Distinct

by Hamill, Ike

  “These weren’t here,” Corinna said as she turned in her seat. “I would have seen them before. They weren’t here.”

  “That’s what Robby was saying, too. He was suggesting that the world is in flux.”

  “The churn,” Corinna said.

  Brad nodded and took a right. There wasn’t enough space between the vehicles ahead.

  “That was what they called it—the churn. They said that Robby was out in the churn.”

  “I think we’re in it now.”

  Brad took a left so they could get back on track. A small park let the sunlight shine down on the street. Up on the concrete sidewalk, he saw a dozen or so black blobs. He veered away from that side.

  “What are they doing?” Corinna asked.

  “They’re basking,” he said.

  “Not them,” she said, pointing to the shadows. “Them.”

  He looked where she was pointing and saw a rolling black cloud.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  As soon as he heard the hum and recognized the cloud of bees, Brad jerked the wheel in the other direction to get away from them.

  “Don’t panic,” Corinna said. “We used to keep bees. They’re not going to come after us without a reason.”

  “You don’t know,” Brad said. He reached down and pressed the buttons to assure that all the windows were up. He kept the vehicle at a steady speed, not wanting to draw their attention. On the other side, one of the lizards lunged and snapped when they rolled close.

  They passed the swarm and the humming rattled the van’s windows. The air vibrated with the sound of their beating wings. The shifting shape of the cloud was mesmerizing. Corinna ducked to look up through the window and study them.

  “They must be forming a new colony,” Corinna said. “They’ll swarm around the queen and relocate before a new queen can…”

  When she didn’t finish, Brad stole a glance, pulling his attention from the road for just a moment.

  “What?”

  “Those aren’t bees. You better drive faster.”

  He was trying to maneuver between an abandoned car and one of the basking lizards. At the sound of the urgency in her voice, Brad accelerated and steered around the car. The tires strayed very close to the lizard. He could hear the thing snap at them as they rolled by. Corinna still had her eyes fixed on the swarm.

  “Wasps, maybe. Maybe something I’ve never heard of. That might be a hunting swarm.”

  Brad accelerated even more. He didn’t like the sound of that.

  The first wasps that hit the back window of the van sounded almost like rain. When they started plinking into the van’s roof, it sounded more like hail. No matter how fast Brad drove, weaving down the street between cars and hoping he wouldn’t come to another roadblock, the bees or wasps kept up with them.

  CHAPTER 51: WESTERN MASS

  CARRIE LUCKED OUT. EXHAUSTED, she turned down a side street because a lot of the houses had tall hedges that she could duck behind if she heard Terry’s truck coming after her. Behind one of those hedges, she saw the same kind of solar panels as she had seen in Northam. One of the couples had rigged up those panels on their garage roof so they could charge up an electric vehicle. Some people swore by the idea. Others said that it took too long to get a charge from the sun.

  Carrie didn’t care. She broke a window and let herself into the garage. It was right there—a Tesla sedan. When she finally found the key fob in the foyer, she discovered that the car was fully charged. The giant display in the center console complained that the vehicle wasn’t connected to the network. Carrie hit the button for the garage door and waited several seconds before she realized that it wasn’t hooked up to power.

  She got out and manually raised the door.

  Out on the street, her getaway was silent. The electric car barely made a whisper as it whisked her away.

  As she followed the signs to the highway, Carrie found the range indicator and tried to guess how far she had to travel. She would never make it. According to her best guess, she wouldn’t even make it to the western border of Massachusetts before the battery would be drained. Carrie pumped her fist in the air when she found the climate controls. Turning everything off gave her significantly more range.

  …Can’t stay on the main roads…

  The voice inside her head shocked her. Carrie had been so wrapped up in evading the murder trio that she had almost forgotten about it.

  “Why can’t I stay on the main roads?” she whispered.

  …Roadblocks. He has sent out people to create roadblocks on all the major arteries leading to Donnelly…

  “I can’t get all the way there on local roads,” she said. “That would take forever and the maps in this thing aren’t working.”

  …Then we won’t make it…

  Carrie sighed. One more problem to contend with. She figured out the cruise control and set the vehicle to follow the lane. Carrie settled back into the seat.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  The vehicle chimed and braked automatically as it rolled towards the stalled truck. Carrie snapped back awake. She had drifted off as the miles passed.

  “Roadblock,” she whispered.

  She was wrong.

  It was just a normal truck that someone had left on the road. Back in Northam, people had cleaned up a lot of the abandoned cars. Here, in the middle of Massachusetts, nobody had bothered. Carrie took the wheel and steered around the truck. She got the car back up to speed and set the controls again.

  …But it’s time to get off the main roads. There will be roadblocks…

  “I wonder if I could make this thing drive without me in it,” she said to herself. She cycled through the controls on the panel until she found a status indicator for the self-driving feature. When she tried to remove the safety belt or even lift her weight from the seat, the vehicle would start to slow itself down and demand her attention.

  “I’ll need a weight and I’ll have to get it moving and then jump through the window, I guess.”

  …No…

  “But then the car could roll up on the next roadblock and draw their attention.”

  …No…

  “It could work.”

  …NO!…

  The voice in her head was so loud that it made Carrie’s hands clamp down on the steering wheel until the echoes died away.

  “Fine.”

  She used the next exit. It took her several minutes to find a gas station that had a rack of paper maps. She found the right page and creased the book so she could prop it against the car’s display. On the seat next to her, she had a book for New York and Vermont, just in case. Five minutes later, she was lost. The road claiming to be Route 122 had no business going through the middle of Wetherton, but there it was. Carrie couldn’t find a single intersection in real life that matched what the map said she should see.

  She tossed the book aside and changed the car’s display to a simple compass. For the moment, as long as she was headed west, she was going the right direction.

  CHAPTER 52: NEW YORK CITY

  “TRUST ME,” CORINNA SAID.

  Brad grunted and turned the wheel.

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you. I’m simply afraid that the world has changed beneath us. Just because you remember this place as safe, it doesn’t mean that it still is.”

  The wasps were still plinking and pinging against the outside of the van. One had flown through the air vent and Corinna had smashed the thing with the side of her hand before she collected it with a tissue. They had closed all the vents after that. Still, there were one or two vents that Corinna found under the dash that couldn’t be closed. While Brad drove, she had stuffed them with tissue too.

  “I don’t see what good this will do us,” Brad said. The ramp led down under the building, to a subterranean parking level.

  “They won’t follow us down here.”

  The van descended into darkness. The van’s lights came on automatically. Brad flipped on the
high beams. It felt like the dark was eating the beams of the headlights. Navigating down the row of cars, Brad turned around so they were facing the ramp that led back to the street. Still, the wasps beat against the exterior of the van.

  “Turn off the engine and the lights,” Corinna said. “They might be drawn by the exhaust or the light.”

  Brad sighed.

  “This is a terrible idea. We could outrun them.”

  Just before he shut off the lights, she killed another wasp that wriggled through a gap in the vent.

  “If we keep running, they will only get better at making it in here. They leave scent trails.”

  His eyes adjusted quickly. There was enough light coming down the ramp for him to see okay once the van was off. The attack from the wasps diminished rapidly. Corinna killed another one as it squeezed through the gasket around her window. Its bursts of buzzing were silenced with a crunch by her tissue.

  Brad squinted and peered towards the light. The swarm was thick enough to cast a shadow out there.

  “How long do you think they’ll hang out?”

  “No idea,” she said. “Probably not very…”

  She was cut off by a low rumble from behind them. Brad turned to tell Gordie to be quiet. The dog looked at him and whimpered. The low rumbling came again. Brad heard the groan of bending metal. The brake lights came on as he started the van. In the mirror, he saw the lights reflecting in the eyes of something big behind the van. Whatever it was, the eyes got bigger as the animal crept towards them.

  Corinna braced herself as Brad slammed the van into gear and they lurched forward.

  The wasps were still swarming at the top of the ramp. The van caught a little air as they plowed through the cloud of wasps. Brad thought he could hear the claws of the creature tearing at the concrete.

  The van swerved as he steered back onto the road.

  For a moment, he thought he had imagined the monster down in the dark. Then it emerged from the exit with a flash of brown fur.

  Corinna sat with her knees on the seat, gripping the headrest, so she could watch behind them.

  “It’s a bear or something,” she whispered. “Holy shit.”

  She almost fell into Brad when he had to swerve around a car.

  “What?” Brad asked. “What? Is it coming for us?”

  He looked in the side mirror and couldn’t see it. She was blocking the other one—all he could see was the back of her head.

  “The wasps got it. I mean, they’re getting it. It’s not following, but don’t slow down.”

  “Trust me, I won’t,” Brad said.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  They got off the Island of Manhattan on their second try. The first bridge they tried was marked as safe on Robby’s map, but the metal structure was hung with a giant wasp’s nest. Instead of risking it, they went to the next bridge circled in green.

  Brad felt a strange tingling in his stomach as they crossed the river. He glanced at Corinna and then at the dogs in the back seat. Nobody else seemed to register the feeling.

  “What?” Corinna asked.

  “Nothing. What’s our best route?”

  “Take that road.”

  She pointed and Brad maneuvered. They saw a couple more of the lizards basking after the bridge. They looked different in the Bronx. Brad didn’t see many of them after that. The farther north they went, the fewer obstacles they found in the roads.

  The van started to make a low rumble. An indicator lit up on the dash. Brad pulled over to check it out, stopping in the biggest parking lot he could find. The right rear tire was bulging at the bottom, nearly out of air. A bone-white tooth was sticking from the tread.

  “Unless you want to take the time to put on the spare, we should find another vehicle,” Brad said as he got behind the wheel.

  “There’s a can of stuff in the back,” Corinna said.

  He followed her around as she opened the rear hatch and found a big blue can. The stuff was called FlaTender. It dispensed a purple foam when Corinna screwed it onto the tire’s stem. Brad saw some of it leak out around the spout.

  “I’ve never heard of that stuff,” Brad said.

  She looked up at him with a blank expression that ended the discussion. They got back into the van and drove off silently. The rumble was gone and the van powered on.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  The van was hot, even after Corinna turned on the air. The dogs in back panted and Brad put down the windows. Somewhere around Newburgh, a bird dived at the van and nearly made Brad swerve off the road.

  “Drive, would you?” Corinna said.

  “Sorry. It looked like it was going to hit the windshield.”

  The bird swooped down again and its talons scraped across the hood. Brad glanced down at the speedometer. They were traveling 80 kph, according to the gauge. Brad’s mind wandered as he tried to convert it.

  “That thing is brutal,” Corinna said as she squinted up at the sky.

  “And fast,” Brad said. He pushed the van faster and saw the bird start to disappear behind them. “I wish we knew why the world was so fucked up all of a sudden.”

  “We’re out in the churn,” Corinna said.

  Brad rubbed his eyes. They were killing him. He had been focusing so hard on looking for wasps and lizards that he had worn them out. Corinna refolded the map and traced a line with her finger.

  “How much longer on this road?” Brad asked.

  Corinna shrugged and the held out her fingers a few inches apart.

  “This many,” she said.

  “Great.”

  Brad was starting to sweat. He wiped his forehead on his arm and flexed his hands one at a time. They were sore from gripping the steering wheel. For that matter, they were still weak from the motorcycle trip. His shoulder felt like it was going to cramp just from the thought of it.

  “Huh,” Corinna said. She was turning in her seat to look at a brown building that stood next to a water tower.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, I guess. Like you said, the world is fucked up. So, what do we do when we get upstate?”

  “We’re headed to a town called Donnelly. It’s where that guy comes from. Robby was suggesting that all these changes were rotating around that place. At least I think that’s what he meant. The implication is that if we can figure out what’s making everything churn, maybe we can stop it.”

  “If we stop it, does that mean that we’re going to be stuck with the way things are right now?”

  “I don’t know. I guess.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a great idea.”

  “As long as it snaps everyone out of the hypnosis,” Brad said.

  Corinna took a long time to respond.

  “More food for the lizards.”

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  They saw the vehicles from a good distance. The road had been perfectly clear for a while. Brad wasn’t even sure what he was looking at until Corinna put a name to it.

  “That’s a roadblock.”

  “Yeah,” Brad said with a sigh. He let off the gas and they coasted to a stop. If he was remembering correctly, Ty had said something about a roadblock. It might have been Tim. But that would have been on a different road.

  Brad studied the terrain on either side of the van and then turned to look behind them as he turned the vehicle around.

  “What are you doing? Don’t we have to go that way?”

  “What’s your plan?” he asked as he started the van moving south again. “You want to drive right up to it and then start walking?”

  “Or maybe push it out of the way.”

  “What happens if they’ve left people there to guard the roadblock?”

  “I didn’t see anyone.”

  “That would be the point. See if there are any back roads around it, would you?”

  She flipped open the map and snapped the paper.

  “Go that way on whatever road that is.”

  “Do you even know where
we are?”

  “Kinda. I think so. This will be Exit 17, right?”

  Brad nodded. She was right. Since they were going the wrong way, they were taking the entrance, not the exit, but he could see the sign on the other side of the road.

  He slammed on the brakes.

  Corinna put the map down.

  “What now?”

  Brad pointed. “Ducks.”

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  They were marching in a line across the entrance. The van was only twenty feet away from the line of them, but they didn’t seem to notice the vehicle at all.

  Brad saw his mistake just before Corinna pointed it out.

  The things were the size of ducks, and they kinda waddled, but they…

  “Those are termites,” Corinna said.

  Instead of answering, Brad sat there with his mouth hanging open. His numb hand reached for the shifter and tried to find reverse on its own.

  “Drive through them,” she said. “Who cares? Kill them.”

  It was a fair idea. The line of giant termites was already starting to cross the main part of the road. If he backed up, they would be trapped on a small segment of highway between the termites and the roadblock.

  Brad nodded and lurched the van forward. He tried to get as much speed as possible before they hit the line of huge insects.

  Despite their slow waddle in formation, the bugs were fast. Just before the van hit them, they spread their wings and scattered.

  Brad kept accelerating. In his mirror, he saw them drop right back into their line to march across the ground again. The van had just been a momentary disruption to their trip. The curve at the bottom of the entrance was sharp. Brad kept his speed and the van leaned.