Now, as Zephyr looked beyond the radiance of his living room into those shadowy upstairs crevices, nothing seemed preposterous. Up there, the impossible could transform into the probable — those shadows might choke away reality and create it anew. So he walked the stairs and canvassed the rooms, turned on lights, looked under beds and into closets, and peeled back drapes. He wasn’t even sure why he did these things.
When the check was done and just about every light in the house burned brightly, Zephyr moved back into his bedroom. He plopped onto his bed and flipped the TV on with the remote. A quick scan of the channels revealed few deviations from earlier, except for more dead broadcasts. There seemed to be more blank channels than before, but he wasn’t entirely sure if that was true. And the newsroom was still live with yesterday’s hottest stories and a few invisible anchors. He finally noticed the watermark in the lower-right screen and smiled.
“Fox News,” he said. “Well, it’s an improvement, anyway.”
He closed his eyes.
His window rattled against the restless wind, a chorus of moaning ghosts, and he jerked. His alarm clock read 9:47 p.m. Had he drifted? His leaden eyelids threatened to close again. He felt drained to the point of vacuity. His phone still showed no missed calls or texts. He stood up, cracked his wooden shutters and peered outside, not expecting to see anything below, and it was precisely what he didn’t see that got him thinking. The streetlights. The porch lights. And no more. He realized that in stark contrast, his house must look like Disneyland, and it scared him.
Zephyr didn’t subscribe to the horror-movie cliché that illumination was the last great obstacle of the serial killer. Rather, he always wondered why the giant-bosomed babysitters in countless forgettable slasher flicks clung to telephones and pranced around within the confines of an overly bright house while the deranged stalker sneaked around under cover of darkness somewhere outside. He told himself that he would never follow those same broken conventions. Yet, as he idled in his room, he understood that his house was visible both outside and in and he wondered if that was a good thing. The more he thought about it, the more he figured the answer was no. He wasn’t sure what the hell had happened to his friends, his family and the city at large, and until he was he wanted to blend, not diverge.
He canvassed his house, turning off lights. One by one the brightness gave way to blackness and the effect was simultaneously reassuring and maddening. When at last the final spark of sight was extinguished, his eyes struggled for traction as he shuffled through the inky embrace of night.
Upstairs, he reached under his bed and grasped the cold aluminum of his baseball bat, which he drew and swung slow and careful, as a batter might before the first pitch is ever thrown. It wasn’t much, but he took comfort in the makeshift weapon.
He lay in his clothes and shoes with the bat at his side. Periodically, he rose from the depths of weary exhaustion and peered down at the unchanged street. Creaking wood stirred him from dreams of Keiko, her black hair and prominent red stripe, her one crooked tooth, her willowy body, her flowery perfume. He fought against sleep and searched the blackness with his ears. A tree branch scraping against the trim of the house. Or was it footsteps creeping up the stairs? The wind screamed and cackled at him.
As he twisted in and out of rest, the night seemed to stretch on eternally. And when the thin veil of dreams at last threatened to dissipate into nothingness, the white noise outside his window was violated.
Boom.
The sound thundered through his neighborhood and shook him.
Zephyr shot up and let go of something guttural.
Deep. Powerful. An explosion. Or a car backfiring. Or maybe a crash. He couldn’t move. His mind stuttered.
Two more blasts. Pounding echoes ricocheted everywhere.
Gunshots, he thought, his eyes wide. Big ones. Probably not a pistol. Maybe a shotgun.
Sleep was exorcised from his body at the speed of light. He rolled across the bed and thumbed open the shutters. Nothing new. But even so, something had happened out there. Somebody had a gun – and not too far off.
“I’m not alone.”
7
Shopping
The city’s caliginous veil evaporated into pink daylight that drew faint pastel lines on his bedroom wall. Zephyr rubbed his beaten eyes and stood, a dull thud as the baseball bat rolled onto the carpet. He reached into his pocket, produced his mobile and once more found the battery dead, so he walked downstairs and charged it. It was early. The sliver of dawn, let alone crack. It had been about two hours since he heard the trio of gunshots. He hadn’t slept, but no more interruptions came in the night.
He turned on the television in the living room and looked for changes in the patterns. More channels had blinked out. It was indisputable. At least half of them were airing dead space now. It was getting worse, not better.
Zephyr’s body and mind waged relentless war – the former battling for tenacious slumber as the latter charged against it with all of its might. He had, in the hours since those blasts exploded in the distance, considered too many possibilities to count and nearly acted on every one of them. He felt compelled to drive about the desolate city again and investigate. He needed to speed toward the freeway and beyond the confines of his circumstance. Twice, he nearly did it. His car keys jangling in hand, he opened the entry door and looked outward to darkness, but then reconsidered. He walked the house, still afraid to turn on the lights, and stared out misty windows for signs of anything extraordinary. He telephoned everybody and got nobody.
Despite all of his long considerations and contemplations in the night, he knew the moment he heard those gunshots that his next action would lead him neither to the freeway nor to the executor of those mysterious shots.
He was a teenager, but hardly a naive one, and the signs were everywhere, not just in Firefly Valley. The failing TV networks. The one-way phone calls. Even all the dated websites. It stretched beyond his town. He didn’t need to drive for two hours on a freeway to confirm that.
And although he longed to dismantle if not altogether obliterate his growing sense of isolation, he had no plans to seek companionship at his own peril. The fact was, he didn’t know if the proprietor of the blasts was friend or foe. Could be either and you know this, Zeph, he thought. He might’ve been triple-tapping an old lady for her groceries. Hell, it could’ve been a freakin’ gunfight, he thought. Or, you pessimist, maybe it was a cry for attention or maybe somebody needed help.
He stopped, an epiphany upon him.
Three successive shots. Three in a row. It was an S. O. S. It was a standard hunter distress signal. The valley was surrounded by forest, for crying out loud. He’d grown up with this stuff. That should’ve occurred to him right away!
“You idiot,” he hissed. “Stupid. Stupid!”
Were the shots really back-to-back, though? He’d been adrift in dreams and couldn’t rightly remember. Did the first linger, and then two more? He thought that was right, but he’d been jolted awake and his senses delayed. Either possibility was just as likely.
In the end, it didn’t matter. It was the lingering threat of an enemy or perhaps even enemies lurking in the city that compelled him beyond Main Street, onto Market Avenue and finally into Foothill Plaza as the sun took shape over the mountains. It was another mini-mall, five or six businesses wedged into a thin line of dilapidated storefronts and barely enough parking spaces to accommodate them. The plaza stared across the street at an immense structure that was a K-Mart in another economic era. House of Smoke Cigars, Cindy’s Laundry, 4 You Newsstand, The Cyclist, and at last, Firefly Guns, about to earn its first customer of the day. Scratch that – first and likely only visitor of the day.
Zephyr came prepared – not with a wad of cash or credit cards, but towing a massive sledgehammer he’d scavenged from his toolshed. He parked his car in front of the shop and stepped out with the makeshift weapon slung over his shoulder. He leaned it against the dusty storefront window
and surveyed the area.
Firefly Guns was one of three such sellers in town. He chose it simply because it was nearest his house. As far as he knew, the place had been open for business longer than he’d been alive. It sat imprisoned by faded bricks that stretched into white stone. Hefty blue posts supported an overhang that provided shade on scorching summer days, which were not scheduled to return to the area any time soon. A sign on the glass double-doors read, Closed. He tried them anyway and found them locked. To their right was a large storefront window with more signs hanging. Hunters #1 Resource and No Permits Necessary, they claimed. Zephyr was relieved to see that neither the doors nor window were reinforced with security bars – one of the benefits, he supposed, of living in a small city.
“My good luck continues,” he said and picked up the sledgehammer.
Maybe no bars, but what Firefly Guns did have was a security system equipped with an obnoxiously loud alarm. He chose the window over the doors, swung the hammer forward and the glass imploded. He imagined himself punching hole after hole through the translucent barrier until he had created a precise space large enough to duck through. That’s not what happened. As soon as the hammer connected, the impact zone cracked and then shattered. Then, the entirety of the glass window followed suit, falling unto itself as it converted from a smooth, solid mass to tiny chunks and shards. He might’ve laughed at the outcome if not for the alarm, which bellowed a siren that violated his ears and got him moving.
“Crap!” he shouted and jumped into the new entryway, his heart thumping in his chest.
He ran and stumbled along the displays and surveyed the weapons. All he could think about was the piercing alarm and how it must be drawing all of the city’s collective attention to the area, if indeed anyone’s attention could be had.
He leapt over one display case and stole four handguns of unique shapes and colors, absolutely no idea what models, and clasped them to his chest with one hand as he ran back toward his car. Outside again, he fumbled for his keys and dropped all four guns on the sidewalk, where they clanked to a rest. He popped the trunk, picked up the weapons and tossed them into the space. Then he sprinted back inside and repeated the process, this time choosing rifles. He had intended to carry four additional pieces out, but they proved too ungainly, so he only took two, oblivious to their make. He tossed them into his trunk, slammed it shut and opened the car’s front door when he realized he hadn’t picked up any bullets.
“This isn’t happening,” he said and jumped through the window again.
He pawed all manners of bullet boxes. Red ones. Blue ones. Yellow ones. Green ones. Some were bulkier than others. Some leaner. Some heavier. The numbers that adorned them were perfectly meaningless – they might’ve been long lost mathematical codes from an ancient alien civilization.
He braved two trips with the siren blaring and as he climbed out of the window with a myriad of boxes held against his chest, he looked up, and then he dropped them. Beside his car waited an old green station wagon with bald tires and worn paint. And leaning against its front bumper was a man, his arms outstretched and his hands held high, palms open and flat. It was a universal gesture that said with no words at all, stop, calm down – don’t be afraid.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa — it’s fine, chief. Fiiiine. Just wanna talk. Didn’t mean to startle ya!” the man shouted over the siren.
He was older. Mid-fifties or early sixties, probably. Tall. Almost bald, save for a strip of black hair that faded into gray and circled the back of his head, itself tanned and spotted. Heavy stubble peppered his face and double-chin. He had a body like a pear and a belly that hung defiantly over his denim shorts, but Zephyr thought his girth belied muscles of the kind that take a lifetime of hard labor to define. He wore flip-flops.
“I don’t mean ya no harm. Name’s Ross. I live across the way.” The man pointed to a grouping of houses adjacent to the abandoned K-Mart. “I heard the alarm is all.” He stepped forward with an infectious smile and extended his weathered hand.
A box of bullets crashed to the ground as the boy forgot them and shook the man’s hand instead.
“I’m Zephyr. I live a few miles from here. I just cam—”
“Boy, I’m so happy to see you I could kiss you!” Ross said and clamped both of his bulky arms together around Zephyr in a great bear hug. “I thought it were just me. But when I saw you – oh, dear Jesus! Dear sweet Jesus!” he almost sang as he swung the boy effortlessly around.
Zephyr felt tears rush to his eyes and fought them off, blinking. Relief cascaded over him. He’d been struggling against everything: lack of knowledge, isolation, the endless possibilities and his growing fears. The dark of night was pure brightness compared to the blackness of the ordeal. Humanity had gone missing but a day yet it felt like decades to him, and here at last was a ray of authentic light wrapped in a tight shirt and sandals.
When the man finally set Zephyr down again, the boy could see him wiping away his own tears.
“Sir, I… well, thank you. I don’t know what’s going on and it’s just been—” He paused, an idea forming. “Listen, are you hungry?”
8
Zephyr insisted on driving and the older man relented, but not before mandating that the boy trail him to his house first so that he could return his own car. Firefly Guns continued shrieking as the two drove off, its high-pitched drones fading slightly but never dissipating. Ross hadn’t lied. His house — small, single-story, dilapidated, cacti and an assortment of colored rocks in lieu of grass – was several blocks away. The man pulled into a cracked driveway stained in oil and then hurried over to Zephyr’s car, plunked down in the passenger seat — the entire car seemed to sway with him — and smiled.
“All right, let’s eat,” he said.
As Zephyr drove, he explained how he’d awakened at Ridge Park to find his girlfriend missing – censoring the fact that he’d been drinking the night before – and then detailed the events that comprised the remainder of his restless day and night. It was a summarized recounting that culminated in gunshots.
“So you thought you’d get you some of your own guns this morning, and that’s when you run into me,” Ross said.
“Right. It seems kind of stupid now that I’m talking about it with you, but it didn’t feel stupid when I heard those gunshots last night,” Zephyr said. “Did you hear them?”
“Well,” Ross said, rubbing his hands over his scalp, “I heard something, sure enough. I got woke up out of bed in the middle of the night just like you, but I wasn’t sure it was a gun or not.”
“I think it was.”
“Yep. Well, if that’s true, we got company ’round here somewhere,” Ross said.
A few minutes later, the Volvo pulled into a tiny parking lot off Flora Avenue, just four parking spaces and a thin stone walkway that continued to the front door of a restaurant aptly named Early Bird Cafe. The glass door was closed and locked.
“OK, boy. I guess you better do your thing,” Ross said.
Zephyr had come prepared and he didn’t hesitate. He swung the sledgehammer forward and it slammed into the rusty steel guard of the door. It was a direct hit. The metal barrier broke and the lock gave, at which point the door came loose and slid two inches inward. Ross pushed it open, cackling and shaking his head.
“You getting pretty good at this funny business, ain’t ya?” Ross mused as he held the door and gestured for Zephyr to go on in.
Blessedly, there was no alarm. The two spent the next twenty minutes flipping on lights and then scouring the restaurant’s storage room, freezer and pantry, and finally laid out several heavy frying pans on a series of oversized burners, turned them on – thankfully the gas worked just fine – and started cooking. Bacon and sausage sizzled, butter simmered and eggs fried. Ross toasted some English muffins and Zephyr poured two glasses of cold orange juice. The hypnotic smell permeated the place and the boy realized he was starving.
Shortly thereafter, as the two of them ate, Zeph
yr finally asked it.
“Sir, if you—”
“Boy, my name’s Ross,” the man said through a mouthful of eggs. “I know it’s just you being nice and all, but there ain’t no need for sirs with me.”
“All right, sorry. Ross, do you have any idea what’s going on?”
The man stabbed his fork into an overcooked piece of sausage, slid it around a plate soaked in maple syrup. They hadn’t made pancakes or waffles, but apparently he had a sweet tooth. Then, he shoved the entire link into his mouth.
“I wish I could say yep. I woke up yesterday and everybody was gone.” The words came muffled as he chewed. The man held up his hand, index finger outstretched, finally swallowed and then continued. “I looked all over, like you. TV and phone weren’t any help. So I got on the interstate going north and that didn’t last long. So then I come back—”
“Wait, why didn’t it last long?” Zephyr asked.
“Damned trucks all over the place. Cars, too, but mostly just big old diesels. Some of ’em were just stopped in the middle of the lanes. A few more were stuck in the rails. I even saw some turned upside-down,” he said, paused while he forked some food around and then went on. “I drove up and over the hill and let me tell you, it was hard going – probably twenty-five of those giants, at least. I spent more time trying to get around ’em than I did getting anywhere.”
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