eating ships at sea. THE HARRY POTTER WITCH-CULT, said one headline. HUBBLE TELESCOPE PHOTOGRAPHS FACE OF JESUS IN CRAB NEBULA, said another.
Rita was getting angry. “Are they liberals, those monsters?”
“You listen to me, Miss Smarty Pants. You’re just a child and you can’t know the ways of the world. There are things adults know and others we keep from you young people,” Miriam said, her eyes wide and wet and shiny. “Do you know what happened out at that Army base? Hmm, do you? Well, I do. A lot of us know things the liberal media are ignorant of! It was terrorists that caused that explosion out there! Al Qaeda and those effing sand niggers that knocked down them Twin Towers out in New York City! They’ll blow the beejeesus out of all of us if we let them! They caused that explosion to cover up that stuff they put in the water, the stuff that’s making everyone crazy now! Everyone but me and you two girls! You think I’m making that up? You think old Miriam Blake is off her nut? Well, I’m not, because I know what’s out there! Even now, girls, even now the crazy ones are waiting for the sun to go down so they can leap out and start cutting throats! Down in cellars and up in attics, oh they’re waiting with mad eyes and yellow teeth until they can come out and kill! Kill us all! You hear, kill us all!”
“You’re nuts!” Rita said. “You’re nuts, nuts, nuts!”
Miriam slammed her fist down on the coffee table. Then she jumped up and got her shotgun. “Nuts, am I? Oh, poisoned by liberals, both of you! But you’ll see, you’ll soon see that good Mrs. Blake is right! You’ll see the effing horrors of the night and you’ll see them very soon now!”
Rhonda grabbed Rita’s hand before Rita started spitting like a cat. “We’re leaving.”
But Miriam, grinning and drooling, put the shotgun on them. “Oh, no you’re not! You’re not leaving until your Auntie Miriam says you can leave! Do you hear that? Did you hear what I said, you little bitches?”
7
Scott Reed was thinking about how the school board were going to try and hang him on this one and he didn’t figure the union was going to be able to protect him. It was an accident was all. But when it came to one of their precious school buses and the kids inside, oh, they were going to have his head.
As he moved through the dirty water that came up to his hips, he told himself just to play it the way he’d planned: some nut had sideswiped him and sent the bus careening down Coogan Avenue into the water. It seemed perfectly reasonable, but it was, of course, an utter lie. And Reed wasn’t real good at lying.
Never had been.
He hoped those kids weren’t going crazy in the bus. And more than that, he hoped they were still there, that none of them had tried to take off on their own.
The rain had turned into a deluge again and Reed could barely hear himself think. He’d left the bus some thirty minutes before. It should have been a pretty easy trek, but somehow he’d gotten turned around. He didn’t know Bethany very well. But the bus had broken through the barrier at Coogan Avenue and sped down a hill, around a corner, then into the water.
But if that was the case…where was that damn hill and where was Coogan Avenue?
Reed paused, the water sloshing around him, a lake clogged with dead leaves and trash and bobbing debris. The rain poured down and visibility was shit. It was like being lost in some alien world. It was hard to get your bearings when you could only see ten or twenty feet in any direction.
You got turned around, you idiot. That’s what happened. It’s this damn rain. You made for that corner the bus took and instead of going up Coogan Avenue, you turned into a side street.
Which meant, of course, that instead of getting out of Bethany, he was deeper into it now. Not good, not good at all.
Swearing under his breath, realizing he had just made an even bigger mess of things and doubtful that he would even be able to find the bus now until the rain let up, Reed moved through the foul water towards the buildings lining the street. He pushed a floating tree branch out of his way and watched an overturned rowboat float by like a dead alligator gone belly up.
But the rain was pouring down with such ferocity, he could not even see those buildings, let alone find them. So he stopped and felt the panic rising up inside him like lava working its way up the cone of a volcano. Nothing but rain and gray mist and rising water and…dammit, this was a real lovely fix, now wasn’t it?
Just Reed alone, a bad case of the heebie-jeebies blooming in his guts. He turned this way, then that, the rain forcing him to cover his head with his soaking jacket. Lot of good that did to keep him dry. He felt something bump against his leg and he uttered a dry little scream.
Oh, for chrissake, you got to get it togther here.
He stopped, breathing hard, his heart pounding away. Just breathe in and breathe out. Calm down. Easier said than done, though. Being out unprotected in the streets like this was like being lost in a wind tunnel full of blowing water and spray. Even though everything was wide open in every direction, he felt claustrophobic like he had woken in a box.
Okay now, follow your instincts. That’s the way.
He started towards where he thought the buildings were and something else bumped his leg and this time he just swore angrily. Then he moved off again and tripped on something, went face-first right into the water, fighting his way up, brushing wet leaves from his face. And then he went down again like a foot had been stuck out in his path. He came up yet again, wiping water from his eyes, trying to blink them clean. He bumped into something else, but this thing was adrift.
He shoved against it with one hand and felt his fingers contact something cold and fleshy.
Right in front of him were bodies.
Yes, three bodies face down doing the dead man’s float…except now that he had bumped into them, they were circling like sharks until they collided into one another again.
Reed made himself look.
A teenage boy and an elderly man and a young woman with a braided dark ponytail that had washed around her neck like a rope. Her blouse, which barely covered her in the first place, was drawn up around her shoulders. Her flesh was impossibly white and smooth like molded plastic. She was thin and Reed could plainly see the ribbing of her spine. There was a tattoo of a rising, ornamental sun at the small of her back.
Floaters.
Jesus, just like over in River Town.
Reed felt more than a little sickened now. He splashed away from the bodies, telling himself that they were dead and completely harmless. Christ, if he’d bumped into a sack of potatoes he wouldn’t be freaking out like this. And, ultimately, a sack of potatoes was no more dangerous than a few floating cadavers. Yes, it all made perfect sense. It was very logical…but why wouldn’t his brain accept it? Why was it thinking things he could not even bear to acknowledge?
Where were those buildings?
He splashed forward a bit and suddenly went ramrod straight, sensing movement. He just stopped dead, his muscles bunching and his senses tripping over one another trying give him some kind of input. He spun around in a circle, but there was nothing there. But the idea that there might have been sent him into spasms of uncontrollable shivering.
“Is someone there?” he called out. “Anyone?”
His voice sounded weak and was quickly overcome by the lashing rain. Out of the corner of his eyes, he kept catching glints of movement, figures or forms that melted into the grayness of the storm whenever he looked. It was his imagination. It had to be his goddamned imagination because what he had seen had not looked solid like flesh and blood, but something flapping and membranous like a sheet.
Terror raced through him and this time he could not get a handle on it.
He raced off, stumbling through the water and it was deep and thick. Like trying to run in a dream, like he was dragging cinderblocks behind him. He saw leaves and refuse, then those bodies again.
Except the girl was not among them.
She just floated off, you goddamn moron, a voice in his head said like it was extremely pissed-off. Don’t you be thinking anything else. She…just…drifted…away.
