Shawna pressed one finger against the glass. “I keep seeing something out beyond those buildings. A bright light. Flashing.”
“I don’t—” Nan began, but was cut off as the light flashed once again. It was like a camera’s flashbulb going off in a dark alley across the square. “Yes! What is that?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s back there?”
“That’s Fairmont Street. My house is back there.”
“What could be flashing like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think it could be help?” Nan’s voice was sadly optimistic.
“I think,” Shawna said, “it could be absolutely anything.” She pulled the rifle up into her lap and proceeded to load it to capacity. “I should probably check it out.”
“Alone?”
Shawna surveyed the woman. She was in fantastic shape, but was she mentally prepared for another trek across town? She’d witnessed her husband turn into a monster, then have his head blown off, less than an hour ago…
“I don’t want to sit in this car by myself, Shawna. I’ll go crazy.”
Try locking yourself in a convenience store with your boyfriend’s headless corpse, she felt like saying, but didn’t.
Shawna nodded. “All right. But we have to be quick and careful.”
“If there’s—oh!” Nan had turned and caught sight of the mess in the backseat. She stared at it, her jaw unhinged. “Dear Jesus.”
“Don’t look at it.”
“Oh. Oh. Oh.”
“Are you with me, Nan?”
Nan took a deep breath, then turned away from the backseat. She sat facing forward, her hands planted firmly in her lap. After a few seconds, she said, “I’m with you.”
Meg led them both up a flight of narrow, atticlike stairs that creaked beneath their collective weight. The flame of her candle caused their shadows to jump and bob along the walls. Despite the drop in temperature and the fact that he’d left his coat back at the Pack-N-Go to fit in the ventilation shaft, Todd was sweating profusely. Something was roiling around in his guts—a warning. Something was very wrong here.
There was a hatch directly above their heads at the top of the stairs. Meg knocked on it twice, then pushed it up to open it. Hinges squealed. Before crawling up, the girl castigated them with a disquieting stare that made her seem much older than her fourteen years. Then she climbed up and out of the hatch.
Todd followed, bracing himself for anything.
Topside, he found himself in a square room with windows on every wall—thick, hand-blown glass panes reinforced with iron piping. The whole town was visible from this vantage. Directly above his head, an ancient copper bell hung from recessed rafters. He caught a whiff of something in the air, something that was not necessarily dangerous but nonetheless did not belong. It took him a moment to place the smelclass="underline" corn chips.
Meg crept off into the shadows where the silhouette of another person—her brother, Chris?—sat slouched in a folding chair. As Todd helped Kate up out of the hatch, Meg thumped the figure on one shoulder. The silhouette jerked and sat upright, bags of potato chips crunching beneath his shifting feet while he smacked his lips together.
“What?” the boy growled…then saw Todd and Kate standing before him. He sprung up out of the chair and sauntered into the panel of moonlight coming in through the nearest window. He was tall and broad-shouldered but possessed a child’s face, with doughy cheeks, a dimpled chin, and an infant’s squinty eyes. Like a vagabond, he wore several layers of clothing, from beneath which his sizable gut protruded almost comically, and there was a strip of purple satin tied around his forehead like a bandana. Todd was quick to notice his pistol stuffed into the boy’s waistband.
“Are you Chris?” Todd asked.
The boy looked him up and down. Then his piggy little eyes sought out Kate and scrutinized her, as well. Turning to Meg, he said, “Who told you to untie her?”
“I didn’t,” Meg said. She pointed at Todd. “He did.”
Chris’s hand shot out and slapped her across the face.
“Hey!” Kate shouted. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“Who are you both?” Chris demanded. “Where’d you come from? You’re not from town.”
Todd held up both hands in an effort to show his intentions were not of the hostile variety. “Just take it easy. You’re right; we’re not from around here. Our car broke down tonight and we came into town looking for help. We have absolutely nothing to do with anything that’s been going on around here.”
“The girl’s got cuts on her back,” Chris said.
“What?” Todd stammered. For a second he thought Chris was talking about Meg. But then he remembered the lacerations he’d seen on Kate’s bare back as he’d untied her from the chair, and at least some of this madness began to make sense. “No,” Todd said, “you’re wrong.”
“I saw the cuts myself.” The boy was adamant.
“She’s not one of them,” Todd said.
“Me?” Kate said, incredulous.
“Turn around,” Chris demanded of Kate. “Lift up your shirt. I want to see.”
“Fuck off, you perverted little twerp,” Kate barked.
Chris yanked the pistol from his waistband. Todd sidestepped in front of Kate, his hands still up. “Take it easy. She’ll show you. Kate, turn around and lift up your shirt. He thinks you’re one of them.”
“This is insane.”
“So is getting shot by Lord of the Flies over there,” Todd countered. “Just do it.”
Slowly, Kate turned around and pulled her shirt up over her shoulders. The smooth canvas of her back was marred by flecks of broken skin and jagged lacerations—probably from when the gun shop’s window had imploded, sending spears of glass every which way.
“See?” Todd said, tracing a hand along Kate’s back. She shivered at his touch. “They’re just cuts. We’ve been running from those things and got hit with some broken glass. Okay? She’s normal. We both are.”
Chris was chewing on the inside of one cheek. His distrustful, oil-spot eyes darted from Kate to Todd to Kate again. Finally he returned the pistol to his waistband with an unfavorable grunt. “Okay,” he said, though he sounded miserable at having been wrong.
Kate lowered her sweater, then hugged herself with her arm. She was shivering fiercely. Todd rubbed a hand along one of her arms and asked Chris if they had any extra clothes.
Chris dropped back down into his folding chair. He glared at his sister. “Take her down to the trunk. She can pick out whatever she wants.”
Wordlessly, Meg approached Kate, took her by the hand, and led her back down the hatch. Kate cast one last glance at Todd before disappearing down the darkened stairwell in the floor.
Todd moved to the nearest window. He could see the town square clearly from up here. Beyond that, a community fire hall, a building that may have been a school, and a sheriff’s office—all dark. Cars lay overturned in ditches, and near the outskirts of town Todd could make out an ambulance that had died along the shoulder of the road, its rear doors flung open, the whole thing powdered with snow. Then a sinking feeling overtook him when he noticed that the windows of the Pack-N-Go had been blown out. “Oh, shit…”
“I saw you run across the square,” Chris said from his folding chair. He had a voice like a squeaky trumpet. The stink of corn chips was cloying, reminding Todd of awful foot odor; it was all he could do not to gag. “There’s more of you down there.”
“There were,” Todd said. “I hope they’re okay.”
“Two ladies made it out of the store,” Chris said. “I saw them, too.”