

SEAGULL SUMMER

A Novella

SHAWN HOPKINS
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are either a work of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2013 Shawn Hopkins

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means without the written consent of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

ISBN-10: 1493756869

ISBN-13: 978-1493756865

For Nick,

Cape May 1995 and so much more.
1

I close the trunk, wipe a line of sweat from my brow. Leaning against the tailgate of the Honda Pilot, I take a moment while my chest heaves beneath the faded Captain America T-shirt. I don't know why I have it—the shirt. I don't even like Captain America, and I'm not what anyone would be quick to label a "patriot." Who cares? It was five bucks, and it fits me good—though my hot wife is quick to point out that I don't fill it out the way I used to. Yeah, I know. The birth of our first child sort of cut into my gym time. Guess that's life. Sorry, honey.

The ocean breeze drifts down the narrow street and rattles an assortment of wind chimes. Some have been here for ages, and others still have price tags on them. It's a peaceful moment, traffic slow on the one-way street that ends at the beach a few blocks down. It's midweek, and by now most vacationers are already settled in, willing to surrender their parking spot for a fishing trip or a fancy dinner but nothing else. Once secured, parking spots are preserved with extreme prejudice here. I can't believe I was able to park the Pilot here, right in front of the house. The odds are almost enough to make it suspicious. Or maybe it's a sign. Good luck and fortune and all that stuff. Could be a reserved spot, though, which means I'll be ticketed and towed. I look around for a posted sign, but don't see one. I thank my lucky stars—whatever that means. The only vacant spot on the street, from Broadway to Beach, is now taken and from this point forward—or at least until next Wednesday—will be guarded vehemently by yours truly.

Wednesday to Wednesday. I've grown sick of trying to finagle my way into town amidst the chaos that is the weekend in Cape May in August, so I decided on a new tactic. The results: no traffic getting here, no waiting for keys to the house, no scouring the city for a parking spot... So far, so good.

I peel myself off the Honda and step up onto the curb and around a big concrete block that may or may not still be used for mounting horses. I don't know what they're called, never used one, never asked.

I've been coming to this house my whole life, but the plaque hanging beside the door says that it was built in 1870, making it much older than I am. Almost 150 years of history have unfolded around it, and once again I imagine all that it has endured. The Gale of 1878, the New England Hurricane of 1938, the 1944 Great Atlantic hurricane, Hurricane Donna in 1960, Hurricane Gloria in 1985, the 1991 Halloween Nor'easter, Hurricane Floyd in 1999, and of course Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The list is long and comprises of many others, but I think those are the most notable. But then again, I suppose anything is of note when it involves loss of life, and I know plenty of people have died here from foul weather events I can't remember. Were any of the victims staying here, in this house? I wonder. And that's a thought I never had before. I'm not sure I actually like it.

The porch steps are sturdy, and the blue and pink colors of the house seem to welcome me back. I'm not sure if there's ever been a different color scheme associated with the place or not. I certainly can't recall one. Seems the place has always looked this way to me, nothing ever changing, though I realize the unlikelihood of that being the case. Not that there are any old family photos that I can look through. If pictures were ever taken during our family vacations—or even of vacations before I was born—I've never seen them. I'm not exactly sure how far back my bloodline goes with the house, but I think my grandparents were friends of the owners. No, not the original 1870 owners, but someone further down the line. I don't know the details, only that there was some kind of "in" that enabled my grandparents to bring my dad here throughout his childhood. By the time they kicked the bucket, my dad was married to my mom and had taken over the Cape May tradition.

I introduced the place to my wife after we got married five years ago. She's from the West Coast, and I was afraid the beaches and small waves of New Jersey wouldn't be enough to satisfy my blonde surfer bride. I was wrong. Though she didn't waste her time trying to tame the waves, she fell in love with the town. We've even talked about moving here, and the idea of spending a lonely winter on these streets has always fascinated me. Maybe I could start that novel I've been dreaming of writing. But, as with all things on this spinning rock, money seems to be the door to any opportunity. And for us, right now, it's a door that's shut, padlocked, bricked over, and buried. Sorry, babe. Shoulda married that scumbag lawyer I decked the night before you said yes to me.

The memory makes me smile. Never knock out a lawyer unless he's so drunk he won't know what happened once he's come to, and he's such a prick that no one will tell him. But he did have money, and he could've delivered the world—if nothing else—to my wife. I suppose I'm grateful she isn't such a material girl, or else... Well, what's the point of that thought? If she was, I wouldn't love her the way I do, would I?

"Jeff!"

That's her, my lovely Samantha, calling me from inside somewhere. When I open the screen door, grabbing a piece of luggage on the way in, I see our two-and-a-half-year-old son standing on the uneven, wooden floor with his shorts around his ankles and a zucchini-sized piece of crap in his hands. He's squeezing it, and it's beginning to ooze through his little fingers. Well, we don't call him "Doo-Doo Dougie" for nothing.

I wonder if, in the 150 years it has witnessed people within its walls, the house has seen this type of behavior before. I'm guessing not, as I'm pretty convinced that this practice is wholly unique to my son. He just seems to love his crap. I don't get it.

"You gotta be kiddin' me, dude," I say to him.

He looks up as Samantha shakes her head in disgust. Not disbelief, because we know by now that when it comes to poop and our precious child, the possibilities are endless. It is, however, absolutely disgusting every time.

Doug smiles. "Baddah up," he says, exercising his two-year-old phonics.

And before I can stop him, he swings the log at an invisible pitch seen only by him. It would've been a home run our Phillies could have used the other night. Instead, in this reality, the shit breaks off right above his hands and flies through the air like a missile, straight at Samantha.

She can't get out of the way fast enough, and it's a direct hit to her stomach, marking her white tank top with a green-brown souvenir that can't smell good.

She throws her hands up, plenty of disbelief on her face now, and stares down at the crap that has fallen between her feet.

I can't help laughing. It's horrible, I know. I should be reprimanding, grounding, sentencing time-outs left and right, but I can't control myself. It's hilarious, and the tears come streaking down my face. Doug finds it equally funny, which is bad for the future of our family, and I know I need to stop. But I can't breathe.

Samantha's face clouds. Guess she doesn't find it as funny as I do. She bends over, picks up a handful of our son's feces, and throws it with all the force she can muster—which is a heck of a lot considering she was a pitcher in college. But unlike the underhanded softball release, this pitch could have come from any major league baseball mound. At least that's how it feels when it hits me in the head and explodes.

I stop laughing when the urge to vomit hits me just as hard.

"Can't exactly punish him now, can you?" she asks, angry. She looks at her hands and goes into the kitchen.

I hear the sink go on as I stare at Douglas, poop sliding off my head and plopping on my shoe.

"We gotta talk," I say.

2

Our marriage is a good one, always has been. Storybook start, love at first sight, all that. We still get along. There's still romance, even despite Doug's top-secret mission to keep us exhausted and apart. Still, the last few months have been tough, and we've been anticipating this vacation as a sort of recharge for our relational batteries.

We debated leaving Doug with her parents, but her parents are insane. Unfortunately, they followed their daughter over here from the Golden State as soon as they heard of her pregnancy. I don't trust them. Samantha knows this. I suggested my parents instead, and she reminded me that they were dead. I still trust them more.

One time, her dad took Doug out into the snow to make a snowman. In his grandfatherly excitement, he'd forgotten to put shoes on my boy. When Douglas started crying, Grandpa threw his arms up in frustration and cried out, "What the hell are you crying about, boy? Your old man raisin' you to be some kinda wuss?" At which point, he turned around and went inside, slamming the door closed on the one-year-old, barefooted child in the snow. Thankfully, Grandma was watching from the window and went to Doug's rescue. When Grandpa finally realized what the problem was, that he'd forgotten to put anything on the kid's feet, he tried to make it up to his grandchild by serving him a steaming hot mug of cocoa. The scars still mark Doug's legs.

So, we decided to bring Douglas along. We love him, and he really does belong with us. I just hope we can find a way to trick him into letting us relax. Work has been killing me. Late nights, weekends. It's been horrible, and if I could, I would've quit last year. Oh well, I hear it's the American Dream.

I bury my feet in the sand and close my eyes for a second. The sun is hot on my skin, but there's a cool breeze off the ocean that makes it bearable. I love the sound of the waves. It pulls me into dreams of distant times and places, worlds even. Douglas is asleep in the little red tent beside me. Samantha is lying on her stomach, her bikini top undone, the sun painting the white line across her back red. We're not big on sunscreen. Vitamin D deficiency, chemicals... Burn, peel, tan. That's my method. Of course, we've gotten some kind of all-natural something or other for Doug. If he were to get sunburn...well, Cape May, New Jersey, might as well be Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"You awake?" I ask Sam.

No answer.

I put my sunglasses on and begin to survey the platter of sizzling flesh surrounding me. Some look better than others. Some look tempting, hot. Others look like they should be clapped with some sort of human decency fine. If you're gonna show it, it shouldn't make me queasy. At least not in this heat. But that's just me. I'm evil, I know.

I always find myself a little baffled by the turn modesty has taken in just the last fifty years, going so quickly from one thing to nothing. I don't know whether it's a sign of de-evolution or human progress. Guess it depends on your overall view of humanity's place in the cosmos. Either way, I don't complain. Just don't ask me not to look, because that would be completely unfair. Only my wife can ask me not to look at the sweat-gleaned curves pressing in on me. But I know she won't. Which is why I don't. At least not long enough for it to matter.

The Beach Boys are playing from a nearby radio, the fun times of those simpler days swimming over the wind and throwing random notes between the crashing waves. I shut my eyes again and allow the beach to transport me back in time to days I'm much too young to have lived through.

I wake up when a loud screeching sound pierces my ear. I sit up straight in my chair as a seagull takes flight from off Doug's tent.

"Damn bird," I mumble. I hope Samantha didn't hear me. She doesn't tolerate my potty mouth. She's a better, more sophisticated person than I. Perhaps some of us are evolving while others, like me, are in fact returning to our Neanderthal roots. I guess it could also be the universal struggle between good and evil.

The bird flies over the water, gliding until catching a gust of wind. It's snatched away by an invisible hand, like a banking F-14 or some other bird of war. I wonder what it would be like if birds dropped napalm instead of crap.

I check on the rest of my family. They're still asleep. The sun seems to be in the same place I left it, and I figure I may have been asleep for half an hour. Or maybe five minutes. I'm too civilized to know anymore. And plus, I don't really care. I'm on vacation.

I close my eyes.

* * * *

"Hey!"

I open my eyes, and a huge mass of light blinds me. I reflexively shoot my arm up to shield my face from its glory. Or, at least, that's what I try to do. My arms don't move. I hear laughter. It's my wonderful bride and my adorable son. I wonder what's so funny even as I realize that I can't move my other arm, either. Or my legs. Then I become aware of a pressure sitting on my chest. They're laughing louder. The sun is still in my eyes, and I try to squint through it, to see what's going on.

Something's poking my chest, and I can see my darling boy with a sharp piece of driftwood in my mind's eye. He's laughing like it's the funniest thing he's seen since Chicken Little's pants fell down in that movie he got for his birthday.

"Ouch! That hurts! Quit it!"

A shadow crosses over me, and I can see two seagulls standing on the sand where my chest should be. There's goldfish—the snack, not the pet—sprinkled over me. A sharp beak plunges into the sand, and I feel it again. Death by bird pecks. My family can't stop laughing. Wonderful.

"Shoo!" I shout.

The birds pause, looking at me as if considering my request. Or at least the absurdity of it. "Get away!"

They go back to pecking, and I think they're now laughing along with the neighbors who have since joined my loved ones in humiliating me.

With great effort, I sit up, the sand covering me first cracking and then falling away as I rise, reborn, from the earth. The birds aren't laughing now; they're getting the hell away from me before I can snap their necks and jam their heads into the hairy ears of those sitting closest to us.

"Funny," I say, looking down at the red marks on my chest. One of them is oozing.

Douglas is running in circles, throwing his arms up in the air and laughing so hard I'm not entirely convinced it's genuine. He's just acting nuts.

"First shit on my face, and then you feed me to the birds. What's next?"

"You'll have to wait and see," she says. She gives me a look that I know well. Not because I see it often, but because it's impossible to forget. Suddenly, I can't wait for my little sport to go to sleep tonight.

3

I wake up in the middle of the night for some, unknown reason. Probably because the small, stiff bed is killing my back. The A/C is blowing away in the window across from us. A streetlight is peeking through the curtains, and I can see shapes of framed pictures that I know by heart. It's strange how familiar the place is to me after spending just one week a year here.

I look over and pull my share of the blankets out from under Samantha. She hates when I do this, but why should she get to sleep cocooned in warmth while I'm left to endure the frosted air blasting from the humming window unit with nothing but my own crossed arms? She doesn't, and I give a hard yank.

I don't know what woke me up. I never do. I imagine the day will soon come when I'll open my eyes to see Douglas standing beside me, staring at me. At which time I'll probably shit the bed. Crap, I said shit. Even when I say it in my head, I feel judged by my highly evolved wife and smarter people everywhere. I'm so uncivilized. I should be sleeping on the beach beside a fire, my home a hollowed-out whale carcass or something. I'm a savage, and I have a savage's potty-mouth mind. I better clean up my act soon, or Douglas is gonna start repeating my words at the most inopportune times—which will naturally lead to divorce. I don't want a divorce. Oh well, it's 3 a.m. I have better things to think about.

Before I close my eyes again, I can see a bird standing in front of the other window—the one the A/C isn't installed in. The street lamp makes it a dark silhouette, and it casts a partial shadow into our room and across the bed.

Damn bird. I touch my chest. It still hurts.

I drift to sleep. Doug will be waking up at about 5:30. He always does. I don't understand it. I suppose at two, he thinks the world is worth waking up for every day. Obviously he hasn't been watching the news, hasn't been dumped, fired, or expected to make ends meet in the rat race we call freedom. Uh oh, I'm getting cynical. I have to get some sleep if I'm gonna have the energy to walk him—and by "walk," I mean "carry" him—to the coffee shop. We'll catch the sunrise on the beach, watch the dolphins.

Dolphins. I heard—and then confirmed via an internet search—that dolphins gang rape people. Unbelievable.

The bird takes off.

I drift back into sleep.

* * * *

"You see them?" I ask Douglas, pointing out to the rolling seas.

"Yeah!" he screams, jumping up and down, his fists thrusting back and forth with some kind of sound effect. "Dolphins! Dolphins! Dolphins!"

What's he doing? Is he pretending to kill them? Was I like this as a child? So violent and gross? Must get it from Sam's parents. Yuck.

There's at least six of the rubbery mammals breaking the surface in rainbow arcs. I bring the coffee to my mouth, enjoying the morning breeze and the empty beach. And my son, of course. As he chops Flipper to pieces in his young and impressionable mind. Suddenly, I wonder if I did this to him somehow. Foul mouth aside, I don't think I'm that much of a barbarian.

Nah, blame it on the in-laws.

Though I am enjoying the moment, part of me misses the concrete bed I'm paying a small fortune to sleep in for the week. I get up for work every day at the crack of dawn. It would be nice to sleep in just one time this year. Just one stinkin' time. But I don't anticipate that card being in my deck any time soon. Samantha gets that privilege. She's still in bed when I leave every day, Douglas having eaten his cereal with me and waving goodbye out the window. Then, after I'm gone, he climbs back in bed with Sam, and both of them sleep 'til 8 or 9. Must be nice.

Another sip of coffee.

Then again, I do enjoy the time with Douglas. He makes me smile.

"Can I ride them, Daddy?"

It's a step up from eating them. Maybe there's hope. "The dolphins?"

"Yeah, like the movie!"

I have no idea what movie he's referring to. "I don't know if you can swim out that far without your swimmies, buddy."

He frowns, as if he hadn't considered that. "Can you whiddle for me?"

It's funny how a parent can interpret the two-year-old language so effortlessly while those nearby look at you like you're some crazy Star Trek fan insisting that Klingon alone be used in the house. I'm sure it will only get worse when he tries to tell them to "sit," calls them "funky," or needs a "stick." I smile. "I think you're gettin' confused with horses." I don't know if you can really whistle for a horse to come to you, but it always seems to work in the movies. He tries to whistle anyway, but he just spits all over the place. I laugh.

A dolphin jumps out of the water. Doug claps, and I kneel down and wrap an arm around him.

"That's pretty cool, isn't it?" I ask him.

"Yeah! This is supa, supa, supa coo!"

Another sip. Coffee's pretty good, which is fortunate since the choices this early are pretty slim. As in none. Most places won't be opening for another half hour.

Movement to my left catches my eye and distracts me from the pervert porpoises. Two old people armed with metal detectors. They're walking slowly, sweeping the wand back and forth, and I wonder if they've done this before—like in World War I.

The two old-timers pass by without giving any indication that they were even aware of our presence, despite their close proximity to us. Part of me wonders if they'd even notice a land shark sprinting up the beach after them. Probably not. I can't believe that I'll be that old someday. I look at my son and try not to think about it. There's too much to do before then, and I'm here right now to do it.

4

The lifeguard's whistle goes off in my head. My eyes snap open, and I look around, franticly scanning the waves. Just a few kids drifting too close to the jetty. Not a shark attack. I look to my left and find Samantha staring at me, eyes dark with subtle accusation. It's amazing how familiar you can get with a person's eyes. But then eyeballs don't really change, do they? I suppose it's really the skin around the eyes that scrunches, stretches, and pulls in order to transmit all those microscopic messages. Doug is sitting next to her, digging a hole and talking to himself.

"What's the problem?" I don't dare say it. I know what her problem is. I want to tell her that I was up and watching dolphins with Douglas while she was still dreaming of whatever was responsible for the smile that was on her face when I left the bedroom. Probably wasn't me. Though after last night, I guess it was possible. I move my eyes away from her. What's the point? I don't want to fight. I just want to sleep. I fell asleep on my watch, so execute me. At least I'd get some rest.

A boat comes motoring through the waves. It's got a huge TV on it, flashing advertisements to all us sun-bathers. "Never seen that before," I mutter.

"Unbelievable," my wife utters in agreement, her eyes off me and on the 1-800 number for hair growth.

Airplanes pulling phone numbers is one thing, but this... People don't come down here in hopes of catching a glimpse of some floating billboard cutting a path through their view. The next advertisement from the boat is for a book, The Cape May Diamond by Larry Enright. Says it's available for instant download for my e-reader. I shrug. Why not? "You have my reader?"

Sam looks out at the boat in time to see a local restaurant replacing the red-orange hues of the book's cover. "You serious?" she asks.

"About wanting to read a novel about Cape May while I'm in Cape May? Yeah."

She digs into our beach bag. Five minutes later, I'm reading A Cape May Diamond.

"If you're gonna be reading, do you mind if I take a nap?"

The only reason I'm reading instead of sleeping is because she doesn't want me to sleep. She wants to sleep. I recall the days before Douglas. And then try to forget them. It's too painful. "Nope." I move my chair closer to Doug while Sam positions herself on her back, arms down at her sides, and closes her eyes. I can tell she's gone in seconds. Sweet dreams.

Two hours later, I'm a good way into the novel. The history of this place I've been coming to my whole life is fascinating, and I'm already filling Christmas stockings with the paperback.

By now, Douglas has a moat dug around our claimed territory and something beside me that I guess is supposed to be a castle. When I ask him about it, however, he says it's poopy.

Nice.

* * * *

Samantha's awake and repositioning the umbrella. Now she's getting lunch from the cooler. I like watching her out here under the sun. She's sexy.

A seagull lands on the umbrella and looks at me.

"Yeah, just try it," I say, daring the bird to make a move for our food. There's another umbrella lying closed next to my chair, still in its plastic sheath. I start reaching for it, and I swear the bird squints at me.

Something about its eyes...

Two kids run by, the wind carrying the sand they kick up straight into my eyes. I recover just in time to see Sam hand Doug a tuna sandwich. Arm outstretched, Sam's body leaning forward out of the beach chair, the seagull hiding atop the umbrella makes its move. It soars down and takes the lunch from her just before Doug's outstretched fingers have a chance to accept it.

The bird flies toward the water, drops my boy's lunch in the sand, and then has to fight off half a dozen other seagulls that immediately try cashing in on the theft.

People around us are chuckling. Doug is a bit traumatized. Samantha's pissed.

As the big, white and gray bird devours my kid's daily bread, I debate whether or not to use the folded umbrella as a javelin. I could cook us some bird for lunch instead. But I'd probably miss and impale one of the 400-pound Speedo-wearing Sumo wrestlers that are wading in the tide just beyond my target.

"He can have mine," I tell Sam. I hate eating on the beach anyway. Chewing sand with my tuna while scavenger birds hover over my head has absolutely no appeal to me.

"What do you say to Daddy?" Samantha asks Doug, pulling my lunch out of the bag.

"Thanks, Dadda."

"No problem, buddy. Just watch out for those birds."

He curls up beside my bronzing bride. She looks hot right now, and I'm suddenly hoping for a repeat of last night's performance.

"What are you thinking about?" she asks, catching the desire in my eye.

"Things little Doug should never hear."

She smiles, takes a drink of water, and "accidentally" spills some down her neck and beyond, adding a shiny sheen to her exposed skin.

"Oops," she teases, and rubs it in with her hand.

"You should behave yourself," I tell her. "The lifeguard might be watching."

"Even better."

"Oh, you animal." Maybe I'm not the one de-evolving after all.

"You should talk. What was—"

And she's suddenly screaming, swatting above her head at another seagull. This one, however, seems to have landed in her hair. The more the bird flaps its wings and Sam swats at it, the more the bird's scrawny legs seem to get entangled.

My wife is standing now, moving in circles and screaming, "Get it off! Get it off!"

I jump to my feet, though not as quickly as she would have preferred, I'm sure, and grab the folded umbrella. I wave it at the bird, but it accomplishes nothing. I just look like an idiot.

The bird pecks at Sam's head. Not a curious nip, but a full-thrusting stab with its sharp beak. She screams, trips over Doug's trench, and falls down.

The bird comes free and starts flying away when I make contact, striking it down with a powerful swing. The seagull falls to the ground, spinning in circles while flapping its wings. It's making loud bird noises, crying out in pain or anger. Then it lurches toward Doug's nearby toes, snapping at them. He pulls his feet back and shrieks, and I jump at the creature, bringing the umbrella down on its head over and over until its white feathers are red.

I stop, chest heaving. The beach has grown silent, and I can feel a hundred sets of eyes on me.

The seagull isn't moving. I killed it.

"Are you okay?" Samantha's asking Douglas.

He nods, staring at the bird. "Bad birdie," he says, his face twisted with terrified incomprehension.

I ask Sam if she's okay.

She feels her head. "I think so."

Now people are talking. I glance around and see cell phones out. I'll be an internet sensation by bedtime.

Suddenly, shadows begin circling the sand, and I can't help imagine a giant mobile hanging from the sky. Seems others have noticed too, because the cell phones all shift upward.

I look up.

It's no mobile. They're birds, real ones, circling. There's a whole cloud of them, and they momentarily block my view of the sun. "Must be a hundred of them," I hear a woman say. Obviously, she's an exaggerator. Or can't count. In the world I live in, there might be thirty of them. The way they're intertwining with each other does give the impression of more, but unnecessary embellishment annoys me.

Instinctively, however, I take a step back. Thirty or a hundred, there's something about the way these seagulls are behaving that makes me uneasy. They're eerily silent, gliding in wide, crisscrossing arcs, like a living vortex opening in the sky, the light of the sun its center. I have no idea what they're doing, what has brought them together. Maybe they're just observing a moment of silence on behalf of their fallen, crazy cousin.

Then one breaks rank, diving out of the dizzying pattern and coming straight for us. I grab Doug and jump back. The bird lands in the sand next to the feathered corpse and starts pecking into it. It seems curious at first, like a bird testing the ground for worms. I don't know, maybe it's some kind of honor thing among avian soldiers or something, the bird equivalent of a 21-gun salute. But the pecking quickly turns violent, and the bird is exhibiting a demon-possessed savagery that frightens me, tearing the lifeless body to shreds with its sharp beak.

And then all the seagulls, as if imitating old footage of WWII bombers, begin diving out of the sky with loud, screeching battle cries.

Everyone backs away now.

The thirty or so birds are fighting over the body, opening it up and playing tug-of-war with intestines, snapping wildly at each other. There isn't enough meat to feed the entire horde, and only the most aggressive eat. Bloody feathers are carried away by the wind as the violent feast unfolds. The screams of the feathered mob strike some obnoxious frequency that has attracted the attention of everyone within sight. The whole beach is watching. Even the lifeguard is coming over.

Finally, the huddle of insanity breaks, and the birds take flight, disappearing over the nearby jetty just as quickly as they'd come. There's nothing left on the beach, not even a spot of red-speckled sand. The bird I killed is gone without a trace, the crime scene cleansed completely. Devoured.

"What the hell was that?" The question comes from a large, beer-bellied man who must've fallen asleep with his hands on his stomach, because two perfect handprints rest on either side of his navel. Or perhaps they belonged to the two girls standing in his formless shadow. "Mob Boss" goes through my head. Mafia don. Not sure why. Maybe it's the Italian accent. Maybe it's the build and all the gold he's wearing. Maybe it's the supermodels hanging on him. I guess I don't care as long as he doesn't whip out the Tommy-gun he's got tucked in his trunks. Whatever the power persona he's going for, the two sets of fingers that tickle his belly seem to undermine it.

"No idea."

Other people start stepping closer, their toes approaching the boundaries Doug had previously established with his moat.

"You okay?" It's the lifeguard. I'm not in bad shape, but this guy makes me self-conscious—which is ridiculous considering the overall composition of the crowd pressing in on us. Still, I can't help but steal a glance at Samantha. She seems uninterested in the brown eight-pack and little red shorts. Good.

"I think so."

"Never seen anything like that before," he says. "Anyone get bit or scratched?"

"Why?" I ask.

He shrugs, but I know better. I step closer to him and mutter under my breath, "You're not thinking...bird flu or rabies, are you?" I don't know if birds can get rabies, and I'm not entirely serious.

"Bird flu?" A lady overhears and then repeats it too loudly. Could be the exaggerator. Wouldn't surprise me. She has a little boy's head palmed in one of her oven mitts, and she's moving him backward as she tries shrinking away. Good luck with that, I think. I truly am an awful person.

The question drifts through the crowd, interpreted somehow as a statement instead. A panic starts—subtle at first, but escalating. Apparently, no one else here has any explanation for the piranha-like behavior exhibited by the sea birds.

Sam steps close to me, puts her arm around my waist. I look at her and step away. A trickle of blood is peeking through her hairline. "Bird flu," I mouth without sound, staring at her.

Her face melts in terror.

And then I laugh. "Just teasing." I wrap my arms around her and kiss her forehead. There's blood in her hair.

"Jerk." But she nestles her head against my chest. Right in front of the lifeguard. Score.

With nothing left to do, the lifeguard turns back to his stand, shaking his head, unable to explain what just happened.

After a few uneventful minutes pass, everything settles down, and everyone returns to their towels and chairs, already putting the event behind them. I do catch a few people lifting wary eyes to the sky, though.

5

With Douglas completely fried from a full day at the beach and asleep by 6:30, Samantha is curled up on the sofa and engrossed in one of those Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks flicks. It isn't Joe Versus the Volcano, or I'd stay and watch it with her. Instead, I kiss her on the head and tell her I'll be back. I'm still hoping the look she gave me earlier will lead to something tonight. She squeezes my hand and tells me to take my time but warns me not to get too drunk. She isn't going to leave Douglas in bed while she comes to get me when I call for help, and she isn't going to wake him up in order to bring him along. I love my wife. She's always looking out for what's best for me.

"I don't plan on getting drunk," I promise. "Not without you." In truth, I saw a flyer on the boardwalk advertising a live jazz band at a tequila bar a few blocks over and across from the beach. I just want to sit and watch...space out, relax.

"I love you."

"I love you, too," she answers. Then she says we should talk about something when I get back.

"Talk? I was hoping for something else..." But I know what the "something" is, and I don't want to think about it right now. I can't. I need to unwind from months and months of stress. "Okay."

* * * *

I enjoy the walk down the road. The air is cool, and I feel comfortable in my jeans, flip-flops, and white linen shirt, the sleeves rolled to my elbows. The sun is setting, and the sky is on fire with orange hues I've only ever seen over the ocean.

I wait to cross the street and manage to have a short conversation about the weather with a police officer straddling a bicycle. He's nice enough, and I say goodbye when I'm cleared to cross.

The streets are moderately crowded with adults and teenagers alike, pouring in and out of the shops lining the sidewalk opposite the boardwalk—which is also filled with couples holding hands and eating ice cream cones. In the distance, waves crash.

I enter the bar and walk up the steps leading to the lounge on the second floor. I can hear the music already. A waitress in black sits me at a circular table in the corner of the small room. The band is in the opposite corner, only about fifty feet away. Drums, sax, piano, and bass. I don't know much about music, only how it makes me feel. I like to imagine that I can spot talent when I hear it, but I have no idea if my judgments are sound in the world of rhythm and lyric. There are no words to the songs the band is playing, just music. I like it. It's soothing.

The waitress asks if I want to order. I glance over the menu. No prices. That's dangerous. But I'm here to relax, and I don't think they'd bring me my own pitcher of coffee, so I order some fancy beer and a martini. I'll make them last.

A table across from me is packed with family members. One of them, a red-head with a beard, has a guitar with him. He looks familiar to me, but I don't know why.

My drinks arrive.

I close my eyes and listen to the music, let it draw me into its embrace. When the song ends, one of the band members is shouting across the room to the bearded guitar wielder. He's waving for him to come up, and the familiar-looking guy leaves his family behind. He gives the sax player a hug and leans over the drum kit to shake the drummer's hand. Waving to the piano player, he then kneels in the background, extracting an acoustical guitar from out of its case. The guy with the sax introduces him to the crowded room as someone who has appeared on Leno, Letterman, Fallon, and a list of other national comedic idols. Maybe that's where I've seen him. I miss his name because the family is cheering too loudly when it's mentioned.

Once the guy has tweaked the knobs and plucked a few stretching strings, the band starts up again and he's playing along with them like he's been there the whole time.

My musical ignorance aside, I know the guy is good. I'm dazzled by the way his fingers race up and down the instrument's neck. His face is relaxed, as if what he's doing is the easiest thing in the world for him—effortless. I don't think anything in my life comes to me as easy. Well, besides acting like an ass.

I drink beer, sneaking sips of martini along the way, and enjoy the band.

We should talk about something when you get back...

I know what it is. Part of me hoped she'd forgotten, but I knew she wouldn't. Back around Christmas time, in front of the fireplace, wine glasses in hand (I don't even like wine), we spoke of bringing another baby into the world while here in Cape May, during this exact vacation. Not the actual birth part, that would be weird, and I'm not sure all the children on the beach would appreciate the beauty of bringing life onto this spinning rock. But we'd imagined conceiving here, and apparently, she hasn't moved on from the possibility of it like I have.

It's not that I don't want another child. I do. But now? I spend the next thirty minutes weighing the pros and cons of inviting sleepless nights to accompany my early mornings.

The band takes a break, and the voices from the tables around me reach my ear. Someone's talking about seagulls. I cock my head. It's the table across from me. They're using hand motions to demonstrate a seagull attack, raising their arms and dipping them toward the table. At first I think they're talking about my bird incident, about Sam getting plucked in the head.

"You shoulda seen Rachel! She dove to the ground, screaming!"

"They were biting my head!"

"Pecking."

"Stabbing!"

"The lifeguards had to blow their whistles and wave them off! I thought the damn birds were gonna attack them!"

"Did you see their eyes?"

"The lifeguards'?"

"No, asshole, the birds'!"

"They were red!"

"You guys are crazy."

"They were! They were red!"

And of course, the conversation turns from the seagull attack to Peter Benchley's Jaws, which has been said (though I read that Benchley later denied the connection) to have been based on the 1916 rogue Great White that killed four and wounded one between July 1 and 12. There were stupid jokes made funny by alcohol, suggesting Jaws VI could be about a shark with feathers that could fly and other such nonsense.

But I take another sip and lean back, still listening, a renewed interest in my own seagull experience spreading its fingers in my brain.

The band starts back up, but my mind is now with Alfred Hitchcock and his movie about birds. Out of curiosity, I do a quick search on my phone and find that the movie was based on a book. Interesting. I never saw more than a few scenes of the movie—never really interested me. Too old and too young, I guess.

I finish the bottle, drain the glass, and wave for the bill.

* * * *

The moon is out, and my flip-flops are in-hand as I walk the cool sand. There's something mysterious about the beach at night, as if it holds some primeval secret indecipherable to man. I don't know. It's just...grand. Elusive. Alive. My thoughts break apart from there, my mind all over the place, visiting ideas that can't be expressed by words. Like I said, the beach at night is magic.

By the time I resurface from the ethereal hole I've plummeted through, I have no idea how long I've been walking, or where I am in relation to street signs, but I know it's going to take me a while to get back. I hope Samantha isn't waiting for me—which is a reversal of how I felt before. No missed calls. Maybe she started another movie or fell asleep watching the last one. That's okay with me. I'm somber now, and I enjoy the solitude while in this state.

A squawk sounds in my ear as something flies overhead. I duck, but I'm struck in the head anyway. Swearing, my heart pounding, I look up and see the shape of a bird painted dark against the moonlight. But there's an odd extremity dangling from its form, maybe a fish or an eel. But I don't know if seagulls go for eel. I've never heard of it. It was big like an eel, though, whatever it was.

The bird lands just as it was about to disappear against the horizon. I can just make it out in the silver glow. Then a whole flock of birds silently converges on the same spot.

A terrifying and ungodly sound that doesn't seem at all "birdlike" to me erupts through the night, replacing the soothing notes of lapping waves with a shrill savagery that makes my hair stand on end. I get closer, and indeed, there's a dozen or so seagulls pecking away at something. Not sure what I'm thinking, I run toward them, waving my flips-flops and hollering like a lunatic. Rather than eating me, however, they take off, unhappy but submissive. I expect to see a fish or a crab, maybe some kid's funnel cake or pizza, but as I kneel down the shape, my stomach lurches.

It's an arm—fingers to shoulder, it's a human arm. The fingers look to have been chewed off, whatever phalanges remain have been stripped bare of flesh. It looks like a child's arm. Maybe Doug's age.

I'm struck with the sudden urge to be back with my family, to make sure they're okay. It's an irrational feeling, but real nonetheless. I know severed arms found on the beach don't necessarily mean that my wife and child are in some kind of danger, but still...

I take out my phone and call Sam. She doesn't answer, so I hang up and call 911 instead.

6

The police officer stands with one hand on his hip, lighting up the severed arm with a flashlight. It's too dark to make out his features, but I think he's younger than I am. His yellow shirt that says POLICE across the back seems tight on him. His bike is leaning against the boardwalk. More police are on the way, but for now the scene is his—as am I.

"Shark attack?" I ask, thinking of that beginning scene in Jaws where Chief Brody is introduced to the mangled remains of the skinny dipper.

"Don't think so. Doesn't look like it was in the water."

I grunt. CSI Miami, CSI New York, CSI Nebraska (or whatever the latest spinoff is) aren't my shows. "Where's the rest of him?" I don't know for certain that the arm belongs to a boy, and I hope I don't give the cop reason to think I'm involved somehow.

He waves the light down the beach. "That's the question, isn't it?" Then he examines the shoulder area, again trying to guess what could have detached it. "You said a seagull was carrying it?"

"Yeah. Smacked me in the head." I realize too late how ridiculous it sounds, and I wonder if the cop is setting me up as the number one suspect.

"Lot of weight for a gull to be flying around with."

I don't say anything. He's right.

"Seagull's have been goin' a little crazy today."

I nod. "I know." I tell him about Samantha and the conversation I overheard at the martini bar.

"Dog was actually killed."

I wasn't sure if he meant a dog or if there was a person named "Dog." "What?"

"They went into a frenzy, poking and clawing. Bled to death before people could chase the birds away."

"The dog?"

"Yup."

I'm slightly relieved that a guy named Dog wasn't killed by seagulls. "They ever do that before?"

"Not that I ever heard."

We stand in silence.

"Mind if I go check up on my family," I ask, still not able to shake the feeling—whatever it is.

"I think we need to take a statement first."

"Here?"

"At the station."

"How long's that gonna take?"

He shrugs. He doesn't care.

"Great." I try dialing Samantha's phone again. No answer.

* * * *

When I finally get back to the house, it's past midnight. Sam's passed out on the couch, some movie with Keanu Reeves flashing light throughout the room. I don't bother turning it off, and my mind is too preoccupied to find it distracting. I go check on Doug. He's sleeping soundly, curled up in a ball, his blanket kicked down to the footboard. Both arms are accounted for. I stretch the blanket over him and return to Keanu and my wife.

Pulling out my phone, I sit down on the couch, and before I realize what I'm doing, I've typed "seagull attacks" into the search bar. The results stun me.

There's an article from The Guardian about mail being halted to certain streets due to seagulls attacking postmen. The report documents hospitalizations, dogs bleeding to death, heart attacks... There's another BBC article about a woman who tore her Achilles tendon while trying to escape a gull attack in Great Yarmouth. "Seagull Attacks a Soaring Problem in England" is the title of a few articles that have responded to my search. There's even a story about a woman who's forced to wear a colander on her head as a helmet of protection against the attacking birds. Some other poor woman was held up in her house for four days because of these things invading. YouTube videos show up in my search results. I watch a few. Nothing interesting. Bunch of drunk college kids throwing Cheetos on their sleeping friends. Bored of that particular time of life, and all the links to videos of spring breakers in wet T-shirts, I exit YouTube and continue scrolling. Tapping on another link, I begin reading about seagull talons, their razor-sharp, two-inch beaks, and their 65 kph diving speed. The site is European, and my dumb American mind can't do the calculation. I know it's fast, though. As I read through a series of preventatives that have been used to repel seagulls, I also learn that it's illegal to kill the birds without a permit. Oops. I'll have to plead self-defense.

The website says that there's a "gag call" that gulls use to tell people to "go away." If the request isn't honored—or understood—they then perform a "low pass." And if the person still doesn't get the hint, well, then it's crap and vomit followed by talons to the back of the head.

Sheesh. I had no idea seagulls could be so vicious, and my view of them has been forever altered by this new knowledge. However, there's no sign of the sort of behavior I witnessed today. Scavenger carnivores, yes. But a zombie's frenzy over fresh meat? I do see that certain gulls prey on other gulls, as hawks prey on seagulls, but that doesn't satisfy the feeling that there might be some kind of...I don't know. I don't even want to think about it.

The child's arm is the last thing on my mind as I fall away on the couch and into a world that would make Hitchcock proud.

7

I wake up early, though not as early as usual. Douglas is still sleeping, as unbelievable as it is, and I should probably take the opportunity to go back to sleep. I have no idea if and when Doug will ever sleep this late again. But I can't. I'm antsy. So I ease off the couch and whisper in Sam's ear, "I'm goin' for a walk. I'll bring back breakfast. You're on."

You're on. It's the command designated for Doug detail. I'm out, so our boy is now under your watch. I wash my hands of his wellbeing for the next hour or so. Though, I guess in all honesty, I can't really be sure her grunt was affirmation of this responsibility or not. Oh well.

I'm still in my clothes from last night, but I don't care. I unlock the door, not even having to use the bathroom, and head down the sidewalk.

The sky is overcast, gray. The air is cool. It feels nice, and I want a coffee.

I step out of the shop with a cardboard cup in hand and make my way toward the beach. There are joggers on the boardwalk that remind me it's been far too long since I've been in shape. Soon, I tell myself. It's what I always tell myself. I savor my first sip of coffee. Irish cream and sugar. Perfect.

The sand is still cool on my flip-flopped feet, and I walk halfway to the water before I sit down. Dolphins are playing.

A few drops of rain spot the sand. A minute later, thunder rolls across the sky, faint and faraway but coming.

A girl is jogging down by the water, coming toward me, blond ponytail wagging, really short, tight shorts, and a hot pink sports bra. I try to keep my eyes off her, but I can't. And then something else does catch my eye. A seagull—no, two seagulls—circling above the beach, their black-tipped wings outstretched. Is it strange that a beautiful, half-naked girl is running past me, and I can't take my eyes off the birds? But there's something about them that seems...different. Probably because of my dreams last night. I don't like them anymore.

I watch as one suddenly goes into a dive, and at first, I assume it's aiming for something in the water, a fish or something. But it never alters its course.

I try to call out to the girl, to warn her, but it happens too fast.

The gull soars down, its sharp beak a javelin lined up with the back of her neck.

The girl never sees it coming, and the earbuds that are pumping motivation into her head drowns out the loud squawk that sounds just before impact.

The bird's beak plunges into the base of her neck like a folded pair of scissors. The girl pitches forward, stumbles, falls. The bird wrestles its face out of her neck while she screams, trying to reach behind her head and discover the source of her pain. The bird stands on her back, oblivious to the girl's flailing, and blinks. Blood drips from the curved tip of its beak.

I get to my feet, and I'm only two strides closer to her when the other bird dives.

It falls like a missile, straight down, and sticks right into her back. The suddenness of it, the impact and the sound it makes, stuns me. I think the bird, if not the girl, must be dead from a broken neck or smashed skull. But no, the bird plants its claws into her flesh and rips its beak out of her back. She cries out, flailing, as both gulls peck at her sweaty skin, shredding her sports bra to pieces. The girl rolls onto her back, but the birds are just as content to attack the front of her body. She's waving her hands at them, kicking and screaming, her eyes closed tight.

I'm throwing my own hands in the air, screaming and shouting like a lunatic. Maybe I shouldn't have left the coffee. I could've scalded them with it. The white seagulls stop their pecking for a second and look up at me, blood staining their feathered chests. It isn't until I'm five feet away that they finally take off into the air. "Shoo! Shoo!" just doesn't cut it, and I'm swearing up a storm as if a certain combination of expletives might cause them to explode right out of the sky. But they fly away without even a look back.

I grab the girl's wrists and wrestle them down by her side, trying to get her to calm down. She's even prettier up close, and I hope the few red lines across her face don't leave her with scars. "It's okay. They're gone."

She doesn't relax, but she manages to open her eyes.

"You were attacked by seagulls," I tell her, realizing that she never saw them. It sounds terrible, and I can tell from her eyes that she doesn't believe me.

Uh oh.

"Get away from me!" she screams. Then she looks up the beach. "Help! Help!"

"Hey..."

"Help!" She's crying, blood everywhere.

"Shhh... They flew away. They're gone."

"Get away!"

"I'm trying to help you..."

"Help!"

I see someone sprinting to the boardwalk, waving their hands to a police officer who just happens to be passing by. It'll be good for this poor girl. Not gonna be so good for me.

The cop comes charging down the beach at us, gun drawn.

"Get away from her!" he orders, aiming at me.

I've never had a gun aimed at me before, and I must say that it is very unsettling. Especially when I've done nothing wrong—quite the opposite, actually. But when there's a gun pointed at you, you'll do just about anything. I put my hands up and step away from her, shouting, "She was attacked by seagulls!" It doesn't sound any better the second time, but as the officer slows down to a trot, now just a handful of feet away, I can tell he's scanning the beach around us. Looking for a knife, I guess. Or a hook, or a sharp piece of driftwood... Some kind of weapon consistent with the wounds covering her body.

"Sit down on your hands," he says to me, but his face is concentrated on the girl. She's stopped crying now and has become very still. There's so much blood. The cop checks her pulse.

My stomach twists like a wet rag. "She's not..." I can't even say it.

"No." He raises a radio to his lips and calls for an ambulance.

Lightning strikes the liquid horizon.

* * * *

I can't believe this. I've been to Cape May at least one week a year for my entire life and never once have I been to the police station. Now I've been here two times in half a dozen hours.

Once it was established that I hadn't run down the girl with a Rambo knife that no one could find, they let me go after another statement. Now, as I try to find my way out to the sidewalk, still not exactly sure where I am and not getting any offer from the men in uniform to transport me back to the scene of my awesome heroism, I see a couple other people nursing bloody wounds in the waiting room. An old man cradling a metal detector is holding a handkerchief to his scalp and muttering something about a "damn bird." A mother is holding her toddler, rocking the child back and forth, a large bandage wrapped around a tiny forearm.

"What the hell is going on?" I ask an officer in passing.

He stops, scans the room. "Seagulls."

* * * *

By the time I make it back to the house, it's raining pretty hard, and I'm thoroughly soaked. I'm not feeling all that chipper toward the men and women that are paid to serve and protect me. Not after having a gun pointed at me, being dragged to the station, and then being forced to walk all the way back in the driving rain, all because I saved a jogger from killer seagulls. You'd think they'd give me a medal or something. Oh well, guess they're too busy protecting someone else's constitutional rights to worry about mine.

When I left this morning, I'd forgotten to take my cell phone, so as I climb up the porch steps, Samantha and Doug are there waiting for me.

"Where've you been?" Samantha asks, standing.

I collapse into one of the wicker rocking chairs as thunder booms and makes Doug wrap his arms around Sam's legs. I begin by telling her about last night, and when I'm done, she's silent, subconsciously rubbing her head where the seagull had plucked her.

"You don't think..."

I shake my head. "Other than you walking around naked with slippers on your hands last night, you seem perfectly fine to me."

She didn't think that was funny.

"What do they think it is? Why are they attacking people?"

I shrug. "No one's said."

"Is the girl gonna be okay?"

"I think so."

She goes silent again, staring across the street. It's quiet now, the storm keeping everyone indoors. Movies, books, breakfast...

"The arm..."

"I don't know." I don't even want to think about it, and I wonder if I should have told her everything. She's taking the whole thing more seriously than I thought she would.

"You think we should go home?"

I blink, shocked by the sincerity of the suggestion.

"I mean, what if they do have some kind of disease or something?"

It's not hard to imagine what's going through her head. I've seen all the same movies. "I think it'll be okay." But do I? Why that feeling in my gut last night? And that was even before almost getting shot. Maybe I should Google bird diseases before the CDC comes rolling in and begins quarantining all of Cape May County.

"Maybe the storm'll move them out." I ponder my words, what they could mean. Sam recognizes the implication first.

"You think it's a bad batch moving down the coast? A gang of unruly hooligan seabirds just passing through on their way to Miami?"

"Why Miami?"

"Who cares? It's not normal, right?"

"Birds flying to Miami?"

"Jeff."

I sigh. "I don't know. Seems like it could be normal from what I read last night. Seagulls have been known to attack people."

"Killer seagulls."

"Sounds like a Syfy original."

Douglas has moved away from Samantha and is back to driving Matchbox cars around on the porch, crashing them into each other and having a blast.

"What do you wanna do today?" I ask her, moving the conversation away from blood and feathers.

"Just relax."

The prospect of doing nothing comes as a wave of relief. It's been so long since I've had a whole day with nothing to do.

"Movie, order out, a little..." She dances her eyebrows up and down and moves her T-shirt down a little on one shoulder. "...While Doug takes his nap?"

It's been forever since we've been able to spend a stormy afternoon in bed. The prospect thrills me. "I guess."

"You guess?"

"Well, I'm reading this really good mystery novel that takes place in 1975 Cape May."

"Oh."

"I guess I could put it down for a little bit."

"Just a little bit, huh?"

"How long you think he'll sleep?" I nod toward our son, who is mumbling to himself while inspecting a miniature school bus.

"Long enough."

I frown. "That's what they all said."

She shakes her head at my immaturity, and I get up to go inside. I never did get to finish my coffee.

8

It's about noon when I climb out of bed and pad across the dark room in my bare feet. "In my bare feet..." Why do people say that? It makes no sense. Anyway, rain is whipping against the windows. I stretch, enjoying the music the weather is making with the old house. Samantha sits up in bed.

"Wanna bring me a drink and a book?" she asks.

I pull on a pair of boxers. "Sure. What are you in the mood for?"

Now she stretches, the sheets slipping away. "See if there's any Lee Child or John Grisham."

"What do you want to drink?"

"Grab me a Pepsi."

"Did we bring Pepsi?"

"I did."

"What about those reports we read about—"

"We're on vacation."

"Oh." I forgot that anything goes on vacation, that the universe grants a free pass to all behavior. I go down the stairs, check on Doug, and go to the bookshelf in the living room. Worn paperbacks cram the shelf. Too much Patterson, some Sparks. I don't see any Child and the three Grisham books that are there I know she's already read. There's two Stephen King books, some Koontz and Saul. I spot a Jeremy Robinson book I've been eyeing for a while and make plans to read it once I finish A Cape May Diamond. I keep scanning the tattered spines and ultimately pick two. A Lisa Gardner mystery and a Mary Higgins Clark story. Is Mary Jack's wife? I'm not sure, though I've always wondered. I go to grab my e-reader, which I left on the porch in my haste to get to the bedroom once news came that our son was sleeping. I hope it didn't get wet. Book in hand, I push open the door and step onto the porch.

And freeze.

There, perched on the railing, is the biggest seagull I've ever seen. It's staring at me, eyes dark red.

My heart starts pounding. The way the thing is looking at me, unblinking... Then it opens its scarred beak and roars. Not like a lion's roar, but whatever the bird equivalent is.

The noise just pisses me off, though, and I snatch the broom that's leaning against the blue siding. I take three steps toward the creature, intending on a repeat performance of yesterday's bird whacking, when three other gulls fly up through the rain and land beside it. Now four seagulls are staring at me. I stop my charge and instead move slowly back to the bag that holds my reader. Without taking my eyes off the birds, I reach down and grab it, holding the broom out like a sword in my other hand, ready to bludgeon whichever bird wants to attack first. But they don't attack. They just stare.

I back into the house and close the door, shivers raking my flesh. I don't think they'll try coming through the windows, so I go grab a Pepsi from the fridge and return to the bedroom. The house is not only cozy now, but suddenly has the reassuring feeling of a fortress.

I give Sam her choices and climb back in bed beside her. Before she makes a decision on which author to commit to, however, she asks me a question.

"Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Should we?"

"Should we what?"

"Have another baby?" And the sheet is down again.

What the hell. I roll on top of her. But as I kiss her, I can't take my eyes off the windows, sure that red eyes are watching.

9

The next day greets me with blinding sunlight, and I stumble to the window, moving the curtain aside and searching the skies. No clouds anywhere. People are already streaming down the sidewalks, heading toward the beach. I check the clock. It's past 8. After Doug went to bed last night, we watched two movies and ate way too much food. But, after falling asleep at his normal time, I find it hard to believe that our son is still sleeping. So I leave Samantha to go check on him and discover that sleeping he is not. He's sitting in the center of his room and staring up at the TV. It's true, my two-and-a-half-year-old son can work a television, DVD player, a smart phone, his Leap Pad, and a digital camera. I'm not sure if I'm proud of these early feats or not. In any case, he's managed to find a cartoon I don't recognize.

"Hey, buddy."

"Hi, Daddy," he answers without looking.

"How long have you been up?"

"You and Mommy sleeping."

"Yeah, have you been awake for a long time?"

He nods, and right now I don't care if he's watching Showgirls. I'm just relieved he isn't lying in an intersection somewhere.

"What are you watching?"

"Shark."

"Shark?" I don't see any shark.

"I hunngy."

"Okay. You want some cereal?" I realize at this moment that perhaps I should be teaching my son how to speak proper English, but after imagining myself doing so, I decide that we're just not that family. My apologies to every English teacher I ever had, and to all the ones Douglas will have.

He nods.

"Okay, then turn off the TV, and let's get some Cheerios."

He's up at my side instantly, the TV off.

I ruffle his hair. "You are hungry, huh?"

"Supa, supa, supa hunngy!"

I sweep him into my arms and fly him into the kitchen.

When we're done eating, bowls in the sink, I ask him, "Wanna go to the beach?"

He jumps and throws his fist into the air. "Yeah!"

"Okay, come on. Let's get you in your bathing suit."

When we're in his room, I offer three different pairs of trunks before he settles on a camouflage one.

"Put them on while I go check on Mommy, okay?"

He nods.

I walk into the bedroom, and the shades are down, the room darker than when I left it.

"Hey," I whisper. "You okay?"

"That sandwich was bad," she moans.

"Which one?" She had eaten a cheese steak, twenty wings, and the rest of Doug's parmesan sandwich. I hadn't seen her eat that much since she was pregnant.

A hand with an extended finger rises forth from the mountain of sheets.

Laughing, I wish her well, offer her a trash can, and tell her we'll be at the beach. She's miserable and doesn't seem to care if I take Doug to the beach or North Korea. "I have my cell. Let me know if you need anything."

I feel bad for leaving her, but I know she just wants to be left alone. I finish getting what I need from the room and head out.

"Hey," she says before I finish closing the door behind me.

"Yeah?" I answer through the crack.

"I could be pregnant, you know."

* * * *

After kicking a ball around for half an hour, Doug is content to sit still and pile sand over my feet. I ask him random questions as he does this. What do you want to be when you grow up? What's your favorite color? Where would you want to live if you could live anywhere? His answers are funny and some even make sense. Finally, I bring up the sibling scenario.

"Hey, bud, what would you think about having a new brother or sister?"

He throws sand over his shoulder. "Yeah!"

I stare at him, wondering if he understands everything such an addition would entail. No, of course he doesn't. He sees a new friend to play with, nothing else.

"If you had a sister, what should we name her?"

"Poo-poo Head!"

"Right. Silly question." Unbelievable. His obsession with crap is amazing. "What about a brother?"

"Weck-it Walph!"

I was thinking Zoro, myself. I ask him a series of other questions, enjoying the attention it earns me. I don't get much alone time with him. This is nice. I begin to wonder what the coming years will be like. School, junior high... Will we be close, or will he think I'm a dork?

A shadow falls across my face, interrupting my thoughts. I look up from my chair to see the mobster from yesterday hovering over me—handprints still visible on his belly. The arm candy is missing, though.

"Hey, you that guy was attacked by them birds, right?"

"Well, my wife, actually." He looks around for her, and I can detect a trace of worry seeping into his eyes.

"She okay?"

"She's not feeling good."

He kneels, leaning forward and putting the weight of his girth onto one knee. He looks troubled about something. I'm suspicious and wonder where in the world this is going. Am I about to get whacked? He seems to have left his Tommy-gun with his girlfriends today, but there's a conspiratorial aura that he's emitting that has me curious.

"She sick?"

"She doesn't feel good. Why?"

He looks around, not wanting to meet my eyes. His hair is slicked back, his chain partially concealed beneath the hairy mat on his chest. "I heard someone else talkin' this mornin' 'bout stuff. I been thinkin' bout yous since."

That spikes my interest, and I tilt my head slightly, letting him know that he has my attention.

He continues, "I was walkin' the beach, ya' know, tryin' to jog a bit down by the water like I seen everyone do here. I come up on these two girls walkin' in front of me. The sun was in front, so they couldn't see my shadow, ya' know?"

Yeah, I know. Mobster. Hitman. Assassin.

"They was talkin', and the wind was carryin' their conversation. I followed them, listening."

"Kind of creepy."

"Like I said, they had no idea I was there." He takes a breath, not used to talking this fast, and I almost expect that this is just a ploy to get me to drop my guard so that he can pull a switchblade from the back of his trunks and plunge it into my jugular. But he doesn't do that. Instead, he continues to tell me about the story he overheard while stalking the two girls, and such a mental image might have been funny if not for the seriousness on his face.

"Okay..."

"They was talkin' about a friend of theirs, said they was all on the beach down near Madison, and a bunch of seagulls attacked 'em. This friend had her top ripped off and was runnin' around with arms flailing and all. Made quite a scene from what they was saying."

"I bet."

"Had to get fifteen stitches on her head and shoulders."

"Crap."

"Yeah, well, she ain't walkin' the beach with 'em this mornin' 'cause she's sick. Fever or somethin.' At first, ya know, I didn't think nothin' of it. Just picturin' this topless girl runnin' around the beach with seagulls chasin' her. But then this mornin', after my jog, I go to get coffee and overhear another group of people talkin' about a seagull attack that happened last night."

"You must have good ears." He ignored my comment.

"One of 'em hit the bird with a bat, knocked it down. Killed it. Said it had red eyes. Said there was a metal tag on its leg."

"A metal tag?"

"Yeah, like one of those trackin' chips scientists put on animals."

"Okay."

"Weird, right?"

"I guess."

"So then I remember the girl with the stitches, and I start to think about all yous."

This guy is not helping Doug's future English teachers at all.

He goes on, "I wonder if they're the same birds that attacked your wife, ya know? Maybe they flew from here, went and landed on them down there. Anyway, I'm sittin' here lookin' around and spot you and your boy but ain't no sign of your wife. And I start thinkin', what if she's sick, too? And what would it mean if she was."

"What do you mean, 'what it would mean'?" I lean forward, dreading where I know this is going. My heart rate is climbing. I look at Doug. He's not listening. He's busy making what I hope are supposed to be pinecones in the sand.

"The lifeguard asked—"

I cut him off. "I don't think it's anything like that, mister."

He's silent. He knows I'm not as sure as I'd like to be.

Finally, I ask, "So in all your ponderings, have you come up with a theory or something?" I'm not ready to tell him about the kid's arm or the girl I was accused of trying to stab.

"Not really. But you got a flock of seagulls hurtin' people, right? Two of the people they hurt are sick today, and someone sees a metal tag on one of the birds. Somethin's goin' on, don't ya think?"

I don't know what I think. I want to go check on Samantha.

"I really hope she's okay," he says.

I'm getting to my feet when suddenly a scream cuts through the normal sounds of frolicking beachers. We turn our heads to the left and see a crowd of people a hundred yards away, on the other side of the lifeguard, screaming and swatting at half a dozen seagulls that are hovering just out of their reach.

The lifeguard, I can't tell if it's the same guy from yesterday or not, starts blowing his whistle. He's running toward the crowd, waving his red life preserver thing over his head. I don't actually know what it's called, but David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson running with such red buoys in-hand have been cemented in my mind from all the years of watching Baywatch. That's right, and the earlier cast—Billy Warlock and Erika Eleniak—were the better episodes of the series.

As the lifeguard runs toward the commotion, everyone else just stares in disbelief.

Another lifeguard goes sprinting past us from the stand on our right, and I can see another two coming from further up the beach.

Something is wrong. Six pesky seagulls shouldn't have every lifeguard between Grant and Ocean converging with whistles blowing.

The birds don't respond like they did yesterday. Instead, one of them attacks the charging lifeguard. Even from this distance I can hear the plastic thunk the board makes when it strikes one of the birds out of the sky.

Now the other three guards are ducking from diving gulls, and people are beginning to collect their belongings.

"What the hell," the voice says beside me.

I look back at Tony. Is that really his name, or did I just make that up? I can tell he isn't watching the action down the beach like everyone else is. His eyes are locked out over the water. I follow his gaze.

And freeze.

"Holy..."

I feel Tony step back away from me. Soon, someone else sees it and stands up. People are starting to point, attention shifting away from the five birds on our left and to the sky above the seas. People in the water wonder what everyone on the beach is looking at and turn to look up in the sky behind them.

A gray cloud grows closer, coming from nowhere.

Birds. It's an army of birds.

The noise of what has to be thousands and thousands of approaching seagulls slowly begins to reach our ears.

A few people quickly start packing their stuff. Others simply take off for the boardwalk.

I look back to the birds down the beach, and I swear the remaining seagulls are trying to pull a screaming child toward the water. The lifeguards and the kid's family are trying to swat them away, but the birds are persistent and keep at it.

Screams from the water.

Turning back, I see the kamikaze birds falling out of the sky, diving toward the water and striking swimmers. Like huge lawn darts, they impale their targets. A few people go beneath the water, and a handful of gulls slam, beak first, into the now vacant spots. Seconds later, the birds emerge with strips of flesh hanging from their beaks. They float about nonchalantly, as if simply indulging in their normal lunchtime routine, and the swimmers don't resurface.

The whole beach charges for the street. I grab Doug.

Doug is crying, his eyes wide and fixed on the invading army. He squeezes me as hard as he can, and I can feel his terror. I take off with the crowd, part of my brain trying to convince me that this isn't real. That I'm dreaming. A smaller part of my brain even ridicules me for running from a bunch of birds. But there are far more than "a bunch," and the scene is so extraordinary that to not react in such a way would be foolish. That's what a different part of my brain is saying to the other one, and I'm getting confused. I decide to switch off the brain and to just trust my instincts.

And then it happens. We all knew it would. Maybe not with our intellect, as if we could actually calculate the probability of such an incident, but with that voice inside that lets you know that something bad is about to happen. And by "bad" I don't mean having thousands of birds crap all over you. Sure, that might send people seeking cover under their umbrellas, but it certainly wouldn't make everyone stampede off the beach like a herd of demon-possessed swine. No, as soon as the eerie fleet appeared, we all knew something was wrong, and it only took a couple kamikaze birds striking swimmers to confirm our fears. We were being attacked. As ludicrous as it seemed, and whether anyone else knew about the strange seagull behavior this week or not, we all knew what was coming.

The scavengers descend on the fleeing mass. A woman beside me, her shoulder brushing mine, has two gulls in her hair, thrashing with their talons, stabbing her with their beaks. She falls, shouting. I want to help, but Doug is my main concern, my first and foremost responsibility. Stopping to help her would put him in danger, something I'm just not willing to do, no matter how sick it makes me feel. I keep going.

The sun is blotted out by the fleet of seagulls filling the sky like enemy bombers, their black-tipped wings outstretched, their red eyes searching for targets. I think I've fallen into a Stephen King novel.

We stumble to the boardwalk, casualties falling down all around us, the birds soaring like missiles through our ranks, and I pray that my son isn't the next target. We're like a herd of stampeding buffalo, squeezing through the railings that try to corral us up onto the wooded slats of the boardwalk. Others, further down where the boardwalk is sitting higher than the sand, are trying to climb the pillars and the cross bracings. I see two people slip, fall, and disappear beneath the pressing crowd. I almost lose my own footing twice when I'm bumped and pushed from behind. I cannot fall. I need to get to Sam. It's only a few blocks. I can make it.

Doug is crying, and I realize that I'm repeating, "It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay..."

We're up over the boardwalk, hopping the railing and dropping down to the street. Others behind us get pinned against the railing by the wave of human flesh pressing against them, clawing their way over them as if they were dead bodies draped over barbed-wire on the battlefield of some strange fiction.

A seagull plummets right into the windshield of a coming car, and the driver reacts by swerving into the crowd of people that is just now spilling off the boardwalk and into the street. I can't tell if anyone was run over or not. If so, no one seems to be concerned about it. Other cars are forced to stop, and people are flocking toward them, banging on their windows and begging to be let in.

Most of the birds have descended from their lofty heights, no longer high in the sky but pecking and slashing at close range. The scene is absurd, frantic faces running from endless, flapping wings. Blood is spraying everywhere; the screams are unbearable. This can't be happening.

People crowd into the few stores and restaurants that are within reach, but seagulls crash through the windows, chasing down their prey. A look down Beach Street reveals a thousand beachgoers sprinting down the street and heading for their rental homes. It looks like a marathon. Only with blood and screaming children. A bird snaps at my head, and I cradle Doug like I'm a running back and he's a football the defense is trying to strip from me. The gull goes after the person next to me instead, taking a chunk of flesh from the back of his neck. I make it to the other side of the street, to the sidewalk.

I break away from the crowd as everyone heads toward their own street or hotel. There's no one ahead of me, just a concrete path to Samantha and the safety of four walls and a roof. Fear distracts me from my burning lungs and aching arms. Three more blocks. Come on.

A few seagulls circle in the sky like hawks, but I can tell by the volume of bird shrieks behind me that most of the action is still taking place along the boardwalk.

A car flies past us. I can hear sirens in the distance. Help is coming.

I make it to the house and run up the steps. I push open the door and put Doug down, patting his butt and urging him inside. I then look down the street, back toward the beach, and though the porch obstructs my view of the beach, I can see that the sky is still swarming with birds. I want to leave. Now. Before things get out of hand. Yeah, Tony's theory has left its mark on me, and I don't want any part of martial law once people start coughing up blood and breaking out in strange rashes. I shut the door, wondering if the birds will stay by the beach, content to feast on those trampled to death or bleeding. I don't plan on being here to find out, though. I tell Doug to stop crying, that it's going to be okay. I ask him to start packing his stuff while I go check on Samantha.

"We're safe in here," I tell him, and I hope I'm right. The way the birds crashed through windshields and storefronts though...

I run up the stairs, calling for Sam.

There's no answer.

I burst into the bedroom, and she's not there. The bed is empty. I run around, not sure I want her to be on the floor or not, but she's not. I quickly make my way through all the other rooms and find no trace of her. I pat my pockets for my phone, wondering if she tried calling while all hell was breaking loose on the beach. A text.

ON MY WAY. FEEL TERRIBLE BUT MISS U2.

"No, no, no!" I go into Doug's room and grab him. "Sorry, buddy. We'll get your stuff later. We gotta find Mom."

"Where is she?"

I take the time to kneel before him, mustering all the calmness I can in order to convey a sense of control I clearly don't have. "I'm not sure. Do you think you can help me look for her?"

He nods, his eyes still swollen. "She at beach?"

I hope not. "I don't think so."

I carry him down the stairs and grab the keys. I don't bother locking the door behind me, and I buckle Doug in the car seat as fast as I can. As I open the driver's side door to get in, a loud squawk makes me jump. Turning my head, I see a seagull walking across the street, coming toward me, its scrawny legs moving fast. Then it stops, tilts its head, looks around. It walks some more, this time to its right. It stops, looks at me. Walks some more.

I don't have time for this. I slam the door and turn the key. Backing out of my treasured spot, I maneuver the car and run over the seagull. The Honda bounces, and I get a sick pleasure from the jet stream of blood that squirts across the street in my side view. I throw the car in drive and take off toward Beach Avenue, keeping an eye on the sidewalks. "Look for Mommy, okay?" I'm peering over the steering wheel, praying that I see her crouched behind a telephone pole or something.

A bare-chested man with an inner tube around his waist goes sprinting down the sidewalk past us. I turn my head after him, but a sudden bang makes me whip my head around, and I find another man leaning against the hood. Half his face is missing, and his remaining eye is staring at me. At least he has a shirt on.

Doug screams.

I pull past the guy, and I track him with my eyes, watching him wander the street aimlessly through the rearview. "It's okay, buddy. It's okay."

An ambulance goes screaming by on the next street over. The sky above the beach is still covered with a dark cloud of circling birds, like vultures coming from all over to feast on the battlefields of Armageddon.

Beach Avenue is inaccessible. Police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks are scattered amongst crashed vehicles and the injured. It's chaos, family members searching for family members while the birds continue to swoop down. Firefighters are using fire hoses to provide cover, and it seems to be working somewhat. I turn down a side street, not willing to get stuck in the madness. Another police car shoots by ahead of me. I'm looking left and right for any sign of Samantha while blindly hitting redial on the cell over and over again. It goes to voicemail every time. "Come on, Sam," I whisper. The shock is beginning to thin as the gravity of the situation sinks in.

Helicopters overhead. Black ones. Military, I think.

As I cross over the next street, I steal a glance across Beach to the boardwalk. The insanity has consumed it for blocks. Then I hear the gunshots. I think they're coming from the beach, and when I reach the next cross street, I can make out police cars on the beach, officers firing shotguns up into the air at the swarming birds. They're falling out of the sky in threes and fours. Lifeguards and medics are running beneath the cover fire and dragging the injured into the safety of nearby vehicles. It reminds me of the old 1953 War of the Worlds movie.

The passing houses are back to obstructing my view. I don't know where to go. I doubt Sam came this way once all the running started. I wonder if I might have passed her in my escape from the beach. The thought sickens me. She can't be back there. She just can't.

I make a right onto the next street and travel away from the beach until I get to the next one and make another right, heading back toward the house. A crowd of people runs across the street at the next intersection, and I have to slam on the breaks. They're looking up into the air behind them. Right behind them.

I lean over the steering wheel and crane my neck, looking up into the sky. Sure enough, the seagulls have abandoned their swirling position over the beach and boardwalk, and now thousands of small shadows are skimming across the street, the roofs, parked cars... The birds flee the guns and fire hoses and seem to be seeking shelter in town. Ignoring the crowd, they disappear, thousands and thousands of them, as if dissolving right into the houses and trees. I roll down the windows, suddenly realizing that I'm sweating. I never turned the air on. I check on Douglas, and I'm relieved that he's still conscious. It has to be almost a hundred degrees in here.

We sit still at the intersection, windows down, and I watch the last of the avian army vanish. Only they don't vanish back to whatever island they'd been spawned on. Now they are here among us. Hiding on our roofs, in our trees. Waiting.

The silence is even more disturbing than the obnoxious gull-shrieking that was, just moments ago, echoing throughout the neighborhood. The sirens are still sounding, and I can hear the muffled screams and shouts coming from the beach some three or four blocks away, but everything else seems still. I see faces appearing behind curtains in the windows across from us.

I press on the gas and move the car into the intersection, anxious to find my wife. Now that the birds have left the boardwalk, I'll take Doug with me to Beach Avenue. I don't want to take him, don't want him to see the carnage, but I have little choice.

Making a right, I get as close to the boardwalk as I can before leaving the Pilot in the middle of the street. There are no parking spots, and I'm not about to try finding one. All I want to do is get my son the hell out of New Jersey, but I can't leave without Samantha.

I get out of the car, get Doug out of the car seat, and move against the crowd that is just now starting to follow the seagulls into town. They look dazed, scared, as if unable to understand what had happened. I've seen the look before. On the news, after a mass shooting or a bombing, the people staring into space, unable to comprehend...

I step onto Beach and maneuver around an ambulance, trying to avoid a severed leg lying nearby. I press Doug's face into my shoulder, hoping he doesn't see it. What kind of seagulls are these?

My eyes frantically search the scene, passing from one face to the next. The crowd is large, the entire beach crammed into the street, looking for loved ones, trying to find out where to go, how to help, what to do... The authorities don't seem to know themselves. But as I pass close to one, I hear something over a radio that stops my heart. I can't make out the whole thing, but I pick out a few words, and it's all I need. "Quarantine," "symptoms," "nobody leaves," and "army."

This can't be happening.

Crossing through the madness, I take the steps up to the boardwalk and stand for a moment, looking up and down the street. If Samantha is out there somewhere, it could take me hours to find her. I turn my attention back to the beach. It's mostly empty in both directions. There are officers poking dead birds with their shotguns, there are sheets being pulled over bloody corpses, and there are people crying.

The helicopters are just hovering out over the water, observing.

I recognize one of the cops from yesterday and jog over to him. He looks up from the dead bird at his feet. There's a stream of blood flowing from his left temple, where a two-inch gash glistens in the sun.

"Look at that," he mumbles, pointing with the shotgun. There are spent shells all over the beach.

I follow his gaze to the dead bird. Half its chest is missing, but inside the gore is something...metallic. I squint down at it. "I don't understand."

"You and me both." He looks up at the helicopters. "I think you should get out of here."

I'm touched that this officer has my wellbeing in mind, but I shake my head. "I have to find my wife."

He looks down at Douglas, then looks into the street. "They're going to close this place down."

"How long?"

"An hour."

That's not enough time.

"I can't leave her."

He looks sad, like the universe just crapped all over him and there was nothing he could do about it.

"We're dreaming, right?" I ask, not knowing what else to say.

"Some weird-ass dream if we are."

Before I leave him to continue my search, I take a closer look at the gull. I don't know what I'm looking at, but I'm pretty sure there's no animal in God's creation that comes with a metal skeleton. "An experiment?" The word slips out of my mouth before I have time to analyze it, probably as a result of all those sci-fi movies.

"I don't know." He looks up to the helicopters. "But I think they do."

My mind reels. What does that mean? But the possibilities seem endless.

He looks me in the eye. "Ten minutes, and then you should leave." His eyes drift down to Douglas, who has his arms wrapped around my leg. "For him."

I nod, though my heart is singing a different song.

My phone rings.

"Good luck," and the officer walks away, heading to a group of people waving for his attention.

The phone displays Samantha's face, and I'm overwhelmed with relief. "Honey..."

"Hello?" an unfamiliar voice answers.

"Who is this?"

"Mary. Who's this?"

"Where did you get that phone?"

"I found it on the boardwalk."

"When?"

"Right after the birds..."

"Where are you now?" The relief I felt when seeing Sam's face has now been replaced by a sense of dread.

"I'm in my house."

"Where exactly did you find it?"

"Between Congress and Perry. I looked around for...you know, whoever dropped it, but... It was ringing. That's why I noticed it. I couldn't answer it in time, though."

I'm silent, my free hand massaging my forehead.

"Is it your—"

"My wife."

Now she's silent.

"Where are you?" I ask.

"My house is on Washington, near Perry."

"I'll be right there." I hang up, take Doug's hand. "A lady found Mommy's phone. We're goin' to go get it, okay?"

"Why Mommy lose her phone?" he asks, worried.

I'm worried, too. I'm not sure why I need her phone, but I can't just leave it. Washington and Perry isn't that far.

I sweep Doug back into my sore arms and tell him to hold on. He throws his arms around my neck and squeezes tight. "I want you to play a game with me."

"What game?"

"I want you to close your eyes and try really hard to imagine where Mommy's hiding. Don't open your eyes until I say, or the game won't work, okay?"

He nods and squeezes his tiny eyes closed.

Unable to see the gore the birds left behind, I move as quickly as I can, approaching one body after another, stopping only to take a quick peek into rescue vehicles. If she dropped her phone on the boardwalk and was crushed, this is where I would find her body. But I don't see her, alive or dead.

The crowd of people still lingering on the boardwalk and in the street seems indecisive about the next move, hesitant to disperse, not wanting to head back to where the seagulls fled, but not wanting to stay out in the open in case they came back. But if the cop was right about the military being on its way, then the seagulls might be the least of their problems now.

"How's it going?" I ask Doug. "You have any ideas yet?"

"I think she in tree."

"In a tree?"

"Yup."

"There's a lot of trees. Which one?"

"I think harder."

"Let me know."

"I will."

I head back to the car, never taking my eyes off the confused faces around me.

I put Doug in the car seat again and take one more look at the helicopters still hovering over the beach. It's a slow, nerve-searing drive to Samantha's phone, crowds, ambulances, police cars, fire trucks, and others like me just trying to get through it all.

10

The woman answers the phone when I call and tells me she's standing on the porch steps. I see her. Her eyes are up in the clouds, as if the birds are hiding behind them and are about to break cover for another attack. I honk to get her attention. She waves.

"Is that lady with Momma's phone?" Doug's troubled voice comes from the back seat.

"Yeah." It's hard keeping it together for Doug, but I'm glad he's here. He's keeping me sane.

I stop in the middle of the street, not bothering to pull over, and she runs over to the Pilot. I roll down the window.

"I really hope you find her," she says while reaching into the car and handing me the phone. She's older, maybe in her early sixties, and her skin is leathery from a lifetime of sun. But despite the fear she's feeling, she still manages to emit warmth that, on any other day, might have invited a troubled soul such as mine in for tea and sympathy. There's no time for that now.

"I didn't find her on the boardwalk," I tell her.

"That's good. Means she got away."

I hope so. "I hear the military's coming."

Her eyes reveal nothing.

"It might get a little intense once they get here." I briefly relate Tony's theory of the birds carrying the next epidemic.

She shakes her head, sending her sun-bleached hair waving. "This is my home. I'm not leaving it. Besides, this is Cape May; they can't just drop a bomb on us."

She's seen the same movie I have. "I don't know," I say. "They can be pretty creative when they want to be." She doesn't respond to that, so I just nod. "Thanks for picking up."

"You don't have a picture, do you?"

I know she's just trying to sound helpful, but I oblige. Perhaps I should've showed it to the cop, too. "Yeah." I pull out my wallet and fish out our wedding photo. It's an older picture, but Sam hasn't changed much.

Before she sees it, she comments, "Haven't seen a guy with photos in his wallet in a long time." Then she takes it and shakes her head. "Sorry."

I expected nothing less, and I know she did too. "Thanks anyway." I take it back from her. "If you're staying, you better get back inside, lock the doors."

"The calm before the storm?" she asks, and I think I see a shiver run through her. She has a sense of what's coming whether she wants to face it or not.

"Take care."

"Good luck."

She goes back to her house, running with an eye toward the sky. By the time she's out of view, birds have yet to snatch her away. Good. I wouldn't want that on my conscience.

As I drive back toward the rental house, countless movies and novels are parading through my mind—stories of an outbreak that the military is forced to contain with lethal force. The nice lady had said they couldn't bomb Cape May, and maybe she was right. Unless, of course, they can spin it. Which is what politicians excel at. Contain news of the seagull attack and any reported sickness, detonate a nuke to wipe out any trace of the epidemic before it spreads, and then blame some other country we want to invade. Win-win for the guys in Washington. They get a war they always wanted while saving the country from some avian plague. Hell, it's almost justifiable. But would they do such a thing? Absolutely. If they're sure they can pull it off, there's nothing that I won't put past people with power. No matter what flag is pinned to their jacket...which is why I need to get out of here.

"Where we go now, Daddy?"

"We're gonna' stop back at the house and see if Mommy went there."

"I think she is."

"I hope you're right," I whisper. If she's not there, I don't know what else to do. I gotta get Douglas out of here while I can. I'll come back for Samantha later if I have to.

Cars are beginning to fill the streets now, people either getting wind of the lockdown that's coming or just wanting to get out of Cape May before the birds return. The madness is coming, and soon the roads will be jammed, the only two roads out of Cape May sure to be closed off in minutes. Actually, as I think about it, I gotta assume the police have already blocked Route 109. Crap. I'm gonna have to think of another way out of here.

My parking spot is still there, but I drive up over the sidewalk and onto the lawn instead. "Hang on, Doug. I'll be right back."

"No!" He starts crying. "Don't go!"

"I'll be right back." I'm about to sprint up the stairs to the house, when the door opens, and Samantha steps out.

Relief floods over me, and I can feel the tears welling in my eyes.

"Mommy!" I hear Doug shout from inside the car.

She runs to me, and I notice right away that she's not well. We embrace, and the tears fall. She's burning hot against me, sweat running down her face. She's as pale as a ghost.

"I didn't get your message," I tell her.

"I'm just so glad you're okay," she cries. "When I saw the car gone, I thought..."

"How did you get here? Did you walk?"

She turns her red-rimmed eyes back to the porch, and Tony steps out of the house.

"Tony?" Did I actually call him that out loud?

He looks at me, confused.

Yeah, I said it. "How?"

"I got off the beach before the birds attacked. Recognized your wife comin' at me on the boardwalk. I grabbed her and took her back here."

Samantha nodded, wiping her eyes. "I dropped my phone when he grabbed me. He wouldn't let me go back for it."

I look at Tony. "Thank you."

"Who's Tony?" he asks.

"I thought you told me your name was Tony," I lie.

"Name's Randall."

Randall. Yeah. "Nice to meet you."

He's still on the porch, his eyes up on the wires. A lone seagull is perched on the top of a nearby telephone pole, watching us. "Maybe we should get back inside," he says.

Doug is crying, wanting to be freed from his restraints, and Samantha leaves me to rescue him.

"Wait," I look at Ton...Randall, and say, "We should get out of here. Military's coming."

He swears. "I knew it."

At that moment, a police car turns onto the street. The officer is talking through a loudspeaker, advising everyone to stay indoors until further instructed. After it passes, another car comes from the opposite direction and pulls over in front of the house across from us. A man and a woman get out.

"We almost made it to the bridge," he shouts to us. "They have it closed off. They're telling everyone to go back to their homes and to stay there."

Samantha has Doug in her arms, kissing him like she hasn't seen him in a month. "What does that mean?" she asks.

"I hear FEMA's already set up on the north end."

"That was fast," Randall says.

"We got in our car and drove straight to the bridge as soon as the seagulls started attacking. We heard the stories over the last couple days, and we weren't about to hang around. There was a checkpoint already in place by the time we got there."

"And they told you to turn around?"

"They said they had orders not to let anyone in or out of Cape May until further notice."

"They say anything about the birds?" I ask.

"Not a peep."

More helicopters fly overhead.

"What are you gonna do?" I ask them as they walk back up to the house.

"Guess we'll hunker down and see what happens. Not worth gettin' shot tryin' to run."

I think of New Orleans in the wake of Katrina, of all the stories. Of Boston after the marathon bombing. I want no part in it. But what choice do I have at this point?

Randall finally comes down the steps, his eyes sweeping the neighborhood. When he gets close to me, he grabs my elbow and whispers. "I think we should go inside."

I almost make a face and ask, "We?" But he may have saved my wife's life, so I just bite my tongue and nod. We wave to the couple across the street and go inside. I lock the door.

Samantha puts Doug down on the couch and puts on a video for him to watch, reassuring him that everything is okay. Then she joins me and Randall in the kitchen. I almost gasp when I see her beneath the kitchen lights. She looks awful, and I know that something is wrong.

"How do you feel?" I ask.

Randall looks away.

She shakes her head, and I can tell she's trying not to cry. She's scared, and I feel completely helpless. I hold her tight.

"What's happening to me?" she whispers.

I stroke her sweaty hair. "It's going to be okay. We're going to get you help." She doesn't argue that, but I know what she's thinking...what we're all thinking.

After a few more minutes of talking in circles, we go into another room and turn on the television. There's nothing on the news. Every once in a while we peer through the blinds. The streets are empty. Military vehicles have arrived, and they're patrolling the neighborhoods. Martial law on vacation. Wonderful.

We see seagulls congregating on the sidewalks, having free reign of the streets. Twice, armored military vehicles with a lot of wheels roll slowly past this old house, a soldier behind a large machine gun aimed on the clouds of birds that seem to be stalking them from above. The soldiers aren't firing, though. At least not yet. I hope it's because they're afraid of collateral damage, of families being struck by wayward bullets.

Hours later, I determine that Randall might be an okay guy, and I feel a little bad about that first impression. Whatever he is, he is no mobster. A rich porn producer? Maybe, but I'm probably better off not knowing, so I don't ask. What I do ask is why he's hanging around here.

"Don't you have somewhere else to be?"

"You don't want me here?"

"You probably saved my wife's life; you can stay as long as you want. But—"

He waves a meaty hand at me, dismissing my question. "Don't worry about it."

Okay, I won't. "I just don't want you to feel obliged." I almost mention the beauties he had on him the first time we met but decide to hold my tongue. He hasn't offered an explanation, and I don't need one. If he's an Italian Hugh Heffner, good for him. As long as he doesn't get any ideas about having my wife join his harem. Whether he saved her or not. Yuck.

The rest of the day goes by without even a hint of our predicament gracing the television. Not on the local news, CNN, the Weather Channel, Animal Planet, ScyFi, no emergency broadcasting, no nothing. It's almost enough to convince us that it didn't really happen, proof of the power the media wields. Say something long and loud enough and it becomes truth; don't say anything at all and it never happened. Goodnight and good luck.

The seagulls make their seagull noises into the night, and if I close my eyes, I swear they sound like excited chimps bouncing around in the jungle. Every hour or so, a loud speaker tells us to stay indoors for our own safety. Douglas seems to think it's fun, some kind of adventure. He feels safe indoors, away from the birds, and just spends the rest of the day on his Leap Pad, using it to take pictures of the soldiers and cops on the street. Sometimes authority figures don't like that, whether constitutional or not, and it's led to unpleasantries in the past. Especially when what is being filmed exposes some manner of corruption, which this may or may not be. Regardless, I don't want to give them a reason to kick down our door, so I convince Doug to continue his documentation incognito from behind the curtains. That only makes it more exciting for him. I don't know that he's ever seen a spy movie, but he seems to be a natural at playing the part. Great, maybe I'm raising a spy. My wife will love that. He could be one of those nameless stars on the memorial wall at Langley. He passes out around 8. Samantha, who seems to be getting worse, falls asleep an hour later.

Unable to follow suit, Randall and I play cards at the kitchen table until midnight, bouncing theories back and forth—theories I'm glad the rest of my family can't hear. We have no idea what we'll find when the morning sun hits the streets. We talk about the birds, where they might've come from, and Randall thinks that maybe they were part of some military experiment. When I frown at this, he proceeds to justify the thought by educating me on other, documented military experiments. Such as strapping bats with napalm explosives and dropping cases of them over Japan from B-29s in the '40s. Pigeon-guided bombs was another experiment that actually got some funding, and there was the infamous "gay bomb" that the Pentagon looked into for some seven years, as well as weapons that would make bugs and rodents attack the enemy. I must admit that by the end of the lesson, attributing the seagull phenomena to some mad scientist (he lets me know that Operation Paperclip brought Nazi scientists into the employ of the US government after the war, so the term is actually not an exaggeration) sitting in the "creative ways to kill the enemy" room in the Pentagon does not seem completely out of the picture. The question he then proposes is: were the birds released accidentally or intentionally? How he knows all this stuff, I don't care to find out at the moment. There's no time for personal bonding, no stories of the past, no disclosing favorite colors. He doesn't ask about me, and I don't ask about him. We play cards and talk conspiracy and plague. We have some beers and ultimately surrender to fate by nodding off around 1 a.m.

11

I sit up with a start, realizing it's morning and that I'm still alive. A quick look around reveals the room to be empty. Randall has abandoned his position on the couch. He barely fit on that couch, so it doesn't surprise me to see him gone from it. I get to my feet and locate a clock. It's close to 8, and I suddenly notice the smell of coffee. Going into the next room, I find Samantha lying on another couch, still asleep, her breathing shallow.

"Hey," I whisper, kneeling beside her. I place my hand against her forehead. Still hot.

Her eyes open, focus. Once realization sets in, she manages to smile. "Where's Doug?"

"I just woke up."

"Go check."

"Okay. I'll be back."

I go up the steps and into his room. This is where I left him last night, but he's not here now. Before the chord of panic can be strummed, however, the bathroom door across the hall swings open, and my boy steps out.

"Daddy!" He runs to me and gives me a huge hug. I pick him up, carry him downstairs.

"You just wake up?"

He nods, rubbing his eyes.

I set him down at the bottom of the stairs, and he takes off running to Samantha. I walk to the front door, open it, and find Randall out on the porch, leaning over the railing with a cup of coffee in his hands. He's looking up at the sky, doesn't hear me coming.

"No bomb yet?" I ask.

He flinches, startled, and looks back at me. "No. Not yet."

"How long have you been up?"

"Few hours."

His eyes seem to take in every detail the morning has to offer him. He's still wearing one of my shirts, and I'm afraid he's stretched it out for good. No stitches can survive such strain for so long. I follow his gaze. There isn't much too see. The streets are still empty, and I notice a checkpoint down the street toward the beach.

"Any more instructions?"

"Not yet." He takes a sip of coffee and nods to our left. "See that?"

I try to locate his meaning, and it takes me a few seconds before my eyes catch it. "What is it?"

"Good news, I hope."

"Is it a net?"

"Yeah. They set them up all over town last night."

"That's good news?"

He looks at me. "Means they haven't resorted to bombs yet, so probably wasn't the initial plan after all."

"Oh, that is a relief." There isn't a single person that I can see anywhere, and I begin to get the sense that we're all alone. "Did we miss an evacuation?"

"Still not allowed to leave yet." He points down the street, at a police van that's turning our way. "Come on, let's get back in."

We go back inside and close the door. A few seconds later, the van goes by. It offers no message.

Randall says, "Couple local cops was walking by earlier. Talked to me for a couple minutes. Think they're as freaked as we are."

"What did they say?"

"Said the military set up these bird nets all over the island. They don't want the birds gettin' away. They brought hawks to hunt the seagulls, and supersonic sound machines to drive 'em to sharpshooters. They've been shootin' 'em out of the sky."

"What about the sickness?" I wonder for the first time why Randall has decided to stay with us despite Samantha's condition. If I were him, I think I'd want to be as far away from any sign of sickness as possible.

"Didn't know, but they said the CDC was here givin' everyone shots."

"For what?"

"Wasn't told."

I'm not sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, the last thing I wanted to hear was that shots were required, because it meant that our disease theory was right. But on the other hand, if the solution to the sickness was a simple shot, then perhaps it wasn't all that bad. "Who's everyone?"

"FEMA's givin' vaccines to everyone who's been bit or scratched by a gull. They're making the announcement one street at a time."

"It's not airborne?"

"I don't know what it is, but if it was an airborne contagion, I think we woulda woken up to a different scene."

Yeah, HAZMAT suits and barbed wire. "They don't know what it is?"

"The locals?" He shakes his head and sips more coffee.

"And then what?" I ask.

"Then we leave."

"That simple?"

He shrugs. "Guess we'll find out."

I leave Randall with his thoughts, and go back in to join my family.

* * * *

The pounding on the door comes just before noon. Samantha's getting a little color back in her lips, but she still seems to have a fever or something. She's feeling good enough to compete in a game of Candy Land, but I want to get her out of here. She insists she's fine and doesn't want me going out, but I can't hold off much longer. I was just about to disobey her orders and make a run for some meds when the banging started.

I open the door and come face to face with a handful of officers. If it weren't for the news acclimating me to the militarized outfits, I might have assumed we were being paid a visit from some elite commando team. I don't know why the cops have to dress like Judge Dredd. Whatever happened to the blues? Now they look like they're ready to shoot anyone who can't produce their documents fast enough. Whatever. They're here now, and they look like they're capable of storming the house and getting whatever they want with or without my constitutional consent, so I just say, "Hi."

Their automatic weapons aren't aimed directly at me, but they aren't hanging idle either. I look up and down the street and see other officers in black-armored uniforms knocking on doors. So far it doesn't appear that, though they may look like it, these cops are part of an execution team.

"We're going door to door and letting everyone know that they are free to leave the county once they've received a vaccine," the one cop with a mustache tells me.

"A vaccine?"

"Just a precaution. In case the seagulls were carrying something."

A precaution... And the CDC just happens to have a vaccine for whatever the birds might be carrying already in place here, huh? Of course, I don't say anything like this, because I don't want my head shot off. Police can be touchy and sometimes respond a little heavy-handed to...well, anything they don't want to hear.

"Where?" I ask.

"The courthouse."

"And then we can leave?"

He nods.

Despite the outfit, the guy actually seems human. Like he understands and wants to help, not just scare the crap out of us. Doug steps out of the house and hides behind me, peering up at the cops with untrusting eyes. He can't seem to take his eyes off all the guns. Whether they fascinate him or scare the hell out of him, I can't tell. But him being this close to so many of them, all in the hands of those with the authority to shoot us down for just about anything they can think of, makes me uneasy. I want them gone.

"Thank you."

"No one crosses the bridge without them," he states coldly.

"What about the birds? They still out there?"

"A few. We got most of them."

"What are they?" But I don't mention the things driving my suspicion, like the tags they wear or their metallic innards. If this is some sort of top-secret experiment, I'm just dandy not knowing anything about it. No liabilities here.

"Couldn't say," he responds. They turn and leave, walking over to the next house.

I ruffle Doug's hair. "Okay, let's go pack up."

"We goin' home?"

"Soon."

He leaves my side with neither a complaint nor a shout of joy. I think this whole vacation has him quite confused.

Randall is waiting for me when I step back inside.

"Vaccines?" he asks.

"That's what they say."

He sighs. "Guess we don't have much of a choice."

For someone who doesn't even trust the flu shot, having someone stick a needle in my arm without telling me what the hell it is or what it's supposed to fight, it's going to take a lot to convince me that it's necessary.

"They say anything about the birds?" he asks me.

"Said there's a few left."

"Strange how they seemed to be on top of this right from the start, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Makes me suspicious."

"Absolutely."

"I don't want to know."

"Me neither."

"Ignorance is bliss."

"Or deadly."

He frowns. "Let's go with bliss on this one."

12

Randall waves goodbye as he climbs into his car, and I feel a twinge of sadness knowing I'll never see him again. The big Italian actually grew on me. And he might have saved my wife's life.

We pull up to the checkpoint, about fifth in a long line of cars heading away from Cape May. The soldiers, or cops, or whatever they are—who can even tell anymore?—are searching each car thoroughly, as if someone reported seeing a seagull being smuggled into a suitcase. Once they're satisfied that no rabid gull is hogtied in the trunk, they then remove the wristbands that we were given as receipt of inoculation. Again, no one is told what it is we have been inoculated against. Whatever it is, or might be, it can't be all that big of a concern if they're letting us leave like this. Unless... Randall had made a comment as they were jabbing him that this could be their way of spreading a disease, making it look like it was the birds that were responsible when in reality it might be some concoction designed by one of our Nazis meant to be released into the general population. For what reason? Politics and power. Is there ever really any other motive? The thought is absurd, yet I've read stories of it having happened before. But I don't want to think about it. It's in me now, anyway. Whatever it is.

The guys with the guns order us out of the car, and we obey. Civil disobedience could get you shot these days. We now live in a day when cops in riot gear can be commanded to keep veterans from visiting their own memorials. Anyway, I'm not looking to make a statement here. I just want to get my family out of here. I'll leave that protest to someone with more pride than I have.

The drawbridge is up forty yards ahead, and unless someone wants to make a run for the controls, we have to play their game if we want to get home over this bridge. I don't think we can swim it, birds or no birds.

I look around the sky and don't see a bird of any sort anywhere. I suspect an avian genocide was ordered while we slept. There aren't any boats out on the water either, no news helicopters circling.

We watch the men as they go through all of our belongings. When they're done, one of the soldiers tells us to get back in our vehicle. He says "please," and of course, this makes everything okay.

I fasten Doug back in his car seat, close the back doors, and slip into the front seat beside my bride. Then the soldier knocks on the window, signaling for me to roll them down. I comply. Where else am I going to go?

"Fasten your seatbelts, please."

We do as he says, unsure if not wearing a seatbelt is an act of terrorism now or not. So many things change when the constitution is suspended, and I don't recall ever seeing a blueprint for martial law in Cape May. Maybe it was in one of the brochures the renters always leave on the counter every year. I never look at them, so I wouldn't know.

"Please place your hands on the wheel," he tells me.

Another soldier is at the passenger window telling Samantha to place her hands on the dashboard. I wonder what they'll have Doug do. They take the bands off our wrists, and a third soldier is doing the same with Doug. Doug has gotten over his fear, it seems, because he's talking to the soldier about good guys and bad guys and birds and crap. The soldier is doing a wonderful job at completely ignoring him. Guess it's all that training.

Once the evidence of our vaccines is removed, we're free to leave, and half an hour later, the bridge lowers.

We inch along at first, and then we're across and out of Cape May. I can't help feeling like we're fleeing prison and are about to get caught any second. I still can't believe they're just letting us go. Again, I hope it's because whatever the birds might have been carrying isn't so great a concern. I also hope that whatever they put in Doug's young body doesn't surprise us with any weird side effects. They gave him the same dose they gave us. I don't know if I'd be able to forgive myself if something happened to him. I didn't even put up a fight.

Samantha seems to be better, and by the time we're back in Pennsylvania, she seems to have regained all her color.

I surf the radio stations as I drive, but there is absolutely nothing about what happened on the air. I'm not sure how they can completely keep this under wraps, but so far they have. I pull into our driveway, and it feels like a hundred years since we've been home.

* * * *

It's Monday, and I still have two more days off from work. I have no idea what's going on in Cape May now, but I have little desire to make good on the last few days we have left in the house. I've spent hours searching the internet for any mention of the seagull attack and ensuing martial law. I've spotted a few tweets, scattered Facebook posts, and some blog mentions, but by the next day, all such profiles have been erased. Until now, I had no idea how much control the forces-that-be have over the media. It's frightening in a free country. I don't even know how it's possible. The news will spread from word of mouth, but if it ain't on the radio and CNN don't report it, it just didn't happen. I look down at my laptop and do one more search. This time, I'm lucky. I spot hash-tag: SEAGULL SUMMER. I click on it and find hundreds of posts, all related to what just happened. I know they won't last, so I copy them all and paste them into a Word doc. Some of them even have pictures.

Seagull Summer... Thirty years from now, if we haven't all been wiped out by plague or nukes or zombies, we'll be sitting on a porch in Cape May, holding grandkids and telling stories about Seagull Summer.

Douglas comes back into the living room, still in his pajamas. He's fighting a cold or something, and he's enjoying a lazy day of cartoons and chicken noodle soup. It's raining outside, so we justify it that way. He climbs up beside me and rests his head against my shoulder and resumes watching whatever he has on TV. I've learned to tune it out by now.

Samantha walks in next and sits down on my other side. She's hopeful that our shenanigans will result in a new addition to the household. I'm on the fence. I scratch at the rash that's appeared on my chest, not thinking anything of it.

I'm just glad to be home with my family. I bring my e-reader to life, anxious to pick up where I left off in A Cape May Diamond.

