by Tom Leveen
That was good for a smile.
“What about you?”Alex asked. “You’re, what, a junior?”
“Essentially. Yeah.”
“What’re your plans?”
Not intending to, I let out a sigh. “I’m not sure. I’d like to go to college and maybe study astronomy, I guess, but my dad . . . I just mean, I might need to stay close to home, is all.”
I must have zoned out then, because Alex touched my arm and said my name. I shook myself and blinked. “Hmm?”
“We lost you for a sec. You all right?”
“It’s just this trip. The more I think about it, the more I want to really find something concrete. One time, my dad told me, ‘Give a man enough hope and he’ll hang himself.’ I know hope is supposed to be a good thing, but in his case, it’s killing him slowly. Like cancer. I don’t know that giving him any more hope would be a good thing.”
Alex sipped his Coke. “Well, with cancer, sometimes you have to be aggressive. It can save your life that way. Can I make an observation based on my years of accumulated wisdom?”
“Sure, why not.”
“Whatever we find or don’t find, move out of your house,”Alex said. “Because if you don’t, you’ll resent your dad. Or worse.”
What I did not say was: You mean resent him more than I already do.
Because I did. I knew it. I hid it, I didn’t dwell on it, but I knew. And after so many years, I could feel that resentment hardening, petrifying, calcifying into something much darker than resentment, maybe something I couldn’t undo later.
“I don’t want to hate him,”I said.
“Of course not,”Alex said. “But you’ve got a life too, you know? You get to live it. You deserve to live it. Just sayin’.”
I didn’t find it easy to think about much else during the rest of the afternoon. Selby came back inside as our food arrived, grabbing and reading a yellowing newspaper from a stack near the door. I earned a burst of fire from her eyes when she saw she couldn’t sit beside Charlie, but he didn’t try to change the seating arrangement.
Other than that, lunch was kind of fun, in an odd sense. Selby read yesterday’s news and started a crossword, while I methodically ate. One of the best meals I’d had recently, and most important, not roast beef or curly fries.
After, we got right back on the road. We followed Interstate 10, which eventually ran parallel to railroad tracks. Enormous orange, blue, or black shipping containers trudged alongside of us. Near Tucson, we exited the I-10 freeway to a frontage road, then followed that to a dirt path carved only by previous tires. Back at the frontage road, there’d been a post with four mailboxes tacked to it, but other than that, no sign of life. The dirt road took us up and over a rise, and once down it, the frontage road was out of sight. We hadn’t been able to see the freeway for ten minutes or more by then.
19
Now
* * *
Riley stands up, resting the shotgun over his shoulder. The gun doesn’t suit him. He doesn’t handle it with practice or ease. He takes one more drink from the tequila, then pops open the Dr Pepper can for a long slurp. He lets the can dangle in his fingers by his thigh.
“I got a Jeep in the garage,”he says. “It’s a four–wheel-drive. There’s a bit of food and water in the house. The satellite for the TV’s still working, though I doubt for much longer. Got a portable CB radio for emergencies. King bed, pretty comfy. You can stay here, or load up and head out. That big bus won’t get you too far, I don’t think. Do whatever you think is best. There’s a Bible on the bookshelf. And a Koran, and a Bhagavad Gita, a Book of Mormon, a few others like that. On the shelf below that is everything your father ever sent me. It’s not much. Ramblings, mostly. Maybe there’s something in there that’ll help you, but I doubt it. My advice is to just hunker down and enjoy whatever time you got left. I wish you both well.”
Riley comes toward the steps. I step aside to make room. He doesn’t even look at me.
“Where are you going?”Charlie asks, crossing to the railing.
Dr. Riley hesitates, then turns around to look at us both.
“God bless,”he says. It’s the closest I’ve seen him come to a smile.
With that, he starts walking into the desert. Charlie and I watch him go until he turns a corner around one of the small hills that shield his house.
“I don’t get it,”I say. “What’s he—”
Then the shot.
We both jump and automatically clutch at each other. The reverberation echoes for years, a deep, thundering boom that rattles my organs.
We stand there silently until the last of the echoes dies away.
“Well,”Charlie whispers. “That’s not a good sign.”
Thirty-six hours ago, the idea of someone committing suicide with a shotgun just a few hundred yards away from me would’ve given me a seizure. Now it just seems anticlimactic and sad.
And, as Charlie said, it definitely doesn’t bode well for us. Dr. Riley either knew a lot more than he told us, and it wasn’t good . . . or he simply meant what he did say, and we were all doomed.
Once I’ve got my bearings again, I check on Selby—the sound did not disturb her at all—then join Charlie inside the house. CNN blares from Riley’s big flat-screen on the chimney wall, facing his couch. It takes all of about thirty seconds to see why he lost hope.
It appears the world is coming to an end.
Charlie and I sit down on the brown leather couch and watch what the newscasters keep calling “disturbing footage.”They’re right about that. What I had assumed, or hoped, was local to this area has spread. Other power plants are being assaulted by otherworldly beasts. The Hoover Dam, which I’ll have to cross to get back home, is under attack. I learned about Hoover in grade school, and didn’t think the dam itself could really be damaged . . . but the electrical and mechanical parts sure could, and the potential damage from that I couldn’t even fathom. It seems the entire Western Seaboard is under siege, and footage is piling up on newsroom floors of strange and enormous creatures being behind it all.
“We’ve got bases,”Charlie says nervously, sitting on the edge of the couch cushion. “Bases here in Arizona, in California, Nevada. The army will wipe them out.”
“Unless they’ve already been taken out. If those things know what they’re doing, maybe they targeted military sites first.”
Charlie frowns, and remains silent.
“How’d they get so far, so fast?”I say. “I mean, Hoover Dam . . . That’s not far from where I live, that’s hundreds of miles from here.”
Charlie only shakes his head, keeping quiet. We watch for a few more minutes, each video more dire than the last: people panicking, people shooting at the creatures with little or no effect, police and fire departments stretched well past their limits, hospitals overcrowding and then being attacked when at capacity. It does look like the end of the world out there.
I wonder if Dad is watching it all. I wonder what watching might be doing to him.
“Charlie?”
“Huh.”
“I want to go home.”
He pulls his gaze off the TV. “Right now?”
“Right now.”
Charlie clenches and unclenches his jaw for a minute before saying, “I don’t think that’s the best idea.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You’re serious? With all that shit flying around and burning things to ashes, you want to try a drive to Nevada? I don’t think we’ll even get past the dam, Abby. I’m not sure we can make it a mile away from this house.”
“There’re ways around the dam.”
“Long ways.”
“But my dad.”I leave it at that, letting him fill in the blanks.
Charlie puts one hand over mine. “Hey. I got family too. I’m scared. I’m worried. But the fact that we got this far . . . man, my survival instinct is pretty fucking honed right now.”
I don’t answer.
“Why don’t you give
him another call,”Charlie says. “Just to check in, make sure he’s okay.”
I hold up my phone. Charlie looks at it. “What . . . ?”
“No service.”
He reaches for his cell.
“Yours won’t either,”I say. “No one’s will. They’ve already taken them out.”
“How do you—”
“I just know. Look at what’s going on out there. They’re smart. They know what they’re doing. These phones are done.”
Charlie, staring at the screen of his phone, swallows. “The army will—”
“We don’t know that. Riley might’ve been right. These things aren’t scared of us. They probably have no reason to be. Charlie, this might be it.”
“Abby—”
“I know what happened to my mom now. And it sucks, and . . . it’s okay. I can deal with it. But I need to deal with it with my dad. Whatever happens. I can’t let him go through this alone again.”
Charlie tilts his head. “Again?”
I face the TV, numb already to the latest images of twisted creatures tearing our world apart. Amazing how quickly the numbness came.
“Three years ago. With a razor. I found him in the bathroom. It was close. He came close. If I hadn’t found him when I did, he would’ve . . . anyway. I can’t help but wonder what he’s seeing right now. What he’s feeling. If Dr. Riley couldn’t handle it . . .”
I stop there. I don’t need to say anything else.
Charlie stands and walks into the kitchen area. I sit, still and small, watching the news unfold. Every minute brings a new horror to the screen. Schools knocked to the ground by brute force of the rhino-rex creatures. Power poles burnt to cinders by the dragonfly beasts, and blacktop highways turned to sludge by fiery breath.
There were so many. So many out there.
“He was right about the food,”Charlie calls from the kitchen. “We’re all stocked up here. Abby, no kidding, the three of us could live for a month here, easy. Hunker down and wait it out, see what happens. Driving around the desert to get to your dad . . . I get it, I do, but I still think it’s the wrong call.”
“What about Selby? She still needs more help than we can give her.”
“How’d she look when you checked?”
“I’m not a doctor. She’s breathing, and there’s no blood on the bandage. That’s all I know. Staying here—”
The TV goes dark.
I sit up straight. Charlie, realizing the sudden silence, comes back into the living area. “What . . . ?”
“It’s not the TV,”I say. “Look, it still has power.”It slowly dawns on me what the blank screen indicates. “It’s the station that’s dark.”
I try other channels, and get things like History Channel, A&E . . . all sorts of entertainment channels. Nothing network. Nothing with information.
Charlie laces his fingers behind his neck and groans.
“Told you they were thinking.”
“Or being controlled,”Charlie says.
“Whichever.”
Charlie spots Riley’s tall wooden bookcase. He rushes over and sits cross-legged in front of it.
“He said Dad’s stuff was here,”Charlie mutters, pulling out a three-ring binder. “Maybe we can figure something out.”
“Charlie—”
“Just wait!”he shouts at me, and his face is wild. It’s as if the TV going blank was his last straw.
I shrink back. Charlie sees me do it, and forces a deep breath.
“Just wait,”he says again, holding up a hand. “Till . . . till tomorrow. Give me that long. Maybe the stations will come back, or maybe we get someone on the CB radio, or . . . I don’t know, but please, Abby, come on, just give me till tomorrow morning. Okay?”
I stand and bury my fingers under my armpits. I feel absurdly cold.
“Okay. Tomorrow.”
He starts to say something else, but I turn and walk toward the lone hallway before he can speak. I use the bathroom, then find Riley’s bedroom. It’s been perfectly and simply made up, as if he was expecting guests. It’ll do.
But first, I go back out to the RV and climb inside. Selby hasn’t moved even a little, to the point that my heart stops for a moment, thinking she’s died. Then I see the white sheet over her rise and fall, and I sigh with relief. I stand in the doorway to the bedroom, watching her breathe, struggling with an overwhelming sense of sorority. I’ve only known her a couple days, and they haven’t exactly been a good couple days, but I meant what I said to Charlie at the urgent care clinic. I will not let anything else happen to her, no matter what.
The question is, now what? She’s as comfortable here in the RV as anyplace else. I don’t think waking her up to move her inside is necessarily a good idea. The RV might not be the safest place if something comes after us, but then the house isn’t either, based on what we’ve seen on TV. If something attacks us here, I don’t think there will be much we can do about it.
Better to let her rest, I decide. The RV sits within a few yards of the porch, not that far. Charlie and I can take turns checking on her.
For all the good it will do if her condition worsens.
I push the thought away and go back into the house. Charlie still sits on the floor in front of the bookcase, with a different binder in his lap now. He doesn’t even look up as I walk past.
“Keep an eye on Sells,”I say. “She seems okay, but I’m leaving her in the RV. I don’t want to wake her up or move her.”
Charlie nods absently.
I stop walking. “Charlie.”
He finally looks up, face wrinkled in irritation.
“I’m not letting anything else happen to her. Okay?”
His face relaxes. “Okay. Get some rest.”
“That’s my plan.”
I go to Riley’s bedroom, where I take my shoes off and crawl under the comforter. I don’t know when I fall asleep, but it’s long before dark.
20
Then
* * *
“Sure this is right?”I asked Charlie.
“Pretty sure,”he said, consulting his iPhone. A second later, he frowned, shoved it in his back pocket, and began opening cabinets. “Signal’s already shot. Is there a map around?”
“Charlie, there is nothing out here,”I said, watching the Sonoran Desert tumble by outside the window. Severe saguaro and prickly paddle-shaped cacti dominated the gravel floor. Mountains loomed in the distance, purple and blue, their peaks reminding me of shark teeth. Shorter, rounded hills surrounded us, punctuating the otherwise flat desert.
Perhaps not the best possible introduction to driving into the middle of nowhere to meet a stranger.
“There it is,”Alex said a minute later as we drove around a hill.
A simple wood-framed house sat in the middle of a sort of valley. I found myself surprised to see there were no horses anywhere, just mesquite trees, more saguaro, and a huge satellite dish planted into the ground.
“This place has an address?”I said.
“There were the mailboxes,”Charlie said. “We’re not that far off the main highway. It just feels like it.”
“If you say so. Where are the other houses?”
“Beats me. They could be anywhere in these hills, I guess. I doubt they’re very close together.”Then he added, as if just reaching this realization: “You don’t move out here to be near people.”
The professor’s house didn’t seem much bigger than mine, and mine wasn’t very big. It looked sort of diminutive, sitting there alone in the middle of all that nothing. Just a dark green splotch against a backdrop of browns and tans. The house sat in the middle of a sort of valley, with hills surrounding most of it, starting at maybe two hundred yards away. No fence marked off the property, and I wondered how much of it Dr. Riley owned. As far as the eye could see? Farther?
Alex stopped the RV in front of the porch, which ran the width of the house, Southern-style. A picture window took up much of the wall, with the front door implant
ed a few feet to the right of the window. Thick drapes were drawn across the window, blocking any attempt at looking inside.
Selby’s first order of business upon exiting the RV was to light a cigarette. Alex, after grabbing the video equipment bag, fell in beside Charlie, who climbed carefully up a short flight of wooden steps to the porch. The lumber warped mildly, as if warning that one more year out here was apt to result in all planks springing free of their nails. All of us seemed to be scanning the area as if expecting snipers to open fire, except for Selby, who paced back and forth in front of the RV with her smoke.
Charlie knocked on the door. We waited. He knocked again.
The curtains in the window fluttered.
“Dr. Riley?”Charlie called.
The front door opened, revealing an older man with a few weeks’ worth of gray beard growth, deep crow’s feet around his eyes, and dry, parched skin.
“Christ,”the old man said, like he’d stepped in dog shit. “What do you want?”
Charlie reared back at the snarl in the old man’s voice. “You know who I—”
“Of course I know who you are, Charlie,”the old man growled. “You look exactly like your father. What do you want?”
Charlie took a second to compose himself, then said, “Your name showed up in some of my dad’s notes. We were hoping you could help us. We’re here about the disappearance.”
The old man snorted. “They’re still calling it that?”
Even Selby, farthest away from him, looked unsettled at the tone in his voice.
“And we’re off to a good start,”Alex muttered beside me.
Riley’s eyes darted to him, assessed briefly, and zipped back to Charlie. “I have nothing to say, to you or anyone else. So have a nice day.”
He began shutting the door. Strangely, I felt a surge of disappointment. Up until this brisk dismissal, my subconscious must have been really expecting something from the professor. It’s weird how your real desires sneak up like that, like when a friend gets you some gift you had no idea you even wanted.