Seize the Night

nature explains why he doesn't share the monkeys' hatred and rage. I think dogs were put in this world to remind humanity that love, loyalty, devotion, courage, patience, and good humor are the qualities that, with honesty, are the essence of admirable character and the very definition of a life well lived.
    In good Orson I see the hopeful side of my mother's work, the real potential of science to bring light into an often dark world, to lift us up, to stir the spirit and to remind us that the universe is a place of wonder and infinite potential.
    She did, in fact, hope to accomplish great things. She aligned herself with a biological-weapons project solely because this was the only way to obtain the high level of funding needed to realize her design for a gene splicing retrovirus, which she believed could be used to cure many illnesses and inherited disorders—not least of all, my XP.
    You see, my mom didn't destroy the world without good reason.
    She did it trying to help me. Because of me, all of nature is now poised on the brink. Maternal love became the wellspring of ultimate terror.
    So … you want to talk about your conflicted feelings for your mother?
    Orson and I are her sons. I am the fruit of her heart and womb.
    Orson is the fruit of her mind, but she created him as surely as she created me. We are brothers. Not just figuratively. We are bound not by blood but by our mother's passions, and in that sense we share one heart.
    If anything were to happen to Orson, a part of me would die—the purer part, the better part—and die forever.
    “Gotta find him,” I repeated.
    “Faith, bro,” Bobby said.
    He reached for the key in the ignition, but before he could switch on the engine, a sound arose, louder than the soft million-tongue flutter of leaves in the breeze, swelling by the second.
    Bobby put one hand on the Smith & Wesson in his lap.
    I didn't draw my pistol because I knew what I was hearing. The beating of wings. Many wings.
    Like wind-torn shingles from Heaven's roof, the voiceless flock came out of the night, tumbling down in a clatter and whirl of wings more than half a block away, then flying parallel to the pavement, following the street, streaking in our direction. The hundred birds I'd seen earlier were surely part of this apparition, but another hundred had joined them, perhaps two hundred.
    Bobby decided against the revolver and snatched the shotgun from between the seats.
    “Ice it down,” I told him.
    He gave me an odd look. Usually, he's the one advising me to stay cool.
    Seventeen years of friendship ensure that he takes me seriously, but he chambered a round in the shotgun nevertheless.
    Spread the width of the street, the flock swept over us, no more than six feet above our heads. I had the sense that they were flying with astonishing precision, arranged in formations so orderly as to be uncanny. An aerial view of the entire swarm might reveal patterns intriguing because of their unnatural degree of complex order but also disturbing because they would seem simultaneously meaningful and indecipherable.
    Bobby ducked, but I gazed up into the dark churning cloud of wings and feathered breasts, trying to determine if there were species other than nighthawks in these multitudes. The poor light and the blur of movement made it difficult to conduct even a cursory census.
    By the time the last of the enormous flock soared past, not a single bird had dived at us or shrieked. Their passing had such an otherworldly quality that I almost felt as though I had been hallucinating, but a sprinkling of feathers in the Jeep and along the blacktop confirmed the reality of the experience.
    Even as the last small bits of fluffy down descended on the breeze, Bobby threw open the driver's door and scrambled from the Jeep. He was still gripping the shotgun when he turned to stare after the departing flock, although he was holding the weapon in one hand now, muzzle pointed at the pavement, with no intention of using it.
    I got out of the Jeep, too, and watched as the birds swooped up from the end of the street, arcing high across a sea of stars, disappearing into the blackness between those distant suns.
    “Totally awesome,” Bobby said.
    “Yeah.”
    “But …”
    “Yeah.”
    “Feels a little sharky, too.”
    I knew what he meant. This time the birds radiated more than the sorrow that I had felt before. Although the flock's choreography had been breathtaking, even exhilarating, and although their