The Year's Best Horror Stories 21

Which, of course, was the decision all of these people had once made: either risk agony and death at the hands of that thing up there, or fight the inevitable infestation of Mites and spend the rest of their lives in whatever shadow-world the Mites in their heads would take them to. What purpose did these people serve the industrious insects? What did the humans provide the Mites? They could build a mound four feet tall in a single afternoon, using nothing more than their own secretions. How were the encrusted cylinders blooming from the heads of these people different?

Paul did not, could not, know. But Paul’s father, and all the rest—she counted 24 in all—knew very well. Perhaps that was all they were able to know. It was Kate’s overwhelming priority never to find out for herself. She was starving down here, and the few dried rags of meat or canned green beans Paul gave her were not nearly enough. What did the others eat? Did the Mites feed them, sacrifice their own bodies for the nutritional needs of their hosts?

Kate wandered the court during the daylight hours, trying to keep the angelhair from accumulating too heavily in one spot. She tried to talk to the crowned, white-eyed, gently mumbling people who staggered about, trying to grasp something useful in their aimless wandering or in the apparently random building and scurrying of a billion tiny insects. She tried to keep those same insects off of her own body as she walked the perimeters of the trailer court and looked for signs of the monster in the fog. As she did, the angelhair fell, snagging atop the trailers and on the old rooftop antennas and in the branches of the dead trees until it seemed as though she was weaving a canopy of silky fibers over the entire court.

How many of those creatures—warm-blooded predators, large enough to require frequent meals—could there be in a world where there was very little on which to feed? Surely there couldn’t be all that many—maybe it was a sport, a one-of-the-kind monstrosity. But as she walked the perimeter, weaving the outer edge of her silver canopy, she looked into the fog-laden roads and slopes and could feel their presence, their attention. During those first few days it had been hard to understand how these people could have allowed themselves to be subjected to the Mite infestations; why Paul, tearing himself apart to hold the infestation off a few more precious weeks or months, didn’t just take his chances and escape this valley. The longer she stayed, the more she understood. It was the fog and the shadows lurking within it. Once you saw the creature, especially at the range from which she’d seen and felt it, it was impossible not to see suggestions of it in every dark or thin patch in the rolling blanket of cloud.

Kate had to get out. She’d wandered too many years to end up trapped here, scratching her flesh away because of a bunch of gruesomely opportunistic insects, afraid to leave because she saw hallucinations in the fog that surrounded her. There had to be a way to get free, and as the days passed she grew convinced that somehow the answer lay with Paul.

After their first ugly encounter, she’d kept away from him for a couple of days, always aware of his presence, his curiosity, his obvious and sadly awkward attraction to her. Once she came to believe the reason he’d given for his groping hand on the first day, she let down her guard and allowed him to approach and talk to her. He led her to the most well furnished of the abandoned trailers, he found her scraps of food, and in his own, clumsy fashion, he tried to provide her with conversation. Were it not for the horrible scabs and scars festering atop his head, he might have been a fairly attractive young man; his eyes were piercing light blue and there was a warmth and determination in his smile that was almost heartbreaking when she considered how bleak his future was in this rusted, bug-saturated hell.

And so, lying in her trailer at night, sleeping in a bed for the first time in months, she would try to walk herself through her escape, try to rationalize her chances now that she’d lost her shotgun and her blade. With each passing night, Paul would figure more and more into these fantasies, and she began to see reasons why his presence might give her the courage to attempt it, how it was the only way Paul could escape the fate of his father, how his presence could help her odds of surviving.

But Paul was even more afraid of the monsters in the fog than she was. As much as he despised the Mites, he spoke as though he were in debt to them for at least providing a refuge from the creatures in the high ground surrounding the trailer court. And—as far gone as his father might have been—Paul was truly devoted to the man. Kate doubted she could convince the boy to leave unless his father was brought along.

The solution hit her one morning as she stood in the doorway watching a woman stand unflinching as dozens of Mites skittered over her face and into her open-towering crown. Kate was already positive it would work when Paul showed up later that day, wiping the moisture away from the shotgun he’d discovered in the wormgrasses no more than twenty feet upland from where he’d first found her.

“Paul,” she said, picking a large Mite from his shoulder and crushing it between thumb and forefinger, “I know how we can get out of here. You, me, and your father.” She reached for his face with two outstretched fingers, as though to pluck away another Mite, but instead ran her palm and fingertips playfully across his cheek. She could feel him shudder. He looked down at the ground.

“Dad, too?”

“Yes, Paul. Would you like to hear it?”

He looked up at her. She felt a Mite scurry down the front of her shirt, and saw Paul’s eyes follow it bashfully before looking back into her eyes.

“Okay. What’s the plan?”

“Paul, a Mite just crawled down my shirt. Could you get it for me? Would you kill it for me?”

The boy swallowed hard and looked away, paralyzed. She pulled him close.

“Paul? Please?”

He lay next to her in bed, listening as she filled out the distances beyond the fogbanks with her tales, her description of the world he’d never dreamed of seeing himself.

“When I was a little girl, I remember blue, uncloudy skies… people. The changes had all begun years before, of course, but they started to come on more powerfully then, like waves of fog just washing over us, killing us and nearly everything else that couldn’t hide or adapt. And in their place…” She shrugged and didn’t finish, not wanting to scare him too much about the world into which she was about to throw him.

Paul was eager but gentle, awkward but lovingly persistent. As they held each other in the darkness of her bed, she whispered a sanitized scenario of escape to him, and he nodded in agreement with every point. She needn’t have lied to him. She was sure that this boy, her lover, would have agreed to anything she told him.

They trudged through rolling, hissing clouds of milky-white moisture. Kate took the lead, moving quickly while Paul tried to maintain a central position between her and his father, worried that because of Kate’s haste and determination he would lose sight of her. He was frightened by the openness, the emptiness of the sloping ground, and of the fog that sometimes hid Kate completely. He couldn’t afford to lose her for a second, dependent on her not only for leading the way but for her sensitivity and reaction time to all that lurked beyond his own eyes and ears. Still, he could only move so fast. His father was almost too weak for this uphill climb, and far too awkward to keep from falling on his face every few steps.

The beast won’t dare attack us if it’s as afraid of the Mites as you say, she had told him. Your father will be our shield. Him and his cargo. It had all sounded so convincing. I know where the Straggler’s truck is parked. We’ll be able to cover plenty of ground before we have to worry about gasoline. Down there, lying naked against her warm, smooth flesh, there was no way he could not believe her, no way he could refuse.

Since I’ve never seen these Mites anywhere else, maybe there’s something down in the valley they need in order to survive. We can save your father, bring him back. You can grow back your hair. But the world as it had seemed while she’d stroked between his legs and whispered in his ear was far different from the lonely, desolate plain through which they now climbed, so empty but so loud, so vast and yet—with its clinging, milky vapors—so constricting.

The expression on his father’s face was far worse than blank—it was utterly consumed. His head rolled from side to side under the weight of his encrusted crown and wet, gagging songs dripped weakly from his mouth. He has no idea where we’re going. Is there enough left of him to bring back even if the Mites die up here?

Finally Kate ssshhhhed them to a halt at the top of a ridge.

“Is the truck near here?” he whispered. Her response was a sharp grab at his cheeks, her palm pressed firmly