“Yeah well, you did a number on me too. You Marines always so jumpy?”
I dragged my hand across my eyes. “Get some sleep,” I said as I sat up. I shivered as Jack retreated into the shadows of the far corner of the room. I could not shake the feeling I had just seen a dead man.
I was in the midst of a very uneventful guard watch when I first heard the shuffling noise. It was so faint I thought I might be imagining it. It could have been a rat or even one of our party with a particularly nasty itch. That was, of course, until I saw a shadow play under the door to the apartment. Something was out there. Now the true question, was it alive or dead? There was no peep hole through which to look, and if somehow Sir Licks A Lot had made the journey I might have finally slipped over the edge I was holding onto so precariously.
I was standing no further than a foot from the door, stuck in a thought loop. Open the door, confront our guest whether friend or foe, or sit and wait and see if they tried to enter. Whoever it was had stones the size of Mount Rushmore and they weren’t zombies. I watched as they turned the door knob which spun freely, but when they pushed up against the door the dead bolt held fast. I gripped my rifle tight, wondering if I should just pop a few rounds through the door. There was no way I was missing from this range.
“Michael,” came a voice through the door. It was low and throaty and downright terrifying. Cold sweat broke out across my entire body. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.
This wasn’t happening, Jack hadn’t really yet awakened me for my shift. “I’m dreaming,” I said aloud. But I wasn’t, I remember what I had been dreaming. Travis and I had been playing the Wii, Mariokart to be specific, and I had been winning so I had KNOWN that it was a dream.
“Michael, I know you’re there. I can hear you.” The voice, definitely female, came through the door and drilled me in the heart.
“I’m not here,” I mouthed.
“Open the door, invite me in.”
My hand was working on its own volition. I slowly brought it up and it was now resting gently on the dead bolt. I turned the lock, the resounding click disengaging the mechanism.
“Dad?” Justin asked as he came up behind me. “What are you doing?”
As I was about to turn to look at my son, the shadow under the door vanished. “Am I sleeping?” I asked him in all seriousness.
“Well if you are, so am I,” he said smiling. “Dad,” he noted with concern. “It can’t be more than 50 degrees in here and you’re covered in sweat. You getting sick?” “I think I might be,” I told him as I walked away from the door.
Justin passed by me to reengage the lock, a quizzical look on his face.
“What are you doing up?” I asked him at the end of the short entryway.
“Woke up a couple of minutes ago. I was having a bad dream that Eliza found us. She wanted me to invite her in. You alright? You’re looking a little pale.” “It was just a dream,” I told him with absolutely no conviction, and he saw it for the falsehood that it was, just empty words.
“Who was at the door?” he asked uneasily.
“Avon, I think.” I just spit it out; it was my way of diffusing the terror. “Sorry,” I said when I saw his frustration. “I’m not sure if anyone was there,” I told him in all truth.
“But there might have been?” he questioned further.
“Maybe,” I said, licking my lips.
“Was it…?” he asked the unimaginable.
“You should go back to sleep,” I told him. Of course I didn’t sleep another minute the rest of the night, wondering if I had just come that close to the end of my mortality.
The morning brought a bustle of activity as we planned our strategy. Everything came to a halt when Jack opened the door.
“Someone is messing with us,” he scowled as he held my note up. Someone had scrawled “Death Awaits” in a suspiciously red-colored medium, with the added effects of drips and all. “Anybody hear anything?” he asked the room.
Justin and I gave each other a quick knowing glance which fortunately went wholly unnoticed. What was I going to say? “Yeah, this vampire chick who wants to kill me and everyone I know was at the door last night and wanted in. Funny thing is I almost let her.” That probably wouldn’t go over so well.
“Well that’s a cluster,” Brian said, looking through his binoculars at the furniture store from the same vantage point as the evening before.
“I think I can smell them,” Travis said disgustedly.
“Definitely looks like your friends set up camp on the roof,” Brian said as he surveyed the area.
I walked over to the truck. “You tell Ron about this and you’ll be walking home,” I told Gary .
“About what?” he asked suspiciously.
I pushed the passenger side view mirror back and forth until it snapped off.
“He is going to be pissed,” Gary said shaking his head.
“Do you do this stuff on purpose?” BT questioned me.
“I’ve got my reasons.” I lined up the mirror with the early morning sun, trying to see if I could get some reflection to the people on the roof to let them know we were here.
“Do you know Morse code?” Jack asked me.
“Just S.O.S,” I told him truthfully.
“I know a little,” Perla said sheepishly. The entire group turned to look at her. “When I was 15 my boyfriend and I learned it so that we could message to each other when it was safe to either sneak out or sneak in.” She gave Jack a weak smile.
“You never cease to surprise me,” he said as he kissed her forehead.
“Doesn’t matter though, I’m pretty sure nobody over there would know how to read what you signal,” I told her.
“So you basically just ripped the mirror off for nothing?” Tracy asked with one raised eyebrow.
“Et tu Brutus?” I asked.
“I knew it was a mistake when they took you off the Lithium,” Tracy laughed.
“She’s kidding, right?” Cindy asked with a frown.
“Mostly,” I told her.
Travis had grabbed the binoculars from Brian, “Dad, they see us I think. They’re waving their hands.” I grabbed the binoculars, “Do you think they know it’s us?” he asked me.
“I don’t know how. I can barely see their faces with the binoculars and it doesn’t look like they have a pair up there.”
“Wish we had a telescope or something,” Paul said. “I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s them but I’m not a hundred percent sure.” “Well, they’re signaling something,” Alex said as he shaded his eyes. “Long, short, short, short, break, long, long. Is that Morse code?” “Hell if I know,” Paul replied. “I’ve known Mike a long time, he’s never said anything about knowing it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he doesn’t. But he’s got to know that I don’t know it.” “Maybe he’s hoping someone up here does,” Erin said.
“Wait, let’s reason this out,” MJ said coming up to the edge of the roof. “You’re pretty sure he doesn’t know Morse code and he would be fairly confident that you don’t either. Now considering that it is a pretty archaic form of communication, we’ve got to think that he doesn’t believe anybody up here would know it. But yet he keeps repeating the same signal.” “Well, what is it brain boy?” Mrs. Deneaux sniffed disdainfully, sitting in her chaise lounge chair as if it were a throne, smoking another cigarette. Joann looked like she wanted to throttle the old lady if only to get a hold of one of those coffin nails.