“We need to save Lucas, Macky,” Johnny said urgently.
“I know.”
Mackenzie dragged herself to her feet and glanced toward the stage. It was empty. The ghostly women were gone. Picking up the massive gun she’d created, she shoved open the curtains and stepped into the cavernous main area of the theater. Lucas sat in a chair in the front row, hunched over in pain. Blood was dripping from his fingertips onto the red carpet. Behind him Tildy leisurely shoved the knife blade into his back, obviously taking immense pleasure in prolonging his suffering.
“Oh, did you kill Grant already? I really thought he’d last longer. He’s terrible at underestimating women. He thinks we’re stupid little things. But we’re not, are we, Mackenzie? We’re not so meek at all.” With a feral grin, Tildy yanked the knife out of Lucas’s back and moved to drag the blade across his throat.
Mackenzie shot Tildy in the chest, knocking her off her feet and into the seats. “Not at all.”
Lucas struggled to stand, his hand pressed to his throat where the blade had nicked him. Running to him, Mackenzie caught him before he could fall.
“Nice save all around,” Lucas said weakly.
“Don’t you know? I’m Wonder Woman,” Mackenzie said, trying to joke. His blood was slick and warm on her hands and she tried not to think of how bad his injuries might be. Once out of the dead spot, would he heal? Or would he carry his stab wounds with him?
Lucas chortled briefly before it devolved into a wet, raspy cough. “Let’s get out of here.”
“What if your wounds—”
“Let’s go, Mac,” Lucas said, touching her cheek with his red-tinged fingers.
Nodding, she slid her arm around him, helping him walk up the long, steep aisle to the doors that opened to the theater foyer. Johnny walked with them, attempting to help Lucas keep moving. Each step became more difficult as the air around them grew heavier. It was hard to breathe, and Mackenzie felt as though they were forcing their way through an invisible barrier. Again, she felt the dead spot trying to grasp on to her, and she had barely enough strength to knock its tentacle away. In this world, she had power that the creatures of nightmares craved to feast upon, but she was weary of it.
“Almost there,” she said encouragingly, though she sounded winded and weak.
Lucas leaned heavily against her, barely able to move his legs. Johnny clutched him, staring up at his face worriedly.
“We’re almost there, Lucas. Almost there,” he promised.
“There’s not much more they can do to us, huh?” Lucas joked.
Together, they stepped into the foyer.
The deafening roar of a train filled the air. A sob escaped Mackenzie’s lips when she realized what it was seconds before the tornado shredded the roof. The stage of the theater disintegrated, devoured by the twister. The red curtains flapped away into the hellish center of the spinning funnel. The red velvet chairs were smashed into the walls like toys being flung about by a joyous baby.
Though they shouted at each other to hurry, they couldn’t hear each other over the howling winds. Mackenzie felt her ears popping from the pressure. The high winds tore at her hair and clothing as the theater continued to be torn apart behind them. The suction of the great beast slashed at them, trying to lift them off the ground and into its hellish maw.
Mackenzie remembered Grant’s story about his death by a tornado and held tightly to Lucas and Johnny, refusing to believe they could meet such a fate. But as her feet left the ground, she knew they had failed.
Then the world grew silent.
Her feet settled back on the ground.
Even though the foyer was disintegrating around them, the three people stood in a perfect bubble of tranquility. The heavy doors to the outside stood before them even though the walls around it were torn asunder. Suddenly, Mackenzie understood that Lucas hadn’t been too weak to heal himself. He had been reserving the last of his strength to secure them safe passage to the real world.
“Go, Mackenzie.” Lucas slumped to the tiled floor. “Take Johnny and go.”
“Come with me!” she cried out, kneeling beside him.
“I have to hold the storm back and keep the door intact,” he answered. “I have to make sure you get through.”
Shaking her head, she took his hand. “No more dying today, okay? We go together.”
“Please, Lucas, let’s go,” Johnny said, tugging on Lucas’s jacket sleeve.
“It’s just five more feet and we’re out!” Mackenzie exclaimed.
“I don’t know if I’ll—” Lucas stopped himself. “Fuck it. If I’m going to die, it’s going to be a real death.”
“Don’t say that!” Mackenzie protested.
Shaking his head, Lucas forced himself to his feet. “No … no … I’ll never get this shot again, and we all know it. They’ll never let another one of us get this close to an exit. Let’s go.”
Clinging to one another, the three of them took the final steps to the door. Outside the pocket of safety Lucas had formed, the angry, gray winds carried the debris up into the funnel rotating above them. Through the crack in the door, Mackenzie could see a twilight sky. Tears of happiness filled her eyes. Reaching out, she set her hand on the handle.
“Macky,” Johnny said softly. “What if I’m not real?”
“We’re all real,” Lucas assured him.
“Let’s go home,” Mackenzie said.
She stepped through the door.
EPILOGUE
The first thing Mackenzie noticed was the smell of mold and dry rot mingling with the scent of fresh rain. She stood in the doorway of the old theater staring down at the weed-ridden driveway that curved up to the portico. The sun was hidden behind clouds, but the gold-and-pink glow on the horizon revealed the path of its descent. Looking down at her hands, she saw that they were free of blood, dirt, and gore. They were clean and spotless. Her purse hung over her shoulder, a familiar heavy weight.
“We did it! Lucas, Johnny, we’re out!”
The second thing she noticed was that she was alone.
The crushing agony of loss overwhelmed any joy her possible escape had briefly brought.
“Johnny! Lucas!”
Had she truly made it out? Panic building, she attempted to shape a candy bar, but failed. When she realized her failure didn’t mean she had escaped the nightmare world, she swore under her breath. Her energy reserves had been exhausted while attempting to break free and it would take time to refresh. How could she be certain she was out?
With trembling fingers she fished the cell phone out of her purse, but there weren’t any bars.
“Johnny! Lucas! Can you hear me?”
Her voice echoed through the ruined theater, but there was no answer.
Was she free at last, but alone? Had Lucas and Johnny been mere apparitions born of her loneliness?
Stifling a sob of despair, Mackenzie sank onto the stairs. “No, no. They were real. They were real,” she whispered, burying her face in her arms. The thought of losing them was unbearable. They had to escape with her.
“Macky? Am I real? Can you see me?”
“Johnny!”
Looking up, she saw the little boy standing just outside the entrance staring at their surroundings with fear and hope. Dressed in old jeans, a stained brown T-shirt, and battered sneakers, he took a wobbly step toward her. Snatching him up, she crushed him against her.
“Johnny, you’re free!”
His small arms wrapped around her neck and he kissed her cheek. “Don’t cry, Macky. You’re real, too.”
Laughing through her tears, Mackenzie smiled at him joyfully. “I am! And so are you!”
Yet their happiness was short-lived as they both stared at the open doorway to the theater.
“Lucas came with you, right, Johnny?” Again, the band of fear tightened around her heart.
“I followed you, and he said he was right behind me.” Johnny fidgeted, tears in his eyes. “Macky, he didn’t die,
right?”
“Of course not! He’s tough. You know that.”
Johnny nodded, his tiny face pinched with worry.
Licking her lips nervously, Mackenzie stared at the entrance, willing Lucas to appear. It remained frighteningly vacant. Johnny wrapped his fingers around hers and watched with wide eyes.
“Macky, he was real, right?”
Mackenzie nodded, unable to accept the possibility that Lucas had been anything other than another human that had been trapped by the dead spots. “Of course, he was real. He’s coming.”
The seconds ticked away, but the doorway remained woefully empty. At last, Mackenzie took a step toward it, silently praying to a deity she wasn’t even sure she believed in that Lucas would appear.
There was the sound of a shoe scuffing against the floor, then a figure emerged from the murk lingering just beyond the entrance. Quick little fearful thoughts flitted through her mind. What if it was just the tour guide? What if Grant had somehow followed? What if she wasn’t out of the dead spot? She took a step toward the door and stopped, remembering the possibility of the dead spots luring people into their traps.
Stepping into the waning light, Lucas scrutinized the area with an intense expression upon his face. He was clad in black jeans, a tight band T-shirt for a group she had never heard of, and heavy boots. All his terrible wounds were gone. He looked odd without his leather jacket, but his colorful tattoos were a welcome sight.
Stunned, he dragged his eyes away from their surroundings to look at Mackenzie and Johnny. “Are we out?”
“Oh, thank God!” Mackenzie flung her arms around his neck. “I was terrified we’d lost you!”
Kissing her lips long and hard, he gathered her close. Mackenzie didn’t shy away, but returned the gesture that was full of relief and hope.
Still holding on to her, Lucas lifted Johnny up with one arm and set him on his hip. When the boy kissed his cheek, Lucas beamed at him and returned it. “I thought I was too weak to make it out, but I made it!”
Johnny clung to Lucas and his small fingers closed around Mackenzie’s hand resting against Lucas’s chest. “I was scared.”
“Me, too,” Mackenzie confessed, but the relief that filled her dissolved all her fears.
“So,” Lucas said, eyes lifted to the overcast sky above, “do you think we’re out?”
Mackenzie nestled into Lucas’s side, her hand holding Johnny’s. As she gazed at their faces, her heart didn’t feel so tattered anymore. Hope filled in the dark places and chased away the fears. She was uncertain of many things in that moment, but not of the most important thing of all.
At last she said, “We’re what’s real and we’re together.”
“Yeah,” Johnny agreed, nodding his head adamantly.
Lucas cocked his head to gaze into Mackenzie’s eyes. “And we want what’s real, right?”
“It doesn’t matter which world we’re in as long as we’re together. It’s not the world that defines us, but who we are. We can make our own dream palace anywhere.”
Lucas nodded. “Yeah. You’re right. Absolutely.”
Setting Johnny down on the ground, Lucas took one hand while Mackenzie took the other. They stood at the top of the steps gazing at the empty road beyond the driveway.
“What now?” Johnny asked.
Mackenzie exchanged glances with Lucas. The warmth in his eyes made her blush and brought a smile to her lips.
“Yeah, Mac, what now?”
With confidence and wonder filling her heart, Mackenzie said, “We make a new life.”
The trio bounded down the stairs and strode toward the world beyond the theater.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Inspired by a terrifying nightmare, Dead Spots is rooted in events that transpired in my own life.
In 2010, I had just moved to a new house, and my zombie trilogy, As The World Dies, was out for submission with major publishers. It was a fun yet stressful time. I started feeling a bit under the weather but attributed this to nerves until I woke from a nap one afternoon to discover I was in a pool of blood. Horrified, I realized I was in the midst of a miscarriage. It would take months to recover physically and emotionally.
A week later, a dear friend lost her daughter to stillbirth. The baby was one week from her due date when her heart stopped. An autopsy on the baby and extensive testing on my friend revealed that like 60 percent of all stillbirths, there was no discernible cause of death. The baby had simply died in the womb while my friend was taking a nap on her sofa.
It was in the midst of these tragedies that I dreamed of Mackenzie and the dead spots. I was immediately enraptured with the idea of entering a world where our nightmares are made manifest. I often tell people I write about what I fear. I like stepping up to the precipice and gazing down to see how far I might fall. I once heard that the fear of heights is really the fear of jumping.
I’m prone to jumping.
Enthralled with the idea, I posted on Facebook and asked my fans what they fear most. I was stunned not only by the long list that soon filled my wall but also by how common some of those fears are. The concept behind Dead Spots began to evolve, and I grew increasingly excited about the story. But one aspect of my dream haunted me. Mackenzie, like me, my friend, and so many other women, had experienced the awfulness of baby loss.
Diving into a world infested with the manifestations of people’s fears was difficult enough, but also taking on a very complicated character dealing with stillbirth was daunting. Whereas Jenni’s loss in The First Days is the result of a zombie, a creature of make-believe, Mackenzie’s loss is a true-life experience for many women. The challenge of writing about a woman suffering through the worst event imaginable for expectant mothers was to keep Mackenzie’s loss anchored in reality while taking her into the realm of the fantastical.
Sudden Antenatal Death Syndrome (stillbirth with no cause) claims an estimated twenty-six thousand to thirty thousand babies a year. In an attempt to find my own healing in the aftermath of my miscarriage, I spent hours reading the blogs of women who had suffered baby loss. It’s their voices that carried me through the difficult parts of this book. I also owe a debt of thanks to a nurse who cared for women who suffered stillbirth and verified some of the more heartbreaking aspects of my research.
Above all, I am grateful to my dear friend who spoke to me candidly about her loss and the aftermath. Witnessing her struggle to move on from the death of her beloved daughter and embrace life once again with grit, tears, and passion encouraged me to write about Mackenzie and her journey into the realm of nightmares and reminded me that in the darkness the human spirit shines bright.
TOR BOOKS BY RHIANNON FRATER
AS THE WORLD DIES
The First Days
Fighting to Survive
Siege
Dead Spots
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rhiannon Frater lives in Texas. She is the author of The First Days, Fighting to Survive, and Siege, all published by Tor Books, as well as numerous self-published novels. Frater is one of the hosts of Z Cast, a podcast devoted to the Syfy series, Z Nation. Well-loved in the blogosphere, Frater is active in the goth and horror fiction communities and on the convention circuit.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
DEAD SPOTS
Copyright © 2015 by Rhiannon Frater
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Trevillion Images
Cover design by FORT
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
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The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-7653-3715-3 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-4668-3124-7 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466831247
First Edition: February 2015
Dead Spots Page 39