Chapter 3 The Grain Town
The pickups stayed far enough back to prove the men driving them were not fools.
That bothered Dane more than a reckless chase would have. A reckless chase could be punished. Men drunk on speed and anger made mistakes at curves, bridges, blind rises, and broken pavement. They overestimated engines, underestimated ditches, and believed a gun in the hand made physics negotiable.
These men held distance.
One dark shape in the mirror, sometimes two, appearing when the road climbed and vanishing when it dipped behind miles of wet grass and low winter wheat. They did not close. They did not fire. They simply remained, steady as a bad thought.
Tomber’s front end trembled harder with every mile.
Dane felt it through the steering wheel first as a shiver, then as a wandering pull that forced small corrections from his hands.
The impact at the weigh station had bent something.
Tie rod, maybe. Control arm, maybe. Something that belonged straight was no longer straight, and the truck kept reminding him with a dull knock beneath the floorboards whenever the road gave them a seam.
Rosa noticed because she noticed almost everything.
“You’re fighting the wheel.”
“Road’s uneven.”
“Road’s been uneven for thirty miles. Your hands changed ten minutes ago.”
Otto, wedged against the passenger door with Rosa’s rifle across his knees, lifted his head.
“Is that the kind of observation that means we are about to become a tragic roadside sculpture?”
“No,” Dane said.
Rosa looked at him.
“Maybe,” Dane said.
“That felt more honest,” Otto murmured.
Nell sat between Dane and Rosa, the cooler strapped across her lap with a seat belt she had looped twice through the handle.
She had not complained since the weigh station, which made Dane uneasy.
Anger from a child was noisy. Fear was quiet.
Grief quieter still. She watched the mirror whenever Dane did not, and each time the dark pickups appeared, her shoulders drew inward by a fraction.
“How far behind?” she asked.
“Too far to shoot,” Dane said.
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Half a mile when they show. More when they don’t.”
“Are they waiting for us to stop?”
“Yes.”
The answer landed hard in the cab. Otto adjusted his glasses with the back of one trembling knuckle.
“I would like to file a complaint with whoever designed waiting.”
Rosa glanced past Nell at Dane.
“We need a place before the truck decides for us.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He did not answer. She let the silence accuse him for a mile before turning to the side window, where the flat country had begun to gather buildings.
A water tower appeared first, pale blue with most of its painted town name lost to rust and weather.
Then grain elevators, tall and white against the gray sky.
Then a row of houses set back from the road, driveways clogged with abandoned cars, flags, lawn chairs, plastic children’s toys, all the domestic evidence of lives interrupted mid-breath.
The road sign leaned at the edge of town.
VESPER
POP. 1,108
Someone had crossed out the number with black spray paint and written beneath it:
LESS NOW
Otto saw it and sank lower in his seat.
“I hate local humor.”
Dane slowed.
Rosa straightened.
“Why are we slowing?”
“Because towns have garages.”
“Towns also have dead people.”
“Usually more garages than dead people.”
“Since when?”
“Before recently.”
The pickups vanished behind the last rise.
Dane had maybe ninety seconds before they saw Tomber enter Vesper.
Maybe less. He scanned the main street while the truck rolled past a bank, a beauty salon, a hardware store with its windows boarded from the outside, and a café whose front door hung open under a sign advertising pie and free coffee refills.
Two infected stood in the middle of the street, turned slowly toward the engine, and began walking with the vague, gathering purpose of moths finding flame.
At the far end of town, beside the grain elevator, stood a metal building with three service bays and a faded sign:
MACKLIN FARM & DIESEL
TRUCKS · TRACTORS · WELDING
Dane exhaled once.
“There.”
Rosa followed his gaze.
“That building has one way in.”
“And big doors out.”
“If they open.”
“We’ll ask politely.”
He turned off the main street before the nearest infected reached the bumper and guided Tomber into the wide gravel lot beside the garage.
The front bay door was shut. One side door stood open three inches, dark beyond it.
A pair of tractors sat nose to nose near the fence.
A service pickup rested on flat tires by a diesel tank.
The grain elevators rose behind everything, white cylinders streaked with brown, their catwalks disappearing into low cloud.
Dane cut the engine.
The sudden quiet pressed against them.
Nobody moved for two seconds.
Then Nell said, “I don’t like it.”
Dane looked at the dark side door.
“Good.”
“That’s all?”
“It means you’re paying attention.”
Rosa checked the lever-action rifle and then grimaced at the dried blood stiffening her sleeve.
“Nell stays in the truck?”
Dane looked toward the road. No pickups yet.
“Nell stays where we can reach her. Truck’s too visible out here.”
Nell’s expression shifted, surprised despite herself at being included in a sentence that did not end with locked doors.
Otto raised a finger.
“As the newest member of whatever this terrible club is, may I ask what my role should be?”
“Open doors,” Dane said.
“I was hoping for something in the moral support family.”
“You said you fix things.”
“I fix electronics. Occasionally bad coffee. Doors are more of a civilization-wide concept.”
Dane opened his door.
“Learn fast.”
They climbed down into the gravel. Dane’s knee protested the first step so sharply that he almost grabbed the mirror, but he turned the motion into a check of the cracked housing and kept going. Rosa saw. Nell saw too. Neither said anything, which was worse.
The two infected from Main Street came between the buildings, drawn by the truck. Dane handed Rosa the shotgun, took the revolver, and pointed toward the garage.
“Get inside. I’ll clear the slow ones.”
Rosa did not move.
“You have a bad knee and a revolver.”
“I also have impatience.”
“That isn’t cover.”
“Nell,” Dane said without looking at the girl, “go with Rosa.”
Nell hesitated, then slipped the cooler strap over her shoulder and followed Rosa toward the side door. Otto trailed after them, holding the screwdriver he had somehow kept from the weigh station.
Dane waited until they were near the building before crossing the lot toward the infected. One had been a man in a postal uniform, mailbag still hanging from his shoulder, envelopes dark with old rain. The other wore pajamas and one rubber boot. They came steadily, mouths working, hands rising.
Dane did not fire.
He found a length of tow chain near the service pickup, wrapped one end around his fist, and stepped to the side when the postal worker lunged.
The chain took him behind the knees. He fell forward into the gravel, jaw striking with a crack.
Dane brought his boot down once, hard, and turned as the woman in pajamas grabbed for his coat.
Her fingers caught the sleeve. She was stronger than she looked. They always were.
He drove his elbow into her face. Cartilage collapsed beneath the impact, but she did not care. Her teeth snapped near his wrist. Dane shoved the revolver under her chin and fired.
The shot rolled off the metal buildings and came back bigger.
So much for quiet.
At the garage, Rosa cursed and yanked the side door wider.
“Dane!”
More infected appeared at the end of Main Street, not many yet, but enough shapes turning from alleys and storefronts to make the town feel awake in the wrong way. Dane limped back toward the garage, dragging the chain for no reason except that his hand would not let it go.
Inside, Macklin Farm & Diesel smelled of grease, old rubber, welding smoke, and mice.
Light fell through dirty skylights in dull rectangles.
The three service bays held a combine header, a pickup with its hood up, and an empty lift stained black beneath where engines had bled for years.
Tool cabinets lined one wall. Chains hung from hooks.
A calendar from two years ago showed a woman in a cowboy hat leaning against a tractor with more enthusiasm than clothing, but someone had taped a photo of a church picnic over most of her.
Otto stood by the main electrical panel, wiping dust from the breakers.
“I found the door switch,” he said. “Also several spiders who appear to have inherited the premises.”
Rosa had the shotgun raised toward an office door with frosted glass.
“Something moved in there.”
Dane closed the side door behind him and slid a heavy bolt into place.
“Alive or dead?”
“The movement did not submit paperwork.”
Nell stood behind a workbench with the cooler against her chest, eyes flicking between adults and shadows. She looked too small in the big garage, swallowed by hanging chains and machine parts.
Dane crossed to the office door and listened.
A faint rustle. Not the wet breathing of infected. Not the aimless bumping either. This was controlled. Someone trying not to be heard.
He tapped the glass once with the revolver barrel.
“Come out.”
Silence.
Rosa shifted closer.
Dane said, “We don’t have time to drag you out, and I don’t have time to wonder if you’re aiming at us. Door opens in five seconds.”
A man’s voice answered, old and rough.
“You Milemen?”
“No.”
“That’s what Milemen say.”
Rosa said, “Then why ask?”
The silence afterward had a different shape.
The voice said, “How many of you?”
“Enough,” Dane said.
“That’s what Milemen say too.”
Dane looked toward the closed bay doors, listening for engines outside. Nothing yet.
“We’re passing through. Need tools. Maybe parts. Then we’re gone.”
The office door opened two inches. A watery blue eye appeared in the gap. Then more of the man: seventies, maybe, with a gray beard, a seed cap, and a double-barrel shotgun held low but not useless. His coveralls had Macklin stitched over one pocket.
“You brought a child,” he said.
Nell stiffened.
Dane said, “You got a name besides the sign?”
“Elias Macklin.”
“This your shop?”
“Was.”