

Sea of Dreams

By C.L. Bevill

SMASHWORDS EDITION

PUBLISHED 2014 BY:

C.L. Bevill on Smashwords

Sea of Dreams

Copyright ©2010

by Caren L. Bevill

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission, except for brief quotations to books and critical reviews. This story is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Chapter 1

The Beginning...

A sea of dreams washed over the entire world, and when it was gone, everything was different. It happened during the night. On one side of the world it was daylight and might have been much more dramatic. In the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, it was sometime between midnight and three a.m. Exactly when it occurred, I've never been able to find out because I've never encountered a survivor who was awake during the exact time. I, like many others, had been asleep.

I was lying in a sleeping bag just off the Pacific Crest Trail next to my father. The day before we'd ascended several thousand feet. It had been our plan to meet up with a larger group of hikers who were going to climb the northernmost mountain of the Three Sisters. When Dad and I had hunkered down ten feet away from the main trail, we'd made a cold camp and eaten freeze-dried foods reconstituted with water. Then just as the sun had fled below the horizon, we'd bundled up into sleeping bags and dropped off into a sleep that was dreamless and overwhelming.

I awoke with the sun chasing shadows across the trees above me. I didn't move at first. My body was stiff from miles of hiking. We'd parked the car in a hiker's parking lot near Santiam Pass and come up the trail at a brisk pace. My father was in better shape than I was and kept hurrying me along. He hadn't wanted to miss the ascent to Charity, the northern sister of the Three Sisters. Me? I was a seventeen-year-old girl with typical wants. I wanted my iPod, a Caramel Frappaccino from Starbucks, and a bed that was significantly softer than the cold, hard ground. I grumbled about freeze-dried foods that had the consistency of coffee grounds and wished for a feather pillow. After all, how would I ever live without a feather pillow?

Dad had said before falling gently asleep with a low snore, "Next year, you're off to university. You'll probably never have another chance to climb a mountain. The snow has melted down from Charity. The trails are clear. The group is meeting us at the base camp. You'll never have a more interesting two weeks."

Yeah, well, there was that. There was also the problem of no running water, no toilets, and no TV. I was thrilled nearly to death. Did I want to mention the bad feeling I'd had about the trip as if I had known something was going to happen? The same feeling that I had ruthlessly forced down because I had known how excited my father was to be going? Nope. Thrilled nearly to death covered it.

And I never did climb that mountain.

I woke up, and I didn't move. I listened to the wind whistling as it pushed through the highest hills. It sounded strange and unlike what I knew before. There were only the sounds of nature and not much else. Finally, I realized it was later than Dad would have normally let us sleep. I looked at my watch, a Timex that was solar powered, and indignantly grasped that it had stopped.

"Crud, Dad," I said sourly. "Did you sleep past your alarm?" I turned my head and saw that the sleeping bag next to me was empty. It didn't alarm me per se. Dad had to answer the call of nature like every other person on the face of the planet. (Not that I enjoyed thinking about my father actually being human and having the call of nature. I did NOT.) For that moment, I savored the warmth of the sleeping bag and thought about going back to sleep until he returned.

But there was something that pricked at my subconscious. Even now I wouldn't know what to call it. Perhaps an extra something that came with humans into the present; an instinct that warns us that danger is imminent. It was a little tickly feeling that made the hair at the nape of my neck raise up. It said, no, it yelled at me, "Something's wrong, Sophie! Get up and see what it is!"

I thought, bear? But there was no shuffling through the forest floor debris, and bears stayed lower on the mountains. I slowly lifted my head and looked around. I saw the empty sleeping bag that belonged to my father. I saw the two backpacks, ripe with gear, lined up next to the sleeping bag. Further away, my father had hung a plastic bag with the remains of our dinner from a tree branch. Whatever we took in, we had planned to pack out.

No Dad. No grumpy but amicable fifty-year-old man with a day-old beard stirring up freeze-dried coffee for his caffeine fix. Nothing. No one. There were just trees, wind, and an odd emptiness that seemed to press against my chest.

"Dad?" I said quietly. I sat up and shivered with the cold that came in as the sleeping bag slithered down my body. It might be August, but the mountains didn't know that. Slowly, I panned the area again. For all intents and purposes, I was alone. It was me and the world. And the world seemed disinclined to make itself known to me.

It took me a while, but I got myself dressed, answered my own call of nature, and got a drink of water from the packs. In the back of my mind I was explaining to myself why Dad would be back at any moment. It was daylight and had been for at least an hour. He wouldn't leave me alone for more than a few minutes.

I watched the sun rise in the sky, and when I judged another hour had gone by, I dug in the packs for the satellite phone that Dad had brought. Unfortunately, it was dead like my Timex. In response, I said a few bad words that I was certain my father didn't know I'd previously overheard him say. I thought about it and decided that he must have gotten up in the night to pee and perhaps had fallen or had a heart attack. He had to need my help. I removed the topographical maps from my dad's pack and did some quick calculations. Then I did a grid search of the area. (See, you do learn things from Girl Scouts.)

Several sweaty hours later I was certain of only one thing. My father was still missing. There was no sign of him in the immediate area. There were no answers to my repeated calls. I brightened when I remembered that the sat phone had an extra battery. But the fresh battery didn't make the phone work either.

Needing help to search for my father, I decided to return down the mountainside toward the parking area near Santiam Pass. I was more likely to run into someone either with a working phone or access to a park ranger. There were logging trucks in the area and men going to cut wood from dense forests. They had radios. I got the packs together and left Dad's next to the trail. When I began to roll up his sleeping bag I found something very strange.

His shirt fell out of the bag when I upended it. I shook the bag, and his pants came out, as well. I found his socks and his underwear inside the bag. Furthermore, I noticed what I hadn't before; his hiking boots were still sitting beside the bag just as he had left them the night before. It took me a minute to understand what it meant. Wherever Dad had gone, he had walked away stark naked and barefoot on a night that the temperature was barely above forty degrees.

I thought I knew my father, and this wasn't something that he was apt to do. He was a rock-solid professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. He had been married for twenty-five years to my mother, who sold Mary Kay and worked at the library. Hiking was his passion, and he had been looking forward to climbing Charity for the last six months. And although I had grumbled, I wasn't completely unhappy with going on this hike.

When I gave the sleeping bag a last little shake, a gold wedding band that I had never seen separated from my father's left ring finger fell out onto the ground. I became frightened. I packed up and headed down the trail. The wedding band went into a front pocket. In the frantic hours that followed, I stopped to restlessly sleep for a while, only held back from continuing down the trail by the lack of light. When the sky began to tinge pink in the east, I was ready. By the time the sun had hit its zenith, I was at the highway.

The entire hike I thought, I'll find someone soon. They'll help. We'll find Dad.

But I wrong.

The lot was half full of cars, SUVs, and trucks. All were locked and empty. Half of them had stickers that revealed them to be members of Dad's hiking organization. Most of them had been in the lot when Dad and I had arrived early the day before.

Digging out the keys to the VW Jetta, I soon discovered something else. The car wouldn't start. The little electrical indicators that showed it was operating wouldn't come on when the key was turned in the ignition. Nothing happened, not even the clicking sound that is a sure-fire bet that the battery is out of business.

I looked at my Timex watch. It was still dead. There was only one thing that popped into my head and that was there had been a nuclear strike. An electromagnetic pulse that resulted from a nuclear bomb detonation would answer the question of why all of the items no longer worked. Not the watch, the sat phone, or the car. I had done a paper on the effects of nuclear weapons, and this had been one of the interesting aspects to the horrors of discharging a nuclear device.

Screwing up my face, I tried to remember what I'd studied and written about. The impact of an EMP depended on the weapon itself, the altitude of the burst, the yield of the bomb, and the geography of the area over which it was detonated. I suppose that the men and women in charge of the military didn't see an EMP weapon as effective as say, a Daisy Cutter bomb. But take away a country's access to all things electrical from toasters to televisions, and the people would be crippled.

Could that be the answer? I pondered. Could my father's mental health have been impacted by an electromagnetic energy burst? I didn't know, but I did know Dad needed help as fast as I could possibly bring it to him. EMPs were hampered by large geographic features like mountains and the simplicity of distance. I'd have to hike for help. Fortunately, the highway was well traveled and someone had to find me before I hiked very far.

I looked up and saw that the sun was starting to plunge behind the horizon of endless trees. I ate an energy bar, chugged some water, and debated starting down the highway in the dark. I decided to stay put, huddled in the Jetta, hoping that a ranger would pull into the lot soon just to check to make sure no one had forgotten their hiking permits or to rescue those affected by the pulse, if that was what it had been and not some awful coincidence. I pulled a blanket out of the trunk and let the front seat down.

The next thing I knew the sun was shining into my face. The parking lot was the same as it was before. Praying under my breath for my father, I did what I had to do; packed up my pack and started west on the highway. The town of Sisters was closer to the east, but west was downhill, and my energy was waning.

I came across the SUV two miles later. The momentum had carried it off the highway, over a ditch, and it had stopped against a large silver fir. The forestry service emblem on the side of the SUV caught my attention. I thought, EMP. The person behind the wheel of the SUV had been driving down the road. The pulse had detonated. The vehicle stalled out. The power steering had failed. The driver had lost control. It wasn't so hard to understand.

The problem with my theory was that the driver was gone. The door was unlocked, and the front seat was empty. There wasn't any blood, and the airbag wasn't deployed. But there was another problem that I really didn't want to deal with. There was a brown cap with the forestry service emblem sitting on the driver's seat. The brown pants and shirt pooled on the floor belonged to someone who wasn't around anymore. There was a pair of underwear and a pair of black socks. The boots that the pile of clothes covered were still tightly laced to the very top and tied with a double knot. The Bulova watch lying next to one of the boots didn't work either.

There was a cry that startled me until I comprehended it had come from my own lips.

I continued hiking down to the west. I found another vehicle that had careened off the side of the road. It was a Lincoln Navigator. This time there were two sets of clothing in the vehicle. One belonged to a woman who wore a size-six dress and who liked Nine West shoes. (There were three pairs in the back seat, all size 7.) She'd also left a diamond ring that was at least two karats. The car wouldn't start, and the two cell phones I found were dead. The next car I found, I looked inside long enough to find a pair of Levi jeans and a polo shirt. A set of prescription glasses sat on top as if someone had simply dropped them there and walked away. I noticed something I hadn't before. The seat belt was still fastened.

The next cars I saw were twenty miles beyond that, and I was walking through the blisters on the backs of my feet. I could feel the blood flowing down to the bottoms of my boots. I paused because one of the vehicles had run into a ditch, and the front end was crumpled. But I didn't look inside. I was afraid to do it.

I slept alongside the road in a culvert and dreamed that my father was calling to me. He called hoarsely. I was fighting to get to him. I could see a sword flashing in my dream-capable hands as if I were a veritable expert in my night visions. I was using everything I had in order to reach my father before it was too late. Then he called again. Then his voice was cut off in the middle of a cry. It was cut off so dramatically and so finally, that I knew that he was gone. He was really gone. Dad would never be coming back.

When I woke up on that second day I was crying silently; the tears streamed down my face in a river of chilling contribution. But that wasn't what really got my attention. The culvert drained out into a wide meadow of tall green grasses full of autumn promise. Without moving my head much, I could see the entire meadow, and I could plainly see the herd of twenty-something unicorns grazing there.

Unicorns.

EMP? Not. Something else completely freakilicious. Yeppers.
Chapter 2

Panic or Madness?

For the record, unicorns aren't white, magical, prancing visions of elegance. Rather, they are the size of lean-muscled Shetland ponies, are mottled brown in color, have a single black spiral horn, and tend toward aggressive possessiveness. They had grazed peacefully until I gasped loudly.

Once I had made that noise, the dominant unicorn charged me, determined to drive away an imminent threat. Apparently I hadn't been snoring, and I startled them. I was lucky because the head of my sleeping bag faced the culvert that led under the highway. I was also lucky because I was able to scuttle inside before the beast stomped all over my sleeping bag and backpack with his deadly looking black hooves. When the animal was reassured that the threat was gone and that I was suitably subjugated, he paused to hiss at me with solid black eyes flashing. I moved further into the culvert, not at all certain that he couldn't reach me. (And although I couldn't speak unicorn, I thought he was saying, "Showed you, bee-otch.")

With a swish of his multihued mane, the stallion wheeled about and rejoined the herd. Then with a trumpeting bellow, he nipped and roared until they galloped into the forest at his obvious behest. Astonished, I stayed where I was.

Shaking visibly, I waited for long minutes until I was certain the unicorns weren't coming back. The sound of their movement had faded into a brisk wind that moved the branches of the trees around me. I retrieved my belongings, throwing away half the food and a few items that were no longer of service. Then I returned to the road with my knees still trembling.

My logical mind wanted to make sense of the occurrence of what looked like unicorns. Certainly, they were horse-like. Their subtle forms were lighter in weight. But there was a foot-long black horn that spiraled up from the center of their foreheads. They looked similar to horses, but they were oh so plainly, not.

I pinched my arm viciously and discovered that I still bruised easily.

The passing mile markers and the occasional road sign returned me to a state of normality. My father would have called it a state of shock. I wasn't laughing. I wasn't crying. I wasn't anything. I just put one foot in front of the other, ignored the blisters that reopened, and continued on my way. If someone had appeared before me at that moment, I would have thrown myself at their feet and cried with relief. They would have had to drag me around because I wouldn't be able to let go of their legs. Even if that someone happened to be Hitler or Charles Manson.

However, there was no one, and no one appeared.

I passed three campgrounds and only stopped at the first one. The story was the same as everything else I had discovered. There were cars, trucks, RVs, and campers. All were parked in spaces that showed they were there during the dead of night when little was going on. Nothing worked. No one was there. Just outside one of the smaller campers I found an empty set of men's pajamas and slippers. There was a flashlight lying on the ground next to the clothing and a roll of toilet paper. He'd been on his way to the public restroom.

Even though sunlight was pouring down on me, I shivered. I nudged the flashlight and bit my lip. I found three other cell phones within a half-hour and none of them worked. There was a public emergency phone in the campground that was as dead as everything else.

I sat at a picnic table and decided I must be in hell, although I wasn't sure what I had done to put myself there. It was just me and some ornery unicorns, which thankfully seemed to be herbivores.

Then a chipmunk chattered demandingly at me. I jumped as if I had never heard such a noise before. He or she perched on the end of the table and squeaked and peeped at me. After a single minute of being in deep freeze, I let my arm slide back through the straps of the backpack and brought it to the table. The chipmunk stopped its vocal admonishments and tilted its head interestedly. With my hands still shaking, I found a pack of crackers and slowly fed nearly half of it to the chipmunk. I put the cracker as far away from me as I could. The animal would wait for my arm to withdraw, then would rush in to collect its booty. Finally, the chipmunk would withdraw to the far end of the table to eat its prize.

I kept expecting more chipmunks to come running for the dinner bell but I got nothing. It seemed as though I added a single creature to my count. It was me, the unicorns, and a chipmunk.

When the chipmunk was full of crackers, it squeaked and ran off. I wondered if it was looking for compatriots. "Good luck," I said softly and winced at the sound of my own voice. I hesitated before I put the backpack on. I couldn't catch the little guy or girl, and I knew it wouldn't want me to catch it, so I left the rest of the crackers on the table.

I was nearly out of the campground before another chipmunk ran across the road. It paused to chatter at me. I paused and watched as it ran toward the table with the crackers on it. The first chipmunk rushed back. They chattered and chirped at each other, and I could almost put words to the conversation. "Where have you been?" "I'm not sure." "Where are all the humans?" "Well she's here, isn't she?" "Yes, well, where are all the rest?" "Beats me." "Let's eat."

I watched silently and took a deep breath. It wasn't exactly relief that coursed through me. I don't know what to call it. Chipmunks were normal. Then I swatted away a mosquito before I realized what I was doing. My list was getting bigger. Me, unicorns, two chipmunks, and a mosquito. Whoo-hoo!

It was nearly nightfall when I walked into the first small town. It wasn't much bigger than the name on its sign. There was a general store, a gas station, a tiny post office, and three houses. The general store and the gas station were locked. The post office was too, I assumed.

It felt as though I was standing in a ghost town. There were cars parked at the houses, but no one was moving, and all I could hear was the whistle of a breeze. I stood there for a long time before I knocked on one of the doors of the houses. Then I knocked on the door of the next house. I tried the doorbell too, but I couldn't hear it ring inside, so I resorted to my fist on the wood of the front entrance. Finally, I knocked on the door of the third house.

I suppose I should have peeked inside the windows. I should have looked in the bedrooms to see if I could see flattened blankets and empty bed clothing, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. These houses had belonged to someone who wasn't there anymore. They were empty, yet they were full of the memories of those who had once walked there.

It felt like a cemetery.

I slept in a storage shed behind the third house. It was pleasantly cozy with the smell of freshly cut grass inundating it. I made a pallet between a lawn mower and a kayak and slept poorly through the night. Deep in my subconscious, I was expecting someone to fling the door open and scream at me for trespassing.

In the morning, I broke into the house to get food and water. I ate Vienna sausages with my fingers and drank a lukewarm coke from the fridge. It almost felt like a feast when I chased the coke with a package of Oreo cookies. Then I took about a half hour to find what I wanted. The garage of the second house had it. It was an old-fashioned Schwinn bicycle. It had a rear rack and was simple enough that I thought electronics couldn't come into it. I fixed my pack onto the back with a bungee cord and took off to the west once again.

Being on the bike was almost heavenly to my blistered heels. What hiking would have taken all day, took me two hours on the bike. I made the next town well before noon and found more of what I had already seen. Just as I rode into the next spot on the map, I passed a police cruiser planted cockeyed in the road. It had hit an electrical pole. I slowed enough to see the hat on the seat and then disregarded it.

This town was a little bigger. It even had a drug store. What it didn't have, was any people.

I stopped for lunch, eating my pilfered goodies, trying to keep my mind blank. Not that that was hard to do.

The only stop I made was when I saw an empty Ford pickup truck that had run into a billboard's supports. The billboard had canted forward but still remained upright. The truck had a set of clothing in it, too. Flannel shirt, jeans, boots, and a cheap watch that was no longer ticking. No underwear, but maybe that had been a personal preference. What the truck did have was a rifle in the back window rack. I took that and hung it over my shoulder. I couldn't find any bullets but could have slapped myself for not taking the police car's weapons. I didn't want to ride back, so I continued west.

I couldn't have told myself out loud where I was going, but I knew all the same. My family had lived in Springfield, Oregon. It was about sixty miles from where we had parked our VW Jetta at the Santiam Pass. I couldn't find anyone here, but there was a niggling of hope that prodded at me. My mother stayed at home because she didn't like to hike. I hoped, no I prayed, that I would ride up to our house and find her there, waiting for us.

The next car that I found on the side of the road was a Lexus. I stopped because I wanted a map. The topographical maps that I had stopped at the edge of the Three Sisters Wilderness Area, and I needed something to give me a frame of reference. Instead, I found a dash-mounted GPS that was as dead as everything else. I also found an empty suit with an Armani tie. There was an Omega watch, too. Pretty for a man's watch and just as useless as a rock. There weren't any paper maps inside the car.

I rode thirteen more miles on the bike, until my bottom became numb, and stopped at another wide spot in the road. On the way I saw several birds, squirrels, and heard a dog barking off in the woods. At least I thought it was a dog. Because of my experience with the unicorns, I was apprehensive enough to decide not to go looking for the animal. Reason number one for that was that there could be all kinds of newly interesting things in the woods, any number of which might see me as an entrée. Reason number two was that the barking might not be coming from a...dog.

My list was growing. Because of that, I was somewhat relieved. There was life here. There wasn't just me. So far I hadn't found another human being, but there were other things alive. The chipmunks, for example, hadn't come from another place. They had been in that campground when the world had changed. They were little mooches who were used to getting goodies from campers. They knew a human being and knew a soft touch when they saw one. I wasn't the only living thing who was still around after something very strange had happened. And if that was true, then there might be others like me.

I limped around the town for a little while and then helped myself into the diner. There was a faint smell of something going bad. I hadn't considered it, but without electricity, all the food was going to spoil. In the houses, in the grocery stores, and restaurants. I found an apple pie that didn't smell bad and cut a thick piece. I sat at the counter on a stool and calmly ate the pie bite by bite with a fork I had snagged from a bin nearby. When I was done, I started to take the plate to the kitchen to clean up after myself, and then grimaced.

I was standing there at the end of the counter, when I looked up and saw someone watching me. I was frozen in place. So was the other person. When I dropped the dirty plate to the floor, we both jumped. Then I realized I was looking in a mirror. I had been looking at my own reflection, and I hadn't recognized myself. My hair was still black and shoulder length. My eyes were still gray. I was still five foot five inches tall. I guessed I was still a size six although I hadn't been eating well, and my jeans were sagging at my waist.

The girl in the mirror looked...hollow. She was as empty as the world outside the little diner. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I had changed that night, only it took a mirror to reveal it to me.

I bit my lip until it bled. (Of course, that added color to my face.) Then I fled the diner.

I slept that night in a barn outside a modest ranch house. I didn't bother knocking at the door. But I did pull the wooden ladder up into the loft with me so that no one would climb up after I was asleep.

The next morning I let a horse out of its pen. It was a regular horse with spotted pattern. It didn't look sick or bothered, other than being a little skittish. However, the horse, a girl horse I think, didn't want to have anything to do with me. She stayed on the far side of the corral even while I secured the gate to the fence to keep it from closing back on itself. I left the barn door open so the horse could help herself to the hay on the bottom floor. The water trough was full due to the rain of the previous week.

If I'd had a measuring gauge to estimate how I was feeling, the freeing of the horse would have brought the gauge up one notch. There, freed horse. Sophie, one extra notch. Life wasn't great. In fact, life pretty well sucked, but it didn't mean I couldn't do something good for some other living creature. Maybe it didn't make me feel quite so...hollow inside.

The horse nickered at me as I rode away. Maybe she could hang out with the unicorns.

By the end of that day, I saw more animals. A lot of birds. There were some dogs. I saw one cat slinking into its yard. I felt sorry for the animals. They were going to have to learn how to exist without humans. Apparently, just like I was going to have to do. I stopped to unlock gates and propped doors open for animals as I got closer to the Eugene area. Two larger dogs snarled at me as if I was the enemy, a pair of pit bulls of some kind, and I was forced to flee before they could attack me.

There were a lot more vehicles that had simply come to a stop wherever they happened to be. It looked as though engines had basically died, and the wheels of the cars rolled to a stop or collided with something or other. One minivan had crashed into a Jeep. There had been a fire, and the vehicles were blackened with soot. One car had through the window front of a dry cleaner's store.

As I got closer to home, I didn't stop and look anymore. I worked a little harder on the pedals and moved through familiar city streets. A block away from my house, I let the bike roll to a shaky stop and shuddered as I put my feet to the ground.

For two days my thoughts had been on my mother. Certainly, there were others to think of as well that I hadn't previously considered. I had two good friends, Cherie and Kady, who lived a mile away with their mother, a postal worker. The twins went to my high school and were in several of my classes. My uncle, Avery, lived in Corvallis and was close to us. His son, Jeffrey, was two years younger than I was, and I loved him like he was my brother. I didn't have a boyfriend, but there was a boy named Nate whom I liked. We'd gone on two dates. We were supposed to go the movies when I got back from the mountains. We hadn't even kissed yet.

But it was my mother who drew me to Springfield. We had a nice three-bedroom bungalow in a middle class neighborhood. The yard was landscaped, and there wasn't even a yard gnome to be found. She liked her rose bushes. She had ten different varieties in the front yard alone. She tried and tried again to teach me something about roses, but I hadn't wanted to listen about stupid old plants.

I shuddered again and asked myself the anticipated question. What if she's there? And the worst question, the one I didn't want to think about, slithered through my mind like an evil creature of night. What if she's not? What if her gold band and diamond solitaire are in the bed next to her silk night gown? What if I've lost them both?

In the end, my aching, overstrained muscles didn't let me get back on the bike. I left the Schwinn in the middle of the street and walked around the corner. The third house on the left was ours. Brown with white trim. Brownish brick façade on the lower half. A white picket fence that was made from vinyl, so neither Mom nor Dad would ever have to paint it again. My home.

The sun was starting to slide below the horizon, but I had enough light to discover the door was locked. I dug the keys out of my backpack and opened the door.

The house smelled slightly musty. I knew before I went a single step that no one was there. I looked for a note or a sign or anything. The last thing I looked for was Mom's wedding set.

It wasn't in the bed as I had expected. Instead, it was in the kitchen on the tile floor next to her favorite peach-colored night gown. There was a broken glass of milk on the floor nearby. She had been having trouble sleeping without her husband and child in the house.

As I looked at it, I reached inside my jeans and retrieved Dad's wedding band. The three rings were clasped together urgently in my hand. When I finally broke free of the trance I was in, I found it was complete darkness and that I was crying desperately.
Chapter 3

Not Alone...Exactly...

The fog lasted until the next day, or so I thought. When I woke up the next day in my very own bed, I still had my parents' wedding rings clasped in my hand. I was hungry, and my body ached from the miles of bike riding. At the same time I realized that I smelled bad. I even discovered something interesting. The water faucets still worked. I knew the electric water heater was as dead as everything else, but cold water did just fine. Did I take advantage of it? Oh yes I did. I was ripe.

I had a bath in a dark interior bathroom with only a candle for a companion. I even used a little bubble bath. It wasn't the same in cold water, but I smelled like freesia instead of body odor. Then I dressed in my own clothing and dried my hair with my own towel. It was strange. I was at home, by myself, not for the first time, but I thought perhaps for the last time.

I had hard thinking to do. I could live, or I could die. I was alone, and there wasn't much I could do about it. There were animals, and there might be other humans like me, but I had yet to see them. I had to...hope. But hope was a fleeting emotion, and I didn't know how slender the strand was that I was hanging on by.

I stayed at my home for three days. I thought about the new world I was living in now. I had no electricity and no ability to make any for myself. The only food I had was canned and the fruits that were yet unspoiled in the local supermarket. It turned out that apples and oranges were really long-lasting. The winter was coming, and I wasn't sure if I was prepared to rough it.

I thought there was only one thing to do. I needed to head south. Just like the birds. South, where winter wasn't so strenuous, and I could survive without excess stress. Maybe Los Angeles or San Diego. But the thing was that I was going to have to hoof it the entire way. That, or I could go retrieve that Schwinn. Of course, there was a bicycle shop not a mile away, and the prices seemed to be right lately. (Big fire sale! Low demand! Stacked inventory!)

I checked my friends' house and found what I dismally expected. There was a neat row of stud earrings in Cherie's bed along with an oversized Grateful Dead t-shirt and Hello Kitty underwear. Kady left her charm bracelet and flannel jammies that seemed too warm for late summer. I decided against riding the bicycle to see about my uncle and my cousin. In my heart of hearts I knew that it was just as likely that they were gone like everyone else. The utter disappointment that would have blasted over me when I saw what few items were left that represented their lives, would have killed what was left of me.

I was numb. I thought the fog had lifted, but I didn't have a clue how wrong I was. I packed for a trip. I checked the map and decided that San Diego sounded like a nice place to spend the winter. It was about 900 miles on a bike that I would have to pedal every inch of the way. I left Springfield one sunny morning in August, not even knowing what day it was. I had lost count and had no way of figuring out what date it was.

I took some of my clothes and my parents' wedding rings which I hung on a necklace around my neck. I stopped by a gun shop and bought bullets for the rifle. Then I set up coke cans in the lot beside the gun store to practice. It was a good thing that I did that because I couldn't get the gun to shoot. I went back into the store and got more bullets. Same result. I went back into the shop and got a pistol, a Glock by its name, and the correct ammunition for it. After awkwardly loading the unfamiliar weapon, I tried to fire it and found that it didn't work either. I tried a shotgun next, but I wasn't really surprised at the outcome. Nada.

So I went back into the gun shop again and went low tech. I got a crossbow and a box of bolts. It took me a solid hour to get a good handle on how to use the weapon. Pulling the draw of the crossbow took more effort than I was prepared to give. In the end, my shoulders hurt and my fingers burned with repeated snaps of the string. I did manage to hit within a few feet of my targets though. Despite the fact that it was only worth one shot before I would have to struggle to reload it, it was better than nothing. Then I decided I should have something else.

With that I went back into the gun shop and got several knives. One hunting knife was attached to my waist. One was fixed to my boot. A third went into my backpack. I was starting to feel like a female Rambo, but I didn't have a war to fight. (And no, I didn't have any baby oil to smear over my nonexistent bulging muscles.)

I stopped to look around the shop for something else and didn't even realize that I was specifically looking for it until I thought of my dream. The dream I'd had where I was fighting with a sword and searching for my father. But this shop didn't have swords, and I pushed the thought away.

Even with aching limbs, I wanted to leave Springfield, so I did. I pedaled past empty cars and emptier parking lots. I passed a mall that looked like a haunted castle; a single security car had plowed into a light pole in the middle of the front parking lot. By the time I got on Highway 126, I was sweating and not just from the exercise.

It was that the world was so empty. It was so the same as it was before, but it was so different. The normal noises were gone. I could hear birds and sometimes insects, but little else. Even the wind had vanished on this hot, desolate day. By the time I got to Fern Ridge Reservoir, I was panting with exertion. I wanted so desperately to be rid of the city. I wanted to be away from what should have been normal but was no longer.

Then, of course, something else happened. The reservoir was on the north side of the highway. In a few months the Army Corps of Engineers would have been draining it for winter. Not that that was going to happen any longer. At the moment, its greenish-blue fingers still reached almost to the highway. The marshes that surrounded its edges were still bountiful with flora. I even saw a loon.

Then I saw the Loch Ness Monster. The loon saw it too and took off for friendlier climates. Pretty smart bird.

I stopped my bicycle and let it fall to the highway as I stared. I was so frozen with amazement that it didn't occur to me to hide. I'm not sure how big she was, and I assumed it was a she because she had two little baby Loch Ness Monsters with her. Monsterettes? They played in the shallows of the reservoir, and I saw them catch a few fish. The larger one bellowed happily when one of her babies made a successful catch.

I knew that they weren't really Loch Ness Monsters. My mind struggled to remember the name of the most logical conjecture of the origin of lake monsters. The popular theory was that it was a dinosaur holdover that managed to elude all of mankind's scientific endeavors. A plesiosaur or something like it. It was an extinct ocean reptile with paddle-like limbs, a long flattened body, and the classic tail out of a hundred blurry photographs. That is how I would have described the animals in front of me.

This one wasn't extinct. Neither were her two babies. If there were people about, I supposed they would have called her Fernie for Fern Ridge Reservoir. But what the heck did I know?

They weren't interested in me, and later, I discovered I was grateful because the crossbow probably would have affected them like a buzzing mosquito. The mommy, at forty-some feet in length, would have swatted me like an annoying insect. After a while, they waddled into the deeper portions of the lake and vanished from my view.

I got back on the bike and rode even harder than I did before. Fourteen miles later, I was still shivering. Once I had read an account of a pioneer exploring the wilds of North America. The account said that a man was just as likely to be killed by a bear, mountain lion, or a pack of wolves as by hostile Native Americans. In that age, bears, mountain lions, and wolves were prolific. I wondered what the explorer would have made of Fernie and her two offspring.

I stopped to consult my map, and according to the mile marker I had passed, I was supposed to be in the middle of a small town. I looked up and found that the town was gone. Absolutely, undefinedly, incomprehensively gone. Instead, an emerald green swamp bordered the edge of the road, and the asphalt of the road was ragged as if something had torn it away in great chunks. I didn't see any sign of human population. Nor did I see any sign of animal population. Abruptly, there was a strange haunting call that echoed through the moss-laden trees and crept through the murky, lily pad-filled waters. It repeated twice and then went silent.

It sent a shiver of emotion down the entire length of my spine, and I sped through the area, working the pedals of the Schwinn as hard as I could. By the time I crossed the Siuslaw River long miles later, the road had returned to normal, and I started to pass the odd home again. Homes became more frequent; most had docks on the river. Twilight was settling on the world, and I picked a house at random in which to spend the night. I kept dreaming of that peculiar lingering cry, and it seemed to circle the house I slept in as if it were searching for me.

I had found an interior room without windows and laid out my sleeping bag there, blocking the door with a chair against the doorknob. In the morning, I exited the house hesitantly and discovered strange three-toed footprints that circled my bicycle and then led away. I kept the crossbow across my shoulder where I could reach it easily.

By the end of that day, I had reached the Pacific Ocean where I planned to turn south. I could have kept on I-5 from Springfield, but I loved the ocean, and if I had to ride my bicycle the entire length of California, then I was going to have something pretty to look upon. Besides, I didn't have anything better to do. (Did I want to mention that something was drawing me to go that way? Something that made me feel both excited and dismayed. No. I didn't want to mention that.)

Once I got on Highway 101, there was the little problem of the Siuslaw River Bridge. Pedaling through the tidy little coastal city of Florence kept me occupied enough until I reached the river again and the old bridge that once spanned it. Well, put frankly, half of it was gone. I rode to the edge and examined the end. It looked as though it had been sheared away with a very sharp knife. I looked out to sea and thought, Or a very large sea animal with very sharp teeth who thought an old art deco bridge was just the thing to eat on a newly born day.

In any case, in order to head south, I had to find a way across. There was a plethora of boats in the area near the bridge. I borrowed a rowboat, pointedly ignoring the little outboard engine, loaded the Schwinn, and did it the hard way. Rowing a third of a mile might sound easy but it wasn't. In addition to the rowing, I kept looking around the water to make sure I didn't look like a tasty treat to the local, new marine life. Of course, I didn't know what I was planning to do if something did take an undesired interest in me. Blow a raspberry and row like my tail was on fire? Shoot a bolt in their general direction and tell them about Fernie? Either sounded good.

I sighed with relief when I got safely to the other side. I sighed even more when I got my bike up to where the road started up again.

As I continued my journey, the days slipped a little into the fog that surrounded me. I longed to hear a human voice. I longed to see something that gave me a sign that I wasn't alone any longer, that I couldn't be the only one who was left in a world that threatened to kill me well before I could understand what had happened.

Some days I only rode a little ways; I kept finding my way onto the beach. The sands that varied from white to gold and the sharp smell of the sea spray had a healing power that held sway over me. Although I was alone, on the beach I wasn't lonely. I spent one night in Reedsport. The next night I slept among the regal sands of the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area. The wind kept me company and lulled me to sleep.

I think I was waiting for the weird to happen again. That's what I called it. Unicorns, Fernie, disappearing human beings, vanished towns and bridges, swamps that were probably not there before. It was the weird. It had happened, and I fully expected it to happen again. To be perfectly precise, there was a feeling I had as if I knew something was about to happen again. I shouldn't have been surprised.

The third day from Florence, I was almost to North Bend riding industriously on the Schwinn. My butt had developed calluses, and I had a profound respect for people who had rode long marathons on bikes. I was still in that fog, half in shock, not able to think about more than getting my legs to keep moving the way they were supposed to move, and the fact that there wouldn't be any more bike races didn't faze me the way it should have. The sun was high above me and slightly to the rear when I saw a shadow cross over me. It moved swiftly, there one second and gone the next.

In that moment I thought, Airplane. It's the shadow of an airplane. Oh, I couldn't believe it. I didn't even have time to stop. I leaned slightly forward and something raked my back as it tipped me upside down on the asphalt. I hit the hard surface with a grunt and a scream. The crossbow skittered across pavement. Then without hesitating, I scrambled for the side of the road and the protection of the thicket of scrub pine.

I didn't stop until I was so deep into the thicket someone would need a treasure map to find me. One knife was in my hand, and I couldn't remember reaching for it. My back burned, and the cry of something angry filled the day. Even through the thicket I saw the movement of something as it swooped past. It circled twice and then flew away. I saw its indistinct shape and trembled.

My first stop in North Bend was to a pharmacy. I had to find a mirror to look at the scratches on my back. Four parallel marks raked down between my shoulder blades, and despite their ragged appearance, they didn't seem to need stitches. There was no way I could have done anything about that. I practically took a bath in hydrogen peroxide and used a length of two-inch white gauze to wrap around my body several times before gingerly pulling on a new t-shirt.

My second stop in North Bend was to the library. Unfortunately, the library was all computerized, and it took me a while to find the book I wanted. It was in the fantasy section. It was a book on mythological creatures. After searching through the pages of the book, I came to the conclusion that the critter that had taken a swipe at me was a gryphon. Traditionally, the gryphon had the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle. I didn't get a great look because I had been too busy fleeing for my life, but the lean new version seemed a lot creepier. The wings seemed a mile wide and the streamlined body half the size of a modern lion. The sharpened beak appeared as though it could cut through a full suckling pig without effort.

Ignoring the burning pain that continued in my back, I found a notebook in a librarian's desk. Detailing my experiences, starting with the unicorns and where I had seen them, seemed important at the moment. I included the swamp with the funny three-toed thing that had trailed me to the house on the river. Fernie was put in there and her two babies. The last entry was the gryphon. I drew rough pictures and indicated what the situation had been.

I was just like Captain Cook and his ship, the Endeavour, except I didn't have a ship. I had a Schwinn, and I wasn't sure if anyone was left in the world who would appreciate my meager efforts. But it gave me something to think about.

Hoping that the gryphon had a limited hunting area, I left North Bend quickly. Highway 101 moved away from the coast for a few miles as it passed through Coos Bay, Millington, and a few wide spots in the road. I looked over my shoulder often, scanning the skies, but I never saw the gryphon again.

Further down the road, Bandon was a nice little coastal town even if its population had vanished. The bridge that crossed over the Coquille River was whole even if little dragon like critters the size of pigeons flew over the tallest supports. They didn't seem interested in me. I think I was too big. They were after the fish in the river.

On the edge of collapse, I found a bed and breakfast inn on the south side of the river that overlooked the old and new lighthouses. I ate about three bites of a cold canned meal and drank a little bottled water. For some reason I wasn't hungry, and my stomach rolled at the thought of eating more. When I was done I went out onto a wide veranda that looked out over the Pacific Ocean and marveled at the incredible sunset. Mentally documenting all the colors of the clouds above the setting sun, I didn't realize something else was happening.

Off to the south were a series of ancient sea stacks that jutted from the turbulent waters. The rock was being slowly eroded away by the endless ocean. Further down the beach were the shapes of more rocky outcroppings that protruded from the ocean floor. On the highest hill that overlooked the outcroppings, was a bonfire.

It took me a moment to realize that I was looking at a bonfire. It was a controlled fire contained in some kind of pit. I couldn't see if there was anyone there, but the fire itself was the indicator that called to me. I believe that my heart ceased to beat for a count of ten seconds before it roared back to life.

My first instinct was to run for it, to find the person who had created the fire before they slipped away. My second instinct was to check to see if I was seeing things. I rubbed my eyes, blinked several times, and found that the bonfire was still there. My third instinct was to question whether one of the new animals might have made this thing.

And there was that feeling inside me. In my excitement to see another living human being, I ignored it completely. It said something bad was about to happen, but I shoved it down inside of me where I didn't have to listen to it.

But I collected my crossbow and loaded it with a bolt. I checked to make sure my knives were accessible. Then I went for an evening stroll on the beach. So to speak.

The fireflies came next. As soon as my foot touched the sand, they whirled up and around me, a great cloud of little bright lights that glowed brilliantly. They circled me and buzzed past me, a seemingly organized group of relentless animals. Fireflies? They were and they weren't, and they jittered incessantly at me. I swiped at them, but they didn't seem to want to bite me. They swirled about for a long minute and then shot off to the east in a line of bright twinkles. One last one buzzed directly at my face, and it sounded as if it were scolding me. Then it blasted off after its comrades.

I looked at the bonfire longingly, suddenly shaking in my Skechers. I was afraid of disappointment. The closer I got, the more I was certain it was manmade. I climbed the bluff following a well-worn trail and breathed heavily with exertion. I felt hot and anxious as if something was pulling at me.

Twenty feet from the fire a shrieking let go as if a thousand people started to simultaneously cry out at my presence. I twirled around, but I could only see the shadows created by the fire. I yelled, "Who's there?" and winced at the sound of my voice. The shrieking died away, and there was only the crackling of burning wood.

I held the crossbow up, ready to aim at whatever menace would appear to me next. The man who had built the fire yelled horribly as he launched himself at me from out of the darkness. I had an impression of tangled blonde hair and scorching blue eyes that had no amount of humanity left within them. He knocked the crossbow from my hand with one of his. I was trying to twist away when his other hand, knotted into a grim fist, connected with my jaw and made the world go away.
Chapter 4

Really Not Alone...

When my much-too-heavy eyelids finally lifted again, my four limbs were tied to four stakes that had been plunged into the ground. Everything hurt from my head to my back to my wrists to my ankles. The ropes were secure, and the bonfire still merrily burned yards away, and it was the only noise I could perceive. I slowly turned my head and saw that I wasn't alone. I mean, I really wasn't alone. I might have been glad despite that two things were a problem, and the second was a doozie. The first was that I was tied helplessly to the ground. The second was that the man who had attacked me was sitting nearby on a rock, methodically sharpening his knife. Perhaps the fire's dancing light made it worse, but he looked far more dangerous than any of the new creatures I had faced previously.

Being alone didn't seem like such a terrible thing at that moment. I tugged at my wrists and pulled as hard as I could. My skin began to tear.

"It won't..." he said and stopped. I froze as he spoke. He wasn't used to talking any more than I was, and it obviously bothered him. Then he started again hoarsely, "It won't do you any good to struggle. I've had...practice." He pointed with the end of the long knife he had been sharpening.

I looked and saw what I initially thought was a pile of rocks. It wasn't rocks. It was a pile of burnt bones. The one on top was instantly recognizable as a human skull. A femur stuck out from under the skull. Black, thick fear threatened to overwhelm me. It rolled over me, and my stomach clenched as if being compressed by a large fist.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement, and I turned my head to see. It looked like a large spider scuttling out of sight. I thought, You're losing it, girl. My eyes went back to the man with the knife.

"You don't have to do this," I said faintly, ashamed that my tone came across as pleading. Regardless, my voice sounded scratchy, and it wasn't the only thing that was off. My flesh seemed as though it was on fire. I knew that I wasn't close to the flames, but I felt as though I was standing right on top of them. I felt as though I was drugged, dragging myself endlessly through heavy water. Then I added what I had most desired, "You're not alone anymore."

The man resumed his knife sharpening, the snick-snick-snick of the blade going over the whetstone sending a shiver of helpless reaction down my spine. "I've always been alone," he said almost calmly. The insanity was threaded through his tone. His Slinky was seriously kinked. He was a few fries short of a Happy Meal. He was surfing in Nebraska.

I finally found someone, but he had slipped over into the world of dementia and delusion, and he was going to fillet me like a fish he was preparing for dinner. "My name is Sophie," I said desperately. "You don't have to be alone anymore. Just like I don't have to be alone anymore." But I was lying. I didn't want to be around this man with his face that clearly showed the warped malevolence underneath. I wanted my mother and my father. I wanted my friends. I wanted people who loved me and whom I loved. I didn't want this escapee from an insane asylum. This man could be me, if I wasn't very careful. "I can..."

My words broke off when the man hurled himself off the rock with a grunting roar. "Shut up!" he bellowed as he moved. "I don't want to hear your VOICE!" The knife flashed high above his shoulder, and his eyes glittered wildly in the fire's golden light. The knife made an arc that ended as he straddled my body and brought it down into the fleshy part of my shoulder. He said "Shut up!" again, but I didn't really hear it because I was already screaming with the onslaught of the agony brought on by the knife's penetration.

Even while I was screaming, I saw that he wasn't so much older than I was, not even twenty-five under the black dirt embedded in his skin. But the thought skittered away as he reversed direction and yanked the blade out with a sickening slurping noise. My scream was abruptly cut off as I fought to maintain consciousness.

The pain and the heat and the fear all swamped me like a huge wave. I opened my mouth to say something, to say anything, when he lifted the knife again. It looked as though he was aiming for center of mass, and my time was coming to a horrible end. There was a moment where I took it in and thought that at least it would end quickly.

A single firefly that was not really a firefly buzzed directly into the man's face. He grimaced uncontrollably and swatted at it with the knife. I blinked, and a second one appeared. Then another and another appeared, a barrage of little enemy fighters zooming in for the kill. The man began to throw his arms around, trying to chase them away. He snarled viciously, and they flew at his face. He threw himself to his feet and ran at the bonfire.

I think he was going to reach for a lit branch to wave at the fireflies, but they stormed him in a ferocious torrent. He screeched and tripped, falling into the fire while they veered away from the conflagration. Branches and fire crackled in an angry sea of flames. It seemed as though he lay in the fire for a long time, but it must have only been for a few seconds. He started to scream in earnest, wretched emanations of pain that made me want to cover my ears, and rolled away from the flames. His hair was on fire as was his ragged clothing. Leaping to his feet, he ran as if that would save him. He kept screaming as he went off the side of the bluff and then it stopped abruptly.

The fireflies circled in an agitated fashion. Then a few came and flew about me. Their tone changed to a soothing one. It was like a thousand mothers murmuring relaxingly to me. When I blinked, they started to fly away. A last one jabbered at me in a scolding manner and then shot off after the rest. Déjà vu.

I heard a loud panting noise and tensed as I thought the man was returning to finish what he had started. I looked to see, expecting to see a burnt angry lunatic coming back up the bluff. But it was another man altogether. His hair was dark and his eyes were brown and his chest heaved with effort. He stopped abruptly about five feet away and harshly stared down at me. That was okay with me as long as he wasn't a close companion to the other one.

"Oh," he said solemnly while trying to catch his breath. He couldn't break his gaze on me, not even when the other person crested the bluff. My eyes fell on her, and I couldn't bring myself to say anything. She puffed like a steam engine. She looked around the man and then the area, scanning quickly.

Three people. One insane. Two out of breath. A thousand glowing fireflies that whispered and seemed to be protective. Talk about a puzzle.

The woman, who was middle aged and blue eyed, pushed the man aside. She studied me quickly, summing up what the restraints meant, and said, "Where's the...?"

"I heard a scream," said the younger man, not looking away from my face. I was having a hard time focusing no matter how much I wanted to look at the pair of them. "Then a...crash." He pointed at the bluff. "I think...our little friends helped."

The woman stared down at me and frowned. "Just don't stand there. Get a knife out. Cut these ropes. Her wrists and ankles are bloody. Just look at her shoulder."

"Kara," he said agitatedly, his eyes still locked on me. "I should check and make sure the other one is..."

Kara looked toward the bluff. She slowly shook her head. "No, he's not a threat anymore. They would have let us know."

A knife came out of a sheath on the man's belt and I winced. A sound came out of my mouth that sounded like a terrified whine. After a moment, I realized that was exactly what I was doing. The man checked his movement, and the woman said, "It's all right, honey. My name is Kara, and his name is Zach. We're not going to hurt you."

My eyes darted toward the bluff.

Kara looked for a moment. "He's not going to hurt you anymore."

I tried to speak but I couldn't.

The man named Zach sliced the ropes at my ankles, but I whined again when he approached my wrists. He stopped. "What if Kara does it?"

I nodded slowly.

When Kara cut the ropes at my wrists, I found I couldn't lower my arms. The shoulder with the wound was an explosion of agony. "You're..." I said, and the words were choked. I cleared my throat and tried again. "You're not with...him?"

The older woman sat beside me and tried to help me with my arms. She rubbed the muscles while Zach stared at me. He had an odd expression on his face as he continued his unwavering gaze. "We don't even know him," he said. "So, neither did you."

"You're the first people I've seen," I said tiredly. Relief was surging through my exhausted body, reminding me that I was crashing off the adrenalin rush. All that was left was my aching body and a burning that made me feel as though the coastal temperature was barely above freezing. "Besides..."

"He doesn't count," Zach said ruthlessly. "He wasn't human anymore." His eyes had finally looked away from my face. They were fixed on something else. I didn't need to look to see that it was the pile of bones.

My arms finally came down, and Kara helped me sit up. My head spun. I held it in my hands and tried to get a grip on the spinning world. I said, "He hit me. I think maybe I've got a concussion." Black dots appeared at the edges of my vision, and it felt as though the world was sinking.

For the second time that day, I fell into darkness.

* * *

A long time later, or it might have been only minutes, I heard the two of them talking. My head still throbbed. My body still ached, and my back was on fire. I couldn't bring myself to open my eyes so I merely listened.

"...said her head was hit. It could be a concussion."

"All I can remember about concussions is to wake them up every hour and make sure their pupils dilate in light. Both of them and equally."

"What are we going to do if they don't?"

"Go to the library and get a book. Hope her brain isn't swelling."

There was a pause. "Are you sure about...him?"

"Yeah. He's gone. There wasn't anything left. Just blood on the rocks. I hope he stumbled into the water and washed out to sea."

The sounds went away.

* * *

"I've disinfected the wound on her shoulder, but she's burning up with fever. If I had to guess, it's over 105 degrees."

"I'll get a thermometer from the drug store. A regular one that uses mercury in it."

A pause.

"Listen, girl," it was Kara speaking urgently into one of my ears. She gave my good shoulder a little shake. "Listen to me. Are you allergic to anything? Like penicillin? You've got to answer me."

My eyelids came open although it was so difficult. The crack revealed a nice room. The sun was shining in through the balcony. I was lying on one of two queen beds. It was a hotel room with nice neutral colors. Kara was bent over me, anxiously peering into my face. Zach stood behind her, his face was like milk, and he looked down forbiddingly at me. "N-nuh," I said. Obviously, I was a conversational genius. Finally, I was with other human beings, and I couldn't say much of anything at all.

Kara brought a glass of water to my lips and helped prop my head up. I sipped two mouthfuls before I choked. She wiped the residue away and said again, "Are you allergic to anything?"

"No," I said. Then I shivered convulsively. It seemed so cold there. Kara and Zach were both in t-shirts and jeans. Zach covered me up with the blanket from the other bed. "What's wrong with me?" I said while my teeth chattered.

"Fever, vomiting," Kara said. "You were sick before he took you, weren't you? Did you eat something bad?"

"Only canned stuff and bottled water," I said. My teeth came together violently, and I couldn't say anymore. My eyelids fell down again, but there wasn't anything wrong with my hearing.

"Get that thermometer and a bottle of antibiotics. They'll have a Physician's Desk Reference there. Get a couple different kinds of antibiotics. And we're going to need some stuff for an IV to keep her from getting dehydrated," Kara said determinedly. She started to tick items off. "A bag of saline solution. Tubing. IV needle."

"You're going to have to go, Kara," Zach said. "You'll know what to get. But I'm not sure if I want you going by yourself."

"I've got the crossbow and four knives, kiddo," Kara laughed. "I was in the army for ten years as a paramedic before they killed my knees with their freaking road marches. The VA paid for both knees to be rebuilt, so I think I can handle one little burned-up psychopath if he's even still feeling frisky."

Zach didn't say anything.

"There was a pharmacy about three blocks away. I'll be back in a half-hour."

"Stay away from corners," Zach said. "And alleys. Keep an eye on the sky, too. I saw something big flying off to the north. Something we haven't seen before."

"Gryphon," I muttered.

Zach said, "What?"

"Gryphon in the skies," I said, slurring my words as if I was drunk. "Head and wings of a bird, body of a lion. Raked me yesterday."

"Raked you?" Kara said. "You mean it scratched you with its claws? Where?"

"On my back."

"Going to roll you over," Kara muttered. They did and gentle hands lifted up my shirt. "Give me that knife, Zach."

I felt the give of the bandages and the quick intake of air from both of them. "The scratches are infected," Zach said woodenly. "Go get those antibiotics, Kara, and be careful. I'll clean this up while you're gone. And if you're a minute longer than thirty minutes I'm coming after you."

Kara laughed a dry chuckle. "Yeah. Check your Mickey Mouse watch, junior."

A door shut, and I tried to open my eyes again. I should have been disturbed to be in the room alone with a man I didn't know, but I couldn't move. My limbs felt as though they weighed a thousand pounds each. I wasn't going anywhere.

The bed depressed under Zach's weight as he perched on the side next to me. "I'm going to clean these with this antibiotic solution. It's going to hurt."

My eyelids came up a little, and my turned head could see part of his arm and some of his face. His hair was as brown as chestnuts, richly thick and full of golden highlights. His eyes were like chocolate. His tortured expression ruined his pretty face. He was sincerely grim. I could tell, even though I was half out of it, he thought I was going to die.

I hadn't considered that once the fireflies saved me. I thought if I were safe from a whacko with a knife, then things should be okay. Two people, real live people, had found me, and maybe life would be okay again. But the age of technology and advancement had passed on with the night on the mountain. They weren't doctors, and I was earnestly ill. I could die.

"I'll try not to," I said reassuringly.

Zach's eyes met mine. He was confused, "Try not to what?"

"Not to die," I answered. "I'll try. It's so good to see someone again. Don't want to go."

His broad shoulders shuddered once. "What's your name?"

"Sophie," I said. "Can I have another drink of water before you start, please?"

Zach held me while I sipped the water. Even though my teeth chattered convulsively I was able to hold some down. The pain when he started doing what he needed to do was too much for me, and a black curtain came down.

* * *

"Swallow this," Kara said to me. My eyelids opened just a bit, enough to see the middle-aged woman looking worriedly down at me. "Or I'm going to have to give another shot. You're shaking too much to do it safely. And Zach's too much of a weenie to want to hold you down like we did for the IV."

"Kara," Zach said warningly.

"Get a sense of humor, kid," Kara advised. "She's lasted this long, so she's a fighter."

"Her name is Sophie."

"Hmm."

I swallowed the pill and the water that came with it, and then I choked again. "Relax," Kara urged. "Relax. Try to relax that gag reflex."

They said something else and then there was darkness again. I didn't like the darkness. I kept expecting to open my eyes and see a man sharpening his knife on a whetstone while he looked at me with hungry expectation. And I wouldn't have the sword my hand seemed to want so desperately.

* * *

When I came to consciousness again, I had a vague recollection of shadowy dreams and a chill that permeated every inch of my body. But I wasn't cold anymore. I opened my eyes and saw daylight again. I knew I must have slept through an entire day. The room was still, and there was a little snore from the bed to my right. I moved my arm and became aware of the IV taped to the back of my wrist. A drip bag of a clear solution was hanging from the headboard.

I knew that I was feeling better. It was a thousand times better. It was the difference between day and night, between the brightest light imaginable and the darkest black of the deepest cave. I blinked my eyes a few times, and everything stayed the same.

I stretched experimentally. Everything still hurt, but it was a dull ache that wasn't as cutting. My shoulder was taped up so securely I could hardly move it. I could also feel the swath of bandages across my back. An oversized pajama top that buttoned in the front confused me until I realized that the pair must have found some new clothing for me. Men's pajamas in a red and green plaid hung loosely on me. Apparently, the stores were open down here, too.

My mouth was like a bag of cotton balls, and I saw a glass of water sitting on the nightstand next to the bed. I moved a little and heard a grunt next to me. That brought my head around instantly. I saw Kara in the other queen-sized bed, wrapped around two pillows with her head under another one. She was snoring softly. Next to me with his shoulder and leg nestled against mine was Zach. He was wearing a t-shirt and jeans, but his hand rested on my good shoulder and his head with closed eyes faced me.

That was weird. It wasn't at the top of the really weird list, but it was weird. I took the moment to ignore my dry mouth and studied him. He was in his early twenties. His face was exotically pretty. Sculpted cheekbones and a finely shaped physique that said he liked to stay fit. My father had a saying for that type of person. Too pretty for his own good. At the time, I wondered who ever thought that being too pretty was bad. Now it didn't seem to matter.

I inched away, silently damning the sore muscles and the pull of flesh that was only starting to heal. Zach's hand slid to the sheets, and he made a muffled noise and rolled the other way, showing an expanse of tanned abdomen as his t-shirt rode up. I swung my legs to the floor and trembled with the effort. Then I took a sip of the water. Pleased with my effort, I drank some more. I waited to see if anything would happen. It didn't, so I finished the glass.

Then I slowly stood up. It was difficult. Everything was shaking, quaking, or threatening to turn to rubber. I took three steps before I remembered the IV bag. I stepped back and got the bag and then took it with me to the single chair that was sitting beside the sliding glass doors. The doors overlooked the Pacific Ocean. It was a mellow day. The sun was shining brightly. The waves were crashing against the rocks. The wind was briskly blowing the grasses to the south.

It felt so good to sit there. I put the IV bag on the table next to the chair and curled my feet under me. I sat slightly sideways so there was no pressure on my back, and my bad shoulder was carefully guarded. I folded my hands across my lap and enjoyed the sunshine streaming in on my face.

The mental fog was gone. I realized it in an instant. The shock was gone. Thrown violently out on its head by a traumatic experience or by the wish fulfillment that had plagued me for never-ending days? I wasn't certain of that answer.

I looked back at the beds and sighed with relief. There were other people. There were only a few so far, but they were real, and if they were real, then I hadn't lost my mind as I had feared so desperately. Unlike that other poor soul who had built a bonfire, I was not crazy.

Then something else happened.

Zach must have sensed something because he suddenly scrambled in the bed and sat up straight. His eyes settled on the empty part of the bed and immediately went from there to the door. The door was still blocked by the other chair in the room. Then his eyes came to rest on me. I wasn't sure what to say, so I didn't say anything.

"Are you..." he said, and his voice held a slight tone of panic. He stopped and then added, "...all right?"

"I'm better," I said, and the words sounded lame even to me. "The antibiotics must have done the trick. Thank you. Thank you both."

Zach's eyes were burning with unnamable emotion. It reminded me so briefly of the other man's frantic eyes that I looked away. "Thank God," he muttered quietly.

Kara rolled to her side, and the pillow on her head fell to the floor. "Great. Can you all shut up and let a middle-aged broad get her beauty sleep?"

I bit my lip.

Zach leaped to his feet and said, "You've got to be hungry, so I'll make soup." He put his shoes on, unblocked the door, and left without another word.

Kara didn't close her eyes again. Finally, she said, "I'm glad you're better, Sophie. It was touch and go for a while."

I agreed privately, but I didn't say anything. I was thinking about the look in Zach's eyes. I knew it then, but it would be months before I would admit anything to myself.
Chapter 5

Once Upon a Time...

The soup was Campbell's Chicken Noodle, and it came with crumbled Ritz Crackers in a large coffee mug. Zach presented it to me as if he were a waiter, on a tray with a cloth napkin over his arm. "Soup for madam?" he joked, but the joke fell flat.

Kara groaned from where she still lay in bed. The pillow had returned to its place over her head. "You never serve me soup in the morning," she complained good-naturedly.

"You haven't been this ill," Zach retorted. "But I got several cans on the fire. If you're hungry, that is."

"The fire?" I said.

"This motel has a large fire pit out back. I'm keeping a fire going for water and meals," Zach explained. "The pit is made out of bricks. Easy to bank."

"I don't want canned food for breakfast," Kara said firmly. "I want an apple bran muffin and a Cinnamon Dolce Latte from Starbucks."

I sipped soup. It tasted good. It tasted as though I hadn't eaten for days. Then I sighed. "I miss Starbucks, too. White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccino. Grande, of course."

Kara sighed sentimentally. "A kindred soul. Where are you from, Sophie?"

"Springfield," I said. "But we were in the mountains when..." I trailed off because I didn't want to think of my father. I didn't want to think of waking up alone and feeling as though no one would ever say another word to me.

"When it happened," Zach finished. He leaned against the door frame and looked outside. Once, he looked over at me and our eyes connected. I caught a flash of intensity there, and I looked away, down at the floor, before something really weird happened. I drank more soup and nodded instead.

"I'm from Klamath Falls," Kara said. I think she could tell that I really didn't want to talk about what had happened to my parents. "My family was from there. Half of the town is gone now. It looks like a very odd forest made of trees that walk and move very slowly, hugging along the river and running right up to the lake. I suppose I should count myself lucky that I didn't live in that part. Those trees, I think they might be carnivorous."

"I saw a town that seemed as though it had turned into a swamp," I offered, not surprised by Kara's revelation. "Nothing left of the houses and businesses. Just swamp. With something funny living in it. Something with three toes. I didn't see anything but its tracks. And I heard a really weird call."

"One of the mountains has disappeared," Zach said contemplatively. "Brave new world. And do we need to talk about the new additions? Gryphons, big animals in the woods that you hear but never see, I think maybe I saw a centaur, but I never got close enough to tell for sure."

"I've got a notebook with my stuff," I said. Talking to the two was distinctly strange. "I tried to write down what I saw, and where, and how dangerous it seemed. I tried to sketch the animals, too."

"Have you had a chance to add our little friends?" Kara said from where she still lay in bed.

"Our little friends?"

"The little pixie things," she said. "They led us right to you. If they hadn't done something to that guy, then you would have been as dead as that poor other bastard. A pile of bones with cut marks all over..."

"Kara!" Zach said fiercely.

"What? She doesn't need to know?"

"She's still weak," he insisted. "Give her a chance to get some strength back." He straightened and shot me another look that I couldn't decipher. It seemed like Zach was full of looks like that. I was uncomfortable, and I wasn't sure how to act. I went back to the soup, but I knew I wouldn't be able to finish any more. Besides that, what I really wanted was to go to the bathroom and then back to bed. I wiggled uneasily, feeling incredibly stiff.

Kara sat up in bed, dressed in a Go Army t-shirt and gray sweats. She shrugged at Zach and then looked at me sharply. "She's pooped anyway. Sophie, do you need to go to the bathroom?"

Zach started to say something and Kara interrupted, "Kid, she doesn't want you in the bathroom with her."

He glared at her before spinning and leaving the room.

I said, "I do need to go to the bathroom. I feel like I haven't gone for days."

"Oh, you've gone, just not in the bathroom."

I blushed self-consciously.

"Don't be embarrassed," Kara said, rising up to her entire height. I hadn't realized it before, but she was tall for a woman, almost as tall as Zach. She was a solid, middle-aged lady with a lot of short gray hair and steel blue eyes. If I hadn't known she had been in the army I would have guessed her a marine drill sergeant. She was in her forties, not much younger than my parents, and I suddenly wondered about her family. I think she could read it in my eyes.

"My parents died a long time ago," she said quietly. "I had a partner in Klamath Falls. When I woke up, the only thing that was left was this." She held up her left arm and showed me a thick silver cuff bracelet that she was wearing. It was a pretty thing set with amber stones.

My hand went to my neck, and I jerked in shock. The necklace with my parents' wedding rings was gone. Kara saw the movement and lifted her eyes questioningly.

"My parents' wedding rings," I explained. "They were on a chain around my neck. I had them on yesterday."

"There wasn't a chain or rings on you," Kara said gently. "It must have broken off when...the psycho jerk decided to play games. I'm sorry." She cleared her throat and then added, "But that wasn't yesterday, hon. It was about a week ago."

"A week," I repeated dumbly. "I've been sick for a full seven days?"

Kara nodded. "Let me help you to the bathroom."

"Yeah," I agreed because I didn't know what else to say. Oh, my conversational skills had definitely improved since the change to be sure.

* * *

A day later I was moving from the bed to the bathroom by myself. Slowly but surely. I had lost the I.V., and I was keeping all the food and water down. I had a pile of library books, at my request, and my notebook. I had kept busy upgrading my entries. To be certain, I wasn't exactly sure what to say about the fireflies. Kara called them pixies and said they looked like teeny-weeny human beings with wings if you looked closely. Their bodies radiated a bioluminescence that made me think of the little bugs. They had warned me as best they could that danger was about. Furthermore, they had located Kara and Zach and managed to get them to come help me. Kara said they had buzzed around them and then opened a path in the direction they wanted them to go. Only a mile or two away, they had heard the screams as they had got closer, and could see the bonfire, as well.

The fact that fireflies/pixies/new creatures had gone out of their way to save me made me wonder endlessly. Why me? Why not the other one the man had gotten hold of? How had they known to find Kara and Zach? And the questions kept leading to other questions. How had Kara and Zach found each other? What was Zach's story?

"How do you feel?" Zach asked from the doorway. Dark and forbidding, the clouds outside had chased the pair inside. He lingered near the door and kept glancing at me while I pretended not to notice. Kara was reading in the chair by the window while I was propped in the bed.

"I'm okay," I said. I was okay. The antibiotics were working well on me. I was taking some painkillers for the aches, but it wasn't as bad as I would have thought. The bruises on my flesh were already turning yellow. The wound on my shoulder was a healthy, healing pink. Kara told me my back looked the same. She was happy with my progress.

"You don't talk much," Zach commented. I lifted my eyes to his and caught that extraordinary expression again. He looked at me as though, as though...what?

"It doesn't seem...real," I said, aware that it sounded lame. Kara put her book down and gave me her undivided attention. "All this. You. Kara. I feel like I'm going to wake up, and I'll be alone again." Aware that my tone sounded pregnant with despair, I glanced at my notebook and the little drawing of the firefly pixies that Kara had done.

"If it's too good to be true," Kara ventured delicately, "then it must not be true?"

"It wasn't good to lose my father," I said. "I woke up in a sleeping bag, and he was gone. I don't know how long it was before I realized his clothing was still inside his sleeping bag, and his boots were still sitting beside the bag. I searched the mountainside for hours before I gave up to go find help. I kept thinking that I would run into someone who would help me." I kept looking at the notebook. My knuckles were turning white from clasping the paper pages together. "I never did find anyone. But I walked off the mountain and down the mountain and I kept looking. I looked until the moment I walked into my house and found my mother's wedding rings on the kitchen floor next to her nightgown and a broken glass of milk. That wasn't good either."

Kara and Zach didn't say anything.

"No, it doesn't seem real," I mumbled. "I'm sorry. I guess I want to know what's going to happen next."

Zach was suddenly standing next to the bed. He hunkered down and took my hand in his. His flesh felt warm, and I wanted to cling to it eagerly like a lifeline. "We won't leave you, will we, Kara?"

"No, hon," Kara answered, and her tone was open honesty. "I always wanted to have children, you know. Now I've got two to mother. I hope you don't mind. I'm an awful pain to live with, too. Maggie always did say so."

"Maggie was your partner?" I asked. That was sad, infinitely sad to lose the person you loved most in the world, the one you had committed yourself to being with. Pain was pain no matter who had been lost.

"Oh yes. An artist. She did the most wonderful landscapes. She did pretty well in the galleries," Kara's voice dangled reflectively. I glanced up to see her wipe an errant tear away from her eye, and I wished I hadn't said anything.

Zach was still looking at me, holding my hand. I wanted to pull away, but I didn't know how to do it without making it seem as though I thought it was distasteful. (It wasn't, but boy, was I confused about my feelings.) "How did you find each other?" I asked, meaning Zach and Kara, but Kara seemed to understand.

"Once I couldn't find anyone else, I left Klamath Falls," Kara said, and her tone was mild again. "I thought I'd head to I-5 and go south. I walked across the mountains toward the interstate, and found that my knees weren't doing so great. I tried a bicycle, which is better for me, but I decided I was going to have to find a hospital with a physical therapy section for my knees. Well, that, and I had the strangest inkling to go north. Kind of weird that. I kept smelling the strongest scent of cinnamon. Instead of going south, I followed the smell up to Medford and stopped at the library to read up on physical therapy options for knees." She waved her hand placidly at Zach. "And I found him instead of Cinnabon. What were you reading?"

"A thesis on apocalyptical theology," Zach muttered. He rubbed my fingers once more and let go. He stood up and retreated to the door. My fingers tingled oddly.

"Theories on how the world is going to end?" I asked. Well, it wasn't so far off from what I thought for a few minutes, about being in hell. The devil would know, too. My idea of hell had changed. Hell would be being alone again, without any hope of seeing anyone else.

Zach nodded. "I was trying some different trains of thought in order to get my head around what happened."

"He had a pile this big," Kara laughed, indicating about three feet in the air with her hand. "Books that I couldn't pronounce the names of. 'Psychosocial Anthologies of the Archetypal Indicators of the Apocalypse.'"

"You made that up," Zach accused genially.

"Well," Kara said. "Maybe a little. I was so shocked to see him sitting there, I forgot to say anything. For a minute I didn't know what to do. I think he was so engrossed in his reading that he didn't hear me come up. He looked up after that and dropped the book on the floor, and then knocked the rest on the floor in his surprise." She smiled a little. "Would you believe I just ran over to him and hugged him?"

I believed it. I think I would have done the same if I had seen either of them in a normal fashion. What was normal, by the way? I might have done the same to the other man, too, if he hadn't been acting like a psychopath. I would have walked right up to him and let him do his worst in my excitement over seeing another living, breathing, walking human being.

"Embarrassed the heck out of him," Kara went on, oblivious to my wool gathering. "I think I held onto him for five full minutes. He had to pry me off."

I looked at Zach and saw that he was staring at me again. I wanted to say "What?" but I couldn't bring myself to say the word. I just let my gaze drop to the notepad again.

"That was the first night either one of us got a full night's sleep," Kara said. "I was so relieved that I wasn't the only one." She paused and then said, "I bet you felt the same way, huh, Sophie?"

"Yes," I said simply.

* * *

Hours later, Zach had made some kind of stew from freeze dried beef and canned vegetables. It was tasty enough that I forgot that it came out of cans and packages. I even licked the spoon when it was all gone.

Kara said, "We're going to have to start growing things. Not next year. But maybe in a couple. A garden. A big one. And we'll have to can things."

The future. It frightened me. Kara saw a future where we set up as some kind of family. I wasn't even used to being in the same room with them. What if I got accustomed to them? What if I started to love them? What if something happened to them? What if I was alone again?

The fear must have shown in my face because Zach made a noise and reached a hand toward me as I sat in the bed. I put the bowl and spoon quickly down on the night stand. I had changed into loose jeans and a looser baseball jersey they had procured from someone's house. So I stood up and offered to clean up.

Kara scoffed inelegantly and gathered up dishes herself. She was using the apartment that the hotel manager had lived in. She put them on a tray and said curiously, "Why does the water still work?"

"It won't for long," Zach said, his expression intent on mine. "The electricity that allowed the reservoirs to fill up is off. Once the levels drop the water will stop. There's about a dozen other things that can happen, too, to make it stop. We're lucky right now."

"Lucky," I repeated. I went to the door and inched around Zach to stand on the walkway. Was it that obvious that I didn't want to touch him? The previous black clouds had blown clean away and left the skies clear. The sun was starting its descent, and it was another brilliant orange-red, Oregon sunset.

"Maybe you should go back to bed," Zach said softly.

I watched Kara walk down the stairs. "A little exercise won't kill me," I said just as softly. I put my feet into flip flops that they had provided as well and shuffled to the stairs. I just wanted to walk around a little to get my heart pumping. I was weak, but I didn't want to baby myself. Babying myself didn't seem to do anything productive. Zach followed along after a disapproving grunt.

Pausing at the top of the steps, I thought about my strength level. We were on the second floor, and I thought I could get down the stairs, but I wasn't certain if I would get back up by myself.

Zach seemed to be a mind reader. He said gruffly, "If you want to go down, go ahead. If you can't make it back up, I'll carry you."

My face wrinkled in a frown that he couldn't see from behind me. "Thank you," I said faintly. I would make it up the stairs by myself, even if I had to crawl.

So I went down, slowly and carefully, minding the pull of healing flesh from both my shoulder and my back. Neither wounds were incapacitating; the prolonged fever had sapped my strength to nothingness. I came to the bottom and resisted the effort to wipe the beads of sweat that had appeared away from my upper lip. "I just want to walk around the motel, okay?" I said to Zach. "Build me back up."

"Okay," he said, and even I could tell that the word contained the resistance he felt in it. He didn't approve, and he didn't like it. That was okay. He didn't have to.

I meandered around the motel parking lot on the side and passed the office/apartment where Kara was merrily banging pots and pans together. She looked out the window and waved cheerfully at us. Zach kept behind me and didn't say anything.

I didn't say anything to him because I was beyond uncomfortable. He kept...looking...at me. I mean, I didn't know what to say. I wasn't a raving beauty. I didn't have boogers hanging from my nose. I had checked in the mirror. My hair was still shoulder length, and my eyes were still gray. I was a little skinnier than I had been. I didn't get it.

Climbing up a half flight of stairs to the back of the motel had me breathing a little heavy. I stopped and sat on a brick wall. Zach crossed his arms over his chest and looked off to the north.

Finally, he said, "We want to go south for the winter. Kara and I want you to come with us."

Again, I was at a loss for words. He'd said they wouldn't leave me. Of course, I hadn't said I would come with them. Finally, I nodded shortly. It had been my plan to head south anyway. It would be better to go with them. Frankly, I wasn't sure if I could go without them.

"Good," he said.

I rose to my feet and continued my trek around the motel. Oh, I was determined to make it. I could almost feel waves of censure emanating from Zach. It made me all the more dogged. (Sounded like a challenge to me.) We got closer to the fire pit that he had told me about. It was a large thing, ringed by the bricks, covered with a grill. It looked as though the motel would light fires there on those windy nights that required their guests to enjoy all the aspects of the Oregon coastline.

The fire was a pile of glowing red coals that radiated heat even to where I stood. There was a large covered pot there with what must have been the remains of the stew Zach had made. Sitting on the grill right next to the pot, was a blackened skull. Its dark eyes stared endlessly.

I saw it and recognized it for what it meant. Immediately I couldn't move.

Zach muttered something about stubbornness before he realized that I was frozen in place. He looked at the fire pit and cursed. Then he gathered me up in his arms and ran for the other side of the motel. Calling to Kara, he hesitated at the office door.

We both sighed with relief when she stuck her head out the door.

"Time to go," Zach said. "We can't stay here."

Kara didn't question his tone. She only nodded.

And I trembled in Zach's arms, knowing that the other man was still alive, still about. Perhaps he was watching us at that very moment. I made Zach put me down, and I threw up the entire contents of my stomach.
Chapter 6

Running...

"We're going to ride out of here?" I whispered after I was finished vomiting. The pain in my shoulder had been vigorously renewed with extra torment. The excessive heaving had made my back and shoulder move in ways that I was convinced I shouldn't have moved. The throbbing combined with the fear that I had of the man who was delighting in our terror, was making me helpless. I didn't like the sensation. It made me feel like less of a human being and more like a victim with a bull's eye painted on her. "In the dark?"

Zach methodically scanned the area. "We have to. We don't know where he is or what he's capable of doing."

Kara said, "What happened?"

"He left a...present," Zach said hesitantly, peering at me. I was on my knees, still shaking, trying not to fall over on my face. I bit back a moan because of the pain slicing through my shoulder. The flesh had torn when I had been hurling. Lovely thought. "A skull on the grill," he finished reluctantly. "Sometime between dinner and now."

"A skull," Kara repeated, horrified. Her expression was aghast. She looked around as if ascertaining our safety. "I thought you buried..."

"I did," he said gruffly. "Either he unburied it or he had others."

"The bikes are in a carport two blocks down," Kara said, "where I left them last week. If he was watching, then..."

"Then we'll come up with another plan. Bring only water and the crossbows," Zach instructed as if he were the elder of the pair. He looked down at me. "A blanket for her. It's going to be a long night."

"I can't ride a bike," I muttered. I didn't want to beg them not to leave me, but deep inside I feared for them. If they had to choose between protecting me and saving themselves, I had no compunction about the right thing to do. "You've got to...go on," I said on a heartfelt sigh. Then I added the emphasis, "Leave me and go. I'll lock myself in the room."

Zach stood over me while Kara hurried upstairs. He watched the area and the room upstairs. There was enough light from the twilight to see in all directions, but the shadows were growing into areas of potential hazard.

"Listen, Sophie," he said forcefully, and I could see his angry face. He glared at me for a moment, and then he began to speak. "We'll get out of here. This man, this...thing...can't chase us very far. He's injured, too, from what you said. Burned and probably has some broken bones from the fall. If I have to, I'll stop him in whatever way I can." He drew in a deep breath and then included vehemently, "And there's no way in hell that we're leaving you behind."

Shuddering, I just looked up at Zach. Weak and dizzy, I was damning myself because I couldn't help more. When Kara returned clutching the procured items, Zach picked me up again, and they headed down the street.

Fortunately, their bicycles were still where Kara had left them. Two new K2 bicycles were parked in the carport and unmolested. A bicycle trailer had been attached to the man's bike. It was big enough to carry materials like sleeping bags and food and then some. Zach unceremoniously dumped everything out and put me inside. My knees were bent, but it wasn't altogether uncomfortable. He carefully tucked the blanket around me and loaded three gallons of water beside me. Then he gave me a crossbow that was nocked into firing position. He put the quiver of bolts in the pocket on the trailer, so I could easily reach it. It wasn't mine, but it was close enough that I knew what to do with it.

Finally, he brushed his fingers across my cheek, and when I looked up, Kara was smirking. I was certain she couldn't see the color of my cheeks, but she probably knew I was blushing just as brilliantly as the sunset.

It was perhaps almost a half-mile's ride back to the Oregon Coast Highway from where the house was located. Through streets crowded with vacation homes and then through a strip mall area, we rode. Kara was in front. Zach took the rear, and there I was in the trailer. I twisted around in my makeshift seat and watched our rear. I thought I saw movement in the shadows, and then a trio of deer nervously scampered across the road, agitated by our hurried passing. I wondered what they were doing in the middle of the small town, but it hardly mattered.

Then we were back on Highway 101. Kara was breathing heavily, but her strong limbs pumped endlessly. Zach carefully controlled his breathing as he strained with the extra weight. I watched as the twilight faded from red to purple to black. The stars began to pop up with an alacrity that I couldn't appreciate. Struggling with the effort to stay alert enough to see behind us, I shifted around in the trailer causing Zach to call, "Careful, Sophie. You don't want to tip us over."

I saw something, and I lifted my head to figure out what I was looking at. It wasn't an immediate threat so I studied it painstakingly. "Zach," I said loudly after a minute, almost warningly.

Zach turned his head for a moment and then allowed the bicycle to coast to a stop. Kara glanced behind her and saw that we had come to a halt. Zach turned his upper body so that he could fully see what I was seeing. We watched for a long minute before Zach motioned for Kara to go again.

I kept looking back and finally, I said, "It's the motel, isn't it?"

"Yes," Zach grunted. "Yes, I'm pretty sure."

The place where we had spent the last week, I in a mostly oblivious state, was on fire. The winds were feeding the flames, and the entire place looked as if gasoline had been poured upon every inch. It burned so well that it only took a matter of minutes before it collapsed into itself. We heard the noise a few seconds later, and Zach slowed to look behind us again. The fire was moving onto other buildings in the path of the wind. Another building was aflame, and others looked as though the embers were beginning to ignite them.

After that, he went back to his frenetic pace. Wherever the man was located, none of us wanted to be near it. After a while I couldn't see any more flames.

I wasn't certain how they could see to tell where we were going until Kara called eagerly, "Look, Sophie."

Our little friends the firefly pixies were back. They streamed along the road before us like roadside flares. Little flares but there all the same. They led in the same direction, away from the man who had tried to kill me.

After an hour or so, Zach was done. I could feel his limbs shaking with overuse. His breath came in harsh gasps. He began to slow, looking for something to help us, for somewhere to stop for awhile. The world was black, and I couldn't see anything except the firefly pixies and the long expanse of darkness stretching out behind us. Finally, they led us off the main road and to a house that was set back amongst a stand of trees.

When we stopped, one of the little creatures lit upon my arm, standing there with its small wings fluttering anxiously. I sat very still and looked down at the animal that had helped us. The glow of their bioluminescence enabled me to see it clearly. Kara was right. They looked like tiny little humans with elongated features and forest green skin. Their eyes were large and bug-like. Their butterfly-like wings were delicate creations of green translucent material, seeming almost too fragile to actually be of use. He or she, or was it an it?, returned my look frankly and then shook its minuscule head. There was another scolding buzz as its body glowed extra brightly for a moment, and the firefly pixie returned to the fold. The group circled us twice and then lit off into the night, leaving us in a black pool where only the stars above were visible. Even the moon was absent.

Zach said, "I've got a glow stick we can use for light, but we need to get inside and make sure we're in an inside room without windows before I break it open."

Kara groaned as she got off her bicycle. "I've got to stop at the next big city and get another shot. My knees might have been rebuilt, but they weren't meant for this kind of action."

I was still looking up at the sky when Zach bent over me. "Are you all right, Sophie?" he murmured.

"I kept looking back," I said. "I never saw him. I don't think he could be following us." My voice trailed away. "But I suppose he could have seen which way we went. Would the firefly pixies tell us somehow?"

Zach took the crossbow out of my hands. I had forgotten I was holding it. "I know you were watching. I wasn't worried."

"Zach," I said, using his name for the first time. I sensed, rather than saw, him tense up at the usage. "Is the moon gone?"

When Zach picked me up, still wrapped in the blanket, he cursed rather than answered my odd question. "You're all wet, Sophie," he said finally. "Kara, is the door open?"

There was a sound of breaking glass. "It is now," she said. "Sophie, are you sweating? Do you have a fever again?"

Carrying me inside the house, Zach inched around until they found a room that was on the backside of the house. It was a guest bedroom with a king-sized bed. Kara closed the blinds and then the heavy curtains before Zach put me on the bed. Then he broke the glow stick, shaking it fiercely, and raised it up to see.

"Oh God," Kara said brokenly. "Your hand is covered with blood, Zach."

Zach looked at his hand before he looked down at me in dismay. I had felt the stitches give on my shoulder, but I hadn't wanted Zach and Kara to stop. I had even felt the blood as it started to flow down the hole in my back where the knife had gone cleanly through. I ignored it because their safety was more important.

Kara rolled me over onto my side, and I thought that everything seemed a little dim. The green light from the glow stick made the room seem dark and sinister. There were too many shadows and too many places for...things to hide. I moaned and Zach said, "What's wrong?"

Placing her hand on my forehead, Kara said, "She's running a fever again. And this is a lot of blood loss. Do you know your blood type, Sophie?"

"Blood type," I repeated. My last biology class had a blood test we had performed, and I had donated blood once. My blood type was relatively rare. "AB," I said.

"Yes," Kara said loudly with a note of approval that seemed at odds with the situation. "Great news. Get my bag, Zach, you're a donor."

"Don't I have to be AB?" Zach asked flatly. "Because I don't know what type I am, and I don't want to—"

"Quick science lesson," Kara interrupted as she stripped the blanket from my back and pulled the sodden jersey away from my skin. "Give me your knife, Zach. I have to cut this material away." I heard the words, but I didn't comprehend the message. The feel of tugging material and the sound of slicing accompanied her speaking, making me shiver more. "AB blood type is considered the universal recipient, just like O negative is the universal donor. Ideally, AB blood would be the best, but since I'm A positive and you don't know what you are, she's going to take yours. Why you? You're stronger than I am. If she needs more, I'll donate tomorrow. Right now I need the needles and tubes we used for the I.V."

I almost shrieked when Kara pressed something firmly against the back of my injured shoulder. "Sorry," she muttered. "I've got to stop the bleeding or this is going to be all for nothing."

"Don't say that," Zach hissed.

"Okay," Kara soothed. "She's got a good chance with her blood type."

I closed my eyes and wished for something else to happen. As it turned out, I got my wish almost immediately.

* * *

There was a light. It was so powerful I had to blink my eyes, but I found I couldn't. All I could do was to stare at it. It seemed to invite me in, but I didn't want to go, and someone was urgently calling my name. Someone was begging me not to leave them. I felt so much compassion for that person that I turned away, and I went back to the real world, even though I was very much aware of the mental and physical pain that was awaiting me. It came down on me like a crushing wall of stone and I screamed.

* * *

When I woke up again, the sky that I could see through the now-open window was just starting to turn from gray to blue. Someone was holding my hand. I could hear something else. "Are they singing?" Zach asked softly.

"Hush," Kara said.

It was a song. It was a song unlike any I had ever heard before. The eerie resonance wailed through the room and surrounded me like a warm blanket. I felt the sting of the needle in my arm as I moved slightly, but the sound seemed to drown out the feeling of pain, and I didn't really mind. My shoulder was a dull throb that pulsated underneath the cotton wool that pressed down upon me. Unexpectedly, my chest hurt, as well, as if someone had been sitting on top of it.

At first I didn't understand what was happening. I looked slowly around and then I saw the first of the firefly pixies. They were perched on every surface of the room. There were a few settled on the quilted blanket atop my abdomen and my legs. Kara was crouched motionlessly at the foot of the bed. Zach was to my right side, the tubing that Kara used to transfuse his blood was still connected to my arm. Blood was still flowing between us. His hand rested on top of mine; his fingers were curled around my palm, emphasizing the difference between the sizes.

Their uncanny song continued for a moment and then it unexpectedly stopped. One of the little creatures buzzed around my face, and I resisted the urge to gently shoo it away. Its tiny eyes studied me for the longest second as if making certain that I was improved and then it zipped away. The remainder of the group launched into the air en masse and vanished down the hallway in a torrent of green light. Their buzzing sounds slowly faded.

The world was still a fuzzy, distant place. But I no longer felt as though my life was slipping away. The truth be told, all I could wonder was, why me? Why again?

"Zach," Kara muttered, looking at my face. They hadn't known I was awake again.

Zach stirred and bent over me, careful not to twist the tubing. "Sophie?" he asked tentatively.

"Why did they come back?" I asked carefully, my words were slurred.

Swallowing convulsively, Zach visibly grappled with his answer. Finally, he said, "You died. For about a minute, you died. Kara and I gave you CPR. But we didn't think..."

Even Kara choked. "We thought you were a goner, kid," she uttered hoarsely. "I don't believe I've had a worse moment in my life. You won't believe how hard I prayed for you to take another breath."

"We were doing CPR on you when they came back," Zach said as quietly as he could. "They were with us when you started to breathe again. Then we got the transfusion started about an hour ago. When the sun started to come up, they started to sing."

"Like a lullaby," I whispered.

"Sure, hon," Kara said. "Go back to sleep, Sophie. We'll be here."

So I did.

* * *

"Another biology lesson," Kara was saying. "Hyperacute rejection of donated tissues usually applies to donated organs. But the principle is the same. If her immune system sees your blood as incompatible, then her system will start to attack the foreign bodies. And by the way, I think we would have seen symptoms by now, so stop worrying."

Zach grumbled.

"Eat some more, too," Kara chastised. "Build up your blood again. I know it's instant oatmeal, but it's better than beef jerky."

"I feel better," I said. "I'll eat the oatmeal."

They didn't say anything, so I wasn't sure they heard me. But when I opened my eyes they were at the end of the bed staring at me. The sun was up, as indicated by the amount of light pouring into the room, and I was ready to move around. Zach was shirtless with a bandage wrapped around the middle of his arm. One hand held a bowl of what I assumed was instant oatmeal. Kara had a t-shirt on that looked like it was a triple X size and she was only a medium-sized woman. Their eyes were red with fatigue.

"You know, I have a question," I said when no one else said anything. "Why does a glow stick work and a bullet doesn't? Aren't both a chemical reaction? I don't get it."
Chapter 7

What's Next?

I think that Zach and Kara thought I was still sick, maybe even delusional. But it was just a question that had popped into my head, and I couldn't not ask it. No electricity. No phones. Millions of people vanishing overnight. This new world had new creatures, new landscapes, and new rules. I just wanted to read the rule book. The problem was that no one had published it yet. No one was going to publish it for a very long time, if ever.

Perversely, that reminded me that my notebook had been left behind at the motel and was likely a little pile of ashes in a bigger pile of ashes. "I need another notebook," I said inanely, floundering like the Titanic.

They stared at me.

"Before I forget about all the new animals," I explained. "I want to write them all down." I waited for an answer, but they were both just standing there. I waved my hand feebly. "Hello? Thank you for saving my life. Can you...uh...talk to me?"

Kara cleared her throat. "You are better," she said.

"The shoulder hurts," I said mildly. "I'm hungry, though, and I don't feel like I'm running a fever anymore."

Zach put the bowl of oatmeal down on a dresser. "You have to stay in bed," he said curtly. That sounded like a royal command.

I didn't want to stay in bed, but I didn't want to rip out stitches again. "I'll stay in bed," I agreed grudgingly. "Can I have a notebook? If you can find one in this house, and have the firefly pixies been back?"

"They only left an hour or so ago," Kara clarified carefully. "I think they're nocturnal. Mostly, anyway."

"An hour," I repeated thoughtfully. That explained Zach and Kara's surprise. They were probably expecting me to be comatose for another week, maybe with brain damage. "Look, no brain damage from oxygen loss. No organs failing here. Two times two is four," I said. "E equals MC squared where E equals energy, M is for mass, and C equals the speed of light, otherwise called the theory of relativity by Einstein. My father's name is..."I stopped abruptly, all good mood disintegrated with the thoughtless chain of words that I had started in a lighthearted mood. "My father's name...was Freeman, and my mother's name was Miranda."

"Wow," Kara said with forced cheerfulness. "No brain damage in that kid. Good news, right, Zach?"

The darkness seemed to return to me. I didn't want to think of all things sinister, but they came to me regardless. "Any sign of...him?" Him meant the guy with the bonfire and the affiliation for burnt bones.

"No," Zach said succinctly. Closed subject, I read. Do not discuss further. Hah. Since when did I listen to my little moral inner voice? Was I not a turbulent, argumentative teenager testing my boundaries?

"Are we staying here?" I asked sweetly, finding some kind of reserve within me. It might not be the same Earth that I went to sleep on, on the night of the change, but it didn't mean that I had to endure without asking questions. Zach had asked me to come with them. He had said they wanted me to come. It wasn't a communist nation overnight. It was still a democracy, and I had voting rights.

Kara found something interesting to do. She started folding blood-stained clothing that looked like it had been cut off my body.

"We can't move you yet," Zach said, folding his arms over his chest. He looked at me challengingly.

"And if he stumbles onto us?" I asked sincerely. "We're not far from the highway. If he is persistent, he could do it."

"We're not moving you," Zach said in a firmer voice. It was almost a growl.

"At least we could move further away from the road," I ventured.

"Now she talks," he said half to himself. "Now she does. Listen, Sophie, we are NOT moving you. Not yet. Do you remember what happened the last time we moved you? Oh yes, yesterday. Last night, when you nearly bled out. That's the reason I'm a little woozy from the transfusion. You know, the blood I gave you today. I'm not taking that chance with you again."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Kara duck her head. Something was fascinating her on the floor. It must have been as interesting as Carter looking into Tut's tomb for the first time. It suddenly occurred to me that the cut clothing she was holding in her hand meant something. I looked down and saw that I was naked under the blankets. Furthermore, the blankets were slipping. My head shot back to Zach. His eyes were focused completely on my face as I jerked the blankets back up.

"They did something to me," I said. Well, I was the queen of switching subjects today, and I thought I might as well go with the flow.

Kara brought her head up. She was a tough woman all right, but for some reason, Zach was the leader of this expedition. He was the alpha dog, and it wasn't sitting well with me. I hadn't wanted to be alone and I wasn't. I still didn't want to be alone. But I didn't want to be dominated either. "They?" she said curiously.

"The firefly pixies or whatever you want to call them," I elucidated. "How else can you explain how I feel? Wasn't I dead a few hours ago? Weren't you pounding on my chest and breathing for me? I saw a light. A bright light. I think I was three-quarters gone. Maybe even more."

The expression that crossed Zach's face was both pained and aggravated. "You were dead," he said. "But you're not now, and we want to make sure you stay that way."

"I'm not a marshmallow," I exclaimed. Zach jerked.

"We don't think you're a..." Kara said and trailed off uncertainly. "Oh, hon. It's just you were in shock and so ill. You'd lost all your fight, and now, it's all back, isn't it?" She tilted her head curiously as she looked at me. Judging from her expression, she thought it was amusing. "I'll find you some clothes," she added pertly. "And some oatmeal. Zach's got a fire going in the back. A small one without any smoke," she explained with no little amount of mirth.

Zach stared at me. I was getting used to that. This time I stared back until he turned away with an aggrieved grunt.

* * *

Two days later, Zach was still grumpy. He spent a lot of time outside during the day keeping an eye on what was happening. I don't think he wanted to stare at me anymore.

"He thinks it's his fault that you died," Kara explained to me one day while I was sitting in a chair working on a new notebook. Zach had found a nearly new one in a house a mile away. He'd presented it to me with a gruff, "Here." Then he'd tossed a pile of sharpened pencils in my lap. While I was looking down, he escaped like devil was at his heels.

"It wasn't his fault," I said shortly.

"He thinks he should have noticed that you were bleeding," Kara continued blithely.

"It was nearly pitch-black and he was a little occupied."

"Well, yeah," Kara agreed. "You should have told us."

"Uh, excuse me. Nutcase leaving skulls on grills and lighting motel fires? It seemed a little more important to leave than to worry about me bleeding." I bit my tongue and cursed. I should have told them. I had been worried that the man would catch up to us and do far worse things to us than the bleeding of my wounded shoulder.

"Us or you?" Kara said astutely. Her kind blue eyes considered me for a long moment that made me want to squirm. "Zach said you wanted us to leave you there because you couldn't ride a bicycle."

"We could have all burned up in the motel," I said coldly. "Or even worse. He could have used our bones for soup."

"Heck no, you're not a marshmallow," Kara said loudly. "Glad, too. I hate a milquetoast. Should make for an interesting experience. I'm certainly more entertained than I thought I was going to be. It's almost better than soaps." She made a little noise and added, "Not that I ever watched them."

I didn't understand and I didn't ask.

Kara looked over my shoulder and said wonderingly, "You saw a Loch Ness Monster?"

"Fernie," I said. "The name of the reservoir where she was at. She had two babies. They were eating fish. I think the drawing is close. The mommy was about forty feet long."

Kara reached over my shoulder and idly flipped through the pages. She saw the gryphon, the firefly pixies, and the unicorns, too. "Oh my," she muttered. "It's a whole different ball of wax now, isn't it?"

* * *

Two more days later, I was sitting on an A-frame swing in the backyard of the house we'd set up in. It was a large ranch house with black shutters and white trim. Someone had put a lot of effort into keeping the yard trim. Neatly trimmed rose bushes ringed the house. The back porch had two barrels of orange chrysanthemums guarding the door. Since they weren't getting any direct rain, they were wilting. The grass was starting to be a little overgrown, vainly waiting for someone to fire up the riding lawn mower and take care of business.

Kara had gleefully discovered a vegetable garden beyond the barn to the south. She was picking fresh items to make something she couldn't decide on yet. Zach had watched me carefully negotiate my way outside to the swing with my notebook and a bottle of water, and then disappeared in the other direction.

I had decided to make a list of things I missed. Surprisingly, it wasn't the high tech items that made me nostalgic, but simple things like ice cubes and hot water from the tap. I filled up one page and started on the next one before I stopped in amicable disgust. My fingers dropped to my lap, and I sat there gently pushing myself back and forth with one foot.

My general physical improvement had been nothing short of miraculous. The scratches on my back were red marks that didn't even look that bad in the mirror. The bruises on my chest had faded overnight. The shoulder wound was closed up. Kara had removed the stitches before the skin could grow over them. I felt better, better than I had in days. I thought I was ready to get on a bike. Or at the very worst, be stuffed in the bicycle trailer again.

Zach didn't agree. Naturally. Kara was Switzerland, the weenie.

I bent over slightly and looked at the green grass. It was easier to think about the people who had once lived here. Her name had been Gigi. His name had been Eddy. They had two grown daughters and three grandchildren. The photographs had been pretty revealing. They had loved their lives here. I hadn't looked beyond the pictures that had been lovingly set up in the living room. Their names had been engraved on a wood plaque that was mounted above the front door. If their empty clothing had been strewn in the positions where they last lay or stood, Zach and Kara hadn't volunteered the information.

It was my thought that Gigi was the gardener. She had loved her flowers, and she had loved being out in the sunshine. Had they been bad people? I wouldn't have thought so. They kept their house clean, and they liked to entertain people as evidenced by the pictures of parties in their backyard. But I hadn't known them, so I couldn't even guess what their true personalities were like.

What was bothering me was, why was I sitting on their yard swing and they weren't? Why was the man with the dirty blonde hair and searing blue eyes still alive and able to kill someone else? Why were only certain people still here, still alive? Why those people? Why me? I didn't think I was particularly deserving of this fate. Or perhaps it wasn't intended as a favorable action.

"What are you thinking?" the deep voice asked.

I would have liked to say that I didn't jump, but he had startled me. "I was thinking about Gigi and Eddy."

Zach came around the front of the swing. He'd approached from the rear, and I hadn't heard him. Dressed in his characteristic manner, he wore some loose blue jeans and an oversized t-shirt. Apparently, Eddy had been a much heftier man than Zach. He crossed his arms over his chest in his typical fashion and stared at me with those chocolate brown eyes. It was difficult to read his dark expression. "Gigi and Eddy?" he repeated calmly.

"They lived here...before."

Glancing at the ranch house, Zach started in surprise. "Oh," he said at last. "We're here using their house, their things, even their clothing. I guess it would be hard not to think of them a little."

"You didn't look at their portraits in the living room," I said, thinking it was a fact.

"I looked," he said plainly. "I can't do anything about them. Not now. And I didn't know them. But I'm grateful that they kept their house well stocked."

I sighed. "There's that."

"Are you all right?" Zach asked after a long moment. "You seem sad."

I met his eyes. "Yes, I'm sad. I wish I knew why things are the way they are. I wish I had answers to the unanswerable."

"And if you had the answers, would it make you feel better?" he said quietly.

That stopped me. I had to think about it. If I had answers would I feel better? No, I wouldn't feel better. It was possible I might feel worse. What if the answers to my questions were the worst possible answers that I could have? "Can we go tomorrow?" I asked instead of answering his question. It was obstinate of me, but I thought he didn't need to know the answer. "I can ride in the trailer, but I think I should pedal a little ways, just to try to start building my strength back up."

Zach nodded shortly. "Two days of riding in the trailer. Kara and I have been talking about it. We'll see how you're doing before letting you get on a bike. When we get to the next big town, we'll find a better trailer for you or maybe a bike."

"Great," I muttered. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but you've got to know how hard it is to sit here and do nothing."

Zach unexpectedly grinned. It was absolutely shocking to see the wealth of white teeth in his tanned face. He had a pretty face when he was grim. But when he smiled, it was like the sun came out from behind a large dark thunderhead. I stared unashamedly. "You've been better than I expected. I thought you'd be beating me with a stick yesterday."

"You mean we could have gone yesterday," I asked slowly.

He grinned again with a nod and went toward the house with a little whistle.

Before I went inside, I watered the mums while Zach watched. When I was done, I looked at him and said, "Somebody else might get to see them before they die."

Zach didn't reply. He looked levelly at me and then at the flowers as if he didn't quite get my reasoning.

Well, I didn't understand him either. Zach didn't like to talk about before. He didn't talk about his life. He didn't talk about what had happened to him after the change and before he met up with Kara. He didn't talk about his family. When the subject was broached, he deftly changed it. Sometimes he did that so well that I suspected he was a psychologist before. That, or a defense attorney. A really young one.

Zach had secrets. We all had secrets, but he had big honking giant ones. He wasn't a serial killer, or he was saving Kara and I for a rainy day. But seriously, I didn't think he was dangerous. Or at least I didn't think he was dangerous to Kara or to me. Sometimes the subject of the man who had attacked me came up, and I could see the blistering rage behind Zach's eyes. However, he could be remarkably gentle to me and to Kara.

I began to suspect that half of the reason he'd insisted on staying at the house was for Kara's benefit. Her rebuilt knees were giving her problems that she didn't want to discuss. She took anti-inflammatory pills and did several kinds of physical therapy designed to build the strength back up in her knees. Nonetheless, Kara had enough pride that she didn't want to admit that her knees needed the break. Consequently, I was the reason we had to stay. I didn't completely mind being a convenient excuse. It gave me a little something to do.

That evening I sat outside on the swing again while Kara cooked on the small fire contained in Gigi and Eddy's elaborate barbeque pit. It smelled good. There were grilled onions and pan-fried potatoes. She'd cooked fresh carrots and wrapped olive oil-drenched peppers in foil to bake in the pit. She put everything onto plates and took it inside for us. Then she came back out to clean up after herself.

My mouth was watering as I anticipated eating the fresh vegetables.

Then there was a whirl of vibrating light. The little firefly pixies returned in an avid swarm. They didn't seem agitated or annoyed this time. Rather, they seemed to be curiously intent on me. Kara straightened up from beside the fire pit as she realized they had returned. Zach came outside almost immediately. He stood on the back porch and watched the little things circling me enthusiastically.

One buzzed my face and then buzzed it again. It landed on my notebook and stared up at me. It made a little noise that sounded both inquisitive and interested. I didn't understand, but I thought that perhaps it was asking me if I felt all right.

"I'm okay now," I said softly.

The firefly pixie twittered. Its wings beat intensely. It walked up and down my notebook as if lecturing me to be more careful in the future. "Thank you," I said to it. "I know you did something. Something I don't understand. But you saved my life. I think that you gave me something I desperately needed."

The little thing cheeped again. Its tiny, beautiful head tilted to one side and then to the other. It launched itself into the air and circled my head, finally hovering in front of me. Its body was glowing brilliantly.

I turned the page to the drawing I had done of the creature and showed it to them. That really got their attention. They took turns examining my work, all making a sound that sounded suspiciously like chortling. When I looked up, Zach and Kara were standing nearby, lost in a cloud of their own admirers.

I knew the little things didn't quite understand me. But I remembered something they had done. They had sung for me. So I cleared my throat and sang to them. I was an alto, and I wasn't a bad singer, but I couldn't remember any songs but one. I sang Silent Night to them. They immediately surrounded me in a frenzy of rapt concentration. Many landed on me or on the swing in their attempt to get closer to the music. When the last refrain faded away and it was obvious I was finished, one bumped me encouragingly. Several others chirped provokingly.

Zach laughed and said, "I think they want an encore, Sophie."

"I can't think of another song," I admitted.

"Sing Silent Night again," he suggested wryly. "I don't think they'll mind."

But they weren't happy with just one more song. Dinner was going to have to wait. I ended up singing for an hour with Zach and Kara joining in and suggesting music at times. We did a great many Christmas songs including Deck the Halls, Away in a Manger, Little Drummer Boy, and Here Comes Santa Claus. Jingle Bells was a huge hit.

After a while, they seemed happy enough to let me stop. It was just as well because my voice was starting to go. They gathered into a tight cluster of little glowing lights and flew off to wherever they needed to be.

"I'll get you something to drink, Sophie," Kara said solicitously. She went inside to get water for me.

"How did you know to sing to them?" Zach asked strangely.

"I don't know," I said honestly. Then I turned my head. Something was bothering me, and the hair on the back of my neck was standing up. I couldn't quite figure it out. But then I smelled it. "Do you smell burning?"

Zach leaped up from the ground where he had ended up sitting. The fire in the pit was almost out and full night had fallen. The wind was blowing out of the north. He looked in that direction and stared for a long time. Then he said to me, "Go inside with Kara. Lock the doors. Load bolts into the crossbows. I'll knock three times when I come back."

Kara was silent for the longest time while we waited. Then she said, "You know, it's strange."

I sat in a chair in the kitchen and rested my cheek on the palm of my hand. I was tired, but I knew I couldn't sleep. Not until Zach had come back safe and sound. "What's that?"

"It smells like cinnamon again," she said with a great deal of puzzlement. "I remember the day before the change I couldn't get that smell away from me. I thought Maggie had spilled cinnamon in the kitchen. It just seemed overwhelmingly powerful. All day long. Then the day I found Zach, and again on the day we found you. Then today. It seems strange."

It seemed strange to me, but I let it go because there was a lot of strangeness to be found. The change, the new animals, everything. Smelling cinnamon at odd times didn't seem all that far-fetched.

An hour later, Zach returned. Kara broke open another glow stick, and we both looked at his severe appearance. "I climbed to the ridge north of here. I think it's the town five miles from here. One we pedaled right through that night. It's on fire. The fire isn't spreading, and there are several breaks between here and there, so I don't think we're in danger from that. But I have to wonder if it's him."

"He's following us," Kara said forbiddingly.

"Yes," I said. "He is."

"We're leaving tomorrow," Zach announced coldly. "No debates. I don't want to be here when he decides that we might be around. No more broken windows or signs that we've been here. When we forage for food, we take from the backs of the stacks and don't spill things. Don't leave any fresh signs of where we've gone. With a little luck he'll head to the east and we won't ever see him again."

I didn't think he was going to give up that easily, but I didn't say anything else. I knew we were safe enough for the night, or the firefly pixies would have warned us. I just hoped that my faith in them was justified.
Chapter 8

Clues...

There was more smoke in the air when we rose in the morning. It hung over the ranch house like a sullied cloud of despair, vividly reminding us that all was not well. I heard Zach get up early in order to scout the area vigilantly. I got up after he slipped out in order to keep a watch. Kara stirred a little while later, stretching sore muscles from tossing and turning all night. None of us had slept well.

When Zach returned he said that the fires had gone out in the night. He had used a pair of Eddy's binoculars to ascertain that nothing was left but smoking ruins. I helped Kara pack up some of the fresh vegetables in containers borrowed from Gigi's kitchen, and we readied the bicycles for our departure. Zach rolled his eyes at the vegetables, but Kara was unrelenting. "Do you want to take vitamins until we figure out how to grow things again?" she asked him seriously.

Zach shrugged and helped me into the trailer. He leaned over me and said relentlessly, "You feel all right, Sophie? No tears, no fever?"

"I'm fine," I replied curtly. I only wanted to leave. I liked the ranch house, but I still felt like an outsider. I was an interloper in Gigi and Eddy's home, and I always would be. They may not have been ghosts roaming through their house, but if felt like it to me. Every time I stepped around a corner, I expected to see one of them standing there sternly questioning the presence of a stranger in their home.

Then I spoiled my brusque answer to Zach by shivering. The September morning's temperature had been a little low in the mid-forties, and I didn't have a coat on. He said a nasty word and went to get a coat for me. After he came back with a red jacket, he tucked it around me and said firmly, "Tell me if you're tired or you need to stop. I can't read minds, and we need you to act like one of the team."

I stared back into his face. My father could have told him that that particular method didn't work well with me. It sounded like manipulation to me. Hadn't I acted like I cared by not telling them I was bleeding out? Sure, I didn't realize I was nearly bleeding to death, but the horrors that had been behind us seemed to justify my continued silence. I had chosen them over myself. To me, it didn't get more team than that. "I can be a team player," I gritted.

Kara climbed onto her bicycle and prudently made sure she had enough water in the bottle attached to the frame. Very interesting stuff that. Hah. She was staying out of this one, too. One of these days that tactic was going to backfire on her.

Zach bent closer and kept his eyes on mine as he deliberately adjusted the coat over my body. "I hope so," he muttered. "If you don't tell me this time that something's wrong, I'll find a house in the hills where we're safe, and you'll stay on your cute little butt for a solid month."

Then he turned and went to get on the bicycle. I stuck my tongue out at his back, and Kara choked as she saw the action. She quickly turned and covered her mouth with her hand. Zach turned to look at me suspiciously, but I was looking off toward the ocean, as if butter couldn't melt in my mouth.

The pace was less frantic than the last time we were mobile. I got to hold the map and a loaded crossbow. I also got to look around more. There weren't any burnt houses or businesses in front of us, so we assumed that the man hadn't passed us as we slept in Gigi and Eddy's house. When I said something about it a few hours later, Zach said sourly, "If we're really lucky he'll have burned himself up by accident, and then he'll have fallen down a bottomless well."

We cruised through the town of Port Orford and admired the beach with the impressive Battle Rock dominating the curved bay. Colorful boats on trailers were lined up in a row at the dock as if they would soon be launched to go out fishing. The scene was set up as if someone would come walking out of a building ready to do their normal routine. The only problem was that an eighteen-wheeler had come straight down the main road, plunged through a low, shrub-covered sand hill, and plowed to an abysmal end on the beach. The tractor's nose was buried in the sand while the trailer had fallen onto its side spilling a load of DVRs and other assorted electrical goods.

We stopped to eat lunch at Battle Rock City Park which overlooked the beautiful sands before us. I ate cautiously with Zach was eying me as if he could see through me like an X-ray. I wasn't about to admit that just riding in the trailer made me as tired as a dog on a hot summer day, and I wasn't particularly hungry. As soon as Kara finished a sandwich made with slightly stale bread we'd found at a bakery earlier, she thoroughly checked my shoulder wound. I didn't need to look up to know that she was giving Zach a nod of approval.

We continued out of Port Orford, and I think Zach nearly died pulling me on the highway that went up and around a tiny mountain called Humbug. The highway twisted and curved about the state park that held the large outcropping of earth. After a little bit, I offered to get out and walk, but Zach shot me a look of outrage that made me sit very still. So I shrugged to myself. Even Kara gave up and walked up a couple of the hills, calling merrily to Zach to give up the ghost. Finally, I managed to get him to stop and rest while I strolled up the last part of the hills. I was tired, but I didn't want to be the cause of him having wrenched muscles.

Team player. I wanted to yell at him. That was the pot calling the kettle black. I got back in the trailer on the downside and let Zach catch his breath. Kara was coasting cheerfully beside us. The sun was off to the west and starting its final descent. The afternoon temperature was in the low seventies, and the winds had died away. I couldn't smell any smoke, and for a single moment, I almost felt...alive again.

The realization of the moment shook me to the core.

It wasn't right to feel that way. I should still be in mourning for my parents and for all the others who had vanished seemingly in an instant. I shouldn't feel normal because it wasn't right to do so. I should be crying instead, and I suddenly missed my father quite dreadfully.

I tucked my head into the side of the trailer using the red jacket as a pillow and fell asleep with trails of tears running down my cheeks.

* * *

Groggily, I perceived that someone was talking about me. "...Not running another fever?"

"No," came a female voice. "No, she's just tired. Poor little girl."

"Little girl," the male voice repeated thoughtfully. "How old do you think she is?"

"Sixteen? Seventeen?" There was a pause. "You didn't think about that?"

"No." The answer was short and gruff.

"Well, you should." There was a sigh. "Oh Lord, I feel like a den mother."

"What do you mean by that?"

There was an amused huff of air. "You're a smart kid, Zach. You can figure it out. How the heck old are you anyway?"

"I'm twenty-one," he said mildly, apparently surprised by the question.

"Going on fifty-six," Kara laughed. "Don't sweat it, sweetie. I'm sure all will work out." She made another noise that could mean anything and then added, "As these things usually do."

"Seriously," Zach said off to the side somewhere. "Is she all right?"

"I think so," Kara affirmed solemnly.

I yawned so hard my jaw popped. When I opened my eyes, they were both in front of me. I was in bed again. I had been so tired I hadn't felt Zach carrying me into another empty house. I turned my head and saw a broad window overlooking the sea. The sun was starting to dip into the sea with accents of brilliant orange and effervescent purple. The other direction was a broad window overlooking a windblown seaside forest. "Nice house," I said quietly. This was a rich someone's coastal retreat. It had silk sheets and so much glass that a maid would have had the shakes simply looking at it.

"Sophie," Zach said knelt beside the bed and looked me in the face. I blinked tiredly at him. "How do you feel?"

"Really tired," I replied honestly. "It's hard to keep my eyes open. Can I have some water?"

Kara got me a glass and let me sip it while I was propped against the pillows. "Nothing's popped loose, right?" she said. "You were crying. Were you in pain, hon?"

"I don't think so," I said as I carefully rotated the injured shoulder. It didn't feel worse, just a little sore. I was simply bone tired, and my body was trying to catch up. "Don't worry, guys," I whispered as my eyes started to close again. "I think I'm okay. I'll do better tomorrow."

I felt them adjust my body in the bed. I couldn't bring myself to care much. They tucked me in and then one of them lay down beside me. Lips brushed over my forehead and arms gathered me into a warm embrace.

Then an impenetrable blackness came upon me as I slept.

* * *

The next morning I found Zach downstairs with Kara in an immaculate kitchen. Counters were made of black granite, and the appliances were stainless steel. The cupboards were constructed from redwood and stained appropriately. The floors were marble. Some of the prints on the walls I suspected weren't really prints. Everything was as clean as if a horde of cleaners had just finished and vanished out the service entrance. I said, "Wow. Are we eating caviar for breakfast?"

Kara grinned. She was cutting vegetables from Gigi's garden on a butcher block table. She flashed a kitchen knife that looked just as expensive as the rest of the house. "If you want," she answered seriously and motioned at the pantry door, "They have Beluga and American. I looked."

"Yuck," I said. "Have you ever tried caviar? It's disgusting."

Kara shook her head sadly. "It's an acquired taste, kiddo."

"I could catch some fish," Zach offered. "The previous owner had a fishing hobby and is pretty well outfitted. The beach is just down the hill and a set of stairs."

I smiled. Fish sounded about as appealing as caviar. What I really wanted were Chili Cheese Tots from a Sonic Drive-In. "Maybe we should put more room between us and...him, before we linger in one place," I said carefully.

Zach nodded thoughtfully. He'd changed into another t-shirt and jeans. These fit him a little better, and he'd found some hiking boots that were about his size. All of them were on the higher end of expensive, and I had to resist the urge to tease him. But for all I knew, he was used to high-end items. I did know, however, I wasn't used to teasing someone like him.

So we got ready for another round of them working and me riding. But before that, Kara circumspectively put the two small jars of caviar into her backpack. Who knew when we would run into caviar again? Seriously though, yuck, caviar.

The house was located up a narrow but well-kept road that intersected the coastal highway. Zach spent a little time making sure everything was clear. After we were moving, it took us about an hour to reach Gold Beach. Crossing the bridge over the Rogue River, I called for Zach to stop and pointed out toward the mouth of the river.

Zach slowed to a stop and stared out to sea. "There's a good one for your notebook," he said gravely after a lengthy pause.

I agreed silently. Kara stopped a few feet further up and nearly dropped her bike on its side. "Is that..." she started to say. "Is that...what the heyhey is it?"

It was big. That was the best adjective. Big. It was big and greenish. The rounded head emerged from the water and splashed lustily. The tail emerged from dozens of feet away. The eyes seemed as large as dinner plates and reflected light. A school of some kind of fish was before it, furiously scurrying through the churning seas in order to escape. However, the larger animal reared up, shining luminously in the sunlight, and dove eel-like dove into the middle of the school; its mouth was open and ready to feed. The light made the scales on the beast seem iridescent. The sound of the splash when it reached us was as if a Greyhound bus had been dropped into the ocean.

"Maybe you shouldn't go fishing around here," I said numbly.

"'You're going to need a bigger boat,'" Kara announced as if she was in shock. Then she looked to see if either of us had heard her and shook her head. "No one's ever going to get that one ever again."

"A boat?" Zach said. "Who said anything about a boat? I'm not getting on any boat, not with that thing around. It looks like it's a hundred feet long. What if it thinks humans look tastier than all those fish?"

"Oh, never mind," Kara said. "It's not like I'm volunteering to go surfing."

"Did I tell you about the missing bridge?" I asked distantly, still staring at the ginormous fish/serpent thing before us.

Zach snapped back into the moment. "What, you think that ate a bridge?" He pointed outward.

"That or his iron-deficient cousin," I decided.

"We should get off the bridge," Zach declared wryly.

We concurred.

* * *

After another hour we stopped at a wide spot in the road and raided a couple of houses for lunch. Kara offered to share Beluga on Ritz Crackers with us, but neither Zach nor I were biting. We counted our blessings based on the smell alone.

"You're sure that isn't spoiled?" I asked innocently.

Kara screwed up her face. "You're spoiling my buzz, kid."

Zach chuckled. We were sharing sliced Spam on Ritz Crackers from the same package. It was, I'm told, another acquired taste. We had a can of spray cheese and used it liberally. I was also digging into the fresh carrots that Kara had brought with us. Plenty of vitamin A for my eyesight.

An odd thought occurred to me. "Kara, you don't wear glasses?"

"Nope," Kara said agreeably, devouring a cracker piled high with fish roe.

"And you're pretty healthy otherwise, right?"

"Yes," she said, eying me curiously. "What's your point?"

"I was just wondering what the odds were of three people ending up together who were all basically physically fit." I considered. "Disregarding your knees and my being sick from the gryphon's scratches."

Zach was perched on a rock close to me. He leaned back and said, "Nothing wrong with me. The last physical I had had absolutely no downside."

"And Kara, do you have any problems?" I asked warily.

Kara cocked an eyebrow. "Why don't you just throw it out, hon? I am middle aged. I should have a few afflictions, right?" She smiled genially. "I don't. No high blood pressure. No cholesterol issues. I'm a healthy girl."

"And him," I said slowly. "He seemed healthy enough. Maybe not mentally healthy, but physically."

"What are you getting at?" Zach asked brusquely. It was increasingly obvious that he didn't like to talk about the man who had attacked me.

"I was wondering if the survivors, if that's the right word for us, are healthy people," I answered. "I was wondering if that was something we have in common."

Zach thought about it. "We don't have enough of a selection of people to make that observation. The three of us. Four," he corrected with a glance at me, "if you include the wacko. Well, the four of us could be a fluke. And we don't really know about him. For all we know, he could have a brain tumor the size of an orange in his head."

I shrugged. "It's a thought."

Relenting, Zach added, "It's possible, Sophie. But truly, what about Kara's knees? They've been rebuilt. That kind of negates the healthy people scenario."

"Maybe," Kara said interestedly. "The VA doctors used something new on me. It's all organic material in my knees. One of the docs said you wouldn't know it from the original if I didn't have the scars to prove it. And I've run mini-marathons with them. It's just when I overdo it, like I did when I walked over the mountains without a break, I pay the price."

We finished the lunch in a semi-comfortable silence. Zach bent over the map and said, "Shall we try for Brookings?"

"That's twenty miles with me in the back," I protested.

Zach looked at me challengingly.

"Well, it's not like I weigh nothing," I muttered in dissent.

"You're barely skin and bones, Sophie," Zach grated angrily. "I don't know how much weight you lost while you were sick, but it was a lot. You're not even close to the size you used to be."

I glanced down at my jeans. They weren't mine. They were probably Gigi's, and she had been a size four. They hung on my hips. I didn't have a mirror, but I knew I had gotten light. "Bring on the donuts," I said irately.

Zach produced a candy bar and tossed it in my lap. Then he stalked off.

It was Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

Kara was looking interestedly at the sky.

I looked at her for a moment and then at the candy bar. Zach had rounded a corner of the road and disappeared. I sighed loudly and said, "I'm taking a bathroom break, Kara."

Kara smiled at me knowingly. She waved in the opposite direction that Zach had taken. "There's a house beyond those trees. Don't be too long."

I crossed the road and went in the direction she'd indicated. Across a short field and a dry stream bed was a single-story house. It was someone's beach house, not a hundred feet from the trail that led down to yet another fabulous Oregon seashore. I went up a little hill and then down a set of stairs to the small yellow house. There weren't many trees around it, but it had a magnificent view of a set of rocky outcroppings that burst from the bluish-green ocean.

I sat down on an Adirondack chair that was on the deck facing the ocean. Two things were bothering me. One was that Zach had correctly guessed what candy bar was my absolute favorite. It could have been happenstance. It could have been, but somehow I didn't think it was. There could have been a simple explanation, as well. Well, I had been sick for a full week, and I could have said just about anything in my delirious ramblings. I could have even said something about my favorite candy.

It was weak, but it was possible.

But it was the other thing that was a problem. Zach had said that I had lost a lot of weight while I was sick. It was true. But most of the weight I had lost had been in the days immediately following the change. The days where I was most panicked and most uncertain were the times where I couldn't bring myself to eat much. However, Zach didn't meet me until after I had dropped twenty pounds.

How had Zach known how I looked before the weight loss? And did it have another simple explanation? I couldn't think of one.

The troubling question made my stomach roil in distress. It made me suspicious about the only two people whom I knew in the wide, wide world. I didn't want to think that way about them.

I sat there for a while and then got up to use the yellow house's bathroom. The patio door was unlocked, and I didn't even get to use the bathroom before I saw the note taped to the glass.

The contents of the note made me shudder.

When the hand came down on my shoulder from behind, I screamed like a little girl.
Chapter 9

As I Stand Alone...

Zach spun me around and held onto my shoulders tightly as he yelled, "Calm down! It's just me!"

I bit off the scream and closed my eyes for a minute. My chest was heaving with the adrenaline rush his unexpected presence had caused. The moment before he had touched me, the moment I had finished reading the note taped on the door, was an instant in time where I had felt so incredibly alone. No one had been there. No one would ever be there. It was a heartfelt shock to find out I wasn't all by myself.

"Do you have to do that?" I finally accused, snapping my eyes open. "Do you have to sneak up on me?"

Shaking his head, Zach let go with an abruptness that bothered me. It felt as though he was afraid to touch me any longer. "You were gone longer than you should have been. You're still tired, weak, what was I supposed to do? Assume everything was peachy keen fine?" He ran a hand through his hair and stepped away, trying to put much-needed space between us.

I stared at him, my arms wrapping around my body as if I was protecting myself. I wanted to ask the question, "How did you know what I looked like before?" But I suspected that he would brush me off. It would be, "I didn't say that." Or, "I didn't mean it like that." Or, "You misunderstood." It was up to me to decide what he meant. It was up to me to decide whether or not I could trust Zach, last name unknown.

"There's a note," I said instead, my voice was a thread of sound, not like myself at all. I pointed at the glass doors. Then, while Zach looked at the note, I went to use the bathroom. The house was neat and clean, the way the owner had left it. I guess he wanted his wife to know that he had kept it up for her. Her name had been Marie. He hadn't signed his name except with an initial, J. It could have stood for a multitude of names...James, Jake, John, or Jason. I knew inside that it didn't matter, but I still speculated. I could have looked through his papers to find out, but I made myself resist. After all, I was still thinking about Gigi and Eddy.

When I came back outside, Zach was sitting on the same Adirondack chair I had sat in. The note was clenched in his hands, but he was staring out to sea. I sat in the other chair because I wasn't sure what to say. There was a feeling of transient wretchedness that stretched far and away.

Even from where I sat, I could see the words that started the note. His neatly cursive letters were easy to read. "Dearest Marie," it began lovingly, "As I stand alone here, my thoughts are with you. When I woke up two weeks ago, I was alone. I thought you had gone to the store, but the car was still in the residents' lot. Then I couldn't find anyone. The electricity stopped working, and I barely noticed. I realize that you probably won't return. Your empty nightie on the couch next to your wedding rings on the floor, tell me that this was not a woman who simply stepped out on her marriage. I can't live without you, my darling love, my wonderful wife. The sea is calling me and I'm going..." I couldn't read any more because Zach compressed his fist together and crumpled it into a tight ball of useless paper.

"Would you have...?" Zach asked suddenly. His chocolate brown eyes met mine with the force of a locomotive going down a mountain. It forced me to stay focused on him. I literally couldn't look away. "If you hadn't found anyone?"

I looked at his beautiful features. He was such a handsome man. Gruff, too. Controlling. Protective. Was it out of fear? Did he think that if he didn't protect us, then he would be alone? Was it that he didn't want to be alone anymore than we did? Was this his way of shielding himself?

And there was something about the way he looked at me that cause a trembling deep in my soul. I didn't know how to identify it, nor was I certain that I was ready to do so. I shifted back to his question. "I don't think I would have done what he did," I answered candidly. "He went into the ocean and deliberately..." I sighed sorrowfully for J's loss. There was so much pain intrinsically bound into the few brief words he had written on a plain page of notepaper. Would it have made a difference to the man if he knew that there were other survivors out there? Looking for each other in some cases?

"Not deliberately," Zach repeated my words broodingly. He paused and added calculatingly, "But you would have died nonetheless."

"If I hadn't found someone like you and Kara," I said. "I probably would have died soon enough." Was it cold of me to say that? It was the truth. Even if a gryphon hadn't raked my flesh, even if a madman hadn't attacked me, even if I had blithely continued down Highway 101 by myself, I would have slowly wasted away. Human beings weren't meant to be alone, and I wasn't an exception.

Then something else occurred to me, "And if I hadn't been touched by the firefly pixies." I had to give them some credit, as well.

Zach looked away from me. I think he was satisfied with my response. He wasn't happy, but he was persuaded by the truthfulness of my statements. He glanced at the note in his hand. "Do you think he changed his mind at the end?" he asked pensively.

"He loved his wife very much," I said. "And I don't know the answer to that. I hope it ended quickly."

There was such a look of intense sadness on Zach's face as he stared west across white cap-strewn waters. I reached over and touched his shoulder. He cast me a look and wryly smiled at the reaction of the contact. "He thought he was alone," I said. "Perhaps he didn't want to feel the pain anymore."

"Life is always going to be painful," Zach said prosaically. "Things have a way of happening whether you like it or not."

I struggled to find a way out of this melancholy mood we were both in. "It doesn't have to be painful," I said firmly. I reached over and gently took the crumpled note from him. I stood up and went back to the glass door. I carefully replaced it on the door, making sure the tape would hold it again. "It's up to us to make sure it's not."

Zach rose from the chair and carefully drew me to him. He tucked my head into his shoulder and buried his face into my hair. It was a platonic embrace. I was comforting him as much as he was comforting me. We held each other until a seagull came gliding over the rail and surprised us both with a cawing cry of complaint. He let me go with a crusty, "Kara is going to think we went skinny dipping or something."

"Or something," I said with half a forced laugh. "We don't even have a good sea monster story to tell her."

* * *

We spent the remainder of the afternoon on a slow ride to Brookings. There were more hills and more dramatic views of the ocean. Twice we saw something large out in the ocean that could have been the large eel-like, green fish/serpent thing or its brother. Of course, it might have been a stupefied whale wondering what the dealio had happened to his world. Incidentally, I added the green fishy thing to the last page of my notebook and didn't bother to give it a name besides Big Green. Someday, someone who knew something about such creatures would name it something suitable. Hopefully, it wouldn't be during the course of the thing eating him or her.

I had to admit that I was the only one getting the best looks. I stared out to sea with occasional glances behind us to ensure that nothing or no one was following us. We stopped at a steel bridge overlooking a cove far below, and Zach wondered aloud how long it would be before the infrastructure started to collapse.

Kara looked thoughtful. She pointed at the asphalt. Weeds were springing up in cracks on the road. "Before too long, there won't be much road left. We won't be able to ride bikes here in a few years. These bridges could last ten years, or they could get washed away in a storm next winter. A hundred years from now, there won't be much left of our world."

Who would repair any of this anymore? I didn't think of it before. All the things we took for granted were going to be gone, or they would be gone soon. The lack of food wasn't going to be the only issue we would be facing in the future. The three of us were very solemn as we continued our journey.

We reached Brookings before nightfall, and passed through the town, and crossed the Chetco River. By mutual agreement, none of us wanted to spend the night in a place where the man who had attacked me might be able to burn us down. We found a house in the low hills east of the populace and set up for the night. It was another nice house, although not as expensive as the one with the broad window views that I had woken up in yesterday.

Again I was tired, even though I hadn't done anything particularly taxing except for keeping a sharp lookout. I hadn't even fallen asleep. Kara and Zach could both tell I was exhausted, so they let me sleep. Kara woke me up for a dinner of vegetable and pasta soup she had made from the last of Gigi's vegetables. The pasta had come from the previous occupant's kitchen, along with the canned chicken stock for the base. Not that I was complaining. We had cloth napkins and tea from bottles in the pantry. It was quite civilized.

Afterwards, I took a blanket out to the deck and cuddled up in a white spindle rocker placed strategically in the corner. Someone had put it where they could see through the V of twin hills to the beaches and ocean to the west. The sun had disappeared and only a little purplish-pink remained to indicate that it was ever there. Far above me, the stars were beginning to appear in astonishing rapidity. Soon enough I couldn't see the sea at all. It was a sheet of blackness that extended into infinity.

Kara brought me a glass of white wine and placed it on the banister near my right arm. I blinked as she moved back into the house, a silent form, a mom-like being that wasn't motherly at all. I took a sip and smiled. My mother and father let me have a glass of wine at dinners on weekends. Most of the time I didn't like it anyway. The wine that Kara had given me was sweetish and wasn't bad, but I wouldn't finish it.

I was still sad from seeing J's note. It was not dissimilar to being in Gigi and Eddy's house, but it was worse. J had been alive after the change. He'd been alone. Then he couldn't abide it for a second longer. That made five people who had made it. Five out of how many? The population of the United States had been around three hundred million. (The figure that came to my mind was another benefit of a social sciences class.) The population of the state of Oregon had been around three million. Five out of three million? And that was only the ones we had encountered. Perhaps if I found a formula to figure the percentage of survivors to the areas we came from, then I could calculate how many people were still out there.

There were others. They weren't all insane. Of that I was certain.

And there were the firefly pixies. I saw the greenish glow coming up the valley and I smiled. My smile faded just a little as I realized they could be coming to warn us as well as to see how I was doing. I hoped it was the latter because I didn't want to know more danger was lying in wait for us around the next bend.

It took them a few minutes to make their way up to where I was sitting. They came over the deck railing in a wave of pulsating light. They circled me once and then twice. Many landed on the wood balustrade as they gathered closely to me. One of them landed on my hand, and I stopped the motion of the rocking chair with my foot. The little firefly pixie chattered at me questioningly. When it paused, I said, "I'm all right."

It tilted its head as it considered me. The little thing was so delicate and so beautiful that it almost hurt my eyes to look upon her. Her? When had I decided that? It was an odd feeling that came to me. The firefly pixies were all hers. Each and every one of them was a female. I didn't know how I knew this, but it was in my head and it stuck firm. She chirped again longingly; it was a question that I didn't comprehend.

"What is it?" I asked. From behind me I heard the soft footsteps of someone and knew Zach had joined us. A few of the firefly pixies launched themselves into the air and headed for him. Well, he was pretty enough to be one of them; that was for certain. I heard him chuckle quietly as they buzzed his face with avid eagerness.

"Hi guys," he said softly. "Nice to see you again."

"Hi, girls," I corrected. He snorted and then amended his words, "Girls then."

A few more of the pixies landed in my lap and held a little conference of animated chirruping. A few buzzed about in animated concert. It was a marvel they didn't fly into each other.

"Are they following us?" Zach asked wonderingly.

I smiled. "It doesn't bother me."

The group in my lap finally decided on an action and turned to me en masse. I was silent as they looked up at me expectantly. Finally, they began to sing to me. It came to me a moment later that they were trying to sing Jingle Bells. They had the tune correct, but the words didn't sound right. They abruptly stopped, and one of them jabbed my stomach in a hopeful manner.

"They want you to sing," Zach said, sotto voce.

I carefully took a drink of the wine and replaced the glass on the railing, trying to avoid the pixies gathered there. Then I began to sing. Jingle Bells was first, of course. Over the last two days I had been wondering what else to sing to the little things if I was to be given the chance again. I had thought of quite a few. I didn't know all the words, but it didn't stop me. "California Dreaming" was next, followed by On Top of Spaghetti, and Bingo. Once I started down the children's songs path, there was no going back. Zach threw in, Row, Row, Row Your Boat, and Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. Kara came out a little while later and suggested Frere Jaques in both French and English, and Clementine. She also helped to sing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", "Kokomo", "Help Me, Rhonda", and "Good Vibrations." Apparently, she was a Beach Boys fan. We finished with "You've Lost That Loving Feeling", and another encore of Jingle Bells.

I hadn't known that I knew so many songs. When it was obvious that I was pooped, they gathered into a tight-knit group and headed back over the railing down the hill.

One of the little pixies flew close to my cheek and nuzzled me. I stayed perfectly still as a touch as soft and light as a butterfly's wing brushed over my skin. The contact was so fleeting that it didn't seem real. Then my skin tingled, and I kept myself from twitching her away from my flesh. I couldn't quite see what she was doing, but after a moment, she chattered approvingly at me and zipped off after her group.

"That was weird," Kara said in an awed voice. We were all watching the greenish glow move west.

"What isn't?" Zach muttered. Then I felt, rather than saw, him look at me. He tensed up and stepped closer to me. "There's something on your face," he said. "Let me..."

"No," I said. "It's from the pixies. One of them touched me. It's probably just a little of their bioluminescence."

Zach's posture changed. I couldn't see his face, but his broad shoulders were rigid and then they relaxed minutely. "Yeah," he agreed reluctantly. "You should probably wash it off."

I didn't touch my cheek. I didn't want to wash it off.

But the next morning I looked into the mirror and saw that it was a mark. It wasn't readily visible except that the interior bathroom was dark enough to see that the mark glowed like the firefly pixie's illumination. It looked like an outline of the pixie's form, about three-quarters of an inch long with the wings extended to the side. I closed the bathroom door to shut out the light coming down the skylights in the hallway. The bathroom became almost as dark as night.

My cheek glowed in the dark. The figure with attached wings was obvious. And no, it wouldn't wash off. It appeared as though I was marked. I suppose I should have been bothered, but it didn't matter to me.

I knew I wasn't up to riding a bicycle yet, so I submitted to the trailer again. I said determinedly, "I'm getting a bike in Crescent City."

It wasn't a question, but Zach only eyed me with subjective consideration. "We'll see," was all he said. I didn't think he noticed the pixie's mark in the bright morning sun, but I caught Kara looking at it curiously.

I shrugged and she shrugged. They would see it soon enough when the sun went down. I was hoping that Zach didn't make a big deal out of it. It wasn't like he was my father.

It was another leisurely ride. Not a half-hour after we started, we crossed the state line into California. I've been there before, once to Disneyland when I was about ten years old, but I didn't remember much about the trip. I had been only interested in the end product. I still had the Mickey Mouse ears at home.

Well, I amended the statement to myself. The Mickey Mouse ears were sitting in my former bedroom. I doubted I would ever see them again, or my room for that matter. Blinking back tears that sprang to my eyes, I held back a sniffle. Of course, Zach heard me and turned his head questioningly back at me.

I shook my head trying to indicate that everything was all right. Although he kept looking back at me, I didn't let anything else show. We stopped for lunch just after we crossed the Smith River. The highway had veered away from alongside the beaches and roamed through pastureland. We even found a small herd of buffalo. There were five all told, grazing on the land as if nothing was out of place.

Zach stared at them for a long time. "I've never seen a buffalo before," he said at last. "How are they going to survive?"

"The same way we will," Kara said definitely. They both looked at me strangely when I deliberately opened the gate to the pasture that the buffalo were in and blocked it so that it would stay open.

I shrugged. "They can't stay in there forever."

After we resumed our travels, I can honestly say we didn't see anything else strange. There had been a lot of pastures along that stretch of highway between the road and the ocean, but it slowly changed back into pine and scrub, stunted by the fierce Pacific winds. We passed a prison, a large sprawling place with warnings placed strategically along the highway, but hey, I didn't know where we were going to pick up a hitchhiker. There was the occasional building interspersed by the occasional sign, but it seemed as empty as the rest of the world.

I suppose I should have known that was a cue for something different to happen. That was beginning to be a pattern. Just when everything calmed down, surprise!

My legs were beginning to cramp from being bent over, and I couldn't shift enough to make them comfortable in the little trailer that was never meant to carry a full grown adult. So I said to Zach, "Can we please stop before my legs rot and fall off?"

Surprisingly, he let the bike glide to a stop without argument. I jerked frantically as one leg came back awake. I was trying not to embarrass myself overly. Unfortunately, I did fall out of the trailer onto a grassy shoulder and laid there groaning until the pins and needles in the leg stopped being painful. I looked up and grasped that Zach and Kara weren't paying attention to me at all.

Then I turned toward the outskirts of what I assumed was Crescent City. The road had split into a four lane, two lanes going in each direction. The skies were blue with a sporadic cloud to liven things up. A wind was blowing from the north, and the temperature was around seventy-five degrees. Other than being cramped in the back of our little convoy, I was relatively happy. The term "relative" being relative, of course.

Then I saw what they were looking at with awe-stricken eyes. There was a bulletin board. It was a big one facing the southbound highway. Whatever it had on it before was indeterminable. Now it was painted white. The paint cans were still on the little walkway at the base of the sign. As a matter of fact, there was a ladder still propped against the billboard supports. But the really interesting part was that over the white paint was a set of large handpainted red letters. It announced in block lettering: YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

"Well, there you go," I said inanely. That familiar bad feeling washed over me, and I nearly bent over to be sick because of it. This time it wasn't merely a bad feeling. A wave of images appeared in my head and nearly overwhelmed me. I blinked them away and almost groaned with the pain.

Zach and Kara turned to me as if they were both performing the movement in complete synchronization. Mindlessly rubbing my leg, I stared at the sign and then at them, swallowing to contain the instant nausea I felt. I motioned at the sign. Below the huge red letters was another message: Mile marker 47.

"See, what were we worried about?" I supposed contemplatively. "We're not alone." Then I giggled, and it sounded half hysterical even to me.
Chapter 10

What Next?

Who'd a thunk that a billboard would cause such a ruckus? Who would have thought that I would be the paranoid one? I mean, I was the one who didn't want to be alone. So here was a sign that said "YOU ARE NOT ALONE!" I should have been cheering and doing a little jig of happiness. Heck, I could even see dried handprints on the ladder from where the person had climbed down after painting the red words. And by the way, I didn't think red was a good color choice. It sent a message, and I thought I was the only one getting the message. Couldn't anyone but me sense a possible Freudian slip there?

"It's another thirty miles or so," Zach said, pointing at the map.

"It'll be dark," I said. "And I want a bike."

"So we go tomorrow," Kara added positively. "Full daylight. No shadows."

"They'll see us coming a mile away," I protested.

Zach sighed. "So we'll go in the dark then."

"Then we don't know what's waiting for us," I stated gloomily. I took the map from Zach and spread it out flat on the highway. I stood on one corner so it wouldn't blow away. Then I jabbed with my index finger. "Look, there's nothing there."

"There's the Redwood National Forest," Kara said as she looked down at the map. She pointed to something about a quarter inch away from the approximate area. "There's a small town right there."

Zach crossed his arms over his chest and grimly surveyed my face. "What are you afraid of, Sophie?"

I ground my teeth together. I knew I had stuck my tongue out at him before in a fit of childish pique and now I wanted to say sarcastically, "Well, duh," to him as if we were both twelve years old. Instead, I gathered my thoughts and carefully answered. "The last time I got excited about seeing someone else, it didn't go well for me." That was okay. It sounded very adult-like. But I spoiled it when I added, "Do I need to mention the one we don't talk about?

What about the one you buried? The one whose head got left on a grill to terrorize us?"

There was an instantaneous flash of something in Zach's chocolate brown eyes. Was that guilt I saw? Whoa. What did he have to feel guilty about? "Not everyone's a psychopath, Sophie," he said deliberately.

"How do you know that that message," I poked my finger in the direction of the sign, "isn't from him? How do you know he didn't pass us one night and get ahead of us? How do you know he isn't setting a big fat, el sicko trap for us so that we can all be tied to the ground together?"

Kara shuddered. "Surely he was too injured to do that," she said. "He was burned badly, and he fell dozens of feet down that bluff. There was blood."

"If it was him burning up the towns behind us," I said, fighting to keep a level of calm in my voice, "then he couldn't have been quite as bad as we initially thought."

Zach looked at the sign again. He studied it, seeking some kind of answer. "I don't think he could have gotten in front of us. I don't think it's him at all. It's someone else, like the man who left the note."

We had told Kara about the note from J to Marie, and she nodded her head hopefully. I could see by looking at them that they both wanted to see other people. They still had hope in their souls. But I, I who had been touched by something incredibly evil, was too wary to be hopeful. I had learned that Kara and Zach were trustworthy, but because of Zach's statement about my weight loss, I was hard pressed to trust them implicitly.

The firefly pixies trusted them with me. Me? I was learning that I had become neurotic over the course of a month or so. The next thing that would happen would be that I would start seeing pink elephants dancing in the moonlight. Then again, with all the new creatures, who knew what I would see.

"There are others out there," Zach said with a sense of optimism that made my insides twist. "Kara, you, me, J, and him." He waved at the sign. "There's someone else, too. It's more than probable. This person is reaching out to us. Or maybe not to us, to anyone who's still around."

"Okay," Kara said. "Scenario one. It's someone new who is reaching out to survivors like us. Subset A. He or she is harmless and just wants to be friends. Subset B. He or she wants to control other people or even to hurt them."

"Well, when you put it like that," I said wryly.

Kara sighed. "Scenario two. The whackjob did get in front of us, and it's a trap. Why warn us then?"

"Why did he leave the skull on the grill?" I couldn't help asking, and I was instantly sorry when Kara winced. I didn't want to be the one to bring up the fact that we were existing in a world without police, without security, and without the safety we had taken for granted...before.

Zach was staring at me again. Those dark brown eyes were like a laser-guided weapon, locked on my features, blasting right down into the deepest depths of my soul. I didn't like it. It seemed like he could read my thoughts and knew every one of my fears. "I can go ahead," he offered, and I knew he was talking only to me. "I can go and check it out. I'll sneak in, and then when it's safe, I'll come back and get you. If it's him, then we're out of here. We'll head east for a while and then back down south. If it's not him, then I'll see what they're like."

I cast a longing look toward the ocean. Where we were standing was about two or three miles away from the actual sand of the beach. There was an odd feeling in me that made it so I didn't want to go any further away. I liked the coast. I liked being here. We were here and here was where the firefly pixies lived.

I didn't want to play devil's advocate. It made me sound just as paranoid as I felt. But I got the impression that Zach and Kara were expecting a last bastion of civilization from some unknown group of people. There would be more of us, and ta-da, we'd have a fun little group that got along great and everything ran as smooth as could be. If the message wasn't from him, the Burned Man, then it was from someone else.

And we didn't know someone else. Furthermore, we couldn't trust someone else. Why put ourselves in danger if we didn't have to do that?

"When will you go, Zach?" I asked him, an insidious thought forming in my head. I didn't even want to think the thoughts that were forming a plan inside my brain. "We should think about this and make certain it's as safe as possible for you."

Zach examined me with his piercing eyes. I kept my face as blank as possible. Did he realize what I was thinking about? Could he read my features? Did he know the level of obstinacy that I was capable of maintaining? Even Kara was aware that something was up as she looked from Zach to me and then back to Zach again.

"I could use a break," Kara said suddenly, trying to break the ice that had formed like a rapidly moving glacier. "I could stop at a hospital and get another shot of that steroid that helps out my knees. I've been pushing it a little too much."

"And I'm tired," I announced suddenly. I was tired. I wasn't lying about that. I wanted to go to sleep and wake up to find that my father was snoring beside me in his sleeping bag. I wanted to climb that stupid mountain because I knew in my heart that I would never be climbing one again. I wanted to go to sleep and get these disturbing thoughts out of my head. I wanted those feelings of dread that were assailing me to go away and never come back. If only I had made Dad not go...

Well, crud, I said silently. Why do I have to keep thinking about that? But I was well and truly tired. It was going to be weeks before I was up to a reasonable strength again. I needed to get on a bicycle and start working on building myself up. I needed to take vitamins and focus on protein.

I needed to protect someone else besides myself for a change. While Zach was making up his mind whether or not I was playing him, I asked myself the question, could I do what had occurred to me to do?

Zach nodded curtly, and inadvertently answered my silent question, as well. I could do it, provided I listened to that little inner voice that was telling me something oh so very important.

We got back in our respective seats and continued into Crescent City. It was the largest city I'd been in since Springfield, and everything was about the same. There were the intermittent vehicles that had crashed into whatever as their particular drivers had vanished into nothingness, leaving no one to steer and empty clothing. One building had burned to the ground; the cause was unknown. But it was an isolated burn, and nothing around it was impacted. There weren't any more signs indicating a mysterious survivor who wanted to make contact with others.

We found some yellow pages in a house and located an orthopedic clinic for Kara. There was a hospital with the correct offices right off Highway 101. She got what she needed and then some for future use. By the time we were done with that, we found a place to scrounge for dinner and then we were on the southern side of the city. Just before the road started to climb into some hills, we found a secluded house set between the highway and the beach.

Not without a small amount of amusement, I noticed that Zach had conveniently forgotten to stop to look for a bicycle for me. Perhaps he thought I hadn't noticed or that I was extra tired. Or maybe he thought I was caving a little.

Hah! Zach didn't know me! The seclusion of the house was going to work out very well for my budding plans. I checked in the garage and found a tricycle for a toddler. Zach followed after me and couldn't resist a snort when he saw the small three-wheeler. I feigned complete innocence as I turned to look at him.

"What are you looking for?" he asked, playing at ingenuousness, as well.

"Weapons," I answered honestly.

"We've got the crossbows," he said. "Knives, too. It's enough."

I didn't agree. There was an axe in the garage that I took inside. Kara gave me a sideways glance, but I didn't care to let her in on my plan. The previous occupant had left a collection of firearms that weren't good for anything except paperweights. But he also had a few daggers on the wall of his small den. They were sharp, so I took them.

Then I found a bed and went to sleep, waiting for Kara to wake me up for dinner. When I came around, Zach was sitting beside the bed in an armchair. I nearly jumped, but I relaxed myself in time. His eyes rested on me attentively. For a moment I thought that perhaps he had stroked my cheek right over the place where the firefly pixie had marked me, but I might have been dreaming.

Again, I was concerned that he could read me all too easily. I said, "Hi."

His lips quirked. "Hi. Kara's got some food ready. Chili today. With crackers. There's some cheese that had stayed cold enough, too."

"I'll start doing my fair share soon," I said half groggily. More than sooner was what I said on the inside.

Zach folded his hands across his lap. "Neither of us expects you to act like you're a 100 percent, Sophie. You're barely well enough to ride in the trailer."

"I'm okay," I protested. I was well enough to put together a sneaky plan. Even though I had just woken up, I was ready to put a little flea in Zach's ear. "I think we should stay here for a few days. We should consider what's going to happen next. We could go back up to where 101 intersected with 199. We go up 199 until we can cross over the Klamath Mountains and then head back down a parallel road. We come down to where the road cuts back over to the coast near Eureka. Then we can head back up 101 to see what's going on with the mile marker." It came out sleepy but well planned.

Zach looked surprised. Maybe he had been expecting a sleepy grunt and demand for food. "You've thought about it a lot," he said.

"You bet," I snapped. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. "If it's a stranger who painted that sign, then he might not be expecting us from the south. And I've thought of something else."

"Yes?" he asked expectantly.

"If that sign wasn't painted by him, then whoever's at the mile marker is a big target for a psychopath." I looked him fully in the face to let him know I was serious. "We should have burned the sign because there's a good chance that he'll see it. We have an obligation to this stranger to warn him or her. That person deserves a warning to be on the watch for him."

Zach nodded. "I had hoped he would give up." His face became grim. "I don't want to have to kill him."

I crawled out of the bed and adjusted my t-shirt. I had found some clean clothes in the dresser. They had belonged to a woman who was only a little larger in size than I was at the moment. I didn't want to think about her. I didn't even want to think about the photographs on the dresser that I had placed facedown before I could see the smiling faces contained therein.

"And if we run into him?" Zach added deliberately. "We'd be going in the right direction. We'd even be giving him a few days to catch up."

I shrugged. I could do it if I were forced. My desire to protect them would allow me to live with that. I didn't want to do it. But if it came down to a decision between Zach and Kara and that unnamed man who had attacked me, the selection was simple. If that meant I had to pull the trigger on the crossbow, then I would do it.

I went to the bedroom window. It was a smaller bedroom, and the small window looked out toward the beach a quarter-mile away. The master bedroom had a deck with a decisive view of the Pacific Ocean. It also had two sets of empty pajamas in the king-sized bed. The smaller bedroom had been a guest room, or perhaps a place for their adult children to stay in when they visited. It had been still neatly made and inviting.

Zach stayed seated, and I could feel the heavy weight of his gaze on me. I had some more plans to set into motion, but I wanted something else first. "You knew what I looked like before," I said without looking at him, and it wasn't a question. "Before you ever saw me."

"I wondered," he started and then stopped. Then he cleared his throat and started again, "I wondered if you'd caught that."

"You knew," I said again, refusing to be set off my course.

"You want to know how," he stated quietly.

I turned, and the glow of the setting sun lit up the room. It wasn't a large window, but the angle of the sun let the light in completely. There weren't any shadows for Zach to hide in. "It's going to sound insane," he said instead of answering my implicit query.

"What isn't insane right now?" I asked. "The Loch Ness Monster cavorting in an Oregon reservoir with her two babies? Millions, if not billions, of people vanishing in an instant? A man who wanted to stab me to death before he did what...ate me? Isn't that what he did to that other poor individual?"

His face was like carved granite. His eyes didn't flinch from mine. "There were bite marks on the bones," he confirmed, and his words were on the edge of cracking with horror.

"That was the message he was trying to send by putting the skull on the grill?" I asked not of him exactly.

"I don't presume to understand how that man thinks," Zach said carefully.

"Well, presume to understand me then," I said angrily. "How exactly did you know what I looked like...before?"

His jaw was set. He barely opened his mouth as he answered. "I dreamed about you," he said, and it held a violent undercurrent of emotion. "Always of you. Every night until the day of the bluff in Bandon."

"You dreamed of me?" That wasn't the answer I was expecting. Well, I didn't know what I had been expecting. "At night? While you were asleep?"

Zach smiled ironically. "Of course at night. While I slept." His expression changed. It became sadly reminiscent. "You. Always you. I dreamed about you crying. I couldn't do anything for you. You were wandering. Closer and closer to me, but I couldn't do anything to help you." His eyes sank into mine. He took a deep breath, and his muscular chest expanded significantly. "I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't found you. Or if I had found you too late."

I was stunned. I stood frozen by the window.

"And there's more you should know," Zach continued on as if I had encouraged him to do so. "It wasn't just after the change. It was before that, as well. It started months ago. I'm not sure exactly when. Sometime in the spring, I think. I knew you were in some sort of school. I knew that you liked hiking with your father, that sometimes you dreamed of the double chocolate cake your mother liked to make. You know, the one with the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups all cut up on top? You have a favorite top you like to wear. It's got a naval design on it. It's blue and white. There was a hat that matched. You worried about the weight in your hips. Sometimes you would dream of doing those thigh exercises that you must have been doing endlessly during the day." His eyes burned with an intense fire. "How could I have known something like that, if not by some other paranormal way?"

I couldn't move. I didn't know what to make of his confession. With all of the weirdness that had happened to the world and to us, it wasn't out of the realm of possibility. And nothing else seemed to make much sense.

"I was looking for you a long time before the world ever stopped being the way it was," he finished. Then he surged to his feet and slammed out of the room.

* * *

I wasn't hungry, but I made myself eat. Then I asked Kara if she had any strong painkillers. She did and just for me. I said my shoulder was hurting, and Zach asked if I needed a hot pad or something for the muscles. He could boil some water over a fire if I did. He did so in a stilting manner that made Kara look at him with surprise. I said, "No, the painkillers will work."

Kara offered to get them, but I went into the kitchen where she had her backpack and got them myself. Then I noticed the wine rack and asked them if they wanted some wine. There was a very old bottle of something French. Ooh la la! It looked expensive, too. Kara nodded and Zach grunted, which I took to be a yes. It didn't take much, but the painkillers dissolved in the wine readily. I didn't overdo it because I didn't want to hurt them.

I told them I didn't want any wine because I had taken the pills. I even laughed and said the wine didn't really suit me anyway. Kara laughed and told me I didn't know what I was missing. I guessed it was an acquired taste, like caviar.

We all went to bed. Kara took the couch, which was a huge sectional and looked comfortable. Zach changed the sheets in the master bedroom and disappeared in there. I read a two-month-old People magazine by candlelight for about an hour. Then when I was certain that the two were both well and truly out, I proceeded with my plans.

It turned out that I was good at being devious. It made me feel more alive than I ever had before.
Chapter 11

Well-Laid Plans...

An hour after I had taken Kara's bicycle, I was pedaling through Crescent City when the firefly pixies showed up, surrounding me with their energy and essence. Oh, they were highly agitated with me, and I couldn't even sing to them because I was panting with effort. I don't think that they would have been soothed by that in any case. Succinctly, they were pissed off. I didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what was bugging them.

Three times I had to stop and walk to conserve my strength. Once I stopped and sat on the curb next to a pharmacy until I could breathe regularly again. The firefly pixies buzzed me continuously until it became obvious to them that I wasn't going to turn around. One landed on the bicycle handles and chastised me roundly, shaking both tiny arms frantically, glaring at me with discontent. She even stomped on the brake with all the force that her tiny body could muster.

I sighed. "I know," I told them sincerely. "I know he's coming. I could feel it yesterday."

I couldn't explain that feeling anymore than I could explain how Zach dreamed of me previous to actually coming into contact with me. I had always been on the cusp of knowing something was going to happen. Usually it was a certain song on the radio or knowing my cell was going to ring before it did. There had been a bad feeling about the mountain trip with my father, but I hadn't put the words to the feeling. Then I had thought it was simply because I didn't want to climb up another mountain with my father when I could be at the mall with my friends. There had been the bad feeling as I approached the bonfire at Bandon, but I had been injured and sick, and was all too willing to ignore it as my imagination in my excitement over being able to be in contact with another person.

Not so this time. No waiting and thinking that it was just a weird feeling that I should ignore. No ignoring at all. The firefly pixies inadvertently had reinforced my decision. Their frantic presence made me confident that I was headed in the correct direction. I'm sure if they had known that, they would have never shown up at all.

The first moment I had seen the sign, I had known somewhere deep inside. It was something I hadn't admitted to myself until Zach had offered to go ahead to see what was at the mile marker. He was going to be there at the billboard. I was going to be there, too. I couldn't tell what was going to happen, but I knew it was going to be bad. I had to stop him before he could do something to Zach. Zach was going to protect Kara and me, but he was going up against a very evil individual, and Zach wasn't going to persevere. I knew that, too. And I wasn't going to be able to live with that.

That was the choice I had to make. This was the reason I had done what I had. If I had allowed Zach to go, he would have died. Therefore, I didn't allow him that choice. Hopefully he was still sleeping off the drugs I had given him and Kara, both safe from him. They would be angry with me. Perhaps they wouldn't be able to forgive me, but I could live with that. I would make the same choice again over and over, if given the opportunity.

I stopped at a gas station and got a gallon can of gas and a matchbook from the register. I checked to see if the matches worked, and they did just fine. I hadn't realized what Zach had been doing to start our fires. A match was another chemical reaction like the bullets from the guns, but for whatever reason, it was still good to go.

Using a hose from the back of the gas station, I discovered how utterly disgusting it was to siphon gas from a parked car. Don't even talk about doing it in the dark because using a candle with an open flame around gasoline is a bad idea. Believe me, the principle sounds much easier than the actual process. It's very easy to get a mouthful of gasoline by mistake. Getting a mouthful of gasoline will spoil everything you taste for several subsequent hours. Really, gross me out.

Three hours after I left the house between the highway and the beach, I was back at the sign. It didn't look all that different in the nighttime except I couldn't see the letters from my vantage point. Off to the east, the sky was beginning to tinge with pink, indicating the sun was coming around the bend, but the stars above me still twinkled brilliantly.

The firefly pixies were still with me although I was aware that half of them had flown back to the south after it became more and more evident that I wasn't going to give up. Apparently they were sneaky, too. They were headed for reinforcements. "Good luck waking Zach and Kara up, girls," I muttered ungraciously. "And don't forget to fix the flat on his tire, too."

I put the kickstand down on the bicycle and got the gasoline off the bike rack. Then I climbed up the ladder and drenched the sign with gasoline. I let the gasoline run down the supports, and when I was done, I tossed the gallon can. The firefly pixies kept their distance from me as I climbed down the ladder. Maybe the gasoline smell was bothering them or maybe they started to realize that things were becoming more dangerous.

I didn't know what was going to happen, but I knew that the sign had to be destroyed before the Burned Man could see it. If I failed, then he would go after whomever had painted the sign. I deliberately herded the firefly pixies away and waited until they flew to a safe distance. I flicked a match against the striker pad and observed the blue glow before the match ignited. For once the wind wasn't blowing, and the match stayed lit.

There was a loud keening from the pixies. They didn't like the fire. They didn't like that I had it. I tossed the match and quickly retreated to where the pixies were hovering and bleating in distress.

We watched the sign flare into a full-flamed fire. It crackled and sputtered with the strain of the intense heat.

I got my crossbow from the bicycle and loaded it with a bolt. I checked the daggers in my belt and in the ladies hiking boot that I had borrowed from the beach house. They were a size larger than my feet, but it didn't matter much.

One of the firefly pixies deftly dive-bombed my face. She came so close I almost flinched. Then she landed on my shoulder and violently tugged on my hair. She said something. Then she said it again. It sounded like, "Sak. Sak. Sak!" The other pixies flew around me and repeated the word in complete synch. After a moment it dawned on me that they were saying, "Zach."

"What?" I said. "Is he coming? Or is something else wrong?"

The one on my shoulder yanked at my hair again. I'm sure she was trying her best, but it only felt like a few strands of my hair was caught in something unsubstantial. I turned my head slightly to look at her.

She jabbered at me and then pointed to the north. She pointed again and then really yanked on the hair. The strands came loose, and she went flying. It was more luck than anything else that my hand reached up to catch her before she fell to the ground.

Abruptly, the firefly pixies were silent. It was odd. They had been making noise at me generally and around me. It had comforted me to a certain extent. There was only the burning of the sign nearby. It blazed with furious concentration as paper and wood were consumed.

The pixie sat in the palm of my hand and shook her body slightly as if she were clearing her head. She chirped at me, still holding several strands of my hair, and pointed north again.

I looked but I didn't see anything. The highway stretched away. The pink in the eastern sky was beginning to spread. The skies closest to the horizon were changing to yellow as the Earth continued to roll around in its incontrovertible manner. I could see the thick pines and redwoods that grew in abundance on the western side of the highway. The eastern side was populated with pasture of some sort.

With one hand, I took the axe off the back of Kara's bicycle and put it within reach. The crossbow was better for the distance, but I wanted everything I had. The sign crumpled as it burned and part of it fell into the field it stood in. The ladder fell, as well. The weight of the burning parts had tumbled it. The noise echoed into the rapidly fading night, leaving only gray smoke billowing into the skies.

I was dismayed to find that the smoke was readily visible and becoming more visible as the sun continued to ascend in the east. It was like a neon sign pointing to my location.

The pixies grumbled abjectly. The one in my palm jittered nervously. At last she took a leap into the air and flew into the mass of her companions. They hummed above me, gradually regaining a little of the noise they were making before.

I shuddered with the fear that I felt rising inside me. Had I ever made a stand for anything before? I hadn't needed to in the past. My parents had been of the liberal, laissez-faire persuasion. They supported me wholeheartedly in my pursuits, only interfering when I needed guidance on more imperative issues. (That included the all-important talk on the birds and the bees, illegal drug use, and the necessity of a college degree in life, to all of which I had been easily convinced.) I could remember only having to successfully debate for items or events that I desired. Half the success had been wrapped up in proper preparation.

Was I prepared to face a man who would have been judged criminally insane in another world? I was tired. I was weak. I had enough weapons to do the job. I had firefly pixies on my side. The only thing that I was really prepared to do was to save Zach from throwing his life away for my protection.

The sun peeked over the horizon, and the pixies danced about in indecision. One of them flew close to my ear and whispered inaudibly. Their chattering died off to absolute silence. Startled, I looked at the one at my ear and saw that she was staring north. Then I looked north.

He was about a hundred yards away from me. His figure was cast in shadows, but he was walking toward me, slow and unhurried as if he had all the time in the world. As he drew closer, I raised the crossbow and held it with both hands, willing my limbs to be steady enough for the shot.

Half his hair was gone. The other half was black with half-healed burns. Scorch marks raked down his face, and one of his hands was curled abnormally as if it had been deformed in the fire. He was wearing filthy hospital scrubs, and I had an idea where he'd crawled off to after he'd fallen from the bluff. He dragged one of his legs a little. The only thing that was left that even remotely looked human, were his blue eyes. Deep blue like a mountain lake's water, they regarded me as if I might not be entirely real.

I stared back, bracing the crossbow with my elbows against my body. Muscles began to tremble.

The firefly pixies began to make another noise. They hissed at him as if they were cats. They also withdrew behind me, flying in troubled circles, unsure of their next movements. All the time he stared at me, and I stared back.

This time he wasn't shrieking. He didn't have the advantage. And from what I could see, he didn't have a weapon. His hands were hanging at his side, one of them horribly distorted. His feet were as blackened as the rest of him and bare. He looked away from me and then up at the burning billboard. I saw his lips curve into an approving smile.

"Did you..." his hoarse voice said and abruptly stopped. He swallowed convulsively and tried again. "Did you start that to get my attention?"

"No," I answered. I was going to be honest about it if I could. My heart and head were racing. He was still insane. I could tell. If he could kill me, he would. But was it possible to convince him to leave us alone? Would it be feasible for me to succeed without killing this twisted individual? Could I live with myself if I discovered that I had let him live only to have him kill someone else?

His body shuddered. I nearly stepped back. He was taller than I remembered. Perhaps topping six feet, he had the weight to match his height. All I had recall from that nightmarish time was that he was stronger than me and willing to kill me without cause. The vivid recollection of the punishing weight of his body as he straddled mine and his arm slashing overhand with the knife that he intended to use on me had been terrifying. Now he presented as something else. His blackened flesh and seemingly calm demeanor offered as monstrous.

He was a thousand times more frightening now than he had been that night on the bluff. And I wasn't certain I could kill him without cause. He wasn't threatening me except by his previous actions.

I don't know that Zach or Kara would have had me fire the bolt without questioning my own ethics. Before the change it was legally acceptable to kill while defending yourself. No one would have questioned me if I had killed this disturbed individual during his first attack on me. Not given the circumstances. But this was after, and no one would question my decision except myself.

Then I could see that the Burned Man saw the indecision in my eyes and he smiled bigger. His dreadfully cracked flesh oozed clear liquid as he smiled wider. "You can't," he said, and he made a noise that sounded like laughter.

The pixies hissed harder. One tugged at my ear while several others pulled at my hair. They wanted me to run. But they didn't know that the man was going to follow. He wouldn't give up. I could see into his eyes just as well as he could into mine. There was crazed determination there. If I turned my back on him, I was dead.

His smile dropped away at the sounds from the enraged pixies. Their tiny glowing bodies caught his attention, and he snarled, though he didn't move. His body dipped into a semi-crouch as if he were going to launch himself at the little vibrating beings. The snarl made the pixies churn in animosity.

"Them," he raged. "They did this to me."

I didn't say anything. He hadn't liked my voice on our previous meeting, so I wasn't going to try to antagonize him. He was crazy enough without any help from me.

His blue eyes shot to mine. "You. They like you." His voice fractured with pain. I thought that perhaps he had inhaled some of the heated air of the fire and injured his vocal cords. "They...protect you." His head angled forward in order to see me better. "They've marked your face."

I nodded.

His good hand clenched together and remained closed. "Give them to me," he said at last. "Give them to me to kill, and I'll let you live."

I looked at his face and realized that not only was he serious but that he expected me to comply. Not for one second did I believe that he would keep his end of the bargain. Not that I could have done what he wanted in any shape or form.

"Fly," I said to the pixies. I whispered it fiercely. "Fly away and never come back," I cried harshly. "Before he can hurt you!"

The firefly pixies scattered before they keened sharply at me. They were begging with me to flee for my life. Their little green forms blasted away, racing for the skies. The man's intense blue eyes opened wide as he perceived their intent. Suddenly, he came at me with a sudden shriek of infuriated wrath. I raised the crossbow and fired.

And I missed. Without hesitation I lifted the crossbow up and swung at him like I would have with a baseball bat. It crashed against the part where neck met shoulder, and he yelled hugely. His good hand swiped at me and clipped my jaw.

Then I twisted away and reached for the axe. My fingers were touching the handle when he grasped my leg and spun me around. My right foot came up and swung at his face. Putting all my muscles into the swing, it connected with a loud crack that demonstrated I had broken is jawbone. He let go of my left leg, and I scrambled backwards like a crab.

I hadn't been in a fight since the sixth grade and a bully who had been held back a year wanted my hair ribbons. The bully had learned a lesson about skinny ten-year-olds that I hoped she had never forgotten. The lesson had initially come from my grandmother, who wasn't laissez-faire by any means. She had told me when I had to that I should fight and fight until I couldn't stand up anymore. The ultimate point was to make sure that the other person was hurting just as badly as I was. Nana said I should use every inch of my body and not to worry about using the Queensberry rules. I hadn't told Nana that I had to Google it to figure out what that meant. But I hadn't forgotten.

He came after me as I scuttled backwards, his eyes aflame with the chase. He reached for my foot again with his good hand, and I changed tactics. I aimed for the bad hand and was rewarded with a tormented scream as I connected solidly with my foot. Then I was able to get back far enough to grab the axe in both hands.

I spun, already swinging the axe for his midsection, when he pushed forward again and tackled me around my stomach. We flew to the ground in a tangle of jostling limbs. The axe flew out of my hands and skittered across the asphalt far from my reaching fingers.

Then he was atop of me again, in an appalling repeat of the night on the bluff. His body straddled mine, and his wretched hot breath was feverish on my face. I bucked once, trying to get him off of me, but my arms and legs were achingly tired. The energy gained by adrenaline was rapidly draining away. He grasped my wrists with his good hand and squeezed my sides terribly with his thighs. I could feel my ribs compressing, and I found it difficult to breathe.

At least he wouldn't find the others. Black dots appeared around the periphery of my vision. And he wouldn't hurt the firefly pixies. At least that.
Chapter 12

Now the Really Hard Part...

My grandmother died when I was twelve. She had told me many things that I didn't appreciate until I was older. One was to fight with all my might as if it were my last moment on this Earth. Another was never to buy from door-to-door salesmen, which, as it turned out, was never a problem for me and never would be. Another tantalizing edict was that if a man happened to be attacking me, I was to hit him in his testicles, and he would let me go, whereupon when he doubled over, I was to hit him over his head with clutched fists and run like heck. Never mind that I had to use Google to figure out where the testicles were located on a man because I couldn't spell the word to find it in a dictionary.

The problem was that I couldn't reach that particular area of the body. I heaved my hips upward and tried to throw the Burned Man off my body. He squeezed harder, and I heard a dreadful pop and felt an intense pain in my ribs. I screamed with anguish as he laughed a splintered, amused noise.

A red mist began to sift into my vision. I forced my body up again, and he came back down on me harder, throwing his body weight into the motion. His thighs compressed my sides, and I swear I heard bones mashing together. For a moment, he let up, and his fetid breath lingered over my face before he put his mouth close to one of my ears. "Tell me where they are," he said softly. The swelling in his face due to the burns and the broken jaw made the words slurred and nearly undistinguishable.

The waves of pain were welling over me, and I wheezed with exertion. "I won't tell you," I cried, forcing the words out. "They're just two people you'll have to skip having on your menu!"

He came up straight, staring down at me with those strangely intense blue eyes. I held onto the moment because he was relaxed. One of his hands was still wrapped around my wrists, holding them above my head. His powerful thighs bracketed my torso, keeping me captive. I panted for air as he looked at me.

"I don't care about the people," he said at last. He bent closer, and I wanted to vomit with the abjectly awful stench of his breath. "I want those things. Those little bug things. The ones that saved you. Tell me where they are, and I won't kill you."

I let the moment stretch out. "Let me up," I said.

"And you'll tell me," he said eagerly. "So I can burn them all to little crisps. Listen to their tiny bodies explode in the fire." The revolting yearning and anticipation was obvious in his cracked voice.

Dear God above help me, I prayed.

I glared upward and remembered what Nana had said. Fight with everything you've got. I knew I had something left. So I bucked again, and twisted my head to where I could reach the forearm of the limb that was restraining my wrists. Then I shoved myself as hard as I could and bit into the soot-stained flesh of his forearm. It tasted worse than the gasoline, but I didn't let my jaw relax as I clamped down on a mouthful.

It shouldn't have surprised me that he let me go, but I was when he did exactly that. He abruptly released my wrists and batted at my head with his bad hand while I chomped down on the muscles of his arm. Leaning over me, he yanked and shrieked above me. Blood spilled from his arm and over my face. Sickened, I threw him off me at last, releasing his arm in the process.

Scrambling away, I was twenty feet away before I comprehended that I had my back to him, gasping with the pain I felt and the fear that was inundating me. I turned my head and saw that he was clutching at his arm with his bad hand, trying to stem the flow of blood. From the spurting, I knew that I must have bitten into an artery. Then I realized I still had a chunk of him in my mouth, and I spit it out as I tried to keep from gagging. Wicked yuck.

I reached for the knife in my belt and drew it out without pretense. It was one of the sharp daggers from the last beach house, and it was going to keep the man from coming after me evermore. One way or another.

Using his teeth and some of his scrubs the man managed to wrap something around his forearm. He bit the cloth with his mouth and pulled it taut across his flesh. I didn't offer to help as I stood up slowly, never looking away from him.

He rose up, keeping his blue eyes on me as I stood there. My shoulders quivered with effort. I was fully exhausted, and my muscles felt like warmed-over rubber. If the man had any moxie left in him, I could only hope to slash or stab him somewhere in his chest with the knife. Perhaps I could aim for the jugular in his throat. As I made my deadly plans to meet him once again I could see the sheer enmity of his gaze.

Hate. Utter hatred washed from him in a roaring river of bitterness and loathing. If the firefly pixies were on his top ten list of hated things, then I had just been added and gone up on the numerical order. For a moment, I could see that he was calculating his odds of successfully attacking me again. It was a protracted second full of powerless expectation. But suddenly, he glanced over his shoulder, and then he craned his neck to look into the distance. As he turned to face me, his face distorted into a mask of heated rage. Then furious indecision boiled over his expression. Despite his makeshift bandage, the blood continued to drip down his good hand, pooling at his feet, and I hoped for him to pass out.

If he had, then I didn't know what it said about my morality and ethics because there was no way that I was going to put a tourniquet on his arm. I wasn't going to stitch up the bite that I had so happily put there. If he conked out on the asphalt, then he could lie there and die.

Unfortunately, he wasn't going to pass out. His eyes fumed with vehement concentration. His shoulders shuddered with the effort to remain still. "Later," he said to me in a fervent hiss.

"Don't come near me again," I said back, barely keeping rein on my temper. "Maybe I couldn't kill you today. Maybe you could have gotten the best of me. Not next time. I'll have eyes behind my back. And you," I took a moment to do something I rarely did, I sneered expressively, "can kiss two round and rosy parts of my anatomy."

He lunged at me and then stopped with a petulant growl of uncontrolled resentment, pulling up short a few feet from where he had started. His lips curved into that horrid smile, causing the splits in his face to leak with clear fluid once again. "Later," he said again.

I watched him as he limped away, and I turned to ensure that he was keeping his distance from me. He disappeared around the bend of the highway to the north, hobbling off to his provisional haunt to contrive a new assault.

I sat down on the asphalt and shook with the effort to keep myself mentally in one piece. I didn't know if I could kill that man, but I was going to make certain that he didn't catch me in the state I was in ever again.

The sun was up in the sky, and the plumes of smoke were drifting off to the south. It didn't seem like such a horrible day after all. The Burned Man, however, wasn't dead, and I knew he could return to torment me. But on this day, I had saved Zach's life, although he would probably never know it.

The horde of firefly pixies swarmed over me again, buzzing incessantly around me, chattering at me in irate tones. Ironically, it occurred to me that they weren't acting nocturnal at that moment. "You should go and get some rest, girls," I muttered ungratefully. "That guy's not going to do anything bad for at least a few more days." I hope, I said on the inside.

Several pixies keened in front of me as they hovered in place. They were trying to get me to move I finally grasped. Finally, I got up again and went back to Kara's bicycle. I affixed the axe on the rack, put the dagger back into my belt, and awkwardly reloaded the crossbow so that it could rest on the handlebars at the ready position. I kept looking north, but I could see nothing moving.

The remainder of the sign finally fell with a booming echo that made me jump. The flames had died to smoldering bits of red and gold, leaving only blackened metal supports. I climbed back on and wondered how I was going to ride without falling over. My legs were shaking. My arms were quivering, and the place around my torso where he had squeezed me was simmering with malicious pain.

I got about a mile before I fell down. For some reason, I couldn't quite focus nor could I make the bike go fast enough to stay upright. The pixies crowded me again, prattling at me to get up, to get up, and to get up. At least, that was my interpretation. Then they were saying, "Sak! Sak! Sak!" again.

"Yeah, yeah," I murmured as I regained my footing. "If I had him here, I'd be happy, too." I climbed onto the bicycle again and had a thought. If the Burned Man had followed me, then I was a barely moving target. I looked back to the north and could see quite a ways down the highway on both sides. Empty. Dead. Nada.

To the south, there were the beginnings of Crescent City. Housing complexes were popping up. Their yards were overgrown, and I noticed a roof had collapsed, and somehow I knew that it wasn't safe to stop here. I managed to pedal another mile or two before I fell over again.

The pixies were crooning to me. They didn't sound anxious or desperate but just concerned about my well being. I wanted to tell them that I was going to be all right as soon as I could lie down for a bit, but I couldn't get the words to come out of my mouth. I looked back to the north again and found nothing to bother me. It seemed, for the moment, it was merely the firefly pixies and me.

To the south was a large building off to the side of the highway. Dimly, I grasped that I had been to the building before. It was the hospital complex that Kara had gone to the day before.

I crept to my feet and swayed there for a minute. I needed some water, and I hadn't brought any with me. The hospital was close enough and looked like an appropriate place to lie down. Clean beds too, if I could find one that was devoid of empty hospital gowns. I could even give myself some antibiotics if I needed them.

Sluggishly, I thought about my circumstances. The shoulder wound was all right. It hadn't been ripped open again although it throbbed with the exertions of the act of defending myself. I looked down and couldn't see any blood. Furthermore, it didn't feel like it was torn anew. My ribs were screaming with little darts of intense pain. Broken, I decided. Two or more. I could still breathe, and I wasn't coughing up blood, although it felt as though bones were grinding alarmingly together. My back was aching, but I thought that was because he had knocked me on it when he grabbed me. My legs hurt because he had grabbed them several times. I thought that if I pulled up the pant legs I would see finger-sized bruises all over my ankles and calves. Finally, my face hurt where he had clipped me with his fist, and the muscles in my jaws were sore because I had compressed my teeth together so stalwartly.

My primary problem was that I had overextended myself. Not in a small way either. I had done it in a way that was going to kill me if I wasn't very careful. Slowly, I looked around me. The hospital appeared blurry as if the building was moving but it wasn't. Hazily, I recognized that I was slowly rocking back and forth.

I looked back to the north, and I couldn't see anything at all in the distance. I said to the pixies, "You'd tell me, right, girls? If he was coming after me?"

They warbled at me in response. It didn't sound like bad news. Of course, it didn't sound exactly like good news either.

I lurched to Kara's bicycle and caught it by the handlebar. I dragged it to the edge of the highway and then let it fall down the little hill. I didn't want any clues that would let the Burned Man know where I had stopped for a breather. I had the feeling that I should cover the bike up with brush or something, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

Instead, I knelt on the asphalt for a moment and gathered my strength. The firefly pixies surrounded me anxiously. It was beginning to be hard to breathe. My chest was swelling with pain. The dizziness was starting to overcome me. I let my head fall down and concentrated on regaining my breath.

It came to me that perhaps the Burned Man had won after all. Whatever he had done to me didn't seem to be having a good effect on my body. I knew that I was drained, but this was beyond tired. I looked down at Kara's bicycle at the bottom of the incline and saw that I stupidly had pushed the crossbow and the axe down along with the bike. All I had left were the daggers, unless I wanted to climb down there and get the weapons back.

Hah. That wasn't happening.

I got to my feet again and fell down a few steps later. Then I crawled for a little while. The pixies were my little cheering squad. I'm not sure what they were cheering for, but they were encouraging me to move. When I looked up, it didn't seem like I was any closer to the hospital than I had been before.

"Sak!" said a pixie from near my ear. It was a triumphant, cheerful sound as if they had personally accomplished something very positive.

I grunted a little. Then I got to where I was resting on my bent knees. My elbows were braced carefully as I tried to get enough oxygen. I whispered, "I'd like him here, girls, but—" I trailed off because I was gasping for air. I finished the thought on the inside. It's possible that he's still asleep. He doesn't know where I am. I didn't know what time it was, but it was still morning, I thought.

My head came back and looked up at the sun. Maybe not. The sun was awfully high in the sky. More time had passed than I could account for; had I passed out for a while?

The pixies repeated their chant. "Sak! Sak! Sak!"

"Ohh-kay," I said. The blackness was rushing up along the sides of my vision. It seemed as if there was a tunnel that I was entering, and the walls were getting closer and closer to me. I barely managed to turn my head to the south and blink tiredly. There was someone there.

The person was standing on the pegs of the bicycle. The bike was weaving from side to side as the person pumped vigorously, using their entire body to advance the forward motion of the bicycle. His legs were a blur of activity as he worked. His chestnut hair caught the light and shown like gold in the sun's rays.

Zach.

And he saw me as well. If anything, his effort increased.

I couldn't move. I was completely undone. But I could watch. A long way behind Zach, were other figures moving rapidly, as well. Figures? Oh yes, there was more than one. There were at least five. One had short steel gray hair, which I thought was Kara. There was a black-haired man and two brunettes. One was a redhead.

Was I delusional? Maybe Fernie and her two babies would come tromping down the highway next.

Then Zach was only yards away. He didn't even slow down. With a graceful movement that seemed to be practiced, he stepped from the moving bicycle and let it go as he continued in a run at me. He skidded to a stop before me, falling heavily on his knees, and his hands eagerly grasped my upper arms. Nearby, the bike careened off the road and fell heavily. The pixies shouted approvingly and launched into the air with an innate glee.

I gasped with the pain and then tried to breathe again.

"Sophie!" he yelled in my face. "Where are you bleeding from?"

Bleeding? I panted for air. I wasn't bleeding. But a distant thought occurred to me. There was blood all over my face from biting the other man. "Not mine," I got out.

"God," he swore and gathered me into his arms. He tucked his head into the place between my head and shoulder. The perspiration from him dripped down my shirt and reminded me how he had worked to get here in time to help me. "You stupid...girl," he muttered as if that was the worst insult he could come up with. Rearing back, he glowered at me, regaining his hold on my upper arms. "You drugged us. How could you do that?"

I was struggling for air. My chest felt as though it had been punched with a wrecking ball. I couldn't even speak to Zach, much less tell him that I had done it for him. I hadn't wanted him to die.

Of that I was still certain. If Zach had faced the Burned Man then he would have died. I knew I had done the right thing. The only thing I was going to wrestle with was whether or not I should have killed him when I had my single opportunity.

But life isn't tied up in neat little packages with pretty bows. The world before the change hadn't been like that, and the world after the change wasn't turning out to be any better in that respect.

It was when my breathing began to sound as if I were rasping helplessly that Zach's eyes opened wide. I coughed, and a little blood spilled out of my mouth. It was my blood then, and he knew it. The horror in his face was obvious.

The tunnel that was so tight around me narrowed dramatically, and I couldn't tell if I had really seen Zach or not, much less the panting figures that appeared behind him as I swayed.

Lights out...again.
Chapter 13

Not Again?

"...Never seen anything like it," someone said.

"We've never seen anything like a lot of things," said another voice. It sounded like a young man, not Zach. It was a voice I'd never heard before.

"They marked her face," the first someone said, who was also someone I had never heard before. That person had a husky voice. It belonged to a man who sounded like he was a heavy smoker, or used to be. "It's like a tattoo."

"She's special," said the younger one. He was very close to my right side, and I thought that perhaps he was standing over me, looking down at me. I didn't like the feeling it evoked. It felt as it did when Zach was doing it, except this time it was worse. This was a stranger. This was someone I really didn't know, someone I couldn't possibly trust, and someone who could do something terrible to me at any moment. If the Burned Man had taught me anything, it was how to be distrustful. I didn't know these people, and I was afraid to open my eyes.

"We couldn't find any trace of the other one," said a new voice. It was a woman's voice and it wasn't Kara.

Zach said, "There's blood by the billboard. A lot of it. It's not Sophie's, so she must have injured him in some way. I'm hoping he crawled off to die, but he's been resilient in the past." I nearly sighed with relief at the sound of his voice. If he was here, then all couldn't be bad, except that I had a faint recollection of him being on his bike, and then with me, shaking my shoulders. He had been relieved to see me, but he had also been so terribly angry.

"She probably did hurt him," said the young voice. "But she's so young and frail. She looks like a strong wind could take her away."

"She's stronger than she looks," Zach said protectively. "Once you remove that tube, she'll be just fine." What tube?

"Relax, cowboy," said smoker voice. "No one's threatening her. Just stating the obvious. We need all the humans we can take in, and it doesn't matter whether they're skinny or fat. They'll fit in."

"We don't need him," Zach stated coldly.

The young one sighed from above me. "No, we don't need a sociopath. But we need to understand what he's capable of doing."

"He's capable of burning things, of attacking those he perceives as weaker than he is, of killing people," Zach said fervently. "I've told you about what he did in Bandon."

"How do you know that he killed the person whose bones you saw?" the young voice asked in a neutral tone.

"How do you know he didn't?" Zach countered. "If he didn't, then the very least he did was dig up a corpse and use the bones for his afternoon snack while sitting around the bonfire. Maybe he was roasting marshmallows, too! You know, some funky kind of Dr. Lecter s'mores."

"Calm down, Zach," the young voice said. "You have to remember we have only witnesses here. We have no security tapes or DNA evidence. We have only your account and Kara's to go on. If we managed to catch up with this man, then we—"

"He's dangerous," Zach said coldly. "I hope your people truly understand that. He would have killed Sophie. He stabbed her through one of her shoulders. It went all the way through to the back."

"Which seems to have magically healed and all that's left is a very red scar," the young voice replied. The words were unconvinced, but the tone remained dispassionate as if he was stating a plain fact and not questioning the intriguing circumstances behind it.

"You know just as well as I do that this world is different from the one we were born in," Zach responded just as swiftly. "There are things here we cannot explain. The firefly pixies, as Sophie calls them, have formed an attachment to us, particularly her. They did something to her. They healed her."

"Something else we haven't seen," said smoker voice skeptically.

"We've seen things, Ethan," the woman's voice said. "You know what we've seen, what we've all seen. Firefly pixies aren't so strange, are they?"

"No," said Ethan, who was smoker voice, and it was a reluctantly "no." "No, we've seen...things."

"Thank you, Calida," the young voice said calmly. "You're the voice of reason as usual."

Zach snorted. The sound came from close by, and I felt warm fingers curled over my wrist on that side. I didn't have to ask to know they were his, and they felt good there.

I opened my eyes and saw him staring down at me. He didn't look hale and hearty. There were dark rings under his eyes, his face was gaunt, and his cheekbones too prominent. He hadn't been taking care of himself. His mouth opened as he saw my awareness, and he muttered, "Sophie."

I started to say that I was sorry but then I started to choke. Something was in my throat. Suddenly, I couldn't breathe properly. I couldn't move my neck. Panicking, I began to thrash about. There was pain in my chest, searing pain that roared across me. Zach's face became alarmed. "Don't struggle, Sophie," he said urgently. "You had a collapsed lung and broken ribs. They had to put a tube down your throat. You can still breathe. Try to relax."

I wanted to swallow but I couldn't. I wanted to jerk the tube out of my mouth and my throat because it felt alien and so uncomfortable. It didn't belong there. My chest was on fire, and my body ached with uncountable pains. There was another IV in the back of my hand and there were people around me; a lot of people who were all watching me as if I was a bug under a microscope. Behind them I faintly acknowledged the room as one belonging to some sort of hospital. It seemed so absurdly surrealistic, and I began to grapple weakly with the hands pressing on me.

Another man pushed aside the redheaded teenager who was to my right. He leaned over me and said firmly, "I'm a doctor, a medical doctor, Sophie. I put the incubate you, which means I put down your windpipe to help re-inflate your lung. One of your ribs had punctured it and was causing a pneumothorax. We're going to leave the tube in until your lung is better healed." He stared down at me with gray-blue eyes that looked kindly. Regardless, my legs stretched out to their full length as if I had been zapped with a strong volt of electricity. Cramps began to twist muscles in hardened lumps along my calves. I clenched down without thinking about consequences. Abruptly, I was unable to breathe at all.

Zach was kneeling next to the bed, his mouth near my ear. "Relax, Sophie," he said demandingly. "For God's sake, you're going to have a stroke if you don't."

The doctor was saying something to someone else and then he was injecting something into my I.V. The lassitude that came was nearly instantaneous. "Morphine," he said to me. My eyes blurred a little. My body became a limp noodle, and I couldn't control anything at all. "When you wake up again, we'll take the tube out. You understand, I don't have any way of ascertaining that the lung is properly re-inflated or that the puncture is closed enough to hold your lung together, but from what I can tell from by reading—"

"Forget it, Doc," Zach snarled. "She's half out of it."

I looked at Zach beseechingly. My eyelids were so heavy, and I didn't dare close them while so many strangers were around me. If I did, then I knew I wouldn't wake up. With a tremendous effort that was almost all I had left, my hand caught his and squeezed. Zach bent over me and whispered, "Sophie, what is it?"

I caught his shirt with my other hand and held on tight. Any second now, and my fingers were going to slip away.

Zach's face changed from concern to a grimace. He corrected it quickly and said, "I won't leave, Sophie. Kara or I will be here."

The doctor was saying something to the redheaded teenager. "—found several U-plates in the hospital's stores here. The anesthesia is still operational, so I can repair the rib that's more problematic. The new woman has some paramedic experience, so I can use her in the procedure. Even without electricity, it's pretty simple, really."

Zach's head shot up, but I was fading too fast to be alarmed. "Simple for you, maybe," he barked.

I let go of his shirt and watched as my hand dropped away. My eyes closed on his frantic, "Sophie? Sophie!"

* * *

There were bits and pieces that I remembered over the new few days. Apparently, I didn't do so well with the anesthesia. It made me sick, and the doctor had to compensate by giving me something else. He cheerfully reassured Zach. "She's got the I.V. She's breathing steady, and her blood pressure is excellent. The rib is repaired, and the lung is staying inflated. It doesn't get much better than that."

"Why is she so groggy?"

"Side effects of the anesthesia. Not uncommon. And treatable."

But Zach's voice was concerned and aggravated at the same time.

Then Kara was there for a little while. She held my hand and talked to me about the new people, but I think I fell asleep on her, and I couldn't remember anything she said later.

Some unknown time later, they were getting me on my feet and walking me around. I didn't like it much, but I felt better after I did it. Kara said, "It'll keep you from getting pneumonia. What did he do? Punch you in your ribs? Oh, sorry, I know you can't answer me yet."

And there was another time lapse. It seemed as though they were always getting me up and down, but it turned out it was once an hour or two. Just when I thought that I was starting to feel better, the doctor took the tube out of my throat.

Boy, was that a lot of fun. Not.

After the removal, I started feeling a lot better. I had a sore throat, and my chest still hurt, but I could stay up longer, and my strength was coming back.

Kara told me it was two days later, but it felt like it was two weeks.

Zach came periodically to peer in the door at me. But after the tube was removed, he didn't come back, and I didn't ask where he'd gone. Kara stayed with me, and she was gently optimistic.

The doctor's name was Sinclair. Whether it was his first name or his last, I never asked. He was nice enough for a man who liked to take my temperature and my blood pressure and click his tongue knowingly.

Two days later, it was evening, and I was sitting by the window looking out at the sunset pensively. I didn't like being cooped up, but I was grateful I was still breathing. Sinclair told me I had a lovely three-inch scar just above my belly button and a piece of metal inside me now. It was something wrapped around my rib to facilitate the fracture's healing. My biggest challenge was to breathe deeply and often in order to prevent pneumonia from developing. Apparently, that was the worst complication of a ruptured lung.

Kara stayed with me for the entire time, only leaving for essentials. The doctor came in just as she went to get something to eat. She nodded to him and went on her way. I tensed up in the chair and looked at him warily.

Sinclair stopped abruptly. He was a balding man in his forties. The gray in the hair he had left was similar in color to the gray in his gray-blue eyes. He was a tall skinny man who looked like running marathons was something he did for fun. "You don't trust me," he said astutely.

I kept my hand on the dagger that was hidden from him between my body and the side of the easy chair I sat in. Then I shook my head slowly. "It's hard to trust anyone," I said. My voice was rough from the tube. It felt like I had a bad sore throat, and I didn't even get ice chips to soothe it.

Sinclair perched on the side of the bed just close enough to make me a little nervous. "No, I can understand that based on what Zach and Kara have said. I know Kara's told you about our group."

I shook my head again. "She told me when I was half looped."

Sinclair nodded. "Okay. We've got about twenty people. Our leader, for lack of a better word, is Gideon. I don't know if you remember him, but he'll come see you later. We live down at The Redwoods Camp. We're going to move you down there tomorrow or the next day. I don't want to make you nervous. Well, more nervous anyway, but we haven't found the one who hurt you yet. We're kind of in the open here, and that makes us a little nervous, too."

I stared at him. Sinclair seemed a little too at ease, a little too...happy? It seemed weird. It was even weirder than what was usual. "You're happy," I stated rather than asked.

Sinclair appeared a little surprised at the statement. "You're the first real patient I've had for weeks." He waved his hand around the hospital room. "I practiced in Sacramento. I'm a surgeon, lucky for you, but now I'm a general kind of go-to guy. But hey, I got to do surgery for a change, and it was something kind of neat for me." He smiled readily. "And don't get me wrong, I'm glad you're doing well. I just hope we don't have any repeats. Since you burned the sign down, we think that that guy won't be able to find us."

I frowned. I didn't want to talk about the Burned Man. I had a vivid recollection of the last moment I'd seen him as he walked away, half stumbling, bloody, but altogether too determined. There was something that happened before that moment that came to me like a brick falling on my head. Suddenly, he glanced over his shoulder, and then he craned his neck to look into the distance. As he turned to face me, his face distorted into a mask of heated rage. Then furious indecision boiled over his expression. Despite his makeshift bandage, the blood continued to drip down his good hand, pooling at his feet, and I hoped for him to pass out.

He hadn't passed out, but he had known that someone was coming. He had known someone was coming for me. He had known. How long had it been before I made my way to the hospital beside the highway? It had been a long time...an hour maybe to go the two or three miles from the burned sign. An hour before Zach had smoothly stepped off the moving bicycle as if he was stepping from an escalator. There was no way that the other man could have physically seen Zach. There was no bodily way for him to be warned, but he had been all the same.

The Burned Man knew things. Just like I did. Just like Kara smelled the strong scent of cinnamon before something important happened. Just like Zach had his dreams about me. The startling comprehension made me wince unexpectedly. The doctor's face twisted with worry. I raised my hand to stop him from coming to me. "I'm all right."

And it wasn't going to matter about the sign being destroyed. The Burned Man was going to know how to find me in his own special manner.

"Are you in pain?" Sinclair asked. "Do you need something?"

"No," I said quickly. "I was just thinking about...him." I paused, and the moment drew out. Finally, I asked, "Is your group ready for someone like him?"

It was the doctor's turn to frown. I'm not sure if he understood what I was asking him. "We'll protect ourselves," he said instead of answering directly.

I shrugged. There was something else I wanted to know, but I didn't know how I was going to phrase the question. How was I supposed to ask if the doctor had some extra ability that he might not be willing to talk about: Excuse me, doc, but have you got ESP, telekinesis, clairvoyance, or some other as yet indescribable psychic talent? He'd probably check my blood pressure again and give me another shot of morphine.

Kara stepped into the room again. Dressed in a standard set of scrubs, she appeared quite relaxed and healthy. She looked at us curiously and handed me a juice box with the straw already inserted. "It's lukewarm, but it's apple juice." She tossed one to the doctor who caught it deftly. "And one for the M.D., too."

"Thanks," Sinclair said, inserting the straw with a little flourish.

My head started to hurt. I don't know what it was, but it was probably a tension headache. It was becoming increasingly obvious throughout the day that Zach was patently avoiding me, and I didn't have to write to "Dear Abby" to figure out why. I'd be angry if someone drugged me, too. The really bad part was that I didn't know how I could explain it to him without sounding like a complete freak. I put the juice down and rubbed my temple with both hands.

"Headache?" Sinclair asked. I nodded. He got up and put his juice next to mine. "With your permission?" he said affably and waited for me to nod again. He began to rub my temples with his index and middle fingers of both of his hands. His fingers were warm and felt as though the warmth was being imparted into me. It didn't take a minute before the pain began to dissipate. It was gone before I could open my mouth.

I looked up into his gray-blue eyes with shock. Sinclair shrugged crookedly. "I have a way with the minor pains. I was always trying to heal my pets when I was kid. Then I got to work on my dad's back. He said I had extraordinary hands. I think that was what got me started in medicine. Right up until my dad died of a heart attack in the nineties, he swore my hands were pure magic. Helped his lumbago every time."

Then the young man at the door said, "Yes." It wasn't an agreement to what the doctor had said but to what the newcomer was reading in my eyes.

The redheaded teenager was standing just inside the room, looking at me. He couldn't have been more than fifteen years old. His eyes were bright sky blue, and a spray of freckles wandered over his nose and cheekbones. He was tall and gangly, nearly a stick with his teenage build. He had a coke in one hand, and he was rubbing the bridge of his nose with the other hand. I looked back at him and vaguely remembered him from the first blurred moments I had woken in the hospital room.

My head came up and Sinclair stepped back. I said, "You're Gideon. The leader."
Chapter 14

Three's a Crowd.

So Is Four, Five, and Six...

When the firefly pixies came a little while later, Gideon, Sinclair, and Kara were still sitting with me. It was just as well because the conversation had become stilted. The tiny flying swarm made their own entrance into the hospital and crowded into the room just as the sun fell beneath the horizon in the west. Sinclair was lighting a candle near my bed to which I had returned, when a green cloud of flying pixies rolled into the room like an invulnerable force. The only sounds were the doctor gasping and the buzzing of the pixies.

I smiled. So did Kara. Gideon held very still. Sinclair started to freak out, waving his hands as if shooing them away. I said sharply, "Don't hit them! They won't hurt you. And they've never stung or bitten us." Of course, I didn't know that they wouldn't, but the doctor was twitching as if he had stepped on a beehive. At any second he was going to bolt for the door. He froze into place, and his apprehensive eyes watched the circling multitude. I decided that he had never played catch and release with bugs as a child.

The pixies came about me and prattled anxiously. One came to rest on my arm and warbled at me in an edifying sort of tone. I said consolingly, "It's all better now. Look, they fixed me."

Prancing down the length of my forearm, she seemed to be saying, "We'll just see about that, missy."

More of them were circling Kara, and she was laughing a little as she held up a palm for one of them. Interestingly, several were hovering by Gideon and staring at him intently. The remainder were avidly inspecting me and the room and largely ignoring the doctor.

"If you want to leave, Sinclair," I said carefully, "then go slowly to the door. They won't hurt you."

"What are they?" he whispered, not moving. The fear he felt had dispersed into keen attention.

"They're the firefly pixies I was talking about," I said.

Kara laughed. "Pretty cool, huh?"

"They left that mark on your cheek?" Sinclair asked numbly.

"Yes," I said. "They healed me, too. Guess they were otherwise occupied this time."

"You weren't dying," Gideon said. His teenage voice unnerved me. "That's why they didn't come to you. However, they were concerned. They had little watchers with you the whole time. I've seen them. I don't think anyone else noticed. But you weren't dying."

"She wasn't dying," Kara said flatly. "She was dead."

"They brought you back to life," Sinclair said, awestricken.

"That was Zach and Kara," I put in, irritated at the admiration in the doctor's tone. He kept looking at the pixies and then at me as though I was somehow something new and extraterrestrial. "CPR classes did them a lot of good. Thank you, Kara and Zach."

Kara shrugged cordially. "Nice to know some of the old training still is rattling around in my head."

The pixie on my arm jumped up and down demandingly. I looked down at her, and she tilted her head at me expectantly. "Oh no," I said with a wry smile.

"What is it?" Sinclair asked.

"Do you like to sing, doc?" I asked.

"I can sing," he said with the unsaid part being, "Why would you ask that?"

"Good," I said. "They like Jingle Bells."

* * *

As it turned out, the firefly pixies liked the doctor's voice almost as much as they liked mine. They also didn't mind Gideon's off-key tenor or that Ethan and Calida came to listen at the door and watch with unspoken wonder. Zach peeked in and smiled at the pixies when they quickly buzzed him. Then he vanished into the darkness of the hallway without meeting my eyes.

I fell asleep after three versions of Jingle Bells and a variety of sixties' hits like "You've Lost that Loving Feeling", "Wooly Bully", "I Got You Babe", "My Girl", and "Wild Thing." I think "Wild Thing" might have supplanted Jingle Bells in pixie popularity. Before I drifted off I made a mental note to make myself learn the lyrics.

When I woke up, the pixies were buzzing around genially and the room was mostly dark. The windows were open, and a breeze was wafting in. It was getting a little chilly, but I liked the feeling. The stars were out in full force and someone was sitting next to the bed looking at me.

My hand reached for the dagger, and I nearly panicked when I couldn't find it immediately.

"It's all right, Sophie," Zach said.

I closed my eyes briefly. I don't know exactly what I had been dreaming about, but I didn't think it was something pleasant. I had been fighting again. The image of the long sword in my hand, flashing as it struck its deadly path, was all that was left in my mind's eye. I had woken up expecting the worst. I was helpless in a hospital bed, and the Burned Man was next to me, waiting to see the fright on my face before he pounced.

"Zach," I muttered. "You like to scare me, don't you?"

"Just about as much as you like to scare me," he stated softly.

"You're still angry," I said. Well, thank you, Captain Obvious.

"Yes."

I swallowed. "Can I have something to drink?" Can I get out of this conversation by prevaricating?

Zach gave me a glass of water with a straw and watched me struggle to position myself to be able to drink it. Finally, he helped me with one arm and an aggrieved grunt. When I was done I handed the glass back to him, and he put it on the table next to my bed.

"I miss ice," I said plaintively. Also iPods, hot water, and normal conversations.

"There are a lot of things to miss," Zach said contemplatively. He folded his arms over his chest and looked at me. His face was in the shadows but I could feel the weight of his gaze. "Why, Sophie?"

I frowned. Should I explain? Would he get it? He was so angry, I could feel it radiating off him in surges of fury. He wanted to punish me for doing something so extreme, for putting myself in danger. He wanted me to know this was not only unacceptable but something he would have a hard time forgiving me for, if he ever did.

Would the real explanation placate him? Or would he always disbelieve me?

"Do you trust me, Zach?" I asked, forcing my voice to be neutral.

"No," he said immediately. "Not anymore. Not without a reasonable explanation."

"And if my explanation isn't reasonable, then you'll continue to mistrust me?"

Zach took his arms off his chest and leaned forward. I could see the glitter of his eyes; the meager light from the stars reflected off them. "I have to know," he said.

"Why do you have to know?" I asked, suddenly angry. Why did I have to prove myself to him? Why did I have to say that I had a good reason for doing what I did? What if all I had was a reason and it wasn't good enough to suit Zach's sensibilities? Suddenly, I felt doggedly resistant. I didn't want to tell him anything. "Will it make it easier to contemplate? I did something that I felt I had to do, and you wouldn't have let me do it. That's why I did what I did. Because I knew you wouldn't allow me to go."

"You led yourself to a slaughter!" he suddenly bellowed at me. Jerking back in the seat, he went as far as he could from me without physically leaving the room. His tone lowered. "He might have killed you. He was so close to killing you that death was breathing on your flesh!"

No, he would have killed you, Zach. I didn't know why, but it hadn't been my time. It didn't mean I didn't get hurt. But I didn't say that. Instead, I glowered at his shadow-filled face.

"If Kara hadn't been sick because of the painkillers you gave us—," he stopped as I jerked. He saw the action and explained acrimoniously, "Yes, it turns out she doesn't do well with codeine-based medications, something you might want to remember before you drug us again. If she hadn't been sick, we wouldn't have awakened in time. The pixies were there, trying like hell to wake us up."

Well, there was something to feel guilty about. I owed Kara a big apology. Actually, I owed Zach one too, but he was less likely to get one while he was so infuriated with me.

"And these others? Gideon, Sinclair, and the rest? Did you trip over them on the way?" Oh, that was wrong. It came out suspicious and slightly sarcastic. Inwardly I groaned and grappled for better control.

"Sinclair saved your life," Zach said coldly. "They were on the highway as we were making our way back to Crescent City. Ethan gave me his bike so I could go ahead. The others followed behind. Somehow they knew something was wrong. Something they needed to be a part of."

That certainly clicked into place. "Gideon knew, right?"

Zach stilled. "How did you know?"

"Remember what I said about what people had in common?" I asked slowly.

Zach nodded. "Healthy people. Maybe it was because they were healthy that they, that we survived."

"I think it is something else," I stated as plainly as I could. "Your dreams, the doctor's magic hands, Gideon's foreknowledge. Kara smells cinnamon when something significant is about to happen around her. I bet all of us have that in common."

Zach took in a deep breath as he considered it. "Selective survival of people with psychic abilities? The ones who have a certain extra oomph? That's why we woke the next morning and all those others didn't?"

I shrugged. "It's a theory."

Silent for a long time, Zach finally asked, "And what about you? If you've put this hypothesis together, that means you've got something going on as well. What's your...ability?"

If I said what it was, would it bite me on the tushie? Probably. So I lied instead, "I'm not exactly sure."

"And why hasn't Kara said anything about hers?"

"She has mentioned it," I said. "I don't think she realizes what it is that she has exactly. Maybe I don't have all the answers."

"And you're not going to give me the one I really want," Zach acknowledged resentfully.

"No." There wasn't anything else to say. I hadn't trusted him. He doesn't trust me. Yikes. What a way to cement a relationship.

Zach shot to his feet and bent over me in the bed, stopping inches away from my face.

To my favor, I didn't cringe, although he'd startled me. The firefly pixies briefly entered the air in a concerned flurry, but they settled down quickly. His face was in shadows, and I was afraid mine was all too visible in the starlight coming in the windows. I wondered what he was seeing in my expression.

Excruciatingly slowly, Zach lowered his face until his warm lips touched mine. I was frozen. So was he for a long moment. Then it was fire and heat and enchantment. His mouth moved on mine, encouraging me to feel what he was feeling. His hands reached up and tenderly bracketed my face, his thumbs caressing my skin. Every silent message he could send to me came through the pressure of his mouth, the movement of his lips, and the stroke of his fingers of my flesh.

And then I knew why Nate, the boy I had gone out with twice before the change, never would have been enough for me. I knew it, and I didn't want to admit it to anyone.

There was an embarrassed cough from the door, and Zach jerked himself away from me. I was panting. So was Zach, for that matter.

Sinclair stood just inside the room holding a lit candle in his hands. The pixies warbled protestingly at him. I wasn't certain what they were protesting, that the doctor had come in or that Zach had stopped kissing me.

"Sorry," Sinclair offered insincerely. "I heard someone yell."

Zach stalked out of the room with an abrupt, "Sorry I woke you, doc." Then he vanished into the darkness.

I heard his footsteps stomping down the hallway.

Sinclair moved to my side and said, "You all right, Sophie?"

"He wasn't assaulting me," I replied morosely. I wasn't sure what he'd been doing. Well, of course I knew what he had been doing, but I wasn't sure what his intent had been. Somehow, I just didn't see my feeble self as an irresistible bombshell that Zach just had to smooch on. Maybe it was his way of proving a point. Oh heck, what did I know about anything, much less the private thoughts of a man? All I really knew was that if Zach knew that I couldn't have let him die, he might realize that I was falling for him. If I could keep that from happening, perhaps it wouldn't hurt me so much when inevitably he left me just as everyone else had done in my life.

Sinclair sighed. "I didn't think he was," he said carefully.

Kara stumbled into the room. "Everything okay?" she said sleepily.

"Yes," I answered.

"Did you yell?" she said tiredly.

"No, that was Zach."

"Zach yelled?"

"Must have stubbed his toe."

Kara looked at me incredulously. "I was having the best dream, you dodo. There were these great trees, huge trees that grew up in the skies like miles. There were flowers everywhere and these neat log cabins all painted yellow. And I felt good, for the first time since...the change. And Zach stubbed his toe and yelled and woke me up thinking someone was in here trying to kill you again."

"It must have hurt a lot," I explained petulantly.

"That's funny," Sinclair said oddly. "It sounds like you were dreaming about the place we live, Kara. We simply call it The Redwoods because it's in the middle of the Redwood National Park. It used be a campground for city kids."

Kara's face twisted strangely. "You guys been eating something with cinnamon on it?"

I sighed.

* * *

Two days later I was there. It was exactly like Kara had described it. As a matter of fact, she was stunned when first she saw it. She rode her bicycle into a tree, but it was all right because she hadn't been going very fast. I was glad because she was pulling me in a makeshift trailer that Ethan and Zach had made for me. It had more room in it so that I could recline a little and it would have hurt when Kara made us fall over sideways because she was stupefied by the reality of her dream.

The trip had taken longer than they had planned. I had to get out often and stretch my legs. I had terrible leg cramps and the place where the doctor had repaired my rib ached. I could take some painkillers, but every time I did, I caught Kara and/or Zach looking at me oddly. I supposed I deserved that.

Before we left Crescent City, I had Kara run me two errands. She hit the library for me, and she picked something up in a specialty store. I said I didn't care what kind she got, but she brought me one that was obviously made for a man. So I stuck it in the trailer next to me and ignored the peculiar looks I gathered from the small group of people. The oversized book from the library garnered some other funny glances that I similarly ignored.

All bets are off people, I wanted to yell at them. Everyone's got to figure that out one way or another. I had almost been killed by the same man twice, or three times if I wanted to count ripping out the stitches on my wound while reacting to his strange provocation and running for my life. I didn't care to be ill prepared for a fourth attempt or for anything else that was going to happen for that matter.

The Japanese broadsword had protruded from the trailer like a little flag of defiance. It was still there in the trailer when we pedaled into the camp. Most oddly, it looked exactly like the one I had dreamed about. But I ignored it for the moment and looked at the camp instead. A pinewood sign announced it was no longer Camp Twegoh, but The Redwoods. The camp's name had been crossed over and the new words inserted below. Sinclair informed me that twegoh was a Yurok Indian word for raccoon, which explained the engraving on the sign of a large, enthusiastic-looking raccoon.

I supposed I was looking at the sign to avoid looking at all the people. They had come out to greet us. A mass of people that made my mouth dry with shock. They had said twenty, but it seemed like it was forty, a hundred, a thousand, a million! I could hear their enthusiastic voices greeting everyone. More than a few gave excited hugs to the returning people. Of course, that didn't include us. Zach, Kara, and I received curious examinations and friendly smiles as the reunions went on.

I slid a sideways glance to the wall of redwoods to the side, wondering if anyone would notice if I slipped off into the green shadows. Kara touched my arm and squeezed comfortingly. I think she noticed my discomfort immediately. "It'll be all right, hon," she said softly.

"What is it?" Zach said from my other side. "What's wrong with her?"

"Nothing," Kara sighed. "She's a little gun shy, kiddo. How long has it been since we've seen more than us around?"

"A month? Six weeks?" Zach didn't quite understand.

Kara gave me a little squeeze again. "Oh, figure it out, Einstein." Then to me she said, "We can find some place for you to lie down, Sophie. Somewhere away from the noise."

Gideon came up to us and waved his hands for quiet. "I'm going to make this short and sweet, because obviously we have an injured person here. Her name is Sophie, and she's from Springfield, Oregon. Then this is Zach from Medford." He pointed toward Zach. Then he motioned at Kara. "And last but least, Kara from Klamath Falls."

Gideon looked at us. "We'll get around to introductions of the folks here later. Right now, you have to know our rules. One. We don't wander out into the forest alone. I think you can guess why. It's doubly important now, considering what happened to Sophie. Two. I'm in charge. When I'm not in charge, Ethan's in charge. Three. Everyone does chores. Sophie will be excluded until the doctor says she's able to work. I'm sorry to put this on you here, but you need to know the rules."

Zach shrugged. "I was expecting something like that. Are we talking about a democracy here?"

"They elected me," Gideon said simply. "Next year we'll have another election. And everyone is freely able to make complaints to a tribunal. We're working on the rest. It's pretty new to us, too."

Kara nodded. "Do I smell food?"

Gideon laughed. "Smells like stew. Robert over there is getting pretty good with a crossbow. Elk stew, right?"

"Yep," Robert said agreeably. He was a lanky thirty-something-year-old with brown eyes and a friendly face. "But I keep hoping to bag a wild hog. I've got a terrible hankering for bacon."

I scanned the crowd carefully. The faces were smiling, curious, and interested. There was a range from ten years old to a man who looked to be in his sixties. Everyone was patently cheerful about our presence. There wasn't dissent. There wasn't unhappiness. There wasn't anger, and I felt very strange.

My chest was tight, and I knew it wasn't because of the healing lung. I didn't like being here. Suddenly, I became aware that imposed rules seemed contrary. And Zach wasn't speaking to me anymore. Instead, he asked Kara about me or shot me glowering stares from his frowning face. Then he would look away, if my eyes settled on him.

Sinclair and Kara came to help me from the trailer, and I shoved away everything I was feeling so that it went deep inside me. They put me in a cabin that was set up to be a medical clinic for the doctor and left me alone to go outside. There was a bed there that I suspected was the doctor's. I clumped up the pillow, laid down, and stared at the ceiling.

The noise from people talking to each other so eagerly floated inside to me and bothered me. I wanted to escape. OMG!
Chapter 15

Ain't It Peculiar?

Two weeks later, and I was pretty sure that things weren't improving. Physically, I was better. I could breathe. My stitches were gone. The red scar below my breasts was healed up and only itched occasionally. I was up and helping out in the ways that I could. I wasn't permitted to leave the campground until Sinclair said I was 100 percent well. Evidently, he didn't think I was, although I didn't agree, and I suspected that Zach had been whispering tales in his doctorly ears in order to sway that opinion. So I sat on a stool in the large camp kitchen and chopped vegetables or mixed food or sliced homemade bread.

Gibby was the cook, head chef, and captain supreme of dish washing. She was about the only one in the camp who didn't switch chores. She looked like she was about thirty-five years old, and she had blonde hair that was cut short. Her eyes were brown, and she had a nice wry sense of humor when she talked. Mostly, she liked to cook. She liked to find neat things to cook. She praised the scavengers when they brought things back that were interesting to her. "Beets? Cool beans." "Portobello mushrooms? Whiz bang." "Pickled snake heads? Neato mosquito."

Since I was basically in her way, she didn't say much to me. "Good job slicing potatoes, Sophie. Make them more square next time." "Slice the French bread, Sophie, not your fingers. I'm not making lady fingers today. Ha. Ha. Ha." "Go take a nap, Sophie. You look like a dust mop kicked your butt."

She kept a photograph of her family near her favorite six-burner stove. In it was a black-haired man with a goofy smile, Gibby with a sweet smile, and three kids who all favored their father and his inane smile. Since she often looked pensively at the photograph, I didn't complain about the lack of conversation.

When I did have conversations, it was with Kara, Sinclair, or the pixies who visited every few days. It got to where there were many people who enjoyed singing for the pesky little critters. One man named Thad even played the guitar for them, and they lapped it up like a cat with a saucer of cream. They also had to poke their noses into every corner of the camp from the goings-on in the kitchen to the giant fire pit where Robert had designed a roasting device for some of the larger animals he was hunting. However, the pixies never completely abandoned me. They always came to see how I was doing; several stayed with me every time they visited. Sometimes when I woke up in the middle of the night, I would see a faint green light flutter past as one went from one place to the next. I guess I really was a member of their clan.

Zach had volunteered to scavenge with the group of people who traveled around to various cities in the vicinity. They had headed out to Eureka on a trip a few days before. They had taken bicycles with trailers like the one that had carted me around. They planned to return in a week or so, depending on what they could find. Sinclair explained they were to bring back vitamins, food, and various other essentials decided by a triumvirate of the group designated to make those judgments.

Gee. Re-civilization was very civilized. Madame Sarcasm, take a bow. I knew I shouldn't be like that; it wasn't like I had better ideas. I was simply trying to keep my head on straight. No one was bugging me. Mostly no one was staring at me, except one guy, and he had thankfully gone on the volunteer expedition.

So I got to read my how-to-sword fight book. Reading a book wasn't going to properly prepare me, but it was going to lay the groundwork. I wanted to understand what I was getting into.

The other thing I did was to move into the female barracks. Once a dorm for junior camp counselors, there were five of us in there. I was the youngest. The others varied from twenty-five to fifty-six. Five men stayed in the male barracks that had been the junior male counterpart. The others bunked together or in various cabins all over the campground. Gideon had his own place that was once the head counselor's hideout. Ethan and Calida were a pair and stayed together in a single cabin. Overall there were ten females and thirteen males. There were twenty-three people who had survived the most significant event ever to take place in our lifetimes.

The place had its own rash of problems. Mostly logistical stuff. Food storage. Food containment. Obtaining fresh food. The latrines were a huge issue. Obtaining water was a little easier. The campground had its own natural spring. The only thing that didn't seem to be a problem was that the people unnaturally got along. I mean they didn't even seem to get mildly irritated with each other. No snarling, griping, complaining, or yelling. Unless you wanted to count Zach's continued irritation with me, there didn't seem to be any infighting. And I don't think anyone but Kara was aware of Zach's anger with me, and since Zach was absent, it wasn't a concern.

I had a lot of time to observe. Talk about social dynamics in play. This would have been a sociologist's dream come true. My father, in particular, would have been twitching with eagerness to interview and develop protocols for testing his various hypotheses. And the psychologists would have been panting right behind the sociologists.

Gideon was the leader and that in itself was odd. The others kowtowed to him, even in minor decisions. He was fifteen years old; although I thought he had an old soul way of acting. Even the sixty-something man deferred to Gideon. It wasn't fawning; it was respectful observance of Gideon's decisions. When had that ever been the norm in American society? Never, for sure. Elders are always considered to be more apt leaders. Age is considered a basis for experience, knowledge, and ability. Being neither older, nor experienced, Gideon was a strange choice for an elected leader, and the reasoning behind that wasn't explained to me. But I do need to mention that I didn't ask either.

I couldn't very well put it in my notes because the situation wasn't really a new animal, but it was strange. And don't get me wrong, it wasn't that I distrusted Gideon, it was that he was two years younger than I was, for Pete's sake. If they'd elected me to be their leader, I probably would have marched them off to Los Angeles in search of a way to resurrect Starbucks for a beloved latte, which is part and parcel of why I wasn't in the position. Did I mention that I had no earthly desire to be the head honcho?

And the others? They did their things. There was a lot to do in a camp like this. Having no electricity, they did chores by hand, and that always took longer. Washing clothes, dishes, preparing food, and getting ready for winter were all priorities. I watched them with idle speculation that both confused me and made me sad. They laughed with each other. They made jokes with each other. They even mourned their old lives and vanished loved ones with a genial acceptance that disturbed me. Regardless of their grief, they developed new friendships and love, in the case of Ethan and Calida. Even Kara was developing a group of friends with an alacrity I found nearly alarming.

Things weren't better because I wasn't better. I didn't like being around a group of people. I didn't want to start liking anyone. I didn't want to get close. If I got too close, then there was such a high possibility that they would be taken away from me.

I wasn't the same seventeen-year-old girl who had hiked up a mountain trail with her father two months before. And the people there knew it. They spoke to me. They were polite. But they didn't try to crack my shell any more than I tried to open up to them.

There were two exceptions. One was the guitar-playing man named Thad. He was fifty-two and came from San Francisco. He reminded me of my father, and he went out of his way to be kind to me, even when I barely spoke in monosyllables to him. I knew I wasn't acting like an adult, but I wasn't exactly certain how I should act.

The other barefaced exception was Elan. Elan was ten years old. He weighed maybe sixty pounds and was about five feet tall. His hair was the color of burnished wood and just as curly as it could be without hot rollers. His eyes were large and brown and gave Zach a run for his money. He was the youngest of the group. He slept in a cabin with two of the older women who mothered him incessantly.

Gibby said in a rare moment of tête-à-tête that Elan knew things, in a similar way to Gideon. Not wanting to put any more attention on my private theory, I gave Elan the briefest of attention. But it wasn't so from his perspective.

Elan thought I was pretty tight. The words he used were, "kewl" and "fly." Often I caught him watching me when I wasn't supposed to know he was watching me. Finally, he came to me in the kitchen and asked candidly, "How did you get them to put the tattoo on your face?"

I was dicing vegetables for Gibby with a very large and sharp knife, being careful to get them in neat little squares because Gibby might break out a ruler after I was done. I knew what the kid was talking about, although I could have played dumb. "I didn't ask the pixies to put it there," I said pertly. "And it's not a tattoo."

Gibby was stirring something on the stove about a mile away in the oversized kitchen. She spared us a brief glance and went back to work. She had fresh chicken to work with and was having a great time with developing a menu. She hadn't even groaned about de-feathering and gutting the birds that someone had brought back from a farm miles away. She'd even started someone on building a chicken coop, visions of omelets dancing in her head.

Elan frowned at me. Those big brown eyes were pools of emotion. Other than Gideon, who didn't really count, I was the closest in age to him. I wondered if that was why he was picking on me. "But they put it on you, right?" he insisted.

I nodded reluctantly. Tattoos were cool to a ten-year-old, but it wasn't a tattoo, and I hadn't asked for it. Not that I was complaining either. I could see the little wheels going click-click-clunk in his head. He wanted a face pixie, and he wanted me to tell him how to go about getting one. Maybe he even wanted a little pixie for a pet. Wait until one of them went for his eyes in a fit over him pulling on their wings a little too hard. Yikes!

"It glows in the dark," Elan said conspiratorially to me, casting a quick glance at Gibby as if she was going to tell on him for doing something he shouldn't do.

"They're not pets," I told him plainly. "They won't play with you. They won't put something on your face because you want it to be so."

The frown on his little skinny face appeared again. He didn't want to hear that from me. "I don't want one as a pet," he said after a moment. His narrow shoulders contorted in an awkward shrug. "They're just so...fly."

"They're special," I told him, relenting a little. "We have to treat them specially. They'll protect us if we do. They'll warn us if something is wrong. We can never hurt them or try to force them into doing something they don't want to do."

Elan's head tilted at me, and I was reminded of the pixies aptitude in doing exactly that motion. "I don't want to hurt them," he protested mildly, the sincerity in his voice bubbling over. "They're kewl. Really kewl. I mean, what else have we got now? No T.V. No PlayStation. No GameBoy. No kids around my age. I can't chat online with my posse anymore." His face crumpled a little. "I can't IM my mom anymore."

Suddenly, I had a not so paranormal vision of what the last months had been like for Elan. He'd eventually woken up in his bed before nothing had happened to wake him up. When he'd gone looking for his parents, they had been gone. He probably hadn't noticed the empty bed clothes that had been left. His sisters and brothers had been gone, as well. The phone hadn't worked either. He was alone, oh, so utterly alone, and he was only ten years old. He barely knew how to tie his shoes. Then, when he'd gone to the neighbors, they weren't there either. So he'd waited. And he'd waited. He'd gotten sick eating too many cookies instead of something more nutritional. When he was throwing up in the bathroom, he realized that no one was there, and he was by himself.

God, I thought sickly. How had he survived by himself? And more sickly, I thought, What about the other children who survived? Have some of them starved to death because they were all alone out there?

"I knew Gideon was waiting for me," Elan said suddenly. His brown eyes were wet. I knew he wasn't reading my mind, he was reading my face. "I knew that he was waiting for me and that I could trust him. So I went to find him. I used my skateboard." His skinny shoulders shrugged again. "I've always known stuff. Like I knew about you."

I put the knife down on the cutting board before I accidentally cut off one of my fingers. Gibby glanced our way again and then went back to the chickens she was stewing. She was adding herbs with a zest that was abnormal to me. "What did you know about me?" I asked carefully.

"I saw you with the other man, the man who was hurt so badly," Elan said. "The guy with the twisted smile and the black face."

I jerked. Elan was talking about the Burned Man.

"He was hurting you," Elan said matter-of-factly. "Gideon saw something too, but he never told me what. He, Doc, and the others took off to the north right after I told Gideon about the feeling." He plucked up a piece of carrot, checked to see that Gibby wasn't watching, and popped into his mouth.

"Does that happen much?"

"Not really," Elan said. "Sometimes the information's so mucked up I can't tell what it is to help anyone. Once I told my grandmother to buy a lottery ticket, and she won ten thousand dollars. But another time I told a teacher not to cross the street while it was raining, and he thought I was crazy." He nodded to himself. "Mr. Barradas got hit by a car the next time there was a rain storm. The guy in the car, what do they call it? His car slid across the wet pavement."

"Hydroplaned," I said.

"Yes, that's it. The guy hydroplaned, and Mr. Barradas spent the next three months in a body cast. He still uses...he, uh...well, he had to use a cane after that." Elan's face fell a little with the knowledge that his former teacher was as gone as everyone else.

"That must have been hard for you to know that," I said carefully. All I ever had were bad feelings, although the last one had been a doozy.

"Naw," he said. "My mom always told me it wasn't up to me to save the world. All I could do is warn someone and let them do with it what they would."

Poor little guy.

"Tell you what," I said suddenly. "The next time the firefly pixies come, I'll try to get one to land on you, okay?"

"Sure," he said, cheered. "Well, I got to go. Amanda is giving me an English lesson. I've got to read this one book. It's called Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIHM. Have you read it?"

I nearly laughed. Apparently, irony wasn't lost yet. "Sure, a long time ago. Good book. I think you'll like it."

Elan smiled at me as he scuttled out of the kitchen, but not before he snagged a cookie from a cookie jar near one of the swinging double doors.

When I looked back at Gibby, she was smiling at me, too.

Me? I scowled to myself.

* * *

The next day a new person came in. His name was Tomas. Boy, was he glad to see us. One of the people who were watching by the highway brought him in. He kept staring at everyone as if he thought they were going to vanish suddenly.

Yes, I knew that feeling.

Tomas was in his fifties and a carpenter. Gideon was gleefully rubbing his hands together at that. A few of the cabins had roof issues and Tomas was welcome as all get out. He fit right in, and I didn't pay much attention to him until he said he'd seen Gideon's sign near Redding.

We were in the cafeteria because it was sprinkling outside. Gibby had made something with the chicken leftovers that was like creamed chicken over toast, but tasted a lot better than any creamed chicken over toast that my mother had made, and the bread was made from scratch. It was especially appreciated since I knew Gibby had used powdered milk to make the concoction. Power to Gibby. She was a culinary genius.

Tomas, a short man with a handlebar mustache and a Texas twang, was talking about his wandering. It had gotten to be a ritual for people to tell their various where-they-were-when-it-happened stories, although I hadn't shared. Neither had Zach for that matter, and I was very interested in that one.

But Tomas had come from Sacramento where he had lived. His brother had lived in Redding, but both of them had been born in Austin, Texas. There hadn't been any indication of his brother still being around. But there had been Gideon's sign. Similar to the one I had burned down, it said "YOU ARE NOT ALONE!" That one had an additional line: Go to Highway 101, head north toward the Redwood National Park, mile marker 47, to account for the different location of the billboard.

Abruptly, I shot to my feet and knocked my tray on the floor. The clatter echoed for what seemed like forever. My face was burning as everyone stared at me in sudden silence.

"What'd I say?" Tomas asked curiously.

"Just clumsy," I said into the silence that followed. Conversation came back as Tomas continued his story about crossing over the Whiskeytown-Shasta-Trinity National Recreation Area. He'd walked because he didn't like bicycles.

"Gosh darn, they've got hills there," Tomas complained good-naturedly. "Tuckered me plumb out. I don't know how the rest of you ride on those bicycles. Gives my rump a headache thinking about those teeny tiny seats."

But that wasn't what I was thinking about as I cleaned up after myself. Kara was sitting next to me and whispered, "What's wrong, Sophie?"

I shook my head at her. Was I the only one with a brain around there? I was beginning to think I was the only paranoid one. Finally, I finished picking up the remnants of my dinner, and I couldn't help myself. I looked directly at Gideon, who was sitting two tables over. Elan was on one side of him, and a thirty-something woman named Elizabeth was on his other. Shocked, I saw that Gideon was looking directly at me.

"We have to talk," I said loudly to Gideon and he nodded.

As the banter died away at my statement of fact, I congratulated myself on being a real conversational killer. Yee-haw! But that old saying was coursing through my head: Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Chapter 16

Way to Start a Brouhaha...

Gideon trailed after me once I put my tray away. Two someone elses had dish duty, and I didn't feel guilty over that. (The group was following the camp's former traditions by bussing their own tables, much to my continued bemusement.) A great many pairs of eyes tracked us as we went out the double doors in the front of the cafeteria. I paused to allow Gideon to catch up.

The temperature felt like it was in the low sixties, and the sun was starting to plummet. I wrapped my arms around my body and waited. Gideon took a breath and said, "Let's take a walk." He motioned with his hand. "It'll keep us warm enough." We moved around the building that housed the cafeteria and the kitchen and went through a copse of thick redwoods. The campground was situated in the thickest part of the national forest. The land had been privately owned before the national forest had been established.

Privately I thought it was a wonderful place. Although I had never gone to camp, hiking had been my dad's mainstay, and I had been dragged along for the walk. Most of the time I hadn't minded, but I always fussed as if I had. Thinking about my father made me glower, so I clenched my lips together and tried to think of nothing at all.

There were trails everywhere around the campground. A few had wood burned signs indicating where they led. One path said it was the Bluff Trail – 2 miles. Another said it was the Hill Trail – 5 miles. A third stated it was the Orick Trail – 8 miles. Gideon pointed at that one and said, "If you ever need to go to town, that one goes to the nearest small town. You have to ford Redwood Creek, which can be tricky if the water level is up, but it's doable."

We passed someone coming in to eat. It was one of the men I didn't know who did periodic guard duty near the highway. "Hi," Gideon said. "Gibby made a great chicken dish. Also peas, and can you believe it? Peach cobbler."

The man smacked his lips in appreciation. He said reverently as he went past, "That woman sure can cook."

"What difference does it make if I know what trail goes where?" I asked, more sullenly than I would have liked. People at the camp probably thought it was my permanent expression.

Gideon studied the forest before us and made the turn onto the Bluff Trail. I followed without exception. "It doesn't matter to me," he said precisely. "I think it matters to you. It's an escape route for you. It parallels the highway, comes close sometimes, but it'll keep you off the main road. If you should have to go, you might have an easier time on the trail rather than the road."

I hesitated. Well color me easy-to-read. Resident obsessed teenager. "Where are we going?"

"Up on the bluff," Gideon answered straightforwardly. "It's got a great view. I want to show you something."

Okay. I followed along slowly because I wasn't as chipper as I was pretending to be. Gideon set a mellow pace, and before long, we were going up a gradual incline. I had to stop halfway to the top, and Gideon didn't mind waiting as I huffed and puffed.

"The lung's still healing," he said. I looked up at him and silently cursed his younger, healthier, non-injured body.

"Been talking to Sinclair?" I panted.

"Got his permission to bring you up here," Gideon grinned at me. He looked like a cheerful fifteen-year-old boy. Red hair like the color of carrots. He had blue eyes, and that didn't seem right to me. A boy with hair that red should have had green eyes. His shoulders were broad, and he had yet to fill into a man's body. He was about five inches taller than I was, and I thought that he wasn't done growing yet.

When we finally made it to the top, I was delighted, i.e. mucho relieved, to see a bench that had been made from fallen logs. It was parked in the middle of a clearing that looked out over the Redwood Forest and over the Pacific Ocean at the end of the trail. Gideon said, "You should sit before you fall down."

I grimaced at him and sat before he became correct. I didn't think a little hill and a meager two miles would have bothered me that much, but I had been sedentary and sick for too many days. Gideon stood beside me and looked out to the west. "Look," he said. "Tell me what you see."

I struggled for my breath and scanned the forest before us. I finally settled on what appeared to be a trail through the great trees. I didn't get it at first, but I craned my neck for a closer view. The size and width of the trail was contrary to the size of the redwood forest. "Did something make that trail?" I asked warily. "Something really, really big?"

"They're like a mix between an elephant and a brachiosaurus," Gideon said wryly. "Kind of, anyway. Apparently, they migrate through the forest to the sea. They made that trail, and look, there's a few of them."

Faintly, I heard the crunching and thumping of distant large creatures. They followed their ready-made trail and headed toward the ocean. All I could see were the gray humps and the heads as they bobbed up and down. They were a little too distant for me to make out details. I could see their oversized ears and a long tail that stretched far back. They appeared to be several times bigger than any elephant I've ever seen. It was one for the notebook. "Vegetarians?" I asked hopefully.

"Herbivores," Gideon confirmed. "Grass, trees, leaves. Lucky for the redwoods there aren't very many of them. They head for the grassy plains of the coastal ranges to eat. Then they migrate back to the ocean."

"What, they sleep in the ocean?"

"The islands there," Gideon pointed. "They swim out there every day and swim back in the morning like clockwork." The shapes were faint in the distant lights. The sun just barely silhouetted their forms.

I frowned. "I don't remember California having islands up here."

"They didn't," Gideon said solemnly. "They weren't here before the change."

"Sweet," I muttered, awestricken. What was next? Dragons? "They hang out on the island? And what do you call them?"

"I haven't been over there," Gideon said regretfully. "Big Mamas is the going phrase for them. It's still open for debate."

I took a minute to tell Gideon about the big green fish thing we'd seen up the coast, AKA Big Green. "I don't think going out in a boat is a good idea," I added.

Gideon shrugged. "Maybe not. Why did you want to talk to me?"

"Take down your signs," I said vehemently. I wasn't going to pull any punches. Based on Gideon's reaction, he knew exactly what I was talking about.

"What makes you think he hasn't already seen a sign?"

"I don't know that he hasn't," I said, frustrated with Gideon's perceptiveness. "But the Burned Man is dangerous. He's a threat to your people. Think about it, Gideon. He won't come in here and cut your throats in the night. He'll set a fire one day when the wind is blowing fiercely to the south. He'll wait until the forest is dry from lack of rain. He'll set it, and he'll laugh when he does it."

"Lightning starts fires every season, Sophie," Gideon said gently. "It's one of the risks we have by living here."

I nearly groaned. "If you destroy the signs, he might not be able to find this place."

"I sent two people to replace the sign you burned down," Gideon said almost idly.

I stood straight up and measured myself against him. "Have you lost your mind?"

"There are others out there who are looking for something," Gideon told me compassionately. "They need other people, too. They need people like us. They have to have a way of finding us."

I wanted to chew something just so my teeth had something to grind upon. "I realize that," I said. "But you've given an open invitation to this...freak show. This man wanted to carve my lungs from my body. What makes you think you can stop him from killing people here?"

"You stopped him," he said calmly.

"I broke his jaw with my foot, Gideon, not because I knew what to do, but because I got lucky," I told him coolly. "I took a bite out of his arm the size of a walnut. If I hadn't hit an artery, I'm not sure if he would have stopped. You, Zach, and Kara would have just found a big red stain on the highway and nothing else."

That got a slight reaction out of Gideon. His body jerked. He knew exactly how close I had come to dying. "How did you know he would be there?" he asked deliberately.

My mouth snapped shut.

"All right," he said. "I'll tell you instead. You had a hunch. Something in your mind told you he'd be there and that you had to hold him back somehow. Maybe you thought that burning the sign would do the trick. He wouldn't find the invitation and wouldn't be able to track you."

There was a distant roar from the Big Mamas. It was a trumpeting sound that reverberated around us. It made me think of being cast into a time machine that had taken me back to the age of dinosaurs. I guess the Grimm brothers missed the Big Mamas.

"Am I correct?" he asked.

I sat back down on the log seat. The sun had completed its descent and all that was left were orange and pink clouds. "Not exactly," I said.

Gideon seemed surprised. I guessed he thought he had all the answers. "Where am I wrong?"

"I didn't go there to stop him. I went to save Zach," the words were out of my mouth before I could help myself. I could have thrown myself on the ground in mute aggravation when I realized what I had done. If my mouth was any larger, they would name it after a president and have tours.

Gideon considered my words. "But Zach didn't go because you drugged him and Kara." He looked back toward the ocean and smiled slightly. "And you didn't tell Zach why."

I shook my head.

"He's angry with you, and you won't tell him?" Gideon asked incredulously. He reached up to stroke his chin. "Puzzling. Why wouldn't you tell him?"

I knew that Gideon wasn't asking me the question. He was asking himself instead.

"We've had a few people come in who didn't warm up to the others right away," Gideon said quietly. "Like you. You're the longest shutout, however. You like to stay by yourself. You talk to Kara and that's about it. Sometimes you talk to Sinclair. Thad tries hard with you. Elan's got his claws into you, too. Despite that, when you talk about our group, you don't use the word 'our.' You use 'your' and 'you've.' I think it's something to do with being isolated for so long."

"It wasn't that long," I inserted rapidly, wanting him to stop his wretched psychoanalysis.

"And the first person you run into isn't someone like me or Kara or Zach, but a crazed maniac intent on killing you," he went on evenly.

"I think he's of the cannibal persuasion," I put in, sarcastic now.

"Killing you and eating you." He rubbed his chin some more. "Must have scared the holy living crud out of you. I think I'd still be having nightmares."

"I didn't mean to wake them up," I said regretfully, referring to my cabin mates.

"They didn't complain," Gideon told me.

My big mouth. Big. Big. Biggest.

"And you've never talked about how you woke up the morning after the change," Gideon went on. "People have asked, but you've avoided it and deftly, too."

"I have talked about it," I said sourly. "And I don't feel like talking about it more."

"Kara said you were with your father on a hiking trip," Gideon said kindly. "Alone in the mountains in Oregon."

Kara's got a bigger mouth that I do. Huh. For a woman who didn't want to get in the middle of Zach and I having power struggles, she didn't mind starting a little something-something on the side. Must be a side effect from not having daytime television to watch anymore.

"Let's cut to the chase," I said sharply. I stood up again. "And let's get off this bluff before its pitch-black. I can't see in the dark."

"We won't need to see in the dark," Gideon said. He smiled as the horde of firefly pixies came over the side of the bluff and began to circle us avidly. They buzzed and whirled and chattered joyfully at me, and I smiled even though I didn't feel like smiling. Several even jittered happily at Gideon.

They lit the way for us, and Gideon didn't rub it in. As we walked the trail, he hummed Jingle Bells all the way down to the camp.

When I got to the camp it didn't take any little coaxing to get one of the pixies to land on Elan's arm. They did it as if they had been doing it for years. The broad-faced sappy grin on the kid's face was worth a million bucks, or in this case, a bowl of vanilla ice cream.

And when I looked up Gideon was smiling knowingly at me.

Jerkinstein.

* * *

Did I mention that I was having this terrible feeling? A longing. A desire that wasn't being fulfilled. It was centered on my gut as if something was yanking at the bottom of my heart. Cookies didn't salve the yearning, even if someone had found a huge batch of some bagged kind that was still out-of-the-oven soft. I wasn't the drinking type, so alcohol wasn't an answer. (Besides which, Gideon had a rule about alcohol, too. It wasn't going to be allowed for several months until everyone had worked out their mourning periods. It didn't matter to me, but there were a few people who hankered for a beer after a hard day of work in the camp.) Reading the how-to-sword fight book put my unnamable feeling on the back burner for a little while. But after my eyes were tired from reading, it came back with a rush.

Putting a name to the yearning was the worst part. I think half the camp knew before I did. Elan walked past me a few days later and said, "He'll be back soon."

I said stupidly, "Who?"

Elan giggled and went to his class with Amanda. Shaking my head, I went to find a stick that I could use to start my stick fighting practice. I wasn't going to start with the sword because I was more apt to cut off my leg than learn anything productive.

Then the firefly pixies came to me while I was painstakingly making a sparring dummy out of a log. I had found all the tools I needed in one of the sheds and was giving the process some intense thought. Finally, I decided to mount it with rope to a tall branch so it could swing freely.

Tomas the carpenter came to see what I was doing. "Oh, yeah. Good idea. Not boxing. Stick fighting, right?"

I nodded. "I need some help getting the dummy hanging."

"Sure. I'll get a ladder," Tomas nodded genially at me. "You're still a little flakey from being injured somehow, right?"

I nodded again, not so eagerly. Apparently, someone had resisted telling Tomas that story, or maybe it just hadn't come up yet.

"Well then, Sophie," he said. "I can give you some tips. I trained in a Philippine dojo when I was in the air force. Stick fighting is a fading art." He considered. "Really fading now, unless we happen to run into a master who survived."

"I've got a book, but," I shrugged and let the words fade away. "You know. Books aren't like real life."

"Nosiree," Tomas agreed. "We'll make our own form, huh? You won't mind if I pitch in?"

I shook my head.

"Don't talk much, do you?" He laughed. "Do I need to ask why you want to learn all this?" He waved at the wooden form I had scrupulously created.

"Not everyone is friendly now," I said succinctly.

"No," Tomas said solemnly. "No, I reckon not. Hate to run into the fella who's out for something other than the pure companionship of another human."

Been there. Done that. Had the t-shirt.

Tomas looked at the pixies that were circling us. "Man, I ain't never gonna get tired of seeing those little girls." He smiled fondly. "They're like magic." He carefully shook his head as one of them tugged on his mustache. Apparently, the pixies thought his facial hair was very fascinating. "I'll go get that ladder."

I sighed and sat down on a fallen log near the small clearing I was using as a makeshift training arena. The pixies settled around me and buzzed restlessly as if they were slightly agitated.

Finally I perceived that they were excited. "Sak! Sak! Sak!" they cried at once as soon as it dawned on me.

I looked across the camp and saw the bicycles rolling into the parking lot. Several tired, dust-covered people on bikes with loaded trailers came to stops as they entered the campground proper. The scavengers had returned, and the name of my yearning had popped into my head. Oh dear, I thought. I missed him. What was wrong with me?

Even though twilight was on the camp, Zach climbed off the bicycle, and his unerring gaze found me across a solid acre of land. Our eyes locked, and it was like a beam of light that couldn't be turned off.

And I shivered.
Chapter 17

Kara Has a Say...

Of course I chickened out. I fled to the cabin like a little weenie. The firefly pixies split up between flying to greet Zach and trailing after me in a confused glow. Sure the little girls could tell something was up, but they weren't much on advice for the lovelorn, or in my case, the totally, paranoidally, confused lovelorn.

And the next few days were really out of the ordinary. (That was a touch of sarcasm.) Day-to-day life included doing chores. There was a chart posted on the outdoor billboard that used to hold announcements for campers. People were supposed to switch on a daily basis so no one got to do anything good or bad for too long. Good was guard duty for some. Bad was digging new latrines and covering old ones. For me, it wasn't so bad because Sinclair had made a list of the chores I could do and those that I couldn't do. Digging latrines was not on my approved list, but I did get to chop a lot of vegetables and collect eggs from the chickens in the coop Gibby had had built. Furthermore, the doctor wasn't crazy about the stick fighting classes.

So joy of joys, after chores I got to sit and watch Tomas teaching some of the others about stick fighting. Tomas wasn't going to let me participate until Sinclair had given me the okay. When I tried to walk the Bluff Trail by myself, I was held back by Ethan, who appeared in front of me as if he had come out of the mist.

"I'm just trying to get back into 'normal' shape," I explained plaintively. With my fingers, I made the quotation marks around the word "normal."

Ethan just stared down at me. With his heavy beard and massive shape, he reminded me of a very large bear. He made the smaller Calida look like an imp when they were next to each other. When they thought no one was looking, they were very demonstrative. He liked to hold hands, which went to show that he was more bark than bite, and one of his hands was about the size of both of Calida's combined. "You know the rules, Sophie," he said finally. "No one goes into the forest by themselves."

"Fine," I responded fitfully. "You go with me."

He smiled smugly. "Can't. Busy with the triumvirate. But don't let that give you an idea to go sneak off by yourself."

Did you ever want to throw your arms over your chest and march away with your chin in the air like a four-year-old child? I did right at that moment. "It's just the Bluff Trail, for heaven's sake," I cajoled. "Nothing there! I need to get some of my strength back. Someone's going to kick sand in my face soon!"

"Rick and Kala saw a bear yesterday," Ethan informed me with excruciating politeness, ignoring or not understanding my jab at humor. I could tell what he really wanted to do was to yell at me. I don't think he thought much of me.

"A bear?" I repeated doubtfully. Ethan reminded me of bears and wham, there was one. "California has bears?"

"Black bears," he replied. "They're not usually concerned with humans, and they don't normally attack unless provoked or cornered. But see here, the bears have lost some of their food sources. A lot of park bears lived on human refuse. And guess what? No more tourists! Bears are searching wider for food sources. You're about the same size as a deer, and bear's really like their meat fresh. So be careful."

Ethan wandered off in the direction of the buildings the group used as offices and meeting areas. I called after him, "Are they sure it was a bear?"

"Well, it wasn't a unicorn," Ethan called back laughingly.

That showed what he knew. "It might have been, you know!" I yelled at his back. He didn't look back, but his shoulders twitched.

"I'll walk up with you," said another voice and my spine went straight.

I had been making a habit of avoiding Zach, and I had been so successful that it was a shock to have him standing right behind me. I looked longingly at the sign for the Bluff Trail and then said reluctantly, "I'm sure you have other things to do."

Zach made a noise. I wasn't sure what the noise was, but then I wasn't sure of a lot of things. It could have been irritation. It could have been annoyance. It could have been gas. Really, I didn't know. (It wasn't gas. That was a bad joke.)

"You're avoiding me," he said.

Duh. "It's the appropriate reaction when you made it perfectly clear how angry you are with me," I said, not looking at him. "Really, really angry," I added for explanation's sake.

The noise came again. It wasn't gas. (Two jokes. I was becoming a comedian.) "I'm beginning to appreciate that you might have had a very good reason for doing what you did, Sophie," he said carefully.

Oooh! Diplomatic.

I turned and looked at him. He was still about six feet tall. His shoulders were handsomely broad. His hair was still that wonderful chestnut brown that gleamed in the September light. And his eyes were still that same color of chocolate brown. He wore a sunshine yellow t-shirt and a pair of worn jeans that showed off the remainder of his enviable form. All in all, his features were still patently faultless. The cherry on top was that he didn't seem angry with me at that moment. Instead, he was looking at me oddly, an expression that made me think he was very pleased to see me alone for a moment. It was enough to give a girl a case of the vapors. And what do you know, my heart went pitter-pitter-patter in my chest, and my breathing lurched. Then I made a really weird noise that sounded like half a hiccough and half a gasp.

The hitch of my breath gave Zach a little case of what-now? and he stepped closer to me with an alarmed, "You okay?"

I took a deep breath, let it out, and then took another one. As I tried to compose myself, I thought, Boy am I acting like a scared little teenager or what? Wait a minute, I was a scared little teenager. Silly me. "I'm okay," I said after a minute of trying to regulate my breathing. Then as his expression relaxed, I thought that I might as well get it over with. "Okay, let's go."

Zach pointed. "Up the trail?"

"Yes," I replied. "Have you seen the Big Mamas?"

He laughed. "Closer than you have, I imagine. You wouldn't believe how big they are."

"Maybe you can help me put it in my notebook," I said before I realized what I was saying. Perhaps if I tried hard enough I could get both feet in my mouth. After all, I didn't want him to get closer to me, I wanted him further away. (Didn't I?) Quickly, I added, "What else have you seen?"

Zach gazed at me attentively. "There was a group of these little things that crossed the road en masse around Eureka. They looked like a cross between spiders and turtles. They had eight legs. There was an entire area that was covered with cobwebs, and we avoided it because there were a few oversized cobweb-covered lumps that were animals they had snared. Some were as big as rabbits."

I led the way while Zach told me about the little creatures. On that particular trip I had to rest three-quarters of the way up and Zach was looking at me with no little amount of alarm. I didn't need to be a psychic to know he was wondering if I had bitten off a little too much to chew.

"The doctor," I panted, "says I have," big pause for breath, "to keep using my lungs," I finished in one quick breath. "No babying," pant, "them."

"And the stick fighting?" Zach asked, obviously engrossed with the way I was breathing. "Is that a prelude for sword fighting?"

"I don't," I panted, "have the shoulder strength," panted again, "for the crossbow."

Zach thought about it for a minute. "It's not a bad idea." Then of course he had to add, "As long as you don't cut your leg off."

After a while I was able to breathe normally, and we continued up the trail. We passed two people coming back down who stopped to talk to Zach animatedly. They smiled at me, and I smiled at them, but they weren't really interested in me. Zach had been outside the camp lately, and that was very fascinating. Who knew what he had seen?

"A jetliner over by Arcata," Zach was saying, "crashed into the side of a hill. I think it's a 747, but it's hard to tell. The jet fuel caused a fire that burned what was left of it and about a mile all the way around. Several houses, too. I never thought about all the planes that must have been up at the moment that everything changed. I hope no one survived the change on board a plane, only to crash a few minutes later."

"A jet," the woman repeated, amazement in her tone. "It was probably empty, but if it wasn't, at least it was quick."

The man said, "There's got to be hundreds of plane crashes then. If not thousands. How many planes had to be in the air at that moment?"

Zach shrugged, and the pair continued down the trail with a friendly nod.

I was grateful that I had had another moment of rest before the steepest part of the trail. Zach took my elbow although I made a little movement of protest. After his fingers connected with my flesh, I really wanted to pull away. There was that same electricity that flowed between the two of us. It arced and sizzled. When I glanced down at my limb, I expected to see a scorch mark.

When we reached the top I was sincerely appreciative that I could rest on the log bench. I nearly threw myself on it. Zach stood awkwardly for a moment and then sat next to me. Not too close, of course.

All these darned feelings were making me irritable. Nana had a saying for that, too. She was pithy, if not explicit: Pee or get off the potty, girl. I didn't want to get close to Zach. Something was going to happen to him if I did, and I didn't want that. But when I caught a hint of his masculine scent or felt the touch of his fingers on my skin, I wanted something else. I wasn't stupid, but I'd had zero boyfriends. Nate, my two whole dates, had been my first real boyfriend-in-training. My parents had been of the no-boyfriends-until-you're-thirty-five affiliation. There had been awareness in high school, but boys always seemed engrossed in my friends, the twins, or in being my friend. On the whole, it hadn't bothered me until now.

Now it seemed like there was a more important agenda. Life was happening, and I couldn't afford to be a gawky little teenager anymore. I didn't know whether I should push or pull Zach. I felt like a critter out of Doctor Doolittle.

"Gideon said I should speak to you," Zach said softly.

Wondering if I could fake passing out, I bit back a groan. Every single person in the camp was a darned nosy, stick-their-heads-where-they-don't-belong snoopalophagus. Butting-in was becoming the latest national pastime. Deciding against the fake passing-out ploy, I tried for innocent instead. "Why's that?"

"I was angry with you," Zach admitted calmly. "Very angry. But Gideon said you had a good reason, one that might not be easy for me to understand or even to listen to."

I looked out over the redwood forest. The Big Mamas' trail was empty. It was a little early for the mammoth beasts to be headed back out to sea. But I wished they would show up so I could change the subject. Now, please, now.

"And you still want me to tell you," I stated plainly.

"Yeah," he divulged. "I want to know. But I'll wait until you're ready to tell me."

I looked at him in surprise.

A wry expression altered his perfect features. "Shocked?" he asked. "Me, too. I'm not usually so accommodating." He laughed, and it was clear it was at himself. "Not that I'm giving you an excuse to start any more crap." He shook his index finger at me. "People have been talking about your burn-down-the-signs rampage."

I wanted to shut down then. I had been vocal about the blasted signs, and I hadn't limited my outrage to Gideon. However, I didn't want to talk about him \- the Burned Man. "It doesn't have to be forever," I said, gritting my teeth. Never mind that it was probably already too late. After all, it was about three weeks since I had been injured by the man. Who knew what he was up to?

"Maybe not," he agreed. "But I don't want to let one lone psycho scare me into living my life differently than I would have."

Brave words. And it was a little too late for the sentiment because we had let the psycho run us down the coast. Had he forgotten that?

Zach grimaced as if he had read my mind. "I know. I already let him impact us. But we don't have to do that now. We've got numbers."

Suddenly, I didn't want to be the one who put a damper on the whole thing. The Burned Man could do anything he wanted, and I wouldn't be able to say "boo" until after it was all said and done.

I heard a distant crunch and saw that the Big Mamas were making their trek back to the sea. A zoologist would be drooling on himself right now because of all the new creatures that were roaming the world. Too bad the group didn't include one of those.

Zach looked out at the animals. "They have babies already," he said. "I guess they brought them with them from wherever they came from."

"So did Fernie," I said. "So did the unicorns. Who knows why?"

"Calida is pregnant," he added.

No secrets in the big camp, fellas. I sure hoped that Calida didn't want to keep it secret. I didn't know what else to say. "Good for them," I said instead. I hoped it was good. Everything seemed so contrary, but having a child had to be a good thing, a celebration of life. It was disheartening to admit that not everyone might see it the same as I did.

"You sound like you mean it," Zach commented.

"Of course I mean it," I said. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Some people aren't happy," he said. "Some people say they should have waited."

"Some people should mind their own business. It's up to Ethan and Calida," I defended them.

Zach glanced at me, and a little half-smile crossed his lips. "I forget how young you are sometimes."

"Not that much younger than you are," I said irritably.

"And how old is that exactly?"

"I'm seventeen," I said before I could clamp my lips shut. I remembered the half-heard conversation between Kara and Zach while I was so dreadfully exhausted after being so ill. "And you're twenty-one."

"Ah, you were awake," he said understandingly.

"Half-awake," I responded pertly. "And what difference does it make now?"

Zach made a mournful expression. "Old habits die hard, I guess."

Well, I wasn't going to open my mouth bigger and ask for an explanation of what he meant by that.

"And when is your birthday, by the way," he said ingenuously.

"What does it matter?" I asked. "I think everyone's forgotten the date."

"It's Thursday, October 16th," he said positively.

I shook my head. "Gideon?"

"Ethan. Knows the date of everything. Not sure how that's going to come in handy."

"My birthday is in January," I told him. It wasn't going to matter much. I wasn't even sure if I would still be in the camp then. But Zach nodded as if I had given him an ounce of gold. I couldn't figure him out.

We didn't say anything as we descended the trail to the thumping music of the slow-moving Big Mamas' tromping feet. Zach let me go as we came into the camp, and he went off to do whatever it was that he did.

When I entered my cabin, Kara was waiting for me. She was sitting on my bunk reading a book. I blinked and saw that it was a history of swords and sword fighting. It wasn't my book. "Thanks," I said appreciatively, thinking she'd brought me a gift because of my recent pursuit. The Japanese broadsword hung on the wall behind my bunk.

Kara looked up at me. "Not me. It was on your bunk when I came in. Hope you don't mind, but digging latrines is hard work. I had to sit down."

I shrugged. "As long as you took a shower first."

"Hot bath. Some of the springs are heated by something below us. Some of the hot springs are hot enough to boil eggs in." Kara brightened. "I wonder if we can rig something based on the hot water."

I sat next to her and sighed. "You let me know."

Kara produced something from behind her back. "And also with the book, this." She handed me a candy bar. Guess what kind? My favorite, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. My mouth watered. Gibby was a great cook, but there was nothing like a real candy bar.

Kara said, "Someone likes you." The way she said it made it sound like she was my sixth-grade buddy.

I blushed profusely. The book and candy could only be from one person, and I didn't want to play the mental games on figuring out why he was doing it. Since I had just finished talking with him, I felt like an idiot who didn't have a clue what was going on.

Then the twenty-five-year-old woman who lived in my cabin came bouncing in and smiled brightly at us. "Great," she pronounced fluidly. Her name was Lulu, and she looked like a Lulu should look. She had short wavy blonde hair, big blue eyes and a wonderfully curved figure that everyone envied. She also had a giving, bubbly personality that tended to grate on me. Perky. That was Lulu. Very, very, very perky.

"I have so wanted to talk to you, Sophie," she went on, blissfully unaware of my silent glower.

Kara sat up a little and rested her chin on her hands while her elbows were propped on her knees. She was waiting for the show.

"Okay," I said doubtfully.

"Well, I'm just going to be blunt," Lulu said.

"I like blunt," Kara commented. "Don't you, Sophie?"

"Sure, I'm all about blunt," I said. Oh, would you listen to that sarcasm? But it went sailing over Lulu's head.

"Fantabulous," Lulu commented gleefully. Great word usage. That was going in the notebook for future reference.

I waited expectantly while Lulu collected herself. She squared her shoulders and looked directly into my eyes.

Then she said, "Are you, like, interested in Zach?"

Kara smiled to herself and looked fascinatedly at the cabin floor. I'm certain the floor boards were absolutely scintillating. The dust bunnies were, like, totally tubular. I took a second to pointedly notice that she wasn't leaving the area for my continued privacy.

"I – uh," I said. A positive mastermind at the art of banter I was. "Well, I – uh," I affixed nonsensically.

"Because he's, like, very remarkable," Lulu went on, unabashed at my response.

"Remarkable," I repeated. "Yes, he's that, all right."

"Studalicious," Lulu commented.

"Yes, I've noticed that, too," Kara felt compelled to add.

"Oh," Lulu glanced at Kara. "You're not interested in Zach, are you?" Her young eyes gauged Kara up and down with avid curiosity.

"Oh no," Kara said promptly. "Not my type. Not at all. He's more like a son to me."

Whoops. Lulu frowned. I could see the thought that occurred in her head. Was a potential girl pal supposed to use the word studalicious in front of a pseudo-maternal unit? That was a big NO because of ethical and parental mores. Yikes. Better fix that fast. "He really knows about stuff," Lulu ad-libbed. I gathered that meant that she thought he was intelligent.

"Sure does," Kara agreed genially. "Smart kid."

Lulu looked at me. I don't think it occurred to her that I hadn't really answered her question. She smiled brightly, showing orthodontically correct, and snow white teeth in her Californian-tanned face. "Well, peachatrific. I'm so glad we got this aired out." She looked from me to Kara and then back again. "I'm going to the bonfire. Gibby's doing s'mores. Coming?"

"Maybe later," Kara said kindly.

Then Lulu bounced out of the cabin. The girl had energy.

"You know what kind of car she had before the change?" Kara said chirpily.

I looked sideways at Kara.

"A red one," Kara said as she tilted her head and did a little hair flip even though her hair wasn't that long.

"You're bad," I pronounced. I produced the candy bar and offered her one cup. Kara took it and bit into it with barely restrained hunger. I ate the other one, savoring each bite.

Kara examined the floor again and then finally said, "He might not wait for you, you know."

I was going to pretend I didn't know what she was talking about. But it wasn't going to get me anywhere. I also didn't want to explain the wretched lurch in my heart at the thought of Zach not "waiting" for me. "What do you want me to say, Kara?"

"Explain why you drugged us," she said firmly.

"I'm sorry," I said sincerely. "I thought it was— "

"Not to me," she interrupted. "I know exactly why you did it. He wouldn't have let you go, if you hadn't. I dreamed about it a dozen times after the fact. You have to explain to him, to Zach."

I bit my lip. "I don't know if I can—" I started to say, but it trailed off uncertainly. Kara put her arm around my shoulder and said, "I know, hon. Ain't love a bitch?"

"I don't know," I answered honestly. "I really, really don't know."

Kara started to say something else, but a thought bit into my head like an arrow had suddenly pierced my brain. I surged to my feet while she said, "My God, Sophie, what's wrong? You're as white as a sheet."

"It's the two people that Gideon sent," I said faintly. Kara looked at me in alarm. "The ones that were supposed to replace the sign. Didn't you know?"

Kara shook her head as I ran to find Gideon, but I already knew it was too late.
Chapter 18

More Imbroglio...

Their names were Max and Thad. Max was from Ukiah, California. He was twenty-six. Thad was fifty-two, from San Francisco, and had taken an interest in me, as well as playing guitar for the firefly pixies. Neither one talked much about what had happened to them before they had found Gideon's group, and I hadn't heard what little they had said. But I knew that Max once had a wife and two sons. Thad had been a grandfather of three.

Ultimately, I found Gideon at the fire pit talking with a large gathering. It was an evening event for the group. Gibby was setting up for marshmallows and s'mores. There was a pile of pre-sharpened sticks of suitable length. Elan was jumping up and down happily in anticipation of the snack. Everyone was relaxed and pretty much the only people who were missing were on guard duty at the highway. Briefly, I noticed that Lulu had already found Zach and was talking to him animatedly. One of her hands touched his shoulder, and I made myself focus on Gideon.

Gideon stood up from his cut-log stool as soon as I came into sight, and I faltered as he did so. Kara bumped into my back. Why was it, that in this group, no one had seen what was to happen to the two men? Why was it that I hadn't had any tingle of a bad feeling more than I had? Why was it that Gideon knew that something was wrong as soon as he saw me?

There was a reason, of that I was certain. I needed to figure it out in order to understand how to use any of our abilities for the best scenario. Gideon stared at me, and it dawned on me that he was getting a mind full of images. He hadn't discussed it; he had only implied that my theory was correct, but I knew then.

One of the steering committee members, Leander, a man who led the scavenging missions, stood up as well, his face fixed on mine. His expression was horrified as he stared at me, and I wondered what he was thinking.

Zach saw me then, and his eyes centered on me. Lulu turned to see what he was looking at, and she shrugged with an elongated sigh. Her hand dropped to her side.

"Ethan," Gideon said abruptly. "We need to gather the steering committee for a meeting now."

Ethan was sitting across from Gideon, holding Calida on his lap with his hand on her stomach. He frowned at Gideon even as all conversation died away. Boy, I was a killer at parties and like functions. I could really be counted on to clear a crowd. The next thing I knew, they would be fleeing at the mere sight of me.

The steering committee consisted of Gideon, Ethan, Sinclair, Calida, and Leander, who had become friends with Zach. The faction made the decisions about where the larger group was going in terms of becoming civilized once again. They shared their decisions on a biweekly basis with the larger group and asked for suggestions. (It was very enlightening. Often I wasn't sure if I should laugh or cry.) They parted from the crowd while worried words slithered like snakes through the crowd.

"You too, Sophie," Gideon ordered as he turned to follow the others into the main office building. Well, color me surprised.

Zach started to protest but Kara said, "Not now, Zach."

I followed the others with only one glance over my shoulder. Zach was standing at the edge of the group watching me. His arms were at his sides, his hands clenched into fists. Kara was beside him, saying something softly to him. He shook his head and then turned away. Lulu was already talking with someone else, having apparently given up on Zach for the moment.

The main office building had a stonework fireplace that was lit with a blazing fire. There was a series of small offices along one side of the building and a large open area with the fireplace. It provided the light for the room. The five core group members gathered around it, and I lagged behind uncertainly. Gideon motioned me to his side and made a space for me. Everyone sat on the floor expectantly waiting for Gideon to begin.

"Tell them what you saw, Sophie," he instructed kindly.

"The Burned Man," I said immediately. I swallowed nervously. Saying his name was like whispering the name of the worst person imaginable. It was the old mantra: Speak of the devil, and the devil will appear. The Burned Man might not be the devil, but he might very well appear. "He killed them. He killed them both," I finished, wishing it didn't have to be said.

Calida took in a breath that was half a gasp. I had spoken of the mysterious sociopath who had attacked me before, and they knew of his moniker. "Killed who?"

"Max and Thad," I said, and I glanced at Gideon. His face was white. The freckles that clouded his nose and cheeks stood out like period points. His lips were a flat, grim line. I had warned him, and I suspected he didn't need the reminder in the least. It would be haunting him.

"They went to replace the sign," Ethan said. "The one you burned down." He looked at me skeptically. "What makes you think they're dead?" Clearly, Ethan wasn't on board with the whole psychic thing. He was a born cynic and made sure that everyone knew it.

Sinclair made a noise. "Sophie knows things, Ethan. Just like Gideon. Just like Elan."

Ethan's face twisted. "We've had this conversation before. You know I don't believe in any of this crap." His face contorted a little. "Although...there are things I can't just explain away. Maybe."

"What's the day of the week today, Ethan?" I asked quickly.

"It's Thursday," he said promptly. Then he glowered at me.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Calida asked.

"That's my theory," I said. "We survived because we're all something special."

"Special," Ethan repeated doubtfully. "My mind works in a funny way. I remember dates. I can calculate dates and days of the weeks. I've always been good with numbers. I used to be an accountant before the change. It's an interesting skill, nothing more. And it certainly isn't paranormal."

I tried to see the big burly Ethan as an accountant and had to blink. He looked like a lumberjack or an extreme wrestler, not an accountant. Straightaway, I blurted out, "What day was January 1st in the first year A.D.?"

"Monday. Darn it!" Ethan said swiftly. "Would you cut it out? It's nothing exceptional. It's just one of those things. Some people play football really well. I do numbers and dates. Not a huge deal. Especially not now."

"Your brain works differently," I said. "Or maybe it has an extra little something that gives you that ability. Just as I do. Just like Gideon. Just like the doctor and his magic hands."

Sinclair shrugged his shoulders. "Too bad it doesn't work on the bigger injuries, but I'm death on headaches and sore muscles." He made a noise. "Sorry, bad choice of words."

"When's my birthday, Ethan?" I asked quickly.

"Wednesday, January 15th," Ethan said before he clamped his mouth shut.

"How would you know that?" I queried softly.

"And Calida?" Ethan said snarkily, ignoring the question. "What's your take on her? Does she foretell the future or tell about your past lives? Maybe she makes the Chrysler Building vanish in front of a huge crowd."

"I don't know," I said as I looked at Calida. She had an expression on her face that said she knew what I was talking about. Oh yeah, she knew. And she hadn't told Ethan. Sorry, Calida. I hadn't meant to rain on her parade. "What is it, Calida?" I asked slowly. My tone was all that. I knew. She knew that I knew. I knew that she knew that I knew. (What a mouthful.)

"Baby?" Ethan said questioningly. He had caught the same look. It didn't just puzzle him, but it pricked his enduring attention. Calida had hidden something from him. "What is it?"

"Sometimes," she said and then the words died off. "Sometimes," she started again, "I can move things."

Ethan's mouth opened and then shut again.

Gideon nodded encouragingly. "Little things, right, Calida?"

"Mostly," Calida agreed. "But when I was twelve, my grandfather got pinned under his car. The jack stand crumpled. There was no one else, you see. There was no one to help, and the phone was all the way up at the house. I had a nosebleed for two days. They kept me in the hospital, but they let my grandfather out the same day. He thought it was an angel. He never knew what really happened to get the car off him."

"But it was you," Gideon finished.

Ethan was staring at Calida dumbfounded. I wished I could read his mind and tell if he was simply surprised and not frightened. I hoped I hadn't just screwed something up for the two of them. Mostly, I hoped they would forgive my intrusion. She looked at him in silent rebuke and then glanced around. Her gaze settled on a basket of pinecones next to the fireplace. She closed her eyes for a moment, and one of the pine cones tumbled out of the basket. It rolled on the hearth in front of the fireplace for a long moment and then suddenly skittered over to Ethan in abrupt jerking motions. It hit his shin, and he reached down automatically to stop it. When it was still, he looked at Calida with amazement. Then he murmured, "Don't be afraid of me, Calida," and she smiled weakly.

Leander laughed. The sound split the large open space, and everyone looked at him in astonishment. "All this time, I thought it was something only I could do. And this is why we survived? When all those others didn't?" He was a large man in his forties with salt and pepper hair and green eyes. Agile and lean, he exuded a certain strength that people probably didn't appreciate until he was in action. Once he was a banker. Now he was part of a group who were all something unique, not all of who wanted to admit to their extraordinary aptitudes.

"And you?" Gideon asked. When I looked at Gideon it was readily apparent to me that he already knew what was up with Leander.

Mind reader, I thought. Leander's head swung around to me. His green eyes were like arrows. It didn't take a mind reader to know that he was wondering how I could have known that. Good guess, I thought harder. That's why he had been staring at me. He'd known what I was so emotional over.

"That's right," he said to me.

"He doesn't get every thought," I said. "Just the strongest ones. The most emotional."

"It's like pictures in my head. And I tend to tune out most people," Leander added, ducking his head a little. "It's difficult to hear all their thoughts in my head, so I kind of shut it all out unless I need to know something very particular." He shrugged as if he was slightly embarrassed. "It helped a lot when I was doing high finances to know when people were lying." His head swung back to Ethan who was staring at Leander intently. "And yes, I know your underwear is purple with pink polka dots, Ethan. Nice shorts, dude."

Calida smothered a sound with her hand. Ethan snorted.

I didn't laugh. They'd forgotten for a moment why they were here. In their delight of the new and unusual, they'd forgotten about Max and Thad.

But Gideon hadn't forgotten anything. "I should have listened to Sophie," he said. "For that, I'm sorry. I sincerely apologize to you, Sophie. You tried to tell us, and I thought that we were stronger than him. I thought that we would know if he was a threat to us."

"Obviously, it doesn't work all the time," I said. "But I have to ask if the Burned Man knows something about us, as well."

Ethan sat up straight. "You mean, he's like us?" Apparently, acceptance was easier than I had thought it would be for him. "He's somehow psychic, too?"

"I mean exactly that," I agreed. "He knew that you were coming for me, or he would have tried to finish me off. He didn't know how close you were but he knew. He deliberately stopped and looked over his shoulder to the south. If he had known how close I was to giving up, he wouldn't have stopped. If he had known that you and Zach were hours away, and not minutes, he wouldn't have stopped. But he was injured, his blood was draining from his arm too fast, and he fled instead."

Gideon was digesting the information. "And you're certain about Max and Thad?"

"Yes," I said sadly. I didn't say the rest. The bad feeling had come the moment I was talking to Kara. We were too far away to do whatever could have been done. They were by the highway at another billboard they'd selected. They had found a ladder and the paint they needed. While Max was up on top, the Burned Man had come up behind Thad. Thad hadn't fought because he'd been taken by surprise. Max had come down the ladder when Thad wouldn't answer, and the Burned Man had used some kind of club on him. But that wasn't the worst of it.

Leander watched me, and his color faded away. He had seen what I had seen. I couldn't help the emotionality of what had happened. "God," he said. "Oh no."

I lowered my head. Gideon touched my shoulder. "I warned them to be careful," he said softly. "It wasn't enough."

"You didn't know," Ethan responded. "No one knew. If what you say is correct and some of you do have premonitions and the like, it's useful, but it's not something you can count on all the time. You have to understand that. It's possible you couldn't have changed the situation, even if you'd known about it days in advance."

Well, Ethan surprised me. Ever the doubter, he was coming to the rescue. Obviously, he felt protective of Gideon. I wondered how I felt. I had warned Gideon, but I didn't know that the Burned Man would target two grown men. Further, Max and Thad were large men, both more than capable of protecting themselves, but apparently, they hadn't taken the warning to heart. Whose fault was this?

The Burned Man.

Now the decision was what to do about it.

* * *

It didn't go the way I would have liked. The consensus was to send a small group of people (i.e., men with weapons) to recover their bodies and possibly track the Burned Man. The instructions were to go in quickly, never leave the group, and ensure that Max and Thad weren't still alive.

"He likes to burn things," I added morosely. "A watch should be kept while the others are sleeping."

Gideon nodded at me.

Ethan frowned. It was clear that he didn't appreciate the advice. I thought I knew what he saw. A weak girl who had drugged her companions to do something risky. A girl who was barely an adult but who he didn't think acted like one. What could I really offer that was of value?

"A house that's away from forest, a house that's not on the edge of town," I went on regardless of Ethan's attitude. "Zach can tell you where we stayed that night. It's got a view that will let anyone see what's coming."

"Zach can go," Gideon decided with a sideways glance at me. My muscles jerked in unspoken objection, but I didn't say anything. After a moment, something else occurred to me.

"Robert," I said. "He's got a way of tracking...things. Animals. He should go, as well."

Calida said, "And what do we do if we find the Burned Man, Sophie?" Her face was serious; she wanted to know what was next as much as anyone else.

I looked at the fire, reminded of the fires that he had set while we were fleeing from him. "I couldn't kill him. I don't expect someone else to commit murder. It's not right." Then I looked at Calida. "He's a murderer, a vicious psychopath who will kill more members of the group if given another chance. But this is a new society. Have you thought about how crimes committed in this group are to be addressed?"

Leander took a deep breath. "We haven't given it much thought. So far everyone has been so glad to be with other people, problems of the former society haven't cropped up yet. Nothing's been stolen. No one's been assaulted. Everyone seems fairly stable and content. I can only think of trivial disagreements."

"And when the worst happens, what will you do?" I asked. Speaking of the devil, I had to play that old familiar role, the devil's advocate. I didn't like it much but it felt like no one else was willing to take on the role.

"Punishment of some sort," Ethan answered. "Depending on the crime. But we're talking about the Burned Man. We're talking about a crime so atrocious that even our society would have demanded the ultimate punishment." Everyone knew what he meant – death.

"Who is going to perform the execution, Ethan?" I asked carefully. "Who gets to be the one to push the button, or use the axe, or push the stump out from under the Burned Man's legs in order to let him strangle to death from a rope? Who gets to become a murderer in order to stop a murderer?"

Sinclair cleared his throat. "We could draw lots."

"And if it's Calida who draws the lot, for example," I said, "how would that sit with you, Ethan?"

"She's pregnant," Ethan snarled at me. "She shouldn't have to do anything like that."

"And Elan?" I asked. "He's too young, right? How about you, Ethan? Would you be able to sleep at night? Could you be okay with slicing the Burned Man's throat? Or would we find some other way of doing it? Push him off the highest cliff? Maybe use an axe to chop off his head? You could wear a hood so no one would know, but everyone would know anyway."

Gideon sighed, and the sound made me stop speaking. "You've made your point, Sophie."

"What about jailing him?" Leander asked.

"I don't see how well that would lie with everyone," I said. "You'd have to build a prison. You'd have to have people guarding the prison every moment of the day and night. This man, this beast who walks in man's form, isn't like us. I don't know what he was before the change, but he could never be rehabilitated. He could never be freed. And if he escaped, he would probably kill someone or more than one. We'd be charged with caring for him until the day he died of natural causes. "

Calida grimaced. "I can't see that people would want to take care of a man who had killed two of our own. There would be dissent. There might be more than dissent." She frowned unhappily. "Isn't there another answer?"

"Banish him," Sinclair suggested. "I could take him in a boat to the Big Mamas' islands. Let him live there, if he can. Leave him with minimal supplies. Possibly offer to re-supply in six weeks or several times a year."

"Sophie has informed me that traveling in a boat might be unsafe. There are new creatures out in the ocean that may be hazardous to us," Gideon interjected.

"Things that are bigger than the Big Mamas?" Ethan asked incredulously.

I shrugged. "We didn't have a measuring tape. It looked like it really liked fish and not particularly small ones either."

"Oh," he said, obviously trying to think about what could be that large.

"We need options here," Gideon said. "Tomorrow we'll meet as the larger group and let everyone know what happened. We'll make a decision then. I'm leaning toward a jail. We could even take advantage of the prison up past Crescent City. It was a supermax facility. Perhaps it would be good enough to hold this man."

"If a lack of electricity wouldn't be a problem," I said before I could close my mouth. It was possible to go too far with a big mouth. God knew I did it all the time.

"That's something else to consider," Gideon acknowledged.

Sinclair snorted. "I think Sophie's new job is to put forth all the things we don't want to hear. A good position considering our obvious lack of healthy paranoia. We haven't had to fear much of anything except the new creatures, and they mostly seem to be busy adjusting to a new world."

"So glad I could help," I said dryly.

The meeting broke up with no decisions made.

Gideon held me back as the others filed out the door. Ethan would be taking someone out to each of the guards' sites to inform them of the need for extra vigilance. Sinclair was going to talk to the men designated to undertake recovery of the bodies. I could have told them not to go, that it would be fruitless, but I didn't think they would listen to me on that call.

When we were alone, Gideon said, "When did you change your mind?"

I looked away from his youthful face. What did he see when he looked at my face, I pondered. A seventeen-year-old girl with all her dreams bashed in? A girl with a mark on her face that glowed in the dark and a connection to something otherworldly? Someone who could help them to survive? "About what?"

"You've started to use 'our' and 'we' in the conversations," Gideon stated baldly.

I shuddered. I didn't want to be part of the bigger group. It meant I was going to inevitably get hurt again. So I shook my head at him. He made a little face and shrugged. Then he melted into the darkness.

I hesitated at the door. Somewhere out there Zach was waiting for me. I turned around and went out the back of the office building.

Someone else was waiting for me there.
Chapter 19

Walking in Dreams...

The firefly pixies surrounded me, a chattering tornado of greenish light and iridescent magic. They all jabbered and clucked to me like indulgent mothers who hadn't seen their babies for weeks. It was a whirlwind of enchantment. Immediately, their presence made me feel more lighthearted than I would have without them. Their company had the effect of drinking a Red Bull combined with Mountain Dew before a dreaded test in school. I almost felt as though I could jump to the moon in a single bound.

"Hi, girls," I said, remembering that Zach was waiting outside for me on the other side of the building. I guessed I couldn't avoid him forever. Unenthusiastically, I started to head around the building, but they flew in to block me. Taken aback, I stopped. This was something new from them.

With a whoop of panache, the pixies opened another path for me, one that led directly into the forest. I took a look around me, hoping that no one was watching and found that we were alone. The office building butted up against the thickest part of the redwoods. I remembered the rule. No one goes into the forest alone. Technically, I wasn't alone. I had a lot of tiny girls with me, and they could sense danger. Reluctantly, I said, "Okay, girls, let's go."

It didn't mean that I was being cavalier with my safety. The Burned Man was near Crescent City, and it would take him hours to get to The Redwoods, provided he knew where to stop and look. But that wasn't the only danger in the forest. There were other night creatures out there. Bears and mountain lions were two of the before-creatures that still roamed. There were also the new animals, not all of which we'd seen and none of which we could say were not a threat to the humans that were left. Apparently, a Big Mama wouldn't eat us but that didn't mean it might not inadvertently step on us. And I wasn't forgetting the raking claw marks that would forever mar my back.

But I had pixie power. (Didn't that sound like Japanese anime?) I went into the darkness with only the green light of the pixies to guide me. I had only a flannel shirt and jeans on to protect my flesh. My feet were in their typical Skechers. I should have been cold but I wasn't.

They lit the way for me, and after a while my eyes adjusted to the dimness. I could see the black shapes of the tall redwoods against the starry skies. I could hear the movement of the wind above us. Occasionally, there was the odd animal call, the hoot of a hunting owl. There was the crunching of the heavy debris underfoot, and I saw a black-tailed deer scoot away as it became aware of the pixies and me. I knew about other animals I had seen infrequently. Raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, bobcats, and elk were all occupants of the forest. How the change would impact their population was open for debate.

I could feel the upward angle to the course the pixies were leading me on. We crested a bluff after a bit, and I was only a little out of breath. The route was slower. I had to pick my way through the forest on a path that really wasn't a path. Wherever the pixies were taking me wasn't on the camper's well-established routes. No youngsters had trodden this way. The direction went down next, and soon I heard the trickle of a stream running over rocks nearby. It didn't tell me anything important. There were many streams and rivers in the redwoods. It was very nearly a rainforest, and the amount of rainfall varied from 40 to 60 inches a year.

They led me down to the side of the creek, and I picked my way along the rocks there. I was surprised that the pixies were so tolerant of me. They didn't sound impatient or volatile, but undemanding and careful.

After what seemed like hours, they allowed me to stop. I couldn't see very well, even with the stars. I couldn't tell what time it was, and I was slightly disoriented. However, I wasn't frightened. The pixies had never caused me harm before, and I didn't think they would mean to now.

I caught my breath as they twirled around me. Some of them skimmed the water like superior little hunters. I thought they might be eating insects. My face twisted a bit at the thought. Maybe it tasted like chicken to them. They probably thought some of the stuff I ate was pretty gross, too.

Then the moon came out from behind a cloud somewhere in-between half and a quarter full. I remembered asking Zach if the moon was still around or maybe it had been if the moon was gone. But there it was as it must have always been, and I was startled by the amount of relief I felt. Furthermore, it wasn't green or purple or pink. Had the change impacted the moon? Was the flag still flying there next to Neil Armstrong's footprint? Or was there a new resident on the moon that was making the large planetoid its own?

With an odd smile on my face I looked to earth and nearly gasped. There in front of me was a moonlit pool of inordinate beauty. It was a gothic painting from a famous museum. It was a stunning setting that had few matches in its splendor. Black water spilled over a low cliff surrounded by dripping ferns. It trickled over a moss-strewn rock, splitting into twin waterfalls, and landed into a round pool that seemed as deep as the night. The wind had stopped blowing, and the air was alight with firefly pixies. I looked closer. Small glowing things swam under the waters, and I inched near.

Everything was slick and slippery. I parked myself carefully on a large rock and looked down. The pixies flittered past me, lost in their own joy of being reunited with their kinfolk. When I looked closer it seemed as though the ones in the water were the marine equivalents of the ones in the air. Instead of wings, they had a little tail, and they moved through the water at lightning speed. Their tiny bodies glowed the same green as the pixies, and slowly it dawned on me that they must be related.

I allowed my fingers to trail in the water and immediately a dozen of the little creatures surrounded my digits. They caressed my flesh, causing flashes of warmth in the chilled waters. The pixies swooped around me; the noises that they made were cheerful and relaxed.

Sighing with pleasure, I allowed them to touch my hand as they would, holding my limb motionless. Was this the place that the firefly pixies lived then? Were the marine ones a phase of the pixies and the airborne ones another? Or was it more complex? Were the ones in the water the males and the ones in the air the females? I wished I could ask them.

More suggested itself to me. If this was their home as it seemed to be, then had the pixies found their way up the coast to me? Had they been searching for something? Was the something me? And why were they showing this place to me?

I touched my cheek with my free hand and several of the airborne pixies twittered with glee. For a single moment I felt good. As in the moment I had had weeks before, it was a solitary second full of non-sadness and lack of confusion over what decisions needed to be made. I wasn't thinking about the Burned Man. I wasn't thinking about anything but the warmth of nonjudgmental companionship and the delight of a curious new world. It felt absolutely wonderful.

But like all moments, it had to end. This time I didn't feel the overwhelming guilt of having had such an instant. Certainly, I was sad at what I had lost and what had been lost to all of the survivors. But my parents wouldn't have wanted me to die with them, if that was what had happened to them. They would have wanted me to live and to enjoy my life to the best of my abilities.

A pixie landed on my outstretched arm, and my eyes went to her small form. She pointed up the rock hills where the waterfall was sluicing over the mossy rocks. Carefully, I extracted my hand from the water and clambered upward. The pixie flew up and hovered in front of me, leading me.

I watched my footing, and suddenly I was over the rocks, looking into a thick swatch of ferns. The pixie flew underneath the overgrowth and vanished. A moment later she reappeared and beckoned to me. Slowly, methodically, I lifted the thick vegetation away from the rocks and discovered a cave opening. It looked like an old lava tube. Oregon and California were full of such outcroppings, remnants from volcanic eruptions of eons past. Some were miles long. Most were small like this one.

Examining the opening skeptically, I shook my head at the persistent pixie. "I don't think I'll fit in there," I said gently.

I ducked my head so I could see further inside. There was a green glow from the interior. The cave entrance immediately widened into a bigger area where the pixies were actively flitting about. I couldn't tell, but it looked as though it was four feet high and twice as long. There was a wealth of goings-on inside. What seemed like hundreds of pixies were glowing and flying and doing whatever it was that they did. Since so few came out the entrance I was looking into, I assumed that they had other exits they used more frequently.

The pixie warbled at me insistently. Several others gathered with her and continued the general message. They wanted me inside.

"Okay," I said doubtfully. "But if I get stuck, you all are in big trouble."

My head went in first and then my shoulders followed. They rasped over the rough lava at each side. My knees slid over the vegetation, and I nearly slipped forward in an uncontrolled movement. However, I stopped tight. For a moment I felt like a cork in a wine bottle. What I really needed was someone to give my tushie a push, and the pixies weren't up to the job. I grunted, and the pixies in front of me muttered encouragingly. Abruptly, my shoulders felt stuck. I wiggled one way, feeling the flesh being scraped, and then I wiggled the other way, grimacing at the sting of the rocks, even over cloth-covered flesh.

"I hate to say I told you so," I murmured disdainfully. "But I told you so."

One pixie flew forward to pull on my hair. She was joined by another one on the other side of my face. They pulled in tandem. I very nearly laughed at the ludicrousness of the situation. Two tiny Lilliputians were trying to pull Gulliver forward by two strands of hair.

I braced one foot on an outcropping of lava and shoved. My shoulders rubbed even more and then abruptly popped through. The pixies shot backward and nearly brained themselves on the cave walls. They immediately flew back and scolded me. "Sorry," I said insincerely.

Lying there I looked over the interior of the cave. I had just enough room to crawl on my knees with my head only slightly bent. On the opposite side was a crevice that split the wall in half. The middle part dipped backward providing a ledge. Upon the ledge there were dozens of little houses, rounded buildings with tiny openings on the sides. Dimly, they glowed as green as the firefly pixies.

"Did you make those?" I asked, then called myself stupid. Tiny pixies were flying in and out of the little dwellings. Their intense activity reminded me of a beehive. Everyone had a job. Everyone had a purpose.

The closest pixies beckoned me forward again. They got me into a position close to the wall with the small houses, and dozens of them came out to watch me. I laid half on my side and propped my head on my bent arm so I could rest comfortably.

The room had a dampness that was like many caves I had been inside. But it also seemed warmer. Whatever the pixies were up to, they were generating a certain amount of heat. It was nice. Suddenly, I was tired. I had climbed up the Bluff Trail with Zach, and I had gone who knew how far through the forest with the pixies. While in better shape than I had been, I was not fully recovered.

Dozens of pixies watched me. More and more came. Sleepily, I noticed there were pools of water near the end of their little city. Some of the pools glowed as green as everything else. I was too lethargic to investigate. I hoped the pixies wouldn't take offense if I went to sleep, but I couldn't keep my eyes open.

Off to dreamland I went, and it was a long, long, long time before I came back.

Seriously.

* * *

When I woke up, wait, that wasn't correct. I didn't wake up. I came to. I came to what? I became aware again. I opened my eyes, but they weren't really my eyes, and I don't think they were really open. And the world was an explosion of colors, a stunning exhibition of luminosity on the senses. Every color of the rainbow was present. Every secondary color was about. There were a few colors I had never seen before. It was a meadow, but it wasn't a meadow. I was sitting in grass that wasn't grass. I was awake, but I wasn't awake.

Call me Madam Mystified.

For one thing the sky was purple. Not a lovely violet that I would have imagined in a cogent dream, but a vivid, pulsating purple that bounced and danced. I mean, it was PURPLE! The trees beyond the meadows seemed like normal redwood trees except they were orange and yellow and blue. (The trees were ORANGE! YELLOW! And BLUE!) The grass upon which I was sitting was red, viciously scarlet red that seemed as though it would cut through the flesh. (RED! That's the best way to get the idea across.)

And should I mention that my legs were green?

Oh, yes indeedy, I had long legs that didn't look very human anymore. The color was an iridescent green, the shade of a pale green leaf. Long and thin. My feet didn't have toes. They were solid, nearly clubbed in form. My arms were similar. No fingers. But I did have little sticky pads on what would have been my palms.

"Cool," I said, but it came out high pitched and singsong.

As I sat up, I became aware of something fluttering at my back. I looked over a pale green shoulder and saw a vibrating, shimmering outline of an object. I twisted around to see it, but it twisted with me. I turned again, trying to figure out what was moving with me and moving independently at the same time.

Then it dawned on me. I had wings. I looked down and saw that I was glowing. I was a firefly pixie. "Well, that doesn't happen every day," I stated obviously. And the really weird part was that it didn't feel weird. It felt perfectly normal.

"Certainly not," said another singsong voice. I turned to see a pixie landing beside me. Captivated by her finely wrought features, I stared...and continued to stare.

She was the same pale green of my limbs, the color of a peridot glistening in the sunlight. Standing near me, her arms akimbo, her wings fluttering gently behind her, she watched me with a curious deportment. Her eyes dominated her face, the shape of almonds and much larger in proportion than a human eye to their face. The color of the eyes was like the iridescence of the wings, but the colors mixed, blended, and went on forever. There was a tiny nose with little holes and a large welcoming mouth that curved in a smile.

It wasn't an expression the pixie was used to making, and I thought that perhaps she was attempting to smile for my benefit.

"Will the Standing-On-Two-Legs-Singing-Unhappy-Girl not speak to One-Who-Flies-Fastest-In-Spring-Showers?" she sang to me at last, probably because I hadn't said anything else.

"I'm...I'm...what did you call me?" I asked and then finished for myself. "Standing-On-Two-Legs-Singing-Uhappy-Girl?"

"It's what we call Standing-On-Two-Legs-Singing-Unhappy-Girl," the pixie replied.

"And you're One-Who-Flies-Fastest-In-Spring-Showers?" I asked politely.

The pixie nodded.

"Do you mind if I just call you, oh, Spring, for short?" I waited for her to nod. Then I added, "And my name is Sophie."

"Soo-phee," the pixie repeated. "Of course, we know your human name."

I took another look around and then asked, "Am I really a pixie now?"

The pixie giggled like a little girl. "Of course not, Standing – uh, Soophee is still very large, wingless, and lumbers like the giant sisters of the islands." She demurely covered her mouth with her hand. "But certainly more elegantly." The last part sounded like a social lie.

"So what the heck is going on?"

"You're walking in our dream world," Spring answered as if I was insane. "There are important issues we needed to communicate with you."

I would have smiled, but it seemed like an alien thing to do.

"Fly with us, Soophee," she invited. "Come see your sisters. See our world as we see it. Understand us better."

"I can fly?"

"Most definitely," Spring said with another amused snigger. "How horrible it must be for one to be wingless, but here, Soophee is one of us."

So I flew. It took a little concentration but the wings were the things that did all the work. And what do you know, I didn't fall once.
Chapter 20

Did I Have a Few Questions?

What question didn't I ask? The pixies' expressions weren't like humans, but I'm certain they got very tired of my endless questioning.

For example: "Why did you save my life?" Answer: "It was meant to be." Question: "Did you travel up the coast to reach me?" Answer: "Your presence called to us as a fellow sister." (I think that was a yes.) Question: "Where were you before?" Answer: "Before we were before, as we shall always be." (Beats me. I don't think they knew there was a before.) Question: "How long will I be with you walking in dreams?" Answer: "Until the dawn brings forth the swerve of sunshine upon our infinite wells." (A CIA spy in deep cover didn't have anything on the girls regarding evasive answers.)

I met a lot of pixies. They had very interesting names. Flies-With-Red-Gold-Pink-Flowers. Dives-Further-Than-All-Others-In-The-Morning-Skies. Wind-Skimmer-Who-Braves-The-Great-Blowing-Sands. Most of the names had to do with flying or variations thereof. However, there was One-Who-Produces-More-Fledglings-Than-All-Else that raised my eyebrows. I gathered she had a lot of children, but I didn't ask how many.

And it took some effort, but I did discern that it was the males in the water, and the females who flew. Procreation was apparently brief and involved eggs dropped into the waters for the males to fertilize. If I understood what they told me, then the eggs developed in the water, and became either male or female. Females had to reach the surface and fly before they drowned. There weren't relationships as we knew them.

Spring did ask about how our people made babies, and I've never seen so many emotionless faces staring at me blankly. The birds-and-bees discussion didn't really register with them, but they did like Zach's emotional attachment to me. Previously, they hadn't realized he was, in fact, a male.

"Males are bigger?" Spring asked.

"Generally," I answered carefully. "Hairier, too. You know, Ethan's the one with the full beard on his face."

"We don't like Big-Hairy-Face-With-Grouchy-Look much," Spring pronounced. "He doesn't sing."

"He's not so bad," I defended him, wondering why I was doing it. "He just doesn't believe in the new things as the rest of us do."

Spring nodded solemnly. She did understand that these were new experiences for us, that our lives had been drastically different. However, the concept of "before" seemed to bother them. There was no "before." There was only now, what was happening now, and possibly what would happen immediately in the future.

After an extended tour of the area was over, I had met more pixies than I could count. I couldn't remember most of their names and was glad there wasn't going to be a test later. Spring flew me back to the meadow, and we both settled to the ground in a movement that seemed as practiced as if I had been flying since I was born.

Then she stared at me with her emotionless features. Her eyes glittered in extraordinary demonstration. It was beginning to occur to me that the color variations in the eyes were an indicator of the emotional levels they were feeling.

"Why me?" I asked.

"Me" was another term that the pixies didn't feel comfortable with. They seemed to work in concert. They didn't know exactly how to refer to me. I was Soophee or Stands, etc. or occasionally you. "You" was always said with deferential courtesy and hesitation because it was another word that the pixies weren't used to employing.

Spring stepped closer and took my shoulders in her hands. Rather, her hands rested easily on my shoulders, allowing the sticky part to face to the side. "You, Soophee, are the one we've been waiting for. Soophee is part of the greater magic of this wonderful world. It flows within in you. It shines from your skin and radiates from your eyes. Soophee's role is so very imperative that we needed to impart this extreme importance to her."

"That's why you've brought me to your home," I said.

"Yes," Spring nodded urgently. It was obvious to me that it was another motion copied from the humans. She was trying to use movements that I would understand. "There is so much more for Soophee to learn, but we are limited. Soophee is our sister in our heart, if not in our skin. Soophee is here to feel as we do, but also to take on her new roles, her new powers."

"My new roles?" I repeated. "My new powers? Do you mean the ability to tell if something bad is going to happen?"

"Knowing about impending danger is the sisters' way of protecting ourselves. It is what makes us able to survive, but still there is more for Soophee," Spring replied earnestly. She removed one arm and waved expressively. "This is our world. This is the sisters' place in the solar system, and Soophee is also our protection. Soophee must be in order to save us."

"You believe I'm here to protect you?" I asked slowly. "How can I do that?"

"Soophee must listen to what her inner voices tell her," Spring informed me. "Believe in those voices. They will guide Soophee."

I didn't know what to say, but Spring took that as acquiescence to my new positions.

"Come, Soophee," she said. "Let's fly once more. We have more of importance to show Soophee."

So we flew once again. This time we flew over the forest canopy, a cluster of pixies grouped in close formation. Some of them drafted effortlessly off each other and even I found myself doing it without thinking about it. The strongest flyers went in front, and when they tired, others replaced them so they could draft, as well. After a while we reached the great path through the forest that the Big Mamas had made.

Spring flew near to me and called, "This is the trail of the great sisters of the islands. Sometimes we call them Lumbering-Beasts-That-Eat-Constantly-And-Never-Bother-Anything-Else-Living."

"The Big Mamas," I breathed. The pixies' name for them certainly told their story. The Big Mamas were basically harmless unless one threw oneself under their colossal foot.

"They live out on the islands that we see in the distance," Spring waved in the general direction of the ocean. "If we fly very high, we can see their home. They come to eat the grasses that they need to survive. As the sun spins away from us, they will conserve their energies more, until the sun comes back to warm our side of the planet."

"Why are you showing me this?" The intelligence of the pixies warmed me. Clever, articulate in their own language, they were very special, and I knew I could learn from them. I wanted to learn from them. It seemed crucial.

Spring hovered near me so closely that I could feel her breath on my shoulder. "All that is new has familiar connections," she said. "The great sisters will defend us, as well as you and your human kind."

I opened my mouth to ask about a million more questions when she motioned me to fly after her.

"We have more places to travel to," Spring called over her shoulder. "And precious little time."

We visited the midnight pool once more, and Spring explained about the interior pools. The water percolated in through holes in the lava rock, allowing the eggs to be hatched there. It was the only place that pixies could be created. If it were lost, then all of them would be lost, as well. I had assumed that the eggs were laid in the exterior stream, but the pools inside the cave were what were so significant.

The importance of the site was not lost on me. Although I had lived in a world without firefly pixies, unicorns, Big Mamas, and whatever else we would encounter in the future, I wasn't certain I wanted to return to the way it had been before.

Although I missed my parents and my close friends, I had been forever tainted by the magic of the changed world. "Tainted" wasn't the best word to use so I substituted "influenced." I had been forever influenced by the magic of the changed world.

I wasn't the same Sophie I had been before. I would never be that Sophie again.

The last stop for the pixies was The Redwoods camp of the humans. With the altered perception of colors, I was unsure of the time of day although I assumed it was evening. There was a group around the fire pit, but the fire was burning low. Gideon was talking urgently to the group about an ongoing search.

"It's not too late. The weather has been mild. The chances of being in the forest and not being impacted by exposure are decent. We can finish the grid searches first thing in the morning," Gideon said insistently. "If we don't have any success, then we can make new plans."

Ethan said, "But it's been four days, Gideon. We have to take into consideration that she might be dead. Or worse, that she decided to cut her losses."

Zach set his shoulders and faced Ethan angrily. "She didn't leave us," he snarled. "She wouldn't do that."

"All right, then," Ethan snapped back. He looked at Gideon. "What about all your psychic powers then, Gideon? What about that? What is that telling you?"

Elan parted the crowd and came to stand beside Gideon. The smaller boy comfortingly took Gideon's hand. "She's alive," he said loudly, his young voice breaking. "And she's thinking of us. She'll come back soon."

Gideon patted Elan's thin shoulder. "I don't know what to tell you, Ethan. We know the abilities that we have don't always work in the way that we want."

I hovered next to Spring and took it all in. Was this part of the dream, or was this happening? Zach and Ethan were supposed to go after Max's and Thad's bodies. They were supposed to see if they could find the Burned Man. But there they were, still in the camp, looking for someone. Who had been gone for four days? I hadn't heard anything about anyone being missing. Had the Burned Man come immediately here to initiate more havoc? Who would Zach get so upset over? Kara?

But like me, Kara hadn't been gone for four days.

Then Kara stepped forward. She had been in the midst of the crowd, and I hadn't seen her. "I dreamed about her last night," she said vociferously. "I dreamed that she was dreaming about the pixies. She could see these amazing colors, and they were telling her amazing things. She was flying." Kara clenched her fists and thudded them helplessly against her thighs. "She wasn't in pain. She wasn't so forlorn anymore."

Zach cleared his throat. "It sounds like the dreams I've been having about her."

Oh, how could I be so dense? They were talking about me? But I hadn't been gone for four days. Perhaps I had been gone overnight. I wasn't certain if anyone would have noticed that my bunk had not been slept in. Not four days. Definitely not.

"Four days?" I said to Spring.

"Four days in human terms," Spring ascertained. "Soon Soophee will awaken from the dreaming place and rejoin her human family. But she will also be Soophee the protector. She will be Standing-On-Two-Legs-Singing-Girl-Who-Guards-Against-The-Evil-Ones."

"No longer unhappy, huh?" I said wryly.

Spring didn't get the subtle implication and nodded her head at me. "Not unhappy now. Now Soophee is accepting and not wholly unhappy."

"I can still go and look for her for another hour," Zach was protesting the halt in the search. "If someone will come with me. There's enough light to —"

Gideon placed his hand on Zach's shoulder comfortingly. "You need rest, Zach, more than any of us. You might have been dreaming about Sophie, but you've barely been asleep to do it."

Zach cursed fluidly and broke away. He stared at the group, searching their eyes in turn for something he couldn't find. Kara opened her mouth to offer, but I did a nosedive and flew straight at him. I couldn't stand the thought of his pain. Four days? They hadn't a clue where I could have gone. I was torn at the guilt that I felt.

Spring buzzed behind me.

Kara said excitedly, "Look! Zach, look, it's the firefly pixies! They haven't come since..."

Zach looked around urgently. I flew directly at him and pulled up just short of his face. Spring did a controlled dive behind me. "Stern-Affectionate-Handsome-One-Who-Pines won't understand our words," she called from behind me.

"Help me," he said to me and Spring. His face contorted into an expression of utter hopelessness. "Please, I'm begging you." His hands reached for me, and although I knew that he couldn't have known it was me, I landed on his palm, looking up at him with all the intensity I could muster.

Spring hovered beside me. "Stern-Affectionate-Handsome-One-Who-Pines will get his wish soon. Soophee cannot help him now."

"Take Zach to the place of the pixies," I said. "Only Zach. Let him see that I'm alive and unharmed. It's not right to make them worry about me."

Spring's body glowed suddenly. She sang out. Her voice carried, a poignant note that made all the humans instantly quiet, and the pixies gathered above us. I touched Zach's palm with the back of my clubbed hand and rubbed. It didn't help him much. He didn't know. Furthermore, I was in the land of dreams.

"Is this real, Spring?" I asked suddenly. "Or is this simply a dream? Am I dreaming about Zach?"

"Dreams are but another segment of reality, Soophee," Spring said solemnly. She landed beside me and gazed up at Zach with a sincerity I found touching. "Sak has a darkness inside him. Soophee can free this darkness, but it will try her sorely."

"A darkness," I repeated. Zach was staring intently at us. His perfect face was no less perfect with the shadows under his eyes and the tension lines bracketing his mouth. "Will he hurt the pixies? Is that what you're trying to say to me?"

"Sak is not a threat to anyone but himself and perhaps the one you call 'the Burned Man.' We won't talk about him, for talking about evil tempts evil to talk about us." Spring launched herself into the air. She sang to the other pixies, and they began to form lines to lead Zach with them. When the others tried to follow, a group of pixies prevented them by forming a line across their path.

"Only Zach then," Gideon called, understanding immediately. "Get him some water. A pack with emergency gear. Get it quickly."

A man ran for the pack and brought it back within a minute. Zach painstakingly put the pack on while carefully holding me in his hand. I clutched one of his fingers, and he glanced down at me curiously. "You're taking me to her, to Sophie?" he asked imperatively.

I nodded my head. I wished I could tell him. He seemed so disconsolate.

"Is she all right?" he asked earnestly. A light in his eyes revealed his eagerness.

Slowly, I nodded my head again, but he noticed the hesitation, and his face became grimmer. He didn't trust me, or perhaps he didn't trust my hesitation. Since I couldn't explain to him, I only touched his finger once again and then launched myself into the air.

"Wait," he said softly. I hovered midair a few feet away. His steps faltered as he watched me. His face twisted again, the perfect visage was tortured. He stared at me as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. After what seemed like an eternity he said, "Oh, my God. Sophie? Is it...?"

For a moment I stopped flying, and like all flying things that stop flying, I instantly fell. His hand shot out, and he caught me in his palm. Winded, I laid there and panted. I had landed half on my side, and the pain radiated throughout my body. It felt like I had landed on a sheet of iron. Spring appeared straight away, jittering anxiously. "Soophee," she said with heartfelt urgency. "Is Soophee all right?"

I coughed and then sat up. Everything seemed all right. I remembered the pixie that I had caught once. She hadn't been very happy either. It might seem inconsequential to the larger intelligence, but it wasn't to the smaller one. Still, it was better than hitting the ground, and the pain was fading faster than I could have imagined.

"She said 'Sophie,'" Zach muttered. He stared down at me, still half crouched as he had been when he reached out to save me. Then he called rapidly over his shoulder, "Gideon!"

Gideon appeared over Zach's shoulder and looked down at me. The pixies looped above in restless circles. His teenage face was the epitome of astonishment. He stared, and finally, he said, "It is her. How can this be?"

I stood up shakily and let my wings flutter.

Spring landed beside me and said apologetically, "We forget how new Soophee is to the fine art of flying. She took to it so well we forgot."

"I'm all right," I said. "Spring," I added, "we must go back to the midnight pool. I need to leave the world of dreams now. Can we do that?"

Spring buzzed straight up into the air. "Fly, Soophee. Fly with the sisters once more. We will bring Stern-Affectionate-Handsome-One-Who-Pines along as we return Soophee to where she belongs. Fear not for this one. He will soon receive what he wishes most in this world."

I only thought about it once as I sprang into the air. Zach's agonized cry of protest only gave me the slightest pause. I looked back, and his hand was extended toward me in mute appeal. I couldn't tell him that I was hurrying along so that I could return all the quicker, but I felt it all the same.
Chapter 21

The More Things Change...

I didn't pretend that I understood how the firefly pixies could do the things that they did to me. I know that in one moment I was flying faster than I had flown before. I had a contingent of pixies spread out before me, an arrow of green light that pointed the way to my destination. The urgency that I felt was secondary to the guilt over leaving Zach and Kara in a state of worry. Had I known that I was going to be gone for days and not hours, I would have told someone. I would have left a note. I would have mentioned it to Lulu in passing so she could have leapt with cheerleader-like glee and passed it on to her cohorts with elementary school-age reveling. Something, anything, to alleviate the unintentional pain I had caused.

Regardless of my guilt, one moment I was flying. The next moment I was lifting my head from my bent arm and moaning at the pain of stiff muscles. I was inside the cave again, stretched out along an uncomfortable lava floor, not far away from where the pixies were busy with their day-to-day activities. My mouth was dry, and my body was screaming with remonstration. It didn't feel like four days had passed, but my body was yelling at me that undoubtedly I had been lying there entirely too long.

The pixies flew toward me in a rush, their singsong voices lifted in supplication. I heard several different ones asking, "Is Soophee all right?" "Is Soophee all right?" "Soophee recovers?" I gathered by their level of concern that this was not something they did every day of the week.

I said, "I'm okay." The voices immediately shushed. It took me a second to realize what I had done. Without thinking about it, I had unerringly replied in their language. The honeyed tones were the same. The pitch was much lower and sounded gravelly in comparison to their dulcet voices. It didn't sound exactly the same, but it was their language. I started in surprise. "You did that?"

One of the pixies flew in front of my face. I had thought that they looked identical, but having spent time with them, I could see the marginal differences in the shapes of their wings, in the iridescent spread of colors there, and even in the shapes of their eyes. I knew that I had met this pixie before, and I struggled for her name. Ah, it came to me. Flies-With-Red-Gold-Pink-Flowers. She sang to me, "This and more, Soophee. Now all will be clearer for us."

"Okay, girls," I muttered. "I'm going to go back outside, and I don't want to accidentally mush someone."

There was a singsong yell. "Soophee is TURNING AROUND! We will get CLEAR!" It made me smile although I was achingly tired. Feeling like a giant in the land of the really teeny-weeny, I was extremely careful going out the same way I had come in. I couldn't understand why it was a little easier squeezing out until I realized a few pounds must have melted off me inside the cave while I was dreaming.

Dreaming? I couldn't have simply survived in there for four days without food and water, and especially without water. That meant I hadn't really been asleep or that the pixies had done something to me. Whatever it had been had left me voraciously hungry and thirsty.

"Couldn't we have dreamed of eating?" I plaintively said in English. The pixies clouded the outside and cast curious glances at my words. Well, I didn't know what they ate, but I was craving a pizza. Large, thick crusted, with extra cheese and don't forget the mushrooms. Maybe Gibby had figured out some way of making cheese that would stay fresh while I had been gone.

Once I got outside it was dark. Not still dark, but dark again. The stars twinkled above, and the moon was only a sliver of a thumbnail. It was an indicator that the four days I had been in there weren't my imagination.

I fumbled for water from the pool, cautious not to disturb the merman-like pixie counterparts in the current. They rushed me as well, their little bodies glowing greenly in the black waters, eager to see what I was doing. After my thirst was sated, I stumbled into the nearby woods and hoped that the pixies would give me a little privacy. Whatever had happened to me inside the pixies' world hadn't taken care of personal business, and I couldn't wait another minute.

When I came back to the pool the pixies were still aflutter with excitement. Several of them were calling elatedly, "Sak! Sak! Sak!"

I shivered. The air had become cold, and I didn't have an ounce of energy. But I did notice that my breathing was easier. My lungs felt completely normal, and I knew that the pixies had done something about that, as well. "Thanks," I said softly. I was hungry, tired, and cold, and I couldn't imagine why it was that I was tired, considering what I had been doing for four days. My muscles burned with disuse, and I was wondering how I was going to make it back to the campground without lying down to get some real sleep.

Zach to the rescue once again. Oh, he couldn't carry me all the way back, but he did have one of the emergency packs. It had a sleeping bag in it and some emergency provisions. That would take care of anything I needed, provided I could wait for him to show up.

I looked around slowly and went to replace the ferns over the opening to the pixies' cave, just in case anyone else wandered by and decided to take a looksee.

"Hey," I sang to the pixies who were still buzzing about. "How long before Zach comes to us?"

The answer was typically pixie-like. "Once Stern-Affectionate-Handsome-One-Who-Pines gets here, he will be here."

Knowing that I didn't have the energy to try to meet him, I huddled by the base of a tree and gathered my arms around my body. The pixies circled the tree and myself and droned comfortingly. I fell asleep with my head against the tree, not even caring that it was cold or that I was sitting up.

* * *

Oh, I was warm. It felt good. I snuggled closer to my heat source, and suddenly, I could smell something masculine and heady. It was a combination of perspiration and spice and outdoors smell. Half-asleep, I didn't even wonder at the origin. I had been in this position before. I had been held here in a comforting dream. It was a protected place and one that didn't threaten me.

I smiled sleepily and listened for the sounds that would reveal where I was. For the moment, my mind was still mostly lost in the throes of sleep. There weren't the regular sounds of the camp – my bunk mates thumping out of their beds and struggling into cold clothing with barely repressed curses at the temperature. Outside wasn't ringing with the sounds of people chopping wood or changing duties. Dimly, I perceived I wasn't at the camp. Not being there didn't really bother me either.

Then there was a memory. Walking, or rather flying, in the dream world with the firefly pixies, came to me like a shot. It wasn't exactly like a dream, and it wasn't exactly like a memory, but a vivid twisting of both that seemed like a remarkable tale. I realized that I wasn't in the cave because the cave wasn't exactly warm. And the birds were chirping happily far above me.

I grasped that I was inside a sleeping bag and that I was lying on the ground next to something that was very warm. For a split second, I was waking up on the side of a mountain, expecting to hear my father moving around nearby. It frightened me, and I jerked abruptly, forcing the thought away. It had been long before, and the time was over.

Then there was the undeniable and distant trumpeting of a Big Mama as it coursed the redwood forest trail to the grasslands where they fed. I opened my eyes and saw a blue t-shirt. Sky blue. A pocket on the right side. No logo. I lifted my head and saw that the blue t-shirt was covering a broad chest. The muscular arms that came out of the shirt sleeves were wrapped around me. My thigh was lying across both of his. I lifted my head up further and saw, "Zach." I breathed out his name like an accepting sigh.

His eyes were open. The chocolate brown orbs were studying me broodingly. We were wrapped together in the sleeping bag. If I got any closer, I'd have to crawl inside his skin. And did I want to crawl inside his skin? Well, yes, I kind of did. That was weird. Really, really weird.

"Thank you for the book and the candy bar," I said inanely. Goober, I told myself.

Zach appeared confused for a moment, and then he remembered what he'd left on my bunk some four days before. I guess it was his way of giving me jewelry and flowers, except not, or maybe I had just read too much into that.

"Why didn't you come out the front door, Sophie?" he asked instead of commenting on my thankfulness. He meant after I was done talking with Gideon and the steering committee. Because Zach had been waiting for me there, and I had known it.

I looked into his eyes. "I wasn't sure if I wanted to face you again," I said truthfully. Slowly, I glanced away from him and saw that we were a few feet away from where I had fallen asleep. The pixies had brought him to me, and he had wrapped me up in the sleeping bag and then joined me. It wasn't the first time we'd slept in the same bed. It wasn't the first time he had held me comfortingly either. But it was the first time it felt different.

"Ouch," Zach said. "Why don't you hit a guy when he's down?" His face became grim. "I was worried sick about you, Sophie." One of his big hands inched up and tenderly cupped the side of my face. "I thought...I thought that maybe it was him. That he'd come in the night and taken what he couldn't get before. That he'd taken you away."

The warmth of Zach's body didn't hold a candle to the searing heat of his hand on my face. I wanted to tuck my face into the calloused flesh and just take in his distinct aroma. For hours, for days even. "The pixies," I said slowly. "They had to tell me something important. Something critical to us and to them."

His hand caressed my face as if my words were irrelevant. "After I got here, you slept for hours," he murmured. "Your skin was ice cold, but your breathing was normal. I couldn't wake you up."

"The pixies did something to me," I interjected.

"I'll say," he said back. "For a moment I was certain that you were one of them." He gave a little ironic laugh. Zach had been sure at that moment, but now in the bright light of morning with me alive, whole, and very human once again, he wasn't so sure. How had he known? I wondered at what inner instinct told him that the pixie who had sat in his palm was not just any pixie.

Did I want to say that I had been? Did I want to explain to him everything? Did I finally trust Zach? Yikes. I was in big trouble again. But it wasn't the same kind of trouble that I was used to having. Yes, it was a whole NEW trouble. A four-lettered word kind of NEW trouble. Double yikes.

"You died," I blurted and then asked myself, Where the heck did that come from? Then I could hear Kara saying, "Explain why you drugged us." And then, "Not to me. You have to explain to him, to Zach."

"I – what?" Zach said helplessly. His hand stilled on my face. "I didn't die."

Now I was the helpless one. The right words didn't want to seem to come from my mouth. Worse was that I couldn't think of what the correct thing was to say. "The day that we saw the sign near Crescent City," I said finally sputtering the words out. "The sign that said 'You are not alone.'"

Zach nodded at me, still trying to understand.

"I saw it in my head," I told him, my eyes fixed on him, willing him to comprehend me, willing him not to have doubt about what I was saying. "At the sign, you went to face the Burned Man alone, trying to protect me, and he killed you. That's what I saw."

Bewilderment distorted his beautiful face. He was desperately trying to realize what I was saying. "You mean, something like the dreams I had of you, the dreams I have of you," he corrected himself wryly. "It's like that?"

"It was a premonition," I said firmly. "It would have happened. But I made it not happen."

"By drugging us," Zach said incredulously. "You saved my life by slipping me a mickey?" His other hand cupped my other cheek, and he gave my head a little shake. His eyebrows slanted downward in a fierce glower of disapproval. "How did you know he wouldn't kill you instead?"

"I didn't know. Not definitely," I said honestly. "But I couldn't allow you to die for me."

"Why didn't you tell me before?" he asked insistently. "Why? I would have — " His words cut off as he realized that he wouldn't have listened to me. He wouldn't have taken me seriously.

"You were so angry with me," I said. "I don't think you would have believed me. You didn't trust me to tell you the truth. Because of me not telling you when my shoulder ripped open again. Because it would have sounded so out of this world. Because it would have told you just too much for me to bear."

His eyes were like guided lasers shooting into the depths of my soul.

Oh no! Me and my big, big, BIG mouth! There it was, out in the open, as open as it could be without me actually saying the words. I tried to move my head away, but he wouldn't let me. His dear hands were bracketing my face just as he had done the first time he had kissed me. I could see that the wheels were turning around in his head.

"You...care for me that much?" he asked delicately, framing the words as if he was building a house of cards. His tone was uber-carefully neutral. I think he was fighting with his normal urge to be sarcastic or to use words to his immediate advantage.

I dropped my eyes to his chest. No one liked being rejected. I couldn't see what the ultra-perfect Zach, four years older and wiser, would want with geeky, little paranoid teenager, Sophie. I didn't compare to Lulu's lush figure and adorable Cupid's bow lips. I wasn't tall and sleek and wonderfully groomed. I wasn't a conversational whiz kid. I was irritable, close-mouthed, grieving, and obstinate.

"And wonderfully stubborn," he murmured as if he could read my mind.

"Oh, let me out," I begged, starting to struggle to get out of the sleeping bag.

"I can't," he said. My eyes lifted to his again. His face was so serious. The chocolate brown was filled with emotion and something I had never really seen there before. Had I really looked before? "If there's one thing I've learned, Sophie. I can't let you go. Don't you understand that? I dreamed of you before the change. I would do anything for you. I'm not perfect. Sometimes we're going to rub against each other like sandpaper and a match. But each day I spend without you is like a wound opening wider in my heart. Once you were only a dream. Then you were real." His fingers caressed my cheeks, and I was frozen like a statue. "Mulish. Daring. Ready to go out on a limb and saw the branch off behind you. Devoted. Valiant. Beautiful. Breathtaking."

His face lowered to mine, his head tilting so that everything would fit just so. His soft lips touched mine. It was just a little spark of electricity and then a surge of power that shocked us both from the very top of our heads down to the bottom of our heels.

I wanted to breathe him into my body, into my soul. My hands which had been clutching at his t-shirt inched up and joyfully wrapped themselves around his neck. Zach felt my capitulation, and his lips moved delightfully on mine, tasting me, sipping on me until I thought that the world had done a loop-the-loop while my eyes were closed.

Finally, he pulled away, and his chest was heaving with an exertion that had nothing to do with exercise. I wasn't exactly unaffected.

Zach stared at me. I was half lying across his chest, my arms around his neck, and my head pulled back so that I could see his face.

"But you're so..." I said and stopped. Perfect was what I was going to say. So handsome. Like a male model from a magazine that I pretended I never read.

"I'm not whatever it is that you're afraid of," he said softly. "I'm just me. A man. Just what we all are now. I don't have a lot of fancy words for you or flowers or dates before which I ask your father's permission to court you."

My face twisted ironically. "Sounded like some fancy words to me. Mulish. Valiant." I paused. "Beautiful," I added skeptically because I couldn't believe that, even when it came from his lips that seemed so sincere.

"You don't believe you're beautiful," Zach asked disbelievingly. "You must know you're gorgeous. But that's only half of the attraction, no, not even a quarter of what I feel for you. There's so much more, I'd have to write a book about it. Then I'd have to go back and revise it."

I laid my head down on his chest and sighed.

"Slightly insecure," he muttered, but it wasn't like he was saying it was a bad thing, it was more like he was trying to remind himself that I was young.

"Can we go?" I asked after a while. "I really need a bath and to change clothes and I need to tell everyone about the pixies, most especially you though."

I crawled out of the sleeping bag with Zach's help and watched as he repacked everything. He made me drink a full sixteen ounces of water and eat a PowerBar before he'd let us go anywhere.

As I finished my impromptu meal, he looked around the pretty little pool in the midst of the redwoods and shrugged. "Why here?"

"This is where the firefly pixies live," I answered and watched his jaw drop. "This is where they all live." Then I sang to the pixies and watched several come flying out to greet Zach. They buzzed him cheerfully and then disappeared back into their hidey holes.

Certainly, he had been led here by a flying horde of the pixies, and Zach had been so concerned with me, he hadn't realized anything else about the locale. But as his jaw dropped further, I realized I had forgotten about my other surprise.

"You can speak their language now," he muttered.

I smiled crookedly. "Apparently, they did that, too."

"What else did they do?"

I stood and stretched aching muscles, thinking about flying, talks about Big Mamas, about being a protector, and about fulfilling destinies. "I'm still working on that," I said understatedly.
Chapter 22

I Can Hear Him Knocking...

The week that followed was one of the worst I've ever had. Suddenly, I had a boyfriend, and he was older than I was. My mother would have had a fit. No, really, a screaming, knock-down, drag-out, utter hissy fit. I think my parents had been secretly glad that I hadn't gone through the whole boyfriend thing at age fifteen or even sixteen, or heck, even seventeen. I had the group dates which hadn't counted. I held hands with Steve Cooper in the fifth grade, and he had called me his girlfriend. That had meant that we traded iPods for three days before he'd moved on to Jean Simpson who had been up until that time, my best friend. I had played spin the bottle with a group of thirteen-year-olds in Donna Wilson's basement and gotten kissed twice. Both of which had been closemouthed, tentative lip smacks.

Did I know what to do with a boyfriend?

Did I know what to do as the firefly pixie protector?

Did I know what to do when telling Gideon, the fifteen-year-old leader of our odd group, that danger was coming, but I couldn't tell him how or why or when?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no and most definitely NO!

Bad week. Horrible, wretched, awful week. Total yuckzilla.

The group was variously curious, angry, amused, and concerned about my disappearance. I gave Gideon and the steering committee my explanations first. I told them the abbreviated version, and naturally, Ethan was Major General Skepticism in charge of the Eastern Fronts of Incredulity, Disbelief, and Cynicism. I demonstrated singing to the pixies, which pointedly got all their attention. (I felt like the Wondrous Glenda performing with the Amazing Prancing Poodles of Pennsylvania.) I really didn't need to convince Gideon, Leander, Sinclair, and Calida, which should have satisfied me.

They spoke about punishing me for disobeying the "do not go into the forest alone" rule, and Ethan was all for giving it to me with both guns. The others voted on it and decided I hadn't disobeyed the rule intentionally. (Firefly pixies apparently counted as people.)

Here was the big trouble. Some of the larger group didn't have manifested abilities. I believed, as did Gideon, that they had them just the same. Some, like Ethan, didn't believe that their little extra was anything special. It was just something they did. So believing that others in the group were more than extra special came hard to them, even when the ability was patently verified. To a select few, it was nearly impossible.

La-La Land was still alive and well in the camp in the redwoods. Honestly, a few of these people were still having issues with oh, five billion or so people vanishing overnight. I thought that maybe it was because they weren't facing it every day in the form of millions of empty houses and businesses, wrecked cars and airplanes, and a lack of everything that was once normal. They were alone in the woods, in a campground formerly for troubled city kids, not looking at the big picture. They were still thinking of the change as something like the EMP theory I had initially come up with. Most of them hadn't seen new animals or if they had, they had turned their heads quickly away before reality could sink in. ("What was that?" "I don't know, but it had horns, was purple, and sang from The Mikado. Turn away, quick.")

They knew the world had changed, but they didn't have to think about it in The Redwoods. So they didn't. They put blinders on and tried to act normal. Good or bad, that was the case.

Thus, they didn't believe me, and they weren't happy with me either.

Gideon told me, "They'll accept it soon enough."

And I had nodded. Why was it so important for me to have them accept it? I don't know, but I wanted them to do it. It would have been easier not to have to go with the popular vote. Everyone wanted to debate every decision.

And I didn't know what I wanted.

While I was pondering what I wanted, life went on. We did chores. I got cleared by Sinclair for lifting heavy stuff. Zach continued to court me to my eternal bemusement and to Kara's unveiled amusement. I talked with the pixies on a regular basis and tried to pry more information out of them.

And six more people came to the camp. One on one day. Three the day after. Two more the day after that. They came from all directions. The majority had been headed south for the winter. The group of three was from Canada. They'd been on Interstate 5 until they'd hit Redding and seen Gideon's billboard. In all, they'd been looking for people they'd known before the change. A typical reaction and one that we'd all shared.

Four were men. Two were women. Their ages ranged from sixteen (Yea!) to fifty-seven. All were healthy. Two even bought into the whole psychic ability thing. One of them had a hobby of finding things that went missing. Another one said she liked to grow things. I mean, hint, hint, she liked to grow things. (She said she had a whole pile of ribbons from her county fair and most were for biggest vegetables. Btw, she emphatically denied using Miracle-Gro, and I tended to believe her.) She arrived with man number five.

The emphatic gardener's name was Blair, and she was forty years old. She'd lost a family in Idaho. She hadn't been exactly sure why she'd come west, but she'd thought she'd see if her elderly mother was okay in Burns, Oregon. Apparently, the town had become part of a great lake that went for about a hundred miles in all directions. Blair thought that it covered almost all the way to the Idaho/Oregon border and it had things in it that sang and looked like small manatees. (Except she called them mermaids, and I was the only one who really perked up at that.) In any case, Blair hadn't found Burns, Oregon or her elderly mother for that matter or anyone else. And she had circumvented the lake and went over the same ground I had covered. She'd crossed the mountains via Bend, Sisters, and the Santiam Pass. (It gave me goose bumps to think that she had been walking in my path.) She hadn't seen the unicorns or the three-toed thing, but she'd headed south on Interstate 5 before she'd gotten to the reservoir where Fernie and her babies swam and played. But she had seen the broken windows in the restaurants and stores I had entered, and it had given her hope. Eventually, she'd met up with man number five, Tate, in Grants Pass, Oregon. Tate bugged me.

Tate's hair was brown, a medium brown that seemed kind of dull. His eyes were green, a deep green that really bothered me. In his mid-twenties, he was about the same height as Zach and had a good build. He was pretty well tanned, and his face reminded me of things I didn't want to think about.

He wasn't burned black. He didn't have blonde hair. He didn't have searing blue eyes that stared with a bizarre concentration. He didn't have a limp or a bad hand. He was whole, and he looked at me oddly. That was what I didn't like. That, and the fact that he reminded me of the Burned Man.

These were the little things that bothered me. Troubling, my inner voices, the ones the pixies told me to listen to, weren't really saying anything to me. However, one day the pixies came to me in the evening while I was with Zach on the Bluff Trail.

As was usual, I was huffing and puffing up the steep part of the trail while Zach was walking along as if he was meandering down a level country lane. The green light spilled over the trees and surrounded us like a great emerald cloud.

Zach laughed as they tickled his face and buzzed his ears.

I had to stop to catch my breath. Spring was leading the pack, and she trilled to me happily, "Sing to the sisters, Soophee! Sing! Sing! Sing!"

"They're in a good mood," Zach said sardonically.

"You should try their dream world walk," I panted. "Then we'll see about it. They want me to sing." I huffed and braced my arms on my knees.

"So I gathered. It's only a little farther," he said and took my arm. "Come on, girls," he said to the pixies. "You can push on her behind to help."

"Hey," I protested. Climbing hills was never going to be my forte. I was working with Tomas on the stick fighting, however. Three times out of five I could hold the stick properly and actually make contact with some part of the dummy. That actually wasn't saying much. Once, I had hit Tomas's thigh instead of the dummy, and the rest of the class started staying further back when I was up for practice. (It made me question if the ninja-fighting-girl-warrior role was really in my immediate future. I should have watched more of those Bruce Lee/Sonny Chiba movies when my uncle had. Or maybe Buffy the Vampire Slayer?)

Zach sang a little for the pixies as we went up the rest of the hill. His tenor was good for the oldies, and the oldies were what he sang, cheerfully substituting words when he obviously couldn't remember the songs. He was singing "Great Balls of Fire" as we crested the bluff, and I collapsed on the bench seat in a heap of highly pinked flesh.

As I sat there recovering, he sat next to me and casually took my hand in his. We had progressed to hand holding. We had kissed exactly twice, and he was holding back. (Two long kissing sessions were positively volcanic in nature.) That was okay. I was a little shaky on the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing. We didn't have iPods anymore, and I didn't think Zach was going to go for spin-the-bottle. What was next? Promise rings? An invite to the prom? Oh, did I feel dumb? Short answer: Yes.

But something else occurred to me. I sang to Spring, "Have you seen the new humans, Spring?"

She buzzed close to my face and said disappointedly, "No more singing, Soophee?" Hint. Hint. Hint. Hint.

I grimaced. "Yes, I'll sing for the sisters, Spring."

Her miniature wings fluttering madly, she clapped her tiny appendages with glee. I couldn't help wonder why it was that her hands didn't stick together when she did that. "But have you seen the new humans?" I insisted.

"Oh, them," Spring said sourly. "They're not very interesting, are they? We've never heard them sing. They just stare at the other humans as if they might, oh, disappear. Very boring."

"Oh, give them a chance," I said to her. "They might surprise you. But, there's nothing wrong with any of them, is there?" No news was good news, right? If a psycho had come into the camp, wouldn't the pixies be screaming at me? Yes, I think they would.

"What are you saying?" Zach murmured in my ear, closer than I realized and it surprised me.

"I'm asking about the new people in the camp," I muttered.

"What about them?" Zach persisted.

Oh, bad me. I still had a little doubt about Zach. I didn't have an ounce of evidence against the new guy, Tate. He just gave me a bad feeling. A creepy-crawly sensation that made me step back whenever he came within ten yards of me. I didn't want to ignore it, but I didn't want to make a big deal out of it either. I surely didn't want to tell Zach and sound like a big idiot.

"Little-Man-With-Big-Eyes-And-Hurt-Smile talks about the new humans," Spring sang to me as she flew past, leisurely turning on her back and flying upside down. Others were doing loops and expert flying techniques that would have awed the Blue Angels.

"Little-Man who?" I immediately sang to her. Then I said to Zach, "Someone else has been talking to the pixies. Talking, you know?"

"Oh," he said, rubbing my hand tenderly. "Lots of people really like the girls. They're like mascots. Except smarter and cuter and really great to have on your side in a battle. And to tell you when something is up." His lips quirked. "Especially to wake you up when a certain girl has gone running off to do something stupid."

Thanks, Zach. Please shut up. Then I really didn't want to tell him bupkis.

"The short human with the curly hair and the eyes the same color as Sak," Spring answered me on her backswing. "Will Soophee sing now?"

"Getting information out of the pixies is like knocking your head on a brick wall," I said irately.

"Is there anything to worry about?" Zach asked with a smile at me. His brilliant smile made his perfect features even more perfect. He was happy for the moment. Not sullen, brooding, or all Edward Rochester-like. Once I heard Lulu call Zach "broodylicious," and although I was irritated with her, I had to admit she was right. Lately, he'd been almost lighthearted. Like many of the people at the camp, he was moving past his shock and grief over the change. And maybe he was happy with me, too?

"No, I guess not," I said. So I sang-sang to the pixies. It was the usual old favorites. Christmas tunes. Show tunes. Oldies. And a few kid's songs. The pixies loved the singing from the humans. I assumed it was because humans could reach higher and lower pitches and carrying a tune amused the pixies to no end. I would have asked them, but I was afraid of the long-winded, gratuitous answer I was going to get.

By the time the Big Mamas had gone past the bluff and were well on their way to the ocean, I was done. The sun had gone down, and my voice was giving out. Fortunately, the pixies gave in gracefully.

The group began to move down the hill in a flow of glittering, glowing effervescence. Spring lingered by me and sang, "Is Soophee's inner voice speaking to her?"

"I'm not sure," I answered honestly. "Are the sisters' inner voices speaking to them?"

Spring's head tilted in mid-air. She did a somersault that made my hand twitch outward to prevent her from falling, but she caught herself in a faultless movement that was as well coordinated as a circus aerialist.

"I hate when they do that," I muttered.

Zach chuckled. "She probably didn't think about it. She just did it. Is that the one you call Spring?"

I nodded at him and waited for Spring's answer.

"The sisters' inner voices always speak to us," she said mysteriously. "There is much of which to listen." Then she buzzed off, headed after the rest of the horde going in the direction of the midnight pool.

"I hope an owl eats her," I said bitterly. "She just can't answer a question. They have the oddest way of avoiding answering what they don't want to answer."

"Sounds like you," Zach said dryly.

I glanced at him and set my jaw. "What do you want an answer to?" Then I could have bitten my lip. Hadn't I just thrown down a gauntlet? Why, yes, I believed I had. Feeling frisky, wasn't I?

Zach sat straight up, and his gaze settled on me, something glittering intently in his eyes. "Did they change you into a pixie? Those days that you were gone?"

"Yes and no," I said ironically, savoring the moment. "I don't know for sure. It was me in your hand. You were upset with Gideon for calling off the search. Ethan suggested that I had run off. You really wanted to keep looking for me." I was about to add that he had begged Spring and I to help him, but I didn't want to demean him. "But I don't think I was ever really a pixie."

"Yes, no, maybe," he said. "Queen of Not Really Answering Questions. Your majesty, I approve of your artful technique of the expressive dodge."

"If I'm the Queen of Not Really Answering Questions, then you're the Prince of Sarcasm and the Duke of Disdain," I said with a tight smile.

Zach relaxed and touched my hand again. "You were asleep in the cave, but you were a pixie at the same time?"

"That's my closest explanation," I said solemnly. "I'm not trying to dodge that one, Zach. I don't really know. You could ask the pixies, but they really have some doozies for answers. I was a pixie, but I was always still me."

Zach separated my fingers with his fingers and examined them carefully. "You're insecure with me, aren't you?"

Danger. Danger. Danger, Sophie Moore! I sighed and I nodded.

"You haven't had a boyfriend before?" he asked softly.

"No," I said shortly.

He nodded. "Dates?"

"A few," I disclosed slowly. I hadn't even gotten to kiss my last pseudo boyfriend. I was afraid of what an older boy was going to ask of me. I was afraid of what he wasn't going to ask me. I was afraid of everything. Rejection. Not being rejected. I was a mess. I couldn't admit it to myself, much less someone like Zach.

"I see," he said.

"Someone like you," I said immediately and bit off the rest. I was going to say that someone like him, someone so darned perfect and handsome, couldn't possible understand the insecurities of others. But deep down inside I knew that wasn't true. Zach had a few of his own insecurities; I just couldn't put a name to them yet.

"Someone like me what?" he asked softly, but it wasn't the nice kind of softly that it had been before.

"Can you understand how fragile life is now?" I said instead of answering.

"More than you know," he said promptly.

That made me blink. It implied something about him and his secrets. He had never said what had happened to him directly after the change, and I had never asked. I assumed it was as painful an experience as my own had been, indeed as much as anyone's had been. Was it possible that it had been worse than others? God help him if it had been.

"What do you want from me?" I asked him.

Zach smiled sadly. "You'll have to figure that out all by yourself, Sophie. No help there. And I don't think the pixies will know either."

I wasn't angry with him. I wasn't anything but confused. Black and white answers would be nice, but I was only getting gray ones from everyone. But then there was something that wasn't so gray.

Jumping to my feet, I spun toward the trail. My breath caught in my throat. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was too awful to contemplate.

"It's Elan. Something's horribly wrong," I sputtered, and I began to run. Zach gasped behind me, and a moment later I could feel him running behind me. "We might have time to stop it!" I yelled over my shoulder.

I don't know how I managed to get down the trail without breaking my neck. Once Zach caught my arm before I tripped, and he managed to put me upright with his natural gracefulness that I so envied. By the time we reached the camp, we could hear the screaming, and I wanted to cover my ears so I couldn't hear it anymore.
Chapter 23

Stand Tough...

Amanda was the one screaming. She was the one who taught Elan basic elementary education. She also lived with him in a cabin with another middle-aged woman. I knew from my time in The Redwoods that she looked upon Elan like he was her own son. She had lost two teenage children in the change, and Elan had become as important to her as either of them. Standing in the vicinity of the fire pit, Gideon held her by the shoulders, trying to get her to calm down by speaking gently to her, but she was nonstop in her hysterical vocalization.

I looked around. It seemed like nearly everyone in the camp was present. Obviously, the guards were still at their posts. I noticed all of the new people were there with a notable exception. And there were others who were missing. Elan was gone, but I already knew that. I went to Ethan and tightly grasped his shoulder. "What happened?"

Ethan shot me a dirty look as if I was supposed to know already. (I did know, but I wanted independent details.) "Amanda thinks that Elan's run off," he muttered.

Gideon's head shot up, and he stared at me. He was too far away to hear my question to Ethan, but he'd known I was there. I didn't need to be a mind reader to know what was going through his mind. Why hadn't we seen this coming? Poor kid (I meant Gideon), it was tough to be the leader. It was going to be tougher and soon.

"How long?" I said insistently. Could Ethan be that dumb? Did he really think that Amanda would be screaming like a B-movie Scream Queen confronting the killer if she thought that Elan had only run away?

"An hour?" Ethan said shortly. "We don't know. Some of his stuff is gone. He told Yen he wanted to see where the pixies lived, and Yen didn't really think he was serious." Yen was the sixteen-year-old newcomer of Vietnamese heritage. He hadn't seen the pixies yet, although they had seen him. And Elan was obviously Little-Man-With-Big-Eyes-And-Hurt-Smile. I should have seen that coming, too. Elan was infatuated with the firefly pixies. He called them "Tinker Bells," as he had obviously been raised on Disney movies.

Had he followed me? Or had he followed the pixies? Either was possible. It wouldn't have bothered the pixies. Elan didn't want to harm them in the least.

Abruptly, I turned and started toward my cabin. Peripherally, I saw that Zach was trying to organize a search team. He didn't realize I was leaving. As I reached the cabin, I got a lantern lit so that I could see what I was doing. I got my pack and the Japanese broadsword. I packed essentials and a large water bottle. I hung the pack over my shoulders and the broadsword across my chest. It didn't hang exactly the way it was supposed to hang because I wasn't a man, but it didn't really matter. I found the daggers I had taken from the house past Crescent City and put them where they needed to be. I finished with hiking boots in my size that had serendipitously appeared several days after Zach had gone on a scavenging trip.

"Are you leaving?" the voice came, and it wasn't the one I expected to hear. Instead, it was Lulu, curvaceous and cute, asking the curious question. Her head was tilted inquiringly, and her sky blue eyes examined me with obvious purpose.

"Yes, I'm leaving," I said. The vision in my head had shown me Elan's horrible fate, and I had to prevent it. It showed me where and even a little idea of when. I didn't have time to debate with Gideon and especially not with Zach. I only had time to move out as quickly as I could. And Lulu was in my way.

"I have something to show you," Lulu said oddly.

I turned to look at her. Up until that moment I had thought her vapid, but here was a different Lulu. Determined and ready to battle for what she wanted, she was also ready to fight dirty. It wasn't a good look for her. Her pose held a hint of desperation. It didn't make her look attractive at all. It made her look needy and pitiful. What passed through my mind was that Lulu didn't seem so perky all of a sudden nor did she use cute made-up words that were supposed to be hip. She held out a photograph in the palm of her hand, presenting it to me as if it was a prize.

I glanced at it, and the lamplight in the cabin gave me a brief glimpse of what it was like to have lived in Zach's hell. He had dreamed of me, but obviously, he had been thinking of his life before the change, as well. This was a simple wallet-size photo. Zach smiled into the camera. So did the dark-haired woman that his arm was wrapped around. She was pretty as were their matching wedding bands on their left index fingers. But what was especially gorgeous, was the tiny baby with the tuft of chestnut hair and chocolate brown eyes that matched his father's. Zach was holding the child in his other arm, supporting the infant easily with his bent limb. The baby's fist waved in the air, a tiny blue rattle forever silenced in the stillness of a two -dimensional image. Here was a child who would never again laugh, giggle, or cry, for whatever strange twist of fate that had changed our world forever.

Oh, I guess it really wasn't a brief glimpse. I had to look closely to see the wedding bands, but they were there. Zach appeared younger than he was now. I couldn't really tell how much younger. Perhaps if Lulu flipped the photo over I could see the date written on the back by an unknown woman's hand. Had Zach's wife written the date of the photo so that it could never be forgotten? My own frame of reference was that my mother was the official writer on the backs of photographs for posterity. Women, mothers, tended to do that. Why not Zach's wife?

What torment must it be to lose your wife and your baby in the flicker of the mind's eye? Had he woken up expecting to hear the cackle of his infant and only heard silence? Had he wandered the house looking for them only to find nothingness? Yes, I imagined he had. For Zach, it must have been like a knife thrust through his chest, except without the blood. When he read J's suicide note, had Zach been thinking that he had been exactly where J had stood? Zach had asked me if I had perched on that precarious boundary. In hindsight, I should have asked him the very same question.

When my eyes came up, I saw that Lulu was looking at me with satisfaction. She thought she had ruined things for us. Coldly, I wondered if she had. Certainly, this was something I was going to have to think about. And I would have to think hard about a man who professed his affection for me only months after the disappearances of his nearest and dearest.

It was possible that I was misjudging Zach. Oh, where were those inner voices that I so desperately needed to hear? Where was the moment of rationale that gave me the right answer to soothe the ragged edges that were unraveling in my soul?

Save Elan, they said instead. Save him. He needs you.

And what did this say about Lulu? She had obviously taken this from Zach's belongings. She had deliberately searched through his possessions for whatever selfish intention that had motivated her.

I fixed on her big blue eyes. There was satisfaction there and malice, as well. I guess she didn't have a "red" car after all. Instead of the anger that I was supposed to feel, there was pity. She wasn't in the position that she'd hoped to be in.

"Put it back where you found it," I said, and my voice was like ice.

It wasn't the reaction for which she'd aimed. Her mouth opened just a little and I added, "You better hope I don't come back, that I can't come back, Lulu. Because I'll tell him what you did, especially if you haven't. Do you understand that, Lulu? You can't lie to him because there are those in the camp who will know exactly who is the real liar."

Lulu said, "You can't— "

I stepped close to her, bumping her with the handle of the Japanese broadsword. She pulled the photograph back, and her eyes reflected the fear that I suddenly caused. It wasn't right. A seventeen-year-old shouldn't cause a twenty-five-year old woman to feel fear, but Lulu had brought it on herself. Furthermore, I didn't regret the moment. She needed the wake-up call if she hoped to continue to live in The Redwoods, if she wanted to continue to be a social animal.

"I can," I said firmly, frigidly, staring her down so that she couldn't look away from me. "I'm going after Elan now. Because if I don't, the Burned Man will do things to him that will give every single person in this camp nightmares for every single day of the rest of their lives. And you, all you care about is eliminating a...romantic rival. Zach doesn't want you, Lulu. He'll never want you, and you've done something awful. You've betrayed his trust and the trust of the people living here. Do you think anyone will want to be with you now?"

I hitched the backpack on my shoulders and watched her lovely features crumple. Lulu hadn't considered the consequences of her actions.

"I'll say you took the photograph from his cabin," she said suddenly, viciously.

Kara cleared her throat from where she stood in the doorway.

Lulu spun, gasped, and the photograph fluttered to the ground. As Kara reached to pick it up, Lulu pressed her aside and disappeared into the darkness with a haunted cry of dismay. Kara took the photo by the edge and looked at it with a little intake of breath. "Oh, dear God," she murmured. "That poor young man." Then her eyes came up to me with dawning awareness.

I kept my features as blank as I could, but perhaps the pain was exposed in my eyes. It felt like the same sharpened metaphorical blade that had sliced Zach in half.

"Oh, hon," she said brokenly. "I'm sure...I'm sure it isn't as bad as all that."

I set my back stiffly and walked past Kara. She was silent for a moment as she watched me striding away. It took her a moment to realize that I wasn't coming back, that I was leaving the camp. Behind me Kara was crying out for Zach and Gideon, but it didn't take me ten seconds to vanish into the blackness of the forest. I knew exactly what trail to take. After a few minutes, I could hear them calling far behind me, but it didn't really matter.

I don't think ten minutes had passed before the pixies joined me. Spring was sputtering at me as she flew. "Soophee," she sang irately. "Soophee is causing danger to herself again! Soophee could wait for Sak and the other humans!"

The Orick Trail was the one I followed. "If you ever need to go to town, that one goes to the nearest small town. You have to ford Redwood Creek, which can be tricky if the water level is up but it's doable. It's an escape route for you. It parallels the highway, comes close sometimes, but it'll keep you off the main road. If you should have to go, you might have an easier time on the trail rather than the road." Those were Gideon's words to me. Had they been prophetic, or had Gideon been simply trying to comfort a skittish newcomer?

"Buzz off, Spring, if you're not going to help me," I sang fiercely, trying to regulate my breathing. I didn't know how far ahead of they were, but I needed to be as speedy as I could.

Spring hissed at me. I gritted my teeth. I didn't want to aggravate the pixies, but how could I get them to understand that Elan was a child, a helpless child with no one to protect him?

"You have children, right, Spring?" I sang to her, trying to make the point I had to make in the most expedient method.

"Almost all of the sisters have children," she sang back huffily.

"Little-Man-With-Big-Eyes-And-Hurt-Smile is one of our children," I sang to her, my tones insistent and determined.

Spring flew straight up into the air after making a strange noise. She did a pass past my nose and circled around my front. "Little-Man-With-Big-Eyes-And-Hurt-Smile is...a child? Is that why he is not as tall as you?"

"Elan hasn't grown up yet," I told her. "Although he seems strong enough to the sisters, he's not, and he has to be protected. Just as you protect your children. He's vulnerable, frightened, and someone very terrible has taken him."

"The new human took him," she sang warily.

I nodded with a deep breath. Perhaps the pixies hadn't seen the danger because it hadn't been presented to me. Perhaps there was something about the Burned Man that kept the pixies from knowing what he was doing. Perhaps the Burned Man's abilities had blinded me, as well. I didn't know the answers, and there was only one thing that mattered now.

The pixies lit my way, showing me the trail, making it easier for me. I would make excellent time, if I could only find the pair before they reached Eureka. It was there that I had seen something so awful I didn't want to even think about it. I wouldn't have known except that Zach had told me about the spiders he had seen. Briefly, I closed my eyes and forced the horrific scene of my premonition from my mind. "Can you find Elan for me?" I asked Spring.

"The sisters will try," Spring declared, now intent on the purpose of my mission. "But Soophee needs to know that we cannot see the other human."

Ah, an answer. "The sisters cannot see Tate, the other human," I repeated. They meant in whatever psychic sense that guided them.

Spring let out a keening moan. "We see what happens to Soophee. Soophee is connected to the sisters."

"And are you seeing something bad for me?" I interpreted.

Spring didn't answer, but that was answer enough for me. As I hiked purposefully, I knew something else. The premonitions changed. As events changed in the present, long-term consequences altered in the future. There was another trail somewhere. It looked like a thousand people had once hiked there. The redwoods and other trees leaned over the trail in an arch of sea green deference. The trail was flat and curved around the bottom of a bluff. The ocean crashed against rocks nearby and bellowed out its defiance at the halt of its waves. The sun was dimly pushing through the pines and shrubs and a morning fog was trying to wind its way through the world seeking something it would never be able to find.

Elan was crying for his mother. Not Amanda, but the mother he had lost months before. He was scared and alone but for this solitary frightening man who wouldn't answer his questions and who shoved him along when he wouldn't walk voluntarily. This man looked at Elan funnily, and Elan was shuddering because he knew the man was going to kill him. There was more, as well, in the form of the things that seemed to be following the scary man and seemed to want to help him.

The man was Tate, the newcomer, and as they stopped to each eat a PowerBar and drink some water, he reached up to his eyes and took out the green-colored contacts that had been inserted there. His eyes were an intense blue, the color of a deep mountain lake. It was a color I had seen before. It was the same hated blue eyes that looked at me out of the Burned Man's face. But Tate's face wasn't burned. His limbs were whole and unscarred. His hair was brown instead of dirty blonde. His face wasn't ravaged by insanity.

But his words were blurred with hatred. "You'll call them," he hissed more to himself than to Elan. "You'll call them when I'm ready."

Was his hair dyed? Was this man the Burned Man? All I could see in my mind's eye was the blackened features of the Burned Man and his blazing blue eyes. He was tall the same as Tate, and his build was similar, but he couldn't have healed without showing some of the effects of the first night at the bonfire. His features had been burned; his hair had been half gone. Then there had been something wrong with one of his legs and one of his hands. Then I had bitten the good arm and caused a massive amount of bleeding. I had hoped that he would crawl off and die someplace to never bother us again, but Max and Thad had discovered the folly of my desire. But I was discovering it, too, for that matter.

If these were not two distinct men, then I would have never recognized the Burning Man. His hair was back, unless it was a good wig. I could buy that, but the skin couldn't have been repaired. I glanced at the pixies flying ahead of me, muttering amongst themselves, unhappy with my actions, and knew they could have healed the Burned Man as they had healed me. But they wouldn't have done that. They couldn't have done it.

The vision had Tate opening his coat and his shirt to allow the sweat on his chest to dry. He flapped the shirt to help, and I saw the mark on his chest. It was a little larger than the one on my cheek, and its shape was much different, but I knew instantly what it was for. The spiders had marked him as one of theirs just as the pixies had marked me.

I thought of the dark shape skittering into the tall grass on the side of the road near the sign I had burned to the ground. A spider thing? Something that helped the Burned Man?

I blinked to the present. I looked through the darkness to the west. There was a compass on the end of one my knives. I stopped for a moment, pulling the weapon and freeing it so I could see the handle. The compass spun lazily. The pixies curiously waited for me as I studied the tiny dial.

There were two puzzles. One was whether Tate was the Burned Man or not. The other was figuring out where the trail was that I had seen in my head. Based on the way the sun was moving, they were heading south down the coast, the same direction I was going. They were on foot most likely because Tate had no way of hauling Elan around. Additionally, it was obvious from my vision that Tate wanted Elan to call them.

Three puzzles. Who were them? Was it the group? Was it something else?

I looked at the mass of fluttering pixies waiting for me, waiting for their protector to make a decision. Elan talked about the pixies. He was infatuated with them. He wanted to see their home. He wanted the mark on his face like mine. He was able to talk to them, and the pixies didn't mind in the least.

The Burned Man had wanted me to tell him where the pixies were located, so he could destroy them because he blamed them for his ghastly injuries at the bonfire. If Tate was the Burned Man somehow magically recovered, then was he still obsessed with the pixies? If he couldn't get at me, then had he taken Elan thinking that the child could provide him with what he so desperately wanted?

Had the Burned Man somehow grasped that he could pretend to be normal with Blair for a few days so that he could ingratiate himself into the group?

God, the questions that whirled frantically in my mind. Ultimately, it didn't matter if the Burned Man was Tate or not. It only mattered that he had kidnapped Elan and that he was headed toward Eureka and a destination that gave me shivers. The previous premonition had shown what Tate had intended as a conclusion for Elan, and it involved the scary spiders that Zach had told me about previously.

I needed to find a trail that went across the redwoods to the coast. That was where I would be able to find Tate and Elan and save Elan, if I could, long before they reached the place where the spiders lived.
Chapter 24

Little Miss Muffet Sat on a Tuffet...

I stopped and slept for a few hours just after I found a trail that headed for the coastline. The sign was marked as the Coast Trail – 3.5 miles. The glow of the firefly pixies illuminated the words for me, and I found a spot where I could put a sleeping bag under a rhododendron bush. My eyes were burning with exhaustion. The day had been long. I had been digging trenches for the latrines before going up the Bluff Trail with Zach. Although I had time for a bath before we went for our evening stroll, I wasn't exactly prepared to go on a multi-mile, rushed hike in order to save someone's life. However I thought my day was going to end up, this wasn't it. The ground was cold. The air was damp. My stomach was tied in knots. The pixies were unhappy with me. Zach was probably thinking only God knew what about what had happened with Lulu.

And I dreamed of Zach. He wouldn't sleep. Frantic with worry, he thought of Kara and of Lulu and of the small photograph I had looked upon in Lulu's hand. Mostly, he was thinking about me. "How can I make her understand, Kara?" he asked anxiously. They were dressed, packs on their backs, on the highway, searching, searching, searching. Kara said, "Either she will or she won't. She's not unreasonable. But Zach, couldn't you have picked a lesser secret to hide from her?" "She doesn't talk about her parents," he retorted angrily. "You don't talk about your partner. You think I want to talk about them? If I talk about them, all I want to do is cry. So I chose not to talk about them because it hurts so deeply. I didn't think it would really matter."

I wanted to reach out to him in my sleep to say I understood about secrets. I understood that there were things that no man or woman ever wanted to talk about. How could we? We had all faced one of the worse events our kind could endure. The end of our world, yet we were also facing something that was very exciting – the beginning of a new civilization, the establishment of a new humanity.

Was I not a living example of what the new existence was going to be like? A partner of the pixies, one of the sisters, sworn to protect them, and to protect the people who wanted the change to continue with goodness and decency. (I was going to write promos for the firefly pixies, I swear.)

Because I felt that way so strongly, I hadn't waited for Gideon and the others to discuss options about Elan in excruciatingly slow details. Elan's providence wouldn't wait for people to make long-winded decisions, no matter if they were right or wrong.

Despite Zach's need to keep the information about his family undisclosed, he was not a bad person. Every moment I had spent with him had convinced me of that integral facet of his personality. He felt the agonized hurt as much as any of us did, and somehow he had found something to care about. He was afraid to lose it just as I was afraid to take chances.

"Zach," I called, and my voice was as sincere as I felt. "I'll come back."

And I swear, in the dream, the conscious Zach with his tormented expression heard me.

* * *

I woke, and it was still dark. The stars still twinkled above me. Far and away, the distant light of massive suns had died away millions of years before their light reached the place where I could look on them. It was a symbol of how life persevered. Although the stars had died away so long ago, something of them still existed here and now.

The pixies stirred to life as I did. Some of them had snuggled against me for warmth. Others patrolled the forest looking for signs of Tate or Elan. Packing quickly, I got moving again, heading west for the coast. The pixies flew about me, slightly sluggish but keen to make progress. My exigency had rubbed off on them.

The trail was well established but months of disuse had brought up dozens of sprouts. The trees and bushes would reclaim the narrow stretch of pathway before a year or two had passed. In five years, because of rain, erosion, and new growth, there would be little left to show that anyone had come this way. Certainly, there was no sign that two people had come this way before I had.

It didn't mean anything. There were dozens of trails that led to the ocean from Highway 101 from the Redwood National Forest. There were dozens of roads, some paved, more not, that people had used to explore the section of wilderness that had been set aside for preservation. Tate could have used any of them.

Spring was riding on my head, holding on to some of my hair as if she was riding a horse and holding its mane. I sang to her, "Go and rest, Spring. Take the sisters with you so that they will be able to help me tonight."

Hesitating as she still held onto my hair, Spring was silent for a moment. "Soophee should avoid the old places of the forest, the places where humans once worked," she sang to me, the caveat blatantly obvious in her tone.

I grimaced. More information, please. Don't hold out on me now, girlfriend. I need your help more than ever. "What kind of old places, Spring?"

The pixies returned to me in an agitated swarm. They chattered nervously. I supposed they wanted me to realize the urgency of Spring's message. "The before-places," Spring called to me. "Soophee asks about the before and the sisters only know of the now and the after-now, but it is the before-place that we see as the dangerous place, the place where Soophee will be most at risk."

At risk. At risk was better than the pixies foreseeing Soophee at death.

Oh, but I had options. I could call on the pixies to guide the group to me, to help me, if they would do that. I believed they would fight to protect Elan, perhaps they would even kill the Burned Man, or the man who might have been the Burned Man, Tate. But it was those people I didn't want to put in more jeopardy. I had no premonitions about myself or about Zach or Kara. It was only Elan who figured in my mental portents.

Then there was the fact that half of the group didn't believe in the abilities that the others possessed. They wouldn't believe that I could lead them to Elan. Convincing them would take more precious time.

I knew that I was better by myself. I had beaten the Burned Man before, and now I was in better condition. I could beat him again. And I could beat Tate, whoever he was.

"Spring," I sang. "Go and rest. I'll follow the path that leads to Elan."

"This is the proper direction," she sang to me. "We feel Little-Man-With-Big-Eyes-And-Hurt-Smile. He is very sad but thus far is unhurt. He's not far from Soophee. The sisters will stay with Soophee."

Sighing, I nodded. Not far for the pixies could mean anything from three feet to a walk of several days. Several of the pixies landed on my head and my shoulders. Some of them descended on the pack. They would conserve their strength. I tried to question them about the before-places and what that meant, but it was next to impossible to understand their answers. Almost everything was before to them. They lived for the now. The redwoods and the humans who lived near them were now. Everything else was before.

A before-building could be a 7-Eleven store or a hundred-year-old cabin. It might not even be a building, but something that had been built, like a bridge. The more information I tried to get out of the more, the more indescribable their answers became. They were tired as was I and doubtless hungry, too. I had water, but I hadn't planned on a long trip. I don't know what I was thinking when I packed. (I knew that Elan was in horrible danger, and I packed weapons with which to defend him.)

"Food," I said to Spring. "I need food."

Spring moved on my head. It felt like she perked right up at the mention of food. "The sisters know a wonderful insect that has the most bittersweet taste. We're certain that Soophee would enjoy this one. We believe the humans call it a butterfly. It's crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside." Then she made a yummy sound that nearly made me groan.

"I don't think we could find enough butterflies to feed me," I sang back, trying to keep the dryness out of my tone.

"Oh," she responded.

"But don't let that stop you from eating," I added helpfully.

The pixies decided that was a great idea and went to find a meadow.

Twenty minutes later I came across a campsite. Someone had pitched a small tent off the path. The red walls caught my eye. The packs were still present, hanging on a tree branch in order to deter predators that might find the food smells interesting. I didn't want to look inside the windblown tent that was rapidly tearing into tatters. If it hadn't been staked to the ground it would have blown away long before. I could see the two sleeping bags inside. If there had been a shape to them once, it was gone with the rain and critters who had wandered through. But they had left a cache of granola bars inside a waterproof bag inside one of the packs, and that was good enough for me.

I came to the perpendicular trail a few minutes later. There was a sign that revealed it was a section of the old highway. Highway 1 had once coursed from the southern part of California, hugging the coastline, to the northern part of the state. Much of it had changed over to Highway 101 although obsolete sections had been left to rot like this one. People walked the remnants of what was a major structural accomplishment for the early part of the 20th century. (At least that was what the sign told me.) A hundred yards beyond were the cliffs above the beaches. I could smell the sea spray and could hear the cry of seagulls.

Turning south, I found the button ten minutes after that. It was large and blue, the size of a quarter. It was from Elan's coat. The buttons were on the outside; there was a zipper on the interior of the coat. A down coat, it was designed to keep the snow out while a child was building snowmen or sledding down the bunny slope. Amanda had gotten one of the scavengers to pick it up in the correct size for Elan in preparation for the impending winter. I left the button in the middle of the trail because I knew that Zach and Kara would be coming after Elan and me.

A mile later I found a broken branch. It was fresh, and the branch was still flexible. Then a few miles later there was another button. Then a tiger's eye marble. Then there was a pencil with ghosts and black cats on it. It hadn't been sharpened yet. Elan was cleaning out his pockets. Clever little boy.

I stopped in mid-afternoon to rest. I leaned against a broad redwood tree between the enormous roots and looked up at the blue sky. Only a few puffy clouds marred the color. I was wondering what I was going to do with the Japanese broadsword when I fell asleep again. I hadn't meant to, but the dreams started right away.

Gideon was talking to Ethan. "Follow them. They know where to go. She knows what's going to happen to Elan. We have to trust that she's right and trying to prevent it."

Ethan scowled. "But you're certain that Lulu is telling the truth."

"She's sorry for what she did. She doesn't want Elan to die. Or Sophie for that matter."

"I have volunteers," Ethan said. "We'll go at first light. Maybe we can catch up with Zach and Kara before too long."

Gideon's eyes glimmered. "I don't think there's a hope of that. Something else is going to happen. We need to prepare for that. I can see it coming, but I don't know what it is."

Ethan started to sneer, but the expression melted from his face. "Something's going to happen? Something bad? Do we need to leave this place?"

Nodding solemnly, Gideon said, "We're all going to have to leave. It was just a matter of time anyway."

Then Zach was there. He was sleeping next to Kara, both in sleeping bags on the ground. Their faces were cut with lines of exhaustion. He was dreaming of his son. His name had been Daniel, and he had been nearly three years old. A toddler, not a baby as in the photograph. He had been a bundle of energy and talked more as if he had been four or five years old. Zach had been teaching him how to play soccer and football. He had wanted to play T-Ball the following summer.

Then Zach was dreaming of me. The powerful emotions that he felt for me were both overwhelming and endearing. I didn't understand how he could have these feelings for me so closely after his wife's vanishing, but the feelings were there all the same. He would wait as long as it took for me to get over my skittishness, and he was prepared to wait a very long time. After all, we were both relatively young.

Then his wife was there in his dreams, and she was screaming at him, angry with his inability to understand her restlessness. They had married too young. They had been neighbors, childhood sweethearts. Both families had expected them to be together, and they had been. They had decided not to wait until after college but to marry first and support each other while they went to their collective classes. Daniel had been a happy accident and never unwanted.

Lila had been her name. She had married too young, far too young. She had missed the life of a teenager. She had disliked the feeling of being tied down with a husband and a young child when all of her friends were attending college and having fun. She had wanted more, and unwilling to wait, she had went out and gotten more.

The dream switched again. Zach was dreaming that it was I who was screaming. I wasn't arguing with someone. I wasn't having a fit or trying to make myself heard. I was screaming because someone was killing me, and the pain was devastating. Zach reached for me in the dream, but he was all too helpless. Like his son before, there was nothing he could do about it.

Then he woke up screaming, as well.

My eyes snapped open, and I found something crawling up my leg.

I didn't remember withdrawing the broadsword, but there was a swish of noise and a blur of motion that was my right hand and arm moving in determined purpose. The blade flashed in a solitary ray of sunlight and then it was plunged into the ground between my legs.

Looking down I noticed two things. The first thing I saw was my hand on the vibrating handle. The weapon was twitching from the potent execution it had undergone. The second item was that the thing that had been crawling up my leg was impaled by the blade into the ground not an inch from my jean-clad legs.

It was a spider the size of an orange not including the length of its legs. It had a greenish back that resembled a turtle's shell and eight black, lightly furred legs. Its red eyes stared sightlessly at me. Blackish venom dripped from impressive looking pincer-like mouthparts. The blade had pierced the slight indentation of its shell, where I supposed it would be most vulnerable.

"What the bleep?" I said and leapt to my feet. There were more of them on the path, spread out, moving crab-like toward me. I didn't immediately feel the threat, but I could remember Zach's words. "They looked like a cross between spiders and turtles. They had eight legs. There was an entire area that was covered with cobwebs, and we avoided it because there were a few oversized cobweb-covered lumps that were animals they had snared. Some were as big as rabbits."

I knew that they were trouble. I didn't actually remember pulling the sword from the creature stuck to the ground, but abruptly, it was in my hand again, and there was a haze of activity. I moved, leaped, and jumped. When I looked behind me there was a dozen dead spiders lying on the trail, and the rest were fleeing into the brush. "Did I do that?" I asked with a little bit of trepidation combined with wonder. I remembered my dreams about fighting with a sword and knew that all the stick fighting preparatory work hadn't done this for me.

Spring and her happy horde of pixies buzzed in on my note of awed reflection. They held sticks formed like tiny spears. When they got close enough to identify the spiders, there was a fierce hiss that came from them in a combined tone. Some of the pixies took off after the fleeing spiders with a terrible cry of anger.

I glanced down at the sword in my hand. Suddenly, it was heavy. My arm drooped. Then I noticed I was breathing heavily. I didn't know how I had done what I had done, but the power was there all the same. Here was the awkward teenager who couldn't hit the practice dummy with the sticks but suddenly was killing spiders with gleeful abandon. Samurai Sophie. Whoo-hoo!

Spring landed on my shoulder and sang, "Told you so," except what she actually said was, "The sisters knew it would be thus." She sounded incredibly smug for something that was less than two inches tall.

There was another premonition that filled my head. Elan was standing at the edge of a bluff. Tate was beside him, his face warped with dread and rage and loathing. Suddenly, the older man shoved the boy, and Elan went over the edge.

I didn't take the time to say anything to the pixies. I turned south and ran. The old road dipped into a hollow, and a wooden bridge crossed a largish stream. In the clearing ahead of me was an old rock-walled building. It had no windows left nor did it have a roof, but it sat beside the stream, and the remnants of an old waterwheel were left there. Greenish wood that had long-since splintered was left beside the stream, and the remnants of an old waterwheel were left there. Rotting bucket boards attached to a pair of rusting circles had been the exterior part of the wheel was all that was left.

Spring held onto my hair and hissed urgently in my ear. "A before-place," she sang hauntingly. "This is the before-place to beware, Soophee."

I came up short at the open doors. I could see inside. Shadows stretched out in the interior. Supports for the walls had been constructed in the recent past. They were built from steel struts and ran up the walls of the three-storied building. Ivy and vines crept up the walls, concealing the mortar that held the rock walls together. It was an empty place, a building that once held working men, but now held...something very bad.

"What did you see, Spring?" I sang insistently. "Tell me."

"Soophee goes into the building and she falls screaming," Spring told me, and her voice held a note of fear.

Premonitions were wonderful things if one had time to do something about them. If one had time to make a rational decision. I held the sword at the midlevel position, not too far in the air, not too low, and thought that I didn't have any time to prevent Elan from being thrown from the cliffs.

The original premonition had been that Elan had been fed to the spiders as Tate had promised them. But I had caught up to them, and events in the future had changed infinitesimally. It meant that just because I went into the building, I wasn't necessarily going to fall screaming to my death or to even worse.

So what did I do? I heard Elan cry out my name in such a terrified tone that my spine was immediately frozen with ice. I stepped into the building and into the darkness.
Chapter 25

Along Came a Spider

and Sat Down Beside Her...

I had come to the conclusion that premonitions are similar to a house of cards. To get to the very peak of the house, the house must be carefully constructed card by card. If one is missed, or one goes awry, then the peak is never achieved. I had begun to realize that the premonitions I saw frequently featured people I cared about in a state of trouble or worse. Not only did I not see a premonition about myself except as a general feeling of danger to come, but a premonition could be squashed at the very least adjustment. I had control over what could or would happen, and acknowledging that fact gave me previously overlooked strength.

Once I had heard Elan's frantic call, it didn't matter to me what Spring had told me. "Soophee goes into the building and she falls screaming." But as I stepped into the deep shadows at the forefront of the building, I heard the cracking of the floor beneath my feet and her foreboding statement shot to my heart immediately. The wood beneath me began to move ominously, boards snapped loudly, and I instantly surged forward. I bent my legs and was readying myself to leap when the landing crumpled beneath me. I propelled myself across the disintegrating wood and jumped into the air.

For a moment all was clear. There were dozens of spiders all around me. Their webs were hidden in the shadows of the walls. Their prey had been carefully captured and wrapped for later consumption. On the opposite wall waiting for me to fall into his trap, was Tate, holding Elan before him, one hand muffling the child. Elan had done what Tate had desired; he had cried out to me in order to get me inside. The scaffolding behind me collapsed into the hole beneath it. Whether it had been there originally or Tate had managed to make it, I didn't know. But he had sawed through the support beams so that whoever entered first would fall into a hole filled with ruby-eyed spiders and sharpened stakes.

As I landed on the other side, Tate screamed out his venomous hatred of me. His wretchedly perverted face resembled the Burned Man more than ever. He backed away from me pulling Elan with him.

The Japanese broadsword was swinging before my feet hit the dirt floor. I landed hard, one knee came down onto the ground, but it didn't stop the steel from swinging at its targets. It didn't stop me from bounding into an upright position and the sword from lashing out in a deadly semicircle. My thoughts went into a state of grayness that shocked me later. I simply wasn't thinking about what I was doing. I killed the spiders as they came scuttling at me, some of them as they launched themselves at me from the walls.

At the first step into the building, the firefly pixies had thrust themselves into the air, and their war cries were as loud as Tate's keening howl of rage. They headed for the distant corners of the room, and each success was lauded with triumphant yells. Green blurs of movement showed their attack patterns, and it seemed they were far too quick for the spiders to defend against. I forged a path to Tate and Elan, and when I was ten feet away, Tate snarled at me.

"Stop!" he yelled viciously. His hand lowered to Elan's throat and immediately closed around the little neck. Elan choked even as he struggled.

I stopped but not before I carved three more of the spiders into little itty-bitty non-spider-like pieces. Bringing the gore-splattered sword back to the middle position, I waited for opportunity. Two things came to me as I waited infinitesimally for my moment to take Elan away from Tate. One was that Tate was exactly who I so desperately feared.

"It is you," I said grimly. "The Burned Man. All healed."

His blue eyes scorched me. Somehow I was correct. He had been saved by the spiders. They had healed him just as the pixies had healed me. He had made a devil's deal with them. After all, they had similar appetites. Maybe they were psychotic things just like him. They had even made him a little less insane so that he could pass for a "normal" survivor for a little while. He knew that we couldn't see what he was doing and used it to his advantage. He had counted on his previous appearance to fool me. Tate couldn't have been the Burned Man. He was burned, but it wasn't quite so obvious.

He'd dyed his hair. He'd put in green contact lenses. He'd hooked up with Blair the gardener from Idaho. He'd kidnapped Elan. All to do what? To kill me? No, to kill the pixies. And maybe me in the process as an added treat.

Tate had been completely insane. Now he was a functional psychopath. Had the union with the spider creatures cured some of his mental illness? Was he a rational being now who could be held accountable for his actions? I didn't know what I was going to do with him. If I stopped to think about it, then I was going to falter, and I couldn't afford to do that.

His mouth warped into a bitter smile. "Still can't kill me, huh?"

"Harm Elan and try me out," I said fiercely. I stepped closer. The reach with the sword was a nice one, and so far, Tate didn't have his trusty knife out. The other thing that occurred to me was that the smell of gasoline was overwhelming in the air. I couldn't look away to see what else he had been doing. Tate had been very busy, and he was very, very dangerous.

Tate's hand clenched ominously, and Elan's lips began to turn blue. His brown eyes began to bulge. "You didn't have eyes behind your back," Tate said coldly. "Like you said."

I twisted suddenly and impaled two more spiders. Their bodies fell lifelessly away as I came back to face Tate and Elan. "Let him go," I said, "and you can walk away today. I won't follow you. I can guarantee the group won't follow you. You can go south with the spiders. Live with them. Away from us."

Tate released Elan's throat marginally, and Elan gasped in air. "Even though I have killed people?" he asked slyly. "In spite of that?"

"There's no court here," I said. "No jury. No judge. Just me right now. You've found a connection with the spiders. You can keep that if you want. But never, never, never touch another human being. That's my ultimatum."

"I don't think Gideon would want you negotiating for for peace with me," Tate said wickedly.

"I'm not negotiating anything," I said, and it dripped with the ice that I felt in my soul. Tate might not be three-quarters baked, but he was half-baked, and his biscuits were still in the oven. "Do what I say or suffer the consequences."

Tate leaned forward just slightly. Once he had been a handsome young man in his prime. The change had come and with it, his sanity had trickled away. His features might not be altered from what he had been, but his soul had become as black as the deepest part of the Marianas Trench.

"Once, I was a fisherman," Tate said, and it was like a reminiscence. His fingers idly caressed Elan's throat. Elan's eyes pleaded silently with me. I couldn't respond. I didn't dare. "I lived in Bandon. When the change came, I was out to sea. I worked by myself because it was the only way I could stand it. But when I finally rowed back into port in the dinghy, nothing was the same. And I discovered what I truly was, what I had never been courageous enough to be before." He paused, and his lips curved malevolently. He thought he had me. "You tried your best before and failed. The spiders healed me despite your finest labors." He laughed at me. "Consequences? You're just a little girl who knows nothing of consequences."

Tate began to shuffle sideways, keeping Elan between himself and me. One of the older man's hands felt along the back wall, guiding him. The other was wrapped around Elan's neck still. His arm was curled around Elan's body so that he could maintain the unyielding hold. I heard Spring singing to the sisters behind me, and I didn't think about what happened next. Two steps from Tate was another door, the stones of which were falling onto the floor. Two steps from where Tate and Elan moved sluggishly, they would be out in the open, and Tate would be free to make his way to the bluff. Then the peak of my house of cards would be achieved. Elan would die.

So instead, the broadsword moved.

The sunlight from above reflected off the sword as it sped into a fantastic arch. The dispersed illumination bounced across the moss-covered stones that made up the walls. For a single tension charged, everlasting moment, it caught in Tate's blue eyes. There was a microsecond of confusion. Then there was clarity. The sword came down and passed exactly where I wanted it to go. Elan's eyes went as wide as saucers and Tate's arm that was holding the boy captive fell away, severed just below where the elbow bent. It bounced absurdly, and the fingers continued to flex endlessly as if they still held onto Elan's neck.

There was another moment. A moment of silence. The pixies didn't even flutter. Elan's mouth opened, and he snapped it shut again. Then Tate exploded into movement and sound.

Shrieking, Tate shoved Elan away from him with the hand he had remaining. The boy stumbled and rolled and then started to tumble into the hole that had been Tate's deadly trap. Disregarding the danger from the injured Tate, I leaped for Elan. As he was about to fall the ten feet into the horrendous pit, I caught his blue down coat with my left hand. His weight dragged me forward for a foot, and then everything stopped in a swirl of dust. His little legs moved in midair as I yanked him backwards so that some of his weight rested on a wooden support that was still unyielding.

Gasping, I turned my head to look at the Burned Man, certain that he would take the opportunity to stab me in the back or worse. But Tate was fleeing the building, holding his severed limb under his opposite arm.

"Have the spiders heal that," I hissed and pulled Elan up into my arms. I dropped the sword to bind the cut on Elan's collarbone. I had scored the child when I sliced off Tate's arm. Elan was crying and clutching me frantically as if he was afraid to let me go.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Elan," I muttered crazily. "I didn't mean to hurt you. I swear Sinclair will patch you up as good as new, and it'll be all right."

I had awkwardly gathered the child up before there was a deafening whoosh of noise. The back of the building went up in a burst of heat, light, and flames. Dimly, I perceived that Tate had set the building on fire. Maybe it had been Plan B.

And the pixies were streaming out one of the broken windows as if demons were flying on their heels. Spring was singing at me in a rushed, loud scream of noise, but I couldn't understand. I didn't really need to understand. Without hesitation, I jumped through the closest opening and landed in a heap with Elan in my arms.

I quickly made my way to my feet. The Japanese broadsword was still in the blazing building and would remain there. There was no way I was leaving Elan alone. Looking around, there was no sight of Tate, and another sound suddenly started that made shivers rush down the entire length of my spine.

The spiders that had been left trapped in the building were screaming.

There was a spotted trail of blood leading to the north, well away from the both of us, and I stopped to treat Elan far from the building burning merrily behind us. The wound was minor. The two-inch-long cut wouldn't even need stitches, but I felt certain that no one was going to let me forget that one anytime soon. Frowning with worry twisting my guts, I muttered, "I'm so sorry, Elan. I wouldn't have cut you if I..."

Elan threw his arms around my neck and cried as if his heart was broken. The pixies circled us anxiously. Through Elan's tormented words, I could hear him saying that he was sorry. It was his fault that he had gone into the redwoods alone. "No, no," I said. "I should have taken you to the pixies. They wouldn't have minded."

After a while, Elan's cries trickled away. Blotting his eyes with the sleeve of his blue coat, he pulled his head back and whispered, "They wouldn't?"

"Look," I said, pointing up. "They came for you."

Elan wiped his eyes and looked up. Spring buzzed his face and tried to smile at him, but she was horrible at the human act. I don't think Elan minded, however. There was a tentative smile from the child that warmed my heart. Coming to my feet, I wrapped him around my body and started to head back to the trail. I didn't know where Tate was located, but I thought that help would be coming soon.

"Sak!" Spring said triumphantly from above me. Her little wings fluttered and swished in conquest as if she had bested me in mortal combat. My eyes rolled, and I wondered if she knew what that meant.

"Good," I sang. "Little-Man-With-Big-Eyes-And-Hurt-Smile needs water and food. Go tell Zach to hurry his cute little tushie up."

Spring buzzed my face. "Soophee says the word 'tushie,' but the sisters don't understand it."

"Never mind," I murmured. Waving the pixies along, I looked around and saw that the old building was starting to fall. The large rocks were falling away as wood supports below burned. We crossed the bridge that I had run over before, and I stopped to adjust Elan on my body. I wasn't large, and he wasn't small. Even if my back was screaming, I didn't want to put him down yet. So I sat against a tree, carefully checking for spiders, and waited.

The sun was on its way down in the west, and the brisk wind was lowering the temperature again. I closed my eyes and let myself smell Elan's hair. An awful lassitude came over me, and I could have fallen asleep right there if someone hadn't knelt beside me and cupped his hand over my cheek. My eyes opened and saw Zach staring at me solemnly.

"I'm sorry about Daniel," I said, and he jerked visibly.

Then his throat swallowed convulsively. "Where's the Burned Man? I see a trail of blood, but..."

"I don't know where he is," I answered. Kara stumbled into sight. She froze into a standstill as she saw us. She saw that Elan was alive, and her eyes closed in thankfulness.

"It's Tate," I said. "He's the Burned Man. Somehow he was healed, same as I was. But I don't think he'll be bothering us for a little while."

Zach stared at me. He wanted to ask the questions I had already asked. But he had seen too many odd and weird things in the last months to really disbelieve me. "What healed him?" he asked instead.

Good question. "The spider things you saw before," I said. "They like to eat the same things he does."

Kara grimaced. "That sick..." she said and then covered her mouth. "Is Elan hurt?"

I grimaced. "He's cut on his collarbone."

"That rotten, no good..." Kara said, hunkering down beside us. She brushed her hand over Elan's forehead. Elan had fallen asleep in my arms. The poor little guy had been so wired for days that relief was like a shot of morphine for him. He crashed, and he crashed hard.

"Oh, Tate didn't do that," I said tiredly. "I did."

Zach's head snapped up. "You cut Elan?"

I rubbed my hand over Elan's hair. "I wasn't trying to." Oh, here was where I was going to get myself in trouble big time. How to explain that I sliced Elan while cutting off Tate's arm in order to make Tate let Elan go? I could have thought about it for hours and probably still not have come up with a diplomatic way of elucidation. It turned out that Elan wasn't quite all the way asleep.

"Accident," Elan muttered. "She cut off his arm. That wasn't an accident."

"What?" Zach bit out.

Elan sleepily looked up. "It was the only way, Zach," he said drowsily. "That guy wouldn't have let me go. So Sophie cut off his arm with the sword. After she killed about a million of those icky spiders."

Zach glared at me. I shrugged.

Kara laughed.

"We can't stay here," I said after a minute of non-communication. Zach was furious with me. Kara didn't know what to say to continue being neutral. Elan fell back asleep.

Finally, Zach took Elan from me, and we headed north again. We were following in the footsteps of the Burned Man, but I didn't feel threatened. The light faded before we could see where the blood trail led. We camped off the trail and took turns keeping watch. The pixies buzzed away to return to the midnight pool with my effusive thanks, although Spring was distinctly annoyed with me.

In the morning, Ethan and a team of four men found us, and I had to endure explanations all over again. Zach was irritated at Ethan enough to take him back to the burned out mill to show him the bodies of the spiders and the webs that still survived. When they returned to our group, they reported that the spiders had most likely fled because they had seen no evidence of live ones.

Elan was in a much better mood and cheerful as we hiked back to the camp in the redwoods. It took most of the afternoon, and it was nearly evening when we walked into a camp alive with people and fires.

However, five minutes after we arrived, Gideon was explaining to me why I would have to be exiled for my transgressions, and then I had another premonition that was so strong I nearly fell on my face.
Chapter 26

And Then Miss Muffet

Kicked Some Booty...

Zach was swearing at Gideon. Then he added vehemently, "Sophie saved Elan's life! What did you want? For her to stop and deliberate what to do for hours before she went after Tate? He's the Burned Man, for the love of God! We told you he's dangerous. She wanted you to destroy the signs for a very specific reason." His hands clenched into angry fists. "This was exactly it. He's unpredictable and insane."

"Tate didn't look very burned to me," Ethan interjected.

"The spiders healed him," I said softly. Ethan shot me a dirty look. He didn't really believe the firefly pixies had healed me either. But he couldn't very well deny either new creature's existences. He had seen both. Ethan was going to be one of those people who would deny the existence of the supernatural until it came up and bit him on the posterior. Literally.

Gideon's face was grim. His teenaged face was flushed but determined. I already knew he wasn't going to back down, not to me, not to Zach, not to anyone. "We have rules. The rules are in place for very good reasons. We don't go out by ourselves. The instant the rules are disregarded, then we don't have civilization anymore. We have nothing. Sophie disregarded the rule, not once, but twice. The penalty is exile. The steering committee agreed that she was justified in her actions, and the penalty was mitigated, however, she still broke the rules. She can come back to us in six months if she still wants to. But she is no longer permitted in this camp as of sunrise tomorrow." He turned his troubled face to me and sighed. "I'm sorry, Sophie."

I looked at Gideon. He was sorry. A first offense was a month of exile. A second offense was a year, not six months. A third offense was permanent exile. I was getting to be quite the bad girl.

Most of the group was in the center of the camp, excited about our return, happy to see Elan alive and healthy. Most of them weren't particularly happy about my sentence but didn't have a reason to disagree. Amanda had her arms wrapped around Elan and wouldn't let go of him. Their other cabin mate was likewise demonstrative. His little face was patently disgusted with the amount of feminine affection directed at him. Upon hearing Gideon's words, Amanda and Elan snapped their heads around to look at me at the same time. Elan said, "No, no, you can't do that to her. She saved my life. He wouldn't have let me go." His voice choked. "He wanted to feed me to the spiders."

There was a hush in the crowd. Blair the gardener, who had spent days alone with Tate, said, "But he seemed so...normal."

I wanted to say that was what they used to say about serial killers, but it didn't seem like the right thing to say.

Zach drew in a breath. He was ready to do battle. "This isn't right. Sophie doesn't deserve this."

Amanda echoed Zach's sentiment. "She saved Elan. Can't we give her another chance?"

Gideon stood up straight. His shoulders became set. I saw for a moment the man he would grow into, the soaring, erect individual who would tower over those who were many inches taller than he was. He was, for lack of a better term, stuck between a rock and a hard place. (Was I the rock or the hard place? Hmm.) "We already exiled one person today for doing less than that. Lulu only broke one rule, and she was exiled for a month," he said unhappily. "The rules that we decided on months ago. All of us who were in the camp from the first decided, and those who came into this camp afterwards agreed to, those rules. Why should the rules be different for each individual? It isn't fair to the others."

So Lulu was paying the price for her little act of desperation. It didn't make me feel any better. I hoped she headed for the mountains or south, anywhere but north where the Burned Man had gone, carrying his severed limb. I hoped she had enough common sense to sleep with one eye open. I hoped she came back a more thoughtful person. I hoped she came back. Period.

Zach said, "Lulu caused her own problem. She did something very wrong, and I need to talk to you about that, Sophie. Before you disappear again."

I sighed. I wasn't sure if I wanted to hear what Zach had to say. (Part of me did. Desperately. Desperate just as Lulu had been, and it made me quiver inside.)

"If you leave this camp, I'll go with you," Zach declared suddenly.

Sinclair cleared his throat. "You agreed to be my student," he said straightly to Zach. "You and Kara, both. You've got the most medical experience of any of us, and I'm not a spring chicken. We need some good people to become the next doctors. We need you, kid."

"Experience?" I repeated. Kara had been a paramedic in the U.S. Army, but what had Zach been?

"A pre-med student," he told me. "My mother watched Daniel for me. I think you already know that Lila had left us almost two years before."

Everyone was listening to us. I think I was the only one to whom the statements made sense. Lila had been Zach's young wife. She had been too young, however, to live the life of a housewife with a small child. She had been unhappy and had left Zach and Daniel. Zach had depended on his family to help care for Daniel. As a result, it had been Zach who was the primary caregiver for his son. It was Zach who tended to his boo-boos and to his nightmares and to his need to cuddle sometimes. It was Zach who had suffered tremendously when the change had rolled over us like some horrible sea of dreams. His only child hadn't come with us to the next life.

I opened my mouth to say that it was all right. Zach should stay and study with Sinclair. I would be all right by myself. It would have been a big fat lie, but I would say it anyway. However, I had another premonition, and this one made me grasp my head between my hands and drop to my knees. My mind reeled with the information.

Zach dropped beside me, his hands urgent on my back, trying to understand what was wrong with me. Sinclair was kneeling on my other side trying to get me to raise my head so he could look at my eyes.

I brought my head up and looked at Gideon, wiping the tears of pain away from my cheeks. "It doesn't matter now," I said to him and only to him. "You know you have to leave. All of you, now."

Gideon stared at me. He nodded shortly and then started on instructions. "All right, people. We're evacuating. You know the plans. Get the emergency packs and take what personal effects you need. We're traveling as quickly as we can. The people who have some problem with walking, John with the broken ankle and Elan, need to ride in the trailers. No one gets left behind. Ethan, we need to get to the guards and get them back straightaway."

His voice trickled away as people stared at him in disbelief. They started to ask questions, but I yelled something unintelligible and heated, and everyone shut right up. Then I said, "It's him again. Tate, whatever he calls himself, the Burned Man, he's gone north, and he's set a fire, or he will very soon. The forest is dry, and it'll burn like tinder. The winds are blowing south, and this place will burn like crazy." I took a deep breath and added the ultimatum, "If you stay here in this place, you will die. Do as Gideon says, and you have a chance."

Then I came to my feet and walked away. Actually, I half stumbled because my head felt like it had a hammer on the inside trying to get out. I needed to restock my pack and steal another sword if I could. Tomas had one in his cabin. I needed it more than he did, and I didn't think Tomas was going to mind. Behind me, people were rushing to do what they were tasked to do.

Zach's hand came down on my shoulder. "Where are you going, Sophie?" His chocolate brown eyes glared at me.

"I'm going to stop him if I can," I said resolutely. "It seems to be my lot in life."

"Why?" he asked desolately. "Why does it have to be you?"

"I don't know the answer to that, Zach," I said sincerely. "Maybe if you find someone who does know, you can tell me, too."

"You don't have to be alone," said another voice. Ethan stood beside us. He was glaring at me as if he truly hated me. He didn't really. He just didn't like what I made him think about. He grimaced suddenly and said, "I'll go, too. He has to be stopped. Doesn't matter if it's Tate or the Burned Man or even if they're the same. He's got to be stopped and now."

I blinked. Calida was pregnant, and I hadn't expected Ethan to leave her side even for a moment. Ethan didn't believe in us, not really, even when the powers had been demonstrated for him. "Why?" I said before I could stop myself.

"The date thing," he answered grimly. "Today's the 31st of October. Halloween," he added with a dry laugh. "Not that anyone is trick-or-treating today. Most people don't care about the date much. Except some want to know when their birthdays are, when Christmas is, so we can be grateful for our lives."

Zach started to say something, but I put my hand on his arm. He stopped, startled, and looked at me.

"What about the date thing?" I asked slowly. It was important to Ethan. He had discovered something about himself, and he wasn't happy. As a matter of fact, he looked like he had been torn apart.

"You can't tell anyone else," Ethan said, and his usually harsh voice was pleading. "I can't have people asking me this question. I don't think I could bear to tell anyone what I shouldn't know. Not. One. Other. Person. Ever."

"I swear," I said. "I swear I will never tell anyone else what you know."

"Swear you won't ask me what I'm going to you tell you," Ethan insisted, "past this one time. Swear that."

"I swear," I affirmed.

Zach echoed me.

"Ask me," Ethan said, and his voice choked with emotion. "Ask me what date she'll die."

"Oh no," I said. I had once asked Ethan what date I was born. He had known down to the day. Not because of mental subtraction from the present date, but because he had simply known. Dates and days were Ethan's forte. It hadn't occurred to me that he might know the opposite end of the spectrum.

"Ask me when Calida dies," he whispered, and Zach stepped back with a horrified expression.

"What date does Calida die?" I said, forcing the words out of my mouth, hating myself for saying each one of them.

"Friday, October 31st," Ethan murmured. "Today. God help us all." He collected himself and looked across the clearing. Calida was collecting her belongings and loading a bicycle. She was unaware of the level of emotion that was threatening Ethan's self-control. If she had looked at him at that moment, she surely would have known. "Both of them," he added lowly, harshly.

I touched Ethan's hand. "We can change it," I said. "I've changed the premonitions. I saw Elan die. I changed that. I don't know how we're going to do it but we will. I swear, Ethan."

Ethan's moisture-filled eyes stared at me, a glimmer of hope there.

"Get weapons," Zach said. "Crossbows. Arrows. Rocks. We need to make sure that he doesn't have the spiders with him when we take him down."

"He doesn't," I said. "He...burned his bridge with them." I wasn't trying for a pun, but out it came anyway, and no one even got it but me.

Zach studied my face for a moment and then gave me a gentle nudge. "Go, Sophie. Get more of your stuff. I'll get some on-the-go food. We don't have a lot of time."

The moment I stepped away, I saw something else in my head. For an instant I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

"What is it?" Zach asked urgently. His arms wrapped around my body.

"I know what to do," I murmured incredulously. "I mean, I really know what to do. And Zach, forget the food. We have to go now."

I stepped closer to the redwoods, and I sang my loudest song. Everyone in camp stopped to stare at me. The camp became motionless and silent, but for my call. Then after a moment, I knew my answer. The pixies heard, and they were coming as fast as they could. I ran to Tomas' cabin and took the sword out of his surprised hand. "Sorry," I said. "I need it."

"Okay," Tomas said agreeably but confused. "I know a good store in Sacramento. Maybe we'll get down there soon. I'll get another one. One for you, too. You seem to be hard on them."

I met Zach and Ethan at the crossroads for the trails. Gideon was waiting, as well. "Which way should we go, Sophie?" he asked me.

"To the south. Go as hard as you can. Until you come to the river and then shelter in the houses across the river. Keep away from the forest and the meadows." I turned away onto the forest trail and headed north. Zach and Ethan were at my heels.

"Good luck," Gideon called after us.

"Did you say anything to Calida?" Zach asked Ethan behind me.

"What could I say to her?" Ethan asked bitterly.

Then there were others behind us. All were younger members of the group. Fit members who would be able to keep up. Gibby, Tomas, Robert the hunter, and Leander fell in behind us as if we were part of a team.

"Tell us what to do, Sophie," Leander said.

I glanced over my shoulder at him. Then I saw the rest of them. My steps faltered as I perceived that they held spears, crossbows, and a large butcher knife in Gibby's case. "We...uh...we..." I mumbled. Ethan took pity on me.

"We're going after Tate or the Burned Man or both of them or one and the same," Ethan snapped. "We're going to stop him. Hopefully before he burns the redwoods down to the ground."

"What he said," I muttered ungraciously. What was I supposed to do with a group of grown-ups? How was I supposed to tell them what needed to be done when I didn't exactly know what needed to be done? What I had seen in my head was a picture of something that I couldn't exactly describe.

I needed to be somewhere before the sun went down. If all was to be accomplished, then I needed to be at the location where the hill met the large open path where the Big Mamas had mashed the forest to the ground.

Increasing my pace, I began to jog. Ethan was the only one who complained. Zach kept behind me like a shadow.

"Are we going to have time to talk later?" Zach said after a moment. I was panting, but his breathing was level. (He was probably jogging every day just in anticipation of a hero-type situation like this. Silly me.)

"I don't know," I puffed.

"She left me," he said.

"I know," I said, concentrating on the trail. The shadows were lengthening, and I couldn't see everything in my way. The sun was dropping in the distance, and we didn't have time for conversation. However, I couldn't make Zach let it go.

"Then you need to understand," he insisted. "We were never...in love."

I squared my shoulders and glanced at Ethan. The big man was grim and breathing hard, but dour amusement danced in his eyes. The others were absorbed on making their bodies work to their capacity.

"Okay," I said.

Zach said a bad word. I gathered I was supposed to capitulate at this point and maybe throw myself in his arms. "Do you understand, Sophie?"

"God, please tell me you understand," Gibby gasped from somewhere behind us.

I glanced at Zach. His face had turned a very interesting shade of red. Well, an audience didn't really work for this.

"No, I don't understand," I bit out.

"We got married because we thought we were supposed to get married," he gritted. "Then we had Daniel, and I'll never regret that in a million years."

"No one expects you to regret your son," I threw in, panting harder. I tripped on a root, and Zach pulled me to my feet by grabbing my arm.

"But Lila left me for another man. She filed for divorce. She didn't even want to have joint custody of Daniel. She wanted her freedom, and I found that out, I was relieved. I had Daniel, and although I was disappointed, I wasn't unhappy. Then when the dreams started..." His voice trailed off. We went down a steep hill, and everyone was skidding to keep upright.

When we had regained a level path, Ethan prompted, "Then when the dreams started...?"

Zach shot Ethan a dirty look. "I found out something very important. I had loved Lila, but it wasn't really love."

I held my breath for a second and then choked on it. Ethan reached over and pounded my back helpfully. Gibby called from the back, "Tell her, Zach. Just tell her."

"It's you," Zach said. He came in front of me and skidded to a stop. He forced me to stop as well, and everyone pounded to a halt around us. His hands gripped my shoulders, and he stared intently into my eyes, ignoring my heaving chest and the perspiration dripping from my forehead. "I didn't know what love was before. Like I do now. I love you, Sophie."

My mouth opened to answer him. My eyes were lost in the forthright expression of his face. He was trying so hard to impart the silent message to me. Believe me, Sophie. Trust me, Sophie. Love me, too, Sophie.

But just when I started to say something, I realized we had stopped at the spot where the paths crossed. Crushed trees lay to each side of us. Brush had been flattened to bits all around us. A weathered path was beginning to take shape in the twenty or so yards that spanned the corridor.

Then the Big Mamas trumpeted a warning alarm not a hundred yards from us. Zach and I turned to look at the same time. The lead animal was bellowing out a warning to us, and the remainder was following in its wake.

Zach's fingers tightened on my flesh, and he started to push me back into the standing redwoods. But I stopped him. We stood there and waited for the Big Mamas to come closer.
Chapter 27

Can Someone Say Duh?

Gideon had said that the Big Mamas were a mix of elephant and brachiosaurus. Their color was gray like an elephant's. Their tails were long and trailed away like a brachiosaurus. Their heads were hunched and their ears large like paddles. Really, really, really gigantic paddles. They had long noses that seemed kind of like an anteater's except longer, but not so long as an elephant's trunk. Their feet were broad and multi-toed, the better to stomp things down in their paths. Each footprint looked like the size of a round patio table. (I didn't have a measuring tape on me, and I meant the kind that would seat at least four people.)

In the dying light of the sun, those ginormous stompers looked like they could mash us without even noticing we were underfoot. The lead animal bellowed another warning to us. Peripherally I could see the rest of the group (my group or homo survivorous as I sometimes called them) trying to fade back into the forest that was still standing. Zach stepped in front of me and squared his shoulders determinedly. I nearly laughed. I didn't think his hundred and eighty pounds was going to protect me from fifty tons of new animal.

The remainder of the group of Big Mamas trailed behind the leader, twenty or so in all. A herd of the creatures returning to their nightly home. How in the world did they swim? Were they so big that they simply waded out to the islands?

Lumbering-Beasts-That-Eat-Constantly-And-Never-Bother-Anything-Else-Living was what Spring called them. They didn't like us in their path, and the lead beast was showing its agitation.

Zach abruptly tensed up. He said to me, "Can you smell it?"

I hadn't before that moment, but then I did. Smoke was in the air. The wind was briskly blowing to the south, and the smoke from the north was traveling with it. Ashy and acrid, it burned the nostrils, letting everyone know it was on the rise. Fire was coming. The Burned Man had been happily at work, attempting to destroy again.

A moment later, a herd of elk exploded across the Big Mamas' path, hesitated at the sight of us, and then plunged past, causing several of the people behind me to gasp. "Is it too late?" Ethan snarled. "Is it too late? Ask me that question again, Sophie. Right now."

The lead Big Mama bellowed again, using her elongated nose like an oversized, organic trumpet. They slowed. A black bear crossed the emptiness between us and the Big Mamas. Then there was a pair of foxes who scurried. The Big Mama turned its head to the north and appeared as if it was sniffing the air. They could smell the smoke, too.

"Not now," I hissed to Ethan, intent on what Spring had told me. "All that is new has familiar connections," she had said. "The great sisters will defend us as well as you and your human kind."

I stepped around Zach. A sea of dreams had come one night and changed the world. It had brought the new and the frightening. It had erased people and animals and things without defining why it had been done. It had changed all of us.

We weren't the same people who had gone to sleep that night. Some of us couldn't accept the fact, and some of us couldn't face what we'd become, because how could we still be ourselves without our lost loved ones? How could we ever be happy again?

I didn't have all the answers. But I knew I had changed. The firefly pixies had an intimate connection to me. They had helped me because they knew that I would help them, that in some way, I was one of them.

A rush of green light suddenly overwhelmed me. Spring and her fellow pixies had caught up to me. They were twittering in alarm. Their jittering was unnerved and anxious. Instantly, Spring landed on my head and held onto my hair for support. She muttered irately above my ears, and I didn't catch what she was saying except that it was negative.

I didn't have the time to explain to them. I took in a deep breath and bellowed at the Big Mamas. Zach jerked back from me in alarm. Spring launched herself while still holding my hair, and then came back down again.

Silence ensued. Then the lead Big Mama bellowed back at me in a questioning tone.

Ethan said, "Holy macaroni and cheese."

"Did it just...ask you a question?" Tomas said gravely.

The Big Mamas didn't speak like the pixies. They had small brains in comparison to their bodies, and they understood about three major things. Food, safety, and danger. They spoke in single syllable sentences. "You small thing. What?" was what it said to me and I understood. I didn't know how but I suspected.

I just about killed my voice talking to them. "Pain. From. That way. We need help from you."

The lead Big Mama conferred with her group.

I explained quickly to Spring, who was astounded. "Well, you said they would help," I sang to her.

Spring even managed to tell me a pixie joke. It went along the lines of why did the Big Mama cross the stream? The answer, not exactly translatable, was something along the lines of because they weigh 50 tons and felt like crossing the stream. The pixies thought it was hilarious and sniggered endlessly.

The humans wanted to know what I was doing.

"She's actually talking to them," Gibby muttered.

Leander was reading my thoughts and was dumbfounded. He could see the premonition in my head. "You want us to do what, Sophie?" he said before I could finish saying what we were going to do.

"You volunteered, Leander," I said grimly, finding a certain amount of amusement. Then I bellowed to the Big Mamas again. The strongest animals stayed. The remainder headed for the sea and the safety of their island.

When the leader stepped close to us, Zach nearly yanked my arm out of its socket. I moved Tomas's sword to my back where it wouldn't be in my way and strapped it tightly. "It's all right, Zach," I told him calmly. "Just do what I do, and get ready to enjoy the ride. Kick with your legs to indicate which way to go, and hang on tight so you don't fall off."

"What?" he said. He gave me a look that indicated that he fully doubted that all my marbles were together in one place.

The Big Mama fell to its knees and bowed its head. The ground shook around us and everyone started to retreat before I waved impatiently at them again. Looking at the animal closely, I was stricken by how both dissimilar and comparable it was. Although it was gray like an elephant and had some similar features, it wasn't one. But the way it presented itself to me was like I'd seen elephants do before. I wondered what the Big Mamas would think of an elephant if they ever saw one.

The Big Mama's leg was larger around than my body and Zach's combined. "You heard me," I said to Zach. The nose came close to me and wrapped around my body while Zach started to urgently grab at me again.

"It's all right," I told him and pried his hand off my arm. "Get ready for the ride of your life, cowboy," I added with a little smug smile. "I don't think we're going to do this every day of the week."

It put me on its shoulders just behind its head. The group of people peered up at me as if I had gone completely insane. It seemed insane to me for a single instant, but I knew what they didn't. I knew what had to be done.

I asked the animal if it was a boy or a girl, and I received an annoyed bellow in return. It turned out to be a she. She had a name that was completely untranslatable into English. It was kind of like Bellow-Snort-Roar-Cough-Snort-Snort. The pixies had arranged themselves around me like a green cloud. The lead animal turned her head sideways to look at me curiously. Her black eye studied the pixies with acute interest.

"They friends," I yelled at her.

The animal bellowed again. "They look like bugs." She snorted, and it was only a snort. Then she added, "Bugs, yuck."

Then each of the remaining animals lined up and took all of the humans on their backs. Everyone looked like they were in a state of shock. I explained to the Big Mamas again what I wanted. The lead animal, which I started calling Bellow, explained to the others using rip-roaring trumpeting noises that were both frightening and exhilarating at the same time.

Then I called to the group of humans, "Use your legs as steering guides. Kick the way you want to go. They'll understand. And hang onto the ears. They won't mind." I grasped the ears of Bellow and paused at the hard leather feel of it. The skin wasn't just thick, it was incredibly thick. It felt as if it were five inches deep.

Bellow turned and headed north, pummeling the redwoods and the other trees underneath her massive feet. Great trees went down underneath her massive limbs. Sometimes her head butted the shrubbery out of the way. The others followed, and the people hung on for dear life. I glanced back and could see Zach holding on and an odd little smile on his face.

After a little while, we came up a ridge and saw the fire. The sun had dropped beneath the horizon, and the spreading flames were busily scattering along wherever the embers chanced to fall.

I could feel Bellow tensing underneath me. She shouted something to her comrades, and they all trumpeted gleefully. Then they aimed for the fire. We didn't need to direct them or anything. Soon I was ripping material off the bottom of my shirt to wrap around my lower face. In the light of the fire I could see that the others were replicating my actions.

Perhaps I thought that perhaps the animals would be frightened of fire. My premonition had only been enough of a flash to propel me in the correct direction. They spread out in a line and got to work. The flames burst in front of us like explosive devices. Bellow reared up, and I held on for dear life.

I heard Zach yelling from off to my right and saw that his animal was rearing, as well. Then they were all rearing, balancing briefly on their rear legs, their tails whipping out behind them, then down they went like heavy weights dropped from a tall building. They hit, and the ground shuddered. The fire under their front feet was instantly stamped out.

The pixies shot up into the air, fearful of the flying embers, and I sang to them to leave before they were singed. Spring sang, "We'll pull back and watch, Soophee!"

"Yee-haw!" Gibby yelled cheerfully. The animals were rearing again and stomping before I could take a breath. After a while, it was up to the riders to spot the problem areas. The Big Mamas didn't have our range of vision. Hours later, I felt like I had been on a roller coaster all night long. When I got off I was going to walk just like that, too.

The Big Mamas had caught the fire before it began to sweep down a long valley of redwoods. They had surrounded it and pushed it back like a team of highly trained firefighters. Their immense feet stomped out every bit of the sparks that lit the night.

When the winds died down at dawn, they did something more amazing. They were slowing down as the fire was contained to a smaller area. The Burned Man hadn't had time to spread it further, or perhaps he had collapsed. We couldn't be so lucky, I supposed. Tate had more lives than a cat.

But as I pondered his fate, I realized the Big Mamas had stopped to graze. But they weren't grazing on grass or tree leaves. Instead, they were eating bits of burning wood, the hottest parts. The thickness of their flesh suddenly made sense. It was something they did.

Bellow stopped to look back at me. "Yum yum," she said to me. "You want?"

"No, thank you," I yelled at her.

During their impromptu meal, she explained to me that they migrated to the mountains once every season to partake of magna that they dug from the volcanoes themselves. Well, that was my interpretation. She used one syllable words, and I got the bigger picture. I didn't have the vocabulary to ask where they had been doing that before they came to this place or how they managed to dig being the way that they were. Those feet and those noses weren't made for digging through hardened lava. Or maybe they were.

When the sun came up, the fire was all but gone. I stood on the Big Mamas shoulders and looked everywhere, but there was no sign of fire left. There was hardly even any smoke left. I felt elated at the success until something else occurred to me. I don't know how long it took me to realize where we were at, until I saw the bits of a yellow-painted wall in some debris below me. I wouldn't have recognized the place. We had finished and were stopped in the encampment.

All the log cabins were gone; demolished by fire and by the Big Mamas. Nothing was left that was recognizable. The fire had been quick. It burned everything by midnight. Ethan's date for Calida would have been correct.

The Big Mamas milled around, and finally, Bellow turned her head to say, "Done now. Yum. Yum. Small thing come to us for fire again. Yes?"

Her nose-like appendage grasped me even as she bent to the ground. All around me the other Big Mamas were doing the same. We slid to the ground with an assortment of grunts and scuttled out of the way of the huge animals as they turned to find their way back to the sea. Not much for small talk, the lead animal bellowed a hardy, "Goodbye!" at us and trudged off.

"Sure!" I yelled. Then I sat down on the ground because my legs were made of rubber. All of the others were doing likewise. Even Zach was walking funny as he joined me and shoved a bottle of water at me.

The pixies swarmed us, and I consumed the water without hesitation. After a while, I turned to Ethan and asked him the same horrible question.

Ethan smiled grimly at me. "Not today," he said. "Not tomorrow. Not for a long, long time."

When we were somewhat rested, we got ourselves organized and started off for the others. They would be waiting for us at the river. Perhaps Gideon would have sent people to see what had happened.

Spring circled me once and then again and then landed on my hand. "Soophee," she sang. "There is something the sisters need to say."

"Is the midnight pool all right?" I asked anxiously. I hadn't even thought about the pixies' home. Since they were with me the entire time, it didn't seem like they were in any danger.

"Yes, the fire did not reach the sisters' home," Spring sang happily. "Only a little smoke and none are harmed."

"Good," I said in English, and Zach glanced at me. "What?" he mouthed.

"The sisters have seen the spiders again," Spring sang. "Far from the place that Soophee fought them. Going after the one we don't talk about, the one we can't see in our visions."

"They've gone after the Burned Man?" I sang incredulously.

Spring nodded her head at me. Her meaning suddenly became clear to me. The spiders weren't joining Tate. They had gone after him.

"He betrayed them," I said. "He made a deal with them and then he killed some of them in the abandoned mill."

Spring nuzzled my hand with her wings and then sprang into the air after her comrades. "Return to us soon, Soophee. You will be missed."

As I watched them fly away, it occurred to me that Spring was saying goodbye to me, as well. She knew I was going away, and I wasn't coming back for a while. Clairvoyant, glowing, supernatural beings. Scary.

Then I joined the rest of our exhausted group. We wanted to be on our way and so we went.
Epilogue

The Messenger...

Eight days later, Gideon's group had settled on the south side of Eureka. They would stay there for the winter and decide what to do in the spring when it was time to grow things. The entire group had gathered to rescind the steering committee's vote about my exile. It was official. I wasn't exiled.

Kara found Lulu across the causeway to the spit of land that framed the bay that Eureka sat on. Alive and well, she was lonely, and Gideon commuted her sentence. Still she stayed away for several days, trying to get her courage up to return. When she did come back into the fold, she couldn't look at me and stayed away from me as much as possible. However, she did the same to Zach, and he was still very angry with her.

Zach and I were dancing around each other. I could see the question in his eyes when he looked at me. He had expressed himself. Why couldn't I?

I got to sidestep that one by lieu of the messenger. A thirty-year-old man was found by some of Gideon's scouts. He was browned by the sun, well-equipped, and had a broadsword strapped to his side where he could easily draw it. His name was Hanley, and he had come from Washington, D.C.

It turned out that there was one surviving member of the United States Congress left. A junior representative from Texas. Well, he was now unofficially the President, and he was trying to get representatives from all over the United States to come to him to revive the Constitution.

I volunteered to Gideon before I told Zach. Gideon thought that I would probably be gone for about a year. I guess the pixies had seen it coming.

Hanley was headed north. We warned him about the Burned Man, who was now the one-handed Burned Man. He didn't seem particularly worried. It seemed he had a connection to an interesting new creature. It looked a lot like a dragon and was about the size of a mountain lion. It went everywhere with Hanley and seemed protective of its human cohort. Hanley even had an interesting bluish mark on his shoulder. It looked like a tattoo of a dragon, but I knew that it wasn't a tattoo.

The day came for me to leave, and Zach came to me in the house I was staying in. Kara left us alone and went outside to wait. She was going to walk me as far as Arcata, where I would turn to the east, and head over the mountains on my way to visit with the new President of the United States of America.

"Why?" he said simply. His handsome, perfect face was grim.

I stepped close to him without touching him and inhaled his masculine scent. Zach always smelled as good as he looked. "You're not ready yet," I stated. It wasn't a question, and I was certain about the proclamation. "Neither am I. Not really."

Zach reached out a hand and touched my cheek. After I nuzzled into his hand, he took in a strained breath and pulled me into his arms. His head dipped and our lips met. I swear that we would have burned the house down if he hadn't pulled back eventually. His serious eyes searched mine.

"No, not yet," he affirmed. "But I still love you."

I reluctantly unlooped my arms from around his neck. "And I love you," I whispered. "That won't change, not now. Not a hundred years from now. So when I come back, you'll be here for me, training to be a doctor, right?"

A bleak smile curved his lips. "Promise me you won't get yourself killed," he said, his voice choking suddenly.

"I have a map from Hanley," I said. "He's pointed out some areas to avoid and groups of people like us who will help me. I'll come back if I have to crawl."

So when I walked out of Eureka with Kara at my side, my last sight of him was him standing in the road watching me leave.

There was something I needed to do. I was only seventeen years old, and I had been through the biggest change a human being could endure. I had lost everything, but I had gained so much more.

Life could be sad, but it was also to be savored. I would see Zach again, as well as the pixies, and everything and everyone else I had learned to value again. Nothing was really lost.

– TE

Coming in July 2013

Mountains of Dreams

Once Upon a Time...

Once upon a time, or so the story is supposed to go, the world stopped being the world we all know. In fact, no one really knows what happened. Sure, there's conjecture. Everyone's tossed down their opinion. If I had a dime for every time I heard the suggestions of aliens, communists, or secret projects from an enigmatic government, I'd have a lot of dimes that are pretty much worthless now. For a long time I thought there had been an EMP, an electromagnetic pulse. A sudden burst of electromagnetic radiation released from a nuclear bomb explosion would have halted everything that used electricity. However, the side effect of a nuke didn't really explain why there suddenly was a herd of unicorns prancing around the forest. (Not the friendly unicorns with rainbows shooting out of their tushies either.) It also didn't explain why a huge chunk of people just vanished, leaving the clothing they were wearing in piles on the ground or wherever they happened to be. And it certainly didn't explain why the people with an extra-special set of senses were the only ones left behind.

Everyone's got a story of where they were when it happened. I woke up on the side of a mountain. The sleeping bag beside mine once had my father in it. All that was left was some clothes he had been wearing and his wedding ring. I didn't see another living person for a month or so. But I saw other things. The herd of unicorns was just the first. There were also the gryphon, a thing that looked like the Loch Ness Monster frolicking in a reservoir with its two babies, and a horde of miniature dragons that took up residence on a coastal Oregon bridge. Before I encountered the individual I called the Burned Man, who lured me to a bluff with a bonfire intent on homicide and a cannibalistic feast, I was beginning to think that I was completely alone and utterly bonkers.

Being nuts made the new world sound like something that was justified and understandable. People disappeared? You're insane. New animals bouncing around? You're cuckoo. Psychics are the only people left? You're a few clowns short of a circus.

See? Insanity didn't sound so bad. But I wasn't insane. Not then. Not now.

Once upon a time sounds like it was the beginning of a fairy tale, but puh-lease, that wasn't a fairy tale and it certainly didn't transmogrify into one later. Trust me. I was living in it, and I was definitely not Snow White nor was I Cinderella. My shoes weren't glass slippers and seven happy-go-lucky dwarves weren't cavorting with me in a magical forest singing a perky song. To be perfectly precise, I was lucky that I wearing leather combat boots, considering the situation I was in.

Here it goes...

About the Author

C.L. Bevill has lived in Virginia, Texas, Arizona, and Oregon. She once was in the U.S. Army and a graphic illustrator. She holds degrees in social psychology and counseling. She is the author of Bubba and the Dead Woman, Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas, Bubba and the Missing Woman, Veiled Eyes, Disembodied Bones, and Shadow People, among others. Presently she lives with her husband and her daughter in Alabama and continues to constantly write. She can be reached at www.clbevill.com or you can read her blog at www.carwoo.blogspot.com

Other Novels

by C.L. Bevill

~

Mysteries:

Bubba and the Dead Woman

Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas

Bubba and the Missing Woman

Brownie and the Dame

Bubba and the Mysterious Murder Note

Bayou Moon

Crimson Bayou

Paranormal Suspense/Romance:

Veiled Eyes (Lake People 1)

Disembodied Bones (Lake People 2)

Arcanorum: A Lake People Novel (Lake People 3)

The Moon Trilogy:

Black Moon (The Moon Trilogy 1)

Amber Moon (The Moon Trilogy 2)

Silver Moon (The Moon Trilogy 3)

Cat Clan Novellas:

Harvest Moon

Blood Moon

Crescent Moon

Shadow People

Sea of Dreams

Mountains of Dreams (Dreams #2) (Coming soon)

Suspense:

The Flight of the Scarlet Tanager

Black Comedy:

The Life and Death of Bayou Billy

Missile Rats

Chicklet:

Dial 'M' For Mascara

