None of the cars stopped on the bridge looked heavily damaged. In fact, on his trip, Robby saw a lot of cars pulled over with exploded-eye corpses but only a few looked like they’d been in a big crash. He theorized they’d made some attempt to pull over just before their deaths and then rolled to a gentle, post mortem stop. This assumption led Robby to the depressing idea that most of the vehicles on the road would have remained running until they eventually ran out of gas.
He hadn’t confirmed this idea. The thought of getting close enough to one of the exploded-eye corpses to see the gas gauge was not even slightly appealing to him. At the other side of the Wyoming trailer, another idea waited for him. The car hooked up to the trailer also had a bike rack attached to it. Two full-sized mountain bikes and a kid’s bike—pink with handlebar streamers—were lashed to the trunk. Robby gathered everything he could fit in his backpack, and grabbed the keys to the SUV before he let himself out to stand on the bridge.
The wind blowing up the river bit at his skin. Robby zipped up his coat until the zipper hit the sore spot on his neck. The sore spot made him think of his father. He felt naked walking up the slight slope of the bridge deck to the wrecked car. The bucking bronco painted on the trailer stared at him with a half-crazed eye. The horse gave the impression of brown, but it was really composed of colorful strokes of random colors. Rings of blue and purple made up its flared nostrils and streaks of red flowed down the horse’s chest like blood. Robby focused on the bikes and tried to ignore the horse mural.
When Robby approached the back of the car, he just stared at the bike rack. He figured they would be locked to the rack, and he would need the driver’s keys to unlock them. He almost couldn’t believe his luck—they weren’t locked. The bikes were merely lashed to the rack with nylon straps. In minutes, Robby unhooked and rested them against the side of the trailer.
Both of the adult-sized bikes looked good, so Robby chose the one with the pack of tools and pump clipped to the frame. He coasted down the slope of the bridge and waved goodbye to the SUV as he passed. It felt strange to ride a bike without a helmet. Robby didn’t pedal, he let gravity take him down the road and looked back and forth carefully, watching for any sign of danger. He felt stealthy on the bike, but less insulated than in the SUV.
He planned to trade in his bike for the next functional car or truck he could find.
Not far down the road the first exit led to to Market street. Robby rolled down to the stop sign and rode up onto the sidewalk of a fairly big road. Just up the road he found small neighborhoods mixed with clusters of businesses. A little farther, Robby found a shopping mall with a bunch of cars grouped near the entrance to the Best Buy.
He let his bike slow to a stop and put his feet down. When he saw movement over by the store, he hunched over the handlebars. Robby shuffled the bike over to a clump of bushes decorating a concrete island in the parking lot. He laid the bike down and crept between the evergreen shrubs.
Past all the parked cars, color lined the sidewalk next to the Best Buy. Closest to the door, behind some velvet ropes, people had set up tents; farther away, they had sleeping bags and lawn chairs. The movement which caught Robby’s eye was the flap of a big purple tent, fluttering in the breeze. The whole line looked messy and disorganized against the clean facade of the building.
Robby’s family never shopped on Black Friday. Their Thanksgiving always consisted of dinner at Grandma’s followed by his mom and grandmother working on little projects around the house. Grandma never asked for help, but she worried around the edges of something until someone would come to her rescue. That someone was always Robby’s mom.
Robby had seen the lines of people on TV though. He’d seen them camped out on the news, waiting for the big post-Thanksgiving sales. Now, witnessing the line of shabby tents and chairs, Robby saw them in real life. Or, perhaps real death would be more appropriate, he thought.
Even from his distance, Robby saw that these would-be shoppers suffered the same fate as everyone else south of Portland—the sitters all sat with slumped heads and eye goo on their jackets. Most of the others were splayed out on the sidewalk. One unlucky man in a black jacket and a black cap had fallen forwards. The velvet rope propped him up under his armpits and the stanchions on either side leaned towards him, like drunken buddies propping up their passed-out friend.
Robby stood up and glanced around, feeling stupid for having ducked because of a tent-fly flapping in the wind. He rolled his bike down the aisle of the parking lot over towards the group. He figured this would be an easy place to score another vehicle.
He started scanning the clump of cars looking for a nice, big, new-looking vehicle. With a few candidates in mind, he looked down the line of corpses, trying to determine which body belonged to what car. He decided to try to correspond each car’s parking lot position to the place of the person in line.
He couldn’t see the occupants of the first tent, but guessed from the big double-wide tent that the people belonged to the first tan minivan. The third guy was easy. His wheelchair matched him nicely with the van in the handicapped spot. Robby thought about going directly for the wheelchair guy’s keys. The van looked capable and sturdy. Then he remembered a thing he’d seen on TV—people in wheelchairs were likely to have their vehicles retrofitted with hand controls. Robby didn’t want to learn something new; he was still getting comfortable driving a normal car.
Robby walked past the handicapped van and paused at the travel lane to look both ways before crossing. He smiled at his habit—who was he expecting to drive by? Robby pushed the bike and then stopped quickly when the bike made a weird sound. The freewheel clicked twice and then made a weird “swooshing” sound. The sound stopped almost as quickly as the bike. Robby leaned down closer, but didn’t see anything wrong with it.
He pushed the bike forward again, waiting for the familiar click from the rear tire. Once again, as soon as he heard the second click, he heard a swoosh. He stopped the bike again, and the swoosh was followed immediately by a complementary “whoosh.”
Without moving the bike, he heard it again—“Swoosh-whoosh.”
Robby realized the sounds weren’t coming from the bike. He looked up. His eyes tracked down the length of the line towards the corner of the Best Buy.
A giant puddle spilled down from the sidewalk into the parking lot. As he watched, another wave of liquid gushed from around the corner of the building and joined the puddle. The crest of the new flood made the swoosh sound, and it spread out into the puddle with the whoosh sound.
To Robby—an island boy—the flowing liquid was the tide coming in on gentle swells. Despite the volume of fluid coming in with each swell, the puddle didn’t seem to be growing. At least it wasn’t growing in diameter. If anything, instead of getting wider, the puddle was getting deeper. Robby backed up. His feet seemed to move on their own until his body was mostly hidden behind the van. Robby peered around the side to watch several more swells bring even more height to the center of the puddle. It sloped down towards the pavement on the edges, but in the center the puddle looked about knee-deep. Robby glanced around in all directions, looking for the best angle of retreat. When he didn’t see anything else dangerous-looking behind him, his curiosity returned his gaze back to the liquid.
The swells stopped coming from around the corner and the edges of the puddle pulled in a little tighter. The pavement around the puddle where the liquid retreated was still dark with moisture. Robby watched the swelling liquid change direction and head towards the back of the line of corpses.
Except for his winter jacket, the last guy in line would have looked perfectly at home on a beach. His big folding chair had cup-holders built into both armrests, and the man slouched deep into the seat. His head slumped over to one side, as if his last margarita finally caught up with him. The man’s gloved hands flopped over the armrests and dangled at his sides.