The Last Mile by Tim Waggoner Read Free Book Online

home once a week by another thrall driving a battered pickup truck. Where the food came from, especially the produce, Dan didn’t know and didn’t ask. And as for the utilities, they just worked, presumably because his Master willed it. But he’d gotten so much more than the conveniences of modern life restored. Caroline had returned to her senses after his thrall-mark appeared, and her ghastly self-inflicted wounds healed—to a point. They’d never be able to make love again, but at least his wife was sane. And the return of their conveniences—including regular television, though only one channel that showed randomly selected reruns of old shows—had helped Lindsey come out of her near-catatonia. Life wasn’t back to normal, how could it be? But his family had it a damn site better than most people in the World After, and Dan intended to keep it that way.
    “And what does your Master want now? Me?”
    Dan didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The girl was dirty, her white blouse dingy and splotched with all manner of stains, many of them blood, he guessed. She was an adult, but only just. Not that much older than Lindsey, really. Biologically speaking, he was old enough to be her father, if he’d gotten married young and started a family right away. The thought of what his Master would do to her…
    No, don’t go there, he warned himself. Look what happened last time. You got to stay cold, stay hard. For your family.
    They didn’t have that far to go. Less than a mile now. He could do this, had done it plenty of times before. He’d only failed once, and he wouldn’t fail again. He couldn’t.
    “Tell me something,” the girl said. “Why is your Master all the way the hell out in butt-fuck Egypt? I mean if he—or it, or whatever—wants you to make like Domino’s and deliver, wouldn’t he have picked someone who lived closer?”
    A good question, and one that Dan had pondered on more than one occasion. The best answer he could come up with: because it amused his Master to make his thrall travel.
    “Shut the fuck up and keep walking” was the answer he gave the girl instead.
    * * *
    Good going, kiddo. Piss him off any more and he’ll put a couple bullets in your back.
    Probably not, she decided. His Master obviously wanted her alive. Still, that didn’t mean the thrall couldn’t get rough with her if she mouthed off too much. But she just couldn’t help herself. She’d always been one to talk before she thought, and she’d only gotten worse since the Arrival. More than just the physical world changed that day: the people had too.
    We’re all a little crazy now, she thought. She glanced over her shoulder at the thrall. Some of us more than others.
    She faced forward again and marveled at how different the highway looked. This was the first time she’d been so far out of town since the Arrival, and I-75 looked nothing like she remembered. The asphalt on both sides of the highway was cracked and broken; that much was the same as in town. But the large weeds sprouting up from the fissures—thorn-stalks, she’d heard them called—were different. The streets in town might be broken and difficult to travel on, but they remained passable. But she’d seen what the thorn-stalks could do. By the time she and her captor had made it to the side of the road, they’d reduced the deer monster to an empty bag of pebbly gray hide. Even its bones had been liquefied and absorbed. It seemed the Masters had no objections to humans moving about freely in town, as long as they didn’t stray past the city limits.
    It’s like we’re pets in a cage, she thought. No, more like animals in a holding pen, waiting our turn to be led to the slaughterhouse.
    The mental image sent ice water surging through her veins, and she wondered again what her captor and his Master had in mind for her. Whatever it was, she knew it wouldn’t be as merciful as a quick death.
    Live in the moment, she reminded herself. That was the only way to