Six Strings to Save the World

by Michael McSherry

  Six Strings to Save the World

  Michael McSherry

  Copyright © 2020 Michael McSherry

  All rights reserved.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  To my wife and children. You are the music of my life.

  Chapter One

  I’m selling a piece of myself for $700.

  Dad would have called that overly dramatic. But that’s how I feel. The pawn shop’s cashier wears a pit-stained Hawaiian button-up. He runs his Cheetos-dusted fingers over the fretboard of my favorite guitar, studying it underneath a harsh lamp. It’s a 1986 Fender Telecaster that Dad and I restored together when he wasn’t busy in his shop. I drum my fingers on the counter as the register slides open with a mocking chime. Cheetos-fingers counts off a series of grimy $100 bills and lays them on the counter with an orange-lipped smile. I pocket the cash and step outside.

  “How’d it go, Caleb?” Tori gargles through a mouthful of pop. “Did they try to short you?” She sets the bottle down on the hood of my car next to Dex, who’s busily scratching notes into a pocket-sized steno pad.

  I shake my head. “Not this time.” The red neon OPEN sign buzzes above us, and I wonder how many people have stood exactly where I’m standing, holding a bit of cash in hand, one memory lighter. I throw my keys to Dex, interrupting his writing. “Will you drive?”

  “Do I get to pick the music?” Dex’s eyes light up as he flicks his notepad shut, slipping it into his pocket and tucking a chewed-up pencil behind his ear.

  “Veto,” Tori sighs.

  “Seconded,” I say. “We can throw some quarters in a blender later if you love dubstep so much.” I let Tori have shotgun and crawl into the back of my beat-up sedan, stretching my feet out over the empty seat.

  “I’m actually into glitch-hop right now. It’s big in Europe.”

  “So was the plague, Dex.”

  He ignores me, adjusting the mirror with meticulous precision.

  “Don’t let him touch my stereo, Tori.”

  “We’re not going to listen to computer diarrhea,” she assures me. Instead, Tori dials in National Public Radio and a swell of gentle orchestral music sets the spare change in my cupholders rattling.

  “Much better, Grandma.” I kick the back of Tori’s seat.

  “If you listened to Tchaikovsky more often you might gain a few I.Q. points over a toaster.” She looks over her shoulder and the playful smile drops from her face as she studies me. “You okay?” She has a way of creasing her eyebrows and smoothing her hair back from her face when she’s worried. She draws one loose strand behind her ear.

  “Yeah,” I lie. “Hurry up, Dex. We’ve got places to be.”

  He puts the car in reverse and backs up slowly, head swiveling from side to side like a paranoid groundhog as he checks his mirrors. “Oh yeah?” he asks. “Where’s that? Loitering at the gas station? People-watching at the coffee shop?”

  “Let’s go to the lot.”

  No further instruction required. Dex brings the car onto the county road cutting through town and refuses to accelerate through a yellow at our town’s one stop light. You could walk Tempus one end to the other in fifteen minutes, but it takes twice as long to get through the grocery store. Everybody always sees someone they know, and wouldn’t you know it, they just have to catch up right there in the aisle.

  Half an eternity of Dex’s careful driving later, he eases the car into the empty parking lot of Alto’s Music. The windows stand dark and a heavy chain loops taut between the handles of the double doors. A faded For Sale sign hangs on one loose nail, partially covering the bright red “A” of the wooden Alto’s lettering on the storefront.

  “Do you think the bank is going to sell this place before we graduate?” I ask them.

  “It’s been empty for two years,” Dex assures me. “I think they can wait for a couple more. In case you haven’t noticed, nobody’s rushing to set up shop in Tempus.”

  “Except me.”

  Tori flashes a smile back at me. “Except you.”

  Dex and Tori believe in me more than I do most days. It helps. I’ve been talking about re-opening Alto’s Music ever since Dad died, but at the start of junior year, the idea really grew legs. Wobbly, bow-legged baby legs, but legs all the same. Tori built a website and sketched up a new storefront, including a new logo. Dex is great with numbers, and we’ve been working to figure out an e-commerce plan to bring Alto’s into the twenty-first. Dad’s name was Aldus Young, but everybody called him Alto, after his favorite instrument.

  Tchaikovsky fades down and Tori passes me the cable. “Your pick,” she says.

  I scroll through my phone until I settle on Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love.” It opens with a guitar riff as thick as honey. The drums come rolling in and set up a beat that carries you into the first verse when Jack Bruce starts crooning. Dad would sing it to Mom before her early shifts at the hospital.

  It starts to rain.

  We let my phone shuffle through a few more songs, sitting together while the drizzle spatters the roof of my car, fading into the background behind the music like the hiss of a needle on vinyl. Dex and Tori are the only people I know like me, who are happy to just sit and listen. Really listen.

  “Who do you think would win in a fight?” Dex breaks the silence eventually. “Clapton or Tchaikovsky?”

  It’s one of our favorite games: pitting musicians against one another in hypothetical hand-to-hand combat.

  “Tchaikovsky,” Tori declares. “Have you seen his mustache?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Mustache size is directly proportional to power level,” Tori explains. “Tom Selleck. Burt Reynolds. Alex Trebek.”

  Dex looks back at me. “What’s Clapton bringing to the table?”

  “Tchaikovsky looks like a hair-puller,” I say. “Clapton’s got that salon-quality do. He’d tap out.”

  We go on and on like this across multiple genres: NSYNC vs. The Beach Boys, Aerosmith vs. Bieber, Weird Al vs. Rick Astley. Tori’s in tears as Dex explains why the guys from Daft Punk are rendered impervious to Ozzy’s batty finishing move because of their headgear. By the time we’re done, we’ve wasted most of the evening. Dex is getting ready to put the car back in drive when a couple of police cars go flying toward town on County Road 12, their lights flashing and sirens blaring.

  “What’s that about?” Dex wonders.

  “Car crash?” Tori guesses.

  I pull the cable from my phone, switching the car’s radio back on just in time to catch the annoying blare of an emergency broadcast. The alarm pulses as a computer-generated voice fills the car:

  “Attention. Attention. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has declared a state of emergency for the City of Tempus, Bachville County. The Agency has ordered an immediate evacuation. Evacuate your homes immediately. Attention. Attention. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has ordered an evacuation of the City of Tempus, Bachville County. Proceed five or more miles from the city immediately.”

  The emergency-broadcast siren sounds again and the message starts to repeat. Four more cop cars go flying by with their sirens on, the haze of drizzle casting halos around their lights.

  “Is this real?” Tori asks.

  My phone buzzes with the same emergency alarm.

  Tori’s phone st
arts to ring. Then mine. I step out of the car while Tori answers her phone, one finger held to my ear while the rain wets the back of my neck.

  “Where are you?!” Mom’s voice comes blaring through my phone before I can say anything.

  “At the shop, Mom. What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know. They’re asking medical personnel to help get people out of the retirement home. They’re evacuating. Get back in your car and go.”

  Mom sees a lot of nasty things at the hospital: traffic and work accidents, the occasional gun wound. Before she immigrated, she was a medic in the Israeli military, where I imagine she saw much worse. She meets most things with a stern face and a steady hand. Point is, I don’t hear her afraid too often, but she’s afraid now. It’s infectious.

  “Where should we go?”

  “They’re setting up a shelter at Blake’s high school. Go there and I’ll find you as soon as I can.”

  “We’re going now,” I promise. “I’ll see you there.”

  “I love you. Be safe, okay?”

  “Yeah. Love you.”

  I hang up the phone and open the driver door as Dex fiddles with the radio dials. “We’re supposed to get to Blake fast,” I say, tapping Dex on the shoulder. “I’ll drive.”

  Dex looks relieved that he won’t have to break the speed limit and bails into the backseat. I climb in and gas the engine, swinging the car around and spraying mud as we get back onto the county road. I can see the beginnings of a line of traffic starting far behind us. Alto’s Music is on the edge of town, so we’ve got a head start. I’m going faster than the speed limit but when another string of cop cars pass us going the opposite direction, none of them seem to care.

  “Dad, we’re fine.” Tori’s voice pitches high as she talks on her phone. “We’re already going, okay? I have my phone on me. Call me once you’re there, okay?”

  The emergency broadcast is still playing on repeat over the radio. I turn it off, dropping us into eerie silence.

  “What’s happening?” Dex asks finally.

  “Dad said FEMA is coming in,” Tori answers. “Who knows what they’re doing in the middle of nowhere.”

  Dex and Tori are back on their phones immediately while I’m counting the squad cars passing in the opposite direction. “Everybody’s posting, but nobody knows anything.” Dex’s voice is strained. “Everybody’s just trying to get out.”

  I press on the accelerator a little harder as the wiper blades mark a quick tempo across the windshield.

  * * * * *

  Blake is the next town over and eight miles away. It’s already crawling with lights and sirens. Blacked-out SUVs with rack lighting and flashers blinking are directing incoming traffic to the school. We follow a string of cars out onto the baseball field to park. Hundreds of people are clambering out of their vehicles in confusion, questioning one another in a daze.

  Tori, Dex, and I leave my car and head up to the school doors, where a large crowd has already gathered. A woman with a blue FEMA jacket stands halfway out of her SUV with a megaphone in hand, rain-slicked hair pushed away from her eyes. “Proceed inside and check in with your name and contact information. Accommodations are being made!” Her voice blares over the confused crowd as people herd toward the doors.

  We head inside and join the check-in line. The conversation around us is still just a buzz of nervousness and frantic questions. I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket and see a text from Mom.

  Where r u?

  I text her back and within five minutes she’s there, pulling me from the line and squeezing me so tightly that I think my ribs might crack. “I’m so glad you’re safe!” She’s got a grab-and-go first-aid kit strapped over her shoulder, with her hospital badge clipped to her shirt.

  “We’re okay, Mom,” I assure her. Or myself. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Tori’s dad shows up next, and we hear him before we see him. “I need to see my daughter. Move please!” The sea of people parts and a five-foot-nothing man with wrought-iron gaze comes to a halt before us.

  “Victoria,” Tori’s dad breathes, his eyes softening. He draws Tori into a tight, one-armed hug. He only has one arm, and so he wears his shirts with one sleeve cut off and sewn shut. He turns to me. “You three were together?”

  “Yes, Mr. Patel,” I say, standing a bit straighter and looking down at my feet.

  “You take good care of each other.” His hand settles on my shoulder. I raise my eyes and Mr. Patel offers me what might be the first smile he’s ever directed my way. He turns to my mother.

  “Are you well, Diane?”

  “I’m great, Sai. All things considered.” At that, she laughs in an exhausted way that only Mom can laugh. “I can’t stay for long, though. We’re supposed to report in with the feds.”

  We stand in nervous silence for a moment.

  “Have you called your parents yet?” Mom asks Dex.

  “I sent them a text,” Dex shrugs, his voice bitter. “They’re still at the casino.” He doesn’t like talking about his parents. He spends most of his time avoiding them over at my place or Tori’s.

  Mom pulls Dex in for a hug. “You’ll stay with us then, wherever we end up.”

  Dex’s face brightens a bit.

  “They’re having me come back to the hospital for an emergency shift,” Mom continues, releasing Dex. “They’re triaging hospice and nursing-home clients from Tempus. I’ll be back in a bit.”

  She leaves us with Mr. Patel, and we work our way through the line with all the other worried people. After we’ve given our information, we enter one of the school’s three gymnasiums. We wait out another half hour, with more and more people filing into the gym every minute. Eventually, the lights flick off and back on in quick succession. Another FEMA agent stands on a chair, waiting for the crowd to quiet down. Once a hush falls over the gymnasium, he begins to talk. Even without a microphone, his voice is booming.

  “I would like to begin by saying that the evacuation of Tempus is nearly complete, and that we are coordinating with local authorities to ensure that families remain in contact. I am certain you all have questions concerning this disturbance.”

  He pauses, scanning over the crowd once more. “At 8:30 p.m. satellite imagery and ground-based observatories detected a large field of meteor debris on collision course with Earth’s atmosphere. Ordinarily, such debris burns up on entry. However, several objects are large enough to survive atmospheric descent. Merely a possibility,” he assures everyone, “but as a precaution, the agency ordered Tempus evacuated.”

  “Meteorites?” a man questions from somewhere in the crowd.

  The FEMA agent nods. “Correct. We will update you all as information becomes available.”

  The crowd begins to buzz with questions, but the agent is already stepping away. I listen to some people around us chattering nervously as Tori, Dex, and I exchange glances.

  It’s 9:15 now, and soon we slip into the painful silence of just waiting. Everybody in the gymnasium is either afraid or confused. A handful of Blake and Tempus police officers eventually come through to distribute bottles of water and granola bars.

  Mom comes back shortly before 10:00, looking exhausted. She grabs a half-eaten granola bar from my hand and shoves it into her mouth.

  “Why didn’t you come home after school?” Mom asks me through a mouthful of food.

  “I was out.”

  “Out,” she repeats. “Out doing what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I came home from work and you weren’t there. You didn’t even text me.”

  “I was at the pawn shop,” I answer with a shrug.

  “Why?”

  I reach into my pocket and pull out the $700. I pass it to Mom, who looks at the money, confused. “I know we’re not going to make rent.”

  “Did you sell the Fender?”

  “It’s fine, Mom,” I say.

  She starts tearing up and I feel worse than ever. “It’s not fine, Caleb. You lo
ved that guitar.”

  “Dad would have done it. No questions.”

  She looks at me the way she does sometimes, sad and happy at the same time, and puts her hand on my cheek.

  “Caleb,” Dex interrupts, entirely oblivious to Mom’s tears. “Tori and I are going to go watch. Want to come?”

  “Watch what?” I ask.

  “Watch for the meteorites. There’s nothing else to do, right?”

  “It’s a natural disaster, Dex.” Mom frowns, grabbing another granola bar and starting to unwrap it. When she sees the expectant look on Dex’s face, her features soften. “Keep your phone on,” she orders me sternly.

  I follow Dex and Tori outside. There are still people and officers milling about, but Dex leads us out to the football field, where we climb the empty bleachers to the top row. The rain has tapered off into a mist that wets our faces as we gaze in Tempus’s general direction.

  “We’re not going to be able to see anything if it all burns up, right?” I ask.

  “No,” Dex shakes his head, droplets of water spinning from his slicked hair. “Not with the cloud cover. But if anything survives the atmosphere, we might see it pass the clouds.”

  We spend the next several minutes just staring quietly out into the dark.

  “I’m cold,” Tori says pointedly.

  “Few more minutes,” Dex mutters, unblinking.

  A few more minutes turns to five. Ten. Twenty minutes. Tori and I are about ready to call it and drag Dex inside.

  But then we see them.

  Lights in the clouds.

  They’re faint this far out, and small at first: dark red flickers that glow for a moment and disappear, like little lanterns in a heavy mist. The small flares increase in frequency, flashing through the sky.

  Tori has her phone out, sheltering it from the mist with one hand as she records the entire thing. “It’s sort of beautiful,” she whispers.

  It changes, though. One light becomes much larger than all the others. It burns brightly but it doesn’t flicker from existence. Instead, it breaks through the clouds and plummets down in a plume of fire, like a spear stabbed down through the clouds. Behind the first, more of these large, bright lights emerge into view. There are five of them now, burning like torches for the few seconds we can see them descending. We watch them falling quietly until they disappear over the tree-line to our west.