The Remaining (6 page)

Tommy asks the obvious after Allison is gone. “She upset?”

It’s not the first time Tommy has walked in on something going on between Jack and Allison, but today something feels different.

The thumping bass back in the banquet room is the only thing he can hear for a moment. It seems like Jack is thinking, though Tommy has no idea what he’s thinking about. Jack is seldom lost for words and almost never lost in thought. Jack doesn’t wade in those kinds of deep waters.

“She just needs to cool off a little bit. Then we’ll have a talk. She’s just heated.” He brushes back his hair, the hesitation still there. “C’mon,” he says to Tommy. “Let’s go back.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’m sure. Of course I’m sure. This is a party. Let’s go.”

The two friends, looking like twins in their gray suits, head back in to the party. Tommy’s not going to pry any more with Jack even though his buddy sounds doubtful. It sounded like Jack was telling himself that he’s sure, but nothing about his tone made it seem like he really is.

They enter the busy and loud room without Allison. She’ll surely show back up in a while.

“You want something to drink?” Jack asks Tommy.

Tommy nods. “Yeah, whatever you’re having.”

As Jack wanders off toward the bar, Tommy slips out his cell phone. The screen saver shows the movie poster of
Apocalypse Now
but no text message. As Bruno Mars belts the dancers into shape on the floor in the center of the room, Tommy types out a text. Just to see what’s up with Allison.

He sees Jack waving a beer and goes over to him. Soon enough Jack and Allison will be smiling and hanging all over each other again. This is the pattern like always, with Tommy right in the center of it. Always trying to help out.

The camera is rolling again.

Tommy feels the elevator they’re in moving up as he points the video recorder at Mr. and Mrs. Chapman.

“Thank you for coming to our room to drop off some of the wedding presents,” Skylar’s father says, his gray hair
looking as perfect as it did when Tommy saw him a few hours ago.

“No problem. Now that I have you trapped
 
—what’s the secret to staying married all these years?”

“I’m always right,” Mrs. Chapman says.

“That’s actually correct,” Mr. Chapman says quickly with a smile.

They’re a good-looking couple, especially Mrs. Chapman. Tommy can tell Skylar gets her dominant genes from her mother, who looks attractive in her evening dress showing off a trim figure. The Chapmans laugh at each other, and it’s a moment that Tommy loves capturing on video. Tommy knows
this
is one of the secrets.

Keep laughing together. Keep the humor coming.

Mr. Chapman clears his throat and looks directly into the camera.

“Skylar, if you are watching this right now, your wedding was absolutely beautiful.”

“You know your daughter wouldn’t have it any other way,” Tommy adds.

“It should have been at the church,” Mrs. Chapman says.

“It was her choice,” Mr. Chapman gently assures. “Even if it’s not what we wanted.”

“And we all know Skylar gets what she wants,” Tommy jokes.

“Like mother like
 
—”

Mr. Chapman pauses. Tommy blinks several times, thinking he’s not seeing the right image on the camera screen.

It looks like I can see their breath. As if we’re standing outside on a cold winter day.

The elevator seems to be stopped. Just like Tommy’s breathing. Just like his pulse.

He glances at the couple he’s facing and sees something awful. Noticing their breath is one thing. It’s odd, but it’s not just that. They both suddenly look pale as ghosts, as if they’ve both seen something horrific.

“Did you feel that?” Mr. Chapman asks his wife.

“It just got so cold,” she says.

Tommy is confused; he doesn’t feel any change.
What is happening here?

Mr. Chapman turns to look at Tommy and his camera. The look is empty. As if any feeling or emotion or love or anything is all gone. Absent. Boom. Just vanished. And something else
 
—his pupils suddenly start getting smaller.

Tommy is about to say something when he’s interrupted. The elevator jolts as Skylar’s parents fall to the carpeted floor and land in awkward poses with loud thuds.

This is not happening this has gotta be a joke right right?

Tommy tilts the camera down and sees their lifeless faces looking up at him. He knows in an instant this isn’t a joke. They’re dead, both of them, just like that. He can just feel it. He knows.

The camera drops to the floor and lands near Mrs. Chapman’s head as Tommy leans over and calls out their names and tries to revive them. They’re so cold, both of
them. The temperature hasn’t changed, but they feel like they’ve been stored in an ice locker for a week.

A rush of searing, shaking terror fills Tommy.

“Mr. Chapman, Mrs. Chapman. You guys. Come on.”

He moves them, then jerks them, then actually slaps them but he gets nothing. As he picks up his camera, he sees the whitewashed, empty face of Skylar’s mother. Her pupils are the size of pinpricks, as if she’s just been staring into some bright light for a long time.

He screams for help and keeps screaming, the sound of his voice actually assuring him that he’s not dead or losing his mind. This isn’t a joke. Even the fun-loving Chapmans wouldn’t do something like this. They look and feel dead.

And I’m trapped with them.

“Somebody help me,” he cries out as he feels the elevator moving again.

His arms and legs are shivering as the door finally opens. For a second Tommy wonders what to do with the bodies sprawled out on the floor.

Then he hears the screams coming from the wedding reception.

He doesn’t hesitate. He bolts out of the elevator and down the hall.

He has no idea what kind of nightmare he’s about to see. But it sounds worse than the terror he just witnessed.

As he rushes toward the horrible sounds, he thinks of one thing.

Allison.

Allison wants to pray but can’t. She sits in the pew in a silent and empty church with the glowing colors of the stained-glass windows on each side filling the room with a sky-blue sort of light. This place gives her a modicum of hope. It’s a bit like going window shopping and seeing the amazing and expensive fashions all nearly within reach. If-onlys fill her soul. If only she had the money to buy that dress. If only she had the motivation to blurt out the prayer she’s held for some time.

If only.

This isn’t the first time she’s come to Rivertown Community Church. Since living around Wilmington
the last few years, she’s occasionally found herself walking back from a bar or a night out and then wandering in here. There was the time Jack had too much to drink and she left him being obnoxious with the rest of their friends. Another time was on a night when he was supposed to meet her but ended up canceling because of work. There was even the evening after Skylar’s bridal shower when Allison just slipped inside here to think.

There’s a calm here that’s comforting. She has her phone silenced and she’s not checking Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. The news of the day isn’t getting to her. Nobody from the wedding party is intruding with their witty comments or deep thoughts or probing questions.

It’s just her and . . .

God?

She can’t say that exactly. She thinks maybe it’s something like that but it’s not like she comes here to pray. She’s not at that point. She’s warming up to the concept. Getting the seat in the pew warm. Getting used to the idea of staring at a cross and looking upward.

All she can think is what she should do now. And how she’s wasted all these years. And how she needs to start fresh.

Tomorrow can be a better day.

A hundred different ideas and thoughts flood her. Then she hears a violent crash outside that jerks her up out of the padded pew. A car alarm goes off and she hears a scream.

Another scream, this time from somewhere back in the church. It’s a large church that extends for a whole block.

“Help me!”

This is a woman’s voice from outside.

Another alarm sounds. Another crash. A door slamming. The ground underneath her shaking.

What is happening?

She glances up at the cross one more time, then heads through the doors at the front of the church, toward where the sound of the crash came from. When she opens the door, she finds a car rammed into another. One of the cars doesn’t seem to have anybody inside it. A woman sits in the other car’s driver’s seat bleeding from her head. The car door hangs open. The woman sees Allison and says something and then tries to get out of the car. She crumples to the street.

Allison rushes over to help her.

She hears screaming in the background. Someone yelling. A man runs past on the sidewalk. There’s the sound of glass breaking. Another car flies by them and nearly crashes as it veers around and keeps tearing down the road.

“What happened?” Allison says as she helps the woman stand.

There is a deep gash in the woman’s forehead that’s gushing blood. The woman holds a hand up to stop it but that’s only smearing it everywhere.

“The car just suddenly started coming toward me. There was no driver. It hit me going thirty miles an hour.”

“Let’s get you to the grass over here,” she tells the woman, who’s probably in her fifties. “Let me see if anybody is in the other car.”

There’s an explosion somewhere nearby that makes Allison duck instinctively. She looks at the sky and it seems different, as if gray clouds were suddenly painted there with the touch of a button like on a phone app.

It didn’t look like that when I entered the church.

She peers into the other car and sees a figure draped across the front seats.

She opens the door slowly. “Hello? Are you okay? Hello, sir?”

It’s a heavyset man in shorts and a T-shirt. She can see the side of his face. She leans over.

Then she touches his skin and feels the cold. His eyes aren’t moving and his profile looks like a wax dummy’s.

He must’ve had a heart attack or something while driving.

Allison goes back over to the woman sitting on the grass looking like she might have a concussion.

A tall black man in khakis and a button-down shirt runs toward them screaming. “They’re dead all of them are dead they’re all dead and we’re next we’re going to be next.”

Allison moves off the sidewalk and expects the terrified man to stop but he doesn’t. He’s sweaty and out of breath but he moves past them yelling and cursing and sprinting toward somewhere.

In the distance something is burning. Allison can see black smoke coming from behind the trees.

“Let’s go back in the church, okay?” she tells the woman.

She checks her phone but there are no new messages. She tries to make a call but there’s no service.

The worst thing she could do is flip out like the guy running past them just did.

Another explosion tears through the afternoon air and makes her wince. She looks around and for a second can’t even think.

Get inside go inside and get away from whatever is happening out here. Help the woman and get back in the church.

Allison starts to say something and then realizes she hasn’t taken a breath in a few moments. She breathes in and clears her throat, then leans over and helps the bleeding woman to her feet.

“Let’s go inside and find something to stop the bleeding. Then we’ll call the police and figure out what’s happening.”

A siren sounds in the distance. There are unfamiliar noises everywhere. She sees a dog scrambling down the road, a bit like the man who just passed them. Frantic, out of breath, going who knows where.

Allison thinks of the gang she left behind at the hotel. Now she wishes she had stayed with them.

I have to get ahold of them somehow. Or get back to the hotel.

She knows this isn’t just something happening on the side of this street. All over Wilmington, some kind of dark chaos is occurring. She pictures Jack and Tommy and Skylar and Dan and Lauren.

Then she thinks of her family.

“Come on,” she finally says, snapping herself out of it.

They head back into the church. Maybe they’ll find some kind of sanctuary inside.

Death fills the floor.

The seconds move by like falling sledgehammers dropping against his soul. It’s too much to take in, yet his eyes and his ears are forced to see and hear all of it. Every awful little bit.

Tommy stumbles over a body as he makes his way to the reception room. This looks like a battleground, like some kind of national tragedy just took place on the top floor of the Plantation Hotel. Yet there is no gun-toting crazy person to be found. No bleeding wounds to be seen. No visible remnants of a bomb blast.

But death is all around him.

There are gasps and screams and moans and mumbling. Shouts of all kinds. Too many to make sense of. The music is still playing, making things even worse. The driving dance track by Lady Gaga only adds to the utter hysteria.

I’m never gonna listen to that song again without picturing all of this.

Not that he can afford to worry about ever listening to music again.

He’s gotta survive this right now.

The inside of the banquet room devastates him. Bodies are everywhere, dropped and discarded like a scene from a ransacked mannequin warehouse. Figures are draped over the fallen, crying and calling and freaking out. He sees trays of food and broken glasses littering the floor. As he walks in hoping to find someone he knows, he can hear the crinkle of glass under his dress shoes.

His eyes land on an overturned table near the front that had held a bunch of framed photographs of Dan and Skylar. They’re now all spread over the ground as if they’ve been trampled.

People are running around and the sounds of screams are everywhere.

What kind of hell is happening in front of me?

For a second everything goes on pause, including the sights and the sounds and his brain. He feels like he is moving in slow motion until another voice pokes him awake.

Don’t fade out now just act and react.

He instinctively cries out Jack’s name because he needs
some help here. He moves in and sees mangled legs in high heels beside an overturned table. Tommy sees the face and the hair and knows this woman.

It’s the Southern belle he was talking to at the bar. He notices the cross pendant hanging around her neck, then sees the blank expression similar to the one the Chapmans had.

She’s not moving, not breathing, not alive in any way.

“What the
 
—?” He can’t say more.

A funny and sad and weird thought comes to him. He thinks of the last episode of
The Walking Dead
he saw and for a second he wonders if he needs to grab some kind of weapon. But that’s why it’s funny and sad. This isn’t a zombie movie, and these people aren’t coming back from the dead.

“Dan? Sky?” Tommy’s eyes scan through the blurry motion and then see the white bridal dress moving around. Skylar is up and moving and that’s a good thing. She’s hovering over someone, trying to revive them.

Then Tommy sees Jack nearby and darts over to him.

“Jack
 
—man
 
—Skylar’s parents in the elevator
 
—they just fell down dead
 
—and this
 
—what just happened?”

His mind is moving so fast he can’t even finish whole sentences. Jack looks like he’s in a slow-motion daze himself.

“I don’t know, Tommy,” Jack says as his eyes look all around them. “I don’t know. . . .”

Two voices rush up to them. Tommy sees Dan’s pale face and Skylar’s wide eyes.

“Lauren’s dead,” are the only words he hears Skylar say.

She’s dead?

He thinks of the figure Skylar was just hovering over and knows it has to be Lauren.

She can’t be gone.

“I’m looking for my mom and dad,” Skylar says through tears.

Tommy thinks of his own parents and his sister. Then of Lauren and of the end of last summer when she told him she thought something bad was going to happen, how she kept dreaming about it.

“Have you seen my parents?”

Tommy hears Skylar but can’t answer, can’t even look at her.

“I can’t find them anywhere.”

He feels numb and just wants to close his eyes to this and to everything.

“Tommy?”

Jack is looking at him. Skylar’s waiting for an answer. Dan looks scared.

“Come on, man,” Jack says.

It seems like only five seconds ago Dan and Skylar were saying their vows. It seems like they were only another five seconds away from leaving to go on their honeymoon. But now this.

Now Tommy has to tell her the truth.

“I’m so sorry, Sky. I was with them in the elevator and they just
 
—”

The bride crumbles to the floor, ignoring her dress and
her makeup and anything else as she bursts into fresh tears. Dan goes to her side, cradling her with his arm.

“I just want to go see them,” she cries out between sobs. “Now.”

Jack looks at Tommy and seems to realize something. “Allison,” he says.

Skylar is on her feet again and sprints out of the room with Dan following. Jack pulls out his phone as an elderly woman behind them starts screaming at a high pitch.

“Cell service is busy,” Jack says.

An explosion shakes the building and causes both Jack and Tommy to hunker down as if it’s in the room. Audible gasps and moans are heard as everybody realizes the boom came from outside.

“That sounded like a missile,” Tommy says to Jack. “Come on; let’s see what’s happening outside.”

Nothing in him wants to go out and see where the blast came from, but then again, nothing in him wants to remain in this open grave of a room.

Tommy and Jack head toward the glass doors of the balcony, unsure what awaits them.

The air outside feels thick while the sky looks even thicker. Angry clouds cover it only moments after it was a clear, open window up to heaven. Tommy feels a gust of wind and sees figures already scattered on the rooftop deck, looking out at the chaos around them. He pushes past a couple
he saw talking to the Chapmans. The woman is crying while the man consoles her. Tommy walks up to the edge of the rooftop and stares out over the city.

Columns of smoke rise from the buildings below. Dozens of different noises try to tackle him down. Sirens and car horns and muffled voices and screams sound from everywhere. Tommy watches in disbelief. There’s nothing he can think. It’s all too real, too horrible, too raw.

He sees a balding man with an arm around a woman who might be his wife on a rooftop across from him. Tommy can see their expressions. Bleak, scared, empty. They look his way as if waiting to see how he can help.

They all seem so helpless. So alone. Is that how he looks too?

Behind the couple, something explodes, followed by a large smoke plume resembling a thought bubble. Tommy can imagine the words that would fill it.

Many of them would be curse words.

Tommy looks down at the street and sees the jam of cars. People are running everywhere like ants fleeing a boot pounding down on them.

This can’t be happening.

A scary droning sound comes from the sky, and Tommy looks up, half expecting to find alien invaders. Yet it’s only a plane flying.

Only a plane. Flying dangerously low. Flying
 
—

The plane slams into the rooftop across the way that held the huddled elderly couple. A series of groans and
cries and curses follow. Tommy ducks and dives to the floor and hears yet another booming sound.

For a second he’s kneeling and about to get up when the whole world starts to shake. His camera slides as he tries to grab onto something but there’s nothing around.

The violent jerking lasts a few moments, then stops. And then the panicked chaos really commences.