Bird Box

seven

Riverbridge.

Malorie has been to this area once, several years before. It was a New Year’s Eve party. She hardly recalls the name of the girl who threw it. Marcy something. Maribel, maybe. Shannon knew her, and Shannon drove that night. The roads were slushy. Dirty gray banks of snow framed the side streets. People used ice from the roof for their mixed drinks. Someone got half-naked and wrote the year 2009 in the snow. Now it’s summer’s peak, the middle of July, and Malorie is driving. Scared, alone, and grieving.

The drive over is agonizing. Traveling no more than fifteen miles per hour, Malorie frantically looks for street signs, for other cars. She closes her eyes, then opens them again, still driving.

The roads are empty. Every home she passes has blankets or wood boards covering the windows. Storefronts are vacant. Strip mall parking lots are barren. She keeps her eyes immediately on the road ahead and drives, following the route highlighted on the map beside her. Her hands feel weak on the wheel. Her eyes ache from crying. She feels an unyielding flow of guilt for having left her sister, dead, on the bathroom floor of their house.

She did not bury her. She just left.

The hospitals didn’t answer their phones. Neither did the funeral homes. Malorie covered her, partially, with a blue and yellow scarf that Shannon loved.

The radio comes in and out. A man is talking about the possibility of war. If mankind bands together, he says, but then it’s all static. On the side of the road, she passes an abandoned car. The doors are open. A jacket hangs from the passenger seat touching the road. Malorie quickly looks ahead again. Then she closes her eyes. Then she opens them.

The radio is working. The man is still talking about war. Something moves to the right, and she sees it out of the corner of her eye. She does not look at it. She closes her right eye. Ahead, in the middle of the road, a bird lands and then takes off again. When Malorie reaches this spot, she sees the bird was interested in a dead dog. Malorie drives over it. The car bounces; she hits her head on the roof, her suitcase rattling in the backseat. She is shaking. The dog didn’t just look dead, it looked bent. She closes her eyes. She opens them.

A bird, maybe the same bird, caws from the sky. Malorie passes Roundtree Street. Ballam Street. Horton. She knows she is close. Something darts on her left. She closes her left eye. She passes an empty mail truck and its letters are strewn on the concrete. A bird flies too low, almost hitting the windshield. She screams, closes both eyes, and opens them. When she does, she sees the street sign she is looking for.

Shillingham.

She turns right, braking as she rounds the corner onto Shillingham Lane. She does not need to check her map for the number 273. It has been on her mind the entire drive.

Aside from a few cars parked in front of a house on the right, the street is empty. The neighborhood is ordinary, suburban. Most of the houses look the same. The lawns are overgrown. Every window is draped. In her eagerness, Malorie looks to the house where the cars are parked and knows it is the one she’s looking for.

She closes her eyes and slams on the brakes.

Stopped and breathing hard, the faint image of the house remains in her mind.

The garage is to the right. The garage door, beige, is closed. A brown shingled roof rests on white siding and bricks. The front door is a darker brown. The windows are covered. There’s an attic.

Steeling herself, eyes still closed, Malorie turns and grips the handle of the suitcase. The house is maybe fifty feet from where she stopped. She knows she is not close to the curb. She does not care. Attempting to calm herself, she breathes deeply, slowly. The suitcase is beside her in the passenger seat. Eyes closed, she listens. Hearing nothing outside the car, she opens the driver’s-side door and steps out, reaching for her things.

The baby kicks.

Malorie gasps, fumbling with her luggage. She almost opens her eyes to look down at her belly. Instead, she brings her hands there and rubs.

“We’re here,” she whispers.

She takes hold of the suitcase and, blindly, carefully, walks to the front lawn. Once she feels the grass beneath her shoes, she moves quicker, walking fast into a low bush. The needles prick her wrists and hip. She steps back, listening, and feels concrete beneath her shoes, stepping cautiously to where she thinks the front door is.

She is right. Clattering her suitcase on the porch, she feels along the brick, finding a doorbell. She rings it.

At first, there is no response. There is a sinking feeling that she has reached her end. Has she driven this far, braved this world, for nothing? She rings the bell again. Then again. Again. There is no response. She knocks, frantically beating the door.

Nobody calls to her.

Then… she hears muffled voices from within.

Oh my God! Someone’s here! Someone’s home!

“Hello?” she calls quietly. The sound of her own voice on the empty street scares her. “Hello! I read the ad in the paper!”

Silence. Malorie waits, listening. Then, someone calls to her.

“Who are you?” a man says. “Where are you from?”

Malorie feels relief, hope. She feels like crying.

“My name is Malorie! I’ve driven from Westcourt!”

There is a pause. Then, “Are your eyes closed?”

It’s a different man’s voice.

“Yes! My eyes are closed.”

“Have they been closed for a long time?”

Just let me in! she thinks. LET ME IN!

“No,” she answers. “Or yes. I’ve driven from Westcourt. I closed them as much as I could.”

She hears low voices. Some are angry. The people are debating whether or not to let her in.

“I haven’t seen anything!” she calls. “I swear. I’m safe. My eyes are closed. Please. I read the ad in the paper.”

“Keep them closed,” a man finally says. “We’re opening the door. When we do, come inside as quickly as you can. Okay?”

“Okay. Yes. Okay.”

She waits. The air is still, calm. Nothing happens. Then she hears the click of the door. She steps forward quickly. Hands reach out and pull her in. The door slams shut behind her.

“Now wait,” a woman says. “We need to feel around. We need to know you’ve come in alone.”

Malorie stands with her eyes closed and listens. It sounds like they are feeling along the walls with broomsticks. More than one pair of hands touch her shoulders, her neck, her legs. Someone is behind her now. She hears fingers upon the closed door.

“All right,” a man says. “We’re okay.”

When Malorie opens her eyes, she sees five people standing in a line before her. Shoulder to shoulder, they fill the foyer. She stares at them. They stare at her. One of them wears a helmet of some kind. His arms are covered in what looks like cotton balls and tape. Pens, pencils, and more sharp objects project from the tape like a child’s version of medieval weaponry. Two of them hold broomsticks.

“Hello,” this man says. “My name is Tom. You understand of course why we answer the door like this. Anything could slip in with you.”

Despite the helmet, Malorie sees Tom has blondish brown hair. His features are strong. His blue eyes flare with intelligence. He’s not much taller than Malorie. Unshaven, his stubble is almost red.

“I understand,” Malorie says.

“Westcourt,” Tom says, stepping toward her. “That’s a real drive. What you did was extremely brave. Why don’t you sit down, so we can talk about what you saw along the way?”

Malorie nods but she does not move. She is clutching her suitcase so tight that her knuckles are white and hurt. A taller, bigger man approaches her.

“Here,” he says, “let me take that for you.”

“Thank you.”

“My name is Jules. I’ve been here for two months. Most of us have. Tom and Don arrived a little earlier.”

Jules’s short dark hair looks dirty. Like he’s been working outside. He appears kind.

Malorie looks at the housemates from face to face. There is one woman and four men.

“I’m Don,” Don says. He, too, has dark hair. A little longer. He wears black pants, a purple button-down shirt rolled up to the elbows. He looks older than Malorie, twenty-seven, twenty-eight. “You scared the hell out of us. Nobody’s knocked on that door for weeks now.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s no worry,” the fourth man says. “We all did what you did. I’m Felix.”

Felix looks tired. Malorie thinks he looks young. Twenty-one, twenty-two. His long nose and bushy brown hair make him look almost cartoonish. He is tall, like Jules, but thinner.

“And I’m Cheryl,” the woman says, extending her hand. Malorie shakes it.

Cheryl’s expression is less welcoming than Tom’s and Felix’s. Her brown hair hides some of her face. She is wearing a tank top. She, too, looks like she’s been working.

“Jules, will you help me get this thing off?” Tom says. He is trying to remove his helmet, but the makeshift body armor is getting in the way. Jules helps him.

With the helmet off, Malorie gets a better look at him. His sandy blond hair is messy above his fair face. The suggestion of freckles gives him color. His beard is barely more than stubble, but his mustache is more pronounced. His plaid button-down shirt and brown slacks remind Malorie of a teacher she once had.

Seeing him for the first time, she hardly realizes he is looking at her belly.

“I don’t mean any offense, but are you pregnant?”

“Yes,” she says weakly, frightened that this will be a burden.

“Oh fuck,” Cheryl says. “You have to be kidding me.”

“Cheryl,” Tom says, “you’re gonna scare her.”

“Look, Malorie, was it?” Cheryl says. “I’m not trying to come off as mean when I say this, but bringing a pregnant woman into this house is a real responsibility.”

Malorie is quiet. She looks from face to face, noting the expressions they make. They seem to be studying her. Deciding whether or not they are up to the task of housing someone who will eventually give birth. It suddenly strikes Malorie that she hadn’t thought of it in these terms. On the drive over, she didn’t think that this was where she might deliver her baby.

The tears are coming.

Cheryl shakes her head and, relenting, steps to her.

“My God,” she says. “Come here.”

“I wasn’t always alone,” Malorie says. “My sister, Shannon, was with me. She’s dead now. I left her.”

She is crying now. Through her blurred vision she sees the four men are watching her. They look compassionate. Instantly, Malorie recognizes they’re all grieving in their own ways.

“Come on,” Tom says. “Let’s show you the house. You can use the bedroom at the top of the stairs. I’ll sleep down here.”

“No,” Malorie says. “I couldn’t take a room from any of you.”

“I insist,” Tom says. “Cheryl sleeps at the end of the hall up there. Felix is in the room next to the one that will be yours. You’re pregnant, after all. We’ll help you with it the best we can.”

They are walking through a hall. They pass a bedroom on the left. Then a bathroom. Malorie catches her reflection in the mirror and quickly looks away. On the left, she sees a kitchen. On the counter are large buckets.

“This,” Tom says, “is the living room. We hang out a lot in here.”

Malorie turns to see his hand is gesturing toward the larger room. There is a couch. An end table with a telephone on it. Lamps. An easy chair. Carpet. A calendar is drawn in what looks like marker on the wall between framed paintings. The windows are covered by hanging black blankets.

Malorie looks up as a dog suddenly trots into the room. It’s a border collie. The dog looks at her curiously before stepping to her feet and waiting for her to pet him.

“This is Victor,” Jules says. “He’s six years old now. I got him as a puppy.”

Malorie pets the dog. She thinks Shannon would have liked him. Then Jules leaves the room, carrying her suitcase up a flight of carpeted stairs. Along the walls, pictures hang. Some are photos, some are art. At the top, she sees him enter a bedroom. Even from down here she can see a blanket covers the window.

Cheryl walks her to the couch. There, Malorie sits, exhausted from sadness and shock. Cheryl and Don say they will prepare some food.

“Canned goods,” Felix says. “We went on a run the day I arrived. This was just before the first incident was reported in the Upper Peninsula. The man at the store thought we were crazy. We’ve got enough to last us about three months still.”

“A little less than that now,” Don says, vanishing into the kitchen. Malorie wonders if he meant there were more mouths to feed because of her arrival.

Then, sitting beside her on the couch, Tom asks what things she saw on the drive over. He is curious about everything. Tom is the kind of man who would use any information she gives him, and she feels like the insignificant details she remembers are no help at all. She tells him about the dead dog. The mail truck. The empty storefronts and streets, and the abandoned car with the jacket.

“There are some things I’ll need to tell you,” Tom says. “First off, this house doesn’t belong to anybody here. The owner died. I’ll explain that to you later. There’s no Internet. It’s been down since we got here. We’re pretty sure the people who run the cell towers have stopped going to work. Or they’re dead. No mail comes anymore, and no newspapers. Have you checked your cell phone lately? Ours quit working about three weeks ago. But there is a landline, if you can believe the luck of that, although I don’t know who we’ll call.”

Cheryl enters the room, carrying a plate with carrots and peas. A small glass of water, too.

“The landline still works,” Tom says, “for the same reason the lights are still on. The local power plant runs on hydroelectricity. I can’t tell you if it will stop working, too, one day, but if the men working the power left the gates open in just the right way, the power could go on indefinitely. That means the river powers this house. Did you know there’s a river behind us? Barring disaster, as long as it flows, we may be in luck. We might survive. Is that asking for too much? Probably. But when you go to the well out back to get some water, and it’s the water we use for everything, you’ll be able to hear the river flowing about eighty yards behind us. There’s no running water here. It gave out shortly after I arrived. To go to the bathroom, we use buckets and take turns carrying the slop buckets to the latrines. Those are just ditches we’ve dug in the woods. Of course, all of this has to be done blindfolded.”

Jules comes downstairs. Victor, the dog, follows behind him.

“You’re all set,” he says, nodding at Malorie.

“Thank you,” she says quietly.

Tom points to a cardboard box on a small table against the wall.

“The blindfolds are in there. You can use any of them, whenever you want to.”

They are all looking at her. Cheryl is sitting on the arm of the easy chair. Don is standing in the entrance to the kitchen. Jules kneels by Victor at the stairs. Felix is standing by one of the blanketed windows.

They’ve each grieved, Malorie thinks. These people have experienced terrible things, like me.

Malorie, drinking from the glass Cheryl has given her, turns to Tom. She cannot rid her mind of Shannon. But she tries, speaking to Tom wearily.

“What was the stuff I saw you wearing when I arrived?”

“The armor?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not sure yet,” Tom says, smiling. “I’m trying to build a suit. Something to protect more than just our eyes. We don’t know what’ll happen if one of those things touches us.”

Malorie looks to the other housemates. Then back at Tom.

“You guys believe that there are creatures out there?”

“Yes,” Tom says. “George, the man who owned this house, he saw one. Just before he died.”

Malorie doesn’t know what to say. She instinctively brings a hand to her belly.

“I’m not trying to scare you,” Tom says. “And I’ll tell you George’s story soon. But the radio has been saying the same thing. I think it’s a consensus now. Something living is doing this to us. And it only takes seeing one for a second, maybe less.”

Everything in the room seems to get darker for Malorie. She feels dizzy, light-headed.

“Whatever they are,” Tom says, “our minds can’t understand them. They’re like infinity, it seems. Something too complex for us to comprehend. Do you see?”

Tom’s words are getting lost somehow for Malorie. Victor pants heavily at Jules’s feet. Cheryl is asking if she is okay. Tom is still speaking.

Creatures… infinity… our minds have ceilings, Malorie… these things… they are beyond it… higher than it… out of reach… out of—

But here, Malorie faints.