Mark Falkin - The Late Bloomer

I nodded. “It’s so hard to describe. All I can say is that I know many are gathered somewhere.”

In the distance was Mueller’s Park and the bright red Thinkery Children’s Museum. Doubt kids were there thinkering about the old world. “Kids lived,” I mused. “What a ‘kid’ is we’re not sure. Pre-puberty?”

Bass nodded. “Yet we’re still here.”

I pressed my lips together. I looked over his shoulder at the Bronco where Kodie sat in the front. She had put her head back and closed her eyes, clearly not feeling well. “Some adults killed themselves.” In my head the bald man shoots himself in his kitchen, the little squares of windows lighting up in the dark, and the smiling nurse sits atop the fence looking down at me with that wild glamour in her eyes, nodding yes. “I do not get that, but it’s a significant number. Most died like…”

“My folks,” Bass said with a raised chin.

“Like them, and like the Flemings, the Lagenkamps. And Rebecca’s dad. The trashman on my street. It was getting him. The people at McBride’s. The white stuff. But, where are they?”

“It’s not like we’ve gone house to house. Maybe they’re all still inside.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Why?” Bass asked.

“Your folks were clearly trying to leave.”

“Yeah, but I think they were reacting to…” He caught the emotion in his throat and swallowed. “Going somewhere… That’s not what I saw in their eyes. They were panicking, flailing.” His eyes shined as he staunched tears.

“Okay. My mom walked off somewhere. Martin’s car was gone. I didn’t see a bunch of people walking this morning. But all these trucks and cars. Even this police car over here.” I pointed down the freeway and squinted. “See? The driver door’s open. Empty. These truckers, cops, shift workers, they were driving through the dawn when it happened. All of them, they pulled over, stopped, parked, got up, and walked away. Where? Why?”

I saw whales lined up on beaches. Fires at night. Dancing silhouettes.

I thought I was starting to understand why. “Like the world’s whales, they beached themselves. They went somewhere to die.”

Bass pursed his lips as he measured my conjecture. Mueller Lake winked as a flock of waterbirds took flight from its surface. “All right. So, do we go looking for the kids… or this place the dead went?”

“Kids,” I said, my voice flat. “I’m not sure finding where a bunch of dead people are matters.”

“I’m with you. We need to assess and the biggest assessment to make is to find out where the hell a hundred thousand kids are.”

And that’s when we heard the roaring.

It came from the direction of the river. We heard it three more times as we drove with windows down. Each time we heard it, we narrowed down its location. We’d angle in on the sound, disagree with each other, the noise repeated, more terrifying each time. The third time we heard it we knew it was the sound of thousands opening their throats, like what you’d hear in a stadium, a big play for the home team, the starting chords of a smash-hit song.

But it had a keening, unhinged pitch to it. Having heard nothing for a day and then to hear this, from a distance—I thought my nerves might melt down.

We heard it again driving up Barton Springs. We were so close now that Bass instinctually slowed down. The dreams and visions had hinted this was the place. The children of Austin had all gathered on the morning after at Butler Park.

Butler was this open green centerpiece to the several cultural structures near Lady Bird Lake. Next to it was the Palmer Arts Center and the Long Center. A place of picnics, running dogs and children, a night-lit fountain, ponds and walking paths and the river curving just beyond. The grand backdrop was the downtown skyline. An idyll. Of course they’d chosen it to be their place of reckoning.

We crept along, ready to bolt. I know it wasn’t just me seeing the potential scene here as we got closer. They’d hear us, stop their noisemaking, turn and come for us as a horde. It wouldn’t take long for their two hundred thousand hands to get at us through the webbed glass.

Yesterday they were disparate and coming together. Now that they were in a hive, their reaction to us might be different. Strength in numbers. Strength in groupthink. You mess with one bee, you might get stung. Go home, put some ice on it. You mess with a hive…

What, we were going to shoot at them, mow them down with the Bronco? Even if we did, there were too many.

Oh, that damned muffler’s hacking, even at this nil speed, was too much. “Kill it, Bass,” I said. “They’re gonna hear us. If we want to see them in their natural state, we’ve got to walk.”

Bass pulled into the Peter Pan Mini Golf at the corner and turned off the truck. We sat in the quiet for a moment, looking at the twelve-foot elfin Peter who, in front of the course’s building, had taken a knee and gazed into the great beyond not unlike the Great Sphinx of Giza, only this Sphinx wore tights and had a droll smile that did nothing to settle our nerves.

Bass: “Okay, let’s roll.”

We exited the Bronco, each having the presence of mind not to slam the doors.

“Let’s go over to that building next to the park there, you know?” I asked.

“Yeah, Dougherty Arts,” said Kodie.

“Let’s see if we can climb up and see what they’re doing.”

“What about Palmer?”

“You think we can slip past them on Barton Springs? It’s wide open there. They’ll all see us and then it’s a footrace. And we’d be treed up there if they saw us. The school’s better.”

We stood at the bus stop across from the Peter Pan. I was scanning around while Bass talked and in my head I heard the MoPac train from last night. Chasing that train had been futile, I’d thought. But now I’m not so sure because the residue of its sound caused my eyes to fall upon the bridge stretching across Barton Springs Road just yards away.

Bass yammered next to me. I slapped him on the chest with the back of my hand—shut up for a sec, I’m thinking. I stared at the yellow sign which read 13ft-7in posted on the bridge across which only trains crossed. This was where the MoPac—the Missouri Pacific Railroad—took a turn through downtown Austin before making its way south. It ran right past the park, and from memory I knew it did so under the cover of trees and vines. When the train passed through it was a haunting sound because you couldn’t see it. You just hear it motoring through the trees, the high whine of stressed metal, the thunder of rolling weight. Like a monster in the trees.

A beast, maybe.

“I got it,” I said, my knuckles still brushing Bass’s T-shirt. “Look.” I pointed up.

“Ah,” Kodie said. “Nice. We can scramble up there and look down on them.”

“Won’t they see us?” Bass asked.

I shook my head. “Too many trash trees and ivy. We’ll be able to see them but they won’t see us. I got this, too.” I held up my $1,000 tactical binoculars. “If there’s a problem, we can scoot down and get to the Bronco.”

Making sure to avoid the beds of spiky poison ivy, within minutes we made it to the top of the incline where the cement braced the receding bridgeworks. Just as we got to the top, the children roared. At what impulse, we hadn’t a clue. We made our way along the track, walled-off by thick foliage.

Down below us about twenty feet, bivouacked into a spot below, a leaning tree was a miniature tent city established by some homeless. Across from this was the back of the Dougherty Arts Center which was covered in colorful graffiti. The one which caught my eye, however, was simply the word scary , rendered in black and lacking artfulness there in the middle of it all above a back door.