Extinct

by Hamill, Ike

  The highway turned due south just before Freeport. Brad dug out a can of orange marking paint he’d packed in one of his bags. He tucked the spray can inside his jacket to warm it up. Then, after Brad found a way around the overpass for Route 125, he kept his eyes open for any landmarks on his left. In Freeport the high school sat in a lot which basically abutted the highway, and Brad wanted to test his theory that the schools might be emergency housing for storm survivors.

  Along this stretch of road, trees lined the highway. Brad couldn’t see the trees for all the snow piled on top of them, but they made the highway seem like it was carved into the snowscape. He rode along with the sound of his snowmobile reverberating off the walls of snow on either side. Brad tried to get on top of the snow wall on his left, but the snow was unstable underneath the ice. He punched through little air pockets so often, jolting the sled’s ride, that he was forced to return once more to the snow-covered highway. When he saw a break in the wall to the left, he decided to leave the highway and try to find the high school.

  He took the can of spray paint from his jacket and marked an arrow on two of the snow-covered tree mounds before he left the road. The orange paint stood out well amidst all the white. Brad kept the can at the ready and laid down a mark on the ice every time he was forced to make a turn around an obstacle.

  The map didn’t give him any clue. What finally pointed him in the right direction was the shape of the baseball diamond. Its geometrically perfect fences ended at the looming backstop and snow-mounded bleachers. Brad had to drive over to the dugout and orient himself down the third-base line before he could point to the series of lumps belonging to the high school.

  Brad drove around to the front of the gym to hunt for any signs of life.

  He found nothing.

  Around the side of the gym, Brad made his way to the front of the building. He stood on what should have been the front lawn of the stately high school, looking up at was surely the front facade. He didn’t expect anyone to still be there—he figured anyone would have evacuated south weeks before—but he thought he would at least see signs that people had sought refuge from the snow there. He found nothing.

  Brad took a side street away from the high school and found the big municipal parking lots which serviced the multitudes of summer shoppers who came to visit Freeport’s outlet stores. In town, the wind swept big snow banks against the sides of buildings and down the streets, making everything a jumble of unfamiliar shapes. Brad steered his snowmobile to the top of the highest snow hill to try to get his bearings.

  He found an interesting shape which reminded him of his own house. Just downslope from his perch, Brad found a bowl of ice surrounding a cluster of chimneys. The exhaust from the chimneys had melted the falling snow enough to keep this area clear. As he rounded the bowl, he made another discovery—part of the melted snow had kept part of the building exposed. Brad found a dormer with a set of windows looking in on a business office.

  Brad’s curiosity turned into excitement when he realized he’d found entry into L.L. Bean—a huge retailer of outdoor gear. He shut off his snowmobile, smashed through the window, and found himself in the penthouse office of the hiking and hunting mothership. Brad considered himself pretty well decked out, but knew he could easily upgrade all his gear in this one store.

  Walled offices lined the perimeter of the floor. The center was divided up into cubicle space. Brad guessed it served as a call center at one time, but not too recently. Most of the desks had no personal items, just a dead computer, stapler, and roll of tape. Brad left his backpack at the window and led with one of his flashlights as he explored the empty floor.

  In the very center, he found elevators and a door to the stairs. Brad propped open the door with a fire extinguisher and took the stairs down into the retail space. The next door was three flights down. Big windows in the staircase showed layer after layer of packed snow against the glass. Halfway down the bottom flight, he saw a layer of gray in the pristine snow, like soot had fallen from the sky along with the white flakes.

  Brad pushed through the heavy door and found himself standing behind an information desk in a section dedicated to fishing and archery. He dragged a display rack of fishing line over to prop open the door and then swept his flashlight around the cavernous store. The inside of the store featured tons of exposed beams and hanging canoes and other merchandise. As Brad’s flashlight beam swung through the space, the shadows danced and spun two stories up on the tall ceiling.

  Next to a stand of fishing poles, a split rail fence divided the shopping area from a nature scene with a standing black bear. It looked like pretty good taxidermy to Brad, but the dusty fur detracted from its realism.

  Brad shined his light in the bear’s glass eyes and leaned on the fence—“Can you do me a favor, Baloo? Can you keep this door open for me?”

  The sound of his voice in the emptiness of the place gave him a chill. These aisles expected dozens if not hundreds of milling shoppers to animate the space. Without them, it seemed haunted. Brad busied himself making a mental list of survival gear he could use and set about finding the items. The store had multiple floors and twisted and turned over a city block, but Brad only needed to hit a couple of sections to find what he needed. He passed by the giant aquarium. A few fish darted to the corner, away from his light. They fed on their dead cousins.

  “Why aren’t you frozen?” Brad asked the fish behind the glass. The fish didn’t answer. They only stared back with bulging eyes and flared mouths. The fish didn’t answer him, but he found his answer as he looked for a parka in his size.

  In the men’s outwear section, Brad set his flashlight on top of one of the display cases and pointed it at a stuffed bobcat which sat on a cubby case filled with jeans. Its shiny eyes weren’t looking at Brad. Worse—the eyes seemed to have just turned away every time he looked up at it, like it had been studying Brad and then looked away nonchalantly just before he caught it in the act.

  He removed his gloves, goggles, and jacket, bracing himself for the cold of the icy tomb, but found the temperature moderate. It wasn’t just the lack of wind—Brad gauged that the inside of the store was at least in the forties, if not higher. He removed his cap and listened. He couldn’t hear any machinery. Brad grabbed what he needed and dressed quickly. He added a headlamp just above his goggles. He glanced back at the bobcat several times as he left its section.

  Back at the stairwell, the door stood propped open by the fishing line rack.

  “Thanks, bear,” he said. “One more favor? If you see a bobcat, try to slow him down until I get out of here?”

  Brad glanced back in that direction as he spoke. His headlamp reflected on some shiny object at the far end of the store and Brad imagined the bobcat crouched there, waiting for the right moment to sprint after him. Brad moved the display and let the door swing shut behind him. It clicked as it closed, but not before Brad heard some sliding noise, like claws on a tile floor. His new clothes were too well insulated for the store. Sweat stood out on his brow and he unzipped several layers while he pounded up the stairs.

  At the top of the stairs he burst through the door and kicked aside the fire extinguisher. He had a moment of panic when he couldn’t remember where he’d come in. He’d gotten turned around during his exploration and expected the window in the wrong direction. He found it again by covering his headlamp and shutting off his flashlight. Brad jogged for the faint glow of sunlight through snow which marked the exit.

  The door to the stairwell clicked shut.

  Brad turned and braced himself for a bobcat attack. There was nothing there. He climbed out through the window and felt more comfortable when he mounted his snowmobile and started the engine. Brad drove back up to the top of the building to scan for the best direction to get back to the highway. He initially intended to head back to the high school so he could backtrack to where he’d left the highway. With his new stolen binoculars, he picked out one of the dashes of orange paint he
’d left to mark his trail.

  Brad pulled the binoculars away from his eyes. A dark shadow passed by the hump he identified as belonging to the high school. He caught the smallest glimpse of it before it disappeared behind a snow drift. Brad slung the binoculars and turned his snowmobile in the direction of Route 1. The drifts from all the stores made the road hard to follow, but he preferred that to facing the implied unknown of the momentary shadow he’d just seen.

  Fortunately, he kept his speed low and didn’t flip his snowmobile when his ski punched through the crust and hooked a power line. For a second, the line looked like a giant snake. Brad wrestled the sled backwards—not wanting to touch the twisted black cable—until he pulled the ski free from the line.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  ONCE HE GOT back on the highway, Brad wound the snowmobile back up to a decent speed. He still slowed for bridges and overpasses, but mostly to check the map and verify his location. The next significant crossing came just a few miles south of Freeport, where the highway crossed over Route 1 in Yarmouth. Here the two roads switched places, with the highway hugging the coast and Route 1 pushing inland for a while. Brad found the location of the overpass, but it didn’t look right—he couldn’t find any drifts marking the buildings he knew in the area. He expected to see at least a big mound to his left, where a map store featured a giant blue globe in the lobby.

  Instead, Brad found flat snowfields in both directions. He could see the line of Route 1 trailing north, mostly because it cut through the hills in a straight line, but to the south it just faded into the flatness. A little farther south he found the bridge where the highway crossed the river, and he saw up the river where the other bridges crossed, but aside from the gentle swells and dips of the terrain, he saw no features. Towards the ocean, Brad saw nothing but frozen white plains.

  In the middle of the bridge Brad lifted the binoculars. With these he could see dark water—at least one sign that the whole world wasn’t frozen over.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  BY MID-AFTERNOON BRAD found himself in Falmouth. He took his time navigating the ramps and overpasses, trying to find the safest way around them. His work was complicated by the diminishing snow. Here he saw the tops of trees poking out from the drifts, and even the peaks of a few houses up on the hill. Where the highway passed close to the marshes, he saw open water not far off the coast. Brad stopped next to a spot where the retreating tide left a muddy bank. He ate lunch while watching the lapping waves.

  To his south, Brad saw buildings of Portland—whole buildings—without a trace of snow on them. He took care on the bridges which led into the city. They were covered with just enough snow to make the footing for the snowmobile unstable. He found hardly any crust here, like the ice had given up somewhere around Falmouth.

  With the lack of snow, Brad expected to find other signs of life. He kept his eyes peeled for animal tracks, smoke from chimneys, or even birds, but he saw nothing. He slowed down as he entered town. The snow only measured a few inches deep—just barely enough to keep riding the snowmobile without worrying about damage to the skis. Brad killed the engine the first time he heard them scrape.

  Brad removed his goggles and took down his hood. The whistling wind blowing across the cove was the only sound he heard. He didn’t see a single car in either direction. The highway was deserted. He stepped off the snowmobile and stood in the middle of the southbound lane of the highway. The few inches of snow was covered with just enough of a crust to not blow away.

  He stood at the north end of Maine’s largest city. The city looked intact, but utterly uninhabited. From his position he saw all the tallest buildings of the city. On his right, the city’s muddy cove bordered perfectly still neighborhoods.

  Brad started walking.

  He followed the highway down to a grocery store. He still carried plenty of provisions, but he wasn’t looking for food. He was looking for signs of human activity. He approached the store through the adjacent park, stopping at a bench to use his binoculars. Someone had broken out the window next to the door. Brad approached cautiously. He found various footprints leading in and out of the store, but most of the prints seemed to belong to one set of shoes, slightly smaller than his own.

  The store was dark inside. When he turned on his headlamp, Brad found the fist-sized rock inside the circle of broken glass. A cart, flipped on its side, lay past the rock. He wrinkled his nose as he stepped carefully over the glass. Even with the cold, aisles of past-due perishables assaulted his senses. Brad took a quick tour through the store. In the realm of canned goods, he found a couple of shelves which looked suspiciously empty. The store’s inventory of soup, beans, sauce, and canned vegetables had been hit hard. The baking supplies looked fully stocked.

  On the other side of the store, Brad found the chips, snacks, and other junk food diminished as well. He grabbed a couple of items for himself, stuffed them in his big pack, and then exited. The footprints led to tire tracks.

  At the end of the parking lot, the tracks headed off in various directions. Brad picked a direction and walked down the tire tracks. The snow crunched under his feet and he whistled a tune to go with the rhythm. Under a dead traffic signal, the tracks split up again, heading in all three directions.

  “You’ve been busy,” Brad said to the tracks. He crouched to study them further. It looked like the vehicle had only gone straight through the intersection once, to the left a couple of times, and the majority of trips had gone to the right. Except for his own, he saw no footprints to go along with the tire tracks.

  Brad took a right and walked down the middle of the road. Local businesses and office buildings flanked him on either side. He walked between a set of fast food restaurants, and rubbed his stomach through his jacket.

  He interrupted his whistling for another comment to nobody—“Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a hot burger right now. Give me a large fry, no, two, and a large shake,” he said.

  At the next block the tracks branched again. Brad stopped and turned in a slow circle.

  “I get it,” he said. “You don’t want me to know where you’re going, so you’ve gone everywhere. Is that it? Either that or you’ve got business in every part of town. Well I know one place you’ve visited quite a few times.”

  Brad left the main drag and wound down side streets until he came up behind a house which faced a grocery store. He stood on the front porch for several minutes. The brick porch featured pretty, understated columns holding up a solid roof. The panes on either side of the door were frosted, but by kneeling on the porch swing Brad could see into the living room. The house looked clean and spare. Under-stuffed furniture sat on oriental area rugs and hardwood floors. The walls and trim were white, but the moldings had a fancy, old-school design.

  Brad went back to the door and cocked his elbow to break through the glass panel next to the door handle. He couldn’t do it. He felt compelled to knock first. Brad knocked and then stood there, looking around to make sure he was still alone, feeling foolish while he waited to see if anyone would answer.

  “Okay,” he whispered, “I’m breaking in.”

  He tapped the glass and then lined his elbow up. His eye landed on rocks lining one of the flower beds right next to the porch. Brad smiled as he fetched a rock.

  “No sense ripping my new jacket,” he said as he got ready to smash the window with the rock.

  Before he thrust the rock forward, he reached out with his right hand and tried the handle. The door opened and swung inward.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said. Brad pitched the rock back into the yard.

  He left the door open a crack. The temperature was lower inside the house than out. He took a quick tour of the first floor—nice dining room, living room, kitchen, bathroom, den. When he made it back to the entry, he climbed up to the second floor. Upstairs he found bedrooms and bathrooms. The house had nice views of the cove and the city in the distance. Out front the maples would block most of it in the summer t
ime, but this time of year they would have a glittering view of the city lights every night.

  Brad smiled to himself as he stood in the master bedroom—if he ever lived near the city, this would be the kind of place he’d like to have. Around him, everything pointed to life suddenly interrupted. A glass of water and a folded magazine stood on the nightstand. A pair of pants lay draped over the back of a chair. In the master bathroom, a towel was hung over the show curtain rod. Brad took off his glove and ran his hand over the top of the bureau. He found some dust—enough for his finger to leave a trail—but probably less dust than on his own bureau at home.

  Brad visited the rest of the bedrooms. The family had two girls from the looks of the rooms. One girl had a serious odor problem in her room, but Brad guessed it was from the dead ferret in the aquarium. At least it looked like a ferret. Brad only saw a fuzzy lump of moldy fur in the corner. He found plenty of signs of them, but no actual residents.

  In the kitchen, Brad found the stairs to the cellar. He turned on his headlamp and his handheld flashlight, but he barely needed them down there. Three walls of the house had window wells which let in plenty of light into the unfinished space. Despite having concrete walls and floors, the cellar looked very neat. Aside from the furnace, water heater, and other appliances, Brad found some workout equipment and well-organized plastic bins of books.

  Brad locked every door, even the cellar door, and checked the locks on all the windows. He removed his backpack in the living room and moved the couch away from the front window. From this window he saw the best view of the grocery store. He planned to camp out in the house until he spotted the owner of the vehicle and the small sneakers, assuming they were the same person.