by Ike Hamill
“What the fuck was that?” Romie asked.
“That’s where the ants are from,” Brad said.
She looked at him like he was crazy. All things considered, he thought she might be right. Romie honked the horn and the brake lights of the car in front flashed. The column of vehicles maneuvered back to the road and began moving again.
Brad put a hand to his chest, almost surprised to feel it rise and fall with his breath. He reached for his own wrist to check his heartbeat. It was fast, but steady.
“I think we died for a moment,” Sandy said from the back seat. He heard her shift suddenly and looked back to see her checking on Hulk. The dog put his head over the back of the seats with his tongue hanging from the side of his mouth.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Brad said.
“You people are crazy,” Romie said. She laid on the horn again. The message was clear to the others—the car at the head of the line sped up and the others followed.
“I hate this,” he said.
“What?” Romie asked.
“I hate that we’re running away. We’ve always run toward our problems. We ran toward them with the intention of solving them, regardless of the risk. How did we get into this situation where we’re running away?”
“You have a better idea?”
“Of course not.”
The arrows petered out after they crossed a bridge and then came south along a river. Brad saw an overpass in the distance. He stiffened in his seat. It still made him uncomfortable to drive through underpasses—he avoided them whenever possible. In the darkness, where a road passed under another road, anything could lurk. They were sometimes inhabited by hives of insects, in his experience.
The line of vehicles was slowing to a stop again.
“Why are we stopping?” Romie asked. She reached for the radio.
Brad put his hand on hers.
“I’ll find out,” he said. He opened his door and stepped down to the pavement. His focus was still on the overpass. He was listening for any sign of flapping wings as he leaned on the hood of the SUV and made his way toward the front of the line of cars.
Impatient, Romie had gotten out too. She was going up the other side.
“What’s the holdup?” he heard her ask as they reached Wesley’s car.
Brad kept moving.
By the time he reached Trish’s vehicle, he could see why they had stopped. On a side street to the right, trucks were parked, all in a row. They were big moving trucks. It was easy to imagine what had happened. The people of Donnelly had gathered a bunch of supplies and come this way, leaving only a trail of purple arrows. The question remained—why had they stopped in this sleepy town? The note had said that they were headed for a bunker that Merle had found.
Dave jumped down from his vehicle and started walking toward the trucks. Brad scanned the area while he watched him go. It was the same story in most of the abandoned small towns. Nature had come to a quick and easy truce with the remnants of civilization that people had left behind. Down the street a tree had crashed through one of the houses. Another sat in a yard that was so overgrown with poplar trees that the house was barely visible from the road. Next door, the grass was high and the door was open, but the house looked like it was probably in decent shape. Power lines were down and there was grass growing up through cracks in the pavement.
Dave had looked through the windows of the moving trucks and was down at the corner.
He turned back toward their caravan.
“Hey!” Dave shouted. “There are people over here.”
He was pointing beyond a low wall.
Brad started heading that direction. He sped up when Sandy joined him and took his arm. Hulk was with her—that made Brad a little more comfortable. There was something wrong with this town that he couldn’t put his finger on. Maybe it was just the way that Dave kept looking beyond that wall.
A whole group of people from the caravan reached Dave to see what he had discovered.
The strength washed out of Brad’s legs. Their clothes were faded, but he recognized the garments just by the cut.
“The bunker is near here,” Brad said.
“Yeah?” Sandy asked.
“Yeah. Those are government guys.”
The corpses were arranged down the low wall, almost like they were ready to ambush anyone who came around the corner. Dave knelt in front of one and reached out to touch the sunglasses that were tucked in the man’s shirt pocket.
“Don’t,” Brad said. “Don’t touch it.”
“How did they get here?” Dave asked. “They don’t look like their eyes exploded, and they’re all lined up.”
“And why weren’t they eaten?” Trish asked.
Most everyone turned to look at her.
“What?” she asked. “There have to be wolves or coyotes around. Hell, even crows would pick them apart after too long.”
Brad hung back. His throat was so dry that he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to talk until the words were leaving his mouth.
“They were moved here. They must have been down in the bunker and they were moved here just in case.”
“In case what? In case they came back to life?” Dave asked. He sounded incredulous until he saw the serious look on Brad’s face.
“Stranger things have happened,” Romie said, speaking up for the first time. “Okay—so we know that the bunker must be around here somewhere. If they can figure out how to get in, then we should be able to, right? Let’s break into teams and search the areas for any signs or tracks.”
Brad stayed put, keeping an eye on the corpses. After a moment, he realized that Romie was still there at his side.
“I would just slow people down,” she said.
The two of them turned back toward the caravan of vehicles. Everyone was getting out now and it occurred to Brad for the first time that the whole community of Gladstone was here, roaming through some abandoned town, north of Donnelly. It was a weird sight. The kids, happy to have a job or maybe just happy to be out of the confines of their vehicles, were practically sprinting as they joined their parents, looking for clues.
Wesley was holding up his hands, shouting to everyone. He was far enough away that Brad could just barely hear what he was saying. Wesley was trying to warn everyone to be careful of where they stepped and to be sure they didn’t mess up any evidence before it could be studied.
“You really think we can find the entrance?” Brad asked Romie.
“I think we have to do something,” Romie said. “The sun is going to set soon and we don’t want to be out here.”
“I’m guessing that this town was completely oblivious of the bunker and they lived right here,” Brad said.
“Well, we have a couple of significant advantages, don’t we?” she asked. “One, we know it exists. Two, we know it has to be close enough that they unloaded the trucks into it.”
“Yeah. I guess,” Brad said.
Over by the farthest truck, he saw Sandy pointing Hulk toward something on the ground.
Chapter 94: Corinna
Leaving the cave, Corinna waved off the idea of siphoning gas from one of the other vehicles. There was a quarter tank in the truck—plenty to make it to the tanker that was parked out on the highway. But by the time she reached the tanker, her opinion had changed. The fuel truck was parked far too close to the woods, and the shadows between the trees were much too dark. There was something lurking back in there. She could feel it. Another day or another time, she would have ignored those fears.
“Not this time,” she told the woods. She wasn’t going to be fooled into complacency again.
In the same way, the Death Lines were getting easier and easier for her predict. The hair would stand up on the back of her neck and a chill would run down her spine. Taking a deep breath and bracing herself, she rolled through the first one and broke through to the other side unscathed. The second time was a little more difficult. The Death Line crossed the roa
d right in the middle of a turn and the truck nearly rolled down an embankment before she regained control.
“Next time, I’ll steer tighter into the curve,” she said to herself. She didn’t have to. The next Death Line was perpendicular to the road and easy to navigate.
Even as she got comfortable with the Death Lines, she kept reminding herself that they weren’t the only dangers that she faced. There were other predators out in the woods, and they might decide to take on something as big as the truck.
Without questioning why, she reached down and turned off the CB radio. There was something about the glowing display that bothered her. Corinna felt more comfortable with it off.
“I’m going to have to find a therapist after this, and Robby is going to pay for every session. This whole trip was his idea.”
The notion made her smile and then laugh. It reminded of her of one of her grandfather’s rants. On the news, a firefighter was talking about a van that had exploded on the turnpike. The man had been crying as he talked about the kids who were trapped inside.
“It must have been a terrible thing to see,” Corinna had said.
“Terrible? What’s terrible about it?” her grandfather had asked her.
“Are you telling me you wouldn’t be upset if you saw a van full of children burning up?” Corinna had asked.
“If it was my job?”
“What’s that have to do with it? Isn’t it terrible even if it’s your job?”
“If it’s my job, then it’s my job. If I go out to be a fireman, then I’m choosing to be in a position where I might have to look at people burning up. If I don’t know that, then why did I get into that line of work?”
“To help people,” Corinna had said.
“Bah,” her grandfather had said. “We all got drafted into the army. We didn’t want to go over there and shoot people, but we had to anyway. I had to point my gun and shoot a guy who never did anything to me and who could have been my friend under different circumstances. He probably didn’t want to be there any more than I did.”
“And you’re saying it wasn’t terrible?”
“What’s terrible? You live one moment and you die the next. Why should one be more terrible than the other?”
“What if that man had been your friend? Wouldn’t it have been terrible then?”
“Everybody you know... There was a time before they lived and there will be a time after. You hope that life isn’t going to include a bunch of suffering, but a lot of time it does. There’s nothing terrible about it.”
Corinna had never really understood her grandfather’s point, but she had taken one thing away from the conversation. It was the same lesson as the poster that he pointed to when she took him to his physical therapy. The poster said, “Pain is mandatory. Suffering is optional.”
Getting back to Donnelly was going to be a pain. Suffering along the way was completely optional. Corinna relaxed a little in the seat and glanced down at the gas gauge. She saw both yellow and blue marks on the road sign that she passed. There was another tanker with gas somewhere ahead. If she ran out before she reached the tanker, it would be a pain, but there was no benefit to being nervous about it.
At the top of a hill, the truck engine sputtered and died. This wasn’t a Death Line, she had simply run out of gas. Corinna rocked back and forth in her seat, praying that the truck would keep enough momentum to start rolling down the other side of the hill. The road ahead was straight and long enough that it faded to a bluish purple before dipped and rose again to the next hill. Somewhere, on top of that hill in the distance, the tanker sat. It probably had enough fuel in it to drown the whole truck, but not unless she could reach it.
Beneath her, the tires rolled to a stop.
“Shit,” she said, slamming her hands down on the steering wheel.
Before getting out, she looked through every window with wide eyes. The road cut through a patch of scrub and brush, so she had good visibility. There was nothing troubling on either side. That almost made her more nervous. It was all too perfect.
“Oh well. Can’t stay here,” she said with a sigh.
Corinna opened the door and pushed it wide open. The vehicle was out of gear. She dropped to the pavement and put her shoulder against the frame, digging in her feet. The truck might as well have weighed a million pounds. With everything she had, she couldn’t feel it moving at all. Finally, she resorted to rocking back and forth to get it going. Panting and cursing, she finally got it to roll. Corinna kept pushing until it was difficult to keep up with the truck, and then she laughed as she tried to jump back in.
In the slow-rolling truck, it didn’t seem as funny anymore. She gripped the wheel tight to hold the truck on the right course, but tried not to do anything that would slow her momentum.
A shadow flashed across the interior of the truck and Corinna leaned forward to see what was overhead. Vultures circling might mean that there was carrion around, and that might mean that there was a predator near.
Blocking out the sun with a hand, she didn’t see any birds in the sky. Corinna leaned back and tried to catch her breath. She was still breathing hard from pushing the truck.
Another shadow flashed—this time in the rearview mirror. She spun around to look through the back window. It could have been her imagination, but she thought she saw something disappear into the high grass on the east side of the highway.
“I would have heard it,” she said. Just to be sure, she put down her window an inch.
The truck began to pick up even more speed. Corinna peered at the horizon.
“It better be that hill,” she said to herself. She could picture it so clearly—she had passed the tanker on her motorcycle when she was coming south. Then again, the long stretch of road through those hills made up a giant repeating pattern. Her hope was sparked when she spotted the sun reflecting off of metal in the distance.
As soon as the truck reached the flat part of the road at the bottom of the hill, its speed began to drop off.
“Come on,” Corinna whispered. “Just give me a little more.”
All her optimistic fantasies about coasting most of the way up the hill were eroding away. Before long, the truck was coming to a stop. With a sigh, she put it in park and turned off the key. She was impatient to get the job done, but she made herself wait while she watched through the windows.
“This is stupid,” she finally said, opening the door. “What am I going to do, sit in this truck forever? I should have found a motorcycle.”
Closing the door to the truck and standing there in the road, she felt naked. It was like jumping off the end of a dock into water so deep that she didn’t know where the bottom was. For the first time in a long time, she felt completely alone.
There was no other choice—she started to walk up the hill.
Every sound in the woods sent up alarm bells in her head. As she walked, she forced herself to close her eyes and really listen and feel the world around her. When she heard something rustling in the grass, her eyes flew back open. They locked onto a squirrel, sitting right at the edge of the road. The squirrel was frozen, just like she was. When it bent to pick up a seed, she finally exhaled.
Behind her, the truck looked like it was a thousand miles away.
“It’s fine,” she whispered. “I’ll be fine.”
Corinna started walking again.
“If I hadn’t left my stuff in the truck, I could jump in the tanker and drive the whole damn thing to Donnelly. Hard to run out of gas when your entire vehicle is carrying gas.”
If Liam had been there, and said that to her, she would have chewed him out for ten minutes. When they were living together he had done that constantly—told her what they should have done after it was way too late. Growing up, Liam had been the master of hindsight.
Corinna had always said the same thing to him.
“Listen, if you have a constructive idea about what we should do in the future, by all means share it with me. If you ju
st want to talk about what we should have done in the past, keep it to yourself.”
“You never listen to me,” Liam had always said.
“Because you’re always telling me what I did wrong.”
“But if you would just listen to me…” he would start to say.
“Again. That’s in the past,” she would reply.
Just thinking about it was getting her worked up again, and it had been years since they had lived together. Corinna hated it when her brain got caught in one of those loops. She had to change the subject in her own head so she could stop replaying that old argument.
A new idea occurred to her that was so ingenious that it made her pause for a moment.
She turned to the west. The field was dotted with a few wildflowers and then transitioned into a forest in the distance. The new idea was so simple that she couldn’t imagine why it had never occurred to her before.
She said it aloud to see how it would sound.
“I’ll just go.”
Sure, there could be predators in the woods. She was a predator too. Who was to say that those other predators would be more frightening than she was? All over the world, people had evolved and spread and conquered the terrain. In Africa, lions and even elephants were afraid of people. In the arctic, people had conquered polar bears and whales. Eventually, everything bowed before the adaptability and cunning of human beings. There wasn’t anything in those woods that could stop her.
She actually took a step toward the side of the road to see how it might feel. Countless times, it had occurred to Corinna that the world was in a hopeless state of disrepair. All of the progress that people had made was erased and the remains of the species were barely clinging to life with their fingernails. Now, taking one step toward the wilderness, it occurred to her that it wasn’t the whole world that was clinging to desperation, it was only their failed notion of civilization.