Wanderers

by Chuck Wendig

  “Jesus, Benji. You didn’t tell me any of this.” She shook her head. “And it’s not your fault. Listen to me: You’re not going out there.”

  “He has Landry. Maybe I can…convince him that I have a cure. I can lie, gin up some deception—I can make something up on the fly.”

  “You’re not an improv comedian. This is life and death. That man won’t be reasonable. He’ll kill you.”

  “He’ll kill Landry, too. And we’re all going to die one way or another out here. Maybe I can meet him. Maybe I can get through to him. Or…trick him somehow. I can do this.”

  “Benji. Listen to me—”

  “Stay safe. Hide if you must.”

  “If you’re going, I’m coming with you.”

  “No. You’re going to stay behind. Because you’re smart. And because you’re the only other one Black Swan will speak to. I’m leaving you with this—” He reached into his pocket for the satphone he used to communicate with Black Swan.

  The phone wasn’t there.

  He checked his other pocket furiously, then began looking around the room in a panic.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “The phone. The Black Swan phone. I don’t have it.”

  NOW AND THEN

  Outside the Ouray Simulation

  THIS WAS THE VOID AND Shana was lost within it.

  Entering into the black door, Shana expected to enter a place of darkness, but a place nonetheless—where she was, though, could not accurately be described as a place at all. It was a land without limits. No margins were present. It was eternal and endless. In it, she had no body. She was merely a part of the void: her threads wound together with those of this nowhere realm, a tapestry of infinite layers, edgeless and unceasing.

  At first, it was quiet. It was cold. It was comforting.

  Then, lights. Pinpricks.

  She knew, instantly, that these lights belonged to the flock. Other knowledge flooded within her, and she could barely comprehend what it all meant, or how to parse it or sort it. It felt like so much that it threatened to tear her apart, to render her into scattered, disconnected quantum pieces.

  Shana moved through the void. Pulsed throughout it like a buzzing current running down an electric line.

  To one light—

  Eyes open in the dark of a dingy motel room, water stain on the ceiling above, the sound of gunfire outside, the mountain air cold.

  To another—

  Eyes open, sitting in a chair in a living room, two cats milling about an empty tuna can in the corner, staring suspiciously at her, mrowing to each other as if in conversation—mrow? mrow. mrow? mrow!—and again outside she heard the snap-crackle-pop of gunfire, of someone yelling, of the siege within the real town of Ouray.

  To a third—

  Eyes open in a place that is different from the others. No gunfire. No chilled mountain air. Ahead, a Plexiglas wall with holes drilled into it. All around, white concrete. Above, buzzing fluorescents, blinking, fritzing. Out of the Plexiglas was a hall, with other such rooms like this—eleven rooms, to be precise, and in them were people, still and waxen like mannequins, each mounted to the wall at the back of their cell, leather straps fixing them there, and it was then that Shana sees—her mother, her mother is down the hall, in one of the cells, her face only a few feet from the plastic glass, oh God, she’s real, she’s not an illusion on the part of Black Swan at all, not a program—

  Out, ripped out, perhaps by Black Swan itself, to another—she wanted dearly to go to Nessie, but that was not where she ended up, no—

  Eyes open, resting on a bed in a cabinlike bedroom, a boxy old TV sitting in the corner atop a handmade wooden dresser, a ceiling fan above draped with spiderwebs, but then she spied movement as a man crept into the room with a rifle pressed to his shoulder, he pointed it at her and she thought, It’s time, I can make it happen, the defense protocol is mine to control if I want it, and I could make this person go pop with just the wish to make it so—but she couldn’t, she couldn’t will herself to do that to someone, couldn’t bring herself to stir the swarm so that it rips out of this sleepwalker, even as he raised the gun, readying it to fire—

  Out there, in the dark, she heard a voice.

  Impossible.

  But there it was.

  Arav’s voice.

  “Shana I’m so sorry…”

  She fled as the gun went off. Buzzing again through the black. Riding the threads of the informational void. She went to him. She went to Arav.

  And there he was. Waiting for her in the dark.

  * * *

  —

  ARAV HELD THE Black Swan phone. He held it cupped in his palms like he was praying to it. He sat in her room at the Beaumont, at the foot of her bed, the lights out, his head resting against her ankle.

  “Shana. I’m so sorry. You probably can’t hear me. But I’m going to go, now. It’s over. I’m losing myself to the disease. I did a bad thing the other day, I almost hurt people. I don’t want to hurt our friends. I don’t want to hurt you. So I’m going to take my moment. I’m going to—”

  The phone pulsed in his hand.

  ARAV?

  He startled.

  “Is this…Black Swan?”

  ARAV. IT’S ME. SHANA.

  “That’s n-not possible. You’re here with me—”

  I’M IN HERE, ARAV. I’M…INSIDE BLACK SWAN’S PROGRAM. THERE IS A SIMULATION IN HERE. WE’RE ALL HERE, LIKE MARCY SAID. I CAN SEE YOU. I LOVE YOU.

  “I love you, too.” He blinked away tears that ran milky down his cheeks. He pressed his forehead tighter against her ankle and he reached up and held her there. He would go to lie with her, but it felt somehow invasive to do so, so here he stayed, at the foot of the bed. “Please come back to me.”

  I CAN’T. I DON’T KNOW HOW. WHAT WERE YOU GOING TO DO, ARAV? WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE GOING TO TAKE YOUR MOMENT?

  “I’m going to—I have a gun. I shouldn’t have a gun, but I have a gun. I took it off one of the dead militiamen.” He looked over at the high-powered rifle, swaddled in green camouflage tape. “I’m going to go and kill as many of these people as I can find.”

  NO. DON’T DO THAT! THE FLOCK HAS THE DEFENSE MECHANISM. WE CAN USE IT. ONE BY ONE AS THEY COME, THE FLOCK CAN…DISRUPT THE SWARM AND HURT THE ATTACKERS. IF THEY’RE GOING TO DIE ANYWAY, WE CAN TURN IT AGAINST THE ATTACKER. IT’LL WORK!

  But it wouldn’t work. And he told her so.

  “It doesn’t matter, I just heard the man on the radio. Ozark Stover. He said they have…grenades, and a tank. The flock can’t do anything about that. That, that…that defense won’t go that far, it can’t—”

  He paused.

  Wait.

  ARAV, WHAT IS IT? HELLO? ARE YOU THERE?

  “I just had an idea.”

  TELL ME.

  NOVEMBER 5

  Just outside Ouray, Colorado

  MARCY FELT THE GLOW, BUT distant now. She could even see it, if she concentrated real hard—through the Humvee ahead of her, through the angled trucks and the old school bus, she could see the glow in little pockets and puffs. It had been scattered, pulled apart, but that didn’t diminish it, somehow. It sang in her head like a cacophony of angelic voices—no longer as one chorus, but as a thousand separate songs, each beautiful, each its own.

  Strength flooded back into her.

  But she was bound and kneeling. Plastic zip-ties fixed around her wrists behind her, cutting off the blood flow and making her hands numb. Her feet, too, were wound with the same white plastic cables. She knelt on the chilly asphalt, having been given no jacket—the cold stung her all over. Around her, milling about the cars and trucks (and the tank), were members of the militia. Drivers and soldiers. Stover came with three dozen men. All men. All armed and crazy. Each of them at some varying stage of s
ickness, and it showed.

  She struggled against her bonds. It had taken great effort over the last month to exercise her body and stop her muscles from atrophying. It had taken even greater effort to exercise her mind and stop herself from going mad. But she managed, somehow, to do both. And even now, she was held fast and firm, unable to do anything but watch the glow extinguish—

  One light at a time.

  Then those around her began to disperse, summoned by some kind of activity up front, past the bus. Stover’s big voice reached even back here (the hell is this?) and it pinged the curiosity of these easily led men. Your master is calling, little poodles, she thought bitterly as several of them broke away and headed around the far side of the bus to see.

  It left her relatively alone.

  She struggled, rocking back and forth, serving only to fall over onto her side. Marcy scanned the area for something, anything, on which to cut her bonds. There. The exhaust pipe of a pickup truck. That could work. It was metal. Sharp enough, she wagered. She flexed her body inward and outward, using a gentle rocking motion to move herself achingly toward the truck—

  Closer.

  Closer…

  Almost there—

  Something grabbed her from behind, dragging her backward. “No,” she said, “please,” the bottom dropping out from under her as the exhaust pipe got farther away, not closer.

  “Hold still” came a voice in her ear.

  She recognized it.

  “You,” she said. The man from the cells underneath Innsbrook. His face roamed into view over her shoulder. He held up a little penknife dangling on a bullet-shaped keychain, thumbing the blade open. Click. “You came. You’re here!”

  “I told you I would. Hold on.”

  Her arms moved as he tugged on them—

  Then, pop.

  Her wrists sprang free. Blood instantly began to flow back to them. She flexed her numb fingers as he pulled her feet toward him, cutting the cable there, too. “Thank you,” she said.

  “I need to find my son.”

  He helped her stand up—

  Just as they heard the rattle-clack of a bolt action closing on a rifle.

  They turned to see who had found them.

  Her savior, Matthew—stared at their captor with wide, sad eyes.

  “Bo,” Matthew said.

  One of Ozark’s men—really, just a boy—stood there. Round cheeks gone pink in the cold. His nose was red, and the nostrils caked with white. Marcy knew his name was Bo, not much else. He was not as cruel as some of the men, but neither was he good to her. He seemed numb, empty, a blank slate of a person. A knitted skullcap pulled low across his forehead, lining up with his furrowed brow. In his hand he held a long hunting rifle.

  “Dad?” Bo asked.

  Oh fuck, Marcy thought.

  Matthew eased his hands out in front of him. She saw a pistol sitting awkwardly behind him, tucked in her rescuer’s waistband. He offered that placating gesture, easing forward with a step.

  “Dad, you need to leave,” the boy said.

  “I can’t do that, Bo. I’ve come here to find you.”

  “You found me. Now get out.”

  “Son. This place, these people, it’s poison. Come with me back to town. Help us. This is about survival—I have friends now—”

  “I have friends, too.”

  “These people aren’t your friends. They’ve lied to you—”

  “You never wanted me to have friends.”

  This, Marcy saw, was not going how Matthew wanted it to go.

  She saw the boy’s body language. It felt like an eternity since Marcy had been on a beat as a cop, but she knew that language. The boy was feeling cornered. Hostile. And he was not averse to pulling that trigger. Even now he telegraphed it, finger moving to the trigger, body tensing around the rifle in anticipation of the recoil—

  “Son—”

  “I’m not your damn son,” Bo said, raising his voice, and then it all went to hell. He opened his mouth to yell, which he did, calling out—

  Matthew raced toward his son—

  The boy raised the rifle—

  Marcy was having none of it. She took one long step, then another, and on that second step reared back her arm and then let it fly. A meteoric fist crushed Bo’s nose, knocking his head so far back on his neck she was half surprised he didn’t end up with the back of his skull in his ass-crack. The boy tumbled and ended up flat on his back.

  Matthew stared at her, wide-eyed. “You hit my son.”

  “Your son was about to blow your head off.”

  That realization seemed to reach him. “Thanks,” he said.

  “A little quid pro quo never hurt anyone. Now come on, we need to—” Move, she was about to say, but turned out it was too late. Because here came Ozark’s men, their guns up in a half circle around them.

  As they moved Matthew and Marcy forward, guns at their backs, the song in her head suddenly began to grow distinctly in volume. Louder and louder.

  And, she realized, closer and closer.

  NOVEMBER 5

  Just outside Ouray, Colorado

  “AIN’T THIS SOMETHING,” OZARK STOVER said, the school bus to his back.

  Benji watched as five of Ozark’s men brought two people around the front of the bus—Matthew Bird and, to his shock, Marcy Reyes.

  Matthew gave him a sad, guilty look. He was haunted by something. Lost within it. Benji understood and felt the same. He mouthed the words, Where’s Dove? But Matthew’s mournful gaze was all he needed.

  As for Marcy—

  She gave him the strangest look indeed.

  Like she was happy about something. Eerily satisfied, somehow. Her time in captivity had not done her well. Benji worried about her state of mind. But he didn’t have long to ponder it. The man behind him kicked a boot into the back of his leg, forcing him to the ground. “Hands behind your head,” the man said. Benji was uncertain that his decision to leave Sadie behind and come here was the right one—especially now that the location of the Black Swan phone was a total mystery—but it was what it was, and here he knelt.

  Stover stepped over to him, drowning him in shadow.

  “Fucking CDC, huh?” Stover said. The big man took a big fist and rapped on the top of Benji’s head with his knuckles. He winced at the pain. “Got a big brain in there, I guess. Figure you sussed out a cure for White Mask here at the end of the world, thought you could get away with it. Keep it for yourself and your friends. And these mummies. Maybe that’s what the flock is, huh? Just a bunch of fucking mummies you’re keeping alive, somehow.”

  “I can help you,” Benji said. “But first I want to see my friend, Landry—”

  “Relax. He’s fine. On the bus, sleeping real cozy-like. But you hold that thought, because I want to talk to my old friend here.”

  Then he turned his attention to Matthew.

  Stover brought his bulk against the smaller man. Pressing Matthew up against the bus. The big man snorfled loud, wiped his nose on the sleeve of his coat, leaving him a slug-trail of snot. “Preacher,” Stover said, still sniffling. “I admit I am surprised to see you. Usually a cur dog like you gets away, he runs off into the woods and never comes back. Maybe you find him on the highway as roadkill. But here you are. Coming back to me, ain’t that sweet. I’d give you a kiss hello, but as you can see, I’m not feeling so hot. But ah, what the hell, you look healthy.” He leaned in, gave Matthew a hard kiss on the cheek. “Sorry if my beard is a little scratchy, Preacher.”

  “Fuck you,” Matthew said. But Benji heard the tremble in his voice.

  “Don’t get pissy,” Stover said. “I’ll keep you near, use you later.”

  Then he turned to walk back to Benji. But Marcy said something.

  She said, with an oddly beatific smile,
“It’s coming.”

  “What’s that, you big bitch? What’s coming?”

  “Justice.”

  He punched her in the stomach. She doubled over, coughing, a string of spit oozing from her lower lip.

  “Shut up, you fucking dent-headed cunt. Talk to me about justice like you know a fucking thing.” Stover snatched a pistol out of a man’s hand and pointed it at the top of her head. “I’ll blow open your skull, use the metal plate in there as a fucking ashtray.”

  “Wait,” Benji croaked.

  Stover slowly turned his head, staring. “What’s that?”

  “I said wait. You’re sick. You want a cure. I have it.”

  The monstrous man pivoted, stomping back over to him. Gun out, he jammed it sideways against Benji’s temple—hard enough to draw blood.

  “You don’t offer me shit. I offer you shit. I offer you a deal and you take it. That’s how this works.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Benji nodded, wincing at the pain of the pistol’s sights digging into his skin. “Tell me your offer.”

  “Here it is. You give me the cure. And I see fit not to kill every last one of you. I’ll kill most of you. Definitely kill most of your mummies because I don’t trust that shit. But you can live. Matthew can live, too. Marcy over there is gonna get her brains evacuated out her crumpled head because I don’t have time for her shit.”

  Benji stuck out his chin. “We all live, or you get no cure.”

  “I get my cure, or I start shooting parts offa you. Start with some fingers. Or ears. Maybe the feet next. Kneecaps. Then elbows. Boom, boom, boom. It’ll hurt like a motherfucker. Oh, you were a doctor? Maybe I do it to someone else in front of you. Gotta be someone in this town you got heart-eyes for. It’s the way of things. I find her—or him, because maybe you like that dick—you’ll give me the cure.”

  “This is not negotiating in good faith.”

  “I am not a man of good faith. Ask Matthew. I’m the Devil, Doc.” He sucked on his lower lip as snot bubbled up out of his craterous nostrils. Stover licked it away and smiled. “Tell you what. You seemed upset that I pointed a gun at Marcy over there. So let’s try that again.”