“How many?” Peter is murmuring into his walkie, watching through the window as the truck and its trailer veer off into the ruins of another small town.
“I’m seeing three so far,” Lindh crackles.
“Condition?”
“Pretty dry. Lots of fractures. Okay, they see me…they’re coming…really slowly. Maybe just starved, but…”
“Leave them,” Peter says. “Not worth it.”
“You sure?”
“God’s Jury isn’t seeker-friendly. I don’t want to scare Nora away just when we’re starting to reach her.”
“But isn’t this why we’re out here?”
“We’ve already got a car-full with us, over a thousand at the community, and plenty more between all the affiliates. It’s enough.”
“But Pastor Bark said ‘anything with teeth.’ He said, ‘until our storehouses overflow.’”
“I know what he said, but…” Peter pauses, grimaces. “Pastor Bark’s a focused man, okay? He finds a purpose and he pursues it, relentlessly. That’s why he’s a great leader, but sometimes it’s up to us to be his periphery vision, you know?”
“Periphery vision?”
“We watch out for the stuff he can’t see while he’s charging into war. And right now I see a scared girl whose soul is on the table, and that’s worth a lot more than what’s out there.”
A long pause. “All right. Guess I’m all done, then.”
“Drive safe. See you at the station.”
Peter pockets his walkie and turns around.
“Oh—hey, Addis!” He erases his surprise with a big grin. “Do you, um…do you like trains? I loved trains when I was your age. Want to see the engine room?”
Addis’s stare is unreadable but never quite blank. He finds that this ambiguity unnerves people, and he lets it do its work for a moment. Then he says, “I want to see the cargo cars.”
Peter’s eyes widen. “Oh wow! I didn’t know you talked.”
“Cargo cars.”
“Well…I’d love to take you back there, buddy, but I don’t think your sister wants that.”
Addis turns and starts back.
“When we get to our community,” Peter calls after him, “we’ll set you up with a nice spot in the Redemption Hall and you’ll get to meet all the other people like you. Okay?”
The door squeals shut behind Addis. He walks past the rows of backward-facing chairs, struggling to stay upright as the floor sways beneath him. He walks past his sister, who is staring out the window at the endless miles of desert. He comes to the end of the car and pushes the door latch, but this one is locked. He stares through the door’s tiny window at the faded red freight car behind it, trying to penetrate its walls, but all he gets is fine detail on a patch of rust. So he listens instead. He hears the wheezing and groaning and squishy movements of a car full of rotten corpses. And behind that, more of the same.
But behind that, in the car at the rear: something else. A sound he’s been hearing since the train arrived, what he assumed was just an undertone in the train’s chorus of squeals and roars. But now that he’s listening, it rises out of the noise. It clarifies and introduces itself.
A low, dissonant hum.
I
A STEADY RATTLE fills the RV. It began when I hit the invisible pothole and it’s slowly growing louder. Tomsen didn’t yell at me when it happened, just stared silently until I pulled over and surrendered the driver seat. Now I can’t tell if she’s upset with me. She’s silent, but so are the rest of us, watching the road pass with wide-eyed vigilance. We have more to worry about than auto repairs.
I catch glimpses of skeletons sprawled in the sand or leering through the windows of rusty cars and I tense. But so far, nothing moves. Some of the skulls are shot through—responsibly neutralized by their former occupants. Others lie in pieces, pried open and cast aside like oyster shells. They don’t buzz or roar with rage at our disruption of their desert diorama. They are empty.
“No guns?” M asks, digging through the RV’s cabinets. “Really?”
Tomsen grips the wheel, frowning into the horizon. I can feel the axle’s rattle in my feet.
“You lasted ten years…alone in America…with no guns?”
“You can’t shoot the plague,” Tomsen says. “You only hit its victims.”
“Well, yeah…” He tests the weight of a cast-iron skillet. “But still.”
I agree with Tomsen. But M has a point. And I have a big wrench in my white-knuckled grip. Julie hunches in the passenger seat with a tire iron. All three of us glisten with sweat.
We pass scene after scene of dried-up carnage, constant reminders of the danger with still no sign of its source. As hours pass without incident, the anticipation ferments into an itchy, maddening anxiety. Julie gets up and paces the RV’s short hallway, tapping her tire iron against the walls and countertops. The kids have sequestered themselves in the bedroom. If they were ordinary children, the ambient tension would be overloading their nerves, sparking fights and teary meltdowns. Instead, they have built a fort of cushions and blankets, and they peer through the opening as if awaiting a siege.
Finally, it’s too much. Julie drops the iron on the floor and throws up her hands. “Okay, where are they? Where the hell are they? Were you pranking us, Tomsen? I’m freaking out.”
Tomsen looks her over with an evaluative squint, like a doctor considering a prescription. “Do you want some cannabis? Some people find it relaxing.”
Julie stops pacing and cocks her head. “Seriously?”
“Left of the sink, bottom drawer.”
Julie opens the drawer. Her eyes go wide. “Holy shit, Tomsen! I think you have a problem.”
The drawer is almost completely full of baggies and bales. It’s enough to give Tomsen a strong claim to the title of drug lord.
“I don’t smoke it,” she says. “It’s universal currency. That drawer was going to fund the Almanac for another five years.”
“Um…” Julie pulls out a pack of rolling papers and a lighter. “You don’t smoke it?”
“Sometimes I offer it to Almanac guests. For interviews. Loosens tongues. Especially for the odd topics, the terror tales and sailor stories. But help yourself. I don’t smoke cannabis. Makes me jittery.”
Julie looks at me. I shrug.
“Well,” she says, “we need to stay alert…but a few puffs might steady our nerves.”
She rolls a joint. She takes a drag and offers it to me. I consider it for a moment, then I remember the last time I tested a new drug on my newly Living brain. That first shot of vodka in the Orchard bar, and the stumbling mayhem that followed. I already know I’m a sloppy drunk…this isn’t a good time to find out what I’m like when I’m high.
I smile and shake my head, and M snatches the joint.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
They exchange a few puffs, then Julie stubs it out and returns to the passenger seat. She stares ahead at the passing yellow lines.
“Feel better?” Tomsen asks.
“Maybe.” Her grip on the tire iron relaxes until she sets it in her lap. “A little.” She’s no longer panicking, but her eyes still comb the dusty plains with a nervous intensity. “But I don’t get this. Why would Boneys swarm out in the desert? There’s no one to eat.”
Tomsen nods. “Strange phenomenon. Started about three months ago. Mass migrations. Retreating from the cities, swarming in the empty spaces, like they wanted to get away from the Living instead of into them.”