Brandon didn’t look very comfortable sprawled in the bottom of the cart, with his lanky legs sticking up over the sides, so I took off my jacket—which was covered with gross smears of vomit and blood anyway—and balled it up under his head. Not really hospital grade care, but it was the best I could do for now.
It would have been impossible to explore the mall with the flashlight switched off, so I propped it up in the kiddy seat of the shopping cart. It was too late to worry about being sneaky now. The rumbling and squeaking of the cart wheels would be more than enough to give us away if there were more Drones about, especially if they were in better condition than the one Brandon killed. Or broke. I still didn’t know if the Drones were technically alive. Space Man pets? Space Man robots? No one even knew what the Space Men themselves actually looked like. Maybe the Drones were the Space Men, although that didn’t feel right somehow.
The cart bumped over cracks in the floor and crunched over broken glass. I stuck close to the storefronts, checking our position every time we reached an open space with a map kiosk.
I wondered if it might be better to find a way out of the mall and go back to the car to wait, when my corridor opened out into the cavernous space of a food court. A big, square fountain filled the middle of the court, with tables and chairs set all around it. A glass dome like the one in the Mountain Post washed a slowly fading amber glow over the area, what was left of the day’s light. I pushed the cart forward through the last patch of darkness separating my corridor from the dimming light of the atrium, and the wheels bumped against something soft.
At first I thought it was a pile of old clothes, then the familiar stink hit me and I took three quick steps backward, my heart thumping in dizzy waves.
A man. The front of his shirt was scorched and black with old blood. Shot in the chest, I guessed. Drones grabbed—they didn’t tear people open as far as I’d seen.
My first urge was to bolt, but the cart and Brandon were heavy, and I had no idea if there were more Drones nearby. Or worse. Maybe some crazy guys with guns hid waiting to shoot any trespassers. My gaze fell back to the bullet hole in the dead guy’s chest.
“Brandon? Hey, Brandon? You think you can walk for a bit? Please?”
Nothing. Not even a groan this time. I sucked in a ragged breath. I had to stay calm and think rationally.
The dead guy was past the gooey up stage. He must have been there a while, so there was probably nothing to get all freaked out over anyway. I steered the cart carefully around the edge of the pool of dried blood, and made my way toward the fountain. There was another dead guy here, not shot this time, but hung by the neck from one of the decorative arches at the fountain’s center. His face was black and so puffed up it was almost round, like an old Halloween pumpkin. A gun lay on the floor nearby, not dropped, but propped up neatly by the edge of the fountain. There was a pair of shoes too.
I stared at the shoes, listening to my own ragged breathing. The shoes were worse than the bodies. I could see the dark prints left by the man’s heels inside the shoes. Why had he taken them off? So he could wade out into the water? And then what? Just took off his belt and hung himself? I raised a shaky hand to push my hair back off my face.
Brandon stirred, trying to say something, but I couldn’t make out what it was.
“Brandon? You awake?”
Nothing.
I eyed the man’s gun. I knew I should probably take it, but the thought of touching anything of his gave me the creeps. It would be like knocking over a gravestone. A piece of paper rested beneath the gun, weighted down by it, and I stooped to read the note.
“i had to kill them, but i don’t have to live with it. they look like us, but they’re not”
“Jeez Louise,” I muttered. What was that even supposed to mean? I didn’t know, but it was enough to give me a grade A case of the shivers all over again.
Brandon groaned in the cart, trying to sit up.
“Whaz happening?” he asked, his voice thick and foggy.
“Lay back down,” I said. “You hit your head and you need to stay put until I figure out what to do next.”
“Whez Dad?”
“Oh, brother. Brandon, just stay put and shut up. I can’t deal with this right now.”
But instead of lying back down, he struggled to climb out of the cart. I managed to pry his fingers off the sides so that he flopped back down into an uncomfortable-looking position, but he showed no signs of wanting to settle. I swung the cart around so he faced away from the hanging man. Last thing I needed was for him to freak out more than he was already.
“Dad?”
I flinched at the way his voice echoed round the empty food court.
“Be quiet—” The words died in my throat. Shapes drifted down from the roof high above, like balloons falling when the clock strikes midnight in a New Year’s Eve party scene.
Drones.
More than I’d ever seen. Hundreds of them floated down from the roof in a dreamy way, tentacles unfurling behind them like streamers as they fell.
I knew I’d never be able to run away in time, not with Brandon and the cart to push, and anyway, where would I run to?
Instead, I watched them as they fell, hoping that the end, whatever it was, wouldn’t hurt too much.
Jake
e found the quarter right away, lying in the middle of the floor, a little ways back from the bench where he’d sat to try on the big, squishy boots.
Mean old thing!
Hiding away one minute, lying smugly in plain sight the next, making him feel foolish. Jake rubbed the Shiny with his thumb, enjoying the smooth feel of it, and maybe he should have been paying more attention to where he was going and less to that no-good hiding Shiny, because when he opened the door that he’d thought would take him back outside to the Big Kids, there was just a room with some lockers, and a bucket on wheels with a mop in it.
Jake squatted down and wrapped his arms around his head, eyes shut tight until the glowing silver patterns in his mind were all that he could see. After a minute, the confusion let go a little and he could stand up and look around again.
He should go back to the place with the giant animal—the Bufferlow, the Big Kids had called it. He’d liked the Bufferlow. It stood very still and let him pet it. It looked like it would be soft, but its hide was rough and bristly, an unexpected sensation. Jake had the idea that perhaps if he went back to the good place with the Bufferlow, he’d remember which way to go from there, but when he took the turn he’d thought might lead him back to the Bufferlow he ended up in another corridor instead.
This one was white stone, with lots of the weird rooms that the Big Kids said were called “stores.” People stood in the store windows. Jake knew they weren’t real people. He’d touched one like it in stores before. These people were hard and cold like stone. Jake didn’t like the way their blank eyes stared, or the way their filled-in mouths were stretched into hungry smiles. Jake knew that they couldn’t move. They couldn’t hurt him. He knew that, but when he was alone, it was hard to remember.
Jake decided not to look at them.
But when he wasn’t looking, it was too easy to imagine them sneaking closer and closer, until a set of those cold, hard hands closed around his neck. Jake whipped his head around to look at the fake people, but they were standing just as they had been, behind the big, glass windows.
He walked a little faster, glancing back over his shoulder to keep an eye on them, but that wasn’t such a great idea either, because he tripped right over his own feet and fell smack onto his face. The flashlight skittered away across the floor.
Hurt.
His arm hurt where it hit the floor. It was hard for him to breathe, and he couldn’t see the dark corridor, or the flashlight, or the scary fake people. Silver lines and patterns unspooled endlessly before his blank eyes, not in neat loops and spirals now, but in crazy sunbursts. He was getting mixed up. He needed to look up at the sky to set the patterns all back in t
heir places. Tears leaked from his eyes and he scrubbed them away with his bruised hands. He hated the way the tears felt running down his face; couldn’t get used to the sensation at all. Finally, the silver lines faded, and Jake could see enough to pick up the flashlight. It still worked, in spite of an ugly crack in the cheerful red plastic of its housing.
He wished the Big Kids were with him. Even Brandon, who sometimes yelled.
When he heard a voice calling his name, he wondered at first if he imagined it, like he’d imagined the fake people stealing along behind him. But the voice called out again, and what’s more, he recognized it as Gracie’s. Jake started to run, but checked himself, wary of taking another spill. Everything was quiet, then he heard another voice. Brandon, this time.
Jake walked quickly, the special Shiny turning in his hand. It was slippery with sweat. He closed his fist tight around the metal and thrust his hand deep into the pocket of his jeans, to be sure it couldn’t slip away again. Roll away again.
The corridor ended in a big space where light spilled down from another of the strange windows in the roof.
There they were! Gracie and Brandon were in the middle of the big room. Brandon was lying in a cart like a little kid. Was it a game? The kind of game called a joke? Jake never understood why things were a joke, but he knew jokes were happy things. Maybe the Big Kids weren’t mad at him after all. As he started toward them, Gracie’s head snapped up and her mouth dropped open. Jake squinted up at the roof too, to try to see what she saw.
His first thought was the false people, but they wouldn’t be up, and anyway, the Big Kids weren’t scared of the false people like he was. When he noticed the first of the Drones drift down out of the gloom, Jake relaxed. They were spent and old and lost, and the sad “alone” feeling in him reached out to them. Their job here was almost done. Those that hadn’t fulfilled their task had waited too long, and the life inside of them was weak and dying. No danger to the Big Kids, but they didn’t seem to know it. Gracie’s mouth was open in a big scared “O” and now that Jake looked more carefully, there was something about the awkward loll of Brandon’s limbs that made Jake think he was hurt. If the Big Kids got scared, would they run away and leave him lost again?
Jake’s sneakers skirted a pool of dried blood. He saw a person, stiff and blue hanging on a rope, but it meant no more to him than the empty fountain or the upturned benches.
Gracie’s hand was cold when he took it, like the hand of a fake person might be, but Jake willed himself to keep holding it.
“It’s okay,” Jake told her, carefully. He laughed. It was odd to hear his mouth making words happen. Gracie seemed to think so too, because her she gawked at Jake with the same horror she’d regarded the Drones with.
“It’s okay,” Jake said again, more loudly this time, savoring the feeling of the words in his mouth. “Don’t be scared, Gracie. If you want, I’ll tell them to go away.”
She nodded slowly, eyes so wide she looked like a little kid herself.
Jake looked up at the Drones as they drifted downward.
“Go away,” he told them, not in the new “out loud” voice, but in the secret one that came from the place where the silver patterns swirled.
“Go away. It’s over for you here.”
Brandon
ou got to slow down ‘til you know what you’re doing,” I told Gracie, for the hundredth time.
“I do know what I’m doing. I always thought driving was such a big deal, but it’s so easy!”
I couldn’t drive myself yet, not until the headaches eased off. The sick fluttery feeling in my stomach and the ringing in my ears had stopped yesterday, but the Fall sunlight streaming in through the windshield still sent my head hammering until the world started to blur and pitch. There was too much shit on the roads to drive safely at night, so we traveled by day.
After the accident at the mall, I’d been sure we were screwed, but Gracie had picked up the knack of driving the big SUV pretty well. Of course she thought it was a breeze, and put her foot down whenever I wasn’t paying attention. Nothing seemed to faze that girl. She just took it for granted that she was good at everything and always right.
Jake was in his usual spot, kneeling up on the back seat with his head hanging out the window like a dog. He’d gotten back to the car on his own, was there waiting when Gracie dragged me out of the mall. She wouldn’t talk about what happened, and was likely scared I’d get mad at Jake for running off and causing all that trouble for nothing.
And I had been kind of mad at first. Getting my ass beat by a Drone. Ending up with what Gracie said was a concussion. It would make anyone mad! But the pounding of my head was all I’d had the energy to focus on at first, and now that I could keep my eyes open for more than five minutes without feeling like my brain was going to burst, I was too happy to hear Jake talking to be mad. Not that Jake had much to say. A couple of words a day if we were lucky, but it still showed that we were doing good. The kid was getting better.
The driving was tough on Jake at first, with no stopping to pick up Shinys along the way. When we stopped to siphon gas the first time—which even perfect Gracie admitted was harder than we’d thought it would be—Gracie had found a pad of paper and a pencil for him.
At first, Jake didn’t seem to know what to do with the pencil and paper, but after Gracie drew a few doodles for him, he’d gotten the picture, so to speak.
Now Jake drew the crazy patterns he used to make with the Shinys on the notepad. He’d wanted to bury the pages at the end of the day, but after what’d happened at the mall, we’d been keeping him close. No more sneaky midnight adventures. For once, Gracie didn’t want to argue with me, about that, anyways. We’d been sleeping locked in the car at night. After a few shitty nights for all three of us, Jake had accepted it. Maybe there was hope for the little freakazoid yet.
I thought that we’d likely make it to the cabin by the end of the week. The going was slow because of the pileups and craters in the road, and in some places, we’d had to ditch the highway and backtrack until we could get on surface streets, but we were getting there.
I rubbed my aching head as Gracie guided the SUV through huge drifts of fall leaves. The leaves were pretty deep in places; with no one around to rake them, they piled up against the empty buildings.
In a year from now, the trees and the weeds would grow up right through these houses, and in fifty years, maybe there would be nothing left at all of all these shitty little towns.
Dumb way to think. The soldiers would come. Order would be restored. Maybe we’d have to get through this winter alone, but it wouldn’t take much longer than that, surely.
The weather was colder already, so it was good to have the new clothes and shit. I hadn’t let Gracie put on the car heater yet, not when we could bundle up, but if it got any cooler, we’d have to suck it up and use the gas. Hopefully it wouldn’t be too tough to keep the cabin warm. Bob had been up there in the winter a couple times, so there must have been a generator or something. Generators needed gas too, though. The throb in my head worsened. There was no point stressing about gas right now. I’d just make myself sick again. “Borrowing trouble,” Grammy used to say. Meaning, you don’t get stressed over shit that hasn’t happened yet.
“We should stop soon,” Gracie said, interrupting my thoughts. “Sun’s going down earlier every day.”
I looked at the map. Reading anything made me sick and dizzy, but I didn’t intend to be completely useless. I was forced to read slower like this anyway, and I made fewer mistakes—especially with Gracie concentrating on the road, instead of poised to snatch the map away the second she thought I was about to screw up.
“Town coming up. Marlborough. We’ll get through that, then park for the night.”
The sun sank slowly as we drove into Marlborough, and the sky blazed as orange and yellow as the trees. We drove down a short Main Street, with a post office, a pharmacy, and a couple of other stores of the kind you find in town
s like this, selling a little of nothing much, but somehow staying in business year after year. All of them were closed up for good now.
The residential area wasn’t much more to look at. A few blocks of statelier old houses huddled close to what passed for a downtown, followed by a straggle of smaller, newer houses getting shabbier and more spaced out as we drove out toward the open country again.
I yawned, pinching my own cheek to banish the heavy waves of tiredness which threatened to drag me under into sleep. I found it hard to keep my eyes open more than a few hours at a stretch since my accident. In a few nights from now, I could be sleeping in a real honest-to-goodness bed again. If we made good time tomorrow…
Gracie shook my arm.
“Brandon? There’s a truck in the road.”
“So drive round it,” I mumbled.
“Just wake up already!” She poked me hard in the ribs and I sat up rubbing my eyes.
The truck parked across the road was an army truck. I sat bolt upright in my seat, more awake than I’d been in weeks. “It’s the cavalry!” I told Gracie.
I didn’t exactly expect her to whoop, but I thought she’d do more than glower for a change. What a killjoy! Better even than the truck were the windows of the tumble down ranch house at the side of the road. Each one of them blazed with the unfamiliar brilliance of electric light.
Jake
racie and Brandon were talking to the men. Brandon looked happy. Gracie did not. But she wasn’t screaming or running away either. There were two men. One was very skinny with crazy black hair and a weird smell coming from the little stick he had in his mouth. A cigarette, that was the word for it.
He said the big man’s name was Terry, and that his own name was Doc. Terry was very tall and looked strong. He smiled a lot. He had green pants and a green shirt and was what Brandon called an Army Dude. Terry squatted down in front of Jake. He smelled bad. Like sweat and stale cigarettes.
“Now, you look like you could use feeding, little buddy. Ain’t much to you, is there?”
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