Scary Out There (31 page)

“Is she still breathing?” Quinney asked, his voice gentler than Kayah had ever heard it.

Kayah gave a single, curt nod, but her mother's breathing was so shallow that she held on to Naira's wrist, feeling for a pulse. It was there, but faint.

“I wouldn't take any bets,” Priya muttered.

Quinney hissed at her to be silent, but Kayah paid her no attention. Quinney and his crew watched one another's backs because none of them—not a one—had anyone else to look out for them. Tynan and Quinney had no parents, while Priya had parents who didn't give a shit. Delmar lived with his junkie older sister. Kayah had always felt sorry for the skids. Though she and Naira fought plenty, she knew how fortunate she was to have a mother to go home to, someone who would never shut her out and who would love her no matter what mistakes she made. The rest of them might envy her that love, but they could never understand how much Kayah truly cherished it, or how much she feared losing it.

Tires screeched as Delmar took another sharp turn, and the truck canted dangerously to one side.

Tynan banged on the wall, screaming for Delmar to be more careful. “Getting us to the Emergency's no good if you kill us on the way!”

“You want us to slow down?” Priya asked. “You saw the skyline.”

“Dead's dead either way,” Tynan said. He drew back his jacket to display the gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans. “We get caught outside, we got a chance, but he plows
us into a storefront, we don't live to see the sun come up.”

Kayah caught his eye, and he grinned at her. Tynan had a skittish, manic energy and a talent for saying the wrong thing, but she knew he meant well. She mustered a wan smile, then focused again on her mother. Kayah pushed Naira's hair out of her face. Her clammy skin had turned cool and seemed even paler now, though that could have been Kayah's imagination.

The stink of gas and chemicals filled the back of the truck, overcoming the stale, sweet smell of old whiskey that had soaked into the floor and the crates. Kayah pulled up her shirt to cover her mouth, but kept her other hand firmly on her mother's wrist, feeling the thready flutter of her pulse.

“God, the smell,” Tynan groaned.

“Gotta be the refinery,” Quinney said. “Means we're only a few blocks from the Emergency.”

He glanced at Kayah as he said this last bit, trying to reassure her. But she barely saw him, staring instead at the narrow gap at the bottom of the truck's rear door. There had been a hint of light there before—but now there was only darkness.

Nightfall.

Kayah slumped back against liquor boxes. Hollow, utterly empty inside, she glanced up at Quinney as if this pale, roughhewn, ginger boy might be able to remake the world, to spin it backward to a time before darkness meant death.

The truck rocked to one side, the engine roared as Delmar gunned it, and then just as abruptly they came to a juddering
halt. Quinney ratcheted the latch back and hauled the door open. Tynan jumped out into the parking lot, shouting for help.

“Quiet, idiot!” Priya barked as she followed him out.

Into the dark.

Time had seemed to flicker past while they drove, but Kayah saw that long minutes had gone by, and a blue-gray filter had fallen across the city. In the parking lot, cars shone in the wan yellow light of the rising moon.

“Go,” Quinney breathed.

The word snapped her back to reality. Kayah leaped out the back of the truck, dropped to the pavement, and turned to grab the edge of the blanket. Quinney and Priya slid her mother to the edge, and Kayah grabbed hold as Priya jumped down to help her. Naira's face had gone slack and her chest seemed to have stilled.

No
, Kayah thought, feeling the night around them and fearing they had risked all of this for nothing.

The city air had gone still. Even the breath in her lungs seemed to stop moving as she and Hope held either side of the blanket and Quinney jumped down from the truck to take hold of the fabric with both hands, almost cradling Naira's head. Kayah's mother hung down like a child in a sling, but they had no choice now—no better way. Delmar stayed in the truck, behind the wheel, and Tynan ran for the emergency room doors, the soles of his shoes scuffing the pavement.

“Oh shit . . . ,” Priya whispered.

Kayah had been hustling along, arms straight down, trying to glide her mother as smoothly through the parking lot as possible. Trying not to breathe even as she wondered if her mother had stopped. Now she whipped her head up and stared at Priya . . . saw where the other girl was looking, and felt herself deflate. Tears sprang to her eyes.

“No,” she said.

Quinney shot her a glance meant to silence her.

Sorrow and anger boiled up inside her as the first tears slid down her face.

“No!” she repeated, louder now.

The emergency room entrance had already been shuttered. At dusk, metal doors and grates would be lowered into place on structures all over the city, but hospital emergency rooms were supposed to remain open at least thirty minutes after nightfall, with armed guards at the doors.

Not tonight. The plate glass windows that looked out on the parking lot were shielded, and the doors were closed up tight.

“Tynan,” Quinney rasped, “see if you can get them to open up. Be quick, but be damn quiet.”

He glanced up. Kayah didn't dare. They were like ghosts out there in the moonlight, all of them pale and unearthly and easily spotted from above.

Tynan slapped an open palm against the metal doors.
Kayah could hear him hissing quietly, talking low in hopes that whoever was on the other side would open up. She could barely make out the words, but the phrase “dying woman” floated out across the lot as though they had been spoken right into her ear. In the cab of the truck, Delmar swore. Kayah and Priya and Quinney shuffled toward the blocked ER entrance with Naira hammocked in the blanket between them, but there seemed little point.

“This is damn stupid,” Delmar said in a low voice. “We're dead out here, man. Get in the truck.”

Kayah shot him a murderous look. His eyes were wide with fear so complete he didn't even seem to see her. Something broke inside her.

“Quinney,” she said as they reached the metal doors blocking the ER. “You guys should go.”

Tynan jumped back from the doors, nodding with a kind of manic energy, his arms flailing in a kind of pantomime. “That's what I'm saying. We shouldn't be out here to begin with.”

Kayah nodded to Priya. A chilly breeze whistled past them, rustling the bushes off to the right of the ER entrance as the two girls gently lowered the blanket to the ground. Quinney had no choice but to do the same or risk dumping Naira onto the ground.

Kayah crouched by her mother's side, afraid that all of this had been for nothing, but then she saw the shallow rise and fall of Naira's
chest and knew they still had a chance. Kayah kissed her mother's cheek and then jumped up and turned toward the metal doors. She slapped a palm against them, the blow echoing across the parking lot and into the night.

“Don't do that,” Tynan said.

Kayah put her mouth to the gap between the metal doors. “Please?” she begged. “My mother's had a heart attack. Please!”

“Damn it, shut your—” Tynan began.

“Go,” she said. “Just go. I understand.”

“We're not leaving you here,” he said.

“Maybe
you're
not,” Priya replied.

Quinney snapped his head around to stare at her.

Priya sighed, bouncing nervously from foot to foot. “We gotta go, Q. You know it.”

“Not if the hospital lets us in.”

Kayah touched his hand, and he froze at the contact. Lifted his gaze slowly and stared at her.

“Thank you,” she said. “But they're right.”

Quinney hesitated again. “We had a deal.”

For half a second she didn't remember. Then she stared at him. “You're crazy.”

He gave her a sad, hopeless sort of smile, and for the first time Kayah understood that Quinney had not come with her for a kiss or to save her mother or out of some manic courage. He had helped her because he had grown tired of being afraid all the time.

“Count to ten and decide if you want to put your mom back in the truck,” he said. “We're leaving. You stay, it won't just be
her
heart that stops tonight.”

He started to walk away.

“Quinney,” Kayah said softly, and when he turned, she rushed over and kissed him softly on the cheek. Then she shoved him backward. “Go.”

The others urged him on. Delmar started up the truck, and it growled loudly to life, the noise rumbling across the lot. Kayah pounded on the ER door four times in rapid succession and called out for someone to let her in.

Over the truck's engine she could barely hear the voice from inside telling her to go away.

“Not a chance!” she snapped. “Let me in or you're killing me and my mother both!”

Behind her, Priya called to Quinney.

Once. Then a second time, and the second time her voice was full of despair, almost a moan. Tynan swore and Quinney snapped at them all to get into the truck, hissed at Delmar to roll up the driver's window.

Kayah turned and saw them running for the back of the truck. Tynan had his gun out, and now she saw Priya flip up the back of her jacket and slip her own nine millimeter from a thin holster clipped to her belt. Quinney glanced up at the sky as he ran. A shadow passed through the moonlight, and then, even over the rumble of the truck's engine, Kayah
heard the sound, like the unfurling of a heavy canvas flag.

She looked up.

The Cloaks circled above, leather wings outstretched and long necks extended. Kayah had seen them from inside, cruising the night skies as if flying itself was enough of a pleasure to keep them contented. They sailed in the moonlight, and for a moment the wind gusted and the updraft off the face of the hospital pushed them higher. But she knew they would not stay aloft.

She twisted around and lifted a hand, ready to pound on the metal doors. Her hand never fell. Whoever stood on the other side had not been willing to open the door before—they would never do it now that the Cloaks had arrived.

Kayah knelt by her mother's side again and took her hand. In the moonlight Naira's eyes were open and gleaming, staring up at her.

“Momma?” Kayah said.

Naira couldn't speak. Pale and sweating, brow furrowed with pain, she couldn't manage a word, but she was alive.

In her eyes, Kayah could see the reflection of the Cloaks circling overhead.

She saw the first one dive toward the ground.

Delmar put the truck into grinding gear, and it lurched and began to roar away. Kayah closed her eyes.

“Damn it, girl, fight!” Quinney shouted as he lunged past her and slammed into the metal barrier. He banged on the ER door once, twice, a third time.

The first of the Cloaks arced down toward them, leathery wings fluttering. Kayah covered her mother's body with her own. Quinney swore again, and she glanced up in time to see him turn, take aim with his gun, and shoot the Cloak in the head.

It screamed—the sound spiking through her brain—and crashed into the pavement only feet away. For several heartbeats it lay still, but then she heard the wet sounds of the creature peeling itself from the ground, and it began to push itself up on hands and feet that were dry, black leather, but somehow almost human.

“They left you,” Kayah said, numb inside.
You're in shock
, she thought. But still the idea that the others had let Quinney get out of the truck, let him fight to save her, astonished her.

“Or I left them,” he said, stepping up and firing at the grounded Cloak again before he turned to her. “Now we're going.”

Quinney grabbed her wrist and yanked her away from her mother. Her feet were moving before she even realized it. Thirty yards away, the truck bumped to a stop, and the back door rolled up. Tynan and Priya stood in the open back of the liquor truck, outlined in the moonlight, firing at the Cloaks that began to descend as if they had a hope in hell of doing anything but slowing the things down. Bullets weren't enough. They had to take the monster's heads and set them on fire.

Fire,
she thought, a sliver of hope rising in her. The liquor would burn all too well. In that moment, she allowed herself to
rush toward the truck with Quinney, who continued to yank her along as he fired at two Cloaks who slid down through the moonlight toward them, long hands out and mouths gaping, silver teeth gleaming.

They darted away, avoiding the gunfire, and in that moment Kayah realized her mistake.

“Shoot them!” she screamed, grabbing Quinney's gun hand and trying to force it around.

He did, but too late. Her hands opened and closed emptily and then she grabbed for his gun, tried to wrest it away from him so that she could do the shooting herself. So that she could do
something.

The Cloaks alighted around her mother. One of them ripped the blanket away with those long, black talons, so like human fingers. Naira flipped onto the ground between them as a third Cloak landed next to the other two and grabbed hold of her mother.

“Come on!” Tynan shouted from the back of the truck.

Gunshots cracked the air, bullets slicing upward toward the Cloaks who dove at the truck. Tynan and Priya were protecting themselves. Kayah fought with Quinney over his gun, and finally he just let her take it.

She screamed as she marched toward the creatures crouched around her mother. Tears slid down her face as she pulled the trigger, emptying the magazine. Two of the Cloaks went down, but in the space between breaths they were stirring again.

Quinney shouted her name, but she figured he was running for the truck.

Like Kayah should have been.

Like her mother would have wanted her to.