The Distance

by Jeremy Robinson

  “I was thinking you could make Molotov cocktails—you know, with rags and alcohol, or gasoline, stuff them in there. Poe, you need to focus. I...I just...if I’m not there in time and it’s the baby they want...” I recognize that his voice sounds frantic, but it’s also distant and muffled, the message unclear. I stand up and stretch, shake my head. I will pretend to still be here one hundred percent.

  I try to deflect, but end up being honest. “I’m feeling a little funny.”

  Look at me, being vulnerable.

  Bricks start to fall from the side of my mental building.

  “Is the baby okay? Are you feeling her move around a lot?” His voice, so tender, a feather on my cheek. I put my free left hand to my cheek, pressing my palm against my skin. I run my fingers through the hair above my ear.

  August, help me.

  “She’s fine. It’s funny, she wiggled a bit when you said that,” I say, managing a tiny chuckle. The pitch of my voice drops an octave. “I think it’s my brain. I might be losing my mind.” I start to cry. An entire brick wall crumbles, a pile of dust.

  His voice is firm, immediate. “You are not losing your mind, Poe. You’re my smart, brave girl. Do you hear me? You are not alone. I’m with you. I am right here with you. Together we’re strong, okay? Poe? Sweetheart?”

  A gentle jingle tickles my ears. I look toward Luke, on the floor, chewing a sock—what ever happened to his tennis ball? He still wears tags, so I can locate him easier, but right now, they’re pinned beneath his furry neck, unmoving. Not making a sound.

  From the front of the house, I hear the now distinct jingle of bells.

  The tripwire.

  My heart beats hard.

  Vision tunnels.

  Squirt goes suddenly still.

  “August?” I whisper.

  “You have to stay strong, Poe. I’m on my way.”

  “I think they’re here.”

  45

  AUGUST

  My bike wobbles beneath me as I slip off the seat and let go of the single handlebar I’d been holding while speaking to Poe. The bike continues on without me for ten feet, slows and then tips, sprawling like a man whose limbs have just suddenly stopped working. I land on my feet, phone crushed to my ear.

  “Poe,” I say, my voice barely controlled. “What’s going on?”

  I hear shuffling. Breathing. Then a loud thud, and nothing. Silence. My phone beeps at me, and I pull it away. The screen reads, connection lost.

  I frantically redial. It rings without stop.

  Mark pulls up beside me. “What’s up?”

  “She’s not answering.”

  “Could it be—”

  The look in my eyes silences Mark. “She said they were there. She thought they were there. The Blur. Damn it!”

  I want to smash the phone on the pavement. I want to scream. But I contain my anger and fear, disconnecting the call and putting the phone back in my pocket. Poe will call me back. If she can. I hate myself and my personal limits. If I was stronger, faster, younger and not fighting some kind of alien infection, I’d be there by now.

  Fight them, Poe, I think. Stay alive.

  The men and women biking with me, people I now consider my tribe, pull to a stop, looking at Mark and me. Their concern is evident. And appreciated, because I’m about to announce a doubling of our efforts, turning our cycling equivalent of a marathon pace into something closer to a sprint, knowing full well that I’m the one who will slow us down. But I’m fueled by desperation. My lips pucker to form the first sound in the word, “We,” but it’s not my voice that fills the air.

  “Help!”

  All eyes turn to the road ahead.

  “What is it?” I ask Mark, who is taller than me and standing on the pedals of his perfectly balanced, motionless bike, looking over the heads of the people in front of us.

  “Looks like Jon.”

  Before the end, Jon was a fitness freak. He’s lean, but powerful, like a shaggy haired supermodel. Brook, his girlfriend, is like a female version of Jon, except she somehow keeps her wavy hair well brushed, despite wearing a helmet most of the day. Together, they are our point riders. They stay an hour ahead of us, watching for obstacles we might need to detour around, scoping out places to sleep at the end of every day. They’re a pair of powerhouse introverts, but they’re always together.

  When I don’t see Brook, the hair on my arms stands up.

  Then the tone of Jon’s voice settles in. I pick up my discarded bike, climb back on, and pedal hard, rounding the group to the front, where Tanya and Jeb have met Jon.

  The world as I knew it is gone. My daughter along with it. But traveling with this group of fellow survivors, I have once again found community. More than that, really. Before humanity was wiped out, my community consisted almost completely of colleagues. Sure, I considered many of them to be friends, but we talked, almost exclusively, about work. But now? I’m leading a bicycle gang of twenty-somethings who wear their feelings on their sleeves and aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty with each other’s problems. The result is a cohesive, healthy, thriving—and mobile—colony.

  The future of mankind.

  And I’ve become fiercely protective of them. Though if I’m honest, my heart belongs to Poe. She gave me hope when there was none. I love her like a daughter. I’ll love her baby like my own grandchild. If they make it. If they survive. If we reach them in time.

  The best guess for our arrival in New Hampshire—we’re currently riding on Pennsylvania’s Interstate 78—is two weeks, sometime in the first few days of August. That’s also the best guess for when she’s due. She hasn’t complained about it much, but I know that child is weighing on her, both emotionally and physically. Strong as she is, she’ll be waddling like a penguin, struggling to do anything more than survive.

  My insides are tearing as I ride toward Jon, knowing in my gut that Poe will be on her own for a while longer, despite the desperation I feel. I want to scream, to pedal like a maniac and ride with the strength and speed of a demigod, but I can’t abandon these people. Not only would it be wrong, but Poe wouldn’t want me to. Even if this is something simple, like an injury, we’re not...I’m not...going to get much faster. Exhaustion plagues me. At night, we hide, sleeping in locked basements or other easily defendable positions. But once that sun comes up, we haul ass, slowed mostly by the limitations of my age, and the rash-induced infection sapping my strength.

  “They took her!” Jon says as I ride up, his words sealing Poe’s fate in my mind. “Tried to kill me.”

  There’s blood on his shirt, but I can’t tell what kind of wound he received.

  “I—I didn’t want to run, but—” He shakes his head. He’s abandoned the woman he loves.

  “Doesn’t sound like you had a choice,” I say, but there is no more time to salve his emotional wounds, or even his physical ones. Poe needs us. Now. But if Brook needs us first, there is no time to waste. I take his face in my hand and speak in a tone that I hope will cut straight through the hundred horrible scenarios he’s conjured about Brook’s fate. “Who took her? The Blur?”

  “H—human. Rashes. A gang of them.”

  “How many?”

  “Thirty. Maybe more.”

  This is already looking grim. We’re outnumbered.

  “What else can you tell me about them?” I ask.

  He blinks his eyes and wipes away the tears. Focusing. “They, ahh, they were crazy. Ambushed us. About ten miles up the road.”

  This doesn’t sound entirely true. It’s hard to believe anyone could catch Jon or Brook when they were on bikes.

  “How did they catch you?” I ask.

  A moment of shame is replaced by a set jaw. “We’d stopped to... We were...”

  “I get it,” I say, putting my hand on his shoulder. As fast as the pair is, they never seem to get as far as I think they could in a single day. Jon’s perpetual smile, after a day of hard riding, always tells the truth. They stopped for some ex
tracurricular activity and literally got caught with their pants down. “Were they armed?”

  He nods his head. “Yeah, but with axes and swords. Shit like that. Some had bows and arrows. But not all of them had two arms. They were all shirtless. Even the women. They all had the rash on their chests, but it looked like their skin had been melted. Hanging from the stubs of their arms. From their faces. Like they had been melted, but not from fire. It was just loose, like...”

  “Hochman’s,” I say, remembering the photos of people in the middle stages of the fast moving disease. Layers of fat and connective tissue holding skin in place would degrade, giving the infected the appearance of melting. Joints slipped free, and weakened flesh simply tore. Sometimes the fingers would go first. Then the arms. And eventually the legs. Life slipped away after that, as the internal organs turned to mush. The whole process took just days. But from Jon’s description, the Rashes he encountered showed the scars of Hochman’s, not the disease itself. If they’d been symptomatic, they would have been lying on the ground, slowly coming undone. And that means they survived it somehow.

  Saying the name of the disease that, prior to the end of civilization, threatened to end humanity in its own way, sends a hush through the group.

  “Yeah,” Jon says. “Like Hochman’s.”

  “Could it be connected to the rash?” Jeb asks.

  I glance at my shoulder, and Mark answers for me. “Naw, man. The rash isn’t Hochman’s.”

  We’ve talked about this before. All the people they encountered with the rash before meeting me had always been violent. Deranged. Like Crazy Lady. I have the same rash, even now, faded but present. Mark knows about it, but I’ve hidden it from the rest, mostly because I need them to trust me, to get me to Poe, but I’ve also never had a violent urge toward anyone in the group. Mark and I have never discussed it, but he’s kept my secret. Knows what it could mean. For me. For Poe.

  Jeb doesn’t look convinced. And while I agree with Mark, there isn’t time to get into how he knows that the rash isn’t a Hochman’s symptom. Brook is in trouble...and Poe is still too God-damned far away. “If they had Hochman’s, they don’t anymore, so let’s worry about what we know for sure instead of getting worked up about what we don’t.” I motion to the wound on Jon’s shoulder. “Is that okay?”

  He looks at the bloody, but no longer bleeding, wound. “This was from a knife. Just a nick, but I couldn’t get to my gear.”

  I try not to shake my head. Despite the casual air of the group, we have rules, one of which is to never be out of arm’s reach from your weapon. If the Blur take another shot at us, we’ll be ready. Apparently, it’s other survivors we’re not prepared for. The sun was up, so Jon let his guard down.

  “Wouldn’t be the apocalypse without some Mad Max assholes, right?” Jeb says. His attempt at humor is too accurate to be funny.

  “Anything else?” I ask.

  “They were on foot,” he says, eyes up, thinking. “Dogs. They had dogs. Pitbulls mostly. Some chased me half the way here. And that rash... All of them. Dark black rings. Around their hearts.” He taps his chest over his heart. “Just to the left of center.”

  I glance at my shoulder, where my rash is hidden. It’s further to the left, originating from my shoulder. Could that be the difference? Whatever it is driving these people to kill their own doesn’t work on me because the Blur missed my heart?

  It occurs to me that this might be Brook’s true fate. She’ll be infected and come looking for Jon, who would be defenseless against her. He’d run right into her blade before ever considering she might turn it on him. But it’s the Blur that do the infecting, with that long finger-needle organic suit. A memory of the Blur’s stringy insides flits through my mind and sends a shiver through my body. I keep my thoughts on Brook, who I care for, and whose salvation puts us back on the path to Poe. “We need to find her before it gets dark.”

  “Find her?” Tanya asks. She’s apparently decided that Brook’s fate is sealed. “We need to protect the people here. Find a way around.”

  Part of me is tempted to agree. Abandoning Brook appeals to the part of me that is terrified about Poe’s fate. But I couldn’t leave Brook to that fate any more than I could leave Poe. There isn’t time to argue, so I slide my backpack off, pull out my map and unfold it on the pavement. After finding our location on the map, I point to the off ramp we passed a mile back. “Here. Head back. Take this exit onto 309. Take Taylor Drive to Route 412 and then back up to the Interstate.”

  I follow the map up, ten miles. The 412 exit is fifteen miles ahead, beyond where Brook was taken, and hopefully beyond the gang’s base of operations, if they have one. For all we know, they might be on their way here, or like us, they might be heading north. Either way, I’m going to reach them before the group does.

  “We won’t make it there before nightfall,” Tanya points out.

  I nod. “Find someplace to sleep. I’ll meet you there in the morning.”

  “You’re going after her?” she asks.

  “I’d go after you, too.” I fold up the map, stuff it back in my pack and hold the gear up. “One of our own has been taken. I’m going to get her back.” The group around me, some of whom have heard the exchange, some of whom were out of earshot, stare at me. “I need someone to take my pack for the night.”

  Tanya takes the heavy backpack and places it on her handlebars.

  “Thanks,” I say. “Just get everyone to a safe house tonight. We’ll meet up at the 412 junction at first light. We’re going to ride hard from here on out.”

  “Is Poe in trouble?” she asks, and my tough front nearly cracks.

  I manage a nod. “Brook first. Then Poe.”

  Mark holds his pack up. “Mine, too.”

  A volunteer quickly steps forward and takes the pack.

  “Mark,” I say. “You don’t—”

  “I’m coming.”

  “Me, too,” Jeb says, and he hands his pack off to someone without asking.

  Jon is coming, too. That’s a given. And he doesn’t have a backpack to give up. He lost everything, including his gun. “Jon needs a weapon,” I say.

  Tanya, who is now overloaded with two packs, happily hands over her sub machine gun and two extra clips. Jeb says it’s an MP5. I have no idea, but the weapon came from the trunk of a police car along with a shotgun and two pistols. Whatever it is, it’s deadly.

  Deadly.

  I try not to think about it, but I’m keenly aware as I ride away from my new family, that before this night is through, I will have killed again. But this time it won’t be a Blur...

  It will be people.

  46

  POE

  Barefoot and pregnant, a living cliché, I stand and waddle to the wall, switching off the light. August is still on the phone, and Luke, hot on my heels, bounds around, thinking we’re playing.

  “Poe? What’s going on?” August is saying.

  I move to the kitchen, switching the lights off there. Why am I shutting off the lights? It’s harder to see now. Harder for them to see you, too, I shout at myself, feeling serious and loopy at the same time.

  Scrambling through the kitchen back to the living room, I trip on the threshold and land on my hands and knees, my heavy belly pendulous and tight under me. Some deep, interior abdomen muscle pulls, and I wince. The phone flies out of my hand and crashes against the piano. I scoot over on all fours, pick it up and place it against my ear.

  “Hello? August?” I hear nothing. Don’t be broken, don’t be broken. I hit the power button but nothing happens. The phone is silent. Dead. He’s gone.

  Like Santa and his eight tiny reindeer, another jingling sounds from the front yard. I sit back on my haunches, wondering what to do. More jingling. The tripwires are nearly invisible; I did a great job hiding them, having worked on the placement for several days, doing nothing else. But now, here I am, crouched and voluptuous with child, alarmed by my own alarm. What good is this early warning going to do
me if I just sit here?

  Maybe it’s just a deer, or a dog. I tiptoe to one of the boarded up living room windows and peer through the thin line between the boards. I left just enough space at the bottom of the windows to be able to open them three inches, or I would have started going crazy from staleness and the creeping quiet in here. The sunshine outside is bright and blinding, but low in the sky.

  Daylight is safe, I tell myself, but I’m not convinced. Leila. The dog. The battle. In my experience, bad things happen while the sun is up.

  My parents set the house fairly far back from the road, so an acre of land sits between me and the first tripwire, which runs along the line of trees at the road.

  It keeps jingling, but I can’t see anything.

  I look for deer. For bears. For things that are visible. But what if it is the Blur? Part of me says, hogwash, that aliens capable of wiping out the human race wouldn’t be tricked by tripwires. Or would they? It worked for Arnold Schwarzenegger in that movie. I should have rigged up some falling logs, or spiky traps, too.

  And what if we’re right, that there are two vying groups of Blur? How will I tell them apart without walking up and asking for a sniff test. I smell the air, but sense nothing beyond the hot dry dust of a window sill.

  A more disturbing thought sneaks past what feeble defenses remain, what if it doesn’t matter?

  Maybe all of the Blur have just been biding their time? Maybe they did something to my parents, and now the aliens have come to collect me and Squirt. They’ll pluck me from the house and my baby from my womb. And then what? More tests? On both of us? Or maybe they’ll be done with me. Discarded, they’ll keep my baby. Maybe raise her. The petri dish cleaned, maybe they’ll start a new experiment. Name her Eve.

  Seriously, my brain, evil disturber, will throw me under the bus way before my body gives in. I can’t keep a sane thought in my head. I’m not even sure if the thoughts that sound insane, really are. Thinking positive thoughts might be what’s crazy right now.