“I just thought—”
“Open the glovebox,” Tomsen snaps, sharper than I’ve ever heard her. Julie opens the glovebox. “Hand me that case.” Julie hands her what looks like an antique silver makeup kit. “Hold the wheel.”
While Julie reaches over to comply, Tomsen flips open the case to reveal a mound of white powder. It’s not makeup. She cuts a vague line with her fingernail, pulls a hundred dollar bill out of a jacket pocket, rolls it up with a flick of her fingers, and snorts.
“Jesus, Tomsen,” Julie says with wide eyes. “We were trying to calm our nerves, not fucking party.”
But Tomsen’s nerves suddenly do look calm. She gives the case back to Julie and takes the wheel with steady hands, and then she closes her eyes. The shriek from the axle winds down as the RV decelerates. When we come to a full stop in the middle of the highway, Tomsen’s eyes slide open.
“Okay,” she says with a hazy smile. Her voice sounds lower and softer, like she just woke up from a nap. “Okay.”
She climbs down from the cockpit and moves to the back. She opens a cabinet and pulls out a big, jangling tool bag. “Give me two hours,” she says, casually swiping the tire iron out of Julie’s lap, and saunters out the door.
Julie and I exchange dumbfounded looks. The kids wait in their cushion fort, worried and silent. For a moment, the only sound is the desert wind, then there’s a clanking and a cranking, and the front of the RV rises notch by notch.
“What’s she take when she is trying to party?” M wonders, staring out the open door. “Chamomile tea?”
Julie chuckles. “Tomsen in the club, snorting lines of Ambien.”
A smile creeps onto my face. Their high is infectious. I enjoy it for a few seconds before a voice from the cushion fort punctures the levity.
“What about Nora? Won’t we lose her?”
Our smiles fade. Sprout Kelvin: our six-year-old voice of responsibility.
“Maybe her train will make some stops too,” Julie says. “Suggest that to the universe.”
M steps out the door and stares west. His posture is hunched in odd ways, favoring his many wounds. “What Tomsen said…ghosts and demons…she’s just crazy, right?” He turns slowly, scanning the horizon. “None of that’s real, right?”
The sun is retreating toward the mountains. A bruise-blue shadow spreads in the east. “Zombies weren’t real,” I mumble, imagining things springing to life in that shadow, emerging from lairs of nonbeing as the sun abandons its watch. “Until we decided they were.”
WE
ABRAM SQUIRMS in his seat. His forearms stick to the leather. The interior of the huge SUV is inexplicably cramped, all black, and hot despite its tinted windows. He sweats in the humid darkness. He swears he can hear the heartbeats of the two soldiers squeezed against him, like they’re a set of triplets in some monster’s leathery womb.
He can’t stand it. He has to do something. He wants to kick and thrash but he sublimates his panic, funnels it into yet another cautious probe.
“Hey, uh…” He considers asking the man on his right for his name but quickly scraps the idea. “You guys heard about the new program? Orientation?”
“It went public two weeks ago,” the man says dully, staring straight ahead.
“Pretty crazy, though, right? Zombie employees?”
The man says nothing.
“How many do you think we have working for us by now?”
“Don’t know.”
“In the facilities I’ve seen, there’s more of them than us.”
“And?” The man keeps staring at the seat in front of him.
“Just wondering if we’re putting ourselves out of a job.”
The man looks out the side window and says nothing. Abram turns to the woman on his left. “I mean, they’re using Living subjects now, right? Kids, even?”
The woman shrugs. “Whatever it takes.”
She’s young, possibly a teenager, but she sounds as blank and disinterested as the man staring out the window. Women are rare in Axiom’s field ranks, especially young ones. Abram wonders what degradations she had to crawl through to reach this position. Her black hair is dull, her tawny skin is scarred, her dark eyes look haunted behind their heavy lids.
“Do you…” Abram says, struggling to continue his subterfuge through a sudden wave of emotion. “Do you know what they do with them? The Living subjects?”
The girl squints at him like he’s crossed some line of decorum.
“They don’t tell us much in Nashville,” he adds. “Just wondering if you know what’s—”
“Hey.” A grizzled face leans around the front passenger seat. “That’s enough back there. Orientation’s not our problem.”
The team manager is an older man, past his prime but sturdy, graying everywhere but his thick black eyebrows. Abram is still waiting for someone to say his name.
“Sorry, sir,” Abram says. “Just curious, sir.”
The team manager studies him in the mirror for a moment. “I don’t recognize you.”
“Jim Roberts, sir. I joined up in Nashville.”
The manager nods. “Well, Roberts, ‘curiosity’ isn’t a good fit for this company. If you’re worrying about someone else’s job, you’re not doing yours.”
“Yes sir.”
The manager’s walkie squawks. “Scout Beta to Team Manager Abbot.”
“Go ahead,” Abbot replies.
“Civilians two miles ahead of you. Large RV.”
“Profit-loss?”
“Gas cans, supply crates, no visible weapons. Worth a stop.”
“Do it.”
Abram leans forward. It’s a smaller world than it used to be; there are only three passable highways to choose from when traversing the length of the country, so run-ins with familiar faces are far from impossible. But it can’t be them. It can’t be.
He restrains a sigh of relief when the RV comes into view. It’s a blocky modern coach, adorned with gaudy swooshes in four different shades of beige. The scouts have already lined up the passengers, eight people ranging from elderly to adolescent. A family.
The scouts haven’t drawn any weapons and are no doubt employing Adaptive Inducement to seem less threatening, but the effect only seems to work on the youngest of the children. Everyone else looks terrified.
“PR time,” says Team Manager Abbot as he steps out of the vehicle. No one else moves to follow him. The driver keeps the windows up despite the heat, and Abram watches the proceedings through the tinted glass, a mute procession of gestures and expressions like a grim silent film.
Abbot approaches the family with his hands outstretched, greeting them jovially.
The family listens with increasing unease.
Abbot gestures to their RV, the supplies on its roof, then to the Axiom convoy. His face adopts a soliciting look, like he’s asking for a favor that’s significant but not unreasonable.
One of the younger men takes a step forward, his mouth moving rapidly. He waves his hands at the empty wilderness around them, then to the rest of his group, with an emphasis on the children.
Abbot appears to consider this, then brightens like he’s had an idea. He points to the group, then spreads his hands to indicate the Axiom convoy, then concludes his statement with a proud grin, like a gameshow host announcing a prize.
The young man shakes his head vehemently.
Abbot shrugs. He says something to one of the scouts, who climbs into the RV and slowly drives off, leaving the family in a cloud of dust.
The young man shouts at Abbot’s back as Abbot walks away, and it’s loud enough to be heard inside the Hummer.