“Kinky? Over.”
“Yeah. We’re at Kinky Friedman’s Utopia Dog Rescue Ranch. One of the girls here used to help out here summers and since they don’t like dogs and it’s really remote out here, we came here. Random really, but. Over.”
We all looked at each other mouthing, Kinky Friedman?
“Wait, wait. They don’t like dogs? The kids? And who in the hell is Kinky Friedman? Over.”
“Kinky. Uh, ran for governor a few years ago. Musician, writer. I don’t know much about him. He’s, like, the only musical act to ever have its Austin City Limits taping fail to air. For naughtiness or something. In the seventies. Anyway, Kinky’s not here. But, yeah, dogs’ hackles go up when there’s kids around. Bark like it’s the Devil himself. They do not hang around. God, we feel sorry for the kids, but they’re scary. It’s like they know they’re different now and can’t help it. What is this that’s happened? You guys have a frigging clue? Any media, Internet, phone working there? Ours all went out by I’d say nine that morning. Sorry, I have diarrhea of the mouth. Just so excited to be making contact. Over.”
“Same here. No adults. No reception of any kind. Just looped radio ads and this ham radio. Over.”
“Ha-ha yeah same in San An. The old world still shaking its moneymaker. Maybe the dead listen, head over to the great mall in the sky. Over.”
Bass looked at us. We offered nothing but agape mouths among the scatter of cards. He stopped with the niceties and catch-up and issued an existential question meant to be practical. “So, what do we do now, Chris?”
Chris took it as practical. “We’ve been talking. Makes sense to us that we should get together with anyone we find. Out here would a good place to gather. Austin’s probably not going much better than San Antonio kid-wise. Over.”
“They’re not doing much here other than amassing down by the river and roaring a lot. They are freaky, though, yeah, give you that. I think they’re just all freaked out right now and if we just let things settle, maybe in time we can all work together. Over.” Bass shrugged at us, like, right?
“You all clearly have not seen what we have. You wouldn’t be saying that. Over.”
“I take your word for it. We’ve seen… enough. They haven’t done the roadblock thing to us. They’ve stayed away. They did surround us once when we went to go look at a plane crash, but that’s it. Other than their Hitler-youth rallies that look like an ocean of waving wheat. Oh, and they threw stuff at my truck. Over.”
“Yes! God, they move all weird. That alone. I mean, get the hell away from me, you know? Makes my skin crawl to see them do that. Not natural. Over.”
“Yeah. Hey, keep this open. Don’t leave. We need to talk, map you guys, etcetera. Okay. Hold on. Over.”
“Gotcha. Sitting here, drinking a Lone Star, watching the dogs play, sun going down behind the hills there. Man… All good, Bastian, considering. The girls are cute. Lucked out. Over.”
Bass took his finger off the transponder. I said, “In case we get cut off, tell them where we are, the address. And ask them if they’re late bloomers.”
They looked at me weird, but didn’t question. Bass nodded and told Chris in Utopia where we were located. But he didn’t ask.
“Got it. Happy Halloween. Belch. Over.”
“Ask him, Bass.”
Bass pushed the mike trigger, scooted up closer. “Hey, Chris? This may seem weird, but I’ve got a friend here wants me to ask you something. Over.”
“Belch. Sure, shoot. Over.”
“It’s kind of personal, but I guess there’s no use being all polite. So, here it is: Were you a late bloomer? Over.”
Chris paused. The pause went on so long that I thought maybe we’d lost the connection. “Chris, you there? Over.”
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I, uh, yeah, matter of fact I was. I was real self-conscious about it, too. I thought it was never going to happen. I remember thinking I was stuck in low gear, like I was really different. Being a teen’s bad enough, but that made it really hard for me for a while.”
Our heads nodded with grim understanding.
“But, then I bloomed with a vengeance, had a massive growth spurt and here I am, a non-virgin half-drunk monkey at world’s end. Over.”
I motioned to Bass to continue. He asked, “What about the others? Do you know? Over.”
“Uhhh, can’t say that I do. I think I know what you’re getting at, though. Let me ask real quick. Don’t hang up, okay? Over.”
Chris came back breathless to the microphone. “CQ CQ you there Austin? Bastian? Over.”
“Yeah, here. Over.”
“Yeah, all admitted to reaching puberty later than most, as far as they knew. Late bloomers. Over.”
Slowly panning his eyes across each of ours, Bass said into the mike with satisfaction, “Seems we have a pattern here, Chris. Over.”
“Seems we do. And if that holds up, there are a lot of high school seniors out there running around like us trying to make contact.”
Just as I thought I was understanding—that me and Kodie and Bass were the closest late bloomers to Fleming and, ergo, Jespers, that this is perhaps why we were still alive; to receive the message about Jespers’s Gene, to bring this understanding into the new world—now here’s this group of us in the hill country.
“So, do we go out there?” I asked the group. “Seems we’re close to food and drugstores if we need them. Going out there, we’ll be cut off. Away from kids, maybe, but cut off. The logistics of it.”
“The way Chris is talking, it makes me think that the kids will be doing the same here soon. And if they’re running them off that way by blocking their routes, it won’t be long before they start figuring out how to use materials to do their bidding,” Bass said.
What bidding? I thought but didn’t broadcast. Kodie caught me looking inward. Our eyes met. She was thinking, asking herself, the same thing—Bidden by…?
“Maybe,” said Kodie. “I’m not sure they plan on doing anything the old way. It’s like they’re starting from scratch. Like that’s what all this is about. Evolution, Rapture, whatever you want to call it.” She shrugged but had wide blinkless eyes.
Kodie had it pegged, articulated what we already knew.
“What I felt from them when I was locked in that room with them for that minute? That hostility? They seemed feral, cornered. I’ve never been so scared. My lizard brain got the adrenal-dopamine squirt. My skin prickled and my arm and leg hair stood up as if the room filled with static electricity.”
“Yeah, I mean, think about it,” said Bass. “They may be scared, but not too scared to stand in harm’s way to block a moving car. The way they looked at us at Butler? Deathly. Like a snake rattling its tail at high pitch. I don’t think they’re scared when together like that.”
“Point is, time’s of the essence. I don’t see peaceful coexistence happening with them, at least not for a while,” I said.
“So, which? Tell Chris we’re going to stay put for a while or go to them now?” Bass lifted the transponder.
And then, through the speakers attached to the ham radio, we heard the dogs of Utopia start to bark like mad. Chris had kept the line open, as if he wanted us to hear.
This went on for a minute. The next thing we heard was a whisper, sounding like Chris. “You all hear that in Austin? Get yourself a dog. I’m telling you. ’Cause they’re here. I can’t see anyone yet. It’s dark.”
I turned my head to the window to see the navy sky, knowing out there, away from vestigial city lights, with the hills and cliffs rising around the ranch, it would be darker.