by Kit Alloway
Whim’s phone rang. “It’s your dad,” he said, and answered it. “Hello?… Got it. I’ll tell Josh and Will.” He hung up. “Household meeting in the dining room in five minutes.”
“Good,” Josh said. “That’s good.”
Ten minutes later, the entire household had assembled in the dining room, the only room really big enough to hold them. Mirren, Katia, and Fel and Collena were there, too, and they’d dragged chairs in from the kitchen to cluster around the enormous harvest table. Josh wished she’d had time to go get Feodor—not because she considered him family, but because she wanted his input.
“Let’s get started,” Whim’s mother, Saidy, said. “The junta is asking all fit dream walkers to form teams and go out and fight nightmares. Obviously, Winsor needs to stay here.”
Winsor, Josh realized, wasn’t with them. Had she not even been invited?
Doesn’t she have a right to know what’s going on? Josh thought. She isn’t made of paper.
“As much as I’d like to help, I just had a baby,” Kerstel said. “I probably need to stay here.”
“That’s good,” Saidy said. “You can take care of Winsor and Keri.”
“I want Grandpa Ben here, too,” Deloise said. “He shouldn’t be alone.”
“Fine,” Saidy said. “Haley, I assume you’re staying, too. Josh—”
“Wait,” Haley said, and then had to say it again, louder, before Saidy noticed he was speaking. “Wait. Why should I stay here?”
Saidy looked at him, momentarily speechless. “Didn’t you have a catatonic panic attack yesterday?”
Haley shrank back, and Josh said, “It wasn’t a panic attack, it was a psychic … episode, or attack, or something.” Just the memory of the aftermath was making Josh anxious. “I went through it, too.”
Every adult in the room was staring at Josh, and that’s when she remembered that Kerstel was the only one who really understood Haley’s abilities. Mirren’s aunt, in particular, looked like she’d just walked in on a board meeting attended by chimps in business suits. Whim put a hand over his eyes.
“I mean,” Josh stuttered, “Haley’s a good dream walker.”
Haley gave her a tiny, private smile across the table, one that was laughing at her just a little bit, and Josh smiled back. She was mostly relieved at seeing him conscious again, but she wasn’t lying when she backed him up. Having seen him in Feodor’s dimension and his courage when he remained in Death, she fully trusted his ability to handle an emergency.
“Yes, well,” Saidy said, seeming irritated by the interruption. “Haley’s eighteen, I guess he can make his own decisions. We should pack up today and set out by tomorrow. We’ll need, what, three vehicles?”
“Wait a sec,” Josh said. She knew she was interrupting—again—but she had to speak up. “You want the rest of us to form a single team? Doesn’t it make more sense for us to split into multiple groups?”
“I don’t want you girls going off by yourselves,” her father told her.
“I agree,” Alex added.
“Dad, that’s crazy,” Whim said. “Nobody walks nightmares in groups of twenty. And Josh can lead her own team.”
Josh suddenly really liked having Whim as her soldier.
“I don’t know,” Lauren said, and Kerstel put a hand on his shoulder.
“Lauren, she’s probably the finest dream walker on the planet. She’s better qualified to do this than any of us. I know you want to keep her close, but she doesn’t need us hovering over her shoulder.”
Lauren frowned, but Josh decided to jump in anyway.
“And I want Haley, Del, Will, and Whim on my team,” she said.
“I’m going with you,” Mirren said.
Half the adults in the room broke into protests, and Josh held up a hand.
“Kerstel just made my point,” she said. “I’ve done more dream walking than most of you put together. And the people I’ve done it with and trained with are my friends. I know what to expect from them, and I know what they are and aren’t capable of. We can function together as a team.”
“Mirren isn’t going anywhere,” Collena said. “Absolutely not. And Katia has never even been in the Dream.”
Nobody mentioned taking Katia, Josh thought, at the same moment Katia said, “I want to go.”
“Out of the question,” Collena said, and for once, Josh agreed with her.
Releasing an angry breath, Mirren said to her aunt and uncle, “I trained with Josh, which makes me better prepared to help than either of you.”
“Mirren—” Collena began.
“You haven’t set foot in the Dream since we went into hiding twenty years ago. I passed a dream-walking trial less than four months ago.”
“You don’t have any right to risk yourself,” Collena shot back. “You have a responsibility to stay alive.”
“I have a responsibility to do what the dream walkers need me to do, and right now that’s helping prevent nightmares from overrunning the earth.”
While Josh appreciated Mirren’s faith in her training, she was actually a little reluctant to take Mirren with her. Her training had been brief, and she’d nearly drowned during her dream-walking trial. Besides, her intelligence could serve a better purpose. “Actually, I could use you for something else. If you take over building and distributing the VHAGs, that leaves me free to deal with Veil tears.”
“You’ve decided to distribute them?” Mirren asked.
“I don’t see what choice we have now.”
Mirren considered, then nodded. “I agree.”
As always, Josh could trust her to be sensible.
To Mirren’s aunt and uncle, Josh said, “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but if you haven’t been in the Dream in twenty years, today isn’t the day to go back in. If you two and Katia help Mirren and Feodor, that will get a lot of VHAGs out there a lot faster.”
“How many people do you need working on the VHAGs?” Lauren asked.
Josh thought. “Somebody needs to go fight nightmares on the streets. But that’s only triage. I don’t know how we can stop this cascade effect except by giving out as many VHAGs as possible, so anyone who isn’t current on their dream-walking training should be working on the VHAGs.”
“We’ll never get them all back,” Mirren warned.
“No,” Josh agreed. “We won’t. But I’m afraid we may already have passed the point where mere dream walking can stabilize the Veil.”
“What are you saying?” Collena asked.
“I’m saying we might not come back from this.”
The room fell silent.
“Well,” Alex said. “VHAGs it is.”
“You still need an adult to supervise your team,” Saidy told Josh.
“An adult will slow us down,” said Josh, who was getting sick of this argument. “We know what we’re doing.”
“You’re children,” Saidy said.
“Josh is right,” Deloise cut in, much to everyone’s surprise. “Saidy, I don’t think I’ve ever dream walked with you. I have no idea what kind of leader you are, and if you tell me to do something I don’t understand, I’m going to second-guess you. I won’t second-guess Josh.”
“That’s not the point,” Lauren said.
“It is the point,” Will said. “Us kids have followed her through enough hell to know that what she says goes. But the rest of you aren’t going to want to take orders from her.”
The adults exchanged unsettled glances across the table, and Josh couldn’t help smiling at Will, despite the seriousness of the occasion. Beneath the table, he put his hand on her knee and left it there.
Before anyone else could continue the argument, Josh added, “I think Alex should lead the other team.”
“Alex!” Saidy cried, outraged. She and Alex had a fairly unhappy marriage, and part of that unhappiness was due to Saidy’s belief that Alex was a hapless idiot.
“Alex dream walks more hours than any other adult here. Look at the schedu
le. He pulls four six-hour shifts a week, every week, most of them during peak nightmare hours. The only other adult who comes close to that is Kerstel, and she can’t go.”
“I’m a paramedic,” Saidy began, and Josh interrupted her.
“Which means you need to hang back in case of injuries and treat as many field cases as possible. Dad, I don’t think you’ve walked a single nightmare since Kerstel got pregnant. Alex is the logical choice.”
“I want to go with him,” Collena said.
Mirren cast her eyes at the ceiling.
The adults argued for another fifteen minutes, but Whim, who usually dream walked with Alex, stood up for his father, and eventually, Alex stood up for himself—quite literally. He rose from his chair, and said, “I want to lead the team. Thank you for the nomination, Josh. Saidy, if you don’t feel like you can follow me, I’m sure a hospital could use your help.”
Reluctantly, Saidy agreed, and the meeting broke up. Josh went up to her father afterward and hugged him.
“Thank you for trusting me,” she said.
He held her by the shoulders. “You have three of my four children on your team. Don’t come back with any less.”
“I promise,” Josh said. It didn’t matter that it was a promise she couldn’t make; he needed to hear the words.
Lauren nodded, but as he started to get out of his chair, he said, “What’s that on your neck?”
Josh automatically clapped a hand over the hickey, which hurt. A few feet away, Will turned a dark shade of red.
“Training accident?” Josh suggested, which sounded ridiculous even to her.
Lauren rolled his eyes, but he smiled for the first time all day. “You two be careful,” he told Josh and Will.
She didn’t think he was only talking about fighting nightmares.
Thirty−one
Josh’s team set out in Kerstel’s van that afternoon. It would have been a fun road trip if they hadn’t all been so afraid of getting killed.
Except Haley, Will reflected, who seems to have lost all fear of Death.
I should find that reassuring, but I’m too scared.
The drive to the nearest tear took less than two hours. The tear looked huge to Will—at least thirty feet across—but Josh reminded them that the size wouldn’t matter once she had the VHAG going and was inside the Dream.
“Remember,” she said. “This is what we trained for. You aren’t going to see anything here that we haven’t seen a hundred times in the Dream. It just seems strange because it’s in the middle of a town.”
“Um, Josh,” Whim said, and pointed out the window.
In the center of the little town of Shepherd’s Creek, a sixty-foot-high metal tripod was walking down the street.
“All right,” Josh admitted. “Maybe you haven’t seen that before. But we can do this. Go team!”
They tumbled out of the van and ran toward the tear. The tripod was moving away from them, which was lucky, but as they got closer, several dozen screaming pilgrims came running out of the Dream.
Josh pulled back, and they waited for the pilgrims to pass.
Nothing we haven’t trained for, Will told himself. He wished he weren’t wearing a gas mask; it limited his peripheral vision.
At Josh’s signal, they ran forward. The tear was located on the next block, but to get to it, they had to run through a square that contained a large, rectangular fountain. Several people had been pulled underwater by pale purple octopus tentacles and were actively drowning.
“Haley, Whim, the fountain!”
Haley and Whim broke off while Will and Deloise kept running. Josh didn’t hesitate before leaping through the Veil hanging in midair, but Will and Deloise glanced at each other before following. Will was carrying an ax, but he felt practically naked as the Veil dust soaked right through his clothing.
On the other side of the Veil was a grassy knoll that boasted a large tree, and hanging from one particularly sturdy branch were three witches. Their faces were bloated and blackened, but they weren’t dead.
They were undead.
Josh sat down on the ground and turned on her VHAG. Will and Deloise were there for one reason—to protect Josh’s body while her soul wasn’t inside it. They even had a makeshift sling they could use to carry her—it?—around.
Will and Deloise stood facing opposite directions, Josh on the ground between them, and waited.
“Is this it?” Will asked, watching the angry witches trying to wriggle free of their nooses.
“Yeah, this is a lot easier than I was expecting,” Deloise said, and her sentence was punctuated by the tear in the Veil blinking out of existence.
A second later, Josh was back on her feet. She threw an archway open and ran through it.
Will and Deloise shrugged at each other and followed her back into the World. They burst out into the square, where Whim and Haley had managed to drag the octopus—and its victims—out of the fountain and onto the pavement. Unfortunately, they had also been ensnared by tentacles and were thrashing around on the ground trying to get free.
“Del, get its head!” Josh said. “Will, chop the arms!”
Will ran to the tentacle wrapped around Haley and hacked it off. Haley, who had a machete in his hand, crawled to the nearest civilian and sawed at the tentacle holding her. Josh freed another townsperson, who had gone limp, and pulled off her gas mask to give him mouth-to-mouth.
By the time Deloise had reached the octopus’s head and crushed its brains with her hammer, the man had vomited a half gallon of water and was sitting up against a storefront.
“I can’t believe that worked,” Josh told Will, putting her mask back on. “That almost never works. Back to the van, guys!”
“Wait,” Whim said, “should we take down the tripod?”
“With what? It’ll run out of Veil dust and vanish in a few hours. We need to focus on closing more tears.”
They headed for the van. As they ran back through town, Will saw a woman attempting to fight off a ninja, but each time she tried to punch him, her arm slowed in midair, as if inexplicably losing strength. Will made a quick detour to hit the ninja twice in the face and break his knee with a swift kick.
“Oh, thank you,” the woman said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me!”
“Don’t give up,” Will told her, and started running again.
He was the last to jump into the van. Deloise distributed bottles of water and they all drank in silence for a moment. Then Josh said, “Where to next, Whim?”
“North,” Whim said, checking DWTV’s map on his phone. “The next tear is north.”
* * *
They fell into a rhythm: consult the map, drive to the tear, close the tear, repeat. They slept on the road, often no longer than half an hour at a time, and slowly their initial enthusiasm and sense of purpose began to fade.
Because more tears just kept opening.
Every time Whim pulled up the map, new tears were marked upon it with red Xs. They began to remind Will of old cartoons where dead characters’ eyes were Xed out, and in his mind, he gave up on the towns they represented. Their route began crossing back on itself as new tears opened in towns they’d passed through safely before, or worse—in towns they had already been to. No matter how many tears they closed, they couldn’t seem to get more than a hundred miles from Tanith.
Will was the first one to get hurt. He got hit in the face—not even by a nightmare, but by a terrified man who saw his gas mask and panicked—and fell backward onto broken glass. The same hand he’d cut with a mirror months before took the brunt of the fall, and he spent the next drive picking shards of glass out of his flesh.
Then Deloise slipped in oil and twisted her knee. She iced it in between towns. Whim ran into a low-hanging sign while chasing an elf and busted his nose. A foo dog bit Haley’s arm.
The longer they went on, the more they wore down, and the worse the injuries became. Josh fell off some scaffolding and probably cracked a rib;
they weren’t certain because she wouldn’t go to a hospital, all of which were overrun anyway. Will narrowly avoided being stabbed, but he got cut badly enough that Deloise had to put nineteen stitches in his side while he bit down on Whim’s belt. At the next town, a golf cart doing twenty miles an hour winged Haley.
They were all exhausted, weak, and cranky. But the breaking point came when Deloise’s gas mask failed and she breathed in a lungful of Veil dust. Josh and Whim had to drag her, screaming, back to the van.
“We can still seal the tear,” Josh said. “Will, you stay with Del.”
Will, who was pretty sure he’d torn his stitches, bent over next to the van and pulled his mask off. Sweat dripped off the tip of his nose.
“No, no, no,” Whim said. “You want just the three of us to go back there? Did you see the size of those lizards?”
“All right, we’ll take Will too. Del will be fine alone for a few minutes.”
“What?!” Whim shouted at Josh. “She’s hallucinating out of her freaking mind!”
Deloise was inside the van, screaming about hotel soap—or soup? Will couldn’t tell.
“Then I’ll go by myself,” Josh said.
Will looked up at her, at the hand she was holding against her cracked rib, at her bloodshot eyes, at the desperation that had brought her close to tears.
“Josh,” he said. “No. We have to rest. Let’s find a hotel, get some sleep, eat real food, and then see where we are.”
Josh started to argue with him, but suddenly Haley leaned over and spit a bloody tooth onto the asphalt.
Will saw something go out of Josh then. She cast one last glance at the open tear and the lizards streaming out of it, and said, “All right.”
They found a hotel, showered, bandaged their fresh wounds and rebandaged their old ones, and then fell asleep. Even Deloise’s hallucinations couldn’t keep her awake.
Will woke up in the middle of the night. Josh was sitting at the foot of the bed, legs pulled up against her chest, chin resting on her knees. A twenty-four-hour news station was playing on the television, showing one scene after another of Veil tears—seventy, ninety, some more than a hundred feet long.
“Estimates are that more than fifty of these major phenomena have now appeared, with thousands of smaller ones opening up all around the globe,” a reporter said.
