Shattered Roads

by ALICE HENDERSON

  She hadn’t expected these things out here. When she didn’t run into them on the first two nights driving, she’d thought they didn’t like going near the car. Once she’d hit this interstate, she’d hoped that maybe they only hunted in the heart of the cities. From now on, she’d have to be careful when she stopped. Sleep only during the day. Maybe now that she’d found this relatively unobstructed road, she could travel more at night.

  She drove on for the rest of the evening, eyes burning with exhaustion. At last, with the heavy clouds showing the glow of dawn, she pulled over and crawled into the back seat once more. But she couldn’t fall asleep. She stared out of the window at the sky, waiting for it to brighten.

  She pulled out Raven’s old PRD and powered it up. She selected another entry. Raven appeared, this time sitting at the edge of a vast ocean. As before, she could make out the tops of buildings submerged some distance offshore. Raven pointed at them. “This was once a densely populated city. They built it right at the ocean’s edge. Why is it underwater now, you might ask?” He tucked his hair behind his ear.

  “As the earth continued to heat up, the loss of sea ice was staggering. Not only did ice cover hit record lows, but it melted much faster than anyone had anticipated. Huge shelves broke off and melted in the Arctic and the Antarctic. The sea level rose drastically as less of the earth’s water was locked up in ice. Coastal cities like this one tried to fight back by raising levees and sandbagging, but it was a losing battle. Once thriving hubs of trade and commerce, these areas were quickly abandoned as floodwaters moved in with unexpected speed. The sea took them, forcing people to move farther inland. The cities were lost beneath the waves.”

  He pointed at the bizarre structures sticking up above the whitecaps. “I often wonder what it must have been like to live back then, to be in a city that wasn’t atmospherically shielded, to have no idea of the doom that was about to befall you. The crazy thing is, they had advance warning. The climatologists told people that they’d experience unprecedented flooding. But instead of curbing greenhouse gas emissions, they used stopgap measures, like raising levees. It wasn’t enough. It was too little too late, and these people paid for it with their homes and lives.”

  When the recording ended, it was still too dark to fall asleep, so she watched another entry.

  Raven wasn’t his usual cheery self in this one. His jaw was clenched, his eyes heavy with bags. Behind him she saw an unbroken vista of cement and toppled buildings. He centered the camera on himself. “Okay. This is a tough one. I’m calling it Where Have All the Animals Gone? You may have seen my previous entry about how ancient forests and landscapes were once teeming with wildlife. But if you’ve been traveling out here, you’ve probably noticed that’s not the case anymore. What happened to all the magnificent creatures we used to share this planet with?

  “Well, before humans evolved, there had been at least five mass extinction events in the history of our planet—events where a majority of species went extinct. These were due to megavolcanism, changing sea levels, asteroid impacts, and disease. Then humans came along, and a sixth mass extinction began to occur. Animals were overharvested for food. Their habitats were destroyed. Invasive species were introduced, both intentionally and inadvertently, and they killed off the native ones. Scientists in the late twentieth century stopped calling this the Sixth Extinction, but rather the Anthropocene Extinction, since humans were so clearly the cause. By then, humans were killing off anywhere from ten thousand to sixty thousand species a year. A year.

  “The ancient extinction events had taken at least a million years to happen, often even longer. But this last one happened in only hundreds of years. There were some attempts to save bigger, iconic species whose appearance humans liked. Wolves, bears, giant tortoises . . . But their reintroduction attempts were largely unsuccessful, as the creatures were being brought back to fragmented and human-developed lands that could no longer sustain healthy populations. In other cases, there just weren’t enough individuals reintroduced to keep up a healthy group. Back then, people ignored the interrelation of everything, doing little to save the necessary pollinator species like bees and bats. They weren’t big, flashy, or cute, so they were left to die. Pesticides wreaked havoc on them.

  “For the first time in the history of the planet, a single species was responsible for a mass extinction. And there weren’t enough people willing to stand up and fight for wildlife.

  “Of course, without these creatures, the planet was really in trouble. All of them had fulfilled a vital role in a vast web, each one doing something to regulate the planet. Maybe you’ve heard that old saying about how a butterfly could flap its wings in the Rocky Mountains and cause a hurricane over the tropics? Everything’s connected in the natural world. Unsustainable development, endless pollution, a complete disregard for other species when money could be made . . . that’s all my species practiced.

  “So the animals slipped away, with little thought given to their disappearance.” He looked into the camera for a long time, then gazed out at the broken landscape. He reached out and ended the recording.

  H124 turned off the PRD. She wondered what it must have been like for people back then, as well as for the animals that once roamed this land. Looking east, she watched the sun peek above the distant hills. When it finally streamed in through the windows, she allowed her eyes to close.

  H124 sat up, peering sleepily out of the window. Twilight’s glow faded in the west. Were those things back? It seemed like it was still too light out. She’d have to put her diurnal theory to a test. How long after sunset did she have before they came out? She kept her ears open. Then she heard something. Above the dull drumming of the rain droned some kind of engine way in the distance. She stared out. The sound shifted, and she looked the other way. Then it faded.

  She pulled out her PRD, gaping at it. She’d been asleep for twelve hours. She’d been more exhausted than she thought.

  Listening for a few more minutes, she waited for the sound to return, but it never did. She opened the back door and climbed out, stretching and yawning in the early evening hour. Another storm system was moving in. Lightning flashed, and she could smell the unmistakable scent of coming rain.

  The sun had set, but the west still glowed gold and blue. She took some time to freshen up, always watchful for the prowlers. So far she’d only seen them well into darkness, so she felt a little at ease as she prepared for another long stint behind the wheel.

  She climbed into the driver’s seat, started up the car, and drove toward the fading twilight. As the dark deepened in the sky, she glanced up through the windshield and slammed on the brakes. Something had filled the sky with light. Her mouth hung open as she gazed up at a myriad of glimmering lights arcing from one horizon to the other. In the middle of the sky, so many twinkling bright points were clustered that it looked like a giant, glowing cloud.

  Suddenly heedless of the night prowlers, she got out of the car, still gazing upward. Were all of these things stars? She’d seen a couple from inside the atmospheric shield, but never more than one or two. The entire sky was filled with them! As she watched, a light streaked by overhead, then vanished. The more she stared, the more she could see colors there, red and blue and more. An especially bright one burned steadily near the horizon. It was magical.

  Growing more aware of her surroundings, she felt the shadows growing closer and decided to return to the car. She drove on, still glancing up at every chance she got. As the night wore on, she grew familiar with the stars, their arrangement and brightness most of all. She made up shapes among them when she could actually see them. Most of the time clouds obscured her view. But when they were out, she knew she was alive.

  Being out here was like being in a constant maelstrom. Weather ruled all. She could see why they’d built the atmospheric dome, but she wondered what it was like when weather wasn’t so violent, and people could walk about th
e earth with relative ease.

  A storm blew in from the west. She drove along the interstate for hours, staring out at the lightning. At times it rained so much that her windshield wipers didn’t even make a difference, and she had to pull over while rivers ran along the road.

  She reached a flooded bridge and stopped, worried the car would wash away if she tried to cross it. The bridge stood about a foot underwater, so she turned the car off, deciding not to risk it. She stopped on the road for two hours, waiting for the rain to lessen. But even when it did taper off for a while, the river seemed to rise even higher, washing rain down from some other point. Finally she decided to drive across the bridge when the water level had lowered a little.

  She crept onto it slowly, opening the driver’s door to check the depth. Water gushed by just below the undercarriage of the car, her tires halfway submerged. She drove without stopping, closing the door as the current sprayed up on both sides. Gripping the wheel, she steered the car across the bridge, feeling the pressure of the water pushing against the car. She let out a “Whoop!” when she made it across. She couldn’t remember feeling this accomplished before in New Atlantic. That life might have been safe until the day she left, but there was no thrill, no joy, no sense of greater purpose.

  She drove on, at times feeling brave at the thought of what lay ahead, and others feeling lonelier than she ever thought possible. The night road went on and on, but the lightning kept her entertained. She wondered where the nearest human was. Or the nearest opossum, for that matter. She felt like she was the only living thing for miles . . .

  The moon made a brief appearance, rising above a bank of storm clouds. It was full, a gleaming bright light, the clouds below it a magical shelf of silver. She was enchanted by the sight. Then she saw another flash of light some way down the road.

  She squinted, trying to make out what it was. Then it vanished. A few seconds later it reappeared, flashing ahead of her. Two circles of white light, then two more, then two more. They disappeared, and she slowed down. Then they came back.

  Three vehicles, speeding toward her.

  Chapter 16

  Spotting some bushes on the side of the road, she switched off her headlights and pulled over. She remembered what Rowan had said about how she didn’t want to run into anyone out here. Moving off the road and onto a grassy area, she aimed for the bushes in the dark. She could barely make them out now.

  Taking cover, she wondered if she should stay in the car or not. Finally she decided to. She could make a faster escape that way, even though she probably wouldn’t get as good a look at whoever it was from behind the scrub.

  The headlights were still a long way off down the road, but she hoped they hadn’t seen her. Her heart thudded. If she’d seen their headlights . . .

  She rolled down the window slightly, listening to the hum of their engines. Their cars certainly weren’t electric. They buzzed loudly. Soon the lights grew brighter, illuminating the bushes. Her heart beat a little faster. Was she covered enough? She glanced around for a space of deeper cover, but couldn’t make out anything. She couldn’t risk turning the headlights on again, so she decided to stay put.

  Now she could really hear their motors, droning toward her. The lights laid bare the section of road she’d just left. All three cars drew close. She could see dark forms inside, but couldn’t make out any details.

  The driver of the lead car stuck his head out, searching the side of the road. She held her breath. They passed her location, driving on slowly.

  Relief flooded over her as she saw their taillights. But her blood froze again when the lead car stopped a short way down the road. The other two followed suit. She turned around in the driver’s seat, kneeling so she could see over the back of it.

  The driver of the first car got out, directing the car behind him to angle its headlights into the brush off-road.

  “What do you see?” she heard a man ask from the second car.

  “I’m not sure,” the driver responded. He stepped closer to the shoulder, then held back. He waved for the third car to angle its lights, too. They stood backlit, and she couldn’t tell what direction they were looking in. “It’s a car,” said the driver, and H124’s breath caught in her chest.

  Someone got out from the passenger side of the second car and joined the driver. He had long, greasy black hair. He bent down, peering into the bushes. “You’re right! I knew I saw headlights!”

  The long-haired man forged into the brush, the driver yelling after him, “Arch, are you crazy? This is prime night stalker territory! Get back to the road!”

  She could see that the man named Arch was raking through the thick brush toward a dark shape there. As he parted some branches, she saw a reflection off a taillight. It was a car.

  “We can come back in the day with more guys,” the driver told him.

  “The car I saw was moving. The driver could leave by then! We need another working vehicle.” Arch pressed on, trying to reach the car in the dense bushes.

  Broken-down cars littered the sides of this road, and she doubted they would have given this one a second look if they hadn’t seen her headlights.

  “It’s old,” Arch called back to his friend. “This couldn’t have been the one I saw.”

  Suddenly three dark shapes came streaking through the bushes, and she heard the unmistakable hissing of the prowlers.

  “Get back in the car!” shouted the driver. A couple of people who had gotten out to watch jumped back in. The driver started running back to his own car, then saw that his companion wasn’t doing the same.

  “I’m snagged!” Arch yelled from the bushes. H124 watched as the three shapes closed in on him. He broke branches and tried to thrash his way out, but two prowlers were already circling him. All three were nothing but dark shapes in the brush, hunched things that moved fast. She couldn’t make out their details in the dark, but they seemed to stand upright, though one rested on its arms. Arch stopped, whirled around, then made a break for it between two of them. One leaped through the air, landing on his back, and he went down hard in the dirt.

  “Arch!” shouted the driver. He rushed forward to help, and the two other prowlers turned on him, approaching, bodies poised to pounce. He backed up.

  The man in the dirt screamed as the thing bit into his neck. A cloud of dust kicked up in the headlights. Two other people got out of the cars, but the driver yelled, “Get back in! He’s gone! We’ve got to get out of here!” H124 saw more shapes snaking down the embankment. The driver saw them, too, and as his friend stopped screaming, he raced back to his car and slammed the door. The prowlers gave chase, but he got inside just in time.

  The three cars roared off, speeding down the interstate. She whirled around, starting up her own car. She kept the headlights off, but even in the pitch-darkness she could see more figures streaking down the embankment, silhouetted against the open sky.

  She backed up and accelerated toward the road as several closed in on her. She heard the thump of one striking the back of the car as she hurtled onto the road, speeding away. In her rearview mirror she saw a lone prowler standing on the shoulder. Then it loped back to where the dead man lay.

  Night stalkers, they’d called them. What the hell were they?

  She drove on, not wanting to turn her headlights on. Behind her she could see the vanishing red taillights of the other three cars. She drove slowly, keeping the car in motion in the center of the road, not going fast enough to damage it if she hit something. She imagined those things loping down the road after her, and as soon as the taillights vanished, she flipped on the headlights. Light flooded the road, and she floored it.

  She crested a rise and came to an area where the road cut through small, rolling hills. She drove for hours across the undulating terrain. Briefly the moon peeked out from the clouds, and for a few minutes she caught glimpses of tall buildings in ruin
ed cities along either side of the road. Desolation settled in on her. The only other humans she’d seen since Rowan and she’d had to flee from the city. She wondered what they would have done if they’d found her. Taken her car and left her there? Taken her too? Killed her? She remembered Rowan warning her to not let them know she was a worker, that they would torture her for her knowledge of PPC-run cities.

  By the time she reached the coordinates for the next weather shelter, her eyes burned with exhaustion. The sun hung low in the west, lighting up some towering thunderheads in gold, red, and pink. She opened the car door, stepped out, and stretched. The X on the shelter map showed a spot she hoped was safe to stash the car. She pulled out her PRD, navigating toward the X. But when she got there, she stared out at a collapsed warehouse. She crawled into it, digging through the rubble, wondering if maybe a door led to an underground garage. But she didn’t find anything. In the end, she dragged several huge pieces of sheet metal out of the warehouse and propped them up against two abandoned vehicles on the street. Then she drove her car beneath the sheets, getting it out of the weather, and hopefully out of sight of anyone driving along the roads.

  She switched the PRD’s coordinates to take her to the weather shelter, slinging her tool bag over her shoulder. She followed the blinking arrow, which brought her to a narrow alley cluttered with fallen mortar, bricks, and ancient rusted hulks of steel. She scrambled over the crumbling stonework, at last coming to a set of cement stairs that descended to a sunken doorway. She spotted the familiar weather shelter sign, the funnel next to the running man. She stepped over a rusted I-beam that lay across the top of the stairs, then half slid down a pile of disintegrating stonework that choked the stairwell. She heard the rumble of thunder in the distance.