One

An Ordinary Sunday in Masterson

The day the world started to end, it was hot outside. When the sun came up over Masterson that fateful Sunday, nobody could have foreseen the carnage that was about to unfold. Before lunchtime, half the citizens of that sleepy New Hampshire town would be dead.

It was a little after nine, and it was already getting warm out. Dick Carnaby on The Weather Roundup said it would hit a hundred degrees by midday. But nothing seemed out of place in Masterson. It looked like a typical Sunday morning. Sprinklers showered down on luscious green lawns. Songbirds fluttered from one tree to the next. The paperboy peddled through the streets, tossing the Sunday Gazette onto porches. And perhaps most traditionally of all, Milo Winters and his dad were out on the driveway, washing the car – a chore they tackled together every weekend.

Milo’s mom had insisted that they both wear their thick-brimmed hats. The ones they used to take fishing, back before Milo became a brooding teenager. But while Milo could give fishing the cold shoulder, he couldn’t say no to washing the car with his dad – it was the only condition of his weekly allowance, which he’d been saving up for the latest Goblin Avenger game.

Besides, it wasn’t a particularly hard chore. He just had to stand on the driveway and hold the bucket up every time his dad came over to re-dunk his sponge. Bucket holder, as his dad called it, had been Milo’s job every Sunday morning since he was too young to remember. He was thirteen that hot, awful day, so he was well-practiced by then.

Milo was scrawny and pale and had an untidy mop of mousy-blonde hair. He wore an oversized white t-shirt, with black lounge pants.

In contrast to his son, Dallas Winters was tall and well-built – the result of many an evening spent with the lifting bench in the garage. His hair was dark, and he wore it in a crew cut. He had an all-year-round tan even though he spent most of his time in the office, and he wore ugly, tinted glasses that went brown in the sun. 

‘Binko, play The Berries,’ Dallas said as he dunked his sponge into Milo’s bucket. 

The smart speaker he’d set down on the lawn started to play. The Berries were a little-known and even-littler-appreciated barbershop band from the sixties. Dallas had become obsessed with them after hearing them on Throwback Hour on Radio Six. Now he played them on loop: while driving round town in the Mamba, while mowing the backyard, while working out, even while washing the car on a Sunday morning. 

Milo watched his dad run the sponge over the car’s hood. The suds turned crusty white the second they touched the Mamba’s skin, and vapor drifted softly upwards into the hot morning air. 

That car was his most treasured possession. It was a classic red sportster (Volcanic Red, if Dallas was to correct you) from the late seventies. He’d gotten it five years back when it came up for auction at Riley’s Motor House, down on Benvale Street. 

He knew he shouldn’t have bought it, but when his dad died, it triggered something in him, and he felt like life was too short not to treat yourself once in a while. So he went down to the bank and withdrew half his retirement pot (even though he was still a good thirty years off retiring). 

‘I’ll have three long decades to build it back up,’ he told his wife, but she wasn’t the biggest fan of that reasoning. 

That was all ancient history now, though. Milo’s mom had gotten over it, in the end. She even admitted it was a nice car. She might mention the whole debacle, though, once in a while if Dallas ever questioned some lavish online purchase of hers. Remember the time you spent half your retirement fund on that fucking car? He’d bite his tongue pretty quickly.

The Berries suddenly cut off, and a news reporter began broadcasting, ‘More casualties are being brought into emergency rooms across the states, with as yet undiagnosed symptoms. The strained services are urging you to…’

‘Binko, play The Berries!’ Dallas demanded. 

The blue LED wheel on the front of the smart speaker started to spin, and then his favorite barbershop quartet rang out across the garden again.

‘Smart speaker, my ass.’

A breeze tickled down the street, and Milo heard something flap around in the gutter. He set the bucket down and went to take a closer look.

It was a mask, from the virus, caught in the storm drain. All beat-up and sun-faded. It’d been a long time since he’d seen one. Two years, probably. The Winters used to have a different color for each family member for when they went out to the mall. They hung on nails, by the front door. 

His little sister Sally was born just before the lockdown and was too young to wear one, but their mom would pull her blanket up over her nose in the buggy. 

Milo was glad to be rid of masks. They made his face hot and sticky, and the elastic cut into his ears. If he ever had to wear one for more than a couple of hours, he’d be guaranteed a fresh zit or two on his chin or just above his lip. 

Everyone over the age of twelve got their Lavitika vaccinations down at the school. Milo and his classmates couldn’t use the gymnasium for months because there was a queue snaking through it all day. Sheriff Callow had to set up camp on-site because protestors kept trying to burn it down. Before they were sent away, of course. 

The virus went away after that. The vaccine had done its job. No more masks. No more video call quizzes with Grandma and Grandpa every Thursday evening. No more staying out of the spare room where the consoles were set up because his dad’s makeshift office had taken over. 

Things had gone back to normal. It was easy to go about your day without remembering the virus – unless you drove down Hughes Drive, of course. There’s a big memorial plinth there, next to the library, with all the names chipped into the marble. Or unless a battered old face mask blew into your life. 

‘Milo, where’s my bucket holder?’ Dallas called over his shoulder. He was standing there, clueless, with a bone-dry sponge. 

I daydream for a few seconds, and the whole operation falls apart, Milo thought. 

He picked up the bucket again and took it over to his dad so he could sink his sponge in. 

The fire alarm started going off inside the house. The boys on the driveway weren’t too concerned. It had become a typical sound on a Sunday morning. Mrs. Winters would often load up the griddle with bacon and then get distracted by Sally. 

Milo watched as his mom threw open the window and wafted out the smoke with an oven mitt. He could hear the sound of the bacon sizzling in the pan. 

‘Smells good, hon,’ Dallas shouted across the lawn. He turned to Milo and whispered, ‘Smells like that time we let Uncle Malc put gasoline on the barbecue.’ 

Milo smiled. 

His dad worked the sponge into the ridge, along the bottom of the windshield. When he peered back into the bucket, he saw there was nothing left but some black swill at the bottom, so he dropped the sponge inside.

‘Right, time to hose her down.’ 

Dallas went to the back of the driveway and started to unreel the hose. When he reached the Mamba, he suddenly stopped to clutch at his stomach. The nozzle clattered onto the concrete and came off. Water spewed out from the open hose end.

‘Are you ok?’ Milo set the bucket down and stepped towards him. 

His dad was hunched over, holding his belly with one hand and his knee with the other, breathing deeply. 

‘Shall I get mom?’ 

His dad didn’t reply. He just sucked in a breath through clenched teeth.

‘I’ll get mom.’ 

‘No, no. Don’t worry your mother!’ he shouted. ‘It’s just gas, I think. It was hurting last night. It’ll pass in a sec.’ He straightened up, took a few more slow, controlled breaths, and then forced a smile. ‘All good!’ 

‘You sure?’ 

‘Yeah, yeah. Come on. Let’s get this finished up. Breakfast will be ready soon.’ 

His dad fixed the nozzle back onto the hose and rinsed away whatever suds hadn’t burnt off in the sun. 

‘Go and get the rags, kiddo!’ 

Milo fetched the box of rags from the garage. Every time his mom wore a hole in a kitchen towel, it would end up deposited in the rag box. Every Sunday Milo and his dad would use them to buff the car dry to prevent any nasty streak marks. 

The air was suddenly filled with the ringing of a bike bell and the screeching of brakes. 

Mrs. Sampson and her children came to a halt on the road, next to them. The three of them were straddling a bike each and touched their feet down to steady themselves. 

The Sampson family lived a few doors down. They used to barbecue together all the time, before Uncle Malc offended them.

Mrs. Sampson rode at the front. She was a petite woman, with a blond bob. The basket fixed to her handlebar cradled two over-stuffed grocery bags that were starting to tear in the corners. 

Behind her rode her daughter, Becca. She was a pale girl, with a dyed black fringe, purple lipstick, heavy eyeliner, and a choker clasped around her neck. She wore black from head to toe – from the leather jacket down to the fishnet stockings that fed into her boots. She was a year older than Milo. 

Milo blushed uneasily as she fixed her deadly gaze on him, with her arms folded firmly across her chest. 

Given a choice, Becca would be at home, in her room, with the blinds closed, and Courting Armageddon blaring out of her Binko. But her father had been puking his guts up all morning, and the stench had crept into every room in the house. For once she was happy to be out, in the open air. 

Brody rode at the back of the Sampson convoy. He was nine. Fairly heavyset. Pale like his sister, with short brown hair, and watchful green eyes. He was very quiet. But very clever, mechanically speaking. He was always building some contraption or another. ‘He has a touch of the autism,’ Mrs. Sampson announced to everyone during one barbecue. 

There was a special assembly about autism at Milo’s school one morning, on behalf of Brody, not long after the doctors diagnosed him. His name wasn’t mentioned, but all the kids knew who it regarded. They all turned their heads and sniggered at him as he stared blankly at the stage. 

‘You two will have to stop by and do mine next,’ laughed Mrs. Sampson as she rested on her bike at the roadside, with both children parked behind her. 

If Milo had a dollar every time someone had said that to them over the years, he’d have his own Mamba by now. It seemed the mandatory thing to say when seeing somebody washing a car. 

‘Put Dan to work! It’s a nice enough morning,’ Dallas said, with a smile. 

‘Oh, he ain’t feeling too well,’ Mrs. Sampson said. ‘We just went to the shop to get him some meds, didn’t we?’ 

Brody didn’t react. Becca nodded lightly – her hateful scowl still fixed on Milo. 

‘Poor Dan,’ Dallas said. ‘What’s up with him? Have you called Doctor Singh?’ 

‘Can’t get through to the doc. Dan’s been in bed two days now. Puking a lot. Started with bad stomach cramps.’ 

Milo looked at his dad. 

‘Probably a bug going round,’ Dallas told her. ‘Tell him I send him my best.’ 

‘Will do!’

Milo’s dad shifted his gaze to Brody, who was staring back at him, expressionless. 

‘How’s it going, Brody?’ he asked. 

Brody didn’t say anything.

‘Oh, he’s just fine,’ Mrs. Sampson said. 

‘Built anything cool lately?’ 

Again, Brody didn’t reply. He just stared. Becca smirked. 

‘Another slingshot,’ his mom said, disapprovingly. 

‘Ah. I still haven’t fixed my fence from the last one,’ Dallas half-laughed. 

At one of the barbecues the families used to enjoy together, Brody had pulled his latest contraption from his backpack. It was a wooden box, about the size of a shoebox, with a hole in one end, a lever on the top, and a small trigger on the bottom. He then plucked a small rock out of the flowerbed. He fed it into the hole, pulled back the lever, aimed it at the fence, and then pulled the trigger. It blasted a hole through the wooden slats, a foot wide. 

‘Yee-haw! This mute little dipshit is good for something after all!’ Uncle Malc had shouted, so excited he spilled beer all down himself. The Sampsons went home, both embarrassed and insulted, and they hadn’t arranged another meet-up since. 

‘Anyway,’ Mrs. Sampson said, as she stood by the roadside, ‘we better get these meds back home.’ 

She cycled away, and her children followed. 

A short while after, a pale boy came along the street, dragging his feet. He had long, black, oily hair that had been slicked back with a comb. His eyes were milky blue, with wild black pupils. A bright pink scar ran from his left nostril, down through his upper lip. He wore a battered black leather jacket – even on the hottest of days. Under it, a white t-shirt was tucked into his jeans.

His name was Richard Lachance. But at school he insisted that everybody call him Rex. And at school you did what Rex said.

Milo froze as he locked eyes with him and watched him slowly breeze by, the way a gazelle watches a passing lion. 

Every school has that one sadistic prick who thrives on terrorizing others. In Masterson High, Rex was that prick. 

Last year Milo had suffered his first serious run-in with Rex. He’d been shoved in the corridor before, sure, but Rex and his two buddies did that to everyone. One gray Thursday morning, though, things ramped up a gear. 

‘Breakfast is on the table!’ Milo’s mom called through the window. 

Dallas finished buffing the hood and then threw his rag onto the driveway. Milo moved his gaze away from Rex, who was further along the street now, and threw down his rag, too. They looked the car over and then headed inside. 

From the author:

Dear reader, if you’ve made it this far, I hope you liked the first chapter of my novel. In case you do, I’ve popped the links for the rest of it below. It’s available on ebook, paperback and Kindle Unlimited. Thank you.

Jon.