Tina cocked her head, not taking her eyes off Colleen. “You wanted to love him, but you couldn’t . . . so you settled for him needing you.”
Colleen felt her chest clench, the breath in her go dry. She felt naked, seen by this being that had been a child, had been human once, and was increasingly becoming something other, something more.
“I thought of leaving,” Colleen managed to say.
“We leave when we can... or when something takes us.” Tina scanned the dark waters, the woods enfolding them, the open gulf of air beyond the jagged coastline.
To the south.
“ ‘Rory was a punk,’ ” Tina repeated to herself, voice nearly inaudible. “And Mr. Stern was a dragon in his heart, long before the Change. Is this,” she spread her spider-fragile hands, through which the light of the campfire could almost be seen to shine, “because of what I am?”
She dropped her hands, and there was resignation and release in the gesture. “Maybe soon I’ll know.”
Her gaze was turned inward, and she floated silent, her soft radiance filling her like an opal, playing over the interior of the tent. Colleen peered at her, sensing her despair, knowing the feeling so well and so long in herself. The fear of abandonment, the fear of loss. Striving to be the best— whether that meant being the prettiest, the most graceful or the toughest on the block, it really boiled down to the same thing. Having value to someone . . . and feeling so afraid of being worth nothing at all.
Colleen ached to comfort her, to say, Everything will be all right. But her heart brooked no false promises, to Tina or herself.
The campfire crackled as a log fell, sending up a firefly swarm of sparks, drawing Colleen’s attention. On the far side of the flame, Cal and Doc and Goldie drowsed in their sleeping bags beneath the dark velvet of the eastern sky. Colleen found her glance lingering on Cal. The amber light of the fire picked out the grave features, the long chin and straight nose, the soft light-brown curls. He looked troubled, even in sleep, saddled with the weight of the world.
“Do you love him?”
Colleen turned her head sharply at Tina’s question, asked in that same small voice. She was drawing breath to say something, though she didn’t know what, when Tina looked up suddenly and her eyes flared.
On the far side of the fire, a huddled form darted, snatched up a leather backpack and tore off into the brush.
“Cal! Doc!” Colleen was on the run, unslinging her crossbow, keeping the shadowy form in sight. It was a puny little cuss, about the size of a child, but it moved incredibly fleetly through the darkness over the uneven terrain.
A light rose up behind her, and Colleen heard the hubbub of Doc and Cal following, one of them having seized a burning stick from the fire. She plunged on, unmindful of the evergreen branches whipping at her face.
The little fucker was moving like greased lightning, despite the weight of the cumbersome pack, gaining ever more of a lead. By his rough silhouette, the pointed, tufted ears that stuck out on either side of his oversized head, the baggy clothes that hung off him, it was pretty damn clear just what he was.
A nightcrawler, like the bunch that had bustled past them on the way to the hospital. That had cornered Cal in the tunnels under Manhattan.
That had once been someone she’d shared her life with. Ahead of him through the cover of trees, Colleen could see a darkness in the rock face.
It was a cave mouth.
Oh no, you don’t, thought Colleen. She raised the crossbow and fired, deliberately missing him. The bolt struck a cedar trunk ahead of him with an authoritative thwak. He let out a cry and ducked away. She reloaded and loosed another arrow. This one lodged in a mound of earth on the far side of him.
The thief flailed in panic, then wheeled and ran directly at them, shrieking like a banshee.
Colleen held her ground, readying for the impact. But before the figure reached her, its foot caught on a root and it tumbled headlong, crashing down with a solid “Oof!” The pack went flying, spinning end over end, bouncing off a thick branch and deflecting into a ravine. It struck an out-cropping in the cliffside and burst open, raining tins of devilled ham and apricots and baby corn into the void.
Colleen leapt to the lip of the chasm, caught the glint of the cans as they fell and were lost. “Great, just great . . . just about every meal for the next week.”
A rustle of leaves alerted her. The invader was trying to crawl away.
Colleen grabbed him, pinned him with her knee to his chest. “Where you think you’re going, you rat bastard?”
“Easy, easy there,” Cal said, drawing up to her. “He’s just a kid.”
And Colleen saw, in the darting milk-white eyes and the trembling chin, that it was true. She eased her knee off him, and the boy scooted back up against the rock face, terrified and cornered. Barefoot, he wore the tattered remnants of jeans and a Darth Maul T-shirt, and Colleen wondered if he shivered from fear or from the cold, if he could feel cold.
Cal crouched down to his level. “What’s your name, son? Where are you from? It’s okay, we’re not gonna hurt you.”
He said nothing, rocking, his arms tight around himself.
Doc pulled a hunk of bread from his pocket, held it out. “Here, boy.” And then, to Colleen’s accusatory glare, “The boy is hungry.”
The nightcrawler boy snatched it, gobbled it down. But he would say nothing to their questions.
And then a warm glow, melting green and red and blue, breached the clearing, and the boy looked up in wonder.
Tina drifted liquid to him, and it was clear from his face that he had never seen her like before. They appraised each other with their altered eyes, tilting their strange, large heads, and there was kinship on their faces, and loss.
“I’m Tina Griffin,” she said, settling before him like a soap bubble, throwing dancing colors onto his face. He squinted at her, the light hurting his eyes but unable to turn them away.
“Freddy Salvo,” he said finally, his words distorted by tumbled razor teeth. “From Brandywine, down the road...”
“Pretty weird, huh?” She nodded at her weightless arms and legs, toward his gray, leeched skin.
Tears pooled in his pale eyes. “This sucks, man. My mom freaked, threw me out on my sorry ass. . . . I try to catch stuff, you know, squirrels and shit, but it’s a joke.”
“Freddy,” Cal kneeled beside him, spoke gently. “Do you have a feeling of someone trying to pull you somewhere?”
“Nah.” His eyes ducked away, furtive. Then, still not looking at them, he mumbled. “I don’t listen to it. Nothin’ to do with me. It’s blurry, far off and shit.”
“Where’s it coming from?”
He considered, then motioned. To the west. The south.
Cal compressed his lips, thoughtful. So it wasn’t just Stern and Tina sensing it, not just New York. It was all the changed ones, at least the three kinds they knew about.
“You not goin’ there, are you?” Dread and awe mixed in Freddy’s voice. “Don’t do it, man.”
Cal asked, “Why?”
This seemed to catch the boy up short. After a moment, he merely gestured, uneasy, vague. Then, watchful of his captors, he rose shakily to his feet. “Can I . . . go?” He eyed them, looking shamed. “Didn’t mean to steal your stuff. Been better, me in that ravine.”
Cal hesitated, weighing the thought before asking, “Would you like to come with us?”
The boy met this with a sharp, fearful intake of air. He shook his head.
Doc asked, “Is there anything we can do to help?”
A kind of desolation passed over Freddy’s face. Again, he shook his head, then turned to leave.
Something made him pause as he passed Tina. He glanced back, her aura dancing in his great white eyes.
“Do you know,” he asked her, “what’s going on? Do you know if we’re gonna be okay?”
His manner was intent, almost pleading. Tina searched in vain for words of comfort. She averted her eyes.
In silence, he disappeared into shadow.
In the morning, Goldie caught a white perch off Gunpowder Falls, which provided them breakfast. But it was clear, with the loss of the pack, that they needed more food. Still, Colleen cautioned against going near cities and the more populous towns.
Under flocks of red-winged blackbirds migrating south, they wound their way across the coastal plain, passing fields of tobacco and corn, along the asphalt tributaries of the 702, the 150, the 97, to the 3, just north of Bowie, near the banks of the Patuxent.
Afternoon found them on a rolling green bluff, peering through stands of sugar maple and white oak at a tiny village of one main street with three blocks of shops and a defunct traffic light. A rusty sign on its periphery, pockmarked by BBs, proclaimed, “Stansbury, pop. 72.” It was so small, they would have passed it by if Goldie hadn’t stopped them.
“No,” he said, squinting fixedly at it. “Here.”
Cal unstrapped his sword, stashed it in the pedicab. And then, with Colleen, Doc and Tina hanging back in the dappled shadows, he and Goldie strolled into town.
The only resident on the main street was a heavy-set woman in a billowy flower-print dress, her long black hair streaked with white, settled in a pine rocker before an empty coffee shop. Its sun-parched, peeling sign read, “The Buttery—Real Home Cooking.”
“That open for business?” Cal asked.
“It is now,” she said, rising with a smile like sunshine emerging from clouds.
There was no meat, but the corn chowder was astounding, and the vegetable stew a marvel.
“Raise ’em myself, in my garden,” the woman—whose name was Lola Johnson—explained as she dished out apple pie. Cal noted that her wrists were twice as big around as his own, yet she seemed robust rather than flabby. “I’ve always had a knack with growing things.”
“And a talent for understatement,” Al Tingly chimed in. Over the course of their meal, other denizens of the town had appeared: Tingly, a lean, stoop-shouldered man who introduced himself as a “hardware merchant”; Laureen Du Costa, who ran the antiques shop three doors down; a scattering of others, none younger than fifty. Goldie eagerly sopped up remnants of stewed tomato with his corn bread. Doc had joined them, too, while Colleen remained secreted with Tina—no need to alarm the townsfolk with visitations, angelic or otherwise.
Stansbury, it emerged, had dwindled since its posted population, its younger citizens having long since fled to brighter horizons, the remnant content to look back on live-lier days and be thankful for present calm.
“Used to get more fresh faces before the interstate bypassed us for New Carrollton,” Laureen said. “But since all this hullabaloo, we’ve been grateful for a little anonymity.”
“You haven’t been eager for authorities to arrive, get everything running again?” asked Doc.
Tingly snorted. “Electricity always was a finicky cuss. We got used to lamps and candles. As for water, our system’s gravity fed, so there’s no squawk there. And if you’re asking us if we’d like a lot of government stooges stompin’ in here and—”
“Don’t get Al started,” Lola cut in, laughing, “or he’ll bend your ear about what a prime SOB Harry Truman was.”
After they had eaten their fill and more, Cal voiced their need to stock up on supplies, and Doc offered to trade medical services. But surprisingly, no one in town had any physical complaints to speak of, nor had anyone fallen afoul of any mysterious new ailments. In fact, since “the Big Nothing,” as Al Tingly called it, even his psoriasis had cleared up.
“Remarkable,” Doc murmured. “To what do you ascribe—”
“Go on, Lola.” Tingly smiled. “Take ’em over and show ’em your potato patch.”
“I could get used to this,” Doc said, as the three of them rocked on the pine glider on Lola Johnson’s porch and the breeze blew through rust and gold maple leaves. The bang of a screen door heralded Lola’s emergence from the house, bearing a tray with pitcher and glasses.
The lemonade, like the rest, was perfection.
Lola settled into a wicker chair opposite them, her expansive frame overflowing it. “Well?” she beamed, throwing her big arms wide to take in the surging tangle of asparagus fern and morning glory that spread across the porch, along the roof line, down the steps. Beyond, in her front yard, flowers the size of hats rivaled in their lushness the corn that stood tall and ready for harvest, the potatoes, yams and carrots bursting from the soil, the trees sagging under the weight of apples, plums and pears. “Not bad for a little Maryland girl with just a spade and hoe.”
“It’s incredible,” Cal said.
“I mean, I was always good, but this—most of it’s been in just the last two weeks. Can you believe that?”
“Oh, yes,” chimed Goldie. “Were any of your neighbors equally fortunate?” asked Doc.
“Well, not at first. But then I’d pop round, putter a little here and there, and. . . .”
“The same results.”
“Let’s just say, I don’t think we’ll be hearing our stomachs growling any time soon.” Her summer-radiant grin appeared and Cal was again struck by the joyfulness of this woman, and her power. Enthroned amid bounty, she seemed like the ghost of Christmas present atop the cornucopia in the Dickens tale, like some primeval spirit of nature.
Which would be cause for celebration in the general run of things, if not for the bodies they had encountered on the road, the predators that roamed free . . . and what awaited them to the south.
Cal rose from the glider, set his empty glass on the tray. “From what I’ve seen, ma’am, I wouldn’t be counting on assistance coming any time soon. Things are getting pretty hairy out there. You might consider being concerned about folks coming ’round who might covet what you’ve got.”
She waved it away with an airy laugh. “Oh, we’re such a little flyspeck, I suspect most folks’ll just sail on by, won’t even know we’re here . . . ’cept nice ones, like you.” Her eyes came to rest on his, full of easy certainty, and somehow, despite all his fears and knowledge, Cal felt reassured.
As the afternoon sun waned, Cal attempted to settle up with Lola Johnson for the foodstuffs, but she insisted they stay the night. Ed Spadaro had been off in Omaha when “the conniption” had happened, prior to which he had entrusted her with keeping an eye on his bed and breakfast.
“It’s moving into the off-season,” Lola noted. “Not that we get much of an on-season, really. We’re quiet folks, and our charms, what little they might be, are subtle.” She added that her perquisites included fixing the rates, which, if she chose, could just damn well be gratis.
In the end, they agreed and gratefully settled into their rooms at the Priory. Under cover of darkness, they spirited Tina into one of the suites. That night, they bathed for the first time in weeks, ate hot food and slept in clean, crisp sheets.
With the exception of Tina, their dreams held no ordeals.
Cal awakened to sunlight glinting through the window and the songs of bobolinks. He stretched, well rested, feeling none of the knots and aches that had plagued him in recent days.
In the clarity of half-wakefulness, his mind drifted over the bounty of Lola Johnson’s garden and how she had felt so certain that the grasping, avaricious ones would pass right on by Stansbury, not give it a second glance—as if she intended not to witness it but somehow to cause it. As she had caused the peaches and pomegranates and sweet potatoes in gardens all over town to swell and grow delectable. As she, if only unconsciously, had brought an equal vitality to her neighbors themselves.
There is a power to the west and the south that caused all this, Stern had said on that fiery rooftop in Manhattan. And everywhere that power had touched, it had sown nightmare and malaise.
Scared and angry and crazy, Tina had added, and that had fit the picture of the merciless force that had shredded the world as conscious and evil—undeniably evil.
But then, how did Lola Johnson fit into that picture? How did thi
s town?
They didn’t.
Floating dreamily, his thoughts flowing free, Cal contemplated the events of recent days, remembered the storm that had come upon New York so suddenly, when his sister had first felt the call that was drawing her, drawing them all, southward.
What if this force were like a storm, and nothing more? A storm might wreck a house if you opened a window and let it in. Or it might nourish a crop to feed a community.
But the storm itself was a force of nature, pure and simple; it held no awareness, no moral sense. It all lay in how it was directed, what channel it was guided through.
By others.
And, if that was the case, then the power that caused all this and the sentience that was scared, angry, crazy . . .
Might be two entirely different things.
Which allowed the possibility of Lola Johnson’s channeling that storm to grow and nurture and heal, a benevolent power that worked her will. That might continue to heal even a wayward traveler, a lost one—
Rising with urgency and hope, Cal pulled on his clothes and hurried down the hall to his sister’s room.
But she was unchanged.
Colleen was in the room with her. Cal had noticed that Colleen was growing closer to Tina, a deeper bond forming, one that might well hold anguish for them both in the days to come. Looking at the two of them now, he put on a gentle smile.
“We’re moving on,” he said.
He found Goldie sitting on the veranda, polishing his Springfield musket—a hopeless effort considering that its metal parts were rusted through and the stock was as dessicated as driftwood.
“Where’s Doc?” Cal asked.
“Loading the last of the jackpot from Mama Nature, I mean, Mrs. Johnson. I hope you like plums. Me, I was holding out for eggplant, but I lost the toss.”
Cal settled beside him on the step. “Thanks for bringing us here.”
Goldie stopped polishing and looked evenly at Cal. “I saw it for what it was. You couldn’t. Mama wouldn’t let you.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured that out.”
Goldie gave him a lopsided grin. “There’s hope for you yet.” He returned to his polishing, whistling a snappy rendition of “Whatever Lola Wants.”
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