Todd

by Nicolai, Adam J

  We went South. Come find us.

  Love, Todd

  A surge of irritation almost makes him tear it up; a simultaneous feeling of pity for his son stays his hand. He grabs what he came in for—Brenda's cell phone, charged last night on a whim—and heads back outside.

  They've got an Expedition, freshly stolen from a neighbor down the road, loaded to the gills. It was even big enough to hold the generator. Alan feels like he's piloting a tank as he rolls it down the driveway. It's a gas guzzler, but they've got the siphon and a bunch of extra gas cans, and they really need the cargo space. There is no home base, now. They've only got what they bring with them.

  Todd cranes his head backward as they drive away. Alan steals a glance in the rearview just in time to see a lifetime of dreams—the house, the family, THE GAME—vanish.

  66

  Highway 35 shoots south all the way to Texas, but based on what he saw on 610, he expects it to be a disaster in the metro area. There are usually barriers on both sides of the highway there, and constant congestion. The crashed cars would have just piled up, making the route impassable.

  South of the cities, though, traffic was normally thinner and there were no walls on the highway. His plan is to get clear of the metro, making their way south however they can, and meet up with 35 where it will hopefully be more passable. Side roads are strictly plan B: they need to make the best time they can, and 35 will have the fewest turns.

  They haven't gone south since that first day, when they had to get out of the car and walk past 115th to Grandma's house. The fires have long since gone out, but 115th is still a tangled mess of plastic and steel. It diverts them east for nearly half a mile before Alan finds a spot clear enough to cut the Expedition through. From there, they're able to wend south through the city, meandering with the roads.

  Todd's face is glued to his window as they drive. The house has kept them insulated for the past few months, but now the nightmare's onslaught is constant: miles of empty cars, empty houses, empty shoes. A pair of grocery carts have inexplicably wandered across the street and are now tangled like lovers outside an abandoned apartment building; a mass of fluttering clothes is piled like a snowdrift against the post office's back wall. Alan tries to avert his eyes, but the sights are impossible to avoid. What are we doing here? he wonders again. How were we spared? Then, as they pick their way south on

  Zane Avenue, Interstate 94 stops them dead. He gets out to take a look, breath smoking in the cold. The highway is a river of twisted metal and shattered glass—a river he'd hoped to cross on a bridge. But just like the bridge they crossed in the storm months ago, this one is a mess of crashed cars. There's no way through in the Expedition. They could probably pick their way over it on foot and jack another car on the other side, but it would mean either leaving behind the generator and nearly everything else, or carrying everything over by hand, probably losing a day in the process.

  Todd gets out too, staring first at the bridge, than at the ruins below. He kicks a chunk of torn rubber over the edge. It bounces into the debris, which coughs up a puff of blue dust.

  They get back in the Expedition and pick their way east for 45 minutes to a choked-off underpass. Again, impassable. There are no more good options to the east, unless they want to try crossing the Mississippi. That went pretty poorly before.

  He knows of one more underpass, west of the first bridge they checked. They make their slow way back, crunching over the ruins of months-old car crashes, lurching tediously over yards and parking lot curbs.

  Less than a mile past the bridge, though, the landscape shifts to black. The cars become scorched husks, the yards a caustic mix of dirt and ash. Ruined trees jut toward the sky: the charred finger bones of buried giants.

  The windows are up, but an acrid stink seeps in. "Here," he tells Todd, as he grabs a cloth from the back seat. "Put this over your face." He has no idea how far the fire damage extends, and while they're in it, food and shelter will be impossible to find. But they're out of options. They can't go back.

  A trip that used to take fifteen minutes takes them nearly an hour and a half. At the end of it, the underpass is gone.

  The blackened skeleton of some kind of tanker truck lies contorted in the street. The 694 bridge, above, is shattered. Chunks of concrete as big as garbage cans litter the street.

  The devastation is nearly total. There are buildings with walls blown open, cars that are torn in half or twisted around naked steel beams.

  "Whoa," Todd breathes.

  "Keep that cloth over your face," Alan orders, pulling one to his own.

  He rewinds the scene. The tanker is passing overhead when its driver vanishes, maybe while completing a lane change. It plows through the bridge's concrete barrier, thrashing in an instant of freefall, before hurtling into the street. The tank tears open in a screech of steel.

  Boom.

  He wants to scream, to pound the steering wheel. They can't drive blindly into the fire zone. The wind was blowing west that night, meaning the fire probably spread much farther that direction; there's no saying how far. And heading west is pointless anyway. They need to get south.

  Fuming, he turns around and heads back to the Zane overpass. They'll have to walk.

  "Dad!" Todd jerks up a finger, pointing, and Alan sees it immediately: something drifting through the sky, far to the north. He slams on the brakes and peers that direction, squinting.

  "Is it an airplane?" Todd is contorting himself so much to get a good look, he has nearly climbed on to the dashboard.

  "I don't know." But even as he says the words, a cold certainty forms like a clot in Alan's stomach. It can't be an airplane. It's far too long and too slow. It has no lights.

  And something is falling from it, behind and below: a broad, dark curtain.

  Todd leans over to the steering wheel, lays into the horn. "Hey!" he screams. "Hey, we're over here!"

  Alan shoves him back. "Stop it! Stop! It's not an airplane!"

  "But what could—?"

  "Look at it, Todd! It's not a fucking airplane!" Todd again latches his eyes to the thing in the sky, and the color slowly drains from his cheeks. Abruptly, he switches on his game system and buries his face in it.

  Alan leaves the rest of the thought unsaid: that the thing in the sky must be something else, something the Blurs have made. It briefly occurs to him that they could turn north and chase it down to be sure.

  The thought lights a fire in him. He puts the Expedition in gear and takes off, more desperate than ever to find a way south.

  67

  Nearly an hour later, Alan jerks open the back cargo door and sees a load of items he considered essential that morning. He has decided that bringing everything is madness—it will take all day, and the next time they have to switch cars, it will cost them another day—but staring at the jumble of supplies, his mind is paralyzed. It tries to start the brutal process of choosing what to leave behind, and fails, over and over.

  Finally Todd pulls out his suitcase, and it knocks something loose in his father's mind. Can't take the generator, obviously. Take the siphon but leave the gas; take the can openers, leave the cans.

  Todd is rubbing his arms, his cheeks blooming. It is early afternoon, and only 40 degrees.

  "All right." Alan slams the cargo door, weighed down like a beast of burden. They pick their way over the bridge, find a little convenience store, and after a few minutes of searching for the keys, help themselves to a Volkswagen. The afternoon is a repeat of the morning—all stops and starts and detours—and the tank runs down to an eighth of a gallon, but at least they don't need to switch vehicles again. They are through Crystal and into Golden Valley, two cities south, when the sun starts brushing the building tops.

  Alan has been watching the rearview all afternoon, but he hasn't seen the thing in the sky since that morning. "Hey," he says, squeezing Todd's shoulder. The boy's 3DS died hours ago, and he's now staring out the window. "That thing we saw is gone. Okay?
I haven't seen it for hours now. I think it went the other way."

  Todd glances at him. "Okay. That's good." He shudders. "I don't like that thing."

  "Me neither." It is yet another change to their world that should leave them ruined, incapable of anything but terror. Instead, Alan pushes its memory into a box in his head and tries to soldier on. "Where do you want to sleep?" he asks. They were only able to carry two electric lanterns, but if they can find a small enough room, maybe they can keep the Blurs out of sight tonight.

  "Don't care."

  They're driving through a residential neighborhood, all cozy streets with little congestion. Alan chooses a house with no blue moss on it, and breaks a window. It's a nice two-story, suffused with the kind of comfortable mess their house used to have. The pantry has some canned green beans and corn, with stale, knock-off Cap'n Crunch for dessert. Dinner is served.

  Todd jumps onto the bed in the one of the upstairs bedrooms, and the mattress sloshes and rolls. "Whoa!" he cries. "What is this?"

  "Oh wow, a waterbed, huh?" Alan's surprised. He didn't know these things even still existed. It restores a little of Todd's natural exuberance; he can't resist crawling on it, rolling on it. At one point he backs up into the hallway, takes a running start, and hurls himself into a running leap. The mattress heaves, becoming a caged wave that sends Todd sprawling and grinning.

  It feels good to let the kid be himself, to not have to reprimand him for everything. If he breaks the bed, so what? They'll move to another bed for the night, and leave the house behind in the morning.

  While Todd plays on the bed, Alan notices a telescope, sitting on a tripod by the window. Suddenly everything clicks: the constellation map and the Curiosity poster, the Kim Stanley Robinson on the bookshelf. "We got ourselves a stargazer," he says.

  "What?"

  "A stargazer lived here. Look." He points at the telescope, and Todd scrambles over to it. This time, Alan does intervene. "Careful. Here. Want to try it?"

  The window faces east, so the sun is behind them. No risk there. He helps Todd get aimed at an early evening star and settles him in, peering into the eyepiece, but the boy is too squirrely to enjoy it. "Cool," he says, a minute later, and returns to rolling around on the bed.

  Alan gets the pair of lanterns set up well before dark. They don't throw as much light as the six he used to use at home, but the room is smaller; he's hoping it'll be enough to keep the Blurs invisible. As night falls, Todd's mood goes with it.

  They read some books. Todd snuggles against his dad's shoulder like he used to, and Alan feels the weight of his head like a million bricks. Too precious to drop, too heavy to support. Just when he thinks his son is asleep, the boy's voice cuts the silence.

  "Do you think we'll ever go home?"

  I don't know, man, Alan thinks to say, or, Maybe, one day. But instead of throwing out a flip answer, he lets himself really ponder the question. It opens a window on a dark road, bleak and winding. What is going to happen to them? He has no end game. He just wants to dodge the winter. That'll require going quite a ways south—probably through Iowa, maybe even all the way through Kansas. And now, with that thing they saw in the sky behind them...

  "No." He keeps the word as gentle as possible. "Probably not. We just have too far to go." He listens to the wind outside, to the creaking of the trees and the rustle of falling leaves. Belatedly, he thinks to add: "I'm sorry. I wish there was another way."

  Todd sighs, but doesn't argue. Alan ruffles his hair and finds it sticky and matted. Neither of them has bathed in far too long. Alan makes a note to keep an eye open for a water source tomorrow—a creek, a river, a stack of water bottles, anything. He never should have let Todd stay this dirty this long. If it had been Brenda—

  "I'm really glad you're feeling better now," Todd whispers. "I missed you really bad."

  The cycle of self-recrimination stutters. Why? he nearly asks, but the voice of his dad volunteers, He didn't really miss you, idiot. He's just got no one else. It makes perfect sense.

  "I mean," Todd goes on, "I know you were there, so I couldn't really miss you, but—"

  "No, I wasn't there. Not really."

  Todd clutches him. "You remember that time I found that flashlight?"

  "Yeah. That was pretty cool."

  A heartbeat. Beneath his sticky hair, Todd's scalp is warm. Vulnerable.

  "And that time we made those jokes at Fast Gas?"

  Alan doesn't smile, but the memory of laughing is like sunlight on his face. His son's phrasing amuses him: The time we made those jokes.

  I didn't make any jokes, he thinks, you just thought everything I said was hysterical, and then you made a bunch of terrible jokes yourself. But those are his dad's words, and he keeps them inside. Todd saw that moment differently, and his version is the one Alan prefers: father and son, hanging out at the gas station, cracking crude jokes together.

  Is it really that easy? he marvels. To make things work, to not be so distant, to spit in his own father's face and take back his relationship with Todd? If it's really that easy, why did I ever let it go?

  "What did you say? 'Kingdom'...?"

  "'Blast your ass to kingdom come,'" Alan quoted.

  "Oh, yeah!" Todd giggles like it was a fart joke. "Where did you even hear that?"

  "Oh, God. I have no idea."

  "You know," Todd starts, and he sounds like a bad voice actor, like someone who doesn't really understand a line delivering it anyway, "we've had more fun than I would've expected."

  Alan's eyes are burning. He remembers the baby boy, the innocence in that child's eyes, remembers the moment he swore to be different than his own father. "What do you mean?" he manages.

  "I just..." Todd sighs, resigned. "I know you don't really like me, and I thought—"

  Alan's heart freezes. "What?"

  The boy flinches, scared he's said too much.

  "Don't like you? Why the hell would you think that?"

  Todd tries to recoil, but Alan won't let him. The boy's face crumples inward, a mask of self-loathing. "Sorry," he says, "sorry," and then, as if he's whipping himself with the word: "Stupid."

  Alan is paralyzed. Aghast. Todd whispers again. "Stupid." He is shaking his head, trembling. "Stupid!"

  Alan did the same thing, when he was eight, and nine, and every age since. The constant berating, the self-hate. Stupid. He is looking through a time machine, watching himself. He is watching the cycle—

  He grabs his son. "Hey. You're not stupid."

  Todd slaps his mouth closed, but starts to shake. He's no longer whispering, but the words are inside, building, thrashing him.

  "Why would you say that? Hey."

  He's quaking in Alan's arms, breaking up. "Shhh. Listen to me."

  "What?" he croaks.

  "When you were a baby, you would cry, and I was there with you. Did you know that?"

  "No."

  "And I would shush you, like this: Shhh." Alan breathes it right in his ear, quiet and sustained. "And I would hold you, like this"—he squeezes him again—"and carry you up and down the stairs, because you liked going bump up and down. And you're bigger now, but I'm still your dad, and I still love you." He feels like a charlatan, throwing breathless promises; he feels like a sissy and a loser.

  "Don't go away again."

  "I won't."

  "I thought you were gone forever."

  "I'm not. I'm here." He flits through a quick mental count of his pills, wishing he was strong enough or healthy enough to be a father without them. "And I hate that you think I don't like you. That—that's my fault. That's not your fault. I do like you. I love you. You're my little boy. You've always been my little boy. It's just—"

  He stares at this sudden abyss, horrified to find himself at its edge, but his son's pain forces him over. He will jump into this blackness himself before he will ever push Todd in again. "It's just that my dad was always really mean to me. There were some good things about him, but he—" Even now, thirt
y years later, he can't speak ill of his father without feeling like he is betraying God. Not only is it blasphemy, but his every word is being heard and taken down for judgment.

  But that's not right. Alan's dad is gone.

  Everyone is gone.

  "He would rip into me, man," Alan breathes. "Nothing was ever good enough for him, nothing I said or did or thought, no grade I got, no work I did, nothing, nothing was ever good enough for him. And they say... well, they say that sometimes people treat their own kids the way their parents treated them. Not because they want to, but because they can't help it, because it's all they know. They just do it automatically. And I—" Ah, gods. "I did that to you, Todd. I didn't mean to. When you were born I swore I wouldn't. I swore I wouldn't. And I did anyway. And I'm sorry, Todd, I'm really, really sorry, because you deserved better than that. You deserve so much better."

  There is no answer. For a long time, interminable passing eons, there is silence.

  Then, slowly, the boy relaxes. His breathing evens; his head sinks into his father's shoulder.

  Alan is now Atlas, holding up the world.

  68

  He wakes surrounded by Blurs.

  The room is dim because one of the lanterns has died, and its black corners are writhing with the things. They're everywhere, now. Everywhere and always.

  He closes his eyes, trying not to be shaken. Whispers dart through his head about their plans: why they're here, what they're doing, how long it will take. The whispers pry his eyes back open, and then he's staring at one of the corners filled with Blurs. Flitting in and out of the floor, the ceiling, wriggling like vitreous floaters—but two of them aren't moving. They're still, looming as the others flash past. Watching.

  Alan flinches, suddenly feeling like a bug under a microscope. He forces his eyes closed, leaving him alone with his twisting nausea and pounding heart. He feels like he's Todd's age again, when any nameless night terror was a rabid dog that could thrash him in its jaws until morning. Panic swells like bile in his chest.