Beyond the Pale: A fantasy anthology (20 page)

Tommy was still watching her.

The girl who wasn’t afraid to hunt a ghost.

“Maybe I’ll hang out with you for a while.” Tommy put his hand on top
of hers, and she didn’t need to feel the weight of it to know it was there.
“There are always things that need protecting.”

PALE RIDER

~

by Nancy Holder

Shards, ashes, and a freaking
carton
of batteries. Inside the
dusty box, there were dozens of double-A six packs.

Dana whooped, victorious. Lowering herself to a squat on the balls of
her feet, she pushed back her dreads and caressed the treasure with her
flashlight beam. Then she set her flashlight upended so that the light bounced
off the ceiling, picked up one of the packs, and wiped off the dust. She turned
it over, examining it for an expiration date. The printing was too faded. She
grabbed the flashlight, and was just about to unscrew the head so she could
test a sample when she heard the creak of a floorboard. She wasn’t alone.

“Shit,” she whispered. As quietly as she could, she clicked off her
flashlight and stuck it in the pocket of her hoodie. Then she grabbed the heavy
carton and stood, listening. Her heart pounded.

Nothing. Maybe she had imagined it. Or the poor old house was settling
some more.

She quietly shuffled out of the room. This was the third time in two
weeks that she’d found batteries in places they’d already searched. She had
just known to go inside the ramshackle house and step through the filth and the
trash to what appeared to be a home office. Even though she and Jordan had been
there before, and carted off anything useable. But this time, she could see the
floorboards in her mind, and she’d pried them up.

In the disintegrating world, change was not usually your friend, but
life had made an exception.

There was another creak, and then a growl, and something charged at
her. She screamed and tore out of the room with her carton. It followed her
into the hall, kicking up years of dust and trash while she banged into the
walls from side to side with the huge box. She kept yelling, barreling around a
fallen door, into pitch-black darkness.

My gun is in
my other pocket
, she thought.

She whirled around and tried to throw the carton at her
attacker—where she thought it might be—but the box was too heavy
and it just tumbled through the darkness to the floor. Stumbling backwards,
seeing nothing, she got the gun out of her other pocket and fired. The thing
howled. Dog. Coyote. She fired a couple more shots and ran out of the house.
The wooden porch gave way and she crashed downward through the rotted waist to
her waist.

Bathed in amber moonlight, a mangy dog leaped out of the shadows. Dana
was trapped. She let out a bellow as it launched itself at her.

It howled; then its limp body smacked against her right arm and it
crumbled in a heap beside her. It didn’t move. Panting with fear, she planted
her palms on either side of her body, fingertips brushing its dirty, matted
fur. She pushed up and out of the hole, propelling herself to freedom as she
flopped onto her front, then threaded her legs free.

The dog was twitching and panting.
Oh, God, rabies
. Had it
bitten her? With a shaking hand, she felt around for her gun, unsure when and
where she’d lost it.

No luck.

She tested her footing. Nothing sprained or broken. She stepped back
into the house, listening hard, feeling along the floor with the soles of her
sneakers for the gun. She still couldn’t find it. She could come back for it
later, but there was no way she was going to leave the batteries. They were
just too precious.

Ear cocked, she groped around for the carton, found it, and picked it
up again. She was trembling. She didn’t feel any pain. No bites, then. Hopefully.

A creak.

She turned back around to leave. Her knees gave way and she almost slid
to the floor.

Silhouetted by moonlight, a man stood in the doorway. Spiky hair, long
coat, boots. Her heartbeat went into overdrive.

His dog
, she thought, cold and
terrified.
He set it on me
.

They faced each other without speaking. She kept it together. You
didn’t live as long as she had—she was seventeen—by losing your
cool. But she was very scared.

“I have a gun,” she said.

He raised his hand. “This one?” he said in some kind of accent.

Oh, God. Oh,
God, oh, God
, she thought. This was what she got. Jordan had told her not to
scavenge alone. But she had just
known
they had to get the batteries
tonight. Jordan was down with a bug, and no else had felt like going.

She licked her lips and raised her chin. “I have another gun.”

“You can have this one back,” he said. The accent was German. He
sounded like a movie villain. He looked like one in his long coat. She felt
naked in her sweatshirt, sneakers and board shorts.

“Stay away from me. I’ll call my guard dog on you,” she said, but her
voice cracked and she realized she was losing her grip on the carton. Icy sweat
was streaming down her body.

“I mean you no harm, Delaney.”

She jerked, even more afraid. That was her given name, and no one at
the house knew it.

He raised his hands above his head, and she saw the outline of her gun.
She didn’t know what to do. Rush him? Run back into the darkness? Where there
might be another dog?

Then suddenly, there was no carton in her arms. It was in his. And they
were on the sidewalk outside the house.

“What the heck?” she said.

“
Es geht
.”

He was very tall, not as old as she had thought—maybe five years
older than her—and in the moonlight, she saw that his hair was blond. His
eyes were light and he had a superhero face—flared cheekbones, square
chin. Pierced eyebrow. Maybe that was a tat on his thumb. He was muscular, his
long black wool coat stretching across big broad shoulders. These days, most
people were a little too thin. Like her. She was all crazy black hair, brown
eyes, and bones. “I got your name from your aunt. Well, from her things. I
haven’t actually met her.”

“What aunt?” she asked him cautiously. She and her mom had kept to
themselves until her death three years ago. She didn’t know any of her
relatives.

“Aunt Meg.” He waited for her reaction. The name meant nothing to her.

“She’s white,” he added.

Her stomach did a flip. Maybe this Aunt Meg was from her father’s side.
Dana didn’t even know his name. Dana’s mom had never told her white
ex-boyfriend that she had gotten pregnant.

“What things?” she asked, catching her sneaker toe on a crack in the
sidewalk. Their neighborhood looked like a bomb had gone off. Things fell apart
all the time. She caught her toe again. Despite the heaviness of the box
against his chest, he reached out a hand to steady her. His fingers were very
warm and pale against her dark skin.

“Where is she?” she asked. “Aunt Meg?”

“She used to work for my family. In a way.” He took his hand away. “My
distant relatives.”

She stopped walking. “It was nice of you to taser that dog and all, but
just, you know, get to the point.”

He stopped, too, and faced her. “It’s a sad world when someone who
knows a family member of yours is greeted with such hostility.”

“This world is more than sad. I don’t know that you know her,” she
countered. “You’re just a name-dropper in a coat.” When he kept looking at her
as if that didn’t compute, she said, “I need more proof.”

He nodded. “Fair enough.”

She looked to the right, at a boarded-up building, and had a funny
feeling. His face came into her mind and then there was something black and
rectangular. She squinted as she walked, trying to make sense of it.

“Hey,” said a voice, and she jerked her head up. She and the guy were
standing in front of her house, which she shared with Jordan, Lucy, Mike, and
Anny. The strays that had become family. Wrapped in his bathrobe and plaid
pajama bottoms, Jordan was standing on the porch, shotgun pointed in their
direction. “What’s up?”

“We have a rule,” she told the guy. “No strangers in the house. Ever.”

He looked from her to Jordan and back again. “My name is Alex Ritter.
There. I’m not a stranger. It’s okay to let me in.”

Jordan hesitated. “What?” he said fuzzily.

“It’s okay,” the guy—Alex said again.

“Cool.” Jordan nodded calmly and lowered the shotgun.

Dana was stunned. “
Jordan?
”

“It’s really all right, Delaney,” the man—Alex said. “I swear it
to you.”

“It’s not,” she insisted. Too late, she remembered that he still had
her gun. She bounded onto the porch beside Jordan and reached for the shotgun.
“We don’t know this guy. And he is
weird
.”

Jordan kept hold of the rifle and opened the front door. “Come on in.”

“Lucy!” Dana shouted. “Anny! Mike!”

Then they were in the house, and her four roommates were oohing and
aahing over the carton of batteries, which Alex was doling out to them like
Santa Claus with his bag of presents. Dana looked around wildly. She had lost
more time. And this creepy man in black was inside her house.

“These things are over fifteen years old,” Jordan marveled as he popped
a couple of batteries in her flashlight, twisted the head back on, and gave it
a flick. Light poured forth. She didn’t remember giving it to him. “Awesome.”

“They’re warm,” Lucy said, holding one between her hands. She leaned
over and kissed Dana on the cheek. “You’re made of fabulous.”

“She chased away some dogs, too,” Alex offered. Dana glared at him.
Everyone else was taking his sudden appearance in stride. Or maybe she had
simply fast-forwarded through the introductions.

She held out a shaking hand. “Give me back my gun.”

He did so, willingly, and she stuffed it into her pocket again. Then
she turned her back and walked into the kitchen. Out of his line of sight, she
slipped through the back door and flew down all the wooden stairs to the cool
sand of the beach.

He followed, as she had expected him to, and she pulled out the gun. He
looked from it to her face and sighed.

“If you shoot, you shoot,” he said.

Then he walked to the water’s edge and lifted his chin. “No seaweed,”
he said. “No seagulls.”

But there was something on the beach, next to his boot. She spotted it
at the same time that he looked down. He picked it up—tats all over that
hand—and his palm blossomed with a pale bluish glow. Her eyes widened as
he put the object in his pocket.

“Sea glass,” he said, as if that should satisfy her.

He turned his face back to the black water. “I was out here earlier.
One good thing about the end of the world. The sunsets are fantastic.”

“This is Southern California. Our sunsets are always fantastic.” She
kept a good grip on the gun. “You’d better tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m Alex Ritter. From Germany. Berlin.”

Despite herself, she was impressed. Eight years ago, people traveled
all over the place. But fuel was getting scarce. Her house didn’t even have a
car.

“I flew here,” he added, as if reading her mind. “I have a plane.”

“Holy shit,” she blurted. There were still planes in the world. And
they cost… she didn’t even know what they cost. Too much to even think about.

He smiled faintly. His profile was sharply etched against the night. It
didn’t make any sense that Jordan had let him in, just like that, and everyone
had behaved as if it was no big deal. It was a huge deal. He was scary.

“Dana, please, I’m sorry,” he said abruptly, turning his face toward
her. “There is no good way to have the talk I need to have with you. Let me
show you.”

Before she could reply, he wiped his face with both his hands and
rubbed them together. He moved his head from side to side, as if working out
the kinks; then he turned to the sea and opened his arms like an orchestra
conductor.

Something hummed against the soles of her feet. A couple of her braids
bobbed in a freshet of wind.

Shimmering blue crackles of energy crackled from his fingertips. Then
the crackles traveled to the water, and hit it with a sizzle. The waves rippled
and flared blue, pink, gold like the Aurora Borealis.

Dana jumped backwards so hard she landed on her butt, and she
spastically lifted her sneakers as the water swirled toward her. It took her a
moment to realize that he’d clasped her wrist and was pulling her to her feet.

“Don’t touch me,” she said as she tried to yank her hand away. He was
bending over her; there were rings under his eyes and the pupils were dilated.
He was jittery and shaky, like he was on something.

She looked from his eyes to the water. The colors were gone. Her mind
started spinning rationalizations and denials. She was spooked by the way he
cocked his head and gazed at her with an odd, confused expression, like he was
trying to remember what to say.