by Lindy Ryan
“The fuck was that?”
She turned the key over again, pumping the squeaky gas pedal. This time the starter rotated—once, twice, picked up on the third time. The truck gusted black smoke from its tailpipe as the engine rumbled to life.
Rachel clapped the cracked plastic dash. Thank Christ.
“Atta girl.”
As she gripped the steering wheel, pressed the gas, and began navigating the truck back onto the road, Rachel looked over to Lucy—the press of panic still bitter on her tongue.
2
The old Ford rattled down the road, its large tires howling across the uneven path as thin drifts of blue smoke followed behind it. The cab smelled sticky and sweet—like burnt transmission fluid, spoiled fruit, and bubblegum—but the engine, when it ran, was a strong son of a bitch.
The truck was a hand-me-down, an artifact Rachel had inherited as part of her late wife’s estate. Ruby’s grandfather, a half-Black, half-Irish immigrant who never met a scrapyard he didn’t like, had given Ruby the ‘93 Ford F150 as a high school graduation gift. The gift included an in-dash radio with big push buttons and shitty reception. Reese had been what people called a “prepper,” but he had passed his mantra onto his granddaughter in a message about preserving life, being prepared. Reese was dust in the ground now, but the old jalopy was still running.
Rachel’s upbringing had been vastly different from her wife’s. Sheltered, even. She’d come from a conservative, middle-class family with over-achieving parents who’d instilled the same sense of hard work into their only daughter. When the Masons retired, they’d moved to Alaska, eager to leave the hustle and bustle of Boston behind for a quaint life where they could occasionally glimpse the Northern Lights and never have to sit in traffic.
James and Darla Mason hadn’t approved of Rachel being a cop or a lesbian, nor of the fact that Rachel had kept both hidden in her closet of secrets for years before letting them out.
Neither had Ruby, Rachel reflected.
Still, they’d eventually all come around. The Masons had softened when Ruby asked to take their last name, even if it was hyphenated and even if she couldn’t give them what they really wanted—grandchildren. Eventually, Rachel wore her parents down with promises she and Ruby would look into adoption. She hadn’t wanted kids, but her wife had, and they’d just begun research months before—well, before.
The truck hit a large pothole. The impact jostled the inside of the cab, sent Lucy bouncing across the seat. Her face smacked against the passenger window, her snout marking a long, wet trail across the glass. The dog snorted and shook her head.
Juneau was paved with rocky roads.
“Sorry, girl,” Rachel apologized. “Just too cold out this morning to roll the window down.”
The dog glared back at her. A low grumble stirred in her throat.
Rachel clicked her teeth. “I know you’ve got a fur coat, Lucy. But I’ve been out in the cold for the past five days and I need to defrost.”
That, and the heater in the old truck was cantankerous at best. It usually took about fifteen minutes to start blowing hot air, and when it finally did, the meager heat was accompanied by a loud, thumping sound, like something was attempting to escape through the ducts under the hood. Today Lucy was going to have to wait. Rachel wanted to get warm, and the window was not coming down. The old truck banged and bucked as it rounded the last turn down the long uneven road and back onto the Juneau main way. Trees began to thin out and buildings cropped up as Rachel made her way downtown. Glacial mountains, still capped with snow, hovered above the bay that ran parallel to the road, and she could see the harbor in the distance where blotted shapes of ships would be waiting to dispense tourists and fishermen, fresh off the water. Juneau wasn’t an island, not technically, but sometimes it felt like one.
Dense clouds had moved in and covered most of the sky, blocking out the blue that had taken the place of the earlier gray Rachel had woken up. The clouds hung low, some off-white but most a dull, dark gray. A storm was fast approaching. Typical Juneau. If it wasn’t one form of precipitation falling from the sky, it was another—rain, snow, snow, rain. The familiar sight brought with it a sense of calm, and the tingly feeling crawling under Rachel’s skin faded.
“When we get home, I’m taking a warm bath,” she informed Lucy. “I’m going to soak for at least an hour.”
She removed one hand from the wheel and placed it over one of the truck’s heater vents. Not full heater hot, but warming up. A half-smile broke across Rachel’s face.
“And I’m going to follow my bath up with a warm cup of cocoa and some of those jumbo marshmallows we both like so much.” She stroked the dog. “What do you want, girl?”
Lucy considered Rachel, wagged her tail. There was knowing in her eyes again. Understanding. As if in answer, she batted her eyes and let loose a series of small, excited barks.
Rachel laughed. “I know. You want to be back with Cowboy, don’t you, girl? That’s all you ever want.”
Lucy yipped. Yes.
“Don’t worry, Cowboy will be waiting for you.” Rachel patted Lucy on the back of her head. “We’ll be there soon. I miss our boy, too.”
Cowboy was Rachel’s dog, but he’d belonged to Lucy first. She and Ruby had picked the pups at a rescue; a bonded pair despite the difference in their age and breeds. While the rest of the pups played, Cowboy and Lucy huddled against each other in the corner—outcasts from the rest of the bunch. Ruby scooped up one ball of fluff and Rachel the other, and they’d doubled their family size in the space of one afternoon. A year later, Lucy had grown into a rock-solid powerhouse of a heeler, and Cowboy had bumbled, stumbled, and tumbled into triple-digit weight gain and a deep love of peanut butter.
The pair couldn’t have been more opposite. Lucy was all stealth and precision, while Cowboy was single-pawedly responsible for breaking nine drinking glasses, four dinner plates, a crystal juice carafe, and an antique Cuckoo clock that had been passed down through the generations since Rachel’s family had migrated from Germany to the United States. Still, despite their differences, the two were inseparable—a team.
Like Ruby and me, Rachel reflected. The thought was warmer than the air gusting through the truck’s busted heater.
Ruby loved the outdoors and dancing in the rain. Rachel preferred a cozy library and jazz. Ruby cooked. Rachel cleaned.
Ruby died.
Rachel lived.
The heat crawling up Rachel’s skin burned. She glanced at Lucy and rolled down the windows a fraction of an inch.
Rachel had been so lost in thought she hadn’t noticed she’d put the long stretch of Egan Drive behind them until the blinking light that signaled the entrance into downtown slowed her down. In all the time Rachel had lived in Juneau, the light had always blinked orange—more a friendly welcome than a traffic mechanism. Now, it was red.
“Well, that’s weird,” Rachel noted.
She slowed to a grinding halt and waited. The engine idled roughly as minutes ticked by, each one marked by the in-dash clock. Four minutes. Five.
Not a single car passed. Rachel checked the view out the passenger window. No boats. Not even a ripple left by a passing wake.
Six minutes.
How long was this frickin’ light? Maybe the reason it always blinked was because the timer in it was broken—something must have accidentally flipped a switch somewhere?
When another three minutes had passed without so much as a scrap of fireweed blowing across the road, Rachel inched the truck forward. She crawled through the red light, and when nothing seemed to go wrong and none of Juneau’s Finest popped out from behind a building, she pressed the gas and climbed back to full speed.
She passed the gas station on the corner. The drive-through coffee shop. There were cars parked at both, but no people. No one passing cardboard cups through the window. No gray-haired hunters leaned against their trucks outside the diner, drinking stale coffee and telling game stories.
That’s odd. There are always people at Donna’s.
Rachel let her foot off the gas as her attention shifted to the front of the diner. She watched the door for a moment, waiting for someone to exit, but no one did. She stamped down on the brake, bringing the old truck to a full stop as she scanned the open windows, the glass-paned double front doors. There was no one. Not a single person.
Her gaze swung to the row of shops across the street. The usually crowded area near the cruise port. Nothing. It was as if everyone in town had—
No, Rachel thought.
People didn’t vanish. It must be the storm, she decided, considering the threatening cloud cover. Ruby would have laughed it off, wouldn’t she? Said even Alaskans didn’t love getting caught in a downpour—that the tingling feeling crawling up Rachel’s arms right now was her cop’s instincts. Everyone had probably just taken a good look at the sky and packed it in, called it a day since it was too early in the season for the real tourist rush.
Her early-warning trigger alert was just looking for something to worry about. Looking for a crime to solve.
But Rachel didn’t think so. Usually, that feeling was fast, adrenaline. It sparked, flickered, but didn’t burn. Didn’t squeeze. Her chest tightened as her fingers reached for the radio, twisted the knob. She rarely turned on the thing—satellite radio didn’t work in Juneau and she generally preferred silence to over-processed pop music—but now Rachel needed to hear noise, needed to hear voices, needed to hear—
Static.
White noise crinkled through the truck’s scratchy sound system. No music, no radio announcer. No kitschy jingles for local car repair or medical offices. Just static.
Rachel pressed another button, navigating to another station. More static. She pressed again.
Nothing.
The vise in her chest tightened. Water pushed into her eyes. What was going on?
“Wake the fuck up, Rachel.” She wiped at her eyes, then reached over and yanked open the glovebox, pulled out her cell.
She thumbed the device unlocked, then tapped the application to open her recent call list. Typically, she turned the infernal thing off when she was hiking, but this time she hadn’t, and a list of missed calls ran in red type down the screen of her phone—all from her mother. All from home.
Rachel hit redial and lifted the phone to her ear. Waited.
The landline rang once. Twice. Three times. The answering machine picked up, and Rachel let it finish, waited for the beep.
“Mom, it’s me. Pick up.” Please pick up.
The one benefit of the antiquated answering machine was that, if someone was home and listening, they’d hear her speaking. If anyone was in earshot, they could pick up.
No one did. Rachel disconnected the call and tried again.
When the answering machine picked up a second time, Rachel lowered the phone and turned to Lucy. The dog’s face was pressed up against the window, her breath fogging the glass where she panted, her keen eyes scanning the outside.
Nothing moved.
Have I lost my mind? This is not possible, right?
Rachel slammed her palms against the steering wheel as a heavy blanket of dread settled over the cab. Something was wrong.
“Where the fuck is everyone?”
The volume of her voice echoed in the truck’s cab, surrounded her, then disappeared, sucked into the silent void. Lucy’s ear twitched, but her attention stayed focused outside of the window.
After another inhale, Rachel let her foot off the brake. The truck inched forward, and she pushed it to a stable speed, scanning the sides of the road around her as she made her way farther into town. Even in the dead of winter, Juneau bustled with life. The town’s usual population of thirty-one thousand should have swelled now, during early spring, when seasonal tourists and cruise ship passengers began to flock to the almost-island to take in the sights of Alaska’s second-largest city. There should be people everywhere, clogging sidewalks and driving too slowly while they gazed at the unique landscape or got turned around in the glacial valley.
Now, all those people seemed to have mysteriously vanished, and Rachel’s pulse was in her throat. It was Roanoke all over again. Rachel wondered if she would find a post or tree somewhere in the town center with Croatoan carved into the wood. Would this become yet another unsolved mystery for paranormal enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists to chase?
Movement stirred ahead and to her left, about two blocks away, between a small line of stores catering to tourists and out-of-towners. What was it? A person? A black bear? Rachel couldn’t be sure, but she had seen something—some sign of life that proved she hadn’t woken up this morning and driven into a ghost town.
She stamped down on the gas pedal. The truck roared to life beneath her foot, and Rachel yanked the wheel hard to the left, propelling the rusted old heap in the direction of the movement. If no one was around, there was no one to care that she was driving on the wrong side of the road.
Rachel let the truck idle outside the stretch of stores she’d been looking at when something had flicked across her vision. As she’d expected, all the shop doors were open, but there were no people, no obvious signs of any activity. It was as if everyone had simply stopped what they were doing, and walked away—but where?
Lucy barked, and Rachel’s head whipped toward the sound. A dog. A mangy old mutt stood alone on the sidewalk, gnawing at a bag of trash pulled from a bin at the edge of a nearby corner. Food garbage spilled out of the bag. Half-eaten chicken, an old doughnut wrapper.
“Seriously, girl,” Rachel told Lucy. “What the fuck is going on around here? Where is everyone?”
Still staring at the dog, Rachel felt for her phone on the seat beside her. She tapped the redial button again, but by the time her mother’s voicemail came across the line Rachel had already turned the truck around, driven under another red light.
“We’re going home,” she said. “My parents will be there. Cowboy will be there. Everything will be fine.” She waited for Lucy—for anyone—to respond.
Rachel sped out of downtown and up into the flats of the neighborhood that bumped up against Juneau’s epicenter. She ignored red lights, stop signs, speed limits, all while pushing the old truck for all it was worth.
Her chest inched tighter and a single tear broke from her eye. She brushed it away impatiently. Lonely. She was used to feeling lonely. But this … this was something else. Her right hand fluttered down to her hip again, reaching for the phantom feel of her police-issue pistol, but all she felt was the press of denim. Anxiety surged in the few cracks of open space the vise had left in her lungs. Ruby was the capable one, the one who could slip off-grid when shit hit the fan and survive, but what was Rachel? A cop who couldn’t even handle her own on the force.
Almost there, she told herself as the tires screeched off the main road and pulled onto Coleman, her parents’ cul-de-sac. Don’t panic.
The Mason’s two-story cabin appeared through the overhanging hemlocks and Rachel squinted, training her focus on the house. Her father’s red SUV sat parked in the driveway, right beside her mother’s white Buick.
A gust of air slipped from Rachel’s lips as the truck slid to a halt at the end of the driveway. If their vehicles were here, they had to be, too—right?
Rachel pushed open her driver’s side door and stepped out, Lucy hot on her heels. The pair ran around the truck’s bed, but Rachel froze when her shoe hit the grass of the lawn.
The front door hung open.
Rachel’s eyes narrowed. Her parents weren’t “leave the door open” people, they were staunch “shut the door because you’re letting the heat/AC out” people. Besides, even if they had left the door open by accident, Cowboy would have already bounded into the yard, tongue blowing in the breeze.
The burning sensation tickled on Rachel’s skin, but her chest relaxed, and she pulled air into her lungs as muscle memory kicked in and her body folded, assuming a tactical stance. There was no gun on her
hip, no radio on her shoulder, but her lips pressed together.
Listen, and be ready. The only thing Ruby and the Boston PD had agreed upon.
Rachel listened, and all she heard was silence. No wind, no animals, no cars, no people. No parents.
No Cowboy.
And she knew, despite the cars being in the driveway and the front door waving open in greeting, there was nobody home.
3
Other than the fact its occupants had vanished, nothing seemed out of place in the Mason home. If anything, it was all a little too normal. A little too familiar.
The wooden floor creaked as Rachel stepped inside. “Mom? Dad? Cowboy?”
The answering silence sucked the moisture from Rachel’s tongue, leaving the inside of her mouth a desert. She could feel her breath growing shallow, her academy training giving way to her human anxieties, daughterly fears.
My parents are gone.
With the thought came a break in what little remained of her hesitation, and Rachel flung herself down the hallway. She ran daily, a quick three-mile jaunt around the neighborhood, but the way her body moved now was different, urgent. It was breakneck, scrambling—the same kind of run she’d done the day Ruby’s foot had slipped off the trail, her body pitched over the side of the cliff. Rachel had flung herself forward, desperate to catch her wife’s hand before it disappeared. She’d felt the touch of Ruby’s fingertips, and then nothing—the same sort of screaming emptiness she felt now.
Rachel rounded the corner of her parent’s bedroom, peeked in. Her mother’s house slippers were parked dependably in front of her nightstand, where she left them every morning, but the bedroom was empty.
Kitchen. Empty.
Den. Fucking empty.
A thick slap of plastic turned Rachel to the backdoor. Lucy stared up at her, her body still wedged halfway through the dog door, dark eyes lost in a circle of white.
Gone, her panting seemed to say. They’re all gone.