See Tom Run (3 page)

Unsure of what to do next, Tom finally decided to run
next door and see if the Chandlers were home. Maybe Bill or Marge
would have an idea of what the hell was going on. Maybe they even
knew where Peg and everyone had gone.

He fled the house and trudged across the driveway to
the Chandlers’ front door and rang the doorbell. Realizing that
their power was most likely out as well, he knocked on the door and
peered through a window to see if he could see anyone. He waited a
few seconds then started beating on the door when he noticed their
only car parked in the driveway.

“Bill, Marge — are you guys in there?” he
shouted.

When nothing happened, he walked around to the rear
of the house and peered through the dining room window. There were
no signs of life anywhere. Certainly odd, seeing as the elderly
couple rarely went out with anyone and their car was here.

Tom decided to try Gary Morris, who lived directly
across the street. He knew for a fact that Gary was home because
he’d seen him pull into his garage just as he left for the
supermarket.

He ran through the driving snow across the street to
Gary’s and beat on the door.

“Gary, it’s Tom!” he cried, wanting nothing more
right now than to simply see another human being. He knew that Gary
Morris had a penchant for keeping an eye on the neighbors and their
goings on. If anyone knew what the hell was happening around here
it would be good old Gary.

After another minute of pounding and shouting, Tom
ran around to the side of the house and peered into the garage
window. Inside he saw Gary’s blue ‘99 Buick. He continued around
the side to the backyard gate and lifted the latch. He strode over
to the back door that led out from the kitchen and began beating on
it. A moment later he went over to a window and peered inside. Tom
saw nothing but a darkened room.

Gary lived in a single story ranch that had no
basement, only a crawl space. In this tiny house, he most certainly
would have heard all of the beating and shouting by now.

Tom went back over to the kitchen door and tried it.
It was locked, just as the front door had been. He made a quick
decision: he would bust out a window and go inside. Gary was either
dead somewhere in there or had vanished mysteriously like the
others. He had to find out.

He spotted a snow shovel leaning against the siding
and picked it up. He went over to the kitchen window and poked the
handle through a single pane of glass near the middle of the frame.
The muffled tinkling sound of the shattered glass was all but lost
in the raging snowstorm. Tom reached in and turned the latch,
hoisted up the window and stuck his head inside.

“Gary—it’s me, Tom! You in there?”

When no reply came, Tom slipped fairly easily though
the window and onto the linoleum floor. It was dusk now and he
could barely see his way around in the kitchen. He rummaged through
the drawers until he located a flashlight and switched it on. The
first thing he did when he spotted the wall phone was try it. The
line was dead. He replaced the phone and went into the dining
room.

Tom knew the house well. The living room was straight
ahead and the two bedrooms and bath would be to the right. He felt
his heart race in his chest as he moved cautiously into the living
room.

He flashed the light around the entire perimeter.
Gary’s easy chair was in its usual position in front of the
television. A neatly folded newspaper sat on the coffee table and
the remote control rested on a small table beside the chair. Tom
went over to the television and touched the screen. It was still
warm, just as he had expected it would be.

But where was Gary?

Tom felt like a nervous cat burglar as he crept
slowly toward the hallway where the bedrooms were located. He knew
that the first room on his left would be the spare bedroom. He
peered inside and saw nothing but a single bed, nightstand and a
dresser. He walked past the bathroom to the only remaining room in
the house. The door to Gary’s bedroom was closed. Tom took a deep
breath and turned the doorknob slowly, dreading what he might find
on the other side.

“Gary?” he called softly, startled at the sound of
his own voice in the eerie silence of the house.

He swung the door open gently.

He aimed the flashlight first on the queen sized bed
then all around the room.

Nothing. No body. No Gary.

He was gone, just like the rest.

Tom felt his heart sink like a lead weight.

Where in the holy hell is everybody?

At that moment, something inside Tom snapped.

Like a raging lunatic, he tore out of Gary Morris’s
house across the yard to the Williams house and beat on the door
furiously with both fists.

“Mike, Carol—open the door! It’s Tom Grayson! Please
come to the door and talk to me!”

He only waited a moment before turning the doorknob
to see if it was locked, which it was. He ran over to their
driveway and saw the Williams’ teenage son’s Mustang parked behind
Carol’s Sonata. Mike’s Explorer was parked out front on the
street.

Tom sprinted back to the front door.

“I know you guys are in there—answer the damn door!”
he cried.

In a fit, Tom ran around to the side of the house and
looked through a window for any signs of life. Then he ran around
to the backyard and tried the sliding patio door. Miraculously, it
slid open.

Not really expecting to find anyone there, Tom
entered the Williams house as though he lived there.

“Just dropping in to see if anyone in this fricking
neighborhood is still around — hope you don’t mind!” he hollered as
he sashayed across the family room into the kitchen. He picked up
the phone, which was of course dead, then made his way throughout
the house. There were signs that someone had been home recently—the
television in the den was still warm as was Jason’s iMac in his
bedroom. But, just like everybody else, the entire Williams family
had apparently vanished from the face of the earth.

Tom entered the living room and plopped down on the
soft leather sofa. His mind was awhirl, trying to put all of this
into some sort of reasonable perspective.

It wasn’t possible to do.

He considered the facts thus far. It was a fact that
every person he had tried to locate since returning from the
supermarket was gone. Where they had gone, he did not know. And,
they all appeared to have been in their homes before their sudden
disappearance. Everyone involved also shared the following
circumstances: the power to their homes was off and their phones
didn’t work.

Theories, Mr. Grayson?

He had none.

Deductions?

He hadn’t an inkling.

What to do now? What would be the most logical thing
to do?

Tom pondered this for a moment. He only came up with
one obvious answer: he had to find out if anybody, anywhere was
still around, period.

And he needed to do it pronto, before it got any
later.

Because the last thing he wanted to do tonight was go
to bed in utter darkness and total isolation, knowing that when he
woke up nothing will have changed.

Tom exited the Williams home and returned to his
home. It was pitch dark inside so he gathered up several candles
and placed them throughout the house. Afterwards, when he tried the
phone again only to find it was still dead, a thought suddenly came
to mind: his iBook! It ran on battery power—maybe he could get on
the internet!

Smiling to himself at the prospect, he went over to
where his laptop computer was plugged into the wall near his fax
machine and clicked opened the lid. He recalled that it had been a
bit low on power that morning so he had attached it to the charger.
It should be fully juiced up by now.

He pressed the power button and held his breath as
the computer booted up. Once he saw the desktop, he clicked on
Safari in the dock and watched the application appear on the
screen. When the window opened, he clicked on the Yahoo bookmark
tab and waited.

Two seconds later, a new window appeared.

You are not connected to the internet. Check your…

Tom leered at the screen.
Oh, but yes I fricking am connected, you
sonofabitch!

Then Tom laughed out loud lamely as he realized his
folly.

But of course you aren’t connected to the internet,
you idiot! Because although your ethernet cable is connected to
your computer, it is connected on the other end to a dsl modem
which in order to work requires not only ac power, which you ain’t
got, but a working telephone line as well, which you also ain’t
got—

Tom shut down the computer with an agonizing groan.
He now realized that in spite of his impending dilemma, he was
totally exhausted. He could feel the wind in his sails starting to
wane.

He sat the laptop down and went into the kitchen,
poured himself a glass of water and chugged it down. He knew what
he had to do next. And he was going to have to do it now, in spite
of his fatigue and in spite of the fact that the blizzard outside
showed no signs of letting up.

He retrieved the flashlight and went around the house
blowing out all of the candles. Then he left by the side door and
began scraping the freshly fallen snow off of his Jeep. The
snowstorm was really raging now.

CHAPTER
2

Visibility was very poor as he drove along Hartford
toward the police station. Having driven no less than ten blocks,
Tom made a frightening discovery: he hadn’t seen a single soul nor
a single moving vehicle since he’d left his house. Nor had he seen
any lights on or any indication that there was power anywhere — not
even the traffic lights were working. It was as if he were driving
through a ghost town.

The cold kept him alert as he negotiated the hills
and dales of Colonial Hills. The sheer darkness and lack of any
movement, vehicular or otherwise, was absolutely cryptic. Somewhere
in the back of his mind, he was fairly certain that he wasn’t going
to find anyone no matter where he went tonight. He was and always
had been an optimist, but he was also a realist. The fact that he
had not seen so much as a single shred of life in Worthington thus
far indicated a reality that was, as impossible as it was to
conceive, likely.

He nonetheless kept his hopes up as he passed by the
supermarket he had been at earlier. There were still several cars
parked outside in spite of the pitch-dark. Tom pulled up beside the
entrance and threw the Jeep into park. He got out and approached
the automatic doors, which failed to open. Inside, he saw nothing
but darkness—not even the glow of emergency lighting.

He hopped back in and continued his drive to the
Worthington Police department. There was something reassuring about
the concept of a police force, he suddenly realized. For if anyone
would still be carrying out their duties no matter how horrific or
chaotic a situation might be, it would be the local police.

And he hoped and prayed that that would be the case
tonight.

There was nearly six inches of fresh snow on the road
as Tom swung a right into the police headquarters parking lot.
Although he certainly hadn’t expected to see the place lit up like
a Christmas tree, he was dismayed to find that the station looked
as dark and foreboding as all of the other structures he’d passed
along the way.

He pulled up beside one of the cruisers and got out.
Training his flashlight along the walkway, he reached the door and
was surprised to find that he was able to pull it open. But what he
discovered inside made his skin crawl.

There was a single red EXIT sign glowing weakly on a
far wall beyond the reception area. In the dimly lit foreground, he
saw no less than a half dozen desks silhouetted by the eerie red
glow, each one equipped with a standard office telephone, a
computer tower with an unlit monitor screen, a file cabinet off to
the side and an office chair pulled up to it. Complementing the
spooky scene was a neat row of walkie-talkies lined up on the desk
sergeant’s counter beside the police radio array.

There was not a single solitary living soul in
sight.

Tom entered the office area. He touched a couple of
the computer monitors as he made his way to the rear of the office
to see if any of them were warm. When he reached one of the doors,
he pushed it open and entered what appeared to be an interrogation
room. He went through another door, past the restrooms then saw the
entrance to the jail. He checked out the cells, which were
uninhabited.

He returned to the reception area and stood for a
moment, staring blankly at the deserted Worthington Police
station.

So this is it, he thought. He was the only living
person in town. Everyone was kaput—not just his family and friends,
but his neighbors and even the entire police department!

Jesus,
he
thought.
This has to be some kind of bad
dream! It simply can’t be real!

He could see his breath in the hazy red light and
realized that the police station was absolutely frigid. That was no
wonder, seeing as there wasn’t any power to run the furnace. It was
surely going to be a cold night no matter where he went, he
thought.

Disgruntled and clueless, Tom made his way back out
to the Jeep. He fired up the engine and turned the heat up to the
max. Then he lowered his head and rested it on the steering wheel,
closed his eyes and began to pray:

God, please — you got to help me here. I don’t know
where my family and everyone have gone or what is happening. I need
to know what to do. I need to know that wherever they are, they are
alive and safe. I don’t want to die like this, God, never seeing
Peg or my kids ever again. Please God, tell me what to do! Where am
I to go?