Instinct (13 page)

Tim and Cedric raided a country store and found breakfast. There was even a dusty box of dog biscuits. Even offered a nice piece of jerky, Cedric preferred nothing over a dog biscuit. He would sit at perfect attention, lay his ears back, and drool from the corners of his mouth, as he waited for a treat. Tim found a bag and packed what he thought might be useful. They stepped out over the broken glass and stood on the store’s porch to look at the morning. It was going to be a beautiful day. There were just a few clouds at the horizon, and the mist had already burned off. It would be hot by noon.

Tim thought about running, but decided that walking was a better plan. His muscles were still sore from the day before, and he didn’t want to risk injury. A pulled hamstring might take a week to heal, and he didn’t even have a place to stay. The houses on either side of the road were old and quaint. On another day, they might even look inviting. Today, they looked like hungry mouths waiting to swallow him whole.

Tim was waiting for Cedric when he looked up and saw the sign.

It read, “Westfield Aviation Flight School.” He’d been heading towards Buffalo, thinking that the closer they got to the city, the more likely they would find an airfield. Private would be best, but public might do. A flight school was more than he could have hoped for. He imagined a big hanger, filled with bulletproof, simple-to-fly machines, all meticulously maintained. To get insurance on a flight-school plane, you needed to demonstrate maximum attention to detail.
 

Tim couldn’t help himself. He broke into a jog as he started the two miles to the school.

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Tim loved the transition. There was a moment when exertion transitioned to floating. For the first half mile or so of running, more if his course started uphill, Tim tore ragged breaths from the air. His throat felt like it might close as he wheezed in and out. Then, as his pace settled into an easy rhythm, his breathing slowed and became part of the forward momentum. He would take three strides on each inhale, and three on each exhale. It was Tim’s meditation. It was his way to turn over the compost that cluttered his mind and reveal fresh, fertile soil.

Everything he cared about had been in that bag or in that plane. Everything except Cedric, of course. He looked down at the pretty Golden Retriever and smiled at the way the dog’s tongue slipped out of the side of his mouth as he ran. He would gladly trade all those possessions for the dog. Now, he didn’t need to make the choice. The possessions were gone. He had considered the maps his key to survival. They were annotated with all the knowledge he’d accumulated about this new world, and now they were gone. The next few weeks would prove to him, one way or the other, just how crucial those maps had been.

Cedric looked up at him and seemed to smile with his eyes.

Tim hadn’t been a dog person before. He hadn’t understood the logic of pets at all. Petting them supposedly decreased your blood pressure, but it was a lousy tradeoff. Couldn’t you take the time that you would spend feeding, caring, and cleaning up, and find a more efficient way to decrease your blood pressure? Pets were nothing but a constant drain on money and time. When he’d heard the barking coming from the little blue house on Thanksgiving, Tim had almost kept walking.

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Back in real life, Tim had lived in a tidy little apartment overlooking the park. He treated his home like a puzzle—he only placed something in there when it would be a perfect fit. He researched every appliance, and every stick of furniture. He made a list of each activity he expected to do in each room, and had furnished and decorated accordingly. The apartment had operated like a precision timepiece. A sloppy, hairy, drooling dog would have never fit that lifestyle.
 

On Thanksgiving morning, everything was going according to plan. He had deconstructed the idea of Thanksgiving into seven components: fowl, starch, starch, vegetable, booze, indulgence, and gratitude. His bird was in the oven, packed with one of the starches, and he was dicing potatoes when the power went off. At first, he thought it was just the lights in the kitchen. Then he noticed that the sound of the parade on TV had shut off in the living room. Tim had stared at the oven for a minute. Some part of him thought that if he held still, everything might just come back to life and there would be no crisis to deal with. The oven was electric. Gas cost more, and meant a separate bill each month, so he’d gone with electric. In his years of living in the little apartment, the power had never gone off before.

After a minute, Tim washed his hands and retrieved his phone. He still had the number for the power company in his address book. He dialed. Using the automated system, he reported his power outage and hung up. Regarding dinner, there was nothing to do but wait. The bird needed at least another hour to cook. He wondered how long the oven would stay hot if he didn’t open it. It was just him for dinner. He was lucky the guy from accounting had turned down his invitation. At least he wouldn’t need to make any excuses.

Tim moved to the living room and fiddled with his phone. Perhaps if he got a feel for the scope of the outage, he could guess at how long the power might be out. If it was just his block, or just his building, maybe it would come back quick. If it was the whole neighborhood, he could see if the Chinese place down the street was open. They were always open on Christmas. Maybe Thanksgiving was another trend they bucked.

He couldn’t connect with the website. Tim fiddled with the settings for a minute, thinking that his phone might be trying to connect with his home network. The network was up—his battery backup would last about an hour—but, of course, anything it normally connected to would be down. After a couple of minutes, he gave up. If there was a way to fix the issue, he wasn’t savvy enough to figure it out. He tried the phone number again, hoping that he could get an estimate if he could just talk to a person.

The phone rang a few times and then a busy signal buzzed in his ear. He pulled the phone from his face and looked at it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard that ugly sound. Tim tried again and his phone wouldn’t even place the call.

He began to feel unsettled. When he looked out the window, the feeling got worse. The family who had been playing football in the park had gone inside. The park was empty. Their football was still sitting there, unattended in the withering grass. Out on the street, nothing was moving. There was a car double-parked over on Chatham Street. Its blinker flashed, but it didn’t move. Tim couldn’t even see anyone behind the wheel.
 

Tim grabbed his keys from the ring, and put on a light jacket. He shut his door quietly and walked up the hall to the elevators. He actually stood there, pressing the button, for several seconds before he remembered the power outage. Tim walked to the stairs.

He kept his arms to his sides rather than touch the railing. At one time, he loved taking the stairs. Then, some homeless person had found a way to get into the stairwell, and had been peeing into the drain. The smell had been disgusting. The building manager had replaced the locks and poured bleach down the drain, but Tim had given up on the stairs. He would rather add another mile to his run than potentially walk through urine. Now he had no choice. His nose was on high alert as he walked down the last flight. He pulled his sleeves up over his hands as he pushed open the door and let himself outside.

It was a beautiful fall day. A lot of people hated the Pittsburgh winter, but Tim suffered it gladly as long as it was preceded by a crisp autumn. Down in South Carolina, fall was a soggy, moldy affair. In Pittsburgh, the air had a nice round bite to it. Tim took a deep breath and smiled. His concern about the power was, for the moment, distant. He decided to walk around the block and see how far the outage stretched.

Tim walked down the sidewalk and glanced over at the football. He considered picking it up and setting it on a bench, but decided against it. The people were probably looking out their window, waiting for someone to steal their ball. His path took him close to the double-parked car. He frowned. The engine was running. The door was even open to traffic. It was like the driver had just gotten out and walked away. Tim shook his head and wondered if he should call the police.
 

Around the corner, he didn’t see any lights on in the businesses. The Chinese restaurant had a plastic sign in the window. It was flipped to “Open.” Tim walked in and a bell over the door rang. He walked up to the little counter where the register sat. There was usually a tiny little woman sitting on the stool. She didn’t seem to do anything. In fact, her eyes were so squinted and wrinkled that Tim often wondered if she could even see the customers. Today, the question was academic. She wasn’t there.

“Hello?” he called.

Their power was obviously out too, but they probably had gas stoves out back. As long as they could make change, maybe he could get a hot lunch to take home.

“Hello?”

Still no answer.

Tim walked back to the fish tank. They’d recently won their case to keep the giant koi fish. Some regulation made them illegal, but the restaurant had fought the state and managed to keep the tank. With the power out, there were no bubbles in the back of the tank. The treasure chest lid didn’t rise and fall. Tim looked closer. Maybe they’d lost the case after all—there were no fish in the tank. He glanced around the dark restaurant and wondered if the sign had been lying. Maybe this place was closed and they’d just forgotten to lock the door. There was certainly nothing going inside that made it appear open.

“Hello?” he called once more.

Tim walked towards the back. There was a bit of light showing through the porthole window to the kitchen. He tentatively pushed open the swinging door. The back room was lit from windows high on the walls. Blue flames danced under big pots on the stove. There were heads of cabbage on the cutting board in the process of being chopped. Nobody was home.

Tim backed out of the kitchen and then turned to make his way out of the empty restaurant. It was suddenly creepy in there.

He walked three more blocks, looking for any signs of life. As soon as he tuned his senses to the silence, it was obvious. There were no kids, no radios, no birds, and no moving cars. He found a couple more cars running, but they were abandoned, like the double-parked car near his apartment. Tim turned for home, not knowing what else to do.

He walked back along Spencer Street. It was a good street for walking, but it was usually lousy for jogging. The road was usually lined with parked cars and the sidewalk clogged with strollers. He thought that if there was anywhere he might find signs of life, it would be here. These people seemed to live to be out in their front yards, or cluttering the sidewalks. He found nothing.

About halfway up the block, a sharp sound startled him.
 

From a tiny blue house, he heard a barking dog.

Tim stopped and looked at the house. The door was open a few inches. He glanced around at the other houses on the block and saw a few more open doors. The dog barked again. Tim took one hesitant step up the walk. He didn’t know how, but he knew that it wasn’t an aggressive bark. The thought made him consider his co-worker, Meredith. She had a new baby boy and enjoyed telling Tim about all the wonderful instincts she was discovering. Tim thought it was a load of garbage. People were learners. Instinct was for wild animals. She had told him that child-rearing was ninety-percent instinct, and he had told her that she was crazy. She had told him that she could instinctively tell what the baby needed just by the sound of his voice. She had said that she could tell the difference between hungry, wet, teething, and hurt. He had dismissed it all as wishful thinking.

Listening to the dog, he distinctly heard dismay and excitement. He heard no aggression. He almost kept walking.
 

Tim had walked up to the door, tried to push it open, and frowned when it stopped short. The door was chained. He heard the barking again—pure excitement this time—and saw the shiny black nose appear in the gap. The dog licked its nose and sniffed the air.

“Hello?” Tim called. He knocked on the door.

The dog barked once in response.

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Tim stopped halfway down the walk. He glanced back over his shoulder when the dog barked once more. He heard frustration in that bark—lonely, hurt, frustration. Tim turned back and returned to the front door of the little blue house.

“Are you alone in there?” he asked. He blushed. It was stupid to talk to a dog. It was worse to ask a question. Tim pushed on the door and it banged against the chain. How much pressure would it take to break a chain like that? His father had told him, “Locks only keep the honest people out.” He pushed slightly harder on the door when it bounced back. The chain held. He heard a thumping from the other side of the door and guessed that the dog’s tail was beating against a wall or something.
 

Tim looked up the street. What was he doing? There had to be an explanation for why everyone had disappeared. Maybe there was a street fair or a parade he didn’t know about. Maybe there was a gas leak or a bomb scare. He should be evacuating the area. He should be headed to the court house, or the hospital, or the high school. Someone would tell him what to do. What he should
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be doing was messing with someone else’s dog, legitimately locked in their own house.

“Who locked this door?” he asked. He didn’t blush this time. He wasn’t asking the dog. He was asking himself. If the door was chained, then someone must still be inside. That person might need help.

Tim ran across the lawn, stepped over a low hedge, and found his way to the neighbor’s door. He tried the doorbell and then remembered the power outage. He banged on the door. It swung open. There was no chain holding this one back.