“No.” Quicker than before, the birds returned. They didn’t reappear from
the point at which they had vanished, instead, they came from high over
the park. We heard them before we saw them, and the sound that heralded
their approach was not the drumming of wings but an unearthly shrieking.
They had broken their vow of silence, exploded it. Screeching, chur
ring, whistling, screaking, shrilling, cricking, they hurtled down out
of the stars. Their tuneless skirling was sharp enough to make my ears
sting as though lanced, and the note of misery was so piercing that my
soul seemed to shrivel around the cold shank of this wounding sound.
Bobby didn’t even begin to raise the shotgun.
I didn’t reach for my pistol, either.
We both knew the birds weren’t attacking. No anger resonated in their
cries, only a wretchedness, a desolation so deep and bleak that it was
beyond despair.
Plummeting behind this blood-freezing wail, the birds appeared.
They engaged in none of their previous aerobatics, forsaking even a
simple formation, swarming gracelessly. Only speed mattered to them now,
because speed alone served their purpose, and they dived, wings back,
using gravity like a slingshot.
With a purpose that neither Bobby nor I foresaw, they shrieked across
the park, across the street, and rocketed unchecked into the face of a
two-story building three doors from the movie theater in front of which
we stood. They hit the structure with such brutal force that the
pock-pock-pock of their bodies smashing against the stucco sounded like
relentless automatic-weapons fire, combined with their shrill cries,
this barrage nearly drowned out the brittle ringing of the shattered
window glass.
Horrified, sickened, I turned away from the carnage and leaned against
the Jeep.
Considering the speed of the flock’s kamikaze descent, the hard rattle
of death could not have continued for more than seconds, but minutes
seemed to pass before the terrible noise ceased. The quiet that followed
was heavy with catastrophic import, like the hush in the wake of a bomb
blast.
I closed my eyes but opened them again when a replay of the flocks’
suicidal plunge was projected vividly onto the backs of my eyelids.
All of nature was on the brink. I had known that much for the past
month, since I’d learned what had happened in the hidden labs of Wyvern.
Now the perilous ledge on which the future stood seemed narrower than I
had thought, the height of the cliff far greater than it had seemed a
moment ago, and the rocks below more jagged than my worst imaginings.
With my eyes open, into my mind came a photographic memory of my
mother’s face. So wise. So kind.
The image of her blurred. Everything around me blurred for a moment, the
street and the movie theater.
I took a shallow breath, which entered my chest with an ache, then a
deeper breath that hurt less, and I wiped my eyes with the back of one
jacket sleeve.
My heritage requires me to bear witness, and I can’t shirk that
responsibility. The light of the sun is denied to me, but I must not
avoid the light of truth, which also burns but anneals rather than
destroys.
I turned to look at the silenced flock.
Hundreds of small birds littered the sidewalk. Only a few wings
shuddered feebly with rapidly fading life. Most of them had hit so hard
that their fragile skulls had shattered and their necks had broken on
impact.
Because they appeared to be ordinary nighthawks, I wondered what
internal change had swept through these birds. Although invisible to the
unassisted eye, the difference was evidently so substantive that they
believed continued existence to be intolerable.
Or perhaps their kamikaze flight had not been a conscious act.
Perhaps it had resulted from a deterioration of their directional
instincts or mass blindness, or dementia.
No. Remembering their elaborate aerobatics, I had to assume that the
change was more profound, more mysterious, and more disturbing than mere
physical dysfunction.
Beside me, the engine of the Jeep turned over, caught, roared, and then
idled as Bobby let up on the accelerator.
I hadn’t been aware of him getting behind the steering wheel.