I keep walking until my throat feels dry. I wish I’d brought water. I didn’t plan for this properly—or at all. I can’t circumnavigate Lost on foot, not without water. I’m still near the eastern outskirts. There could be a break in the dust to the west or the south, but at this rate, it would take me hours to reach it.
Ahead, the dust swirls. It’s only moving in one section—a whirlpool in the center of an otherwise-undisturbed beige lake. Continuing to walk alongside the storm, I watch it swirl. The whirlpool darkens, and the dark-light shadows swirl together as if stirred faster and faster. I slow, and then I halt. Maybe I shouldn’t be so close.
The shadows suck in, the spiral turns inward, and then it shoots out, a tornado-like arm of dust extending over my head. Instinctively, I duck. A car tire is propelled out of the dust tornado. The tire shoots over me and lands between the houses nearly a mile away.
“What the hell,” I say out loud.
I look at the void again as the tornado shrinks back, and the spiral slows. Soon, it’s placid again, as if the eruption had never occurred.Thisis how items end up in Lost? The void...expels them? Violently. Like a...leviathan burp. Eyeing the dust, I back away from it. There’s nothing normal about this dust storm. Nothing normal about this place. Nothing normal about any of this.
I shouldn’t be here.
I don’t belong here.
Enough,I think again. This is the plan: I will find a break or weakness in the dust storm, and then I’m going to cross it, leave, and never look back. For now, though, I’ve walked as far as I can. I turn back and head for the little yellow house.
Maybe I walked too far. My side is cramped, and my breath rakes over my dry throat. Sweat beads and then is wicked away by the heat of the sun. A few minutes later, I begin to feel dizzy and see black spots speckled over my vision.
Claire and Peter are on the porch waiting for me when I arrive at a walk-stumble into the yard. Running to me, Claire hugs my waist. Peter hands me a soda bottle. It’s filled with only slightly murky water. I drink it anyway. My muscles are shaking, and I lean against Claire harder than I should. Soon, I feel a little stronger.
It was stupid to walk into the desert unprepared. But other than that, it’s not a terrible plan. Somewhere, out in the desert, away from the highway, there must be a way around the void. Somehow, I’ll find it. Finishing the soda, I smile at Peter and Claire. I am taking steps toward my goals, and that makes me feel better. Mom would approve.
“I found red paint!” Claire says. “And string.”
Peter waves an ’80s tape recorder in the air. “I have this.”
I nod. Neither asks where I have been or why I went or what I saw.
I find a cloth and wrap it around a stick. Dipping it in the red paint, I paint the biohazard symbol on the front door. For good measure, I also add it to each side of the house. By the time I’ve circled the house, I’m splattered with red paint, and I feel as if I’ve won a battle, as if the act of slathering paint on the house were a direct attack against the horror of the void.
“You look gruesome,” Peter comments. “Like you’ve committed murder most foul.” I shake the cloth with wet red paint at him. He jumps out of the way, and Claire laughs.
Skipping in front of the cloth, she shouts, “Paint me! Paint me!” I spatter her with paint. It falls in dots on her arms and princess dress. She swirls, and the paint sprinkles over her. She giggles. “I’ll do you!” She jumps on a stray sock and dips it in the paint. She shakes it at me, and I jump backward but not fast enough to avoid the dollops of paint on my dress.
“If you two are done...” Peter says behind me.
I turn to say—
And he dumps paint on my shoulder. It drips over my chest and back. He is completely unscathed. I look at Claire; Claire looks at me. We both grip our makeshift paintbrushes and chase after him. We race around the junk pile. Circle the house. Run out the gate toward the other houses.
He disappears between two houses, and we collapse against the wall of a brick building, laughing. I don’t know why it’s funny, but it is. I gulp in air.
Suddenly, I hear voices.
There’s no place to hide. We’re exposed on the side of a building. And then I think,Up.Dropping the paint cloth, I turn and hoist myself onto a windowsill. I grab the gutter and scramble my feet up to the top of the window. I climb onto the roof and turn around to help Claire. She’s already up on the roof beside me. We scramble up to the peak as two men round the corner beneath us. One carries a knife, and the other has a rust-pocked saw. Both are in tattered dirty clothes, and their skin is covered in ugly, smeared tattoos that look as if they did them themselves. I hold my breath.
They don’t look up.
I exhale.
“Look at you! Your teacher is proud.” It’s Peter. He’s perched on the chimney. He holds up a tape recorder and waves it in the air. “Ready to record some feral dogs?”
I swallow. My heart is still beating fast, and the palms of my hands sting. I scraped them as I climbed too fast over the shingles. The good feeling, the illusion of control that I’d had when I’d painted has vanished completely. I wish I weren’t here. I hate this place with the strange dust prison wall and the dangers that lurk everywhere.
I don’t know what he sees in my expression but his smile fades. “The Missing Man isn’t back yet, and the townspeople continue to blame you,” he tells me. “You’re still stuck with us.” He slides off the roof. “Come on, Little Red.” He glances back at me, spattered with paint. “Or ‘Very Red.’”
* * *
It’s easy to find man-eating dogs if you want them.
