Lightfall (29 page)

“Hurry!” Tim shrieked at his frightened son. A second later, he tumbled both boys down the stairs, pulling the thin door shut behind. He threw two flimsy bolts and staggered back, for the thunder of armies was in his house.

“What
is
it?” whimpered Gene. “Is it Mom?”

“No!” cried Tim, in a lonely anguish.

They didn't have thirty seconds left. Upstairs, the furniture broke like matchsticks. The dishes exploded against the walls. The mason jars were all spilled out and trampled underfoot. Already the first of the mob was mauling the cellar door.

“The
dog
” wept Michael, one hand clamped on the blood that matted his hair.

Oh, but they had the dog. They tore it limb from limb in the yard, and it howled till its voice went out. Somebody tied the snake in a double knot. The first lock gave on the door with a spray of sawdust. Tim shrank away to the corner, where the two boys huddled by the washer-dryer. “Get him
behind
you,” he yelled at Michael. And when the boy had done so, shielding his brother and whispering comfort, then Tim knelt himself, trying to hold them both. They stood no chance at all, but he laid his final bet on mercy.

The door ripped open. They crashed downstairs. There were two—a man and a woman. They lurched to the corner and dragged Tim off his sons. They hardly knew where to begin, it seemed. In a rage of impatience, they cast about for tools. The man grabbed a hoe, the woman a scythe. More lunatics were pouring down the stairs. Tim saw the two blades swing over their heads—

Then everything stopped.

For the longest moment they all stood frozen. Then a deafening clatter, as the hoe and scythe fell harmless from their slackened hands. The intruders hardly looked at Tim. Their shoulders sagged like cavemen as they clumped back up the stairs. They drifted out to the yard and made for the road to town. Tim and the boys could hear them singing, could hear the weird harmony fade on the bright fall air, but still for a while they didn't move.…

… he lay in her arms, panting. Though he still wouldn't open his eyes or speak, she knew from the beat of her own heart that the horror was safely passed. The nightmare died inside her so fast it almost made her sad. Already she couldn't say who they were, these men she had just dreamed out of danger. The zing of the insects, the call of an owl, the crack of branches across the stream—everything brought her back here.

Idly, she brushed the damp hair from the forehead of the man she couldn't kill. She felt nothing. Their legs were still in the water, and she was shivering. She looked down at his hairless chest, his baby-fat belly, his little penis limp against his thigh. If he didn't wake soon, she'd leave him here and go tell one of his people where to find him. He'd ceased to be her responsibility. If he wanted to die on his own, then let him.

But even as she eased his head from the pillow of her arm, she heard him moan. His lids fluttered open. Immediately she looked away, as if he could cast a spell by the merest glance. Now that he was back in the world she didn't have to be gentle anymore. Before he could grab her she pushed him off her lap and clambered away along the bank. Shutting her ears with her hands she stepped out into the stream.

She tried to walk straight across with a proud demeanor, but the current had other ideas. She pitched to the side and floundered. She swam with a curious helplessness. By the time she reached the opposite shore she was choking. Only then did she dare to turn. He was where she'd left him, slumped like a puppet. His legs in the eddy were white with the cold. He said no word of reproof—scarcely seemed to focus on her. She could see that he was crying.

“I'll see you after it's over,” Iris called out sharply.

Over the rush of the water she heard his sobbing. She spun around and scrambled up the bank. At first she almost laughed, he seemed so harmless. Tears didn't get him anywhere; she knew those tricks by heart. She'd won this round. He hadn't caught her. She pulled herself up to level ground and came to her feet, as if she had put the sea between them.

And there in the ferns was the rearing zebra, beating the air with its hooves. The whole earth quaked when it landed. Iris staggered back. It meant to crush her—to drive her into the water. She must have panicked, for her right foot tripped on a rabbit hole, and suddenly she was down. The front hooves thundered on the leafy ground, not three feet off. The next time would crack her in two.

Once more she held her tongue. Her last clear thought was not to beg.

“No!” cried the voice of the prophet.

And that was all it needed. The zebra stopped mid-leap and shied, whinnying like a pony. She could have sworn it waited once again to bear her on its back. She got up quickly and walked away. She would not thank her savior. Needles and wood chips clung to her skin. Her hair was a tangle of briars. Unconsciously, she folded her arms across her breasts as she crashed through the lonely underbrush.

She was stung with shame. She'd lost the power all over again, till she had no claim on his pity. She shouldered her way past fallen limbs. The poison sumac stroked her. She was seized by a horror of snakes, but what it really was was this: she'd thrown her people away for the sake of pride. If she'd groveled, she might have saved them. He ought to have woken up from death and found himself inside her.

She broke free of the final web of vines, and the sun beat down on her nakedness. Still, she could hear the faintest sound of sobbing. The long and sunlit hill was a waste of green. The cobalt span of the ocean shrugged its lazy tide. She simply hadn't loved him enough—he was right about that. Across the meadow a few of his people were loading sod. They smiled when they saw her stripped at last. She wondered now if she'd ever loved at all.

Of course it was all irrational, but deep down she feared she had tried to murder God. Tears sprang out on her cheeks. She could not recall what made it all so sad.

No wonder the world was going to end.

VIII

MONDAY HARDLY DAWNED
at all, the sky was so black and low. A rain like this could last a couple of weeks. Sheets of it were already visible far out at sea, as if the storm had stopped to swamp a helpless fleet of ships. But as of midmorning, not a drop had fallen on the cliffs. It only made the moiling of the clouds more dreadful. The ground never lost the drench of the dew and the midnight fog. The trees were chilly, and the bare wood shingles on the final buildings were mossy to the touch.

There was no one about for hours. It wouldn't have been so odd, except there were only a half-dozen houses where a body could still curl up under the covers. What were they doing in church? Didn't they know it was their last day? They ought to be out in the weather, taking a look at their wild green island.

They didn't know a blessed thing. They huddled in rows in the old stone church like refugees in a depot. Their eyes were hollow. They were cold to the bone. A few wept openly—one was rolling in fits on the altar stairs—but mostly they were numb. And all from the loss of one day's sun. If Monday had only risen bright and red, and limpid breezes had blown through the firs, they would have been out like kids, playing. Their work was mostly done, after all. They were free to do what they liked. And here they sat in a sullen pout, like someone was keeping them in.

Michael lay in the meadow grass at the top of the rise, cradling his head in the crook of his arm and looking out through the tall wet stalks. He stared at the church as if he would bomb it, or seal it up like a tomb by an act of purest concentration. The cold didn't bother him. He liked this weather more than the sun.

Ever since he'd risen from the stream he had found the sunlight threatening. He squinted and shaded his eyes, even deep in the woods. The pools and spots of dappled light were like gunfire. Night, when it finally came, was a hundred times more perfect. He danced among the animals—cavorting, nuzzling, wishing in their ears. The gray and the mist of the creeping day circled him like the breath of heaven. He greeted the winter morning as if he had commanded it.

Twice already he'd gone around peeking in all the windows, and no one saw him. Most of those still left in houses slept upstairs. He caught one couple in a three-room cottage: Polly and Dr. Upton. They lay like spoons in her spinster's bed, with their clothes all neatly folded in separate piles on the faded chaise. He watched them sleep for a good half hour, till he laughed so hard the woman's eyes shot open, and he ducked and spidered off.

He tiptoed around the church three times, to get the crowd from every different angle. It almost seemed he was doing an incantation, as if the building were meant to rise up in the air. Nobody saw him here, either, though perhaps it was that nobody cared. He deliberately hadn't fed them their last night's dose of fungus. They were due for another at dawn, and he came up empty-handed. He knew what he was supposed to do—he just ignored it. After all, there was nothing the forces could do to him now. Not this late. He only wanted some leeway, to see what shape this thing was taking. He wasn't out to defy the darker powers. He simply wanted to know up close how hopeless these people were. He needed some tangible proof they'd all be happier dead.

No doubt about it, he felt more pity this time. When the tower clock chimed ten, he came to his feet and stretched his tawny muscles. Before they went off to marry the night, his people deserved a final slug of paradise. Besides, it would make him almost happy to watch them one last time at play. Not that he felt sorry, but he didn't really wish them harm.

As for the rest, it was almost a game with Iris. Oh, he loved her and all, he thought as he pissed on a rosebush. He would live with her here as he said he would, and gladly build her a cabin and cut her wood and haul her water. It was just that the whole arrangement was more formal this time. He didn't plan on being
with
her, not the way he once did. Then he'd suffered the throes of hell if she even left his sight. He wanted the world ravaged if he couldn't have her. He moaned with pain in the starry nights. Couldn't leave himself alone. He shot so many times, nothing came out at all.

Now he raced downhill, buoyed by the rush of the wind till he almost flew, and could not help but laugh at the agonies of youth. He had to swallow it fast, of course, the moment he stopped to catch his breath at the cliff edge. He must not overstep too far. Today was his day to pine and waste away for the sake of Iris. And so, like a monk at prayer, he stood with folded arms in a bed of heather and sighed as if his heart would rend in two. On the stroke of the first tear, the rain came down in a deluge.

He was only a hundred feet from the church. A bare few seconds later, he'd run in under the porch. He was drenched. His hair streamed in his eyes. His teeth chattered happily as he looked out into the seething air. He put his mind on Iris now like a hand on a leper he meant to heal. He basked in the pangs of unrequited love. He savored each rejection like a station of the Cross. The storm blew darker and darker. When he reached for the door, he was gaily weeping. He stood determined to step inside and haul them out to see. If only they knew they could do it too. There wasn't any end now to what the heart could summon.

Maybeth lay on her side and watched the rain come down. She didn't dare move for fear she'd wake Felix. His sleeping arm was slung across her shoulder, and his fingers brushed her nipple through the threadbare lace of her nightgown. It had been a thousand years, it seemed, since she'd held still half a morning so as not to stir a man. She was lighthearted with simplicity, as if there were nothing more important now than keeping watch while the loved one slumbered. In fact it hadn't been this way since thirty years ago, in a whitewashed town in Illinois. Not since the night her husband died, and she had no place to go but here.

At last he rolled away, so he lay on his back and whistled softly through his teeth. Light as a deer, she sat up and glided off the bed. As she fished for slippers with her feet, as she drew the robe from the bedpost, she allowed herself a naked look at Felix, deep asleep and smiling in a dream. She blushed at the sight of his thick-haired chest. The thought went through her head that, back in Illinois, when a man left his wife, he usually went with a girl young as his oldest daughter. Maybeth laughed and covered her mouth. She couldn't think, in the old world, of
anyone
who needed a woman her age.

The rain was so hard that she couldn't see out to the lighthouse on the point. The view stopped at the end of her lawn. It made her feel so safe, she fairly danced across the room. There was the fire to build, the bread to knead, the table to set for four. She was so brimful of joy, she could hardly think what to make. She still had a quart of blueberries, so maybe blueberry pancakes, with sausages and apple crumb. Iris could fix the porridge and squeeze the juice.

She looked back at him sleeping one more time. Two days, she thought, was worth the years of waiting. Two nights was what she meant. For all she knew, he would have to lie with someone else tonight. It was only right to hope they could coax his ruined wife to come before it was too late. But the landlady didn't lose a moment feeling bitter. She blew him a kiss and pulled the door wide without a sound, too happy to grieve that the night was done. There was still so much to look forward to. She couldn't imagine anything nicer than a crackling fire and breakfast cooking, with the gentle noises filtering down of people getting dressed. That's what a house was for.

The moment she closed the door to the hall, before she got to the stairs, Iris came padding down from the floor above. She wore the old flannel bathrobe Maybeth had left in her closet. Iris froze when she saw the landlady—almost seemed to flinch. She reversed her motion like a shift of wind and crept back up a stair. “I forgot my watch,” Iris mumbled, filling the pause haphazardly.

“Is there anything I can do?” asked Maybeth.