Chapter Seven: Six Weeks Ago has been removed. If you would like to receive a copy as a PDF file, please contact the author at fugitivedead [at] gmail [dot] com.

Chapter Six: Now has been removed. If you would like to receive a copy as a PDF file, please contact the author at fugitivedead [at] gmail [dot] com.

Walker Sheffield’s bookstore was a cramped space, but he’d done everything he could to make it inviting and comfortable for the diminishing number of people still willing to buy books at shops like his.

First and foremost were the books. Nearly every inch of cream-colored wall space was covered with sturdy oak shelves, stretching from the floor to just a yard shy of the ceiling. Additional shelves were spaced out on the carpeted floor, standing back to back, not as high as the shelves on the wall, but high enough to ensure that the aisles they created were as intimate and isolated as they could be. Then there were the tables, two of them, heavy and wide, nearly filling the space just inside the entrance, weighted down with stacks of the latest trade paperbacks.

Books, nearly everywhere they looked, meant that people entering Sheffield Books might not feel discouraged. It seemed possible, even likely, that even though it wasn’t a Barnes & Noble, the book they were looking for was there. Increasing the odds was the fact that after ten years in business, Walker knew the Vandeveld neighborhood well, knew what its residents liked and what they didn’t. He’d developed a skill for knowing which books to stock and which to pass on, to anticipate his customers’ wants.

For comfort, he’d installed two plush overstuffed easy chairs at the rear of the store, tucked under opposite ends of the large window that took up the back wall. He’d bought the chairs used, not caring that they were worn and needed patching. In fact, he preferred them that way. New and sturdy chairs belonged in a different store catering to different customers. Quickly it had proven to be another wise choice. Even on especially slow days, the chairs were rarely unoccupied.

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The heavy-set man stood and immediately started moving, slowly but determinedly, toward Ryan. Now there was one in front of Ryan in the trees, and one on his right in the road. He glanced over his shoulder into the woods behind him, a dim, overgrown, canopied mystery. Were there more in there?

If he chose to flee, how many more of these creatures would he find? In both directions, the road turned and became obscured by trees. In the direction from which they’d come, he knew there were dozens of these things. Down the valley, meanwhile, was a complete unknown. Perhaps it was safe. Or perhaps civilization had fallen as well.

He decided that for the moment it was better to stay where he was. Here, now, there were two. He could deal with two.

A heavy stick was laying along the side of the road. Ryan picked it up and took several steps toward the man, who was now just a few feet away, his arms outstretched, his fingers grasping. Ryan was almost ready to strike, almost ready to commit — for the first time — an act of violence against another human being. Or what appeared to be another human being.

But first, he would give diplomacy a try.

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Walker steered the rowboat into the center of the lake, and then for several minutes the three of them watched the creatures they’d left behind.

Most of the dozens now collected there stopped at the water’s edge, but some moved into the lake in pursuit, their eyes focused on Walker and his family. Only a few of these engaged in anything resembling swimming, looking as if their arms vaguely remembered something that the rest of their body had forgotten. But they too, like all of the ones who’d entered the lake, eventually slipped under the surface and did not reemerge.

“What’s going on?” Ryan asked.

This was not Walker’s son, the boy who knew everything, or who could at least make up a passable answer. This boy was that boy’s shell.

“I don’t know,” Walker said. It was an admission of ignorance, but in a tone that said that whatever was going on, he would deal with it. He wanted his son to believe that the situation, while seemingly out of control, was still in Walker’s grasp.

Walker looked across the lake at the creatures still standing on the shore, the ones who’d refused to enter the water. What were they thinking? What had kept them out of the water? Was it ‘thinking’ it all? Or just pure instinct?

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Later he would tell his father that it had all been because of the new girl. And Dad, Ryan knew, would understand. It was Mom who never got it.

“What are you doing, Ryan?” Mrs. McGirk asked, with the stupid look on her face that would cause children to abhor her for ages.

“I’m drawing a picture,” he replied.

Mrs. McGirk was new — just two years teaching pre-algebra — but Ryan already knew how she’d be judged by history. Reducing equations in search of the ever-elusive ‘x’, all the while with that stupid look on her face, like she was handing out the keys to the universe, and the ones who didn’t get it would rue the day.

“Is your picture in some way related to algebra?” Mrs. McGirk asked with a smirk, because of course she knew it wasn’t. Because that’s exactly how clever she was.

The new girl’s name was Michelle. She had arrived that morning and had immediately attracted everyone’s attention, for one reason and one reason only: she was beautiful.

The boys were in love with her and the girls already hated her, but it wouldn’t be that way for long. Eventually the only boys still in love with her would be the ones she hadn’t turned down, and the only girls who still hated her would be ones outside her circle of friends. But at the moment they were all anonymous, thirty-five thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds, none more interesting than the other. But Ryan was about to change that.

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The front room in the cabin by the lake was aglow with the light of early morning. Sunlight shot through gaps between the curtains, cutting long lines on the hardwood floor. Illuminated dust hung in the still, quiet air.

Jane was asleep on her side on a small sofa, her legs bent, her toes pressed against the armrest. The corner of a worn duvet was pulled up over her hip; the rest draped down the front of the sofa to the floor. Wearing only her panties and a sleeveless undershirt, she slept clutching herself against the chill. An empty wine bottle sat on a nearby end table; beside it, an empty glass.

Down the hallway in the large bedroom, Walker sat fully dressed in an upholstered armchair, his socked feet propped up on the bed he had not slept in. The air was filled with smoke, and between two fingers hung a cigarette, the latest of the dozen or so he’d smoked during the night. The pack, almost empty, was tucked away in his breast pocket.

Across the hall, in the other, smaller bedroom, slept Ryan, their twelve-year-old son. He had gone to bed early, before the wine drinking and cigarette smoking had begun in earnest. He had not heard the hushed, urgent argument that had kept Walker and Jane up until long past midnight, nor had he witnessed the final violent break that had split them into separate rooms. Ryan had slept soundly for hours. It would be some time before he would sleep so soundly again.

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