Distinct

by Hamill, Ike

  “I don’t understand,” Corinna said. “Where’s the ‘Under God’?”

  “They didn’t have it here. It wasn’t added to our pledge until the 1950s, and not at all in this place.”

  “What are you talking about? I grew up in this place.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yeah. A few miles that way.” She pointed roughly east.

  “And on Thanksgiving a couple of years ago, what happened?”

  “Everyone disappeared,” she said.

  “Or maybe only you disappeared. Maybe you and me and Liam disappeared from the place where ‘Under God’ was in the Pledge. Maybe this is a different place that just looks the same.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head as she backed away from Robby and Gordie. “No.”

  “Why did you paint ‘Lies’ on the plaque?”

  “It was wrong. The year was wrong.”

  “And what year did the planes fly into the twin towers?”

  “Planes?”

  “What year did the World Trade Center come down?”

  “The bombs went off in ’02. They finished rebuilding in 2008, one year behind schedule because of the fight over the steel.”

  Robby nodded. “And for me, that’s not what happened at all.”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  “That’s why I have to go south and see the burn for myself. I have to figure out what makes sense.”

  Corinna kept backing up until she hit the white gate.

  “Take care of Liam,” Robby said. “If you have to, give him some drugs so you can take him upstate. He needs people. You both do.”

  “No,” she said. After she ducked under the gate, she ran.

  Robby sighed and looked at Gordie.

  “You ready?”

  They turned back towards the depths of the tunnel.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  It was worst while they still had the glow of daylight behind them. Robby wanted to turn and run back towards the safety of the light. He wanted to be back aboveground and find another way to continue the journey.

  He stopped and took a deep breath. A few paces ahead of him, Gordie’s collar light was white. The dog was facing towards him, waiting for him to follow.

  “We’ve gone a hundred paces,” he said to Gordie. “That leaves about thirty-four hundred more, give or take.”

  Robby ran the numbers again in his head. The total seemed way too high. The first hundred had taken a tremendous amount of bravery and willpower. There was no way he was going to be able to do that thirty-four more times.

  Gordie was waiting. He had no irrational fear of the dark.

  “Okay,” Robby whispered. He started walking and counting. Gordie turned and trotted ahead. His collar light was flashing red from this angle.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  Robby held a light in each hand. He had a light on a strap slung over his shoulder to point behind them as they walked. It was too easy to imagine something lurking back there, trailing just outside the bubble of light.

  “Seventeen-fifty,” he whispered. He stopped and turned to look back at the ground they had already covered. “That’s halfway.”

  Gordie turned to look at him. His eyes caught the light and glowed green.

  Robby’s breath caught in his throat. He suddenly imagined the crushing weight of all the water above them. There was enough water to drown them both a billion times over. He shook his head to dispel the image and got his feet moving again. He counted his steps. After twenty-two steps, he had to glance behind himself again to make sure that he wasn’t being followed.

  He kept two counts in his head at the same time—total number of steps, and steps since he had last stopped.

  If he could make it to twenty-three steps since he had last stopped, then he was getting better.

  In time with his steps, he heard another noise up ahead. At first, he blamed Gordie. The dog’s light was flashing red—Gordie was facing into the darkness. Robbie’s light picked up the shape of the dog. Gordie was standing still.

  Robby stopped suddenly—both of his counts forgotten.

  The noise that had accompanied his footsteps continued. It sounded like water dripping into a puddle.

  Gordie started to growl.

  “Gordie, to me,” Robby whispered.

  The dog was frozen in the same spot.

  “Gordie!” Robby whispered.

  He forced himself to move forward, and catch up with the dog. Gordie growled again.

  “It’s probably mice, or rats, or raccoons,” he whispered.

  Gordie glanced back at Robby and then turned forward to let out another growl. The dog was unconvinced.

  “Right. Why would they be down here, a three-quarters of a mile from food? Unless…”

  Robby pictured rats working under the skin of a leathery old corpse. Maybe down here the invisible clawed creatures hadn’t been able to snatch up this victim. Maybe he or she had died with their eyes popped out, dripping down their face.

  “Or maybe it was just a regular person who tried to pass through the tunnel and got taken down by a giant pack of rats,” Robby told Gordie.

  Or maybe they weren’t rats at all. Maybe it was something much worse. Robby had seen worse. He had met a man who made the idea of being eaten alive by rats sound like a Sunday picnic.

  “We’re halfway,” Robby said. “Forward or back?”

  He heard the dripping again.

  “Let’s go back,” Robby said.

  He turned to point his light back the way they had come. There was only one problem with that plan. They had passed several doors that were built into the wall along the way. If something had been waiting behind one of those doors, it could be coming their way. They could be walking right into the arms of…

  A noise made Robby whip around.

  He saw Gordie’s red light flash as the dog sprinted into the darkness. A moment later, the light was gone.

  “Gordie!” Robby yelled. His voice echoed off the walls and faded slowly.

  “Gordie!”

  Robby heard the drip again.

  He had no choice. He ran after the dog.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  The shape in the distance didn’t make sense. It was too big.

  One of the taillights caught Robby’s flashlight and the shape resolved itself. It was the first car that Robby had seen in the tunnel. Since the gates had been down across the entrance, he had assumed that it was empty.

  Robby turned his light away from the vehicle and realized that he could still see the outline of the car. It was being lit up from behind—Gordie’s light!

  He rushed to the abandoned car and maneuvered around it. He made sure to keep a decent distance from the edge. It was too easy to imagine a hand darting out from the deep shadows under the car.

  Gordie was on the other side, sniffing the front grille.

  Robby heard the drip again as Gordie dropped to his elbows.

  “No, Gordie,” Robby said. He dropped to the floor to look. The dog had found the source of the sound. Coolant was leaking from the car and dripping into a green puddle underneath.

  “That’s poison,” Robby said. He put a light in his mouth to free up a hand. Robby reached into the backpack. Gordie hunched low as soon as he saw what Robby had.

  “I know you hate the leash, but you keep running off into danger. I can’t have that.”

  Gordie put his ears back and blinked up at Robby as he snapped the leash to the dog’s collar.

  “This isn’t home. We don’t know what’s out here.”

  Gordie stayed close to the pavement and followed Robby as he moved around to the driver’s door. The door was ajar. When Robby reached for it, Gordie went flat down to his belly and let out a low whine.

  “I’m just curious,” Robby said. He pulled the door open, not surprised that the lights didn’t come on. The days of finding perfectly serviceable cars laying around was long past. The batteries were dead, the gas was
bad, and in cases like this one, the engines were leaking vital fluids.

  Robby pointed his light into the car.

  “Huh,” he said.

  The keys were still in the ignition and all the seat belts were still buckled.

  “I haven’t seen that before,” Robby said. Gordie wasn’t interested. He was straining at the leash, pulling Robby away from the car. “You’re right. The last thing we need is another mystery.”

  Gordie was eager to move on. Instead of slinking behind Robby as they continued towards New Jersey, Gordie led the way. He pulled at the leash.

  Robby heard another drip.

  He spun around.

  The car was gone. A light fog made halos around the beams of the flashlights.

  Gordie whined and pulled.

  “Wait,” Robby whispered. “Where did it go?”

  He used both flashlights to point behind them. The tunnel curved, but they had only walked a few steps. It had to be there. When Robby tried to take a step back, Gordie’s low whine rose to a moan. It almost sounded like he was trying to speak.

  “Yeah,” Robby said. “You’re right.”

  He let the dog lead him away.

  Robby split his attention, forward and back.

  “Where did it go?” he whispered again. “I have to think about this. Slow down, Gordie, I need to think.”

  The dog wouldn’t let him slow. When Robby’s pace faltered, Gordie pulled even harder, digging his nails in and pulling at his collar. Robby forgot about the flashlights and forgot about counting. His feet moved automatically to keep his legs underneath him. He was lost in thought.

  The door of the car had been ajar, but the seat belts were still buckled and the keys were in it. Aboveground, people had pulled over and then stepped out of their cars before they were snatched up into the sky. Half of the people had even shut off the engine. Some had dropped the keys just outside the vehicle. For the first few months after that first Thanksgiving, the biggest challenge had been to find a car with juice left in the battery.

  Was something different underground?

  Gordie stopped and Robby ran into the back of the dog.

  After a second, Robby snapped out of his trance.

  “What’s wrong?” Robby asked.

  He pointed his light and saw. Just ahead, the tunnel began to rise. Both lanes were clogged with vehicles. The cars and trucks were sideways, backwards, and at strange angles. Robby even saw one set of tires that were pointed straight up. It looked like someone had picked up the whole tunnel and just shaken it.

  Between Robby and the mess of vehicles, there was a drain in the center of the roadway. A line of liquid reflected Robby’s light—it had dripped from the cars down to the drain.

  “We’re not going through that,” Robby said to Gordie. The dog looked up at him—he agreed.

  They went to the side of the road where a walkway was built into the wall. They had avoided it until now. That’s where the doorways were located, and at several points along the way there were places were the walkway was blocked. It would have taken more time to climb up and down to the raised walk. Besides, until then the roadway had been clear.

  Gordie got his front paws up and Robby lifted the dog so he could slip under the railing. Robby followed, grabbing the leash again.

  The upward slope was encouraging. It meant that they were climbing out of the depths. Robby’s light wandered to the vehicles they passed. He saw the same thing, over and over. Most of the doors were shut. Every driver’s seat belt was buckled. Coffee had been spilled. Cell phones had been dropped on seats. In the passenger’s seat of one car, Robby saw a pair of knitting needles and a bag of yarn on the seat.

  “They weren’t snatched,” Robby said. “They were vaporized.”

  His own voice echoed back to him.

  Robby spun to check behind himself—to make sure that nothing was coming up the walkway behind them.

  Gordie whined.

  When Robby spun back around, his light swept over the roadway again.

  There was nothing but bare pavement.

  His hand trembled as he aimed the light in every direction. Gordie whined again. Robby couldn’t find a single car in sight. There was no spilled coffee, no cell phones, and no knitting. It was all gone.

  “Let’s go,” Robby said to Gordie. The dog kept up as Robby sprinted.

  CHAPTER 15: GLADSTONE

  “TURN LEFT HERE,” ROMIE said.

  “They don’t have their meetings at Red’s anymore?” Brad asked.

  “They outgrew it,” Romie said. “They’ll be headed up to Smitty’s.”

  Brad turned the wheel and drove up the hill. A tree had fallen across the road at some point. The lengths of wood were stacked up on a lawn. There was still some sawdust in the street.

  “That’s where they had their batteries,” Romie said, pointing.

  Brad slowed down and whistled softly. “That place really went up, huh?”

  “Yup,” Romie said.

  “I know it’s early, but where is everyone? I would think that they would be going to their own meeting.”

  “Who knows? Maybe it was cancelled,” Romie said. “For the record, I hope they’re all gone. I think this is a monumentally stupid idea.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  Brad turned into the parking lot and pulled into a spot near the restaurant. He got out and took a deep breath of the morning air. Down at his house, a cool mist from the water had felt chilly. Up here, a little up the hill in Northam, it was getting ready to turn hot. Brad took off his flannel and tossed it in the car.

  “Just let me do the talking,” Romie said.

  “Got it.”

  She led the way.

  The door to the restaurant was open. There was nobody inside.

  “So you think it was cancelled?” Brad asked.

  “Maybe. I thought we would find a note,” Romie said. “You know, for the stragglers.”

  Brad walked between the tables to the far end. He put his hands on the table of a booth and looked through the window across the parking lot. Behind him, Romie went behind the bar and then continued to the door to the kitchen. She went through one set of swinging doors and came out the other.

  “Nothing,” she said. “I would say they changed venues again, but I don’t know why they would. This place is big enough, and the bar and kitchen are stocked.”

  “It’s a ghost town,” Brad said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Yeah,” Romie said.

  They both headed for the door. Just before Romie put her hands on the frame to push it open, a man appeared on the other side. He pulled open the door and they backed up as he smiled and entered.

  “Good,” Abe said, panting. “I was hoping I would catch you here.”

  Romie looked at Brad and then back to Abe. “We didn’t say we were coming.”

  Abe nodded and smiled again. “I know. I just hoped. We’ve changed the meeting place. We’re up on the hill at the greenhouse now.”

  “Oh yeah?” Romie asked. “Listen—we can’t stay. We just came to let you know that some folks from upstate might be paying a visit soon. We’re hoping that if you see any of them, you could send a runner over our way as a little courtesy, you know?”

  Abe nodded along as Romie explained.

  “Sure, yeah. Of course,” Abe said. “You should really come up and tell everyone yourself though, you know? Just to make sure I don’t jumble up the message.” He pointed to Brad. “Plus, we have some interesting new things we want to show you in the garden. We’re all very proud of our accomplishments, and…”

  Romie put a hand on his arm to stop his babbling.

  “Listen, Abe, we really have to get going. We’ll take a raincheck on the garden tour, okay?”

  “You really should come and take a look though,” Abe said as Brad moved to the man’s side. Brad leaned down and glanced through the glass door.

  “And we will,” Romie said. “I promise. It’s jus
t that, you know, time has gotten…”

  She didn’t bother to finish. Brad’s hand came up, holding a silver napkin holder. His swing plowed the metal into the side of Abe’s head. Romie was collapsing on Abe before he hit the ground.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  Abe thrashed and writhed against Romie’s grip as Brad dragged him by the feet. She held a hand over his mouth, but some of Abe’s shouts leaked through her fingers. Once in the kitchen, they shoved Abe through the heavy door into the freezer. Brad kept his shoulder against the door while Romie maneuvered a heavy table to take his place. Together, they wedged the door shut with the table. From the other side, they could barely hear Abe’s pounding.

  “I assume you had a reason for attacking him?” Romie asked.

  “If they don’t have the place surrounded, we might make it through the south door,” Brad said.

  He rushed for the back door of the place and put his weight against the exit bar. The mechanism clicked and Brad pushed it open an inch. From the dining area of the restaurant, they heard something fall to the ground.

  Romie’s eyes went wide. She pointed to the door.

  Brad pushed through. At the other end of the alley, a man was coming around the corner. Brad rushed across and ducked behind a dumpster. He watched as the man turned and then Brad waved for Romie. She darted across too.

  The man must have seen her. He shouted.

  Romie and Brad ran the other direction. Neither of them moved very fast. Brad had suffered a knee injury during the skirmish at Donnelly High. Romie had taken shrapnel that same day. They didn’t have far to go. The car was parked right around the corner. Romie got there first, pulling open the driver’s door and throwing herself inside. The engine started as Brad was still coming around the front of the vehicle.

  The man chasing him caught Brad’s shirt. Romie put the car into gear and bounced it up onto the curb. The man lost his grip as the car connected with his hip. Brad tugged free and caught hold of the door handle, swinging it open and then continuing his momentum until he flopped into the seat. Romie was already backing up. The man was back on his feet and he was joined by another. They chased after the car and caught it when Romie spun the wheel and shifted into forward.