by Platt, Sean
And water was there. A lot of it. All the bottles were warm, but at least 20 were sitting in a big pile of plastic just a few feet away.
Luca looked at the sky. The rainbow was gone.
“It’s coming back,” the dog said, though its mouth didn’t move.
Luca shivered. That was un-possible. Dogs didn’t think loud enough to hear.
“Sometimes we do.”
This doesn’t feel like my pretending reading mind imagination. This is different. Like someone scratched me on my thoughts.
Luca didn’t like his thoughts being scratched. At least not without being asked first. Mom and dad wouldn’t like it. So he refused out-loud dialogue with the dog, but was willing to follow the husky as it trotted back toward the highway. He grabbed two bottles of water and opened one. Warm, but refreshing.
Luca followed, hearing the rustling of more padded feet slapping the dirt behind him.
He walked for hours, feeling stronger the entire time. He was still warm, warmer than he should be, but a whole lot cooler than he’d been a few hours before. Before he fell down, before he woke to a dog that could talk to his thoughts. Before he woke to a ready-to-go campfire.
Luca didn’t get thirsty again. Every time he felt his mouth start to dry, the husky would appear with another bottle of water.
“I think I’m going to have to name you,” Luca finally said, drinking water and rubbing the husky on the snout. “How do you like the name, Dog Vader?”
The dog whimpered. “It’s good for now.”
Luca stroked the Husky’s fur.
He’d been walking for hours and though he wasn’t really tired; it was probably past middlenight or even next day. So Luca stopped, lay his head on a smooth rock and closed his eyes. It was only a moment before he was in the twitchy part of dreams, where his body moves a little but his brain moves a lot.
He opened his eyes and saw an Indian. The kind like in the movies. The kind you’re supposed to call Native Americans. The Indian was sitting on a stump looking at Luca right where Dog Vader had been just a moment before. The man smiled.
Luca sat up. “Am I dreaming?” he asked.
“What do you think?” the Indian spoke, his mouth not moving either. His voice didn’t sound like the deep-voiced Indians from the movies though. It sounded like his own voice, a bit, just like the dog’s had.
“Yes,” Luca nodded. His floppy hair bounced up and down. “And no.”
“You are correct,” the Indian smiled.
“Are you Dog Vadar?”
“I am your friend, yes, but I never agreed to that name.”
“Can I call you Dog Vadar?”
“No.” The man smiled. “But you may call me something else. What would you like to call me?”
“Kick.”
“Kick?”
“Yes, like sidekick. Like Robin. From Batman and Robin.”
“Okay. But what makes you think that I’m the sidekick?” The Indian continued to smile.
“Because you’re the one following me.”
“Then Kick it is,” he said with a laugh.
“Where are we going?” Luca asked.
“There,” Kick pointed toward the far side of the coastline.
“Are we almost there?”
“Almost.”
Luca believed him. He closed his eyes again and didn’t open them until the bright light and white spots came back and told him to. Of course the rainbow agreed. Kick, if Luca wasn’t crazy, was sitting beside him, awake, snout pointed at the rainbow. Luca got up and followed. So did the countless animals behind him.
Luca looked both ways, crossed the street, then ambled over a thin row of rocks separating the road from the sand. He looked at the coastline, then gasped and fell to his knees.
Cats, dogs, birds, and plenty of other animals that weren’t fancy enough for the zoo were there. They were everywhere. Maybe 1,000, though Luca was sorta bad at counting when the counting stuff was spread all over the place.
Luca turned back toward the highway and followed the rainbow. An army of beasts followed.
**
BORICIO WOLFE
Streetlights had flickered the entire way from his apartment to Her Majesty’s, but unlike his apartment and the rest of Crap Alley, currents were crackling at the Circle K. Neon bathed the lot in a cheap glow, which looked especially bright against the backdrop of black.
Boricio laughed out loud at the unlocked cop car and held his grin while looking at the shotgun sitting upright in the back seat. Shit sure is easy at the end of the world! He opened the trunk of the cruiser and headed inside the Circle K for a bit of light early-morning shopping.
Beer, chips, protein bars, Excedrin, porn, everything Hostess makes, a few Cup-A-Soups, and some other sundries made it into the surprisingly large trunk. Boricio slammed the trunk shut, then went back in the store to empty the cash register, just in case. He took the snub-nosed revolver from under the counter and tucked it into his waistband next to his .45, also just in case. After a swift kick to a safe that wouldn’t open and a like it fucking matters, Boricio was sitting in the front of a police cruiser for the first time in his life.
View’s much better from here.
The few miles to the Mississippi were graveyard quiet, with less than nothing on the radio and the same empty hanging in the air outside. Though Boricio wasn’t sure what he expected to see when he hit the river, it wasn’t anything close to what he actually saw. He figured there’d either be no one or everyone, but a fat river void of boats — save for what looked like three ships sitting out as far as his eyes would go — wasn’t on his radar at all.
If it had been bobbing in the middle of the Mississippi by last sundown, it was gone now.
Looks like it’s time to get the fuck out of Dodge.
A minute later Boricio was back behind the wheel, with the siren at full bray and the cruiser’s odometer kissing red, headed back into the business district. To see so many buildings, a city that was always busy like this, dead, was a mind fuck like no other.
**
After a few miles of nothing, Boricio found himself playing “I Spy” with his sanity. The empty outside was bad enough, but the shit he couldn’t put his finger on was a chronic case of Crabs worse. People were missing, but now it seemed like shit was missing, too. And he didn’t know what. He could feel things gone, but couldn’t put his finger on what they were. Like memories he couldn’t withdraw from his bank.
He knew billboards were missing, but wasn’t sure which. Seemed like all the chain shit was still there, though. Boricio flew by a billboard for Applebee’s advertising their new Stacked, Stuffed, and Topped “Entrees You Deserve!”
That right there’s a swinging sack of crap, especially in New Fucking Orleans. Not like the slop makes you sick, but it’s always cold, crappy, or served by some curly cunt hair pimply faced fuck who spends 40 minutes giving you the WhatTheFuck? eye. Plus, the pussy up in there is always too old or too young. Never just right. If the world is dead, at least it took Applebee’s with it.
Boricio whistled as he flew by the missing church that everyone knew wasn’t really a church. That one he knew was missing. The big billboard was still there, but other than that, it was just a big empty nothing sitting on the side of the street.
Well, how about that!! Crazy, fucking shit.
Boricio kept fiddling with the radio. Nothing. Hell, he’d settle for Top 40 right about now, but the nothing on the radio and the nothing on the scanner matched the nothing in the air and all the nothing he’d been driving by.
He was about to drive back home; he’d thought of a few people’s places he’d like to break into if they weren’t there. Some people that had some good shit that could keep him high for months. But then, in the middle of the street was a pickup. Unlike the countless other vehicles he’d passed, this one had a passenger standing next to it. The guy was waving for help.
Yee. Fucking. Haw.
Boricio slowed to a sto
p and gave the siren a celebratory blare as he pulled beside the stranded motorist. The pickup was less than a year old and the dude with the fresh haircut standing next to it was wearing clothes that still held their store-bought creases.
What kind of asshole puts on new clothes to meet the seven fucking horsemen?
Boricio lowered the window, then leaned his head out and smiled. “Morning, Sir. Need any help?”
The motorist nodded. “Thanks officer, you’re the first car I’ve seen pass in the last two hours. Any idea what’s happening?”
“Haven’t a clue,” Boricio stepped from the cruiser, closed the door behind him, and leaned against the black and white. “Been responding to calls all morning. Didn’t even have time to get my uniform on proper.” Boricio gestured at his dirty jeans and the faded indigo polo with a tear on the collar. “Where you from?”
“Gretna, but there’s no one there now. Whole city seems to have disappeared. Same here, I see?”
“Bout half the town’s gone missing,” Boricio chewed on the lie, “They sent the rest of us south on reconnaissance. I’m sure happy to have found you. I was about to turn around.”
“Any idea what’s going on?”
“Nothing for sure, though we got a call from the feds around 4:00 a.m. saying there was some strange happenings started last night over in Nevada. Nothing certain, but you can imagine how the rumors are flying.” Boricio had to swallow his grin, looking at the idiot with the brand new clothes wrestling the idea he’d put there.
“You think it’s some kinda ... alien thing?”
“Probably. Seems like Hollywood’s been predicting somethin’ like this forever.” Boricio ran his hands through his thick hair then looked up and down both sides of the street. Nobody else in sight.
Time to figure out if this fuck knows anything worth knowing.
“I need to check in with dispatch. Anything you can think of for me to tell them?”
“Not much to say. I woke up this morning and everyone was gone. Thought my girlfriend was pissed since we had a big blowup last night. Same brand that happens every 28 days or so and she’s never left before, but I’ve never slept on the couch either, so I didn’t think anything of it at first. But then the air got so heavy, know what I mean?”
“No, not sure. We didn’t have anything like that up north, just a bunch of people running and screaming in the streets. What sorta feeling you mean?”
“Well, it was like...” the motorist swallowed hard, “Don’t think I’m crazy or nothing, but it was like the air weighed more, or maybe less, I’m not sure, but it was different. And I could feel it so I knew something was wrong.”
“What’d you do?”
“At first, nothing. Turned on the TV, but there was nothing on. Not a single station.”
“You mean the TV was dead?”
“No, it was working, but all the channels were blue, except the ones with snow. Oh, and one channel that was showing some old show from the 50’s. Might’ve been Leave it to Beaver, but I’m not sure. Didn’t leave it on long enough to find out.”
“What’d you do after the TV wasn’t working?” Boricio looked at the motorist with kind eyes, waiting to kill.
“Went outside to see what I could see, you know? And I could just feel it, the whole neighborhood gone. And sure enough, it was like someone had shaken the city and dumped the people out. So I changed my clothes, grabbed my keys and started heading north.”
“Why north?”
“Got some family here, brother and his kids, wanted to check on them. But my truck was near empty, hadn’t gassed it in a week, and the gas stations I ran into are all down. No power, no people.”
Fuck. No gas. That was gonna be a BIG time, beer-battered bullshit of a problem. Good thing the cruiser was still three-quarters full.
“Well, you’re welcome to ride along with me,” Boricio jerked his thumb at the cruiser. “I can drop you off at your brothers, if you like. Anything else you can think of before I check in with dispatch? Anything that might help us figure what this is all about?”
The motorist looked far off, half swallowing what he didn’t want to say. Boricio put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
“It’s okay, you’re not alone. Tell me anything you think dispatch might wanna know, and don’t worry if you think it sounds weird.” Boricio smiled as wide as he could. “This is the season of weird after all.”
The motorist returned the smile and swallowed again. “Okay, you know that church up the road? The big one with that sign that says, “The Perfect Place For Imperfect People?”
Boricio felt a bristle at the back of his neck. “Yeah?”
“Well, it was still there, but it wasn’t. Know what I mean?”
Boricio wished he didn’t, but he mostly did. “No, not sure I do.”
“I could see it like it was there, and I felt like if I got out of the pickup I’d be able to feel it beneath my fingers, but it was gone, just like my girlfriend and everyone else in the city.”
“Well, that is weird. I’ll report that to dispatch.”
It’s official. This fucker has gone from worthless to boring.
“You ready to ride?”
“You bet!”
Boricio stuck out his hand. “Sorry I’ve not introduced myself yet. Must’ve left my manners back with the chaos. I’m Officer Thompson. Good to meet you.”
The motorist took Boricio’s hand. “Jim. Jim Silva. Good to meet you too. Thanks for your help.”
“My pleasure.”
Jim Silva had exactly two seconds to notice the officer’s face move from passive to predator before he felt the grip on his hand tighten.
“Hey, Jim?”
“Yeah?” Jim asked, confused by the tight grip on his hand, but too pussy to do anything about it.
“I’m not a cop, Jim.”
“Huh?”
“No, I’m a hunter. I hunt people like you, Jim. Hunt ‘em and kill ‘em.”
Jim’s eyes widened as he tried to pull back his hand. Boricio locked his grip tighter. He loved the look in his victims’ eyes in that moment when they first realized they were with a psychopath. It made him erect, even though he was no queer.
Boricio grabbed Jim by the back of his head, twisted him around, and thrust forward.
Silva’s nose smashed into the top of the cruiser and rained a fountain of blood. He would’ve screamed if sudden knuckles hadn’t beaten the possibility from his throat. Boricio released Jim on two unsteady feet, then let him wobble a few seconds before kicking them from under him with a maniacal laugh.
Another second and Boricio was on top of his new friend, Jim, banging his head on the asphalt like a stick on a snare drum. Jim heaved a few quivering shudders, already dying but a good stretch from dead. Boricio pulled the .45 from his belt, put it to the motorist’s temple, then shook his head and put it back.
Bullets are better than money now.
He raised his boot above the motorist’s head and Silva’s final whimper was silenced with a squish and a new stain on the highway’s old asphalt.
Adios dipshit.
Boricio climbed back in the cruiser and floored the gas.
**
Boricio wondered if he’d killed his friend Jim too quickly. Sure, it felt good, but he’d never killed two days in a row. Maybe he should’ve added the crisp-clothed cocksucker to the stash of Ding-Dongs in the trunk and saved him for later. Would be a shame to not have anything else for a while, which was probably how it would be.
He was relieved to find another breather, though; to know he wasn’t alone on the big blue marble, yet. That meant it was only a matter of time before he’d have someone else to play with. And hopefully the next time it’d be something he could fuck.
Boricio ran his hand along the sudden bulge beneath his denim. The hard-on made him think of pussy for sale, which sent his thoughts to his favorite strip club, Plan B, which made him realize their billboard had gone missing too.
Why t
he fuck didn’t I notice that?
For some reason, that bothered Boricio more than just about anything else. He loved that fucking billboard, and looked forward to it even if he wasn’t gonna stop. Shit was obviously wrong with the world, but shit was wrong with him too if he didn’t even notice his favorite pussy parade was up and running AWOL.
Boricio pulled off the road at a Love’s Travel Stop. If he couldn’t get gas, then he’d get a fully-gassed car. The lot was lit like Christmas, but none of the pumps were working. Boricio traded his cruiser for a full tank and an empty Prius, then went inside and emptied the register of cash, just in case, before heading back to his brand new ride.
The door was halfway open when Boricio heard a muffled, “Help!”
The cry was female, causing the bulge in his jeans to resurface. It sounded like it came from the back of the store, maybe from the bathroom, but after 15 minutes of frustrating search and two more cries, Boricio gave up looking.
I’ll be fucked if I start hearing things, too. If the world is fucked to pieces, fine. That’s them. But if I’m hearing voices, well baby, that’s all me.
Boricio flew back onto the highway and started fiddling with the stations, thinking maybe they’d be better than the ones in the police cruiser. For the first 15 minutes or so, they weren’t, but then a crackle of static on 90.7 reversed the trend.
90.7 was the New Orleans “Original Local Jazz and Heritage Station,” but if jazz was what was being broadcast, Boricio couldn’t hear it through the hazy wall of static punctuated by the occasional beep or muffled word. And though he couldn’t make anything out, the sound was still better than the eerie nothing outside. Besides, it was sorta fun trying to hear what he could, like trying to watch porn on a scrambled channel.
Boricio kept driving while the sky outside darkened. Daylight hadn’t hit, though it had to be morning. But the gloom in the clouds looked less than normal and mostly like a bruise.
