by Sean Platt
Tonight, Charlie decided, as he watched Bob joking with Callie, would be the night he’d make a move.
It was, after all, the end of the world. Who knew how long they had?
Bob got weird at dinner.
They were sitting at Derek’s fancy, dark, wooden table, which could have easily seated 10, when Bob set down the burgers on a giant plate, along with a bag of chips. He was bringing a baking dish from outside, which he’d cooked canned chili in, when it slipped from his hands and shattered on the floor.
“Dammit!” Bob shouted, his eyes quickly targeting Charlie, “Why can’t you clean up when you track water in here?”
“What?” Charlie said, confused.
“Don’t play stupid. You tracked water in here when you got out of the pool. And because you’re too damned lazy to clean it up, I slipped, and dropped our fucking dinner!”
“No, I didn’t,” Charlie said defensively, “I came in through the bathroom door, and dried off in there.”
“Are you calling me a liar, boy?” Bob said, his face redder than his bloodshot eyes.
“No,” Charlie said, confusion turning to panic. “But I swear, I came in through the bathroom.”
“Oh, so now I’m just imagining some spill on the floor, right? Next you’re gonna say I didn’t even drop the dish, I just threw it down on purpose, right?”
Charlie looked down at the floor and while a small puddle of water was next to the broken, blue baking dish and mess of chili all over the floor, it wasn’t from him, meaning it had to be from Callie. He glanced at her, her tongue tied and eyes frightened, then back at Bob.
“Maybe it was me,” he said, lying to protect her.
“I’m sorry,” Callie said, “Actually, I think I might have come in through the door and forgot to wipe it down.”
Bob stared at her, then back at Charlie, momentarily defused, and running a hand through his hair, then looked back at Charlie, “Clean this shit up, boy.”
“What?” Charlie said, “Why me?”
He regretted the words even as the last one trailed from his mouth.
“Excuse me?” Bob said, inches from Charlie’s face and reeking of alcohol, “Because I fucking said so. Things are gonna change around here. I worked my ass off so you and your momma could have a decent life. I worked night and day, busting my ass, and all you ever did was suckle on my tit, like a fucking parasite. You never did shit around the house, never contributed in any way, whatso-fucking-ever. But I got news for ya, boy, your momma ain’t here no more. Time’s are a changin’ and you’re gonna earn your keep if you wanna stay under my roof! It’s time you grow the fuck up and be a man!”
Charlie’s knee was bouncing as his throat tightened, and he struggled to hold back the tears of rage burning inside him. He couldn’t even look at Callie after being ridiculed like that by Bob.
How can he?!
Charlie snapped.
“Under YOUR roof?! Your roof?! This is your brother’s house! And the house before this? My mother’s! Not yours! And according to her, you never paid your fair share! She had to beg you for money, because you held onto all yours and then had the balls to take hers, too! YOU are the FUCKING parasite, not me!”
Bob’s eyes widened, his jaw dropped.
And though Charlie knew he’d made a huge mistake, the look on Bob’s face, if for even a second, was worth the price of admission.
Bob screamed, throwing himself on Charlie. The two fell to the ground.
“You little fucker!” Bob screamed, punching Charlie square in the jaw.
Pain shot through Charlie’s face. Another punch found him right beneath the left eye and left his face at the edge of explosion.
“No!” Callie screamed, pulling Bob away from Charlie. “Stop it!”
Bob reluctantly pulled away, glaring at Charlie.
Callie bent down to help him up, “Are you okay?”
Bob continued to glare as Charlie started to cry from pain and embarrassment. When Charlie responded in a sniffle, Bob smirked and walked to the fridge to get another beer. “Clean this shit up so we can eat like a family.”
The rest of dinner was uncomfortably quiet, as Charlie and Callie exchanged nervous glances while Bob seemed to almost completely forget about the whole damned thing.
As Bob drank, he told crude jokes, and even made small talk with Charlie, telling him he’d done well with the pistol at target practice earlier.
Charlie played along. His pride was wounded, as was his face, but if Bob was being nice now, he’d not look a gift horse in the mouth. Charlie started to understand how his mother must’ve felt living with a ticking schizophrenic time bomb, never knowing what would set it off or what would defuse it.
Bob got up to take a piss upstairs. Callie looked at Charlie, her eyes gentle.
“Thank you for lying for me. I’m so sorry. I should’ve spoken up sooner.”
“It’s okay,” Charlie said. “Better he take it out on me than you.”
As Callie gave him a giant hug, Charlie felt, despite his weakness, like a momentary hero.
9:12 p.m.
Bob was in front of the TV in a drunken stupor, even though it wasn’t working. Callie and Charlie were playing chess upstairs in the bedroom Callie had taken as hers for however long they planned (and there was very little planning involved with Bob) at Derek’s house.
Thankfully, they hadn’t spoken again of “the dinner incident,” and Callie was being extra nice.
The house had five spare rooms in addition to the master bedroom, though only three had beds. While they’d each slept in separate rooms each night, Charlie was hoping tonight, Callie might stay with him.
He didn’t even want to have sex with her — though he would in a heartbeat — so much as just lie beside her and hold her.
“Are you letting me win?” she asked as she took his black queen with her white bishop. “How could you have not seen that coming?”
“I dunno,” he said, trying to work up courage. His stomach was butterflies. “I was just thinking about stuff.”
“Like what?” she said, her beautiful eyes meeting his.
“Um, I dunno,” he said, suddenly realizing that he didn’t even know HOW to make a move on a girl.
Do I kiss her? Do I ask her out? Is asking someone out even possible now? I mean, how the hell are you gonna date when you don’t even know if you’ll be attacked by zombies tomorrow?
His head was spinning as he tried to think of something, anything, other than the rambling words falling awkwardly from his mouth. His mouth was moving a mile a minute, but he wasn’t hearing the words. It was just small talk, meaningless gibberish, as panic moved to full steam.
He had to get control of the situation before his lunatic ramblings sent her running.
Be bold. Be assertive. Girls respect boldness.
“I like you,” he said. His racing heart pushed out the three words, then stopped on a dime.
Twenty-Seven
Brent Foster
Oct. 15
9:47 p.m.
New York City
Brent’s apartment was a fortress of darkness, barely illuminated by a single, battery-operated lantern. A second light sat in the hallway, turned off to keep the batteries fresh.
The refrigerator blocked the doorway, and the kitchen table blocked the living room window. Brent’s mattress, dresser, and a trunk blocked the window in his and Gina’s bedroom. The window in Ben’s room was blocked, partly, by his mattress and dresser.
Their fortress wasn’t impenetrable by any means. They hoped it would slow the creatures down long enough to defend the apartment with the small arsenal spread out on the coffee table.
It had been nearly an hour since the massacre at Stan’s apartment. An hour of horrible silence and endless waiting.
“All this time, I was hoping Gina and Ben were out there, lost. But now I’m not so sure. If they’re out there, with those things, there’s … ” Brent couldn’t finish. The mere thoug
ht of some monstrosity attacking his wife or child, especially his child, was something worse than unimaginable.
But even as he tried to squash the thoughts from his mind, his brain drew the image of Ben seeing one of the monsters, thinking it was a cool cartoon or toy come to life, and calling out to it. And then the look in his son’s eyes as the thing came closer and then finally attacked.
Brent rose from the chair, pacing, wanting to do something, but not knowing what to do. What he could do.
“Do you think they’d be better off if they just vanished?” Luis asked.
“I don’t know. If the same creatures who killed Stan and Melora are also behind the vanishings, then no. But maybe … maybe whatever took all the people was actually saving them?”
“Saving them?”
“Yeah,” Brent said, the idea starting to spin and gather speed in his head, “Maybe some benevolent force was calling people up before these creatures showed up.”
“What? Like God or angels?”
“I dunno,” Brent said, “I mean, the things in the video didn’t seem all that godly, but would we know divine intervention if we saw it?”
“Then why didn’t this … divine source … take us all? I mean, I could see if it was the Rapture and all the sinners or nonbelievers were left behind. But if that were the case, the city would be packed with people, right? As far as we know, it’s just us four. Well, now two.”
As darkness enveloped the city outside, Brent and Luis took turns taking naps. Luis told Brent to go first, lying on the sofa while Luis sat in the recliner. Brent didn’t think he’d fall asleep. But as Luis was telling him a story from his life before the vanishings, Brent fell into the breath of nothing.
In Brent’s dream, he found himself reliving a year-old memory.
Brent and Gina were in bed, listening to the baby monitor as Ben whined, not wanting to sleep. He was almost 3 years old, and had been sleeping on his own for almost two years, but had suddenly developed a fear of sleeping in his bedroom. Gina was trying to sleep. It was 10:20 p.m., and she had to be up early. Brent was typing story notes on his laptop. He didn’t have to be to work until 11 a.m., but he had a few hours of work ahead of him still.
“How long do you want to let him cry it out?” Brent asked. “It’s been 15 minutes.”
Gina sighed, “We can’t keep giving in, or he’s not going to outgrow this.”
Gina was right, and surely in stress listening to her son cry yet not going to him, but she was strong. Brent found it hard to listen to his son’s cries without going to Ben’s room.
Ben’s recent night fears were likely inspired by Brent’s absence at home as he worked later and later. Most nights, his son was asleep before Brent got home. He couldn’t help but think if he went into Ben’s room and cuddled with him a bit, it would do more good than the harm Gina felt would come from surrender.
“I’m going in,” Brent said, closing his laptop.
“Sucker,” Gina said, playfully, and half asleep. He was glad she wasn’t going to argue with him. Raising a son was tough, but not agreeing on things with your wife made it harder. They didn’t have huge disagreements, just lots of little things, which added to the stress he already felt under the insanity of his workload.
He slipped from their room, laptop in hand, and set it on the dining room table before going into Ben’s room, dimly lit by the blue Stanley Train nightlight on the wall.
Ben was sitting up in bed, mouth wide open in full cry.
“Hey, buddy,” Brent said, “What’s wrong?”
“I want Daddy,” he said, his voice tired, ragged from crying.
“I’m here, buddy,” Brent said, “Want me to lay down with you for a few minutes?”
“Yeah,” Ben said, wiping tears from his cheeks.
Brent scooted his son over, slid next to him in the bed, put an arm around him, then rubbed his hair, which often soothed the boy to sleep. Ben relaxed almost immediately.
“Daddy loves you so much,” he said, hugging his son tighter and kissing the back of his head.
Usually, Ben would ask “how much” and they’d play a game where Brent would hold his hands apart in ever increasing amounts, saying, “this much.”
Ben fell asleep without response. It never failed to amaze Brent how quickly his son could go from fully alert to fast asleep. Or in the mornings, when he rose at the crack of dawn, from comatose to running around the house at warp speed.
As Brent lay beside his son, listening to his breathing slow and deep, he was tempted to get up and go back to working on his laptop. That was what he usually did after his son fell asleep, went right back to work.
But this time, something compelled him to stay.
As he stared at the back of his son’s head, and his soft, round cheeks, he was suddenly overwhelmed with tears. How Ben must feel never seeing his daddy, or being brushed aside when Brent had work to finish? He wondered how much damage he’d already done to his child’s psyche, self-esteem, and overall level of happiness by being such an absent father.
In that moment, his arm around his son, listening to him sleep, Brent started to see things with a clarity he’d never had.
Time was flying faster by the day, month, and year. Soon, his son would be older and wouldn’t want hugs from Daddy, and certainly wouldn’t want to snuggle with him in bed. And they’d probably wind up battling in the teen years, if Brent’s relationship with his own father was the normal trajectory for father/son relationships.
Moments like this, where Brent was everything in his son’s eyes, where Daddy could make everything alright with a hug, would soon be gone and lost forever.
This was it, now or never.
He decided to change, to make more of an effort to be home for his family. To live his life to the fullest.
Of course, that’s not what happened. The next day was the first of several staff meetings announcing deep newsroom cuts. Reporters would need to work harder, better, and more hours per week than ever before. Or they’d find themselves next on the list.
So, Brent kept running on the hamster wheel while another year flew by.
Brent woke with regret drowning his eyes.
As he wiped his tears, he looked at the recliner and saw that Luis had fallen asleep, a shotgun in his lap.
What time is it?
He glanced at his watch, an old-fashioned pocket watch Gina had given him when Ben was born. It was nearing midnight.
He was wondering if maybe Gina had already tried to get in the apartment, but was unable to.
As Brent rose from his seat, someone knocked on the door.
Luis snapped awake, gun ready.
Twenty-Eight
Mary Olson
Oct. 16
Just after dawn
Belle Springs, Missouri
Mary screamed.
Desmond, John and Jimmy were all awake and by her side in seconds. “What happened to her, do you know?” Desmond asked.
Mary shook her head, hysterical. She opened her mouth but her tongue was trapped. She tried to push a few words out, but the only things to leave were three long strings of guttural moans, followed by a soul-stripped bellow.
Desmond tried to calm her, but didn’t have the first clue how. Jimmy stared, his verbal cascade uncharacteristically still. Nothing in his upper-class adolescence had prepared him for an unannounced end of the world, or the bottomless torment of a grieving, panicked mother. John’s three miscarriages in six years of marriage gave him the sharpest tools in the room, but he was still too hazy from liquid poison to pull anyone from the abyss.
Desmond turned to Jimmy and John.
“John, I need you to sweep the lobby, everywhere across the common area on the first floor. Jimmy, go outside and look for anything unusual. Check the pool and trash areas. I’ll stay with Mary.” Jimmy nodded and turned toward the door. John was already on his way.
Mary tried to catch her breath, fighting against the 900-pound weight that sat in her s
tomach and plugged her throat.
She’d been in the wooly midst of a wonderful dream, where everything was okay — before her fate collided with an unimaginable future where her life’s work went from giving the country’s lovers the right words to say when they didn’t have their own, to keeping her daughter from the edge of oblivion. Life’s work that lasted all of a day before driving Mary to failure.
No. She couldn't, wouldn’t allow that to happen.
“She’s gone ... ” Two words, but the ending of the second was swallowed by a wave of heaving, shattered sobs.
“We will find her,” Desmond said in a soothing whisper. “She couldn’t have gone far. We just have to start looking.”
“You don’t understand,” Mary cried. “I can’t feel her anywhere. Not at all. It’s like she’s gone gone. No thoughts, no energy, nothing. It’s like … ” Mary fell into another pit of hysterics.
I have to stop. Paola needs me. She’s in danger every second it takes me to get myself together. And if I don’t stop freaking out, things will get worse.
Get it together, Mary. Now.
If she’s dead, you killed her.
Ninety-nine ... 98 ... 97 ... 96 ... 95 ...
Mary blended the rhythm of her breathing with the numbers in her head, slowly aligning her internal chaos with the new impossible reality.
Eighty-four ... 83 ... 82 .... 81 ... 80 ...
She took a long breath, then looked Desmond in the eye. “What do you think we should do?”
Relief colored his face. Desmond pulled Mary into a sudden, surprising embrace, held her for a short moment, then pushed her softly away. “We’re going to find her, and everything will be okay,” he said, holding her eyes. “But we’ve gotta be smart right now, and make sure we’re not letting fear drive the bus. Okay?”
