Wanderers

by Chuck Wendig

  She let out a deep breath and said, “FBI did a deep dive on his family life, his business relationships, everything. Turns out, he’d been acting real fucking squirrelly. Symptoms of dementia. Erratic behavior physically, mentally, emotionally. He also suffered cold symptoms—normal cold virus, not necessarily influenza or pneumonia or anything more serious. More like a proper cold, or maybe an allergic response, and given the inflammation in the brain and elsewhere in his body, that tracks.”

  “When did it start?

  “Not long after an event in San Antonio. The…grand unveiling of some Garlin Gardens park down there. He did some showy explosion to ‘break ground,’ but he…he opened up a cave system.”

  “A cave system.” Benji’s stomach sank through the floor. He feared he knew where this was going. And given who he was talking to—an expert in veterinary health who knew zoonotic vectors like she probably knew her own mother—it explained her fear. “Bats. He released bats.”

  “Got it in one.”

  Cassie opened up a video on his phone—

  It was just a ten-second clip, but the attack was plain to see. Garlin stood on a stage, in front of a crowd, as thousands of small bats swarmed him and everybody else.

  “Mexican free-tailed bats,” she said. “Garlin seemed to manifest symptoms two months after that day. We looked at the biology of the fungus colonizing him. It’s remarkably similar in its biology to both Pseudogymnoascus destructans and Ophidiomyces ophiodiicola.”

  His heart began to do double time. She meant, respectively, that the infection that had affected and maybe killed Jerry Garlin was alarmingly similar to the fungus behind white-nose syndrome in bats, and snake fungal disease in, well, snakes. Both of which were dread killers of both bats and serpents nationwide—the fungus was opportunistic, savaging the bodies of the animals it infected. Snakes suffered sores on their scales. Bats had their wings degrade, and some studies suggested that white-nose fungus—named as such for the way a white powder crusted around the creature’s muzzle—also affected the bat’s echolocation abilities. The bat stopped being able to find food and, with the damage to its wings, stopped being able to fly.

  Mortality rate in snakes was at 100 percent.

  Bats had a better shot, but not by much—in the affected populations, mortality was closer to 90 percent.

  Just the same, it had already killed millions of them—over six million bats dead, last he heard. Mostly of the little brown bat variety.

  “You’re suggesting a zoonotic jump.”

  A pause. “Yeah.”

  “That’s bad, Cass.”

  “It’s real bad, Benji. And again, I hate to say it—it gets worse.”

  “How?”

  “We found three others who have died.”

  “Three. All right.” Deep breath, Benji. “Were they in contact with Garlin in any way?”

  “Indirect contact only. They were present on the day of the groundbreaking ceremony. All three—” He heard her ruffling papers. “Jessie Arvax, Greg Rooney, and Tim Bauer were not only present but also confirmed to have had contact with the bats. Two of them had rabies shots as a precaution.”

  “Okay, okay.” His head spun. “That could be good news. Three is…well, four including Garlin, four dead is regrettable, but that’s a low number.”

  He hoped this was more like influenza. If this was zoonotic, well, most infectious diseases that made the zoonotic jump from animals to people established a beachhead, but not much more.

  Four dead. A small number, he told himself.

  Still, the Spanish flu of 1918 started humble, too…that flu emerged first as a mild strain in the spring of that year, but by late summer had mutated into something far worse. By the end of its run, it had killed forty million people—more than those dead in World War I. He hoped this disease—with the four dead—would remain at that number and not suddenly lurch forward, a pathogenic overachiever.

  He continued: “Sounds like it’s not person-to-person. In bats it’s incredibly infectious—one bat in the colony gets it, they all get it.”

  “Right. We’re trying to rule that out now. But with the, uhh, hope that it follows the pattern of being non-infectious after the jump, maybe we’re in good shape.”

  It struck him that thinking of only four dead after a fungal infection jumped from bat to person as “in good shape” was particularly psychotic—but once again, that was part of the cross he and other medical professionals had to bear. Bedside manner aside, it was all too easy to view this world of his in a cold, clinical manner. Numbers and data. He’d tried to look beyond that with Longacre, and the result was a wretched one.

  But…

  Maybe what happened with Longacre was too overt, too sweeping. He went too big with it. Maybe it was time to think, well, smaller.

  “This could be good news for us,” he said.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Bear with me.” He winced, hating that he was even suggesting this. “Cassie, we know HomeSec wants to kick us to the curb.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “I can take this to Loretta. She can take it to Flores, who can take it to Hunt. We can get ahead of this thing, maybe stay on the job a little longer.”

  At least until I see if my theory regarding nanotechnology is correct, he thought.

  “But this fungal thing doesn’t seem to connect to the walker phenomenon. There’s no bridge.”

  “You know that. And I know that.”

  “Oh. But they don’t know that,” she said.

  “Exactly. It buys us time. We already have it documented that we were considering fungal and parasitic vectors. Given that Black Swan pointed us in the direction of uncovering Jerry Garlin—we can use that. And we can also hope we have successfully gotten ahead of whatever it was that Black Swan was warning us about.”

  “This isn’t Longacre all over again, is it?”

  He swallowed. “I hope not. I understand if you don’t want to go along with it. I’m using you as my check here. If you say not to do this, we won’t do this. You wished I had come to you with Longacre, well, here I am. I’m tired and on edge and I may not be the best judge—”

  “Let’s do it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “No, not at all, but with this flock we are in wildly uncharted territory. Weyland and his goons won’t like it, but that’s fine by me. I say fuck ’em and kick it up the chain, boss.”

  “I will, Cass. And let me know if you find anything else.”

  “Can do.” Another pause. “Hey, are you okay, Benji? For real.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not. Are you?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then let’s be not-okay together. And hope equally for a better day.”

  “I can drink to that,” Cassie said.

  A rumble arose. Like an engine. Coming from far off, but closing in. Cassie and Benji shared a quizzical look.

  Both of them turned in time to see a man roll up on a Harley-Davidson, red like blood and covered in skulls. The lanky man like a rock-and-roll scarecrow, kicked over the bike like he didn’t give a damn about it. Then he wandered into the flock.

  Like he owned the place.

  “That’s…Pete Corley,” Cassie said, mouth agape.

  “Pete…Corley? The Gumdropper guy?”

  “I swear, that’s him. I’ve been to a couple festival shows where they played. He used to be a madman, a real rock star—the kind they don’t make anymore.”

  Benji watched all the shepherds catch on to the fact—he could see the recognition in their eyes dawning. As the man stepped toward the crowd, they peeled away from the flock to greet him. Some refused to get close, gawking at a distance. Others rushed up to beam and gape and shake his hand. And he looked as natural as anyone could be in such a situation, like this wa
s perfectly normal for him.

  Benji didn’t care much for Gumdropper’s music—they were huge in the 1980s, when he was a kid. They were kind of half glam rock, half pop-punk, like some monstrous hybrid of Aerosmith and the Ramones. Benji grew up on hip-hop and R&B: anything from Public Enemy to Boyz II Men, Run-DMC to Usher. These days he often forgot to listen to music—not like Cassie, who hid under the comfort of her headphones five minutes out of every ten. But when he did listen to something, it was John Legend, Alicia Keys, maybe some old Motown records.

  But not caring much for Gumdropper didn’t mean he didn’t know who they were. They weren’t as big as, say, the Stones or the Beatles, but they had a good twenty-year run of dominating rock-and-roll—the band did their share of big stadium events, plus a Super Bowl halftime show. Every few years, they popped up again. An appearance on late-night TV. A new single on iTunes. Talk of some new album that never manifested.

  Corley was a known raconteur and rabble-rouser. Had his troubles with the law, destroying hotel rooms, going wild on coke binges in the ’90s, or there was that stunt on New Year’s Eve in 2000 where he rushed the Times Square stage when Britney Spears was performing. Thing was, he always seemed to escape consequence for those actions. Everyone loved it. Even in 2000, Spears first looked shocked, but then warmed up to him and next thing the world knew, he helped turn “Oops!…I Did It Again” into some guitar-grinding rock-star mash-up.

  “What a spectacular asshole,” Cassie said. “I kinda love him.”

  “Why is he here?”

  “Best guess, he’s looking for attention. He saw where the news cameras were pointed and decided to jump in front of them.”

  And it worked. Already Benji could see some of their “embedded” reporters rushing toward them.

  “Guys!” Here came Arav, hurrying toward them at a fast clip. “Guys, you need to see this.”

  “We’ve seen,” Benji said. “Pete Corley, we know.”

  “That’s not it,” Arav said, half out of breath. He fumbled with his phone and pulled up a livestream of MSNBC. It froze, the wheel turning; signal out here in the heartland wasn’t just half-assed, it was one-quarter-assed at best, maybe 10 percent of ass, and all shit. Finally the video autoplayed—

  On the screen, Benji saw military vehicles: US Army troop carriers. His first question was, Where are they being deployed? But then he saw the chyron at the bottom—

  RIVERSIDE, IOWA.

  It explained why Weyland had been so cocky.

  It’s happening.

  “What time is it?” Benji asked.

  “Just after three P.M.,” Arav said.

  That meant they were ramping this up early. On the screen, the scrolling chyron at the bottom asked if President Hunt was finally taking “decisive action” on the sleepwalker phenomenon.

  On the handheld screen, he saw three troop carriers—at least a dozen soldiers each. They were already pouring out, rifles over shoulders.

  Benji felt every cell in his body go rigid as his mind played out one of many possible scenarios: Troops roll in, guns up, the shepherds resist, the media watches as the two sides clash. Best-case scenario was busted heads and blood on the asphalt. Worst-case, someone opened fire. Were there any firearms among the shepherds? He’d never seen any, but it also wasn’t his place to check. They only had a middling police presence, and further, were they even checking? He imagined not. This was a potential powder keg.

  “Shit,” he said.

  He needed to call Loretta.

  Now.

  What we’re talking about here is a potential Sixth Extinction. We’ve had five such events in the historical record, where species die off at an accelerated rate, and that’s what we’re seeing now—vertebrates are dying off at one hundred times the expected rate, and we’re only just now getting a grip on how bad it is for invertebrates. A study in Germany showed that up to 75 percent of their insects have disappeared since 1989. Notice how driving down the road you get fewer bugs splatted on your windshield? Or how you don’t see as many fireflies anymore? Welcome to the Sixth Extinction. And in this video, we’ll discuss what that means for the world—and for us. Afterward, don’t forget to click like and subscribe!

  —Carl Yong, science writer and broadcaster for

  the PBS Zero Hour YouTube channel

  JULY 3

  Echo Lake, Indiana

  ONCE AGAIN, PASTOR MATTHEW WAS thrown back into the fray with only a plate of food to fend off the conversation. Not that he necessarily wanted to—he enjoyed being the center of things, for once. It felt good. It felt necessary. Lord, it felt right.

  He felt like a man buoyed by a raft on the ocean. He flowed this way and that, from the patio back inside the house to where lots of folks gathered around a massive dark cherrywood bar that wrapped around a tree-trunk pillar in the center of the room. The drinks—a sour bourbon punch now with the oaky kick of whiskey and the tang of lemon and orange—flowed like a river after a strong rain.

  Matt kept looking around, though, trying to find his son, or his wife—or even Ozark. Eventually he spun away from one group (which included an actual bona fide astronaut), and while dancing halfway to another he found himself bumping into Roger. He said, “Hey, Roger,” and found his words looser on his tongue than he’d like—lubricated, he feared, by a bit too much to drink. “You seen—”

  But Roger shushed him. He held up something in his hand—a remote control—and then pointed it to a flat-screen TV that hung above the bar.

  The screen came on big and bright. The sound was down, so Roger cranked it—and it didn’t take long for it to push back against the din-and-clamor of the crowd here talking. They shushed as the TV took over.

  (And here Matthew looked around and idly thought how strange it was for people to turn toward the glowing box with such strange reverence in their eyes. It hypnotized them. A television in any room did that to him, too—that’s why he hated eating out at any restaurant that put a TV on in the corner. He always found himself and his son staring at it, transfixed. Like they were stealing a little devotion away from God and giving it to this…this damnable rectangle of light.)

  (Still, what could he do? He turned to the box and tuned in.)

  Roger didn’t have to change the channel to Fox News—the station was there soon as the TV came on. They were showing video now of some armored troop carriers—one of the newscasters said they were US Army—mobilizing soldiers near the sleepwalker flock in Iowa.

  Again Matthew turned his eye toward the other people around him—a strange thing to do, maybe, and a thing maybe driven by the whiskey fuzzing up his brain. He could see the eyes pointed to the TV, the flicker of motion on it captured in their eyes and their drink glasses. Then he caught movement off to the side: Ozark Stover.

  Standing there with his son and his wife.

  Ozark was giving Autumn something, and she was nodding.

  Bo, for his part, just stood there, staring at the TV like everyone else.

  It was a small moment in time—seemingly unimportant, practically over before it began. But Matthew caught it and it stuck between his teeth like a stringy piece of gristle. Ozark looked over at him then, gave him a small smile and a nod. Autumn didn’t look—she just took Bo and made a beeline for the front door, even as Ozark cut through the crowd toward Matthew. The pastor didn’t know where to go—meet Ozark? Or follow his wife and his son to see where they were going?

  In his indecision, he rooted his feet.

  Which was, in a way, a decision all its own.

  Stover came, stood next to him. He lifted his big bearded chin toward the TV. “Helluva thing.”

  “It’s good,” Matthew said. “I suppose.”

  “Fuck that,” Ozark said. “If you can excuse my salty tongue.”

  “I don’t follow. Isn’t it good what Hunt’s
doing?”

  “It is. And anytime Hunt does something good, that’s bad for us. Creel pushed her and she yielded—which makes her look weak, maybe, but it also makes her look like she’s gotten tough on those freaks.” He sighed. “Still, I’m sure Creel will call her on her hypocrisy. It’s all in the messaging.”

  Matthew swallowed. His mouth was suddenly dry. Why was he afraid to ask Ozark about his wife and his son? “I saw you talking to Autumn—did she…”

  “Leave? She is leaving, yes.”

  “Did she say why?”

  “Tired, I think.”

  His mouth formed the words to ask Ozark about what he gave Autumn—but no sound came out. He resolved to ask Autumn about it later.

  By now Roger had turned the TV off and was thanking everyone for their patience. And with that, the crowd snapped into high gear. From them came the roaring murmur of all of them talking about what they’d just seen.

  Ozark in the meantime looked down at the plate in Matthew’s hands, a plate that once upon a time held half a rack of ribs, but Matthew had done a good job at whittling it down to just bones.

  The big man said, “Glad you liked those, Preacher. That’s from a feral hog I killed here on the property. Around here, we eat what we kill, always. Use all parts of the animal, down to pig’s feet jelly, head cheese, soap from the fat.” He plucked one of the bones from Matthew’s plate and popped it in his mouth like a lollipop. He suckled it and pulled small ribbons of meat off the rib. “You missed some, Preacher. Grab a bone and keep eating.”

  Police Launch Probe into Mysterious Death of Richmond Professor

  By Roberto Spidle, Richmond Times-Dispatch

  Police are attempting to understand the mysterious death of local media and communications professor Greg Rooney. Rooney, 46, was found naked in his bathroom, covered in blood from having taken a shaving razor to his face and throat so vigorously he opened his own jugular. The coroner has suggested he bled out due to this, but could only speculate why the man would—or could—do such a thing. Toxicology reports found no drugs, but the coroner noted that many bath salt and so-called smart drug formulations have not yet been cataloged for tox screens, so that cannot be ruled out. Rooney, divorced, was not found for days, and by that time his body had already been colonized by a white, fuzzy fungus…