The Sound

by James Sperl

  She would have liked nothing more than to share her experience with the others, but she feared the truth of it would scare the bejesus out of everyone. Hell, it still freaked her out just to think about it. But to tell what she saw would have been to reveal how it came to happen in the first place, and Clarissa didn't want to bring down any more scrutiny on Valentina than she already had. It was enough that her friend had an addiction; she didn't need to be ostracized as well.

  The Sound waned and died, the cavernous horizon-to-horizon scrape sputtering to abrupt silence, just as it always did. Everyone in the truck breathed a sigh of relief.

  “God I fucking hate that noise,” Rachel said from the back seat. “It makes my skin crawl.”

  “Tell me about it,” Clarissa responded. She adjusted the rearview mirror to get a look at her friend. “The hairs on my arm are standing up. Look.”

  She returned the mirror to its previous position and held up her arm. Rachel leaned forward and rubbed it soothingly.

  “At least it's over for awhile.”

  Andrew fine-tuned the rearview mirror from his position behind the wheel.

  “I always think that each time I hear it will be the last,” he said, giving the mirror a cursory glance. “Then it happens, and it reminds me how worthless hope seems.”

  “But now we know things we didn't know before,” said Clarissa, attempting to inject the conversation with positivity. “And we're on track to hopefully learn even more. We've just got to stay optimistic. Right, Val?”

  When Valentina didn't answer, Clarissa pulled herself up from slumping to look at her friend.

  Valentina was out cold. Her head leaned against the window glass, and her mouth hung agape. A thin string of drool stretched from her bottom lip to her shirt.

  Clarissa shook her head: Here we go again.

  Leaning over the seat, she spoke directly to Valentina.

  “It's still pretty scary, huh, Val?” she said louder. Then, with even more volume, “Sure would be great if it finally stopped, right?”

  “Clarissa, what're you doing?” Rachel said quietly. “Can't you see she's sleeping?”

  “So it appears.” Clarissa cupped her hands around her mouth and nearly shouted, “Val, you awake?!”

  Valentina was a stone.

  “Jesus!” Andrew barked, hunching his shoulders in protest. “Is there a reason you're yelling?”

  “Just want to make sure my girl is truly out.”

  “Well, she is,” Rachel said.

  “Good.”

  Clarissa lurched into the back seat and snatched up Valentina's purse.

  Rachel recoiled from the sudden movement then gaped in shock. “Clarissa! What're you doing?”

  “What needs to be done,” she said, as she opened the purse. “Did you know she didn't sleep last night? I woke up several times to find her manically doing something: flipping through Kap's fashion magazines, pacing around the room—and it wasn't because she was raring to go. She's zonked now because she's coming down from something, and I want to know what.”

  Rachel struggled for a reply but had none.

  “Normally, I'm all about the rights of the citizen and invasion of privacy,” Andrew said. “But Clarissa's right. Valentina's becoming a danger to herself. And because of that, she's becoming a liability to us.”

  “But...but she's our friend,” Rachel said.

  Clarissa found Rachel's hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.

  “Which is exactly why I'm doing this.”

  She plunged into Valentina's purse. She knew she'd find something. Things had been too hectic, and Valentina was too preoccupied over the past day to take precautions and hide her stash. Besides, who carried a purse anymore? So it was no surprise when Clarissa's hand wrapped around something cylindrical. She pulled it out and sighed exasperatedly.

  A plastic amber pill vial. And it was half full.

  Rachel's eyes swelled at the sight of it. “What's in it?”

  “Don't know,” Clarissa said, working off the lid. “But let's find out.”

  She snapped off the top and upended the contents of the bottle into her palm. Red round pills the size of an aspirin spilled out. Stamped onto the surface of each were the letters “RR.”

  Andrew stole glances at her as she held up one of the pills for inspection.

  “What are those?” he said with a frown. “I don't know that I've ever seen a red pill before, legal or otherwise. Amphetamine?”

  “Not sure. But it would have to be, wouldn't it? They all say 'RR.'”

  Andrew's face fell slack. He looked at Clarissa with dire urgency and plucked one of the pills from her palm. He held it in his line of sight with the road while he drove.

  “Shit,” he said after a moment.

  Rachel was pressed up against the front seat. “What? What is it?”

  Andrew sighed. “RR. It's Road Rage.”

  Clarissa felt the blood leave her face. “Road Rage? Are you sure?”

  “No. But can you think of anything else RR could mean?”

  When Clarissa thought about it, the answer was, of course, no. Road Rage had enjoyed a meteoric rise to infamy in just a few short months. Most people believed its existence came about at the same time as the Sound, which made sense—rumor had it that the highly specialized drug was designed to allow people to avoid sleep.

  Its purpose always struck Clarissa as curious since people could no more avoid sleep than they could stop drinking water and expect to survive. The body required base care in the form of rest and nutrition to function. It was physiology 101. But rationality often took a backseat to fear when lives were at stake.

  Clarissa's only prior run-in with the drug happened six weeks ago while she had conducted a sweep of a looted Walgreens with Jon and Andrew. The store had been pretty well picked-over, but one never knew what got left behind, so they performed a full canvas that included the storage room. A trio of addicts had resided there, all of whom clung to the thinnest thread of life.

  Clarissa would never forget how they looked: emaciated and with eyes so bloodshot almost no white remained, the two men and one woman were shells of the human form. Ragged clumps of hair spotted their scalps, and horrible sores besieged their bodies. They twitched and flailed uncontrollably, their mind no longer in control of their functions. The smell in the room was a whole other matter.

  Upon seeing Clarissa, Jon, and Andrew, the more conscious of the three climbed unsteadily to his feet and staggered forward. At the time, what he bellowed to them in hoarse desperation made no sense. But some weeks later, when stories surfaced of a drug that “helped” people avoid the effects of the Sound, the word Clarissa heard bleated at her from the drug-addled man fell into retrospective step.

  Rage.

  They never told the others what they saw, particularly Valentina, who had already started to show signs of seeking out alternative solutions to sleeping. Everyone was already scared enough. Now, though, Clarissa wondered if that was a mistake. Perhaps if she had told her friend what she saw, if she had relayed every last gory detail of the toll Road Rage took on a person, then maybe Valentina would be in a different place. She may not have been any less frightened, but at least she might have been able to climb safely down from the slippery slope she perched atop.

  Orion.

  Clarissa had no doubt in her mind she obtained the pills there. Somehow, some way, she'd found a way to get them. They hadn't swept a home in more than a week—the periodic searches were obvious acquisition points for Valentina—yet her behavior had changed noticeably over the past day. Since Orion. She had come down hard before from binges in the past, having used traveling days to recover by sleeping for large chunks of time, but it was how she behaved last night that was different.

  Before Orion, her highs were an electric state. Her energy increased, and she had difficulty sitting still, but at nighttime, while everyone else slept, she was at least able to contain her chemically influenced behavior enough to all
ow people to get some shut-eye.

  Unlike last night.

  Valentina's vivacity seemed boundless as if she were unable to harness fully the synaptic signals her brain cranked out. Clarissa had never seen her so manic. Something was off. Different.

  Now she knew why.

  She studied Valentina, who hadn't so much as budged.

  Andrew glimpsed her. “So what're you going to do?”

  “I don't know,” she said, sighing. “But I think an intervention may be in our near future if we can't find a way to get a handle on it. Or her.” She faced forward and held the vial in front of her. “But I get it. I really do. The reality of what's happening to people, the...the terrifying mystery of where they all go...some days it's all I can do not to join her. But I know these things aren't the answer. We need to face what's happening head on, to attack the problem with a clear head, not turn inward and mentally dilute ourselves.”

  “Agreed,” Rachel said. “But what do we do right now?”

  “Well, for starters, we can do this.”

  Without another thought, Clarissa dumped the pills back into the vial, rolled down the window, and pitched it into the rushing wind. She watched it clatter to the ground in the side view mirror then bounce into a ditch.

  “Clarissa!” Rachel gasped. She clapped a hand over her mouth. “Val...Val's going to be crazy pissed when she finds out those are gone!”

  “Good. Then she can come ask me what happened to them, which she won't.”

  “You're hardcore,” Andrew said, grinning.

  “When you've been friends for as long as we have, hardcore's the only way to roll.”

  Clarissa returned Valentina's purse to its spot then rolled the window up. As the glass seated in the door frame, a sign announcing “Stonebridge” sped past. One issue gave way to the next.

  “What's our gas situation look like?”

  Andrew chuckled. “You read my mind. We're hovering just over half a tank.”

  “We traded a lot of fuel yesterday.” She plucked a Pennsylvania state map from a messenger bag, which Andrew designated map storage. She unfolded it and located Stonebridge in the index to learn its grid coordinates; then she hunted with a finger until she pinpointed it on the map.

  “Looks like it's ten or so miles off the road. And according to the map, the population is a little less than 2,000 people. Might be a good place to stop and give refueling a shot.”

  “I agree,” Andrew said. “We'll give it a look. Get on the horn and let the others know.”

  “Will do.” Clarissa reached for the walkie-talkie stowed beneath the dashboard and held it in front of her face. “Hey, you goofs, anyone there?”

  Andrew shook his head. “You'd get massacred by the radio community if they ever heard your over-the-air etiquette.”

  Clarissa rocked her wrist to pull the radio away from her face. “Yeah? Well, once people stop getting sucked through colliding planes of existence into unknown, physical locations on the other side of the universe, you can remind me to be concerned.” She stuck out her tongue and smiled.

  “We're here,” Evan's crackly voice came back.

  “Hey, Ev. How's everyone doing back there?” Clarissa turned around to look at the SUV that followed them and waved.

  “We're hanging in there, though my dad and I are having a disagreement about who the best director is. Was. Whatever.”

  “There's no disagreement!” Jon's distant voice bellowed. “It's Kubrick. End of story.”

  “Kubrick's an overrated ass bag!” Evan responded. “I mean, come on, ego much? Why does anyone need seventy takes to get a scene right? If a director can't get it done in ten, something's up.”

  “Better than that Arofartsky guy,” Jon responded.

  “It's Aronofsky, and he's got more talent in his little finger than Kubrick had in his whole pudgy body.”

  Clarissa grinned at Andrew and Rachel. She held the walkie-talkie out so each could hear it better. It had been awhile since anyone enjoyed live entertainment.

  “Oh, please,” Jon said. “Kubrick shoots movies about war and ghosts. That Arofartsky guy made a movie about ballerinas.”

  “It was more than just about ballerinas!” Evan barked. “And you know it.”

  “I don't know. Seemed pretty gay. And that's coming from a gay guy.”

  “Well, listen,” Clarissa interrupted through a giggle, “I just wanted to let you know that we're going to pit stop in Stonebridge and try for a gas run.”

  “Yeah,” Jon said. “We saw the sign. Sounds like a plan.”

  “Okay. See you in a few.”

  Clarissa returned the walkie-talkie to its spot then leaned back to watch the scenery through the window. It was beautiful through this stretch of road. Bushy trees swayed in a light breeze over lush green berms, which were months past due for a mowing. Patchy grey-white clouds hovered like plump blimps, the sun just peeking out from behind one of them and kissing the shimmering leaves with golden light. It was almost enough to make her forget that terrible things happened in the world.

  Almost.

  A red car approached from the opposite direction. Even before it zoomed past Andrew's truck, it was obvious that it traveled at a high rate of speed, much faster than was advisable for these roads where stalled and abandoned vehicles were commonplace. Moments later, a second vehicle raced after it.

  Hot on the first car's heels trailed a lifted Toyota Tacoma. Its wheels were half as tall as a man, and even though a guardrail separated opposing lanes of traffic, Andrew's truck still shimmied from the whoosh of displaced air as it rocketed past. Three men rode in the bed; each held a rifle. All three stared at Andrew's and Jon's vehicles.

  Clarissa and Rachel whirled around to stare at them through the back window as they passed, Andrew pinning his eyes to the rearview in clench-jawed anticipation. After several tense minutes ticked by, and it became evident the truck hadn't backtracked to follow them, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

  Stonebridge couldn't have come at a better time.

  They needed to get off the road.

  CHAPTER 43

  The tiny town of Stonebridge had exactly one gas station, which, as it turned out, was all they needed.

  Aaron's Food & Fuel was positioned just inside the city's limits and a good half mile or so from where “downtown” began. A standard gas-station-slash-roadside-micro-convenience-store, Aaron's boasted four pumps, three of which offered unleaded.

  Everyone knew not to waste time fiddling with the pumps. None had worked since most of the country lost power a few months back. Instead, they focused attention on the holding tanks.

  Cesare had become quite skilled at locating keys to locked reservoir access ports. In almost every situation where he and the others had come across a padlocked fuel door—an extremely rare occurrence—he was the one who managed to find the relative key. Today was no exception.

  Within minutes of pulling into Aaron's parking lot, Cesare tracked down a key ring inside a locked desk drawer, which he'd had to pry open. Five minutes later, the group fed lengths of crusted-over garden hose into the reservoir and filled up the vehicles and whatever empty containers they could find from around the property.

  From start to finish, the entire operation took twenty-seven minutes.

  Such a rapid procurement was highly unusual.

  The job hadn't only been effortless; it had been devoid of threat. That was not the norm. Everyone had grown accustomed to maintaining heightened levels of awareness and soaring on adrenalin rushes during a fuel run. It wasn't until they had filed back into the vehicles and cruised on down the road without incident did they consider a run successful.

  Today, however, hadn't required that same level of cognizance. Not a single car passed by on the road. No people, either alone or traveling in a group, meandered along the adjacent walk with wary, distrustful eyes. No distant gunshots or screams or menacing noises of any sort, for that matter, had sounded to raise heads in pulse-quickenin
g alertness.

  It was as if the entire town had disappeared.

  A quarter mile or so away from the gas station, a store sign loomed over the road. Nobody could make out the first of the two words on it, which was in tiny print, but everyone could read the second word “Market” just fine. With such tremendous success at Aaron's, the group made the unanimous decision to check it out and see what they could scavenge.

  Andrew and Jon drove the short distance to the market and pulled into the modest parking lot. Andrew coasted along the lot's perimeter, sizing up the store and the handful of vehicles parked scattershot around it. Jon followed at a close distance, mimicking Andrew turn for turn. They settled on a spot near the corner of the lot; each man backed his vehicle up against a cinder block wall, so both faced out. The location provided a clear view of two sides of the tiny grocery store.

  “Well?” Clarissa said, as Andrew put the car into park and idled. “We going in?”

  Andrew stared at the store. He passed his eyes over the exterior and tracked to the entrance and exit points of not only the building but also the lot. Clarissa should have known better than to expect an immediate answer before he conducted a reconnaissance. After a moment, he looked past her to Jon and gave a thumbs up, which Jon returned. They cut the engines. Everyone got out.

  The quiet was eerily oppressive and the first thing anyone noticed.

  “Man, where is everyone,” Evan said. “I've never seen a town this empty.”

  Andrew withdrew his rifle from the truck. “Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because you can't see anyone, there's no one here.” He twirled a concentrated three-hundred-sixty-degrees. “We could have eyes on us right now.”

  Elenora eased down from her seat with Cesare's help.

  “It is very strange,” she said. “I don't recall ever coming across a place as inactive as this. Do you think the people here have all been...?”