Wanderers
Page 86
Benji thought but did not say, You certainly don’t want to see what it looks like now. Ozark came with thirty-five men. Ten of them died on the streets or in the houses of Ouray. The rest met their end under the assault of the swarm. Each of them detonated like a hand grenade. All of them besides Matthew’s boy. Why it was that Black Swan chose to spare him wasn’t clear; either the AI knew something, or the kid just ended up lucky. Either way, right now, the north end of town looked and smelled like a slaughterhouse. It was made all the worse by the fact that the day had turned sunny and warm. The road was red. Bits of bone stuck in the asphalt, in cars, in nearby trees, too. Benji was glad that none of his people were caught in what was literally human shrapnel.
“All the bad guys go boom?” Dove asked. He sounded distant and sad, now, like he was trying to summon some good feelings. When he spoke he stared off at an unfixed point, like he was lost in his own thoughts. “I could use the good news, at least.”
“They did.”
“Even the Chief Shithead in charge? Treebark Stovepipe or whatever his goddamn name was?”
“Ozark Stover.”
“Yeah. That one. Wish I could’ve killed him myself. I would’ve made it hurt, too. A long, slow, painful ride to the end.”
Again Matthew and Benji shared a look. Benji knew what Matthew had done. In the bus, once they knew Stover had gone, Matthew raced after him. He fired his pistol again and again. Hit him once, apparently. Then when Pete—of all people—came racing around the corner, knocking Stover down, Matthew went in to finish the job with his pistol. It was revenge, Benji knew, and one that Matthew had arguably earned. But it didn’t make him any more comfortable around the man. He wanted to believe that Matthew was still a good man in there somewhere, a man of faith. He wasn’t evil. But he had been changed by all this.
Then again, hadn’t they all?
Benji had done his share of killing, too, after all.
Dove said, “Benji, where’s your lady?”
“I hesitate to call her mine,” Benji said. He didn’t mean for it to sound spiteful when he added: “I very clearly don’t control her actions, and she does as she wishes in this life.” But it did. It sounded bitter. He loved her. He trusted her. He knew what she did was for him and for the flock. But he hated that she did it. It cut him to the core that she might be dead in a month or two, and he might still get five, even six months more. “She’s off helping clear out houses. I’ll be joining her soon.”
Dove looked to Matthew. “And you look somber as a cemetery plot. I know your son’s been giving you some trouble. Maybe you’ll get through to him, and maybe you won’t. But I wanted to thank you, at least, for saving my ass up there on that trail. Wasn’t for you, I’d have died.”
He reached out and took Matthew’s hand and held it for a while.
“I’m just glad you’re okay,” Matthew said.
“Hell, nobody’s okay,” Dove said. “Maybe we never were, and we damn sure aren’t now. But we’re here. Until we’re not. And that’s all I find it fair to ask for.” Tears glistened in his eyes, but Dove blinked them away, and then they were gone before they fell down his cheeks.
NOVEMBER 25
Ouray, Colorado
THANKSGIVING ARRIVED, AND WITH IT, an inch of snow, so they had a meal befitting the holiday, gathering together in the community center basement. Dove offered right out of the gate, “Anybody made a Last Supper joke yet?” No one had. He was the first. Most people laughed, and they did so sincerely, because one of the truest things about people is that they will laugh in the face of terror, tragedy, and sadness. And, as Sadie pointed out so eloquently that night, “We laugh so that we don’t scream.”
That earned a round of toasting. Wine, beer, and whiskey went around, glasses clinking against glasses, tink. The food they conjured was the real deal—two wild turkeys that Maryam and Dove found in the foothills (oddly, Maryam noted, the breed of turkey was in fact called Merriam’s turkey, causing Dove to remark, “Seems like destiny to me”), brined and roasted in a clay oven that Dove had on his property. They also had root vegetables like carrots and yams, plus stuffing made from proper stale bread; a stock from the bones went to gravy and they found a few cans of cranberry sauce. Lucy Chao, a former pastry chef, made pumpkin pie and cookies.
It was a night of laughing and storytelling. Not everyone participated, of course. The reality of their time here was too bold, too fresh, to forget. Matthew’s son was still sick and in jail, and his wife remained gone: lost, or sick, or killed. Wayward and wandering. Matthew did ask that they say a prayer for those lost, which seemed out of character for a man who had lost his faith—but they said the prayer just the same, even as they kept God’s name mostly out of it. They toasted to each they lost.
Until the end, when they toasted Arav.
Arav, who saved them.
Benji felt restless. Sadie had begun to manifest the external signs of White Mask upon her—the fingerprints of the disease, insidious as it grew too large to be contained, its tendrils of white just starting to ring the outside of her nostrils. She grew pale and wan, though her spirit remained vibrant—she above all others seemed to enjoy the dinner, telling silly joke after bawdy story, whether it was about growing up in a London council block or designing Black Swan. She seemed to bask in it, and all the while she snuggled up against Benji, her hand on his thigh. That night they made love by the heat of a pellet stove in their room at the Beaumont, the stars and snow twinkling outside in tandem, the two of them trying to forget that soon enough, one would be without the other until that one passed on, too.
WINTER
Ouray, Colorado
DAYS PASSED, THEN MONTHS, THEN years.
One by one they left this world, because that was the way of things.
Except when it wasn’t.
FIVE YEARS LATER, IN MAY
Ouray, Colorado
IT WAS LIKE SURFACING FROM cold water. Body up, bent at the waist, a deep and howling gasp to draw in allllll the oxygen that it felt like it was missing. Then came the chills, sweeping over her fast.
Shana rolled out of her bed at the Beaumont Hotel, her teeth chattering. And then she dry-heaved, eventually coughing up something that looked like froth and gray dust. Consciousness came and went, pulsing like a black wave. She tried to stand, bracing herself against the doorway. She tried to call out. But then everything started to go wobbly. She felt the world rush up to meet her—her head hit the carpet. A sound came. Her heart, lub-dubbing louder and louder until—
No. Not her heart. Footsteps. Someone running. Rushing to her.
A voice, warped and mushy, hit her ears. Hands slid underneath her. But it was too late. Darkness swept in and claimed her. Back to the Black Room, she thought…
* * *
—
AWAKE AGAIN. ANOTHER gasp. Another lurching upright.
She was back in her bed at the Beaumont. Her first thought was this was some kind of weird recursive bullshit, like she was reliving the same moment again—back up out of the void once more. But this time was different. No chills, no rolling off the bed, no puking up spit and filth.
An IV sat hooked up to her arm. A cart like you’d find at a library, a book cart, sat nearby, and on it was a ragtag dash of medical equipment she didn’t recognize. The door to her room opened up and someone—her savior?—entered. At first, she didn’t recognize him. He was tall and thin, with a gray beard that was ill maintained, and eyes set deeper than she remembered. It hit her, suddenly.
“Benji?”
“Shana.”
He smiled a sad smile.
They embraced.
* * *
—
“YOUR BABY IS healthy,” he said to her. “As far as I can tell, anyway. I have only limited equipment here, but eventually I’ll bring some more equipment from Ridgway.”
“I…I still don’t understand what’s happening. I know I’m awake but you’re…supposed to not be here and…” Her voice broke. Her vision throbbed as darkness threatened to take her again.
Benji steadied her and gave her some water. She drank it down greedily, sloppily, not even realizing how thirsty she was. The water in her belly felt cold, but it only served to highlight the total emptiness there, and suddenly a hunger overwhelmed her.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
“I…really am.”
He smiled and squeezed her arm. “I’d expect so. The others all were when they woke.”
“The others?”
“Yes,” he said. “You are the last of the sleepers to wake. The others woke up months ago.”
* * *
—
THE WALK FROM the Beaumont to the community center felt doubly disorienting—here was Ouray in reality, and her memory of it was only as a simulation. It matched up perfectly, almost too perfectly, like when a special effect in a movie looked too good, somehow, so it felt jarring.
The town, like the simulation, played host to many of her flockmates. They goggled at her as she passed. Shana expected once more to be treated like an outsider, but that wasn’t what happened at all. People waved. Some wept. Others called to her and seemed thankful she was here. Suddenly, Mia was running up to her, her motormouth running a thousand miles an hour: “Holy shit holy shit holy shit, chica, it really is you. We all thought you were gone, girl—bitch I am so happy to see you.”
She threw her arms around Shana. Shana almost passed out again. Mia started to rattle off a hundred questions—
Benji gently separated them. “Mia, if you don’t mind? I think she needs some space. And some food.”
“Oh, fuck,” Mia said. “Right, right. Shoot, when I woke up, bitch, I was ready to eat like, a whole cow. One bite, boom. Go. Eat. I’ll see you.”
Then Mia kissed her on the cheek and hurried off.
Onward they went.
* * *
—
BROTH, FIRST. WHICH she did not eat with a spoon. Rather, she brought it to her lips and guzzled it. It was warm and satisfying in the way that many salty foods are. As she did this, Benji said, “The electrolytes will help you recover. If you’re anything like the others, then your body waking up from stasis will be like…the worst case of jet lag you can have. Like a hangover tied to an anvil, dropped on your head.”
With broth dribbling down her lip to her chin, Shana asked, “Is this canned broth? It’s so good.”
“No, it’s the real thing. We have chickens. They didn’t die in the plague, and in fact, chickens seem to be having…quite a moment, ecologically.”
She paused in her drinking, and wiped her mouth.
“You didn’t die, either.”
“No,” he said, and he didn’t look happy about it, exactly. More like he was haunted by it. Then he told her what had happened while she slept.
THEN
Ouray, Colorado
BENJI TOLD THIS TO SHANA:
He and Sadie and the others worked tirelessly together in the aftermath of Ozark Stover’s attack, pushing to cobble together as many resources as they could. They hoarded essential books. They gathered guns, bows, bullets, arrows—he didn’t want humans to need those things, but it was foolish to think they weren’t useful when it came to hunting. They gathered fuel—regular gasoline and diesel, adding in stabilizers to give it some stable shelf life. It would be stable up to two years, and after that, who knew?
It was strange, setting up a town—a life!—for people that would outlive you. Sadie said to him, “I suppose in a way this is what being a parent is like, isn’t it? Creating a legacy of a sort.”
“Yes,” he said. He added, “But I imagine that you hope the world will be a better place for your children, not a worse one. A shattered one.”
She rested her head on his shoulder as others gathered supplies to store in a central location: the community center.
It was just after the new year that Sadie truly began to degrade.
He begged her to take some of the remaining pills, but she steadfastly refused—to the point of threatening to throw them away if he insisted one more time. She said that Black Swan trusted him, she trusted him, and maybe, just maybe, the pills would give him enough time to make everything right for the flock when they woke up.
Meanwhile, he stayed healthy as she grew sicker. Her mind began to go with her body—the telltale corruption worn on her face in streaks of white concealed that the disease was also pulling apart her brain.
It wasn’t just her, of course. Nearly everyone grew sicker.
One day, Pete Corley found Benji in the library—where Benji was now gathering local maps for use by the flock—and he said, “Landry is sick.” Benji knew that, of course. He’d seen it. How could he not? Most of the shepherds were sick. Most of the townsfolk, too.
“You seem okay,” Benji said.
Pete shrugged. “Nary a sniffle so far, but I know it’s coming.”
“Are you all right?”
“Nothing’s all right, but for nothing being all right, I’m pretty all right. I have Landry. I just…want to make him comfortable.” Pete said there was a house outside of town, up the so-called Million Dollar Highway, at the top of all those switchbacks. A run-down Victorian, huge, sprawling, and in Pete’s words, “Gaudy as a Wild West whore.” He told Benji he was going to move Landry up there, and they’d spend their days and nights together, at least until Landry passed.
(“Did that work?” Shana asked Benji. “No,” Benji answered.)
The days and nights for Pete and Landry were good…for a while. Then the disease did what it did: White Mask affixed so completely to him that it wound its corruptive filaments and threads into the man’s brain, and one night, the night of a bad storm, Landry wandered outside while Pete slept. By the time Pete woke to realize it—it was too late. He went out into the mounting snow. Landry was gone.
Together, they found him, days later. Out there. Sitting on a rock overlooking the Ice Park Trail, which itself wound down through the valley, toward the river, toward the town. Landry, poised on that rock, was buried halfway up with snow. He was shirtless and smiling, frozen there, eyes open, cold and glassy. In his hands he held a shirt—not one of his own, but one of Pete’s, in fact. “He looks happy,” Pete said, blinking back tears. Later they wondered what went on in Landry Pierce’s head as he wandered out into the snow that night. What did he think he was doing? What was he seeing?
What visions, what lies, did White Mask show him?
They could only hope that the lies were comforting ones, and by the smile bolted to his frozen face, they were.
The night they found Landry, Sadie broke down. She knew what had happened to Landry would one day happen to her. Sooner than later. The disease had already moved into her mind. She’d begun forgetting little things—like closing a door after she went through it, or where she’d left her shoes or her gloves. It was a glimpse of a future where she knew she would forget how to eat, or even that she needed to eat.
Pete and Marcy one day found Benji. The two of them had yet to show signs of the disease. They all sat around, had a little wine, and Pete said to Benji: “I’m leaving, mate. Again.”
The rock star decided that he would do, as he put it, “one final tour.”
“Going to hit the road with a
guitar. See what the world is like as it falls apart. I’ll sing and drink and puke, I’ll fuck up some nice hotel rooms and if I get half a chance, break my guitar over the head of one of those ARM motherfuckers, assuming they’re still out there. Hell, who knows, maybe I’ll find Evil Elvis out there somewhere, still alive, and he and I can either kiss and make up or we can strangle each other on the stage of Radio City Music Hall. Time to live my best life, eh?” When pressed on it, Pete admitted in a small, sad voice: “Listen, mates, truth is? I just can’t do it. I can’t watch you all go like Landry. One by one by one. All while I haven’t a sneeze in me. Christ. I’m a coward and I know it, and I’m leaving this world true to form, by running away.”
Benji couldn’t fault him. If he could’ve run away, he would’ve.
Marcy, Benji, Sadie, Dove, they all watched him go once more. The RV rattling off up the switchbacks.
And then Pete was gone. Off on whatever adventure awaited him.
Matthew, too, was talking about leaving, about seeing if he could find his wife. But he didn’t. He stayed.
Over the next few weeks, others left them, either by abandoning the town or by dying. Maryam went to find horses, and never returned. Bo, Matthew’s son, after weeks of ranting and raving and screaming racial epithets at the walls while weeping, he one night choked on his food, as if forgetting how to swallow it. Some died quietly. Others died with madness in their eyes, knives in their hands, the disease in their minds.
And then came the night—
Sadie was having a good night. Her flu-like symptoms had subsided. She seemed clearer than she had been. She and Benji had some dinner. Not a fancy dinner, no—but they were slowly working through perishables, so it meant they had a couple of baked potatoes, a can of potted meat, some softened venison jerky, and a dessert of roasted apples with brown sugar and walnuts. And, of course, wine. They offered to have Marcy join them, but Marcy said the two of them deserved some time together, and alone.