Wanderers

by Chuck Wendig

  Finally, Benji was alone. Alone, and in a way, at home.

  Because he was in the Ouray library.

  Libraries had, for Benji, long been a source of solace. His work took him around the world, and often put him in intensely strange or stressful situations: crawling through bat-infested caves (no worse smell except the one that came out of industrial chicken houses), catching and testing domestic hogs (the kind that, given half a choice, would gladly start to gobble up your extremities because pigs really were pigs), tracking quarantine vectors through very unpleasant places (a Bangkok brothel, the Philadelphia sewer system, various slaughterhouses and rendering plants). He enjoyed his work then; the burden of it was one he chose and found satisfying, if not exactly happy-making.

  But it was hard and he needed escape.

  For him, libraries served as that escape: They were routinely calm, if not always quiet, and of course they surrounded him with books.

  Sweet, sweet books.

  Each book, a treasure chest of knowledge. And the advent of the modern library did not disturb him: The introduction of computers and other “screens” into libraries only increased that access to information.

  That was key, he long felt, to an informed society, one that cleaved to both empathy and critical thinking: access to information. Simply being able to know things—true things!—meant the world to him. And better still, reference librarians served well in the role that the internet never did: They were the perfect bouncers at the door of bad information. Or, put differently, they were the best vectors to transmit truth. Just as diseases required strong vectors to survive, thrive, and spread, Benji always felt that the power of a healthy society hinged on powerful vectors that allowed good information to do the same: survive, thrive, spread. Unhealthy societies quashed truth-tellers, hid facts, and curtailed debate (often at the end of a sword or rifle). Information, as the saying went, wanted to be free.

  And a healthy society understood that and helped it to be so.

  And libraries were the perfect, shining example of that assistance.

  The Ouray library was, truth be told, not particularly robust: It was the library of a small mountain town in Colorado. It needn’t possess the breadth and depth of, say, the Multnomah County Library system in Portland, or the libraries of NYC, Los Angeles, or DC. It wasn’t beautiful or artful like Seattle, Belarus, or Trinity College. It did not have the rare books that Yale’s Beinecke Library had on hand.

  But it had little treasures, as all libraries did. It had Holt 1967 first editions of Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles, tons of Star Trek novels, plus stacks of magazines he used to love—Discover, Omni, National Geographic. He wanted to dive into them the way one dives into a pool on a hot summer’s day—but he couldn’t. That was not his purpose.

  His purpose was to help build a knowledge base for the flock.

  One day, they would wake, as it were, from their sleepwalking.

  And when they did, they would be woefully unprepared for the world to come. Benji knew he was overstating that problem somewhat: Black Swan had curated the people that made up the flock. They were, literally, the chosen ones. And Black Swan had chosen people from the gamut, but long ago Benji had run the numbers and looked at the people who became sleepwalkers and even from early on, it was evident they were not fools. They had a wide variety of disciplines on hand, with the added bonus of people who were, on the whole, pretty damn smart. He knew they would not be lost, wayward sheep. They were wolves.

  Just the same, anything he could give them, he would. His favor to them. He’d die. They’d live. He could give them an inheritance.

  The goal was: find any books in here that would give them necessary knowledge. He found a book on engine repair; that went in the box. Bushcraft 101, by Dave Canterbury? In the box. US Army Field Manual? Absolutely. Various cookbooks went in, too, especially those comfortable with field dressing and preparing wild game. He found an unexpected library edition of Annalee Newitz’s Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction, and of course that went in—though it was not necessarily full of practical information, it contained several thought experiments on how humanity would survive extinction. He also found older books on shade gardening, foraging, first aid, and those would be helpful. As were the old surveyor maps and road atlases from decades past. He blew dust off them as he chucked them in the box, then reminded himself, too, to check out that bookstore Dove told him about. He wished suddenly he had the Foxfire manuals from the ’70s—those books taught you about everything from snakebites to making moonshine, from tanning hides to midwifing. What if they were here, though? This seemed like the kind of library that would stock them…

  He was about to head to another shelf—

  When the front door of the library creaked open.

  He spun around, instantly clocking where his rifle was—

  Across the room, three tables away, oh shit—

  But it was just Landry.

  His heart racing, he leaned back against the table. “Landry. It’s you.”

  “You look like you saw the Devil jump up out of that box.”

  “I just—the road has made me twitchy.”

  The young black man walked in, hands clasped behind him as he did—he had an imperial stride, slow and somehow eerily confident. “No harm in being twitchy these days, I figure.” Landry lowered his voice, as if someone might be listening. “Long as you didn’t piss your britches.”

  “I did not yet soak my pants, no.”

  “Good to hear.”

  “What ahh—what brings you here? It’s gotta be after midnight.”

  “Almost. About eleven thirty P.M. I don’t sleep well these days. Especially since Pete went off on his little journey.”

  Benji sighed. “We didn’t get to talk much and I’m sorry about that. I know you said you decided to stay here, but why?”

  “I’m sick. I think.” Benji could hear it in Landry’s voice—that treacly thickness behind his nose, deep in the sinuses. “I told Mister Rockgod to head on without me and go find his family. No idea if he succeeded. He may be dead for all I know.”

  Way he said it, Landry was clearly manufacturing defiance—his chin up, chest out, like he was pretending he didn’t care. Like it was what it was, he was bulletproof to that kind of thinking. But it failed to hide how much he missed Pete. Benji said, “It’s okay to miss him.”

  “Nothing’s okay anymore, Doc.”

  “I suppose you’re right about that.”

  “I brought something.”

  Now the purpose of the hands behind his back became clear: Landry produced a bottle of something. A dark liquid sloshed within.

  “What’s that?” Benji said, raising his eyes.

  “Bottle of whiskey. Made here in Colorado, by the look of it—Stranahan’s Diamond Peak. Dunno if it’s any good, but it was the most expensive thing still left on the shelf. All the other good shit was gone, sweetie.”

  “You like whiskey?”

  “Shit, not really. I’m a vodka-gin kinda boy. Hell, I’ll get fucked up on white wine spritzers if you let me. But this feels like a whiskey kinda town, and it damn sure feels like a whiskey kinda world.”

  Benji couldn’t argue with him on that.

  The two of them sat down, popped the bottle.

  In lieu of glasses, they just passed it back and forth. The bottle went ploomp as Benji pulled it away from his lips. The alcohol was warm in his mouth, like caramel and popcorn—when it went down his throat, it left a scalding trail like a log flume ride through boiling water. He coughed and blinked away tears. Landry laughed at him as he took a sip, unaffected.

  “I hate to see what happens if you smoke some of that Colorado weed,” Landry said. “You’ll cough up your own kidneys.”

  “I’ve never smoked marijuana,” he said, wipi
ng his eyes.

  “I can tell by the way you said, ‘I’ve never smoked marijuana.’ ” Landry did a buttoned-up academic impression of him, ladling on what seemed to be extra nerdiness. (Though hell, maybe Benji really did sound that way.) “Tell me, Doc. How the hell does a grown man in this day and age not try a little pot here and there?”

  “It just…never came up. I didn’t want to cloud my thinking. I always viewed my mind like a computer, and I never wanted to slow it down. I tried speed in grad school once—someone’s Adderall. Made me feel like I could disassociate all my atoms and vibrate through walls. I stayed up late, but didn’t finish the paper I was working on, and instead just…cleaned my dorm room. Three times, if I recall.”

  Landry laughed. “Speed is nasty business. Cocaine’s a little nicer, plus I can pretend I’m all 1980s and shit. Acid’s fun, though you can’t get it too easily these days. I mean, even before the Apocalypse. Shrooms are cool once they get going but first you gotta like, throw up, which automatically is a no way nuh uh for me. I won’t barf my guts up just to get high.” He took another plug of the bottle then stared at Benji with deep, soulful eyes. “Doc, what you should do is, take that woman of yours, go get yourself some weed—something edible, like I had these cannabis caramel chews one time? And you couldn’t even taste the THC funk in ’em. Go find a high spot on one of these mountains and, you know, get high with the mountains. Enjoy a sunrise or a sunset. Fuck off from the world for thirty, sixty, ninety minutes.”

  Benji sighed. “But there’s so much to do.”

  “The world’s gonna die anyway. Grab some joy while you can.”

  “You might be right.”

  “I am right. I pride myself on being right. I told Pete that all the time. And I’m telling you now.” He paused. “Sadie sent me, you know.”

  “Did she now?”

  “Mm-hmm. Told me to check on you. Make sure you get some downtime, maybe some sleep.”

  Benji held up the bottle, gave it a swishy-slosh. “This doesn’t look like sleep, Landry.”

  “Drink enough, it’ll damn sure feel like sleep.”

  “I love Sadie.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You love Pete?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit.”

  “Shit is right.”

  Benji spun the bottle cap in his hand, then fixed it to the top of the bottle. “I ought to go and—” Be with Sadie was what he was about to say. But outside, he heard a distant sound. Landry started to ask him about it, but Benji shushed him with a quick hiss.

  A low grumble, off somewhere.

  Like an engine.

  A plane, maybe? No—it was ground-level, he thought. Whatever it was, it was getting closer, too. Benji, trying to push through the whiskey soaking his brain, grabbed the rifle off the back table and hurried to the door out of the library, and then to the door out of the community center. As he staggered onto the street, two things hit him—

  First, little white flakes dotted the dark. Motes, swirling and whirling about. Ashes, he thought, from the bodies. But it wasn’t. It was snow.

  Second, a pair of headlights appeared at the south end of town, bright like demon eyes. The back end of the car swished one way as it rounded the bend onto Main Street, and it barreled forward, swerving through low grass. Benji raised the rifle and pointed it as Landry followed outside, asking what the hell was going on.

  The car came closer. Looked fancy. Silver-gray. Pocked and stained with road grime. Looked like a Lexus. Whoever was driving slammed the brakes—the back end of the car fishtailed as it did, and the whole vehicle slid hard enough to end up perpendicular to the sidewalk and street. Benji blinked against the snow and the darkness, and he saw that in the car sat one person—a man, driving.

  The door popped and that man stood up. He had hollow eyes and a patchy, dark beard. His hair came out in messy curls from underneath a knit winter cap. Benji held the rifle aloft.

  “Hands up!” he said. “Hands up or I shoot.”

  The man quickly juggled a pair of wool-gloved hands over his head. “I’m not—I’m not here to hurt you. I promise. I just need you to listen.”

  The voice. It sounded familiar, though Benji couldn’t fathom why, exactly. It nagged at him like a fingernail scraping paint from an old wall.

  Fatigue wore at him. The whiskey pulled at his mind. Even so, he felt suddenly awake and aware of everything. Every snowflake. Every slice of cold wind. The cold metal trigger underneath his coiled finger.

  It was then that Benji realized who the man was.

  He knew that voice.

  Devil’s Pilgrims…

  Halt their progress…

  Enemies of Christ, the Children of Wormwood…

  Matthew Bird. The pastor who had that podcast, the radio show, who showed up with Hiram Golden. Associated with Ed Creel and the ARM.

  “Please,” Bird said, staggering toward him. “You have to listen.”

  “Back, back, back!” Benji cried. “Don’t you come any closer—”

  “You’re in danger,” the pastor said, taking a lunging step toward the front of the Lexus. Benji pressed the gun into his shoulder. He saw the brand on the man’s neck. Hammer, serpent, and sword.

  No.

  He pulled the trigger.

  NOW AND THEN

  The Ouray Simulation

  THE SIMULATION HELD NO SET mealtimes, as time itself was too fluid and uncertain, but once in a while a mealtime simply seemed to exist.

  This one, they ate in the community center room.

  It was a small buffet full of hometown foods: turkey and mashed potatoes, soda and beer, cheesecake and cookies. It had the feel of Thanksgiving, though Shana did not believe today was Turkey Day. Or maybe it was. Maybe it always was, if they wanted it to be. It was disorienting to think that way; though Shana had never had jet lag, she wondered if this was what it felt like: being somehow outside of time, out of sync with the place from whence you came.

  She sat and ate alone at a small table in the far corner, near an old oil painting of a rust-red mine building, with purple mountains set as the backdrop. Probably somewhere local or whatever.

  The rest of the room was abuzz with chatter—the flock had found their houses in the real world, and everyone was excited. A lot of their resting places, as some called them, were the same as their chosen bedrooms here. A gift from Black Swan? A kind of psychic synchronicity? Who knew?

  For her part, Shana closed her eyes to see—and sure enough, she was on the bed in her room at the Beaumont Hotel, staring up at the tin-tile ceiling. Arav was there, watching over her. Pacing back and forth, back and forth, the floorboards complaining under the tireless assault of his footsteps. A hand jostled her shoulder—

  She snapped back to the simulation.

  Nessie stood there. “Why don’t you come sit with us?” she asked, gesturing to a table across the room. There others sat—Mia, Aliya, some others Shana recognized but whose names she did not yet know.

  “I’m good.”

  “You’re acting weird.”

  I saw the black door. I caught it on camera. And then it was gone. Black Swan is fucking with me, little sister. I think it’s fucking with all of us. Or maybe she was wrong. Maybe her perceptions were off. Maybe she was losing her damn mind. Pregnant ladies went crazy, didn’t they? Oh God I’m pregnant. Nothing makes sense anymore.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine. Come sit!”

  “I said no.” That last word, she practically growled. She didn’t mean to, but that’s how it came out. Nessie recoiled, as if slapped.

  “Oh. Okay.” She looked sad. Maybe a little mad. And then she went back over to the others, tossing one last look over her shoulder.

  Shana sighed.

  She was now the child of
two different realities, one simulation, one not, and she didn’t want either of them.

  Just the same, she closed her eyes once more and felt her mind gently separate from the Ouray simulation and—

  There, again, Arav walked. Cracking his knuckles now, sharp rolling pops.

  He started to speak.

  “Shana come back to me. Please.”

  Her heart leapt. She wanted to scream. Wanted to stand up, reach for him, embrace him. She tried to get her body to do something, anything. She was a passive observer, an audience member to her own life.

  He kept on:

  “I don’t want to be here anymore. I don’t feel right. I…I’m having trouble staying in my own head…”

  She wanted to say to him, I understand that more than you can know.

  “I just, uhh, I just…I forgot your name earlier? That’s a confession I don’t want to make and I don’t even know if you can hear me or will remember this but…I’m having a moment of lucidity and I wanted to tell you that I love you and I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry that I’m losing myself to this…” He roared in frustration, grabbing at his face like someone trying to rip weeds out of a garden. “This damn disease. It’s got us all. But it doesn’t have you. That’s the one treasure I get to keep. It doesn’t have—”

  A gunshot.

  But where?

  In the simulation, or here in reality?

  Arav’s head spun toward it on a swivel, whipping around. So here, then. In the real Ouray.

  He raced out of the room and Shana wanted to scream his name, to call him back, but it was too late. Arav was gone.

  NOVEMBER 2

  Ouray, Colorado

  STRANGE THE THINGS ONE THOUGHT about in moments of crisis and chaos. Matthew Bird, his ears buzzing sharply with the sound of the rifle shot ringing out, wondered, How long before I begin to lose my hearing? He’d been too close now to so many gunshots. So many instances of tinnitus ringing in his ears. As he pressed himself against the ground, a bit of information—a memory—flitted through his head, uninvited, like a bat in the attic. Once upon a time he’d read somewhere, or heard on the radio, that the sound of ringing in your ears was the sound of ear cells dying, their last shriek before going dark and deaf. It was probably a lie. Some misinformation. Or disinformation. Most things seemed to be anymore. For a moment, his brain lied to him, told him that Autumn was here with him, that she was underneath him, that she had come with him from Innsbrook, but she hadn’t. He was alone. So goddamn alone.