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Just Drive
by Will McIntosh
THEY STRETCHED OUT THE WORDS AS THEY SANG, going overboard to show me they weren’t rushing, even though standing in that kitchen was so not safe it was ridiculous.
As they brought the song home in their New York-Italian accents, I realized that when you got down to it, “Happy Birthday” is a terrible song. The tune sucks, and the words are empty and repetitive. I blew out the candles quickly, just wanting to get out of there. No wish, because all wishes were pointless except for one, and that one wasn’t going to come true no matter how hard I blew.
“Somebody get the plates,” Aunt Marie said.
“What do we need plates for?” Uncle Joey gestured at the table. “They’re cookies. You pick them up and you eat them.”
“It’s a party, for God’s sake,” Marie shot back.
Mom opened cabinets until she hit on the one holding the plates. She grabbed a few, began shoving them at people. “Here.”
I hadn’t wanted to stop for the party. Standing in some long-dead stranger’s dusty kitchen only reminded me of how fucked up everything was, and I didn’t need any more reminders of that.
I took my cookies and headed down the hallway. If we were going to risk our lives to eat cookies, I might as well take advantage of it to have some alone-time. I missed solitude. Once it had been such a simple thing, to close a door or walk into the woods. Now I was lucky if I got to be alone for three minutes a month.
There was makeup in the bathroom—a dozen lipsticks, mascara, the whole arsenal. Picking a lipstick at random, I ran it over my lips, enjoying the familiar gliding sensation. I leaned in so my face was close to the dirty mirror, studied my lips before sticking the lipstick in my back pocket.
Something had to give. I was so tired of being terrified, so sick of my relatives, of not sleeping, and eating stale food out of dead people’s pantries. But nothing was going to give. Nothing was going to change, unless you counted things getting worse as change.
Out in the living room, the walkie-talkie crackled to life. “We’ve got hostiles north of Route Nine, between Chester and Fifty-Four, heading south-southwest toward Elberton. Repeat, hostiles north of—”
I sprinted for the exit, ending up right on Uncle Joey’s heels with Mom and Marie right behind me.
As soon as I was outside I could hear them. It was the high-pitched buzzing of their vegetation teeth, not the lower drone of their meat-eating teeth, but they could switch them out in the time it took me to kiss my ass goodbye.
We’d backed the SUV right up to the house and left the doors open. I scrambled through my assigned door—rear right—and dove into the far back as the SUV roared to life. We peeled across the lawn, thumped over the curb and swung left, away from the sound of the buzztops.
Out the back window, I could see the leaves on a big oak tree quiver like it was being pushed by a bulldozer. Suddenly it slammed to the ground like the bulldozer had found the sweet spot and flattened it.
I caught a glimpse of the termite that had taken it down—black and gold, its skin like mottled stone—before we screeched around the corner.
I had constant nightmares about their mouths, if you could call them that, sliding along the ground at the end of tube-shaped snouts, row after row of shiny silver-gray teeth disappearing into the darkness of their throats.
Eight or nine buzztops chased our SUV, no two shaped quite the same. As we accelerated, the buzztops fell behind.
Were they disappointed when people got away? Were they even alive? Or were they machines? Even after dissecting a few the government hadn’t been able to say for sure. They were like fat snouted logs with teeth running on a hundred tiny legs, swallowing every twig, every bug, every blade of grass, leaving nothing but concrete and dirt.
“Oh, shit!” Joey shouted, making me jump. I spun to face front just as Joey hit the brakes.
More buzztops, coming from the opposite direction.
Joey turned down a driveway, went around the side of the house and into the back yard, which was fenced in.
“Goddamn.” Joey crashed right through the fence, sending splintered wood flying.
“Watch out!” Mom screamed. We were headed right for an in-ground pool filled with green water.
Joey yanked the wheel; the SUV fishtailed violently, then straightened. Out the side window I caught a glimpse of four buzztops pushing through the gap in the fence. They ignored the trees and grass. Meat always took priority.
“No, no, no,” Joey cried. The space between this house and the next was filled by a huge eucalyptus tree, its branches all the way to the ground. Joey swung the SUV right, between the pool and the house.
One of the buzztops glided over the pool, mouth open wide, bearing down as we cut left, around the house. Smaller ones—the ones that swarmed into houses and cars and other cramped places to chew you up—poured out of its mouth as it tried to cut us off. They scurried after us, as Uncle Joey plowed over a bicycle lying beside the house before cutting across the front lawn to avoid a white van blocking the driveway. The little rats fell behind, and suddenly I felt bad for thinking about how sick I was of my relatives, because if one of those rats had gotten on the SUV it would have broken through the window and gone right to work chewing up whoever was closest.
* * *
We flew down the road, the land outside a desert—nothing but collapsed buildings and dirt, chewed-up telephone lines laying in tangles along the side of the road because telephone poles are made of wood, and buzztops eat wood.
“Jesus. Did they do that on purpose, sending two swarms from opposite directions?” Marie asked.
“Nah,” Joey said. “They’re dumb bastards. We just got unlucky.”
“Maybe they’re getting smarter,” Marie said.
Joey waved a dismissive hand. “They’re not getting smarter.”
“How do you know?” Marie said.
“Why would they suddenly get smarter? They’ve been doing the same thing for four months, day and night. Suddenly they’re gonna get smarter?”
“Why not?”
As my pulse slowed from heart-attack territory back to its post-invasion racing normal, I turned, slid down my seat in the wayback until I was lying down, and propped one foot on the window. The three of them used to bicker about how much salt to put in the spaghetti sauce; now they bickered about which way to go to avoid being eaten.
I reached out, touched the photo of my late best friend Rachel that was taped to the seat back, along with a dozen other photos and a small mirror. I missed Rachel. I missed having in-jokes with someone, missed being in constant phone contact. I missed my room. Even with all of my most important shit laid out and taped up around me, the back of an SUV wasn’t much of a substitute for a room.
I sat up and looked out the window. The stripped landscape went on and on as far as I could see. There wasn’t much left for them to eat. Would the buzztops leave when they were finished gobbling up everything that wasn’t able to run, or would they stay until they’d hunted down every last scrap of fleeing meat? Nobody knew. Not that it mattered. If they took everything, we’d all starve to death after they left anyway. We were probably a month or two away from that.
All we could do was keep driving and hope we didn’t run into too many cloudy days in a row, so the SUV’s solar battery stayed charged. We always had a destination in mind, were always chasing some new rumor of a place the buzztops couldn’t reach that would accept refugees. It was all a pipe dream, though. The few safe places were barricaded, not just against the buzztops but to avoid being overrun by refugees. The rest of the places weren’t safe. So we kept driving, because you can’t outrun buzztops on foot.
And besides, the people locked in those bunkers were going to run out of food eventually anyway. We were all going to die.
Static burst from the walkie talkie, then a male voice. “Anybod
y out there?”
“Here, I’ll take it.” I held out my hand, and Mom gave me the walkie. I’d talk to anyone who didn’t have the same last name as me. Even a stranger I would never meet.
I held down the reply button. “Hey there, fellow refugee. What’s up?”
From the front seat, Joey called, “Follow protocol. You say ‘over’ when you’re done talking—”
“Joey, leave her alone,” Mom said.
I pressed the walkie close to my ear, trying to hear over their yakking.
“Who am I talking to?” the voice asked. He sounded young.
“Carrie Sardonopoli. Who are you?”
“Marcus Abreu. Nice to meet you, Carrie. Is that Carrie with a K, or a C?”
“A C,” I said. “Why, you planning to write me a letter? Maybe send an email?”
Marcus broke out laughing. “You never know. Where you headed, Carrie?”
“Colorado Springs. There’s a huge underground installation there. Steel doors, a food supply. Or so my uncle says.”
“Colorado Springs. That’s a looong way,” Marcus said.
Uncle Joey slowed as they passed a tank in the road, its hatch open.
“Well, we don’t have any pressing engagements to get to. My school is on permanent summer break, since all of the teachers were eaten and all.”
Marcus laughed again. “Hey, what a coincidence. All of my teachers were eaten, too.”
“How old are you?” I pulled the lipstick from my pocket, twisted the cap with one hand.
“Sixteen. What about you?”
“Hey, major coincidence. Same here. In fact, today’s my birthday.”
Marcus sang Happy Birthday while Mom laughed, and Joey complained that we were running down the batteries. Not that we didn’t have a crate of replacements in the back, more than enough to last until the end of the world.
When Marcus finished, he said, “That’s a terrible song.”
“Isn’t it? I was just thinking that.”
Marcus was with his sister and a friend. They’d been out of town at a swim meet the day the invaders came. As far as they knew, their parents were dead. They were heading toward the Pacific, to see if they could locate a boat that had been overlooked that was fast enough to outrun buzztops. They were dreaming.
They were also headed in the opposite direction from me. My spirits plunged; talking to Marcus was the best time I’d had in months. Evidently Marcus was enjoying it as well, because we went on talking as the signal weakened.
“At least my mom got forty-six years of a normal life,” I said softly, hoping Mom couldn’t hear. “We got sixteen. Now I get to spend the time I have left stuffed in the back of an SUV, listening to my relatives argue. I may never sleep in a bed again.”
“Life is screwing us over. Sometimes when I’m at my darkest, I wonder if I’d be better off if the termite—” Marcus’s voice faded into static.
“What was that? I didn’t hear the end.”
“I can—” his voice faded out, then returned. “—you, either.”
“Shit,” I said under my breath. I’d give anything to be able to go on talking to him, even for just another hour. I pressed the reply button. “Good luck. I wish we’d had a chance to meet.”
“—too. Happy—” I only caught a snippet, but I got the gist. Me too. Happy Birthday.
“Bye.” I set the walkie talkie on the seat beside me and tried not to cry. If I’d been alone I would have, but the last thing I needed was my uncle mocking me, or worse yet, attempting to console me.
How could you have any sort of life if you could never stop anywhere for more than a few minutes?
“Man, what I wouldn’t give for a hamburger right now,” Uncle Joey said. “Medium rare, mustard and mayo. A thick slice of onion on top.”
“Don’t talk about food,” Mom said.
“Hey, I don’t get to eat any good food any more. Don’t tell me I can’t talk about it, either. This ain’t Russia.”
I closed my eyes, stuck my fingers in my ears and tried to go to sleep. But I couldn’t. I kept thinking about Marcus. What did he look like? Actually, I didn’t even care that much what he looked like.
“What kind of name is Abreu?” I called, interrupting the argument.
“Hispanic,” Uncle Joey said. “There was a ballplayer named Bobby Abreu. Good player. He skin was medium-well. South American or something.”
Medium-well. Lovely. He was going to talk about food one way or another.
I wondered if we were better off heading back toward the coast as well. It was sunny on the coast, so less risk of a string of cloudy days depleting the SUV’s solar battery. When you got down to it, though, fast ships weren’t much safer than cars. You could see buzztops coming, and they couldn’t corner you on some dead end, but if your ship broke down, you couldn’t just run to find a replacement. You were a sitting duck if you couldn’t get the boat running again.
Those were the only real options: ship, car, steel bunker. Even if you stayed close to your vehicle, staying still out in the world was not an option. You didn’t always get a warning that buzztops were headed your way.
* * *
I woke as the SUV slowed. It was dark out.
“I almost hit him,” Joey said, rolling down his window.
A guy in military fatigues bent to talk to Uncle Joey through the window. “Man, am I glad to see you. I broke down. Can you take me somewhere I can find a replacement?”
“You got it.” Joey gestured toward the back door.
The guy climbed in. His name was Tyler. Mid-thirties, heavy reddish beard, wide, beefy face. After introductions he asked the standard question. “Where you headed?”
“Colorado Springs,” Aunt Marie said. She always sounded kind of angry, even when she was saying the most mundane thing. “We heard there’s a secure installation there, with—” she trailed off, because Tyler was shaking his head.
“Don’t bother. Cheyenne Mountain is sealed tight. Half the politicians in the country are holed up there. The ones who survived the first days, anyway. Unless you’re all related to the President, they’ll shoot you before they let you inside.”
“You military?” Uncle Joey asked. I could see his dark, deep-set eyes in the rear-view mirror.
“Ex. Marines. But my rank’s nowhere near high enough to get me into Cheyenne.”
“You tried?” Mom asked.
Tyler nodded. “Hard.”
“You know any more about what’s going on than what we got on the news, before communication went dark?” Joey asked.
Tyler grinned. “I might.” He unzipped a pouch on his pack, pulled out a phone pad. “And seeing as how you were kind enough to save my ass, I’m willing to share. Not that it’ll help you stay alive, but it’s damned interesting.” He called up a video, handed the player up to Marie. She held it so Joey could see as well. All I could see from where I was sitting was that the video was shot outdoors in the daytime, and was shaky and amateurish.
“What is this?” Uncle Joey asked.
Tyler waited a beat before answering. “That’s what’s on the other side of the portals.”
I just about crawled over the seat, trying to see the screen as people shouted in surprise. “Let me see. Pass it back here.” My heart was thudding. Someone had seen the other side, where the buzztops, and the gigantic whale-things that carried the buzztops, came from? It must be a horror show, something out of my nightmares. I wanted to see.
“That was filmed from this side,” Tyler said as Aunt Marie and Uncle Joey watched, with Mom looking over their shoulders. “You can’t take a camera through.” I was just about to climb over the seat when Aunt Marie finally passed the pad back to Tyler. He re-queued the video and handed it to me.
The video was looking down from a height, onto a huge city winding along a river. The buildings were ink-black, hundreds of stories tall, and were connected to each other so they look like one huge, twisting maze. It reminded me of an endless factory.
Either there were no windows, or it was all windows. It was hard to say which. Silver lines that looked like mercury rising and falling in old-fashioned thermometers snaked in all directions, moving around and through the buildings. They must be how the aliens moved around.
The city was surrounded on three sides by wilderness. There was an uninterrupted mat of tightly-woven green and black vegetation, and jutting out of it were trees topped with black and purple canopies as big as hot-air balloons. It was terrifying, and beautiful. My throat clenched as I tried to swallow.
“This was made by a special forces platoon that eventually went through. They were hoping to send a nuke through, but they couldn’t even bring their rifles,” Tyler said as I re-watched the video. “You can’t get anything metal or plastic through. It’s like they’ve got a one-way filter to protect them from just the sort of attack we were contemplating.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. A river passed through the city under arches, the water blue-green like the sky on one side, but where it flowed out, where it was wider, it ran red. I thought I saw the tiniest of specks moving around, but it may have been my imagination; and if not the footage was shot at too far a distance to make them out.
“Who lives there? The buzztops?” I asked.
Tyler shook his head. “The buzztops just transport materials through the portals—the things in charge walk on two legs. Based on what our analysts saw, their best guess is they import food and raw materials from the outside so they can keep their world pristine.”
The SUV slowed. “I guess we’re not going to Colorado Springs. So where are we headed?” When no one answered, Joey glanced back at Tyler. “Where are you headed?”
“To find my family. Then, I’m not sure. I’m thinking of going the cave route.”
Bridge Across the Stars: A Sci-Fi Bridge Original Anthology Page 33