The Night Parade (24 page)

“Delicate work,” Ellie said. She was holding a shoe box in one hand while holding back one of the branches of the hedgerow with the other. “I'm trying to be careful, but I can't get back there to reach them.”

“Reach what?”

“The eggs.”

For a moment he had no idea what she was talking about. But then he recalled the bird nest below her bedroom window, and the three spotted eggs nestled within it.

“You sure that's a good idea?” he said.

“The mother never came back,” Ellie advised, “and I'm not just going to let them be abandoned.”

David eyed the shoe box before reaching out and shoving the branches of the hedgerow out of the way. “So, what's the plan? You're going to be their surrogate?”

“Huh?”

“Their adoptive mother.”

“Oh. Yes. Of course. Why not?”

“Because they're eggs,” he said. Between two prickly boughs he spied the nest—a brownish-gray meshwork of twigs and dead leaves and blades of grass and bits of paper and cellophane all meticulously knitted together. Inside, the eggs looked profoundly delicate, and it amazed David that any birds in the history of the world had ever survived.

“They're just eggs
now
,” Ellie corrected.

“And they've been eggs for quite some time,” David said. He gathered the nest out of the tangle of branches and handed it over to Ellie. “They aren't going to hatch, baby.”

“You don't know that,” she said.

“I'm pretty sure. It's been so long, they would've hatched by now.”

“You don't
know
that,” she insisted, holding out the shoe box with its lid open. “Besides, it isn't right that they should be abandoned like that. Someone needs to take care of them.”

“All right,” he acquiesced, setting the nest into the box, then brushing his hands along the legs of his trousers. “So I guess now you're the mama bird.”

“What word did you say before?” she asked, peering down at the nest in the box. She cradled it against her breast.

“Surrogate,” he said.

“Surrogate,” she repeated. Then she frowned. “That doesn't sound nice at all,” she added.

H
e woke her just before dawn, and in silence they cleaned themselves up, pulled on fresh clothes, and made their way out to the car without muttering a single word to each other. It wasn't until they were heading west on I-70 with the sun creeping up along the rear windshield that Ellie asked where they were going.

“I spoke to Uncle Tim last night,” he explained. “We're supposed to meet him at a campground in Colorado. We've still got a lot of driving to do.”

“Why a campground?”

“Uncle Tim's just being cautious, and I can't say I disagree with him. Also, I don't think he wanted me driving the whole way.”

“Why?”

“Because he knows people are looking for the two of us.”

“Did you tell him about Mom?”

“I did. Anyway, this campground,” he said, quickly changing the subject, “it was a place we'd visited when we were kids. It's called Funluck Park. Some name, huh?”

“What is it?”

“Just a state park. A campground. But do you know what it used to be?”

“What?”

“An amusement park. You know, with rides and game booths and all that stuff.”

“Like Disney?”

He laughed. “Not even close, sweetheart. It was just an old park when I visited as a kid. But you know what? A lot of the old amusement park rides were still there, left behind. They were sort of like run-down landmarks.”

“Do you think they're still there now?”

“Could be,” he said. “Hey, do you want to hear a crazy story about what happened there when I was a kid?”

For the first time in a long while, her face brightened. “Sure.”

So he told her about the cross-country trip his family had taken back in the summer of David's eleventh year. Emmitt Brody had rented an RV and had shuttled his brood—Tim, David, David's mother—beneath what Woody Guthrie once proclaimed was the “endless skyway.” The trip lasted about five weeks, during which time they made it all the way out to the West Coast and back.

At one point in the trip, during a stop at a gas station somewhere in Colorado, Emmitt Brody got wind of a rinky-dink amusement park that had been closed down decades earlier and now served as a local campground. The gas station attendant who imparted this bit of trivia unto David's stepfather also added that many of the rides that had serviced the amusement park had been left behind, and while they were all out of commission and beyond repair, they had become a sort of trademark for the little park and the area that surrounded it.

Munching on gas-station hot dogs, they had detoured to the park. Soon, they came upon the ancient wrought-iron fence that surrounded the wooded grounds. There was a sign out front that read
FUNLUCK PARK
. Within that fence stood the relics of its former incarnation—the undulating roller-coaster tracks overgrown with weeds, the Tilt-A-Whirl cars sunken partway down into the earth, the bumper cars strewn about in a distant field like a herd of buffalo that had died in the middle of some prehistoric pilgrimage, a wooden carousel horse tipped on its side, weather-faded and strangled by vines, or perhaps the garishly painted boards of a gift shop tossed about like so much driftwood washed up on a beach.

They all got sick soon after arriving at the park, undoubtedly the result of eating the gas-station hot dogs, and each of them heaved repeatedly into the underbrush. David and Tim sobbed while David's mother vomited almost politely behind a lilac bush. Emmitt soon joined them, the sounds of his upchucking like the uncooperative growls of a stalled engine. In the confusion, Emmitt had dropped his lit cigar into a nearby trash receptacle; the debris inside blossomed into flame. After wiping his mouth on his sleeve, David rolled over and watched the flame dancing in the barrel, tongues of fire licking the sky, so bright it hurt his eyes to look at it, to stare—

He stared—

So bright, he couldn't—

“Daddy.” It was Ellie's voice, swimming down to him as if from the opening in a well.

David blinked and realized he wasn't staring at a fire—or even the memory of a fire—at all, but directly at the sun, which filled their entire windshield. The car was positioned at an angle off the highway, facing backward, the vehicle's nose butted up against the guardrail. His door was open and he had his left foot out on the ground, a cool wind blowing the damp hair off his sweaty forehead.

He looked at Ellie, who stared at him with terror in her eyes.

“Hey,” he said, and rubbed the side of her face.

“What happened?” she asked. He voice was barely audible. “You were talking and then . . . then . . . you just stopped and turned the car around . . .”

He glanced down and saw the car was still in Drive. If he'd taken his foot off the brake . . .

“Jesus, kid,” he said, pulling his leg back in and shutting the door. “I guess I was daydreaming for a second there, huh? Not enough sleep.”

“You just . . . just pulled the car over and turned around and . . .”

“Hey, everything's okay.” He gave her his best smile. “Why are you so upset?”

“You scared me. You were talking, telling me a story, and then you started talking funny and then you just stopped.”

“I'm tired, El. Very tired.”

He could see that her eyes were searching his. In the end, he looked away.

“Let's get back on the road, okay?”

After a moment, Ellie nodded.

They got back on the road.

 

A
s more and more students dropped their courses, the college granted the remaining students the option of completing the semester from their homes. Certain instructors lectured via Skype while others simply e-mailed assignments to their students and awaited the return e-mails with the work attached. For David, who taught English literature, the change was welcome and easy: There was little he needed to lecture on, and his students could all read the assigned work from the privacy—or safety—of their own homes. Papers were submitted to him via e-mail. When someone failed to send in a paper, David would send a follow-up e-mail as a reminder. If
that
e-mail went unanswered, David gave up. He assumed he was dealing with your basic collegiate delinquency—there were always a slim few who carried their laziness straight out of high school and into college . . . and, David supposed, throughout the rest of their lives, too—but on the chance that something more profound had come into these students' lives, he was not going to be the one to inquire about it.

He assumed a good number of them died in those final weeks before the school year ended.

The faculty was also allowed to work from home, yet David opted to come to campus at least two days out of the week. For one thing, there was little work he could get done with both Kathy and Ellie at home now. Kathy had taken to homeschooling the girl, and while Ellie had always been a good student, Kathy became frequently frustrated in her inability to get the information across to her. But it was more than this distraction that caused him to work in the English department's office these few days a week; it was Kathy's overall disposition, which seemed to be worsening with each passing day. Her eyes always looked clouded with dark morbidity; her thoughts always seemed to be elsewhere, occupied by some distant but oncoming doom that, sometimes, David could feel if he sat too close to her or stared at her long enough. If he spent too much time around her, she would inevitably lash out at him. Lately, their arguments had been frequent and fierce.

This change in Kathy terrified him. However, he didn't have the luxury of falling apart. Kathy's disposition forced him to remain falsely positive, if only around Ellie. His hours spent at the college allowed for him to release some of his own anxiety without worrying about keeping up a strong front for his family's sake. Sometimes he had to pull over on the shoulder of the road during the hour-long drive to the college, overcome by a panic attack. Sometimes he sat in the department office's lounge area with the lights off, staring off into space, terrified to talk to anyone else on campus for fear that their conversations would inevitably turn apocalyptic.

Sometimes Burt Langstrom was there, sometimes he wasn't. When he
was
there, he acknowledged David with the same detachment as Kathy. More than once David wondered if this was a sign of the illness itself—a preemptive disassociation prior to the onset of the hallucinations. Indeed, there was a fog about Burt that spoke to his mind being elsewhere.
Wandering
was the word that immediately came to David when he looked at Burt like this.
His mind is wandering.
But for obvious reasons, he didn't like to think about it in those terms.

On this particular afternoon, David arrived in the lounge to find Burt propped up on the ratty sofa, eyes glued to the television on the counter. On most channels, it was nothing but news reports now. Today, the news report was about some small island in the Pacific whose entire population had died. The newscaster kept using the term
extinct
in all its forms, which made David think of the dodo bird. And then birds in general.

“I didn't know you were here today,” David said, pausing in the doorway of the lounge.

Burt did not answer.

“You look like a zombie. You shouldn't be watching this madness.” He reached out to turn the TV off, but Burt barked at him. It was just that—a nonverbal bark, just like an animal might make. David froze. When he looked at his friend, he saw that Burt's eyes were bleary with tears.

David went to the fridge, stuffed his lunch bag inside, then stood there breathing heavily with his hands on his hips. He considered not coming to the college anymore, just like the students, for the sheer purpose of keeping away from Burt Langstrom. The man was setting him on edge. He no longer liked being around him. No, it was worse than that: He no longer felt
comfortable
around Burt.

“I'm no mathematician,” Burt spoke up suddenly, “but they say there's a baby born somewhere in the world every eight seconds. The rate of infection from Wanderer's Folly has just surpassed that. Like I said, I'm no mathematician, but I can figure out what that means.”

“I think you're driving yourself mad,” David said.

“Conspiracies abound, David.” Burt turned and faced him. He'd lost weight so that his cheeks hung from him like the jowls of a hound dog. His eyes were rheumy as a hound dog's, too. David didn't like the pallor of his skin. “You should read the
Nadsat Report
,” Burt said.

“What's that?”

“Online newspaper. Government cover-ups and the like. They've been posting some thought-provoking articles. They've got some insight, boy. Think the government might be responsible for this whole thing.”

“The government,” David said.

“They've been following the birds' disappearances, too. Early on. Like, before the mainstream media. Suspected something was up from the very beginning. You know what they're talking about now?”

“What's that?”

“The quarantines. Say some are legit but others are a ruse. They think people are being taken away against their will and studied in secret hospitals.”

David said nothing.

“Government thinks maybe some people out there might be immune. If you're in a quarantined zone, where pretty much the entire population has got the Folly, and you
don't
, well, maybe that's something important. What do you think about that?”

“I just don't know, Burt.” He felt suddenly exhausted. These conversations made him nervous.

“The
Nadsat Report
,” Burt said, still staring at the TV.

“You been eating, Burt?”

“Sure. Say, how's the family, David?”

“They're okay.”

“You're not still sending that daughter of yours to school, are you?”

“Kathy's been homeschooling her.”

“Sure, sure.” Burt nodded. His wet eyes danced around the room. “Laura's been doing the same for our girls. Don't let their friends come over anymore, either. Moon-Bird complained on that score, but I wasn't budging.” Burt turned a grim smile toward him. David imagined he could see the man's skull through the thin, transparent fabric of his flesh. “Moon-Bird's what we call our youngest. A nickname. It comes from a book of poems she likes.”

“I think you should see a doctor, Burt.”

“The only fellow I'm going to see, David, is the guy who rents those RVs off the beltway. Remember me talking about him?”

“Of course. That's still the plan?”

That grim smile widened. Burt's teeth looked gray. “Still the plan, Stan,” he said.

“Maybe I should drive you home.”

“Don't think so. Thanks, though.”

“Do you even have any work to do? Papers to grade?”

“Not a one,” Burt announced. He turned back to the television. There was a toothpaste commercial on now. “I'm just out here gathering my thoughts. I guess I come out of habit. It makes it easier to pretend that things are still normal by coming in here every day.”

David understood. It was what he was doing, too.

“You said your little girl is all right, David? She acting fine to you?”

“She's fine, Burt.”

Burt Langstrom's brow creased. “Yeah, but . . . how do you know?”

“I . . . I don't know, Burt. But she's the same. That's all. She isn't sick.”

“Well, that's good, I guess. That's real good.”

“Are your girls all right, Burt?”

“Oh yeah, David. They're beautiful. Just goddamn beautiful.”

David left him that way, opting instead to head across campus to the administrative offices. Only one secretary was there, reading a magazine behind a screen of bulletproof glass. She wore a surgical mask over her nose and mouth.

“I need to look up a phone number of someone in my department,” David said, speaking into the microphone box in the glass.

The secretary's brow creased. “Who are you?” Her voice was barely audible.

He held his faculty ID against the glass.

The secretary got up and approached the glass. Once David gave her the information, she rooted through her computer before supplying him with the telephone number. He entered it into his phone, thanked the woman—she had already gone back to her magazine—then slipped outside into the quad.

It was springtime and the afternoon was alive with the sound of insects of all kinds. Without birds, the world was becoming choked with them, and in such a short amount of time. Long-legged things popped out of the grass, and a variety of flying thingamajigs navigated from flower to flower. It got so you couldn't open your mouth outdoors without inhaling a few.

He dialed the number, heard it ring several times. He realized he was holding his breath. It kept ringing, and he was about to hang up when a woman's voice answered.

“Is this Laura?” he said.

“Who's this?” said the woman. She sounded nervous, on edge. He'd met Laura Langstrom a number of times, at various social events at the college. David and Kathy had also been over to the Langstroms' for a cookout last summer, a hospitality David kept meaning to repay. Laura Langstrom was what someone might refer to as a hefty woman, with meaty upper arms and thighs that stretched the fabric of her pants. She had always been pleasant enough—the entire Langstrom clan had always been happy and cheerful—but now she sounded like someone who'd been holed up in a cave for half a year and had forgotten how to converse with another human being.

“This is David Arlen, Laura. From the college.”

“Burt's college?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Is that where he is now?”

“Yes.” He thought it odd she wouldn't know where her husband was. “He's—”

“Is he okay?” she said, cutting him off. “Did something happen?”

“Well, nothing happened, but—”

“You wouldn't be calling me if something hasn't happened. Just tell me.”

“Burt's okay. I've just been worried about him lately. His . . . his behavior, I guess. His . . .” His what? Attitude? Outlook? Entire persona? He didn't know how to finish the thought.

“Does he seem sick to you, David?”

“He seems severely depressed. I think he should talk to a doctor.”

“We've all been to doctors. We had our quarterly test just last month. We're all clean here, David. Folly-free, as they say.” She practically sang this last part, as though it was part of some advertising jingle.

“That's not the kind of doctor I'm talking about. I think he needs to see . . . well, maybe a shrink.”

“We don't have a shrink.”

“Maybe he should get one. Listen, I know this is coming out of left field, Laura, but I felt I should do something—”

“Tell me,” Laura Langstrom said, and now her voice dropped, as if they were two criminals conspiring over the phone about an upcoming heist. “How is your family, David? How is . . . uh . . .”

“Kathy and Eleanor,” he finished for her.

“Yes!” The word jolted from her. “Yes, that's right. How are they? Are they healthy? Have you gotten blood tests recently?”

“We're all clean.”

“Are you
sure
?” Her words hung there, the emphasis on that final word somehow sounding perverse. As if she was taunting him.

“As sure as we can be.”

“Because sometimes you can't trust them,” said Laura.

“Trust what? The blood tests?”

“Yes, that's right. But not
just
the tests.
Them.
Do you understand?” She whispered this last part.

“No. Who's ‘them'?”

“Them,” she said. “Them. You want to know something? We don't let anyone come over anymore. I suggest you do the same.”

“We're keeping to ourselves,” he said, suddenly wondering how this panicked woman on the other end of the line had managed to usurp this conversation.

“And Burt and I, we keep
watching
them. Because I think part of this whole thing—the part they don't report about on the news, I mean—is the
sneaking
part, the part that creeps up on you and gets you, infiltrates you, even when they tell you the blood tests are all fine. Fine and dandy.” Again, she lowered her voice to a whisper: “But I don't believe it. Not for one goddamn second. You might think we don't notice those . . . slight changes . . . in their behavior, David, but we do. We do.”

“Who are you talking about?”

Laura Langstrom's response was a single whistling exhalation.

“Are you feeling all right?” David asked.

“Me? Oh, I'm just fine, David.” Her normal voice again, as if some pill had just kicked in and regulated her. “We're just all so scared, David.”

“Burt mentioned something about packing up and driving off somewhere.”