Instinct (32 page)

“And what…” Brad didn’t get far into his question before the man interrupted him.

“And who would survive after that sabotage? Possibly only the saboteur himself.”

“Are you suggesting that somehow I had a hand in killing off the vast majority of the world’s population?” Brad asked. He wavered on his feet. His head felt light. Brad reached back and steadied himself on the wall. From its cold feel, he deduced that it was some sort of painted metal.

“Depressed. Lonely. Mourning a wife who divorced you and then died while you were engaged in efforts to reconcile with her. Reaching out to old friends in desperation. Hallucinating. You were not the picture of mental health, Brad.”

“How exactly do you suppose I facilitated the apocalypse?” Brad asked. “With whom did I collude?”

“That’s what I’ve brought you here to answer,” the man said.

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Robby’s feet seemed to fall automatically in rhythm with the others. He blinked a few times and glanced left and right. They were all shuffling up the gentle slope through the leaves. Their glassy eyes barely seemed to register the trees as they moved between them. Robby almost called out to Pete, who was on his right, but he decided to keep his mouth shut.
 

The sky was brighter ahead. It looked like the woods opened up to a clearing. Lisa extended a hand as they walked forward. Robby saw someone jogging along the edge of the woods. The person’s head bobbed as they ran.

“Hello?” someone called from up ahead. Pete shook his head and stopped. Robby, Romie, and Lisa, kept shuffling.

More faces appeared at the edge of the woods. Some were bearded, like the men who had forced them from the car. But these bearded men looked different. Their eyes didn’t have the same cold intensity. They looked slightly frightened.

“Hello? Who’s there?” someone else asked.

“Don’t be an ass. It’s just people. Go greet them,” another voice said.

Soon, one of the bearded men slung his gun over his shoulder and pushed his way through the brush. He stood at the edge of the woods and waved a welcoming arm to the shufflers. Robby watched as Lisa and Romie seemed to regain their senses. Pete trotted up behind them as they moved towards the waving man.

A smile broke across Lisa’s face.

“Hello?” she called.

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Robby sat at the end of the picnic table and thanked the man who brought over the plates of food.

“You guys look half-starved,” the server said with a smile.
 

Another bearded man—this one looked soft, like an insurance salesman, or an accountant—came over and sat next to Lisa. She smiled at him as she used her fingers to raise a tiny potato to her mouth.

“Where did you get potatoes?” she asked.

“We grew them,” the man said. “My name is Hampton.”

They made their introductions. Pete spoke through a mouthful of canned beans. Romie went last.
 

“There aren’t enough pollinators. You know—bugs. You have to use a tiny paintbrush to move the pollen from one flower to the next. It’s a pain,” Hampton said.

“It’s delicious,” Lisa said.

“Where’s Brad?” Pete asked.

“I thought you might be able to answer that,” Hampton said. Concern furrowed his brow. “The men who found you in the car said that there were five of you. Then, when you came up the hill, only four. A couple of people are looking in the woods. I’ll make sure more people join the search.”

“Wait,” Romie said. “What happened?”

“It’s that little valley down there,” Hampton said. “It’s a geographic oddity. Gas collects down there in that little valley and it crowds out the oxygen. That’s why we sent those men down to get you out as soon as we spotted your car approaching. Any longer down there, and you might have suffocated.”

“Brad!” Romie said. She stood up and tried to untangle her legs from the picnic table.
 

“He’s not in the dangerous part. We’ve got a watch on that. If you didn’t see where he went, then he probably just got confused and wandered off,” Hampton said. “They should have escorted you up here, I’m sorry. I think that people get sensitive. They don’t want you to think that you’re being arrested or something, so they usually just point people at the hill and let them make their way up to the camp on their own. Don’t worry. We’ll find your friend.”

Romie settled back down to the bench, but she didn’t look like she was going to make herself comfortable.

“I’ll leave you guys to your food,” Hampton said. “We’ve made up some rooms in the house for you. We like to welcome our new arrivals with a little luxury. After that, you’ll be assigned duties and tents if you decide to stay. We encourage you to stay, of course.”

They picked through their food as they listened. Hampton excused himself and moved away from the table. They were one group amongst many. People moved between the picnic tables with their plates. The four of them received a few glances, but their presence didn’t seem to surprise anyone.

“What happened?” Pete said. He had been moving like he was hypnotized. Now he blinked and glanced around.

“Welcome back, Pete,” Romie said.
 

“How did we get here?”

Robby lifted his napkin to his face before he spoke. “Drugged. We were drugged.”

“What?” Pete asked. It was his turn to try to climb out from the picnic table. He banged a knee but got one leg out. He swung it around to the other side of the bench before he fell back to a seat.

“They seem friendly enough,” Lisa said. “They’ve found a bunch of new people.”

“Who has?” Romie asked.

“Luke’s group,” Lisa said.

“These are the people that went with Luke? I don’t recognize anyone,” Romie said.

“You wouldn’t,” Lisa said. “You have a terrible memory for faces. Look—there’s that guy, Frank.”

“Where?”

“The one with the beard.

“Tons of them have beards,” Romie said. “Pete has half a beard.”

“I have a headache,” Pete said. “Where are you going?”

He seemed to know that Robby was getting up to leave before Robby had even swung his legs out from under the table. Robby understood why Romie and Pete had experienced so much trouble trying to stand. Since he had been sitting there, his legs had gone to sleep.

“Just going to take my plate up,” Robby said. He pointed to a place where people took their plates. There was a can for compost right next to a tub with soapy water. Robby followed a woman up and waited his turn to rinse his plate.

She smiled at him as she finished and it was his turn. Robby took the opportunity. “Hey, do you know a woman named Judy? Judy Densmore?”

The woman pushed her hair back and glanced up as she thought. “Judy… I think so. Twenties? Brown hair?”

Robby nodded.
 

“I think her tent is…” The woman turned and glanced a couple of directions before she settled on one. “I would try the little camp between that garden and the barn.”

“Thanks,” Robby said. He glanced back at the table before he followed the direction she had pointed out. His compatriots were back to their stupor—smiling and lifting food to their mouths. Robby stuffed his hands into his pockets and followed the fence that ran next to a line of trees. The sun was just beginning to heat up the morning. Robby wondered what time it was, and how much time they had lost. Someone had stolen hours from them. It wasn’t quite daylight when they’d found the washout in the road, and now the sun was up.

Movement caught his eye and Robby saw the horses grazing in the pasture. In the driveway, several Land Rovers were parked. The paint under the gas caps was stained pink. The roofs were scraped and dented from hauling gear. On a couple of the vehicles, the headlamps had been painted black except for a thin strip in the middle. Robby took all this in as he watched people making visits to the porch of the big house. Regardless of where their paths began or ended, people veered up to the porch, consulted the clipboards hanging from the clapboards, and then continued on their way.
 

Robby decided to mimic their pattern.

He slowed his pace so he would arrive after the couple in front of him had checked the clipboard and left. He found lists of chores for the day. Each list began with the name of the person in charge and then listed out who was assigned that chore. Robby scanned three clipboards until he found Judy’s name.

He put the clipboard back on its hook and looked back and forth across the little settlement. They had three areas of tents, plus the house. Tractors and vehicles were stored in the driveway next to the house. He knew where they took their meals, and he could see stacks of wood over near where they had an outdoor kitchen set up. He blinked at the sky and wondered how this camp would change if they experienced any heavy rain. Or snow. What would they do if it began to snow and didn’t stop?

He returned his attention back to the lawn. He was looking for the most-traveled path, and he found it. It ran down a set of ruts that looked like it used to be a road. In the woods, he saw what must be the latrine area. That was Judy’s assignment for the day. Robby followed the path.

Robby passed a group of seven people coming the other direction. They seemed reasonably clean. Everyone’s clothes were beginning to look a bit worn, especially at the ankles and the cuffs. They didn’t smell as bad as he expected. When a breeze carried their odor to Robby, it wasn’t offensive. He suspected that his own stink might have something to do with that. When everyone’s hygiene suffered the same consequence, would anyone notice? Only one or two of the people even seemed to register Robby’s passing. They must be accustomed to seeing new faces, he thought.

As he walked by a barn, Robby saw a boy hauling a bucket to one of the stalls. The boy was probably is own age. Robby nodded, but the boy barely seemed to notice him. He was focused on not slopping the contents of the bucket before he could lift it into the stall.

He drew closer to the woods and realized his assumption had been correct. They’d erected a simple latrine at the edge of the woods. It was a long shack with a few improvised doors down the face. It might have been a chicken coop, or some other utility building before being conscripted into latrine duty. The doors of the empty stalls had little towels over the handle. When someone went inside, they took the towel with them, indicating their occupancy. Robby slowed and glanced up and down the tree line. There had been too many names on the list for the duty to simply be maintenance or cleaning. He was looking for a whole crew of latrine workers, which meant they might be digging a new facility. He spotted it before too long.
 

The lucky ones were clearing brush. The hard work was going on underground.

Robby approached. The new latrine site was a good fifty yards from the old one, and it was going to be twice the size. Robby slowed and backed up to let a pair of men carry a large log up the path a bit. They added it to a pile.

Robby went forward until he could see over the lip of the new hole. It was already seven or eight feet deep, but people were busy digging. He spotted her hair first. She flipped it back and then brushed dirt off her face with the back of her hand.

“Judy?” he asked.
 

She froze. Before she turned around, she set her shovel down carefully. Her eyes were blank for a second before they lit up.

“Robby!”

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They sat on the fence. Robby looked out over the pasture to where one of the horses was rolling in a brown patch of dusty dirt. Judy was picking much darker dirt out from under her fingernails. She moved one towards her mouth, like she was going to chew on it, but she stopped and intertwined her fingers.

“You guys didn’t call me on the radio,” Judy said.

“We tried that first night and didn’t get you. After that, I guess you were too far away to pick up the signal,” Robby said.

“What happened?” she straightened up and waited for his reply.
 

Robby took his time, like he was organizing his thoughts. “A lot of stuff happened. We collected the bodies and took them up north, into the light. It was very much like that dream I had. You remember that dream?”

She nodded and looked back down at her feet.

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,” she said.

“You believed,” Robby said.

She met his eyes for a second, and then looked away.

“You believed, but you didn’t want to be a part of it. It’s okay. I understand,” Robby said.

“Just because you were right about what happened, doesn’t mean it was the thing we were supposed to do,” she said.

“I know. You’re right.”

“Maybe we should have just stayed out of it. Maybe it was just nature’s way of moving forward, you know?”

Robby shook his head, but didn’t say anything. They had lived together for a while, like foster kids who become as close as siblings when placed under the same roof. All that time, they had only really disagreed about two things—her smoking, and whether they should fight back against the force that threatened humanity.
 

“You quit smoking?” he asked.

“How did you know?”

“For one, you would have had one by now. Second, your color looks much better. Third, your fingernails look like you’ve been digging most of that latrine with your hands. Fourth…”

“Okay, stop!” she said, laughing.

Over near the latrine site, one of the men looked up. He wore a thick beard. Robby was starting to get the impression that he was the one in charge of the digging. When Robby looked back to Judy, the clouds had returned to her brow.

“Luke’s gone,” she said. “It’s not common knowledge.”

“Oh,” Robby said. “I never really had a problem with Luke. He and I just had a difference of opinion about what to do.”

“You didn’t know him,” Judy said.

“I met him twice. I think I had a pretty good idea of what kind of man he was.”