Dark Ride Read online

  I'd just finished my breakfast, an egg sandwich that hardly sated my appetite. The growl in my stomach made me reach into the cupboard for some cereal, but Sharon sighed and gave me a bit of a cross look. I'd promised to pick up some things at Wegman's, the essentials like milk, bread, cheese, etc, and was now being silently reminded of it. She'd run out of space for her notes on the magnetic refrigerator pad and had expressed displeasure with the slight inconvenience. I told her to simply hang another one. She ignored me and told me to go out and get the things she needed so she could start the list anew. It was a played-out routine between us, one not worth arguing over so long as I stayed married to the same woman.

  "Weather's gettin' bad," she said, despite the glaring sun.

  "Sky's clear. Ain't no sign of a storm."

  "Wind's still blowing, though."

  Indeed it was. It'd kept me up half the night, the endless sound of it howling about the eaves and whipping twigs and debris against the shingles. Toss single digit temperatures into the mix, and yeah, you had yourself some pretty nasty weather, cloudless skies or not. So I bundled myself up in the Gore-Tex jacket Sharon gave me for Christmas, then poked my head into the den. Kevin had a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and was doing his best burrito imitation on the couch. Sharon leaned over to attend to the fire, amply providing me with a pleasant view of her rear. There I stood, admiring the scene until the wind rattled the windows and made me realize, with dismay, that I'd soon be leaving the warm comforts of home for a Sunday afternoon encounter with the elements.

  Little did I know.

  "Anything else you need before I leave?"

  "You got the list, right?"

  "Yep."

  "That's all we need."

  Another stronger gale shook the windows. Kevin loosened the blanket around his head. "Dad, TV's been out all morning."

  "Well, I suppose that's to be expected, with the wind blowing like it is. Plus there's ice all over the wires."

  "Let's just hope the power stays on." Sharon tossed another log onto the fire. Sparks showered the hearth in a comforting display of warmth. Kevin pulled the blanket back over his head and made himself one with the sofa cushions. He'll probably be in the same position when I get back. I figured in a few more years he'll be the one running errands for the Queen of the Household and I'll be wrapped in a blanket staring at my wife's ass. Until that day...

  So I said my farewells, and left through the front door. Immediately a sharp gust hit me in the face. The sting of it was shockingly harsh against my skin, as though I'd taken a slap across the cheek. I wrestled the jacket's hood up over my head and walked briskly to the car, looking up to see the naked branches of the Elms out front groaning restlessly beneath the wind's flexing muscles.

  With the wind and the cold weather and the bitterness of it all, you'd figure there might've been a helluva storm on its way. But the sky had never looked clearer, or bluer. In comparison to the clouds of yesterday, it exhibited a radiant hue like a tropical ocean contrasting the stagnant murk of Capson Lake. It was deeply brilliant, utterly fascinating, not a wisp of a cloud to be seen. It looks painted, I thought. It looks unreal.

  More wind came, but unlike the sharp punching gusts rattling the windows and slapping my face, this wind shifted, unsteadily at first, then purposefully and in portions, against my face, my legs, my body, like frisking hands. I shuddered in its embrace, and despite the bitter cold, felt an immediate sweat breaking out against my back. I squeezed the keys in my gloved hand, then opened the door to the Dodge pickup and got in, slamming it shut and thereby closing out the invasive draft, which pounded the vehicle and nearly cradle-rocked the entire chassis.

  Amidst the protective confines of the cab, the wind seemed to vocalize its unruly intentions, or perhaps, I imagined, its frustrations for not being able to get to me. It whooped against the windshield, screamed about the sides, and whistled loudly at the rear before departing with a roar. It sounded almost musical in nature. Throw in the creaking tree boughs for percussion, and you had yourself one mighty chorus of nature's elements.

  I pulled the truck around and headed up the driveway, which ran three hundred feet to Pikes Road. The layer of icy frost on the grass reflected the sun's rays in a glimmerful sheen, and I imagined that from above it must've looked like a great suntan reflector. As I steered along the crunching gravel, claw-like tree-shadows swayed violently in the choppy path of the driveway. The fierce wind kept whistling and whipping at the pickup, causing the steering wheel to joggle in my grip.

  I passed the cluster of elms lining the front lawn, and was just thinking how pitifully weak they looked in their leafless state when a sudden flash of light from above lit up the windshield, demanding me to shut my eyes. A loud crack filled the air and I yelled "Holy shit!" and then it was raining dead twigs all around. A few splinters showered down in the rear of the cab, but I heard the real bulk of the damage hit the ground just feet behind the tailgate.

  "Shit!" I yelled again, then stopped the truck and twisted around to peer through the rear windshield. What I saw explained the loud crack I'd heard, but...well, let's just say I was having a good deal of trouble believing what'd just happened, and did not dare get out of the truck just yet.

  I'd assumed that a branch had snapped away from one of the trees, and that much in part was true. But you had to multiply that branch by about twelve or fifteen, and that's what I now had in my front yard. There were tree branches laying all over, splintered boughs severed from their trunks, rising and poking every-which-way. The messy scene and sudden odor of burning wood reminded me of the time I'd visited the logging plant up in Newcastle where the lumberjacks chainsawed the logs before trucking them up to the paper mill. What you had left was a knotted abundance of fireplace wood that you could cart away for free in your pickup. Seemed as though I had enough firewood now to last me through the winter, complements of Mother Nature. And to think: I didn't even have to lug it home. Woo-hoo.

  Sharon emerged from the house, her face pinched with worry. "What the hell happened?"

  I lowered the window. Bits of wood flew into my face. "The wind, I guess." I grinned uncomfortably, feeling as though I'd just told a lie; it didn't seem possible that a single forceful gale could do such damage. Then I remembered the flash of light I saw just before the branches came down. Lightning, perhaps. But that really didn't seem at all possible, there were no clouds in the sky. So then how could this have happened?

  "Well, you'd better hurry up home." Sharon looked more than concerned, and I knew she'd end up hiding out in the dark basement—a thunderstorm ritual of hers—if things got any worse out here. "I don't like the looks of this."

  "Just stay in the house," I said, and at that moment the screen door whipped from her hand and slammed against the house.

  "Ahh! Jesus!" She pulled the door back and quickly closed herself inside. Hello basement.

  I shut the window, then took a deep breath and rolled the Dodge to the end of the driveway, where I made a left turn out onto Pikes Road. The wind had left its mess out here too. Branches and twigs littered the entire road. An azalea bush, uprooted from Lou Henry's yard across the street, lay against his mailbox post like a large roadkill.

  Slowly I moved the pickup forward. Not fifty feet down the road I heard another sharp crackling noise. I cringed and hit the brakes, half-expecting a tree limb to fall onto the truck. When I looked out the driver's side window, I thought I saw a hissing reptile...it looked that way to me until I realized a power line had snapped. It dangled from the top of the street pole all the way to the asphalt, where it writhed angrily like the snake I imagined it to be. There were black scorch-marks in the road like some July 4th amateur's aftermath. Above, the wire leading from the pole to my roof was still intact; if it had snapped over the dry trees, there definitely would have been an inferno to contend with.

  I inched the car up the road, away from the wire, then tried to cell-phone home to see if the power was out, but no
connection could be made—only static met my ear. Maybe there's a storm coming after all, I thought, and immediately knew better than to turn back. If the power failed, then I'd need some candles and kerosene in addition to the food on Sharon's list. And with the wire down, it'd take a good while to get the juice flowing again.

  The road leading into town was also badly littered with debris, making the going slow and difficult, and every now and then I had to navigate around some larger branches. Halfway into town an old oak had uprooted from its place at the forefront of someone's yard and lay across the road like a dead dinosaur. I had to four-wheel the Dodge over the grass in the yard across the street to make my way around it.

  Although the wind appeared to have calmed down for the moment, the damage left in its wake was wholly troubling. In addition to the twigs and tree limbs, mailboxes, newspapers, wood shingles, weathervanes, and other outdoor items swept the area. There were downed wires on almost every street corner, and on Willets Place an entire telephone pole had fallen on someone's house. Flames and black smoke rose ominously into the sky (the clear blue sky), intimidating the lone firetruck at the scene. At this point, realizing the severity of the damage, I turned on the radio for a report, but caught only static across the board. First the cable. Then the cell phone. Now, the radio. This is worse than I imagined.

  Finally, I turned onto Main Street and slowly made my way into a mostly deserted town. A sharp blast of wind shook the car as if in protest of my arrival, but I ignored it and moved on, pulling the truck into the Wegman's shopping center. The large parking lot was only spotted with cars, perhaps a dozen in all. Two light poles had come down, arched over like broken flower stems. One had fallen atop someone's Ford SUV, crushing the roof into a jagged 'U' shape. A state police cruiser sat near the scene with its door open and its lights blazing, a heavy-set uniformed cop was leaning against someone's car about twenty feet away. I parked a good distance from the cruiser then got out. The wind, suddenly strong again, nearly took the door from my hand, and I had to muscle it to get it closed.

  I strolled over to the cop, purposely scraping my feet against the blacktop to alert him of my approach. He must've heard me coming but never looked up. His freckled face remained downcast, shoulders hunched, eyes squeezed shut. When I got to within five feet of him, I could see icy tears pouring from his eyes. All I could think was, Jesus, something very bad is happening, something very bad is happening, over and over again.

  "Are you okay?" I asked the cop. Dumb question, but what else could I have said?

  He shifted towards me, and that's when I saw the gun. He had it in his right hand, pointed toward the ground. He opened his tear-filled eyes and looked toward the sky. His shoulders started shaking and sobs blurted from his lips.

  "Jesus, what's wrong? What's..." I had a difficult time finding the right words. My heart started doing backflips, and I looked around a quick moment to see if anyone else might be nearby—someone with their wits about them. I saw a woman running into Wegman's, but that was it. Running into Wegman's. As if trying to get away from something...

  "It's over," the cop blurted. "The prophet was right. They've come."

  In the distance, I heard a scream. A human scream. It warbled down into a sick gristly wail, then died. It seemed to have come from inside the supermarket.

  "What's over?" I asked weakly, keeping one eye on his gun and another over my shoulder toward the supermarket. I wanted to grab his collar and scream, So what the fuck is going on? And what are you going to do about it? In thought, I answered my own question: apparently nothing. Here there were screams. And downed poles. And crushed cars. And all the cop could do was babble and cry.

  "Yep, yep...they've come. There's nothing anyone can do about it."

  "Who's come?" My heart was pounding, not particularly at what he was saying, but because of the simple fact that a cop was standing before me, highly unstable, and with his gun drawn.

  And then something totally unforeseen happened. The wind picked up. Again it prodded my body and face; oddly, it seemed to have come from numerous directions, along with that eerie feeling as if hands were forcefully fondling me. The cop yelled, "Not me, you bastards!" He raised the gun, arm trembling wildly; it looked as though someone had grabbed his forearm and was trying to shake the gun loose from his grip. There came a brilliant flash of light from above (like the one I saw just before the trees snapped in my yard), followed by a siren-like missling noise in the distance that abruptly came to an end with a tremendous explosion. It rocked the earth beneath my feet. I spun around in a panic, trying to keep my balance. Far off in the distance, perhaps three miles to the east, I saw a tremendous plume of black smoke rising into the air.

  "What the fuck?" I yelled. "Are we under attack? What the fuck?"

  "The planes," the cop said, eerily calm. "They're falling from the sky. Every goddamned one of them. And there's nothing we can do about it."

  Planes? Falling from the sky?

  I wouldn't have believed him hadn't I seen the smoke in the distance, or the thin trail of white vapor leading down into it. I heard some car alarms blaring in the distance, then a shriek of brakes, then a crash. People started yelling and I saw a man in the intersection of Main and High gesturing uncontrollably, as though on fire. The rise and fall of the town's fire siren began its boundless toll. Never in my life had I felt such an overwhelming pouring of disquiet. It was as though the entire town was all at once falling apart at the seams. Maybe even the whole world.

  The planes are falling out of the sky. I saw it, but I didn't believe it.

  "The wind!" the cop yelled.

  Head spinning, I turned back to face him. He was heaving, as if about to throw up. The gun wriggled wildly in his hand, then fell to the asphalt with a dull clunk.

  He repeated, "The wind..." and then he started choking and jerking around and moving like the man I saw in the intersection, who, by the way, was still there shaking and trembling uncontrollably, feet glued to the ground. The cop was screaming now as if in excruciating pain, but it did him no good. I thought he might be having some kind of seizure until I realized that his uniform was rippling too, as if caught in a strong wind, and then he was virtually lifted off the ground and carried away from me. I could see him trying to fight whatever had him in its grasp—his hands moved ponderously as if under water, his booted toes dragged along the asphalt—but it seemed only to exhaust him. His body spasmed and twitched, and at one point he went head-over-heels in a complete somersault, looking remarkably like an astronaut in a no-gravity environment. A tiny cyclone of dust twirled around him, encapsulating him as it carried him away.

  "The wind," I said to myself. It's taking him away.

  It carried him to the intersection where six other people were now gathered. Everyone there was behaving in a similar fashion: twitching as if being prodded with electricity, yet obviously unable to move from their current positions. I recalled the sensation of the wind coming at me from multiple directions, how it purposefully seized me and clutched me, as if trying to manipulate me. I imagined that if it had come at me stronger, with more direct intent, then I might not have been able to move like the others in the street, who were trapped in its bouncy, muscling command.

  I reached down for the gun, but a gust of wind took it away from me, sending it across the parking lot into a growth of weeds alongside the building perhaps a hundred yards away. This little trick brought about feelings of hysteria in me. It made me want to do go home. It made me want to see if my family was all right.

  Suddenly, I heard a squelch. It came from the police car.

  The door had been left open and the police multiband radio was on. Pacing crazily, I tried my cell phone first, but the network was still down. In the far distance, I heard another huge explosion. The ground reverberated beneath my feet. Another plane, I told myself. Jesus Christ.

  I looked at my car, then at the police car, then at the people in the street, then back to the police car. If the
re were any answers to be had, they would be found on the other end of that police radio. So I ran to the police car and shut myself in, running my hand against the steering column and feeling out the keys, which were still in the ignition. I figured I might be better off taking the police cruiser home, given the sudden circumstances.

  I looked back out at the people gathered in the intersection, perhaps two-dozen strong now. They jostled together frantically, like lottery balls in a clear tank, unable to break their bounds. Their clothes rippled madly under the force of the wind, and the hair on their heads flew up in the tunnel of air spinning just above them. Away from the crowd, two middle-aged men drifted in from around the corner of Elm. They floated about four feet off the ground, as if tethered on strings, one partially clad in pajamas, the other completely naked. Once the crowd seemed to be in their sights, the wind picked up speed and sailed them down Main Street—they looked as though they'd been shot from cannons. Their bodies convulsed, mouths wide open, cheeks rippling from the aerodynamic force. The ferocious wind then hurled them like sacks of laundry right into the stormy mix of people. The collision was fierce and loud. Screams erupted, carried out by the twisting storm, and a mad wash of blood spun away from the fray in a thick splatter across the intersection.

  The radio squelched again and then a male voice crackled on, startling me. I moved to grab the microphone from the mounting bracket, but fumbled it and was unable to retrieve it: I couldn't tear my sights away from the insanity outside. I was paralyzed with fear, and numb with the fact that as long as I remained in the car, I appeared to be safe. But then what? Would the wind let me drive back home?

  A hiss of static shot out from the radio. I fingered the receiver and the voice came back, loud and clear from the tinny speaker. I focused my sights on the dangling microphone, away from the madness a hundred yards away:

  ...so I'm at the Woodlawn Police Department, and there's no one here at all, the place is empty. Down the road there's a large crowd of people. There's maybe a hundred or more of them, men, women, and children, all amassed together in what I can only describe at the moment as an unbreakable cluster. I know that doesn't seem to make any sense, but they're under some sort of...of physical influence. It's the wind that's doing it, but I have no explanation for it, and I don't think anyone does, really. I mean, it's just gone fucking batty...it's like it's alive, man. It's picking people up and moving them around into these groups, and then it surrounds them with these little tornadoes. They're all over, these storm-held masses. I just came in from Lakeview twenty-five miles away and passed four of these crowds on the way. In Ashborough the crowd was so big, I had to stop the car and get out so I could get around them. It was so fucking strange...I mean, I just walked right by them...well, I kept a safe a distance, stayed at least fifty feet away, but I really couldn't get any closer because the wind wouldn't let me. Man, it was so fucking surreal, I could see all their faces...the ones on the outside, they were looking at me. Their faces were all bloodied and battered, torn up from the wind and debris. I could see them trying to reach out to me, as if I might be able to help them or something. Yeah, right. I'd tried once, took a step closer to the whirling dervish, but the wind kicked me back—it felt as if I'd taken a sharp punch to the ribs or something. It's really fucked up, I mean, the wind, it just pushed me away, as if I might've been some kind of threat. Makes me wonder...why doesn't it want me? I mean, I ain't complaining, but for some reason, it just doesn't pen me up like the others. It goes as far as to feel me up, but then it just blows me away as if I taste bad or something. Heh, blows me away...get it? Aw Jesus, I'm losing my fucking mind. Yeah, I mean, as far as I can tell, I'm the only one left. And then the planes...Jesus Christ man, they're falling out of the sky like hailstones. It was early this morning, maybe about two AM, when all this started. I'd heard on the radio that there were reports of bright flashes in the sky and extreme turbulence, and that all the planes still in the air couldn't land because the weather patterns suddenly went haywire and the wind started knocking the planes around like punching bags. Of course, the planes eventually began running out of fuel, so they had no choice but to try to land, and they broke up as they made their descents. Last I heard, before the radios went out, was that there'd been about 850 planes in the air when this all began. I heard one go down about two hours ago, near Lynnfield, and I figure they're still dropping like flies...Jesus, man, I mean, what the fuck? Am I the only one left? Is there anyone out there that can hear me right now?