Just Plain Weird (26 page)

    
    
“You think it was a meteor?” Eliza asked, her arms crossed in front of her, hugging herself against the chilly wind.

    
    
“I don’t think so,” I said. No, it couldn’t have been a meteor. Everything seemed too neat around the crater; if it had been a meteor, there should have been tons of debris scattered around the crater. The structures around the crater, mostly factories and warehouses, didn’t seem damaged at all. These buildings would have been severely damaged, if not leveled, from the mere shockwave of a huge meteor strike so close.

    
    
I squatted down and examined the end of the street. The blacktop ended at a jagged edge. Below the blacktop, there was old cobblestone street, paved over long ago, along with the metal tracks on which streetcars once rode, when streetcars were the primary public transportation. I reached down and felt the end of one of the forgotten metal tracks. It was cold and smooth and unbent. The ends of the cobblestones, too, were smooth, not broken, not even chipped. Again, all very neat, too neat, as though something unimaginably sharp had sliced through the street. Still squatting, I gazed across the chasm and wondered what could have caused this type of damage. The wind gusted up and rattled a nearby street sign. I thought I could hear something distant on the wind, the sound of tittering interrupted by clicking and clacking.
Titter click click titter clack click titter clack
clack…
whatever it was, was so far away I could barely hear it. For a panicky second I thought maybe the sound was coming from the deepest hollow of my own mind-- maybe a coded message from the artifact, which was trying to tell me something. As I listen to the sound, the air seemed to become colder, goose bumps rose on my arms, and I had a sick dropping feeling in the pit of my stomach. When I stood erect, I felt somewhat light-headed. My legs felt weak and heavy. I noticed, then, that my heart was racing as though I was having a major adrenalin rush. Although I’d never in my life had one, I was pretty sure what I was now experiencing was an anxiety attack.

    
    
“We have to get out of here,” I said, my breath shortening.

    
    
Eliza looked at me. She seemed puzzled. Maybe I had sounded too emphatic. The danger here was gone, the damage done long ago. So why the panic?

    
    
“What’s the deal, Travis?” she asked. “You’re looking a little flushed. The headaches coming back?”

    
    
“Uh-uh. We just need to go-- now.”

    
    
She followed me back to the four by four. Once she had it started she executed a three-point turn, and we were heading away from the crater.

    
    
She asked if I still wanted to look for a fire station, and I told her to forget about that for now-- if we happen to run across one, fine, we’ll stop. I gave her directions to get to Norman’s, which was the sporting goods store where I’d bought all my weight lifting equipment. She shot me a funny look, but didn’t say anything, just guided the four by four down the silent street.

    
    
Norman’s was fairly big for an independently owned store, carrying just about everything the huge chain stores sold. It was no big surprise that we found a parking space on the street right in front of the doors. It was one of the stores that were locked down pretty tight, as though Norman had been fairly certain that the end of the world hadn’t arrived and that someday he would return to reopen. Security gates stretched across the large front windows of the store, and the glass front door bore stickers that warned of electric alarms. A security grating hung inside the front door, behind the thick safety glass inside which was webbed with wire mesh.

    
    
We got out of the four by four and walked up to the front door. I studied the door, trying to figure out the easiest way to get inside. Having always been a law-abiding person, breaking and entering wasn’t something with which I was familiar. I had only the vaguest notions of how to proceed. For her part, Eliza considered the unlikely possibility that though the place looked locked down like a fortress, maybe somebody actually forget to lock the door. She reached out and tried to push the door open, but it wouldn’t budge.

    
    
“No such luck,” she muttered.

    
    
“You have any tools,” I suggested. “Maybe a tire iron.”

 
   
    
She retrieved the tire iron from the four by four, and while she stood at a safe distance, I swung it at the front door. The safety glass shattered into about a thousand pieces, most of which remained held in place by the network of wiring inside the glass. Only a few shards of glass flew from the pane, and landed at my feet on the floor of the lobby. I hit the glass again and again, each time breaking out more small fragments of glass, and bending the wire that ran throughout the pane. Finally I knocked out enough fragments of glass and bent the wiring aside enough to make an opening in the pane, near the door lock. I tried to reach inside, to turn the lock lever I knew would be there (it was in the city codes that all retail establishments had to have entry locks that opened with a lever-- not a key-- on the inside, in case of a fire), but my hand was too big to fit under the security grating that hung on the inside of the door.

    
    
Eliza came to the rescue with her small hands and tiny wrists. She managed to squeeze her hand past the grating and turn the lever and unlock the door. When she pulled her hand back, I could see her wrist was had three large scratches from having rubbed against the edge of the remaining glass or the sharp ends of broken wiring. It looked as though some small animal had clawed her. I thought she would complain, or make some sarcastic remark about the injury, but instead she kept her mouth shut, and followed me into the dark store.

    
    
“Exactly, what are we doing here, Trav?” she asked.

    
    
“We need to pick up a few things,” I explain. “First off, why don’t you find us snowsuits? Get one for Doc, too.”

    
    
“Snow suits?”

    
    
“Sure, you have any idea how cold it’s going to get at night? It’s about forty degrees out now. Imagine what it’s going to be like tonight. Probably five to ten degrees, maybe colder. We need something warm in case we have to go outside for some reason.”

    
    
Dim light from outside filtered through the windows, so that the very front of the store was somewhat illuminated, not much, but enough for you to see and not trip over something and break your neck. The deeper you went into the store, though, the darker it became, until you reached the back wall, which was lost in blackness.

    
    
I walked over to one of the checkout counters, to the small racks filled with impulse items: batteries, key rings, and baseball cards… all kinds of candy bars so hard by now that they probably would crack your teeth if you tried to eat them. On one of the racks I found some disposable flashlights, square plastic things whose batteries you never had to change; you just used it until its battery died and then tossed to whole thing in the garbage and bought a new one. I had to strip the plastic clamshell packaging from three or four of them before I found one whose battery still had a charge. I went through a couple more before I found another working flashlight for Eliza. I handed her the flashlight, and pointed her toward the sales section, where what was left of the store’s supply of winter sportswear was hanging on racks marked discount and reduced. The world had paused on a mid-April day, so most of the sportswear racks were filled with lightweight clothing: tennis and golf shirts, skimpy and slippery-looking running clothes…

    
    
“Is there anything else you’ll be needing?” Eliza asked, walking away from me. “Some skis or curling gear? Or perhaps some swampers?”

    
    
“The snowsuits will be fine. But if you happen to spot some lanterns and rechargeable batteries, grab them.”

         
“What about a first-aid kit,” she suggested. I couldn’t see her now; she was lost among the sportswear racks. “I think I’m bleeding to death, and apparently the artifact is in no condition to heal me.”

    
    
“Yeah, grab a first-aid kit,” I said.

    
    
“Ohmigod,” she cried.

    
    
“What’s wrong?”

    
    
“I just found an outfit that is so ugly…”

    
    
“Eliza, try to remember why we’re here,” I advised her, and then headed toward the back of the store.

    
    
The beam from the flashlight stabbed into the darkness before me, sweeping across baseball bats and mitts, and then golf clubs and bags. I crossed over a couple aisles, and found the fishing section, where fishing rods were set in holders and angled over the aisle and expensive reels were locked in a glass case and all kinds of hooks and lures in little plastic cases lined the shelves. Further down the aisle, deeper into the store, I passed racks from which hung the outerwear donned by hunters: camouflage t-shirts, camouflage jumpsuits, camouflage jackets (insulated and un-insulated), camouflage vests, camouflage ponchos. As the light swept over the endless lines of clothing designed to make humans invisible to animals, it occurred to me what a gimmick the clothing was; no matter how well camouflaged you are, I realized, animals-- whatever you’re hunting-- will still know you’re there because they’ll smell you. They’ll smell you long before you’re in a position for them not to see you or your camo gear. You might just as well go hunting in a day-glo pink zuit suit. The true function of camouflage clothing is to make the hunters look cool and feel macho, and if they feel macho enough, they tend to forget what they’re actually doing: killing animals that are too stupid to recognize a rifle and realize it can kill them…. I finally reached the counter at the rear of the store. Behind the counter, the wall was lined with various rifles, from innocent-looking .22 caliber target rifles to serious-looking hunting rifles with scopes so large you’d swear you’d be able to spot and shoot off a rabbit’s left testicle from ten miles away. The flashlight beam danced across the guns, creating sinister shadows on the paneled wall. I found the rack that held the shotguns, which looked large and scary with their thick barrels. I jumped over the counter and examined them more closely. I found a twenty-gauge double-barrel Mossberg whose appearance was so frightening you could probably kill a goose by holding the gun up and letting the goose get a good look at it. I pulled the Mossberg off the rack. It was fairly hefty and had a pistol grip handle. I set the shotgun on the counter, and started to search the shelves under the gun racks, where boxes of ammunition were stacked and separated according to caliber. When I found the boxes of twenty-gauge buckshot, I grabbed stacks of boxes and piled them onto the counter. I jumped back over the counter, and after a brief search, returned with a nylon duffle bag, into which I dumped the boxes of ammunition. I zipped the duffle bag shut, and threw it over my shoulder. I grabbed the Mossberg with my free hand, and headed for the front of the store.

    
    
Eliza was waiting for me out front of the store. She’d already loaded the snowsuits and lanterns into the four by four. When she spotted the shotgun I was carrying, she gave me a look that was a combination of confusion, alarm, and disgust. The look passed quickly, and she chose for the moment to ignore the presence of the weapon.

    
    
As we headed home, Eliza started shooting me side-glances as I reached into the duffel bag, which I’d dropped on the floor between my feet, and grabbed a box of shells and began loading the Mossberg.

    
    
“First question,” she said finally. “No, wait… let me jump to the third question. You actually know how to work one of those-- things?”

    
    
“My father took me hunting last year,” I said. “It was one of those pity things. You know, because he’s always out of town, so when he is in town, and has some free time, he feels obligated to want to do things with me.”