Left Turns

Leah Davenport turns left off of Broadway because the two cars ahead of her do, and because she’s thinking about him.

Shit.

Now she’ll have to round the first block in order to get back en-route. It shouldn’t be a long delay, but in this traffic it won’t be at all quick either.

She adjusts the rearview mirror and checks on Madison, who’s still asleep. “Don’t worry sweetheart, just a tiny detour…”

Madison stretches and yawns.

Leah runs some numbers in her head. Yes...if this self-inflicted detour lasts less than ten minutes she should still make it home by seven thirty- and that won’t be too bad.

Traffic crawls forward one excruciating car-length at a time. The vehicles undulate like the segmented scales of some lethargic metal beast. The line of cars, she thinks, is larger than the sum of its drivers, passengers and vehicles. In a very real sense, the traffic is alive...

Seven minutes feel more like seven days and Leah can see the next intersection now. She lets out a breath she doesn’t realize she’s been holding.

Another six minutes pass. The turn she needs to make is right ahead...only a few car-lengths away. She’s close enough to read the diamond shaped, orange sign. “Street Closed: Left Turn Only.”

She glances at the clock on the dash, adds another thirty minutes to her original estimate. Okay, it still shouldn’t be too bad…

She wants a cigarette. It’s been over a year now, since she’s smoked. She quit the very first day she first suspected she was pregnant, and usually doesn’t think about it anymore.

“Everything’s fine, Maddie-girl,” she whispers into the cabin of her SUV, “We’re just taking the scenic route.”

The segmented beast undulates slowly, but inexorably forward, and finally here is intersection number two.

“Oh, come on…” Leah says under her breath. “You’re kidding me, right?”

The next intersection is barricaded. And here’s the same sign. “Street Closed: Left Turn Only.” Now she’s going to have to call him. Not yet, though- not until she’s back on Broadway and heading in the direction of home.

Madison is awake. Leah doesn’t have to look back to know this, and that makes her feel good.

Her breathing...she thinks....I heard the change in her breathing...

Leah tilts the rearview. “Look who’s awake!”

The baby affords her mother a big, open-mouthed grin. She looks adorable and beautiful and goofy all at the same time, and Leah can’t help but smile. In her periphery, she sees the traffic ahead of her roll forward. She follows.

“Mommy made a booboo, Maddy...”

Madison is delighted. “Momma boo-boo-boo…”

Leah laughs. “That’s right, sweetheart! Momma boo-boo-boo-ed, but we’ll be home soon.”

Traffic has stopped. She is going to be very late, and he’s not going to be happy.

“Boo-boo-boo!” Madison says, and laughs.

“Boo-boo-boo!” Leah says. She forces a smile, but her right hand leaves the steering wheel and goes to her side, near the small of her back.

She reaches over to where her purse rests on the passenger seat. Without looking, she locates her cell and dials home.

“Where are you?” He asks. He doesn’t sound particularly concerned.

“I’m fine,” she says, “But we’re going to be late.”

The line is silent for a moment. “Why?”

“Boo-boo-boo!” Madison giggles.

Traffic is moving again, sort of, and Leah eases her foot off of the brake. “Traffic. It looks like there might be road work up ahead.”

“On Broadway? I just took Broadway to get home…”

Leah sighs inwardly. “Not Broadway. I turned off.”

“Why the hell did you do that?”

“I didn’t do it on purpose. I’m trying to get back on now.”

“Boo-boo-boo…”

He laughs a dry laugh. “How do you turn off of a main-road by accident?”

Traffic is rolling forward. Leah can see the next intersection. “I wasn’t thinking about where I was going.”

“Well...what am I supposed to do about dinner?”

She wonders when the man she married had become so...needy. She can’t recall.

“There’s leftover ziti in the fridge if you want, but I won’t be that long…”

He makes a dismissive, impatient sound. “I’ll order something.”

“Mama boo-boo-boo…”

Leah suppresses a groan. Their savings, once moderate, if not significant, is dwindling fast. Has been since he decided to take a sabbatical and finish his book.

That fucking book…was that when he changed? No, she decides. It had started before that.

“Okay, just…”

“Just what? What’s the problem now?”

She breathes deeply; exhales. “Just put it on the Mastercard, please.”

“I’ve got cash.” He says. That’s news to Leah, who had to leave a bag of groceries at the supermarket this week for wont of liquidity.

“Alright. Let me go so I don’t get a ticket.”

“Bye.” He says, and hangs up.

“Boo-boo-boo!” Madison says.

Leah takes another deep, cleansing breath and exhales in a sigh. “Boo-boo-boo, baby,” she responds, and places her cell back in her purse. “Now let’s get...oh you can’t be serious!”

Madison makes anxious noises from the back seat.

“No, no...it’s okay, Madison. It’s okay, baby.” Leah’s words sooth her child. Leah herself is not at all soothed.

They’e reached the next intersection. Long, rickety-looking, sawhorses block the avenue. In front of the horses, a diamond-shaped, orange sign:

LEFT TURN ONLY

Leah has been anxious since having turned left off of Broadway. She’s been nervous since coming upon the second detour sign. Now, she feels a cold stab of actual panic in her chest. What the hell is going on here? Why are all of these streets closed? Has there been a terrible accident? She hasn’t heard any sirens, or seen any emergency vehicles…

“Mama-mama-ma…” Madison contributes from her car-seat.

“It’s okay, Maddy-girl! Mama’s gonna get us home. We’re just taking the long-way...” She smiles into the rearview and Madison smiles back.

“Mama-mama-ma!”

It starts to rain. What begins as a random droplet here and there on the windshield quickly escalates into a steady, if light, downpour. Perfect, she thinks, and turns on the wipers.

Traffic should be lightening up this far south, but isn’t. Leah checks the dashboard display for the time. Seven-ten. If traffic dissolves, she thinks- if the rapture happens and one third of the population suddenly vanish into thin air- she may still get home by eight. In all likelihood, though, she and her little girl will be making it home no earlier than eight-thirty or nine tonight.

Leah thanks God that she had the sense to bring Madison along to the baby-shower today. Her husband- her new husband, in a very real sense- has a nasty jealous streak. Recently, he’s taken to accusing her of running around with his close friend, Andrew.

Her hand returns, seemingly of its own volition, to the bruise on the side of her lower back.

“Mama-ma-boo-boo-boo!”

“Yes, Maddy. Mama made a boo-boo.” Leah bites down on the inside of her lip, lest the stinging in her eyes and the pressure in her chest erupt into a volcanic, cathartic fit of crying. She has to hold it together, for Madison.

They roll up on the next orange diamond and set of rickety wooden horses. Leah doesn’t bother reading the bold-print on the sign. She knows what it says. At any rate, she’s thinking something else just now...something more than a little troubling. Namely, how many left turns can one make, in a relatively confined area, without passing the same road, or building, twice? It’s a deceptively complex question, she realizes, depending entirely on the area of the first four left turns. Or at least that’s as far as she’s reasoned the problem through when the car in front of her jumps on its brakes.

She reaches back in a maternal effort to restrain her daughter and steps on her own brake. Her SUV stops just short of tapping the bumper of the car in front of them. Madison voices her displeasure at being jostled so.

Leah puts the transmission in park and closes her eyes for a second. She can feel the beginnings of a terrible headache coming on...




--------------------------------------------




Ninety-minutes and eleven coerced left-turns later, and Leah is giving serious thought to taking matters into her own hands. She’s been more than patient, but this is ridiculous. And anyway, how can you make eleven (fourteen, counting the first three) left turns, all more or less evenly spaced from one another, and not circle the same block twice? The same street twice?

What’s worse, the streets and neighborhoods have taken on a decidedly...defeated quality. Trendy boutiques and chic salons have given way to check-cashing storefronts and pawnshops. Here and there mill the walking dead. Some gather around stoops, others on street corners. Leah inadvertently makes eye contact with a skeletal old man. The windows to the man’s soul are bereft of hope.

Doing her very best to be discreet, Leah checks to make sure that the SUV’s doors are locked, and that the windows are rolled all the way shut.

“Boo-boo-boo?” Madison isn’t quite irritable yet, but it’s clear she’s losing her enthusiasm for this little adventure.

Traffic rolls forward, and Leah follows.

“Yes, Maddy. Mommy made a boo-boo. Just hang on, baby. Mommy will get you home…”

“Mamamamama!”

Leah grins and thinks how nice it is to have a one-person cheering section.

The day is at an end, and darkness has gathered. The clock on the dash reads eight-forty-seven in bright green block numerals. She’d better call him again.

Another left turn and this street is worse than the last. The buildings are dilapidated and ugly, their stoops and stone facades crumbling. People are everywhere. They move in slow motion and eye each car as it passes.

Leah is scared. The dead stares of the hangers-about are more than unnerving. Her left leg, she notices, is bouncing with nervous energy. With an effort of will, she makes it stop.

“Ma-ma-ma?”

She looks into the rear-view and forces a big smile for her little girl. “It’s okay, baby. Nothing to worry about.”

When he used to golf, which had been frequently before he’d started writing that damned book, her husband would often take her SUV instead of his own car. Leah wonders if maybe he’s left a club or two rolling around back there, and if she’ll be able to access them, should the need arise...

The car in front of her rolls forward and Leah’s SUV does too. She looks around without being obvious about it. She considers driving right through the barricade at the next intersection. She considers it very seriously.

The relative silence of the SUV’s cabin is violated by Katy Perry. Baby, you’re a firework, she sings, and Leah reaches for her cell-phone. She breathes deeply and sighs.

“Hello,” she says, trying not to sound as worried as she is.

“Where the hell are you?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” she says, and regrets it immediately. Her hand finds the small of her back.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean it that way. Are you okay?”

“Yes,” Leah says automatically. “Well, I think so. We’re still in traffic.”

“Are you serious? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. It’s like...it’s like they’re herding us.”

He laughs, and she resents it.

“They are herding you,” he says. They’re herding you away from an accident or a gas-leak or a water-main break…”

He could be right, she supposes. She knows he isn’t, though.

“How long, do you think?” He doesn’t sound angry or suspicious anymore, so that’s something.

Leah considers the question. “I really don’t know. I’m just glad I have another bottle for Madison.”

“Okay. Well...call me if you need anything or...I don’t know…”

“I will.” Leah says, and this time it is she who ends the call.




-----------------------------------------------------




She’s made up her mind. She’s going to drive through the next set of barricades, make a right turn, and get the hell off of this insane detour.

What, she figures, is the worst that might happen? She’ll be arrested, and at least then she’ll be able to tell her husband where to come and get them.

The next intersection is about four car-lengths ahead of her now. She can see the street sign. She takes a deep, fortifying breath.

“Mamamamama!” Madison cheers.

Damn right, kiddo, she thinks. “That’s right baby! Mamamamama!”

Madison smiles.

Two car-lengths now. Almost there…

Her heart is pounding in her chest...

A report sounds in the dawning night, and Leah’s blood goes cold.

That was a gunshot…

The more reasonable part of her asserts itself. It could have been a backfire, it insists, or even one of Katy Perry’s fireworks...

And do you really have any idea what actual, live gunfire sounds like?

Only it had been a gunshot. Leah doesn’t know why, but she is as sure of this as she is of anything in this world.

One more car-length to go. Just one more…

Traffic moves and she’s there. She steels herself, turns the SUV’s wheel all the way to the right…

...and feels her heart falls into her stomach. Just beyond the pylons and wooden barricades, a group of shadowy figures are gathered. She looks beyond them and sees more movement amidst the darkness.

Shit!

Going to jail for destroying a barricade is something she’s willing to do in order to end this ordeal. Hurting or possibly killing someone is not.

She turns the wheel back to the forward position and frowns. She has to pee so badly that her lower abdomen is beginning to cramp. The clock on the dash reads nine-oh-six.

Madison is getting fussy. Leah reaches into the diaper-bag on the passenger-seat floor and searches out the full bottle. She finds it and gives it to her daughter.

Another gunshot sounds in the night, and Leah is afraid for an instant that she’ll wet her pants.

Okay, okay...get a hold of yourself. This is a detour. Granted, it is a poorly thought-out detour through a pretty shitty neighborhood, but it is only a detour. It will end, eventually...

Cries from the backseat. She cranes her neck and sees that Madison has dropped her dinner. Leah twists her torso and reaches for the bottle. The effort makes her bladder scream.

She has her fingertips on the bottle now, and is rolling it toward her palm. A horn blasts from behind and Leah snaps back around. The car in front of her has rolled forward a car-length or two, and she closes the distance.

Madison cries. Leah wants to also.

Leah has turned her attention back to Madison’s bottle, is half-turned in her seat, when an explosion rocks the night. She can feel it as well as hear it. She feels her bladder let go, notes the warm moisture in an offhand way. Fear turns to alarm. Is there a battle going on, she wonders? Have we been attacked?

Stay calm...you have a better chance of getting through this if you stay calm…

The reasonable voice inside of her is right, she knows, but it is asking a lot. She takes a deep breath and once more twists to retrieve Madison’s bottle. The poor child has picked up on her mother’s distress, Leah knows.

“We’re going to be okay, baby-girl. Mommy will get us home, I promise.” She retrieves a baby wipe from the diaper-bag, keeping a careful eye on traffic. She cleans the nipple on the bottle and gives it back to Madison.

“Ma-ma-ma-ma…” The baby says. She accepts the bottle.




-------------------------------------------------




Another eight left-turns, seven gunshots and four terrifying explosions later and it’s nine-thirty-eight. The streets continue to degenerate, as do their indigenous peoples. Many of them now walk with a pronounced hunch, Leah notes. Some chatter away to one another, others to themselves.

It is past impossible, Leah knows, to have made so many left turns in so confined an area and not have seen the same streets numerous times. She’s no expert in traffic patterns, or geometry, or probability, for that matter- but this, she knows intuitively, is simply wrong.

There’s no cell-service here. She’s tried twice to call home only to receive an automated message.

Where the hell are we...?

She reaches for her cell-phone and checks again. Still no bars…

There’s a tap at the window and Leah jumps, lets out a gasp. A man- only Leah isn’t entirely sure that it is a man- stares at her with dead eyes. A scream rises, catches in her throat. He raises one arm and points. The car ahead of her has moved she sees, a full two lengths.

She looks back at the nightmare of a man and then rolls forward, leaving him standing and pointing. She wonders, as she resumes her place in line, why the car behind her hadn’t honked, as it had before.

A slight adjustment of the rear-view mirror gives her the answer. The car behind her hasn’t rolled forward to close the distance between them, and she can see why. It is empty, and its driver’s side door is open.

The car ahead of her rolls forward. Leah takes a ragged breath and follows. She sees that a group of the shambling denizens of this nightmare place have gathered around a white truck, some ten or so car lengths ahead of her own. As she watches, one of the creatures- because that is all they are now, any vestiges of humanity had been abandoned a block or two back- puts an elbow through the truck’s driver’s-side window.

Leah jumps and screams. She can’t help herself. Madison joins her and resumes crying.

“It’s okay, Madison. It’s okay…” Any cheer is gone from her voice now. She is unable to summon a smile, even for her daughter. She reaches into her bag and checks her cell-phone. There are no bars still, which is probably just as well. She doesn’t want to spend the last moments of her life arguing with him.

The thing is reaching into the broken driver’s side window of the white truck, now. A man emerges from a black sedan a few cars behind and levels a .38 caliber pistol at the creature. Two of the nightmares start quickly in the man’s direction.

“Police!” the man says. Leah experiences a tiny jolt of...what? Relief…? Hope…?

The creatures are still closing the distance between themselves and the plainclothes officer. He fires two shots, one into the abdomen of each approaching nightmare. They pause and clutch at their wounds, dazed, but in no apparent pain. Leah watches the cop fire a third shot, this one directly into the right temple of the being molesting the driver of the white truck.

Leah is simultaneously relieved and horrified as the creature leaves its feet, as though pulled by an invisible wire. It hits the pavement with a wet, dull thud. She hears a scream, and realizes that it is she who is screaming. Madison screams right along, her healthy little lungs doing an admirable job of keeping pace with her terrified mother’s.

Terror threatens to overwhelm Leah completely. Her breath is ragged and uneven. Her hands and even her arms are shaking, out of her control. She struggles to assert any degree of dominance over the fear.

She wants to comfort her daughter, but is unable. Right now the best she can hope to do is save Madison’s life. Comfort will have to wait.

The thought “Maybe forever…” begins to coalesce in her mind. She refuses to articulate it, though, even silently. She bites down hard on the inside of her lip, and lets the pain scatter the embryonic thought into nothingness.

Leah watches with a growing sense of defeat as the two injured creatures resume walking toward the police officer. Once is still holding his concave and wounded stomach.

The officer- a pudgy, balding man in an ill-fitting suit- shoots each of the oncoming things in the forehead once. Leah screams again, but at the same time she admires the officer’s restraint. Had she been in his place, she’d have emptied that little gun into the closest creature. And then of course, she’d have been very well and goodly screwed.

It doesn’t look as though the officer’s economy of ammunition is going to help him much, though. The two creatures he’s shot in the head have collapsed into twitching heaps on the pavement, but three more are now advancing.

With one shot left in his revolver, the officer shoots the closest of the things in the head and gets back into his car. He locks the doors and checks the windows.

As if that’s going to help, Leah thinks. She herself has stopped screaming. Madison has not.

The knot of troglodytes gathered around the white truck shamble back and toward the sidewalk. Leah looks to either side of her own SUV and notes that a battalion of the things have lined the sidewalks, on either side and in either direction, for as far as she can see. These sub-human sentries glare at the unfolding spectacle, but remain more-or-less motionless.

Leah checks the time. She wants something to look at, even for one second, that brings her back to the real world. The green digits read nine-thirty-seven…

A flash of light interrupts Leah’s train of thought. It’s followed a few parts of a second later by an explosion that rattles the windows and frame of her vehicle. She hears herself cry out, hears Madison intensify the tenor of her own wails.

Seconds later the shock-wave follows, throwing bits of jagged, and in some cases still flaming, debris against Leah’s windshield. She flinches involuntarily; raises her right hand to shield her face. With her left, she does her best to shield Madison. The glass remains intact, but it is dimpled and spider-webbed.

I’m going to die, Leah thinks.

She pushes the useless thought aside. She can’t die, not yet. Leah makes herself an unspoken promise- she will live long enough to save Madison. No matter what happens, she will somehow accomplish that.

Now if only she can figure out how...

There is nothing left, she sees, of the white truck that had been the object of the creatures’ scrutiny. One of the monstrosities moves to the next vehicle in line, a green minivan, and motions to the driver to pull forward. The driver refuses, and instead attempts to escape out of the passenger’s side door.

The driver is a smartly-dressed woman. She’s discarded her shoes, Leah notes, in favor of a barefoot getaway. The creatures are everywhere, though, and in no time they have her. They pull at her long chestnut hair, rake at her skin with long yellow fingernails.

They pull her apart.

Leah is out of screams, apparently. She takes in the grotesque display in silence. Madison’s distressed crying makes an eerily appropriate soundtrack, however, and Leah decides that- given the choice- she would rather be incinerated than dismembered.

If you’re going to do this, Leah’s normally reasonable inner-voice speaks up, do it now…

Yes, she realizes. If not now, when? She closes her eyes for just an instant, mumbles a prayer for the first time in quite some time.

“Hold on, sweetheart,” she says. “Mommy’s going to get you home.”

The intensity of the child's wailing lessens.

“Mommy loves you, Madison. I want you to know that, okay baby?”

Madison stops crying. She is breathing short, hitching breaths.

Leah reaches down and engages the SUV’s four-wheel-drive. He’d ridiculed her for wanting to buy a vehicle with four-wheel-drive. He’d said it was unnecessary on Long Island, and more expensive to boot. She’d insisted though, and now she is glad she did...

Unleashing a primal, inarticulate cry, Leah turns the wheel of the SUV all the way to the right and smashes her foot down on the accelerator. She clips the bumper of the car in front of her as she exits the line of traffic. She can see that some of the creatures have taken notice and are moving to intercept.

Another flash of light, then, and the blue minivan is gone. Leah feels the explosion in her teeth, in her bones.

She drives up onto the sidewalk in order to fit her SUV onto the packed, one lane avenue. She shrieks as the first body hits her windshield, and then resumes her warrior’s cry. Creatures fall beneath her tires, some are clipped on the hip or side and sent spinning. The unholy things rage at this unanticipated development. Leah can see the raw hatred in their otherwise lifeless eyes as she mows through them without the slightest hesitation.

The urge to make a left turn (as she’s heading in the opposite direction now, those are the barricaded streets) is almost overwhelming. Would it take her toward home, she wonders? Or would it lead her further into this hidden world of nightmares? No, the safest thing to do, she decides, is to follow the doomed cars in the detour like the proverbial trail of breadcrumbs.

She drives through those obstacles she can, skirts those she can’t. She sideswipes a sports car in order to avoid an ancient-looking steel mailbox. She remembers a prayer from back when she and her mother attended Alanon- before her father had died of cirrhosis of the liver.

Grant me the serenity to run over those things I can; the reflexes to avoid those things I can’t; and the wisdom to know the difference.

She’s managed six right-turns, following the detour in reverse. She’s left a trail of destruction and even death, she knows. None of that matters. Those things were going to kill her- and her baby. She feels no remorse.

A glance at her speedometer tells her that she’s doing thirty-two miles an hour. Leah grins savagely. It feels as though she’s doing ninety.

Another right turn and three sideswiped vehicles later and Leah notes a marked improvement in her surroundings. The people milling about are actually people, she sees. The buildings, though in need of repair, are at least relatively sound-looking and obviously lived-in.

The urge to pull over now is substantial. While this neighborhood is Park Avenue compared with what she’s just seen, she has the sense to know that it is a marginal area, at best. And she still has Madison, first and foremost, to think about. She’ll go just a little further...

She continues on, in violation of any number of traffic laws, for another six or seven more right-turns.

We’re going to make it out of this alive.

From the backseat, Madison chimes in. “Mamamamama!”




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Leah phones the police from the parking lot of a hotel not far from her own home. “Hello,” she says, and allows herself to cry. “I have to report a car-jacking.”

The operator asks if she needs medical attention. Leah declines. The woman on the line assures her that a marked police car is on its way. “Thank you.” She ends the call and moves to place her cell in the pocket of the sweat-jacket she’s tied around her waist. She hesitates, bouncing Madison absently on one hip. After a moment’s thought, she dials her home number and thumbs the green button.

“Leah? Where are you?”

Really? she thinks. She wonders, not for the first time, whether the man she married has any concern at all for her well-being.

“I’m okay, thanks.” She doesn’t regret saying it this time.

He lets out an exasperated breath. “You know what I mean. Are you alright?”

“I’m leaving you.” A tear rolls down her cheek.

A moment of silence. “What?”

“I won’t try to keep you from seeing Madison…”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” His voice is angry...panicked. “What the hell is going on?”

“I’m sorry. I really am, but you’ve changed. You aren’t the man I married. You haven’t been for over a year now…”

Another pause. “Leah...you know I’ve been stressed out about the book, but...baby, I can change. I told you...I can be the man I was…”

Leah doesn’t think so. She doesn’t think that he does either.

“Maybe,” she says. “But I can’t go back to being the woman I was. Not after the way you’ve treated me.”

“Leah...honey…”

“It’s too late. I’m sorry. I’ll be in touch in a day or two, we can talk about visits with Maddy, and moving arrangements.”

“Where are you?”

“I’ll be in touch.” Leah ends the call and turns off her cell-phone. She collects herself.

“Well, Maddy-baby,” she says, and wipes the tears from her cheeks. “Are you ready?”

Madison smiles. “Ma-ma-ma-ma.”

Leah smiles too. “Good. So...what do you say we put all of this behind us?”

"Ma-ma-ma-ma!"

She kisses her daughter- thinks how nice it is to have a cheering section.

Together they enter the hotel lobby.


J. Robert Kane
November 2016