Hitchers

CHAPTER 31

The McMansions along Fairview Road were mostly dark. These were the people who could afford to flee Atlanta for an extended period. When they were packing, I wondered if they had considered the possibility that they might not be allowed to come back.

They weren’t calling it a quarantine, which was probably wise. The president called it a “precautionary controlled observation of the situation.” As promised, commerce wasn’t being interrupted, so we were still able to buy Snickers bars and the new Arcade Fire CD, assuming they could find truck drivers with the guts to drive in and out of the Haunted City (as the press were now calling it), but people weren’t able to drive in or out without a good reason.

Rather than risk sounding crazy by talking about the dead rising, or appearing to have his head in his ass by insisting on the post-traumatic identity disorder explanation, the president simply referred to it as “The grave events taking place in the aftermath of the anthrax attack.” Using of the word “grave” seemed like a bad call to me, but he went with it. He assured the American people that the problem was contained and would not spread, and that every resource was being brought to bear to help those afflicted.

The federal government had so many resources, so many channels of information, yet they always managed to be a step behind in reacting to any but the most predictable disasters. Their response to an anthrax attack looked like a carefully choreographed dance. Their response to mass possession? More like a drunk stumbling home from a bar, pausing occasionally to vomit in the gutter.

When we hit Little Five Points, with its stretch of cafes, bars, and trendy shops, dark houses gave way to brightly lit streets.

“Wow,” Lorena said.

Hitchers were everywhere. It was almost as if they all knew Little Five Points was the place to be.

“How did you know we should come here?” I asked.

“There’s a Facebook page for The Returned,” Lorena said.

I stifled an ironic laugh. Figured. We were calling them Hitchers, the dead, parasites. They were calling themselves The Returned and twittering each other.

They lurched along the sidewalks on Euclid like extras in a George Romero film, sounding like giant bullfrogs as they greeted each other. We passed a Fox News truck; near it a reporter was interviewing hitchers.

The dead must be eager to go out and live. Most of those still in Atlanta who weren’t possessed were probably at home cowering behind bolted doors, watching the news. That’s where I would be if my situation were different.

Not all of the unafflicted were hiding, though. A throng of people were standing across the street, watching, shouting things at the hitchers. Some looked scared, some angry. They weren’t holding protest signs, but had that sort of air.

We found a parking space three blocks over and walked arm-in-arm to Loca Luna, one of Lorena’s favorite hangouts. I wasn’t the only person on the street who was not occupying someone else’s body, and when I spotted a fellow “living” I smiled at them. I suspected most of them had hitchers that were dormant at the moment.

There was a street preacher on the corner of Moreland. He was discussing Revelations, his lips frothy with emotion, imploring passers-by to let him cast their demons out.

A young woman in a short skirt approached him, sobbing, flat-out begging for his help.

The preacher touched the woman’s elbow. “Pray with me.” They got down on their knees. Two others joined them on the pavement. The preacher traced the sign of the cross in the air as six or seven others joined the group, causing the flow on the sidewalk to clog as people skirted the group.

“Come on,” Lorena said. I couldn’t imagine what she was feeling as she watched them there, so desperate to exorcise their “demons.” I, on the other hand, couldn’t blame them for trying. It wouldn’t work, I was sure, but when you have no good options, any option looks appealing. We moved on as more people joined the exorcism.

We passed the crowd of protesters and tried to ignore their angry shouts to go back where we belonged, that we weren’t welcome here on Earth. They spat the word “demon” like it was a racial slur, and it felt like one. We picked up our pace, and I felt sweet relief when we passed through the doors into Loca Luna.

Most of the people there were hitchers. Loca Luna was a big turquoise place with high ceilings, recessed lighting, and fake palm trees. The dance floor was packed with people jerking to the Latin beat, their hands shuddering.

I wondered whether Lorena or Summer had picked out her outfit, a paisley caftan shirt that struck me as vaguely wizard-ish, and a long black velvet skirt. It wasn’t Lorena’s style, but it was probably the flashiest outfit Summer owned. My guess was Lorena picked it.

“Ooh, I’m getting a t-bone,” Lorena said as she put her jacket on the back of her chair. “They do great marinated steaks here.” She rubbed her hands together. “It’s been forever.” Her hands stopped rubbing and her smile became wan. “Hm. That’s almost right.”

I could see she was desperate for her birthday to seem normal. She was trying to set aside everything that had happened, set aside the fact that she was dead, that she was in another woman’s body, that in all likelihood I would soon be dead. It was a lot to set aside.

“What was it like?” I asked. “Is it bad?”

Lorena shook her head. “Not bad, just so different it turns you inside out.” She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, as if mentally returning herself to Deadland. “You feel yourself peeling away, a tiny fraction at a time. Little pieces of your past float off, all of your memories, sounds, smells, thoughts—everything you are, until you start to lose track of yourself.” She squeezed her eyes more tightly shut. “Once in a while a piece of someone else would land on me for a moment before floating off again. I would catch a glimpse of that other life. That was nice; I savored those moments. They were my only human contact.” She opened her eyes. The vastness reflected in them, the awe and dread, terrified me. “That wind is still blowing through me. I can hear it.”

The waitress interrupted. She rattled off the items on the menu that weren’t available. I asked her about the limited options, and she said that besides the difficulty finding drivers, suppliers were leery about local businesses’ ability to pay their bills going forward. She took our orders and set us up with drinks.

I sipped my drink, leaned back in my seat. “I hadn’t realized how much I craved a night like this. It feels good to have a few hours to relax.”

Lorena grinned. “Glad I could provide an excuse.” She twisted her arm to examine the long tattoo running wrist-to-elbow. “It certainly gets your attention. I’ll never understand why people would inject ink under their skin.” She switched arms and examined the other, which was a mirror image. “They’re very nice arms, besides the tattoos.” She ran a quavering finger down Summer’s forearm.

“She can see and hear all this, remember,” I said.

Lorena put her arm down. “I know. I said she had pretty arms, didn’t I?” She laughed as I shook my head. “Didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did.” Maybe it was inevitable that two people sharing the same body would become antagonistic toward each other.

We fell silent, stared at each other across the table. Lorena let out a big sigh. “What a mess.”

“Happy birthday,” I said.

Lorena dropped her fork. It clattered on the plate. “Oh, shit.” She whined in frustration as the tremor in her hands grew still.

Summer pressed her palms to her temples. “Sorry.”

I shrugged. “Not your fault.”

Summer surveyed the half-eaten steak on the plate in front of her, then pushed it toward the center of the table. “I meant I was sorry your night was ruined. I wasn’t apologizing.”

“No. Right,” I stammered.

She took the napkin from her lap and set it next to the plate.

“Do you want to finish? Are you still hungry?” I gestured toward her plate. I didn’t want to go home. I craved a few hours of normalcy in what had become my extremely abnormal life.

“I’m a vegetarian,” Summer said. She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, shrugged.

“Oh, shit. Right.” I stared at the remains of the steak. “And she was eating meat. It never even occurred to me.”

“Don’t worry about it.” She waved off my concern. “Go ahead and finish your meal.”

I didn’t know why, but I felt terribly uncomfortable, as if I’d done something wrong. “Have a drink, at least.” I reached toward Lorena’s half-empty glass of wine, realized that even though only Summer’s lips had touched it, to her it would seem like someone else had been drinking from it. I looked around for our waitress, trying to remember what she looked like.

“She didn’t even get to dance,” Summer said, taking a sip from Lorena’s untouched water glass. She turned and looked at the dancers on the floor, swaying to a Latin salsa. “Probably a good thing. It’s all hips. She’d have trouble dancing like that with my skinny hips.”

The music stopped abruptly. We turned to see what was happening. It looked as if the bass player had been taken over by his hitcher, and the hitcher didn’t play. After a moment he climbed down from the small stage and the rest of the band soldiered on without him.

“Will you help me do something?” Summer asked, turning back to look at me.

“Sure,” I said.

She gave me a look that said I wasn’t necessarily going to like what she said. “I want to see my brother.”

“The one who died?” Even before she nodded I knew it was. “I thought you said you didn’t want to speak to loved ones you lost.”

She struggled for words, then said, simply, “I changed my mind.”

I waited for her to elaborate. It didn’t seem wise for her to mess around in Deadland unless she had good reason. I certainly had no desire to go back. It also seemed a bad idea to use our valuable time running after someone who couldn’t help us solve our problem.

“We didn’t part on the best of terms,” Summer said. “He was bugging the hell out of me and I told him not to call any more.” She poked the dinner roll Lorena hadn’t eaten, leaving a divot. “The idiot didn’t tell me he was dying of cirrhosis.”

“How was he bugging you?”

Summer shook her bangs out of her face, looked up at me. “He’d call in the evening, my only time with Rebecca, and repeat the same things he’d said that morning, because he’d already forgotten he called that morning. I had to take him to his doctors’ appointments because there was no one else, then he’d get into arguments with the nurses, accuse them of stealing his pills or something.” She lifted her glass, drained the last of the water. “I just want things to be right between us, before I—” She trailed off.

“Before you what?”

She stared into her water. “Before I’m gone.”

Her tone made me uneasy—Summer seemed like the last of our little trio who would give up. “We don’t know you’re going anywhere,” I said.

“I know. But we don’t know I’m not, and I’d like to see my brother while I have the chance. Will you help me?”

“Do you even know if you can get to Deadland?”

Summer tilted her head and flashed her best crooked, wan smile. “Oh yeah.” She pointed at a table by the windows. “Someone choked to death right over there.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “Welcome back to the land of the living! Wow, you just returned from Deadland for the first time, and you’re not sobbing or anything. You’re Wonder Woman.”

“Nah, I knew what to expect.” She gestured at me with her glass. “You wandered in blind. I would have wet myself if I’d stumbled into Deadland the way you did.”

“Figuratively wet yourself,” I said. “You wouldn’t have had control of your bladder at the time.”

“Sure, figuratively,” Summer agreed, nodding, then blew out a laugh between closed lips. She seemed to have a thousand different laughs, from a musical giggle to an inhaled honk.

“And now you want to go right back in.” I put my drink down. “Hold on. Your brother died in a hospital, didn’t he? In the intensive care unit, I’m guessing?”

Summer nodded. “That’s right.”

How many people had died in that same room? It had to be hundreds. “That’s going to be some scene. Do you think you’d even be able to find him?”

Summer shrugged. “If I can’t, I can’t. I’d like to try.”

I studied her brown eyes for a minute. “If that’s what you want, then sure, I’ll help.”

“Thanks. It means a lot to me. More than I can say.”

An up-tempo song came on, causing some of the dancers to hoot. Summer turned to watch them.

“Do you like to dance?” I asked, making conversation.

She shrugged, causing the sprinkle of stars tattooed across her neck and shoulders to crinkle. “I used to. Not many opportunities lately.”

She watched the dancers longingly, it seemed to me. I wasn’t much of a dancer. Lorena had been the dancer.

“We could dance now,” I suggested.

Summer turned. “You really want to?”

“Why not? Let’s have a little fun. And if you’re dancing, Lorena at least gets to go along for the ride. I would certainly appreciate it if Grandpa would do something marginally interesting once in a while, maybe take in a Braves game. I’m sick of sitting in depressing bars with aging alcoholics.”

Without another word she pushed out of her chair. I followed her onto the dance floor.

Summer watched the woman next to her for a moment, trying to get the rhythm, then closed her eyes and let herself go. She didn’t dance like the woman next to her, or like Lorena, but she was striking in her own way. She reminded me of a Native American priestess, her hands upturned in supplication, head back, shoulders moving more than her hips. Maybe what was most striking was that she was smiling, really smiling. I was glad.

The song changed, this one even faster, more frenetic. Summer let out a whoop, glanced my way to make sure I was game to stay, and smiled when she saw I was.

After a third song, a slow one came on. Sweating, we went to the bar and got drinks.

“It’s been so long since I had fun,” Summer said. “You forget. When things are so bad you forget that you still need to kick back once in a while, or you’ll lose it.”

“You’re a terrific dancer,” I said.

“I feel like Olive Oyl when I dance.” Summer fanned herself with her hand. “That was my nickname in seventh grade. Well, not my nickname; it was what kids called me when they wanted to be mean.

“I can’t believe your classmates even knew who Olive Oyl was.”

Maybe it was the booze kicking in, but suddenly I was acutely aware of how weird this situation was. We were at a bar filled with dead people. I was dancing with the woman my dead wife was possessing while my dead grandfather looked on.

The slow song ended, replaced by another burner. “Ooh!” Summer grabbed my forearm and pulled. I followed. The hell with it; Summer was right, if I didn’t relax and have some fun I was going to have a nervous breakdown.

Some of the dancers were doing this twirling thing, a full 360-degree spin. Summer tried it, laughing, so I gave it a shot. I should have fun like there was no tomorrow. For us, there might not be.

There was an old man dancing on the fringe of the dance floor, his tremulous hands dangling from gyrating hips. Stiff as the movements were, it would have been obvious that a young woman was executing them even if the old man hadn’t been wearing a black dress and lipstick.

Another drink, more dancing. In an odd way I felt like I was getting to know the other dancers, linked by the music and the close quarters. Occasionally I would catch someone’s eye and smile, like our dancing was a shared secret, a bit of good news amidst all the bad.

A song ended, replaced by another slow ballad. I looked at Summer and she shrugged. We closed the space between us.

It occurred to me that if Grandpa took control at this precise moment it would almost be funny. Not quite, but almost. I’d been in control for nearly six hours. There was no predicting when he’d reappear, but the odds increased with every hour.

“Thanks for this,” Summer said. “It’s nice to forget for a little while.”

“It is,” I said into her ear. It felt good to hold her. I wondered if the line between Summer and Lorena was blurring in my mind. I was thrilled when I got to talk to Lorena, but I enjoyed Summer’s company almost as much.

Just as much, if I was completely honest. I had done my best to put out of my mind the electric attraction I’d felt for Summer when I’d seen her in the Blue Boy Diner, the day I first met Mick. Out of curiosity I tried to imagine that the dead had never come back, that Summer was just a woman I was dating. How would I feel about her?

We were dancing with our faces a few inches apart; I could see the little star tattoos on the back of her neck and shoulders.

If Lorena hadn’t come back, I would be crazy about Summer. I felt so comfortable with Summer, such a sense of ease. Despite the situation we were in, Summer’s fun-loving nature came through. It surprised me that I would be attracted to Summer, because she and Lorena were very different. Had I changed so much over the past two years that I was attracted to a totally different sort of woman? I guess it was possible. So much had happened. It was hard to believe only two years had passed.

I could never let Lorena know what I was feeling. Or Summer, for that matter. But it was stupid to try to hide my feeling from myself.

The song ended, replaced by more Latino bop. I held on to Summer. She stayed in my arms. I expected to feel her gently push away, but she didn’t. Without slow music to call it dancing, we spent a long moment in an embrace.

A loud crash startled me. We jerked apart, looked toward the front of the restaurant for the source of the sound. The smoked front window was shattered; there was a big hole in the center with jagged shards and cracks radiating. Someone had thrown a rock or brick through the window.

We moved closer, heard shouts and arguing outside. Through the breach in the window I saw a National Guard troop pushing at people, trying to move them back.

“Satan’s army. It’s Satan’s army! Whose side are you on?” someone shouted. There was a roar of agreement from the crowd.

“Come on,” Summer said, tugging my sleeve, drawing me toward the back of the restaurant. “Let’s get out of here.”

She pushed open the kitchen door, turned to the first person we saw, a terrified kid carrying a tray of dirty dishes. “Is there a back door?”

The sweaty bus boy motioned with his head. “Straight back and to the left.”

We spilled out in an alley filled with dumpsters; the angry commotion, now muffled, reached us over the building.

“Whew, I’m a little toasted,” Summer said, pressing a hand against the brick to steady herself. I was feeling a little toasted myself. The thud of music from a nearby club seemed to be bypassing my ears and hitting me straight in the chest.

We passed out of the alley, to be greeted by another angry mob. Some of them pointed at us.

“We know what you are,” a tall bald guy shouted.

As we rushed past, heads down, a pimply teenager stepped in front of me. When I looked up at him he spit in my face. I glared at the little bastard in impotent fury as I wiped off the spit. Summer tugged my jacket, pulling me into the street and around the crowd.

“No one believes this is a disease,” Summer said, glancing over her shoulder.

“Are any of them following us?” I asked.

“No.”

The knot of muscle between my shoulders relaxed a little.

“Are you sure the car is this way?” Summer asked.

“We’re going to hang a right at the next corner. I parked over on—”

We both stopped at the sound of a scream. It was brief, clipped. It seemed to be coming from the next street over.

“What was that?” Summer asked.

We doubled our pace. “I don’t know.”

Now that we were paying attention I could just barely hear a voice. It sounded panicked, high-pitched. The bald fear in the tone made my guts twist.

We broke into a run.

“Maybe we should go back to the news vans, get someone to call the police,” I suggested.

We passed a shallow alley. A kid who’d been facing a loading dock spun around. I heard Summer peep in surprise as the kid grabbed my passing shoulder and jammed a pistol into my neck.

“Don’t move,” he said. He turned and, keeping his voice down, called over his shoulder. “I got two more.” He was wearing a Braves cap and camo pants, sixteen or seventeen years old.

Another man appeared out the darkness of the alley.

“Hold on,” I said, trying to keep the breathless panic out of my voice. “We’re just going home.”

“No you ain’t,” said an older, heavy-set guy with big jowls surrounding a tiny chin. “Move. This way.” Pointing what looked like a small assault rifle at us, he led us past green dumpsters and stacks of wooden palettes to a lowered fire escape ladder.

“Climb,” he said.

“Hang on, hang on” I said, raising my hands in supplication. I could hear voices above us, on the roof.

The big man shoved me, knocking my forehead against the steel ladder. “Hang on nothing. Move.”

I climbed, with Summer right behind, followed by the man with the gun. We hit the landing ten feet up, where narrow steps angled up the five- or six-story building. I couldn’t see into the small, grimy windows. Everything inside was dark; the building was some sort of industrial place.

“Keep on going,” the big man ordered.

“What is this about?” Summer asked. “We don’t understand what’s happening. We were just going to our car.”

The man didn’t answer. As we climbed we kept asking, kept explaining that we weren’t any part of this, but the man didn’t respond.

Panicked voices rang out from below. The kid who’d grabbed me from the alley was bringing two more people up behind us.

One story from the top we heard another scream from above. I didn’t want to go up there, didn’t want to see what was causing people to scream like that. I considered diving through one of the windows we passed, hoping Summer would follow me, but the man with the gun was right behind us. He’d be on us before we could even get up to run. With my legs shaking so badly I could barely find the steps, I climbed the last flight, onto the roof.

There were eight or nine people on the roof, gathered at the far end. Most of them had guns. One jogged over and took control of us, nodding once to the big man, who turned and headed back down. We were hustled toward the group.

“What is he doing?” Summer said, staring toward the people gathered on the roof.

A man in camo was clutching a woman by the upper arm, dragging her along. The woman screeched and pleaded, dug in her heels, trying to pry the man’s fingers from her arm. Another man grabbed her other arm with his free hand. They dragged her toward the edge of the roof.

“No. Stop,” Summer said, her hands pressed to her cheeks.

They lifted the woman, who was bucking and bicycling her feet, over the low wall until she was sitting on it. She was blubbering, pleading, gripping the edge of the wall for all she was worth as she tried to twist around.

The men pried her fingers loose and pushed. She fell, screaming.

“Jesus, what are you doing?” I asked.

“Sending you back where you came from,” said the man with us. He had a goatee, was maybe thirty.

“We’re not,” Summer said. “Look. Look at our hands.” She held out both hands for the man to examine, glanced at me, said, “Show him yours.”

I held out my hands.

“We’re not stupid. We know the demons hide,” the man said. “Let’s go.” He raised his gun so casually, like it was a beer and he was about to take a swig.

“You’re making a mistake—we don’t have any demons,” Summer said.

“Yeah,” the kid leading the group behind us said. “Then what were you doing in Little Five Points? Partying with the rest of Satan’s army, that’s what.”

“I was walking her home,” I said. “It’s not safe for her to be out here alone with all of the dead walking around. She was delivering food to her eighty-year-old mother who lives on McClendon.” The two men were listening, maybe even looking uncertain, so I kept talking. “This is Summer—”

“I live on Highland,” Summer interjected. “Finn is my neighbor. He wouldn’t let me go alone.”

The guy with the goatee stared at us. “Get over there.”

It hit me suddenly, why they were throwing people off the roof when they could simply shoot them. You could only hear screams for a block or two, and there weren’t many residences in this area. Gunshots you could hear for half a mile. That would alert police and National Guard troops.

“This is nuts,” I said. “We’re on your side. You can’t just throw us off a roof.”

“We’re at war with Satan,” he said. “Innocent people die in war, especially when the stakes are five billion souls. If you’re innocent, it’s too bad you were in the wrong place.”

“You can’t just call something a war and murder people,” Summer said. She gestured toward the other end of the roof. “You have to stop them.” They were dragging a young guy toward the edge now; it was taking three of them.

The guy’s taut expression didn’t change. “I’m not gonna say it again. Move.” He raised the gun, tensed his finger.

I held my ground; so did Summer. “You won’t shoot us unless you absolutely have to,” I said. “You don’t want the police to hear.”

He turned his head, called, “Pete. Need some help here.” A man with a rifle trotted over. This guy was tall, with big muscular arms. He strode right up to me and, without a word, belted me in the side of the head with his rifle.

The roof spun; a hard, dull pain spread from one temple to the other. Somehow I stayed on my feet. An arm wrapped around my neck, putting me in a headlock, twisting me off my feet and dragging me. Dragging me toward the edge, I knew. Panicked, I reached up, trying to dislodge the arm. Vaguely I heard Summer screaming.

“Soldiers!” someone called. “Soldiers. Let’s move.”

The arm around my neck was suddenly gone. I fell to the ground, struggled to my hands and knees as Summer reached to help me.

A gunshot cracked nearby. Then shouts, the thump of boots, and more gunshots.

I lifted my head to look around, but saw only black static dots. My head was killing me. “What’s happening?”

“They’re running. Someone must have called the police.” Summer sank to the roof next to me, started to cry.

A siren rose in the distance, drawing closer.