by James Sperl
She pulled away from him and adjusted the light so it illuminated both of their faces.
“Are you okay?” she said, but it came out mouthed: Are you okay?
Dustin nodded. He tried to reply, but he spoke so fast Clarissa couldn't read his lips to make sense of what he was saying. He recoiled at the lack of sound and attempted to say something else, but he became paralyzed with confusion when his follow-up failed to produce anything either. He looked at Clarissa, desperate: What's going on?
Clarissa thought quickly on her feet. Using her finger, she traced letters in the air against the black background. She imagined her finger was a stick of green neon ink.
Words materialized in the pitch and hung in place until she finished writing. She looked at Dustin, who was both enthralled and befuddled. He winced as he read Clarissa's air-tacked note.
we can't talk in here. there's no sound.
Seeming to understand, he attempted to air-write a response and dragged his finger through space. Nothing happened. Clarissa took his arm so he would look at her.
you have 2 imagine it, she wrote. in here we have complete control.
Dustin gave a cluster of nods. He inhaled and tried again. Ice-white letters appeared where his finger traced. His eyes swelled with awe.
are you okay?
yes, Clarissa wrote back. I'm fine. I'm in a room somewhere at Boston Scientific bldg. you must be 2.
Dustin nodded again. He swiped his hand over the floating letters. They dissipated like dense smoke.
It's Donna. she injected something into me.
I know. me 2.
what are we supposed to do in here?
Clarissa shrugged. save the world?
Dustin passed his eyes over the dominating shapes that crawled into blackness hundreds of feet in all directions.
how?
not sure. but I think it has 2 do with that light.
She thrust her flashlight toward the undulating blue light in the distance. Dustin followed her hand then turned back with a start. He quick-scrawled: what the hell is that?
I think it's the g8way from here to wherever ppl go. and look. Clarissa nudged her light back in the same direction, this time indicating the silhouette that roamed indiscriminately in the shadows. there are others here 2.
Dustin peered at the wandering person then flinched in surprise when he discovered a second one even closer.
there's another 1, he wrote.
Clarissa followed his finger and adjusted the light in her hand. The beam glanced dimly off the shoulder of a man, who cowered and threw up a splayed hand over his face.
Donna must b sending everyone she's got in here, she scribbled. She erased her words and followed with, she must really b worried this will be r last chance b4 NF is attacked. She panned the light around again and found a third person huddled on the ground beneath a severely twisted piece of architecture. I've never seen so many ppl in here at 1 time.
Dustin regarded her with horrifying fascination. you've been here b4?
yes.
how did you get out? survive?
Clarissa pinched her lips into a knot of uncertainty. luck?
Dustin dropped his eyes to the blackness beneath his feet in somber contemplation. That Clarissa's experiences in such a lonely and terrifying place so affected him warmed her heart and almost made her forget where she was. Almost.
He scowled and canted his head, as if suddenly aware of something he had overlooked. He pointed at the light in Clarissa's hand.
where did u get the light?
It's like I said, Clarissa air-scribbled. In here if u can imagine it it becomes real.
Dustin looked at the green floating words Clarissa had just scrawled. Their impossible presence seemed to infuse him with a slow-brewing understanding.
anything?
far as I know.
Dustin thought a moment then pinched his eyes closed. A bat appeared in his hand. He gaped at Clarissa, stupefied. He held the bat aloft then closed his eyes again. The bat burst into brilliance, as it transformed into a blue lightsaber à la Star Wars. Dustin grinned with the satisfaction of a twelve-year-old boy.
this is cool.
Despite their predicament, Clarissa managed a smile. It quickly evaporated when she became uniquely aware that Dustin's boyhood manifestation drew attention to them like a bug zapper in a lightless backyard. She waved her hand in front of his face to get his attention then wrote, U need 2 get rid of that!
Dustin understood immediately. His face slackened, as he scanned the never-ending darkness. Thought it wasn't his first time in the Nothing Place, he had yet to experience the shadow creatures. Common sense and intuition took hold: In a place like this, there had to be something bad. As quickly as he had created it, he snuffed out the lightsaber. He stood at attention to see if he had unwittingly summoned something beastly, but when nothing appeared, he found Clarissa again.
I don't understand.
what?
how I can cre8. I've never been able 2 do that b4. the pills Donna gave me only let me have awareness, manipul8 surroundings. never 2 make things.
Clarissa weighed her response. I think it's this place. I think it's a melding of both the dream and the physical world. both exist simultaneously here. She swiped away the floating words to continue. plus, what Donna injected into us is more potent. we can probably do anything here.
This last statement hit Clarissa like a punch to the chest: We can do anything here. Dustin leaned into her meditative, distant stare. He touched her shoulder to pull her back to him.
what is it? he wrote.
An idea came so fast and immediate to Clarissa, she almost burst into giggles. If they could, in fact, will into existence anything they wanted to in the Nothing Place, then they were only limited by their imaginations. She and Dustin had just proven it. She knew nothing of flashlight circuitry, yet a fully functional one had appeared in her hand when she dreamed it. And Dustin had conjured something that didn't even exist, and yet even the most diehard Star Wars fan would be hard-pressed to argue that the lightsaber wasn't real. A flicker of hope burned where there had only been darkness.
I think I have an idea, Clarissa drew, her words sloppy and nearly unintelligible.
Dustin shrugged in anticipation of an explanation, but just as Clarissa prepared to launch into her far-reaching theory, she froze in what she could only describe as horrified glee. Her light had passed over a woman, but it wasn't the sight of another frightened female in the Nothing Place that had her standing at attention like an alert prairie dog: it was that the woman seemed so familiar.
Clarissa stepped toward the woman, training the light beam on the woman's face. The woman turned her head in fear, obscuring herself; she held up dual palms as a defense against the light. Clarissa studied her as the woman trembled in a half-stoop. She was trim and had long, dark hair. Her skin was pale, her exposed arms gaunt beneath the grimy lavender blouse that hung loosely on her frame. In all, nothing about the woman stood out as particularly recognizable. Nothing, that was, except for her shoes.
Clarissa knew those shoes. She was there the day her friend bought a pair of the limited edition Hello Kitty Adidas from a boutique shop in Salem. Clarissa had never seen anyone with a pair before or since, so the odds of running into someone with the same pair of wine-colored, cartoon cat head-tongued shoes—in the Nothing Place of all places—bordered on near impossibility.
She sprinted headlong toward the recoiling figure, who hadn't so much as budged since Clarissa pinned her light to her. Clarissa dropped to a knee in front of her and gently took the woman's shoulders. As she expected, the woman flailed on instinct and fought back, but Clarissa had prepared herself for it. She seized one swinging arm and expertly corralled the other into the same hand that held the first, restraining both of the woman's hands with only one of her own. When she had subdued the woman, Clarissa shined the light still in her free hand directly into her own face.
The woman
calmed. Clarissa nodded enthusiastically and released the woman's hands, taking the opportunity to scrawl rapidly in the air: It's Clarissa.
Clarissa shifted the light to read the woman's expression. Dark, rabbity eyes peered from behind a curtain of tousled black tresses. Slipping a hand inside the veil of hair, Clarissa eased it away from the woman's face.
Rachel gaped back.
She heaved forward and clutched at Clarissa as if she were the only lifeboat on a vast and empty sea. Her body shook, and Clarissa could feel jets of air against her neck and ear where Rachel likely spewed words of relief at having found her. Clarissa peeled her friend's hands away and tenderly forced her back. Rachel jabbered at her soundlessly, her eyes wide with unmistakable terror, as she gestured exaggeratedly. Clarissa held a finger to her lips then tucked Rachel's hair behind her ears to assure clear vision. After Rachel had calmed, Clarissa wrote, there's no sound in here. you have 2 write.
Rachel seemed to understand, and after a much-too-long moment, she dragged her finger over the air. Nothing happened. Rachel gave a depleted, wet-eyed frown, but Clarissa shook her off.
It's okay, she wrote. I'll show u how to do it but we need 2 go. Dustin's here 2. Rachel's saggy eyes rounded with disbelief. It's true. he's over there. Clarissa swiveled and shined her light at Dustin, who scrunched his face and waved from thirty yards away. Donna sent everyone she's taken in here.
Rachel shrugged and winced: to do what?
Clarissa nodded. I'll explain. but first we need 2 join Dustin. stay 2gether. She grabbed Rachel's hand and tugged. The pair started off at a trot, with Clarissa ramping up the pace to a full jog after a few steps, when Rachel wrenched her arm free. Clarissa's momentum propelled her another handful of strides before she was able to look back and shine a light on her friend.
The Nothing Place had already proven that it didn't adhere to the universal laws of physics. Sound was rendered useless, and complex objects could be created out of thin air at will. Clarissa wondered if the same distortion of reality also applied to time. For when she turned to investigate why Rachel had pulled away, what should have been a momentary discovery felt like an eternity of witnessed horror.
Rachel had dropped to a crouch, her eyes cast upward in slanted teardrops of dread. Before Clarissa had the chance to determine the source of her friend's despair, a monstrous shadow swooped down from overhead and engulfed her. In what had likely taken only milliseconds, Rachel was gone.
Clarissa wailed with full-lunged ferocity. She swept the darkness for any sign of her friend, but even in her moment of unhinged anguish, she knew her efforts were wasted. Tears exploded from her eyes, and even though she couldn't hear herself, she felt misplaced satisfaction with every primal scream she unleashed into the blackness.
Rachel's gone.
Dustin crashed into Clarissa from her blindside and snatched up her hand. She whirled in preparation to do battle in this bleak and hideous world but softened upon seeing Dustin.
Run! he shouted mutely at her.
But she couldn't run. Not in here. And though every cell in her body ached to grieve for her friend, Clarissa understood that inaction meant a similar fate.
Heaving the flashlight into the pitch, she clenched Dustin's hands tightly but didn't move. He gaped at her in the hint of light that remained, terrified, and tugged at her to go, but she only watched his eyes, as they transformed from arrant confusion to all-encompassing fear. Then she watched Dustin Taless disappear until he was nothing at all.
CHAPTER 70
Motors droned in an uninterrupted growl. The sound was a deep, resonant thrum that shook the very foundation of New Framingham. It rattled the air and stiffened the men and women who lined the rooftops shoulder to shoulder, their eyes fraught with a deep-trenched fear most had never experienced before.
Andrew did his best to put the malevolent chug of several hundred open-throttled engines from his mind as he searched for Clarissa, but he could no more ignore them than he could convince himself that she remained inside the borders of this doomed community.
He had just finished his sweep of the eastern perimeter, having canvassed the aisle of each shop or service that had yet to shutter its doors, when a breathless Cesare sprinted over to him from out of a scattered crowd of last-minute, would-be soldiers. His crestfallen expression upon discovering Andrew without Clarissa was in direct proportion to the two-ton weight of concern Andrew felt in his heart.
“She's at the Boston Scientific building,” Andrew said. He patted Naomi soothingly on her sweaty back to ease her crying.
“Has to be,” Cesare replied between light pants. “So what do we do? We'll never make it over there before this place erupts.”
“Agreed.” Andrew turned an ear to the sky; the motors were deathly near.
“So what's our play?”
Andrew passed his eyes over the person-dense battle lines that had formed in every pocket of penetrable space along the ground. He trailed to the rooftops and the masses there that strained the integrity of the tarred surfaces upon which they stood and realized that, for the first time in more years than he could recall, his well of ingenuity had run dry—he was out of answers.
In minutes, New Framingham would be under siege from every direction. He didn't need a bird's-eye view of the advancing army to know this. There would be no getting out. There would only be fighting through, something he would have felt infinitely more comfortable attempting were it not for the tiny life that wriggled in his arms and pawed at his chest. It was without question that Clarissa had been taken, probably along with her new friend Dustin. They were at the Boston Scientific building. He was sure of it. It wouldn't surprise Andrew to learn that Rachel was there too. But time was not a friend. Even if he had undeniable proof of their whereabouts, he and Cesare wouldn't be able to cover the ground over to the facility before they were swept up by the war-hungry wasteland army that rumbled toward them. And even if they could make it, they still had the issue of what to do once they got there. It was a colossal shitstorm of a situation. Still, they couldn't sit idly by like lambs to the slaughter. They had to do something.
“We...” Andrew began but trailed off. He spun in place and evaluated the sound of the approaching engines, which seemed to come from everywhere all at once like a white-noise tidal wave. “The safe house,” he blurted finally. “We'll make for the safe house. With any luck, we can get there before the shit hits the fan. But we need to go now.”
Cesare nodded ahead of his response. “I was thinking the same thing.” Both men trotted toward the nearest eastern checkpoint. “Think they'll let us out of here to try? Better yet, will the folks guarding the safe house let us in if we even make it in time?”
Andrew maneuvered past men and women who wandered aimlessly, people who were unsure of where they should be or what they should do. Some stared with blank, shell-shocked expressions, the inevitability of what was about to happen too much to bear. Others wept openly.
“Everyone's too concerned with keeping people out, not holding them in,” Andrew said. He stepped up his pace. Naomi's cries teetered on wails. “As far as the safe house goes, it's an elderly and children's sanctuary.” He nudged his head toward Naomi. “I'd like to see them turn away a baby.”
Cesare dodged a stout man, who charged past him, hands pressed to ears. “I just hope others don't get the same idea,” he said. “If too many people think like us, we could be giving away the loca—”
“Here they come!”
The distant shout came from a rooftop along the western border. Others followed, repeating the claim of the first in a vocal grapevine of fear and panic that daisy chained along the perimeter until all of New Framingham was aflutter with the stark new reality.
They were here.
Andrew's hastened footsteps petered to a stop. He alternated between the northern and southern borders—New Framingham's weakest points—and angled for a view past the brave men and women who guarded them. The rumble of engines was
deafening. The ground shook with their ferocity. Dim light filled in the gaps of darkness between buildings and people until both ends were awash in it. Strings of headlights zipped by open spaces at alarming speeds accompanied by taunting laughs and indiscernible jeers made no less ominous from their lack of clarity.
Andrew felt blood leave his face. He turned as if submerged in viscous liquid. His and Cesare's brief window of opportunity had just been summarily closed. They were trapped.
Cesare gaped at the scene in stunned astonishment. “What...what do we do?”
But Andrew had nothing to offer in response. Even if a checkpoint allowed them out, or they were so fortunate as to locate a rear entrance that had gone overlooked, any attempt to flee now would be suicidal.
Gunshots popped from somewhere across the lot. Milliseconds later, the rooftops along the western perimeter sparkled with gunfire, the sound a cacophony of unrelenting explosions.
“Come on!” shouted Andrew to Cesare, though he had no earthly idea where they would go. On instinct, he whipped around and charged for the nearest store—the Macy's Furniture Gallery. They wouldn't find shelter from what was happening or what would soon happen, he knew, but at least an interior space provided some protection against errant bullets. He cupped his hand around Naomi's head at the thought.
They veered toward the storefront but pulled up sharply—people overran the entrance, clamoring to get inside. Frenzied residents pushed and elbowed, knocking women to the ground. Fights erupted among their male counterparts with brutal efficiency and no small amount of bloody injuries. Fearful screams accompanied the pandemonium, as gunfire expanded to the eastern rooftops and filled the night with flashes of festive light made macabre with their purpose.