Vance and I mustered up smiles of our own. For the next hour or so while the storm raged on outside, we were heroes. We felt relatively relaxed inside, confident nothing could breach our walls. Even if it did, there were too many of us, too well-armed and too battle-hardened to be taken. The center had been vandalized back in the seventies and the owners had taken pains to put in thick, wire-filled windows that were hard to crack much less to break through. We felt safe inside, the way that medieval armsmen must have felt in their stout stone castle walls. Let the storm do its worst, we thought.
After the strange storm blew past and the winds died down, a fog settled over the town it left behind. The fog was of a peculiar quality, and I was reminded of the silvery cloud of vapor I’d seen earlier today swallowing up the lakeshore. I had to wonder what might wander out of that fog. Soon, we could only see half-way across the parking lot. Half an hour later, even the nearest of the cars drifted in and out of sight behind patches of heavy white vapor.
Still, with the storm gone and Holly rescued, we felt safe inside our walls. We felt it, a rising confidence. We had turned the corner on this whole thing. We could understand it and we could beat it.
We could not have been more wrong.
Fourteen
The white fog outside the center kept growing thicker.
“Somehow, just looking at it, I don’t like it,” said Vance beside me. Monika communicated the same sentiment in a more direct way by sliding herself under my arm.
“How’s Holly?” I asked her. I knew she had been spending a lot of time fussing over the girl.
“She is improved.”
“Did something move out there?” asked Vance.
“I didn’t see anything,” I said. “The wind stirs that stuff around sometimes.”
“What’s with this fog, anyway?” Vance demanded petulantly. “A storm is supposed to leave the air nice and clear.”‘
“That was not normal storm,” said Monika.
“You got me there,” admitted Vance.
We were peering out through the closed glass doors in the lobby. Most people avoided the lobby now, figuring logically that any intruders were likely to start with the front door. It had afforded the best view of the storm, however, so there I stood.
“What I really don’t like are those red flashes up there,” Vance continued.
I didn’t like them either. They were still going on, occasionally, red flashes of silent lightning far up in the clouds. They were completely outside all the normal rules when it came to storms. The light from them shone through as a pinkish glimmer. I thought about how odd it was to have any kind of lightning and fog at the same time. I could not recall having seen both at the same time before. Not ever.
Then came a heavy
Vance took a step back from the glass. I joined him. Monika took at least two steps back and half-tripped over one of those waiting-room chairs that are all connected together in a group like a weird chair-couch.
“You gonna tell me that was nothing?” Vance hissed out between clenched teeth.
“What’s going on out there?” asked a deep voice. It was Brigman walking up, our old history teacher. As far as I knew, only he and Mrs. Hatchell had survived from our old school. I was glad to see him. His deep voice had always commanded instant respect from us back in school. He was bald and fat, but had thick arms with a lot of hair on them. On his shoulder was a red fireaxe he’d probably pulled out of a firebox at the school. He tossed a steady stream of peanut candies down his throat with the other hand.
Vance tried to shush him, but that was an effort doomed to failure.
“Don’t wet yourself, boy!” Brigman laughed. “That’s just Erik Fotti out there, probably trying to drive that police cruiser around in the fog. He’s on guard duty until dusk.”
I nodded, a bit relieved. It seemed likely that Fotti would be out there, screwing around with the police car. I sensed that he already fancied himself our new sheriff. He had quietly taken ownership of our town’s only police cruiser and its shotgun.
No more sounds came from outside for a bit, and we unconsciously started to relax. That’s when the power went.
It wasn’t just the lights powered by the generators that died. Everything around us died. We had a lot of things rigged up now and some of the lights were connected to car batteries in the dimmer hallways. Everything went out, every machine in the place.
It got very quiet for a few moments, and then we could hear the cries of concern from back in the labs and examination rooms and nurses stations. Everyone was asking the same thing.
“I’ll check the generators,” said Brigman.
Monika left to go check on Holly.
“Let’s break out the Colemans,” I told Vance. He nodded and we were on it, setting up propane lamps all over the building. Fortunately, the possibility of losing the generators down in the basement had been prepared for. We worked quickly, it almost felt good to have a chore, it drove out thoughts of the fog and the
I was back in the dentist’s section when I ran into Erik Foti. He was messing with his cassette player and seemed agitated.
“Aren’t you supposed to be on guard duty?” I asked him.
He tossed me an annoyed look and shook his cassette player. AA batteries rolled across a table and he put in two more. “Yeah,” he said. “I took a break for the storm, okay?”
“Fine, but the storm is pretty much over with.”
He gave me a wry look. “Things still look pretty strange out there.”
“What’s wrong with your player?
“I guess it’s dead or all the batteries are,” he said mournfully. “Flashlights aren’t working either.”
I frowned and took up a flashlight, messed with it, switched batteries. Nothing. He had three cassette players out on a table and they were all dead, all of them.
“I’ve got to tell the Doc about this,” I said. “And you should take a look out there.”
He nodded, a bit sheepishly. “Hey,” he said as I was leaving. “You did a fine thing out there bringing that girl in, Gannon.”
I flashed him a smile and walked quickly toward Doc Wilton’s office. On the way, I noticed by the light of the Coleman in the nurses’ station that the battery operated wall clock was motionless. There should have been emergency lights on over the exits, and those were out too, I realized. I began to shoulder my way past the people wandering dazedly in the halls. I broke into a trot.
Fifteen
I threw open Doc Wilton’s door, ignoring the PRIVATE sign on it. The interior was dimly lit by a tiny bathroom-sized window up high over the bookshelves.
“Doc?”
She didn’t answer right away. She was working with something in her hands. I couldn’t see what.
“Doc, the power’s dead. Everything is dead. I mean everything, all the batteries and flashlights-” I broke off, realizing for the first time that the thing in her hand was a small handgun.
“I know, Gannon,” she said quietly.
“Doc, we really need you right now. People will panic without light tonight,” I said quietly.
