Black Sky

Chapter Five

When it happened, he instinctively put his arm around her shoulder. His daughter trembled, a fearful tremor that came deep from her guts. He pulled her to him as if she were his little girl again. He would have liked to stroke her hair and whisper to her that everything would be all right. Just like when she was six years old and they still lived in this old hovel where the water dripped through the ceiling. But he wasn't allowed to do that, of course. Not with a grown woman who was in her early twenties. Nor with a woman who had wet the bed until she was fourteen.

So he simply pulled himself to her, and she allowed it, which pleased and frightened him at the same time. In those moments, as the moon slid across the sun with cruel slowness and his daughter trembled with fear, she had become a little girl again. His little girl.

And he hated himself for the fact that this made him happy.

The shadow fell across the glass front of the rest stop, the parking lot where every car window instantly darkened, and all the upwardly just faces with light goggles, to the trees on the embankment.
Tom noticed how quiet it was. As if the darkness had left a vacuum where there was nothing: no sounds, no movements, no oxygen molecules. Something else was here now.
With them. And they all felt it.
It didn't surprise him, but he felt a cold horror as the moon slowly engulfed the sun. Something terrible was happening.
And there was nothing he could do. Just sit here, with the greasy bags of fast food in his hand, and watch everything go dark.
The sun was already half gone, just a glowing crescent that grew narrower and narrower.
And the blackness broke through the last floodgates as well, pouring into Tom's chest like stagnant water. Something inside him froze, and he thought: We should have escaped from here, but we can't now. It's far too late...
At that very moment, everyone present in the parking lot, watching the eclipse with increasing alarm, had the same thought.
It was too late. Of course it was.
And they all knew it.

Darkness poured into the interior of the service area until only the electric overhead lights were on. The redhead behind the cash register - his name was Marian Poszak and he had turned nineteen three days ago - paused in his order and felt tingling goose bumps creep up his bare arms.
Even the family man he was serving suddenly seemed uninterested in his Long Beef menu.
"Here we go!" squawked one of the kids.
"Yes, Dad!" exclaimed the daughter. "Let's go outside."
"Dad still has to pay, Celine," said the father, visibly unhappy. His head turned back to the darkening window. "I can't just walk out now."
"Dad!" the children howled, almost in sync, and Marian had to pull himself together not to screw up his face. Marian Poszak couldn't stand children anyway, and children wailing in double chorus were the very worst.
"I'll take them outside," the woman said. "Then they can see the eclipse."
"And am I to carry it all by myself then?" the man retorted in a tone that made Marian think of a snarling dragon.
"I'll help you, of course," the woman said. "It will only take two minutes."
The husband rolled his eyes. "Oh, man. All right."
"Don't worry," a voice called from behind Marian. "The register's closed for the next two minutes anyway. Just order later."
Marian turned and saw Emma walk past him. Emma was the kitchen help who always handed him food up front. She had already taken off her regulation kitchen apron, swinging a pair of light-protective goggles in her hand.
"You can't do that," Marian shouted. "Mrs. Becker will kill us."
"Mrs. Becker can kiss my ass," Emma shouted, putting on the light-shielding goggles for dramatic effect. "Go on outside," she told the children. "You only see an eclipse like this once in a lifetime."
"Dad! Daddy!" the children immediately howled. "Mom says we can. And the register is closed!"
"Okay, fine," the father reluctantly conceded. "Then go with your mother."
He scowled as Marian felt. Then he turned back to Marian. "Don't you want to follow your colleague?"
Marian shrugged. "There's no point. I just sold my glasses a minute ago."
"Was it at least a good deal?"
Marian Poszak smiled fleetingly. "Oh, yes, it was."

Outside, in the parking lot, only a meager crescent remained of the sun, and the moon pushed inexorably forward. A narrow, bright slit in the middle of darkness, which became thinner and thinner.
Then, all at once, even the last light disappeared.
The moon had shifted completely in front of the sun, and everything was in darkness: a dark blue twilight that lay on the landscape like a shroud. It had become colder, they all felt that. But this cold was different from what they had expected.
It wasn't just the outside temperatures - this cold rose from the center of their bodies.
Above their heads flickered the corona, the last relic of their old lives. At the sight of their new, dead sun, they all felt fear.
It was not the uneasiness that comes with an unfamiliar situation; it was the feeling of dread that follows a terrible realization.
For some it was a clearly formulated thought, for others just a diffuse piece of flotsam from the silt-clogged shallows of the subconscious, but basically everyone had the same thought: this is the end.
And of course they were all right.