Rivals

Maggie waited outside. You would not catch her climbing around inside some ancient airplane hangar the military had built out in the desert and then left to collapse under its own weight. It just wasn't safe. The thing didn't even look normal. It looked like it kept changing shape, but then if you stared at it, it wasn't moving or anything. Weird, she thought, as in, too weird to be part of my life.

Of course stupid Brent had to stupidly run inside. He was only two years younger than she was, fifteen to her seventeen, but he could be such a child. And the way he followed Dad around like a puppy made her roll her eyes. He was just like a puppy - exactly like a puppy. He lived for that moment when someone called him a good boy and patted him on the head.

Maggie decided she would wait ten minutes. That was fair, right? More than enough time to let the two of them have their little boy adventure and realize there was nothing inside more interesting than maybe some brown recluse spiders - the kind that gave you that horrible disease. Then she would demand that they come back out so the three of them could head back to camp. She just got one flickering bar of reception on her Sidekick if she went up on the bluff overlooking their campsite. It was just enough to send and receive short texts.

She kicked at some pebbles and they bounced off the side of the thing. Instead of the muted clangs she was expecting, they made a sound like they were hitting the stretched skin of a drum. That was kind of weird.

Had it been ten minutes yet? She wasn't sure. Maggie never wore a watch. That was what the clock on her Sidekick was for, and she'd left it back at camp. No point hauling it around out in the desert, she'd thought. It would have just been more weight to carry in her pack. Her mom had taught her to always travel light.

Mom -

Maggie thought about her mom a lot. Several times a day, in fact. Sometimes she would think about the times they'd spent together and she would cry. Sometimes she'd think about the accident and get angry. The other guy had been drunk. He had absolutely no right to be driving, no right at all to be driving that fast. He'd taken away Maggie's mom because he was too stupid to be allowed to breathe. He had ruined Maggie's life in a split second.

Mom.

Maggie sighed theatrically - she was working on a new sigh, a long, drawn-out exhalation that told the world she was so over this - and then stepped down into the shady interior of the old building or whatever it was. It had to have been ten minutes, right? She was startled when she felt how cold it was inside, but at least that explained the birds. Animals in the desert would take any shade they could find, any way of cooling themselves down. There were probably jackrabbits and kit foxes inside as well, and maybe even coyotes. Now that would be stupid. Titanically stupid, to get eaten by coyotes because two little boys (one of whom happened to be her forty-year old dad) had to play explorer in the desert.

Beyond the arches was a section where the ceiling hadn't been worn away. It looked pretty dark back there. She stepped over some puddles of stagnant water - probably full of insect larvae, yuck - and reached into her pack to get her flashlight. When she flicked it on she saw that the cylinder went on farther than she'd thought. It sloped downward, as if most of it was still underground. Maybe it was the entrance to a mine or something. Maybe the weird chill in the air was just a breeze coming up from some deep cavern.

Of course, she couldn't feel a breeze. The air inside was perfectly still. But whatever. She just had to find the boys and convince them to leave. It wouldn't be easy. They almost never accepted that she knew what she was talking about, and if she said this place was dangerous that would most likely make them want to explore deeper.

She saw a little light up ahead. It looked like another flashlight, almost identical to the one she carried. She swung her light around and saw that Brent was pointing his own light at Dad, who was bent over something she couldn't see. They had stopped in front of a row of big tubes set into the wall of the cylinder. A smaller tube stuck up out of the ground, like a pipe, or the top of a well. Dad was looking into its mouth.

"Guys," she said. "Come on - " but then she stopped. She could hear her own voice, kind of. It sounded very faint, though. It was like the cylinder was absorbing sounds. She picked up a rock and threw it at the wall. She saw it hit, but didn't hear anything.

"Guys!" she shouted, as loud as she could. It sounded like a whisper. The boys didn't even turn around.

This place was weird, and creepy. Two very good reasons to leave. She headed towards them, intending on grabbing them and dragging them out if she had to. That was when she noticed she could see her father's bones, his skull, his rib cage, the two thin bones in his forearm.

It was like he was being x-rayed. It was like in a cartoon when someone sticks their finger in a light socket. Then she realized she could see his bones because they were burning bright green - and because his skin and most of his flesh was already gone.

She rushed forward, not even thinking about what she was doing, and grabbed Brent. He was staring at Dad and didn't seem capable of moving. His eyes looked strange and his skin was glowing. Whatever had happened to Dad was starting to happen to him, too.

Maggie looked down at her hands. Green fire covered them as if she were burning up. Yet she didn't feel hot at all - it just tingled.

She picked Brent up and threw him over her shoulder. Then she ran.

Dad was dead. He was dead. He was dead! She thought he had to be. Because if he wasn't -