Succinct (Extinct Book 5)

by Ike Hamill

  Corinna forgot to hold her breath.

  They passed over the Death Line and a heavy fist thumped into her chest, driving out the air. Her vision doubled. The strength went out of her hands, letting the wheel spin on its own. Corinna put all of her attention on one act—pushing the gearshift from drive to neutral before the stalling engine could sap all of their speed.

  She managed it just before her vision went black.

  They rolled forward into the void.

  Her eyes fluttered and her hands moved automatically. Mashing the gas down, she turned the key and the truck’s engine whined. When she jerked the lever back to drive, the truck jumped forward, sending a spray of dirt out behind them.

  The right front wheel hit something that crunched and ground.

  She saw it in the mirror—it was her motorcycle.

  The other thing that she saw in the mirror made Corinna turn in her seat to see it with her own eyes.

  The black shape had hit the Death Line and stopped. It had gathered there, an angry storm cloud, pressed against the invisible surface of the line.

  Beth coughed. A horrible rattle came out of Red.

  Corinna turned her attention back to getting the truck aligned with the dirt road and gathering speed. She was still accelerating when she hit the pavement and skidded through the turn.

  “You okay?” she asked Beth.

  Beth blinked and held up bloody hands in front of her face. She looked down, trying to find her injury, and then realized that the blood had come from Red.

  “Oh, no. Stop the truck. Stop!” Beth shouted.

  “I can’t,” Corinna said. “We don’t know if that thing is going to make it around the Death Line. I have a pretty good sense of how fast it can travel now. I’m not going to stop and let it catch up.”

  “What are you talking about? Red’s dead.”

  Corinna let out a slow breath.

  “I said stop.”

  “If he’s dead, Beth, there’s no sense in stopping.”

  Beth slumped down into her seat. Corinna stole glances at her, watching the woman put her bloody hands to her face and then pulling them away to stare at them.

  “I’m sorry,” Corinna said. She didn’t add that Red had probably been doomed since the moment they had first been attacked. Red seemed to know it. He had known that it was the end of the line and he had asked them to leave him behind. It was better this way though. At least this way he had died amongst friends, with a fighting chance at life.

  “I don’t understand what happened.”

  Corinna shook her head and didn’t answer. There was no good answer. The truck bounced over a bad part of road and Red belched out air. His head rolled to the side. Corinna locked eyes with Beth in the mirror.

  “I’m not stopping. Keep an eye on him though.”

  Beth gave a tiny nod with wide eyes that were locked on Red. She shrank back until she was pressed against the inside of the truck’s door. Corinna didn’t tell Beth what was going through her mind. She kept imagining the Dianne-monster and wondering. If she had gotten close enough, would the Dianne-monster have had a pulse? Would it have been breathing? At least they had a seatbelt around Red. That would give them some time if he decided to get more lively.

  Beth was blinking and seemed a little less tense when Corinna glanced in the mirror again.

  “It’s just the body letting out the air. It happens when people die. He’s probably going to evacuate as well.”

  Corinna nodded.

  A wave of dread passed through her, and it had nothing to do with Red strapped into the seat behind her.

  “Hold your breath,” she said.

  Corinna dropped the truck into neutral again. They coasted through another patch of bad air. The truck sputtered, but they had enough speed that it didn’t stall completely.

  “How did you know?” Beth asked after she started breathing again.

  “You get a sense for it,” Corinna said. “You didn’t feel it?”

  “Not that I know of. Any idea what causes it?”

  “Nope.”

  They drove for a good while in silence. Corinna was so focused on watching the woods around them that she nearly missed the turn. When Beth pointed it out, Corinna was startled by the sound of her voice.

  “Yeah,” Corinna said. “Okay.”

  She took the turn wide and the tires spun in the dirt at the side of the road before they caught pavement again. The roads were in better shape here. They didn’t get the cold or snow that Donnelly got each winter. Or, maybe the roads had just been in better shape when everything had collapsed. It wouldn’t matter in another generation. They would be back to walking or maybe riding horses. Perhaps they would piece together bikes with fat tires and full suspensions. Some of the people in Donnelly already biked everywhere. With all the shortcuts, it was often faster.

  “And right here,” Beth said.

  Corinna had already begun too slow for the turn.

  “I’m going to need another motorcycle,” Corinna said.

  “That’s a terrible idea.”

  It had been a long time since anyone had tried to talk her out of riding a motorcycle. When he was a kid, Liam had objected many times. He had been a paranoid little kid, always picturing the worst every time they were apart. By the time she got back, he would be furious and crying, talking about how he had pictured her flying over the handlebars and smashing into a tree. There had even been a time when she had given in enough to wear a helmet.

  “Do you know where there’s a motorcycle or not?”

  “Those places with the bad air—what happens if you hit one when you’re riding a motorcycle?”

  “I can sense them. I just hold my breath and coast through.”

  “What happens if you’re right in the middle of steering around a tree that’s down or something? You’re could pass out, dump the bike, and not be able to find a way out of it.”

  “You’re crazy,” Corinna said. She sped up a bit because there was a spot ahead where the trees came close to the road. She remembered that dark shape that she had seen in the woods, back when she was following the truck. The same thought came back to her—there could be something in the woods, ready to pounce. It would be good to carry some speed by the trees.

  “Yeah, okay, maybe you’re right,” Corinna said. Just this once, it might be safer to have a vehicle around her.

  “So that means you’re leaving? You could stay in the cave with us. It would be a lot safer than being out on the road.”

  “Yeah. No thanks,” Corinna said. “The trip was pretty much useless. I came down to tell you guys that Robby thought it would be safer underground and I found out that you already knew that.”

  “At least you helped us get more supplies. We were going to run out soon.”

  Beth lifted herself in her seat a little to check on the bags in the bed. They had been sewn at the top—they were probably okay.

  “I don’t know what good it’s going to do you,” Corinna said. “What if this is the way things are going to be forever? We’ll all starve or get attacked.”

  As soon as the words left her mouth, she regretted them. There was no sense harping on the dim future. They were all going to have to live through it either way.

  “We’ll adjust. We’ll figure it out,” Beth said.

  Corinna looked at her in the mirror, but Beth was studying Red.

  “Yeah, you’re right.”

  Corinna thought that the lie had sounded pretty good. The truth that had been forming inside her was beginning to solidify. She believed that the world had actually ended years before, maybe even before everyone had disappeared. Everything that they were experiencing was simply the tail on the bell curve. They weren’t the beginning of a new civilization. They were only the echoes of one that had sealed its fate a long time before.

  “Up here. To the left,” Beth said, pointing to where the other vehicles were parked.

  “Don’t you want me to get as close to the
entrance as possible?”

  “No. We don’t know if the ground is stable over there. Safer to carry stuff in.”

  “What about him?”

  “We made a graveyard behind that building. We’ll put him near the others.”

  Corinna parked the truck and turned it off. Until Beth opened her door, the world seemed too quiet for a moment. They had left filled with fear and promise, and they had returned defeated, despite the sacks of food in the back.

  Beth paused and turned back.

  “If you’re intent on leaving, you can have this truck, after we unload it. There are cans of gas in the back of the yellow truck at the end.”

  “Thanks,” Corinna said.

  “I’ll see if I can convince anyone else to come out and help unload.”

  “I’ll get the dolly.”

  They walked together toward the entrance of the cave, leaving Red’s body in the truck.

  Part Five:

  Return

  Chapter 91: Lisa

  They split up to pack their things to leave. Lisa kept pausing to brace herself against doorframes and walls, feeling almost dizzy. The feeling was mental though—not physical. When she saw Tim and Penny coming down the hall, she called to him.

  “Is this… Is this right?” Lisa asked. She set down her backpack so it wouldn’t topple her.

  “How do you mean?”

  “It feels like everything is changing. This isn’t the way that things were supposed to happen.”

  Before Ashley’s presentation, Lisa had felt like she knew exactly how everything would go. Ashley was going to explain to them what was going on with the sun, moon, and the other strange things they could see in the night sky. Then, they were going to leave on the cart, head north and then east, and then everything would end.

  Now, Lisa couldn’t see any of that. It had all changed in an instant.

  “Honestly, I’d rather not know,” Tim said. “The only thing worse than not knowing the future, is knowing it precisely.”

  “But don’t you feel upended? Untethered? Don’t you feel like the ground is shifting underneath us?”

  Tim considered that with narrowed eyes.

  Eventually, he said, “No more than usual.”

  “Guys?” Ashley called from the door to the stairs. “You coming?”

  They looked at each other one more time and they followed Penny as she trotted off toward Ashley.

  Ashley tossed her bag into the back of the cart while Tim helped Penny climb in.

  Lisa could almost see the plan forming behind Ashley’s eyes. The girl had broken out of her introspective funk and was full of energy once more.

  “Back to the boat, and we’ll have enough fuel to make it back to the pier and the path that leads up to the research facility. I think I know enough of the language now that I’ll be able to figure out where they went. If we can just learn the rest of what they know…”

  Ashley jumped behind the wheel of the cart. Lisa was about to tell her how to start it up, but Ashley reached for the lever automatically and they were off. Tim and Lisa had gone off on several supply and hunting runs, keeping the three of them fed while Ashley puzzled over the mysteries of the observatory. This was Ashley’s first time behind the wheel of the little vehicle, but she was perfectly competent at navigating down the winding road that led to the flooded village.

  “Once we learn what we can learn,” Ashley said, “then we’ll have to figure out the best way to get home. I’m guessing that we can take the boat back up to the falls and hike up to the cabin that Tim found. From there, we’ll go through that forest, avoiding the jungle until we turn east.

  “I didn’t see any paths or roads leading north,” Tim said.

  “It looks like there are some on the map,” Ashley said. “We can study it together later.”

  “It’s true that I didn’t get to explore much,” Tim said.

  It had been days since Tim complained about his ankle. Lisa wondered if it was pain-free, but she didn’t really want to ask him. Tim’s symptoms seemed somewhat tied to how much attention he put on them. Janelle had been the same way when she was a little kid. Left alone, she would forget about a scraped knee or stomach ache. If someone asked her about it, the symptoms would come back. Fortunately, Janelle had outgrown that.

  “We should consider taking some of the fuel back with us as well, but I don’t know what good it would do without an engine to utilize it,” Ashley said.

  As they descended down into the valley, they started to pass an occasional house. Lisa watched one go by and thought about how similar it looked to the houses on the outskirts of Donnelly. Those houses, in the northern part of New York State, had steep roofs with deep overhangs because of the snow. Compared to the houses down in Gladstone, those giant, steep-shouldered places up in Donnelly looked like they were hiding under their roofs.

  Ashley slowed and pointed at a side road.

  “I think that road would lead to the same place as where we’re eventually going. It heads north for a few miles, turns east, and then links up with…”

  “Stop,” Lisa said, putting up her hand.

  Ashley looked confused. She was still driving the cart slowly down the hill.

  “Stop, Ashley.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You remember too, don’t you?” Lisa asked.

  “Remember what?”

  “Back in the observatory, Tim and I were living in a constant state of déjà vu. It was like everything had been lived before and we were just repeating the same motions over and over.”

  Lisa glanced back at Tim to ratify what she was saying, but he looked just as confused as Ashley.

  “We thought that you weren’t experiencing it because you were so wrapped up in what you were doing. It was almost like you were the only real person, experiencing real things. We were just… I don’t know, we were just, like, supporting characters in your narrative. That’s the wrong way to say it, but you understand what I mean.”

  “No,” Ashley said. “I don’t.”

  “But, now, I’m seeing that you experienced it as well. It’s fading for me, but I think you still completely have it. You knew how to drive this cart, even though it’s your first time. You know where this road goes, even though I’m sure it wasn’t on the map. Tim and I looked at the map dozens of times when we went on our foraging runs. Small roads like that aren’t drawn.”

  “It’s only small right here. It gets bigger as it loops around the valley because it…”

  “See? How would you know that?” Lisa demanded. Ashley looked frightened by the confrontation. That wasn’t the point. “I’m sorry, but you need to tell us what you’re not saying. You remember something and I believe that it’s making you change what you would normally do. Is that it? Are you trying to change what you remember?”

  Ashley looked down as she shook her head. The cart automatically shut itself off since they hadn’t moved in a minute. The wind blowing through the trees was the only sound until Ashley’s breath hitched. She sounded like her little sister used to when reminded of a scrape that she had forgotten about.

  “Ashley? Tell us. Please?”

  “We go that way,” Ashley said, pointing. “You guys wanted to take the road that went along the ridge, past the old orchard, but I said that it would be faster if we came halfway down to the valley and then turned. It’s because the bridge the other way has fallen down so we would have to walk sooner.”

  “What bridge?” Tim asked.

  Lisa shushed him so Ashley would continue.

  “But when we take that road,” Ashley pointed back to the road they had just passed. “We don’t make it all that far. We stop to use the bathroom. Penny slides down a little hill…”

  Lisa could almost see it in her head. It was a still image that had been faded from being in the sun too long. The edges of the future were blurred. Maybe it was because Ashley had tried so hard to erase them. It suddenly made perfect sense why Lisa’s memories
of the future didn’t go very far. They ended abruptly because Lisa was going to end abruptly. Lisa wanted to stop Ashley, but she couldn’t find her voice, so Ashley stumbled on.

  “Tim goes down to get her, and she starts barking,” Ashley said.

  As Ashley described it, the picture became clearer and clearer in Lisa’s head.

  “He goes down and he steps into a spot where the radiation is particularly bad. It knocks him to his knees, but not because he’s in pain.”

  Lisa sees it all. They see the change coming over Tim. Even Penny seems aware of what is happening. Tim’s face transforms as he goes down to his knees. He’s usually so kind and gentle, but his face is twisted and contorted with rage. This is the insanity that Ashley read about in the journals. This is the madness that caused all of the researchers to commit murder and suicide. Lisa will run down to rescue him, but it will already be too late. Before she can get him out of there, she’s engulfed in the madness as well.

  “It was terrible,” Ashley said, shaking her head. “Will be, I mean. Would be?”

  They were silent for a moment while Ashley composed herself enough to speak clearly again.

  “I can’t do it,” Ashley said.

  “But what about you?” Lisa asked. “What would happen to you?”

  Ashley blinked to clear her eyes and then finally looked up at Lisa.

  “I won’t.”

  “But what would have happened?” Tim asked.

  “Nothing,” Ashley said. “Everything, I guess. I can’t risk trying to save both of you—not after what happened to Lisa. I have to go on without you. I keep following the road and then I make it back to the shallow river. That leads me almost all the way back to the Outpost.”

  “So you came up with this false mission back to the monkey house so that we’ll avoid that section of road,” Tim said.

  When Ashley didn’t respond, they knew that Tim’s guess had been correct.

  “What happens the way we’re going now?” Lisa asked. “What happens at the monkey house.”

  Ashley swallowed hard and looked down at her own hands. One hand was rubbing the other, trying to comfort herself as she got up the nerve to respond.