Echo Island

by Jared C. Wilson

  When it thinned to an invisible line, he looked right, anticipating the imminent rise of the Echo Island coast from the western horizon. As soon as the land of one side dipped below sight, the land of the other poked into view, like the pass between them was some gigantic oceanographic teeter-totter, like each world hung in the balance of the ferry’s traversable scale. One coast down, the other up. Inhale, exhale. That was how it worked, and since making this discovery, Jason had made it a secret ritual to watch this balance shift every time he’d traveled by ferry between the island and the mainland.

  Like clockwork, like the tipping of that scale, the island slowly rose from the sea, taking its jagged shape of rocky beach and angular forest. Eventually, the beach ran as far east and west as he could see, and the ferry’s bumpered hull gently rubbed against the concrete dock. The ferryman descended the cabin without a word, locked the vessel to the broad boat ramp, and lowered the gate, which usually withstood the passage of cars, but that morning only upheld the unloading of the foursome.

  No sooner had their feet crunched the gravel in the landing’s lot than the ferryman scooped the gate back up, unlatched the steel fasteners, and began chugging the ferry back out to sea.

  “What’s up with the hippie dude not waiting?” Bradley said.

  Archer looked around. “I don’t see anyone waiting to board.”

  “Yeah, but homeboy’s supposed to wait. There’s like, what, one-hour intervals or something? There’s a schedule.”

  The whole thing bothered Jason, but he didn’t say anything. He’d found the emptiness of the ferry station back on the mainland unnerving. And now the Echo Island landing was vacant too.

  Archer asked him, “You gonna call your mom to come get you?”

  “They’re at church,” Jason said. “I’ll walk. How about you?”

  “We’ll just hitch a ride with Archway.” Bradley turned to Archer. “You parked in the lot, right?”

  “Yeah,” Archer said. “Sure, no problem.”

  Jason said goodbye, slung his bag over his shoulder, and headed for home.

  Only three blocks away, paranoia set in. He hadn’t encountered a single person yet. Jason tried coming up with as many rational explanations as he could for why he hadn’t so much as heard the sounds of other people—no voices, no cars, no machinery of any sort—in the typically bustling streets adjacent to the ferry landing. But no explanation would come. He tried telling himself that he was just tired, that his imagination was getting the better of him. It worked for a while, but the uneasiness nagged.

  Jason passed through the close-set intersections off the town square. The landscape was a still life. In the parked cars, the waving flags, and the glint of sunlight off windows and chrome, the presence of people was suggested, but nowhere was it confirmed. He tried opening the door of the library, the post office, and the cell phone store, but he had chosen those doors in a strategy of self-reassurance, knowing he could tell himself they weren’t open on Sunday mornings anyway. He only glanced into the windows of the diners and restaurants he knew should have been open and bustling with people.

  Entering the bushy enclave of the Royal Garden subdivision, he finally breathed a sigh of relief to see a group of cars parked in the lot of the Lutheran church. He almost laughed at himself.

  Once inside his house, Jason flipped the kitchen light switch. Nothing happened. He tried the living room. No light. Trying the hall light switch with the same result, he suddenly realized the unnerving quiet he’d experienced throughout the town was no doubt due to a power outage.

  He climbed the carpeted steps to the second floor, entered his messy bedroom, and collapsed into bed, seeking the sleep that the previous night’s goofing off had prevented.

  Sleep never came, however, and after an hour of a restless tossing in his bed, Jason was startled by a pounding on the door.

  He scrambled downstairs, pulling on his shirt.

  Whoever was knocking was practically beating the door down.

  “Hold on!” Jason said.

  He turned the dead bolt and opened the door.

  Archer, Bradley, and Tim stood on the front porch, huddled together as if for warmth, all of their faces terrified.

  Bradley said, “Everybody’s gone.”

  2

  LIFELESS

  What are you talking about?” Jason said.

  The noonday sun lit up the neighborhood behind them with a surreal, cartoonish vividness, like a scene from a Florida postcard.

  “Everybody’s gone,” Bradley repeated.

  “Everybody who?”

  “Everybody,” Tim said, as if that cleared things up.

  Archer pushed past them and stepped into the house. From the marble-tiled entryway, he offered a ponderous look to the sunken living room. “Are your parents home?” he asked.

  “No, they’re at church.”

  “Did you text them?”

  “Why would I?”

  Archer looked at him in that serious Archer way but didn’t answer.

  “My phone’s not working anyway,” Jason said.

  Archer said, “Did you pass anybody on your way here?”

  “No. I mean, I didn’t see anybody.”

  “No cars? Nothing?”

  “No. Wait—there are people at that church outside the subdivision.”

  Bradley said, “No, there aren’t.”

  “Yes, there are,” said Jason. “I saw the cars when I was walking by.”

  “There are cars,” Bradley said, “but no people. We went in.”

  Tim was the only one who hadn’t entered the house yet. On the stoop, arms limp at his sides, he stared straight ahead as if waiting for an invitation, as if waiting for Bradley’s okay to move.

  Jason said, “Tim, are you coming in?”

  Tim opened his mouth to speak but seemed to get lost in response. He blinked dumbly.

  “He’s been freaking out since we found out,” Bradley said.

  Archer said, “We’re all freaking out.”

  Jason reached out, grabbed Tim’s arm, and pulled him into the house. He shut the door.

  Turning to Bradley and Archer, he said, “Freaking out about what?”

  Bradley was incredulous. “Dude. Everybody’s gone.”

  “Vanished,” Archer whispered.

  “Even my dog’s gone,” Bradley said.

  “Mine too,” said Tim.

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Bradley nodded.

  Jason cracked a smile. “Is this some kind of joke?”

  Archer flipped the light switch up and down. “Power’s out here too, huh?” He crossed into the living room to pick up the landline phone sitting on a side table.

  Bradley said, “It’s not a joke, dude.”

  Archer held up the cordless receiver to his ear and shrugged. “Phone’s dead.”

  “It’s a cordless,” Jason said. “It’s out because the power’s out.”

  “Every landline we’ve checked is out,” said Bradley. “Everything’s out! When the light wouldn’t come on at the landing office, we checked some more along the way.”

  “Maybe it was a bad storm,” Jason said.

  “Do you remember it storming last night?”

  “Power goes out all the time.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Bradley mock agreed. Then he said sternly, “Where did everybody go, man?”

  “Stop saying everybody,” said Jason.

  “What?”

  “Stop saying everybody. You walked from the dock to here. It’s a big island.”

  “So where is everybody, Jason?”

  “It’s a big island!”

  Archer said, “Let’s calm down. Let’s think about this.”

  A screech of wood on tile made all three of t
hem jump, and they turned to see that Tim had grown tired of standing. He sat in the entryway chair Jason’s mother had found at an antique store the year before.

  “He’s right,” Archer said, meaning Jason. “I mean, it’s not a big island, but there are lots of places people could go. But, on the other hand, I can’t think of a reason why everybody from this stretch would all go somewhere else.”

  “Everybody?” Jason said. “Did you look in every door? Look in every window?”

  Bradley erupted. “No one’s here, man!”

  Jason abruptly started for the door, walking quickly and dramatically.

  “Where are you going?” Bradley said.

  As he flew past, Tim turned his head, confused.

  Archer and Bradley followed Jason to the sidewalk and watched as he mounted the porch of the neighbor’s house. He knocked on the door.

  When no one answered, he pounded even harder.

  “No one’s there!” Bradley called.

  Jason peered into a window, cupping his hand over his brow to shield the glare.

  He marched back.

  Bradley started to say, “I already told you—” but Jason passed them and approached the neighboring house on the other side, the home of the Vawters.

  He knocked louder this time and waited longer.

  Nothing.

  “Car’s in the driveway too,” Bradley said.

  Jason looked at him, clearly agitated. Is Bradley enjoying this? Does he have to rub it in?

  Looking up and down the street, Jason thought about trying a few more houses, but he went back to the Vawters’ maroon Honda Civic. They never locked their doors, so Jason opened the driver’s side, meaning to honk the horn. The noise might bring someone outside, or at least to a window.

  But the horn wouldn’t sound.

  He pressed harder on the steering wheel pad.

  “What are you doing?” Bradley asked.

  “I thought I could—” Jason said. He tried it again. Nothing.

  He walked back to his own driveway and grasped the garage handle. His heart sank as the white accordion door rolled up. Both of his parents’ cars, the white Chevy Lumina and the silver Buick LeSabre, still sat together on the oil-stained slab inside.

  He walked back inside, his friends following close behind.

  “It doesn’t make sense,” he said.

  “You said yourself,” Archer said, “it’s a big island. They obviously went somewhere. We just have to find them.”

  “Batteries don’t work,” Jason said.

  “The batteries in what don’t work?”

  “In everything,” Jason said, although he instantly recognized that the test sample that he’d used to arrive at the conclusion was, relatively speaking, about the sample size his friends had used to conclude everyone on the island had vanished.

  “Everything?” asked Bradley.

  Archer looked around the room for battery-powered things. Most of the electronics were plugged into power they already knew was down. But Archer picked up the remote control, knowing it would prove its juice if the red light flickered. But he tried every button. The light never blinked.

  “Tim,” he said.

  Tim didn’t seem to hear.

  Archer rose and walked over to him. “Let me see your keys.”

  Tim looked up at Archer like he’d just asked if he could borrow a kidney.

  “Your keys,” Archer repeated.

  “Um,” Tim managed to say.

  Bradley helped. “In your pocket, broseph.”

  Archer said, “I want to look at your penlight.”

  Tim chewed on his lip like he had to think through the implications of the request. Finally, he stuffed his thick fingers in his jeans pocket and fished out his keys. Archer took them, twisted the tiny flashlight both ways, and illuminated nothing.

  Jason said, “See? They’re just dead.”

  “But all of them?” Archer asked. “That’s quite a coincidence.”

  “All of them in the house.”

  “Where do you keep your batteries?” Archer said. “The fresh ones.”

  “Kitchen drawer.”

  “Bradley,” said Archer. “Remote.”

  Bradley tossed it to him as he walked to the kitchen.

  After pulling the fifth drawer, Archer found the package of double-As.

  “Forget the batteries, dude,” Bradley called. “There are bigger fish to fry, like the fact that apparently, every living thing on Echo Island is gone.”

  Archer ignored him and replaced the batteries in the remote. He pushed buttons. The red light remained dead. “Okay,” he said. “This is weird.”

  “We’ve established that, Sherlock.” Bradley now stood in the doorway between the kitchen and living room. “Now can we go find everybody before Tim wets his pants and Jason needs a straitjacket?”

  Archer said, “What?” He was still looking at the television’s remote control. He finally looked back at Bradley.

  “Dude?” Bradley said.

  Archer swallowed. “Yeah, yeah, okay.”

  In the living room, Archer posited a plan.

  “We need to walk the island, I guess.”

  “It takes a day to circle this thing,” Bradley said.

  “We’ll split up, then: two and two. In opposite directions. And we’ll meet up halfway.”

  “It’s still a long walk.”

  They hadn’t noticed Jason slipping out. He returned now, car keys in his fist.

  “Both cars are dead,” he said.

  Archer looked at Bradley. “Unless you have a car that runs on your ego, we’re walking.”

  “The Vawters have bikes,” Jason said. “Mountain bikes.”

  “Yeah, bikes,” said Bradley. “Bikes are good.”

  Tim hadn’t joined them in the living room, and they hadn’t felt compelled to ask him, but suddenly he piped up from his lonely spot in the sunlit foyer. “We’re splitting up?”

  “Yeah,” Archer said. “We’ll go faster that way.”

  Tim said, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “Why?”

  Tim just blinked.

  Jason said, “He might be right. We don’t know what happened. Maybe we should stick together. For protection or something. What if we get halfway round and the other two have disappeared too? If someone gets hurt or lost, what then?”

  “It just makes sense this way,” Archer said. “Otherwise we’d be walking all night.”

  “Pedaling,” corrected Tim.

  “Whatever.”

  “What happens if we run into trouble?” Jason said. “How would the other two find out?”

  “I’m not sure that’s a rational fear,” said Archer. “But if there’s someone else, some others in the town who pose a threat, they’ve already managed to make five thousand people disappear, so I doubt four more would be a big deal. This way, if two of us get captured, at least there are two left to rescue them or go find help.”

  “Go for help,” Jason said. “Why didn’t we think of that? The ferry!”

  “What about it?”

  “It has to come back. Let’s just go back to the mainland.”

  Bradley said, “Dude, the ferry’s not coming back.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I have to agree with Bradley,” said Archer. “Mr. Farmer wasn’t the pilot. And the way the hippie dude hightailed it back right after dropping us . . .”

  “Maybe the ferryman’s part of the operation,” Bradley said.

  Jason glared. “The operation? What bad movie did you climb out of?”

  “A better question, I think,” Archer said, “is what bad movie did we crawl into?” He could sense the frustration building in Jason, so he added, “Okay, look—one of us can s
tart back at the ferry landing. Wait an hour. See if it returns.”

  Jason wasn’t appeased, but Archer continued anyway.

  “Also, probably not a bad idea to check our phones every now and then. And see if any cars have keys left in them. Check the insides of big buildings like schools, the Catholic Church on Granger Road, the stadium, the movie theater, you know?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Bradley. “Let’s go.”

  “All right,” Archer said. “Who’s with who?”

  Tim again broke in. “I’ll go with Bradley.”

  Bradley sat up straight and contemplated the still figure of his friend in the entryway. “You gonna be okay, Biggie Smalls?”

  Tim’s brow furrowed. “What?”

  “You’re not gonna, like, freak out on me or anything?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Bradley frowned. He said to Archer and Jason, “Yeah, I’ll take Tim. But who’s going where?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Archer said.

  “You’re the smart guy,” said Bradley. “You tell us.”

  Archer chewed his lip for a second, then said, “Jason and I will go east. Lots of room there for people to congregate. We can check the stadium, for instance. You guys start at the ferry station and head up the western coast from there.”

  They liberated four bicycles from the Vawter family’s garage and set out, two and two down Royal Garden Drive and then in opposite directions on Steeplechase at the mouth of the subdivision.

  Bradley and Tim pedaled right and then south to the ferry landing, while Archer and Jason began their tour of the island’s eastern side, all of them eager to find someone, anyone, on the island, and none of them prepared for what they couldn’t know was coming.

  3

  LOOKING

  Jason and Archer swerved around the gentle slopes of the island’s uneven terrain. Since he’d been a kid, the short, soft grasses of the town, running in low mounds and sunlit patches around the narrow streets, had always reminded Jason of a mini-golf course, a life-size replica of a tiny prefab landscape. He’d traveled around the island all his life, but this day felt different, looked different. The midday sun shone perceptible edges. It gave off the same light and warmth, but it was a cartoon sun all of a sudden, and the windless air only added to the eerie quality of their exploration.