by Dan Padavona
Had Hank been home all along? He imagined the backwoods yokel creeping down the hallway with a twin-barreled shotgun. The wind gusted harder, raining green leaves against the windowpane. The floorboard squealed, and Ricky exhaled. Just the wind. Nothing to be worried about.
Swinging his legs off the bed, he snatched the picture off Amy’s nightstand. As he retraced his steps through the hallway, he had another idea. An even better idea. An idea that would make a difference in the world. He felt himself stir again, though that should have been unlikely so soon after orgasm. Grinning wide, he rushed down the staircase, nearly stumbling near the bottom and falling headfirst into plaster.
Easy, Ricky. No need to break your neck.
After unlocking the front door, he circled around the house, past the carport to the rickety garage at the end of the driveway. Ricky pulled the door up. Hot, musty air poured outward. Along the back wall, he found what he sought—a gas can, three quarters full. Not enough fuel to get him very far down the road, but plenty for starting a helluva bonfire. Two doors down, he found another garage and another gas can.
Back inside Hank’s house, it took him several frustrating minutes to find a book of matches. They weren’t in the kitchen drawers or in any of the logical places an intelligent person stores matches. Pulling the drawers off the runners, he whipped them across the kitchen. Wood and utensils exploded against the wall, tearing wallpaper and crumbling plaster. He spotted a book of matches on top of the refrigerator.
Ricky’s gonna burn this bitch down, baby.
Ricky splashed the couch and living room floor with gasoline. Then he walked out of the house and repeated the procedure, finding most of the doors of Chardray unlocked. He counted 24 houses, not bothering with Peter Pig’s. The memory of the darkened interior and the swarming flies made him shiver, so he gave the restaurant a wide berth as he went door-to-door like a frenzied vacuum cleaner salesman.
After all of the houses were doused, he backtracked to the end of the street. He tossed a lit match into each house, smiling as he watched blue flame spreading across the floor. By the time he’d worked his way through half of the houses, he smelled wood burning from down the street. Several minutes later, the growl of a distant inferno was heard among the sounds of glass breaking. The wind whipped toward him. He laughed, knowing the dry gale would feed the fire and spread it until nothing was left standing in Chardray.
With only three houses remaining, he ran out of matches. But that didn’t affect Ricky’s mood. The wind already did the lion’s share of the work for him, pushing the blaze toward the highway.
He ran. From behind him came explosions as the flames encountered gas stoves and water heaters. The booming came closer, and he started to worry that he might get trapped within the inferno.
Running faster, he heard another blast from the end of the street, followed by the clanging of metal raining down on the asphalt—a vehicle explosion. It wasn’t until then that Ricky realized he had forgotten to obtain a new car. Hell, he hadn’t even remembered to grab food for the road. He was too frightened and too invigorated to feel stupid. But what did it matter? He would find another town and a nice set of wheels.
As Chardray crackled and boomed, Ricky ran up the highway entrance ramp, sensing the flames gaining on him. But he wasn’t afraid. He was excited. The world was full of fast cars, mansions, and single girls.
And what Ricky wanted, Ricky would have.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Home Sweet Home
Palms cast black shadows that wriggled like tarantulas against the sun-baked asphalt, the wind whistling through the Bay Palace’s resort buildings. When Darren and Carina turned out of the parking lot, another man and woman emerged from behind a row of groomed hedges.
“Should we kill them?” asked Lorna, her long black hair fanning out from a sudden gale.
Will shook his head. “The orders were to follow them, to see what they are up to.”
Lorna looked disappointed by this, but before she protested, the Prius turned toward the park’s main gates. Grabbing him by the hand, Lorna pulled Will toward their station wagon.
“They’re getting away, Will.”
“No chance. They’ll be the only people on the highway. We’ll find them.”
Tuesday dawned with sweltering heat exacerbated by the lack of air conditioning. Although Darren knew gasoline was a priceless commodity and running the Prius’ air conditioning on high would consume his gas quickly, he splurged. The AC felt wonderful against his skin, like diving into crystal pool waters.
Following Carina’s directions, Darren drove east on I-4, past Disney World and Universal Studios, through Orlando, toward the I-95 juncture. As they drove down I-4, Darren kept peaking at the mirror, thinking he saw metal flashing on the horizon.
“Something wrong?”
He looked one more time at the mirror. Occasional wrecks dotted the highway, some of them requiring him to swerve onto the shoulder, but otherwise the road appeared empty.
“No. Just my mind playing tricks on me.”
Halfway along their route, he exited the highway and cruised into a brick-faced strip mall painted in muted warm tones. Vehicles clogged the parking lot. A blue Toyota RAV4 blocked the mall exit, sleeping in front of a deadened traffic light. He pulled in front of a Radio Shack, bringing the Prius to a stop over a painted warning: FIRE LANE. NO PARKING.
The interior of Radio Shack was warm and dark, like the inside of a brick oven. Shelves of calculators and mobile phone accessories appeared as foreboding tunnels which threw dark shadows against the rug.
“I don’t like it in here, Darren,” Carina said.
“Me neither. Let’s get what we need and get the hell out of here.”
While Carina filled a shopping bag with batteries of various sizes, Darren prowled through the gloom, collecting flashlights and tool sets in a second bag. Opening the glass case from behind the counter, he grabbed several portable ham radios, two citizen band units, and four walkie talkies.
As he crouched beneath the countertop, he felt his hair stand on end. Someone was behind him. Wheeling around, he saw Carina’s silhouette.
“Jesus. You scared the hell out of me.”
“Sorry about that. I’ve got enough for now. You can’t swing a dead cat between here and the coast without hitting an electronics shop.”
“Thanks for the visual. Okay, let’s get the heck out of here.”
Before reentering the highway, Darren checked the pumps at a 24-hour Mobil station. As he expected, the gas pumps were no longer operative. A few miles down the interstate, he pulled into a travel plaza and found similar luck. The Prius was down to a half-tank remaining, plenty enough to get them to Florida Bliss. But he estimated that he would run out of fuel within the week.
Half an hour later, they swerved through a slalom course of stopped vehicles at the interchange to I-95 and emerged onto the six-lane thoroughfare. Billboards along the highway advertised cheap theme park tickets and displayed photos of smiling families enjoying Florida beaches. Darren felt a hollow pang in his stomach. On Easter weekend, he had been stuck in I-95 tourist traffic, complaining to himself about how overbuilt Florida was. And hadn’t he remarked that there were too many people in the world, and that maybe it was time for a good ole plague to knock the traffic levels down to reasonable levels? Now, as they traveled northward with the highway to themselves, he longed for the minivans with northern states’ license plates that always appeared during the holidays. He missed seeing surfboards sticking out of the backs of jeeps like dolphins’ tails.
As he looked over at her, he said, “Have you given any more thought to your theory of why the world is suddenly empty? Still think it is biblical?”
She ran a hand through her hair, still wet from showering at Bay Palace. “I guess I do. Something tells me I should have spent more time in church over the last several years. But it’s a little late to find religion now.”
He laughed. “And yet, if your theory is correc
t, we were spared while others far more pious than you and I were not. How does that make any sense?”
Shrugging her shoulders, Carina peered toward the west side of the highway. A few miles off I-95, solar-paneled rooftops glimmered like placid lake waters, reflecting hundreds of white suns. “There it is,” she said, pointing toward Florida Bliss. “Take the next exit and turn left.”
When Darren pulled the Prius into the gated community, his mouth hung agape. Florida Bliss wasn’t just an experimental, eco-friendly neighborhood. It was a luxury resort-turned-community that rivaled the Bay Palace in grandeur. The homes were of varied Victorian constructions, painted in immaculate whites, offset by striking cerise roofs. The southern-exposed walls and roofs were covered by solar panels, the only blemish on the idyllic homes.
The gates stood locked, but the electronic entry system ran on solar power. Carina produced a laminated Florida Coasters security card, and Darren inserted it into a card reader outside the driver side window. The gates opened.
A winding red brick roadway led past the gates into the neighborhood. Their car reflected in the glass of the security checkpoint, momentarily fooling Darren into thinking that there was a guard inside. His breath caught in his throat, and then he recognized himself in the glass.
As they meandered through the neighborhood, circling back on roads where children should have been riding bikes and erecting lemonade stands, he marveled at the size of the homes.
“I don’t even want to ask what it costs to live here,” he said
“I can tell you that it is out of my pay grade, so don’t feel too bad.”
They circled through the community twice, passing the community’s central park. Among the swing sets, slides, and wooden playground equipment grew the twin fruit groves Carina had mentioned. Oranges and peaches grew plump, dotting the green-leaved trees with warm coloration.
“See the community center at the edge of the park?” She pointed toward a long, white, rectangular building beyond the playground equipment. “That’s the recreation center and realty office. Pull in there.”
He stopped the car at the walkway leading toward the community center steps. They found the doors unlocked, and upon entering the building, Darren thought he had turned the clock back to Saturday morning. Cool, climate-controlled air drifted down from the ceiling to greet them like an old friend. A half-round, glossy laminate reception desk was set off to the left. Like all of the Victorian exteriors of Florida Bliss, the interior was painted antiseptic-white. Gabled windows let in bright beams of sunlight. From down the hall came the familiar electronic blips and booms of arcade games.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Darren continued down the hallway. Along the left wall stood a row of classic arcade game machines—Asteroids, Centipede, Space Invaders, Phoenix. “I spent half of my youth jamming quarters into these things.”
“Later. Let’s get ourselves a house first. You can break your high scores from now until eternity.”
“That’s what she said.”
Carina swatted him on the arm, smiling up at him with a wholesome sweetness, like fresh strawberries on a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Heat bloomed in his cheeks.
At the far end of the community center ascended a set of stairs. He followed Carina up the staircase, and at the top of the landing, he found a hallway of offices stretching back toward the parking lot. She entered the first door on the right, and after rummaging for several minutes through cabinets and desk drawers, she emerged with a handful of keys.
“How does number 26 sound to you?”
“Would it be highly random of me if I said it sounded like a bad choice?”
“It’s the house right across the road. Easy access to the community center and park.”
“I don’t think we can afford the payments.”
“Don’t worry. I work here. I can get us a really good deal.”
That afternoon, the sky exploded with cauliflower-formed clouds, portending another daily round of Florida thunderstorms. As the building cloud masses developed dark gray bases, Darren and Carina located a U-Haul lot a few miles south of Florida Bliss. While the first raindrops dropped out of engorged cumulus clouds and splattered against their windshields, they dragged a mattress and bed frame out the front door of a furniture retailer into the back of the moving truck, never once noticing the station wagon parked across the street in an alleyway or the two figures seated inside the vehicle.
Carina followed Darren’s truck back to Florida Bliss in the Prius, and when they pulled into the driveway of house number 26, the sky opened up into torrents of rain, as though the Atlantic Ocean poured out of the heavens. Darren raced from the truck to the car, leaping into the passenger seat. He sat grinning, water dripping down his face.
“You could have waited until the storm let up,” she said. “You know the way Florida thunderstorms are. Ten minutes from now, it will be sunny.”
Thunder rumbled a deep growl that permeated through the car, shaking the seats.
“A little rain never hurt anyone.” The paved brick street, choked by the sudden deluge, ran like a river out of its banks. “I like how they built all of the houses on the top of slight inclines. Smart. No basement flooding issues.”
Reaching into the backseat, Darren removed a handheld CB radio and filled it with a pack of AA batteries.
“What are the odds anyone else is out there listening?” he asked.
“Probably better than the odds were Saturday morning that the world would disappear by supper time.”
“Good point.”
Scanning the available frequencies, Darren was met with the buzz of distant static.
“Hello. This is Darren Emerson in central Florida. Can anyone hear me?” Lightning flashed. The radio crackled. As the thunderstorm obscured the windshield in a blurry river of water, he scanned the channels with his ear pressed close to the speaker, listening for signs of life. After several minutes, he flipped the radio off and sighed. “I’ll try the ham radios later. They have a better radius, but not too many people use them.”
At 4:30 PM, the rain was reduced to a pitter-patter on the car roof, as though fingers were drumming to a song without beats. Thunder roared from further inland, and thin strands of golden light emerged from behind brightening clouds.
In the sultry aftermath of the storm, Darren hefted the mattress and bed frame in multiple trips from the truck to the upstairs bedroom. He even removed his sneakers inside the doorway, not wanting to track dirt across the plush carpeting.
The master bedroom overlooked the community center, park, and groves, their view offered through decorative octagonal windows covering most of the street-side wall.
When they finished constructing the bed, they were soaked with sweat and dampened by rainfall. Their eyes met, and Darren felt a tingle of excitement. Somehow her rain-drenched hair made her even more alluring. He walked into the shower, and she followed him.
He turned on the spray, and before his hair was wet, she backed him against the shower wall and pressed her breasts into him. Their lips met, and his mouth opened and accepted her tongue. Warm buckets of water cascaded over their heads, the spray tickling their skin. His fingers gripped her buttocks as she ran her hands along his back.
After their brief shower, as the sweet nectar of early evening sunshine poured out of the southern sky, she mounted him on their new bed and took him in full view of the windows, unaware of the eyes watching them from behind the community center.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Atlanta Goes to the Dogs
Like an ice cube on a hot plate, Tuesday afternoon in Atlanta melted away. Inside the Ritz-Carlton, the air grew increasingly stifling, and opening the windows did little more than move the hot air around. As Keeshana Laurens checked the level of the red dye alcohol in the wall thermometer, she wiped her brow with her sleeve. The temperature read 84 degrees. By summer, the luxurious confines of the Ritz-Carlton would feel like the insides of a blast furnace.
/> Another problem cropped up—Atlanta stunk.
It was a twisted potpourri of smells—garbage, that nobody picked up, festering under the May sun; a sewage facility somewhere in the city that failed; milk and meat products spoiling in a million refrigerators, restaurants, and grocery markets. Then there were the animals. On Sunday, the only things moving on the streets had been stray cats and dogs. By Monday, the cat and dog population seemed to have quadrupled. They were joined by squirrels, skunks, raccoons, and several lumbering woodchucks. Birds power-painted car windshields, storefronts, park benches, and street lamps with guano. This morning, Keeshana had watched from her third-story window as three deer meandered across Lenox Square as though window shopping. Atlanta looked like a scene from “Dr. Doolittle.”
“It sure didn’t take long for the animals to move in,” Keeshana said. Her roommate sat on the edge of her bed, nervously kneading a pillow in her lap. On the street below, a Great Dane squatted on its back heels and defecated on the pavement. The dog yipped one happy bark and ran across the road with its tail wagging. Pretty soon, downtown would be a gold mine of excrement. Keeshana half-wondered if a herd of cows might wander through by the end of the week. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe the country would be a better choice.”
Keeshana was more concerned by the activity after nightfall than she was by the smell. Last night, a big man had materialized out of the darkness, striding down the sidewalk with a baseball bat in his hand. Now and then, he would stop and swing the bat against a plate-glass window. Halfway down the street, he had leapt onto the hood of a Toyota Corolla and beat dents onto the hood, hooting like a delinquent caveman. Something had been wrong in the man’s eyes, too, as though he had been searching for the origins of a voice whispering in his ear. She worried what the man would do if he encountered another person. A few hours later, a boy and girl in their late teens or early twenties came walking through Phipps Plaza with their hands stuffed inside sweatshirt pockets. They wore hoods despite the warm overnight temperature. The girl stopped and shoved something cylindrical that looked like a homemade pipe bomb into the tailpipe of a red SUV. The boy and girl ran off, laughing. Several seconds later, the back of the SUV exploded, lifting the rear wheels a foot off the pavement. As orange flame licked at the back bumper and black smoke eddied into the night, three car alarms had shrilled.