Refraction

by Naomi Hughes

  A gurney.

  Elliott lifts the match farther away from him and finds another empty gurney pushed against a wall, and then a dead monitor and an empty IV stand. We’ve landed in a hospital.

  I clear my throat. “A dollar, for a mint? That’s highway robbery.”

  Elliott lights a new match—just three left now—and steps farther away from the door. There’s open space to either side of us. We’re in a hallway. There’s a plaque next to the door we just came out of. CHILDREN’S WING, I make out, with an arrow pointing to the left. The arrow pointing to the right says EMERGENCY ROOM and INFORMATION DESK and PARKING GARAGE.

  Elliott turns to the right, maneuvering past the gurney. “I guess you would know all about highway robbery,” he deadpans.

  Ahead is a row of doors, these large and wooden with room numbers next to the knobs. Room number 189 is open. Elliott moves toward it. I cross the threshold behind him. Another compulsion roars to life in my mind, and this time I don’t have the strength to battle it. I lift my zip-tied hands, tap the door frame three times on the left and five on the right, hoping Elliott doesn’t notice. Relief saturates me; now I’ll be safe from the Beings, safe from the fog. Three and five are good numbers. They’ll protect me.

  But barely a second later, a tidal wave of shame rips through me, drowning the relief. I curl my hands into fists, furious with myself. I’ve just broken a yearlong streak of not performing any of my compulsions. How hard is it to simply walk through a damn doorway? All I had to do was not tap it, but somehow I couldn’t even manage that much. I know tapping won’t protect me. I know the relief never lasts long. I know all about the lies OCD is telling me—and I still gave in to them anyway.

  I force my hands to unclench. I can’t deal with this right now. I need to focus. If I can just focus on what’s happening around me, maybe I can manage to forget what’s happening inside my own head.

  Elliott is standing ahead of me, taking stock of the room. The flame casts dancing shadows over another empty gurney and monitor, a computer built to swivel out from the corner, a dead TV overhead.

  And a window.

  Beyond the glass is a sea of murky gray. At first it’s only slightly lighter than the complete darkness in the hallway, but then lightning flashes and the fog captures it, diffusing it into a dim, sparkling blue glow that illuminates our little room for a second. My brain instantly blinks back to middle school science class to provide me with the name of this phenomenon. Refraction: the way light bends and breaks and scatters when it’s caught by a prism or by a lens. Or in this case, by the tiny droplets of liquid that make up the fog that’s drowned the world.

  Without a word, Elliott and I use the light of the second-to-last match to strip one of the gurneys, pull the mattress off, and push it up lengthwise against the window. Then we shove the gurney in front of it to hold it in place.

  The match burns down to a speck of flickering blue. Darkness seeps from the hallway into the room, fills up the corners and cracks. My eyes are burning but I don’t blink. I don’t want the darkness to creep beneath my eyelids.

  As Elliott lights the final match, I move away from him and close the door. It doesn’t have a lock. I want to laugh, because this is bad news—a lock would be an extra measure of security against potential Beings, who after all can’t go through solid objects—but instead of being scared, I’m relieved. I don’t want to spend the rest of the night fighting the compulsion to get up and double-check that the door really is locked. This way I’ll still be terrified, but at least I don’t have to do anything about it, because there’s nothing to do.

  I grit my teeth. It must be the stress of the situation causing my OCD to flare up so badly. But it doesn’t matter; I can still fight it. I’ve already beat it once, after all. Tapping on the doorway earlier, worrying about the lock and which pocket my key is in, these are just small slipups. They don’t have to mean anything. They definitely don’t mean my OCD is coming back full force.

  I try to make myself believe it.

  “Might as well try to get some sleep,” Elliott says. He’s sitting down in the spot where the gurney was.

  I turn and eye the now-dying match at his feet. “Maybe we ought to start a fire?” I ask, though the Boy Scout has to have already thought of that.

  Sure enough, he shakes his head. “No ventilation in here,” he explains. “Too much of a risk.”

  I nod, resigned, and then hesitate as I try to decide where to sit. Instinct tells me the far side of the room—Elliott is still my enemy, after all—but he’s also the only other living person within fifty miles. And, I tell myself, I need to stay close in case he tries to sneak off without me in the middle of the night.

  I move to a spot a few feet away from him and slide to the floor, the zip ties on my wrists digging in at the motion. The last match burns out. And together, in the silence and the darkness, we wait for daylight.

  Dawn creeps around the edges of the mattress with the gray pallor of a long-dead corpse. I’m sitting with my arms around my knees—the only position that’s even semi-comfortable, as my hands are still zip-tied together—when I realize I can make out Elliott’s form farther down the wall. He’s sprawled out on his stomach looking like one of those chalk crime-scene outlines, snoring as if he’s at a sleepover instead of waiting for death to pounce.

  There’s an empty IV bag next to my foot. I throw it at him.

  He comes awake instantly, brushing the bag off and glaring at me. He stretches, glances at the mattress-covered window, and then stands. “Time to move,” he says without preamble and opens the door.

  I tense, leaping to my feet. My muscles are stiff and tired from the long night, but I ignore the ache. “What the hell? You have to check for Beings first!” I hiss, eyes wide.

  He glances back at me. “If there’s a Being in the hall, it’s going to kill us whether or not I check for it.”

  Which is true, but unhelpful.

  I follow him cautiously. Several nearby doors are open, spilling enough muted gray light for us to see in the hallway. Elliott steps around an empty gurney that’s pushed up against the wall and then disappears through another door. It’s a bathroom. After a moment, I hear the squeak of a faucet turning on and then the sound of running water. Apparently the plumbing still works here, at least.

  I start after him. My still-damp shoes squelch with each step. I sigh, wishing we could stumble upon some fresh clothing or a miraculously working dryer. Or a coffeemaker, while I’m wishing for impossible things; my eyes are grainy with fatigue, and my brain feels disconnected and floaty from lack of sleep.

  “Keep your eyes down,” Elliott calls to me, his voice tense. “I’m pretty sure there’s a mirror above the sink.”

  I hesitate—but then look down at myself. Spots of Ginger’s blood are still flecked all over my arms. Some of it stains my shirt and pants, too, and there’s not much I can do about that, but I’m suddenly desperate to wash off as much of it as possible. I edge inside the bathroom, careful to keep my gaze on the white tiles beneath my feet.

  Ten minutes later, we’ve both freshened up as best we can and, despite me making it blindingly obvious how difficult it is for me to maneuver with bound hands, Elliott hasn’t offered to help me get out of the zip ties.

  He’s going to make me ask. “Fine,” I snap as we exit the bathroom. “Are you going to show me how to do that move you did to get out of these, or what?”

  He strides ahead, ducking into another patient room. There’s a shuffling noise and then he comes out with a blanket over one shoulder and a long extension cord looped around the other. “No,” he answers, nodding at my hands. “I like this better.”

  I watch as he moves farther down the hall, choosing another room and disappearing inside again. Frustrated, I twist my wrists, trying to shift the ties to a spot that isn’t already chafed and sore. “You won’t like it better when a Being attacks,” I call after him as loudly as I dare. “You’ll be getting eaten and I w
on’t be able to help at all, because my hands are literally tied.”

  He emerges from the doorway with a handful of rattling pill bottles and first-aid supplies, tucking them into his pockets. “You wouldn’t help if I was getting eaten anyway,” he says. “You’d leave me behind the second you thought it was in your best interest.”

  I pause. It occurs to me that this is the way I’ve been thinking of him; that he’s waiting for the opportunity to abandon me, that I have to stick close, or he’ll leave me to my fate without a second thought. I wonder when I started assuming everyone was like me.

  “Do you really think so little of me?” I ask, genuinely curious. If he truly thinks I’m such a liability, why would he bother to keep me around even this long?

  He pauses and finally looks at me, his expression closed off. After a moment he shuffles through the supplies in his hands and tosses me something small and gleaming. I catch it: a little pair of surgical scissors. It’s sheer luck that I caught them by the handle and not by one of the blades, which could have sliced a finger open. I look back up.

  “Give me a reason not to,” Elliott says, and then he turns his back and walks away.

  By the time I’ve managed to contort my hands enough to cut through the ties and free myself, Elliott has already found the information desk. I hurry straight to the big map that’s plastered to the wall above it, vaulting over the desk to read it more closely.

  I squint. “It looks like the parking garage entrance is …”

  “That way.” Elliott cuts me off, pointing to the left. His expression is strange—wary, unsettled. I follow his line of sight to find two sets of glass double doors. Muted gray sunlight spills through them, which, I realize now, is why it was bright enough for me to read the map a moment ago. Beyond the doors I can make out the dim interior of a multistory parking garage. There’s fog out there, but it’s thin—blown into submission by the storm I can still hear at the edges of the garage—and easily allows me to see rows upon rows of cars and trucks and SUVs. We’ll be able to spot any nearby Beings while we’re out there, too, as the garage is small enough that it’s not very dark even in the shadowed center.

  “Yes!” I exult quietly, pumping a fist. Finally, a win.

  “Callahan,” Elliott says from behind me, his voice slow and strange, “do you notice anything weird about those cars?”

  I crack my knuckles, mentally going through the list of tools I’ll need to scavenge. “That there’s a lot of ’em,” I answer. It’s good news. I’ve actually only ever hot-wired one car successfully—Ty’s ‘92 Camaro—so the wider selection means a better chance at finding one that I’ll know how to steal.

  “Yeah,” Elliott says. “About a hundred of them on this level alone. A hundred cars—and no bodies.”

  I go still as the words sink in. Then, slowly, I turn. I look around. The front desk area is wide open and clean. There’s a bank of dead elevators to my left, a dark glassed-in gift shop and a waiting area to my right, and antiseptic white tile beneath my feet. It was the same in all the hallways and patient rooms we’ve passed through: empty gurneys, vacant nurses’ stations. And not a single corpse.

  “It’s only been a year since the Fracture,” Elliott says. “There should be bodies everywhere. We shouldn’t be able to breathe for the smell, shouldn’t be able to take a step without running into a body. All those cars out there. Where are their owners?”

  Unease crawls over my skin. I try to shake it off. “The Beings ate them, probably,” I reason. It’s the supposition that’s been in the back of my mind ever since we first stepped onto the empty ground floor, but now it doesn’t quite feel right. Beings have never eaten people—or at least, not completely—on the island. But maybe that’s just because they dissipate too fast. The Beings and fog on the mainland are permanent.

  “Then where’s the blood?” Elliott persists. “The signs of struggle?”

  I look around again. He’s right. There should be bones and blood all over this foyer, personal belongings scattered across the floor, claw marks on the walls. Even if everyone had enough of a warning to evacuate safely, there should be signs of distress, of people leaving in a rush. But there’s nothing. No half-finished paperwork on the desk. No toys left behind in the waiting area. The floor is sparkling, as if it were mopped yesterday.

  Elliott points at the sign above the desk. MADRIGAL SOUTH HOSPITAL, it reads at the top. “I’ve been here before,” he says, his voice dark and far away. “With Mom. She was the city treasurer here when I was fourteen. This hospital had just been built; she attended the opening ceremony. It’s been in use for three years since then, but it still looks exactly like it did the day she cut the ribbon. Except,” he says, sweeping a hand at the parking garage, “for all those cars.”

  I swallow. I look from him to the cars: my salvation, my escape. My first step toward maybe, somehow, getting to Ty. “Are you saying this is some sort of … what, a trap?”

  The Beings have never shown any sign of intelligence before. But then, as far as we can tell, they’re just the weapons of whatever aliens attacked us last year. So if this is a trap … I don’t want to meet whoever set it.

  “I don’t know what it is,” Elliott admits.

  I brood for a moment. “We have to take the chance,” I say at last, and start toward the doors.

  Elliott’s mouth is set in grim lines, but he nods. “Just a sec,” he says. He walks over to the desk, reaches beneath it, and fiddles with it for a second before he manages to unscrew one of its legs. He turns, hefting the solid-looking length of wood. It’s ornately carved and about three feet long.

  “That’ll do exactly zero good against a Being,” I observe.

  He strides toward the doors. “It might buy us a minute or two if it comes to a fight, at least.”

  I move out after him, through the first set of doors and into the little foyer. My mind, which has been feeling fuzzy from lack of sleep, sharpens at the danger we’re about to walk into. “Be careful of the side mirrors on the cars, and the rearview mirrors, too,” I warn. “Keep your eyes up. You’re my lookout.”

  “How far I’ve fallen,” he mutters, and paces out into the parking garage without a backwards look. He hops onto the hood of a nearby Jag and scans the area, keeping the desk leg out and ready. He’s still got the blanket over one shoulder and the cord looped over the other. He should look ridiculous. I’m kind of annoyed that he looks a little bit badass instead.

  I pause at the second set of doors, holding one open but not stepping out of the foyer yet. The wind howls in the distance. It doesn’t sound quite as strong as last night. We must have just caught one of the outside bands of the hurricane, or maybe it’s losing strength.

  I look out across the cars. The fog is light out here but I can still see it, can sense it thickening against my skin until it’s almost a liquid, something clear and viscous and capable of drowning me. I can smell it, too: unnaturally metallic, ever-so-faintly burnt. The smoldering ash of a lightning strike.

  I catch myself tapping on the door frame and snatch my hand down, disgusted with myself. Anxiety crashes through me, overwhelming. I need to finish tapping the door frame. Otherwise I won’t be safe in the garage. And I know it won’t actually make a difference, that tapping a door can’t make me safe, but that doesn’t stop the all-consuming urgency of the compulsion or the desperate need for even the few seconds of relief that the tapping will bring.

  “You coming or what?” Elliott calls in a low voice, still scanning for Beings.

  “Hold on,” I say, setting my jaw. I will not give in to my OCD. I’ve worked too hard to backslide like this. I need to put it in its place right now, once and for all, in order to stop the anxiety. I will turn around and go back through both these sets of double doors again—three times apiece, five times apiece, just to make sure—until the urges and the anxiety are gone.

  I turn around. I take one step. I glance up, and see the mirror.

  It’s high on th
e wall above the waiting area, one of those mirrored half-domes that help people see around corners. It takes me a second to register what it is. In that second, something ripples across the surface of the mirror: a rainbow sheen, like an oil slick on water. A low buzz of electricity crackles across my skin. And then comes the weird sensation in my ribs—as if there’s a string connecting my smallest rib to something inside the mirror, and it wants to reel me in.

  My body understands what’s happening before my brain does. Horror washes through me like a storm surge. I freeze.

  The oil slick on the mirror’s surface darkens to a gray curl of fog. Something carved from night reaches up through it. A paw—its joints too long, too close to being fingers—curls through the mirror. Scythe-like claws scrape trenches in the wall below.

  Another paw joins it on the other side. A terrible face rises up: pointed ears made of darkness, a foxlike muzzle that spreads into a panting smile. In one push it’s out of the mirror and on the ground, shadows rising from its back like tendrils of mist.

  It unfolds itself.

  It stands up on two legs, its joints crooked and horrible.

  It turns—and looks at me.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MY MUSCLES UNLOCK. I STUMBLE BACKWARDS. Terror is an egg in my chest, cracking itself open, beating its wings like a second heartbeat.

  I turn and run.

  Elliott is still atop the car. He’s looking in the other direction, blind to the threat. “ACKERMANN,” I scream, and he whirls around. He spots the Being. It’s throwing itself against the first set of glass doors—which, thank God, closed behind me. Elliott’s whole body goes taut and he leaps off the car with a curse. The blanket slides off his shoulder and drops to the pavement at the sudden movement.

  “Find us some transportation, now,” he orders, wielding the desk leg as he strides toward the creature. The Being doesn’t make any sound, but its silence is even more terrible than snarling would have been. It’s like a nightmare come to life. Unthinkable, unstoppable.