Benny nodded. He was salivating.
“Benny, I’m going to take your blindfold off and show you our new friend.”
Benny urinated on the pavement.
“If you do good, I’ll give you some water and a treat. Are you going to do a good job?”
Benny made a sound that wasn’t human, and then the bearded man nodded to his handler, who pulled off the blindfold. The wildman crouched in front of Jack. Eyes ringed with black and yellow bruises but still a deep clarity and intensity in them. He was inches from Jack’s face. Smelled terrible, like he’d been bedding down in his own shit, and he seemed to be staring at something on the back of Jack’s skull.
Jack looked up at the man holding the revolver. “What the f**k is—”
Never saw the thing move, but Benny was suddenly on top of him and trying to tear Jack’s throat out with his teeth. Took three men to drag it away and several jolts from the cattle prod before it finally collapsed in the road and curled up moaning in the fetal position.
Jack scrambled back toward the van, trying to catch his breath, the man with the revolver moving toward him, saying, “It’s all right. This is good news. If Benny had crawled into your lap and started cooing, you wouldn’t be with us anymore.”
“What is that thing?”
“Benny’s our pet. Our affected pet. He checks out everyone who tries to come into the city. I’m Brian, by the way.” He offered a hand, helped Jack onto his feet.
“Is the city safe?” Jack asked.
“Yeah. We figure there’s ten, fifteen thousand people here. Many have left, gone north toward the border, but that’s a rough trip. It’s heavily guarded up there. We’ve got all the roads into town protected.”
“No affected in the city?”
“Nope.”
“How’s that possible?”
“It was cloudy the night of the event over this part of Montana.”
“You haven’t been attacked?”
“Not by any force that stood a chance. We’ve got five thousand armed men ready to f**k shit up on a moment’s notice.”
Jack looked around, the RPMs of his heart falling back toward baseline.
“Has a woman with two children passed through in the last week?”
“I don’t think so. You have a picture?”
“No.”
“Your wife and kids?”
Jack nodded.
“You’re the first person to even come up this road in three days. Are they coming here to meet you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know where they are. We were separated in Wyoming.” He looked at the rest of the crew. “Any of you seen them?”
Nothing but headshakes and sorrys.
“My boy is affected,” Jack said. “He isn’t symptomatic or violent, but he saw the lights. He’s seven years old. Would you let him in?”
“How’s it possible he isn’t like the others?”
“I don’t know, but he isn’t. His name is Cole.”
“We’ll keep an eye out for them,” Brian said. “If he isn’t hostile, we’ll let your family through.”
“You swear to me?”
“We don’t kill kids.” Brian pointed through the windshield at Donald. “Friend of yours?”
“I picked him up this morning outside of White Sulphur Springs, just walking down the middle of the road. He needs medical attention.”
“Well, there’s shelters set up at some of the schools. You might find a doctor at one of those.”
“There’s an Air Force base here, right?”
“Yeah, but it’s been on lockdown since everything went to hell. I guess it’s understandable—they’ve got the silos holding the Minuteman nuclear missiles.”
Jack climbed back into the driver’s seat.
“You’ll let me through?”
“Absolutely.” He closed Jack’s door. “Safe travels.”
Jack had passed through the outskirts of Great Falls a handful of times in the last ten years during those long driving trips to see his father when his old man had still lived in Cut Bank. But he hadn’t been in the city proper since he and Dee had left to start a life in Albuquerque, sixteen years ago. Thought this might be the most peculiar circumstance under which to experience the emotion of nostalgia.
Driving the quiet streets, he found it haunting to see the darkness fall upon a city that had no light to raise in its defense.
In the blue dusk, he passed an ice cream shop he and Dee had frequented all those years ago on Friday nights. But everything else, at least what little he could see of it, had changed.
He drove to a hospital and cruised past the emergency room entrance, dark and vacated.
Went on.
There was no one out. The streets empty. The geography of the town might have been an asset, might have stoked his memory, had there been streetlights to guide him. But it was as dark as the countryside in these city limits. He drove for thirty minutes, dipping into the reserve tank, rambling in search of anything that resembled a shelter.
The engine had already sputtered once when he saw the soft smears of light through windows in the distance, and as the form of the building took shape, he recognized it—a high school. People were milling around the steps that climbed to the main brick building, the cherry glow of their cigarettes barely visible in the dark.
Jack pulled over to the curb and turned off the minivan.
He was thirsty again.
“Donald,” he said. “We’re at a shelter. They might have hot food. Clean water. Cots. I’ll find a doctor to look at you. We’re in a safe city now. You’ll be taken care of.”
Donald leaned against the door.
“Don? You awake?” Jack reached over and touched the man’s hand.
Cool and limp.
His neck gave no pulse.
Jack climbed the steps to the school. Inside, candlelight flickered off the lockers and it smelled worse than a homeless shelter—stink of body odor and rancid clothing. Cots stretched down the length of the hallway, and everywhere the noise of hushed conversations and snoring. A baby crying somewhere. He didn’t smell food.
He walked a long corridor, cots on either side and open suitcases—barely enough room him to make his way down the middle without trampling someone’s filthy laundry.
Five minutes of negotiating the crowded hallways brought him to the entrance of a gymnasium, where a woman sat at a folding table reading by candlelight a library-bound edition of Treasure Island. She looked up at Jack with what he imagined to be the no-bullshit demeanor of a mathematics teacher, or worse, a principal.