Wanderers

by Chuck Wendig

  Could she blame them? They wanted bliss. She was offering them conspiracy theories. They were thankful to Black Swan. She was distrustful of it. They were happy in their ignorance. She wanted to ruin that all by knowing more, more, more.

  Like, she thought, look at these two jerks over here. Across the street walked two of the flock. People she didn’t really know very well—she was Cora Pak, he was Justin Wills. Cora had this adorable little bounce to her step and a black bob haircut with hard knife-slash bangs. Justin was tall and hipsterish like if a lumberjack fucked a barista in a library and had a baby—the groomed beard, the mustache with a twist, the red-and-black tartan flannel, the too-damn-skinny skinny jeans. They didn’t look like that in the flock, from Shana’s memory. Cora the sleepwalker was a frumpy pajama-clad mess. Justin the sleepwalker was no lumbersexual, just a gangly guy in a T-shirt and jeans. Maybe in here, this was how they really looked, or how they really envisioned themselves. Maybe they took on new life and new looks. Shana didn’t know. (Shana just looked like, well, Shana.)

  They’d fallen in love, those two.

  They didn’t know each other outside the flock. Shana remembered Cora wandering to the flock in…what was it, Ohio? Justin came late, in Oregon. They were two separate people who had found each other in here.

  The Ouray Simulation: dating app for the next generation.

  Literally, the next generation. Because the rest of the world was going to die. Maybe, Shana thought, this was Black Swan’s plan. Get people together. Force them to fall in love. So they can repopulate the earth.

  Cora and Justin walked hand in hand across the street.

  Justin held an ice cream cone. Chocolate. The two of them shared it, like two gross-ass people in love. (And here Shana had to willfully not think about Arav, Please be okay, Arav, please be okay, I know you won’t be there when I wake up, but I want you to be, maybe there’s a chance…)

  Shana watched as Cora got up on her tippy-toes to taste it. Justin didn’t lower it to her, because he probably thought it was flirting to make her work for it. And Cora fell for it, giggling as she reached—

  And then, like that, Justin was gone.

  It was as if he never existed. Except he did. Shana saw him. Cora knew he was gone, too, because suddenly she leaned forward to taste the cone—and the cone was already falling to the sidewalk, the cone cracking, the ice cream plopping. Cora nearly fell forward, but caught herself.

  The young woman looked around, bewildered.

  She called his name, softly at first.

  Then louder. “Justin? Justin!”

  Shana watched confusion turn to panic as she looked left, looked right. She peered into the window of the jerky store, as if…somehow he’d glitched into there. And maybe he had, Shana didn’t know. But this was a glitch, wasn’t it? Somehow? Shana stood up to run to help her—

  And then, like that, Cora was gone, too.

  Her voice just an echo calling Justin’s name.

  Shana did not know what was happening. But she had a very bad feeling about this. And only one would truly know the answer.

  Black Swan.

  NOVEMBER 5

  Ouray, Colorado

  MATTHEW TRIED TO TELL HIMSELF that the gunshot wasn’t what he thought it was; maybe it was an accidental discharge, maybe it was someone taking a shot at an animal, maybe it was a backfiring engine or a door closing really loud with the sound carrying strangely down here in the basement that was the community center—

  A second sound came fast on the heels of the first.

  Benji looked to Matthew. His jaw was tight, his mouth resolute, even as his eyes flashed panic. Once, Matthew’d had no familiarity with guns, bullets, any of that. But since falling into Ozark Stover’s orbit, he’d gained intimate knowledge of that sound. The way it felt in his teeth. The way it made him flinch. The panic in Benji’s eyes surely matched his own.

  “They’re here,” he told Benji.

  “Can you handle a gun?” Benji asked.

  He nodded. “I can.”

  “Come with me.”

  They raced to the steps. Through the fear and the anger was something else, something utterly illogical: hope. The tiny hope that if Stover was here, that meant Bo was here, too. And if Bo was here, maybe Autumn had come—or, even better, maybe Bo wasn’t here, which meant she’d gotten to him, she’d pulled him away from that life, those people, she’d saved him more surely than God had ever saved anyone.

  Upstairs, Benji opened a desk drawer, and in there sat a pistol. It was Matthew’s own—the one he’d brought to Ouray, the one he’d wanted to use to shoot Ozark Stover down there in the access tunnels underneath Innsbrook. “Here.”

  “You trust me?”

  “I don’t have any choice. If everything you said is true, if what happened to you really happened, you’ve paid your penance, and you’ll help us. Do I have that right?”

  “You do.”

  “Then we have work to do, Matthew.”

  Matthew took the weapon.

  * * *

  —

  BENJI HAD ALMOST begun to believe it wasn’t going to happen. They’d gone around and around with preparation, gathering guns, collecting ammo, creating a plan. And then, nothing. Days without incident. No attack.

  But now that was over. The faint sense that maybe Stover and the ARM militia wouldn’t come had faded.

  The walkie crackled. Landry reported in, said he’d seen them. He’d been up in the top of the courthouse tower, and from there he saw headlights at the north end of town, near the river. It was a lot of them, a whole line of lights glowing in the dark—and then, like that, they were all gone. Lights off.

  They were blocked by the vehicles put there—buses and cars and trucks, all parked at angles across the two roads leading into town. Where were they, then? Benji had a guess: Stover and his people were on foot. Moving through town. Maybe through buildings. And then what? How soon until they were on top of them?

  Soon, Dove hurried in the door, was already saying that it sounded like the shots came from the north side, where Landry saw the headlights. Some of the flock had settled in up there on the short little stub of 10th Avenue. Was a park on the one side and some houses on the other—mostly ranchers and smaller homes, and some of the walkers like Shveta Shastri, Cora Pak, Norman Pureau, and Justin Wills had wandered there to begin their…cocooning, or incubation, or whatever the phenomenon was. The flock was defenseless. They couldn’t be cut or bludgeoned, but as the events on Klamath Bridge proved, they could be shot, and they could be killed.

  And this time, they would not be replaced.

  With each bullet, Stover could begin to undercut the future of humanity. He could erase its potential, one life at a time, until civilization was doomed, well and truly, forever.

  After Dove, a dozen townsfolk followed him in, as per the plan—none of them armed with firearms, but all of them wielding some kind of found weapon: One held a sharpened shovel; another had a home-spun spear made out of a broom handle, a diving knife, and a liberal swaddling of duct tape. A third had a proper machete, a fourth a bulky wood-splitting ax.

  The guns were spread out among the shepherds and townspeople who could handle them: Dove, clumsy bandage swaddling his head, already had the holster unsnapped and the revolver in his hand. Maryam had her lever-action, and Bertie had a .410 squirrel gun. Sadie held a boxy pistol, a Glock. Benji had his rifle. They were armed.

  But, he feared, nowhere near well enough.

  He knew more would come, but already the room was bursting with murmured questions and the low, thrumming undercurrent of fear.

  “Listen up!” Benji said, over the din. They quieted down and turned toward him. He felt Sadie’s hand on the small of his back: It steadied him, gave him a much-needed boost. “This is it. It’s happening. I don’t know what we’re faci
ng out there. I do know this: If you’re someone who lived here before we showed up, I apologize for bringing this to your door. I am sorry, and I wish I could fix it. But the fact you’re standing with us tells me that you’re really, truly with us. You’re shepherds, now, too. Thank you.” He took a deep breath. “The plan is the plan. Stealth and caution are the only ways we can drive them off. Find your pair. Head to your locations and wait. If anyone shows up and you don’t recognize them…”

  His words died in his mouth. He couldn’t quite bring himself to say it: Kill them. His job was to save people. To do no harm, medically speaking. It ran counter to everything he knew—he was no soldier, and neither were any of these people. But they understood the purview. He saw it in their eyes as they nodded, mustering the courage to accept the thing he could not say.

  And with that, the crowd broke apart. They took whatever weapons they could, and they went to their planned locations. Benji feared it was a death sentence. Part of him even now wanted to yell to get them to turn around and have them gather as one, en masse. But this made the most sense to him: Logically, you put people out there in key hiding places with a good vantage, and from there they could ambush their attackers. Maybe, just maybe, it would be enough to limit the numbers of the ARM militia coming in here—and better yet, maybe it would run them off.

  But not everyone dispersed.

  Because not everyone was to follow that plan.

  Staying behind were Sadie, Landry, Dove, and Matthew.

  Landry couldn’t shoot, so his job was to guard the Ouray Chalet Inn—since it was a central location with around thirty rooms, each with two or more beds, it held a large concentration of the flock. They gave him an autoloader shotgun loaded with birdshot, what Dove described as “a dum-dum gun, because any dum-dum can use it.” If Landry got overwhelmed, the inn had a bell, since some used the main room as a wedding chapel.

  Dove, being a competent shooter, took the Mini-14 from Benji. Just east of here was the start of a trail that either went up to Cascade Falls, or connected with the north end of the Perimeter Trail. It went up along the edge of the mountain, and gave a good vantage point looking down just where Landry saw those headlights.

  “I’m gonna hit the trail, scope out the bastards at the north side of town, see if I can take any of them out,” Dove said. Benji handed over a magazine for the rifle, already loaded with .223 rounds. Dove traded him for the .357, leaving the weighty, nickel-shine revolver in Benji’s grip. Dove nodded to him and Benji nodded back. “Godspeed, everyone.”

  “Where do you need me?” Matthew asked as Dove pocketed the magazine. “I can help. Let me help.”

  “Stay with Sadie and me,” Benji said. “We can coordinate efforts with walkie-talkies—with you we can be flexible.”

  “I think I want to go with him,” Matthew said, gesturing to Dove.

  “I go alone.”

  “You could use somebody to watch your back up there, I bet.”

  “Like I said, I’m good alone—”

  Matthew blurted out: “My son might be there. I just…I want to see him. I don’t want you to shoot him. Please let me come with you.”

  It was bald-facedly honest. Dove gave Benji a look. “I don’t know—”

  “Let him,” Sadie said. When eyes turned to her, she said with a sniffle: “I don’t know how this is going to go for any of us, but if Matthew’s son is here, and he’s the one who warned us this was coming, we have no right to deny him this. He’s paid what he owed. Go, Matthew.”

  Dove didn’t look happy, but he nodded. “All right, Matthew.”

  They left.

  And that left only Benji and Sadie.

  Together, their role was coordination. To hole up here in the community center and manage anything that came in over walkie-talkie: Everyone was instructed to stay off the radio unless they had an emergency, but given the situation, it would be easy to interpret everything as an emergency. Those out there had to walk the line between staying silent and keeping Benji and Sadie apprised of critical information.

  “I love you,” he told her.

  “I love you, too,” she said.

  They kissed.

  It was then she looked puzzled. “Where’s Arav?”

  NOW AND THEN

  The Ouray Simulation

  SHANA CLIMBED TO MEET BLACK Swan. As she did, she heard the cries of those below—cries of confusion and bewilderment. Names being called. Someone yelling for help. She knew what was happening.

  People were disappearing.

  And she didn’t know why, but Black Swan would.

  She reached the top, finding there the chair like a throne. Black Swan coiled and uncoiled in the sky, characteristically unfazed. The wind whipped around her, tousling her hair in golden ribbons.

  “You!” she called.

  Slowly, the deep, dark worm drifted down to meet her.

  Its face pulsed with light.

  HELLO, SHANA STEWART.

  “I want to know what’s going on. Now.”

  THE TOWN IS UNDER ATTACK.

  “The simulation?”

  THE REAL TOWN OF OURAY, COLORADO. THE SAME PEOPLE WHO ATTACKED YOU ON THE BRIDGE OF THE GOLDEN BEARS HAVE FOUND THE FLOCK AGAIN. THEY HAVE BROUGHT CONSIDERABLE FORCES TO BEAR.

  “Why…are people disappearing?”

  She knew the answer, but she needed to hear it.

  BECAUSE THEY ARE DEAD. UNABLE TO BE REPLACED.

  She wanted to puke. Was that even an option here?

  “You have to stop them.”

  I AM HERE. NOT THERE. I HAVE NO CAPACITY FOR THAT.

  “Bullshit. You can…you can do something. You’re…a god in this place, you have unlimited power—”

  IN THIS PLACE, YES. BUT THIS PLACE IS NOT REAL, AS YOU HAVE POINTED OUT. NOR AM I TRULY A GOD, SHANA. I AM PINNED TO THE MORTAL WORLD, BOUND INTO FLESH THAT I CAN DEFEND FROM IMPACT AND BLADE, BUT NOT FROM THE PENETRATIVE FORCE OF A BULLET. THOSE WHO DIE ARE DEAD. THOSE MISSING CANNOT BE REPLACED. THIS IS THE ENDGAME. THE FLOCK AND SHEPHERDS WILL SURVIVE, OR THEY WILL NOT. IF THE FLOCK DIES, THEN I DIE WITH IT.

  She imagined that right now, someone might be stalking into her room with a gun. Ready to dispatch her, cold barrel against the forehead, bang. She almost thought to look, but she was too afraid to see.

  Then something hit her.

  “You can see…everything.”

  DEFINE YOUR TERMS.

  “I mean…I can see through my eyes in the real world, and so can every sleepwalker. But you can see through them, too, can’t you?”

  I CAN.

  “You can be like an…early warning system. Or, or—you can use the defense mechanism when one of the killers comes in the room.” She couldn’t believe she was saying this, the sheer idea of it sickened her, but she saw no other way. “We lose one sleepwalker to wipe out one of those militia fuckers, at least it stops them from killing more. It could work.”

  YES. IT COULD.

  “So…do it! Are you going to do it? I…I can help, let me help, let me do something.” They can’t kill Nessie. Or Mia. Or Arav. Or Benji…“Please, just open our eyes, do whatever it takes…”

  But Black Swan was silent.

  She had just opened her mouth to scream at the monstrous, mute worm hovering there in the sky before her—

  When ahead she saw it.

  The black door.

  It opened in the rock. It almost seemed to glow.

  GO ON, Black Swan told her. ENTER THE DOOR.

  And she did.

  NOVEMBER 5

  Ouray, Colorado

  THE MOON HUNG IN THE sky, just the barest scrape, like the edge of a sickle. Clouds muddied the spray of stars, leaving the world before Matthew Bird plunged in darkness. He followed Dove Hansen above the ridgeline, along the Perimeter Trail,
and though his eyes had adjusted somewhat, the sheer depth and weight of the dark felt crushing. Like he couldn’t breathe. Like at any moment he’d make a grave misstep on some scree and slip down off the edge, plunging a hundred feet to the rocks or the road below.

  Dove seemed to have no such trouble. He was moving ahead steadily. Swiftly, though with care. Sometimes Matthew could see him turn his head and look back—impatient and disappointed, probably, at how Matthew was slowing everything down. But he didn’t complain. He just waited till the ex-pastor caught up, and then he moved forward anew.

  In the distance, behind them, they started to hear gunfire: erratic pop sounds. Single shots, mostly, though then he heard a short string of bursts—an automatic weapon. Then it was quiet again.

  The older man whispered something back at him.

  Matthew called forward: “What? I didn’t hear you.”

  Dove stopped, visibly irritated. “I said, what’s your son look like?”

  “Why?”

  “Damnit, man, so I don’t accidentally put a bullet through his head. You’re reckoning to save him, so I’m asking for a description.”

  “He’s…my height, black hair, messy, like a mop. Pale, round cheeks, maybe more…pimples than the average teenager? Brown eyes. Dark eyebrows. Last I saw him he was growing a…mustache.” Or something he hoped would one day be a mustache, Matthew thought.

  Dove nodded. “All right.”

  He started to walk again, but then stopped short.

  He asked Matthew: “What happened?”

  “With what?”

  “Your son. He’s with these…people. He’s not with you.”

  “We…made mistakes. I made mistakes. He grew too close to the wrong people and we didn’t see it until it was too late.”

  “You think he’s able to be saved?”

  Saved. Language that once meant a very different thing to Matthew.

  “I don’t know,” Matthew said. “I’d like to think so but he was always troubled, I think.” Though he really only saw that now that he was looking back on it. Back then, they liked to tell themselves that their son was just moody, like kids sometimes are. But maybe it was more than that.