by Rob Heinze
The people up the beach continued to swarm towards the wash of the ocean. He couldn’t believe how many there were. Some had come naked; others were shedding clothes as they walked forward, stumbling as they did so. In the insanity there was no emotion, no clarity on their faces: they were robots, thoughtless, produced to complete one single function, which Colin Redman was unfortunately privy to see: copulate.
“Holy fucking shit,” he breathed.
He could not move. The pressure his hands put on the binoculars grew, forcing the lens painfully into his eye-sockets. He didn’t notice. There seemed to be no order to the swarming, no plan, no rehearsal: up and down the three-mile stretch of Bay Isle beach the world’s largest and most perverse orgy took place. Colin, shaking now and sweating, pulled his binoculars to the right, back towards his beach. It was much less populated, which made what he saw so much worse. He knew these people! They were his neighbors! More people spilled onto the beach.
He found Mrs. Parks, even if he didn’t want to find Mrs. Parks. She was engaged with some man he didn’t know in the shallows of the water, which washed around their ankles and circled them in foam.
Colin, in his horrified haze, thought of all those animal shows he watched on National Geographic. The animals’ expressions never changed, not even during intercourse, and here he saw those same dull, glazed-over expressions on people. The man was now done with Mrs. Parks and he moved—
“No! Oh, God!”
He was going to Mrs. Parks’ daughter, who was at least seventeen but still, God, what was going on, what was this?
He thought absurdly of the seagull, wondering if it was flying low up the beach and wondering the same thing.
The phone started ringing in his house, a high-toned ululation that he barely heard. He was watching the horror show on the beach. The answering machine came on and his attorney, Richard Dagnall, left him a message he didn’t hear and didn’t care to hear. More people came to the beach. He felt as if he were watching executions, deaths, murders. He pulled the binoculars up the beach, startled at the sheer volume of people.
Everyone in the fucking town’s down there, he thought.
Then, frightened, he thought: why not me?
It suddenly felt very important to him that he get his camera and film this. He practically threw the binoculars to the ground and raced inside. He was moving fast to the stairs, leaping down three at a time, slipping and landing on his rear and leaping up quickly again. He couldn’t find the goddamn camera! He went to the main closet by the front door, pulling hats and gloves and papers off the shelf on the top.
“Fuck! Where is it!”
Your phone, Jackass. Use your iPhone.
He spun and saw it sitting on the kitchen counter. He had been using his land-line when calling Richard Dagnall, and always kept his iPhone on the kitchen counter. He ran, grabbed, and hustled back upstairs. He burst out onto the balcony, half expecting—hoping—to see an empty beach. It wasn’t. While the influx of people had ended, the beach was absolutely filled with naked human bodies engaged in some absurdity. He went to the camera on the iPhone, switched to camera (damn thing so slow to make that change from photo to video!), and then hit record. He somehow felt relief when he heard the little ding indicating that the camera was ready.
“This is what I am seeing,” he said, breathing heavily. “Out of nowhere. I was just out on the balcony, and all these people…they start coming to the beach…and doing this.”
He lifted the phone so it could see far up the beach, capturing the volume of The Swarm.
“It…it looks like all of Bay Isle is here. But I’m not.”
He turned the camera around, filming his flushed, wide-eyed face.
“I’m Colin Redman. I am not part of this.”
He turned the camera back to the beach. “I am not sure what this is. The people…they’re not people now. They’re not people.”
He didn’t know what to say, so he just ran the camera, anxiously and nervously waiting to see what the outcome of this was. He took his binoculars and put them to his eyes with one hand while holding the iPhone up with the other.
By the time The Swarm ended, the iPhone would show a total of 35:27 minutes.
###
Dawn Thompson drove up the street as quickly as she could. She came to Bay Avenue intersection and stopped. What she saw made her utter a tiny exclamation: people were swarming across the street. She didn’t know what to do. She turned left, blinker on, and drove down the street slowly. The people in the street didn’t move, didn’t even seem aware a car was on the road.
They’re zombies, she thought.
Finally the people had crossed, and from a bird’s eye view, the mass of people gave the impression of water pouring down the streets of Bay Isle towards the beach. Dawn was now behind The Swarm, and she drove quickly to her husband’s office, speeding into the parking lot and parking in two spots. She got out, left her keys in the car, and ran into the building. The reception area was empty. The elevator was open, and unoccupied.
He’s not here, she thought.
She went into the elevator anyway and depressed the button for the 3rd floor. The elevator doors slid closed painfully slow and Dawn moved back and forth to combat her living anxiousness while the elevator rose. She practically pushed the doors open before they had a chance, and she was out and rushing down the hallway. Paul’s office was a small suite with only another office, a conference room, bathroom and reception area. She found it shut, praying that someone would be inside but knowing they wouldn’t be. She burst into it, and found it empty.
“Paul? Paul!”
His office was on the right, the door open and the light on. She went into it. He was not there. His sunglasses, which he wore everywhere, were on his desk. His computer was on. She went around and saw the Microsoft Outlook was open and the Inbox had 4 unread messages. Then she saw his cell phone, somehow like a tombstone, on his desk.
Then he had become a part of it...whatever it was.
She left the office as quickly as she had entered, taking the steps over the elevator. She burst out into the sunlight and leapt into the car. She accelerated out of the spot, then stopped.
Where was she going?
“I don’t know,” she told herself.
The streets were empty. Cars, abandoned, idled on the road at stop lights, which turned red, green, yellow and red with no one to obey them. She could not see people; they had moved up the streets.
I’ll follow them, she told herself.
She got into the car and sped forward, peeling into the street from the curb. She had to swerve around idled, abandoned cars. She started to feel guilty that she hadn’t gone to Church in a few years. She had been raised Roman Catholic and her parents had gone to church every Sunday, even on vacations, but she hadn’t gone since she’d moved on and out.
Is it time to pray? Is this some terrorist attack, or mind-fuck from above?
“Not yet,” she breathed.
She made a sharp left down a side street, heading east now towards the beach. Bay Isle roads were very much like New York City roads; the streets ran east to west and the avenues north to south. She had chosen this side street randomly, not ever sure she had been down it. She could see the people moving now, blocks ahead of her. They had gotten far, but they hadn’t reached the beach.
“Where is everyone going?”
She slowed now, coming to a stop sign. She glanced to the right and saw a car—a moving car. It was coming down the road and on its roof were lights and those lights were flashing. It was a cop car. There was such a tremendous relief inside of her that she almost cried. She slammed the car into park, jumped out, and started waving her arms in the intersection. The cruiser was going very fast, and Dawn knew it wouldn’t stop.
He’s looking to the east, after the swarm.
She started to shout, waving her hands frantically. She could see his head now, clearly not looking at her.
Please! Please
!
The car zipped past her, and the driver’s head turned. The brakes squealed, and the rear of the car swayed as it came to a stop. The window came down and police Chief Ruggiero’s face gazed out. Dawn could tell it was questioning and cautious. She had never met the Chief, though she had seen his picture in the local paper.
“Are you okay?” He asked.
“Yes, I think, but my husband’s missing.”
“He’s not missing,” the Chief said, “he’s part of them.” He hiked his thumb back towards the beach and the moving swarm.
“What is happening to them?”
“I don’t know,” the Chief said, “But I am going up to see why they’re heading to the beach. You be safe.”
He started to close the window when she called out to him: “Chief, wait!”
He looked back at her.
“Can I come with you?”
He thought about it, but only for a moment. The truth was that he had no idea what was happening to everyone, and he had told the woman to be safe, but wouldn’t she be safest with him…the guy with the guns? If the people in the swarm suddenly turned aggressive, started attacking or whatever?
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s hurry.”
Dawn hustled back to her car, grabbed the keys and shut the door. She left it parked in the street despite the nagging urge to park it. She got into the passenger side, shut the door, and the Chief sped up the avenue.
“My husband was fine this morning,” Dawn said.
“Yeah, so were my wife, my two teenage boys, and my entire goddamn department.”
“Why are we not…part of it?”
“I don’t even know what it is, and something tells me that, whether we’re walking up with them or not, we are part of it…and we’re going to be part of it.”
The Chief had been Chief of the Bay Isle city police force for seventeen years. He knew the town like he knew his house. He had never dealt with anything too crazy save for a couple murders, traffic fatalities, couple drownings and once suspected arson at a restaurant. Unlike the rest of Jersey Shore towns, Bay Isle did not have a boardwalk and it was a “dry” town. No establishments were permitted a liquor license to sell or distribute alcohol. It had always been the goal of the Bay Isle’s founders to offer a vacation getaway for non-vacationers, if that made sense. The scarce few developments that had actually been able to obtain construction permits consisted of extravagant mansions along the waterfront on either bay or ocean side. There were also low-key condominium units along the east-side of the island. It was a sleepy town—a relaxing town, as it should be—and the property values for the founders who owned a significant amount of the land had sky-rocketed and was now astronomical. Families didn’t want to go to Seaside Heights and be stuck with their kids among all the guidos and guidettes that came down from Staten Island, NY to drink, fight and fuck. That was fine for Seaside Heights, but it was not okay for Bay Isle.
Despite his lack of experience in this venue, Chief Ruggiero’s gut told him this was going to snow-ball even after it was over…if it did end.
The Chief turned the cruiser down a street, heading due east. They could see the beach hinted at as an open space at the end of the tunnel-like road. The swarm was still moving, some on the sidewalk, some in the street, and the Chief had to maneuver the car onto sidewalks to pass them.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said.
“They’re not harmful, are they?”
“I think only to themselves. Look, I could run them down and they wouldn’t care.”
He honked the horn as he came to an impasse with four people walking in a row. He couldn’t go around them, but had to inch along until they crossed an avenue, then the Chief sped around them and continued down the street.
“It’s like a zombie movie,” Dawn said.
“Huh?”
“It reminds me of a zombie movie.”
The Chief didn’t answer. He was within two blocks of Ocean Avenue, which was the main drag up and down the east side of the side. From Google Earth, there is a north-south stretch of dunes just on the east of Ocean Avenue. On the left, there are mostly large, obnoxious houses with three-floors and balconies dotting each door and window. The largest of the houses were on the south end of the island, where some software guy used it as a second home and another rich real estate guy, Parks, lived. They were about three-quarters of the way up Ocean Avenue, and the Chief drove towards the line of municipal parking spaces, about half of them full, and parked the car. He reached to the dashboard and unlocked the shotgun from its holster. Dawn had gotten out of the car, and when the Chief emerged holding the shotgun, her face went a shade paler.
“Just in case.”
“Okay.”
The Chief’s driving had actually put them in front of The Swarm, and as they stood there, the people started to emerge from the side-streets. The sound of their foot-falls grew louder, and it made Dawn shiver. It was very obvious they headed for the beach, their density growing as they funneled onto the boardwalk beach accesses. Looking up and down the street was like watching a dream, Dawn thought.
Dawn’s next thought, which came completely of its own accord, made her whole body cold.
“Chief?”
He looked to her, and she, too, could see the befuddlement on his face.
“What if they…what if they don’t stop?”
He didn’t seem to understand the implication.
“What if they walk right into the ocean?”
The way they were moving, oblivious to anything, the Chief had a horrible feeling that that would be the outcome. That thought had never crossed his mind. He couldn’t answer Dawn. Instead, he turned and started to run up the access directly in front of him, knocking staggering people out of the way. He wouldn’t be able to stop it. He wouldn’t be able to stop them from walking into the ocean and drowning. There were too many. Thousands of people would drown, his family, his friends, neighbors: the ocean would become a waving waterbed of bodies, grotesque and non-compliant with reality. He would watch all these people die.
Dawn was running behind him, but he barely heard her footsteps.
###
Calvin Wrigley and Rex Torres got out of the BMW just before Chief Ruggiero picked Dawn Thompson up for a ride.
Rex moved in quick bursts that seemed to be the exclusive movement of small, short men. In the trunk he grabbed his trauma bag and ran over to the older lady. He crouched down and felt for a pulse. There was no thought of fear in his mind: he had fallen into the rhythmic motions of his job. Pulse was steady if not a little slow. Respirations: check. A little shallow. She must have had one hell of a fright.
“She okay?” Calvin asked.
“Did she hit her head? When she fell?”
“I don’t think so.”
He tried to remember the way she had fallen; she had just sort of flopped down, as if depressurized.
“I thought all she need were those smelling salts,” Calvin ventured.
Rex reached into his bag, searched for a minute, and pulled out a tiny tube. He showed it to Calvin.
“Got them.”
He cracked the seal and put them, carefully, under the lady’s nose. She gagged awake after a few moments of passing the vial back and forth under her nose. She saw them, confused, and they told her she had fainted. Then something seemed to register in her mind.
“I hit that guy,” she said.
“Yes,” Rex said.
“He wasn’t supposed to be walking there. Why was he walking in the water?”
“It’s wetlands,” Calvin said. “I watched the whole thing. Left his jet-ski overturned in the shallows. I saw you coming, tried to wave you down, warn you.”
“I was driving fast. I was trying to get out of town.”
“Police Chief says everyone’s acting crazy,” Calvin ventured.
The woman’s eyes were wide. “I thought they were going to kill me. They were all coming towards me, determined but
with no expression of determination. Does that make sense?”
“They were like robots?” Rex said.
She nodded. “But robots not made by humans.”
“Okay,” Rex said.
“What’s happened to everyone?”
“We don’t know,” Rex said. He looked back up to Calvin. “We should probably take—” Then he looked back to the lady. “I’m sorry, Ma’am, what’s your name?”
“Linda. Linda Davis.”
“I’m Rex. This is Calvin. I’m a doctor, and Calvin works on the bridge…”
He pointed back towards the bridge. Linda Davis sat up, head swimming momentarily, and gazed towards the bridge. She saw that it was sticking up like a black pillar, marring the blue sky.
“Why’s it up?”
“Chief’s orders,” Calvin said. “Until he can figure out what’s going on.”
“Oh, God. I was just down visiting friends for the weekend…I just want to go home. Can’t you let the bridge down so I can go home?”
Calvin moved a bit on his feet, as if to dance away from the question. Rex saw his hesitation and he thought that, had Calvin been alone, he might have let the woman flee. But then he would have to explain to the line of cars on the other side of the bridge why they couldn’t pass the other way.
“I think you need to go to the Medi-Merge, just for a quick MRI.”
He realized that the Cape May County hospital was on the other side of the bridge. The Medi-Merge was the next best thing, though he wasn’t sure they even had MRI capabilities there.
“Why?”
“To make sure you didn’t hit your head when you fell,” Rex said.
“I didn’t. I mean, nothing hurts. I just want to go home.”
There’s also the matter of the man you hit, Rex thought. But he didn’t want to tell the woman that: he felt that might send her over the edge. Her eyes, too wide, reminded him of caged animals that had almost broken themselves free.
“I know,” Rex said. “Me too. But I think we need to take you for an MRI.”
“Back into town?” She asked, eyes widening.
Don’t escape, please don’t come out, Rex thought, watching her eyes.
“Yes,” Rex said.