The Night Parade

  “No,” Ellie said flatly.

  “Not just yet,” David softened, grinning at the boy.

  “C’mon,” Turk said.

  David and Ellie followed Turk down the hall. The smell of the food grew more substantial, causing David’s stomach to clench painfully. It was a simple country kitchen with curtains over a wall of windows, a tidy kitchen table already set with plates and glasses, and wallpaper with little roosters on it. A woman stood before the stove, slim and pretty, with a plain face that needed no makeup. She looked up from a frying pan, a somewhat bemused expression on her face at the sight of David and Ellie. Her mouth opened, but she said nothing.

  Turk made the introductions. “This is Dave. And that’s his daughter, Eleanor. Found them wandering along Bixby like they just fell from the sky or something.” He leaned over the stove, inhaled, grinned. “Smells delicious.” He pecked his wife’s cheek. To David, he said, “This is my wife, Pauline.”

  “Hiya,” she said. The surprised look had yet to leave her face.

  “Hello,” David said.

  “Well, it’s a good thing I made extra,” she said. Then she swatted Turk on the rear end. “Show these nice folks where the washroom is, then set a couple more plates.”

  “Sammy,” Turk said, opening the fridge and peering inside. “Go on, now.”

  “I’ll show you,” Sam said, slipping around the table and back out into the hall. David and Ellie followed him to a small bathroom. “Flush if you pee,” Sam instructed, then left them to it.

  David closed the bathroom door.

  “Why did you have a gun?” Ellie said.

  “For protection.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  He sighed and rubbed at his forehead. “Hey. I’m the parent, remember?”

  “I don’t like it here. In this house.”

  “It’ll be okay.”

  “It’s the same feeling I had last night, when we first got here. It doesn’t feel right.”

  “Let’s just be polite, and then we can go after breakfast.” He turned on the tap. “Wash up.”

  She went to the sink while he went to the toilet. He hadn’t urinated since last night, and his bladder ached. “You okay stepping out in the hall while I go to the bathroom?”

  “Don’t want to,” she said, shutting off the water.

  “Well, turn your head. Look at the wall or something.”

  She turned her back to him as he unzipped his jeans. David stared up at the ceiling until he began to urinate. Midway through the process, Ellie said, “Wow. How long are you gonna pee?”

  David tried to stifle a laugh, which only caused a bubble of snot to burst from his right nostril. “Keep quiet, will you?” he said, snatching a swath of toilet paper and blowing his nose.

  Before they went back out in the hall, David said, “Just for the record, our last name is Smith. Okay?”

  “That sounds phony-baloney.”

  “Yeah? Then what name should we use?”

  “Monroe,” she said. It was the last name of her best friend from school, David knew.

  “Yeah, okay. Monroe. Just don’t volunteer it. You get me?”

  “Sure. Don’t forget to wash your hands. You peed.”

  “Christ.” He washed his hands, then opened the bathroom door.

  Sam was standing there, waiting for them.

  “Oh,” David said. “Hello.”

  “Food’s up,” Sam said, and led them back to the kitchen.

  23

  David relaxed throughout the meal, which was delicious, and by the time his plate was clean, he was completely at ease with the Powells. Pauline was a wonderful cook, and she was more than happy to give both David and Ellie second helpings of everything. The pancakes were thick and fluffy, and there was a richness to the cooked meat that was both unusual and superb. David assumed he was just ravenous. By the third time David expressed how delicious the meal was, Pauline waved a hand at him and said, “Well, you’re too kind, but it’s darn hard to screw up premade pancake batter.”

  During the meal, and for the sake of the children, they kept the conversation light. The tone shifted only once, when a resounded trill of a distant Klaxon interrupted the meal. It sounded disconcertingly like an air-raid siren.

  Turk sensed their discomfort. “That’s the firehouse down on Cotton Road,” he said. “There’s some folks holed up there.”

  “People like you?” Ellie said.

  “Unfortunately, little darling, that’s not the case.” He turned his attention to David. “Like I said before, there’s some folks around here you gotta be careful of. The people down at the firehouse, well, they’re sort of like a cult, I guess you’d say.”

  “Are they Worlders?” David said, referring to the burgeoning sect of people who believed that Wanderer’s Folly was nature’s way of cleaning the slate, a biological Noah’s Ark. They were opposed to any attempt to come up with a cure for the illness. David had read about them in the newspaper and a bit online. Their numbers were growing, their sects cropping up all throughout the United States and overseas.

  “I don’t think they’re as crazy as all that, although they’re probably pretty close,” Turk said. “There were some rumors before the evac that some guy was healing the sick. Real sorcerer-type shit. He wound up gathering up himself a small congregation, too.”

  “False prophet,” said Pauline.

  Turk nodded. “They waited out the evac, same as we did, and now they’re holed up in the firehouse. Got weapons, too, I’ve heard. They sound their alarm once a day to let people know they’re still there.”

  “Did they heal someone who had the Folly?” Ellie asked.

  “They ain’t healed no one, sweetheart,” Turk said. “Was just stories. They want you to believe in their witchcraft.”

  “Lord knows what they do to any poor soul who hears that siren and happens to follow it to them,” Pauline said. She genuflected.

  “What does he look like?” Ellie asked. “The false prophet.”

  Turk stared at her for a moment, then shook his head. “Ain’t never seen him. Only hear his siren. That banshee call.”

  “Because I saw someone this morning,” Ellie said. “Just before you found us on the street. I saw someone and I thought maybe he wanted us to follow him.”

  David placed a hand on Ellie’s shoulder.

  “Then you’re lucky I found you both when I did,” Turk said.

  A moment later, the siren ceased. The silence that followed seemed preternatural.

  Once Sam had finished his meal, he invited Ellie to go play in the yard. David nodded his approval and Ellie got up from her chair, albeit reluctantly. David was comfortable enough around this family to permit it, not to mention he had a perfect view of the backyard from the kitchen windows. He told her to stay within sight and she nodded obediently. She looked miserable. A moment later, Sam was sprinting across the back lawn while Ellie, almost cautiously, walked behind him.

  “Why don’t I clean up while you boys finish your coffee on the porch,” Pauline suggested as she stood and gathered some plates.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Turk said. He practically rocketed out of his seat. Slapping David on the forearm, he said, “You smoke?”

  “Sure.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  It was more a mudroom than a porch, but it caught a good breeze and the day was warming up all around them, so sitting out there turned out to be pleasant enough. Turk offered him an unfiltered Camel, and they smoked and drank their coffee while, in the yard, Sam executed cartwheels as Ellie watched him with an expression of utter perplexity.

  “So where you from exactly?” Turk asked him.

  David took too much time thinking of an answer. By the time he spit out, “Outside D.C.,” Turk was already smiling wryly to himself and shaking his head.

  “Listen,” Turk said, leaning closer to David over the armrest of his chair. “The world’s a changed place, amigo. What’s happened in the past
is in the past, you dig? I’ll only ask you one question and one question only.” He nodded toward the yard. “That really your little girl out there?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right. Then everything else is cake, my friend.”

  “What happened here?” David asked.

  “Ain’t it obvious? The Folly come through.”

  “Yeah, but why did Goodwin get hit so hard? Things weren’t half this bad back home. There are still businesses open on the interstate and other cities seem like they’re doing just fine. Why’d you guys get it so badly?”

  “God’s will,” Turk said. “What else could it be? We’ve stopped thinking on the whys of it some time ago. Ain’t no one we can blame. We just gotta make do.” He pointed due east. “Half the whole neighborhood went in just three days—boom, boom, boom. Jus’ like that. People got sick, started dying right in the streets. Most of ’em acting crazy when they went. That’s when people started picking up and leaving, but then the National Guard moved in and quarantined the place. Couldn’t get out and they weren’t lettin’ no one in.”

  “I saw places like that on the news.”

  “Yeah, well, what they don’t tell you is them guardsmen, they was all too afraid to come in here and lay down the law. They just stood on the other side of that fence and made sure no one walked out. Heck, they was just a bunch of scared kids themselves. But in here, in the thick of it, it was every man for his self. Martial law turned anarchy. After a time, they forced the evac and sent whoever was left to . . . well, to hospitals, supposedly, but I don’t believe that for a second.”

  “No?”

  “Where you gonna put up a whole town? Nearest hospital is T.J. Samson over in Glasgow, and they ain’t got the staff or the room for ever’body.”

  “So, what do you think happened to them?”

  Turk sucked on his cigarette, then blew rings into the air. “You don’t wanna know what I think, Dave.”

  “Sure I do.”

  He rubbed a hand across his shaved scalp. “Rounded up and sent to some test facility someplace, is my best guess. The evacuees were still healthy, or so they seemed, so I’m guessing the government’s prob’ly interested in why they’re still healthy. So now they’re test subjects. Guinea pigs. Sounds paranoid, but it’s what I believe.”

  “You’re not the only one. I’ve read some articles about that recently.” But he wasn’t thinking about newspaper articles. He was thinking about Kathy.

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t going to let that happen to my family.”

  “They didn’t force you to leave?”

  Again, Turk gave him that strange sidelong glance, which David interpreted as a suggestion not to delve too deeply into what Turk and his family had had to do to survive.

  “You mentioned someone named Solomon,” David said, redirecting the conversation. “How many other people stayed behind?”

  “We’ve got three more staying with us,” Turk said. “Four, if you include Solomon. Then there’re those nutters down at the firehouse, like I mentioned earlier. Lord knows how many they’ve got in their ranks now. There’re more out there besides them, too, but like I said, you’d best want to steer clear of ’em.” Turk thumped an index finger against his cranium. “Some ain’t right in the head. You dig?”

  “What’s your plan?”

  Turk frowned. Behind the veil of cigarette smoke, he suddenly looked much older than he had when they’d first met out on the street. “Plan? What do you mean?”

  “You can’t stay here forever,” David said.

  “Why not?”

  “Well—”

  “We get everything we need from town. Don’t cost nothin’ ’cause there ain’t nobody there to charge us. Anything else we might need, we get in a car and drive there. The rest of the world’s still ticking. Mostly, anyways. Said so yourself.”

  “What about your son? What about school?”

  “Pauline schools him.”

  “But those other people out there in town—the people at the firehouse and all the others. Heck, you stuck a gun in my face because you didn’t know who I was. This environment can’t be good for Sam in the long run.”

  Turk laughed. “The long run? Just how much time you think this world has got, boy?”

  David just stared at him. It was by no means a unique notion, but it troubled him to hear Turk espouse it in such a flippant manner. Worse still was the man’s apparent resignation to it—that they were all going to die in the end, and that no one would be spared this illness, so why fight it? They just sat there eating their hearty breakfasts and looted deserted stores and waited for the end.

  “You can’t think like that,” David said. “We’re still healthy. Our kids are still healthy. Maybe there’s hope.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Could be many of us will be spared, and we’ll just have to pick up the pieces once this thing . . . well, once it blows over, I guess. But, see, there comes a point when you got to take a look around and say, hey, what the heck am I livin’ for? The world’s gone to shit, most of my loved ones are dead, and things are just gonna get worse and worse. It’s like them zombie apocalypse movies. You know the ones I’m talking about? Folks in those movies are always struggling to stay alive, to get from one place to the next place, to do whatever they got to do . . . but for what? You really want to live like that? For-fucking-ever? No, thanks.”

  Jesus, David thought. Yet what troubled him most was what Kathy had said to him on the last night in their home together, a thing that echoed almost verbatim Turk’s sentiments . . .

  “I’ve become quite the religious man, Dave,” Turk said. He produced two more cigarettes and handed one to David. “Something like this, a man can’t help but fall back on his faith. And you know what I figure? I figure this is the rapture. This is our penance. This is the final plague. We’re talking real-life book of Revelation shit, my friend.”

  “You sound like a Worlder now,” David said.

  “No.” Turk held up a finger. His expression was stern. “Those peckerheads, they’re like Wiccans. They want to see Mother Nature drag things back to the Stone Age. That ain’t got nothing to do with Jesus Christ.” Turk cleared his throat. “ ‘And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.’ Now, Dave, I don’t know about you, but it’s my opinion that mankind as a whole ain’t been faithful and true for some time now. And if we ain’t in the middle of a war, then I don’t know my head from my ass.”

  As a general rule, David reserved his own opinion about people who quoted the Good Book, but for some reason it seemed fitting coming from Turk. Or perhaps it was the current state of things.

  “Mall shootings, school shootings, passenger jets blown out of the sky or slammin’ into skyscrapers, those animals in the Middle East choppin’ off heads and lobbing bombs at each other since the dawn of time—what we’re doing now is paying the piper,” Turk said. “Bill’s come due. It’s come down to the individual to confront his or her own sins, and to either make amends and appeal to God, or to go down with the rest of the lot in a crowd of screaming lunatics.” With that, Turk bolted up from his chair and shouted out across the yard at his son, who was halfway up the tenuous branches of a magnolia tree. “Get down, you idiot! You’ll break a leg and then where’ll you be? I ain’t fixin’ to mend no broken bones, boy!”

  The boy dropped down from the tree, slapping bits of bark away from his palms. Ellie stood beside him, still watching him as though he were something curious swimming around inside an aquarium.

  Turk turned to him, grinning. “So in the meantime, I got this nice house, a pretty wife, a happy little yard where my kid can play, damn fool that he is. Nothing so bad about that, in my opinion.” The cigarette jounced between his lips.

  “Okay,” David said. “I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  He shrugged. “Even if I didn’t, it’s not my place. You’ve g
ot a lovely family.”

  Turk sucked on his cigarette so hard that it looked like the insides of his cheeks touched. Then he tossed the ember into a ceramic flowerpot that had some soil and bottle caps in it. “You want to know why else I can’t leave?” he said, his voice lower now.

  “I don’t know,” David said. “Do I?”

  “You gonna be cool?” Turk asked. “If you’re cool, I’ll show you.”

  “Sure. I’m cool.”

  “Come with me, you’re so cool,” Turk said, and went back into the house.

  David stood, tossed his own cigarette into the flowerpot, then shouted to Ellie that he would be right back. She regarded him the way a puppy might, with a cocked head and no expression. He went inside and followed Turk through the house and up a flight of creaky stairs. The upstairs hallway was outfitted in the same rooster-patterned wallpaper as the kitchen. Doors lined the hall, each of them closed. Hanging in the center of each door was a crucifix. The sight of them all lined up like that gave David a chill.

  Turk went to the end of the hall. He dug around in his pocket as they came to the last door, and ultimately produced a ring of keys. David noted that there was a dead bolt attached to the door frame, right above the knob.

  “What’s in there?”

  “He won’t hurt you. Just don’t say nothing or move around a whole lot. Too much stimuli seems to set him off.”

  Turk unlocked the dead bolt, opened the door, and flipped on the light switch.

  David recognized it as a child’s room only because there was a child sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor. It was a boy, perhaps Sam’s age, though it was difficult to tell because the kid had his back to them. The walls were covered in quilts, the mismatched patterns nearly seizure-inducing, and there were smeary brownish-black handprints stamped on some of them. A mattress sat on the floor, soggy and yellowed with stains. Several white balls were scattered about the floor and atop the mattress; it took David a second or two to realize these were tufts of stuffing that had been torn out of stuffed animals, whose gutted carcasses lay strewn about the room. Lastly, he spotted what looked like some dog toys near the head of the bed—a short length of rope; a stuffed animal whose classification in the animal kingdom was no longer evident due to its missing limbs and mangled, threadbare face; a plastic Frisbee stamped with teeth marks; a few rubber balls.