by Hamill, Ike
Brad stepped forward to make the introductions. “Nate, this is Sheila, Lisa, Ted, and Pete.”
“Where’s the other one?" Nate asked.
“Pardon?” Brad asked.
“The thick woman who was with you in the truck. Where did she get to?" Nate asked.
“Oh,” Brad said. “I’m not sure. She must be around here somewhere.”
“I’d like to talk to her again,” Nate said.
Brad glanced around the group to see if anyone else found this statement peculiar. Only Lisa seemed concerned; or at least more concerned. Ted’s eyes hadn’t slowed since Nate walked up. Ted scanned up and down Nate’s body, like he was just waiting for the new man to pull out a concealed weapon. Even Pete, who seemed to like everyone, displayed guarded, half-turned-away body language.
Robby broke the silence—“Nate’s going to join us for a bit.”
“We’re hustling these citizens from the truck there over to this sled,” Pete said, pointing.
“Why don’t you help us on the sled?” Robby asked. “We could use a hand keeping all the deceased in one place until we get the straps up over them.”
“Sure thing,” Nate said.
Brad walked with Sheila, Lisa, and Ted over to the truck while Pete and Robby brought Nate up to speed on how they were stacking the corpses. After a brief consultation, Ted and Brad volunteered to carry the bodies from the truck to the sled while the women worked inside the truck. Brad caught pieces of the conversation between Robby and Nate as they worked to pile up the bodies on the sled.
“… and Brad experienced the same thing up his way, but he waited out the first part of the storm.” Robby told Nate. “If you look on a map, you can see concentric circles around where this thing is gestating. In South Portland, you happened to be in the protein-rich area. It’s like the albumen of an egg. In some zones all the biological material was removed, but down in your zone…”
Brad walked away before Robby finished his sentence, but Brad had heard his theories before. Robby related the whole Earth to a giant egg, where the embryo was from an enormous alien species. Before planting its egg, the aliens prepped the Earth by destroying as much of the population as possible and then released antibodies to take care of the rest. Robby equated his plan to scrambling the contents of the egg.
When Brad and Ted carried the next body over to the sled, Robby was talking about the antibodies.
“We call them the ‘Elementals’ because we’ve seen solid, liquid, air, and fire. The solid was Brad’s rock monster. I saw the liquid down in New Hampshire and destructive wind. A guy up from Virginia described the fire creatures, and the aether is the thing that snatched up everyone on Thanksgiving Day,” Robby said.
Nate grunted something Brad couldn’t hear.
Robby replied, “No, I don’t. But it could be something passed down through oral history from a much earlier time.”
After their last Denny’s dinner, Robby had shared some of his research with the small group. He’d found copies of scientific articles which theorized that a mass extinction had nearly killed off the human race seventy-thousand years earlier. Based on genetic evidence, the worldwide human population had been reduced to just a couple-thousand individuals. Most scientists blamed the earlier crisis on a supervolcano, but Robby showed the group eerie similarities between that event and their current situation.
“Why are we bothering with this guy?” Ted asked as he and Brad walked back over to the truck.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s clear to me that Nate is up to no good. Why are we bending over backwards to explain what we’re doing?”
“It’s not terribly strange,” Brad said. “I mean, he’s getting the same information we all got when we signed on, you know? It seems reasonable.”
“But we were already part of the group,” Ted said. “We made a conscious effort to seek out other survivors and then form into a network. That’s how we all came together. If this guy was living this close, he must have known there were other people in the area. How many months did he know about us and yet he never tried to make contact?”
The men were now standing back at the truck. Lisa and Sheila dropped another body over at the edge of the moving van and listened to the conversation. Back at the sled, Robby, Pete, and Nate were strapping down a row of bodies.
Lisa offered an observation—“Some of us tried to make contact several times before we found a welcoming party.
“You’re talking about when you met Lyle? I think Lyle had problems before all this started. It was just bad luck you ran into him first,” Ted said.
“Yes, that’s my point,” Lisa said. “Maybe he did try to join up, but he ran into somebody like Lyle first.”
“That’s no excuse,” Ted said. “He should have tried again.”
“And here he is,” Lisa said. “He’s here, and he appears to have reached out to join up with us. Seems like the only difference between him and us is timing.”
The four stood and watched Robby explaining something to the newest member of their loose group.
“Let’s keep moving,” Brad said. “It feels like it’s getting colder out here.” He tugged on the shoulders of an old corpse and waited for Ted to grab the man’s ankles. Brad tried to keep his own shoulders back as they lugged the body over to the sled, but his upper back always wanted to hunch forward. A dull ache settled into the space between his shoulder blades.
“Why didn’t you guys pull up closer to the sled?” Brad asked. “We could have just slid them right from the truck.”
“We did with the first one. It got stuck and we didn’t want to waste a bunch of time to move it out of the way. The shoulder drops off too fast on the other side of the road,” Ted said.
“But we could have just unloaded to one of the other sleds,” Brad said.
“I just work here,” Ted said, smiling. “Those guys make all the decisions.”
The men reached the sled and started their gentle, swinging, three-count automatically. On three they slid the corpse onto the deck of the big trailer.
“We almost done with this truck?" Pete asked.
“I think just a few more,” Ted said.
“Can one of you guys get the next one backed up right here?”
“You read my mind,” Brad said. “I was hoping we wouldn’t have to haul them by hand this time.”
“Great,” Pete said. “Back right up here, please.”
Brad nodded and headed back down the road. He circled around the left side of his moving van to look for Romie’s footprints. He hadn’t seen her leave the vehicle, but the passenger door was pointed away from the group, so she could have snuck off. The snow on her side was undisturbed. Brad continued around the moving van, leaving his own set of prints. He checked out the back to see how much room he had to turn the big truck around, and then came back to the driver’s door.
He climbed in expecting to find Romie in the cab. She was crouched down in the cargo area behind the front seats.
“You okay?” Brad asked.
“Are you?” Romie asked. “That crazy guy hasn’t attacked you all and eaten your privates?”
Brad closed his door and started the moving van. He strapped himself in with his seat belt and reacquainted himself with the mirrors.
“We don’t know he was the one who desecrated the body in the Chinese restaurant,” Brad said. “Maybe it was an animal or something.”
“Animals don’t know shit about zippers,” Romie said. She’d used this same line earlier as they’d driven north to rejoin their compatriots.
“Well Robby’s giving him a tryout,” Brad said. “He might be perfectly normal.”
Brad pulled the gear shift down into reverse and eased off the brake as the van’s alarm beeped rhythmically.
“Sure, he might be,” Romie said. “He might also follow us until we fall asleep and then murder us all. Did you ask him how he happened to follow us here? We went south for five miles and then
looped back around. Then we spent an hour at the nursing home. How did he find us again?”
“He probably just watched the bridge,” Brad said. “He probably saw us go south this morning and was ready to follow us back north over the bridge.”
Brad shifted into drive so he could straighten out the moving van before making his approach in reverse. He centered the sled in his two rearview mirrors and shifted back to reverse.
“The hell is that?" Romie asked.
“What?”
“That,” Romie said. She pointed slightly to her left, through the windshield. Brad shifted to park. On the side of the highway, facing directly towards them, an abandoned car rested half on the pavement and half in the ditch next to the shoulder.
Brad followed Romie’s pointing arm and stared at the car. It seemed like an ordinary car—a dark-brown Chevy sedan with its driver’s door propped open. Brad hadn’t witnessed any people disappear, but he pictured it from the descriptions of those who had. He imagined the driver pulling over with eyes glazed over and mouth slightly ajar. The driver probably stepped all the way out of the car before being sucked up into nothingness. He turned to Romie, wondering why she was suddenly interested in this car.
“Look. There,” she said, jabbing her finger at the car.
When Brad looked back he finally understood. Peeking around the rear corner of the car he saw a small head. Two intent eyes locked onto his for a moment before the head disappeared again behind the bumper.
“Is it a kid?” Brad asked.
“I think it is. A little girl,” Romie said. “Come on.” She slipped past the passenger’s seat and slid out through the door.
Brad shut off the truck and followed her through the snow.
Romie walked towards the car and held out her hand like she was approaching a stray dog. “Hello? Are you back there?”
Brad hurried to catch up with her. He pulled alongside as Romie rounded the back of the car.
“Hey there,” Romie said as she dropped to a crouch with one hand on the trunk of the car. “What’s your name?” The child retreated when Brad moved into sight. The kid shuffled backwards until the far side of the car and then sprinted around the corner.
“She’s headed for the others,” Romie said. “Hey! There’s a kid coming your way.” She shouted in the direction of the sled. Brad ran after the child, sprinting through the slippery snow around the van. Nate jumped down from the deck of the sled as the child ran up. The kid threw arms around Nate’s leg.
Nate bent and hefted the child to his chest. He whispered in the kid’s ear and clutched tight.
“So you know her?” Romie asked, arriving at a jog.
The others arrived and formed a semicircle around Nate and the child.
“Him,” Nate said. “His name is Brynn.” Brynn’s face remained buried in the space between Nate’s neck and shoulder. Brad understood why Romie had thought Brynn a girl. The child wore pink sneakers, red leg-warmers, and a purple jacket with a fur-lined hood. Long, curly hair poked out from the edges of Brynn’s hood.
“Come on, boy,” Nate said. “Introduce yourself to the people.”
Brynn shook his head without removing his eyes from Nate’s shoulder.
“He’s shy,” Nate said.
“Why didn’t you mention him earlier?" Ted asked.
“You didn’t ask, and I hadn’t gotten around to it,” Nate said. Brynn was too big for Nate to hold for long. “I’m going to put you down now,” Nate said to Brynn. “You’ll be okay.”
He set the boy down on the edge of the sled. Brad thought the child somehow shrank in Nate’s arms. He seemed so helpless, sitting on the edge of the sled next to the stacked bodies. Brad was terrible with guessing ages, but figured Brynn was about ten. Brynn folded his hands into his lap.
“He was supposed to stay back in our truck until I came to get him later. Weren’t you?” Nate asked Brynn. The boy didn’t acknowledge the question, he simply stared back at Nate.
“Does he speak?" Ted asked.
“Ask him yourself,” Nate said.
“Brynn? Is that your name?” Romie asked. The boy glanced at her and then back to Nate.
“You stay out of the way, boy,” Nate said. “We’ve got to move some more of these people. We won’t take too long, I promise.”
Brynn did as he was told. He moved off to the side of the road, cleared away the snow from a section of pavement and spent his time lighting books of matches. While they moved the bodies, the group held a whispered debate about Nate and Brynn. Romie and Lisa shared the opinion that Nate and Brynn should be welcomed into the group and invited back to the apartment building they all shared. Ted maintained his distrust of Nate.
“Are you and Brynn coming back with us tonight?” Robby asked Nate. “There’s plenty of room at the building where we’re staying.” Ted approached and stood at Robby’s side, ready to revoke Robby’s invitation as soon as he got a chance to speak.
Nate beat him to it—“Thanks, but no. We’ve got a place to get back to. Stuff to take care of. We’ll be back in the morning if you’re going to fill the rest of these sleds.”
“Yes,” Robby said. “We’ll meet you here two hours after sunrise, if that’s okay?”
“See you then,” Nate said. “Nice to meet you all.”
Lisa waved, but nobody said goodbye. Nate whistled to Brynn and the two trudged off through the snow walking south on the highway until the overpass, and then over the embankment and down the hill.
✪ ✪ ✪ ✪ ✪
THE GROUP COMPARED notes after their first day of collecting corpses. Their second day proved much more productive. Ted and Lisa rounded up nearly a hundred on their own and the unloading was so smooth that all the teams managed to fit in a second gathering trip. By the fourth day, they’d exceeded Robby’s quota of one thousand bodies.
Nate showed up each morning and helped them unload and stack. He never went with the collection teams. While they were out, Nate disappeared with Brynn only to show up just as a team returned with a full moving van. Ted remained wary, but the rest of the group warmed to Nate and Brynn. The boy rarely engaged with anyone except Nate. He stayed away from the others, usually focused on burning something with his endless supply of matchbooks.
Pete strapped tanks of diesel fuel to the tractors and to the sleds they would pull. It wasn’t as volatile as gasoline, especially in the cold, but Pete still got nervous whenever Brynn and his matches strayed too close to one of the tanks. He approached Nate several times who would then scold Brynn until he moved farther away with his pyromania.
On the fourth day, as they strapped the last of the corpses to the final sled, Nate finally accepted the invitation to dinner. He and Brynn followed the group’s convoy over to the apartment building they shared.
The only fresh thing they cooked was the bread, which Lisa set to rise as soon as they returned. Everything else came from cans, but they prepared a good variety of fruits, vegetables, and two kinds of canned ham. Ted opened a bottle of wine while Robby showed Brynn the assortment of soda he’d collected. With the generators running, they had lights and music. Pete hooked up a propane tank for the oven and a camp refrigerator.
Sheila prepared a selection of cheese and crackers while they waited for the bread to bake. The group took up positions in the living room of the largest apartment. Through the big French doors to the balcony they could just see the spot on the highway where they’d loaded the sleds. Nate perched on the big couch by the coffee table. He sat on the edge of his seat, ready to jump up if need be, or perhaps just to spare the couch from his dirty clothes. Sheila gently suggested that Nate could change into Ted’s extra clothes—they were about the same build— but Nate declined. Next to Nate, Brynn folded himself deep into a corner of the puffy couch. His arms were crossed tight. Brynn’s hands looked empty without matches. Nate relieved him of all his packs of matches before he allowed him inside.
A silence formed when Robby shut off the TV over the
bar. He’d started a DVD of a kid’s movie, but Brynn wasn’t interested in watching. Sheila set her tray of cheese on the table and Nate broke the silence.
“So you’re leaving in the morning?” Nate asked.
“Yup,” Pete said. He turned in his chair to glance over at the highway where the tractors were parked.
“I guess you’re not going to need this setup anymore then?” Nate asked.
“I suppose not,” Pete said.
“Wait a second,” Romie said. “We’ll be back. We’re not leaving forever, are we?”
“If we do make it through this thing—this morbid corpse delivery job—why would we want to come back here?" Pete asked. “All the places we could go? We could move to Cape Elizabeth and have the best ocean-side property available.”
“There’s eye-poppers down there,” Lisa said.
“Not so many as there used to be,” Pete said. “And it wouldn’t take much effort to clear them out. Haven’t we learned that?”
“I like this place,” Romie said. “It’s south of the snow and north of Robby’s Elementals.”
“Why did you say you called them that?" Nate asked.
“What?" Romie asked. “Elementals? I thought Robby explained.”
“I only gave him a rough outline,” Robby said. “I didn’t really give him much background.”
Robby jumped down from his barstool, grabbed his bottle of pop, and moved to the small couch, next to Brad.
“Did you see anyone disappear, Nate?” Robby asked.
“No, but Brynn did.”
Brynn nodded his head.
“Have you been south? Did you see any of the moving water or the columns of fire?” Robby asked.
“No,” Nate said. “Oh, the bread smells good.” He closed his eyes and seemed to relax a little, but his back didn’t get any closer to the couch.
The aroma of the fresh bread reached Brad. Lisa had made her sourdough, and Brad’s mouth was already watering for it. He stuffed a cracker and a big hunk of cheese in his mouth.
Robby ignored the bread comment and continued his explanation—“I’ll go back to the beginning. In ancient Greece, they believed everything was made up of combinations of five elements: Earth, water, fire, air, and aether.”
