Extinct (22 page)

“Yes!” Robby said. He slammed down the door lock on the passenger’s side and then took care of his own door before he turned to look around. The truck was just a two-seater, so he didn’t have to worry about something jumping up from the back seat, and the bed of the truck was empty. Robby adjusted the seat so he could reach the pedals.

He dropped the transmission lever down to drive and cranked the wheel around. He took a hard right on the asphalt to stay as far away from the wet streak as he could. When he straightened the wheel out, he floored the gas and nearly lost his grip on the wheel as the old truck burst forward. He took the next turn a little fast. The truck swayed and felt out of control. Robby stabbed the brakes and tried to wrestle the vehicle back under control. He took his feet off of both of the pedals and let the truck slow down and straighten itself out instead of fighting it.

“That’s more like it,” he said, smiling. He adjusted the rearview mirror. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

Robby accelerated gently and leaned back.
 

This road was mostly empty. Only a couple of derelict cars remained in the travel lanes, so Robby didn’t have to weave at all. He reached down and turned on the blower. It made a chirping, bad-bearing sound, but warm air leaked out from the vents and made the noisy truck a lot more pleasant. He read the signs carefully—he could get back on the highway up ahead and continue his southward trek. The skies were packed full of sooty clouds, but to the south they looked brighter. He thought it possible he might even find clear skies before the sun went down completely.
 

The gas gauge showed more than a half tank of gas. Robby turned on the radio just loud enough to hear the static and hit the seek button. The frequency display spun quickly up through the numbers without pausing. He watched as the numbers worked up through the low hundreds. A shadow across the road caught his eye just before the explosion. As the shadow crossed under the front of the truck’s hood, Robby realized it wasn’t a shadow at all. The dark pavement was a wet spot.

The front tires of the truck fired off at the same time. They blew out with a spectacular bang. The idiot light on the dashboard of the old truck—the one to remind Robby to fasten his seat belt—was dark during the trip up until this point. At the very instant the information could no longer help, the light flashed on.

The tires didn’t just explode—they actually stuck to the road where the pavement was stained dark with fluid. Robby figured this out as the back of the truck started to rise. The truck’s momentum was forcing the engine down towards the pavement, and the rear up in the air.
 

Robby tried to brace himself against the steering wheel, but his arm strength was no match for his own inertia. He flew forward into the wheel. Like the seat belt warning light, the truck’s airbag was sluggish to respond. Robby’s chest almost made contact with the top of the wheel when the vinyl under the horn sprung out of the way of the inflating bag. The airbag’s deployment was almost as violent as the sudden, jolting stop, so Robby was now thrown backwards and his momentum deflected upwards.

His head hit the roof of the cab and he left a streak of skin and hair on the headliner.
 

The rear wheels of the truck floated almost three feet over the ground before they reached their apex and started to fall back to the pavement. Robby fell backwards too after his encounter with the late but overzealous airbag. He fell backwards at the same speed as the truck, so it seemed like free-fall to Robby, like he would never hit the ground.

When the truck hit the ground and Robby hit the seat, his arms and neck rag-dolled and he bounced on the old seat springs. On the second bounce, his jaw clacked shut, and his left incisor drilled a perfect hole through the edge of his tongue. Blood filled his mouth as he blinked hard, trying to hold on to his senses, and batted the airbag out of the way.

Movement on Robby’s left drew his attention. The dark streak of moisture across the road led up over the curb and then disappeared into the grass embankment next to the road. The movement turned out to be a swell of liquid returning to the wet track. It seeped out of the grass and produced a bubble of fluid moving towards the front of the truck. The first swell only looked about five inches high, but on its heels, the next swell could have touched Robby’s knees if he’d been brave or stupid enough to stand in the street.

The fluid looked the same as the carrion wave back at the Best Buy, but it didn’t move at the same lazy speed. This wave had a purpose. It pushed across the westbound lanes as Robby’s mouth filled with blood. He grabbed for the door handle, but the door wouldn’t budge.
 

“Shoot,” Robby said. His pierced tongue turned the word into “Thoot,” and blood and spit spilled down his chin. He banged at the door with his shoulder. It seemed like it wanted to open but the upper corner was hanging up on the frame—newly bent from the accident, Robby figured.

He hit the button to lower the window. The motor sounded sick, but the window began to slowly open. He pressed the other button too. The passenger’s window started to descend as well. It went faster. Both windows stopped when the wave impacted the truck’s wheel. All the lights on the dash extinguished as well. He jerked his hand away from the switches, afraid to touch anything after his experience with bike. His window was only halfway down; the other window was a little lower.

Robby dove across the seat and grabbed for the passenger door handle.
 

The front of the truck dipped, dropping Robby into a six inch free-fall. Stretched across the seat, he pulled the passenger’s door handle and pushed with his other hand. The door groaned, but moved a little. He pulled his legs up and thrust them back against the side of the driver’s seat for leverage.

The front of the truck lurched again, dropping another foot.

Robby wailed away at the door. It sprang free and flew out of his hands. The door swung wide open, hit the limits of the hinges and bounced back. He caught it with stiff arms and held it open as he scrambled across the seat. The floor mat of the truck, where his feet would have been if he’d been riding shotgun, changed color and then disappeared completely. Where the wheel-well should have been, he could now see clear through to the pavement. As the pavement grew and the floor mat disappeared, Robby realized the whole front of the truck was falling at a steady pace now.
 

The driver’s side was disappearing faster, so the truck tipped to that side. By the time Robby climbed out through the passenger’s door he could almost stand on the side of the truck. He surveyed the pavement quickly. The front edge of the truck was eroding into the puddle of liquid, but the rear still sat over dry asphalt. He leapt to the rear.
 

He only needed to push himself a few inches to the rear to get clear of the puddle. But with the truck falling, and his pulsing adrenaline, he misjudged the jump. His right foot and hand landed on the dry asphalt, but his left foot came down right on the edge of the puddle. It was more than just a wet spot on the pavement now, but still only an inch or so deep where his foot landed.

The pain scared him because it was like nothing he’d ever felt. The numbness when he’d gripped the bike wheel earlier felt like an electric shock, but where his foot touched the liquid, it felt like a lightning strike. He screamed and tugged at his leg. On the second pull, his knee popped and his foot slipped free from his boot and sock. When Robby’s bare foot pulled out, the boot sunk into the liquid and disappeared before his eyes. The fluid swelled around the spot, and the puddle was instantly several inches deep there.

The last of Robby’s sock vanished. The fluid swelled and then extended a runner towards his bare foot. He sprang to his feet and ran. His naked foot slapped the pavement as he sprinted. After a couple dozen steps, he looked back over his shoulder. The truck silently upended—the front half was now completely gone and the bed and rear wheels stood straight up in the air. The puddle rapidly ate the rest of the truck. It looked like the truck was sinking into a hole opened up in the pavement, but Robby thought the puddle was somehow absorbing the truck’s matter. It wasn’t like acid, he thought. With acid there would be a sizzling or a smell. The puddle was just dissolving things. Selectively. Back at the Best Buy it hadn’t absorbed any of the tents or chairs, but here it consumed everything.

Where the puddle ate his shoe and sock, the puddle struck out after Robby. A thin line of liquid flowed and paused, flowed and paused. It zig-zagged a little and Robby realized the puddle was flowing from spot to spot where his feet had fallen as he ran. He ran up the grass slope to the parking lot of a strip mall. His foot was already starting to feel numb from running barefoot on the pavement, but he knew he didn’t have time to worry about his foot. He glanced back. The stream picked up speed; it now gushed after him. The front of the wave was about half-a-foot deep, but behind the leading edge, he saw some swells which looked at least knee-high.
 

He thought about his mom. Barefoot running would not have been a problem for her. She’d always gone the whole summer without shoes. She would sometimes sit on the front stoop and file down her callouses, leaving a fine white powder of skin on the flagstones.
 

He slapped himself in the face. Hard. He recognized that weird nostalgia from the last time he’d been close to the liquid. This was not the time for childhood memories. He started jogging across the parking lot. There was only one car in the lot—parked outside the fabric store—and he didn’t see any corpses around, but he headed that direction anyway.

He gulped in the cold air through his mouth. He forced himself to jog faster. He couldn’t see the flow of the liquid anymore, that was back down the embankment on the road surface, but he sensed the slight hill wouldn’t slow it down. His bare foot ached and threatened to cramp each time he lifted it.
 

Robby reached the car and tugged on the driver’s door. The handle snapped back. The door was locked. He pulled back and thrust his elbow against the window, but his elbow just bounced off the glass. He looked back over his shoulder. Back at the edge of the parking lot, the liquid was cascading over the curb, forming a pool on the asphalt where Robby had paused to think about his mom.

“Come on,” Robby said. He smacked the window with the palm of his hand and then jogged away from the car parallel to the strip mall. His stride became uneven, favoring his bare foot. A hot knife of pain poked at his right side, under his ribs. He gasped, trying to breathe through the pain.

At the end of the mall, he found a short downhill slope and then another parking lot belonging to the next strip mall. He didn’t look back. He barreled down the hill and kept running, scanning the lot but not seeing any cars in this lot either. He almost ran right past the cars tucked along the side of the end store. They were parked behind a concrete block wall, right next to the dumpsters. Even after he saw them he kept jogging. For no good reason, he turned and jogged over to peek around the wall. That’s when he saw the green-shirted employees who had gone outside for a smoke break before their eyes exploded and they collapsed in a pile with unlit cigarettes in their hands.
 

He kicked his legs back into a sprint and instantly regretted it. He stubbed his toe and stumbled the rest of the way over to the bodies. He didn’t hesitate at all with the corpses. He rolled the men over and clawed at their pockets. From the three men he came away with two sets of keys and a lighter. He ran to the nearest car—a brown Chevy compact car with New Hampshire plates—and fumbled through the keys. The key with the bow tie fit the door and popped up the lock. He jumped in and cranked the engine as he pulled the seat lever and rocked it forward. The engine caught and he pulled the shift lever into reverse.

The car looked clean but stunk of cigarette smoke. Robby spun the wheel and backed around. He heard a thump from the rear when he backed over one of the smokers’ legs. He shifted to drive and pulled around the cement-block wall.
 

He stood on the brakes, screeching to a halt—the liquid flowed down the hill between the two parking lots and turned the corner to follow Robby back to the smoking area. He stopped less than ten feet from its edge. Robby clutched the gear shift and chunked it to neutral and then reverse. The Chevy’s engine wound up like a toy as Robby backed up down the alley next to the mall.

The lot extended back behind the building. He turned the wheel just a touch and slowed to a stop. Behind the mall he saw a long access road and loading docks dotting the back wall of the mall. He paused to see what the liquid would do. Now that he saw an escape route, he wanted to see how smart it was.

The trail of liquid approached the smokers and pooled around them. A fresh branch continued over to where the Chevy had been parked. He watched the corpses dissolve into the puddle—they went quick, without much of a swell of fluid—but the liquid didn’t follow the tire tracks of the Chevy. It swelled and ebbed where he had run, but couldn’t track him in the vehicle.

He wanted to leave while his luck still held. Before he hit the gas again he pulled the seat belt over and buckled himself in. With the rearview mirror adjusted so he could keep an eye out for the liquid, he drove carefully down the access road. It felt good to get his bare foot off the pavement. The foot still felt numb, but at least it wasn’t on cold pavement anymore.

At the far end of the mall, the access road looped around the building and back out to the main parking lot. He slowed and crept the car out slowly back to the main lot. The other end of the lot was so far away that Robby couldn’t even see the flowing liquid pursuing him. He found an exit down to the main road on his side of the lot so he steered for it.

Down at the parking lot exit, Robby paused for several seconds and scanned the road in both directions. He couldn’t see anything of his old truck back to the west, and he didn’t see any sign of wet pavement in either direction. He headed east, towards the highway.