by G X Todd
‘9, 10, 14, 19, and . . . um—’
‘21,’ he said. CB channels for emergencies, highway traffic and regional road news from the old days.
‘Right. 21. Tried them all. Nada.’
‘Go back to 15, and leave it there.’ That was the channel the radio had been tuned to when he’d first switched it on. Presumably, the channel the dead girl had been monitoring.
‘Gotcha,’ Lacey said.
Pilgrim settled back as Alex pulled on to the road and smoothly accelerated. He didn’t look at his bike as they went by; he had left different parts of himself everywhere he’d been. Pretty soon all he’d have left were the boots on his feet and the sole ability to place one in front of the other until there were no more steps to take. Perhaps then he’d give himself the luxury of looking back.
‘You should get some sleep,’ Alex said, her eyes meeting his in the rear-view mirror.
He eased lower into the seat, his eyes heavy-lidded, the cushion softening and opening up to meet him. ‘Get off the highway at the next off-ramp,’ he said. ‘And don’t stop for anybody.’ He sank down, down into the seat’s foamy embrace, until he was encased on all sides, as if lying in a plush, slumberous coffin.
CHAPTER 17
Pilgrim slept deeply. He didn’t dream. (Dreams were for people who still believed there were safe places left in the world.) There were flashes of images in the dark, though. Memories that were lodged in the back of his skull, hidden in the vast oceans of his mind and supposedly safeguarded in locked chests. Occasionally, they slipped free from their bindings, not even chains able to hold them.
In one he saw a naked man strung up by his neck, swaying high overhead at the end of a rope tied to a telephone pole. A piece of cardboard strapped to his chest read ‘He Hears’ in trembling black marker. He had one shoe on. A black-and-white wingtip. A scattering of kids gathered beneath him, the eldest no older than eight, throwing rocks and empty cans as if he were a dangling human piñata who would spill his contents if only they could strike him in the right spot.
In the next image, Pilgrim saw three adults hunkered around a campfire, a ragtag group of dirt and bones and scraps of clothes, their eyes white in their ash-streaked faces. A small dog was being spit-roasted over the open flames. They hadn’t bothered to skin it or remove its collar. The animal was alight in several places, the smell of burning fur musky and offensive. When they saw Pilgrim, they stood and yelled and waved angrily at him to get away. He didn’t recognise any of the words they used – they had lost the ability to verbalise their frantic sentiments. They were more animal than the poor mongrel that was being cooked.
The last image wasn’t a memory. Or at least not one he remembered. He stood in the middle of what used to be a town, but now its landscape was moon-like with craters and cracked streets and sidewalks on all different levels, as if God himself had shifted the tectonic plates beneath the Earth to create steps, some leading up into heaven, others down into the bowels of hell. All the buildings had been levelled. There were no people. Pilgrim was the first man to stand in the town since it had been destroyed and would probably be the last. This place was the definition of desolation. Nothing lived here any more. And yet the sky was alive with red, pulsing static, bursting with electricity every few seconds, a low drone buzzing from its depths as though invisible power lines ran hot above his head. With each burst of fizzing electricity, the hairs lifted on his arms and the droning caught on crackling sounds, almost like words. The longer he looked up at that shifting, red-static sky, the more he thought he could understand it, thought the sky was speaking to him. It said, ‘Thanatos’ and ‘Listen’ and ‘Slaughter’ and ‘Death’, and the words made his blood fizz with static, too, so that it ran hot and fearful under his skin.
Pilgrim opened his eyes, and he was in the back seat of the car, looking at the napes of Alex’s and Lacey’s necks. There was no hypnopompic transition for him: he was simply asleep and then awake.
The girls were talking again. All they seemed to do was talk. Beneath it, the low-volume static from the CB radio provided a cushion of white noise.
It’s what women do, talk. That and make men feel inferior. Voice hovered nearby as if he’d been waiting for Pilgrim to awaken.
Pilgrim wanted to tell him about the last part of his dream, about the red, pulsing sky and the words it had spoken to him, but something stayed his tongue. It had left him with a vague feeling of apprehension, and he didn’t want Voice picking up on it.
He directed his attention out of the window, at the position of the fat molten ball in the sky. He hadn’t been asleep for much more than an hour. He was glad to see they had followed his instructions and left the highway behind. They were now driving through an abandoned town, very different from the one he had awoken from. Broken windows, broken doors, rusting cars without wheels, overgrown grass and straggly bushes, caved-in roofs, collapsed garage porticos. The sign for a one-screen picture house they passed read ‘N W SH W NG – M AX: (R)’.
The inside of the car was stuffy and hot. It made him groggy. He stayed slumped where he was and listened to them talk.
‘I’m pretty sure it’s the next right,’ Lacey was saying. There was a rustle of paper as she lifted the map up and folded it in half, and folded it in half again, laying it back in her lap, her head bowing over it.
‘Just tell me when to turn,’ Alex told her.
‘You’ll really like Vicksburg, Alex. My sister lives in this really big house, so there’ll be plenty of room for you.’
She’s got a sister, Voice said in a musing kind of way.
Pilgrim studied the side of Lacey’s face when she reached over to pick up the CB’s handset. The arm of her sunglasses hid her eye, but her profile was all soft, clean curves. There was a tiny bump at the bridge of her nose, as if she had broken it falling off her swing set, or if a goat she milked had butted her while she pulled at its teats, or maybe she had slipped while getting out of the tub after taking one of the baths she so loved.
Don’t, Voice warned.
‘That’d be nice,’ Alex said. ‘We should see how your sister feels about it first, though. She might not want strangers in her house.’
A few clicks came from the CB as the girl keyed the mic on and off, on and off.
‘Oh, Karey won’t mind – she likes having visitors. You’ll get to try her scones. She makes the best scones, I swear.’ The static cut off as she keyed the mic on. ‘You all hear that? Who out there wants scones? Chocolate orange scones, strawberry and white chocolate scones, and plain old raisin ones. She’s not so great at baking apple pies,’ she said in a more conversational tone, ‘but her scones are to die for. Here’s S. Levee Street coming up.’
Alex took the turning on the right. The radio crackled and Pilgrim’s ears perked up, but no answer came through.
‘I used to make the most awesome cookies,’ Alex said. ‘I loved my kitchen. It was the tiniest kitchen in the world – think postage-stamp size, that’s how small. But I could reach everything from standing in the one spot. It was wonderful.’
‘My sister’s kitchen is pretty big. And old. It’s got cast-iron stoves and stuff.’
Alex’s next question sounded tentative. ‘Do you think she knows you’re coming?’
Lacey turned to look out of the passenger window. Her voice was bright and loose, but Pilgrim heard the forced cheer injected into it. The radio went silent again, the static shutting off, as if it, too, wanted to better hear the girl’s words.
‘She should, yep. I waited such a long while. ’Cause, you know, I wasn’t sure if she’d be coming, and Grammy said we needed to worry about our lot, and my sister was more than capable of looking out for hers. She has David and Addison – that’s my niece, did I tell you about her? I’m an aunt.’ Lacey laughed, as if that was the wildest thing ever. ‘My sister finally got pregnant after a bunch of times trying. My grams said Addison was a miracle baby. Karey had her a couple months before everything went nuts, s
o I haven’t even met her yet. That’s awful, isn’t it? That I haven’t met my own niece? But my grammy said it wasn’t safe to, you know, go travelling across two whole states. She tried the one time, after I hounded and hounded her to. It didn’t go so well. And Grammy’s eyesight got pretty bad – she couldn’t hardly see anything by the end . . .’ The girl trailed off, but then caught herself, and the full-wattage of her brightness came back. ‘So after Grammy passed, I thought I’d make my own way there.’
‘Wow. So your niece would be seven now?’ Alex asked.
‘Yep. Almost eight.’
‘And how long has it been since your grammy passed away?’ Alex asked gently.
Lacey made a low, humming noise while she thought about it and went back to clicking the mic’s transmission button. ‘Guess it must’ve been . . . three months ago? Yeah, about three months.’ She tried to sound offhand about it, but Pilgrim would bet the girl knew exactly how long it had been, probably to the day.
‘So that’s when you set up the lemonade stand you told me about?’ Alex said.
‘Not straight away. I wasn’t sure what I’d do, to be honest.’ Click-click-click. ‘I mean, Grammy had gotten pretty forgetful, and I tried talking to her, but it didn’t help much. Had to figure stuff out on my own.’ A static-silenced click. ‘We don’t get hardly any traffic passing through, but I reckoned someone would come by eventually. Took a chance on it being someone who’d help. And it wasn’t like I didn’t have my toad sticker.’
‘Toad sticker?’
‘My grammy’s old paring knife.’
Pilgrim had listened enough; he straightened up, groaning as he stretched out the kinks in his back. He said, ‘You’d planned on sticking me, then, if I hadn’t paid my way?’ He was slightly irked, in retrospect, that he had allowed her on to the back of his bike without first checking her over for weapons. She could have easily slid that toad sticker of hers between his ribs if she’d so desired, and he wouldn’t have been able to stop her.
Lacey had started in her seat when he spoke, but now she swivelled around, hooking her arm over the seat back so she could face him. ‘I’d planned on sticking you if you’d gone and tried to git me, yep.’
Git ya. Voice cackled.
‘Lucky I was happy with just the lemonade.’
Lacey smirked at him. ‘Right. Or else you’d be full of holes, like in the cartoons when someone gets punctured and they take a drink and it all pours out of the wounds like a human fountain. I remember those.’
Pincushion Pilgrim.
‘Feel better?’ Alex asked him. ‘You weren’t asleep long.’
‘Feel fine.’ He twisted his neck, heard it crack, and opened and closed his left hand, pins and needles prickling through it.
Lacey scrubbed at her nose with her fist, then said, ‘You hungry? I was just telling Alex about my sister’s scones—’
‘Chocolate orange, strawberry and white chocolate, and plain old raisin. I heard.’
‘You dirty possum,’ she said, but she was grinning when she said it.
‘I wasn’t playing dead.’
She lost some of her smile, the last bits hanging around as if undecided where to go.
‘Opossums play dead to deter predators,’ he said, explaining the difference. ‘I was asleep.’
Her smile had disappeared. The radio static fell ominously silent again. ‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen a real-life one.’
‘And probably won’t. Most likely they’ve all been caught and eaten, or else gone back into the wild—’
‘From the map,’ Alex said, interrupting, ‘we worked out we’re just south of Fort Worth. So only about six hours away from Vicksburg.’
‘Good,’ Pilgrim said, nodding. ‘That’s good.’ He turned to Lacey. ‘You’re going to Vicksburg because you think your sister is there?’
Pilgrim—
Lacey frowned, suspicion sharpening her words. ‘Yeah, why?’
‘You understand the chances of finding her alive are slim.’
Pilgrim. There was a definite reprimand to Voice’s tone this time.
‘Hey, now,’ Alex said at the same time, glancing back at him. ‘We should see first before making any assumptions.’
‘False hope is dangerous,’ he told her. ‘You know as well as I do that the odds aren’t good.’
‘You don’t know anything,’ Lacey said, staring hard at him, her eyes kind of squinty. Pilgrim wasn’t sure why she was angry; he was discussing the realities of the situation, that was all. ‘You think you do because you’ve been out there more than I have. But you don’t.’
‘I didn’t say I did,’ he said, frowning now. ‘But if that’s the only reason you want to go to Vicksburg, then you need to rethink—’
Alex interrupted again. ‘We’ll hope for the best, and see what we find. OK? There’s nothing wrong with that.’ In the rear-view mirror, her eyes bored into his, effectively silencing him.
Lacey shot him her own last look and turned around, slumping in her seat and crossing her arms. The mic shuttered a bunch of fast clicks as the girl depressed the button in quick succession, cutting into the radio’s static.
That clicking is getting really annoying.
‘The more you click that or hold the mic button down, the less likely we’ll hear any transmissions.’
The girl huffed, and the clicking stopped. A soft wash of white noise settled throughout the car.
Pilgrim scratched the side of his face.
Teenagers, Voice said, as if that explained everything. Don’t worry about it. We had a sister once, too. You remember her? Had the same curly hair as—
‘Not now,’ Pilgrim said.
Alex sent him another frowning look through the rear-view mirror, but he paid it no mind.
Not now, not now. It’s always ‘not now’ with you. Never want to listen.
‘Can I see the map?’ he asked, reaching one hand between the front seats and leaving it hanging there, waiting patiently until Lacey sighed loudly and slapped the map into his open palm.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
She made no response.
He found the stretch of highway where the car had crashed, then traced the path of the dead girl’s flight with his finger, his eyes scanning the names of each town and city, waiting for the word ‘Defend’ to jump out at him. But it didn’t. There was no mention of ‘Defend’, ‘Defender’, ‘Defending’ or any other form of that root word anywhere in a hundred-mile radius. Pilgrim laid the map down and used the pads of his thumb and middle finger to rub his eyes.
Look!
A green sign swept past, pointing to a road on the left.
‘Stop.’ Pilgrim twisted in his seat, his eyes fixed on the sign as though it might pop out of existence if he let it out of sight.
The library was a small building, only a single storey high. Its roof was brown tiles, its bricks beige and weathered. Elmer the Patchwork Elephant had been painted on one of the front-facing windows, but he was missing his head, the pane broken clean in half. The door had been pulled off its hinges, so now there was only a doorway and an open invitation, which Pilgrim felt sure the librarians of old would have been happy about. Everyone was welcome at the library, after all.
‘What’re we doing here?’ Lacey asked, stepping out into the heat of the mid-morning sun.
Pilgrim had thought the fresh air outside would feel better than the baking stuffiness of the car, but he was wrong.
Baked like one of Lacey’s sister’s scones.
Pilgrim slid his sunglasses on and surveyed the parking lot. The concrete was faded and cracked. So were the sidewalks. The rear of five properties overlooked the car park, and he checked the windows of each house, but no one was watching and he felt no eyes on him. His ears were picking up on something, though. More a vibration than a noise. A faint buzz in the concrete beneath his feet. A generator, possibly. That could mean people. But they were choosing not to show themselves, and that suited Pilgrim.
‘Yeah, I got that. But what books?’
Pilgrim almost smiled when the girl lifted her rifle, unconsciously following his example and checking over the weapon in exactly the way he would have asked her to if she hadn’t done it of her own accord.
‘I’ll show you when I find them,’ he told her.
She trailed after him to the back of the car, where he popped open the trunk and lifted his pack out, slinging it on to his back. Lacey and Alex followed his example, taking all their belongings with them. Alex locked the car. Pilgrim didn’t say that, if anyone wanted it, they’d bust it open in ten seconds flat and be gone before they had time to come back.
‘Why does everything have to be a mystery with you, man? Can’t you just tell me which books?’
He looked down at Lacey. Her sunglasses continued to hide her eyes, but he could tell by the way her brows were scrunched up that she was scowling at him.
‘You’d rather be told than to see for yourself?’ he asked, genuinely surprised.
‘Yes.’
He looked at Alex, and she shrugged, smiling slightly. He noticed she’d taken a tyre iron from the car and slid it under her belt.
He turned back to the girl. ‘I don’t know yet. I’ll know when I see them.’ And he walked around her and headed for the library’s entrance, doing a third and final scan of the surrounding area as he went.
There was a moment’s silence, and then: ‘You’re kidding me, right? You don’t even know what books you’re looking for?’ He heard her tramp up behind him.
Pilgrim stopped in the doorway. The mustiness of old books wafted out to greet him, and he inhaled deeply. ‘They used to think making books digital – making everything digital – was the future. But where are those things now? Lost, that’s where.’ He didn’t turn to her as he spoke. ‘Books are real. They’re all about feeling them in your hands. Leafing through their pages. Smelling the ink. You’ll know it when you have the right one.’ Gun held ready, he stepped inside. ‘And stay alert,’ he added. ‘We don’t know who’s hanging around.’
