“Given that nobody else is home either, that’s probably a safe guess.”
“But the fire . . .”
Archer put his hand on the door handle.
“What are you doing?”
“What?” Archer said as he pressed the button.
The sound of the latch lifting almost made Jason jump, and before he could say anything, Archer began easing the door in.
“Hello?” he offered meekly as he opened the door wide.
In the dust-filled light from the fire and the doorway, they could see that the cabin was not exactly arranged for habitation. The place consisted of one spacious room laid out with rough, hardwood floor. One beaten leather trunk, a brick hearth at the fireplace that held a poker and spade, and a small wooden desk in the far corner occupied the space.
On the desk sat a short stack of blank paper with a black fountain pen resting diagonally on top. To the upper right of the desktop was an inkwell and to the upper left, a green ashtray with three cigarette butts.
Most curious, however, was the ramshackle wooden bookcase adjacent to the desk. Each cobwebby shelf held a row of green notebooks, all of them identical on the exterior. Archer pulled one from the bookcase. It was the sort of composition journal one might find at a high-end stationery store or in the gift section of a bookstore. He thumbed through the entire thing. Every line was filled with illegible writing. He stopped on a random page and concentrated.
“What in the world?” he muttered. He turned to Jason. “Can you read this?”
Jason took the notebook and scanned the page. “Wow. No. That’s weird. Just looks like gibberish to me.”
Archer put the green notebook down on the desk and took two more from the bookcase, leafing slowly through a few pages in each. “Same in these. Same handwriting. I can’t read a word of it. Does that say commitment?”
Jason looked above Archer’s fingernail. “Got me. Just looks like squiggles. Random letters. But some of these don’t even look like letters. It’s like a weird code or something.” He slipped the notebook back into its place on the shelf. “This is like something out of a serial killer movie, man. There’s got to be a hundred of these notebooks here. All filled with this gibberish.”
“We don’t know if it’s gibberish,” said Archer. “We can’t read them. Doesn’t mean they can’t be read. They’re just illegible to us.”
“This isn’t normal.”
“Yes, I’d agree with that. But then, nothing about this day has exactly been normal.”
Jason was now concentrated on the desk. “Hey, did you put that there?” asked Jason.
“Put what?”
“That ashtray. It wasn’t there a second ago was it?”
“Sure it was.”
“I didn’t see it.”
“It’s kinda dark in here.”
“Yeah,” Jason said. He cupped his palm over the flat bowl made of dark green crystal. The three cigarette nubs garnished a gray display of their cremated bodies.
“Warm?” asked Archer.
“No.”
“And that fire is practically gone. It’s probably safe to say that whoever lives here disappeared with everybody else.”
“So now what? Keep looking?”
Archer rubbed his chin. “Part of me wants to stay here, like maybe the gibberish writer will come back.”
“But you just said you thought he disappeared too.”
“Yeah, I know. But after quickly doing the math, I don’t see how the fire would still be smoking this many hours after everybody left.”
“You’re assuming the time on the clocks is the time everyone left,” Jason said.
“You’re right; it’s an assumption,” admitted Archer. “But that chimney was giving off a fair amount of smoke earlier. That seems odd if nobody had been fueling it since early this morning.”
Jason picked up one of the cigarette butts carefully between thumb and forefinger like it was a piece of crime scene evidence. He gingerly returned the specimen to the ashtray. “If you care what I think,” he said, “I say we stick to the plan. Finish looking around and then meet up with the guys.”
Archer cast a wan gaze over the desk. “All right,” he said. But before joining Jason’s retreat to the door, he removed a green notebook from the bottom of the bookcase and tucked it under his arm. “Let’s go.”
“What’re you doing with that?”
“Don’t know exactly. But it might tell us something important.”
“You can’t even read it.”
“Not yet, I can’t. But I’ll figure it out.”
They descended the porch, closing the door behind them.
“Probably some dude’s life story. Or everything he’s eaten the last forty years,” said Jason.
“Or maybe,” Archer said smirking, “the secrets of the universe.”
“Riiight.”
The two boys scrambled over the stony breach between cliff and forest, and finding their point of exit, entered the woods and the search once more.
5
WONDERING
As afternoon seeped into evening, Jason and Archer snaked slowly through tract housing, a small series of parks, and the western edge of the island’s southern business district. They’d given up checking doors, content to weave on their bikes back and forth in the freedom of the abandoned streets, eyes peeled for any other signs of life. As sunlight ebbed, so too did their hopes for finding any.
They rested only once, parking themselves on the warm curb outside Meegel’s Donuts, where they sat in silence and stared at their fading reflections in the Safeguard Insurance window across the road. Neither of them felt like letting the dark find them, so they stood when dusk grew gloomy and pedaled for the rendezvous point.
They could hear Bradley before they could see him. His voice boomed down Royal Garden Drive: “It’s just Jason and Archway.”
The duos ambled, tired and dejected, into their customary foursome.
“Tim thought you guys were everybody.” Bradley poked Tim in the ribs.
“I didn’t say that,” Tim demurred.
“You guys see anybody?” Archer said.
“Yeah, man,” said Bradley. “They’re all in my pocket.”
“There are other people here,” Tim said.
“Well, wait,” Bradley started.
Tim continued, “We think there was somebody else in the Bee Market. We chased him out the back and into the woods.”
“We think he went into the woods,” Bradley corrected.
A mix of hope and fear washed over Jason’s face. “You saw somebody? A man?”
“No, we didn’t see anybody,” Bradley said. “But a pot fell in the market, and we assumed it was him. Or, I guess maybe her. Whoever.”
“And we found a cabin with a fire,” Jason said. “And some weird notebooks.”
“Notebooks?”
“Oh, it’s no big deal,” Archer said. He didn’t want Bradley and Tim pawing at his discovery until he’d had a chance to examine it closely himself. Before Jason could explain any further, Archer changed the subject: “Anything at the landing?”
“No,” said Bradley. “None of the boats work either. I hope you’ve got some theory on all this stuff, Einstein.”
“I am puzzled, definitely,” said Archer. “There’s got to be a logical explanation, but what I worry about is, even if we can explain it, we probably can’t fix it. If you know what I mean.”
“Dude, I hardly ever know what you mean.”
They stopped talking for a moment, each of them staring at the ground. Finally, Archer said, “No, definitely not alone, I don’t think.”
In the middle of the empty street, they all suddenly felt exposed. Tim rubbed his arms like he was cold. “You think we could go inside somewhere?”
Inside his house, Jason gathered candles and lit them. His mother collected them for no apparent reason, and he had a large array to choose from.
Night hadn’t darkened the house yet, but dusky dimness was overtaking it. A consortium of gray thunderheads rolled into the sky overhead.
Bradley sat on the couch cradling a pillow with a fidgety Tim next to him. Archer examined the green notebook he had brought with him, straining to make sense of the scribbles. He had a vague sense that they were in some discernible distortion, as if all he had to do was squint the right way and perfect penmanship would come into focus.
“Whatcha reading?” Bradley asked.
“Huh? Oh, just one of those notebooks I found earlier.”
When Jason deemed the flickering light sufficient, he squeezed between Tim and Bradley on the couch. They sat in silence for a while until the sound of distant thunder spurred them to talk.
“What are we going to do?” Jason began.
Tim was already nodding in agreement when Bradley said, “I’ve got no idea.” A pause. “Archway?”
The open green cover of the notebook lowered, and Archer was biting his lip.
“Any clues in that thing?” Bradley said.
“No idea,” Archer said. “I can’t read it. But we’ve discovered lots of clues, actually. No electronic functionality. The whole population gone. A few signs of life—the noise you heard in the market and the chimney smoke. We’ve got clues. Just no connections between them. No clear connections, anyway.”
“Well, maybe if you did less reading and more thinking, you’d find some,” Bradley said.
That perturbed the thinker. “Is your brain broken?”
Bradley smirked and looked at Jason. “Is that a trick question?”
Tim blurted, “I just really want to know what’s going on!”
Bradley’s smirk disappeared. “Chill out, dude. We’ll figure it out.”
“Everybody’s gone!” Tim said. “Except there’s someone else out there. And we don’t know who they are or what they’re after or if they want to hurt us.”
“Dude! We know. Let’s focus on a solution. Is that okay with you?”
Tim’s eyes began to well.
“Don’t do it. Dude, if you do it, I will smack you.”
Jason put his back to Tim and said to Bradley, “Ease up.”
Bradley shrugged.
Tim wiped his nose with his fist as Jason straightened against the back of the couch again. “Archer, is there anything you can think of that could have caused all this?”
“It depends on what the this is you’re referring to. I can think of some scenarios that might explain complete electrical failure, and I can think of some that might explain the disappearance of an entire populace. But a scenario that explains both? I’ve got nothing.”
Bradley shot the pillow like a basketball into Archer’s lap. “Great.”
“I mean, here’s the thing: from a technical standpoint, it doesn’t really make sense. So instead I’ve been thinking in terms of why. Why would everybody disappear? Without notice. Without warning. If it had been premeditated or, like, if everyone had decided to evacuate or something, there’d be a sign or a notice. They don’t make decisions like that in a weekend, and if they did, surely Brad’s or Tim’s parents would have called or texted to let us know. We didn’t hear anything about a planned evacuation. And even if they all had to leave in a hurry, that would have been obvious. But as you can see, the place does not look evacuated so much as . . . well, I don’t know what.”
“Like they vanished,” Jason said.
Archer nodded. “Yeah,” he said softly.
“But how?” Jason asked.
“I don’t know. But that ties into this electrical conundrum. An event perpetrated upon the island caused both mysteries. But the how of the electricity is a tough nut, as well. Someone, or some ones, could have neutralized the power plant or cut off the electricity coming to the island, but that doesn’t explain battery and motor dysfunction. Failure this complete is really a much larger-scale event.”
“What could do it?”
“Man-made? A nuclear blast, maybe. A gigantic electromagnetic pulse. There are supposedly machines that can create an electromagnetic pulse capable of simulating a nuclear effect on electrical systems without all the death and damage, but you can’t just pick one up at your local dollar store.”
Jason practically whispered, “Maybe that’s what happened.”
“What? A nuclear blast? I doubt it. We would have felt it or seen it. And everything’s still standing. It might explain the obliteration of everybody in town, but not why everything else looks like it always did.”
“Yeah. Well, is there anything else that compares?”
“I suppose, theoretically, a powerful enough lightning storm or major geologic event could create enough electromagnetic force. I’m talking a storm or a tectonic shift of cataclysmic proportions, though. If either occurred, we were too close not to have felt it. A lightning storm that big or an earthquake? We would have sensed it. That’s end-of-days-type stuff.”
Tim sniffed. “The rapture.”
Bradley said, “Dude, will you quit it with the rapture?”
Archer didn’t miss a beat, as if he’d already considered the possibility: “The rapture might make sense from a religious point of view,” he said, “but I doubt that’s what happened here. If the popular theory that God would take only ‘born-again Christians’ is accurate, the town should have plenty of people left over. We have a good town, but the majority of people are not Christian by any stretch. I would expect a rapture to have actually left more people than it took. Unless they’ve got the rapture wrong, and God just takes everybody.”
“Maybe God did take everybody,” Tim said.
“Everybody but us?”
“I already told him all that,” said Bradley. “It wasn’t a rapture. But I think we’re sort of ignoring the obvious here.”
“What’s that?” Archer asked, obviously intrigued.
“The creepy guy on the ferry? The complete disappearance of everyone? There’s something spooky about all this, man. It’s like a ghost movie or something.”
“Oh.” Archer was clearly disappointed. “I think we’ll have more luck thinking through a rational explanation to a very real problem here. In the category of the supernatural, there are just too many possibilities and, therefore, room for too much irrational speculation.”
“Dude, can’t you talk like a normal person for once?” Bradley said.
Before Archer could answer, it was Jason’s turn to break. “Why are you all being so calm about this?” He looked on the verge of tears.
Archer frowned. “Does getting upset help anything?”
“I don’t know!”
There was silence.
Jason burned. “We might never see our families again.”
Tim sniffed.
“Great,” Bradley said. “Tim’s crying again. Way to go, Jase.”
Jason sat on his hands. “This is messed up, man. This is messed up.”
Archer said, “We’ll figure it out, Jason.”
“Shut up!”
Archer winced. Finding no help from Bradley, he lifted the notebook to his face. But it was too dark to see the gibberish.
Night invaded the house. Their faces shimmered yellow and swam in shadows. Rain began to pelt the windows, then grew into a steady roar.
After a long silence, Bradley rose. “Forget this, man. You guys can sit around. I’m going back.”
Tim looked up, frightened. “Back where?”
“To the mainland, what do you think?”
Bradley had spoken to Tim, but Jason looked up from the couch like a chastened child. Meekly, he reminded Bradley, “The boats don’t work.”
�
�I’ll sail it. Kayak, I mean.”
Archer stood. “Bradley, it’s storming.”
“Duh. But I’m not sitting around here all night.”
He turned to leave. Tim followed him with his head, his tears surging again. Jason stared straight ahead, dumbfounded. Archer followed Bradley to the door. “It’s too dangerous, man.”
“Hey, here’s something for you to calculate.” Bradley opened the door. A mist swirled in around him. “If I paddle from here to the mainland to get help, what time will I get back?”
“Well—” Archer began.
“Dude! I’m just joking. You crack me up, Archway.”
He punched Archer on the arm and turned to step out onto the stoop. Lightning flashed nearby.
Archer flinched.
“This is gonna be wild!” Bradley shouted in crazy exultation as he walked across the yard and disappeared into the watery veil. Thunder rocked the house, and Archer shut the door.
Tim called, “You just let him go?”
“Yeah.”
“What if he disappears too?”
Archer cocked his head at Tim. “Are you going to try to stop him while he’s in this state?”
Jason wanted to get a drink from the kitchen. He rose to leave and said, “You think he’ll really try it?”
“I don’t know,” Archer said. “He’s kind of unhinged at the moment, so maybe.”
“Yes,” said Tim. “He’ll really try it.”
If not for the lightning, Bradley might never have reached the ferry landing. The thick rain and the black night, previously decorated by Echo Island’s many streetlights, had him pedaling blind. But the prolonged flashes of lightning lit his way.
Bradley dropped the bike on the gravel parking lot and headed straight for the machine room and the kayak. The lightning did not help in the building; in darkness and under the disorienting roar of the rain on the tin roof, he stumbled about, arms before him, feeling around like the newly blind. He felt along the wall to the right of the door, knocking random articles off tables and shelves in an attempt to stay clear of the boat ramps. He was already drenched from the rain, but falling into oily water was something else entirely.
Echo Island Page 5
