He paused, screwing up his face in anguish. I wasn’t sure why he was doing it, not until I heard the sound of a helicopter overhead. My heart damn near leapt out of my chest, that’s how excited I was. A helicopter? My mind immediately went to a rescue team, a grizzled pair of soldiers riding around, shining their spotlight on wraiths and picking up survivors.

  I turned and started toward the lobby. Ramsey’s hand caught my arm before I got more than a few steps.

  “That ain’t a real helicopter…”

  “What?”

  Besides their false voices, I had never heard the wraiths use sound effects to lure us out. They had only turned themselves into dead loved ones or other monsters—

  A near-deafening boom derailed my train of thought. It was followed by an urgent beeping and the constant spray of gunfire. Instinctively, I hunched over and covered the back of my head. Ramsey remained standing, almost dazed.

  A voice shouted when the gunfire faded.

  “Cobb! Cobb! Get over here! Ramirez is hurt! His leg—oh fuck, man, he’s bleedin’ all over the place! I need help! Ramsey, goddamnit, get off your ass and help us!”

  I understood it then. Ramsey talked of Thumbprint People, yes, but I believe that was where his irrational fears stopped. The fears that affected him the most were of the real world. Of war. Of battle. Of bloodshed. And the wraiths were bringing these fears to life.

  More gunfire erupted in the distance. Someone screamed in pain. Bullets whined off metal and thumped into wood. Frozen, Ramsey stared in the direction of the sounds.

  “I gotta…I gotta go help Ramirez and Griff. I ain’t gonna let ‘em die like last time—” Now it was my turn to hold him back. He bucked, gritting his teeth, screaming, “Let me go, you bastard! Let me go!”

  “It’s not real, Ramsey! It’s not real!”

  His flexed muscles relaxed. He had opened the cut on his head in his frenzy. A thin stream of blood dripped from it. Once through the eyebrow, it wound its way down his cheek like a red teardrop.

  “You’re right, Grady. Fuck, you’re right…”

  I let go of him, and he stepped back and leaned against the wall. He put his hands over his face. With a shudder, he choked out a sob. A few seconds later, however, anger replaced the sadness. He ground his teeth together. His flesh burned crimson, nearly matching the shade of the blood he had smeared on his cheeks.

  I raised my arm, wanting to grab him again, but the attempt was halfhearted. In truth, my curiosity prevented me from doing so. He seemed oddly composed for such an angered man. I wanted to know what he had up his sleeve.

  He pushed the door open. The cold burned the exposed parts of my skin, but the wind blew no stronger than a light breeze. Laid out in front of me was a small corridor with walls of flimsy steel. It connected the main building of the theater to another smaller building. A lone lamp hung from the middle of the ceiling. Ramsey yanked on the pull cord, and a pale yellow glow gleamed off the other building’s silver facade. It was an old trailer annex. He brought his keys out again, found the right one on the first try, and unlocked the other door.

  Undecided, I stood half in the theater and half in the corridor. Eventually, like always, curiosity bested my fear. It's a good thing I’m not a cat.

  I stepped into the connecting tunnel and closed the door behind me. A wave of heat rolled my way. I felt like I was back to my firefighting days. I’d usually say any type of heat right about then was welcome. Hell, sometimes the idea of setting myself ablaze to combat the cold crossed my mind—and more than once. A joke, of course, at least for the first few times, but as my fingers inevitably lost feeling and parts of my skin darkened with eventual frostbite, that idea gained some weight, I’ll admit. But this heat that I felt from the inside of the trailer made setting myself on fire seem like Little League.

  As I got closer, my eyes dried to the point that blinking was painful. I’m not joking, I thought the bug spray in my jacket pocket might up and explode at any moment.

  Each step, even without snow beneath my feet, was a slog, like the heat was pushing back. I extended an arm and settled my hand on the metal. Warmth burned through my gloves. Without them, it would’ve hurt, no doubt—not third-degree burn hurt, but hurt nonetheless.

  I climbed the two steps leading in. The heat grew almost unbearable, and a quick glance around told me why. I just wasn’t prepared for it. I expected guns, actual big guns—or the entrance to Hell—but that wasn’t the case. Far from it, in fact.

  Car batteries—a boatload of them, like Ramsey spoke of earlier. I counted six rows lining the floor, but they were stacked a few feet high. If I had to guess, there were easily a hundred or more, all connected to one another by a few master cords which ran to a circuit breaker on the wall. Ramsey tiptoed through them without problem. I’m guessing he had done it many times before. I followed him about halfway. The fillings in my teeth ached, like I was walking through the graveyard of a malfunctioned nuclear power plant. I know, I know, this was probably mental, but I felt it, and when I think about it now, I can still feel it.

  The trailer was shaped like a brick—long, short, and squat. Most of the cupboards and built-in furniture had been torn out. I reckoned to make more room for the batteries and/or to burn the wood. Fruit-themed wallpaper flapped around the spaces where cabinets once existed. A pile of dust and debris from Ramsey’s de-renovation lay off to one side. Pieces of heavy wood covered the three windows, which still had not fruit but vegetable-themed curtains hanging from crooked rods above. Whoever this place had belonged to before it fell into Ramsey’s possession certainly liked their food decor.

  My eyes fell to the centerpiece again. “This is a major fire hazard, dude.”

  “Huh?” Ramsey, his legs splayed out in an uncomfortable angle to avoid the batteries, fiddled with the cover on the circuit breaker.

  “I used to be a firefighter,” I said. “This place is either gonna go kaboom or drown in battery acid.”

  “Good, let it. It’s a piece of shit anyways.” He snapped the circuit breaker’s door open. Two dozen or so buttons ran down it. His fingers danced along each one as he squinted and mumbled what he’d written on masking tape. Kitchen, Lobby, Bathroom, and so on. “Ah, here we go!”

  “What?”

  “I’d cover your eyes if I was you, Grady.”

  “For what?”

  “Three…two…”

  “What? Why are you counting down?”

  “One!”

  Ramsey threw the switch. It clicked, sounding louder than the slamming of a car door. A buzzing replaced it as a sudden burst of light exploded outside.

  For a glorious few seconds, at least until my retinas started burning, I thought the sun was back to its former glory. The idea was a fleeting one, however, as I remembered it was nine at night, if Ramsey’s wristwatch was to be believed. Still, had the time been wrong, the sun had never been this bright in my lifetime.

  Realizing my options were either going blind or covering my eyes, I settled on the latter.

  “Hear that?” Ramsey shouted.

  “The buzzing? Yeah, sounds like an army of bees.”

  “Listen harder, friend.”

  I strained my ears, unsure of what the hell was happening. About to guide myself out of the trailer by way of touch, I stopped. The image of me tripping and disconnecting one of the batteries burst into my head. I didn’t want to be inside here when the place blew.

  As I opened my mouth to voice my dissent, a different sound cut through the drone of the batteries. It was a sound I recognized. The soft popping of expiring wraiths. They went off one after the other, like some kind of depraved fireworks, and a stream of high-pitched screams followed these pops.

  “That’s it!” Ramsey shouted. He grunted as he pulled the switch back down. The buzzing stopped, the trailer grew a few degrees cooler, and the light vanished.

  I opened my eyes. A greenish tattoo floated around the edges of my vision for a moment. Rubbing my face in the crook of my arm, I asked, “Are they gone?”

  “Most of ‘em, probably. The ones that didn’t get torched no doubt got scared and ran. They ain’t human, I know, but they ain’t dumb either.”

  “What was that?”

  “My masterpiece,” Ramsey answered, grinning. “Been workin’ on that since the day I found this place.” He tapped one of the walls, knocking a small cloud of dust into the air. “I call it the Battery Box, ‘cause”—he waved a hand toward the floor—“well, you get it.”

  “I do.” I swiped a sleeve across my brow, and surprisingly, it came back slick with sweat.

  Ramsey noticed this and nodded toward the tunnel. “Let’s get outta here. If you want to, you can step out in the cold for a bit. Shadows are gone, and it’d cool ya off in probably two seconds flat. But if you’re smart—”

  A spark crackled from one of the batteries. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough, unlike Ramsey, who located the source and ripped it out of line. He juggled it from hand to hand like a potato fresh from the oven.

  “Aw, shit!”

  “Need any help?” I asked, hoping he didn’t. My days of fighting fires were long behind me. Not by choice, but had the world not ended, I doubted I’d ever don bunker gear—or PPE, to the layman—again. And after I failed to save the boy from the apartment, I didn’t exactly miss it.

  “Nah, I’m good. Go on ahead and check on your pals.”

  Relieved, I wasted no time in doing so, and raced back to the cafe.

  They were still sitting at the middle table. Mia clutched a shaking Chewy against the swell of her stomach. Both her and Ell’s cheeks shined with tears, and firelight reflected off the sweat coating Stone’s forehead.

  They looked drained—I mean, beyond exhausted—but otherwise okay.

  4

  Thumbprint People

  “Are you sure you guys are all right?” I asked, sliding beside Ell and draping my arm over her shoulders.

  “They—they’re really gone? You’re not fuckin’ with us?” Mia said before Ell could answer me.

  Ramsey, jovial and bursting with energy again, skipped across the room toward the window. He fingered the barrier, pulled it back, and peered through the crack. “Oh, they’re gone, all right. I see a lot of snow out there, and that’s about it.”

  “You promise?”

  “I promise, sweetheart.”

  Damn, Mia was so messed up, she hadn’t even noticed Ramsey’s use of a patronizing nickname. Usually she’d be all over that. If a man called a woman “honey,” “sweetheart,” “dear,” or any variation of a distinctively gendered pet name, and that man wasn’t the woman’s husband or significant other, Mia automatically denounced it as demeaning and oppressive. That is, unless it came from someone’s nice old grandfather. “But even Grandpa can be a perv. Shit, most of them geezers are,” she had explained to me one time. It wasn’t like I would ever call her such a name, but I still made a mental note not to…because I valued what I had below my belt, and I wouldn’t have put it past a pissed-off Mia to use my manhood as a punching bag.

  Ramsey got off lucky that day, that was for sure. Despite his and my proclamation of no more monsters outside, Mia only slightly relaxed, whereas Stone and Eleanor started to resemble humans again as opposed to the drained bags of skin they were when I had entered.

  Ell grabbed Mia’s hand. “It’s all right now. Relax. Deep breaths.”

  Mia nodded. “Thanks.”

  Ramsey set a hand on each of his hips. “So what do y’all think of my secret weapon?” He waited a moment, but we gave no answer. “Well, it’s effective, that’s about all that matters. Buncha spotlights and some other Army shit.” Chuckling, he looked at Stone. “How ‘bout you, buddy, you dig it?”

  Stone’s face was a blank slate. A few seconds passed before he even gave a hint that he intended to reply, and I was betting on him saying something offensive and/or vulgar when he did.

  But he didn’t; I was surprised.

  “I’ll tell you this, Ramsey,” Stone said, “you’ve just gone up a couple of notches in my book.”

  “Now that’s good to hear, partner!”

  “Ah, don’t get ahead of yourself. I still don’t completely trust you after you shot at us.”

  “Near y’all, I shot near y’all,” Ramsey corrected. “But yeah, I get it. You can’t trust nobody but your CO, your—”

  “Momma, and God,” Stone finished, much to Ramsey’s amusement.

  Chewy’s head turned up, and he sniffed loudly. So I inhaled, and that was when I noticed a slight burning smell drifting into the cafe.

  “You sure it didn’t catch after I left?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” Ramsey said. “It’s like a supernova in there—it burns bright, but it don’t burn for long. Like I said, it’s a helluva fuel sucker.” On cue, the lights in the cafe flickered and buzzed. Ramsey’s eyes drifted toward the nearest bulb, and he frowned. “Well, someone else go ahead and take a look outside. Double check that them sons-of-bitches are gone.”

  No one took him up on the offer. For some reason, maybe it was me trying to be brave or just being plain stupid—and I’m guessing it was the latter—I advanced toward the window. I almost said: What's the worst thing that could happen? but didn’t because saying something like that almost always made the worst thing that could happen, happen.

  At the window, I moved the piece of wood and stared out into the new darkness for a few moments. “I don’t see anything.”

  Ramsey was leaning against the fireplace. He laughed, bent, and slapped his knee hard enough to make Chewy’s ears perk up.

  “You’re damn right! Made them motherfuckers scurry back to the giant asshole they crawled out of!”

  I nodded my head, impressed. The feeling didn’t last for long, however, because Ramsey’s voice turned ominous. He stopped laughing and, one by one, he met our eyes with his own, whispering, “They’ll be back in a couple of days. They always come back.”

  He was right, of course, and I hadn’t doubted him about that…but the monsters returned much sooner than we expected.

  Much sooner.

  Stone said, “So it’s like a toaster? Shit, that sounds like the perfect place to sleep.”

  “If you wanna wake up barbecued,” I said.

  “Yeah, Grady’s right,” Ramsey said. “It’s a hazard. Lotta risk for the reward. I can’t use it too much neither. That few minutes alone burned up about a quarter of my juice. That’s why I said it’s best to ignore ‘em. They can’t get in, and as long as we’re awake, they can’t get in our heads. But—”

  “They were extra saucy tonight,” Stone interrupted.

  Ramsey chuckled. “Saucy, yeah, that’s one way of puttin’ it. I think it’s somethin’ else, though.” His face was wrinkled, as if deep in thought.

  That piqued my curiosity. “What something?”

  “Well, the dude studyin’ them bastards in the City—Berretti—he had this theory. I don’t know if it holds any water or not, but the more I think about it—and with what happened here tonight—maybe he ain’t totally off his rocker.”

  “What is it?” Mia demanded. “Christ, we’ve been over this, Ramsey! Get. To. The. Point.”

  He tipped an imaginary hat her way and grinned. “The shadows—or the wraiths, or the ‘rages, or whatever you wanna call ‘em—they take a liking to certain people. They follow ya around, latch onto your back and won’t let go until they’ve done whatever it is that they do to us. Suck our souls or eat our fear and whatnot. They probably caught your scent and teamed up with the bastards followin’ me. Fuckin’ dinner party, that’s what that shit was.” He cupped a hand over to the side of his mouth and hollered: “Sorry, assholes, meal’s canceled!”

  This brought thoughts of Bob into my head. He had compared himself to a dinner host for the monsters, gaining the trust of wanderers like us who were unfortunate enough to cross his path, and torturing them to extract fear and grief and anguish.

  Stone sat up straight and eyed Ramsey. “You’re telling me the same motherfuckers that haunted our asses on Prism Lake, miles and miles away, have followed us all the way down here?”

  Ramsey gave him a shrug. “Eh…it’s just a theory. Everything about ‘em is a theory because they ain’t exactly willin’ to be studied and all. And I don’t know how much weight this particular theory holds, but I know I ain’t ever had to deal with so many shadows in all the weeks I’ve spent here. Come to think of it, that was only the second time I used the Battery Box.” He nodded to me. “And with Mr. Firefighter-Grady over here chewing me out for it bein’ ‘unsafe’, I don’t know if I’ll get to use it again.”

  Glaring in my direction, Stone shook his head; Ell patted me on the back, as if to say It’s okay for being a stickler, I love you regardless; and Mia, rolling her eyes, said, “Color me unsurprised.”

  I hauled my arms out to the sides. “Hey, I’m just watching our backs. I’d prefer it if none of us were burned alive.”

  “Shit,” Stone mumbled, “being burned alive sounds kinda good right about now.”

  “Yeah, where you’re going”—Mia leaned over and jabbed Stone in the shoulder—“you better be gettin’ used to the fire.”

  “Me-ow,” Ramsey said and chortled.

  Mia said, “Hey, watch it with that sexist shit.”

  “Sorry,” Ramsey mumbled, not meeting her eyes.

  Eleanor chuckled, and Stone’s glare bounced from me to her. “Really, Ell? You’ll call me out for saying rude stuff, but you laugh when Mia does it. Talk about a double standard, for real.”

  Chewy gave a short little yap, but it sounded playful enough that I wasn’t sure who the dog sided with; I thought he just wanted attention. Mia appeared to think Chewy leaned more to her side because she pulled him into her lap and kissed the top of his head. Having gotten the desired attention, his stubby tail whirred into a blur. Mia then blew Stone a kiss. I was grinning, thinking she was sounding and acting more like herself. That was good, especially after what the wraiths had hurled at her.

 

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