Headlight beams flashed through the spaces between bungalows. The truck. It was passing on the next street parallel to this one, behind the small houses.
Although I hadn’t seen any details of the vehicle, I was sure Bobby had arrived. The pitch of the engine was similar to that of his Jeep, and it was speeding toward the commercial district of Dead Town, where we were supposed to meet.
I headed in that direction as the roar of the truck rapidly diminished. The pain was gone from my calf, but the nerve continued to flutter, leaving my left leg weaker than my right. With the cramp threatening to recur, I didn’t even try to run.
From above came the shearing sound of wings, cutting the air into scimitar shapes. I looked up, ducking defensively, as a flock of birds made a low pass, in tight formation, and vanished into the night ahead.
Their speed and the darkness prevented me from identifying their species. This might have been the mysterious crew that had roosted in the tree under which I’d placed my call to Bobby.
When I reached the end of the block, the birds were flying in a circle over the intersection, as if marking time until I caught up with them. I counted ten or twelve, more than had kept watch over me from the Indian laurel.
Their behavior was peculiar, but I didn’t feel that they intended any harm.
Even if I was wrong and they posed a danger to me, there was no way to avoid them. If I changed my route, they could easily follow.
As they passed across the face of the descendent moon, traveling more slowly than before, I saw them clearly enough to identify them tentatively as nighthawks. Because they live by my schedule, I am familiar with this species, also known as nightjars, which encompasses seventy varieties, including the whippoorwill.
Nighthawks feed on insects—moths, flying ants, mosquitoes, beetles—and dine while on the wing. Snatching tidbits from the air, they jink this way and that, exhibiting a singular swooping-darting-twisting pattern of flight that, as much as anything, identifies them.
The full moon provides them with the ideal circumstances for a banquet, because in its radiance, flying insects are more visible. Ordinarily, nighthawks are ceaselessly active in these conditions, their harsh churring calls cutting the air as they feast.
The lunar lamp above, currently unobstructed by clouds, ensured good hunting, yet these birds were not inclined to take advantage of the ideal conditions. Acting counter to instinct, they squandered the moonlight, flying monotonously in a circle that was approximately forty feet in diameter, around and around over the intersection. For the most part, they proceeded in single file, though three pairs flew side by side, none feeding or issuing a single cry.
I crossed the intersection and kept going.
In the distance, the sound of the engine abruptly cut off. If it was Bobby’s Jeep, he must have arrived at our rendezvous point.
I was a third of the way into the subsequent block when the flock followed. They passed overhead at a higher altitude than previously but low enough to cause me to tuck my head down.
When I arrived at another intersection, they had again formed a bird carousel, minus calliope, circling thirty feet overhead. Although any attempt to take a count would have resulted in more vertigo than waits in a bottle of tequila, I was sure the number of nighthawks had grown.
Over the next two blocks, the size of the flock swelled until it wasn’t necessary to take a count to verify the increase. By the time I reached the three-way intersection in which this street ended, at least a hundred birds were circling quietly above. For the most part, they were now grouped in pairs, and there were two layers to this flying feathered ring, one about five to ten feet higher than the other.
I stopped, gazing up, transfixed.
Thanks to the circus between my ears, I can seize upon the smallest disquieting observation and from it extrapolate a terror of cataclysmic proportions. Yet, though the birds unnerved me, I still didn’t believe they were a threat.
Their unnatural behavior was ominous without implying aggression. This aerial ballet, humdrum in its pattern yet inexpressibly graceful, conveyed a mood as clear and unmistakable as any ballet ever performed by dancers on a stage, as affecting as any piece of music ever meant to touch the heart—and the mood here was sorrow. Sorrow so poignant that it pinched my breath and made me feel as though something more bitter than blood were pumping through my veins.
To poets but also to those whose stomachs curdle at the mention of poetry, birds in flight usually evoke thoughts of freedom, hope, faith, joy. The thrum of these pinions, however, was as bleak as the keening of an arctic wind coming across a thousand miles of barren ice; it was a forlorn sound, and in my heart it coalesced into an icy weight.
With the exquisite timing and choreography that suggests psychic connections among the members of a flock, the double ring of birds fluidly combined into a single ascending spiral. They rose like a coil of dark smoke, around and up and up through the flue of the night, across the pocked moon, becoming steadily less visible against the stars, until at last they dissipated like mere fumes and soot across the rooftop of the world.
All was silent. Windless. Dead.
This behavior of the nighthawks had been unnatural, certainly, but not a meaningless aberration, not a mere curiosity. There was calculation—therefore meaning—in their air show.
The puzzle resisted an easy solution.
Actually, I wasn’t sure I wanted to fit all the pieces together. The resultant picture was not likely to be comforting. The birds themselves posed no threat, but their bizarre performance couldn’t be construed as a good thing.
A sign. An omen.
Not the kind of omen that makes you want to buy a lottery ticket or take a quick trip to Vegas. Certainly not an omen that would make you decide to commit more of your net worth to the stock market. No, this was an omen that might inspire you to move to rural New Mexico, up into the fastness of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, as far from civilization as you could get, with a hoard of food, twenty thousand rounds of ammunition—and a prayer book.
I returned the pistol to the holster under my jacket.
Suddenly I was tired, drained.
I took a few deep breaths, but each inhalation was as stale as the air I exhaled.
When I wiped a hand across my face, hoping to slough off my weariness, I expected my skin to be greasy. Instead, it was dry and hot.
I found a penny-size tender spot just below my left cheekbone. Gently massaging it with a fingertip, I tried to remember whether I had knocked against anything during the night’s adventures.
Any pain without apparent cause is a possible early signal of a forming lesion, of the cancer that I have thus far remarkably escaped. If the suspect blemish or tenderness occurs on my face or hands, which are exposed to light even though sheathed in sunscreen, the chances of malignancy are greater.
Lowering my hand from my face, I reminded myself to live in the moment. Because of XP, I was born with no future, and in spite of my limitations, I live a full life—perhaps a better one—by concerning myself as little as possible with what tomorrow may bring. The present is more vivid, more precious, more fulfilling, if you understand that it is all you have.
Carpe diem, said the poet Horace, more than two thousand years ago. Seize the day. And trust not in tomorrow.
Carpe noctem works as well for me. I seize the night, wringing from it all that it has to offer, and I refuse to dwell on the fact that eventually the darkness of all darknesses will wring the same from me.
9
The solemn birds had cast down a dreary mood, like feathers molting from their wings. I walked determinedly out of that fallen plumage, heading toward the movie theater where Bobby Halloway was waiting.
The sore spot on my cheek might never develop into a lesion or a blister. Its value, as a source of worry, had been solely to distract me from the more terrible fear that I was reluctant to face: The longer Jimmy Wing and Orson were missing, the greater the likelihood they were dead.
Bordering the northern edge of Dead Town’s residential district is a park with handball courts at one end and tennis courts at the other. In the middle are acres of picnic grounds shaded by California live oaks that have fared well since the base closure, a playground with swings and jungle gyms, an open-air pavilion, and an enormous swimming pool.
The large oval pavilion, where bands once played on summer nights, is the only ornate structure in Wyvern: Victorian, with an encircling balustrade, fluted columns, a deep cornice enhanced by elaborate millwork, and a fanciful roof that drops from finial to eaves in shingled scallops reminiscent of the swags of a circus tent. Here, under strings of colored Christmas lights, young men had danced with their wives—and then gone off to bloody deaths in World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, and lesser skirmishes. The lights still dangle from rafter to rafter, unplugged and sheathed in dust, and often it seems that if you squint your eyes just slightly on moonlit nights like this, you can see the ghosts of martyrs to democracy dancing with the spirits of their widows.
As I strode through the tall grass, past the community swimming pool, where the chain-link fence sagged around the entire perimeter and was completely broken down in a few spots, I increased my pace, not solely because I was anxious to get to the movie house. Nothing has happened here to make me fearful of the place, but instinct tells me not to linger near this concrete-walled swamp. The pool is nearly two hundred feet long and eighty feet wide, with a lifeguard platform in the center. Currently, it was two-thirds full of collected rain. The black water would be black in daylight, too, because it was thickened with rotting oak leaves and other debris. In this fetid sludge, even the moon lost its silver purity, leaving a distorted, bile-yellow reflection like the face of a goblin in a dream.
Although I remained at a distance, I could smell the reeking slough. The stench wasn’t as bad as that in the bungalow kitchen, but it was pretty close.
Worse than the odor was the aura of the pool, which could not be perceived by the usual five senses but which was readily apparent to an indescribable sixth. No, my overactive imagination wasn’t overacting. This is, at all times, an undeniably real quality of the pool: a subtle but cold squirming energy from which your mind shrinks, an evil mojo that slithers across the surface of your soul with all the tactility of a ball of worms writhing in your hand.
I thought I heard a splash, something breaking the surface of the sludge, followed by an oily churning, as if a swimmer were doing laps. I assumed these noises were the products of my imagination, but nevertheless, as the swimmer stroked closer to my end of the pool, I broke into a run.
Beyond the park lies Commissary Way, along the north side of which stand the enterprises and institutions that, in addition to those in Moonlight Bay, once served Wyvern’s thirty-six thousand active-duty personnel and thirteen thousand of their dependents. The commissary and the movie theater anchor opposite ends of the long street. Between them are a barbershop, a dry cleaner, a florist, a bakery, a bank, the enlisted men’s club, the officers’ club, a library, a game arcade, a kindergarten, an elementary school, a fitness center, and additional shops—all empty, their painted signs faded and weathered.
These one-and two-story buildings are plain but, precisely because of their simplicity, pleasing to the eye: white clapboard, painted concrete blocks, stucco. The utilitarian nature of military construction combined with Depression-era frugality—which guided every project in 1939, when the base was commissioned—could have resulted in an ugly industrial look. But the army architects and construction crews had made an effort to create buildings with some grace, relying on only such fundamentals as harmonious lines and angles, rhythmic window placement, and varying but complementary roof lines.
The movie theater is as humble as the other buildings, and its marquee rests flat against the front wall, above the entrance. I don’t know what film last played here or the names of the actors who appeared in it. Only three black plastic letters remain in the tracks where titles and cast were announced, forming a single word: WHO.
In spite of the absence of concluding punctuation, I read this enigmatic message as a desperate question referring to the genetic terror spawned in hidden laboratories somewhere on these grounds. Who am I? Who are you? Who are we becoming? Who did this to us? Who can save us?
Who? Who?
Bobby’s black Jeep was parked in front of the theater. The vinyl roof and walls were not attached to the frame and roll bars, so the vehicle was open to the night.
As I approached the Jeep, the moon sank behind the clouds in the west, so close to the horizon now that it was unlikely to reappear, but even from a block away, I could clearly see Bobby sitting behind the steering wheel.
We are the same height and weight. Although my hair is blond and his is dark brown, although my eyes are pale blue and his are so raven black they have blue highlights, we can pass for brothers. We have been each other’s closest friend since we were eleven, and so perhaps we have grown alike in many ways. We stand, sit, and move with the same posture and at the same pace; I think this is because we have spent so much time surfing, in sync with the sea. Sasha insists we have “catlike grace,” which I think flatters us too much, but however catlike we may or may not be, neither of us drinks milk from a saucer or prefers a litter box to a bathroom.
I went to the passenger side, grabbed the roll bar, and swung into the Jeep without opening the low door. I had to work my feet around a small Styrofoam cooler on the floor in front of the seat.
Bobby was wearing khakis, a long-sleeve white cotton pullover, and a Hawaiian shirt—he owns no other style—over the thin sweater.
He was drinking a Heineken.
Although I had never seen Bobby drunk, I said, “Hope you’re not too mellow.”
Without looking away from the street, he said, “Mellow isn’t like dumb or ugly,” meaning the word too should never be used to modify it.
The night was pleasantly cool but not crisp, so I said, “Flow me a Heinie?”
“Go for it.”
I fished a bottle out of the ice in the cooler and twisted off the cap. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was. The beer washed the lingering bitterness out of my mouth.
Bobby glanced at the rearview mirror for a moment, then returned his attention to the street in front of us.
Braced between the seats, aimed toward the rear of the Jeep, was a pistol-grip, pump-action shotgun.
“Beer and guns,” I said, shaking my head.
“We’re obviously not Amish.”
“You come in by the river like I said?”
“Yeah.”
“How’d you drive through the fence?”
“Cut the hole bigger.”
“I expected you to walk in.”
“Too hard to carry the cooler.”
“I guess we might need the speed,” I conceded, considering the size of the area to be searched.