The Only Ones (6 page)

Darla stopped for a moment. A tear escaped from her eye. She looked around the church, nodded confidently, and went on.

“But I was alone. Even when I escaped from the neighborhood and it wasn’t fire everywhere, I was still alone. It was a ghost town for miles and miles. Everyone was gone, and if it had been a dream, then I would have known it was a dream and pinched myself awake ’cause it was all so crazy. But I was awake and afraid and alone.”

Darla stopped again. She closed her eyes and smiled. “Four days later, after getting practically nowhere because of all the stuff in the streets, I found Kid Godzilla.”

“Her monster truck,” the girl with silver eyes explained with a sigh. It didn’t mean much to Martin, though. He knew monsters. He knew trucks. He didn’t associate the two.

“You gotta see the wheels,” Darla said excitedly. “Big as a moose, Martin! Kid Godzilla was parked at a burger joint and the keys were in it. So I ditched the pickup and I rode that beast straight across the country. Three weeks. Twenty tanks of gas. Rolling over and crushing everything! Until I got here.”

“You knew to come here?” Martin asked.

“I checked the lake house and my parents weren’t there. I had family on the East Coast and thought there was a chance that maybe
they
were still around. I passed through this place on the way. I haven’t left since. Deep down, we all knew to come here.”

“We all ended up here,” the boy with olive skin corrected her.

“Call it coincidence, call it fate,” Darla said. “This is the place you come. There’s nowhere else. There’s no
one
else. Martin, this is the entire world.”

Looking around the church, Martin was greeted with a chorus of nods.

“It seems like a nice place” was all he could think to say.

Laughter echoed through the room.

“Shhh!” Darla chided. “Stories! There are many to get through. Henry is next. Henry.”

The redheaded boy nodded and scooted his chair toward the center.

“Didja have a tree house on your island?” he barked at Martin.

“No. I don’t believe I did.”

“I had two,” Henry said firmly. “Parents had a hundred acres. In the back, two tree houses. Had a telescope. I could watch the stars, but from the taller tree house, I could see town too. It was a small town, but things happened. Could watch people comin’ and goin’ from the hardware store and the grocery store. I would know what they were buyin’. I would know who they were talkin’ to. I would know where they were goin’. I would know … 
everything
.

“On the mornin’ of the Day, I was in town with my dad, and Mr. Henkles was at the hardware store, and that ol’ lady that stinks like mouthwash was sellin’ banana bread or some garbage on the corner, and it was sunny and there was a whole lotta other crap happenin’ too. But when I went home, and went out to my scope, I looked back and everything changed. A car was smashed through the front winda of the hardware store, which was pretty awesome.
Grocery bags were tipped over and on the street. Dogs were wrestlin’ around on the lawns. And nobody was there. Nobody.

“I went back to the house to tell my brother. But he was gone too. And my parents were gone and my neighbors were gone and everyone—”

“Jeez Louise!” the olive-skinned boy butted in. “Do we have to go through all these stories again?”

Henry scowled at him.

“It’s what we do, Felix,” Darla said diplomatically.

“It’s what we used to do,” Felix said. He held up the block of wood he had been scribbling on. “We can think for ourselves now. We have the Internet now. He can read it all there.”

“I know,” Darla said. “And we all appreciate the Internet. But this is a tradition.”

Felix shook his head. “Does anyone here really give a hoot about tradition?”

A few hands shot up in the crowd, but the question was mostly met with tired indifference.

“That doesn’t mean—” Darla started.

“I’m going home,” Felix said, standing from his chair and bowing graciously to Martin. “Welcome, Martin. Hope you enjoy your stay.” Then he turned to the door.

“Thank you,” Martin called to him.

Following Felix’s lead, all the other kids popped up from their chairs and headed for the exit.

“Well,” Darla said with a deep breath. “That didn’t go as planned.”

“I rode a bike here,” Henry told Martin. “That’s what happened next in the story. On the highway. Cool, right? I
thought I might see dead people, but I didn’t see any dead people.”

“That’s good,” Martin said.

“Eh,” Henry squawked with a shrug.

Darla gave Martin a quick pat on his knee. “Let’s get you a house,” she said. “What type would you like?”

T
hey walked down the main street of town, Martin in the middle, with Henry and Darla on either side of him, lanterns in their hands. The other kids retreated to houses along the street or down the leafy lanes that splintered off. Their lanterns bobbed along with them and then disappeared.

“Books, I guess,” Martin told Darla and Henry. “One with a lot of books in it.”

“Most of ’em got books,” Henry said.

“Electricity?” Martin asked, looking down at the lanterns.

“We have batteries and a few generators,” Darla said, “but only for special occasions.”

“What about solar panels?” Martin asked.

“Not any we know how to use,” Henry said.

“I could help with that,” Martin said.

“You can?” Darla exclaimed. “That must be your thing!”

“My thing?”

“We all have a thing here,” Darla explained. “Like Henry
is the guy who hunts and protects us. And I’m the girl who drives and … decides. So you’re the guy who knows about solar panels. That’s why you’re here. Don’t you see?”

“Okay,” Martin agreed. It sounded fine to him. After all, people were supposed to have jobs.

They walked quietly for a while as Martin surveyed the houses and storefronts. Even in the dark, he could tell this town was different from the others he’d visited. The shutters and signs were straight. Displays in windows, consisting of pumpkins and corn husks and mason jars, were all clean and orderly. The roads were clear. The grass was cut. This was a home, or as close to one as he had ever encountered.

“That’s the Smash Factory there,” Henry said, pointing to a storefront with a giant hammer painted on the window. “Raul did it up a while back. If you’re angry, or just plain bored, you can go on in there and bust things up. TVs, flower vases, car windshields, that sort of stuff. It’s good for a laugh.”

“And that’s Gina’s Joint,” Darla said, pointing to a house painted with swirls of neon green and pink. “It’s all kaleidoscopes and tie-dye and glow-in-the-dark hippy garbage. Avoid it if you get dizzy, but if you ever want any Roman candles or bottle rockets, then Gina’s your girl.”

Perched on top of a small hill, overlooking the town square, was a tall yellow house with a sharply slanted slate roof. A boy on its front steps caught Martin’s eye. A burning torch was in his left hand. His right hand was petting some sort of striped animal that was sitting patiently by his side. Martin didn’t recognize the boy from the church.

“What about him?” Martin asked, pointing. “What’s his thing?”

“That’s Nigel,” Henry said, grabbing Martin’s hand and
lowering it. “His thing is he does whatever the heck he wants and we give him whatever he wants. It’s ’cause he talks to animals. Probably talking to that stupid tiger right now.”

“Do the animals talk back?” Martin asked.

“Well …,” Darla said, cocking her chin.

The house Martin picked reminded him of the houses on the island. It had gray shingles and a matching pair of gables. The ocean was miles off, but there was a creek that ran through the backyard with a calming whoosh.

“A bold choice,” Darla told him.

“How so?” Martin asked.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” she said with a sly smile. “I don’t know. Maybe it means something. A fresh beginning.”

Henry snorted, as if he couldn’t care less, and Darla let out a quick, jabbing laugh. They left Martin standing alone at the front door.

In almost every room of Martin’s new home, there were shelves full of books. In the garage, there were tools, covered in a thin film of dust. In the kitchen, there were canned goods stocking the cupboards. What Martin found most intriguing, however, was in the basement.

The basement consisted of one scanty low-ceilinged room with brick walls and a concrete floor. Candles in glass vases decorated ledges, and trunks, and wooden crates. A Ping-Pong table, with a stack of boxes on it, was pushed into the corner. From the pictures on the boxes, Martin could see they held kits for model cars and boats and trains. Against one wall was a grimy plaid sofa with a woven wool blanket hanging over its arm. On a coffee table, in front of the sofa, was a miniature house, cut in half to show its innards.

It was a dollhouse, or that was what Martin assumed. Only it didn’t look like the dollhouses he had imagined. The rooms inside weren’t reproductions of kitchens or bedrooms or parlors. They were all the same room, decorated in the same way, over and over, three floors of three, nine rooms in all. They had minuscule candles in glass vases, baby Ping-Pong tables pushed into their corners, grimy toy sofas. They were shrunken duplicates of the room Martin was standing in now. The only difference was that in every room except for one, there was a single glass bottle on the coffee table rather than a shrunken dollhouse. In that odd room out, the coffee table was empty.

Martin still had the bottle Kelvin had given him. Gingerly, he eased his fingers over the toy furniture and set it in its rightful place on the tiny table.

Martin slept in a giant bed on the top floor of the house, and he woke when the sun angled through an octagonal window just above the headboard. Downstairs, he opened a can of beans and then went out to the back porch and ate them for breakfast as he watched the creek. He had expected Darla or Henry or someone to stop by, but after a couple of hours and no visitors, he slipped on some shoes and headed to the front door to go for a walk.

Two large plastic jugs, each filled to the top with water, were waiting on the front step. A note sandwiched between the jugs read:

In the distance, a boy pedaled a bicycle down the street, towing behind him a small red wagon filled with more jugs. Martin couldn’t catch up with the bike, so he opted to walk in the opposite direction, toward the town square.

The next person he came upon was a lanky girl with cropped blond hair and a tight outfit made from synthetic fabrics. She was jogging at a steady clip, heading straight for Martin.

As she approached, Martin waved. “Top of the morning,” he said.

Maybe that wasn’t the thing to say in this neck of the woods, because the girl didn’t slow her pace. As she blew by him, she raised four fingers.

“Four miles to go,” she grunted.

Four miles to go? Figuring out local phrases was sure to be a chore, Martin thought, but there was no point in stressing over these things. Martin was the new guy, and it was the new guy’s job to make mistakes, to learn. So he simply chose to move on.

He paused only when the yellow house from the night before came into view. Nigel wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but there was a collection of animals grazing and lounging in the yard. There were chickens and goats and cats and a few other creatures that Martin couldn’t figure out. He wondered why they weren’t scurrying off, as animals tended to do in the wild.

In the corner of the yard, a group of dogs were collected around a giant replica of an ice cream cone. It was at least eight feet tall, the sheen of it indicating fiberglass construction. The cone had a waffle-print design, and the ice cream was three scoops of three different colors—red, white, and brown. Martin had seen pictures of ice cream cones in a cookbook before, but he had never realized that dogs had such an interest in them. Their noses were glued to the thing.

“Git!” Henry commanded as he stepped out of some
bushes, waving a stick. The dogs scattered, and Henry tossed the stick at the biggest one to make sure he didn’t contemplate turning back. Reaching into the bushes, he then pulled out a long nylon duffel bag, which he set next to the ice cream cone. He gave the scoops of ice cream a push from underneath. They detached from the cone and flopped backward on a hinge. It made sense to Martin now. This was a container.

Henry bent down and unzipped the duffel. From inside, he started pulling body parts of an animal: legs, torso, head. It was a deer, a moderately sized doe. Unaware or unconcerned that he was being watched, Henry deposited each piece into the cone, and when the bag was empty, he circled around and pushed the scoops of ice cream up. The hinges creaked. The scoops fell back on the cone. The container was shut. Henry grabbed the duffel and slipped back through the bushes and headed toward the town square.

Martin decided to avoid Henry and continue his explorations by turning down a narrow side street. It was quiet and pleasant, and the only other person around was a boy walking purposefully toward a narrow dirt trail that led into a thick patch of trees. Martin followed. It was easy to catch up, but he thought it best to keep his distance.

About a quarter mile down the trail, the boy angled off through a thicket of bushes, then stopped next to a rocky ledge. In the side of the ledge was a dark rectangular hole, framed with wood. The boy set something down next to the hole and bowed his head. After a minute or so, he turned back around.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said to Martin. “I thought I heard some sort of a ruckus.”

“I’m so sorry.” Martin started to back away.

“No, no, stay,” the boy yelled. “I want to yak it up for a sec.”

Martin recognized him as he got closer. It was the olive-skinned boy named Felix, the one who had been jotting down notes in the church. The night before, in the dark, Martin hadn’t gotten a good look at most of the kids. For instance, he hadn’t noticed that Felix’s hair had been cut away in the front, and that he wore a dark band around his forehead where his bangs might have hung. Sticking out from that band were spools of string, screwdrivers, pens, and tiny lightbulbs.