Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(56)

The shadows released their grip at the momentary flash and leapt back. Zara touched the lighter to the symbols on the pavement. The symbols ignited, flaring against the shadows that surrounded them. Zara’s dress glowed, drawing in the light from the fire. The flare subsided momentarily, and she stood.

Another shadow leapt at her and pushed her back onto the pavement. It opened its mouth, a black abyss drawing in her life. It bent down to Zara, to pull her life through its throat. She thrust the lighter in its face and tried to flick it on.

Sid stepped up to the warded circle, watching her struggle with the shadow.

“Stay inside,” she screamed. “Stay inside, Sid!” The lighter flashed again, and Zara stuck her hand down the shadow’s throat. The burst of light ignited inside the shadow, and the creature dissolved.

Another shadow flew at her, but before Zara could react, it disintegrated. Sid stood over her, holding one of the candles. He looked at her. “Go,” he said. “She needs you. I’ll be all right.”

Mira writhed on the pavement nearby, tendrils of shadows forcing themselves down her throat.

Zara ran to her, pushing through the shadows. The light on her dress faltered. She touched the lighter to the rags wrapped around her right hand, and the blue flame ignited them.

Zara touched her flaming hand to Mira’s chest. The shadow’s tendrils writhed and scattered, falling off Mira’s twitching body. Zara removed the lid of the jar and held it to Mira’s face. She moved her flaming hand over the body, causing Mira to convulse violently. Zara straddled Mira to keep her from shifting and waited for the shadow to leave her body. It dribbled out through her nose and mouth: a thick tarry mass that Zara collected in the jar.

Behind her, Sid set more of the symbols aflame, clearing the shadows. They scattered away, a few of them writhing in the remnants of flame.

Zara dragged Mira’s unconscious body back into the circle, and chalked new wards around them, smaller than the circle she had drawn before. Sid sat down, withdrawing into his thoughts again. Zara offered him some water, and she ate an apple while they waited for the first light of morning.

? ?

Mira spent the rest of the night in shock, looking out into the night for any sign of the shadows. But they didn’t come back, and, soon after, the fire on the pavement burned down.

At dawn, Zara wrapped up the bottle that contained Miguel’s shadow and handed it over to Mira. Mira’s hands trembled as she took it.

“The glass won’t break,” Zara said to her. “But you should keep the rag wrapped around the bottle, just in case. Your neighbours may be superstitious, and it’s better if you don’t give them a reason to suspect you.”

Mira nodded. “Thank you.”

“It was unfortunate that your meeting had to end as it did,” said Zara.

“But it didn’t,” said Mira. “I’ve lived for too long with the guilt, and whatever that was, it wasn’t Miguel.”

“Bury the bottle in your yard at the full moon,” said Zara.

Mira hugged her. “I don’t know where you’re going,” she said, “but be safe.”

Sid stirred in his sleep, leaning against the backpack.

Mira looked at him. “They grow up too soon,” she said

“Sometimes they never grow up at all,” Zara replied.

? ?

Zara walked north, away from Edmonton, to the place where the light was scarce, where unnameable shadows haunted the night roads.

As Zara walked, waiting for the sun to set, she felt that the shadows had already won. They had grown till they swallowed the whole world. There were too many of them. More than she could ever protect Sid from. Every day the sun delayed its arrival, and the shadows inevitably gained another hour of their lives.

Sid stood on the shoulder of the highway, watching the sun set. She sat down near him.

The blindness was coming to her, had been coming since she had received the gift, and the dying light that reached her reminded her that it would soon be eternal night.

“I’ve got some dinner,” she said. He sat and opened his mouth while she fed him the cold soup and bread. He finished and lay his head down on her lap. She held her lighter in one hand and with the other gently stroked his head.

In a few hours they would walk north again, to find and face the nameless demon that had spread shadows throughout the world. For now she sat with her son.





@SHALESTATE


David Huebert

Warm, very warm. And wet, very wet. The Great Unpredictable Nonwinter left us very warm and very wet. But we survived. The forests flourished, and we survived. The redwoods grew tall in the North, and we survived. The bears died off – first white, then gold, then black – and we survived. The bats bred and bred and bred, darkening the skies and filling every night with their abominable wailing. The enemies of @shalestate came and went. They built great #Econations and shunned oil and electricity and worshipped the ancient texts of the heretic Kyoto, but they perished in the end. And we survived.

It rained for 100,000 years, and we survived.

We survived because of the Great Technological Know-How, and the ComfyBunker. But now there is no more Technology. No more Know-How. There is no more Bottled Sunlight. There are few acceptable pairings left. The Endless Bacteriafree Fountain has dried up. The Mentholsuits have all but lost their soothing chill. The water is stagnant and full of diseased bat blood and we have no way to filter it. The mushrooms are tainted, due to lack of clean water. They weaken the stomach, and not everyone can digest them. Three Followers died last year, two the year before that. None of them older than 50. Soon there will be no more surviving, not in this place.