the last day of school.
They were inside, she could tell. They were on the inside of Ford Road. Roger’s car from the day before stood waiting magically towards the side of an old barn.
“Wait …” said Tracey. “Where are we going now?”
“Deeper … always deeper.”
She nodded and let Roger lead her. They got in the car and drove off. Behind the bend, Tracey worried about seeing walkers, but there were other cars, very clean, longish, she realized she was in the 1960s.
“You called it a rift.”
“There’s a thing,” he said, watching out for traffic. “If you talk too much about it, you might find yourself back in the other reality. You have to make a point of accepting Ford Road as your reality. Then it will help you. And keep you.”
“Okay,” she said and nodded. “Silly me with all my questions.”
“Your life has changed dramatically in the last 24 hours. I understand.”
“You’ve changed too.”
“Yeah, this ‘forgiven’ business … it was never my style.”
Tracey knew better than to press for more details. She was losing the need for answers. They were coming close to a town. The town looked nondescript. As they drove past an ice cream parlor, Tracey longed to lick the heavenly treat on a cone, but there was a ‘closed’ sign on the door. As they drove further, Roger’s appearance began to change, his hair suddenly seemed much shorter, cropped, and he was wearing horn-rimmed glasses, not the round kind, but the angular. It made him look strict, like a teacher. His jaw bone was clenched. Tracey swallowed hard.
“We’re married, honey. And we have four kids.”
“What?” asked Tracey, “what the hell?!?”
She pushed the vanity mirror down and saw that her hair had been dyed red, and she had a scarf on against the wind. Also, she was wearing dark sunglasses and a sleeveless dress. A dress!
She smiled, and her white teeth were smudged red with lipstick. This was not good.
“Roger, can we leave if we want to?” she asked timidly.
“Yes, we can leave the Halloween party tonight when and if we want to.”
“Halloween?”
“It’s not Easter, you know?” he growled, and laughed a wicked laugh. But then he realized he was being short and mean and apologized. He took her hand with his right hand (and kept his left hand on the steering wheel, driving ever faster), and brought it to his mouth and kissed it.
“I have always loved your soft hands …” he cooed.
“You are speeding …”
“I want to get home fast, that’s all.”
Tracey hated this place and this time already. It was so not her. Ford Road was a pit stop on the highway to hell.
Commander Dale Harrington, more commonly referred to as ‘The Freakshow’, plowed his bulldozer into Roger’s house in a last chance power drive. Behind him, the crowd roared. It had to be here somewhere. That was what the bitch had spit out after an all-night torture session. She had lost plenty of her teeth and her good looks during the procedure.
This would be the end of it, the agony, the chaos, the lawlessness (oh, but that part he liked), the nights waking up in sweat at the sound of walkers gurgling, chugging, approaching. Lord, how he hated them and their vile stench. A mixture of plastic and vomit and dried blood.
He had heard about Ford Road all through his younger years, but it had been the thing to muse about down at the watering hole, after a drink too many and a lost game. He never took it seriously … until he saw his first walker.
“Where is Roger?” they had all asked.
He was the only one. Someone had seen his aunt banging on his door and checking out his car. Had he been home? He had not opened. They had dragged her away and tried to beat it out of her. She told them what she knew, before passing out.
“You’re too crazy to even know what you are doing, you dickheads!” she had screamed.
So here he was, plowing up Roger’s house, while his buddie thrust hoses full of water on it. No sign of Roger, no sign of a rift for the zombies to go back into and disappear.
“It does not work that way!” the aunt had screamed, before Dale slapped her in the face … again.
“It does when I say so!”
Dale refused to give up. He had to be on it, but nothing was budging. “Go get her!” he screamed. “That fat aunt.”
“We can’t,” they yelled back. “She died.”
So he brought his big smoking machine to a stop. Right on top of the rubble that used to be Roger’s house, some of the walls still standing. Dale rubbed his head.
They would wait for Roger, in the woods. He would come back, he always did. But why would he, this time?
Dale didn’t even know what Roger looked like. He couldn’t remember ever talking to the man. Dale felt sick to his stomach and defeated. He had not slept in two days. But they were all looking up to him. They needed him for help. They begged for someone to guide them, to get them out of this colossal mess.
Now they were dragging someone towards him by the hair, a man who had been to school with Roger, who knew him, a homie, a friend. Or so they thought.
“Roger has no friends!” he was yelling, as a cog of Dale’s smacked him.
“Okay, okay, lay low,” Dale called out. “We’re getting nowhere here.”
He got down from the bulldozer and came sauntering towards his new victim.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Caleb from Ford Road.”
“Oh, are you now.”
“Yes, my dad owns the farm across the street.”
“Good, then you know all about his place …”
“That I do.”
“Guys, get me more beer and a drink or two and coffee … whatever you find that might humor our new friend … Caleb.”
Tracey’s mind raced back 48 hours. She had washed her hair in the gas station public restroom, ice cold brown water coming in spurts out of the faucet, chilling her fingers. It had felt so good anyway to get rid of at least some of the grime. There were other drivers needing the toilet, so she had had no time for her toothbrush, and no time for mascara.
Idling outside had been an incredibly good-looking young man in a big sedan, warm and inviting, and quite obviously too good to be true. He was staring straight at her. She hesitated and looked out towards the highway. It was drizzling. It was cold.
When she had bought a roll of Pringles with her last money, the weatherman on the radio in the convenience store had talked about a storm. Then, there was mention of a strange new virus which had already claimed many lives in the United States alone.
So she had sprinted towards the sedan in the rain and opened the door on the passenger side. The driver smiled.
“What took you so long?” he asked.
She got in. It wasn’t the smart thing to do. It just wasn’t. But her bones were sore and the new upholstery felt so good against her strained back, a dream come true. Maybe just this once, it was her easy break, her lucky chance, her big thing to happen.
He had smiled an amazing smile, with perfect white teeth and perfect sincerity. She had decided to stay with him and hope for the best. But real life? It never worked that way, now did it?
‘Halloween Party Tonight Dear’ read the note on the refrigerator door in this other reality she had come into, where she was a housewife with an uber-dedicated, utterly humorless husband. She actually caught herself longing for the gas station restroom, as crazy as that sounded, if only to have another chance at it, to see it play out differently.
Her kids were screaming and fighting and Roger had vanished. Halloween was looming, with bags of candy everywhere. Did she have to live a fake life so as not to die of exposure or sadness or an unforeseen virus? Who had decided she was married and had children? When had all of this happened? She made a vow she would do what it took to leave this Ford Road horror story, but first … she had to live through … Halloween.
After a glass or two
of whiskey sour with ice, Caleb warmed up to the fact he was now working for a guy named Dale. Not that he liked the bully freak. He seemed to be in charge, elected by a nameless group of vastly desperate people. What did he know about Roger? Dale was asking him.
“I’ve seen him maybe four or five times in my life. High School? I can’t remember.”
“Go on …” Dale said and blew cigarette smoke in his face.
“His folks were different, the entire family and the entire … heck, everyone here … knew.”
“What? Vampires?”
“If it helps you, yeah. Vampires. They killed. They killed people who ventured out here on the country roads. And they disposed of them. They drove the bodies into the rift. After they had gutted their stuff and their cars.”
“Aliens? Rift?”
Now Caleb had their undivided attention. He was in a crammed room with muscle-heavy thugs. They were all staring at him, transfixed.
“You drive, same as always, and then … you are somewhere else.”
“What?”
“You go back in time. Or forward … I have never been. My dad, he told me.”
“And what’s the point? What’s there to gain?”
“Makes you younger. More powerful. Better in bed …”
The whole room exploded with laughter. This did not deter Caleb. He shrugged and downed his glass.
“Some never came back.”
“Folks are talking it’s where the walkers came from,” one of the men interjected.
“That might well be. Who’s to say?”
“Could we get rid to them that way?”
“I cannot answer your question. I could show you … where they say the rift is … However, it is not always in the same place, and you have to