by Chuck Wendig
Sadie came to him. She swept up on him and embraced him in a lung-crushing hug. She whispered in his ear that she was glad he was all right, and he told her the same. It was the truth. He melted into her. His cheek pressed against the top of her head. He felt her tears wetting his neck and the top of his chest. For a time he closed his eyes and shut out the carnage on the bridge. But then, when he opened his eyes again, he returned to one body:
Charlie Stewart.
Gently, he pulled away from Sadie and went over to him. The lower half of his face had been shot away. The color had run out of his cheeks, giving his skin the same ashen pallor as the sky above. His pupils were down to little pencil points, the whites of his eyes threaded with bright little veins.
He was dead.
He looked around. “Where’s Shana?” Sadie gave him a look and he clarified: “His daughter. Shana Stewart.”
She must be with the sister. Nessie.
But something else nagged at him.
He hurried back through the crowd, again swiping away questions as they came to him. “Not now,” he said, moving fast, looking this way and that. The flock was now all the way toward the other side of the bridge, most of the walkers already on the highway beyond it, winding their way through the evergreen hills on each side. Benji broke into a run.
* * *
—
EVEN FROM UP here in the tree, Marcy could feel it—the flock, now safe, was moving on. The strange hum she heard was growing faint. And with it, she could feel the familiar ache in her muscles, the tightness in her chest. Some of it, she suspected, was anxiety. But there was something real here, too, something she didn’t understand—her connection with the flock. Still, Marcy also knew now she didn’t need to understand it.
Her role was not to understand.
It was to follow and to protect.
As she had done today and would do again and again, long as she was able. Already she imagined what she could do to help the other shepherds prepare. She knew a little hand-to-hand, had some firearms training. Marcy could teach them. Further, she would help them find weapons. Because going forward, the shepherds needed to be armed.
Gently, she turned herself around in the portable deer stand—it was hard, as she was big in all directions, a muscled giant trying very hard not to tumble off this precarious seat. As she pivoted, she saw a faint splash of dark red on the pine tree behind her. The sniper’s blood mixing with the sap of the tree. She spit into it, the last bit of anger she felt.
She slung the rifle over her shoulder. Then Marcy climbed slowly down the tall pine. She knew from climbing trees as a kid, even a narrow branch will support you long as you step close to its base, where it meets the tree. So that’s what she did, using it as a ladder. Slow and steady, she told herself, wins the race.
Her foot eased off the last branch and to the ground below. And again, her cop training came to bear.
She heard a sound behind her—the crisp, gentle crunch of a foot pressing down on pine needles.
Marcy turned on her heel, unslinging the rifle—
But she was slow. Too slow. Being out of range from the walkers meant her body was slow to react to her brain’s commands.
Something cracked her in the side of the head.
A crash and a clamor in the well of her ear met with a searing pain along the top of her head and the underside of her jaw. Not my head. Please. Her poor pumpkin had been through so much…
“Please,” she gurgled into the pine needles.
Someone racked a pump-action behind her.
Cha-chak.
And then all went dark.
* * *
—
THE FLOCK MOVED slow, but Benji moved fast. He ran up off the bridge, alongside them, until he reached the fore of the walkers.
The first of them, Nessie Stewart, remained at the head of the flock. Her long straight hair framing her pale, cherubic face. Her gaze stretching into the distance, looking either at nothing or at something so far away Benji couldn’t even conceive of what it was.
Nessie was alone but for the other walkers. Her sister wasn’t here.
He felt a sudden pinch of fear—where could she be? She was not precisely his responsibility, but he’d heard the news that she was pregnant, and knew that it was Arav’s child. That made her feel like his responsibility. And thinking back, too, to that time she’d saved Clade Berman’s son before he went off like a blood-filled firecracker…she was a good kid. Benji tried to imagine worst-case scenarios: Had she gone off with Marcy? Maybe she had. Could she have fallen into the water? Would she be alive in the river, or a corpse floating down it like a felled tree? He moved back the other direction now, going along the other side of the flock, toward the bridge once more.
There.
“Shana!” he called to her, because there she was, right there, wandering through the flock—
He called her name and she did not turn.
Benji moved toward her, winding through the walkers.
And he realized, no, she was not wandering through the flock.
She was walking with it. Her stare was empty. Her face, placid. The girl was no longer a shepherd. Shana Stewart was now a sleepwalker.
Stranger still, she wasn’t alone. As Benji looked around him, he saw other familiar faces: Mia Carillo, Aliya Jameson, Carl Carter, shepherds who had joined the flock, moving forward with an unavoidable step.
People are saying this is it, this is the End Times, Armageddon, but I’m okay with that. Really! I am! I mean, as long as I get to see the final season of Stranger Things first, right? So if Netflix could just release that today, I think that’s a fair trade, don’t you?
—Jimmy Coburn, monologue from 9/9,
The Nightly Show with Jimmy Coburn
SEPTEMBER 10
Echo Lake, Indiana
IT HAD BEEN THREE DAYS now since Matthew heard the sounds of men and engines. And it had been three days since anyone had come to see him.
He was starving. He’d burned through what few odds and ends he had around in terms of snacks: half a bag of potato chips, an old banana, some tough-as-a-leather-belt venison jerky. He went through that on the first day. Second and third day, he grew hungrier, until it felt like his stomach would pooch in and pucker up, becoming a mouth that ate up the rest of him. In one dream, he dreamed of Autumn and Bo: The two of them hunkered down by Matthew’s leg. Autumn held the leg up to her mouth as she ate it raw, teeth sinking into the pale skin, pulling it away, red and wet. Sometimes she stopped and offered some to Bo, and he took greedy, hard bites—his teeth pressing against the bone deep in the meat, scraping and clacking as he bit down again and again.
Matthew could still hear the crunch of bone and the wet sound of them eating the meat of his leg. He could also hear the shattering of bone from when the hammer struck the center of his left hand…
The pain was as bad as ever, but the swelling was down, at least.
Thank God for small miracles, he thought bitterly.
Matthew paced. He cried out. He slammed his chains against the desk and the walls, hoping to make enough noise that someone would come.
Nobody did.
Until—
There came the creak-and-groan of the hatch.
Someone is coming.
At first, Matthew opened his mouth to beg and plead—whoever it was, Stover or one of his men, they needed to know he was desperate to be fed. He had water from the powder room sink, he had a place to go to the bathroom, but without food, he would wither and rot. The body eating itself.
But then a new thought hit him, even as he heard the sound of hurried footsteps on metal ladder rungs.
I’m going to kill whoever this is.
He had a weapon. He had the chain. He could see now the little chips and dings it had taken out of
the cement wall.
The thought became suddenly madder as his stomach growled: I’ll kill whoever it is, then I will eat them. Truly, he told himself, he wouldn’t really do that, he hadn’t really gone that far over the mental fence, and yet, in the back of his mind, he wondered: Would he? What did human meat taste like? This person would not be cooked. They would be human sushi. He imagined his teeth sinking into the soft meat of a biceps, or the inside of a thigh…
He pressed himself up against the cement wall, and he heard footsteps approaching. A shadow preceded the man, and as soon as Hiram Golden stepped in, Matthew lashed out with the chain—it whipped the man on the side of his head, and while he was staggered, Matthew leapt behind him, bringing the chain up around his neck, under his chin.
Matthew leered and began choking.
“Kkkggg,” Hiram said. “Mmm—Matthew. Stop.”
The man’s head was turning purple. Matthew saw his face was sloppy and unshaven, with dark circles haunting the hollows around his eyes. He looked gaunt. Like he hadn’t eaten. That’s okay. I’ll eat you, put you out of your misery. “You die,” Matthew said, “just shut up, shut up, and die. You can’t…can’t lock me up here. You and Stover and the rest.”
“Mmm—I’m not—not with Stover—”
“What?”
The man’s eyes began to bulge. Hiram’s knees began to buckle.
“Gggg-getting you…out…here…”
Matthew let the chain go.
Hiram Golden fell to his knees, wheezing, clutching at his windpipe. “I’m here…to rescue you.”
Aren’t you a little short for a stormtrooper? Matthew thought, then heard a mad cackle bubble up out of him. What an absurd thought—a line from Star Wars. Classic tale of good versus evil. Snarling, he stabbed out with a clumsy foot and knocked Hiram over. “Why? Why are you here for real?”
Hiram put the flat of his hand against the wall, using it to brace himself as he stood. “I told you. I’m here to get you out. I think…I think Stover is gone. Things are bad out there, Matthew. The president—”
“The president what?”
“President Hunt is dead.”
At this point, Matthew did not expect he could be shocked by anything—trapped here, forced to put out lunatic podcasts and videos, kept like a dog on a chain? How much worse could it get?
But this, this sent a chord of dread reverberating through him.
“How?”
“They shot her. One of Stover’s people, maybe, or one of the other militias. She’d been in hiding somewhere in DC, but she came out to give a…a speech, a talk, and on the way to the helicopter a sniper took her out from five hundred yards. A shot right through the temple.”
“An assassination.”
“Yes. That’s right. And it’s not the end of it. These people, the militias, they’ve moved on some of the cities. Philadelphia. DC. Atlanta. San Francisco. Drove in there with trucks and tanks and men dressed in fatigues and armor like they’re…proper soldiers or something. They took out quarantine centers. They had a list of people, too, known sympathizers. Some were politicians or celebrities or community leaders and they just…shot them in the streets, Matthew. Right there on the sidewalks and in the streets. And they burned mosques, synagogues, black churches. They’re still doing it. Jesus, Matthew. They’re…coming together, these people, these militias. Joining forces. Turns out, a lot of people in this country have been building up their arsenals, waiting for a moment like this.”
Matthew pointed, sneering. “You don’t get to play like you’re surprised. You on your radio show, peddling your conspiracy theories and all that poisonous talk.”
“I…” Hiram stared off at an unfixed point. “It was just entertainment for me. I didn’t know. I didn’t want all this. I vote Democrat every year.”
“You’re pathetic.”
“You helped. Don’t think you didn’t. You need to own this, too.”
Matthew’s face twisted up into a broken mask, a big hopeless smile forming the crack right down the middle. “Oh, I own all of this. This, my kingdom of cement and pain. My bunker castle. My glorious realm.” He heard himself shaking in his stuttering breath. “You’re right, though. I do own this. I did my part. I fell for the song, for the attention, how it felt. But now I’m starving. I got a—” His voice cracked as he said this next part. “—broken hand. They did things to me. Other…things. And my wife is dead.”
“Your wife? Autumn?” Hiram looked confused. “Matthew, she’s not dead. She’s here. Autumn came with me. She’s in the car.”
Matthew shoved him. “Don’t you mess with me.”
“I’m not, for Christ’s sake. I swear she’s up there.”
The strength nearly went out of Matthew. He had to brace himself against the wall. Autumn…is alive? “And Bo?”
“Bo’s not here. I think Stover took him—the other militias, they’re having some kind of big meet-up in St. Louis. Home base or something.”
Matthew didn’t know if he was supposed to say thank you or fuck you or what, and neither seemed to come to his lips. Instead he nodded and said, “Good. Then get me out of these chains.”
The other man warily moved toward Matthew, pulling out his keychain, the one with the bullet on it and the little penknife. The keychain had a new key, now—a little iron key that Hiram used to undo the manacle around Matthew’s wrist. It popped free and even that small movement sent a fresh ripple of pain through his hand, up his arm, dead-ending at the elbow. He winced and shut it out. He was getting very good at shutting out the pain.
Hiram waved him toward the exit. Together the two of them climbed the ladder. Matthew followed behind, and he had a hard time—not only were his legs soft and weak, less like legs and more like bundles of ramen noodles, but his broken hand was no help.
But freedom was calling.
Up he went. One arduous rung at a time.
Once Hiram was up, he turned to help Matthew, wincing and grunting as he got Matthew up through the hole in the cement floor of the shed. Before coming down here, this little shed had been full of gear: gas masks, hazmat suits, shelves of MREs. It was empty, now.
Hiram shushed him, and he turned toward the shed door.
Matthew followed close behind.
Gently, Hiram eased the door open and took a ginger step out.
Whoom.
There was a cannon’s boom of thunder, and then Hiram’s head was just…gone. His white suit suddenly went red. All that was left atop his shoulders was part of the spine and a few ragged flaps of skin, like the latex remnant of a popped balloon.
Hiram fell backward, and Matthew was not fast enough—the body fell against him and he tumbled backward, hitting the back of his head on the top of the hatch. Somewhere he heard a sound, a terrible keening scream. As Ozark Stover’s shadow fell upon him—a shadow heavier than Hiram’s headless body—he realized that the scream was his own.
There stood Stover, the side-by-side twin barrels of a shotgun broken open and draped casually over his arm. Twin trails of white arose from the open barrels like smoke from a dragon’s nose. The eggy stink of expended powder hanging in the air made Matthew want to vomit.
Stover had something in his mouth, like a piece of hard candy, swishing from cheek to cheek, clicking against his teeth as he sucked on it.
“Preacher, I am disappointed. Less in you, more in him. I thought Hiram was one of us. Turns out, he doesn’t have the steel in his backbone, the blood in his balls, to hang with us. Fucking quisling.” He sighed. “You, though. I’m not surprised. You couldn’t free yourself because you’re too weak for that, but soon as someone showed you a crack in the wall, I knew you’d squirm through it, you fucking worm.”
“…Hiram said you were gone.”
“I was.” He smiled with those broken slat-board teeth. “And now I’m
back. I figured, boy like Bo maybe needs his mother, so I’d come fetch Autumn for him, maybe she could keep me company, too.” Stover took Matthew’s measure at that, and then said, “I see by your lack of surprise that Hiram must’ve told you she’s still kicking around out there, huh?”
Matthew scrambled to pull himself free from Hiram’s headless body, the blood soaking his chest, his neck, his arms. He babbled and pleaded as he worked to extricate himself. “Just let me go. Let my family go.”
“They’re my family now.” Stover thumbed two more shells into the open breach of the double barrel. Click, click. With a hard jerk of his arm, he snapped the twin barrels shut. But then he took a moment and looked down at the gun and then to Matthew. “I don’t really need this, do I? That’d be overkill.” He licked his lips. “Maybe I’ll take you, throw you back down into your hole. Maybe we can have a little fun first.” He leered. “I know I said blood wasn’t good lubrication, but there’s enough of Hiram’s around to test my hypothesis.”
The big man moved closer.
Do something, you coward, you weakling, Matthew chided himself, even as Stover’s shadow darkened the door, blocking out all the day’s light. God won’t save you. God helps those who help themselves. He fumbled in and around Hiram’s corpse, into the pockets, until he found it, jingle-jangle. Just in time, too, as Ozark Stover turned the body over, flipping it aside all too casually.
Stover reached down, that hard candy forming a bulge in the side of his mouth. Matthew smelled butterscotch.
His thumb worked, pressing flat against the steel, pushing out—
Flick.
Ozark got close. Nearly nose-to-nose. “Ready for this?” he asked.
Matthew hooked his arm inward, fast as he could manage.
The little penknife-blade, the one from Hiram’s keychain, the one Matthew had just opened, buried to the hilt in Stover’s neck.
Thhhtck.
Then came a moment when neither of them did or said anything. Stover held Matthew by the collar, and Matthew held the knife to the monsterman’s neck. Blood welled and pumped, and each stared at the other with wide eyes. Stover’s nostrils flared.