"We need to think about this," Tyler said.
His finger was on the lighter, and the flame of the lighter was on the wet blunt, drying it and sealing it. He put the blunt to his lips, sharply inhaling the contents. It was a harsh first hit, but a necessary one.
The grape flavor mingled with that sticky piney fragrance almost majestically. Tyler opened his mouth ever slightly, allowing rings of smoke to curl outward. They coalesced in the open space of the front seats. Audrey sat in the passenger seat, idle and quiet.
"You okay?" she whispered.
Tyler turned to her. He passed the blunt, and she accepted wordlessly. "You're the one I'm worried about," he said. He eyed her as she pulled with the force of a vacuum cleaner. The cough came almost immediately—a hacking, struggling cough. Tyler would normally laugh at such a display, but today, he was short on humor.
"I saw it last night," Tyler murmured. "It's what I told you about. That... "He received the blunt and took another hearty pull. He could fill his eyes glazing over now. The warmth was setting in like a nice soak; his eyelids were already heavy.
"...Flash." He finished. "It started with the flash." Audrey received the blunt. "We need to get in touch with Father," she said
Tyler took a sip of the water bottle he got from Seven-Eleven. It was hot as all hell, but he couldn't stop it. His shirt was like a wet towel. Audrey looked sweaty as hell too, but she wasn't making a word of it. As crazy as it was, she seemed to have forgotten about everything: the scar in the sky, the empty town, the incredible heat, the teacher, the students—everything.
Tyler's mind was running at a fevered pitch. The flash had somehow permeated all of their minds. Whatever landed, whatever had come crashing down in those distant peaks, was something terrible. It was killing people.
Everybody was losing their bearings. And it was everywhere. It was in the air, and the dead noise of empty stations. It was bursting in strange forms from the sewers, and spewing from the sky, and practically turning the whole goddamn town into a fucking sauna. Was it telepathy? What kind of technology would allow such power, what kind of inexplicable, indomitable—
"It's absolute mind control," Tyler sputtered, still lost in his thoughts. Audrey turned as he took another hit of the blunt. But he was right, wasn't he? It was some type of power, like a virus, but in the mind—seizing the human brains of every citizen of this town, in one way or the other. It was taking hold, and most these bastards didn't even know it—because before they knew it, they were zombies. Walking around mindless and deathly.
Tyler and Audrey stepped out of the car. They were in the parking lot of the mall: a giant concrete structure with chain restaurants and gaudy displays for high-end clothing stores. As usual, there were cars everywhere. No people though.
Tyler motioned to Audrey who followed his lead. He puffed the sizzling blunt as he weaved in and out of vehicles. Their doors were thrown open. Some were parked randomly against light poles, as if the drivers had stopped immediately with barely enough time to put them in park.
"It's like a virus," Tyler thought aloud. "Some people are hit and they get crushed, right off the bat." He looked to Audrey for agreement, but she was lost, off in her own world. "Then you've got the guys who put up a fight," he said. "They have the symptoms, but can't beat 'em." He nodded, his guesses gaining confidence.
"And then you've got the others—they'll get the symptoms, they'll feel like shit, but then they'll get better." He looked to Audrey, with her hung head. Her pupils had gotten larger, and the coloring in her eyes seemed normal. She was pale, but reasonably so. She looked nothing like Dirby from the convenience store.
Tyler took another hit as he approached the west opening of the mall. Giant automatic glass doors waited. He stood before them, but they did not open. He frowned. "Then you've got those who are aware of the virus, are exposed to the virus, and yet—nada. They don't show a single symptom, don't feel a single thing. They're fine, perfectly fine."
Tyler exhaled the smoke in a fat, grey puff. "Whatever it is, they had the right genes to combat it. They already have the antibodies in place, and when the virus comes, they tear that sucka to bits." Tyler nodded resolutely at this, and wrapped his arm around his girlfriend. She seemed to shake. "We need to get out of the Dale," she mumbled. "We need to get out of the Dale now."
Tyler wanted to stop her there. He wanted to remind her of not just her father, but her mother and two brothers. He wanted to remind her that he had a family—that maybe they were dead, maybe they weren't. He wanted to remind her of the few close friends they had made in their years living in this boring valley city, and the countless acquaintances and rapports forged—and how any, or all, of these people could be dying.
Or maybe they were already dead. Or maybe, just maybe, they were gone. Not here, not outside town, not 20 miles down US-50. Just gone. One moment walking about their daily lives, the next—gone. Plucked straight from the ground, straight to the sky.
Gone.
But not all were gone. Tyler was here. And Audrey was here. And they were hanging on. Tyler would never let anything happen to this girl. As long as he had air in his lungs and a pulse in his veins, nothing was going to take her from him. He tightened his arm around her shoulders. She was bony and pale, and wouldn't meet his eyes. Her head was turned, away from the giant automatic doors. God, did he love her.
But she wouldn't meet his eyes, because she was looking away. Only feet away, parked half on the mall sidewalk, half in the lot, was a dingy sedan. An older man sat slumped in the driver's seat. He held his hands out immediately in front of his chest. His eyes protruded from their sockets, locked like glass spheres on his splayed, reed-thin fingers.
His mouth was frozen in a visage of horror, his flesh like taut rubber—a vestigial shell. The man did not budge. And at the center of his forehead: a gaping hole, blown straight through. Like a cannonball of brain and crimson.
###
You will be okay. Everything is okay now
Audrey wanted to believe it. How could she not believe it? She was okay. She was feeling better and better by the minute. And she knew what she had to do. These were her thoughts, and she knew what they wanted her to do. They made sense, didn't they? She needed to stop worrying about these things.
Life was not controllable. You couldn't put your hands around it and wrestle it to the ground and distill meaning—that just wasn't practical. She looked at her boyfriend, looking leaner and meaner than ever. Why were they at the mall? Where was he taking her?
Audrey wanted to open her mouth and shout at him. She wanted to do a lot of things, really. It was easier to be quiet, though—she knew this. They were so nice to her when she was quiet; they were always so nice. Audrey knew how to please people. Her whole life she had been the one to placate. It had served her well in everything, had it not? She knew it had.
Tyler would never understand. He was one to resist; in the open. He was hiding in plain sight. She was graceful. Tyler could be, but usually... He was falling apart wasn't he? Tyler was not in line with the plan, was he?
We need him in line with the plan
Tyler would fight till the cold death. His calm demeanor contained an inferno. She knew it. Audrey knew what she was doing, but Tyler was stumbling over every rock in the road. He was going to bring them down if he continued to fall.
You can only get up so many times
Audrey was right. They were right. Tyler, bless his heart, was going to ruin everything. He'd try to rationalize everything; he'd do his best to explain it out loud, for his benefit and for others'. He'd take every risk in the book to continue his numbed, drugged existence. He'd turn on himself, contradicting; hypocritical. He'd become mad, and then he'd attack. He'd attack all others who tried to stop him—who tried to lasso him with their rational thoughts and pull him back to the world he had left so so long ago. Audrey had seen it all before.
It was obvious what needed to happen. Tyler posed a threat. They needed that threat erased.
###
"What's your name, sweetheart?"
Paul wondered where the little girl had come from. Had they left her, in the rush to get out of town? Had she been forgotten in the exodus? What kind of family left a small child? Paul had to stop himself. Maybe she didn't have a family. Not everybody was so fortunate.
Paul had worked this sector before, and he knew that the Borrows were a breeding ground for instability. A lot of 18 year old mothers ditched their kids the first chance they got. It's what happened around here—terrible and true. And he knew from his buddy Mike that the cops often ignored the area. They took it easy in Marin's Dale. When problems did arise, the black and white always had a reason for arriving late; or not at all.
Paul frowned. All in all, Marin's Dale was a great place to live. It had supported his family for almost two decades. But even the greenest pastures had their weeds. The Dale was no different. And now, those green pastures had turned to red. Blood red.
Paul gave it another go.
"Is your mommy here?"
She stared back, with those inhuman eyes of hers, but her lips did not move. Paul had never seen anything quite like this. Granted, he was by no means a certified doctor, but he had been around the block more than enough times—and he knew more than enough people. This girl, with her looks and demeanor; she had something.
But Paul wasn't about to leave her here, not like this. Whether or not it was communicable, he didn't care. At this point, with the town the way it was looking, nobody should be left alone. She was coming with him.
"Hold my hand, sweetie," he said. He was reminded instantly of a day, an October day, that seemed a lifetime ago. It had come and gone, with the wind and the leaves. He watched the girl then, with her pale small face, much like his daughter's so many years before. He relished the innocence in their faces, the way they seemed to never lose their wonder, even when sometimes life could siphon the life out of you.
His daughter had been different back then. Not just emotionally, but in form. The car accident left her face fuzzy like a bad oil painting. The arthritis at an early age kept her home most of the time, while her husband supported her and the children.
But she was strong, his daughter. She could make changes the likes of which you would not believe. Tom brought home the money that paid the bills and kept the house warm during winters, kept everybody cool and content during the burn of summer; the dinners at 4-star, 5-star restaurants, vacations to Water Country USA and skiing in Aspen.
But Michelle was the strong one. She never let anything stop her. She was the inspiration for their children, for her husband; she stayed impenetrable on the inside, while her body crumbled.
Paul could see this in the girl's eyes. A running reel of his life and his past; a flurry of memories superimposed on the blank white of those eyes. Time was running out, Paul knew. It was good to keep a young spirit, but he was getting older now. He hated the cliché, but it was true. He was too old for this shit.
As the girl's hand finally extended, small fingers and all accepting his, Paul looked away. The peaceful niche he had carved out in Marin's Dale was under attack. For all he knew, the whole world could be under attack. But he was too old for this shit. And boy oh boy, what shit it was.
###
The bastard was never given a chance.
Michael had been sitting there. He couldn't remember why. The driver of the Ford Explorer had come erratically, half over the curb, and boom.
Right over the old man scraping and trembling on the gravel.
The old man. Michael remembered now. The old man had been crawling. There had been red shit all over his face like he had burned it with something awful.
Michael ripped the steering wheel to the right. To the left. Spinning gamely and shredding the turns as the top-heavy Explorer jostled ahead. The Crown Vic and the Ford barreled through the labyrinth of stopped vehicles, clipping fire hydrants and sidewalks, and narrowly dodging the blurring light poles and shop fronts. Manholes clinged as the two speeding vehicles navigated.
Michael hadn't seen the face of the reckless driver. But he couldn't stop now. This was the end of the line for this bozo, whoever he was. He had come in a hurry, but he would not get away.
Michael slammed the brakes as the Explorer tore through a GEICO'S sale sign at the median strip. The Ford jerked and the tires squealed, spitting grassy chunks back into Michael's windshield. He immediately slapped the wipers. Plowing through, he followed exactly. The Vic grumbled as it jumped the median.
And immediately he was back to the races.
"Slow down, psycho!" Michael yelled, as if the fuck-up could hear him
They tore into the mall, skidding around automobile obstacles, by the countless construction cones of the new parking garage, by concrete dividers, over, through, in and out of the manmade delirium.
"You fucking psy—"
Michael lost the wheel. The concrete wall came rushing forward.