Magic Time: Angelfire (5 page)

“Hear—what’d I hear?” He started humming.

“Oh, jeez!” I said. “He didn’t
hear
anything because there was nothing to hear. Fire was roaring, those things were wailing like banshees, that damned dog—” I glanced over to where the dog in question snoozed peacefully under a gurney. “It was like you said, they caught another scent.”

“
I
said that,” said Goldman, jabbing a thumb into his chest.

Like that was real important. I said, “We know fire stops them.”

Cal nodded. “That makes sense. Light sensitivity seems to be a by-product of the transformation. We’ve certainly seen that with the grunters. Tina… Tina was bothered by it too.”

Every muscle in his face went tight, like someone had turned a ratchet somewhere in his head. Happened every time he spoke her name, and every time, it reminded me of losing Dad. Of course, where Dad went, there was no road back, and that was a long time ago, so it didn’t really bear thinking about. We had at least a chance of finding Tina.

Cal glanced at Jim and Emily. “But you said you saw them in daylight.”

“Only in the depths of the woods,” she said. “They stayed in the shadows. They never once came out where we could really get a good look at them.”

“Until the sun went down,” Cal finished.

Emily nodded.

“I wonder how far they range,” murmured Cal. “They could be local, regional—we have no way of knowing.”

He was right. So far we’d only seen three sorts of tweaks that seemed to crop up repeatedly—
typy
, to use a term from my horsey past. We’d heard them called by various names— sprites or flares, trogs or grunters. Dragons. There was no other word for those. Grunters liked to skulk in shadows and holes, dragons favored skyscrapers or other aeries, and flares, we had been discovering, were becoming scarcer by the day. It seemed the Source, or whatever was at the bottom of this abyss the world had been slam-dunked into, was sucking them up like they were Gummy Bears.

And why? Of all the changes a power like that could make, why change
us
? People in general, I mean, because
I
sure hadn’t changed. I couldn’t fly, I didn’t care to burrow into holes, and I didn’t hear Voices with a capital
V.
None of it made sense to me.
None
of it. Cal had this deep conviction that everything we learned about our new world gave us a better chance of dealing with the Source, I wasn’t nearly so sure. Hell, there were days I wasn’t sure what we were doing on this road trip. I mean, sometimes a little voice in my head (small
v
) told me the best thing to do would be to just hunker down in some quiet backwater like Boone’s Gap or Grave Creek and ride it out. Except that things were kind of looking like there was no “out.”

“It’s hard to believe they were once human,” murmured Jim.

“Strictly speaking,” said Doc quietly, “they are
still
human.”

The memory of singed hair and charbroiled flesh rose up to choke me. I’d had about enough of this conversation.

Cal put a hand on my shoulder, as if he knew what was going on in my head. I like that about him. I hate that about him.

“Look,” he said, “we’re all going to need something to eat and a place to stay…”

One of the nurses, a young thing with Coke-bottle lenses and big, doe-brown eyes, pulled off her gloves with a snap. She turned her big eyes on Cal. “I can show you to the cafeteria.”

“You have a cafeteria?” I asked.

She laughed and answered me without taking her eyes off Cal’s face. “It’s more like a hickory pit barbecue, but it’s a source of food.”

He smiled at her, no doubt making her day. “That’d be great.” He looked to Doc. “Unless you need to keep them here?”

“Only Mr. Beecher,” Doc answered. “The leg is most definitely broken.”

Cal nodded, gave my shoulder a squeeze, and turned to gather his charges. That was when Goldman planted himself firmly in Jim Gossett’s path and unloaded a gush of questions.

“On the way in, you said you felt as if the woods were watching you. What did you mean by that? Did you—I don’t know—uh, feel dread, excitement, impending doom, indigestion, bad juju—what?”

We all stared bug-eyed at Goldman as if he were a space alien. (I’ve wondered.)

“We were
scared
,” said Emily.

Goldman persisted. “But did you… did you
hear
anything? Did something
speak
to you?”

Jim cast Cal a fleeting and unreadable glance.
Is this guy for real?

“I heard angels.”

The voice was small and came from somewhere around Jim Gossett’s kneecaps. Lissa had slipped unnoticed into the circle of adults.

Cal crouched so he could meet her eye-to-eye. “What do you mean by angels, honey?”

“Like angels singing. Oscar and I heard them. I think Gil heard them, too, but he pretended not to.” She sent the little boy an arch glance.

“Who’s Oscar?”

She pointed to the dog, who’d opened one eye at the mention of his name. The eye rolled shut.

“He heard them, I know he did, ’cause he barked at them and howled…” She paused to demonstrate, making Oscar’s ears twitch. “… and he tried to run away to find them.”

“Oscar barks at everything,” Gil commented.

Cal glanced up at him. “Did you hear the angels, Gil?” “It weren’t angels. Prob’ly just deer or something.” “Deer don’t sing,” said Lissa.

“It weren’t singing.”

“But it was
like
singing—it
was
.” Lissa looked up into the ring of grown-up faces. “Honest. Sure, Oscar barks at lots of stuff, but he hardly howls at all. He howls when he hears music.
That’s
why I think it was angels. Because
Oscar could hear them. Dogs can see
and
hear angels,” she added.

“That was a movie,” said Gil. “This is real life.”

I swear to God, those were the most chilling words I’d heard all day.

“Real life,” murmured Goldie, and wandered out into the corridor that led into the wards, his shadow stretching eerily ahead of him.

Cal’s eyes followed him. He straightened and looked to the nurses. “Is there a hospital administrator here? Someone in charge?”

The nearsighted nurse—“Lucy” according to her name tag—nodded. “Dr. Nelson. He has an office right down that corridor to the right.” She pointed in the direction opposite where Goldie had gone. “I could take you—”

“Thanks, but I think I can probably find it myself. I would appreciate it if you could show my friends to the cafeteria, though. Colleen, would you… ?”

“Play Bo Peep? No problem,” I said. “I’m kind of hungry myself. I can keep an eye on Goldman for you while I’m at it.”

He shot me the ghost of a grin. “Thanks.”

Lucy took us to their makeshift mess hall. She pointed us at the chow line, which was hopping at this time of evening, and hurried back to the E.R. I didn’t imagine for a moment that Stan Beecher’s leg was the big draw.

I scanned the room. Even in the uneven lantern light Goldie wasn’t hard to spot. He was a real fashion plate, if you thought a purple and red paisley vest and a green plaid shirt made the perfect ensemble. He was sitting alone at a table near the glass sliders that gave out onto a large patio.

Through the glass I could see ranks of grills and hibachis and other low-tech cooking devices—the kitchen, I guessed. There were five or six people scrambling to make sure all the cook stoves were completely beneath the awning and out of the rain, which was suddenly coming down in buckets.

I hesitated for a moment, then went over and plopped down
across from Goldman, who was busy worrying a piece of bread to tiny bits. He didn’t so much as glance up. I opened my mouth to ask how he was doing.

“Kids are very perceptive people,” he told me. “They hear angels.”

“Angels with hunting packs?”

“Maybe the two things are not connected. Just because two occurrences are synchronicitous doesn’t mean there’s a causal relationship.”

I hate it when he talks over my head. “Yeah, and maybe there’s not much oxygen on your world.”

“I think somebody or something saved our bacon.”

“You know what I think? I think our lurker friends had dinner plans, and that the only reason they backed off was to keep from becoming tweak flambé.”

A spark of amusement crept into his dark eyes. “Oh, clever. And you continued the food metaphor. I’m impressed. But a minute ago you were suggesting the big sissies were afraid of a little rain.”

Before I could offer a tart comeback, he added, “There’s something in that woods, and I think it’s important we know what it is.”

“Goldman, I’ll tell you what’s in that woods—weird, creepy, bloodthirsty critters that were once-upon-a-time human beings, just like you and me. They didn’t get called off. They just got scared because one of them bought the farm.”

“And you were forced to kill him… or her. I’m sorry, Colleen.” He gave me a liquid brown look of utter sorrow that bit through me like a north wind, then got up and headed across the room.

I was stunned. “What—sorry? Do I look like I need your sympathy?”

Part of me wanted to chase him down and make him take back his pity. Another part was just plain embarrassed, because people were staring at me. My dignity circuit kicked in. I grinned and shook my head, as if I hadn’t just let him get to me. I was still sitting there about twenty minutes later when Cal came in and sat down across the table.

“Where’s Goldie?” were the first words out of his mouth. They pissed me off.

“Just missed him.”

Cal’s eyes tried to catch mine and read them. “Did he say anything more to you about what he heard out there?”

“Nothing that made any sense.” I changed the subject. “You talk to the admin guy—Nelson?”

He nodded, looking down at his hands clasped on the tabletop. Something about the expression on his face… “What?”

He raised his eyes to the sheet of glass and looked out into the rain. Flames from the cook stoves were bright blossoms in the dark. Our reflections watched us watching them.

“They have some very real needs here, Colleen. They’re short doctors, nurses… mechanics.” He shot a glance at me. “You name it, they need it.”

“He asked us to stay.”

A nod.

“You’re not seriously thinking about it?”

“I don’t want to think about it, but…” He closed his eyes. “Just after you left, they brought in a kid with severe slash wounds. Deep slash wounds. I didn’t think they’d be able to stop the bleeding. Dr. Nelson didn’t think they’d be able to stop the bleeding. Doc did. And between the two of them, they pulled it off. The kid’s unconscious, but Doc thinks he’ll recover.” His eyes opened and pinned me to the back of my chair. “When I first walked into his office a while ago, Darryl Nelson struck me as a man who was worn-out—almost used up. No light in his eyes, no hope. He said it was the end of a long day, but it was more than that. When he shook my hand just now …” He turned his right hand over on the table, palm up, and I realized the cuffs of his shirt were stained with blood. “…he was a different man.”

I touched the stained sleeve. “That the kid’s?”

He pulled a wry grimace. “I’m a paramedic now.”

“And they need paramedics.”

“They need everything.” He sat back in his chair. After a
moment of silence he looked at me, his eyes sharp and cool. “You know as well as I do that there’s not a lot we can do in just a few days. This place has problems that would take an ongoing battle just to keep under control. But…” He gazed around the cafeteria at the little knots of people scattered around the room—families, children. “We can make a little bit of a difference here, and the rest could only help us.”

I had to admit, the thought of setting up camp here, even for a couple of days, was awfully appealing. We were all exhausted. Even Cal, for all that he seemed to have an endless supply of high-voltage batteries. This wasn’t an easy decision for him. Fear for Tina, fear that we’d be too late for her, for everyone, just hovered in the back of his head. You could see it in his eyes if you looked real close, as I often did.

“If you want to move on…”

He shook his head. “We’re going to be here at least for the night. Let’s just… be here now, or whatever Yoda said.”

I snorted. The thought of Cal being here now was a bit of a stretch. “Yeah, right.”

He almost smiled. “Look, why don’t you go get some sleep? I’m going back down to the E.R. and make sure Doc doesn’t pull an all-nighter.”

He got up then, automatically reaching down to adjust the position of the sword that hung against his thigh. The sword he’d pulled, like Excalibur, from a pile of trash in the Manhattan underground. Sometimes I thought the thing was more than a weapon. A familiar, maybe—like a witch’s black cat. Okay, that’s creepy, but these days you found yourself thinking stuff like that all the time.

I gestured at it. “You’re gonna forget to take that thing off one of these nights, and wake up with it fused to your leg.”

This time he did smile, and the smile got all the way up into his eyes. It was a smile that made you feel, irrationally, that he saw the end of all this, and it was a
good
end. He laid a hand on the sword hilt. “Darryl said if you go to the admissions desk, they’d find a room for you. With a real bed.”

“A real bed? I don’t know if I remember how to use one of those.”