Todd (2 page)

He turned his phone off,
hesitated, then grabbed the Ngs' hammer and smashed it. Todd watched, eyes
wide. "What...?" he started, but Alan had managed to shock him into
silence.

Gotta get out of here.
The
phone was a ruin, but they could still trace the signal. Couldn't they?

They made everyone disappear.
They killed everyone at once. Yes, they can trace the fucking signal.

The lid on his pit of horrors
lurched. A wild, gibbering voice leaked out of it.

What is this oh gods what are
they what happened they're dead oh my god they're all dead—

"Why did you break your
phone?" Todd asked.

"Come on. We're
leaving." Some part of Alan's mind, fighting to put that lid back,
marveled at how steady his voice was.

"I want to check upstairs and
see if Ethan is here." Todd started into the living room. Alan grabbed for
his arm and missed.

"Todd!"

"Just real quick! I want to
borrow—"

"
No! Stop it!
"
Alan grabbed his son and hauled him outside.

6

He didn't throw him to the grass,
but he wanted to. "When I say to come, you come! No more fucking around!
You understand?"

His son flinched like Alan had hit
him. Alan knew the look: he'd seen it a thousand times.
Easy,
he tried
to admonish himself, but the warning was lost in a wash of panic.

"We don't have time for that,
Todd! Everyone—!"

Everyone is dead!
he wanted
to scream.
Don't you see that? Are you that fucking dense? Everyone is dead!
He bit it back, but it fought him. It wanted out. "I'm trying to keep
us safe. Okay?"

"Okay!" Todd barked.

Don't you fucking snap at me!

Alan grabbed his hand and ran back
to their garage.

"Where are we even
going?
"

He opened the garage door.
"Get in the car."

"Where are we
going?
"

"I don't know! Just get in
the car, would you please just
get in the damn car?
"

Todd got in, and Alan slammed his
door.

He backed into the street and started
driving. Their little neighborhood was a nest of curving roads and dead-end
cul-de-sacs,
a fresh horror around every corner.

A crashed car, shoving idly into a
garage door. A spilled bike, empty clothing pooled around it like a puddle of
blood. The sights forced Alan to take stock of the situation, paradoxically
calming him down.

Todd finally began to notice what
was happening. "Why are all those cars crashed?"

"The people are gone. They
were driving and then they just disappeared."

"So the cars crashed because
no one was driving them?"

"You got it."

Todd chewed on this as they
meandered through the suburban maze. There weren't many crashed cars, but there
were enough that Alan had to stay slow, to be ready to wind around them.

They passed a bike path with
another pile of clothes, this one with an empty dog leash.

"Why did they
disappear?"

Alan took a deep breath, trying
not to snap.
He's as scared as I am,
he tried to remember.
Or if he
isn't, he will be soon.
"I don't know for sure."

"Did
everyone
disappear?"

"I don't—" His voice
died. That word—
everyone
—echoed in his head.

How far did it go? He'd only seen
his immediate neighborhood. Maybe it had only happened in these few blocks.
Maybe—

A memory of the empty news desk
hit him like a blow to the stomach.

"I don't think so," he
managed, trying to believe it.
Everyone
was a big word. It couldn't have
been
everyone
.

"Did Mommy and Allie
disappear?"

Alan's hands started shaking on
the wheel. He flipped the rearview mirror down so he could see his son's face.
Todd was already looking at it, waiting for him, his face pinched and focused.

"I think so," Alan said.

A black silence followed the
words. Alan threw noise at it, trying to keep it away.

"I found their clothes
upstairs, the clothes they were wearing. Just like the... you know the clothes
we saw at the Ngs' house?"

"They're
gone?
"
Todd's voice broke. His face became something Alan had never seen before.
"Just like
that?
"

Yep, just like that!
a
nasty, spiteful voice spat.
I know Mommy was always your favorite, but she's
gone now, and you're stuck with me. Your lazy, mean failure of a dad.

Even now?
Alan threw back.
You
have to be petty and jealous
now?
What the fuck is
wrong
with
you?

It was an old back-and-forth, Dad Alan
and Asshole Alan, and while they argued, Todd looked like he'd been stabbed.
"Hey," Alan said.

"But how could they just
disappear?
"
The word was a whimper. "Are they coming back?"

"I don't know yet. Hey."
Alan tried to reach back for his son's hand, feeling like the world's biggest
jackass, but either he couldn't find it or Todd wouldn't take it. "We're
still here. All right? We'll figure it out."

"Was that what you... when
you said some kind of attack? Was that—"

"That's what I meant. But I
don't know, Todd. I'm just guessing. It might've just been an accident."
Wild visions danced in his head: melting reactors and broken containment seals.
His searching hand floundered; he gave up and put it back on the wheel.
"Okay?"

Todd's face pinched again. "Can
we
find
them?"

"We'll try." At least
the gibbering in his head was gone now. His son's need had shoved it back in
its hole. "Right now we just have to get away from the house, all right?
I'm not sure it's safe there. Okay?"

Todd's eyes drifted away from his
father's, back to the empty world outside the window. A tear streaked his right
cheek.

"Hey. Look at me. Okay?"

Todd looked at him through the
mirror. "Okay."

I love you.
The words were
on his lips, but Alan hesitated. He always did.
I love you.
What was the
big deal? Dads could tell their sons they loved them.

But Asshole Alan scoffed.
You'll
just sound like a prick. Brenda disappears and suddenly you're Mr. Mom? Give me
a break.

He let it go.

7

At 115th, the first major
intersection, the damage was worse.

The cars were piled seven- and
eight-deep. Looking down the boulevard, Alan saw even more that had run off the
road. Some had smashed into the fancy retaining walls that lined one side of
the street. Some of these were moving, dragging aimlessly against the walls
like asylum inmates. A couple, here and there, were on fire. He wondered if
they would explode eventually, like cars always did in the movies.

Todd's mouth was agape. "What
happened?"

"Same thing as back there.
The drivers disappeared. There's just more cars here." If a busy local
street was this bad, the freeways would be impassable. Anything busier than
their tiny suburban neighborhood would be. "We'll have to walk."

They got out and trotted through
the intersection, giving the burning cars a broad berth. Most of the vehicles
were still idling, shoving lazily against each other like rude customers at a
buffet. Alan imagined one of the SUVs jerking loose and running them down.

"Someone should turn these
cars off," Todd said. "They're making a lot of pollution."

A lame chuckle scraped out of
Alan's throat. "Not my top priority." They swerved left, to the front
of the column, so they wouldn't have to climb over any cars that could suddenly
start moving. "But hey, when they run out of gas, their polluting days
will be over."

Alan wanted to be away from home,
in case something did come to investigate his text, so he steered them toward
Brenda's mom's house. It was a twenty-minute walk past the intersection, down
quiet side streets dappled with shadows.

"Are we going to
Grandma's?"

"Yeah," Alan said.

"Is she... do you think
she..."

"I don't know. All we can do
is see."

There was no one on the streets.
No walkers, no bikers.

No birdsong. No dogs,
Alan
noticed, remembering the empty leash.
Did it nail all the animals, too?

He peered into backyards and tree
cover, hoping for a glimpse of a squirrel or a bird, but saw nothing. The weird
text message exchange had been nearly 40 minutes ago, and he was starting to
feel like they'd dodged a bullet. But the eerie silence, the total emptiness,
replaced his earlier panic with a thrumming disquiet.

When he'd been little and still
religious, he'd woken up more than once to the certainty that the house was
empty. Every time it happened—
every time—
he'd had to fight down the
panic that the Rapture had happened while he was sleeping: that Jehovah had
taken back His faithful followers and left Alan to die on a planet sentenced to
hell. The first time it happened Alan had started screaming, and his mom had
run in from the backyard to reassure him. Every time after, he'd kept his
terror inside until a fervent search turned up one of his parents, and the oily
sheen of horror would slowly fade back into normal life.

Seeing all the empty yards brought
those mornings back with a vengeance. The old indoctrination reared up,
surprising him.
You were wrong. God took everyone, but He left you, because
you were the worst kind of sinner: one who used to believe, but turned his
back.

It did scare him, for a second,
but he'd reasoned his way out of that particular fairy tale a long time ago,
and the rational part of his mind shot back fast.
Really? In the entire city
of Brooklyn Park,
everyone was holy enough to get into Heaven except me and my eight-year-old
son?
The argument was reflexive and dripping with disdain. It sent that
particular fear flapping off like a pricked balloon.

No, he didn't believe in the
Rapture anymore. But obviously
something
was going on, and it was easy
to feel small again: desperate for a sign that he wasn't alone, drowning slowly
in dread.

He fought it. He couldn't be that
little boy right now. He had one of his own.

Grandma's was one of the older
houses, all flaking grey paint and crooked gutters. Todd's mouth became a tight
line when he saw it. He ran ahead.

"Grandma!" His voice was
fraught with dread, a macabre parody of his normal cheerful cry. Alan trotted
after him. "Grandma!" It was weird, how loud his voice was on the
empty street.

The front door was unlocked.
Inside, they saw she'd been making a sandwich. Her empty clothes were on the
kitchen floor.

Todd knew what it meant this time.
He grabbed the clothes, staring. Alan would have said something, but nothing he
could say would matter.

"They feel so weird."

"Yeah. Thin. Like tissue
paper or something."

Todd didn't answer. He just stood
there, brows furrowed, eyes churning.

"How could they just
disappear?
"
At eight, he still sounded sometimes like he was trying to mimic the speech of
adults. Every sentence trembled with melodrama and outrage, but there was an
authentic rawness in his voice now. "It's like a
magic trick.
They
had to go
somewhere!
"

"Maybe they did." There
was no residue, no ash smearing the clothes.
Things never really disappear,
Alan
had told his daughter once, when she'd asked about death.
They can change
into energy, and energy can change back into matter. But nothing ever goes
away.

Grandma's old cell phone was on
the counter, the blinking light by the antenna signaling an unread text. Alan
opened the phone and saw what he expected.

where
are you

"Where do you think they
went?" Todd said. "Maybe they got... like... teleported, or
something?"

"I don't know." Alan
closed the phone, set it back on the counter. "We'll look tomorrow,
okay?" Better to stay in the house for now. It would be dark in a few
hours, and Alan didn't want to be out in it.

8

They tried the TV. It was a little
after 5, time for the broadcast news. Every station that would normally have a
live show had gone to static. There were canned dramas and commercials running
on a few of the other stations. Alan wondered how many stations were automated,
and to what degree.

He left Todd in the living room
watching a repeat of some reality show and went to Grandma's desktop computer
in her bedroom. CNN and all the local news sites were down. He went global and
tried to pull up the Guardian website. It was down. The only other
international site that came to mind was Al Jazeera, also down.

Amazon.jp was up, but that wasn't
a news site. Google was up. Alan searched for "British phone
directory," thinking to pick out some random phone number in Britain,
just to see if someone would pick up. Then he realized he hadn't even tried 911
yet.

He tried it on the landline phone.
No one answered.

His mom had died a few years ago,
but Dad was retired in Florida.
It was the first out-of-state number that came to mind. Alan never wanted to
talk to his dad, but in this one rare case, hearing his voice would be a
relief.

Alan punched in the numbers and
waited. Dad didn't answer.

Typical.

He tried other numbers: a cousin
that lived in Washington, another family friend in Florida. When no one answered he started
through every phone number he could think of, local or otherwise.

They were gone.

"
Everybody?
" he demanded
of the empty room. It was impossible. How could everyone just disappear? A
virus he could understand. A mushroom cloud he could understand. But the human
species didn't even possess a weapon that could—