by Cole, Nick
The air turned dry and warm, and when Cory took his next step forward, he heard the sound of grit being ground into a parking lot. That unique dry echoing sound one hears on a hot day when the sun beats down and the air feels like a blast from an oven. The next steps that followed were just like that one and Cory opened his eyes.
He was standing in front of a 7-11.
The 7-11 Daddy took him to sometimes.
“The Slurpee place.”
That’s what he called it.
Cory walked into the store as the doors parted for him. He felt the cool blast of air conditioning. There was no one in the store. No music either. Just the sound of a Slurpee machine ceaselessly whirling. Cory walked toward the machine and watched as the blue and the red Slurpee inside the machine turned over and over as though nothing were ever wrong with the world.
Cory took a small cup and filled it with red Slurpee. He set it down, selected a small straw and put it into the red colored ice drink.
And then he drank.
There were no strangers here.
He turned, expecting the door to slide open and to see the stranger with the big gun come in and shoot him. But the door remained closed and outside all was hot and lifeless.
Cory took off his backpack and undid his cape. He laid it out on the ground beneath the slowly swirling Slurpee machine. Then he took off his mask. Pieces of black ash had somehow gotten inside. Cory brushed those away and they fell onto the clean linoleum floor and were blown away by the draft coming from the air conditioning.
Cory sat down with his Slurpee and continued to suck its icy coolness.
He would wait here for Daddy.
Daddy would come here.
This was a Daddy place.
In time, Cory curled up on his cape and slept. He was very tired from his long and strange adventure.
When he awoke, it was night outside the store. But inside the store, it was brightly lit and Cory wandered about and ate a few snacks. A Slim Jim. Some potato chips. A candy bar. He walked outside through the automatic sliding door and entered the night.
It was quiet. The moon wasn’t up yet.
There was no one anywhere.
After a few minutes, he turned to the east and saw the beginning of a full moon rising above the low gray mountains there.
Then he knew what he’d need to do to find Daddy.
The Bat Signal.
If Daddy was in trouble, then Cory would see the Bat Signal on the moon and he would go to wherever it was shining and he would find Daddy there.
Because it was night, Cory put on his cape and mask again because Batman can go out at night. He would climb a high hill and see where the signal was coming from.
Cory left the store and followed Forest Lake Avenue up toward the moon and the mountains in the east. By the time he made Bake Parkway the moon was above the mountains. It was a big moon and it glowed a bright yellow as it rose out of the distant smoke and haze of other disasters.
The moon was rising toward the north of Cory, so he followed Portola Parkway, north toward the Market Faire, watching it and not seeing the Strangers he passed in distant businesses, banging at the windows with soundless screams as he walked by. Trapped mindlessly inside the stores they’d found themselves in on that last day.
In time, Cory passed the Market Faire, watching the swollen moon as it climbed before his eyes higher and higher into the night sky. At any moment, Cory knew Daddy would send up the Bat Signal and Cory would see and go to him and eventually, Cory was absolutely convinced of this, there would be pancakes, which meant so much more than just food.
So much more, as sometimes ordinary things do.
Cory found himself cutting through an open wilderness park and entering the charcoaled ruins of a neighborhood that had burned to the ground. He crossed through blackened foundations and climbed up naked ashy hillsides, only to cross through the skeletal remains of houses where bathtubs and toilets were the only things that remained. Melted cars in weird shapes rested on scorched streets and Cory climbed higher and higher up the hill, watching the moon as it stood straight above him now.
Waiting.
At the top of the hill, amid the ruin of a small palace, Cory found a patio and some broken stonework to rest on. The smell of burnt wood hung heavy in the air and mixed with some unseen night-blooming jasmine. Cory watched the moon waver amid the debris in the reflection of the pool.
At any moment...
... he knew the Bat Signal would be there.
At any moment...
He waited and watched throughout the night. Watching and waiting like a good boy until the moon had crossed the night sky, turning the few clouds in the east silver. In time, the moon was out over the coast and falling into an ocean that seemed like the costume of the Batman from the movies. Silvery and dark.
And suddenly Cory was crying, because what else was there left to do now?
He was all alone.
He’d been brave. Even for just a little longer when it was needed most in ways Cory would never understand.
And Daddy was never coming to get Cory.
Never.
Ever.
And in time Ash, came and sat beside Cory in the night and he sobbed into her because he knew she was not a stranger and that she was kind.
The End
The Next Book will be
The Lost Castle, Wyrd 3.0
Head over to my website at NickColeBooks.com and let me know what you think about my books and check out some of my other titles. Or just say, “Hi!” While you’re there sign up for Nick’s Newsletter so I can let you know about my latest books and the free swag and ARC copies I sometimes give away. Oh, and... I think there’s a little more left to this story... Keep going. It’s going to get wyrd-er and weirder.
About The Author
Nick Cole is a former soldier and working actor living in Southern California. When he is not auditioning for commercials, going out for sitcoms or being shot, kicked, stabbed or beaten by the students of various film schools for their projects, he can be found writing books for Harper Collins.
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