Turn Down the Lights Page 6

  Stephen reached out and caught Lilly by the arm and he held her so her weight was still on her legs.

  For the longest moment of his life, Stephen was certain they were about to die. If her weight shifted too much, the mine would explode and they’d both be killed. But he held her and eventually she began to blink and she glanced around, startled and dazed.

  “What happened?” she asked, groggy, like she had been awakened from a deep sleep.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Sorry,” she whispered. “I got dizzy. I’m so thirsty.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I can get you some water.”

  But he couldn’t. Not here. This whole area was poison. There wasn’t any clean water anywhere, and even if there was, he couldn’t leave this little girl alone in her condition. Instead he kept holding her while he searched for a solution and he didn’t say anything else until she finally spoke again.

  “I’m so tired.”

  “You need to stay still, but don’t worry, you’ll be okay.”

  Stephen’s mind was running red hot, trying to remember any relevant events he had witnessed in this war, any of the countless stories Rick had told him in the countless hotel bars. Stephen had seen a lot of people killed by mines since he came to this country. Stepping in the wrong place in the wrong field, driving on the wrong road. Once he had watched from a distance as a U.N. bomb disposal unit attempted to disarm a mine buried in the middle of a schoolyard. The men were blown to pieces. They had been pros. They were dead.

  Stephen wiped more sweat and tears away from the little girl’s face. Considering how exhausted she was and given the situation, he thought she was holding herself together pretty well. Better than some adults he had seen. Maybe because she truly believed there was a way out of the situation, some means to fix this problem. She didn’t know the truth like he did.

  “Do you know what kind of bomb it is, Lilly? Did your father ever mention that?”

  Her eyes had grown glassy, but Stephen’s words seemed to wake her up a bit. She whispered, “It hops.”

  It hops.

  A hopping bomb. He knew what she meant. Rick had called them Bouncing Betties. They were quite popular for the rebels in this war thanks to all of the Army depots that had been overrun in the early days of the fighting. There were millions of these things littering the landscape, hibernating under the dirt, just waiting to release their explosive fury.

  A very specific memory returned to Stephen: Rick in some hotel bar explaining that a Bouncing Betty was designed to launch into the air after a soldier activated it, detonating approximately three seconds later so the explosion would rip apart a whole group of soldiers instead of maiming or killing just one.

  But those three seconds gave Stephen an idea.

  As the idea took shape, a voice that sounded very much like his own whispered to him: You’re fucking kidding yourself, Stephen. You don’t even know if the kid’s right about the type of mine. And Rick could have been talking out his ass.

  Yet what other choice did he have?

  He could start running out of town immediately, head for the old highway and hope to find help. It would take him an hour to reach the highway, at least, and he had no idea what might be waiting for him there. Certainly not a bomb technician.

  Lilly would never last that long. Not even close. She could barely stand on her own now. How could he expect her to stand motionless for hours or even days?

  His other option was to hope and pray that someone would just happen to come along, someone with the appropriate knowledge to help, or that the U.N. would hurry back for him.

  Stephen knew what hopes and prayers got you in this wasteland. He could hope and pray until the end of time and they might still be standing here when the universe imploded upon itself.

  The media liaisons hadn’t even bothered to do the head count like they were supposed to before taking off, so his absence might not be noticed until tonight. And even then, who would guess he had been left behind? More likely, they’d assume he had flaked out like so many journalists before him when they faced the horrors of this war. Some of his colleagues might check for him in the hotel bar, if they checked anywhere.

  It could be days before they understood something terrible had happened and even then they might not guess he had been left behind on this trip. Kidnappings and murders were so common in this country, they’d probably assume he was dead in a ditch somewhere and wait for his headless body to arrive in the morgue.

  Stephen thought of his wife and daughter and his life back home. Rebecca and Tracy, waiting for him. Desperate for him to return safely. He thought of everything he could lose by making the wrong decision, right here, right now.

  What if Rick had been mistaken about the way the Bouncing Betties worked, about that three second delay? Those all-important three seconds. What if the little girl’s father had been wrong about the type of mine? What if she was just confused? What if she was right, but he simply wasn’t fast enough? What the hell was Stephen doing here anyway?

  The little girl whispered, “I’m falling.”

  “Lilly, you need to stay steady for a little longer, okay? Can you support yourself for a minute?”

  She wiped her eyes and nodded. Stephen released her arms, stood and stretched his legs, which were already stiff from kneeling.

  She whispered, “Please don’t leave me.”

  “I have to check something over there,” Stephen said, pointing at the crumbling remains of a barbershop on the other side of the street. He didn’t actually need to check anything at the barbershop, but he needed to know if he had enough room to implement his insane idea.

  “What about me?”

  “Stay very still. Everything will be okay,” he said, flashing a forced smile. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

  She nodded, but Stephen could see how weak she was. Standing like that in the hot sun for even ten minutes had to be tough on her. She obviously hadn’t eaten a decent meal in months and the water she’d been drinking was most likely killing her.

  Stephen carefully made his way across the street to the ruined barbershop. He avoided any patches of dirt and pavement that seemed suspect and he reached his destination without incident. He stretched his legs again, squatting down, standing back up on his tippy toes, all the time watching the little girl.

  The stretches came naturally enough. He had loosened these muscles thousands of times before high school track and field meets, although he had never imagined his legs could ever feel as old and heavy as they did today.

  Stephen knew his timing had to be perfect, everything had to be perfect for this crazy idea of his to work, but there also wasn’t much time left. He watched the little girl as his mind spun with a million reasons why he should hurry in the opposite direction instead of risking his life.

  Lilly was frozen with fear, her eyes locked on him. Her legs were trembling badly and her arms twitched. She was about to lose her balance again, to pass out from the heat and the dehydration, and the mine would kill her where she landed.

  Lilly opened her mouth but no sounds emerged. She stared straight at Stephen, her eyes pleading for him to help her, to please do something or she would fall and she knew what that meant and she didn’t want to die like her mother. Her eyes bulged and started to roll back into her head.

  Before Stephen could have a second thought, before he could say a prayer or think of Rebecca and Tracy and have a change of heart, his legs were moving. He deftly dodged the dirt patches, his shoes hitting the same places he had paced out on his way across the street.

  Lilly’s swaying became more pronounced and her feet were on the verge of shifting when Stephen grabbed her under her arms and lifted her off the ground.

  In the same instant he bent his legs and his knees coiled like springs and he launched himself into the air toward the back of the pick-up truck, pulling Lilly tight to his chest.

  Stephen’s legs clipped the side of the truck and he t
umbled forward, landing on top of Lilly inside the truck bed.

  His life flashed before his eyes and Stephen waited for what felt like an eternity for the explosion. Again and again his mind repeated the memory of his father talking about death. Right now, here on this abandoned small town street, he understood his father had been correct: death was making a decision and no mortal could change the outcome one way or another. Death could claim whomever it wanted. There were no exceptions.

  Then time snapped back to normal. The three seconds were long past and there had been no explosion. The ragged photographer and the little girl were still alive.

  Stephen rolled onto his side and checked Lilly to make sure she hadn’t been injured when they landed. The little girl lay there, stunned, her eyes blinking out of sync. Her dirty legs and arms were scraped and dotted with blood, but she was alive.

  Stephen gasped in a breath, pushed himself to his knees, and tumbled over the far side of the truck, landing hard on the sidewalk.

  He stumbled to his feet, reached back into the bed of the truck, and lifted Lilly up into his arms. He carried her to the town square as quickly as he could, not daring to even glance over his shoulder. He didn’t stop until he had passed the war monument.

  By then Stephen’s entire body was trembling, on the verge of collapsing as the adrenaline rush came to a sudden halt, and he placed Lilly on the bench next to his camera. He leaned against the base of the tall metal soldier and stared down the street. He located the metal prongs of the device in the dirt patch Lilly had been standing on.

  A dud! The damn thing was a dud! Stephen thought just before the mine was propelled into the air and exploded.

  The pick-up truck roared as it flipped into the air. Shrapnel rocketed through the town square, coming so close to Stephen’s head that he could feel the superheated metal passing by his ears like a sudden breeze. The sound of the explosion echoed across the valley.

  “Jesus,” he whispered. His legs lost all their strength and he fell into the tall grasses. They pricked at his exposed skin like tiny knives, but he didn’t notice. He didn’t care. He couldn’t believe he was still alive.

  “Are we safe?” the little girl asked, one arm covering her eyes from the beating rays of the sun, the other arm hanging limply off the edge of the bench.

  “We made it, Rebecca, we made it,” Stephen said, rolling over and staring up at the monument of the soldier, which partially blocked the angry gaze of the summer sun. That tiny bit of shade was a relief. Stephen reached out and took the little girl’s hand into his own again.

  “Who’s Rebecca?”

  Stephen realized what he had said. “She’s my daughter.”

  He pushed himself to his feet, his entire body aching from the movement. He felt like he was a million years old. He retrieved his camera, securing it around his neck. He paused for a moment, glanced back at the burning truck, and then he reached into his pocket for the silver chain he had found earlier.

  If he hadn’t stopped to pick up the necklace, Lilly would have been left standing on the mine all alone until her legs gave out and she died. It was a miracle she was alive. Hell, it was a miracle that he was alive.

  In that moment of eternity, death had given them a pass. For whatever reason, death hadn’t claimed them.

  “What’s that?” Lilly asked.

  “Something to keep you safe,” Stephen replied as he put the chain around her neck.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, her eyes blinking closed. Almost instantly she was sound asleep.

  Stephen could understand why. He was exhausted and the heat was nearly enough to knock him back to the ground, but there was no time to waste.

  He wrapped his arms under the little girl and he carried her away from the death and the destruction that was her hometown.

  He had already decided he would make his way to the old highway and from there they would search for someone with a radio. It was their best and only option, which made the decision easy enough.

  While he walked, Stephen thought about his wife and daughter waiting for him in his hometown on the other side of the ocean. The sweltering heat made his muscles twinge and his head spin. His mind bounced from thought to thought.

  He didn’t want to consider the long road awaiting the little girl. Her journey was just beginning and she had no family, no community. She was trapped in a homeland torn apart by war.

  But right now none of that mattered. The little girl needed doctors, she needed medicine, she needed clean water and a safe place to sleep. If she didn’t get medical treatment soon, her lack of family and a stable homeland wouldn’t be much of a problem for her.

  Stephen would shepherd the little girl to safety and then he’d secure a seat on the first flight home to be with his family, even if it meant quitting his job to depart early. He had to flee this cursed land for the sake of his sanity. He desperately hoped he could leave his haunted memories among the overgrown fields and burned towns and rivers full of bloody debris.

  Death had given him a second chance and he didn’t intend to waste it.

  Yet for the rest of his life, whenever Stephen closed his eyes, he would see the little girl standing under the hot afternoon sun in the middle of the street, all alone in the abandoned town on the hill overlooking the nuclear power plant. He would never forget Lilly standing in her tattered white dress, frozen in place, her eyes wide and pleading for his help.

  That image would haunt Stephen until the end of his natural life, until the moment when eternity returned to claim what it was owed.

  “IN THE ROOM, I DO MY DANCE. ”

  The words, whispered, were told to me in my sleep, by my father.

  The next morning he was gone.

  I was ten years old when my father abandoned us. He didn’t tell anyone he was going, didn’t call afterward, didn’t even send us a letter. We just woke up one morning, and he was no longer there. We had no idea at first whether he had been killed or kidnapped, whether aliens had abducted him or he’d been taken into the witness protection program. But when Mom told us that he’d packed his clothes and his favorite CDs, when she found out a day or two later that he’d withdrawn money from the bank account (though not all of it), when she learned that he had quit his job and given two weeks’ notice—in other words, when she realized that he had planned this—she sat us down and said simply, in her no-nonsense way, “Your father has abandoned his family.”

  She never spoke of him again, and if either Clara or I mentioned him, she would immediately change the subject.

  Despite the bitter hatred she obviously felt for our father, Mom allowed my sister and me to each keep a picture of him in our respective rooms. There were no other pictures of him in the house—every photo of my parents as a couple had been taken down and put away—but I had one on my dresser of my dad hoisting me on his shoulders in front of the Matterhorn at Disneyland. I was about five in the shot. Clara had a framed photo on her wall of Dad helping her build a sand castle on the beach. I don’t know about Clara, because we never talked about it, but as the years passed, I began to forget little things about my father: the type of shoes he wore, his laugh, his favorite food. The picture of him in my mind was missing pieces, no longer complete.

  The only thing that remained sharp in my memory was the last thing he said to me, those words, whispered at night, that I had incorporated into a dream: “In the room, I do my dance.”

  I was a junior in high school when Liz Nguyen asked me to the Sadie Hawkins dance. I had a crush on her, and I was pretty sure she liked me, too, but the invitation finally confirmed it. The only problem was that I didn’t know how to dance. I was embarrassed to admit my inadequacy, but I thought it better to come clean, and I told Liz, giving her the chance to back out.

  She laughed. “You think I’m some great dancer? I’m not clubbing every night, either. I mean, look at me.”

  I did. True, she wasn’t the type of tight-jeaned, topheavy party girl who was out dancing instead
of studying, but from my perspective, she was wonderful. Slender, pretty, bookish but not nerdy, I found her much more attractive than any other girl in my class.

  Still, she obviously knew how to dance. At least a little bit.

  I did not.

  I told her that, and she laughed again. She seemed to find my awkwardness endearing rather than embarrassing. “I’ll help you,” she said. “We can practice in my bedroom.”

  “In the room, I do my dance.”

  The thought gave me a slight chill, and I shivered. “Do you...often practice dancing in your room?” I asked.

  “Oh sure,” she said. “That way I can watch myself in the mirror and see how I look. So I can correct anything I’m doing wrong,” she added quickly. “Not to, you know, admire myself or anything.”

  I smiled.

  “I’m serious!” she hit my shoulder.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “We can practice.”

  Despite her modesty, Liz was actually quite a good dancer, and for the next week, we spent at least an hour every afternoon going over some simple steps. Despite my clumsiness, she was able to teach me a slow dance where I basically lurched from side to side, holding her hands, and a slightly quicker dance for fast songs where I stood in place, arms cocked at my sides, and sort of...exercised.

  The following week, the week before the dance, we saw each other briefly in the halls and talked on the phone a few times, but we both had midterm tests and a lot of homework, so we didn’t get to practice, though I did it myself in front of my own mirror and thought I didn’t look too bad. At least, I didn’t think I’d embarrass myself.

  Sadie Hawkins Day was a Friday, and the dance was that evening in the gym. In keeping with tradition, she would be the one to pick me up. She’d also bought the tickets for the event and came with a boutonniere that she pinned to my shirt. Without the pretext of dance practice, we were forced to have an actual conversation, and on the drive over, I flailed about, unsuccessfully trying to come up with a conversation topic that would last more than a few sentences. Liz wasn’t much better at the small talk, but there was something self-possessed about her, an inner stillness that I hadn’t seen before and that made me feel like a bumbling oaf. I hadn’t talked to her for a few days, and out of desperation, I asked, “What did you do yesterday?” I knew she’d probably just gone to school and then gone home, as I had, and I was trying to come up with a followup question when she answered me.