Black Magic (25 page)

He held his breath. He felt the weight of the creatures across his body. The insects pumped blood from his skin and he felt lightheaded. He flailed in panic. This was no way to die.

“Out here!” shouted Autumn.

Andy could barely hear her over the insects’ screeching whine. He cracked his eyes to see where she was as he swatted at the black mass. She was outside in the downpour. Felix bolted through the doorway toward her. Andy spat out a mouthful of mosquitoes and followed.
 

The punishing rain swept the mosquitoes from his skin. Andy scrubbed his neck and head clear. He blew his nose into his hands and was rewarded with a ball of yellow snot, black bodies and bright red blood.

“They can’t swarm in this,” Autumn yelled over the wind and rain. An inch of water surged over her feet and down the alley into the street. Behind her, a wave of mosquitoes swarmed out of the shop door and melted away under the rain’s withering fire.
 

“We need to stop this before the town’s washed away,” Felix said.

Andy gave a rueful look at the rifle on the floor of the Magic Shop. Every inch of skin the mosquitoes had a run at was a mass of itching, bleeding welts. He didn’t dare risk another trip into that maelstrom.

“This way,” he said.
 

The three of them splashed though the rain back to the DPW parking lot. Autumn held them up short of crossing the street.

“As the wildlife biologist,” she said, “I’m not the one who should be saying this but…what the hell are those?”

Across the street in the parking lot a half-dozen gray rabbits hopped around the white DPW pickup. The two rear tires were flat. One rabbit hung from the tread of a front tire, gleaming jagged teeth sunk into the thick rubber. As it swung its body back and forth, its teeth sawed through the radial. Air whooshed from the tire and the truck sagged closer to the ground.

“Side door,” Andy said.

He led the group on a skittish, circular path to the DPW side door. Halfway there, the rabbits caught their scent. A hiss arose from the group and they bounded in pursuit. The three humans broke into a run.

Andy fumbled with a ring of keys as they approached the building. One rabbit raced yards ahead of the pack. Andy hit the door at full speed and used his shoulder as a brake. The key jiggled around the lock as he tried to insert it. It finally slid in and with a twist and yank, he opened the door. Emergency lights lit the hall in long shadows. The lead rabbit closed. Andy entered with Autumn and Felix right behind him. As Felix pulled the door shut, the lead rabbit launched itself into the air like a gray missile.

With perfect timing, the rabbit hurtled through the doorway’s shrinking gap. The rabbit hit Felix’s right leg. Felix spun and yanked the door shut behind him. He screamed in pain.

Andy and Autumn whirled around. The rabbit chomped a hunk of flesh and blue jean from Felix’s leg and dropped to the floor. Blood sprayed the floor. Felix jammed the heel of his cowboy boot into its head. The rabbit’s skull crunched flat and blood pooled beneath it.

Felix stood in shock for a moment, staring at the predatory creature. Then he leaned against the wall and slid to the ground. His eyes never left the wet carcass.

Andy ran to his office and returned with a first aid kit. Autumn knelt over the rabbit. She pulled a pen from her pocket and probed its mouth. Andy tore away Felix’s pant leg and checked the bleeding wound.

He fought his initial instinct to recoil. Flashes of Afghanistan memories flipped though his mind. Amputated limbs. Screaming children. Puddles of blood on the streets. His hands shook as he unspooled a roll of cotton gauze. He fought back the urge to bolt down the hallway in panic and summoned his long-dormant military first aid training.
 

Felix’s gouge wasn’t deep. No arteries were cut. It could be worse. Andy focused on the wound and searched for some clinical detachment.

“This thing is bizarre,” Autumn said in wonder at the rabbit, her clinical detachment apparently in full swing.

Andy sprayed some antiseptic on Felix’s wound. Felix did not react. Andy made a compress bandage and bound the wound.
 

“This isn’t bad, Felix, but you need a doctor. And you don’t need to be walking around on it before that.”

Lost in her analysis, Autumn lifted one rabbit paw with the tip of her pen. Scythe-like claws extended from the pads.

“Slashing feline claws,” she observed. “Canid teeth. Fur coarse as ground flax seed. Rabbits are herbivores. This thing can’t exist.”

“There’s a couch in my office,” Andy said to Felix. “You should lie down there and keep your leg elevated.”
 

Felix nodded and Andy helped him out of the hallway. Autumn followed them in.

“I don’t need a DNA test to tell you that’s some kind of chimera,” Autumn said.
 

Andy gave her a blank look.

“A hybrid mix of multiple species,” she said. “Nothing we could pull off scientifically.”

“Just magically,” Andy said.

Autumn shrugged and signaled the surrender of science. A door in the hallway slammed open and closed.
 

“Andy?” a timid voice called out.

Chapter Fifty-Six

“Mom?” Andy called down the hallway.

Dolly appeared in the doorway, Walking Bear behind her. Andy gave her a huge hug. Walking Bear spied the rabbit on the floor and knelt to investigate alongside Autumn. “What are you two doing out here? How did you get past the rabbits?”

Dolly relayed the story of Shane’s rampage around the retirement home. She’d seen no rabbits around the building.

“The town has gone insane,” Felix said.

“I think that Lyle Miller has some black magic going on down at–” Andy said.

“–the Apex plant,” Dolly finished. “It’s what I’ve been seeing for days.”

“Your painting,” Andy said. “We need to get down there and see what’s going on. Mom, why don’t you and Walking Bear go across the street to the shelter?”

Dolly snorted. “Not likely. I wouldn’t have dreamed the place if I wasn’t supposed to be there to stop something. And I need you and Walking Bear there.”

“Mom…”

Dolly gave Andy an indignant stare until he sighed in resignation. He turned to Walking Bear. “I don’t suppose you’ll go to the shelter.”

“I’m her bodyguard,” the Anamassee answered.

Andy turned to Autumn.

“Don’t even ask it,” she said.

Andy balled his fists in frustration and looked down at Felix.

“You are sure as hell not going. Stay right here. If things get hairy, get over to the shelter. But this is one tough old building.”

“No problem, boss,” he said.

“Rabbits, snakes and gators,” Andy said. “We’re going to need some weapons.”

He longed for the M-16 on the Magic Shop floor. Instead he opened the tool locker. He pulled out a machete he used to cut brush and offered it to Walking Bear. The Anamassee pointed to a knife on his belt.

“This has more stopping power,” Andy said.

“I have help waiting,” Walking Bear said.

Andy handed it to Autumn. She reached past him and grabbed a shovel.

“I’ve been pretty good with one of these lately,” she said.

Andy sighed. He made a meek show of offering the machete to his mother.

“Andy, please,” she said dismissively.

Andy raised his hands and gave up.

“My natural leadership is seriously going to waste here,” he said.

The four went to the door to the DPW lot. There wasn’t a rabbit in sight. The DPW pickup had four flats. There was an inch of water in the bed and it was still raining.

“We’ll take my truck,” Walking Bear said.

But Andy had another idea, a great plan he wanted nothing to do with. But it was the right plan. He pulled a key from the key box by the door.

“We need to also have something that will take more punishment,” he said, “in case we meet up with more of those rabbits, some gators, or worse.” He gritted his teeth. “We should take the dump truck.”

He couldn’t believe he got the words out of his mouth. The last thing he’d planned to do was get behind the wheel of that thing.

“Does that run?” Autumn said.

“Yep. Only two forward gears and no reverse, but it runs.”

Andy ducked into the rain first and ran to the truck. A pit opened in his stomach as soon as he stepped on the running board. He pushed on and climbed up into the cab. The familiar high view through the windshield brought back a surge of dark memories.

The passenger door opened. Dolly climbed in.

“Mom! Where’s Autumn?”

“With Walking Bear. I told her I was riding with my son.”

“Mom, you shouldn’t be riding at all. Please, head over to the shelter.”

“Andrew,” she said.
 

Andy hadn’t heard that chiding tone since he was a kid. Resolution had turned Dolly’s face to stone.

“I’ve been at that home for years, fading in and out of the rest of the world. Don’t think I don’t know when it happens. It’s embarrassing and terrifying. In an instant I am in an alien world, surrounded by strangers. But worse than not knowing who you, my own son, is, is not knowing who I am. Imagine experiencing your existence vaporize. And each event, it’s just a signpost saying
Full Senility Ahead
and the miles to go get shorter every time.
 

“The last few days, I have been back. Back better than in years, perhaps better than ever. And through it all I’ve been haunted by Apex. The reason I’m well is to be able to confront whatever is there. Now I can walk there to confront it alone, or I can ride there with my son. Which way should I go?”

This was his mother, the one he remembered, who fought the powers that be, who led the crusade to save the Everglades, who managed their world after his father’s death. Andy had missed her.

“Guess you’d better buckle up,” he said.
 

He turned the key and the truck rumbled to life. The diesel sent vibrations up though his seat and he flashed back to assembling a convoy in Afghanistan. He shook it off and flipped on the lights and wipers. He remembered that the truck had no reverse gear. He thrust the gearshift into first.

“What kills me is I’m just going to have to fix this later,” he said.

He let out the clutch and the truck crept forward. It flattened the chain link fence in front of it and rolled out onto Washington Street. Walking Bear and Autumn were already there in the pickup truck. They headed toward the Apex plant. Andy upshifted to second and followed.

A dead stoplight bounced on its cable in the stiff, shifting wind, three empty eyes watching the two trucks pass beneath it. Darkness reigned outside the headlights’ narrow path. Each swipe of the wipers threw a sheet of water over the side of the truck. Andy took a deep breath to calm the dread that roiled in his stomach. He hoped he was ready to cope with whatever Lyle had in store for them at the plant. He prayed that whatever it was, he could keep his mother safe from it.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Carlina drove way too fast. Rain fell like buckets of water against her windshield and all the wipers did was add a steady backbeat to the rain’s rampage. She guessed and braked and prayed that no one else was foolish enough to be out in this weather. Her own safety never entered her mind. Her worries were about Ricky and Angela, home alone in the heart of this storm.

From the main road, she saw that the house was dark, just like the rest of town. The two great oaks on either side of the house swayed so low in the wind gusts she could not believe they were still standing. She barely had the car in park before she was out and through the house’s front door.

As soon as she entered, Angela leapt from the living room’s dim shadows and wrapped her quivering arms around her mother’s waist.

“Mommy! Mommy!” she cried rapid fire. “You are home. You’re okay. It’s Ricky. Something’s wrong. I wanted to run. Daddy said not to leave so I stayed. You have to fix Ricky!”

She pulled her mother down the hall and halted her in front of Ricky’s open door. Carlina looked in and screamed her son’s name.

Two candles burning at the ends of his desk lit the scene in an eerie flickering glow. Ricky sat at his desk, eyes glazed to a milky blue. He held both hands up before him and moved them like he was conducting some silent symphony. Above the desk floated a set of playing cards. With each flick of Ricky’s wrist, the cards took on a new shape, flew a new formation. At his mother’s cry, Ricky did not react, undisturbed in whatever world he now inhabited.

The wind gusted to a freight-train crescendo. Loose siding rattled against the walls. Two sharp warning cracks sounded outside. Carlina’s maternal sense went to high alert, her subconscious cued to some unseen but half-processed danger. She reached for Angela.

The old oak outside exploded like a clap of thunder. Carlina jumped at the sound. Her hands missed Angela by inches.

The ceiling along the front of the house collapsed. Barrel-sized branches burst through the sheetrock like an invading organism. A blast of rain and leaves swept in like its humid breath. One branch brushed Carlina aside. Her head hit the wall and she saw stars.