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Bobby decided against the revolver and snatched the shotgun froaveme to stay cool

Seventeen years of friendship ensure that he takes un nevertheless

Spread the width of the street, the flock swept over us, no more than six feet above our heads I had the sense that they were flying with astonishing precision, arranged in formations so orderly as to be uncanny An aerial view of the entire swar because of their unnatural degree of co because they would seeful and indecipherable

Bobby ducked, but I gazed up into the dark churning cloud of wings and feathered breasts, trying to deterhthawks in these ht and the blur of movement made it difficult to conduct even a cursory census

By the tile bird had dived at us or shrieked Their passing had such an otherworldly quality that I al of feathers in the Jeep and along the blacktop confirmed the reality of the experience

Even as the last small bits of fluffy down descended on the breeze, Bobby threw open the driver’s door and scraun when he turned to stare after the departing flock, although he was holding the weapon in one hand now,it

I got out of the Jeep, too, and watched as the birds swooped up froh across a sea of stars, disappearing into the blackness between those distant suns

"Totally awesome," Bobby said

"Yeah"

"But…"

"Yeah"

"Feels a little sharky, too"

I knehat he meant This time the birds radiated h the flock’s choreography had been breathtaking, even exhilarating, and although their a conspiracy of silence seemed to express and to inspire an odd sort of reverence, soerous lay under their perforled blue sea could look so totally sacred even while great whites churned in a feeding frenzy just under the surface This felt a little sharky

Although the nighthawks had cli at the constellation into which they had vanished, as if ere in full-on early Spielberg, waiting for the htly less intense than God sheds

"Saw it before," I told hius"

"True"

"Insane"

"Maximum"

"When?"

"On my way here," I said "Just the other side of the park But the flock was s?"

"I don’t know But here they coain"

"I don’t hear the"

He hesitated, then slowly nodded and said, "Yeah," when he felt it, too

Stars over stars under stars A larger light that rouped flares as small meteors hit the at east to west, perhaps an airliner sailing along the interface between our sea of air and the airless sea betorlds

I was almost prepared to question my instinct, when, at last, the flock returned froht Incredibly, the birds swept down into the street and past us in a helix, corkscrewing along Cos

This exhibition, this incredible stunt, was so thrilling that inevitably it inspired wonder, and in wonder is the seed of joy I felt ht, butperception of a wrongness in the birds’ behavior that was separate fro novelty of it

Bobby must have felt the saht hich he first greeted the sight of the spiraling flock His sh withered, and he turned to stare after the departing nighthaith a cracking expression that was becorimace

Two blocks away, the birds twisted up into the sky, like the withdrawing funnel of a fading tornado

Their aerobatics had required strenuous effort; the beating of their wings had been so furious that even as the dru diminished, I could feel the reverberations of it in my ears, in ht onceus with just the whisper of the onshore breeze

"It’s not over," Bobby said

"No"

Quicker than before, the birds returned They didn’t reappear from the point at which they had vanished; instead, they cah over the park We heard them beforethem, and the sound that heralded their approach was not the dru

They had broken their vow of silence, exploded it Screeching, churring, whistling, screaking, shrilling, cricking, they hurtled down out of the stars Their tuneless skirling was sharp enough to h lanced, and the note ofthat my soul see sound

Bobby didn’t even begin to raise the shotgun

I didn’t reach forNo anger resonated in their cries, only a wretchedness, a desolation so deep and bleak that it was beyond despair

Plu wail, the birds appeared They engaged in none of their previous aerobatics, forsaking even a siracelessly 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 sainst the stucco sounded like relentless automatic-weapons fire; coe nearly drowned out the brittle ringing of the shatteredglass

Horrified, sickened, I turned away fro 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 folloas heavy with catastrophic import, like the hush in the wake of a boain 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 seereater than it had seeed than s

With raphic e 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 e requires me to bear witness, and I can’t shirk that responsibility The light of the sun is denied to ht of truth, which also burns but anneals rather than destroys

I turned to look at the silenced flock

Hundreds of ss shuddered feebly with rapidly fading life Most of theile skulls had shattered and their necks had broken on ihthawks, 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 kaht had not been a conscious act Perhaps it had resulted from a deterioration of their directional instincts ortheir elaborate aerobatics, I had to assue wasthan ine of the Jeep turned over, caught, roared, and then idled as Bobby let up on the accelerator

I hadn’t been aware of hi wheel