2
Frost gripped the railing hard enough to hurt, but her mind, distracted by the view, barely registered the pain. Refuge had materialized on the top of a huge, gently sloping hillside. Tan, rocky soil led away from the town in all directions, leading down to strange formations of white stone—or was it bone?—and great globs of twisted flesh-like material.
Immense curved towers rose up in rows, resembling the rib bones of long-departed behemoths. She saw what looked like gigantic teeth erupting from the soil, and then slowly sinking back under—huge molars rising and falling, as if the entire landscape were the inside of a giant’s masticating mouth. Large bonfires dotted the landscape, their roaring flames stretching high into the sky and filling the air with a putrid, burnt scent and a thick choking smoke.
Bat-winged creatures swooped and ripped through the air, but their bodies were odd and twisted, their long, skinny limbs dangling at obscene angles. Distorted, like a surrealist painting. At this distance, she couldn’t tell exactly what they were, though she doubted a closer look would help clarify things.
Two miles to the south, the structures on the ground formed a city-sized circle. A long avenue extended out from the formation’s core, leading straight toward Refuge. The more Frost looked at the city, the more she realized that it wasn’t a city at all—it was a labyrinth. Within the massive circle, the white stone walls twisted back and forth. Huge curtains of flesh colored canvas looked like they had washed over the walls of the labyrinth in a tidal wave, and then frozen in place.
The visual effect was chilling.
But it was the sound that truly terrified her.
The labyrinth stretching below was probably ten times the size of Refuge—and it was populated. She could hear its residents screaming. More screams than her mind could process. Some long and shrill, some short and gruff like barked insults. But there was no mistaking the sound—they were people, in agony and anguish, terror and despair.
The sounds rose and fell in volume with the wind, as it swept more and more of the thick black smoke their way.
“What…what is it?” Frost asked aloud.
“Nothing we want to see,” Griffin answered, his tone grim.
Dodge bent forward and peered out at the labyrinth through Winslow’s telescope, which they had mounted at the center of the roost, allowing for a full three-hundred-sixty-degree view around town.
“Nothing you want to see,
again
, you mean,” Dodge said, and stood up. He looked pointedly at Griffin, and Griffin hurried over to look through the telescope. After a quick look, he stood up, his face drawn and ashen.
“What is it?” Frost asked.
Griffin said nothing.
“If you don’t tell her, I will,” Dodge said.
Griffin turned back to look out at the hellish place to which they had come.
“I painted this,” Griffin said softly.
“What? When?” Frost asked. She’d seen many of his paintings in the past. They were frequently printed in the local paper whenever he had a show. They were dark and shocking. Nothing like this. But it had been a while since she’d seen anything new.
Griffin turned around, his face still drawn and haggard.
“The paintings I don’t show.”
“How many?”
He shrugged. “Fifty. Sixty, maybe.”
“He showed one to me,” Dodge said, “years ago when he was questioning his faith, or lack thereof.” He turned to Griffin. “How did you come up with the images?”
“Nightmares.” Griffin said. “After I left the Rangers… I painted what I dreamt.”
Frost was stunned. The hellscape before her was horrible. That Griffin was capable of imagining something like this reminded her of the alternate Griffin—savage and violent. Despite what she knew about him, he was clearly capable of great darkness.
“You need to get some better dreams,” she said, attempting to quell her rising distress.
Griffin offered a sad smile. The darkness no doubt scared him, too.
Dodge headed toward the ladder. “People will want some comforting if they’ve seen what’s out there.”
Griffin stepped aside to let Frost descend before him.
“Aren’t you going to take a snap of this world?” she asked him.
“No point. I have plenty at home.”
The remaining population
waited inside the office of the Sheriff’s station. They sat on every available surface and on the floor. If they spoke, they did so in quiet, hushed voices, fear filling their eyes at the occasional wailing from outside. Griffin saw all the people he had come to know better through this ordeal, after having known them only as acquaintances for years. Phillip Beaumont and his daughters. Mary Soucey-Bartlett and her husband, Brian, from the market. Widowed Tess and the boy, Wyatt. Laurie Whittemore and Julie Barnes. They were all waiting for their leaders—Frost, Dodge and Griffin—to come and tell them what would happen next.
Griffin looked at the expectant faces and wondered how he would tell them the world they’d come to, this new terrifying landscape, looked like the nightmares of his paintings. Then Frost saved him from needing to do so.
“Okay, everyone,” she said. “We’ve shifted again. We discussed this. We don’t know the dangers this new world might present, but we know what our town looks like and how best to defend it. Let’s start with what we know. Recon Team One? The Phantom. Check the road to the north and out by the diner. Team Two? The Humvee and the road south. Like we discussed and prepared for. We can’t stop threats coming from the air or the woods, but the three easiest ways into town are the roads. If the danger looks too tough, you run. Remember, your job isn’t to fight the threats, but to warn us of them. Go.”
When she finished, two teams of five men got up and left the station. Two men by the front doors, where they had attached iron bars from dismantled jail cells to act as defensible barricades, closed the gates after the teams departed.
“The rest of you go about your assigned tasks. Remember, we only need to stay here until we’ve assessed the dangers. If, like in that last world, things are calm, then you can go outside again or back to your homes.”
Griffin wandered to Frost’s office, where Winslow was hunched over the desk, scribbling furiously on a piece of paper. Radar and Lisa sat on the side of the office, Radar likewise scribbling on a pad sitting on Frost’s credenza. Lisa was flipping through the punctured journal from the document safe.
“Any luck here?”
Radar looked up. “We think it’s a substitution cipher. Mr. Ellison liked anagrams, so we think he’d like a good sub cipher, too. There’s just a lot of possibilities to try.”
Winslow merely grunted from the desk.
“Alright. Keep up the good work, and thanks.”
Griffin moved over to the conference room, where Avalon sat with Cash Whittemore and Kyle Gardner. Dodge entered and sat at the table. Frost came in behind Griffin. She moved and sat at the table with the others.
“Dad,” Avalon said. “This place. It—”
Griffin stopped her with a raised hand. “I’m about to get to that.” He leaned on the edge of the table. “I have no way to explain this. None at all, so don’t ask, but the world out there, it looks like a lot of my paintings. If that’s true, if this place is somehow a reflection of what I put in those images, then there are going to be some dangerous things out there.”
“What are we talking here?” Cash asked, sitting forward. Griffin appreciated that the man didn’t try to lay any blame and took the revelation in stride. He just got down to business.
“Pretty much everything from the landscape to the flora and fauna will try to kill you. It’s basically the most hostile environment imaginable. We have two things going for us. First, most of the dangers are rooted in place and are unable to move into town. Second, this world seems to begin a few miles out, so there’s a good buffer. Our best strategy for this one is to keep inside town, stay quiet, and hope we shift again soon.”
Cash cleared his throat. “You said, ‘
most
of the dangers are rooted in place.’”
“Yeah, well, let’s just hope the ones that aren’t don’t notice us,” Griffin said.
“A magically appearing town might be kinda hard to miss.” Cash’s eyebrows rose high on his forehead. “Don’t ya think?”
Griffin nodded slowly. Cash was right, but he had no intention of detailing the mobile dangers he’d created in his paintings. It would only increase the panic. Better to wait and see what, if anything, decided to visit town. The response to all of it would essentially be the same: shoot the shit out of it.
“What about figuring all this out?” Avalon asked. “Have they made any sense of that code?” She looked much better these days. The cramps, cold sweats and shakes had all subsided. Whatever personal horrors she’d endured through the Oxy withdrawal, she seemed to be over them all. There were a few bad nights at the start of the week in the savannah, but for the first time since she had come home, her eyes were clear.
“They’re working on it. And before you ask, there’s been no sign of Ellison or his nurse.” He punctuated the word, ‘nurse,’ with air quotes.
“Seems to me, you guys are going about this all wrong.” The voice came from the open door, behind Griffin. They all turned to see Julie Barnes leaning on the frame in her designer redneck apparel. “I mean, I’m just a real estate agent, but it seems to me you should focus on those pylon thingies you mentioned—the ones we saw on Sheriff Frost’s map? They have to be powered by something, right?”
Seeing she had everyone’s attention, Julie stepped into the room. “Now, we all know the retrofit to the town put in a ton of solar panels on the roofs of most of the structures, and you can see the occasional windmill in the woods on the hills around town.”
Cash leaned back in his chair, eyeing her suspiciously. “What’s your point?”
Julie shrugged. “Well, seems to me that those pylons would need more power than what all those solar panels can generate, especially with the town still drawing power. The old airfield out behind the orchard has rows and rows of solar panels and windmills. Wouldn’t it be possible to follow the electricity from there to the pylons, and—I don’t know—shut it off? For when we shift someplace safer, obviously.” She turned to look at Cash. “You’re the electrician. Back me up here.”
Cash leaned forward in his chair. “Lines are underground, but she has a point. There’s a substation over there, and there should be diagrams showing the flow of power. Maybe not to the pylons themselves, but to whatever is controlling them. There’d need to be a hell of a lot of juice going that way.” He looked up at Griffin. “We should check it out.”
“I’ll go with you,” Julie volunteered.
Cash was about to protest but she pulled a big ring of keys from her pocket and jingled them at him. “Real estate agent, remember? I have the key to the front gate of the airfield.”
Cash looked at Griffin, but he just shrugged. “Alright, you two go check out the airfield. I’m not sure shutting the pylons down is the right play, though. That might leave us stranded—permanently—wherever we are, instead of returning us home. But if we can find the controls for the shifts, I’d wager we’ll find Ellison and our answers.” He turned to the doctor. “Kyle, we’ll need you to stay here at the station, coordinating and helping the injured.”
The young doctor nodded and said “Of course.”
Griffin turned to Frost. “I’m thinking of having another go at Ellison’s place. Tearing it inside out, looking for any kind of clue or maybe a panic room where the old guy might be holed up. What do you think?”