Echo Island

by Jared C. Wilson

  The disappearance of the townspeople changed the town itself, the way his empty and powerless house suddenly felt like a stage set. Or maybe it was just his mind playing tricks on him.

  Archer nudged his way in front of him as the right shoulder of their curve dropped off. He followed the trajectory of a battered guardrail to the halfway point and skidded slowly to a stop.

  “What’s wrong?” Jason asked.

  “You know what’s down there?”

  Archer pointed his bony finger down the slope and into the dense forest on the other side of a rocky ditch about forty yards away.

  “What?” Jason asked.

  Archer then pointed up, and Jason lifted his gaze to the thick mass of power lines running overhead. Behind the boys, the lines stretched to a steel tower and continued their journey out of sight; before them, the lines slanted down over the forest to the invisible shoreline.

  “The power station’s down that ridge,” Archer said.

  “So what?”

  “Maybe we can find out what happened to the power. A downed line or something. Maybe lightning struck.”

  “Do you know how to fix stuff like that?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then what’s the point?” Jason asked. “We’re supposed to cover the island looking for everybody. It’ll take two days if we keep stopping to look at everything.”

  “I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on,” Archer said.

  “I know. But the best way to figure that out, I think, is to find everybody.”

  “Okay, then let’s check the beach first.”

  “We can see it best from the rise,” said Jason, nodding at the fork in the road at the end of the curve. To the right, the pavement rose steeply and opened out next to a rest area with one of the island’s best panoramic ocean views.

  Pedaling up the hill proved grueling, and Archer gave up halfway, dismounting and walking the bike up the rest of the slope. Jason dropped from his bike too and followed.

  When they reached the slice of land holding three picnic tables and two barbecue grills, they leaned the bikes against the fence and walked to the wood railing along the grassy cliff. Over the emerald fans of conifer and spruce, the gray ripple of the shore ran empty as far as they could see in either direction, the only movement the lapping of the surf.

  The boys both stared in silent disappointment. There were no signs of life.

  Jason finally said, “Keep going, I guess.”

  Archer agreed, and they resumed the search.

  Tim lagged behind Bradley throughout the straight-shot trek to the ferry landing. They cut through the commercial district that bordered the western coast of the island. Bradley banged on every car with an alarm sticker in its window, just to check Archer’s battery theory, but no alarms sounded.

  There had to be a logical explanation for everything, but Bradley always had trouble with logic. Every mystery movie, even the terrible and terribly obvious ones, seemed good to him; he could never guess whodunit even while others laughed at how ludicrously telegraphed the solution had been. And this—this vanishing of the town—did not easily provoke any solution in his mind.

  They rolled onto the gravel lot of the landing, and Tim abruptly said, “Maybe it was the rapture.”

  “What?”

  “You know, the rapture. Jesus came back and took everyone to heaven.”

  Bradley felt like smacking him. “The rapture? Did Jesus just forget about us?”

  “We weren’t on the island.”

  “So, Jesus just raptured the island?”

  Tim thought about that for a second. He hated when Bradley got into retort mode, which seemed like all the time.

  “Okay,” Tim finally said. “We got left behind because . . . you know.”

  “What?” Bradley said.

  “Well, Jesus doesn’t take everybody. Didn’t you read Left Behind?”

  Bradley didn’t really read books. “No. Did you?”

  “Well, no,” said Tim, “but I know He doesn’t just take anybody, supposedly.”

  “But we go to church.”

  “Yeah,” said Tim uneasily.

  Bradley added, “Sometimes, I mean.”

  Tim looked at him.

  “All right, I see what you’re saying,” Bradley said. “But what about Jason? He’s a Christian, right? Why didn’t Jesus take him?”

  “You never can tell.”

  “Nah. The dude’s a straight-up dork for Jesus. More than any of us are, anyway. If he didn’t make the cut, something’s seriously screwed up with the rapture vacuum if it sucked up the whole town but not him.”

  Tim thought about that. “Yeah, I see what you’re saying.”

  “It’s not the rapture,” said Bradley, but his eyes read hope more than assurance.

  “Then what is it?”

  “Dude! That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

  At the ferry landing, Bradley dismounted the bike and didn’t bother with the kickstand, letting it fall to the ground. While Tim tried getting his stand to lodge in the gravel, Bradley walked to the concrete dock. As if some clue might await him, he peered cautiously over the edge to see the slosh of the brackish water against the rubber brace. He muttered to himself, “Man, we shoulda known something was up when it wasn’t Mr. Farmer driving the ferry.”

  As Tim came to replicate Bradley’s downward gaze into the water, Bradley walked between the deep ruts formed by countless cars, heading for the machine room. It was a long, rickety, garage-like building with one half hovering on decks over the water so boats could be brought in.

  Bradley had been in the machine room once before, when he was eleven years old and curious. He still remembered the blast of noise that assaulted his adolescent ears when he opened the metal door, the sounds of cranks and air-powered tools, the blare of grunge rock on a boom box, and the conversational shouting of the same two or three workmen who seemed to always be there. As a kid, he found it disorienting and impressive.

  Now when Bradley opened the door, the only sound was the ambient hush and trickle of water. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see. A crew of evil henchmen, perhaps, or a gang of terrorists holding people hostage. But not nothing.

  The boom box, upgraded since the midnineties of course, still sat on the paint-splattered table to his right. Bradley tried turning it on. No juice.

  Tim’s face appeared over his shoulder. “What’s in here?”

  “It’s the, uh, what you call it? Repair . . . place.”

  Tim skirted the narrow boat ramps.

  “Be careful, dude,” Bradley said.

  Tim didn’t respond, but he walked the length of the structure, peering behind crates and around huge pulley contraptions. At the far end, a motorboat with its tail in the water was lashed to a rusty hook in the concrete floor.

  “We could take the boat,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Tim said. “Around the island. Back to the mainland. Whatever. It’d be faster than the bikes.”

  Bradley frowned at him, but he thought it wasn’t an entirely bad idea. Of course, they couldn’t explore ground in the boat. But if the entire population of the town was near any of the coasts, they could spot them much sooner than they could traveling by land. And getting back to the mainland sounded good too. If something really bad had happened, they’d want to contact the state police.

  A phone sat next to the radio, and he picked it up. No dial tone.

  “Yeah, let’s try the boat,” he said.

  Despite some difficulty involving a complicated latch and Tim almost falling into the water, they managed to raise the large door to the ramp. They slid the boat down into the water until it floated, and while Tim stood on the cement walkway still holding the rope, Bradley sat in the ve
ssel trying to start the motor.

  But it was no use. The thing had gas. The sparkplugs even looked new. But as hard as Bradley yanked on the starter, nothing happened. He had started several identical boats hundreds of times in his short life as an amateur sailor, so he knew what he was doing.

  But nothing worked.

  “Pull it over, so I can climb out,” Bradley said.

  They checked the office again, where both of them pushed buttons, flicked switches, and listened to receivers to no avail.

  After a silent final survey of the ocean pass between themselves and the invisible west coast of Washington, they remounted their bikes and, taking a left out of the parking lot, headed south to resume the investigation.

  “Shouldn’t we wait to see if the ferry comes?” Tim huffed.

  “It’s not coming back, dude,” said Bradley.

  Tim didn’t argue.

  The padlock on the Echo Island High School stadium gate was secure. Archer pondered the concertina wire adorning the tall chain-link fence.

  “Think we should try it?” Jason asked.

  “I don’t know. The stadium would be the perfect place to keep everyone. It’s one of the only places big enough. But unless they’re all bound and gagged, it seems like thousands of people would make some kind of noise.”

  Jason jogged along the fence to where it ended at a rocky cliff face.

  “You can’t squeeze through there,” Archer called.

  “Not squeezin’, just lookin’.”

  From his vantage point against the barrier, Jason could see right through the open gate into the stadium. He could see the end zone and almost half of the field.

  “Can you see?” Archer asked.

  “Yeah. Unless they’re sitting utterly silent in the stands, they’re not in there.”

  When Jason returned, Archer said, “The question now is, do we keep going north to the lighthouse or cut inland and check the theater?”

  “Makes sense to move in and work our way out, right?”

  “Yeah. But if everyone’s on a boat or something headed out to sea, the longer we wait, the longer they have to get out of sight.”

  “Even if everyone left, don’t you think they’d leave a note? A sign? Something?”

  “Yes,” Archer said. “Unless they didn’t leave by choice.”

  “Five thousand people, man. You can’t kidnap five thousand people without leaving a trace.”

  Archer said nothing, but his face said, I’m not dumb. He was capable of doing the math.

  Archer was now in one of his dazes. Jason punched him lightly on the arm.

  Archer blinked several times fast. “Sorry, I can’t help it,” he said.

  Jason smirked, nodded. “So, the lighthouse.”

  “I think we should cover the island and then start testing theories if we don’t find them.”

  Jason said, “It’s just weird.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you scared?”

  “Nervous,” said Archer, “if that’s what you mean. I try not to be scared of things until I know what it is exactly that I should be scared of.”

  “But your mom. My mom and dad. My brother.”

  “We may find them. They’re not gone until we can’t find them anywhere, and we’re not done looking.”

  “So, the lighthouse,” Jason said again.

  “The lighthouse.”

  Four miles north of the stadium—at the end of a straight and gradually rising road lined with thin cedars—the pinnacle of a lush, windswept promontory, the pocked and weather-mottled Echo Island lighthouse resembled the discarded bone of some gigantic prehistoric beast.

  The boys found the door open. The tiny elevator didn’t work, so they climbed the shaky spiral staircase to the lookout and scanned the oceanic horizon. The Pacific was the same as it had ever been, azure and gray and churning from the eternal, unseen disturbance, but it was void of ship or sign. One could always spot an array of fishing boats on the water from the lighthouse, but not today. Far to the east an ominous array of storm clouds obscured their view of the mainland.

  Jason kept looking, hoping, while Archer played with the computer and radio equipment.

  “Anything?” Archer asked.

  “Nothing,” said Jason. “How about you?”

  “Everything’s dead.”

  Jason circled the parapet, looking back over the island itself.

  “Man, this is biza—”

  Archer looked up. “What is it?”

  “C’mere, dude.”

  Archer’s eyes followed Jason’s pointing finger across the thick woods cradling the western coast. Miles and miles away, into the sky he seemed to be pointing.

  “See that?”

  “What?”

  “Right there, in that sorta corner. Look right above the trees. Do you see it?”

  “I do.”

  In the hazy distance, a thin line of smoke was rising from the forest.

  “That’s a chimney fire,” Archer said.

  Jason was already starting for the stairs. “Well, come on.”

  “I need a rest, man.”

  Tim practically tumbled off his bike, dismounting clumsily and ambling for the corner bus stop, where he fell onto the bench.

  Bradley knew Tim had been sucking wind for five miles, but he hoped he could tough it out. They’d already investigated two churches, two convenience stores, and the bus station, and Bradley thought they were making good time on their appointed rounds. He considered his huffing friend only a mild irritation. He was used to such breakdowns.

  “That other church is only a couple more miles up the road,” he said. “And the Bee Market. Want me to go and come back?”

  “No,” Tim said a little too loudly.

  “All right, dude. I’ll wait for you.”

  Bradley tried popping a wheelie but couldn’t. He left the bike in the street and joined Tim.

  “Scoot over, wheezie.”

  The thick sweat on Tim’s face glistened in the sunlight. He was nearly hyperventilating.

  “Geez, calm down, dude. It’s going to be okay.”

  Bradley weakly patted Tim’s damp back.

  Tim started to cry.

  Bradley sighed. “Man, don’t do that.” He put his hand on Tim’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay. We’ll find them.”

  “Where?” Tim said. “Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ll never see my parents again.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Aren’t you freaked out?”

  “It’s freaky,” Bradley said. “I’ll admit that. So yeah, I’m freaked out. But, come on, we don’t know what’s going on. I’m sure there’s a good explanation for this.”

  A moment later, Tim asked, “Hey, do you remember when you hit Clarence Deakins?”

  “Huh? What are you talking about?”

  “When you punched Clarence,” Tim said.

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “That was cuz of me, right?”

  “What? No.”

  “He was going to complain to Coach about me being on the team. Cuz his cousin got cut, and he thought I sucked. He thought I was only on the team because I knew you, and cuz your dad and Coach were friends.”

  “Are friends.”

  “Are friends, right. But yeah, is that why you got in a fight with him?”

  “Dude, I barely remember that.”

  “It was the beginning of last year,” Tim said.

  “Why are you asking me this right now?”

  “Just answer me. Did you hit him cuz of me?”

  “Dude, Clarence Deakins is an idiot. I popped him cuz he deserved it, cuz he deserved it just for being Clarence.”
<
br />   “But why’d you stick up for me?”

  “I don’t know,” Bradley shifted uncomfortably before standing up. “Come on, man. Time’s wastin’.”

  As they started for their bikes, Bradley abruptly stopped.

  “What?” Tim said.

  Bradley stared at a red metal box next to the bench.

  “The newspaper,” he said.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s today’s date.”

  “So . . .”

  “We were only gone two nights. So, whatever happened to everybody happened late last night or early this morning.” Bradley went on. “What time you think they print the next day’s paper? What time you think they put them out?”

  “I dunno. Early.”

  “So, whatever happened probably happened today. This morning, before we got back.”

  4

  WANDERING

  Hey, maybe there’s a clue in there,” Tim said.

  “In where?”

  “The newspaper. Get one out. Maybe there’s a weather report or news story that can help us figure this out.”

  “Maybe,” said Bradley.

  He pulled the handle on the machine, and it didn’t give.

  “Got a dollar in change?”

  “No.”

  Bradley said, “Hmm,” as he looked up and down the street.

  “What are you looking f—” Tim started to say, but before he could finish, Bradley started yanking on the handle with great, rattling force.

  “Whoa, what’re you doing?”

  Bradley stopped, looking at him dumbly. “Getting a paper, what’s it look like I’m doing?”

  “You’re gonna break it.”

  “Right,” said Bradley, and he shook his head in aggravation and resumed jerking on the machine. When he couldn’t get the lock to snap, he started kicking the plexiglass window on the front.

  Tim yelled, “We can just get one off somebody’s driveway.” But Bradley ignored him. Kicking the newspaper machine wasn’t just practical; it was cathartic.