Extinct (36 page)

“Probably not,” Nate said. “It’s been months and I haven’t seen you before.” Nate ran a slow gaze from the ground back up to Brad’s eyes. “I guess we travel in different circles.”

“Well…” Brad started and then didn’t know how to finish.

“So where are you taking them?” asked Nate. “To, you know, be
respectful.
”

“Mass grave,” Brad said.

“Where? In case I want to pay
my
respects.”

Brad looked to Romie.

“A patch of woods off of 114," Romie said.

“Got it,” Nate said. “Patch of woods.”

“Okay then," Romie said. She moved in a careful, sidestepping circle around Nate, back to the cab of the truck. Brad waved and walked to the driver’s door. They both closed their doors quickly and immediately locked them. Brad turned the key and prayed the moving van would start. Nate still stood next to the door of the Chinese restaurant as they pulled away.
 

“Well that was a bust," Romie said. “Lots of corpses in there. We could have finished off the day.”

“What a creepy guy,” Brad said. “I hope we don’t meet up with him again.”

“I get the feeling we will, somehow," Romie said. “Take a left up here in case he’s watching. I want him to think we’re headed south.”

“Sure thing,” Brad said.

Until they’d rounded several turns, Brad paid more attention to the rearview mirrors than the road in front of them. Romie called out turns and led them back around to Route 1 before they turned north again. They passed cars of the dead—veered off to the side of the road—but they were all empty. The doors hung open revealing empty seats. Another team of corpse collectors, probably Ted and Sheila, had already harvested this area.

“Hey,” Romie said, snapping her fingers. “Take a right up here. Old folks home.”

“Good idea,” Brad said.
 

They finished their quota with an easy pile of withered, graying corpses. Some of the old women, dressed in sweatpants and shirts, smelling like salty chicken soup, were so light that Brad could have carried them on his own. They doubled their speed when Romie realized they could pile two bodies on a wheelchair and move four corpses at a time.
 

They headed north towards the rendezvous point with their truckload of death.

✪
 
✪
 
✪
 
✪
 
✪

Brad followed the tracks of other trucks north on the highway through the snow. Weighted down with the corpses, the big moving van didn’t have any problem with traction. Before it got too deep—still less than a foot deep—Romie pointed out the line of sleds parked up ahead. Each flat sled was about twenty-five feet long and attached to a huge, tracked vehicle, the Bombardiers Pete acquired.

When he saw them pulling up, Pete waved Brad up to the front sled where the other two moving vans were also parked. Sheila and Ted were pulling bodies off the back of the van and carrying them over to the sled. As soon as he got Brad to the right spot, Pete jumped up on the sled to help Robby stack the corpses.
 

They were working on the second row of bodies. They’d already secured the first row with thick yellow straps.

Brad jumped down from the driver’s seat and walked over to where Ted and Sheila were lifting the body of a fat man in a bathrobe. They’d stomped down a path through the snow between the van and the sled, but Brad was cutting a new path through the powder as he approached.

“Can I take over for one of you guys?” Brad asked.

Sheila answered, “We’re fine, but you might want to help Lisa.” Sheila pointed her chin at the back of the van. In the gloomy interior, Brad saw Lisa dragging another body to the back edge of the moving van. Brad used the handle mounted on the side of the van and hoisted himself up onto the deck. He blinked at the darkness—eyes still squinting from looking across the snow—and helped Lisa slide another heavy man by his bathrobe.

“Who’s that?” asked Lisa.

“Who?” Brad asked. He looked up to see her pointing south, down the highway.

A dark figure stood in the snow about a hundred yards from their position.

“Nate,” Brad said, under his breath.

“Who?” asked Lisa, but Brad was already jumping down from the back of the moving van. Brad caught up with Ted and Sheila as they tossed their corpse up to Pete and Robby.
 

“Hey, guys,” Brad said. When he had their attention, he continued. “I think this guy might be trouble.” He didn’t point, but motioned with his eyes in the direction of the dark figure standing in the snow.

Pete dropped to one knee on the deck of the sled, bringing his head level with Ted’s.
 

“Who is it?” asked Ted.

“I’m not sure,” Brad said, “but it might be the guy Romie and I just met over at the Chinese restaurant.”

“So you talked to him?” asked Ted.

“If it’s the same guy, yes,” Brad said.

Robby climbed down from the sled and tromped off, cutting a new line through the snow. “I’m going to go meet him,” he called back over his shoulder.

“I’m right behind you,” Brad said.

As Brad walked away, he heard Sheila and Ted arrive at the conclusion that a two-person greeting party was probably enough. Brad glanced around for Romie—he hadn’t seen her since they pulled up to the convoy—but she wasn’t with the group.
 

Brad caught up to Robby as the boy slogged through the snow.

“Did you see where Romie went?” Brad asked Robby.

“She’s still in the truck you guys pulled up in,” Robby said.
 

Brad confirmed as they walked by the other moving van. Romie was still sitting there in the cab. She slid over to the driver’s side and she looked focused on the side-view mirror. She nodded to Brad and Robby as they walked past.
 

“She’s watching that guy,” Robby said softly.

“Yup,” Brad said.

“What did he say to you before?” Robby asked.

“Not much. He wanted to know where we were taking the corpses. I don’t know how he followed us. We went south and then looped back around before coming back here and we didn’t see him the whole time. When we left him, he was on foot in a parking lot. There was a cannibalized body in that restaurant. He might be responsible.”

Robby didn’t comment. They’d crossed about halfway to the man. The dark figure, who Brad still assumed was Nate, didn’t move. He stood between the tire tracks left by the moving vans. He flicked his long hair out of his face with a toss of his head. Robby and Brad stopped about ten feet away from him. It was Nate.

“Respectful,” Nate said.

“Hi, I’m Robby.”

“Nate,” said the dirty man. A breeze brought his odor to Brad. Nate smelled a bit like the nursing home corpses. It was a smell Brad had begun to associate with cold neglect. Brad traced Nate’s footprints through the snow. He hadn’t arrived on the highway; he came from the west.
 

“Hello again,” Brad said.

“Patch of woods?” asked Nate, gesturing to the sleds off in the distance behind Robby and Brad.

“It’s a long story,” Brad said, “and, frankly, we didn’t think you needed to know.”

“You could have said that,” Nate said. He tilted his head down towards the snow and then started violently shaking it, as he’d done outside the Chinese restaurant. Again, he kept going until they could hear Nate’s cheeks slapping against his teeth.

“Are you okay?” Robby asked.

Nate stopped instantly and looked up at the young man.

“Are you? Should any of us be, after all this?”

“We have to load these deceased onto these flatbed sleds there,” Robby said. “You’re welcome to help or we can talk with you while we work.” Robby gestured back to the group who stopped working to watch the conversation.

“I’d like to know what the hell you’re doing first,” Nate said.

“We’re taking all these people up north,” Brad said.
 

“Why?” asked Nate.

Brad looked to Robby.

“We think we can get rid of the thing growing up there,” Robby said. “If we trigger an immune response, we think we can get it to go away.”

“That’s a hell of an odd thing to say,” Nate said.
 

Robby shrugged.

Brad wanted to argue in Robby’s defense. He wanted to put the young man’s theory in context to convince Nate why he should take it seriously. But the silence seemed to belong to Robby and Nate alone; it wasn’t Brad’s to break.
 

A light breeze kicked up swirls of snowflakes, taking the hard edge off of the fresh footprints. Since Brad arrived in Portland, he hadn’t felt much wind. In fact, he wondered if he’d felt any wind at all. In Portland, everything was still. None of the snow drifted or melted under the perpetually gray skies. Could this breeze be the first breath of air he’d felt in a month?

Nate broke the silence. "Seems like grave robbery to me.”

“They weren’t buried,” Robby said. “And we’re going to inter them up north.”

“In a patch of woods, right?” Nate asked.

“Like he said, you didn’t need to know so they made the choice to tell you a lie. We’re not making any apologies for what we’re doing here. It’s the right thing to do,” Robby said.

“And if I help you move some of those dead, will you explain further what you intend to do with them?” asked Nate.

“Certainly,” Robby said. He turned and swept his arm towards the sled. “After you.”

Nate nodded and shuffled between Robby and Brad. As short-and-stocky Nate passed by, Brad caught a bigger noseful of the man. He smelled like he looked—greasy and sour. Robby and Brad followed him back towards the sled. As they passed Brad’s moving van, Brad looked up to see if Romie was still in the cab. He didn’t see her.

When they’d approached to a few dozen paces from the sled, everyone stopped working and grouped together to greet the new arrival.

“This is Nate,” Robby said.

“Hi,” Nate said, waving.

Brad stepped forward to make the introductions. “Nate, this is Sheila, Lisa, Ted, and Pete.”

“Where’s the other one?” asked Nate.

“Pardon?” Brad asked.

“The thick woman who was with you in the truck. Where did she get to?” asked Nate.

“Oh,” Brad said. “I’m not sure. She must be around here somewhere.”

“I’d like to talk to her again,” Nate said.

Brad glanced around the group to see if anyone else found this statement peculiar. Only Lisa seemed concerned; or at least
more
concerned. Ted’s eyes hadn’t slowed since Nate walked up. Ted scanned up and down Nate’s body, like he was just waiting for the new man to pull out a concealed weapon. Even Pete, who seemed to like everyone, displayed guarded, half-turned-away body language.

Robby broke the silence. "Nate’s going to join us for a bit.”

“We’re hustling these citizens from the truck there over to this sled,” Pete said, pointing.

“Why don’t you help us on the sled?” Robby asked. “We could use a hand keeping all the deceased in one place until we get the straps up over them.”

“Sure thing,” Nate said.

Brad walked with Sheila, Lisa, and Ted over to the truck while Pete and Robby brought Nate up to speed on how they were stacking the corpses. After a brief consultation, Ted and Brad volunteered to carry the bodies from the truck to the sled while the women worked inside the truck. Brad caught pieces of the conversation between Robby and Nate as they worked to pile up the bodies on the sled.

“… and Brad experienced the same thing up his way, but he waited out the first part of the storm.” Robby told Nate. “If you look on a map, you can see concentric circles around where this thing is gestating. In South Portland, you happened to be in the protein-rich area. It’s like the albumen of an egg. In some zones all the biological material was removed, but down in your zone…”

Brad walked away before Robby finished his sentence, but Brad had heard his theories before. Robby related the whole Earth to a giant egg, where the embryo was from an enormous alien species. Before planting its egg, the aliens prepped the Earth by destroying as much of the population as possible and then released antibodies to take care of the rest. Robby equated his plan to scrambling the contents of the egg.
 

When Brad and Ted carried the next body over to the sled, Robby was talking about the antibodies.

“We call them the ‘Elementals’ because we’ve seen solid, liquid, air, and fire. The solid was Brad’s rock monster. I saw the liquid down in New Hampshire and destructive wind. A guy up from Virginia described the fire creatures, and the aether is the thing that snatched up everyone on Thanksgiving Day,” Robby said.

Nate grunted something Brad couldn’t hear.
 

Robby replied, “No, I don’t. But it could be something passed down through oral history from a much earlier time.”

After their last Denny’s dinner, Robby had shared some of his research with the small group. He’d found copies of scientific articles which theorized that a mass extinction had nearly killed off the human race seventy-thousand years earlier. Based on genetic evidence, the worldwide human population had been reduced to just a couple-thousand individuals. Most scientists blamed the earlier crisis on a supervolcano, but Robby showed the group eerie similarities between that event and their current situation.
 

“Why are we bothering with this guy?” Ted asked as he and Brad walked back over to the truck.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s clear to me that Nate is up to no good. Why are we bending over backwards to explain what we’re doing?”

“It’s not terribly strange,” Brad said. “I mean, he’s getting the same information we all got when we signed on, you know? It seems reasonable.”

“But we were already part of the group," Ted said. “We made a conscious effort to seek out other survivors and then form into a network. That’s how we all came together. If this guy was living this close, he must have known there were other people in the area. How many months did he know about us and yet he never tried to make contact?”

The men were now standing back at the truck. Lisa and Sheila dropped another body over at the edge of the moving van and listened to the conversation. Back at the sled, Robby, Pete, and Nate were strapping down a row of bodies.