"c51" - читать интересную книгу автора (Burt Andrew - Noontide Night)

12:00 Noon, Saturday, January 1, 2000
Manukau, New Zealand

Morgan paced the maternity room. It was precisely nine steps from Desiree's bed, past the three other beds to the window. A ninety-degree turn. Then three paces to the door nearest the toilet on the closet-filled opposite wall. Twelve steps and two turns back to Desiree. All the beds were full with new mothers; others were allegedly in other rooms. What idiots! Hadn't they thought that trying to have a baby born on January 1, 2000 would be a terrible idea? No, of course not. He hadn't even thought there'd be a problem, and he was a goddamned programmer. "Morgan?" Desiree called him over with a nod of her head. Morgan dashed over, eager to be wanted. "Yeah, honey, what can I get you? More water? Fluff your pillows?" She lowered her voice. "I think your pacing is annoying the other moms. Do you think..." Morgan looked dejected. He hated this waiting, waiting, waiting. The not knowing. "Sure, sure, I'll sit down." He picked up a magazine, but curled it tightly instead of reading it. "I wish that radio hadn't died." The batteries in the portable they'd been listening to had faded to oblivion like the news it reported. "It died right in the middle of a report on Iraqi troop movements toward some border. Which one do you think it was going to say? Kuwaiti again? Iranian? Jordanian, maybe, as a path toward Israel?" Morgan realized he was speaking loudly again. Jenny, the next mom over, was giving him a sidelong glance. "I'll shut up now," he said, slipping down in his chair. "Honey, would you like to go back to the flat and get us some changes of clothes? And my hospital bag. You know, the one I prepared? It's sitting on the bathroom floor. You could take a shower if there's any water. What do you think?" He was in the car practically before she'd finished her sentence. He knew she was just trying to give him some make-work, but this was one of the reasons they worked so well together as a team. She always knew just what he needed. No, it was more than make-work. He didn't need to try hard to convince himself of that. They probably would be at the hospital for days. Fortunately, the car had the all-important radio. A sudden bulge of date failures had occurred worldwide, simultaneously, like a shotgun blast among the sharpshooting sniper shots. Those ahead of the shock wave fumbled for an explanation, and blamed solar flares. The reports later resolved the mystery: They were failures caused by clocks set to Universal Coordinated Time, which hit midnight at the same time as London. The radio offered no word on where Saddam Hussein was massing his troops, but they did clarify why Big Ben rang for ten solid minutes until someone manually shut it up. The clock was not, they repeated, computer controlled, but had been set off by teenage pranksters. The traffic was heavier now than when he'd last been on the road half a day ago. There was broken glass in many intersections. Cars tried to go all four directions at once. Under ordinary circumstances without a stop light things might have been more orderly, but not today; people had been pushed too far. Morgan noted that this did reaffirm the need for stop lights at certain intersections, though. He'd often wondered if those with light traffic needed them. Now he wondered if he'd be able to find new tires if these went flat. He hopped on the highway. And was unable to get off. Police had blocked the exits and were waving cars onward. Morgan felt like a cow channeled to the slaughterhouse. As a kid during the Cold War, when he and everyone were afraid of the Russians, Morgan watched in horror, in God-fearing awe, at the parades of Soviet troops and tanks and missiles, in relentless, gear-driven precision. The soldiers had seemed marching automatons, inhumanly expressionless, and all the fiercer for it. Morgan's heart raced as he now felt the tight chest and numb limbs of animal fear like an East German trying to run the gauntlet of the Wall to freedom. The Manukau police, whom he'd formerly felt nebulously as friends, looked cold and brutal and totalitarian as they denied Morgan exit from the highway. Move on, they waved. The red and blue lights flashing at every offramp marched him down the gray soulless expanse in precise lockstep. Spooked by the image, he pulled over at the Redoubt Road exit and rolled down his window. Even under the blackest hour of Stalin the Russians had kept their sense of humor and hope, he was sure of it. He knew bribery was their coin, but he dared not try that here. Not that he had anything of value anyway. But these ominous sentries must—he shouted in his mind, they must!—still have traces of humanity. He'd talk to them. "What's the problem officer? I really needed to get off two exits ago." "Huge riot started outside Copper Joe's Tavern. City Centre's all a mess. Shopping centre's on fire. We're just keeping everyone away." Then the man smiled, and shrugged, as if he was in a bind just as much as Morgan, melting Morgan's ice cube of fear. "Well, how far will I have to go? My wife's in the hospital, and..." Morgan told his story, embellishing Desiree's condition and escalating his need to get home. "Well, look mate, I shouldn't do this, but you can get off here," he said with a wink. "Go on around." Morgan thanked him profusely. He navigated back to Great South Road and wound homeward. Everything looked like commerce-as-usual. Across the road the trees were green and cars were lined up before the shops, trunks open, tailgates down, doors flung wide. An orderly stream of patrons carried off their after-Christmas booty. Only... something niggled at Morgan. Something wasn't right. The shoppers were surreally shadowless. But that was simply the noon sun. Inside, the stores were dark. Yet that wasn't the problem, either. Morgan could rationalize that the stores would open anyway. A glint of sunlight abruptly revealed the source of his discomfort: The sun reflected off an array of broken window glass. He glanced back — and noted that most of the store windows had no signs, no reflections, and were, in fact, gaping dark maws. Where the hell were the police? Surely the store alarms had registered... maybe not. Or maybe so! What if the looting were so widespread that the police couldn't cover everything? "Keeping everyone away," the cop had said. The police had had their hands full with groups like the "Mongrel Mob" Maori street gang even before all this. Morgan inched forward toward the intersection where the dark stop lights gazed outward like blind eyes. He wondered if the cars ahead and behind him were filled with remorseless, Bacchanalian thugs and their prizes. As he pushed through the intersection—cars crazily, impatiently turning directly at him—he heard firecracker pops behind him. In the rearview mirror he saw a man leaving a gun store firing a semi-automatic pistol in the air. Morgan stared in disbelief: As if nobody else heard it, as if it were a message sent directly to his ears, the other looters continued calmly toting merchandise to their cars. Morgan imagined he could see demonic red eyes boring into him from the man, though in rational fact he knew from the angle of the lunatic's arm that his back was turned. Morgan sped away breathing raggedly. Had the world gone mad? The apartment was a mess. Hundreds of dollars of open champagne bottles littered the counter. The white carpet was still wet where Morgan kicked over the TV-cart, a giant amoeba-shaped stain with bits of curved, broken glasses projected upward like alien body parts. Sandwiches had been mashed into the carpet, crackers crushed by the stampede, paper plates full of pretzels gored by spiked heels, noisemakers silenced where they fell. Someone's pair of eyeglasses were shattered beneath an overturned chair. At least, Morgan thought, they hadn't had red wine. It smelled of stale vomit, as if the world had woken up with a bad hangover. A trampled piece of paper lay amidst the wreckage. It was the winning paper from their contest. Morgan unfolded it. Dieter Axton had been the winner. Morgan was glad Axton hadn't collected his prize, even though it hadn't fared well. Morgan found the package, stomped, torn, and buried by debris. Half covered by its red foil wrapping, as if bloodied, was their gag gift: A tiny hardback edition of Beowulf. The gag was that it was a "signed" copy—rather impossible since nobody knew who had written it. Morgan pondered now what he might have said about it after the winner had unwrapped it. If the VCR had not blinked, Morgan mused that he would have praised the continuity and growth of society, from 1000 A.D. when Beowulf was first committed to writing; the first poem in the English language. Had the VCR blinked, Morgan could have joked that at least they'd saved one classic from extinction, and rebuilding could occur. It tore at his heart to see it so vandalized. Wait a minute. Hadn't Axton boasted he thought the VCR would go out? This was the winner from the 'no blinky' box. The asshole had probably played both boxes. Morgan poked around in the 'blinks 12:00' box. He unfolded a bunch of entries. Yes, here was Axton's. Morgan kept unfolding, curious who'd voted how. Brian had voted 'blinks' despite saying otherwise. Hmph. And—and here was another with Axton's name! The little swine had voted twice. No, three times! Four! Morgan continued to unfold papers to find the depth of Axton's cheating. The ball-nosed bastard! Morgan choked on his anger. It was all his fault! God damnit, if Axton hadn't been fucking up their project—slogging it down with meaningless paperwork, continuous reports, frequent and useless meetings, sitting on hardware acquisitions, chilling morale with derogatory comments—then they'd have finished on time. He and Desiree would be home in California. She'd have had the baby there, and not now, not early. Morgan's blurry unease with the project suddenly focused, and he saw that Axton was, for some reason, trying to scuttle their project rather than smoothly complete it. Morgan shook, could feel tears of fury. Axton was killing his baby. Then he noticed, dangling from a chaise lounge on the balcony, a tennis-shoed foot. The rest was hidden by the back of the lounger. But there was definitely a person there. And the balcony's sliding glass door was also open. He was positive they'd closed it. By God, enough was enough! To have the sanctity of his own home violated! Morgan grabbed the phone. Dead. Not that the police would come anyway. Morgan's breath came like a snorting bull's. He analyzed the foot. The shoe was soot-smudged and worn. Morgan's imagination ran immediately to a homeless person trying locks on doors in the apartment building. He couldn't remember for sure if he'd locked the front door. Sleeping at noon—and the foot had twitched once, proving it wasn't a corpse—probably meant a drunk. Morgan began to stride over for a closer look, then heard Desiree's voice in his head. Not a good idea. Morgan's thoughts were as sharp as his rage. What if this person had stopped over at the gun shop free-for-all on the way here? Morgan hiked to the coat closet and grabbed his baseball bat. The comfortable grip of the New York ash reminded Morgan of his father. He'd given Morgan this very bat on Morgan's twelfth birthday. Morgan went over the edge. "Get the fuck out of my house!" he shouted and on the word fuck he crashed the bat down onto the VCR. The kitchen counter cracked and splintered. "I don't know who the hell you are, but get the fuck out of my house!" He swung the bat sideways this time at the VCR sending crunching metal and plastic and circuit boards flying across the room. "Get out!" A small figure jumped from the lounger. "Oh God! Oh God! Don't hurt me! Please!" said the female voice. "Oh God! Don't hurt me!" Morgan stopped the bat in mid swing at the overturned TV cart. The woman hugged herself tight in her black leather jacket. It was Matty. Morgan froze. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" Morgan lowered the bat. Recognition clicked his conscious mind back on, sapped his animal urge to kill. "I didn't know— What are you doing here?" Morgan looked around to make sure he was really in his own apartment. "Your wife said I could stay here. I live in Pukekohe, and this is so much closer. She gave me her key, see?" She paused, breathing hard. "This was a mistake. I better go." "No, no, wait, it's ok. I'm sorry, really I am. I didn't know." He tossed the bat aside. "God, I don't know what happened, I just... I just freaked out." Morgan sat on the couch, head in his hands. Civilization was so much more fragile than he'd ever imagined. "My baby almost died. I know that's no excuse. I lost it." All emotion had drained out of him; he sat, numb. Matty hesitated, then sat beside him and squeezed him. "It's okay, it's okay." She rocked him gently. "I should have cleaned the place up a bit, then you'd've known something was up. But I was just knackered." "What are we coming to, Matty? The lights go out and we lose it. What kind of people are we? We lived for thousands of years without this stuff. It's just the fucking lights." "No, no, Mr. Hyland, it's more than the lights. It's all the buildup. The doomsaying. Nobody took it serious. So when it happens... God, I know I still feel like it's the end of the world. But you know what? Even if it gets worse, which it probably will if all that talk was even half-way right, but eventually, sometime, it's going to get better. No worries, you know?" "Deep down, yeah. But on the surface..." He stood. "I'm okay." He wasn't sure if he was saying that for Matty's benefit, or his own. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "Anyway, hey, stay here as long as you like. You can have Oscar for protection," he motioned to the bat. "I'm just going to get some things. If you need anything give me a ca—well, scratch that, there's no phone." He wiped his face with his hand, looked around, and shrugged. "Boy, the world is going to have one helluva hangover. Don't wake me up until 2001."

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Chapter 5.1

12:00 Noon, Saturday, January 1, 2000
Manukau, New Zealand

Morgan paced the maternity room. It was precisely nine steps from Desiree's bed, past the three other beds to the window. A ninety-degree turn. Then three paces to the door nearest the toilet on the closet-filled opposite wall. Twelve steps and two turns back to Desiree. All the beds were full with new mothers; others were allegedly in other rooms. What idiots! Hadn't they thought that trying to have a baby born on January 1, 2000 would be a terrible idea? No, of course not. He hadn't even thought there'd be a problem, and he was a goddamned programmer. "Morgan?" Desiree called him over with a nod of her head. Morgan dashed over, eager to be wanted. "Yeah, honey, what can I get you? More water? Fluff your pillows?" She lowered her voice. "I think your pacing is annoying the other moms. Do you think..." Morgan looked dejected. He hated this waiting, waiting, waiting. The not knowing. "Sure, sure, I'll sit down." He picked up a magazine, but curled it tightly instead of reading it. "I wish that radio hadn't died." The batteries in the portable they'd been listening to had faded to oblivion like the news it reported. "It died right in the middle of a report on Iraqi troop movements toward some border. Which one do you think it was going to say? Kuwaiti again? Iranian? Jordanian, maybe, as a path toward Israel?" Morgan realized he was speaking loudly again. Jenny, the next mom over, was giving him a sidelong glance. "I'll shut up now," he said, slipping down in his chair. "Honey, would you like to go back to the flat and get us some changes of clothes? And my hospital bag. You know, the one I prepared? It's sitting on the bathroom floor. You could take a shower if there's any water. What do you think?" He was in the car practically before she'd finished her sentence. He knew she was just trying to give him some make-work, but this was one of the reasons they worked so well together as a team. She always knew just what he needed. No, it was more than make-work. He didn't need to try hard to convince himself of that. They probably would be at the hospital for days. Fortunately, the car had the all-important radio. A sudden bulge of date failures had occurred worldwide, simultaneously, like a shotgun blast among the sharpshooting sniper shots. Those ahead of the shock wave fumbled for an explanation, and blamed solar flares. The reports later resolved the mystery: They were failures caused by clocks set to Universal Coordinated Time, which hit midnight at the same time as London. The radio offered no word on where Saddam Hussein was massing his troops, but they did clarify why Big Ben rang for ten solid minutes until someone manually shut it up. The clock was not, they repeated, computer controlled, but had been set off by teenage pranksters. The traffic was heavier now than when he'd last been on the road half a day ago. There was broken glass in many intersections. Cars tried to go all four directions at once. Under ordinary circumstances without a stop light things might have been more orderly, but not today; people had been pushed too far. Morgan noted that this did reaffirm the need for stop lights at certain intersections, though. He'd often wondered if those with light traffic needed them. Now he wondered if he'd be able to find new tires if these went flat. He hopped on the highway. And was unable to get off. Police had blocked the exits and were waving cars onward. Morgan felt like a cow channeled to the slaughterhouse. As a kid during the Cold War, when he and everyone were afraid of the Russians, Morgan watched in horror, in God-fearing awe, at the parades of Soviet troops and tanks and missiles, in relentless, gear-driven precision. The soldiers had seemed marching automatons, inhumanly expressionless, and all the fiercer for it. Morgan's heart raced as he now felt the tight chest and numb limbs of animal fear like an East German trying to run the gauntlet of the Wall to freedom. The Manukau police, whom he'd formerly felt nebulously as friends, looked cold and brutal and totalitarian as they denied Morgan exit from the highway. Move on, they waved. The red and blue lights flashing at every offramp marched him down the gray soulless expanse in precise lockstep. Spooked by the image, he pulled over at the Redoubt Road exit and rolled down his window. Even under the blackest hour of Stalin the Russians had kept their sense of humor and hope, he was sure of it. He knew bribery was their coin, but he dared not try that here. Not that he had anything of value anyway. But these ominous sentries must—he shouted in his mind, they must!—still have traces of humanity. He'd talk to them. "What's the problem officer? I really needed to get off two exits ago." "Huge riot started outside Copper Joe's Tavern. City Centre's all a mess. Shopping centre's on fire. We're just keeping everyone away." Then the man smiled, and shrugged, as if he was in a bind just as much as Morgan, melting Morgan's ice cube of fear. "Well, how far will I have to go? My wife's in the hospital, and..." Morgan told his story, embellishing Desiree's condition and escalating his need to get home. "Well, look mate, I shouldn't do this, but you can get off here," he said with a wink. "Go on around." Morgan thanked him profusely. He navigated back to Great South Road and wound homeward. Everything looked like commerce-as-usual. Across the road the trees were green and cars were lined up before the shops, trunks open, tailgates down, doors flung wide. An orderly stream of patrons carried off their after-Christmas booty. Only... something niggled at Morgan. Something wasn't right. The shoppers were surreally shadowless. But that was simply the noon sun. Inside, the stores were dark. Yet that wasn't the problem, either. Morgan could rationalize that the stores would open anyway. A glint of sunlight abruptly revealed the source of his discomfort: The sun reflected off an array of broken window glass. He glanced back — and noted that most of the store windows had no signs, no reflections, and were, in fact, gaping dark maws. Where the hell were the police? Surely the store alarms had registered... maybe not. Or maybe so! What if the looting were so widespread that the police couldn't cover everything? "Keeping everyone away," the cop had said. The police had had their hands full with groups like the "Mongrel Mob" Maori street gang even before all this. Morgan inched forward toward the intersection where the dark stop lights gazed outward like blind eyes. He wondered if the cars ahead and behind him were filled with remorseless, Bacchanalian thugs and their prizes. As he pushed through the intersection—cars crazily, impatiently turning directly at him—he heard firecracker pops behind him. In the rearview mirror he saw a man leaving a gun store firing a semi-automatic pistol in the air. Morgan stared in disbelief: As if nobody else heard it, as if it were a message sent directly to his ears, the other looters continued calmly toting merchandise to their cars. Morgan imagined he could see demonic red eyes boring into him from the man, though in rational fact he knew from the angle of the lunatic's arm that his back was turned. Morgan sped away breathing raggedly. Had the world gone mad? The apartment was a mess. Hundreds of dollars of open champagne bottles littered the counter. The white carpet was still wet where Morgan kicked over the TV-cart, a giant amoeba-shaped stain with bits of curved, broken glasses projected upward like alien body parts. Sandwiches had been mashed into the carpet, crackers crushed by the stampede, paper plates full of pretzels gored by spiked heels, noisemakers silenced where they fell. Someone's pair of eyeglasses were shattered beneath an overturned chair. At least, Morgan thought, they hadn't had red wine. It smelled of stale vomit, as if the world had woken up with a bad hangover. A trampled piece of paper lay amidst the wreckage. It was the winning paper from their contest. Morgan unfolded it. Dieter Axton had been the winner. Morgan was glad Axton hadn't collected his prize, even though it hadn't fared well. Morgan found the package, stomped, torn, and buried by debris. Half covered by its red foil wrapping, as if bloodied, was their gag gift: A tiny hardback edition of Beowulf. The gag was that it was a "signed" copy—rather impossible since nobody knew who had written it. Morgan pondered now what he might have said about it after the winner had unwrapped it. If the VCR had not blinked, Morgan mused that he would have praised the continuity and growth of society, from 1000 A.D. when Beowulf was first committed to writing; the first poem in the English language. Had the VCR blinked, Morgan could have joked that at least they'd saved one classic from extinction, and rebuilding could occur. It tore at his heart to see it so vandalized. Wait a minute. Hadn't Axton boasted he thought the VCR would go out? This was the winner from the 'no blinky' box. The asshole had probably played both boxes. Morgan poked around in the 'blinks 12:00' box. He unfolded a bunch of entries. Yes, here was Axton's. Morgan kept unfolding, curious who'd voted how. Brian had voted 'blinks' despite saying otherwise. Hmph. And—and here was another with Axton's name! The little swine had voted twice. No, three times! Four! Morgan continued to unfold papers to find the depth of Axton's cheating. The ball-nosed bastard! Morgan choked on his anger. It was all his fault! God damnit, if Axton hadn't been fucking up their project—slogging it down with meaningless paperwork, continuous reports, frequent and useless meetings, sitting on hardware acquisitions, chilling morale with derogatory comments—then they'd have finished on time. He and Desiree would be home in California. She'd have had the baby there, and not now, not early. Morgan's blurry unease with the project suddenly focused, and he saw that Axton was, for some reason, trying to scuttle their project rather than smoothly complete it. Morgan shook, could feel tears of fury. Axton was killing his baby. Then he noticed, dangling from a chaise lounge on the balcony, a tennis-shoed foot. The rest was hidden by the back of the lounger. But there was definitely a person there. And the balcony's sliding glass door was also open. He was positive they'd closed it. By God, enough was enough! To have the sanctity of his own home violated! Morgan grabbed the phone. Dead. Not that the police would come anyway. Morgan's breath came like a snorting bull's. He analyzed the foot. The shoe was soot-smudged and worn. Morgan's imagination ran immediately to a homeless person trying locks on doors in the apartment building. He couldn't remember for sure if he'd locked the front door. Sleeping at noon—and the foot had twitched once, proving it wasn't a corpse—probably meant a drunk. Morgan began to stride over for a closer look, then heard Desiree's voice in his head. Not a good idea. Morgan's thoughts were as sharp as his rage. What if this person had stopped over at the gun shop free-for-all on the way here? Morgan hiked to the coat closet and grabbed his baseball bat. The comfortable grip of the New York ash reminded Morgan of his father. He'd given Morgan this very bat on Morgan's twelfth birthday. Morgan went over the edge. "Get the fuck out of my house!" he shouted and on the word fuck he crashed the bat down onto the VCR. The kitchen counter cracked and splintered. "I don't know who the hell you are, but get the fuck out of my house!" He swung the bat sideways this time at the VCR sending crunching metal and plastic and circuit boards flying across the room. "Get out!" A small figure jumped from the lounger. "Oh God! Oh God! Don't hurt me! Please!" said the female voice. "Oh God! Don't hurt me!" Morgan stopped the bat in mid swing at the overturned TV cart. The woman hugged herself tight in her black leather jacket. It was Matty. Morgan froze. "Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" Morgan lowered the bat. Recognition clicked his conscious mind back on, sapped his animal urge to kill. "I didn't know— What are you doing here?" Morgan looked around to make sure he was really in his own apartment. "Your wife said I could stay here. I live in Pukekohe, and this is so much closer. She gave me her key, see?" She paused, breathing hard. "This was a mistake. I better go." "No, no, wait, it's ok. I'm sorry, really I am. I didn't know." He tossed the bat aside. "God, I don't know what happened, I just... I just freaked out." Morgan sat on the couch, head in his hands. Civilization was so much more fragile than he'd ever imagined. "My baby almost died. I know that's no excuse. I lost it." All emotion had drained out of him; he sat, numb. Matty hesitated, then sat beside him and squeezed him. "It's okay, it's okay." She rocked him gently. "I should have cleaned the place up a bit, then you'd've known something was up. But I was just knackered." "What are we coming to, Matty? The lights go out and we lose it. What kind of people are we? We lived for thousands of years without this stuff. It's just the fucking lights." "No, no, Mr. Hyland, it's more than the lights. It's all the buildup. The doomsaying. Nobody took it serious. So when it happens... God, I know I still feel like it's the end of the world. But you know what? Even if it gets worse, which it probably will if all that talk was even half-way right, but eventually, sometime, it's going to get better. No worries, you know?" "Deep down, yeah. But on the surface..." He stood. "I'm okay." He wasn't sure if he was saying that for Matty's benefit, or his own. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. "Anyway, hey, stay here as long as you like. You can have Oscar for protection," he motioned to the bat. "I'm just going to get some things. If you need anything give me a ca—well, scratch that, there's no phone." He wiped his face with his hand, looked around, and shrugged. "Boy, the world is going to have one helluva hangover. Don't wake me up until 2001."


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