He wriggled his head sideways, trying to locate the moon, but it had vanished. The woman’s face was barely visible, just in front of him, and her breathing seemed to have become slower in the past few minutes.
“Elvira? You hear me? Hang on in there. Got friends” He succumbed to another coughing fit at the tightness of the wreckage around his waist. “Friends on the way. Could be here some time after dawn. Just hang on.”
The wind rose for a time, finally carrying the last of the rain away with it, clearing the sky, bringing a watery moonlight.
Ryan was able to see his wrist chron, finding that it was only a little after midnight.
He could also see the way Elvira was lying. A large roof timber had her pinned to the ruined floor. She was flat on her stomach, hands out of sight, hair dark with black, congealing blood, eyes closed. A deep cut dripped more blood from the side of her mouth, exposing the broken end of a denture. There was something sticking into her throat from beneath, which Ryan finally decided was the headless statue of Elvis Presley.
ELVIRA STOPPED BREATHING at 115 a.m. There was no drama, as there rarely was, simply the unmistakable cessation of everything.
It was a short while after her passing that the first of the tiny rodents appeared, the same breed that he’d spotted scampering through the puddles when he arrived in the heart of the burned-out ville.
They reminded him of the notorious cuddlies, furry little golden bears that looked like every child’s bedtime ideal. The unbelievably vicious creatures had left young Jak Lauren with two deep scars on his face, near his mouth, that he would carry with him to the grave.
He was aware of them pouring over the wreckage like a black tide, none of them any larger than his thumb, with tiny dark eyes and miniature razor teeth. For several minutes they paid him no attention at all.
When one of them came close and began to climb up onto Ryan’s jacket he gave the loudest roar he could and the mutie mice vanished.
They didn’t reappear until a few minutes after three in the morning. There seemed to be even more of them, as if they’d been enlisting reinforcements from the whole of the devastated little township.
It was about then that Ryan also became aware that the watery mud was rising around him and had reached his groin.
“Fireblast!” The familiar expletive was so quietly and resignedly said that the absurdity struck Ryan and produced a ghost of a grim smilea smile that vanished at a pricking pain in the back of his trapped left hand. He flexed his fingers, looking down to see that the mutie rodents were turning their attention to him. Some of them were also making good time with the dead, staring face of Elvira Madison.
They covered her skull like a shifting hood of dark hair, with occasional glimpses of bloody skin beneath.
Ryan shouted and batted his right hand at them, disturbing them for a few moments. Only this time they didn’t all vanish. They just withdrew and regrouped, hundreds of microscopic eyes watching him fixedly.
The moon showed him all too well the danger from the furry mice. In less than a half minute they’d virtually flayed the skin from Elvira’s skull, less than a yard from him, also removing eyes and lips and much of the nose. Even as Ryan stared at the horror that she had become, a blood-sodden rodent emerged from her open mouth and dropped off into the wrecked timbers.
He shouted again, his voice echoing around him in the stillness. As he waved his fist threateningly at the creatures, he felt some of the beams shifting, pinning him even more tightly, sucking him lower into the watery trap.
If they could swim below the surface, then he was instantly, irrevocably doomed. But he had noticed that their fluffed-up fur held so much air it was impossible for them to dive. Indeed, it was almost impossible for them to drown unaided.
The timbers around him creaked and groaned under increasing pressure.