my saber and laughed.
“Going to cut me if I kill myself, eh? Ironic, don’t you think boy? If ever there was a time and place where suicide was easier for a person, I don’t know it. All I have to do is take a walk in the woods and it will all be over shortly.”
“That would be a brave death.”
She frowned again. “So I’m a coward? You don’t see what I do, Gannon, you don’t see the future clearly.”
She took up the pistol and toyed with it. I saw it was a cheap-looking.32 caliber semi-automatic. She put it down on a pile of maps she had been working on with a clunk and I snatched it up. I tucked it into my pocket and walked out. As I did so, I found the flat stone I had picked up on the lakeshore. It was still there, and it still felt warm, although that could have been from my body heat.
I pulled the stone out and flashed it at Wilton. She recoiled slightly. “Why are you afraid of this thing?”
“It’s enchanted, I think,” she said.
“What can you do with an enchanted rock?”
She shrugged. “Try throwing it at one of them, or if it is rough enough, use it to sharpen up that pig-sticker of yours. I don’t care.”
I hefted it and nodded. “Why don’t you go check on Holly again?” I suggested.
She nodded and got up. She looked old and bent, but not broken anymore. She limped away to the examination rooms. I opened my mouth to ask about her limp, but shut it again. I’d asked enough.
Sixteen
I went back to my empty cot and closed the door. I didn’t want anyone to see this.
I pulled the stone out of my pocket again and here, in the darkness, it glimmered plainly. I took out my saber and ran the stone along the edge. It was indeed rough enough to use as a grinding stone. Usually, one would have used a softer stone like soapstone, but it worked quite well. After scraping each side perhaps twenty times, I thought to see the faintest blue glimmer along my blade. I chewed my lip and breathed harder, feeling like I was doing something evil, but fun, like finding dad’s playboys as a kid. I scratched at the blade more, and the faint glimmer turned into a glow.
I put the stone back into my pocket, sheathed my weapon and went to check on things at the front entrance. The fog outside looked even thicker, if anything. It looked like someone had pressed a gauzy blanket against the glass. Only a few feet of gray concrete walkway was visible outside now. Erik Foti was in the lobby peering out dubiously at nothing. He gripped and re-gripped his shotgun nervously. He glanced at me as I walked up.
“Yeah, I know, guard duty.”
“Hmm,” I said, “looks kinda strange out there. Is everyone inside?”
“Everyone except for Brigman, he found nothing wrong in here and went outside to check the fuse box. He thinks maybe one of the trees fell over in the storm and hit the lines that came up from the basement.”
“He’s out there in that? Alone?”
“Yeah, well…” Eric trailed off. None of us wanted to go out there. It wasn’t the roiling fog itself, exactly, it was the things that might be out there in the that stuff. The things you wouldn’t be able to see.
“How long has he been gone?”
Erik paused before answering, and then he sighed. “Too long.”
I nodded, and swallowed. “I’m going out. I’ll just sweep around the building once and see what’s up.”
Erik’s face worked, I looked at him and he was flushed, his cheeks purple. “No,” he said quietly, putting a hand out in front of me, “I’ll go, I should have gone already. I’m on duty.”
“Erik, it’s cool-”
“No, no, it’s not. You went for that girl and I chickened. I’m going to do this one.”
I nodded. “I’ll stand right here. Let me know if something is wrong.”
He glanced at me again quickly and nodded. Then he grinned. “I’m not gonna scream, don’t worry.”
I chuckled politely.
Then he edged open the door, and a white tendril of smoky vapor curled into the waiting room. He slipped outside and the fog ate him up.
He went to the right. I noted that, in case he didn’t come back and we had to look for him.
I cracked open the door, even though I didn’t want to, and listened. It couldn’t have been much past two in the afternoon, but you’d never know it looking out there.
Vance came up next to me. “There you are, what-?”
I put up a hand and shushed him. For once, he actually fell silent, not an easy thing for Vance, I knew. He and I listened at the cracked doorway like thieves.
We waited and strained our ears and listened. A minute passed, then another, I think, before I heard anything special. What I finally heard wasn’t the welcome sound of shoes on wet pavement coming back home to us, but instead something that sounded like the creaking and twanging of guitar wires breaking in unison.
Vance and I looked at each other.
“What?” he asked in a hushed tone. Somehow, we both wanted to keep quiet.
“The chain link fence,” I whispered back, envisioning something out there, ripping slowly through the fencing that the last of Redmoor’s citizens had hastily erected.
More wires creaked and twisted and snapped. Then there was a jangling sound that could only be the chain links coiling up, and a crash that reminded me of the sound a trashcan makes when it is knocked over and spilling its contents. A figure loomed in the fog and we both drew back a pace. I saw a round belly and a red axe. It was Mr. Brigman.
“Something-” he panted, pushing in through the doors, “Something’s out there. Something
“Where’s Erik? Did he find you?”
“Yeah, he did, he went to check it out. Something was messing with the fence line. We worked so hard on that fence. It’s not even finished yet. Anything that wanted to could just go around. Why would they want to tear up the fence? Why not go around?”
This simple question seemed to really bother him. But I didn’t have any answers, so I didn’t try to give him one. The things were mad, who knew why they did anything?
Faces started to appear behind us at the three nurses’ stations. Everyone seemed to stay behind the reception desks, as if somehow a four-foot tall wooden structure with a Formica countertop would protect them. The Nelsons were there, and Monika and Mrs. Hatchell and even Doc Wilton, plus about a half dozen others. They were all dark oval faces and bright big eyes in the gray light. Everyone was quiet. Everyone was listening. We were Neanderthals huddled in our cave while a saber tooth nosed around outside.
Everyone hung back, that is, except for Holly Nelson. She came forward slowly to join us. In her hand she had that screwdriver. Her lips were pressed in a narrow line as she studied the fog outside. I almost smiled, she was a fighter, all right. I found it interesting in a detached way that no one called her back to safety. She looked much older now with a bandaged head, a hunter’s jacket and blue jeans on. She had as much right to play this game her own way now as any of us did. There wasn’t really any safe spot anymore, and all of us knew it. I realized that kids were going to be growing up very fast in this new world.
I drew my saber then, and it rasped out of the sheathe with a long sighing sound. I rested the blade on my shoulder and pushed open the door another few inches. The mist swirled and broke up enough for me to see glimpses of the nearest cars parked just a dozen feet away.
“Erik?” I hissed. Something moved out there, and for a second I thought something had heard me. I listened to what could only be the crunching, tinkling sound of glass breaking. It was probably a car window caving in.
I had my head out, then a foot. Then I figured
It was colder out there than I had realized, and the fog had a funny, almost seaside smell to it. The odor
