Instinct (3 page)

“Where?” Pete asked.

“Up there,” Lisa said. “On the left. Second floor, fourth window down.”

The windows above the stores could have belonged to offices or maybe even apartments for the owners. Brad counted out the windows, but he didn’t see anything there.

“What did you see?” Pete asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It might have been a candle, or a flashlight.”

“Maybe it was just a shooting star reflecting off the glass,” Pete said.

She didn’t say anything. Brad saw her head shaking in the dark.

“Let’s go find a car,” Pete said. He started to walk.
 

Brad turned to Robby, who was still sitting on the pavement. He reached down under the boy’s shoulders to lift him. At Brad’s touch, Robby rose on his own. Brad found that he could just tug on Robby’s arm and the boy would walk. Brad kept his eyes on the window as they walked by the building.

CHAPTER 2: NEW YORK

J
UDY
THOUGHT
:
T
HEY
HAVE
no idea how dangerous he is.

Luke was a chameleon as he moved through the group. He swaggered over to a group of bearded men. These were the type of men who always seemed to have a rifle slung over their shoulder. To them, Luke projected a brash confidence that resonated with their rebel spirit. When Luke moved on to talk to the two family-types—people who had clumped together into more or less nuclear families—he dropped the swagger and adopted a thoughtful, mellow demeanor. With the cynical young people, he had an acerbic wit. With the older group, Luke appeared both proud of and offended by the state of the world around him.

“Well?” a voice asked from behind her.

Judy jumped. She fumbled her hands to her shirt pocket to reach for a pack of cigarettes that wasn’t there. She had quit days before, but her hands hadn’t gotten the message yet.

“Well what?” she asked. She turned to look at Ron.
 

“Do you think there’s any chance we’ll get there today?” Ron asked. “Or are we going to spend another night under the stars?”

“Either way we’ll be under the stars. You don’t think there will be housing for everyone, do you?” she asked. She folded her arms to keep her hands from searching for another pack.
 

Ron shook his head and swept his eyes through the parking lot. They were waiting for the raiding party to come out of the grocery store. Judy hated this part of the day. It was always miserable. Waiting was terrible—after what had happened in New Hampshire, she felt on edge all the time. The only thing worse than waiting was when she was picked for the raiding team. Going into a dark store, full of rotting smells and a shifting shadows, felt like robbing a grave.

“Look at him,” Ron said as Luke moved on to the next faction of their group. “It’s like he’s running for office.”

“I can’t tell if you’re attracted to him, or just afraid,” Judy said.

“Both,” Ron said. “Why wouldn’t it be both. Try to act normal. Here he comes.”

“Hey Luke,” Ron said. There was just a tiny bit of flare at the end of his greeting. Judy heard just the tiniest hint of flirtation there.

“Ron,” Luke said. He put his hand on Ron’s shoulder and steered him away from Judy. She heard Luke conveying some contrived task to Ron as they walked away. This was Luke’s process—he wouldn’t say, “I need to talk to Judy.” He would come up with some reason to pull Ron away and double back. Judy was tempted to walk away before Luke could return. She wasn’t interested in dealing with a chameleon at the moment. She stuffed her hands into her pockets—still no cigarettes there—and turned towards the bushes.

“Judy,” Luke called. When they’d first met, Luke had poured on his southern accent. Back then her name sounded more like “Jew-uh-dee,” coming from his mouth. Judy had a low opinion of souther drawls, and somewhere along the way Luke had figured that out and adjusted accordingly. Now he hardly sounded southern at all when they chatted.

“I was just…” she said. “Bathroom, you know?”

“Sure,” Luke said. “Just give me a second, would ya?”

“Sure,” she said. She tried to swallow her sigh and make it sound like a normal exhale. She was somewhat successful.

“I wanna get your opinion on morale. How do you think everyone is doing with this whole trip thing?” Luke asked.

“The whole ‘trip thing’?” Judy asked.

“Yeah,” Luke said. He lowered his voice. “People trust you. What can we do to keep them moving for another few days?”

“Few days?” Judy asked. “I thought we were going to get to your ranch today or tomorrow? Why would it be another few days?”

“You know how people are,” he said. “We have to under promise and over deliver at this point in time. I’ll say a few days and then ev’ryone will be excited when we show up.”

“Just be honest, Luke,” she said. “You need to be honest.”

“Oh sure, sure,” Luke said. “I’m an open book.”

“Really?” Judy asked. “Let me ask you something—why have you had guys with guns around the camp every night? What happens if I decide I want to leave? Would they shoot me?”

“What?” Luke asked. He looked sincerely shocked by the concept. She wondered if swaggering Luke—the one who had been talking to the bearded rednecks—would also be shocked. “Those men were doing everything they could to keep everyone safe. If we have to post a thousand guns around this group to keep us safe, that’s what we’ll do.”

“Have you seen anything out here that could be stopped with a gun?” Judy asked.

“I don’t pretend to know all the dangers we face, Judy,” Luke said. He was in full politician mode now. “If you get a chance, could you maybe chat up some of the others? Maybe give them some more hope to cling to? I know a little change in morale would carry us a long way.”

“Sure, Luke,” she said. She wondered how many other people he’d tasked with the same mission. By nightfall they would all be trying to convince each other of the same thing.

Luke left her and walked off towards the front of the store. He passed by the bearded men again and that swagger came back, if only for a few seconds. He patted one of the men on the back and they shared a laugh. Judy reached for her cigarettes again.

Ron jogged up and pulled in a big lungful of air to catch his breath.

“What did I miss?” Ron asked.

“Nothing,” Judy said. “He’s running for president again. What did he have you do?”

“I was scouting the road to make sure our escape route is clear.”

Judy nodded.

“He pretty much admitted that we aren’t going to get there for a few days,” Judy said.

“What?” Ron asked. “Two days ago, it was supposed to be yesterday. Then yesterday he said today. Are we getting farther away from this place?”

“What makes you think there’s a place?” Judy asked.

“He wouldn’t drag us across four states to some made up Eden, would he?” Ron asked. “Tell me we haven’t been hunting snipe?”

“I don’t know what he’s doing,” Judy said.

“I’m going to go ask him. This is absurd. Why can’t he just show us on a map where he’s taking us to? He can’t keep it secret forever. We’re going to live there, right? I’m going to go ask him.”

Judy put a hand on his arm before Ron could walk away.

“Don’t do that,” Judy said.

The raiding party burst from the doors of the store with shopping carts loaded down. It was the same thing they always got: dry goods, bottled drinks, and cans. The people pushing the carts looked like a strange collection of train robbers. They had bandanas pulled up over their noses to help filter out the smell and mold. Judy went to help load the food into the vehicles.

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Judy woke to a single shot. She knew the sound. The people who carried guns always seemed to find some excuse to fire the weapons. They claimed that they had to adjust the sights, mostly. But it was dark out. She raised a hand to block out the light from the overhead lamp. The Land Rover bonged a tiny chime to alert everyone that the driver’s door was open.

“What are we doing?” Judy asked the woman in the passenger’s seat. Her name was Erika, and Judy had only talked to her a few times.
 

“There was a fire up ahead,” Erika said. “I think someone shot at it.”

“Shot at a fire?” Judy asked. She didn’t wait for an answer. She spilled out into the night and moved away from the line of vehicles to get a better perspective. She saw a line of Land Rovers with their doors open and people walking towards the front of the line. This wasn’t protocol. At the sign of a threat they were supposed disperse and collect again at the last rally point. Judy glanced behind herself. There was a thin strip of woods and then a neighborhood. It would be easy to hide in one of those houses until the group gave up on her. She wouldn’t be the first person to desert the group. She took a step backwards.

Ron appeared at her side.

“What are they doing?” he asked.

“I have no idea,” Judy said.

“We shouldn’t all be wandering around. It could be dangerous.”

Judy nodded.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go find out why everyone is crazy.”

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Luke had climbed atop the horse trailer and someone handed up a pair of binoculars to him.

“I see six. Maybe seven. Listen,” he said. He took the binoculars away from his face and looked down at everyone. “These things go after anything mechanical as far as I figure. We go down there on foot and I think we can skirt right around them.”

Judy bit her lip. The group was silent. She looked around at her fellow travelers and wondered why they weren’t all grumbling at the thought. They’d been on the road a long time in those same vehicles. They had a process.

“Don’t you think we should find a way around them, Luke?” Frank asked. If Luke was the president, Frank was the VP in charge of asking obvious questions. When Frank expressed a dissenting opinion, it was always so Luke could argue it down and shut the book on the opposition. This, on the other hand, sounded like an honest question.

“No,” Luke said. “We’re too close, Frank.”

Luke began to slide backwards to the ladder bolted to the side of the trailer. He lowered himself down.

“I’ll take Cincinnati and scout it out. The rest of you start putting supplies into bags so we can carry them. Wake everyone up and get ready to travel on foot,” Luke said.

He opened the side door of the trailer and started talking low to the horse inside. Judy chewed on her thumbnail and looked at the group. Nobody was following orders. Luke emerged from the trailer and moved around back to open the doors and lower the ramp.
 

“Get moving,” Luke said. “If those things spotted the vehicles, they’ll be on their way. It’s mechanical stuff they like. Houston, why don’t you take one of the Rovers in back and drive it away from the group. Leave it runnin’ and shut th’others down.” Amongst the bearded men, Frank and Luke were the only ones who went by their real names. All the rest of the bearded guys were nicknamed for the town or city where they’d been born.

Judy began to move back towards the vehicle she’d been riding in. She’d left her bag on the seat. It only had a few things in it, but they were the things she counted as her own.
 

“Hey!” Ron called. “Judy, wait.”

“What?” she asked, turning.

Ron got close and talked low.

“Are you thinking about bailing out?”

“No, of course not,” she said. There was no version of her plan that worked better with Ron in tow.
 

“Because if you were, I think we could follow Frank back to that vehicle and wait for him to leave it running,” Ron said.

“Don’t be crazy.”

Judy walked fast, hoping to leave him behind. The Cruiser she’d been riding in was empty. Erika and Mike, or Matt, or whatever his name was, had already grabbed their stuff. Judy snatched her bag and moved out of the way as people arrived to pull the storage bins down from the roof. Some of the Cruisers were packed full of people. They liked to clump together with friends and turned the act of travel into social bonding. Judy always migrated to a Cruiser that carried supplies. With only one or two people inside, they were quiet and Judy could read. She wasn’t close with any of these people. She spent more time with Ron than anyone else, and she merely tolerated him.

Judy put her bag over her shoulder and inched backwards out of the light from the vehicles. The woods, and their complete darkness, were only a few paces away. If she could cover that distance, she could slip away while everyone was busy.

“Can you grab the other end?” a man asked.

Judy looked around. Everyone else had their hands full. He was talking to her.

“Sure,” she said.

The man was Brighton. He had a big frame that looked like it was built to carry a lot more bodyweight than he had. She picked up the other end of the storage bin and gripped under the plastic lip. It wasn’t too heavy, but it was bulky. It was about the right size to be a child’s coffin. Judy shook her head to clear the image. Brighton turned and held the thing behind him so he could walk forward.