“Scientists have a certain humility about them. Of their place in the world. You understand it was just as possible that we didn’t evolve. And really wouldn’t have cared.”
“It’s true. Any one of a million things breaks differently, and some other species would have dominated the earth.”
“One with better sense than us.”
“Probably.”
“People were wretched.”
Hello, pot? Kettle is on line two. Would like to discuss colors with you.
Rachel’s left eyebrow arced upward, just enough for Priya to notice.
“You’re wondering why I killed the people at the school.”
“It had crossed my mind.”
“Will is too important.”
“What does Will have to do with it?”
“Until we know what’s special about him, it would be a grievous error to have his existence become common knowledge.”
“But you said people knew about him.”
“Rumors, really. Conjecture. A myth. A legend. I don’t think anyone really believed he existed.”
Rachel didn’t reply.
“You really don’t know how desperate people have become, do you?”
“I guess not.”
“People have gone off the deep end. The loneliness. The sadness. The idea that all this is for nothing. All the suffering was for nothing.”
“And if it got out he really existed?”
“I believe there would be a religious component to it.”
“Meaning what?”
“You agree that the vast majority of people alive before the plague believed in God?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Didn’t that strike you as odd? That literally billions of people devoted their entire lives to a supreme all-powerful being they had never, ever seen? A deity who had never once in recorded history provided irrefutable proof of his existence?”
“You don’t believe in God.”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t put much stock in that fairy tale. I’m supposed to accept as fact that a man rose from the dead from a story told over and over again, massaged, spun, re-massaged and re-spun?
“I guess I never thought of it that way.”
“Either way, I think it’s highly probable people would view Will as a gift from God. Or God Himself. The Second Coming and all that.”
A chill tickled Rachel’s spine.
“Do you mind if I ask who Will’s father was?”
“He doesn’t have one.”
For the briefest of moments, Priya’s dark olive skin paled, almost to ash.
Then Rachel began to laugh.
“His father’s an asshole. At least he was. He’s dead.”
“I see.”
“Besides, what do I care what people think about him?”
“My dear, after that, all bets would be off. We would be in uncharted waters. For the sake of humanity, we have to find out what’s special about him. We will find out. I promise you that. I am sorry if there is collateral damage. But we have to find out.”
Rachel felt a buzzing on the bridge of her nose, that sensation that things were getting away from her, that things were beyond her control and there was nothing she could do about it.
“What were you? Before?”
“Police officer.”
Rachel’s eyebrows elevated slightly.
“Don’t fit the bill, do I? Not too many Indian women working as officers.”
It didn’t fit the bill, no, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that they’d all forgotten who they were. Humanity had forgotten itself. All the things they’d been, all the things they’d done, all the things they were capable of had been swept under the rug.
She let the comment slide behind them in the wake of the moment. A stitch of commotion from the second floor drew their attention. Rachel glanced up and saw Priya’s comrades escorting two people downstairs, their footfalls heavy and clanging on the metal steps.
They were brought before Priya, two bedraggled middle-aged men. One had long hair tied back in a ponytail. His beard was speckled with gray, but it was mostly just dirty. The second man was heavier set and balding. He wore a blue New York Giants sweatshirt that had seen better days. Both were a bit wild-eyed.
“What have we here?” Priya asked. There was something unnerving about her accent, something precise and frightening. Charming and cultured once upon a time. No longer.
“Found these two upstairs.” It was one of the guys from Rachel’s vehicle. “It’s bad.”
“Show me,” Priya said. “Rachel, come along. You need to see what I’m talking about.”
Rachel paused, glancing over her shoulder toward the vehicle carrying Will.
“Relax,” she said. “He will be fine.”
Rachel’s gaze lingered on the boy a bit longer before she turned and followed Priya. The stairs felt rickety, the years of weather and wind and rain taking their toll on the metal bolts and screws. It was nearly full dark; the beams from their flashlights hitched and bounced as they scaled the steps, navigated the breezeway, past the shattered remains of a vending machine.
Rachel’s heart was beating so hard she could feel it in her ears. She didn’t know why she was so nervous. Obviously, Priya wanted to prove her point, to justify the way she handled things. Truthfully, Rachel didn’t care. People did what they wanted, and they had let it be that way. The S.S. Morality had long since set sail.
A half-moon hung in an unusually clear sky; its silver light shimmered against the windows of the rooms they passed along the balcony. The group had paused at the doorway at the end of the concourse, the men and women huddled around the entrance, shifting to get a good look at the interior but hesitant to go in.
A thick, rich smell hung in the air. Metallic. Meaty. It was different than the smell of sickness and death she remembered from the heady days of the plague, mostly gone now, but occasionally, she would catch a whiff of something, and it would all come back, all the way down to the color socks her stepfather was wearing on the day he died.
The crowd parted as she and Priya approached the doorway. Somebody handed Priya a flashlight, and she stepped into the room without a moment’s hesitation. A woman motioned for Rachel to follow her into the room, the stench growing as she drew closer. Rachel paused for a second at the threshold and then stepped inside.
It was a standard hotel room, two queen-sized beds, a small round table, a chest of drawers, a cheesy art print hanging on the wall. Rachel followed the beam of light from Priya’s flashlight around the room. A puddle of blood on the carpet by the dresser. A larger one in the space between the beds. Still another. Knives and other sharp instruments on the table. Then the flashlight settled on the bed closest to the door.
She moved the light a bit higher up on the bed. At first, Rachel didn’t know what she was looking at. Then her head processed the thing her eyes were seeing. It was a woman. At least, it had once been a woman. Now it was … desecrated, that was the best word Rachel could think of. Desecration. She looked away because there was no need to look.
“You see?” Priya asked.
“OK. It’s not the first time I’ve seen it. What’s your point?”
“The world is full of terrible things. And terrible people. This is what happens when you lose all hope. You become a monster. You become the thing you fear. For all I know these guys were middle school principals or medical supply salesmen and now this.”
Rachel had heard enough of Priya’s oral dissertation on the current state of the human condition. She went back outside and leaned against the railing, looking out on the dead town spread out before her.
She became aware of a presence behind her.
“Like I said, who knows what happens if people find out about your boy.”
They went back downstairs to the parking lot, where the two men were down on their knees, their hands laced together above their respective heads. The light from the lanterns illuminated
them in a small sphere of light. They said nothing, made no sound.
Someone handed Priya a gun.
She pressed the barrel to the nape of the first man’s neck and pulled the trigger. Rachel started at the sound of the shot; gunfire never lost its visceral punch, even if she had lost a chunk of her hearing during the gunplay of the last decade. Before the dead man’s body had finished crumpled to the ground, she repeated the action with the second man, the two gunshots coming so close together they seemed to amplify one another. The report echoed, bouncing across buildings.
They slept.
At three a.m., Rachel got up and went to the room where the dead woman lay. She pulled the cheap blanket, bearing a pattern that could best be described as a kaleidoscopic nightmare, from the second bed and covered her remains.
She sat with the dead woman and cried.
30
They drove for three days, churning west through the plains, the upper peaks of the Rockies coming into sharper relief on the horizon. The schedule was rote. On the road by seven a.m., lunch at noon, stopping at dark. Powered by the biofuel, the vehicles only managed a top speed of about thirty miles per hour, and they only managed that on a few stretches of road. The pace was maddening to Rachel, some long-dead part of her still remembering how fast cars used to travel, and then she would remind herself she could be walking. Will rode in the lead car, Rachel in the trail vehicle. Priya alternated between them, probably to compare their stories. That was one thing she didn’t have to worry about. She was telling the truth; she had no idea if Priya was, but she wasn’t in any position to second-guess her at this point.
The first night, they took shelter in a sturdily built farmhouse. The paint had peeled, and moss carpeted the exterior like a bad rash, but the structure was sound. Priya kept a guard on Rachel all night, but she was too worn out and her back was too sore to even contemplate an escape. The events of the previous night had drained the group’s energy, and they had all turned in early. Rachel slept at the end of the hall in a musty-smelling bedroom with a sentry outside her door. She didn’t know where Will had slept.
They camped outside the second night, the surrounding terrain not giving up any shelter worth hunkering down in. Again, Priya kept them separated, except at dinner, when they were allowed to sit across from one another.
“I’m not the monster you think I am,” Priya had said as they ate their beans.
Rachel didn’t reply.
Then someone had broken out a guitar, and they sang some Rolling Stones, some Beatles, even some Avett Brothers, an alt-rock-folk-bluegrass-hipster band popular right before the end. The last tune was called Murder in the City, a quiet little number about the importance of family and that one had made Rachel tear up a little, or maybe it had been from the smoke of the campfire. If Will had seen her cry, if he asked her about it, she would say it was from the smoke.
Music was a rare thing these days, and when they heard it, it sounded particularly special, almost forbidden. What business did music have in this world? Harmony and song were anathema to this world in discord. And that made it sound all the sweeter.
The third day on the road dawned wet and chilly, the rain thrumming against the polyester tents they had pitched. They were a hundred miles from Denver, which would put them there around midday, assuming they didn’t hit any obstacles. Rachel hadn’t slept well, tossing and turning all night, even briefly debating an escape attempt because she was pretty sure Will was three tents over and she could take the guard outside her tent, and they could make it to one of the vehicles in the ensuing chaos. But she was only pretty sure that’s where he was, and so she had lain in her tent, dozing more than sleeping. Shivering in the cold.
When she emerged from her tent at dawn, she felt thick and slow, her eyes sticky with sleep, her head hurting. The unknown of today added another layer of stress. Perhaps there would be answers; maybe there would only be more questions. But as she crouched, relieving herself in the bushes, she understood today was different, its outcome murky.
The group, fourteen of them in all, was buzzing, a current running through them as they ate and addressed their morning constitutionals. They all wanted to know what was out there. It wasn’t just her quest anymore.
Will woke up a few minutes later. He popped out of his tent, tufts of wild hair poking out in every direction. As he made a beeline for the chow, she noticed that little attention was being paid to him.
Now, Rachel. Now.
She finished her business and pulled up her pants. As she fastened the last button, she charted a course that would intersect with Will’s, a straight line that would bring them together near a large rock on the edge of the camp. Twenty yards. Fifteen. Ten. They made eye contact moments before she hooked her arm around his waist and pulled him past the rock, toward a copse of trees that guarded the camp’s northwest flank.
“Run,” she said. “Now.”
They bolted.
Behind her, she heard a burst of shouting, Priya’s normally reserved voice limned with anger.
“Hurry.”
The idiocy of this maneuver dawned on her as they negotiated the uneven terrain of the forest. The ground, caked with dead leaves, cascaded gently, forcing them to regulate their speed. Heavy rustling behind them as Priya’s group gave chase.
Where would they go?
What would they eat?
She didn’t even know where the hell they were.
She hazarded a look over her shoulder, a decision she immediately regretted. Her injured ankle began to throb as she negotiated the uneven terrain, a relief map of exposed roots and rocky ground. White hot pain surged up through her leg, making her stomach flip. Eventually, her leg buckled and she stumbled to the ground in a heap. Will, who had been off her right hip, tripped over his mother’s leg and landed headfirst into a mound of dirt and leaves.
“Mommy!” he barked, rolling to his side and sitting up.
Knowing the game was up, she took her time, rolling to a sitting position, facing back in the direction of the camp. A group of four came up on them and quickly surrounded them.
“Can’t blame a girl for trying, right?”
They walked back to the camp as rain began to fall; Rachel made the trip under her own power, but every step was painful, her ankle tender and fiery. She didn’t know why she had tried something so foolish, so exquisitely stupid. She could not abide being Priya’s puppet, playing to her agenda. That meant compromising who she was, what kind of mother she was. On her own, she could think, she could analyze, and if necessary she could abort. But under Priya’s thumb, she would have to go all the way, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, with a woman who represented all that was evil and wrong and twisted in the world.
Priya did not look happy when they got back. Her jaw was clenched tight, the muscles under her cheekbone rippling. Her hands closed and unfurled again, closed and opened. She was a cornered animal, looking for a way out.
“Was it worth it?” she asked in a measured voice.
Rachel couldn’t look at her. It wasn’t worth it, but she didn’t want to admit that to her.
Priya drew in close to Rachel, her lips nearly touching Rachel’s ear.
“I’m sorry,” Priya said. “But there are always consequences.”
With the speed of a cobra, Priya grabbed Rachel’s left hand and snapped her pinky finger like she was breaking a pencil. The crackle of the bone breaking was as bad if not worse than the stab of pain she felt. Her eyes watered and a grunt escaped her lips, but she refused to scream.
Priya let her go, and Rachel cradled her injured her hand against her chest. Steam curled from her overheated skin, even in the chilly rain. They stared at each other, the world around them falling away from her periphery until there was nothing but Priya. Her eyes were stone dead, the visage of a woman who had plucked the wings from a housefly, who had used a magnifying glass to scorch a trail of ants. Rachel vowed she would find the answer Priya was looking for, she most cer
tainly would, and then she would kill her.
“Bring me some medical tape,” she said.
No one moved.
“I said bring me some goddamned medical tape!”
This galvanized her troops and suddenly there were half a dozen people looking for medical tape, digging through packs and first-aid kits until someone brought her a roll of it from their medical kit. Priya tore off two long sections and affixed them to her sleeve.
“Give me your hand,” she said.
Rachel extended her hand to the woman; her finger trembled from the trauma Priya had inflicted upon it. Priya gently straightened the finger and splinted it against Rachel’s ring finger, binding them together with the lengths of tape.
“Are we done with the silliness now?”
Rachel nodded.
“Don’t you see?” Priya asked. “We need each other. You never would have made it without me. I can’t save us without you. Without Will. The fate of the human race may depend on our alliance. I’m not saying you have to like me. But understand that your success depends on mine.
“Are you ready to see this to the end now?”
Rachel’s finger throbbed.
“Yes.”
#
They hit the Denver city limits shortly before noon, the skyline coming into view as they rounded a curve along Interstate 56. As they rounded a curve, Rachel could make out the shadowy outline of the Rockies in the distance, veiled by the mist and the low-hanging clouds. She’d been to Denver only once before, when she was in ninth grade and she and her mother and Jerry had flown here for a cousin’s wedding. A boy had tried to kiss her at that wedding, and she had turned her cheek at the last moment, giving him nothing but a mouthful of her hair. She tried recalling his name but she could not.
It was the biggest city Rachel had seen in years; she had forgotten how massive the buildings were. From a distance, Denver looked none worse for the wear, about what you’d expect on a quiet day in the big city. Dead traffic still choked the eastbound lanes headed out of the city, but nature was doing its best to win back the territory. Hearty weeds had overwhelmed the rusted and deteriorating hulks of metal, as though the cars had invaded a nature preserve and not the other way around.
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