Alone Read Free

something sinister really had happened to Jerry and Danielle, then every second mattered. But he couldn’t report it as long as the power was out and his cell phone wasn’t working. He decided to try the Lopez’s next door. Maybe their power was on. If not, then maybe their cell phones were working.
    He walked back outside again. His apprehension grew as he passed by Jerry’s car. Much like his home, the rest of the neighborhood was silent. The typical summer morning sounds were missing. There were no birds chirping from the trees and power lines. The leaves on the trees weren’t rustling in the breeze, and no squirrels scampered across them. There were no lawnmowers roaring to life. No children playing and shouting in their yards. No traffic in the street. No booming car stereos as the teenagers cruised by—no cruising teenagers either.  
    Dan stared upward into the gray sky. No planes passed overhead, even though they lived just a few miles from the airport. There weren’t even any contrails from airplanes that had already passed by. It was possible that the murky, overcast haze obscured them, but at the very least, he would have still been able to hear the planes overhead. They were a regular occurrence. But not this morning, and that meant trouble. The last time the planes were absent from the sky was the day after September 11th, when the President had shut down all air traffic in the country.
    Dan’s dread grew. He stepped onto his neighbor’s lawn. The grass should have been wet with morning dew, but it was curiously dry and brittle. The leaves drooped on the trees.
    You really need to water your yard, Hector, he thought.
    The Lopez family had moved onto the block the same year as Dan and Jerry, and they’d grown close over time. Hector Lopez, his wife Estelle, and his teenage daughter Maria, were good people, and had no problem with a gay couple living next door—let alone a gay couple raising an adoptive daughter. Hector had mentioned once that Maria suffered from depression. She had apparently gone through a self-mutilation phase, cutting herself with knives, but all that had changed now that they’d moved here. Dan liked the family very much.  
    Hector commuted into the city every morning, and Estelle worked part-time at the mall. When Dan peeked through their garage door window, he saw that both Hector and Estelle’s cars were still inside. Maria’s sporty little Volkswagen, purchased for her several months ago as a sweet-sixteen present, sat in the driveway. Dan felt a rush of relief. All three of them were obviously home. Sitting next to the vehicles was the new bass boat Hector had purchased only a few weeks before.  
    Dan crept up the sidewalk, suddenly aware that he was parading around in his bathrobe. But so what? Why should he care what anyone thought right now? This was no time to feel self-conscious. Jerry and Danielle were gone, and they were all that mattered. He rang the doorbell. The chime didn’t sound and the button didn’t light up. He rang it again, hopeful, but nothing happened.
    “The power must be out here, too.”
    He knocked, instead, and waited. When there was no answer, Dan knocked again, listening carefully for sounds from inside the house. He was greeted by silence. Cursing, he rapped again, harder this time. Nothing. He beat the door with both fists, hammering on it, hollering for Hector and Estelle and Maria—shouting for somebody, anybody, to help him. Even in his panic, Dan was aware once again of the curious, muted sound effect. The door shook in its frame, yet his blows were muffled. Even his cries sounded small in the silence. He didn’t have time to ponder it now. He reached down and tried the doorknob. It was locked. He rattled it, then slammed the door with his shoulder. His efforts produced nothing.
    Moaning, he ran back to his yard and cut across it to the Kresby’s house. Their grass also felt dry and withered.  
    Jesus, doesn’t anybody take care of