Wanderers

by Chuck Wendig

  “I’m going out there,” he said, throwing on his jacket.

  Cassie caught his arm. “Boss, slow your roll. The wind out there—”

  “Someone might be hurt, or in danger.”

  “Shit,” Martin said. His jacket never came off. “I’ll come, too.”

  Robbie said, “Whoa, whoa, you idiots might end up as the ones hurt or in danger if you go out there. I’m not saying we won’t rescue your asses, but please don’t make us.”

  “We won’t go far,” Benji said, and then he threw open the door and stepped out into the maelstrom, Martin following close behind.

  * * *

  —

  “I HOPE THIS shit doesn’t chip my windshield,” Mia said as the hail clattered against the hood of the truck. “Already looks like it’s dinging the paint. I don’t got money for repairs.”

  Shana wanted to snap at her: I don’t care about your truck, I care about the sleepwalkers, and she had about opened her mouth to say it—

  But then her eyes caught movement in the passenger-side mirror. A shifting of shapes in the storm. A movement of white, like a flag waving. It came from behind them, back down the driveway, toward the farm that sat off the road.

  And then she heard voices.

  “Someone’s out there,” she said. “Someone’s yelling.”

  “What?” Mia asked. “Where?”

  But Shana didn’t have time to answer.

  Because she opened the door and hurried out into the storm.

  * * *

  —

  THE WIND FELT like a series of hard shoves—in the onslaught of the storm, Benji almost fell into Martin, nearly knocking them both into the ditch. Martin yelled at him over the wind, but the words were stolen away. They righted themselves; Benji pulled the hood of his jacket over his head (far too late, he realized, as it just dumped more water over him). Then he stepped out around the front end of the truck, to the surprised looks of Remy and Avigail sitting in there. She knocked on the window and mimed asking him what the hell he was doing, but he didn’t bother answering. Instead, as pea-sized hail pelted him, he put the camera up to his eye—

  Thermal imaging resumed. This time, he scanned farther down the road—not where the sleepwalkers were, but rather, where they were headed.

  He saw a lone truck out there. He recognized it as belonging to one of the shepherds, though Benji was not sure which one. Beyond the truck, he saw movement heading away from a white stone farmhouse—two warm bodies and one cooler body walking this way, about fifty yards out.

  He recognized the steady gait of the duller, colder form.

  It’s a sleepwalker.

  A new one. Running away to join the circus.

  And in this mess, no less.

  But the other two—

  People were chasing after. Maybe family, who knew?

  It was they who were yelling. Yelling for whoever this walker was. Probably upset because this person—someone they knew, maybe someone they loved—had up and walked out into a storm during a blaring tornado siren. They didn’t understand.

  And if they tried to stop whoever it was, it would end in blood and bone and tragedy.

  Benji didn’t have time to explain.

  He broke into a hard run through the driving rain.

  * * *

  —

  THROUGH THE SHEETS of water and the hail that whipped her head and shoulders, Shana saw three shapes emerge.

  Three people.

  One of them was a walker. She could tell instantly—for the last two weeks she’d inadvertently studied that slow-and-steady-wins-the-race gait. Even in the half dark, she could see the whites of those dead eyes coming at her.

  She couldn’t make out an age—but it was a man, or a teenage boy. Maybe a white T-shirt. Dungarees. Broad shoulders. A man, she realized.

  The other two were not walkers.

  One, a woman. Older. The other, younger—this one, a boy. Both yelling at the walker. Over the siren and the wind she heard clips of words and phrases—don’t go—come back—can’t you see the storm?

  And then the word, Dad.

  A fast guess: The walker was the husband to the woman, father to the boy. Shana bolted toward them, coltish and clumsy, waving her hands and screeching like a demon that they needed to back away, to go home, to let him go—even as they reached for him, pawing at him.

  Now: a voice from her right.

  Someone else was running toward her. No. Two someones.

  She recognized them—Benji Ray, and behind him, Martin Vargas. The two of them cut a straight line from the trailer, running past the flock of walkers. Ahead, this lone walker, this father, was straining to join the flock: like a metal ball bearing rolling toward a powerful magnet.

  She understood it, now. His family wanted to stop him.

  To bring him home.

  But keeping him home meant something far worse than they intended. Even though they should’ve known better. The CDC had issued its warnings. They were all over the news: Do not impede the walkers…

  “Stop!” Shana screamed, her arms waving like she was warning drivers of a bridge out ahead. “Stop!”

  As she closed in, the rain was going sideways. Shana saw the woman—her long hair matted, her mouth open, miserably pleading as she held her husband tight. The boy, no more than ten, dug his heels into the gravel, clinging to his father’s arm, pulling on it like he was in a tug-of-war for his father’s life.

  The father was shaking. His jaw craned open.

  He began to scream. Louder than the rain. Louder than the siren.

  He’s gonna blow, she thought.

  But Shana didn’t stop running.

  Benji slowed his sprint, holding the thermal camera to his eye. The imaging showed the man’s temperature blooming. Benji saw now that someone else was running to intercept—a girl, one of the shepherds, bolting toward the family.

  From off to the side, now, a new flash of movement—

  Benji turned, following it—a dark shape, a gray ghost with a flash of red, whipping through the storm. Behind him, Martin turned toward it, too—

  And whatever it was, borne on the wind, crashed into him. His head turned sideways and he cried out, falling to the ground.

  Benji called out: “Martin!”

  But as he did, his own foot landed in a puddle that went deeper than he knew—his ankle twisted as the heel went down. Pain lit up inside him, full-tilt-pinball, and next thing he knew he was on the ground, the air blasted out of pancaked lungs.

  The camera clattered ahead of him into the stones.

  * * *

  —

  THE FATHER OF the family of three began to…swell. Shana saw this clearly now, for she was close, too close, running straight for them. Her mind screamed at her body to stop, stop, stop, but onward she ran, even as the man’s arms blew up like balloons, the biceps straining. His chest and belly bloated like something was straning to get out of him. The way his head craned back, the way his jaw extended open farther and farther, the bones grinding and crackling until the mouth was a yawning cavern—it was impossible, like a special effect in a movie.

  Later, she would remember that.

  But the rest would remain a blur.

  All she would be able to pull out of it would be moments:

  Her arm out.

  The feeling of something caught against her.

  Her hands around it. Not it. Him.

  The boy. Heavy in her arms.

  Rain, cutting the air.

  Hail, stinging her shoulders.

  Air, whistling and howling.

  She hit the ground. Something broke, a bone snapping. Crack. That was just the first of many sounds that would haunt her later. As her eyes squeezed shut, she heard the boy’s father not explode but pop—t
he sound of skin splitting followed by the wet splash of all that was inside him. As the man’s inhuman dirge died fast, the wife’s began. The thud and tumble and mucky tacky splash of her body landing on the ground, falling into a pile of what was once her husband.

  Thunder rolled. The rain roared on.

  Once again the GOP members of Congress have asked President Hunt for a statement regarding the so-called Sleepwalkers now passing through the heart of Indiana. The only response has come from Press Secretary Wells, who said that Hunt is “assured that the CDC will have more answers soon.” Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, Republican nominee Ed Creel has again reiterated conspiracy theories about Hunt, claiming that she has perhaps engineered this “flock” in order to distract from having to answer substantive policy questions over the NSA leaks of last year. In other news, an outbreak of over one hundred tornadoes hit the Midwest yesterday, seven of them being of EF4 or EF5—no indication yet of number of deaths or damage…

  —Oscar Castillo, CBS Morning News

  JUNE 20

  Mercy Hospital, Waldron, Indiana

  A DEEP INTAKE OF BREATH as Benji’s head lifted suddenly from his chest.

  He blinked.

  Was I asleep?

  He swallowed; his mouth was dry. He adjusted himself and sat up straighter in the hospital chair. Across from him was a window: The sky remained dark, and rain continued to fall, but now its fall was gentle, a pat-pat-pat of little drops against the glass. He looked at his watch. Four thirty in the morning. He looked up over his shoulder, saw a door and a sign: MORGUE.

  The memories came back to him like someone flipping playing cards faceup onto a table. One by one.

  Martin, hit by what turned out to be part of a flying stop sign.

  Benji’s ankle tweaking as he fell.

  The camera falling away.

  The girl—Nessie’s sister—running.

  Then and there in the rain, Benji got to his feet, even with his injured ankle, and made a choice—he ran toward the family, not back toward Martin. But it was too late, either way.

  He remembered the way the man’s skin rippled and bulged, and the way he tore open. What came out of him was no delight—it was a rain of shiny bone and red blood, and the woman who was holding him, his wife, held him tight even as he erupted beneath her. And she took it. All of it. She screamed. She fell.

  And then the worst thought struck Benji—

  I need their bodies.

  Death was a tragedy.

  But death was also a data point.

  He remembered limping to the wife and her husband, these two farmers—the husband little more than a pile of himself, twists of skin and loops of organs, studded with the porcelain splinters of bone shrapnel. The wife was still alive, but barely. Those shrapnel pieces stuck out of her at odd angles. One in her neck, blood pumping gently past the shard, already joining with the rain and washing away. Before Benji could do anything else, her mouth froze as the life left her eyes, leaving only windows looking into an empty house. Lightning flashed.

  And the terrible, cold, merciless thought hit him:

  I need their bodies.

  But with it, a worse realization:

  And the storm is going to wash it all away.

  He needed evidence. The walkers could not be cut. They could not be bled. No knife, no needle would pierce them.

  And before him, in a pile, was all of what he needed:

  Blood, bones, organs, epidermis, brains, the whole gory enchilada.

  Benji remembered ripping off his jacket, getting it under that pile, and wrapping his jacket around the sloppy mess. The horror of what he was doing struck him, and he remembered crying out, almost as if in pain. The revulsion in him warred with the need to do it. He tried to remind himself, This was a person just a minute ago.

  That was then. Now he sat in a chair outside the hospital morgue. Still damp from showering all the mess off himself. He tried to remember how he’d gotten here…but he didn’t have to reach far for the answer. Because here they came. The girl: Nessie’s sister, and behind her another shepherd, a young woman whose name he didn’t know. They drove him here. Helped him get the remains of the husband and the body of the wife in the back.

  And the boy, too.

  The boy suffered only a broken arm. Because of her.

  Benji lurched to his feet. They startled at his sudden movement.

  “You saved him,” Benji said. And he realized now it was completely out of nowhere, a total non sequitur. The teen girl blinked at him like he had gone off his gourd. He sighed. “The boy, I mean. You saved him.”

  “Oh.” She looked down at her feet. “I dunno.”

  “No, no, you did. I remember. That boy—he was clinging to his parents. When…his father went, he might’ve ended up same as his mother. But you ran in there. You saved his life. What’s your name again?”

  “Shana. Shana Stewart.”

  He stood up. His ankle complained and his leg almost gave out as a result. But it wasn’t broken, so he winced past it and held out a hand.

  “Doctor Benji Ray.”

  The other woman chewed a piece of gum and looked him up and down with sad eyes. “We just got cleaned up. You were asleep.”

  “It’s fine,” he said, withdrawing his hand. “Is the…boy okay?”

  Shana answered: “I think so. Just a broken arm or whatever.” She made a sour, sad face. “But I don’t think he’ll ever be really okay.”

  “No, perhaps not.” The boy’s life was irrevocably different now, whoever he was. His parents were dead in wildly unnatural circumstances. The system was not kind to orphans, Benji knew. Perhaps the unnatural circumstances would afford him some special attention. “Are you okay? The both of you?”

  “Yo, we just wanna go back,” the other shepherd said.

  “I’m sorry, your name is?” Benji asked.

  “Mia.”

  “Thank you, Mia, for driving me here. The both of you…you have done more than you realize. We haven’t been able to properly examine a sleepwalker—and though the circumstances here are far from ideal, this will afford us the chance.” He paused. “I’m sorry, I must sound so cold, so detached. I don’t mean to.”

  “It’s cool,” Shana said, the sadness in her smile reminding him: It most certainly is not cool.

  “We wanna know what’s going on more than you do,” Mia said. “It’s our families out there. Her sister. My bro.”

  “Thank you again.” They nodded and started to walk off, murmuring to each other. But then Shana looked back and said:

  “I dunno if your guy is still in there with the, uh, with the remains or not. In case you were wondering.”

  “My guy?”

  She nodded. “One that came while you were sleeping.”

  Panic struck him like a bucket of water.

  The bodies.

  Last time they had bodies, they were stolen.

  This time, he’d brought the bodies here, and then what? He thought, No, no, no, someone may have come, what if they were taken again—all out from under me as I slept. Stupid! He hurried toward the morgue door—

  Just as it opened, its mechanism automatic.

  A man stepped into the door frame, clad in an autopsy PPE suit—the blood on the suit looked purple against the blue. Through the mask, Benji saw a familiar face: Robbie Taylor.

  “You look like hell, Benj.”

  Benji nodded, weary. He wanted to lean forward and hug the man. “I feel like hell, Robbie.”

  “I didn’t want to wake you…you looked so peaceful.”

  “Farthest thing from it.”

  “Yeah, it’s all pretty fucked up. Besides, you’ve been running on fumes since all this started. And it’s about to get a lot weirder.”

  “I see the look in your ey
es,” Benji said. “We’re up shit creek without the courtesy of a paddle, aren’t we?”

  “Paddle? Fuck, Benji, we don’t even have a boat.”

  * * *

  —

  IN THE PARKING lot, they sat in Mia’s old-ass Bronco.

  Mia went to turn on the engine, but Shana said: “Wait.”

  Mia waited.

  Outside, past the parking lot, over the trees, came the faintest glow of sunrise—the storm had passed, and the day would soon begin.

  “What is it?” Mia asked.

  Shana did not answer. Because though the storm outside had gone, the one inside her was just whirling to life. It swept up across her and in moments she had braced herself against the dashboard as the tears came. Soon she was lost to wracking, hitching sobs. She crumpled, folding into herself. Knees to chest. Arms around shins. She couldn’t see through her tears. She tried to say to Mia, “I’m just tired. Last night was hard.” But it mostly came out a mumbled gabble.

  Mia gave her a tissue, then put a hand on her shoulder.

  Just a small gesture, but it meant everything.

  And slowly, surely, just as the storm last night passed, so did this one.

  Shana took a deep breath. She blinked away the tears.

  “Let’s go see our families,” Shana said.

  Mia started the engine.

  * * *

  —

  TOGETHER THEY WENT upstairs to visit Martin Vargas. The other man, even in his hospital gown and with a bandage over his head, still somehow managed to look handsome.

  “Jesus, Martin,” Benji said, taking a look at his head. “Stitches?”

  “Three. Not serious. But that stop sign gave me a good whack.” He grunted as he sat up in bed. “Concussion. I’ll be fine. Hand me that remote.” Benji tossed him the TV remote, and Martin turned it off. “Any updates? Tell me we got the remains. Tell me you did an autopsy—”

  Robbie nodded. “Benji did the goop scoop, I did the postmortem-palooza. And, ahh.” He pulled over a chair, plopped down in it. “Okay. So. Obviously, what I saw was just preliminary. We won’t have a full tox screen right away, and it’ll take time for the techs to run the blood panel. But initial gross external examination tells me what we already know: The male patient, a Mister Clade Berman, forty-five years old, expired by…detonating.” He forced his lips to make a soft cork-popping sound. “Jesus, the guy just ripped apart. As if there was a bomb inside him that went off.”