SurvivorZ

8

WILSON

Wilson Bentley drove with one eye on the road and the other on the mirror. Maureen talked quietly with Nora in the back seat. His wife was still very weak, but at least seemed more present now than she did before. She noticed his smile and returned it. The sight warmed his heart. After almost fifty years of marriage, he still wasn't prepared to lose his teenage sweetheart.

He feared running into congested traffic across the bridge into Northampton, but the roads were surprisingly free of traffic for this time of day. That was good. He didn't need Doctor Sommers to tell him how precarious Nora's condition was. Her father died of a heart attack. He took a fatal spell within an hour of recovering from his first one. The last thing they needed was to be stuck in gridlock, should the same thing happen to her.

"Stay on this road. Keep following it to Elm," Maureen instructed.

"I know."

Wilson was no stranger to the hospital. Nora gave birth twice inside its walls. Thoughts of his children occupied his mind as he focused on the road ahead. The call to Jason and Sandra wasn't one he anticipated. He decided it would be best to wait until after the doctor had a chance to check Nora over. There was no point in worrying them unnecessarily. After they knew more about her condition, he could probably reach them from a pay phone at the hospital — assuming the phone company fixed whatever mishap brought down their system this time.

They sailed past the rural neighborhoods along Bridge Street, meeting only a handful of cars headed in the other direction. Quaint, two-story homes hid their faces under a curtain of tall oak trees. Across the road from them, the white monuments of Bridge Street Cemetery dotted the verdant landscape behind a chain link fence.

Wilson slowed slightly to regard the graveyard as they drove past. A handful of people in mud-caked suits and dresses clung to the inside of the fence, peering out through the diamond gaps in the chain. He felt their eyes on them as they passed by. It was a little unnerving.

"Little early for Halloween, isn't it?" he mumbled.

"Everything all right?" Maureen inquired.

"Fine. We'll be there soon. How's Nora?"

"She's doing well. Right, Nora?"

Nora smiled and nodded gently.

"There's not much traffic on the road this morning," he noted. "We should be there in no time."

However, the disquiet troubling him earlier only deepened as they drew closer to downtown Northampton. A disturbing anomaly engulfed the town, and they were driving straight towards its misshapen heart.

They passed under the shadow of a train overpass as they hooked onto Main Street. A man in a ragged t-shirt and sweatpants stopped under the tracks to watch them go. Wilson couldn't get a good look at him in the dark. A momentary illusion tried to persuade him that the jogger was missing half a scalp, but Wilson chalked this up to a trick of the shadows.

He failed to notice how the figure changed direction to follow them. He also missed his eyes: soulless white opals gazing at them with restless hunger.

"Something weird is going on," he announced.

"Is it a traffic jam?" Maureen replied. "We can take a side road."

"No, I don't think so."

Wilson couldn't put his finger on the source of his growing unease. Maureen poked her head between the seats for a closer look. The two glanced at one another and pondered the surreal sight outside their windshield.