by Sean Platt
“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 percent of the population of the planet vanished. Gone, poof, into the unknown.”
“What are you talking about?” Brent asked, now glancing at Luis, also stone-faced.
“We’re calling it The Collapse. And we’ve known it was going to happen for years.”
Brent stayed silent. He was certain his expression was louder than words, anyway.
“The four of us have been dreaming of this day and hour since we were children. We found one another five years ago on some message boards, and started researching this thing, trying to prepare. We even came up with a name for ourselves,” Stan said with a laugh, “We call ourselves the 215 Society.”
Okay, that’s it, I’m outta here. Brent began to think of a way to get the hell out of the room without offending Luis.
“We’re not crazy,” Melora said with a professorial smile. “We’ve been dreaming of this moment for most of our lives. Something in the dream told us that the world would be gone and we had to prepare.”
“Prepare? How?” Brent asked, his curiosity getting the better of him even if he was chasing delusion. It wouldn’t be the first time he entertained some loon with crazy, tin foil hat stories.
“Well, we never really knew, to be honest,” Stan said, “At first, we thought we were supposed to warn people. We tried that, but nobody listens to you when you say the world’s gonna end. And we didn’t want to lose our jobs or get thrown in the loony bin. So we kept mum, just trying to be ready in whatever ways we could.”
“Wait,” Brent said, looking around the room, and trying to see into the hall, which likely led to a single bedroom and bath. “You said there were four of you; where’s the fourth?”
“We haven’t seen her yet,” Melora said. “She was supposed to come here last night to wait with us. But she never showed.”
“So, you all stayed here for the end of the world? What happened at 2:15 a.m.?” Brent asked. “Did you see people vanish? Was there some big light from a UFO? Was God here? What happened?”
Melora smiled one of those smiles that someone gives you when they’re looking down on you. “You think we’re crazy, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Brent said, “I’m just looking for my family and would like to know what the hell happened.”
“They’re gone,” Luis said from behind. “They’re all gone.”
Brent was getting pissed, but kept his attention on Melora as he spoke. “They’re not gone. I’m going to find them.”
“I’m afraid Luis is right,” Melora said. “Everyone is gone. Which is why I’m confused. You didn’t answer my question before. Have you not had the dreams, too?”
“No,” Brent said, standing. “I didn’t have any crazy dreams. I told you what happened, and now I’m going to go out to find my family. Thank you for your time and your . . . stories.”
Brent pushed his way past Luis, who didn’t bother to stop him.
“Wait,” Stan called out, his voice hyper. “There’s something you’ve gotta see.”
Brent was going to ignore him, just head the hell out of there, get back out on the street and leave Crazy Town. But again, his reporter’s curiosity tugged at him. Even if these people didn’t know what the hell was happening, he wanted to understand what they thought was going down.
“What?” Brent asked, going to the kitchen where Stan and Melora were pulling something from a box. A small video recorder.
Stan handed it to Brent.
“Press play.”
He did.
The camera showed the time in the bottom right corner: 2:14 a.m. The scene was the room he was in now, except the chairs and couch were all moved aside, and the three 215ers were sitting on the floor talking.
“Should be any minute now,” Stan said in the video.
Melora started to say something and then the power went out.
The camera switched to night vision green and showed all three fall to the ground, unconscious. There was some static. Brent watched the screen, waiting for them to move, but they didn’t. They were out cold. If he didn’t know better, he’d think they dropped dead right there.
“That’s it until an hour later, when we woke up,” Stan said. “Then we went out and drove around the city to confirm what we thought.”
“I drove around the city,” Luis corrected him.
“Yes,” Stan agreed.
“Okay, so you recorded yourselves ‘passing out’ at the same time; what’s that supposed to prove?” Brent asked.
Melora reached into the box and pulled out another recorder. “This is the one we put in an apartment two doors down. One of several we placed in other apartments, I might add. Without anyone’s knowledge, of course.”
She handed it to Brent, and he pressed play.
The recording started at 2:14 a.m.
The scene was inside someone’s bedroom, a king-sized bed. The camera was already on night vision. Next to the bed, Brent saw a clock’s face that read 2:10. He could see the shapes of a man and woman in bed, the guy hogging the blankets, the woman curled against him. He could hear one of them snoring.
The alarm clock went black.
“That’s the power outage,” Melora said.
Brent kept watching.
More static, this time accompanied by a five-second burst of a high-pitched whistle like a tea kettle if the tea kettle’s sound were filtered through a high-velocity fan.
And then something came into view of the camera and Brent jumped. The camera fell from his hands.
“What the fuck was that?!”
Stan, surprisingly agile, grabbed the camera before it hit the ground. He rewound it to where Brent had left off and handed it back.
Something that looked like a dark cloud had formed all at once over the bed, a swirling mass of slow-moving, smoky tendrils. Except it moved more like smoke in liquid form. Brent stared in horror as two long tentacles of darkness twisted and snaked down toward the sleeping bodies. Just as one of the tentacles crept toward the woman’s head, the image flickered.
More static and the high-pitched weird teakettle noise whistled for the longest five seconds of Brent’s entire life. The static cleared. When it did, the bed was empty.
The time in the corner read 2:15 a.m.
Twelve
Mary Olson
Desmond was a fun neighborhood mystery. Everyone loved to guess where he got his money. No one knew what he did, but everyone knew he had to be one of the best. His house, directly across the street from Mary’s, wasn’t larger than hers. But it was just as big and 10 times as impressive. You could tell that she was someone who was struggling to stay in such a grand home; he was likely living beneath his means.
Desmond rarely wore anything other than jeans and a simple shirt, but on him, everything looked custom tailored. Even jeans and tees. He always had new toys, including cars. And new women, or so rumor went. And the one time Mary had been inside his house, she left thinking it was the most beautiful interior she’d ever seen. And his garden inspired jealousy from everyone in the neighborhood. She’d dreamt of the garden more than once.
Mary had known a few guys who could mint money, all of them assholes. Desmond wasn’t. He was a good guy with a great sense of humor, though he spent most of the time quiet, at least at the neighborhood gatherings. He had honest eyes and was a great listener; rarely broke eye contact and usually waited his turn to speak. When he spoke, people listened.
“What do you mean the world is dead?” John asked.
“Exactly that. May not be the entire world, but St. Louis is gone for sure. If there’s a rest of the world, we need to get to it now.”
“People are missing, or do you mean the town itself?”
“A little of both,” Desmond said. “All the people, definitely. But a lot of the town, too.”
“How do you know?” John’s bottom lip started to dance.
“Because I’ve been driving the city since 3:30 this morning. It’s a ghost town, and I can’t get a signal from anywhere in the world. If I can’t get a signal, no one in this city can.”
Jimmy lost his tongue for the first time in years.
Mary said, “What do you think we should do?”
“Pack some supplies; we’re gonna head southwest to Fort Leonard Wood. If the world’s gone to shit, you can bet the Army base is the best place to be.”
Jimmy’s tongue came back. “What if the Army is gone?”
John stepped in front of Jimmy. “I’m not going. I’m waiting for Jenny here.”
Desmond said, “Jenny’s gone.”
“She’ll be back.”
A sadness shuddered through the tiny circle. Desmond put his hand on John’s shoulder. “We’ll be safer together. And have a better chance at finding Jenny.”
Jimmy agreed. “Yeah man, better together.”
Mary turned to John. “I know how you feel. But right now, we don’t know what’s happened or what that means for tomorrow. All we know is, yesterday’s gone. Whatever happened, we were hit hard. If our numbers were cut, then every number matters. We need to stick together and figure out what’s going on.”
John was silent. Desmond thanked Mary with his eyes then opened his mouth. “I suggest we’re packed and ready to hit the road hard in 30. Take only what you know you need. No computers or large items. I only have so much room in the cargo van for our supplies. We can also use the Escalade.”
John said, “I’ll go. We can take my Suburban. Just cleaned it yesterday.”
Desmond smiled. “Okay then, let’s hustle. Everyone back here in 30.”
“Why the hurry?” Jimmy wasn’t being flip, just wanted to know. “Looks like we’ve got all the time in the world.”
A shadow smudged Desmond’s face. “Time might not mean what it used to. But if the sky is falling, every minute matters.”
Mary and Paola went back into the house. Paola ran upstairs to pack clothes; Mary stayed downstairs in the kitchen tossing a medley of foods into two, 30-gallon trash bags. She packed all the dries, then made a cooler of perishables and set it by the front door beside the two plastic bags.
Paola met her mom at the front door with two suitcases, stuffed with Mary’s favorite jeans, cammies, and sweaters, with 15 minutes to spare.
“Anything else?”
Paola was sweet this morning. And it was early.
“Not sure. Other than are we dreaming, is this real, or any other way of saying, this can’t be happening. Most of all I just want to know you’re okay. Are you?”
Paola smiled. “Would it be weird if I said yes?”
“A little,” Mary hugged her daughter and laughed. “But you’ve always been a little weird and a lot tough!”
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“What do you think happened?”
Mary had no idea and couldn’t possibly guess. “I don’t know, but I think we’ll be okay. That feels right. And you know I’d tell you if it didn’t. Whatever happened, we’re okay. That has to be enough for us right now, got it?”
Paola gave her mom her hand. “Pinky promise.”
Mary wrapped her pinky around Paola’s. They spent several minutes rocking back and forth, then opened the door to the sudden future waiting outside.
Desmond’s cargo van was nice but nondescript from the outside. New, tall, and shiny. Black. The back doors were open. Mary saw custom cabinets and shelving inside, sitting beside a small bank of computers, every screen black. Her face must have looked louder than she thought.
“I’m not crazy,” Desmond laughed. “I’m just always prepared and can afford to do it well. Come on, let’s get packed.” He took the bags from Mary and Paola and loaded them into the van.
“Mind if I take a look?” Mary asked.
“By all means,” Desmond stood behind the swinging door and bowed his head.
Mary climbed in and started opening cabinets. They were packed with an end-of-the-world picnic: juice, dried fruits, condensed milk, canned meats, peanut butter, jelly, crackers, granola bars, baby food, coffee, tea, hard candy, cereal, salt, pepper, sugar. There was a giant first aid kit, the biggest Mary had ever seen, a portable toilet, light sticks, a stack of 5-gallon buckets, plastic trash bags, bleach, a disaster supply kit, and tons of water, though it looked like it would run out quick.
Mary looked at her two plastic bags and felt like she was watering her lawn while looking at Desmond’s copper piping.
“One more,” Desmond said, straining to lift a small footlocker into the van. A padlock secured the lock.
“What’s in there?” Mary asked, even though she anticipated the response.
“Guns,” Desmond said matter-of-factly.
“Who’s riding with me?” John opened the door to his Suburban and climbed in. Mary and Paola climbed in back.
“I’ll go with Desmond,” Jimmy said.
Desmond shook his head. “You should ride in the Suburban. I’ll hit the front line.”
Jimmy didn’t disagree, just opened the passenger side of the Suburban and climbed inside.
The cargo van left Warson Woods. The Suburban followed.
The Suburban was a coffin of silence as its occupants surveyed the city beyond their neighborhood.
It was gone.
In its place, torn trees jutted up from the debris-strewn earth consisting of splintered remnants of houses, destroyed vehicles, broken glass, and paper. Lots and lots of paper, as if a million office buildings exploded, and paper rained from the sky, as if a super-tornado had wiped out miles and miles of the city.
Paola burst into tears, and Mary hugged her tight.
“What happened?”
“Jesus,” John said. “Everything is ... gone.”
Mary held Paola tightly, unable to think of anything to say that would soothe her this time. As they drove along, Mary saw that Jimmy, who had his face buried in a fantasy book, was starting to tear up. She turned away, so as not to embarrass him.
Fortunately, the on-ramp to the highway was intact and the streets remarkably, and eerily, were free of vehicles. If a mass exodus occurred, everyone either got out in time, or took other means of escape.
And the sky had a gauze. It made her think, opposite of Colorado, and that managed a smile. They’d driven nearly 20 minutes before the trees began to appear along the side of the road again. The tornado, or whatever it was, hadn’t reached this far. In another 15 minutes or so, they would reach the next major city. She hoped it was still standing.
As they drove in relative silence, something gnawed in Mary’s brain. Something she should either remember, or notice. That’s when it occurred to her — something was off about the trees. She realized what it was before Jimmy said a thing.
“You hear them?” Jimmy turned to the back seat.
“Who?” Paola asked.
“The trees.”
Paola did, though she hadn’t realized it until that moment. That they were able to hear anything from inside the cabin of the Suburban, let alone trees, confused her. That she and Jimmy agreed it was the trees they heard, even odder.
“Yeah,” Jimmy drummed his fingers on the dashboard, “they’re definitely talking.”
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 newfound orifice, it gasped and groaned, as if trying to form words.