by Jeff Wood
***
A drive-in movie theatre screen watches over an abandoned lot. Weeds and small trees muscle up through the cracked concrete between rows and rows of old car-park speakers.
An all-white, very white unmarked ice cream truck is parked at the back of the lot by the concession stand, a small cinder block building.
Samson emerges from the building in an overcoat and mirrored sunglasses. He locks up and crosses the lot to his truck.
He cranks the ignition, turning it over several times before it catches and fires to life. He breathes into his cold hands, rubs them together, and waits for the engine to warm up. He’s scruffy but handsome, with a huckster’s jawline.
***
A small corporate banquet room suitable for semi-intimate business luncheons. 10 round tables are covered in white tablecloths. Each table is set only with empty water glasses.
A young woman is alone in the room. Simone is in her mid-20s. She wears a cater-waiter’s tuxedo uniform and is naturally pretty but pale beneath the fluorescent lighting and lite music floating down from the banquet room ceiling.
She moves from table to table, circling each table, filling glasses with ice water from translucent plastic pitchers. She moves with care and painstaking attention, not with the quick mechanization of a jaded veteran caterer, but as if a great effort were required just to be in the room in the first place.
Water and ice pour from pitcher to glass, clinking and singing like sensitive teeth.
***
Brown winter grasses sweep across the crotch of an exit ramp. Cars speed along the freeway in heavy streams of flowing traffic.
Jonah stands in the gravel along the side of the road, just a few short yards from the commuter cars whizzing by. He works with a land surveyor’s prism rod, a metal staff about six feet tall. He holds the rod vertical to the ground as if he’s planting a flagpole. His walkie-talkie squawks—
GUNNER
(radio)
Good. Got it. And… let’s add 10 and we’ll shoot ’er again.
Jonah un-plants the rod, turns, and walks in the gravel, counting out paces alongside the busy highway. His radio squawks again.
GUNNER
(radio)
Stop. Good. Let’s shoot it.
He plants the surveyor’s rod in the gravel. He wraps his hands around the spirit level and eyes-up behind the prism. The prism is a golden mirror at the top of the rod used for reflecting a surveyor’s laser.
GUNNER
(radio)
Shooting…
Commuter traffic whips by Jonah as he holds the rod steady. The golden prism shimmers in some brief light.
GUNNER
(radio)
Got the shot. Whoop, hang on. Something’s funky here.
Jonah looks out across the gray suburban expanse. The rooftops of houses sprawl endlessly toward the horizon of gauze and ozone.
He pulls a small black notebook out of his back pocket and scribbles down some notes.
***
Simone stops pouring water. She stares at the table, absorbed in some singular thought spread out across the white tablecloth.
The glasses on her tables begin to shake a little, ice clinking gently against cold glass.
***
In his kitchen, Robert takes a couple sips at his coffee. He sets the cup down on the table and hesitates over something, preoccupied. Then he rises and leaves the room for a moment. The ceiling fan slowly stirs the room, eerily animating the empty space.
Robert returns with a double-barrel shotgun. He sits down and loads two shells into the 20-gauge. He lays the shotgun across his lap and sits stoically at the table, waiting and thinking.
He takes his pulse, feeling the loud rhythm of his own beating heart.
***
The heartbeat is pounding.
On the side of the freeway, scribbling notes into his book, Jonah pauses and looks out across the city again. Traffic races behind him.
Strangely, all the cars slow down to a crawl and then stop. They begin honking impatiently until all the honking becomes a single stacked chord of overtones and undertones.
Then the honking suddenly stops.
In the eerie quiet, all the passengers are looking out their car windows in unison, like an audience at the theatre. Jonah turns and watches them all gazing out from inside their cars at something on the horizon.
***
In the parking lot of the drive-in theatre, Samson’s truck dies. He turns the key, cranking and grinding the starter but the engine won’t catch.
***
Robert turns the shotgun around and inserts the end of the barrel into his mouth. A piercing tone breaks across his kitchen radio.
***
Out in the suburban street, the two children look up from their chalk drawing as a bright red cardinal passes quickly overhead.
***
Alerted by something unseen, the herd of morning deer suddenly raise their heads from grazing.
***
Jonah turns to face the horizon and quickly covers his face as a flash of blinding white light and a thunderous detonation emanate from somewhere out on the hyper-urban sprawl.
He lowers his hands to see a mushroom cloud forming above the rooftops in the distance.
***
From inside his truck, Samson looks up at the outdoor movie screen in disbelief.
A reflection of the mushroom cloud is exploding in broad daylight on the blank, white screen.
***
The mushroom cloud soars and spirals over the low-slung skyline, a geyser of fire slowly unfurling like a proud peacock, ferocious and beautiful.
Jonah watches the spectacle.
The exploded cloud almost seems to hold its form, like a tactile sculpture, a cobra accumulating mass and power. Fire in the sky, dazzling colors of unearthly devastation above the monochrome metropolis.
And then it unleashes.
Looking down on the city, shock waves radiate in concentric circles from the center.
The city is overtaken by monstrous sound and fury as a wall of atomic fire rolls across the grid. Neighborhoods are annihilated by the shock wave. A sea of rooftops, fences, and vinyl siding is obliterated.
***
Old-man Robert is blown away by a blistering atomic wind, the molecules of his body blurring colorfully into the drizzling wallpaper of his kitchen.
***
Out in the winter field, the wild deer flash transparently, all skeleton and antlers, exterior shells disintegrating.
***
The cowgirl and the Indian boy evaporate.
***
The windshields of cars shatter like fine crystal as the shock wave rolls down the highway, an aria of glass exploding across the legion of commuter cars.
On the side of the road, Jonah watches the sonic wave rolling toward him.
And he is consumed—
JONAH
Wait.
The Apocalypse pauses.
Jonah stands in a calm field of white light, a blinding brightness glistening and radiating between two worlds.
He searches in the luminescent fog like a blind man. Wide-eyed, looking at his hands and his body, a body of whirling molecules and orbiting atoms. Music, strange and gentle, soft bells and singing glasses. Beautiful, serene light—
—and then it’s gone, fast, sucked out of the atmosphere, and Jonah is standing on the road, a charred skeleton.
Behind him, cars and bodies sit frozen, seared and smeared on the road, smoking like a Day of the Dead still life. Showers of shattered window glass hang in mid-air.
For a moment, the road is quiet and still.
Then the scene collapses. The windshields of commuter cars fall back into place like puzzle pieces.
Jonah’s molecules reassemble, swirling into form.
And as though flowing toward some massive vacuum, the apocalyptic sequence reverses. Shock waves radiate back toward the center of the city and suburbia reconstruc
ts itself.
***
In the banquet room of the Convention Center, ice water flows in reverse, pouring up and backward into the pitcher in Simone’s hand.
***
The mushroom cloud implodes, retreating into its source. And in a flash of light the compression is complete.
***
Jonah clutches painfully at his left arm and looks around himself in shock at what may or may not have just happened.
A stream of commuter traffic flows smoothly behind him.
He looks out across the suburban expanse and his radio squawks.
GUNNER
(radio)
Got the shot. Whoop, hang on. Something’s funky here.
Up the road, a weathered Chevy Suburban is parked in the gravel with Jonah’s work crew.
Gunner is a rounded bear of a man. A thick mustache hangs beneath a formidable snout on his red-cheeked and chinless face. He stands out in the cold behind the scope of a surveyor’s laser gun mounted on a tripod.
Sue, on the other hand, is wiry, angular, and razor-clean. Easily chilled, he sits in the heated truck working out calculations with his engineering charts.
Separated by the truck window, the two men speak to each other with two-way radios even though they are only a few yards apart.
SUE
(radio)
What’s up, Gunner?
GUNNER
(radio)
Dunno. Hang on… There we go. Good to go. Must’ve had a bug in the gun.
SUE
(radio)
All right, let’s shoot the next one.
GUNNER
(radio)
Yeah. Good. Shooting.
***
Robert has the end of the shotgun barrel in his mouth.
The radio whines a piercing tone.
RADIO VOICE
This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test. In the event of an actual emergency—
Robert slowly backs off the shotgun, placing it gingerly on his lap. He gets up and switches off the radio. He listens to the silence in his kitchen. He looks up at the ceiling fan.
The fan is no longer spinning around.
***
Samson is grinding the ignition and racing the engine of the ice cream truck. Startled, he releases the key and takes his foot off the gas.
He sits back and allows the engine to settle, perplexed at the lost moment. He takes off his sunglasses and looks up at the blank movie screen. It is looming, but blank.
Then he throws a switch on the dash. A clumsy ice cream melody trips across the lot. Sam throws her into gear and pulls away.
***
Robert steps out onto the back patio to get some air. He stands on the cold concrete pad, in his bathrobe and bare feet, shotgun at his side, gazing out across the frozen farm field. He spies the small herd of deer and the 12-point buck and watches them foraging at the ground.
Out in the field, the deer scatter at the booming of a shotgun blast.
***
Simone is staring at the white tablecloth with a pitcher of ice water in her hand.
MR. STEVENS
Good morning, Simone.
Startled, she shrieks and spills a glass of water across the crisp new table setting. Standing across the room by the door is Mr. Stevens, a gaunt and imposing minister of a man in a tuxedo.
SIMONE
Darn it. Good morning.
MR. STEVENS
How we doing in here this morning?
SIMONE
Okay. Pretty good.
MR. STEVENS
Super.
He gives her a thumbs-up.
MR. STEVENS
Keep up the good work.
Mr. Stevens exits.
Simone catches her breath and looks back down at the wet tablecloth that now needs to be changed and reset.
***
Robert stands in his dull, dim living room with the shotgun at his side. The living room is perfectly ordered and composed, virtually unlived-in. He looks around the room, lost, as if he’s unsure whose house this is, or what to do about it, as if he’s never been here before.
He takes up a framed photograph from an end table and considers it impassively. He moves to the front window and peers through anemic, translucent curtains. He fingers the coarse, thin fabric and lets it drop, scanning the room for a familiar sign or indication.
***
Samson pulls into a sprawling parking lot. He parks the truck, hops out, and crosses the lot toward the entrance to a mega-supermarket.
Inside the epic super-store is a colorful explosion of radiant products and packaging lined up like the codified end of evolution. 300 different kinds of cereal. Aisle after aisle of everything that you could ever need, for what’s left of the entire family. There’s a striking absence of elevator music. Oddly, the store is nearly deserted.
Sam pushes a shopping cart into the massive store, rattling the wheels from aisle to aisle, moving through the consumer paradise. He turns down an aisle and finds what he’s looking for. He fills his cart with boxes of instant hot chocolate.
He turns to leave and then he sees something—
A mud man is standing at the end of the aisle, staring at him. The mud man is naked to the waist and covered in pale mud paint, like a ghostly aboriginal. The man also looks remarkably like Samson. The two stare at each other for a moment, like mirror images.
Sam turns and quickly pushes his cart down the aisle in the opposite direction. He walks back through the store, passing aisle after aisle. The mud man mirrors his steps, at the far end of each aisle. Sam watches him as they move together, spellbound by the strange and synchronous apparition.
Then he cuts into a checkout line and unloads the contents of his cart onto a conveyor belt.
III
A sledgehammer comes down hard onto a wooden stake, driving it several times into the cold, hard earth.
Jonah pulls off one of his gloves and places a small metal tack on top of the wooden stake.
His radio squawks.
GUNNER
(radio)
Right just a little. Little more. All right, good. Let’s shoot it there.
Jonah adjusts the tack as instructed and taps it into the top of the stake with his hammer. He pulls his glove back on and grabs the surveyor’s prism rod. He places the spear-like tip of the rod onto the concave head of the metal tack and holds the rod level and steady.
GUNNER
(radio)
Shooting—
He waits, his breath steaming in the cold, both hands concentrated on the surveyor’s staff.
GUNNER
(radio)
Got the shot. And— Good!
Jonah paces out a new distance, hiking over the hard-packed earth and counting out paces under his breath. The surveyors are at work, running a circuit out on a cold and bleak landscape. A large field has been razed for development. Nearby houses rise from the frozen mud and sprawl into the countryside.
Sue sits in the warm truck running numbers over his engineering charts with a pencil and an old calculator. Still separated by the truck window, Gunner and Sue communicate over their radios like astronauts on a lunar outpost.
GUNNER
(radio)
Okay, next set.
SUE
(radio)
Hang on. Gimme just a minute here.
Jonah pauses out on the field and considers the landscape about him, an arid enclave of brand new haunted houses, silent and brooding in broad daylight.
Gunner sips at some coffee and also observes the frames of houses in various stages of construction. Inanimate windows stare back at him, some empty and hollow, others darkened by new glass.
Sue works at his charts and numbers with pencil and calculator. Gunner interrupts him over the radio.
GUNNER
(radio)
Sue.
SUE
(radio)
Yes, Gunner.
G
UNNER
(radio)
You ever get uneasy out here?
SUE
(radio)
Out here where?
Gunner shoots him a look and raises his voice, emphatically, not bothering to use the radio.
GUNNER
Here.
Sue rephrases, obligingly.
SUE
(radio)
How do you mean, Gunner.
GUNNER
(radio)
I mean where in the hell is everyone? For example.
SUE
(radio)
Who?
GUNNER
(radio)
All these fucking people.
SUE
(radio)
They’re obviously not here yet.
GUNNER
(radio)
Either way, I don’t know how in the hell they live like this. I’ll tell you one thing, you unplug the mainline on these goddamn people and they wouldn’t last two seconds out here all frantic and helpless like little poodle dogs.
SUE
(radio)
That’d be a sight, wouldn’t it. Now just give me a second here.
Gunner kicks at the dirt and does his best to keep his mouth shut, his trigger-finger fiddling on the radio.
One window seems oddly placed on the side of a house, a single window on a wall of siding. A single dark eye.
Gunner lays back into the radio.
GUNNER
(radio)
I just think it’s pretty fucking weird that all of a sudden there’s twice as many houses as there was five minutes ago.
SUE
(radio)
All right, Gunner, let’s cut the chatter. I need to concentrate for a minute.
GUNNER
(radio)
But who are these people? What in the hell-God’s-name do they all do?
SUE
(radio)
They work, just like you and I do.
GUNNER
(radio)
No they do not work just like I do. They breeze into their little cubicles in forty dollar socks and write little memos about which interstate gets to run through whose family farm.
Jonah scribbles notes into his notebook, overhearing their conversation on his radio.
SUE
(radio)
All right, Gunner, I get the point. Now shut it.
GUNNER
(radio)
No, you do not get the point. The point is that—
SUE
That’s enough!