After a moment’s recovery, the wedge-head surged forward again.
Uh-oh.... Carpenter pointed the gun at it and fired. He caught it square in the middle of one of the wedges and it burst like a balloon, spraying rubbery chunks of flesh and some dark jelly in a sunburst that glowed blue for a second, then pulsed out.
For a moment, all was quiet. The things in the tunnel paused, seeming to consider this unexpected wrench in the works from an interloper of the worst kind—the kind with weapons. There was a slight rushing of air to the left, then the tunnel exploded with the sound of legs and mouths and long blades of arm. He could see nothing, but he could hear them, Christ Almighty, he could hear them coming fast.
Lighter in one hand and gun in the other, Carpenter spit out the cigar and ran. He ran toward Thrall, toward the wedge-headed guardians of the gate. He ran toward that little patch of lighter night that signified the far pavement of Main Street’s beginnings. He felt something cold and terribly smooth brush his shoulder, but he didn’t so much as glance in that direction. He simply weaved in the darkness, dodging amorphous shapes. He couldn’t see a damned thing but he could feel. His body just knew somehow, like it always knew.
He heard the whistling this time of blades very close to his ear, and he ducked. If he was going to make it out to the other side, he would have to go guerilla all the way.
Something connected with his shin beneath his right knee and he spilled forward just as an arm blade sliced out in the dark. There was a high-pitched scream, and something fell with a thud to the ground by his head. He turned and saw the outline of chattering pie-wedge mouths still going—soundless, but still going. Simultaneously, he felt the pain in his leg—not the throbbing he was used to, but a sharp pain, as if he’d fallen on razor blades. Around the pain the shred of his pants felt wet. He didn’t wait around to check on it, nor to watch the slowing of the wedge mouths as they died, but he made a vague connection that the death of the thing above him had prevented it from doing damage to more than just his shin.
Carpenter rolled to the left and tried to get up, stumbled even as he crawled forward, then tried again. This time his feet connected with the ground and he shot up and away. Behind him, he heard a blade arc down and connect with the ground.
A wedge appeared suddenly in front of him and he skidded, aimed his gun, and blew the wedge out of his way.
The patch of pavement was growing now. He could see it. He could feel a cooler breeze stirring ahead of him, licking tentatively into the density of the tunnel. His knees and now his shin devoured his muscles in fiery pain. A dry soreness in his chest rivaled the thudding in his back. Still, he ran like hell. A sound like Ginsu knives sliced and diced its way ever closer; the things behind him were pressing ahead, too.
Two more wedge-heads dropped in front of him. He caught one on a lucky shot and the wedges burst apart in the middle and chattered all the way down into the shades of the floor. The other creature flinched back into the dark. Something like a vine smacked at his arm and he tried to wave it away. Razor arcs sank into the muscle of his forearm and nearly yanked him off balance, threatening to hold him where he stood. Carpenter aimed up and fired, yanking his arm away at the same time. The white hot sensation in his arm intensified, then ebbed. The razors fell away as the tentacle in which they were embedded slackened and lost its hold.
Carpenter saw a flicker of blue light to his left, and in it, the glint of a bone blade. He ducked as a diamond-head’s arm cut the darkness between them. Carpenter flicked open the lighter, lit it, and waved it blindly next to him. There was a scream, but little light. The diamond-head sucked in most of the firelight as the flames climbed the robes. Instinct told Carpenter to duck and roll then, and he did, awkwardly and painfully, landing on his arm. The butt of his gun dug into his ribs. He scrambled to his feet, huffing. Blue light flashed and the wedge-head that hung in the space he’d occupied a moment before swung at him and almost connected with his ribcage. Carpenter darted out of the way and shot it. Then he began to run ahead again. Splintering pain in his bones bolted from his knees down both shins now, and his breath grew ragged. But he was almost there. Almost....
One of the diamond-heads screamed behind him and there was a snick of ripping fabric. He stretched the muscles in his legs and pumped his arms, anything to keep him ahead of those things. His body screamed You’re too damn old for this, you fool but he kept running anyway.
The opening of the tunnel was there, suddenly full-sized, and Carpenter threw himself through it. He landed heavily on his hip and on his bad shin, and a zinger shot up his elbow where his funny bone connected with pavement. He didn’t care. That patch of Main Street was sweet, good Earth to him, and the breeze above was Heaven compared to the stifling darkness of the tunnel. He rolled onto his back and looked up, fully prepared to blow away as many of those parasites as he could before they swarmed out of the mouth of Thrall and down on top of him.
There wasn’t anything above him but the leafy edges of tree tops framing a black dome freckled with stars. He sat up.
The faces of the diamond heads glared at him from the edge of the tunnel in almost perfect familial unison. The wedge-heads bobbed from above, their mouths chattering softly. Then, as one mass, they sank back into the tunnel beyond his vision, and moments later, he heard the screaming and the tearing of flesh.
Carpenter pulled out the razor sextant embedded in his shin and rose shakily. He tucked the gun into the band of his pants and slipped the lighter into his shirt pocket, then hobbled away.
***
“So,” Jesse said to Caitlyn once the others had left, “what should we do?”
“C’mon. I’ll show you.” She took his hand and led him back down the hallway and through the other door in the main station room. Steps led down to the jails, and she tugged him toward them. Their footsteps echoed in the stairwell as they made their way down.
The dim lights showed him a large processing area at the bottom of the stairs. It featured an overturned desk whose clutter lay about it in a halo of paper and cardboard in the center of the room. A door on the right wall was dented just enough to make opening it difficult if not damn near impossible. Jesse didn’t think it would budge far enough to even get an idea of what was on the other side. Set into the back and left walls of the room stood dark holding cells, their metal bars caked with a reddish brown paste, except for one cell. That looked like it had been wiped clean by a mother’s touch, maybe, or a child’s play.
“Mommy said this place is safe. We can wait for her here.”
Looking around the room, Jesse felt anything but safe. One of those things he’d seen in the apartment could slice those bars in two easily. But he supposed that living in Thrall, Mia had had to take security where she could get it. Still, if anything came down those stairs....
Caitlyn sat cross-legged on the floor and smiled up at him, motioning for him to sit with her. Jesse dropped his backpack and sat down across from her.
“Got any toys in there?”
Jesse shook his head. “Sorry. Just boring grown-up stuff. I might have a Twinkie or something in here if you’re hungry.”
“That’s okay. I’ll wait for Mommy. Want to play a game?” she asked him.
“Sure. What do you want to play?”
“I Spy.”
“Okay. You go first.”
“Do you know how to play?”
Jesse nodded. “Used to play with my mom when I was little.”
Caitlyn tilted her head thoughtfully. “My other grandma?”
“You got it.” He smiled. “She would have loved you.”
“Did she die from monsters that night with the blood on Main Street, too? Mommy says lots of people died from monsters that night.”
Jesse’s smile faded. Jeez, how much had this little girl been through? Christ. Most kids were afraid of garden variety closet monsters and vague crawlers under the bed—things that mommies and daddies could check for each night and hold absolute powe
r to banish from the bedroom. But Caitlyn had to have been raised her whole life with the understanding that monsters were real and that people died because of them, and that even mommies and daddies couldn’t chase them away. How would he ever be able to make her feel safe? How could she ever believe he could protect her?
Even if he’d been willing to stay, Jesse thought, it wouldn’t have changed what Caitlyn had experienced. He wouldn’t have been able to shelter her from any of it unless he’d gotten the three of them out of there years ago. He had the sudden urge to tell her he was sorry, but he didn’t think he could put it in a way she’d understand.
“No,” he said slowly. “They died before that. Car accident. Did you...know Mommy’s parents? Your grandparents?”
Caitlyn bowed her little head and shrugged. “Grandma used to rock me to sleep when I was a baby. I remember her a little bit, kind of. Grandma and Grandpa died like those other people. The monsters ate them.”
He touched her arm tentatively, softly, afraid of spooking her. “As long as I have any say or control over what happens here, I won’t let anything hurt you or Mommy, okay?”
Caitlyn nodded. “Mommy says that, too.”
“Really?”
“Mommy tells me bedtime stories about you coming home to get us. She says we can’t afford God, cause he’s too esspensive, or angels, so we hafta have faith in you. She says that a lot. Do you think God is really so esspensive, Daddy?”
Jesse was about to answer when he heard a knock on the stairs. His head whipped around in the direction of the stairwell.
Six, seven, ten seconds ticked off and there was no other sound. Jesse and Caitlyn exchanged shrugs.
“Guess it was just—”
A sound like a rusty playground swing in the stairwell cut Jesse off. It made up for what it lacked in depth with an arrhythmic eerie resonance. There was a flash, and the stairway grew dark. The processing area’s already dim lights flickered.
“Stay here.” Jesse rose slowly, drawing the gun out of his backpack. He crept slowly to the bottom of the stairs. Something swayed back and forth in the blackness above—the burnt out bulb, maybe, or....
The something swung to the left, gripped the wall and stopped. The rusty swing sound from the shape on the wall grew in pitch and volume.
“Daddy?” The little voice behind him sounded afraid. “What is it?”
“Not sure. I’m going—”
At the sound of Jesse’s voice, the shape on the wall scrabbled down sideways, then swung onto the steps and continued the rest of the way down the stairs. Jesse backed away and as it came into view, he locked his gun on it.
It looked at first like a soccer ball-sized gas planet, a nebulous round form from which whips of oil-spill colors lashed out. The whips smacked the steps and curled over them, pulling the thing down toward him with remarkable speed.
But as it reached the bottom of the stairs, the nebula in the center solidified and the spikes froze. There was a loud squeal like swing chains strained to their limit and the crystallized thing exploded. A shard of the frozen whip nicked his forearm and brilliant pain flashed across his left side.
The sound of footsteps on the stairs was nearly eclipsed by the burning in his arm. It obliterated thought, and to an extent, even vision. The ground rose up to meet him and he felt its cold hard concrete through his clothes. Tiny explosions of numbness were set off in the minefield from his wrist to his elbow. The breath hitched in his lungs. Sweat under his arms, under his hairline, and across his lip felt cold. He was vaguely aware of someone standing over him, rummaging in a duffel bag that landed with a canvas thump on the floor.
He closed his eyes and slowly the burning numbness went away. The pain came back but with far less strength, and as it ebbed away, he opened his eyes.
“Thank God it just grazed you.”
That voice—he knew that voice. The fog in his head cleared with the last remnants of the pain, and he turned his head up to the source of the voice.
“You okay?” The girl above him asked, her words feathery soft. His vision came back, grew clear, and there she was.
“Mia.” Everything inside his chest contracted, and for a moment, sitting there looking up at her, he couldn’t breathe. He didn’t even think his heart beat. Then, everything let go and he was flooded with memories, thoughts, things he wanted to say.
It was Mia. Hot damn and holy donuts, it was her. She was alive, and she was here, and he’d made it to her. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
Her eyes filled up with tears but she laughed. “Is it really you, Jesse?” She crouched down in front of him. “I can’t believe you’re really here.”
Caitlyn crawled over to him from her place on the floor and put her little arm around his shoulders. “Does it still hurt, Daddy? Mommy says the other monsters wait until the poison goes into you, then come and eat you.”
Jesse shook his head slowly. “Well, not this time, baby. It stings a little, but I’m okay.”
“Yeah, it will sting for a while, but it wears off in an hour or so. Let me cover it, though, because those wounds get infected really easily. The bandage will keep it from reopening.” Mia smiled at him as she wrapped a bandage around his forearm to stop the bleeding, and that was worth all the pain that little exploding bastard had caused. She was beautiful. Thinner, maybe, as if she hadn’t always eaten well in the last few years; the flannel pants hung off her hips and her t-shirt hung loosely off her breasts. But it somehow made her lovelier. It reinforced the image of her as a princess in his mind, delicate and sweet. The luster of her blond hair hadn’t dulled, and as she tilted her head to study him, it swept over one thin shoulder.
But something in the depths of her blue eyes had changed. Those eyes were weatherworn. They had seen things—maybe still did see things—that had destroyed beliefs and tested hopes. They’d learned to see in a darkness he could only begin to imagine.
She taped the bandage by his wrist and his elbow. “There. All better.”
Jesse pulled her gently to him in a hug and held her for a long time.
“I’ve missed you so much, Jesse.”
He hugged her tighter. “I’ve missed you, too.” He felt a tiny wriggling at his hip and moved to include Caitlyn in his embrace. “I...wow. Wow. It’s great to see you, Mia. Really great.”
She pulled a little away from him. “This must be a lot for you to take in, all at once. Us, the town....”
“Yeah, it isn’t exactly the place I left.”
“It’s been so long. We have a lot to catch up on,” Mia said.
“And talk about.”
Mia nodded. “Yes. There will be plenty to talk about in the morning.” She put her arm around Caitlyn. “I’m glad to see you two were getting to know each other.”
“Mommy, I met Daddy’s friends! They were very nice.”
“Oh?” Mia raised an eyebrow at Jesse.
He nodded slowly. “I’ve had some help. Remember Tom?”
“Tom...Wyatt? Oh my God, you’ve seen Tom Wyatt? How is he?”
“Good, good. He’s been great to us. We never would have made it this far without him.”
“We?”
Jesse felt heat rising in his neck and cheeks. “My friend Nadia from Ohio. And we’ve met two other people, Dr. Murdock and James Carpenter.”
“Carpenter, the mailman? I thought he was crazy.”
Jesse grinned. “He is.”
“So, where are your friends now?”
“At the park. We have to meet them at the guards’ station before morning. Carpenter says there’s something there we’ll need to pick up if we want to get out of here.”
Mia tilted her head. “We can’t. Dark is coming on now. I can’t take Caitlyn out into the Raw.”
“Mommy, I’m hungry.”
Mia reached distractedly into the oversized duffle bag at her feet and pulled out a box of Cheerios. Caitlyn took them eagerly and dove in.
“You understand, Jesse, th
at our chances of making it there at night are far lower than if we wait until morning.”
“Mia, the park’s right behind this building.”
“The park is, but the guards’ station is a hike from here.”
“They’ll think we’re dead if we don’t make it there by morning, and they may try to leave without us.”
“Jesse, it isn’t safe at night. Not with a child.”
Jesse leaned against the bars of one of the cells and sighed. “Okay, Mia, but we have to leave before dawn. It’s not too far from here, and if we move quickly, we can make it by first light.”
She touched his face. Her fingers were warm, and the warmth radiated down through his whole body. “Thank you, Jesse. Thank you for coming back.”
THIRTEEN
The light had nearly died out in the sky. The guard tower stood about five hundred feet from them. They could make out the dark silhouette of roof against the dusk as they trudged through Thrall Community Park and Recreational Area. Nadia shined the flashlight ahead for them, but it did little more than show them the occasional overgrowth of weeds, the lone park bench, the broken gravel of what used to be the jogging trail, corralled behind the iron gates.
Of all the places in Thrall that Nadia had been, she liked the park the least. Out there in the open grass, she felt like she was floating in a shoreless ocean, just waiting for something far bigger to wash over her and drown her. Or worse, for something to come up out of the depths and drag her down.
No one spoke. She strained to hear something, anything indicating life, good or bad. But there were no sounds in the park except those of their feet crunching the dying grass or kicking the gravel. There were no autumn crickets or tree frogs. No owls or bats. Nothing alive.
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