Todd (6 page)

Forty feet in, an Accord had
crashed over the divider and through the bridge rail, blocking the pedestrian
walkway. The torn rail exposed the thrashing river, fifty feet below.

They could climb over the hood,
but it was slick with hailstones and angled toward the water; the car's rear
end was suspended behind the overturned divider, its front tires barely
clinging to the edge of the bridge.

That left a tiny crawlspace under
its midsection. "Under! Go under!" Alan dropped to his stomach and
wriggled under the car, stealing looks back to make sure Todd was following.
Each fevered glance brought him a flash of the frothing river, two feet to his
right.

The car creaked above them,
buffeted by the wind. An instant of bad luck and it would collapse, crushing
them as it rolled over the edge, maybe breaking off a chunk of the bridge and
dumping them into the river. Then he was out, turning back for his son. He
grabbed his hand and pulled. Todd howled.

"I'm stuck! I'm
stuck
on
something!"

"Todd, come on! Just
pull!"

"
I can't!
"

The trees they had passed minutes
before were now aflame. The wind picked up, shrieking out of the darkness, and
the fire fell back.

Alan dove back under the car. Todd's
shirt had caught on a torn chunk of metal. He slipped it loose and hauled him
out. They tore across the bridge as the wind crescendoed.

On the river banks below, trees
bent nearly sideways. One came loose, hurling itself into the river.

Then they were across.

Here, the street was nearly clear
of traffic. Alan saw a house across the road and pulled Todd that way. They
bounded up the front steps as the wind screamed. He threw the front door open
and ran inside. In a flash of lightning, he saw a dusty old living room,
threadbare carpet, leaning furniture.

"The basement! Find the
basement!" The wind barged in through the door behind them, hurling the
empty clothes that had been on the living room floor into the little kitchen in
the back. Another flash of lightning and he saw a set of stairs winding
upwards, with a door set under its landing.

The front windows erupted with
tree branches as they made the door, showering the carpet with glass. The
branch leaves bucked and heaved, grasping. Alan turned his back to them and
yanked the door open.

The stairs to the basement were
dead black. Alan slammed the door, plunging them into darkness.

"I can't see!" Todd
shrieked. "
Where are we?
"

Alan pulled him along, slipping
and running down the stairs to a landing, then feeling his way around in the
dark to more steps. At the bottom he tripped and fell. His hands scraped cold
concrete.

He scooted back until he felt the
wall behind him. Then Todd clutched at him, his head buried in Alan's chest,
rocking and wailing as a leviathan tore the world apart.

19

He dreamt about
THE GAME
.

He was in the basement, of course.
He was always in the basement. He had been there so long that the outside world
had become merely a vague idea, something to be glimpsed through the hazy window
of his computer screen or heard crackling in the audio of a YouTube video.

But
THE
GAME
was coming along, or so he told his wife whenever she asked:
mechanics falling into place, yes, playtesting going well. He'd have a
prototype ready for a crowdfunding campaign soon, he said. This month, it was
always this month, and the faith burning in her eyes, the same faith that had
always buoyed him and given him strength, now made him flinch.

Because
THE GAME
was supposed to be fun. When he started, he had trusted
his instincts on what constituted fun, but he'd been in this damn hole for so
long that those instincts were rusting. Or maybe, he realized, they'd never
been there in the first place. Maybe he just wasn't smart enough or creative
enough; maybe he was delusional to think he'd ever be able to do it. Maybe he
had quit his job and cashed out his retirement savings for nothing. Maybe his
empty hubris would crash his family; cost them their house; cost him his
marriage.

You're not some creative
genius,
his dad said.
You're just a hack. You're a deadbeat, hiding in
your basement instead of getting a real job. For Christ's sakes, grow up. Your
family needs you.

20

"Dad," Todd murmured.

Alan stirred, his muscles stiff
from hours on the ground. There were two narrow windows set high up in the
walls—he'd seen them igniting with lightning during the storm—and through them
he could see it was still nighttime. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness a
little, and he could make out the vague outlines of stacked junk now, not all
that different from his own basement. But the roaring and creaking from
outside, the sounds of shattering glass and uprooting trees, were finally over.
Now he heard rain pattering, and nothing else.

Alan absorbed this. "Are you
okay?"

"Yeah." A pause.
"That was really scary." Todd's voice was shaking. "Was that a
tornado?" There was a kind of awed reverence in his voice; he didn't have
that casual midwestern bravado about storms yet.

"I don't know. It might have
been. It's hard to tell sometimes. Wind can be really strong without a tornado,
too." Suddenly Alan wanted to inspect him for cuts or bruises, make sure
he wasn't limping, but it was too dark. "Do you hurt at all?"

"No. Well maybe a little bit.
My leg kind of hurts, and my shoulder."

Alan remembered hauling his son
over the bridge, pulling him down the stairs. "But not a lot? Can you
stand up?"

A rustle; Todd's shadow moved in
the darkness. "Yeah, I can stand up."

"Okay." Alan heaved a
sigh. "That's good." The storm was a mess of blurred impressions in
his head. As they recurred to him, he wanted to kick himself. It was stupid
decision after stupid decision. He had to start making the right calls.

We both survived,
he tried
to remind himself.
That counts for something.

"The storm's over, I
think."

"Whew." Todd said it
like a word, carefully pronouncing each sound, without a hint of irony. Then:
"Are we gonna go home now?"

"No. Not right now."
They didn't have a car, and he wouldn't risk going back over that bridge in the
dark. "But it might be safe to go upstairs." Alan shifted, wincing as
blood burned its way back into his stiff legs. "I'm gonna go check, make
sure it's safe."

Todd grabbed his hand. "You
can't leave me in the
dark!
"

The words crackled with panic,
taking Alan aback. For just a second, he was in his son's head: alone in a
stranger's black basement, reeling from losing most of his family. The grip of
Todd's hand sparked an incongruous memory of Alan offering the boy his thumb
when Todd had been a baby, and the warm, fierce clutch of his gums.

"No. Sorry. I wasn't
thinking. We'll both go up. But I go first, all right? And you
have
to
listen. Stay back until I say it's safe."

"Okay." He was still
holding Alan's hand.

21

It was no brighter in the living
room than it had been in the basement. In one of the sporadic lightning
flashes, Alan saw another tree had come down, this one bulging through the
living room windows. It had claimed the TV—an old standard-definition—and one
of the arm chairs, but the wall was bearing weight. When the flicker of
lightning ended, Alan held onto the afterimage as long as he could, painting it
over the darkness.

"Okay. We're gonna go into
the kitchen, try to find some light or some food. All right?"

"Okay."

"But there's broken glass all
over the floor, and who knows what else, so you have to be careful. No running,
no being crazy." Something occurred to him. "Do you still have both
your shoes on?"

Todd reached down to feel his
feet—it was the kind of quirky, disconnected behavior his teachers always
commented on at conference time. "Yeah."

"All right. Walk slow. Try
not to lift your feet. Just kind of... shuffle, along the floor."

"Like walking on ice?"

"Yes!" Perfect.
"Just like that."

Alan led them shuffling into the
dark, feeling along the wall with one hand. When the floor changed from the
scruff of carpet to the squeak of linoleum, he knelt and felt carefully for
broken glass. There was a lot less.

"Okay. We need to find a
flashlight. Try to feel for drawers or—"

Click.
A light flared on.
Todd was holding a flashlight, his face split in a giant grin.

"Where was that?" Alan
said, boggling.

"It was on the wall!"
Todd squealed. "I just felt along the wall and there was a nail and it was
hanging
right there!
"

"Nice!" Alan cried, and
Todd squealed again, bouncing up and down, eyes dancing: "
Eeeeeeeeeeeee
!
"

"All right," Alan
laughed. "All right. Nice!" He held out his hand. "Can I hold
it?"

"Sure!"

Alan took the flashlight, and
suddenly everything felt possible. They'd lived through the storm. They'd made
it to the other side of the river, hopefully leaving the fire behind. They were
in the Twin Cities suburbs, surrounded by grocery stores and generators and
food. They would survive this.

"Great," he said.
"Nice job, pal."

"I just felt and it was right
there, I couldn't believe it!"

"That is fantastic. Here,
come on, let's see if we can find you one."

Turned out there was another one,
hanging near the back door. In Todd's hands it became an instant counterpoint to
the steady, searching beam from Alan's, lurching and leaping over the walls
like a lemur in the trees.

The kitchen was old—peeling
laminate countertops and a single rusting sink—but the pantry was stocked, and
the fridge was still cool. Todd grabbed some cheese sticks and crackers while
Alan pulled out the cold lunch meat and some carrots, then hunted down some
bread. There were grocery bags jammed in next to the fridge; Alan loaded up two
of them.

"All right. Let's go upstairs
and look for a place to sit down and eat."

They shuffled back through the
living room—a little faster this time; it was easier with the flashlights—and
made their way upstairs, the wooden stairs creaking. Alan had started thinking
of the homeowners as an older couple, maybe retired. They'd been nice people,
he thought, who would've appreciated their food not going to waste.

Alan and Todd had a 1 AM dinner
sitting on their bedroom floor, the light of one flashlight presiding from the
bed. Alan made Todd eat some carrots, and wondered how much longer he'd be able
to find them. They'd start rotting in a couple weeks, at the most—but then
again, how hard could it be to grow some carrots for two people?
I'm no
Robinson Crusoe, but even I can probably manage that.

"Dad."

"Yeah."

"I think I lost Vegatron when
we were running. I had him but now he's just disappeared."

You're worried about your
stupid toy? You should be happy to be
alive. Asshole Alan was always ready
with a remark, but for once, Alan recognized that the voice wasn't really his.
It was his dad's. "That's all right." He chewed, swallowed, tried to
think of the opposite of what his own father might say. "Just think. All
the toys in the city are basically yours now." He gave his son a
conspiratorial wink.

Todd smiled. "Oh, yeah!"
This was one of his favorite exclamations. It always made him sound like he had
just remembered something.

"Did you get enough to
eat?"

"Yeah. Dad?"

"What?"

"Will you read to me
tonight?"

The question caught him off-guard;
Todd hadn't asked it in years. "Well, sure, if we can find a book. We're
not going back downstairs, though. It's dangerous in the dark."

"There's a bookshelf right
there." Todd pointed behind his dad. "Look."

"Well..." The idea of
escaping into a book was surprisingly enticing. "Okay, sure. Are there any
books up there good for kids, though?"

Todd vaulted over the bed, running
his flashlight beam over the spines. "I
think
so."

Alan joined him, and saw an entire
shelf dedicated to the kids' classics. His mental picture of the couple that
had lived here deepened: one was a schoolteacher, maybe, or they had grandkids
that came to visit sometimes. He felt a sudden connection with them, a deep
gratitude.

"
Old Yeller,
"
Todd said. "It's about a dog, I think. I heard about it in school."

"How about something
else?"

Todd's fingers danced along the
spines, his lips moving silently. "
Little House in the Big Woods?
"
he said, sounding intrigued. "What is
that?
"

Alan took it down. "It's a
pioneer story."

"What does that mean?"

He could imagine the old couple
watching. "It means it's perfect."

22

He woke to the sun's gentle heat,
in a strange bed dappled with morning streaks and shadows. Todd lay sleeping
next to him, his face serene.

There was no urgency and nowhere to
go. No one was late for work or school;
THE GAME
didn't leap immediately to his thoughts, forcing him to trudge downstairs with
shame in his heart. There was only the stillness and the light and his son.

He wanted nothing to change, so
instead of moving, he watched.

Todd's breaths were deep and even,
nearly silent. Everything about his face was perfect: the rich brown of his
eyebrows, the contours of his cheeks and eyes, even the perfect muss of his
hair. This flawless creature, constantly fidgeting when awake, was still as a
portrait in repose. When Todd had been a baby, Alan had sat and watched him
like this, just observing the miracle of his existence.
We can't have
immortality,
he'd thought,
but we can have this.