“The compass just spins,” Dobbs said. He held one up to illustrate his point.
“I’m sorry,” Violet said. “That’s my fault. It’s the capsule.”
“What capsule? And who are you again?”
“I’m Violet, Dobbs. This is my house. We’ve met.”
“Sorry, don’t remember.”
“It’s okay.”
“What capsule are you talking about?”
“The one under the house. It’s protecting us right now. It’s why you, Oona, needed Ed to tell you where to turn off the road, and why the zombies can’t find us, and why all of your equipment thinks it’s half a mile west of where it actually is, and why the compass thinks true north is down.”
“Jesus,” Oona said. She pulled her pistol and aimed it at Violet. “She’s an alien, isn’t she, Edgar?”
“Hold it, hold it. Calm down.” Ed stepped in front of Violet, which was just a bad idea, but he didn’t have any good ones. “Look, we have a lot to do and not a lot of time. Dobbs, you found the frequency the zombies were communicating on, right?”
“Yeah, but… dude, is she really an alien?”
“Focus, Dobbs.”
“I did, but I can’t translate it.”
“I may be able to,” Violet said.
“Right now, everyone out there is looking for someone,” Ed said, “and the only way to make this end is to convince them they’re looking in the wrong place.”
“So, you want to send the zombies to where, Oakdale?” Dobbs asked.
“I mean wrong planet, not wrong town.”
“I think you should get out of the way,” Oona said.
“Oona, you’re not going to shoot a little girl. We need her help.”
The barrel quavered. “Aaahhh,” she said, disgusted either with Ed or herself. She holstered the gun.
“The tech we need to leverage is in the root cellar,” Violet said. “You’re all welcome to come down and have a look.”
Laura came from inside the camper.
“That doesn’t sound at all inviting,” she said. “But sure, I’ll go.”
“You’re serious, there’s an alien ship in the basement?” Dobbs said. “Can we touch it?”
“Yes, I’ll disable the defenses.”
“Hot damn, I’m in.”
“Laura, can you get Annie?” Ed said. “I think she should see this too.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s inside, right?”
“No? No, she was in the house with you.”
“She went out the back,” Ed said. “I just figured she came around here.”
“She must still be back there,” Violet said. “Hang on.”
“Sam, can you see her from up there?”
“No, but it’s dark. But where could she have gone? I mean, this is the only place she’s safe.”
Violet stiffened. “Oh no.”
“What is it?”
“I just sent Todd in back to check. Annie’s bike is gone.”
21
SO THE ABYSS GAZES ALSO
Annie was flying.
That was the thing nobody seemed to understand when asking about the bike. Under certain conditions, it was the closest she would ever get to actually taking flight. This was true even though she could feel every bump in the road, and even when she had to keep pedaling to maintain the takeoff speed.
It was dark, and Violet’s road was made of packed dirt that was still damp from the rainfall, on top of which there were potholes from natural erosion, so riding down it at twenty miles an hour on a bike, without a helmet, was pretty reckless. Annie didn’t particularly care, though. She had a headlight to help identify the dips—she knew where a lot of them were already, as this was hardly her first trip along the road—and she was a nimble and experienced cyclist. And as long as she was on the bike and riding as fast as she could, all the zombies and aliens and everything else that had taken up residence in her head were gone.
She just didn’t know where she was going.
After exiting Violet’s kitchen, she wandered out the back of the house and saw her bike sitting there, and without really thinking she began checking the tires and the gears the way she would if she were preparing for a trip. Then she just decided that was what was happening: she was going on a trip. Where was still up to debate.
Any trip would require getting past the camper undetected, though, because surely nobody there would understand, so she committed to a long loop around the front of the house, through the woods she caught Todd wandering around in. By the time that loop was completed she was at the elbow in the dirt road and out of Sam’s rooftop view, and there was nothing between her and the rest of the world but open road. So she turned her light on and started pedaling.
It was glorious. The entire day just vanished into the humid late August nighttime air, and for about five minutes Annie was a sixteen-year old girl with regular old sixteen-year old girl problems that didn’t include extra-dimensional thought monsters.
Then she reached Liberty Road.
There were zombies all over Liberty, because of course there were. Violet’s alien mojo reached the end of the dirt road, so that was where the trail went cold. A whole bunch of sleepwalking townspeople were meandering aimlessly while whatever was controlling them tried to understand information that suggested Annie was assumed directly into heaven at around that spot.
The smart thing to do, as soon as she realized what she was heading into, was to turn around and escape back into Vi’s protective bubble. But for that moment, Annie liked less what was behind her than what was in front. Plus, the zombies were kind of well-spaced—much better than the shoulder-to-shoulder maneuvers she’s seen on Main Street—which made it seem like just another entertaining challenge for Annie and her cyclocross bike.
They’re just slow-moving pedestrians, she thought.
She hit Liberty at speed, and committed to a tight right turn that pointed her uphill and in the direction of her house. This made a lot of sense, because she knew the zombie population only got denser the further downhill (toward Main) she traveled, but that didn’t mean it was a logic-driven decision, or even a decision at all. She just started heading that way.
She wasn’t heading home, but that was also not an actively made decision, it was just what she knew she was doing.
THE BIKE WAS a gift for her fourteenth birthday, and was the only expensive thing she owned. At first it was just a thing she used now and then, but once it was clear her mother wasn’t going to be up to driving her down the hill all the time, it became indispensible.
Even in winter. It was only five miles to the school from Annie’s front door, but it was a ferocious five miles when there was snow on the ground, regardless of the vehicle. However, it turned out there were only a handful of occasions in which there was A: snow on the roads, and B: not-canceled classes. Generally speaking, the roads were cleaned up pretty fast, partly because the army insisted on the state prioritizing the roads in Sorrow Falls when it came time to plow.
Annie fell in love with the cyclocross bike as soon as she saw it. Her father had to take her all the way to Brattleboro to find a decent shop, and the place was full of light carbon three speed bikes designed specifically for short-travel commuting and priced to encourage people to get them. Annie wasn’t interested. Whether because she’d already been riding the streets on the out-of-a-box Schwinn she was now too big for and understood the kind of conditions she had to deal with, or she was instinctively drawn to the sturdy one-of-a-kind machine in the corner, she knew right away that this one was for her.
The bike was pale yellow, aluminum but with a carbon fork. Heavier than the full carbons, it felt like something solid and dependable. Not quite a dirt bike and not exactly a touring bike either, it was designed for a sport where competitors threw themselves down hills on their bike and ran up other hills with the bike on their back.