by Dan Padavona
“Read something about it on the Internet recently. That’s the experimental community your company was building.”
“Yeah. It’s a space coast development about two miles off of interstate 95. It’s completely built. The homes were due to be put up for sale next April. Darren, we’re talking 6000 acres of land and enough housing for 4000 people, and you can easily increase that to 10,000 people if homes are shared. But that’s not the exciting part. Every home was built to be environmentally friendly—solar panels with battery backup storage, south-facing solar water heaters. It all works.”
“Electricity, air conditioning, and hot meals. I like it already.”
“Each yard has a garden plot, too, though obviously there aren’t any gardens started. The company vision was that every family could grow enough vegetables to feed four. That always seemed like a stretch to me, but it’s a start. The central park even has two established groves of peaches and oranges.”
“Sounds like you are trying to convert me to vegetarianism.”
“I’ll make a deal with you. If Bambi wanders into the neighborhood, he’s all yours.”
Darren pushed himself up and sat beside Carina. The suite window offered a view of the lake, which shimmered in the moonlight, like a scattering of diamonds.
“This could really work. Food supply is still an issue. But if we get the lights on, I bet everything else will start to fall into place. So when do you want to go?”
“After breakfast?”
“I’ll have to check my appointment schedule first.”
Carina punched him in the arm and giggled. As her eyes drifted around the suite, past the wet bar, kitchenette, and high-definition television, she said, “You know, I’m really gonna miss this place. Maybe not the creepiness of the resort after dark. But this room has a lot of memories.”
“We’ve made several since last night.”
“Stop it. I’m trying to be serious.”
“You know, if someone figures out how to turn the grid on again, you just might own this place. Carina Coasters has a nice ring to it.”
“Ha-ha, very funny.”
“I’m only half-kidding. Think of all the infrastructure waiting for someone to come along and claim it. Hotels, restaurants, stadiums, power companies. What are the chances anyone with a claim on all this infrastructure is still alive? And what court would uphold the claim, if they are? You could own your own mall empire.”
“It’s not that simple. All of those businesses you mentioned require customers to support it. You are the only person I’ve seen since Saturday evening. Unless you eat a hundred thousand burgers per day, my fast food chain will go bankrupt.”
“So we scale down for a bit—”
A crash echoed from the hallway, followed by the muted sound of a door closing. Darren went silent.
Carina’s eyes widened, appearing like hen’s eggs in the ambient window light. “We’re not alone, are we?”
“You said it yourself,” Darren said. “There are probably guests still on the resort, trying to figure out what happened and where they should go.” He rose off the bed and walked naked to the door. Placing his ear to the door, Darren listened. Carina sheepishly walked toward him, wrapped in a bed sheet.
None of the noises one would expect inside a resort hotel drifted down the corridors. Not the grind and rattle of the ice machine, nor the laughter of children returning from the parks. But Darren heard something. Straining to listen, he heard the distant, dull thudding of footsteps from the floor below.
“Is there somebody out there?”
“I don’t know,” Darren said. “I thought I heard something from the floor below us.”
Carina pulled the sheet tighter around her shoulders. As Darren listened, he heard the dull thudding again, and the rattle and click of door knobs being tested, as though someone was going from room to room, searching for an unlocked door.
“What is it—”
“Shh.”
The suite door was locked with the bolt engaged. The darkness within the suite seemed thicker now, seeming to push back against the moonlight at the window.
Carina ran on tiptoe to stand beside the window. Pressing her back to the wall, she peeked her head around the frame. The resort hotel walls were front lit by the moon. Three floors below, at ground level, the lake washed against the shore in gentle waves. To the right of the building, the hotel threw a black, shark-fin shadow across the grounds. The gardens and pool area, so inviting by day, appeared at night as a treacherous jungle, within which untold dangers stalked.
At the door, Darren peered through the peep hole. Even with night-adjusted eyes, he couldn’t see anything in the halls. The sounds from below went silent.
For ten minutes, they maintained their watch positions in chilled silence—Darren at the door, Carina at the window. The moon drifted behind a cloud and came out on the other side with a haunted scream for a face.
But no danger presented itself.
When they returned to the bed, their eyes were troubled. Several hours remained until sunrise. Holding each other close, it took a long time before they were calm enough to sleep. Eventually their breathing slowed, and they drifted into fitful slumber.
While they slept, the drapes oscillated in the wind like dancing phantoms.
Shortly after 3 am, the doorknob turned ever so slightly. The knob came to rest, and then it twisted until it was stopped by the lock. As Darren and Carina tossed and turned, a figure moved silently down the hall, checking each door. They were not alone in the world.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Travel Plaza
I am my father’s son.
The first flaxen rays of sunrise warmed his face. Blake opened his eyes and looked around, lying in a secluded section of public park outside of Binghamton, New York, with the dew soaking through his clothes. He rubbed his arms and shivered.
A grove of beechnut and maple trees formed a half-circle around him. Several yards away, a red playground merry-go-round caught the light, the steel safety bars glowing like the surface of the sun. Beyond the merry-go-round stood a swing set and a tall slide shaped like a rocket ship.
As had been the case since he discovered the box of adoption papers in the attic on Saturday, he had dreamed of his father. In the dream, his father had taught him to drive. Blake used his left foot to brake and his right foot to accelerate, and his father corrected him, teaching him to use only the right. They drove along an empty stretch of country road marked by leaning, dilapidated barns and long stretches of field grass. Blake’s hands felt clammy as he gripped the wheel. His father, Morgan Connelly, talked in soothing tones that blended with the low hum of the engine. Overhead, a green, glistening ocean of flora and sunshine swept past in a verdant fog. Nothing out of the ordinary happened in the dream, and perhaps that is what made it the most painful dream yet. When he dreamed, there was never a cardboard box with hidden adoption papers. People still went to school, worked jobs, and came home for supper at 5 PM. His father was still his father.
Now in the park, he cupped his elbows with his hands, trying to squeeze the cold out of him. He remembered something odd from his dream. His father had said—
Remember always that you are not alone. If you run into trouble, get yourself south. You’ll find help there.
Blake thought the advice strange. In the strengthening morning light, he felt himself drawn southward.
Is that where all the people are? Has there been some sort of bizarre migration?
As the sun shone against his face, drying his clothing and warming his bones, he cut across the park and walked south along the tree-lined asphalt of U.S. route 11.
Though she didn’t yet know him, Tori felt drawn to Blake’s position like a magnet to metal. Since escaping Jacob Mann in Red Oak, her life seemed like a waking nightmare in which she continuously looked over her shoulder, expecting to see Jacob coming for her.
She longed for the safety of other people. She missed crowded
shopping malls, sleepovers, and baseball games.
Tori had slept the night away in the front seat of the Civic, the car parked amid a few hundred others in a Target parking lot outside of Binghamton, New York. Battling her fear of the vast, shadowed store interior, she had crept into the Target for sneakers. As she walked barefoot between the shelves, which stretched dungeon-like into darkness, she could no longer imagine a time when the store had been brightly lit, full of people shopping. The huge store had become a black maze, within which she sought items for her journey. Who knew what monsters awaited her down those silent, dark corridors?
After finding a pair of running sneakers, she had slipped back into the night. It had taken her several more minutes to locate her Civic in the unlit parking lot.
Feeling sufficiently hidden among the ocean of plastic and aluminum, she’d drifted asleep shortly after midnight. She had dreamed, and within the dream she had followed a gray cloud amidst a pristine, blue sky. It seemed illogical to her to feel calmed, following the one existing flaw in the picturesque sky scape. Yet her instinct told her safety could be found ahead, and so she followed the strange cloud, driving over rolling hills, walking through wildflower meadows, past gurgling brooks, and through a public park where children once played.
Now her attention was pulled southward, as though a string was tied to her. She almost expected to see the cloud from her dreams, rising over the misty, forested hills like a hot air balloon. Instead she saw an indigo sky, deeper than all the world’s oceans. Something to the south attracted her. It gave her hope.
She remembered a science lesson from the second grade. Mr. Glick had given each of his students a black, rectangular magnet that looked like a piece of dark chocolate and a paper clip. Under Mr. Glick’s supervision, Tori had placed her forefinger and thumb around the magnet, inching the rectangle across the scratched, wooden desk toward the paper clip. At first, she hadn’t noticed any change with the paper clip. There had come a moment, when the magnet was halfway across the desk, that the paper clip started to rattle. The magnet echoed the vibration, silently emitting waves of energy into her fingers.
Then, when she inched the magnet closer, the paper clip had leaped across the desk with such suddenness that she squealed. A wave of surprised yells rolled through the classroom, followed by—
“Aw, cool.”
“That was awesome.”
“Hey, Dennis. Try it with your braces.”
“Wicked.”
Kept far enough apart, the paper clip didn’t appear to feel the magnet’s presence. But when she brought the magnet closer, the tiny piece of metal had been compelled to move.
Magnets and paper clips were not on Tori’s mind as she drove the Civic eastward along route 434 between Binghamton and the town of Vestal. She crept past car dealerships, Starbucks, McDonald’s, and a sprawling strip mall. The parking lots were packed full of cars, giving the illusion of human activity on a normal day.
At least I know I’m not the only person alive.
Over the last two days, as she drove south along I-81, she had caught glimpses of solitary vehicles moving along ridge-top highways, like motorboats lost at sea. Now, as the city of Binghamton burgeoned out of concrete and blacktop, the eastern tops of the tallest buildings awash in orange like desert mesa, she felt herself drawn toward a stretch of a back-road highway marked as route 11.
Her father had once told her that U.S. route 11 was like a gateway to the eastern United States. It took you from the U.S.-Canada border to New Orleans, Louisiana. All you had to do was stay on U.S. route 11, and you could see the Civil War battlefields of historic Virginia, the Adirondack mountains, Sand Mountain, Lookout Mountain, Hattiesburg, and all that New Orleans jazz. The idea that one road could take her that far always made her tingle with excitement, and her parents had even taken a two-hour jog along route 11 through Virgina when she was twelve, before her father caught the faster, more antiseptic I-81 so they could make it to Orlando in two days.
She passed the sleepy town of Conklin, and as Tori put the town’s community park in her rear view mirror, she felt the same attraction the paper clip had experienced when the magnet had drawn close. Before the car crested a hillock north of the Pennsylvania border, she sensed something important was about to happen.
When she saw him striding alone along the right shoulder, his eyes staring at the gravel, dusty sneakers kicking up stone, she had an urge to press the accelerator to the floor and drive past. Besides Jacob Mann, he was the first person she’d seen close-up since Saturday morning. Although she craved nothing more than to share conversation with another person, especially a boy who looked to be about her age, she was leery of letting a stranger into the car.
What if he is insane like Jacob?
Before she could change her mind, she brought the car to a stop twenty yards ahead of the boy. Through the rear-view mirror she watched him. Initially, he stopped, watching the red glow of the brake lights the way he might eye a panther stalking out of the jungle. He took a few steps forward, veering right to place as much room between himself and the car as possible. Tori rolled down the passenger window and leaned across the seat.
He stopped beside the car. She saw relief on his face, as though he realized she was someone he need not fear. The relief transmuted into something that resembled indignation. It was the same look the smart kids in school reserved for speeches delivered by the homecoming king and queen.
“Can I give you a ride?”
He stood looking at her for several seconds, an ever-changing palette of emotions on his face.
“Come on,” she said. “Let me give you a lift.”
He reached for the door, and when he touched it, he pulled his hand back, as if he expected Tori to kick the accelerator and laugh at him as she drove off. When she didn’t drive off, he cautiously opened the door. As he poked his head through the door, she saw he was a quiet sort of attractive—good looking, but plain-featured and easy to look past, as though he was hiding in plain sight.
“Are you sure?”
“You aren’t like a serial killer or anything, right?”
His icy blankness warmed into a smile. “No.”
“Then yes, I’m sure.”
He crawled into the passenger seat, and Tori started to drive.
She wondered anew about the boy riding shotgun. Was he the source of optimism she had felt upon awakening? Watching him fidget in his seat, his eyes drifting toward her and darting back as though he was afraid she might snap at him, she saw him more as a rescued puppy than a guard dog.
In the warm light that basks the land after sunrise, during the sixty minutes that photographers refer to as “the golden hour,” Tori drove through tiny Pennsylvania industrial towns where even the factories and smokestacks appeared picturesque against the rural landscape. At any moment she could have cut east and picked up the faster, more efficient I-81. Perhaps it was the fond nostalgia of her father’s affinity for U.S. route 11 that convinced her to stick to the slower route.
Attempting to engage the boy in conversation, Tori learned his name was Blake Connelly, and that he was from the greater Syracuse area, less than an hour’s drive from Red Oak. Beyond that, she learned very little. He was like a block of ice she chipped and chiseled at, trying to turn mystery into art. By the time she crossed onto I-81 south near Scranton, he seemed more relaxed and willing to talk.
“Where do you think everyone disappeared to?” she asked. He shrugged his shoulders. “Come on. You must have some ideas?”
“Does it matter? There are more important things to worry about.”
“Like?”
“Like how to survive, I guess.”
She brushed her auburn curls from her face, and she caught him looking at her. His cheeks turned red.
“How many people have you seen since Saturday night?”
“I saw a few cars on the highway. Last night I saw the glow of a lantern from a farmhouse not far from where you picked me up. So the
re are people out there. Just not many of them.”
“That sounds about the same as what I’ve seen.”
He peered out the passenger window, watching a row of houses on the outskirts of Scranton. “It makes you wonder.”
“What’s that?”
“All of those houses. You figure there were probably a few hundred people in that neighborhood. Odds are a few people are still there, watching us drive past. You have to know they see us, too. I bet not more than four or five cars drive down this section of highway per day, so when they hear a car coming, they look.”
“I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re probably right.”
“Let’s say 99 out of 100 are…vacated. The last two nights, I kept looking for a place to stay. Because eventually, if I keep sleeping outside, I’m going to get caught in a thunderstorm or something. But every time I thought about going into one of those houses, I kept thinking, what if it is one of those one in 100 houses that isn’t vacated? And what if the person who lives there is someone who might have done some pretty awful things?”
She shivered. “God. Like a serial killer or something. That would be pretty awful luck.”
“Low odds. But not that low.”
“I don’t think I could ever stay in one of those unknown houses, now that you have mentioned the possibilities.”
“Unless you plan on sleeping in the rain and snow, you’re going to have to.”
By mid-morning, they passed Harrisburg and entered into rolling farm country dotted by paint-chipped houses and fenced-in pastures. The morning humidity that had soaked Blake with dew rose skyward to form tall, cauliflower-shaped clouds, like the turrets of a faraway kingdom. The wind picked up, and the compact car rocked across the centerline between the driving and passing lanes with each gust. Tori glanced at the gas gauge. They were down to a quarter tank.
“Speaking of storms, it feels like it wants to rain later today,” she said.
He nodded, and she noticed him glancing toward the gas gauge. “It won’t be long before we’re out of fuel.”