He began walking away.
She watched him in the side mirror. Her right foot was still poised over the gas pedal, and she thought she was going to step on it and leave, but was shocked to find herself putting the Buick in park, opening the door, and stepping out into the street instead.
He stopped and looked back.
“Kate,” she said. “My name’s Kate.”
He stared back at her for a moment, and she realized he was pouting.
He’s just a kid.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do. After last night…”
“Yeah,” he said.
She could see it in his eyes, in the blood on his clothes, the sticky flesh that caked his baseball bat. He knew all about last night.
His eyes shifted over to her car and he pointed with the baseball bat. “Your grill’s all messed up.”
“What?”
“Your grill.”
She walked to the front of the car and saw that the Buick’s grill was miraculously hanging on by a couple of hooks. How had it stayed on all night? How had she missed it this morning? She shook her head and managed a small smile. “It’s not mine.”
“You stole it or something?” He looked amused.
“No, I…” She smiled again. “I guess I did.”
“I grabbed this, too.” He held up the baseball bat. “Took what I could when it all happened.” His face darkened. “You saw it, right? You saw them?”
Kate looked back at him and nodded. “Yes.”
His face flushed with relief. “Where you headed?” he asked.
“I need gas.”
“I passed a gas station a block from here. I can show you if you want.”
“Okay.”
“What happened to your shoes?”
“What?”
“You’re not wearing shoes,” he said, pointing with the bat again.
“Oh. I guess I lost them.”
His name was Luke, and he was right. The creatures weren’t outside in the sunlight. They had gone into hiding.
The attacks didn’t happen until nightfall…
Kate drove the Buick, Luke sitting in the passenger’s seat with the window rolled down, his bat on the floor within each reach. She saw the newly covered windows around them. She hadn’t noticed them earlier, but now that Luke pointed them out, they became obvious. Every window of the bigger buildings they passed — stores, offices, and strip malls — was covered over with blankets, fabric, newspapers, or, in some cases, big, blocky furniture.
They didn’t leave, they went inside.
Smaller buildings, like the auto body shop she had stayed in last night, seemed to be free of coverings…
“One of them tried to get me around sunup,” Luke said. “I could tell it was psyching itself up, ready to just go for it, when the sun came out and it took off. I never saw anything move so fast.”
“Where were you?”
“I was in this small shop, looking for supplies. When sunlight started coming in through the windows, it took off for the back room and never came out. Like it was scared or something. I don’t know why. I guess they don’t like sunlight.”
“The attacks…they didn’t start until nightfall, I think.”
“I noticed that, too. I guess it makes sense.”
Sense? Nothing about this makes sense. There’s no order here, just chaos.
She drove on in silence.
The gas station he mentioned hadn’t been of any use to them. There were sheets thrown over the windows, keeping out the sun. To use the gas pumps, they needed to go inside to turn them on first, and neither of them were too excited about that idea.
“You work in an office or something?” he asked after a while.
“Why do you ask that?”
“Your clothes.”
She was suddenly very aware of her appearance: the tear along the skirt, the missing buttons at the bottom of the blouse draping off her waist. At least it wasn’t the buttons near the top which would have left her bra visible. Still, she felt half-naked sitting next to him.
“I do,” she said. “Work in an office. I was leaving work when it happened. What about you?”
“I was eating pizza with some guys about three blocks from here.”
He stared out the window, and Kate noticed that his hand had wandered back over to the taped handle of the bat.
“What happened?” she asked.
“These things just started appearing everywhere and attacking everyone.” He shook his head. “It was crazy, like something out of a movie.” He shifted in his seat. “One second I was talking to Mark and Steve, and the next they’re down on the floor bleeding all over the place. It was unreal. The guy behind the counter had this bat — for security, I guess. He was trying to hit one of them with it, but he kept missing. They got him, and he dropped the bat, so I picked it up. I guess I was better with it than he was.”
“How did you survive after that?”
“I don’t know. I just took off. I don’t think they were chasing me. They don’t do that. When they get someone down, they just…you know, you’ve seen it.”
“Yes,” Kate said, remembering Jack and Donald again.
“Did you lose someone?”
“Some friends…”
“What’s happening, do you know?”
He sounded so young. Like the kid that he was, trying to understand the bigger world, turning to the first adult he saw for answers. In this case, her. She felt embarrassingly ill-equipped.
“I mean, where are the cops?” he asked. “Shouldn’t there be cops all over the place? Or soldiers? Do you know what happened?”
“I don’t know,” Kate said. “Nothing makes sense.”
“Where’s the government?” he asked, as if she should know.
I don’t know.
“Where’s the military?” he went on. “When I woke up and didn’t see anyone on the streets — no tanks or helicopters or anything — I think that’s what really freaked me out. I always thought, you know, the government would send in troops if something like this ever happened. But they haven’t, have they?”
“No.”
“Did you hear anything on the news? It would have been on the news, wouldn’t it? How does something like this go unreported?”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
He looked thoughtful. “A lot of kids didn’t show up for school yesterday. That was pretty crazy. They even let us go home early because of it.”
“How many?”
“What?”
“How many kids didn’t show up for school?”
“I don’t know. A lot. I think like sixty or seventy, I wasn’t really paying attention when they announced it. It was enough for them to send us home early, anyway. That’s never happened before.”
“There was nothing on the news about that.”
“No?”
“No,” she said.
There was nothing on the news. Nothing that warned of this, anyway. There had been something about a police action in some building near Downtown, but that was it. News about that many kids across the city not showing up for school would have been a big deal.
“Maybe it’s happening all around the country,” Luke said thoughtfully. “That would explain why the government isn’t doing anything, right?”
She nodded. Like most citizens, she was conditioned to accept the government responding in cases of emergency.
So where were they? Where the hell were they when they needed them the most?
She drove in silence, feeling the anger boiling inside her.