Inferno Park (6 page)

“Ready?” his dad asked.

“Sure.” Carter climbed up into the passenger seat of the moving truck. An old gray station wagon with a Georgia tag pulled into the parking lot, driven by a miserable-looking woman in her late twenties or early thirties, probably another survivor coming to pay tribute to a lost family member. Carter imagined she’d lost a young son or daughter in the disaster.

“You all right?” Carter’s dad asked. He pulled out into the sparse morning traffic of Beachview Drive. Carter remembered when this road was crammed full on summer afternoons, with teenagers and tourists shouting at one another from their cars.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Carter said, though they both knew it was a lie. He felt shaken.

“On to work, then. Did I tell you we’re moving Dr. Larson today?”

“Really?” Carter pictured his old pediatrician, the kindly wrinkled man with Sesame Street toys in his waiting room. Carter’s mom used to take him for regular check-ups at Dr. Larson’s office, but of course those days were long gone. “Where’s he going?”

“Fort Walton Beach. We’re looking at a two or three hour drive along 98, if the traffic doesn’t screw with us.”

They fell silent as they drove past what remained of the Eight-Track. Their old go-kart business was chained up and boarded, like all the attractions that had once lit up this section of Beachview Drive. The bank had taken it and stripped it down, selling off the go-karts and anything else useful, then left it for dead.

The same fate had destroyed Dinosaur Mini-Golf and the other countless little businesses here—nobody called it “the Starwalk” anymore. Some called it Death Row, when they had to speak of it at all. The closing of Starland Amusement Park had dragged down all the minor attractions along with it, killing the tourism on which the town had depended.

Across the road, the carcasses of the dead hospitality industry lay strewn along the beach itself. Heavy storms and neglect had already reduced some buildings to rubble. Conch City had few true hotels, but roadside motels had sprouted like dandelions, painted eye-grabbing colors like salmon pink, citrus orange, and sky blue, their signs advertising such mind-blowing amenities as “Cable TV” and “Clean Bathrooms.”

Now those places were locked and boarded, their parking-lot swimming pools thick with slime.

Carter glanced back at the amusement park. Any motorist passing through town might have been confused or unsettled while passing the high fence choked with weeds and vines. The only elements of Starland visible from the road were a few chunks of roller coaster, the steeply tilted red-white-and-blue tower of the American Rockets ride, and a two-story red devil face looming high above the overgrown fence, his maniacal grin gloating over the wasteland of rusting attractions and dead dreams.

Carter’s dad steered them out to East Bay Road, into Conch City’s small cluster of upscale subdivisions. Dr. Larson’s neighborhood was lined with old-growth magnolia, cypress and red maple trees, the two-story and three-story houses set back from the road, many with wraparound porches and French doors. Some still had their lawns and flower gardens intact, while others had suffered a creeping invasion of wildflowers and weeds. FOR SALE signs sat in front of at least half the houses; some signs were additionally adorned with large red stickers reading FORECLOSURE or SHORT SALE.

The pediatrician’s front drive curved in to touch his front porch, then curved back out to the street. A hedge of hibiscus thick with pink blossoms followed the curve of his driveway, enclosing a grassy lawn area with a birdbath-sized seashell water fountain at the center. Hummingbirds were out in the golden dawn light, sipping at the fountain and feasting on the heavy pink blossoms, but they scattered as the big green box truck lumbered up the driveway.

“Put on your hat,” Carter’s dad said as they parked at the wide front steps.

“I hate the hat,” Carter replied, looking down at the green cap with the cartoon cow perched over the words MOOVIN’ ON.

“Corporate rules. You don’t want a citation. QA can check on you anytime. You never know when they’re around.” MOOVIN’ ON corporate headquarters sent out Quality Assurance spies in surveillance vans to check the behavior of franchisees and low-level employees all over the country, including such details as conforming to uniform requirements.

“I hate working for this company,” Carter said.

“You’re not the only one.” His dad pulled on his own green cow cap and stepped down from the truck.

Carter sighed as he put on the green cap. He glanced at himself in the mirror. On the ridiculous cap, the one that would keep his head swamped and dripping with sweat all afternoon, the cartoon cow looked eager to be MOOVIN’ ON to somewhere new and better. Carter understood how that cow felt.

He climbed down from the truck and joined his dad on the porch, just as Dr. Larson opened the beveled-glass front door. He wore the same horn-rimmed glasses that Carter remembered, though his gray hair had thinned back to a small fringe.

“Who is it?” a female voice called from somewhere deep inside the house.

“The movers!” Dr. Larson shouted back over his shoulder. When he turned back to face them, his eyes settled on Carter, then widened behind his glasses. “Is that Carter Roanoke?”

“It is,” Carter said.

The doctor took a breath, glancing back at Carter’s dad. “And you’re Henry. Used to have the go-kart place out on the Starwalk.”

Carter’s dad nodded and mumbled something nobody could hear.

“I remember when you were this high, Carter.” Dr. Larson held his hand down close to his knee. “How’s your mother?”

Carter and his dad glanced at each other.

“Haven’t heard from her in a while.” Carter shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about his mom running off. It was too embarrassing, among other things.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Dr. Larson leaned back, his mouth open a bit, the reaction of someone discovering his attempt at minor small talk had landed him in a tangled conversational briar patch.

“Hard to believe you’re moving out, too,” Carter’s dad said. “Seems like everybody’s gone or trying to be.”

“The practice has slowed considerably. I was lucky to have a good offer from a hospital in Fort Walton.” Dr. Larson wrung his hands. “There’s still Dr. Weisman, if you need pediatric care...”

“Doubt we will. You already sold this place, huh?”

“Unfortunately not, but we have some hope.” Dr. Larson nodded at a house down the street, and Carter followed his eyes to a two-story blue and yellow Queen Anne style house with gingerbread trim along the porch and balcony. “The Woodmans finally sold theirs. Took five months, but...it seems like a nice family that’s moved in.”

“Somebody actually moved
into
Conch City?” Carter asked. It was his second summer working with his dad at the moving company, and in that time, they’d only moved people away from the shrinking town.

“He’ll be chief administrator at the new nursing-care facility on Cypress Lane.” Dr. Larson nodded at the gingerbread house again.

“New nursing home? That’ll bring some fresh young blood into town,” Carter’s dad said, and Larson gave a polite laugh.

“He has a daughter your age. You should go meet her, Carter,” the doctor suggested.

“We should get started,” Carter’s dad interrupted, as though Carter were going to walk off the job and go knock on the new girl’s door.

Carter and his dad went to work, wrapping everything in plastic, packing it into green boxes (with the MOOVIN’ ON logo, of course), and finally carting it all out to the box truck, starting with the heaviest furniture. They moved like clockwork, speaking little, communicating with a language of nods and gestures developed during their years working together at the Eight-Track.

His once-boisterous dad had grown quiet and withdrawn over the years. The disaster at Starland had cast a deep shadow over the whole town, and his dad was no exception—around that time, he’d stopped having his friends over to play loud music in the garage, and started looking somber most of the time. Carter hadn’t immediately grasped that the death of the amusement park was also the death of the Eight-Track and the rest of the town, but he supposed his dad had understood that right away.

The Eight-Track’s business had rapidly fallen off until it fell into bankruptcy. The family moved from a small but cheerful house with old hardwood floors into an even smaller apartment in a cheap complex called Sand Dollar Park. Carter’s mom drank more and more, spent nights away from home, and eventually stopped coming back. She’d moved away to Tampa two years earlier with some younger guy she’d met at a bar, and details were sketchy after that.

Carter enjoyed his summers working with his dad, because he understood his dad could lose himself in work, putting the disappointments and troubles out of mind for a while, accidentally becoming like his old self for an occasional minute or two. In good moods, he blasted his old classic rock CDs over the truck’s speakers, like he’d done in the long-lost days of the Eight-Track.

Carter kept busy—wrap, box, pad, repeat. Heavy items in small boxes, light items in large boxes. Seal each with packing tape and write KITCHEN or MASTER BEDROOM or DINING ROOM on two sides with black marker. Repeat. Pay attention and do a lot of nodding whenever the customer spoke. Never take off the stupid cow hat.

He was rolling a hand truck stacked with green boxes backwards down the front steps when he first noticed her. She snapped pictures—with an actual camera, not a phone—of a big white Colonial-style house down the street, set back in the shade of giant, sprawling old trees. It was one of the houses marked FORECLOSURE.

She had dark hair and dressed with a professional look, black pants and a crisp white buttoned shirt, which made him think she was older than him. By the time Carter returned inside and emerged again with the next load of boxes, she was walking closer, snapping pictures of houses along the way. She only seemed interested in those that were for sale.

He happened to take a little extra time unloading that particular stack of boxes, curious to see what the girl was doing. He watched her draw close and realized she was his own age, but he didn’t recognize her.

It was probably the new girl who’d moved into the old Woodman house. He wasn’t sure he was in the mood to meet her, or that he wanted to do it while sweating his face off under his stupid green cow hat, but she kept walking closer while he rolled the empty hand truck back down the ramp.

“Do you mind?” she asked, raising her camera.

“What are you taking pictures of? Houses for sale?”

“The implosion of Western capitalism.” She stepped onto the driveway and snapped a picture of Carter as he wheeled the hand truck—extra slowly—back to the front steps.

“Where did I fit into that implosion?” he asked.

“You’re part of the dissolving process of this neighborhood. Where did everybody go?”

“Away.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Probably that thing you already said. The decline of Western civilization.” Carter hoisted the hand truck up the steps. He definitely didn’t feel like explaining why the town was dying out.

“The old amusement park by the beach. That’s where all those people died, isn’t it? I remember it. I remember the devil’s face all over the news when it happened,” she said.

“That’s the place.”

“The devil’s still there. You can see him over the fence.”

“Yep. Satan watches over us all. I have to go get more boxes,” Carter said.

“Can I take pictures of you rolling them out?”

“You really don’t have anything better to do?”

“I’m making a photo essay about this neighborhood,” she said. “I’m moving in while everyone else is moving out. I want pictures of the old amusement park, too, all of that decay and desolation stuff.”

“Sounds fun,” Carter said. He did not want to talk about it at all, especially not after visiting the park’s front gate earlier in the day.

He brought out another stack of boxes, and the girl clicked several pictures of him towing it down the stairs and unloading it onto the truck.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Seventeen,” he said.

“I’m sixteen. You know, I thought you were older at first. I guess it’s the uniform.”

“It’s a very professional uniform,” he said. “You’ll notice the cartoon cows on the coveralls
and
the hat.”

“I like the cows. Are you going to be in school next week?”

“Where else would I be?”

“Just asking. I read the drop-out rate was super-high here.”

“More room for the rest of us,” he said. “I’m not dropping out. I don’t want to be moving people’s furniture when I’m forty.”

At that moment, he happened to see his dad wheeling his own stack of boxes across the front porch. His dad stopped for a moment and looked at him. He’d clearly been close enough to hear what Carter had said, and Carter suddenly felt awful.

His dad didn’t say anything as he lugged his hand truck down the front stairs and up the retractable ramp into the truck. When he’d unloaded his boxes, he looked from Carter to the girl, who was now only a few feet from the back of the truck.

“Hurry up. Long day ahead,” his dad finally said before returning inside.