I was lying on the couch at home and glanced out of the window towards the house directly across the street. There was a car parked in the driveway over there – sort of! It was sitting in a weird spot, not quite in the driveway and yet not all the way out either. It looked like whoever had been behind the wheel had just stopped. They’d paused. Given up halfway through the maneuver.
Frozen.
Sounds like no big deal, I know. And yet it’s the little things. Sometimes they trigger the imagination the most.
This book is dedicated to you stranger. Thank you for your funky parking.
Mark.
Part I
A Few Years From Now…
Chapter 1
March 25th
Jack Murray was sitting in bed staring at the clock.
He’d just woken up after a good night’s sleep and now he was waiting for the fog to clear in his mind. Waiting for those bright red LED digits on the clock face to make sense.
7.50am.
“Seven-fifty?” Jack said. His voice was deep and groggy.
He leapt forward in bed, straining for a better look at the clock on the bedside table. Seconds later a flailing arm lashed out, fingers grasping as Jack searched for the cellphone he’d tucked under the pillow overnight. He took one look at it. The screen was blank. He groaned and gave the phone a furious slap on the back, as if that was somehow going to snap the treacherous battery into life.
Jack felt a sudden stab of horror. He was awake now.
And he’d slept in.
“Oh shit.”
Jack looked at the digital clock again.
7.51am.
“Damn,” he said, looking at the dead phone lying in his hand. “Didn’t I charge you yesterday?”
Jack shook his head. He made a silent promise to himself that he would set two alarms from now on and that he’d do it for the rest of his life. No kidding. Better safe than sorry. With a raspy groan of irritation, he reached an arm over the side of the bed, searching for the charger on the wooden floor. He scooped it up, then connected it to the phone. There was no flashing icon in the corner, no sign that the device was charging.
“What the…?” Jack said, frowning. “You’re not broken. You can’t be.”
He threw the phone down onto the bed and sighed. There was no time to worry about technological failure. In less than forty minutes the 8.30am buzzer would ring and Jack Murray, for the first time in his life, would be late for school.
“Great,” Jack said. He sat in silence for a moment, listening to the frantic rush of birdsong coming from outside. “Great start to the week.”
Why hadn’t his parents woken him up?
He pulled his legs out from underneath the covers, scratching his head and yawning so hard that his jaw cracked.
He knew the answer to that question. His folks were trying to teach him a lesson. How many times in the past had they been forced to knock on his door multiple times to get him up? This was a minor but consistent flaw in Jack’s life – his inability to drag his ass out of bed in the mornings. It was harder than ever right now because there was still a touch of winter lingering in the Oregon spring. Cold mornings were the worst.
Jack’s thoughts turned to Donna. She’d be waiting for him at school. They always met up before class – it was their thing, their long-standing ritual that went back to middle school. Room 11, ten minutes before the buzzer. It was the thing Jack looked forward to most of all during the weekdays.
Donna time.
Now he’d have to text her, tell her that he…
Nope. The phone wasn’t working.
Jack sighed yet again. He got up and walked over to the full-length mirror on the closet door. Sure he was running late but a quick look, that’s all – this brief physical inspection first thing was another long-standing ritual, a habit that Jack couldn’t and wouldn’t break for no one. After all, there were more important things to worry about than being late for school. Fresh zits and other facial blemishes, those strange unexplained marks that could break out on a teenage face overnight – these were disastrous. Especially in the superficial jungle called high school.
Jack’s eyes probed the reflection.
He smiled and admired the view. His handsome face wasn’t something he could take credit for – that was God’s work. Jack was just lucky when it came to physical attributes – he’d been one of those cute kids who hadn’t gone all weird and gangly in their teenage years – from choir boy to junior Frankenstein’s monster. Fortunately for Jack, he’d evolved from a good-looking kid into a handsome young man with jet-black hair, a chiseled Johnny Depp-like facial structure, good shoulders and lean muscles that he’d earned from years of football practice.
Jack winked at the young man in the mirror.
Today, king of the twelfth grade. Tomorrow, king of the world.
That thought made him glance over his shoulder towards a pile of college brochures sitting on his desk. The future. Sure, right now he lived in Alexandra Falls, Oregon – a cute town located in the middle of nowhere. But that wasn’t Jack’s forever. School was nearly over. He was getting out and the possibilities were endless. Jack had a mind to go east to Harvard or Princeton but of course there were other schools with better football teams that he’d have to consider. It was easy to be the high school football hero in a small nothing town like Alexandra Falls – there wasn’t much in the way of competition. But Jack had a burning desire to test himself against the best.
Not just in football, but in everything.
He opened the bedroom door and stepped into the hallway. There was an icy chill inside the house that made him shiver as he stood there in nothing but boxer shorts and a wrinkled t-shirt. Jack looked over at his parents’ bedroom door and saw that it was closed.
“Thanks a lot,” he said.
He glanced down the winding oak staircase that spiraled towards the lower hallway. Jack leaned over the railing, straining his ears for any sound of movement from downstairs. Dishes rattling in the kitchen, the voice of a news anchor speaking on TV, the refrigerator door opening and closing – anything to indicate signs of life in the house. But there was nothing. Jack couldn’t even hear the faint buzz of electricity.
He shook his head. Of course they’d been on time. Now he couldn’t even bitch at them for letting him sleep in.
They’d always said it was going to happen one day – that they’d just leave him sleeping in bed and let him walk to school. Jack never believed them. He didn’t think they’d ever go through with it.
He still couldn’t believe it.
“Mom? Dad? Are you guys home?”
No answer.
He knocked on their bedroom door. Nothing.
“Fine,” Jack said.
He was due in Mr Lee’s Physics class at 8.30. Jack would have to run all the way from the house to the classroom door if he was going to make it there on time. He could just imagine the look of shock on the other kids’ faces as the big jock hero walked in late, especially the creepy losers who always sat up at the back of the classroom – Sammy Neil and Vince Kutter. Those guys hated Jack. They’d have a field day this morning, that’s if they’d bothered to turn up to school themselves.
“C’mon,” Jack said. “Get a move on.”
He hurried into the bathroom and took a hot shower. As he lathered up his body with soap, Jack daydreamed about life outside of Alexandra Falls. All the girls that he’d meet in the big wide world. Jack was a realist – he knew that his relationship with Donna, as strong as it was, wouldn’t survive high school. Donna knew it too – at least Jack hoped she did. Donna was a bright girl – she’d have her pick of the best colleges from one end of the country to another. She was beautiful too and the guys would chase after her like a pack of horny dogs. Jack and Donna would split up and become long distance friends – that’s what was going to happen after high school. In a matter of five years, they’d be just another name moving up and down on each other’s Facebook news feed, making the occ
asional complimentary comment about vacation photos.
After the shower, Jack went into the bedroom. He looked at the clock – 8.04am.
“Oh man,” he said.
He still had to get dressed. After that, a twenty-five minute walk to school and that’s if he got his skates on.
Jack put on the clothes that were hanging over his chair – a pair of jeans, a black t-shirt and a gray Nike hoodie.
Grabbing a comb off the bedside table, he swept a clump of damp hair away from his face and forced it backwards over his head. After that, Jack grabbed that day’s pile of books off his desk and crammed them into his North Face backpack.
He checked his cellphone again. It still wasn’t charging.
Jack threw it back onto the bed.
He hurried downstairs. No time for breakfast. Still he poured himself a glass of orange juice and drank it down in one gulp. It was something, a little Vitamin C, and hopefully enough to prevent his belly from rumbling while Mr. Lee was talking in class.
Jack slid his backpack over his shoulder and walked towards the front door. He slipped his feet inside the tan Sperry shoes waiting on the rack in the downstairs hallway. At the same time, he noticed his dad’s work shoes still sitting neatly in the rack. They’d been polished so hard that Jack could see his reflection on the surface.
There was a confused look on his face.
“That’s weird,” he said.
There were a lot of shoes bundled together on the rack. His mom owned so many pairs that he could never tell what she wore to work. But that wasn’t the case with his dad. His dad always wore the same pair to the office – he wore these shoes, a gorgeous pair of black Bruno Magli that Jack’s mom had bought the old man as a birthday present.
Why were they still sitting on the rack?
Jack shrugged. Maybe his dad had bought a new pair. No big deal. He didn’t know everything that went on inside his dad’s mind.
Jack opened the door. He stepped outside and the air was balmy on his face; it was at least a little more tolerable than the permanent winter chill inside the Murray house.
He stopped.
Their cars were still in the driveway.
Jack frowned. A cold feeling swept over him and his legs felt unsteady. He immediately turned back to the house, picturing his parents’ bedroom door – the same door that he’d seen tightly closed earlier that morning.
They didn’t wake me up.
Jack felt his heart beating faster. He was on the brink of racing back inside to check upstairs when he glanced towards the street.
“What the…?” he said.
Jack’s mouth fell open. His eyes stared hard.
There were people over there. They were in their cars, in their gardens and scattered up and down the street in small groups. But this was no ordinary Monday morning scenery that Jack was looking at. Something was wrong – terribly wrong. They weren’t moving, none of them. Everyone on Washington Street stood like statues, silent and rigid like they’d been frozen on the spot by magic. Jack might as well have been looking at a flock of waxwork mannequins – smiling, happy-looking ornaments put there to sell the joys of suburban life to potential buyers.
It was an incredible sight.
Jack staggered down the driveway. His eyes darted back and forth.
There were several cars scattered around the street with drivers frozen behind the wheel. These cars had come to a stop only after rolling into the nearest garden wall or fence. All the engines were still humming and it was a steady monotonous sound that warded off a chilling silence.
Jack stood on the sidewalk in a daze. He recognized all of these people – even if he didn’t know all the names he knew the faces. He knew Mr Johnson, who was stuck in mid-stride in his driveway, dressed in a slick navy suit, walking towards the silver Audi Sedan and looking back towards the house. Mrs Johnson was standing at the doorway, waving a chubby, bejeweled hand at her husband. It was a goodbye salute that wouldn’t end.
He knew the Campbells.
Mrs Campbell, tall and graceful, was strolling down the street like an Amazonian queen. Her three redheaded kids walked behind her in a neat line. She was taking her daughter, Laurie Campbell, to school. Laurie was in the tenth grade, a couple of years below Jack. Nice kid – she was as bright as a button and had a wicked sense of humor, beloved of the entire neighborhood. The other two Campbell girls, the twins Geena and Isabella, both five and dressed in matching dungarees, were trailing behind their mother and sister. They looked bored.
Jack stepped onto the road, looking around in disbelief. His mouth was still hanging open. It was the same everywhere – people on their way to work, school, or just popping down to the town center to run some morning errands. Going places, but going nowhere.
“This isn’t happening,” Jack said.
He clamped a hand over his mouth. A faint voice in his mind told him to relax because he had to be dreaming. Right? He was in bed and he’d only dreamed of waking up late, his phone breaking, and everything else that had happened so far. Either that or the entire neighborhood was playing a sick joke on him. Jack even found himself laughing at one point – a noise so foreign to his emotional state that it sounded like it came from one of the waxworks.
He pinched himself hard on the back of the hand. Nothing happened.
“Hello!” Jack called out. “Can anyone hear me?”
Jack saw a flicker of movement in the doorway of a nearby house. It came from across the street.
A large Border Collie ran out of the Lancaster house and stepped onto the lawn. Mrs Lancaster was standing on the front step, staring with unblinking eyes at an empty driveway. The collie trotted across the pristine lawn, circled a small patch of grass with excitement and then squatted down to take a shit.
Jack waited for the dog to finish.
“Here Gracie,” he said, stretching a hand and making clicking noises with his mouth.
He found himself walking over to the Lancaster house. As he moved across the street, Jack kept his eyes on Mrs Lancaster at the door. It looked as if she was waiting for Gracie to finish her business so that she could come out and scoop up the mess.
“Mrs Lancaster?” Jack called over. “Are you okay? Can you hear me?”
He walked past the Campbell girls and their tall mother. Jack glanced at them, half-expecting the kids to shout ‘BOO’ and for all the waxworks on the street to burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
But it was too early for an April Fool’s joke.
Jack walked over the Lancaster’s lawn, avoiding the fresh, gleaming pile of mess that Gracie had left there. The dog paid little attention to Jack. She wandered onto the road, tail wagging, sniffing curiously at the legs of the human statues.
Jack stepped through a brick archway that led to the front door of the attractive two-story Lancaster house. Mrs Lancaster was standing on the step, a half smile etched on her face. It looked like she’d been thinking about something nice when the freeze came. Jack took a deep breath and forced himself to edge closer to the woman. With a trembling hand, he reached out and his finger touched her face. There was something strange about the way the skin felt – it was harder than Jack had expected, rubbery and artificial, as if Jack was touching a mask.
“Mrs Lancaster?” Jack said. “Are you alright?”
He groaned. Stupid question.
He touched her on the shoulder. As his eyes lowered, Jack noticed that Mrs Lancaster’s blouse was unbuttoned several buttons down. His probing finger started to shake. A sudden hunger swelled up inside Jack’s body. Every teenage boy in the neighborhood fantasized about what they’d like to do to Mrs Lancaster. No doubt every grown man on Washington Street did too, She was gorgeous and yet married to a dorky-looking husband who wouldn’t have stood a chance with if he hadn’t been loaded.
“Mrs Lancaster?” Jack said. His voice was quiet now, less jumpy.
Slowly his hand went forward again, reaching for that tantalizing hint of bronze
cleavage poking out of Mrs Lancaster’s blouse.
Jack’s heart was racing.
A quick look, that’s all he wanted.
Jack stopped. He jerked his hand back like he’d been zapped by electricity. He took a clumsy backwards step through the arches and kept going down the Lancaster driveway and onto the road. At last, his eyes turned away from the woman in shame. What the hell just happened? He wasn’t a pervert, or was he? There was something seriously wrong in this town and there he was, trying to take a sneak peek down a woman’s top. To cop a feel? Why? It’s not like he was a sex maniac or desperate for attention. Jack had all the adoration he needed from the girls at school and that wasn’t bragging – it was a fact. He was that guy. He didn’t need to prey upon a helpless woman to feel good about himself.
Asshole.
What was he thinking?
Jack’s legs felt heavy, like they were slowly filling up with lead. His brain felt sluggish. Was he sliding into paralysis? Was he becoming one of them? He looked up to the sky and sniffed at the air like a curious dog. What was that faint metallic odor he was inhaling? What was that strange taste lingering on the tip of his tongue?
Of course.
America was under attack.
It was chemical warfare.
They were always talking about it on the news and how it could happen at any time. Russia. North Korea. It was either a terrorist attack or a full-scale military assault on the country with chemical weapons – with a paralysis-inducing gas that shouldn’t have been possible. It was something even worse than 9/11 and it was happening.
Jack’s heart was racing. He covered his nose and mouth with his hands and ran back to the Murray house.
Chapter 2
Jack slammed the door shut behind him. In the silence of Washington Street, it sounded like a gunshot.
His backpack fell to the floor.
He looked at the staircase that led to his parents’ bedroom. His eyes followed the long, winding path upstairs and he dreaded the thought of taking that journey.
The Dystopiaville Omnibus: A Dystopian Sci-Fi Horror Collection Page 16
