Night of the Purple Moon (6 page)

When Abby returned to the window, her blood turned cold. Purple fingers of fog were working their way between the bare branches of the trees behind the Couture’s house, reaching out for her.

Jordan’s heart pounded. Every house on Melrose Street stood dark and lifeless in the thickening mist. He expected the fog to worsen. When warm air settled over cold water or cold air over warm water, it made for the best conditions for prisons of white to brew up quickly. Within minutes, ten-mile visibility could shrink to ten inches. Sometimes ten inches dwindled to one inch.

They stayed in the middle of the street. He continually scanned the yards to his left and right for signs of people or coyotes.

“Should we go back?” Emily asked. “It looks like the fog might get worse.” Her breathing made her brown eyes seem bigger, wider.

Jordan shook his head. “Stay close. Even if we can’t see, we can follow the road back home.”

Emily moved closer, her shoulder grazing against his arm felt nice.

“San Diego was foggy every morning,” she said. “But the sun always burned it off by noontime.”

“Is that where you grew up?”

“We lived there for two years. My parents worked at Scripps Institute. Before that we lived in Seattle for three years. Kevin and I were born in San Francisco.”

Talking about normal stuff, with a girl no less, seemed to calm him down. “What’s it like to move around so much?” he asked.

“As soon as you make friends, you have to leave them. I have a really good friend, Tess. She was planning to visit me this summer. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

“You sound like Abby,” Jordan said. “She hated moving here. This week she was supposed to stay with my mom in Cambridge and see all her friends.” He started to explain his mother’s living and working situation, but cut it short when his throat thickened and he felt on the verge of tears. “Does Kevin like the island?”

“He doesn’t care where he lives,” Emily said. “All he does is read science books and spend time on the computer.”

“Do you guys get along?”

She cocked her head. “Yeah, why wouldn’t we?”

“Abby and I fight about everything.”

“Everything?” she said in a tone of disbelief.

“Yeah, pretty much.”

They passed by the house where an old man who mended fishing nets lived. Sunday mornings, pickup trucks would always line the street as commercial fishermen dropped off and picked up nets. The street was deserted now, no fishermen, no nets, the old man’s house dark.

Jordan froze just beyond the house. He grabbed Emily’s arm and held her from going further. Ahead of them the green car that had raced by his house had smashed into a telephone pole, the front end badly crumpled. Glass cubes littered the ground, and green antifreeze formed a puddle by the front tire.

“It drove by our house earlier,” he said.

“I remember you and Abby and Kevin talking about it.”

Jordan took Emily’s hand and they inched closer. He saw the airbag had deflated and the motionless driver slumped forward. The driver had red hair. They moved closer still and Jordan could now see streams of dried blood on the driver’s cheeks.

“It’s a boy,” Jordan cried. “I know who it is. He’s in Abby’s class. His name is Ryan Foster.”

Emily squeezed his hand. “That means other kids our age are probably alive. Let’s go.”

Abby stared out the window into the brooding face of the lavender monster. The vice of fog was tightening around them. The Couture’s house had disappeared ten minutes ago, but she could still make out the shape of the lobster truck. Mr. Marsh was missing, his body probably dragged off by the coyote pack.

She checked her watch again. Jordan and Emily had been gone forty five minutes.

Usually when the fog was this thick, Abby would retreat to her room, pull down the shade, and curse her father for accepting the job as librarian and moving them all here. Castine Island was one of the foggiest spots on the planet, which meant she had privately sworn at him a lot.

“Ajay’s online!” Kevin shouted.

She jumped.

“My cousin,” Kevin added as he typed.

Abby rushed to his side. Strangely, she was joyful knowing that someone else was alive.

Kevin was on Facebook, typing in the chatbox.

KEVIN: AJAY!!!!

KEVIN: AJAY, ARE YOU THERE????

KEVIN: AJAY????

“He lives in Mumbai,” Kevin said.

“India?”

Kevin nodded. “He’s fourteen. He has an older brother, Jyran. We visited them last summer. You need a satellite connection to be online.”

Abby thought her friend Mel in Cambridge had satellite.

KEVIN: PLEASE RESPOND

KEVIN: ???

They stared at the screen.

“What time is it in India?” Abby asked.

“Eleven thirty at night. They’re nine and a half hours ahead of us.”

They kept staring at the screen in silence.

The computer bleeped.

Abby grabbed Kevin’s arm from excitement.

AJAY: KEVIN

Kevin’s fingers started dancing on the keyboard.

KEVIN: ARE YOU OKAY?

AJAY: EVERYONE

A pause. Every passing second felt like a minute. Kevin started up again.

KEVIN: EVERYONE WHAT?

KEVIN: AJAY?

A bleep, finally.

AJAY: MY PARENTS, JYRAN

“I know what he’s going to write!” Kevin shrieked. “His brother and parents are dead.”

Abby swallowed hard. “How old is Jyran?”

Kevin lowered his head. “Sixteen.”

AJAY: THEY’RE DEAD

Kevin didn’t move, as if his fingers had turned to wood. Abby noticed that he had closed his eyes and was crying softly.

“Kevin, you have to keep typing! Say something.”

He choked out a sob, but otherwise kept his eyes shut and didn’t move.

The computer bleeped and bleeped.

AJAY: KEVIN, ARE YOU THERE?

AJAY: KEVIN????

AJAY: PLEASE ANSWER ME

AJAY: WHAT SHOULD I DO?

Abby slid the computer in front of her and typed.

KEVIN: OUR PARENTS DIED TOO

KEVIN: THE POLICE DON’T ANSWER THE PHONE

KEVIN: NO RADIO, NO TV

She thought it was too confusing to explain who she was.

KEVIN: THE FERRY ISN’T RUNNING

AJAY: I SEE DEAD PEOPLE OUT MY WINDOW

AJAY: THEY’RE IN CARS, ON THE SIDEWALK

AJAY: FOR BLOCKS AND BLOCKS, EVERY DIRECTION

AJAY: ADULTS ARE DEAD EVERYWHERE

Everywhere. The word exploded off the screen. The world was a big place. Adults were dead in Ajay’s neighborhood in India half way around the world. Adults were dead on Castine Island. The fact that TV and radio stations didn’t work and web sites were out of date probably meant adults were dead in New York, California, Boston, and other large cities. No ferry meant more adults were dead in Portland. A chilling thought bubbled up from deep inside Abby’s brain. What if the only survivors left on Earth were children?

AJAY: SOME OLD PEOPLE ARE ALIVE

AJAY: KIDS ARE ALIVE

AJAY: KIDS MY AGE

AJAY: AND YOUNGER

AJAY: THERE’S A BABY CRYING NEXT DOOR

Abby swallowed her tears and typed.

KEVIN: AJAY

KEVIN: ARE YOU SAFE?

KEVIN: AJAY?

KEVIN: ARE YOU THERE?

“We lost the connection,” Kevin said, his face wet and glistening. “He’s gone.”

Jordan and Emily walked away from the mangled car and toward the harbor, the fog growing thicker by the minute.

They hadn’t gone far when Emily stopped. “Jordan, I’m afraid.”

He felt her hand trembling through the glove. He squeezed it and gave her a gentle tug. “We’ve come this far. Let’s keep going. We’ll find someone who will help us.”

There was no activity at the normally busy harbor, nobody to help them. The harbor was eerily quiet. Once before Jordan had seen it like this. His dad had forgotten to lock up the library one Saturday evening and Jordan had joined him early the next morning to lock it up. Now, from the sailboats in dry dock to the playground, all along Gleason Street, every storefront, the ferry terminal, the tavern, the entire harbor area was as deserted as that Sunday morning in February.

Three commercial fishing boats, ghostly shapes in the fog, were at the main dock, tied up. Jordan thought that any one of the trawlers would be perfect for crossing the strait to the mainland.

It was strange to see fishing boats without hundreds of seagulls hovering nearby, even in the fog. Jordan wondered if the space dust had killed birds. The cat that had followed Abby home and the coyotes did not seem adversely affected. What about the other creatures, fish and insects and reptiles?

Emily pointed to a body out on the dock. Facing away from them, it was impossible to tell if it were a man or woman in the purple haze. He or she was wearing yellow rain gear and rubber boots.

“There’s nothing we can do,” he said.

The steadiness of his voice surprised Jordan. He felt that something inside of him had gone numb. He wanted it to remain that way, thinking that worse things lay ahead.

The fog thickened, as if a purple curtain had dropped, and they could see no further than their outstretched hands.

Jordan no longer expected to find anyone in the harbor, but there were important items he wanted to get.

“Whoever leaves the house again, they’ll need to know how long they’ve been gone,” he said. “We can get wrist watches at the drug store.”

Holding hands, they scuffled and shuffled to Mercer’s Drug Store through a zillion pinpricks of mist, following sidewalk cracks, curb stones, sand pushed to the side of the road, and other contours and textures of the ground as if it were Braille.

The drugstore was on the corner of Gleason and Berkley. Jordan probed around for something to smash the glass door. His foot bumped against a brick.

“Step back,” he told Emily and hurled the brick. The burglar alarm sounded, muted by fog. A spider web of cracks fanned out, but the glass didn’t break. He used the brick like an axe, chopping, chopping, chopping, until he made an opening big enough for his hand. He reached inside and unlocked the door.

Jordan took four watches from a display case and gave one to Emily. “It’s not stealing,” he said.

“Jordan, there’s lots of other stuff here that we could use. Vitamins, band-aids, batteries…”

“Emily, we can come back tomorrow. Abby’s probably freaking out that we’ve been gone this long.”

Emily grabbed a basket and started filling it. “We’re here now.” She stopped and gave him a hard stare. “Well, are you going to help?”

Abby had five unread emails in her inbox, including one that took her breath away. It was from Angelie Leigh, her mother. The time and date stamp of the email told Abby that her mom had sent it from her office in Boston, eight hours before the comet had streaked across the night sky. That was the worst possible news. Abby had received no communication from her mother after the night of the purple moon. She opened it with a sinking feeling.

Remind the boys to clean up! Love to everyone. See you tomorrow … Mom. PS. I have special presents for you, Jordan, and Touk!!!

Tears streamed down Abby’s cheeks and splashed on the keyboard.

She opened her chatbox and once more lost her breath. Mel was online.

“Mel,” Abby cried. “She’s my best friend,” she told Kevin. “She lives in Cambridge.”

“What type of satellite connection does she have?”

Abby ignored him and typed.

ABBY: MELLLLLLL!!!!

She kept her fingers poised on the keys. The laptop bleeped, and a thousand thoughts rushed into her head at once.

MELANIE: ABS, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?

ABBY: ARE YOU SAFE?

MELANIE: MY PARENTS

MELANIE: ARE DEAD

Abby had prayed things were somehow different in Cambridge.

ABBY: I’M SO SORRY

ABBY: IT’S THE SAME HERE

ABBY: JORDAN AND TOUK ARE FINE

MELANIE: I’M ALONE. WHAT SHOULD I DO?????????

ABBY: HAVE YOU HEARD FROM STEPH?

“Steph is her neighbor,” Abby said. “They live a block away from my house.”

MELANIE: THERE’S A LIGHT ON IN HER HOUSE

MELANIE: WHAT IF SHE’S DEAD?

ABBY: SHE’S NOT

ABBY: GO THERE!

ABBY: STAY TOGETHER

Abby wondered if she should ask Mel to check on her mother. Her friend would do anything she asked of her. But Abby worried about what she would learn. She wanted to know what happened and at the same time didn’t want to know.

ABBY: MEL, I NEED TO ASK YOU A FAVOR

She’d tell Mel to wear a mask and take Steph with her. Even if the news was bad, Abby had to find out.

ABBY: MEL?

ABBY: HAVE YOU SEEN MY MOM?

ABBY: CAN YOU CHECK ON HER?

ABBY: ARE YOU THERE????

ABBY: PLEASE ANSWER ME!!!!

Abby felt Kevin’s hand on her shoulder. “The connection is down,” he said.

ABBY: MEL!!!

ABBY: MEL

ABBY: MEL, PLEASE

Jordan and Emily headed home, loaded with supplies from the drugstore. They passed by the supermarket, hardware store, the tavern, the bowling alley… Jordan felt each store and business with his outstretched fingertips.

He moved them to the sidewalk so that they could follow the curbstone.

Moments later he bumped into a parked car. It was a police cruiser. They were in front of the police station.

“We can get two-way radios inside,” Jordan said. “If Abby can talk to us when we’re outside, she won’t get worried.”

“Will they work with all the space dust?”

Jordan gave Emily a nudge. “Where’s your brother when we need him?”

Her eyes brightened. She must be smiling beneath her mask, he thought.

Emily’s smile didn’t last long. They both knew what they would find inside the station. More bodies. Whoever had been on duty the night of the purple moon.

Behind the counter, they saw Officer Redmond had tipped over backward in his chair. Jordan had last seen the policeman a few days ago directing cars onto the ferry.

His eyes were wide open, and he was staring straight up at the ceiling. Jordan trembled and tasted bile in the back of his throat. It was scary enough to see a body this close, but those eyes really rattled him.