Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous: Tim Marquitz (37 page)

Lester struggled to his feet and staggered outside.

“Where are you going?”

He looked back at Carla. “Are you kidding? After all this, I’m
not missing how it ends.”

He stepped out and looked up to see the shining form of the dragon
climbing into the air, as the serpent struggled to free itself. Then,
with a single wrenching motion, it tore Gulega’s head from its
body and spat it into the river. Before Lester could react, Gulega’s
brackish, black blood rained down on him, drenching him in foulness
and filth. The dragon then rent the serpent’s body in two and
cast the pieces down onto the ruined Sunsphere, drenching Lester even
further in the black snake’s viscera.

Saturated, he turned round to hear Carla’s joyous laughter.

She limped to him and wiped his face clean with her sweater.

“My hero,” she said.

“Well done, Coyote,” Moon’s voice called out behind
them. He shuffled down from the street to meet them, picking up the
lantern along the way. “I see you convinced Atsila to join your
cause.”

“You crazy bastard. You set us up as bait.” Lester spat
out black bile.

“You didn’t think that little old egg was going to stop
Gulega, did you?” Moon said with a smile. “We have
monsters of our own to raise.”

Moon looked up and waved his porkpie hat to the dragon, which circled
overhead with a triumphant roar.

“Atsila up there will be our sun until you return,” Moon
said.

“Say what now?”

“Return from where?” Carla asked.

“Your journey isn’t over, little Eagle. You have to
rescue Sun. My sister’s still alive.” Moon chuckled when
he looked at Lester. “And you, Coyote, will help her steal
something from the Ghost Country.”

Lester looked about at the carnage surrounding them and shook his
head. “I just want to get the hell out of Knoxville.”

Everyone remembered exactly where they were the day the moon cracked
open and Selene slid inside. It was like 9/11, or the Challenger, or
as the elderly said, the day President Kennedy was shot.

The establishment of the lunar colony had been the biggest event in
the past hundred years. It had taken a decade to excavate and build,
and every waxing night all of mankind looked up to watch the
construction progress, growing slowly but steadily like a little gray
spider web on the far south end. People talked about how it was
before there was a mark on the moon. They showed their children
pictures, because the little ones didn’t believe it.

The waiting list for resettlement had begun months before the project
was even officially announced. Hundreds of hopefuls died on that list
without ever seeing it completed.

They were the lucky ones.

When the moon cracked and Selene collapsed into the hole, it took the
cream of the wealthy elite with it. Who else could afford to settle
there?

The participating governments garnered a lot of positive press
holding lotteries for anyone in the public willing to move up there.
Even a couple third world nations were graciously included. The
International Lunar Homesteader Project, they called it. Qualified
winners got to live on the moon in Selene’s Personnel Quarter.
Qualified, meaning entrants were required to garner the approval of
the International Lunar Relocation Committee, and approval came from
having useful occupational experience. Not just engineers and
geologists, but maintenance and waste disposal, even domestics. The
Lunar elite needed a class to rule, a work force to maintain that
chrome, Kubrickian wonderland after all.

Most of the initial colonists were well-connected, or wealthy, or
celebrities, and despite all the talk in the media of the moon being
a new, unblemished, uncorrupted land, members of the fledgling
colonial government were all of the above. The moon’s first
governor was a popular ex-American president, who had been a
Hollywood A-lister before that, born a daughter of an international
hotel tycoon with relatives in several different European noble
families.

Shackleton Base was the closest NASA outpost. They beamed the first
grainy images from the disaster site, and in the first week they were
inescapable, if somewhat underwhelming. Just an impenetrable cloud of
slow-moving black smoke pouring from a hellishly huge hole, the news
tickers scrolling NASDAQ numbers beneath it twenty four seven.
Despite a brand new jagged crack in its face, from the earth, it
looked like a pen had exploded in the moon’s pocket and was
steadily spreading across its southern hemisphere, darker than the
usual splotches of gray mare.

The rescue effort was stymied by the thickness of the cloud. It was
impenetrable. The images probe cameras transmitted were no help, and
something in its mineral makeup interfered with remote signals. After
three multi-million dollar drones were lost, the powers that be
elected to wait until the dust settled before going in to haul out
bodies and salvage equipment, particularly the costly radiation
shield array.

But the dust didn’t settle.

It lifted like a huge plume, ever increasing.

Then they lost contact with Shackleton.

It was two weeks after Selene had fallen that the plume began to
drift into Earth’s atmosphere. Whether it came on solar winds
or what, nobody knew.

Walter Coombs surely had no idea.

He only knew he had the bad luck of having been replacing yet another
faulty pressure vacuum assembly outside one of the old barracks at
Fort Sill when the base went on lockdown, and now he couldn’t
go home and walk his dog.

Whoever the army had contracted to lay the plumbing for the base must
have pocketed a third of the budget, because Walter had been out
every night since the Selene disaster dealing with backflow issues of
the worst sort brought about by corner cutting.

Up until now, being part of the base’s Department of Public
Works labor pool had been nothing more than replacing the odd gasket
or providing regular preventative maintenance service. Nothing too
challenging; a cush job with a regular paycheck.

But heavy Oklahoma rains, all last week, had caused the toilets in
several of the older barracks to back up. They’d closed them
off and moved the soldiers to temporary accommodations. He had to
break out the hip waders and trudge through the base sewer line. That
was when he started uncovering more and more problems. Sure it meant
more hours, but it also meant a hell of a lot more work, and all this
had hit while he happened to be on a late night call to stop a
backflow problem in one of the barrack latrines. Now he was the sole
plumber on site.

When Shackleton had gone quiet, the DPW duty sergeant, Timms, had
come and informed him that all military installations were on
lockdown worldwide until the nature of the Selene disaster had been
better assessed, whatever the hell that meant.

Walter had tried to phone his neighbors about walking and feeding the
dog, but apparently lockdown even meant no outside communication.

So he resolved himself to fixing the backflow problem as best he
could with what he had on hand, and hoping the dog didn’t tear
up the house too bad.

The morning after the cloud hit the earth’s atmosphere, well,
there was no morning.

Walter woke up in his bed at Lodging and drove the DPW car up
Ferguson Road to get a donut and coffee from the mess. The sky was
still dark.

Thinking he’d just gotten up early, he yawned and went back
into his room only to see the digital alarm clock read eight a.m. He
turned the TV on but got no reception.

Sun should’ve been well up.

He went back outside again. He realized then that he hadn’t
been woken up by the morning bugle call or the PT cadences either.

The sky was black as night. There were no stars. He remembered
something on the news the night prior, about the debris cloud from
Selene maybe coming down.

He ambled over to Sergeant Timms’ office, whistling an old
Doobie Brothers tune that was stuck in his head. He found Timms on
the land line with somebody, speaking quickly, in clipped tones.
Behind him, his television screen was entirely blue, NO SIGNAL in the
upper left hand corner.

“Yes, sir,” said Timms. “Understood, sir.”

He hung up and looked up at Walter as he came over and plunked down
in the chair.

“TV out?” Walter asked tiredly.

“Satellite’s out,” Timms said. “All
satellites. Wherever that shit is,” he said, pointing out the
window. “It’s spreading across the whole damn country.
Maybe the planet. Winds are carryin’ it.”

“Maybe the planet?”

“Yeah. It’s FUBAR. All the airports are grounded till the
shit clears. All the airports
everywhere
. Even us.”

“That’s a bitch.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Moon dust,” said Walter, squinting his eyes out the
window. He couldn’t even see the sun, where it was supposed to
be.

“Yeah. Atmosphere should’ve burned it all off. Weird. So
hey, Walter. What’s the situation with the north barracks? Guys
still gonna get their feet wet after they take a dump or what?”

“I’m doing my best with what I got. I’m just one
guy. I installed five new pressure vacuum assemblies. I need seven,
but I only have one more on hand. You want the rest fixed, I need to
order the parts.”

“Alright, forget it. You need anything?”

“Yeah I need help. When are they gonna give the OK to let those
schlubs in Lawton come in? More importantly, when can I go home?”

“No telling,” Timms said. “Orders are nobody in or
out till we get the all clear.”

“Listen, I got a dog.”

“Orders, man,” Timms said, holding up his hands.

Walter blew through his lips.

“My phone don’t work, and I haven’t been able to
reach the neighbors. He’s probably shittin’ all over the
place.”

Timms rubbed his eyes.

“Yeah nobody’s cells are working. Something to do with
the cloud. Look, what I can do, and don’t let this get around,
tomorrow, we got a couple trucks headed into town. They’re
going in to garrison the airport. Sergeant Mackey’s drivin’
one. Your place is on the way. Maybe I can ask him go in and get your
mutt, bring him back, but he’ll probably be at the airport till
Friday at least.”

“That’s fine, as long as somebody’s takin’
care of him. I’d appreciate that, sarge.”

“Alright, Walter. You had breakfast?”

“I was just going over there. You wanna come?”

“Nah, I gotta stay by the phone.”

The phone rang then, and he picked it up.

“I’ll see ya later,” Walter said, getting up.

Timms waved him out.

It was good of Timms to send Mackey to get his dog.

The next two days came and went, and Walter marked their passing by
the clock. The sun didn’t shine through the black cloud.

The nights were cold, and the grass browned. Birds chirped in
confusion all night. Walter had to put a pillow over his head to shut
out the racket. The leaves on the trees grew sickly pale.

Walter had nothing to do. He gamboled around the fort, seeing all the
touristy stuff he’d never bothered with. He walked through the
ancient green steel guns of Artillery Park. Though it was noon, a
family of possums scurried by in the open, running for who knew what.

He had to take a flashlight to read the inscription on the stone
pyramid under the eagle that marked Geronimo’s grave, and the
Apache prayer cloths tied to the bare limbed trees, the dead flowers,
the pale white tombstones of the guerilla leader’s daughters
creeped him out. He thought about the story that the Skull and Bones
guys had come and stolen the old Indian’s head, and his mind
dwelt on that headless skeleton down there. It might not have been so
bad in the day.

But of course, when he went, it had
been
day.

There was a bad smell in the air. Like sulfur, but by the third day
everybody was used to it.

Walter woke up in the middle of the third night to see the MP’s
dragging some stir crazy kid off to the stockade. The endless night
had probably got to him. You never could tell about some of these
guys. They might be total hardasses by day but afraid of bunny
rabbits or something.

A lot of the guys he saw had a hollow, wild-eyed look, their irises
wide to adjust to the dark. He wondered if he had it too, but he’d
been seeing himself in the mirror everyday so he figured he wouldn’t
notice if he did.

Nobody knew anything about what was going on in the rest of the
world. No TV, or radio. It was weird. The cloud cover showed no signs
of blowing away. You couldn’t even see it move or anything. It
was exactly like night.

Four days, five days in, and nobody could sleep much. The plants were
dying.

Walter spent his time in Timms’ office. There was a bit of a
breakdown in discipline by then, and they shared a bottle of Jack and
played cards for cigarettes like a couple of convicts.

“What do you think’s going on, sarge?” Walter asked
over a pat hand.

The sergeant’s eyes were red rimmed and ringed.

“I can’t say, Walter. I mean, I don’t know. Nobody
does. Not even the brass. It’s like the end of the world out
there. You believe in God? Jesus?”

“Not really.”

“I guess I do. I mean, I’m a Christian, but I don’t
go to church or anything. I’ve been talking to the chaplain
though … ”

His voice trailed off when Walter laid down his cards.

“You motherfucker!” Timms said snickering and throwing
down his hand as Walter pawed the cigarettes across the table.

“You know I been thinking?” said Walter. “That shit
is in the upper atmosphere, so we gotta be breathing it right?”

“Yeah.”

“You think it’s all over the world?”

“Yeah, I do,” said Timms. “We’d be hearing
shit if it wasn’t.”