A bell rang out and Apoca-blo dashed out from behind the till. “Got a customer. Do you officers need me to stay?”
“No, we’ve got your statement,” I said. “Thank you, Apoc—ah, I mean Pablo.”
“Sure, sure.” He pushed out the door and before it closed, I heard his cheerful greeting: “Good afternoon! Such a nice day! Are you ready for the end of the world?”
Stan shook his head. “Something not right with that one. But he’s a good worker. Heck of a salesman. Nice kid too. Just...” He shook his head like that explained it all.
And it did. Compared to the things that happened in Ordinary, and the citizens who made it their home, one happy-go-lucky apocalypse enthusiast wasn’t even a blip on the town’s weirdness radar.
“Here it is.” Stan clicked on the link to the video feed. “I have it set to record from sundown to sunrise. As a security measure for my employees.”
And for catching Bigfoot in the act. He wouldn’t mention that because everyone knew it was crazy to believe that Bigfoot was real. And yes, Bigfoot got a kick out of that.
Stan hit the button and the black and white video played. It was a still shot of the shed, and just a corner of the road beyond it. The only way I could tell the recording was playing was by the occasional car that zoomed down the road at a fast-forward speed.
We watched as the time stamp ticked down. Nothing changed at the shed. No one drove close to it, no one walked near it, no one touched it.
The sky was dark, raindrops a flurry of silver lancets.
Something flashed by the screen.
“Wait,” I said.
Myra tensed beside me at the same moment.
“Back up slowly.”
“I think it was just a bird.” Stan backed up the recording, a little too quickly so that we got only the briefest glimpse of something moving in front of the camera again.
“Slow it down,” I said.
He hit play and the recording rolled, rain falling at the right speed.
I held my breath, curled my fingers so that I could feel the press of my fingernails in my palm. Had we really caught a break? A clue as to who had dumped Sven’s body in the shed?
Would it be Ryder?
Please don’t let it be Ryder, I chanted silently.Please don’t let it be Ryder.
Stan stabbed the button to stop the recording. “Sweet Mother Mary,” he breathed.
And there, frozen on the screen clear enough to crawl through it, was a man.
My mind furiously cataloged hair, eyes, face, jaw.
Not Ryder. Oh, thank gods.
I broke out in a cold sweat and shivered in relief.
“That’s Sven, isn’t it?” Stan said. “His face...it’s wrong. Animal...”
“It’s the lighting,” Myra said.
It wasn’t the lighting. It was his fear, his pain, his death. Sven looked more vampiric in that image than I’d ever seen him in life. His eyes were wide, pupils blown out to cover any color, a hole centered in his forehead above them. His face was sharpened, and out of shape. At the paused moment of the video his three-quarter profile showed bloody, swollen lips hanging open enough to reveal the wickedly sharp point of an elongated fang.
He was dead.
“We’ll need to take this file,” Myra said. “To look over it more carefully.” She smoothly killed the video, erasing Sven’s face from the screen.
