Deadburbia Read online

  "Try the operator," Eric suggested. There was no zero key, but there was one that looked a bit like a stylized circle, so Nikki pressed this. The phone hummed, there was a click, and through the receiver they all heard it: a moist, phlegmy groan, tortured and hateful. It went on and on, until Nikki's free hand shot up and broke the connection. Taking a deep breath, she tried again, this time pressing the key where the zero ought to have been. There was a buzz and the line began ringing. After three rings someone picked it up.

  "Hello? Hello? Oh thank God," gasped a muffled, weepy, male voice. "I've prayed and prayed someone would call. This phone doesn't make outgoing calls, they told me. I'm so scared..."

  "Are you the operator...?" Nikki asked hesitantly.

  "No! No, I'm a Thing! Oh no, oh no no no no..." the man wailed horribly. It was the wail of someone who had given up all hope. Nikki quickly hung up.

  "Let me try," said Carter, shoving her aside. "What's your number?" She told him, and he dialed it, counting off the keys and pressing the ones where the correct numbers should have been. This time the line did not ring, but immediately connected him to someone angrily babbling in what sounded like Chinese. Dialing his own number in the same manner, he got a man sobbing pitifully for someone named Martha, who broke the connection the second he spoke. Theatrically banging his head against the base of the phone, he let the receiver dangle loosely in his hand. It buzzed for several seconds before a mechanical voice came on admonishing them to make a call or please hang up. Then it sounded like someone was simultaneously laughing and vomiting, and the receiver made a weird popping sound before going silent.

  "Should we try 9-1-1?" whispered Eric.

  "I don't wanna call no 9-1-1..." said Tray.

  "What are we going to do?" asked Kim.

  "We in Hell," said Hustle reverently. "That's gotta be it."

  "We're not in fucking Hell!" screamed Carter, violently throwing the receiver to the sidewalk. It bounced off the concrete and hit Nikki in the leg. Hauling back, he tried to put his fist through the Plexiglas wall of the phone booth, failed, and then stormed off down the street, shaking his injured hand. Nikki chased after him.

  "Do you really think we're in Hell?" Kim asked. She tugged at her shorts, as if trying to pull them down to better cover herself. She felt exposed and sinful.

  "We got to be. We prob'ly had an accident out there on the highway, cuttin' each other off like that, and here we are. They prob'ly pulling our mortal remains out those two cars right now." Kim squeaked and buried her face in Eric's chest. He put his arms around her.

  "You stupid asshole," Tray said, turning on his cousin. "You scarin' everybody! You stupid fuckhead assfuck idiot. Shut the fuck up!"

  "Then why can't we leave?" Hustle asked calmly. "Why can't we leave or call no one for help?"

  "Because you're a dumb shit, that's why! You so dumb you infected us all!" Hands in his pockets, Tray stalked off down the sidewalk in the opposite direction as Carter and Nikki.

  "Great," said Hustle, "now we all splittin' up. That ain't never good." He slapped Eric on the back. "You go get your boy, I'll go get mine," he told him, jogging after Tray.

  "Stay here, by the cars," Eric told Kim. "I'll be right back." He chased after Nikki and Carter. Kim watched him go, paying special attention to his butt. He had a nice butt. Her eyes found the discarded phone receiver and she picked it up. Clutching it tightly in her left hand, she stepped into the phone booth, raised her finger to the keypad, closed her eyes, said a little prayer, and then, eyes still closed, punched out her number, area code included. As always, she dialed it in a little pattern, not even looking at the numbers. It's how she'd learned the number when she was a child, and she was so used to doing it this way that the rare rotary phone she encountered actually stymied her. Please pick up, Daddy, she thought to herself.

  "Hello?" said a muffled, familiar voice, still full of sleep. She was almost giddy, as if a great weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Thank you, Jesus, she thought to herself.

  "Daddy, my friends and I are stranded and we need your help! Can you hear me?"

  "Where...you...?" he was breaking up, but as long as he could hear her... She gave him their last known location, as best she could, and told him the name of the exit.

  "Meet us at the 7-11, okay? Except it's not a real 7-11. Okay?"

  She was relatively certain that he told her he was on his way.

  10

  "Your old man ain't coming," Tray said. All six kids were sitting or leaning on the two cars, which were parked smack dab in the middle of the convenience store parking lot, nose to nose in a V. Both front doors of the big car were open and rap music blared from within, courtesy of a cassette Hustle had brought with him. This was the fourth time they'd listened to it all the way through and even Hustle was getting tired of it, but they couldn't pick up anything on the radio besides babbling in unidentifiable foreign languages, and one broadcast that was nothing but hysterical laughter and screaming. Turning off the music entirely wasn't an option, because the silence was infinitely worse.

  Despite the bad taste, Tray had relieved the store of a twelve pack of beer and was on his fourth, although he grimaced with each swallow and didn't appear to be getting drunk. Kim had accepted one, but wrinkled her nose and threw it away after the first sip. Nikki had gone inside too, for a candy bar, dutifully leaving a dollar on the counter. But when she opened the wrapper she discovered that, rather than candy, it contained a block of polished wood, roughly in the shape of a bar of candy. She tossed it into a nearby trash barrel (pristine and, until now, apparently unused) and didn't bother going back inside to get her dollar.

  "He's coming," Kim pouted.

  "It's been three hours," Carter said, exasperated. Tray slid off the hood of his mother's car and polished off the beer in his hand.

  "This place is BULLSHIT!" he shouted. Winding up, he hurled the empty bottle at the front of the store, shattering the right side of the expansive front window. Nikki gasped as several jagged cracks raced each other to the far side and then the entire widow spiderwebbed and collapsed into tiny sparkling nuggets of safety glass, flowing into the parking lot like water, hundreds of individual pieces bouncing across the asphalt like tiny, shiny rubber balls.

  "Holy shit!" said Eric, not without some admiration.

  "Let's see 'em ignore that!" said Tray. He threw both arms in the air. "We waitin'!" he called out. "Negroes on the rampage! Come lock us up!" Hustle reached inside the car and turned the cassette deck volume down, half expecting to hear sirens in the distance. But nothing happened. "Fuck. This. Bullshit," Tray chanted, punctuating each word with a full beer, hurled through the missing front window and into the store. They heard items falling and breaking inside.

  "The moon hasn't moved," Eric said quietly, already losing interest in Tray's rampage. "All the time we've been here, it hasn't moved."

  "What does that mean?" asked Kim, snuggled up against him.

  "It means that maybe that big kid was right," Carter said quietly. "Maybe this is Hell, and we've all been condemned for our sins."

  "But we're Christians," objected Kim. Carter sneered.

  "He's not," Carter said, indicating Eric. "And neither are..." he lowered his voice "… those two."

  "How do you know?" asked Nikki.

  "I don't think black people have souls," Carter said, just loud enough for them to hear.

  "What about Jackson?" Kim asked. "He goes to our church!"

  "He's different," Carter quickly appended.

  "You're a pig," Nikki said. "I can't even believe I agreed to go on a date with you. If this is Hell, then you're here for being a disgusting, racist pig."

  "And you're here for being so self-righteous," he spat back. "And he's here because he's an atheist, and Kim's here because she's acting like a drunken slut..."

  Before he was even conscious of the fact that he'd decided to do so, Eric stepped forward and punched Carter right in the face. Carter stumbled
back, more from surprise than the force of the blow, and then stared at Eric with what could only be described as indignation. His upper lip was split and was already beginning to bleed.

  "You piece of shit..." he said. "I've got a knife!" Kim sprang in front of Eric, shielding him with her body. Eric tried to gently push her aside but she stood her ground.

  "You'll have to stab me first!" she said.

  "Why don't you just stab us all with your big knife?" Nikki said sarcastically. Everyone was staring at him, even the black kids, and he realized that, unless he did stab all three of them he had zero outs, at least none that left him with his pride intact. Letting loose with a stream of obscenities, he pushed Nikki aside, climbed into his car, and started it up.

  "Hey!" Nikki shouted. "You can't just leave us here!"

  His only response was to give her the finger as he tore off, tires screeching, into the night.

  "You're my hero!" Kim smiled, looping her arms around Eric's neck. "Kiss me!" For a moment he sympathized with Carter. No outs. He tried to give her a quick peck on the lips but she obviously had other ideas, and with a mental shrug of the shoulders he gave in. Since when was he afraid to kiss a cute girl, anyway? Even if she wasn't, by any stretch of the imagination, his type.

  "Yeah, great, except Carter was our ride, Kimberly," Nikki said. "You couldn't wait until Monday at school to deck him, tough guy?" she glared at Eric.

  "You're not invited to our wedding," Kim told her pertly.

  "Man, that guy was a dick. You better off without him," said Tray.

  Hustle watched the Omni's taillights disappear around the corner. He remembered another factoid, or rather a phrase, he'd picked up in school. Divide and conquer.

  11

  Carter did have a knife, and he retrieved it from the glove box now. It was a butterfly knife, and he absently practiced flipping it open and closed as he sat in his car, parked half on, half off the sidewalk. He was a victim of the sin of pride, he realized, and the realization, not so much the commission, pissed him off. Now he'd have to do something to get back into everyone's good graces, and the best way to do that, he knew, was to find the way out of this place. Because they damn sure weren't actually in Hell – that was lazy thinking and total bullshit. It was the kind of thing that would happen to someone on The Twilight Zone, the old, creaky black and white version from the 1940s or whenever. And it was probably a dumb, lazy cliché then.

  The problem was, he couldn't continue to just drive around, looking for the way out. He would inevitably pass the convenience store again and they'd all see him. They'd know he was still lost. They'd make fun of him. He had to try something different – think outside the box. Maybe I should start with the obvious, he thought, staring down the street and its row of sparkling, unblemished, not-quite-interchangeable houses. The lawns, he noted absently, were not only meticulously neat, the grass in each and every lot was all exactly the same height. Exactly. The residential mailboxes, identical, were squarish and light grey, and of the half dozen or so in his line of sight, only one varied in any way – its flag was up, indicating outgoing mail in the box. There wasn't a light to be seen in any of the houses – even the porch lights were out – but they must have power because two or three of the lawns were equipped with sprinkler systems that were currently active, dutifully misting the eerily perfect, dark green grass. Could someone actually be home? Could it really be that easy?

  Locking his car, and then smiling grimly for even bothering, he ambled across the street and up the walkway of the nearest house. What would he say if someone did answer the door? "Hello, my friends and I are really, really stupid and we can't find our way out of your neighborhood. Can you help?" Suddenly, he felt very foolish. He almost turned around, but, gritting his teeth, he forced himself to knock loudly on the door, before he could second guess himself into chickening out. He wondered what time it was. He wasn't wearing his watch, but it had to be pretty late. He hoped whoever lived here didn't answer the door with a shotgun.

  He needn't have worried. Nothing happened. Emboldened, he knocked again, louder this time. "Hello?" he called out. "Anyone home?" Almost without thinking, he tried the knob. It turned easily, and the door popped off the latch. He hesitated. Okay, now he was breaking and entering. But what choice did he have? Maybe they had a phone that actually connected to someplace besides the Outer Limits, or an address book with a street map in it, or something. The door swung open easily, silently, and he stepped inside. "Hello?" Carter called out again, wary of surprising someone in their own home. "The door was open. I need help. Hello?" There was a light switch on the wall to his right. He took a chance and flipped it on, and the room filled with tepid light.

  The furnishings were sparse and minimally functional, and appeared to be brand new. Carter's mother had gotten certified as a real estate agent during his parents' extended separation, back when he was in grade school, and this place reminded him of the model homes she'd sometimes show. It even smelled like one of those plastic, pre-fab homes, although there was an earthy scent too, just barely discernible. It made him think of potting soil – expensive, fancy dirt. Only when he let out his breath did he realize that he'd been holding it. Clearly no one lived here, and that was obviously the solution to the entire mystery. This was some sort of model neighborhood, and nobody, or almost nobody, lived here, yet. Or maybe they ran out of money, and the whole place had been abandoned. Either way, it was all perfectly rational. He found the rest of the house to be equally spartan and sterile, with one exception: one of the beds had obviously been slept in, and the cheap white sheets were smeared with a dark brown substance that Carter was relieved to realize was the source of the clean, earthy smell he'd detected earlier. Likely a homeless person had used the place as a crash pad.

  Stepping through a small enclosed porch into the back yard, Carter was surprised to discover that there was actually an in-ground swimming pool taking up the majority of the space, and when he hit the row of switches inside the door the entire area, including the interior of the pool, was bathed in harsh, white light. By necessity the back yard was rather cramped to facilitate the inclusion of the pool, and the wooden privacy fence that surrounded him on three sides made it feel even more constricted. He wondered if all the lots were set up like this. Sure, having a pool was nice, but what if you wanted space for a little garden, or to throw a ball around? What if you had a dog? It would have to shit on the concrete. A couple of bubbles broke the smooth surface of the crystal clear pool water. Had he turned the pump on when he hit all those switches? He walked over for a closer look.

  There was a dead body at the bottom of the swimming pool.

  Carter started, but he wasn't really scared. Still, he'd never actually seen a dead body before, not even in a funeral home, so he stared at this one with a mixture of revulsion and awe. Probably, he reasoned, this was the hypothetical homeless person who'd been sleeping in the bedroom. It was certainly dirty enough, its skin and clothing a uniform dark black in color, with isolated patches of a reddish brown. Didn't waterlogged skin eventually turn black? That sounded right. Yet its flesh appeared desiccated too, which would seem impossible seeing as it was entirely submerged in water. And didn't bodies float? He was certain that in all the crime movies he'd seen one of the biggest problems the characters had with disposing of a body in the water was weighing it down.

  Carter got down on his knees for a closer look. The body's arms were gently moving up and down in some unseen current, almost as if it were trying to float to the surface yet, for some reason, couldn't. And then Carter realized why. This corpse wasn't clothed in filthy street clothes as he'd initially assumed – it was wearing tarnished, rusty armor, honest-to-God armor, like a knight of old. That was what was weighing it down. And now Carter could see a rusty sword too, lying on the pool bottom not far away from the body. A tragic backstory came to mind: this guy, on his way to a Renaissance Fair or something, somehow falls into the swimming pool and, unable to get out of his h
ighly authentic, period-appropriate armor, drowns. Tragic, yes, but pretty funny, too, when you thought about it. "Tough break, Sir Galahad," Carter said out loud. As if on cue, the corpse's head lolled to the left, as if it were looking at him.

  And then the corpse lifted its head, desperately reaching for him with grasping, bony fingers, its jaw working up and down as if it were trying to speak. Or bite.

  Carter pissed himself.

  12

  "It's a... movie set," Eric said hesitantly, but he quickly warmed up to the idea. "That's why all the products are made-up brands! If they used real brands they'd have to pay a licensing fee or something. That also explains why there's no actual road in or out."

  "'Cept we drove in on a road, so we should be able to drive out the same way," said Hustle.

  "There is to be no criticism or discussion at this stage," said Nikki, holding up her hand. She was writing all their theories down in the little notebook she kept in her purse. "Just ideas. It's called brainstorming."

  "We know what brainstorming is. We ain't stupid," grumbled Tray.

  "So far we've got: We're in Hell. We're in Heaven. It's a dummy town for testing nuclear weapons. We're in, quote, that Jewish Hell I forget the name of it, unquote. We're in..." she sighed "...Funkytown..."

  "That one mine," smiled Tray.

  "...and, finally, it's a movie set."

  "Man, this a waste of time," said Tray. "I say we pick a direction and start walkin'. I absolutely guarantee we'll end up someplace."

  They all looked up as Carter's Omni came tearing around the corner so fast that it would've been on two wheels if it weren't an Omni. Carter, soaking wet, spilled out of the driver's seat almost before it had screeched to a halt. He left the engine running.

  "Your boyfriend back," said Tray, frowning.

  "He's not my boyfriend," said Nikki.

  "You're not gonna believe what I found!" Carter gasped. He was a little disappointed that they weren't more impressed by his dramatic return, but screw it, they'd be impressed soon enough.