The Fog (14 page)

“Why, Mel, you know we’re not allowed to indulge on the premises. This here is throat medicine. Doctor’s orders.”

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway, your girlfriend on the radio’s been talking about you.”

“I know. I only came in tonight to keep her happy.”

“I thought you were off tonight. I thought it was supposed to be Romero.”

“I’m in love with my job.”

“She turned you down again, eh?”

“Romero wants the graveyard shift.”

“Fine, wonderful. Till then, you can tell Stevie all about that big mother fog bank moving southeast there.”

O’Bannon went to the radar screen. “Where?”

“You find it, ace. I got to see a man about a dog.”

“Loan me your keys? I’ll lock up after you and leave ’em with Romero.”

“I thought you didn’t forget them this time.”

“I lied.”

“Danny, Danny,” said Sloane. He unhooked the fob from his belt, removed his car keys, and tossed the ring to O’Bannon. “Don’t forget to keep the shortwave on. The Captain gets a wee bit testy when nobody’s on the line for the hourly feed. Catch your act tomorrow.”

“The hell you will. I’m off tomorrow.”

The door slammed.

“See you,” said O’Bannon.

He searched the scope. The door opened.

“Don’t forget to bolt the door behind me,” said Sloane.

“Right.”

“Regulations, remember? You never know when an inspection’s coming down.”

The door slammed again.

O’Bannon fixed his bleary eyes on the scope as it made a complete sweep. This time a definite mass interrupted the green circle, like a dark star a few degrees south and east.

“Aha,” he said, “gotcha.”

He turned the radio up to a reasonable level. Music. He reached for the phone.

“Hello, KAB.”

“How are you, sweetheart?” O’Bannon’s voice was tinny.

“Take the phone out of your chin, Dan.”

“It is. You sound glad to hear me.”

“I thought you were celebrating.”

“What’s a party without you?”

“Be serious. I haven’t got all night. I do, actually, but not for you.” She filled her lungs, relieved, and put out the cigarette. She didn’t need it anymore. Reflected in the window, the burning tip arced down like a meteor.

“Another fog bank, pretty lady.”

“How would you know?”

“It says so right here on my scope.”

“Where?”

“Coming in off the ocean from the southeast. Moving inland now. Should be here where I am in about five, ten minutes. Then I’ll get to see if it’s really pea soup or what.”

“Hold the line, will you?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

She spun a knob, fading the music down, and patched herself back on the air.

“Here’s a special bulletin for all you meteorological freaks,” she said. “The Coast Guard Weather Station on Russell Road reports a fog bank moving southwest along the coast. So batten down the hatches, kiddies. I’ll be talking to you again on the half hour.”

She faded the music back up and took O’Bannon off hold.

“Are you sure that’s the whole story, Dan? I thought I saw something blowing in from the other side, as well. Could it be hitting us from both sides, do you think?”

She disconnected the studio monitor and pressed the receiver tighter to her ear. She could hear only a rushing sound. This was no time for Dan to clown around, she thought. She shook the receiver, then placed it up against her ear and listened hard. Like the blood in her head, it was starting to pound.

“Dan? Are you there?”

Cold night air streamed through the windowless truck. Elizabeth pushed her hair back and discovered that it was damp. She examined her palm in the dashboard light. It was sparkling, as if she had dipped it in sequins.

“Look at this,” she said.

“Mind if we make another stop first?” said Nick.

He overhanded the wheel, ran off the highway, and braked. Then he made a J-turn and barreled back in the opposite direction. He was looking for a break in the trees. There was no sign, but he found it.

“This must be Russell Road,” said Elizabeth. “Is that what she just said?”

“This isn’t it, but it’ll get us there. You’re a quick study, kid.”

“Don’t call me that, okay? ‘Hey You’ or ‘What’s-Your-Name’ or even ‘Sweetheart.’ ” I shouldn’t have said that last one, she thought. She had tried to make it sound the way Bogart would say it, but it hadn’t come out right. “Only not ‘Kid.’ Okay, Nick? Nothing personal.”

“Back where I come from,” he said, “it’s a term of endearment. But you wouldn’t know about that in Pasadena.”

“I’m learning.”

“Hold on. This road hasn’t been repaired for twenty years.”

They bumped down a grade, found what was left of the pavement, and geared up. The springs were squeaking, bouncing them up and down like an amusement park ride. But he knows what he’s doing, she thought.

She slid closer to him.

“Dan?”

“Still here. You sound different tonight. Sort of intense.”

“I feel like talking, that’s all.”

“You told me the other day you don’t like talking on the phone. You said you get all talked out on the air. Remember?”

“Dan, where’s the fog now?”

“The fog? Hell, I should be able to see it from my front door.”

That close, she thought.

“Wait a minute, Dan. I’m going to try something.”

She carried the phone with her to the window and closed the light switch. For a moment she was in total darkness. Then the rows of colored lights on her board appeared in the glass. She looked through them. There in the moonlight was the coast, dotted with rows of porch lights and windows up and down the beach. She followed the coastline to the horizon.

“I can see it!” she said.

The fog now rimmed the waterline completely. You couldn’t miss it. It had curved around the border of Antonio Bay and was unfolding along the beaches in the manner of a neon snake.

It was glowing. Distinct.

“Did you hear what I said? I said—”

“What’s the big deal?” said O’Bannon. “If you see fog once, you’ve seen it for life.”

“There’s something different about this fog, Dan. It . . . it’s bright.”

“How do you mean?”

“You’re not going to believe this. But it’s glowing. I’m looking at it right now. You’ll be able to see for yourself pretty soon. Is it there yet?”

“Glowing? Oh, I get it. You take something to keep you going, right? Gets you lit up sometimes?”

She followed its progress, fascinated. It seemed to be a living thing, a churning tube of radiant energy.

“Hey,” said O’Bannon.

“What? Did you say something?”

“The lights went out here, that’s all.”

Stevie cupped the earpiece closer. She could hear that same static sound in the wires again.

“Yes?” she said. “Keep talking, will you, Dan?”

“Sorry. Jeez, my compass is spinning like a sonofabitch. Feels like the air conditioner just shot all the way over to sub-zero. Did Mel leave a window open? Hey!”

The static was louder.

“What in the holy hell is that?” said O’Bannon.

“What is it? What’s happening?”

The static broadened into a swishing sound. Now she was certain it was not in the wires. It was definitely coming from the other end.

“Dan?
Dan?”

“Had me goin’ for a minute there. Somebody’s shining a light outside the window.”

“Dan, listen to me.”

“I’m gonna check this out. Hold on, sweetheart.”

“Dan? Oh please stay on the line! Dan!”

The swishing sound became the hissing of steam under pressure. She heard Dan’s footsteps fading into it. They reverberated hollowly across the weather station. The footsteps left the phone but continued to resound louder, much louder, pounding and pounding. Her heart double-timed, assaulting her eardrums, but the pounding was even stronger, more deafening, a series of short explosions hammering at the door of the outpost. O’Bannon’s voice came to her from the other end of a long tunnel, the walls throbbing around him with that ungodly pounding.

“Come on. This has gotta be a joke. Now he’s got a light outside the damn door . . .”

A nameless fear seized her for reasons she only dimly comprehended. She shouted into the phone, knowing that he would not be able to hear her. “Dan! Stay away from the door!”

“. . . And whoever it is, he ain’t gonna like finding me home!”

She heard the squeak of the doorknob at his end, the door whispering open.

“. . . Damnfool,” said O’Bannon. “It wasn’t even locked. All he had to do was . . . Hello? Somebody out there?”

The sound of a dripping like rain, slow, steady, replacing the pounding, and then a menacing rush of air. She heard O’Bannon shouting outside his office.

“I guess some asshole got into the hard stuff and started taking this hundred-year business a mite too seriously . . .”

There was a louder sound of some . . . liquid . . . slopping over something at the lonely weather station. And over it all, a long horrible scream.

“Dan!”

But there was only the throb of labored breathing on the line. A heavy, terrible breathing and now a dredging noise that seemed to be sliding . . . sliding toward her.

“Dan! Oh Dan, you stupid fool! You didn’t have to prove anything, you crazy, crazy . . .”

The earpiece dropped from her hand just as the muffled crash of breaking glass filled her ears, lingering like wind chimes gone mad in a wind that would not stop.

“. . . And all of us need to redouble our efforts and work together as a family. For we have a vital, thriving community here, and I say we’ve got to make every effort to keep it that way!”

Inside the tavern, the bartender racked a row of clean beer mugs, wiped his hands on his apron and hiked up the volume on the radio in order to hear KAB above the amplified voice of Kathy Williams. It was not Stevie’s usual rap. It was some sort of news-break.

“Sorry to interrupt the good music,” said Stevie, “but I have an urgent bulletin here.” Her voice broke but continued. “Will Sheriff David Simms please contact KAB immediately. The number is 555-2131. This is an emergency.”

The music resumed. The bartender lowered the volume.

Outside, Kathy Williams was leafing through her notes, scraping the microphone, which sent a thud and then a sustained whine of feedback through the PA system. The crowd stirred restlessly.

The bartender unclipped a pen from his shirt pocket and made a note on a napkin. He let himself out from behind the bar and walked slowly to the door, reluctant to intercede.

Sheriff Simms was standing next to Kathy, a glazed impersonation of concern on his jowled face.

The bartender made up his mind. He untied his apron, tossed it over the bar, and strode across the park. He slipped around to the side, climbed up the rear of the platform and tapped Simms’ shoulder. The Sheriff leaned over, nodded once and climbed down.

Behind him, the crowd broke into applause.

“Most of you have taken candles already, Well, I don’t blame you. We’re here tonight to dedicate this fine piece of sculpture commissioned by the Antonio Bay City Council, and you’re impatient. Bless you all for your civic spirit. In a moment I’ll ask my monitors to pass among you to see that your candles are relighted, and then we’ll line up . . .”

The sheriff hitched up his pants and followed the bartender inside, leaving a dotted line of footprints in the wet grass.

“God almighty,” he said at the door. “Look at that fog, will you? I couldn’t see it from where I was.”

“That might have something to do with it,” said the bartender. “An accident, maybe. You never know in weather like this. I wrote out the number for you.”

Simms stopped off at the men’s room—it was labeled CREW—and then dropped a dime into the pay phone.

“Hello, KAB,” said Stevie Wayne breathlessly.

“Hello, Miss Wayne? This is . . .”

Across the park, Kathy’s voice was receding like a ship in the night. The bartender remained outside on the porch, trying to watch the relighting of the candles, but fog was flowing in so fast now that all that was to be seen anywhere in the park were the pinpricks of a few sputtering wicks through the thickening mist. The platform was obscured, Kathy only a disembodied voice from the loudspeakers, which were impeded by static. There were no longer trees or audience, not even a visible demarcation between land and sky but only a polar landscape, a snowy expanse covered by the turbulent moire of fog.

It was impossible for anyone to see the way the mass of fog had wound its way uphill from the base of the poles at the other end of Main Street, the way it now sheathed their crosslike tops, coating the ceramic insulators with ice crystals, contracting over the connections, freezing the wires brittle and finally snapping them off hard and clean, breaking every telephone link to the Square, the Inn and the homes and businesses of Antonio Bay within a half-mile radius.

Interrupted in mid-sentence, Sheriff David Simms pumped the pay phone cradle, trying to get a response from the operator, a dial tone or even a recording. But the phone was cold and quite dead in his hand, and there was nothing he nor anyone else in the town could have done about it.

CHAPTER NINE