“The local church is a major meeting place for them,” Tiff said. “The enemy.”
“Where are we going?” Peter asked. “Where do we go when we’ve set whatever fire and they come after us? This is a really simple question, and if we can’t answer it…”
“We can’t answer it,” I said, “not easily, not well. There’s no real safe haven, unless we get clever, lucky, or fight like hell to make one.”
“That’s not reassuring,” Peter replied. “But hey, since we don’t have a place to go, and we don’t have any winter clothes, we can start a fire and maybe stand around warming our hands until the monsters get us and tear us to pieces. I’ve heard being torn to pieces by ghosts and goblins is one of the better ways to go. Or, maybe if they decide to make the ‘killing us’ part take a while, the cold will get us. Maybe not a quick death, but a medium-length death, at least. That’s something.”
Christoff put his hands up to his ears, “Stop.”
Peter snapped his fingers. “Unless they drag us inside. Then it could take hours, if they even let us die at all.”
“Stop!” Christoff said. “Shut up! My brother died and you’re making jokes like this is something to joke about!”
He shoved Peter, two-handed.
Peter, stone-faced, took a step back, catching his balance. “Be more pathetic, Christoff, it’s a great look for you. Talk to me when you aren’t so fucking useless!”
He shoved Christoff back, far harder. Christoff, only barely a teenager, was still small, closer to his mom and sister in build than Callan had been. Christoff fell hard.
Floorboards broke.
I caught the cloth around Christoff’s stomach before the floor gave way completely, lifting him up by his shirt.
“Woah,” Evan said. “Not cool.”
Mice teemed in the space between the floor and the ceiling below, moving through the area like water in a river, no empty space between them.
“Even less cool!”
Some, as the tide of rodents flowed, managed to scrabble up the wall or up a broken floorboard, running toward feet, or toward Alexis and Kathy, who were kneeling and sitting, respectively. They both kicked and swatted at the things, sending the mangy vermin running off to nearby holes in the wall and floor.
The floor continued falling through, emptying down into the floor below. The sheer amount of them didn’t abate.
Had he fallen through, would that tide just have poured down on his head? Were bugs and rodents literally filling the walls and floors around us?
I set Christoff down, walking around the hole in the floor, toward Peter.
He looked far more afraid than I might have anticipated, backing away several steps before stopping with his back to the wall.
“Calm down,” I said.
“Calm,” he said, both hands raised.
I was closer to the portal, and turned my head to look out.
The lights in the house had died. Every window and door was shattered, and dark figures ringed the property, some human, some human-shaped, and some most definitely monstrous.
There were too many between us and the place we needed to be. Setting fire to the glades at the very edge of the property wouldn’t work. Nobody would be fooled, and it wouldn’t drive away the Others.
“Can you back off?” Peter asked.
I met his eyes.
“I’m not going to mess with the kid anymore. I was pissed, I was frustrated, that’s it. I’m cool.”
I didn’t move.
“My brother said back off,” Ellie said.
Ganging up on me.
“Blake,” Alexis said. “Come help?”
I turned away from Peter.
She was still looking after Kathryn’s shoulder.
I couldn’t look at Alexis without feeling that ugly stirring inside me. I kept my attention on the shoulder.
“Is this okay?” Alexis asked. Talking to Kathryn.
“Fix my arm and I don’t care,” my cousin said.
“Good. Blake, we need the arm at this angle. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to push it into the socket, so if you could do it?”
I nodded, mute.
“Don’t like being here, huh?” she asked.
“Does anyone?” I replied, despite myself.
“I guess not,” she said. “Position it like this. You’re going to want to shove the arm in this direction, firmly. Like-”
She touched my arm, part of the demonstration. Fingers touching wood and skin both.
I shied back, flinching.
“Sorry,” she said, quickly. “I’m sorry.”
Why had I flinched?
I felt anger more than fear.
Anger more than like. An agitated, alien sort of anger had ripped out so many of the good things and found its way into the resulting voids.
I wanted to blame the Tenements, the Drains, the Abyss, but I couldn’t.
Damn me, damn them, damn it all.
I shut my eyes.
I didn’t want to be that person. That angry, wounded person.
A second passed.
“What’s wrong?” Evan asked.
I shook my head. I couldn’t really sigh anymore, which was weird. I couldn’t stretch, or groan, or do any of the normal things I had used to do, to let the little stresses go. I couldn’t ride my motorcycle or seek comfort in my friends.
“I don’t know what I’m doing anymore,” I said.
“That’s this place speaking,” Alexis said. “It’s getting to you.”
“It’s this place, yeah,” I said. “More than you know.”
“You can’t get bogged down. Staying in one place is probably a mistake. You were saying you don’t know what you’re doing? Let’s do what we can to keep moving forward. We’ll help Kathy, then we’ll work out a plan, then we should leave.”
“That wasn’t what I was saying,” I said. “I wasn’t talking strategy.”
I slammed the arm into the socket. Kathy screamed, a short sound.
Followed by a groan of pain.
It hadn’t worked.
“You did that right,” Alexis said. “I had the training, while volunteering. It could be broken, but that’d be a strange break.”
“This place inflicted the wound, in a roundabout way,” I said. “We might need more extraordinary measures to fix it. If it’s fixable.”
I saw the look on Kathryn’s face. A bit of horror.
“Sucks to be you,” Ellie said.
“Blake,” Alexis started.
I didn’t want to hear what she had to say.
“Alexis,” I cut her off. Talking was easier than listening. If I listened, I might start thinking about the validity of her words. “What I was saying before. I don’t know what I’m doing… it isn’t just the short term. It’s the long term, above all else, really.”
“You don’t need to dwell on the long term,” she said.
Oh man, that word choice. From someone who could well be conspiring to put me down the moment I stopped being useful.
I shut my eyes, focusing on being still, not punching the wall or saying the wrong thing.
“I do need to dwell on the long term,” I said. “I need to have something to aim for, after today is done. Something more to fight for.”
Something selfish, I thought.