If there was one thing the team consisting of a computer programmer, a biology major, a probably econ major, and a thirteen-year-old juvenile delinquent named Bethany could agree on, it was that none of them possessed the survival skills necessary to last for long in a world without stocked supermarkets or the supply chain that stocked them.
It was a harsh discovery, made shortly after Robbie and Carol left the dorm to reunite with Touré and meet Bethany: Between the four of them, nobody had once gone hunting, skinned a rabbit, deboned a fish, or plucked a chicken. The only knives any of them were familiar with were steak knives. And not one member of the party had fired a gun or even picked one up.
On the last point, Touré had at least some knowledge, except that it all came from a role-playing game, so what he knew didn’t extend beyond familiarity with guns that were used in the Wild West. He likewise knew the difference between a katana and a wakizashi—also from role-playing, albeit from a different game—which was still useless information, as he could neither use one of them nor get his hands on one.
They couldn’t get their hands on any guns either, because nobody sold guns in Cambridge.
The only reason they were still alive after a week was because of the fortuitous discovery of the many, many bricks of “nutrient bars” they’d stumbled upon in the supermarket. They were on a pallet in the middle of the otherwise nearly picked-clean store, which was interesting for a lot of reasons. It implied that nobody wanted the nutrient bars and went for the regular food first. A counterpoint to this observation—made by Carol, who was quickly turning into the closest thing they had to an adult—was the suggestion that the bricks were put out only after the shelves had been stripped, and possibly because they were. A supporting point in favor of this argument was that there were three empty pallets next to the one with the nutrient bricks.
The sign in front of the supply was only nominally helpful. It read:
NOOT BARS
MAX 2 PER CUSTOMER
Beneath the message was a company logo—a triangle with an off-center rectangle inside of it—that matched the logo stamped on the bricks.
According to the Noot bar packaging, one brick was the equivalent of six to eight meals for an adult. Doing a little math, this meant the four of them had between sixty and seventy days to figure out how to feed themselves off the land, find someone who could teach them how to survive, find more Noot bars, or discover where everyone else in the world was hiding and move there.
The two problems with the Noot bar were (1) none of them had ever heard of it, even though the in-store advertising suggested a ubiquity on par with certain brands of soda, and (2) it tasted kind of blah. Not awful, not great, just somewhere between sawdust and unseasoned tofu.
They ate the bricks anyway, washed down with water from whatever source was available. Both the dormitory in which Carol and Robbie had hidden on the first night and the grocery store that kept Touré and Bethany safe had tap water that tasted just fine. Whether or not it was actually contaminated with some tasteless and odorless terrible, awful thing was the subject of occasional discussion, but everyone agreed it was preferable to getting water from the Charles.
On this point, they could pull water from the river, but they didn’t have many receptacles to carry water in, so it would make for a lot of trips. There was also an open question as to whether the Charles River was a better option than tap water. Carol and Robbie seemed to think it had to be, by default, but they weren’t raised in the area. Touré had been, and so had Bethany, and they’d both been told that falling in the river meant a tetanus shot. Nobody was sure if this was true or if it was just something people said, but given the evident health of the animals living on and around the river, it seemed the latter was closer to being correct.
The real problem was the same as it had been from day one: If they wanted to know whether the water in the Charles was safe, they had to look up the answer in some kind of online resource, which they couldn’t access. They lacked electricity, and because of that they lacked information. To get information, they had to find another way to communicate with the outside world.
They were all staying in the dormitory, because it had plenty of beds, whereas the grocery store had none. Conversely, the store had the pallet of Noot bars, which was too large and heavy to take everywhere, so they wanted to stay close. It wasn’t as if one of them had suggested they simply stay put because the dorm was safe and was near their only food source. It was more that nobody offered an alternative and they were already there.
Staying at the dorm contributed to the sense that all of this was temporary. Why find a long-term solution when surely people who knew more about surviving were out there, just waiting to be discovered?
Consequently, every plan they made was a short-term answer to an immediate need. When it was clear their isolation was going to last more than a day or two, Robbie and Touré went out on the bikes and filled up backpacks with clothes for all four of them, but it was clothing meant to last through the next two weeks: T-shirts, jeans, socks and underwear, and a couple of jackets. Toothbrushes, toothpaste, and deodorant took three days to discover, and they were still looking for shampoo.
Soap they had plenty of, because the janitor’s closet was well stocked. Likewise, they had lots of towels and toilet paper. Most personal grooming had to involve cold water, so nobody was taking proper showers so much as sponging and toweling off before they froze to death—because the building had no heat. Inevitably, when their rescuers arrived, they would find four living people who smelled awful, had too much hair in too many of the wrong places, with bad breath, and who were suffering from a vitamin C deficiency.
But they would be alive.
Making contact with these hypothetical rescuers continued to be Robbie and Touré’s primary focus. This manifested both in harmless ways and in less harmless ways—meaning, they could be doing something better with their time.
A harmless example was the day Robbie took another look at the display case Carol had found back on their first night in the dormitory. Inside the case was a device called a field phone, from the Second World War.
The fact that it was a portable phone wasn’t the interesting part. The interesting part was that it had a lever on the side that could be used to charge it before making a call. Maybe, Robbie reasoned, if they hooked it up and charged it, they could make a phone call somewhere. Whose number to try remained an open question.
They broke it out of the case and spent the evening attaching the landline wires to the back of the field phone. (This was some work, because they needed to strip the wires first, which meant finding a knife, and it took them three hours to find a knife.) Then they cranked it, and listened for a dial tone that never came.
The experiment was deemed a partial success, as it seemed as if the lever did manage to create an electrical charge. Since none of them knew how to produce electricity—Touré vaguely recalled magnets being important, but couldn’t remember why—having something that gave them a charge was a solid step forward. They just didn’t know what to do with it.
Less harmlessly, after getting additional clothes and various sundries for the dorm, Robbie and Touré spent their days roaming the area on bikes. This wasn’t inherently harmful—they were gaining a better understanding of how wrecked certain parts of the commonwealth were—but it was a waste of the time at least one member of the party thought they simply didn’t have.
Not that looking for other survivors wasn’t of value.
They were hoping to find someone with complementary skills. Medical training would be of particular use, everyone agreed, for while nobody had suffered a serious cut, bruise, or break as of yet, it was sure to happen eventually. Better than a doctor would be someone who knew what happened during the whateverpocalypse—Touré’s word, which they’d all adopted without entirely meaning to—but they’d all come to some sort of peace with the notion that no explanation would be forthcoming. Or if it did, it wouldn’t be soon.
The daily jaunts were something Robbie and Touré decided to do on their own, and as the only people in the group who could ride bikes—Bethany claimed she didn’t know how, and Carol obviously couldn’t—they didn’t seem to think additional input was needed.
Carol disagreed. Her reasoning was solid: It was going to be cold soon, and they needed to be prepared for that.
One of the reasons this point became a subject of debate was that nobody could agree on how soon was soon.
“I am saying,” Carol said, “that we need to plan for winter, and we need to do it now.”
They were sitting in the common room after another day in which the guys returned with little more than stories of wrecked places. On this day, they reported that a mall in Porter Square had been vandalized by animals, a neighborhood near Teele Square had burned down recently, and there still wasn’t anyone alive other than them. Also, they saw a bear. This was very exciting.
Carol was pushing them to collect more winter-specific provisions. Robbie and Touré had already picked up spare bits of outerwear on their trips—mostly for themselves, since they could try stuff on as they went—but the problem was, there was only so much they could carry back on the bikes. To do this right, they really needed a car, and that wasn’t an option.
“I understand that,” Touré said to Carol, “but we have time. We’ll pick up things every day, okay? It’s no rush. You’re from Florida; you probably think winter here is way worse than it is.”
“I’m familiar with seasonality,” Carol said, “and I’m up to date on the severity of the winters in New England. The climatic changes—”
“Yeah, yeah, but it’s months away, I’m saying. Maybe we get five feet of snow this year . . . it’s still five feet of snow four or five months from now.”
“It’s five feet of snow we won’t know is coming until it’s here,” Carol said. “We have no forecasts, and meteorologist isn’t on our list of skills. And it isn’t just clothing. It’s heat. We have none. We’ll freeze to death where we’re sitting if we don’t prepare. It’s already chilly in the evenings, and we have only so many blankets.”
“Hang on,” Robbie said. “Touré, what do you mean, four or five months?”
“Yeah, I was wondering about that too,” Bethany said. “What are you talking about? It’s like eight or nine months.”
“Right,” Robbie said. “No, wait, hang on. That isn’t right either. It’s two or three months. I don’t know where eight came from.”
“Yes,” Carol agreed. “Robbie’s right. We’re nearing the end of September. The weather is surely about to turn.”
“Whoa, what?” Touré said. “It’s July.”
“It’s September,” Robbie said. “Maybe second week.”
“Closer to the fourth,” Carol said.
“No, the first week of classes was the first week of September, and then . . .”
“Classes began the middle of the second week,” Carol said. “And I know exactly what time of month it is now.”
“How do you . . . Oh. Right.”
“I’m . . . quite regular,” she said.
“So I guess we can use that as a timepiece now,” Robbie said. “But honestly, this is turning into the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had.”
“You’re all nuts,” Bethany said. “It’s not close to September or July. It’s the middle of May.”
“May?” Touré said. “You’re off your meds, kid.”
None of them knew very much about Bethany. She had a way with locks that implied an extensive history of minor criminal behavior, but that wasn’t as illuminating as it probably should have been. Robbie could envision a backstory for her that was built on this particular aspect of her character, but it would have been ripped from Oliver Twist, and this wasn’t nineteenth-century London. Granted, he never lived in a city before, but he didn’t think there were roving packs of street urchins pickpocketing Boston’s well-to-do.
Her being an orphan was certainly still a possibility; she never spoke about her family, or about any friends, which could indicate some reticence to discuss painful matters—on the assumption they were all dead—or it could mean she had no parents or friends. Either way, Robbie hadn’t figured out how to ask her about herself yet; she tended to get defensive quickly.
One thing he did know about her was that she hated to be called a kid. This was probably why Touré always called her that.
“I will cut your throat in your sleep if you don’t stop with the kid crap,” she said to Touré.
“With what?” he asked. “Are you packing a switchblade?”
“I know how to handle myself.”
“Sure.”
“I should never have let you in!” she said. “I should have let the wolves get you.”
Bethany lamented having ever allowed Touré into the supermarket at least once a day.
“Guys, knock it off,” Robbie said. “This isn’t helping.”
“Well, it’s not May, Robert,” Touré said, “and it’s not September. It’s July. You think I don’t know what month it is? What’s the matter with all of you?”
“Harvard classes don’t begin before September,” Carol said. “Why would we be here otherwise?”
“That’s between you and the school,” Touré said. “I know what I know.”
“We don’t need to rely on what you think you know,” Robbie said. “There are other ways.”
“Yeah, I checked online this morning,” Touré said. “It didn’t help.”
“No, man—look outside.”
The windows on one side of the common room looked out over the courtyard, beyond which was Memorial Drive and the Charles River. Out of the other windows was a formerly well-groomed lawn with a copse of trees.
Robbie pointed to the windows facing the front of the dorm, and singled out the trees, still visible in the light of the setting sun.
“I’ve been outside,” Touré said. “What’s your point?”
“The leaves are turning. You want to tell me that happens in July?”
The leaves weren’t just turning; they had already turned. There was no green left, and there hadn’t been for at least a week. Everywhere they looked was an explosion of oranges and browns.
“Oh . . . damn,” Touré said. “It didn’t even register.”
“You’re right,” Bethany said. “He’s right.”
“But I think we’re all wrong, guys,” Touré said. “I mean, unless the seasons got messed up along with everything else, it’s gotta be October. How’s that even possible?”
“How is any of this possible?” Carol said. “As I said, we live in a building with no heat, and we have no winter clothes. How long before we’re in trouble?”
“Maybe a month,” Touré said.
“We’ll need firewood,” Carol said. “Perhaps tomorrow you could find an axe. Has anyone chopped wood before?”
“I’ve set a couple of fires,” Bethany said.
“Of course you have,” Touré said.
The next day, Robbie and Touré hit up the hardware store on Mass Ave. It was only a mile or so from the dormitory, a few blocks from Touré’s apartment, and within sight of the bike shop. Given the store wasn’t terribly large, there was a decent chance there were no axes, but according to Touré the nearest big chain store was in Watertown and they hadn’t even attempted to explore in that direction yet.
They were both very familiar with the neighborhood. That neither of them had tried to tap the contents of the hardware store already only spoke to how unprepared they were to survive the whateverpocalypse. Surely even a half-decent prepper would have started there. A half-decent prepper would have also known what to do with the stuff inside.
Robbie had a passing familiarity with tools. His dad was handy enough, and he’d provided Robbie with plenty of opportunities to watch someone else use tools correctly. He just never did much of it himself. When something broke, he’d tell Dad, and Dad would fix it.
Robbie never used to think much about what his adult life was going to be like, but he imagined a day when he was out on his own, living in a different state with a wife and child, calling up his father because he needed a shelf hung and figured it would end up crooked if he did it himself. He also imagined his father seeing no problem with just driving over to take care of it.
The idea that his father would never be able to do that now had just begun to sink in over the past couple of days. When Robbie was alone, he discovered that he was prone to crying jags without any evident trigger. He wasn’t thinking about his father when it happened, or his mom, sister, or friends from home. This was almost worse, because it meant that just being alive was its own trigger.
He kept the crying from the others, as much as that was possible.
“Yeah, man, I don’t know what it is,” Touré was saying. “She bugs me; I can’t explain why.”
He was complaining about Bethany, which he did regularly.
“Here’s one,” Robbie said, kneeling over to pry a brick loose from the sidewalk.
In Cambridge some sidewalks were paved with regular old cement, some sections were brick, and a couple of spots—around the trees—were covered with some sort of breathable rubber. Robbie thought the rubber was sort of cool; it allowed the tree to grow (and must be letting water through a porous surface) without the roots destroying the sidewalk. It was especially noticeable now that the trees had gone mad. There were several cracks in the cement, and the tree roots under brick had managed to work most of the bricks loose, but the rubber held.
They needed bricks to get into stores. It was either that or bring along the resident lock-picker, which Touré considered a last resort.
“I think she’s hiding something,” Touré said.
“You’re the only one picking that up,” Robbie said. “She’s just private. Next you’ll be telling me you think Carol can actually see.”
Touré laughed.
“Nah, I tested that,” he said.
“How?”
“Never mind how. You gonna throw that, or can I?”
“Have at it,” Robbie said, handing over the brick.
It was still early morning. There was a low fog hanging over the street which, in the red sunrise, turned everything pinkish. It looked like it was going to be a clear day, but they had rain a few days back that had come out of nowhere, so he wasn’t sure how much he could trust his predictive skills.
Rabbits, squirrels, and chipmunks were scurrying this way and that through the ground fog, not at all certain about what to do with the humans. It was like they thought they probably shouldbe afraid but were waiting on confirmation.
Robbie wondered for the umpteenth time what it would take to kill and eat one of the rabbits. It was a thought he never expected to have, certainly, not to mention a skill he never expected to need. On the other hand, his breakfast had been five bites of a Noot bar, which he was quite thoroughly sick of. He was pretty sure if he didn’t eat something else soon, the next meat-centric daydream he had was going to involve cannibalism.
Touré chucked the brick through the front window of the hardware store. The glass shattered loudly, disrupting the peaceful morning.
“Boy, that’s fun,” Touré said. “We should do this more often.”
“Probably heard that for miles,” Robbie said. “So maybe not.”
“So? We’re looking for other people, right? Do more of this and they’ll find us.”
“That’s not the kind of attention I’m worried about.”
“The wolves only hunt at night. C’mon.”
Robbie didn’t say so, because Touré already knew it, even if he wasn’t willing to acknowledge it, but there were creatures other than the wolf-beasts to worry about. They’d seen—from a distance, thankfully—two bears, on different occasions in different parts of town. They also met an elk who looked downright furious, gotten charged at by a four-point buck, stared down a wild boar, and saw a moose from afar. Nature was terrifying, and it was all over the place.
They stepped into the store, past a cardboard display touting chainsaw technology.
It was dark in the back. Robbie took the bag off his shoulder and extracted a wooden table leg with a torn piece of bedsheet wrapped around the tip, a container of lighter fluid, and a book of matches.
The carton of matches was the big prize of their second day’s quest for provisions, and the lighter fluid the big prize of the third day. They had proven to be more useful than just about anything other than the Noot bars. The team still had to learn how to rediscover electricity, but fire remained discovered.
He squirted some lighter fluid on the bedsheet, lit the torch, and headed into the back.
“And another thing,” Touré said. “She keeps harping on how she saved my life, like that’s a thing.”
“But didn’t she?”
“We don’t know that. You guys made it through the night okay. I mean, all she did was open a door. I bet I could’ve found a way in on my own.”
The store was selectively empty. All the camping gear was gone, which was frustrating but not surprising. They needed sleeping bags, blankets, and winter gear, but this wasn’t the place to get those things anyway. Robbie didn’t know where to go, but that was the next problem after figuring out how to turn a tree into firewood.
“Axes,” Touré said, from the other end of the aisle. “I think. Bring the light over.”
Not just axes; a selection of axes, which just struck Robbie as weird. How many different ways could there be to design an axe?
“Look, I understand,” Robbie said, regarding Bethany. “She annoys you. You annoy her just as much, I’m sure. It’s normal. I probably annoy all three of you.”
Touré laughed.
“Sure, but not so much. And I don’t think you and Carol annoy each other at all. How’s this?”
He held up one of the four axe options.
“Super. What do you mean, about Carol?”
“You know what. Speaking of, you ever think about . . . ?”
“Think about what?”
“You know. Come springtime, we’re going to have to start talking about repopulating, right? Last people on Earth, we have a duty here.”
“I am begging you to stop talking right now.”
“Fine. We’ll take two axes. Unless you want to try a chainsaw? They run on gas, don’t they?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know how to use one and I like having all my limbs.”
“Yeah, me too. It’s an option, though. Keep it in the back of your mind, in case it turns out chopping down a tree is too hard.”
Touré turned around to head back to the street, and Robbie was about to follow when he caught a flash of light at the edge of his vision.
It was coming from the back of the store.
“Hey, Touré?” Robbie said.
“Yeah?”
Touré looked back. Robbie didn’t have to add anything, as it was quickly obvious what was bothering him.
There was a collection of fireflies in the back. That wasn’t really what it was, but that was what it looked like—a swirl of light spinning in a tight circle, not obviously emanating from or being manipulated by anything nearby.
“What . . . the hell . . . is that?” Touré asked.
“I have no idea.”
The lights settled into a stationary orbit: vaguely vertical, about six feet tall and three feet wide.
And then, after a collective shimmer, they re-formed into something with two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head.
Robbie and Touré had just enough time to register this before it blinked out of existence.
Robbie realized he was holding his breath.
“You saw that, right?” Touré asked. “That wasn’t just me?”
“I saw it.”
Robbie walked to the back of the store, to the spot where the shimmery whatever-it-was had appeared. Nothing was there that could explain what they’d just witnessed, although he couldn’t really imagine what a proper explanation would look like.
“What do you think it was?” Robbie asked.
“I have some ideas. A human being trapped in another dimension, trying to tell us what happened to everyone. An alien. A silvery ghost piercing the veil to warn us about something. All sound good to me.”
“A hallucination?”
“Both of us?”
“A joint hallucination.”
“Sure, if that’s possible,” Touré said. “I like the other options better. I can probably come up with ten more if you give me a few minutes.”
“We should ask Bethany if she’s seen anything like that,” Robbie said.
Touré shrugged. “Maybe,” he said.
“You don’t want to ask Bethany.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“I know you don’t like her, but she can see, so . . .”
“No, I get it,” Touré said. “I’m not sure we should even mention it until we have a better idea what just happened. Put that out. Let’s get out of here.”
Touré headed back to the street while Robbie tried to douse the torch.
They were still working on torch technology. Holding a match up to the end of a table leg didn’t accomplish much other than to make the wood smolder, which wasn’t entirely resolved by wrapping the cloth around the end of it. They tried this—leg, then match, then cloth—after finding the matches. It caught, but didn’t stay that way for long.
What they needed was an accelerant, which was what led to the lighter fluid. (Bethany, who evidently did know a lot about setting fires, was the one who worked this out.)
But once the cloth was lit, there was a decent chance that flaming bits of material would fall off, right onto the hand of whoever was holding the torch. They’d nearly lit the dorm on fire three times because of this. Worse, once the wood caught, there was nothing preventing the flame from creeping all the way down and engulfing the entire leg. Holding the torch upright—so the flame would have to go against gravity—sometimes did the trick, but not every time.
Robbie had a couple of painful burns on his hands because of all that. Nothing serious enough to need a doctor, which was great, because, again, they didn’t have one. But that day was coming.
He was still trying to extinguish the torch, by waving it around to put the fire out, when Touré began shouting.
“HEY! HEY, NO! DON’T RUN!”
Robbie looked up, half expecting to find that the sparkling man had returned and was now being accosted by Touré.
That wasn’t it.
There was a teenage boy a quarter of a mile up Mass Ave. He looked skinny, and scared, and malnourished . . . and disinterested in having a conversation with the guy holding two axes and shouting at him. He turned around and ran up a side street.
“We got a live one,” Touré said. “C’mon!”
He dropped the axes and broke into a run.
On any other day, they’d have the bikes, but for the axe-fetching task they’d agreed walking made more sense, because neither of them relished the idea of biking around while carrying axes. Not on these roads.
“Right,” Robbie said. He chucked the torch into the middle of the street, where it was less likely to ignite something else, dropped his backpack on the ground, and started running.
He was in better shape than Touré, but in worse shoes. Getting some running shoes and a decent pair of boots was near the top of the list of things he wanted to do before the snows came; he just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Until he’d had to sprint in his penny loafers, it hadn’t really seemed urgent.
He caught up with Touré eventually though, about four blocks down Mass Ave.
“He went up there,” Touré said, between heavy breaths. He was pointing down a side street. “That road doesn’t lead anywhere. It goes right, and right again, and then it hooks back up with Mass Ave. down there. You keep behind him—I’ll go straight and try to cut him off.”
“Okay.”
They broke, doing the one thing Touré was in the habit of insisting they not do: split up.
Robbie ran down the middle of the side street, past all variety of scrambling woodland creatures who thought he was running after them.
One of these days, we’re going to stumble on the wolf den, he thought. And of course, as soon as he thought it, he became certain he was about to do exactly that.
But instead he turned the corner on nothing in particular. Just more disabled cars in permanent parking spaces, ruptured pavement, trees with the occasional scary-looking furry beastie, and, importantly, no frightened teenage boy.
Robbie slowed to a walk. If the kid wasn’t in view, he had either turned the next corner already—in which case Touré was about to meet up with him—or he was hiding somewhere nearby.
“Hey,” Robbie said. “If you can hear me, we’re friends. We have food and shelter.”
No answer. A horny squirrel started chittering, but that was probably not directed at Robbie.
“Come on, you must be hungry,” he said.
There was a corporate parking garage to his left, about halfway down the street. He stopped in front of it and started scanning the decks, as this was the sort of place he might hide out if he were on the run. It was open, unlike all the presumably locked buildings in every direction, and it offered a raised vantage point.
His eyes settled on the second level. There was something peculiar about the shadows up there. It wasn’t a peculiarity he could pin down, so he just kept staring in case an explanation arrived.
It did, sort of. He became convinced something in the darkness up there was staring back at him. The shadow itself was peculiar; the sunrise wasn’t hitting the front of the garage yet, but the ambient light of the sun was reducing the bite of the shade everywhere else. The middle of the garage refused to succumb.
Robbie decided that was the problem he had with the second floor; the lack of light was unnatural somehow.
There was probably an excellent explanation that would present itself if he stared at the spot for long enough, he decided. So he continued to stare, as if this was a competition to see who blinked first.
Robbie won when the darkness blinked.
That wasn’t right. There was a better description for what just happened. There wasn’t anyone up there, and what wasn’t up there didn’t blink, and if it had blinked, it was a dark thing in a dark place, blinking darkly. He couldn’t have seen it. This was just the underutilized creative side of his brain, trying out a new and fun hallucination, right after showing him a bunch of fireflies shaped like a person.
Or maybe the Noot bars had hallucinogenic effects that were just now kicking in.
If he really wanted to prove nobody was up there, he could charge up the ramp. It wasn’t far; just one flight. But that wasn’t happening, because he needed his legs for that and his legs didn’t feel like moving.
Robbie was still standing there when Touré ran up. It had probably been just a minute or two, but felt longer.
“Did you see him?” Touré asked.
“Who?” Robbie asked. He broke off from the staring contest with the darkness.
“The kid. Did you see him? He didn’t come out the other side.”
“No, man,” Robbie said. “I didn’t see him.”
He looked up at the garage again. It looked perfectly normal now.
All in your head, Rob, he told himself.
“Are you sure he came this way?” Robbie asked.
“Pretty sure. You all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I need some rest, is all. Come on, let’s head back. The kid’s gotta resurface eventually.”
Carol walked along the river, alone. She had her cane, and her ears, and that was enough to get around during the day in a world without cars and only a few predators. Probably.
She needed the air. They’d been living in the dorm for only a week, but the place smelled stale and artificial, like the air had already been used by someone else. She’d explored every floor at least once, in search of . . . well, not really in search of anything so much as just keeping busy.
When it came to looking for stuff that was of use to the team, she was not the person best equipped to be on point. She could hear things better, perhaps—although this wasn’t really true; she just listened better—but that was only helpful if they wanted to know how many mice were living in the walls. (The answer: quite a few.)
Everyone else wanted her to be safe, so they insisted she stay inside. Carol appreciated their concern, especially since they could just as easily have concluded it would be best for them if she went away and died somewhere. They’d have more food, and they would be more mobile.
It was conceivable that were it not for the burden of the blind woman, Robbie and Touré would have already biked halfway across the state to wherever the people were . . . if there were in fact any people to be found. Like the others, she continued to hold out hope that this was just a temporary existence, even if she was also the one arguing that they needed to plan as if it was permanent. It was an attitude she tried not to push too hard, because without that hope, she didn’t know what the others would do.
She stopped on the path to listen to the world around her. Every now and then, she got this sense that Burton was near, but of course he wasn’t. It was her mind playing tricks again, twisting what she desperately wanted to be true into an illusion of reality.
Carol had been struggling with the implications of this evident human apocalypse a lot in the last couple of days. It kicked in once she felt safe for the first time since the day she and Robbie awoke in an empty dormitory. The scope was just too vast to absorb all at once, so it rolled in slowly instead, in waves of understanding.
Everyone she ever knew—her parents, her high school classmates, the first boy she ever kissed—was dead. And yet, as she came to grips with that, the one she missed most painfully was her dog.
Something scurried over her foot. She jumped back in surprise, and then laughed.
There were so many animals moving around her now. She found it terrifying at first; a week later, it was fascinating, and somewhat entertaining as long as none of them was trying to eat her. Had all these creatures always been there, just biding their time until humanity exited the food chain?
Up ahead, she heard what had to be a Canada goose squawking angrily at . . . well, not at her—of this she was fairly certain. A disagreement between the geese and some other creature was heating up to her right, toward the riverbank, and that was enough of a reason not to head in that direction until it was resolved.
She found a tree and sat down under it.
There was a cat of some kind over her head. It didn’t sound heavy enough to pose a threat. Of course, it did pose a very real threat, because she couldn’t see it in order to defend herself properly. But it didn’t know that.
Presently, she heard Bethany coming down the path.
“Hey,” the girl said, “I don’t think you’re supposed to be out alone, are you?”
“I’m not alone,” Carol said. “You’re here.”
“I’m here now. For real, these animals are whackjobs. I don’t feel safe, and I can see . . . Shit, sorry. I mean, I know they’re coming.”
“It’s not a secret, my being blind. You can talk about it. It’s perhaps a blessing right now, not to see what’s around us. They’re leaving us alone. As with bees.”
“Not sure I know what you mean,” Bethany said. “You know, there’s a bench right over here. Probably more comfortable. Fewer ants, for sure.”
“Is there?” Carol held her hand up. “Help me over.”
Bethany was a little thing, not quite finished with puberty. She had to really lean back to counterbalance Carol. Then she helped her to the bench.
“This is better, thank you,” Carol said.
“You’re welcome.”
“What I mean is, bees are harmless if you don’t try to swat at them. They only attack out of a need to defend themselves.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that. Cool.”
Carol leaned back and enjoyed the breeze coming off the river, while Bethany sat there and struggled to come up with a way to verbalize what was on her mind. She fidgeted, and inhaled as if to speak, but then did not. Carol waited her out.
“That thing you were saying earlier,” Bethany said, finally. “About knowing the time of month.”
“Oh. Yes. What about it?”
“Do you . . . how do you . . .”
Carol reached out and took Bethany’s hand.
“Have you had your first yet?” she asked the girl, wondering if she’d just been elected to have the talk with their resident pubescent.
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, yes, I have. But, um, I don’t know when it’s supposed to happen again. Or if it even will. And, like . . . I don’t have any other clothes right now? Underwear, I mean. I was gonna go out and get some, because I don’t want to ask . . . I mean, that’s the last thing I want to tell Touré, and . . . maybe Robbie would be cool with it, he seems okay. So I was gonna go out and find some on my own, but I don’t want to leave you. I’ve been washing my stuff in the sink, but man.”
“You don’t want to soil yourself.”
“I’m saying.”
“I have pads. I made Robbie find some for me on the third day. The poor boy, I think I could hear him blushing.”
Bethany laughed. Carol thought it might be the first time she’d heard the girl laugh genuinely. She had a witheringly scornful artificial laugh that was reserved for whatever came out of Touré’s mouth, but this was very different.
“What’s up with you and Robbie, anyway?” Bethany asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I dunno. You guys are like . . . a team. Whenever there’s a vote, you two always agree on everything. Even what month it is.”
“I guess we do,” Carol said. “But you seem to always abstain.”
“I what?”
“You decline to vote.”
“Well, yeah, it doesn’t matter. If I agree with you two, there’s no point saying so. If I disagree, I’m siding with the asshat.”
It was Carol’s turn to laugh.
“Touré is a challenge, but he’s not so terrible.”
“Right, well, anyway, you and Robbie are in charge, so . . .”
“Are we?”
“One of you is. I can’t tell which. You’re a team, like I said. It doesn’t matter anyway.”
Bethany pulled her hand away.
“I can give you some pads,” Carol said. “And you’re right—we should task the boys with fetching some undergarments. But tell me: Why did you say ‘if it will’?”
“Why did I say what?”
“Just now, you were talking about your time of the month, and you sounded uncertain as to whether you’ll have another. Do you have questions? Biologically?”
“Oh. No, I know it’s supposed to happen again, you know, if this was normal. I meant because of how things are now.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“Yeah, forget it. Maybe . . .”
Carol reached out to take Bethany’s hand again, but the younger girl had stood. She was still there, but out of reach.
“Bethany, what did you want to say?” Carol asked.
Bethany was dragging her toe along the sidewalk. Carol could hear it sliding around; auditory indications of a deep reluctance.
“I figured it was obvious,” Bethany said.
“I don’t understand,” Carol said.
“But either way, if you’re still doing it, so will I, so I should prepare for it. Wasn’t sure if everything was put on pause, you know?”
“No, I don’t know. ‘On pause’?”
Bethany sighed.
“I mean,” Bethany said, “I can’t be the only one who figured it out.”
“Bethany, what? Tell me.”
“We’re all dead,” she said.
When Bethany’s family first moved into the house on Fayerweather Street—she was eight—they gave her the bedroom with the windows that opened over the roof of the carport. She’d been taking advantage of this ever since.
Sometimes, it served as a makeshift porch, where she’d lie down on a towel placed over the too-hot shingles and roast herself in the sun. Or she’d use it whenever she needed to win a game of hide-and-seek. It was also where she would go to get away from her younger brother, Dustin, who had perfected a kind of annoying designed specifically for her torment.
It wasn’t until she turned twelve that it became more than a secret extension of her bedroom. That was when she got her hands on an old wooden ladder.
The ladder lived under the window, where it couldn’t be seen from the street, except when she needed it. Then it lived on the back side of the carport.
Late at night, if there was a place to be—or even if there wasn’t and she just felt like it—she’d hang the ladder over the side, climb down, and then go do whatever. Later, she’d come back and pull it up after her.
Mom and Dad were either not wise to this, or were indifferent. It was hard to tell with them. Dad was a big deal with a local bank (CFO or CEO or CIO or something else that began with a C) and Mom was . . . Actually, she didn’t have a job. Her existence seemed defined by who she was married to and how many charity events she could cram into her schedule. She was always busy, anyway, with whatever. Bethany didn’t mind; it freed her up to pursue her own personal interests.
Locks were always her biggest interest, although she couldn’t say why.
She figured out how to pick a lock on her own, when she was six, using the underside of a barrette. This was in response to the nanny’s decision to punish Bethany by locking her in her room for an hourlong timeout. Bethany didn’t remember what she’d done, or much about where they were living then—it wasn’t as nice, and it wasn’t in Cambridge—but she did remember figuring out how locks worked by trial and error, over the course of that hour.
Half that, actually. She got the lock open in thirty minutes, then tiptoed down the hall and used the house phone to tell her mom that the nanny hit her and locked her up. She hadn’t hit her, but since the rest was true, how much did it actually matter?
The nanny was fired, and that was cool.
By the time she was twelve, having already figured out how to pick all the locks in the house and in the midst of a crescendo of boredom that only mandatory summer reading lists can engender, she used the ladder to sneak out in the middle of the night in order to start a personal, largely harmless, crime spree.
She picked the neighbor’s locks, just for kicks, not even going inside at first. For some reason, she thought it would be funny if there was an argument about who left the back door open the night before. That got boring—and less funny—fast, though, so then she started sneaking through the doors she’d opened.
Then she began taking things. Dumb things, like a garlic press, or all the refrigerator magnets. She’d return them later, but in weird places, like under the couch. Or she’d swap them: put what she took from one house in another house. One time she found a wedding ring on a holder next to the kitchen sink. She took it, broke into a house across the street, and put it next to the sink there.
It was fun. The only downside was almost never being able to appreciate how these little stunts played out. That was true up until the day her mom sat her down to have an Important Talk.
Bethany thought it was going to be on a different subject—sex, or the first time she bled, which hadn’t happened yet—so she was prepared for all manner of awkward. But it wasn’t that.
Instead, Mom began with “I want you to know that you’re completely safe,” which was a crazy way to go.
“Okay,” Bethany said. “That’s great, thanks.”
Mom then went on about how there had been a series of break-ins in the neighborhood and everyone was worried, but added, “We’re all safe here.”
This should perhaps have scared Bethany into stopping—Mom used the word “safe” seven times, which got increasingly alarming as the talk went on—but her reaction was more or less the exact opposite: This was the best thing ever. Not only did they not know it was her, but they thought some guy was coming into the neighborhood and breaking into their houses in the middle of the night. This was hilarious.
Once she knew the whole neighborhood was trying to outsmart her, she was doubly interested in keeping it up.
Because now it was a competition.
Some of the neighbors got dogs, but they were easy to outsmart. All Bethany had to do was go over during the day and ask if she could pet the new dog, and then she was on the canine okay list and every dog on the street thought she was a friend.
They also added burglar alarms, which were harder to charm. Three times, she nearly got caught by an alarm, although it wasn’t as close as it could have been. There was usually a beep-beep from the house alarm that preceded a full alert. As soon as she heard that, she ran for the back fence.
The cops also rolled up and down the street more often, but that was the easiest to avoid, because they were looking for someone who didn’t look like they lived there.
It was all just for kicks. She never took anything of value, except to put it back where it came from or somewhere else, and nobody got hurt. She figured at worst, if she was caught, she’d be grounded, quietly. Nobody was going to want to admit that the terrible neighborhood crime spree was being perpetrated by a thirteen-year-old girl.
Bethany didn’t remember exactly what happened on that night in May, the last time she snuck out the window. She did recall going down the ladder and heading to one of the big houses on the rich side of Reservoir, and she sort of remembered an alarm going off, and running. She had to take refuge in a tree for a couple of hours that night too, which in hindsight had to mean that the hunt for her was getting more serious. Somehow, in the moment, it still seemed fun and worth pursuing. It was only after the fact that it seemed crazy and stupid.
She fell asleep in the tree, but woke up before sunrise and made it back home before she got busted.
The next morning was when everything stopped making sense.
Her room was exactly as she’d left it, so she didn’t even think anything was wrong until she tried leaving.
The bedroom door was locked. Her mom had locked it from the outside, which was, at minimum, a little weird. Granted, Bethany had her own bathroom, so it wasn’t like any emergency short of a fire would have necessitated her exiting into the hall, but all the same, punishment usually works better on a person if they know they’re being punished.
She didn’t sweat it. Whatever was going on, she’d figure it out, either after Mom unlocked the door or after she picked the lock.
Since she was still in her clothes from the night before, she thought it best to wash up. There was no hot water for some reason, so she just did a quick rinse and changed clothes. Then, as nobody appeared to be coming to set her free, she let herself out.
The house was quiet. It was a pretty huge place, with an epic staircase leading up to a rotunda of rooms. At the far end, opposite the top of the staircase, was a grandfather clock that always tick-tick-ticked and chimed the hour. It was the job of one of the maids to make sure it was always going. That involved opening up the middle chamber and pulling until a weight was moved from the bottom of the clock to the top. It’s a magic clock that runs on gravity, the maid told her one time.
The clock wasn’t running that morning, though; somebody screwed up.
“Hello?” she shouted. Her words echoed back, trembling in the glass front of the grandfather clock and in the chandelier at the bottom of the stairs.
She headed down, around the staircase, to the kitchen.
It was an old, old house, the kind of old where the kitchen and its staff were hidden in back, away from the presumption of guests in the front of the place. A whole section was separated from the front, accessible only via a staircase from the kitchen. Dustin played on those back steps all the time, thinking it was a secret passageway, with ghosts and all.
Nobody was in the kitchen. Not even a ghost.
“Hello?” she shouted again. More tinny echoing.
It made zero sense. Mom certainly could not be there, and Dad was almost never there, because he shuttled between Boston and New York so regularly that he kept a place in Manhattan. But Dustin at least should be there, and someone making breakfast for them should be there, and at least one of the maids should be there.
The power’s out, she realized.
To confirm, she crossed the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator door. The inside was warm, and also empty.
This triggered something like panic in Bethany.
She started running from room to room, for any sign of life, first on the ground floor and then the bedrooms on the second floor. She even rechecked her own room, and the roof of the carport, just in case they were all hiding out there for some reason.
There was one thing of note about the roof, but it didn’t involve her missing family: The ladder was gone.
She climbed out and looked over the side in case she forgot to pull it up, but it wasn’t against the side of the carport, either.
Something else about the outside gave her pause: She couldn’t hear anybody. They lived halfway up Fayerweather and looked down on Brattle, where there was always traffic—but today, there wasn’t any. It was all weirdly quiet, except the birds, who were weirdly loud.
She climbed back inside, closed and locked the window, then ran back downstairs.
The house phone was in the study. Mom and Dad had adamantly refused to give her a cell phone before she turned sixteen for blah-blah-blah reasons that only made sense to them. If you want to call someone, young lady, there’s a perfectly good telephone right there, her father said, without even laughing. Then he’d retire to that very study to do bank stuff, ensuring that if Bethany did have someone to call she wouldn’t be doing it while her father was home.
The study was past the living room, through two sliding doors. She went inside and picked up the phone.
It was dead. She pushed the little button in the receiver cradle a bunch of times. Still nothing.
She got down on the floor and checked the connection. While she didn’t know a lot about telephone maintenance, this one looked like it was hooked up to the wall in all the right ways.
On her knees, beside the desk, she was at the perfect angle to notice the altar.
That’s what it was; there was no better way to describe it. It was through the double doors, in the living room, next to the front window. She must have run past it two or three times already and just not seen it, because she wasn’t used to anything being there.
She got up and went for a closer look.
It had been set up on what looked like an old vanity. There was an enormous picture of Bethany in the center; a headshot from when she was twelve. In orbit around it were a number of other pictures of Bethany at different ages. In front was a row of candles, and a book.
Wait, am I DEAD? she thought.
She jumped back, her heart trying to pound its way through her throat.
When she was in third grade, a kid in her class drowned. Barney something. She didn’t remember him at all, but she remembered his wake because that wasn’t the kind of event a third-grader should ever attend.
Barney’s parents had a collage on display in the funeral home, with a bunch of photos of Barney playing, and having fun, and smiling for the camera. It looked just like what Bethany was looking at now.
Only now she was the one being mourned.
Trembling, she opened the book.
It was a scrapbook. The first page was a copy of her own birth announcement, and her baby-as-a-burrito photo from the hospital. The next page was just pictures of her: in a stroller, in a crib, in a walker. The next had the first time she crawled.
This was a book about her life, beginning with childbirth and ending with . . . ?
She flipped to the last page. It was a clipping from the Boston Globe.
NO SUSPECTS IN CASE OF MISSING CAMBRIDGE TEEN
Cambridge, MA—Police have no suspects in the case of the missing Cambridge teen, but a local burglar may be the key to the case.
Bethany Jacobs was believed to have been taken by an unknown individual who gained access to her bedroom by way of a ladder and an open window. Police are now saying a series of burglaries in the area may be linked . . .
That was as far as she could read before the tears made it impossible to focus.
“I’m not dead!” she shouted. “I’m right here!”
Nobody was around to hear her: not Mom, or Dustin, her father or any of the house staff.
She ran outside to tell the neighbors she was still alive, but there wasn’t anyone outside, either. A raccoon heard her testimony, but nobody human.
She kept on running, but there was no life to be found.
Bethany stopped running when she reached the river, which was full of every other kind of life.
Her eventual decision to break into the supermarket was made without a great deal of thought: She was hungry, and that was where the food was. She’d only been inside a short while before Touré showed up.
Up until then, as far as she knew, every human was gone.
Bethany didn’t tell Carol any of this. She wasn’t sure why—it just felt like there would be consequences if she did. She still woke up every morning half expecting Carol, Robbie, and Touré to be gone, just like her family.
“Why do you think we’re dead?” Carol asked.
“What?”
“I said, why do you think we’re dead? That’s a peculiar suggestion. We seem to be the only ones not dead.”
“I dunno,” Bethany said. “Maybe not dead dead. Like, in another dimension or whatever. Like in a story. Or, what’s that place in between heaven and hell?”
“Purgatory?”
“Yeah, that.”
“If I believed in such a place, then . . .” Carol stopped, and sniffed the air.
“What is it?” Bethany asked.
Carol held her hand out.
“Rain is coming,” she said. “We should go back inside.”