Heavy sheets of rain pounded her window so hard it flexed in the frame. Things were heading south inside and outside of the Elysian walls. What a night.
She crept over to her door and cracked it open. She peered out in the hallway. Something crashed down around the hallway corner. Chilling laughter followed. She edged out of her room and inched down the hallway.
She hung her head into Shane’s open doorway. Dwayne lay on the floor, a pulverized, bloody mess. Shane’s wheelchair was still there. But Shane was not. How could he…?
Walking Bear’s room was a few doors over. Something about being with that big quiet Anamassee felt really safe right now.
“Well, looky who’s up to party with the big boys.”
Chester stood in the hallway in all his splendid stupidity, pupils wide as sinkholes from whatever he was hopped up on. Blood splattered the front of his shirt. Denny stepped out from behind him and gave a lupine smile.
“Well, hello Dolly!” he said.
Shivers ran up Dolly’s spine. These two were out of control.
Shane stepped between his two henchmen and pulled each back with a hand on a shoulder.
“No, no, boys. This bitch is mine.”
Shane alone was more terrifying than the three of them together. Denny and Chester might have a shred of rational thought. Shane was psychotic. Without them to check him…
Dolly ran down the hallway.
“Nowhere to run,” Shane called. He followed at a steady pace, long strong strides down the hallway. “It’s an old-fashioned lock-in. A pajama party. Don’t be antisocial.”
Dolly had seen the tent in the sick bastard’s pants. He probably hadn’t had solid wood for years and she had a sickening idea what he’d be ready to do with it. She slipped on the floor as she rounded a corner and slammed into the wall. Something in her shoulder crunched and a flamethrower of pain raced through her right side.
“Don’t hurt yourself, Dolly,” Shane’s voice called from down the corridor. “That’s my job tonight.”
Dolly pushed off the wall and ran for her room. She slammed the door behind her and locked it. Shane might have had a miraculous recovery, but even in his prime he couldn’t break down that solid wood door. She leaned back against her work table and tried to stop hyperventilating.
The door handle rattled. Shane’s face appeared in the window like some twisted apparition. In the shadow she swore his eyes had a blue hue.
“Dolly, Dolly, Dolly,” he admonished her. “Fate can’t keep us apart.” He shook the nurses’ key ring in front of his face. “I’ve got the keys to your heart.”
She was trapped. The window barely opened and she couldn’t break it. Once he got in here…
Lightning flashed and something boomed outside the building, like a bomb exploding. The lights flickered and went dark. Emergency lighting far down the hallway kicked in.
“What the fuck was that?” Shane yelled down the hall.
Dolly could not make out the muffled response.
“Check the goddamn generator,” Shane ordered. Then in a quiet voice he whispered through the crack in the door jamb. “Dim lighting is much more romantic anyway.”
Keys jangled as Shane searched for the master. Dolly’s hand brushed against a cold metal cylinder. Clear gloss paint. She remembered the warning on the label:
Danger! Flammable!
She spun around and grabbed the can. She groped in the dark with her other hand, smacking away paints and brushes. It was here somewhere. She had just seen it.
The door behind her burst open.
“Say, bitch,” Shane said. He slapped his cane against one hand. “It’s time to party.”
Dolly felt it at her fingertips, a cool metal-tipped plastic cylinder. She snatched it and the spray can and spun around.
Shane was inches from her, a dark shadow backlit by the dim hallway lights. She aimed the lacquer at the dark recess of his face and sprayed.
“Fuck!” Shane halted. He flinched and spit as the spray coated his face.
Dolly brought the lighter up with her other hand and flicked it beneath the spray can’s stream. The plume exploded into a roaring torrent of yellow fire. Like dragon’s breath it lit the room and rolled toward Shane’s head. He raised a hand in weak defense from the sudden light and approaching heat.
Flames raced through his outstretched fingers. His face ignited into a sizzling yellow fireball. Shane screeched like a terrified child.
Dolly cut the stream. Shane pounded at his face with his hands, one of which was already a flaming torch. He staggered one step back, and then rocketed backward out the door like he’d been sucked out an airlock. He hit the far wall, then went careening down the hallway like a burning torch. The stink of scorched hair and flesh filled the room.
Dolly stood frozen, lighter and paint can pointed at the door and ready to fire at the next face to threaten her. Walking Bear stuck his head in the threshold.
“Hold up,” he said. “I thought you could use a hand, but that was before I knew you had a flamethrower in here.”
Dolly dropped her makeshift weapons to the floor and ran into Walking Bear’s arms. He enveloped her like a big warm blanket. She buried her head in his chest. His shirt smelled like pine needles.
“Am I glad to see you.”
She noticed that Denny and Chester lay in a crumpled pile at the end of the hall. She looked up at Walking Bear.
“Well?”
“They ran into each other in the dark. You ready to get out of here?”
“We can’t,” Dolly said. “The doors are locked.”
“Lightning blew the generator. No power, no locks.”
She looked up at his big broad face. “I’d face the storm before I stayed here.”
“I have a car,” Walking Bear said.
“You have a car?” Dolly said with surprise. “How come you never drove it?”
“Well, I didn’t have anywhere I needed to go.”
Dolly shook her head in wonder.
She knew the town’s hurricane protocol. Andy would be at the DPW, ready to respond when the storm let up enough to get things back up and running. And her vision said she needed him.
“We have to stop this madness. At the source. I know just where to go for help,” she said.
They walked out of the home and an armadillo stood at the edge of the sidewalk in the lee of a shrub. It looked up at Walking Bear and tracked him as he approached. Walking Bear nodded to the armadillo. Dolly gave Walking Bear a quizzical look.
“My spirit guide,” he said.
The armadillo waddled up to Dolly. It stopped at her feet and sat up on its hind legs like a begging dog. It wagged its snout at Dolly.
Dolly never liked armadillos. They dug up her garden and looked like something God assembled out of spare parts. But she did not recoil, though this creature was just inches from her. It stared up at her with its tiny black eyes set in its pointy armored face.
The armadillo radiated some dynamic living power. She felt a strange, calm attraction, and an irresistible urge.
She bent over and reached out with two fingers. She touched the armadillo’s forehead. Her fingertips went warm and energy soft as a summer breeze flowed into her hand. The armadillo dropped down on all fours and sauntered off into the woods. Dolly stared after it in stark amazement, as if the armadillo’s touch had the same effect as Midas’. Walking Bear had to pull her back upright.
“Where’s he going?” she managed to say.
“He will prepare our way.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” Walking Bear said. “But he does.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
The mosquito swarm surged out of the Magic Shop doorway. It split into three and descended on Andy, Autumn and Felix. The insects coated Andy’s arms like two throbbing black blankets. Bites like needle-pricks raced up his skin like machine gun fire. He dropped the rifle and swept a hand down his left arm. Mosquito bodies crunched against his sk
in and left a trail of bright red blood. Hundreds more dove in to take their place.
Mosquitoes swarmed his neck like their vampiric brethren. Twin groups surged up his pants and attacked his legs. Mosquitoes flew into his ears and up his nose. They alighted on his eyeballs. He shut his eyes tight and felt their bodies crush. The whine of the insects inspired visions of them inside his brain. He inhaled and insects coated his mouth.
He held his breath. He felt the weight of the creatures across his body. The insects pumped blood from his skin and he felt lightheaded. He flailed in panic. This was no way to die.
“Out here!” shouted Autumn.
Andy could barely hear her over the insects’ screeching whine. He cracked his eyes to see where she was as he swatted at the black mass. She was outside in the downpour. Felix bolted through the doorway toward her. Andy spat out a mouthful of mosquitoes and followed.
The punishing rain swept the mosquitoes from his skin. Andy scrubbed his neck and head clear. He blew his nose into his hands and was rewarded with a ball of yellow snot, black bodies and bright red blood.
“They can’t swarm in this,” Autumn yelled over the wind and rain. An inch of water surged over her feet and down the alley into the street. Behind her, a wave of mosquitoes swarmed out of the shop door and melted away under the rain’s withering fire.
“We need to stop this before the town’s washed away,” Felix said.
Andy gave a rueful look at the rifle on the floor of the Magic Shop. Every inch of skin the mosquitoes had a run at was a mass of itching, bleeding welts. He didn’t dare risk another trip into that maelstrom.
“This way,” he said.
The three of them splashed though the rain back to the DPW parking lot. Autumn held them up short of crossing the street.
“As the wildlife biologist,” she said, “I’m not the one who should be saying this but…what the hell are those?”
Across the street in the parking lot a half-dozen gray rabbits hopped around the white DPW pickup. The two rear tires were flat. One rabbit hung from the tread of a front tire, gleaming jagged teeth sunk into the thick rubber. As it swung its body back and forth, its teeth sawed through the radial. Air whooshed from the tire and the truck sagged closer to the ground.
“Side door,” Andy said.
He led the group on a skittish, circular path to the DPW side door. Halfway there, the rabbits caught their scent. A hiss arose from the group and they bounded in pursuit. The three humans broke into a run.
Andy fumbled with a ring of keys as they approached the building. One rabbit raced yards ahead of the pack. Andy hit the door at full speed and used his shoulder as a brake. The key jiggled around the lock as he tried to insert it. It finally slid in and with a twist and yank, he opened the door. Emergency lights lit the hall in long shadows. The lead rabbit closed. Andy entered with Autumn and Felix right behind him. As Felix pulled the door shut, the lead rabbit launched itself into the air like a gray missile.
With perfect timing, the rabbit hurtled through the doorway’s shrinking gap. The rabbit hit Felix’s right leg. Felix spun and yanked the door shut behind him. He screamed in pain.
Andy and Autumn whirled around. The rabbit chomped a hunk of flesh and blue jean from Felix’s leg and dropped to the floor. Blood sprayed the floor. Felix jammed the heel of his cowboy boot into its head. The rabbit’s skull crunched flat and blood pooled beneath it.
Felix stood in shock for a moment, staring at the predatory creature. Then he leaned against the wall and slid to the ground. His eyes never left the wet carcass.
Andy ran to his office and returned with a first aid kit. Autumn knelt over the rabbit. She pulled a pen from her pocket and probed its mouth. Andy tore away Felix’s pant leg and checked the bleeding wound.
He fought his initial instinct to recoil. Flashes of Afghanistan memories flipped though his mind. Amputated limbs. Screaming children. Puddles of blood on the streets. His hands shook as he unspooled a roll of cotton gauze. He fought back the urge to bolt down the hallway in panic and summoned his long-dormant military first aid training.
Felix’s gouge wasn’t deep. No arteries were cut. It could be worse. Andy focused on the wound and searched for some clinical detachment.
“This thing is bizarre,” Autumn said in wonder at the rabbit, her clinical detachment apparently in full swing.
Andy sprayed some antiseptic on Felix’s wound. Felix did not react. Andy made a compress bandage and bound the wound.
“This isn’t bad, Felix, but you need a doctor. And you don’t need to be walking around on it before that.”
Lost in her analysis, Autumn lifted one rabbit paw with the tip of her pen. Scythe-like claws extended from the pads.
“Slashing feline claws,” she observed. “Canid teeth. Fur coarse as ground flax seed. Rabbits are herbivores. This thing can’t exist.”
“There’s a couch in my office,” Andy said to Felix. “You should lie down there and keep your leg elevated.”
Felix nodded and Andy helped him out of the hallway. Autumn followed them in.
“I don’t need a DNA test to tell you that’s some kind of chimera,” Autumn said.
Andy gave her a blank look.
“A hybrid mix of multiple species,” she said. “Nothing we could pull off scientifically.”
“Just magically,” Andy said.
Autumn shrugged and signaled the surrender of science. A door in the hallway slammed open and closed.
“Andy?” a timid voice called out.
Chapter Fifty-Six
“Mom?” Andy called down the hallway.
Dolly appeared in the doorway, Walking Bear behind her. Andy gave her a huge hug. Walking Bear spied the rabbit on the floor and knelt to investigate alongside Autumn. “What are you two doing out here? How did you get past the rabbits?”
Dolly relayed the story of Shane’s rampage around the retirement home. She’d seen no rabbits around the building.
“The town has gone insane,” Felix said.
“I think that Lyle Miller has some black magic going on down at–” Andy said.
“–the Apex plant,” Dolly finished. “It’s what I’ve been seeing for days.”
“Your painting,” Andy said. “We need to get down there and see what’s going on. Mom, why don’t you and Walking Bear go across the street to the shelter?”
Dolly snorted. “Not likely. I wouldn’t have dreamed the place if I wasn’t supposed to be there to stop something. And I need you and Walking Bear there.”
“Mom…”
Dolly gave Andy an indignant stare until he sighed in resignation. He turned to Walking Bear. “I don’t suppose you’ll go to the shelter.”
“I’m her bodyguard,” the Anamassee answered.
Andy turned to Autumn.
“Don’t even ask it,” she said.
Andy balled his fists in frustration and looked down at Felix.
“You are sure as hell not going. Stay right here. If things get hairy, get over to the shelter. But this is one tough old building.”
“No problem, boss,” he said.
“Rabbits, snakes and gators,” Andy said. “We’re going to need some weapons.”
He longed for the M-16 on the Magic Shop floor. Instead he opened the tool locker. He pulled out a machete he used to cut brush and offered it to Walking Bear. The Anamassee pointed to a knife on his belt.
“This has more stopping power,” Andy said.
“I have help waiting,” Walking Bear said.
Andy handed it to Autumn. She reached past him and grabbed a shovel.
“I’ve been pretty good with one of these lately,” she said.
Andy sighed. He made a meek show of offering the machete to his mother.
“Andy, please,” she said dismissively.
Andy raised his hands and gave up.
“My natural leadership is seriously going to waste here,” he said.
The four went to the door to the DPW lot. There
wasn’t a rabbit in sight. The DPW pickup had four flats. There was an inch of water in the bed and it was still raining.
“We’ll take my truck,” Walking Bear said.
But Andy had another idea, a great plan he wanted nothing to do with. But it was the right plan. He pulled a key from the key box by the door.
“We need to also have something that will take more punishment,” he said, “in case we meet up with more of those rabbits, some gators, or worse.” He gritted his teeth. “We should take the dump truck.”
He couldn’t believe he got the words out of his mouth. The last thing he’d planned to do was get behind the wheel of that thing.
“Does that run?” Autumn said.
“Yep. Only two forward gears and no reverse, but it runs.”
Andy ducked into the rain first and ran to the truck. A pit opened in his stomach as soon as he stepped on the running board. He pushed on and climbed up into the cab. The familiar high view through the windshield brought back a surge of dark memories.
The passenger door opened. Dolly climbed in.
“Mom! Where’s Autumn?”
“With Walking Bear. I told her I was riding with my son.”
“Mom, you shouldn’t be riding at all. Please, head over to the shelter.”
“Andrew,” she said.
Andy hadn’t heard that chiding tone since he was a kid. Resolution had turned Dolly’s face to stone.
“I’ve been at that home for years, fading in and out of the rest of the world. Don’t think I don’t know when it happens. It’s embarrassing and terrifying. In an instant I am in an alien world, surrounded by strangers. But worse than not knowing who you, my own son, is, is not knowing who I am. Imagine experiencing your existence vaporize. And each event, it’s just a signpost saying Full Senility Ahead and the miles to go get shorter every time.
“The last few days, I have been back. Back better than in years, perhaps better than ever. And through it all I’ve been haunted by Apex. The reason I’m well is to be able to confront whatever is there. Now I can walk there to confront it alone, or I can ride there with my son. Which way should I go?”
Black Magic Page 18
