“Well, no business trip this year, buddy,” Stone said now. He fiddled with his bottom lip. “This year, I feel like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.”
“That isn’t good,” I said halfheartedly as I lifted Monica, laid her against my shoulder, and patted her back.
“Nope. It ain’t good at all, Grady, my man. Happy frickin’ birthday, har-har-har!”
Monica suddenly giggled. A high and sweet sound none of us had expected to hear. I froze, thinking it had to be a wraith messing with our heads.
I turned from Eleanor, whose eyes were now wide open, to Stone, who was arching an eyebrow at me.
“Grady,” he said, “why did you just laugh like you’ve been sucking on helium?”
“That…that wasn’t me…” I held Monica up in front of me. She was all smiles. Little dribbles of milk hung around the corners of her grin. “I think that was her.”
“No way,” Ell said. “Can babies laugh at five-ish months?”
“Don’t look at us,” Stone said, raising his hands, palms out. “You’re the nurse.”
Raising the pitch of my voice and trying my best baby talk—which was, in hindsight, probably pretty terrible and terrifying—I said to Monica, “Did you just laugh, huh? Did you, you little princess?”
Her lips parted and she looked at me like I was crazy.
“Something made her laugh…” Ell said. “What did you do?”
Stone shrugged. “Nothin’, she’s probably just laughing at Grady’s face.”
“Hilarious, as always,” I said, turning toward Eleanor. “I think it was something Stone said. What’d you say?”
“‘Happy frickin’ birthday?”
“Language, Stone,” Ell hissed. “Language.”
“Frickin’? Oh, c’mon, she doesn’t understand what I’m saying, and that’s not technically a swear word.”
“You’re vastly underestimating the intelligence of babies,” Ell said. “They’re basically sponges. They soak up everything. Including unfavorable language.”
“Yeah, man,” I said, “do you really want Monica here sounding like you by the time she’s two?”
“Well, if she is her mother’s daughter, I don’t think there’s much that can be done to prevent that.” Stone laughed—which, coincidentally, caused Mia to rustle.
We all watched as she roused herself out of sleep.
“Okay,” she said, “if you guys are creepin’ on me while I’m passed out now, then I’m definitely movin’ out.”
“Uh…Mia, I think your daughter just laughed,” I said.
Her eyes widened. She leaned forward and almost fell out of bed. “What?”
I nodded. “Yep.”
“We think she laughed,” Stone said.
“I missed her first giggle?” Mia whined. “Noooo… How could you guys let that happen?”
“Potential first giggle,” Stone repeated. “But as they say, when you snooze, you lose…”
Mia took Monica from my arm and jabbed me in the shoulder with her index finger. “Make her do it again!”
I had no idea how, but I tried my damnedest. The faces I made were probably so disturbing that if a psychiatrist saw me doing them in public, he or she would’ve had me committed on the spot. Monica apparently found them neither amusing or abhorrent. She just stared at me with wide-eyed indifference, the way most babies her age do.
Stone raked his fingers down his cheeks. “Oh God, please make it stop…”
“It’s not like you could do any better,” I challenged.
“It’s obviously not faces she likes,” Stone said. “It was the voice.”
“Then do the voices!” Mia urged. “C’mon! I wanna hear her laugh!”
Stone looked around at all of us. I could see the mental struggle he was going through. Do the voice, risk making himself look silly, and get the baby to laugh, or stay…stony, and not risk shattering his cool persona.
Stone sighed. “Fine.” Then, lowering his voice to a baritone so deep I thought it physically impossible, he said, “Happy freakin’ birthday! Har-har-har!”
Sure enough, Monica broke into laughter, the sound high and sweet. She even reached for Stone and gave his nose a honk.
Tears filled Mia’s eyes; Eleanor was laughing right along with the baby; and I’ll admit, I teared up a little myself. Not with sadness, longing, or anything depressing like that, but with a sheer joy I hadn’t felt in who knew how long. Feeling joy like that, well, that was hard to come by in those days.
Hell, it was hard to come by any day.
This was where things started getting bad, that wintry spring, when our guards were down the most. It was understandable—stupid but understandable—because we’d been living in a bubble; most of the citizens in the City were.
Unless you were a Scav, you almost never saw the dark skies or the gray snowflakes thrown down from above; you never felt the icy wind and what you heard of it was more of a sigh than a scream, so it never had a chance to cut through your ears and into your brain; and, most importantly, you never saw the monsters.
The wraiths had become hazy in my mind, like a fading nightmare. Forgetting about them was dangerous, I knew this, but I couldn’t help myself.
Things were just going so well. Eleanor and I were in love; Monica was smiling and laughing; I rarely, if ever, saw John Berretti or the buffoon brothers; Stone was getting shredded in the gym, working out there four or five times a week; and the book club had brought on a smattering of new friends.
After word got around about how much fun the club was, a few others joined. We followed Frankenstein up with Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, which we liked so much, we read another of hers, this one a short novella called The Grownup. From there we dipped our toes back into the classics. To Kill a Mockingbird, a novel I could—and have—read countless times; The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway; The Catcher in the Rye, which almost everyone in the club hated due to Holden Caulfield’s whiny narration; and a few more after that.
I even tried convincing Stone to join. He refused. Obviously.
“Now if you guys start a movie club, or even a comic book club, I’ll consider it,” he had said, which sparked an idea in my head. So the next time I saw George, I asked him if it was possible for him to grab some comics on a future supply run.
“I’ll keep my eye peeled,” George answered. “But no promises.”
Three weeks later, along with a fresh supply of antibiotics, food, and bottled water, George and the Scavs dumped a bag full of Spider-Man and Batman graphic novels on a table in front of me.
Ayden picked up a copy of The Dark Knight Returns written by Frank Miller. It was a special edition hardcover. “This one’s a hell of a ride. Old ass Bruce Wayne comes outta retirement and fights some weird-lookin’ mutant motherfuckers.”
“I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never read it,” I said, examining the cover. “Mutant motherfuckers?”
“Yessir.”
“Hm, I think I’ll give it a go.”
“Yeah, do yourself a favor and read it ASAP.” He passed it to me and continued going through the pile. Most of the books were beat up. The hardcovers were wrapped in dingy cellophane with stickers and barcodes on them that read MASON COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY.
“You guys got these from a library?” I asked.
Ayden shrugged his coat off, turned, and hung it over the back of a chair. It dripped with melted snow. I was surprised to see the lack of layers he wore beneath. I guess when you had a wall of solid muscle covering your body, you kept yourself warm that way.
Zoe Quintrell, the only female Scavenger, was unlacing her heavy boots in the same chair Ayden had draped his coat over. She looked up. I wasn’t sure if it was melted snow or sweat running down her brow. “Yep. George wanted to go. Guess it’s for that little book club you lames got going on.”
“Was it out of the way?” I asked, already feeling bad. Thank goodness no one had been hurt, but if they had gone on account of me and someone had died, I’
d never forgive myself.
“Eh, not really,” Ayden said. “Besides, we got some good flicks too. Buncha comedies and shit. We’re gonna be heroes once the others get wind of that.”
“Funny,” Zoe said. “Heroes because we grabbed a few Adam Sandler movies, not because we restocked our supply of Keflex. Talk about priorities.”
Later, I walked into our barracks with a few of the comic books in a brown paper bag. Stone was sprawled out on his mattress, hands behind his head, eyes closed. He opened one eye when he heard me coming, focusing on what I held in my hands. He arched an eyebrow.
“Porn?”
“What?” I said, surprised.
“What’s with the brown paper bag? Looks like the kinda stuff they used to slip Playboy and Penthouse mags in at Borders. Remember that one time we paid that homeless dude to score us the one with Jessica Alba on the cover?”
I stopped dead in my tracks and peered over my shoulder, looking for any signs of Ell. I knew she was working at the hospital, but you can never be too careful. “Hey, keep your voice down, dude.”
“What? You afraid your girlfriend’s gonna find out you tried to sneak a few peeks at a nudie mag when you were younger, like every other teenage boy in the world?”
“Hey, better safe than sorry.”
Stone scowled. “What is it, then? And if it’s not a Brazilian G.I.L.F. mag, I’m gonna be seriously disappointed.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“G.I.L.F. stands for grandmother I’d like to fu—”
“Yeah, yeah, I got it. You’re still disgusting.”
“Relax, Grady. I only joke.”
I passed him the bag. He tilted it back and forth in his hands, as if weighing it. “Well, if it’s not sexy grandmas in precarious positions, then what is it?” His face lit up. “Oooh, is it a new puppy?”
Chewy, who was half asleep at the end of the bed, cocked an ear and scowled almost as well as Stone had a moment ago.
“Just open it, you dummy.”
Stone turned it upside down, and the books fell out onto his lap. The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: Year One, and Spider-Man: Birth of Venom. Stone’s entire face brightened. I mean, he looked fifteen years younger.
“Bro.”
“Yep,” I said.
“Bro.”
“Uh-huh.”
“How? How in the world did you manage this?”
I shrugged. “Just put in a good word with the right people. There’s a bunch more in the library. Ayden told me The Dark Knight Returns is pretty good. I can’t speak on that. I’ve read my fair share of comics, but normally just whatever they had at the Giant Eagle by my house—and those weren’t always of the utmost quality.”
Stone sat up, pulled himself to the side. On shaky but stronger than normal legs, he stood, wrapped his arms around me, and squeezed tightly. I couldn’t even raise my own arms. He had really been hitting the weights hard.
“Dude, thank you so much!”
“Don’t thank me,” I struggled to say. “It was all the Scavs.” He let go, and I gasped. The rush of sweet air filling my lungs had never felt better.
“Shit, dude, now I can start my comic book club.”
“Exactly!”
“Would you like to be the Vice President?”
“Hell yeah.”
“Too bad, spot’s taken.”
“What? By who?”
Stone turned toward Chewy, who couldn’t resist wagging his stubby tail. “Should I tell him, or do you want to, buddy?”
Chewy let out a little bark.
I laughed. “All right, well, I can’t be mad about that.”
“First Lady is still up for grabs. You want that one?”
I flipped him off. “Whatever, that’s fine. Just as long as I get to read and discuss comic books with my best friend.”
“Ay, we’re more than best friends, Grady. We’re brothers.”
I nodded. “Brothers.”
I said this was where things started to get bad, and I wasn’t lying. Maybe I’m stalling a bit, but that’s because I don’t want to remind myself of what happened. It’s hard, you know, reminding myself of the pain and anguish we all went through. Hadn’t we gone through enough already?
But, as you know, I pride myself on telling the truth, so the truth is what I shall tell you.
It happened the very next night after I’d given Stone the comics, before we even had the inaugural comic book club meeting. He and I were both on watch duty, and we were working together. The prior weeks on the job had been uneventful. I hadn’t been on my guard. I hadn’t expected to see what I saw, and that was bad. I remember thinking I must’ve fallen asleep, that I was in a nightmare.
Oh, how I wish…how I wish.
The sad thing is Stone wasn’t even scheduled to work that night. He was covering for Lee, who apparently had come down with some sort of bug. The “Hangover Flu,” most likely. Whatever. I wasn’t mad about it. I got to spend more time with my oldest friend, and time spent together always went by in a blur.
We were hanging out, talking Spider-Man and Batman, playing cards, occasionally glancing at the monitors. Overall, a good time—until the third hour came about.
Although I’d thought I might’ve fallen asleep, I knew that wasn’t true. I wasn’t tired, distracted, or two steps away from crazy. I’d slept a full six hours the night before and had a hearty nap prior to my shift. Plus my thermos was full of hot coffee and I’d been sipping it steadily.
I shot out of my chair and pointed at the screen. “Whoa! What was that?”
Stone stopped paging through the Spider-Man comic and dropped it. It fluttered to the floor, where it absorbed some of the melted snow near the space heater. “What? You saw something? No lie?”
“I think so.” I leaned closer and set my coffee down with a trembling hand. “What the hell? I swear—” The quality wasn’t great, but when all you saw was a sea of white, you didn’t need high-def resolution.
The snow was falling in droves, making the already shoddy picture worse, but I knew I was seeing something. I had gotten so used to the unblemished views on the cameras, the undisturbed plateaus of white, that anything out of the ordinary would catch my attention as easily as a string of firecrackers going off in a silent library.
“Wraith?” Stone whispered.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean, it could be.”
That’s what we always had to assume. My rational mind thought otherwise. I said, “The lights are too strong. They wouldn’t be able to get this close—”
That was when I saw it again.
A shadowy figure erupted out of the snow, and a cloud of white quickly swallowed it up. This made our view worse, but once the wind took hold of the snow-cloud and blew it away, what the figure was became clearer.
Who it was.
High-def wasn’t necessary to see the fear written on this woman’s face…or to see that she was running for her life.
3
New Arrival
The woman flailed her arms as she drove through the mounds of white. Stumbling and then regaining her balance, stumbling and then regaining her balance—
The watchtower phone was patched directly to Nick Rider’s pager—yes, pager. Rudimentary tech like that made a comeback during the apocalypse. Nick would most likely respond quickly from his office—because it seemed he was always in his office—but on the off-chance he wasn’t there, he would know to get to a telephone or a walkie-talkie as soon as he could. A call from the watchtower was serious business. We had the military to thank for this communication system. Most of the soldiers were dead and gone, but their genius and ingenuity lingered around the City and, for the most part, kept it afloat.
“We’re not crazy, right?” I asked Stone.
He was staring blankly at the monitor.
“That’s a person, is it not?” I said.
“I-I think so.”
“I should call it in.” But what if we were wrong?
What if we were hallucinating, going crazy like Paul Ellis, the man whose own sanity began slipping before he let out the captured wraith that brought a massacre to the City? If anyone thought we were heading in Ellis’ direction, even Nick Rider, we’d be thrown out of the City—all of us.
If we weren’t…well, then the seed would be planted. The people of the City would start questioning our sanity, much like I’d been questioning it since the onset of this apocalypse. And these citizens were already on edge, no matter how quickly they welcomed us newbies. To them, craziness—with the way the world was now—was a prelude to disaster.
My hand hovered over the phone, which was a fitting fire-truck red, signifying not only its importance but reminding me of my past life as well.
“Stone? What should I do?”
He understood the weight of the situation as much as I did.
The idea of a wraith coming this close while the lighthouse’s lantern blazed was illogical. Wasn’t it? Of course—and I’ve said this before—everything about them was illogical.
Stone opened his mouth, stuttered, but gave me no answer.
It was in times like these that I heard my grandmother’s voice in the back of my head. She always told me to follow my heart—because, she would say, the brain trips itself up, but the heart doesn’t; it doesn’t think, it only feels.
My heart told me someone could be in danger. My heart asked: What if that person running through the snow was someone like me, someone just trying to survive? Hadn’t I done the same thing not so long ago? If no one had helped me, not only would I be dead, but so would Mia and Monica.
Those thoughts settled it.
I picked up the red phone, and I dialed Nick Rider’s number.
Nick spoke very slowly and very carefully. His voice sounded tinny, as if he were on another continent instead of a quarter of a mile away. I believed it was either the weather messing with it…or perhaps darker forces, the kind that rooted for our downfall.
“Are you sure, Grady?”
“I’m looking at her right now.”
“I’ll be right down.”
Whiteout (Book 5): The Feeding Page 5