by Ike Hamill
“I really don’t think they were affected.”
“Based on what?”
“I haven’t put together everything yet,” Robby said.
Brad rolled his eyes.
“You gave them food, now give them time. In a week or two, we’ll come back and check up on them. By then, they will have worked through that food and they’ll either decide to venture out into the world or they will be much more inclined to trust you. Give them half a minute to process our existence and I promise they will be acting a lot more logically about everything.”
“You have a point,” Robby said. “But I can’t get over the feeling that we need to do something right now.”
“Okay,” Brad said. He put the truck into gear and began to back up.
“Wait—where are we going?”
“We’re going to backtrack. We’ll set up another post office closer to the border so we can get a signal that skips right over this town.”
Robby threw up his hands with a sigh. There was nothing to do about it. He looked through his window.
Robby smiled to himself and looked down at his kids. They were both asleep again. In fact, they had been asleep for a while. He had been telling the story to himself—remembering the day so clearly that it almost felt like he was there again. Memories were fluid. They changed with retelling.
Robby frowned and closed his eyes. He let his exhaustion roll over him, like a warm tide. The story of their mother was the gift that he would always give to his children when they asked for it. Dreams about the day she died would be his curse. He hoped they wouldn’t come again, but he knew that it was only a matter of time. Every time he pictured her alive, he was destined to dream of her dead.
The community as a whole had gotten lucky with disease and infection. Ty and Dr. Matthew were at a loss to explain it, other than to say that their small population was blessed with natural resistance and too few people to transmit epidemics.
Robby didn’t feel blessed. He had lost his love in a heartbeat.
Robby sighed and drifted to sleep.
Chapter 75: Corinna
Corinna woke by the side of the road. Her sleeping bag was a few feet away, half inside out. There was gravel stuck to her face. She wiped it off with a numb hand and then stared down at her hand. It was sticky with blood.
“I’m bleeding?” she whispered to herself.
She sat up and tried to reconstruct the night before as she gently wiped her face.
The sun was starting to color the sky in the east, on the other side of the mountains. Corinna remembered crossing into Virginia, then pulling over because she couldn’t keep her eyes open. Eventually, even with pills, her body was doomed to crash.
Struggling to her feet, she stumbled over to the motorcycle and used one the side mirrors to examine herself. There was blood on her cheek and a little on her neck. As far as she could see, there were no cuts or abrasions that could be the source.
Corinna rolled her head, letting her neck crack to relieve some of the kinks.
“Fuck it,” she said, bending over to pick up her sleeping bag. Once she got to the Outpost, she could wash up and figure out if she was injured.
Under the sleeping bag, she found the likely source of the blood.
The squirrel was flayed open. The muscles and organs had been torn from the corpse. Corinna cringed and then felt her stomach lurch. Suddenly, the foul taste in her mouth took on horrible new overtones.
She threw the stained sleeping bag off the road and bent over to vomit. Nothing but stringy bile would come up. Corinna grabbed her water bottle and splashed it on her face and in her mouth. When she was through, she tossed it after the bag and swung a leg over the motorcycle. She wanted nothing more than to drive far away from the carnage.
Chapter 76: Ashley
“Okay,” Ashley said, trying to get her brain around the problem. They were paddling in a little canoe that Tim had spotted. Penny was sitting in the middle with Tim. Ashley was in the front, doing most of the paddling, while Lisa steered in the rear.
“So, let’s assume that time doesn’t work out here the same way that it does back where we live. I don’t know how exactly to justify that, but let’s assume it.”
“Maybe we’re not even on the same planet anymore,” Lisa said. “Just because the images look like they align with the map…”
“There are a lot of similarities,” Tim said. “All the bends of the river?”
“The language is different though. And the species of fish and trees don’t look the same,” Ashley said.
“Plenty of them do,” Tim said.
“Some things are the same and some are different,” Ashley said. “What does that mean for the mission?”
“I’ve forgotten what the mission even was,” Lisa said.
“The observatory,” Ashley said. “The moon. The sun.”
“Oh. Right.”
When Ashley spun to look at Lisa, the canoe wobbled. Tim put out his hands, like grabbing the sides would somehow steady them.
“Hey,” Tim said, “head over there.”
Ashley glanced carefully to see where he was pointing, then she saw it too. Through an open garage door, they could see a shelf with a bunch of red fuel tanks.
“Smells the same to me,” Lisa said, handing the tank back to Tim.
“So, the fuel here is like a sweet-smelling syrup,” Ashley said, just to state aloud what they were all thinking.
Tim nodded and Lisa shrugged.
“The canoe is going to be loaded, bringing this back,” Tim said. He was sitting on the workbench that ran along the side of the garage. Ashley and Lisa were still in the canoe with Penny.
“No,” Ashley said. “If it’s the same as what we have, then we don’t have to bring it. Without it, we should be able to take this canoe to where we were going to start hiking anyway, right?”
After a moment, they all agreed. Ashley held the canoe steady while Tim climbed back in and they were off.
“Back to the boat, get our stuff, and then find the place to start hiking?” Lisa asked.
“No,” Ashley said.
“No?”
“We’ve been out here too long. The hike won’t take forever. We get up there, see if the observatory is in working order, and then we head back home,” Ashley said.
“After all this,” Lisa said, “you’re just going to look at it and then turn around?”
Ashley didn’t say what she was thinking. This place was different. It wasn’t the world that they had come from. There was no chance that the observatory would be there, or if it was, it would be some foreign thing that meant nothing to them.
Ashley didn’t say any of that.
“Let’s go.”
She was surprised when nobody disagreed with her.
They paddled through the flooded town. Some of the buildings were just a face. They would look fine as the canoe approached, and then around the backside, they could see the destroyed interior. It was like a land of ruined dollhouses.
“At least there are no bodies,” Lisa mumbled.
Ashley had been to a few places where the dead still lingered. She had ventured far enough north to find desiccated corpses locked in deteriorating rooms. Once, she had found a man on the third floor of an apartment building. When she had come through the door, the apartment had been so clean and orderly, she had almost backed right out—thinking that it was inhabited. There hadn’t been any food on the counters and the refrigerator was closed. Ashley had crept quietly through the living room and found the resident in the chair of his office. The body was reclining, looking up at the ceiling. She looked up to see what he had been staring at and saw the brown stain up there. It could have been a stain from something dripping down from the floor above, but Ashley didn’t think so. She decided that she had finally encountered one of the exploded eye corpses that her father had mentioned in his writing. After that discovery, the dried up corpse had lingered in her dreams for a week.
&nb
sp; “Over there,” Tim said.
Ashley glanced over her shoulder and saw that he was holding up the map and pointing. At the far end of a little inlet, a road ran uphill through the trees. She paddled faster and Lisa steered them in the right direction. Her shoulders were aching by the time the canoe beached itself on the crumbling bank and Penny jumped out.
They waited for Tim to get out and then Ashley steadied the canoe for Lisa.
Ashley tied up the canoe while Tim and Lisa struck off, up the hill.
“Don’t wait for me,” Tim said.
They didn’t bother to argue with him, but kept pace as he limped along. His ankle was getting better, despite the constant walking. By the time the river was disappearing around the bend behind them, Tim was nearly walking normally. Penny barked and ran ahead.
They walked in silence.
Hiking without their packs made Ashley feel light and untethered to the ground. She had the maps, her flashlight, and a knife. Everything else was still back in the boat. Ahead, Penny was standing in the middle of the road, wagging her tail. Ashley caught up first and saw a house, nearly camouflaged by overgrown bushes.
“Keep going,” Ashley said to the others. “I’m going to look to see if there’s anything inside.”
Tim and Lisa ignored her, stopping on the road and waiting. Ashley decided to keep her trip short. The upstairs windows of the place had been knocked out. There was little chance she would find anything useful. Putting her shoulder to the door, the rotted wood cracked and then the door swung inwards on groaning hinges. The floor felt solid enough. In some ways, it looked just like any of the other places she had explored. Chairs and couches in the living room were arranged around a wooden coffee table. But there were little things about the place that looked foreign. Instead of photos or paintings, the walls were hung with big squares and rectangles of color. The colors matched the faded carpet. The wall with the chimney was a ruin of mold and decay.
Ashley found the kitchen and discovered a cabinet that hadn’t been disturbed by rodents. Inside, there were boxes and cans that looked miraculously unspoiled. With a cloth bag from next to the sink, she carried the stuff back out. Tim whistled for Penny and they walked while Lisa looked over one of the cans.
“It’s that same writing,” Lisa said.
“And no pictures,” Tim said. “Cans used to always have pictures on the label of whatever food was inside.”
“I’ve seen cans,” Ashley said.
“Not in this good shape,” Lisa said, shaking it. “It’s not bloated, and the label isn’t faded. This looks like it just came off the shelf.”
Ashley didn’t bother to contradict her. They had found plenty of cans that looked just as good until they were opened. Inside, the contents would be thick, disgusting syrup. Even sealed in a can, organic material decayed eventually.
They walked in silence for a couple of minutes.
“When I was a kid,” Tim said, “one time we got a box of canned food from the church. The basement had flooded and all of the labels had fallen off. We got pretty good shaking them to tell the difference between mushroom soup and canned peaches. Still, it was almost always a surprise.”
Tim had told the story before. Ashley couldn’t remember precisely when, but she remembered the story and the image it conjured up in her head—Tim and his parents all sitting around a table with a can opener and a stack of mystery cans. It was funny that she couldn’t remember when he had told the story. They hadn’t opened a single can on the trip.
“I knew that,” Lisa said.
“Knew what?” Tim asked.
“I knew that your family had a box of cans from the church. You’re repeating yourself.”
“I don’t think so,” Tim said.
“We should walk faster,” Ashley said. She didn’t like the way the road seemed familiar as well. The pavement had run out. They were hiking up a dirt road with trees encroaching in on either side. It wound back and forth as it climbed the hill. Faint traces of the road were visible on the satellite image, and the road was drawn as a dotted line on the map. It seemed like they had hiked up the hill before.
Ashley shook the thought away.
“We need water and rest,” Lisa said.
Both she and Tim had slowed down so much that it was almost painful for Ashley to keep their pace. She wanted to race ahead, but they called her back every time she got more than a dozen paces away from them.
“You guys can wait here. I’ll go ahead.”
“You’re just as dehydrated as we are. It’s time to look for water and start a fire. We can boil the water in one of the cans,” Lisa said.
“You think it was impulsive of me to start hiking without any supplies,” Ashley said. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“We all decided to come,” Tim said. “Nobody is accusing you of anything. We just want to reevaluate. There’s no sense in killing ourselves now, so close to our goal.”
“I’ve hiked without water for longer. I can do it. I’ll go alone,” Ashley said. This time, when she ranged ahead, they didn’t try to stop her. She heard the bag of cans thump when it hit the ground and she knew that they had stopped.
The sun had disappeared behind the hill and it was starting to get dark. Ashley lost the road and became tangled in the trees. She had to backtrack to find the ruts of the road again and was rewarded a few minutes later as she climbed above the tree line. The first stars were coming out above.
Around another switchback, Ashley saw a light up the hill. Even with her weary legs and desperate thirst, she wanted to run toward the light. She knew it was her goal. With every step, her doubt grew. They had traveled so far, and through such strange terrain, that it seemed impossible that she was actually on the final leg of the journey.
Tim and Lisa weren’t with her. They weren’t around to reassure her that reality was still intact. Putting one foot in front of the other, endlessly climbing, Ashley began to worry if she was really there at all. Maybe she had drowned back in the river. Maybe she had bumped her head back in Gladstone and she had imagined all this.
Whatever the truth of the situation, it didn’t matter. She was going to climb and reach the light regardless of whether or not it was real. With the next switchback, she could see the source of the light. It was a fixture on the side of a building above. Against the starry sky, she could see the dome of the place. It was the observatory.
Drawn toward her final goal, Ashley walked faster and faster, tapping energy that she didn’t even know that she still possessed.
Around the next turn, she lost track of the light. There was a cliff on her right side and a scrubby hill down to her left. The road under her feet was mostly rocks and sand. The terrain had changed incredibly since she had left the river to climb. With the cliff on her side, the road went on and on. Ashley looked up at the stars, trying to see what direction she was headed. She had the feeling that the road didn’t go up to the observatory after all. She was going to have to climb the cliff if she wanted to get there. Then, when she had almost given up hope, she saw by the starlight that the road did curve again and she was nearly at the place.
When she tried to run, the best she could do was a fast shuffle to climb the rest of the way up. The light was mounted above a double door and Ashley headed for it.
Through the glass, she could see the shadowy interior of the lobby.
Ashley gripped the handle and pulled.
It was locked.
She hunted around and found a rock. Lifting it with both hands, she returned and prepared to run at the glass with the rock. Then, she had an idea that was so clear that it felt like a memory. She dropped the rock and reached for the other door. It swung open freely.
Ashley wanted to laugh, but the sound died in her throat before it could get out.
A number of memories flashed through her head as she stood there with the door in her hand. She knew that she would go into the dim lobby and take a right. She knew that she would find a wa
ter fountain and that she would turn the handle and let it run for a full minute before she dared to take any of the sweet water into her mouth. She knew that she would drink too quickly and have trouble keeping the water down.
She would find the light switches and cringe at all the light escaping from the place—who knew who might spot the glow? There would be a snack machine with a glass front and she would finally use the rock. The crackers and chips inside the machine would still smell fresh and the salt would sting her cracked lips when she tasted them.
All these images flew by.
The only way she could think to combat them was to move forward and prove them untrue. When her hand found the light switches in the dark, Ashley felt a chill move through her. As far as she knew, the only people near enough to see the lights come on were Lisa and Tim, somewhere down in the woods. There was no reason to fear them.
She shook her head and glanced around the lobby, finding the short hall down to the break room. She saw the water fountain and moved toward it. It hummed just the way she expected it would when she turned the handle.
The water was cool and clear, but she let it run, just like in her memory.
When she put her lips to the stream, she was careful not to drink too quickly. It was hard. After so many days of boiled, flat water, it was nearly impossible not to gulp the water down. It tasted just like the water at home that came from their seemingly bottomless well.
Ashley pulled back. The water threatened to come back up because she drank too fast.
Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she moved on to find the snack machine with the glass front. The feeling of déjà vu was subsiding. These things that would happen, and had already happened, were not good or bad. She realized that there was no reason for her to dread the future or try to change it from her vision of what would come. The only thing that mattered was the telescope upstairs. All the observatories near her had been destroyed by tornadoes, long before she was born. This was her chance to see the celestial bodies up close.