The other cars were operated by residents who were either not asleep at the right time or were not susceptible for some other reason yet to be explained. The first car they came across nearly killed them, as the driver was obviously not dealing with the reality of the situation well. He cut across a lawn just before they made it to the Main Street intersection, coming within a mailbox or two of sideswiping their driver’s side before swerving into the ninety degree left-hand turn ahead.
By the time Ed got the car to the same point, the other car was already ahead by three blocks. Its taillights disappeared at the bridge.
“They have the same idea,” Ed said.
“I hope he made it to the bridge and didn’t skid off the side of it, he wasn’t all that in control.”
“Must be his first apocalypse.”
The speeding car did make the bridge, but he didn’t get a lot further. They caught up at the end of a line of traffic.
The northern bridge was one of the more impressive parts of the town, even if few thought much of it outside of its functional use: connecting the northern tip of Sorrow Falls with the town of Mount Hermon by spanning the river. It was impressive, more for its hundred-foot drop than its three football-field length, and certainly not for its two-lane width.
There was no traffic heading into Sorrow Falls at this time. Instead, both sides of the solid double-yellow line were filled with cars attempting to get out, and honking loudly to see if that helped somehow.
“What’s going on up there?” Annie asked.
“The sirens. Dammit. I wasn’t thinking.”
“What?”
“The lockdown. The army closed the checkpoint.”
“It’s a wooden barrier. They can just run through it. Are they worried about their cars at a time like this?”
“No, but the men with the guns on the other side of the wooden barrier might be a concern.”
“They wouldn’t.”
“Annie, that’s what their orders are. C’mon.”
He turned off the car and climbed out.
“You think we can sneak past?” she asked, getting out.
“No, but maybe I can talk them into letting you through.”
“You just said—”
“I know, but I have to try. The… sleepwalkers think you’re the person they want. Maybe getting you out of town will end this whole thing.”
He took her by the hand and started along the narrow space between the cars and the guardrail. There was a nominal sidewalk on each side of the bridge that was really only wide enough for one person at a time. The railing was more impressive, with a fence on the other side of it that was suicide-prevention tall.
It was a lot cooler on the bridge. The wind along the river cut right across and reminded Annie that her clothes still weren’t entirely dry from getting caught in the downpour earlier. That seemed like it happened ages ago, and to someone else.
Behind them, other people were starting to get out of their cars. They’d started a trend. She was pretty sure this wasn’t a good kind of trend.
“What did you mean, they think I’m the person they want?” she asked.
“I believe they’re mistaken.”
“That’s sweet, but what makes you say that?”
“Just a theory I’m working on.”
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”
“No, I mean it.”
As anticipated, the end of the traffic jam was the army checkpoint. The gates were down, and four men with M16A2’s just like the one Sam carried stood at the ready on the other side of those gates.
“Do you know any of them?” Ed asked.
“We’re not close enough yet. Think it’ll make a difference?”
“No idea. I’m pretty sure I don’t, though, and I was sort of hoping I’d have more than just my ID to stand on.”
They were still four cars away from the front when the driver of the first vehicle decided he had enough. Him Annie recognized: it was Lew Stempel. He was one of Hollis’s foremen. She went to school with his daughter, Winnie.
Lew had apparently been sitting at the gates for a while, no doubt leaning on his horn the entire time—as she remembered it, he wasn’t known as a patient guy—before jumping out and walking right up to the first soldier at the barricade. Annie wasn’t close enough to hear what he was saying over the intermittent honking and the wind on the bridge, which was perpetual and considerable. His gestures were pretty easy to read though.
He threw his hands in the air, and pointed at the crowd behind his car, and banged on his chest. All the while he was walking closer to the army’s perimeter.
Two of the soldiers had their barrels trained on him, but he kept walking.
I dare you to shoot me, he was saying. It didn’t look like they were going to.
Like Ed said, the army had orders, and if those orders meant to shoot an American citizen on U.S. soil, they were supposed to do it. This was one of those questions that came up from time to time in polite media conversations about Sorrow Falls: could a soldier really do that, if they had to?
So far, it looked like the answer was no.
Lew stepped around the gate and began arguing with the first of the guards face-to-face. This got more and more heated, and looked like a volatile enough situation for Ed to stop when still a couple of cars away, and put his hand across Annie’s shoulders in that protective sort of way adults did sometimes.
“This might get bad,” he said.
Lew abruptly pushed past the corporal and sprinted down the Mount Hermon side of the bridge.
The second soldier, who had neither been shoved nor directly confronted, took aim and fired a warning shot above the head of the fleeing man, a clear indication that this time, they would not hold their fire, and the next shot would not miss its mark.
It was the closest Annie had ever been to gunfire. She ducked instinctively, and let out a little scream she was immediately embarrassed about.
Lew was surprised too, and stopped in his tracks, but not entirely because of the gunshot. He stopped because of what happened to the bullet that missed him.
They all heard it, even over the horns. It was the sound described by the sheriff of Sorrow Falls three years earlier, when he fired a handgun at the spaceship: a deep THUD that resonated with the bottom of the stomach and caused knees to buckle.
“The ship’s barrier expanded,” Ed said. “That was what that feeling was.”
“You’re saying the only thing between us and getting out of Sorrow Falls is a few feet of depressing thoughts?” Annie asked.
“Maybe?”
Lew Stempel decided to continue running, perhaps reasonably concluding that at a certain point the army’s bullets wouldn’t be able to reach him.
Unfortunately for him, the nature of the defensive barrier changed. Instead of slowing down, becoming sad, and reversing course, Mr. Stempel reached a point where he could no longer move. It was like he was stuck in an invisible membrane, as perhaps he was. That membrane was flexible, like an elastic band, and also like an elastic band it didn’t store energy for long.
Lew shot backwards. He was airborne for the first ten feet, and then rolled another five or six before bouncing to a stop.
Ed looked at Annie.
“Back to the car,” he said. “Before we’re trapped on this bridge.”
IT WAS to Oona and Laura’s immense credit that the trailer, which hadn’t moved in over a year, started up immediately. There was gas in the tank, the engine was clean and the fluids filled, and the tires were fully inflated. This was as much a part of their monthly maintenance cycle as gun-cleaning, toilet-cleaning, and bullet-making.
At the same time, they’d been parked for so long, the idea of driving away was as odd to them as it would be if this were a real fortress instead of a tricked-out family camper.