Distinct

by Hamill, Ike

  When he got down to the road below, they were headed east.

  “Not this way,” Corinna said.

  “You said this way.”

  “That was before I saw that,” she said. She pointed at another one of the brown buildings. Every time they had passed one, she had studied it while they drove by.

  Brad finally figured it out. It wasn’t a building at all. The brown tower was a perfectly formed cylinder, and had holes around the circumference that appeared to be windows. It wasn’t made by people. It was a mound, and it probably belonged to the giant insects they had just seen.

  “Yeah, okay,” Brad said. He used both lanes and part of the shoulder to whip the van around again. He was getting good at reversing direction.

  “Shit!” Brad said.

  Corinna was so busy looking back at the termite tower that she didn’t see. There was a congregation of the insects under the highway overpass.

  “Go through?” Brad asked. His vote was no, based on the number of bugs. He had no idea how heavy they were, but there were so many of them that the van might have trouble if the things didn’t scatter.

  “I think we have to,” she said. “That’s a lot, but there are even more behind us.”

  Brad turned to look back. She was right. While he had been focused on what was ahead of them, the bugs had started to emerge from the tower. They were flying down to the road behind the van and amassing.

  “Hang on,” Brad said.

  He aimed for the center of the underpass and accelerated.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  The first few termites under the overpass fluttered out of the way. Brad started to feel hope swell in his chest. It appeared that luck was going to be on their side—the bugs would clear a path just like they had done on the ramp.

  The van’s bumper hit one of the bugs. It rolled under the van and then crunched as the tire crushed its exoskeleton. Brad had a moment to wonder if the bug’s death was his own fault. Maybe if he had gone a little slower, the termite would have had time to fly away like the others. A moment later, the thought left his mind. He saw other bugs scrambling to get under the front of the van, like they wanted to be crushed.

  The vehicle heaved up over the growing pile. Meanwhile, the ones who had escaped were swarming back around to the rear, closing the van into their throng. The sunlight was quickly blocked by the bugs.

  Corinna put her hand against her window. On the other side of the glass, there was a nightmare of legs and flapping wings.

  In the back, Gordie slipped down to the floor and tried to squirm below Brad’s seat.

  The van began to buck. The engine groaned, coughed, and then quit. The vehicle stopped and then rolled back a foot or two.

  “They’ve clogged the intake or the exhaust, I think,” Brad said.

  His voice was barely audible over the sound of clicking and scraping from outside. A termite on the windshield fluttered its wings and they buzzed against the glass. The wasps had been a terrifying cloud of venomous stingers, but at least they had been a normal size. When Brad looked at these things, all he could think about was how strong ants were for their bodyweight. If these things had that same power differential, they would be able…

  “They’re going to flip us,” Corinna said.

  Brad felt it too. The van was starting to tilt to the side and then rock.

  He put it back in park and tried to start the engine again. It might be fruitless, but he had to try. The starter ground for a second and then gave out. The idiot lights on the dash extinguished. From what Brad could see through the windshield, it looked like the hood was bubbling with activity from underneath.

  “They cut the power,” Brad said.

  Corinna jumped when a crack appeared in the windshield.

  Less than a second later, it had spidered into a dozen cracks.

  CHAPTER 53: UPSTATE

  WHEN THE COMPASS STARTED to act funny, Carrie used the sun to navigate.

  The map was horribly unreliable in terms of roads, but the bodies of water seemed to line up fairly well. She chose roads that appeared to follow lakes or rivers and used the names of those to find her way across the state.

  Even on back roads, she found one or two roadblocks. They were half-hearted attempts. In one place, a tree had been cut down and left across the pavement. It was small enough that Carrie was able to move it out of the way on her own while the Tesla watched her with its cameras. In another spot, the window was down on the sedan left in the road. She reached in and popped the parking brake. The car rolled out of the way on its own.

  “So much for that roadblock,” she whispered to herself.

  …It could be a trap…

  “Do you ever say anything positive?” she asked herself.

  …We have to be ready for anything…

  “What does that mean?”

  …Just because they’re not expecting us to be here, doesn’t mean that they haven’t prepared…

  Carrie let the vehicle slow to a stop and put her hands on either side of her head. The idea she had been chasing was half-assed at best. It felt good to stay on the move—running away from those people and what they had done. But if she was really honest with herself, she didn’t have a good notion of what she was doing

  …We shouldn’t stay in one place…

  “I know!” she shouted. Her voice was too loud for the car. The display on the center console was complaining again. It couldn’t give her an estimate of the distance to a charging station and she only had twenty-five miles of battery left. There was a wide spot in the road ahead where the lake came close to a little dirt parking area. The area was lousy with lakes. Carrie pulled over and stopped the vehicle just to shut off the depressing center-console display.

  When she stopped, the weight of her problems caught up to her more easily.

  She realized how stupid she was. All this time, she had been telling herself that she was fighting so hard because of the baby inside of her. Everyone else was wrong and she was right because she had to protect her baby. When the voice inside of herself—likely created by the part of her that always tried to undermine her own success—told her to run, who was it serving?

  She couldn’t deliver a baby on her own, let alone raise it without any help.

  …Is the baby even still alive?…

  The idea passed over her like a dark cloud. Carrie didn’t have time to entertain it. She froze perfectly still and held her breath when she saw the woman walking down the road.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  The woman was walking backwards with her hand held out to the side. Carrie thought she was waving at someone until she saw the raised thumb.

  The woman was hitchhiking.

  Carrie reached for the door handle and then stopped herself.

  The electric car was nearly silent. All she had to do was turn it around and she might be able to sneak away before the woman even realized that Carrie was there.

  It was too late. The woman turned and walked directly towards Carrie. Her head was hung low as she stared down towards the pavement, but surely she would see if Carrie even moved a muscle.

  And there was something else that froze Carrie in place—there was something familiar about the woman. It wasn’t her features, it was the way she moved. Her legs glided under her dress, making the light fabric swirl and dance with every step. Carrie knew that stride.

  She looked down and saw her hand on the door again. For the second time, she pulled away. It was almost like her body had its own will.

  The woman paused and looked out over the lake. She drank in the view, pushing back her long hair.

  Now, she would have to see Carrie.

  “She’s not there,” Carrie whispered. The realization had left her lips as soon as it came into her head. The woman wasn’t there. She wasn’t even entirely opaque. Some of the green light that passed through the trees overhead was also passing through the woman. She was no more substantial than the sheer material of her dress.


  The mysterious ghost walked across the strip of dusty dirt between the road and the water. The fabric of her dress began to spread and float before she even reached the lake. The woman waded into the lake but Carrie didn’t see a single ripple expanding away from her legs.

  …Ghosts are real. Don’t you understand?…

  Carrie shook her head—she didn’t understand. The next thought was inevitable. If ghosts were real, then maybe The Origin had been right all alone. Maybe Jannie really was still alive somewhere in the world.

  Jannie would help with the baby. She would find a way to deliver the baby safely, and she would help Carrie figure out how to raise it. All Carrie had to do was believe that it was true. That was the first step.

  This time, Carrie didn’t stop herself. She opened the door and climbed out of the car.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  “Hey!” Carrie yelled. “Hey. Who are you?”

  She expected no reaction. The ghost woman would be like a movie—acting out the same script over and over regardless of what else was happening.

  Of course, like most of Carrie’s expectations, that didn’t happen at all. The woman turned and Carrie took a surprised step back. There was a resemblance. It wasn’t Jannie—for one thing, the woman was far too young—but there was a resemblance. The woman could have been Jannie’s younger sister, or maybe even her daughter. And the woman was looking right at her as she stood in the water. Carrie even heard the water splash when the woman began to climb from the lake. She heard the splash but still didn’t see any ripples on the surface.

  “Who are you?” Carrie asked.

  The woman was looking her directly in the eyes. She seemed to be from another time—the way her hair fell and the collar of her dress. Even the way it was cut to fit her torso but then flared out below her hips. Carrie had to wonder if the ghost woman was really seeing her, or was reacting to something in her ghost world.

  Carrie backed up another step as the woman approached.

  “Who…”

  The woman, walking steadily, passed through the front of the car.

  She disappeared.

  Carrie let the air out of her chest, and put her hand over her heart. It was fluttering. Carrie took several seconds, just standing there, before she felt confident that she could get back in the car without falling over.

  The display didn’t light up when she pushed the button.

  Carrie fumbled in her pocket, thinking that maybe she had dropped the magic fob that made the car operate. Even with it in her hand, the car was dead.

  Pressing the control below the screen, she finally got a message.

  Low Battery—Hibernation Mode.

  “I was supposed to have twenty-five more miles.”

  She slammed her hands on the wheel.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  The road wasn’t on the map, but the lake sure as hell was. In fact, that was the problem. The problem was that Long Lake was on the map three times. Carrie looked back at the green sign mounted on the bridge. It still didn’t give her any more information.

  “I’m either very close, or still pretty far away,” she said.

  Without road names that made any sense, the map was close to useless. She was tempted to let it slip from her fingers and drop down into the water below.

  “Unless…” she said.

  She saw a dotted line and traced it to the end. One of the Long Lakes had a recreational area with a hiking trail. If she could find that trail, then she would know which lake she was on. Carrie oriented herself with the sun and struck off west.

  …If the roads are different…

  “Then the recreational areas could be different. I know,” she said. “But if it’s the same…”

  She unfolded her map again. It slipped from her fingers as a breeze gusted across the surface of the water. The map was over the railing and falling towards the water below before Carrie could even react.

  “Shit!”

  She covered her mouth and looked around.

  “Who’s going to hear me? A ghost?”

  Carrie laughed at herself for a moment and then the emotion threatened to turn. She was desperate and the situation seemed to be getting worse by the second. All of her doubt returned like flood waters rushing up over her ankles. It only took a few inches of flowing water to knock someone off their feet. She remembered that from somewhere. All she wanted to do was sit down and figure out who had told her that important fact about walking through a flood.

  …Keep moving…

  Carrie nodded at the thought. Everything was easier when she was moving.

  ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪

  She got to the top of the hill and paced. Carrie was afraid to slow down. Once she recognized the pattern, it was impossible to ignore. Every time she slowed, the past would catch up with her. When it did, it brought fear, loneliness, and despair. She couldn’t afford to lose any energy to those emotions, so she paced.

  The recreational area and hiking trail were in the right place. From what she remembered from the map this place had been called Mooselick Look. It sounded like a tongue twister for toddlers.

  “Ten times fast,” she said.

  She continued to circle. Something in the distance caught her eye. The vista would have been incredible, if she had stopped to look at it. The rock ledge let her look down at the lake below, as it wound its way south. That’s not what drew her attention. Carrie focused on the north end of the lake where she could see a road through the trees. There were vehicles moving down that road, headed north.

  Until that moment, she still hadn’t been certain of where she was. She closed her eyes to picture the map. Pacing on the uneven rock with her eyes closed was too much. She nearly fell down.

  “Well, I could verify where they’re going.”

  She picked a trail that led in the right direction and headed off.

  CHAPTER 54: DONNELLY

  THE GIANT TERMITES BEAT their wings and tapped their black legs against the glass. The splintering cracks turned into a network. One of the chunks of glass flew from a small hole. Brad watched as a bug probed a feeler into the hole and then went back to work with its tapping. New bugs—even bigger than the others—began to appear on the other side of the glass. These had short wings and didn’t move as quickly. The major difference was on the head. Instead of withdrawn, inward-facing mouths, the slow ones had big pincers for jaws. One of the pincer termites began to work at the hole.

  “This is no good,” Corinna said.

  One of the dogs barked as she climbed between the seats and worked her way towards the back of the van. She pushed Prince aside and took his place at the sliding door. Corinna took out her sword and put a hand on the latch.

  “Don’t do that,” Brad yelled over the clattering insects.

  “Why not?”

  “They’ll eat you alive.”

  “They’re going to be in here in seconds. You don’t think we’re going to die anyway?”

  Her question was drowned out by an explosion from behind them. Corinna and Brad both raised arms in front of their eyes as the back of the van was bathed in orange flames. Outside, smoking and burning termites crawled over each other to get away from the heat. None of them were trying to break into the car anymore.

  Brad’s hand found the key. He turned it before he remembered that it didn’t have power anymore.

  They heard a clank and a second later the van jerked backwards.

  They were moving, and gaining speed.

  Corinna threw down her sword so she didn’t accidentally cut herself. Brad pulled his seatbelt tight and grabbed the door as they accelerated.

  The bugs were swept away by the speed. Brad heard an engine and saw daylight through the windows again. The van began to slow. People ran to the doors and pulled at them and banged on the glass while shouting over each other.

  “Get out! Come on! Get out of there.”

  Brad shrank back from his window. He heard the sliding door op
en and Corinna was pulled from the vehicle. Prince ran after her as hands came through the opening and snagged Gordie’s collar.

  Outside the driver’s door, a person appeared. Their face was covered by goggles and gas mask. They tugged at the door, but Brad hit the button and locked them out. Someone else was coming through the van and grabbing at his arm and shoulder.

  “Get out of there!” a person shouted.

  Through the cracked windshield, Brad saw the overpass. Bugs were regrouping and forming a line, marching towards the van. Others were taking to the air to attack from above.

  “We don’t have much time!”

  His brain switched from fight to flight—he felt it happen. If the people in the masks wanted him dead, they could have left him to the super termites. Brad squeezed between the seats and was helped along by their pulling hands.

  They hunched over as termites dove down from the sky. Supporting him on one side, the person was dressed head-to-toe in a white jumpsuit with hood. On his other side, a mask and helmet covered the person. They ran towards a bus.

  Just as they made it through the door, the bus began to retreat. The woman in the white jumpsuit was only hanging on to the polished handle of the door. Brad reached down and helped her in as the masked person supported his other arm. They were just in time the bus swung around to reverse direction, the woman would have been thrown from the doorway had Brad not held her tight.

  They climbed into the bus and the driver closed the door with the big lever. The three of them collapsed, panting, into seats. Above them, termites bounced off the metal roof. Brad was reminded of the wasps. These bugs were much bigger.

  He turned in his seat and saw Corinna and the dogs. They had all made it. Behind them, the guy with the flame thrower was trying to extinguish the pilot flame at the end of his torch. Another jump-suited person reached over and helped. The air in the bus was heavy with fumes and smoke. The bus rocked as the driver took a fast corner.