Shadow Borne by Angie West Page B

of my head when Aranu resealed the bags, rose to his feet,
and turned to face me.
    "There will be more." he said. "If we're
lucky there will only be a couple hundred running free."
    "That's not exactly a great best case
scenario." I said dryly.
    "We aren't exactly lucky people are we?" He
smiled ruefully.
    "Well, that depends on how you look at it."
I mumbled. "You really think we've got an epidemic on our
hands?"
    "If we don't now," he said, walking to the
fence line to stare out into the darkness beyond the cabin, “we
will soon.”
    Clouds had covered the moon again and the
only illumination in our immediate vicinity came from the glimmer
of the fence. The golden light softened Aranu's harsh features in
profile. He looked more human.
    "Let's hope you're wrong." I balled up the
bloody clothes and the rags, both the wet and the damp one, and
hurled them over the fence and onto my front yard, intending to
pitch the entire mess into the trash in the morning.
    "I'm not wrong." Aranu said without turning
around. "If that thing had been mutated–and what other explanation
could there be–others would have been, as well. If Kahn and the
Lahuel have that kind of capability, why stop at one?"
    Why indeed. "Damn." He was right, though. It
was looking more and more like the best we were going to do was
damage control. That and hope to hell the remaining fences didn't
fail anytime soon. "Well." I shook out my blanket and spread it
evenly across the ground. "I'm going to bed. This day is officially
over." I grumbled. "Right now."
    Aranu left the edge of the fence and came to
a stop next to my make-shift bed. "You're sleeping out here?"
    "I've slept outside before." I needlessly
pointed out. Nearly everyone Aranu and I knew had slept outside at
one time or another and some, like Aranu himself, even preferred a
pallet on the hard ground to sleeping on a bed. Once I had even
seen him fall asleep on the thick branches of a large Gildwood
tree.
    "If you're worried about the Coatyl in the
woods, I can take you to the dome. Juliette and Tara are probably
still up swimming. I'm headed that way to camp, anyway." He held
out a hand, which I ignored.
    "Thanks, but I'm not afraid of the Coatyl."
That was sort of a lie. "I'd go to the dome if I really wanted to."
That was definitely a lie. "Besides, I'm too tired to go any
further than right here." I patted the cold, hard ground beside the
dark blue blanket.
    "Yeah?" He frowned, staring down at me for
another long moment.
    "I'll be fine. Thanks for carrying the
Coatyl though." I said, feeling guilty all over again for the way I
had snapped at him earlier during the changing of the guard.
    "I've got to wake the men." he said after a
full minute had passed.
    "That's probably a good idea." I agreed.
    "I don't want to leave you."
    "I'll be fine. I am fine. Go."
    "Do you want me to send anyone your
way?"
    "Nope." I told him. "I'm going to sleep
right now. I'll be at Mark and Claire's in the morning."
    "Good," he said. "I'll rally the troops and
meet you there."
    I nodded and turned onto my side, wrapping
myself in the blanket. His footsteps crunched across a handful of
stray leaves that had blown across the ground near the fence and
then nothing. Silence. He was gone.
    I let out the breath I'd been only dimly
aware of holding and shivered in the black night, wishing it were
dark enough to block out the sight of the bag that lay a few feet
away. But thanks to Juliette's washing skills, the burlap sack had
been bleached until it was almost as white as the Coatyl had been
and even in the dark the thing stood out, though it was mostly the
outline. But it was enough to know it was there. Three feet
away.
    I gripped the edge of the blanket and rolled
over to put several more feet of distance between the bag and
myself. I had lied to Aranu, I thought, because there was no way I
would be able to sleep tonight. But I yawned and within minutes the
gentle shimmering, pulsing illumination of the fence, closer