Nightfall Read online

  At one street corner, they stepped around a pool of blood on the sidewalk. The blood had to be human. What else could it be? Plus, a trail of bloody footprints led from the middle of it, fading away as they went. The coppery scent of fresh blood soured the air, drowning out for the moment even the stench of bird shit.

  “Nobody loses that much blood and lives,” Ned whispered, his eyes round with fear.

  “No,” Joe said. “They don’t.”

  He squeezed Ned’s hand to comfort him, and also maybe to comfort himself. Ned eased closer, weaving his fingers through Joe’s. They walked on. Their pace was slower now as they gazed nervously about, leery of what might lie ahead and uneasy because they couldn’t see more than three or four car lengths in any direction.

  Just when Joe began to think it couldn’t get any worse, suddenly it was not only bird shit that came tumbling from the sky. It was the birds themselves.

  After two long days of endless circling, exhaustion must have finally laid claim to them. One after the other, they plummeted from the sky, their bodies striking the earth with dull thuds, some close enough for Joe to see, others lost in the haze. Ned and Joe jumped when a falling bird struck a parked car not five feet away. The screech of the car alarm ripped through the morning air, startling them even more. Sometimes the falling birds lay limp and lifeless where they landed. Other times the poor creatures tried to pull themselves back into the air, back to where they felt safe. But they were too weak.

  Joe had never seen anything so heartbreaking in his life. The birds were everywhere, peppering the ground. Countless breeds—sparrows, crows, dainty hummingbirds, beautiful tangerine-breasted house finches, snowy seagulls, their wingspans surprisingly wide. Some lay motionless in death while others barely stirred, their bodies twitching with exhaustion, wings still flapping in a parody of flight as if they had forgotten the art of stillness. Others were wasting their last ounce of strength fighting with each other, and those were the most confusing of all. It seemed that even as death reached out to claim them, anger had taken root. They clawed and pecked at their dying brethren, even as their own lives slipped away. Between the birds and the howling dogs, the world had gone crazy. Something about this third red dawn had robbed the creatures of their sanity.

  And then another thought struck Joe. Where are all the people?

  He stumbled to a stop, dragging Ned to a halt beside him. “Where has everyone gone?” he whispered, spinning this way and that, looking up and down the sidewalk. And the street. There was no traffic! What the hell was going on?

  “Maybe they’re hiding under their beds,” Ned whispered back. “If I didn’t have you with me, that’s what I’d be doing.”

  Joe didn’t think Ned was joking, so he didn’t attempt a smile. He simply continued to gaze around, wondering where everyone was. Maybe Ned was right. Maybe they were hiding, secluded away in closets and basements, waiting for it all to end, waiting for the world to return to normal. He clutched Ned’s hand all the tighter, as if afraid he too might suddenly run off and disappear. And that would break Joe’s heart.

  Frightened but determined, they continued walking hand in hand toward the deli. While the blocks slid by beneath them, Joe’s thoughts spun a maelstrom inside his head.

  As if the fact that everyone had disappeared wasn’t enough to freak him out, Joe suddenly turned his eyes back to Ned. He considered the thought he’d just had. About Ned running away and disappearing into the haze. And what that would do to him.

  It was true, he knew. If Ned were no longer here, walking at his side and clutching his hand, it would break Joe’s heart. The feelings Joe had for Ned had been stewing for months. And now, after last night, he knew his feelings had turned a corner. They might not be as simple as they had once been, but they were certainly far stronger. It wasn’t as if he had fallen in love with Ned after one night in bed together. Or that’s what he kept telling himself. But still, looking back at the hours they spent in each other’s arms, making love, exploring each other’s bodies, made Joe’s heart swell inside his chest. Even now, just the feel of Ned’s hand in his on this weirdass morning, made his poor swollen heart beat a little faster, a little harder, a little more contentedly. It was as if at some point between yesterday and today, he had found his purpose. He had found his reason to go on.

  Ignoring the fucked-up world they had woken to—the deepening red haze, the dying birds, the howling fucking dogs, everything coated in bird shit—Joe stopped again in the middle of the empty sidewalk without warning and pulled Ned into his arms. He held him close and laid his cheek to Ned’s, relishing the unhesitating way Ned accepted and returned his hug.

  “I’m glad you’re with me,” Joe murmured, his eyes crinkling into a smile as he breathed in the scent of Ned’s hair, Ned’s skin. “I don’t care what sort of shitstorm we’ve been tossed into here. I don’t care what happens to this stupid planet. I’m just glad you’re with me, Ned. I’m glad we’re facing it together.”

  Ned rose on tiptoe and laid his lips to Joe’s ear. “I’m glad we’re together too.”

  “Are you?” Joe quietly asked, placing his hands at the side of Ned’s neck and cradling his head as they pulled apart far enough to stare into each other’s eyes.

  Ned gazed up at him with such adoration, Joe’s eyes burned, and tears began to form. Ned’s voice was a whisper, drifting through the haze.

  “I’ll be with you as long as you want me to be, Joe.”

  Ned was so beautiful standing there, gazing at him trustingly with those gentle blue eyes, that Joe’s heart clenched up like a fist. The spasm was so unexpected it almost hurt. He struggled to find his voice. “Thank you for last night. It was… incredible.”

  Ned blinked. His eyes were riveted to Joe’s lips, and Joe enjoyed having them there. Joe watched as Ned fought to swallow. When he finally found his voice, it sounded all crumpled up, like a piece of paper wadded into a ball, wrinkly and crushed and twisted out of shape.

  “Since the day I met you, I’ve never wanted to be with anyone else.” Ned’s cheeks burned red, but he didn’t look embarrassed. He looked proud and determined. It was as if his time with Joe had made him stronger. Braver and more self-assured. Joe liked that too. “But you probably already know all that,” Ned added with a hint of a smile, his eyes as bright as diamonds.

  Joe edged closer and laid a tentative kiss to Ned’s mouth. He relaxed into the kiss when Ned’s arms came up and pulled him close. The kiss went on and on as the birds continued to fall from the sky and the damned demented dogs continued to howl and bark and snarl in the distance. There was a big dog fight going on somewhere. It sounded like they were trying to kill each other. But in Ned’s arms, at home in Ned’s kiss, Joe wasn’t afraid.

  He remembered the night before out on the trail. The dogs attacking Ned until Joe rushed in to chase them away. How they could have killed Ned if they had dragged him to the ground. How they could have overpowered him and ripped him to shreds. How it all could have ended far differently than it actually had.

  Those thoughts he quickly pushed away. No harm had come to Ned last night, and he wouldn’t allow any harm to come to him today. Ned was safe, and Joe would keep him that way. He would take care of Ned, just as Ned would take care of him. He didn’t doubt it for a minute.

  In each other’s arms, they stood in the bloodred haze of a morning that should never have been, in the midst of a city that had gone from an Eden to a bloody nightmare, and lost themselves in the simplicity of a single kiss. There was an innocence and an impossibility about it that did not escape Joe. There was an underlying promise in the kiss too. And the promise flowed silently in both directions, from Joe to Ned and back again. That didn’t escape Joe either. While he might not know what Ned was thinking, he most certainly knew what Ned was feeling. Joe knew because his feelings were the same. His feelings were exactly the same.

  Thank God you’re here with me, Ned. And thank God you’re safe. While the world crumbled to rui
n, a flock of dying birds flopped at their feet, and thoughts and fears tumbled through Joe’s head like a load of laundry spinning in a dryer, that one thought came to anchor Joe. His feelings for Ned were crystal clear. There was nothing mysterious about them, nothing strange. They simply were what they were. To a man like Joe who had never given himself heart and soul to anyone before in his life, had never even wanted to, it was an astonishing realization. More astonishing even than a world gone head-spinning, batshit crazy.

  A scream wrenched him back to the real world.

  It was a woman’s scream. As quickly as the scream faded, Joe heard a furious yelling. Two men. Cursing. Bellowing horrible words at each other. The woman’s scream came again as the unmistakable sound of fists pummeling flesh began to echo through the air. The sounds were made more frightening by the fact that neither Joe nor Ned could see very far ahead. Joe spun first one way, then another, trying to decide which direction the sounds were coming from. In truth, they could have come from anywhere. Just around the corner or a half a mile away, from behind them, in front of them, or directly above their fucking heads. The crimson haze was simply too blinding, too distorting. It made it impossible to pinpoint where sounds originated.

  Joe tensed. “What should we do?” He could still taste Ned’s kiss on his lips, but the woman’s scream echoed in his ears as well. The perfection of the one had been shattered by the terror in the other. And with the red haze still wafting about their heads like a shroud, limiting vision, confusing sound, Joe had to fight against the urge to cower beneath it.

  It was hard to be brave when you couldn’t see what was coming at you.

  Ned plucked nervously at Joe’s shirt. Joe’s attention was torn from the screams and back to him.

  “We should go!” Ned hissed, quietly tugging at Joe’s sleeve. “I’m worried about Mr. Wong. He’s probably at the deli by himself. He’s too stubborn to ever close up shop. We could be nuked by Russia, and he’d still be standing there slicing pickle loaf. And these animals, these people….” Ned cast nervous glances in every direction, clearly disturbed by the distant screams and the tortured, howling beasts. “They’re not acting right, Joe. I’m scared.”

  Ned was right. It was scary. Whatever had affected the dogs and the birds seemed to be affecting people too. They were acting crazy.

  “Then let’s hurry,” Joe said. “If he’s not there, we’ll rush back to the apartment and lock ourselves in.” A mischievous grin twisted his mouth. “That way I’ll have you all to myself again. Naked and delicious.”

  A flush rose to Ned’s cheeks, but standing there in the bloodred haze, his blush was barely visible. On the other hand, Joe enjoyed the fact that Ned’s eyes were as bright as spotlights.

  “I like the sound of that,” Ned purred.

  Sharing a secretive smile, they took off once again for the deli. Still holding hands, they sprinted the last two blocks, hoping to slip through the haze before danger could find them. At the final cross street, they looked up the boulevard and spotted a cluster of men a stone’s throw away. They were battling with each other, fists flying. There must have been ten or twelve of them. Curses echoed up and down the street. Already inert bodies lay here and there in the melee, knocked senseless or worse. In the distance, police sirens wailed, but the sirens were fading away, not coming closer. For some reason the cops were going in the wrong direction. Whatever the fistfight was about, it appeared the police had decided to let the guys duke it out on their own. Maybe they had bigger fish to fry somewhere else. Or maybe they didn’t know about it at all.

  A thought occurred to Joe. He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and tapped it on. Nothing happened. There was no signal. Maybe communications were down. Maybe that’s why the cops weren’t responding to this riot. That must be it!

  “They don’t know, Ned! I’ll bet the cops don’t know.”

  Confused, Ned asked, “What? What are you saying?”

  But before Joe could explain, from a stand of trees to their left, they heard a cruel, blustering cry. “Hey, you faggots. Stop!” A second later came the unmistakable sound of a gunshot. Joe ducked as a bullet whizzed over their heads.

  “Fucker!” Joe screamed in fury.

  Clutching at Ned’s jacket to keep him close, Joe tore off down the street, running even faster than he had been before, desperate to get away from the idiot with the gun. Seconds later, the deli appeared through the haze. The windows were dark, of course, since the power was out. The business looked closed, as empty as the street around it. Even the sirens in the distance couldn’t be heard anymore. Joe frowned. If they needed police protection, they were piss out of luck.

  They approached the deli carefully, not sure what to do. Seconds later, Mr. Wong burst through the front door. He grabbed them both in a steely grip and yanked them inside, almost dragging them off their feet. “Hurry!” he cried. “Get off street!”

  The minute they stumbled through the door, Mr. Wong locked it behind them and pulled the blinds. With trembling hands, he latched the dead bolts at the floor and at the top of the double doors. Then he grunted with the effort of sliding a waist-high cooler used for fruit juices in front of the door to secure it further. Sweating and cussing softly to himself, he turned back to Ned and Joe and pulled them deeper into the deli, farther away from the storefront windows and away from the door. Only then did Joe see a smear of blood on Mr. Wong’s cheek. With his free hand, Mr. Wong held a bloody wad of napkins to his ear.

  “What happened?” Ned cried, rushing forward to lead Mr. Wong to one of the tables in the back, snatching another stack of napkins off the counter as he passed. “What’s going on? Why are you bleeding?”

  Mr. Wong stared at them, his narrow eyes filled with emotion. Joe wasn’t sure if the emotion was anger or fear. His eyes were as dark as onyx, and they skipped like shiny black stones from Ned to Joe, then back again to Ned. “The world go crazy, Neddie,” he whispered, as if it was all a big secret and he was the only one who knew it. “The world go fucking crazy!”

  “Where’s your family?” Ned pleaded, busying himself at the sink behind the counter, dampening the ball of napkins under the faucet. “Are they safe? Are the boys at home?”

  Mr. Wong sat obediently still while Ned wrung out the fistful of wet napkins and started dabbing at the blood on his face. Joe watched too. When Mr. Wong’s chin was clean, Joe saw there was no cut there at all. The blood must have all come from Mr. Wong’s ear. Ned carefully nudged Mr. Wong’s hand aside to examine the injury while Joe continued to watch, periodically letting his eyes flit to the door and through the slats of the blinds to make sure no one was sneaking up on them outside. With Mr. Wong’s hand out of the way, they saw why there was so much blood. His ear lobe had been completely torn away.

  “What the hell happened?” Ned hissed in horror, cringing at the sight of Mr. Wong’s mutilated ear. With a grimace, he quickly pressed the ball of wet napkins to it, as much to clean the wound as to block it from sight.

  Mr. Wong winced but didn’t complain about Ned dabbing at his ear. “Crazy man bite me. He hiding in the back when I come to work.”

  Joe and Ned turned their attention to the back of the deli. They didn’t see anyone.

  “So where is he?” Joe asked. “Did you run him off?”

  Mr. Wong looked sad, as if he still couldn’t believe it happened. “No,” he said, his eyes more hurt now than angry. “He still there.”

  Warily, Joe and Ned moved toward the back, past the fryers and the island where Mr. Wong stood for hours, building sandwiches, mixing salads. They tiptoed past the glass-fronted coolers with the great chunks of meat and cheese inside, all waiting for their turn at the slicer.

  They found the man in front of the walk-in freezer. He was lying motionless at the foot of the freezer door. He wore rags and looked homeless. He lay on his back, eyes closed as if peacefully asleep. But sleep was well beyond him at this point in the game, since there was a bigass carving knife protruding
from his chest and a large pool of blood congealing on the tiles beneath him.

  “My God!” Ned gasped.

  Joe rushed closer and knelt by the body. He pressed a finger to the man’s neck, seeking a pulse. While he worked, he studied Ned’s frightened face. There was an uneasy tremor of recognition in Ned’s eyes, and Joe understood the truth immediately. “You know him, don’t you?”

  Ned nodded. Mr. Wong was suddenly standing there as well. He held more wet napkins to his ear, still trying to staunch the bleeding. While Mr. Wong stared blandly down at the lifeless body, it was Ned who finally spoke.

  He sounded confused, like he had just awakened from a dream that made no sense. “It’s old Fred. He’s homeless. Mr. Wong feeds him sometimes. Takes him a sandwich out back to the alley.” Ned offered a desperate frown, clearly trying to make sense out of what might have happened. “He was always nice, Joe.” His eyes slid to Mr. Wong. “Why would he attack you now?”

  Mr. Wong gave an exaggerated shrug. He looked anything but apologetic. “He go crazy, like everybody else. He jump on me and bite me. I think he try to kill me, so I kill him first. What else I supposed to do?”

  “We have to call the police,” Joe said. “We have to tell them what happened.”

  Mr. Wong dabbed at a rivulet of blood dripping down his neck. He sounded slightly bored by all the drama unfolding. “I already call. Two hours ago. They no come.”

  “What do you mean, they no come?”

  “What I said. They no come. Why you talk funny?”

  Joe didn’t have an answer for that. “Then we’ll call again,” he said.

  “You can’t. Phone dead now. I just try. Cell phone too. World gone to shit.” As if weary of the whole conversation, he suddenly grinned. “You boys hungry? I fix you breakfast. Egg salad fresh.”