by S T Branton
“I don't think this is the type of alcohol she was talking about, honey.”
“It's also not anything my grandmother ever said. She drank tequila like it was going out of style.”
“That's because Grandma Violet was the shit,” Ally said from the doorway.
I looked at her, and she smiled as she came over to the side of the bed. They took most of the injured miners to the closest hospital, but I didn't want to go through that hassle. I insisted I was fine and didn't need to be seen by anybody. It was only a few scratches and scrapes, bumps and bruises. Your run-of-the-mill mine cave-in banged up situation. But Ally insisted I get looked at. So, she brought me to the local doctor's office.
“That she was,” I agreed.
Ally looked at the nurse. "How is she doing?"
"She's a terrible patient," the nurse told her, but she said it through a little smile.
"Yep, that sounds like Slick. I'm surprised she let you get anywhere near her with that stuff. She'll use it on other people but freak the freak out if anyone comes at her with a bottle of alcohol."
"Care to tell her why?" I challenged.
"It wasn't that big a deal. I might have used a little too much when helping her clean up and gotten some in her ear," Ally told the nurse.
"And what were you doing right before that?" I prompted.
"Trying to pierce your belly button with a safety pin."
"If you were trying to clean her up after attempting to pierce her belly button with a safety pin, how did you end up getting rubbing alcohol in her ear?" the nurse asked.
"I think we’re stumbling close to the reason I don't enjoy rubbing alcohol."
"Well, either way. What you did was amazing. Some people who were down in that mine literally owe you their life," Ally said.
"Just happy to help," I muttered. I waited for the nurse to walk out of the room and met Ally's eyes. "I saw something strange in that mine. As I was helping the last person out and we reached the edge of the cave, I looked back. Ally, that guy showed up."
"What guy?"
"The guy we saw walking down the street when we went to the bar. Remember? The really tall young one. He was down there. I have no idea where he came from, but he showed up and stood there while the mine caved in around him. Then he was gone.”
"What do you think that means?" Ally asked.
I shook my head. "I'm not sure. It could be nothing."
Someone knocked on the door, and I called out, asking who it was.
"It's Jonas," he called back. "I wanted to make sure you're doing all right."
Ally looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded. She got up and hurried to the door to let him in. She gazed at him, obviously a little mesmerized by his good looks. He stepped into the room cautiously and walked up to the side of the bed.
"How are you feeling? Are you doing okay?"
"I'm fine. There was no reason for a doctor to see me. I'm a little bounced around, is all. But Ally insisted I see someone and have them help me clean up all these extensive injuries you see in front of you."
"Ally sounds like she's an excellent friend," Jonas said.
Ally tossed a smug, self-satisfied look in my direction. "I told you."
"She wiped me off with a bunch of alcohol pads. You could have brought me home and spritzed me with Windex, and it would have had the same effect."
"I always loved being appreciated for my professional work," the nurse said as she came back into the room carrying a handful of bandages.
I cringed. "I'm sorry. That didn't come out right. It's only that I've been through a lot, and had to learn to deal without doctors."
"Is this another incident involving her and safety pins?"
"No. This one's not her fault. I appreciate your help. Now that my skin doesn't feel like it's melting off, I feel better."
"I'm glad to hear it." She wrapped up the worst of my scrapes and scratches with bandages and left the room again.
"I’m impressed by you, you know," Jonas said. "What you did back there was incredible."
I tried to brush it off by looking away and sweeping my hand around in the air in front of him to dissipate the words. "It's not that big a deal. Anyone would have done it."
"That's the thing. Nobody did," Jonas answered me. "How many people stood around outside the mine, waiting?"
"Hey," Ally snapped. "Not all of us are equipped with the fortitude and skills to manage the disaster relief efforts of a mine cave-in."
"And that's perfectly fine. That’s what makes what she did so impressive."
"I told her that, too," Ally agreed.
"Can we get back to talking about why we came here?" I wanted to steer the conversation away from me.
"Are earthquakes normal around here?" Ally asked.
It was kind of a jump, but I would take it. Jonas shook his head.
"Again, I'm not from around here, but I've visited this area many times. Earthquakes didn't used to happen around here. But now...now it's different. It's starting to feel like a pattern. Every time a body turns up, an earthquake happens soon after."
"That’s a pretty big warning sign,” Ally pointed out.
"This was the first time there was a cave-in. The earthquakes are getting worse."
I swallowed hard when the realization of what that meant sank in. I drew a deep breath and readied myself.
"So, that means—" I started, but he mercifully stepped in to stop me from having to ask the question directly.
"Yes. They found another body. It's right down the hall if you want to see it."
Chapter Fifteen
We crept down the hallway toward the room that was doubling as a morgue after the cave-in but stopped short when we saw a doctor lingering right outside. We backed up into a dark alcove lined with racks of newly cleaned lab coats.
"We have to get around that doctor," Jonas said. "I don't think he would like us wandering in for a meet and greet with their newest corpse."
I looked at the coats hanging from the metal rack. "We could put these on. Pretend that we’re doctors, too, and need to check on the bodies."
Two sets of eyes in full judgment mode turned on me.
"Then maybe we can do a montage of investigating the body to the smooth sounds of Wham! before doing a slow-motion run out of the office and back to the hotel with everyone on our heels." Ally didn’t hide her sarcasm.
"Well, that sounds like a delightful movie. Do you have another suggestion?"
"I could talk to him, pretend I need his help with someone outside, then run like hell and meet you when you leave," she offered.
"That’s a better plan. Do your thing."
"Are you sure about this?" Jonas asked. "We don't want to make them suspicious."
"Trust me. She won't. I mean, at some point she will, but that's kind of built into the plan with the whole run like hell part. It's a process."
He didn't look entirely convinced, which was understandable. Ally shook out her hair and smoothed her clothes, then slapped on a compelling concerned face and burst out of the alcove toward the doctor. Jonas and I sank backward into the hanging coats so we wouldn't be seen when other staff heard the commotion and came down the hall to see what was happening.
"See? I knew these coats were going to come in handy for the plan," I whispered.
Jonas rolled his eyes at me and peered around the corner at Ally. My best friend chattered and gasped while rambling to the doctor about needing help and asking him to come with her. I couldn't understand the majority of the words coming out of her mouth, but I was sure that was the intention. If she could confuse the doctor badly enough, her big eyes and pouty lips would be enough to get the man to come along. It took less than thirty seconds.
Ally ran down the hall in the opposite direction with the doctor following close behind her. Jonas and I waited for a few seconds before stepping out of the alcove and hurrying over to the door.
"What's she going to do when she gets that guy outside
, and nobody is waiting?" Jonas asked.
"Didn't you hear the plan?" I grabbed the handle and tugged on it despite the obvious keypad keeping it secure. For such a small town, I was shocked to see them have anything more complicated than a mass-produced key lock, but I guessed they treated the rare dead-and-not-at-the-hospital with a little extra care.
"The plan is for her to go out there, not have anyone injured or gravely ill, or having been abducted and probed or whatever the hell she was rambling about, then run?"
I swung my eyes toward him. "Do you have some brilliant other plans you decided to keep tucked in your back pocket for the next time we need to break into a morgue?"
"No," he admitted.
"Then we'll let her handle it." I ran my fingers over the keypad while trying to figure out how to overcome it.
"Is there an emergency button that overrides the need for a code?" Jonas asked.
"That seems like it might be a bit of a design flaw, don't you think?"
"I don't think she'll be able to keep up the charade for very long. We need to figure out how to get in there."
There was only one option. Two, if someone happened by with a friendly disposition and willingness to put the code in for us. That left me with relying on one. I reached into my pocket and pulled out my switchblade. "I'm going to ask you to take a step back. I've never done this particular procedure before, and I'm not sure exactly what's going to happen."
"What is that?"
"A switchblade."
I examined the edge of the keypad until I found where it connected, and used the tip of the blade to pop the plastic cover out of place. It revealed a series of wires, and I took a few seconds while thinking about which one of them would be most effective to cut. Deciding it wasn't a bomb, so the chances weren't great it would explode, I picked them all up in one hand and used the blade to slice through them cleanly. There was no massive flash of light or big boom, so I took it as a victory.
The door opened when I turned the handle and pushed. Jonas and I slipped inside, and I closed the door behind us.
"Who are you?" he asked again, more suspicious this time after watching me disable the keypad.
"I told you. I'm a photographer. With my Sunny 85-15 AAA Gumball." I tucked my trusty switchblade away.
"I thought you said you had a point-and-shoot."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "That is a point-and-shoot." I was going to ride this thing as far as it would carry me.
"The body is over here." He directed me to the nearest drawer.
We pulled it out, and my hand flew to my mouth. There wasn't enough time between learning about the body from the mine and me getting here to develop any expectations about it. Even if there had been, I didn't think it would be anything like this. This wasn't merely any body. This was the body of a Farsider.
"I can't believe this," I murmured.
"I told you someone put him through something pretty horrible." Jonas pointed out a few areas of the body. "This looks like ritualistic mutilation. I wouldn't be surprised if it were part of some sort of ceremony."
I understood why he would say that. Anyone looking at the poor man stretched out on the table would see the strange areas of the body and think they were mutilations. I knew different. I'd seen this before. What Jonas called mutilations were dryad attributes. I had encountered those creatures during my time in The Deep and knew how to recognize the unique features.
Long arms and legs stretched down until they almost fell off the slab entirely. The skin, if that’s what you would call it, was hard and thick, and seemed to grow separately in batches that then wove together in layers. It looked for all the world like tree bark. Nearsider legends spoke of dryads as ‘tree spirits,’ and there was no doubt why that was so. The big, sunken eyes of this one seemed friendly, if rather Neanderthal-ish. Its fingernails were brown and chipped in jagged lines like they had grown for a long time, but had broken near death. His empty, lifeless eyes looked up at the ceiling in the thousand-yard stare of the dead I had seen so many times before.
But it wasn't only those attributes that struck me about the horrific corpse of the slightly older man spread out on the table. This man had also been severely beaten. It was savage, brutal in its extent. Wounds covered every part of the body, leaving it tattered. Whoever did this hated this person. I drew in a breath, then slowly let it out. It was a horrible sight, and I had seen my fair share of horrible. This would have been a terrorizing experience that could have taken a long time to finally result in death.
I couldn't tell much about him. The injuries were too extreme to be able to identify many details. Even if I knew who he was, it might have been a challenge to recognize him immediately. This needed more evaluation. I took out the phone Ally got for me and started snapping pictures of the body while walking around the perimeter of the slab to get images of him from all angles.
"Why aren't you using your camera to do that?"
Still trying to get me. I'm one step ahead of you, buddy.
"You can't possibly think I'd have my Gumball with me here. That is a delicate, high-dollar piece of equipment. I don't traipse it out wherever I might need to snap a picture or two."
"We should get out of here."
"Yeah, we should probably find Ally." I stuffed my phone back into my pocket.
I stuck my head out of the morgue and looked up and down the hallway to make sure no one was there. It was still empty, so we slipped out and headed for the door leading outside.
A few doctors had gathered around and talked heatedly.
"She left. I didn't get the chance to look her over or give her discharge papers," one said.
"Oh, shit. They're talking about me. Go. Go, go, go."
We scurried around the edge of the parking lot and rushed out onto the main road. I reached for my phone to call Ally, but she jumped out from behind a tree at me. My hand smashed against my heart, and I shook my head at her.
"You are so lucky I didn't have my switchblade in my hand right then. Come on. We need to get away from here. They're looking for me. Probably you, too."
Ally looked at Jonas. "Thank you. I appreciate you getting in touch with me and helping us."
Jonas nodded. "No problem. Call me anytime, okay?” He pointed to a red SUV on the side of the road. “But for right now, I’ve gotta run. I'll call you soon."
With a little wave, Jonas got in his car, and we parted ways. Ally and I walked back to the hotel, and when we got into our room, I latched the door and took out my phone. "Look at this. I took pictures of the body."
"Holy hell, what happened to him? Is it a Farsider?" she asked when she looked at the screen and scrolled through the pictures.
"Without a doubt. And someone wanted him to suffer. I think it's time we found this commune."
Chapter Sixteen
Splinter squirmed as I tried to get him safely to the ground, and when his little feet hit the dirt, he took off in circles, delighted to be out of my pocket and in nature, and obviously feeling much better after the horror that was ‘The Cupcake Incident.’
“I thought Splinter was more of a city kind of guy.” Leaves crunched under Ally’s feet as she walked.
“Splinter is an ‘anywhere food might be left out’ kind of guy, but yeah, he seems pretty stoked about the woods.”
Ally laughed in an easy way that was good to hear. She hadn’t been very relaxed since the last Fae attack, and I thought getting some fresh air would be good for her nerves. I wanted to keep the mission talk to a minimum so I could give her a break, but Ally brought it up anyway, although she didn’t seem as down today.
“So, what did Archie say?”
Earlier, I called Archie to talk about what I saw at the doctor’s office and to thank him for the shield. I also emailed him the pictures I took, which resulted in a much longer conversation than I hoped for.
“Well, he was happy the shield worked out well. I told him how it held up in the cave and how it saved my life and that
guy. He was pretty pleased with himself over that.”
“Sounds about right.” Ally used a large stick she found earlier to be her walking stick to stab the ground as we went up a hill.
“Then I sent him pictures of the body from the morgue. Definitely a dryad. There are a bunch of different varieties, and he isn’t sure which one, but some of them are pretty dangerous. He also said they’re known to cause earthquakes occasionally, so, you know…”
“So, be careful.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah.”
“Anyway,” I tried to liven up the situation and make it less about the constant fear of death and dismemberment, “I thought if you wanted to, we should come up here and camp sometime.”
Ally stopped dead in her tracks, and I awaited her response. It could go either way into righteous indignation that I would try to cheer her up with a camping trip, or a happy squealing sound capable of waking up the gods themselves and starting an avalanche a thousand miles away. I squinted and waited for either one.
Somewhere, an avalanche mysteriously fell, and thousands of dogs lost their ever-loving minds for a minute.
When she finished squealing and shaking me by the shoulders while jumping up and down like she won the Showcase Showdown on The Price is Right, I smiled back at her and tried to focus on the vibrating girl in front of me.
“So, that’s a yes?”
“Eeee!”
“All right, then. I’m glad you’re excited. Hell, I’m excited.”
What shocked me was, I wasn’t lying. The prospect of camping excited me. It was a novel thing for me, something I would never have imagined myself feeling, but I was trying it out. It had been a couple of months since my escape from The Deep, but that handful of weeks compared to the decade of captivity in the slimy walls of the prison left me craving the air and sunshine. I would happily roll around in the grass and pine needles simply because I could. I didn’t need to do anything to convince my best friend. Ally was already all in.
“God, how many times did I try to talk you into camping with my family?” Her voice was still several octaves higher than it should be.
