When Graveyards Yawn by G. Wells Taylor (good books for high schoolers .TXT) 📕

We traveled a winding course into Downings, taking extra caution to lose any tails that might be on us, and ever mindful of Queens. It was easy. The streets that led in and out of the Downings District were littered with torn up cars and trucks, abandoned roadblocks and festered with detours. The office buildings in that section of town had not fared any better. Many were burned out relics of the world before the Change, corpses of a dead civilization. It was fitting that gangs of the dead commanded them now as squatters and thieves. The real money had long since abandoned this part of Greasetown.

I knew of a place, where Tommy had taken me once, when I had been nothing more than an irritated afterthought. He had approached three tall buildings in Downings. The one in the center was ancient, and the shortest. It was a flat-topped number with all the old gothic scrollwork over the windows. Apparently whoever had owned it had been reluctant to sell, because on two congruent sides had grown up a pair of enormous skyscrapers of plain concrete and glass now abandoned. They dwarfed the older building, and were erected so close to it that there was a little under a cramped foot of air separating them. Juxtaposed in such a way, the old building’s roof became a tarry diamond set into the corner formed by these two massive abutting buildings. The deepest point of the diamond was dark, sandwiched by the mass and shadow of the gargantuan twins, facing east. The tall buildings had few windows now—just jagged sills and warped aluminum framing. The winds howled through the cramped spaces like demons. Tommy’s secret place was atop this short, flat roof that stopped at the twentieth floor. Shaded from whatever weak sun there was; it became a perfect place for mosses, and the three short cedars that grew there. Tommy had brought me here once, and I had seen stars; now I sought this sanctuary for a night’s sleep in a city that was growing deadly for me.

I was concerned about my last episode with Tommy, so gave my gun to Elmo and told him to stand guard at the top of the stairs and the broken door that served as roof-access. I walked wearily to the three cedars, sat myself under the rough shelter of a dilapidated plastic and aluminum hobo hut that had been erected beside them, opened the bottle of whiskey, set a pack of cigarettes down and let go of Tommy. He immediately mumbled something about Caesar, then attacked the bottle with a vengeance. I watched apprehensively as he smoked and drank voraciously. When a quarter of the bottle was gone, exhaustion took its toll and he fell asleep on a tumble of garbage and small, moss-covered rocks. He snored weakly. I relaxed and let the hollow darkness absorb me.

Transition.

I was naked in a sterile hallway. Sweat soaked my brow. The lights had gone out. Someone had scrubbed me clean again. My cheeks were raw from the plastic bristles. Whenever the lights went out the doors automatically swung shut in a long rolling thunder: boom, boom, boom like a giant stamping closer on enormous killing feet. I was left in the darkness. I pressed my back to the wall; the bricks were cold against my skin. Fear chattered in my ears.

The sound of breathing reached me from a short distance down the hall prickling my hair at the scalp. If only the clown were here. The clown could help. He’d make the fear go away. From the darkness someone screamed, hot iron on flesh. I scuttled on all fours toward the TV blueness of a night-lit window. A swollen moon pressed against the upper corner, and punched rectangular holes repetitively down the hall where other wired windows allowed a tantalizing view, but no freedom. In the eerie light, I saw strange naked shapes moving slowly toward me, obscenely dragging mottled, twisted limbs. I opened the window on hinges. Fall branches scratched at the air outside it like creaky buried-alive fingers. A wind moaned. Leaves whirled. Approaching all around me was the silent motion of madness. But I could feel an unusual magic now. The clown was here. He had arrived. There was more to the darkness this time, the moon’s light, to the shadowy forms that crept near. I knew that the lights would not return. Something had happened and they were out for good. Something had happened out there in the world beyond the black line of trees.

I reached up and grasped the steel mesh screening. I gripped it with my fingers until the skin began to tear. I pulled until it stretched toward me, its blister-shape filling up with moonlight. My arms and fingers ached, the knuckles bled. The screen stretched, swelled inward, anchored to my torn claws, and finally burst free.

I slipped outside. The moonlight glittered on the dewy grass. A field stretched before me to a thick stand of trees atop a hill. I ran in a crouching lope, dropping to all fours in a panting rhythm to feel the warm dew splash my cheeks and soak my body. I reached the hill and turned. I watched the window I had escaped through; saw it birthing sinister monkey shapes into the night. I looked toward the city in the distance. Its many lights did not twinkle like a star field now. Violence had replaced them, lights red as blood howled along the streets. Fire burst out—an explosion.

Transition.

Sweat boiled out of my skin, and my mind whirled with flashing red images. I was in Tommy, had entered during the dream. I could not feel his presence as I often did—lurking there beneath my consciousness like a Freudian nightmare. I tried to remember the dream’s fleeting images. Flickering lights and red motes like incandescent blood cells danced and sparked inside my skull. I remembered a moon, then slithering, scampering dark shapes. I calmed myself with whiskey and cigarettes, and fumbled for the sandwiches I had brought along. It was dawn. I had been out for about five hours. The sky slowly lightened.

An unusual rosy light began to color the clouds to the east. Unusual in the sense that I had not seen such a thing in all the time I had been in partnership with Tommy. From my vantage point, I could see the long lancing orange cloud shapes forming and stretching from the horizon toward me. Red, as ripe as apple, as sick as blood, began to grow in intensity in an angry bar beneath the cloud. It shot long bands of sparkle across the water—scoring furious grooves in the gray ocean. Perhaps that was why Tommy had chosen this place. Perhaps he had glimpsed the sunrise this way—the harsh sharp glory like a flag wrested from the hands of a dead soldier and waved over the battlefield. My perch was perfect for seeing this spectacle. Below me, the alien rays set fire to the mist that boiled through Greasetown’s streets and peopled it with chromium sparks and embers. The streets followed the burning beams toward the sea. The asphalt glimmered for a moment, and then the clouds grew dark and dropped heavily on the red—snuffed out the light. An empty coffin boom of thunder fell. Darkness grew over Greasetown like scar tissue. Drizzle began tapping the plastic roof over my head.

I climbed to my feet and watched it all with keen interest because as the sky lightened the pieces had started to fall into place. I had plenty of motive. I had suspects. I even had culprits. I had only two problems left. I had to find someone I could tell my story to, and I had to find Van Reydner. She could clear away all of my doubts. She could prove my claims. I would find her soon, if my hunch was right. The first thing I had to do was get in touch with Richard Adrian.