Free Soft Apocalypses by Lucy Snyder Page A

to snare our legs.
    We made it back to the rusty gate, threw ourselves over the bars, and scrambled into his cab, me in the passenger seat, both of us gasping for breath. He tore out of there and neither of us said anything at all until we were miles down the highway.
    A rest stop appeared around the next bend, friendly and bright. He pulled into the parking lot beneath one of the lights. The blue glow felt like safety.
    “That thing wanted you bad.” Alonzo’s voice shook like my body. “I saw ... I saw you in the house, but I could see through it, and those vines ...”
    He shuddered. “I saw those people ... what were they, ghosts?”
    I shook my head numbly. “Bait. Just bait.”
    Then I took a harder look at him. “How did you know to come back? I didn’t call you. I couldn’t call you.”
    “When I dropped you off, that place just gave me the creeps, you know? So I did a web search on the address. And there was ... there was a fire five years ago. The house ... it burned down with everyone inside.”
    “What? Let me see.”
    Alonzo pulled the news story up on his cell phone. “There’s all kind of jagged metal and holes and stuff in a place like that, and I thought I should check on you. My aunt would never let me hear the end of it if I left a customer someplace I knew was dangerous and they got hurt.”
    I took the phone from him. It displayed a photo of the charred ruin of my father’s house. The article beneath said someone had doused the place in kerosene and lit it with a cigarette. Firefighters found three adult bodies in the wreckage, all burned down to bones and teeth. Arson investigators discovered the skeleton of an infant in the dirt beneath the porch. She had died of a skull fracture; either someone dropped her or someone strong had hit her just once.
    “Oh, baby,” I whispered. Part of me had held onto some slight hope that my parents gave her up for adoption. Tears streamed down my face. “Oh, Leanna.”
    My big sister had gone home to get her own closure, but something terrible and hungry had been born in the blood and ashes and lingering nightmares.
    “I’m so sorry,” Alonzo said. “I ... I can’t believe nobody called to tell you what happened.”
    I shrugged miserably. “How could they? Almost nobody knew me when I did live here, and that was long ago.”
    I wiped my eyes, turned and fixed Alonzo in a hard gaze. “Were you serious when you said you wanted to make the world a better place for everyone?”
    He swallowed nervously. “Yes, ma’am. I am dead serious about that.”
    “That thing you saw? It’s still alive up there. If it can’t have me, I bet it’ll settle for somebody else. You think any of the folks in your aunt’s church would be willing to grab some machetes and blow torches and do a little weed control come sunup?”
    He nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I believe they would.”
     
     
     

The Cold Gallery
     
    Emma and her mother joined the line of kids and parents in Riggleman Hall’s foyer. They’d be waiting a while. The Freshman Orientation coordinators had scheduled far too few advisors for far too many students.
    Suddenly, a chill crept across Emma’s back, and she felt a pair of icy hands close around her neck.
    “Hey!” She whirled around.
    “What’s the matter?” Her mom looked puzzled.
    “Someone...” Emma trailed off. Not only was nobody standing behind her, nobody was within twenty feet of her. “Nothing. Just my nerves, I guess.”
     
    “Well, this is nice.” Emma’s mother led the way into the dorm room and plunked down the duffel bag. “ Very nice, don’t you think?”
    “Um.” Emma set down her suitcases. The relentlessly beige room was smaller than it had looked on the university website. At least she had the place to herself. “Yeah, it seems nice, Mom.”
    “The dorms we had weren’t nearly this spacious.”
    Looking wistful, her mom opened her purse and pulled out the letter from her father, Professor Burke.
    Her father