by Billy Dering
“Hey Sara. Sorry to call you so late, but you told me you would be out late.”
“No problem. Are you crying?” She sat up straighter. “Did Scott Sherman do something to you?”
“No, no, I haven’t met him yet,” Karen responded. “It’s my mother. She has me so upset right now. We got into an argument and…” Sara sat and listened, but did not say a word.
Jumping back in the truck, Brian exhaled. “The smoke is dissipating. I think it was just burning off the sea water that got inside the engine compartment. Just give it another ten minutes and we should be good to go.” He leaned back in his seat and exhaled. “Well Sara, you don’t have to worry about still being here at 11:03.”
Sara, while still on the phone with Karen, held up the jewelry box and gave a thumbs up.
From the rear of the vehicle, Kid was staring out the front windshield at the black sky over the ocean. The silence became all-consuming, as if a whisper in the wind could shatter an eardrum. Kid was lost in the stillness of that moment when out of nowhere, he had a sinking feeling. He shuddered. There were people who swore that they sensed something a second before it happened…
Suddenly, and without any warning, the sky turned blinding red. A collage of rapidly moving red lines painted the sky in every direction. Everyone screamed and covered their faces as Brian’s truck vibrated.
A searing pain registered in Kid’s eyes and he reached up to cover his face. Sara’s phone fell onto his lap, and he heard Karen’s panicked voice. “Oh my God Sara, something is wrong. My room is red, from some strange light…” And then the phone cut out.
A humming sound swept over the truck in quick pulses, and Kid felt his chest cavity being hollowed out. With a pain and sickness like he had never felt before, he concluded, I am dying, right here and now.
Chapter 3
December 26, 2044
Monday, 11:00 PM
New Jersey coast
The hour of the event
Touching his own face, Kid realized that he was still alive. He rubbed his eyes and tried in vain to focus. He was unable to see anything but a curtain of red in every direction. His heart was beating violently, with his breaths shallow and rapid. Regaining full awareness of his surroundings, he heard a repetitive beep inside the truck. He reached out for Sara and she yelped at his touch, but she was thankfully alive. He heard Brian crying out in pain, while the others in the vehicle were all yelling in panicked fear.
Kid barked, “Hold on everyone. Let’s calm down!” The incoherent screaming stopped, but one person was still moaning. “Brian, are you alright?”
“My eyes are burning! I was staring out the windshield when the sky just… exploded,” he strained to reply.
“Heidi, how about you?” Kid asked.
“My eyes aren’t burning but I’m blind! All I can see is red.”
“Me too. Can anyone see anything but red?”
A chorus of desperate and scared voices answered, “No!”
Everyone started talking at the same time, prompting Kid to yell again. “Hold it! Stop! Freaking out isn’t helping!” A repetitive pulse blared in the silence inside the truck. “What the hell is beeping?”
Feeling around blindly, Sara grabbed a box and held it to her ear. “It’s in this jewelry box that my father gave me!”
“Can you stop it?” Usually a beeping sound would be nothing more than a nuisance, but given the present chaotic circumstances, it invoked sheer panic. It didn’t help that nobody could see.
“I don’t know!” He heard the crinkle of wrapping paper as she opened the box. “There’s a… slip of paper and, it must be an old watch. I’m just pressing every button.” Finally, the noise stopped. He heard her stuff everything in the box and shove it into a compartment in the back of the truck.
Heidi’s voice was shaking. “What just happened out there, and why can’t we see?”
“Must’ve been an explosion of some kind,” Mike Norris replied. “But a blinding one. I can’t see anything!”
“None of us can yet,” Kid said. “Give it a minute. Maybe it will pass.”
“It didn’t sound like an explosion,” Sara jumped in. “It sounded like it was sweeping over us from side to side.”
“She’s right, it seemed to be moving back and forth,” Kid noted.
“What do you think it was, Sara?” Heidi asked. “If anyone would know weaponry it would be you, since you grew up on military bases.”
“I’m not sure. But they looked like neutron beams.”
“What!” Heidi replied in horror. “I’ve heard what those do to people. Don’t even tell me…” She was starting to bawl.
“No, no, wait, it couldn’t be,” Sara interjected.
“Why not?”
“Because we would be dead.”
For a couple of seconds, there was complete silence in the vehicle.
“Sara, try calling your Dad,” Kid said as he grabbed her phone from his lap. Without the aid of sight she tried, but did not even have a signal. Nobody’s device had a signal.
Grabbing the edge of his blanket, Kid began to tear off material to make blindfolds for everyone. “I think we’re just flash blind.” He hoped the effect was temporary.
Kid tore and dispensed blindfolds for everyone in the back and then crawled forward. “Here Heidi, take these blindfolds. Put one over Brian’s eyes, and one over yours.”
The group waited in the truck for more than half an hour, blind and helpless, but expecting police or emergency vehicles to arrive. To combat the bitter cold, Heidi would occasionally reach over, turn the vehicle on and blast the heat.
“I hope we’re far enough away from the ocean. The storm sounds pretty bad outside,” Sara remarked.
“We’re far enough back. We were more than halfway up the beach,” Kid replied.
He sat listening to the drops of freezing rain pecking at the roof of the truck, wondering if his sight would return soon. He lowered his blindfold and tried to focus, but he saw only a red collage. His mind kept replaying Karen’s last panicked words, ‘…something is wrong. My room is red, from some strange light.’ Whatever had happened was obviously not limited to the beach in Seaside Heights, New Jersey.
After another hour, the ice pellet parade ended.
“Maria, can you hand me my pants?” Kid asked. He couldn’t stand waiting any longer.
She pushed a pair into his arms. “I think these are yours.”
Although it was not usually a difficult task, even putting on pants was awkward without the aid of sight. His blue jeans were remarkably dry, with only limited areas of dampness. Feeling a specific area of moisture against his calf, it seemed to him that his sense of touch was heightened. He then turned around and tried to find the door handle. “I’m going outside. I’ll see if anyone’s around to help.”
“Can you see?” Sara asked.
“No, but I can feel my way to the Quick-Fix. I just need to find the curb and follow it for a few blocks.”
“Few blocks?” Jess scoffed. “It’s further than that.”
“Two blocks in and eight blocks over to be exact,” Kid said.
“It’s the middle of the night, and you can’t see,” Sara noted. “And the weather is pretty shaky.”
“I can’t just sit here. Anyway, it’s a 24-hour convenience store, so someone should be there. Probably the same guy who gave me a pocketful of change since he was out of dollar bills. The weather seems fine now, but if it turns, I will just take shelter where I can until it passes.”
He found the handle for the back door and said to Sara, “I’m opening the door. Lean forward.” To the entire group, he added, “Hang in there everybody. I’m going to find out what is happening here.”
It was a meaningless consolation, one that faded as quickly as it arrived, but for a split second Kid actually felt vindicated. The sense of foreboding he had felt in the absolute calm before the storm was not unfounded after all. Now he wished it was. Flash blind, he misjudged the
distance to the ground when jumping out and his knees buckled. Lying on his side, he cursed the sand because his pants were soggy again. As he stood up, he reached out and touched the bumper of the truck to reorient himself. “Move back. I’m closing the door, in three, two, one…” he warned. The slam echoed in the night.
Walking cautiously, he moved up the beach until he reached the boardwalk. He ran his hand over the old wooden boards, pulled a splinter out of his numb index finger, and climbed up. The frigid ocean breeze whipped him with a vengeance, accentuating the dampness of his pants.
Kid stopped as his feet contacted the road, and he listened for cars or any sound that might indicate life. He heard the gusty wind, the tide, and nothing else. As he started to walk, his foot began to slide on the icy asphalt. Catching his balance, he stutter-stepped across the street until he stumbled on the curb on the other side. He followed it and headed west up the beach block. As he crossed an intersection, he shuffled his feet until he picked up the curb on the other side of the road. At the end of the second block, he turned south. He continued forward and tapped the curb with his shoe every few steps to make sure he was going straight. Despite stepping with caution, he nearly tripped and twisted his ankle several times. At the sixth intersection, he bumped his forehead into a metal sign that was mounted near eye-level. He jerked back and the sign vibrated, like someone vigorously shaking a thin piece of sheet metal.
Traversing the eighth block, he turned when he reached a curb cut-out, right where he had estimated the store would be. He could not believe how difficult it was to find the place without the aid of sight. Sensing that he had gone too far, he stopped and turned around only to find the side of the building at his fingertips. He followed the wall, came around to the front, and opened the door.
Kid almost fell backward as a wave of the most disgusting smell hit him. He covered his nose and jumped back. “What spoiled in here?” He took a deep breath and again walked into the store.
“Hello.” Nobody answered, so he tried again a little louder. “Hello!” Still no answer.
Taking small steps, he made his way to the back of the store. Using his fingertips, he found a door, opened it and reached in. He discovered a ball on a lower shelf. After unraveling a loose piece, he determined that it was string. Immediately he thought of a good use for it, and kept it in his hand.
Going out the front door, he tied one end of the ball of string to the door handle. He unwound it as he headed across the parking lot. Despite the chilly temperature, it felt good to breathe fresh air and get away from the stench inside the store. He intended to case out the area and try to find someone to help them. He wasn’t even halfway across the parking lot when freezing rain and hail started coming down in buckets. “How about a break here?” Kid said aloud as his clothes absorbed the falling precipitation.
He was thankful for his forethought in using the string as a guide. Without the aid of sight, he followed the twine and hustled back to the door. Feeling his way to the back of the store, he sat down in a corner. With his arms folded over his knees, Kid shivered as cold and damp clothes pressed against his skin. The stress of the night’s events was weighing on his mind and body, so when he buried his nose in the sleeve of his shirt in an effort to escape the smell, he fell asleep.
“Kid, wake up!”
Startled, Kid arose. His face became involuntarily contorted as the foul smell in the store again registered with his senses. “Jess?”
“Yeah, I can see now. Take your blindfold off, maybe you can too.”
Kid took his blindfold off and tried to focus. He could see shadows, although they still had a tint of red. He rubbed his eyes. “Everything is still kind of blurry.”
“It took me a few minutes to focus, but the haze clears pretty quickly.”
Jess breathed through his nose. “Something’s freakin ripe in here.” Breathing again and wincing, “That’s just nasty.”
“Check the meats in the deli case. What time is it anyway?”
“8:00 a.m.”
At this point Kid could see well enough to get up and walk around without having to feel his way. He also realized it was daylight. “How are the others?” he inquired.
“Everyone can see again, except Brian,” Jess noted.
“Where are they?”
“At a house down the beach, warming up in front of a wood stove,” he answered as he peered into the case holding the deli meats.
“I could use that myself. I need to thaw out,” Kid said. “Are you ready to drive back?”
“I didn’t drive. I walked because Brian’s truck was on fumes when we pulled up to Old Man Drexer’s house.”
“Old Man Drexer’s house?”
“That’s what Heidi calls it. She said that when she was down the shore last summer, her and her boyfriend at the time met an old guy named Mr. Drexer who lived there. He told them he used to be an attorney, but he quit and took up surf fishing instead.”
“How noble.”
Jess stared into the deli case. “These meats haven’t gone bad. Anyway, it’s cold enough in here for them to keep for at least a few days.”
Though his vision was still somewhat cloudy, Kid saw lip balms on a shelf behind the counter. Desperately needing one, he went to reach over and stopped as he noticed the counter was a mess. Taking a handful of napkins from a nearby dispenser, he wiped away what appeared to be a clump of food on the counter. It reminded him of the cheap burrito Mark Norris made the mistake of buying there. He stretched to grab the lip balm and was overpowered by an even more pungent wave of stench.
He looked down and froze, staring in horror.
December 26, 2044
Monday, 11:00 PM
New Jersey coast
The moment of the event
John Patel was bored beyond belief while working the night shift at the Quick-Fix convenience store. He couldn’t understand why the place stayed open in the winter. With almost everything on the shore closed for the winter, he would be lucky to have two customers all night. Sure, the job was easy, but the nights seemed endless. To amuse himself, he made the mistake of playing some scratch-off lottery tickets. He could not stop, and after losing $300, he was determined to keep playing until he found enough winners to cover his loses.
Otherwise, even though his uncle owned the store, he would be unemployed tomorrow. And at 24 years of age, his parents wanted him out of the house once and for all. That was the only reason he was working at his uncle’s shithole store.
After grabbing yet another lottery ticket and scratching it off, he blinked as the world turned a blinding red. First a strong wave of nausea passed through him, and then he screamed in agony as his insides turned to liquid. The last thing he saw as his eyes melted was yet another losing lottery ticket in his trembling hand.
He collapsed to the floor. As his arm dragged against the counter top, a clump of skin and muscle scraped away, like the meat of a slow-cooked spare rib falling off the bone.
Chapter 4
December 27, 2044
Tuesday, 8:15 AM
New Jersey coast
The morning after the event
Kid’s stomach churned, and he felt weak and nauseous as his brain combined the awful sight with the rotten smell.
On the floor behind the counter was a bloody, lumpy, grotesque mound with a skull, a ribcage, other large bones and entrails. Clearly discernible was a scratch-off lottery ticket, which seemed to be floating on top of the pile. It appeared as though this person had simply melted, with a stream of blood and guts running into one corner of the space behind the counter.
Seeing the expression of disgust, Jess asked, “What’s the matter?”
Kid pointed at the floor behind the counter. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him.
Jess leaned over and his face too become deathly pale. “Is that…” he started to say and jumped back from the counter, “Damn!” He put his hand over his mouth and nose and tried to stifle the sudden gag reflex.
Grabbing Jess’s arm, Kid said, “Let’s get out of here.”
Jess nodded and ran for the door.
Kid hurriedly gathered snacks and drinks, stuffed them in a bag and dashed out.
As they walked down the boardwalk, Kid could not escape the pungent olfactory recollection of the carnage in the convenience store. He also couldn’t escape the feeling that this was not an isolated incident. “Listen, don’t say anything about what we saw back there. Not yet. They’ll flip out and jump to all kinds of conclusions.”
Jess inhaled a lungful of fresh air. “Fine by me.” The walk seemed to be helping him. His face was a little less pale, although his hand still rested across his stomach.
When Kid had heard ‘house down the beach,’ he was thinking of the multi-million dollar homes monopolizing the shoreline. He was surprised when they walked up to a weather-beaten and unkempt small shack, which appeared to be teetering as it rested on crooked wood pilings. Even more odd, it was the only house on the beach side of the boardwalk. “Went for the diamond in the rough?” he quipped.
“Went for the closest place that had a chimney since we were running out of gas. We were lucky to make it this far. It’s actually pretty air-tight and has running water.”
“The place looks abandoned,” Kid said as he walked up the warped and soggy wood steps.
Jess followed, saying, “I know. But someone was living here.”
Sara opened the door, and hugged Kid. “I guess you had to hunker down somewhere?”
“Yeah, the convenience store. I would’ve called if our phones were working.”
“It’s better you took shelter. It was bad outside. The storm eroded away half of the beach.”
Kid cased out the dusty and dirty dwelling. It had a large open living room, a small bathroom with a toilet and a shower, and a third room with a closed door. He approached the shut door of what he assumed was a bedroom and reached out his hand.