Root: Part IV, Chapter 6

Hasta’s team comes across the aftermath of a horrific massacre—and a lone survivor who seems convinced their mission is doomed.

For more on this project, please see “This Year a Serial Takes Root.”

6.0 Hasta

They weren’t all dead, as Moses discovered sniffing gingerly through the carnage. Five of them were, but one was alive. Mostly.

When Hasta and Kylie followed the van through the window, they found a scene of utter devastation. It was a roadside rest area much like the first they’d come to, but with a bigger visitor center. The building, though, was smashed to flinders. Two cars were overturned in the parking lot, an oily column of smoke rising from the one that still burned. Two bodies lay smoking before it, charred beyond recognition. Unburned body parts, including two heads, were strewn about the gravel and the greensward amidst copious amounts of blood. A blonde girl in a green soccer jersey sat propped like a rag doll against a garbage can. She looked fine except for the extreme tilt of her head.

Moses barked piteously from a stand of aspen on the far side of the ruins. Frida was standing next to the minivan hugging her chest as she wept. Hasta grabbed an ashen-faced Juan from the driver’s seat and dragged him with her around the margins of the slaughter. She swallowed her rising gorge. This was the worst thing she’d ever seen in her life, but she knew if she gave in to her revulsion then everyone else in the group would lose it too.

She wished it were Ivan beside her.

Moses sat with his hindquarters in the grass and his front legs jittering in agitation. Six feet from him in the faint shade of an aspen tree lay a Southeast Asian girl. Her face and shirt were dirty but intact. Her legs, though, ended in charred stumps. Where the ragged flesh wasn’t black, it was angry and red, cracked and blistered.

The girl stirred as Hasta and Juan knelt to either side of her, and her eyes jerked open. She tried to back away, but her hands scrabbled ineffectually in the soft grass.

“It’s okay, we’re friends,” Hasta said.

The girl relaxed a little but her breath came raggedly, hitching in her chest. “Monsters,” she coughed. Her eyes looked bruised. “I thought you were monsters.”

“You were asleep.”

The girl nodded. “Asleep is bad. Awake was worse.”

Hasta and Juan stared at each other. Hasta hoped she didn’t look as helpless and frightened as he did.

“Are you on your way to the Bus?” the girl asked.

“Yes,” said Hasta. “To petition Brahman.”

The girl nodded and closed her eyes.

Hasta didn’t know what she could or should do for the girl’s wounds. She was afraid to ask. “What happened here?”

The girl stirred again and turned her eyes to Hasta. “Daemons,” she said. “The two most beautiful creatures I’ve ever seen.” She licked her dry lips. “Where are you from? We were from Kansas City.”

“Chicago,” Hasta said. “When did the daemons attack you?”

“The Windy City,” said the girl. “I always wanted to go there.”

Hasta bit her lip. “It could still happen. The daemons?”

“An hour ago? I don’t know. I don’t know how long I was asleep.” The girl shook her head. “Bill and Chuck fought hard, but the rest of us were pretty useless.”

Hasta needed details. “Was it an ambush? Where did they come from? What did they do?”

The girl’s long sigh sounded like death itself. “We were getting out of our cars. They just came walking out of the fog. They told us to go home. We didn’t.” Her lower lip trembled. “My friends are all dead, aren’t they?”

“But you’re alive,” Hasta said.

“I don’t know why.” The girl sniffled. “I’m Elaine. What’s your name?”

“I’m Hasta. This is Juan.”

“Hasta with an H?” said Elaine, her eyes going wide in alarm. She struggled to sit up. “You’re not the one in charge, are you?”

Hasta pressed Elaine’s shoulder, trying to get her to lie back down, but the girl’s strength was astonishing. “I am.”

“OMG.” Elaine closed her eyes and sank back to the grass. “We at least had a Bill. They’re going to find you. It’s going to be a massacre.”

“It’s not going to be like that,” Hasta said, stroking Elaine’s hair. “Did you see them leave? Did you see which was they went?”

Elaine shook her head, looking miserable. “I don’t remember them leaving. When things got really bad, I must have passed out.”

“That was probably fortunate.” Hasta looked at Juan, who was motioning with his head in the direction of the van. She nodded agreement. “We’re going to move you now, okay, Elaine? You’re going to come with us. You’ll be safe.”

She slipped her hand under the girl’s shoulder.

“No!” Elaine shrieked, starting to thrash. “Just leave me here! I don’t want to see them again!”

“All right, all right,” Hasta said, and drew her hand back. “We won’t move you, don’t worry.”

Juan gave Hasta an incredulous look. Hasta gave him a helpless look in return, spreading her hands. She went on stroking the girl’s hair.

“All this way,” Elaine said, settling down and closing her eyes. “You’d think I would at least have gotten to see the Bus for myself.”

“It’s supposed to be really something,” Hasta said.

Elaine opened her eyes again to look at Hasta. “You know, you’re really beautiful. It’s a good last thing to see.”

She moved one arm across her body and drew a long, slow circle on the opposite wrist, right where a watch would go.

6.1 Lamm

Lamm emerged from the comm window into a fiery maelstrom.

The input window from the McDonald’s freezer had led him to a shed behind a rest stop in Wisconsin. There he’d hunted around until sensing another recently used window in a men’s room supply closet. And now he was here, in the midst of flames.

He spun up a shield to protect himself from the heat and smoke, but not before the fire singed his eyebrows and sideburns. He grimaced as he picked his way out of another storeroom, around and over burning timbers, and finally into the cool light of day.

Lamm found himself at a fancy refueling station in southern Minnesota. He prowled cautiously around the perimeter, far from the burning building, before canceling his shield. The fire had been set deliberately, no doubt by whomever had passed through the window before him. And that person had more in mind than just to stymie pursuit. If that were the goal, he could have closed the window after passing through it.

No, whoever had set the fire wanted to kill his pursuers.

“A.A.,” Lamm said out loud. “But you won’t find me so easy to kill.”

He closed his eyes and cast about for the next window, which he knew must be somewhere near at hand. √

To be continued…