Alone (2 page)

Shrugging, Dan decided to call time and temperature, find out how late he was, and then call the power and water companies before he left for work. Luckily, the kitchen phone wasn’t a cordless, and it didn’t need electricity to work. He lifted the phone from its cradle and brought it to his ear. All he heard was more silence. Dan toyed with it, trying to get a dial tone, but to no avail. The phone slipped from his hand, and tumbled to the floor without a sound. The first twinge of unease gnawed at him. The dead utilities and his missing family ... What the hell was going on? Had there been an accident or something? A terrorist attack? No, he was just being silly. There had to be a logical explanation. He just needed to wake up. Then things would make sense.

He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of orange juice. Still pondering the situation, he brought the carton to his lips, drank, grimaced, and then spit the juice out in the sink. It had no taste. It wasn’t rancid. It was just—
tasteless
. The milk and soda had the same effect when he tried them. Even the bottled water tasted strange—flat. He grabbed a cold chicken drumstick, and took a bite.

“Ugh!”
 

Disgusted, he threw it into the garbage can. The chicken was also tasteless. Like chewing on a piece of paper. Could the stuff in the fridge have gone bad already? Just how long had the power been out? How long had he been asleep? And for that matter, where had the chicken come from? As far as Dan remembered, they’d had lasagna last night. Where were those leftovers?

“Jerry?” He called out again, not expecting an answer. “Danielle? Are you guys here?”

No response.

Sighing, he tightened the belt of his robe and decided to get the newspaper. Maybe there had been a thunderstorm overnight, and he’d slept through it. Maybe it had knocked down the power lines or something. That would explain the utility outage, at the very least.

Dan walked to the front door, his bare feet swishing on the carpet. Normally the sound was very loud, but this morning, it too seemed quieter. He wondered again about his ears. Was there something wrong with his hearing? First sign of an oncoming sinus infection, perhaps?
 

He opened the door, stepped onto the sidewalk, and noticed that the light outside was different, as well. He stared up at the dark and overcast sky. It looked strange. There was no sun, and no clouds. Instead, there was only a bleak, gray curtain. It didn’t billow. Didn’t move. He’d never seen anything like it before. The haze was like fog, but seemed ... denser, somehow. Too thick. It obscured everything. He could see a few of his neighbor’s houses—the Kresby’s and the Lopez’s—in each direction, and some of the trees lining the street, but after that there was nothing but more gray haze. Dan frowned. It was as if the rest of the neighborhood had been swallowed up by the weird fog.

He was annoyed to discover that the newspaper wasn’t on the sidewalk. The delivery boy was usually pretty good about throwing it there. The kid had an arm like a major league player and the precision of an Army sniper. Dan took a few more steps, searching for the paper. Then he looked at the driveway—and froze.

“Oh no ...”

Jerry’s silver Lexus was still in the driveway, parked in front of Dan’s brand new Ford Explorer.

Tiny pangs of real fear blossomed inside of him now, replacing his anger. He stood there, his pulse quickening as panic set in. Where the hell was his family? Could Danielle have been abducted, like other children in the news? Kidnapped—and Jerry killed, trying to protect her? Or a hate crime, perhaps? Maybe some sick fuck had them right now! His partner and daughter could be out there, and—

He punched his leg in frustration as a new thought occurred to him.

“The cell phone! Why didn’t I think of that before?”

Because you just woke up, moron.

Dan ran back into the house, through the kitchen and living room, and took the stairs three at a time. Yes, the kitchen phone hadn’t worked, but it relied on the phone lines. That didn’t necessarily mean the cellular network was down. Rushing into the bedroom, he grabbed the cell phone from its charger on the nightstand and pressed the power button, turning it on. Even with the power outage, the battery should have still had plenty of life.

Except that it didn’t. The cell phone sat silently in his hands. He waited for it to power up, but it didn’t. The screen stayed blank and dim.

“Come on!”
 

Dan thumbed the power button again, and then, without waiting for the screen to light up, he dialed 911. Again there was nothing. The cell phone, like everything else in the house, was dead.
 

“I don’t believe this ...”

Standing there in his bathrobe, Dan suddenly felt weak. He thought he might pass out. His head swooned and his vision darkened. His loved ones were missing, and something strange was going on. His stomach felt sick. Dan dropped the cell phone and sank onto the bed, clutching the sheets with his fists, and trying to keep his growing fear from overwhelming him.
 

He didn’t even notice that the mattress springs did not squeak.

TWO

H
e sat there a few moments, trembling, his head throbbing, not from pain, but from terror. The fear and nausea grew stronger, and his stomach cramped. Dan slapped a hand over his mouth and ran to the bathroom. He knelt and gagged, but nothing came out. Desperate for relief, he stuck his middle finger down his throat and tried forcing himself to vomit. It didn’t help. Nothing came out but air.

Standing back up, Dan cinched his robe around him and tried to think. Something was terribly wrong, that much was obvious. He needed to call the police. If something sinister really had happened to Jerry and Danielle, then every second mattered. But he couldn’t report it as long as the power was out and his cell phone wasn’t working. He decided to try the Lopez’s next door. Maybe their power was on. If not, then maybe their cell phones were working.

He walked back outside again. His apprehension grew as he passed by Jerry’s car. Much like his home, the rest of the neighborhood was silent. The typical summer morning sounds were missing. There were no birds chirping from the trees and power lines. The leaves on the trees weren’t rustling in the breeze, and no squirrels scampered across them. There were no lawnmowers roaring to life. No children playing and shouting in their yards. No traffic in the street. No booming car stereos as the teenagers cruised by—no cruising teenagers either.
 

Dan stared upward into the gray sky. No planes passed overhead, even though they lived just a few miles from the airport. There weren’t even any contrails from airplanes that had already passed by. It was possible that the murky, overcast haze obscured them, but at the very least, he would have still been able to hear the planes overhead. They were a regular occurrence. But not this morning, and that meant trouble. The last time the planes were absent from the sky was the day after September 11th, when the President had shut down all air traffic in the country.

Dan’s dread grew. He stepped onto his neighbor’s lawn. The grass should have been wet with morning dew, but it was curiously dry and brittle. The leaves drooped on the trees.

You really need to water your yard, Hector,
he thought.

The Lopez family had moved onto the block the same year as Dan and Jerry, and they’d grown close over time. Hector Lopez, his wife Estelle, and his teenage daughter Maria, were good people, and had no problem with a gay couple living next door—let alone a gay couple raising an adoptive daughter. Hector had mentioned once that Maria suffered from depression. She had apparently gone through a self-mutilation phase, cutting herself with knives, but all that had changed now that they’d moved here. Dan liked the family very much.
 

Hector commuted into the city every morning, and Estelle worked part-time at the mall. When Dan peeked through their garage door window, he saw that both Hector and Estelle’s cars were still inside. Maria’s sporty little Volkswagen, purchased for her several months ago as a sweet-sixteen present, sat in the driveway. Dan felt a rush of relief. All three of them were obviously home. Sitting next to the vehicles was the new bass boat Hector had purchased only a few weeks before.
 

Dan crept up the sidewalk, suddenly aware that he was parading around in his bathrobe. But so what? Why should he care what anyone thought right now? This was no time to feel self-conscious. Jerry and Danielle were gone, and they were all that mattered. He rang the doorbell. The chime didn’t sound and the button didn’t light up. He rang it again, hopeful, but nothing happened.

“The power must be out here, too.”

He knocked, instead, and waited. When there was no answer, Dan knocked again, listening carefully for sounds from inside the house. He was greeted by silence. Cursing, he rapped again, harder this time. Nothing. He beat the door with both fists, hammering on it, hollering for Hector and Estelle and Maria—shouting for somebody, anybody, to help him. Even in his panic, Dan was aware once again of the curious, muted sound effect. The door shook in its frame, yet his blows were muffled. Even his cries sounded small in the silence. He didn’t have time to ponder it now. He reached down and tried the doorknob. It was locked. He rattled it, then slammed the door with his shoulder. His efforts produced nothing.

Moaning, he ran back to his yard and cut across it to the Kresby’s house. Their grass also felt dry and withered.
 

Jesus, doesn’t anybody take care of their lawn anymore?

His robe had come unfastened and it flapped behind him, fluttering like a cape. If any of the neighbors were watching him right now, he realized, they were getting quite the show.

I probably look like a middle-aged Captain Marvel,
he thought.
Fuck them. If they don’t like it, they can close the shades.

It occurred to him that other than the Kresby’s and the Lopez’s, nobody could see him anyway. The gray fog obliterated everything else. He could see the road and a few of the homes across the street, and the cars in their driveways, but beyond that was emptiness. Indeed, the neighborhood just sort of faded away, vanishing into the murk. Chances were he could run around naked out here and no one would know. He almost wished somebody
could
see him. If ripping off his robe and boxers and letting his dick flap in the breeze would make someone call the police, he’d be all for it.

Focus,
he thought.
You’re freaking out, and that’s not going to help Jerry or Danielle.
Get a grip on yourself. The Kresby’s will be home. They’re retired. They never go anywhere, except to the grocery store on Friday. Phil’s prostate wakes him up early every morning. He’ll answer. He’ll help.
 

Except that Phil Kresby didn’t answer the door. Neither did his wife, Susan. Dan’s urgent knocks and cries for help went unanswered, just as they had at the Lopez home. Frantic, he pressed his face against the Kresby’s large bay window at the front of the house. The curtains were slightly parted. Dan cupped his hands beside his eyes and peered through the glass. It was hard to see more than a few feet inside. The Kresby’s living room was filled with the same gray fog that obscured the rest of the neighborhood.

“What the hell is going on? What is this?”

Dan realized that his voice sounded very strange out here in the silence. He had trouble believing it was he who had spoken aloud. He scowled, wondering how the fog had gotten inside the Kresby’s home. Had they left a window open or something? Were they okay? Could something have happened to them, too?
 

“Phil,” he shouted, banging on the window and noticing the strange muffling effect again. “Phil? Susan? Are you home? It’s Dan Miller! Please, if you’re in there, answer me. I need help. Something has happened.”
 

Dan glanced around the yard, spotted a ceramic lawn gnome squatting between two of the Kresby’s bushes, and picked it up. He noticed that the shrubs had the same withered look and texture as the grass and trees, but then he turned his attention to the gnome. It was solid, but surprisingly light. Dan smashed the lawn ornament’s pointed green hat against the window. The glass shattered on the third blow. For a brief second, Dan thought he heard a woman scream, as if from a far off distance, but then the sound faded. Shards of glass fell quietly at his feet. Again, he wondered what was going on with his hearing. The sound of breaking glass should have been much louder. And who had he heard screaming? Had it been Susan? If so, she must be upstairs, given how far away she’d sounded.

“Susan? Are you in there? I’m sorry about the window, but I need help.”

He paused, listening, but there was no response. Yet he couldn’t have imagined the scream, could he? There had to be someone here.
 

“Susan! Answer me, god damn it! Something very strange is going on. I’m coming in. I don’t mean any harm. If you’re in there, let me know.”

When he still didn’t receive a response, Dan carefully picked the shards of glass out of the frame and then climbed through the broken window. He watched where he stepped on the other side, mindful of his bare feet. Once inside the Kresby’s home, he was immediately overcome by a vague sense of unease. At first, he chalked it up to the situation—his family was missing and he had just broken into his neighbor’s house. But as he crept forward into the living room, that feeling of dread increased. Something was wrong in here. He didn’t know what it was. He couldn’t name it or define it or explain the cause. He just felt it on some instinctive level.
 

The gloom deepened as he went further, obscuring his vision. Hesitating, Dan reached out and tried to touch the gray haze, but his hand simply passed through it as if it weren’t there. He thought back to an experience he’d had when he and Jerry first started dating. They’d gone mountain climbing together for a weekend, and at the top of a peak, he’d touched the low-hanging mist. At the time, Jerry had made a joke of it, saying that his love for Dan made him feel like he was walking amidst the clouds. Dan remembered the sensation as he’d waved his hand through the fog in the Kresby’s home. This wasn’t the same as on the mountain. There was no sense of dampness or cold. Indeed, the grayness felt like nothing at all. It had no temperature or texture or smell. He stepped into it, and that sense of foreboding increased.