Over the Rainbow

by Brian Rowe

  “Connie? Is that you? What’s happening?”

  He raced down the stairs and turned to his left.

  “Oh no,” he said.

  The kitchen was overloaded with thick smoke, but none of his family was inside, thank the Lord. He found a baking sheet of black, burning quiche in the oven.

  Raymond searched for an oven mitt. He grabbed a handful of paper towels from the spindle, set a few on each hand. He pressed his hands against the baking sheet and pulled it out of the oven, but the heat was too much, and the sheet dropped to his feet.

  “Oww!”

  He closed the oven and kicked the sheet across the kitchen. He pounded his fists against the beeping ceiling alarm, and when it didn’t stop, he ripped it right off and threw it to the floor.

  Raymond took a deep breath. “There,” he said.

  He opened the sliding door to let out the smoke, then stepped toward the kitchen table. On it were two plates of half-eaten turkey sandwiches, next to two half-empty glasses of Sprite. He knew, Connie knew, probably the whole town knew, his growing eighteen-year-old boys were always hungry, and never abandoned a meal without a good reason.

  Raymond stepped outside. He assumed his wife and boys had been taken—and he wished he could have joined them.

  “If it just hadn’t been for Zipporah,” he said, with a shake of his head. “If I had just worked harder to keep her from sinning, we all could have gone together. As a family.”

  He crossed his arms and turned to his right. His next-door neighbor stood on her porch, upright and robotic, much the same way he was standing on his. He walked past the bushes and approached her.

  “Bethany?”

  His middle-aged neighbor, dressed in white pajamas, her curly black hair dangling all the way down to her buttocks, didn’t acknowledge Raymond with a turn or a look. She just stared toward the street.

  “Bethany, it’s Raymond. Have you seen my boys? Or Connie? They’re not in the house—”

  “They’re gone,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “They’re all gone.”

  “Oh.” He tickled his moustache. “Your family, too?”

  She finally looked at Raymond, with dead eyes. “All six of us were in the kitchen. I was serving lunch. And then… poof.”

  Raymond stared at her, in denial. “What happened to them?”

  “The kitchen window disappeared, like a ghost, and everyone rose up through the opening. Everyone… except me. I didn’t even get a chance to say good-bye.” A tear dropped to her chin. “What kind of a God takes an entire family up to Heaven, but not the mother?”

  Raymond darted his eyes toward the street. An ambulance roared toward them. “Everything’s going to be okay, Bethany.”

  She shook her head. “Have you been watching the news? It’s definitely not okay. Things are getting worse. The ones who were taken? They’re the ones who are going to be okay. The ones left behind? We’ve been left here to die.”

  He stepped toward her, wanted to take her hand. But she was too far away.

  She found the edge of her porch, then brushed another tear from her cheek. “I can’t live without my family.”

  The ambulance veered around the corner and sped down the neighborhood street at forty miles per hour. Bethany sprinted off her porch, past the sidewalk, and into the street. The ambulance slammed right into her.

  Raymond looked away. “Oh. Oh God.”

  He returned to his house and closed the door. He tried to catch his breath. Topeka had always been a small community of normal, quiet people leading normal, quiet lives. But not today.

  Raymond turned to the window, next to the kitchen table. It had indeed vanished, allowing for his wife and boys to ascend toward the sky.

  He went into the living room and turned on his television set. He switched to channel four—then hit MUTE when the phone on the table started ringing.

  Raymond dropped to his knees and picked up the phone before its second ring.

  “Zipporah? Is that you?”

  “Ray?” a nasally voice asked on the other end.

  “Oh. Victor.” Raymond rolled his eyes. “Now’s not a good time.”

  “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you. Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been a little preoccupied. Have you seen what's been happening?” Raymond glanced at the TV. It showed live footage of people running through New York City streets.

  “Ray, just because a few people disappear doesn’t mean the world stops spinning—”

  “My family is missing, Victor! What kind of a person would I be if I just ignored that?”

  He heard a cough, and then: “The kind of man who has no interest in being Governor. I’ve done my homework, Ray. You’re not going to believe this. They’ve all vanished. Every Kansas official was taken today. You’re the only one left.”

  Raymond rolled over on his stomach and pushed his forehead against the couch. He didn’t know how to react. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying, your road to Governor just got that much easier. What happened today is a blessing, my friend, not a curse.”

  Ray’s ambition pumped through his veins like the blood of a tiger. Not in his most marvelous dreams did he imagine something like this happening. But he wouldn’t let himself think about it. Not now. “Victor, can we talk about this later?”

  “Aren’t you excited?”

  “Yes, of course. But my family…”

  “Maybe they'll turn up, I wouldn't worry about it. My family’s fine. None of us went anywhere.”

  “Well, good for you,” Raymond said, his words dripping with cynicism.

  “We got lucky, I guess. So Ray, when are you going to make a statement? City Hall is bustling with news cameras—”

  “Not now. I just… I can’t right now.”

  Raymond hung up the phone, and tossed it to the carpet. His attention diverted back to the television. It was difficult watching the images with the TV turned to MUTE; without sound, the news coverage looked like a real-life horror movie.

  The camera cut to Matt Lauer, who stood in a gray mist and had his right hand shoved against his ear. Raymond turned up the volume to hear what the Today Show anchor had to say.

  “No words can describe the unexplained terrors of this day, a day that will not only live in infamy, but one that has forever changed the future of our world. At 3:03 PM eastern standard time, the world experienced a disaster of biblical proportions. No official number has been released, but it is estimated that at least seventy percent of the world’s population has disappeared. But even more disturbing… is the aftermath.”

  Raymond blasted the volume as high as it would go, and sat down on the couch.

  “In the moments following the event,” Matt Lauer continued, “the skies spilled out extinct creatures, of every size and shape, and of every species. We’ve seen everything, from quaggas to aurochs to the Irish deer—to real life dinosaurs.” A loud roar broke out in the distance, and the tall platform he stood on began to wobble. He looked back. A utility pole crashed down to the street. “Holy shit!” he shouted. “We need to cut right now! Cut the camera! Cut—oh my God!” The mouth of a Tyrannosaurus rex popped into frame and clamped down on Matt Lauer’s head.

  The TV cut to static.

  Raymond pushed away from the couch and fell to the floor, his hands covering his mouth. He stared up at the ceiling. Shook his head real fast.

  “Why?” Raymond asked, his lips quivering. He grabbed the lamp on top of the couch-side table and threw it against the wall. “Why couldn’t you take me, huh? Why couldn’t you take me?”

  He raced into his office and pulled out the top drawer. He tore through all of his daughter’s printed e-mails like a repressed serial killer.

  “All I wanted was for Zipporah to be straight,” he said, ripping through the pages. “I just wanted my girl to have a chance at a normal life. So what does she do? She sneaks inside a suitcase, and goes to Seattle, to see h
er little friend. Now God has forsaken both of us!”

  He tossed the scraps into the air and fell against the carpet. The pieces of paper floated down against his chest like snowflakes.

  Raymond picked up a page that landed on top of his head. This one was still intact, and it was a message from Mira, dated February 14, 1999:

  every day I think of you

  every night I dream of you

  as the months go by I smile

  and even though I’m in denial

  I know one day you'll be here

  you'll kiss me as I shed a tear

  i'm waiting for you in laurelhurst

  I feel like my heart would burst

  if you ever found me

  if you ever wrapped your arms around me

  i've always hated this day

  but today

  this day

  is the best day

  of all days

  happy valentine’s day

  i love you my darling z

  m

  Raymond pretended to gag, as he read every clichéd, frivolous phrase. He scrunched up the page, and threw it to the ground.

  Then he stopped. “Wait.”

  He opened it back up, read through the e-mail again.

  “Laurelhurst,” he said.

  He returned to his feet, then folded the paper into quarters and stuck it in his back pocket.

  Raymond walked into the hallway and caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror. His hair stood straight up, his face was red and bloated, dark shadows appeared under his eyes. He brushed against the dirt stains on his shirt and pants. He considered changing into something more comfortable but decided against it. He had a thirty-hour drive ahead of him and needed to get going.

  He double-checked that he had his keys and wallet. Then he grabbed his emergency cell phone, just in case anyone tried to reach him.

  Raymond wasn’t stupid. He knew Connie and his two boys had been taken in the rapture, that they weren’t coming back. While God had deemed Raymond unsuitable to stand next to Him, his wife and sons were likely gone for good.

  “But Zipporah,” he said.

  His daughter had been left behind, he was sure of it. Raymond didn’t know a lot about homosexuals but he knew this: no gay person in the world had been taken up into the sky, because homosexuality was a sin, the worst kind imaginable.

  “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman,” he said to himself. “It is an abomination. Leviticus 18:22.”

  He walked outside and got into his Lexus. More sirens started blaring in the distance.

  “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men or women who practice homosexuality. Corinthians 6:9.”

  He started up the car and turned on the radio. Another depressing news report streamed in over the airwaves, so he put in his CD of classic hits of the 30’s and 40’s. “The Trolley Song” blasted its sweet melody through the two front speakers.

  “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. Romans 1:24-27.”

  He pulled out of the driveway, onto the empty neighborhood street. He rolled down his driver’s side window and let the music blare outside the car, like he hoped the voice of an innocent starlet would calm the scared city dwellers.

  “Zipporah,” he said, staring out the windshield, “if you think you can go to Seattle and share your wicked life with that girl, then you’ve got another thing coming.”

  A group of kids ran panicked through an intersection up ahead, so Raymond turned onto the next street. No cars were on this road; no people, either. He was alone. He sighed, and started to slow down.

  Then a dinosaur plowed through a fence and stomped out onto the street.

  “What in the world?” Raymond screamed, and slammed on his brakes.

  Twenty-feet long and algae green in color, with tiny spikes running along its body and a flat head that stretched back behind its miniature eyes, the creature turned toward his car, and let out a loud roar.

  Raymond revved the engine, and as the song reached its crescendo, he floored the pedal to the metal and smashed the front of his Lexus against the dinosaur. It fell against its back, with a muddled groan.

  But Raymond wasn’t finished. He went in reverse, then floored the car again, and rammed it against the dinosaur’s head.

  “It’s almost the twenty-first century!” Raymond shouted out the window. “We shouldn’t have to deal with you relics!”

  As the speakers emitted the last line of the song, Raymond sped toward the dinosaur one last time and rolled the car over its legs.

  He took off down the road and glanced once in his rearview mirror. A pool of blood spilled out into the center of the street, and the dinosaur, still very much alive, started shrieking in pain.

  “You got what was coming to you,” Raymond said, and averted his eyes back to the road ahead.

  But as he heard the distressed call of the dinosaur a second time, he rolled up his window.

  Five minutes later, he pulled onto I-70, which would take him all the way to Colorado, before he had to change freeways and head north.

  All the way to Washington.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Monday, June 14, 1999

  I woke up groggy. My forehead was a touch warm, and my back was awkward and stiff. I looked at the clock. It was just after midnight.

  Elle and Frankie were sleeping. Even Judy was out cold. The only other person awake was our chauffeur, Mr. Balm. He drove in the right hand lane of the four-lane highway—and started to swerve.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Mr. Balm?” I leaned against his seat. “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t… I can’t breathe…”

  He veered around a stranded car. The freeway was cluttered with vehicles, some smashed up against the guardrail, others turned over on their sides or flipped upside down. So many of them didn’t have windshields.

  Frankie woke up, just as Mr. Balm doubled over in pain. He had one hand on the steering wheel, and the other on his chest.

  “Mr. Balm, pull over,” I said. “Pull over now.”

  “What’s going on?” Frankie asked.

  Mr. Balm swerved around one more vehicle, then pulled onto the shoulder. I jumped out and opened his driver’s side door. He looked ready to faint. Sweat dripped down his forehead and cheeks, and his mouth hung open, like he needed to puke. I unbuckled his seatbelt.

  “Where does it hurt?” I asked.

  “It’s my heart.”

  “Are you having an attack?”

  “No. It’s… it’s an episode. It usually only lasts a minute or two.” He grabbed a case of medicine from the front pouch of his backpack and popped two pills into his mouth.

  “Why didn’t you wake us up?” I glanced at Frankie, who was just sitting there. “Frankie, get out of the car and help me. We have to get Mr. Balm to a hospital—”

  “No,” Mr. Balm said, waving his hands in my face. “No, I’ll be fine. I just need one of you two to drive.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked. “We can look for one.”

  “Trust me. I get these all the time. You don’t have to worry. Besides, we have no time to waste. We have to get to Seattle.”

  Frankie appeared beside me. I stayed focused on Mr. Balm. “Thanks, but I’m not going to let you get sick, all right? We’re all in this together.”

  He sighed, and kept his right hand pressed to his chest. “Of course. Thank you, Zippy.”

  “What do you want me to do with him?” Frankie asked.

  “Here, help me put him in the back.”

  We guided Mr. Balm out of the driver’s seat, Frankie supporting his arms and me supporting his legs. I opened the rear door.
<
br />   “Elle, get in the passenger seat,” I said.

  “What’s going on?” She started waking up, but kept her eyes closed.

  “Do as I say. Mr. Balm isn’t feeling well.”

  Elle let out a loud yawn, but then moved over the center console to the front of the car.

  Frankie squeezed himself back inside the car and pulled Mr. Balm up on the back seat. He laid him out flat, so that he stared up at the ceiling. Then Frankie rested Mr. Balm’s head in a comfortable position. I pushed against his feet, made sure he was all the way inside.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mr. Balm said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me…”

  “It’s okay,” I said. I took the keys from him.

  I shut the door and met Frankie at the front of the Explorer. He had appeared so rested a minute ago, but now he was frazzled, his eyes bloodshot, his hair a mess.

  I held the keys up to Frankie’s chest. “Here. I’ll sit in the passenger seat with Elle.”

  “What?” He pushed the keys away. “I don’t think I’m the best choice to drive.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m just... I'm tired. It's late.”

  “You'll be fine. You don’t have a concussion, right?”

  “No, but driving for a long stretch of time might give me another headache.”

  I pushed my hands against the nape of my neck and stared up at the night sky. “You can’t get sick, Frankie. How are we supposed to get to Seattle if you and Mr. Balm are stacked on top of each other in the back seat?”

  “I’m not sick like him. I’ll be okay.” He looked at Elle and smiled, like he wanted to assure her there was nothing to worry about. He turned back to me. “Why don’t you drive?”

  “Me? Are you crazy?”

  “Zippy. We survived a plane crash, we've seen the triceratops and the stegosaurus and the world's smallest pterodactyl. I think we've both gone a little crazy.”

  I rolled my eyes. “What, and you think we're the only ones? This didn't just happen to us, Frankie. I'm sure this is happening all over the country, the world even.”

  “What do you mean?”