by Chuck Wendig
“Where are you going?” she asked him.
“Where else? Back to the flock.” Loretta didn’t want him on this. So he would go back to the flock. Where Black Swan wanted him. Maybe that was his place. Whether he liked it or not.
Tumblr avatar: sonic_the_otakuhog
okay so I figured it out, I figured the walkers out, no need to thank me—these poor weirdos come from the same universe where it’s the Berenstein Bears not Berenstain, where Sinbad was in that genie movie, where C3P0 was gold the whole time, that’s right, bitches, it’s the Mandela Effect, for real, we fired up the Large Hard-On Collider and kapow, now it’s some multi-dimensional quantum bullshit, mark my words, the worlds are crashing together and this is the result, though whether they’re here to save us or kill us, who knows!?!?
Source: sonic_the_otakuhog
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JULY 15
Lodgepole, Nebraska
MORNING IN NOWHERE, NEBRASKA.
Thick bands of phlegmy clouds obscured the sun—even at noon, everything seemed gilded in an eerie dark light, like you might find at twilight or during a solar eclipse. Ill-shaped shadows floated across the wheat fields.
It only served to highlight the weirdness that Marcy was experiencing.
The flock was upset.
Not the shepherds. No, the shepherds didn’t know squat because the flock didn’t show any kind of displeasure or concern. They did as they did, marching forward, eyes as empty as bathtub drains.
Just the same, they were upset.
She could feel it. She could hear it.
A cacophony of whispers arose from them. The glow seemed less to glob and blob and drift like an amoeba, and instead seemed…spiky and erratic in places, sharp like the skin of some strange fruit. Soon words poked through the static, sometimes whole phrases—
Coming
Begins
Box Canyon
MVP
White Mask
“White Mask?” she said abruptly, out loud.
Shana turned toward her, making a puckered face. For a moment, Marcy had forgotten she was walking next to the girl.
“What?” Shana asked.
“I…nothing.”
“You said, ‘White Mask.’ ”
“Did I? I don’t know. I was just…” Marcy cleared her throat. “Zoning out. Sorry.” Part of her thought, Just tell her, let her know that you can hear the flock sometimes, it’s how you knew when her birthday was—because Nessie knew. She wanted to tell them all, sometimes: They’re still in there. The sleepwalkers weren’t lost. They were just…hidden. But Marcy was just settling in with the shepherds. They accepted her, now. This would put them off, like a horse bucking its rider. “Where’s your boy?”
“My what?”
“Arav.”
“I dunno. He’s been around. Just acting kinda weird. In the CDC trailer a lot, taking a lot of calls. Something’s going on.” Shana scowled. “And he’s not a boy, you know.”
“Your maaaaan, then,” Marcy teased.
“Shut up, he’s not my—he’s not my anything. He’s not my man. My boy, my fella, my anything. He’s just a man. We’re not—it’s not—we’re so not a thing.” Shana paused. “Did someone tell you we were a thing?”
“Shana, all the shepherds know. The birds know, the bees know. The flock probably knows. You two canoodle.”
“Canoodle? Who says canoodle?”
“Apparently, I do.”
“We don’t canoodle.”
“Okay, okay,” Marcy said, holding up her hands in surrender. “I give up. You’re not canoodling, he’s not your man. I’ll stop asking, no need to be all nuts about it.”
The glow again pulsed and spiked. It made Marcy’s heart leap. The comfort she felt from them suddenly made her feel ill—not like she used to, no, it wasn’t a physical sickness. Everything still felt aces in that department. This was something deeper. She wasn’t a cop anymore, but that didn’t stop her from having cop instincts.
Cops had bad vibes, sometimes.
This was that. A bad vibe, like a song played on an ill-tuned instrument.
“You okay?” Shana asked.
“What? Yeah. Sure.” Even though she wasn’t.
“You look kinda freaked out.”
“I, ahhh, no. No?” She didn’t want to fall down this hole, so Marcy moved to change the subject.
“Things okay with your dad?”
“You don’t have to be my therapist. I just went through this with that rock-star idiot.”
Marcy shrugged. “Let’s say I need the distraction. Spoiler alert: It gets a little tiny itty-bitty bit boring out here. Nebraska isn’t exactly a roller-coaster ride, Shana.” She neglected to mention that she also wanted a distraction from the hissing whispers only she could hear.
White Mask…
“No, things are not all right with Dad. He’s like the aging fanboy Renfield to Pete Corley’s rock-star Dracula. He’d eat bugs if that man asked him to. I think he likes the attention, too—since the cameras and everything are crawling up Corley’s butt every minute of every day.” She kicked a small stone and it went skidding across the road. “Meanwhile I think he’s in denial about everything else. About me, about Nessie. About the farm, which—you know, I have no idea if we even have a farm anymore. He won’t talk about it, not any of it. And I don’t want to talk to him anyway.”
“At least you got a new camera.”
“I did. And I’ve got a little money in my pocket since the newspeople are buying my photos, now.”
“Citizen journalism is the future, they say.”
“Is it?” Shana shrugged. “I dunno. I hope I get to be a part of it, because I think I’ve found what I want to do with my life.”
“Most people never find that.”
“Did you?”
“I did.” Marcy shrugged. “And then I took a bat to the head.”
But maybe, just maybe, she’d found something new. Something right here. With these people. With her angels.
She’d do anything to protect them.
Anything.
New presidential poll: Ed Creel (GOP) 39%, President Hunt (Dem) 37%, undecided 20%, E. K. Mahnke (Green) 4%
@Rasmussen_Poll
17 replies 2.5k RTs 8.7k likes
JULY 15
Burnsville, Indiana
ARE YOU A HERO, OR are you a coward?
That thought went around and around in Matthew’s mind, a Tom-and-Jerry pursuit of each thought one-upping the other thought. It chased him as he left the convention center, as he went back to the hotel to book a new flight home, as he took a red-eye back to Indiana, and even now as he opened up the front door of his house and went inside.
Hero.
Or coward.
The crowd at Creel’s event—all that chanting, those signs, the rage that came off them like smoke from a growing wildfire—was just too much for Matthew. He’d never stop thinking about it. A crowd at a church, big church or small church, it felt positive—people looking for something, looking for hope, looking for a way forward. This was not that. This was only a church of rage and terror. And it struck him backstage that this was not who he was. He’d been caught in the grip of fantasy, thinking that he could do some good here—and he had to admit, he sure didn’t mind the bigger crowd sizes on Sunday morning, or the surge of donations that rolled in.
But that grip was not the confident and comfortable grip of a handshake. It was a hand holding a tool, closing tight upon it.
Maybe that was the answer after all.
I’m not a hero or a coward, but I sure was a tool.
A tool and a fool and…
He sighed.
It was late morning by the time he came home. He’d barely slept on th
e plane, and his only thought was to wander like one of those sleepwalkers up to bed and faceplant upon it, letting sleep sweep him away.
The sleepwalkers. My God, those poor people. Here he was, making them the enemy. Telling the world that they were the Devil’s ally—maybe even the Devil’s own children. An apocalyptic army of the Antichrist. What had he done? How far had he gone?
And what could he do to fix it?
He chucked his phone on the kitchen counter.
“Autumn?” he called. No answer. “Bo?” Also nothing. It was a summer morning; both of them should be here. She’d taken to sleeping in late now, so he wandered upstairs but found their bed messy—and empty.
Bo’s room was empty, too.
Back downstairs, he reluctantly took his phone and turned it on. Matt had been keeping it off since he left the convention center. Once upon a time, as a teenager, he worked in a local feed store and he hated it so bad—all the dust from the corn and alfalfa and other silage had driven his allergies nuts, and he told the boss and he told his father. They didn’t care. Told him to suck it up. So one day, he just quit. Walked out without a word. All the next day he hid from his parents, staying in his bedroom. He unplugged the phone so nobody could call. Years later, even driving by the feed store still gave him a little twinge of shame and guilt.
This was that, all over again. He was afraid to turn his phone on because he knew what would be waiting there, like a ghost haunting an old, bad house. But he also knew that maybe Autumn or Bo had left a message for him there. He bit his lip almost hard enough to draw blood—
Then he turned the phone on.
Soon as it found a signal, the phone lit up like a gaudy dime-store Christmas tree, signaling voicemails and missed calls and text messages: a cacophony of dings, boops, beeps. Then the email sound went off.
Matthew took a deep breath and scanned the messages.
A lot from Hiram Golden. He was mad as hell. Looked like he’d spun a story to the Creel people, something about Matthew having food poisoning from “some local Mexican place,” said Creel’s people bought it. But then he said CALL ME, in all caps. And he sent that text another dozen times.
Some texts landed from Creel’s people—his aides and event coordinators. They weren’t mad—they wanted to rebook him.
Then, buried in there, one text, just one, from Roger Green, the firearms instructor, the one who’d told him that being in with Ozark was serious business and not to be dismissed.
All his text said was: I told you not to half-ass it, Pastor Matt. Ozark wants to see you.
Matthew sighed. He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes so hard he saw streaks of light swimming there in the darkness behind them.
Then, at the end of it all, one message from Autumn:
sometngis wrogn.
What did that mean, exactly?
A tremor of fear ran through him.
He went to the fridge, to see if she’d left anything there on the whiteboard.
Nothing.
But yet, something.
Nearby, a little pill bottle. Like the one that held her Xanax.
It was empty.
He called for her again: “Autumn? Hello?” He did another lap through the house: Bo’s room, their bedroom, and this time he took an additional stop, their en suite bathroom…
The door was shut.
He tried the knob. It didn’t open. Locked.
“Autumn?” he said.
Maybe the door was sticky. Summer humidity and all. He tried again, more vigorously. Nothing. Rattle, rattle. Now worry ran through his legs, down his arms, humming in his ears. He pushed his shoulder into the door once—it didn’t budge. Again—still nothing. He backed up, then stabbed out with his foot into as hard a kick as he could muster, centered right on the doorknob. It popped off, and the door pitched open.
That’s when he found Autumn.
Her body was in the tub. Her eyes half lidded as the soapy water gently lapped at her chin. Running down the tub was a crust of drying vomit. More puke floated in the tub, forming foamy, bilious islands.
“No, no, no,” he said, rushing over, nearly slipping on another pill bottle—he dropped to his knees, grabbing her hand. It was clammy, but warm. “Autumn, wake up, wake up.”
But she wasn’t waking up.
Please, God, if you can hear me—
Her eyelids fluttered. “Maaa” was all she said.
Crying, he got his arms under her, hoisting her out of the tub—almost losing himself on the wet tile of the bathroom floor—and bringing her into the bedroom. He laid her down, wrapped her in a blanket.
Then he called 911.
* * *
—
THE DOCTOR, AN owlish man with a chin scar and eyebrows for miles, sat in the chair across from Matthew, next to Autumn’s bed in the hospital. Matthew held her hand. Machines beeped around them. A breathing tube was stuck up her nose, and a feeding tube into her mouth.
Doctor Gestern spoke, explaining to Matthew what had happened, best as he could tell. Matthew heard the words, but almost as if they were separate from him, radiating all around him, a wobbling, wavy echo.
She appeared to overdose, Pastor Bird…
Oxycodone and Xanax are a real bad combination…
Problem is, people start to build up a tolerance quick, so they might take more of them as they go along to fix whatever pain they’re enduring…
She’s presently in a coma, Pastor, I can’t say what that means, but her vitals are steady, and fingers are crossed there’s no brain damage…
No, I can’t rightly say where she got them, they’re not prescriptions, and that’s the problem with drugs like these, you don’t know where they came from, what’s in ’em, in what concentration…
But Matthew knew where they came from.
They came from Ozark Stover.
He looked to Autumn. Weak and pale, like the fading memory of a person instead of the person herself. He wondered how they’d pay for all this. He wondered when she’d wake up. He wondered about a deeper, darker question he dared not name—an indescribable, uncertain dread.
When the doctor was done, he said that Matthew could go home if he wanted, it was late, they could call with updates.
But Matthew wasn’t going to go home. Instead, he said a prayer. Matthew asked the Lord for forgiveness, for guidance, and for courage. He bent and kissed Autumn on the forehead. He told her he was sorry.
Then he grabbed his keys and hit the road. Over the hill and through the woods, to Ozark Stover’s house, he’d go.
A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.
—Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, part 1
JULY 15
North Platte Regional Airport, Nebraska
AFTER THE FLIGHT, WAITING FOR bags, Benji went to the bathroom. He did his business. He washed his hands.
No Sadie. No Black Swan.
He felt troubled and alone.
* * *
—
THE FLOCK HAD moved, of course. Drawing a jagged line from Rosebud, through Lodgepole and Sidney, now approaching Potterstown, Nebraska, about fifty miles from the Wyoming border. Benji and Arav sat in a different rental—a claustrophobic Honda two-door hatchback—in the cement parking lot of a line of forgotten warehouses. The warehouses sat at the margins of Potterstown, a modern American ghost town. Died in the late ’80s when manufacturing dried up out here. Dead buildings, the gray of ash, the red of rust, waited around like tombstones to a forgotten industrial age.
He tried to imagine if this is what the world would look like in five, ten
, fifteen years. After humankind had gone.
No, he chastised himself. That’s not what’s happening.
People could survive.
They would survive.
Humanity, whether you were optimistic or pessimistic, was either a hearty breed of survivors or a swarm of cockroaches in the wall. Whichever way you went, that meant people were sticking around.
He’d help make sure of it.
Before meeting with the remaining EIS team of dwindling techs, he’d grabbed Arav and brought him here. It was important to get the young man on the same page before returning fully to the flock, to the job he no longer precisely understood. (Was he still an investigator? Or was this investigation over? Benji didn’t see himself as a shepherd. But that’s what he was now, wasn’t it?)
“We need to talk,” Benji said to Arav.
“Yeah. Yes. Of course. What did they say? The meeting in Atlanta…was it about…” Arav swallowed, like he couldn’t say the words. Instead, all he managed to say was: “Is it true? What they told us?”
Benji nodded. “It is true. At least, the part about White Mask.”
“Is that what they’re calling it? White Mask.”
“It is.”
Arav chewed on the inside of his cheek. “And the walkers?”
“I don’t know. I think…maybe they really are infected with nanomachines. Or particles of some kind.”
“You told Loretta?”
Benji hesitated. “I didn’t.”
Desperate, now, Arav asked: “Why?”
“I want you to imagine the very real possibility that what we were told is correct. If White Mask is the plague they say it will be, then…the flock is our best bet to create a continuity of life. They can survive this. But if we go telling the CDC, or the FBI? Then that’s it. Homeland Security will definitely move in. They will view the walkers not as patients or as survivors—they will view them as weapons, as enemies, as terrorists. They will be attacked. You understand that, don’t you? That’ll be it.”