The Spaceship Next Door (23 page)

“I want to hook up with the end of Main, then the bridge.”

“That’s not near anything.”

“That’s the point. I’m getting you out of town before I do anything else.”

“Ed…”

“This isn’t open to debate. I promised to look after you, and the best way I know to do that is to get you as far away from here as possible. Now get me to the bridge.”

“
S
omeone said
that to me before,” Dobbs said.

Dobbs
, Sam thought.
No wonder I couldn’t get it right, what kind of name is that?

“Who?” Laura asked.

The three of them were still down in the main cabin of the trailer, while the fourth occupant—someone named Oona—marched around on the roof with what looked like a high-powered sniper rifle. The rifle was probably meant for him or someone like him.

She was pacing up there, not using the gun. Sam took this to mean the mob resumed their slow stagger down the hill and was leaving them alone. He would have used a side window to verify this, but their windows were all shuttered with steel panels.

“I don’t know who. He came up to me in the woods.”

“You were on your poop run?”

“How did you know about that?”

Laura laughed.

“Everyone knows about it, Dobbs. We were all wondering why you stopped.”

Sam thought Laura had a really pleasant laugh and a nice demeanor, and she looked really cute. He wasn’t sure if he felt that way about her specifically because she and her friend up top just saved his life or not. Then he decided there was no point speculating, because given the trappings of the room, this woman and the other one were romantically engaged.

Laura was wearing shorts and a basic blue T-shirt, which made her look far more normal than she appeared to actually be, based on what was hanging on the walls. It looked like they owned a small collection of leather armor. They also made their own bullets and rolled their own cigarettes, and collected Penthouse calendars. It looked like they were also keeping urine in jars in the back of the trailer, but he couldn’t be positive.

“Some creeper walked up and asked me, he was like, ‘are you’, and I got the hell out of there rather than figure out what the answer was. I figured it was just some weird guy.”

“How long ago was that?” Sam asked.

“Two, three weeks, probably. Hey, thanks for the save.”

“No problem. I’m supposed to… I just realized I’ve abandoned my post. I should get back outside.”

“Your
post
?” Laura said. “Your position was overrun, you can’t go back out there.”

“It didn’t look like they were interested in anybody here. They were heading toward Main before he interrupted one of them.”

“That was Art Shoeman,” Dobbs said. “Not just
one of them
.”

“Yeah, well it looks like my entire team is out there with him. More reason to get back, the fence is unguarded.”

“I think the ship can take care of itself, soldier,” Laura said.

“It’s Sam. And I have orders.”

“Well, they’re stupid orders given the current situation, Sam. You don’t want to end up being a zombie like your buddies.”

“I think I need to fall asleep for that to happen.”

“Sure, or die.”

There was a knock on the door.

“
Don’t answer that,
” Oona said from above.

“What’s going on?” Laura asked.

“Don’t open the door and don’t let the kid leave. Get up here.”

There was a second and a third knock, and then it became clear these weren’t knocks in any normal sense. Someone out there was banging on the sides of the camper.

I guess they haven’t gone anywhere,
Sam thought.

There was an interior ladder to the roof, which was about the best idea Sam had ever seen in terms of camper design given the current reality. These were a couple of survivalists, and they’d planned well. He appreciated that at any other time he’d have used the word
paranoid
to describe what he was seeing. That word was now
practical
, and it made him think he was exactly where he should be, regardless of his orders.

Then he got to the roof. Laura went up first, with Dobbs slow to follow. Sam got up there last and took one look at the arsenal of weaponry hanging on the reinforced low wall surrounding the rooftop, and a new word replaced
practical
. That word was
militia.
These ladies were a two-person militia, and this camper was definitely built to withstand an attack from other people with guns.

The army, in other words.

Oona was a husky woman in pajamas with kittens on them, still holding a high-powered rifle. The expression on her face made it plain that she was not happy to have him there.

“Look but don’t touch,” she said, referring to the guns. “Those ain’t for you.”

“I’m guessing the barrel end is,” he said.

She smiled. “I don’t think we gamed a single scenario where one of you ended up here with us, so you’re not wrong.”

“Any zombie scenarios?”

“Oh sure, a bunch. What did you mean about falling asleep?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Those people down there aren’t dead, they’re sleeping.”

“So more like they’re possessed.”

“If that works better for you, yes.”

“Why don’t we just wake them up?”

“I dealt with this once before. I’m pretty sure if you do that you’ll kill them.”

“Huh. Well that leaves us with a hairy problem, soldier.”

“How so?”

The camper rocked lightly.

“That’s how so. Have a look over the side.”

Because of the high walls, Sam had to walk right to the lip.

There were at least fifty people out there, and half that number was closing on the camper.

“I didn’t know there were this many people in Sorrow Falls,” he said. “Where are they coming from?”

“Farmhouses,” Laura said. “And the base up the hill.”

Sam remembered the screaming he heard in the background when he called in. At this time of night, probably half the division would have been asleep.

“It’s too soon,” he said. “Unless the zombies are moving faster when we aren’t looking.”

“Or they learned how to drive,” Dobbs offered.

“I’m not saying that’s impossible, but if they could do that they would have driven past us. The ship isn’t their destination. Something downtown is. The guys in fatigues must be from one of the outposts.”

This piqued Oona’s attention. “Come again?”

“The… outposts. We have ten or twelve of them set up in the hills. That’s where the sirens you’re hearing are all situated. It’s for the cordon scenario.”

The trailer rocked again. The people below were trying to knock it over.

“I don’t understand why they’re doing that,” Dobbs said. “Like you said, they were on their way to Main.”

“It’s a threat response,” Laura said. “They’re acting like white blood cells.”

“Because I killed one,” Oona added. “That’s why. What was the cordon scenario?”

“It’s a containment directive, in the event of a contagion, or… well, or this, I guess. It’s to keep all the weirdness contained within the town. The river’s a natural border to the east, but anyone can walk out through the woods north, south and west. The men at the outposts have orders to fan out and put a soldier at each passable point. It’s not impenetrable, but it’s better than nothing.”

Bump
. The camper rocked again.

“Nice to know you all had plans to trap us in here.”

“We would have been trapped right with you. We have no jurisdiction outside the town line, so the perimeter had to be within it.”

“Well, I disagree with you there, soldier,” Oona said. She stepped up to the edge of the roof and looked down at the crowd. “A man standing at the exit is the only one not trapped in the room. Now are you telling me all these people down there are alive?”

“I don’t know if they all are. That woman there, for instance. She’d probably not.”

He pointed out a zombie in a nice dress with no nose and only one eye. The left side of her body was semi-crushed, so she was dragging herself mostly with a working right leg. She was about thirty feet away and heading for the camper, albeit slowly.

“All right, so we’ll call those original recipe zombies.”

Oona took aim with the rifle and fired once, a clean headshot that dropped the woman immediately.

“Dammit, Oona!” Laura yelled. “That’s why they’re attacking!”

“They’re already attacking, and we had to know if the same thing that drops the free-range ones also take out the original recipe.”

“I think you’re mixing your chicken metaphors.”

“Shut up, Dobbs, the one with the gun does the naming.”

“They all stopped when you fired,” Sam said. “They learned what a gunshot means.”

“How could they not know that?” Dobbs asked.

“I mean whoever is running things down there learned it.”

The trailer rocked again.

“Okay, two things,” Laura said. “First off, maybe we need to keep firing guns to get them to stop trying to push us over. Second, we could probably use an escape plan here. I don’t want to know what they’re planning to do to us in a breach, do you?”

“We can hang the outside ladder off the back and hit the field, head for the woods maybe,” Oona said. “The four of us can carry a lot of provisions and a lot of guns. I mean, as long as Dobbs’ poop zombie isn’t out there still.”

Dobbs looked over the field side. “They’re circling around now. We’d have to drop and run in the next minute to pull that off.”

“Not enough time,” Laura said. “We could start wounding them like Sam suggested. They can’t chase us with a bullet in the leg.”

“Shoot to kill and be done with it,” Oona said. “Us or them.”

“Guys,” Sam said.

“Oona, it’s not their fault!” Laura said.

“I appreciate that, but it’s still us or them, and I like us better.”

“
Guys.
Why don’t we just drive away? This thing still runs, doesn’t it?”

T
he headlights drew
attention to the car, but they had little a choice. Ed didn’t know the roads well enough to navigate in the dark, and there were people to avoid besides.

It was also helpful when they discovered other cars on the road. This happened after they made it out of the tiny side streets and back onto Main, at the far northern end and away from the thickest part of the sleepwalking horde.

Annie and Ed decided, en route, to stop calling them zombies and start calling them sleepwalkers, since the latter was more accurate and less terrifying, and also self-justified the decision not to run them over without prejudice. Plus,
the sleepwalker apocalypse
sounded sort of cute.

It was not, alas, entirely accurate, because Annie kept spotting people she knew who happened to be dead.

The other cars were operated by residents who were either not asleep at the right time or were not susceptible for some other reason yet to be explained. The first car they came across nearly killed them, as the driver was obviously not dealing with the reality of the situation well. He cut across a lawn just before they made it to the Main Street intersection, coming within a mailbox or two of sideswiping their driver’s side before swerving into the ninety degree left-hand turn ahead.

By the time Ed got the car to the same point, the other car was already ahead by three blocks. Its taillights disappeared at the bridge.

“They have the same idea,” Ed said.

“I hope he made it to the bridge and didn’t skid off the side of it, he wasn’t all that in control.”

“Must be his first apocalypse.”

The speeding car did make the bridge, but he didn’t get a lot further. They caught up at the end of a line of traffic.

The northern bridge was one of the more impressive parts of the town, even if few thought much of it outside of its functional use: connecting the northern tip of Sorrow Falls with the town of Mount Hermon by spanning the river. It was impressive, more for its hundred-foot drop than its three football-field length, and certainly not for its two-lane width.

There was no traffic heading into Sorrow Falls at this time. Instead, both sides of the solid double-yellow line were filled with cars attempting to get out, and honking loudly to see if that helped somehow.

“What’s going on up there?” Annie asked.

“The sirens. Dammit. I wasn’t thinking.”

“What?”

“The lockdown. The army closed the checkpoint.”

“It’s a wooden barrier. They can just run through it. Are they worried about their cars at a time like this?”

“No, but the men with the guns on the other side of the wooden barrier might be a concern.”

“They
wouldn’t
.”

“Annie, that’s what their orders are. C’mon.”

He turned off the car and climbed out.

“You think we can sneak past?” she asked, getting out.

“No, but maybe I can talk them into letting you through.”

“You just said—”

“I know, but I have to try. The… sleepwalkers think you’re the person they want. Maybe getting you out of town will end this whole thing.”

He took her by the hand and started along the narrow space between the cars and the guardrail. There was a nominal sidewalk on each side of the bridge that was really only wide enough for one person at a time. The railing was more impressive, with a fence on the other side of it that was suicide-prevention tall.

It was a lot cooler on the bridge. The wind along the river cut right across and reminded Annie that her clothes still weren’t entirely dry from getting caught in the downpour earlier. That seemed like it happened ages ago, and to someone else.

Behind them, other people were starting to get out of their cars. They’d started a trend. She was pretty sure this wasn’t a good kind of trend.

“What did you mean, they
think
I’m the person they want?” she asked.

“I believe they’re mistaken.”

“That’s sweet, but what makes you say that?”

“Just a theory I’m working on.”