How many hours did I sit here listening to silence that didn't break into a channel identification jingle? How long had it been since someone yammered at me with a voice that sounded like a smile, or sang a cute, lyrical song about garbage bags or underarm deodorant. An owl hooted and doesn't cheerfully remind me not to pollute. A coyote cried his loneliness to the sky and there wasn't road runner in sight.
I was alone, completely alone, and at somewhat of a loss, as if this were my first solo trip away from home, as if I had never lived forty six years on my own. That sounds strange, doesn't it? Yet, sitting in my big old chair, staring out past the outskirts of town at the desert, I knew I have never been more alone.
Ah, I was a foolish old man. All I need do was get up and walk the old street into town. It wasn't much of a town, but it was mine and I knew everyone in it. Of course, no one but Gilda would be awake at this hour, but that didn't matter. She would be there, sitting at the counter in her store, bent over the latest issues of her magazines like a golden haired hunch back. She always kept the new magazines in her back room until she'd read them all. Then she put them out on the racks, and as people bought them she'd say:
"There's a real good story about frogs in there," if they bought the National Geographic, or "Big coats are coming back into style for the winter this year," or whatever the fashion magazines said. Yeah, Gilda always had something to say about the magazines she'd read during her long, lonely nights. It was only when she got to the Ellery Queen that she couldn't and wouldn't be bothered, or she'd give the endings away.
But, with the power out all over town and her eyes getting as bad as they were, I couldn't see her perched on her high stool with only the white fire of a Coleman lantern hissing nearby. No, like all the rest of us, I would bet she was sitting outside, waiting for the power to come back on.
A spot of light appeared across the street, like the dot on a dying tube, and I leaned forward to see who it was.
"Jeb, is that you?"
"Hot out, ain't it," Jeb said and shuffled across the street from his house. He swiveled the white beam of his flashlight up and it struck my eyes like a flash of lightning. It dropped and found the porch steps and guided him up to the old rocking chair I'd just repaired. It creaked as he sat down and aimed his flashlight at the floor. He was ninety eight and his hands, holding the silver tube of light, were creased and wrinkled like the land around us. Near all of his teeth were gone, except the two in front, and they made him look like Mortimer Snerd, all country dumb and proud of it.
"You forgot how hot it is when the fans go off," I said and he chuckled.
"S'pose so. What'da'ya reckon' happened to the lights?"
"The Palo Verde nuclear plant probably blew up," I suggested and he laughed again.
"Ah, we'da seen that from here," he said. "Prob'ly just a thunderstorm. They'll be back on soon."
"Hope so. Perry Mason is on at eleven."
"Oh. Well. Have you eaten?"
"Can't see to cook," I said.
He held out his flashlight. "This'll help."
I almost laughed at his subtlety, and pushed myself out of my chair.
"You just stay right here where its cool," I said and took the flashlight from him. "I'll fix us some dinner."
"Sure I can't help?" He asked, lazily rocking back and forth in his chair. I let the screen door bang shut behind me before I assured him I could take care of it alone.
I crossed the living room to the kitchen with the flashlight beam feeling the way like a white cane and checked the darkened refrigerator for the leftover stew. To my surprise it wasn't there in a Tupperware bowl. It was still in the pan on the stove. It looked okay, so I set it to heat on the stove's blue flame and searched for the can opener in the back of the cutlery drawer. I opened up the frozen orange juice and squeezed it out of the cardboard can like toothpaste. It plopped and dripped into the bottom of the glass pitcher, and I dumped the half melted ice in with it. I stirred the leftover stew and split it between the two plates with the last of the sourdough bread. I turned off the stove and set the plates and pitcher on a tray with flatware and glasses, and juggled the tray so I could hold the flashlight to find my way back out again.
"Here we go," I said as I backed the screen door open and turned to Jeb, only to find the rocking chair empty. "Jeb?" The screen door slammed behind me as I crossed to the table between our chairs and set the tray down. "Jeb? Where'd you get to?" I swung the beam across the yard, across the street and found no sight of him. "Jeb!" I shouted and started down the porch steps.
"I ain't deaf," he said behind me. I nearly slipped on the steps, I turned so fast, and transfixed him in the rocking chair. He took another bite out of his piece of bread and looked at me as he chewed. He swallowed and said: "I'm waiting for ya."
"Where did you go?"
"Go? Where's there to go, boy?" He looked at me kind of funny, as if he was sharing a private joke with me, but it wasn't a joke I knew.
"You gotta bottle, boy?" He asked with a distasteful glance at the orange juice.
"A bottle," I repeated dumbly and sat down.
"Yeah, you know," he gestured with his knobby thumb to his lips and tipped his head back. "Do ya, huh?"
"I have some beer," I said. "But its warm."
"Beer?" He spat on the floor and reached for his plate. He looked at it and wrinkled his nose. "Is this the best you kin do?"
"It's good food," I said defensively, and took a bite of my stew. It tasted old and cold and the bread was a hard crust when it should have been new.
"What's going on here?" I demanded and swung the flashlight accusingly on Jeb, but he was gone again. I stood up so fast I knocked over my plate and it clattered on the porch. "What the bloody hell is going on here?"
Nobody answered. Jeb didn't suddenly reappear. Cursing, I crossed the street to pound on Jeb's door.
"It ain't locked, " Jeb said from inside, and piqued my anger even more.
"Come out here, you old fart!" I shouted.He didn't answer, so I barged in, and gagged on the stench in his house. I swung the flashlight around as I covered my nose and my mouth.
"You're takin' you're time," he snapped, and I caught him in the light, sitting in his chair in front of his old black and white TV. Only, as I stepped forward to him, I saw something was different, and I knew this was the source of the smell. It was Jeb alright. It was his body and he was dead.
There was no way to tell how long he had been dead, but I thought by the way he looked and smelled it was at least a couple of days. Yet that couldn't be! I had seen him. I had talked to him. He had talked to me. He couldn't be dead, and to prove it, I touched his sleeve, but he was real. Then, the other....Jesus Christ. Only a ghost could vanish on a whim or at will. Christ on a crutch.
I left his house, but I didn't go home. He might be there. I hurried down the street and into town and crossed the empty main street to Gilda's store. I had to tell someone about Jeb so I burst through the door and started for the little back room, but the beam of my flashlight stabbed across the countertop and caught Gilda sitting on her high chair, bowed over her magazine.
"Gilda, Jeb's dead," I said and waited for her to look up. But she didn't look up and I realized there was no light on, so how could she be sitting there reading. "Gilda?"
I touched her and she fell over. Without a sound, she fell over and lay still and huddled, in the same position in which she had died. A smell came from her, too, the same smell as in Jeb's house.
"Ah, Jesus, what's happening here!"
I ran out into the street calling for help, but all the houses were dark and no one came to answer my cries. I ran from house to house, but never entered them. The smell told me it was all the same, and I was alone, like a tormented character out of the Twilight Zone.
I returned to my house, and just as I had feared, Jeb was sitting there in the rocking chair. I stared at him, at the way he watched me so thoughtfully, and I realized suddenly that he had all his teeth.
"You're dead," I said.
"I don't feel dead," he replied. "Do you?"
"What? What did you say?"
He didn't answer. He just smiled with his perfect white teeth. I threw his flashlight at him and both he and it disappeared. I strangled a cry and yanked the screen door open. I ran to the living room and my favorite chair in front of my TV, and a spot of light shot out from behind me and blossomed there.
And there I sat, slack faced and slouched with my feet on a chair, my eyes glued to the tube as if something played there.
"I figure it happened sometime yesterday night," Jeb said behind me and let his flashlight's beam drop to pool on the carpet between us. "Something in the air. Maybe in the water. But it killed us all dead."
"But I'm here. You're here."
"The others are gone," he said. "For most of them it didn't take long to realize they were dead."
"What about..."
"Me?" He smiled. "I waited for you. I tried to tell you, but as long as the TV was on you just couldn't hear me. You just tuned me out. When they turned the power off, I knew sooner or later you'd wander out."
He turned toward the door.
"Are you ready to go?" He asked. I turned off the television and followed him out.
