“You’ll know it, trust me.” Then Todd was gone.
Ray went back to the others and explained the situation.
Fran and Deena were excited, but Ashleigh was silent. The one named Elaine, an older, heavyset woman with the title of Night Matron, said, “Even if this guy’s telling you the truth, which I doubt, we would be fools to do what he says. We have a good thing going here, everything we need, and I’m not about to just abandon it for some wild-goose chase. We wouldn’t last five minutes out there on our own. This isn’t a prison; these fences were put up to protect us! You Munies might not care about that, but the rest of us do.”
“Oh, I agree,” Ray said. “It’s a stupid idea.”
“What?” Fran exploded. “Are you serious? You’re the one who said we were going to get the hell away from here, and now you’re just going to wimp out like that?”
“I’m sorry, Fran. I was just daydreaming; I didn’t think anyone would take it seriously. Of course we can’t leave.”
“That’s fucked up, dude,” said Deena.
Elaine said, “Girls, you should listen to the advice of your new roommate. It’s a nice fantasy, but the truth is, a man will say anything to get into your pants.”
“Men,” Ray said, shaking his head.
“Men,” Elaine agreed.
“Elaine, do you by any chance happen to know my uncle Jim?”
“Of course I know the Prophet. He’s the one who asked me to come get you.”
“Oh… cool. Well, say hello to him for me, would you? And please tell him that Barnstable says hello.”
“I certainly will.”
Elaine returned them to their trailer. As soon as she was gone, Ray jumped into action.
“All right, ladies,” he said, rifling through the kitchen drawers, “we have to arm ourselves and be ready to fight our way out of here. I need your help-move!”
“What are you talking about?” Ashleigh asked.
“Obviously, nobody’s going to help us, so we have to help ourselves.”
Disconcerted by the abrupt mood swing, the three were wary of believing anything Ray said, but Fran and Deena reluctantly went along with it. Ashleigh sulked, praying for their souls.
The trailer held very little in the way of weapons, so Ray hoped no one would dare interfere with them as long as they were wearing their vests. And since Xombies couldn’t touch them either, they should be able to simply walk out of the compound once the electrified outer fence was down. As the hours passed, exhaustion set in, and they dozed.
They were awakened by a burst of gunfire, then a series of explosions.
“Shit, it’s time,” Ray cried. “Everybody up, it’s time!”
Throwing a mattress over the inner fence, they boosted each other over and hurried to the main gate. All the other women were out and about, chattering anxiously, but there was no sign of Sandoval. Along the street, generators chugged into action; electric wires fizzed; sirens blared. Spotlights swept the field and beamed across the dome of the State House. From inside the building there were muffled alarms and gunfire. For a moment, the shooting increased… then just as quickly it petered out. Skate-troopers zipped purposefully up and down the street, then simultaneously changed direction as their radios crackled instructions to report for an emergency security inspection. As they skated away, they killed the generators, leaving silence and dark in their wake.
Ray and the girls waited by the fence, shivering. It seemed to get colder as the sun came up.
“Is that it?” Fran asked.
“I think that’s it,” Ray said miserably.
“Damn.”
Deena said, “Well, let’s go inside, I’m freezing.”
“You go ahead,” Ray said. “I’m going to wait a few more minutes.”
Fran and Deena left, leaving Ray alone with Ashleigh.
“There’s no need to wait for me,” Ray told her, trying to control his voice. If Barnstable’s coup had failed, then Todd was probably dead… and Sandoval would be next. “Go back inside. I just have to give it a little while longer.”
“There’s no point,” said Ashleigh.
“You never know.”
“No, I do know. Your scheme didn’t work because I warned them about it.”
“What?” Ray’s brain fumbled for purchase. “What are you talking about?”
Ashleigh held up a small walkie-talkie. “I told them-with this! I told them, and I’m glad I told them! Yes! That’s right! Because those men are trying to do the Lord’s work, and it’s our job to help them, not sell them out to Miska!”
“Oh my God… ”
“You might well pray for Eve’s mercy, because you’ll have none from me!”
“Oh my God, you crazy bitch… ”
Ray felt boiling-hot tears running down his frozen face, and before he knew what he was doing he slapped the girl. The instant he did it, he regretted it. Ray had never hit a girl in his life, and hitting a misguided teenager was just wrong. But there was no taking it back.
Ashleigh immediately returned the blow, clawing Ray’s cheek with her long, painted nails and attacking like a wildcat. Stunned by the furious assault, he fell back, ducking and dodging the girl’s clawed hands. Ashleigh was clearly experienced at catfighting, a natural street brawler. Ray hadn’t been in a fight since grade school, and he didn’t want to be in one now, but the girl was all over him, punching and scratching and kicking as hard as she could-which was very hard.
“Stop it, stop it!” Ray cried, defending his eyes from those sharp nails.
Ashleigh drove even harder, her baby-doll features twisted into a mask of rage, spittle flying from her mouth. The left side of her face was bright red from his slap. In panic, Ray suddenly realized that no one was going to save him; that if he surrendered or showed weakness, this maniac might kill him, so he started fighting back with all his might. Pinwheeling his arms, he landed a lucky blow to the girl’s jaw-crack!-and just like that, Ashleigh went down.
She went down hard, looking pitiful and frail, just a kid really. Ray knelt to help her and found she wasn’t breathing. Oh God, he thought. Not this. Please not this.
“Help!” he cried. “Somebody help! We need medical attention here-it’s an emergency! Anybody, please help!”
No one seemed to hear, and Ray decided to try CPR. He remembered there was some song you could use to time chest compressions-was it “Stayin’ Alive”? Suddenly, something hit him like a wrecking ball. The force knocked him a good ten feet. Stunned, he looked back to see a strange figure straddling Ashleigh’s helpless body.
It was the girls’ dog-the ugly pig-dog.
Only now the animal looked almost human. It had human hands and a childish human face, its skin mottled pink and black, and its eyes two dark marbles. Those bulging, manic eyes fixed on Ray, and he shrank in horror to realize he was alone, unarmed, and trapped in a fence with this grotesque hybrid monstrosity.
But the thing was not interested in him. As he watched, it cradled Ashleigh’s limp body in its hands and leaned down as if to kiss her. To Ray’s horror, it did kiss her, the dreaded Xombie kiss. Black demon lips cupped pink human ones and proceeded to suck face… but then something unusual happened:
Instead of collapsing, Ashleigh’s chest swelled with air. At once the girl coughed to life, not as a hellish Maenad but as a normal human female. Her attacker let her go and spit something on the ground: Ashleigh’s bubble gum. The creature had saved her from choking.
Having done its good deed, the dog-thing now came for Ray. From its maniacal face, he knew there was no such benevolence in store for him, and he scrambled to escape, slip-sliding on the dewy grass. Dead I’m dead I’m so dead.
Just before the weird thing reached him, a pinpoint of red light skittered across its body, and it started coming apart. Ray hit the ground, thinking, Snipers! Whatever that laser sight touched magically exploded as if spring-loaded. Chunks flew from the dog-boy’s head and torso; its legs snapped like twigs. As the creature went down, incendiaries pelted the grass, flaring white-hot. It writhed in the fire, curling backward and inside out as it tried to flee its own burning flesh.