CRAWL 21

"Alright," said a voice behind me, "Stay still and lemme see ya..." And suddenly it clicked. Kate! The timing of her findin me, though, kinda weird... and the paper was gone too. Was I maybe supposed to tie the two things in together? To protect her from that bastard? Maybe, I thought, but in the meantime...

"Let me guess," I said. "We're gonna have a little chat?" She gasped, and I couldn't help but grin as I turned. "You're gonna have to think of a new threat, kid." I didn't get a chance to say anything more, though, cause she knocked the wind outta me by grabbing me into a hug. Stronger than she looked, that kid, and she musta been running around a lot before finding me, cause she was burning hot.

"Nathan!" she gasped. "You're alive! You're ok! Uhm… I mean…" She let go, looking embarrassed as hell. "It's good to see you, uh… That is…" I grinned at her again. "Yeah, yeah, you're overwhelmed with joy, I can see that." I tried to tone things down, to not embarrass her. "Hey, you got something in your eye, kid." I turned away, pretended to take stock of the streets while she rubbed her eyes.

"Where've you been?" I asked her. "When the sirens sounded I saw you fall, and I... I thought I heard you when I woke up on the street, but then I couldn't find you."

"I… I guess I got lost." she muttered . "In my home town, too. If this is Silent Hill, that is. I… I dunno where we are, I can't see anything I recognise…" She trailed off, looking unsure now, her eyes downcast.

"Well, I was just looking at the road signs," I said, "and they say we're at the corner of Bachman and Bradbury…"

"Bradbury!" she yelled. "Then we're almost there! I'm almost home!" She took off suddenly, and in a second her pale skin and white clothes had vanished in the fog.I yelled after her, but no answer came back.

Following her was easy, though, and just as well, 'cause as I caught up, I saw her leaning over some damn gaping hole in the road. Holding on to a lamp post, she was swaying, about to fall. The gaping maw in front of her yawned hungry as she fell forward. I sped up, frantic, and just caught her as her fingers slid from the metal pole. My own hand smacked against the post as I grabbed hold of it, scooped her up by the waist with my free arm and pulled her hard against me.

Picking her up was easier than dragging her, so I carried her back to the safety of the sidewalk. Well, the sort of safety. Her body's heat pressed into me as I held her in my arms, her ass against my zipper, her toned belly pressing hot under my arm. With a massive effort I put her down quickly as I could and stood well back, tired out from the run. Leaning against one of the trees lining the road, she blinked about her, getting her head back together.

"I woulda warned you…" I panted, "half the freaking roads are out, and those that aren't…well, I ain't seen anything yet, but I sure as hell heard something. We're not alone, and that's not good news for us." I couldn't be sure exactly what I had heard, but I had sure as hell heard something out there, before finding that paper, and I didn't wanna take any chances. Nor have this little girl take any, either. Which, I guess, is why I didn't tell her about what the paper showed me. This kid was plenty on edge already, I didn't want her to do anything rash. At the time it all seemed just the right thing to do, but something about her just now, just before she went off to find the others and I found this tape recorder, seems to me she found him again anyway. Or he found her. At the time, neither of us knew what we were dealing with, or I mighta warned her, mighta tried to scare her off a little more, but I felt still like I needed to figure things out, so I kept quiet, just mentioned the sounds, the monsters I thought I had heard.

I saw her gulp, and saw the fear on her face. Well done, old man, I told myself, now you've scared the hell outta her, what're you gonna do to help her? I guess I shoulda guessed the fear of the monsters she'd seen woulda worked stronger on her, a little kid, than on a grown man. Still, though, at least she'd be careful now. I hoped. But how to get things back on track?

The map! Perhaps the map could help. Even if the routes I found didn't help us out, at least it'd give her… hell, I dunno, some hope, so faith. Something.

"We can go by… uhm… hang on, I found a map, somewhere…" I pulled it out of my pocket to check, and a piece of paper stashed inside fell out. I grabbed for it, just catching it as it floated down. I hadn't looked real hard at the map before, so I guess it coulda been hidden in there without my noticing, but thinking now, maybe it'd been left there by whatever left the other paper for me to find.

I held the ragged scrap carefully to what light the fog allowed through, squinting to make out the handwriting. The markings of the date on the page , the style of scrawl... Could it be the same kind I had seen before? The same author?

"Looks like… Jan 9th. I think…" I told her.

I read on aloud:

"Finally made it back. Can't think how they didn't catch me on the way in, they must have known I'd head back home. Or maybe even they can't believe anyone could be that stupid. Something's changed, though. Place is empty. I'll keep this journal, just in case I need to look back on what I find. Should be ok, though, just lie up for a few days, lick my wounds, then maybe skip the country. Need to get to the hospital first, though. Alchemilla's close by, maybe I can find a nice nurse to help me."

It stops there," I said, and tucked the scrap into my pocket. Nothing more written on it, but if there were more it could be worth collecting them. Maybe it'd make more sense that way. Maybe.

"Weird, like someone was trying to keep a journal of all this… this stuff. What's Alchemilla, anyway?" I asked, hoping she'd tell me something harmless. Hoping I'd maybe dreamt or hallucinated the hospital, the name, the nurse.

"Local hospital," Kate said, "Just across the bridge a ways over there." My heart sank. A local hospital. So I had seen something real. Couldn't just explain it away as some kinda fever-dream. What the hell, though? Why show me that? Why'd the paper vanish, with nothing left to show Kate?

She continued: "It's been around since the town began, but there was a big bust-up about some drug ring and some nurses went missing. I dunno what, but that place always gives me the creeps."

Great, I thought, just great. So that... all of that really happened. But then, if that was then , then how did that nurse see me? How did she grab me? And what in the hell happened to Lisa? She had said she'd go out with him, what in the hell did he do to her?

She shivered, and said. "So what's your map say? How can we get to Levine Street ?"

"Lessee now…" I checked my map, "Midwich leads to Matheson leads to Levine Street. Sort of. What's in Levine Street anyway?"

She mumbled something real quiet.

"What's that?"

"Home! I wanna go home!" she snapped at me. I stepped back, shocked. I'd known she had a temper, but… somehow it was still a surprise her lashing out at me. Guess I'm still just human.

"I'm sorry," she sighed, burying her hands in her hair, "I just… all this is getting to me, and I can't remember when I last slept, or ate, or… anything other than running away or shooting or looking for Ange- HOLY SHIT, ANGELA!"

She gaped at me. "Where's Angela? What… what happened to her? Where's she? If you woke up near me, then where'd she go? And Damian?"

I shrugged. What did I know? I'd followed them as far as I could and then lost them in that hole or hospital or whatever the hell it'd been, and I wasn't about to tell her about that. I'd seen how scared she'd been for the kid just in the church. Knowing what kinda place Angela was probably in now would just make her frantic, and that I could do without, you know? Not to mention that I didn't even know the kid was there. Best to keep quiet.

"You got me, kid, but the way I see it, they've gotta be someplace better than we are. He can take bullets and live, and burn and still walk, and since she's with him…"

"No, you're wrong!" she was crying now, "He didn't take the bullets, you just shot some damn flask he was carrying! The other one I had to dig out, and that damn near broke him with pain!"

So he wasn't a superman after all. Maybe I would be able to teach him a thing or two. If a guy can bleed, can feel pain...

"And Angela…" she carried on, "Ohmigod, Angela! If you had seen what happened to her…"

"The Haunted House you said about?"

"Yeah, that place… Oh God…!"

Oh man, she was really cracking up there, I tell ya. I had to jump in, change the topic, and that fast or she'd just have lost it right there.

"Look," I said, trying to sound as stern as I could, "we can't help them, whatever happened to them. And I'm damn sure that black-wearing bastard aint done for yet, whatever you saw. He's still got shit to mess up for… Well, someone. Best we can do is stay alive and look out for ourselves."

And now she was finally calming down, forcing her breath to slow up. " Ok. I guess that makes sense." She stopped shifting from side to side, stood still, and forced herself back to normal. Or whatever 'normal' is for a girl, anyway.

She turned towards Midwich, then stopped still. "But you gotta promise me something, Nathan, ok?"

"Sure, kid, what's that?"

"Whatever you see, whatever you hear, stay away from the school. Jeff told me there was something up there, in this… this place…"

Great. Not bad enough that she was trusting Damian, now she was taking advice from that pervert Jeff, too. I tried to reason with her:

"Yeah, but Jeff was-"

"I know what he was!" she interrupted me, "I know what he was, you told me what he did. But he didn't lie, did he?"

"No," I said, and the truth of that ate away inside me like acid, "he didn't lie. He was having too much fun with the truth."

"So you'll stay out? It seemed like even he was scared of the place."

"Ok," I sighed, resigned, "I'll stay out."

"No matter what?" she nagged. "You promise you won't go in, no matter what?"

"I promise," I told her, doing my best not to let it show how her whining was getting to me. "No matter what." Women! Never happy with a guy, even when he's agreeing with them. Not that I wanted to go into the school. I'd had enough of that, specially after running into that old student again. Gimme a retail job, even, anything but that crap. Well, ok, I guess I miss it a little, but why would I wanna go to Midwich? An empty school in an empty town on my vacation? Nothing for me there. And that was a best-case scenario. Somehow, I couldn't keep that little voice in the back of my mind from whispering at me that 'empty' hadn't been a good way to describe this place in a long time. There were still... inhabitants here, and why shouldn't they have reached the school?

I shuddered. No, nothing for me there. "No matter what." I repeated.

"Ok," she said." Let's get outta here. This fog gives me the creeps."

And so we made our way out towards Levine street. Ahead of us, heading away, toward the school, I saw movement just on the edge of visibility. Something... something that looked human. A human figure, distant, girlish. I saw it for just a moment, then it vanished into the fog. Or, thought I did, but since Kate didn't seem to see anything, I wasn't sure if maybe I wasn't finally losing it. I hadn't heard anything, that was for sure, so I tried to convince myself that it was just a trick of my mind, that so familiar figure. Those clothes and that hair.

After all, she was long gone.

I mean, she had to be.

There was no way that...

Nah. That was crazy.

It nagged at my mind as we walked on. An question that couldn't be, with an answer that… I couldn't know.

A/N - Real Life, man. Too much real life... getting in the way of fanfic. :-(