Todd (7 page)

It had been fascinating to watch
Todd become his own person: to take all the things Alan and Brenda had given
him, and make them new. This phenomenon had only been heightened with Allie,
who had seemed to take the reverse traits from her parents (Alan's nose and
eyebrows; mom's cheeks and hair) and was bubbly where Todd was introspective,
thoughtful where he was wild, and silly where he was serious.

They both looked like their
parents. They both came from their parents. But they were brand new human
beings. It was one of life's most glorious mysteries, and he used to let
himself meditate on it as long as he could.

When had he stopped allowing
himself the time to stop and watch his children? When had their miracle become
so mundane that he was capable of ignoring it? Yes, Todd had taken more to
Brenda than to him, but surely that had been partially Alan's own fault. He'd
pushed the boy away, been too annoyed with his constant squirming and bustle.
He'd committed the sin he'd sworn to never commit: he'd acted like his father.

But even as they'd grown apart,
even as the depression had slipped its tendrils into Alan's mind and dragged
everything to darkness, he'd tried to keep a grasp on the things that were
important—to remind himself how lucky he was to have such incredible children.
The depression would tell him that everything ends, that death is inevitable.
That the children would grow, and become different people; that eventually even
their children and their children's children would grow, and forget, and die.
He would fight these ideas in the only way he knew how, by telling himself:
But
I have them now.

They are here right now.

It was a tiny shelter in a
hurricane the size of the universe—a rickety thing that could collapse at any
moment—but sometimes, it was enough. He reached for the idea reflexively now, a
child for an old blanket, and found it covered in barbs.

It wasn't true. Allie wasn't here.

He sucked in a breath and rolled
on to his back, his heart suddenly hammering.

His little girl was gone—the one
who was always dancing, who loved pink and purple despite her parents' efforts
not to pigeonhole her. He had held her empty clothes in his hands. He had
watched them flaking into dust.

The old mantra—
they are here
now
—was suddenly poison.

Anguish drove him to his feet, and
they sent up a cry of protest. Rashes sizzled on his thighs; a dull ache
crouched in his calves and shoulders. His whole body was a map of pain after
last night's running. He winced and berated himself for being out of shape: an
automated response that meant nothing.

He limped to the bathroom down the
hall and relieved himself. The water was still running—that was something—but
outside the window trees were down everywhere, ripped up like weeds. Tangled
power lines criss-crossed the streets, drowning in glittering pools of
shattered glass.

It had been a big one. Allie had
always liked a good storm; she would've loved this.

Memories of his daughter chased
him into the hallway, to the other bedroom on the upper level, where he could
make out the river. Dirty smoke curled from the wreckage across the bridge, but
it was thin. The storm must have put the fire out.

They'd made it, then. He felt like
he should've been relieved.

But the ghost of Allie's smile
haunted him. What was the point of surviving in a world without it?

23

There was a drugstore just up the
street. They ducked in to stock up on batteries and grab a couple extra
flashlights. Alan took one of their little grocery carts, and they loaded it up
with the bags of food they'd salvaged from the kitchen last night, along with
some of the books they'd found. A case of bottled water for the bottom of the
cart, and they were fully loaded.

"Anything else you want to
grab while we're here?" Alan asked. Todd ran back, flashlight bouncing
over black shelves, and returned with a box of cookies. His eyes watched
Alan's, expecting admonition. Alan shrugged. If the end of the world wasn't
good for cookies, what the hell was it good for?

Outside, the sun beat from a clear
sky, baking the asphalt. Alan shielded his eyes, trying to get his bearings, to
make a plan. There were trees and street signs down. The power cables draping
the street were probably dead, but he didn't want to find out. Swarms of empty
clothes fluttered from tree branches and traffic lights. A pair of white Capris
blew like a flag from a broken lamp post:
We surrender
.

"Are we going home now?"
Somehow, in the two minutes he'd had the cookies, Todd had gotten a streak of
chocolate on one cheek and a pants leg.

Alan hadn't been planning to go
home—the thought of setting foot on that bridge again terrified him—but he
wasn't sure where else to go. "I don't know. We should probably get
settled somewhere, get a generator running, maybe set up some kind of signal so
that when people come, they can find us."

"People are gonna come rescue
us?"

"Well, yeah. I mean, I don't
know how far everyone disappeared, but it can't have been the whole world.
Probably not even the whole country."
Except I tried to call Washington and Florida,
and got no answer. 911 didn't pick up. Websites were down. The news anchor desk
was empty.

He shook the thoughts away. He
couldn't base their entire survival plan on ten minutes of half-assed internet
searching. "Someone will come looking eventually."

Todd sighed, obviously relieved. Alan
felt a stab of guilt. Lying to himself was one thing. Lying to his son—

"So are we going home to set
up the generator?"

They already had the generator at
home. They knew the area there.

"We'd have to go over the
bridge again."

Todd looked that way and made a
noise of vague trepidation. "Yeah. But I really want my 3DS."

Sure Todd wanted his video games.
The kid was a junkie for them. Before he'd spent two years locked in a basement
with one, Alan had been the same way.

"And I just miss home."

"Yeah. I miss home,
too."

Todd stared at the ground, biting
his lip. A shock of hair was standing straight up at the back of his head,
lending the vague impression of a bird's crest. His lips bristled with cookie
crumbs.

He's got nothing, for gods'
sakes.

"All right. Sure. Let's go
home."

24

The bridge was easier to manage in
the daylight. The wind, screaming up the river basin the night before, had
thrown some of the cars into the river below. The rest it had piled into a
long, jagged mess that choked the right lane but created just enough twisting
space in the left lane for the shopping cart. As Alan tried to wrestle it
through, Todd clambered along behind him, jumping on to bumpers and over hoods,
leaping extravagantly onto asphalt glittering with broken glass.

Alan glanced back, his shoulder
throbbing from trying to wrench the cart between a torn bumper and a concrete
rail. "Todd! What the hell?"

"Sorry." He was already
halfway up another hood.

Alan left the cart and grabbed his
son by the arm. "Are you trying to get yourself killed? Can't you see all
the broken glass?"

"I was being careful!"

"Careful? You were jumping
into a pile of broken glass! What the hell is wrong with you?" He grabbed
Todd and swung him to the ground, setting him on his feet. "Stay on the
ground," he snapped. "All right?"

"All right!" Todd
snapped back.

Don't you fucking sass me! I'm
trying to fucking keep you alive!
Alan's mouth was open, the words ready to
fire—but they weren't his words. They were his dad's.

God dammit, they were his
dad's.

He'd been through that grindstone
a million times as a kid: Dad snapped and berated, goading Alan into snapping
back, then tore into him for sassing. It was a trap that left Alan with his
back to the wall every time, fighting for his life and gasping for air. No
right answer, no way out. He was supposed to just shut up and take it, whatever
bullshit his dad dished out.

Was that what he wanted for Todd?

He was jumping on broken glass
for Christ's sakes!
Alan's dad cried, incensed.
So you ripped into him,
big fucking deal, at least he's not dead!

He's eight,
Brenda said,
and
you're 38. You're the one who should be mature enough to watch your tongue.

Fuck her,
Dad spat.
She's
gone now. No more nightly lectures about how much better she is at parenting.
No more critiquing everything you say, no more sanctimonious judgments every
time you slip and snap a little. So you snapped, so fucking what. She's gone.
Fuck her.

 And a third voice, the
father he wanted to be:
I'm sorry, Todd. I didn't mean to snap. You just
scared me half to death jumping like that. I love you too much to see you get
hurt and I overreacted.

He wanted to say it. His tongue
fought to say it.

But it wasn't him.

25

A blackened wasteland stretched
westward on the other side of the bridge: the aftermath of the fire. They
stared at it until the reek drove them east, toward home, retracing their steps
through the backyards and parking lots along

The road back to the 610 bridge
had some downed trees and plenty of stray branches, but wasn't in much worse
shape than it had been the day before. They stopped at the hardware store and
picked up the siphon pump they needed, along with a couple of gas cans. It took
a few tries to get the thing working, but eventually he managed to fill the
cans by draining one of the cars in the parking lot. Feeling more like Crusoe
by the minute, he went back in for a few other essentials: more batteries, some
utility knives, a tool set, and a whole bunch of extension cords.

On the way home, they drove past
the grocery store. How much food had rotted in there since the power went out
yesterday morning? The milk had probably turned by now, and the meat too. It
had been right there, and he had screwed up the chance to get it.

There's powdered milk, and
dried meat,
he tried to tell himself
. Plenty of bagged beef jerky in
there. We'll be fine.
He took a deep breath, and tried to believe it.

610 looked as terrible as ever,
but the bridge was still clear. Another ten minutes, and they saw home.
"Well, look at that," Alan said. "It's still here."

A neighbor on the other side of
the
cul-de-sac
did have a tree down, but for the most part, the whole
area had weathered the storm well. He made Todd come with him as he finished a
visual inspection of the house, making sure there was no damage. All the glass
was intact, all the walls in one piece. Lucky.

They went inside. With no small
effort, he managed to move the generator out to the deck, then brought up the
gas cans and filled it up. When it started on the first pull, he could've wept
with relief.

The thing had four outlets. He ran
extension cords into the house, then plugged in the fridge, the freezer, and a
lamp. "All right," he said. "Go ahead. 3DS right here."

Todd dashed back to grab his game
machine. That was when Alan noticed that one of the lanterns they'd left on the
counter yesterday was now sitting on the couch.

"Did you move that
lantern?" he asked when Todd came back.

Todd looked. "No. I don't
think
so."

"Well think back, Todd, when
I was on the deck setting up the generator, did you move it?"

"No." He shook his head
emphatically. "No way."

 They'd left both the
lanterns sitting on the counter yesterday; Alan was sure of it. Yes, there'd
been a storm since then, but all the windows were intact, the doors had been
closed, and nothing else was moved. The wind hadn't done this.

Get out of the house,
something
told him.
There is something here.

He took Todd and did a thorough
inspection all over again: basement, ground floor, upstairs. Nothing else was
out of place.

With the fridge running and a
light on, the place actually felt like home. Todd was going to play on his 3DS,
just like normal; they could have dinner in the living room watching TV if they
wanted, just like normal. The word
normal
had never been so tantalizing.
A niggling confusion about where they'd left the lanterns yesterday wasn't
enough to justifying leaving now.

You said you'd start making the
right calls,
the same voice whispered.

I am,
Alan insisted.
This
is the right call. What, we're supposed to sleep in some weird house every time
one of us moves something and forgets about it?

No,
it shot back,
you're
supposed to sleep in a weird house every night from here on out. You should be
on the move, trying to find other people, not just sitting here like an idiot,
waiting to die.

Alan gritted his teeth, scanning
the living room one more time. Even if something had moved the lantern—a
raccoon that had survived, or something—there was no evidence that it was
dangerous. He shook his head; he was sick of lurching from plan to plan, driven
forward solely by panic. "Come on. We're going to the grocery store."

26

Just like they had at the hardware
store, cars had shattered the glass storefront at Crown Foods. They had bulled
into the registers, knocking over candy and magazine displays, and then idled
until they ran out of gas. One was still going even now, two full days after
crashing. Alan had Todd wait outside as he crunched through the glass to turn
it off.