by B. V. Larson
I poured myself some coffee. I was feeling the long day of hiking. “Or maybe she is a recent convert, and she remembers all this from when she was on our side.”
She nodded, admitting the possibility. “In any case, she is definitely a free agent and one of the new sort of creatures we have been seeing.”
I looked at her, and felt an urge to get some answers. “Look, Doc, do you think you have a handle on all this now? I mean, not that you are about to fix it, but that you get what is going on? Where did our world go wrong?”
“No,” she said simply. “Well, I know some things. I do think I have clues now, and what you’ve told me fits with the pattern. You already know about the fissures, the fault lines if you will, in the world, where things go mad.”
I nodded, gulping some hot brown liquid. It tasted like it had spent a few days in the pot, but exploded warmly in my belly, feeling good.
“I think all of us and everything around us is being affected, not just the few who go all the way and turn bestial. You see, even your flashlight was affected when it got too close. It seems electrical devices fail first. They can’t take much variance and still operate. Look at a car for example. Have you ever put new sparkplugs in an old car?”
I nodded, only half following her.
“You have to set the gap on the sparks to just the right distance with a fine tool, right? If the gap is too short or too wide they don’t fire right, it’s a very delicate system. Computer chips are even more precise, they require an absolutely stable voltage level and the circuitry has to all be formed exactly right down the millionths of an inch per contact. If anything is wrong, they don’t work. That’s why we are seeing more failures in digital equipment than we are even in humans.”
“But not all this equipment has been moved next to one of these lines on the map,” I argued. “Computers are dead everywhere, it didn’t matter how close the shifting was.”
“Right, which brings me to our next conclusion.”
She eyed me for a while, as if deciding if she should really tell me.
“What then?” I demanded.
She nodded and looked down at her hands while she spoke then, seemingly wishing she didn’t have to bear this news.
“Gannon, we are all changing. Getting close to these lines on the map speeds it up, and some of us resist better than others, but we are all changing. The world is changing too. People and animals are much more resilient systems than complex machines are. People can get cancer, get pregnant, lose a limb, get fat or old or whatever and still function. Computers can’t change shape and still operate.”
“But we still look the same,” I argued, not liking her idea at all. It was like being told you were terminally ill.
Wilton slowly closed her eyes, and then opened them again. “Do you realize Gannon, that the largest and most age-resistant organ in the human body is the skin? We think of it as the classic way to detect age, but really, a doctor can tell you that inside your body your other organs are getting worn out even faster. They show more wear and tear than you would ever see on the outside of a person. In a like fashion, we are all changing in small, subtle ways. They hide at first. The way a person riddled with cancer might notice nothing and go on for years before the truth shows up as a backache or an odd cough that won’t go away.
“Some of us are already learning the inner truth. There are spurs on the backs of hands. Tiny tails sprout, hidden in underwear. Extra teeth in the back of mouths. People will hide it at first, terrified, hoping against hope in natural denial. This is how the last of us are going. We are the resistant ones, or the ones lucky enough to have been far from the fissures all this time. As the population is reduced down to those who are most resistant, we won’t change all at once, it takes a while longer.”
“What kind of proof do you have?” I demanded. I was having trouble buying all this. I’m sure, at least partly, it was because I didn’t like what I was hearing.
She chuckled, “I’m not running a government certified medical lab here with a crack research team, if that’s what you mean. But, I will tell you a few things: For one, our normal internal body temperature in this town is not 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit any longer. The average is now 99.1 degrees Fahrenheit and it seems to be rising. For another, I know of two people in the community right now who have deformities, minor ones that you would never find unless you stripped them down and examined them inch by inch. And you can bet there are others.”
I opened my mouth at this point and raised my index finger.
“And no,” she went on, waving my finger back down again, “I won’t tell you who they are. They seem stable and there is no reason for me to believe they are any more dangerous than anyone else in the group.”
I chewed my lip, thinking I still wanted to know. I wanted to know who to watch.
“Lastly, I’ve observed an increasing number of minor changes in the plant and animal wild life. It is my belief that they will pose our next major threat.”
“How so?”
She sighed. “So far, mostly humans have been affected. But what if a migrating flocks of birds turn into winged snakes—”
“I’ve seen a few of those,” I interrupted.
“I know you have, and what if the trees themselves—changed?”
I thought of the articles in the newspapers I’d read. Hadn’t trees come to life somewhere?
“There are a lot of trees in this forest,” I muttered.
She nodded, clearly feeling she was victorious over my objections.
“There’s something else,” I said finally. I showed her the stone in my pocket. With the lights turned down, it was easy to see it still glowed.
Wilton touched it and spun it around gently, examining the impression. She looked at me sharply.
“The thing had hooves?”
I nodded, “I guess so. I’ve been seeing such prints quite a bit lately. I think this creature was leaving those prints.”
Wilton suddenly shoved the stone away from her, sending it skittering across the table. I snatched it up and put it back in my pocket. I gave her a frown of annoyance, but she didn’t seem to notice. She wrung her fingers one by one and stared at the desk.
“She’s one of the powerful ones, then,” she said quietly.
I asked her what she meant, but she didn’t tell me.
Eleven
The first thing I did when I got out of Wilton’s office, of course, was search for Monika. I was yawning despite the coffee and munching on a sandwich that Carlene Mitts had handed me. The sandwich tasted great; neither Vance nor I could cook worth a damn. When we made sandwiches, they came out as Spartan, bachelor-house affairs with only bread, meat and maybe a smattering of one half-crusty condiment or another to glue it all together. I’d forgotten what a real sandwich tasted like when done by an artist such as Mrs. Mitts. There was pickle in there and thin onion slices, it was like a professional deli sandwich. I made a mental note to really lay on the complements next time I saw her.
I found Monika still talking to Mrs. Hatchell. At least she wasn’t crying, but I could see by her reddened face that there had been some tears at some point.
“Oh, hello Gannon,” said Mrs. Hatchell when I nosed the door open. “We were just talking about you.”
“Nothing too incriminating I hope, Mrs. H.” I said. All the ex-school kids called her Mrs. H.
Then Monika jumped me. I needn’t have worried about her forgetting me, I realized as I received her enthusiastic hug. She felt and smelled good, and I slipped my arm around her. We stood in the doorway and listened to Mrs. Hatchell for a while. No one ever ran into old Mrs. H. without stopping and listening for a while.
She was a widow who had lost her husband but not her wedding ring. She would always be married to the man she’d lost to a boating accident she often referred to as “some foolishness” a decade ago. She wasn’t anything special to look at, either. She was thin and had a slight stoop. Thirty years ago in high school, she ha
d been pretty, I was sure, but now her bright eyes looked suspicious rather than curious. Calculating, rather than thoughtful. Not that she wasn’t a good citizen. She was, in fact, one of the best citizens in the county. I liked her, but she was hard to take in large doses.
She talked on and on about traumatic experiences and altered judgment and false redirection of blame and finally worked her way up to something she called The Counter-Intuity of Socionomic Insight. Whatever the heck that meant. While she talked I noticed her noticing that Monika and I were in contact the entire time. That was the funny thing about her, sometimes it seemed like she was just raving on in her own land of terminology and reciting tidbits from interesting articles she’d read, but she really was picking up everything that was going on in the room and sometimes, if you poked her the right way, you could get something useful out of her.
The lecture went on for some time. It was all about the mental state of our community in these trying times. We moved into the room and took up chairs around a small table, joining her. Monika’s eyes went glassy after about a minute and a half. I sympathized, it wasn’t even her native language. I lasted a bit longer, but soon I couldn’t hold on any longer either.
“Mrs. Hatchell,” I interrupted loudly.
“Yes?” she said, seemingly startled.
“Do you know about the shadows?”
“The shadows?”
“The ones that are partly changed, but live among us. Do you think you can spot them? Do you think they are dangerous? How are they feeling about all this?”
She gave a sudden intake of breath. “So you know about them.”
I told her briefly of my encounter in the woods. Monika watched me with big eyes as I told my tale.
Mrs. Hatchell eyed me suddenly, as if seeing me for the first time. “You’ve grown into a fine young man, Gannon.”
“Thank you, Mrs. H.”
“The Shadows,” she said. She took a sip of coffee and ran her finger around the rim of the mug. “I think they are thinking the same thing you would if you found a discoloration on your body—a strange one. First, you feel panic. Then, perhaps you would explain it away as bruise or an injury, but then… Eventually, you would realize you had to hide it from the others. You might live in fear then, feeling like no one was your friend, not the changelings outside nor the humans in here.”
I nodded. “Makes sense. But are they dangerous?”
“I don’t know. If the change affected their minds not just their bodies then yes, they may be. But we’ve never been attacked by anyone who looked purely human. All the changelings were very far gone before they tried to harm anyone else. So I would expect them to be somewhat safe to deal with.”
“But you don’t know.”
“Of course not. Are you thinking of an individual?”
“No, I’m looking for general information. I can see your point about not being too dangerous because no one in that partially changed state has ever been reported as an attacker… But maybe that will change now that there are more of them.”
“Gannon,” said Monika then, speaking up for the first time. “If you do find someone like that, don’t be too hard on them. I’m sure they are afraid themselves.”
I looked at her dark eyes and saw the hurt there. Of course, I realized she must be thinking of Billy.
“She’s right,” said Mrs. Hatchell. She leaned forward and her eyes became intense. “There aren’t too many of us left. We may have to make compromises.”
I got a weird feeling from her, but then, who didn’t after talking to Mrs. H. for a long while? After her husband had vanished there had been plenty of cruel jokes to go around. If anything, she had become more intense since then. Sometimes she even talked about her husband as if he were still around.
“The Reverend said the same thing, more or less. He said that they are lost and they might possibly be brought back to us. He still prays and hopes for them.”
Mrs. Hatchell nodded and retreated back into her chair. “He’s right, in his own rationalized way. I have essentially the same thoughts. This town is almost dead.”
I thought of Elkinsville then, out there at the bottom of the lake. Would Redmoor someday soon be as dead as that watery ghost town?
I left Mrs. H. and took Monika with me. It was late, we were both yawning, but somehow as soon as we were out in the corridor alone some eletricity started up and we talked closely.
“She’s a wise woman,” said Monika. “But maybe not as wise as she thinks.”
I pushed out my lower lip and nodded, appreciating her logic. “Let’s go outside and eat a donut.” I said, showing her a white powdered donut I’d snagged from a tray. She smiled up at me and we went outside.
The air was cold and fresh and there was a light wind going. It felt good after the stuffy interior of the medical center. I gave her the first bite of the donut. She took a nibble at first, then smiled and took a good-sized bite. I wondered if she had ever had a powdered donut in her life before. I took a bite myself. The donut was stale, but the powdered sugar tasted good. It caked up in my mouth in a familiar sensation that made me smile.
I pointed to the stars and she nodded and we talked. I named a few constellations and she joined in. Some of her names sounded strange, but I agreed with whatever she wanted to call them.
The stars were bigger and brighter overhead than I’d ever seen them in Redmoor. They looked like they do when you are up in the mountains camping. There were no streetlights or cars or neon signs or flickering televisions in windows anymore to compete with them. The moon had set by now, and the Milky Way was a glowing river that crossed the sky. Constellations shone in noticeable groupings. I picked out Orion from his belt and the Pleiades cluster straight overhead. I wondered how many people around the world were out looking at them tonight, seeing them as people hadn’t for centuries.
Monika got cold after awhile so we went back inside and found a room to sleep in. There were was only one cot. She looked at it and then at me, alarmed.
“Oh, just a second,” I said.
I went and found a second cot and put it in the room. I pushed it up against the opposite wall. She was shy at first about sleeping in the same room with me. I kind of liked the idea, but decided I wouldn’t care if she left and slept somewhere else. When we turned down the lanterns, I thought of going for a kiss, but could not quite do it.
I fell asleep knowing that if Vance had been in this spot, he would not have chickened.
Twelve
Mrs. Hatchell found us in the early morning. I awakened to find her tapping at my boots. There was a carved frown of disapproval on her face. I glanced at Monika, sleeping in her cot across the room and felt a flush of embarrassment. This was quickly followed by a feeling of irritation. I wondered if she would ever get over treating me like a kid.
“Yeah? What is it?”
She waved me out into the hall. I grunted and rolled gently off the cot and put on my shoes quietly so as to not awaken Monika, who made a murmuring sound but stayed asleep as I left. I stumbled into the hallway. Hatchell looked at me reproachfully over her reading glasses.
“Gannon, I don’t think you should be taking advantage of her.”
“Mrs. H.,” I said, “the world is being eaten nightly by monsters and I think there are more important things to worry about.”
She glanced back into the room, at Monika, still frowning. “Gannon, have you thought about your actions? Can you imagine bringing a new life into the world the way it is right now? It would be a crime.”
I made a sound of exasperation. “Is there something I can help you with, Mrs. Hatchell?”
She kept frowning at me. “The Nelson family came in last night, all except for little Holly Nelson. They’ve asked for volunteers to go back and get her. She’s only eleven.”
“Why did they leave her behind?”
She made a fluttering motion with her hand. “Something chased them out. They lost her out there at night. You know how her
father is in a wheelchair. They are begging for help and most people are just looking ashamed.”
I nodded. There were few of us willing to go out and face the world as it was now. “I’ll do it. Me and Vance.”
She nodded and was about to stalk off when she paused. “One more thing. There’s a storm coming in. A big, strange one by the look of it.”
“Great,” I said.
After she left I gently awakened Monika and we went out to find some breakfast and Vance. The Nelson family found us first and gave us tearful thanks. I nodded and felt uncomfortable. Mrs. Hatchell must have gone and told them immediately. Everyone knew the odds were bad. I hated the idea of coming back and telling the Nelson’s that their daughter was torn to pieces, or worse, that she had turned into a lizard and we had killed her.
I sighed, knowing that I was committed now. Looking outside, the skies did indeed look to be darkening with a storm. The wind was gusting up and plucking the last of the leaves off the trees.
Monika sent me out into the storm with a worried look. A lock of her hair kept slipping down into her face and she kept pushing it back. I liked that. She gave me a thermos of hot coffee she’d gotten somewhere and a brown sack with a tunafish sandwich in it. I hated tunafish, but I smiled anyway.
She gave me a kiss on the cheek that left a wet spot that quickly cooled in the winds to an icy tingle. She only said one thing: “Come back.”
Vance watched all this with interest and was on me before we had gotten across the parking lot.
“Well?” he demanded.
“What?” I said in annoyance.
“Did you?”
“What?”
“You know what, dammit. Did the best man win or not?”
“I think she likes me, if that’s what you mean,” I said vaguely. On some level I was enjoying his discomfiture as much as he was enjoying mine.
“Come on, Come on,” he complained. “Did you get down to business with her or not? That cot was pretty dammed cozy.”
