Todd (19 page)

He stares at this sudden abyss,
horrified to find himself at its edge, but his son's pain forces him over. He
will jump into this blackness himself before he will ever push Todd in again.
"It's just that my dad was always really mean to me. There were some good
things about him, but he—" Even now, thirty years later, he can't speak
ill of his father without feeling like he is betraying God. Not only is it
blasphemy, but his every word is being heard and taken down for judgment.

But that's not right. Alan's dad
is gone.

Everyone is gone.

"He would rip into me,
man," Alan breathes. "Nothing was ever good enough for him, nothing I
said or did or thought, no grade I got, no work I did, nothing, nothing was
ever
good enough for him. And they say... well, they say that sometimes people
treat their own kids the way their parents treated them. Not because they want
to, but because they can't help it, because it's all they know. They just do it
automatically. And I—"
Ah, gods.
"I did that to you, Todd. I
didn't mean to. When you were born I swore I wouldn't. I
swore
I
wouldn't. And I did anyway. And I'm sorry, Todd, I'm really, really sorry,
because you deserved better than that. You deserve so much better."

There is no answer. For a long
time, interminable passing eons, there is silence.

Then, slowly, the boy relaxes. His
breathing evens; his head sinks into his father's shoulder.

Alan is now Atlas, holding up the
world.

68

He wakes surrounded by Blurs.

The room is dim because one of the
lanterns has died, and its black corners are writhing with the things. They're
everywhere, now. Everywhere and always.

He closes his eyes, trying not to
be shaken. Whispers dart through his head about their plans: why they're here,
what they're doing, how long it will take. The whispers pry his eyes back open,
and then he's staring at one of the corners filled with Blurs. Flitting in and
out of the floor, the ceiling, wriggling like vitreous floaters—but two of them
aren't moving. They're still, looming as the others flash past. Watching.

Alan flinches, suddenly feeling
like a bug under a microscope. He forces his eyes closed, leaving him alone
with his twisting nausea and pounding heart. He feels like he's Todd's age
again, when any nameless night terror was a rabid dog that could thrash him in
its jaws until morning. Panic swells like bile in his chest.

What's next? Throwing a blanket
over his head and whimpering?

No. He opens his eyes again and
meets their stare. "It's our room," he says, loudly enough to be
heard but not so loud as to wake his son. "It's our building, it's our
planet. I'll look at you if I goddamn please."

His challenge might have been
Todd's hurled shoe. The pair turns sideways and vanishes into the stream of
Blurs.

Alan extricates himself from his
son's limbs and stands up. He is suddenly emboldened, heady with temerity.
Our
building. Our planet.
He stalks to the corner, thrusts his arm into the
thick of them—

And feels nothing. They continue
to swarm around him—through him?—but the hairs on his arm don't even quiver.

"What do you want?" he
mutters. There are answers here, somehow. He's sure of it. The Blurs, the moss,
somehow they caused everyone to vanish, or are part of what happens next.

Some insight tickles the back of
his mind. Something he's overlooked, or brushed off.

He lurches to his suitcase, rummages
through the contents until he finds Brenda's phone. For a second his heart
jumps, thinking he might be able to learn the date, but it says
1/1/00.
The
text is still in her history, though—the last one she received.

where
are you

They sent a text message. He grabs
this fact, examines it like an unearthed diamond. He has paid it nowhere near
enough attention.

His mind tries to derail him,
demands to know who
they
are, but he jerks it back. Forget who they are.
Somehow, they accessed the satellite system and sent a
text
, presumably
to every phone which could receive one.

Why would they do that?

That is the million-dollar
question, but as he ponders it, he finds another facet to this diamond. They
didn't just send a text message. They monitored the responses. They
answered
the responses.

He can communicate with them.

He whips his head toward the Blurs
streaking in the corner, as if he has stumbled upon a weapon and expects to be
attacked before he can grab it, but they don't notice his revelation. He turns
back to the phone, lamely fumbles through the settings menu trying to find a
signal, but of course there isn't one. His chance to get answers by texting
them—if he ever had it—is gone.

Maybe there's another way.
He
goes through the mental gymnastics of outlandish, impossible answers: turning
the cellular network back on, rigging a private cell network somehow,
experimenting with a
wi-fi
network. It's all
ludicrous. He doesn't have the expertise, let alone the time. The snow is
coming.

Okay. Nothing electronic, then.
But if they were able to read his text message, shouldn't they be able to
read a message over any medium? Could he maybe just write them a
note
?

He looks around the room,
bewildered by his own train of thought. He doesn't even know what he'd say to
them. As he wrestles with the question, his eyes light on the telescope, and
his heart jumps into his throat as a new possibility occurs to him.

He goes into the hall, retraces
his steps to the second-story roof deck he saw on the way in. The blue star,
when he finally finds it, is almost directly overhead. It is the
second-brightest thing in the night sky, outshone just barely by the quarter
moon. He sets up the telescope, the tips of his ears burning in the cold. His
heart is thundering as he leans into the eyepiece. Is this a good idea? Does he
really
want
to see?

But he has no idea what he's
looking at; barely even understands how to operate the telescope. He squints
and fiddles with knobs. A dull ache begins to fester in his neck. But the image
grows, fills his view, and slowly he begins to realize the blue star is an
asteroid. He can't see it clearly—at maximum magnification it still seems the
size of a pool ball—but its surface seems to be uneven and rocky. A long
trench, like a dried riverbed, bisects it. And it is swarming with Blurs.

He can't be certain, of course.
The image is far too small. But it's magnified enough to see that the rock
itself isn't blue; the color extends around it like an aura, shifting and
warping just like the Blurs in the corner of the bedroom where Todd is
sleeping. So it could be anything, really. Maybe it's a weird refraction of the
light; maybe it's blue for the same reason Neptune
is blue. (Methane, right? Or nitrogen? Something like that.)

So he can't be certain, but he is
certain anyway. He has never been so viscerally certain of anything in his
life.

The blue star is a seething mass
of Blurs, and it's drawing closer every night.

69

They wake up shivering. Alan loads
up the telescope and tripod, adding the combo to his mental list of
indispensible supplies. After a cold breakfast and a can each of warm Pepsi,
they're back on the road.

They don't talk much. The drive
requires his concentration: Alan is constantly checking his atlas, taking
alternate routes when the roads clog up, steering around debris. But the
silence feels different to him, more companionable. He reaches over and
squeezes Todd's shoulder; the boy looks surprised, then smiles.

An hour into the drive they reach
Interstate 394. The underpass is blocked, but today Alan doesn't waste time
checking for other routes. They cross on foot, but instead of packing
everything up, they leave it behind. After nicking a Volvo sedan from the first
gas station on the other side, they circle back as close as they can to get
their stuff. With the telescope, they need two trips to get everything, but it
doesn't take too long. Then they continue their slow way south.

They come across another fire zone
around midday, this one the result of a monstrous crashed passenger jet. One of
its wings is buried in an apartment building. They find a way around.

Sometime in the afternoon they
reach Edina, one of the most affluent
neighborhoods in Minnesota,
now a ghost town. Alan gives a wide berth to its malls and business centers,
but even picking through the residential areas is difficult, and they end up
having to change cars again twice: once at 62 Crosstown, and once at Interstate
494.

The Expedition they were driving
yesterday morning feels like a dream from a hundred years ago.

The sun comes down in Bloomington, four miles
southwest of the international airport. Alan is vaguely surprised they haven't
seen more crashed planes. He maneuvers to another residential area and finds a
house by a small pond.

"Ever been skinny-dipping?"
he asks as they pull up.

"What's that?"

"Come on, I'll show
you."

He brings Todd inside first, loots
the home for towels and a bucket, soap and shampoo. He preps a bed with plenty of
blankets. He considers trying to start a fire, but the twin specters of
suffocation and inferno hold him back. It'll be chilly, but the blankets will
probably be enough to warm them up; if not, they can hole up in the car with
the heater blasting.

"All right." The pond
isn't much to look at. The water's low, the bank muddy and naked. He wonders
briefly if the people who bought these houses felt ripped off when the water
level dropped. "Get naked, get in the water, and wash up."

Todd looks at him like he's lost
his mind.

"Come on, man, I'm serious.
We're filthy." He strips off his shirt, grimacing; it feels like pulling
off a second skin. "Look. See? We're gonna start growing mushrooms here
pretty soon." It's Brenda's line. She used it all the time. Of course, it
was never this close to being true when she said it.

Skeptical, Todd pulls his clothes
off, wraps himself in a towel, and approaches the bank of the pond. It's not
windy today, and it isn't even cold enough to see their breath, so that's
lucky. Alan would peg it at maybe 60 degrees, easily the warmest day they've
had in weeks, but as the daylight vanishes, that is changing.

Todd pokes a toe into the mud of
the bank and yelps. "It's freezing!"

Alan, also naked, follows him to
the shore and winces. "That's pretty cold," he admits, "but
we've still gotta do this. Come on." He reaches for his son's hand, and
the boy pulls away.

"Unh-uh. You first."

Alan's automatic response is fury.
The tired,
Why, you little—
kind of thing that his father would've had.
He recognizes it, waits for it to pass, then takes a step toward Todd.
"Come on. I'm not making you do it alone, so don't do that to me. Let's
just do it and get it over with."

"You first," Todd
repeats.

Alan draws slowly closer.
"Look," he feints, "let's just—" and he howls a war cry as
he lunges for Todd's hand, trying to pull him in. The boy screeches and jumps
back, and Alan slips and falls ass-first into the freezing mud.

Todd cackles. Alan tries to
scramble to his feet, slips again, and plunges into the water.

"Ah,
fuck!
" he
shrieks, between bouts of laughter and coughing up pond water. "That is
cold!
"

Todd is beside himself, laughing
so hard he is doubled over and shaking. "Are you okay?" he finally
asks. He is covered in goose bumps, his eyes shining in the dying sunlight. His
two front teeth have come in, Alan suddenly notices; they are practically
double the size of all the other teeth in his mouth, giving him a beaver-like
smile which is both guileless and adorable.

"Oh, yeah, I'm f-f-fine."
Alan exaggerates the stutter, clutching his arms around himself like he's
freezing to death. "Except that I'm in here
alone!
" he roars,
and bursts from the water like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Todd shrieks and runs, but Alan
catches him. The shrieks redouble, echoing through the empty backyards as Alan
roars. "
Grrrrraaaah
! Swamp Monster want
company!" He hauls his son back, kicking and screaming and laughing, and
plunges him into the pond.

70

He's able to use frontage roads
along 35 the next day, sticking close to the highway he's pinned his hopes on.
He braces for the worst as they approach the Minnesota
River, but the bridge is surprisingly clear. Traffic must have
been light here when the people vanished. They don't even have to change cars.

From the heightened elevation of
the bridge, though, Alan is able to see the city of Burnsville sprawled out below him. All of
it—the lake to his left, the field to his right, every building he can
see—bristles with blue moss.

"Oh," Todd breathes. His
voice is flat, heavy with shock. "Look at all the moss."

Alan pulls over. He needs a minute
to think.

That gibbering panic—the kind that
tried to derail him on the first day of this disaster—tries to rear its head,
and fails. He's become too inured to devastation to be alarmed. In its place is
only a flat-eyed weariness, a deep sense of despair.

 He gets out of the car,
staring numbly toward the city, cycling through options. How dangerous is the
moss? Can they drive through it? From here, he can't tell how far it extends;
for all he knows, North America from this
point south is covered in it.

"Can we go back to the pond
house?" Todd tries to keep his voice casual, but Alan hears the desperate
hope packed into the words. "I liked it there."