by Edward Aubry
He stared at the rock, then blew on it again, with more force.
A gust hit him in the back. He wobbled, then watched as a visible wave of force rippled through the foliage away from him and down the path. He looked at the stone, and at the pixie, who admonished him with her silence. Without further comment, the stone went into his pack.
There were more such artifacts. He found a copper ring, and when he put it on, he felt less tired. Once he came across a pedestal with a small, wooden box on top of it. The box contained what looked like an ordinary deck of playing cards. On inspection, he learned that sometimes they would all become the ace of spades, and that without fail, if he asked Glimmer to draw a card and then reshuffled it into the deck, no matter how many times he shuffled, he could deal the card she had picked. Right off the top.
He kept these curiosities. After the stone, Glimmer did not bother to advise him.
Some days were better than others. They found a stretch of brick road heading mostly west and followed it for two days. They lost an entire day walking around a swampy lake. Harrison found a bicycle once and was able to ride it for a few miles over flat terrain. But then he ran over a piece of glass and punctured a tire. He walked the bike for two days, hoping to find a repair kit, but in the end had to abandon it.
By now, Harrison estimated that they were well into New York State (or what had once been New York). They crossed a few narrow streams, but nothing on the order of what he expected from the Hudson. They must have edged north in their travels, he decided, and crossed the river at a narrow point. He had no idea how far north they had wandered, but he figured that the worst-case scenario would be getting to the St. Lawrence, at which point he could follow it to the Great Lakes and walk along their shores all the way to Illinois.
The days wore on into weeks. Harrison revised his estimated travel time upward. Far upward.
* * *
"So," Glimmer asked enthusiastically, "are we looking for anything specific?" In the middle of another dense forest, they had come across another ruined building and stopped to investigate. The structure was the rough size of a large house. The walls on one whole side were gone, and the places where they had come off were ragged and crumbling. Objects of an unknown design and technology, evidently intact, were strewn about the floors of every room. The building was otherwise uninhabited.
Harrison picked up a small, cubical object and scrutinized it. "I'm not sure," he said.
"Then are we looking for anything vague?" she asked with equal eagerness. Now she was wearing gym shorts and a white T-shirt that said Jell-O in red letters across the front. Her elbows and knees had pads strapped to them, and on her head sat an ovoid helmet. She was flitting around the room like a kid who thinks she might be in a candy shop but isn't quite sure.
Harrison shrugged. "Anything useful," he said. He dropped the cube and shuffled through the room, scooting things out of his way with his feet. "What do you think this place was?"
"Like I would know?" She zipped past his head and grabbed a cord that hung from some apparatus on the ceiling. She tugged straight down on it twice with what appeared to be great exertion, but to no effect.
"I was just thinking out loud," he said. "I've almost gotten used to the experience of finding future stuff, but it still seems weird to see stuff all strewn about like this. I feel like I'm looting the Batcave." He picked up a silvery blue gadget, U-shaped and palm sized, with a big, inviting switch on one side. Etched into its otherwise unmarked face was a symbol, presumably a company logo: a simple vertical line segment that connected at the bottom to an elaborate curve. "Well, this has got to be something, right?" He looked to Glimmer, who merely cocked an eyebrow in response. He sighed and turned the object around in his hands three times, then held it out at arms' length. He looked away from it, gritted his teeth, closed his eyes tight, and thumbed the switch.
"Like I would know?" Glimmer said. He opened his eyes. The pixie was hovering over the U-shaped thing. She was flickering. "Like I would know?" she repeated.
"Hey! What's the big idea?" she demanded. Only it wasn't the Glimmer over his hand.
"Hmm," said Harrison. "Looks like I found a camera."
"Turn it off!" the pixie ordered.
He complied, weighing the object in his hand for a moment, deciding whether to take it, then remembering that in his pack its weight would make no difference. He looked up. She was pouting.
"Do I really look like that?" she asked.
"Uh, no," he said. "You're much prettier."
"Oh!" she beamed. "Good."
Harrison continued sifting through the ruins, sorting treasure from junk, an unsatisfying process. "That's it," he finally said. "I'm going."
"Did you find what you needed?" asked Glimmer.
Harrison did not answer right away. He thought about it as he climbed down from the ruins and back into the forest. "No," he said after some time, "but this is starting to bug me."
She looked puzzled. "I'm not sure I know what you mean."
He frowned. "I'm not sure I do, either. This just …" He stopped talking, and they traveled in silence for a while. Finally, he blurted out, "Oh, hell! We've been on our way to Chicago for almost three weeks, and I have no clue where we are. And as if that's not bad enough, I feel like my whole plan has been, I don't know, co-opted, or something."
Glimmer waited for the next part of his thought, but it didn't come. "Still not following you," she said from right behind him.
"The stuff!" he shouted. "All these treasure troves we keep stumbling into. I feel like we started out looking for Chicago, and now we're on some damned scavenger hunt!" He stopped himself, then said in a quieter, more measured tone, "I can't shake the feeling that I'm a mouse. A mouse running around collecting cheese, and I'm not supposed to worry about why there's cheese everywhere, except that one of these times the cheese will jump on me and snap my neck."
"Eeuuw," said Glimmer. She scratched her head. "Sounds like good ol' paranoia to me. Why would anyone set Harrison traps all over the countryside? Seems like a lot of trouble."
"No more trouble than setting the entire freaking world on shuffle play," he quipped. After a minute, he asked, "Where were you three months ago?" He meant it as a subject changer. He was curious about her. Where had she come from? He also wanted to know if there had always been pixies, and they were just hiding throughout history, or if pixies were a part of what happened to the world. Of course, as soon as it was out of his mouth, and he could hear it, and in light of their current conversation, he realized how his question must sound.
"I don't like your tone," she said.
This did not put him at ease. The door was open, though. Ready or not, it was time to go in. "Seriously," he prodded, "where were you when you first started following me?"
"Stalking you," she corrected.
"Stalking me."
She became quiet. It was impossible to tell if this was because she had something to hide, or if she had memories best left unshared, or if she truly didn't know. Her habit of giving obfuscatory answers to simple questions was now creeping over the edge that separated foible from liability. He was about to explain this to her when she gave him an unexpectedly straight answer.
"Actually," she began, "I was right near that motel where you were staying."
"Really?"
She nodded. "Only there wasn't a motel there. It appeared for the first time when the world went haywire."
So much for the straight answer. "Then what was there before?"
"A tree," she said, "and about a thousand pixies. Not counting me, of course."
Harrison was struck by the image of a thousand pixies. If it were true that they had been there all along, why had no one ever noticed them? "Are they still there?" he asked.
"Not anymore," she said.
"Well, where did they go?"
She scowled. "Where did all the people go?"
"I have no idea," he said. "I thought we had been over-" He cut himself
off and stood still. "Oh my God," he said. "They're all gone?"
She nodded.
"You're the last one?"
She nodded again.
"Wow," he said. "I'm sorry. That was … I … I wasn't thinking. It didn't occur to me."
"Don't worry about it," she said, but she didn't look at him. She flew on ahead. Harrison started to walk again.
A few minutes after he caught up with her, something she said clicked in his brain. "Hold up," he said. "That motel was there before everything changed. I remembered it when I found it. It's not that far from where I used to work."
She shook her head. "No, it wasn't. It turned up with all the other weird buildings, the same time you did."
"But I've always been here," he muttered, unsure how-or even if-he should pursue this discussion. He looked at the compass on his wrist. It pointed behind him, at the wrecked building they had just plundered. Just then, the needle wavered, then it rotated almost half a turn. It now pointed in front of him and off to the left. "That was fast," he said. Most days, there were several hours of travel between man-made objects. This time, they had walked only fifteen minutes when the arrow turned. That meant they had about fifteen minutes to go until they found whatever it wanted them to find.
Fifteen minutes later, they broke through the brush and found a divided highway. "Awesome," said Harrison.
"This is good?" Glimmer asked.
"If this is what I think it is, yeah, it's super good. This looks like an interstate, and if I'm right, it's Route 90. If it holds out, this will take us all the way to Chicago. If we're really lucky, we might even find a car." He was excited now. "And it means we're not as far north as I thought, which is also good."
They had gone about a mile when Harrison first saw the familiar red and blue shield that confirmed he was on an interstate highway. It was paired with another sign, a green sign, on the same post. At first he assumed it would be some marker giving the distance to some city, but then he remembered that those signs were much bigger. As it came closer, and more into focus, he recognized it.
"Oh, crap," he whispered.
"What?" Glimmer asked.
"Wait," he said. He concentrated on the sign until he was close enough to read it without mistaking it for something else. He couldn't make out the words, but the picture, a pilgrim hat, was as clear as crystal.
"Oh. Crap!"
"What's wrong?" Glimmer looked back and forth from Harrison to the sign, confusion in her eyes. "This isn't Route 90?"
"Crap!" he repeated. "Crap, crap, crap! Yeah, it's Route 90, but it's the Massachusetts Turnpike."
After a few moments of silence, she ventured, "So that's crap, then?"
He didn't look at her. "We haven't even left Massachusetts yet! We've been drifting south this whole time! We're about 200 miles short of where I thought we were! Damn it!" He stopped walking. "This is insane. If we turned around right now? Followed this road east? We'd be back at the motel in about three days." He pondered the ramifications of what he had just said and remembered that he had driven past the junction of 90 and 91 many times in recent memory. Then he remembered that 90 did not exist there anymore. "Maybe," he added.
"Is that what you want to do?" she asked. It was not a criticism.
He thought about Claudia. He thought about whoever else might be in Chicago right now. He thought about what it would feel like never to see another person again. Then, in an unexpected wave of guilt, he thought about what it would feel like to be the last pixie on earth. Her tiny eyes seemed very big at that moment.
"Of course not," he told her. "I was just … of course not." He began walking again.
Chapter Six
Grilled Chicken Sandwich
They were not as far from the New York border as Harrison feared, so they made it there by nightfall. They slept in a toll booth.
The next day, Harrison awoke to find himself alone. There was a note stuck to the window. Startled to see that it had no visible tape or gum or any other adhesive on it, he peeled it off to read it.
Dear Harry,
I woke up early, and saw something I wanted
to check out. Don't wait for me. I'll catch up.
Stay on the road!
Love,
Glimmer
Her handwriting was neat and curvy, and she had dotted each I with a little heart. He chuckled as he imagined her writing that note. Each letter on the paper was bigger than her hand.
Trusting that she would indeed catch up, he set out down the highway, keeping to the shoulder. According to his maps, Route 90 passed through Albany, jiggering through Route 87. If that junction were still intact, they would cross the Hudson with no difficulty. He might then need to decide whether he was better off continuing west or heading south. "I'll cross that bridge when I come to it," he said, laughing aloud at his joke. He was just as glad no one had heard it.
He walked for three hours, stopping to rest only once. Twice he tried the radio, but both times got nothing. The inconsistency was troubling. He was also starting to become concerned that he was leaving the pixie behind, but then he remembered how fast he had seen her fly.
And then he found a rest stop.
It was not marked from the road, and in fact appeared to be out of place. Rather than an exit ramp, a small dirt road, perpendicular to the highway, led to the stop. It consisted of a small gas station and a McDonald's restaurant, which seemed ordinary enough. What was not ordinary was that it was surrounded by a moat. There was a drawbridge. The drawbridge was lowered. Harrison persuaded himself to investigate, hoping to find a video game, or perhaps a functioning freezer filled with ice cream bars.
Just inside the door sat a huge, glass-enclosed gear box with a giant wheel on the outside. For two quarters, plus one penny, a tourist could create a token that said, I ♥ NY. Or the Lord's Prayer. Harrison opted for the former, a gift for his traveling companion. He had pilfered some change from the toll booth, just to fidget with it, and used it now to create the charm, enjoying the sensation of spinning the large wheel, especially the resistance at the moment the press bit into the penny. The finished product hit bottom with a little metallic clink and he fished it out. While admiring it, he caught sight of something in his peripheral vision. He turned to look.
A man stood behind the counter.
He was wearing a McDonald's uniform. He said nothing, and did not even appear to be watching Harrison, who approached the counter with slow caution. Was this a real person? Was he cardboard? The man scratched his arm.
Harrison gulped. "Hello?" The man did not respond. Harrison moved closer, brought himself right up to the counter. He made eye contact. "Hello?"
The man appeared to be in his early twenties. He was tidy, but had a bit of a vacant look. "Can I help you?" he asked.
This was surreal. After over two months of wandering through the unexpected and the impossible, Harrison now found himself embedded in the quintessential familiar American experience. He imagined that it might be fun to ride it out and order something, but he couldn't bring himself to do that.
"How long have you …?" he began, then stopped himself. The man behind the counter stared at him. Fair enough, under the circumstances, but Harrison found the stare unsettling. It took him a moment to grasp why. It was not a stare of amazement, of the discovery of another human being. It was a bored stare. The stare of a man taking no joy in his job. Something about this disturbed him, but only for the briefest of instants. In fact, the stare added to the familiar warmth of the environment.
Harrison was about to ask this man something, but he had absolutely no idea what.
"Can I help you?" the man repeated.
Harrison thought for a second. "Yes," he said. He heard himself speak the word, and a flood of comfort washed through him. This was McDonald's, the friendliest sanctuary in the world, and it was sanctuary of which Harrison was in desperate need. He couldn't imagine why he had been uneasy at first. With a glance at the menu, he responded, "Can
I have a … a grilled chicken sandwich? And a vanilla shake?" He waited, breathless, eager.
"Would you like fries with that?"
Harrison's eyes squeezed tight, tears of joy leaking from them. "Yes," he whispered. "Yes, please."
"For here?" He nodded. He was given his total and paid with a twenty. He counted his change.
The man behind the counter laid a tray down in front of him and covered it with a paper placemat. He scooped some French fries into a paper box and set it on the tray. Then he went into the back. After the longest two minutes Harrison could recall, the man returned with a sandwich wrapped in paper, which he set on the tray. Finally, he filled a cup with a cold vanilla shake and snapped a lid on it. "Thank you," he said, putting it on the tray.
Harrison hesitated. He felt foolish. He had to talk to this person, but he didn't want the moment to end. He decided to eat first. This guy didn't look like he was going anywhere. Besides, Harrison was hungry.
He picked a table, sat, and ate. The sandwich was about how he remembered them, but not quite delicious, which took some of the magic out of the experience. The shake tasted funny, too, like artificial sweetener. He felt strange now for making the food a priority over the person, and he wrestled with this discomfort and fear, right to the end of the sandwich. He resolved to get up on his last bite, but as he started to do so, he saw that the man had already come out to talk. He was standing at Harrison's table.
And then a lot of things happened very, very quickly.
The server looked like he was just about to say something when a beam of orange light shot out of his chest. He looked down at it, surprised by it himself. No, thought Harrison, not out of. Into. He realized that the beam had traveled in the opposite direction from what he first thought, and then he realized that he could also see it coming out the guy's back. Then he noticed the blood.
It was more blood, he thought, than he had ever seen before, counting all the times he had ever seen blood combined. It sprayed out the guy's back in a grotesquely huge fan and spattered every surface behind him. The tables, the floor, even the ceiling and the counter twenty feet away from him were slick with blood. It was far darker than he would have expected it to be, but he had never seen blood in this quantity before and had no idea if this much blood was supposed to look dark.