Wanderers: An All Too Believable Dystopia?

 

Wanderers (2019)

By Chuck Wendig

Del Rey, 800 pages

★★★★ 

 

 

 

These days it is much easier to imagine human destruction than utopia. The Wanderer is a griping look at dystopia. Chuck Wendig published his novel in 2019, but it proved prescient. Can we imagine a contagion first made manifest in a distant locale that inexorably spreads? Check. Pandemic denial? Check. Paranoic politics? Check. A rogue AI program? Maybe! 

 

It opens in the American Heartlands when Shana’s 15-year-old younger sister Nessie becomes robotic and non-responsive. Attempts to take a blood sample fail because no needle can penetrate her. Nor does she speak, respond to others, or feel anything as she begins her barefoot trek toward some unknown destination. It’s as if she is sleepwalking, but can’t wake up. Before long she is joined by thirty-odd others. They relentlessly march and are dubbed “Walkers.”

 

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has theories but no answers. Enter Benji Ray, an African American fired by the agency for falsifying data to prevent pork contamination. He is unofficially brought back into the fold by former mentor Martin Vargas–to the delight of several former colleagues–not because Vargas trusts him, but because Benji has been selected by Black Swan, an algorithm program (and perhaps more). When the CDC fails to detect an immediate cause, the Internet conspiracy machine kicks into high gear. Bio terrorists? Foreigners? A science experiment gone wrong? Attention-seeking fakes? The only thing known for certain is that attempts to impede the Walkers causes them to explode–literally.

 

As others succumb to the mystery ailment, still another crazed theory arises, a government conspiracy that adherents insist is what one might expect when a woman, Nora Hunt, is the President of the United States. That’s the official line of Fox News and red-meat Republicans who push for a military solution. The Walkers, though, are accompanied by Shepherds, human-shield friends and family of the afflicted, as well as potential caretakers should they wake up. As the Walkers’ numbers increase, Matthew Bird, an Indiana preacher, adds backwoods religion to the equation. Bird is an unknown until Ozark Stover, a survivalist/white supremacist, turns the reverend into a media sensation. Bird embraces his instant fame and dubs the Walkers the “Devil’s Pilgrims.” Stover is determined to obliterate the Walkers in a metaphorical showdown at the O.K. Corral. Time is not on the side of the CDC, as even President Hunt, who is getting clobbered in the polls, is willing to turn the matter over to Homeland Security if the contagion isn’t stopped. In essence, we have a battle between science and politics. Sound familiar? Check.

 

Wanderers is a nail-biting drama that riffs off contemporary history, including Trumpism. It is a long novel in part because Wendig interweaves personal stories. The Shepherds are joined by Marcy Reyes, a former cop whose life is a mess, but seems to draw energy and strength from the Walkers. They are also joined, for dubious reasons, by a cynical pop punk/hard rock musician, Shana has issues to resolve with her father, several love affairs blossom, Bird finds himself estranged from his wife and son, and Benji learns that the contagion predates the Walkers. Meanwhile, Stover begins to mobilize his militia, many of whom are anxious to discredit Hunt and the non-white team that dominates the investigation, including Sadie, Black Swan’s inventor. Time is literally running out. There are 1,024 Walkers, but for others the contagion is fatal and the end of the Anthropocene is a distinct possibility.

 

But what of Black Swan? What indeed. And why are the Walkers inexorably marching toward Ouray, Colorado, a played out mining town of fewer than a thousand people?  Is Black Swan the cause of the contagion, a solution, or something else entirely? Wendig’s complex narrative even veers toward the simulation hypothesis–a postulate that is both ancient and recent–that ponders whether human beings are inside a construct controlled by some external force. Wendig’s twist is to suggest connections to quantum entanglement, but mostly Wanderers is a tale of pandemonium, confirmation bias, and the myriad ways in which humans find it easier to scapegoat than cooperate.

 

Wendig owes debts to past apocalyptic novels such as Alas, Babylon; The Andromeda Strain; Cloud Atlas; The Dog Stars; Oryx and Crate; The Road; Station Eleven; and even Mary Shelley’s The Last Man. I suppose we must concede: Dystopia rules.

 

Rob Weir