by Brad Munson
The first one thwacked into the side of the tow truck and shattered like glass. Their odd fragility made Ty think they were harmless; for an instant he thought they were just weird Frisbee-shaped tumbleweeds that could annoy you and nothing more. Then the next one soared in, a flying dinner plate that hit the trunk of the eucalyptus two feet above Ty's head and stuck there, bit into it, quivering with the power of its flight and the thrashing wind.
Ty took it in. He thought of the ridiculous cartoon weapons he’d seen in king fu movies and comic books – ninja stars, bowler hats, even playing cards – and he knew what these things could do. As if to confirm it, a second thornwheel, bigger than the other two, swarmed out of the iron-colored storm and sliced through a writhing branch of the tree and cut it free in a single stroke, sent it flying. It left a cleanly cut stump dripping with rainwater.
Another razor-sharp wheel hit the truck right where the winch mounted to its bed. It made a strange ringing sound, like a bell made out of bone as it cracked into pieces and fell away.
“LEONARD!” Ty shouted, knowing as he did it that he couldn’t possibly be heard even three feet away. “LEONARD, LOOK OUT!”
Five more of the things sped out of the mist. Two passed between them, turning in the air as they flew and disappeared. Another fell, somehow misshapen already, and dug a furrow in the mud. Leonard, still unaware, tuned to wrap the chain around his hand so he could grip it, secure it to the bumper or the winch. He didn’t even see another thornwheel fly towards him, didn’t react to it before it passed through his bicep, just about the elbow, and cut his arm away.
“SHIT!”
He froze for a moment, the only thing not moving in the storm. The arm was already gone, tossed into the roiling mist. Leonard stiffened as he turned back towards Tyler and showed him his face for the first time. It held nothing more than a look of sheer, dumb astonishment – a gaping, mute, what the fuck? expression that even seemed somehow accusatory, as if this was all because of Ty, all that goddamn nig—
Another sharpened wheel of bone flew out of the mist, spinning almost vertical to the ground, and sliced into Leonard’s face, two inches deep on his right side. Tyler watched as it cut the old man's face off, from just behind the cheekbones forward, and threw it into the night.
The mechanic stood there in the lashing rain, armless, faceless, motionless for the longest time. Then he slumped – knees buckling, waist folding, arms drooping, collapsing into a heap of bloody clothing and dripping flesh. Blood flowed out of him, made so thin and plentiful by the rain that it looked like cranberry juice.
Dead. Certainly, completely, instantly dead.
All around Ty, more thornwheels where whining and buzzing through the wind. Other impossible things, too: silver-gray tumbleweeds, big as beach balls, flexing and rolling inches above the ground. Sheets of what looked like skin or cellophane, writhing bedsheets that wrapped around rocks and covered one of the gas pumps with a smothering blanket. And more mundane wreckage as well: broken branches, sharp as spears; shards of barrel cactus; shards of wood and metal like makeshift daggers. All of it, more of it, shot past him, filling the air.
Tyler ran. As fast and as hard as he could, hunched down to make the smallest possible target, dodging left and right like a linebacker and just running, back across the forty feet they’d traveled to the front door of the mini-mart. He didn't miss a step as he pounded inside and spun back to slam and lock the door behind him –
– as a thornwheel, four feet across, slammed into the glass entrance and shattered, exploded, because it couldn’t cut through.
Ty stared at the chaos for a long time. He saw the familiar debris and the impossible… creatures? Weapons? Wreckage? … that flew past him in an endless rush. They crashed and cracked against the wall, the roof, the windows. They were all around him, thick and fast and hitting harder than ever. They were destroying everything – everything they could touch, everything they could find, everything they could cut.
And pretty soon, he thought – very soon, he was sure – they’ll cut their way in here.
Six
“I don't care where you go,” Douglas Pratt said, his voice so far into his nose he sounded like a cartoon elf. “Go home and take a nap. Go to Taco del Colon. Take a nap in the gosh-damn teacher's lounge, for all I care. But be back here – right here, this very spot – no later than 5:45 tonight or I will know the reason why.”
The reason why, James Barrymore told himself, is that nobody else wants to be around you even during regular business hours, much less during our precious moments away from this shit hole. But he didn't say a word out loud. He didn't dare.
He never dared.
The cops had pulled the teachers off search-and-rescue duty after the second sweep through the school. It was clear that Katie Greenaway had disappeared as completely and effectively as Megan, Terri, and Little Jennifer before her. It was up to the police now, if it was up to anyone at all. Back to business as usual, the PE teacher thought bitterly. Even if 'usual' is a horror happening right in front of you.
Carole Ann Johnson and Dave Drucker had been muttering to themselves. Now they announced they were making a run to Taco del Colon rather than braving the elements to return home for just a few minutes. “You want anything?” Carol asked, somehow still bouncy after all that had happened.
“Pass,” Barrymore said. He had less-than-fond memories of his last encounter with Taco del Colon; he'd rather skip three meals than go through that again. Elli gave a polite “No thank you,” and ducked away.
Trini made a face; she looked as if someone had taken a dump in her lunch bag. “That place? No. Never. I think it's against my religion.” As she said it she sauntered past Barrymore; her shoulder brushed his so lightly he barely felt it. “I'm going to check on vending machine supplies in the store room,” she said. “Back in five.”
The knot of teachers and support staff drifted apart, some heading temporarily for home and some finding a corner to hide in for the next two hours. After a couple of minutes, Barrymore moved to the hallways between the Cafetorium and kitchen and, unseen, slipped into the storeroom himself.
Trini was waiting there for him.
Their kiss was rather short but full of promise, and they held each other for a long time. Then Trini rested her head against his shoulder and let out a long, ragged sigh, the rich fall of her hair tumbling down his chest. “She's not anywhere,” she said, her voice low and sad.
“No, she isn't.” He didn't imagine they'd ever see the little girl again – at least not alive. “And the rain only makes it worse.”
“What is that even about?” she said, pulling away from him, but staying close. “It never rains here.”
“I've been here seven years and four months,” he said, “and I've never felt so much as a drop. But now …” He glanced out the tiny high window of the storeroom. All he could see was mottled gray clouds as the last of the day faded away. “It's crazy.”
She nodded, almost emphatic. There was a strange, haunted look in her eyes. “It is crazy,” she said. “Can you feel that? Like it's not just rain, it's … something more. Something weirder.”
The fact is, he didn't feel anything at all, except slightly damp from his earlier exposure to the storm, and damn tired of dealing with school kids, staff politics, and Douglas fucking Pratt. “I just wish there was something we could do,” he said.
She shrugged. “Take care of the rest of them, I guess. As well as we can.”
“Which isn't all that well, seems to me.”
She put her arms around his neck and kissed him very intentionally. “You do great,” she said when she finished. “Much better than you know.”
“Not bad for a bargain basement Frankenstein, eh?”
She frowned. “Shut up with that.” She pulled away and picked up an unopened carton of peanut clusters. “Come on,” she said. “You know I'd love to stay in here and make out with you in the supply closet like some teenage intern, but we shou
ld do our bit.”
“Don't talk about my 'bit' like that.”
“Oh my God.”
“… and you can do it any time you want.”
She pushed open the door with one awesome hip and laughed. “You're getting as bad as Dave Drucker,” she said …
… and almost ran directly into Dave Drucker himself on the other side of the door.
“'Bad'? he said. “I resemble that remark.”
She dropped her head in chagrin. “Yes,” she said. “you do.”
They really did open the vending machines and restock them, but they went heavy on the non-sugar drinks and protein bars. If they were going to be inundated by restless pre-teens, tweens, and teens for the evening, the last thing they needed was more sweet fuel for their incipient hysteria. As they restocked, other teachers wandered by and offered useless advice; they were filling the last machine when Barrymore noticed that the last of the daylight was disappearing from the windows.
“There,” he said as he put the final package in place. “Done.” He tugged at the massive vending machine door, pulling it shut. “Now maybe we can find something actually decent to eat in – GAH!”
Kerianne was standing right behind the door, motionless and expressionless. Barrymore found himself jumping to his feet; he towered over the little girl, easily twice her size.
“Kerianne!” he said. “You – you're still here.”
She stared at him, unblinking, and nodded slowly. There was a wrinkled piece of paper clutched in her left hand and the stub of a charcoal pencil in her right. “Momma's late,” she said. “She called and told me.”
Trini squatted down next to her and put a hand in the small of her back. “Okay, then,” she said. “Would you like a juice? We can sit over here and wait for –”
“I drew this,” she said, and held out the wrinkled paper. “I had to.”
Barrymore frowned at that. Had to? He took the paper from her very gently and thanked her.
“No juice please,” Kerianne said. “It tastes funny.”
Trini smiled at that. “You know what?” she stage-whispered to the little girl. “I think so too.”
Barrymore found himself staring at Kerianne's drawing. He was having a hard time controlling his expression. The image there was just … extraordinary.
It filled the entire sheet – the back of the Town Meeting announcement that Douglas Pratt had forced into the hands of every student. It was sort of a … snake? But not the smooth-sided, slippery snake every child in this school had seen in real life – often on the walk home from school. It was long and thin, yes, but somehow the sketch conferred huge size, and it was made of something other than flesh. Bone, maybe. Nested twists of hard-edged material. Vertebrae, he thought. It looks a little like a naked spinal column slithering across the ground. And the head wasn't a head at all. At first he thought it was an open flower, but no: it was roughly circular, concentric rows of teeth, a sharp-edged lamprey mouth that went down and down, all tiny razors deep into the creature's maw …
The details was amazing, far beyond Kerianne's grade level. The lines were so clear and in proportion – even for a creature that was clearly made from nightmares – that it looked as if it had been drawn from life by an art college graduate.
Barrymore forced himself to look away, but not back to the little girl. Not yet. He cleared his throat, and Trini took the drawing from him before he could stop her. “You … you did this, Kerianne?”
She nodded. “I had to. I saw it.”
Trini was gaping in horror at the drawing. “You saw this?” she said, her voice unsteady.
Kerianne looked just a little impatient. “In here,” she said, and put three fingertip against her forehead, a weird upside-down Girl Scouts salute. “There are a lot.”
Barrymore cleared his throat again. “You … you see a lot of these?”
She shook her head, and he found himself unaccountably relieved. “Just today and yesterday. I mean, dreams and things, and little voices sometimes, but everybody –”
“I'm sorry!”
The two adults jumped and turned at the sudden, strong voice. A randomly pretty woman with an unruly mop of real blonde hair was rushing up to them, clutching an over-sized purse. Heidi … something or other. Kerianne's mom.
“I am so sorry! I got hung up on an order, and then this freaking rain storm and … really really sorry!”
Barrymore had never met her before, but he liked her immediately. She reminded him of an early Goldie Hawn or Meg Ryan: pretty and clueless and only half-listening to what you were saying.
“Not a problem,” Barrymore said. “Look, if you want to just hang here now, we're going to rustle up some real food in the kitchen. Kerianne can stay with us while you go to the meeting –”
“Oh, no. No, thanks, no,” she said, putting her head down and shaking it emphatically. “I don't have time for the meeting. I have three orders due on the weekend, I really can't spare the time.” She looked up impulsively, and Barrymore was startled by how wide her blue-blue eyes were. “I mean it's important, I know it's important, but I can't right now. I just can't.”
Trini put a hand on her arm. “We understand. I'm sure there will be flyers and or a report coming home.”
Kerianne's eyes flickered back and forth between her mother and her teachers, as if she'd never seen adults in conversation before.
“Good,” Heidi said. “Good good good. Come on, sweetie, let's get home.” She put out a hand and Kerianne took it, looking almost grateful. The smile that her mother gave them was wide and enthusiastic and entirely without meaning. “We'll see you tomorrow, right? School's open, right?”
Trini gave her an encouraging smile. “Like every other Friday,” she said. “We'll see you then.”
“Sure will,” Kerianne's mom said.
Trini turned her attention back to the little girl and held up the crumpled drawing. “Can I keep this?” she said.
Kerianne nodded as her mother tugged her away. “You have to,” she said.
Seven
Kerianne had a diary. A sketchbook, actually, that her mother had given her last Christmas. It had a big hard cover and lots of cream-colored blank pages. She worked in it every night.
Actually, it was two diaries. One side, the front side, was drawings of unicorns and princesses and sometimes her mom and sometimes lists of her friends, mostly made up. This was the diary-part she kept for her mother; she was pretty sure Momma snuck into her room when she was at school and checked it out every few days.
The other side, upside down and a few pages in, was her own personal diary. She wrote it in upside-down and backwards, in a tiny crabbed hand. Her secret language. Kerianne had been able to do that kind of thing since she had first learned to write at all, but she'd never told anybody. It was too weird. The second diary was where she kept her secret thoughts, about the dreams and the little voices.
Mom didn't know about that one. Even if she noticed it, it was look pretty much like scribbling and doodles, and that was good, because it was secret. These were the things she couldn't tell Momma. The things that happened to her, the things she saw. And she couldn't tell Momma because they were weird, and Momma always worried about weird stuff happening to Kerianne. She didn't want her little girl to end up like her dad.
She wasn't like her dad, Kerianne knew. She wasn't like anybody.
One of her first entries, months ago, was very short:
I wish I could draw.
She had never been able to. Not until now. But she had really wanted to. She would wake up in the morning with things in her head, and she would try to write them down, but words just didn't work. Pictures would have, she thought, but all she could do was say how she felt, not what they were.
I feel like bugs are crawling on me sometimes, but not bugs. They have sharp little nails and I think their cutting me but their not. Their not even there, mostly.
Something keeps whispering to me right at sunset but it's n
ot Momma and it's not the TV. It's inside my ear and sometimes, on cloudy days, it HURTS.
And now, all of a sudden, for no reason, she could draw really well. WAY better than she was supposed to. It was cool for the first day and even the second. The pictures that came out of her fingers were strange, she knew that, but she was so happy she could make them at all, get them out of her head and onto paper, that she didn't mind. But now they were forcing their way out. She couldn't make them stop, and that was kind of scary.
Now, with the rain rattling against her bedroom window, and thunder off in the distance, with her mother in the living room, hunched over her sewing machine and working, working, working, Kerianne wrote about what had happened at school that day.
I had to draw the dragontongue. I dint even know it's name then but I do now and I HAD to draw it for Ms. Trini. She needs to be careful. They ALL need to be careful. I dont want them to talk to me but they keep talking to me anyway so PLEASE STOP TALKING TO ME, OK?
Have to stop writing now. Have to draw.
She drew more pictures for hours, until whatever compulsion finally let her go, sometime after three in the morning. Her mother came in to check on her twice, and she heard her tick-tick-ticking down the hall both times, so it was easy to hide her diary and lie down with her back to the door and close her eyes. Momma didn't check too close; she was busy and very tired, so Kerianne didn't blame her.
The hardest part was stopping even for a few minutes. Her hand actually started to shake while she waited for Momma to finish tucking her in so she could go back to work. Once she was gone, the pictures just gushed out of her fingers all over, right through the pencil and onto the page. Most of the pictures were so awful and ugly that when they was done, she tore them out of her diary, crumpled them into tiny balls, and threw them in the garbage.
Which wasn't enough. When it finally let her go, she cranked open her casement window, just an inch, and threw them all into the storm. The wind snatched them away, threw them into the air, swallowed them whole.