Instinct (26 page)

“This is ancient knowledge?” Lisa asked. “Then how did you get it?”

“God told me,” Romie said.

“Did God mention where we could get something to eat, or maybe some water?” Lisa asked.

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They walked through the night, and didn’t discuss stopping until the sky behind them began to brighten. The road they walked closely followed a brook. Every few turns through the hills, the brook passed under their road through a big culvert, or a bridge spanned the rocky stream bed. Brad glanced over the railing on one of these bridges and he could smell the running water. It smelled fresh, and made him even more thirsty. They’d already exhausted the bottles of water they’d carried from the ranger station.

Brad wondered if this running water was keeping the killer liquid at bay, or if maybe they’d finally passed out of the range of the stuff.

“We can stay here today,” Romie said. She pointed up into the dark. Pete and Lisa pointed their flashlights in the direction of her arm, but what she was pointing to wasn’t obvious.

“God told you where we should stay?” Lisa asked.

Hardly a mile seemed to pass without Lisa making one of these snide comments. It was a role reversal for the women. Usually Lisa was the calming factor as Romie made the remarks.

“No,” Romie said. “I saw the sign.”

Brad read it. “BB&B. Fine Dining. Accomodations.”

The bridge to the place hardly looked capable of supporting automobiles. It was wood planks, and barely wide enough for two cars to pass each other. On the other side of the brook, the driveway wound up the steep hill on a series of switchbacks. The building was bigger than Brad expected. Four stories of windows looked north at the top of the hill. Pete tried the door and found it open. Brad went in last. He glanced east at the pink sky. It was going to be a cloudy morning, by the look of it. From what he could see, mist covered the lower elevations.

“Oh, god!” Lisa called from inside.
 

Brad rushed in.

He found the others clustered in the kitchen. They stood around the center island. There, on top of a slate countertop, a serving dish held an appalling display.

The thing was surrounded by candles that had burned down to their holders. Milky wax pooled around each one. The silver platter was tarnished with a dark gray patina. The turkey looked like it had melted and congealed too. It was surrounded by a black fluid that had dried out and turned to hard enamel. A stack of plates stood at Brad’s end of the counter, as well as carving tools. A colony of mushrooms was growing form the crusty remains of the stuffing.

“Who’s hungry?” Pete asked.

“That’s disturbing,” Lisa said. She turned away and began rummaging through the cabinets.

Brad looked over to the stove, where various pots likely held the rest of the Thanksgiving meal. They all turned at the popping sound from the corner. Pete turned with a bottle of sparkling wine foaming in his hands.

“I think it’s warm,” he said. He sloshed the foam from the top of the bottle and took a swig. He handed the bottle to Romie. She set it down on the counter and Pete moved around her to retrieve it.

“We’ve got crackers and cans,” Lisa said. She pulled out some food and carried it to the adjoining dining room after surveying the cluttered counters in the kitchen. She came back and opened drawers until she found a can opener. Robby went to a tall cabinet next to the refrigerator and immediately found some drinks. He carried those and followed Lisa.

After a second, Lisa appeared in the doorway.
 

“You guys ready to come in here? We’re still waiting on your story, Romie,” she said.

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Brad stuck out his hand and waited. Pete got the idea and handed over the can opener. The candle nearly went out when Brad’s hand brushed near it, but it wouldn’t have mattered too much. There was a decent amount of morning light leaking in through the windows by then.
 

They sat at a formal dining table, set for seven. They had napkins, silver, and glasses. Everything was set except for the plates. Apparently, dinner was going to be served buffet-style, in the kitchen. Brad’s aunt had always served formal dinners this way. It kept the clutter from her small table and almost gave the impression that servants had delivered the food to the waiting feasters. This table was huge though. It could have easily supported the big turkey as the centerpiece. Brad kept glancing at the chandelier. The cut glass seemed to dance in the flickering candlelight.

“We’re still waiting for your story,” Lisa said.

“Fine,” Romie said through a mouthful of canned peaches. “God forbid we actually get to eat something.”

“Eat while you talk,” Lisa said. “We’re not fancy here.”

Nonetheless, Romie finished chewing and swallowing before she spoke.
 

“It was those symbols that Robby showed me,” Romie said. “I don’t know how to explain the feeling. When we get someplace safer, you’re just going to have to try it for yourself. I really think you should.”

“But what happened?”

“Relax. I’ll tell you,” Romie said. She laid her hands down on the table, like she was going to rise. Instead, she took a big breath and began her story. “As I looked at those squiggles, the world felt like it was pulling away. The book became like a dot of light in the center of my vision, and everything else was black. The black parts just grew and grew until the book just looked like a tiny little pinprick of light, right at the edge of what I could see. It was like I was looking at the night sky, but there was only one star.

“And that’s what it was, too. I understood as the light began to get bigger and bigger. I was zooming in on that little dot of light. It was like I was a spaceship and I was getting closer and closer to that star.”

Brad had an unsettled feeling. He had been just about to spoon a black olive into his mouth when she said this. He paused and waited with his spoon halfway to his mouth. Olive juice dripped from his spoon to the fancy lace tablecloth.

“A dark dot passed between me and the star. I knew it was a planet, and I figured I should be heading for it, but it zoomed by me. As I got closer, and the star got bigger, I realized that the planet was going to return. I was going to reach its orbit just as it came back around. I was right. The star was like the size of a softball and I saw that planet again. It got bigger and bigger as I moved closer. Then, I started to get nervous that I was coming in too fast, and the planet was coming too fast at me.”

“Is this important?” Pete said. “Is it important to your story?”

“Shhh!” Lisa said. “Let her talk.”

“I realized from the colors, that the planet was Earth. I even saw the moon come around. It didn’t look exactly like Earth though. I knew it even at a distance. The land was too green, and the oceans were too washed-out looking. There were a ton of clouds, but I could see the continents and they were wrong, too. They were all packed together.”

Robby was slurping a mouthful of cold soup when he spoke. “Pangea.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Romie said.

“What’s Pangea?” Pete asked.

“All the continents used to be packed together,” Lisa said. “Like back when the dinosaurs were around.”

“You went back into time?” Pete asked. He had a big smile on his face, like he was about to make a joke.

“Shhh!” Lisa said. “Keep going, Romie.”

“I kept going, fast as ever, and the Earth went around again. I went through the atmosphere and thought I would burn up for a second. I didn’t.”

“You got all this from that diary?” Pete asked.

Lisa pursed her lips and looked like she was about to shush him again, but Romie answered the question.

“You know how instinct works, Pete?”

“You just feel it,” he said.

“No, I mean how it works.”

“I guess not. I guess I’m not entirely convinced there is such a thing.”

“Neither do I,” Romie said. “Understand it, I mean. I do believe there is such a thing as instinct. You put a nipple in front of a baby, and it knows how to suckle. Your house cat still knows how to hunt a mouse, even though nobody taught it. They all wriggle their butts, right before they pounce. It’s like they’re trying to get their hindquarters settled in before they’re about to make a run at something, and they all do it.”

“I suppose,” Pete said.

“So where do we get the suckling behavior? How do cats know to wiggle?”

“Genetics,” Pete said.

“You could call it that. Or you could call it instinct. What’s the difference? However we get it, some behaviors seem to come standard with all people. What I realized when I was swooping down to that planet, is that there might be even bigger instincts we have locked away in our consciousness. They might need a trigger to release them, like maybe a set of symbols. You look at those, and suddenly you remember something that’s burned right into every human being.”

“In the DNA?” Brad asked. He set down his spoon and let the rest of the liquid and the olive slosh back into the can.

“I don’t know,” Romie said. “It could be in our DNA, or maybe there’s some other mechanism that we don’t know about. Maybe there is a spirit that’s made of energy or something. Maybe there’s a soul that gets attached to your body when you’re born. Maybe that soul has a collective memory that transcends a single life.”

Pete made a derisive buzzing sound with his lips.

“Shhh!” Lisa said, again.

“Or maybe it was God. I think that’s what it was. I think God was talking to me. He was letting me know what’s going on.”

Nobody said a word to that.

“I swooped down low and saw all the wonderful creatures of that old world. It was older than people. Maybe it was older than mammals. I don’t know for sure. There’s a huge gap in what I was able to see. I was hovering over the ground, like a view you’d see from an airplane, and everything below me started to change. First, the forest began to change. Everything happened in fast motion. The greens became washed out and the new color spread with little veins coming out from the center of a circle. Then, in the very center, a black spot formed. The black turned to bright white and that began to spread. Clouds formed above it, like hurricane, but I could still see through them. I saw the ground below turning white and I realized that it was snowing under those clouds. In the very center of the circle, a bright light appeared.

“Next thing I knew, I was on the ground, just outside the circle of snow.” Romie took a second to collect her thoughts before she continued. “I moved inside the circle. I saw some of the dinosaurs. All the other animals were gone already, but some dinosaurs were still there. They don’t look anything like we portray them. Some of them had feathers that were so fine they almost looked like fur. They had bright colors.”

“Were you scared? Lisa asked.

“No,” Romie said. “They were all dead. Maybe a few of them had lived through it, but those were smart enough to hide. All the ones I saw out in the open were dead. Some had popped out eyes, like we saw with all those people.” Romie looked up at the ceiling for a second. Some memory brought a quick smile to her face. It disappeared as quickly as it had come. She shook her head. “You start to realize that it’s the overload of the nervous system that makes their eyes pop out. It’s like they’ve been hooked up to too much voltage.”

“But why?” Lisa asked.

“They’re going to be puppets later,” Romie said. “Their bodies will be marched in to the baby when it gets far along enough to need the meal. They’re being prepped for that purpose. Some will stay behind and be processed by the liquid, but most will trek to the center when the blue lightning starts up.”

“Wait a second,” Pete said. “Didn’t you say it’s safe towards the center? Are you moving us towards the thing that wants to eat us?”

“We’re at a different stage of the process right now,” Romie said.

Brad looked over at Robby. He’d been mostly silent since he had woken up from his weird coma, but somehow he seemed particularly silent now. He looked like he definitely had something to contribute to the conversation, but he was holding back for some reason.

“It’s like last year,” Romie said. “The snatchers come in bulk and it begins snowing. We haven’t even gotten to that phase on this go around.”

Pete ticked off his objections. “But we already have the killer liquid. We already have the snatchers. The world has already fucking ended, if you hadn’t noticed.”

Romie shook her head. “It’s not the same. You tell him, Robby.”

All eyes turned to the boy. He was pressing the sides of the candle, near the top. The wax walls were soft and the hot liquid spilled down the sides.

“Go ahead, Robby,” Pete said. “You knew about this stuff before, right? You had us take all those bodies to the light, and a lot of what she’s saying seems to fit your theories from back then. What’s your opinion?”

Robby didn’t look at Pete as he answered. “I think we should hear Romie’s whole story before we cloud it up with other ideas.”

Pete gave a shrug with a resigned nod. They looked back to Romie.

“There’s actually not much more. My vision is incomplete and I knew it was when I was having it. It’s like there was a jump in the movie, like a whole reel was missing. Maybe the guy from the ranger station was missing a chunk of his DNA. Maybe that’s why he killed himself. Anyway, in my vision, I flew to the center of the circle and time advanced. I watched the ball of light send out its tendrils. It makes a whole network around itself to bring it what it needs to develop. And here’s the hardest part to understand: all the times it has been to this planet were the same exact time for it.”

She let that sink in.

“You said that like it should mean something,” Lisa said.

“It does. Shit, I don’t know how to explain it. Imagine you’re in a room, and someone takes that room and plugs it into different houses. When the residents of the different houses open the door and see you inside, they think they’re looking at someone in their house. But, to you, it’s all the same room. You get it?”