“Need me to come up with you?”
I frowned.
“No,” I said. “Do you have to?”
“It’s not protocol,” he said. “You’re healthy, you’re safe. We’ll call you if we need anything else.”
“Thanks,” I said, and reached for the door handle. After a second of groping, I sighed.
“I have to let you out.”
“Ah.”
I climbed out of the car with Sykes’ help and stepped out onto the grass.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said.
“Thanks for not being dead.”
I snapped around toward him, to catch the look on his face, but he’d already turned his back to me. He popped open the driver’s side door and slid into it without another word. Before the car pulled away, he gave me the granite stare I’d come to know well in my brief hour in his care. He cruised down the street at the same even pace he moved at—like he had no hurry in the world, but at the same time, like he might spring into furious motion. Call me wacko, but I think I liked him.
I turned and walked up the driveway. I didn’t make it to the second porch step before the screen door flew open and banged against the wall. My mother, her face red, blasted out through the dark hole into the house and wrapped her arms around me.
The heat inside of me flared to life again, burning through my core. I sucked in a breath and felt an icy sting on my tongue. It rushed down my windpipe, into my lungs, my belly, throwing a spray of fine white ice on the erupting flame. My skin cooled almost instantly.
Something leaked into me, flooded my senses—a fumbling primal grasping in the dark…tears being kissed away…oh God our little Lucy…
Aftershave, stinging and musky and pleasant. The little tug of his lips…oh. Of Dad’s lips. On my Mom’s neck. Oh. Oh! Blargh! Yuck, ack!
The little brain-movie faded, and I staggered under a rush of vertigo. What the hell? How did I…what was I seeing? Whatever it was, it combined terror and heartbreak and comfort—for them, at least. I kinda longed for a lobotomy to scrape that image out.
What had I just seen? And more importantly, why was I seeing it?
Mom held me at arm’s length, her eyes flashing across my body, looking for drug marks, cuts, bullet holes, who knows. The dark silhouette shape of my father crowded the doorway into the house. “Lucy,” Dad said, his voice low. “Are you hurt?”
I looked up at him—my mother turned, her arms still grabbing at me, to look back at him, too.
“A little,” I said.
The sound of the gunshot—Baldy’s hands, the leer in all of their eyes. The terror. The helpless stand in the alleyway where they could do anything they wanted. The…
…black…
…long wide ribbons of light, snaking through the dust-motes. Noon no longer—evening leaned into the living room in long dusty strokes of amber and red. The over-stuffed sofa beneath me, cradling me on a cloud of upholstery and fluffy pillows. My head had been used to pound in nails. The hand and knee on my right side ached. The TV was dark.
I lolled my head, trying to find the source of a cold something dripping down the back of my neck. I saw the corner of something white. My groping hand found the ice pack, tugged it off my head, and flipped it over. It was wrapped in paper-towels stained the light pink of diluted blood. I touched a tender spot on the right side of my head, not too far east of the asphalt-raw lump in the back.
The floor behind me creaked. I rolled to look over the back of the couch.
Mom perched on an ottoman next to the couch and laid the back of her hand across my cheek. She smiled and handed me a glass of water.
“You passed out, baby,” she said. “You must have had a long night. I can’t even imagine.”
“What?” I rubbed the spot on my head. The pain in my wrist and the sting in my knee concurred with Mom’s objective assessment. “I just…keeled over?”
“Pretty much,” Mom said. “Scared the hell out of your dad and me. I think he was ready to launch into a tirade before you bowed out.”
“What about now?”
“Actually, he’s still ready. He’s on the phone with the police. He had some questions I guess.”
“All reasonable and un-angry like?”
Mom laughed.
“Of course,” Mom said. “Nothing about legal action, incompetence, or gross negligence.”
“Zack called,” Mom said as she stood up.
I sat up again, and she made a face.
“He knows you’re fine, they all do.”
I hadn’t thought about Zack. Not since the dream or whatever it was. My first date with him, with anyone, had ended in an all-night search party. I covered my eyes and threw myself back on the couch with a groan, hoping to turn invisible or explode, anything to stop the gushing embarrassment. I heard Mom shift on the ottoman.
“You really like him?”
I nodded, my eyes still shaded in shame and something like self-loathing.
“Did the boys in the alley—?”
“No,” I said, firmly. “They ran away.”
“And they didn’t steal anything?”
I sighed. I wished Sykes had come up with me to explain everything.
I fed her my questionable story. She looked worried, but I don’t think she had a predetermined parent-protocol for this particular situation. She put her hand over mine and offered me the glass of water again.
“Drink. You’re not hungry, baby? It’s probably been a whole day since you ate.”
My stomach, still and quiet, asked for nothing. I hadn’t thought about it, but she was right. I took a sip of water and wondered if shock or terror stole your appetite.
“Officer Sykes took me through a McDonalds,” I lied. “I was starving.”
She nodded, satisfied. I didn’t think a cop would take you through the drive-thru, but then again, Sykes wasn’t the average cop. Not as far as I had encountered, anyway.
Thanks for not being dead,
his voice echoed.
I frowned. I told my Mom I was tired, and she let me be. I took another gulp of water, set it on the coffee table, and lay back down. Sleep felt far away, a distant dream, an abstract concept like time travel. Behold my surprise when it grabbed me in seconds and pulled me back down into the dark.
I woke up at the beach.
Chapter Four
Welcome to the Meadows
The sweet and sour smell of the ocean flooded my senses. The taste of wood smoke, the salty air cutting my skin like an icy blade. Summer days with my parents, splashing through the shallows, daring myself to go out further. To jump the waves and go further still. To go until the big one hit me and rolled me and dumped me out on the beach with about three gallons of saltwater down my throat. Then, of course, to start all over again.
Summer nights, beach parties, lit by the murderous orange glow of an obscenely-sized bonfire. Bundled in sweatshirts, watching the boys in the group wrestle in the sand or toss a football, making fun of them or taking bets.
My eyes flicked open. Grey. Lightless yet oddly lit grey. A haze without an end.
I held my hands in front of my eyes. Not blind. Charcoal grey sand, wet and clumpy, stuck to my fingers. I sat up in surprise.
I wasn’t dreaming. I knew that right away.
The dark grey sand unraveled up and down a long, featureless coastline. The surging grey soup of the ocean beat against the shore, cresting and falling in meager impressions of waves. The sea stretched on forever, with only the distant glimmer and the far-off ringing of what had to be a long line of abandoned, rusting buoys. A sky the color of ash, devoid entirely of clouds, empty of the warmth of any visible sun, cast a weird indirect glow on everything. Nothing bright, nothing dark. Just a miserable granite color in all directions.
I turned around, away from the featureless ocean. The charcoal sand crested into a ridge that blocked anything in that direction from sight. Sand, in undulating dunes, stretched out to the left and right of me, paralleling the shape of the coastline.
“Hello!”
My voice didn’t echo. It stopped where it left my mouth, as if it died the moment it hit oxygen.
“HELLO!”
The same effect, only louder. I winced.
Time to assess the situation, Luce. You’re on an alien planet? No. Dead? Maybe. Dreaming?
I looked around again, trying to soak in the strange environment. It was cold—wherever I was, I was still wearing the skirt, boots, torn shirt, coat combo I’d had on for far too long. It wasn’t Alaska cold, just beach-cold, but it was enough. I thought about the bonfires we’d had freshman year and
longed
. I tucked my coat around my body and buttoned it up to my neck.
My legs were damp and my skirt felt soaked-through. It clung to me like a second skin, no flex, no slink, all friction. It was the feeling of wet socks all over, and I resisted a disgusted shudder.
No, I wasn’t dreaming. I’d never felt anything so vivid in a dream. Besides, in dreams, didn’t things…happen? Friends, loved ones, horror-movie slashers. Something. Not featureless grey and disquiet.
I stood up and nearly snapped my ankle. If I thought running in boots sucked, standing in wet sand was murder. My high-heeled boots may have looked sexy-tough, but at that moment I wanted nothing to do with them. I reached down, navigated the long and gruesome task of unlacing them around my calves, and tugged them off. I tied them together, wrapped the laces around one finger, and tossed them over my shoulder. I stripped off my black socks with one hand, doing the one-foot-dance all the while, and tucked them into the boots.
My bare feet sank into the moist sand with a
squelch
. I wriggled my toes and felt a violent chill spike through them.
“Time to get movin’, Luce,” I said to no one. “Because this is pretty damn weird.”
I marched up the hill, away from the ocean. My toes fought for purchase in the silt. Jaunty steps mirrored my light heart—my light heart, unfortunately, mirrored nothing. The emotion was difficult to pinpoint. It reminded me of the way sunlight made me feel—inexplicably nourished, even if it did eventually burn my skin to lobster-like shades. I really do wish I had the capacity to tan.
Come on, girl. Focus. Focus and walk.
Trudging through wet sand was better than a
Stairmaster
. On the other side of the ridge, a long grey river of highway blacktop paralleled the ridge for a mile or two before swinging away from the coast into oblivion.
The sand hill became a slide of gravel, all the way down to the guard rails of a freeway.
Beyond the six lanes of the empty highway the countryside, a mixture of chaparral and ash, rolled on out of sight. Distant mountain shapes broke the sky into ragged lines.
The highway angled toward a distant glowing dome of indistinct light. A city, I guessed, though it easily could have been a football stadium or God or a big fat nightlight.
Just B-movie post-apocalypse fare and a crap-ton of grey lifeless countryside.
I knew the response I’d get before I even bothered.
“HELLO!”
My voice stopped at the edge of my lips. Again. I sighed and tucked my free hand into my pocket, a ward against the cold if nothing else. The empty bullet casing touched my fingertips.
I rolled the shell-casing around in my fingers. It felt even colder than usual, like a cylinder of ice. I pressed my skin against the sharp edge of the hole where the bullet used to be.
“HELLO!”
The ground rumbled underneath me. I sucked in a gasp and tried not to tumble down the slope. It shook again, and the sand rolled under my bare feet. I looked around, trying to find the source of the sound, but it came from every direction, every pore in the sand.
I turned.
A dot on the horizon. A ball of white on the ocean. Bigger. Growing larger.
I pivoted and booked down toward the highway. I came down the slope too fast, track star that I am, and my ankle twisted and shot hot sparks of pain up my leg. I vaulted the low guardrail with one hand and landed on the blacktop with a crunch, one that unfortunately took place in my ankle. I tumbled to the ground, my ankle dunked in molten lava.
Son of a bitch that hurt, Lucy. But don’t stop running.
The ground bucked again but with less power—more like an impact than an earthquake. A deep-seated fear welled up within me, uncontrollable, unexplainable. I hobbled across the three empty lanes, crawled over the center divider, and dropped to my hands and knees. The highway shook, and a bright light lanced over the divider, illuminating the grey countryside with unnatural glow. My heart raced, my lungs billowed, and my ankle shouted obscenities at me. I was shaking all over, like I’d just been pulled out of a frozen lake.
I couldn’t hear anything—whatever thing that had come from the ocean, whatever thing that now stabbed the area with a bright white searchlight, was as silent as the grave. Not a footstep, nothing.
Another flash of light—the shadow of the center divider stood out sharply against the blacktop for a moment. Two white circles of light stood out in the shadow, and I turned my head to see the two holes bored through the cement on either side. Ignoring a shrill, naggy caution-voice in my head that sounded more like me than I cared for, I crawled to the closest hole. I took a deep, slow breath, trying to clear my gut of the rampaging butterflies, and peeked through the hole.
Light burned my eyes—it was impossible to make out any of the thing’s features. He looked to be made of light—just sunshine sculpted with arms and legs. His head seemed to be turned away from me, but it was impossible to tell. It wasn’t until a searing beam of light erupted from his face and swept the highway to the left of me that I was sure.
It flashed toward me, and I threw myself away from the hole. I looked behind me—the same clear-cut shadow of the center divider, with two perfectly circular holes. I let out another whoosh of breath and tried not to move.
Unless the thing had Superman eyes, I might be safe
.
When the light moved on, I took another peek to make sure. It hadn’t seen me. It swept the highway to my right with slow, even strokes.