It’s Doyle’s call to make. Yet only as he accepts the need does he begin to speculate, too late, at the feasibility. They’ll be easy prey on the roadside, and he wouldn’t dare risk entering a building, even if they could find one that looked suitable in the mounting darkness.
It’s more luck than he feels he deserves that a solution presents itself. Ahead, a low gorge looms from the twilight, spanned by a bridge of stained concrete and metal barrier rails. A dirt track breaks leftward from the road, and on a flash of impulse, Doyle crosses to follow it. The trail leads down the slope, tucks under the struts of the bridge, and then, inexplicably, peters out. The headlights fall upon a muddy strip of river crawling through the gorge bed. On the near bank, an overturned supermarket shopping cart and a couple of battered plastic crates lie amid other assorted trash.
Doyle maneuvers the jeep so that they’re facing toward the trail. Satisfied, he leans back, stretching cramped limbs. A groan, half of discomfort and half of relief, slips free before he can contain it.
When he glances at Kyle, the boy is gazing at him, bleary-eyed from tiredness but with evident distrust. “Why here?” he asks.
“It’s as safe as anywhere.”
“What if Sickers come by?”
“Then it’s still as safe as anywhere.”
Kyle considers. “Can we take a walk?”
Doyle doesn’t like the idea of letting the girl leave the jeep. He reminds himself that she’s been out before, that in fact her presence might have saved his life. But it’s hard to make the thought stick. “Keep close,” he says.
He watches them for a minute, Kyle pacing stiff-legged and the girl scurrying back and forth around him, holding her arms always as though she isn’t certain what to do with them, making chuckling sounds that never come near to being words. Then Doyle makes a start on a fire.
The river has washed up scraps of wood, and he’s brought firelighters and matches and a small sack of barbeque coals from the stores. Altogether, it proves easier than he’d expected. Once the fire’s going, Doyle prepares a sparse dinner of beans and dogs. He doesn’t need to call the others back; the smell of cooking food draws them. Doyle and Kyle sit on the overturned crates, the gun stashed at Doyle’s feet. The girl eats rapidly, scooping with her fingers, oblivious of the heat. She’s heedful to waste nothing. Afterward, Doyle washes the plates and pans in the river, and empties his bladder into the murky flow. He walks to where Kyle is waiting beside the flagging fire and says, “You can sleep in the back. I’ll take the front. The girl can have the trunk.”
Doyle unpacks the blankets he’s brought. There are even a couple of stiff, yellowed pillows in there, a suggestion of Carlita’s. Doyle carries the bedding around and tosses it through the open side doors. He returns to the fire. “We should bed down before it gets any darker.”
“I’ll help Abigail get settled,” Kyle agrees.
Doyle would like to say more, something that might cement this hesitant peace between them. No words come to him. He scuffs the leftovers of the fire with a heel, paces back to the jeep, and climbs into the front, locking the door behind him. He settles the gun in the passenger footwell, lies down in his clothes, pulls the blanket to his chin, and bundles the pillow in the angle where seat meets door. He closes his eyes and listens as Kyle strives to make himself comfortable.
Tiredness settles over him, a weight that draws at his whole body. Doyle was convinced he wouldn’t sleep, but the notion seems absurd now. He feels like cement sinking into dark water.
However, when sleep comes, it’s sullen, fragmentary, a smothering presence beyond which he can perceive the waking world. He dreams unsettling chunks of dreams. Once, he’s certain Sickers have gathered round the jeep, but when Doyle forces his eyes open, there’s only the darkness. The third time he wakes, it’s with the awareness of a nightmare he’s forgotten even as he reaches for the memory, and with unease that has nothing to do with Sickers. He knows what’s caused it, though not how he knows. And as he wonders, Doyle hears the slightest creak of the seat backs.
He doesn’t open his eyes. Nevertheless, Doyle is suddenly, entirely awake. He isn’t afraid, but there’s a pressure in his mind and limbs that’s almost paralyzing. “Kyle,” he says, so softly he can scarcely be sure he’s spoken.
Again, there comes a fractional noise, or else a change in the quality of the silence. Yet all Doyle feels is that overwhelming weight.
“You can kill me anytime,” he says. “Why not see what’s in the city first?”
The moment stretches. He begins to doubt himself. Then, once more, there’s an impression of motion, and Doyle knows that Kyle has moved away. He knows as well that in the morning he’ll remember this as if it had been a dream, as if he’d never woken or spoken. He knows that as much as he feels he won’t get back to sleep, he will, and that it will be better sleep than the night has offered so far.
Doyle settles against his knotted pillow and lets himself sink.
Chapter Forty
She doesn’t know what time it is, except that it’s night. Aaronovich can hear raised voices from the direction of the cellblock. Just raised voices, and yet they must be very loud to carry such a distance, even in the still air.
That air is cool rather than cold, but the cold will surely come soon. Aaronovich, finding herself thinking of Abigail, pushes the thought aside before it can take hold. The cold doesn’t bother Abigail. If there’s anyone she should be concerned for, it’s Kyle or Doyle Johnson – or herself.
Aaronovich keeps close to the administrative wing, merging her silhouette with its darkness. At the corner, she hurries across the gap to the Big House, already regretting the weight of the bags she’s packed. She’s not a young woman. She won’t be able to get far burdened like this. However, if she wants to survive for more than a day or two, then, sooner or later, she’ll need all that she’s carrying.
And she does want to survive. Of everything she’s realized in the last few hours, that is perhaps her greatest revelation. She’s not willing to let Funland take her life as it’s taken so much else.
She slips through a door and, only once it’s shut behind her, flicks on her flashlight. Aaronovich has spent so little time in the Big House, or anywhere outside of her offices, that she’s hardly familiar with these corridors. But Doyle made her memorize the route to Carlita’s rooms, and it isn’t complicated. She knows she’s followed his directions precisely when she comes up against a locked door; few doors are kept locked in Funland these days. She taps lightly, and when there’s no response, more firmly. Though she would like to call Carlita’s name, it seems just plausible that someone might be listening. Nothing can be trusted or assumed.
Aaronovich waits. Even the prospect of knocking again makes her anxious. If circumstances should get out of control, the Big House is the first place they’ll come. It’s a symbol, and don’t revolutions thrive upon such things? Yet she finds that she can’t imagine what has begun in those terms, as a rupture with the past intended to resuscitate the future. No, what Aaronovich envisages when she thinks of the events occurring at this moment in the cellblock is the last frantic spasms of a dying animal.
Aaronovich senses rather than hears movement on the other side of the door. “Carlita?” she murmurs.
“Doctor?”
“Yes. Will you open the door?”
There’s a pause, and a palpable air of hesitation. Then comes the click of a lock turning. The door opens a sliver. There’s candlelight beyond, but Aaronovich can’t see Carlita’s face, merely the shape of her, outlined.
“What are you doing here?” Carlita sounds apprehensive, as if even Aaronovich could be a threat, or at any rate the harbinger of danger.
Which indeed she is. “We’re not safe,” Aaronovich says. Because that’s too much a statement of the obvious, she adds, “Foster came asking about Johnson. He’s afraid he’s going to lo
se control. He’s right to be. Maybe he’ll be able to keep them in check and it won’t come to anything. But even if he can….” Even if he can, I think it’s all over. No, I know it is. “We need to be ready. To plan for the worst.”
“The worst?” Carlita echoes, as though testing the concept.
Aaronovich gives her a moment to reach the same conclusions she herself has, which are the only conclusions possible.
“My god,” Carlita says. “You really mean it.”
“I don’t know how long we have. Likely not long at all. If they find out what I’ve done in the infirmary—”
Carlita’s eyes widen. “What did you do?” But nothing in the question suggests that she expects an answer. Perhaps she’s already read what she needs to in Aaronovich’s expression.
“So can I come in?”
This time, she allows an edge of forcefulness into her voice. She doesn’t take Carlita’s reluctance personally. They’re both aware that along with Aaronovich comes everything she represents, an irreparable puncture in Carlita’s hermetically sealed reality and hard choices with no correct answers. Still, every instant she spends in the corridor makes her feel more exposed.
Then Carlita steps back, drawing the door after her. “Yes,” she says. “Of course.”
Chapter Forty-One
Johnson was right about one thing. There will be other opportunities. As gray light seeps around the edges of the bridge, that’s the only thought Kyle can find any comfort in.
He’d lain, not feigning sleep because he knew Johnson couldn’t see him, but staying perfectly still. All the while, he’d kept one hand in his pocket, gripping the hilt of his knife. He’d planned to wait for Johnson’s breathing to level out, but it never did, and Kyle had decided that must simply be how a man slept when he had so much guilt on his conscience.
Kyle could perceive a narrow stripe of sky past the bridge, and he’d watched the stars glimmering there. The night was clear, the moon brilliant and sharp. The astringent light had made him think of Aaronovich’s infirmary. He’d fallen asleep just once, despite himself. He’d dreamed of that first night in Funland: he and Carlita together after the crash, the doctor tending to their injuries. In the dream, however, Austin had been there, and he’d been sick. Initially, Kyle had been afraid, until he’d come to comprehend that all Austin did was cower in the corner, whimpering with steady terror. Kyle had roused feeling not frightened but troubled, and for a moment the frigid moonlight had made him question if he’d really woken.
By then, he no longer doubted that Johnson must be sleeping. Kyle had slipped the knife out of his pocket. He’d shifted to his knees, flinching at every slight creak. For the first time, he’d considered how he would do it. He’d have to lean through the gap in the seats, holding the knife outstretched. Yet there was no way he’d be able to apply enough pressure like that for a clean cut. His sole hope would be that surprise would buy the second or two he needed.
He hadn’t thought until then of Johnson struggling, of there being blood. But Johnson would struggle. There would be very much blood. Kyle felt bile swelling in his throat. Regardless, he’d leaned into the gap between the seats, the knife held out before him.
And Johnson had begun to talk.
Nothing could have horrified Kyle more. It wasn’t the words themselves; perhaps it was only how Johnson remained so completely immobile, as though speaking out of sleep or even death. Still, Kyle had kept control of himself. He’d moved back slowly, as slowly as he’d ever done anything. He’d lain down, by the smallest degrees. He’d pulled his blanket over him, willing the coarse fabric into silence.
That was how he’d spent the rest of the night. It’s how, with eyes gummed by tiredness, he greets the colorless morning.
If he had merely been deterred then he might have slept. What bothers Kyle isn’t that he was discovered, it’s the sure knowledge that he could never have gone through with his plan. He’d realized the truth in the instant before Johnson spoke, had known with cold and absolute certainty. Whatever it would take to drive a knife into a sleeping man’s throat was nowhere to be found in him.
That doesn’t mean Johnson gets away with what he’s done. Nothing can diminish for one moment the fact that he shot Kyle’s father to death, that, when he lets himself, Kyle can still feel the warm spatter of blood on his cheek.
What it means is that he can’t use the knife. Probably not a gun, either. But there are other ways to kill a man, aren’t there? Out here, there must be. All he can do is wait to see what possibilities this desolate new world has to offer. Maybe it will kill Doyle Johnson of its own accord, and all Kyle will have to do is watch.
* * *
Doyle stirs soon after dawn, chilly and stiff-limbed. He isn’t surprised to find Kyle already awake. Doyle considers suggesting that they have some breakfast, but the thought makes him queasy, he’d rather not push their supplies, and the notion of building a fire strikes him as somehow riskier now than on the previous night. In the end, he shares around a packet of cookies. Of the three of them, the girl seems to be the only one to have had any sleep. She’s alert, full of nervous energy, too much so for Doyle’s liking. He’s glad when Kyle walks with her along the river’s edge, allowing him to pack the bedding and bundle it into the back without constantly feeling the need to keep her in view.
At no point does he mention what happened in the night. It isn’t that he’s trying to protect Kyle. Doyle just has no idea what he can say.
When Kyle returns, the Sicker girl is calmer, a portion of her vitality burned off by the exercise. She’s behaving better than Doyle had dared anticipate. He has to remind himself that’s absolutely not a reason to trust her, any more than he’d trust a trained wolf. Doyle pauses until Kyle has her settled in the back before he takes the driver’s seat, wincing at the prospect of a second day behind the wheel. He builds speed on the brief flat stretch beyond the bridge and then guns the engine, as the jeep struggles upon the loose-surfaced incline. The tires slide and spit gravel, and Doyle is grateful when the dirt track resolves to asphalt.
He’d been expecting Sickers. In his imagination, they were waiting on the bridge, or back up the road maybe, watching cold-eyed as buzzards. That they aren’t there perturbs Doyle. A threat that behaves according to his expectations is one he stands a chance against. People that act like monsters he can understand, he’s seen it all too often. He doesn’t want to have to think about Aaronovich’s theories, which even now nudge the edges of his mind. He doesn’t want to wonder if she might be right.
At first, the roads are much the same as yesterday, cracked and pockmarked and littered with debris. The going gets easier when finally they leave the back roads for the highway. There, at least there are no fallen trees, though in places refuse has blown across the lanes: in one spot a battered billboard, in another a sheet of polythene, snared on the central reservation and flopping like some obscene jellyfish.
With six lanes, these hazards are easy to avoid, and for whole stretches the highway is utterly empty. It’s ten minutes, even, before Doyle spies the first vehicle, a flatbed truck painted in military colors, pulled carefully to the side of the road and clearly abandoned long ago, for the windows are shattered and the green is nearly gray with plastered dust. After that, there are others: once an eighteen-wheeler on the far shoulder, a couple more military vehicles, but very few cars.
Here, too, there’s no sign of Sickers. Doyle has to caution himself not to relax. Not seeing them doesn’t mean they aren’t around. Yet, rationally, there’s no doubt that the highway has little to offer; with no traffic, there’s nothing, not even roadkill, to draw them. It makes sense that they should keep to the country, where they have shelter, water, and the possibility of food.
By early afternoon, Doyle has grown so complacent that, when the jeep crests a rise and the dip beyond reveals a half dozen Sickers spread across the lanes, his imme
diate reaction is to stamp the brake rather than to speed up. It’s crazy, stupid, but in that moment they look so normal, it’s easier to accept the illusion than to convince himself they’re a threat.
They’re crossing between the banks, the road now just another terrain to them. Spaced across the blacktop, their presence conjures the absurd impression of a mother duck trailed by her ducklings. Doyle counts four adults and two children, scantly covered despite the cold.
One of the children – a boy in his teens, perhaps Kyle’s age – is first to look round. He cocks his head at the low rumble of the engine. His thin pale face is suspended in a rat’s nest of black hair that hangs past his shoulders. His eyes are wide open, as though in shock. He takes a step toward them, and at that the others turn as well.
Doyle has been observing rather than driving. In the back, the girl is growling, a constant rumble from the depths of her throat. The jeep is hardly moving. Doyle goes for the accelerator, grazes it, and the engine makes a strangled sound. He wants to pound his foot upon the pedal. Instead, he forces himself to work it gently.
They’re too spread out. There’s no way around. If he tries to break through, how will they respond? A human body, even emaciated like these are, is a heavy thing. Doyle prefers not to learn what one would do to their windshield. And six Sickers, working together, what could they achieve? Or should he be counting seven? The girl is still growling, an insistent, off-key note such as a damaged machine might make.
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