by Mark Fenger
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Tom awoke to the smell of smoke. He sat up with a shock before his eyes were fully open. “Sorry Pa, I must have slept late. Is breakfast done?” He blinked and cleared his eyes. No campfire, no Pa… that chapter of his life was long past. That was a relief. His Pa would have whipped him something fierce for sleeping in.
Giles laughed. “Your Pa’s not here to take care of your ass boy.”
Tom sniffed again. No campfire, but there was a strong smell of smoke in the air. He looked over the side of the tower. The Mist below flickered orange where the Draggers had set the town alight, and in the distance two of the town’s fifty or so refuge towers were burning.
Oleg stood beside him. “Must be a smart ‘un leadin’ them, usin’ fire like that.”
Agatha snorted a laugh. “Too bad we don’t have a smart ‘un leading us.”
Oleg grinned at her. “Now now, try an’ act civilized, Injun.”
Agatha stood and stepped toe to toe with Oleg who was a head and a half taller than her. “Civilized, like stealing other people’s possessions?”
“That’s for yer own protection little miss.”
“Protecting us from what? Most dangerous thing up here is your damn snoring!”
An uproar of laughter below broke the conversation. Tom peered over the side, but couldn’t see a thing through the Mist. “I don’t like it. What’re they doin’ down there?”
Oleg whipped open the trap door and leaned through the hole. “Shit, they’re climbin’!” He pulled out the revolver and blasted a half dozen shots at the Draggers. The grinning mock-humans just continued their climb though, steady as ever.
Agatha whistled, mock-impressed. “Where’d you learn to shoot like that Ace? You couldn’t hit the ground throwin’ a rock!”
“Shut up!” Oleg quickly reloaded, dropping several cartridges from shaking fingers as the Draggers came ever closer. They smelled of the wild, and leered up a the humans with hungry eyes, laughing and chuckling as they came.
Willow screamed and Tom turned to see an arm reaching over the side of the tower wall. He ran forward as the perverted human face appeared and lashed out with a straight right, smashing the thing’s nose flat. She blinked, but continued to haul herself upwards. Tom grabbed a finger and pulled. It broke with a loud pop. He broke another, and another, but the Dragger threw her leg over the wall, ignoring him completely.
The blast of the revolver next to Tom’s head deafened him. The beast’s head exploded, and she fell backwards off the tower. A fine mist of blood and gore settled all around.
“See I can hit ‘em!” Oleg grinned at Agatha.
Agatha snorted. “Well dog my cats, we should call you Captain Crackerjack with shootin’ like that. Two feet away and you didn’t even hit dead-centre.”
At the trap-door Giles was busily kicking and stomping at fingers. Tom ran over and slammed the door with a satisfying crunch of broken cartilage and bone. “Take that!” He jumped on the door, causing a new wave of crackles and pops. “Hah! Try climbing with all your fingers broken!” He whipped the door open again and several grinning faces fell away, still laughing, only to be silenced when they finally hit the ground.
The few remaining Draggers retreated, and that was the end of the assault.
Other than the mist below, the weather was beautiful, the warm sun beat down, comforting at first, but as dehydration set in it became a curse. The Mist showed no signs of receding as it normally would, if anything it was thickening in the midday sun. The Draggers stayed on too, their cackling echoed from every corner of Milton.
Three nearby towers fall to Dragger attacks that day. The six refugees in the tower did their best to shield themselves from the sun, but they were all burned and peeling by evening, throats raw and tongues swollen from thirst.
As night approached the Mist grew thicker and taller than ever. It lapped around the walls of their refuge, as if searching for a way in. Several ropy tendrils snaked through the cracks around the trap door.
Tom saw them first. “Mist coming in!”
Giles turned and saw the smoky worm creeping toward him. He screamed like a little girl and scrambled up the side of the tower wall, where he stood balancing on the thin rail. Oleg followed suit, but lay down across a corner in the wall. It looked uncomfortable, but he didn’t risk falling like Giles.
The others backed away and the wisps of Mist, deprived of their targets, scrabbled uselessly for purchase against the walls underneath Oleg and Giles. Then they paused, as if sniffing the air, and turned toward Tom.
It was extremely rare for someone to be turned before their nineteenth birthday, but Tom wasn’t taking any chances. He hopped up on a corner and imitated Oleg. Not as uncomfortable as it looked, although he sincerely hoped he wouldn’t have to sleep that way.
With nobody old enough left to attack, the mist tendrils seemed to give up, they returned to the trap door and slithered down through the cracks. Slowly the mound of Mist under their tower flattened out as if exhausted from the effort.
In the distance, moonlight illuminated mounds of Mist attacking the other towers. Screams of fear from humans, and laughter from the freshly turned Draggers told the story. The town of Milton was being overrun. Around midnight clouds rolled in, obscuring the moon and rescuing the survivors from the morbid sight of the other towers falling, one by one. Shrieks of laughter and terror mingled together through the long night.
In spite of their exhaustion, not one of the six refugees in the tower slept.
Episode 1