The Melting Read online

  “Holy Jesus!” It’s James, and his voice is breathy and shocked. “What is that?” He’s looking straight ahead, over my shoulder from his position in the back seat.

  I follow his eyes through the windshield and see it immediately, a blanket of pale gray rising from the ground at the base of the Maripo River Bridge. We’re still almost a mile from the bridge, but there is no mistaking the wall that’s been constructed there; it’s at least ten feet high, rising toward the sky like the façade of a skyscraper.

  Tom continues to drive toward the white wall, no doubt thinking the same thing I am, that he’s not seeing it properly, that it’s some trick of the sky and landscape that’s creating the illusion of a barrier.

  But another hundred yards removes any doubt that the image is real. The wall is there, perhaps even higher than my initial ten-foot estimate, and it spans the entire width of the bridge, extending across the road and buttressing against the reinforced concrete traffic barriers on both sides of the highway.

  Tom stops about a quarter mile short of the bridge and puts the truck in park. “Any suggestions?”

  “Why would they do this?” James asks.

  “It’s like they’ve set up some type of quarantine area,” Stella adds, her voice sounding as genuinely surprised as I would expect from someone not privy to any details.

  “There are no soldiers though. No military or police presence at all. Wouldn’t they have a tank or something, like back at the exit ramp?”

  “What do you think, Stella,” I say, “Where’s the rest of the colonel’s friends.”

  Stella scoffs, and I can feel her frustration behind me. “How long is this type of questioning going to go on?” Her voice is pitched, indignant, but I don’t turn around.

  “I suppose until we get answers,” I reply.

  “Well then I guess it’s going to be for the rest of our time together, because I don’t have any. Not about this anyway. I’ve told you everything I know about what was supposed to happen with the experiment. At least everything that I was told, which was obviously less than Terry.”

  “James is right, though,” Tom says, ignoring the growing spat between Stella and me. “If they was really serious about keeping us from leaving, they’d have done more than throw up this wall. My guess is they ain’t got the manpower to guard every exit road out of here.”

  Warren County is essentially a peninsula, attached to the mainland of the state to the west, and surrounded by water otherwise. And there are only three roads out, two of which are via bridges: the Maripo River Bridge at which we are currently, and the Howard Steeple Bridge at the south end of the county. Both of these bridges span water wide enough that a fit person could never swim them in perfect weather, and certainly not in freezing conditions like these.

  “Then we’ll head west along the river until we reach Hambleton,” James suggests. “From there well take 7 out of town.”

  The other exit is west along the peninsula, the route James just suggested.

  “I’d expect there’d be a roadblock there as well. And I have a feeling that might be the route where they’ve congregated their manpower.”

  “Why do you think that?” Stella asks, and a sense of suspicion activates in me once again.

  “Just a hunch, really, but I’m guessing they figured if they blocked off the bridge with a wall too high to climb and too wide to get around, anyone who still wanted out would be forced to try another route, the most obvious being the one James just talked about. But even if they do block the road out of Hambleton, they can’t block off the whole town, so I expect they’re monitoring the road along the way and we’d meet some company before we ever got that far.”

  “What about south?” Danielle asks.

  Tom shrugs. “That’s the Steeple Bridge. Assume it would be like this ‘un. Choked off at the source. And I don’t think we got the gas to get there anyhow.”

  The gas station where we stopped on the way from my house had no working pumps, but we were lucky to find a couple of full containers in the garage. It’s not a scenario we could necessarily depend on again.

  “So maybe Dominic had the right idea after all,” Danielle says, her voice loud and slightly panicked. “Maybe we should just throw ourselves at the feet of these crab things. Or shoot ourselves in the head and get it over with.”

  “Not saying that, Danielle,” Tom assures, “just being honest about the situation.”

  “Let’s take a look,” I say, nodding toward the passenger door, encouraging Danielle to open it. She frowns and pushes open the door, and I follow her down to the thin layer of snow that now covers the asphalt. It’s still pretty cold outside, but not anything like it was just a few weeks earlier when Naia and I were still holed up in the student union of the college. It seems like three lifetimes ago that I was there, bickering with her about whether or not to leave, about whether to brave the weather and the white beasts that lingered outside.

  The crabs.

  They had come only sporadically back then, showing up every couple of days, two or three at a time. That was until that last day when the sun returned and we made the decision to leave. Then there had been dozens. Attacking us like the cannibalistic monsters they turned out to be. It was that day that I knew the world had truly ended.

  But we had managed to escape, fleeing the snow-covered campus of Warren Community College, sprinting across the quad until we were outside the college grounds and in the parking lot of Balmore Plaza, the shopping center that bordered the school to the east.

  But that was the final stop for Naia. Before she ever had the chance to start again, to begin a new existence with the group in the diner, the crabs that had been waiting at the entrance of the Thai restaurant were on top of her, tearing out her insides with their bare hands.

  It should have been me, of course, who went to investigate the Thai restaurant, the one who opened the door unexpectedly, only to be disembowelled by the proprietors inside who had turned with the snow.

  But, once again, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t me at the restaurant and it wasn’t me at home with my wife on that Sunday afternoon in May when the snow began to fall. My flaws have saved my life. My improprieties and cowardice and lack of principle are the only reason I’m still alive today.

  And the truth is, despite my concessions to Danielle in my own foyer a couple of hours earlier, I don’t really want to live anymore, and the guilt and loneliness that are promised in my future continue to rage. But I’m going to live anyway. I’m going to give it the effort at least, if only for the sake of the two women I’ve murdered.

  I walk to the base of the bridge and stare up at the absolute unscalability of the wall in front of me. It’s concrete in construction and looks similar to the noise barriers often seen along the highway, the ones backing against housing subdivisions to spare them the constant blare of passing traffic. The sides of the wall extend beyond the width of the road, blocking the entire view of the bridge from this distance and making it impossible to walk around and onto the bridge from the street.

  I walk over to one of the guardrails that meets the base of the wall, and I can see beyond it the drop off to a steep hill that slopes down to a row of houses on the water. It looks to be at least a fifteen-foot rise from the bottom of the hill to the street, which means there will be no walking to the side of the bridge from the bottom and then climbing onto it from an angle.

  The only way out of Warren County in this direction is on the water.

  “That don’t look too promising,” Tom says, now standing beside me, following my gaze down the hill. “If you was thinking what I was.”

  “Yeah, it’s what I was thinking.”

  “What are we going to do down there? We won’t be able to get on the bridge from there.” It’s Stella, and beside her is James. Danielle walks up seconds later to complete the huddle at the base of the bridge.

  “The way I see it,” I say, “we have two options, and neither of them seems all that great
.”

  Everyone stays silent, waiting for me to complete the idea.

  “And I guess the option we decide to go with really depends on what our goals are.”

  “What does that mean?” Stella asks. “Goals?”

  “Well, I mean, is our goal just to survive as long as we can? Hang out in this wasteland and hope someone from outside of this nightmare eventually comes to our rescue? A miracle helicopter or something. Or is our goal to keep going? To try and get as far as we can from this place, even if that means taking some big risks?”

  The group is quiet again, this time pondering the options.

  “What do you think, Dom?” It’s Tom, and his eyes are soft, genuine, earnestly interested in my guidance.

  “Of course I want to survive,” I say without hesitating.

  “Really?” Danielle asks, “Should that be obvious to us?”

  The jab is fair, and I let it stand without responding. “But I also want to find out what happened. And to do that, in my opinion, we need to get out of here. And the closest exit out of here is the other side of the river.”

  Stella closes her eyes and begins to shake her head.

  “What?” I ask. “Why the dismissive head shake?”

  “Getting to the other side of the river doesn’t guarantee you’ll get answers.”

  “No? Isn’t that where Dramatech is or whatever your company is called?”

  “The name of the company is Drumbard and Wallace Technologies, and it’s several miles past the bridge, which, I’ll remind you, is blocked at the moment by the Great Wall of Warren. And even if you were somehow able to get us there, across the bridge and then to D&W, do you really think that you’ll be able to just saunter right up and speak to the principles there? Especially if they are the ones behind all of this?”

  I give Stella’s concerns the proper consideration before replying. “No, probably not. But you might be able to.”

  Stella scoffs, her eyes wide and disbelieving. “I’m here too! Why would I be able to do that?”

  “I’m sure you have your badge or whatever credentials you need to get inside the building.”

  Stella rolls her eyes and gives a quick quiver of her head, a signal that I have no idea what I’m talking about, which, in fairness, I don’t.

  James starts to laugh. “Inside the building? What are you talking about? That’s the plan? Have you looked around? It’s the middle of summer and there’s snow on the ground. The world is over. I want to get out of this town too, but what makes you think there’s anything for us across that bridge.” He holds an extended arm out to the shores of the opposite bank. “It’s all white as far as any of us can see. Snow and snow and more snow. And can’t you see them moving over there? Because I can. Hopping around like overgrown arctic rabbits, just lying in wait?”

  James starts to laugh harder now.

  “I think it’s a possibility. That’s all.”

  “Or it’s a possibility that the fucking world has come to an end, and we’ll spend the rest of our lives being hunted by ghosts? Except worse than ghosts, because even though they look like ghosts, they don’t pass through you when they touch you, they tear out your goddamn kidneys!”

  “That’s all now, James,” Tom says, his voice low and steady. “We all know the situation.”

  James begins to speak again and Tom snaps his head toward him; the diner owner’s face remains calm and comforting, but there’s a threat in his eyes that keeps James quiet.

  “If you have a plan, James,” I say without sarcasm, “I’m willing to hear it. I’m sure we all are.” I hold James’ stare until he shakes his head quickly and then turns and walks back to the truck in a huff.

  We all watch James until he reaches the vehicle and slides back into the passenger seat, and then Tom looks back to me and says, “So you want to leave Warren County. Sounds like an idea to me. How we gonna do that?”

  I nod toward the row of homes at the bottom of hill, which are a mixed tableau of modern-day mansions and sixties era ramblers; the latter, no doubt, belonging to older citizens who have lived on the coast for years and have had no interest in entertaining the barrage of offers thrown their way from wealthy investors. This is the place they’ve lived for most of their lives, the place where they’ve raised their families, made their livings, and intended to die. And it would seem at first glance, they realized their dreams in full.

  Despite the variance in home sizes, however, the lots all seem to be spaced rather evenly in a horseshoe shape around the curve of the shoreline, with only a few precious yards of space between them. “You see these waterfront homes here?” I ask rhetorically.

  Tom nods.

  “Every one of them has a pier, which means most of them have boats.”

  Tom nods and then squints in confusion. “Don’t see many boats though.”

  Tom’s right: most of the piers are empty, and the few boats that are still docked seem to mirror the conditions of the houses; which is to say, the mansions have yachts, and the dated homes have old fishing boats which, even from a distance, display their weathering and fading paint.

  “Don’t suppose you’ll have much luck with those yachts. No sensible person would leave keys to any beautiful boats like that inside. Probably do better with that Sea Nymph out yonder. ‘Bout, uh, ten houses down, I’d say. See it?”

  Tom points to a small fishing boat with a silver hull and pistachio green interior. Unlike the fancy yacht docked at the pier of the house beside it, the Sea Nymph has an outboard motor that, if it starts at all, will need every ounce of horsepower to move the five of us to the other side of the river. But we’re not entering a regatta; we just need something to get us across.

  “I think that might be the winner, Tom,” I say, and I can almost feel Stella’s incredulity bubbling beside me.

  “That thing?” Stella asks finally, her tone tempered, but I’m sure that’s only for Tom’s sake.

  “Do you have experience with boats, Dom?” Danielle asks.

  “Not really, but we’re not heading to Barbados. We just need to cross a mile, mile and a half of water. Still water at that. That’s one silver lining of these freezing temperatures—they slow down the current.”

  “Dom’s right,” Tom says, “don’t need to be a sea captain to take a motorboat across a river. And I’ve got plenty of hours on the water if need be.”

  “I think we might be needing,” Stella jabs, and then grins over at me.

  “But I would recommend that if this is to be our decision, we should get going with it. Whether it be that Nymph or sumpin’ else, we should get down there and see if we can get one to start. And even if you do get the Nymph going, it wouldn’t hurt to check the ignitions of some of those big boys either. If the keys are there, I think we’d all rather go in style.”

  “I think maybe only two of us should go down at first,” I say, “and then, if we can get one going, we’ll give a signal to whoever stays behind. Who’s with me? Danielle?”

  Danielle purses her lips and cocks her head, a gesture indicating flattery that she’d been recruited so quickly for the mission. She nods.

  “Shall we then?”

  “We shall.”

  I hop the guardrail and begin to make my way down the steep embankment that leads from the road and bottoms out into a small clump of tall trees that rise up above the freeway, naturally blocking the view of the houses from the road. Danielle follows right behind me.

  The footing on the hill isn’t treacherous exactly, but each step requires concentration; a sprained ankle wouldn’t be the end of the world at this point, but it wouldn’t be helpful either.

  And then, despite my focus on the descent, something above and behind me stops me in my tracks midway down the hill. Whether it was because of a faint sound, one that didn’t quite register consciously, or, perhaps, from some primitive, extra-sensory instinct of “being-watched,” I feel compelled to turn back to the bridge. And when I do, I see them instantly.
r />   There are at least a dozen of them, crabs, standing atop the side barrier of the bridge that faces us, their bodies hunched down like gargoyles, their bare white feet wedged between the bottom railing and the top of the concrete partition. Their knees knife straight out over the water, as if they’re poised to jump, and though they remain virtually motionless from their necks down, their eyes follow our every move, their heads shifting constantly, keeping Danielle and I in the proper frame at all times.

  I want to gag with fear, but I put a hand to my mouth to stifle any noticeable reaction. I turn back to the hill and see Danielle placing one foot carefully in front of the other. She hasn’t seen the crabs or my reaction, and I suddenly feel a responsibility to keep both from her.

  I return my focus to the hill, and the moment we reach the bottom and start towards the neighborhood, I keep her centered on the houses in front of us, feigning a bit of confusion about which home had the boat that we’ve decided is the best candidate for our journey. “I can’t remember if it was the eighth or ninth house.”

  “Follow me,” she says. “I’ve got it.”

  I fall in behind Danielle and follow her towards the house, jogging lightly as we go, and I can’t help but look back to the bridge one more time. I can see Tom and Stella watching us from their place next to the wall, only a few yards from where the crabs are on the opposite side, and I give them a thumbs up, which Tom alone acknowledges by holding up an open hand. I then swallow and look over to the line of crabs, which have now doubled in size atop the railing. They look like a murder of crows, or, perhaps more aptly, seagulls.

  We reach the tenth house from the bridge and I return my concentration to the mission, pushing through the picket gate and immediately venturing out to the back yard and onto the pier. The Sea Nymph bobs gently by the pier, meekly fighting against its mooring, and now that I’m only a foot or two from the small fishing boat, I can see that its even older than I suspected—it’s thirty years old if it’s a day—and uglier than a rusty trash can. But all the parts seem to be in place, and, most importantly, it’s easily big enough to hold the five of us.