by Chuck Wendig
“It’s, ahhh, it’s good.” A strange feeling swept over him. He felt feverish. His heart raced in a fit of tachycardia. His palms grew damp. Am I getting sick?
No, he realized, it wasn’t that at all.
It had been so long since he’d been in any kind of a relationship, since he’d had anyone attracted to him—or been attracted to anyone in turn—that this feeling was almost extraterrestrial.
Was that it? Was he attracted to Sadie?
I can’t think about this right now. Now was not the time. There were greater burdens to carry. Romance at this point was childish. And worse, a distraction. He needed to be thinking about the problem.
Not about her.
Quickly, he changed course in the conversation.
Instead, he told Sadie what they’d found regarding the test tube that had been sent to Nessie Stewart—the one that Shana had been using to store her marijuana, of all things.
“We found no microscopic residue in the container. Nothing. And one assumes that if the vial contained some kind of contagion, then Shana—the older sister—would be walking with the flock alongside her sister. But she’s not.”
Sadie hesitated. Was she disappointed he hadn’t answered her question? Was he reading too much into this? Again, here it was, proof he was being distracted by the wrong problem.
“Has Black Swan helped at all?” she asked.
“A little.” He spun the phone around and directed it toward one of the bland hotel room walls. Benji activated the projector. “I’ve been thinking again about patterns. There’s a pattern at work here, even if I can’t see what it means. Black Swan,” he said, “can you highlight the commonalities shared among the walkers in the flock? What patterns am I not yet seeing?”
One green pulse, and then the screen lit up with data. Lines of information crunched very quickly, and when it was done, it resolved to white; and in that white, two circles formed.
Each circle contained a tidbit of data:
In the first:
89th percentile health factor
In the second:
85th percentile intelligence factor
And that was it.
Those were the two common elements.
The age of the sleepers was spread out, none too young, none too old. The flock overall was relatively diverse, at least compared with the rest of the country’s population. The two common elements were: They were smarter than most, and they were healthier than most. Abnormally so.
His silence must’ve struck Sadie, for over the speaker she said: “Did I lose you? Or did I just lose you to thought again?”
“Lost in my thoughts, sorry. I forgot you’re not here and you can’t see what’s on the screen. I’d put you on video, but I don’t think the wireless here is robust enough.”
“It’s fine, you can tell me.” Pause. “I like the sound of your voice.”
I like the sound of yours, he thought, but did not say.
He explained.
“Black Swan,” he said. “How do you determine health factor?” The circles went away and the screen filled with text. Benji read several of them to her: “Health records, physical education certificates, local exams.”
To this last bit, Sadie said: “Local exams?”
“Yes,” Benji said. “Of course. Black Swan scans them.”
“Really?”
“You…didn’t know it could do that?”
She laughed. “No. I didn’t.”
“Doesn’t that bother you?”
“Of course not. It’s learning. Evolving. It is as it should be—just as you and I learn new skills, so should it. That cheeky bastard is adding to its résumé, isn’t it?”
“Tsk, tsk. I thought we weren’t supposed to anthropomorphize.”
She laughed. “I think the cats are out of the sack on that one, don’t you?” She kept on: “A scan is interesting, as it’s not like it has X-ray capabilities or anything. But I suppose it can detect temperature and pulse and other abnormalities. Black Swan, how do you calculate intelligence factors?”
More data appeared onscreen. IQ tests, standardized tests, grades, job performance ratings, analyses of social media. He read them to Sadie.
“So best guess,” she said, “Black Swan is telling us that the walkers are both fairly healthy and fairly intelligent.”
“That appears to be the case. Which is, I admit, puzzling. Diseases come from a wide variety of vectors, and some as a result can be a bit choosy—hepatitis D can only infect those already infected with hepatitis B, for instance. Sometimes region is at play—a disease in the late 1800s affected only a subset of men from the Moosehead Lake region of Maine, and it caused them no end of startled fits and muscle movements. The Jumping Frenchmen of Maine disease, they called it.”
“That sounds insane. You’re making that up.”
“I’m not! I promise. Thing is, it was never repeated. That disease never came up again and no one can really explain it. So we don’t always know what considerations are in play. Some diseases affect different ages or people of certain locales—parasites might look for very specific conditions in which to multiply or in a host to control. But nothing that crosses the axis lines of intelligence and health. Unless—”
“Benji—”
“Unless it’s deeper than that. In a disease like porphyria—the so-called vampire disease, where patients become literally allergic to light and, curiously, defecate purple fecal matter—”
“Benji.”
“—in that disease, it’s a genetic component, a gene mutation. What if the walkers are all bound by a specific gene mutation. I’m going to have to talk to Cassie and Martin, have them look back at Clade Berman’s blood—”
“Benji, listen to me.”
“Sorry. I was yammering.”
“Prattling, I like to say. It sounds nicer.”
“It sounds very British.”
“I am very British. I am at least ninety-first percentile British. Tell me, what room are you in? I’m having something sent up to you. Something to help you relax.”
“Oh. Let’s see—I’m in two forty-three.”
“Good. Perfect.”
“What are you sending up?”
“A treat. Like I said: something to help you relax.”
“Oh, Sadie, I hope it’s not a bottle of something—if I drink, it’ll cloud my thinking, and at this point the last thing I need is—”
Just then, a knock at the door.
He said into the phone (quite dubiously): “Hold on, you.”
From the other side of the door, a deep voice: “Room service.”
Well, now, what did she get me? The hotel worked fast.
He went to the door, opened it—
And Sadie stood there. She had a cocky tilt to her hips and her tongue gently poking out between her teeth, like a canary in a cat’s mouth.
Benji felt his face stretching with his own grin. “I…I don’t even—”
She waggled her phone at him. “Told you. A treat.” And now, in that deeper voice she was faking: “To help you relax.”
“Sadie, I—”
“Shut up and let me in.”
She melted into him. Her mouth against his. Her weight pushed him deeper into the room. Her leg kicked out behind her, the heel on her boot catching the door and slamming it shut. Her hands braided behind his back, and the two of them toppled onto the bed, all the papers there scattering to the four corners.
Here’s how we do things in America: We identify a problem, then we promptly ignore it until it’s not just biting our ass, but it’s already eaten the right cheek and has started on the left. Antibiotics, for instance. The bacteria are winning. They’re fast evolving defenses against all our antibiotics, and when that happens, we lose everything. Ever
ything from heart surgery to a tattoo to a hangnail becomes infinitely more dangerous. And what are the pharma companies doing? Twiddling their thumbs. Not enough money in it, they say. We’re in a plane plunging toward the ground. Eventually we’ll pull up—right at the last minute! We’ll figure out something with horizontal gene transfer or bacteriophages or polymer nanotech. We won’t crash. But we’ll come real, real close. We always do. That’s the American way.
—science writer Afzad Kerman in his TED Talk, “Chaos and Crisis: The Accidental Ingenuity of the Almost-Apocalypse”
JUNE 21
Cloverdale, Indiana
THE FLOCK GREW OVERNIGHT, AS it did every night. And it would grow today, as it did every day. More flock meant more shepherds. More shepherds meant more cops. And more media. Shana felt overwhelmed by it. Like they were all in a pot of water as it came slowly to a boil. A pot that would cook her skin off her bones. A pot that would boil over, one day. And then what?
But it wasn’t just that, was it? It was Dad, who still wouldn’t come out of the RV to be with Nessie. It was the fact that Nessie had fallen prey to someone pretending to be their mother (because surely it couldn’t be their actual mother, could it? That woman was hell and gone, happily fucked off from her family). It was Nessie being lost to her. Her family was in tatters.
Shana relied on routine to help her through it. Get up. Get coffee from whoever was bringing it—today it was Mary Sue Trachtenberg, one of the shepherds, who literally bought six of those big-ass Dunkin’ Donuts jugs. And she had bags of donuts, too. (The shepherds had a loose fund going: Pay what you want to pay, someone goes and picks up waters, coffees, light meals. Want something bigger, you gotta leave the flock and get it yourself.)
So she ate a donut, shot the shit for a little while with Mia, then took her position by Nessie. Walking, walking. Brushing her hair. Using a handkerchief to wipe road dust from her sister’s face. Talking to her in case she was listening—a lot of shepherds talked to their flock, because what if they were in there? Like coma patients, maybe they could hear. (Mia didn’t think so. She said it was like “talking to a houseplant—these poor bitches ain’t hearin’ us, Shana.”) At first Shana thought to keep the conversation light—dude, Indiana is boring, the sky is blue, I’m about to start my period and I forgot fucking tampons so now I’m going to have to pay one of these weirdos to get me tampons—but then she found herself interrogating her little sister about those emails, the test tube, their mother.
“The hell were you thinking?” she asked, keeping her voice low. “That wasn’t Mom. You fell for some scam. Not just a scam, but like, they’re saying it all started with you, did you know that? You were the first because you opened some box and opened some test tube and…” She grred. It felt suddenly like all eyes were on her. Like all the other shepherds were staring at her. Not just because she made that grr-sound louder than she intended, but because maybe they knew. Maybe they blamed Nessie. Stupid girl opened Pandora’s box and now all these people were here with loved ones infected by it. Even if that wasn’t true, they’d soon come to believe it, and then what? Would they stone Shana and her sister? Hold Nessie down until she erupted?
None of this was doing fuck-all to help her feel better.
In fact, her mood was worsening—her anxiety felt like it was driving fast the wrong way down a one-way street.
Then she remembered sitting with Arav the night before.
What he told her.
Then maybe that is the thing you want to be doing. You should take more photos. Might be nice. Might help you feel better.
The camera.
Take pictures.
So she got out her phone and she set to work.
At first, it was like settling into the ocean at the Jersey Shore for the first time. No matter how hot the day, the water always felt too cold, so she’d creep in slow, adapting to it inch by inch. Shana had never really taken photos of people all that often. Usually it was just…things. A tree that looked like a hand. A praying mantis (Shana used her little phone-fitted macro lens to get a look at the thing’s freaky eye). One time she found a deer, a dead deer, and it was really fucking long gone—its middle was missing, and the rib cage had air between the red, raw slats, so she stuck her cameraphone in there (don’t drop it don’t drop it don’t drop it she told herself) and took a photo of the inside of the rotting animal. It was a cool-as-hell photo, like a crimson cathedral, but she never showed anybody because it was too gross and surely they’d laugh at her. Call her names. Something something reindeer games.
But taking pictures of people? No. Couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Now, though…
She started with what she knew.
Or rather, who she knew.
Nessie. She got in close and pointed the camera at her sister’s flat, expressionless face—then, a tap of the phone.
Click.
There. Her sister’s face, framed between the borders of the phone screen. Mouth that stern line. But there was something else there, too. An illusion, she knew, but…
In that photo, there was life.
Expression.
Unpinned from the automaton-like parade, in that one frame Nessie looked alive, aware, awake—though that also made her look haunted. Like she was staring at something far away, something terrible. A distant threat or a future she feared would soon come true.
She quick put a filter on it—black and white, high contrast. Gave the image a rugged, liquid mercury cast.
It wasn’t just that Nessie looked haunted.
The image itself was haunting.
“Thanks, sis,” Shana said, giving Nessie a quick peck on the cheek.
As the flock moved past her, she took a few more shots. Wider shots, looking both at the coming parade of sleepwalkers, and then behind them. Then the media people gathered together, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, waiting for some break. And cops easing their cruisers along—they were traveling forward at such a slow pace, they gazed at their phones, dicking around on Facebook or playing Angry Birds or some shit. (And suddenly Shana wished for a better camera. A real camera. With a lens that she could twist to zoom, and then she might be able to really see what they were doing on those phones…what a visual that would make.)
Creatively, she felt limber. Excitement pumped through her like new blood. So fuck it, she thought, and she jogged to catch up to the sleepwalkers once more, and there she started doing as she had with Nessie: She got close, framed their faces, then took the shot.
One after the next.
Darryl Sweet—Headphones Kid, snap.
Birthmark Girl, a white girl whose name was really Jasmine, and who had no shepherd to walk with her—snap.
Mister Manypockets, whose name was Barney Coolridge, and who had seventeen pockets across his whole ensemble—snap.
Mateo, Mia’s brother, snap. (“What are you doing?” Mia asked. “I don’t know,” Shana said, smiling without meaning to.)
Shana got halfway through then jogged back off to the side of the road to look at the photos. They were amazing. Even without filters, they all gave her the same vibe that she got with Nessie: They were alive in there, somehow. She could see it on their faces. And yet, at the same time, the sleepwalker phenomenon connected them, too—they all looked awake but asleep, with nary a single bit of tightness to their faces, with eyes that looked off down the same infinite highway. They had all shared in something. Or were still sharing something. And because it was only the faces, it erased the variation between body shapes and sizes. Flipping quickly from face to face made them almost seem like they were morphing from one to the other, a transformative shift whose commonalities carried on to the next.
Shana was hungry for it, now. She wanted more, more, more.
Again she waded into the flock, and again she put her camera up and framed the face of one o
f the walkers, a young black girl she didn’t know, hair in ringlets, earrings from the bottom to the top of each ear—
“Hey, get the fuck away from my baby.”
Shana startled. A woman, one of the shepherds, was storming up to her. Her index finger was so bent and fiercely pointed, it looked as if it were ready to shoot lightning out of its long-nailed tip.
“Wh…what?” Shana asked.
“I see you taking pictures of my daughter.”
Shana backpedaled to keep up with the flock. The woman kept on her.
“I was just—I’m just taking a record of the other sleepwalkers, I’m a shepherd like you and—”
“I know who you are, I know what you’re doing.”
“It’s okay, it’s not for anything. Besides, the newspeople have already taken photos, I think—”
The woman shook her head, narrowed her eyes, looked angry enough to bite Shana’s phone in half. “My baby isn’t for them, and she’s not for you, neither. I know what you’ll do, you’ll take her photo and pop it on your goddamn Instagram or something. But other people are not your playthings. We’re not your damn art projects. Stow that shit and get away.”
“I…”
“Go on. Get away.”
Shana, rattled, quickly pocketed the phone and hurried back to Nessie. She matched her step to her sister’s and swallowed a hard lump. It took everything she had to pretend she didn’t want to cry, and that alone made her feel stupid and embarrassed because why would she cry over that? She should’ve just taken the dumb girl’s photo anyway. Told the lady to fuck off, too bad, it’s happening.
Shit.
Shit.
The woman was right, though, wasn’t she? Shana wouldn’t want someone coming over here and snapping shots of her sister.
She thought about going to apologize, but what would she say? Already she felt like a huge asshole. No way to fix that now. Next thing she knew, Mia was at her elbow. “Hey, that lady gave you a real shit-fit.”