Run Joe run! came the voice within, the small spritely voice of Alex, possibly the nicest person he had ever known, whose blown apart body lay behind him now, on the other side of the shopping center. After rounding the back of the strip mall in front of a ladies’ hair salon and a shoe store he all of a sudden felt funny about running, as if it would draw too much attention to him with all of these slow walking grownups about.

Joe slowed and began walking along the sidewalk under the canopy. This reminded him of Dad’s favorite horror movie, the one he said was a classic and depicted real life in some weird way; the one Mom would never watch. In that movie a man had wandered around looking for his family in a world of walking corpses possessed by an alien intelligence. Joe felt like that man.

There were just enough grownups to make him weave in and out, and a couple of little kids come shopping who looked up at him as if he were the super kid of the future, wondering what it would be like to view the world from such a great hairy height. With these busy people and the doors of businesses opening he felt clumsy and out of place, afraid he would walk into someone or something and call attention to himself. A door swung open in front of him almost smashing his face and a person in uniform ran out, a policeman!

The man paid attention only to the voice coming from the radio next to his shirt pocket, which said something about a ‘live shooter’. As the heavy glass door closed of its own accord he read the emblem that was emblazoned with a police badge and the legend POLICE SUBSTATION #3. His legs grew rubbery and he almost fell over but was saved by the textured concrete wall.

The policeman was off and away. Now the sounds of a helicopter chopping the air overhead came to him and he just wanted to disappear into a puff of smoke—be gone forever like a floating dandelion spray flitting above the lawn…

“Are you okay Sweetie,” came the soft voice of a young woman that was oddly nestled in the rumble of a muscle car’s engine.

Joe looked up to his left even as he stepped zombie-like down off the curb onto the parking lot drive that he had begun thoughtlessly crossing.

He saw the sleek lines of some kind of sports car that Dad would have loved, except that it was powder blue instead of red, as Dad no doubt would have declared it should have been. Before his eyes scanned up to the window of the idling car her voice came again, as pretty as wind chimes on a quiet winter morning out on Mom’s porch.

“Do you need a lift Sweetie?”

Joe looked up into the eyes of a pretty blonde lady that was about the age of a student teacher he supposed. She was overweight, a little bigger than Mom, but not as big as Alex’s mom—poor Mrs. Jackson! She loved Alex so much.

“Get in Sweetie, no time to dally.”

He opened the door like a robot and sat slowly down onto a seat that had been occupied by an old time family photo in a picture frame which was being removed and placed on the back seat by the extremely plump white lady in the driver’s seat. She then turned to him with some wet wipes and wiped something off of his face and shoulder—Alex, oh God!

More wet wipes were being placed in his hands. “Here you go Sweetie, you finish, Martha May has to roll.”

The car rumbled off as the commotion of the chopper, roaring police engines, sirens and the murmur of the crowd became like a great hissing stream—no, more like a sewer—washing over him in a torrent like that time his kayak flipped when he and Dad were up in Franklin. He recalled how he had not wanted to emerge from the rushing water, and how sad he had been—but glad too—when Dad’s big heavy hand had reached down and pulled him by his harness up out of the water and dragged he and his kayak—the kayak named Bob—onto the stony bank in that land of smoke-ringed mountains…

Joe's story is to be concluded in the novella Fat Girl Dancing to be released in October.