Seagull Summer

by Shawn Hopkins

  The crowd of people still lingering on the boardwalk and in the street seems indecisive about the next move, hesitant to disperse, not wanting to head back to where the seagulls fled, but not wanting to stay out in the open in case they came back. But if the cop was right about the military being on its way, then the seagulls might be the least of their problems now.

  “How’s it going?” I ask Doug. “You have any ideas yet?”

  “I think she in tree.”

  “In a tree?”

  “Yup.”

  “There’s a lot of trees. Which one?”

  “I think harder.”

  “Let me know.”

  “I will.”

  I head back to the car, never taking my eyes off the confused faces around me.

  I put Doug in the car seat again and take one more look at the helicopters still hovering over the beach. It’s a slow, nerve-searing drive to Samantha’s phone, crowds, ambulances, police cars, fire trucks, and others like me just trying to get through it all.

  10

  The woman answers the phone when I call and tells me she’s standing on the porch steps. I see her. Her eyes are up in the clouds, as if the birds are hiding behind them and are about to break cover for another attack. I honk to get her attention. She waves.

  “Is that lady with Momma’s phone?” Doug’s troubled voice comes from the back seat.

  “Yeah.” It’s hard keeping it together for Doug, but I’m glad he’s here. He’s keeping me sane.

  I stop in the middle of the street, not bothering to pull over, and she runs over to the Pilot. I roll down the window.

  “I really hope you find her,” she says while reaching into the car and handing me the phone. She’s older, maybe in her early sixties, and her skin is leathery from a lifetime of sun. But despite the fear she’s feeling, she still manages to emit warmth that, on any other day, might have invited a troubled soul such as mine in for tea and sympathy. There’s no time for that now.

  “I didn’t find her on the boardwalk,” I tell her.

  “That’s good. Means she got away.”

  I hope so. “I hear the military’s coming.”

  Her eyes reveal nothing.

  “It might get a little intense once they get here.” I briefly relate Tony’s theory of the birds carrying the next epidemic.

  She shakes her head, sending her sun-bleached hair waving. “This is my home. I’m not leaving it. Besides, this is Cape May; they can’t just drop a bomb on us.”

  She’s seen the same movie I have. “I don’t know,” I say. “They can be pretty creative when they want to be.” She doesn’t respond to that, so I just nod. “Thanks for picking up.”

  “You don’t have a picture, do you?”

  I know she’s just trying to sound helpful, but I oblige. Perhaps I should’ve showed it to the cop, too. “Yeah.” I pull out my wallet and fish out our wedding photo. It’s an older picture, but Sam hasn’t changed much.

  Before she sees it, she comments, “Haven’t seen a guy with photos in his wallet in a long time.” Then she takes it and shakes her head. “Sorry.”

  I expected nothing less, and I know she did too. “Thanks anyway.” I take it back from her. “If you’re staying, you better get back inside, lock the doors.”

  “The calm before the storm?” she asks, and I think I see a shiver run through her. She has a sense of what’s coming whether she wants to face it or not.

  “Take care.”

  “Good luck.”

  She goes back to her house, running with an eye toward the sky. By the time she’s out of view, birds have yet to snatch her away. Good. I wouldn’t want that on my conscience.

  As I drive back toward the rental house, countless movies and novels are parading through my mind—stories of an outbreak that the military is forced to contain with lethal force. The nice lady had said they couldn’t bomb Cape May, and maybe she was right. Unless, of course, they can spin it. Which is what politicians excel at. Contain news of the seagull attack and any reported sickness, detonate a nuke to wipe out any trace of the epidemic before it spreads, and then blame some other country we want to invade. Win-win for the guys in Washington. They get a war they always wanted while saving the country from some avian plague. Hell, it’s almost justifiable. But would they do such a thing? Absolutely. If they’re sure they can pull it off, there’s nothing that I won’t put past people with power. No matter what flag is pinned to their jacket…which is why I need to get out of here.

  “Where we go now, Daddy?”

  “We’re gonna’ stop back at the house and see if Mommy went there.”

  “I think she is.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I whisper. If she’s not there, I don’t know what else to do. I gotta get Douglas out of here while I can. I’ll come back for Samantha later if I have to.

  Cars are beginning to fill the streets now, people either getting wind of the lockdown that’s coming or just wanting to get out of Cape May before the birds return. The madness is coming, and soon the roads will be jammed, the only two roads out of Cape May sure to be closed off in minutes. Actually, as I think about it, I gotta assume the police have already blocked Route 109. Crap. I’m gonna have to think of another way out of here.

  My parking spot is still there, but I drive up over the sidewalk and onto the lawn instead. “Hang on, Doug. I’ll be right back.”

  “No!” He starts crying. “Don’t go!”

  “I’ll be right back.” I’m about to sprint up the stairs to the house, when the door opens, and Samantha steps out.

  Relief floods over me, and I can feel the tears welling in my eyes.

  “Mommy!” I hear Doug shout from inside the car.

  She runs to me, and I notice right away that she’s not well. We embrace, and the tears fall. She’s burning hot against me, sweat running down her face. She’s as pale as a ghost.

  “I didn’t get your message,” I tell her.

  “I’m just so glad you’re okay,” she cries. “When I saw the car gone, I thought…”

  “How did you get here? Did you walk?”

  She turns her red-rimmed eyes back to the porch, and Tony steps out of the house.

  “Tony?” Did I actually call him that out loud?

  He looks at me, confused.

  Yeah, I said it. “How?”

  “I got off the beach before the birds attacked. Recognized your wife comin’ at me on the boardwalk. I grabbed her and took her back here.”

  Samantha nodded, wiping her eyes. “I dropped my phone when he grabbed me. He wouldn’t let me go back for it.”

  I look at Tony. “Thank you.”

  “Who’s Tony?” he asks.

  “I thought you told me your name was Tony,” I lie.

  “Name’s Randall.”

  Randall. Yeah. “Nice to meet you.”

  He’s still on the porch, his eyes up on the wires. A lone seagull is perched on the top of a nearby telephone pole, watching us. “Maybe we should get back inside,” he says.

  Doug is crying, wanting to be freed from his restraints, and Samantha leaves me to rescue him.

  “Wait,” I look at Ton…Randall, and say, “We should get out of here. Military’s coming.”

  He swears. “I knew it.”

  At that moment, a police car turns onto the street. The officer is talking through a loudspeaker, advising everyone to stay indoors until further instructed. After it passes, another car comes from the opposite direction and pulls over in front of the house across from us. A man and a woman get out.

  “We almost made it to the bridge,” he shouts to us. “They have it closed off. They’re telling everyone to go back to their homes and to stay there.”

  Samantha has Doug in her arms, kissing him like she hasn’t seen him in a month. “What does that mean?” she asks.

  “I hear FEMA’s already set up on the north end.”

  “That was fast,” Randall says.

  “We got in our car
and drove straight to the bridge as soon as the seagulls started attacking. We heard the stories over the last couple days, and we weren’t about to hang around. There was a checkpoint already in place by the time we got there.”

  “And they told you to turn around?”

  “They said they had orders not to let anyone in or out of Cape May until further notice.”

  “They say anything about the birds?” I ask.

  “Not a peep.”

  More helicopters fly overhead.

  “What are you gonna do?” I ask them as they walk back up to the house.

  “Guess we’ll hunker down and see what happens. Not worth gettin’ shot tryin’ to run.”

  I think of New Orleans in the wake of Katrina, of all the stories. Of Boston after the marathon bombing. I want no part in it. But what choice do I have at this point?

  Randall finally comes down the steps, his eyes sweeping the neighborhood. When he gets close to me, he grabs my elbow and whispers. “I think we should go inside.”

  I almost make a face and ask, “We?” But he may have saved my wife’s life, so I just bite my tongue and nod. We wave to the couple across the street and go inside. I lock the door.

  Samantha puts Doug down on the couch and puts on a video for him to watch, reassuring him that everything is okay. Then she joins me and Randall in the kitchen. I almost gasp when I see her beneath the kitchen lights. She looks awful, and I know that something is wrong.

  “How do you feel?” I ask.

  Randall looks away.

  She shakes her head, and I can tell she’s trying not to cry. She’s scared, and I feel completely helpless. I hold her tight.

  “What’s happening to me?” she whispers.

  I stroke her sweaty hair. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to get you help.” She doesn’t argue that, but I know what she’s thinking…what we’re all thinking.

  After a few more minutes of talking in circles, we go into another room and turn on the television. There’s nothing on the news. Every once in a while we peer through the blinds. The streets are empty. Military vehicles have arrived, and they’re patrolling the neighborhoods. Martial law on vacation. Wonderful.

  We see seagulls congregating on the sidewalks, having free reign of the streets. Twice, armored military vehicles with a lot of wheels roll slowly past this old house, a soldier behind a large machine gun aimed on the clouds of birds that seem to be stalking them from above. The soldiers aren’t firing, though. At least not yet. I hope it’s because they’re afraid of collateral damage, of families being struck by wayward bullets.

  Hours later, I determine that Randall might be an okay guy, and I feel a little bad about that first impression. Whatever he is, he is no mobster. A rich porn producer? Maybe, but I’m probably better off not knowing, so I don’t ask. What I do ask is why he’s hanging around here.

  “Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

  “You don’t want me here?”

  “You probably saved my wife’s life; you can stay as long as you want. But—”

  He waves a meaty hand at me, dismissing my question. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Okay, I won’t. “I just don’t want you to feel obliged.” I almost mention the beauties he had on him the first time we met but decide to hold my tongue. He hasn’t offered an explanation, and I don’t need one. If he’s an Italian Hugh Heffner, good for him. As long as he doesn’t get any ideas about having my wife join his harem. Whether he saved her or not. Yuck.

  The rest of the day goes by without even a hint of our predicament gracing the television. Not on the local news, CNN, the Weather Channel, Animal Planet, ScyFi, no emergency broadcasting, no nothing. It’s almost enough to convince us that it didn’t really happen, proof of the power the media wields. Say something long and loud enough and it becomes truth; don’t say anything at all and it never happened. Goodnight and good luck.

  The seagulls make their seagull noises into the night, and if I close my eyes, I swear they sound like excited chimps bouncing around in the jungle. Every hour or so, a loud speaker tells us to stay indoors for our own safety. Douglas seems to think it’s fun, some kind of adventure. He feels safe indoors, away from the birds, and just spends the rest of the day on his Leap Pad, using it to take pictures of the soldiers and cops on the street. Sometimes authority figures don’t like that, whether constitutional or not, and it’s led to unpleasantries in the past. Especially when what is being filmed exposes some manner of corruption, which this may or may not be. Regardless, I don’t want to give them a reason to kick down our door, so I convince Doug to continue his documentation incognito from behind the curtains. That only makes it more exciting for him. I don’t know that he’s ever seen a spy movie, but he seems to be a natural at playing the part. Great, maybe I’m raising a spy. My wife will love that. He could be one of those nameless stars on the memorial wall at Langley. He passes out around 8. Samantha, who seems to be getting worse, falls asleep an hour later.

  Unable to follow suit, Randall and I play cards at the kitchen table until midnight, bouncing theories back and forth—theories I’m glad the rest of my family can’t hear. We have no idea what we’ll find when the morning sun hits the streets. We talk about the birds, where they might’ve come from, and Randall thinks that maybe they were part of some military experiment. When I frown at this, he proceeds to justify the thought by educating me on other, documented military experiments. Such as strapping bats with napalm explosives and dropping cases of them over Japan from B-29s in the ’40s. Pigeon-guided bombs was another experiment that actually got some funding, and there was the infamous “gay bomb” that the Pentagon looked into for some seven years, as well as weapons that would make bugs and rodents attack the enemy. I must admit that by the end of the lesson, attributing the seagull phenomena to some mad scientist (he lets me know that Operation Paperclip brought Nazi scientists into the employ of the US government after the war, so the term is actually not an exaggeration) sitting in the “creative ways to kill the enemy” room in the Pentagon does not seem completely out of the picture. The question he then proposes is: were the birds released accidentally or intentionally? How he knows all this stuff, I don’t care to find out at the moment. There’s no time for personal bonding, no stories of the past, no disclosing favorite colors. He doesn’t ask about me, and I don’t ask about him. We play cards and talk conspiracy and plague. We have some beers and ultimately surrender to fate by nodding off around 1 a.m.

  11

  I sit up with a start, realizing it’s morning and that I’m still alive. A quick look around reveals the room to be empty. Randall has abandoned his position on the couch. He barely fit on that couch, so it doesn’t surprise me to see him gone from it. I get to my feet and locate a clock. It’s close to 8, and I suddenly notice the smell of coffee. Going into the next room, I find Samantha lying on another couch, still asleep, her breathing shallow.

  “Hey,” I whisper, kneeling beside her. I place my hand against her forehead. Still hot.

  Her eyes open, focus. Once realization sets in, she manages to smile. “Where’s Doug?”

  “I just woke up.”

  “Go check.”

  “Okay. I’ll be back.”

  I go up the steps and into his room. This is where I left him last night, but he’s not here now. Before the chord of panic can be strummed, however, the bathroom door across the hall swings open, and my boy steps out.

  “Daddy!” He runs to me and gives me a huge hug. I pick him up, carry him downstairs.

  “You just wake up?”

  He nods, rubbing his eyes.

  I set him down at the bottom of the stairs, and he takes off running to Samantha. I walk to the front door, open it, and find Randall out on the porch, leaning over the railing with a cup of coffee in his hands. He’s looking up at the sky, doesn’t hear me coming.

  “No bomb yet?” I ask.

  He flinches, startled, and looks back at me. “No. Not yet.�
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  “How long have you been up?”

  “Few hours.”

  His eyes seem to take in every detail the morning has to offer him. He’s still wearing one of my shirts, and I’m afraid he’s stretched it out for good. No stitches can survive such strain for so long. I follow his gaze. There isn’t much too see. The streets are still empty, and I notice a checkpoint down the street toward the beach.

  “Any more instructions?”

  “Not yet.” He takes a sip of coffee and nods to our left. “See that?”

  I try to locate his meaning, and it takes me a few seconds before my eyes catch it. “What is it?”

  “Good news, I hope.”

  “Is it a net?”

  “Yeah. They set them up all over town last night.”

  “That’s good news?”

  He looks at me. “Means they haven’t resorted to bombs yet, so probably wasn’t the initial plan after all.”

  “Oh, that is a relief.” There isn’t a single person that I can see anywhere, and I begin to get the sense that we’re all alone. “Did we miss an evacuation?”

  “Still not allowed to leave yet.” He points down the street, at a police van that’s turning our way. “Come on, let’s get back in.”

  We go back inside and close the door. A few seconds later, the van goes by. It offers no message.

  Randall says, “Couple local cops was walking by earlier. Talked to me for a couple minutes. Think they’re as freaked as we are.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Said the military set up these bird nets all over the island. They don’t want the birds gettin’ away. They brought hawks to hunt the seagulls, and supersonic sound machines to drive ’em to sharpshooters. They’ve been shootin’ ’em out of the sky.”

  “What about the sickness?” I wonder for the first time why Randall has decided to stay with us despite Samantha’s condition. If I were him, I think I’d want to be as far away from any sign of sickness as possible.

  “Didn’t know, but they said the CDC was here givin’ everyone shots.”