by Blake Crouch
Jack drew even with him, tried to make eye contact, then finally stepped in front of the man, who stopped, his gray eyes staring off at a horizon beyond even the scope of this infinite country.
In another world completely.
“Are you hurt?” Jack said.
His voice must have made some impact, because the man met his eyes, but he didn’t speak.
“I have food in the car,” Jack said. “I don’t have water, but this road will take us through the Little Belt Mountains. We’ll find some in the high country for sure.”
The man just stood there. His entire body trembling slightly. Like there was a cataclysm underway deep in his core.
Jack touched the man’s bare arm where the shirt sleeve had been torn away, felt the sun’s accumulation of heat radiating from it.
“You should come with me. You’ll die out here.”
He escorted the man to the passenger side and installed him in the front seat.
“Sorry about the smell,” Jack said. “It ain’t pretty, but it beats walking.”
The man seemed not to notice.
Jack buckled him in and closed the door.
They sped down the abbreviated main street of another slaughtered town. Mountains to the north, and the road climbed into them. Jack glanced over at the man, saw him touching the matter on his window, running his finger through it, smearing it across the glass. A bag of potato chips and a candy bar sat in his lap, unopened, unacknowledged.
“I’m Jack, by the way,” he said. “What’s your name?”
The man looked at him as if he either didn’t know or couldn’t bring himself to say. His wallet bulged out of the side pocket of his slacks, and Jack reached over, tugged it out, flipped it open.
“Donald Massey, of Provo, Utah. Good to meet you, Donald. I’m from Albuquerque.”
Donald made no response.
“Aren’t you hungry? Here.” Jack reached over and took the candy bar out of Donald’s lap, ripped open the packaging. He slid the bar into Donald’s grasp, but the man just stared at it.
“Do you want to listen to some music?”
Jack turned on the Beach Boys.
They rode up into the mountains, Jack hating to be on a winding road again. With all these blind corners, you could roll up on a roadblock before you knew what hit you.
In the early afternoon, they passed through a mountain village that was probably very much a ghost town before anyone had bothered to burn it. A few dozen houses. Couple buildings on the main strip. Evergreen trees in the fields and on the hills, the smell of them coming through the dashboard vents, a welcome change.
On the north side of town, Jack pulled over and turned off the engine. When he opened the door, he could hear the running water in the trees and smell its sweetness.
“You need to drink something, Donald,” Jack said.
The man just stared through the windshield.
Jack lifted a travel mug out of the center console.
Jack rinsed the residue of ancient coffee out of the mug and filled it with water from the creek.
Headed back to the van, opened Donald’s door.
“It’s really good,” Jack said.
He held the mug to Donald’s sunblasted lips and tilted. Most of the water ran down the man’s chest under his shirt, but he inadvertently swallowed some of it.
Jack tried to give him a little more, but the man was disinterested.
“We’ll reach Great Falls in the afternoon,” Jack said. “It’s a big city. I used to live there.”
Impossible to know if the man registered a word he was saying.
“I got separated from my family five days ago.” Jack glanced at the man’s left ring finger, saw a gold wedding band. “Were you with your family, Donald?”
No response.
Jack sipped the water, grains of sand from the creekbed deposited on the tip of his tongue.
“Let me guess what you do for a living. My wife and I used to play this game all the time.” Jack studied the man’s leather clogs—nothing much to look at now, but they suggested wealth. Couple hundred dollars off the shelf. Jack inspected the tag on the back of the man’s collar. “Brooks Brothers. All right.” He looked at Donald’s hands. Covered in blood and still clutched like claws, but he could tell they weren’t the hands of a man who earned his living working outdoors. “You strike me as an ad man,” Jack said. “Am I right? You work in an advertising and marketing firm in Provo?”
Nothing.
“I bet you’d never guess my vocation. Tell you what. I’ll give you three. . .”
Jack stopped. Felt the cold premonition of having missed something lifting out of his gut. He almost didn’t want to know, but the fear couldn’t touch his curiosity.
He opened the glove compartment, rifled through a stack of yellow napkins, plastic silverware, bank deposit envelopes, until he came to the automobile liability policy, protected in a plastic sleeve. He opened it, stared down at the small cards that identified the coverage, the policy limits, and the named insureds.
Donald Walter Massey.
Angela Jacobs-Massey.
Jack looked at Donald.
“Jesus Christ.”
They went on through the mountains, Jack trying to pay attention to what was coming in the distance, but all he could think about was Donald, wondering what had happened back down the road. Couldn’t imagine the man fleeing. He wouldn’t have left his family. Had the affected purposely left him alive then? Murdered his family in front of him and then sent him down the highway on foot?
Jack blinked the tears out of his eyes.
He looked over at the man who now leaned against the door. That look in his face like he’d just been hollowed out. Jack wanting to tell him that he’d taken care of their bodies, or at least done what he could, shown them respect. He wanted to say something beautiful and profound and comforting, about how even in all this horror, there were things between people who loved each other that couldn’t be touched, that lived through pain, torture, separation, even death. He thought he still believed that. But he didn’t say anything. Just reached over and laced his fingers through Donald’s, which barely released their incomprehensible store of tension, and Jack held the man’s hand as he drove them down out of the mountains, and he did not let go.
In the early evening the city lay several miles in the distance. The sun low over the plains beyond. Everything bright, golden. The way Jack dreamed of this place.
He disengaged his hand from Donald’s, the man still sleeping against the door.
The gas gauge needle hovered over the empty slash.
He was debating whether to head into town or take the bypass when he saw the first sign—a billboard that had once advertised a casino, now whitewashed and covered in black writing:
YOU ARE NOW UNDER SNIPER SURVEILLANCE
Stop in the next 400 yards
Jack took his foot off the gas.
Another billboard, same side of the road, one hundred yards further down.
300 yards to stop
Comply or you will be shot
Jack looked in the rearview mirror, saw several vehicles trailing him, no idea where they’d come from.
200 YARDS
TURN OFF YOUR VEHICLE AND. . .
He could see a roadblock a quarter mile in the distance, set up at a fork in the highway.
More than twenty cars and trucks. Sand bags. Staunch artillery.
He was passing vehicles now on the shoulder that had been shot to hell and burned.
DO NOT FUCKING MOVE
The cars behind him were close now, one of them a Jeep Grand Cherokee with the roof cut out and two men with machineguns standing on the back seat, ready to unload.
Jack brought the minivan to a full stop, put it in park, and turned off the engine.
The Jeep hung back thirty yards.
Jack looked over at Donald, started to rouse him, then thought, Why wake the man just to be killed?
Six heavily-armed men in
body armor strode up the middle of the highway toward the minivan, one of them dragging an emaciated man along by a leash in one hand, the other holding a cattle prod.
They didn’t strike Jack as military, didn’t carry themselves so cocksure.
As if it had been scripted, the greeting party stopped thirty yards out from the front bumper of the minivan, and the tallest of the bunch raised a bullhorn to his mouth.
“Both of you, out of the car.”
Jack grabbed Donald’s arm. “Come on, we have to get out.”
The man wouldn’t move.
“Donald.”
“You have five seconds before we open fire.”
Jack opened his door and stepped out into the highway with his hands raised.
“You in the car, get out or—”
“He doesn’t hear you,” Jack yelled. “His mind is gone.”
“Lay down on your stomach.”
Jack got down onto his knees and then prostrated himself across the rough, sun-warmed pavement. Listened to the sound of their footsteps coming toward him, and he didn’t dare move or even raise his head to watch them approach. Just lay there with his heart throbbing against the road, wondering, from a strangely detached perspective, if this was how and where it would end for him.
The men stopped several feet away.
One of them came forward and Jack felt hands running up and down his sides, his legs.
“Clean.”
“Go check the other guy. You, sit up.”
Jack sat up.
“Where’s Benny?”
One of the guards produced a blindfolded rail of a man, naked, beaten to within an inch of his life, bruises covering his body and face, his hands cuffed and a chain linking his ankles above his bare feet.
The tall, bearded man pointed a large revolver at Jack’s face and asked him his name.
“Jack.”
“Is there a bomb in your van?”
“No.”
The one who’d frisked Jack peered over the front passenger door, said, “This one’s completely checked out.”
The bearded man stared at Jack. “Jack, I want to introduce you to Benny.” Benny’s handler gave a hard tug on the leash, dragging him within a foot of Jack. “Here’s the deal. If Benny likes you, I’m going to blow your brains out all over the road. If he doesn’t, we’ll talk.” He looked at Benny. “Ready, boy? Ready to do some work?”
Benny nodded. He was salivating.
“Benny, I’m going to take your blindfold off and show you our new friend.”
Benny urinated on the pavement.
“If you do good, I’ll give you some water and a treat. Are you going to do a good job?”
Benny made a sound that wasn’t human, and then the bearded man nodded to his handler, who pulled off the blindfold. The wildman crouched in front of Jack. Eyes ringed with black and yellow bruises but still a deep clarity and intensity in them. He was inches from Jack’s face. Smelled terrible, like he’d been bedding down in his own shit, and he seemed to be staring at something on the back of Jack’s skull.
Jack looked up at the man holding the revolver. “What the fuck is—”
Never saw the thing move, but Benny was suddenly on top of him and trying to tear Jack’s throat out with his teeth. Took three men to drag it away and several jolts from the cattle prod before it finally collapsed in the road and curled up moaning in the fetal position.
Jack scrambled back toward the van, trying to catch his breath, the man with the revolver moving toward him, saying, “It’s all right. This is good news. If Benny had crawled into your lap and started cooing, you wouldn’t be with us anymore.”
“What is that thing?”
“Benny’s our pet. Our affected pet. He checks out everyone who tries to come into the city. I’m Brian, by the way.” He offered a hand, helped Jack onto his feet.
“Is the city safe?” Jack asked.
“Yeah. We figure there’s ten, fifteen thousand people here. Many have left, gone north toward the border, but that’s a rough trip. It’s heavily guarded up there. We’ve got all the roads into town protected.”
“No affected in the city?”
“Nope.”
“How’s that possible?”
“It was cloudy the night of the event over this part of Montana.”
“You haven’t been attacked?”
“Not by any force that stood a chance. We’ve got five thousand armed men ready to fuck shit up on a moment’s notice.”
Jack looked around, the RPMs of his heart falling back toward baseline.
“Has a woman with two children passed through in the last week?”
“I don’t think so. You have a picture?”
“No.”
“Your wife and kids?”
Jack nodded.
“You’re the first person to even come up this road in three days. Are they coming here to meet you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know where they are. We were separated in Wyoming.” He looked at the rest of the crew. “Any of you seen them?”
Nothing but headshakes and sorrys.
“My boy is affected,” Jack said. “He isn’t symptomatic or violent, but he saw the lights. He’s seven years old. Would you let him in?”
“How’s it possible he isn’t like the others?”
“I don’t know, but he isn’t. His name is Cole.”
“We’ll keep an eye out for them,” Brian said. “If he isn’t hostile, we’ll let your family through.”
“You swear to me?”
“We don’t kill kids.” Brian pointed through the windshield at Donald. “Friend of yours?”
“I picked him up this morning outside of White Sulphur Springs, just walking down the middle of the road. He needs medical attention.”
“Well, there’s shelters set up at some of the schools. You might find a doctor at one of those.”
“There’s an Air Force base here, right?”
“Yeah, but it’s been on lockdown since everything went to hell. I guess it’s understandable—they’ve got the silos holding the Minuteman nuclear missiles.”
Jack climbed back into the driver’s seat.
“You’ll let me through?”
“Absolutely.” He closed Jack’s door. “Safe travels.”
Jack had passed through the outskirts of Great Falls a handful of times in the last ten years during those long driving trips to see his father when his old man had still lived in Cut Bank. But he hadn’t been in the city proper since he and Dee had left to start a life in Albuquerque, sixteen years ago. Thought this might be the most peculiar circumstance under which to experience the emotion of nostalgia.
Driving the quiet streets, he found it haunting to see the darkness fall upon a city that had no light to raise in its defense.
In the blue dusk, he passed an ice cream shop he and Dee had frequented all those years ago on Friday nights. But everything else, at least what little he could see of it, had changed.
He drove to a hospital and cruised past the emergency room entrance, dark and vacated.
Went on.
There was no one out. The streets empty. The geography of the town might have been an asset, might have stoked his memory, had there been streetlights to guide him. But it was as dark as the countryside in these city limits. He drove for thirty minutes, dipping into the reserve tank, rambling in search of anything that resembled a shelter.
The engine had already sputtered once when he saw the soft smears of light through windows in the distance, and as the form of the building took shape, he recognized it—a high school. People were milling around the steps that climbed to the main brick building, the cherry glow of their cigarettes barely visible in the dark.
Jack pulled over to the curb and turned off the minivan.
He was thirsty again.
“Donald,” he said. “We’re at a shelter. They might have hot food. Clean water. Cots. I’ll find a doctor to look at you. We’re in a safe ci
ty now. You’ll be taken care of.”
Donald leaned against the door.
“Don? You awake?” Jack reached over and touched the man’s hand.
Cool and limp.
His neck gave no pulse.
Jack climbed the steps to the school. Inside, candlelight flickered off the lockers and it smelled worse than a homeless shelter—stink of body odor and rancid clothing. Cots stretched down the length of the hallway, and everywhere the noise of hushed conversations and snoring. A baby crying somewhere. He didn’t smell food.
He walked a long corridor, cots on either side and open suitcases—barely enough room him to make his way down the middle without trampling someone’s filthy laundry.
Five minutes of negotiating the crowded hallways brought him to the entrance of a gymnasium, where a woman sat at a folding table reading by candlelight a library-bound edition of Treasure Island. She looked up at Jack with what he imagined to be the no-bullshit demeanor of a mathematics teacher, or worse, a principal.
“You’re new,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“You from Great Falls?”
“Albuquerque. I’m looking for my family. My wife is Dee. She’s short, brown hair, beautiful. Forty years old. My son is Cole, and he’s. . .” As he said Cole’s name, he thought about Benny and the roadblocks at the edge of town.
“Sir?”
“He’s seven. My daughter is Naomi and she’s fourteen, looks a lot like her mother.”
“And you think they’re here?”
“I don’t know. We were separated, but I think they might have come to Great Falls—”
“Doesn’t ring a bell, but we’ve got over two thousand people here. Look, I wish I could offer you a cot, but we’re maxed out and I don’t know when more food is coming. The Air Force base had been trucking in MRE rations, but we haven’t seen them in five days.” She sounded tired and emotionless. Jack thinking, You haven’t seen anything.