Type 88

Part 6 - Crunch Crunch, Chapter 15

15

Five Days until the Deadline

Jeff cracked a beer. Quitting time was an hour ago, but he had invited the team to stick around the shop to play cards. Benny was among the group that did.

The kid stared out of the open shop door at the setting sun in the western horizon. The sky was lighting up.

Jeff looked at his watch.

    "Anyone think it's funny that with the end of the world coming in a week, we've been here making fucking bug zappers?" Tim asked at the card table. He folded his hand and finished his first whiskey sour. "I mean, to us, it seems pretty inconsequential. But to moths and flies and shit, we're making this electric death machine. They see this amazing blue light." Tim spread his arms and looked up at the ceiling in wonder. "And they have no fucking clue what it is, so they wanna check it out. Then they fly right in, and bam! Dead forever. It's gotta be the most beautiful light they've ever seen.

"So at a different scale, we've been making for bugs what the broadcast told us it would do to us five days from now. We've been the voice this whole time!"

The guys at the table ignored him.

Tim got up and scooped some ice. "Who wants another drink?"

One of the guys folded his hand.

"Suit yourselves. There's more poker in my left dick than in all you schlubs combined. I'll fix myself another one and even the playing field a little."

Jeff walked over and leaned against the doorframe across from Benny. They acknowledged each other with a nod. Jeff had rehearsed what he was going to say, but standing here he was paralyzed, same as always. Benny looked at him for a moment, then turned his attention back out to the twilight.

Hundreds of miles away, the sky lit up in a gorgeous, horrible array of color. The government must be doing tests in the Pacific, Jeff thought. Five days before the deadline, and we're testing our shit.

    The radio cut. The shop froze. Jeff squeezed his glass, furious. Don't fucking do it again, whoever you are. These people have been through enough, he thought.

    Benny moved toward his father. Jeff put his hand on his shoulder, which eased the kid's expression.

    A roaring silence controlled the floor.

    Tim broke it. "Great. Benny, your turn to flip the breaker," he said. "I'll pour you one for when you're back." Tim splashed sour into his cup, already brimming with whiskey. He spilled it with the two fingers still sprouting from his cast.

"I'll take care of it," Jeff told Benny. "Tell Tim to mix me one too, and we'll have a drink when I'm back. I want to talk to you about something."

Benny smiled and nodded, trembling a little. "If this is the raise you've been promising for the last four years, it really must be the end of the world," he said with a quiver.

Jeff laughed.

"You know, Mom asked me to go with her and Scott to that cult camp. I didn't know what to do for a long time. But I stayed here because you're right. It's time to grow up and be a man," Benny said, lifting his head to see eye to eye with his father.

Jeff put his arm on Benny's shoulder. "Son, I don't know—"

    Douglas interrupted, bolting between them in the direction of the lighted night sky.

"Douglas! Get back here," Jeff called out. The dog didn't listen. "Douglas!"

Jeff looked back at Benny, shook his head, and walked out after the dog.

A few hundred feet away, in the direction Douglas was headed, a pack of wolves paced in a circle.

There were at least twenty of them. Jeff stopped walking. One by one, they stopped pacing and turned to face him. Their golden eyes pierced the twilight, the color blending with the explosions in the sky behind them.

Douglas joined the group, disappearing behind the first few. The pack watched Jeff for a few moments before they slowly turned away, heading toward the ocean.

Static suddenly pulsed through Jeff's body. The sensation felt as if someone had turned a television on but left it set to an empty input. Jeff looked at his hands. The tips of his fingers were turning numb.

With each pulse, the static intensity grew heavier. Jeff squinted back toward the ocean, trying to locate the wolves.

A powerful pulse belted him backward, and he clutched his head in agony. A few seconds later, he could no longer stand upright.

"Benny!" he called out. He forced himself to turn around. His head rattled. A thunderous screeching approached. It sounded like a train with failing brakes. Benny stumbled into the night. Jeff moved toward him. His vision quaked. The work truck bounced into the side of the shop. Shingles slid off the roof.

"Benny—it's OK! Stay inside; go to the basement. I'm coming."

Benny grimaced, holding his head. "Dad..."

Before Jeff could take another step, the screeching stopped and light erupted in a crescendo through the sky. The horizon washed over him in seconds.

Jeff fell to his knees. He could see Benny's shadow, surrounded by piercing brightness.

He thought it was the most beautiful light he'd ever seen.

He could no longer see the shop in the distance. Benny faded into the static that bordered his vision.

Jeff got ahold of him and held him in his arms. Benny held him back. Jeff tried to tell him something.

The shop melted into a pane of solid glass.

***

Hours later, the ground settled. Thousands of miles away, skylines shaped during the turn of the twentieth century were gone. Freeways, highways, town roads, and dirt paths were gone. The Hills at Amherst was gone. Jeff, Benny, and the rest of us were gone.

    Earth endured. Deep topographic contours, forged through nature's endless ruthlessness, stretched across the void. Stomp, stomp, crunch. Nothing stopped this.

    At the former site of Royal Implement, a subsidiary of Spectrum Manufacturing, the nuclear fire had burned the shadow of a father, holding his son for the first time, into the ground.

    What else could matter?

Nothing.