Instinct (11 page)

“We’re getting closer,” she said. “We found a decent car, a battery charger, and plenty of gas.” She ticked the items off on her fingers. “Romie and Pete are trying to get a generator started so we can charge the battery enough to start the car.”

“It’s not standard?” Brad asked.
 

“It is, but there are no hills nearby, and the thing is really heavy. I don’t think we’d want to push it far. How’s he doing?” she asked, pointing at Lyle.

“Same,” Brad said.
 

Lyle was clamped to the step stool by ratcheting straps. Brad stood when Lisa approached Lyle, but he wasn’t too concerned. She raised his eyelids one at a time and flashed her light in his eyes.

“He has a concussion for sure. He might have internal bleeding or brain damage. I think we should stay here until he stabilizes. He’s not a threat to us in this condition, and he’ll die if we leave him.”

Brad took Lisa’s arm and guided her away from Lyle.
 

He spoke softly to spare Robby from hearing. “I don’t know what he did to Robby, but the boy is still pretty traumatized. Maybe we should just let nature take its course with this guy. We have no reason to be kind to him.”

She pulled away from his hand. “Brad, this is a person. If you haven’t noticed, there aren’t very many of us left. I refuse to abandon my humanity.”

Brad was about to argue, but they both turned towards the door when they heard the engine.
 

“Is that the generator?” Lisa asked.

“No. That’s a car.”

Headlights swept through the garage windows. Robby moved over to the door.

CHAPTER 8: NEW YORK

J
UDY
WOKE
WHEN
THE
sunlight hit her face. The inside of the vehicle was stuffy and warm. The windows were closed, but she could hear the bustling activity going on outside her little coffin. She pushed up from the seat and blinked to clear her eyes.

It looked like there were people everywhere. When she focused, she realized she recognized them. It was their walk that made them look different than before. Instead of hunching, like they were expecting hail, everyone stood upright and walked tall. She couldn’t believe this was the same group of people. She let herself out and took a deep breath of fresh air. It smelled different here. Everything seemed clean.
 

Judy walked by a fence, where a bunch of people were lined up. They watched three women out in the field. They were trying to round up a bunch of horses. The animals paced away from the women. They held their heads and tails high as they ran. Judy kept moving.

A big patch of dirt next to the house was the focus of another group. Some stood and pointed while others were on their knees, pulling weeds.
 

Still more people were taking bags of supplies in through the front door and walking them down the hall. Judy moved through the scenes, not addressing anyone. She walked around the house and followed a shed to a big barn. The doors were wide open. Judy walked down the concrete floor of the aisle. All the stalls were empty except one, which held Cincinnati. Judy grabbed a handful of hay from a bale. She gave it to the horse through bars of the stall.

“How come you’re in here while everyone else gets to play outside?” she asked him. “That doesn’t seem fair.

“They think he’ll get sick,” a voice said. Judy spun around to find Ron. He was coming out of one of the other stalls. He set a big rake down and leaned it against the wall. Ron wasn’t the type of person she expected to see in a barn. He usually kept himself away from manual labor and things that might dirty his clothes. He wore boots that were laced over the cuffs of his jeans.

“Why would he get sick? Are the other horses sick?”

“No. It’s something to do with the grass. I guess he hasn’t been able to graze or something. Too much grass all at once will make him sick. I heard he’s going to go out for a couple of hours this afternoon.”

“That sucks. He’s been carted around in a tiny metal box for all this time. Now he’s boarded up into a wooden one. He’s destined to be a prisoner, I guess.”

“Luke rescued him from starvation, so I guess he’s lucky to be alive at all. But I guess we all are.”

“Luck? You call this luck? I call it being too stupid to get the hint. We’re clearly not supposed to still be alive.”

“I guess,” Ron said. “I signed you up for one of the bedrooms tonight. Luke said you should get first pick because you were in the party that made first contact and you didn’t take a room last night. Everyone else who wants to stay inside is on a waiting list. Everyone else is in a tent.”

“I don’t want a room. I’m not sure I want to go back in that house again.”

Ron frowned. “You’re going to have to eventually. You’ll be on kitchen duty before too long.”

“We’ll see,” Judy said. She had no intention of setting foot in that kitchen again. “Is this the chore you drew? Are you the stable boy now?”

“No,” Ron said. “I actually pulled gardening, but I traded with one of those prissy kids. He didn’t want to clean horse shit and I didn’t want to get dirt under my nails. This isn’t so bad. I get to wear gloves and use a long rake.”

“Perfect,” Judy said. She looked out the back door of the barn. A little road, that was little more than two ruts in the lawn, ran between the fences and curved off into the woods. “What are the other chores they’re doling out?”

“I don’t know. I saw water hauling. Some people were setting up a laundry at the creek. Some of Luke’s militia setting up a perimeter, so their must be some guard duty.”

“Hunting?”

“Not that I know of. There was some talk about heading into town to raid the grocery store. I haven’t heard about any hunting trips though.”

Judy nodded.

“Have fun with your horse shit,” she said. She wandered back towards the house.

She stopped when she got to the fence where a group was watching the women try to round up the horses. They weren’t even getting close to the animals. As soon as they swept them into a corner, the horses would break through the gap and run to the opposite end of the pasture. People next to Judy shouted encouragement and suggestions. Nothing was helping. Judy wasn’t watching the horses. She was scanning the other side of the fence, where the woods began. She saw him eventually. One of Luke’s bearded men was leaning against a tree.
 

They’d dealt with defectors before. Luke’s group didn’t take rejection well. At the beginning of their trip, Luke had lectured about the importance of forming a cohesive unit. He had warned them that if even one person decided to go their own way, the group would fall apart. He didn’t have to convince everyone. He only needed to convince enough people to enforce his plan.

A young man named Harrison had been the first to try to leave. Harrison was seventeen, and he’d joined up with Luke’s group in western Maine. Living alone had made Harrison quiet, impulsive, and independent, but he was drawn to the traveling group and came alone willingly. By the time they got to Vermont, the kid was miserable. He couldn’t submit to Luke’s authority.

When Harrison tried to leave, he had the sense to do it quietly. The boy waited until midnight and then snuck off. Luke’s militia caught him a few hours later and dragged him back. People were just waking up when the bearded men marched Harrison back to the convoy of vehicles. Judy had expected that everyone would feel the same way she did—let the boy go if he wanted to leave. If he wanted to go out on his own, that was his decision.
 

The group voted on Harrison’s fate. The ballots were numbered. Although not every ballot was cast, the ones turned in were unanimous. Harrison was forced to stay with the group. He was escorted at all times and his hands were cuffed while he slept. The next time he tried to leave the group, he was shot. The injury wasn’t fatal, but the resulting infection turned out to be. Harrison was the first and last person to attempt to leave the group.

He was not, however, the only person they’d lost. The snatchers—things that made a person disappear into the sky—had taken a couple, and they’d lost several to what the kids called “water monsters.”
 

Judy watched the guard on the other side of the fence until she saw him signal down the way. She followed the direction of his signal and found the next guard. They likely formed a perimeter around the farm.
 

Judy walked back to the house.
 

On the back porch, the lists were posted. She found her own name on a list entitled, “Garbage Detail.” She scanned the “Supply Run” list until she found the right name. Judy asked around until she found the woman setting up a tent in the side yard.

“Vera!” Judy called. The woman was connecting poles and trying to feed them through a slot in the tent.

“Hi, Judy,” Vera said. She wore an exasperated smile and frowned at her own hands.

“Let me help,” Judy said. She straightened the nylon so Vera could feet the pole through the slot. “I saw you were on the supply run. When is that, tonight?”

“Yeah,” Vera said. “They’re waiting until sunset in case there are any water monsters in town.”

“Creepy,” Judy said.

“Yeah. I’m not looking forward to it. I’d be okay if it were like the third or fourth run, but it sucks to draw the very first supply run into a new town. It doesn’t even seem like we need to go. There’s a full pantry in there. Seems like we could live for a while on that.”

“There’s a lot of us now,” Judy said. She looked around at the other tents in the yard. As they’d moved from Maine to New York, they’d picked up new recruits every day. They were all volunteers. Nobody was forced to come along if they didn’t want to, but most did. And—as Harrison’s story had reinforced—once you joined, you were in for life.

“I was just thinking that last night. It was different when we were on the road. You didn’t know how far the column of vehicles stretched. Once we all collected here, I couldn’t believe how many people we had.”

“How do you feel about garbage?”

Vera laughed. “How do you mean?”

“I’m supposed to be on garbage duty. It’s not that tough. According to the sheet you just have to take garbage from the bins there and drag it off to a big pit they found over there in the woods. There are guards, so it doesn’t seem risky at all. I just have a thing about garbage. It’s not my favorite.”

“I guess I don’t mind it,” Vera said.

“Trade?” Judy asked. “I’ll go on the supply run if you take my garbage duty.”

“I don’t know. Are we allowed to trade?”

“Ron said he traded stables for gardening. I saw some other names exchanged on the lists. I think it’s okay.”

“I’d feel better if we cleared it with Wallingford, or one of the others.”

Judy knew what Vera meant by “others.” Nobody ever said it aloud, but people cleared things with the bearded men.

“I’ll clear it,” Judy said. “If you don’t mind, that is.”

Vera thought about it for a minute. She finished feeding the pole through the slot.
 

“Deal.
If
you help me finish setting up this tent.”

“No problem,” Judy said.

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She rode in the passenger’s seat and watched the two tiny red lights. Richmond, the bearded man behind the wheel, kept their vehicle glued to the rear bumper of the car in front of them. They had replaced the brake lights with two pinpricks of light, and drove in a tight column.

Richmond wasn’t the man’s real name. Most of the militia men had taken to calling each other by the name of the town where they were born. He reached for his mug and Judy tensed. All the interior lights were off, so she couldn’t tell how fast they were going. Every time he took his hand off the wheel, she felt like they were going to crash.
 

She cracked open her window. Richmond spit into his mug. He was chewing tobacco, and using the mug as a receptacle for his spit. The spearmint smell made Judy’s stomach turn.

The column of vehicles swept around a bend and Judy saw the headlights of the lead vehicle. They were passing between a narrow gap of abandoned cars.

“How far is this place?” she asked. She was wondering if it might be wise to look around for something to vomit into.

“Don’t know,” Richmond said. He spit again.

The red dots of light flashed and they began to slow. Judy’s stomach clenched and rolled.

The radio crackled and a voice came through the speaker. “Parking. Escape formation.”

Richmond slowed and the tiny lights swept off to the right. Judy saw the lights of the other vehicles. Richmond spun the wheel and then backed into his spot. They fanned the vehicles so they were pointing in different directions, in case one or more should be blocked in by something. The backs of the vehicles pointed at the store.

Judy waited and turned on her headlamp when Richmond turned his on. They gave off a dim red light. It was just enough to see by. Judy grabbed her bag.