by Ike Hamill
“Keep your eyes forward this time,” Brad said as they climbed back up on their bikes.
“Don’t be so bossy. It doesn’t suit you.”
After all these years together, Brad would have figured that he and Romie would have managed to find a smoother way of communicating. Most of the time that they interacted, there were other people around. Robby and Lisa stepped in and prevented them from getting on each other’s nerves. Side by side, they continued down the uneven pavement.
“You remember that guy, Nate?” she asked, eventually. This was easy for her—she was barely breathing hard. Brad wasn’t so accustomed to riding a bicycle.
“Sure,” he said. They had been together a very short period of time, but it was impossible to forget any of those people. Together, they had faced down certain death. Some of them had walked away. Nate wasn’t so lucky.
“It’s just that you were away for a good bit of that.”
“I remember,” Brad said.
“I was thinking about the first time that we met him. It was at that Chinese restaurant.”
“The buffet.”
“We both thought he was crazy. We thought that he was a whacked out cannibal. Why do you suppose that he was acting like that?”
“I haven’t given it much thought,” Brad said.
“Well, think about it now. What do you think his problem was? Drugs? Fear?”
“He didn’t really seem afraid of much.”
“That’s not true,” she said. “He was pretty terrified of anything happening to Brynn. That kid had been through a lot, I gather, and I think that Nate made a promise to keep Brynn safe. He wasn’t going to let that kid down, no matter what. Whatever happened to us, you can be sure that Nate was going to stand between Brynn and trouble.”
“Okay, so what do you think it was? You’ve obviously thought about it—why do you think that Nate was so twitchy that first time?”
Brad was beginning to breathe hard and his leg was starting to make a warm complaint about the effort.
“Trust,” she said.
“Trust?”
“I believe that Nate was trapped. This is just me thinking out loud, but I think that Nate knew that he couldn’t protect Brynn by himself. Maybe he made a promise not to hurt anyone. Maybe he didn’t want to start a war against bigger numbers. Whatever the reason, he needed to link up with a group. We were some of the only people left in town and he decided that he was going to have to reach out and trust us before he had even met us. That’s what his brain told him to do, but his body was trying to reject the idea.”
Brad’s bicycle squeaked as he pedaled it. The front end rattled as it bounced over a rock that the frost had liberated from the ground at some point.
“You’ve thought about this a lot,” he said.
“Well, we’re the last ones, if you think about it. Everyone else has come to the hard truth that they have to trust some parts of their lives to everyone else, you know? Down in Gladstone, we’re a part of the community, but we’re also our own little community. The four of us and the kids don’t really rely on the others. Sure, we do favors back and forth and support each other, but if everything hits the fan, we’ll still be there.”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“No. We’re like Nate at that Chinese buffet. We’re trembling and shaking at the prospect of having to join up for real. You and Robby have given in and you’re going to try to weather the storm up in Donnelly. I’m the one who is saying that maybe if we’re shaking that much, we shouldn’t give in.”
Brad didn’t know how to respond to that. He didn’t see how they really had anything in common with the way that Nate had acted decades before. It was pointless to wonder about.
“Look at what happened to him,” Romie said.
“He went off to protect Brynn on the other side. They died together.”
“But it was because they didn’t stay isolated.”
Brad was about to make a rebuttal. His thought was cut off by a shape in the distance. There was a piece of cloth tucked into the door of the car ahead. That was the signal—it was the emergency vehicle that had been stashed on the route. Any traveler in need was welcome to take it as long as they put it back when they had the chance.
Romie was already accelerating toward it. Brad’s tired muscles couldn’t keep up.
Over her shoulder, she called back, “I’ll drive this time. You’re bad luck.”
Brad knew there was something wrong as soon as Romie opened the car door. The lights didn’t come on, and there was no warning chime from the vehicle. It was as dead as the SUV that they had left up the road. Still, she slipped behind the wheel.
“It’s not going to work.”
“You don’t know for sure. You’re just guessing.”
Romie stepped on the brake, tried the key, and made sure it was in park before she tried to crank it again. She did everything except fiddle with the radio before she finally gave in.
“These are supposed to be checked regularly,” she said. “The map wasn’t right and the emergency car is out of order. People are getting really sloppy, you know? It’s not going to be long before someone gets hurt because of it.”
Brad looked up toward the sky at the fading ribbon. With the sun over the horizon, the crack in the sky was almost gone. It barely gave off any light. The dimensions of the phenomenon were still the same. The light leaking from the crack in the sky flickered, like something electrical being shorted out.
“What was that?” Romie asked.
Brad realized that he had been mumbling to himself while he stared up at the sky. The stars were out now. Amongst the stars and the moon, the crack didn’t seem so strange.
“It’s almost electrical,” he said.
“What is? The car?”
She turned the key again. Under the hood, something clicked. The next time she turned it, the starter motor cranked and the engine fired up.
“There!” Romie said, revving the engine. “It was just cold.”
Brad looked up at the sky again. The crack had faded so much that it was barely visible.
“Get in.”
Before he did, Brad rolled the bicycles over to the side of the decayed road and leaned them up against a tree. If someone else found themselves in trouble before he could return the car, at least they would find the bikes. His seatbelt was barely latched when Romie took off.
“We’ll never get there if we crash,” Brad said.
“Relax. I haven’t crashed in years.”
He didn’t bother to point out that her statement was incorrect. She would only argue that her last accident didn’t count. “If I’m okay and the car still drives, then it doesn’t count.” That’s what she would always say in her defense.
“I just need you to slow down so I can see the markings. We don’t have a map, remember?”
“What good are the markings going to do? We already know that this road went to shit since the last time anyone updated the map, remember?”
“We should have stuck to the way we came up.”
“You keep saying that. I don’t see what the point is of repeating that. We’re just going to have to live with the roads we have,” she said.
It was a fair point. Still, Brad wished that she would slow down. The car sputtered for a moment and Brad couldn’t help himself—he automatically looked through the window toward the sky. It could have been his imagination, but it seemed like the crack above flickered in time with the sputtering engine. He blinked and tried to see the place where the crack connected with the horizon. It was too faded to see.
“See if there’s any water in back,” Romie said. “I’m parched.”
Brad nodded and loosened his seatbelt so he could turn. There were some jars of water on the floor. He pulled one from the crate and cracked the lid. Steering with one hand, Romie took it from him.
“Tastes stale,” she said.
Brad took it when she handed it over. They passed it back and forth
until the jar was empty.
Ahead of them, the headlights seemed too weak for the job. The car rumbled over the broken asphalt. Romie finally slowed when they went around a long curve and the road climbed in elevation.
“How much farther?” she asked.
“At this speed? Another couple of hours.”
“Turn on the radio—see if you can find the news.”
They both laughed.
The car bounced over another bad section of road. Romie sighed. From the light of the dashboard, Brad studied her face.
“What’s wrong?”
Romie shook her head. She always got quiet when she was upset about something. She claimed that she hated the way it made her voice sound all “froggy.” Brad was pretty sure that she would rather be silent than show any vulnerability.
“What is it?” he asked.
“They’re not coming back,” Romie said.
“Who? Lisa and Ashley?”
She nodded.
“I want things the way that they were. It was hard enough when Ashley kept wanting to go out on her own, you know? Why couldn’t she be happy doing her research from home? But I knew that she wasn’t going to be one who would stay close. I’ve known that for years and years. I just never figured that we would lose both her and Lisa.”
“They’re coming back, Romie.”
“You’re not even coming back, Brad. I’m the only one who is going home. I thought we made a promise to each other.”
Brad opened his mouth to object—they had left home because this was an emergency—but he shut it again. If they didn’t stick together in the case of an emergency, then their pact wasn’t really that solid. Robby said that he wanted to be in Donnelly because of his kids. He didn’t want his kids to be cut off from everyone else. In truth, he was probably still there because that’s where the action was. There was nothing really going on in Gladstone.
The truth was that, over the years, Robby had always run toward any emergency.
“I’m coming back,” Brad said. “I just need a little while.”
Romie laughed.
“The sky split apart,” she mumbled to herself. “If we hadn’t already gone through everything we’ve gone through, we would have lost our minds at that.”
Her laughter was contagious.
Chapter 50: Liam
It always happened the same way—Liam could suddenly feel how thin the walls were. Through some sheetrock, insulation, and a layer of siding, something was watching him. The firemen used to have a thermal camera that was so sensitive that it could see people through walls. The things that lived in the sky were way more powerful than that. They could read his heartbeat and track his breathing. The worst part was that they didn’t even have to break down the walls in order to get at him. If they wanted to snatch Liam up, they would simply compel him to go outside, under the wide-open sky, and then pluck him from his life and take him into the void.
Liam looked back to the monitor. Looking at the puppies, calmly sleeping in their box, he felt better. That mother dog was fierce. If there was some threat looming to her family, she would be up and alert. Since she was sleeping, it had to be somewhat safe.
Liam shivered and looked at the door, praying that Jackson would come back soon. As soon as Jackson came back, Liam would scurry back to his own house, deep underground. Thick concrete walls would allow him to sleep.
The door banged open.
Liam jumped up.
“Come on,” Jackson said. “We have to go.”
Liam shook his head. He pointed at the monitor.
“They’ll be fine. I need your help tracking down my son.”
“No. I can’t.”
“You have to.”
“I don’t know where Merle is. How would I?”
“That’s not the point. I can find him. The point is that he trusts you and likes you. I’m going to bring you to him, and you’re going to convince him to help us.”
Liam kept shaking his head.
Jackson went into the other room to put out fresh food and water. Liam watched him from the doorway. It was Liam’s chance to flee. He wanted Jackson to understand first.
“I really can’t go with you. I’m not feeling well and I have to get back to my own house, you know?”
“Nah—it’s not safe,” Jackson said.
When he was finished with the dog chores, Jackson swept by, dodging around Liam like he wasn’t there. That’s the way that Liam felt—he wasn’t there. The wake behind Jackson was so strong that it would sweep along anything untethered.
Liam followed Jackson out into the driveway, still objecting.
“Get on,” Jackson said.
It had been a long time. Liam had ridden on the back of plenty of motorcycles in his youth. He had no intention of doing it again.
“No.”
“Fine,” Jackson said, rolling his eyes as he dismounted.
There was a giant truck parked next to the garage. It seemed like a victory. Liam climbed in as Jackson fired the thing up and revved the engine.
“I don’t understand why you think that I’m going to be able to talk Merle into coming back,” Liam said. “He might like me, but he never did anything I asked him to do.”
“Maybe not right away,” Jackson said.
Liam was pressed back into the seat as Jackson accelerated away from the house. It only took a few turns before Liam was helplessly lost. Jackson bounced the truck up over curbs and down dirt paths. It swayed and rocked at high speed.
“There’s some kind of poison in the air. It’s moving around. Robby was already talking about getting everyone underground. Now, he’s ramping up the timeline. He wants to get all of us into a bunker in the next couple of days. After that, only small missions will go out in order to secure supplies.”
“Bunker?” Liam asked. The word was potent and beautiful. It conjured an image of tons and tons of safe rock and dirt overhead.
“Yeah, that’s why we need Merle. He’s an expert on the bunkers. He knows which ones have good supplies and which ones are still in working order. The only problem is that he’s kinda secretive about where they are. He likes to keep his secrets.”
“I thought people were afraid of bunkers,” Liam said. It wasn’t the first time that the idea had come up. Trying to be proactive about the next potential disaster, some had advocated for emergency shelters underground. Of course, Liam had loved the idea. The stigma from the farm had ended the idea. Before Liam’s time at Donnelly, there had been an underground installation at the farm that had been uprooted by tornadoes. People associated the military bunkers with deceit and subterranean danger.
“That’s true, but those were a different kind. There were some bunkers that were built as conduits down to the things in the groundwater. People are terrified of those, and I guess with good reason. That’s not what Merle has been exploring. The ones he’s into, he calls ‘dry bunkers,’ and they were built for important people to survive nuclear blasts and pandemics. At least that’s Robby’s theory.”
“Where are they?” Liam asked. His fear was almost completely forgotten at this point. With the thought of deep, safe bunkers, his desire to return home had waned.
“That’s what we need Merle for. Like I said, he’s awful secretive about them.”
“How are we going to find him?”
“He doesn’t live underground—he only explores there. I have a pretty good idea where he lives when he’s not exploring.”
Jackson drove across an overgrown park and through a hole in the fence before he turned left on what used to be a major road. At times, it felt like Jackson was turning randomly just to torture the poor truck. He scraped the sides on rocks and trees. He spun the tires in a bog until Liam was pretty sure they were completely stuck. When the truck finally inched forward, it caught on something solid and the wheels managed to drag them up and out of the muck.
Jackson finally stopped in the middle of a forest. He shut off the engine with no buil
dings in sight.
“We have to walk from here,” Jackson said.
Liam peered through the window. Outside, it was nothing but bushes and trees. There could be anything lurking out there—from bears to disease-ridden ticks.
“Walk?”
“Merle is a little paranoid. Last time I visited him, he had big magnetic landmines in the yard. You could walk right past them, but a truck would set them off.”
“Great,” Liam said.
Jackson’s door squealed as he opened it. One of the scrapes had damaged the hinge and Jackson had to apply his shoulder to the door to get it to swing.
“Tell him I’m here,” Liam said.
“He won’t come. He doesn’t trust me anymore.” Jackson paused, leaning on his door. “I thought it was funny when he was a kid to tell him little lies. It wasn’t anything mean. When I wanted to distract him from something, I would say, ‘Hey, look, Merle—did you see that? Superman just flew by.’ I thought he knew it was a joke. Turns out, I was just training him to never believe me.”
“I don’t want to go out there,” Liam said, looking through his window again.
“Okay, but if you’re worried about bears or cougars, you should be more afraid to stay here in the truck. This truck won’t keep out a hungry bear, and they prefer to attack people who are alone.”
Liam knew that Jackson was trying to play on his fear. Even though he knew it, it was still working.
With a sigh, Liam opened his door. The woods were probably dangerous, but at least he would be with Jackson.
“Just keep your eyes open for tripwires. Like I said, Merle is pretty paranoid. He wouldn’t intentionally do anything to hurt a person, but you never know, you know?”
“Sure.”
Liam fell in right behind Jackson and tried to match his footsteps. He figured that if Jackson stayed safe, then he would as well. It was difficult to reproduce Jackson’s long, confident stride.
“There it is,” Jackson said.
Liam looked past him and saw a flash of blue through the trees. At the edge of the woods, Jackson stopped and Liam nearly ran into him. They were at the edge of a ditch. Moat was probably a better description, but it was filled with mud instead of water.