Bad Glass

Whoever was here had been here for a while. And they hadn’t had time to flee.

Floyd met my eyes, his bottom lip trembling slightly. He pointed up toward the second floor. His expression was easy to read: They’re up there. Waiting.

And, no doubt, they’d already heard us coming.

We returned to the foyer, and I nodded up toward the second-floor landing. “You and Devon are friends, right?” I whispered. “Call up to him. Let him know we aren’t a threat.”

Floyd nodded, his eyes still wide. “Devon?” he called. “You up there, man? What are you doing?”

We both held our breath, waiting for a reply. After a half minute of silence, I gestured toward the stairs. Floyd shook his head and backed away, making me take the lead.

The upstairs hallway was dark. Most of the connecting doors stood wide open, but the windows in each of the rooms had been boarded shut, blocking out the snow-white light. After my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I poked my head into a couple of rooms, finding them just as empty as the rooms downstairs.

Floyd put his hand on my shoulder and pointed to a door up ahead. It was the only closed door on the entire floor, and its position put it even with the downstairs entrance. It was the room we’d been watching from across the street. Devon’s room.

Floyd stepped up to the door and knocked. “Devon?” he called. “Seriously, man, what is this shit? What’s going on?” There was no reply. As the silence started to stretch, I watched the expression on Floyd’s face morph from tentative discomfort all the way to annoyance. “Fuck, man, we know you’re—” Floyd’s voice was cut short as he threw the door open, revealing yet another empty room.

The unshuttered window gave entry to a blinding white light, and I was left momentarily dazzled, trying to blink away the starbursts in my eyes. Floyd stepped into the room, looked left, then right, and immediately stormed out again. I could hear him rushing from room to room along the upstairs hallway, looking for Devon.

For my part, I turned slowly just inside the door, studying the walls, trying to figure out where that eerie blue light had come from. There weren’t any visible problems with the room—no ragged holes punched into the walls, no disembodied limbs—but that didn’t stop my heart from thumping hard inside my chest. I turned to my right and ran trembling fingers along the nearest wall. I didn’t know what I was feeling for. Something horrible. Something I couldn’t see.

“He’s not up here,” Floyd said, rushing back into the room. “There’s nobody up here.”

I stepped over to the window and stared out at the bright afternoon. “Is there an attic or a cellar?” I asked. My hands were still shaking with adrenaline, but I could feel my heartbeat starting to slow. “Is there someplace they could hide? I mean, they have to be here, right? We saw Devon just a couple of minutes ago. And that blue glow …”

“Hey, hey, hey!” Floyd exclaimed, a hint of surprise in his voice. “Did you see this?”

I turned away from the window and found him moving toward the far side of the room. There was something tucked away in the corner, something I hadn’t noticed earlier: a small metal console, about the size of a shoe box.

“It’s a radio,” Floyd said, settling down in front of the box. He hit a switch, and it hummed to life. A bright digital display illuminated the front panel, and static crackled from its speaker. “Some type of CB radio. Battery- powered. And that’s not all.” Floyd reached behind the radio and picked up a pair of binoculars. There was a worried look on his face as he handed them over; his eyes kept darting back and forth between my face and the sleek black piece of equipment. He understood exactly what the binoculars and radio meant.

I took the binoculars back over to the window and raised them to my eyes. I scanned across the front of the house, spending brief seconds on each of the upstairs windows before finally panning down to the open living-room blinds. I adjusted the focus, zooming in on the sofa. It was a good pair of binoculars. Staring through those high- quality lenses, I could make out the stains in the sofa’s upholstery. Hell, I could count the number of crumbs trapped between its cushions.

I spent two nights on that couch! I thought, letting out a frustrated grunt. Somebody could have been watching me the entire time.

I lowered the glasses and returned to Floyd’s side, giving him a faint head shake as I crouched down on my heels. He took the binoculars from my hand and set them back where he’d found them.

“I thought radios didn’t work here,” I said, nodding toward the console. “I thought the military was jamming all of the channels.”

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were keeping some frequencies open so they could communicate with each other.” He frowned. “But they’d be monitoring those lines, keeping it all military all the time.”

“Do you think this is military business, then?” I asked, pointing to the radio.

“Devon? Military?” Floyd grunted in disbelief. “No way! I just can’t believe that.”

“Then who?” I asked. “Who was he talking to?”

Floyd shrugged and leaned forward, studying the radio more closely. There was a large “transmit” button on the front of the console, and the frequency was set to double zero. Floyd leaned over the top of the box and began running his hands along its back side. “Wait a second,” he muttered beneath his breath. “What do we have here?” He got up into a crouch and started moving his hands across the wall behind the console. “There’s a wire here, coming out of the radio.”

“An antenna?”

Floyd shook his head, more interested in following the line than answering my question.

I got up off my heels. I could see the wire now, a thin white line pressed into the angle between floor and wall. Once he got to the door, Floyd stood up straight, following the wire as it continued up along the outside of the door frame. The thin white line touched the ceiling, then continued down the length of the hallway, back the way we’d come.

“It’s held in place with staples,” he said. “We’ve got to follow it, find out where it goes.”

“Hold on a second,” I said, turning back toward the room. “We left the radio—”

I halted, shocked motionless before I could take a single step back into the room. The console was still lit, illuminated by the sharp digits glowing bright on its face. Double zeros, drawn out in glowing blue lines.

The light was bright enough to bathe the entire room in eerie electric blue.

I groaned, suddenly feeling very, very stupid.

It’s nothing but coincidence, I chastised myself. The glow in the apartment building, this room … it’s just a fucking color.

I shut off the radio and followed Floyd out of the room.

Floyd had a tiny flashlight on his key ring. He focused its narrow beam on the wire, tucked up against the ceiling, and started following it down the length of the hallway.

“Tell me about Devon,” I said as we followed the tiny white line. “I’ve barely seen him. It seems like he’s gone all the time.”

“Yeah, he hasn’t been around much. Not since you got here.” We reached the stairway, and Floyd traced the wire back down the wall, where it disappeared over the edge of the landing. “He’s always been a bit of a flake, but …” He stopped in his tracks and turned back toward me, a perplexed look appearing on his face. “Actually, he asked about you last night, asked about your photography. He wanted to know what you were planning to do with all of your pictures.”

Uneasy gooseflesh prickled up along my back. My pictures. Was that it? Was this all about me?

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing. I told him the truth: I have no idea what you’re doing.” Floyd paused for a moment, his face contorting as he tried to piece it all together. “What’s going on, Dean? Why’s he spying on us? And who’s he talking to on that radio?” He held out his hands, then looked left and right, a gesture that encompassed the entire house. Then his voice dropped down to a whisper: “And where’d he go?”

“I don’t know. I’m new here, remember?”

Floyd stared at me for a couple of seconds. His eyes were cold and accusing, like he didn’t quite believe me.