I sprinted through tall iron gates standing ajar, and for the first time Radar hesitated, front paws on a crumbling concrete slab, rear paws in the street. I stopped too, long enough to catch my breath.
“I don’t like it, either, girl, but we have to, so come on!”
She came. We wove our way around the leaning grave markers. An evening mist was beginning to rise from the overgrown grass and thistles. I could see a wrought iron fence forty yards ahead. It looked too high to climb even if I hadn’t had my dog with me, but there was a gate.
I tripped over a gravestone and went sprawling. I started to get up, then froze, at first not believing what I was seeing. Radar was barking wildly. A desiccated hand with yellowing bone showing through torn skin emerged from the ground. It opened and closed, clutching and releasing little showers of wet earth. When I saw such things in horror movies, I just laughed and hooted along with my friends and grabbed more popcorn. I wasn’t laughing now. I screamed… and the hand heard me. It turned toward me like a fucking radar dish, clutching at the darkening air.
I leaped to my feet and ran. Rades ran beside me, barking and snarling and looking back over her shoulder. I reached the cemetery gate. It was locked. I drew back, lowered one shoulder, and hit it the way I’d once hit opposing linemen. It rattled but didn’t give. Radar’s barks were climbing the ladder, no longer ROWF-ROWF-ROWF but YARK-YARK-YARK, almost as if she were also trying to scream.
I looked back and saw more hands emerging from the ground, like ghastly flowers with fingers instead of petals. First just a few, then dozens. Maybe hundreds. And something else, something worse: the squall of rusty hinges. The crypts were about to give up their dead. I remember thinking that punishing trespassers was one thing—understandable—but this was ridiculous.
I hit the gate again, giving it everything I had. The lock broke. The gate burst open and I went flailing forward, arms waving, trying to keep my balance. I almost made it, then tripped over something else, maybe a curbstone, and went to my knees.
I looked up and saw that I had fallen into the Gallien Road.
I got to my feet, knees stinging and pants ripped. I looked behind me into the graveyard. There was nothing coming after us, but those waving hands were quite bad enough. I thought about the strength it would take to burst open coffin lids and claw through the intervening earth. For all I knew, the Empisarians didn’t bother with coffins, maybe they just wrapped their dead in shrouds and called it good. The groundmist had taken on a blue glow, as if electrified.
“RUN!” I shouted at Radar. “RUN!”
We ran for the gate. We ran for our lives.
4
We’d come out on the road much further up from where we’d turned off to follow Mr. Bowditch’s marks, but I could see the outer gate in the gathering gloom. It might have been half a mile ahead, maybe a little less. I was gasping, and my legs felt heavy. Some of that was because my pants had gotten soaked with mud and water when I fell from the pedestal, but mostly it was simple exhaustion. I’d played sports for my entire scholastic career but had skipped basketball—not just because I didn’t really care for Coach Harkness but because, given my size and weight, running really wasn’t my thing. There was a reason I played first during baseball season; it was the defensive position requiring the least speed. I had to slow to a jog. Even though the gate didn’t seem to be getting any closer, it was the best I could do if I didn’t want to cramp up and have to stop.
Then Radar looked over her shoulder and began giving those high, frightened barks again. I turned and saw a flock of brilliant blue lights coming toward us from the direction of the palace. It had to be the night soldiers. I didn’t waste time trying to convince myself otherwise, just picked up my pace again.
My breath ran in and out of me, each gasp and blow hotter than the last. My heart was thundering. Bright spots began to pulse in front of my eyes, expanding and contracting. I looked back again and saw the blue lights were closer. And they had gained legs. They were men, each surrounded by a fierce blue aura. I couldn’t see their faces yet and didn’t want to.
I stumbled over my own stupid feet, caught my balance, ran on. Full dark had arrived, but the gate was a lighter shade of gray than the wall, and I could see it was closer. If I could keep running, I thought we had a chance.
A stitch started in my side, not bad at first, then sinking in. It ran up my ribcage and drilled into my armpit. My hair, wet and muddy, flopped up and down on my forehead. My pack thudded against my back, so much ballast. I slipped it off and slung it into a nest of brambles beside a turreted building flanked by posts striped red and white and topped with stone butterflies. Those monarchs were still whole, probably because they were too high to reach without ladders.