Wanderers

by Chuck Wendig

“I don’t know,” she lied. “And you can’t tell us anything?” “No.” Another lie. She felt shame. Tell them, she thought. “A shame. The mystery shall remain, then.” “…Yeah.”

I never likeed this hoe

The voice had no voice. It was just words, thoughts without sound. HELLO, SHANA STEWART. She started out of bed, nearly tripping over the sheets tangled around her. “I…I don’t…who’s there.” I BELIEVE YOU KNOW THE ANSWER TO THAT.

How is that possible? I CAN NO LONGER SUSTAIN MYSELF ACROSS THE HOST FLOCK, BUT YOUR BODY IS GENERATING CONSIDERABLE ENERGY NOW: AS A CHILD GROWS WITHIN YOU, YOU ARE A BEACON OF VITALITY, AND SO YOU AND YOUR CHILD WILL HOST THE BLACK SWAN SWARM. Go to hell. HELL IS AN ILLUSION. A CONSTRUCT OF MAN. You killed man. You killed all of humanity. SO YOU REMEMBER.

Following instructions, he took the vial, he went to a cave where bats stirred, restive in the thousands, and he pitched the glass vial into the dark. A distant tinkling crash as it broke. And that was where it began. She remembered Black Swan’s lie to Benjamin Ray: White Mask emerging from the permafrost and making a slow and steady march south. But that was the false narrative. Brandon Sharpe was the real one. The White Mask pathogen…it didn’t come out of nowhere. It wasn’t global warming. It was you. You stole it from a laboratory in Texas, your little pedophile carried it to those bats, and he planted it there. So that we would all die.