* * * *
After kicking a ball around for half an hour, Doug is content to sit still and pile sand over my feet. I ask him random questions as he does this. What do you want to be when you grow up? What’s your favorite color? Where would you want to live if you could live anywhere? His answers are funny and some even make sense. Finally, I bring up the sibling scenario.
“Hey, bud, what would you think about having a new brother or sister?”
He throws sand over his shoulder. “Yeah!”
I stare at him, wondering if he understands everything such an addition would entail. No, of course he doesn’t. He sees a new friend to play with, nothing else.
“If you had a sister, what should we name her?”
“Poo-poo Head!”
“Right. Silly question.” Unbelievable. His obsession with crap is amazing. “What about a brother?”
“Weck-it Walph!”
I was thinking Zoro, myself. I ask him a series of other questions, enjoying the attention it earns me. I don’t get much alone time with him. This is nice. I begin to wonder what the coming years will be like. School, junior high… Will we be close, or will he think I’m a dork?
A shadow falls across my face, interrupting my thoughts. I look up from my chair to see the mobster from yesterday hovering over me—handprints still visible on his belly. The arm candy is missing, though.
“Hey, you that guy was attacked by them birds, right?”
“Well, my wife, actually.” He looks around for her, and I can detect a trace of worry seeping into his eyes.
“She okay?”
“She’s not feeling good.”
He kneels, leaning forward and putting the weight of his girth onto one knee. He looks troubled about something. I’m suspicious and wonder where in the world this is going. Am I about to get whacked? He seems to have left his Tommy-gun with his girlfriends today, but there’s a conspiratorial aura that he’s emitting that has me curious.
“She sick?”
“She doesn’t feel good. Why?”
He looks around, not wanting to meet my eyes. His hair is slicked back, his chain partially concealed beneath the hairy mat on his chest. “I heard someone else talkin’ this mornin’ ’bout stuff. I been thinkin’ bout yous since.”
That spikes my interest, and I tilt my head slightly, letting him know that he has my attention.
He continues, “I was walkin’ the beach, ya’ know, tryin’ to jog a bit down by the water like I seen everyone do here. I come up on these two girls walkin’ in front of me. The sun was in front, so they couldn’t see my shadow, ya’ know?”
Yeah, I know. Mobster. Hitman. Assassin.
“They was talkin’, and the wind was carryin’ their conversation. I followed them, listening.”
“Kind of creepy.”
“Like I said, they had no idea I was there.” He takes a breath, not used to talking this fast, and I almost expect that this is just a ploy to get me to drop my guard so that he can pull a switchblade from the back of his trunks and plunge it into my jugular. But he doesn’t do that. Instead, he continues to tell me about the story he overheard while stalking the two girls, and such a mental image might have been funny if not for the seriousness on his face.
“Okay…”
“They was talkin’ about a friend of theirs, said they was all on the beach down near Madison, and a bunch of seagulls attacked ’em. This friend had her top ripped off and was runnin’ around with arms flailing and all. Made quite a scene from what they was saying.”
“I bet.”
“Had to get fifteen stitches on her head and shoulders.”
“Crap.”
“Yeah, well, she ain’t walkin’ the beach with ’em this mornin’ ’cause she’s sick. Fever or somethin.’ At first, ya know, I didn’t think nothin’ of it. Just picturin’ this topless girl runnin’ around the beach with seagulls chasin’ her. But then this mornin’, after my jog, I go to get coffee and overhear another group of people talkin’ about a seagull attack that happened last night.”
“You must have good ears.” He ignored my comment.
“One of ’em hit the bird with a bat, knocked it down. Killed it. Said it had red eyes. Said there was a metal tag on its leg.”
“A metal tag?”
“Yeah, like one of those trackin’ chips scientists put on animals.”
“Okay.”
“Weird, right?”
“I guess.”
“So then I remember the girl with the stitches, and I start to think about all yous.”
This guy is not helping Doug’s future English teachers at all.
He goes on, “I wonder if they’re the same birds that attacked your wife, ya know? Maybe they flew from here, went and landed on them down there. Anyway, I’m sittin’ here lookin’ around and spot you and your boy but ain’t no sign of your wife. And I start thinkin’, what if she’s sick, too? And what would it mean if she was.”
“What do you mean, ‘what it would mean’?” I lean forward, dreading where I know this is going. My heart rate is climbing. I look at Doug. He’s not listening. He’s busy making what I hope are supposed to be pinecones in the sand.
“The lifeguard asked—”
I cut him off. “I don’t think it’s anything like that, mister.”
He’s silent. He knows I’m not as sure as I’d like to be.
Finally, I ask, “So in all your ponderings, have you come up with a theory or something?” I’m not ready to tell him about the kid’s arm or the girl I was accused of trying to stab.
“Not really. But you got a flock of seagulls hurtin’ people, right? Two of the people they hurt are sick today, and someone sees a metal tag on one of the birds. Somethin’s goin’ on, don’t ya think?”
I don’t know what I think. I want to go check on Samantha.
“I really hope she’s okay,” he says.
I’m getting to my feet when suddenly a scream cuts through the normal sounds of frolicking beachers. We turn our heads to the left and see a crowd of people a hundred yards away, on the other side of the lifeguard, screaming and swatting at half a dozen seagulls that are hovering just out of their reach.
The lifeguard, I can’t tell if it’s the same guy from yesterday or not, starts blowing his whistle. He’s running toward the crowd, waving his red life preserver thing over his head. I don’t actually know what it’s called, but David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson running with such red buoys in-hand have been cemented in my mind from all the years of watching Baywatch. That’s right, and the earlier cast—Billy Warlock and Erika Eleniak—were the better episodes of the series.
As the lifeguard runs toward the commotion, everyone else just stares in disbelief.
Another lifeguard goes sprinting past us from the stand on our right, and I can see another two coming from further up the beach.
Something is wrong. Six pesky seagulls shouldn’t have every lifeguard between Grant and Ocean converging with whistles blowing.
The birds don’t respond like they did yesterday. Instead, one of them attacks the charging lifeguard. Even from this distance I can hear the plastic thunk the board makes when it strikes one of the birds out of the sky.
Now the other three guards are ducking from diving gulls, and people are beginning to collect their belongings.
“What the hell,” the voice says beside me.
I look back at Tony. Is that really his name, or did I just make that up? I can tell he isn’t watching the action down the beach like everyone else is. His eyes are locked out over the water. I follow his gaze.
And freeze.
“Holy…”
I feel Tony step back away from me. Soon, someone else sees it and stands up. People are starting to point, attention shifting away from the five birds on our left and to the sky above the seas. People in the water wonder what everyone on the beach is looking at and turn to look up in the sky behind them.
A gray cloud grows closer, co
ming from nowhere.
Birds. It’s an army of birds.
The noise of what has to be thousands and thousands of approaching seagulls slowly begins to reach our ears.
A few people quickly start packing their stuff. Others simply take off for the boardwalk.
I look back to the birds down the beach, and I swear the remaining seagulls are trying to pull a screaming child toward the water. The lifeguards and the kid’s family are trying to swat them away, but the birds are persistent and keep at it.
Screams from the water.
Turning back, I see the kamikaze birds falling out of the sky, diving toward the water and striking swimmers. Like huge lawn darts, they impale their targets. A few people go beneath the water, and a handful of gulls slam, beak first, into the now vacant spots. Seconds later, the birds emerge with strips of flesh hanging from their beaks. They float about nonchalantly, as if simply indulging in their normal lunchtime routine, and the swimmers don’t resurface.
The whole beach charges for the street. I grab Doug.
Doug is crying, his eyes wide and fixed on the invading army. He squeezes me as hard as he can, and I can feel his terror. I take off with the crowd, part of my brain trying to convince me that this isn’t real. That I’m dreaming. A smaller part of my brain even ridicules me for running from a bunch of birds. But there are far more than “a bunch,” and the scene is so extraordinary that to not react in such a way would be foolish. That’s what a different part of my brain is saying to the other one, and I’m getting confused. I decide to switch off the brain and to just trust my instincts.
And then it happens. We all knew it would. Maybe not with our intellect, as if we could actually calculate the probability of such an incident, but with that voice inside that lets you know that something bad is about to happen. And by “bad” I don’t mean having thousands of birds crap all over you. Sure, that might send people seeking cover under their umbrellas, but it certainly wouldn’t make everyone stampede off the beach like a herd of demon-possessed swine. No, as soon as the eerie fleet appeared, we all knew something was wrong, and it only took a couple kamikaze birds striking swimmers to confirm our fears. We were being attacked. As ludicrous as it seemed, and whether anyone else knew about the strange seagull behavior this week or not, we all knew what was coming.
The scavengers descend on the fleeing mass. A woman beside me, her shoulder brushing mine, has two gulls in her hair, thrashing with their talons, stabbing her with their beaks. She falls, shouting. I want to help, but Doug is my main concern, my first and foremost responsibility. Stopping to help her would put him in danger, something I’m just not willing to do, no matter how sick it makes me feel. I keep going.
The sun is blotted out by the fleet of seagulls filling the sky like enemy bombers, their black-tipped wings outstretched, their red eyes searching for targets. I think I’ve fallen into a Stephen King novel.
We stumble to the boardwalk, casualties falling down all around us, the birds soaring like missiles through our ranks, and I pray that my son isn’t the next target. We’re like a herd of stampeding buffalo, squeezing through the railings that try to corral us up onto the wooded slats of the boardwalk. Others, further down where the boardwalk is sitting higher than the sand, are trying to climb the pillars and the cross bracings. I see two people slip, fall, and disappear beneath the pressing crowd. I almost lose my own footing twice when I’m bumped and pushed from behind. I cannot fall. I need to get to Sam. It’s only a few blocks. I can make it.
Doug is crying, and I realize that I’m repeating, “It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna be okay…”
We’re up over the boardwalk, hopping the railing and dropping down to the street. Others behind us get pinned against the railing by the wave of human flesh pressing against them, clawing their way over them as if they were dead bodies draped over barbed-wire on the battlefield of some strange fiction.
A seagull plummets right into the windshield of a coming car, and the driver reacts by swerving into the crowd of people that is just now spilling off the boardwalk and into the street. I can’t tell if anyone was run over or not. If so, no one seems to be concerned about it. Other cars are forced to stop, and people are flocking toward them, banging on their windows and begging to be let in.
Most of the birds have descended from their lofty heights, no longer high in the sky but pecking and slashing at close range. The scene is absurd, frantic faces running from endless, flapping wings. Blood is spraying everywhere; the screams are unbearable. This can’t be happening.
People crowd into the few stores and restaurants that are within reach, but seagulls crash through the windows, chasing down their prey. A look down Beach Street reveals a thousand beachgoers sprinting down the street and heading for their rental homes. It looks like a marathon. Only with blood and screaming children. A bird snaps at my head, and I cradle Doug like I’m a running back and he’s a football the defense is trying to strip from me. The gull goes after the person next to me instead, taking a chunk of flesh from the back of his neck. I make it to the other side of the street, to the sidewalk.
I break away from the crowd as everyone heads toward their own street or hotel. There’s no one ahead of me, just a concrete path to Samantha and the safety of four walls and a roof. Fear distracts me from my burning lungs and aching arms. Three more blocks. Come on.
A few seagulls circle in the sky like hawks, but I can tell by the volume of bird shrieks behind me that most of the action is still taking place along the boardwalk.
A car flies past us. I can hear sirens in the distance. Help is coming.
I make it to the house and run up the steps. I push open the door and put Doug down, patting his butt and urging him inside. I then look down the street, back toward the beach, and though the porch obstructs my view of the beach, I can see that the sky is still swarming with birds. I want to leave. Now. Before things get out of hand. Yeah, Tony’s theory has left its mark on me, and I don’t want any part of martial law once people start coughing up blood and breaking out in strange rashes. I shut the door, wondering if the birds will stay by the beach, content to feast on those trampled to death or bleeding. I don’t plan on being here to find out, though. I tell Doug to stop crying, that it’s going to be okay. I ask him to start packing his stuff while I go check on Samantha.
“We’re safe in here,” I tell him, and I hope I’m right. The way the birds crashed through windshields and storefronts though…
I run up the stairs, calling for Sam.
There’s no answer.
I burst into the bedroom, and she’s not there. The bed is empty. I run around, not sure I want her to be on the floor or not, but she’s not. I quickly make my way through all the other rooms and find no trace of her. I pat my pockets for my phone, wondering if she tried calling while all hell was breaking loose on the beach. A text.
ON MY WAY. FEEL TERRIBLE BUT MISS U2.
“No, no, no!” I go into Doug’s room and grab him. “Sorry, buddy. We’ll get your stuff later. We gotta find Mom.”
“Where is she?”
I take the time to kneel before him, mustering all the calmness I can in order to convey a sense of control I clearly don’t have. “I’m not sure. Do you think you can help me look for her?”
He nods, his eyes still swollen. “She at beach?”
I hope not. “I don’t think so.”
I carry him down the stairs and grab the keys. I don’t bother locking the door behind me, and I buckle Doug in the car seat as fast as I can. As I open the driver’s side door to get in, a loud squawk makes me jump. Turning my head, I see a seagull walking across the street, coming toward me, its scrawny legs moving fast. Then it stops, tilts its head, looks around. It walks some more, this time to its right. It stops, looks at me. Walks some more.
I don’t have time for this. I slam the door and turn the key. Backing out of my treasured spot, I maneuver the car and run over the seagull. The Honda bounce
s, and I get a sick pleasure from the jet stream of blood that squirts across the street in my side view. I throw the car in drive and take off toward Beach Avenue, keeping an eye on the sidewalks. “Look for Mommy, okay?” I’m peering over the steering wheel, praying that I see her crouched behind a telephone pole or something.
A bare-chested man with an inner tube around his waist goes sprinting down the sidewalk past us. I turn my head after him, but a sudden bang makes me whip my head around, and I find another man leaning against the hood. Half his face is missing, and his remaining eye is staring at me. At least he has a shirt on.
Doug screams.
I pull past the guy, and I track him with my eyes, watching him wander the street aimlessly through the rearview. “It’s okay, buddy. It’s okay.”
An ambulance goes screaming by on the next street over. The sky above the beach is still covered with a dark cloud of circling birds, like vultures coming from all over to feast on the battlefields of Armageddon.
Beach Avenue is inaccessible. Police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks are scattered amongst crashed vehicles and the injured. It’s chaos, family members searching for family members while the birds continue to swoop down. Firefighters are using fire hoses to provide cover, and it seems to be working somewhat. I turn down a side street, not willing to get stuck in the madness. Another police car shoots by ahead of me. I’m looking left and right for any sign of Samantha while blindly hitting redial on the cell over and over again. It goes to voicemail every time. “Come on, Sam,” I whisper. The shock is beginning to thin as the gravity of the situation sinks in.
Helicopters overhead. Black ones. Military, I think.
As I cross over the next street, I steal a glance across Beach to the boardwalk. The insanity has consumed it for blocks. Then I hear the gunshots. I think they’re coming from the beach, and when I reach the next cross street, I can make out police cars on the beach, officers firing shotguns up into the air at the swarming birds. They’re falling out of the sky in threes and fours. Lifeguards and medics are running beneath the cover fire and dragging the injured into the safety of nearby vehicles. It reminds me of the old 1953 War of the Worlds movie.
The passing houses are back to obstructing my view. I don’t know where to go. I doubt Sam came this way once all the running started. I wonder if I might have passed her in my escape from the beach. The thought sickens me. She can’t be back there. She just can’t.
I make a right onto the next street and travel away from the beach until I get to the next one and make another right, heading back toward the house. A crowd of people runs across the street at the next intersection, and I have to slam on the breaks. They’re looking up into the air behind them. Right behind them.
I lean over the steering wheel and crane my neck, looking up into the sky. Sure enough, the seagulls have abandoned their swirling position over the beach and boardwalk, and now thousands of small shadows are skimming across the street, the roofs, parked cars… The birds flee the guns and fire hoses and seem to be seeking shelter in town. Ignoring the crowd, they disappear, thousands and thousands of them, as if dissolving right into the houses and trees. I roll down the windows, suddenly realizing that I’m sweating. I never turned the air on. I check on Douglas, and I’m relieved that he’s still conscious. It has to be almost a hundred degrees in here.
We sit still at the intersection, windows down, and I watch the last of the avian army vanish. Only they don’t vanish back to whatever island they’d been spawned on. Now they are here among us. Hiding on our roofs, in our trees. Waiting.
The silence is even more disturbing than the obnoxious gull-shrieking that was, just moments ago, echoing throughout the neighborhood. The sirens are still sounding, and I can hear the muffled screams and shouts coming from the beach some three or four blocks away, but everything else seems still. I see faces appearing behind curtains in the windows across from us.
I press on the gas and move the car into the intersection, anxious to find my wife. Now that the birds have left the boardwalk, I’ll take Doug with me to Beach Avenue. I don’t want to take him, don’t want him to see the carnage, but I have little choice.
Making a right, I get as close to the boardwalk as I can before leaving the Pilot in the middle of the street. There are no parking spots, and I’m not about to try finding one. All I want to do is get my son the hell out of New Jersey, but I can’t leave without Samantha.
I get out of the car, get Doug out of the car seat, and move against the crowd that is just now starting to follow the seagulls into town. They look dazed, scared, as if unable to understand what had happened. I’ve seen the look before. On the news, after a mass shooting or a bombing, the people staring into space, unable to comprehend…
I step onto Beach and maneuver around an ambulance, trying to avoid a severed leg lying nearby. I press Doug’s face into my shoulder, hoping he doesn’t see it. What kind of seagulls are these?
My eyes frantically search the scene, passing from one face to the next. The crowd is large, the entire beach crammed into the street, looking for loved ones, trying to find out where to go, how to help, what to do… The authorities don’t seem to know themselves. But as I pass close to one, I hear something over a radio that stops my heart. I can’t make out the whole thing, but I pick out a few words, and it’s all I need. “Quarantine,” “symptoms,” “nobody leaves,” and “army.”
This can’t be happening.
Crossing through the madness, I take the steps up to the boardwalk and stand for a moment, looking up and down the street. If Samantha is out there somewhere, it could take me hours to find her. I turn my attention back to the beach. It’s mostly empty in both directions. There are officers poking dead birds with their shotguns, there are sheets being pulled over bloody corpses, and there are people crying.
The helicopters are just hovering out over the water, observing.
I recognize one of the cops from yesterday and jog over to him. He looks up from the dead bird at his feet. There’s a stream of blood flowing from his left temple, where a two-inch gash glistens in the sun.
“Look at that,” he mumbles, pointing with the shotgun. There are spent shells all over the beach.
I follow his gaze to the dead bird. Half its chest is missing, but inside the gore is something…metallic. I squint down at it. “I don’t understand.”
“You and me both.” He looks up at the helicopters. “I think you should get out of here.”
I’m touched that this officer has my wellbeing in mind, but I shake my head. “I have to find my wife.”
He looks down at Douglas, then looks into the street. “They’re going to close this place down.”
“How long?”
“An hour.”
That’s not enough time.
“I can’t leave her.”
He looks sad, like the universe just crapped all over him and there was nothing he could do about it.
“We’re dreaming, right?” I ask, not knowing what else to say.
“Some weird-ass dream if we are.”
Before I leave him to continue my search, I take a closer look at the gull. I don’t know what I’m looking at, but I’m pretty sure there’s no animal in God’s creation that comes with a metal skeleton. “An experiment?” The word slips out of my mouth before I have time to analyze it, probably as a result of all those sci-fi movies.
“I don’t know.” He looks up to the helicopters. “But I think they do.”
My mind reels. What does that mean? But the possibilities seem endless.
He looks me in the eye. “Ten minutes, and then you should leave.” His eyes drift down to Douglas, who has his arms wrapped around my leg. “For him.”
I nod, though my heart is singing a different song.
My phone rings.
“Good luck,” and the officer walks away, heading to a group of people waving for his attention.
The phone displays Samantha’s face, and I’m overwhelmed
with relief. “Honey…”
“Hello?” an unfamiliar voice answers.
“Who is this?”
“Mary. Who’s this?”
“Where did you get that phone?”
“I found it on the boardwalk.”
“When?”
“Right after the birds…”
“Where are you now?” The relief I felt when seeing Sam’s face has now been replaced by a sense of dread.
“I’m in my house.”
“Where exactly did you find it?”
“Between Congress and Perry. I looked around for…you know, whoever dropped it, but… It was ringing. That’s why I noticed it. I couldn’t answer it in time, though.”
I’m silent, my free hand massaging my forehead.
“Is it your—”
“My wife.”
Now she’s silent.
“Where are you?” I ask.
“My house is on Washington, near Perry.”
“I’ll be right there.” I hang up, take Doug’s hand. “A lady found Mommy’s phone. We’re goin’ to go get it, okay?”
“Why Mommy lose her phone?” he asks, worried.
I’m worried, too. I’m not sure why I need her phone, but I can’t just leave it. Washington and Perry isn’t that far.
I sweep Doug back into my sore arms and tell him to hold on. He throws his arms around my neck and squeezes tight. “I want you to play a game with me.”
“What game?”
“I want you to close your eyes and try really hard to imagine where Mommy’s hiding. Don’t open your eyes until I say, or the game won’t work, okay?”
He nods and squeezes his tiny eyes closed.
Unable to see the gore the birds left behind, I move as quickly as I can, approaching one body after another, stopping only to take a quick peek into rescue vehicles. If she dropped her phone on the boardwalk and was crushed, this is where I would find her body. But I don’t see her, alive or dead.
The crowd of people still lingering on the boardwalk and in the street seems indecisive about the next move, hesitant to disperse, not wanting to head back to where the seagulls fled, but not wanting to stay out in the open in case they came back. But if the cop was right about the military being on its way, then the seagulls might be the least of their problems now.
“How’s it going?” I ask Doug. “You have any ideas yet?”
“I think she in tree.”
“In a tree?”
“Yup.”
“There’s a lot of trees. Which one?”
“I think harder.”
“Let me know.”
“I will.”
I head back to the car, never taking my eyes off the confused faces around me.
I put Doug in the car seat again and take one more look at the helicopters still hovering over the beach. It’s a slow, nerve-searing drive to Samantha’s phone, crowds, ambulances, police cars, fire trucks, and others like me just trying to get through it all.
10
The woman answers the phone when I call and tells me she’s standing on the porch steps. I see her. Her eyes are up in the clouds, as if the birds are hiding behind them and are about to break cover for another attack. I honk to get her attention. She waves.
“Is that lady with Momma’s phone?” Doug’s troubled voice comes from the back seat.
“Yeah.” It’s hard keeping it together for Doug, but I’m glad he’s here. He’s keeping me sane.
I stop in the middle of the street, not bothering to pull over, and she runs over to the Pilot. I roll down the window.
“I really hope you find her,” she says while reaching into the car and handing me the phone. She’s older, maybe in her early sixties, and her skin is leathery from a lifetime of sun. But despite the fear she’s feeling, she still manages to emit warmth that, on any other day, might have invited a troubled soul such as mine in for tea and sympathy. There’s no time for that now.
“I didn’t find her on the boardwalk,” I tell her.
“That’s good. Means she got away.”
I hope so. “I hear the military’s coming.”
Her eyes reveal nothing.
“It might get a little intense once they get here.” I briefly relate Tony’s theory of the birds carrying the next epidemic.
She shakes her head, sending her sun-bleached hair waving. “This is my home. I’m not leaving it. Besides, this is Cape May; they can’t just drop a bomb on us.”
She’s seen the same movie I have. “I don’t know,” I say. “They can be pretty creative when they want to be.” She doesn’t respond to that, so I just nod. “Thanks for picking up.”
“You don’t have a picture, do you?”
I know she’s just trying to sound helpful, but I oblige. Perhaps I should’ve showed it to the cop, too. “Yeah.” I pull out my wallet and fish out our wedding photo. It’s an older picture, but Sam hasn’t changed much.
Before she sees it, she comments, “Haven’t seen a guy with photos in his wallet in a long time.” Then she takes it and shakes her head. “Sorry.”
I expected nothing less, and I know she did too. “Thanks anyway.” I take it back from her. “If you’re staying, you better get back inside, lock the doors.”
“The calm before the storm?” she asks, and I think I see a shiver run through her. She has a sense of what’s coming whether she wants to face it or not.
“Take care.”
“Good luck.”
She goes back to her house, running with an eye toward the sky. By the time she’s out of view, birds have yet to snatch her away. Good. I wouldn’t want that on my conscience.
As I drive back toward the rental house, countless movies and novels are parading through my mind—stories of an outbreak that the military is forced to contain with lethal force. The nice lady had said they couldn’t bomb Cape May, and maybe she was right. Unless, of course, they can spin it. Which is what politicians excel at. Contain news of the seagull attack and any reported sickness, detonate a nuke to wipe out any trace of the epidemic before it spreads, and then blame some other country we want to invade. Win-win for the guys in Washington. They get a war they always wanted while saving the country from some avian plague. Hell, it’s almost justifiable. But would they do such a thing? Absolutely. If they’re sure they can pull it off, there’s nothing that I won’t put past people with power. No matter what flag is pinned to their jacket…which is why I need to get out of here.
“Where we go now, Daddy?”
“We’re gonna’ stop back at the house and see if Mommy went there.”
“I think she is.”
“I hope you’re right,” I whisper. If she’s not there, I don’t know what else to do. I gotta get Douglas out of here while I can. I’ll come back for Samantha later if I have to.
Cars are beginning to fill the streets now, people either getting wind of the lockdown that’s coming or just wanting to get out of Cape May before the birds return. The madness is coming, and soon the roads will be jammed, the only two roads out of Cape May sure to be closed off in minutes. Actually, as I think about it, I gotta assume the police have already blocked Route 109. Crap. I’m gonna have to think of another way out of here.
My parking spot is still there, but I drive up over the sidewalk and onto the lawn instead. “Hang on, Doug. I’ll be right back.”
“No!” He starts crying. “Don’t go!”
“I’ll be right back.” I’m about to sprint up the stairs to the house, when the door opens, and Samantha steps out.
Relief floods over me, and I can feel the tears welling in my eyes.
“Mommy!” I hear Doug shout from inside the car.
She runs to me, and I notice right away that she’s not well. We embrace, and the tears fall. She’s burning hot against me, sweat running down her face. She’s as pale as a ghost.
“I didn’t get your message,” I tell her.
“I’m just so glad you’re okay,” she cries. “When I s
aw the car gone, I thought…”
“How did you get here? Did you walk?”
She turns her red-rimmed eyes back to the porch, and Tony steps out of the house.
“Tony?” Did I actually call him that out loud?
He looks at me, confused.
Yeah, I said it. “How?”
“I got off the beach before the birds attacked. Recognized your wife comin’ at me on the boardwalk. I grabbed her and took her back here.”
Samantha nodded, wiping her eyes. “I dropped my phone when he grabbed me. He wouldn’t let me go back for it.”
I look at Tony. “Thank you.”
“Who’s Tony?” he asks.
“I thought you told me your name was Tony,” I lie.
“Name’s Randall.”
Randall. Yeah. “Nice to meet you.”
He’s still on the porch, his eyes up on the wires. A lone seagull is perched on the top of a nearby telephone pole, watching us. “Maybe we should get back inside,” he says.
Doug is crying, wanting to be freed from his restraints, and Samantha leaves me to rescue him.
“Wait,” I look at Ton…Randall, and say, “We should get out of here. Military’s coming.”
He swears. “I knew it.”
At that moment, a police car turns onto the street. The officer is talking through a loudspeaker, advising everyone to stay indoors until further instructed. After it passes, another car comes from the opposite direction and pulls over in front of the house across from us. A man and a woman get out.
“We almost made it to the bridge,” he shouts to us. “They have it closed off. They’re telling everyone to go back to their homes and to stay there.”
Samantha has Doug in her arms, kissing him like she hasn’t seen him in a month. “What does that mean?” she asks.
“I hear FEMA’s already set up on the north end.”
“That was fast,” Randall says.
“We got in our car and drove straight to the bridge as soon as the seagulls started attacking. We heard the stories over the last couple days, and we weren’t about to hang around. There was a checkpoint already in place by the time we got there.”
“And they told you to turn around?”
“They said they had orders not to let anyone in or out of Cape May until further notice.”
“They say anything about the birds?” I ask.
“Not a peep.”
More helicopters fly overhead.
“What are you gonna do?” I ask them as they walk back up to the house.
“Guess we’ll hunker down and see what happens. Not worth gettin’ shot tryin’ to run.”
I think of New Orleans in the wake of Katrina, of all the stories. Of Boston after the marathon bombing. I want no part in it. But what choice do I have at this point?
Randall finally comes down the steps, his eyes sweeping the neighborhood. When he gets close to me, he grabs my elbow and whispers. “I think we should go inside.”
I almost make a face and ask, “We?” But he may have saved my wife’s life, so I just bite my tongue and nod. We wave to the couple across the street and go inside. I lock the door.
Samantha puts Doug down on the couch and puts on a video for him to watch, reassuring him that everything is okay. Then she joins me and Randall in the kitchen. I almost gasp when I see her beneath the kitchen lights. She looks awful, and I know that something is wrong.
“How do you feel?” I ask.
Randall looks away.
She shakes her head, and I can tell she’s trying not to cry. She’s scared, and I feel completely helpless. I hold her tight.
“What’s happening to me?” she whispers.
I stroke her sweaty hair. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to get you help.” She doesn’t argue that, but I know what she’s thinking…what we’re all thinking.
After a few more minutes of talking in circles, we go into another room and turn on the television. There’s nothing on the news. Every once in a while we peer through the blinds. The streets are empty. Military vehicles have arrived, and they’re patrolling the neighborhoods. Martial law on vacation. Wonderful.
We see seagulls congregating on the sidewalks, having free reign of the streets. Twice, armored military vehicles with a lot of wheels roll slowly past this old house, a soldier behind a large machine gun aimed on the clouds of birds that seem to be stalking them from above. The soldiers aren’t firing, though. At least not yet. I hope it’s because they’re afraid of collateral damage, of families being struck by wayward bullets.
Hours later, I determine that Randall might be an okay guy, and I feel a little bad about that first impression. Whatever he is, he is no mobster. A rich porn producer? Maybe, but I’m probably better off not knowing, so I don’t ask. What I do ask is why he’s hanging around here.
“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”
“You don’t want me here?”
“You probably saved my wife’s life; you can stay as long as you want. But—”
He waves a meaty hand at me, dismissing my question. “Don’t worry about it.”
Okay, I won’t. “I just don’t want you to feel obliged.” I almost mention the beauties he had on him the first time we met but decide to hold my tongue. He hasn’t offered an explanation, and I don’t need one. If he’s an Italian Hugh Heffner, good for him. As long as he doesn’t get any ideas about having my wife join his harem. Whether he saved her or not. Yuck.
The rest of the day goes by without even a hint of our predicament gracing the television. Not on the local news, CNN, the Weather Channel, Animal Planet, ScyFi, no emergency broadcasting, no nothing. It’s almost enough to convince us that it didn’t really happen, proof of the power the media wields. Say something long and loud enough and it becomes truth; don’t say anything at all and it never happened. Goodnight and good luck.
The seagulls make their seagull noises into the night, and if I close my eyes, I swear they sound like excited chimps bouncing around in the jungle. Every hour or so, a loud speaker tells us to stay indoors for our own safety. Douglas seems to think it’s fun, some kind of adventure. He feels safe indoors, away from the birds, and just spends the rest of the day on his Leap Pad, using it to take pictures of the soldiers and cops on the street. Sometimes authority figures don’t like that, whether constitutional or not, and it’s led to unpleasantries in the past. Especially when what is being filmed exposes some manner of corruption, which this may or may not be. Regardless, I don’t want to give them a reason to kick down our door, so I convince Doug to continue his documentation incognito from behind the curtains. That only makes it more exciting for him. I don’t know that he’s ever seen a spy movie, but he seems to be a natural at playing the part. Great, maybe I’m raising a spy. My wife will love that. He could be one of those nameless stars on the memorial wall at Langley. He passes out around 8. Samantha, who seems to be getting worse, falls asleep an hour later.
Unable to follow suit, Randall and I play cards at the kitchen table until midnight, bouncing theories back and forth—theories I’m glad the rest of my family can’t hear. We have no idea what we’ll find when the morning sun hits the streets. We talk about the birds, where they might’ve come from, and Randall thinks that maybe they were part of some military experiment. When I frown at this, he proceeds to justify the thought by educating me on other, documented military experiments. Such as strapping bats with napalm explosives and dropping cases of them over Japan from B-29s in the ’40s. Pigeon-guided bombs was another experiment that actually got some funding, and there was the infamous “gay bomb” that the Pentagon looked into for some seven years, as well as weapons that would make bugs and rodents attack the enemy. I must admit that by the end of the lesson, attributing the seagull phenomena to some mad scientist (he lets me know that Operation Paperclip brought Nazi scientists into the employ of the US government after the war, so the term is actually not an exaggeration) sitting in the “creative ways to kil
l the enemy” room in the Pentagon does not seem completely out of the picture. The question he then proposes is: were the birds released accidentally or intentionally? How he knows all this stuff, I don’t care to find out at the moment. There’s no time for personal bonding, no stories of the past, no disclosing favorite colors. He doesn’t ask about me, and I don’t ask about him. We play cards and talk conspiracy and plague. We have some beers and ultimately surrender to fate by nodding off around 1 a.m.
11
I sit up with a start, realizing it’s morning and that I’m still alive. A quick look around reveals the room to be empty. Randall has abandoned his position on the couch. He barely fit on that couch, so it doesn’t surprise me to see him gone from it. I get to my feet and locate a clock. It’s close to 8, and I suddenly notice the smell of coffee. Going into the next room, I find Samantha lying on another couch, still asleep, her breathing shallow.
“Hey,” I whisper, kneeling beside her. I place my hand against her forehead. Still hot.
Her eyes open, focus. Once realization sets in, she manages to smile. “Where’s Doug?”
“I just woke up.”
“Go check.”
“Okay. I’ll be back.”
I go up the steps and into his room. This is where I left him last night, but he’s not here now. Before the chord of panic can be strummed, however, the bathroom door across the hall swings open, and my boy steps out.
“Daddy!” He runs to me and gives me a huge hug. I pick him up, carry him downstairs.
“You just wake up?”
He nods, rubbing his eyes.
I set him down at the bottom of the stairs, and he takes off running to Samantha. I walk to the front door, open it, and find Randall out on the porch, leaning over the railing with a cup of coffee in his hands. He’s looking up at the sky, doesn’t hear me coming.
“No bomb yet?” I ask.
He flinches, startled, and looks back at me. “No. Not yet.”
“How long have you been up?”
“Few hours.”
His eyes seem to take in every detail the morning has to offer him. He’s still wearing one of my shirts, and I’m afraid he’s stretched it out for good. No stitches can survive such strain for so long. I follow his gaze. There isn’t much too see. The streets are still empty, and I notice a checkpoint down the street toward the beach.
“Any more instructions?”
“Not yet.” He takes a sip of coffee and nods to our left. “See that?”
I try to locate his meaning, and it takes me a few seconds before my eyes catch it. “What is it?”
“Good news, I hope.”
“Is it a net?”
“Yeah. They set them up all over town last night.”
“That’s good news?”
He looks at me. “Means they haven’t resorted to bombs yet, so probably wasn’t the initial plan after all.”
“Oh, that is a relief.” There isn’t a single person that I can see anywhere, and I begin to get the sense that we’re all alone. “Did we miss an evacuation?”
“Still not allowed to leave yet.” He points down the street, at a police van that’s turning our way. “Come on, let’s get back in.”
We go back inside and close the door. A few seconds later, the van goes by. It offers no message.
Randall says, “Couple local cops was walking by earlier. Talked to me for a couple minutes. Think they’re as freaked as we are.”
“What did they say?”
“Said the military set up these bird nets all over the island. They don’t want the birds gettin’ away. They brought hawks to hunt the seagulls, and supersonic sound machines to drive ’em to sharpshooters. They’ve been shootin’ ’em out of the sky.”
“What about the sickness?” I wonder for the first time why Randall has decided to stay with us despite Samantha’s condition. If I were him, I think I’d want to be as far away from any sign of sickness as possible.
“Didn’t know, but they said the CDC was here givin’ everyone shots.”
“For what?”
“Wasn’t told.”
I’m not sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, the last thing I wanted to hear was that shots were required, because it meant that our disease theory was right. But on the other hand, if the solution to the sickness was a simple shot, then perhaps it wasn’t all that bad. “Who’s everyone?”
“FEMA’s givin’ vaccines to everyone who’s been bit or scratched by a gull. They’re making the announcement one street at a time.”
“It’s not airborne?”
“I don’t know what it is, but if it was an airborne contagion, I think we woulda woken up to a different scene.”
Yeah, HAZMAT suits and barbed wire. “They don’t know what it is?”
“The locals?” He shakes his head and sips more coffee.
“And then what?” I ask.
“Then we leave.”
“That simple?”
He shrugs. “Guess we’ll find out.”
I leave Randall with his thoughts, and go back in to join my family.