Darkness on the Edge of Town Read Free Page B

only tell you what happened to us. What we saw and heard and experienced ourselves.
    In the beginning.
    I went to bed late that morning—around three A.M. —because I’d been wrapped up in playing a video game. Christy was in the living room watching Headline News and eating a bowl of cereal. She’d just smoked some weed. I remember drifting off to the smell of her bong smoke wafting into the bedroom from beneath the closed door and the distant drone of the television. One of the anchors was prattling on about ten new fashions or some such bullshit, and I was wondering how that qualified as news. Then I fell asleep.
    She woke me a few hours later. I was groggy and grumpy, and it took me a while to actually open my eyes. She kept shaking me, insisting that I get up. When I finally did, I became alert pretty fast. There was something in Christy’s tone that alarmed me. She sounded worried. Not scared. Being scared came later. But she was definitely concerned about something.
    I sat up and rubbed my bleary eyes. “What’s wrong?”
    “Outside,” she said, breathless. “You’ve got to see it.”
    “What?”
    “Just hurry!” She jumped up and ran out of the room.
    Yawning, I climbed out of bed and scratched my balls. I heard a few car horns honking outside and voices raised in concern, but no sirens or alarms or anything. I sniffed the air but didn’t smell smoke.
    “This better be worth it, Christy.”
    She didn’t respond.
    Our second-floor apartment is pretty small, and there’s not much room between the bed and our dresser. I banged my hip against the side of the dresser and cursed. I hated that fucking thing. I fumbled for the lamp, knocking over an empty beer bottle, an open rollof quarters, and Christy’s incense burner. The coins clattered to the floor and the bottle clinked against the wall. I clicked the lamp’s switch, but nothing happened. Then I noticed the digital clock on the nightstand. It was blank. Not flashing but blank. The power was out. I figured that maybe a car had hit a pole outside our building or something.
    I grabbed a pair of sweatpants out of the hamper. Christy had tossed a wet bath towel on top of them. They were damp and smelled musty, but I put them on anyway because they were cleaner than anything else in the apartment. We were overdue for a trip to the Laundromat. I remember that clearly because we never got the chance. We’ve done laundry a few times since then—washing our clothes with dishwashing detergent and a bucket of water from the pond behind the fire company. But that pond is drying up now, and what little water is left in it has grown stagnant and reeks like raw sewage. There’s been no rain since the darkness arrived. Mosquitoes hover around the pond in clouds, and a thin coat of green slime covers the surface. Wearing dirty clothes has become more preferable—at least to those of us who don’t wander the streets naked and howling, like some have taken to doing.
    Barefoot, I shuffled out into our tiny living room. Two small candles flickered on the coffee table, filling the apartment with the scent of lilac and lavender. Christy peered out the window. She was wearing one of my old T-shirts and a pair of panties, but she didn’t seem concerned that someone on the street might see her. Her eyes were wide, and her upper lip quivered. One hand was over her breast.
    “What’s going on?” I asked. “Is someone hurt?”
    Without looking at me, she said, “It’s dark.”
    I blinked, trying to figure out why that mattered. “Well, what time is it?”
    “I don’t know. Almost seven, I think. The sun should be up by now.”
    “Maybe it’s gonna rain. Didn’t the weatherman say we were supposed to have thunderstorms all week long?”
    She didn’t respond. I crossed over to the window and stood beside her. I put my arm around her, trying to shed my annoyance at being woken up. That was when I noticed that she was trembling. It wasn’t just her lip. Her