Текст книги "Howlers"

Автор книги: Kent Harrington

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

“You can’t shoot him,” Quentin said.

“Why not? He’s a little bitch. I had to fight with my father. I might have hurt him. He wouldn’t help me.”

“Rebecca! Listen to me! We need that boy alive right now. We need everyone we can get to help us. If we’re going to survive.”

“What about my dad?”

“Is he—is he one of them?”

“I don’t know. He started talking crazy a little while ago. And he hit me. He’s never hit me in his life!”

Quentin saw Summers come up the stairs. He was pale and looked like he’d been through hell.

Rebecca turned around and looked at Gary Summers as he came through the door.  His bicycle tunic was torn and hanging off of him. Rebecca took a swing at him and hit him in the side of the head with her fist. He stumbled over one of the dead Howlers and fell down, but immediately stood up.

“You have to kill her father, sheriff. He’s one of them,” the kid said, holding the side of his head where Rebecca had punched him.

“Shut up!” Rebecca said. “I wasn’t going to let him shoot my father. You fucking asshole.” She lunged at Summers again. Quentin had to stand between them to protect the boy.

“I wanted to shoot him, but she took the gun away,” Gary said.

“All right, boy. It’s all right,” Quentin said. “Rebecca, listen to me. I want you to go outside and make sure Dillon has all the .216 ammo and .45 and .9mm you’ve got in the store. All right? We found the stuff behind the counter. But I’m hoping there’s more stored somewhere.”

“Yeah, there’s more than that,” she said, looking at Summers. “You better hope those things get you before I do, motherfucker.”

“I’ll go down and see about your father,” Quentin said.

“No. I’ll do it,” Dillon said. He’d come back into the store. “Where is he?”

“He needs a doctor,” Rebecca said.

Dillon was cradling the Thompson in his arms. “What’s wrong with him?” Dillon said.

“He’s acting crazy,” Rebecca said.

Dillon looked at Quentin.

“Okay. I’ll go down and talk to him,” Dillon said.

“He’s one of them!” Summers said. “You have to kill him!”

“Shut the fuck up!” Rebecca said.

Dillon walked up to the girl. “What did he do? Your father.”

“He started talking crazy and—”

Dillon punched her in the jaw. Rebecca fell on the ground like she’d been shot. “You better hold onto her,” he said. “I’ll go kill him. That’s what they do just before they become one of them—talk crazy. I saw it happen down south.” Dillon walked down the stairs to the basement and disappeared into the dark. In a moment they heard the Thompson bark.

*   *   *

It was snowing. The shovel Marvin had bought at Home Depot for gardening in the spring was new, and its end sharp. Vivian Poole’s small body was lying wrapped up in a pink blanket he’d taken from her bed. He looked up and saw snow falling through the late afternoon, the light failing quickly. “Snow devils” kicked up by the strong wind danced across the big white-with-snow lawn where they’d planned to put in a vegetable garden that summer. At the edge of the big yard was a deer fence he’d had put up; it was vinyl-covered chain link, and bright green, and brand new looking. Beyond the fence was the U.S. Forest Service forest. its snow-covered pines tall and dark, dominating the landscape as far as the eye could see. The trees looked ancient in the failing light. There were dark lightless spaces between grey trunks. The dark spaces looked like tunnels to nowhere.

Marvin began to dig his daughter’s grave. It seemed impossible, all of it. The last ten hours were impossible—a walking nightmare. Despite the lingering hope he’d wake from this nightmare at any moment, he knew all that had happened was real. It was the feeling he’d gotten when he wrapped his daughter in her favorite blanket: that it was all real. He’d kissed her cheek, then he’d finally made himself pull the blanket over her face. It was all real, he’d told himself. He was not going to wake up.

He sank his shovel in the lawn and saw a square of earth and dead grass come up. He was crying, but didn’t try to stop. Everything hurt.

I’ve no idea what we’ll do or where we’ll go. How can you be dead, my darling girl?

Marvin saw a tear drop from his face and hit his shoe. He was still wearing his dress shoes, which he’d laced on that morning when everything in his life was so perfect and calm. He’d gone downstairs to breakfast with the kids, they’d laughed. Grace had cooked oatmeal. He let himself drift into the dream of their last breakfast together. He could remember the children’s faces as they ate; it was the beauty of young faces he’d delighted in only a few hours ago. His wife in her robe, her hair down at her shoulders. The morning’s San Francisco Chronicle, the sound it made as he folded it to read the sports page.

Marvin heard a howling sound. The sound brought him out of his daydream. He’d been digging and crying and living in the past that seemed more real now. He looked up, his eyes tear-filled. He saw shapes in the forest, dark shapes, just specters really, because they were so deep in the forest. But they were coming his way, ten, twenty; he couldn’t tell. He wiped his eyes. Tears had frozen on his face and the ice crystals hurt when he dragged them across his cheek with the back of his hand.

“Animals,” he said. “Fucking animals!” He heard himself say it. He turned and looked at his daughter’s blanket-covered body. Snow had collected on the blanket. He wasn’t going to leave her. He knew that. Let them come. He would bury her.

The howling sound became louder. One howl answered another, coming from the forest. He wouldn’t look, he thought. He began to dig faster. Each strike, with the shovel, went deeper and deeper, as he raced to get the grave dug. The earth was like stone, uncaring, evil, not wanting him to pierce it. He managed to break through the frozen upper layer until the earth was no longer rock hard. The shovel hit bits of granite as he worked. He heard the shovel’s metal tip make a tinging sound, and ting again as he broke the ground, a narrow long trench that would serve as his daughter’s grave.

Marvin finally allowed himself to look up. He could see several of the things—much closer now—coming through the forest toward the fence.

“Jesus God—help me!” he said. “Jesus, God help me!” He heard himself yell and heard the call of the howlers. The things were answering calls coming from deep inside the forest. They’d spotted him now and the things were gathering, walking from out of a morphing twilight casting a helpless dying light that grew shadows along its edges. Fog-like patches rushed in to fill the new grey voids, leaving a murky darkness that had moments before been forest.

“Vivian! God is my witness—I will not run!” He was terrified. Poole began again to dig like a maniac.

*   *   *

“I thought I killed you,” Patty said, looking at Miles Hunt in the big living room. He was facing a French door to the yard.

“Almost,” Miles said.

“I’m sorry. I thought you were one of them.”

“Well, if you had given me a second to explain.”

Two Howlers were in the backyard, squatting on their haunches and looking at them passively. They were kids: two boys.

“Why don’t they try and break in?” Patty said, walking up behind Miles.

“I don’t know,” Miles said. “There’s a lot of howling coming from the forest behind Poole’s place, maybe it’s that. They seem to be waiting. They call back sometimes.”

“Like coyotes,” Patty said. “Can you walk?” She felt horrible that she’d almost killed an innocent person. “I was so frightened—I’d skied for miles alone, and saw no one that was human. I started shooting at anything, really.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Miles said.

The two Howlers got up off their haunches, moved off around to the side of the house and disappeared from view.

“I’ve locked everything. There’s no way they can get in.”

“Is there a shotgun?” Patty said. “The doctor said he has one. Crouchback.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t looked,” Miles said. “Where’s Crouchback?”

“Dead,” Patty said.

Miles turned around. He was holding the fire poker in both hands. “Is that what you shot me with?” He looked at her service revolver.

“Yes.”

“Jesus! What a day, huh?” he said. “My name’s Miles.”

“Patty,” she said.

“What about the doctor?” Miles asked. “Is he alive?”

“Yes. He and his wife. Their two children, they’re dead. ”

“I see,” Miles said. “Do you know what’s happened?”

“No. The government thinks it’s a virus of some kind,” she said. “That’s what they say on the TV, anyway.”

“It’s not,” Miles said. “It’s not that. It’s something to do with food.”

“What difference does it make, really?” she said. “We’re still fucked.”

“Right. What difference does it make? I saw a gun cabinet in one of the bedrooms,” Miles said. “Down the hall.”

The door opened and one of the Howlers that had been in the backyard stepped in through the front door, which Patty had left unlocked. The Howler ran into the house. They could hear its wet shoes slap the floor of the foyer.

Patty waited until the thing was almost on her and she fired her last bullet—she’d found the bullet at her feet, hidden in the Poole’s carpet. She hit the thing in the middle of its forehead, sending a mist of brains and blood out the back of its skull.

Miles ran to the front door and locked it. He turned and saw the thing still twitching and clawing the living room carpet, the back of its head gone. The girl who had shot it seemed to be in a trance. She stepped over the dying still-squirming thing and walked down the hall toward the bedrooms.

“We better get back to the doctor’s,” Patty said, not bothering to turn around.

A loud rap sounded on the front door and then another, much louder. Miles jumped as if he’d been shocked. He slid open a metal cover on the front door’s peep hole and looked outside. He saw a Howler’s eye staring back at him, very close.

“Open the door,” Patty said.

Miles turned around. He saw the girl standing directly behind him. She had a hunting rifle slung over her shoulder, and was holding a pump-style shotgun in both hands. “Go ahead, open it.”

“Give me the rifle. There’s a pack of them out in the street in front of the doctor’s place.”

Patty unslung the Winchester .30-30 she’d found in Crouchback’s bedroom and handed it to Miles.

“It’s fully loaded,” Patty said. “He kept it loaded. Five rounds, one in the pipe. Make them count,” she said.

Miles looked at her. “You sure?”

“My father was a deer hunter,” Patty said. “I grew up with that model Winchester around the house. He used to make me clean it. Do you know how to use it?”

“Yes,” Miles said. “Six rounds.”

Patty reached over and unlocked the front door. Miles leveled the Winchester, pulling the hammer back, just before the door flew open.

CHAPTER 19

It had stopped snowing around three in the afternoon. The sky above them was crepuscular, red-tinged, and peaceful, Quentin thought, as the four of them sped down the narrow road. He glanced down at the gas gauge and saw that he still had a good half-tank of fuel in his patrol car. Better than nothing.

“You can’t keep me handcuffed, Quentin. It’s not fair,” Rebecca said.

“You promise not to shoot anyone?” Quentin asked. They were driving away from Timberline and toward Highway 50, on the two-lane road that had just been plowed that morning. The snow was six feet high on either side of the narrow county road. The patrol car’s red and blue lights were on. They were dodging abandoned cars that had been stopped by Howlers, the occupants dragged out and murdered. At times they had to slow down and weave around whole groups of cars. Some had been rolled over. At times it was necessary to drive the abandoned cars off the road in order to get past them.

   A few random Howlers were still on the road. When Quentin could do so at the right speed, so that they wouldn’t hurt the patrol car, he pointed at a standing Howler and ran them over. One had gotten stuck in the patrol car’s undercarriage and been dragged, howling and screaming, for more than a mile, until its asphalt-burnt body had been torn apart and it finally shut up. The windshield on the patrol car’s passenger side had been shattered by a big Howler—a man Dillon recognized as the short-order cook at the Denny’s where he’d stopped that morning. The Howler had walked into the middle of the road and thrown a rock straight at their car as they sped toward him. The Howler was still wearing his apron and grey-checkered cook’s pants he’d worn earlier that morning.

“Okay, I promise,” Rebecca said.

“I don’t believe her,” Dillon said.

“Shut up. You murdered my father,” Rebecca said. “Asshole. Murderer!”

“Here’s the deal,” Dillon said. “It wasn’t your father anymore. He’d become one of them. I told you.”

“It’s true, Rebecca. I went down there myself and looked at your dad. He wouldn’t have wanted to live like that,” Quentin said. “I’m sorry. It happened to Sharon.”

“Sharon?” Rebecca said, stunned.

“Yes. This morning. We had to—end it. I know how you feel. But they wouldn’t have wanted to go on living like that. You know that as well as I do. It wasn’t really Sharon anymore,” Quentin said.

“Hey, the kid has fallen asleep,” Dillon said. He nodded to Gary Summers, who was nodding out his head against the window, fast asleep.

“He’s a pussy,” Rebecca said. “You should let him out. He’s no good to anyone.”

“Okay, unlock her cuffs,” Quentin said, taking the key from his shirt pocket. “She’s calmed down enough—I hope.”

Dillon took the handcuff key, reached over and unlocked the girl’s handcuffs. Rebecca opened the cuffs, lifting the bracket up from her right wrist, sliding her wrist out. She did the same with her left hand, freeing it too.

“Rebecca, I need your help. Up here, where we’re going. I’m going to arrest the men who raped Lacy. You’ve known my daughters, both of them, since you all were little girls. Will you help me do this?”

Rebecca sat back in the seat. She tossed the cuffs up to Dillon, who caught them.

“Lacy was raped?” she said.

“Yes, today. She was looking for Sharon and went to one of the gang’s houses in Timberline,” Quentin said.

“Is she okay?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“I knew Sharon was hanging out with those guys. I told her it was crazy,” Rebecca said. Lacy Collier had been one of her good friends in high school. Despite everything that had happened to her father and to her world in the last ten hours, the news of Lacy’s rape seemed to affect her in a strange way. She had always been jealous of Lacy having a mother when she herself didn’t. She liked to visit the Colliers’ home to see what having a mother was like. When Lacy’s mother died, it was as if her own mother had died.

“That’s fucked up,” Rebecca said. “Yeah, I’ll help. Sure.”

“There may be a gunfight,” Quentin said. “You okay with that?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay with that,” Rebecca said. She looked over at Summers, who was still sleeping. “What are you going to do with the little bitch?” Rebecca said.

The man who’d shot her father laughed.

“I plan on taking him with us. When we’re finished up here, we’re going to Chuck Phelps’s place. Lacy is going to meet us there. We’ll stay there at Chuck’s place until the Army comes and they get rid of these—”

“Howlers,” Dillon said. “That’s what they called them down in Elko.”

The patrol car slowed down and Quentin took a right turn onto a narrow single lane. There was a nest of mailboxes, some with mail still stuffed in them, at the turn off.

“This is where I figure they’ll be,” Quentin said. It sounded to the others like he might be talking to himself.

*   *   *

Lacy looked out the bedroom window at Bell. He’d gone outside to the driveway to check on the truck. It was snowing very hard, so hard that at times it seemed the storm would cover everything and make it disappear: the driveway, the truck, even the lieutenant. They’d searched the house but found no firearms. Bell had found only a golf club. He carried it with him outside.

Lacy realized that the Lieutenant was a brave man and Robin Wood had been a coward, something she would never have expected. Smoke poured from the truck’s exhaust pipe as Bell kicked over the engine. The windshield wipers came on and pushed wind-driven piled-up snow off the windshield. Bell got out of the truck and moved the snow off the windshield with his hand. He climbed back in and drove the truck out onto the driveway and close to the front door. For just the briefest second, she’d panicked, thinking that Bell, too, was going to abandon her. But she watched him turn the truck and pull it very close to the front door, so when they left they wouldn’t have to cross the wide driveway.

She heard the front door open and close again. She walked out of the bedroom. She’d been brushing her hair because it made her feel normal. She was wearing clean clothes, jeans and a blouse she’d left at Robin’s that summer. She’d found no winter clothes. She’d taken one of Robin’s down vests and pulled it on.

“Is there gas? Do we have enough?”

“The yellow warning light is on,” Bell said, his eyes meeting hers.

“Are there any of them—of those things, out there?”

“I didn’t see any,” he said.

Bell looked very pale and thin, she thought. “That’s probably not enough gas to get there,” Lacy said. She put her hairbrush down. She’d left it here that past summer too, when she’d thought she’d been in love.

“He never loved me at all,” Lacy said. “I was such a fool. Jesus!”

“Well, then something good has come out of all of this then,” Bell said. “I guess.”

“Have you ever been in love, Lieutenant?”

“You mean like not with my dog, right?”

She smiled. He had a way of making her smile as if things were normal, and she liked it.

“No, not with your dog.”

“Well, I’m a Southerner, and we love our dogs, ma’am,” he said. “No, not really. Not with a girl. I loved the Army, and flying helicopters, until this morning.”

“You’re lucky. You feel stupid when you find out that people weren’t who you thought they were.”

“How far is this place from here? This ranch?” Bell asked.

“It’s on the other side of town, toward Emigrant Gap, off the county road, about eight miles, maybe a little more, from here. We measured it once, Robin and I.”

“How long does it take to drive?”

“Twenty-five minutes in the summer, and if there’s no traffic. In winter it takes longer,” Lacy said. “We don’t have enough gas.”

“Probably not,” Bell said. “But we might. The warning light could have just come on, for all we know.”

“And if it didn’t just come on?” she said.

“I think you need to put on some warmer clothes,” the Lieutenant said. “You know, just in case we have to do some walking.”

*   *   *

Grace Poole, wearing just a pair of white panties and a man’s brown sweater, got up from the bed and stumbled across the cold, high-ceilinged master bedroom. She was barefoot. She stopped and looked down at her feet and realized she couldn’t feel the carpet. She paused as she crossed the room and looked at herself in the full-length dressing mirror. Her complexion was ashen grey. Her long hair was messy from lying in bed. She walked up closer to the mirror and touched her face, but couldn’t feel her fingers on her skin. She saw her left hand move over her forehead and nose, but she had no feeling as she walked her fingers over her face.

She spoke to the person she saw in the mirror; it was involuntary, as if she were being forced to speak. She heard gibberish and saw her lips move. A long white tail of thick-looking spit slid out of her mouth as she spoke. It hung grotesquely in the air, then dropped to the floor in one long elastic looking strand.

“Gotcha. Ketchup now; no deal. No deal. Samsung. Galaxy. Now! The magic of Macy’s ... no deal. News at bison. Stream.” She heard herself saying the words. Spit from her mouth hit the clean dressing mirror, white globs of it splattering onto the clean glass. “Fuckshit; fuckshit.” She squatted on the floor and pissed on the room’s white rug, soaking her panties. She felt horribly nauseated. She stood, walked to the bathroom and threw up a white stream of spit into one of the two sinks. She looked up and yelled her husband’s name; but the words she heard herself scream were not what she’d intended to say. It was as if her vocal cords, and lips, had been taken over and were being run by remote control—by someone else, who was forcing her to speak things she had no intention of speaking.

She stumbled out of the bathroom and out into the hallway. She could see the backyard through a large transom window. She saw Marvin outside, without a coat, digging with a shovel, his arms moving quickly. He was standing in the middle of their snow-covered backyard. She leaned on the banister but couldn’t feel it. She could hear howling and looked out and saw several of the things begin to climb their green vinyl fence, coming from the forest behind the house.

Grace went down the steps and threw up half way down. More glue-like spit streamed out of her mouth. She wiped her face with the back of her hand. She saw the vomit run down her hands and between her fingers as she kept walking down the stairs and into the semi-dark foyer. She saw Crouchback’s body lying across the sofa, two round black-ringed holes in his face.

“Marvin—help me!” She heard her own voice speak some of the last intelligible words she would ever mouth. She heard the front door open and close behind her. She turned and looked at Patty and Miles Hunt. She thought she recognized them, but wasn’t quite sure.

“Mrs. Poole?” Miles said.

“Marvin,” Grace Poole said and wiped her mouth. “Marvin—outside.”

“She’s one of them,” Patty said. She raised the shotgun and was going to fire, but Miles knocked the barrel up. Her shot went wild, blowing a hole in the ceiling.

“No!” Miles screamed. Grace Poole ran down the stairs and toward the kitchen. Miles heard Patty’s shotgun rack almost immediately behind him.

“She’s one of them, God dam it!” Patty said.

Miles turned and looked at Patty Tyson. He could see she was horrified. He too couldn’t believe that Grace Poole, a woman he knew so well, was one of them.

He walked into the kitchen and saw Grace pull a kitchen knife from its place in a huge wooden block.

“Grace. Are you all right? Grace!” Miles said.

“Marvin,” Grace Poole said, and gestured outside; it was the coarse gesture of a Neanderthal, not the woman he’d known.

Miles looked out the French door and saw several Howlers inside the backyard. Two of them were crouched and were howling, their heads tilted up. “Grace. Don’t go out there!”

Grace Poole reached for the doorknob. Patty Tyson came through the kitchen doorway and fired her shotgun from the hip. The blast ripped off Grace Poole’s right arm at the shoulder. Miles saw the woman’s skull peppered with dark birdshot. The force of the blast shoved Grace Poole forward into the partially open French door. Grace’s head bounced off the glass, the door still intact. Her left arm gone, she turned and looked at them, then ran out the open French door into the backyard.

“Do that again and I’ll kill you,” Patty said looking at Miles.

“What did you do?” Miles said, horrified that the girl had shot Grace Poole.

“Can’t you see? She’s turned into one of them! We have to kill her!” Patty yelled, racking the shotgun. “Fuck! No ammo.” She looked down at the shotgun’s open breech.

They’d fought a horrific battle crossing the street on the way to the Poole’s house. They’d fired both their weapons at the gang of Howlers—ten or twelve of them, mostly teenagers—that had attacked them. They’d had to stand back-to-back and fire at the things as they ran at them. One of the Howlers had managed to tear the .30-30 from Miles’ hands. Patty had shot it in the head, at point blank range, damaging the .30-30. Miles had been sure he was going to die, watching the rifle snatched from his grasp. He’d frozen, terrified, staring at the Howler who lifted the rifle over its head ready to strike him with it. He’d been unable to move, paralyzed with fear.

Tyson turned and fired, blowing the thing’s head off at the shoulders. Miles had pulled the stock-shattered rifle from the Howler’s still standing body. Tyson screamed at him to run; they’d both run toward the Pooles’ house.

  Marvin stepped back. He watched the Howlers, five of them, drop over the green chain-link fence and into his yard.

“You’ll have to kill me!” he yelled at them. It was senseless, but he was tired of being afraid. He’d been terrified since he’d driven home from his office. It had been the kind of fear he’d never felt before, all-encompassing. And now he felt liberated from it. If he was going to die, he was going to die fighting.

He drew back the shovel and swung it like a bat. Two of the Howlers crouched on their haunches as soon as they landed in the yard and began to howl. Marvin turned and looked at the blanket with his daughter wrapped in it. Another of the Howlers dropped into the yard. He recognized a very fat woman who owned the 7-11 on Highway 50. Another Howler jumped off the fence and immediately came toward him at a lope using his knuckles to run along the frozen ground. Marvin raised his shovel and waited for the thing to get close enough to hit.

“Marvin.” Marvin turned and saw his wife. “Get back.” She spoke in a strange tone of voice. “Get back.” He saw that his wife’s face was bloody and full of buck shot, her nose smashed from hitting the French door, her left arm gone. He could see the raw white shoulder-bone socket exposed. Grace was holding a kitchen knife in her right hand.

“Grace! Jesus! God!” Marvin turned and saw Patty Tyson pulling shotgun shells out of her jacket pocket standing in the open door to the kitchen, Miles behind her.

“Get back away from her, doctor,” Patty yelled. “Get back!”

“No,” Miles said, the horror of it all hitting him. “No, don’t shoot!” He turned and faced Patty.

Miles Hunt raised the broken rifle. He had counted the shots out on the road. The rifle’s stock was shattered so that only bits of the wooden stock where clinging to its steel frame. He threw the lever and lifted the rifle and lined up the ramp sight on the loping Howler. He fired and heard the shot go off and felt the barrel kick up. He hit the fat Howler in the face and she fell at Grace Poole’s feet.

“Don’t. Dear God. Don’t shoot her!” Marvin yelled. Poole was running toward them; he’d dropped the shovel and was waving his arms in an attempt to stop them from shooting his wife. Miles ran toward the doctor and grabbed him; they both fell together in the snow.

Patty Tyson walked past them. Miles saw her boots pass his face. He was holding the doctor with all his might, keeping him from standing up. He could hear Poole yelling, pleading with the girl not to shoot Grace.

Patty Tyson raised the shotgun and walked toward Grace Poole. Grace turned and looked at her, the knife in her hand, her missing arm’s mangled red stump leaking blood.

“Mrs. Poole,” Patty said. “I’m sorry.” A long wad of white thick-looking spit formed on Grace Poole’s lips. The spit welled out of her mouth in a long ugly ribbon.

“Goofloke ... Nostitch ... Shoo ... Shoot me. ... Plekase,” Grace said.

Their eyes locked. Patty could see the woman—what was left of Grace Poole—was crying. Tears formed in her blood-shot eyes. “Pl-k-ease. I eg you!”

Patty raised the shotgun and fired. Grace Poole’s head disappeared in a red halo. Patty pushed Grace’s teetering, headless body over and walked on, deeper into the yard, blasting at the Howlers who were approaching her, almost completely surrounding her. She didn’t realize, as she fired at the Howlers—picking them off one by one, turning her body in a clockwise killing motion, the twelve gauge’s muzzle flashing—that she, too, was crying.

*   *   *

“How many miles is it to your ranch?” Bell asked. They’d noted the mileage when they got in the truck and left Wood’s house, armed only with the golf club. They’d driven the first few miles in complete silence. At times an abandoned car would appear in the road; sometimes bodies could be seen inside the car, or lying in the road.

“Are you scared?” Lacy asked.

“Yes,” Bell said. “About running out of gas.”

“So am I,” Lacy said. The truck’s interior was warm. She’d been freezing in the house, and it felt wonderful to be warm again. “What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know,” Bell said.

“I think it’s that power plant in Japan,” Lacy said.

“Fukushima?” Bell said. “I read about it.”

“Yes,” Lacy said.

“Why’s that?” Bell said.

“I read that it was leaking radioactivity into the Pacific. A professor at school went on about it one day. What it would mean if only half of the reports were true: mutations, premature infant deaths? The man was frightened. He said the media wasn’t reporting the truth about what was going on there.”

“You’re in school?” Bell said, wanting to change the subject. He glanced at the gas gauge. The yellow warning light was on and the gauge was sitting on the E. Lacy saw him glance down at the gauge.

“Yes. Cal. It’s where my mother went,” she said.

“I went to Ole Miss.” Lacy gave him a look. “University of Mississippi.”

“Oh.”

“I played basketball. It was fun. I don’t think there’s anything better than when you’re in college,” Bell said.

“Yes,” she said.

“It was just beautiful,” Bell said. “Going to school. I had a scholarship. No worries. Just played ball and chased girls. I’d never had so much fun in my whole life. It was more fun than anyone deserves.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I don’t know,” Bell said. “My brother was killed in Iraq while I was in school, my sophomore year. I always felt it wasn’t right, my having all that fun and my brother being dead.” He hadn’t spoken to anyone about how he’d felt about his brother’s death, not even with his mother and father. He’d always felt that it was his fault. It was irrational, he knew that, but he’d felt it was some kind of divine punishment nonetheless. His parents were fundamentalist Christians and he’d grown up with a real fear of God, and a fear of doing wrong. Somehow he’d felt he’d sin by enjoying his life after his brother was killed.

“I’m sorry about your brother,” Lacy said. She looked out the window. The forest was dark; it was after six now and pitch black out on the road.