Walk, turn, walk.
A half hour passed at this excruciating pace. Another. The Host in front of me halted, and I nearly stumbled into him, my splayed fingers brushing the back of his jacket. He did not turn. Instead he tilted his head up to the sky. A bluish white glow framed the boreholes and the edge of his head as he uploaded his data to the heavens and whatever resided up there. A clicking sound emerged, maybe from his throat, maybe from somewhere else. Staring through the rear boreholes as if they were binoculars, I watched the mapped terrain scroll across his front eye membranes.
The clicking stopped, the glow faded, the head tilted down, and he continued on. Gathering myself, I followed as carefully as before.
Walk, turn, walk.
We ambled over plots, threaded between tombstones, carved around grave markers. It was slow-motion insanity, my life hanging on every tiny motion. I was following the already dead out of the cemetery, like some mythological hero trying to escape the underworld.
At last the fence came within reach. I fought down a panicked urge to spring onto the wrought-iron bars and scale them. We did a final, endless rotation just inside the perimeter and, after what seemed like forever, walked out through an open rear gate. I followed the Host to freedom. Several Mappers remained in view, dispersing across the rolling hills.
I stayed on the Host’s heels until there were no other Mappers in sight.
Then I simply stopped walking. I let him drift on in a straight line through the woods. Way up ahead he turned ninety degrees and disappeared through a veil of branches.
I briefly remained as I’d been, clenched and tense.
And then the pent-up terror of the past few hours shuddered out of me. On cue my muscles cramped. I had to consciously unlock my shoulders, draw them down and away from my head.
Bathed by the moonlight, I breathed and shook out my knotted neck. Exhaling long and slow, I continued on my course.
After what I’d been through, the remaining bank of the ridge was a breeze. I broke out onto the dirt road, and there it was, mud-spattered and glorious. The Silverado. I grabbed the keys off the front tire where we’d left them.
Swinging in behind the wheel, I felt a charge of triumph.
I followed the bumpy road down, the ride smoothing out as I lurched onto the highway. The route through the valley was straight and true, and I encountered no real problems. Like before, the abandoned cars were easy enough to dodge and Hosts were few, far between, and easy to steer around. For a while I even rolled down the window and let the breeze riffle my hair.
At the gas station, using the same air tube Alex had used, I siphoned off more diesel from the huge fuel tank of the semi. The bitter taste of the sludge made me gag. Once I’d filled up, I drove to an empty stretch of highway and parked the pickup right on the dotted line. Sitting on the warm hood of the idling truck, keeping a clear line of sight in every direction, I ate a stale sandwich and washed it down with some water.
A picnic for one.
I drove on, Ponderosa Pass coming up, a black mass even darker than the darkness ahead. Remembering the mob of workers from the cannery, I eased off the gas before the barricade and killed the headlights.
As soon as the barricade vaguely resolved ahead, I steered off the road. It was pitch-black here, the mountains cutting off the moon from sight, so I slowed to a crawl. The tires sank in the marshy reeds alongside the road.
The overturned bus from the Lawrenceville Cannery seemed to leap out of the darkness. I almost smashed into it, managing to wrench the wheel to the side just in time.
After steering around the bus, I parked the Silverado at the base of the pass. The tree line sloped steeply upward here, impossible to scale. I hopped out, my boots smacking wetly into the earth. To start my hike up the mountain, I’d have to climb the barricade once again.
As I pulled my boots from the wet reeds, they made a sucking sound. It was annoying and loud, but there was no other way for me to get back to the road. I continued on, stepping into a boggy spot. My boot sank even lower. When I went to lift my leg, my foot almost pulled out of the boot. I paused to firm my toes inside the boot.
But the sucking sound continued.
Behind me.
Then it stopped. An echo?
I waited, listening for the faintest sound. Nothing. I took another step, and the sucking noise came again in the darkness behind me. I paused, and it paused as well.
I tried to ram my fear back down my throat. If I started sprinting, I’d literally run right out of my boots. Even if I managed to get away, I wouldn’t last an hour out here barefoot.
I started up again.
The sucking noise started up.
But now it was in stereo.
Dozens of feet squelching through the reeds.