The Hole (23 page)

“The exit!” Evajean shouted, grabbing his arm.

He yanked it away from her, terrified she’d run them off the road, and she pulled back. But her voice still carried only excitement. “Pull off at the next exit!”

“Why?”

“Do it,” she said, and Elliot decided he would. He didn’t know what she had in mind but the thought of not being able to get inside the rest stop of or it being one with only a small shack of bathrooms, easily smashed down, occurred to him, and he knew he couldn’t count on his plan working. They drove past the pull off for the stop and he felt no loss in its passing.

“There!” Evajean said. An exit was just ahead. Elliot pulled onto it and, a moment latter, the creatures turned and followed. “Now go under!” she yelled at him. “Go under the overpass.”

He realized what she was getting at and hoped to hell it would would work. Could the creatures really be that stupid? He didn’t know, but it damn well better be the case, he thought. Because if the creatures figured this one out, he and Evajean were probably as screwed as they’d ever been since setting out on this increasingly imprudent journey.

He twisted the wheel to the left and again felt the truck lean. But it held steady this time and his hands on the wheel did the same. The overpass was only a short distance in front of them and he flushed with hope when he saw that it was clearly too low for the creatures to run through.

Just be so fucking dumb,
he thought at the creatures, and drove underneath.

The creature in front turned to follow. It reared back, however, just yards away from colliding the top half of its tubular body with the concrete and steel only eleven fee above the pavement. As Elliot sped away, he saw the second creature slam into the first, both falling, and then the truck was onto the curve of the on ramp and heading back onto the highway towards the east. As they drove across the overpass, he could see the two creatures pacing randomly, twisting their front quarters, looking for the truck.
They really *are
that stupid,* he thought.

Evajean cheered and clapped and Elliot grinned at this small burst of luck. “Smart,” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Then they both just sat quietly, breathing and enjoying the sense of relief.

“What do you think those things were?” Evajean asked after some time. She’d pulled Hope out from under the seat and now had the dog on her lap, scratching its ears.

“I don’t know.”

“It’s just that they were like animals, but ones I’ve never heard of. I guess- I mean, where could they have come from?”

Elliot thought about this, but didn’t have an answer. They were imaginary monsters, not zoo creatures, not something escaped from a nature preserve. You can’t explain stuff like that, he told himself, just like you can’t explain most everything that’s happened since pulling in to that Wal-Mart parking lot.

“It’s genetics,” Evajean said, sounding surprised. “Like GMOs.”

“What?”

“Like those frankenfoods. Genetically modified organisms. You know
Jurassic Park
?”

“Yeah.”

“With the dinosaurs they brought back with genes from amber? I bet that’s what happened with the plague and the crazies and those things. I bet someone engineered something, maybe was trying to build a new kind of animal, and they made the plague by mistake.”

“Maybe,” Elliot said.

“No, that’s it,” Evajean continued, excited now. “When the plague showed up, it was because someone let it out of a lab. Maybe they did it on purpose, you know, but I think it was more of a mistake. And the elderly and kids got sick first, because that’s the way it always is-they’re weaker. And then because it was, well, it was a science experiment, it mutated. It was unstable. Adults could get sick, too. And it mutated again and we go the crazies.”

Elliot thought maybe she was on to something, so he let her keep going, wanting to hear what else she had.

“And here’s the thing, Elliot. Those creatures back there, I bet they were the science experiment. The plague is just something they have, like trichinosis and pork.”

When she said this last, Elliot gave up on the idea. Genes could build a new animal, sure, and create the plague-even drive people insane. But the things they’d seen in Nahom, what Evajean had done, those just couldn’t be explained by a screw up in a lab.

“And we’re immune,” Evajean was saying when Elliot finally responded to her theory.

“No,” he said. “I don’t think so. It makes sense, but I just don’t think that’s how it is.”

Evajean stopped talking and stared at him. She didn’t look hurt-just disappointed. “But it is,” she said. “It has to be.”

“I just don’t think so,” Elliot said.

“Then what-”

“It’s Nahom. That’s what I keep coming back to. What happened there after we were attacked.”

“But I-”

“Don’t remember it, I know. But you were there in that cave when they killed the girl. You saw-”

“I don’t know what I saw.”

“Yes, you do. So do I. We saw spirits, or something like spirits-ghosts, I guess. We saw them come out of those people. And no matter how advanced the virus that came off those creatures is, it couldn’t make spirits rise from living human beings.”

Evajean was silent. She turned, looking out the window and pet Hope. Then she said, her voice small, “What do you think it is, then?”

Elliot shrugged. “The end times,” he said. “Maybe this is the end of the world.”

She turned to face him now, the excitement gone, her features slack. “No,” she said.

“That’s what I think.”

“But you don’t even- You don’t believe that stuff, do you, Elliot?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Before, no, none of it. It’s all just old books and people on TV who are clearly delusional. Like in Nahom. Those books in the house they gave us? It’s all crap, I’m sure of that. None of it’s true.” He stopped and sucked in a large breath. “But there’s
something
going on and I’m starting to think the only way to describe it is something like what’s in those books. Something otherworldly.”

Evajean was quiet. And then she laughed. “I just want to get to Colorado,” she said. “Or Montana or wherever. That’s when we’ll know. When we find the Hole, that’s when we’ll know.”

“What if it’s jut a body dump? A big pile of corpses.”

“It won’t be, she said. “It’ll be something more than that. Something that’ll explain all this.” She laughed again and punched him lightly on the arm. “Supernatural? Elliot, that’s silly. Those spirits in the cave? Probably just us being really tired and then all those bright torches in such a small place. When we got out, when the crazies came, I don’t know what could’ve came over me, but if I had to guess, I’d say exhaustion-a waking dream, right? Or maybe you were the one dreaming. And who knows about the crazies. Maybe they all died because they were sick. Maybe the heat from all the fires killed them. It could be anything.”

She stopped, looking at him for approval of this new explanation. But he couldn’t give it because, as much as he wanted to believe everything she’d just said, he knew none of it was true.

“Perhaps,” he said finally. “Yeah, perhaps.”

For the next fifteen hours they drove, stopping only to eat, relieve themselves, and fill the truck’s tank with gas from the metal drums foraged in Nahom. The conversation about what was going on continued, but in the absence of a mundane explanation, it quickly became futile. Any supernatural answer might work, after all, since all were unbound by a necessary congruence to known facts. This didn’t stop them from tossing ideas back and forth, but the result was only more confusion.

I-64 turned into I-70, but the roads remained empty. For the whole of those fifteen hours, they didn’t see another car or any of the crazies. As the excitement of the brush with the creatures faded, the drive took on a pleasant atmosphere: the scenery was beautiful and lack of anything to run into gave Elliot the opportunity to look out and enjoy it.

Eventually they’d agreed to hold off on any further speculation until they reached Colorado. If they found the Hole there, then maybe all their questions would be answered-a prediction Evajean insisted on maintaining. And, as had originally been the plan, if Colorado was a bust, they’d head north into Montana and check out the story of the truck driver in the bar.

Several hours after it got dark, Elliot pulled off the road, gathered the guns from the back of the truck. When these were placed within easy reach, the two of them tilted back their seats and went to sleep. As before, motels were available off several exits, but the idea of being caught again by the crazies made taking advantage of them seem foolish.

Evajean fell asleep almost immediately, Hope curled in her lap, but Elliot had a more difficult time. The seat only went slightly further back than in airline coach, and the padding inside had hardened with age. He twisted, trying to find a comfortable position, but none worked, either giving his head nothing to lean on or else forcing his spine to an awkward angle. After perhaps an hour of this he gave up and got out of the truck.

The night air had shed much of its heat and he was again reminded that this was the end of September and he and Evajean had only the engine of an old truck to keep them warm. Even the hotels would be unheated.

He dug around in the back of the truck until he found an apple. Taking a bit, he returned to the front and sat down on the hood.

The sky was clear and the moon just a pencil line arc overhead. Elliot leaned back on the windshield and pulled his jacked tight. He finished his apple while looking up at the stars and tried to force himself not to return to the problem of unanswered questions.

When he was done and too cold to stay outside, he got back into the truck and turned it on. Evajean woke up only briefly, turning and giving him a questioning look, then fell asleep again. After a few minutes, once the cab was at a comfortable temperature, he killed the engine and resumed his efforts to get some rest.

By morning, the sky had cleared entirely. Low, flat clouds cut the sun, but it was still warm enough that they were able to drive with the windows down. Hope pushed his head out and, while Evajean held him tight, panted into the wind.

Elliot drove with a shot gun jammed in next to his seat, ready this time for any new creatures that might charge the truck. He wasn’t concerned with the crazies anymore, at least not in the sense of fear for his life, but the coincidence of those two creatures being right by where he and Evajean stopped was too great-he was sure there would be a lot more out there.

“We should be there tomorrow morning,” he said and Evajean looked at him, nodding.

“Just one more night. We can do that.” She shrugged. “And if there are people there, maybe we can even sleep in real beds. I feel exhausted all the time now.”

“It’s stress.”

“That, yeah,” she said, “but I bet it’s also from sleeping in a truck.”

That afternoon, after they’d stopped to eat a small meal, and with no further sign of strange beasts, Elliot tried bringing up Nahom again, but the response was the same. She didn’t remember anything and didn’t want to talk about it.

“I really don’t know what you want me to tell you,” she said after he’d pressed her to think back, to try to remember anything of what had happened.

Elliot sighed. “I don’t know either,” he said. “Do you have the box? Can you take it out for a second?”

Evajean reached around behind her seat and pulled out the small, golden cube. It was about the size of a rubik’s cube and perfectly smooth on all sides, the edges and points crisp but not too sharp to hold.

“Can you look at it for me?” Elliot said. He didn’t want to stop driving just to inspect the cube.

“There’s nothing on it.”

“No seams? Anything like that?”

Evajean turned the box around in her hands, holding it up in front of her face. “No,” she said.

“Even at-”

“Wait!” She pulled the box very close until it almost touched her nose.

“What is it?”

“Stop,” Evajean said and waved her hand at him. “Just let me look.”

She twisted the box, around and around, scanning her eyes along each of its twelve edges. “There’s something…” she said and pushed her fingernail against the metal.

Elliot heard a click and Evajean jumped back in her seat, dropping the cube onto the floor at her feet. She bent down and picked it up. “Look,” she said.

Elliot did. Then he put his foot on the break, slowed the truck and pulled off onto the shoulder. He killed the ignition and leaned over to look at the box.

Evajean had opened a seam along one of its edges. The metal was pulled wider at the center than the corners, like a small change purse. Evajean held the opening up to her eye but then dropped it down and shook her head. “I can’t see anything,” she said.

“Can you open it more?”

She pushed her finger inside. Elliot had a momentary vision of the think snapping shut, a hungry little mouth, but then Evajean looked at him and grinned. “I think I just need to…” she said and pulled the box open the rest of the way.

There was no sound as hidden seams along the top and bottom fell open. The two halves folded back on each other. The inside was filled with sheets of paper, aged and yellow, but not crumbling. Each was filled with tiny lettering in close rows. It was a book.

“What does it say?” Elliot asked.

Evajean flipped the pages. “I can’t read it. The letters aren’t english ones.” She turned a few more of the small sheets. “Some look like math symbols. Did you take calculus?”

Elliot nodded.

“They look like those.”

“Is it math?”

“I don’t think so. There aren’t any numbers. It just looks like math in some spots.” She leaned back, setting the open cub in her lap. “None of this is going to be easy, is it?” she said.

“What isn’t?”

“But I guess this could just be some sort of old book, you know? Or a child’s toy. Why does it have to be important?”

“It was glowing,” Elliot said. “And you held it over your head and used it to kill all the crazies. I think there has to be something to it.”