PANIC (19 page)

S
ATURN
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EVENTH
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RECEDING THE
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NO CARS OR trucks or buses drive the streets this early in the day.

Instead, there are people in the streets, walking toward the square.

New Hope’s oldest resident, Bette Wolver, walks the painted line in the center of the road, shoeless. Her doctor warned her about sleeping without her feet covered. She leads a procession in her nightdress.

John Porter used to fish the bay with his father and his uncle until a storm drowned them both out at sea and dashed his young body against a natural pier of rocks on the shore. They found him unconscious on the beach when the storm retreated and he never walked after that. He’s forty now and feels grateful to be alive, attending the one church in town with a wheelchair ramp every Sunday. He falls in line behind Bette, unconsciously wheeling himself forward.

Maria Acuna holds her baby in her arms, crossing the street to walk lockstep with the old woman. Living in town is expensive but it means she doesn’t have to own a car.

Geoff Archer lives on the edge of town in garden apartments right behind a liquor store. He goes by Jeff because he tries to avoid having anyone find out he spent the last eight years in prison as a sex offender. She sure didn’t look fifteen; he was fond of saying to his cellmate. Sometimes he’d fantasize about being with her or wonder what she was up to. His eyes are closed, but he walks to the square like he has a built-in compass.

Leah Tucker hopped a train to get to Memphis but had to dive two towns over from New Hope to escape an unscheduled search by Amtrak cops. Her ankle hurts like hell and sleeping outdoors doesn’t do her any favors. She’s just passing through. She plods along, no longer feeling the pain of her twisted joint.

Ignacio Gonsalvo normally wakes at four AM to get the bus to open the bakery, but he’s been ill for the past week. He shivers as he plods along, still shaking off pneumonia.

Mack Williams loves his son, even with his special challenges. He sits up some nights where his girlfriend won’t see him, weeping over the prospects for the boy’s future in some home for mentally challenged adults. The boy holds his father’s hand to steady himself in his leg braces. In his other hand, he holds his favorite Curious George picture book.

Sandra Wilson, newly widowed, rises in her sleep. She’s partially nude and glides along like a dancer, the muscles in her bare legs standing out every time she takes a step. She thinks her husband is squandering his retirement again, trying to get together corroborating proof of some strange phenomenon that likely doesn’t even involve the police. She’s still dreaming.

The ground is dewy and hard and obscured by a waist high mist. The growing footfalls echo throughout the square as they approach, amplified by the still air.

Two hundred more join them, hardly everyone. All throughout town, doors hang open, every domicile thoughtlessly abandoned by sleepwalkers. They stand together in the square, silently, and turn their faces to the morning sun.

An ugly orb peers through the blanketed sky, an indistinct point of light diffused by a grey veil. It hides beyond the sun to mock the very idea. Dark tendrils part the clouds; miles wide, five in all. They articulate fully, like a starfish stretching itself to hide on the seafloor. The center is a palm.

The fingertips touch down all around them then draw together, closing into a fist.

This place and everyone in it are swallowed up.