Extinct (2 page)

Sam glanced at Sarah before answering. "Plenty of time to eat later. We’ll both go down,” he explained to both Sarah and Paulie. “And if nobody shows up in an hour, then we’ll shut her down and both come back here for turkey, and you can stay on the couch tonight.”

“I appreciate that," Paulie said, “but I can hole up in the lounge. I’ve done it before.”

“Nonsense," Sarah said. “It’ll be as cold as a cave in there tonight.”

Robby watched the conversation and noted that all the adults seemed resigned the ferry wouldn’t be running back to shore that day. The boat wouldn’t run without a captain, but Robby had never heard of the ferry staying overnight at the island. Sam caught a ride to the mainland
 
before each shift, so he could maintain his residence—the only thing his parents left to him—on the island. Any one of these things happening—the ferry staying overnight, the captain disappearing, the Harbor Master missing—would have been extraordinary. Together, the events of the day seemed almost incomprehensible.

Sam pulled his boots on and Paulie fished his gloves out of his pockets. They exited back through the door to the garage and Robby stood up. He would have to shovel under the garage door as soon as they left. Otherwise the snow tracked in by the Jeep would stop the door from shutting all the way.

“Don’t forget your hat,” his mom said.

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The shoveling took forever. First, the snow drifted into the garage as fast as Robby could shovel it out. Then, Robby stayed outside and started shoveling down the driveway. It wouldn’t really help. His dad would use the snowblower in the morning and the extra shoveling wouldn’t give him much of an advantage, but it kept Robby out of the house and away from his mom, who would be trying to hum away all her worries. Robby could picture her in there, standing at the stove, nervously mashing potatoes, and humming a tuneless song.

His dad would be back in an hour. Robby wondered if he could stay outside that long. He had his good jacket on, but he wasn’t dressed for the wind. A black shape up the street caught his eye. The falling snow made it hard to see past the end of the driveway, but that big black mass hadn’t been there before, he was sure of that. Robby kept shoveling, but kept his eyes trained on the shape. When he flicked the shovel to throw the snow, his hood pulled to the right, blocking his vision. When his hood came back to center, the shape moved closer.

Robby backed towards the garage door. He had closed the big door, so more snow wouldn’t drift into the garage. The path to the back porch sat under a foot of powder. The black shape shifted, right before his eyes. It moved to the end of the driveway. It stood tall in front and trailed off towards the back, like a centaur. Robby backed onto the path to the back porch, slogging through the drift. The black shape—the centaur-thing—approached faster, closing the gap to Robby.
 

Robby dropped the shovel he had been dragging. He turned to run for the door. His feet couldn’t keep up with his momentum and he pitched forward into a drift. He flailed on hands and knees in the snow. When he stole a glance over his shoulder, the centaur-thing reached all the way to the shoveled part of the driveway. Robby flipped over on his butt, so at least he would be able to defend himself when the beast came for him.

Just before his eyes made sense of the shape before him, Robby’s brain put together the clues. His centaur-thing had to be Ms. Norton, trailing her two sons—Brandon and Jim. On that deduction, Robby pushed himself to his knees and got back to his feet. He picked up the shovel just as Ms. Norton approached.

“You’ll move a lot more snow with the shovel than with your hands, Robby,” she said.

“Yes, Ms. Norton,” Robby said.

She turned to her youngest son and said, “Jim, you help Robby clear this walk and then you both get inside.” She held a big white bakery box from the island’s grocer out in front of her, the cardboard nearly soaked through from the snow.
 

Ms. Norton waited for Robby to step off to the side and then she led Brandon towards the house. When Brandon passed Robby, he pushed Robby in the chest, sending him backwards into the snow. Jim grabbed the end of the shovel and hauled Robby back to his feet.

“My brother’s a dick," Jim said.

“Yeah,” Robby said.

Jim took the shovel and started clearing the path out to the driveway while Robby brushed himself off.

“So you guys aren’t taking the ferry?” Robby asked.

“No," Jim said. The rest of his response was carried away by a gust of wind. He repeated himself, “Early’s not there.”

“Master Johnson?” Robby asked. Technically, Early was a Master too but everyone just called him Early.

“He’s gone too," Jim said. “Not enough people to crew the ferry. Your dad said he’s coming home presently.”

The boys finished their shoveling and then headed back inside.

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The boys pushed the coffee table out of the way and sat on the floor in the front room. They had a deck of cards and three stacks of Monopoly money. The game was Texas Hold ’Em.

In the kitchen, the adults crowded around the little kitchen table. As soon as Robby’s dad and Paulie came back, they shooed the kids away so they could talk. Even Ms. Norton, Haddie, kept her voice down as they talked. You could usually hear her three floors away. Unable to hear the conversation, Robby focused on the card game.

Robby gave away a couple of small pots to Brandon’s aggressive play. He wanted to see how Brandon would bet when he had a good hand.
 

Jim showed no backbone; he could be chased out of almost any hand with one good raise, and his face instantly revealed the strength of his cards.

 
Jim dealt the next hand and Robby saw what he wanted. Brandon came in with the minimum raise. Robby called him. He gave up a quarter of his money to see Brandon’s cards, but it was worth it. Now he knew what Brandon would do with a really good hand. On the next hand, Jim came away the winner. Robby frowned. It should have been his pot, but Jim misread the cards. Jim played as if he held a pair of jacks, but he unknowingly had a straight. That beat Robby’s three kings.

He would have to adjust his approach to compensate for Jim’s mistakes.

“This is stupid," Brandon said. “Let’s watch TV.”

“Cable’s out,” Robby said. “All you can get is channels Two and Five.”

“You don’t have satellite?” asked Brandon. He tossed the deck of cards into Jim’s pile of money.

“With your power out, neither do you,” Robby said.

“If my dad were home, he’d start up the generator, and then we would," Brandon said.

“Isn’t the generator still broke?” asked Jim.

“Shut up," Brandon said. He turned back to Robby and said, “If your dad was smart enough, he could start up the ferry and take us back to the mainland. Then we wouldn’t even be stuck here. I’m turning on the TV.”

Robby thought about stopping Brandon. His parents didn’t like him to watch TV. They all tried to keep their viewing to a minimum; they usually read books or magazines. But stopping Brandon would be tough. The boy stood several inches taller than Robby and had a mean temper. Perhaps Robby and Jim could stop him together, but it would take a while to convince Jim to oppose his brother. From Robby’s experiences in school, he always assumed family would stick together. Robby got lucky—his father came in before Brandon found the remote control.

Sam stepped over the coffee table and pressed the power button on the side of the TV.

“We’re gonna fire up the boob tube and see what’s shaking,” he said.

Paulie, Sarah, and Haddie Norton followed him into the room. They all stood in the center of the front room, looking at the television. The boys gravitated to the couch to get out of the way. Sam punched another button on the TV to switch it over to the antenna and then tried to navigate down to channel Two.

“I got it, Dad," Robby said. He hit the button on the remote control to tune in the station.

A commercial for toilet paper filled the screen.

“There’s no crawl or anything about the storm," Paulie said. “Usually they have text across the bottom of the picture when there’s an emergency or a storm warning or whatever.”

“Try channel Five, Robby," Sam said.

Robby hit the button for channel Five. They found a rerun of a daytime talk show.

“Nothing there either," Paulie said.

“Well, maybe this storm’s not a big deal for the rest of the state," Sam said. “Wouldn’t be the first time our island problems didn’t make the local news. You boys keep your eyes glued to that TV and let us know if something happens.”

“I’ll stay here with the boys," Haddie said. She sat next to her son Jim on the couch.
 

Robby jumped up and caught his dad before he could go back to the kitchen.

“Hey, Dad,” Robby said, “I think those stations are fed down from the network via satellite.”

“Yeah?” asked Sam. “What are you trying to say?”

“Who knows for sure,” Robby said, “but they might not even have anyone there. Maybe we’re just seeing the network feed because everyone disappeared, like Early or Master Johnson.”

“Do you have any reason for that speculation?” asked Sam.

“No,” Robby said. “But I was just thinking—if we assume this is a local problem, we might decide to wait it out. If we assume it’s a larger disaster, the worst-case scenario, then that might suggest another course of action.”

“Sometimes you think too much, son," Sam said. He put his hand on Robby’s shoulder. “And you talk like a textbook. Sometimes we just get a freak storm on Thanksgiving and the phones go out. But if you get any more information, you let me know.”

“Okay,” Robby said. He smiled and tried to imitate his dad’s easy way of letting go. But he couldn’t let go, and as he sat down in the big brown chair his mind kept spinning. His dad was right—he had no solid evidence. Robby liked to be cautious; he liked to prepare for the worst case. With no way to get information from the outside world, how could he set his mind at ease? Robby slipped from his chair and headed for the steps. In his room, he turned down the volume on his clock radio before turning it on. Static came from the speaker. Robby wasn’t surprised—he never used the radio. Who knew when it had been last tuned in to an actual station? He rolled the dial all the way down and then slowly scanned through the frequencies. He didn’t hear anything except the constant fuzzy white noise.
 

Robby stopped next at the hall closet. His mom kept a portable radio there, next to the sewing machine. He dragged it out and took it to the bathroom to plug it in. He found the same result on that radio—nothing but static. The radio went back into the closet. Robby flushed the toilet, so nobody would ask where he had been, and walked back downstairs. He had just taken his seat again when his mom entered.

“All right, everyone, let’s eat before it turns to mush. We don’t have enough room at the table, so you kids can take your plates to the coffee table," Sarah said.

Aside from a few mumbled compliments to the chef, the procession remained silent as each person made their plate. The turkey turned out great—just a tiny bit dry. They had plenty of food; Sarah cooked for maximum leftovers.
 

Sam waited for everyone else before fixing his plate. He had the old camping lantern at the head of the table. Sam wrapped the old lantern mantle in a sandwich bag before slipping his small scissors in to cut the string. The old mantle dissolved as he pulled it from the lantern. Robby watched him fit the new one on and knew the next step—his dad would burn the mantle to prepare it for lighting.

Sam stood up and said, “I’m going to the garage to burn this in.”

“I’ll go with you, Dad,” Robby said. He set down his plate and followed his dad.

“No, you get your food," Sam said.

“But I want to get the box of candles and the spare flashlights, anyway,” Robby said.

Sam nodded.

In the garage, Sam set the lantern on his bench and turned to Robby.

“Okay, let’s hear it. What has your big brain cooked up now?” asked Sam.

“Can I ask a couple of questions?” Robby asked.

“Shoot,” Sam said. He trusted his son, and respected his son’s intellect, but he sometimes lost patience with Robby’s tendency to analyze every situation.

“Were there less people on the ferry when you landed than when you set off?” Robby asked.

Sam had a great poker face. He didn’t show the slightest reaction to the question. He just considered how to answer—should he try to gloss over the facts and comfort his son, or tell the truth? “Perhaps," Sam said.

“Did you see anyone downtown?” Robby asked.

“Yes," Sam said.

“Anyone aside from Paulie, Ms. Norton, Jim, and Brandon?” Robby asked.

“No," Sam said.

“Any lights on in any of the houses as you came home?” Robby asked.

“No, just ours," Sam said. “But the power is out to who knows how many houses.”

“But it’s pretty dark out with the storm, shouldn’t you have seen flashlights, or candles, or firelight?” Robby asked.

“It’s pretty much a whiteout," Sam said. “You couldn’t see the hand in front of your face.”

“Okay,” Robby said. “Any tire tracks? Footprints? Signs of life?”

“With that blizzard? Any sign would be wiped out in minutes," Sam said. “Perhaps you’re getting to a point?”

“Yeah. Just one more thing: did you see any wildlife?” Robby asked.

Sam managed to keep his face neutral again. "Some deer,” he began, “maybe a couple of raccoon.” In fact, he and Paulie had nearly been stampeded by a herd of deer as the men walked to the ferry parking lot. The island had a healthy deer population, but Sam never saw so many together at once.

Robby nodded.

“Okay," Sam said. He struck a match and lit the lantern mantle. “What’s it all mean, Mr. Holmes?”

“Too early to know for sure,” Robby said, “but it could be a local extinction.”