by Platt, Sean
Piper rolled her eyes. Trevor had been catching both of their vibes for the entire time they’d been walking beside the slow-moving line of traffic despite trying to move his mind from Piper, and he’d seen how they’d both started hard then softened through the hike. That was how they usually did things. When Piper didn’t agree with Meyer (which wasn’t often, Trevor had noticed; she naturally avoided conflict), they squared off into silence. Somehow a compromise was always reached without a word. They met in the middle, each managing to apologize without ever saying a sorry. She hadn’t wanted to jack a car; he had. Apparently, stealing one from a lot was a fair middle ground.
“Come on,” said Meyer, veering away from the road to cut through a field bordering the lot. “They have insurance, and my insurance has been ripping me off for years. I owe them one.”
“How do you know it’s the same insurance company?” said Lila.
“They’re all owned by Satan. Let’s go.”
The field was unmowed but clean, free of the debris that littered the roadside. They’d made it quite far out of the sprawl and were now mostly suburban, so the lot wasn’t the kind they were used to seeing in cities, where kids drank and dug in abandoned basements or homeless people slept below the tall grass. It was gently rolling, coming down and away from the road. The dealership itself was nestled in a miniature valley, down from the road’s peak, with its own hills and dales between the subsections of new Toyotas in rows.
They crossed through the line of vehicles, Raj stopping to read the specs. A moment later they were at the lot’s front door, which was, of course, locked. But it was also glass.
It took Meyer a while to find something suitable with which to break the doors. The lot had been kept clean, and there were no lead pipes, baseball bats, two-by-fours studded with nails, or any of the other convenient props one would have expected to find on a typical Hollywood back lot. Eventually, he found a chunk of concrete that had broken upward, presumably during a freeze cycle, and tossed it hard through the glass. Then he reached in and unlocked the door. Meyer was flicking on the lights when there was a click in the empty lobby, filled with desks and abandoned paperwork.
Trevor almost didn’t see the reason for his father’s raised hands until it was too late. He was striding toward a water cooler when there was a shout.
“Stay where you are!”
Trevor looked up to see a man holding a rifle pointed directly at his chest. He was mostly behind a desk, apparently kneeling. The rifle had a scope, and the man was peering directly through it as if hunting Trevor like a deer — probably what the rifle had been intended for, before it had become a weapon of preservation.
“Get down on your knees, both of you!” He looked up at Raj, Piper, and Lila, who were a few steps back and added, “All of you!” He waved the gun around with a jitter, jerking the long barrel side to side in staccato movements, meeting each target in turn.
“Easy,” said Meyer. “We didn’t know you were in here.”
“Well I fucking am! And now you can just get the fuck out!”
Meyer looked over at Trevor, nodding toward the floor: Kneel as he says. He was doing the same himself, glancing back at the others to follow.
“I’m just kneeling like you said. But if you want us to go, we will.”
“Kneel!”
“I’m kneeling. It’s fine.” Meyer’s voice was a glassy lake. Trevor felt like he might pass out, and Lila looked seconds from doing the same, breathing through her mouth as if unable to catch her breath.
“I said kneel!”
He already was kneeling. The man sounded hysterical, almost out of his mind. He appeared to be in his early forties, bald on top with a ring of brown hair in a halo from ear to ear. He was wearing a long-sleeve white shirt and a brightly colored tie, as if ready to work. Only his armpits seemed yellowed with sweat, and everything was rumpled, as if he’d slept in it.
“It’s fine. No problem.”
“What are you doing here?”
“We came for a car. But we’ll leave. No big deal.” Trevor flexed to rise, but his father stared him back into place.
“This is my place!” the man shouted. His voice was tremulous, cracked.
“Of course. It’s your place.”
“Don’t you fucking humor me!”
“I’m not. We’ll move on. Can I stand?”
The man raised the gun higher, refirming its butt against his shoulder. “You think I won’t shoot you? I shot the others! You hear me? I’m not soft! This is my place!”
The statement made Trevor feel cold: I shot the others. A thousand movie scenes raced through his mind. Loud action where one fighter battled for what was his. Creeping dread, where one person did what he had to survive, even if it meant killing friends who were sick, or competing for resources.
“No problem. I’m just going to stand up.”
“Don’t you fucking move!”
“Listen,” said Meyer. “What’s your name?”
“None of your fucking business.”
With his hands still raised, Meyer’s eyes narrowed. After a moment, Trevor saw what he was peering at: the brass-colored plate on the desk he was crouching behind.
“Frank,” he said, reading the plate. “Can I call you Frank?”
“Isaiah!” the man blurted.
Trevor watched his father nod. He’d known his name wasn’t Frank, but getting people to do things they thought had been their own idea was one of his specialties.
“Isaiah,” Meyer said evenly. “I’m going to stand. My son over there is going to stand, then the rest of my family behind me. Please. One father to another, I’ll ask you: keep the gun on me.”
Something registered in the former car salesman’s face. The rifle lowered a fraction of an inch. Apparently, the man did have a family. Then Trevor saw another desk with another nameplate, right where his father had been looking while Isaiah had been looking at the others. The plate on that desk said Isaiah Schwartz, and there were several photos beside it in frames, of children with brown hair.
Isaiah didn’t ask Meyer how he knew what he’d known, but he did allow Meyer to stand. Slowly, Trevor and the others did the same.
“We’re just going to walk out. Okay? Keep your gun on me.”
Meyer began to step backward. Piper, Raj, and Lila were already out, out of sight. Trevor watched his father’s eyes beckon. Trevor had gone the farthest in, but Meyer wanted him behind. The man probably wouldn’t shoot, because Meyer’s voice had a way of soothing the savage beast. He’d once told Trevor he used anger and indignation as a negotiating tactic — not in himself, but in others. If he could get the other party ranting and raving before he calmed them, they always felt stupid and somewhat conciliatory. Once they blew their energy being pissed off, they lost their advantage unless they could maintain their anger — which, thanks to Meyer Dempsey’s considerable charisma, they never could.
Trevor walked behind his father, then watched his slow retreat. There was something different in the way he was moving. He wasn’t like himself. He had a slight waddle, just as he’d had a slight affect in his voice a moment ago that wasn’t usually there. It was subtle. But once you knew what he was doing — once you realized he was matching Isaiah Schwartz’s vocal patterns and walk as he came forward — it was obvious.
People like people they’re like, Trevor’s father had once told him. It was amazing what people would agree to if you spoke how they spoke and copied a few of their mannerisms. Just like how Isaiah, now that he’d risen from behind the desk to march them out, kept tilting his head to the side as if to crack or stretch his neck. Just like how Meyer, backing out of the car dealership, was doing exactly the same thing. You’d think people would notice being copied. But that was another thing Meyer had told his son: most people are so far up their own asses, they barely notice there are other people in the world.
“Don’t come back. And if you tell anyone I’m here … ” said the salesman, still walking
forward.
“We won’t.” Meyer tilted his head. Crack.
“Don’t you hide on my lot, either. You go up there. To the road.”
Meyer stepped backward, barely looking down to watch the stairs. He effortlessly descended heels first, bringing himself below the salesman’s eye line. It would make the man feel superior — higher in status because he was literally higher up. Trevor knew that trick, too. He fumbled down slightly faster, less graceful than his father, and looked up doe eyed. Just another helpless animal of prey, like those he probably used to shoot on the weekends, using the rifle he kept in his trunk.
Meyer was now halfway across the apron of driveway in front of the building’s doors, his hands still obediently raised. He waited for the man to lower his weapon or definitively allow them to go, but instead he just stood on the raised steps, the rifle’s barrel slowly lowering.
“They left without me,” he said, his voice suddenly small.
Trevor looked at his father, seeing if he wanted to parlay this moment of weakness into a new advantage.
Who left? His friends? His co-workers? Or most coldly: his family?
Trevor never found out. Raj stepped out from behind the alcove behind the door and hit Mr. Schwartz hard with a large cigarette Butt Depot that had been set in the designated smoking area around the corner.
The salesman hit the ground. Lila, behind Raj, looked aghast and as if she’d been trying to stop her man from acting. Piper snatched the rifle, taking too long to free the strap from the man’s unconscious body.
“Stupid, Raj,” said Meyer, shaking his head, clearly surprised. “But good job.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Day Four, Early Afternoon
Chicago, Rural Illinois
They were on the road, with untold horrors before them.
According to Lila’s phone, it was just after noon by the time they located the transponders, then figured out the dealership’s system for matching key fobs on hooks to vehicles on the lot. Her father wanted a Land Cruiser — and, given the vast selection they finally found themselves able to take advantage of, would settle for nothing less. Now that Toyota offered a Land Cruiser hybrid, there were tons of upsides with almost no real downside.
The tanks were massive, and the new hybrid engines averaged 32 mpg on the highway when running on full auto. A driver, if they needed to go manual, would lower the efficiency, but they could still expect to hit thirty or more once they found open roads. With luck, they might be able to get all the way to Vail, stopping just four times for gas — more if they could fill tanks to carry as they had in the JetVan. The Land Cruiser was also heavy enough to crush through smaller obstacles and push lesser vehicles out of the way if it had to. And it would run off road, which meant they could cruise up the medians if they found open grass.
They didn’t tie the salesman, at Piper’s insistence. He’d need his freedom to survive. They needed to get away before he woke (taking his rifle; Piper was foofy but hardly naive), but he wasn’t a threat if they left him inside the building, on his side in case he vomited in his sleep.
The dealership also had a wide variety of paper maps — something Lila hadn’t considered but that her father took as a great relief. They didn’t have atlases, but they had Chicago and the outlying areas, and a wide-view Midwest map that showed a good chunk of their forthcoming trip from far up. Lila wasn’t used to navigating without a GPS, but her father had spent a childhood with parents who were always behind the times, and hence knew the basics of following a line on paper. And beyond that, she suspected he’d boned up on map reading as part of his crazy survivalist fetish — no longer so crazy.
Before leaving, Meyer tried the dealership’s hardline phones to reach her mother. He had no luck, but kept at it for long after Piper had begun waving frantically that they needed to go. They’d hit the road, and he’d resumed trying on his cell. There was still no data coverage and intermittent voice. Their devices were quickly becoming useless, not much more valuable than rocks they might throw to defend themselves.
The Land Cruiser was as good as its name, and Meyer wasted no time heading out in the grass bordering the highways. Seeing this, several cars in the slower lanes on concrete followed, zagging out of line and into the faster way paved by the oversized vehicle. Most made it just off the road, then stuck in what was essentially a large drainage culvert. A few made it onto the grass and rattled bumpily along for a few miles behind them before sticking. Only the toughest, most off-road-ready trucks and SUVs kept up, forming an impromptu express lane beside the road.
Eventually, traffic thinned enough to jockey back onto the highway. Meyer kept going, always staying in the right lane and keeping an eye on the berm to keep a lane of escape available. But luck stuck to them, and once past the outermost of Chicago’s sprawl, roads became rural. Lila’s father handed the paper maps to Piper, who proved an adept navigator. She led them onto forgotten roads, reasoning that the more they avoided people, the better. The gas gauge was the only barometer in need of watching, and until it started to creep down near a quarter, they’d stay out in the backwoods, pretending humanity was already gone.
They followed signs for Davenport and Moline, then skirted the cities by a wide berth on approach. “We don’t want another Chicago,” her father said from the front seat. No one disagreed.
The way was smooth and predictable enough that once Meyer was through watching the berm in case he needed to go off roading again, he turned on the autodrive and they rode like normal people on a regular trip. The car’s GPS wasn’t working any better than their phones’, but the maps programmed into memory did a fair job working with the odometer to keep an eye on their rough position. Proximity detectors worked fine without a connection, and when they approached other, slower vehicles (decreasingly often), the car corrected easily, passing with everything but a wave.
Lila tried to stay calm. She didn’t want to raise her father’s ire (or hopes), so when he was turned from the car’s middle, watching the sun-washed flat land ahead, she tried to call her mom. She knew the phones didn’t work and that she was foolishly wasting battery power (though Lila supposed she could rummage for the charge cord), but still, each time she heard the out-of-service message her heart dropped a little. She tried not to think of Mom, of the way she’d been cut off when Dad’s phone had failed. But it was hard not to think of something — like her mother probably raped, murdered, and left in the burning desert.
She looked at Raj. He smiled. She smiled back, supposing she owed him some adoration. She’d protested when he’d gone for that smoker’s station to clock the man with the gun, but it had been a catch-22: if she protested too loudly, the man would turn, see Raj, then shoot him. Still, whether she’d thought him an idiot or not, it was thanks to Raj that they had the Cruiser and were on their way to Vail.
She gave his arm an affectionate squeeze, then looked at the passing scenery. Close to the wheels, grass and wire fences were whipping by. Farther out, the pastures and even a few grazing cows were almost stationary, creeping by slowly as if on a conveyor. Little by little, they were moving west. Little by little, they were going to make it.
They’d have their shelter for whatever came.
They’d have food, water, and (if her father’s preparation was as thorough as she suspected) an impervious wall between them and anyone who might want in. The bunker itself was under a sprawling estate, and while her father had said the bunker was finished and stocked, the house itself was only at about three-quarters. The bunker’s entrance from the house would be concealable. Vagrants and opportunists might camp upstairs, but nobody would even know the bunker was there, if they were lucky. And so far, they were getting quite lucky indeed.
They’d have soft beds.
They’d have pillows, too, which was good because Lila remembered the way Piper’s friend, Willow, had gone on and on about her huge body pillow when she’d been pregnant. Lila even seemed to remember her mother having an eno
rmous pillow when she’d been about to have Trevor, though those might have been false memories because she would only have been two years old. But either way, pregnant women needed their pillows. And Lila would have hers.
But she wouldn’t have a doctor. Not for the delivery if they had to stay underground, and not for the checkups. How would she know how the baby was developing? Who would she ask her medical questions? If Mom arrived, she could ask her, but Piper had never been pregnant. How would she know if she was gaining enough weight, too much weight, or if something was wrong? What if the baby’s umbilical cord was wrapped around its neck during the delivery? What if it was breech?
Oh, shit — what if she needed a C-section?
Lila told herself to relax. As her father had pointed out many times already, nothing had even happened yet. Wasn’t it possible that the aliens would be friendly? Wasn’t it possible that there were no aliens, and that the spheres were just probes or something? Wasn’t it possible that they were, indeed, alien ships … but that they were bound for somewhere beyond Earth, maybe on their way to the sun?
And besides — women had been having babies forever. Since way before modern medicine. It’s the reason humanity still existed. Even Eve had managed it, and she’d had the world’s first vagina. And it’s not like Adam had been prepared to be an obstetrician, amateur gynecologist though he’d undoubtedly been.
And hey, throughout history, only, like, half of women died in childbirth.
She was pulled from her reverie as the car slowed, shocked to realize hours had passed into dark. They’d found a gas station at the crossroads of nothing and nowhere, and its lights were on — obvious now that the light had mostly drained from the day. It was fully automated, like a real civilized station in the city. There didn’t need to be an attendant — and there was, therefore, nobody around.
At least that’s what they thought before they knew they were wrong.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
