I go next door to the Fowlers. Janice Fowler is stretched out on her sidewalk. I put my hand up to her face and can feel heat from the flames still burning from down within, cooking her insides. And in the road, Kevin has fallen beneath the open door of his polished souped-up Mustang. He loves that car. He’s on the asphalt, the skin exposed by his muscle shirt is bubbled by heat.
I run to the park, not looking directly at the wrecked cars or fallen bags of groceries or kids under their bikes. Gramercy Park is a public morgue. I stand at the crest of the park looking out at a sea of bodies. A kid face down in the sandbox, and another bent up in the monkey bars like a spider’s prey. An old man on a bench, still holding a bag of seeds, has puked up soot. A girl at the swing set is being slow-dragged beneath her swing, her leg tangled in the chain above. I won’t look into the circle of baby strollers whose mothers are in a pile around them.
People laid out on blankets are burned by the sun on their outsides, while bones and organs are baked to ashen powder on their insides.
Everyone, everywhere.
I run flat-out all the way home, back up to Grandfather’s room, open the void and hide away from this new world of charred corpses and cry until I lose consciousness.
“Help me, my darling. Turn the pages while I read.”
Grandfather’s bad hand is in a slack fist. “I will read, you turn the pages.”
He reads me strange stories of ancient days and struggles of good and evil. Some of the things he says and the words he uses don’t make sense. He tells me that in time I will understand the words of this book and of my great purpose in the new world. He has me fetch his cane. He pushes its carved knob handle into his feeble right palm and tries to squeeze.
“Soon, this hand will be lost to me for good,” he sighs.
I replace the cane knob handle in his hand with my own small hand.
“You’ll still have my hands, Grandfather,” I say. He smiles as he kisses me.
I buried Mom and Dad in the backyard garden. They hardly weighed anything. When I accidently dropped Mom, her middle section came apart in a blast of ash. I put them in the dirt and I put that part of my life in there with them. Saved from the flames and born into the new world. The devastation happened months ago, yet bodies smolder long after. Eventually, most bodies dry up, crumble and blow away.
I text: Human dust fills my lungs with the memories of my beloved, my neighbors, and strangers. I press SEND. I keep my smartphone charged by my car charger. I still use it to play games, to look at photos, and as an organizer. And mainly to fire off texts to the farthest reaches of my address book. My messages in a digital bottle sent bobbing in a cyber ocean.
With fall stepping up and the temperatures dropping every morning, I’m increasing my scavenging. When especially needed, I run the house on gas-powered generators; but I’m conservative with their use. I have winter to worry about.
I can’t find the doll in the road anymore. I need to hear from Grandfather. I drive to the mall. The Change left it a nightmare. The parking lot looks like an auto dealership: rows and rows of empty cars. Inside, the absence of people feels almost as creepy as the first time I navigated its walkways littered with burned bodies. It took months to clear out the bodies—from the food court, from the rest rooms, from the play center, from the shops. And weeks more to sweep out the ashes. The place still smells of sulfur.
My steps echo as I pass the dried-out fountain in the center of the mall that’s filled with corroded pennies. In the third toyshop I check, I find a pull-string doll in a corner darkened by a burned-out fluorescent tube. I tear the doll from its packaging. I pull at the string but it only releases partway, just one eye flits open. Its mouth looks scrunched up, like the doll’s about to throw a tantrum. A dying fluorescent tube at the front of the store flickers on the doll’s shiny face. I pull the string harder. The other eye pops open so hard the plastic eyelid flies off. There is no eyeball underneath. The socket is filled with blood. Its voice spills out as the string recoils into the dolclass="underline" “The New Creatures come at night.” The blood in its socket alternates from red to black as the light goes on and off. I pull it again: “New Creatures come tonight.” A bloody tear runs down its plastic cheek.
I make it to the parking lot as the storm sets in. I speed home beneath a rumbling sky, my heart running as hard as the Pathfinder. Up in Grandfather’s room, familiar thunder rattles the arched wooden window frame. With tears in my eyes, I step out the room and into the void of protection. Inside, I am safe from whatever is cracking the sky. This is the safest place in the world, Grandfather used to say. “In here, nothing can touch you. Nothing can see you.”
As I wait I sleep, and I dream of my mother sitting lifeless on the floor, a shattered plate between her legs, still burning. In the dream she stares at me as she cooks, so hot I can see an orange-blue glow beneath the skin of her throat.
I’m greeted with the stubborn illusion of a peaceful sunrise streaming through the attic window. It might be any of the hundreds of sunrises I’ve witnessed from this room. Grandfather could be downstairs with Mom and Dad, waiting for me to join them for breakfast. Donut yapping for table scraps. But I know better. From the void I step back into Grandfather’s room knowing something has forever changed. Again. I’m terrified. I retrieve a gun from the locked box in the hallway closet. I’m careful to load it like my daddy taught me when I was sixteen. Outside I find no destruction, no dead bodies. I know where I must go and what I must do.
I drive to Gramercy Park.
The great elm in the middle of the park is gloriously in bloom. Its leaves have returned to its branches and multicolored flowers light it up like a child’s painting. And thousands of heavy, ripe pears bend its branches. I almost cry at the sight. It reminds me of life. It makes me think of the old world with a breathing Internet and crawling insects and animals and people.
I tuck the gun away and walk to the tree. Out in the open, I spot two people without clothes and they seize on my presence, moving toward me. My heart quickens as I take in the sight of people. They are the New Creatures. Not monstrous like I was led to believe. Beautiful. Naked. Flawless golden-brown skin, wooly hair. The woman steps to me, arms outstretched with a smile. Her breasts and nipples are as perfect as I have ever seen. I can’t help gawking at the man. Muscled and scarless. Mesmerizing in his upright posture and uncircumcised penis. I want to touch him.
“For God so loved the world that He swept it clean from iniquity and barbarianism, setting right what had been wrong for years upon years,” the female says.
I take a step back. She steps closer.
“The Lord kept His promise to destroy the world by fire. And all the world was set afire, but the fire did not burn the land and the trees and the oceans. The fire burned within every man, woman and child. In the center of the day, the Lord did command fire to burn man and his offspring. All sinners and their souls were burned away for eternity.”
The male creature steps up. “And after a hundred days, all life was gone from the earth. And on the 101st day, the Lord reached into the dust and reformed man in his image. And on the 102nd day, the Lord blew life into the mouth of man, and He named him Aman.”
She: “And on the 103rd day, the Lord reached into the dust and reformed woman, and the next day He blew life into the mouth of woman, and He named her Ava.”
“It is so beautiful here,” I say. “I can hardly stand the beauty.”