The Dark

by Michael Cook

Marvin pulled his pickup out of the driveway and away from the house. The sky was a bright canopy of blue September silk, the Nebraska land beneath it a line of brilliant green and gold. It was a fine day to leave the old behind and drive like hell toward the new.

Quiet residential streets turned into thoroughfares, then hooked up with interstate 80 which ran west and promised the rest of Nebraska. It took half an hour for the last of Omaha to disappear from his rear-view mirror. Marvin popped a cassette into the pickup’s tape player, and Bruce Springsteen began singing about Cadillacs and badlands, factories and Candy’s room.

Three hours away was Cedarville, a tiny town in the middle of Nebraska so pretty you could use it to sell pies. Everything he owned – make that everything he could take – was packed in the back of the truck: all his clothes, some cheap power tools he’d received on Father’s Days, books and CDs no one else wanted, and a few orphaned pieces of furniture, most of them from the basement. None of it really mattered. Everything he needed was ahead of him.

Once traffic fell off he set the cruise for 80. At that speed he could make the trip in three hours. This stretch of the interstate ran straight as a ribbon almost clear to Colorado and 80 seemed reasonable. The highway patrol seemed to think so, too. It was such a mindless drive that Marvin had even seen drivers reading newspapers and novels from behind the wheel, though he’d never been able to pass the 250 miles to Cedarville that way.

Once, on his fourth or fifth trip out, he’d missed an accident by precious minutes. East of Grand Island a semi had rear-ended a car, plunging both vehicles into the grassy median between the lanes where they’d rolled to a tableau-like stop. The semi was fine, aside from the fact that it was off the road and tilted at a ponderous angle, but the car looked as though a bomb had exploded in the trunk. By some miracle its driver had survived, and when Marvin passed by she was stumbling at the side of the road, her face crazy with blood, screaming. Who hit my car? she demanded from the dumb-struck onlookers circled around her. Did you hit my car?

Marvin spent the rest of the trip feeling as though he’d drunk too much coffee, his shoulders pulled up to his ears, his hands white around the steering wheel. The moment he got to Marie’s he hugged and kissed her with as much relief as desire, then spilled the whole story out to her like a boy who’d seen an elephant. When she turned out the bedside light later that night he got a case of the shakes so bad she finally gave him a Xanax to help him sleep. Don’t worry about them, she said in the dark. The pill made his arms and legs heavy, and his head float. It’s behind you. You’re here with me. That’s all that matters.

In the end she’d been right, even though it went against everything Marvin believed before meeting her: you didn’t just drive past the scene of an accident; you didn’t leave a wife and family of twenty some-odd years for a younger woman; you didn’t throw away one life to go chasing after another. And yet, that’s exactly what he’d done. Was doing. Had been for the past six months.

It started like most things of this type. They’d met on one of Marvin’s business trips. She’d been born and raised in Cedarville, and wasn’t put off when he told her he was married. Her husband had died a few years back from a rare form of cancer, leaving her with bills and a little boy. She was lonely, she said, and it was time for her to think about dating again. Better to get your feet wet in someone else’s pool before buying your own, don’t you think? she’d said.

As it turned out they both got more than their feet wet, and at times it felt to Marvin like they were up to their necks in it. For months he thought about breaking it off, but soon realized he was enjoying his time in Cedarville more than his time at home. And what in the Hell he could do about it?

The guy had to be doing a hundred. He’d caught Marvin wool-gathering in the left-hand lane and not paying much attention. Suddenly he was on Marvin’s tail, then swerving and passing him by on the right, horn blaring. Marvin checked his rear-view before easing into the other lane himself, and noticed the sky behind him. It was dark blue, the color of new jeans. But it was still early, just a quarter to six. Too early for the light to be so far gone, especially in early September. Marie was probably home from work by now. He reached over to his briefcase and the cell phone inside, then dialed her number.

“Hey there, sweetheart. How’s the drive going?”

“It looks good. We still on for dinner?”

“You bet, unless you’d rather celebrate at our Chevy dealer’s buffalo roast. Is risotto okay?”

Marvin smiled. “Sounds great. Do you need anything?”

“Just you, so bring a lot. I’ve got stuff for martinis, too.” Marvin heard glass clink together in the kitchen and Josh, her son, driving through another game of Nintendo SpeedZone in the background. “Hey Marvin!” he shouted out.

“Josh says ‘hi.’”

“Tell him ‘hi’ back.” Marvin waved absently to the boy as though he might be sitting on the hood of his truck.

“So when can I expect you home?” It was the first time Marie had referred to her house that way in relation to him. Truthfully, it was the first time he’d thought of it that way himself.

“Eight, he answered, maybe a little before.”

“Okay. Just drive safely. I’ll see you soon, but not soon enough.”

They said goodbye and Marvin pushed the phone’s END button. He grinned ruefully, thinking that was pretty much what he’d done with Wendy and the kids.

It was the kind of messy break-up their neighbors and friends might talk about for weeks, maybe months if no one else got divorced or fired or sick in the meantime. In the end though, it was easier than he’d ever hoped. Whatever joy and happiness he’d experienced in those twenty years was balanced out by equal portions of anger and regret. That left him with a clean slate, more or less, and now when he thought about those twenty years that was pretty much how he felt, completely blank, like a blackboard that had been wiped clean.

Several miles outside of Lincoln, traffic slowed, and Marvin brought the truck down to 45. Both lanes were lined with cars and minivans, pickups and trucks, as far as Marvin could see.

He pulled in behind a station wagon full of kids. The sun balanced on the edge of the horizon, lighting the station wagons interior and the children inside with a strange orange glow that seemed half shadow. Some were crying, he noticed, with wide open mouths and clenched eyes, and when the woman driving turned around to holler something at them, it seemed she was crying, too.

Behind him, a couple his age sat stone-faced in a blazer and stared at the fast-setting sun. In the Chevy to his left a young woman hunched over her steering wheel and smoked a cigarette nervously. Somewhere nearby the brakes of a semi wheezed and groaned. Everyone pulled forward patiently, slowed, then pulled forward again.

As they drew closer to the Lincoln exit, traffic thickened even more. Sometimes it stopped entirely, and when it did Marvin squirmed like a man caught at a long and boring film. He passed the first off-ramp at just over 25 miles an hour, uttering a silent thanks when he discovered a good portion of the drivers were leaving the interstate. Still, the road was a mess. Much more of this and he’d lose the time he saved leaving Omaha. Marie would hold dinner and not say anything about it, but he hated making her wait. Especially tonight, when so much waiting on her part was finally coming to an end.

The second exit was just like the first, only worse. Cars were packed so densely they threatened to spill over onto the shoulders. Why would everyone go to Lincoln tonight? Sure, it was six o’clock, it might be anything from plain old rush hour to a college football game or a big concert at the fairgrounds. But even if that were the case, Marvin had never seen anything like this.

Whatever was drawing folks to Lincoln, Marvin was glad to leave it behind at the final exit. After maneuvering into the left-hand lane he more or less had the road to himself again. He pressed Resume on the cruise control and felt the accelerator dip toward the floorboard beneath his foot. The pickup pulled back up to eight and then Marvin nudged it on to just under ninety, praying the highway patrol wouldn’t see him.

The sun had largely disappeared, leaving behind it a trail of crimson and gold. Soon the stars would come out. Marvin looked forward to seeing them from Marie’s back yard – their back yard now. Josh loved astronomy. He was at that age where it was either dinosaurs or outer space, and Marvin was glad he’d chosen the latter. “Did you know the light from stars takes millions of years to get here?” he’d once asked Marvin as they sat together on the back deck. Then, without waiting for an answer: “Those stars could be burned out, and we wouldn’t know it for millions of years. They could be burned out right now, and we wouldn’t even know it.”

He was 20 miles past Lincoln when he turned on the headlights. He twisted the knob on the turning signal column, then did it again when the road ahead remained dark.

Nothing. Again, and still no better.

Marvin sat up straighter in his seat and peered out at the road beneath the truck’s front end, searching for a sign of the headlight’s familiar bright beams. Were the damned things working at all?

He swore and signaled, checking his mirrors, then twisted around and looked again for headlights behind him. The road looked inky and empty.

The pickup met the shoulder with a crunch of gravel. He activated the blinkers but didn’t bother killing the engine, then opened the door to get out.

He bent down directly in front of the headlights. They were on, there was no mistaking that. But the lamps produced only a dingy yellow glow, like flashlights running off the last juice of old batteries. Marvin straightened up and passed his hand in front of one, then the other. The beams evaporated just a few feet inches from the truck.

Cedarville was still over 100 miles away, but Grand Island was no more than 25 and there was a truck stop near the exit. Maybe he could find a mechanic working late who’d take a look at the damned things. With luck he could get to Marie’s by eight-thirty, nine at the latest. He started back to the driver’s seat, then stopped when he saw the sky.

It was dark, completely blank, with no pinpoints of light. Even the moon’s small sliver was dimmed, as though someone had drawn black silk across it.

He clenched his eyes and rubbed them with his fingers, willing them to adjust to the night and pick out the stars he knew should be overhead by now. He looked up again. Somewhere nearby corn rustled in wind and from inside the truck Bruce Springsteen was swearing to prove it all night, all night. And still there were no stars.

Forty miles an hour was as fast as he dared go. He decided to use the brights, but even they failed to penetrate more than one car-length of road. The dark had grown thicker in the past half hour or so. It reminded him of driving through thick fog or blinding snow, and Marvin caught himself leaning toward the windshield, alternately squinting and opening his eyes wider to improve his vision, though neither had much effect. Mostly, the highway dropped off into black nothingness, and Marvin steered more by faith and feel, trusting that the road would continue on in more or less a straight line.

Blindness. The word bubbled up inside his head and began repeating itself like a morbid mantra. Night blindness, a rational but increasingly desperate voice replied. Hadn’t he read somewhere that night blindness was a problem for guys over forty? Something about a lack of vitamin D?

He took his eyes off the road just long enough to quickly glance around at the truck’s dashboard. Its blue LEDs were as weak as the headlamps. The cabin light, he soon discovered, was useless, too. He gauged his speed more by the air rushing past his open window than by the numbers, which ran together in blurs.

A dark green mileage sign appeared out of the darkness, and at first he thought it was blank. For a few brief seconds he was able to pick out the gray letters on its front. Grand Island was just 14 miles off now.

Eventually he met with another car heading west. The taillights loomed up so fast in front of him that he had to slam on his brakes to avoid hitting it. Despite the scare, he was grateful for the point of reference in the dark, and followed it closer than he probably should have. If it went off the road for some reason, he would likely join it and not know the difference until his pickup began to rock and jolt its way into whatever lay unseen past the road’s shoulder.

As they drew nearer to Grand Island Marvin and the car ahead of him met up with others. Gradually he realized they were all driving slowly, no more than twenty now. He resigned himself to waiting, hoping that the Grand Island exit would show itself soon.

He inched along, riding the brakes more than the accelerator and praying the driver behind him was watching his ass with the same intensity he was watching the cars ahead of him. From time to time he checked his rear-view mirror. The headlights in it reminded him of two gray buttons on a dark coat.

He wondered how much time was passing but didn’t dare squint at his wristwatch now; the squarish digits on the dashboard clock were impossible to read as well. Fives could be nines, which might also be eights or sixes; seven and one had never been so close.

The exit to Grand Island announced itself with a brief constellation of streetlights that quickly arced off into empty space. The off-ramp was just like those in Lincoln, but darker, more invisible. And slower. He wouldn’t even have known there was a ramp if not for the two short lines of paired red taillights describing its curve off the main road. Beyond them Marvin could just make out the grayed orange glow of the truck stop.

If memory served, it was a big one – a TravAmerica with endless rows of fueling islands and a food court and a store that sold everything from cosmetics to automotive supplies. In daylight it would have taken him no more than two minutes to reach it from the interstate, but now the trip seemed to swallow hours. Along the way he passed other convenience marts and fast-food restaurants shrouded in murk beneath an endless black sky. Every lamp and bulb, every line of neon and fluorescent in sight burned, but cast no light. Beyond them, everything was dark.

Was it a brownout? A power failure or some weird kind of surge? Once he was at the truck stop, maybe there’d be someone who knew what was going on.

The truck stop’s parking lot was full, so Marvin found his way around to the back, where cars and trucks were pulling into a vacant field. He located a spot away from the others and stopped the pickup.

He stepped outside and strained to orient himself among the dark shapes and silhouettes around him. A lot of people had left their headlights on, but they were no match for the gloom. Some carried flashlights as they walked from car to car, which winked and swirled in the dark but illuminated nothing. The truck strop was to his right and Marvin began walking toward it, tall grass brushing against his legs.

Voices seemed to carry better in the darkness, and Marvin heard bits and pieces of conversations as he neared the store. Off to his left a woman was talking about a lunar eclipse in an authoritative tone that threatened to crack open and start leaking hysteria. Two men chuckled about it being the damnedest thing. Another woman in the distance was sobbing.

Somewhere, someone was playing a radio. As he half walked, half felt his way to the truck stop, Marvin listened to it with dawning alarm.

The announcer said there was still no official word, but that Los Angeles and Denver were reporting the same thing. Chicago was now in total darkness, and the AP wires from Miami, Atlanta and New York had been lost over an hour ago. Authorities were recommending that people remain inside their homes and listen to the radio for further updates. Travelers were encouraged to seek shelter at the first opportunity and stay off the roads.

Chicago. Miami. New York. Not blindness, then. Not a brownout or power failure. The electrical lines were working just as well as his eyes. The problem was just… darkness. Dark like deep water, flowing from one end of the country to the other, wiping out the lights as it went.

The concentration of fluorescents and sodium arc lights at the truck stop’s entrance thinned the darkness only a little and people huddled together in the brighter like pedestrians under canopies in a rainstorm. A few children chased each from one pool of light to the next, squealing. On his way to the doors he passed by families and couples, holding hands or arms around one another, murmuring quietly to themselves.

Inside, Marvin felt as though he was trying to make his way through a poorly exposed photograph. Walls and floors were just dim planes and lines; words and pictures on signs and advertisements ran together in marbled gray shapes. Color was all but non-existent and at times Marvin had to feel his way around tables and vending machines.

People lined every wall. The food court was overrun with them. He was surprised to discover most of the restaurants were still open for business, even though the counter help was fumbling in the dark and bumping into one another. A couple of kids were crying. Some women were, too, but otherwise everyone whispered. They sounded like an audience in a large theater, just before the lights dim and the show begins.

Marvin finally located the store off to his left. All the fluorescent lights were on, but it was still flooded in murk. People milled everywhere in groups of two or three, holding hands so as not to lose one another. It was impossible to avoid brushing against them as he made his way past shadowy soda coolers and up and down the aisles of nearly indistinguishable merchandise.

He found the automotive supplies near the back, and crouched down in front of the shelf to locate with his hands what his eyes couldn’t see: a utility lamp. He tore open the box and ran his hand down the cord hopefully until he reached its end. It was not pronged, but an open circle that neatly fit his fingertip. He could attach it to the pickup’s cigarette lighter, then. It wouldn’t press back the dark completely, but maybe it could supplement the trucks headlights, at least enough to help him get to Cedarville where Marie and Josh waited. If the world was plunging into darkness – and more and more it looked like that’s exactly what was happening – he wanted to be with them. Not strangers, not other people’s friends and families, but his own.

Light bulbs and duct tape were blessedly nearby, and Marvin grabbed handfuls of both before heading back in the direction he came. No one noticed he hadn’t paid, or if they did they no longer cared.

He dumped everything on the truck’s hood and felt around with his key to open the driver’s side door. He reached around the steering wheel and felt around for the cigarette lighter. He pulled the plug out and tossed it behind him, then attached the utility lamp’s cord.

Nothing happened. Fear pressed in at the sides of his head until he remembered the bulbs. He found them again on the hood of the truck and screwed one into the socket. Light swelled weakly from the lamp – not bright by any means, but at least it was something.

The cord wouldn’t reach to the bumper, so Marvin decided to attach it to the windshield instead. He slapped tape over the lamp’s handle and the windshield with no regard for stability. It only had to hold another 50 miles or so, and most of that would be at low speeds.

Marvin got into the truck and closed the door. His key found the ignition, and Marvin revved the engine, then threw it into drive. Even with the safety lamp he was driving blindly, and it was impossible to tell if he was headed back toward the interstate or into the cornfield bordering the truck stop.

He didn’t go fast, but he seemed to go far. Eventually something – corn, he figured – began slapping against the sides of the truck and dragging along the undercarriage with growing weight. He reached for his cell phone again and tried to call Marie, to hear the sound of her voice and assure her he’d be home soon, but the call wouldn’t go through. Instead, he turned on the radio. Even the sound of a strangers voice was better than the nothingness surrounding him.

Bill Bullock was broadcasting out of KRNY, in Kearney, and as an apology for his frequent technical gaffs he reminded his listeners that he was flying solo on this dark night in America. I imagine it’s as dark here in the studio as it is where you are, he said, only I’ve got more buttons that need pushing. Bill promised to broadcast for as long as he could and encouraged his listeners to ring him up. It’s comforting, isn’t it, he asked, to hear a friendly voice in the dark?

Marvin turned the truck left, then right, then left again, hoping to find a road or even a path nearby. After several long minutes he did. It was gravel from the sounds of it, unmarked and unlighted, but after the open sea of the cornfield he was grateful for anything that was headed in two definite directions. He turned left, toward where he thought the interstate might be, and slowly followed what little of the road he could see.

Bill Bullock kept his promise and continued his broadcast, talking in the dark and announcing the time with grim regularity. Nine o’clock. Ten. Ten-thirty. The road rolled on, and Bill reported what little he could make out from official sources. The National Weather Service reported that the sun had set in Hawaii at 4:47 P.M., more than two hours ahead of schedule. Global communications were failing, microwave transmissions, long-distance service. NASA had already lost contact with several satellites and was expecting the rest to follow within a few hours. There was no word from the White House, or the Pentagon.

Some time after eleven Bill Bullock’s voice disintegrated into static. Marvin fumbled with the controls to locate another station but found nothing. Nothing on the FM band either. He longed to be with Marie, curled around her and Josh in the failing light. Or at the truck stop, where there were at least other people, others couples, other families nearby.

He drove on, feeling both blind and deaf now, cut off from everything but darkness and the constant hum of the truck’s engine. The road unfolded slowly, revealing itself in inches.

It got difficult to keep his eyes open. There was so little to see now, so few reasons not to let them close. At least for a second or two. Maybe, when he opened them again, he thought, he would be able to see more.

Marvin woke in bottomless dark with something on his lap and hands. He flailed at it and the dark around it in claustrophobic terror before realizing the trucks airbag had exploded. He looked around, but saw nothing. He thought his eyes were open, but there was no way to know for sure.

He found the door latch and pulled it toward him, then staggered out of the truck. His eyes burned now, and he wiped something warm and wet away from them with one hand. He managed to walk only a few feet before he tripped and fell to the ground.

He turned himself over and looked up into what should have been the sky. He searched for a spot of light and found none. Maybe Josh was right. Maybe the stars had gone out, and all those millions of years of darkness had had finally reached Earth.

Marvin pushed against the ground to right himself. As soon as he could stand he reached out with both hands for the cool metal of the truck, the rough bark of a tree, the reassuring uprightness of a fence post or light pole. He found nothing except empty blackness and more black beyond it.

He walked that way, hands held out stiff in front of him, deeper and deeper into the dark, until panic finally set in, sharp and hot. He began to run then, no longer caring if he tripped or fell. He ran, and kept running, and found nothing in front of him, nothing above or below. He rushed into the blackness, headlong into the void, and ran without stopping, ran without end.

Eventually he opened his mouth to scream.

When he did, the dark rushed in.