Shadowfever

What the feck is moving down the hall at me?

Later, when I tell the story, I don’t tell the whole truth.

Truth is, the unthinkable happened. I got scared in that dark hall. I felt something coming and it freaked me.

I say I never got to the corridor.

Never admit I backed out with my tail tucked between my legs, retreated to the light, and then freeze-framed back to the dining hall.

The shooting starts again and so does the screaming and we all run, but there’s only one way out and that’s the way in, so we’re knocking over tables and scrambling behind ’em.

Jo and me, we end up behind the same table. Long as she doesn’t try any funky lezbo stuff on me, I don’t mind sharing my spot. I tap the table. It’s thick, made of solid wood. Might hold up, depending on bullets and distance.

More screams. I wanna hold my ears.

I’m cowering. I disgust myself.

I gotta look. I gotta know what the feck is doing this to us!

Jo and I move for opposite ends of the table at the same time and crack heads. She glares at me.

“Like it’s my fault,” I hiss defensively. “You moved, too.”

“Where’s Liz?” she hisses back.

I shrug. On my hands and knees, I waggle my ass. Whole abbey’s falling apart and she’s worried about her little girlfriend. “Baaaaa,” I say.

She looks at me like I’m nuts. Then we’re both poking our heads around the table.

Bullets are ripping across the room, ricocheting off walls and wood. Blood’s spraying everywhere, gory as feck, and the screams keep coming. The shooter is framed in the door of the dining hall.

Jo gasps and I just about fall over choking.

It’s Barb!

What the feck’s this all about?

She’s draped in rounds, toting the biggest Uzi I ever seen. White-faced, she’s screaming curses at us, taking us down like sitting ducks. I gape. “Barb?” I mutter. Don’t make no sense.

Weird thing is, Jo looks stunned and bursts out, “I thought it was Liz!”

I stare down the table at her. All I can see is her head, but she kinda shrugs it. “Long story.”

I assess the room, the scene. We’re at the back of the hall. We’ll be last to die. What the feck do I do? Why is Barb shooting us?

I look at Jo. She’s no help. Looks blank as the page I was writing The Dani Daily on.

Dude, I wish Mac was here! What would she do? Should I freeze-frame in while Barb’s shooting everybody and try to take her gun? Am I fast enough? I don’t wanna die today. Tomorrow’s gonna be my day. And I just know it’s gonna be a good one, too! ’Sides, I got too much to do. Somebody’s gotta keep an eye on Ro.

But we’re dropping like flies! Holy feckin’ crikey, Barb’s wiping us out!

I cram a candy bar in my mouth whole, chew it just enough to get it in my gut. I’m gonna need every ounce of energy I got to pull this off. I gotta do something. Barb ain’t gonna run outta bullets for a long time. The Mega can’t cower behind a table and do nothing.

I poke my head out from behind the table, take a snapshot of the scene, and lock it down hard in my head. I map where every person, table, chair, and obstacle is.

Problem is Barb. She’s the unknown. She’s moving and spraying fire so erratically, I can’t slam a grid of possibles down over my mental map.

Feck!

I stare, trying to pick up some kinda pattern.

I duck back behind the table as a shot zings by. Poke my head out again. Ain’t no pattern.

I pump breaths superfast, puffing my cheeks in and out, kicking my adrenaline up. I ease my head out, lock the grid down best I can, and am about to give my feet wings, when Barb goes kinda fuzzy around the edges and the room gets so fecking cold my breath comes out white.

Jo makes a strangled sound.

We both see it at the same time.

What’s shooting at us ain’t Barb at all.

Well … it is, and she’s screaming, but not like the psycho-rage-bitch-from-hell I thought she was.

She’s screaming in horror.

She’s fighting for control of the gun and failing. She forces it down and sprays the floor, but it comes up again. She tries to swing it left, toward the wall. It yanks back to the right. Her finger’s tight on the trigger the whole time.

She blurs again.

She’s just Barb.

No, she ain’t! She’s—dude—what the feck is that? She’s got too many heads, too many teeth! She’s some kinda monster! And it ain’t no Shade!

It’s Barb again.

Being forced to kill us.

Behind her, a shadow climbs the wall. It’s huge! It towers, it expands, and when it laughs, my blood clots up in my veins and can’t get to my brain, ’cause it’s got so many ice chunks in it.

“Where is the Grand Bitch?” it roars. “I want her fucking heeeeeeead!”

Jo and I look at each other.

We get it.

We both know what’s got her, what’s really firing those rounds, and it gets driven home like a spike through my skull that I ain’t nearly The Shit Mac thinks I am.

Me and Jo ooze real slow back behind the table.

Just two brave little sheep.

Hiding from a book.

The Book.

The one we been hoping to find. Talking real big about locking it down again. Yeah, right, just what the feck did we think we were gonna do with it?

The nerve of it. It came here. Here, where it was trapped for so long. It must feel pretty feckin’ invincible. Pisses me off so bad I’m shaking. It came here. Gah—that’s so feckin’ wrong!

I read Mac’s journal. I know how it works. Makes folks pick it up. Me and Barb and Jo and about fifteen others went into Dublin this morning for supplies. We didn’t stick together the whole time. Split up and went off after different things.

It musta got Barb alone and made her pick it up.

I get a creepy chill that goes all the way up my spine so fast I get brain freeze when it hits my head.

Feckin’ A! The Sinsar Dubh rode back to the abbey with us this morning! Right there on our bus!

I was sitting on the same bus with the Unseelie King’s Book and didn’t even know it!

I sort through my options. I ain’t impervious to bullets. Dying today ain’t gonna do nobody no good, ’specially not me. Don’t know how to stop it. Ain’t beating myself up for that. Nobody knows how to stop it.