Zephyr had already seen this phenomenon in the city streets for himself. Not diesels, but an assortment of cars – a handful of them overturned, more crashed, but most rolled to a stop and vacant. He was going to ask if Ross had seen any evidence of survivors when the man started to speak again.
“So I just gave up and come back. But I’d already committed myself going northbound and there weren’t no exits any time soon.” He took a generous bite of muffin, wiped some jelly from his cheek and then licked the side of his hand. “So, I turned around and drove back down the wrong way. I always wanted to do that, but there weren’t nothing fun about it. I thought I might get stuck between those trucks and there I’d be.”
Zephyr found the image horrifying and incredible. All the law of the land, the rules of the road, forgotten, he thought. He finally asked if Ross had spotted anything resembling life and the man said no – just clothing, shoes, jewelry, all the same remnants the boy had encountered. As he’d suspected, the highways and likely the nearest cities too were not immune to whatever had happened — whatever was still happening.
The man said that after he’d finally traversed the freeway, he drove around town and looked for people but couldn’t find anyone, a situation Zephyr knew too well. He tried the police station and it was open. When he stepped inside, though, he discovered it empty. Most of the shops were closed, he said. As the day passed on, he investigated the hospital, which was also vacant.
“It was eerie in there. I’m not gonna lie, I walked down a hallway and then I turned around and left. I’m a grown man, but I ain’t embarrassed to admit it,” he said.
So he’d gone home, sank into his sofa, turned on the television and waited. And then he fell asleep. He woke several hours later to the howling wind and it had grown dark outside. He made dinner and waited some more. Nothing happened. He dialed around and nobody answered. He even tried calling his ex-wife.
“And, boy, that should tell you just how scared I was by then,” he said, threw back his head and laughed.
Ross Williams was fifty-eight, a bachelor, father to a single son who died in the Gulf War, and retired. He’d tried on a variety of professions throughout his life, he cheerfully explained, including cameos as a mechanic, salesman, and his personal favorite, a concierge for some “fancy hotel” from a different era and place. But, he said, the bulk of his career life could be divided in two: his younger days in construction and the last twenty years, which were spent in the postal industry. He’d been a mailman.
Zephyr returned his small talk with details of his own much shorter life. That he was an only child. His aspiration to be journalist. His first and only girlfriend, now missing. His parents, both doctors, also vanished. But he found his own story dull, especially because the older man recounted his stretching history with such gusto and a depth of enthusiasm that Zephyr found he could not parallel. Maybe his life was a bore. Perhaps, but it’s certainly not boring now, he thought.
When their words finally ceased, Ross stared through the window a long time and Zephyr walked to the checkout register, found a pack of chewing gum and pocketed it. He had already shed any guilt about such things. For now at least, those old restrictions didn’t apply. When he returned to the table again, Ross said, “Well, at least we know dogs ain’t been taken away. Probably just people.”
When Zephyr didn’t follow, the man pointed to the window. There, out beyond the little parking lot and trotting along a sidewalk across Flora Avenue, was a bulky German Shepherd, its tongue dangling from its open jaws. As they watched, it hurried along an intersection and out of view.
“It could still be like us,” Zephyr said. “Maybe some of the dogs are gone. But not all of them.”
“Maybe,” Ross agreed, but he didn’t look convinced.
The two were halfway back to the car when the man stopped, turned and walked back into the restaurant, calling behind for Zephyr to wait just a minute. Shortly thereafter, he reappeared with an oversized bowl full of their leftovers – some scrambled eggs, charred bacon, sausage and even three pieces of toasted sourdough bread softened in butter.
“Just in case the little pooch comes back. Maybe he’ll find this snack,” Ross said. “He’s gotta eat, too.”
Fifteen minutes later, the boy’s car turned onto Main Street as they searched the city for other survivors. The older man chewed two sticks of gum into a wet mass, his lips smacking, as the car coasted and they talked.
“Ross, what do you think happened?” Zephyr asked. It was the question that had been on his mind for hours, but also the one he’d been afraid to voice because he was sure no answer could suffice.
Ross continued chewing and seemed to consider the question.
“I don’t really know, but if I were to guess at it, I’d reckon it’s God’s work,” he said at last.
“Do you mean, like, the Rapture?” the boy asked.
Zephyr was agnostic, but he’d caught himself hypocritically praying to God nearly every time he soared into a rough patch of turbulence on his flights to visit family in California. He sometimes wondered if he didn’t secretly believe – hidden, locked away – yet, he also found some of the stories populating the bible absurd.
Take, for example, the Rapture, a biblical prophecy predicting that at some point in the future, those who believe in Jesus Christ will simply float into the air and be saved, vanishing instantly from the planet. According to the same scripture, non-believers will, in stark contrast, be forced to endure years of turmoil, war, plague and more before Christ revisits the world and casts the sinful away into a lake of fire. In other words, good times.
“Well, I don’t know nothing about that,” Ross said. He turned his head to look at Zephyr. “But I’ll tell you one thing, boy. Look around you. Who else but God could have done this?”
9
The town protected its secrets. If people persisted, they stayed hidden as the man and the boy patrolled desolate streets crowded only by cars and the intermittent motorcycle frozen in awkward death rolls. The occasional crash interrupted the surreal presentation of the leftover world. There lay no bodies to be discovered, but Zephyr nevertheless could not shake the feeling that people were out there – maybe drowning in their own plight, maybe hiding, maybe watching.
The car radio hissed and popped as they drove and only a single station played music – an endlessly looped tune from Bruce Springsteen. Zephyr wondered if the song might play forever, until the electricity crackled and blinked out or the broadcast satellites plummeted back to Earth in fiery streaks. Would it take a month? A year? A century of Dancing in the Dark?
As the sun inched past solar noon, the boy started to worry about the night to come. He wasn’t convinced that he could hole up in isolation and wait out the morning again. Now that he’d found someone with whom he could share the burden of the nightmarish situation, he dreaded the prospect of reclaiming full ownership. Yet, he wasn’t certain that Ross would second his newfound commitment to inseparability. The man might choose instead his own residence and to embrace some solitary semblance of the life that existed, for better or worse, just two days ago.
They backtracked the city, drove down Market Avenue and, with dust swirling beneath their tires, turned into Foothill Plaza, home to Firefly Guns, now and forever literally open for business. Zephyr rolled down the driver’s side window and heard no deafening siren, only the grinding of grit and gravel under the weight of the car.
“Alarm finally shut itself off. That’s a relief, anyhoo,” Ross said.
Zephyr wasn’t quite as relieved. The boy wondered if the system had shut down or if someone had turned it off. The latter possibility struck him as particularly frightening because it suggested that somebody out there was acting with a level of calm, methodical discipline that escaped his grasp.
“You think we should check it out?” Zephyr asked.
“I ain’t got nowhere better to be,” Ross mused.
Ten minutes later, they emerged from the sto
re carrying even more guns and bullets. As far as the boy could tell, nobody had been there. Weapons and ammo still littered the walls and shelves. Shards of glass blanketed the floor just beyond the frame. Probably, the alarm had just run its course.
They popped the trunk and looked over the growing mass of handguns, rifles and ammo boxes of all colors. Zephyr still didn’t know if any guns matched their bullets so he hoisted up a long, heavy rifle and examined it, searching for some kind of make and model number. A dark wooden grip bled into black steel. It was double-barreled. A single thin slot revealed a chamber for bullets. He turned the contraption over and then upside-down like an awestruck caveman intoxicated by a gadget from a science fiction future.
“It’s a 30-30,” Ross said, chuckling. “I can tell already you don’t know shit about guns, chief. And here’s another tip for you. You see all them yellow-trimmed boxes in your trunk?”
“What about them?”
“Those’re blanks. They’re useless.”
In addition to all the blanks, what the man called “glorified noise-makers,” they discovered that the majority of the bullets Zephyr had run away with were incompatible with most of his weapons. Ross found this truth tantamount to the funniest joke ever told. He laughed until his face turned red and his eyes watered and then he slapped the boy hard on the back.
“Boy, you got yourself more guns in that trunk than a man’d know what to do with but only a-one of ’em gonna fire,” he said. “Maybe we oughta just get you a nice little BB gun so you don’t go shooting your foot off, or something worse.”
“I’m glad I amuse you,” Zephyr said, smiling. “Oh, hey – here’s an idea! If you can stop laughing for just a minute, maybe you could actually help me find the right bullets.”
Ross eventually obliged him. The man combed through his weapons and identified them one by one. Two Glock 9mm pistols, a .357 Magnum, a Smith and Wesson long frame pistol, three 22-caliber rifles and a shotgun in addition to the 30-30 he’d already named. He’d also carried an assortment of his own weapons to the car, presumably much smarter choices.
“How the heck do you know what all these guns are?” Zephyr asked, astonished.
Ross stopped and looked at him, an eyebrow raised.
“Where do we live?” he asked. “Here’s a hint, boy: it ain’t New York. How don’t you know what they are?”
Zephyr recollected that Firefly Valley’s small population somehow still required so many guns and so much ammunition that three dedicated stores had surfaced and flourished over the years.
“Touché,” he said.
Ross climbed through the store’s open window and returned a few minutes later with a wide stack of boxes that he held between his hands, drawing on brute force to crush each container into the next in an explosive cardboard accordion. He dumped the packages into Zephyr’s trunk and then he turned around and climbed into the storefront hole again. By his fourth trip, Zephyr could no longer bite his tongue.
“Are you planning to start a war, Ross?” he asked.
“Well, you already shown me you ain’t too smart when guns is concerned, but I gotta give you credit for having a good idea. If somebody’s here shooting their gun off at night, I don’t know about you, but I’ll sleep a little better with plenty of my own firepower,” he said, paused and then added, “And since you already got all the blanks, I guess I’ll just have to settle for whatever’s left.”
“Don’t come crying to me when you’ve used up all your bullets and you want some of my blanks,” Zephyr retaliated.
“Boy, let’s hope I don’t gotta use any of these bullets.”
10
Tumorous clouds intercepted the sun’s rays and cast the valley in shade as the wind took flight and the day grew older. They had spent the afternoon in a viscous blur, driving along deserted streets and emptied lots and rolling by lifeless storefronts like meticulous window browsers.
When another street light changed from green to yellow and Zephyr again slowed the car in observance, Ross said, “You ain’t gonna get a ticket if you run a red light.”
“What? Oh.”
He’d been doing it all day, he realized. No — for the last two days. Obeying all the street signs and stop lights even as he robbed gun stores and ransacked restaurants.
“Sorry,” he said and laughed. “It’s ridiculous. I swear, I just… it never even occurred to me.”
So he stomped on the gas pedal, his engine roared and he blew through the light. The overhang camera snapped a picture that nobody would ever see and issued a ticket that no law enforcement agency would ever enforce. A teenage boy at the wheel of a white sedan. Next to him, a stocky bald man. Both of them were grinning.
Thirty minutes later, with dark clouds upon them and drizzle coating the windshield, they rolled about town as Zephyr played a new driving game. If he saw a red light, he’d gas it and try to pass underneath before it could change to green again. The problem was that the lights didn’t glow red very long. He didn’t know if the city’s traffic infrastructure operated via timers, whether it was based on the time of day or if hidden cameras or sensors triggered the lights. Regardless, the game wasn’t easy and his new ambition did not go unnoticed by his passenger.
“Now you’ve gone from one extreme to the other,” Ross said and rolled his eyes, but he never told Zephyr to slow down.
Eventually Ross said that they weren’t accomplishing anything and suggested a trip to the grocery store, which was a good idea. They needed to stock up on food and water to carry them through the week, if not longer. And Ross also wanted to loot some beer. They took a corner back onto Main Street and Zephyr was so focused on the stoplight ahead of him that he didn’t see the figure standing in the middle of the intersection.
“Look out!” Ross yelled and in a second flat the boy finally observed the pedestrian, jerked the steering wheel to the right and slammed on the breaks. If it’d been a driving test, he’d have failed for sure. The car drifted, skidding sideways over the crosswalk, spinning and spraying water as it went, and missed the man standing before it by no more than ten feet. The engine humming. Zephyr’s heart nearly jumped out of his chest.
He turned to Ross. “Jesus! Are you all right?”
His passenger didn’t answer. Neither did he move; only stared beyond the boy and through the driver’s side window, his face frozen. When Zephyr started to turn again, Ross stopped him.
“No, no,” he whispered. His eyes never moved. “Look at me, boy. Don’t turn around. He’s got a gun.”
They had plenty of guns, too. Pistols, rifles, shotguns – just about anything a hunter, survivalist or nut job with an agenda could possibly want or need. But in a stroke of genius, they had loaded all of their weapons and bullets, blanks included, into the trunk, where they currently sat.
Zephyr turned to face the newcomer and the man met his gaze. Average height. Lean. Thinning brown hair, cut short, and an equally sparse beard. Mid-thirties, maybe. He wore a black business suit with tie and dress shoes, all soaked from the rain. Both arms hung at their sides. In his right hand, though, he gripped a black revolver. To Zephyr, his face looked… blank. Completely unreadable. And he didn’t move.
“What did I tell you?” Ross said. “Jesus Almighty, get us outta here!”
The boy stomped on the gas pedal and back wheels spun, but the slippery street offered no traction. He stopped, then repeated with less pressure and the tires finally caught pavement. The vehicle’s rear end drifted clockwise in a perfect circle before he realized that he’d forgotten to straighten out the steering wheel and locked them in a perpetual donut. Zephyr yanked the wheel to the left this time and the car at last chose a direction and sped off, zipping straight away into a center divide. The Volvo hit the curb hard and both occupants bounced around in their seats before it came down on the other side with brutal gravity and smashed into a parked mini-van.
“Pop the trunk!” Ross yelled, and Zephyr fumbled for the release.
&nb
sp; His senses lagged. He felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach. When he finally stepped from the car and peered across the street through the rain at the man in the suit, the figure glared back, gun still dangling at his side, but made no move to advance on them. He might’ve been a statue. The boy heard heavy metallic pumping noises from the rear of the car and then Ross stepped out, butt of a shotgun held at his shoulder, aim locked and firm, and walked toward the well-dressed enigma.
“I got my gun on ya!” he called. “Don’t try nothin’ funny or you’re gonna wish you didn’t!”
The figure either didn’t hear him or didn’t care. He lowered his gaze, seeming to survey the street, but he looked neither scared nor mad.
“We don’t want no trouble!” Ross repeated and edged closer. “Ya hear? Just drop that gun of yours, all right?”
It occurred to Zephyr that he had inadvertently become a passive observer to this scene, so he dashed forward and soon shadowed Ross, who stood less than eight feet from the drenched businessman. Now the rain poured down in curtains, splattering, pounding, and crushing visibility. Cold water hammered them, great gobs of it exploding on the barrel of Ross’s shotgun. Zephyr pulled his hoodie over his head and it was soaked in seconds. But the figure in the suit kept on staring.
“Mister,” Ross said. “Are you all right?”
There came no immediate reply.
“Miste—”
“Go ahead and do it,” the suit said and there was something in his tone that stopped Zephyr cold. It was short. Defiant. Perhaps even provocative.
“Go ahead, what?” Ross asked.
The suit’s gun hand twitched just a little as he locked eyes with them. They were tired, bloodshot eyes attached to a gaunt face. “Aim that fucking gun and pull the trigger,” he spat.
“There ain’t no rea—”
“Do it, or I’ll do you,” the suit said. Calm. But underneath, something else.
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