Wanderers

by Chuck Wendig

  This was like that. The way things were—the comfort of the addiction of modern, normal life—had drastically fucked off to places unknown. It would, Pete suspected, never return. And it wasn’t just modern life: It was the flock itself. The shepherds had winnowed. They were down to a few dozen, now. Fewer vehicles. Fewer people. Now they carried weapons: rifles, pistols, knives. They hadn’t gone full Mad Max or anything, but some had armored their campers and cars and trucks with sheet metal and trash can lids and the like. The shepherds walked with the wary face of someone who had been in—and was still in—a war zone, scanning the horizon instead of talking and laughing, watching the road and the hills for an ambush instead of braiding one another’s hair or whatever the hell normal people did. It wasn’t exactly that innocence was lost or any of that foofy folderol, but these people had, as the saying went, seen some shit. They’d seen some shit. They’d been in the shit.

  It was a shit parade. Shit pies for everyone.

  Shit, shit, shitty shit.

  The doc, Benji, had given them all a speech a week or so after the sniper attack on the bridge of the golden bears. After they lost so many of their own. Some had joined the walkers. Some, like Marcy, were just…gone. They looked high and low, but never found hide nor hair of her.

  The speech he gave was one where he came clean.

  He told them what was really going on.

  Pete still wasn’t sure how much of it he believed. In his head, he questioned all of it, because it all sounded so fucking fucked, didn’t it? The flock, engineered to survive by a—what’s that, mate? A smart computer? Thinks like a person, or better than a person? Everyone filled up to the brim with itty-bitty drones or iPhones or whatever the hell is inside them? Sounded daft. Something out of a barmy, batshit dime-store novel. And yet, in his heart of hearts, Pete believed the core of it—

  The world was dying, but the flock would remain.

  Now, as Pete wound his way along the margins of the flock, the Beast parked behind him on the side of the road along this dead-end deeply fucked half-desert town, he felt the same way he felt the day Benji gave that speech. He felt empty. He felt a massive loss. Like there had been a bloodletting of all that was in him.

  It was absurd, but the loss that he felt most was the loss of rock-and-roll.

  I mean, yes, sure, music in general, but really—

  Rock-and-fucking-roll.

  Rock music was intrinsically human. Not American, no—he thought that, once, but you think that, you’d have to forget you ever heard the Beatles, or Guided by Voices, or Rammstein, or the Scorpions, or gods, what about Babymetal? Japanese bubblegum heavy metal? Brilliant! Or the metal scene out of Botswana (Overthrust!), or those glorious little punk prick bastards out of Myanmar (Rebel Riot!), or that glam-band dream-balladry of that Argentine band that Evil Elvis used to listen to (Babasónicos!).

  Rock was rebellion and resistance. It was madness and sanity, rolled up into one. It was equal parts about sex and sticking it to the man.

  (Pete thought: For me, sex is all about sticking it to the man. Ba-dum-pshh!)

  And soon, rock-and-roll would be gone.

  Because it was human. And when humans left, rock went with them.

  Sure, the flock would remain, fine, bah, whatever. There was no rock legacy there. Benji said he thought there were a handful of musicians in the batch, and maybe they’d start some Apocalypse Rock gig in the American afterlife, but Pete wouldn’t be around to hear it. He wouldn’t be around to sing it, or strum it, either.

  What was that saying? It was an old quote, some claimed Banksy said it, but Banksy was a rip-off artist like the rest of them. A man dies twice, once when he stops breathing, next when someone speaks his name for the last time. Pete’s name would be lost quick. The flock wouldn’t remember him. Why would they? Why should they? He and the rest of Gumdropper would be gone. Their names weren’t carved in stone; they were signed in soft mud.

  Even now, as he moved toward Benji at the head of the flock, he thought, Gods, I miss those fuckers. Gumdropper. Even Evil Elvis, that snide prick. He wondered: Did that bastard have the sniffles yet? Was he dead in his bathtub, his skin home to the fruiting bodies of White Mask? Part of him hoped not. Part of him missed his old friend, missed the way those magic fingers played the Stratocaster like he was an angel with a harp.

  Another part of him thought, Well, fuck that, and fuck him.

  Life was too short, literally now, to worry about that wanker.

  He had other things to worry about.

  Like telling Benji the news.

  Ahead, Benji had a map stretched out across the hood of a blue van—a van that belonged to one of the newer shepherds, if Pete remembered correctly. The map, Pete saw, was of the American Southwest. A road map, but topographic, too. The puckered lines of mountains, the puffy green pockets of forests, the long stretches of dead-ass desert.

  That’s what Benji was looking at. Sadie stood on one side, Arav on the other. Arav’s earliest days back with the flock had him stuffed in one of those crazy CDC hazmat suits from the lab trailer—him walking around like he was one of the bad government guys hunting E.T. or something. Now the kid had settled for something less conspicuous: a ruggedized Honeywell rubber respirator mask, black as Vader’s armor but with two purple filter bulbs sticking out at off-angles. When he spoke, it was muffled, mumbly.

  Benji was saying, “These next couple of weeks are going to be hard. The path to Ouray, according to Black Swan, takes us past the Calico Mountains, up along the edge of the Mojave, past the Hollow Hills. From there, into Nevada—we leave Highway 15 and circumvent Las Vegas, head past Lake Mead, then back to 15, after which we snip off the corner of Arizona for a short trip and then, Utah. Nevada and Utah are going to be tough. Hot days, cold nights. Not a lot of water. Not a lot of towns.”

  “Not a lot of fuck-all,” Pete said, interrupting. “Not by the look of it, at least.”

  Sadie said: “I’ve driven through there. It’s pretty. It’s also pretty desolate. Benji’s right—we’ll need to stock up. Water, food, sunscreen—”

  “Ammunition,” Arav said. Pete noticed the bulge of a pistol at the boy’s hip, hiding in a black polyester holster tucked under his white tee.

  “Settle down, Clint Eastwood,” Pete said. “Ease off the throttle.”

  “We need to be ready. That means being armed.”

  “You barely know how to use that thing.”

  “I’ve been practicing.”

  “Yes, I’ve seen your ‘practicing,’ and I assure you, all the unbroken bottles and unperforated soup cans would like to thank you.”

  Arav puffed up his chest and started in with, “You don’t understand, because you’re not really committed to protecting this flock and—”

  “All right,” Sadie said. Arav didn’t back down so she said it again, louder this time: “All! Right! Relax. Can’t really protect the flock if we kill each other. The flock is going with or without us, so let’s get prepared.”

  Benji nodded, arms crossed. “We’ll get some of the other shepherds on board and leave the flock in shifts to get supplies. Presently, some can work backward toward Barstow and scan the grocery stores and gas stations. I can’t get a signal out here to check the internet—” As it turned out, the internet did not simply turn off with societal collapse; it just became difficult to access and far, far quieter. “But Black Swan is a satphone and can still interface maps and other regional data. Barstow being Barstow, it’s home to three different gun stores, so assuming they have not been plundered already, those are targets, as well. Pete, given the size of Charlie’s old camper, I’d like to recruit you to head to Barstow and—”

  “Ahhh. About that.”

  The three of them raised eyebrows and looked at him expectantly.

  “Benjamin,” Pete said, injecting his voice with some overdra
matic formality, “can I speak to you, ahh, privately?”

  * * *

  —

  “YOU’RE RUNNING AWAY,” Benji said. His voice was calm, but his mouth formed an angry line across his face.

  The two of them stood in front of a broken-up white brick building—the fading paint on the side of the crumbling stone said MINE STORE. A lone cactus had taken up residence inside the rubble, standing vigil.

  “What?” Pete said. “Am not.”

  “So you’re not leaving?”

  “Whuh—well, I, yuhhh, nnnn—”

  “You’re leaving.”

  “Yes! Yes, we’re leaving. Landry and I are leaving.”

  “Fine, then go,” Benji said, waving him off and turning to head back to the receding flock. But then he seemed to swiftly reconsider, and he wheeled on Pete, fury arcing in each eye like a firing spark plug. “No, you know what? I’ve got your number. I see you, Pete Corley. You came here for the attention, for the media and the fans and the…the fucking Instagram pics and adoring tweets and all those precious cookies. But you came here, too, running away from something. From everything. From your band, your family, your responsibilities. When the shit started splattering around here, you ponied up. You did right. Helped me save some people. And even though you and your boy-toy in there have been living it up in your little end-of-the-world pity-party, you’ve still found time to help out, and I appreciate that. But we’re not done. We have farther to go before we can stop. The shepherds are dwindling. I can’t lose people. I can’t have you slinking away like some scared little cat. There’s nowhere to run to, Rockgod. This? Is it. This? Is home. So you know what, I revoke my permission to leave. Stow that shit in some deep hole within yourself, because you’re staying, and you’re helping these people get to Ouray, Colorado.”

  Silence stretched out between them like a long, empty road.

  As if for drama, a wind kicked up, sending serpents of sand slithering between the two men.

  “That was very good,” Pete said, finally, giving a clipped nod. “It was very—you know, it was very tough guy, very grr, stern. I approve. Shit this and fuck that. I assume you didn’t practice it, so, well done.”

  Pete clapped in slow applause.

  Benji said, quite earnestly, “Thank you.”

  Then the two of them laughed a little. The tension bubble didn’t pop entirely, but a little air crept out of it.

  “Listen, I’m not running away. If anything, I’m trying to do…the opposite of that. I need to un-run-away, I need to…go home. I’ve decided—ahh, we’ve decided, Landry and me—to go find my family.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh.” Benji looked dubious. “Both of you? Together?”

  “When you say it out loud like that, I do hear how gabbling mad it sounds. Shit.”

  “I thought your family had…gone off without you? And they don’t know about…your other deal.”

  “The rampant homosexuality? They don’t know. Maybe Lena suspects. Christ, maybe she’s known all along, I dunno.”

  “This a good idea?”

  “No? Probably not? But they’re my family. I’ve screwed this all up. I should’ve been with them when this hit. I don’t even know—” Human feelings reminded him that he was in fact human and that felt ew, gross, yucky, so he tried very hard to tamp it down. “I don’t even know if they’re all right. Her family’s rich and I like to think they’ll be out of the path of this thing, but…”

  “White Mask’s brutal. Its path is wide.”

  “Yeah.” He clucked his tongue. “Yeah, it is. So—I have to do this. I’ve got to go and find them. Tell them the truth. See if…they’ll still accept me, and have me, and have Landry. I love them, but I’m in love with him. Maybe we can all live in some weird polyamorous love-cult.” Pete held up both hands as if in warning. “I mean, not my kids. They can just be the strange children of a completely fucked-up family. Which, given that it’s the end of the world, is probably the least fucked-up thing, so.”

  “There’s that.”

  “There’s that, indeed.” Pete put a hand out on Benji’s shoulder. “I just need them to know who I am. And that I give a shit. Right now, gods, if they’re even alive, they probably hate me. And they should.”

  They really fucking should.

  “Damnit, Pete.”

  “I know.”

  “I was just getting around to liking you.”

  “Pfah. You liked me from the very beginning.”

  “Well, you’re a likable guy.”

  “A likable asshole, really, but it’s an angle, and I stick to it.”

  Benji shifted from foot to foot. “You leaving now?”

  “Soon, I think. We’ve got some miles ahead of us.”

  “About three thousand, I believe.”

  Pete offered a hand. “Thanks, Doc.”

  Benji shook it. “Go be with your family, Rockgod.”

  “Ah, fuck it,” Pete said, then hugged him. He held the hug for a while. Too long, really, long enough to make it weird. But that was who he was, and maybe, he hoped, it would be what ended up on his gravestone.

  Here lies Pete Corley.

  He lived too long, really.

  Long enough to make it weird.

  RIFP.

  * * *

  —

  LATER, WHEN THE flock had gone on past the asphalt, onto a part of the road that went to gravel past a bullet-pocked sign that read PAVEMENT ENDS, Pete saddled up in the driver’s seat of the Beast.

  “Why’d you say that shit earlier?” he asked Landry. “All that mythological business. The Iliad or whatever it was.”

  “Because, you illiterate fool, we’re in Hector, California, and the bit I said was about Hector, the Trojan prince, enemy to Achilles. We’d just had our own funeral feast, too, what with all the junk food. You’ll notice I threw all that shit away, by the way.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “We really doing this?” Pete asked, suddenly unsure.

  “We are, cocksucker. We got gas in the tank, gas in the secondary tank, we got shitty road food, and, permit me to be a little romantic, we got each other.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “I know. I’ll rot your teeth I’m so sweet. I’m basically cotton candy.”

  “We are missing one thing, though.”

  Landry arched an eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  Pete, from a cubby in the dash, pulled a cassette tape, spinning it between two fingers. “Tunes, motherfucker. We are missing that most vital ingredient: rock-and-roll as we roll down the rockin’ road.”

  He eased the tape into the cassette player, then finished the job with a sinister push of his long, talonlike index finger. The tape clicked and whirred, and from the tinny speakers of the Beast’s stereo roared forth the fifth studio album from Gumdropper, Miracle Mile. The guitar on the title track kicked up, and Pete sang along as he revved the engine.

  The Beast roared, and leapt to its journey.

  THREAD ON CREEL: It’s all bullshit. We’d be marching in the streets if that didn’t mean we’d all get White Mask. Ed Creel is a fascist. He bought his way in. (1/?)

  |

  Here’s what I heard: He has a compound out in Kansas, one of those ex-missile-silo “survival compounds,” condos for the richest preppers. You can google them if you still have internet. (2/?)

  |

  If anybody is alive to follow the money, I heard if you follow it, it ends up in the pockets of those Supreme Court justices. (3/?)

  |

  And if you wanna know where Oshiro and the Successors are? Smart money says they’re all dead, too. That or they fucked off to their own prepper domain, some island somew
here (4/?)

  |

  To sum up: #NotMyPresident—not that anything matters anymore. But fuck Creel and his racist ARM army. See you in the quarantine centers. Or the grave. The end. (5/5)

  @sarah_parnelli

  14 replies 17 RTs 52 likes

  OCTOBER 14

  Innsbrook, Missouri

  MATTHEW BIRD STARED THROUGH THE riflescope. He’d been looking through it for God knows how long now—ten minutes, twenty, forty, two days, two weeks, an eternity. Least, that’s how it felt. (And of course he now knew that really, God didn’t know the answer, either, because God was dead. Maybe God had existed once. But it was easier to believe that He had died not for our sins but rather, because of them. It was better that than accept He would allow all this horror to happen to the world of men.)

  Across the lake water, he watched the docks in the glass of the scope, letting the crosshairs drift over the shirtless boys and teen girls in their underwear jumping off into the water. They were kids of what was now called the ARM, or American Resurrection Movement—that being Creel’s army, formed of the white supremacist and supposedly Christian militias that joined forces in the wake of White Mask to seize control of a crumbling nation. Matthew wasn’t sure what those kids were like. Were they living in blissful oblivion, enjoying life as it was in the protected resort area here in Innsbrook? Or were they the modern equivalent of Hitler Youths, smiling and laughing and playing only when they weren’t out there on the streets in gas masks and fatigues, firing on anybody who didn’t look like them?

  The crosshairs hovered over them. One by one.

  Once in a while, Matthew’s finger twitched, as if eager.

  And whenever it did, he coiled it inward, pulling it tight against his palm. Just to make sure he didn’t accidentally discharge the weapon. Matthew never put his finger on the trigger, but he had this mad fear it would (if he stopped paying attention for just long enough) move of its own volition to the trigger, giving it a quick and irreversible tug. Then he’d have to watch one of those teens fall to the ground, the others around them flecked with their bloody remains.