Extinct (26 page)

The store was dark inside. When he turned on his headlamp, Brad found the fist-sized rock inside the circle of broken glass. A cart, flipped on its side, lay past the rock. He wrinkled his nose as he stepped carefully over the glass. Even with the cold, aisles of past-due perishables assaulted his senses. Brad took a quick tour through the store. In the realm of canned goods, he found a couple of shelves which looked suspiciously empty. The store’s inventory of soup, beans, sauce, and canned vegetables had been hit hard. The baking supplies looked fully stocked.

On the other side of the store, Brad found the chips, snacks, and other junk food diminished as well. He grabbed a couple of items for himself, stuffed them in his big pack, and then exited. The footprints led to tire tracks.
 

At the end of the parking lot, the tracks headed off in various directions. Brad picked a direction and walked down the tire tracks. The snow crunched under his feet and he whistled a tune to go with the rhythm. Under a dead traffic signal, the tracks split up again, heading in all three directions.
 

“You’ve been busy,” Brad said to the tracks. He crouched to study them further. It looked like the vehicle had only gone straight through the intersection once, to the left a couple of times, and the majority of trips had gone to the right. Except for his own, he saw no footprints to go along with the tire tracks.
 

Brad took a right and walked down the middle of the road. Local businesses and office buildings flanked him on either side. He walked between a set of fast food restaurants, and rubbed his stomach through his jacket.

He interrupted his whistling for another comment to nobody. "Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a hot burger right now. Give me a large fry, no, two, and a large shake,” he said.

At the next block the tracks branched again. Brad stopped and turned in a slow circle.

“I get it,” he said. “You don’t want me to know where you’re going, so you’ve gone everywhere. Is that it? Either that or you’ve got business in every part of town. Well I know one place you’ve visited quite a few times.”

Brad left the main drag and wound down side streets until he came up behind a house which faced a grocery store. He stood on the front porch for several minutes. The brick porch featured pretty, understated columns holding up a solid roof. The panes on either side of the door were frosted, but by kneeling on the porch swing Brad could see into the living room. The house looked clean and spare. Under-stuffed furniture sat on oriental area rugs and hardwood floors. The walls and trim were white, but the moldings had a fancy, old-school design.
 

Brad went back to the door and cocked his elbow to break through the glass panel next to the door handle. He couldn’t do it. He felt compelled to knock first. Brad knocked and then stood there, looking around to make sure he was still alone, feeling foolish while he waited to see if anyone would answer.
 

“Okay,” he whispered, “I’m breaking in.”

He tapped the glass and then lined his elbow up. His eye landed on rocks lining one of the flower beds right next to the porch. Brad smiled as he fetched a rock.
 

“No sense ripping my new jacket,” he said as he got ready to smash the window with the rock.

Before he thrust the rock forward, he reached out with his right hand and tried the handle. The door opened and swung inward.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. Brad pitched the rock back into the yard.

He left the door open a crack. The temperature was lower inside the house than out. He took a quick tour of the first floor—nice dining room, living room, kitchen, bathroom, den. When he made it back to the entry, he climbed up to the second floor. Upstairs he found bedrooms and bathrooms. The house had nice views of the cove and the city in the distance. Out front the maples would block most of it in the summer time, but this time of year they would have a glittering view of the city lights every night.
 

Brad smiled to himself as he stood in the master bedroom—if he ever lived near the city, this would be the kind of place he’d like to have. Around him, everything pointed to life suddenly interrupted. A glass of water and a folded magazine stood on the nightstand. A pair of pants lay draped over the back of a chair. In the master bathroom, a towel was hung over the shower curtain rod. Brad took off his glove and ran his hand over the top of the bureau. He found some dust—enough for his finger to leave a trail—but probably less dust than on his own bureau at home.

Brad visited the rest of the bedrooms. The family had two girls from the looks of the rooms. One girl had a serious odor problem in her room, but Brad guessed it was from the dead ferret in the aquarium. At least it looked like a ferret. Brad only saw a fuzzy lump of moldy fur in the corner. He found plenty of signs of them, but no actual residents.
 

In the kitchen, Brad found the stairs to the cellar. He turned on his headlamp and his handheld flashlight, but he barely needed them down there. Three walls of the house had window wells which let in plenty of light into the unfinished space. Despite having concrete walls and floors, the cellar looked very neat. Aside from the furnace, water heater, and other appliances, Brad found some workout equipment and well-organized plastic bins of books.

Brad locked every door, even the cellar door, and checked the locks on all the windows. He removed his backpack in the living room and moved the couch away from the front window. From this window he saw the best view of the grocery store. He planned to camp out in the house until he spotted the owner of the vehicle and the small sneakers, assuming they were the same person.

Brad pulled up an austere chair, and snacked on food from his pack as the light faded from the winter sky. The throw blankets from the living offered little warmth, so Brad fetched a down comforter from the non-smelly girl’s room. He wrapped his legs and stayed awake for as long as he could. The clouds glowed from a moon which Brad couldn’t see. Every now and then, he spotted a break where he could see the stars. While he stared at the night sky, his eyes drifted close and Brad fell asleep.
 

He woke once in the middle of the night and found his way to the back porch to relieve himself. He didn’t use a light—he didn’t want to be spotted or to ruin his night-vision. When Brad returned to his seat, he thought he saw a glimpse of brake lights on the other side of the cove. He stayed up for hours, staring at the spot and hoping to see more, but he saw nothing. He eventually slipped back to an uneasy sleep and didn’t wake up again until the boy broke into his hideout at dawn.

Chapter 11: Brad and Robby Meet

R
OBBY
PUSHED
OPEN
THE
door and shined his flashlight into Brad’s eyes. Outside, the clouds on the horizon glowed with the dawn.

“What do you want?” Robby asked. His tone was flat, rather than inquisitive.

Brad jerked awake and held up his hand in front of the light. A package of cookies slipped from his lap and landed on the floor.

“I’m sorry,” Brad said. “Is this your house? I didn’t think anyone was home.”

“What do you want?” Robby asked again.

“What do you mean?” Brad asked. Even without being able to see Robby completely, he got enough of an impression from Robby’s stature, frame, and voice to guess that he was young. “Hey, kid, do you mind not shining that thing in my face?”

Robby lowered the beam to Brad’s feet and then swept it quickly around the living room. Robby returned the beam to Brad’s chest. Brad saw Robby’s silhouette, but not his face.

“Why are you watching the grocery store?” Robby asked.

“I saw tracks there. I wanted to see if anyone would come back,” Brad said. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve seen another person? Since before Thanksgiving.”

“Where were you living?” Robby asked.

“Kingston,” Brad said. “Where were you living?”

Robby ignored Brad’s question. "How much snow did you get there?”

“What’s with the questions anyway?” Brad asked. “How about we go back and forth? You know, with me answering one question, and then you answering one question? Like a real conversation?”

“I’m from an island off the coast. You don’t know it,” Robby said. “How deep was the snow in Kingston?”

“I didn’t exactly get a chance to measure it, but it was pretty fucking deep. Pardon my French,” Brad said. “Not as deep as Freeport though. Maybe about twenty feet?”

“And Freeport?” Robby asked.

“No, no,” Brad said. “My turn. Where did everyone go?”

“I have no idea,” Robby said. “Why did you come from Kingston down to here?”

“I couldn’t keep living up there under twenty feet of snow, could I? As soon as the snow stopped I came south to find out where everyone went. Were they evacuated or something?”

“No, they weren’t evacuated,” Robby said. “So, as you said, you haven’t seen anyone since Thanksgiving, correct?”

“As I said,” Brad confirmed.
 

“If you decide to stay here, you can have that grocery store,” Robby said, pointing. “If you decide to leave, there’s a parking lot up on Forest Ave. If you see a car with the windshield wipers up, it’s driveable and the keys are in it. There will be a syphon in the back seat. If you see a parked car with the gas door open, you can assume there’s no more gas in it. You’ll have to syphon from another to fill your tank.”

“Wait, son, wait,” Brad said, sensing the conversation was coming to an end, “how long have you been alone?”

“What makes you think I’m alone?” Robby asked.

“Well, then how many people are there?” Brad asked.

“I have no idea,” Robby said. “Some people are living here where the snow is only a couple inches deep, but most people live alone. If you go south or west, you’ll find dead bodies. Go too far away from the snow and you’ll find worse. Watch out for any standing water or even any wet spots. They’re dangerous.”

Robby started to back out of the door, pull it shut behind him.

“Wait, wait,” Brad begged, “where will you be?”

“I’ll see you again,” Robby said.

“Hey, get back here! What day is it?” Brad yelled as Robby clicked the door shut.

From beyond the closed door he heard Robby’s yell. "Friday, January sixth.”

Brad threw off the comforter and bolted over to the door. He pulled it open and followed the boy’s footprints across the neighbor’s yard and over to a side street. A couple of stop signs away, he saw a red car taking a right turn.

✪
 
✪
 
✪
 
✪
 
✪

Brad spent a week in the Dead Ferret house before he saw the boy again. He intended to grab one of the cars from the Forest Avenue lot and head south. He found the cars just as the boy said he would—two near the corner of the lot had the windshield wipers raised, keys in their ignitions, and syphons in their back seats. Brad took the nicer of the two vehicles and started out for the highway.
 

Lots of tracks led down Forest Avenue, but none veered onto the entrance ramp for the highway. Brad puzzled about that as he too continued past without using the ramp. He continued on Forest until he saw a set of tracks turn off onto a side street. His curiosity got the better of him and he followed. The tracks led up the side street, and down another, zig-zagging through the streets past businesses and houses. At the next major road he found so many tracks leading to the bridge to South Portland that it almost looked like the road had been plowed.
 

In South Portland, Brad saw a wrecked vehicle for the first time. He got out to investigate.

A woman’s curly hair pooled over the steering wheel of the compact car. The car sat with two wheels up on the curb, but had little damage where it rested against a utility pole. Brad knocked on the window even though the hood of the car was cold when he took off his glove and touched it. The curly hair still didn’t move when he knocked again.

He tugged at the handle, but the door was locked.

Farther south, Brad found a big truck in a ditch with unlocked doors. When he pulled the door open, a man in a flannel suit slumped to the side, held in place by his seat belt. The air from the truck smelled bad. The man behind the wheel had an open mouth and black, crusty holes where his eyes should have been. His tongue looked gray and swollen. Brad shut the door to the truck and walked slowly back to his own vehicle. As he drove around South Portland, he saw several more wrecked cars and although he slowed for each one, he didn’t bother to check out the people inside. From what he could see from a distance, they’d all shared the same eye-bursting fate.

Brad made his way back to the ferret house that night.
 

He explored his local neighborhood. Although he found no corpses—eyes burst or not—he did make several other discoveries. Right next door he liberated a round heater from a sewing room over a garage. This house also yielded two big blue cans of kerosene. The round heater drove the living room temperature of the ferret house up to eighty degrees one evening. Brad slept in his underwear that night for the first time in months.