Extinct (52 page)

Instinct

CHAPTER ONE

New Hampshire

“Y
OU
READY
?” P
ETE
ASKED
. His voice was just a whisper.

Brad held up a finger. He pushed aside the curtain and looked across the yard. There was just enough starlight for him to see the minivan parked at the curb. He was more concerned with the concrete walkway that led from the front door to the sidewalk.
 

Brad turned and pointed to his eyes. He then motioned for Pete.

Pete crawled over to the window and looked. When he drew close, Brad could smell the fear on Pete. It was the same scent he smelled on himself whenever he took off his jacket.

“That was there,” Pete whispered, motioning out the window. “It’s runoff.”

“Don’t step on it. Just in case,” Brad said. The last three words brought back a memory of his grandfather.

Pete moved back around to the boy’s feet and Brad took the shoulders. They exchanged a glance and lifted. The boy wasn’t heavy, but when they moved through doors or had to make a dash across a lawn, it was easier for two people to carry him. Pete backed up to the door and held the boy’s ankles with one hand while he opened it.

After looking back and forth, Pete moved. They barely slowed for the steps down to the walk. The only time Pete hesitated was when he reached the thin stream of water that ran across the concrete walk. It was a thin dark streak in the starlight. He took a giant step over, moved a little, and then waited for Brad to do the same. The door of the minivan slid open as they arrived. Pete and Brad handed the boy through to the hands that came out from the darkness and then climbed in behind him.

Brad slid the door closed most of the way. He waited for Romie to start the wheels turning before he latched it.

“I need light,” Romie said.

“Keep moving,” Pete said. “I’m on it.”

He ducked down under her legs before he turned on his little flashlight.

Brad helped Lisa lift the boy into place so she could snap a seatbelt over him. Lisa put her hands on his young cheeks and lifted his head up. She looked into his blank eyes and held his head for a second, like she was trying to balance it on his neck. After she was satisfied that it would stay up, she let go and moved into her own seat. Brad sat in the third row.

“Got it,” Pete said. When he popped the fuse back into the socket, the headlights came on.

“That’s better,” Romie said.

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Brad looked out his window at the passing houses. They were all dark. Some of the front doors were open, inviting him into their blackness. He tried to imagine someone asleep in one of the houses. It was impossible. It felt like these houses had been empty forever, and would always be empty. They had a derelict, abandoned look, like empty skulls. There was no life inside.

They rarely talked when they traveled. Romie would slow whenever she saw a streak of liquid across the pavement. Pete would either motion for her to drive through, or signal that they should find another way around. They made terrible progress. Sometimes they would have to backtrack a mile or two just to find another path. Pete always navigated, and he always found another route when their road was blocked by the killer liquid, but sometimes the diversion would add hours to the trip.

Brad tried to sleep. It was impossible. Every time his eyes drifted shut, an alarm would go off in his brain. He felt like he was falling and he would shoot his legs out to catch himself. His eyes would fly back open and his body would pulse with electricity.

“Stop kicking my seat,” Lisa whispered.

“Sorry,” Brad said.

When the horizon started to glow orange, Pete directed them uphill. It always felt safest at the higher elevations. They had to get in a building before the liquid started to move again. It moved more in the daylight.

Romie pulled up in front of a tall three-story house. Brick stairs were cut into the hill. The door that led out the side porch was wide open.

Lisa unbuckled the boy.

“I got him,” Brad said.

“Are you sure?”

Brad nodded.

Pete, Romie, and Lisa went around back for the bags and Brad pulled on the boy’s armpits as he backed out of the van. He crouched on the curb and pulled the boy closer until his waist was on Brad’s shoulder. He pulled at the side of the van to stand up with the load.
 

Brad was panting by the time he got to the top of the stairs. Lisa came out of the house after dropping off their bags. She helped Brad carry the boy into the house. They laid him out on a day bed in the den.

Lisa pulled a bottle of eyedrops from her pocket and squeezed two drops into each of the boy’s eyes. She closed his lids and pulled a blanket over him.

“He needs a bath,” Lisa said.

Brad nodded. “We all do, I think.”

“Good point,” she said. She walked out and left him there. Brad sat down in the chair behind the desk. He didn’t mean to fall asleep. He was looking through the window at the brightening sky when he drifted off.

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“You want some soup?”

Brad opened his eyes to bright sun. His eyes went first to the boy, who was in the same spot where they’d left him. He blinked and saw Lisa standing in the doorway. She was holding out a steaming bowl.

“We should get him on the toilet,” Brad said.

“He can wait a few minutes,” Lisa said. “He’s not squirming yet.”

Brad nodded. He stood and propped himself up on the desk until his legs would support him. They were nearly numb from the chair. He took the soup and thanked Lisa.

“What day is it?” Brad asked. He lifted a spoon. It was the vegetable soup with the little letters in it. His mouth already anticipated the salty taste.

“Six,” she said.

“I can’t do it,” Brad said.

“It will be tough,” Lisa said. She looked over to the boy. She walked alongside his daybed and laid a hand on his forehead. She pulled back the blankets to expose his upper body before she left.

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The kitchen table was covered with Pete’s maps.
 

There was no reason to keep their voices down, but Brad couldn’t help it.

“I know we said one more week,” Brad said. “I can’t do it.”

“I feel the same way,” Pete said, “but we have to. Robby would be the first person to say it.”

“It’s the same as Ted,” Romie said. “It’s the same as with you.”

“No,” Brad said. He shook his head. “It’s not the same. He’s right in there, and he’s still alive. If we put food in his mouth, he swallows. If we sit him on the toilet, he goes.”

“Take a closer look at him, Brad,” Romie said. “Even if he woke up, I doubt he’d be able to walk. He’s wasting away.”

“You carried him up the stairs on your shoulder. Do you think you’d have been able to do that two weeks ago?” Pete asked.

“Maybe I’m getting stronger,” Brad said.

They sat in silence for a minute. Lisa stood and went back to the cabinets. She sorted through the contents again, looking for anything else they should take with them.

“I’ll stay here with him. This place is up on a hill. I don’t see any damp pavement around. When Robby wakes up, we’ll come track you down,” Brad said.

“How do you think you’re going to find us?” Pete asked.

“Forget about Robby waking up,” Romie said. “Who’s going to stop you if you try to walk out into the daylight? You think just because we’ve traveled a few miles, those things aren’t around to snatch you up into the air? How long ago was it that Pete tried to walk away? Three days ago?”

“Four,” Lisa said.

“Just because nobody has tried to walk off in four days, you think it’s safe?” Romie asked.

Brad waited to see if anyone else would try to convince him. He gave his final argument. “I saw Robby do this before. Granted, it was only for a few minutes, but I saw this exact behavior. Judy called it his ‘deep cycles’. When Robby is considering a really complex problem, he sometimes disappears into himself. The good news is that when he wakes up, he has the solution to the problem. Don’t you want to know what the solution is?”

Nobody answered. Brad tried to look in their eyes, but they all looked away.

Pete was looking down at his maps when he answered. “I guess I’m not confident that our current problems have solutions, Brad.”

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When they began to pack up the van, Brad pulled Robby’s body from the bed. He lifted him to his shoulder and maneuvered through the door. His hamstrings ached from the morning’s exertion, but he had to admit that the others were right—Robby was only a fraction of his former weight. He would chew and swallow when food was presented, but his body burned right through the energy. Brad could feel the heat radiating off of the boy’s head. His brain was like a furnace inside there.

Romie slid open the door when Brad came across the walk.

“I thought you were staying,” Romie said.

“He has until tomorrow,” Brad said. “I’ll wait and see the next place.”

Lisa was driving. She waited for Brad to buckle Robby in before she pulled away from the curb.

With each mile west, they found more hills. As long as Pete could keep them out of the valleys, they seemed to find less killer liquid that they had to avoid.
 

Brad decided to break the silence. “Pete, you need to tell me how you can see the difference between normal water and the killer stuff,” Brad said.

“It’s not hard,” Pete said. “The killer stuff looks alive. It pulses. It has a heartbeat.”

Thirty minutes passed before Pete was able to show him an example. Brad moved forward and squatted between the front seats. Pete pointed through the windshield at a dark streak across the road. At first, Brad thought Pete was making it up. There was a hill on the right side of the road, and it looked like rain or snowmelt had run down the hill to cross the road. Lisa turned and looked behind them. She was nervous to back the vehicle away from the dark patch of asphalt, but Pete told her to stay put.

“We’ll go if it comes at us, but Brad needs to be able to see this,” Pete said.

“I’m more worried that we’ll get boxed in,” Lisa said.

Pete ignored her. “There! Do you see it? It’s easy with the headlights.”

Brad shook his head. He didn’t see anything unusual about the dark spot at all. It just looked like a dark patch of road where water was flowing. There could be a thousand reasons why it was there—spring runoff and blocked drainage was the most likely suspect.

He narrowed his eyes and let the world blur. There was something there. It was really subtle, but there was something there.

“Do you see it?” Pete asked.

“I don’t know,” Brad said. “Maybe. I guess I need to see regular water now, so I can be sure.”

Lisa backed away. Brad went back to his seat.

Brad was trying to keep himself awake when he saw Pete motion for Lisa to stop again.
 

“What about this one?” Pete asked.

Brad moved forward again. He did the same trick. He let his eyes blur and waited. He couldn’t see anything. “I don’t know. I don’t see anything. I think the other one had a shimmer to it. I don’t see it with this one.”

“Neither do I,” Pete said. He motioned for Lisa to pull forward. They’d all grown accustomed to taking Pete’s word for it. He had a perfect track record for spotting the killer liquid. This time, he didn’t sound completely confident. Lisa’s knuckles went white on the steering wheel as they crossed through the puddle.

Nothing happened.

“See?” Pete asked.

“I think so,” Brad said.

“You just have to be extra careful about wishful thinking,” Pete said.

“What do you mean?”

Pete leaned over with a folded map. He triggered his headlamp and Brad blinked until his eyes came into focus on what Pete pointed to.
 

“You see this bridge?” Pete asked. “We would have to go all the way up here if there wasn’t a way to get to this bridge. And we’re on the only road that goes down into this part of the valley. So that line of water we just crossed was pretty important.”

“Why?”

“Because if it hadn’t been crossable there, we’d have to go all the way up here to get around,” Pete said.

“Oh, I see,” Brad said. “You really didn’t want to have to sidetrack like that.”

“It would have taken hours,” Pete said. “So I have to be extra careful. Maybe It thought I saw something, but I just hoped I didn’t. You’d do best to err on the side of caution.”

“Got it,” Brad said.

They were rolling down into a small town. Out here, a lot of the towns were just collections of buildings that surrounded a convenient place to put a mill on the river. Brad had seen a dozen of them—they all looked the same. The road widened with slanted parking spots on each side. They passed under a dark traffic signal.

Lisa slowed at the train tracks. Where the rails cut through the road surface, it was difficult to tell if the dark area was just a shadow, or maybe a thin line of water. Pete examined it through the windshield and declared it safe. They pushed on towards the bridge.

Pete turned around in his seat. “I don’t want to get too comfy, but it almost seems like there’s pattern to that killer liquid. I’m going to start marking it on the map. It might be a regular grid.”

Brad looked out the side window. The river was running fast and high. All the snow melting in the northern part of the state
 
was finding its way down to the ocean. The dam near the brick mill was overrun. The bridge sat high enough over the water that it seemed like it should be safe.

“Guys?” Lisa asked.

Pete turned around.