Marc Zicree - Magic Time

Poor child, with those distant, hungering eyes. So like Wilma’s students, particularly the ones who had remained in Boone’s Gap, settling into the life of not-enough.

Until the Change, Wilma had told herself that she’d chosen wisely when she had returned from college to stay, embracing the safe and the familiar; told herself that withdrawing from Hank’s affections all those years back had been about valuing the solid, stable life she’d worked so hard to craft.

But what had she chosen, really? What bargain had she struck?

Wilma felt a silken pressure against her leg, saw Imp brushing up against her, seeking reassurance. She spied Mortimer and Theodora and the others crouched nearby, tremulous and watchful, unnerved by the unaccustomed intrusions.

Wilma reached down to stroke Imp. As the others drew close, she brought her heightened senses once more to the struggles within her house, and without.

Cal led the way, the long weeds rustling and whispering around their knees and across the six-foot tin shields. It was only when they got within a few yards of the Wishart house that he was able, suddenly, to see the place clearly in the flare of Doc’s lantern. The stink of decay, of things unidentifiable and terrifying, grew stronger as they approached.

Doc whispered, “ Ty shto ahuyel .”

And Cal could feel it. Whatever was inside screamed at them, hurling against them its power and its will: Stay out of here! Stay out! Stay out!

He shifted his sword in his hand, signaled them into formation. They had shaped the pieces of tin so that, when joined, they became a kind of turtle shell. A clumsy solution, but they’d been crippled by lack of tools and time.

Doc, Colleen and Goldie had just taken note of Cal’s gesture, begun to move, when a sudden stench billowed from the open door of the house. Colleen said, “Watch it!” even before the glow of the lantern picked up movement inside. A grunter was getting to its feet, slowly, staggering, and no wonder: dead for a week, rotting, swollen, decayed eyes staring. .

With an inarticulate gluey howl, another grunter corpse launched itself at them out of the weeds beside the porch, a rusted pair of pruning shears in one hand.

Colleen cursed, swung at it with her wrench with a blow that connected in a sodden horrible splat. But Cal knew, maneuvering the bulky shield and slashing at the creature that lumbered from the porch, killing was not the answer. They were dead already. The dispassionate precision that had taken hold during his battle with Stern returned. Cal cut, not at the head or face, but first at the hands, then at the feet.

Goldie was beside him, grappling and shoving at the attacker with makeshift pike and shield, keeping it at bay while Cal hacked. He heard Colleen curse again, and then snarl, “You dead son of a bitch, will you lay down already!” and turned, to see the smashed, reeling remains of the grunter trying to get up to attack again. He cut off the thing’s feet, sickened and hating himself, even knowing it could neither feel nor think.

The two corpses were still trying to crawl after Cal and his friends as they sprang up the porch steps and into the dark of the house, the tin of their four-walled citadel clattering into place. A whirlwind met them. Junk and dust and the very fragments of the house pounded against the reverberating metal. Splintered wood flew with the hideous velocity of crossbow bolts, denting their shields, bruising them, staggering them sideways. Bits of wire and springs writhed beneath their jolting shell, caught and tore at their ankles, stabbed through shoes while the dust of decades billowed into an impenetrable cloud.

Choking, Cal thrust the others out behind him, Doc limping from a shard of wood driven through the muscle of his calf. Back in the blackened, gore-clotted weeds, a yard from where they’d entered, they stood together gasping.

Colleen said, “House, one. New Yorkers, zip.”

Cal rasped out, “Again. Momentum.” He turned to Doc, “You up to it?”

Doc nodded, gray-faced. “Into the reactor.”

They braced. Cal waited a moment, gauging distance and direction. “ Now! ”

They plunged forward, the boards of the porch buckling and ripping under their feet and the joists underneath spearing up at them. Cal kicked the lock of the inner door with all his strength. It splintered inward and they pounded through as one, grouped beneath their shields.

The lantern Doc held exploded in his hand. He threw it away from him, stumbling, lost them fleetingly in blackness. Goldie cried out, and fireballs whirled into being, illuminating the onrush of missiles: cans and broken glass, iron burners from the stove and pieces of china and plastic sharp as razors. They lurched back together, shields clattering, an instant before the maelstrom. It staggered them, but this time Cal shouted, “Move!”

They battled forward, Cal squinting between the shields’ joining, wavering slits. Dust-thickened moonlight and sputtering, dimming fireballs painted visions suited for a madhouse.

In the corner, the refrigerator heaved and twisted, wrenching itself like a chained bull to get loose. The very baseboards and the moldings of the ceiling undulated and jerked, popping nails, battling to free themselves, to join the killing assault.

The space of the kitchen seemed to distort, twisting under the impact of malevolent will. The walls moved, cupboards gaped. Then, with the speed of a striking snake, the wallpaper pattern hissed out from the walls in gripping loops of thorny rope, and snared Colleen’s foot.

Colleen went down hard, both hands encumbered, corrugated tin slamming the floor beneath her forearm as her wrench sailed into an ebony void.

Their circle was broken. All about them, shards of broken dishes, scattered and corkscrewed silverware, smashed window glass slowly rose from their resting places and began to swirl in a large but closing ring, increasing into a howling, savage storm.

At the same moment, a dead grunter inches from Colleen heaved itself up from the floor where it had lain for weeks by the smell, oozing, bones showing through the shreds of its flesh. Cal slashed at it as Colleen wriggled free of her tangling shield, rolling away into the ruins of the kitchen table, which she immediately grasped as a weapon.

The table wheeled and thrashed in her grip. Cal handed off his sword to Doc, jerked Colleen up and back against him, and stamped on her shield’s curving top to stand it upright. She seized it, their circle closed again-and the storm within the house exploded with a screech.

Through the kitchen and down the hall , Wilma had directed them. It’s the door on the left.

Only in the darkness there seemed to be a hundred doors, all banging open and shut, with nothing behind any of them but black. The roaring tempest filled ears and minds, the house rocked on its foundation with a violence that wrung groans from the wood and brick and nails.

A voice screaming: GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT. Screaming in terror.

It was afraid.

Mortally afraid.

Images of icy water, of screaming voices, of blue sparks swirling out of emptiness. .

Doc yelled, “Cal!” as he went down. Cal, wrenching at the single door that hadn’t slammed open and shut, turned back. A sliver of floorboard had speared Doc from below, piercing his thigh.

Colleen, shifting her shield to shelter them both, was already dragging the physician back to the outer door. Goldie, standing alone and vulnerable in the no-man’s land between, looked to Cal, questioning.

The knob was in Cal’s hand, held shut, it seemed, not by a lock but by an invisible other on the opposite side.

With a desperation, a rage beyond his own comprehension, Cal jerked back. The door gave. Only a few inches. Only for an instant.