CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Robyn and Kelly
Robyn’s lungs burned as much from the long walk home as the putrid funk that was leaking out of that hole in the world. She rushed through the mess of traffic and people, shoving them aside when she had to, breaking free of grabbing arms and scared faces begging for help, for answers. Most were frantic, shouting and arguing with each other. There were fist fights. Robyn watched a woman hit a man with a tire iron. His face cracked open like a watermelon and watermelon is what she told herself was coming out of the split.
Some of the people knelt and prayed. That’s when Robyn began to stitch things together. Thomas, Travis, Bill Shockley, Jean Kepler. They all lived in Smithville and had for their entire lives. Her momma as well, and now she was dead. Was the crazy because of the town or vice versa? She’d only been back for a few months. Kelly the same. Robyn felt rational, upset but rational. Kelly never seemed mean. They fought, but what mother didn’t argue with her teenage daughter. Rusty was clearheaded and he was a visitor. Something had changed in that place. Something was growing like a great honking pimple and she knew she was witnessing its gory, pus-filled explosion all over the bathroom mirror.
Hadn’t Sandy called it war?
It felt like war. Not like a movie where everything was scripted and choreographed, but out and out war. Messy, stinking and chaotic.
Sandy also said it was like the end of days. That feels more appropriate. The bible says, “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.”
Robyn heard a crying child and marched on past the sound, trying not to look, but seeing the girl with long hair in pig tails. She saw the tears streaming from the child’s eyes in the light of the street lamp just before it exploded into a spray of glass, plastic and sparks. The child’s scream intensified, but Robyn pressed on. Her maternal instincts gnawed at her.
Comfort the girl. Hold the girl. Comfort the girl. She is frightened. Go to her.
It was her girl that needed comfort. Kelly was somewhere and needed her mother. Robyn needed her child. All would be well if she found Kelly alive. She could get through this if only Kelly was still alive. Another megaflock of birds flew overhead, hidden in the darkness. She ignored it all and headed toward the Admiral.
There was another skeleton. She saw it clearly that time, no question. It was the most unnatural, surreal thing she had ever experienced. It was climbing in through a broken window on the front of one of the historic homes that had long stood on Howe. During the day, it was a deep blue, like the ocean, with white gingerbread around the wrap-around porch. In the dark, it was a hulking thing made of grays and blacks. The undead thing on the porch gave it an old drive-in movie quality. Norman Bates’s dead mother came to mind, like her mother had said.
I’ll be a skull sitting in the upstairs window in some god awful rocking chair with a bad wig on.
Just before it stepped inside, the thing looked back over its shoulder and Robyn would’ve sworn it was looking right at her. Shouts came from inside the house as she moved on.
An elderly woman grabbed Robyn’s arm as she crossed Howe, one block away from Bay. “God is judging us!”
She’s right. This is the end. The rapture. Judgment day. All of that shit was true. I wanted it to be fantastic. I wanted to think it would be thousands of years from now. I wanted...
“No,” Robyn said and slapped the old woman’s hand away. She kept running, panting. The motel was right there. She paused at the corner just long enough to look around. A man on the pier caught her eye. He was like an actor in the spotlight that was provided by one of the lamps as he shot a woman in the head. Robyn stopped and stared. There was commotion all around her. Shouting, fighting, car horns and now a distant police siren. The man on the pier was all she saw. He turned and fired the weapon into two smaller silhouettes. Children. She burst into tears and shouted, “No!”
The man on the pier didn’t hear her, or didn’t care. He shoved the bodies into the water one by one and then put the gun to his own head. Robyn held up one hand to block the scene. As the shot rang out she screamed and ran to the door of the Admiral’s lobby. It was locked.
She shook the door and pounded on the glass window, pressing her face against it and looking for Kelly. Looking for any sign that she was alive. “Kelly!” she shouted. “Kelly, it’s momma. I’m here, baby! I’m here.” Her face pressed against the glass and steam from her breath fogged places on the window. Another street lamp popped behind her. Then another.
There was stirring behind the counter. Fingers, then the top of a head, then terrified eyes. Kelly was there. She was crying and as Robyn watched, she mouthed the word “Momma?” Then she rushed to the door. Gunfire exploded on their right, then a larger BOOM! Robyn looked up the street and watches as the fireball rolled up into the sky. Half a dozen flaming bodies walked away from the building—another restaurant—then fell to the ground.
The door rattled as Kelly fumbled the deadbolt and the knob lock and then opened it wide. “Momma! Oh my god. Oh my god. What is happening?”
Robyn hugged her child while shoving her backwards into the lobby. She locked the door behind them and the pair ducked down behind the counter. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.”
They sat for a moment catching their breath and listening to the madness outside. Robyn clung to her daughter. For the moment, she felt safer. Not safe, but able to breathe. She tried to catch her breath. She tried to think.
What do I do? What can I do? Help, oh God we need help. Is this happening everywhere? Are people crazy in every town, in every city.The phone! Use the phone. Call someone. Call anyone!
She peeked up over the counter, certain Mother Bates from down the street would be staring at her through the front door of the Admiral Motel. Hollow skull eyes and grinning teeth that would chatter together but make no words. It wasn’t so. There was nothing there but a line of cars and the noise—all of that noise. Robyn grabbed at the phone on the counter, knocking it to the floor. When she put it to her ear, static was the first thing she heard, but there was a dial tone there as well. She punched in the numbers for the restaurant and as it started ringing, she tried to remember who was on shift.
Larry and Sue, or was it Kirsten? Maybe the new girl, what is her name again? And the kitchen staff is who. Carl and…Saturday. Who works on Saturday. Fuck. I know this. I need this.
The phone rang again and again and again.
“Damn it,” Robyn said. “Have you seen anyone from the restaurant?”
“No. That’s why I locked myself in here. There were terrible noises coming from next door and shouting. That’s when the gunshots started.”
“There’s gunfire everywhere,” Robyn said. She thought about the man on the pier. The woman, the crying children and then the dead bodies as he dumped them into the waterway.
“Call mamaw,” Kelly said.
Oh God. Momma is dead, washed up on the shore somewhere and taken to some hospital south of here. Kelly doesn’t know.
In her mind, she saw her mother, bloated and purple with the strap of her purse wrapped around her neck, sand covering half of her face and caked in her hair. Her eyes were open and something squirmed from her mouth. A fish or maybe a small eel. Robyn shook her head trying to lose the vision. She found Kelly’s face and began to cry again.
“What is it, momma?”
“Your mamaw…”
“What?”
“She…”
“Oh no,” Kelly said. “Something happened to her out there didn’t it?”
Robyn just nodded her head. She knew if she started talking those horrible words would come out. The sandy face and the tiny eel-fish-thing spilling from her mouth. They were, of course all fabrications, but it had been so real in her head. She couldn’t think about it. Kelly hugged her mother and the two of them cried. It was a welcome release, but Robyn’s mind still moved at light speed.
> Tears aren’t helping protect your child. We have to get out of here.
Robyn tried to take inventory. She was terrified, but whole. Kelly was with her, unharmed physically. Momma was dead. So many were dead. Maybe, she thought, maybe Rusty was okay. He was locked in that jail cell. If they could get back to him, maybe they could convince Greg let him out. Everyone at the jail was okay when she left. They could find an SUV or something that would get them out of town. Hopefully they could get away from the mess. Maybe it was just crazy in Smithville. A new t-shirt for the tourist shops. Crazy in Smithville! So many maybes.
“Kelly, I need you to listen to me,” Robyn said, inching back from her daughter and putting reassuring hands on her shoulders. She wiped tears from her eyes and huffed. “I need you to listen.”
Kelly nodded. She drew in a deep breath, shuddering as she blew it out. A half-smile reassured Robyn that she was ready to listen.
“We need to get out of here,” Robyn said.
Kelly immediately shook her head in protest. “No. No no no no no. We’re safe in here. We can wait. It will pass, whatever this is. We can wait.”
“Listen to me. We can’t stay here. This is like a hurricane, honey. What if it lasts a week? A month? We need food. Water.”
Kelly shook her head. “There’s food at the restaurant. We could board up like we used to when the storms came. There’s shutters in the storage room.”
“Are you going to go out there and put them up?” Kelly said.
“We can wait until morning. Things might calm down before morning.”
Another explosion rocked the world. It was close. The restaurant. Gas from the oven or the ranges. Another BOOM!
“Kelly, we can’t stay here. We can find Rusty. Maybe he can help.”
Don’t tell her he’s in jail. Don’t mention any of that. Greg is unstable…but the building is safe, concrete. There are weapons there. Rusty is there. I don’t know what else to do. We can’t stay here. Can’t.
“He can’t help us,” Kelly said.
Who can help us? Rusty isn’t crazy. Everyone else is crazy.
Robyn’s mind flashed between that thing wriggling its way free of her dead mother’s bloated lips and the sound of that last gunshot when the man on the pier killed himself. She saw Greg Stafford’s face, sweaty and smeared with blood—insane with stress. She saw Thomas Bledsoe giddily beating Shrimp to death, blow after blow after chuckling blow. She saw that other man’s face split wide and all the watermelon falling out onto the street. She saw Sue crying as Travis’s body swayed back and forth, hanging from the winch of his wrecker. She saw the little girl with the pigtails and the street lamp exploding again, sending showers of sparks all over. She saw Rusty. He was the only stable thing. The only sane choice. The only option that didn’t suck. Stay and die, or try to live.
“We can’t stay here. Rusty isn’t…” she paused, unsure of how to finish the sentence.
He isn’t what? What is he or isn’t he?
“Whatever happened to the rest of them. He isn’t like them,” Robyn said.
Kelly pleaded with her eyes. Robyn held her arms and watched her think it through. Another explosion caused a crack to rip up through the sheetrock in the motel lobby. Flakes of ceiling fell around them. More gunfire outside. It was farther away. Robyn squeezed her daughter’s arms again. “Baby, we have to go.”
Kelly closed her eyes and nodded. Holding her breath, Robyn got up first. She stepped over to the door and looked in all directions. There was no immediate threat. No Mrs. Bates. No watermelon man. No dead children.
The pair stepped outside, looking for anything to fear. There was plenty to oblige them, but it all seemed distant. More screams, followed by gunfire, smaller explosions and something else. Some other noise was building in the distance. A sound like PUH PUH PUH PUH PUH PUH PUH. It was continuous in its crescendo. When she saw the search light, she put the pieces together. A helicopter. Maybe help was finally coming.
Someone will take control. Someone will rescue us. Everyone else is insane, aren’t they? Everyone else is too busy killing one another to need rescue. They are all beyond rescue. Surely the pilot can see that.
The chopper drew closer, scanning the ground with its search light and Robyn began to scream. “Help! Dear God, help us!” She jumped up and down and waved her arms. Kelly mimicked her. In the empty street, they should’ve stuck out like a red dress at a funeral. And they would have except that was when the rest of the street lights went out.