Shifting

Thirty-Four

I looked back at the center. I realized that there were several faces glued to various windows. I saw Holly Nelson’s, and Nick Hackler’s and Monika’s. My talk with the Preacher had not been as private as I’d assumed. I doubted they had heard the words, but they had gotten the gist of it, I was sure.

The Preacher and I stood side by side quietly as the Captain and Wilton approached us. We had our hands ready. Vance came out too, casually holding his rifle at waist-level. I saw no sign of the Captain’s M4 and felt relieved. Perhaps he had lost that weapon. Or perhaps he had stashed it somewhere for a special occasion.

They reached the gate and Wilton called out. “Let us in, I think we might be followed!”

The three of us walked toward the gate, which was chained tight. Barbed wire wound around the top of the fence now, and the empty guard tower built of plywood and two-by-fours loomed mutely over them.

“Well, Captain?” I said, eyeing them both.

The Preacher had been opening his mouth, and seemed startled that I had beaten him to it. He watched me with interest, but did not object or interrupt.

“Gannon,” the Captain greeted me. He had his knife at his side, but his hand was on the hilt. Both he and Wilton looked dirty and tired. I could only wonder what they had been up to while I slept.

“Do we still have a truce?” I demanded.

“Of course,” he said, attempting a smile. “There are worse things out here than you or I.”

I nodded, not buying his friendly show entirely, but finding his point hard to argue.

“And what about Wilton and the thing from the beach?” I demanded, coming up to the gate to face him. “I never meant to let either of them into the center.”

Wilton opened her mouth to speak, but the Captain waved her to silence. Wilton looked worriedly from face to face, but took the hint and held her tongue. I imagined it was difficult for her. She kept glancing over her shoulder and scanning the houses and streets behind them.

The Captain came up to the fence and clawed his hands in the chain links. “Look, Gannon, things are bad out here. I’ve seen bad things. You know what I mean. We are all going to have to work together tonight I think and use everything we have, or we’re all dead. Or worse.”

I eyed the Captain. “Explain what you mean.”

“Okay, but let us in first.”

I glared at them, undecided for a moment.

“If we let you in, you’ll bring it all right here, just like she did before,” said Vance, his eyes narrowly upon Wilton.

“Let them in,” said the Preacher at my side.

I glanced at him, and then nodded to Vance. With a lot of muttering and cursing, he fumbled with the keys and got the locks off the chains. We shook open the makeshift, sagging gates far enough to let them slip inside, then sealed them up again with twists and braids of rusty chain.

When they got inside, we eyed one another with suspicion for a second, and then the Preacher broke the mood by offering his hand to the new arrivals. We all shook hands around in a circle. The familiar act of trust relieved some of the tension, but not all of it.

“Welcome back,” said the Preacher, smiling and locking eyes with each of them in turn. “It’s hard not to be suspicious of one another on this dark day. We must try to remember our humanity, and to forgive. Everyone loses their way, at times, but it is never too late.”

I could see the words had some impact on Wilton, and even the Captain wasn’t immune and aloof to the sentiment. His words made me think of my secret burden. It was odd how easy it was to forget about it. In fact, I found it easy to pretend my hand didn’t have black talons that threatened to tear apart my pocket. Had I lost my way?

I thought of all the movies I’d seen where people had changed into monsters. They always tried to hide it. They always felt shame and gave angry denials. It was so strange to be the monster. I felt like the good man who commits a crime accidentally, and who is then forced to live a lie, sure that at any moment someone would figure it out, that everyone would learn of his secret shame. They had to figure it out eventually. Who was I to try and judge these others with their own failings? What had Wilton or the Captain done that I hadn’t?

“I think I’ll wash up,” I heard myself say, and I marveled at my normal tone of voice. I was becoming good at covering. “Make sure you try some of Nick Hackler’s cooking, he’s quite proud of it.”

They laughed and I left them out there in the parking lot. I had been driven away by self-doubt, I knew. In a way it was a relief, I wanted the Preacher to take over leadership and manage our defenses. When tonight came, I would fight on the side of the humanity. But I kept having another thought, a dark thought about pulling out of here. I might be able to survive better if I just left, if I struck out on my own. What stopped me was the thought of everyone I cared for. I thought of them in turn, Monika and Holly Nelson and my younger brother Vance, who even now excitedly told whoever would listen about his traps and where he’d found the barbed wire bails and a dozen other things. I couldn’t leave them.

As if she had divined my thoughts, Mrs. Hatchell caught me in the lobby next to the sausage stand. Nick was off somewhere, perhaps concocting a lunch out of changeling corpses.

“Gannon,” she said, grabbing my arm. “I need to talk to you.”

“What is it?”

“Whatever you are thinking, you need to stay here tonight,” she told me, still holding onto my arm.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“You wander quite a bit, boy. But not tonight, okay?”

“But why are you so concerned?”

“Because we need you,” said Monika, appearing behind me. I hadn’t heard her approach. She always moved quietly.

I reached out my good hand to her and she reached hers to meet mine. Mrs. Hatchell watched our fingers entwine and smiled. I’m sure she now approved of our closeness-now that it fit in with her plans.

“It’s the Preacher,” hissed Mrs. Hatchell. She leaned uncomfortably close to us. “It’s that thing he’s got, on his belt. He was gone for weeks, even longer than you were, and last night he comes back with an enchanted artifact, saying it’s a gift from one of them. He’s never without it. He’ll put his Bible down, but not that thing.”

She said this last with clenched teeth. She let go of my arm and leaned her skinny butt back against the table.

“So you don’t trust him?” I asked.

“We don’t,” Monika chimed in. I turned back to her, surprised. I trusted her judgment more than I did the counselor’s.

“Listen, ladies,” I whispered back to both of them. “First of all, I’m not leaving. Secondly, the Preacher, I believe, is the most trustworthy of all of us. I trust him more than I do myself.”

They both blinked at me. I looked from one face to the next.

“What’s with your hand?” asked Mrs. Hatchell. She looked pointedly at the abomination I kept jammed in my pocket.

“I injured it,” I said smoothly. I had practiced the lie, and it came out sounding very natural. I wondered how long I could keep it concealed. Perhaps, just long enough for me to prove myself to the rest of them.

“Gannon,” said Monika. Her face had that scared-kid look I found most endearing. “What if he decides that we aren’t good enough?”

I looked back at her for a moment. Her eyes flicked down to my hidden hand, and then back to my face. She knew. Mrs. H. was only starting to suspect, but Monika knew. I had noticed hints before, but now I was sure. She knew my hand had gone bad, and she knew the Preacher wouldn’t like it, and now she didn’t like him, because he was a threat to me.

“You two are so sappy,” Hatchell said suddenly, misinterpreting our close, wordless exchange. She shook her head and tsked. “This office romance would be enjoyable, if we weren’t all about to get butchered. Promise me that if you have a spat, neither of you tries to leave until we survive this storm and the trick-or-treaters I’m expecting to see tonight.”

“There aren’t going to be any trick-or-treaters,” said Holly, walking in our conversation. Her eyes were hard, but there was a touch of a lost look on her too-young face. I felt bad for her. “Not ever again.”

“We’ll see about that,” I said.

She came closer and I saw she had a Bowie knife in her hands. She thunked it tip-first into the table that still had a few cold sausages on it. “Tonight, I’m going to stand by you, whatever happens.”

I nodded and smiled. I knew she meant it. She couldn’t have weighed eighty pounds yet, but I knew she would fight, no matter what happened. She wasn’t a kid anymore. Others might freeze up or run, but not her. She would fight, and that made her valuable.

“I’ll be glad to have you there,” I told her, and I meant it.

Wilton came in then, followed by the rest of them. The Preacher came in last. Wilton set the lantern, with my coat still over it, on the big, low kids’ coloring table that occupied one corner of the lobby. I had always liked that corner as a child. It had bead-puzzles and blocks and the fish tank in it, along with some heavily-eared magazines and books. I’d played there, what now seemed like a century ago.

The lantern was heavy, and I was amazed Wilton had carried it so far. She half slumped over it now, and even though she had put it down, she kept at least one hand resting on top of it. It’s got her fixated, I thought to myself. I knew that power it had very well.

Vance came over to me and handed me a shotgun, or at least he tried to. I thought it must have been the one from the police cruiser, but I refused it with a wave. “I’ll stick to my sword.”

He shook his head, “Brother, if these guys are right about what is coming tonight, you’ll need it. This is one of our last shotguns, most of the rest burned up over at Billson’s ages ago.”

Our one hunting shop in town had died an early death. Someone followed by two loping monsters had run in there, no doubt seeking some personal protection. Somehow, in the following battle, everyone inside had died, including the changelings. But the place had caught fire and burned, removing most of our ammunition and weapons from the town.

Just the same, I knew I could never work a shotgun with one hand, and I didn’t want to even try to work it with my warped hand.

“Have you got a pistol?” I asked.

He nodded and handed me a semi-automatic. I looked a bit plain, but serviceable.

“What is it?” I asked him.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “It’s Russian or German I guess. It takes 9mm standard ammo. Found it in one of the houses down the block. We went on some scavenging missions. I think we’ve got plenty of guns for everyone in the center. But ammo is going to be low, and we don’t have enough of any one type to match up all the guns.”

I found the stamp on it, made in Jordan, it said. I hoped the sucker wouldn’t jam on me. “Just one clip?” I asked.

He tossed me a back up, and, right there, I almost blew it. My right hand had the pistol, so I automatically yanked my left out to catch the clip. I stopped myself just in time. The clip bounced off my gut and clattered to the ground. Monika dove for it, snatched up the clip and shoved it into my right coat pocket. I put the pistol in there with it. I wondered how the hell I was going to reload.

“You asleep?” asked Vance. We had often tossed balls back and forth in the living room for years, tennis balls, footballs, even while watching TV. Especially while watching TV. It used to drive our mom nuts. He knew I rarely dropped anything.

“You were aiming for my balls, weren’t you?” I accused and faked a smile.

He smiled back, but looked a bit confused. Still, it got him off the topic. He could be like a birddog if you let him get onto a scent.

Monika grabbed my arm then, the bad one, and tugged at me. “I’ve got something for you,” she said in a near-whisper. It was noisy enough in the room that no one else noticed her. Everyone was bustling about. We had lived through a storm before, and we would do it again. The center had walls now, and we were prepared. Or at least, we thought we were, I wasn’t so sure, but I wasn’t going to say anything about my doubts. I hadn’t told people about the things on the beach or the things at the bottom of the sea. They would see horrors enough on their own soon.

I let Monika drag me down a hallway and into a room with an X-ray machine in it. I wondered if I would ever get another X-ray during the rest of my life.

“Here,” she said, and she had a large, black leather glove. It was a left-handed glove. She had a strange look on her face, as if she were involved in a crime. It was the furtive expression people in her country must have worn when they hid contraband from the communists a generation before.

I looked at the glove. I blinked at it not knowing what to say, her trust in me was sweet-she was so sweet. She didn’t care if I was part monster, she just wanted to protect me from the others. I took the glove with my good hand and then I hugged her tightly. I jerked my head, indicating that she should leave while a put it on.

“Put it on,” she said, looking me in the eye. Her look told me that she wouldn’t retch, that she wouldn’t run screaming, that she wouldn’t tell on me, or leave me. But I knew that having lizard fingers, even in a glove, would be a turn off for any girl. I moved behind the X-ray shield, with its tiny window of leaded glass, to put it on. There was a sink back there, and I felt the dry chaffing of my leathery new hand when it came out of my pocket. I wondered if it was part sea turtle, it felt so dry and chapped. It was not at all happy to be away from the watery world it was created in. I turned on the tap water, wanting to wet my curled thick fingers just a moment before I cruelly shoved them into a rabbit skin glove. The sink stuttered and thumped. I’d forgotten, the power was out and the pumps hadn’t been on for days. Still, the faucet pissed out a dribble of cool water on my hand. I rubbed it over the whole thing, as far as it would go. It was like a teaspoon of butter spread over a mile of thirsty bread, but it felt good anyway.

“Do you need help?” called Monika delicately.

I shook my head and tried to jam my strange hand into the glove. The fingers were too thick, especially the knuckles. It was like putting on clothes two sizes too small. When I finally had it on, one of the glove fingers sagged and flopped emptily, of course. I only had three fingers and a short thumb now. Still, it looked pretty good if I kept it relaxed. If I clenched a fist, that one missing finger was obvious, but if I was careful, the whole thing would pass a lax inspection.

I managed to get a fake grin on my face when I turned back to face my faithful girlfriend. I held up the glove and wriggled my fingers a bit inside it. She smiled at first, but the wriggling was a mistake. The fingers move in an unnatural, clutching motion. I ignored her expression and kept the grin pasted on. I put the hand back down at my side.

“Thanks, Monika,” I told her.

In answer, she kissed me. We kept kissing for a bit, and then I noticed that it had grown quiet out in the hallway. I glanced at the door, and underneath, a faint kaleidoscope of lights flickered, as if there was a rainbow out there or maybe one of those disco balls doing a slow spin.

Someone had uncovered the lantern, I knew it in an instant.

I released Monika and strode to the door, throwing it open.

“Don’t look at it,” I told her over my shoulder.

She nodded in confusion.