But the encounters—whether Can Heads or just desperate people—didn’t stop the cars.
“Got to be getting there soon,” Helen said.
Even Helen’s voice, Christie thought, sounded wary, tight, tense.
Out of place for a woman who always seemed to be confident, strong.
Then the woman said: “Oh, God.”
On the right side of the road, a pile of two, three Can Heads—hard to tell—their clothes worn away, jutting pieces of exposed bone, the blood turned a near blackish color as it picked up the headlights from the line of cars.
A pile of them.
Killed a while ago.
Then—farther on—Christie had to follow other cars, moving around a body that lay in the right lane.
Face down.
Fully dressed.
Perhaps killed by the men in the cars ahead.
She saw Helen look at the body as she swerved to avoid running over it.
“That’s one well-dressed Can Head,” she said.
Christie hesitated.
As if what she was about to say might make the idea, the question real.
Letting fear grow.
“If … if it is a Can Head.”
Helen turned to her as she got back to the center of the right lane.
“You mean, might be one of those … like you had at Paterville?”
A nod.
“God, Christie. Can’t tell you how that shit … really disturbs me. If we can’t tell the difference anymore…”
The next words left unsaid.
What the hell will we do?
Finally, they saw a sign.
Dotted with bullet holes. Titled at a strange angle.
But the words could be read, the white letters reflecting back the milky glare of the headlights.
WAWARSING—TWO MILES
Helen shifted in her seat. Christie heard a click. The safety of her gun being released.
“We’re here,” she said to Christie. “Let’s hope we do this fast.”
38
Night
“Why do we have to stay here?” Simon asked, standing by the window.
“Looks like everyone’s gone somewhere. And we have to stay in the room?”
He turned to Kate.
“I want to go see where my friends are.”
“Mom said to stay here till she got back.”
Simon nodded. “It’s boring here.”
“We can play more spit. Or Monopoly.”
In truth, Kate didn’t want to do either.
But she also knew something that Simon didn’t.
That soon they were going to leave this “boring” place for good.
He started for the door that led out of the room.
“I’m going to walk around.”
“Simon!” Kate said. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“Oh yeah?” Then: “You going to stop me?”
She wanted to say that he had caused enough trouble for one day, but attacking her brother didn’t seem like the right thing to do.
And—it was boring just sitting in the room.
All those cars, people leaving the inn. The place had to be empty.
“Okay. You can go walk around—but I’m coming with you.”
Simon rolled his eyes. “Why—are you my babysitter?”
Kate stood up. “Actually, yes, I am.”
He turned to the door, and she hurried to catch up to her brother.
And as he walked out … “Yeah, well, I don’t need a babysitter.”
* * *
Wawarsing.
Probably one of those beautiful mountain towns, Christie thought.
Before things changed, and made towns like this so dangerous, towns that couldn’t afford the police, or the fences, or the weapons.
Most people left.
A few stayed. But how many of those could hang on, doors locked, guns ready?
The red brake lights of the pickup in front flashed once, then again, and the caravan again stopped.
“What’s up?” Christie said.
Absolutely impossible to see anything with that pickup in front.
“I don’t know. Maybe we’re there. But looks to me like we’re still outside the town.”
Someone honked a horn from the back.
Like a traffic jam in midtown Manhattan at rush hour.
Helen turned to her.
“Want me to go look?”
Christie sat there. Hands locked on the steering wheel.
Then—a feeling.
This seemed wrong. The cars stopped. Something about it … all wrong.
“No,” she said to Helen.
“I could just go walk up, see what’s what.”
Christie shook her head.
She turned to her door lock.
It was up.
Unlocked.
What did Jack say? Always said?
Windows up.
Doors locked.
Always … goddamned locked.
She turned to Helen.
“Just … lock your door.”
Helen looked at her as if confused by the order, the tone of voice, the tense, strained sound, engine still idling, still burning precious gas.
Helen turned and pushed down her door lock as well.
“There we go. You expecting—?”
And then the reason for the feeling became clear.
* * *
Ahead, they came out from both sides of the narrow road, holding things in their hands.
“Oh, God,” Helen said.
She raised her shotgun as Christie reached to the backseat to grab whatever gun her fingers first touched.
* * *
“Okay. Enough walking around. Looks like your friends are grounded.”
“I bet they’re probably doing something fun,” Simon said. “With everyone away.”
Kate looked around.
Usually, at night, there’d be a guard at this end of the building, where the locked doors sealed off the other building attached to the main part of the inn.
But tonight there was no guard.
Some of the rooms they passed were open.
She saw a woman reading who smiled at them as they walked by. Then a couple sitting together while some music played quietly, the woman holding the only baby here.
Other rooms closed.
So quiet, with so many people away.
“Let’s go back, Simon.”
Then she confessed her own fear.
“I don’t like this. It’s too quiet.”
He turned to her.
Was he trying to prove he was brave? she wondered. After what had happened? Is that what boys did? One dumb thing after another?
“But that’s why it’s good to explore.”
Would he just go off on his own if she said no?
“All right. A bit more. But I want to be back in the room well before Mom comes back.”
“Sure.”
They turned away from the shut doors, the sealed wing, and Kate followed Simon as he wandered back to the main staircase, wishing there were more voices down here, more open rooms, more people …
* * *
Things happened so quickly that Christie had no time to react, to think, to do anything.
She saw Can Heads—though the dark made them just blackish figures erupting from both sides of the road—bolting toward all the vehicles.
Gun blasts.
People in the vehicles shooting. Can Heads holding things over their heads and then smashing down on the cars.
Just the quickest of glimpses—and then she turned and looked to her left, and one of the things’ faces came flush to her window, using its head …
God—using its head!
—to smash against Christie’s window.
She heard a noise to the right. A smash, a crack.
But she didn’t turn away from the thing trying to smack its way in to look at what that might be.
Then: anot
her cracking noise from the right.
“Helen,” she said. “Are you—”
The window, she thought. That was the noise. Had to be.
But not broken.
The electric window sliding down.
She wanted to yell at Helen, “No!”
But the sight and sound of the Can Head beside her, inches away, eyes a criss-cross of red lines, the reflected light of the dashboard making the thing look like an alien.
Still, only seconds had passed.
The pickup truck in front reared backward.
Like a rodeo bull, bucking, nearly rising from the ground with its massive tires.
Smashing right into her small Honda and sending Christie jerking forward, her head smacking into the steering wheel.
But with that bump, the Can Head slipped away from the window.
She had the thought: the driver’s panicking, trying to get the hell away.
She heard a blast. Deafening, the sound an explosion in the car.
Quick turn.
Helen had lowered the window.
And she now fired the shotgun into the darkness outside.
The truck reared into them again, as if it could bulldoze the entire line of cars backward.
Christie held the steering wheel in one hand, a revolver in the other.
Was the safety off?
She’d have to take her hand from the steering wheel to check.
Ahead, the spill of milky light from her too-low headlights cast enough light to show that a Can Head now stood on the running board, near the cab of the pickup truck, reaching in.
Then—a horrible moment, the door to the truck popped open.
“Christie—we’ve got to get the hell out of here.”
More blasts. Helen’s gun a cannon in the car; Christie’s ears ringing after each blast.
“Christie!” Helen yelled.
The Can Head on the truck pulled back, yanking out the driver; Christie heard his screams.
Christie’s headlights caught the driver clawing, clutching on to the steering wheel, then the door, the plump driver no match for the monster that pulled at him.
Until finally, the driver rolled to the ground, and the thing literally leaped into the air to pounce on the driver, bringing its head down fast into the driver’s midsection.
Christie felt bile gather at the bottom of her throat, ready to throw up.
She thought:
I’m not moving. I’m frozen.
I’m not doing anything here.
Then Helen again: “It’s a trap. Christie—we have to get the hell out of here. Now.”
She saw two other Can Heads race past the one feeding off the truck driver. A hesitation as they looked down.
But then they both looked up and saw Christie’s car.
Their eyes—in her mind—locking on hers.
Another blast from Helen’s gun, like a ticking clock counting off the seconds of Christie’s indecision, her immobilization.
* * *
“Wait.”
Simon stood at the staircase that led down to the garage.
“I bet we could go down there now—and nobody would see.”
“We’re not doing that. We’re going back upstairs. And—”
As if to dare Kate, Simon took a step down the staircase to the garage, his eyes on Kate.
Then another step, as Kate remembered being down there, with that boy trapping her.
I don’t want to go down there, she thought.
“Simon!”
He had a big grin on.
“You can try … to catch me.”
Another step, and as Kate finally stopped standing and started moving toward him, down the staircase, his smile so big now as he bolted and disappeared down the stairs.
“Simon,” she said again, taking care not to yell.
There were still a few people milling about in the dining room. And more people down at the other end where the Colonel had his office.
I don’t need to get in any more trouble, Kate thought.
But she did what she had to.
She raced after Simon.
39
Escape
The Can Heads near the one squatting on the trucker now began a crazy, loping run toward Christie and the car.
Helen leaned out her window and fired, but Christie could see that without stepping out, her angle was no good.
And Helen would have to be crazy to get out—with who knew how many more of them out there.
A look to the left.
The narrow two-lane road sloping down an incline.
But the other lane was blocked.
The cars behind her had tried to turn, but it was so narrow that they all seemed locked together, nobody going anywhere.
While Can Heads went from one to the next.
On either side of the road, trees … most of them dead, a few pines, and lots of scrubby brush.
But as she looked left again, Christie saw a possibility.
An insane possibility.
But the only possibility.
She threw the car into reverse and backed up, smacking into the car behind her.
Was that driver gone? Had they been able to pry him out, someone else to be turned into their version of road kill?
Forward, and then another lurch backward.
Helen kept shooting and not once asked … what the hell are you doing?
Until Christie thought she had enough space, with the two Can Heads racing toward her now splitting up, one moving to her side, the other to Helen’s open window.
But that one’s head suddenly disappeared as Helen finally had a good shot.
The car in drive, Christie now cut the wheel hard to the left.
There was an opening amidst those trees and the brush.
Maybe—she thought—just wide enough.
Who knew what was ahead? What kind of hidden rocks, branches, tree limbs. Anything and everything that could stop her car.
But whatever it was, it had to be better than sitting in that line, mired, waiting to be attacked.
* * *
She pressed her foot down hard. With the steering wheel cut so hard, the tires screeched, and she moved into and then over the Can Head beside her window, its scream merging with the shriek and squeal of the tires.
She had the thought:
They don’t even sound human.
And this—as the car literally rocketed into the woody brush to the left:
Is what those men were doing to the Can Head so bad after all?
They’re not human.
They’re not even animals.
Monsters.
But even as she had that thought, her eyes wide, trying to avoid anything that could bring the Honda to a dead stop, she realized the real reason it was wrong.
If we do that.
If that’s how we act …
Then we’re no better.
The front of the car nosedived into the depression, then rose up, a ship bucking on angry waves.
“Hang on,” she said to Helen.
“Oh, I am,” Helen said, her rifle and head back in the car, barrel pointed down.
Christie thought … we might only go a few yards and then get stuck. Just delaying the inevitable.
Nowhere to go.
Committed, she had no choice but to keep the accelerator down, hands locked, and eyes looking dead ahead.
* * *
Kate took the staircase, fast, risking a look back to see whether anyone had heard her and followed them here.
Until she got to the bottom, and again saw the mammoth cavern of the garage.
Unlike before, only a few cars down here. Older cars. Maybe wrecks.
Most of the cars gone with all the others.
She couldn’t see Simon.
Playing hide and seek.
Idiot boy, she thought.
She looked around to see if there were any guards down here. Maybe Simon had already been seen by one of them, told t
o get out.
And they could both go back to the room, the adventure over.
But there was no one.
The place so quiet.
Giant overhead lights made the center of the cavernous garage bright, the corners getting no light whatsoever.
To the left, she saw the entrance to the tunnel—where she had stood with that boy.
The tunnels … a maze.
Would Simon go in there?
Why won’t he do what he’s told?
She had no choice but to play his game, and she began walking slowly through the garage, needing to walk around each car, this damn game of hide and seek that she didn’t want to play at all.
* * *
The car hit something—a branch, inches thick, four, five feet long—and it flew over the hood, sliding over the windshield onto the roof, and off the back of the car.
The bushes and trees on the sides created a constant scratching sound as if screaming about an impending disaster ahead.
Then the right front tire hit something hard—maybe a boulder, a stray rock jutting up—and the car rose on one side and tilted sharply to the right.
Then the rear tire hit the same rock, and the car repeated the movement.
But then the trees and stumps that had seemed to wall the car in so tightly … thinned out, creating more room for Christie to maneuver.
The car still bucked up and down, the movement constant now, but it was easier to dodge the obstacles.
And even when the car dug into another depression, the front of the vehicle jerked quickly out of the hole.
Christie was going fast.
Damn good car, she thought.
But then Helen said: “Oh, shit.”
This open area led to a hill, a steep angle down, with nowhere else to go.
Unless she wanted to stop and go back the way they came.
She took her foot off the accelerator, but she’d still be hitting the slope at a great speed.
Foot moving to the brake.
But braking only made the car start to slide wobbly to the left, then right, veering out of control.
Foot off the brake.
And now she could at least attempt to steer it as the car rolled down the hill, bumping up and down.
Christie felt herself rise out of her seat with each bump, only the steering wheel helping her stay in place.
Hands locked, the car halfway down the hill.
A quick look up, to see beyond the hill.
To see what was ahead.
Then: what she saw—
There was only one word for it.
Hope.
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