by Kyla Stone
Bear gave a plaintive whine, his huge head stuck out one window, his fluffy tail banging the glass of the opposite window. He was tired of being cooped up. He wanted to play. Mostly, he wanted hugs and kisses from adoring little people.
“Sorry, buddy. I’m really sorry, but we can’t stop.”
It hurt her heart. Everything in her wanted to help. She had the sinking sensation that everyone would need help soon, and there would be no one to give it.
The task was too overwhelming, too enormous.
What would these highways look like a week from now? A month? She thrust the what-ifs out of her mind and focused on the here and now.
The end of the journey was within sight. She just had to make it there.
34
SHILOH EASTON
DAY FIVE
After dark, Shiloh took highway 58 out of Munising and drove the four miles northeast to Sand Point Beach.
She parked the ATV next to a gray hatchback. She recognized several vehicles that belonged to Munising High School students.
Shiloh wore Cody’s black hoodie beneath her jacket. It was still cold at night. Since the beach was tucked behind Grand Island, it was sheltered from the worst of the wind.
There were lovely views of the bay, Grand Island, and the old wood East Channel Lighthouse. She wasn’t here for the views.
A massive bonfire had been constructed on the beach. Camping chairs and blankets were strewn across the sand. Dozens of teenagers ringed the fire, their faces highlighted in flickering lights from the fire and the aurora ribboning the night sky above their heads.
Tense voices drifted across the beach. Someone had brought a battery-operated radio and set it on a piece of driftwood. A BTS song played at full volume, but no one was listening.
Girls whispered to each other, their expressions tense and upset. The guys huddled in groups or threw stones into the lake. Couples sat in camping chairs, holding hands and staring at the sky.
For once, no one had their phones out. Probably because their batteries were all drained.
She’d heard rumors of the bonfires at school on Monday, before she’d lost time, before she’d awakened to a nightmare.
Some of the seniors had planned a party every night to celebrate the Northern Lights. With school canceled for the week and the internet fried, there was little else to do.
Shiloh approached a couple of girls and asked them about Cody, and then Ruby. She showed them the flyer. They brushed her off. She was just a kid. No one wanted to pay attention. No one cared.
She moved among the crowd, searching for someone who could help her. She heard snippets of conversations: complaints about the lack of social media, dead batteries, missed TV shows.
Most of them were talking about the power outages. How long it would last, how the supply chain would be affected, what it might mean for graduation, for college and jobs, the future. Several people looked like they’d been crying.
Across the bonfire, a Hispanic girl with long curly hair sat on the sand, her head bent as she strummed a guitar. Shiloh recognized her. Gabriella Velazquez was a junior at the high school. She was one of Cody’s customers. And she was friends with Ruby.
Shiloh strode across the expanse of beach, circling the bonfire. The heat licked her cheeks. A drunk guy danced around the bonfire, arms held high, beer sloshing from his red SOLO cup.
He almost spilled his beer on her. “Hey, sorry!” he called after her, his words slurred.
Shiloh barely noticed. She halted in front of Gabriella. “You know Cody.”
Gabriella stopped strumming and squinted up at her. “Do I know you?”
“You know my brother. Cody Easton.”
“I don’t know him.”
Shiloh bit back a sharp retort. “He’s missing.”
She made a face. “Okay.”
“I’m trying to find him.”
The girl bent her head again, her hair a curtain across her face. “Well, I can’t help you.”
Shiloh considered stabbing her but resisted. You got more flies with honey than vinegar, or something like that. “You get your pills from him.”
Gabriella’s head snapped up. Her eyes narrowed. “What do you want?”
Shiloh stuck her hand into the front pocket of the hoodie. Her fingers closed around the baggie of pills. She didn’t like that Cody had been dealing, but if it would help her get what she wanted, she’d do anything. “I have some. I’ll give them to you if you can help me.”
Gabriella’s eyes gleamed, her pupils large in the reddish glow radiating from the sky. “I don’t know anything about your brother, I swear. I’m sorry he’s missing. I heard about what happened to your grandfather. I’m sorry about that.”
“Yeah, well. Sorry doesn’t fix anything.”
She blinked. “I guess not.”
Shiloh sucked in a breath. “What about Ruby? You know her.”
“Yeah, sure. We’re friends.”
“She’s missing, too.”
“Listen, she’ll come back in a few days with some wild story to tell about a new boyfriend or some cool thing she did. Her mom’s freaked, but Ruby can take care of herself. She’s not missing. This is what she does.”
Shiloh pulled out the baggie and dangled it in front of her. “Tell me everything you know anyway. Anything weird. Anything out of the ordinary.”
Gabriella didn’t take her eyes off the pills. “She did say one thing. About this truck she kept seeing over and over. On her street and outside the café where she works and stuff. Ruby’s dramatic, though. She’s always trying to make things more important than they are.”
“What did the truck look like?”
“Dark blue. I think she said it was the janitor’s truck. Of the school. It freaked her out.”
“He was following her?”
“I dunno, I don’t remember. He’s weird, though. He’s been there like forever, and barely talks, but like, looks funny, right? You get it.” She shrugged. “I don’t think it’s anything. The only reason Ruby hasn’t called is because the phones are dead. I don’t know why you’re trying to find her.”
“That’s my business.”
Gabriella held out her hand. “You gonna give me those or not? I could really use them. This whole solar flare situation has been really stressful for me. I can’t stop crying. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
She tossed the baggie into her outstretched hand. “It’s the end of the world.”
Shiloh left Gabriella gaping after her and spun, headed back across the beach toward the parking lot.
35
SHILOH EASTON
DAY FIVE
The lock click, click, clicked, the sound loud in the silence. Crickets churred in the night. The aurora danced bright enough in the sky that she didn’t even need a flashlight.
Shiloh wrinkled her nose, her lower lip protruding as she concentrated on picking the lock of the trailer’s back door. The front door had a new fancy lock, but the side door that entered through the laundry room was basic, a simple pin tumbler lock.
Ripe for the picking. She smiled grimly at the joke. Cody would have appreciated it. Cody would appreciate it—when she found him.
Carefully, she picked back and forth, moving the pins up and down inside the lock until she sensed the gap between the key pin and the driver pin lining up with the shear.
The door unlocked.
The information that Gabriella had given her seemed flimsy, insubstantial. But she had nothing else to go on. No clues, no evidence, nothing.
It didn’t seem promising, but this was the only lead that she had.
Calvin Fitch lived at the end of a dead-end dirt road. Rusty cars cluttered the narrow street. Glass glinted along the shoulder of the road in the grass. Broken beer bottles tossed into the ditch.
Most of the houses were in disrepair, sagging singlewides set on concrete blocks. Shin-high weeds clutched at the faded siding. A propane tank was hooked to the side of the trail
er. No vehicles were parked in the grass driveway.
Two lawn chairs sat on a flat patch of dirt beside a creek that ran through the back of several properties. Black flies and mosquitos swarmed above the black water.
Fifty yards to her right, a second battered trailer sat on blocks under a great weeping willow. A rusted beater truck was parked at the front door. There was no driveway, only wilted, weedy grass.
She glanced behind her. The curtains twitched. She waited, frozen, until they fell back into place and went still.
Once inside, she closed the door behind her and stood for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. The air smelled musty. The trash can in the kitchen was empty but for a couple of Stover’s frozen dinners. The dishes were done and dried on the counter.
Shiloh searched the trailer, ducking beneath windows and using a small penlight, the beam pointed down to avoid detection. She’d parked the four-wheeler at the top of the street, off the road behind a cluster of cottonwoods. You could never be too careful.
Cautiously but quickly, she moved, her heart thumping against her ribs, her breath caught in her throat, her senses on alert for the rumble of a car engine or sweep of headlights.
She flipped couch cushions and checked beneath furniture, careful to put everything back as she’d found it, no embroidered pillow out of place.
In the first bedroom, she found a box of condoms in the bedside drawer, unopened, Sports Illustrated and Car and Driver on the nightstand. A striped bedspread, the bed made. She upended the mattress, discovered nothing but dust bunnies.
On the nightstand stood a framed photo of a years-younger Calvin Fitch, arm in arm with a man who looked familiar. They were squinting against the sun, surrounded by old-growth trees, a derelict cabin behind them—weeds, rotting wood, a rusty birdbath encrusted with vines off to the righthand side.
She’d seen that face before, but she couldn’t place it. It was benign, forgettable. A boring adult in a sea of adults. Balding hair, bland chubby cheeks, weak chin.
Making a mental note of the man’s face, she returned to the search. On her hands and knees, she checked beneath the bed: a shoebox of old photos, plastic storage bins, a cardboard box labeled ‘cat toys.’
Her frustration grew. She rifled through drawers and closets and even unscrewed the grates from the vents. So far, the man was impossibly dull. And normal.
She rummaged through coat pockets—Chapstick, a few quarters, lint, and a receipt for a boat rental from the marina. She switched on the laptop sitting on the desk. Nothing happened. It was dead.
She checked the drawers, the filing cabinet, a side table against the wall with framed posters of various football players hung above it. Bills. Boring stuff. A bookcase with boring books on birding. Birds of Michigan, a Field Guide and Wild about Michigan Birds.
Chagrined, she slumped in the black pleather office chair. The wheels squeaked beneath
her weight. Hot defeated tears stung her eyes. She’d checked everywhere. Nothing suspicious or out of the ordinary.
Another dead end. It felt like running full tilt into a wall. She had no other leads, no strings to pull, no resources.
Tilting her head back, she closed her eyes. The fake leather stuck to the backs of her bare thighs. She needed to leave. It was past time to go, and yet, she couldn’t quite give up. There had to be something.
The doublewide was so quiet. No ticking clock. No refrigerator hum. No rumble of a generator or the pings from various electronics. Absolute silence but for her own breathing, the sound of her pulse in her ears.
Shiloh stood. The chair pushed back, wheels squeaking in protest. She shoved it back into place, slightly angled away from the desk as she’d found it.
Leaving the second bedroom slash office, she padded down the carpeted hallway into the kitchen. Scanned it again. Cupboards, sink, countertops, fridge and stove and trash can.
No food and water bowl in the kitchen.
She sniffed the air. A bit musty, stale, slight hint of bleach.
No kitty litter smell.
Swiftly, she jogged back through the living room down the narrow hallway to the bedroom. Kneeling, she bent until her cheek pressed against the vinyl floor as she swept the penlight beneath the ruffled duster.
The penlight highlighted the plastic bins labeled summer and winter clothing. The Christmas box. The box labeled ‘cat toys.’
Maybe his cat had died. It was possible. The box forgotten beneath the bed.
Shiloh flattened herself onto her stomach and reached for the box. It wasn’t dusty. No moth balls or dust bunnies, no grit on her fingertips. The floor beneath the bed, too, had been swept clean. As if it were accessed frequently.
Pulling it out, she sat up, legs crossed, and set it in her lap. An oversized shoebox. No lock. No secret code or key required. It was nothing.
Still, her hands trembled as she set down the penlight, The aurora pulsed red through the curtains. Shiloh removed the lid.
Polaroids. That’s the first thing that registered. Hundreds of photos filled the box. The second thing that registered in her brain—the photos were of girls. Most of the older than her, but still teenagers. The poses. All that skin.
Her heart went cold inside her chest. Her hands turned clammy. An ill feeling expanded within her belly. She nearly vomited.
Everything in her wanted to hurl the photos away. To scour the sight from her brain, to burn her fingertips where they’d touched the pictures. Instead, she forced herself to riffle through them, gently, carefully, touching only the edges.
There were no pictures of Cody. No boys at all. It didn’t make her feel better.
Gingerly, she picked up a Polaroid from the stack. A pretty girl with black hair and no smile. The girls in the photos were strangers. Somewhere, someone knew them, loved them. They had mothers and fathers. Sisters and brothers who missed them.
Nausea churned in her stomach. Disgust roiled through her. She felt violated. And enraged.
This man was sick. The worst kind of windigo. He should be locked up or shot.
Shiloh voted for shot. She’d volunteer her crossbow.
And yet, at some deeply selfish gut level, she was disappointed. She’d come for Cody. What did this monster have to do with Cody’s disappearance? What if it was nothing at all?
She had thought that Ruby’s disappearance must be connected. Two kids from the same town—gone. It had to be more than a coincidence. But maybe it was. She was grasping at straws and she knew it.
A distant sound registered deep in her consciousness. She blinked, startled. The rumble of a truck sounded somewhere outside.
Her heart leapt into her throat. It might not be him. It could be a neighbor. Nothing to worry about, no reason to panic—
The rumble grew louder.
The truck was on this road.
Frantic, she placed the lid back in place, slid the box back beneath the bed. Was it exactly where she’d found it? To the inch, to the exact degree? Would he know? Would he sense her presence, her touch? With shaking fingers, she smoothed the ruffled duster.
Springing to her feet, she shoved the Polaroid she held into her pocket, seized the penlight, and switched it off. The guest bedroom was located at the rear of the doublewide. The aurora outside was bright, distracting. No reason he would’ve seen it.
She sprinted for the doorway, reached the hallway, and slid into the kitchen as the twin beams of headlights washed across the living room. Shadows wavered across the walls.
Would he glimpse a shadow among shadows? Wouldn’t he be night-blinded by his own headlights? He hadn’t seen her. She’d get away by the skin of her teeth.
Half crouching, she lunged across the expanse of the kitchen floor and reached the laundry room, slipped inside, nearly tripped over the broom leaning against the wall.
And then she glanced down. Shoes in a neat row in front of the washing machine—a pair of tennis shoes, a pair of khaki-colored sandals, and a pair of work boots. Bl
ack. With white stitching up the sides. Red laces.
A cold darkness enveloped Shiloh, like she’d somehow fallen backward into her own shadow. She knew those boots. Remembered the salvage yard, a crowbar dripping blood.
No time to consider what it meant. Time to go. To get out.
She fumbled for the door handle. Her hands clumsy as two blocks of wood. The knob turned. She wrenched it open.
Her pulse thudded so loud she couldn’t hear a thing. He could be right behind her, reaching out to seize her braid and yank her back into Hades itself.
Shiloh ran. Her feet pounded, arms pumping, breath ragged, torn from her throat. She sprinted across patchy grass, trampled through a garden at the rear of the yard, terrified.
She sprinted through several backyards. Brambles caught at her legs. Thorns scratched her skin. The glow of the aurora tinged the forest red. She could see. And someone could see her, if they were looking.
Twigs slapped her face. A tree root tripped her. She flung out her hands, caught herself on the trunk of an oak tree. Then she ran again, gasping, lungs on fire.
At the end of the road, the Honda FourTrax waited behind the cottonwoods. Relief flooded her veins. Her legs turned to water. She yanked the key fob from her front pocket and straddled the four-wheeler, then jabbed the key at the ignition.
She missed. Her hands shook so badly she tried twice before the key finally went in.
Behind her, an engine roared. Not her own. Down the street. The truck. A menacing growl like a living creature. A predator on the hunt.
She cursed under her breath. Panic threatened to strangle her. But she turned the key and the engine roared to life. She switched the gear control into drive while releasing the brake, both hands gripping the handlebars, and accelerated like a bat out of hell.
36
SHILOH EASTON
