Page 58 of Them

“It’s okay. Long time ago.”

“It wasn’t right, no matter how long.”

“The Scorpions were already in the city. In the East River, the Hudson. It was a matter of time once the mayor assured everyone’s safety,” Tim said with a coldness in his voice. “Mom said she believed them. Said the northern blockades would hold.” A sniffle. “I didn’t believe her, of course. She wasn’t telling me the truth. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have told me to stay south. She would’ve asked me to come home.”

Lane tried to meet Tim’s eyes, but he was still looking for stars between the clouds.

“Thank God you didn’t listen.”

“Didn’t have much of a choice. Or a car. Or money for a flight. Had a train ticket, but it left the day after they shut down the Mason-Dixon. Nobody could pass north of Maryland. Didn’t even get a refund.”

Lane didn’t want to say anything. There was a storm swelling inside his new friend. Best for Tim to let it out at his own pace.

“After New York, I was… just lost. Classes had already shut down by then, and the school was about to kick out the few who remained on campus, mostly international students or folks like me from the Northeast. Everyone who’d lost family was kinda manic. Planning one-ways to Colorado and California, Europe if they were rich, job hunting as far from the swarm as they could, people trying to be normal. But… I just couldn’t, and there were plenty like that too. Just dazed, y’know? I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. Where I was going. All of a sudden, I was just… alone. Couldn’t withdraw from the bank since it was based back in the city. I couldn’t drive, and even then the traffic might’ve gotten me killed, not that I knew that. I thought…”

“You were desperate.”

“Yeah. I was. The Scorpions had footholds in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, even Delaware by then. New York was going to slow ’em down but… it seemed like just a matter of time.”

Lane nodded. “So what’d you do?”

No response. The wind picked up. Scaffolding creaked.

“Tim?”

“I had a soccer scholarship, but it didn’t cover housing. Food. I still needed to work as much as I could in the offseason. The local Home Depot manager was poker buddies with one of the Everglade U football coaches, so athletes had part-time jobs waiting for them if they wanted. Spent the weekends of my first summer preseason pouring concrete… Well, more like lugging bags of mix.”

“Work is work,” said Lane.

Tim took a deep breath. “Sure, but one of the gigs was… different. This was 2023, just a few months after Maine got locked down. Most folks thought the military would handle it, but plenty were scared. I guess that’s my way of saying nobody was too shocked when we found out we’d be working on a ‘storm shelter.’

“Everyone in town knew the guy who hired us, or his car anyway. A beat-up Chevy with conspiracy theory stickers plastered all over the windows and bumpers, most of them related to Scorpions by the time I got there. A big yard outside of town where he shot live ammunition.

“I only ever talked to him once, when I went inside his house to piss. He was sitting at the kitchen table, with a goddamn arsenal of pistols and rifles laid out in front of him. But… he seemed nice enough. Big guy. Bald, sunburned head. Said his name was Ron and showed me to the bathroom.

“The shelter was nearly finished by then; my shift just had to pour the top layer and enclose this sort of… entrance shaft. A ladder in a tube that went straight down into the dirt. We buried the whole thing and went about our lives, but even a year and change later, I hadn’t forgotten about Ron’s bunker.”

Lane folded his hands in his lap. He thought he knew where this was going, and it was his responsibility to listen.

“I don’t know if that’s context or an explanation or an excuse, but it is the truth. When the shit hit the fan, I was all alone. Afraid. I just needed direction, y’know? I didn’t know where to go. What to do. The world was ending, and all I wanted was a dark, safe place where I could hide out and process it all.

“So… I thought, Fuck it, what’ve I got to lose? I needed help, and everyone else was gone. If this Ron guy was taking the Scorpions seriously from day one, maybe he could point me toward a safe place. Give me an idea of what the hell was going on.

“I walked to Ron’s house from the dorms. Nobody answered the door, but it wasn’t shut all the way. The trunk of his car was loaded with supplies, like he was running them inside. I didn’t want anything. Just advice. Just something. Even a vague idea of what I should do. It all just happened so fast. What were people supposed to believe after New York was just… gone? What were they supposed to think after Boston before that, where a whole damn army couldn’t stop the Scorpions? It didn’t matter if we threw everything at them; all we could do was delay. By the time everyone realized that, no one wanted to realize anything. They just wanted to pretend like nothing was happening or run for the hills.”

“But not Ron.”

“No. Not Ron. He was taking the rumors seriously before most people had even heard of a Scorpion. I thought he might know something. Anything. I nudged the door open and peeked inside. There was nobody there, and the place looked kind of bare. Most of his things were boxed up. I remember the television was showing helicopter footage of Scorpion nests in Ontario and Quebec, and the Canadian prime minister was screaming about our failure to contain the ‘Macroscorpion menace.’ ”

“Fun times,” Lane said. Tim gave no acknowledgment, save for a slight upward curve of his lips. “Sorry, kid. Go on.”

Tim continued. “I heard water running upstairs, so I yelled up there. Asked if anyone was home. I didn’t hear an answer but… I definitely heard something. It wasn’t quite a word, more like a baby babbling. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what I would find.”

“What was it?”

“I went upstairs. The bathroom door was open and I could hear this faint moaning. Eugheugheugheugh. Like that. Soft and weak.”

The impression reminded Lane of a tongueless person trying to speak.