The Spaceship Next Door

¹⁸ THE SLEEPWALKING DEAD

It was Oona’s idea to start operating in shifts.

She suggested it right after Annie brought her friend Edgar over to pretend be a journalist and ask pointed questions about something that obviously happened recently. Whether that something was the ‘breathing’ they were picking up or not, self-evidently the government had an idea that the ship was manifesting a new risk. The low-key poke-around of the “government operative posing as reporter” was very nearly polite and respectful, as dishonest as it happened to be at its core, so Laura mostly didn’t mind, and Oona only minded because everything irritated her.

Working in shifts meant hardly spending any time together, because there were only two of them. With three or four, some overlap would have been acceptable, but Oona didn’t want to pair up with any of the other campers because she trusted nobody aside from herself and Laura.

There was still a little overlap. Information had to be exchanged and developments discussed and theories hatched. Also, there were certain gun-cleaning rituals, which needed to be maintained. They didn’t want to come out of this discovering they’d both been cleaning the same five guns for a month.

Laura had just begun her shift when the ground shook. It nearly rocked the trailer onto its side. It did knock Oona out of bed. Laura heard it from the roof.

“You okay, babe?” Laura asked. She was taken out of her lawn chair, and failed to fall over the side only because of the high wall. Their computer equipment—bolted to tables that were bolted to the roof—fared better.

Oona cursed for fifteen straight seconds, then climbed up the center ladder and poked her head out of the hatch.

“What in the name of baby Jesus was that?”

“Dunno. I think the ship stomped on the ground.”

Laura got to her feet (her left elbow, which broke her fall, was going to have a monster bruise in the morning she could tell already) and looked across the street at their Mount Doom.

“There’s a light,” she said.

“Lemme see.”

Oona scrambled up. She was still dressed for bed, which meant floral flannels that were so far removed from her end-of-the-world leather chic she looked like a different person.

She saw the light, scrambled for binoculars, found them, looked at the light again.

“Definitely the ship.”

“What else would it be?”

“Someone behind it with a blowtorch. Same color.”

“It would only look right from this angle if that were true.”

“Yes, darling, but what I’m telling you is it’s not that, and we can rule that out, and it’s actually the ship. Don’t bust my balls.”

To their right, Dobbs was shouting stuff at soldier boy across the street. Only a couple of the other rooftop residents were even awake, it looked like.

Three years and they’re going to sleep through The Moment, she thought. What a shame that was.

“You were right,” Laura said. “Keeping shifts was a good idea.”

“’Course it was.” Oona sat in her chair and started fiddling with the equipment. “I only have good ideas. Light me a smoke, would you?”

Right then the depression grenade hit. When it was over—and it was over almost instantly, thank goodness—Laura was lying on the trailer on her back and Oona was actively crying.

“Well that was horrible,” Oona said. “Get up, and light me that smoke.”

“Later.”

Lighting a smoke actually involved rolling a cigarette, because it was cheaper to buy tobacco in bulk and there were fewer government-sanctioned chemicals. It was a process, anyway, and she wanted to pay attention. “What does the equipment say?”

“Says the anthill blew up.” This was a reference to an in-joke, that their equipment was sensitive enough to detect an ant fart from a hundred feet.

Oona tapped out a few things. “Pretty sure that thing is emitting something.”

“I see it.” A laser-narrow light was pointed skyward, reaching a termination point that was probably a mile or two up.

It gave Laura an idea.

“Hey, I think I know what’s happening.”

“Art? Hey, Art!”

Dobbs was yelling from his own roof, because Art Shoeman walking slowly along the side of the road.

She looked at Dobbs. “What’s he doing?” she shouted.

“I don’t know!”

He wasn’t the only one. Mika and Morrie, Zeno and Johnny Nguyen were also out there. And Earl Pleasant. And Joy Chen. They had all exited their campers to begin a slow trek down the street.

“Art!” Laura yelled. “ART SHOEMAN.”

Art stopped, and looked up at her. It was creepily slow and deliberate.

“You are not,” he said. Then he turned and continued walking.

“What the hell.”

“What did he say?” Oona asked.

“He said I’m not.”

“Not what?”

“No idea.”

Dobbs, meanwhile, climbed down from his roof to catch up with Art.

“Hey, hey Art, where are you going? The ship, man, it’s what we’ve been waiting for.”

“Are you?”

“That isn’t funny, man, come on!”

“Dobbs, maybe you should leave him,” Laura called down.

“No, this is bull.”

He grabbed Shoeman’s elbow to try and get the older man to stop walking. Art’s response was dramatic: he pulled back his arm and unleashed a wicked backhand that knocked Dobbs onto his ass in the brambles on the side of the road.

He wasn’t done. As disconnected as Art Shoeman appeared to be to the world, he knew how to respond to a threat, and in a way that seemed impossible for a person of his age and general demeanor.

Art stepped forward and raised his leg to stomp on Dobbs, who was still stunned and largely defenseless.

Then soldier boy showed up. He must have heard the shouting and decided to involve himself, when he probably had more important things to do. He grabbed Art from behind, spun and threw the old man into the street.

This had an undesired effect.

Everyone stumbling down the side of the road stopped, turned, and headed for the threat, which was now both the soldier and Dobbs. This wouldn’t have been all too terrible because these were not people known for their physical well-being—except for the five army guys in their company—but there were a lot of them.

“Oh no,” Laura said.

She spun around and flipped open the hatch.

“Where you going?” Oona asked. “What is it?”

There was no time to explain. Laura slid down the ladder to the main cabin, and out the door.

She got to Dobbs first. He was only twenty feet away, stuck in the brush.

“Get up, Dobbs,” she said, grabbing his arm. “Hurry, get off your fat ass and move.”

“What’s wrong with him?” he asked. “Did you see Art?”

“I saw.”

“What’s going on?”

“The world’s ending. Now c’mon, I’m not going to drag you!”

Dobbs pulled himself up.

He wouldn’t be going back to his own camper because the route was cut off. Suddenly there were people everywhere, most of them weren’t from the trailer community, and only a few had on army fatigues.

“Back to my camper. Hurry.”

“Okay.” He turned and ran.

“Hey, soldier boy!” Laura shouted. “Let’s go!”

The kid already had his handgun out, and looked like he was deciding whom to use it on first.

“Where?” he asked.

“Trailer, straight back to my right.”

“Get yourself there and hold the door, I’ll be right behind you.”

Just then, a siren sounded. It was an air raid siren, the kind people too young for the Second World War only ever heard in old movies. There was essentially no way this was a good sign.

“That’s bad, right?” Laura asked.

“Yep, real bad. Get to that door.”

Dobbs was little and round, and still woozy from the slap in the head, but he could run pretty well when his life appeared to depend on it, so he beat Laura to the door handily, and then waited for her.

“Get in,” she said, “and don’t touch anything.”

She turned around. “We’re clear!”

The soldier, perhaps unwisely, had begun engaging one of the other soldiers in hand-to-hand. Unwisely, because the other soldier didn’t seem to have any pain receptors, and the rest were closing in. The non-zombie soldier—Laura couldn’t think of any better word than ‘zombie’ for what she was seeing—couldn’t get free. Every time he tried to turn around and get away the larger man opposite him grabbed a wrist or a piece of his clothing and pulled him back in.

Suddenly, a shot rang out, and the zombie soldier’s head disappeared in a red cloud.

“Dammit, no!” soldier boy shouted. “Shoot to wound, shoot to wound!”

“You’re welcome,” Oona said from the roof.

The soldier scrambled away from his dead compatriot and reached the door just ahead of the throng. Laura let him in and started applying the deadbolts, of which there were several.

“Don’t… don’t shoot to kill,” the soldier said.

“I’m Laura. Welcome aboard.”

“Sam. Thanks for the assist. Tell your friend up top to be careful.”

“I will, but between you and me she may not care.”

“WHAT ARE THE SIRENS FOR?” Annie asked.

“It’s a lockdown. Containment strategy. They installed sirens all over the perimeter in the event conventional communications went out.”

“I didn’t know this.”

“It wasn’t public knowledge. A lot of things weren’t.”

“Like what?”

“We have to get to the car.”

“Not until you answer my question.”

“Annie! Look around. We have to get to the car.”

He was right. Main Street was quickly turning into a pedestrian walkway. It was nearly impassible in both directions.

“Inside,” Annie said. “Through the back.”

They retreated into the lobby, and nearly ran over Pete.

“What’s going on out there? Is the Luftwaffe bombing?”

“What?” Ed asked.

“The sirens.”

“You wouldn’t believe us,” Annie said.

“Oh yeah?”

Pete opened the door, looked outside for a half second, and closed it again.

“Okay, I don’t believe you,” she said.

“We never said anything.”

“I don’t believe myself, then. What do we do?”

“You need to stay here,” Ed said. “Lock the doors, keep them out.”

“I don’t think that’s a good long-term solution.”

“It doesn’t have to be. As soon as Annie and I get to the car, nobody out there is going to be interested in coming in.”

“Why’s that?”

“They’re looking for me,” Annie said. “We’re pretty sure.”

“Now hang on, I can’t—”

“Pete,” Ed interrupted, “we really don’t have the time to argue. Hold the doors, keep everyone in here safe, and try not to shoot any of the zombies.”

Ed grabbed Annie’s arm and the two of them sprinted away from a dumbfounded sheriff, past Beth’s room, and down the hall. As she hoped, the doors in the back led to the ambulance bay, and from there the back parking lot.

It was empty. The zombies weren’t smart enough to surround the building.

Ed was unlocking the car when they heard the amplified voice of one of the soldiers at the checkpoint.

“PLEASE RETURN TO YOUR HOMES. MARTIAL LAW IS IN EFFECT.”

“Yeah, that’s not gonna help,” Ed said.

There was a loud pop Annie was pretty sure was a gunshot. She climbed into the car.

“This is going to go badly, isn’t it?” she asked.

“I think probably. If it’s like this down here I can’t imagine what the base is like.”

He pulled out of the space and turned the corner, which was when it became clear the only way out of the lot was to run people over.

“I hate to say this, but can we just go through them?” Annie asked.

“I’m nearly positive these people aren’t actually dead and I don’t think this car can take more than a couple of direct impacts. Town cars aren’t really designed to plow into traffic and keep going.”

“What is?”

“The army has a few war zone vehicles that would do it. Or one of those black SUV’s you talked me out of using.”

“That was solid advice at the time.”

She looked through the rear window and thought about where they were.

“How do you feel about driving through yards?”

“Surprisingly good.”

“Excellent. Turn us around.”

Ed backed up and performed a hairpin in reverse that was actually a little cool. For a half second Annie felt like she was in an action movie.

She pointed to a spot between two trees.

“If you can get through there I think it’s pretty flat right to Mrs. Evanov’s yard. She used to have a wood fence but it’s mostly fallen apart so hopefully we’ll be okay. On the other side is Yucca.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Oh, but you’ll have to gun it. There’s a lip along the edge of the lot.”

What happened next was somewhat less than Hollywood awesome. Ed gunned the engine and aimed for the spot, but the lip of which Annie spoke was eight inches and squared off, so there was no ramping up and over it. There was only a hard bump, which raised the car and its occupants into the air and down again, inelegantly, and awkwardly off-course. Ed was able to wrestle the vehicle sufficiently to maneuver it between the target trees rather than into one of them, but lost enough speed that the wood fence Annie insisted was barely there became a significant obstacle.

The horizontal support post ended up across the hood. Ed had to stop the car and remove fence parts before continuing through Mrs. Evanov’s yard.

“The road’s just there,” Annie said, pointing ahead. Ed steered through the yard.

Halfway around the side of the house, a figure lurched in front of them. Ed swerved, but a soft-but-distinctive thud indicated he failed miss completely.

“Oh God, what was that?” Annie asked.

“Just a guess, but that was probably Mrs. Evanov.”

Past the side of the house, he skidded onto Yucca Way. It wasn’t entirely zombie-free, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as Main.

“Okay, now what?” he asked.

“Depends. Where are we going? If you want to head for the ship you’re facing the wrong way.”

“I want to hook up with the end of Main, then the bridge.”

“That’s not near anything.”

“That’s the point. I’m getting you out of town before I do anything else.”

“Ed…”

“This isn’t open to debate. I promised to look after you, and the best way I know to do that is to get you as far away from here as possible. Now get me to the bridge.”

“SOMEONE SAID that to me before,” Dobbs said.

Dobbs, Sam thought. No wonder I couldn’t get it right, what kind of name is that?

“Who?” Laura asked.

The three of them were still down in the main cabin of the trailer, while the fourth occupant—someone named Oona—marched around on the roof with what looked like a high-powered sniper rifle. The rifle was probably meant for him or someone like him.

She was pacing up there, not using the gun. Sam took this to mean the mob resumed their slow stagger down the hill and was leaving them alone. He would have used a side window to verify this, but their windows were all shuttered with steel panels.

“I don’t know who. He came up to me in the woods.”

“You were on your poop run?”

“How did you know about that?”

Laura laughed.

“Everyone knows about it, Dobbs. We were all wondering why you stopped.”

Sam thought Laura had a really pleasant laugh and a nice demeanor, and she looked really cute. He wasn’t sure if he felt that way about her specifically because she and her friend up top just saved his life or not. Then he decided there was no point speculating, because given the trappings of the room, this woman and the other one were romantically engaged.

Laura was wearing shorts and a basic blue T-shirt, which made her look far more normal than she appeared to actually be, based on what was hanging on the walls. It looked like they owned a small collection of leather armor. They also made their own bullets and rolled their own cigarettes, and collected Penthouse calendars. It looked like they were also keeping urine in jars in the back of the trailer, but he couldn’t be positive.

“Some creeper walked up and asked me, he was like, ‘are you’, and I got the hell out of there rather than figure out what the answer was. I figured it was just some weird guy.”

“How long ago was that?” Sam asked.

“Two, three weeks, probably. Hey, thanks for the save.”

“No problem. I’m supposed to… I just realized I’ve abandoned my post. I should get back outside.”

“Your post?” Laura said. “Your position was overrun, you can’t go back out there.”

“It didn’t look like they were interested in anybody here. They were heading toward Main before he interrupted one of them.”

“That was Art Shoeman,” Dobbs said. “Not just one of them.”

“Yeah, well it looks like my entire team is out there with him. More reason to get back, the fence is unguarded.”

“I think the ship can take care of itself, soldier,” Laura said.

“It’s Sam. And I have orders.”

“Well, they’re stupid orders given the current situation, Sam. You don’t want to end up being a zombie like your buddies.”

“I think I need to fall asleep for that to happen.”

“Sure, or die.”

There was a knock on the door.

“Don’t answer that,” Oona said from above.

“What’s going on?” Laura asked.

“Don’t open the door and don’t let the kid leave. Get up here.”

There was a second and a third knock, and then it became clear these weren’t knocks in any normal sense. Someone out there was banging on the sides of the camper.

I guess they haven’t gone anywhere, Sam thought.

There was an interior ladder to the roof, which was about the best idea Sam had ever seen in terms of camper design given the current reality. These were a couple of survivalists, and they’d planned well. He appreciated that at any other time he’d have used the word paranoid to describe what he was seeing. That word was now practical, and it made him think he was exactly where he should be, regardless of his orders.

Then he got to the roof. Laura went up first, with Dobbs slow to follow. Sam got up there last and took one look at the arsenal of weaponry hanging on the reinforced low wall surrounding the rooftop, and a new word replaced practical. That word was militia. These ladies were a two-person militia, and this camper was definitely built to withstand an attack from other people with guns.

The army, in other words.

Oona was a husky woman in pajamas with kittens on them, still holding a high-powered rifle. The expression on her face made it plain that she was not happy to have him there.

“Look but don’t touch,” she said, referring to the guns. “Those ain’t for you.”

“I’m guessing the barrel end is,” he said.

She smiled. “I don’t think we gamed a single scenario where one of you ended up here with us, so you’re not wrong.”

“Any zombie scenarios?”

“Oh sure, a bunch. What did you mean about falling asleep?”

“Isn’t it obvious? Those people down there aren’t dead, they’re sleeping.”

“So more like they’re possessed.”

“If that works better for you, yes.”

“Why don’t we just wake them up?”

“I dealt with this once before. I’m pretty sure if you do that you’ll kill them.”

“Huh. Well that leaves us with a hairy problem, soldier.”

“How so?”

The camper rocked lightly.

“That’s how so. Have a look over the side.”

Because of the high walls, Sam had to walk right to the lip.

There were at least fifty people out there, and half that number was closing on the camper.

“I didn’t know there were this many people in Sorrow Falls,” he said. “Where are they coming from?”

“Farmhouses,” Laura said. “And the base up the hill.”

Sam remembered the screaming he heard in the background when he called in. At this time of night, probably half the division would have been asleep.

“It’s too soon,” he said. “Unless the zombies are moving faster when we aren’t looking.”

“Or they learned how to drive,” Dobbs offered.

“I’m not saying that’s impossible, but if they could do that they would have driven past us. The ship isn’t their destination. Something downtown is. The guys in fatigues must be from one of the outposts.”

This piqued Oona’s attention. “Come again?”

“The… outposts. We have ten or twelve of them set up in the hills. That’s where the sirens you’re hearing are all situated. It’s for the cordon scenario.”

The trailer rocked again. The people below were trying to knock it over.

“I don’t understand why they’re doing that,” Dobbs said. “Like you said, they were on their way to Main.”

“It’s a threat response,” Laura said. “They’re acting like white blood cells.”

“Because I killed one,” Oona added. “That’s why. What was the cordon scenario?”

“It’s a containment directive, in the event of a contagion, or… well, or this, I guess. It’s to keep all the weirdness contained within the town. The river’s a natural border to the east, but anyone can walk out through the woods north, south and west. The men at the outposts have orders to fan out and put a soldier at each passable point. It’s not impenetrable, but it’s better than nothing.”

Bump. The camper rocked again.

“Nice to know you all had plans to trap us in here.”

“We would have been trapped right with you. We have no jurisdiction outside the town line, so the perimeter had to be within it.”

“Well, I disagree with you there, soldier,” Oona said. She stepped up to the edge of the roof and looked down at the crowd. “A man standing at the exit is the only one not trapped in the room. Now are you telling me all these people down there are alive?”

“I don’t know if they all are. That woman there, for instance. She’d probably not.”

He pointed out a zombie in a nice dress with no nose and only one eye. The left side of her body was semi-crushed, so she was dragging herself mostly with a working right leg. She was about thirty feet away and heading for the camper, albeit slowly.

“All right, so we’ll call those original recipe zombies.”

Oona took aim with the rifle and fired once, a clean headshot that dropped the woman immediately.

“Dammit, Oona!” Laura yelled. “That’s why they’re attacking!”

“They’re already attacking, and we had to know if the same thing that drops the free-range ones also take out the original recipe.”

“I think you’re mixing your chicken metaphors.”

“Shut up, Dobbs, the one with the gun does the naming.”

“They all stopped when you fired,” Sam said. “They learned what a gunshot means.”

“How could they not know that?” Dobbs asked.

“I mean whoever is running things down there learned it.”

The trailer rocked again.

“Okay, two things,” Laura said. “First off, maybe we need to keep firing guns to get them to stop trying to push us over. Second, we could probably use an escape plan here. I don’t want to know what they’re planning to do to us in a breach, do you?”

“We can hang the outside ladder off the back and hit the field, head for the woods maybe,” Oona said. “The four of us can carry a lot of provisions and a lot of guns. I mean, as long as Dobbs’ poop zombie isn’t out there still.”

Dobbs looked over the field side. “They’re circling around now. We’d have to drop and run in the next minute to pull that off.”

“Not enough time,” Laura said. “We could start wounding them like Sam suggested. They can’t chase us with a bullet in the leg.”

“Shoot to kill and be done with it,” Oona said. “Us or them.”

“Guys,” Sam said.

“Oona, it’s not their fault!” Laura said.

“I appreciate that, but it’s still us or them, and I like us better.”

“Guys. Why don’t we just drive away? This thing still runs, doesn’t it?”

THE HEADLIGHTS DREW attention to the car, but they had little a choice. Ed didn’t know the roads well enough to navigate in the dark, and there were people to avoid besides.

It was also helpful when they discovered other cars on the road. This happened after they made it out of the tiny side streets and back onto Main, at the far northern end and away from the thickest part of the sleepwalking horde.

Annie and Ed decided, en route, to stop calling them zombies and start calling them sleepwalkers, since the latter was more accurate and less terrifying, and also self-justified the decision not to run them over without prejudice. Plus, the sleepwalker apocalypse sounded sort of cute.

It was not, alas, entirely accurate, because Annie kept spotting people she knew who happened to be dead.

The other cars were operated by residents who were either not asleep at the right time or were not susceptible for some other reason yet to be explained. The first car they came across nearly killed them, as the driver was obviously not dealing with the reality of the situation well. He cut across a lawn just before they made it to the Main Street intersection, coming within a mailbox or two of sideswiping their driver’s side before swerving into the ninety degree left-hand turn ahead.

By the time Ed got the car to the same point, the other car was already ahead by three blocks. Its taillights disappeared at the bridge.

“They have the same idea,” Ed said.

“I hope he made it to the bridge and didn’t skid off the side of it, he wasn’t all that in control.”

“Must be his first apocalypse.”

The speeding car did make the bridge, but he didn’t get a lot further. They caught up at the end of a line of traffic.

The northern bridge was one of the more impressive parts of the town, even if few thought much of it outside of its functional use: connecting the northern tip of Sorrow Falls with the town of Mount Hermon by spanning the river. It was impressive, more for its hundred-foot drop than its three football-field length, and certainly not for its two-lane width.

There was no traffic heading into Sorrow Falls at this time. Instead, both sides of the solid double-yellow line were filled with cars attempting to get out, and honking loudly to see if that helped somehow.

“What’s going on up there?” Annie asked.

“The sirens. Dammit. I wasn’t thinking.”

“What?”

“The lockdown. The army closed the checkpoint.”

“It’s a wooden barrier. They can just run through it. Are they worried about their cars at a time like this?”

“No, but the men with the guns on the other side of the wooden barrier might be a concern.”

“They wouldn’t.”

“Annie, that’s what their orders are. C’mon.”

He turned off the car and climbed out.

“You think we can sneak past?” she asked, getting out.

“No, but maybe I can talk them into letting you through.”

“You just said—”

“I know, but I have to try. The… sleepwalkers think you’re the person they want. Maybe getting you out of town will end this whole thing.”

He took her by the hand and started along the narrow space between the cars and the guardrail. There was a nominal sidewalk on each side of the bridge that was really only wide enough for one person at a time. The railing was more impressive, with a fence on the other side of it that was suicide-prevention tall.

It was a lot cooler on the bridge. The wind along the river cut right across and reminded Annie that her clothes still weren’t entirely dry from getting caught in the downpour earlier. That seemed like it happened ages ago, and to someone else.

Behind them, other people were starting to get out of their cars. They’d started a trend. She was pretty sure this wasn’t a good kind of trend.

“What did you mean, they think I’m the person they want?” she asked.

“I believe they’re mistaken.”

“That’s sweet, but what makes you say that?”

“Just a theory I’m working on.”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

“No, I mean it.”

As anticipated, the end of the traffic jam was the army checkpoint. The gates were down, and four men with M16A2’s just like the one Sam carried stood at the ready on the other side of those gates.

“Do you know any of them?” Ed asked.

“We’re not close enough yet. Think it’ll make a difference?”

“No idea. I’m pretty sure I don’t, though, and I was sort of hoping I’d have more than just my ID to stand on.”

They were still four cars away from the front when the driver of the first vehicle decided he had enough. Him Annie recognized: it was Lew Stempel. He was one of Hollis’s foremen. She went to school with his daughter, Winnie.

Lew had apparently been sitting at the gates for a while, no doubt leaning on his horn the entire time—as she remembered it, he wasn’t known as a patient guy—before jumping out and walking right up to the first soldier at the barricade. Annie wasn’t close enough to hear what he was saying over the intermittent honking and the wind on the bridge, which was perpetual and considerable. His gestures were pretty easy to read though.

He threw his hands in the air, and pointed at the crowd behind his car, and banged on his chest. All the while he was walking closer to the army’s perimeter.

Two of the soldiers had their barrels trained on him, but he kept walking.

I dare you to shoot me, he was saying. It didn’t look like they were going to.

Like Ed said, the army had orders, and if those orders meant to shoot an American citizen on U.S. soil, they were supposed to do it. This was one of those questions that came up from time to time in polite media conversations about Sorrow Falls: could a soldier really do that, if they had to?

So far, it looked like the answer was no.

Lew stepped around the gate and began arguing with the first of the guards face-to-face. This got more and more heated, and looked like a volatile enough situation for Ed to stop when still a couple of cars away, and put his hand across Annie’s shoulders in that protective sort of way adults did sometimes.

“This might get bad,” he said.

Lew abruptly pushed past the corporal and sprinted down the Mount Hermon side of the bridge.

The second soldier, who had neither been shoved nor directly confronted, took aim and fired a warning shot above the head of the fleeing man, a clear indication that this time, they would not hold their fire, and the next shot would not miss its mark.

It was the closest Annie had ever been to gunfire. She ducked instinctively, and let out a little scream she was immediately embarrassed about.

Lew was surprised too, and stopped in his tracks, but not entirely because of the gunshot. He stopped because of what happened to the bullet that missed him.

They all heard it, even over the horns. It was the sound described by the sheriff of Sorrow Falls three years earlier, when he fired a handgun at the spaceship: a deep THUD that resonated with the bottom of the stomach and caused knees to buckle.

“The ship’s barrier expanded,” Ed said. “That was what that feeling was.”

“You’re saying the only thing between us and getting out of Sorrow Falls is a few feet of depressing thoughts?” Annie asked.

“Maybe?”

Lew Stempel decided to continue running, perhaps reasonably concluding that at a certain point the army’s bullets wouldn’t be able to reach him.

Unfortunately for him, the nature of the defensive barrier changed. Instead of slowing down, becoming sad, and reversing course, Mr. Stempel reached a point where he could no longer move. It was like he was stuck in an invisible membrane, as perhaps he was. That membrane was flexible, like an elastic band, and also like an elastic band it didn’t store energy for long.

Lew shot backwards. He was airborne for the first ten feet, and then rolled another five or six before bouncing to a stop.

Ed looked at Annie.

“Back to the car,” he said. “Before we’re trapped on this bridge.”

IT WAS to Oona and Laura’s immense credit that the trailer, which hadn’t moved in over a year, started up immediately. There was gas in the tank, the engine was clean and the fluids filled, and the tires were fully inflated. This was as much a part of their monthly maintenance cycle as gun-cleaning, toilet-cleaning, and bullet-making.

At the same time, they’d been parked for so long, the idea of driving away was as odd to them as it would be if this were a real fortress instead of a tricked-out family camper.

“All right, she’s started,” Oona said from the driver’s seat. It took ten minutes just to dig out the seat, which had been storing dirty laundry and unused Mason jars.

“Start driving,” Sam suggested from the passenger seat.

“Where, and how?”

There was a sea of zombies in front of the vehicle. Half of them were ignoring the camper and walking downhill, but that didn’t mean they weren’t in the way.

“We can head to Main, maybe see what they’re so interested in down there. If we don’t like it, it’s just a quick right over the bridge and out of town.”

“Thought you said the soldiers were buttoning up.”

“This thing’s bullet-proof, isn’t it?”

She laughed. “Most of it is. Windshield’s not. Too expensive. We didn’t plan to drive into gunfire, to be honest. Thought you were all about staying at your post.”

“I was. But now I’m thinking it would be best if someone made it out of here to report on what’s going on in here. I don’t think signals are making it out.”

“Plus you want to live through the night.”

“I had that thought.”

“So how do you want to get rid of all them?”

“I can start shooting at their feet, I guess. If I need to. They have a self-preservation instinct or they wouldn’t freeze at the sound of a gunshot, so if you start rolling they may get out of your way.”

Once they started moving, the zombies intent on tipping the trailer either lost interest or were engaged in extremely slow pursuit; it was basically impossible to tell the difference. Sam took up a position on the roof, using his own M16 to warn off any zombies about to wander into the path of the trailer, while Oona drove. Laura helped Sam using a rifle of her own. She wasn’t properly trained on its use, exactly, so Sam had to spend a few minutes discussing the finer points of suppression and crowd-control fire.

It was slow going initially, with a lot of bumping to convince people to get out of the way, but it eventually worked well enough to get the trailer out of the dirt and onto the road.

“Hey, did you guys get a chance to analyze any of this?” Dobbs asked. He was inexperienced with guns and showed no interest in learning, so while Sam and Laura patrolled the roof, Dobbs sat down with the electronics to see what was what.

“Oona will shoot you in the face if you touch any of that,” Laura said.

“Nah she won’t. This is pretty cool, what you’ve got going on here. These archives? How come you never shared any of this?”

Laura looked over his shoulder.

“These are under password, how the hell did you get in?”

“She left it open, I swear.”

“I repeat, she’ll shoot you when she finds out.”

“Aw, c’mon, Laura, the world’s already ending, this is no time to be guarding secrets.”

Laura sighed and went back to her position at the edge of the roof.

“You guys captured a new audio signal before we started driving, did you know?” Dobbs asked.

“No. Play it.”

He tapped a few commands, and the audio file played over the speakers.

“That’s someone breathing,” Sam said.

“We’ve been getting that for a month,” Laura said. “It’s too constant to be a person, though.”

“Are you sure?” Sam asked. “Some of the guys were sleeping behind the ship at night. Not me, but some of the guys.”

“Unless one of them was asleep for the entire month, it’s not that.”

The breathing accelerated drastically, and got louder. It sounded like the wind of a man in a sprint.

“Well that’s new,” she said.

“If that was really coming from the ship, I’m sure we would have known about it,” Sam said.

Dobbs laughed. “You think they’d tell you?”

“I think if the spaceship started breathing, yes, someone would tip us off.”

“But it’s not the ship… oh, hah! That’s brilliant.”

“What?” Laura asked.

“You know, I bet the government’s scientists never even heard this. You met with that guy, right? Annie’s friend, the guy writing an article?”

He put the last words in air quotes to point out how little he believed this.

“We did, yes.”

“Did you show him this? What did he think?”

“I don’t think he took it seriously.”

“But it was news to him, wasn’t it?”

“I think it was.”

“Betcha the government’s audio sensors had a filter in place. Something that excluded known sources of sound. It’d be the right choice if you want to pick up a small sound hiding beneath the crickets and the traffic and all that. The better the program the worse it would be for them.”

“That makes sense,” Laura said. “The ship listened to the sounds in the field, and then when it needed to do something that made a noise it mimicked the native sounds. The government filtered it out because it thought it was manmade.”

“Why did it need to make a noise?” Sam asked.

“That’s the best part,” Dobbs said. “If this timeline is correct, I’m pretty sure you guys captured the zombie communications channel.”

THE CAR WAS BLOCKED from behind by the time they reached it, but there was room to conduct a three-point turn using the left lane, which wasn’t yet full of cars driven by people thinking they could escape the presumption of carnage only a zombie apocalypse can deliver.

The road leading off the bridge was about as narrow as the bridge itself, but only went about a two hundred feet before connecting with Main. Annie wasn’t sure where Ed intended to take her next. There were plenty of other ways out of Sorrow Falls that didn’t involve bridges, and more than a few that also didn’t involve army checkpoints, but if what they just saw held true in all direction, they were stuck within a containment field being maintained by the spaceship itself. If that were the case, there wasn’t going to be any place he could take Annie safely. Half the town was zombies (the sleepwalker thing just wasn’t going to stick) and she saw no reason to expect them to stop until they had what they wanted.

Or, in this case, who they wanted.

The zombies, last seen amassing at the clinic, had adjusted their route and were heading down the street toward the bridge, and there was no real explanation for why they were doing that other than that Annie had moved from the clinic to the bridge, and they wanted Annie. Or Ed, theoretically, since he was with her at both locations. It seemed unlikely, but the possibility existed.

“How did they find us so quickly?” she asked.

“Don’t know, but I’m not happy about it.”

They were closing off the end of the road.

“You may have to plow through a few zombies if you want to get us out of here,” Annie said.

“Maybe not.”

He gunned the engine right up to the edge of the horde, and then slowed abruptly, nearly to a complete stop. The people in front of him showed no predilection for getting out of his way when it looked like he was going to barrel through them, and were no less willing to step aside when he slowed.

“Duck down,” he said.

“What are you going to do?”

“Just do it!”

She slid down until her head wasn’t visible through the window.

Ed started rolling the car forward at a pace no faster than five miles an hour. She could hear the front of the car brushing up against people. It sounded like they were going through a dry car wash.

“If I can just… nudge them…”

The car kept rolling. Every now and then it would slow until he surged the engine to get a little more power behind it, and then the stubborn obstacle before him either gave way or fell over.

“Is it working?”

“I think so. We’re almost to Main… uh-oh.”

He was looking in the rearview mirror.

“What is it?”

“They stopped walking to the bridge. They’re circling back.”

“Back to where?”

The rear windshield shattered from a heavy blow. It didn’t explode in pieces, because car glass was good like that. Instead, it fell down into the back seat as a single sheet.

Annie screamed.

“Dammit,” Ed muttered. Then he punched it.

The engine screamed, and the car lurched forward, then up, then forward again. Annie was practically on the floor of the car, and could feel every bump and thud through the undercarriage. Without question, they were running over people.

Meanwhile, someone was trying to crawl into the car through the space left by the shattered rear window. It was a woman Annie didn’t recognize, clinging onto the side of the opening and bleeding from the pieces of glass stuck in the frame. She was probably on the lower side of her forties, this woman. Maybe she was a mother of one of the younger kids in town. She could be someone who liked antiquing, and ice cream, and Sunday choir. Now she was running the risk of losing a finger as her vacant eyes searched the car for Annie.

Ed hit a rough patch in the road and started to fishtail. Annie could feel them losing control.

“Slow down before we end up in the river,” Annie shouted.

“You are…” the woman in the window said.

“If I slow down we’re stuck. I’m… dragging at least three people. Hold on tight.”

“To what?”

“Um, okay, sit up, get your seat belt on.”

She pulled herself back up into the bucket seat and strapped in. The woman clinging to the rear appreciated this, clearly, as she started saying “you are” even louder.

The hood of the car had a passenger too, a confused looking young man Annie recognized as a customer of the diner. His expression seemed to indicate that he had no more idea than anyone else why he was riding the outside of a moving car.

Ahead of them, townspeople were converging on a point just ahead of the hood of the car. There was no way anything short of a tank was going to make it through all of them.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Look left.”

She did. There were more zombies, but on the other side was an empty space for about ten feet, beyond which was Main.

“No, no, no, don’t do that.”

“Why not, it’s clear.”

“It’s clear because the grass is hiding a crevasse.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“I’m dead serious. There’s a crease right there.”

“A crease? I can jump a crease.”

“Ed…”

There was no more discussion, because then Ed jerked the wheel to the left and floored the gas, and committed to the move.

The space he was aiming for actually had a name, and that name was Charlie’s Pocket. It was well established long before the early demise of one Charles Dane Fincus that it was possible, if not paying attention, to miss the turn for the bridge, but Charlie performed the feat so spectacularly that he was the one everyone talked about when they talked about the pocket at all.

Building the bridge meant extending the land from the level of Main Street to the edge of the river. The process left a little lip of space at the corner, on both sides, where Main dropped off but before the land build-up for the bridge commenced. Most parts of the year, the void was invisible, either due to the naturally growing long grasses that came up from the riverfront, or snowdrifts.

One night some years prior, Charlie Fincus took the turn for the bridge at a speed estimated after the fact to be somewhere in the range of seventy miles per hour. He missed the road, and hit the pocket instead. At that speed, the pocket turned into a slalom course that carried his car straight down on its side until it rammed into the edge of the river, flipped up and landed upside-down in the water.

Charlie wasn’t wearing his seatbelt, so he didn’t make it all the way to the river in the car. Instead, he was flung like a rock from a sling when his Chevy went hood over tailpipe. He landed on the riverbank, but what made the story so memorable was that the bank he landed on was on the other side of the river. He died on impact, thankfully.

Annie knew the legend of Charlie’s Pocket, but didn’t think she had enough time to convey it to Ed, who wasn’t working with a ton of options anyway. She was just glad the town hadn’t gotten around to putting up the necessary guardrails yet, a rare instance of bureaucracy working in someone’s favor.

The car hit the curb at an angle, the left tire bouncing up before the right, turning them a little bit too even with the edge of the bridge. Their momentum corrected for it in time, though---barely—so they hit the pocket with a little speed.

The good news was, when they went airborne they lost the people (or parts of them) that were being dragged. The bad news was they weren’t airborne nearly long enough to clear the jump. The weight of the engine block pulled the nose right down to the ground, and far too soon. Ed hit the gas as soon as the front tires were down, but by then the car was already facing a twenty-degree angle. In other words, while the car’s nose was pointed at Main, it wasn’t heading in that direction. It was sliding into the pocket.

“Annie, you’re going to have to jump from the car,” Ed said, way more calmly than such a statement warranted.

“What?”

“I mean it, right now. Unbuckle, open the door and jump as far as you can.”

“What about you?”

“I have to hold my foot on the gas so you can get free. Soon as you’re out, I’ll join you.”

“C’mon, that’s what people say right before they die in a ball of—”

“Annie, please!”

“Right, but I better see you in a minute.”

“You will, I promise.”

She unbuckled, pushed open the door, and jumped clear, into tall grass that hid an unanticipated steepness.

As soon as she was out, the car gave in to gravity. It slid past her and caught the deep part of Charlie’s Pocket. It didn’t stop until it reached the river.

She didn’t see Ed get clear.

“Dammit, Ed, now what am I supposed to do?”

It seemed unreasonably quiet, lying there in the tall grass. She could hear her own breathing, and the car grinding to a stop at the riverbank, but she was beneath the bridge and the road, and so insulated from the sound coming from those places. It was oddly peaceful, and staying right there was tempting. Maybe the zombies wouldn’t find her there, and if they did, it was possible every one of them would slide into the pocket and never get near her.

It wasn’t a terrible plan, and she couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.

“You are…”

The woman from the back of the car made it out okay, it looked like. She was halfway down the hill and climbing in Annie’s direction. It made for a compelling reason not to stay where she was.

Violet’s. I could go there.

She would need to find a car, or find someone with a car.

Just break into a house and find the car key, that’s all.

It wouldn’t have been all that difficult, not with everyone in town on the streets. Zombies weren’t driving, and there was twelve blocks of row house residences less than a mile to her left. Sure, driving the car anywhere was going to end up being a serious challenge, but one thing at a time. Annie couldn’t stay where she was, so even if stealing a car wasn’t really a viable long-term plan, it was at least a plan.

She got up and started climbing. Main was pretty close, and she was a fast runner, and none of these people were moving all that quickly. She could do it.

When she reached the edge of the ravine and got to her feet, she realized with some measure of horror how mistaken she’d been.

Every single zombie from the edge of bridge road to the corner of Main was looking right at her.

“Oh,” she said. “Hello everyone.”

Someone came up behind and grabbed her arm. She screamed.

“It’s me, it’s me,” Ed said.

“Jesus Christ!” She slapped him in the chest. “I thought you were dead, don’t do that to me!”

“I’m sorry, I thought you saw me! I landed on the other side of the ravine. I waved.”

“You waved?”

“I didn’t want to shout.”

Annie pointed at the crowd. “Like that would have mattered.”

“Well I know that now. So, um… what’s our plan?”

“Learn to fly.”

“Any other ideas?”

“Why aren’t they moving?” she asked.

“I think they’re waiting for you to move. They have you cornered.”

“Not really.”

She nodded to their left.

The last building on the eastern side of Main was a gas station. South of the station, the land between the river and the road opened up to allow for the row house neighborhoods, but on the back side of the gas station itself was nothing but open space leading to the river. Directly behind the garage was a flat area wide enough for a person but not a car. There weren’t any zombies standing on that ground.

“Run behind the station, cut right to Main, steal a car, win the game. What do you think?” she asked.

“Sounds good to me. Except I’ve never stolen a car.”

“Neither have I.”

“I mean I don’t know how to hot wire one.”

“Ed… one thing at a time. We run on three. Ready?”