Kenneth Calhoun - Black Moon

Chase recalled how Jordan hadn’t looked his way. He seemed to mull things over, then nodded slowly out the window. It was as if he was signaling someone on the mountain to let time keep rolling forward, if only to see how it went.

NOW here they were, three states north, the heist behind them. Jordan had somehow managed to pick up a girl without leaving the room. The girl tried to entice him to join them by describing a local attraction: two graves side by side in the graveyard, one inscribed WERE, the other WOLF.

“It makes for an awesome profile picture,” she insisted.

“I’m really tired,” Chase said. This was true, but he had another motive for staying behind.

As soon as he was alone, he went to the car and began his excavation of the trunk.

THE SUN WOULD STOP IT FROM HAPPENING. There were no working streetlights anymore, no power in the lines. Drivers couldn’t see in the dark—sleepless people who shouldn’t be driving anyway. But it was coming, the sun, a dumb but faithful beast of fire, as though no one had told it everything had changed.

Lila could see the sky lightening behind the craggy mountains, a peach-colored hue slowly seeping into the pale canvas, bringing some definition to her surroundings. It was such a relief to see. The night had taken forever, and, though it was receding, the crashes continued. Over her shoulder, on a winding concrete overpass suspended high overhead, she heard the shriek of tires and the crunch of metal and glass as another speeding car joined the long chain of collisions. She winced, then lightly touched her swollen face. She was pretty sure the Marine driver was dead, if not from their crash, then from the eight or so crashes that had followed in the darkness. The car—which her father had given to the Marine for his willingness to drive her—had probably been gradually crushed in a vise of impact.

“The sun will stop it,” she said aloud.

Daylight revealed that she was standing in the basin of a wide, arid valley. They had lived in the area for a while, though many miles from here, when she was small. She only vaguely remembered it—a date tree in the yard, the elderly neighbors splashing in their pool behind the oleander hedge, coyotes close to the fence at night, a fire on the ridgeline and ashes snowing down.

The freeway cut through the valley and the loop of overpass, from which she had staggered down, swung close to a neighborhood. She could see that it was a development of identical tract homes, painted in gradients of beige and roofed with pink Spanish tiles. It was very similar to Lila’s own neighborhood out in the desert, behind the treeless, moon-colored mountains that loomed in the background. The trees along the parkway were little more than frail saplings tethered to posts for support. She knew from watching neighborhoods sprout in the desert how it had evolved from skeletal two-by-four frames mounted on concrete slabs to stuccoed and shingled homes. How the lawns had been rolled on like carpet, how the crosswalks and yellow lines were spray-painted from a slow-moving truck. As she entered the closest cul-de-sac, she could see that the sidewalks were flat, unbroken by roots or earthquakes, and the gutters were dry and free of moss. Under the chaotic clutter of junk on the lawns and driveways, and a heap of ashes in the middle of the street, it was all brand-new.

As the sun inched upward, she felt wobbly in the legs and sat on a curb. What now, what next? How would she get home? Where was it, exactly? She was overwhelmed by a sudden sense of her smallness, her solitude. Crying into her hands, she was careful not to press too hard on her battered face. They had betrayed her by sending her away, her parents. For her own good, they kept saying, her own safety, to protect her. They hadn’t been themselves for a couple of weeks now, alternating between fits of delirious rage and apologetic promises to have her taken somewhere safe. A base near the coast where her father had contacts. They have others over there, they told her. People like you who can still sleep. But where? The Marine driver would say nothing about it, though she had pressed relentlessly from the backseat.

God, this is so messed up.

She pulled off her left sock, which was soaked with blood from a gash in her thigh, and dropped it in the dry gutter. It looked gruesome, like an organ torn from a body. There must be a cut somewhere on her head too, because every time she pressed her hand to her temple, it came away daubed with red. Her entire scalp and swollen jaw pulsed with pain. Her lip was still bleeding; she could taste the blood. What frightened her was seeing part of her own face out of the corner of her eye.

A number of vultures were circling the overpass, like trash bags in a dust devil. Lila had counted more than two dozen when a woman came out of the house across the street and noticed her sitting there trying to decide what to do. She crossed the street, her oversized flip-flops clapping against her heels. Judging by the woman’s frazzled appearance and darting eyes, Lila figured that she had been sleepless for some time. She was stout, wearing a simple denim skirt and a man’s pinstriped dress shirt that was buttoned wrong. Her wide bulldog face looked sunburned and her lips were cracked.

The woman said, “Why is it you that is sitting out here with these bloody socks in the middle of everything? Come home away from here!”

Lila allowed herself to be led into a nearby house, pulled along by the woman’s grip on her arm. Not the one from which the woman had emerged, but the house immediately behind Lila. There, the woman sat her at the kitchen counter. The sink was filled with broken dishes. There were blackened pots and pans on the floor and what looked like shards of dried pasta everywhere, as well as dark soupy splotches. Lila wanted to plug her nose. Something was rotten somewhere close. On the windowsill, a dark avocado seed was suspended over a jar by toothpicks, like a dried and shrunken heart. There was no water in the jar, Lila noted, just a filmy residue. Maybe someone drank it. She wished she had water now, and food.

On the counter, there were several bowls of uneaten cereal. Someone, perhaps this woman, had placed one before each barstool. The woman glanced around. She opened the refrigerator to reveal its emptiness. Like the inside of a spaceship in the future, Lila thought, looking past the woman into the white plastic void. She picked out a cornflake from the bowl in front of her and put it on her tongue. It was soft and stale. She didn’t care. It had been weeks since she had had cereal and almost two days since she had eaten anything at all.

The woman seemed surprised by the empty state of the fridge. She stood back and studied it, scratching at her heavy thigh. Her legs were webbed with purplish veins. She walked past Lila and opened a door, which Lila could see led into a dimly lit garage. Was there a car in there? Could she drive it home? Could she drive a car? It didn’t look that hard, you just turn the wheel when the road curves.

The woman stepped into the garage and shut the door behind her.

Lila sat alone in the kitchen, painfully chewing fistfuls of the soft flakes and watching the door. Her hope was that a larger meal was coming her way, and the possibility of eating overrode all other concerns for the moment. Five, then ten, minutes passed and the woman did not return. Lila got up and tried the faucet. Water miraculously spilled from it with a steady hiss. She leaned into it and drank, though this made her head wound throb. She could feel water passing through her throat and sloshing heavily in her stomach. The water was cool and airy, almost fizzy, as it flowed from the tap. She finally broke away from the stream, gasping for air, and wiped her mouth with her hand. She looked out the window. The street was empty. She liked that—the absence of people. People without sleep were trouble, broken and dangerous even if they’ve loved you their whole life.