(okay stay)
—were the only sign of other life he'd seen since yesterday. He had to know where they'd come from.
He was careful, though. He grabbed the best weapon he could find—a little gardening fork from the garage—and eased the door open. The house was dark and quiet, the air a stale reminder of yesterday's air conditioning.
Todd didn't wait for him; he darted toward his room and his games. "My 3DS is still here," he reported from around the corner, "but the power's on red."
"Get back here," Alan ordered. "Don't run off like that, I told you."
"Can I plug it into the generator?" He ambled back into the living room, clutching his game system and looking pensive.
"Just... come here. I want to finish checking the house. Be quiet. No more running off until I say it's safe." Alan considered asking him to wait in the kitchen, or maybe even the car, but he didn't want him out of sight. There was probably no one in the house, but if there was, he didn't want to find out by having them take his son. "Stay close and stay quiet."
They went room to room. The house was clear. Alan went back to the car, brought the generator inside, and cursed.
"What?"
"It... needs gas."
"We have gas for the lawnmower."
"Yeah, I know, Todd." That wouldn't be enough.
He felt like an idiot. How had he thought it generated power? Magic? Where the hell was he going to get gas, with all the power out?
His own incompetence staggered him. His mind broke loose, a dog off its leash, and ran down the path of wild speculation.
Even if he got the generator running, then what? There was only so much food they could keep cold. Eventually nothing that needed to be cooled—meat, vegetables, milk, butter, nothing—would still be good. There were probably enough dry goods at the grocery store alone to keep them fed for years, but would those even stay good that long? And even if they would, did they have enough nutritional value to keep them from getting sick?
Supplement with vitamins, he answered himself. There are tons of them at the store. He didn't even know what vitamins they needed. Again, he felt the longing for his phone, for instant answers.
Fake it. Do your best. Or go to the library.
Fine, but how long could they survive that way? Years? Decades?
The concept was a brick wall. The escaped dog ran headlong into it.
It wouldn't be decades. They would be rescued. It simply wasn't possible that every human being on Earth had vanished. But if that were the case, then why just sit here? If there was somewhere to go, why not go there?
Because we don't know which way to go. Should we head to Canada, or Mexico? What if it hit all of North America, and we need to wait for someone from overseas? Are we going to sail a boat across the Atlantic?
He and Brenda had always told the kids: if you get lost in a store, don't move. Stand still and wait.
But what about the empty news desk? What about his failure to reach anyone in the country? What about—
Doesn't matter. We can't just go running like chickens with our heads cut off. We need to wait. Set up a signal on the roof. An entire human population just vanished. Someone will come looking. Make sure they see us; until then, survive.
"Okay." His hands were shaking. He rubbed his forehead, trying to get himself back under control.
Todd was oblivious, fiddling with the plastic handles on the generator box.
"We need more gas." Without power, none of the pumps would work. Where else could they get gas?
Something in his head clicked, some bubble of intuition fluttering up from his subconscious. There was gas everywhere; they were surrounded by it. Every car in the city was loaded with it. They just needed a siphon.
He grabbed Todd's shoulder. "Come on."
"What? Where are we going?"
"Back to the hardware store."
"Again?" The implicit accusation in his son's voice nearly triggered him, made him want to give up and scream. Even if he got the generator going, he was building a house with toothpicks, here. Did he really think—
But he couldn't afford hysteria; some part of him recognized that. Things were falling apart too fast. They had to get what they needed while they still could. There would be time for second-guessing later. He ignored Todd's incredulity and urged him to the front door.
When they stepped outside, he smelled smoke.
16
The black column to the west, over 610, was bigger—more of a wall than a line. They could see it from the house. When the wind shifted, the acrid stink was unmistakable.
Todd's nose wrinkled. "Ugh. What's that smell?"
"It's fire," Alan said. They got in the car.
"It smells bad."
"Yeah. We'll have to watch it." As he pulled out of the driveway, he caught a glimpse in the rearview mirror of something blue, moving.
He slammed on the brakes. Todd squealed, protesting the sudden stop, and Alan shushed him, eyes riveted to the mirror. It had been a flicker of a shirt tail, or a dog's collar; something alive. Just a quick flash. But it was gone now. It might have run behind the house.
"Wait here."
"What—?"
"Wait." He jumped out and ran around the side of the house, then to the back, and saw nothing. He checked under their deck, and both the backyard doors—the one up on the deck, and the one below, on the patio. They were locked.
"What the hell?" he muttered. He'd seen something moving. Maybe the wind, rustling the trees?
Yeah. Last time I checked, we didn't have any blue trees.
His desperation overcame his common sense. "Hello?" he shouted. "I saw you! It's all right! Come out!" Blue... maybe it had been jeans? "Come on!" He trotted farther into the backyard, peering at the other houses. "It's all right!"
Suddenly he thought of Todd, alone in the car. It was a trick. They got him. Whoever they were, they got him. It was some crazy, some nutcase who'd survived the attack like they had; or it was some kind of scout for the bad guys, who wouldn't hesitate to grab an unprotected child.
Alan bolted out of the yard, heart thundering. He'd told Todd a hundred times to scream if someone ever tried to take him. He would scream, and Alan would know.
Right?
"Todd!"
He was in the back seat, playing with some old Happy Meal toy. Alan tore his door open, panting. "Todd?"
"I found Vegatron," he explained. "He was under your seat. He can still shoot. Look." He squeezed a button and shot a foam pellet at Alan's shoulder.
Alan sagged. "Did you see someone?"
His son's grin faded. "No."
He rubbed his temple. You're losing it, Alan. Get it together. He looked around one more time, but the only thing moving was the smoke, drifting closer.
He got back in the car and started driving.
17
From the 610 bridge, he could see the fire.
It was a lurid glow, welling behind the western skyline. If it had started with a crashed car, it had since spread up the embankment and caught the trees, jumping from house to house and growing fast.
Todd didn't even notice it; he was captivated by his plastic robot, muttering to himself and periodically thumping against the back of Alan's seat. Alan didn't point it out.
There was no point in getting the siphon now. They couldn't go home. They had to get away from the fire.
Alan glanced east to gauge the road that way, and suddenly noticed how dark the eastern sky was. He was no storm chaser, but he'd lived in the midwest his whole life. He knew a wall cloud when he saw one. Yesterday's forecast came rushing back to him.
Fire on the left, tornado on the right.
"Shit," he breathed. Todd ignored him, still absorbed by Vegatron.
He needed to know which way the fire was spreading. He needed to know if it was safer to drive north or south. He needed radar, weather reports, a birds-eye view from a helicopter.
He needed his goddamn smartphone.
The glow of the fire paralleled them as he drove. It must have been fanning out, spreading in multiple directions. He wanted to go faster—his speedometer went past 100 mph, which should be able to outrun a storm or a spreading fire—but he was hamstrung by all the dead cars clotting the road. He had to crawl the car around them, rolling painfully over curbs and through parking lots, as the fire grew brighter on their left.
Todd looked up, suddenly returning to reality. "What is that?"
"That's the fire," Alan grunted. A glance in the rearview mirror showed Todd's face paling.
"Is it gonna get us?"
"No. We're almost at the river." The words surprised him; he should've realized it earlier. They were only a few miles from the Mississippi. If there was a better natural fire block than that, he didn't know what it was.
"Is it nighttime already?"
"Nope. It's just getting dark because of the storm." The clock in the dash said 3:14 PM. He flipped the headlights on.
Another hail stone clanged off the roof.
"Can hail put out the fire?"
"I don't know. It would sure be nice."
"Dad?"
"Yeah." The sky overhead had gone black. The sky to the left was red and pulsing. Alan thought of dragons and volcanoes; the mouth of hell.
"Vegatron can either shoot a missile or fight with his hands. But I was thinking if he had a cannon on his shoulder he could shoot missiles and fight at the same time. He could even grab an enemy and hold them still, then fire the cannon right in their face!"
The hail picked up, banging into the windshield, rattling the roof like a drum. They hit a mercifully clear stretch of road; as far as the headlights would show, the empty cars had drifted off the pavement. Thank God. He eased it up to 45, his eyes glued to the street.
"And if they tried to fight back, he could pull them into a bear hug. He is really strong, he has strong arms because they're made of metal, so when he—"
"All right," Alan said. "Okay. Shhh." His heart was its own generator now, humming in his chest, making every nerve thrum.
Then something exploded from that red glow to their left. A blast of fire curled skyward, the dragon belching flame. "Jesus," Alan said, every nerve screaming. "Okay. Christ."
"Dad!"
"It's okay," he lied. "It's all right." He brought the speed up further, pressing his luck to 60, but a sudden heap of tangled cars loomed out of the blackness. He hit the brakes.
Nothing happened. The tires slid on the hail without slowing.
He let the brakes go and eased them left, over the opposing lane and into the shoulder. The wreck flashed past; then an overturned pickup truck leapt into the headlights. He didn't hit it and ricochet into the ditch, spinning and screaming through a nightmare of shattering glass. Instead he eased right again, back into the lane.
"Okay." His hands were shaking like branches in a windstorm. "Just get to the river. Get across the river." He didn't know if he was thinking it or saying it.
Another explosion went off, smaller than the first but somehow even more ominous. Todd let out a startled scream. "It's okay. It's all right. Just close your eyes. We're almost there." A cross street swam out of the darkness, littered with tangled metal and broken glass:
West River Road. He felt an instant of relief, immediately smothered in horror. The bridge wasn't here. He knew that. It was two miles west, along the river. Two miles toward the fire. And it was on 169, a major highway. The whole thing would be a disaster, impassable, maybe in flames itself.
Shit! That gibbering panic kicked the door open, burst into his skull, and lit a fire of its own. Shit shit shit!
So we get out of the car, he screamed over it. Run for the river from here. Cross it on foot.
Really? He threw back at himself. How deep is the river here? Do you even know? Todd couldn't swim yet, and Alan couldn't carry him. And there was a storm coming.
They needed a bridge.
Turn east. 169 isn't the only bridge over the river. No, but the other one was even farther away, and it was on 610, which would be just as bad as the 169 bridge.
The hail was slanting left, bouncing off the pavement and into the ditch. That meant the wind was blowing toward the fire. That would slow it down. Right? Wasn't that how it worked?
Todd had his hands over his ears, wincing, his eyes pinched shut.
Alan turned toward the fire.
18
The wreckage began before they could even see the bridge: cars hurled against each other like rocks on a beach. He drove around it as long he could—picking his slow way over the shoulder, arcing down into the ditch—but that soon grew impossible.
He stopped the car, threw it in park.
"All right, Todd, listen to me." His son's eyes were riveted to the front windshield, fastened to the brilliance of the wildfire. It had to be less than a mile away now, looming just behind the trees. "Todd. Look at me."
His son blinked as if just realizing Alan was there.
"We're almost at the bridge, but there's too many cars to drive there. We're going to do like we did yesterday, when we walked across the street. Remember?"
"Yeah."
"You stay right with me. Do exactly what I say, exactly when I say it. Please. Can you do that?"
"Yeah." The word hitched, spiraled upward into a moan of fear.
"All right." When Alan opened his door, the heat of the wildfire hit him like a furnace blast.
Too late. The air was breathable, but hot. We're too late. We're going to die out here.
He tore his son's door open and pulled him out. They fought their way across the street, then cut through backyards and parking lots, making their slow way toward the bridge.
"Dad, we're going towards the fire! The fire's right there!" Alan hauled him forward, scrambling around lawn chairs, clambering over fences. Hail crunched beneath their feet.
"It's okay." The fire's crackle was a roar now; Todd might not have heard him. "It's okay." An answering crack of thunder exploded behind them, threatening to split the Earth in half.
Todd jerked away and dropped to the ground, clutching his ears and wailing. Alan scooped him up and kept running. They hit a bend in the road and started angling north toward the bridge.
A tree across the street burst into flames.
We should have stayed at home. We should've gone to the basement. Better to burn there, to die with Brenda and Allie.
Alan's arms were giving out, his back burning. He couldn't carry his son any more.
They reached the bridge.
The wreckage there glittered with the fire's reflection, hell spilling from every shattered windshield and headlight. But it wasn't on fire itself. And there was—
oh God oh thank God
—a wall of concrete dividers, making a walkway for pedestrians, that was largely intact.
"Todd!" His throat cracked from the heat. He put his son down before his arms gave out and pointed at the bridge. "There! We're almost there!" He jerked the boy into a run.
Forty feet in, an Accord had crashed over the divider and through the bridge rail, blocking the pedestrian walkway. The torn rail exposed the thrashing river, fifty feet below.
They could climb over the hood, but it was slick with hailstones and angled toward the water; the car's rear end was suspended behind the overturned divider, its front tires barely clinging to the edge of the bridge.
That left a tiny crawlspace under its midsection. "Under! Go under!" Alan dropped to his stomach and wriggled under the car, stealing looks back to make sure Todd was following. Each fevered glance brought him a flash of the frothing river, two feet to his right.
The car creaked above them, buffeted by the wind. An instant of bad luck and it would collapse, crushing them as it rolled over the edge, maybe breaking off a chunk of the bridge and dumping them into the river. Then
he was out, turning back for his son. He grabbed his hand and pulled. Todd howled.
"I'm stuck! I'm stuck on something!"
"Todd, come on! Just pull!"
"I can't!"
The trees they had passed minutes before were now aflame. The wind picked up, shrieking out of the darkness, and the fire fell back.
Alan dove back under the car. Todd's shirt had caught on a torn chunk of metal. He slipped it loose and hauled him out. They tore across the bridge as the wind crescendoed.
On the river banks below, trees bent nearly sideways. One came loose, hurling itself into the river.
Then they were across.
Here, the street was nearly clear of traffic. Alan saw a house across the road and pulled Todd that way. They bounded up the front steps as the wind screamed. He threw the front door open and ran inside. In a flash of lightning, he saw a dusty old living room, threadbare carpet, leaning furniture.
"The basement! Find the basement!" The wind barged in through the door behind them, hurling the empty clothes that had been on the living room floor into the little kitchen in the back. Another flash of lightning and he saw a set of stairs winding upwards, with a door set under its landing.
The front windows erupted with tree branches as they made the door, showering the carpet with glass. The branch leaves bucked and heaved, grasping. Alan turned his back to them and yanked the door open.
The stairs to the basement were dead black. Alan slammed the door, plunging them into darkness.
"I can't see!" Todd shrieked. "Where are we?"
Alan pulled him along, slipping and running down the stairs to a landing, then feeling his way around in the dark to more steps. At the bottom he tripped and fell. His hands scraped cold concrete.
He scooted back until he felt the wall behind him. Then Todd clutched at him, his head buried in Alan's chest, rocking and wailing as a leviathan tore the world apart.
19
He dreamt about THE GAME.
He was in the basement, of course. He was always in the basement. He had been there so long that the outside world had become merely a vague idea, something to be glimpsed through the hazy window of his computer screen or heard crackling in the audio of a YouTube video.
Todd Page 4