“You might be smarter than you look,” Zephyr said.
“I get that a lot. I think it might be the beard.”
The boy smiled. “You’re right, though. I haven’t been thinking about it that way, but I bet you’re onto something. The thing is, though, even if we find the link between all of us, if there actually is one, that’s all we’ll have. Just a link. But we still won’t know why. Let’s say we find out that every last survivor loves the color red and that’s what binds us all together. So what? The real question isn’t why we’re here but why everyone else isn’t.”
Merrick nodded. “Yeah, well, you’re smarter than you look, too.”
“Must be the hair.”
It was a joke, but Zephyr realized that the mop atop his head really had been left unattended for the last week and it was greasier and longer than he preferred. On instinct, he tucked thick, brown strands of it behind his ears.
Merrick slowed and skirted a stalled red truck. “Like I said, I really don’t know. I’m just throwing stuff out there. If it’s God or a higher force that we don’t understand or aliens or whatever, we can’t control that. There may be a design here. Then again, there may be no design at all. But maybe we can find a few answers between us— and by us, I mean all the survivors— if we ask the right questions and look in the right places. That’s all I’m saying.”
“No, I totally agree,” the boy remarked.
“Let’s hope this is all moot in a few days, anyway. Maybe everything will go back to normal. I like to think I’m a realist, but you can’t set any kind of realistic expectations when it’s the end of the freakin’ world, ya know?”
“It’s not really the end of the world,” Jordan said. “You’re just kidding, right?”
“No, it’s not the end of the world, sweetheart. But it might be the end of the world as we knew it,” he said.
21
The freeway into Las Cruces was more congested than any Zephyr had seen since the disappearances, and the traffic slowed their progress. To his credit, Merrick proved a surefooted driver, and he zigzagged between stalled cars or wrecks without as much as a scrape. At first, the boy winced at every close call, but as time passed he came to trust in the man’s ability.
“We’re not gonna get a ticket, girlie. Wear it if you want, or don’t. I honestly don’t care,” Merrick told her a couple hours earlier after she asked if she could unbuckle her safety belt for the third time. Zephyr was against this declaration from the start and suggested that Jordan re-clasp the harness without hesitation, but this advice ricocheted away from her and soon after she could be found bouncing back and forth inside the cabin, clearly drunk on her newfound freedom.
The car jerked to one direction before Merrick corrected it. “Whoa, whoa— there we go,” he said, tapped Zephyr’s arm and prompted him to turn around. Two miles behind them, a pair of headlights cut through the blackness.
“I see ’em.”
“Hard to miss. We got another survivor.”
Zephyr raised in his seat. “What do we do?”
Merrick ignored the question. Instead, he triggered the cruiser’s emergency lights and slowed the car to a stop. This was not what Zephyr had envisioned.
“What the hell are you doing?”
The man beat on the horn and then opened the car door. “What’s it look like? Let’s go and say hello.” And he was off before the boy could muster an argument.
Zephyr cursed him under his breath, then told Jordan to stay close. For a nanosecond, he couldn’t find it and panic swept over him, but then his fingers curled around the butt of his shotgun and he withdrew from the vehicle with it. He and Jordan scurried away from the car, the center-divide and Merrick, a development not unnoticed by the man.
“OK, come on, where are you two going?” he called.
Zephyr shushed him. “Feel free to risk your life, but don’t risk ours. When the coast is clear, give us a sign.” He made for the darkness off the shoulder of the highway and then turned back again. “And don’t tell anyone we’re here!”
“Really? You’re still doing this?” Merrick threw up his hands. “You know what? Fine. Try not to shoot anyone from the side of the road, if you can resist.”
Zephyr held Jordan’s hand and whispered commands to her — whatever happens, don’t move and you have to be quieter than you’ve ever been in your life— as the two of them sat motionless under cover of darkness in the rocky shoulder off the highway.
The cold wind wedged itself between them as they watched the headlights approach. At first, minuscule candles flickering in the distance, but before too long the lights took on shape, size and halos. When at last the car was within throwing distance of the cruiser, the driver slowed and honked repeatedly before stopping. It wasn’t just a car, though. Even from his position, Zephyr could see that it had real hulk and girth. The high beams stood level to the cruiser’s top lights and the boy thought he could make out the shape of a huge truck, or maybe even a bus or tank between the pulses of reds and blues.
A door swung open and someone stepped out as Zephyr squinted for definition that eluded him. There was a figure engaged in conversation with Merrick, but he couldn’t distinguish much more. Was it just one person or were there more? And why was Merrick such a fool? He remembered his own roadside encounter with the man. Had I been like Ross, you would probably be dead, my friend, and here you are again.
After too long, the older man walked to the newcomer’s car and stood there for what seemed forever. Zephyr longed for a pair of binoculars and promised to track down some upon their arrival in Las Cruces. Just as he was contemplating where he might be able to loot some, another figure emerged from the vehicle and the three of them walked back to the cruiser, at which point Merrick leaned into the driver’s side window and retrieved something.
A moment later, his voice boomed loud and clear over the megaphone. “All right, Road Warrior.”
Oh, for crying out loud! The man just doesn’t take anything seriously.
“The coast is clear. This is my official signal to come on back. Repeat. This is my official sign.”
Then it was another voice that blasted against the wind. To Zephyr, he sounded distinctly teenage.
“So, do I just hold thi— OK, yeah, got it.” He cleared his throat. “So dude. It’s all good. It’s just me and my brother and we’re cool.” He waited, perhaps expecting Zephyr to emerge from cover of darkness and when that didn’t happen he continued. “OK, then, all right, so this is my brother, Brad. OK, so, yeah, here ya go.”
A second later, one more voice blared into the darkness. “Yeah, we’re stoked to see some more people on the road and trust me, we’re totally cool, like my brother Dildo Face said.”
Almost inaudible: “Shut up, jackass.”
“Dildo Face has spoken so I better put this down. We’ll be hanging here with Merrick so, cool. Peace out.”
22
Brad and Ben Splinter looked like pro surfers. Lean, if not lanky, tanned, each with straight blonde hair that hung past their shoulders. Both donned loose shorts and t-shirts. They didn’t just look like two brothers, but a mirrored image of one another, which made a lot of sense because they were identical twins. Zephyr guessed them in their late teens or very early twenties, but the subject of age hadn’t yet come up. They all sat in the relative luxury of the parked Humvee the boys drove and snacked on some marshmallows.
They were staying with a friend in Henderson, Nevada, a suburb on the outskirts of Las Vegas, when “everyone popped,” as Ben not-so-delicately put it. Like Merrick, they were wide awake and had their own recollections of the event.
“We were playing Battlefield online,” began Brad.
“You were,” his brother corrected. “I was browsing the Web.”
“Dude, seriously? Does it matter? We were in the same freakin’ room.”
“If you want to be accurate, it does,” Ben replied.
“Will you just let me tell the damned sto
ry?” He glared at his sibling. “As I was saying. I was online. My brain-dead brother was no doubt trolling for porn. And our friend, Jeff, was watching me play. I was on a truly gargantuan run, too. I mean, literally dominating dudes. And—”
“I bet you were,” said Ben.
“Just shut up. So the next thing I know, there’s this weird sound — like, everywhere. In the room and coming through my headset, too. Like a hissing. And then Jeff is gone.”
“Nothing but clothes,” his brother added.
“The sucking noise, right? Same thing I heard,” Merrick said, nodding.
Ben nodded back. “Yep. And then like a bubble popping.”
“Did you see your friend disappear? I mean, did you actually see him go?” Merrick asked.
The brothers shook their heads. “No,” Ben said. “Just afterward. And, you know, nothing being left of him. We didn’t actually see it, though. Brad was playing and I was online, so neither of us were really paying attention, and it happened so fast.”
“I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, but that was it,” his brother agreed.
Brad brushed his hands through his hair. “I was in the middle of a team match, though. One second earlier, we’d all been running through the desert and gunning down idiots. Like, totally owning these fools.” He smiled, clearly impressed with himself. “Anyway, lots of chatter, lots of gunfire— just a big old mess of sound. Suddenly, it was all quiet. So I looked back at the screen and everyone is just standing there. My teammates, the guys we were battling. Nobody moving anymore.”
“Even then,” he continued, “we went downstairs looking for Jeff and his sister. They share a house together. Or, shared, maybe. Whatever the case, we obviously didn’t find them. We just found Lisa’s clothes in her bed. By that time, we were pretty freaked out. So, like everyone else still alive, we turned on the TV, tried calling peeps, etcetera. You know the story from there.”
“Is your— I mean, your family— are they?” Zephyr started, fumbling for words.
“Yeah, no. Our dad died when we were kids and our mom died a few years ago. No brothers, or sisters. Or anybody, for that matter. Just the two of us,” Brad explained.
“Gotcha,” Zephyr said, unsure whether to offer condolences or congratulations. At least their grief was old and dulled and not fresh and sharp. He made apologies anyway.
“Nah, it’s cool, dude,” Brad said. “We figure this is one time it’s good to be us. I would not be liking life right now if—”
“Yeah, we get it, Dr. Tact,” his brother said and punched him in the arm.
“What?” he asked, rubbing his arm. Then it dawned on him. “Ohh, damn. Sorry, shit. I’m an idiot.”
“Yeah you are,” Ben agreed.
23
When they realized that the event was widespread, the twins drove from Henderson to Vegas to look for people and answers, but it proved mostly fruitless.
“Vegas looked like hell itself, dudes. It was, like, literally Sin City,” Brad explained.
“I don’t think you know how to use the word ‘literally,’” his brother interrupted.
“Just shut. It was still dark outside, but this ginormous red cloud glowed over the city because all these fires were going. And there was this kind of fog covering a lot of stuff. Only after we got closer did it hit me that it wasn’t fog— just smoke and dust, like when the Twin Towers fell.”
“Planes,” Merrick said, not really a question.
“Yeah. One of them hit Mandalay Bay, I think, because the entire hotel was just gone. Just completely missing except for piles of debris and shit.” He drew his hands apart and sounded an explosion. “Meanwhile, a couple other hotels— MGM Grand, for example— were just roasting. Like, totally ablaze.”
“Yeah, and that’s when we started to see people running around,” Ben said.
“In the hotel?” Zephyr asked.
“No, no. In the streets, mostly. We talked to some of them. This one girl was just wearing underwear and a bra and she said the terrorists got us and she was crying and not making much sense beyond that. We asked if we could help but she just ran off,” Ben said.
“Yeah, she had mascara all down her face— she would’ve been hot, but it was just creepy,” Brad added. Then, perhaps reading Zephyr’s mind or just to change the subject, he said, “We saw probably fifty people or so, you think?”
“Nah, I’d say more than that. We saw thirty or forty walking together that one time and then tons of stragglers. I bet it’s more than a hundred,” Ben said.
“You’re crazy. No way was it that much.”
Ben looked at him. “Dude. There were like forty alone in the intersection in front of Wynn. Are you trying to tell me we only saw ten more people throughout the whole city?”
The brothers continued bantering and bickering this way for the next half hour, each allowing the other to advance portions of their story, but never without interruption. Zephyr eventually learned a little more about the situation in Vegas, although not very much. Vanishings and fires aside, the city lived on, according to the duo. Electricity flowed. Brad said that the strip was blanketed in clothes and shoes. Only a few hotels burned, but they were infernos. Wrecks lay unnoticed. Vacant cars littered the streets and sidewalks, their engines and headlights fighting to persist. They talked to passersby and nobody really knew what happened. Some people were leaving Vegas and others were staying.
Shortly after their arrival, the twins witnessed a small group of survivors loot a liquor store and this triggered a collective epiphany. It wasn’t long before they found themselves drunk at one of the hotel casinos, where they spent the remainder of the night and early morning.
“It was surreal,” Brad noted.
Ben sighed. “It sounds pretty bad, I know, and in hindsight it’s probably not our best moment. But it seemed like the end of the world at the time and nobody was really thinking straight. So I guess we just sort of went with it.”
“I mean, I won’t bullshit you, either— it was kind of rad,” Brad said and shrugged. “Just the total trip of doing whatever—not the peeps disappearing part.”
Zephyr liked the twins. There was no air of pretense about them. Rather, they seemed to accept the reality of the event with a nod and a shrug. Oh, the apocalypse has come? Bummer. That’s that, I guess. Do you wanna grab a beer or something? It wasn’t noble or even particularly intelligent. They existed somewhere between pure fatalism and Darwinism. But for their faults, they were at least real. There was something else about them, though. Their attitude was infectious because despite it all, nothing had touched their optimism. They recounted everything not with incredulousness or horror. Oh, maybe a sprinkle of both in recognition of taste. Mostly, it was just astonishment, and underneath it all, excitement. For all of these reasons, he envied them, even if he didn’t completely understand them.
“Didn’t you guys wonder what happened, though?” he finally asked.
Brad smiled. “Oh, we know exactly what happened, dude. You’ve heard about Area 51, right?”
His brother rolled his eyes. “Come on, man. It’s getting late and I’m hungry. Do we have to do this?”
“Can you just shut up for one minute? Jesus.”
“Yeah, I saw Independence Day. Government facility in Nevada with a bunch of top-secret stuff,” Zephyr said. “Guys, we already thought about aliens. There’s also the possibility of the Rapture. And I’m sure a million more theories.”
“This isn’t a theory, my man,” Brad said. “We’ve been there.”
“You went to Area 51?” Merrick asked, unable to mask his skepticism.
“Hell, yes, we did. And we saw some pretty unexplainable shit, too.”
“Uh, that’s entirely debatable,” Ben said.
After their drunken night in Vegas, the twins woke and resolved to utilize their newfound freedom to the fullest. They narrowed their options down to a nearby amusement park or the infamous government facility, and a coin flip decided it.
Brad recounted their travels to the hidden base, whose gates were mysteriously unlocked and swung outward, as though, “something had broken free.” Merrick cackled at the suggestion but the twin ignored him. The two brothers explored the base, discovered security towers armed with turrets and piles of clothes strewn about the entryway and interior. They made their way deeper into its series of nondescript white buildings and found abandoned classrooms and barracks and hangars, all with more neatly-departed clothes.
It was one such hangar that served as the centerpiece to their narrative, though. Unlike the others, it housed no cutting-edge planes or jets. It was empty, and sloped down for a football field’s length into what should have been earth.
“But it wasn’t,” Brad said, smiling. “We got to this open area filled with computer shit everywhere, tons of clothes all over the place, and then this big, black wall. But dudes, it wasn’t a wall. It was like a screen. Imagine the biggest movie screen you ever saw, multiply that by at least fifteen, and you’ve got the size.”
“So the government has a top-secret underground movie theater?” Merrick quipped.
“Dude,” Brad said and stared at him. “It wasn’t a movie screen. It was totally black. Even when we shined our phones on it. It was like made of some kind of weird glass, and we couldn’t see behind it. Whatever it is, lots of people were working on it. Hundreds, based on the leftover laundry down there.”
“My brother thinks it’s a Stargate, basically,” Ben said and shook his head.
“That’s not what…” Brad punched his twin’s arm. “You always have to… you’re a damned idiot.”
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