The Hole (17 page)

And the light ruptured its bounds and ripped through the crowd surrounding them. The crazies bent or tumbled as it passed, like they’d been hit low by something heavy. And from each one, just as he’d seen in the cave when Uncle Jeffry and his flock had done their sacrifice,
some thing
came out of them, shifted out of them, so that a shadow figure was next to each crazy, bent or prone as well. The figures faded within seconds of the light’s passing, spreading out and growing less dense, like smoke. The crazies died then without sound or sign of pain. They simple collapsed to the ground and stayed there.

The woman in red was the last to go. As the light moved through her, she stopped her mad tearing and looked back at Evajean, fear and defeat in face. Her mouth opened and she said something Elliot couldn’t hear. Above him, Evajean responded, “I know. I’m sorry.” And the woman fell, her body empty.

The light dissipated, and the dog whined deep in its throat. The golden cube landed on the grass next to Elliot and then fell after it, her legs crumpled up underneath her, her head bumping his shoulder. He grabbed her, pulled her into his arms. Evajean sighed and her eyes slid closed.

The two of them didn’t talk as they explored the town. Hope bounced along behind while Elliot and Evajean looked for anything that might help them get their stalled journey going again. A moderate rain had kicked up, extinguishing most of the fires beyond the still raging church. Elliot also had a hunch-one he didn’t tell Evajean about-that the force that had killed the crazies had also snuffed out much of the flames.

Evajean had eventually come to with Elliot still sitting in the middle of a vast circle of bodies, radiating out though the whole of Nahom. She’d blinked at him, coughed a few times, and asked what happened, shock overcoming her as she noticed the wreckage of crazies. He comforted her as best he could but his careful recounting of the events over the prior minutes pushed Evajean toward hysteria. Eventually she told him to stop, that she had the gist of it and didn’t need to know the details, not now.

At the present, however, picking their way over bodies that thinned out as they got further from the epicenter of… whatever it was that had happened, they each focused on this new search, hunting for options to prevent having to walk all the way to Colorado. Nahom had supplies: canned goods, tools, and guns. But without something to carry it all in, they’d only be able to take a minimum, perhaps not enough to make it out of the mountains-or even just back to the road.

Evajean insisted they split up to make better time. Elliot was against the idea initially but when he realized the separation was only to allow her time to collect herself, he went along with it. She took Hope and headed around to the buildings on the opposite side of the church from where they’d spent most of their time.

As he wandered through another house, this one slightly larger than the cottage they’d stayed in, he finally allowed himself the opportunity to go over everything that had happened since the crazies had first come down the hill to interrupt the funeral. It’s still Evajean, he told himself. Whatever all the rest of that was, it’s still her. But he wasn’t so sure and that made him queasy. She’d been sick-not for long, true, but there was no doubt it had been the same sickness that’d claimed so many. And then she’d found the box, or the box had found her.

That was all secondary, however. The display in the circle, her strange words and the sudden death of all those crazies; those images kept driving through his mind. He recalled the look of calm power on her face as she’d given her speech to the woman in red, and the power that’d come from the box as she held it high.

Her words.

He couldn’t even remember all of them now. They were lost in the terror of that moment. But he had heard her call this the waypoint-she’d told the crazies to leave it-and that word, when examined in the light of this series of coincidences, consumed his focus.

Elliot pushed bags of flour and cornmeal around in a cabinet, but he wasn’t paying attention to them. His mind was gathering and sifting.

The only two people left in what felt like a very large chunk of Virginia happened to be across the street from each other. They happened to be run off the road, separated, and yet each found the same mountain town, a town so small and isolated it might not be on any but the most detailed maps. And that town was full of living, breathing, uninfected people who had somehow managed to find Elliot when he’d been some distance away, a captive of the crazies.

It was all so much. How had he and Evajean found Nahom? Was Nahom the waypoint Evajean had spoken of? The waypoint of what?

Elliot wished for a moment that he’d been more into that conspiracy theory stuff, piecing together explanations comprised of alien abductions, Masons, reptilian royal families, and Scientologists. If his mind had more experience doing that kind of thing-finding hidden connections-he might be able to solve this. But the simple fact was that it overwhelmed him, the disparate facts and situations blurred in his thoughts by the emotions-love, loss, terror-they were constantly buffeted by. You’re not smart enough, he thought. Clarine could have done it, she had that kind of quick mind, but you’re just not smart enough to force the fragments into a whole.

The trouble was, because he couldn’t figure it out, Elliot was starting to distrust her. She’d told the folks of Nahom he was out there, sent them out to find him. She’d spent hours with them before he arrived, hours she might used to plan. Was it all, then, just a show for his benefit? Had she arranged this? That was crazy, he knew, but the thoughts wouldn’t go away.

She was calling from outside, shouting to him. “Elliot!” he heard from some distance. He put down the can of pears he been turning absently in his hand and came out onto the porch. She ran toward him, waving her arms. She was smiling though, even laughing, so he waited for her to come to him.

“Elliot,” she said when she was close enough to not have to shout, “you’re not going- It’s- God, Elliot, they have a truck! I found a truck!” She was panting, grinning, and her face flushed. “It works,” she continued, slightly calmed down, “and there’s gas. There were keys in it and I tried and it worked!”

The dog bounded clumsily to her side, out of breath, its tongue flopping out the side of its mouth. “But how are we-” he started, but she cut him off, waving her hands in excitement.

“That’s the best part. There’s a road. Right back there. It’s wide enough for the truck and I bet that’s what it’s for because there are tread marks. I think we can get out of here!”

The dog barked and happily attacked her foot. Evajean giggled.

She was right. The truck, an ancient vehicle rubbed clean of paint, like a dust bowl relic too far east, was tucked into a wooden shack too small for anything else. A wooden door on metal slides had been pushed aside a couple of feet by Evajean, and they both had to put their full weight into it to get it the rest of the way.

The truck had a wooden hold bolted to the flatbed, large enough to haul nearly all the supplies they’d need. Elliot whooped when he saw it, pounding his fist against the barn’s wall in excitement. They could get out of here, quickly and easily, and with everything it’d take to make it to Colorado. So long as there were gas stations or abandoned cars, their trip west would be an easy one.

Like it started out as? his brain tried to remind him, but he pushed that aside.

They spent until morning loading the truck, taking food and jugs of water, guns and bullets. They’d defend themselves this time, from whatever the western road might hold. The sun was over the hills when Elliot sat down in the driver’s seat and Evajean climbed in on the other side, holding the dog and still smiling. She’s using this, he thought. She’s using this terrific flash of luck to not have to deal with what had happened in the small hours of the night. But they’d have to deal with it, have to talk it through once Nahom had dropped far behind. Because that just wasn’t the kind of thing you can agree to just ignore. Not in a world as mad as this one. He’d let her do it for now, however. He couldn’t see the point of doing otherwise.

True to her word, the truck started without issue, the engine loud and heavy, but smooth enough to prevent worry. They pulled out of the barn and took the wide dirt road as it curved out of town, following a gentle assent angled along the slope to the west of Nahom. After a mile or so, it joined with a paved road, barely a single lane in each direction, and then on to the highway. As soon as they hit that, Elliot’s breathing became easier. That hated place was so far behind now and they were safe from whatever had been left in the burning church or the caves and tunnels underneath. Evajean had fallen asleep, the dog as well, and he drove in comfortable silence. The truck didn’t have a radio, but he didn’t mind. It was enough to listen to the wind and watch the mountains go by.

It’d had a full tank when they left and there were a few large cans of extra gasoline in the barn. These they’d loaded into the back of the truck, tucked in near the center of the supplies to keep from banging around. It was more than enough to get them through until evening and then, once they’d had a full night of rest, they’d worry about finding more.

Small talk was all they managed for the next ten hours, Elliot driving and Evajean playing with the dog or looking out the window. He wanted to know more about what had happened to her back in Nahom, but she wasn’t ready. She didn’t tell him that, but he was aware of it, nonetheless.

The day’s drive took them out of the mountains along I-64, through West Virginia, and into Kentucky. They would’ve made Louisville, except that the truck couldn’t do much over fifty without starting to shake. Elliot keep it at forty-five to be safe. They saw other cars occasionally-not very many, however. But the strange thing, which Evajean pointed out more than once, was that there just weren’t any people. Every car they passed was in the road or along its side, empty, doors sometimes open, but often not, windows occasionally broken but mostly whole. It was like everyone had just got out and gone somewhere, not seeing the need for transportation anymore.

“Where do you think they went?” Evajean asked, after they’d eaten a lunch of canned meat and green beans pulled from their stores in the back of the truck. “They’re just gone.”

Elliot, physically tired but still on a mental high from the previous night, rolled down his windows another few inches. “Could be anywhere,” he said.

“No. I mean, where’d they all go? There’s a lot of people in the United States, Elliot. Like three-hundred million. And a lot of cars, too. And they’re just not here. When people got sick, back in Charlottesville, when they got sick they died. This didn’t vanish. Why aren’t there bodies?”

“I’m glad there aren’t,” he said.

“I am, too. I mean, god, can you imagine? If this whole highway was filled with them? I don’t know if I could do it, if I could make this drive.”

“If
I
could make this drive…” he said, and she laughed.

“You thought a truck this old was going to be an automatic?” she said. Then she drifted back to her original line of thought. “I guess what I mean, Elliot, is, do you think they went somewhere?”

“Instead of dying?”

“Yes.”

“Like the crazies,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Where could they have gone?”

“I don’t know,” Evajean said.

“That’d be a huge crowd. To just up and leave.”

Of course, he thought about this while they’d driven. Whenever his mind wasn’t tumbling through Evajean’s behavior and the death of the crazies, the near complete emptiness of the world was what it occupied itself with. If all the people who hadn’t died had gone crazy and if the crazies had an instinctual grouping behavior, like a school of fish or a pack of animals, then they could be anywhere. Three-hundred million was a lot, sure, but you can really pack them in if need be. Everyone could be standing in a huge clump in Oklahoma.

But that just brought up the next question. If he accepted that most people hadn’t in fact died, but instead become like the crazies who’d attacked Nahom, why hadn’t it happened to everyone? And why, with the exception of the lone woman in the Wal-Mart, had nobody gone crazy in Charlottesville? Why was Clarine dead instead of like the woman in red?

“Is it the hole?” Evajean said.

“Is what the hole?” Elliot said, his attention only now returning from his own thoughts.

“Where they went. All of them. Do you think when they took people to the hole, took the bodies, they did it because that’s where they were going anyway? The ones that didn’t die?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “Evajean, I really don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“No.” He looked over at her. “No, that’s not what I meant. It’s only that it’s been a mess these last days and I’m tired. Exhausted. You know when the last time we slept was?”

She thought about it. “Thirty hours ago? Something like that.” She yawned, like the question had reminded her of her own weariness. “We could pull over, get some sleep.”

“I can go a ways before that,” he said. “Driving is actually nice. I’m not being chased.”

She smiled. “Yeah, that is something.”

And so he drove. Another two hours, however, and his eyes were too heavy to manage, his concentration drifting. He told Evajean it was time and she was more than happy to call it quits for the day. A full night’s sleep, far from the horrors of Nahom, was the most enticing thing Elliot could imagine now. And he was so bone tired, he’d sleep without dreams, turning his mind off from the rush of questions that’d plagued it all day.

He took the next exit off the highway that promised lodging. Right next to the interstate was a Super 8 motel, and he pulled the truck into the parking lot, stopping in front of the main office. “If there aren’t any keys,” he said, “we’ll just break the window.” Evajean nodded.

But there were keys. The office was empty, but clean and orderly. Wherever the nation’s population had gone, they hadn’t seen the need to stop at a motel along the way. Behind the large desk was a bank of keys. Only a few of the slots were vacant. Grabbing one on the first floor, Elliot and Evajean left the office.