Kenneth Calhoun - Black Moon

But crying was like a sleep drug for her. About an hour into the drive, as they ascended the overpass, she nodded out. It was only for a few seconds, but it was enough for the Marine, who caught the dropping of her head in the rearview. He turned in his seat, reaching for her with both hands, completely abandoning the wheel and shouting incomprehensibly, and she jolted awake. She screamed, seeing the crashed car rushing toward them over his shoulder. The impact sucked him halfway out the windshield and spat him back into the driver’s seat with a smashed face. The car crumpled toward her as she folded over, bashing her mouth on her own knees, then blasted back with the seat into the trunk, which held her like a coffin. She had had to kick it open to escape, then wandered a few wobbly steps before collapsing on the shoulder, out cold. Another crash—a car plowing into the trunk she had just fled—jolted her back onto her feet. She darted for the concrete barrier that lined the road and almost threw herself over before realizing she was several stories above the ground.

NOW she was in the home of some strangers, staring into the mirror looking like a stranger herself. Maybe she was no stranger to them, she pondered. Maybe I just think I’m a stranger because I was in a crash. I’m just confused or something. Happens in movies all the time. Maybe I really do live here and have always lived here and that other life is just a dream I had. That’s why they don’t ask who I am. But she also knew that the sleepless are like that. They lose the ability to recognize people.

Plus, they get really stupid, Lila reminded herself as she stepped back into the hallway. You can talk them out of anything, except shipping you off to some imaginary safe zone, even though it’s just a rumor passed around by a bunch of sleepless lunatics.

Oh, man, my face kills.

She found the next door closed, but not locked, so she ducked inside. The bed was unmade. There were posters of shirtless actors on the wall. Eww. That whole vampire scene that Lila hated. This must be the cheerleader’s room. She went over to the desk where a laptop sat. She tried to turn it on. Nothing, of course. There were trophies on a shelf—cheerleading victories.

Catching her reflection again in the dresser mirror, it occurred to her that she should change her clothes. She searched the drawers and selected a pair of jeans. Sitting on the bed, she stripped off her bloodstained shorts and slid into the pants. They were a little loose, but she cinched them tight around her narrow waist with a belt.

She decided she wanted a shirt with buttons so she wouldn’t have to pull anything over her battered and bruised head. When she pulled open the closet door, she was confronted by two large eyes in the darkness—unblinking eyes the size of saucers. She gasped and drew back before her brain could process what she was seeing.

It was a mask.

The mask of a team mascot. An owl’s head with enormous eyes. Oh, yeah, she thought, recalling the local high school’s team name from the trophies. The Night Owls.

OUT on the street there was a commotion at the center of the cul-de-sac, where the ashes were piled. Several parents and kids had emerged from the houses and were gathering in the hot, shadeless street. Lila could see them from the cheerleader’s window. She wondered if one of the kids was the cheerleader. Maybe they had food out there. The soggy cornflakes hadn’t quite filled the void of hunger. She had been carrying it for weeks now—always hungry, always sleepy.

She made her way to the gathering, stepping over the clutter of objects the houses seemed to have coughed up on the yellow lawns—toaster ovens, printers, shattered televisions and torn-up books, soiled clothes, soccer cleats, documents blowing around. Broken shards of circuit boards and plates, barbecue grills. How had all this gotten outside? A couple of young boys came up behind Lila, running past her toward the ash pile, where two men were standing with rifles slung on their backs. Lila studied them. Could they drive her home? They wore only shorts and boots. One had a long, wild beard that hung down, dark and wet over his sunburned chest. “The fire we want is higher than the houses,” the bearded man said.

The other began speaking before the first man had finished. “The ones who don’t are the ones who won’t, better understand.”

Lila saw the woman who had first led her into the house. She came out the front door of yet another house, walking with an elderly woman in a bathrobe. Trying to lead her by the arm, but the two of them staggered drunkenly off the path into the lawn. The older woman slumped toward the ground, but the other woman held her up. Another woman was watching from her upstairs balcony as she threw papers into the air. There were about a dozen kids now. Most of them were younger than Lila—eight, ten, maybe. Boys and girls, thin and scraped up. Red-eyed and twitching with nervous energy, practically panting like dogs chained to a tree.

There were four teenage boys and three girls. A fat boy was shirtless, exposing his floppy breasts and loose folds of skin. Another boy with a scruffy goatee held a homemade spear. It looked to Lila like a curtain rod with a knife duct-taped to the end. He looked old enough to drive, not that messed up. Sleepless, she could see, but not that sleepless. Not too sleepless, yet.

One of the girls was wearing a tattered yellow prom dress. She could not be the cheerleader, Lila knew, because her hair was nearly black. The cheerleader, like Lila, had dirty blond hair. Another girl was wearing a one-piece bathing suit and running shoes. The third looked as if she could be going to school, with capri pants and a flowered blouse. She was holding a broken umbrella over her head, creating a circle of shade with a bite taken out of it on the ground. Everyone seemed to have a hammer or a hatchet, or even a monkey wrench, in their hand. They wavered where they stood, blinking at the light.

Without any apparent cue, the boy with the spear let out a whoop and started running down the street. Everyone ran after him, including Lila. She did not know what else to do, nor could she tell if they were running with or after the boy. But if it led to food, she would play along.

She ran with this pack of sleepless youths past the end of the block and into a nearby field of dust, charging down the shallow remnants of vague furrows and past the gnarled wicks of long-dead grapevines, the sky a pale blue parachute above them, the vultures churning over the ribbon of concrete suspended on columns like an ancient aqueduct. They yipped and howled. The older boys seemed to be racing toward some unspoken destination, with the teen girls trailing, the smaller kids already falling behind and fanning out.

Lila ran hard, trying to keep up. Each step caused her head to pulse with pain, her thigh wound to flash hurt like lightning. But she had been a junior varsity soccer player at school and some of that was still with her now, in her muscles and the targeting of her steps, as they crossed a dirt road and started down a slope of quartz boulders. Below was an undeveloped stretch of washland—a field of speckled rocks and mustard stalk. Lizards darted off sun-baked boulders as they approached.

Sleep inside them, she thought. Tiny doses. Lila could hear their dry skittering in the weave of dead grass.

The kids stomped like wild horses through the terrain, now heavy-footed, breathing hard. No one was whooping now. They fell a lot, crashing to their knees, skidding in the dust. Soon it was just the older kids. They ran down old winding motorbike trails, through the brittle scrub, scaring up grasshoppers. The land gradually tilted toward the bottom of the valley. In the distance, a lone tree billowed darkly among the thistles.