“It was a rat, I think.”

  “Whatever it is; it’s ... still alive. Listen.”

  And he did listen—and quickly determined that, whatever it was, it was either in great pain or scared out of its wits.

  And then they were both scrambling, out of the car and into the heat and glare, and what they saw next was something neither of them would forget—for it was both portent and prelude to everything which lie ahead.

  It was two things above all else: adorable and almost dead. It was also attached to the top of the tire like a vise (where it had taken refuge after the near collision), its little claws dug into the rubber like a cat’s and its dark eyes regarding them fearfully—and yet somehow bravely. Still, it was not a cat (or a kitten) in spite of its claws, nor was it a mouse, however over-sized. What it was, quite simply, was something unknown; although what Coup thought it resembled most was a mongoose, albeit clearly still in its infant stage. Nor did it seem to be dangerous, as Tess found out when she touched it against Coup’s advice and it merely licked her fingers—or tried to—its sandpapery tongue just as dry as the dead.

  “It’s this heat,” she said, finally, stroking its neck and back. “It’s seriously dehydrated.” She looked at Coup. “Whatever it is, I don’t think it has very long.”

  “It needs water,” he said. “And it needs it fast.”

  He stood and looked into the backseat; at the cooler he’d picked up from Walmart before heading out to L.A. “And we gotta bring his temperature down. Can you move him, you think?”

  “I think so, yes. If he’ll let go of the tire.”

  Coup took a spare shirt from the back and shook it out, then opened the cooler and laid it inside. “Most the ice is still good; we’ll lay him in here.” He picked a Styrofoam cup off the floor. “And see if we can’t get him to drink something.”

  And then, having managed a few sips and been laid in the chest—it had taken both of them to disengage it from the tire—the thing seemed to sleep; as they pulled away from the shoulder and back onto the road (although where they should go was another question entirely) and decided to name it “Rikki-Tik”—after Kipling’s famous mongoose.

  They hadn’t traveled far, however, when they encountered more evidence that something wasn’t right—with the road, with the traffic (or lack thereof), with the world.

  “What’s that?” asked Tess as something glinted about a mile ahead, something blue and crumpled, torn, smashed.

  “What’s what?” he said, and then noticed it: a blue and chrome thing turned over on it side in the middle of the road, a ruined and battered thing. A car.

  “Jesus,” he said, letting off the gas.

  “Mary and Joseph,” added Tess. “Christ. Do you think anyone could have ...” She paused, squinting. “Coup, tell me that isn’t what I think it is.”

  But he was seeing it too, and knew that what was splashed down the car’s door was exactly what she thought it was.

  “It’s blood, all right.” He geared down and brought them slowly alongside the hulk, where he put it in park and inhaled, deeply. He did not, however, shut off the engine.

  “Please, God, be empty,” said Tess. “I’m not ready for this shit.”

  Coup sighed. “Why don’t you ... check on our friend or something. I’ll have a look .”

  “Okay.”

  But he’d barely begun to open his door when a wrinkled hand appeared suddenly, waveringly, amidst the wreckage—and gripped its glass-covered dash. After which Coup reiterated calmly, gently: “Tess, check on our friend.” —and climbed out.

  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.

  Had Coup anticipated how unbearable the silence would become he wouldn’t have sought out the remote and silenced the TV, nor encouraged Tess to take Rikki-Tik to the restroom and clean him up.

  And yet, Christ, what was there to say? They were strangers, all of them—even he and Tess were strangers—who among them even knew the other’s name, much less anything about what was going on or what the thing lying behind the counter was? When at last he spoke he did so quietly, almost reverentially, offering only his name and where he’d been heading, hoping the others gathered around the counter would follow suit— which, after a moment, they did, slowly, hesitantly.

  “Rory Holmes,” said the big man, “long-haul trucker, enroute to Los Angeles from Laredo, when—when all this happened.”

  “Elliott Giles,” said the wiry guy in the wife-beater, “disabled veteran. Not any war, just—just the service. Enroute to Phoenix from Las Cruces.” He paused, his lower lip trembling. “I—I only did what had to be done.”

  “You’re good. You’re all good, man,” said Rory, clapping him on the back, startling him. “You done right.”

  The introductions continued:

  “Long Nguyen. Civil engineer. Atlanta to San Diego.”

  “Ashley May. Phoenix from Cedar City. Utah.”

  “Cameron Reeves. Ah—” The twenty-something year-old hesitated. “Immigration activist enroute to the new wall at El Paso.” He paused, appearing self-conscious. “From Washington. That’s my group.” He indicated a trio of young people near the booths.

  “D.C.?” asked Rory.

  “State,” said Cameron. “Seattle.”

  “Ah. The Great White North.”

  “Sure. I guess.”

  “Carson Bates,” blurted a heavyset man abruptly, squaring his beefy shoulders. “Carrot-topped farmer cum crop-duster; and all around daredevil.” He glanced at Cameron and tweaked his MAGA hat. “And a proud supporter of President Donald J. Tucker.”

  “You don’t say,” said Coup. The hat alone was pretty hard to ignore.

  Cameron just shrugged.

  That left only two in the immediate group who hadn’t spoken; the attractive woman in the red dress (who seemed to have recovered) and a young man of Native American heritage who introduced himself only as “Johnny—from Tucson.”

  “Kate Patel,” said the woman at length, “CEO, Desert Smoke Vapors. Enroute to L.A. from Austin.” Her voice lowered slightly. “And about to get underway again.”

  “It’s your apocalypse,” said Coup. “And a warm welcome to all.”

  And yet the silence reasserted itself as they watched the tangle of flesh cool and bleed; its eight limbs stiffening like driftwood and its eyes staring in four different directions, its chaos of muscle and bone settling, until, spying a nametag amidst the riot of fabric and tissue, Coup said, “It’s the clerk. He or she—has been combined with something. Like a lizard. Or a crocodile. Look,”

  He pointed to where a partial human face had emerged from the mangle, its mouth stretched in a hideous grimace, its right cheek morphed like clay, its gray flesh blending seamlessly back into the beast—the monitor lizard. The crocodile, whatever.

  “Right there, at the animal’s neck. See it?”

  “Like they were baked together in a fucking microwave,” said Rory.

  “Or melted—like nachos.” said Elliott.

  “More like fused,” said Long. “Blended to form a single entity ... a single amalgamate.”

  “Like Brundlefly,” whispered Ashley.

  Coup hadn’t quite caught that.

  She blushed a little self-consciously. “Like The Fly. You know, that movie from the ’80s, with Jeff Goldblum.”

  Everyone just looked at her.

  “The remake—of the original black and white. Jesus. The Fly.”

  “I know the movie,” said Coup. “But what’s—”

  “When the guy who built the transportation pod gets drunk and tests it on himself, and the fly gets caught in the matrix ...”

  “... and they get fused together.” He looked down at the thing, at the four human limbs and the four reptilian ones, at the four dead eyes all pointed in different directions. “Jesus ... But what could—”

  “That’s not all,” said Long.

  He went around the counter and approached the corpse—his shoes squelching in the blood and gruel—then hitched up his pants and knelt. “This foot here, for example—”

  “Don’t touch it!” said Ashley.

  He paused, fingertips hovering.

  “She’s right, you know,” said Rory. “Who knows what that thing might be carrying.”

  He traced the scales, his finger suspended just above them. “See this? Kind of like a big bird’s talon, isn’t it? Not much like a lizard—more like an ostrich, or an emu. But what’s really curious is this, right here.” He indicated a single scythe-like claw, about three inches in length, and curved like a scimitar. “Because it’s retractable, see?” He laughed slightly. “Like your cat’s. And it’s sickled-shaped. Which means—”

  “Look, ah, Bill Nye,” interrupted Carson, shouldering past Coup, displacing him with his bulk. “Is there a point to any of this? Or are you just showing off your American education?”

  Coup raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, yes, there is,” said Long. He appeared vaguely stupefied. “The point is: no animal like this currently exists.”

  Carson just looked at him—like a big, dopey John Candy—appearing amused. “It’s not? Well, what is it, then?” He looked at the others as if for support. “Is it Mothra?” He laughed.

  “Whatever it is, we can’t just leave it here,” said Elliott.

  Coup looked outside, at the landscaped berm on the south end of the lot. “We’ll bury it there, by the water—”

  “Look, you guys can do whatever you want,” Kate interrupted, “but I’m not touching that thing.” Her keys rattled as she removed them from her purse. “Besides, I’ve got a board meeting to attend.” She moved toward the doors. “Apocalypse or no apocalypse.”

 

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