365 Days Alone

by Nancy Isaak

  Before I had a chance to agree, Jay and I had reached the vehicle that was stopped in the middle of the road. Now, I'm not a car girl or anything, but I'm a vegetarian and recycle, so I was at least smart enough to recognize a Tesla electric car when I saw one.

  “Nice vehicle,” I murmured. “I like the color. It’s kind of pearly.”

  “Expensive car to leave in the middle of the road,” said Jay, peering in the side window. A moment later, she drew back, surprised. “Kaylee, the keys are still in the ignition!”

  Moving around the car, I pulled at the door handles. “All locked.” I pointed to a small blue bag just to the right of the driver's seat, next to the parking brake. “And, look…there’s a purse in there, which means the driver is probably a woman. Actually, that's not just a purse. That's a Louis Vuitton.”

  Jay came around to peer through the driver’s window. “And her phone is still in its charger on the dashboard.”

  I shrunk back, unnerved. “Look at her seatbelt,” I whispered.

  “Oh my gosh,” Jay gasped. “It’s still buckled up!”

  And that was the moment—when we first became really scared.

  Because where did the driver go…and how did she get out of the car without unbuckling her seatbelt?!

  * * * *

  Jay and I didn't just walk home.

  We ran home!

  Since my townhouse was closest, that was the first door we slammed through.

  Now, I have one of those mothers who are really strict about taking your shoes off when you come into the house. Yesterday, however, Jay and I raced inside without even thinking about taking off our shoes. Then, we ran all through the townhouse, searching.

  But my mom wasn't on the first level.

  And she wasn’t in her bedroom on the second, either.

  In fact, everything was exactly like it was when we had left earlier that morning—empty rooms, purse on the kitchen counter, phone, wallet, and keys in the pockets.

  But—no mom.

  * * * *

  Jay and I stood for a long moment, staring at each other, not really knowing what to think or do.

  Then, suddenly…Jay took off running.

  She didn't even have to say where she was going. I knew exactly where she was heading—six doors down, to her own family's townhouse.

  I didn't follow Jay immediately.

  Instead, I searched through the townhouse once more, checking closets and bathrooms—just in case.

  It was useless, of course…there was nobody there.

  * * * *

  When I finally did leave the townhouse, I locked it up.

  Part of me was just following habit, making sure that everything was secure like my mom had taught me. But there was another part—deep inside—that thought I was being stupid and ridiculous. That was the part of me that suspected that there simply wasn't any good reason to lock up our doors anymore.

  * * * *

  I took my time, walking the few doors down to Jay’s townhouse.

  The whole way I was trying to ignore the small knot of terror that was growing in my belly. Unfortunately, the lack of people in our cul-de-sac, the uneasy quiet from the 101 Freeway, and the open Sitipala back door made it very difficult to ignore that something was very seriously wrong in Agoura Hills—and that I probably had every right to be scared.

  And that was before I found Jay inside her townhouse’s kitchen, staring down at a pile of dirty dishes in the kitchen sink.

  “Double-crap,” I whispered, upon seeing all those plates and glasses.

  Tears immediately began to slide down Jay's face; they drip-dropped onto the dishes. “My mother would never leave the house like this,” Jay said, sadly. “Never…she would die first.”

  And it's true.

  Jay's mom is even more anal than mine.

  I don't eat at the Sitipala’s a lot but—when I do—her mom grabs my plate even as the last fork of food is being lifted toward my mouth. And her mom doesn't even really eat with the rest of the family. She's always too busy running around, making sure everyone has everything they need.

  Truth is—Jay's mom would be utterly humiliated if anyone saw a sink of dirty dishes in her house. Mrs. Sitipala’s townhouse has always been a source of immense pride for her. She loves keeping it spotless; dishes are done within minutes of the last bite being eaten, rugs and floors are vacuumed and mopped every day, and dust doesn’t even think of coming for a visit.

  Which is how we both knew that Jay’s mom was gone—the dirty dishes in the sink.

  “Did you check the rest of the rooms?” I asked.

  Jay nodded. “There's no one anywhere.”

  “Your brothers?”

  Jay has two younger brothers—Salim is five and Umar is two. They're cute kids, but Jay and I don't spend a lot of time around them—mostly because they’re so much younger.

  Also, they tend to be more than a little annoying.

  For some reason, her brothers like to poke Jay and me. I mean, they actually take their fingers and poke us in our arms and legs. And, unfortunately, we can't complain to Jay's mom and dad because, in their culture, the boys pretty much can do whatever they want. They're treated like little princes while the females do all the work—very irritating.

  “I can't find them anywhere,” whispered Jay, sounding completely baffled.

  * * * *

  Even though she had already searched the townhouse, I helped Jay go through it once again. We figured that, because her brothers were so small, they might have hidden somewhere if they were scared.

  So, we looked into every drawer, every cupboard, behind every piece of furniture, and under every bed. We even went up into the secret place that I'm not supposed to know about—the attic room that Jay's dad built above their second level.

  It's not very big—the ‘secret room’—just a small storage area under the roof. But the Home Owner's Association doesn’t know that it's there. Jay's dad built it over one summer two years ago, when the neighbors to the left were on vacation and the townhouse on the right was vacant and in the process of being sold.

  Mr. Sitipala cut an entrance into the attic, putting in a small trap door in the ceiling of the closet in the master bedroom. The trap door pulls down and a ladder unfolds.

  I climbed up there once with Jay, when her parents and brothers were at mosque one afternoon. Jay was home sick—though not as sick as her parents thought. She just didn't want to go to mosque that day. Plus, the secret room had just been completed and Jay wanted to show it to me.

  Truthfully, it was kind of neat.

  I mean, it was a ‘secret room’.

  Right now, however, the little room is being used to store stuff—decorations, files, that sort of thing. The only reason it's still even ‘secret’ is that Jay's dad doesn’t want to go in front of the Home Owner's Association to ask for forgiveness for building it without their permission.

  Fact is, there are two other townhouses in our complex that have little attic rooms exactly like the Sitipala's. The big difference, however, is that those owners got permission to build from the Home Owner’s Association.

  Not like Jay’s dad.

  “It would take too bloody long,” he told Jay once, “and I think it is not any of their business in any case. We are not in Pakistan anymore. We are in America and I am in my home and these silly fascists, this Home Owners’ Association, it does not have the legal right to tell me what I can and cannot do.”

  Which, of course, they could…and did.

  * * * *

  Salim and Umar weren't in the secret room, of course.

  They weren't anywhere.

  Jay's dad was also missing, but he works as an IT bigwig at this manufacturing company in the San Fernando Valley (the next Valley over from ours), and he had gone into work around 4:30 a.m. It was Jay’s and my hope that he would eventually show up and explain what was going on.

  But Jay's dad never did show up yesterday…or today.

&nbs
p; Nobody has.

  * * * *

  Later, Jay and I walked out onto the cul-de-sac behind our townhouses. We just stood there on the driveway—turning and turning—but no matter where we looked, there simply wasn't anybody to be seen.

  But we did see something…

  The new Korean Family—their back door was open, their house keys were in the lock, and a bag of groceries was sitting on the sidewalk out front.

  The Patriotic Lady—her car was parked two feet farther back than where it should have been and, when we went to check, the keys were in the ignition and her seatbelt was fastened.

  The Margarita Lady—there was a half-empty glass on her little table and flies were buzzing around it, landing every now and again to sample whatever was left of the strawberry mixture inside.

  The Mean Israeli Couple—well, their stupid car was once again blocking our garbage can, so there really was nothing unusual about that.

  But still...

  * * * *

  “What are we going to do?” whispered Jay, wiping up her tears.

  Somehow she looked even smaller and younger than usual. Probably it was just because she was so scared…like me.

  “I don't know,” I answered, truthfully. “Maybe we should go and knock on everyone's doors. See if we can find an adult.”

  Luckily that didn’t take very long. Even though there were over 200 units in the whole of our complex, there were only about thirty in our section—L. So, knock, knock—from one townhouse to the next (even the Israeli's!), we knocked on everyone's door in our section.

  No one answered, though.

  And when we peeked in through the windows, what we saw confirmed to us that the occupants were ‘gone’, just like our own families—pillows on the floor in front of televisions; dishes with food in them on kitchen tables; laundry baskets in front of opened washers and dryers.

  Like everyone had instantaneously disappeared…lifted out of whatever they had been doing at the exact same moment and magically transported somewhere else.

  Except us—Jay and me.

  And that was probably the most terrifying thought of all—why everyone had suddenly disappeared, but we were still here.

  Then—suddenly—Jay and I had another, even more terrifying thought.

  What if it wasn't just us who were still here?

  What if there were others left behind?

  And what if those ‘others’ were actually very bad?

  * * * *

  After some discussion (mostly to calm our fears), Jay and I decided to expand our search by walking around our neighborhood. We started at the top of the hill just across the street from my townhouse, looking down Argos Street toward the high school.

  “The Tesla is still there,” I noted, pointing toward the empty car that remained angled across the middle of the road.

  Jay took a deep breath and pointed in a different direction—up Conejo View Drive. “Then let’s go the other way.”

  “If we want to make a complete circuit of the neighborhood, we’ll still have to pass the Tesla on the way back,” I reminded her.

  “I know,” Jay murmured, head lowering. “I guess maybe I’m hoping it will be gone by the time we get back.”

  “I don't know what would be scarier,” I admitted. “If we come around and the Tesla is still there or if it’s gone.”

  * * * *

  It took us a little over an hour to make a lopsided circle around our neighborhood.

  As we passed Agoura High, I suggested to Jay that we go inside the grounds and check it out. Even on weekends and holidays, there’s usually someone at the high school—from custodians to stoners to skateboarders scratching up the railings.

  Jay would have none of it, though.

  No way in ‘heck’ was she stepping onto that campus.

  With everything so weird, the huge buildings of Agoura High and their dark shadows were too menacing to her. As ridiculous as it sounds—Jay had zombies and vampires on her mind (science fiction lover—remember).

  * * * *

  There is a really lovely area of our neighborhood called Old Agoura—big, Western-style houses with horses and corrals and everything. At one of the bigger properties along Driver Avenue in Old Agoura, Jay and I came across two horses—a black and a chestnut—munching away on an enormous front lawn that led up to a sprawling ranch house. There were pumpkins on the ground, along the fence line, and all the way up the long driveway, and a menacing scarecrow loomed over a nearby mailbox.

  I knew this house from when I was younger and would trick or treat here. The owner was a sweet gray-haired woman who always gave out full-size candy bars to the neighborhood kids each year.

  “Do you think she’s in there?” I asked, as Jay and I leaned on the property’s fence, watching the horses graze. “That lady who gives the good treats.”

  “I hope so,” Jay said. “But I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

  “Look up the driveway. There’s mail on the ground. She must have been taken just after she came down to the mail box.”

  * * * *

  Jay and I never did go up to the old lady’s house, mostly because we were too afraid of what we might find. But we did spend a few minutes watching her horses and—eventually—the large black one came over and allowed me to scratch it behind the top of its ears.

  And I'm probably a horrible person but—standing there yesterday, scratching that horse's head—I actually wondered if I'd have the nerve to come back and take it.

  I mean, if there isn’t anybody left, if nobody is actually living in the house—it would kind of make it okay, wouldn’t it? I mean, morally, would it even be stealing if there is no one alive to object?

  * * * *

  But—yesterday, at least—we left the black horse in peace, munching on grass alongside its chestnut neighbor. There’s a creek on the property, so Jay and I are pretty confident that the horses have enough access to water. Plus, the lawn is certainly big enough to feed them for a while.

  (By the way, if ‘this’ continues, Jay and I will probably go back and take both of the horses. Right now—even though I feel kind of silly about it—we’re still too ‘good-girl’ to get up the nerve to do it.)

  * * * *

  We continued walking along Driver Avenue, making our way through Old Agoura, until we finally turned right onto Colodny Drive. This area of our neighborhood unnerved us because, even though it was only one very long block, it was filled with apartment and townhouse complexes.

  As we walked along its shadowed sidewalks, I couldn’t help myself; I kept imagining that I was seeing nefarious shapes watching us from behind the many dark windows on either side of us.

  But the reality was different; the windows remained empty.

  The residents had all disappeared.

  * * * *

  There were two cars stopped in the middle of Colodny Drive, though—one vehicle facing one way, the other in the opposite direction. Ironically, the two cars had stopped directly across from each other, their drivers' windows open—as though their occupants had been in the midst of a conversation when they both abruptly disappeared.

  Jay and I took a short detour off the sidewalk to peer in through the passenger windows of both cars. As with the Tesla, the keys were in the ignitions and the seatbelts were still fastened.

  * * * *

  At the end of Colodny Drive was a cement ramp leading up to a chain-link covered pedestrian bridge that crossed over the 101 Freeway—one of the busiest freeways in the United States.

  Feeling a little scared (enclosed walkway—open only on either end—great place for an ambush!), Jay and I slowly moved up the ramp until we were on the level part of the bridge, looking down on the freeway below.

  No movement…nothing.

  Just dozens and dozens and dozens of stopped vehicles—some facing toward us, some facing away.

  All empty; seatbelts fastened.

  “Holy cow!” I cried out—apparent
ly a little too suddenly for Jay’s nerves.

  She gave a little screech, her head whipping around, searching for danger. “What?!”

  “Take a look,” I pointed. “On the right, facing away from us. See that car in the slow lane. Is that what I think it is? The one with all that electronic stuff on its roof.”

  Jay leaned in closer to the chain-link fence, eyes squinting.

  “Well, what do you know,” she said, quietly.

  “That's the Google car, isn't it? The one that goes around mapping everything for Google.”

  She nodded. “I think so.”

  “Wow,” I marveled, “even the Google car. This is getting weirder and weirder. I mean, I wonder what's coming next.”

  “I swear to God,” whispered Jay, looking around uneasily, “if zombies or vampires show up, I'm so going to poop my pants.”

  “Don’t worry,” I tried to assure her. “I’m pretty sure that there aren't any zombies or vampires in Agoura Hills.”

  Jay waved at the highway below. “A freeway of dead and empty cars. Like, this is right out of the movies, Kaylee. Everyone is just gone. We've got no power. Only thing left of the internet, as far as I can see, is a dead Google-car. So, if we've got all that, why can't we have zombies and vampires?”

  (She actually has a good point. Ever since, Jay and I have been talking about the possibility of there really being zombies or vampires and what we are going to do to protect ourselves if they do show up. Needless to say, it's only one of our many worries at the moment.)