Todd (13 page)
Authors: Adam J Nicolai
"God, you scared me,
screaming like that. Almost gave me a heart attack."
"A
heart attack?
"
he wailed.
"Hey—no, it's just an
expression. No. I'm fine. I'll be fine." God, he reminded Alan so much of
himself: always expecting the worst, always flinching. "I didn't mean it
literally."
"That was just
figurative?" He only stumbled a little over the big word, and Alan felt a
secret—but fierce— surge of pride. He was a smart kid.
"Right. Just figurative. Come
have some breakfast."
They spent the day on the basics:
storing up supplies and tracking down spray paint for a sign on the roof. Alan
saw the blue flashes twice: once at the hardware store, and once as they got
home. If Todd saw them, he didn't comment.
That afternoon Alan took advantage
of their running water and working gas line to make spaghetti, figuring such
extravagant meals wouldn't be available much longer. His mind tried to linger
on this; he tried to force it past.
When it started getting dark, he
and Todd migrated upstairs without speaking. Alan pulled the shades, closed the
door, and turned on all the lamps. If there were Blurs in the bedroom, at least
the light kept them invisible.
The next day he hauled out the
ladder and climbed onto the roof. He hated using ladders alone and almost asked
Todd to spot him, but the thought of the boy fidgeting and knocking it over
kept his mouth closed. "Why don't you play DS for awhile," Alan said,
"right there where I can see you? And don't touch the ladder."
It was harder to spray paint a
message on the roof than he would've expected. He couldn't see it from the sky,
so he had to guess at the scale. Worse, with every step on the sloped shingles
he imagined falling and breaking a leg or an arm. Todd would run over in these
visions, but was little help; Alan would need to drag himself inside and after
a failed effort to splint the break, slowly die from some kind of infection.
That was bad enough, but it left Todd alone, the last human being on Earth, and
he—
All right,
Alan told
himself more than once.
That's enough.
After an hour of fraught creeping
he managed two messages, both glaring from the rooftop in brilliant, scrawling
red. One slope said simply:
The other:
He wondered how much of that last one
was a cry for help, and how much was simple defiance.
Both pointless,
he told
himself.
There's no one to see these.
It was a stupid risk, climbing
around on the roof like that—for what? They hadn't heard a running car in days,
hadn't seen so much as a hot air balloon in the sky.
It's theirs now,
he
thought again.
Everything is theirs now.
"Did you get the message
on?" his son asked when he descended.
"Yep."
"What does it say?"
Alan told him, then explained what
SOS
meant.
"Oh! That's really good.
Someone will see that for
sure.
"
The bottom of his stomach fell
out.
First Heaven, now rescue. Why not tell him Santa Claus is bringing
macaroni and cheese for dinner tonight?
It was a bad idea, telling Todd
everything was going to be okay. He was a smart kid. He was going to realize
they were alone. And when he did—
Alan gave his best fake smile.
"I hope so."
In the afternoon they went out for
more gas. The generator was ravenous. Depending on what they used it for,
sometimes they would end up filling it three or four times a day. Alan wanted
to keep pace with its consumption but also build a reserve, just in case, and
that meant a lot of siphoning.
Siphoning wasn't hard—he was
getting more skilled at it by the day—but it wasn't comfortable kneeling on the
asphalt, and every car's gas compartment was a little different. This one
needed a key, that one had a latch hidden under the driver's seat. Half the
time, even when he did get into the gas compartment, he'd find the tank nearly
empty.
He paused as they pulled in to the
station parking lot, staring at the pumps, and felt a surge of regret. If he
could've relived those first two days, he would do everything differently. He'd
hit the grocery store immediately, maybe even try to hook up a generator
there
instead of at home. He'd come to the gas station while its generator was
still on, and fill every gas can he could find—maybe even use the cars' tanks
as storage.
Regret was pointless. His mind
pivoted, started trying to figure out what he was screwing up
now
.
They parked and got out. For the
first time in his life, he wondered where the station's gas was stored. He
glanced around for some kind of giant tank, thinking maybe he'd just never
noticed it before, then abruptly felt stupid. He took a quick look through the
inside of the store, to make sure it wasn't cleverly hidden behind the cooler.
Nope. Must've been underground.
He checked behind the counter for
some kind of manual override switch, something that would function even when
the power was out. All he found was a picture, taped to the back of the
counter, of one of the kids who had worked there. He had an arm around his
girlfriend. They were both smiling.
Had that kid stolen glances at
that picture while he was working? Had it given him a little strength to draw
on, while enduring a tedious eight-hour shift?
Alan tried to angle the picture to
mitigate the glare from the window, but he accidentally pulled the tape loose.
The picture fluttered out of his hand, landing facedown on the dirty floor.
It was garbage now, just like
everything else.
He decided to empty all the cars.
He pulled out every gas can the station had and a few others that he found in
back seats or trunks. The lot was littered with full gas cans and shiny fuel puddles
when Todd found a book of matches.
"Whoa. Give me that."
"What is it?" The boy
opened the front, inspecting the matches inside.
"Now, Todd. Give it
here." Alan sprinted over to his son.
"Why?"
"'Cause it'll blast your ass
to kingdom come," Alan muttered, snatching the pack away.
Todd laughed—not a chuckle, but a
full-blown belly laugh. "
What?
" he cried. "Blast my
ass...?
"
He dissolved into hysterical snickers and snorts.
It's not funny, pal,
Alan
started to say, but the thing is, it
was
kind of funny. He chuckled
despite himself. "To kingdom come," he said, and Todd completely lost
it, staggering backwards to the nearest car, clutching his stomach.
"What—? What—?" Todd was
gasping, his face turning red. Alan had never seen him laugh like this. He felt
himself grinning like an idiot. "What does that even
mean?
"
The scholar in Alan's head tried
to jump in, and the father ran him down. He shook his head. "Who fuckin'
knows."
Todd had finally started gasping
for air, but this was lightning in a dry field. He sprawled over the back of
the trunk, tears streaming down his face, hands drumming like a wrestler
tapping out. By now Alan was laughing nearly as hard himself.
"I can't..." He fought
for the words. "I can't...
believe
that."
"I got a million of
'em."
"Blast my
ass,
"
he cackled again. "My
ass
. It's so
funny!
"
"Yeah," Alan said,
coming down a bit. "Well, just leave the matches to me, okay?"
"Okay." Todd wiped his
eyes, shuddering with snickers. "That is
crazy.
'Blast my ass to
kingdom come.'"
Alan was still smiling. It felt
good. "All right. Help me get these cans over here, okay? Carefully."
But his son needed a minute to
recover, and he let him have it. As Alan started loading gas cans, Todd said,
"Hey Dad, what do you call a pig crossed with an oyster?"
Alan had heard this one, of
course; Todd was always telling it to anyone who would listen. Although, he
suddenly realized, Todd had never told it to him. "I give up."
"An
oinkster
!"
he cried.
Alan grinned. "Nice."
"Why did the school kids cross
the road?"
"I don't know," Alan
obliged.
"To get to the other
slide
."
He beamed.
Alan laughed, not because it was
funny, but because Todd was always so damned happy to tell it. "Do you
even know what the original joke was?"
"Like the first joke?"
"Yeah... like, that joke is a
take-off of a different joke. It's a really old joke."
"'Why did the chicken cross
the road?' That one?"
"Yeah. Do you know why?"
"Yeah," he said, with a
tone that said
duh.
"To get to the other
slide.
"
On the way home, Todd asked what
day it was. Alan opened his mouth to answer, and came up blank.
Shit. Oh, no way.
"Is it Saturday?" Todd
said. "It feels like it's Saturday."
"No." It had been Sunday
when everyone disappeared. He ticked the mornings forward in his head: Grandma's,
the old couple's house, the funeral. Three nights—four nights?—at home.
"Pretty sure it's Friday." How could he not know what day it was? He
felt like an old man with Alzheimer's, trying to hide the fact that he was
losing it.
"Okay." Todd had the
window down and one arm out, his hand riding the wind. "I guess it doesn't
matter."
That gave Alan a shock. "Of
course it matters," he retorted. "Why would you say that?"
"Well, there's no school
anyway, no matter what day it is. And you don't have to work anymore."
No school. Of course. What were
the days for, if not marking time until you had to go back to school?
"Well, that's true, but we still need to know what day it is."
"Why?"
"Well..." Alan chewed on
this. "Because we should know how long it's been, for one thing. And we
need to know how long until winter comes, so we can be ready for it." That
was true, but he didn't like to think about it. Even the part of him that
really believed they were all alone couldn't accept that they'd still be stuck
here by winter. "So really," he went on, "I guess it doesn't
matter so much what day it is as what
date
it is. But we should
definitely keep track of that, and if we're keeping track of that, we might as
well know what day it is too."
That was all well and good, but
there was a deeper reason, of course, which was that naming the days was part
of what made them human. As long as they named them, they were in control of
them.
We can't lose track of the
days. We just can't.
He resolved to start keeping a calendar at home.
"Yeah." Todd was staring
past his bobbing hand, into the vague distance. "I wish we had solar
panels."
"Wow," Alan said.
"Yeah. That... that would be pretty great." He indulged the fantasy
for a minute. He didn't know how to install solar panels, but there had to be
some homes in the Twin Cities that had them. He wondered if it would be worth
spending the time and fuel to find one.
"Dad?"
"Yeah."
"What do you think those
blurry things wanted?"
He hesitated. "I'm not sure.
There's really no way to know."
"Do you think they made all
the people disappear? And the animals, too. Because did you notice the animals
are gone too?"
"Yeah, I did notice that. And
I don't know if they did, but... put it this way, it seems hard to believe that
they
didn't
."
"Yeah." Todd's hand
tilted back, catching the wave and riding high before diving again. "I'm
afraid they want to get us. Like they missed us the first time and now they
want to come back and get us."
Alan took a deep breath. "I
don't know," he said again. "I worry about that, too. But I'll tell
you this: if they wanted us and were able to get us, don't you think they would
have done it the other night?"
"Probably." Todd sighed.
"I'm just glad we keep the lights on now so they can't. Because they can't
go where the lights are, right?"
He hadn't made the connection to
the flashes of blue Alan had seen in the daytime. Alan debated whether to tell
him, but couldn't see how making him more scared would help the situation. If
they were coming, they were coming. Did it really matter what he believed?
"I think that's probably right," he hedged.
They pulled into the driveway, and
went inside to find a calendar.
That night, someone saw the
message on the roof.
A helicopter woke Alan, its
thrumming blades making the glass shake in the windows. The light was blinding,
like something out of
X-Files
when the aliens came. He woke Todd and
dashed outside, waving. Their rescuers dropped a rope. They both climbed up and
were whisked away to safety.
It turned out there were other
survivors, and they were holed up in a secret, abandoned military base in the Rocky mountains. Upon landing, Alan and Todd were swarmed
by refugees.
They were of all ages and walks of
life, from all parts of the world. They'd built a school and were cultivating a
farm just large enough to support everyone. They used an old ham radio to reach
other survivors.
The Blurs can't survive at this altitude,
they
explained.
We're safe here.
Waking from this dream felt like
drowning.
He made pancakes and bacon for
breakfast. The motions were old and comfortable; they gave his mind something
to do that wasn't despair. When Todd woke up he had him set the table, hoping
the routine might help soothe him, too.
"Omegabeam has the best long
range light attack," Todd said without preamble as he carried a pair of
cups into the dining room, "but if you have Darklaser you can still block
it. I just wish there was a way to break that stupid Darklaser."
