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by Matthew Costello

  It felt as if that bit of weight on his foot could send him sliding again.

  Joe moved so that he just held the ankle, his elbow resting on the stone.

  “I don’t know, Simon. I mean, I don’t know if I can do anything.”

  He tugged at Simon’s leg.

  Once, again, and then:

  “What are you doing?”

  Joe stood up, so slowly, the stone seeming more like chunks of ice now.

  “I’m going to go get help.”

  Simon nodded. They’d get in trouble. But he needed an adult to help him.

  “Okay. Go do that. And hurry.”

  Joe nodded back. Simon watched him turn and start down the trail. He moved slowly.

  Simon wished he’d race down the trail—but he knew that wouldn’t be safe.

  So he had to lie there, caught, his face flush against the stone trail as Joe took each careful step back down.

  Simon felt the wind blowing around him, the sky losing its color, the stone that had tripped him up making him cold, scared …

  And then as Joe vanished around a bend … alone.

  * * *

  “One of them did something?” Christie said, her fear turning to anger. “Which one?”

  Kate shook her head.

  Their voices were low, but others heading into the dining room could see them, standing there, talking so seriously.

  “Does it matter, Mom? Does it?”

  “I’ll—talk to someone. God, you’re fourteen.”

  Christie looked away.

  Then Kate put a hand on her mother. “Nothing really happened. I went somewhere I shouldn’t have. I got scared. I was stupid.”

  It’s this place, Kate thought.

  This fortress of guns and people sealed away, hiding.

  Then, as if suddenly clear, she thought: this isn’t a good place.

  “Okay. We’ll talk more later?”

  Kate nodded.

  “As long as you’re okay.”

  “I am. I’m … okay.”

  She touched Kate’s cheek.

  Then put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Now, I have to find your brother. You haven’t—”

  But those words died with the sound of voices coming from the entrance to the inn, shouts—and then she heard her name being called.

  She let her hand slip from Kate’s shoulder, fear again returning.

  The voices shouting, excited, alarmed.

  She turned and looked in that direction, to the men, standing, talking to a kid.

  Simon’s friend.

  The older kid.

  One of the guards leaning down, nodding.

  Another watching as Christie walked—and then ran to them.

  * * *

  Simon looked down at the inn, trying to see Joe, but a jagged tree trunk blocked his view of the big door.

  Come on, he thought. Hurry!

  He felt so alone here. The only sound other than his breathing was the wind making some nearby leafless branches shake and scratch the rock.

  Nothing else alive up here, he thought.

  He closed his eyes for a moment, thinking it would be better.

  Just keep them closed until people showed up and got him out of here.

  But when he did that, it seemed worse, with only those two sounds and the cold of the stone against his face, his body feeling the jagged pieces of rock that he lay on.

  So he opened them.

  And looked to the left, out to the far end of the mountain where the inn ended, and the mountain led to the road down.

  He blinked.

  He had thought that he was all alone.

  That he was the only thing alive here while he waited for people to come. To help him.

  But now, looking at the sloping ground far from the inn, he saw … movement.

  His eyes stayed locked on the movement he saw.

  What is it? he thought.

  Then he noticed that there was movement in a lot of different places. Shapes moving among those trees that still had green needles, and also among others, the ones that had died long ago and stood there like … like …

  Skeletons.

  His eyes now not even looking down at the trail to see if anyone was coming for him because these moving shapes had him staring so hard.

  People, he thought.

  People coming up the mountain.

  Maybe people from the inn? Guards?

  Is that who he was seeing? Because, yes, they definitely looked like people as the moving things took on a clearer shape.

  He saw legs, heads turning.

  None of them using the road.

  Sneaking up.

  All of them sneaking their way up through the tree trunks, the bushes, and the tall pine trees.

  Almost hidden.

  Secretly, he thought.

  Moving so secretly.

  In a way, in a place, that no one would see them.

  People moving.

  Except he knew, looking at them now, after everything he had seen and done.

  He knew.

  These weren’t people at all.

  33

  Surrounded

  Christie leaned down to the boy, his name escaping her for a moment.

  “What’s going on?” she said. “Where’s Simon?”

  But one of the guards touched her shoulder.

  She didn’t take her eyes off the boy.

  “He’s still up on the trail,” the guard said. “We’re going now.”

  Christie pulled back from the boy. “Me too.”

  “Best you stay—”

  Christie’s response was to head out the door, pushing it open, the men hurrying to follow her.

  The cool air hitting her skin. She hadn’t noticed how it had started to darken already, the mountain casting a big shadow, the sun nearly down.

  She had to stop for a moment once outside.

  Where was the mountain trail; how did Simon and those other kids know how to find it?

  The guards ran past her, one of them turning to her, accepting the inevitable.

  “This way,” he said.

  Christie ran full out to keep up with them, circling around the side of the lake, heading toward the sheer wall of the cliff, the mountaintop ahead, and the trail where something had happened to her son.

  * * *

  Simon kept looking.

  Suddenly, it seemed to him that no one was coming for him.

  He had a bad thought.

  What if something had happened to Joe?

  What if he never got back to the inn?

  And now, down there, all these—

  (He let himself think the word.)

  —Can Heads were coming toward the inn, on the ground, all around it.

  He started counting them.

  One. Two. Three. There … a fourth. Over there—a fifth!

  Were there others that he couldn’t see? More on the other side?

  Then: could they see him?

  And if they could see him, would they come up here, seeing him not moving?

  Almost as if he was waiting for them.

  Again thinking, begging …

  Hurry.

  He gave another yank with his leg.

  But again it didn’t budge.

  * * *

  Christie followed the men, climbing over the barrier, scrambling to keep up with them.

  The trail was closed. All this shifting rock … so dangerous.

  Yet Simon had come up here.

  She felt angry. How could he do that? Then, angry that the guards, all these men supposedly keeping them safe, had somehow let kids come up here, climb up here, away from the inn where anything … anything could happen.

  And even then she knew that underneath all that anger, there was really only one clear and overwhelmingly powerful feeling. Fear.

  She slipped once on the smooth rock, sidestepping the rubble that seemed to litter that path all the way up.

  How far up w
as he? Would he be okay, and if not, if not—

  The thoughts distracting her from paying attention to the tricky climb up the path, but then a misstep suddenly calling her back to attention.

  She started to lose her breath.

  The thought: I should have been doing more exercise inside the inn. You never know when you would need to move fast, to run.

  She wouldn’t let that happen again.

  Need to stay in shape.

  All the time.

  She opened her mouth wide to force in as much air as possible.

  * * *

  Simon balled up his fists. His fingers so cold.

  The Can Heads below had spread out.

  He could see them, almost taking their time as they moved this way and that, as if studying the building.

  Monsters looking for a way into the castle, he thought.

  That’s what they’re doing.

  And though he had been worried that they would see him …

  That one of those … things … would scurry up here, and squat down beside him, and, and …

  Now he was worried for his mom. For Kate.

  Just them.

  Neither of them knowing that the Can Heads were there, outside, and getting closer.

  There was nothing he could do.

  No way he could warn them.

  All he could do was watch.

  * * *

  Gasping, yards away behind the men, the trail at this speed, this angle … punishing.

  But then one of the men’s voices.

  “I see him!”

  She pleaded: let him be okay.

  The hope—the sweet, elusive hope—that he would be okay.

  She would make any deal, any promise to anything, anyone, if he would simply be … okay.

  Christie ran even harder, stumbling as rocks slipped, tugging on the wooden, splintery handrail until she too could see Simon, lying on the path.

  She called out: “Simon!”

  And in seconds, she was beside him.

  One of the men turned to her.

  “He got his foot wedged.”

  Christie couldn’t hug him, but she cradled his head.

  “You okay, Simon? You all right?”

  She expected him to nod and say he was okay. That he slipped. Got his foot caught.

  One of the men already leaning over the edge, looking at how his foot had become trapped.

  But he didn’t nod.

  Didn’t smile.

  And what he said …

  What he said …

  “Mom. They’re coming. Right down there.”

  Then louder as Christie became aware that the men were listening, turning, looking … “They’re down there and nobody can see them.”

  Now Christie turned and looked down the mountain, and for a second, she saw nothing.

  Then—God—they were so clear.

  The bodies moving through the woods, close to the inn, picking their way through the brambles and fallen limbs of dead trees, moving steadily.

  One of the men, looking as well, spoke. “Shit.”

  Then another. “We gotta get going. Gotta warn everyone.”

  The third man, leaning over the edge, tugging at Simon’s leg.

  “He really got it jammed in here.”

  “Come on,” another man said.

  Christie took her eyes away from the figures below, pausing to look at Simon.

  Gonna be okay.

  Then she said to the man working on the trapped foot:

  “Is it—”

  But the man turned. “I have to undo the laces, work his damn foot out.” Then, almost impatiently, as if telling the others not to rush him. “Hang on.”

  More moments, and everyone’s eyes turned to what was going on outside the inn.

  One of the men had gone farther up the trail. “I’m gonna fire a shot. Warn them down there.”

  But the guard beside him said, “Then they’ll see us. Know we’re here. They could—Christ—cut us off.”

  But the man raised his gun and let off three blasts, the sounds of the firing echoing off the sheer cliff wall.

  “There. Okay,” the man said, helping Simon as his foot sprung free of the sneaker and the crack.

  The man turned around, and Christie watched him yank at what had to be the sneaker.

  She helped Simon up.

  “There. Damn.”

  The man swung back from the edge, and handed the sneaker to Simon.

  “Get that on as fast as you can, son.”

  Christie watched Simon bend down and slide his foot into the sneaker, doing the laces up quickly, her hand on his shoulder.

  “We gotta go,” the man who had fired the warning shots said.

  “Stupid,” his friend said. “Firing—goddamn.”

  Simon stood up.

  “Ready,” Simon said.

  Christie took his hand, and now they trailed the men who, having freed Simon, acted as though Christie and Simon’s getting back to the inn, getting back safely, wasn’t their problem at all.

  So Christie held Simon’s hand tight as they went down the trail.

  * * *

  They hit a point where they couldn’t really see the woods that surrounded the inn, that mix of dead trees, bushes, and the few stands of pines that somehow grew in this new world.

  Christie knew everyone had to be thinking:

  We’re running down, off this mountain, right into Can Heads.

  And she had this added thought …

  I don’t have my gun.

  The weeks of quiet had lulled her.

  She kept trying to move Simon as fast as he could, holding his hand, taking care that neither of them slipped on the loose rock, the men so far ahead of them.

  Almost abandoning them.

  Yeah, she thought. Fear of Can Heads will do that.

  Who wouldn’t want to get away?

  When things were coming … things that wanted to eat you.

  Nothing more primal than that.

  Not a goddamn thing.

  Until finally she saw where the trail ended, level ground. The lake ahead, the path curling around to the inn.

  Still moving fast, she leaned down to Simon.

  “We have to run, Simon. As fast as you can. Okay?”

  He had said nothing since pointing out the Can Heads. Now he just answered, “Okay.”

  And as soon as Christie hit the level ground of the path, with no more rubble, she started to run, though her lungs still hurt from before, pulling Simon behind her.

  * * *

  Not seeing anyone for a minute.

  Though one of the men stopped, and looked back at them, impatiently waving at them to hurry.

  Guess it wouldn’t look so good to go out and rescue someone, and then lose both him and his mother.

  She could see the building, massive, but now with those things moving around it.

  Like rats, she thought. Looking for a way in.

  All the so-called safety of this place vanishing.

  Maybe they’d become complacent.

  What people do.

  Get complacent. Make mistakes. Then pay the price.

  The man waving at them, waiting, gun lowered.

  “Almost there,” she said to Simon between gasps of air.

  Until, curving around the small lake, she saw the main entrance to the inn.

  Men outside, guns ready.

  Reminding her of a painting.

  The men with guns, waiting for others to get inside.

  Guns ready, attackers coming.

  Remembered from a museum trip she took with her high school class, centuries ago.

  Last Stand at the Alamo.

  She risked a look to the right, to where the jumble of trees and dead limbs ran near the road, near the inn.

  And she moaned as she saw two of them, running.

  So fast—and bolting right for Simon and her.

  34

  Kick the Can

  The g
uards positioned by the door saw the two Can Heads, and Christie watched them raise their weapons.

  But to hit the Can Heads, the men would need to shoot through her and Simon as they ran to the inn.

  They held their fire—and Christie didn’t look back.

  Until they reached the group of men and she heard someone say, “Now!”

  And the guns fired behind Christie and Simon, blast after blast, the sound deafening, the shots echoing off the nearby mountain wall.

  They kept on running into the building.

  Where mayhem prevailed.

  * * *

  The Colonel stood in the lobby pointing, giving his orders to men, each holding a gun, as they raced up to him.

  She also saw Helen, her riot shotgun in hand, standing near him, but her eyes fixed on the entrance.

  As soon as Helen saw Christie, she came running over.

  Her first words to Simon:

  “You okay?”

  The boy nodded. Christie held him close, though part of her wanted to yell at him, so angry that he had put himself in so much danger.

  So foolish.

  But that was overshadowed by the tremendous relief she felt.

  He was okay. They were okay.

  And then her mind came back to what was happening.

  “I—I should get my gun,” Christie said.

  “Hang on. You should go back to your room. Get your gun, sure. But stay there. They got enough guys with guns running around here. You—go up with your kids. I told Kate to wait there.”

  Kate.

  She had forgotten all about Kate, the boy who tried to do something with her.

  Her kids suddenly pushing against the limits of this place. This place suddenly not safe at all.

  “What are you gonna do?”

  Helen raised her gun a bit.

  “See if they could use some real firepower outside.”

  “No. Stay with us.”

  “Look. I think there’s only a few of them out there. The shots dying down already. Though, gotta tell you one thing…”

  Helen came closer so only Christie could hear.

  “Seemed like it was kind of a planned attack. Y’know, a surprise. Working together.”

  Christie nodded. She thought of the people at Paterville.

  Who looked so normal.

  Were the ones outside like that?

  Able to think, plan?

  Trying to sneak around the building, find a way in.

  In which case—

  She gave Simon’s shoulder a squeeze.

  Simon had given the alert.

  He might have made the difference between a bunch of dead Can Heads, and losing people here.