Instinct (2 page)

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.”

✪
 
✪
 
✪
 
✪
 
✪

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.

“Does that strike you as odd?” Lisa asked. She was pointing off to the side. She stopped the van about a third of the way across the bridge.

“What?” Pete asked. He peered into the darkness.

Lisa turned the wheel and gave the van some gas. The headlights swept to the right until they lit up the bridge’s railing.

“I don’t see anything,” Brad said.

“Those cans,” Lisa said. She pointed again.

It still took Brad a few seconds to see it. Where the railing met the bridge surface, there was a grate to let rain wash down into the river below. Clustered there, Brad saw four or five soda cans. They would have rolled away except the uneven surface of the grate held them in place.
 

“Wrappers, too,” Pete said.

Pinned into crevices around the cans, Brad saw candy wrappers.

“Litter?” Brad asked. “I don’t know…”

He was cut off by a sound from behind him. Brad was still kneeling just behind the front seats of the minivan and he spun on his feet. The sound was coming from Robby’s mouth, which hung open. Romie was sitting behind him. She leaned forward.

“What the hell?” Pete asked.

Robby’s moan coalesced into a word. “Noooooo,” Robby said.

“Robby? Can you hear me?” Brad asked. He reached out and touched the boy’s hand.

Robby’s eyes were still dead. They stared forward, focused on nothing at all. “Back up,” Robby said. His lips barely moved.

“What?” Pete asked.

The world fell away from Brad. He braced himself on the seats as he dropped. With a bang, the van came to stop and he crashed into the floor.

He spun to see what was happening.

Lisa pushed the shift lever into reverse and gunned the engine. She wasn’t looking backwards. Her eyes were locked straight ahead at the bridge that was tearing itself apart in front of them. A crack split through the center of the bridge, separating them from the other bank. The half they were on had fallen several feet.

The structure of the bridge groaned. Brad realized that it sounded just like Robby’s moan.

With a thunk, the world dropped another half of a foot. The van’s tires squealed on the pavement. It couldn’t get traction on the sloped pavement. Just as they began to creep backwards, the bridge dropped again and the tires lost the ground they had gained.

Pete pushed open his door and twisted in his seat to poke his head out.

“We have to get out!” Pete yelled over the noise.

Lisa turned the wheel and the tires caught. They jerked backwards and Brad fell to his ass. He grabbed for Robby’s seatbelt and used it to pull himself upwards. The boy’s mouth was still open and his eyes stared at nothing. The van hit something behind them and Brad fell into Robby. He grabbed Robby’s seatbelt buckle and tried to release the belt.

Lisa revved the engine even higher. The tires screamed and ground at something. She thrashed against the wheel, like she could force the van to move.

“Come on,” Pete said. “We have to get out.”

Brad reached for the van door and pulled up on the latch. The door was heavy and he was trying to push it uphill. He got his shoulder into it and raised it a couple of feet. He reached for Robby and pulled at the boy’s shirt. Even in his unconscious state, Robby was bracing his legs against falling. He resisted Brad’s pull.

“Help me,” Brad said to Romie. She was working at her own seatbelt.

“I can’t get it undone,” Romie said.

Brad heard the rushing water as Pete’s door fell all the way open. He heard the engine wind down as Lisa gave up and threw it into park. When she took her foot off the brake, the van slumped forward. The door crunched into Brad’s shoulder. By tugging on Robby’s arm, he managed to pull him to the side a bit. Robby slid towards Brad.

Pete rolled the door open and Brad pulled Robby around.

Through the window he saw Lisa tugging at the other sliding door. She couldn’t open it.

The bridge dropped again with the sound of tortured metal.
 

Brad pulled Robby from the van and nearly tumbled backwards down the slope of the bridge span. He held Robby with one arm and caught himself on the passenger’s door that Pete had left open. He heard the muffled crunch of glass as Lisa used a tool to smash through the van’s window.

“Robby!” Brad yelled. “I know you’re in there. You have to help me if you want to live.”

His voice was almost lost in the sound of the rushing water below.

Pete was holding the sliding door open and reaching his other hand out to help Brad climb the slope of the bridge.

With a loud “tock” the van dropped away a few inches. Brad crashed backwards into the passenger’s door again. Pete couldn’t help and hold the door open at the same time. He let the door slide shut and reached for Brad’s hand.
 

They locked arms and pulled. Brad got Robby going up the slope as the van made the “tock” noise again. Brad understood what was happening—the mechanism that was supposed to stop the van from rolling when in park was giving way. The weight on Brad’s arm decreased. Robby was moving on his own.

Linked together, the three climbed.
 

The van slipped again and Pete fell to his knees. He began to slide towards the widening gap behind them. The bridge surface began to vibrate as the rushing water tugged at the collapsing structure. Brad took the lead and pulled at both Robby and Pete. They climbed as the bridge wilted beneath them. Pete got back to his feet and let go of Brad’s arm. They threw themselves forward to grab at the crack that opened where the bridge met the bank.

Behind them, the van picked up speed and skidded down into the water. Brad couldn’t look back. He knew that if he lost concentration on pulling himself forward, he would be the next to slip back into the water.

He dragged Robby forward until the boy’s hands found the crack. With both arms unburdened, Brad was able to climb the steep surface. He reached forward and his hand couldn’t get enough friction on the horizontal road. He tried to dig his fingernails into the asphalt. Beside him, he sensed that Robby and Pete were doing little more than hanging on.

A arm shot out of the darkness and grabbed his hand.

Brad looked up to see Romie.

✪
 
✪
 
✪
 
✪
 
✪

They climbed up onto the road and crawled away from the edge. Lisa helped Robby, and Romie gave a hand to Brad and Pete. When they got to safety, they all collapsed to the pavement. When a piece of the bridge groaned and tore away, Brad scrambled back another couple of feet.

“Flood damage?” Romie asked.

“Maybe,” Pete said.

“Maybe not,” Lisa said.
 

“Why do you say that?” Brad asked.

“There were cans and soda wrappers,” Lisa said. “It looked to me that someone had waited up there for a while. Maybe they were standing guard while someone sabotaged the bridge.”

“Why would someone do that?” Brad asked.

“Maybe the killer liquid, and fire monsters, and snatchers aren’t the only things to be afraid of around here,” Pete said.
 

“How did you get out?” Brad asked, turning to Romie.

Lisa held up something in the darkness. Brad didn’t have to see it to understand. Lisa had given them all the same tool. It was something she had found in a convenience store. One end had a plastic cap protecting a sharp point for smashing car windows. The other end had a recessed blade you could use for cutting through a seatbelt.

“How did he get out?” Romie asked. She pointed to Robby.

The boy still had the same empty look on his face. He was staring straight forward and sitting next to Brad.

Brad reached out and shook the boy’s shoulder. He didn’t respond.
 

“I don’t know,” Brad said. “But he definitely moved on his own when his life was threatened.”

“Speaking of which,” Pete said. “We can’t stay here. It’s too dangerous to be outdoors like this.”

They began to push to their feet.

“I need more maps. We have to get all new gear. All our traveling food was in there,” Pete said.
 

Lisa put her hand on his elbow and Pete trailed off. She was staring off into the night.

“What?” Pete whispered. His voice was carried away by the sound of the river.

“I saw something,” Lisa said. She pointed up the street.

All Brad could see was the dark traffic signal. It was bobbing and swaying in the wind. The buildings were dark. The windows were black rectangles cut into the sides. On the left, the big windows looked like they belonged to a general store. On the right, Brad saw a place he imagined had sold appliances or furniture. There were one or two cars parked in the spaces. Brad wondered how far up the hill they’d have to walk to find another suitable vehicle. It wouldn’t be comfortable to pack all five of them into one of the little cars he saw. Plus, they would need to find a set of keys.