The trailer was shaped like a brick—long, short, and squat. Most of the cupboards and built-in furniture had been torn out. I reckoned to make more room for the batteries and/or to burn the wood. Fruit-themed wallpaper flapped around the spaces where cabinets once existed. A pile of dust and debris from Ramsey’s de-renovation lay off to one side. Pieces of heavy wood covered the three windows, which still had not fruit but vegetable-themed curtains hanging from crooked rods above. Whoever this place had belonged to before it fell into Ramsey’s possession certainly liked their food decor.
My eyes fell to the centerpiece again. “This is a major fire hazard, dude.”
“Huh?” Ramsey, his legs splayed out in an uncomfortable angle to avoid the batteries, fiddled with the cover on the circuit breaker.
“I used to be a firefighter,” I said. “This place is either gonna go kaboom or drown in battery acid.”
“Good, let it. It’s a piece of shit anyways.” He snapped the circuit breaker’s door open. Two dozen or so buttons ran down it. His fingers danced along each one as he squinted and mumbled what he’d written on masking tape. Kitchen, Lobby, Bathroom, and so on. “Ah, here we go!”
“What?”
“I’d cover your eyes if I was you, Grady.”
“For what?”
“Three…two…”
“What? Why are you counting down?”
“One!”
Ramsey threw the switch. It clicked, sounding louder than the slamming of a car door. A buzzing replaced it as a sudden burst of light exploded outside.
For a glorious few seconds, at least until my retinas started burning, I thought the sun was back to its former glory. The idea was a fleeting one, however, as I remembered it was nine at night, if Ramsey’s wristwatch was to be believed. Still, had the time been wrong, the sun had never been this bright in my lifetime.
Realizing my options were either going blind or covering my eyes, I settled on the latter.
“Hear that?” Ramsey shouted.
“The buzzing? Yeah, sounds like an army of bees.”
“Listen harder, friend.”
I strained my ears, unsure of what the hell was happening. About to guide myself out of the trailer by way of touch, I stopped. The image of me tripping and disconnecting one of the batteries burst into my head. I didn’t want to be inside here when the place blew.
As I opened my mouth to voice my dissent, a different sound cut through the drone of the batteries. It was a sound I recognized. The soft popping of expiring wraiths. They went off one after the other, like some kind of depraved fireworks, and a stream of high-pitched screams followed these pops.
“That’s it!” Ramsey shouted. He grunted as he pulled the switch back down. The buzzing stopped, the trailer grew a few degrees cooler, and the light vanished.
I opened my eyes. A greenish tattoo floated around the edges of my vision for a moment. Rubbing my face in the crook of my arm, I asked, “Are they gone?”
“Most of ‘em, probably. The ones that didn’t get torched no doubt got scared and ran. They ain’t human, I know, but they ain’t dumb either.”
“What was that?”
“My masterpiece,” Ramsey answered, grinning. “Been workin’ on that since the day I found this place.” He tapped one of the walls, knocking a small cloud of dust into the air. “I call it the Battery Box, ‘cause”—he waved a hand toward the floor—“well, you get it.”
“I do.” I swiped a sleeve across my brow, and surprisingly, it came back slick with sweat.
Ramsey noticed this and nodded toward the tunnel. “Let’s get outta here. If you want to, you can step out in the cold for a bit. Shadows are gone, and it’d cool ya off in probably two seconds flat. But if you’re smart—”
A spark crackled from one of the batteries. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough, unlike Ramsey, who located the source and ripped it out of line. He juggled it from hand to hand like a potato fresh from the oven.
“Aw, shit!”
“Need any help?” I asked, hoping he didn’t. My days of fighting fires were long behind me. Not by choice, but had the world not ended, I doubted I’d ever don bunker gear—or PPE, to the layman—again. And after I failed to save the boy from the apartment, I didn’t exactly miss it.
“Nah, I’m good. Go on ahead and check on your pals.”
Relieved, I wasted no time in doing so, and raced back to the cafe.
They were still sitting at the middle table. Mia clutched a shaking Chewy against the swell of her stomach. Both her and Ell’s cheeks shined with tears, and firelight reflected off the sweat coating Stone’s forehead.
They looked drained—I mean, beyond exhausted—but otherwise okay.
4
Thumbprint People
“Are you sure you guys are all right?” I asked, sliding beside Ell and draping my arm over her shoulders.
“They—they’re really gone? You’re not fuckin’ with us?” Mia said before Ell could answer me.
Ramsey, jovial and bursting with energy again, skipped across the room toward the window. He fingered the barrier, pulled it back, and peered through the crack. “Oh, they’re gone, all right. I see a lot of snow out there, and that’s about it.”
“You promise?”
“I promise, sweetheart.”
Damn, Mia was so messed up, she hadn’t even noticed Ramsey’s use of a patronizing nickname. Usually she’d be all over that. If a man called a woman “honey,” “sweetheart,” “dear,” or any variation of a distinctively gendered pet name, and that man wasn’t the woman’s husband or significant other, Mia automatically denounced it as demeaning and oppressive. That is, unless it came from someone’s nice old grandfather. “But even Grandpa can be a perv. Shit, most of them geezers are,” she had explained to me one time. It wasn’t like I would ever call her such a name, but I still made a mental note not to…because I valued what I had below my belt, and I wouldn’t have put it past a pissed-off Mia to use my manhood as a punching bag.
Ramsey got off lucky that day, that was
