by Dan Padavona
Listening to the waterfall cascade from across the pool, he closed his eyes. As he drifted toward slumber, he was aware of the scents and sounds around him—the fluttering of palm leaves, the scent of chlorine intermingled with tropical flowers, the way the wind whistled between the buildings. Two seagulls squawked and squabbled over a discarded french fry. He relaxed, giving in to exhaustion.
He was moments from sleep when the hairs rose on the back of his neck. Someone stood behind him. He sensed the person hunched over him. He opened his eyes, expecting to see a butcher’s knife poised against his throat or a gun aimed at his head.
Darren saw a woman—a wavy-haired blonde with sunglasses pushed up on her head. From her blue and green short sleeve shirt with affixed roller coaster logo, he deduced that she was a park employee.
“Sorry, I was just—”
“Enjoying a free vacation?” Her smile disarmed him. As she sat down in the lounge chair across from him and crossed her legs, he noticed she was strikingly beautiful. “I see you checked yourself into the King’s Suite. Good choice. Are you pleased with the view?”
“How did you—”
“Carina Fortin,” she said, extending her hand. As he shook her hand, he noticed her firm grip. He watched her brown eyes assess him. “I’m the Resort Relations Manager here at Florida Coasters, not that there is much need for resort relations today. And you’re Darren Emerson, unless you entered an assumed name into the reservations system. I’ve been watching you since you arrived.”
“Yeah, I actually put my real name into the system. Pretty stupid, huh? I know I’m trespassing. I’ll grab my stuff and go.” He started to rise. She put her hand out to stop him.
“Nonsense. Stay. As far as I can tell, we’re the only two people on the resort grounds. Why let these nice rooms go to waste? I don’t think anyone will be checking in tomorrow, so you might as well stay awhile.” He sat down. For a long moment, she sat watching him, as though she was considering how to ask her next question. “Now that you are here, I guess I should ask you where you think everyone disappeared to yesterday.”
“I should have spoken sooner. I was going to ask you the same question,” he said. Her eyes followed his across the abandoned wallets and electronics. “I must have fallen asleep sometime before five o’clock yesterday afternoon, though I don’t remember wanting to take a nap. And when I woke up—”
“Everyone was gone,” she said, nodding as she finished his sentence. “My phone service worked until about 7 pm last night, but when I tried to make a call, all the phone did was ring. I tried everyone on my contact list at least twice and never got an answer. Then the service died.”
“That sounds a lot like my evening. Say, were any of your contacts out of state?”
“Sure. The majority of them are. I moved down to Florida from Vermont seven years ago. Most of my friends and family are from up north.”
“So the disappearances, if you want to call them that, weren’t limited to Florida. I assumed as much.”
As she turned her head toward the lake, which shimmered golden in the late afternoon sunlight, she nervously fiddled with the drawstring of her shorts, as though busying herself with a mundane task would prevent her from thinking about the implications of a world without people.
“Are you a religious man, Darren?”
“No. Not particularly,” he said. “I was raised Catholic. But I didn’t stick around long enough to get confirmed. I guess I’m a church school dropout.”
“Well, I’m not very religious myself. To be gun-to-my-head-honest, I haven’t believed in gods or devils since elementary school. But Darwinism doesn’t explain a few hundred million people disappearing from the earth on a lazy May afternoon.”
“So you’re thinking that a higher power is at work here. Like some kind of judgment day?”
“Something like that. Who can say? Remember learning about the apocalypse?” Darren nodded. “Maybe the apocalypse isn’t about the world ending, so much as it about the human race coming to an end.”
“I’m not sure that I follow you.”
“I’ve been watching the lake since morning. Same number of seagulls that were here yesterday, same number of birds flying in and out of the trees. The mosquitoes are still everywhere,” she said, slapping a mosquito which landed on her arm. “See what I mean?”
“I saw three deer along I-4 on my way here, so the animals are still around. It’s like they’re getting bold, already venturing out for a look now that there aren’t tractor trailers and commuters buzzing past every few seconds.”
Carina nodded. “The animals were unaffected. Unless I’m mistaken, if a judgment was passed, it was passed on the human race only.”
“So why are you and I still here?”
“For a while, I wondered if I was the only one left. But I’m not so narcissistic to believe that I was the only person worth keeping around. There must be other people around, don’t you think?”
“Yeah. Sure there are. Hey, maybe your apocalypse is some kind of test. A test to see if what remains of us is worthy of sticking around for another several thousand years.”
Though the afternoon was warm, Carina rubbed the goosebumps off her arms. “If you are right, I’d hate to think how we will be asked to prove our worth. How many people do you think are left?”
He scratched his chin and leaned his head back, as though the puffy cumulus clouds would divine an answer. “I’ll bet there are quite a few nearby. Figuring that nine out of ten are so scared that they haven’t ventured outside yet, and that’s just a half-assed guess, I’ll venture we aren’t nearly the only people left wandering the ole 407.
“But they’ll have to come out soon. Once the power fails, and it’s going to fail sooner than later, you’re going to have folks wandering by necessity, scavenging for food, trying to find a way to stay cool under the southern sun. And how about those northerners? Think they might decide to head our way after the first cold night of September when there is no gas and electric company to turn the heat on? My guess is we’ll see plenty more people in the next few days, and a whole bunch more once autumn comes knocking.”
“It makes me wonder if there is anyone else inside the resort, watching us and wondering if it is safe to go outside,” she said, her eyes traveling across the resort windows.
Seconds turned to minutes, and minutes to an hour. Realizing how much he missed the interplay of simple conversation, Darren thought he could talk with Carina until the following morning’s sunrise.
Across the lake, the Golden Dragon roller coaster slumbered like a humpbacked monster among its smaller brethren. Seagulls circled the shoreline, their shadows like transient storm clouds reflecting upon the water’s surface.
“It’s getting late,” he said. “I should probably get back to my suite.”
“You want company?” He raised his eyebrows. “I mean to talk some more. This place is kinda creepy, deserted like this.”
“Sure. I’d love some company. I suppose there isn’t much company to go around these days. But I have to warn you. I snore like a locomotive.”
“Who said anything about spending the night?” She smiled up at him.
He threw his plastic food containers into a green recycling bin, laughing to himself when he remembered there was no one left to collect the trash.
Together they walked through the desolate courtyard, like Camelot’s lone survivors, toward the amber lake waters. Night grew out of the eastern sky, and with it a feeling of trepidation that Darren could not place. When they were safely inside his suite, Carina locked and bolted the door.
At 10:18 p.m., the power died.
CHAPTER SIX
Here, There Be Demons
She lay trembling on the couch with a blanket pulled up to her chin to wall away the night. Set on the coffee table was a framed photograph of Tori and her parents. The people in the photo smiled back at her as though they resided in an alternate universe where life went on and everyone wa
s happy.
Tori limped through most of Sunday in a state of numbness, but the reality of her loved ones being gone kept creeping up on her. Sometimes the truth flared up when she had too much time to sit and think. When she saw a dirty shirt on her bedroom floor, she remembered that Sundays were laundry days and that she should have been washing or folding, helping her mother with the chores. During the afternoon she’d wandered the town lost in a phantom world—
Or was she a phantom haunting the earth, caught within a cruel purgatory?
—past darkened storefronts and empty yards.
At supper time she had entered the Red Oak Fresh Grocer two blocks north of home, grabbed a loaf of bread and a box of Wheaties, and walked out with next morning’s breakfast. The power had gone out before sunrise, and although the milk inside the store refrigerators was still cool to the touch, she had no way to keep it fresh at home. Eventually she would have to give up perishables, so she thought she might as well get used to dry cereal.
She hadn’t desired to stay long within the grocery store, with its shadowy aisles stretching toward a black oblivion. She had the unsettling feeling that she was not alone in the store, and as she padded along the bread aisle, she thought she heard footsteps paralleling hers from one aisle over. Without muzak and the ring of cash registers, the acoustics within the bleak confines fooled her. Tori couldn’t be certain if the footsteps were her own, echoing, or if someone else was in the store with her.
As she hurried into the daylight, she felt as if she had escaped from a haunted house.
On the outskirts of downtown, not far from Mrs. Donnely’s boutique, she heard a high-pitched mewling from beneath a moving truck. Lowering herself to her knees, she peered underneath the truck and discovered a white kitten looking out at her. It took several minutes of coaxing before the kitten came to her. She stroked its white, muddied fur. The outline of the cat’s rib cage showed plainly through the fur, and as she tore off pieces of bread, the kitten ate and purred, resting contentedly on her lap. Before she could convince the cat to come home with her, it ran off through an alleyway.
After losing the kitten, she walked through downtown while nibbling on bread. A small part of her held out hope that she would look through a storefront window and see someone she recognized. Maybe a friend sipping tea at the cafe or coming down the street holding a shopping bag of new summer clothes. But there was nobody in those storefronts.
Now, as the darkness of the old house crept down from the attic, spilling off of the second floor landing like India ink, the living room grew black. The silence of the house was thorough, as though pillows were pressed against her ears. She hadn’t realized how pervasive the hum of electrical current through walls was or how deafening the buzz of a refrigerator’s motor could be, until those sounds only existed in memory.
She pulled the blanket tighter. Her eyes welled with tears. She stared at the photograph, wondering about afterlives and whether she would ever see her parents again.
Her stomach growled, reminding her that she needed to eat, even if she abhorred the idea of food. With her hand cupped about the flame, Tori grabbed a lit candle off the coffee table. She crossed through the dining room and turned left into the kitchen.
When she reached the kitchen, something seemed out of place. Wrinkling her nose, she stared at the Honda car keys on the kitchen counter. Hadn’t they been hung on the hook? The last 48 hours were a mire of confusion, and maybe she had moved the keys earlier in the day. She considered a drive into Syracuse. Maybe the disappearances were confined to Red Oak. Maybe someone in the city could tell her what was going on.
After hanging the keys on the hook, she opened the refrigerator—just a hint of coolness remaining—and retrieved a jar of Smucker’s strawberry jelly.
Two minutes later she returned to the living room with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on white bread. Peanut butter and jelly had been her favorite since her toddler years, when her mother made them for Tori on lazy summer days. She even cut off the crust, something she probably hadn’t done in ten years. After she consumed the crust pieces (she didn’t think it was wise to waste food), she settled onto the couch with her food, feeling a tinge of nostalgia. But in her grief, the sandwich tasted flavorless.
After mechanically consuming the sandwich, she went upstairs to shower, fearing that the water would be cold. Though she had changed clothes, she hadn’t thought to shower since the town vanished. Her body smelled dingy. Stripping out of her clothes, she hung a bath towel over the bar, thinking she would stay under the spray just long enough to get her hair wet. Bracing herself for the icy cold, she was relieved to find that the hot water heater still functioned. The initial spray was cool, probably a similar temperature to the park’s swimming pool during summer—chilly, but not frigid. Then the water heater caught up to the flow rate. Tori stood under the spray for several minutes, feeling the water cascade in waves over her face.
Shutting off the faucet, she slid open the shower door. When she reached for the towel, she grasped nothing but air.
Where’s my towel?
The candle light flickered noisily within the closed confines of the bathroom, radiating off the four walls as though she was inside an oven.
She spotted the missing towel on the door rung where her father’s towel usually hung. She swore she had placed the towel on the sliding door’s bar, but she barely remembered any specifics from the past two days, let alone where her bath towel was. As she reached for the towel, three candlelight-reflected shadows reached with her, like wraiths, sending a chill up her spine.
Goosebumps erupted across her body. As she wrapped the towel around her like a blanket, her knees shook and her teeth chattered. She stood in place for several minutes, listening to the water drip onto the bath mat, like raindrops against a closed window, waiting for the heat to return to her body.
Bathed in the cobalt blues of moonlight, the upstairs hallway looked cold and wintry as she crossed from the bathroom to her bedroom. She stepped forward and a floorboard groaned. For a second, she heard the moan echo from the top of the staircase.
Shutting the bedroom door behind her, she twisted the lock and stood silent, listening. Is someone coming up the stairs? Or was it just the echo of her own footfall, amplified by an imagination that threatened to run amok?
Crickets chirred through the open window. Translucent drapes danced in the night breeze, reaching for her with ghostly arms.
A minute passed, and then another minute. Silence from the hallway leaked under the threshold.
Calm down. You’re making yourself crazy.
Convinced she had imagined the sound from the staircase, Tori brushed the tangles out of her auburn hair and slipped on a pair of cotton athletic shorts. She pulled a nightshirt over her head, brushed her hair again, and regarded her reflection in the mirror over her dresser. Her face looked pale and drawn. Dark semicircles lay beneath her eyes like identical crescent moons. Sighing, she reached for the door lock; but before she twisted the lock open, she placed her ear to the door.
No footsteps on the staircase. No monsters.
After several seconds, she opened the door to the moonlit hallway.
Fiery orange spilled out of the bathroom where the candle burned. Grabbing the candle, she walked toward the stairs, the fire pushing back the darkness several paces in front of her. As she descended the staircase, the candlelight gradually revealed the living room.
Placing the candle on the coffee table, she sat on the couch and pulled the blanket over her legs.
The family photograph on the coffee table was gone. It was now on the end table.
Her heart lurched.
The candle’s glow overwhelmed her vision, leaving the rest of the downstairs in crypt-like darkness. Thick drapes were drawn against the front picture window. Cool blues slipped around the curtains like water spilling in.
The flame reflected off the far wall, turning her own shadow monstrous, making every movement exaggerate
d. The flame flickered, and for a moment she felt a breeze pass through the darkness. Her mouth went cotton-dry. She wanted to melt into the cushions.
The candle burned down to the wick, and now the blackness of the living room closed in on the dying flame. Her escape routes—the front door, the kitchen, the stairs—were shrouds of darkness.
“Torrriiiiiii…”
A whisper, like beetles crawling through dead leaves, came from behind her. She jumped off the couch and banged her knee against the coffee table. The candle tilted over.
Tori turned toward the dining room, backing away from the whisper. The tilted candle shone like a flashlight into the dining room. Her eyes passed over the dining room table, the cabinet, the ceiling-to-floor curtains fronting the sliding glass door.
The curtains moved.
Two shoes protruded from beneath the curtains.
“Torrriiiiiii…”
As the curtains parted behind her, she ran for the front door. A shrill scream broke the silence. She pulled the front door open, and the intruder hurled his body into the door, slamming it shut.
Her escape route cut off, Tori ran for the kitchen, a horrifying mixture of child-like squeals and monstrous roars following her through the living room. She caught her reflection in the dining room’s glass corner cabinet. She saw her terror-struck face and something dark rushing up from behind her.
The candlelight captured her pursuer’s face, and as she turned the corner toward the kitchen, she caught the reflection of Jacob Mann, frenzied and whey-faced. She screamed.
As she reached for the back door, Jacob grabbed her by the hair. He whipped Tori backward, yanking a handful of hair out by the roots. She struck the base of the kitchen island. Her shoulder screamed in agony. He pulled her up by the hair and whipped her into the refrigerator door. Magnets, notes, and prescriptions rained down on her head as the room spun past her.
As she tried to crawl past him, Jacob kicked her in the ribs. She squealed, rolling into a ball on the cold floor. To Tori, it felt like tiny knives were stuck in her rib cage. His footsteps circled around her head.