One One-Thousand
I’d been among the few stuffed animals that Mrs. Carmine had placed inside the crib when she first brought little Cynthia home. The others lining the rest of the room hadn’t been as lucky and so the toddler rarely played with them in the years to follow.
Her bright blond curls stood out in family portraits when set against the straight dark hair of her adoptive parents. They adored the child. She was showered with attention. Always given new toys. It didn’t matter, I remained her favorite. So on the day the screams started, little Cynthia came running for me first.
The Carmines had a television in their living room, but if I wasn’t placed or dropped on the floor in its line of view, I’d be stuck having to piece things together just by listening. What I heard was horrifying. Mass violence overseas. Some type of invasion. Enormous power outages leaving entire countries in the dark. I’d hear Mr. Carmine talking about a potential war and how they’d have to start coming up with an escape plan would it ever reach Stateside. I’d hear Mrs. Carmine sit up crying for nights in a row. Cynthia held me tighter than ever before. After she’d fall asleep, I’d stare at the other stuffed animals in the room with me, all of us with the same blank expressions we’d always worn. I always wondered if they too, could think like me. If they were stuck inside their own bodies like I was, unable to move or speak, just observe and process. I assumed they could. But of course, I’d never know, just like they’d never know if they ever wondered the same thing about me.
“Sam!” I heard Mrs. Carmine crying out to her husband from another room. “Get in here now!” She sounded petrified and began sobbing loudly. Cynthia stopped her coloring, scooped me up by one of my floppy ears, and ran out of her room towards her mother. From the poor girl’s arms, I watched the television but struggled to make sense of what I was seeing. A helicopter was transmitting a live feed from high above. It showed a gigantic gaping hole in the middle of a desert. I couldn’t make out how large it was until I realized the small specks surrounding its outer edge that I mistook for ants turned out to be people. Millions of them. The camera zoomed in as far as it could onto a cluster of them. I could almost make out their faces when Mrs. Carmine shrieked again, covering her mouth. “They’re digging!” She yelled to herself. Cynthia and I were made to go back into her room, though I couldn’t help but think about what I’d just seen. Who were those people? Something about the way they were standing wasn’t normal.
In the coming weeks I tried piecing together what little information I could. Mass suicides were happening globally. People were voluntarily walking into the oceans without trying to swim. All heading towards the hole that had gotten so big it now seemed to cover half of Egypt. Mrs. Carmine began sleeping next to Cynthia at night. She’d taught her daughter to count from ten one-thousand all the way down until she’d hit zero. She told her how that was the magic number that could instantly slow her racing heartbeat if she ever got scared. But how she could only use its magic once in her life. How the fewer numbers she’d need to count, the braver she was. Cynthia never needed to get past six one-thousand.
One afternoon I heard shouting. But it sounded different than ever before. I quickly realized it wasn’t coming from anywhere inside the house. Just then, I heard the front door open and slam shut.
“Carol – get Cynthia now! It’s here! It’s come here!” I heard Mr. Carmine running through the house, gathering things.
“What?!” Mrs. Carmine’s voice from their bedroom.
“Now Carol! Go!”
“Tell me what’s happening!”
“No time, I’ll explain in the car! Get Cynthia!”
The sound of the bedroom door bursting open woke the sleeping girl. Her mother grabbed her hand.
“Come on baby, we’re leaving.” I watched the two hurry out of the room, down the hall, and around the corner out of sight.
“Wait!” I finally heard. The sound of little footsteps ran back towards me and a minute later, I was in the girl’s arms as the three of them headed for the front door, bags of food in hand.
“Straight to the car.” Mr. Carmine said. Then, sunlight. Since first arriving to the Carmines’, I’d been taken outdoors twice. Once for a trip to the park and once to play with Cynthia in the backyard. For the past year and a half however, we lived with the world turning into utter chaos. Now, I finally saw for myself the reality of it all.
The first thing I noticed were the screams coming from half the houses on the block. A few cars had broken windows. Then, a man running, another chasing him while flailing his limbs violently, saying something over and over in a gurgled voice. Mr. Carmine jumped in the car. Mrs. Carmine opened the backseat for me and the girl, then slammed it shut and hurried into the passenger seat. I tried to see where the two men ran to but couldn’t find them. When the car backed away from the driveway they reentered my line of sight.
“Mommy!” Cynthia howled. The gurgling man had caught up to his victim, pinned him to the ground, and was now forcing himself atop his head to get to his ear. He began chanting the same phrase over and over again. A language I’d never heard. In a matter of seconds the man trying to fight himself free stopped moving. He stiffened out. Then, his limbs cracked into a position they weren’t made to take. He began to utter something. His voice had changed into the same demonic growl as his attacker’s. He jumped up and the two began running again. But this time, together, and in complete syncopation.
“Drive, Sam!” Cynthia’s mother yelled.
“What’s happening?” Mr. Carmine muttered to himself.
As the car pulled away from the house, I looked out passed the back window. Trees whirled by. Homes on fire, cars overturned, we were nearing downtown. More packs of those gurgling people, all chanting the same thing, all with cracking limbs running in a form no human body has ever taken before. No blood stains, no wounds, just the same expression on their faces as I had seen on those people surrounding the huge hole in the Earth. It looked, evil. Muscles I’d never seen a face use held their features in place. Unsymmetrical eyes. Lips that snarled. Crooked noses.
“They’re saying whatever it is reached Manhattan last night. By this morning it was here in Florida and an hour ago just outside Sarasota.” Mr. Carmine relayed the news to his shocked wife, too paralyzed to cry. “They turn into these things by some signal the brain picks up when it’s close enough to hear it. Then they go after others, turning more until they have enough and start heading East.”
“Why East?” Mrs. Carmine asked.
“They’re headed in that hole’s direction. Whatever’s buried there, they’re digging for it constantly, day and night, even after some have their arms fall off, they continue to dig. It’s…, this is it. This is how the world ends.” The car continued to race through the city streets.
“Don’t talk like that, I’m sure they’ve started dropping bombs on that pit by now.”
“It doesn’t work! New ones find their way to it! They just-“
Mr. Carmine had been in the middle of catching his breath when an SUV barreled into the driver’s side. We slid to a complete stop with broken glass covering the inside of the car. I couldn’t see the aftermath but by Mrs. Carmine’s hysteria, I assumed the worst.
“No! No, no, Sam, my God!” Cynthia had never been quick to cry. But now I started feeling her chest rise and lower quicker and quicker. “Baby get out of the car!” Mrs. Carmine flew out and grabbed her daughter out and into the street. Cynthia held me tighter. I could see the driver from the SUV’s body had smashed through its windshield. “Oh my God, oh my God. Where? Where?” The girl’s mother was frantically looking for a place to run towards. Screams came from all around us. The storefronts were all broken into. Gunfire from both near and far. “There!” She grabbed her daughter’s hand and the two of them ran inside a neighborhood deli. The chairs that were once stacked up against the door had been pushed to the side. Mrs. Carmine looked around in a panic. Then a voice.
“Over here! Hurry!” From behind the counter, a man stood waving his arm. We ran towards him as he pointed to the walk-in freezer. “My wife and son are in there, come on!”
The two pounded on its outside and a few seconds later the thick door swung open. From back out in the dining area, a loud crash rung out by windows being broken, then the faint sounds of deep gurgled chanting filled the room.
“They’re in! Hurry, get to the back of the freezer!” The man yelled. His wife, young son, Mrs. Carmine and Cynthia huddled together in the dim corner as the man pulled the freezer door shut and stacked as many crates as he could find in front of it. He kept the light on and I watched him kneel down in prayer. Cynthia squeezed me tight and I noticed the young boy with us looking at her in worry, he too held a stuffed bunny in his arms. I made eye contact with it and it with me. I didn’t know what the young boy had named his furry friend or if they’d made as many memories as little Cynthia and I had over the years. I didn’t know how close the two had become or if the young boy had ever been able to read the bunny’s blank face as well as Cynthia had been able to read mine. I didn’t even know if the bunny could feel emotion or think thoughts like I could, but still, we stared at each other in silence. Outside, gurgled chanting neared closer to the freezer.
“Ten one-thousand…,” whispered a shaking Cynthia. “Nine one-thousand…eight one- thousand.” Pounding on the door began. The man prayed faster, louder, with more aggression. The chanting, though in unison, sounded like it came from a dozen or more voices. “Five one-thousand…four one-thousand.” The man began crying, the chanting grew louder, the pounding turned into violent scratching. Panels began getting pulled off in all directions. The bunny held its blank expression, still looking at me, and by the time Cynthia reached one one-thousand and hadn’t yet stopped, I wondered if it knew how scared it should truly be.