Just then, a piercing scream cut the air, riveting all of them where they stood. It was the six-forty train from Ogdensburg, going through.
“Christ,” said Shingo. “I really hope that’s coming from the engine, and not from the passengers.”
“If it’s pulling sleeping cars, that’s the engine,” said Hjerald. “If they’re coach cars, it’s even odds.”
“We ought to get back to the research,” said Fuji, trying to lighten the mood of the room. “What was it we were talking about?”
“The end of the world,” said Hjerald. “And …” he stopped, eyes glued to the floor where the thin rivulets of blood flowing down Meredith’s leg was pooling.
“What’s that all about?” Hjerald asked, beginning to point.
“Nothing, Van Hassel!” Shingo snarled, stepping between them. “It’s nothing. Right, Meredith?”
Meredith swallowed hard, but didn’t answer. Not one of them looked at the others. Meredith moved to sit down, then dropped the book which she’d still been holding on the floor beside her, open.
June picked it up, and with the briefest glance at her leg, stood next to Hjerald. “I agree with Fuji,” he said, assuming the role of peacemaker. He wasn’t certain just what was taking place, here, but he realized that perhaps they had all been in too close of quarters for a little too long. “We ought to be wrapping up our studies, but I don’t think that we need to do it all tonight.”
“That’s right,” Hjerald chimed in, “no telling how long this Ragnarok business will take.”
Then, Shingo spoke—not mentioning Meredith’s bleeding leg— “Did your stepfather—Langbein—have a brother?”
“No—as. As far as I knew, Michael was an only child.”
“Okay,” said Shingo, “but maybe his parents … I mean, until a few years ago, you thought that your mother had been faithful to …”
“Don’t go there.”
“Sorry.”
Hjerald stretched and yawned. “I won’t mind going to sleep. For all we know, this could all just be a bad dream—maybe that’s all the end of the world is anyway: a bad, bad, dream.”
As if in response, June moved to the side of the couch where Fuji was sitting, sipping Delna’s lemonade. He cleared his throat, then began to read from the book Meredith had dropped.
“The sun will go black
earth sink in the sea,
heaven be stripped
of its bright stars:
smoke rage
and fire,
leaping the flame
lick heaven itself.”
He stopped, closing the book.
“Look,” said June, motioning to the tall windows.
Outside, beneath the orange glow of the horizon, flakes of snow were beginning to fall, drifting lazily across the face of the dark sun.
O O O
After everyone had said nervous goodbyes at Soame’s, agreeing to meet again the next morning, June and Delna, still fussing over Fujiko, bundled her off to bed, and Shingo walked Meredith home, spending most of the walk apologizing profusely for accidentally injuring her, however slight it may have been. He insisted that he’d merely been caught up in the whirl of stories, and he’d let his anxiety overwhelm him.
He also apologized for snapping at Hjerald, who likely would hold less of a grudge for Shingo’s temper than Meredith would. He attributed it to the pressures of the past few days, and swore he would make it up to the wonky journalist as soon as he had the opportunity, but she kept him tentatively unforgiven until they got home anyway, ending up—no surprise, here—in her bed.
The first time Meredith and Shingo made love, she didn’t dare ask how old he was, but she knew he had graduated only the year before. That, along with the letters from her father put Shingo at approximately the legal age to keep her from getting arrested, but then again, she couldn’t be entirely sure.
That night, rolled into a comforter on her bed, Shingo laughed when she asked him about it. “Of course I’m eighteen,” he said jovially. “My birthday was about six weeks before you moved here, so I guess we’re both lucky, seeing as we’re both near our sexual prime.”
“You jerk,” Meredith said, throwing a pillow at him. “I’m only twenty-six—women don’t hit their stride until their mid-thirties. You, on the other hand, start winding down in about three years, so maybe I’d better start looking around for another young buck …”
He looked so crushed that she immediately jumped up and wrapped her arms around him. “I’m only joking, you know.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want me to read you a story?”
“You’re teasing.”
“Do you want me to go away?”
“Now you’re just being mean.”
“Do you want to do it again?”
He looked at her, passive, but said nothing. His unblinking eyes seemed to be searching hers, as if trying to answer a different question—one she hadn’t asked.
He didn’t answer, but merely held her tighter.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
He responded by kissing her, hard. Meredith threw her legs around his hips, and wrapped together, they fell back onto the bed.
O O O
Meredith suspected it was Fujiko, standing on her porch, listening. She couldn’t be certain, though.
She and Shingo had fallen asleep after their enthusiastic lovemaking, which she enjoyed more than she dared to admit. She might tease him unmercifully, but there’s something to be said for being romantically involved with a young buck.
Meredith woke up, presumably to get a drink of water, and saw a shadow standing outside on the porch. It was out of range of the gauzy moonlight, and Meredith had put out her lights when she and Shingo arrived, so all that was visible was a silhouette. She thought now it was a sound that woke her; perhaps the creak of a step, or the snapping of a twig. Whatever it was, she was now fully awake, naked, and staring out her window at a dark personage who might’ve been staring back at her.
Meredith was trying to decide what to do, whether to yell for help, or wake Shingo, or find her Louisville slugger, or do nothing, when abruptly, the figure turned and shuffled back down the walk to the street. There was something familiar about the movements—certainly, she’d decided, this person was no threat—and her suspicion was borne out when the shadow paused to fire up a handheld lantern, and the glow lit up the meek, polite features of Fujiko Kawaminami.
Perhaps she had felt what Meredith was feeling; change was coming, great change. It might have even happened already, moving into their homes and lives like cold moonlight, invisible, its presence only hinted at by a cold draft of air in closed rooms. Meredith gazed into the dark reflections of the mirrored vanity; Hjerald was right—strands of gray permeated her usually dark hair. She had begun to feel other changes as well, though their exact nature she could not discern. Like the hair, maybe the changes are gradual, so that she doesn’t question them, but instead awakens one morning and wonders if her hair was ever any color other than gray. It’s said that every seven years, all the cells in a person’s body will have been completely replaced by new cells. Completely. But, your arm is still your arm, your eyes still your eyes, and your thoughts still the thoughts of the person you believe to be yourself—only the person thinking them is not the same person you were seven years earlier, or will be seven years hence. Meredith wondered—if the change happened more quickly, if the cells were replaced in a matter of days rather than years, would she notice? Would she still be Meredith Strugatski? Or would she be someone different, whose only connections to the person that was are memories and thoughts that feel right, because she cannot remember otherwise?
Outside, in the darkness that is the river, the ships of state and commerce that spanned the great distances between their home ports and the cities beyond the Seaway continued to sail, but not for affairs of trade—they had become one and all, the great theatrical Viking barges of old, carrying their cargo to t
he reward of Valhalla. As with the originals, the ships were consumed in flame; unlike on these vessels, however, the men on the Viking barges were already dead.
Meredith stood at her window for a time longer, watching the glow above the river, and she imagined that she could hear the screams; though she realized that if she indeed could hear something, it was more likely to be coming from the town rather than the river. Thus comforted, Meredith went to bed.
***
Chapter Four
Thor’s Day
It began with the children; sixteen gone missing in three days. Next, came the slaughter of the livestock; cattle, goats, sheep—killed in their tracks in the fields, and in their pens as they slept. Then, one by one, the people of Silvertown began to vanish. At first, the disappearances were attributed to the griffins (once domestic automobiles) and the manticores (foreign automobiles), until people realized that the odd beasts were basically lazy, and were only dangerous within a fifty-foot radius of where they were parked. Also, there was no blood, no sign that they had disappeared due to violence. A meeting was called at Soame’s to discuss the situation.
Walking the few blocks to The Pickle Factory, Meredith for the first time began to wonder if the odd feelings she’d been having were more than that—she began to wonder if she was doing terrible things. She began to wonder, if the only real monster in town …
… Was herself.
Meredith lost the train of thought when she saw Fuji heading in the other direction, towards the town’s edge. Meredith waved and yelled, but Fuji didn’t seem to hear her. It was cold—Fuji was wearing a heavy, lined anorak, but Meredith could see tints of blue on her hands around the small bundle of flowers she was holding. If it’d been her, Meredith thought, she’d’ve taken gloves, but Meredith wasn’t really one to correct her elders.
Meredith met up with Hjerald, who was lugging his satchel down the sidewalk, just outside Soame’s.
“Greetings, Reedy,” he said, waving. “Nice morning for a nuclear winter, isn’t it?”
The snow had continued throughout the night, and by morning, several inches had accumulated. At least there was no fear of traffic on slick roads—not unless you stepped too close to a hungry car, that is. Hjerald had come to the conclusion that nuclear deployment of some kind had to be involved; it certainly went a long way towards explaining the electrical, mechanical, and communications failures, as well as the atmospheric conditions. It didn’t do diddly squat, though, regarding the disappearing people and animals, or the machines that had suddenly developed independent streaks and matching appetites. They went in to Soame’s together.
“Hi, Glen, Delna,” Meredith said as cheerfully as she could manage. “How was your night?”
“Not too bad,” said Glen. “Delna spent the first half of the evening shaving my back …”
“Ooo-kayy …”
“… And I spent the rest of the night shaving hers.”
“Whoa, dude,” said Hjerald. “Too much information.”
Meredith was either tired, lacking caffeine, or both, because that concept sounded eminently logical at the moment—in the poor clouded light, Delna did look as if she had as much stubble as Glen. Not that Meredith felt herself to be any great prize, herself. The town water had given out that morning, and it made her hair look awful. For some reason, not having a shower seemed to coat her in a lacquer of dowdiness; her skin looked mottled, and her breasts seemed to be sagging. It probably didn’t help that her diet had been irregular all week—something she was bound to hear about from Delna or Fuji, sooner or later.
Meredith looked at the faces of the men sitting around the main hall (of course, she thought wryly, gathering to discuss important situations was only a job for the menfolks, the women not havin’ the inclinations to sully their brains with such drivel, bein’ preoccupied with cookin’ and birthin’ babies, and the like): Lloyd Willis and Mayor Stanley; Mel Gibson, a teacher from the other end of town; Eddie Wallace, an engineer and gentleman farmer (meaning what he plants dies a quick and painful death); Vernal Solomon, whose family were among the original settlers, and whom the street The Pickle Factory was on was named for; and Harley Cole, who came in just behind Meredith and Hjerald, beet-red and mad as a hornet.
Cole, like Vernal Solomon, was another of the town elders who was loved and respected for three reasons: he was a living repository of town history; he knew more about farming than anyone in three states; and he had used a hickory switch to beat the living daylights out of every current member of the town council when they were boys whom he had caught stealing his corn. Cole lived close to the river, and had once survived a flash flood by perching atop his roof, wearing only longjohns and a hat. When the rescue team got out to his property, Shingo, who was six and had tagged along in the boat, laughed and pointed at the ‘King who had no clothes’ (it was actually the Emperor who’d had no clothes, but hey—he was six, and it was funny). Everyone called him Old King Cole after that.
“I guess I’ll start,” said Eddie. “I think we all know a lot of kids and people have gone missing, so me and the Mayor called this meeting to decide what to do. But what I’m really worried about is my cattle.”
“Same here,” said Mel Gibson. “I lost a lot of sheep. Gruesome. A terrible sight.”
“That’s right!” said Harley Cole, stepping to the center of the room, “It was the most awful thing I ever saw!” he sputtered, furious. “My sheep! My poor, poor sheep!”
“It’s all right,” said Eddie, patting him on the back in sympathy. “We’re all here discussing that very thing. As a matter of fact, I stopped at your place on the way, but you weren’t home.”
“Of course I weren’t home!” spat Harley. “I were … I mean, I was out in the field takin’ care of my sheep!”
“Taking care of them?” put in one of the others. “You mean some of them survived?”
“Well, of course they survived—my point is, what kind of wool am I gonna get, them being traumatized and all?”
Everyone in the room just stared at Old King Cole and blinked. Finally, Hjerald spoke up. “Mr. Cole? Sir? Just what in hades … I mean, what are you talking about, exactly?”
“That awful beast,” said Harley bitterly. “That abomination. I heard the noises—Nellie’s got a bell collar—around five, and went out to the barn, but …” he paused, looking around for Shingo, “… Bein’ in my skivvies, I didn’t want to go in too far. Lucky I didn’t, too—or it’d a buggered me after he was done with Nellie.”
“Nellie?” asked Hjerald.
“His prize sheep,” Mel explained.
“Did I hear you right,” said Glen. “You say he was, ah … Assaulting your sheep?”
“Darn tootin’,” said Harley. “He was covered in fur, like an animal, and he had a good hold on ol’ Nellie. I looked in the barn, and there he was, huffin’ and puffin’ and makin’ a terrible racket. By the time I got some britches on and brought out my rifle, he was gone.”
They were a still life: ten speechless people looking incredulously at this one extremely bothered farmer.
“Well,” said Eddie, “I’m at a loss as to how to follow up on that.”
“Wait,” said Harley, digging in his pocket. “I got something, here. My Nellie, she put up a fight, she did,” he said proudly. “I got a sample of the bastard’s blood here on ’er hooves.”
He displayed a handkerchief smeared with blood. “George?” he said loudly, “George, are you here?”
“Right here, Harley—and I’ve got Oly with me.”
George Daves was the seventh-grade science teacher at the school, but mostly he was known as having the best tracking dog in St. Lawrence County; Oly, a grouchy, greying, three-legged shepherd-husky mix, could track a paper hat down the Amazon River, then return it to the forest where the trees had been milled to make the paper. Harley handed the handkerchief to George, who stuck it under Oly’s nose. “Here you go, boy—go get ’em!”
Oly was off like a sho
t—at least, as fast as he could shoot on three legs. He bolted straight out the front door of Soame’s …
… Then turned around and bolted straight back in.
Bypassing the men at the tables, Oly ran to the side door leading to the Kawaminami’s private residence, pushed it open, and disappeared. A few moments later, there arose a terrific commotion from within, followed by a triumphant barking: Oly apparently thought he’d cornered his prey in the library.
George winced. “Sorry about that, June,” he said.
Hjerald looked doubtfully at the science teacher. “Are you sure his leg is all he’s missing?”
George rose from his seat, scratching his head. “Oly almost never misfires—maybe once or twice since he was a pup. It’s probably all those old books—he did the same thing when we walked him around town after Vasily was killed.”
“Hey Harley,” said Mel, who had gone with June and several of the others to retrieve the dog, “I think you’re gonna want to see this.”
George, Hjerald, and Meredith followed the others through the doors, then down the iron staircase and across the landing to where Mel, June, and the Mayor were trying to keep Oly from bounding across the broad desk and ripping out Rod Bristol’s throat.
As if nothing unusual was occurring, Rod watched the bewildered group with a bemused look as he continued calmly cataloguing and stamping books. As on the day before, he was dressed nattily in a grey and pink pinstripe suit with a double-breasted jacket; unlike then, his hair was unkempt, his glasses cracked, and every inch of exposed skin was covered with a thick, bristly black fur.
The room also smelled very strongly of sheep.
“Gentlemen,” said Bristol, “I’m afraid there are no dogs allowed in the library.”
“You bastard!” bellowed Harley. “You skeered my best sheep! My Nellie!”
“Now Harley,” began the Mayor, “Oly just made a mistake, that’s all …”
“Nellie?” said Bristol. “Is she the one with the bells? She’s very soft, you know.”
Mythworld: Invisible Moon Page 7