He put the truck in drive and hit the gas.
**
Ed had driven nearly three miles and the entire town was pitch black, save for the occasional emergency lights at gas stations. Nobody was on the streets, in car, or on foot. He found the freeway ramp that would take him out of state, and merged in a hurry. The lights along the highway were dim, but not out, also running on backup power, he figured.
How big is this blackout? Something’s not right.
His head was still pounding, and his thoughts still jumbled from the crash. Once he got some sleep, he’d be able to think more clearly, suss out what the hell was happening. Falling planes, blackouts, missing people — this wasn’t all coincidence. Something bigger was in play. And while he could see someone downing the plane to free him — he still had some fans at the agency and killing a bunch of innocent people was nothing to them — a second plane and the blackouts made no sense.
Something big is happening.
Maybe he would call Jade — if he could find a working phone.
Would be nice to know she’s okay.
He’d been driving nearly 10 minutes and had yet to see another driver, but was careful to keep under the speed limit, anyway. He let the radio continue its scan, waiting for something other than static.
White lines raced by as the sound of rain splattered against the thumping of his windshield wipers. The quiet drone threatened to send him into sleep. His eyes were heavy and he wanted nothing more than to pull over and grab a quick nap. But he couldn’t stop. He had to press the advantage of his new-found freedom before they came looking for him.
His eyes grew heavier as he strained to see through the thickening rain, which was now a blinding white squall in front of him. He had to slow the truck to ensure he didn’t run off the road. His eyes were dry, and he wanted to close them, but had to concentrate on the rain to see anything in this mess.
That’s when he heard it.
“sssaaiirr,” a voice echoed in some faraway place over the radio waves.
Ed’s eyes shot wide open and he sat upright, attention on the radio’s face as the numbers escalated from the 101s to the 105s, and then the voice again.
“...again...”
There! The word was clear as day. The digital channel locked on a station. 88.8 FM, a spot on the dial reserved for public airwaves, religious stations, and talk radio. Ed hit the button to stop the scan, waiting for another sound. Still static, but busy static, something just out of range, trying to come through.
His eyes were glued to the radio as if he’d see whoever it was he was waiting to hear. So he didn’t see the car until it was nearly too late.
On the side of the highway, the soft red glow of taillights broke through the white wall of rain.
“Fuck!” Ed screamed, yanking on the steering wheel sharply, sending the SUV sliding.
Ed rotated the wheel in the direction of the spin, praying the SUV wouldn’t roll. The truck spun, faster out of control, as it crossed into the opposite lanes. Ed’s eyes were wide, adrenaline shooting through every cell, as he somehow turned through the skid and managed to come to a full stop.
His body shaking, he let out a deep breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding, and glanced ahead, his car now facing the original direction. Twenty yards ahead, a light colored Buick sat on the side of the road, its front passenger side crushed against the side rail. Its front driver light and taillights were on, but the cabin was dark.
Ed leaned forward, trying to see into the car.
Is there someone in there?
He thought he saw movement, but couldn’t be certain.
Every instinct told him to get the hell out of there, but something else tugged at his brain, pushing him forward. He grabbed the gun from the backpack, checked the clip, made sure one was in the chamber, and the safety off.
He drove toward the car, slowly, with high beams on. Nobody was in the driver or passenger seats.
He saw movement again. This time for certain. Someone was in the backseat, just out of view. He pulled the SUV in front of the car, aiming the lights inside, and stepped from the truck, into the rain, gun in hand.
He approached the car carefully, eyes on the backseat and its just out of sight inhabitant. He brushed the hard-falling rain from his eyes, and inched closer to the car until he saw a shape in the back seat. He trained the gun on the vehicle as he approached the back driver’s side door and peered inside. As he moved closer, his eyes widened.
Sitting in the backseat, with her hands over her pregnant stomach was a ghost-white girl, no more than 16.
* * * *
LUCA HARDING
Luca woke alone, sore, and somewhere with a lot of confusing. Trees surrounded him, but he could still hear waves from the Pacific. The rainbow was gone. His Lego shoes had been taken off, his other shoes sat beside him. A dog, a husky, was panting beside him.
Luca grabbed his shoes and started to put them on. His head was still pounding, though less than before. His arms were painted in purple and a long gash ran along most of his right leg. It was bigger than the cut on his left ankle, though the cut on his ankle hurt a lot, lot more.
It was painful to stand, so Lucas stayed sitting, rubbing his wounds. The heat in his body was easing the pain. So was the air, which had cooled down enough to feel a little like a kiss.
The Husky didn’t seem weird like the other animals he’d seen; it was pretty normal. The dog whimpered and nudged his nose at the bottle of water beside him. It was warm, but Luca drank it all in a few furious swallows.
“Did you help me?” he asked, half expecting an answer. The husky nudged him and Luca looked up. The rainbow was back, still pointing south, slightly brighter.
Luca’s leg throbbed. “What am I supposed to do now?” He looked at the husky. “No way I’m driving.”
“I don’t like driving without the controller. Or Daddy. It’s pretty sort of scary. Especially because I can’t look around me like I can when we’re going somewhere as a family. But we can’t go anywhere as a family now because I don’t know where anyone is and the phones don’t want the numbers to work.”
The husky trotted to the edge of the clearing and stuck his nose at something Luca couldn’t see. Luca slowly followed. In 10 steps the dirt ended in concrete. On the other side of the yellow paint sat a rundown shack that looked like it sold milkshakes. And they were probably great milkshakes, because a lot of bikes were in the bike rack.
Luca looked both ways and crossed the street. He felt a bristle on the other side. He turned back and looked toward the trees, but saw none of the eyes he felt peering from behind them.
They’re there. But I don’t know how many because the math is hard when it gets to a lot.
Luca looked another moment, then turned and headed for the employee entrance of the ice cream shack. It was locked but the window wasn’t. Inside, he looked for the white plastic box with the big red cross, like the one in Mrs. Engler’s office.
He found it in a cabinet a lot like Mrs. Engler’s, the first place he tried. It looked mostly the same, though it didn’t have the peeling Transformers sticker that Johnny Bryson put on the back when Mrs. Engler wasn’t looking.
Luca split the square into a rectangle, then made a pile of the stuff people used when ambulance men were saving people in the movies. He finished cleaning his wounds and suddenly felt hungry. A little at first but then the hungry grew really, really big. It grew into the kind of hungry his dad called “alligator hungry.”
He made a bowl of ice cream and a big sandwich. He didn’t eat enough ice cream to get sick later, like he had at Billy’s birthday when he ate so many scoops he threw up in the pool. He ate just enough to know his mom would be happy if she was sitting right beside him. After all, maybe she was.
Maybe everyone else is here and I’m the one who’s not?
He removed the one bike without a lock, the red one with a white stripe, then swung on the seat and looked int
o the sky. Sure enough, the rainbow was back. Luca started to pedal, leaving the eyes behind him.
**
Luca stayed on the bike, but the next several hours were mean.
His leg looked like it had a layer of Rice Krispies coated in blood. His head felt like when he hung upside down on the monkey bars and fell, and his tummy was like the time Greg Moore punched him in the stomach because he had accidentally dropped and cracked his Super Soaker. Except worse.
He stopped four times, seven counting the places that were locked. The entire time he still hadn’t seen a single person. Probably about 500 cars, though that stuff was hard to count. All the empty made it easy to feel the something following behind him. A lot more animals were here than at the ice cream shack, maybe times two. But Luca didn’t mind. They felt like less alone. And besides, they probably knew a lot of stuff he didn’t. Like where his mom and dad might be. If the rainbow knew, maybe they did too.
It was only after his fifth stop when Luca finally realized he had a hard time seeing the rainbow when he was thirsty. The rainbow had started to flicker alongside a roll in his belly when he saw another one of the shacks that looked busy like it was open but was empty like it was closed.
A few yards from the front of the shack, Luca’s bike hit a sharp rock jutting from the dirt. The bike’s front tire came to a dead stop while the rear wheel lifted from the back. Luca’s short stint as Superman lasted only a second.
He hurt. A lot. A million galaxies worse than when Greg Moore had punched him. He wanted to close his eyes but couldn’t. The big rainbow was back, leapfrogging over the little one.
I’m supposed to go. I’m supposed to go now.
Luca stood. But only for a moment. His knees wobbled, then quit. His cheek met the thin side of a rock on its way to the dirt and a little river of blood ran toward the highway.
**
Luca woke in another small clearing. He felt different. Looked different, too. His mottled arms had returned to their normal olive color and his legs were free of their bloody Rice Krispie layer. His face, which he remembered falling on, didn’t hurt either.
The Husky was there, looking at Luca with large, sad eyes that looked even larger and sadder beneath the bright light of the full moon. In front of Luca sat a small pile of broken twigs and brittle leaves, gathered like the mini-mountains Dad made for the family campfires, just smaller.
And water was there. A lot of it. All the bottles were warm, but at least 20 were sitting in a big pile of plastic just a few feet away.
Luca looked at the sky. The rainbow was gone.
“It’s coming back,” the dog said, though its mouth didn’t move.
Luca shivered. That was un-possible. Dogs didn’t think loud enough to hear.
“Sometimes we do.”
This doesn’t feel like my pretending reading mind imagination. This is different. Like someone scratched me on my thoughts.
Luca didn’t like his thoughts being scratched. At least not without being asked first. Mom and dad wouldn’t like it. So he refused out-loud dialogue with the dog, but was willing to follow the husky as it trotted back toward the highway. He grabbed two bottles of water and opened one. Warm, but refreshing.
Luca followed, hearing the rustling of more padded feet slapping the dirt behind him.
He walked for hours, feeling stronger the entire time. He was still warm, warmer than he should be, but a whole lot cooler than he’d been a few hours before. Before he fell down, before he woke to a dog that could talk to his thoughts. Before he woke to a ready-to-go campfire.
Luca didn’t get thirsty again. Every time he felt his mouth start to dry, the husky would appear with another bottle of water.
“I think I’m going to have to name you,” Luca finally said, drinking water and rubbing the husky on the snout. “How do you like the name, Dog Vader?”
The dog whimpered. “It’s good for now.”
Luca stroked the Husky’s fur.
He’d been walking for hours and though he wasn’t really tired; it was probably past middlenight or even next day. So Luca stopped, lay his head on a smooth rock and closed his eyes. It was only a moment before he was in the twitchy part of dreams, where his body moves a little but his brain moves a lot.
He opened his eyes and saw an Indian. The kind like in the movies. The kind you’re supposed to call Native Americans. The Indian was sitting on a stump looking at Luca right where Dog Vader had been just a moment before. The man smiled.
Luca sat up. “Am I dreaming?” he asked.
“What do you think?” the Indian spoke, his mouth not moving either. His voice didn’t sound like the deep-voiced Indians from the movies though. It sounded like his own voice, a bit, just like the dog’s had.
“Yes,” Luca nodded. His floppy hair bounced up and down. “And no.”
“You are correct,” the Indian smiled.
“Are you Dog Vader?”
“I am your friend, yes, but I never agreed to that name.”
“Can I call you Dog Vader?”
“No.” The man smiled. “But you may call me something else. What would you like to call me?”
“Kick.”
“Kick?”
“Yes, like sidekick. Like Robin. From Batman and Robin.”
“Okay. But what makes you think that I’m the sidekick?” The Indian continued to smile.
“Because you’re the one following me.”
“Then Kick it is,” he said with a laugh.
“Where are we going?” Luca asked.
“There,” Kick pointed toward the far side of the coastline.
“Are we almost there?”
“Almost.”
Luca believed him. He closed his eyes again and didn’t open them until the bright light and white spots came back and told him to. Of course the rainbow agreed. Kick, if Luca wasn’t crazy, was sitting beside him, awake, snout pointed at the rainbow. Luca got up and followed. So did the countless animals behind him.
Luca looked both ways, crossed the street, then ambled over a thin row of rocks separating the road from the sand. He looked at the coastline, then gasped and fell to his knees.
Cats, dogs, birds, and plenty of other animals that weren’t fancy enough for the zoo were there. They were everywhere. Maybe 1,000, though Luca was sorta bad at counting when the counting stuff was spread all over the place.
Luca turned back toward the highway and followed the rainbow. An army of beasts followed.
* * * *
BORICIO WOLFE
Streetlights had flickered the entire way from his apartment to Her Majesty’s, but unlike his apartment and the rest of Crap Alley, currents were crackling at the Circle K. Neon bathed the lot in a cheap glow, which looked especially bright against the backdrop of black.
Boricio laughed out loud at the unlocked cop car and held his grin while looking at the shotgun sitting upright in the back seat. Shit sure is easy at the end of the world! He opened the trunk of the cruiser and headed inside the Circle K for a bit of light early-morning shopping.
Beer, chips, protein bars, Excedrin, porn, everything Hostess makes, a few Cup-A-Soups, and some other sundries made it into the surprisingly large trunk. Boricio slammed the trunk shut, then went back in the store to empty the cash register, just in case. He took the snub-nosed revolver from under the counter and tucked it into his waistband next to his .45, also just in case. After a swift kick to a safe that wouldn’t open and a like it fucking matters, Boricio was sitting in the front of a police cruiser for the first time in his life.
View’s much better from here.
The few miles to the Mississippi were graveyard quiet, with less than nothing on the radio and the same empty hanging in the air outside. Though Boricio wasn’t sure what he expected to see when he hit the river, it wasn’t anything close to what he actually saw. He figured there’d either be no one or everyone, but a fat river void of boats — save for what looked like three ships sitti
ng out as far as his eyes would go — wasn’t on his radar at all.
If it had been bobbing in the middle of the Mississippi by last sundown, it was gone now.
Looks like it’s time to get the fuck out of Dodge.
A minute later Boricio was back behind the wheel, with the siren at full bray and the cruiser’s odometer kissing red, headed back into the business district. To see so many buildings, a city that was always busy like this, dead, was a mind fuck like no other.
**
After a few miles of nothing, Boricio found himself playing “I Spy” with his sanity. The empty outside was bad enough, but the shit he couldn’t put his finger on was a chronic case of Crabs worse. People were missing, but now it seemed like shit was missing, too. And he didn’t know what. He could feel things gone, but couldn’t put his finger on what they were. Like memories he couldn’t withdraw from his bank.
He knew billboards were missing, but wasn’t sure which. Seemed like all the chain shit was still there, though. Boricio flew by a billboard for Applebee’s advertising their new Stacked, Stuffed, and Topped “Entrees You Deserve!”
That right there’s a swinging sack of crap, especially in New Fucking Orleans. Not like the slop makes you sick, but it’s always cold, crappy, or served by some curly cunt hair pimply faced fuck who spends 40 minutes giving you the WhatTheFuck? eye. Plus, the pussy up in there is always too old or too young. Never just right. If the world is dead, at least it took Applebee’s with it.
Boricio whistled as he flew by the missing church that everyone knew wasn’t really a church. That one he knew was missing. The big billboard was still there, but other than that, it was just a big empty nothing sitting on the side of the street.
Well, how about that!! Crazy, fucking shit.
Boricio kept fiddling with the radio. Nothing. Hell, he’d settle for Top 40 right about now, but the nothing on the radio and the nothing on the scanner matched the nothing in the air and all the nothing he’d been driving by.
He was about to drive back home; he’d thought of a few people’s places he’d like to break into if they weren’t there. Some people that had some good shit that could keep him high for months. But then, in the middle of the street was a pickup. Unlike the countless other vehicles he’d passed, this one had a passenger standing next to it. The guy was waving for help.