Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalipse

nightmares by the score—at one point, excited by what had felt like the resurgence of the old Wayne, the one with whom she could talk about anything, Jackie had tried to verbalize the feeling that had refused to abandon her since the catastrophes had begun: that somehow all of this was contingent, none of the changes that had contorted the world permanent, not yet—the best she could manage to explain the sensation was to compare it to the way she’d felt after her best girlfriend, Elaine Brown, had been killed by a drunk driver on her way home from her job at Dunkin’ Donuts the year before: for about a day after her parents had sat her down at the kitchen table to tell her, Jackie had been absolutely convinced that Elaine’s death was not yet set in stone, that there was some way for her to change things, if only she could figure out what it was—she’d been in shock, yes, but it was as if that blow to her system had brought her temporarily closer to the machinery of the world, allowed her to feel the peeling away of this course of events from other possibilities—the sensation she had now was different mostly in terms of magnitude and duration: when Elaine had been killed, it had been like standing next to a small motor, a motorcycle, say, for twenty-four hours or so; this was like standing beside railroad tracks while a three-engine freight train rumbled past, night and day, for weeks—Wayne had named the feeling “quantum divergence,” (an awful lot of quanta flying around that day), which sounded impressive but didn’t really mean what he wanted it to—it was, Jackie said, like being able to feel the Fates changing the weave of the world—whatever name you gave her awareness, whether it was anything more than a peculiar effect of profound shock, a milder version of the transformations that were altering Wayne (for all she knew, it was a well-documented response to trauma), the problem with her conviction of the freight train of events rattling away from alternate scenarios was its utter uselessness: after all, what could she do about it? it wasn’t as if she had the ability to reverse events, to cause the Fates to loosen what they’d woven and start again (though secretly she wondered if, somewhere, there might be a door that would open back to the world she’d known)—his attempt at naming it aside, Wayne hadn’t known what to say to her sensation, and the conversation had moved on to other topics, to the baby, and how much longer till Jackie was due, and what were they going to do when she was ready to give birth?—at the time, she’d hoped they’d be able to use the facilities at Vassar Hospital, at which, at the rate they were going, she projected they’d arrive around the time the baby was about to come, and if the Pack had been defeated, killed by then, there would be no reason they couldn’t set up camp in it; there was a lot to be said for staying in a hospital—but they had fled up Route 9 faster than she’d anticipated; the Pack had proven more wily and ever-more-difficult to kill, and now they would have to try one of the hospitals in Kingston (if there were any point to it; if the baby were still alive; if her body didn’t go into labor before then and deliver a stillborn child)—Enough, she thought, one hand rubbing her stomach in broad circles, as if it were a lamp and she summoning the genie; Be all right, she told the baby, be all right—funny, how much you could want something that intimidated the hell out of you, that you hadn’t wanted in the first place but had felt powerless to refuse (thank you, twelve years of Catholic school), that had wrenched the wheel from your hands and turned your life onto an unexpected, unpaved road; talk about quantum divergence—she remembered the first time she’d felt the baby move, the first time she’d been sure, a flutter that had simultaneously freaked her out and thrilled her, and which had grown into kicks and jabs and using her bladder as a personal trampoline—the emotion that had grown up in response to her pregnancy had been different than what she’d expected: there had been none of the treacly sentimentality she’d been sure would ooze through her; instead, what had sprouted in her had been more basic, primitive, even, a deep connection to the child pushing out her belly, as if she could feel the umbilicus tying them together—the emotion had been supplemented by others: anxiety, mostly, and teary pathos, and occasionally profound contentment, as solid and heavy as a stone—Be all right, she told the baby, be all right.

Just before dawn, the sky filling with light, indigo paling to dark blue, the faintest stars fading out, The Pack Came, their arrival heralded by the blat of a car alarm, which, she realized, Wayne must have rigged for exactly this purpose—in an instant, she had hefted the rifle to her cheek and one of the Pack leapt into focus; she moved the gun back and forth and saw two behind that one, and one more bringing up the rear, the four of them about ten feet behind the rope barrier, making their way slowly, placing each plate-sized foot with care, stopping to sniff the road in front of them, pausing to study the Bridge’s support cables—there was enough time for Jackie to verify her initial count a second, a third time, and once she was certain that the four things she saw were the Pack, that was it, there were no others padding along behind them, her heart lifted with a fierce joy and she thought, Four, there are four of them; we can do this; Wayne was right; we can be free of them, finally—they were in rough shape, these four; it looked as if they’d pulled themselves from the wreckage of the trap at the mall: their hides were decorated with cuts, slashes, burns; patches of hair had been torn and scraped away; flaps of skin hung down like streamers; the one she’d focused on first appeared to have something wrong with its left eye, which was crusted with dark blood, while the one bringing up the rear was trailing its left back leg behind it—that they had survived made them the fittest, yes, thank you, Mr. Darwin, but watching their cautious advance, Jackie was reminded of her grandmother’s dog, a poodle that had been old when she was a child and had grown steadily more gray, more infirm, more trembling and tentative each year, and if her heart wasn’t moved to pity; the last four weeks had insured the impossibility of that; the association tempered her joy—It’s time to end this, she thought, and turned to wake Wayne, who was (of course) already up and jamming pistols into his jeans, slipping the strap of his bag-of-tricks over his head, his face still—he crouched beside her, holding a third pistol out to her: “In case one of them makes it past me,” he said as she took it, checked the safety, and set it on the rock beside her—he reached for her backpack, dragged it around for her to lean on: “Take the one to the rear,” he said, “and any others that try to escape,” and before she could answer, he was running away from her, heading back along the ledge-holding the rifle aloft with her right hand, Jackie eased herself up and down, until she was lying against the backpack, then brought the rifle into position, fitting the stock against her shoulder, anchoring it against the meat to take the kick, which Wayne had assured her wasn’t that bad—she looked through the sight and there were the Pack, stopped in their tracks, their hackles raised; she could hear them, a deep bass note like a viol whose strings were frayed out of true, and she curled her finger around the trigger, ready for them to panic and flee, reminding herself to squeeze, not pull, and wondering if she would be able to hit, let alone stop, any of them—Wayne was running down the road toward the Bridge, his hands empty, and when the Pack saw him, the note they were holding rose to a ragged shriek, drowning out whatever Wayne was shouting at them; taunting them, no doubt, urging them on (and a part of her wondered why that should work, why animals would respond to insult, and she wondered if they weren’t animals, but wasn’t sure what such a question implied, because she couldn’t imagine machines being bothered by Wayne’s provocations, which left what? people? which was ridiculous).

It was over quickly, or so Jackie would think afterwards—while everything was taking place, it seemed to occur with agonizing slowness, almost a series of tableaux that shifted with each change in the Bridge’s lights, violet, and Wayne was in mid-run, his mouth open, his hands out to either side of him, the leader of the Pack’s jaws tightening into a snarl that was strangely close to a grin, the others stepping forward, blue, and Wayne was stopped, no more than twenty feet from the rope barrier, which, seen against the Pack drawing closer to it, seemed fanciful, a child’s approximation of a more substantial arrangement, green, and the leader was crouching to jump, Wayne’s hands were still empty, the rear member of the Pack had ceased moving forward and appeared to be considering retreat; Jackie had its shortened head in the crosshairs, yellow, and the leader was in the air, Wayne’s hands were full of the pistols he was pointing not at the thing hanging suspended before him, but the pair behind it; the rearguard had turned to bolt, jerking its head out of the target, showing Jackie its neck, orange, and the leader had struck the web and been caught in it, the ropes sagging but holding it up; the ends of Wayne’s pistols were flaring white as he emptied them into the middle two members of the Pack, which lurched forward even as he blew their heads to pieces; the remaining thing was in the process of swinging itself around to flee, exposing the back of its head to Jackie’s aim and she squeezed the trigger, the rifle flashing and cracking and slamming back into her shoulder, almost tearing itself out of her hands, red, and she was struggling the sight back to her face, trying to find the last member of the Pack before it was too far away, hoping for one more shot, maybe she could wound it, cripple it and Wayne could finish it, but she couldn’t see it, it was gone, and she swept the sight back and forth and there it was, its legs splayed out, the front of its head gone, shattered, and for a moment she was so happy she wanted to shout out loud, and then she thought of Wayne and searched for him, her finger hovering over the trigger, orange, again, and she saw that Wayne had abandoned the pistols, cast them to either side, and was walking towards the last member of the Pack, which had not succeeded in disentangling itself from Wayne’s rope trap and which twisted and writhed, biting the air in its frustration; she thought, What the hell? and aimed for the thing’s chest; but yellow, and something was wrong, the sight was dark; she drew back from it, blinked, and looked through it, again, green, and she saw that Wayne was wearing a cape, that he was trailed by a length of blackness