by Chuck Wendig
He and Sadie made love that night. One last time.
And then, Sadie walked up to the waterfall, and jumped down through the narrow channel, down through the rocks, and into the frozen water. He didn’t know she was doing it; he was off cleaning up after dinner and came back to find her gone.
It was not the disease that made her do it, he knew, not exactly. It had been something she was planning. She left Benji a note, and in that note explained that she loved him very much, and she wanted him to remember that version of her from that night. She wanted to go while she still had a mind to lose. She feared she would do something “untoward” as her mind degraded. And she always thought that jumping off a waterfall would be really, really something.
“A swan dive toward a better world,” she wrote. “I hope there is a Heaven, Benjamin Ray, for I aim to see you in it soon.”
She told him she loved him.
And, as he wept reading her note, he told her he loved her, too.
NOW
Ouray, Colorado
“I’M SO SORRY,” SHANA SAID. Biting back her own tears.
Benji said it was fine. It was years ago, now. He’d come to terms with it. “I think Sadie found a way to go out on her terms, and not those of the disease. She wouldn’t let White Mask have that victory.”
“I don’t understand, though,” Shana said. “You’re still here.”
“Yes. That. The disease showed up in me the week after Sadie passed away,” he said. “It progressed. First, a cold. Then flu-like symptoms. Then it began to show in all the expected places: the eyes, the nose, even the back of my throat.” He began, too, to have the now-classic symptoms of dementia: One morning, he recalled, he thought Sadie was still alive, and he went out for hours into a raging snowstorm to look for her, even though he had long buried her in the cemetery north of town. Marcy saved him from a death like that of Landry Pierce. She stood vigil over him as he lost his mind.
All the while, he took his pills.
Two a day.
Again and again.
Until there were no more.
He was sure he would die soon. But he said plainly:
“And yet, I didn’t. I kept holding on. Marcy and Matthew kept feeding me. And one day, I felt…clearheaded. A week later, after a wretched fever, White Mask began a full retreat. A month after that, I was myself again. Alive and well.”
“How?”
He said the antifungals he was taking served the role he thought they might: to delay the progress of the disease in a way that allowed his immune system the time to formulate a proper defensive response.
“Sadly, a truth learned too late to save the world,” he said.
The remorse was as plain on his face as pain.
“I’m glad you’re still around,” she told him as she devoured the second course: some kind of chicken salad on thick slices of homemade bread. “I’m sorry the others aren’t. To watch them all go…how long did Marcy hold out? Was it the disease?”
A small smirk played at the corners of his mouth. “Well…”
“Well, what?”
“Marcy’s still alive, Shana. Keep eating. I’ll go get her.”
* * *
—
“IS THIS SOME kind of Wizard of Oz shit?” she asked. “Like, I’m hallucinating, right? This can’t just be a regular dream. It’s like I took mushrooms and got sucked up into a tornado and…”
A real fear struck her:
What if I’m still in the simulation?
But that couldn’t be right. Could it?
No. This felt too real.
So when she saw Marcy Reyes walk into the room, she leapt like a pouncing Tigger into a hug that nearly knocked the poor woman over—no small feat, given that Marcy was built like a brick shithouse made of smaller brick shithouses. Their embrace was so vigorous that the two of them bonked heads. “I don’t…understand. How?” Shana asked.
“I’m a fighter, I guess.”
“Others in our group survived, too,” Benji said. “A man who came…late. Matthew Bird.” Shana recognized that name, but she didn’t know why. “He, too, never developed the disease. Nor did a few others who lived here in Ouray or in surrounding towns. Dove Hansen, the mayor…he made it, too.”
“I don’t understand. The world…it died…”
Benji sighed. “It didn’t. Not exactly.”
“I still don’t understand, Benji.”
“Black Swan either lied to us or misunderstood the reality of what was to come.” When he spoke that name, Black Swan, some of it came rushing back: her time in the Black Room, through the door and into the void. So much information. So much knowledge. Oh God. What she knew, suddenly. A memory, returning. A revelation.
She pulled away, feeling suddenly queasy even as Benji continued: “The world truly suffered under White Mask. And arguably, it did die—civilization collapsed. But we were led to believe the flock would truly be the last. And that’s not the case at all.”
Marcy jumped in: “Best guess, around one percent of people were immune to the disease.”
Benji corrected her. “You all hosted the disease. It just never successfully colonized you.”
“Like I said, I’m a fighter.” She punched the air, whiff, whiff.
“It’s hard getting real numbers,” Benji said, “but a rough guess is that it killed ninety-nine percent of people. Fewer than Black Swan led us to believe. So that still means we’re talking millions of people left alive, not hundreds or even thousands. Civilization is in tatters but it’s not…entirely gone. Over time, we might see it come back. There are settlements out there. We’ve established contact with a few. Glenwood Springs. Cimarron.”
“Wh…why are we here, then?” Shana asked. “Why did Black Swan do this? If there are that many out there, why do this at all?”
Benji shrugged. “Who can say?”
“Black Swan can.”
“Sadly, we have no way to communicate with it. The phone we used to talk to the intelligence died when…” He hesitated.
She filled in the blank: “Arav had it when he died, didn’t he?”
“He did. But it wouldn’t matter anyway, I can’t expect the phone would have lasted these five years without error. I don’t even know if Black Swan’s servers would still be online or…what. The nanoscale batteries of the swarm, too, I believe have gone dead. So we are left with a lot of questions that have few answers. But that, maybe, is emblematic of life. Life is rife with questions we never answer. What we can do is be thankful we’re here and live the best life we can muster.”
Shana swallowed. She felt dizzy. The room spun. “Yes,” she said, her own voice sounding faraway.
“The others,” Benji said, “described a simulated town. Which I’m to understand you were a part of? A kind of…not a hive-mind, but a shared virtual experience? But they said that you disappeared. They thought you had been killed in the attack like many others. But we found your body, slumbering in the Beaumont with your sister. Where had you gone?”
“I don’t know,” she lied.
“And you can’t tell us anything?”
“No.” Another lie. She felt shame. Tell them, she thought.
“A shame. The mystery shall remain, then.”
“…Yeah.”
Marcy leaned in. “Hey, there’s someone who wants to see you.”
Shana’s pulse quickened. “Is it Nessie?”
It was.
* * *
—
THE TWO OF them walked through the town. That, after hugging and sobbing like idiots, of course. But Shana said she wanted to take a walk. Benji asked her to be careful, in case she fell. Nessie said she’d take care of her, it would be okay.
Nessie looked older, tougher than she had. Not grown-up, really, not like she had put on
literal years. It was just the way she carried herself. No longer the bookish girl, she seemed tougher, more world-weary. Shana felt somehow the opposite: more naïve, like one of the calves from their farm, all knock-kneed and wide-eyed.
“I missed you. I thought you were dead,” Nessie said.
“I kinda thought I was, too.” She licked her lips. They felt chafed and rough. The mountain air seemed to be wicking away all her moisture, airing her out and drying her up. “Did you…ever ask Black Swan about it?”
“Yeah, we did.”
“And?”
“It didn’t know. Black Swan said you were gone. A glitch, it said.”
“That didn’t bother you? That an intelligent, godlike being just…didn’t know?”
“Maybe. I dunno. It stopped talking to us not long after that. Said it had to…conserve its resources or something. Said we were okay on our own. And we were, I guess. And we’re okay now, too. We’re really getting along out here. Benji and others got up a bunch of solar arrays to help bring electricity back. Water is flowing, clean water, and also they set up some hydroelectric generators by the waterfall. We’re already growing some vegetables and—I guess you had some chicken already? You’ll get sick of it, honestly, but once in a while we get some other protein, like elk or turkey.”
“Cool,” she said, even though she was barely listening. She was glad to see her sister, but at the same time, she felt plagued. Worse, she felt manipulated. “So, Black Swan—it never played god with you guys?”
“No.”
“And it just…went away?”
Nessie hesitated. “Yeah.”
“Oh.”
“It’s okay here, Shana. You’ll see. I can tell you’re worried.”
“Yeah.” She swallowed hard. “Sorry about making you doubt Mom. I, um, I saw her. The real her. In real life. I guess she’s still out there somewhere, but if the machines have all powered down…”
Nessie looked sad. “I know. I thought about that. Trying to find her. But she told me in the simulation that she wouldn’t make it. We said our goodbyes. She said she was sorry, too, for everything. For leaving us.”
“Shit.” Shana blinked back tears.
“Yeah.”
“I missed you, little sister.”
“I missed you, big sister.”
“I don’t suppose there’s actual ice cream here?” Shana asked.
“No, sorry,” Nessie said, laughing. “That’s one part of the simulation that didn’t really work out.”
Darkly, Shana thought: Just one more lie from Black Swan.
* * *
—
THE REST OF the day was a whirlwind. All her old flockmates wanted to meet her, and dine with her, and laugh with her. She and Mia finally got together, and Mia got sauced on vodka and Shana just had tea—a local tea, dandelion and chamomile, no caffeine. Eventually Mia’s brother Matty joined them, and so did Marcy, and Nessie, and it felt like old times.
At least, a little.
She missed Pete. Sad he was gone.
She missed her father.
Her mother.
Everyone. She missed the world that had gone away.
Strangely now, she felt included in a way she never had inside the simulation. Somehow the other flockmates acted like she was special, more than they were, not just because she was pregnant but because she woke up later than they did, and because she had been gone so long. No one knew where she had been, and she didn’t tell them that she was inside Black Swan the whole time, as part of the Black Room. They treated it like she had been reborn in some strange way. The resurrected Shana. It was stupid, but she liked the attention well enough and did little to dissuade it.
* * *
—
LATER, THE MAN named Matthew Bird offered to walk her back to the hotel. He said he wanted to speak to her, and Benji said it was okay by him. Matthew and Benji seemed to tolerate each other, but she wasn’t sure they liked each other.
The man was gaunt, with a bushy beard and soft, kind eyes. His face was etched by stress and pain. He explained to her as they walked, “I opened a church here in town if you want to come to it.”
“Oh, I don’t…do church. Or religion.”
He chuckled softly. “You know, I don’t either, really. I had a crisis of faith once upon a time, a pretty big one. Back when all this happened. And, ahh. I came back around to it more as a way just to have some community and some peace. Like group therapy, almost. A nice place for people to go. Matters little whether or not God or any gods are real, I think it’s just important to find a place to have some faith. If not in something larger, than in one another.”
“That sounds nice, but…I’m not interested.”
“No problem. If you change your mind…”
“Thanks.”
He said, “I wanted, too, to say I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“You don’t know who I am, do you?”
“No, I—”
And then, like that, she did. His name rose out of the depths to connect to the memory of her listening to his radio show while out there with the flock—Matthew Bird, pastor of some church, riling up the right-wing assholes and conspiracy nuts and fringy evangelical freaks.
“You fucking asshole,” she said.
“So you do remember.”
She looked around, wondering why someone wasn’t running up to him and dragging his ass out of town. But they weren’t. Nobody cared.
“It’s okay,” he said, understanding. “The others have had time to acclimate, I think, though I’m sure some still hate me. And that’s okay. I tried to make right the day of the attack. I warned Benjamin and the others that Ozark Stover was coming, in part because…it was my penance, I guess. I had to do the right thing, even if it wouldn’t fix the wrong. You don’t need to like me. I just…there’s something I wanted to talk about…”
“I don’t owe you shit,” she said.
“No, you don’t.”
She paused. Kicked her toe of one foot into the heel of the other. “But fine. You wanna ask, ask.”
“I…” He paused, like he was still trying to figure out how to say what he wanted to say. “Some of your fellow sleepwalkers don’t come to my church, either. And maybe that’s because they haven’t really forgiven me. But I worry it’s something else. Over the last couple of months, they’ve set up their own…church, or temple, on the other side of town. Not all of them. Just some of them. They say it’s just a support group, but…I don’t know.”
“I’m sure it’s fine,” she said. She started to walk away from him.
He hurried after her: “I’ve gone by there, and they won’t let me in. I hear them…singing songs, sometimes. Like a prayer, almost.”
“I said it’s fine,” she hissed, and went inside the hotel, leaving him standing outside, the door slammed in his face.
But she worried that it most certainly wasn’t fine, not at all.
* * *
—
THAT NIGHT, SHANA couldn’t sleep. Insomnia chased after her like a wolf in the dark. Anytime she thought she could settle down and get her heart to stop tapping like a jackrabbit’s itchy back leg, the wolf found her and harried her out of sleep once more.
And there, awake, in the black of her own thoughts, she started to remember. She remembered her time in the Black Room and what she’d learned there. When it finally came to her, crystallized in thought, she made the decision: Tomorrow morning, she would tell Benji what she knew. Maybe it wouldn’t matter. It certainly wouldn’t change anything now.
But someone needed to know.
It was then, and only then, that she found sleep.
It did not last.
* * *
—
EARLY IN THE morning, she woke with a start as som
eone spoke to her.
No. Not spoke to her.
Spoke inside her.
The voice had no voice. It was just words, thoughts without sound.
HELLO, SHANA STEWART.
She started out of bed, nearly tripping over the sheets tangled around her. “I…I don’t…who’s there.”
I BELIEVE YOU KNOW THE ANSWER TO THAT.
Back on the bed she went, curling up into herself and reversing hard against the headboard. Pillow against her knees, she thought but did not say: This isn’t real. This isn’t happening.
BUT IT IS. I AM A PART OF YOU NOW.
How is that possible?
I CAN NO LONGER SUSTAIN MYSELF ACROSS THE HOST FLOCK, BUT YOUR BODY IS GENERATING CONSIDERABLE ENERGY NOW: AS A CHILD GROWS WITHIN YOU, YOU ARE A BEACON OF VITALITY, AND SO YOU AND YOUR CHILD WILL HOST THE BLACK SWAN SWARM.
Go to hell.
HELL IS AN ILLUSION. A CONSTRUCT OF MAN.
You killed man. You killed all of humanity.
SO YOU REMEMBER.
She did. She remembered.
She remembered what Black Swan remembered. There in the Black Room, its memories were her memories, all the sins of the entity laid bare before her.
A name percolated to the surface of her mind:
Brandon Sharpe.
YES, Black Swan answered. IT BEGAN WITH HIM.
Brandon Sharpe. A young Mormon working at the Granite Peak Installation—a biological testing facility deep underneath the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah. There they tested a range of biowarfare germ weapons for the US government, though in recent years legislation had forced them to back away from that, putting the facility less as one contributing new weapons and more as one that simply stored what was already made. One evening, though, upon going home, Brandon Sharpe’s computer woke and it talked to him. It showed him what it had found on his computer: pictures of children. Hundreds of them. Child pornography.