Blackout

13

About an hour later we heard the horn. It sounded in the night, shrill and insistent. One long beep, followed by two shorter ones. At first, I thought it was the things out there making some kind of weird noise, but it was just a car horn. Five minutes later, it repeated the long beep followed by the two short ones. I don’t think any of us thought it was accidental by that point.

“It’s a signal,” Bonnie said. “Somebody’s trying to signal us.”

“Yes,” I said, because it could be nothing else.

We said no more about it. I had a cigarette with Bonnie, and Billy sorted through the refrigerator until he found a longneck Bud. He sucked it down in one long pull, wiping foam from his mouth.

“Now I feel human,” he said.

The horn sounded again and we all tensed. Somebody obviously needed help and, as silly as it sounds, there was almost a desperate tone to the beeping. The horn kept sounding at five-minute intervals. It put us all on edge. God knew we had enough on our plates about then. We weren’t discussing what was going on and I wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad. We were just waiting, maybe hoping it would all go away and we could put the pieces of our lives back together. The idea of that seemed even more terrifying to me than waiting for the things or the cables to come for us because it meant going back to a normal life without Kathy. It meant accepting her loss. It meant going on, struggling forward without her and I honestly didn’t think I had the heart for it.

The darkness held outside.

I think I was waiting for the moon to come out or for the stars to show. That would have signaled an end to hostilities, I figured. One of my greatest fears was that the darkness would never end. That dawn would come but the sun would never rise. That we would be forced into the existence of moles, of night scavengers who would never know again the light of day. The idea was horrifying. And being a science teacher, I knew that if the sun did not rise day after day after day, there would be no photosynthesis. The plants and trees would no longer process carbon dioxide and release breathable oxygen. I had an image of a dying, dark Earth, shrubs and forests and ferns and flowers all dead and withered, humanity suffocating on its own toxic by-products.

The horn sounded again.

“Why don’t they fucking quit it already?” Bonnie said. “We can’t help ’em any more than we can help ourselves.”

She was right in a way, but Billy and I kept looking at each other and I knew we were both thinking the same thing: whoever was out there needed help and if we didn’t go to them we could hardly call ourselves human. There was death out there. But I feared that less than the idea of living with myself knowing I could have done something to help someone in need. The teeth of guilt are much sharper than any sword.

“I wonder if it’s someone we know,” Billy said, not a question.

“Could be,” I said. “If it was me out there, I’d want someone to help me.”

Bonnie was watching us both by that point. “Don’t even fucking think of it. It’s too dangerous. We need each other. Nobody’s going out there.”

The horn sounded again and I flinched.

“Nothing out there,” Iris said, her mouth stitched in a scowl. “If you tell yourself there’s nothing out there, then there isn’t.”

She was losing it so nobody commented on that. We just sat there. That was the worst part of it all: waiting. I knew the horn was going to sound again and when it did, I was going to scream. I didn’t want to hear it. I couldn’t bear to hear it.

But I heard it. We all heard it.

“Fuck this,” Billy said. “Jon, you got any weapons around here? An ax? Anything useful?”

“I got a few things out in the garage,” I said.

“No,” Bonnie said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

Billy sighed. “What if that was you out there?”

“Then I’d get out of the fucking car and get somewhere safe.”

“What if you were injured and you couldn’t?”

She glared at him, but slowly her face softened. Bonnie was a good person. Despite certain malfunctions of character, she was inherently a good person. She was very kind when it came down to it. “All right,” she finally said. “Go then. Just be careful.”

She kissed Billy before we left and I could see that she really didn’t believe she’d see him again. We took one of the flashlights and went out to the garage. Billy took the riot gun Bonnie had swiped from the patrol car. I took a hatchet and unscrewed the handle of my push broom. I sharpened the end of it until I had a serviceable pike.

Then we walked out into the darkness.