He peered through blurry eyes. Was it? No. Of course not. Madness.
The shape resolved into a kid, a regular kid, with regular hands and arms and nothing at all like that other form he had seen in the smoke.
Caine stood up, feeling foolish for having been spooked. “Move on, move on,” he yelled.
He raised his hands and used his power to shove the group forward. Half of them stumbled and fell.
He cursed them. “Move!”
The earlier form in the smoke. That tall, lean body. The arm that went on and on. Impossible. An illusion, just like this one. Imagination fed by exhaustion and fear and hunger.
“Penny, are you doing anything?” Caine demanded.
Penny rasped, “What do you mean?”
“I thought I saw something,” Caine said. Then he amended. “Someone. Before.”
“It wasn’t me,” Penny said. “I would never use my powers on you, Caine.”
“No,” Caine agreed. “You wouldn’t.” His confidence was draining away. His mind was playing tricks on him. The others would sense it soon. Diana already did. But then she’d had the same hallucination, hadn’t she?
“This is too slow,” Caine said. “We have to go straight down the street. Penny, either you or me, one of us takes down anyone that gets in our way. Right?”
He plunged down the street, aiming for the beach. He had to fight the urge to look over his shoulder for the boy who could not possibly be there.
They made it safely as far as the beach. But there they ran into a group of maybe twenty kids, all milling around gaping at the fire, crying, giggling, encouraging one another. Half like they were watching a show, half like they were personally burning in those flames.
At first the gaggle of kids didn’t notice Caine’s group, but then one glanced over and his eyes widened as he saw Diana. And then, Caine.
“It’s Caine!”
“Out of my way,” Caine warned. The last thing he wanted was a stupid, pointless, and time-wasting fight. He was in a hurry.
“You!” another kid cried. “You started the fire!”
“What? Moron.” Caine pushed past, using his actual hands, not his powers, not looking for trouble right now. But the cry was being taken up by others and now a dozen furious, terrified kids were in his face, yelling and crying and then one threw a punch.
“Enough,” Caine yelled. He raised a hand, and the nearest kid went flying. He landed with a sickening crunch twenty feet away.
Caine never even saw the person who brained him with a crowbar. The blow seemed to come out of nowhere. He was on his knees, too confused to be scared.
He saw the crowbar just before it hit the second time. A weaker blow, and badly aimed, but shockingly painful on the bone of his left shoulder. It sent a numbing electricity all the way down to his fingertips.
He wasn’t going to wait for a third blow. He raised his right hand, but before he could pulverize the little boy, Penny made her move.
The boy leaped back, almost as far as if Caine had thrown him.
He screamed and swung his crowbar wildly around him. When the crowbar flew from his fear-weakened grip, he began punching and clawing the air, eyes wild.
“What’s he seeing?” Caine asked.
“Very large spiders,” Penny answered. “Really large. And they jump really fast.”
“Thanks,” Caine grunted. He stood up and rubbed his numbed arm. “Hope they give him a heart attack. Come on,” he yelled. “It’s not far now. Hang in with me, everyone, by morning you’ll be eating.”
Mary didn’t have the energy to go home. Not much point, really…no shower…no…
She sagged onto the chair in the cramped office. She tried to lift her legs, rest her feet on a cardboard box, but even that required too much energy.
She rattled the pill bottle on her desk. She pried the top off and looked at what she had. She didn’t even recognize the pill, but it must be some kind of antidepressant. That’s all she ever got from Dahra.
She downed it dry.
When had she last taken a pill? She needed to keep track of them.
Two kids down with some kind of flu.
What was she supposed to…
What might have been dreams melded seamlessly with memory and Mary wandered for a while in a place filled with sick children and the smell of pee and her mother making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in giant stacks for some event at school and Mary wrapping the sandwiches in Ziploc bags, counting them into recycled plastic Ralph’s bags.
“Did you wet yourself?” her mother asked.
“I guess so. It smells like it.” She wasn’t embarrassed, just annoyed, wishing her mother wouldn’t make an issue out of it.
And then the door was opened and a little girl came and crawled onto Mary’s lap but Mary couldn’t move her arms to hug because her arms were made out of lead.
“I’m so tired,” Mary told her mother.
“Well, we’ve made eight thousand sandwiches,” her mother explained, and Mary saw from the stacks and stacks that teetered comically like something from a Dr. Seuss book, that it was true.
“You look sickly.”
“I’m fine,” Mary said.
“I want my mommy,” the little girl said in her ear, and warm tears rolled onto Mary’s neck.
“You should come home now,” Mary’s mother said.
“I have to do the laundry first,” Mary said.
“Someone else will do it.”