The Suburb Beyond the Stars (7 page)

C
ars — many of them — were scattered all over the razed field. There was no order to them — no rows, no tidy schemes. Several of the cars were running, blue fumes drifting up around them. The sun shone down on them.

It was not the cars that startled Gregory and Brian, but the people. Many of them were lying in the mud around the cars, as if they’d suffered seizures or been mowed down by guns.

“See — this,” said Gregory, running beside Brian, “is an instance where I believe in running
away.”

Brian reached a silver Volvo sports wagon next to which a man lay prone. Brian stooped beside him.

The man was breathing. His eyes were partially open. He did not seem wounded.

“Hello?” said Brian. “Sir? Sir?”

The man didn’t respond. Gregory squatted down on the other side of him. “What’s wrong with him?” the boy asked.

Brian didn’t respond, but reached out gingerly and shook the man’s shoulder. It was caked with mud. “Sir?” he said again.

The man stirred like a child in sleep, reluctant to leave a dream of wonders. “I’m at work right now,” he said, slurring. “Can I call you later?”

“You’re in a field of mud,” Gregory insisted. “You’re lying beside a car.”

The man turned onto his side, facing away from Gregory. He rubbed his face with his hand and stopped moving. He clearly didn’t want to be disturbed.

“You should get up,” said Brian. “You’re lying with part of you in a puddle.”

The man pulled his knees up against his chest, dragging his calves and cuffs through the oily water. He closed his eyes and whispered a demand that something be collated pronto.

Brian and Gregory stood. They wandered around the graveyard of commuters. People were slumped at the wheels of their cars. Men lay in the dirt, their shirts half untucked from writhing in sleep, their ties twisted beneath them, grimy with mud. Women rested against the wheels of their coupes, mouths open, breathing loudly. The two boys walked quietly between them, their shoes squelching in ruts.

A summer breeze blew over the desolation. The hair of insensate middle managers stirred and fluttered.

“What is this?” Gregory whispered. Then he yelled, “HELLO?”

His voice seemed small in a very large plain.

“They think they’re at the office,” said Brian. “All of them, I bet. At the office or the grocery store or something.”

“What … why?”

“They’re hypnotized somehow. Because they can’t leave the neighborhood. If they left, they’d realize what was going on. They’d be able to tell that time was passing differently.”

“So they just come here?” said Gregory. “They leave for work, they just drive over here, and then they fall asleep until it’s time to go home?”

“Otherwise, the Thusser wouldn’t be able to keep them in the development. People would leave and they’d realize that time was weird and that they were confused. They wouldn’t come back.”

Gregory shook his head. He was aghast. He didn’t like to think that things could go this wrong.

One family in the lot was clearly on vacation. There were kayaks on the roof, bikes on the racks, and parents in the front seats, asleep on the dashboard. In the backseat, kids were canted against the windows, their cheeks smeared on the glass. They were ready for swimming.

Brian and Gregory pounded on the windows. They pummeled the doors. There was no motion within the car. Frantically, the two of them charged around the muddy lot and shook people lying on the ground. No movement. The heads rolled unevenly. The arms slumped. The bodies were heavy as sacks of sand.

Gregory rarely had the chance to slap a few faces, especially in public, but now he could slap away, leaning
down and yelling long and loud, one screaming note right in the ear of a man in dress jeans, hollering at him with a look of desperation, a desperation that seemed born of an astonished irritation that anyone could get mesmerized this way, that anyone could be so dumb. He just couldn’t believe that they wouldn’t wake up.

Brian watched him, sadly.

When Gregory had exhausted himself, he stood up. His knees were capped with mud. He and Brian stood in the field, surrounded by duped dreamers. In the distance, the sound of cicadas started up in the trees.

Solemnly, Brian and Gregory walked away from the parking lot. Then, without discussing it, they both began to run. An eagle was in the air over their heads, looking for the woodland. They reached the construction. Workmen with uneven mouths watched them pass.

Brian and Gregory headed for the sales office, where Milton Deatley, deceased, was open for business.

I
n the waiting room of the business office, on a cheap wood pedestal, stood the noble elk himself, a look of deep compassion in his glass eyes, the summer sunlight catching and spinning on his polypropylene antlers.

The office itself was converted from one of Rumbling Elk Haven’s six unique house designs. The waiting room would normally have been a living room, and there was not much to distinguish it from a living room (it had couches, chairs, a coffee table with real estate magazines carefully overlapping in diagonals), except for the plastic elk and, near the fireplace, a laminated map on an easel.

Brian went over to the map immediately and began to study it. Gregory stood awkwardly by the elk. Smooth jazz was playing in the air.

No one was at the reception desk. “The Crooked Steeple!” Brian exclaimed. “I forgot about it. It’s just up the hill from Prudence’s house.”

“What about it?” asked Gregory.

“It’s still there. It’s on the map. I mean, it’s surrounded by houses, but it’s a landmark that could help us figure out what’s —”

“I was getting some coffee,” said a woman, coming through a door. “And throwing away the rest of my breakfast burrito.” She walked to the desk and sat on it, crossing her legs. Her hair was sprayed into a mane. “Are your parents around?”

Brian said no; Gregory, thinking more quickly, said, “They’re outside. They’ll be here in a minute.”

The receptionist looked carefully from one boy to the other. “So your parents are outside.”

“They’re walking around.”

“That’s great. We encourage walking.”

“It strengthens the hams.”

“The hams,” the woman repeated. “Do you kids want some comic books to look at while you wait?”

Brian blurted, “Is Mr. Deatley here?”

The woman walked behind her desk and sat down in her chair. “Why do you want to see Mr. Deatley?”

“He’s a friend of my parents,” said Gregory. “He took a parachuting class with my dad.”

The woman looked skeptical. “I didn’t know Milt parachuted.”

“Oh, you can drop him from all kinds of heights,” Gregory attested.

The woman asked, “Do you want anything from the kitchen while you wait? We have Danish.”

“I’ll take a Danish,” said Gregory.

“We’re not really hungry,” Brian answered.

“We’d like to see Mr. Deatley,” Gregory insisted.

“He’s not here right now,” the woman said, “in the actual office.”

Gregory asked, “Is he okay?”

“Sure, he’s fine.”

“Looking good? My dad was worried about him. He said the last time he saw him, he looked kind of like a corpse.”

“He’s great.”

“You know, the walking dead.”

Brian muttered, “Gregory.”

“He’s out and about,” the woman said. “He’s checking out some units over on Heather Lane.”

Gregory asked, “Is there a problem?”

“With what?”

“On Heather Lane?”

The receptionist smiled irritably. “There’s no problem. We do our best to resolve any issues swiftly and to the satisfaction of all our owners.”

“We’ll head over there,” said Brian.

The receptionist seemed suspicious. “Won’t your parents miss you?”

Gregory said, “They’ll find us.”

“You better leave a note.”

“No, that’s fine.”

The boys slipped out before she could ask any more questions.

“Did you have to make jokes?” Brian asked.

“She didn’t notice.”

“Yes she did. She could tell you were lying.”

“No she couldn’t. She was thinking about those Danish.”

Brian shook his head angrily. He said, “Let’s go. It’s over this way. I memorized the map.” He began running along the road.

“Oh, did you?” said Gregory. “And what are we going to do when we meet Milton Deatley? Don’t we want to have a story?”

“We have to find out about Prudence.”

“We can’t just ask him. We should have broken into his office and looked around. While she was throwing away her breakfast burrito.”

Brian realized Gregory was right. “I don’t know what we’re going to do when we meet him,” he admitted. “We’ll have to play it by ear.”

“You haven’t seen many zombie movies, have you?” said Gregory. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t talk about meeting the undead and playing it by ear. Or any phrase involving body parts.” They turned left down a half-paved gravel road. “Like pulling his leg,” Gregory continued. They turned right onto tarmac. “Or whether him meeting with us is any ‘skin off his back.’”

“Thanks,” said Brian. He didn’t want to joke around.

“You’re just grumpy because you’re the
brains
of the outfit. You’re basically a menu item for zombies.”

Past driveways and Palladian windows they jogged, past empty lawns and chilly concrete birdbaths. They saw no one on the streets.

Brian slowed his run. He was breathing heavily. They were in the heart of the suburb.

They stepped onto Heather Lane.

The road was curiously silent.

The houses looked uninhabited, somehow, though new. Brian couldn’t put his finger on why. He and Gregory walked cautiously down the sidewalk. A few cars were abandoned on the street. They had not been parked but were at angles. The door of one was open. The light was no longer on. The car battery had run down.

Something had happened here.

Brian’s palms were sweating. He looked to Gregory, who was also silenced by the menace in the air.

They were about halfway along the street when Brian pointed at a house.

At first, Gregory saw only the basketball hoop in the driveway, the miniature soccer net rimmed with Styrofoam. Then he looked past the hydrangeas. He saw something move in the backyard.

Four white horses cropped the grass. They were yoked to a black car with chrome trim.

B
rian and Gregory approached the house. The front door was open. Brian looked in first and hurled himself back out.

“What?” asked Gregory.

“There’s someone in there.”

From inside came a soft, hesitant clank.

Gregory approached the open door and looked in. Brian couldn’t see past him. Gregory was clearly staring at something in front of him. Gregory said, “Hello. Are you okay?”

A man’s voice, thin and whining, replied, “I’m waiting.”

“Are you okay?” Gregory insisted. “Is there anything wrong?”

“The kids are already part of it,” said the man’s voice.

Brian crept up to Gregory’s side and peered through the doorway. The dim, moving mound he’d seen when he looked in the first time now resolved itself.

It was a man in a suit. He had prized up the thin marble tiles that lined his entryway and had crawled under them like they were a quilt. He was hunkered on the naked substrate. He peered out from between the stacked, chipped squares, with red, terrified eyes.

“Where’s the owner of the horses?” asked Brian.

“Mr. Deatley,” the man answered. He clutched at his marble skirts. “A monster came through,” he said. “The kids were safe in a wall. Thanks be. Thanks be.” He started to cry. “It was a monster.” Several of his tiles slid off and went spinning across the splintered floor. Startled, he leaped; more tile jangled and fell. It busted on the backer board. The man shifted, looking about him. “Can you hide me? Can you put more marble on me? High up? The kids are already gone.”

“What do you mean,
gone
?” Brian asked. He backed against the door frame. “Where — where do they take them?”

“They’re right here,” said the man. He was hunched down, stubbing his fingers and thumbs on tiles still embedded in the mortar, trying to pry them loose.

Brian squatted down. “Are they under the house?” he asked gently.

“In the wall,” the man whispered back. “They’re safe.”

A chill went down Brian’s spine. “Where?” he asked. “Where are they in the wall?”

“In their room,” said the man. “They love it here.”

“What was the monster like?” Gregory asked.

The man let forth a querulous whine. He kept drawing tiles to him and stacking them on his back, but at this
point, he shook too much to balance it. The marble kept cascading down his flanks.

“It had armor,” he said. “It had … it was crazy.”

Brian asked, “Did it put the kids in the wall?”

The man shook his head, dislodging another tile. It bumped and rattled down his back. “They were safe in the wall. It tried to cut them out. It tried to get them and take them away.”

Brian stood. “Let’s find them,” he said to Gregory.

Once again, heading into danger, saving kids we don’t know,
Gregory thought to himself.
Only, this time I don’t even have a rake.

Carefully, looking around them constantly, arms spread, the two boys crossed the foyer. The man shivered at their approach.

They walked past him, staring around them. On the wall was a photo of sports cars going around a bend. Gregory stopped for a moment before it.

The man in the floor whispered, “I’m an amateur photographer.”

“Where are the kids?” Brian asked.

“Up in Bryson’s room,” the man answered, without explanation.

The two boys began climbing the steps. They kept their eyes roving from side to side so nothing could leap out at them.

On the stairs there were photos of the Sierra Nevada. Two blond kids stood in a field of flowers.

The boys found the children in the second bedroom they went into.

Gregory saw them and yelped. Brian could only stare. Without thinking, he pawed at the door frame, backing away.

It was not an unusual bedroom, except that everything in it was white. The bed and its comforter were white. There were white cubes filled with action figures and guns. There was a white rug. The goose-necked lamp was white, and it cast a white egg of light across the white walls.

The kids had been absorbed somehow into those walls. The sister hung out of the plaster, her upper body slumped, her arms hanging down, her white-blond hair hanging down, her head drooping. There was no seam between the wall and her body. It appeared that her back, her stomach, her shirt simply flattened into it, and she leached out into the plaster, devoured.

The brother had been almost totally consumed. He was less boy than architecture. Still, the wall bulged a bit in the shape of him, as if he were pressed against a membrane. An elbow jabbed out of the flat. A knee. The features of his face rose out of the blank surface. There was a spray of freckles across his nose that fanned out across the plane. They had scattered as he had been absorbed. The white wall was freckled now.

Around the sister were several brutal slices. Someone had hacked at the plaster where her legs should have been, trying to gouge her free.

Brian walked toward the half girl. Gregory started shaking and wouldn’t move. He wondered suddenly — wondered if his cousin had been absorbed like this — if
she’d been in the walls the whole time, inches from them while they slept.

Brian went to the girl’s side and held his fingertips in front of her face.

“She’s breathing,” he said. “She’s alive.”

“What is going
on
?” Gregory demanded. “What
is
this?”

There was a crash downstairs. The boys jumped and realized it was the man’s tiles all dropping to earth at once. There were voices. The echoes rang out in the desolate house. “They’re upstairs,” said the man in the floor. “They’re looking after the kids.”

Brian and Gregory gaped and peered around wildly. Someone was crossing the foyer. Someone was walking up the stairs. Turning at the landing. Striding up another flight.

Someone walked down the hall, jingling slightly.

Someone entered the room. Brian and Gregory were already gone. Still there were the white bed, the white rug, the white lamp casting its egg of white light across the white-frozen siblings, the freckled wall.

Someone opened the closet.

Brian and Gregory cowered.

The man with the red, ground-up face confronted them.

“I believe I can answer your questions,” he said.