Josh stood beside the cruiser with the shotgun, the barrel of which he held low at his hips, aiming. Maria was beside him, and both were both transfixed on the street ahead.
Allie followed the children’s stares down the empty street which was still and quiet. She could see only cars and streetlamps and the low roofs of the ramblers that lined the street like giant steppingstones. It was an eerily beautiful sight, with the sky as blue as topaz, the sun illuminating the backdrop of the mountains rising miles in the distance. “What’s happening?” she whispered, anxiously surveying the road.
“It...it went behind the house. Over there. The house with the red car in the drive.” Josh pointed to a small brown rambler, third house on the left of Hermosa about a hundred yards down.
“Did it see you?”
Both children nodded in unison.
“It was coming for me,” Maria whispered.
Josh turned to Maria and shook his head slowly. “It was coming for both of us.”
“No. I could feel it. It wanted me. Only me.”
“Why?”
“I...I think because you already gave it what it wanted.” Maria looked to the ground, as if exploring a thread that was developing in her mind in real time. “But it never got anything from me. In the backyard. Ms. Allie came before it could...ask me.”
Josh pondered Maria’s theory, and though there was little evidence to support it fully, he trusted his friend’s instincts and nodded in agreement, accepting the truth of it.
Josh focused again on Allie. “I shot at it. Twice. Not sure I hit it, but it seemed hurt. At least at first. Then Maria got to the horn and you came outside and...that’s when it ran. I don’t think it liked the sound of the horn.”
“Less than the sound of the shotgun?
Josh shrugged.
Allie looked at Maria for confirmation of the events, but the girl had turned her focus from the road to Allie’s left shoulder and the bundle cradled there. Allie smiled weakly.
“Is he...alive?” Maria asked.
Allied sighed and nodded. “He is.”
Maria moved in closer and peeked through the blanket, hesitantly. Antonio’s eyes were closed; he was sleeping. “How?”
“How what?”
“How can he be alive? How is it possible?”
Allie shrugged. “I don’t know. But he is. It must not have seen him before.”
Maria shook her head. “That’s not what I meant.”
Allie squinted, confused.
“He wasn’t supposed to survive birth. And then the doctors said he would only live a couple hours even if he was born alive. How...how hasn’t he died yet?”
Allie swallowed, the question sending a chill through her. “I don’t know, Maria.”
“And he was all alone in the house.” She looked to Josh and then back to Allie for answers, now becoming animated, teetering on hysterics. “Just lying on the bed, right?”
Allie nodded.
“And you’re wrong about it not seeing him. It was in the room. That thing was in the room when it turned my mom...” She lowered her voice, wiping away a tear. “When it turned my mom and dad to black. It saw Antonio. It had to have seen him. But it...it just left him there. It left him and came for me instead. Why?”
The question felt philosophical to Allie, rhetorical, and she had nothing that resembled an answer anyway. And she certainly didn’t have the time to concoct one that would ring true or even comforting. “I don’t know, Maria, but this isn’t the time to figure it out. Let’s just call your brother lucky for now and ponder the questions later, okay?”
Maria looked away quickly, as if she’d been dismissed, unsatisfied with the answer.
Allie looked at Josh now. “You had good instincts. Both of you.”
“Instincts about what?”
“To fight. To try to scare it. Most people would have stayed in the car and hid, and under most circumstances, that would be have been good advice. But not in this case. You did great.”
Josh said nothing, his eyes still focused on the street.
“And I think you might be right about it being startled. I fired at it earlier and scared it away.” Allie furrowed her brow and looked away, suddenly questioning her hypothesis.
“What is it, Ms. Allie?”
“I hit it. I know I did. Earlier, on the patio. It ran away. Like you just described. But it didn’t look hurt. Not physically anyway.”
“If the one hiding behind the house right now is the same one you saw earlier, it didn’t look hurt to me either.” Josh paused. “Maybe you just hurt its ears.”
Allie glanced up as if Josh had read her mind, just at the second the thought arrived. She nodded; eyes wide, hopeful. “That’s what I was thinking. I think it hates the sound of guns. Horns. Maybe anything loud.”
“Why didn’t it leave when I shot at it then?”
“I don’t know.”
Josh looked down, considering the theory. “So, does that mean we can scare it but not kill it?”
Allie gave the question the pause it warranted and then said, “I don’t know that either. The noise thing is a good theory, but not one I want to test right now. We need to get out of here. We got who we came for, and now we need to get this little guy back to the station.”
Allie, Josh, and Maria returned to the cruiser, with Josh taking the front passenger seat now while Maria held her brother in the back. As Allie drove in the direction of the station, she passed the house that Josh pointed out, behind which the creature had fled, but there was nothing to be seen.
The interior of the car was quiet for the next several minutes, and during the respite, Allie replayed the events of minutes earlier again in her mind, exploring Maria’s questions about Antonio, as well as Josh’s and her theory about loud noises being a repellent.
She thought of Maria’s parents’ room again, empty but for a baby. A baby that was, almost impossibly, alive.
But the room was empty.
Allie spun her head around now, swerving toward the shoulder of the road as she did, rolling the cruiser up on the sidewalk and nearly clipping a fire hydrant. She stopped the car and put it in park. “Maria?”
Maria looked up as if expecting a reprimand; Antonio was cradled tightly in her arms, its delicate, misshapen head covered like a monk’s.
“Your parents. You said your parents were home and that the creature turned them to...whatever it turns them into, right? That’s what you said?”
Maria nodded.
“Where? Where in the house did it happen?”
“In the room.”
“In their room?”
“Yes. Why?” Maria’s eyes glistened with the memory of her parents.
Allie frowned, suddenly embarrassed that she hadn’t been more discreet with her questions, more considerate of the child whose family had been destroyed only hours earlier. It was too late now, however, and at this stage of the game, there was no use lying to these kids. “They weren’t there, Maria. Your parents weren’t there.”
“What? But I...I saw them. What do you mean they weren’t there?”
Allie shook her head. “They weren’t. If their bodies were there before, they weren’t a few minutes ago. Not in the room or in the main part of the house either.”
“It took them?”
Allie had the word ‘moved’ in her mind, but Maria’s term ‘took’ sounded more appropriate somehow. “I don’t know, but it seemed something did. Or else they just disappeared.”
She thought back to Luke and Randy, fried and frozen in their kitchen, and then to their father on the patio outside. Obviously, the bodies of those three had been present, but as Allie reflected on the scene, their deaths had likely just happened, an assumption she made based on the location of the creature when she first saw it, only two doors down from the Carson home. On any normal day, that kind of reasoning would have been close to nonsense, but in the context of this day, she thought it made reasonable sense.
“What does it mean?” Maria asked.
Allie could only shake her head. “I don’t know, sweetheart. I have no idea.”
Allie pulled the car off the sidewalk and then turned onto Magnolia, heading in the direction of the station.
“We’re going to Carla’s now, right?” Josh asked.
Allie had forgotten about the diner and her promise to look for Josh’s mom. Not only had she told him they would try to find her at Carla’s, but that it was also a good idea. And maybe it was. If there were others alive in Garmella, that was as good a place to look as any. And Josh needed to have closure on his mother one way or the other.
“Yes, Josh, Carla’s Diner. Absolutely.”
There was a grim silence in the car now as Allie headed toward the diner, an understanding looming now that the fate of Josh’s mom would be known in minutes, and perhaps the rest of the town’s as well.
But they had also found Maria’s brother alive—they had accomplished their mission—so that was at least one win for the day, and Allie was going to revel in it for a moment.
Allie turned the corner on Quarry Hill and drove until she saw the top of Carla’s sign rising above the hilltop at the corner of Coralbean and Sweetclover. It was lit up like on any other day, the red lettering on the canary yellow background giving the sign a certain carnival feel, a contrast to the rather dull, underlit interior of the place.
Ahead, at the end of Quarry Hill, Allie could see the back of KD’s neon green banner, its letters seeming to beckon still, advertising its promise of fuel and convenience despite the catastrophe that had descended on the town. Those were two nouns Allie thought might be useful right now, and she made a mental note to hit KD’s next.
She pulled into Carla’s, and her gaze focused on the lone vehicle in the lot, a Ford F-250 which was parked in the first spot to the right of the door. Allie assumed the truck didn’t belong to Josh’s mother, but she didn’t voice the judgement, hoping maybe she was wrong and that Josh would recognize it and voice his excitement. When he said nothing several seconds after entering the lot, she had her answer.
Allie chose a spot at the rear of the lot, well away from the entrance, not wanting to box herself in too closely in the event she needed to make a quick getaway. “All right guys,” she said, shifting the car into park and beginning to twist her torso to the back again, preparing to give her ‘Stay here’ speech once more.
But the moment the cruiser locks popped up, Josh swung the passenger door wide and started his dash to the front of the restaurant.
Allie was quick, however, stepping down to the crumbling concrete lot only a second after Josh, and before he could make it to the door she called, “Josh! Stop this second!”
Josh froze in his tracks, the authority in Allie’s voice irresistible to his eleven-year-old ears and brain. He was still five steps or so from the front door, but he wasn’t dissuaded from his quest, and he turned slowly back toward the officer. “I’m going in, Ms. Allie.”
“Me too.” It was Maria, now standing beside Allie by the cruiser, the ever-silent Antonio still in her arms, the young girl cradling her brother as naturally as if she had been caring for him for years. “I don’t want to stay in the car again. It wasn’t safe last time.”
Allie sighed and put her hands in the air as she nodded. “Okay, that’s fine. We’ll all go. But I can’t have you running off like that, Josh. Both of you.” She paused. “You either, Antonio.”
Maria looked confused for a moment, but then she found the joke and giggled in the way only pre-teen girls can.
“But I’m leading us in,” Allie continued, not giving a hint of humor at the joke she’d just told. She nodded to Josh. “Can you see inside?”
Josh turned back toward the restaurant and hunched slightly, leaning forward, trying to peer in through the front windows and glass door. But the sun was too bright, and he got only his own reflection and the desert landscape behind him in return. He shook his head. “I can’t see anything.”
Allie strode slowly toward Josh now, Maria following closely behind her, and both joined the boy in his location a few yards from the door. “Ready?” she asked, and when both kids nodded in unison, she said, “Let’s go.”
The three took the final few steps toward the diner until they were standing at the front door, and there Allie cupped her hands around her eyes and peered through the glass, giving her vision several seconds to adjust.
“It looks empty,” she said, “but I can’t really tell for sure,” and without hesitation, she pulled open the door and stepped inside, ushering in Josh and Maria behind her.
Carla’s Diner was the only true breakfast place in town, and for that reason, every morning by 8 am, the place was bustling like a Bangkok street market, with a wait time of not less than fifteen minutes. Most of the clientele at that time of day were retirees, north of sixty-five, but as the day progressed, and especially at dinner time, the diner saw customers in every age range. It was a healthy business, and Carla—now retired herself—was a local celebrity in Garmella.
In that moment, however, as Allie, Josh and Maria stood in a tight circle on Carla’s welcome mat, each staring to their right down the long laminate aisle that divided the diner’s booths from the service counter, the place appeared as empty as a college dorm in July.
A “Please Wait to be Seated” sign stood guard in front of them—absurdly—and no one took a breath as they surveyed the scene, each waiting for the stark emptiness of the place to suddenly explode into chaos.
Finally, Maria spoke. “There’s no one here.”
The girl’s words broke the spell, and Allie swallowed and blinked for the first time in what felt like several minutes. “Doesn’t look like it, does it?”
It was certainly true that the dining room was empty—there wasn’t a soul in sight—but the emptiness wasn’t one of abandonment or panic, as if the people had fled in the middle of breakfast. The eating surfaces of the tables had not a single plate or utensil atop them, nor a crumb of food from what Allie could see. And but for a single cup of coffee that sat nearly full to the right of the register, the service counter was clean as well. Carla’s Diner didn’t look abandoned; it looked like it had yet to open for the day, the empty lot out front seeming to verify that hypothesis.
“She’s not here,” Josh said, his voice cracking on the word ‘not.’ He cleared his throat and repeated, “She’s...she’s not—"
“Let’s go,” Allie whispered sharply, interrupting the boy. “We haven’t even stepped off the welcome mat yet. Sheesh. What kind of police work would that be if we left right now?” She stared at Josh, awaiting an answer to her seemingly rhetorical question.
Josh looked at Allie sheepishly and shrugged.
“It would be bad police work.” She gave a disappointed shake of her head and then nodded in the direction of a pair of double doors behind the counter, each with a small window carved at the top. “The kitchen’s back there, I guess?” Allie had been to Carla’s a thousand times and knew as well as anyone where the kitchen was, but she wanted to keep Josh involved.
Josh nodded.
“Okay, stay close then. Let’s see what’s going on behind the scenes.”
Allie stepped off the mat and led the kids around the counter, squeezing past a cake display and a double-barreled coffee maker, both with two full pots on the burners. She noted again the organization of the place, clean and prepped and ready for business.
Allie stopped at the double-doors. “You been back here before?”
Josh nodded. “Yeah, a few times.”
“What are we looking at in terms of layout?”
Josh shrugged. “It’s small. I don’t know. Everything goes to the right, just like the dining room. The stove and sinks and...everything. You can see everything as soon as you walk in.”
Allie nodded and took a deep breath and then pulled her gun once more. “I’d really prefer if you both stayed here.”
Both kids averted t
heir eyes, neither speaking, an indication that they had heard Allie’s preference and were now ready to proceed with her as planned.
Allie frowned. “Fine. But again, stay behind.”
She pushed in the door on the left, the Out door, and, as Josh had described, the kitchen flowed to the right, giving an instant visual of the entire kitchen, which wasn’t much bigger than the kitchen in a large house. She imagined Winston Bell’s kitchen was probably twice the size. And there was no one to be seen.
Allie took a breath. “What’s that back there?” She nodded toward a large metal door at the end of the kitchen.
“It’s the walk-in.”
“Refrigerator, right?”
Josh chuckled. “Yeah. You haven’t spent much time around a kitchen, huh?”
Allie gave a sarcastic smile. “I have my strengths, young man.”
Josh smiled, but within seconds, his face turned white and tears took the place of laughter in his eyes. “She would be here,” he said. “Today is her early shift. She gets in at like five-thirty on Thursdays.”
“Carla’s opens at six, right?”
Josh nodded.
“Well, it definitely opened today.”
“How do you know that?”
“For starters, the front door was unlocked.”
Josh seemed unconvinced at that piece of evidence. “I guess. But I think whoever opens for the day just leaves the door unlocked. People aren’t lined up at the door at six in the morning.”
Allie nodded. “Fair enough. But there was also a cup of coffee on the counter. With a used spoon beside it. Somebody—probably the first customer of the day—was served coffee this morning.”
Josh compressed his lips, now intrigued. Then Allie tilted her head and added, “But your mom’s car wasn’t out front, was it? I assume she drives in to work.”
Josh nodded and his eyes lit suddenly. “She does, but employees have to park in the back.”
Allie looked at the rear exit, where a panic bar threatened to sound the fire alarm if the door was opened. “Does that thing work?”
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