TWENTY-TWO

“The thing I don’t understand,” Theo was saying, “is why the three of you aren’t dead.”

The group was sitting at the long table in the control room, all except Finn and Rey, who had returned to the barracks to sleep. Peter’s daze of adrenaline had worn off, and the pain in his ankle, which did not seem to be broken, had settled to a low throb; someone had chipped a piece of ice off one of the condensers, and Peter was holding this, wrapped in a sodden rag, to the injured joint. The fact that he had just killed Zander Phillips, a man he had known, had yet to produce in him any emotion he could actually name. The information was simply too strange to process. But the station key had still been around Zander’s neck, so there could be no doubt who it was. There had been no choice, of course; Zander had been fully turned. Strictly speaking, the viral who had tried to force its way through the hatch hadn’t been Zander Phillips anymore. And yet Peter could not suppress the feeling that at the last instant before he’d squeezed the trigger, he’d detected a glimmer of recognition in the viral’s eyes—a look, even, of relief.

In the aftermath of the attack, Theo had questioned Caleb carefully. The boy’s story didn’t quite add up, but it was also clear that he was suffering from exhaustion and exposure. His lips were swollen and cracked, he had a big purple bruise on his forehead, and both of his feet were laced with cuts. The lost shoes seemed to pain him most of all; they were black Nike Push-Offs, he explained, brand-new in their box from the Foot Locker at the mall. They’d come off somehow in his race across the valley, but he’d been so scared he’d barely noticed.

“We’ll get you a new pair,” Theo had said. “Just tell me about Zander.”

Caleb was eating as he spoke, gnawing off bites of hardtack and washing them down with gulps of water. Well, everything had been normal, Caleb explained, until about six days ago, when Zander had begun to act … odd. Very odd. Even for Zander, which was saying something. He didn’t want to go outside the fence, and he wasn’t sleeping at all. All night long he’d be up pacing the control room, muttering to himself. Caleb thought it was just too much time at the station, that when the relief crew showed, Zander would snap out of it.

“So then one day he announces we’re going out to the field, and tells me to get the cart packed and ready. I was sitting here eating my lunch, and he just marches in and announces this. He wants to swap out one of the governors in the west section. Okay, I say, but what’s the big emergency? Isn’t it a little late in the day to be going to the field? He’s got this crazy look in his eyes, and he smelled bad. I mean, he stank. You feeling okay, I ask him, and he says, Just get your gear, we’re going.”

“When was this?”

Caleb swallowed. “Three days ago.”

Theo leaned forward in his chair. “You’ve been outside three days?”

Caleb nodded. He’d finished off the last of the hardtack and started on a dish of soybean paste, scooping it out with his fingers. “So we ride out with the jenny, but here’s the thing. We don’t go to the west field. We go to the east field. Nothing’s worked over there for years; they’re all dead sticks. And it takes forever to get there, two hours with the cart at least. It’s past half-day, we’re cutting it close as it is. I’m like, Zander, west is that way, buddy, what the hell are we doing out here? Are you trying to get us killed? So we get to the tower he says he wants to fix, and the thing’s a rust bucket. Completely backblown. I can see that from the ground. No chance swapping the governor’s going to do anything. But that’s what he wants to do, so I haul my ass up the ladder and set the winch and start stripping out the old housing, working as fast as I can. I’m thinking, Okay, this doesn’t make a lot of sense, as far as I can tell we’re risking our necks for nothing, but maybe he knows something I don’t. Anyway, that was when I heard the scream.”

“Zander screamed?”

Caleb shook his head. “The jenny. I’m not kidding, that was exactly what it sounded like. I’d never heard anything like it. When I looked down she’s just keeling over, going down like a bag of rocks. It takes me a second to figure what I’m seeing. It’s blood. A lot of it.” He wiped his greasy mouth with the back of his hand and pushed the empty dish of paste aside. “Zander always said this stuff tasted like balls. I was like, When did you eat balls, Zander, like I really want to know? But after three days, it’s really not half bad.”

Theo sighed impatiently. “Caleb, please. The blood—”

He took a long swig of water. “Right, okay, so. The blood. Zander’s kneeling by her and I yell, Zander, what the hell happened? When he gets up I see he’s stripped to the waist, he’s got a blade in his hand, and there’s blood all over him. Somehow I missed the signs. I’ve got about five seconds before he comes up the ladder for me, too. But he doesn’t. He just sits down at the base of the tower, in the shade of one of the struts, where I can’t see him. Zander, I yell down, listen to me. You got to fight this thing. I’m all alone up here. I’m thinking that maybe if I can get him to snap out of it long enough, I can make a run for it.”

“I don’t get it,” Alicia said. “When would he have gotten infected?”

“That’s the thing,” Caleb went on. “I couldn’t figure that either. I’d been with him just about every minute of the day.”

“What about at night?” Theo offered. “You said he didn’t sleep. Maybe he went outside.”

“I suppose that’s possible, but why would he? And plus, he didn’t really look any different, apart from the blood.”

“What about his eyes?”

“Nothing. No oranging at all, from what I could see. I’m telling you, it was weird. So I’m stuck on the tower, Zander’s at the bottom, maybe taken up and maybe not, but either way it’s going to get dark eventually. Zander, I yell, look, I’m coming down, one way or the other. I’m not armed, all I’ve got is the wrench, but maybe I can brain him with it and get away. I’ve also got to get the key from him somehow. I can’t see him from the ladder, so when I’m about three meters from the bottom I decide what the hell, I’m just going to jump. I’ve already tipped my hand, but I figure I’m dead anyway. I drop and come up with the wrench ready to swing. But it’s gone. Snatched right out of my hand. Zander’s right behind me. That’s when he says to me, Go back up.”

“Go back up?” This was Arlo.

Caleb nodded. “No kidding, that’s what he said. And if he was flipping, I still couldn’t tell. But he’s got the blade in one hand, the wrench in the other, there’s blood all over him, and without the key there’s no way I’m getting back inside the station. I ask him, What do you mean go back up, and he says, You’re safe if you go back up the tower. So that’s what I did.” The boy shrugged. “That’s where I was for the last three days, until I saw you on the Eastern Road.”

Peter looked at his brother; Theo’s expression indicated he didn’t know what to make of Caleb’s story either. What had Zander intended? Had he already been taken up or not? It had been many years, and not in living memory, since anyone had directly witnessed the effects of the infection’s early stages. But there were plenty of stories, from the early days especially, the time of the Walkers, of bizarre behaviors—not just the blood hunger and spontaneous disrobing that everyone knew to be a sign. Strange utterances, public speechmaking, manic feats of athleticism. One Walker, it was said, had broken into the Storehouse and actually eaten himself to death; another had killed all his children in their beds before setting himself aflame; a third had stripped naked, ascended to the catwalk in full view of the Watch, and recited, at the top of his lungs, both the entire Gettysburg Address—there was a copy of it hanging on the wall in one of the classrooms in the Sanctuary—and twenty-five verses of “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” before hurling himself over, twenty meters to the hardpan.

“So what about the smokes?” Theo asked.

“Well, that’s the funny thing. It was just like Zander said. There weren’t any. At least none that came close. I could see them once in a while at night, moving out in the valley. But they pretty much just left me alone. They don’t like to hunt in the turbine fields, Zander always thought the movement screwed them up, so maybe that’s got something to do with it, I don’t know.” The boy paused; Peter could see the weight of his ordeal finally catching up with him. “Once I got used to it, it was actually kind of peaceful. I didn’t see Zander after that. I could hear him, scuffling around at the base of the tower. But he never answered me. By then I figured my best chance was to wait for the relief crew to show up and try to get away.”

“So you saw us.”

“Believe me, I yelled my lungs out, but I guess you were just too far away to hear me. That’s when I realized Zander was gone. The jenny, too. The virals must have dragged it off. By then I only had a hand of daylight at the most. But I was out of water, and there was no way anyone was coming to look for me in the east field, so I decided to climb down and make a run for it. I got to within maybe a thousand meters when suddenly the smokes were just everywhere. I thought, That’s it, I’m meat for sure. I hid under the base of one of the towers and pretty much waited to die. But for some reason, they kept their distance. I couldn’t tell you how long I was under there, but when I looked out they were gone, not a smoke in sight. By then I knew the gate was closed, but I guess I just thought I could get inside somehow.”

Arlo turned to Theo. “It doesn’t make sense. Why would they leave him alone like that?”

“Because they were following him,” Alicia cut in. “We could see them from the roof. Using him as bait maybe, to draw us out? Since when do they do that?”

“They don’t.” Something hardened in Theo’s expression then; he stiffened in his chair. “Look, I’m glad Caleb’s safe, don’t get me wrong. But that was some stupid stunt, both of you. This station goes off-line, the lights go out, that’s it for everybody. I don’t know why I have to explain this, but apparently I do.”

Peter and Alicia were silent; there was nothing to say. It was true. If Peter’s rifle had gone just a few centimeters to the left or right, they’d probably all be dead now. It had been a lucky shot and he knew it.

“None of which explains how Zander got infected,” Theo went on. “Or what he was doing, leaving Caleb on the tower.”

“The hell with that,” Arlo said, and slapped his knees. “What I really want to know about are those guns. How many are there?”

“Twelve crates under the stairs,” Alicia answered. “Six more in the crawl space on the roof.”

“Which is exactly where they’re going to stay,” Theo said.

Alicia laughed. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, yes, I can. Look what almost happened. Can you honestly tell me you would have gone outside there without those guns?”

“Maybe not. But Caleb’s alive because of them. And I don’t care what you say, I’m glad we went outside. These aren’t just guns, Theo. They’re like brand-new.”

“I know they are,” Theo said. “I’ve seen them. I know all about them.”

“You do?”

He nodded. “Of course I do.”

For a moment no one spoke. Alicia leaned forward over the table. “So whose guns are they?”

But it was Peter to whom Theo gave his answer. “Our father’s.” So, in the last hour of the night, Theo told the story. Caleb, unable to keep his eyes open another minute, had gone to the barracks to sleep, and Arlo had broken out the shine, as they sometimes did after a night on the Wall. He poured it into each of their cups, two fingers, and passed it around the table.

There was an old Marine Corps base east of there, Theo explained, about a two-day ride. A place called Twentynine Palms. Most of it was gone, he said, pretty much sanded up. You could hardly tell there was anything there unless you knew where to look. Their father had found the weapons in an underground bunker—all boxed up, tight and dry, and not just rifles. Pistols and mortars. Machine guns and grenades. A whole garage of vehicles, even a couple of tanks. They had no way to move the heavier weapons, and none of the vehicles would run, but their father and Uncle Willem had been moving the rifles back to the station a cartload at a time—three trips total before Willem had been killed.

“So why didn’t he tell anyone?” Peter asked.

“Well, he did. He told our mother, and a few others. He didn’t ride alone, you know. I’m guessing the Colonel knew. Probably Old Chou. Zander had to know, since he was stashing them here.”

“But not Sanjay,” Alicia cut in.

Theo shook his head, frowning. “Believe me, Sanjay was the last person my father would tell. Don’t get me wrong: Sanjay is fine at what he does. But he was always dead set against the rides, especially after Raj was killed.”

“That’s right,” Arlo said. “He was one of the three.”

Theo nodded. “I think it was always a sore spot with Sanjay, that his brother wanted to ride with our father. I never really understood it, but there was some bad blood between them from way back. After Raj was killed, it only got worse. Sanjay turned the Household against our father, voted him out as Head, put an end to the rides. That was when our father stepped down and began to ride alone.”

Peter held his cup of shine to his nose, felt its acrid fumes burning his nostrils, and put it down on the table. He didn’t know what was more discouraging—that his father had kept this secret from him or that Theo had.

“So why hide the guns in the first place?” he asked. “Why not just bring them up the mountain?”

“And do what with them? Think about it, brother. We all heard you out there. By my count, the two of you shot off thirty-six rounds to kill, what, two virals? Out of how many? Those guns’d last about a season if he just handed them over to the Watch. People would be shooting at their own shadows. Hell, half the time they’d probably be shooting each other. I think that’s what he was most afraid of.”

“How many are left?” Alicia asked.

“In the bunker? I don’t know. I’ve never seen it.”

“But you know where it is.”

Theo sipped his shine. “I see where you’re going with this, and you can stop right there. Our father, well, he had ideas. Peter, you know this as well as I do. He just couldn’t accept the fact that we’re all that’s left, that there’s no one out there. And if he could find others, and if they had guns … ” His voice trailed away.

Alicia lifted in her chair. “An army,” she said, her eyes moving over all of them. “That’s it, isn’t it? He wanted to make an army. To fight the smokes.”

“Which is pointless,” Theo said, and Peter heard the bitterness in his brother’s voice. “Pointless and crazy. The Army had guns, and what happened to them? Did they ever come back for us? With their guns and rockets and helicopters? No, they didn’t, and I’ll tell you why. Because they’re all dead.”

Alicia was undeterred. “Well, I like it,” she said. “Hell, I think it’s a great idea.”

Theo gave a bitter laugh. “I knew you would.”

“And I don’t think we’re alone, either,” she pressed. “There are others. Out there, somewhere.”

“Is that right? What makes you so sure?”

Alicia appeared suddenly at a loss. “Nothing,” she said. “I just am.”

Theo frowned into his cup, giving the contents a long swirl. “You can believe anything you want,” he said quietly, “but that doesn’t make it true.”

“Our father believed it,” Peter said.

“Yes, he did, brother. And it got him killed. I know it’s not something we talk about, but those are the facts. You stand the Mercy and you figure some things out, believe me. Our father didn’t go out there to let it go. Whoever thinks so doesn’t understand the first thing about him. He went out there because he just couldn’t stand not knowing, not for one more minute of his life. It was brave, and it was stupid, and he got his answer.”

“He saw a Walker. At Milagro.”

“Maybe he did. If you ask me, he saw what he wanted to see. And it doesn’t matter either way. What difference would one Walker make?”

Peter felt badly shaken by Theo’s hopelessness; it seemed not just defeated but disloyal.

“Where there’s one, there are others,” Peter said.

“What there are, brother, are smokes. All the guns in the world won’t change that.”

For a moment no one spoke. The idea was in the air, unspoken but palpable. How long did they have before the lights went out? Before no one remembered how to fix them?

“I don’t believe that,” Arlo said. “And I can’t believe you do either. If that’s all there is, what’s the point of anything?”

“The point?” Theo peered into his cup again. “I wish I knew. I suppose the point is just staying alive. Keeping the lights on as long as we can.” He tipped the shine to his lips and drained it in one hard swallow. “On that note, it’ll be daybreak soon, everyone. Let Caleb sleep, but wake the others. We’ve got bodies to take care of.”

There were four. They found three in the yard and one, Zander, on the roof, lying face-up on the concrete by the hatch, his naked limbs sprawled in a startled-looking X. The bullet from Peter’s rifle had blasted through the top of his head, shearing off the crown of his skull, which was hanging kitty-corner by a flap of skin. Already the morning sun had begun to shrivel him; a fine, gray mist was rising from his blackening flesh.

Peter had gotten used to the virals’ appearance but still found it unnerving to see one close up. The way the facial features seemed to have been buffed away, smoothed into an almost infantile blandness; the curling expansion of the hands and feet, with their grasping digits and razor-sharp claws; the dense muscularity of the limbs and torso and the long, gimballed neck; the slivered teeth crowding the mouth like spikes of steel. In rubber boots and gloves, wearing a rag around his face, Finn used a long pitchfork to lift the key by its cord and drop it in a metal bucket. They doused the key with alcohol and set it aflame, then left it to dry in the sun; what the flames hadn’t killed, the sun’s rays would. Then they rolled Zander, his body stiff as wood, onto a plastic tarp, which they folded over him, making a tube. Arlo and Rey hoisted it to the edge of the roof and dropped it to the yard below.

By the time they’d dragged all four past the fence line, the sun was high and hot. Peter, leaning on a length of pipe, watched from the upwind side as Theo poured alcohol over the bodies. He felt useless, but with his ankle the way it was, there wasn’t much he could do to help. Alicia was standing watch, holding one of the rifles. Caleb had finally awakened and had come outside to watch with the others. Peter saw that he was wearing a pair of tall leather boots.

“Zander’s,” Caleb explained. The boy shrugged, a little guiltily. “His extra pair. I didn’t think he’d mind.”

Theo removed a tin of sulfur matches from his pouch and drew down his mask. In his other hand he held a torch. Huge circles of sweat stained his shirt at the throat and armpits. The shirt was an old one from the Storehouse, the sleeves long gone, the collar frayed to threads; on the breast pocket, embroidered in a curving script, was the name Armando.

“Anybody want to say anything?”

Peter thought he should, but couldn’t find the words. Seeing the body on the roof had done nothing to change the disquieting feeling that, at the end, Zander had made it easy for him—that Zander had still been Zander. But all of the bodies in the pile had been somebody once. Maybe one of them was Armando.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” Theo said, and cleared his throat. “Zander, you were a good engineer, and a good friend. You never had a bad word for anyone, and we thank you for that. Sleep well.” Then he struck the match, held the flame to the torch until it caught, and touched it to the pile.

The skin went quickly, vaporizing like paper, followed by the rest, the bones caving in on themselves to burst into puffing clouds of ash. It was over in a minute. When the last of the flames had died down, they shoveled the remains into the shallow pit Rey and Finn had dug, pushing a layer of earth on top.

They were tamping down the dirt when Caleb spoke. “I just want to say, I think he fought it. He could have killed me out there.”

Theo put his shovel aside. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said, “but what worries me is that he didn’t.”

In the days that followed, Peter thought about the events of that night, replaying them in his mind. Not only what had happened on the roof and Caleb’s strange story of the tower, but also his brother’s bitter tone when they’d spoken of the guns. Because Alicia was right; the guns meant something. His whole life Peter had thought of the world of the Time Before as something gone. It was as if a blade had fallen onto time itself, cleaving it into halves, that which came before and that which came after. Between these halves there was no bridge; the war had been lost, the Army was no more, the world beyond the Colony was an open grave of a history no one even remembered. Peter, in fact, had never given much thought to what his father had actually been looking for, out there in the dark. He supposed this was because it had seemed so obvious: people, other survivors. But holding one of his father’s rifles—and even now, lying in the barracks while his ankle mended and remembering the feel of it—he sensed something more, how the past and all its powers seemed to have flowed into him. So maybe that was what his father had been doing all along, on the Long Rides. He’d been trying to remember the world.

Surely Theo had known that; that was the largeness inside him, inside all the men of the Long Rides. Peter had made up his mind, long ago, not to hold it against Theo, what his mother had said on the morning she’d died. Take care of your brother, Theo. He’s not strong, like you. The truth was the truth, and as the years went by, Peter discovered that knowing this about himself was bearable; at times it almost came as a relief. It was a difficult and desperate thing their father had attempted, built on a faith that flew in the face of every fact, and if Theo was to be the Jaxon to shoulder this burden—shoulder it for the two of them—Peter could accept that. But telling Arlo that there was no point, that the only thing left to do was keep the lights on as long as they could—saying this to Arlo, of all people, who had a Little in the Sanctuary—this was not the Theo he knew. Something had changed in his brother. He wondered what it could be.

They stayed at the station five days. Finn and Rey spent the first day restoring power to the fence, then got to work on the west field, regreasing the turbine housings. Arlo, Theo, and Alicia took turns escorting them, in shifts of two, always returning well before sundown to lock the place down tight. With nothing else to occupy his time, Peter resorted to playing solo from a deck with three missing cards and leafing through a box of books in the storage room. A random assemblage of titles: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, A History of the Ottoman Empire, Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage (Classics of Western Literature). In the back of each book was a cardboard pocket, printed with the words PROPERTY OF RIVERSIDE COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY, and tucked inside it a card with a list of dates in faded ink: September 7, 2014; April 3, 2012; December 21, 2016.

“Who got these?” he asked Theo one night, after the group had returned from the field. A pile of books was stacked on the floor by Peter’s bunk.

Theo was rinsing his face at the washbasin. He turned, drying his hands on the front of his shirt. “I think they’ve been here a long time. I don’t know if Zander could read much, so he put them away. Anything good?”

Peter held up the book he had been reading: Moby-Dick; or, The Whale.

“To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure this is English,” Peter said. “It’s taken me most of today to get through a page.”

His brother gave a tired-sounding laugh. “Let’s see that ankle.”

Theo sat on the edge of Peter’s cot. Gently he took Peter’s foot in his hands and rolled it on the joint. The two of them had barely spoken since the night of the attack. None of them had, really.

“Well, it looks better.” Theo rubbed his stubbled chin. His eyes, Peter saw, were hollowed with exhaustion. “The swelling’s down. Think you can ride?”

“I’d crawl if I had to, to get out of here.”

They set out after breakfast the next morning. Arlo had agreed to stay behind with Rey and Finn until the next relief party arrived. Caleb said he wanted to stay too, but Theo convinced him otherwise—with Arlo there, and as long as they stayed inside the fence, a fourth was unnecessary. And Caleb had been through more than enough.

The other question was the guns. Theo wanted to leave them where they were; Alicia argued that it made no sense to leave them all behind. They still didn’t know what had happened to Zander or why the smokes hadn’t killed Caleb when they’d had the chance. In the end, they reached a compromise. The party would ride back armed but hide their guns outside the Wall for safekeeping. The rest would stay under the stairs.

“I doubt I’ll need ’em,” Arlo said, as the group was mounting up. “Any smokes show up, I can just talk them to death.” Though it was also true that he was wearing a rifle over his shoulder. Alicia had shown him how to load and clean it and let him fire off a few rounds in the yard for practice. “Holy damn!” he’d yelled in his big voice, and squeezed off another round, knocking the target can clean off its post. “Is that ever something!” Theo was right, Peter thought; once you had a gun, it was a hard thing to let go of.

“I mean what I say, Arlo,” Theo warned. The horses, after so many days without exercise, were antsy to go, shifting beneath them, tamping down the dust. “Something’s not right. Stay inside the fence. Lock it down each night before you see the first shadow. Agreed?”

“No worries, cuz.” Grinning through his beard, Arlo looked at Finn and Rey, whose faces, Peter thought, did nothing to conceal their feeling of doom. Stuck in the station with Arlo and his stories; probably he’d just break down and sing for them, guitar or no guitar. Hanging from Arlo’s neck was the key they’d taken from Zander’s body. Theo had the other one.

“Oh, come on, guys,” Arlo called to the wrenches, and clapped his hands. “Buck up. It’ll be like a party.” But as he stepped to Theo’s horse, his expression sobered abruptly. “Put this in your pouch,” Arlo said quietly, slipping him a folded sheet of paper. “For Leigh and the baby, if anything happens.”

Theo tucked the paper away without looking at it. “Ten days. Stay inside.”

“Ten days, cuz.”

They rode out into the valley. Without a cart to pull, they cut across the fields toward Banning, bypassing the Eastern Road to shave a few kilometers off the route. No one was talking; they were saving their energies for the long ride ahead.

As they approached the edge of town, Theo drew up.

“I almost forgot.” He reached into his saddlebag and removed the curious object that Michael had given him at the gate, six days ago. “Anybody remember what this thing is?”

Caleb drew his mount alongside, taking the board from Theo to examine it. “It’s a motherboard. Intel chip, Pion series. See the nine? That’s how you can tell.”

“You know about this stuff?”

“Have to.” With a shrug, Caleb handed the board back to Theo. “The turbine controls use Pions. Ours are hardened military, but basically the same. They’re tough as nails and faster than snot. Sixteen gigahertz without overclocking.”

Peter was watching Theo’s expression: he had no idea what this meant, either.

“Well, Michael wants one.”

“You should have said something. We have plenty of extras at the station.”

Alicia laughed. “I have to say, you surprise me, Caleb. You sound like the Circuit. I didn’t even know you wrenches could read.”

Caleb twisted in the saddle to face her; but if he was offended, he gave no sign. “Are you kidding me? What else is there to do down here? Zander was always sneaking off to the library to get more books. There’re, like, boxes and boxes of them stacked in the toolshed. And not just technical stuff. Guy would read anything. Said books were more interesting than people.”

For a moment, no one spoke.

“What did I say?” asked Caleb.

The library was located near the Empire Valley Outlet Mall on the north edge of town: a squat, square building surrounded by hardpan tufted with tall weeds. They took shelter behind a filling station and dismounted; Theo retrieved the binoculars from his saddlebag and scanned the building.

“It’s pretty sanded up. The windows are still intact above ground level, though. The building looks tight.”

“Can you see inside?” Peter asked.

“The sun’s too bright, reflecting off the glass.” He passed the binoculars to Alicia and turned to Hightop. “You’re certain?”

“That Zander came here?” The boy nodded. “Yes, I’m certain.”

“Did you ever go with him?”

“Are you serious?”

Alicia had clambered up a dumpster to the roof of the filling station to have a better look.

“Anything?”

She drew down the binoculars. “You’re right, the sun’s too bright. I don’t see how there’d be anything inside, though, with all those windows.”

“That’s what Zander always said,” Caleb added.

“I don’t get it,” Peter said. “Why would he come out here alone?”

Alicia dropped down. She dusted off her hands on the front of her jersey and pushed a sweat-dampened strand of hair off her face. “I think we should check it out. Middle of the day like this, we’re not going to have a better chance.”

Theo’s face said, Why am I not surprised? He turned toward Peter. “What’s your vote?”

“Since when do we vote?”

“Since now. If we do this, everyone has to agree.”

Peter tried to read Theo’s expression, to guess what he wanted to do. In the question before him, he felt the weight of challenge. He thought, Why this? Why now?

He nodded his assent.

“Okay, Lish,” Theo said, and reached for his rifle. “You’ve got your smokehunt.”

They left Caleb with the horses and approached the building in a loose line. The sand was pushed high against the windows, but the front entrance, at the top of a short flight of stairs, was clear. The door opened easily; they stepped inside. They were in some kind of entryway. Hung on the wall just inside the door was a bulletin board covered with paper signs, faded but still legible. CAR FOR SALE, ’14 NISSAN SERATA, LOW MILES. LOSE WEIGHT NOW, ASK ME HOW! BABYSITTER WANTED, AFTERNOONS, SOME EVENINGS, MUST HAVE CAR. CHILDREN’S STORY HOUR, TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS 10:30–11:30. And, larger than the rest, on a sheet of curling yellow paper:

STAY ALIVE. STAY IN WELL-LIGHTED AREAS.
REPORT ALL SIGNS OF INFECTION.
DO NOT LET STRANGERS INTO YOUR HOME.
ONLY LEAVE SAFE ZONES IF INSTRUCTED BY A GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL.

They moved inside, into a wide room lit by tall windows that faced the parking lot. The air was sharp and thick with heat.

Sitting at the front desk was a body.

The woman—Peter could tell it was a woman—appeared to have shot herself. The gun, a small revolver, was still clutched in her hand where it had fallen to her lap. The corpse was brown as leather, the woman’s desiccated flesh stretched taut over the bones, but the bullet hole in the side of her skull was plainly visible. Her head was tipped to the side, as if she had dropped something and had taken a moment to look.

“I’m glad Arlo isn’t here to see that,” Alicia murmured.

They moved in silence into the stacks. Books were strewn everywhere on the floor, so many it was like walking on drifts of snow. They circled back around to the front; Theo gestured with the barrel of his rifle toward the stairs.

“All eyes.”

The stairs opened on a large room flooded with sunlight that poured from the windows. A feeling of spaciousness: the shelves had all been pushed aside to make room for the lines of cots that had taken their place.

Each cot bore a body.

“There must be fifty of them,” Alicia whispered. “Is it some kind of infirmary?”

Theo moved deeper into the room, sliding between the rows of cots. An odd muskiness clung to the air. Halfway down the column, Theo paused beside one of the cots and reached down to remove a small object. Something floppy, made of disintegrating cloth. He held it up for Peter and Alicia to see. A stuffed doll.

“I don’t think that’s what this is.”

The images began to resolve in Peter’s mind, forming a pattern. The smallness of the bodies. The stuffed animals and toys clutched by tiny hands of leathered bone. As Peter stepped forward, he felt and heard the crunch of plastic. A syringe. There were dozens of them, scattered over the floor.

The meaning hit him like a fist.

“Theo, this is … these are … ” The word stopped in his throat.

His brother was already headed to the stairs. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

They didn’t stop until they were outside. They stood on the front stoop, breathing in great gulps of fresh air. In the distance, Peter could see Caleb standing on the roof of the filling station, still scanning the scene with the binoculars.

“They must have known what was happening,” Alicia said quietly. “Decided it was better this way.”

Theo slung his rifle and took a long drink of water. His face was ashen; Peter saw that his brother’s hands were trembling. “Goddamn Zander,” Theo said. “Why the fuck would he come here?”

“There’s a second flight of stairs at the back,” Alicia said. “We should check it.”

Theo spat and shook his head, hard.

“Let it go, Lish,” Peter said.

“What’s the point of checking the building if we don’t check the whole thing?”

Theo turned sharply. “I don’t want to spend another second in this place.” He was resolved, his words would be final. “We torch it. No discussion.”

They pulled books from the shelves and fashioned a pile near the front desk. The paper caught swiftly, flames leaping from book to book. They retreated through the door and stood back fifty meters to watch the building burn. Peter took a drink from his canteen, but nothing would wash away the taste in his mouth; the taste of bodies, of death. He knew his eyes had beheld something that would stay with him for all the days of his life. Zander had come here, but not just for books. He’d come to see the children.

And that was when the drifted sand at the base of the building began to move.

Alicia, standing beside him, saw this first.

“Peter … ”

The sand collapsed; the virals poured forth, clawing from the sand where it had covered the basement windows. A pod of six, chased into the blazing light of midday by the flames.

They screamed. A great, high-pitched wail that shattered the air with pain and fury.

The library was fully engulfed now. Peter raised his rifle and fumbled for the trigger. His movements felt vague, without focus. Everything about the scene seemed only half real, his mind finding no traction on any of it. More virals were emerging through the heavy black smoke that roiled from the upper windows, the glass exploding in a glittering rain of shards, their flesh blazing, trailing liquid fronds of flame. It seemed that whole stretches of time had passed since he’d lifted his rifle, intending to fire. The first group had taken refuge in a pocket of shade where the library steps rose from the sand, a single huddled mass, their faces pressed to the ground like Littles in a game of hide-and-seek.

“Peter, we can’t stay here!”

He shook off his torpor at the sound of Alicia’s voice. Beside him, Theo appeared frozen in place, the barrel of his gun pointed uselessly at the ground, his face slack, eyes wide and impassive: What’s the use?

“Theo, listen to me,” Alicia said, shaking him roughly by the arm; for a moment Peter thought she was actually about to strike him. The virals at the base of the steps had begun to stir. A collective twitch passed through them, like wind rippling the surface of a pool of water. “We have to go, right now.”

Theo shifted his gaze toward Peter. “Oh, brother,” he said. “I think we’re fucked.”

“Peter,” Alicia pleaded, “help me.”

They each took him by an arm; by the time they were halfway across the lot, Theo was running on his own. The feeling of unreality was gone now, replaced by one desire only: to get away, to escape. They rounded the corner of the filling station to see Caleb, on his horse, barreling away. They mounted their horses and kicked to a gallop, tearing after him across the hardpan. In their wake, Peter could hear more explosions of glass. Alicia was pointing, yelling over the wind: the mall. That’s where Caleb was headed. At full speed they tore up a ridge of crested sand and down into the empty lot in time to see Caleb leaping from his horse by the building’s west entrance. He slapped its hindquarters and darted through the opening while his horse raced away.

“Inside!” Alicia yelled. She was in command now; Theo said nothing. “Go, leave the horses!”

The animals were bait, an offering. There was no chance to say goodbye; they dismounted and dashed inside. The best place, Peter knew, would be the atrium. The glass roof had been torn away, there was sunlight and cover, they could make some kind of defense. Down the darkened hall they ran. The air was heavy and sour, the walls bulging with mold, exposing rusted beams, dangling wires, encrusted pipes. Most of the stores were shuttered but others stood open like amazed faces, their dim interiors clogged with debris. Peter could see Caleb running up ahead, fat beams of golden daylight falling down.

They emerged into the atrium, into sun so bright they blinked against it. The room was like a forest. Nearly every surface was choked with fat green vines; in the center a stand of palms reached toward the open ceiling. More vines dripped from the exposed struts of the ceiling, like coils of living rope. They took cover behind a barricade of overturned tables at the base of the trees. Caleb was nowhere to be seen.

Peter looked at his brother, crouched beside him. “Are you okay?”

Theo nodded uncertainly. They were all breathing hard. “I’m sorry. About back there. I just … ” He shook his head. “I don’t know.” He wiped the sweat from his eyes. “I’ll take the left. Stay with Lish.” He skittered away.

Kneeling beside him, Lish checked the load on her rifle and pulled the bolt. Four hallways met the atrium: the attack, if it came, would come from the west.

“Do you think the sun got them?” Peter asked.

“I don’t know, Peter. They seemed pretty mad. Maybe some but not all.” She wrapped the rifle’s sling tightly around her forearm. “I need you to promise me something,” she said. “I won’t be one of them. If it comes to that, I need you to take care of it.”

“Flyers, Lish. It won’t. Don’t even say it.”

“I’m saying if it does.” Her voice was firm. “Don’t hesitate.”

There was no more time for words; they heard footsteps racing toward them. Caleb careened into the atrium, clutching an object to his chest. As he dove behind the tables, Peter saw what he was holding. A black shoe box.

“I don’t believe it,” Alicia said. “You went scavenging?”

Caleb lifted the lid and tossed it aside. A pair of bright yellow sneakers, still wrapped in paper. He kicked off Zander’s boots and shoved his feet into them.

“Shit,” he said, wearing a crestfallen frown, “they’re way too big. They’re not even close.”

And then the first viral fell, a blur of movement first above and then behind them, dropping through the atrium roof; Peter rolled in time to see Theo being lifted up, tossed toward the ceiling, his rifle dangling where the sling had tangled in his arm, his hands and feet scrabbling at space. A second viral, hanging upside down from one of the ceiling struts, snatched Peter’s brother by the ankle as if he weighed nothing at all. Theo’s body was fully inverted now; Peter saw the look on his brother’s face, an expression of pure astonishment. He’d made no sound at all. His rifle fell away, spinning to the floor below. Then the viral flung Peter’s brother through the open roof and he was gone.

Peter scrambled to his feet, his finger finding the trigger. He heard a voice, his voice, calling his brother’s name, and the sound of Alicia firing. Three virals were on the ceiling now, launching from strut to strut. Peter detected, at the periphery of his vision, Alicia shoving Caleb up and over the counter of a restaurant on the far side of the atrium. Peter fired at last, fired again. But the virals were too fast; always the spot where he aimed was empty. It seemed to Peter as if they were playing a kind of game, trying to trick them into expending their ammunition. Since when do they do that? he thought, and wondered when he’d heard these words before.

As the first one let go, Peter saw, in his mind’s eye, the fatal dimension of its arc. Alicia was standing with her back to the counter now. The viral descended straight for her, arms outstretched, legs bent to absorb the impact, a being of teeth and claws and smoothly muscled power. In the instant before it landed, Alicia stepped forward, positioning herself directly under it, holding the rifle away from her body, like a blade.

She fired.

A mist of red, a confusion of bodies tumbling, the rifle clattering away. In the time it took Peter to realize that Alicia was not dead, she was on her feet again. The viral lay where he’d come to rest, the back of his head cratered with blood. She’d shot it through the mouth. Above them, the other two had come to an abrupt halt, stiffening, teeth flashing, their heads swiveling toward Alicia as if pulled by a single string.

“Get out of here!” she called, and vaulted over the counter. “Just run!”

He did. He ran.

He was deep inside the mall now. There seemed to be no way out. All the exits were barricaded, blocked by mountains of debris: furniture, shopping carts, dumpsters full of trash.

And Theo, his brother, was gone.

His only option was to hide. He tore down a hall of shuttered storefronts, yanking upward at their grates, but none would open; all were locked tight. Through the fog of his panic, a single question emerged: Why wasn’t he dead yet? He had fled from the atrium not expecting to make it more than ten steps. A flash of pain and it would all be over. At least a full minute had passed before he’d realized the virals weren’t pursuing him.

Because they were busy, he thought. He had to clutch one of the grates just to keep standing. He dug his fingers between the slats and pressed his forehead against the metal, fighting for breath. His friends were dead. That was the only explanation. Theo was dead, Caleb was dead, Alicia was dead. And when the virals were done, when they had drunk their fill, they’d be coming for him.

Hunting him.

He ran. Down one hall and into another, tearing past shuttered storefront after shuttered storefront. He wasn’t even bothering with the grates now; his mind was seized with one thought: to get outside, onto open ground. Daylight ahead, and a feeling of openness: he turned a corner and emerged, skidding on the tiles, into a wide, domelike space. A second atrium. The area was clear of debris. Sunshine descended in smoky shafts from a ring of windows, high above.

In the center of the room, standing motionless, was a herd of tiny horses.

They were grouped in a tight circle beneath some kind of freestanding shelter. Peter froze, expecting them to scatter. How had a herd of horses gotten into the mall? He stepped cautiously forward. Now it was obvious: the horses weren’t real. A carousel. Peter had seen a picture of one, in a book in the Sanctuary. The base would turn and music would play, and children would ride the horses around and around. He stepped onto the decking; a heavy layer of dust encased them, dulling their features. He squared his shoulders to one of the animals and brushed the grime away, revealing the bright colors beneath, the precisely painted-on details: the lashes of its eyes, the grooves of its teeth, the long slope of its nose and the flaring nostrils.

He felt it then, a sudden awareness at his extremities, like a touch of cold metal. He startled, lifting his face.

Standing before him was a girl.

A Walker.

He couldn’t have said how old she was. Thirteen? Sixteen? Her hair was long and dark, and thick with mats; she was wearing a pair of threadbare gaps cut off at the ankles and a T-shirt stiff with dirt, all of it too large on her boyish frame. Her pants were cinched to her waist with a length of electric cord; on her feet she wore a pair of sandals with plastic daisies poking between the toes.

Before Peter could speak, she raised a finger to her lips: Don’t speak. She moved briskly toward the center of the platform and turned to wave him on, to tell him to come with her.

He heard them then. A skittering in the hall, the rattle of metal grates on the shuttered storefronts.

The virals were coming. Searching. Hunting.

The girl’s eyes were very wide. Hurry, her eyes said. She took his hand and pulled him to the center of the platform. There she dropped to her knees and dug at a metal ring in the floor. A trapdoor, flush with the wooden decking. She climbed inside so that only her face was showing.

Quickly, quickly.

Peter followed her down the hole and sealed the trapdoor above him. They were under the carousel now, in some kind of crawl space. Angled blades of light, spangled with dust motes, fell through the slats of the decking over their heads, revealing a dark bulk of machinery and, on the floor beside it, a rumpled bedroll. Plastic bottles of water and tins of food stacked in rows, their paper labels long since worn away. Did she live here?

The decking shuddered. The girl had dropped to her knees. A shadow moved across them. She was showing him what to do.

Lie down. Be still.

He did as she asked. Then she climbed on top of him, onto his back. He could feel the heat of her body, the warmth of her breath on his neck. She was covering his body with her own. The virals were all over the carousel now. He could feel their minds searching, probing, hear the soft clicking in their throats. How long before they discovered the trapdoor?

Don’t move. Don’t breathe.

He closed his eyes tightly, willing himself into absolute stillness, waiting for the sound of the door being ripped off its hinges. The rifle was on the floor beside him. He might get off a shot or two, but that would be all.

Seconds passed. More shudders above, the sharp, excited breathing of virals with human scent in their nostrils. Tasting the blood in the air. But something was wrong; he sensed their uncertainty. The girl was pressing down upon him. Screening him, protecting him. Silence from above; had the virals gone? A minute moved by, and then another. His sense of expectation shifted from the virals to what the girl would do next. At last she climbed off him. He rose to his knees. Their faces were just inches apart. The soft curve of her cheek was like a child’s, but her eyes were not, not at all. He could smell her breath; there was something sweet to it, like honey.

“How did you—”

She shook her head sharply to silence him, pointing to the ceiling, then pressed her fingers to her lips again.

They’re gone. But they’ll be back.

She rose to her feet and opened the trapdoor. A quick turn of the head to show him her meaning.

Follow me. Do it now.

They emerged onto the decking of the carousel. The room was empty, but he could feel the virals’ departed presence, the air swirling in unseen eddies around the places they had stood. Moving quickly, the girl led him to a door across the atrium. It was propped open, held in place with a wedge of concrete. They stepped inside and she let the door close behind them, sealing them inside; he heard the click of a lock.

Blackness.

A new panic gripped him, a feeling of complete disorientation. But then he felt her taking his hand. Her grip was tight, meant to reassure; she pulled him farther in.

I have you. It’s all right.

He tried to count his steps, but it was useless. He could feel in her grip that she wanted him to go faster, that his uncertainty was holding them back. He stumbled on something in his path and the rifle fell away, lost in the darkness.

“Wait—”

A wang from behind, and the groan of bending metal. The virals had found them. Ahead he detected a glow of daylight; his surroundings began to emerge to his vision. They were in a long, high-ceilinged hallway; slims were shoved against the walls, a chorus of grinning skeletons, their limbs contorted in what seemed to be postures of warning. Another crash from behind; the door was failing, caving in on its hinges. The hallway ended at another door, which stood open. A stairwell. From high above came a glow of yellow daylight, and the sound and smell of pigeons. On the wall was a sign: ROOF ACCESS.

He turned. The girl was still standing in the hallway, just outside the stairwell door. Their eyes met briefly, hauntingly. Before another second passed, the girl stepped forward and, rising on her toes, pressed her closed mouth—a bird pecking water—against his face.

Just that: she kissed him on the cheek.

Peter was too stunned to speak. The girl backed away, into the dark hall. Go now, her eyes said.

Then she closed the door.

“Hey!” He heard the click of the lock. He gripped the handle, but it was immovable. He pounded on the sealed metal. “Hey! Don’t leave me!”

But the girl was gone, a departed spirit. He saw the sign again: ROOF ACCESS. That’s where she wanted him to go.

He began to climb. The air was roasting, nearly asphyxiating with the gas of pigeon. Long streaks of guano smeared the walls, encrusting the stairs and banister like layers of paint. The birds seemed to take scant notice of him, fluttering here and there as he made his ascent, as if his presence were no more than a curiosity. Three flights, four; he was panting with exertion, the taste in his mouth and nose was excruciating in its foulness, his eyes stung as if splashed by acid.

At last he reached the top. A final door and, on the wall above it, far out of reach, a tiny window, its edges scalloped by broken glass, yellowed by soot and time.

The door was padlocked.

A dead end. After everything, the girl had led him to a dead end. A furious clang shook the stairwell as the first viral hit the door below him. Birds lifted off and scattered all around him, swirling the air with feathers.

That was when he saw it, so encrusted with guano it had blended invisibly into the wall around it. He used his elbow to smash the glass, then yanked the axe free. A second crash from below. One more push and the virals would be through the door and streaming up the stairs.

Peter lifted the axe over his head and gave it a hard swing, aiming for the padlock. The blade glanced off, but he could tell he’d done some damage. He took a deep breath, calculating the distance, and gave the axe another swing, putting everything he had behind it. A clean hit: the lock split and shattered. He leaned into the door with all his might and with a groan of age and rust it fell open, spilling him into sunlight.

He was on the roof at the north side of the mall, facing the mountains. He hobbled quickly to the edge.

The drop was fifteen meters at least. He’d break his leg or worse.

Lying immobile on the hardpan, waiting for the virals to take him. It wasn’t how he wanted things to end. He was bleeding freely from his elbow; a trail of his blood had followed him from the open door. Though he had no memory of pain, he must have cut it when he’d smashed the panel. But a little blood would hardly make a difference now. At least he had the axe.

He was turning to face the door, preparing to swing, when a cry reached him from below.

“Jump!”

Alicia and Caleb, coming around the corner of the building on horseback, riding fast. Alicia was waving to him, her body arched forward from the stirrups. “Jump!”

He thought of Theo, lifted up. He thought of his father, standing at the edge of the sea, and of the sea and stars. He thought of the girl, covering his body with her own, the warmth and sweetness of her breath on his neck and on his cheek where she had kissed him.

His friends were calling and waving from below, the virals were coming up the stairs, the axe was in his hand.

Not now, he thought, not yet, and he closed his eyes and jumped.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 569