Seize the Night

This behavior of the nighthawks had been unnatural, certainly, but not a meaningless aberration, not a mere curiosity. There was calculation — therefore meaning — in their air show.

The puzzle resisted an easy solution.

Actually, I wasn’t sure I wanted to fit all the pieces together. The resultant picture was not likely to be comforting. The birds themselves posed no threat, but their bizarre performance couldn’t be construed as a good thing.

A sign. An omen.

Not the kind of omen that makes you want to buy a lottery ticket or take a quick trip to Vegas. Certainly not an omen that would make you decide to commit more of your net worth to the stock market. No, this was an omen that might inspire you to move to rural New Mexico, up into the fastness of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, as far from civilization as you could get, with a hoard of food, twenty thousand rounds of ammunition — and a prayer book.

I returned the pistol to the holster under my jacket.

Suddenly I was tired, drained.

I took a few deep breaths, but each inhalation was as stale as the air I exhaled.

When I wiped a hand across my face, hoping to slough off my weariness, I expected my skin to be greasy. Instead, it was dry and hot.

I found a penny-size tender spot just below my left cheekbone. Gently massaging it with a fingertip, I tried to remember whether I had knocked against anything during the night’s adventures.

Any pain without apparent cause is a possible early signal of a forming lesion, of the cancer that I have thus far remarkably escaped. If the suspect blemish or tenderness occurs on my face or hands, which are exposed to light even though sheathed in sunscreen, the chances of malignancy are greater.

Lowering my hand from my face, I reminded myself to live in the moment. Because of XP, I was born with no future, and in spite of my limitations, I live a full life — perhaps a better one — by concerning myself as little as possible with what tomorrow may bring. The present is more vivid, more precious, more fulfilling, if you understand that it is all you have.

Carpe diem, said the poet Horace, more than two thousand years ago. Seize the day. And trust not in tomorrow.

Carpe noctem works as well for me. I seize the night, wringing from it all that it has to offer, and I refuse to dwell on the fact that eventually the darkness of all darknesses will wring the same from me.

9

The solemn birds had cast down a dreary mood, like feathers molting from their wings. I walked determinedly out of that fallen plumage, heading toward the movie theater where Bobby Halloway was waiting.

The sore spot on my cheek might never develop into a lesion or a blister. Its value, as a source of worry, had been solely to distract me from the more terrible fear that I was reluctant to face: The longer Jimmy Wing and Orson were missing, the greater the likelihood they were dead.

Bordering the northern edge of Dead Town’s residential district is a park with handball courts at one end and tennis courts at the other. In the middle are acres of picnic grounds shaded by California live oaks that have fared well since the base closure, a playground with swings and jungle gyms, an open-air pavilion, and an enormous swimming pool.

The large oval pavilion, where bands once played on summer nights, is the only ornate structure in Wyvern: Victorian, with an encircling balustrade, fluted columns, a deep cornice enhanced by elaborate millwork, and a fanciful roof that drops from finial to eaves in shingled scallops reminiscent of the swags of a circus tent. Here, under strings of colored Christmas lights, young men had danced with their wives — and then gone off to bloody deaths in World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, and lesser skirmishes. The lights still dangle from rafter to rafter, unplugged and sheathed in dust, and often it seems that if you squint your eyes just slightly on moonlit nights like this, you can see the ghosts of martyrs to democracy dancing with the spirits of their widows.

As I strode through the tall grass, past the community swimming pool, where the chain-link fence sagged around the entire perimeter and was completely broken down in a few spots, I increased my pace, not solely because I was anxious to get to the movie house. Nothing has happened here to make me fearful of the place, but instinct tells me not to linger near this concrete-walled swamp. The pool is nearly two hundred feet long and eighty feet wide, with a lifeguard platform in the center. Currently, it was two-thirds full of collected rain. The black water would be black in daylight, too, because it was thickened with rotting oak leaves and other debris. In this fetid sludge, even the moon lost its silver purity, leaving a distorted, bile-yellow reflection like the face of a goblin in a dream.

Although I remained at a distance, I could smell the reeking slough. The stench wasn’t as bad as that in the bungalow kitchen, but it was pretty close.

Worse than the odor was the aura of the pool, which could not be perceived by the usual five senses but which was readily apparent to an indescribable sixth. No, my overactive imagination wasn’t overacting. This is, at all times, an undeniably real quality of the pool: a subtle but cold squirming energy from which your mind shrinks, an evil mojo that slithers across the surface of your soul with all the tactility of a ball of worms writhing in your hand.

I thought I heard a splash, something breaking the surface of the sludge, followed by an oily churning, as if a swimmer were doing laps. I assumed these noises were the products of my imagination, but nevertheless, as the swimmer stroked closer to my end of the pool, I broke into a run.

Beyond the park lies Commissary Way, along the north side of which stand the enterprises and institutions that, in addition to those in Moonlight Bay, once served Wyvern’s thirty-six thousand active-duty personnel and thirteen thousand of their dependents. The commissary and the movie theater anchor opposite ends of the long street. Between them are a barbershop, a dry cleaner, a florist, a bakery, a bank, the enlisted men’s club, the officers’ club, a library, a game arcade, a kindergarten, an elementary school, a fitness center, and additional shops — all empty, their painted signs faded and weathered.

These one-and two-story buildings are plain but, precisely because of their simplicity, pleasing to the eye: white clapboard, painted concrete blocks, stucco. The utilitarian nature of military construction combined with Depression-era frugality — which guided every project in 1939, when the base was commissioned — could have resulted in an ugly industrial look. But the army architects and construction crews had made an effort to create buildings with some grace, relying on only such fundamentals as harmonious lines and angles, rhythmic window placement, and varying but complementary roof lines.

The movie theater is as humble as the other buildings, and its marquee rests flat against the front wall, above the entrance. I don’t know what film last played here or the names of the actors who appeared in it. Only three black plastic letters remain in the tracks where titles and cast were announced, forming a single word: WHO.

In spite of the absence of concluding punctuation, I read this enigmatic message as a desperate question referring to the genetic terror spawned in hidden laboratories somewhere on these grounds. Who am I? Who are you? Who are we becoming? Who did this to us? Who can save us?

Who? Who?

Bobby’s black Jeep was parked in front of the theater. The vinyl roof and walls were not attached to the frame and roll bars, so the vehicle was open to the night.

As I approached the Jeep, the moon sank behind the clouds in the west, so close to the horizon now that it was unlikely to reappear, but even from a block away, I could clearly see Bobby sitting behind the steering wheel.

We are the same height and weight. Although my hair is blond and his is dark brown, although my eyes are pale blue and his are so raven black they have blue highlights, we can pass for brothers. We have been each other’s closest friend since we were eleven, and so perhaps we have grown alike in many ways. We stand, sit, and move