by Rio Youers
“The gods thank you,” she said.
I nodded, glancing up. Her blue eyes widened, and her grip tightened on my hand momentarily before it released. She blinked twice and smiled, patting my shoulder before continuing on, fluffy popcorn hair bouncing atop her head. My fingers twitched, yearning to grab the photograph, to demand to know where she was, but I had to be smart about it. Didn’t want to get kicked out for being a fraud.
When I tipped my chin back up, they’d already moved on. Standing with my hands on my hips, I stared at their backs. She recognized my face. I knew she did. I was such a chicken shit. I should’ve pulled out the photo.
It wasn’t that hard to keep track of the Firsts’ progress; with everyone coming up to them, they were slow. I kept to a safe distance, safe enough so no one would really notice me, especially their guards. At least I hoped not. When they neared the food and kitchen end of camp, they stepped off the path into the trees there. I counted to ten, peeked around to make sure no one was paying any attention, and followed. A narrow path twisted its way around and I got about twenty paces in when a man—not one of the two who’d been walking with them in the camp—emerged from behind a large grouping of trees. He wore a loose fitting tunic, faded jeans, and an easy smile, but there was no doubt as to his role.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“I saw them in the camp,” I said, clasping my hands in front of me. “I was hoping to talk to them.”
“This is a private area, not for pilgrims.”
“But I—”
“Let me take you back to the camp.”
“No, that’s okay, I know the way,” I said, already walking back, my mouth acrid. “But thank you.”
I moved fast, but his footfalls followed. I tensed, preparing for a grab of my arm or being told to stop but neither happened. When I reached the tents, I turned to see him standing a few feet in the trees. I smiled and waved. He nodded.
While the camp never fully quieted, there were lulls, especially after midnight. A few stragglers from the pilgrimage would return, but for the most part, those that walked all night didn’t return until after sunrise. A little before three in the morning, dressed in dark clothes, I crept from my tent. I kept my steps soft, walking on the edges of the pathways, sticking to the shadows as best as I could. At the treeline, I walked a little past the narrow path until the full moon illuminated a space between two trees I fit through with ease. I was lucky, the canopy was thick but not so thick that it blocked every speck of light. Keeping parallel to the path, I moved deeper into the woods.
A vine snagged on my pants and stifling a curse, I bent to untangle it. Footsteps approached, soft and quiet. I crouched, making myself as small as possible. The footsteps drew nearer, and the arc of a flashlight came dangerously close. My muscles tensed, but before I was found, the steps and light receded.
After tugging the vine free, I shrugged off my sweater, shivering in my tank top, and pulled the Zippo from my pocket. Twigs and dead leaves made a neat little nest underneath the bundled cotton, but I crawled away, molasses slow, until I came across a felled tree. During the day, it wouldn’t hide anyone except a small kid, but at night it would work.
One flick of the Zippo and flames began to eat the sweater. I returned to the tree and waited, barely breathing. When the shouting and running started, I took off. I was closer to the Firsts’ camp than I’d thought. It was small, with their tents arranged in a loose semicircle around a firepit. Not a guard in sight, although a couple of tents that probably belonged to them sat off to the side. The Firsts were emerging from theirs, shrugging on robes and wiping sleep from their eyes. As soon as I saw the woman who’d recognized my face, I tucked deeper into the trees. When the chaos was over, I returned to my tent and slept like a milk-drunk baby.
Breakfast was cold cereal and toast. The picture stayed in my pocket; I kept my head down and my voice to myself. Nothing seemed different in the camp. No guards trolling around, no strange looks from or directed to anyone. I loaded my backpack with bottles of water, a couple bananas, and a bag of trail mix, and headed for the pilgrimage, but when I drew close enough to hear the whisper of steps I turned and smacked my way through the trees.
It was a long, miserable trek to get to the woods behind the Firsts’ camp, but as hoped, I didn’t run into anyone else along the way. As a little kid, I loved climbing trees, the taller, the better; turned out I was still pretty good at it. The guards weren’t armed, nor did they patrol the camp, but they checked out a noise in the trees more than once. No way to know if this was normal or because of the fire I set, but they didn’t seem overly worried.
The Firsts spent the day going in and out of their tents, eating food brought to them by people from the main camp, and occasionally visiting a small wooden building set a ways back in the woods. After dinner, they all left together with guards in tow, and I guessed they were going to shake hands with pilgrims and all that bullshit.
I shimmied down from the tree and went to check out the building. It held a small toilet on one side and on the other, a sink, and a shower, the latter two hooked up to what looked like rain barrels outside. While I didn’t love the idea of staking out a toilet, it was better than walking a million miles every day. So, I climbed another tree, ate my trail mix, watched, and waited. It only took a couple of hours for the Firsts to return, and the woman with the fluffy hair was the third visitor to the bathroom.
I waited for her just outside the door. She emerged, shaking her wet hands dry, her eyes widening when she saw me.
“Please,” I said, my voice soft. Unthreatening. I held out the photograph. “I’m looking for my mom. I know she’s here, but I can’t find her. Can you help me?” Tears burned in my eyes. The perfect touch.
She looked over my shoulder and I knew she was debating whether to call for help so I grabbed her arm. Not hard enough to hurt, but firm. “Please, I miss her so much.”
She sighed and patted my hand. “Valerie always spoke of you fondly. Cate, isn’t it?”
I nodded. It took everything I had to keep my face serene.
“I thought it was you. You look just like her. But you should go, honey. This place isn’t for you. And people are starting to talk. You showing the picture around to everyone, then trying to get to our camp . . . ”
“You don’t understand. I just want to see her. Just once, that’s all.”
“I do understand. I know it’s hard. You’re not the first person to come looking for someone.”
The kindness in her eyes made my grip tighten, my fingers digging into her papery skin, and she winced. She’d have bruises, and I was okay with that. “I’m sorry, please, I’ve missed her so much, I feel like if I just see her, if I talk to her, everything will be okay and I’ll be okay and then I can—” My voice choked into sobs.
“Sheila?” a man said from not too far away. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she called out. “Be there in a minute.”
“You need to go,” she mouthed.
“Please, just tell me where she is.”
Twigs cracked under someone’s feet, and I let Sheila go.
She leaned close to me and whispered in my ear, “You’ll find your answers at the twelfth shrine, but think carefully before you go.”
Before she slipped away, she gave me a look of pity. I crossed my arms under my breasts and watched her go. Her cryptic words lingered in the air. Truth or bullshit?
I wiped beneath my eyes and flicked my tears away. I had no idea how to get to the twelfth shrine from here, so I went back through the woods. Once the sun began to set, I turned toward the pilgrimage and joined at the edge of the line, trying to keep some distance. The footsteps, the breath, the quiet prayers, it all felt ominous now. I had a bad feeling I was being lured to the twelfth shrine on purpose. They were probably going to throw me out.
I sighed. So be it.
And then what? I shoved my hands in my pockets. But I came here not knowing the And then wh
at? Not knowing and not caring. So I kept walking under a darkening sky until I reached the very end, past the eleventh shrine. My flashlight found the path through the trees and while it wasn’t as well-trod, nor was it a straight route, it was relatively easy to follow. It traveled a fair distance away from the road, because of the washout, I assumed, then arced back around. The trees broke ahead, and I saw the corner of the shrine, an ornately carved piece of wood, repurposed from an old cuckoo clock. Clicking off my light, I squatted beside a tree. The minutes passed slowly, but I stayed where I was. If it was a lure, they were probably hiding as well, waiting for me to emerge.
When my ankles ached from the squat, I stood, bracing myself against the tree until the hurt ebbed and, holding the still-off flashlight in my hand, I walked out of the trees and scanned the shadows. Nothing and no one. I shivered and turned on the flashlight.
“Cate?”
I whirled around, the flashlight cutting crazed lines in the air as I did. No one was there except the god in her shrine, a small pile of offerings on the ground below like totems to the victim of an accident.
I took a step closer and then another. And there, in the shrine, not a god, but my mother. Too small, too misshapen, but her face, an older version of my own, was undeniable. My legs went rubbery and I put my hands on my knees to keep from falling. When I could breathe again, I rose and stepped even closer. I never imagined something like this. It had to be a mirage or a trick, whether of my mind or designed by the Firsts.
But it wasn’t.
The twelfth god had multiple limbs and a spheroid body. Somehow, my mother had been altered to match her shape. Condensed, broken, changed. Arms and legs bifurcated into many with joints bending the wrong way. Torso stretched wide, crushed down. It shouldn’t have been possible, but it was. And worse still, she appeared to have grown into the shrine itself, her pale flesh seamlessly joining the wood and iron. An experiment that went wrong? Or something designed to hold her there?
She was monstrous. An abomination. And she didn’t look much like my mom anymore. That made things easier.
“The gods had to leave,” she said, smiling sadly. Her voice was thick and rusty, as though speech took far more effort now. “What were we supposed to do? All those people, all that hope . . . ”
“You weren’t supposed to be here in the first place,” I said, the words barbed. “How could you? How could you just leave like that? In the middle of the night like a coward? You didn’t even say goodbye.”
“I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
“Understand? How could I ever understand? And how could you let them do this to you?”
She lifted one arm, the resulting movement reminding me of a child’s rubbery toy, and my gut clenched. “The god picked me to take her place,” she said.
“You could’ve said no.”
“You don’t say no to a god,” she said with a sigh carrying a faint whiff of decay and brackish water.
“You should’ve. You should’ve come home.”
“I couldn’t.” She leaned forward with a crackle of bones unaccustomed to movement and a creak of wood.
“Bullshit. You chose not to. And for what? To be a stupid fake god sitting here while people, while the world, thinks you’re real? While people pray to you?” I kicked the pile of offerings, sending the eight-limbed figures scattering in all directions.
“Cate, sweetheart, I never meant to hurt you.” She held out a different arm, a different hand, palm up. Two other arms crossed over her abdomen, the way a pregnant woman would. If that pregnant woman had vipers for arms.
Hideous. Obscene.
“Dad thought I came here to find you and bring you home.” I dropped my backpack to the ground and rummaged in my pocket for the Zippo. “You recognize this, don’t you? I’ve carried it every day. I waited every day for you to come back. Every. Single. Day. I waited and hoped, but you chose all this over me, over your own daughter.”
“They were gods, Cate. Can’t you understand that?”
“I hate you,” I said, the words soft as a feather pillow. I sparked the flame and held it to the canvas material of my backpack until it caught, then I nudged it with my foot until it was beneath her shrine.
The flames began to lick at the wooden support post. Her serpentine arms, now wearing bracelets and armbands of smoke, writhed in a tangle of fear and panic. She screamed, but it was high and thin, and I backed away from the heat. I didn’t care if anyone heard. It was too late to save her. It had been too late for a long time.
“You were already a god to me, Mom,” I said, but the growing roar of the fire swallowed the words whole.
OUTRUNNING THE END
CULLEN BUNN
A black highway, stretching into darkness.
Headlights. Distant pinpoints at first, growing larger—brighter—as they draw close.
In the oncoming cars—faces. Drivers and passengers. They fade into view as the glow of headlights fill the passing cars. Just quick glimpses, their faces frozen in a single fleeting second.
Dour-faced. Smiling. Laughing. Weeping.
Screaming.
And then gone.
Why do they scream? Is it because something chases them? It can’t be. The Blight hasn’t spread this far yet.No.They scream because they can see what lies before them.
The rear view, reflecting the red flare of tail lights, fading into nothing.
Somewhere back there . . . in the darkness . . . in the heart of the spreading Blight . . . the dead man follows.
***
Tires hiss over wet pavement as Brandon steers the car into the parking lot. A light mist dances in the air, churning, coating the windshield in a blurry mess. The light of the convenience store sign—GAS & GOODIES, it proclaims—is muted by the wet, murky haze. He pulls to a stop next to the gas pumps. For a minute or two, he sits behind the wheel, staring at the bright store front. He’s been behind the wheel so long, anything else feels unnatural. But he pries his fingers from the wheel, shrugs his way out of the car, opens the gas tank, and takes the nozzle from the pump.
The nozzle’s handle is warm and fleshy in Brandon’s hand. He feels a steady throbbing, some sort of thick fluid pulsing sluggishly through inhuman veins. He quickly shoves the nozzle into the tank. He can’t be sure, but he thinks he hears a satisfied grunting. He starts the flow of gasoline, sets it, and then steps away. He rubs his fingers against his palm as he watches the shuddering nozzle, then gazes into the distance, back the way he came.
The Blight is close.
The digital gas pump meter flashes, counting the gallons. Brandon hurries across the lot toward the store. There is only one other car here, a beaten Ford Festiva with the windows down. The interior is covered in a watery residue. But it’s not his problem. As Brandon enters the store, an electronic bell chimes. From behind the counter, the clerk—the owner of the Festiva most likely—looks up from his phone and nods in Brandon’s direction.
“Slow night,” the clerk says, and returns to texting or sexting or whatever the Hell he is doing. Brandon did not bring his cell phone with him on this journey. It felt like a distraction. It felt unnecessary.
Brandon moves toward the back of the store.
And he curses under his breath.
All he wants is a soda, something with some kick, something with enough caffeine to keep his eyes open a while longer, but the refrigerated cabinet is full of wet, squirming things, slapping and slithering against the glass, leaving viscous slug-trails of blood and ooze.
The pattern is hypnotic.
It draws him in, urges him to open the door and let them roll out in a glistening sheet across the tiled floor.
The pattern-eels want him to sleep.
They serve the dead man who hunts him.
The bell rings again. Brandon’s heart skips a beat. He crouches a little, hiding behind bags of tortilla chips, watching. Has the dead man caught up with him already? It seems impossible, especially after he’s done so much
to shake him—taking back roads, backtracking, driving night and day without resting—but he couldn’t be sure. These days, the roads seemed to twist and squirm and contract, not all that different from the pattern-eels.
For all he knows, he is chasing the dead man now, not the other way around.
Another customer enters. He’s young, just barely out of his teenage years, wearing slouchy jeans, a tight tank top, and a flat-billed cap pulled low over his eyes.
“Slow night,” the clerk says, an autopilot greeting.
Making a bee-line for the restroom, the new arrival moves quickly, but to sleep-deprived eyes, it looks like he’s moving in slow motion, too.
Coffee, Brandon decides. Coffee will do. He’s never liked the stuff, but tonight’s not about enjoyment. It’s about staying awake. It’s about driving for his life.
It’s about outrunning the end of the world.
The coffee is black and thick. Brandon imagines it has been sitting in the glass pot all day. He fills one large Styrofoam cup with the steaming liquid, then a second. As he walks to the front of the store, he slurps one of the coffees down, savoring the searing heat, the bitterness, the rush. He’s emptied the cup by the time he reaches the counter.
There, he finds a cardboard display of energy shots, and he selects three—no, four—of them. Next to the cash register is a rack of plastic single-dose pouches of migraine meds and no-doze tablets. He grabs a handful of each, pushing them across the counter, along with the empty cup, the untouched coffee, and the energy shots.
“Long trip ahead of you?”
The clerk slides the items across the counter, scanning each one, making a show of examining the energy shots, as if he’d never seen them before.
“Long trip?” The clerk asks again.
“That’s right,” Brandon says.
“Hey, you know,” the clerk says, “if you’re dead behind the wheel, you can always just park in the lot, get a couple of hours of sleep before setting out again. I won’t give you trouble about it. My manager would. He’s a dick. But he doesn’t clock in again for several hours. Might be a bit safer for you if you get some rest.”
