Night Sentry

by Greg M. Hall

it before you go to bed.”

  Well, duh, Mikey wanted to respond. He was going to tell Craig Marks, who was serving as the Watch Chief, as soon as he got off the wall, but after hearing Carey suggest it, he suddenly didn’t want to.

  “Yeah,” he managed to grunt out, and walked along the parapet.

  Before he descended the stairs that took him down to street level, he stole one more glance over his shoulder, at the form of the man who was still out there.

  The guy had turned a little, to make sure he was still facing Mikey.

  With a shudder that didn’t come from the cold wind, he descended the stairs and set off toward the Sheriff’s station. He was almost certain the stranger continued to move to face Mikey, like a sunflower tracking the sun.

  Craig Marks rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, but Mikey liked him. He was abrasive, nearing his fifties, and all stubble on his head and face, as if his hair and beard did their best to match his personality.

  Despite the unkempt appearance and irascible personality, Craig was a leader. When the shit hit the fan, if you weren’t looking to Craig, you were an idiot. The problem was, when the shit wasn’t hitting the fan, and it generally wasn’t, it was hard to miss the fact that he didn’t like people very much.

  That’s why, even though he was the best person to lead up the response to any security concerns, he took the night shift. It meant there were less folks to deal with.

  “What’s wrong?”

  This was the greeting Craig gave Mikey as he walked through the door of the Sheriff’s station. It was about as congenial as the grizzled man would get; he despised the exchange of pleasantries, and if he responded to the standard greeting of ‘how are you?’ at all, it was with: “Do you really want to know, or do you want me to give you the standard bullshit ‘fine’?”

  Mikey had spent enough time around Craig to just answer him. “Something weird out there on the perimeter. A guy just walked up out of the dark and asked to come in.”

  “And you said ‘no’, right?”

  “I’m supposed to say ‘no’. So I said ‘no’.”

  “So did he piss off?”

  Craig had asked this casually as his head rotated back to the tattered old book he’d been reading. When Mikey responded, his head came back up. “No, he’s just standing out there. Been standing there for two hours, at least.”

  “You left Carey out there by himself? You should have signaled.”

  “He’s fine. It’s not like the guy was doing anything.”

  “Yeah, but how often does someone just walk up to the wall in the middle of the night? I think it’s been at least a month since the last group of strangers showed up, and that was in the middle of the day. This guy’s by himself. At night. It smells funny.”

  “You want to go check it out?”

  Craig shot him a look that said, no shit, Sherlock, as he thrust an arm into the sleeve of his coat. “You come too. It’s probably nothing. But if it’s something, I might need you to run up the wall and let everyone know what’s going on. Especially Riggs and Cooney, ‘cuz I sure as hell ain’t gonna be the one climbing up that ladder.”

  The muscles of Mikey’s neck groaned, and his fingers and toes protested, as he pushed the door open back into the frigid night. Even though the wall was only a couple of blocks from the station, the walk back there felt like a death march. The wind was mercifully at his back, but Mikey knew after Craig and Carey stared at the idiot interloper for a few minutes, he’d have to walk to bed facing fully into it.

  The glow of the perimeter lights reached above the wall, and poked thin ribbons of light through where the slabs joined. Mikey looked away from it, away from an inexplicable shard of despair the sight shoved into his gut, and cast his eyes down to the footsteps he’d just made on the walk up. They’d already been mostly erased by the wind and fresh snow.

  A movement from his periphery caused him to look up, in time to see Craig running past him toward the wall. Without questioning, Mikey ran after him.

  His brain was too sleep-deprived to ask ‘why?’, but he sensed something wasn’t quite right.

  After drawing to within half a block of the wall, Mikey realized he should have been seeing the silhouette of Carey’s head and shoulders above the top of the parapet.

  Craig bounded up the stairs, and quickly dropped to all fours. He scrabbled along the parapet, a sight that should have been comical but was anything but. As Mikey’s protesting, nearly seized legs pushed him up the stairs that he had descended just a few minutes before, he could see an odd shape on the walkway boards.

  Mikey had almost forgotten why he had come back out in the first place. He was so cold and tired. Something tugged at his memory, though, enough to make him turn to his left and look over the wall.

  The stranger was still out there, facing right at him.

  “Get down!” Craig barked at Mikey. Clumsily, he complied, his knees barely cushioned by the snow as he buckled himself onto the walkway. Craig was still bent over the Carey-sized shape, whose edges seemed to flutter a little in the wind.

  Mikey heard a curse word from the older man, and it finally dawned on him what the bundle was. He stole a glance over the top of the wall, just barely, as if discovering what had just happened would cause the stranger to transform.

  Craig didn’t give Mikey any more instructions. He whipped his hunting rifle, a lever-action .30 caliber, over the wall and aimed for a second before squeezing off a round.

  From his vantage point, Mikey swore he saw the snow kick up directly behind the stranger. Craig had hit the odd, flowing overgarment dead center.

  He kept standing, as if he hadn’t even heard the gunshot.

  Craig let loose a rapid string of profanities, far more meaningful as a whole than the individual words were, as he twisted the rifle and worked the action. This time, he rested his hand on the wall, let all the breath escape his lungs, and squeezed.

  Another flare of snow kicked up behind the shape, and this time Mikey swore he saw a scrap of cloth and something solid and black exit the back of the stranger. But it remained standing.

  Craig was working in another cartridge, and no words were escaping his mouth. His eyes were wide, nearly bugging out, but still concentrating on the task at hand. Mikey now got a full revelation of the man who had come back from the Middle East refusing to talk about his time there, but followed by rumors of heroism straight out of a Homeric tale.

  As he took aim, the man out in the snow raised an arm.

  Mikey’s gaze was torn from the stranger by a flutter of movement down the parapet. The Carey-sized lump on the walkway had doubled in size. Craig’s rifle leaned against the parapet, as if he had gingerly set it there before collapsing.

  Now the man was approaching.

  Mikey began to fumble for his rifle, but not for too long. If Craig had actually missed twice, it was the first two consecutive failures he’d ever had. Surely Riggs and Cooney would have heard the shots, and placed a few of their own by now, if they were alive up in their perch.

  No, guns were no good.

  “What do you want from us?” It was all Mikey could think to say.

  “I just wanted to come see you and your mom, Mikey.”

  The apparition had gotten closer now, and the request sounded like he had whispered it in Mikey’s ear. Even though it was a withered, dessicated version of itself, he recognized it.

  “You can come out with me. I’ll take you to Omaha, and you can get that M-14 you always wanted.”

  Mikey turned and sat on the walkway, resting his back against the parapet. He had a feeling that it didn’t matter if he opened the gate or not.

  >+<

  About the Author:

  Greg M. Hall has many stories published online and in print, and his novels, Traffic Control and Stunted, are available online and in select bookstores. For more of his stories, visit his website at www.gregmhall.com, his podcast at www.
killbox.mevio.com, or his blog at sf.gregmhall.com. He lives in eastern Nebraska with his wife, a bunch of kids, and pet tortoise.