by Nate Kenyon
Looking out at that scene, I felt completely alone and helpless, and I wondered how we had ever thought we could make our way through this.
Nobody spoke. The Geiger counter on Sue’s lap began to tick faster. I glanced at her in the passenger seat, and she shook her head. Not in the danger zone yet. Of course, danger zone was a relative term, wasn’t it? You might not start glowing green, at least not at first, but did that really make one bit of difference if you had a boiling tube of bioengineered insects hollowing out your insides?
A moment later the rear door opened and Dan climbed inside, cold air following him in. I could hear the angry ocean in the distance, throwing itself against the rocks, an ominous sound, before he slammed the door shut.
“I’d recommend you step on it,” he said. I could see the fear on his face through the hood’s shield. “Right now.”
I dropped the Jeep into gear and hit the gas.
We exploded out through the open garage door, headlights cutting a path through the murky, permanent dusk. I had only a split second to register movement on our right before I felt the SUV shudder with the impact of something large and heavy. I glanced in the rearview mirror long enough to see a gigantic naked woman tumbling across the asphalt behind us, her pendulous breasts swinging as she got to her feet again and started limping after the car, blood on her face, her mouth opening wide as she let out one of those tortured, alien screams.
“Pete,” Sue said, her voice tight.
“I see them.” I gripped the wheel tightly, peering out through the windshield in disbelief. Two more people were standing in the middle of the driveway as we approached, a man and woman, lit up by our headlights. They looked to be in their thirties, well dressed, but there was something oddly familiar about their posture, too upright and stiff.
They did not move a muscle as I barreled toward them.
Why the hell were they standing in the middle of the road? If these things were intelligent like I thought, they couldn’t possibly think they could stop the Jeep that way.
I looked at Sue and her eyes were closed, her hood resting back against the headrest as if she were sleeping, only her rapid breathing and her death grip on the Geiger counter in her lap giving her away. I wanted to close my eyes too and drift away from this place, but I did not have the luxury of taking that path. I had been chosen, for better or worse, to be the executioner.
I told myself that what I was about to do was self-defense; or was it murder? These people were still alive, at least in some form. I wondered if the infected felt pain, and just as quickly decided that if Jay and Jimmie’s behavior inside the shelter was any indication, they did.
I honked the horn, lay my hand on it, blaring. They would not move. I had no choice.
“Hang on to something,” I said to no one in particular.
We hit the man and woman going close to forty miles an hour. The Jeep’s bumper clipped them hard at the waist so that they snapped forward and smashed their faces into the hood, and then flipped headfirst into the windshield, their arms pinwheeling, the impact making spiderweb cracks like two broken soup bowls before they tumbled up and over the roof.
As we hit them I heard them cry out, inside my head; felt something of the impact as a faint, ghostlike pain in my hips. Dan shouted something from the backseat, but I couldn’t understand him, didn’t have time to think before the voices drifted away. I shuddered with the memory of them, like something foul and black had bled through my pores and into my brain.
In the rearview mirror I saw them hit the pavement behind us like rag dolls, flopping hands over feet and coming to rest in a tangled heap about thirty feet in front of the fat naked lady, who was still running after us but dropping back quickly.
The driveway took a sharp right-hand curve and descended down toward the ocean. I swung the wheel, tires squealing slightly under the strain, and as we straightened out again the bridge came into view.
I almost stood on the brakes, but managed to resist the urge in time. There was no stopping now, come hell or high water, but the bridge itself looked like it were alive, pulsing and swirling, and it took me a moment to realize that it was blanketed by thousands and thousands of the giant mosquitolike creatures that had attacked Sue. There were people on there too, but I couldn’t see more than vague shapes through the swarm.
“We’re going to need some industrial-strength bug spray,” I muttered.
“What are they doing?” Sue said.
“They’re attacking the supports, trying to weaken it,” Dan said. He hitched forward in his seat so his head was close to us. “Those things back there weren’t trying to stop us. They were just trying to slow us down, buy some time.” He reached out a gloved hand and squeezed my shoulder. “We have to hurry, Pete. They’re going to find a way to take it down, do you understand me? And then we’re trapped here.”
I nodded and put the pedal to the floor, feeling that familiar red tinge of panic beginning to creep over me.
We accelerated hard down the gentle slope toward the bridge. A gust of wind buffeted the SUV and picked up the ash from the road, obscuring the view for one heart-stopping moment before I blew through it, the Jeep lurched upward, and we entered a buzzing, snarling tornado of hell.
As soon as we hit the swarm I knew I’d badly miscalculated. Bugs slapped the sides of the SUV, bounced off the hood and crunched under the tires as we shuddered nearly sideways onto the bridge. We were going way too fast.
As the cloud engulfed us I was suddenly driving blind, and more huge mosquitoes burst against us like hailstones, smearing their guts across the glass and lengthening the cracks until the entire windshield threatened to fall into our laps.
Sue screamed, the sound shockingly loud in the confines of the car. I swung the wheel to the left, felt the Jeep fishtail through the cloud, swung it right again, trying to regain control as the rear end slid out behind us and we went into a full skid. I lost all sense of direction, holding on to the steering wheel with both hands and clamping my foot down on the brakes as we spun, terror washing over me in a paralyzing wave.
A jarring thud shook us as a human shape materialized out of the cloud beyond my driver’s-side window and went down under the tires. I wondered how close we were to the guardrail and a drop of at least fifty feet to the rocky ocean below, and I thought of the moment of weightlessness that would come as we crashed through, the plunge downward and the impact with the icy sea; how it would blow out the windshield into our faces, water rushing rapidly in to strangle us, forcing itself into our mouths and down our throats and filling our lungs with salt. Ending us, once and for all, in the most merciful way.
All this flew through my mind in a split second, before we slid to a stop not three feet from the rail. The engine had stalled, and my hands ached from clutching the wheel, my legs trembling, brake pedal still pushed hard to the floor.
Everything was silent, except for the dull buzz of the mosquitoes outside, the hiss-pop of my mask, and Sue’s Geiger counter, which was ticking fast enough now to sound like static, and I thought of that first night down in the hole, listening to the emptiness from the radio, concentrating so hard I imagined my mother’s voice bleeding through it.
I could hear her again now.
Pete…hurts…
The voice sounded real enough. I lifted my gloved hands and found them shaking, and I could not seem to catch my breath. It was still cold in the car, but I was sweating hard. It occurred to me that I might be dangerously unstable, that what had happened back at Sue’s grandfather’s house and the dream of my father had been the last crack in the dam holding back something huge and irrevocable.
Then the cloud of insects lifted slightly, and I peered out the streaked and shattered windshield at a tightly knit group of people in the center of the bridge about twenty feet away. Somehow we had spun completely around and were facing the mainland again.
The group began to advance together, something odd about the way they moved. I realized that
their steps were all perfectly synchronized; right, left, right…
“Go,” Sue said, in a strangled, shaky voice. “Hurry.”
I managed to turn the key and the engine roared to life. I stomped on the gas and the Jeep leaped forward, gaining speed quickly. We plowed right through the middle of them, sending several tumbling over the rail and pulling others down under the wheels with a thump-thud and a sickening crunch of breaking bones.
I kept going, plunging into another cloud of angry, humming insects, hitting the gas again and roaring ahead to where I thought the bridge’s exit lay. Sweat poured off me inside the suit, dripping down between my shoulder blades and running into my eyes. I could hardly see anything through the cracks and bug guts. I flipped on the windshield wipers, trying to clear the gunk from the glass, but the wipers just smeared it into a thick brown paste and caught at the bodies of more insects as they hit and spun away.
It was over in an instant. Almost as quickly as it had begun, the cloud lifted.
We left the bridge with a thump and squeal of tires and entered the mainland.
Breathe in, breathe out. I swallowed hard past the lump in my throat as we accelerated up the slope on the other side of the bridge. I sprayed blue windshield cleaner and the wipers flopped back and forth again, and I could see enough through the gunk and the spiderweb of cracks to remain on the road.
“We made it,” I said, more to myself than to anyone inside the SUV. “We’re okay.”
Sue was crying next to me, huddled against the door, knees up and clutching the Geiger counter around her middle like a protective mother with a child. I considered trying to hold her hand, and thought better of it. I didn’t know what she thought of me anymore, or whether she even remembered what had happened last night. My own mind seemed to be slowing down, rather than speeding up; I caught bits and pieces of the road before me like old sepia-colored snapshots. That throbbing ache between my eyes had intensified into dual nails being driven into my brain.
I could see more human shapes through the dim light ahead, some of them already near us, others like shadows marching in a single-file line from the dead trees and across the flat, barren fields, the wasteland. A line of ants from their burrows. I couldn’t tell how many of them were still alive, and how many might be like Sue’s grandfather, but I knew that I would run down every single one of them, if that was what it took. The time for mercy was gone, if it had ever been here at all.
I looked in the mirror behind us and saw a dark cloud of mosquitoes lifting off the bridge, swarming our way. But they were falling behind as I sped up.
“They’re tracking us,” Dan said. “I can hear them. Goddamn it! Get out of my fucking head!” I caught him clutching at his hood with his good arm, and my entire body went cold with the memory of Jay and Jimmie doing the same thing in the shelter as things got worse for them. If he lost it now, I had no idea what I’d do.
“Dan,” I said. “Dan.” I met his eyes in the mirror. “Stay with us, here. Please. Please stay with us.”
He held my gaze, let out a deep, shaky breath and nodded. I saw Tessa touch his shoulder, but he didn’t seem to feel it through his suit. She didn’t speak, and as I blinked through the sweat I thought I saw her image shiver and blur in the mirror. I squeezed my eyes shut, shook my head, and when I opened them she was staring back at me in concern.
“Okay,” Dan said, in a shaky voice, dropping his arm. “Okay.”
The Geiger counter kicked up another notch. Sue uncurled herself from around it. “We’re almost in the red,” she said. She tapped the screen with her finger and shook the device, as if that might change the reading. When she looked at me I noticed how bloodshot her eyes were, how panicked she was behind her mask, how close to unhinged.
“Sing something,” I said. I had no idea where that came from, but as soon as it left my mouth, I knew it was the right thing. She had always had a pretty voice, singing in the choir in her mother’s church and in a badly directed version of Oklahoma our school theater department had put on during our sophomore year. We had all pitched in to help with that one, Jay working the lines with her, Dan playing a bit part onstage, me and Tessa painting the sets. Overall it had been a train wreck, but Sue had been really good, far better than any of the others.
“I…no,” she said. “That’s crazy. I can’t.”
“Come on. Sing something from the play. Hey, Dan, pull some beef jerky out of one of those sacks. We’ll have dinner and a show.”
We were still human, weren’t we? After all that had happened, we had kept our dignity, and that, more than anything else, spurred me on. I wanted to see my house again, and find my mother, dead or alive. I wanted to prove to myself that I was worthy of the trust and faith she had put in me all these years, that my father had been wrong about me.
You’re spineless, boy, always have been.
If I was going out, I wanted to do it the right way.
Sue gave me a shaky smile, and my heart warmed at the sight. “Come on,” I said again.
“I know a way to prove what they say is quite untrue,” she began softly, the melody faint and muffled through her mask and hood, her voice gaining strength and conviction as she went along. “Here is the gist, a practical list of ‘don’ts’ for you…”
Don’t throw bouquets at me
Don’t please my folks too much
Don’t laugh at my jokes too much
People will say we’re in looooove!
We drove on as the infected fell far behind, Sue’s voice drifting through our heads like a sorrowful memory of something long past, through miles of empty, dead fields and shattered trees, silent houses and abandoned cars, deeper into the dark and unknown.
Closer to home, and whatever waited for me there.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
We drove through that deserted, broken landscape, and eventually Sue’s voice began to falter and died away, and nobody said anything else. We were all too horrified by what lay before us.
I turned from Ocean Road onto Route 1. As we moved inland the destruction seemed to get worse, the sky darker and more threatening. We passed the occasional abandoned cars, left on the side of the road or sometimes right in the middle of it, doors still open, ash coating everything. Frozen in time like fossil remains. The people who had driven them, those who had laughed, and cried, and made love, fought and slept and lived their own individual lives a billion times over, had disappeared, and now the world lay silent like a candy wrapper that had been discarded on the curb.
We saw no one moving at all.
Route 1 swept down past brown inlets crusted with ice, burned marshes and seedy motels, car dealerships and convenience stores, all deserted and dead under that flat, gunmetal sky, some windows shattered, others still intact and dull with ash and dust. I thought about drawing a message in them, something really clever like Petey Wuz Here or Meet Me in Alaska with a smiley face, but, of course, I didn’t stop. We were like sharks in open water, keep moving or die.
Just outside the bridge to Wiscasset, the headlights picked up a nasty accident in front of us, maybe twenty cars and trucks all bunched up and busted, glass and plastic scattered across the road. At first I didn’t think we could get through, but I found a way to skirt it on the shoulder, the Jeep’s tires halfway into the drainage ditch.
“It’s Mike Giles,” Dan said from the back.
I looked, and he was right. Giles’s car, anyway, one of those new Dodge Challengers with racing stripes and a Patriots sticker in the rear window, sitting in the middle of the pileup, front end smashed up enough for the engine to be half into the driver’s seat. He was a football player too, a muscled offensive lineman with a plump face and a buzz cut, and Dan got along with him but he’d never been friendly with the rest of us. He’d gotten the car a couple of months ago from his father, who owned the dealership in Brunswick, and he loved tooling through the high school parking lot, showing it off.
Giles had never been one to wear his sea
t belt either. As we crept past, I could see the hole in the windshield where he’d flown through on impact, the edges smeared with dried blood.
“Where’d he go?” I said, and regretted it as soon as the words were out of my mouth. Nobody spoke. We all knew where he went. He was probably somewhere out in those dead weeds beyond the bridge, waiting for us to stop and take a look around.
I wondered how many of our classmates were out there somewhere, neither alive nor truly dead. How many of our neighbors and coworkers, teachers and distant cousins. Part of the hive mind now.
I glanced in the rearview at Dan, who was sweating profusely inside his suit and breathing too fast. “Can you hear them?” I said.
“No,” he said. “I can’t. I can’t hear anything.”
I nodded. But I wasn’t sure I believed him. I gripped the shotgun tucked at my side. It would be hard to maneuver in this small space.
I’ll have to act long before that…I can’t take the chance of…hurting someone.
I wondered if that time was getting close, and whether he’d have the strength to act when it came. I met his eyes in the mirror, and he nodded slightly at me, as if he understood.
It was tight enough as I passed by for metal to scrape the side of the Jeep with a teeth-clenching squeal, and then we were free and on the bridge, leaving Mr. Mike Giles, God save him, somewhere in the rearview mirror.
Wiscasset was a tourist town with a postcard-pretty main street sloping down toward the water, and normally it would have been bright and bustling with life, but now the road was empty, the shops dark and deserted. We left the bridge and drove slowly past Red’s Eats, the tiny food shack that had been an icon for so long, and the sight of the empty, ash-covered counter just about made my heart break. Jimmie had worked there part-time and we’d spent many summer evenings lined up before closing, waiting for one of Red’s burgers and fries before heading to the movies or someone’s house to hang out. Now it was just another memory of something we would never get back.
