Shifting

other things. I couldn’t leave them.

As if she had divined my thoughts, Mrs. Hatchell caught me in the lobby next to the sausage stand. Nick was off somewhere, perhaps concocting a lunch out of changeling corpses.

“Gannon,” she said, grabbing my arm. “I need to talk to you.”

“What is it?”

“Whatever you are thinking, you need to stay here tonight,” she told me, still holding onto my arm.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“You wander quite a bit, boy. But not tonight, okay?”

“But why are you so concerned?”

“Because we need you,” said Monika, appearing behind me. I hadn’t heard her approach. She always moved quietly.

I reached out my good hand to her and she reached hers to meet mine. Mrs. Hatchell watched our fingers entwine and smiled. I’m sure she now approved of our closeness-now that it fit in with her plans.

“It’s the Preacher,” hissed Mrs. Hatchell. She leaned uncomfortably close to us. “It’s that thing he’s got, on his belt. He was gone for weeks, even longer than you were, and last night he comes back with an enchanted artifact, saying it’s a gift from one of them. He’s never without it. He’ll put his Bible down, but not that thing.”

She said this last with clenched teeth. She let go of my arm and leaned her skinny butt back against the table.

“So you don’t trust him?” I asked.

“We don’t,” Monika chimed in. I turned back to her, surprised. I trusted her judgment more than I did the counselor’s.

“Listen, ladies,” I whispered back to both of them. “First of all, I’m not leaving. Secondly, the Preacher, I believe, is the most trustworthy of all of us. I trust him more than I do myself.”

They both blinked at me. I looked from one face to the next.

“What’s with your hand?” asked Mrs. Hatchell. She looked pointedly at the abomination I kept jammed in my pocket.

“I injured it,” I said smoothly. I had practiced the lie, and it came out sounding very natural. I wondered how long I could keep it concealed. Perhaps, just long enough for me to prove myself to the rest of them.

“Gannon,” said Monika. Her face had that scared-kid look I found most endearing. “What if he decides that we aren’t good enough?”

I looked back at her for a moment. Her eyes flicked down to my hidden hand, and then back to my face. She knew. Mrs. H. was only starting to suspect, but Monika knew. I had noticed hints before, but now I was sure. She knew my hand had gone bad, and she knew the Preacher wouldn’t like it, and now she didn’t like him, because he was a threat to me.

“You two are so sappy,” Hatchell said suddenly, misinterpreting our close, wordless exchange. She shook her head and tsked. “This office romance would be enjoyable, if we weren’t all about to get butchered. Promise me that if you have a spat, neither of you tries to leave until we survive this storm and the trick-or-treaters I’m expecting to see tonight.”

“There aren’t going to be any trick-or-treaters,” said Holly, walking in our conversation. Her eyes were hard, but there was a touch of a lost look on her too-young face. I felt bad for her. “Not ever again.”

“We’ll see about that,” I said.

She came closer and I saw she had a Bowie knife in her hands. She thunked it tip-first into the table that still had a few cold sausages on it. “Tonight, I’m going to stand by you, whatever happens.”

I nodded and smiled. I knew she meant it. She couldn’t have weighed eighty pounds yet, but I knew she would fight, no matter what happened. She wasn’t a kid anymore. Others might freeze up or run, but not her. She would fight, and that made her valuable.

“I’ll be glad to have you there,” I told her, and I meant it.

Wilton came in then, followed by the rest of them. The Preacher came in last. Wilton set the lantern, with my coat still over it, on the big, low kids’ coloring table that occupied one corner of the lobby. I had always liked that corner as a child. It had bead-puzzles and blocks and the fish tank in it, along with some heavily-eared magazines and books. I’d played there, what now seemed like a century ago.

The lantern was heavy, and I was amazed Wilton had carried it so far. She half slumped over it now, and even though she had put it down, she kept at least one hand resting on top of it. It’s got her fixated, I thought to myself. I knew that power it had very well.

Vance came over to me and handed me a shotgun, or at least he tried to. I thought it must have been the one from the police cruiser, but I refused it with a wave. “I’ll stick to my sword.”

He shook his head, “Brother, if these guys are right about what is coming tonight, you’ll need it. This is one of our last shotguns, most of the rest burned up over at Billson’s ages ago.”

Our one hunting shop in town had died an early death. Someone followed by two loping monsters had run in there, no doubt seeking some personal protection. Somehow, in the following battle, everyone inside had died, including the changelings. But the place had caught fire and burned, removing most of our ammunition and weapons from the town.

Just the same, I knew I could never work a shotgun with one hand, and I didn’t want to even try to work it with my warped hand.

“Have you got a pistol?” I asked.

He nodded and handed me a semi-automatic. I looked a bit plain, but serviceable.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “It’s Russian or German I guess. It takes 9mm standard ammo. Found it in one of the houses down the block. We went on some scavenging missions. I think we’ve got plenty of guns for everyone in the center. But ammo is going to be low, and we don’t have enough of any one type to match up all the guns.”

I found the stamp on it, made in Jordan, it said. I hoped the sucker wouldn’t jam on me. “Just one clip?” I asked.

He tossed me a back up, and, right there, I almost blew it. My right hand had the pistol, so I automatically yanked my left out to catch the clip. I stopped myself just in time. The clip bounced off my gut and clattered to the ground. Monika dove for it, snatched up the clip and shoved it into my right coat pocket. I put the pistol in there with it. I wondered how the hell I was going to reload.

“You asleep?” asked Vance. We had often tossed balls back and forth in the living room for years, tennis balls, footballs, even while watching TV. Especially while watching TV. It used to drive our mom nuts. He knew I rarely dropped anything.

“You were aiming for my balls, weren’t you?” I accused and faked a smile.

He smiled back, but looked a bit confused. Still, it got him off the topic. He could be like a birddog if you let him get onto a scent.

Monika grabbed my arm then, the bad one, and tugged at me. “I’ve got something for you,” she said in a near-whisper. It was noisy enough in the room that no one else noticed her. Everyone was bustling about. We had lived through a storm before, and we would do it again. The center had walls now, and we were prepared. Or at least, we thought we were, I wasn’t so sure, but I wasn’t going to say anything about my doubts. I hadn’t told people about the things on the beach or the things at the bottom of the sea. They would see horrors enough on their own soon.

I let Monika drag me down a hallway and into a room with an X-ray machine in it. I wondered if I would ever get another X-ray during the rest of my life.

“Here,” she said, and she had a large, black leather glove. It was a left-handed glove. She had a strange look on her face, as if she were involved in a crime. It was the furtive expression people in her country must have worn when they hid contraband from the communists a generation before.

I looked at the glove. I blinked at it not knowing what to say, her trust in me was sweet-she was so sweet. She didn’t care if I was part monster, she just wanted to protect me from the others. I took the glove with my good hand and then I hugged her tightly. I jerked my head, indicating that she should leave while a put it on.

“Put it on,” she said, looking me in the eye. Her look told me that she wouldn’t retch, that she wouldn’t run