by Sean Platt
A thick silence lingered for a few minutes, interrupted by a slight rattle that sounded like it was coming from under the hood, followed by a heavy blanket of ... atmosphere, or something; a sudden weight — gravity growing thick and fattening the air around them.
“See,” Paola said. “The trees are mad.”
Something stole the flush from John’s face.
“You hear them now, don’t you?” Jimmy asked.
John nodded. He could hear the trees, at least until they fell silent a moment later. The dense clusters started to thin. They passed a patch of twisting, blackened branches, then the green was suddenly, shockingly, all gone.
Everything grew darker over the next few miles: the sky, the surroundings, the ground. The entire drive had seen the five of them sailing through the great big empty, but the long miles were nothing compared to the rather abrupt dead man’s walk now surrounding them.
There was nothing — no trees, no cars, no people, no houses. Nothing but ashen ground and empty air. Corpses would’ve been a welcome sight over this. At least it would’ve been something.
Everyone in the car was wondering the same thing: Was Missouri gone forever, and was this the tundra of their new, dead world?
They drove for another few minutes in awed, toxic silence, wondering where everything had gone. Then they drove right into the answer. No words could describe the devastation before them. Storm, squall, tempest, tsunami — none would do.
If the world had ended, it looked as though they’d surely found the center.
Sixteen
Luca Harding
Oct. 17, 2011
Morning
Somewhere in California
Luca woke up mostly happy, though he still felt slightly scared. The itchy burny was gone. It started to fade when he woke up and now almost felt nice. Warm all over, like being by the fire naked.
The invisible fire kept him from getting tired. It was his third day walking, yet Luca could still have easily played a full game of soccer, or several. He saw another dead dog on the side of the road, and his sad spiders started to crawl.
Luca shuddered, but didn’t stop his stride, or even slow. He missed his family, and the world. But he would find everyone soon. Probably as soon as he found the man who made the lobster tacos. Luca had been thinking about him a lot lately. Whenever he went to sleep, usually after he was finished talking to the Indian.
Luca didn’t remember what the man who made the lobster tacos looked like, so his brain made up a brand new face. Now he was tall, taller than most people, but not quite as tall as his dad. The lobster man was older than his dad, though. His skinny body swam inside an extra large, lime-colored T-shirt. It billowed beneath his blue apron as it battled the beach wind that whipped around them.
The taco man looked happy enough to play the good guy in a cartoon, and his smile was so nice it made Luca feel like he’d find his mom and dad as soon as he finished eating his taco.
The spiders weren’t there because he missed his mom and dad, even though he did. They were there because so many of the animals had started to disappear. There had been hundreds, and though there were just as many now, the ones on the side of the road weren’t moving. And when they stopped moving, they got bugs all over their faces. Dog Vader, or Kick (as he preferred to be called even though Dog Vader was a much cooler name), was okay, but a lot of the other animals weren’t. And the bad numbers were getting too high to count.
Luca could’ve kept walking through the night last night, but the dark was terrible scary to walk in, especially when the animals didn’t move. Luca would walk until he couldn’t take it anymore, then he would stop on the beach side of the highway and sleep in the sand. The other side was too close to the terrible scary — the only thing that made Luca feel like he might never see his family again.
I don’t like the terrible scary. If Mom and Dad and Anna aren’t coming back, then they might be hiding deep inside the terrible scary. Animals stop moving forever once the bugs are on their faces. If Mom and Dad and Anna are deep inside the terrible scary, they’ll probably have bugs on their faces, too.
Sleeping wasn’t too bad, though. Because that’s where he got to see his new friend. It only took seconds last night before he was out and talking to Dog Vader, who once again looked like an Indian. He wasn’t really an Indian; Luca knew that was un-possible. Dogs didn’t just turn into people. But talking to the Indian in his dream was the only way he could understand stuff, since Luca couldn’t speak barky, which is why Luca always wondered if he could really trust the husky’s thoughts in the daylight.
“Why are all the animals dying?” he asked.
The Indian had grown more outlandish each time Luca napped. He now wore a giant headdress, earrings that hung half as low as a Hula-hoop, and a necklace made from what looked like the teeth of a saber tooth tiger. He also held in his lap a giant red, plastic pipe with a white ring around the top.
The Indian took a giant puff, then said, “They are not dying.”
Luca thought about the animals, both dead and alive, and how they all looked so strange. Like they weren’t really there, even though they were — equally un-possible.
Luca wished the Indian wouldn’t use so much of the confusing talk. He was trying to think of a different way to ask the same question when a second ring of smoke curled through the air, followed by, “Dying closes a circle. The animals still move in a line.”
More confusing talk. Luca didn’t care about shapes. He knew the animals were dying, plus he could see pieces of their realness missing. He wished the Indian would just tell him why, but sometimes he liked to answer questions Luca didn’t even ask.
“Where did the rainbows go?” Luca tried a totally different question, hoping the Indian wouldn’t use confusing talk in his answer.
“They are there,” he said, “but you don’t need them like you did.”
Luca would have asked another question but was suddenly eating a lobster taco and staring at the one smile that swore everything would be okay. He swallowed his taco and closed his eyes, then opened them to a beautiful sky that was the exact same blue as the bubblegum ice cream he wasn’t allowed to try until he turned 10. Because bubblegum ice cream was two digits worth of sweet, at least according to his dad.
He rubbed his eyes and felt the invisible fire on his body. He was safe, even though the animals were all dying.
When Dad goes to the store and then comes back, that’s a circle. When Mom says, “Let’s go to the store together,” we are moving in a line.
Dog Vader wasn’t around when he woke in the morning, but Luca wasn’t worried. They always managed to find each other. Luca began to wonder where the husky had gone when he realized he hadn’t seen him in a whole lot of hours. It had to be close to lunch time, but Luca didn’t want to stop just yet and eat any of the food in his backpack.
He had to be getting close to Mexico because Luca saw one of those signs with the family running across the street. That meant they weren’t too much farther from the man with the lobster tacos.
Luca passed a cat with bugs on its face and felt an ouchy inside, but his attention wasn’t on the cat for long. He heard the husky’s unmistakable whine and saw Dog Vader a few yards up the road, nudging his nose against something on the ground.
Luca was standing beside the dog, just as a man was starting to wake up. He opened his eyes slowly, then smiled, leaping to his feet at the sight of Luca.
“It’s you!”
Luca took a big step back. He was NEVER supposed to talk to strangers. NO, NO, G.I. Joe. But this was definitely an emergency, even if he wasn’t bleeding or vomiting. He needed help, and how else was he supposed to get it if he couldn’t ask? But there was a big problem. The man didn’t look like just any old stranger.
He’s a jumbo stranger. If I talk to him, he might take me far, far away. He might even make me live inside the terrible scary, since that’s where he probably lives himself.
The man
kept jumping up and down. “It’s you, it’s you, HA, it’s finally you!” Luca looked past the scary, white hair and fixed his gaze on the man’s smile. It made Luca feel safe, just like the man’s large, lime-green T-shirt. The memory of lobster lingered on his tongue, and Luca took a small step toward the tall man.
Dog Vader whined. The stranger cleared his throat and ran his hands through a thick carpet’s worth of hair. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said. “It’s just so great to see someone else. Are you alone?”
Luca thought he should say probably no, but lying made his tummy feel terrible. “Yes.”
The tall man looked disappointed, though not at all surprised. He held his hand out to Luca. “I’m Will, Will Bishop.”
Luca took his hand. “Luca, Luca Harding.”
“Where’re you from, Luca?”
“Las Orillas.”
Will looked impressed. “You walked down here yourself?”
“Yeah, most of the way. I drove a little, but I had to stop because I didn’t like it when I crashed the car.”
“Had a fender bender, eh? Well, looks like you made it out okay.”
Luca didn’t want to tell him about the invisible magic that made him better. He wondered where Will was from. He looked a-lot-of homeless. More than just the few days’ worth since everyone went away. He also looked a little like Santa Claus, if he were skinnier and his beard was less bushy.
“Did you drive down here?” Luca asked.
“Nope. I live here.”
“Where?”
“Wherever I can.”
“You ARE homeless!”
Will laughed. “Well, you don’t have to sound so happy about it! Yeah, I’m homeless. And apparently, now so are you. But I have the edge since I’ve been doing it for a while. So, I say we stick together. Strength in numbers and all that. What do you think?”
His hair is scary, but his smile is from the man with the tacos.
“You recognize me, don’t you, Luca?”
The boy nodded.
“Well, I’d like to tell you a story.”
Will sat and crossed his legs. “You’re a smart kid, Luca. And if we’re gonna travel together, I figure we’ve gotta start out right.”
Luca sat in front of him with his hands in his lap.
Will said, “I’ve been waiting for you. And I mean you specifically, not just anyone. And I haven’t been waiting just three days. It’s been nearly a year. That’s why I came down here to live in the first place.”
Will rubbed his temples, chewed his lip, lowered his voice, then dropped to one knee, and looked Luca in the eye. “The world is gone, Luca. And it’s never coming back. I’ve known this was going to happen for a while. Told everyone I could, too. But that only made me lose everything I had, including a world’s worth of friends and colleagues, each one thinking I was batty. Of course, I’m the one who ended up with the beachfront property.”
Will winked at Luca and leaned in closer. “You see, I’ve been having dreams since forever. Bigger than big dreams, really. You know, like a Beatles song. You do know the Beatles, right?”
Luca nodded.
“Well, these dreams are all packed with color. More color than what seems possible to see normally, even when your eyes are wide open. Crazy colors, too. But even though they’re all out of this world, the rest of the dream feels just as real as the school year. Well, Luca, in one of those dreams, several actually, I’ve been spending some time with you. Though I must say you look a lot different in person.”
“What do I look like in the dream?”
Will studied Luca for a moment, “Different, that’s all. But your colors, they’re exactly the same.”
“What do you mean my colors?”
“Everyone is made up of sound and color. Sometimes, I can hear people’s sounds, but not all the time. But I can always see the colors.”
“What do my colors look like?”
Will’s smile was all over his face. “They’re the most amazing colors I’ve ever seen! The sort of colors that might just make everything okay.”
Will started to laugh so hard he came a little close to crying. His laughter slowed, then eventually stopped. He stood and said, “Come on; there’s a ton to tell you. We’ll get caught up on the way.”
“I’m supposed to go there,” Luca pointed toward Mexico.
“Nope,” Will shook his head, “You were just supposed to meet me. And now you have. It’s time to head east, and we’re not gonna want to waste a lot of time. Are you ready?”
Luca nodded. “Do you have a car, Mr. Bishop?”
“It’s Will, now and forever. And no, I don’t have a car. But I do have something better.” Will smiled and jerked his thumb toward a helicopter just sitting there in the middle of the sand.
First, though, they’d dine on some food. Not lobster tacos, to Luca’s disappointment, but rather some peanut butter sandwiches and water from the nearby gas station.
Dog Vader chowed down on people food because Luca wasn’t sure if Dog Vader was supposed to eat dog food or not. And he didn’t want to insult him.
Luca thought about telling Will about Dog Vader’s Indian side and his mind talking, but decided to keep it secret for now. For one, it was his special secret. For two, he didn’t want Will to think he was crazy.
Seventeen
Boricio Wolfe
Oct. 16, 2011
New Orleans, Louisiana
Boricio wasn’t looking for anything in particular when he happened upon a living room packed full of shit he didn’t understand. He had spent the day seeing how rich folks lived, specifically on the waterfront. He found himself in a fancy eight-bedroom, six-bathroom, two-story house with three boat slips, two of them occupied, in Gulfport, Mississippi.
He’d already been through four or five of the houses on the stretch, and sure as shit, rich fuckers knew how to live: alcohol, clothes, guns, jewelry, lots of pills, pounds of weed, loads of money, and plenty of food. What surprised him were some of the fetishes these homeowners seemed to engage in. One house had a secret room devoted to sex toys. A wheel on a wall, bondage gear, and a wall full of sex devices that looked almost like weapons.
They look at me like I’m some degenerate; these people are sicker than me! They just hide their dark side under shit tons of money and fuckin’ Armani.
The stuff in the secret room was strange, but not as weird as the shit in the house he was in now. Like the other houses, the mansion was practically hermetically sealed. So he blew in the glass from the front door with a shotgun. He had a backpack filled with shells and sorta enjoyed the noise.
The foyer was the usual look-at-me, fancy-pants bullshit with too much white space. Past the foyer into the living room, though, that’s where the walls were practically painted in the strangest shit Boricio had ever seen, rich people or no.
The living room was massive, with all the posh furniture pushed to one side. Eight bedrolls sat in a large circle in the middle of the floor. Each bedroll had a large bank of pillows, several bottles of water, and a medium-sized red bucket. The buckets contained what looked and smelled like vomit. The vomit was black, and every bucket was filled with the same shit that was on the walls.
The air was thick, and smelled alien to Boricio.
The fuck is that shit in the air? Smells like some sorta back bayou black-ass water from one of them fake-ass shamans who likes to fuck with the tourists. Difference is, back alley shit smells fake; this black-magic snatch right here smells like the real deal. Yessiree, some weird-ass shit went down in this room.
Two buckets had been kicked to the side. Scabs of black vomit crusted the lacquered hardwood floor. Rich people were willing to pay a chunky hunk of fat cash for thrills you couldn't score in a back alley, but the bad trips that had happened in the living room had practically scarred the air.
A red and white bedroll was in the center of the circle, with wooden instruments, spirit sticks burned to a nub, and a large, two-liter j
ug of what looked like sludge. It had been filled to the top, as evidenced by the thick coat of green and brown the bottle wore at its lip, but now it was mostly empty. A shot glass on the floor shared the ghost of whatever had been inside.
Well fuck me four times on a Friday if that ain’t some million-dollar mind fuck right there. Giddy-up. I might as well make myself nice and cozy. The world is over, and there’s some liquid fucking juju just waiting to get swallowed.
Boricio picked up the two-liter jug and shot glass, then went upstairs, found the master bedroom and lay on the bed. He had no idea on the dosage, so he filled the glass to the top, put it to his lips, held his breath, and spilled the entire psychedelic mess down his throat.
For a few moments, he didn’t feel anything. He wondered if it wasn’t some sort of drug in the jars but rather some perverted, sick-ass rich, weirdo bodily-fluid-ingesting ceremony.
Something moved in his guts.
Seconds later, without warning, Boricio lost it all. Vomit spewed from his mouth like an unholy sprinkler. The sudden acid in his nostrils made him wince. It was liquid death and smelled the part.
Boricio lay face down on the Egyptian cotton as the toxic stew leaked from his mouth and marred the ivory-colored rug. He noticed it in a detached, almost whimsical way. He smiled, moving to touch the stuff, but his hand felt weird, as if he was directing someone else’s body from a distance. He started to laugh as his fingers opened and closed on his cue — a bottomless, retching chainsaw of a guffaw. Whatever he puked up, he was glad it was gone.
He felt so much lighter, so much stronger, so much better.
And besides, only once the blackness was gone could Boricio see all the colors around him. They bled and expanded and spun around, dancing in his mind and threatening to smother him in an endless torrent of mile-long thoughts.