DEAD IN BED By Bailey Simms: The Complete Second Book

PART 13, SECTION 5

The three of us, Chris and Ian and I, carefully approached the park with the scent of briquettes and charring burgers in the air. We kept close to the tree line. We didn't want to be seen until we knew for sure why people had been allowed to gather here without any apparent Home Guard oversight at all.

But as we drew closer, it looked safe. Mr. Lawrence, the high school principal who'd been forced by the Home Guard to MC the public executions, was drinking a beer with Ted Feinstein, the dentist. They were both laughing at some joke. Tuck and Peggy Schroep were smearing condiments on hamburger buns. Mrs. Whipple, sunburnt, was dozing on a blanket. There were at least a hundred people. They looked like they'd been happily picnicking all day without a care in the world.

Nick, the bartender at the Buckshot, opened a beer and handed it to some girl from outside who it looked like he'd started dating.

I strolled out from the shadows and sat down at their picnic table.

"Wow," I said to Nick, "Where'd you get the beers?"

"Ashley! Where you been?" Nick smiled slyly as he handed me a beer. "I kept some stashed away for a special occasion."

"I've been . . . away," I explained vaguely. "What's the occasion?"

Tuck Shroep leaned over from the opposite table. "Home guard's gone!" He called out, his mouth filled with hamburger. "Up and left! Didn't you hear?"

Nick nodded in confirmation. "They all pulled out yesterday. Home Guard, National Guard. The whole thing. Poof." He made a gesture like a blown-out candle flame. "Vanished," he said. "I guess all their funding ran out. We're on our own."

With this, he raised his beer bottle.

I clinked mine against his and drank down the ice-cold beer. Was it possible? Had the TGVx actually begun to spread through the population? Had we managed to neutralize the disease?

Had our plan worked?

"You want a burger?" Tuck offered. "We got plenty."

It was true. Hundreds of hamburgers were stacked on grills all around me. Someone must have made fresh buns. There were trays full. It was a real party.

I was hungry, but ever since my dad died, whenever things started to feel a little festive I started to really miss him. It tore at my heart that he couldn't be around while everyone was having fun.

"Maybe I'll have a burger a little later," I said. "I think I'm gonna take a walk first."

Not far from where we sat was my dad's favorite fishing hole, and I wanted to sit there for a little while, away from the crowd, where I could have a few moments alone.

"I wouldn't do that, if I were you, Ash," Nick warned as I started toward the river path. His new girlfriend held his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. "There's something out there, along the riverbank."

"Something?" I stood to leave. "What do you mean something?" I laughed. "Like a freaking marsh monster?"

"Well, I don't know exactly." Nick said quietly. "But people have been seeing something. A lot of women have been saying something's been following them in the shadows by the river."

Nick's girlfriend added, "I saw it." She shuddered. She was deadly serious. "I can't even describe it."

"Bull," Tuck Shroep called out. "You kids and your Goddamn boogie men. Slender Man this, Bloody Mary that. Blah, blah, blah. I swear to God. It's just a deer or something. Probably wounded in the reeds, poor thing."

"I'll be okay," I said to Nick.

"Suit yourself," he said. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

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