ZerOes

by Chuck Wendig

  Behind the men, the door opens suddenly with a rattle and a bang. A young woman enters—she’s small but looks tough. Taut and thin like a tow cable. Her hair is messily pulled into a topknot, her cheeks smudged with filth, a crooked hand-rolled cigarette hanging out of her mouth like she’s a dog carrying a broken stick.

  She starts barking at the men. Chance, of course, can’t understand her—but he can hear in her tone she’s . . . irritated with them? Though she looks young, her tone is that of a mother frustrated by her shitty little insubordinate children.

  Then comes a moment—she turns toward Chance and he gets a good look at her face, dead-on. Oh holy hell on a hang glider.

  It’s her.

  It’s the Widow of Zheng.

  Suddenly she says—in English—“Do it now.”

  The two phones in the room flash and spark. The old man and the attaché suddenly stiffen, mouths craning wide, eyes pried open by electric current. Then each collapses downward, crumpling like a cigarette stubbed out in an ashtray.

  The translator is left.

  He holds up his hands.

  The Widow kicks him in the balls.

  He doubles over with an ooooooh. Cradling his crotch.

  She offers a hand to Chance.

  He takes it.

  “You smell like yak,” she says, hauling him up out of the chair.

  “It’s my natural cologne.”

  She frowns at him. And stares. Again like he’s just some impudent toddler.

  “Come,” she snaps. “We don’t have much time. Grab their phones.”

  CHAPTER 40

  The Descent

  THE POCONO MOUNTAINS, PENNSYLVANIA

  The SUV punches a path through the dark forest. Everything about Chance is rigid, locked tight—his arms straight against the wheel, his jaw set so hard he can feel pain in his ears, his spine stiff, his leg long as his boot mashes the accelerator.

  He hears a voice, and seconds later realizes it’s his own: “Everyone all right?”

  Aleena from the back: “Reagan’s been hit.”

  “I’m fine,” Reagan barks. Quickly. Too quickly. The pain in her voice is evident. “Just drive.” Chance glances in the rearview, sees the two shapes in the backseat—Aleena, Reagan—and behind them, all the way in the back, Wade. Reagan thumps her head against the glass, clutches her biceps—that where she got hit? Chance doesn’t know.

  “Jesus!” DeAndre shouts. “Watch the road, man!”

  Face forward and Chance sees a turn up ahead—he’s taking it too fast, and even as he hits the brake the gravel slides under the tires and suddenly it’s like they’re drifting, the SUV listing sideways but not taking the turn—

  No, no, no, please, c’mon now. If they wreck here, they’ll be too close to the Lodge, too close to the—enemy? Who was that back there? Who ordered this? He jams the brake, cuts the wheel hard. The back end drifts. The front end feels liquid, slippery, loose—but then it’s right again and the SUV manages the turn.

  DeAndre presses one hand flat against the dashboard. In this light, he looks ashen, like a burned-down cigarette. Chance hears him fidgeting with something—the click and murmur of a pistol. “That Copper’s gun?” Chance asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “You know how to use it?”

  “Not really.”

  From the back Wade says, “Give it here.” DeAndre passes the gun back.

  “What the hell did we do?” Aleena asks.

  “We looked too hard, too close,” Wade growls.

  “We need to think!” Chance yells. “Not about what just happened but what about happens next, all right? Where we going?”

  “We don’t even know where we are,” DeAndre says.

  “We need to find a city—” Aleena says.

  “Like what, New York?” Wade interrupts, incredulous. “Hell no.”

  “It’s easy to get lost there. Lots of nooks and crannies—”

  “And also a huge police and federal presence. Listen, I appreciate the moxie of wanting to hide from the shark by hitching a ride on its belly, but we aren’t remoras. They’ll find us. We need to go somewhere remote.”

  “Wade’s got a point,” Chance says. He can feel Aleena’s stare burning into the back of his neck like a pair of hot ingots. “The city is crowded, you’re right, and we might be able to hide there, but if we can’t we’re trapped. Lots of traffic, so can’t drive. The subway, you gotta wait for it to show up—”

  Reagan interrupts: “Don’t forget cameras everywhere.”

  “Guys,” DeAndre says. “Guys.” He points.

  Chance looks. Ahead, down the long gravel drive, in the woods: Headlights. Distant.

  “The gate,” Chance says. Of course, the damn gate. It’s been two months since they came up here, and he forgot—there’s the inside perimeter. “What do I do? What the hell do I do?”

  “Cut the lights!” Wade hisses.

  Chance fumbles, hits the lights—the wipers go on, instead. “Damn, sorry, not my car, not my car,” and then he finds it and—click. The forest goes dark ahead of them. He slows the car to a stop.

  “We can’t wait here,” DeAndre says. “We’re gonna have company soon enough. We slowed ’em down, but that doesn’t mean they’re stopped.”

  “Drive slow,” Aleena says.

  Wade says, “She’s right. Drive slow, and if you see something—if you get half a chance, you gun it through the fence, all right? When we came in it was all mechanized, no one there to man it. Let’s hope whoever’s there now is underprepared for us.”

  Chance’s heart feels like a living thing, an animal caught in his chest trying to get out. He eases the car forward. He rounds a slight bend and—

  The fence is closed. Beyond it is a single pair of headlights. In the beams, a whorl of insects—moths, mosquitoes, beetles.

  Again he stops the SUV. “I don’t see anybody.”

  “The lights are facing us,” Aleena says. “They could be sitting there in the car. Just waiting for us to drive on up.”

  “They ain’t blocking the road,” Wade says. “Gun it.”

  “The gate opens automatically,” Reagan says. Her voice sounds rough—like it’s been abraded against a jagged stone. “I think it’s keyed into these cars. Just . . . drive up. See if it opens.”

  Chance presses down on the accelerator again. The car lumbers forward, pokey and slow. Sure enough, within ten feet of the gate it clicks, whirs, and begins to slide open.

  “Hit the lights,” Wade says.

  Chance does. The forest ahead lights up. Their headlights compete with those from the other car—another SUV like theirs, a full-size. Tahoe or Yukon.

  “Look, look, look,” DeAndre says, suddenly panicked—

  They all see it. Two bodies. One on the ground. Another slumped against the inside of the SUV window. Nobody’s moving.

  “The fuck?” Reagan says.

  Chance pulls the SUV ahead. The other vehicle is off to the side, though the one body is straight ahead, facedown in the gravel. All black. Military gear, like those at the Lodge. A gun, still in the hand of the outstretched body. Blood shines wet and red on the gravel. Inside the vehicle, more blood.

  “These look like the guys at the Lodge,” DeAndre says. “The hell’s going on? They kill people and then someone kills them? I don’t like this, man.”

  “Hey, shit, is that a gun?” Wade calls from the back. “Someone get it.”

  “Man, I ain’t getting out,” DeAndre says.

  “I’ll do it,” Reagan says.

  “Do we really want another gun?” Aleena asks. “If they stop us—”

  Wade barks: “They’re not looking to ask us a few questions or give us a parking ticket, little girl. At best, they’re trying to kill us. That is a helluva piece of hardware on the ground. It’s an MP7—high-grade submachine gun. I can’t get out—no doors back here, so unless you feel like jostling around—”

  “Damnit,” Chance growls, “I’ll do it.
Reagan, you’re hurt, stay here.”

  He takes a few deep, loud, fast breaths, then pops the door. Hops down out of the SUV. The gravel crunches and slides underneath his boots. His hands are shaking.

  He tiptoes toward the body—an absurd act, he knows, but for some reason he’s got this crazy notion that being quiet is still in his best interest. When he gets close, he extends a leg. Captures the gun with his boot, tries to drag it closer. It won’t move. Then he sees: the strap from the gun extends out, still wrapped around the body’s shoulder. Shit.

  Chance eases closer to the body. Kneels down. The blood shines black on the dark gravel. He knows he shouldn’t, but he grabs the front of the body’s helmet, then lifts. The head cranes back with a cracking sound. Behind the visor, the man’s face is empty, ghostly, eyes wide, mouth hanging open, the throat slashed like a knife dragged across raw steak—Chance smells the coppery, greasy stink. It gets in his nose and he turns aside, trying like hell not to throw up.

  Get the gun and go. He reaches forward—

  Footsteps. Movement. Fast. He looks up, but it’s too late. A gray shape darts out of the night, slams into him.

  Chance bowls over—his head smacks back into the gravel. Someone or something scrambles on top of him—a woman. A girl. Long filthy hair forming a matted curtain. Framing a pale face cratered with sores. She grins: a leering mouth, yellow teeth. “You saved her! You awakened the god. Our mother! The dragon thanks you.” She raises both hands. A rusty hunting knife hangs in her grip.

  No, Chance thinks. Not rusty. Bloody. He catches a glimpse of the side of her head. A patch of hair has been cut free, exposing a section of scalp. Stitching, foul and ragged, forms a postage-stamp-size square there upon her scalp. What the—

  Wham. DeAndre brings the gun against the side of the girl’s head and she tumbles off Chance, falling onto her side, twitching, the knife still clutched in her grip. She moans.

  “Back in the car,” DeAndre says. “Go. Go!”

  Chance reaches down, yanks the submachine gun free from the dead soldier’s shoulder, then hops back up in the car.

  The young woman lifts her head, woozy, eyes unfocused. She grins as a line of blood snakes a trail down the side of her face. “Mother sees you.”

  Chance slams the door and guns it.

  Midnight. They park around back of a Sheetz gas station at the junction of 476 and 80. In the glove compartment of the SUV they find a road atlas. Chance plants the map in the middle divider, and they all gather around, except Reagan, who hangs back, holding her hand to her arm.

  Chance looks up at her: “You okay back there?”

  “I’m fine, Chauncey,” she growls.

  “You need a doctor,” Aleena says.

  “I need to sit and not have people natter at me. It’s not bad. I’m fine. Let’s just figure out where we’re going first, yeah?”

  Wade spins the map around. “Look. I-80’s a real useful road. It cuts like a knife all the way across most of the country. We take it to Colorado, head south at Fort Collins, then cross the Rockies using 70—I got a few stashes up in the mountains, plus a few friends who might be able to help us out.”

  “Let me guess,” Aleena says. “Your friends are a bunch of mixed nuts, right? Gun nuts, conspiracy nuts, libertarian personal freedom Murrica nuts . . .”

  “Hey, these friends of mine are goddamn patriots,” Wade says, “and might I remind you that me and them probably don’t sound so nutty after all we’ve seen. But we can’t take this car with us.”

  “What?” Chance asks. “This thing’s built like a tank.”

  “It’s also a federal vehicle. For all we know they’re tracking the thing. Shit, it’s got a GPS in the damn dashboard.”

  “Means we need to steal a new car,” DeAndre asks.

  “And,” Aleena adds, “we could use some money.”

  DeAndre shrugs. “One thing hackers know how to do, it’s steal money.”

  “Not without a computer,” Aleena says. “Unless you’ve got some kind of microchip inside your brain.”

  “I’ll get the damn money,” Chance says. “Someone else has to worry about the car, though. Got a couple at the pumps—”

  Sure enough, two cars at the pumps. One’s been there for the past couple of minutes, the other’s just pulling up. Car that’s been there is a VW sedan. A weary-looking woman leans against it, staring off into space.

  The new car is a Subaru Outback. For when your local grocery store is in the middle of the wilderness, Chance thinks. The driver gets out, starts pumping gas. He’s got what looks like pajama pants on—pumpkin orange—and a green puffy vest with no shirt on underneath the vest. Blond hair a big fireworks display of dreads.

  “Man, dreads on white boys are just plain weird,” Reagan says. She reaches forward and pats DeAndre on the shoulder, wincing as she does so. “I’m sorry, black person, for how we whiteys have misappropriated your culture. Rock, rap, baggy pants, and now dreads. We’re the thieving magpies of culture.”

  DeAndre pulls away from her. “Man, you do not quit. Getting shot at—hell, getting shot—doesn’t slow you down one half second, does it?”

  She sighs. “Whatever, man.” She leans back in the seat, suddenly surly.

  Chance is half listening, half watching the Subaru’s driver, who fishes his phone out of his pocket and glances at the screen. Soon as he brings it to his ear, he gets a confused look. He laughs, like, maybe this is some kind of joke.

  But then he turns toward the SUV. Looks right at them. His eyes narrow. Squinting, like he’s checking them out.

  “Something’s up,” Chance says, and soon as he says that, Mr. Crunchy starts walking over to them. Cell phone to his ear. Nodding. A gangly, loopy walk, like he’s got a beat playing in his ear all the time.

  DeAndre gives a short nod to Chance.

  Chance rolls down his window. “Hey.”

  Mr. Crunchy licks his lips. “’Sup. Hey, this is pretty wack, but—” He holds out the cell phone. “You, uh, you got a call.”

  Chance looks at everyone.

  “Don’t take that call,” Wade says.

  “Answer it,” Reagan says.

  Chance asks: “Who is it?”

  Mr. Crunchy gives a bewildered look. “Some lady.”

  Chance reaches out for the phone. Catches an acrid whiff of skunky weed coming off the guy like stink off hot swamp water. He pulls away, taking the phone—it’s an older clamshell style. “Hello?”

  “Chance Dalton,” says a woman’s voice. It’s a voice he recognizes. He cups his hand over the phone, whispers to the car: “It’s her.” Then, back on the phone: “Hell do you want?”

  “I want to extend an olive branch to your pod.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Come back to us. What happened at the Hunting Lodge was a mistake. You did so much good for us. You should not be unduly punished for your service.”

  Again he says to the others in the car: “She says she wants peace. She wants us to surrender. Give ourselves up.”

  “Tell her I’d sooner put my head in an alligator’s mouth,” Wade says.

  Reagan says: “Tell her she’s a cunt, and we don’t cunt it up with cunts.”

  Aleena doesn’t offer any advice of her own, just grabs the phone out of Chance’s hand. “We’re done doing your dirty laundry just so we can end up as more of it. I don’t know who you are or why you built Typhon—I don’t know why you needed those twelve other people; I don’t know what your endgame is. I don’t care. We’re done being pawns on your chessboard. Stay. Away. From us.”

  Chance watches Aleena’s face go from angry and triumphant to horror struck, all her features going slack. He can’t hear what’s on the other line, but Aleena looks up. “Oh God, we have to go,” she says. Then, with an injection of panic: “We need to go! She knows where we are. They’re coming for us—”

  Chance fumbles with the keys, starts the engine.

  “Hey,” Mr. Crunchy says, leani
ng in. “Hey! That’s my—”

  Outside: a pop. Crunchy’s body shudders and slumps forward. DeAndre screams. Chance cries out, grabs a hank of the dreadlocked hair, and throws the guy’s head back—he sees a black bloom in the center of the man’s forehead, an exit wound, he realizes—and then, as Crunchy falls, Chance sees a sleek black car bounding hard into the gas station lot. A bone-white hand holding a pistol is hanging outside the driver’s-side window.

  Chance punches the accelerator.

  The pistol fires three more times—pop! pop! pop!—and the back window by Aleena spiderwebs and then shatters into a rain of tinted-glass hail. The SUV is slow to move, but once it gains momentum, it barrels forward like a locomotive. Behind them, the car skids, drifts on the cracked gas station lot, its back end nearly taking out a rack of propane tanks. But it catches momentum out of its turn and rockets toward them.

  In the rearview, Chance sees the face of their pursuer. Pale as fireplace ash. Scarred. Hairless. Face cold, dead, emotionless.

  Chance blasts the SUV out of the lot and back onto the road. The SUV’s engine grumbles like a growling dog. The black car—a BMW, he thinks, maybe a 7 series—whips out of the gas station like a wasp leaving its nest.

  Ahead, there’s an intersection. Staying straight will take them to I-80. The other way is highway 940, by the signs. Chance thinks, We got a green light. He prays it holds.

  But his eyes catch something. He can see the red glow of the light on the opposing side against the night. But then it goes green. He looks back at their light: still green. The light is green all four directions. Which means—

  “Hold on!” Chance yells. It’s late, but the roads aren’t empty. As he watches, a pickup truck goes through the light at the same time as a little red coupe. He wants to look away, but—

  The truck wipes out the coupe. Takes out the front end like it was a piñata filled with metal shavings. The truck skids to a halt, the coupe flipping on its side—