Experiment in Terror 09 Dust to Dust(20)

As I passed by city hall, I could see the bridge was deserted and the pedestrian walkway was covered with a thin layer of snow. I slid a little as the path turned from pavement to wood slats but kept on going.

I was about halfway across the bridge, Brooklyn looming in the distance, when the air in front of me began to shift. I stopped in my tracks, the hairs on my arms standing up, my nerves popping from waves of electricity.

And there he was.

Dex.

My Dex.

He was standing a few feet in front of me, seeming to materialize out of the air. He had his grey newsboy cap on his head, dressed in a black t-shirt and black jeans and boots. The same thing he was wearing when Michael took him. But despite his monochrome clothing, he was in color. His eyes were mahogany brown and squinting against the sun as he scoured his gaze over the river, looking utterly confused, his skin tone flawless and lightly tan. And his features were warped by the moving air, which meant he was not in the Veil at all, but in our world.

I wasn’t sure why I was being shown this, why there was a rip between the worlds right here in front of me. But I’d be stupid not to take it.

My heart swelled. I had found him. I was his again and he was mine.

“Dex!” I said, my voice sounding weak and metallic despite the joy that was flooding through me.

But he seemed to hear it. He turned his head and looked in my direction, though not at me.

It didn’t matter. I took quick steps toward the shimmer, preparing myself to walk through, not caring how it would look to people on the other side, a girl coming out of thin air. I waited for the cold to intensify, for the pressure in my head to build, to feel like I was being sucked away.

Nothing happened.

I opened my eyes. I was still in the Veil. The shimmer was gone.

Dex was gone.

I was all alone.

But at least now, I knew where he was. I knew he was alive and out there, in New York City, and he was by himself. That was more than I could have hoped for.

Now I had to think of how the hell I was going to get back. I couldn’t count on another window opening up like that. Perhaps that was all it had been, a window to the other side, not a door.

I waved my hands in the air in vain hope that I would strike something, make something happen. I was frantic, panic pulsing through me, the idea that I couldn’t get to him fast enough.

Ada! I yelled in my head, hoping she could hear me on the other side. I didn’t know how long I’d been in the bathroom for in Bryant Park, but they no doubt were worried about me by now. I hoped she and Maximus were tuned in, listening, figuring out what happened and how to get me back.

Ada! Maximus! I yelled again, looking around me. It wouldn’t do, not here. I had to head back to the park, back to the washrooms. Otherwise they’d have no idea where I was.

I turned around and headed back along the bridge. I hated to leave Dex, even though I couldn’t see him I still knew he was there, but there was no way I could get to him this way. I’d have to get through to Ada and Maximus first, then all of us would have to hightail it to the bridge and hope to track him down.

Time didn’t feel like it was on my side. I started running again and this time my movement brought things out of the shadows.

I heard a hard, scratching sound behind me and looked over my shoulder to see a giant spider – and by giant, again, the size of a cat – come crawling down the side of a brick building. It leaped onto the ground and started for me.

A similar sound came from my right. I shot a furtive glance in that direction and saw two more spiders emerge, one from underneath a bench, the other out of a sewer drain, their foot-long legs straining toward me like blackened fingers.

Oh shit.

Now I was booking it, running through the dead streets as fast as I could go, my hair whipping behind me. I praised God for Manhattan’s grid set-up as I was easily able to zig zag my way toward the park. The city was a piece of cake when there were no taxi cabs and rushing pedestrians around.

I was only a block away when something came from nowhere and flew at my chest.

I shrieked and looked down to see the cockroach eyeball dig its pincers into my skin, the eye staring up at me with mad clarity.

Take me with you, the man’s voice said, though in my panic and confusion I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I’ll ward them off if you take me with you.

“Get off of me!” I screamed and the roach only dug its claws in deeper, filling my chest with shards of pain. Grimacing, I had no choice but to put my hand around the jagged, hard-backed shell, my fingers sliding along the pulsing veins of the optic nerve.

I yanked it off and threw it far away just as his other eye came crawling toward me. Without thinking I raised my foot and smashed the creature beneath my Chucks. The eyeball was resistant for a second before the pressure caused it to splatter into slimy goo beneath my sole. Somewhere, the man was screaming.