Extinct (4 page)

“I’ll check in tomorrow morning then,” Brad said.

“Great," Phil said. “Talk to you then.”

Brad hung up and propped his arms on the counter, staring at the glass. He could imagine losing a day, but he couldn’t begin to understand how he gained another Wednesday. One day was like the next though. He had very little to hang a calendar on. He remembered the letter. He always wrote a letter on Tuesday night. Since he’d just woken up he couldn’t have written one yet, but he remembered what he’d written. He nearly ran for his office.

The legal pad sat in its normal spot, propped next to his printer. He grabbed it and flipped to the middle. The last entry was from June second—a week earlier. He wondered if it was possible to dream an entire day with such clarity that it seemed real. Brad flipped the page on his yellow legal pad. Each Tuesday night letter was to his ex-wife. He never sent them anywhere. After divorcing Brad, Karen put the final stamp on their relationship by dying. He sat down to rewrite the letter he thought he’d already written.

✪
 
✪
 
✪
 
✪
 
✪

Dear Karen,

I should tell you straight-away—the Cartonio place burned down. I know you’ll be heartbroken. Nobody was hurt, thankfully. I showed up just after Butch kicked in the kitchen door and pulled the dogs out of there. Butch smelled and heard the fire down at his place, so you can imagine it was pretty far gone by the time he got there. Luckily, the dogs were in the kitchen and the fire started over by the garage. All those propane tanks, old mower engines, and junked cars were exploding when I happened to drive by. It sounded like the fourth of July. Now the nearest neighbor to this house is almost three quarters of a mile away. There goes your theory—this place is getting
more
rural every year. I’m certain Cartonio won’t try to rebuild the place. He didn’t have any insurance, and he owes the town a bunch of back-taxes anyway. If the town puts a lien on the property then he’ll have to sell, and I’ll try to pick up the land cheap. I’d rather pick up more property I don’t need than have someone put up another shack.

This summer has really heated up. Hard to believe after the cold, wet spring. I heard it was the second wettest spring on record. I’ve got some really interesting plants out back. Your pasture is almost done. At least the clearing part is almost done. I know, I’ve said it before, but I finally broke down and bought one of those brush clearing machines, so it really does look like a pasture now. I’ll get one of the Hucker brothers over here to level it out and then maybe hydro-seed it. I wish you were here. I can’t remember exactly what seed mixture you wanted out in the back pasture.
 

Anyway, this one type of plant popped up this spring in a place I cleared last fall. It’s over near the oak tree you said would straighten out once it got full sun (it never did straighten out, but at least it filled out). This plant is a short vine with two sets of leaves on it. The big leaves look almost like grape leaves, but it also has these tiny, oval leaves running up the stem. It moves! It’s like a mimosa. When the plant is disturbed, the leaves fold up towards the stem. That’s the one I’m thinking of, right? The stem also has these little barbed thorns. When the leaves fold up the whole vine kinda curls, and it sinks its thorns into your legs. Really odd—I’ve never seen anything quite like it. You’d probably know exactly what it was, I’m sure. I just thought it was a nuisance until I went back there with shorts on today. When that vine muckles ahold, it’s really painful to get it unstuck.

Well, that’s the bulk of what’s going on. I miss you so much.
 

Much Love,
 

Brad

Chapter 3: In the Snow (Fall)

“W
E
’
RE
STICKING
TOGETHER
,”
SHOUTED
Sam. He addressed Paulie and Robby in the driveway.

The storm erased Robby’s shoveling while they ate. The wind drove the snow sideways. The two men huddled together at Robby’s level so he could hear. Paulie tapped Sam’s shoulder and the two men stood up to confer alone.

Robby couldn’t hear Paulie’s question, but he heard his Dad’s response.

“Because he sees more than most people, and he can figure stuff out better than either of us can," Sam said. “No offense. He’ll be fine—he’ll stay on my right hip the whole time.”

Sam turned to include Robby. "Wontcha, Robby?”

Robby nodded. He moved to his dad’s right side to punctuate the point.
 

Paulie nodded, but glanced back to the house.

Only the kitchen windows glowed with light. The power went out halfway through supper and they started up the lantern just to see their plates. Sarah interrupted her supper to draw buckets of water as soon as the power went out. They would only have a limited quantity of pressure from the island water supply. It probably wouldn’t be a problem with so few people on the island, but Sarah didn’t like to be without fresh water. She and the Norton boys were using some of the water to rinse the dishes while Sam’s expedition went to look for other islanders.

“Grab ahold of my jacket,” Sam told Robby.

Robby fell in behind his father as they got out to the sidewalk. The snow was too deep to walk side by side. Paulie fell in behind Robby.

They headed south on Cottage Lane. Paulie suggested they go check up on Irwin Dyer, a sixty-ish bachelor who lived a few doors down. He never traveled for Thanksgiving or any other reason if there was a football game on. Sam trudged through the thigh-deep snow to cross the street so they could follow the Sampson’s picket fence. The snow and wind made it difficult to even walk in a straight line.

Paulie closed ranks from behind until Robby felt sandwiched between the two men. They moved in lockstep, leaning into the wind. Despite the cold, Robby started to heat up with the effort. When the fence ended, Sam cut across Irwin’s yard. They saw a faint light coming from his living room window as they approached.

They huddled on Irwin Dyer’s porch. Sam pounded on the door. When he didn’t get a response, Sam unzipped his hood and pressed his ear against the door. Paulie took down his hood as well.

“Anything?” asked Paulie.

“What?” asked Sam.

“Did you hear anything?” Paulie yelled.

“Nope," Sam said, shaking his head, “nothing.”

He pounded again. This time the door knocker bounced with each blow.

“See if you can see anything," Sam said. He pointed Paulie to the living room window. Paulie leaned out over the porch railing and cupped his hands up to the glass to peer inside.

“Nothing," Paulie said.
 

“He won’t mind if we let ourselves in," Sam said.

Sam cracked open the door a bit and yelled inside. "Irwin? Ya home? It’s Sam Pierce here.” He looked back to Paulie, shrugged, and then pushed the door open.

Robby had never visited Mr. Dyer’s living room, and never entered the house through the front door. They usually came in through his mud room when they visited Irwin, because they were usually returning one of his wandering dogs. Mr. Dyer didn’t let the dogs in the living room either.

They knocked the snow off their boots the best they could, but they dragged a lot in with them. The folds of their clothing held secret caches of powder that fell to the carpet as they entered.

“Irwin?” yelled Sam.

Paulie closed the door behind them. A single lantern, much like the one they’d left hanging in the kitchen with Sarah, lit the living room.
 

“Mr. Dyer?” yelled Paulie. “You here?”

“Why didn’t I think to bring a flashlight?” asked Sam.

“Here you go, dad,” Robby said. He fished a flashlight out of his jacket pocket.

“And you didn’t want him to come,” Sam said to Paulie.

“You know what I meant," Paulie said. He smiled at Robby.

Sam crossed through to the dining room and clicked on the flashlight. “Well, where’s old Irwin? He’s probably just in the kitchen, getting his supper ready," Sam said. He pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen. He paused in the doorway and turned back to address Paulie and Robby. "You coming? I thought we were going to stick together.”

“Hey," Paulie said, “do you think we should just go through his house like this? Seems strange just letting ourselves in to poke around.”

“If Irwin turns up, I’ll apologize for all of us, don’t you worry. He went back a ways with my dad, your dad too. I think we owe it to him to make sure he’s okay, in light of the circumstances. At the very least, we’ve got a real bad storm that’s popped up and the power’s out.”

Paulie nodded and followed.

The kitchen was dark, cold, and empty. The door to the mudroom stood half open and a few inches of snow had drifted in. Sam walked through the room slowly, pointing his flashlight left and right, not wanting to miss any details. Robby found a battery-powered lantern on the table. It gave off a thin blue glow and a low buzz.

“Back door’s open," Sam said. The kitchen featured a little mudroom off the back. The door to the outside stood wide open and the mudroom floor was covered with a fresh drift of snow.
 

Sam closed the outer door as far as it would go against the windrow.

“Looks like someone left and didn’t intend to come back," Paulie said.

“Maybe they were just raised in a barn," Sam said, smiling. “It has to happen sometimes. Everyone talks about it. Seriously though, he’s got to be around here somewhere. He wouldn’t just abandon his house and go out fucking around in a blizzard.”

“And his dogs,” Robby said. “They must be around too.”

“So where would he go, Robby?” Sam asked his son.

“I’m sorry?” Robby asked. He stared at the little drift of snow, which now had a big clean arc drawn through it from the travel of the door.

“If you’re right about this local extinction, where would the people go?” asked Sam.

“I couldn’t really say,” Robby said.

“Now c’mon, Robby, this is no time to be coy,” his father said. “I’m not asking for rock solid, I’m asking for your best guess. Fire up your thinker and give me a guess.”

“Well… It’s the
why
more than the
where
,” Robby said. He sensed his father’s frustration at his answer and quickly amended—“Most extinctions are gradual, and based on resources, environment, habitat, or predators. If this is really a local extinction, then it’s more likely some pathogen, since we can rule out volcano or meteor strike.”

“If it’s a disease, then why haven’t we got it?” asked Sam.

“We may yet,” Robby said. “Or we may have a natural immunity. Maybe we haven’t been exposed to the wrong combination of things yet.”

“Or maybe we’re just overreacting," Paulie said.

“That’s always a possibility, Paulie," Sam said. “But I vote we treat everything as the worst case, just so it doesn’t surprise us if it is.” He turned back to his son. "So where do you figure the sick people are then?”

“It could be like brodifacoum,” Robby said. His dad raised his eyebrows. “You know, that stuff you use for rats.”

“Oh, d-Con," Sam said. “The rat poison. Draws them to water?”

“Yeah,” Robby said. “It’s an anticoagulant that’s used as a rat poison. It makes the rats so thirsty that they…”

Sam finished the sentence for him, “Leave the house just before they die. So whatever’s making people sick could also be making them disappear before they die.”

“If it’s a water thing, that would explain why all those people disappeared off the ferry today," Paulie said.

“It would also explain why we were almost mowed down by that herd of deer trying to get to the shore," Sam said. “So that’s what’s going on you think?” he asked Robby.

“It’s just a working theory,” Robby said. “We don’t have enough evidence to support or refute it, but it’s something we can test against.”

“Maybe we’ll find some tracks outside then. Give us an idea of where he went. Let’s go check upstairs first, just to be sure," Sam said. He led the way back into the dining room. First they looked in the little privy, off the back hall, and in the den. Upstairs, they found two bedrooms and a bathroom. They were all empty. After making a quick check of the rooms, Sam led them back into each one so they could poke around in the closets, just to be sure.

Sam stood at the top of the stairs, shining his light at the access panel to the attic.

“He couldn’t be up there," Paulie said. “There’d have to be a ladder here somewhere. Irwin wasn’t exactly a gymnast.”

“I’m just thinking," Sam said. “There’s a panel like this under the rug in the privy. I saw it when I helped Irwin snake out his shitter.”

“Can’t be much more than a crawlspace under here," Paulie said. “This place is right on ledge.”

“We might as well be thorough," Sam said. “No sense in turning out the whole house just to stop now.”

They found the living room as they had left it, but the lantern started to sputter. Sam gave it a couple of pumps and adjusted the valve until it burned silently again. The two men and the boy collected in the back hallway and opened the door to the small bathroom. It contained only enough room for a toilet and a vanity.