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It happened pow, like that. One minute he’d been blasting through the Arizona desert and listening to Martha and the Vandellas sing “Heat Wave” on the Mustang’s AM radio, and the next he was pulling over, rumbling to a stop on the shoulder of State Route 87 and idling in place as the good-looking hitchhiker jogged to catch up with him.
“Man, am I glad to see you,” she panted, opening the door—then froze, suddenly, examining the cab, peering into the backseat. “No body parts in that cooler? No murder weapons?”
“Only these,” He held up his hands. “Registered as deadly weapons in fifty states. And Puerto Rico.”
“Is that so?” She laughed, appearing relieved, then climbed in and shut the door. “So where you headed, Deadly Hands?”
“New Mexico. Albuquerque.”
“That’ll do.” She took one of his hands and examined it. “Nah, these are too pretty.” She traced his fingers, studying them. “A dentist’s, maybe. Or a lab technician.” When he didn’t say anything, she added: “No? Something creative, then. Nebulous. An artist, maybe. Or a photographer.”
He shifted in his seat uncomfortably, unsure whether he was getting creeped out by her touch and directness—or a hard-on. He glanced her up and down quickly: the slender figure, the long, dark hair—the brown eyes like a doe in heat. Definitely a hard-on. “Look, I—”
“A writer, I think,” she said, suddenly, and let go of his hand. “Ha! Am I warm?”
He opened his mouth to speak but closed it immediately, seeing only Heller and the office at 123 Wilshire Blvd—the cheap suit, the shit-eating grin—his hard-on withering like a prune in September.
“No,” he said at last, gripping the gearshift, pushing in the clutch. “You’re cold. Cold as fucking Pluto.”
And then they were moving, crossing the rumble strip and picking up speed, the engine growling, leaping up, the sweltering sun beating down, as she looked at him, curiously, quizzically, and he tried to ignore her. As the mercury in the little thermometer on the dash topped 90 degrees—and kept climbing.
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“So what’s your story?” she asked, shouting over the wind and the radio, which was too loud, too tinny. He turned it down.
“My story?” He laughed. “I’m not the one who was hitchhiking through the Sonoran Desert.”
She smiled self-deprecatingly. “Yeah, there is that.” She hung her head back so that her dark hair billowed out the window. “I was at an artist’s colony—the Desert Muse.” She smiled again, bitterly, it seemed. “Or the Desert Ruse, as I call it. Ever heard of it?”
He shook his head.
“Yeah, well, it’s where a bunch of grad students hang out with their professors for a week and study the fine arts. You know, like how to out-snark the other pimply kids ... or fuck your professor.”
He glanced at her sidelong, raising an eyebrow.
“Okay, so maybe not fuck him. But definitely give him something to think about. You know, like when he’s handing out teaching internships.”
He nodded slowly, exaggeratedly. “Ah.”
“Ah. So I just bugged out. I didn’t want to play anymore. And now I’m heading home. Back to Miami.”
He drove, listening, the wind buffeting his hair, which was graying at the temples. She couldn’t have been more than, say, what? Twenty-five? Twenty-six? “Yeah? And?”
“And that’s all you get. At least until I know something about you. Your name, for instance.”
He accelerated, he wasn’t sure why, focusing on the road. “Cooper,” he said, finally. “Cooper Black. But, please, call me ‘Coup’—everyone does.”
“Cooper—Coup. Black? Cooper Black? Like the font?”
“Just like the font.”
“Well, that’s different.” She fell silent for a moment, watching the scenery pass. “I’m Tess, by the way. Tess Baker.” She added, “Please. Go on.”
Cooper only exhaled. “No, no, no, that’s it. I was just coming back from L.A. when I saw you with your thumb out.” He turned the radio back up but got only static. “That’s really all there is to it. Just a guy on a road trip.”
Neither said anything as the radials droned and the radio hissed.
“I think you went there for a reason ... and it didn’t go so well. That’s what I think.” She waited as he fiddled with the dial. “Can’t find your channel there, Coup?”
“No, Doctor Laura, I can’t, actually. Can’t seem to find much of anything. And I went there, if you must know, because I’d sold a book to Roman House and the editor I was working with had a heart attack—he just keeled, okay? So I had to meet this new asshole, who couldn’t stand me or the book, and who cancelled the entire project. And then ...”
He looked at her and found her arching an eyebrow quizzically.
“Then I hit him. All right? Right in the old kisser. And then I turned his desk over and threw his banker’s light, you know, the kind with the faux gold plating and green glass shade—”
She nodded impatiently.
“—right through the window. And then I ran like a rabbit, straight to my car and out of L.A., after which I passed this really good-looking hitchhiker who peppered me with questions until I started going bugfuck. Okay? All right? You happy?”
“I like a man who can open up,” she said.
“I’m not opening up. I’m trying to—”
And then they heard it, the whir of a siren, after which he looked through his rear-view mirror and she out the back window to see a brown and white State Patrol vehicle following them dangerously close, its windshield reflecting the sun like knives and its red and blue lights flashing, telling them to pull over.
“It’s just not my fucking day,” he marveled, still looking in the mirror, even as Tess placed a hand on his leg—close to his crotch, he noticed—and said: “But it could be, Coup. It still could be.” —before her eyes expanded like saucers and she shrieked, shouting, “Look out!”
And he looked ahead in time to see a brown blur, a large mouse, he thought, or a kitten, which had been scurrying across the road, vanish beneath the filthy hood.
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It all happened so quickly that it wasn’t even clear, at least at first, what had happened, other than he’d slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting the creature and caused the police car to ram them from behind—like a wrecking ball, it seemed, knocking them forward.
And then there they were, stalled at the side of the road in front of a partially accordioned police car (while parked over an almost certainly dead cat, possibly a rodent) and feeling their necks; even as Coup glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw the officer storming toward them—his service weapon drawn.
“Oh, not good,” said Tess, shrinking down in her seat, as Cooper held up his hands and offered assurances. “It’s okay—everything’s going to be fine. There’s nothing to—”
“Get out of the car and get on the ground! Now!”
“Jesus,” said Coup.
“Yeah. Shouldn’t he at least be asking us if we’re all right?”
“Do it!”
They did it, easing open their doors and hurrying to get on the ground, putting their hands behind their backs, making of themselves nice little arrestable bundles.
“Look, Officer, I can explain every ...”
“Shut up! Shut up and stay on the ground! Don’t move!”
They didn’t move—but stayed precisely as they were, their hearts pounding, their blood racing, as the cop keyed his mic:
“530 to Dispatch, request back-up at State Route 87 and 19, collision with civilian vehicle, possible DUI. Over.”
“Possible DUI?” Coup craned his neck to look at him. “Where in the hell did you get—”
“Shut up and stay on the ground! Keep your hands behind your back!” And into his mic: “530 to Dispatch, did you copy? Over.”
But there was nothing, no reply whatsoever, just static—like the Mustang’s AM radio. Coup craned his neck again, this time in the opposite direction: And no vehicles, either. Come to think of it, there’d been nothing since he’d picked up the girl, not even so much as a semi, always so ubiquitous.
He strained to peer skyward, the sun stabbing at his eyes. And no air traffic. No contrails to fuel the conspiracy theorists—nothing. Just a pale, blue dome, without even a cloud.
He froze as gravel crunched beneath the cop’s shoes, half expecting a boot on his neck, but quickly realized the man was moving away from him, not toward him, back toward his car.
“I’m scared, Coup,” said Tess, her voice sounding small, distant. “I’m really scared.”
“I know,” he said, the sweat pouring down his forehead, stinging his eyes. “I am too. But it’ll be all right. Just, you know, chill, as they say. He’s called for back-up. That’s a good thing.”
“Witnesses,” she said. “Maybe a commanding officer.”
“Exactly. Just hang tight. I know it’s hot.”
“I’ll be okay.” She added: “Thanks, Coup.”
He grunted. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Just—thanks. For being here. For looking out for me. Like a big brother, almost. Or a fa—”
“Shht, he’s coming,” he said—suddenly, urgently.
The world just sat, silently.
“But I don’t hear any—”
“Sorry, false alarm. Must have been my own foot, or something.”
And then they waited.
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How much time passed would have been difficult to say: maybe it was only a few minutes—say, ten or fifteen—and maybe it was a half hour; regardless, when they at last climbed to their feet and walked to the officer’s car, they found him nowhere in sight. He had, quite simply, just vanished without a trace.
“But ... that’s impossible,” said Tess, shielding her eyes, scanning the horizon,. “He couldn’t possibly have walked that far—could he?”
Coup appeared troubled as he stood next to her and did likewise. “It’s possible ... but it sure as hell ain’t likely.” He looked at the patrol car, the door of which still hung open, and his eyes seized upon the shotgun—which glinted between the seats like black gold. “Maybe someone picked him up. But why would he leave in the first place? And why would he leave that just sitting there for anyone to take?”
He looked to where the keys hung from the ignition. “Not to mention the car itself?”
“There’s no footprints,” said Tess, examining the ground. She looked up at him as though she felt suddenly ill. “Nothing leading away. Just ours and his walking to and from ...” She paused, her lower lip trembling. “How is that possible, Coup? And not just him but—where is everybody else? Where are the other cars? How in ...”
And then she just broke suddenly and rushed into his arms, and they remained like that for several minutes, during which time he scanned the sky, and, to his deep relief, spied a passenger jet arching glimmeringly across the sky, its contrail just as white and reassuring as angel dust.
“Look, there, see,” He released her abruptly and spun her around. “We’re not in the Twilight Zone, after all. Hey, yo, Freedom Bird! We’re down here!” He waved his arms back and forth. “Give us a lift! Albuquerque or bust!”
Yet there was something odd about the plane’s trajectory he hadn’t initially noticed—or had he? For it truly was arching, which is to say it wasn’t crossing the sky so much as it was ... falling from it. Yes, yes, he could see now that was true, as he disengaged from Tess and paced through the scrub, tracking the jet as it curved gracefully in the sun— to finally plummet straight into the far hills, where it vanished like a specter in a plume of fiery smoke.
And then he was gripping the shotgun and trying to wrest it from its rack; but, finding it locked, had to search the car for a key: upon which, realizing there were none that would fit, he located a small button just beneath the seat and depressed it—freeing the weapon.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Tess as she tailed him back to the Mustang, but he ignored her until they were again seated inside, after which he turned to her and said, briskly, “Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but I’m doing it, okay?”
And it was on the tip of her lips to respond when they heard the sound: a kind of muffled whimper—something between a chirp and a meow—coming from outside. Coming from beneath the car.
“Oh my God, Coup. The cat ...”
“It was a rat, I think.”
“Whatever it is; it’s ... still alive. Listen.”
And he did listen—and quickly determined that, whatever it was, it was either in great pain or scared out of its wits.
And then they were both scrambling, out of the car and into the heat and glare, and what they saw next was something neither of them would forget—for it was both portent and prelude to everything which lie ahead.
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It was two things above all else: adorable and almost dead. It was also attached to the top of the tire like a vise (where it had taken refuge after the near collision), its little claws dug into the rubber like a cat’s and its dark eyes regarding them fearfully—and yet somehow bravely. Still, it was not a cat (or a kitten) in spite of its claws, nor was it a mouse, however over-sized. What it was, quite simply, was something unknown; although what Coup thought it resembled most was a mongoose, albeit clearly still in its infant stage. Nor did it seem to be dangerous, as Tess found out when she touched it against Coup’s advice and it merely licked her fingers—or tried to—its sandpapery tongue just as dry as the dead.
“It’s this heat,” she said, finally, stroking its neck and back. “It’s seriously dehydrated.” She looked at Coup. “Whatever it is, I don’t think it has very long.”
“It needs water,” he said. “And it needs it fast.”
He stood and looked into the backseat; at the cooler he’d picked up from Walmart before heading out to L.A. “And we gotta bring his temperature down. Can you move him, you think?”
“I think so, yes. If he’ll let go of the tire.”
Coup took a spare shirt from the back and shook it out, then opened the cooler and laid it inside. “Most the ice is still good; we’ll lay him in here.” He picked a Styrofoam cup off the floor. “And see if we can’t get him to drink something.”
And then, having managed a few sips and been laid in the chest—it had taken both of them to disengage it from the tire—the thing seemed to sleep; as they pulled away from the shoulder and back onto the road (although where they should go was another question entirely) and decided to name it “Rikki-Tik”—after Kipling’s famous mongoose.
They hadn’t traveled far, however, when they encountered more evidence that something wasn’t right—with the road, with the traffic (or lack thereof), with the world.
“What’s that?” asked Tess as something glinted about a mile ahead, something blue and crumpled, torn, smashed.
“What’s what?” he said, and then noticed it: a blue and chrome thing turned over on it side in the middle of the road, a ruined and battered thing. A car.
“Jesus,” he said, letting off the gas.
“Mary and Joseph,” added Tess. “Christ. Do you think anyone could have ...” She paused, squinting. “Coup, tell me that isn’t what I think it is.”
But he was seeing it too, and knew that what was splashed down the car’s door was exactly what she thought it was.
“It’s blood, all right.” He geared down and brought them slowly alongside the hulk, where he put it in park and inhaled, deeply. He did not, however, shut off the engine.
“Please, God, be empty,” said Tess. “I’m not ready for this shit.”
Coup sighed. “Why don’t you ... check on our friend or something. I’ll have a look .”
“Okay.”
But he’d barely begun to open his door when a wrinkled hand appeared suddenly, waveringly, amidst the wreckage—and gripped its glass-covered dash. After which Coup reiterated calmly, gently: “Tess, check on our friend.” —and climbed out.
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To Coup’s astonishment, the man—who couldn’t have been less than ninety years old—had suffered only minor cuts and abrasions; although his wife, he said, had been killed (which was weird, to say the least, since he was the only one in the car). Beyond that, though, he hadn’t had much to say—nor did Coup blame him—as they rumbled from the scene and continued east; indeed, he seemed to still be in state of shock. One thing, however, was woefully clear, and that was that at his age (and level of dementia) he shouldn’t have been driving in the first place.
“Maybe she was thrown clear,” said Tess as she buckled him in next to the ice chest, her tight Levi shorts merely inches from Coup’s head. “It was obviously a horrific accident; although it is strange that there was no other car. Could they have had a blowout, you think?”
“The short answer is ‘no,’” said Coup matter-of-factly. “That car’s tires were good. As for being thrown clear—no way. I searched the entire area. There was nothing. Not unless the coyotes carried her away.”
“Well, there you—”
“The coyotes didn’t carry her away, Tess.”
“Look, I don’t know,” she protested as she helped the man dig out his wallet—it was fat and had been causing him discomfort, was her guess.
All of which went out the window when he removed a picture from it and handed it to her: a picture of himself and his wife when they were much, much younger—or so she’d presumed, at least until she saw the timestamp in the lower right corner of the frame. A timestamp which read: October 15, 2017.
“This is nuts,” said Coup, looking at it, before handing it back. “All of this is just stark-raving ...”
But he never finished the sentence, for they were approaching another vehicle, three other vehicles, to be precise, all of which were ditched at the side of the road as though their drivers had simply fallen asleep.
“They’re empty, every single one,” whispered Tess as they passed the vehicles at a virtual crawl. “Just like the cop car. Just like this guy’s wife. It’s almost as if—”
“Don’t say it,” said Coup.
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”
“We don’t know that yet—”
“It’s like they just disappeared! Just poof! Gone!”
“Tess—”
“Goddamn it, Coup! Lying to ourselves about it isn’t going to—"
“Some of them did,” said the old man suddenly, rendering them speechless, even as Tess turned around and Coup looked into the rear-view mirror. “Vanished just like ghosts, like they’d never existed at all. I know because I saw it with my own eyes. But that’s not what happened to my wife.”
They just looked at him, nobody saying anything. It was, in a sense, as if he’d been reborn—still as old as Methuselah but suddenly alert and aware; enough so that he’d become acutely aware of his condition and surroundings and seemed to be entranced by the sight of his own liver-spotted hand, which he studied as though it wasn’t his at all but a total stranger’s.
At last he said, “No. No. Because you see, some disappeared. And some, well, I guess some have or will end up like me. But my wife ...” He paused, looking first at Coup and then at Tess, his eyes ancient, haunted, possessed almost. “My wife was eaten.”
After which they faced forward again and didn’t say anything for a long time, not until they passed the green and white sign indicating food and gas via the next exit, at which they looked at each other and nodded at almost the same instant, then touched hands as if to brace themselves for what they might find there.
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It was called the Border Rendezvous and as best Coup could figure it, it was a Union 76 gas station on crack. What else was there to make of a place with a giant Mexican bandit named “Benito the Bandido” standing over its drive—his legs bowed absurdly and his hands gripping the titular sign— or boasting in its other signage of being home to the world famous Dingo Dog (“Have a Dingo, Gringo!”) and the “largest indoor reptile exhibit in the U.S.?”
“Jesus,” said Tess as they drove between the statue’s gargantuan legs, “Where were the P.C. Police when they built this?”
“Just a gleam in someone’s eye,” said Coup, maneuvering the Mustang around a lengthy pump island (which was more befitting an actual truck stop than a glorified gas station/food mart). “Probably one of those professors at the Desert Ruse.” He added: “Don’t knock it. They’ll be cold water and air-conditioning. Not to mention a big TV.”
She looked at him, struck by his mentioning of the Desert Ruse. He listened. She wasn’t used to that. “Yeah, but ...” She looked at the building’s front windows doubtfully. “Will there be a signal?”
“That,” he said, as they rumbled up to those windows and stopped, “is the 64-thousand dollar question.” He shut off the engine and exhaled. “Okay. I’ll take our furry friend if you can assist Mr.—?”
“Becker,” said the old man. “Henry Becker. And I don’t need a nurse to get out of a car, thank you. I was thirty-four just an hour ago.”
Tess looked at Cooper but he just shrugged. One didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
They all got out, Coup fetching the ice chest while Tess walked behind Becker, her arms at the ready, and they went into the store, where they were greeted immediately by a cacophony of voices—and saw a large group gathered in front of the counter.
“Any one of you a doctor?” someone snapped, having turned at the sound of door chimes—a large black man with a shiny head and long gray beard (a trucker, maybe, or a biker, although Coup hadn’t noticed any bikes out front). “Or do you have any medicine? Prescription meds, opioids, muscle relaxers ...”
The three of them just froze.
“Speak up!”
“No, nothing,” said Coup—he couldn’t help but notice that Tess had gripped his arm instinctively— and added, “What is it? What’s going on?”
There was a sound like liquid splattering the floor and a woman in a red dress turned around, cupping her mouth. “Oh my God. Can’t someone just kill it?”
“Now, wait a minute—”
“She’s right, you know. Who has a gun?” said the big man—adding, when no one responded, “Come on! This has got to end!”
An animal, thought Coup. Someone’s animal is dying—probably from this heat. Jesus.
It was on the tip of his lips to say he did, in the car, when someone beat him to it; a wiry little man in a cowboy hat and wife-beater (who had also turned at the chimes), who said, plaintively, “I have one.”
“Jesus, Coup, look,” said Tess, nodding toward the ceiling, toward the massive flat screen mounted above and behind the counter, and he nearly leapt with joy when he saw that it was not in fact broadcasting static but actual imagery—or at least the CNN logo, which filled the screen—and that someone was talking: Anderson Cooper, perhaps, although it was difficult to say over the commotion at the counter. Coup caught only “extreme weather ranging from sudden heat waves to flash ice-storms all across the country” before hearing another splattering of liquid and the people at the counter gasp, after which a single shot rang out and he jumped.
And then it was over—whatever it was—and the animal, whatever it had been, was dead, surely, and Tess ran to him and collided with his shoulder even as the room returned to some kind of normalcy and the voice on the TV continued: “... the fact is we just don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know where my family is or if they’re safe. I don’t know if we have a President—or if he’s simply vanished. I don’t know where our first responders are, or our law enforcement, to say nothing of the military, or why so many of our friends and loved ones have disappeared. All I know is—”
And then static broke across the screen like a gunshot—pow, like that—and their connection to the rest of the world was lost; and the room fell silent, or nearly so, for a woman sitting at one of the booths was sobbing and the static continued to hiss.
That’s when Coup first noticed it, the blood which was so dark as to be almost black, spreading from the small gap beneath the counter, pooling around people’s shoes—and set down the ice chest, embracing Tess briefly before moving toward the gathering and peering over the fixture himself.
Where he saw something so strange and terrible, so grotesque, that his mind could not at first accept it: a thing not only without analog to the natural world (at least insofar as he understood it) but which seemed a purposeful mockery. A thing, in short, which was neither man nor animal, and yet, somehow, a tangle of both.
A thing from which he shielded a little girl as she inexplicably tried to join him and whose dead, randomly placed eyes—two of them small, blue, human, two others as large and slit-pupiled as any serpent’s—gazed emptily into space.
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Had Coup anticipated how unbearable the silence would become he wouldn’t have sought out the remote and silenced the TV, nor encouraged Tess to take Rikki-Tik to the restroom and clean him up.
And yet, Christ, what was there to say? They were strangers, all of them—even he and Tess were strangers—who among them even knew the other’s name, much less anything about what was going on or what the thing lying behind the counter was? When at last he spoke he did so quietly, almost reverentially, offering only his name and where he’d been heading, hoping the others gathered around the counter would follow suit— which, after a moment, they did, slowly, hesitantly.
“Rory Holmes,” said the big man, “long-haul trucker, enroute to Los Angeles from Laredo, when—when all this happened.”
“Elliott Giles,” said the wiry guy in the wife-beater, “disabled veteran. Not any war, just—just the service. Enroute to Phoenix from Las Cruces.” He paused, his lower lip trembling. “I—I only did what had to be done.”
“You’re good. You’re all good, man,” said Rory, clapping him on the back, startling him. “You done right.”
The introductions continued:
“Long Nguyen. Civil engineer. Atlanta to San Diego.”
“Ashley May. Phoenix from Cedar City. Utah.”
“Cameron Reeves. Ah—” The twenty-something year-old hesitated. “Immigration activist enroute to the new wall at El Paso.” He paused, appearing self-conscious. “From Washington. That’s my group.” He indicated a trio of young people near the booths.
“D.C.?” asked Rory.
“State,” said Cameron. “Seattle.”
“Ah. The Great White North.”
“Sure. I guess.”
“Carson Bates,” blurted a heavyset man abruptly, squaring his beefy shoulders. “Carrot-topped farmer cum crop-duster; and all around daredevil.” He glanced at Cameron and tweaked his MAGA hat. “And a proud supporter of President Donald J. Tucker.”
“You don’t say,” said Coup. The hat alone was pretty hard to ignore.
Cameron just shrugged.
That left only two in the immediate group who hadn’t spoken; the attractive woman in the red dress (who seemed to have recovered) and a young man of Native American heritage who introduced himself only as “Johnny—from Tucson.”
“Kate Patel,” said the woman at length, “CEO, Desert Smoke Vapors. Enroute to L.A. from Austin.” Her voice lowered slightly. “And about to get underway again.”
“It’s your apocalypse,” said Coup. “And a warm welcome to all.”
And yet the silence reasserted itself as they watched the tangle of flesh cool and bleed; its eight limbs stiffening like driftwood and its eyes staring in four different directions, its chaos of muscle and bone settling, until, spying a nametag amidst the riot of fabric and tissue, Coup said, “It’s the clerk. He or she—has been combined with something. Like a lizard. Or a crocodile. Look,”
He pointed to where a partial human face had emerged from the mangle, its mouth stretched in a hideous grimace, its right cheek morphed like clay, its gray flesh blending seamlessly back into the beast—the monitor lizard. The crocodile, whatever.
“Right there, at the animal’s neck. See it?”
“Like they were baked together in a fucking microwave,” said Rory.
“Or melted—like nachos.” said Elliott.
“More like fused,” said Long. “Blended to form a single entity ... a single amalgamate.”
“Like Brundlefly,” whispered Ashley.
Coup hadn’t quite caught that.
She blushed a little self-consciously. “Like The Fly. You know, that movie from the ’80s, with Jeff Goldblum.”
Everyone just looked at her.
“The remake—of the original black and white. Jesus. The Fly.”
“I know the movie,” said Coup. “But what’s—”
“When the guy who built the transportation pod gets drunk and tests it on himself, and the fly gets caught in the matrix ...”
“... and they get fused together.” He looked down at the thing, at the four human limbs and the four reptilian ones, at the four dead eyes all pointed in different directions. “Jesus ... But what could—”
“That’s not all,” said Long.
He went around the counter and approached the corpse—his shoes squelching in the blood and gruel—then hitched up his pants and knelt. “This foot here, for example—”
“Don’t touch it!” said Ashley.
He paused, fingertips hovering.
“She’s right, you know,” said Rory. “Who knows what that thing might be carrying.”
He traced the scales, his finger suspended just above them. “See this? Kind of like a big bird’s talon, isn’t it? Not much like a lizard—more like an ostrich, or an emu. But what’s really curious is this, right here.” He indicated a single scythe-like claw, about three inches in length, and curved like a scimitar. “Because it’s retractable, see?” He laughed slightly. “Like your cat’s. And it’s sickled-shaped. Which means—”
“Look, ah, Bill Nye,” interrupted Carson, shouldering past Coup, displacing him with his bulk. “Is there a point to any of this? Or are you just showing off your American education?”
Coup raised an eyebrow.
“Well, yes, there is,” said Long. He appeared vaguely stupefied. “The point is: no animal like this currently exists.”
Carson just looked at him—like a big, dopey John Candy—appearing amused. “It’s not? Well, what is it, then?” He looked at the others as if for support. “Is it Mothra?” He laughed.
“Whatever it is, we can’t just leave it here,” said Elliott.
Coup looked outside, at the landscaped berm on the south end of the lot. “We’ll bury it there, by the water—”
“Look, you guys can do whatever you want,” Kate interrupted, “but I’m not touching that thing.” Her keys rattled as she removed them from her purse. “Besides, I’ve got a board meeting to attend.” She moved toward the doors. “Apocalypse or no apocalypse.”
“Now wait a—” Rory began.
“Are you—” said Elliott.
“Is that really a good idea?” asked Coup, which at last caused her to turn around.
“I don’t know, is it?” she said, and slung the purse over her shoulder. “Why don’t you ask him?” She indicated Long. “He seems to know everything.”
“He’s right,” said Rory. “It’s not a good idea.”
“It’s the only idea,” she snapped determinedly. She patted her purse warningly. “And don’t even think about ...”
But they were no longer looking at her— gazing instead at something which had swooped into view outside, something which seemed for an instant almost to hover—its muscles and ligaments twitching, making a thousand adjustments, its stretched membranes undulating, its talons outstretched—before it smashed against the glass like some great, dark kite (cracking it three different ways) and hit the ground violently, scrambling and flapping, leaping and taking wing again, disappearing from sight. All of which happened so fast that the woman in the red dress, having leapt away suddenly, didn’t appear to have even seen it, much less identified it, and only said, finally, “What was that?” And then laughed. “Are we under attack by wild turkeys, for fuck’s sake?”
And then the incident was over and the only sounds were those of the commercial refrigerators humming and the fountain drink regulators hissing, and no one said anything, even when Tess burst back into the room and said, breathlessly, “Jesus, what’s going on?”
“In Bumfuck, Arizona?” said Kate acidly. “Nothing. Kate is leaving, that’s what’s going on. Ta-ta. Let me know when it’s time for the reunion.”
And yet this time she was answered, and by an unexpected voice, a voice as strong and confident as any thirty-four-year-old. A voice which belonged to the old-young man himself, Henry Becker.
“You want to leave, young lady? Go right ahead,” he said, approaching her, each step small, cautious, carefully considered. “But know this. Denial has its limits. And in this case, that limit is exactly where those doors stand.” He closed to within a few feet of her before she touched her purse and said, “That’s close enough.” —causing him to take a step back. He continued: “It might be closer than that, considering these ... things ... can appear out of nowhere.” He turned and indicated the amalgamate. “That poor bastard, for example. His only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because there’s something you need to understand, Miss—”
“Patel,”
“Miss Patel. And that is that for every person gone to this—this phenomena—and you must have seen the empty cars ... something else has, shall we say, arrived.”
She seemed to hesitate, her eyes blinking, her attitude faltering.
“And one of these things, Miss Patel, is outside now. Probably on the roof. We—we saw it, you understand, while you were turned around. But it was aiming for you. And it is only because of those thin doors that you are still here.”
She looked at him passively, almost intimately—as though he’d reached her; as though she were about to change her mind. And then the moment was gone and she was shoving through the doors, letting in the sweltering heat, reminding everyone of what lie just beyond the glass, striding for her car while her red dress flowed freely behind.
“Jesus, we can’t just—” Coup started to say, and lurched forward—but was restrained by Tess, even as Kate made it to her car and opened the door, tossing in her purse, then turned toward the store and shrugged nonchalantly—before gripping her elbow and flipping everyone off.
“See? Big girl panties,” said Tess, and Coup could have just kissed her—when there was a huge, black blur at the corner of his eye and someone gasped; and he turned to see that Kate was gone—just gone. He blinked and she was there again, dangling from the flying thing’s talons, folding as it lighted upon the orange Union ’76 ball; offering up her intestines as it thrust its long, thin beak into her long, thin body.
And then Tess was screaming and he was trying to calm her—as yet another great kite swooped in and lighted upon a streetlight; and still another after that, lighting upon a utility pole; and still one more, which glided in like a jet until its talons touched down in the middle of the lot and it ran on them briefly before dropping to all fours and crawling the rest of the way to the windows.
“Jesus, they’re everywhere,” said Rory, moving to within several feet of the glass. He looked at the creature on the ground as it stared in at them. “Like seagulls after breadcrumbs.”
“And we’re the breadcrumbs,” said Tess.
She watched as yet more arrived and a commotion broke out atop the ’76 sign, where a larger bird attacked the smaller one and wrested its prey away (part of it, anyway) before beating its wings and soaring off—strewing body parts, causing those on the ground to scramble and to squabble amongst themselves.
“It’s an outright feeding frenzy,” said Elliott, stepping up next to Coup. He looked at the creature on the other side of the window even as it was joined by a multitude of others. “Jesus. Look at their eyes.”
But Coup had already noticed—that strange glow that wasn’t really a glow; that backlit fogginess, as though they were blind or perhaps even rabid.
“Like zombies,” said Rory. “Like flying fucking voodoo zombies.” He twisted his body, staring at the sky. “And what the hell is that?”
Coup followed his gaze to where a borealis shimmered like iridescent curtains: its colors shifting and blending, creating hues he’d never before seen (and which hurt his mind), its scale unimaginable. “It’s like the whole world’s gone crazy.”
“Worse,” said Henry, and steadied himself against a fixture, “we’re trapped. If not before than certainly now.” He looked outside to where more and more birds were arriving, crowding the lot like flies, making a sea of gray. “They know there’s food here.”
Coup watched as a ripple moved through that sea—as though the birds had heard something. As though something had spooked them. “What’s that?” he said.
And then everything just exploded—as the birds scattered and took flight and what seemed like stones rattled the glass and foodstuffs began bursting and it became apparent that what they were hearing was gunfire. As everyone hit the floor and the room was pocked by bullets, and Coup blanketed Tess’ body with his own.
As he looked over his shoulder and saw the M1 Abrams tank jouncing into the lot, its machine gun flashing and its exhaust ports belching black smoke—its great, flat turret rotating, pointing directly at them.