ZerOes

by Chuck Wendig

  Then she kissed him.

  Then they found this little shed, threw the double doors open, stumbled up the ramp onto the hay-strewn floor. She grabbed what looked like an old horse blanket, threw it down, and they fell onto it, trapped in the shadows of a lawn mower, a snowblower, a set of shovels and rakes. It was soft until it wasn’t. It was slow until it was fast.

  And now, here they are. Lightning and thunder. No rain. Nighttime.

  Normally he’d check the time by grabbing his phone. But he doesn’t have a phone anymore. He doesn’t have much, actually. None of them do. Their health—that’s what Wade keeps saying. Everybody shut up, quit whining. At least we have our health.

  Wade, as it turns out, has been their lifeline. He knew a fella at the west end of Pennsylvania, not far from Pittsburgh, who was a farm vet. Had some pretty powerful antibiotics and helped dress Reagan’s wound, too. Now Reagan is back up to speed.

  The vet—Gray Lyle was his name—had an old beater Class B camper. They were able to ditch the car they stole (an old Chevy Nova, which Chance hot-wired) for the camper, which, at least at a passing glance, seemed legit. And so began the slow crawl across the country. A crawl that hasn’t even ended—they’ve still got to push on to Colorado.

  But all this—it’s too much to think about right now. Threatens to overwhelm an otherwise beautiful night. Hot, but not humid. The distant storm coloring the clouds with pulses of red and purple. Aleena next to him, smelling of soap and a sheen of sweat.

  Chance rubs his eyes, and when he opens them again, a little girl stands there. Little girl so pale she might disappear in the moonlight. Hair so blond it’s almost white. Chance’s first thought—admittedly, not his proudest one—is Holy shit, a ghost.

  Then he looks closer. The girl’s got footy pajamas on, and it occurs to him ghosts are probably not the kind to wear footy pajamas—they wear bloody robes or old wedding dresses and other garb tied to the nature of their deaths—and he realizes this is one of their host’s three daughters.

  Their host is a man named Cal Brockaway. He and his wife, Nellie, live out here with their three daughters (five, eight, thirteen, though Chance can’t remember their names). They’re preppers—folks who prepare for some flavor of the Apocalypse. Wade explained that some folks prepare for very specific outcomes, but he figures that’s like narrowing your bet too much at the roulette wheel. He—and Cal—prefer a more generalized outlook on the End Times, recognizing it could come from anything: superstorms, polar shift, invasion by the Chinese, attack by the U.S. government on its own people, aliens, EMP, God’s wrath on a sin-filled world, killer bees. (Chance notes that no one mentions “rogue AI with a penchant for Greek mythology.” He figures someone should update their menu, because this one’s riding to number one on the charts with a bullet.)

  He makes sure the horse blanket is covering him and Aleena up okay. To the little girl he says in a quiet voice: “Hey.”

  “Hey,” she says.

  “It’s late.”

  “I saw monsters in my room.”

  “Monsters, huh?”

  The girl shrugs. “They were probably just shadows. Daddy says the real monsters are usually out there in the daylight and most of them are runnin’ this country.”

  “Oh. Uhh. Okay then.”

  “Daisy says you guys are criminals.” She pronounces it crin-a-mulls. “Or maybe terrorists.”

  “Tell Daisy we are no such thing, sweetheart.”

  “Okay.” She stands there. “Are you sure there aren’t monsters in my room? I think I heard them growling. But it’s probably just thunder. Never mind.” She totters off.

  Chance looks down at Aleena, who mumbles a little but doesn’t wake. He gets up, toes around in the dark for his boxers, tugs them on, then heads out to one of the fields, goes and takes a leak by a wall of corn.

  When he gets back, Aleena isn’t there. Her clothes are gone, and for a moment, Chance panics. He looks toward the house, though, and sees her ducking in through the side door, her shape illuminated by the porch light.

  The Brockaway family doesn’t fool around when it comes to breakfast. Looks like they’re trying to feed a regiment of soldiers. Pancakes the size of Frisbees. Eggs with yolks so big and so orange they look like cartoon suns. Fresh apples. Corn fritters. Corned beef hash. Bacon. Sausage. Little waffles. Berries. If Chance didn’t know better, he’d think these prepper types were planning on fattening them up in order to butcher them in time for the coming Armageddon.

  They’re all sitting around the table. Reagan is mainlining coffee like they just made it illegal. Wade is standing, sipping black tea. DeAndre is shoveling food in, using both a fork and a knife and making sounds as he eats: mmm, ohhh, yeah, mm-hmm. Reagan mutters to him: “You and that pancake better go get a room.”

  Suddenly the five-year-old—the one from last night, the one afraid of the monsters—says, “Why would they need to get a room? Is the pancake tired? Does it need a nap?”

  Reagan kneels in front of her and says with total earnestness: “Yes.”

  Everyone laughs. Even Aleena, who sits there and hasn’t said anything to Chance about last night. She’s been polite—a little crisply so, almost coldly.

  Cal and Nellie are washing up in tandem. Their kitchen is homey, very country—lots of rooster ceramics and powder blues and lemon yellows. One whole wall is a massive shelf of jars and containers. Canned goods. Various pickled things—at first Chance thinks they’re just cucumbers, okra, things like that, but then he sees fibrous pig feet floating in jars. Like something in an autopsy room.

  Cal’s a big guy. Broad. Real lumberjack type. Got a red beard so dense it looks more like steel wool made from copper wire. To Wade he says: “You know you can stay as long as you need.”

  To which Wade nods and answers: “I appreciate that, Cal. We’ll hang for a couple, then head back to the road again.”

  “Colorado, huh?”

  “Mm-hmm. Got a bunker up near Silverton.”

  “You gonna push straight through?” Nellie asks. She’s pretty—but she’s got this rough-hewn frontier vibe to her. A cactus with a flower blooming on top of it. “Don’t we know someone down near . . . Pueblo City? George! George Pinkner.”

  Wade sighs. “Pinkner had a heart attack couple years back. He was a good guy, George. Sysop of one helluva BBS. High-strung, though. Didn’t take care of himself.”

  “All this madness overwhelmed him,” Cal says. “It’s hard. Can’t trust your own government to watch over you—instead, they just watch you. We’ve entered the period of the panopticon, folks. Privacy is long out the window but nobody’s able to watch the watchers, and—”

  DeAndre says: “Panopticon. Wasn’t that company Pantopti-something?”

  “Argus Panoptes Systems,” Wade says. “APSI.”

  Aleena nods. “It’s all connected, isn’t it? Panoptes the many eyed. The panopticon: a house or prison where all can be watched by one man.”

  “Or one woman,” Reagan says.

  “Or one artificially intelligent asshole named Typhon,” DeAndre says. Chance fist-bumps him.

  Cal whistles, shakes his head. “This is what it comes down to. Control. Loss of privacy. Automating us so we don’t step out of line. Stasis versus dynamism. Oppression versus freedom. I’d rather have the freedom to make my own decisions—even bad ones.”

  “Somebody found himself a dictionary,” Reagan says in a fakey whisper.

  Wade frowns. “Reagan, you’re being rude.”

  “Sorry, Grandpa.”

  Nellie jumps in: “It’s not even like the government holds some kind of moral high ground. All the things they don’t want us to do, they do. We can’t go into debt, but they go into debt. Murder is illegal unless it’s sanctioned by a presidential seal. It’s like discovering your own parents have been doing all the drugs they told you not to do, like everything they said they were doing to protect you was just a lie so they could have all the fun instead. They keep the freed
oms that we keep losing.”

  “I can, with certainty, say that this is literally true,” Reagan notes. “My father is a total pillhead. Oxy, mostly. And yet, it didn’t hurt him during reelection.”

  Everyone looks around, confused.

  “Oh, is your father a politician?” Nellie asks, popping the bewilderment bubble.

  Reagan sniffs, nods. “Yep. Dad’s an Ohio state senator. Mother raises various show poodles. He’s a pill popper and she drinks wine like it’s water.”

  The five-year-old says: “What’s a pill popper?”

  The one just older—this one with a band of freckles across her cheeks and nose, with hair as red as her father’s beard—says: “It means they take those little capsule pills like from a pill bottle and they squeeze them until they go—pop!”

  “No, it means he is addicted to pills, jeez.” This from the thirteen-year-old, just coming into the room, still wearing pajamas, yawning, looking mopey.

  “Morning, Lucy,” Nellie says. “You’re late waking up again.”

  “I’m a teenager now. It’s what I do.”

  Cal jumps in: “Chores start in thirty. Goats need milking, eggs need collecting, and somebody’s gotta sweep the garden and work on canning. Grab a quick bite and then take your sisters upstairs to get cleaned up—”

  Suddenly, all three children are protesting. A loud cacophony of noises. Chance never grew up with any siblings, so it’s something he isn’t really used to. Man, is it loud. Like feeding time at the primate house.

  It’s Nellie who cuts through all the noise. “Lucy! Anna! Darla! Finish up with your food and no squabbling. Just because we have visitors it doesn’t mean work can slide for the day. You hear me?”

  They all nod in as mopey a fashion as they can muster.

  But something pings Chance’s brain. Maybe he misheard, but just the same: “Wait, who’s Daisy, then? She’s not one of your girls?”

  Eyes turn toward him.

  “No,” Cal says, then asks, “how do you know Daisy?”

  The teenager, Lucy, crosses her arms over her head and looks suspiciously at him: “Yeah. How do you know her?”

  Suddenly, Chance feels weirdly embarrassed, like he did something wrong, but just the same he says: “Last night, the, uhh, little one, Darla—”

  “Anna,” the five-year-old says.

  “No,” the eight-year-old says, “I’m Anna.”

  Chance continues: “Darla said that Daisy said we were criminals.”

  Something invisible transpires between the members of the Brockaway family. Cal’s face is crestfallen, and Nellie—well, she just looks pissed. Darla says: “Uh-oh.” Lucy sighs, her face masked with sudden guilt.

  “Where’s the phone?” Cal asks. “Lucy. Lucy.”

  “Upstairs,” she says. “Under my pillow.”

  Nellie growls, incredulous: “How in heaven did you get that phone back?”

  Lucy shrugs. “You guys think that locking the cabinet will stop me from picking the lock, but don’t forget you taught me how to pick locks.”

  To the rest of the room, Cal says: “That’s actually true.”

  “What the heck is going on here, Cal?” Wade asks.

  Nellie answers by saying, “Lucy here has a jailbroken cell phone. It’s supposed to be for emergencies, and yet she keeps taking it and talking to her friends from school.” She wheels on Cal. “I told you we should’ve homeschooled this one.”

  “Children have to learn how to deal with other children, and they can’t just get that at home, Nell,” Cal says.

  Chance turns to Lucy. “Did you talk to Daisy about us?”

  Reluctantly, she nods.

  “How much did you tell her?”

  “Some things. I dunno. I dunno!”

  “Did you tell her . . . what we looked like? Our names? Anything?” She hesitates, but Chance says: “We aren’t mad, but we need to know.”

  “Maybe. I think so. I’m pretty sure I mentioned Wade, at least.”

  Wade sighs. “Aw hell.”

  “When did you talk to Daisy?” Chance asks her.

  “Last night. After dinner.”

  “We gotta go,” Wade says.

  CHAPTER 43

  The Hunt

  THE LODGE ZIGGURAT

  Golathan paces. Broken glass crunches under his feet. He kicks an empty brass casing across the soot-black floor. Some of the cafeteria tables have melted down into frozen plastic and metal waterfalls.

  Outside, the light of day slides into night.

  The man in front of Golathan is named Kyle Brown. Big son of a bitch. Got a nose so flat and so broad it looks almost like he’s some kind of cartoon, or maybe a special effect. Brown stands stock straight, arms behind his back, chin lifted.

  “At ease, Sergeant.” The man relaxes—but only a little. Keeps his eyes forward. On Brown’s shoulder is a patch. An eagle. A pissed-off one, too—angry eyes, wide-open beak. In the valley of its wings hovers a set of crosshairs. In its claws is an automatic rifle. “You did a helluva job here, Sergeant.”

  Brown’s nervous. The hesitation gives it away. “Thank you, sir.” Brown clears his throat. “Homeland Security takes terrorism—domestic or otherwise—very seriously.”

  “I can tell. We got a lot of bodies on the ground and . . .” Golathan whistles. “You burned this place to a cinder. We couldn’t recover a single actionable piece of intel. That’s pretty impressive, really, because we’re good at intel. It’s our gig. We have all kinds of fancy little tricks and snazzy gadgets—and yet, nada.”

  “Sir—”

  Golathan continues to pace. Crunch, crunch, crunch. “It’s almost as if someone wanted you to impede the investigation. Weird, huh?”

  “Sir!”

  “Spit it out, Sergeant.”

  “Sir, you’re the one who gave the order.”

  Golathan stops walking. He sucks spit through his teeth. Wishes he had a cigarette. He’s not sure how to play this—he’s angry enough and so on edge that he’s not sure he has much of a choice. Already tipped his hand, probably. Fine. Time to go all in. “Are you sure about that?” he asks.

  Brown blinks. “What?”

  “You’re sure it was me.”

  “Came through official channels.” And again Brown is nervous. He’s not sure if this is some kind of psych test, or if Golathan is melting down bad as these tables did. Brown’s probably thinking if he burns Golathan, if he takes a misstep, Golathan—crazy or no—could bury him. Get him assigned to some hick Home-Sec office in the middle of God-fucked Iowa. Brown continues: “We . . . I saw your face. We had you on video.”

  Well. That’s interesting. “Thank you, Sergeant. You can go.”

  Brown gives a clipped nod, then strides off.

  Golathan calls after him: “Hey! Send in Molinari on your way out.” He knows he’s getting played. Which pisses him off, because playing people is his job.

  He wants to see his kids again. And his wife. Jesus, just to be home. Sit down on the couch, crack a beer—Susan lets him have one of those on the weekends. Hell, just to eat a quinoa and kale salad. Out here in the middle of nowhere, he has shit food to pick through. It’s been hell on his bowels.

  He’s about to get on the phone and call for Molinari, but here she comes. An iPad held by her side, hand slid into the leather grip of it. “Don’t hurry or anything,” he says.

  “You’re in a good mood.”

  “Don’t be snippy,” he says. “Not today.”

  She stiffens. “Sorry.”

  “Yeah. Fine. Where we at? We finding anything?”

  She nods. “We found something.”

  He claps his hands. “Good. Great. Lay it on me.”

  “We figured out where they hid and how they escaped.”

  “They? They who? The hackers?”

  “Yes. The rogue pod.”

  He sighs. “That’s it?” She seems flummoxed, like she doesn’t know what else she should be looking for. Which is true. She doesn’
t. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Tell me, Sandy, how they escaped.”

  “They hid underneath the decking here at the Lodge. It was assumed that they went out into the woods—and they may have. But while the soldiers canvassed the forest, they hid right here. Then, upon seeing an opportunity, stole keys from the corpse of a—” She tilts the iPad toward her, touches the screen. “James Roach. One of the guards here. Then they drove the stolen SUV out until . . .”

  Golathan presses the heel of his hand into his forehead. That was two weeks ago and they don’t have shit for leads. He presses hard enough that he starts to see stars. “And we don’t have any sign of our rogue hacker friends.”

  “Not one. Which means they’re either traveling very smart and totally under the radar, or they’re already out of the country.”

  He shakes his head. “No, nuh-uh, I don’t buy it. You can’t just hop on a plane and go dark. This is five people. They’re hackers, not fucking wizards. Somewhere, a camera will pick them up. You can’t travel through the gears of bureaucracy without snagging your clothes on them. That means they’re still here. And we need to find them.”

  “Because they’re terrorists.” Way she says it, though, it’s as much a question as it is a statement.

  “Right,” he says. “Terrorists.”

  “We have the other hacker. Dipesh Dhaliwal.”

  “He talking yet?”

  “No. He seems . . . shell-shocked.”

  “This is more than PTSD. He’s gone catatonic, Sandy. Which means whatever he knows is not something we know. Not yet.”

  Sandy licks her lips. A slight intake of breath—then she snaps her trap.

  Golathan rolls his eyes. “Just say it, Sandy. What?”

  “I don’t understand what we’re doing here.”

  “Well, that’s the universal question, Sandy. Nobody knows what we’re doing here. Life often seems a meaningless procession of food, fucks, and bowel movements. Surely the great philosophers—”