by Chuck Wendig
She smirked. “What can I say? I’m good at my job. I designed a very effective prediction engine.” She linked her arm in his. “Now we’d better get a move on, don’t you think? The mystery of Maker’s Bell awaits.”
Look at this photo of these 11 zombies—four of them are identifiable Antifa crisis actors. This isn’t some foreign attack or some kind of outbreak. This is a leftie conspiracy in action. Stay frosty, spread the word.
Two words: fake. news.
—user KobraKommandr at r/conspiracy, answering the question,
“What’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen while alone?”
JUNE 4
Pine Grove, Pennsylvania
“SO LIKE, WHAT THE FUCK is going on here?” Zig asked.
“I dunno,” Shana said, her fingers drumming on the filthy dash of his little Honda Civic.
She’d called her friend Zig, woken him up out of a dead sleep, demanded he come hang with her. She’d told him what was happening. Said it might be the last time they hung for a while, she didn’t know.
He leapt at the chance.
Because Zig liked her.
Like-liked her.
Definitely wanted to fuck her.
Maybe even loved her, ugh.
He didn’t know she knew, but oh, she knew. The dude couldn’t hide it. He gawked and gaped and did everything she asked (which, okay, maybe she took advantage of now and again, sorry universe, jeez). They DMed back and forth on Twitter, they texted, they sent funny pictures. He was always there when she wanted to bitch about someone or something. He was her best friend. So he loved her, maybe. She didn’t love him back.
This was never spoken.
Zig hunched over his steering wheel—he had the long, ropy limbs of slumped-over Slenderman, a long Adrien Brody nose, and a Green Goblin chin. One day, he’d probably grow into all of it and would end up tall and dark and handsome, but right now he was a conglomeration of awkward parts put together awkwardly.
He handed over his weed pen: a vaporizer he called the Wand.
“A little magic?” he asked.
She’d asked him to bring the weed, and he did, but now when faced with it she wasn’t sure. “I should stay clear.”
“Shit, really? I’d think you’d wanna do the opposite.”
“I dunno. Just gimme a sec.” The car sat off on the shoulder of Old Route 443. Behind them, pine trees stood vigil, like the bayonets of dead soldiers stuck up out of mossy earth to mark their passing. Ahead, the hood of the car sat pointed toward the presently empty road. The sleepwalkers weren’t here yet. But they were coming this way—unless they deviated, they’d arrive in ten, maybe fifteen minutes. First up, though, would be the police: They had a cop car at the front of the flock, and a cop car at the back. By now, she wondered how many there were of the walkers. Yesterday, after Mister Blamire…met his end, the walkers numbered only two. By midnight, another six had joined. By this morning, another three.
Possibly that number had grown. It wasn’t like clockwork, not exactly. But it seemed like one arrived every couple of hours. Same nowhere stare. Same steady but urgent step.
Shana reached down, massaged her calves through her jeans. Walking all night had left her exhausted. She asked Zig: “You bring me breakfast?”
“Oh yeah,” he said, spacing out. He reached into the back and grabbed a small plastic Wawa bag. She rescued three items from within it: an egg-and-cheese bagel sandwich, a greasy shingle of hash browns, and a Diet Dr Pepper.
Shana greedily ate and drank.
“Thanks,” she said around a mouthful of sandwich.
“Sure.” He watched her eat. “Sorry about Nessie.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.”
When she finished, she found a ratty napkin in the bottom of the bag and used it to wipe the grease off her fingertips.
“Did you bring me the other thing?” she asked.
“I…”
“Zig. Did you?”
“Shana, I dunno.”
“You dunno if you brought it?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
She stiffened. “I need it.”
“You know, I dunno what this is, Shana, but you’ve done enough for your family. You’ve already had to play mom when yours went away. Maybe it’s time to just like, walk away from this. Let the cops handle it.”
“I don’t want the cops to handle it.”
He looked down at his lap. “Dude, if my dad finds out, he’ll literally kill me. He will literally kick my butt so hard I’ll be tasting my own asshole for weeks.”
“So you didn’t bring it.”
He sighed.
“I brought it.”
“Okay. Good.” She made an impatient gesture with her hands, like restive moths stirred from grass by stumbling feet. “Come on, before the cops.”
Zig reached again into the backseat. He pulled out another package. This one: a brown paper bag. It tinkled as he handed it over, like the sound of dull wind chimes. Shana opened the bag.
The revolver’s barrel was short, like a pig’s nose. Six bullets clinked and clattered against the blued steel. Shana rolled the bag top tight, then chucked it into her backpack. “Thanks.”
“Be careful.”
“I’m not going to use it. It’s just in case.”
“Just in case of what?”
“I…don’t know.” Just in case they try to do to my sister what they did to Mister Blamire. “Blamire’s dead, you know.”
“I know.”
“What’s the news saying?”
“Not much yet. Just some kind of accident in Granger.” He paused. “But like, social media is on it. I saw some shit on Twitter…”
She couldn’t worry about that. People wouldn’t understand this. Because none of it made any sense at all. Not to her, not to anyone. Soon, someone would come to help. Someone would come who understood.
For now, though, she was on her own.
As if on cue, she spotted the flashing lights of the police SUV down a ways. It crept slowly along. Not far behind, she knew, the sleepers walked.
“They let you get close?” Zig asked.
“Close like, near Nessie? No. Mostly I walk behind.”
“How are you gonna like, sleep and go to the bathroom?”
“I dunno,” she said. “I have a sleeping bag. I have a little money.”
“But if you sleep, they’ll keep going. How will you catch up?”
Sudden anger flared within her. “I don’t know, okay? They can’t walk forever. They’ll have to…stop, or collapse in exhaustion.” He opened his mouth to ask another question—one of Zig’s more annoying habits was exactly that, question after question after question like he was doing a fucking BuzzFeed quiz on your behalf—but she cut him off. “It’s my sister out there. Okay? I need to do this. I don’t think it’ll keep going. Somehow, it’ll end soon.” That, she said with almost zero confidence. She made that prediction only out of hope, and hope she knew had like, zero basis in reality.
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then I’ll keep walking till my feet fall off.”
President Hunt released a statement that she is quote-unquote “Aware of the situation in Maker’s Bell, Pennsylvania, and is monitoring events closely.” Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, does it, folks? Believe you me, she knows what this is. Maybe it’s an attack by North Korea. Maybe it’s something internal—we all know that both the CDC and FEMA are known rogue agencies, right? The truth will come out as long as we demand it. And this is your reminder: In November, we can pack Hunt’s suitcase with a whole bunch of votes for Ed Creel.
—Hiram Golden, The Golden Hour podcast
JUNE 4
Pine Grove, Pennsylvania
PINE GROVE DIDN’T LOOK LIKE much—just a scattering of old houses, broken businesses, and trailer parks. True to its name, pine trees stood everywhere like tall, brooding sentinels. The morning had a chill to it; a dampness clung to the air.
Ahead stood the Pine Grove Diner—a little lemon-yellow building with a black-and-white-checkered band around the outside.
Sadie stood, rubbing her arms. “Your friend is late.”
“He’s usually late,” Benji said, yawning. “He’s great at what he does, but…less good at everything else in life. That’s the trade-off.”
Robbie Taylor was not a man who took good care of himself. Of course, having said that, here stood Benji, who had barely slept over the last…what was it now? Twenty-four hours? He’d managed some fits and starts in the rental car, and grabbed a quick hour in the motel. But he still felt like a man standing on his tiptoes at the edge of a cliff. I’m not supposed to be here.
There—a car came pulling in, stones popping under its tires. A white Dodge Crossover. It wheeled up fast, skidding hard on the brakes as it pulled in right next to Benji.
Robbie Taylor stepped out, looking no different than Benji remembered him: The man had a lazy, comfortable lean to him, frizzy hair pulled back with a scrunchie and sideburns like a pair of fuzzy pork chops. He was infinitely, endlessly rumpled. Like at the end of every day, he wadded himself up and piled himself on the floor.
The two men clasped hands, then pulled each other into a hug.
“My brother from another mother,” Robbie said, then pulled back with one eyebrow askew. “Wait, is that racist?”
“What?”
“Calling you brother? That’s racist, isn’t it.”
“I think technically the term is cultural appropriation, but don’t worry, I’ll give you an official Black American excuse card.”
“Is that like a Monopoly Get Out of Jail Free card?”
“See, now you’re being racist.”
“Hey, whoa, I didn’t mean it like that.” Robbie held up both hands in surrender. He turned to Sadie and said with his hand out, “Sadie Emeka, right? I don’t think we’ve met but—Robbie Taylor, senior ORT.”
She shook it. “A pleasure. Thank you for entertaining our presence here. And”—she lowered her voice, sotto voce—“not telling Loretta.”
“Yeah, when she finds out, she’s gonna chew me up like Hubba Bubba bubble gum,” Robbie said, “but fuck it, I’m happy to see you.”
Benji laughed. The two of them had come up together in the CDC. Started the same year, eventually walked different paths—paths that converged under the umbrella of the NCEZID: the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. So just seeing Robbie again—and finding that the man didn’t seem to hate him—helped ease the tension. A little.
“I’m glad Loretta put you on this,” Benji said. “I expected you’d be busy, off somewhere halfway around the globe.”
“I was. Kak City, this go-round.” Kakata, in Liberia. “Ebola. World Health had us come in and confirm.”
“False alarm?” Benji hadn’t heard anything on the news.
“Fuckin’ thankfully. All’s quiet on the Ebola front, my friend. And with the new vaccine they’re deploying, maybe we got this thing licked. You miss it?”
“Miss what?”
“This. The life. The job. Being in the shit.”
“I was never like you.”
“What’s that mean?”
“A hot-zone worker. I was never really in the shit.”
“You were literally in the shit, don’t give me that.”
Benji laughed. Robbie wasn’t wrong. How many times had he had to crawl through a slick cave chute of bat guano, or stomp around through pigshit, chickenshit, monkeyshit, human shit?
“Fine, but nobody ever shot at me.”
“Fair enough.” Robbie looked at his watch. “All right, meeting starts in an hour. Let’s get inside, pump black coffee straight into our fucking hearts, and get everyone up to speed.”
* * *
—
THE INSIDE OF the diner was a garish mix of polished chrome and wood paneling. The fake red leather of the booths was cracked and patched with bits of tape. They sat at a big table to accommodate the upcoming meeting, and each ended up with a cup of coffee.
Benji needed it.
Robbie slapped down a report. Just a few slips of stapled paper tucked sloppily in a folder. A thin folder meant that so far, the CDC didn’t know much, if anything, about what was going on here.
Together they went over the details.
At a certain point, Benji had to stop Robbie and ask: “Wait, the paramedic couldn’t administer the sedative?”
“Said the needle wouldn’t break the skin.”
A symptom. But of what?
“Scleroderma, maybe.”
Scleroderma hardened the skin—and inevitably, the internal organs—and without treatment, the autoimmune disorder could cause life-threatening complications.
“Ennh, maybe, but no visible signs. No calcinosis, no sclerodactyly, none of the capillary dilation on the skin.”
Sadie jumped in and said: “Maybe the paramedic just…fucked up?”
“Yeah.” Robbie nodded. “That’s what I’m thinking. We’re not exactly in a bustling metropolis here. Never know what you’re going to find.”
Benji leaned in over his coffee, keeping his voice low—though they didn’t have anyone else sitting around them eating breakfast, he was cautious about causing any kind of panic. “What are we dealing with here, Robbie? This report…it started with one person, they walk, others catch the bug and join in? If this is communicable, we’ve never seen its like.”
“I dunno, Benj, that used to be your job. I’m just here to contain it. It’s your job—well, sorry, it’s the job of EIS—to figure out the sheer what-the-fuckery of it. You said this…Black Swan predicted it?”
“That’s right,” Sadie said.
“And that means,” Benji said, “there was something to presage this. Some clue that we’re not seeing.” Frustration mounted. He leaned back, arms crossed. His brain went over it again and again. “This can’t be infectious. The symptoms—the sleepwalking, the violent seizures—that doesn’t track with something communicable. And why would it only infect one person out of all those they pass? Sleep disorders, if that’s what this is, don’t have underlying infectious causes. You don’t catch sleepwalking.”
“Sleepwalkers also don’t tend to erupt like Mount Vesuvius when you stop them from sleepwalking, Benji.”
“Yes, there is that. But! Sleepwalking can have underlying chemical causes. Certain medications, for instance, cause somnambulism or other sleep disorders. Imagine if the walkers were all, say, drinking from the same source of water, or eating a similar food—something tainted with an anti-psychotic pharmaceutical, or maybe some new pesticide or herbicide—regulations have been watered down so much and so often, who knows what’s out there?”
Robbie tsk-tsk-tsked him. “You’re doing your old job, Benji. I thought you were just here to confirm the machine’s prediction and then move along. Tiger can’t change his stripes, huh?”
“I can’t help being curious.” Benji cautioned a glance toward Sadie. “And my job description here is…still under some negotiation. But I promise, I’ll stay out of the way. I’m not here to intrude or corrupt the investigation or its reputation—”
“Nah, fuck all that. If you figure something out, I want to hear it. Your input isn’t corrupt, not to me.” Robbie stared off. “Because honestly, I think EIS is good, but it’s not as good as it was when you were there. You always had an angle, a way of looking at things nobody else did. Like Yemen.”
“Yemen?” Sadie asked.
“It was nothing,” Benji said.
“Yeah, t
he kind of nothing that leads a guy to get a commendation from the top brass at the CDC. Benji figured out MERS-CoV.”
Nearly a decade before, it was the first time they’d seen MERS-CoV, a SARS-like respiratory illness. It popped up out of nowhere in the city of Ataq. Had a 40 percent death rate. It wasn’t the worst death—Ebola and other hemorrhagic fevers took that crown—but struggling for breath as your organs failed wasn’t any picnic. Robbie was there as part of containment, but Benji and his team joined a WHO group to help figure out where the hell it was coming from in the first place. The SARS coronavirus was believed to come from bats, which in turn infected civet cats, from which in turn it jumped to humans in Guangdong Province in China, 2002. That led Benji to believe that MERS was similarly zoonotic. His instincts were right. It came from camels.
Specifically, camel piss.
Seeing the look of bewilderment on Sadie’s face, Benji tried to explain all this, but already Robbie was laughing about it so hard he was wheezing and his eyes were shining. Benji chuckled, too, but waved his hands in the air as a caution.
“Hey, hey, it’s not funny—”
“We had to tell them not to drink camel piss, Benji.”
“Okay, but let’s remember, it was a Bedouin and Yemeni folk cure with some real truth behind it. Those researchers out of Jeddah found that camel urine contained PMF701—camel milk, too. Nanobots have pulled out those particles and found that they help to fight both cancer and some skin conditions.”
Turned out, that was where MERS came from.
“I’m not—” Robbie coughed, clearing his throat and still laughing. He wiped his eyes. “I’m not making fun of them drinking urine—I mean, okay, I am a little bit, because holy shit can you imagine? Jesus, fuck, the taste. But no, I’m thinking about the, the goddamn—” And the laughs started up again, uncontrollable guffaws like from someone trying not to laugh in church or at a funeral. “I’m thinking about the posters. The fucking posters!”
The posters.
Oh shit, the posters.
The World Health Organization had started an educational campaign that plastered the Arabian Peninsula with posters that told people why it was a bad idea to drink camel piss. Robbie said, still wheezing, “The little cartoon cutout camel with the—the little pee-pee bullets coming down into a glass. Like, ‘Oh, excuse me, I’m just going to put this empty glass under this camel dick and serve me up a nice frothy pint.’ Oh God, Jesus. What a fucking life.”