by Sean Platt
John turned his head to the right and raised an eyebrow. “The trees are talking? What are you smoking?”
“Nothing yet,” Jimmy laughed. He pulled a small Ziploc baggie from the inside of his jacket and opened it. The sweet, skunky scent of herb filled the Suburban.”
“What is that?” Paola asked.
“Nothing,” Mary said. Then, after a second, “It’s marijuana.”
“Oh,” Paola said. “It smells sorta good.”
“Yes, it sorta does,” Mary laughed, then traced the memory of her and Ryan in their old days losing hours to the fog.
“I don’t want that in my car,” John said, eyes on the road.
“Relax, yo. It’s the end of the world. This might be the last baggie we ever gonna smoke... until we start planting it. Until then, I’m willing to share. You have the car, I bring the weed. It’s fair. Besides, what’re you worried about — getting a ticket?”
John didn’t care anyway, but the argument turned to vapor when they saw the cargo van slowing to a standstill.
Desmond got out and the temperature in the Suburban rose a degree.
“I wish my brothers were here,” Jimmy said. “Mom and Dad, too.”
Mary and Paola exchanged the same knowing look: everything was different, except that they were all that mattered.
**
Desmond was looking down, his right hand raised at the Suburban in a silent stop. “What should we do?” Paola said.
“Nothing yet,” Mary said, then, “Stay inside.”
“I’m going to take a look.” John put the Suburban in park, then climbed outside and headed for Desmond.
“Yee-haw. Me too.” Jimmy opened his door and hit the concrete. John and Jimmy were just shy of Desmond when Paola opened the door and ran past the boys, in front of Desmond, then face first into a scream.
Desmond pulled Paola back, already hysterical. Mary rushed to her daughter. In front of the van, Mary saw what caused her daughter to shriek. It was all she could do not to follow suit.
The twitching creature on the highway was human — mostly. Its face was pale black, with bright white balls of light pulsating under the glistening, mottled flesh. It had no mouth, eyes, or nose, and its legs were longer than they should’ve been. The body was moving, gasping in its death throes.
The sky got ashy and the twitcher started twitching more. As the sky grew darker, the thing’s jaw began to push out, stretching its head until a slash ripped horizontally above its jaw — forming a rudimentary mouth. From its new-found orifice, it gasped and groaned, as if trying to form words.
Desmond stepped toward the creature, and turned to Mary, “Cover her eyes.”
Paola buried her face in her mother’s shoulder as Desmond aimed a pistol, a Glock, Mary believed, at the twitcher.
“What are you doing?” John screamed, knocking his hand away.
Desmond lowered the gun, then turned to John with a glare, “You won’t be touching me when I’m aiming a loaded gun.”
“He needs help. You can’t just kill whoever you want. None of us agree to that.”
Desmond raised the Glock and pulled the trigger. Twice. The light in the creature’s body seemed to flicker just before its head exploded in gore. Then, the lights went out and its body went limp and still.
The shot sounded like a rolling detonation as it caromed across the emptiness.
“This is the Apocalypse, not a democracy,” Desmond said, “Let’s go.”
Desmond got back in the van and drove around the body without another word.
**
Nothing but silence in the Suburban for several minutes. Mary wondered what Desmond knew that he wasn’t telling anyone else.
Sure, people had vanished, and an entire town wiped off the planet, but who said anything about an Apocalypse? There was no way to know how far spread this event was. No reason not to think that once they reached the Army base, they’d be transported somewhere where everything was still normal.
Apocalypse?
As much as she wanted to believe her hopes, something told her she was wrong, that Desmond was right, and everything had indeed changed. Forever.
She wanted to cry too, but she had to be strong for Paola. And for Jimmy, to an extent. Though he was practically an adult, so much about him was still a child. An orphan.
“Where do you think everyone is?” Jimmy asked, breaking the silence.
“I dunno,” Mary said. “I’m thinking of some sort of evacuation or something.”
“No,” John said, “I mean, maybe if everyone from the same homes were gone. But my wife is gone, Jimmy’s family is gone. There’s no way the Army or anyone would be able to evacuate half of a family without waking the others. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe they all raptured?” Paola offered. “God called all the believers home?”
“That’s all bullshit make believe,” Jimmy said, “And besides, if there was a heaven, no fu... friggin’ way my dad was on the list. Believe you, me.”
“Maybe aliens?” Paola said.
Jimmy thought on that for a moment. “Now, that, I wouldn’t rule out. Though, that would be an awful lot of UFO’s to take all those people away.”
“Maybe they didn’t take them away?” Paola countered. “Maybe they just killed everyone.”
Mary flinched, catching a look from John. She made an “I’m sorry” face and his expression changed from scorn to understanding.
“Let’s change the subject, huh? Why don’t we talk about ... I dunno, you all pick a topic.”
Before they picked a topic, John slowed the Suburban. Desmond had stopped again, in the middle of a bridge, which ran maybe fifty yards, a few hundred feet above ground.
“Why’s he stopping here? We’re nowhere near Fort Leonard Wood.”
Desmond got out of the van and was looking up at the sky. And that’s when they saw them — birds. Lots of them, swarming and diving overhead and to the river below. Desmond walked toward the guardrail and looked down, then turned back to the Suburban and held up a hand, telling the others to stay put.
Jimmy ignored the signal and jumped from the car. John followed. Mary looked at Paola and told her to stay put, she’d be right back. Surprisingly, Paola didn’t argue, and Mary stepped out of the car and joined the rest of the gang looking down over the guardrail.
As she drew closer, she noticed an overpowering sickly sweet smell that seemed somehow familiar, though she couldn’t quite place it. The sound of a river rushing beneath them was barely audible over the squawking of birds as they continued to circle and dive.
John turned toward her and leaned over, vomiting on the road.
Jimmy and Desmond simply stared. Mary reached the guardrail, looked down below and immediately wished she’d stayed in the car.
Corpses filled the river, in the hundreds, if not thousands, bobbing up and down, floating like logs as birds feasted on their rotting flesh.
“Well, I think we know where all the people went,” Jimmy said, his face ashen.
* * * *
BRENT FOSTER
Brent wasn’t sure how long he hid in the pitch black, waiting for a looming dread to fade from the apartment. Maybe 20 minutes. Probably two hours. Hard to tell in the dark and with nothing to count.
He wasn’t sure what he was hiding from, but something in his lizard brain made him run from the downstairs apartment. Something told him if he stayed, he’d die. He hadn’t even worked up the courage to look out his own windows.
What did he see?
Though he couldn’t see the man on the street’s face well enough to see his expression, his run told Brent all he needed to know. The man was fleeing from death.
Maybe the city had suffered a terrorist attack, and the man saw the bad guys coming. Or, Brent suddenly thought, perhaps the man had something to do with what happened and was running from the police or Army or whoever the hell was now in control of the city.
Brent had only recently mo
ved to New York, so he was a tourist to 9/11, not a citizen. But he knew enough to know someone was surely out there evacuating people, searching for survivors, or both. He couldn’t expect someone to find him; he’d have to find them. And that meant leaving the building.
He went back into the living room, glanced out the window and down to the street below. The city, or what he could see of it, was a morgue. He went to the fridge and grabbed another water, sat on his couch, and put his feet up on the coffee table, where a framed photo of his family faced him.
They took the picture last Christmas, just in time for cards. Brent thought sending family photos for cards was smarmy, but Gina insisted. He wondered if it was something women did to compete with their friends to prove who really had a nicer-looking or happier family. All Brent saw in 90 percent of the photos were uncomfortable children and miserable spouses holding tight to a veneer of love.
Merry Christmas, indeed.
He held the photo, eyes fixed on Ben’s joyous smile.
Brent hadn’t wanted kids, not really. The world was far too fucked for that. Ben was an accident. Gina’s plumbing made him a one in a million shot at best. Same as Ben’s odds when Gina was rushed to the hospital bleeding at seven and a half months.
Only then did Brent realize how much he’d come to love the thought of having a son, and let his cynicism face the light of hope. When the doctors came out to update him on the status of the emergency C-section and told him he had a son, he was nothing but tears. And when he finally saw his son in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, his heart melted. Ben was their miracle. And for one not inclined to believe in miracles, that was no small statement.
Sitting there on the couch, Brent felt guiltier than ever about trading his family for work.
He’d always wanted to be a reporter. When he landed a gig in New York, his dream came true. Sure, it wasn’t The Times, just The Apple Tribune, but still, he was in the heart of it all, covering feature stories in the city of a million stories. But the newspaper business was dying: the Internet, evaporating advertising, and a cast and crew that couldn’t stop the bleeding. As the cuts came, he was always spared (so far), but it meant working that much harder to survive the next round.
He rarely saw his family.
It was a temporary sacrifice, he told himself, and a necessary one. He was working toward something, and getting there a word at a time. And he knew good writers, damned good writers, who were unemployed, hungry, and writing anything they could just to keep food in their fridge.
And while he used to dream of the life of a newspaper writer in New York, as something close to being famous, or at least respected, the reality of his role was a slap in the face. Most people treated him like shit. Especially people who disagreed with the politics of his paper, something he had nothing to do with. He was a features guy, telling nice little stories about the city and its eclectic denizens.
But most people didn’t care. You work for the wrong paper, they treat you like a lying, thieving, evil bastard. And even when they didn’t hate him for the paper’s politics, they often bitched when he got some little facet of a story wrong, or more often, didn’t stick with the narrative they imagined the story would take. It never ceased to amaze him how many people would get bent out of shape or threaten lawsuits over a nice story!
Now, sitting alone with no idea where his family was, the vanity of his job was apparent. He was too busy trying to impress strangers and win their love, while neglecting his family who already loved him.
Brent pulled Stanley Train from his pocket, looked at the train’s big goofy smile, and he felt his heart fade into an ache. Ben was gone. The thought that he might never play with his toy train again shattered Brent into tears.
**
Brent spent about half an hour feeling sorry for himself while fear ran rampant in his head. Then something swelled inside him. Anger. Anger at himself and his inaction. His family was out there — he hoped — and it was his job to find them.
He grabbed a backpack from his closet, filled it with food, drinks, and clothes, wrote his wife another note — this one saying he’d be back at midnight — and headed out the door. He left it unlocked since Gina left her keys inside. If someone broke in, let ‘em. Halfway down the hall, he raced back to his apartment, grabbed the framed photo from the couch, put it in his backpack, and headed out into the city.
First, though, he’d need a gun. He found one in the fourth apartment he kicked in. A revolver with a box of bullets. He’d fired a gun twice at a range, but never owned one. No matter, he knew enough to be dangerous.
He stepped out of his apartment building and onto the street. The air was cool, and a fog was rolling in, like a wooly icing atop the haunted hallways of the abandoned concrete empire. Brent couldn’t smell any smoke, or anything out of the ordinary. A good sign, he guessed.
He stared off in the same direction as the man had been staring before losing his shit, but saw nothing odd. Well, no more odd than the ghost streets, and buildings getting swallowed by the fog descending on the city. The fog was different than normal, though Brent couldn’t quite place what the difference was.
He crossed the four lanes of West End Avenue to the apartment building the man had ducked into. It was roughly the same size as his, 15 stories tall. He wasn’t sure how he’d find the guy, or if he’d be dangerous, but Brent had to establish contact with the only person he’d seen.
When he reached the double doors that would normally be locked or tended by a doorman, he noticed that one of the two windows was shattered. Glass covered the red doormat inside. Brent put his hand on the gun tucked inside his jacket and stepped through the doorway. Glass crunched beneath his sneakers. The lobby desk was deserted and the elevators were dead, which meant he had to take the stairs and begin his ascent.
The stairwell was dimly lit by emergency lights. His footsteps echoed off the walls. He didn’t bother with stealth. He hoped the guy, if he were still around, would show himself so Brent wouldn’t have to search the whole damned building.
Brent got his wish as he opened the door to the second floor landing and came face to face with a pistol. On the other end of the gun, a wild-haired disheveled, skinny guy in his late 40’s or early 50’s wearing thick black rimmed glasses. Brent’s hand held his gun tight in his pocket, but made no move to reveal it. Instead, he aimed it at the guy, through his jacket.
“Anyone see you come in here?”
Brent shook his head, “No, I don’t think so. I didn’t see anyone out there.”
“Who sent you?” the guy asked, his voice tuned to nervous.
“Nobody, my name is Brent Foster, I live across the street. I’m looking for my family.”
“Brent Foster?” the guy said, his eyes darting up for a moment, accessing memory. “Brent Foster who writes for the Tribune?”
Great, the moment he’d always hoped would never happen. Some wacko with a gun recognizing him as a reporter. Hope he’s a fan.
“Yes,” Brent said, reluctantly, bracing for reaction.
The guy lowered the gun and a broad smile crossed his face.
“Stanley Byrd, but you can call me Stan. I’m a big fan of your work, sir.” the guy said, putting the gun awkwardly in a jacket that was about 20 years out of fashion.
Brent let go of his own gun and shook Stan’s clammy hand.
“What have you heard? Did you see anything?”
“Nothing,” Brent said, “I woke up and my wife and son were gone. And apparently the whole damned apartment building and everyone on the streets is gone, too.”
“Yeah, the whole city is gone, but not just the city.” Stan said with the certainty of someone who took such things in stride.
“What do you mean?”
“Come, come, I want to introduce you to some people,” Stan said, turning and heading down the hall. “I can’t believe you’re here. I read that story you did on the blind jazz guy who plays in the subways to put his son through college. G
oddamn, that was beautiful stuff.”
“Thanks,” Brent said, following, hand in his jacket. Just in case.
Stan brought him to the last apartment in the hallway, knocked three times, paused, then knocked twice, paused again, then two more quick knocks.
Bolts, several of them by the sounds of it, unbolted and the door opened. A bald, buffed, stone-faced Hispanic in a tight black tee greeted them, arms drowning in ink. He nodded and let them in.
All charm, this one.
Sitting on a sofa even older than Stan’s clothes, was a blonde haired woman in her early 40’s or so. She reminded Brent of a doctor or scientist, and he was rarely wrong when judging people by appearance. Stan was nuts, muscles was angry, and the lady, well, she was probably the brains of the bunch.
Muscles locked the door and Stan introduced everyone.
“Everyone, this is Brent Foster, from the Tribune. Brent, this is Luis Torres, who lives five floors up. And this is Melora Mitchell, who lives in your building, actually.”
Luis nodded. Melora stood up and reached out to shake Brent’s hand. Her hand was cold, thin. She retreated quickly — or perhaps Brent was just imagining things — as if she were aware of Brent’s judgment of her hand’s temperature.
“Have a seat, Brent,” Stan said.
Brent took a seat in one of two recliners across from the couch. Stan took the other, while Luis stood up, arms crossed.
“We didn’t think we’d find another,” Melora said. “How long have you been having the dream?”
Brent didn’t have a chance to ask what she was talking about.
“Where were you at 2:15 a.m.?” Stan asked. It seemed as if he were waiting for a specific response to the time.
“In bed. Why?”
“What do you remember?”
“Nothing. I went to bed dog-ass tired, woke up this morning with a headache, and the world was gone. Why are you asking me about that time?”
“Because that’s when The Collapse first started.”
“What do you mean, Collapse?” Brent asked, glancing now at Melora to see if she were also buying into Stan’s weirdo speak. Her face was all business.
“At 2:15 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, nearly 99.9% of the population of the planet vanished. Gone, poof, into the unknown.”