August Ansel - Shadow Road

“Hail, vagabonds,” he called cheerily. “Well met!” The cape belled gracefully behind him, showing a satin lining the color of dark cherries.

This unexpected greeting seemed to wake Arie first. “Whither, gallivant?” she shouted.

The skating man, already a half-block past them, made a shift so quick and elegant it was nearly invisible and then was skating backward, moving away yet facing them. He began to roll back and forth in wide arcs, studying them. “You wound me,” he said to Arie. “I roll with purpose.”

“From what, to where?” she returned with no hesitation.

“To and fro. Or fro and to, depending on my mood.”

“Your mood seems pert enough.” They’d begun trailing after as he continued moving in those broad, graceful curves.

He glanced briefly over his shoulder, ensuring his path was clear. “Then my plan,” he said, “has proved itself.”

“Which plan is that?” said Handy.

“To wit,” the man said. He raised one finger for emphasis. “‘Wise men ne’er sit and wail their loss but cheerily seek how to redress their harms.’ The Bard.” With a wink, he executed the little turn again and began skating on.

Curran called after. “Is it worth scavenging in town?”

“Up there?” he said, gesturing up the hill in the direction of town. “It’s been done. I can’t advise you, though. These things are none of mine. Cura te ipsum —that’s my motto.” As he rolled away, now picking up speed, he called back. “Take care of your own self.”

Handy turned to Arie. “That sounds familiar.”

She snorted and flapped a palm at him. “The sentiment doesn’t look to have done him any harm.”

“It’s like I’m on mushrooms right now,” said Renna. “What the hell?” She looked at Kory, who was still staring after the tiny, retreating figure on skates. “What do you think?”

“I want shoes with wheels,” he said, voice fat with admiration.

“Are we going in?” said Curran. He still held the rifle in both hands. They were now standing at the foot of a street that led straight up to the town center. “I can see Nygaard’s from here, up there on the left.”

Arie looked where he pointed. It was close. Streets were narrow; houses and shops were built close to the cracked sidewalks. The taller of them seemed almost to tilt forward. The town was built on a series of hills, so the road gradually climbed until it crested about a half-mile away. In the shadowy distance, above Arcata proper, sat the university. Founders Hall dominated the hillside. With every window and arched entrance dark, it looked more like the bulwark of a maximum-security prison than a bastion of higher education.

“Cutting through town saves us a lot of miles on foot,” said Handy. “Otherwise, we’ll need to work back to the highway. We’ll end up bearing west as well as north. Those are miles we’ll have to make up later.”

Renna groaned. “I don’t love this. But I hate the idea of fighting through all those dead cars again, too.”

“We’re going to lose the day,” said Curran.

“You’re right,” said Arie. “We’re here now. Let’s give it a try. One block at a time.”

“WHAT ARE THEY?” asked Renna, staring down the first side street. On every door was an indicator slashed in drooling spray paint: a red number, a green number, or the familiar red X.

“Body count,” said Curran. “Looks like someone was a lot more efficient about it here than in Eureka. The X means no one inside. A red number is a casualty—sick or dead. Green means a healthy person.”

There were very few green numbers.

They walked in pairs, Handy and Renna in front, Arie and Kory right behind them, and Curran bringing up the rear with Talus. As Handy had suggested, they each kept one hand on a weapon and looked in every direction as they proceeded.

After the openness of the frontage road, the quiet of the town seemed strangely amplified. The sounds of animals, birds, and trees moving in the wind were largely missing here, but the more stunning absence was the pedestrian cacophony of human enterprise. When the eye saw homes and shop windows and cars parked along the street, the mind had an expectation of voices and a proliferation of engines. Arie thought what a morass of buzzing, humming, grinding, ticking, and whirring had gone on in the world before, and what a deep concavity the absence of all that sound left in its wake. The loudest thing on the street right now was the faint gritting of their shoes on the concrete.

Before they’d reached the end of the second block, a light breeze had sprung up. The overcast sky broke open here and there, providing patchwork glimpses of blue. Sunlight landed in random bits. In the near distance, at the top of the hill, the soaring white spire of the Presbyterian church was made momentarily brilliant.

The light also winked off twisted chrome and shattered glass at a gas station on the corner. Kory and Renna looked away as they passed, and Handy watched straight ahead. Arie was compelled to bear witness to the mess. She saw Curran looking, too.

Once again, cars were massed together like ants around a sugar cube, and at least half of these were burned out husks. The station’s expansive front windows appeared to have disintegrated, as had the windows of nearby homes. An entire bank of pumps was a warped and blackened mass. Dark bundles lay all around the site, and it took Arie several moments to realize they were bodies—heads bent, limbs contracted, like victims caught in the lava flow of a volcanic eruption. Even here, though, nature relentlessly worked its reclamation. Deep fissures in the concrete had made room for seeds and spores. The wild plants that took hold merged with overgrown grass in the parking strip to create an interconnected maze of the living and the dead.

They were nearing the sporting goods store now. The side of the building was painted in a fantastical mural of outdoor life: river rafting, fly-fishing, deer hunting, all of it now peeling and faded. Commercial buildings and residences sat side by side, a throwback to an era before strict zoning laws. As they approached a battered Craftsman-style house, Talus—heeling alertly to Curran—looked up. Arie saw this in her peripheral vision and followed the dog’s gaze. From the second floor, a white curtain luffed in and out on the breeze. As they passed, a hand pulled the curtain in. The window closed with a thud that made everyone jump.

“It’s all right,” said Arie, keeping her eye on the dog. “If Talus is good, we’re good, too. Just keep walking.” The handsome front door sported no numerals, just the garish red X: no one inside here.

The double entrance of Nygaard’s was chained and padlocked, but the glass was completely shattered. It lay strewn everywhere, inside and out. Arie wondered if the gas station detonation had done the damage, but dark splotches that could only be a copious amount of old blood indicated a different dark mischief. They stepped through the empty doorframe and paused on the other side.

“Wow,” said Kory. Renna draped an arm over the boy’s shoulders.

“What a shit show,” said Curran.

The place was a chaotic nightmare jumble—part retail inventory sent sprawling, part filth brought in from outside by both intention and time. The dank smell of mold hung like a curtain.

“It’s just a different kind of hunting,” said Arie. “Let’s see what we might find.”

They remained paired up and got to work, four on the main floor and Curran up in the half-mezzanine above. There were heaps and piles of things for children: shoes, jackets, stuffed animals, and tiny bicycles. Dozens of petite blue bottles lay in a shattered display of essential oils, the puddle beneath them dark and viscous. Three palm-sized espresso makers, meant for backpacking, sat untouched on an otherwise empty shelf. Plastic kayaks and surfboards were tumbled from an elevated display, and someone had apparently mistaken a kayak for a portable toilet. A dismaying pile of useful things—tents, sleeping bags, backpacks—had been purposely destroyed and piled in the center of the store, where the dead cash register sat like a monolith.