Seize the Night

carnage and leaned against the Jeep.
    Considering the speed of the flock's kamikaze descent, the hard rattle of death could not have continued for more than seconds, but minutes seemed to pass before the terrible noise ceased. The quiet that followed was heavy with catastrophic import, like the hush in the wake of a bomb blast.
    I closed my eyes—but opened them again when a replay of the flocks' suicidal plunge was projected vividly onto the backs of my eyelids.
    All of nature was on the brink. I had known that much for the past month, since I'd learned what had happened in the hidden labs of Wyvern.
    Now the perilous ledge on which the future stood seemed narrower than I had thought, the height of the cliff far greater than it had seemed a moment ago, and the rocks below more jagged than my worst imaginings.
    With my eyes open, into my mind came a photographic memory of my mother's face. So wise. So kind.
    The image of her blurred. Everything around me blurred for a moment, the street and the movie theater.
    I took a shallow breath, which entered my chest with an ache, then a deeper breath that hurt less, and I wiped my eyes with the back of one jacket sleeve.
    My heritage requires me to bear witness, and I can't shirk that responsibility. The light of the sun is denied to me, but I must not avoid the light of truth, which also burns but anneals rather than destroys.
    I turned to look at the silenced flock.
    Hundreds of small birds littered the sidewalk. Only a few wings shuddered feebly with rapidly fading life. Most of them had hit so hard that their fragile skulls had shattered and their necks had broken on impact.
    Because they appeared to be ordinary nighthawks, I wondered what internal change had swept through these birds. Although invisible to the unassisted eye, the difference was evidently so substantive that they believed continued existence to be intolerable.
    Or perhaps their kamikaze flight had not been a conscious act.
    Perhaps it had resulted from a deterioration of their directional instincts or mass blindness, or dementia.
    No. Remembering their elaborate aerobatics, I had to assume that the change was more profound, more mysterious, and more disturbing than mere physical dysfunction.
    Beside me, the engine of the Jeep turned over, caught, roared, and then idled as Bobby let up on the accelerator.
    I hadn't been aware of him getting behind the steering wheel.
    “Bro,” he said.
    Although not directly related to the disappearance of Orson or to the kidnapping of Jimmy Wing, the flock's self-destruction added urgency to the already pressing need to find the dog and the boy.
    For once in his life, Bobby appeared to feel the solvent of time passing through him and swirling away, carrying with it some dissolved essence, like water into a drain.
    He said, “Let's cruise,” with a solemn expression in his eyes that belied the laid-back tone of his voice and the casualness of his language.
    I climbed into the Jeep and yanked the door shut.
    The shotgun was propped between the seats again.
    Bobby switched on the headlights and pulled away from the curb.
    As we approached the mounded birds, I saw that no wing fluttered any longer, except from the ruffling touch of the gentle breeze.
    Neither Bobby nor I had spoken of what we'd witnessed. No words seemed adequate.
    Passing the site of the carnage, he kept his eyes on the street ahead, not glancing even once at the dead flock.
    I, on the other hand, couldn't look away—and turned to stare back after we had passed.
    In my mind's ear, the music came from a piano with only black keys, jangling and discordant.
    Finally I turned to face forward. We drove into the fearsome brightness of the Jeep headlamps, but regardless of our speed, we remained always in the dark, hopelessly chasing the light.

10
    Dead Town could have passed for a neighborhood in Hell, where the condemned were subjected not to fire and boiling oil but to the more significant punishment of solitude and an eternity of quiet in which to contemplate what might have been. As if we were engaged in a supernatural rescue mission to extract two wrongfully damned souls from Hades, Bobby and I searched the streets for any sign of my furry brother or Lilly's son.
    With a powerful handheld spotlight that Bobby plugged into the cigarette lighter, I probed between houses lined up like tombstones.
    Through cracked or partially broken-out windows, where the reflection of the light glowed like a spirit face.