by Dean Murray
Hunter’s fingertips brushed her wrist and she jumped. “Oh,” she said, “I just—” She was as awake as he now, her gaze trailing over the dishcloth, stained a rusty red. “How did you get so much of their blood on you?”
He shifted, pressing himself up to lean on an elbow. His eyes were blued steel, lined in coal and cut through with silver. They were like clouds and storms and all the things she’d never understood about poetry and romance novels. He coughed. “I guess you weren’t the only one who got a couple of good blows in.”
Refusing to be distracted by the line of his jaw, she shoved the damp cloth into his hand, stood. “We need to get downstairs.”
His brow drew down, something in his gaze giving her the impression he didn’t quite trust her.
“It’ll be dark soon,” she explained. “They’ll come back. And down there is the only place it’s safe.” No place was truly safe, not anymore. But she didn’t need to tell him that. “Clean yourself up. I’ll go grab some clothes.”
He nodded, taking a moment to glance around. The kitchen was a mess. After the first night, she’d not even bothered cleaning from the storm. They’d only worried about sealing up holes. About barricades. She bit down the urge to tell Hunter there weren’t normally leaves and trash strewn across the floor, let alone half their belongings.
With a muttered curse, she realized the bat that normally rested against the door frame was gone, abandoned in her fight with monsters. She glanced back at Hunter—whose gaze was narrowed on her—then the lowering sun through the kitchen shutters, and decided to make a run for it without a weapon in hand.
She took the stairs two at a time, sidestepping the missing plank that had not been missing two weeks ago, and held her breath as she swung the corner into the chaos of her brother’s room. Hunter appeared larger than Riley both in height and the width of his shoulders, but her brother had taken to wearing whatever vintage shirts they’d been able to find at the secondhand shop. The money she earned only went so far, and Riley had never complained.
She grabbed two of the larger tee-shirts and a gray and red flannel top. If they were a bit snug, Hunter would have to make do. She wasn’t about to risk hitting up her father’s room. Not after the ceiling collapse.
“Mackenzie?”
She spun, heart in her throat and ready to swing.
It was Hunter, just standing there, holding a hand to his midsection.
“You said Mackenzie. Mackenzie Scott.”
She stared at him, unable to form a response… until he held up the letter bearing her legal last name.
She glared at him. “Are you going through my mail?” It had been on the floor beside him, along with some other paperwork knocked from the counter in their haste to block the exits.
He tossed the envelope on Riley’s desk, his voice level. “I can think of no reason for you to lie to me.”
She crossed her arms, throwing the tone right back. “For one, you’re a stranger. And two—” Her gaze flicked to his midsection, the way he was holding himself. “How did you even get up here?”
“I can’t stay here,” he said.
He didn’t trust her; it was as plain as that. Why she should care was beyond her, but she couldn’t help but be annoyed. “I just saved your life. What’s your problem?”
“Why were you there? At the threshold?”
“You saw it? You know it was there?”
The boy, this stranger, didn’t answer. He simply watched her.
She let out a puff of air. They were both on edge, but there was no sense in hiding anymore. “Scott is my mother’s maiden name. I started using it a few years after she died.” When he didn’t move, she said, “You can leave if you want, but it’s going to be dark soon and I wouldn’t be running around out in the open when night falls.”
She tried to brush past him, furious for no good reason, but he caught her arm. “The gateway. Why were you there?”
Mackenzie’s eyes met his, frozen in the force of his gaze. She’d been startled, and then angry, but now, up close, she could see the sweat beading his brow, the way his shoulder trembled and curled in toward his side. Her eyes trailed down, tracing the line of his arm.
“Hunter, you’re bleeding.”
She stared at the hand that had been pressed to his side. Red seeped through the material of his shirt. It hadn’t been like that before. Hunter swayed, the fingers on her arm sliding free as he moved back.
Mackenzie grabbed him before he fell into the door frame, slipping under his arm the way she had near the park. There was a rustle of leaves outside, the bite of wind from Riley’s busted window, and she shivered. “Come on,” she said. “We have to get to the basement.”
The trek downstairs was considerably harder than their walk home, not only because the way was more treacherous, but because the adrenaline from facing the monsters was gone. And Hunter was a lot heavier than he looked. She was careful not to bump his side, and when they finally made it through the kitchen hallway and down the narrow basement stairs, she fell with him onto the cot where they sat for a moment, backs against the cement wall and panting for air.
Mackenzie caught her breath, but Hunter wasn’t doing as well. He’d not vomited since taking that homemade concoction more than an hour ago, but his skin was cold and clammy. “What happened, Hunter? What’s wrong with your side?”
“The metal—” He grimaced. “They cut me; I must not have gotten it all out.”
His breathing was labored, and she knew she needed to help him, but the wind had picked up outside, and the whistles and clatters had her all twitchy. “Lie back. Just give me a second and I’ll check it out.” She jumped up, securing the basement door with an old empty freezer and two heavy wood slats. No light came through the door jamb and a chill ran up her arms. Shaking it off, she turned, the dim light of the basement coming from a fortunately timed brownout.
“This probably won’t last long,” she said, gesturing toward the light fixture as she hurried back to the cot to kneel at his side. “We usually don’t get more than a few flickers after nightfall—”
Her words cut off as she raised the hem of his shirt. His stomach muscles contracted at the move, the angry red wound on his side weeping fresh blood through a thick black rot. “Hunter,” she whispered.
He shook his head, staring at the basement ceiling. “It’s the poison. You have to find the metal, get it out.” He handed her a flat piece of metal from his pocket. It might have been a keychain once, or a medallion, but she didn’t look at it long, only stared at the man lying on her family’s basement cot. “One of us has to dig it out.”
She didn’t move, and he reached for the trinket. “No,” she said, fingers wrapping around the cold metal. “I can do it.”
He nodded, wiping the blood clean with the hem of his shirt, and let his head fall back to the mattress. Mackenzie stared at the wound. It had hurt him, she could see that. Not by the way his jaw clenched or the way his muscles quivered, but by the red ring of heat surrounding the cut, the pale sheen that had taken over his skin.
“They stabbed you,” she said, more to herself than anything.
“Threw me onto the metal,” he murmured. “That’s how the poison got inside.”
He wasn’t making sense again, and Mackenzie worried that she’d waited too long. Not leaving him in the street to die was one thing; being trapped in her darkened basement with a body, that was a whole other. She squeezed the narrow end of the medallion between her thumb and forefinger, pressing her other hand to his side. He tensed, muscles tightening into cords.
The wound was only a few inches wide, but appeared to run deep. She held her breath, separating the cut and wincing at the sight of open flesh and actual tissue.
She could only pray she wouldn’t pass out.
Leaning forward, she forced the split further. Hunter hissed. The hand that held the tool was shaking; she didn’t have much time before courage deserted her completely. She shifted in the dim ligh
t, and a new stream of black dripped from the severed meat of his side. “There,” she said, “I see it.” She was moving before she had a chance to appreciate what she was about to do, talking herself through it aloud. “It’s a shard of rusted metal. Probably from that fencing or whatever the busted pipes were I found.” Her mouth twisted as she pressed the blade of the medallion into the gash. “Must have shifted when you moved from the kitchen, opened the wound back up…”
The fragment of iron clinked to the basement floor and her face pulled up in disgust. Her fingers opened reflexively, pulling away from his bloody side. She grabbed a scrap of towel from beside the cot—one of her father’s shop rags—and pressed it to Hunter’s skin.
She was so glad he couldn’t see her expression right then.
His hand came down, covering hers over the makeshift bandage, and she could feel the tremble in his fingers as he fumbled to take over the task. She pulled her own free, groping for some new duty. “Can you… Should I go upstairs and get gauze or bandages? We don’t have any ice, the power…”
“Thank you, Mackenzie,” he said. She knew he’d meant it as a denial, but she started toward the door anyway. “No,” he told her.
Mackenzie turned, concerned by the vehemence in his voice. “Don’t go out there,” he said. “Not alone.”
Chapter Five
Mackenzie had dated her share of boys. It was never anything serious; to protect Riley from social services, she’d always shut things down the moment they’d mentioned meeting her parents or stopping by the house. Still, on occasion, she’d been in close proximity to a guy. And given that she’d spent the last few days hiding in a recess behind the house’s basement heating system—alone—she certainly didn’t mind the company.
What she hadn’t expected was to fall fast asleep on top of a stranger the moment her exhaustion won out. Sure, she’d barely escaped with her life, but nothing quite prepared you for finding out you’d been drooling on a stranger for the last few hours.
Forcing down a terrifying remainder of the dream that had woken her, the echoed sound of beating wings, she cleared her throat, pushing off Hunter in the dim light to glance at the covered windows.
“It’s not yet daybreak,” he offered.
She rubbed a hand over her face, disappointed she’d let them fall asleep without moving behind the heating system, but the winds had quieted outside, the air calm. They might not have been as safe as she’d like, but they were awake now and mostly unharmed. Her gaze returned to Hunter. “How’s your side?”
He patted a hand over his stomach, one of Riley’s old elastic sports bandages hidden beneath the hem of his shirt. “I’ll be fine in a few days.”
Her fingers caught in the matted hair that had pulled half-free of her ponytail, apparently having teased itself to Fashion Week level in her sleep. She pulled the band loose to run a few fingers through the tangle, scrunching her face at each tug. It didn’t hurt near as bad as her neck and shoulder, but as long as she didn’t use that side she’d be fine.
Her movements stilled when she realized Hunter was watching her. He’d lost his pallor, but that was about all she could tell in the muted light.
She moved to her knees on the floor in front of him, sliding a cardboard box from beneath the cot. After handing him a bottle of water, she leaned forward to light one of the stubby emergency candles they’d found that first night. She smiled, thinking of Riley’s face when he’d spotted the words “Emergency Kit” on the outside of the box. He must have thought there was something in there that might save them. She imagined an End of Days remedy instead of candles, batteries, and a foil blanket, her smile widening.
“What is it?” Hunter asked, his words low, even in the hush of the space.
Mackenzie glanced at him, their faces too close in the solitude of the basement. She shook her head. “Nothing, just thinking…” Her words trailed off, Mackenzie unable to speak her brother’s name aloud. Strange, given that he’d been the only thing on her mind since she’d woken to find him missing days before.
She thrust a package of crackers at Hunter, taking the red-capped jar of peanut butter from the bottom of her stack. “I’ve been saving this, but I suppose we could use it now.”
Her stomach dipped. Thoughts of starvation were gone since yesterday, the notion of hiding out here smashed by her new plan to help, to tell the authorities what she’d seen, where the portal was so their armies could find it. She stared at the three block letters, the bold stripes of color lining the jar. “I know it was there, Hunter. The portal. I saw it.” Her eyes moved upward in the flickering light of the candle, catching on his. “Those things came from inside a crack in the sky.”
Hunter’s gaze never faltered, locked with hers in unflinching distrust. Why were you there? he’d asked. The gateway.
“Look,” she started, her voice barely above a whisper. “I know it’s crazy. It sounds completely insane.” Peanut butter forgotten, she dropped the jar into the box, curled her fingers into the edge of the cot beside him. “But you can trust me, Hunter. I’ve seen it myself.” She exhaled heavily. “I don’t know what happened to you. I don’t know why you’re afraid to admit it. But I’ve seen it too. That first night, before the phones went down and Riley was attacked, they didn’t believe me. I called the authorities and no one listened to me. They probably had a million calls after that. A million lunatics on the other end of the line.” She shrugged. “Why would they have believed it? But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. That doesn’t mean we can’t help now that they’ve seen for themselves.”
She shook her head, blinking hard against tears that wouldn’t come. “This isn’t a finale for me; this isn’t something I can give up on. I only have one thing left in this world, this whole monster-riddled place. I have to help them find it, Hunter. I have to tell the authorities where those things came through. It’s the only way to help him now.”
Her words hung in the space between them, a narrow strip of confession. She needed this stranger to confirm she’d not lost her mind.
“Riley,” Hunter said.
Mackenzie’s smile was sad as she reached into the box beside her, retrieving a plastic figure left behind from one of his games. It was a tiny gray soldier wearing body armor, his oversized, cherry-red ray gun at the ready. “My brother. Riley.” Her chest squeezed. He ran off in the night. The night, for God’s sake! What was he thinking? She wouldn’t let those fears run wild. She would only hope that he’d made it.
She would only hope that he was alive.
“He plans to fight them,” she continued. “To join the army and defeat the monsters so he can come home.” Her fingers curled tighter into the mattress, inching closer to Hunter’s side. “I have to help him. I don’t have any other choice.”
Riley wasn’t a kid anymore, but she couldn’t abandon him. She had to protect him.
Hunter stared at her for a long moment. His face was not the face of that boy she’d first thought she’d seen, not the peaceful features of the sleeping man sprawled across her kitchen floor. He was returned to himself now, fully awake, and in the glint of wavering candlelight, it was the face of a stranger.
One whose expression did not mirror the desperate need of her own.
“An army,” he said.
Mackenzie nodded, swallowing the anguish of saying it out loud. “Yes. He saw it on the news feeds; they’re gathering troops in the city, taking volunteers. They aren’t even using the Guard…” Memories of the broadcast lay sharp in her mind, the way officials had seemed to have already given up. They’d only posted soldiers at the city centers, defending water sources and government buildings. They’d not even bothered with the pretense of protecting suburbs or rural areas.
They assumed they had already lost.
“The power plants were struck first,” she said. “There were some reports that the magic… can you believe they even said that? Blaming magic. Anyway, the power and phone lines went down right away, poles rippe
d from the ground, power plants and substations showering sparks. And the internet servers fried. I suppose most of the people who want to get news out can’t, and most of those who need it are stranded. Like us.”
His expression hadn’t changed, but Mackenzie was sure her spiel was getting through. He had to admit it. He had to tell her.
“You can trust me,” she said again. “I just need to know that you saw it.” Without the photos, she needed another witness. She needed them to believe her.
Hunter’s gaze traveled her face, slow and deliberate. It was as if he was testing her. She closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath. Please, she thought. Please.
When she opened her eyes again, his gaze was on hers. “Yes,” he said. “I know where the gateway is.”
Chapter Six
Mackenzie’s heart was hammering in her chest. Yes, he’d said. Yes.
She stood, reaching toward the washing machine where she’d stashed a second backpack and emergency supplies. “Okay, so all we have to do is find the army headquarters. On the news, it looked like Adamstown, which isn’t that far from here. It’d be a lot easier if we had gas for the car though.” She sorted which items belonged inside the backpack and which she’d stuff into jacket pockets or strap to a belt. “Riley saw this movie once, some kind of storm-of-the-century thing, and everyone tried to steal the last remaining cars to get out of the city. So he got this idea to take the distributor cap off, and it was genius, except that it wasn’t the car that got stolen. They just siphoned the gas.” She glanced over her shoulder with half a laugh.
Hunter was staring at her.
She turned to put a knee on the cot, sliding down to sit beside him and drawing the backpack onto her lap. “Don’t you see?” she asked. “We have to tell the army. To let them know where the monsters came from.”
