by Trevor Zaple
They spent the better part of three weeks on the highway, traveling during the day and snuggling into those misshapen relics at night. Their supplies drew down but did not quite dwindle. The grocery store in the mall had still been well-stocked, despite the evidence of looting, and they had packed well. As the days went on a sense of purposelessness seemed to descend upon all of them. Every day that passed seemed exactly the same as the one that came before, following a wide highway of snow that lead through an unchanging vista of silent, dead buildings buried and choked with the same hard white that covered everything. They followed the suburbs out through the west, watching the same buildings rise and fall beside them as they went.
Eventually the urban sprawl that grew out of Lake Ontario faded, and the walls that lined the highway faded with it. Large groves of trees grew on either side of them, crowned in white laurels that glittered brilliantly when the sun shone on them. Large yellow-bricked farmhouses rose out of the distant fields, slumbering darkly under the snow. All of them seemed to be built of the same faded yellow brick; Carlos observed this one day and Olivia found it quite funny, saying that there must have been a hell of a sale on it at some point.
A day or so after they passed into the rural lands the clouds began to gather ominously again. By general assent they made for one of the farmhouses that they had seen; by the time they reached it and began to dig away at the snow that piled around it in drifts, the sky had begun to spit fat, crystalline white flakes. They worked through the beginning of the storm and continued while the wind lifted and began to moan. It had picked up a definite high shriek as Carlos kicked the side door in, and as they hurried through the darkened portal the visibility offered through the curtain of blowing snow had dropped to virtually nothing.
It was a likely enough house, sturdy enough to last a hundred winters if properly maintained, and it had been maintained well before its previous owner had disappeared. They marveled at the well-ordered structure of the place. They seemed to be the first people to cross its threshold since the disappearance, and it seemed to welcome them with a mother’s arms. They spent the duration of the storm and a long while after there, building cozy dens and slumbering away the terrible weather together.
The Month of Famine, as it had been once called in that part of the world, turned into March and over the course of four days they watched the sun burn hot over the land and the sun melt into cold, mud-slick water. They stretched and made noises as if to leave, but none of them seemed particularly eager to do so. Carlos busied himself by scouting out the area, glad to be walking on firmer ground and to be rid of the extra burden of snowshoes. They began to settle into an intoxicating routine of domesticity, chatting idly, playing cards, and reading the not-inconsiderable library that the long-vanished family that had lived here had maintained. They let the winter melt and the new spring thaw, and didn’t talk about farming. They didn’t talk about food, or irrigation, or seeds, or any of this. They smiled, and there was a darkness behind their eyes at times, and they laughed and talked and made love, but nothing was said about meat, or wheat, or milk.
One day Carlos returned to the farmhouse with news. He had crested a hill and beheld a town with lights and activity. There were people milling about, he reported, building things and seeming to engage in all sorts of usefulness and productivity. None of them knew quite what to make of it, and they deliberated upon it for some time. March crawled through, seeming to float on a warm updraft of slowly increasing temperatures. The town that Carlos was watching went on with its activities. There was organization, he reported. People had plans, and they carried them out. There was government. They looked at each other warily. The temperatures plummeted after the treacherous Ides, and soon the slate-grey skies returned overhead.
Still they talked, and discussed, sending it around and around on their tongues. Acts of government. Constitutions. Chains of command, and the execution of orders. Law and regulation. They chased it, biting and snapping at it like a circle of starving dogs. The wind blew a scrim of ice across the moon, and the trees around the barren brown fields seemed to whisper with inevitability.
On the 19th they awoke to snow in the secret crevices of the earth. It curled through the cracks in the pavement that ran along their haven like ideograms in an elegant alien language. They read it and knew finally that, in the end, the eddy of the maelstrom can never be fought. The pull of that swirling, massing energy can only be ridden, to whatever ends may come.
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About the Author
Trevor Zaple was born in London, Ontario, in the midst of one of the periodic sessions of brutal recession that characterize life in Ontario. He grew up in the picturesque rural surroundings of Seaforth before fleeing to a series of dying industrial burgs across Southern Ontario.
He has a bachelor's degree in Contemporary Studies granted unto him by Wilfrid Laurier University, which has about as much meaning as it sounds. He lived fondly in Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood for several years before retreating to yet another dying industrial burg. He now lives with his wife and daughter in St. Catharines, Ontario.
Visit Trevor’s Amazon Author Page at:
https://www.amazon.com/Trevor-Zaple/e/B00DLKDOAY/
Check out his blog at:
https://trevorzaple.com/
Copyright
Disappearance
Written by Trevor Zaple
Executive Editor: Michael A. Wills
Editorial Assistant: Ivy M. Wills
This story is a work of fiction. All the characters, organizations, locations, and events portrayed in this story are either the product of the author’s imagination, fictitious, or used fictitiously. No claim to the trademark, copyright, or intellectual property of any identifiable company, organization, product, or public name is made. Any character resembling an actual person, living or dead, would be coincidental and quite remarkable.
Disappearance. Copyright © 2018 by Trevor Zaple. This story and all characters, settings, and other unique features or content are copyright Trevor Zaple. Published under exclusive license by Digital Fiction Publishing Corp. Cover Image Adobe Stock: Copyright © trafa #129363247. This version first published in print and electronically: October 2018 by Digital Fiction Publishing Corp., LaSalle, Ontario, Canada. Digital Fiction, Digital Science Fiction and its logos, and Digital Fiction Publishing Corp and its logo, are Trademarks of Digital Fiction Publishing Corp. (Digital Fiction)
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