by Hamill, Ike
Robby walked up the path, crunching the snow and scanning back and forth for signs of life.
In the distance he could hear an engine, humming away at a steady pace. He approached the lower door of the building. The windows looked in on a big empty room. Stacks of chairs lined the far wall, a big fireplace and hEarth took up most of the left wall, and on the right, overhead fixtures lit up a long bar. To Robby, it looked like a fancy version of the Lion’s Club recreation hall. He reached towards the door and then stopped his hand.
The pulsing engine in the distance troubled him. He figured it was probably just a generator—that would account for the lights over the bar—but would it automatically come on? On the island the power had been out for a while; should this generator still be running? Robby turned from the door and circled the building in the direction of the engine sound. He found the unit about halfway up a steep slope. It didn’t say “Generator,” but it had big cables leading inside and was plumbed to two big propane tanks up near the corner of the building. Robby continued around the perimeter until he found himself at the front of the building.
A narrow driveway led to the door from a parking lot a little ways off, down in the woods. He counted fourteen cars parked down there. No tire tracks disturbed the thin layer of the snow and he could see dark patches beneath the vehicles—they had been parked there since before the snow.
A sign near the glass double-doors read “Towering Pines Conference & Renewal Center.” Robby approached and looked through the glass to a small lobby. He knocked three times on the door. A green lamp lit up a desk, but nobody was sitting at the office chair. He tugged on the metal handle with his gloved hand. The door swung open and Robby stepped inside.
The air inside felt pleasantly warm, but it smelled wrong. It smelled like the cabinet where his mom kept her vitamins—a slight edge of old urine and sweat. Robby wrinkled his nose and let the door swing shut behind him. He was looking for keys, if he could get them. His dad already taught him to drive the island truck they shared with another family, so he would prefer to find truck keys, but he would take whatever he could get. He wanted to head south, to find out for sure if the disappearances were indeed local. The lack of snow this far south bolstered his confidence in the idea he could find help somewhere farther south.
Robby crossed the oriental carpet of the lobby and pushed through the door on his right. He found himself in a hall leading to the back part of the building. Some light came through the glass doors behind him and the window in the door at the far end of the hall, but the emergency lights in the ceiling—presumably lit by the generator—drove the shadows from the middle of the hall. On his right, a door led to an empty conference room. On the left wall, he found doors to the bathrooms.
When he got to the men’s room, his body responded as if on cue. Robby stayed in the hall and swung the door in. Compared to the hallway, the minimal emergency lighting barely lit up the bathroom. Robby debated; he stood in the hall and peered into the cave-like bathroom. It looked clean, had one urinal and three stalls, and he suddenly really needed to go. He stepped in and let the door swing shut behind him. The smell crept up on him as the darkness folded around him. The room smelled worse than the hall. Robby dropped his backpack to the floor and walked to the nearest stall.
He changed his mind and went back for the pack. He hung it from the hook on the back of the stall door and locked himself in. He kept his jacket on, but pulled off the gloves and stuffed them in his pockets.
Robby tried to go quick, but his bowels became shy in the gloomy bathroom. He pulled paper from the roll and folded it around his hand. He would take a bunch for his backpack, in case he needed it later. Robby sighed—almost ready to give up—when things finally started moving. His eyes adjusted to the dark and he could make out more detail in the tiles on the floor. They made a pattern of grey and black rectangles. His eyes rearranged them into different shapes.
Robby’s gaze drifted to the side, where a black line interrupted the pattern on the tiles. He kept his eyes locked on the line—he couldn’t quite make it out in the shadows—while he reached up to his backpack. He pulled out the flashlight and turned it on against his palm, so it wouldn’t blind him. In the red glow the light made through his hand, Robby could see the line was a shoelace in the next stall. He leaned forward and saw the edge of a shoe. His body pulled away, but he forced himself to lean forward. A little higher up the shoe he saw four curled fingers and thumb.
He shut off the flashlight and sucked in a shocked breath. The smell suddenly seemed more intense. Robby hastily cleaned himself up and reflexively flushed the toilet. He cringed from the sound and pressed himself against the opposite wall of the stall, sure the hand would shoot out and grab for his ankle. Robby unlocked the stall door and it swung gently inward with the weight of the backpack.
While the water still filled the bowl, Robby placed one foot and then the other up on the toilet seat. He leaned forward with the flashlight and put his hands against the stall with the shoe and hand. The hand didn’t move at all when the light hit it. Based on the smell, and that he could hear his own breathing, but nothing from the neighboring stall, Robby figured he was sharing the bathroom with a corpse. He needed to be sure.
He turned on the flashlight again—full strength this time—and pointed it over the top of the stall. He waited a second and listened. When he didn’t hear anything, he poked his head over the top of the stall.
The man on the toilet slumped forward. His torso rested against his legs. His head turned to the side, like he was trying to listen closely to a secret his knee was telling him. The man’s tongue stuck out and a splash of blood soaked into his tan pants. The man’s chin was pulled back, like he had gagged on his last breath.
What shocked Robby most about this corpse—the only corpse he’d seen other than at his grandmother’s wake—was the eyes. The man’s eyes had burst, leaving dark red holes. Robby could see one clearly, and just the outline of the other. A splatter pattern on the stall wall suggested his eyes had exploded with some force.
Robby started to feel seasick again. He lowered himself to the floor, still careful to stay pressed to the opposite wall, and grabbed his backpack before shuffling sideways out of the stall. He backed to the door and let himself out of the bathroom. He turned off the flashlight and backed down the hall towards the rear of the building. Something inside him insisted the door would swing open at any second and the eyeless man would stagger down the hall after him. Robby jumped when he backed into the door.
He propped himself up against the door until he got his breathing under control. He flipped the flashlight around, so he could use it as a weapon if he needed to, and pushed his way to the back room of the building.
Light filled every corner of this room from the windows along the back wall. Easy chairs and couches divided up the room into five seating areas, each centered on a round coffee table. Nearly every seat held a well-dressed corpse. Robby took a deep breath of fetid air and let it out slowly. He scanned back and forth, looking for any movement. They all shared the same symptoms—gagging mouth, lolling tongue, and exploded eyes. For some, eye juice and blood dripped down their cheeks. Others had turned to one side or the other, allowing their eyeballs to leave streaks down the back of a leather couch, or down the front of a button-down shirt.
A distant rumbling broke the silence. Warm air came from a vent to Robby’s right.
He counted thirty-eight bodies. With the corpse in the toilet, that meant almost three times more people than cars in the parking lot. Either a lot of people came together, were dropped off, or he had missed a bunch more cars. He didn’t think many of the people here had walked—they looked like they were dressed too well to have walked.
Robby wanted keys. He wanted keys to a truck, if he could get them. He repeated that to himself in his head, trying to get up the courage to frisk the corpses.
“I’m looking for keys to a truck. Who here would drive a truck?” he asked
himself inside his head.
It doesn’t have to be a truck, he reminded himself. Any car would do, it’s just he was accustomed to a truck, and thought somehow the seats were up higher and would be more familiar. He tried to remember if he had even seen a truck outside, but couldn’t recall. That wasn’t like him. Usually anything he saw or heard was pretty much at his disposal. This was different—his mind was clouded by the stress of being in this room of thirty-eight exploded-eye corpses. Surely that was enough to break the concentration of anyone.
He moved his lips as he repeated the thought—“I’m looking for keys to a truck. Who here would drive a truck?”
Robby kept his back to the wall and side-stepped closer to the back of the couch in front of him, where a bald man’s head rested on the back. From the shower of blood and slime on the man’s lap, Robby figured he had been looking upward when his eyes exploded. Robby stood behind the couch and extended his hand to touch a finger to the dead man’s head. He poked him again, a little harder. The man’s neck was stiff and he barely moved at Robby’s touch. Robby slapped at the head. He jumped back at the sound. Nothing else in the room moved.
Robby took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He reached forward with a shaky hand and pressed his fingers to the left side of the man’s neck, where his jugular should be. Nothing—cold skin, no pulse. He braced himself to search the man and then stopped. He wondered—what if they used a valet? This looked like a fancy crowd; maybe someone parked the cars and the keys were hanging on a board somewhere in the lobby? He almost walked away to go search someplace that didn’t contain a bunch of corpses, but then he saw the irregular lump in the man’s slacks, just where his left pocket would be. Robby kept his eye’s on the corpse’s face as he reached down and touched the slacks. He felt angular metal under the fabric. Perhaps he would find keys elsewhere, perhaps not, but now he knew he would find keys here.
With one more glance around the room, Robby leaned over the back of the couch and drove his hand down into the pants pocket. His turned away from the face of the corpse—just inches away from his own face. He leaned farther than he expected, but he managed to hook his fingers through a key ring and pull them back. The keychain held car keys, house keys, and a clicker to unlock the doors from a distance. Robby nodded and stuffed the keys into his own pocket. Some of the eyeball-juice rubbed off on his sleeve.
Robby skipped the woman next to the bald guy and moved on to the next man. After groping for an eternity, Robby found the next man’s keys in his jacket pocket. He wanted several sets in case he got the key ring of a carpooler. Robby worked the edges of the room, not wanting to be surrounded by the corpses. With seven sets of keys in his pockets, Robby circled around the perimeter of the room to get back to the door to the hall.
He almost made it around before he realized he was being watched. The man sitting in the easy chair at the corner sat perfectly still with his hands on the armrests and his legs casually crossed. One of his eyes was a gory mess, splattered on the inside of his glasses and stringing cord and gel down the man’s cheek, but the other eye stared directly at Robby.
Robby could circle around the length of the room the other way, or go past the one-eyed man.
The man wore charcoal grey slacks and a tweed jacket, with patches at the elbows. Robby broke the stare and looked down at the man’s chest. He couldn’t detect any rise and fall, but it would be hard to tell at this distance. Robby took a step closer, now about three paces from one-eye.
Robby squinted at the man’s glasses. Something looked weird. Something aside from the exploded eye on one side and piercing blue eye on the other. He took another half-step closer. When he realized the discrepancy, a little half-smile flashed across Robby’s face and disappeared. The glasses looked funny because the lens on the exploded side was a bifocal, and the other one wasn’t.
“Glass eye,” Robby whispered. He immediately looked around to see if any of the corpses stirred at the sound of his voice. Glass eye or not, Robby pressed his back to the windows and inched along the wall as he passed the man. The eye didn’t follow him.
Robby passed by a big open staircase on his way back to the hall. He’d already seen the lower floor through the windows downstairs, and he knew nobody was down there. He preferred that exit strategy as opposed to having to go down the dark hallway with the bathroom door. He still pictured a toilet-corpse crawling after him.
Robby took one last look at the room full of dead people and jogged down the stairs to the big meeting room. It was cooler down here. He rounded the bar and made his way quickly to the back door. The footprints in the snow leading up to, and away from, the door gave him pause until he realized they were his own. Robby put on his gloves and pushed his way outside, glad to be away from the smell of decay.
He scaled the hill quickly, passed the humming generator, and jogged down the driveway to the parking lot. The first set of keys, General Motors, had a remote control fob. He pressed it several times, spinning to look at each car as he hit the unlock button, but nothing responded. The next set he pulled—Toyota—didn’t have a remote control, and he didn’t see a Toyota parked there.
He got lucky on the third set. A big SUV parked several spaces away from the other cars chirped when he pressed the button. The lights flashed and then stayed on.
“Sweet,” Robby said to himself.
He tried the other sets as well, and found he also held the keys to two sedans. The SUV was his first choice. He peeked through the tinted windows and found it empty. He opened the door and inserted the key to discover a nearly full gas tank. He might get more range out of one of the smaller cars, but then again the SUV probably contained a much bigger tank to compensate for the lower fuel economy. Robby weighed his options briefly and then settled on the SUV. He tossed his backpack inside, started it up, and locked the doors. A dusting of snow covered the windshield, but the wipers took care of it. Before he pulled the seat belt across, he took a moment to lean back between the seats just to verify he was alone in the SUV. Ever since old one-eye, Robby felt like he was being watched. He even pushed far enough back to see over the rear row into the back storage area.
The snow crunched under the SUV’s tires as Robby backed it up slowly out of its spot. He hesitated at the thought of leaving Carl Deemer’s boat tied up to the dock. The floating dock would rise and fall with the tide, but would the water be deep enough? He acknowledged the feeling and tried to let it go, as easily as his dad would have.
Robby moved the seat up until he felt comfortable behind the wheel. When he got out to the main road he realized he didn’t really know where he should go. On the water heading south and west was easy; on the roads he needed a route to follow. He found a Maine atlas in the pocket behind the passenger’s seat, but without a flashing “you are here” dot, like the one on the GPS in the boat, it was of no use to him. He studied the map briefly to try to guess where he was. He was anxious to get moving.
Depending on how far south of Portland he’d gone in the boat, he figured he should either hit Route 77 or Route 9 if he headed west. He adjusted the rearview mirror and saw the glowing green “N” in the corner. At least with a compass he would know which way to turn. Robby took a left.
The roads were mostly empty. When he did see another car, it was usually off to the side of the road in a ditch or crashed into a tree. He slowed down the first few times and then sped back up when he saw eyeball splatter on the inside of the windshield and a slumped-over form behind the wheel. He navigated down narrow streets, lined with big houses and big yards.
Robby felt better when he reached the road sign marking the next road as Route 77. He still wasn’t exactly sure where he was, but if he followed that road he would be able to find his way to the highway. From there he could decide on his course.
A bead of sweat formed on Robby’s forehead. He realized the heat was up all the way. He pulled over and took off his jacket, dropping it on the seat over his backpack. Robby relaxed his grip o
n the steering wheel a little and leaned back against the seat. Some of the tension dropped from his shoulders. One of the displays on the dash told him he could drive another three-hundred miles before needing to fill up.
Robby slowed again when he saw the supermarket. On the island, their grocery store was small and old. Robby had only been in a real supermarket a few times, and this one was bigger than any he’d seen. The lot was empty save for a few cars. The same light dusting of snow showed no footprints or tire tracks, so he pulled in and stopped right near the door. Only dim lights were on inside.
Robby put the SUV in park and detached the remote for the door locks so he could take it with him, but still leave the vehicle running. He tested it—unlock, lock, unlock, lock—before shoving it in his pocket and grabbing his jacket and backpack.
He peered through every window and studied each mirror before jumping out of the SUV. It idled quietly as he locked the doors and walked towards the doors of the supermarket. The snow squeaked and crunched under his boots.
The automatic doors didn’t open, and he couldn’t push them open. The sign read, “Closed—Thanksgiving Day.” He tried a number of things—his flashlight, his boot, the standing astray by the bench—before he found a brick behind the wheel of the last shopping cart. With the brick, he smashed the lower pane of the glass door. It made a terrible racket, and Robby looked around nervously for the better part of minute before convincing himself his vandalism hadn’t summoned the authorities—whatever authorities might remain. He ducked through the door and found himself in the produce department. He grabbed a basket and nearly sprinted through the store.
He found one body, back near the meat section. The woman wore a blue short-sleeve shirt tucked into tan cargo shorts. She was face-down near a scattered pile of cereal boxes and a hand cart with more inventory. Her hair was pooled around her head, but Robby could see a little blood seeping out around the edges. He gave the corpse a wide berth and trotted down the next aisle to grab crackers and cookies. He tried to fill his basket with filling, non-perishable staples. His hunger drove him towards stuff his mom would call junk. He didn’t want to get anything which required cooking.