Wanderers

by Chuck Wendig

  That night, he said a long prayer for the Berman family.

  He knew Clade. Not well, not really—Clade was a good man, and he was a churchgoer, he just didn’t go to God’s Light. He went to United Methodist, up east of Waldron. Matthew had met his wife, Jessa, a few times, and only once met their son, Owen. All good people. Hard workers. Clade was a contractor, got started installing insulation. She was a…physical therapist, wasn’t she? Like Matthew’s father was fond of saying: salt of the earth. That, from Matthew 5:13, You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its savor, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. A passage that spoke to those who cleaved to the laws and the righteousness of God—they held the salt, or the wisdom, of the earth.

  And to lose it was to lose everything.

  That passage struck him, suddenly.

  Had Matthew lost his salt?

  Had he lost his wisdom?

  Had he lost his way?

  Truth was, being a pastor had its ups and downs. It was arguably a sacred role, but it was also his job, and jobs came with things like…paperwork. Maintenance. Balancing books. More rigor and routine than grace and glory. Over time, too, Matthew fell into certain comfortable grooves in his interpretation of the Bible—his church was Baptist, yes, but somewhat more progressive than other churches. So some of his readings of the Bible leaned more academic or poetic—he always said, it was hard to take the Bible as a perfectly literal book given that you had four gospels of Jesus. Four competing stories that did not precisely agree meant that it was, well, literally impossible for the book to be taken literally.

  Whenever anyone got hung up on a phrase in the book, he was fond of saying to them, somewhat cheekily:

  Try reading it literarily, not literally.

  Now, though, he wasn’t so sure.

  Anger and fear surged through him seeing the news play that scene of Clade Berman and his wife dying again and again. That was not a natural death. These walkers were not a natural phenomenon. He was suddenly convinced of that. How could they be? This was no disease like man had ever seen.

  Ozark Stover’s words replayed inside his mind to remind him.

  Maybe something did poison those waters, turn these people into those…things, those sleepwalking strangers. Maybe it was the comet. Maybe the Devil himself. Maybe this was a sign of something worse to come. Those walkers didn’t serve God. God wouldn’t do that to Americans.

  Matthew encouraged Autumn to turn off the TV and get some sleep.

  Then he did not follow his own advice. He went back out into the study and he read deeper and deeper. His eyes burned with fatigue but his heart wouldn’t quit pounding and his brain wouldn’t stop cycling through those images on the news of poor Clade Berman going off like a firecracker held tightly in a closed fist.

  He prayed. He prayed his anger at God, for that was part of his role, he knew: to challenge and confront The Man Upstairs for the things that Matthew did not understand. And then it was his role, too, to ask for God’s forgiveness in challenging Him. This was their relationship.

  Morning came. Matthew sat on the porch. The sun slashed at the horizon with a bleeding line.

  He went in, ate a banana for his breakfast, said hi to Autumn and to Bo. Matthew asked them both to be at his sermon this morning. Autumn usually was; Bo, not so much. Bo said he would be, because Ozark had asked him to be. Something about that worried Matthew, but he told himself it was just the lack of sleep getting to him—whatever brought his son to church was a blessing.

  Then he got ready.

  Usually, during the summer, he kept his attire less formal. A pastor’s dress was for some a sacred cow, but Matthew usually had little room for sacred cows, and felt that their slaughter was sometimes necessary to change people’s perceptions—he wanted to appear more human to his congregation, dress down, speak colloquially. All in order to make them more comfortable. Especially when up against the deluge, so to speak, of God’s expectations for mankind. But today, he had no interest in that. He wanted to put his most serious self forward. He buttoned up his shirt. Pressed his pants. Wore suspenders and a bow tie.

  Then he thought, It’s showtime.

  Showtime, admittedly, was rarely for a big audience. The church had a semi-steady population of attendees: three dozen on the best day. But they were his three dozen, by golly, and he would attend to their spiritual development same as if he had three hundred or three thousand.

  He walked out of the back and into the main sanctuary of God’s Light Church, and as he stepped to the podium, his breath left him, his knees nearly buckled. Because his three dozen had easily doubled. Present were people he’d never seen before—and in the back, as promised, sat Ozark Stover. They did not have pews here at the church, just rows of chairs, and someone had plucked folding chairs from the back wall near the table of coffee and pastries that Autumn put out; Stover and his people sat in the back two rows, stuffing them like sausage. They cleaned up nice enough—all presentable and orderly. Some of the men wore beards or had their hair close-cropped to the scalp, either shaved all the way down or shorn in a military-style buzz cut. The women, many younger than their male counterparts, wore sundresses, their hair in ponytails. Stover himself had his long gray hair pulled back, and he was wearing a simple denim button-down.

  His eyes fixed on Matthew.

  Stover gave a small, stiff nod.

  Matthew swallowed hard, and then he let it all hang out.

  * * *

  —

  IT STARTED LIKE he planned. He opened by saying, “Those of you who come here know that I’m pretty fond of reminding folks how prophecy is not the same as prediction. Many times, what we read in the Bible as a prediction of what’s to come is something we interpret through our own fears and experiences, through current events and with a context that people back then just didn’t have.” And then he started to give some examples, like how different prophecies spoke of Nebuchadnezzar, or Alexander, or the Treaty of Rome. “They weren’t writing to us to warn us of Osama bin Laden, or Nazi Germany, or President Hunt. The opening of Revelation tells us right up front: This is the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things which must happen soon.”

  And he was about to continue, explaining as he sometimes did that Revelation was for the people of that time. That word soon was key: It was about the times in which those people lived.

  But the words stuck in his throat.

  He saw the eyes on him. Stover, frowning. Bo, looking in his lap. People looked restless, bored, like students subject to a lecture.

  And then he thought of all he’d seen last night, and all he’d read. Clade Berman. The truth of the comet and the woman who discovered it. The growing sleepwalker flock—two words entered his mind, then, and he suddenly veered away from the sermon he had planned and said something entirely different. Something only later would he realize was uncharacteristic: “But one wonders what those writers would have made of these walkers—these Devil’s Pilgrims.”

  And with that, he threw out his old sermon.

  And up there, he composed a new one as he spoke it. Moved, he told himself, by God Himself. Filled with light. Borne on a wave of truth.

  I found my salt, he thought.

  * * *

  —

  AFTERWARD, HE WAS left reeling. Matthew wandered the congregation like a dance partner succumbing to the motion and the music—he felt passed around in the best way possible. Moved from one parishioner to the next, down the chain, shaking hands, offering words of consolation and hope in the face of a world coming apart—there was a fervor to the crowd, an electricity, and though what he’d just told them was dire and mad, everyone seemed energized. Happy, almost, in a manic way, to be offered some portion of the truth—and to be given God’s hand
to hold so they might find their way through it all. One by one he did this, past warm smiles and knowing nods, through a crowd of people wanting to hug him and weep.

  And then, at the end of the crowd, he turned his head for a moment, and he saw her. Autumn. His wife, standing off to the side of the room—she was watching him, and for a moment their gazes met and held. He smiled at her, happy as a pig in the proverbial, well, you know. She did not return the smile.

  Then her eyes flicked away to someone near him—

  A hand clasped his, pulling him nearly off his feet.

  Ozark Stover.

  “Preacher,” Stover said, his big bearded grin like a white picket fence half hidden behind a parting thicket. “That was what I hoped to hear. It’s good to hear someone speaking truth about the—what was it? Devil’s Pilgrims. Indeed, indeed.”

  “Mister Stover, thank you for coming. And for bringing all your people. You sure I didn’t go too far?” he asked. “I usually don’t bring that kind of…zeal to my sermons, to be honest with you.”

  “You did good. That thing about the astronomer who discovered the comet? See, that I did not know. Everything means something.” Last night, or rather, early this morning, Matthew looked up the comet that Stover believed represented the Wormwood star in Revelation. Turned out, the woman who discovered it was Japanese, with her last name of Sakamoto—which, he pointed out during his sermon, meant something along the lines of “at the bottom of the slope,” which he interpreted as “at the bottom of the pit.” (He worried here that this was a little bit of poetic license, but any concern was drowned in a washtub under the waters of response the congregation gave it—in short, they ate it up, and it suggested to Matthew that maybe there really was something there.) He said, too, that the woman—who had commented that the world was “overpopulated”—died of an aneurysm the night the comet passed overhead. “Killed by her own discovery,” Stover added. “Ain’t that something. Make a deal with the Devil, and the Devil always takes more than his due, you ask me.”

  “That is his nature,” Matthew said.

  “Something is happening out there. I appreciate you seeing it and saying something. You’re the only one, and time like this, we need people with their eyes open. People like you.”

  Matthew waved it away as he tried to summon humility. “I didn’t do anything different, I just…last night after I saw what happened on the road to Waldron, I knew I had to speak out. I spoke with God and I opened my Bible to Revelation and I found that maybe what’s happening out there is a warning. Diseases and dragons, the woman, Babylon—the comet, the astronomer. I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.”

  “Those walkers are on a crusade. Like you say, a pilgrimage of some kind. And not a holy one.”

  “In time, we’ll get to the bottom of it, Mister Stover.”

  “Call me Oz.”

  He couldn’t help feeling a tingle of pride at that. Matthew couldn’t articulate why, exactly—and he knew the dangers of pride, but surely it was okay to feel honored by someone, to have earned their approval when it had before been difficult? Maybe he was beginning to like Ozark Stover. Better yet, maybe Ozark—Oz—was beginning to like him, too.

  Stover went on: “Me and some of the folks are going to head down to Waldron. The walkers are set to pass through there and I’d very much like to take their measure.”

  “I can go with you—”

  “No, I have something else for you to do,” Ozark said, giving a wink. “Here, come on outside. Someone I’d like you to talk to.” On the way out past the coffee-and-pastries table, an odd panic hit Matthew that, Oh no, we have more people than usual, which means we didn’t make nearly enough coffee or bring enough pastries, but then he saw someone had brought boxes of coffee and donuts from Yum-Yum’s down the highway. As they headed out through the front door onto the church porch, Ozark said, “We brought the extras. Figured you weren’t used to the burden of us, so it seemed right to bring food.”

  “That was very thoughtful—” But he didn’t get to finish his statement. Stover eased him forward to meet someone standing there. On the porch was a handsome man, with slick blond hair thinning over his tanned scalp, white veneers on his teeth, and a powder-blue suit. “Hello,” Matthew said.

  “Preacher, this is Hiram Golden. If you don’t know him—”

  Matthew said, “Of course I know him. A pleasure, Mister Golden.”

  Golden ran a show—admittedly, a fringe kind of politics/conspiracy show, pretty right-wing. The Golden Hour. Started as a podcast, then moved to radio, though his biggest success was still the podcast. Now he was a commentator on Fox, too. Golden was peeling an apple with a small penknife connected to a bullet-shaped keychain. Easing them into his left hand, he gave Matthew a vigorous and warm handshake. He beamed. “Pastor Bird, it is an honest-to-God pleasure hearing someone like you talk. A lot of us out here are increasingly disturbed with what we’re seeing from these…sleepwalkers, and particularly in President Hunt’s response to it. She’s giving them a lot of leeway, and whatever they may be—whether it’s the Devil as you say or some kind of experiment—we need to know the truth. I’d like to record a segment with you—”

  “Sure,” Matthew interjected, jumping the gun a bit. He didn’t always trust someone like Golden, he had to admit—but at the same time, the man had a platform. He had “a long shout,” as Matthew’s father was wont to say. “I’d love to talk to you when you have some time available…”

  “I have time now.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I brought my recorder, and a camera. We do things guerrilla-style on the show, I dunno if you’ve heard it—”

  “I have,” Matthew said, though that was mostly a lie. Generally he heard about Golden’s show secondhand. “Of course.”

  “Then you know we do these things on the spot. If you need to go back in with your congregation, I can wait out here and we can record right here on the porch when everyone’s gone?”

  “That sounds…that sounds just fine.”

  Ozark clapped a heavy hand on Matthew’s shoulder—it was like a tree branch falling on his back. “I’ll leave you two gents to it, then. My work is done. Preacher, good talk today. I’ll be in touch.”

  And like that, the big man ambled toward the gravel parking lot like he didn’t have much care. As if on cue, his people came out of the church—or from around its side—to follow in his wake.

  Now, in the midst of the living beings there was something that appeared to glow like coals kindled by a fire, like torches that moved back and forth between the living beings. The fire was dazzling, and lightning flashed from the fire.

  —Ezekiel 1:13

  JUNE 20

  Waldron, Indiana

  MARCY REYES FOUND HERSELF ON the floor again, three feet from the bed. Her muscles ached like they’d been pulled off her bones and then reattached clumsily, like a sweater you tied around your waist. Her jaw was so tight she thought she might not be able to open it. Her mouth tasted of pennies; her eyes were crusty. Of course, though, it was her head that felt the worst, as it always did. It throbbed. Her whole world throbbed. She wondered, Was this what it was like for a goldfish in a tank? When they told you not to tap the glass, was this why?

  Someone was always tapping her glass.

  Whump whud thud. Wibble, wobble, wooze.

  She slowly got up off the floor, onto her knees.

  The world ran like wet paint. Lights were too bright. Then too dark.

  Then: a sound. A clink, clank. Plates against plates.

  Grunting, she stood. And there, off in the little too-narrow galley kitchen in this dogshit apartment, stood the neighbors’ kid. Except he wasn’t a kid, not anymore—he was their kid, but Max was in his midtwenties, at least. He stood there, going through her stuff,
grabbing one of her plates, going to her fridge to again steal her food.

  Over his shoulder he said, in that nasal voice of his: “Hey, sunshine. Did I wake you?” That, a question asked from his head buried inside her fridge. Not much in there, because she had a hard time making her own food—but people in town sometimes made her stuff, and so what was in there was literally precious to her. Not like she had money to go buy new food, either.

  “Get outta there,” she said. Her voice smaller than she wanted. It wasn’t always this small. Once everything was much bigger.

  The asshole, Max, turned toward her. The bones under his face shifted and popped, the skin rippling as cheekbones rolled. His teeth became fangs, his eyes opened wide, too wide, going from white to yellow, then to red, then they disappeared inside his head like a cork you lose inside a wine bottle—leaving only gaping sockets behind.

  Her mind warred with what she saw, as it always had:

  One part of her said, It’s not real, you know it’s not real.

  Another part was sure, so sure, that it was as real as anything, and that only she could see what so few others could.

  She blinked, and saw now that he had grown tentacles—

  No, not tentacles. Pasta noodles. Spaghetti, hanging down from his mouth. He chewed, grinning around it like a fox lazily eating a pilfered hen. The pain was making her hallucinate. It did that sometimes.

  “Thish ish good,” he said, smirking.

  That spaghetti. Regina Dolan made it for her—Regina was one of the tellers at the bank where Marcy cashed her support checks. Thing was, Marcy didn’t have a lot to look forward to day in and day out—her family never came to see her, and her TV was broken, and she never got any good mail, so what gave her life were the little things. Maybe she got to see the neighbors’ cat, Plucky. Or maybe she saw a nice sunset out the apartment window, the one that overlooked Main Street, past the old broken-down Grandville Theater across the way. Or maybe, just maybe, she had a Tupperware container of some amazing spaghetti she was planning on eating for lunch, making it not only a meal she’d enjoy, but probably the only full meal she’d get that day.