Reg and Amber, she behind him, framed in the bedroom door, stared in the direction of the foyer. Just out of their view was the ornate front door to their otherwise modest home, by past standards of the Los Angeles Hills communities.
When the first and most violent storms rolled in just after the comet struck Reg moved a heavy overstuffed leather chair to the door, but not before lining it on all sides with heavy strips of carpeting cut from an old roll of the stuff they'd bought to cover the bedroom floor. In the ensuing months he'd caulked around the edges of windows and covered as many as he dared with heavy drapes, sometimes just old comforters they'd kept from their poorer times in small apartments down in the city.
The front door couldn't be opened. From his last foray outside two days before Reg knew there was a drift in front of the door that rose nearly to the top of it's frame.
"Reg...what is it?" Amber's voice, soft and taut sounding behind him.
The brushing sound ceased.
The doorbell rang.
They both screamed, he a short yawp, she a ragged sound. She darted across the room as he turned to her, arms out.
It rang again, over and over.
"Why is it doing that?" she shouted.
"There's no electricity, I don't understand!" he looked around wildly. The now-guttering fireplace, the kitchen where he had a coleman lantern ready for the next trip outside. He was, he had to admit, utterly terrified. Much the way he was sure cave-dwelling ancestors had been upon hearing sabertoothed growls in the night.
The doorbell fell silent.
"First the phone..." he muttered.
"What?" Amber was shivering, but he knew it was not from the cold.
He told her of the phone ringing. He was convinced he'd had some kind of waking dream.
They sat down in the steadily darkening gloom of the living room.
Reg took a poker to the fire, stirring coals.
"What could it be?" she asked, voice now cracking a little.
Reg wanted to run to every far corner of the house and look, to get the shotgun he'd bartered from Don Pendleton without Amber's knowledge and blow something away.
"Maybe it's random burps in the electrical systems...I mean, maybe someone down in the valley is trying to get things going." he said, not believing what he said for a minute.
"You think? Last I heard the dam had burst in the first bad storm."
She was referring to the Hoover dam. It was once vital to generating power to Los Angeles, and in the first shockwave of storms after the impact of Comet Hansel-Edelman there were reports the dam had burst. Reg had since heard this was not true, precisely. The water contained by the dam had frozen to such a depth that the turbines stopped working. There was probably a horrible disaster in the offing, if the rumors of a thaw came true, but no one seemed able to worry about that yet.
"No. Hoover is still intact," he said,"perhaps someone set up a coal-fired plant down in the valley. I know that Don told me he'd gotten word of work crews on lines down in Hollywood."
She was silent.
"Hungry?" he asked.
Amber nodded.
They had plenty of water. Reg's first stop anywhere when the confirmation of Comet fall came, only 4 days before the impact, was the big wholesale store between his office at the Times and home. He'd loaded the Dodge Dakota down with bottled water. Enough easily for two people for quite a while, if husbanded properly.
Truth was they'd gone through it in the first three months, but he'd been able to barter engine parts from the Dakota to get more. He had become quite the mechanic while doing this, which he considered funny when he realized the next time he could possibly drive something other than the snowmobile or do something other than ski the Dakota would be a cannabilized hulk on blocks in the garage.
Food was always dicier. One store at the base of the hill had more or less remained open, and took barter. The food it trafficked in was sometimes questionable, and sometimes it closed because it had not managed to acquire any that week. They both feared losing their teeth to a diet high in things that kept well, like dried beef, crackers, potted meat, sugary baked beans.
"Well," he said, "the bad news is we are running low. I'm going to have to go out."
Amber started. "What?"
"I need to go out to get some. I've got my barter stuff ready."
She was silent. Her eyes brimmed.
"What, sweetie?" he asked, fully knowing.
"I want to go with you."
"You-"
"Don't tell me I CAN'T. You are not leaving me here now, after those weird dreams and the scary shit that's happened. NO."
"Amber, there's no room for both of us on the snowmobile. I can only get the stuff I'm going to trade on with bungees and then there's just enough room for me to go myself." he couldn't look at her. He felt helpless, but what he said was true. Part of him wished she'd take another of the stockpiles of pills she'd set back-interesting how she'd made it a point to take every sample she could find from the storeroom at her practice, with the psychiatrist whom she worked with fully approving. It bothered him off and on, even though he took a xanax or valium sometimes too.
She was staring at him, a tear slowly rolling down her cheek.
"Go on then." she said softly.
"When it's daylight." he replied.
She made a bitter sound, a sharp laugh. "How can anyone tell anymore?"
Reg stirred the coals again, stealing as much heat as he could from them.
They sat silently beside each other for a long time.
The peculiar whistling he was accustomed to that indicated the wind picking up came and went. Amber cranked the radio some more. Hart Bocknell was still on. He was reading one of the most recent notices sent from the new capital in Denver.
The president, vice president, and 90% of the members of the houses had survived the comet fall. The justices of the Supreme Court would have, but a middle eastern terrorist group knowing America's normal tight security had faltered in the rush to save people in power before the impact took advantage of the hole and blew the sleek small Lear Jet carrying the supremes out of the sky with a shoulder-fired rocket from somewhere west of Dulles Air Force Base. The FBI task force and the two men they were hunting for the crime were killed within a minute of the blast, never having a chance to escape the predicted zone of death.
Bocknell's voice, a combination of buzzsaw and church bell, rolled along over the mostly irrelevant words.
"...money has been set aside to study the continual reports from populated regions of strange occurences involving utilities that should still be down, as well as reports of 'shadows."
Bocknell paused.
Amber pulled a throw around her and lay down on the large pillow they kept at one end of the sofa, listening carefully.
The announcer continued, something changed a little in his voice."Ladies and Gentlemen of this brave new world, you will note here in a government document acknowledgement of a phenomenon I myself have mentioned recently. Something we treated only half-seriously before the end of the world as we knew it...It says here that reports of shadows continue. The feeling is indeed, there is something...menacing in them."
Amber stood abruptly and went into the bathroom just off the kitchen, where she kept the meds she'd taken from the office.
She rifled through the old laundry hamper she'd converted to be a pill repository. Many of the pills were samples in blister packs. She was nearly to the bottom when she found the ones she sought. She took these a lot, and in fact considered them her fallback. Should Reg go to forage, barter one day and not return, 6 more packets of these and maybe a few others and she'd go asleep forever. She would slip away from this horrible cold world and maybe wake up under the sycamores in her parent's yard in Orange County. Without any shadows brushing about.
She dry-swallowed the pleasant-looking yellow capsules and headed back to the sofa.
Reg had gone to the garage with the coleman lantern to check on the snowmobile and make sure everything he wanted to barter was in good shape.
He had to dress as if going outside in the garage, except for goggles and hat, as the temperature in that room never varied much from the outside, which was probably in the teens right now.
He secured his large package of clothes, books, and tools to the rear of the snowmobile tightly with bungee cords.
He was testing the cords when he heard it.
It was a soft noise, much like that brushing sound they'd heard outside the door. That had been a kind of automatic sound...it seemed random, and that allowed Reg for one to explain it away to himself.
The sound he heard now was...furtive.
Reg turned to face the wavering dark beyond the reach of his lantern. The better part of his garage was taken up with the bulk of the Dakota.
He picked up the lantern and stood from the crouch he'd assumed to secure the hooks for the bungees.
Feeling incredibly stupid, he said, "Hello?"
*brush-brush*
"Is there someone in here?" he asked aloud. He wasn't sure what he expected.
*brushbrush-brush*
Slowly, moving on the balls of his feet, Reg walked the length of the big truck. As he did, the brushing sound recurred several times. It seemed to be coming from the other side of the truck.
He wanted to shout. He wanted to run. The shotgun was hidden in a storage locker just inside the mudroom that led to the garage, and it was padlocked. The key was on a ring in the pocket of the parka he wore.
The brushing sound, suddenly, was behind him.
He whipped around, lantern wavering with the motion, to see...
his shadow.
Bocknell was talking to someone in the studio. Amber tried to read a book as she sat listening. She'd lit both the coleman lanterns they kept for use in the house-fuck the fuel, she was scared-and the book had begun to grab her attention when she caught up with Bocknell's voice.
"So, Doctor Fastow, what you are saying is that Matthias Hansel feared there was something...different about this comet. Aside from the obvious problem of it hitting us and destroying perhaps a third of life on earth?"
Amber allowed herself a grim smile at Hart Bocknell's sarcasm. The man had obviously maintained enough sanity in the face of disaster to still be a smartass.
The voice that replied was that of an older man, with a ghost of a German accent.
"Yes, Hart...as you know Dr. Hansel was able to communicate quite a bit via his brother Georg's Ham radio hookup before the German disaster."
"Indeed," replied Bocknell, "I had the pleasure of speaking with him once myself."
"I recall. Anyway, very near to the disaster that ultimately befell most of the region around Bonn-"
Bocknell interrupted, "I apologize, Doctor, I should remind anyone listening of what that was...the simultaneous detonation of 5 nuclear warheads placed in various areas in West Germany-Dusseldorf and Bonn among them. Appears to have been a massive suicide sponsored by the radical Cult of the Passion led by former German Rock singer Juergen Weiss. Please Dr. Fastow...go ahead now-"
"Yes," said the doctor, his voice sounding sad, "Tragedy upon tragedy...as I was saying, Matthias Hansel developed some very interesting thoughts about the terrible comet that in part bore his name."
"How so?" asked Bocknell.
"Well, for one thing, he seems to think it was not a true comet. Most agree with him on this-our understanding of the structure of comets from past observations did not allow for such a massive and destructive impact. The result of the fall of Comet Hansel-Edelman was much more like what scientists expected from an asteroid strike."
"Very true. As we sit here in my reasonably comfortable studio there sits a 6 foot layer of snow over the high desert outside. Not what one expected from an icy ball that should have burned up in the atmosphere."
"No," responded the doctor, "not at all. The comet seems to have been the standard ball of ice but with a solid iron core. But Dr. Hansel had some more very interesting ideas about the comet."
"And they were?" Bocknell put his familiar upward twist on the word, a lilt in his voice that told the listener to expect great mysteries to come.
"One was that the comet was of extrasolar origin. From beyond the Oort cloud."
"The great 'cloud' of comets that get sent spiralling into the solar system due to the perturbations of a possible companion star?"
"Yes, in a fashion...another theory he developed after the impact was that the comet carried what he termed 'cargo'."
There was a pause.
"Do tell." said Bocknell, letting a bit of awe creep into his voice.
Amber had put down her book now and was fully listening, her heart pounding. Half-formed fears danced in the back of her thoughts, vying for her attention.
"Well, Hart, as you know," the Doctor began. Amber wished for an internet hookup, a search engine to look up this man's name, to check all this out."There were reports soon after the impact in regions that were secondarily affected of strange things. Most of them having to do with shadows, for lack of a better term. People claiming that 'shadows' were taking over their homes, taking over other people...eerie reports like this. Matthias Hansel began to track these reports before his death and was beginning to draw conclusions. He felt the inability to use FM, AM, or television airwaves was connected, as well. Dr. Hansel felt that rather than this shadow phenomenon being the mass delusion of an already stressed populace there was some truth to it. He claimed to have dreams-"
Amber leaned over quickly and twisted the volume knob all the way down. She couldn't listen anymore.
Not now. The sleeping pills were taking effect, and she couldn't have these words follow her into sleep. Into her dreams.
Information flowed. It was transmitted over radio waves, after a fashion. Not intentionally-for the shadows were not capable of intention as it was understood by humans.
Much of the information was about the others in this good cold place. What they were like, how to use them best, how to discard the ones not useful to them.
Shadows in some places adapted quickly and began to read information in computers that had sat idle for months. Many surviving computer owners woke to see their desktop cpu's activity light flickering, to see the screen on and icons being clicked and opened at random. After 6, 7, 8 months the site was too jarring and terrifying, and many would try to flee.
The shadows prefer they not flee, and they liked the taste of fear.
Reg lit out into a world that was an unending study in white. He followed a path that stayed somewhat clear due to others using it once they discovered it.
His destination was the store at the bottom of their road, several miles away.
An observer would have had to be right beside him to see that unlike anyone else venturing out into the sprawling snowfields of Los Angeles, no fog came out of his mouth at regular intervals, to indicate his breathing.
(...to be continued...)
