The Nightworld - Jack Blaine [12]
My phone buzzes across the counter and I pick it up. Charlie’s texting me.
Have you seen the news?
I pour some milk over my cereal and take it to the living room. I grab the remote and switch on the TV. Every channel seems to be a new announcer. I stop on one and listen.
“. . . as it would be just after dusk. No explanation has been forthcoming from any government source thus far. Scientists say it’s too early to comment—that they need more data. The White House remains silent on the strange phenomenon.”
The announcer presses the bud in his ear for a moment, listening to some voice tell him what to say. “Ladies and gentleman, this just in—the White House press secretary says there will be an announcement today. The president will address the nation at seven p.m. Eastern Standard Time this evening. Keep—”
That’s when I realize that the room seems dark. I mean, the curtains are all drawn, so at first I didn’t notice anything, but now that I think about it . . . I jump up and go to the big bay window. I’m almost afraid to pull back the cloth, but I do, just a few inches.
It’s dark. The streetlights are glowing all the way down the street, even though the clock on the wall says it’s nine thirty in the morning. It looks just like the guy said, like dusk, when you can barely see, but it’s not pitch dark yet. I switch off the T.V. and text Charlie.
WTH?
He comes back right away with
I know, right? The whole world’s gone batshit crazy. Mom is crying and calling people. Oh, hell, here she comes. Gotta go—back in a few.
I check to see if all the doors are locked.
Dad doesn’t show up until almost four in the afternoon. I’ve spent the time peeking out various windows to see if it’s really still dark (it always is) and channel surfing to see if any of the news stations say anything different. Finally I hear the garage door open and close, and by the time Dad puts his key in the back-door lock I’m ready to jump out of my skin.
“Where have you been?” I must sound like a pissed-off girlfriend.
“Can you give me a hand with these?” Dad nods toward the Subaru. He’s backed it into the garage, and there are boxes in the cargo area.
I grumble, but I pick up a box.
“I didn’t have time to pack them in right at the store. I want to rearrange so that we have some more room for stuff in the back.”
“What is this stuff?” The boxes don’t have labels.
“Survival supplies. It’s funny, you think you’re prepared until something actually happens and then you realize you’re not prepared at all. I went to that store out on the highway—The End Is Nigh, remember it?”
I sure do. We went in there one Saturday to see what it was when it first opened—must have been a couple of years ago. It turned out to be a survivalist’s paradise. They had all kinds of freeze-dried foods and water purifiers and blankets made of tinfoil stuff and knives and guns and traps. They even had a store model of a “survival cube” that you could shut yourself into in case of a disaster. The brochure said the company guaranteed the cube would keep a person alive thirty days, even in the case of a nuclear bomb, as long as you didn’t open the door. You just strapped yourself in, closed the door and locked it from the inside, and waited it out. There was a toilet built into the seat, and a tube stuck out of one of the walls that you could suck “nutripaste” from. I climbed in and sat down and wondered how anybody could stand it for more than an hour.
After we rearrange all the boxes, Dad starts cooking some dinner. He’s not a bad cook, and tonight it looks like he’s going all out—steaks and fried mushrooms.
“Don’t know when we’ll eat like this again,” he says while he splashes some cooking wine on the steaks.
“What do you mean?