Nothing comes.
I wonder again if this is all simply a side effect of the insomnia. Perhaps I am home in bed, and mentally miserable. Why couldn’t I have just created Tyler Durden instead of a pack of wolves?
I step into the hall. The stairs are all clear to my right. To my left is the wolf, sitting patiently at the end of the hallway.
“Clever girl.”
She stands. I don’t even try to outsmart her. I turn, run for the stairs. For whatever reason, I believe jumping them rather than running down them would be a far more affective method of movement, and I’m soaring through the air. I can’t quite clear the length of them. My heels touch down on the carpeted steps, my feet shooting out from beneath me as if this house were made of ice. Gravity gets the best of me. I go crashing down the last four steps before planting face first into the floor, misplacing and breaking important things inside of me. I think good and hard about staying there forever, but the wolf is halfway here, coming down with far more grace than I.
Slipping on my socks like I used to do as I child, I go for the front door, miss the knob, and fall. The wolf makes it to the bottom and hits the wall hard. This gives me an extra three seconds, and I’m off down the hallway into the kitchen. I slip, lose the bat, and go sliding on the linoleum until the island in the middle of the kitchen brings me to a forceful halt. My head stops spinning just enough to see the wolf bounding after me. Hurt, dazed, and, in my defense, relatively confused, I bury my face in my arms, playing dead.
The wolf never makes contact. I hear her claws and paws banging against the floor, and then hear nothing at all except what sounds like a terrible landing above me. She jumped. She’s on the island.
The bat is still within reach. I go for it, pulling myself up slow and steady, as I’ve been seeing stars since this morning. I’m eye level with the wolf. She’s breathing as hard as I am, salivating like a newborn. The bat down at my side, I’ll never be able to raise it fast enough. My best bet is backing away in hopes of creating enough distance before she pounces.
I take a step.
Then another.
She never breaks my gaze, only curls her lips farther back like I don’t already know how many teeth are under there. Then she does something unexpected. She throws her head back to the moon and howls.
I’ve never played baseball, but I hear swinging for the fences is something you do when you’re trying to hit a home run. Even though every cell in my body feels the skin on my shoulder ripping open, it’s trumped by the satisfaction of watching this dog’s neck break when the bat makes near-perfect contact with her ugly face. I register the sound of her brain splattering against the inside of her skull, neck cracking in two, her body spinning in circles off the counter as if she were caught in a tornado.
I strap my boots back to my feet, and walk out the front door, the bat in my hands covered in blood, fur, and fury. It’s getting hot outside. I wish I had a pair of sunglasses. And pants.
My car is still running, and the world almost feels Prelapsarian.
The sight of the birds on the front lawn does something to my heart the sight of Valerie, the wolves, the elephants, and every other dead body I have found today has not yet done. It sinks into my stomach before hurling into my throat, beating with a ferocity I could have used to slay that wolf with my bare hands.
“WHY!?” I demand of them. “What are you doing? Why aren’t you flying! You stupid birds!” I run wildly into their congregation, arms flying, boots kicking at the grass, hoping to scare them into the sky. They jump and scatter, but none fly higher than my line of sight. I run in circles around them, laughing at their tiny bodies and legs trying to escape me. I sprint laps until I’m famished and fatigued, whereupon I plop myself into the warm summer grass and weep.
I fight the words, afraid to say them, fearing what they will feel like against my tongue, said out loud for all this empty space to hear…
What happened to everyone?
6
IN A FICTIONAL UNIVERSE IT’D BE THAT EASY
I speed reckless and furious to my next destination. I run every red light and give the bird to every stop sign, wishing another fucking elephant had the guts to cross my path.
There’s a kangaroo on my parents’ porch. I can’t bring myself to go inside.
I stop at the pharmacy. The parking lot is empty. Steel gates pulled in front of the glass entrance doors, a security system now obsolete. I pull at the gate anyway. The sun feels hot against my shoulder. Valerie’s sundress has soaked up about as much blood as it can hold. It keeps sliding off my arm beneath the weight of the red. I walk around to the back of the store looking for rocks to throw, a ladder to climb, a forgotten window left open to squeeze through. In a fictional universe, it’d be that easy.
Mr. Phelps remains right where I left him. His contorted frame knocks around the images in my brain of Valerie’s helpless body. It’s my fault she’s gone. I never should have come back here. When I left the first time, I should have taken her with me like we’d planned all along. We could have avoided this entire mess.
I sidestep the milk and eggs and vomit, and I’m on the third floor instead of the second, in front of apartment 306. Mr. and Mrs. Phelps.
I knock.
“Judy?”
No answer.
I can’t keep my head still, glancing left and right and left again.
I look down at my blood and dirt-covered wardrobe, hairy legs, and feet lost in my unlaced boots. I should tie those.
I try the knob.
It’s unlocked.
I can’t figure out why it’s is my responsibility to solve this problem. Maybe because I seem to be the last person left alive in this one zoo town. Which, one could argue, is a much bigger problem than needing to get Mr. Phelps out of my foyer. I should have just gone back to bed when I realized Leslie wasn’t home. I enter the Phelps’s apartment slow and cautious. The Phelps’s are a feisty couple. I wouldn’t be surprised to know they keep a rifle on the top shelf of the closet. Judy seems like the type of pistol you’d find sitting in her rocker on a Sunday morning, sipping tea, cleaning the barrel of her bolt action .22 Caliber Rifle right before taking the dog for a walk.
I crack the door, using it as a shield. “Mrs. Phelps?”
No answer. But seriously, I wasn’t actually expecting one, was I?
I step inside.
The lights are off, curtains drawn. Static prevails on the television, and silhouetted against it is a dark, lonely figure dressed in Mrs. Phelps’s nightgown, rocking ever so slightly—expecting me.
“Dammit!” I stumble back into the hall. “Jesus, Judy, you scared the hell out of me.” I shake off my nerves, walking back into the apartment, flipping the lights on and apologizing for not wearing any pants.
There’s a streak of brown and red down the front of her gown, her chin buried into her breasts. A cane painted blue and red and black dangles from the arms of the chair.
I click the light back off.
“Mrs. Phelps?” Stupid, I know, but I’m not sure what else to do.
There’s a landline on the wall in the kitchen to my right. I grab it and get a dial tone…
A dial tone!
I punch in the number to my parents’ house.
Busy signal.
I hang up. Try again. 911 this time.
Busy.
I call Russell in New York.
Ring.
It smells like my grandmother in here. It’s a very particular scent. Like pasta sauce that’s been left out on the counter overnight, and you think coffee is always brewing when you walk into the kitchen, but it never is; a general mustiness that comes with a trunk of old clothes you find in an attic from World War II.
Ring.
I browse the mail on the counter. Medical bills. Mr. Phelps—Gary—appears to have a herniated disk. The calendar mounted to the wall next to the receiver says he’s scheduled to have surgery in what, two weeks? I still haven’t the slightest clue what day it is. My brain won’t budge on the idea that it’s Monday, even though my phone keeps telling me it’s Wednesday. Every time I see the date it’s like being told the sky is actually green when my entire life I’ve only seen blue. It just doesn’t compute. This month it’s a picture of a kitten, soaking wet in a bathtub, soapsuds piling up atop its little head. Below, the caption reads: Not my day.
When I hang up here, I am going to phone the manufacturer of this calendar, have them put that tiny feline on the phone, and tell it to go fuck itself.
Ring.
A row of pots and pans hangs above the stove. For some reason I touch them, clank them together.
Ring.
I hear something hit the floor.
Every hair on my body stands on end. The pain in my shoulder fades. The room goes cold, like ghost-hunters encountering spirits from another dimension tell you it does when you’re not as alone as you think.
A coworker at the grocery once told me about a time he worked at a hotel and entered a room where guests were complaining of strange noises. When he touched the knob, he said it was cold as ice, even though it was the middle of summer. He was sure to add to his story that the air conditioning was not on. Said he had to open the door using the bottom of his t-shirt like a rag. When he stepped inside, he described being smothered the way people do when they have a heart attack.
Ring.
You’ve reached Russell Scott. I’m currently unavailable or away from my phone, but please leave me your name, number, and a detailed message. I will return your call as soon as possible. Thank you and have a nice…
I place the phone back on the receiver with care like I’m handling dynamite, every inch of my heart telling me to move, go, now, get the hell out, but my legs haven’t gotten the message yet.
I step forward, listening intently, hearing nothing, believing I’m blowing things out of proportion here. The room is suddenly all shadows and solemn. I close my eyes, shutting them tight, and try the same trick I used on the wolf.
“Wake up, wake up, wake up,”
I open my eyes in just enough time to watch the static disappear from the television, darkening the room to near night, and I’m going to be sick. I open the kitchen drawer closest to me hoping for steak knives. I find ladles instead. Twenty of them. All different sizes and colors.
I pick up a ladle and the landline again.
Dead.
I place the phone on the counter this time instead of back on the receiver, and step further into the living room, the largest ladle I saw now in my hands. It seems colder over here than it did in the kitchen. A dark ring has formed on the wall beneath the air conditioner, extending onto the carpet.
Gary and Judy live in a one bedroom. There’s nothing to explore but the kitchen, the living room, and the bedroom. The bedroom with the closed door where I could have sworn I heard…heard what?
You’re paranoid. Everyone is already dead and you’re rapidly losing blood. Get the hell out of here. Find a phone that’s working and call the goddamn Pentagon.
A small thumping noise, like a ball bouncing on carpet, and I swing around, launching the ladle into the kitchen. It collides with the pots and pans above the stove, knocking them from their perch, crashing and clattering onto the stove and floor. I scream like a lady for the second time today, before dropping to the floor. A cat goes darting from the countertops to behind the television.
This carpet is a terrible mess. I’ve landed in candy wrappers and sock fuzz, black hair intertwined through my fingers. I breathe potato chip crumbs and dust, and wait for the silence.
I collect myself because I’m scattered in twenty different directions, and relatively useless now in the event of an attack. Not that I would have proved to be useful before, but any hope I might have had is certainly gone, thanks to that feline. He slinks casually in front of me, seemingly vexed about my presence. His whiskers investigate my face, our wet noses touch. Unsatisfied, he continues on about the day’s affairs.
“What is with these animals today?”
A sound like a large stack of wet cardboard boxes collapsing crawls its way up and out of the heating vent in the floor just a few feet ahead of me, in front of the bedroom door. It’s the kind of sound you hear while lying in bed alone at night, your parents downstairs watching television, your brother talking to girls on the phone in his bedroom, and you’re all tucked away, covers wrapped air-tight around your head because you’re confident there’s something in the walls, under the bed, lightly tapping against the closet doors. Ma tells you over and over again it’s just the house settling in the wind, your father making a ruckus in the garage.
Fine. Okay. Things fall over all the time, especially in the damp basement of an ancient apartment complex. I can understand that. What I don’t understand is the wet, raspy shuffle that follows as if someone is dragging a wet beach towel heavy with salt and sand against a cold cement floor. All I can picture is a limp, lifeless body with its head smashed in; the wet, pulpy sucking sound of brain fragments and blood oozing from a cracked skull as the body is dragged into a dark corner and devoured. I stare at the vent like I can see right through all that dark, down three floors into the basement.
I swallow hard.
The sound fades into silence.
I stick around down here on the carpet for a bit longer, eating stale bread crumbs until I figure out a plan, which isn’t much of a plan at all: I’m going to stand.
Okay. Check.
I brush dirt and dust and other debris from my shirt.
I come up with a new plan: Fix my wounded shoulder, find a weapon, get the hell out of town, and get drunk. I’m not necessarily committed to the order.
The bedroom door doesn’t have a lock, but it won’t budge. I throw my good shoulder into it a few times before I’m able to crack the door. I give it a good kick with the bottom of my boot once, twice, three times, and I’ve worked it over enough to see a scrambled pile of books—encyclopedias and hardback novels scattered about the bedroom floor. I get the thing open wide enough for me to squeeze through, slipping and tearing a few pages out of World Book Encyclopedia X.