Instinct (38 page)

“Wait a second,” Romie said. “I’m all for getting out of here. I just think we shouldn’t slow down when we get to the surface. We get out of here, steal a car, and get the hell out of this place.”

“You were so intent on getting to this farm,” Pete said. “Now, you want to leave. There are good people here. They can help us stand up to the Beardos.”

“Hush!” Lisa hissed. “Brad wants to say something.”

They all turned to Brad.

“They know,” Brad said. He swallowed and cleared his throat. Lisa pushed a bottle of water into his hands. They’d found it in one of the supply rooms. It tasted like hot plastic, but it was drinkable. Brad took a tiny sip. “They know about the thing.”

“Right,” Romie said. “You said you told them everything.”

“No,” Brad said, shaking his head. “They knew before I told them. They knew from when it has been here before.”

“That can’t be,” Lisa said. “It was tens of thousands of years ago. There’s no history that goes back that far.”

“They know. That’s why they set up this place,” Brad said.

“We can debate all this when we’re safe,” Pete said. “I say we go topside and find support amongst the other regular people in the group. All we have to do is show them this bunker and they’ll know that the Beardos are up to no good.”

“And I say we hit the road again,” Romie said.
 

“Let’s vote,” Pete said.

CHAPTER 26: ROAD

T
IM
WAS
BEHIND
THE
wheel and Cedric was curled up in the seat beside him. The dog was fast asleep. With the shaved patch of fur brighter than the rest of his head, Cedric looked almost like he wore a bow on his ear.
 

Their progress was slow. The big vehicle was difficult to navigate around places were the cars had piled up. The first time a bottleneck stopped them, Tim got out to roll a car out of the way. Ty came forward from the back as Tim got back in the ambulance.

“Just shove them out of the way,” Ty said.

“But I…” Tim started. “Okay.”

Ty’s way was noisy, but easier. He slowly approached a car until the ambulance’s bumper made contact, and then he just shoved. The cars dented and crushed, but they moved. Still, it took time. A smaller vehicle could have navigated around, but they wouldn’t all fit in a smaller vehicle.

Tim glanced into his mirror. Amy Lynne was stretched out on the cot. Jackson sat at her side, holding her hand. Ty sat across from them. His head bounced with the movement of the ambulance. He kept his eyes pointed at the floor.
 

A sign above told him he could veer right for Syracuse. Tim kept going straight. He wanted to avoid the city. There were more stopped cars near the cities.

Tim slowed. He regretted not taking the exit. In front of them, a red Chevy had rolled into the back of a big pickup. The pair of vehicles nearly blocked the whole road. There was nowhere to push the car. A concrete wall separated them from the westbound lanes, and a metal guardrail on the right protected them from a gully. The ambulance beeped as Tim put it in reverse.

“Problem?” Ty asked.

“Yeah. Road’s blocked. I’ll take us through Syracuse.”

“Shit,” Ty said.

“It’s not that bad,” Tim said, putting the ambulance back into drive. “I’ll find a road on the outskirts and take us around.”

Ty’s eyes were wide. His finger came up and pointed through the windshield. Tim finally saw what Ty was looking at. On the horizon, a clump of dark clouds were concentrated over one area. Little needles jabbed down from the clouds, descending to the ground. They were the little funnel clouds of tornadoes.

“What the hell…” Ty said.

“It’s the cleanup crew,” Tim said. He swallowed, and tried to get spit back into his suddenly dry mouth. On the seat beside him, Cedric whimpered in his sleep. “I’ve see it before. Those little tornadoes go through and tear apart a whole area.”

“I don’t understand.”

Tim shook his head. “Me neither. This is usually when I start up my airplane and don’t stop until I’m a couple of hundred miles away.”

“Turn back around,” Ty said.

Before Tim could even get the ambulance into reverse again, Ty had disappeared through the back door. It slammed shut as the beeper came on and Tim pulled around. When he got the ambulance straightened out again, he saw Ty. The man was pushing the Chevy out of the way. It was locked up with the pickup truck. Tim saw the truck jolt as Ty pushed on the Chevy. He got the car free and once he got it going, he moved it aside like it was a kid’s bike.

Tim navigated through the gap Ty created. He stopped, and a second later, Ty jumped in the back. Jackson and Amy Lynne didn’t even seem to register the interruption in their travel plans.

Tim accelerated.
 

Ty appeared between the seats and watched the tornadoes as they drove by. There were too many hills and trees to see where the tornadoes were touching down. They could only see them when they lifted back into the air. When they did, the funnel clouds sparkled with debris. Ty didn’t take his eyes off the sight until a hill finally blocked their view.

“That could have happened to the hospital,” Ty said.

Tim nodded. “Or maybe not. They seemed to skip some cities.” He drove on.

Ty leaned close to the windows and kept a constant watch for the tornadoes. Tim didn’t notice the gas gauge until a light indicated that it was low. He pulled off at the next exit and turned right. There was a parking lot with several cars.

“Gas or diesel?” he asked Ty.

“What?” The giant man took his eye off the sky for a second to look at Tim.

“Do you have a siphon in here? Does this thing take regular gas or diesel.”

“Oh. Gas. Give me a second.”

Ty disappeared between the seats and Tim pulled up to a big Ford. He lined up the side of the ambulance with the gas door of the Ford and shut the engine off.

He heard the back door and then Ty appeared in the mirror with a length of clear tube in his hand. He shoved it into the Ford, sucked on the end until he saw liquid, and then let it run into a plastic bucket he set at his feet. Tim heard the door again and then saw Ty moving with more tubing and another bucket. He went to another car and repeated the process.

“You want to go out?” Tim asked. The dog woke instantly and climbed off the seat.

Tim found Ty leaning against the Ford, waiting as the bucket slowly filled.

Ty looked at the sky again. “I guess I didn’t realize things could get worse.”

“What, the tornadoes?”

“Yeah,” Ty said, sighing. “I can’t go back to that hospital now that I know what happens to cities.”

“Not all of them,” Tim said. “Rochester is pretty small. It might be really low on the list.”

“What devils are these, that steal all the people and then tear apart our world?”

Tim shrugged. “I’m not sure it’s worth thinking about. What good would it do you if you knew?”

“It’s natural to want to know why,” Ty said.

He pulled the tube from the Ford and submerged it in the gasoline.
 

“Hold this up,” he said. Tim held the bucket higher than the fill pipe and Ty used the same tube to start moving the gas into the ambulance. Once it was going, Ty walked off to retrieve the other bucket.

When he returned, Tim asked him a question. “Suppose you lost an arm. Would you spend your time wondering why, or would you get on with the business of learning to tie your shoes with one hand?”

“It’s not that simple,” Ty said. “There are more options than that.”

“None worth thinking about.”

Tim was grateful when Ty took the bucket away. He was getting tired of holding it up and the fumes were strong. Ty switched the tube to the other bucket and then handed it back to Tim.

“You said there’s a circle?” Ty asked.

“Certain activity seems to happen at different distances from what I would call a center,” Tim said. “I don’t know. It’s confusing, but when I put it all on a map, it suggested a circle.”

“And we’re headed for the center?”

“I think so,” Tim said. “Honestly, it may have been more like an ellipse, but I’m not sure. The focus seemed to change several weeks ago. Either that, or I just didn’t understand the data well enough to see the real pattern.”

They heard a banging from inside the ambulance. Ty set up the Ford bucket and then walked around to the back door. Tim heard part of the conversation on the air.

“You guys bring anything to eat?” Jackson asked.

Ty’s response was too low to hear.
 

“I could eat a horse,” Amy Lynne said. It was a tone that Tim had never heard from her before.

Ty appeared again. He got to the Ford bucket just as it was about to overflow. He swapped it out with the one Tim held.

“She looks really good,” Ty said. “I think she’s on the mend.”

“That’s good news,” Tim said.

“I’ll run over to that store and see if I can find something to keep those two quiet. Can you put another few buckets in here?”

“Of course. Get me something salty,” Tim said.

Ty nodded. As Ty started to walk away, Cedric appeared from between two rows of cars. He bounded after the huge man. Tim smiled at the funny shaved spot on the dog’s head. It really did look like someone had tied a bow there, or maybe tucked a flower behind his ear. Until you got a good look, of course. At close range, all Tim saw was Ty’s neat little stitches. He tried to hold a grudge against Jackson, but it wouldn’t stick. It would be like holding a grudge against a rock that landed on his foot. The rock was too stupid to blame—it was his fault for being in the way.

From inside the ambulance, he heard Amy Lynne laugh. The sound was bright and bubbly. It didn’t sound at all like the drugged slurs she had uttered earlier.

Tim changed the bucket and found the right height to hold the one feeding the ambulance. At just the right height, it would drain as the other one filled. A small puddle of gas formed around him on the pavement from his spills. He imagined an action hero walking away from him, throwing a cigar over his shoulder, and torching Tim alive. He hoped that Jackson didn’t smoke.
 

Tim lowered the bucket when he heard Cedric’s bark. He’d read somewhere that parents learn the different cries of their babies. One cry means wet, another means hungry. This bark from Cedric wasn’t one that Tim had heard before. It wasn’t his playful bark or his afraid bark. This was an alarm call. This bark sounded like the dog was trying to warn Tim that the action hero was about to flick his cigar over his shoulder.

Tim set the bucket down and ran towards the bark.

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He caught up with the dog at the fence. As soon as he did, Cedric tore across the little parking area towards the store. Tim had to contort his body to fit through the hole in the wooden fence. He wondered how Ty had ever squeezed through the gap.
 

Tim wobbled as he stood up. He was still woozy, either from the gas fumes or from the blow to the head that Jackson had given him much earlier that day. Tim fought to regain his balance as he chased after the dog.

Cedric had disappeared around the corner. His head reappeared and he watched Tim run. Tim reached the brick wall and leaned against it. His strength and stamina had been pretty well tapped. He followed the dog and saw the line of stores connected by an awning. The one on the corner had its door propped open. It was small grocery store. The characters in the window suggested that most of the food inside would be of Asian origin.

Cedric ran inside and barked again.

“What’s wrong?” Tim asked as he pulled himself through the door.

As soon as he saw Ty, Tim’s arm went up to protect his vision. He had only seen the look on another human once before, but he recognized it immediately.

Ty had been immobilized by one of the murals.

“Ty!” Tim yelled. Of course the man didn’t respond. He stood there, looking towards the left side of the store. The giant man was gently swaying on his feet. “Ty!”

Tim ran up to him and grabbed Ty’s hand. He pulled. Some part of Ty’s brain was still active. It was the part that kept him upright, and it had no problem balancing Ty’s massive weight against Tim’s pull. The man didn’t budge. Tim lost his grip on Ty’s fingers and he fell backwards, landing on the hard floor. Tim looked up and saw the curved mirror mounted near the register.
 

He saw the writing on the far wall. It was distorted by the mirror and held no power over Tim. The letters were scrawled on the glass doors of the refrigerator cabinets. The glass was opaque with condensation and mold. The bright red letters stood out clearly against the grime.
 

Tim glanced around for a dolly or a cart. He found nothing but a rack of hand baskets.

Back near the door, Cedric barked again.
 

Tim looked beyond him and saw the dog’s other piece of bad news. The sky to the south was dark. A round cluster of clouds had gathered at the horizon. The little needles of funnel clouds darted down from the perimeter to the ground. The unnatural weather was moving towards their position at a good clip.