by Edward Aubry
He had been thoroughly impressed by how quickly Mitchell had taken to life on the road. Apparently having Harrison as his guardian was a very freeing experience for him. This made Harrison wonder what his parents had been like and what kind of upbringing he had, but he didn't feel comfortable asking. The comments Mitchell made about his parents, which came often, were mostly about amusing things they had done, foods they had liked, or seemingly arbitrary rules they had enforced. Harrison's favorite was the curfew Mitchell's mother had imposed on breakfast cereal, which was never to be consumed after eleven in the morning. This rule had been put in place to curb Mitchell's dad, but the whole family had been held to it.
They had carefully avoided discussing their discovery in the woods, and because Dorothy made no mention of having met anyone else, Harrison felt safe assuming it was no one she knew.
"I think you should consider going with us," he told her. "It hasn't been as hard as you might think." He held up his compass. "This helps us find buildings. Nothing is locked, and everything still works, so we haven't had to rough it too much of the time."
She held out her hand. Harrison handed her the compass. She looked at it skeptically. "This is a compass," she said. "It helps you find buildings?"
He took it back. "We're not sure why, but it points to man-made objects instead of north." He did not offer his guess that it was a magical property. He had no way of knowing how much magic she had seen.
She shook her head. "I'm happy here. You two should stay."
She had already invited them to move into the mall with her. She had explained, in surprising detail, her reasoning for why the video store would suit their domestic needs best, although they would, of course, always be welcome at the Hallmark store, provided they knocked before entering. Harrison had taken this as an opportunity to extend his own invitation, which she was now declining. It was moderately tempting to start a life here with this new quirky family, but it was really out of the question. Harrison stood up. "Listen," he said. "I need to head over to the grocery store and get some Bactine for Mitchell's arm. Why don't you show him around? Let's see if we like the place before we make any decisions, okay?"
Mitchell seemed uncertain whether Harrison was actually considering staying there, and Dorothy looked unconvinced. He hoped his master plan of letting the two of them bond without his presence would work in his favor when they went to leave. Dorothy would want to come with them, he hoped. From her expression, however, he figured she had already seen through his ruse and was devising a counter-scheme. Maybe he would come up with something better once he had a few minutes alone to think.
There was a supermarket three stores away from the Hallmark store. Dorothy had been subsisting on its canned and frozen foods, and since she was the only customer, there were still plenty of provisions to keep her going. Harrison considered staying and eating all the food as a possible strategy to get her to leave, but calculated that it would take too long (as in the rest of his life).
As he shopped, he reflected on the fact that the known population of the Earth had gone from one (himself), to two (Claudia), and now to at least five (Mitchell, Dorothy and the unnamed woman in the Worm station). Six, if he counted the body. It was starting to feel like a world again. It surprised him to acknowledge that he felt good about that.
He found what he was looking for in short order. A box of sterile gauze pads. A new roll of adhesive tape. Hydrogen peroxide to clean the wound (Mitchell was going to love that). Candy to reward him for being a good patient. To buy himself a bit more time, he took his purchases to the checkout counter and pretended to pay for them. Going through the motions felt insane, but comfortingly so.
As he stepped outside, he heard a loud crack, as though someone had hit the glass storefront with something hard. It startled him. What could the kids possibly be doing that would make that kind of noise?
Then he saw it wasn't the kids. He froze.
Standing on the walk in front of the strip mall was a creature he recognized. It was one of the four-clawed bug things that had been skeletonizing the body in the woods. He had never considered the possibility that those had been young specimens. This one was the size of a large dog. It lifted its tail up and swung it like a club against the window. The glass held, but the sound was awful.
It was definitely the Hallmark store. He was too far away to see if the kids were still inside. If they were, they would surely be terrified. Harrison certainly was.
Between the supermarket and the Hallmark shop was a small hardware store. He inched his way toward it, hoping not to draw the attention of the creature. Just as the automatic door detected him and automatically opened, the bug thing turned in his direction. He felt his forehead go ice cold as it became saturated with sweat. The thing began moving toward him. It was faster than he thought, but slower than he feared. He leapt through the door. After far too long, it closed. He had no way of knowing if the creature was still pursuing him. He gambled that even if it did, it would be too short or too stupid to set off the automatic door.
He had not gone in there for safety. Trying to breathe properly, he considered his options. Tools as weapons. Most of the tools he saw were small enough that they would require being very close to the predator-scavenger, and he was hoping to avoid that. He considered an axe, but found it awkward to wield. Then he noticed the gardening tools, and that's where he found his implement of choice. A garden rake. It was long enough that he could strike from a relative distance, light enough to swing well, and as a bonus, was capped with a row of deadly metal teeth. He swished it back and forth a few times to feel its heft and prepare himself for what he would have to do with it. He went back to the door.
The creature had lost interest in him, and had gone back to whacking the window pane. Harrison thought he could see a crack starting to form. He took a deep breath and started to take a step forward when a novel idea struck him. He remembered learning why nature never produced bugs of this size. The cube-square law said that as size increases, the ratio of volume to surface area increases as well. Above a certain size, any organism supported entirely by its surface area (such as the exoskeleton of a lobster or scorpion) would collapse under its own weight. He had been told once that tarantulas could not survive falls, even short ones, because they already had so much stress on their frames that they would split open. This nightmare was much larger than any tarantula. Maybe if he shoved it hard enough, it would hit the ground and splatter apart.
Of course, by the same principle, an arthropod of this magnitude was impossible. Nature had not produced this creature. He hoped that whatever horrible magic had spawned it had not given it properties that would negate his plan.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the wind-stone that Glimmer had (months ago) told him not to keep. Turning it over in his hand, he saw the writing on it that he could not read. The fact that he didn't truly understand its properties had not kept him from appreciating its value, and he now congratulated himself on his cleverness for holding on to it this long. He took a deep breath, looked directly at the monster, held the stone to his mouth, and blew. The creature was lifted right off the ground by a potent gust of wind and flung through the air at a fantastic speed.
Directly toward Harrison.
The same gust of wind knocked Harrison to the pavement. He had very little time to feel stupid before the creature slammed into him. It did not split open on impact, but whether that was because Harrison broke its fall or his plan was just idiotic was impossible to say. Harrison was pinned underneath the thing. It was lying on its back, thrashing around, trying to reorient itself. This close, Harrison could make out more detail. The pattern of indigo spots and lines was much more complex than on the smaller models and included decorative swirls. He could feel its hard body digging into his skin through his clothes. It felt heavier than it looked. He also noticed a smell that was sickeningly reminiscent of seafood. He remembered thinking that these things reminded him of lobsters or scorpio
ns. At this size, and up close, he could clearly see that they resembled neither in any real sense. The proportions, the colors, and the structure were all wrong. Still, the odor, disgusting as it was, helped him focus on his mistaken impression. He found lobsters less frightening than scorpions, so he concentrated on lobster. He thought about eating this thing. Maybe that would help him overcome his terror of it. In that desperate moment, he gambled that the thing might be just enough like a lobster for him to treat it like one.
He grabbed one of the creature's pincers with both hands, and twisted with all the strength he could command. It popped right out. He tossed it aside. He successfully repeated this procedure on six more of its limbs before it finally managed to club him in the head with its tail.
He blacked out.
When he came around, he felt the creature chewing on his neck. Screaming, he heaved the thing off and scurried backwards, panic giving him speed. It began crawling toward him, but the lost limbs were giving it trouble.
Harrison felt his neck for blood but found none, then remembered that these things fed by pulling flesh with their claws. Their mouth parts apparently didn't include anything that could tear skin. He looked for its pincers and found all four of them accounted for, several feet away. It continued to stagger toward him. He stood up, brushed himself off, and picked up the rake. For a moment, he thought how much it reminded him of an oversized potato masher.
Then he brought it down on the creature's head. Again. And again.
He left it there, a mass of crushed tissue, picked up his bag of first aid supplies and limped back to the Hallmark store. On the way, he saw his bruised reflection in a window. Right behind it, he saw the shocked faces of the two children. In Dorothy's eyes he saw opportunity, and he did not squander it.
"Let's get your arm fixed up, Mitchell," he said as he came in the door. "Once we're done with that, we really should get a move on." The boy nodded. Harrison looked at Dorothy. She was staring out the window.
She turned to face him. "Let me get my things," she said.
Chapter Twelve
Nothing Is Locked
"Harrison! He's doing it again!"
Harrison sighed heavily, watching his breath crystallize. The crisp air chewed at his nose and ears, and the thick cover of autumn leaves crunched underfoot. He was grateful that he had had the foresight to pick up heavier coats for himself and his kids at the mall. He took a moment to reflect on how easy it had become to think of them as his kids. He was walking ahead of them, and because they couldn't see his face, he allowed himself to smile.
"Mitchell," he called back without turning his head, "for the love of God, leave her alone."
"I'm not doing anything!"
"He's making that face!"
Harrison stopped and turned around. "Okay," he said, "both of you, knock it off." He took in their faces. They both looked perfectly miserable. He looked at his watch. It was 10:30. They had set out a little after nine, and he was hoping to keep moving until noon, then stop for lunch. Under the best of circumstances, this regimen was usually enough to push the kids just about to their limit. Today, however, was far colder than they were used to, and Harrison was pretty sure that the mild weather was entirely behind them now. This wasn't going to be a cold spell. It was autumn battening down the hatches for winter. He had been hoping to get to Chicago before the snow came.
He yielded. "Okay, people," he said. "Take five." He opened his pack and removed two small, rod-shaped objects. He whacked one against the heel of his boot and tossed it to the ground a few feet away. It promptly expanded itself into a spindly frame, the approximate shape of a kitchen chair, with a fabric seat. Mitchell flopped into it, without waiting to be asked and without noticing that Dorothy had stepped aside to let him do so. Harrison wondered if she was even aware of her finely honed big-sister reflex. He marveled at how smoothly she had slipped into the role, especially since she had never had a brother.
After popping open a seat for Dorothy, Harrison produced a small can of mango nectar for her, and a box of grape juice for Mitchell. He planned to top them both off with water later, if they were still thirsty (which they invariably were), but he wanted to give them a little bit of time to have a comfort experience first. They drank in silent gratitude.
Harrison checked the compass on his wrist. He had been inspecting it, periodically, all morning, but it had not yet given him any useful information. Sometimes, presumably when they were more than a certain distance from any developed oasis, the needle would wobble and spin, lazily, aimlessly. It was infuriating to watch, which is why he would try to go as long as possible between times he looked at it. He was actually growing concerned that they had picked up so much technology along the way that the compass was trying to point back at them now. This time, to his happy surprise, it was pointing in the approximate direction of their travel, twitching only slightly. "Thank God," he muttered.
He let them sit in peace for the promised five minutes, which was just long enough for them to finish their juice and start complaining (Dorothy was cold, Mitchell, bored). "Okay, kids," he said, "let's roll." Neither of them thought this new idea would improve their situation, and they explained this with intense animation. He allowed them to interrupt each other for a few seconds, then held up his wrist for them to see.
"Yes!" they exclaimed simultaneously. They collapsed their chairs with practiced ease.
Permitting himself a moment's optimism, Harrison packed up. The kids, at least for now, were excited, which by itself was enough to sustain him for at least a little while. "Can you zip on ahead?" he asked, as he put the empty juice containers back in the pack and sealed it shut. "I'd like to get a sense of how far we have to go."
He turned around for an answer and found himself looking into eyes many orders of magnitude larger than he had been prepared to focus on. The incongruity was enhanced by the slight magnification effect of the spectacles, also that they were wide with surprise and sympathy.
"You forgot again, didn't you?" asked Dorothy.
He bit his lower lip and strained not to break eye contact with her. "Yeah," he said calmly after a few seconds. "Yeah, I did."
"Sometimes I forget, too," she said unexpectedly. At first, this confused Harrison, who imagined that she was somehow talking about mourning a pixie she had never met. Then he realized what she really meant and his head started to spin. She was talking about her mother. Maybe. Or a sister. Or a school friend or a teacher or a bus driver or a pet. She was mourning everyone she had ever known, and while Harrison had been going through the same thing, he had an adult's arsenal of defense mechanisms. He looked at Mitchell, who was listening and looking at the ground, shivering quietly. The momentum of their excitement was deteriorating rapidly.
"Hey," said Harrison, getting the boy's attention. He knelt on the cold earth and held out his arms. The children curled into his embrace, and as the three of them huddled there for a while, they softly wept together.
* * *
It was another three hours, and two breaks, before they came upon the first sign of what they were looking for. They had emerged from forest onto a grassy plain, which in turn bordered a vast expanse of what Harrison first thought was sand. He considered, and rejected, referring to it as a sand trap. When they stepped onto it, he realized immediately that it was not sand at all. It was the color of beach sand, but the consistency of clay, and it compressed under his boots, leaving clear, firm footprints. The compass pointed straight through to the other side. It was a large enough area that he didn't want to bother with going around it. Some plants were taking hold in little clusters, and he could see small animal footprints in it, too. He figured that must mean it was safe enough. They went through. It ended at a wall of trees.
A few yards into the woods, Harrison spotted something odd. That can't be what it looks like, he thought, but as he approached it, it obviously was. Someone had strung a piece of yarn from one tree to another, and from that tree to the next, and so on
. The trail of yarn was not straight, but wove in both directions through the trees and off into the distance. Its end, if it had one, was not visible from where they stood.
"Ooookay," he said. He consulted the compass, which pointed toward something that lay beyond the other side of the yarn fence. He shrugged. This was a mystery, to be sure, but not a significant one. Nothing to dwell on. He had encountered so much utterly random nonsense in his long trek that this hardly ranked as noteworthy. He reached out, intending to lift the yarn out of the way so that the children could pass under it.
And he realized what a terrible, terrible idea that would be. Terrible danger lay beyond this yarn. He was certain of it. He shivered. Wow, he thought, dodged a bullet there. He watched Mitchell approach the yarn, apparently about to pull it aside himself. Harrison was about to shout a warning when Mitchell's hand suddenly jerked back.
"Ah!" He looked at Harrison with something in his eyes that was between fear and confusion. Harrison nodded. They both somehow knew that they shouldn't cross this boundary, although when he tried to form a coherent thought as to why, he came up blank. Mitchell seemed to agree.
Dorothy had been watching from a few yards back. "What's the matter?" she asked nervously.
"Can't go that way," said Harrison. He stared at the compass, hoping it would come to its senses and start pointing somewhere else.
"Why not?" She came up to the line of yarn, and scrutinized it.
"Don't!" Mitchell shouted.
She reached for it. Harrison grabbed at her hand, but jerked back, afraid he might contact it himself. Just as she was about to touch it, she gasped. "Oh my God!" She turned and buried her face in Harrison's coat.
"Shhh," he said gently, hugging her. He had hoped to spare his kids the horror of this yarn barrier (although he still couldn't put his finger on the nature of that horror), but she had come too close. "It's all right," he said. "We're okay."