“Maybe if I gunned it fast enough…” Piper suggested in a shaking voice.
The pothole seemed to rise up out of the street, sinking its teeth into the fender of the car it had caught, and tearing it off. The frantic driver finally tumbled out and joined the sea of fleeing, screaming people, until it felt almost as if Piper and I were alone in the street.
I didn’t know how much mobility that pothole had, but I very much wanted to get out of there while it was still chewing up that other car. Piper sat frozen and staring in the driver’s seat. I unhooked my seat belt, then reached over and put the car in Park, pulling Piper’s keys from the ignition. Her hands were glued to the steering wheel, the knuckles stark white.
“Piper,” I said in as calm a voice as I could muster, “we have to get out of the car.”
She shook her head frantically, gripping the steering wheel even tighter. I wanted to open my own door and start running, but it was obvious that Piper was too panicked to function. I couldn’t just leave her.
“It’s not safe in here,” I said. “Let’s get out of the road.” The pothole didn’t seem to have any interest in the cars parked along the curb on both sides, nor did it show any signs of wanting to pursue the fleeing pedestrians—assuming it was capable of moving from its current spot. I figured that meant getting out of the car and running away was a damn good plan.
I opened my door, hoping the movement would inspire Piper to do the same, but she was still frozen. I closed my door and ran around to the driver’s side, keeping a careful eye on the pothole while I did. It still seemed to be happily munching its kill, biting off hunks of metal from the car’s exterior and then sinking its teeth into the engine. I opened Piper’s door, grabbed her arm, and bodily yanked her out of the car. She fell to the asphalt with a little cry of distress, but at least that seemed to break her out of her paralysis. When I tugged her toward the sidewalk, she lurched to her feet and followed.
Feeling eerily removed from the situation, I dug out my phone and snapped a quick picture as the pothole reared up and snapped the car’s front axle in two. Then Piper and I turned and ran.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
No other impossible creatures attacked us on the way to my house, though there was a marked increase in the number of sirens. From the sound of them, they were converging on Walnut Street. I also thought I spotted Aleric once, out of the corner of my eye, lurking in an alley on the other side of the street, but when I turned my head to look, he was gone. Assuming he’d ever been there.
I can’t tell you how relieved I was when I closed and locked the front door behind me. I had no particular reason to assume I was safe indoors, except that every bizarre thing that had happened had happened outdoors.
Piper was shaking and glassy eyed, her face made even more ghostly white by her stark new dye job.
“Should I, uh, get you a drink or something?” I asked. I couldn’t blame her for being freaked out, but she was beginning to worry me.
Piper blinked and shook her head. A hint of intelligence returned to her eyes. “What was that thing?” she whispered.
“Have you seen anything else strange at night lately?” I asked, because I couldn’t answer her question. Maybe I was having an easier time accepting what I’d seen because of my previous experiences. My pulse had calmed, and though thinking about the pothole and its teeth made it pick up again, I wasn’t anywhere near panic. Hadn’t been even when we’d been in the car. I wondered if I was storing it all up for a nervous breakdown somewhere down the line.
“What do you mean?”
“You know. Strange. Things you can’t explain. Things that seem to be impossible. Like a moving pothole with teeth. That kind of strange.”
She opened and closed her mouth a few times as if struggling for words. You know Piper’s in bad shape when she can’t find words.
“Never mind,” I said as gently as I could. “Why don’t you just sit down for a bit. You’re safe here.”
Piper nodded and plopped down on the sofa. Bob, who seemed to have mellowed out while we were gone, walked over to her and nosed her hand, begging for a pet. Or maybe he just had that uncanny dog sense that told him she was upset and needed a little furry companionship. She stroked his head idly, and a hint of color finally came back to her face.
I suppose technically I was still mad at her, but I had no trouble putting that anger on the back burner. She looked so frightened and vulnerable right now. I wanted to comfort her, to tell her everything was going to be all right, but it was hard to say when I had such doubts of my own. I didn’t know what was happening out there in the city, but it sure seemed to me it was getting worse instead of better.
I checked the photo I’d taken on my cell phone, wondering if I’d captured the toothy pothole any better than I’d captured the phallic symbol. I wasn’t surprised when my photo showed a picture of a car with its front end smashed and broken sitting in a perfectly ordinary pothole. One with no teeth, and that was clearly not big enough to have caused the kind of damage the car had sustained.
I showed Piper the photo, then told her about my other adventures in photography. Which of course meant mentioning that I’d spent some time with Luke the night before. I thought the idea might spark a hint of jealousy or resentment in her, but instead she just looked guilty.
“I’ve been treating him like shit lately,” she admitted. Her shoulders slumped, and she seemed to have lost the self-assurance that I had always figured was part of her basic nature. “And I’ve been a sucky friend to you, too. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I’ve just been feeling so … frustrated. Like I can’t make a single move without it being governed by rules. Go to school every day. Wear a uniform. Don’t drink alcohol until you’re twenty-one. Don’t try drugs ever.” She sighed hugely. “I know we need rules and all, but do we really need so many stupid ones?”
If she expected me to feel sorry for her, she was in for a disappointment. As far as I could tell, her parents let her get away with just about anything she wanted to, and hello, everyone has to live with things like going to school and drug laws. Did she think she deserved some special exemption?
I didn’t put any of these thoughts into words. A rant wasn’t going to help anything.
“Do you want to call Luke and ask him to come over?” I asked instead. I hoped maybe his would be a more sympathetic ear for her to pour her heart out to, but she shook her head.
“He hasn’t seen the hair yet,” she said with a wry smile. “I have a feeling he’s not going to like it, and I’m not sure I can deal with that right now. I’ve had my fill of being disapproved of for a while.”
I couldn’t tell if that was a barbed comment aimed at me or if she was referring to her parents’ disapproval of her hair or Luke’s disapproval of the rave. Since fighting with her would be counterproductive, I chose to believe it wasn’t aimed at me.
Piper heaved another sigh and dabbed at her eyes, though if she’d cried she’d managed to hide the tears completely. “How am I going to get home?” she wondered. “I mean, there’s no way I’m going back there to get my car even if that thing turns back into a normal pothole.”
I shook my head. “I bet the police have that whole area cordoned off by now anyway. Can your parents come pick you up?”
“They’re at some charity auction tonight and they’ll have their phones turned off. I probably won’t be able to reach them until after eleven.”
“We could call a taxi,” I said doubtfully, but I wasn’t sure how many taxis would even be on the road tonight. And hey, for all I knew, there were potholes with teeth popping up all over the city. “Or you could just wait until my dad gets home and he can maybe take you.”
He’d know which streets were safe to drive on, if any.
Thinking about the chaos more potholes like the one we’d encountered would cause, I grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. The Special Report banner at the top of the screen told me things were bad even before the sound came
on.
“… are urging everyone in the Philadelphia area to stay indoors unless absolutely necessary,” the reporter said. She was standing in front of the Art Museum, bundled up in a fashionable coat and scarf and doing her best not to look nervous. Her best wasn’t good enough, and she was obviously having trouble keeping her eyes on the camera.
The image on the screen changed to a couple of news anchors sitting at a desk, who looked a hell of a lot more poised and comfortable. I felt sorry for the woman whose job it was to stand outside, where all the chaos was happening, and tell everyone else to stay inside where it was safe. Cross TV news reporter off my list of potential future careers.
“In case you’re just joining us,” the male anchor said, “the rash of reports of unexplained phenomena at night has escalated in the city of Philadelphia. Authorities confirm that there have been multiple fatalities across the city but refuse to speculate as to the cause or scope of the issue. What follows are some graphic images captured on cell phone cameras by anonymous sources. Please be warned, these images are not suitable for all audiences.”
The first image that came across the screen was dark and blurry, but you could make it out all right if you squinted. It was the body of a man, his face obscured in a half-hearted show of good taste. He was standing at the mouth of a vacant lot—one that had clearly been blocked off by a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. Half of that fence was still attached to one of the neighboring buildings, but the other half was not only loose, it was wrapped around the man, from his ankles to his neck, in layers so thick you could barely make out his form within them. The man was quite obviously dead, and there was an amazing amount of what I assumed was blood splashed all around.
“Multiple witnesses at the scene of this murder,” the anchorman’s voice said, “report seeing this chain-link fence turn into barbed wire and wrap itself around the victim.”
Beside me, Piper let out a long whistle. “Wow. Your dad and the rest of the police department must be really underwater if they’re letting the press interview murder witnesses.”
The image on the screen started to change, but I had no interest in seeing more pictures of dead people, so I switched the TV off. Piper didn’t protest.
She was right, of course. The police would never allow the press to badger a murder witness until that witness had been thoroughly interviewed and had made statements. There had to be so much crazy shit going on that the police couldn’t stop all the holes, and that thought was positively terrifying.
As of this morning, the story of Philadelphia and its “mass hysteria” had been starting to go public—hence the calls from my mom and sister—and I figured the current situation was going to add tons of fuel to the fire. I glanced over at our answering machine, surprised it wasn’t blinking itself silly with messages from my mom and my sister both. They had to be worried, and my mom would want to get me on that train to Boston ASAP. Or maybe at this point a train was too slow. Maybe she wanted me on an airplane, this very night.
Feeling yet another chill of unease, I picked up the phone and wasn’t entirely surprised to find the line was dead. I then tried my cell phone, but though I could see that I had a connection, I couldn’t get a call through. Again, not entirely surprising. Practically everyone in Philly was probably trying to call someone or being called by someone. There’s only so much traffic the airwaves can handle. Piper gave it a shot with her phone, just in case, but she had no more luck than I had.
“Do you think this is the start of the zombie apocalypse?” Piper asked, but she sounded too scared to make the joke funny.
I laughed anyway, a nervous giggle that momentarily threatened to run away with me. “No sign of zombies yet,” I said, “but I’m going to double-check all our doors and windows, just in case.”
There was no way any of our doors and windows were unlocked—Dad would never stand for that—but at least it gave Piper and me something to do other than brood and speculate. We checked each one together, wiggling each lock to make sure it was fully in place. Bob followed us every step of the way, practically glued to my leg, so that I almost tripped over him a couple of times. He wasn’t usually this clingy—actually, he wasn’t usually clingy at all—and I figured he was once again picking up on our anxiety.
“Maybe we should be watching the news,” Piper said when we were finished. “I’m not sure I want to know what’s happening out there, but not knowing is driving me crazy.”
I agreed with her on both counts. I wasn’t worried about my dad, because the police commissioner had no reason to go out in the field, but I of course knew a lot of his friends and coworkers. People who would be responding to any emergency calls that happened to come in and would therefore be out on the streets with the madness. I hoped all of them were all right, but without keeping an eye on the news, I wouldn’t know the scale of whatever was going on. No, I probably wasn’t going to see anything even remotely comforting, but I preferred to know.
Piper, Bob, and I were all on the stairs between the first and second floors, heading back down to the living room to park in front of the TV, when the lights went out.
“Oh crap,” I whispered under my breath, while Piper said something far more colorful.
We both brought out our cell phones and used their feeble blue light to guide us down the rest of the stairs, and then I went searching for candles. We didn’t have a lot of power outages here in Center City, and when we did, they didn’t last very long, but Dad was always prepared.
I found candles and matches in one of the kitchen drawers, and Piper and I lit enough of them so it wasn’t pitch dark in the living room when we resumed our places on the sofa.
“What are the chances the power company will send someone out tonight to fix whatever’s wrong?” Piper asked.
We both knew the answer. We were just going to have to hunker down in the darkness and wait for morning. I wasn’t sure when or even if Dad was going to come home, but I knew he wasn’t going to turn right around and drive Piper back to her own home. Not tonight.
“Guess you’re staying the night,” I said to her. “Maybe we can pretend this is a slumber party.”
“Oh yeah, let’s change into our nighties and talk about boys,” Piper responded, showing that her sense of humor was still alive and kicking.
I hoped the outage was localized, because a blackout at a time like this could be catastrophic. The police were obviously already overwhelmed, and people get weird in the dark in the best of times.
“I’d suggest ghost stories, but, uh, no,” I said, trying to match Piper’s tone.
“No,” she agreed with a dramatic shudder.
Bob, still being uncommonly clingy, had curled up at my feet and laid his head on his paws. I was edgy enough that I almost jumped out of my skin when his head suddenly snapped up and his ears pricked forward.
I didn’t know what he was responding to—I hadn’t heard anything—but I breathed a little prayer under my breath that it was my dad coming home. I was badly in need of his strength and self-assurance. He would know exactly what to do, how we could stay as safe as possible in the face of whatever was happening outside.
My hopes that Piper and I were about to be under the protection of the police commissioner himself were quickly shattered when I saw the fur on the back of Bob’s neck start to rise.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I really hoped Bob was only bristling because Piper’s and my anxiety was contagious. Silently, I begged for him to put his head back down and go to sleep, but instead he got to his feet and stared intently at the front door, hackles continuing to rise as his ears slowly flattened.
“This can’t be good,” Piper said, her eyes wide and frightened in the candlelight.
“The door’s locked,” I reminded her. “And we checked all the windows. And we have Bob.”
“Uh-huh. A pothole grew teeth and attacked a car earlier tonight, and we’re sitting here in the dark during a blackout.”
; Her case was more convincing than mine. I reached over and took her hand, which was cold and clammy. “We’re safe here,” I said with as much conviction as I could muster, as Bob stalked toward the door, his lips pulling back from his teeth and a low growl rising in his throat.
There was a sudden, loud bang on the door, one short, sharp sound that in no way resembled a knock and that made both Piper and me jump to our feet and cry out in surprise. Bob did not appreciate it, and his growl turned into a full-throated bark that made my bones rattle. He threw himself at the door, his claws ripping into the paint as he tried to batter his way through to whoever—or whatever—was out there.
“Becket…” Piper moaned, her hand tightening on mine as we both backed away from the door and Bob’s fury.
If there were any other noises at the door, we couldn’t hear them over Bob. My heart was pounding in my throat, and I had the now-familiar queasy feeling in my stomach. The flickering candles made the shadows dance all around us, but we’d only bothered to light the living room, where we were sitting. Beyond their feeble glow, everything was pitch dark.
There was another sharp crack, this time not from the door but from the front window. Piper screamed, and practically broke my fingers with her spastic grip. We couldn’t see out the window because the shutters were closed, so there was no way to know what that noise had been. Bob abandoned his post by the door and roared over to the window, ears flattened, neck hair bristling, barking and snarling so viciously that even in the dark I could see the drool flying from his mouth. He rose up on his hind legs and scrabbled at the shutters with his claws.
The noise came again, this time from one of the side windows. Bob pursued it with single-minded fury. The side windows were set high in the wall, so Bob couldn’t get at them directly. Instead, he propped his front paws on the wall and kept making fruitless little jumps.
“It’s playing with us,” Piper whispered, so softly I could barely hear her over Bob.