The Big Empty

A REIGN OF THUNDER-6

To Coup’s astonishment, the man—who couldn’t have been less than ninety years old—had suffered only minor cuts and abrasions; although his wife, he said, had been killed (which was weird, to say the least, since he was the only one in the car). Beyond that, though, he hadn’t had much to say—nor did Coup blame him—as they rumbled from the scene and continued east; indeed, he seemed to still be in state of shock. One thing, however, was woefully clear, and that was that at his age (and level of dementia) he shouldn’t have been driving in the first place.

“Maybe she was thrown clear,” said Tess as she buckled him in next to the ice chest, her tight Levi shorts merely inches from Coup’s head. “It was obviously a horrific accident; although it is strange that there was no other car. Could they have had a blowout, you think?”

“The short answer is ‘no,’” said Coup matter-of-factly. “That car’s tires were good. As for being thrown clear—no way. I searched the entire area. There was nothing. Not unless the coyotes carried her away.”

“Well, there you—”

“The coyotes didn’t carry her away, Tess.”

“Look, I don’t know,” she protested as she helped the man dig out his wallet—it was fat and had been causing him discomfort, was her guess.

All of which went out the window when he removed a picture from it and handed it to her: a picture of himself and his wife when they were much, much younger—or so she’d presumed, at least until she saw the timestamp in the lower right corner of the frame. A timestamp which read: October 15, 2017.

“This is nuts,” said Coup, looking at it, before handing it back. “All of this is just stark-raving ...”

But he never finished the sentence, for they were approaching another vehicle, three other vehicles, to be precise, all of which were ditched at the side of the road as though their drivers had simply fallen asleep.

“They’re empty, every single one,” whispered Tess as they passed the vehicles at a virtual crawl. “Just like the cop car. Just like this guy’s wife. It’s almost as if—”

“Don’t say it,” said Coup.

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”

“We don’t know that yet—”

“It’s like they just disappeared! Just poof! Gone!”

“Tess—”

“Goddamn it, Coup! Lying to ourselves about it isn’t going to—"

“Some of them did,” said the old man suddenly, rendering them speechless, even as Tess turned around and Coup looked into the rear-view mirror. “Vanished just like ghosts, like they’d never existed at all. I know because I saw it with my own eyes. But that’s not what happened to my wife.”

They just looked at him, nobody saying anything. It was, in a sense, as if he’d been reborn—still as old as Methuselah but suddenly alert and aware; enough so that he’d become acutely aware of his condition and surroundings and seemed to be entranced by the sight of his own liver-spotted hand, which he studied as though it wasn’t his at all but a total stranger’s.

At last he said, “No. No. Because you see, some disappeared. And some, well, I guess some have or will end up like me. But my wife ...” He paused, looking first at Coup and then at Tess, his eyes ancient, haunted, possessed almost. “My wife was eaten.”

After which they faced forward again and didn’t say anything for a long time, not until they passed the green and white sign indicating food and gas via the next exit, at which they looked at each other and nodded at almost the same instant, then touched hands as if to brace themselves for what they might find there.

II

It was called the Border Rendezvous and as best Coup could figure it, it was a Union 76 gas station on crack. What else was there to make of a place with a giant Mexican bandit named “Benito the Bandido” standing over its drive—his legs bowed absurdly and his hands gripping the titular sign— or boasting in its other signage of being home to the world famous Dingo Dog (“Have a Dingo, Gringo!”) and the “largest indoor reptile exhibit in the U.S.?”

“Jesus,” said Tess as they drove between the statue’s gargantuan legs, “Where were the P.C. Police when they built this?”

“Just a gleam in someone’s eye,” said Coup, maneuvering the Mustang around a lengthy pump island (which was more befitting an actual truck stop than a glorified gas station/food mart). “Probably one of those professors at the Desert Ruse.” He added: “Don’t knock it. They’ll be cold water and air-conditioning. Not to mention a big TV.”

She looked at him, struck by his mentioning of the Desert Ruse. He listened. She wasn’t used to that. “Yeah, but ...” She looked at the building’s front windows doubtfully. “Will there be a signal?”

“That,” he said, as they rumbled up to those windows and stopped, “is the 64-thousand dollar question.” He shut off the engine and exhaled. “Okay. I’ll take our furry friend if you can assist Mr.—?”

“Becker,” said the old man. “Henry Becker. And I don’t need a nurse to get out of a car, thank you. I was thirty-four just an hour ago.”

Tess looked at Cooper but he just shrugged. One didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

They all got out, Coup fetching the ice chest while Tess walked behind Becker, her arms at the ready, and they went into the store, where they were greeted immediately by a cacophony of voices—and saw a large group gathered in front of the counter.

“Any one of you a doctor?” someone snapped, having turned at the sound of door chimes—a large black man with a shiny head and long gray beard (a trucker, maybe, or a biker, although Coup hadn’t noticed any bikes out front). “Or do you have any medicine? Prescription meds, opioids, muscle relaxers ...”

The three of them just froze.

“Speak up!”

“No, nothing,” said Coup—he couldn’t help but notice that Tess had gripped his arm instinctively— and added, “What is it? What’s going on?”

There was a sound like liquid splattering the floor and a woman in a red dress turned around, cupping her mouth. “Oh my God. Can’t someone just kill it?”

“Now, wait a minute—”

“She’s right, you know. Who has a gun?” said the big man—adding, when no one responded, “Come on! This has got to end!”

An animal, thought Coup. Someone’s animal is dying—probably from this heat. Jesus.

It was on the tip of his lips to say he did, in the car, when someone beat him to it; a wiry little man in a cowboy hat and wife-beater (who had also turned at the chimes), who said, plaintively, “I have one.”

“Jesus, Coup, look,” said Tess, nodding toward the ceiling, toward the massive flat screen mounted above and behind the counter, and he nearly leapt with joy when he saw that it was not in fact broadcasting static but actual imagery—or at least the CNN logo, which filled the screen—and that someone was talking: Anderson Cooper, perhaps, although it was difficult to say over the commotion at the counter. Coup caught only “extreme weather ranging from sudden heat waves to flash ice-storms all across the country” before hearing another splattering of liquid and the people at the counter gasp, after which a single shot rang out and he jumped.

And then it was over—whatever it was—and the animal, whatever it had been, was dead, surely, and Tess ran to him and collided with his shoulder even as the room returned to some kind of normalcy and the voice on the TV continued: “... the fact is we just don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know where my family is or if they’re safe. I don’t know if we have a President—or if he’s simply vanished. I don’t know where our first responders are, or our law enforcement, to say nothing of the military, or why so many of our friends and loved ones have disappeared. All I know is—”

And then static broke across the screen like a gunshot—pow, like that—and their connection to the rest of the world was lost; and the room fell silent, or nearly so, for a woman sitting at one of the booths was sobbing and the static continued to hiss.

That’s when Coup first noticed it, the blood which was so dark as to be almost black, spreading from the small gap beneath the counter, pooling around people’s shoes—and set down the ice chest, embracing Tess briefly before moving toward the gathering and peering over the fixture himself.

Where he saw something so strange and terrible, so grotesque, that his mind could not at first accept it: a thing not only without analog to the natural world (at least insofar as he understood it) but which seemed a purposeful mockery. A thing, in short, which was neither man nor animal, and yet, somehow, a tangle of both.

A thing from which he shielded a little girl as she inexplicably tried to join him and whose dead, randomly placed eyes—two of them small, blue, human, two others as large and slit-pupiled as any serpent’s—gazed emptily into space.

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