by James Sperl
Catherine watched as Janet and Charlie exchanged brief, but knowing glances. Charlie wasn’t smiling.
“Well, I better get to my rounds,” he said adjusting his belt line. “You ladies have yourselves a good day’s sleep.” He turned to Tamara and Abby and said, “And I’ll see you two gals later.”
“Bye, Charlie,” Tamara and Abby spoke in unison.
“We got real lucky when he joined us,” Janet remarked as she watched him exit the store.
“Well, I can tell you he’s made quite an impression over here,” Catherine said, indicating Tamara and Abby with a bob of her head. Janet nodded and smiled cordially and in her lukewarm response Catherine could perceive the desire for an invitation to join them. “Would you like to sit down?”
“Yeah, thanks,” Janet replied as she pulled out a green, wrought iron chair from the table and sat with a huff.
With Janet now at eye level, Catherine was able to scrutinize her more thoroughly. She was, Catherine felt ashamed to admit, not a particularly attractive woman. Her features were fairly plain with small eyes seemingly void of eyelashes and a bony nose all set in a large, rectangular face. Her square chin only emphasized her thin, chapped lips and it was clear that at some point in her life she’d had a bout with a severe form of acne. While her hair appeared clean it was cut into a most utilitarian style, the bangs trimmed unevenly over her eyebrows, the back falling just to the top of her shoulders in a quasi-mullet. In another life, Janet might have been referred to as butch.
“You know, if you’re interested,” Janet said to Tamara and Abby, “the entire toy and game section is virtually untouched.”
Tamara’s eyes lit up like a jack-o-lantern on Halloween, turning to Catherine in an already pleading expression of hope.
“Can I?” Tamara begged.
“Sure, kiddo,” Catherine consented. “Abby, you mind going with her?”
“Uh, no I guess not,” Abby replied unenthusiastically.
Janet leaned over conspiratorially toward Abby. “Two aisles over from the toys are all the MP3 players and other electronics we relocated from the Main Street Market. See if you can find something you like.”
Now Abby’s eyes popped wide, so much so Catherine thought her eyebrows might actually touch her hairline. Abby turned her attention to Catherine waiting for the go-ahead. Janet, sensing approval was required, deferred authority back to Catherine in the event she had somehow stomped on the maternal order of things. “If that’s okay with you, of course.”
Catherine smiled lightly. “That’s fine. Just try and stay where I can see you, okay?”
“All right, mom,” Abby said.
“Okay, mommy,” Tamara blurted, her fanny already out of the chair and moving. Catherine watched her daughters run through the store, excited and playful, and couldn’t decide in that moment how she felt about their sudden burst of happiness given all that had transpired. Her mother had always told her that kids were resilient. Catherine only hoped resiliency wasn’t a breeding ground for indifference.
“You’ve got great kids,” Janet commented. “They’re very brave. You all are.”
“I’m not sure how much bravery factors in to pleading for your life, but thank you.” Catherine picked at her cuticles. “Janet, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Those men...what language were they speaking? I didn’t recognize it. It almost sounded made up.”
Janet pulled a hair from off her tongue. “Probably was. Been hearing a lot more of it lately, too. People throwing together simple, yet coded languages that don’t really exist. Those boys tonight? Sounded like an overly complicated form of pig Latin, you ask me. Some folks feel it’s a way to sort out us from them.”
Catherine squinted at this answer. “Them?”
Janet tried to disguise her stunned expression at Catherine’s response. She quickly changed topics as she continued to size up Catherine.
“I’m sorry I had to disappear on all of you so soon after getting back here. I’ve got quite a few things to attend to around here, as you can probably imagine.”
Catherine again surveyed the Sears store and held out her hands in a gesture of incredulousness. “I can’t even imagine what...I mean, where did everyone...” She laughed exasperatingly. “I’m sorry. I’ve just got a million and one questions and I don’t have a clue where to begin.”
“Well, why don’t we start with this one then,” Janet said purposefully. “Where’d you all come from?”
Catherine’s overwhelmed smile dissolved on her face as she realized this was no idle chitchat. Janet needed answers and given her apparent rank in this new city, it had been incumbent upon her to debrief all new arrivals. This was smart and necessary, Catherine thought. She just wished she hadn’t been blindsided by the query and had had more time to formulate a response to this inevitable question.
“I’ve been running patrols for the past month,” Janet continued, “and the number of folks I’ve been coming across have been small and getting smaller. But then there you all are. A family with young children wandering about in the night. And I’ve just got to know how that can be.”
Catherine looked down at her hands as they clasped one another. “I guess that does deserve some sort of explanation.” She lifted her head and met Janet’s gaze. “We, uh...we were on a sailing trip,” she said convincingly.
“A sailing trip?”
“We set out just a bit over two months ago. It was supposed to be our summer vacation. We were going to port up and down the coast and just enjoy our time together. Josh leaves for college next year—at least he was going to—and so this was our last chance to really all be together before things changed.”
“So you’ve been at sea for two months?” Janet asked, sounding generally impressed.
“More or less, yes.”
“Just you and your kids?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s your husband? I mean...I’m assuming you’re married.”
“I am, but...” Catherine paused intentionally, hoping to provide some drama to her story. She hated to start off this way with Janet, but thought the truth might not only be difficult to swallow, but also result in resentment among her rescuers. “I don’t know where he is.”
“What do you mean? He wasn’t with you on the boat?” Janet prodded.
“No. We were supposed to all leave together, but his work pulled him away at the last minute. He said he’d meet us later at one of the ports along our route.”
“What did he do?”
“He was an airline pilot.”
Janet leaned back, seeming to accept Catherine’s story as truth. Catherine even noticed what appeared to be sympathy forming in the wrinkles of her craggy features.
“One minute we’re all ready for the vacation of a lifetime,” Catherine continued, “the next he’s getting pulled into a four city leg because of pilot shortages.”
Janet looked down at her feet. “Man, that sucks. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” Catherine sat up, then leaned forward on her arms. She stared Janet square in the eye. “Look, you need to help me out here. I’ve been away a long time. I’ve got three kids who are missing their father and upon returning to land I find a darkened city void of people and power. I know something has happened. Something terrible. But I’ve no idea what.” Catherine took a breath and began to inflate her lie further. “We started receiving strange and scary radio signals from other ships on our way to our first port the day after we embarked. Garbled messages, SOSs. Every fiber of my being told me that something was extremely wrong. And when we were met with radio silence from not one, but three of our possible port destinations I knew. I knew something had occurred. So we floated and survived until our supplies ran out. And now we’re back. And I’m as lost as I’ve ever been.”
Janet nodded subtly as if she’d just had a vicarious experience through Catherine. The pain and the loss registering on her face hung as intimately as neg
ligee.
“I’ve got another question for you,” Janet said softly.
“Sure,” Catherine replied.
“Do you drink?”
Janet uncorked a bottle of Flying Leaf Merlot and proceeded to pour it into two plastic cups.
“I’ve never been much of a wine drinker. Always preferred beer,” she said. “But these days...I don’t know. Sipping on wine just makes everything seem a little more civilized.”
Catherine took her cup and swirled it, then quickly sniffed and tasted it. She closed her eyes and let the initial notes of the red wash over her tongue.
Janet watched Catherine enjoy her first alcohol in two months and grinned at her apparent satisfaction. “Is it good?”
“You could’ve poured me red wine vinegar and it would’ve been marvelous,” Catherine responded.
“I don’t know much about wines,” Janet confessed as she picked up the bottle and stared at the label. “But this one’s from California. Figured it couldn’t be half bad.”
“My husband was the connoisseur in our house. He’d buy it. I’d drink it. And that was about as far as my knowledge went.”
“Well, then here’s to a couple of ignoramuses,” Janet teased, holding up her glass.
“Here, here.”
Janet and Catherine sipped from their cups amid smiles. At first impression, Catherine couldn’t decide how she felt about Janet, especially in light of her seemingly gruff demeanor and cold midnight execution. But sitting with her now in Sears, her family safe, and imbibing wine, Catherine found the fiercely independent woman to be strong, capable and immensely likeable.
Janet held her cup in her lap as she leaned back in her chair. “You have questions,” she stated.
“I just need to know...what’s happened,” Catherine declared. “I need to understand how all of this came to be. How are you here? Where did everyone come from? And where is everybody else?”
Janet inhaled deeply and took another drink. “I’ll tell you what I know, which isn’t much. And if you ask around to some of the others here you’re going to get a variation of the same story. Nobody really knows what happened. They only know what they experienced and what they...” Janet played with the rim of her cup. “And what they saw.” She tossed back the rest of her wine.
“On June twentieth, I was on my way in to work over at Copatchee Correctional Facility. I am—was—a corrections officer there. But before I began another glorious day with the bastards of Copa, I stopped off to see a friend, who just so happened to work here in this mall. He used to be a guard at Copa, too, until he turned pussy and took this—oh, sorry,” Janet said, blushing slightly at her colorful language.
“You’re fine,” Catherine shrugged off. “I’ve got two teenagers. Believe me, I’ve heard worse.”
Janet smiled and continued. “Anyways, my friend Marvin took the head of mall security position here at Bayview. I’d visit him a lot before I went to work. Kind of like a calm before the storm.” Janet poured herself another glass of Merlot. “But on this particular day—the day—the storm wasn’t gonna be confined to the Copa.”
Two men in black clothing toting semi-automatic machine guns of some sort strode over to Janet. One of the men, a heavy-set fellow with a thick salt and pepper beard stood at her side until acknowledged. The other man, a muscular young lad with a curious mix of Asian and, perhaps, Mexican descent—Catherine really couldn’t be sure—remained a step behind him.
“Yeah, Steve. What can I do for you?” Janet queried.
“We were just wondering if you wanted us to run a perimeter patrol this morning.”
“What time you got?”
The Bearded Man checked his watch. “Five thirty-five.”
“Sun’ll be high in a little over an hour,” Janet said to herself. “Yeah, good call. Why don’t you round up Stensland and take him with you if he’s willing. Be back by six, though.”
“Will do.”
Catherine regarded the men as they walked off.
“Stephen Blairwood and Derrik Manson,” Janet introduced, redirecting Catherine’s attention. “Great men, but their pairing’s a bit ironic.”
“Why do you say that?”
“`Cause Steve was a postal worker and Derrik was a UPS driver,” Janet said, giggling just a little at the silliness.
Catherine beamed from ear to ear enjoying the lightheartedness of conversation with another adult—something that had been sorely missing from her life. Her eyes lingered on Derrik. Something about him in particular seemed haunted, as if there were a greater pain that transcended this time and place. She watched as he cast a long stare off to the side and in following his gaze discovered he was looking at Tamara as she danced around the toy aisles. For some reason that she couldn’t explain, this ogling, which on any other day would have been perceived as menacing, seemed, somehow, reassuring.
“So, June twentieth,” Janet exhaled reluctantly, resuming. “Here I am, me and Marv swapping previous days’ stories over Krispy Kremes and coffee in the security shack when he gets a buzz on his walkie to turn on the news. Well, he pops on CNN and they’re talking about weather. Flips over to Fox. Same thing. But when he tries MSNBC they’re showing some shit I...I ain’t never seen before.”
Catherine shifted to the edge of her seat, hanging on Janet’s every word.
“One of the local NBC choppers got a line on this guy near 16th Street walking around buckassed naked. I mean head to toe, not a stitch of clothing on him. But more peculiar than that was that it looked like he was covered in blood. Or mud or some kind of brown gunk or something. It was all in his hair and covered his whole body.”
“What was this man doing?” Catherine asked curiously.
“Don’t know. The cops had circled all around him and were yelling at him to get down. Had their guns trained on him and everything. But this guy just keeps walking, this weird look on his face. Like emotionless or disconnected. He didn’t respond to anyone and eventually the cops swarmed him and took him down.”
“That’s really strange.”
“Trust me,” Janet said. “It only gets stranger. After the cops nabbed this guy, Marv starts to flip around to see if any of the other stations are carrying the story. Maybe have some more info. He pops back over to CNN and there’s breaking news of a person being apprehended walking naked in downtown. Thinking this had to be what we just saw and that maybe they’d have a different angle on this guy, we kept watching. But when the video feed came in, I almost crapped myself.”
Catherine’s brow furrowed in anticipation of Janet’s explanation.
“It was a woman,” Janet said. “Same weird bloody gunk all over her. Same vacant expression on her face. But it was a woman. In another city.” She leaned even closer to Catherine. “Two different people with the same symptoms or whatever you want to call it walking around in two different cities.”
“What did the news say?”
“They didn’t have any idea. Thought it might be an elaborate prank, but they really didn’t know. And no sooner did they admit to this than they were cutting away to two other breaking news stories of similar goings on in a third city.”
Janet grabbed the bottle of wine, began to pour then changed her mind. “I’m a fairly rational person, Catherine, and I don’t give much credibility to weird happenings you always hear people saying they experienced. Ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, whatever. And these people on the news, well, I figured it had to be an elaborate hoax or something. Maybe there was a new movie coming out they were trying to promote.” Janet shook her head more to herself as she stared emptily at the table. She upended the wine bottle, deciding to pour some more wine after all.
“I don’t understand,” Catherine began. “I’m not sure I see what these naked people have to do with what happened.”
Janet drank deeply from her cup, wiping a dribble of wine from her mouth with the back of her hand. “Welcome to the club.”
“What’re you saying?” Catherine said. �
�That these people are somehow responsible?”
“What I’m saying is that I don’t have a frickin’ idea, all right?” Janet railed, visibly perturbed. “One minute I’m eating a glazed donut, the next I’m watching the world unspool.”
Catherine sat back uneasily.
Janet collected herself, setting the wine on the table. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that I’ve been living in the middle of this shit since the get-go and I know maybe just a little more than you about what’s going on.”
“It’s all right,” Catherine said calmly.
“It isn’t, but thanks for saying so.” Janet intertwined her fingers on the table and inhaled deeply. “So as Marv and I watched these stories unfold we turn back to MSNBC and the first naked guy. You know, the one the cops all circled and took down?”
“Yes,” Catherine said uncertainly.
“Well, I don’t know what the fuck happened or how the fuck it happened, but this guy, this naked fucking guy is still standing there, his hands cuffed behind his back. And every cop that had just two minutes earlier grabbed and restrained him is lying unconscious in the street.”
“What?” Catherine said as the blood drained from her face.
Janet nodded at seeing the astonishment in Catherine’s eyes.
“That’s what I’m saying. So we turn back to other stations and reports of the same thing start coming in. It’s like you touch one of these people and you end up taking a nap or something.”
“Jesus Christ,” Catherine gasped, her hand subconsciously blanketing her mouth.
“I don’t know about Jesus and God and all of that, but I can tell you this: If there is a God, he was sleeping on that day.” Janet loosened her grip on her hands. She shook her fingers in the air briskly then cracked the joints on her index fingers. “And so it all began. The longer we watched the more and more stories and reports started coming in. And not just from this country.”
Janet pushed her cup away from her, focusing her attention on her scabbed and calloused hands. She picked absently at her thumbnail. “Fifteen minutes later Marvin ordered the mall closed. And this is where I’ve been ever since.”