Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
“These are angry tears. The fucked-up thing is, I remember his voice, Bear. I remember how he sounded. Strong and sure. And I miss that. I miss that voice, I miss the old him, and he is a fucking shithead, and I will never let him back into our lives, but there it is.”
I swallowed and checked Bear. She looked at me. Still alive.
“I left the office. The streets were choked with cars. I’m on the corner of Grace and Broadway, right by that pancake place, and a cop is in the middle of the intersection, and this herd of people just tears out of nowhere and stampedes down Grace. The crowd runs past, and the cop is on the street on his back, not moving. I saw that man being trampled to death. Then a body falls on the street from above. I look up, and there are six-legged things crawling on the building to my right and yanking people out of the windows, and up ahead, just past the IHOP, there is a high-rise apartment building. And it shakes, Bear, and then people start raining from it, jumping in desperation and just smashing onto the street. And I know it’s about to fall, so I jerk my wheel right, and tear down Grace Street in the direction the stampede had come from, because I have no place to go, and something tells me not to follow the crowd. It was hell on Earth, Bear. I don’t know to this day how I got out.
“I pick up Tia, get to Noah’s daycare, grab him, and drive home on autopilot. At some point we pass Target, and it’s on fire. We get to our house and huddle in the bedroom on the bed. The kids are scared, so I turn Netflix on and for some reason it is still streaming despite the world ending. We watch and wait.”
I sat in that bedroom and thought what life would be like if Roger died, and every time I imagined losing him, it felt like someone had cut my soul with a knife. Until today, those were the worst two hours of my life.
“Finally, I hear the code lock, and then Roger walks into the bedroom, wild eyed, disheveled, but alive.”
The relief had been indescribable.
“I hug him, but he doesn’t hug me back. He just stands there, stiff. I thought he was in shock. I make some frozen pizzas, we eat, and we stay with the kids watching Netflix. Roger is distant. It’s like he’s gone into some inside place where nobody is welcome. At some point he leaves the bedroom. I wait until the kids fall asleep, check my phone for news, and then look for him.
“He is sitting on our front porch. He has a pack of cigarettes, and he is chain smoking, one after another. He quit when I was pregnant with Tia. Ten years later, that fucking pack still bothers me. I didn’t make him quit. He chose to do it. Either he had a secret pack – and who keeps a hidden pack of cigarettes for six years? – or he’s been smoking on the side and hiding it from me. Why?
“Anyway, I tell him what I saw on my phone.”
That conversation was branded into my memory. I could recite it word by word and in an instant I was right there, back on that porch, with the night encroaching onto the city and the blaze of orange in the distance, where Target was still burning hours later.
“They are saying that the anomalies are gates that lead to some other world or dimension. There are twelve gates in the US. Our outbreak is fifteen percent contained. They think they’ll have it under control in forty-eight hours.”
“Nothing is under control.” His voice was almost a snarl.
I reached out to take his hand.
He shifted away.
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what happened, I don’t know what you saw, but I’m so sorry.”
“I took 90 home,” he said. “The traffic stopped. Everything stopped. And then the things came. They went after the ones who got out of their cars first. Then they figured out that we were in the cars. I saw them rip a man apart right in front of me. They threw him on my car. His guts fell out of his body onto the glass. His intestines were sliding on the windshield, and he was still alive. I just sat there and watched him die.”
Roger stabbed the cigarette out on the step, crushing it.
“I sat there like that for three hours, waiting for them to find me. I didn’t know if you and the kids were dead or alive. I didn’t know if you made it home or if you were stuck like me. And the whole time I had this voice in the back of my head telling me that I needed to get the fuck out and take care of my wife and kids. I needed to nut up, get out of the car, and go find you.”