The Meridians(72)

Time slowed down until she felt as though she could hear the individual blood cells flowing through her veins, each one bouncing off the walls of her bloodways like a sea of life dashing itself against the shoals and shallows of her body.

She moved like the moon across the night, neither thinking nor acting on instinct. She simply was in the next instant, sweeping a piece of wood from a broken pallet into her hands. She cradled the wood in her hands, and rushed without sound at the gray man.

Scott's eyes were closed.

Mr. Gray had his back to her.

Neither man knew she was there.

She made no sound. She was the moon. Silent, moving across the night sky of this nightmare alley with inevitability and unstoppable purpose.

"I am the moon," she whispered.

And the gray man turned.

"What the -" he began.

But before he could finish the thought, his body was already moving, turning fully toward her, the gun in his hand swinging around to point at her.

Time was still slow, the blood still pounded in her.

I am the moon, she thought.

And with that thought, she screamed a scream that ricocheted off the walls of the alleyway like a spent bullet, and swung the length of wood in her hands.

It hit the gray man square across the face, and saw his nose explode as the board broke across it.

Mr. Gray shrieked a wordless cry, and tried to bring the gun to bear on her. He fired it, over and over, and she felt bullets whip past her, burning the air with their passage like a flight of bees that had been set aflame and left to destroy all in their path.

But none of the bees touched her. She felt them go past so close that the hairs on her head and arms singed with their passing, but none of the bees stung her, none found its mark.

Of course not, she thought insanely, I'm the moon. And she giggled, a high-pitched wheeze that frightened her as much as anything else that had happened this night.

Click, click, click went the gun as the killer before her pulled the trigger on an empty magazine. But still he pulled the trigger, blood splashed into his eyes, and now she knew how he had gotten his nose crushed, but that was impossible, wasn't it, because it had just happened now, so how had he sported the wounds of this night before?

She had no time to ponder the impossibility of it all, because in that moment she relinquished control of herself, falling to her knees as though she had spent all her energy and courage and strength in the single act of defiance against the killer.

She had saved Scott.

And now Scott returned the favor, springing to his feet in the same moment that she fell from hers, and he grabbed her wrist, and screamed "RUN!" and yanked her with him.

They ran.

She was the moon, and she ran.

She looked behind her, into the alleyway as they left it, and saw Mr. Gray, still reeling from the strike that had shattered his nose, blood dripping from his face.

But she noted with almost detached interest that the blood disappeared before it touched the ground. It dripped from his face, and fell into eternity.

"You bitch," screamed Mr. Gray, his voice bubbling around the phantom blood that was spurting from his face. "You bitch, I'll find you, I'll kill you I'll kill you and your boy and Cowley I'll kill all of you forever, forever you hear!"

And then Scott yanked her away from the alley and she lost sight of him.

The moon has left the building, she thought, and giggled again.

"Stay with me, Lynette," said Scott.

He pulled her, tripping over her own feet, to her car.

"No!" she screamed, in that instant not wanting to get in, not wanting to see the two boys in the car.

But Scott paid her no heed, paid her no mind, simply opened the back door and threw her bodily inside and then closed the door behind her.

He got in the front, then, and put the still-running car in gear.

A hand touched her in the darkness, and she almost shrieked, almost fainted as the terror that she had not felt in those critical seconds in the alley now washed over her and crushed her beneath it.

I am not the moon, she thought.

The hand belonged to her son. Kevin touched her hand, but did not look at her.

And that was right. He was one again, he was her son again.

Scott gunned the engine, and then sped off into the night, leaving his car and the alley behind them.

But not Mr. Gray, she knew. Mr. Gray was not dead, and so he would be back.

That was the nature of nightmares. They always came back.





***





34.

***

Scott was more than a little worried that he was going to lose Lynette.

She was huddled in the back of the car, whispering "I am the moon" over and over to herself, and try as he might he could elicit no other response from her no matter what he said.

He looked over at Kevin. The boy was in his pajamas, looking out at the dead of the night as they drove. "You okay, son?" asked Scott. Kevin did not reply, but held out a single small hand, his thumb up.

"Good," said Scott. "At least that makes one of us."

He drove as fast as he could, not driving with any destination in mind, but solely with the goal of putting as many miles between them and that damned alley as he could.

He adjusted the rearview mirror so that he could look at Lynette's form, dark and curled in on itself in the back of the car. "Lynette," he said. No response. "Lynette?"