Island of Fog (Book 1) (24 page)

Being first to be struck by the virus, Robbie’s mom looked the worst. It was a horrific sight, and Hal tried not to look too closely as he and Robbie carefully put her in the boat next to Miss Simone, who was unconscious and taking up a lot of room with her mermaid tailfins.

“She’ll make it,” Hal told Robbie quietly as they worked.

Robbie said nothing, and no wonder—his mom was absolutely still and limp. Was she even breathing? Hal couldn’t tell, and there wasn’t a way to check for a pulse because her throat and wrists were so swollen. Her tongue protruded slightly, and this disturbed Hal more than anything else.

It’s too late
, he thought despairingly.

“Help us,” he urged the others.

Abigail, Darcy and Lauren, who were still splashing water on their parents’ faces in the vain hope it might help, climbed to their feet. They looked weary, their eyes red. Dewey sat with his mother and father, silent, whispering something to them. They were both unconscious.

Of Fenton there was no sign.

Hal dimly became aware of Wrangler barking non-stop from a high point on the nearby rocks. He didn’t like the rocks, but at least it was away from the crashing tide. And he especially didn’t like the scent of terror in the air.

Hal and Robbie, with the help of the three girls, carefully hoisted Darcy’s mom and Fenton’s dad into the boat. There really wasn’t anymore room, but they returned for another anyway. “Your dad looks bad,” Robbie mumbled.

They reached for Mr. Franklin, whose eyes popped open at once. He clutched Hal’s arm and spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Whatever happens, son, I’m proud of you, and—” But he got no further, and collapsed into a coughing fit. After a moment he fell silent, unconscious again.

Hal and his friends lifted him into the boat and laid him out across the others. That was five now, including Miss Simone, and the small boat was already full. Eleven more adults lay on the dock.

Bring out the dead
, a voice in Hal’s head announced. Where had he heard that? In a play he had performed at school one time, set in the medieval ages of kings and queens.
The Black Plague.
That was it. It said in one of the history books that men would go around the village each day calling for the dead to be brought out. They were slung on the back of a cart and taken away to be burned.

Shaking off such morbid thoughts, Hal untied the boat and climbed into the water, holding the rope between his teeth.

“What are you doing?” Robbie asked. “You don’t know where to take them.”

Hal removed the rope for a second to say, “I’m doing all I can. Hopefully, Emily will be here soon with some help, but if not I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

He dove and found himself changing easily into his dragon form. At last
something
was going his way—finally he could change at will.

Gripping the rope between his teeth, Hal swam fast, pulling the boat and looking for something—anything—that might look like a passage to another world. Would it be a bright light? A black hole? He had no idea, and in the murky water he wasn’t likely to see anything anyway. It was hopeless, and he knew it the moment he started swimming.

But he swam doggedly. He wished now they had made for the fog-hole in the woods. At least they all knew where that hole was. Thomas the manticore seemed like an idle threat compared to the current situation.

My parents are dead, and it’s all my fault.

Hal blinked away tears, refusing to let his mind even go there. If he dwelled on the possibility that his parents were dead, he would probably end up sinking to the bottom of the sea in despair.

He swam for perhaps ten minutes, circling around, losing hope. At one point he thought he saw something: an unusually dark patch in the murky, moonlit water. But it was just a big fat fish that swam away as he approached. He then saw something bright and colorful and assumed it was another fish, but it turned out to be a green plastic ball about the size of his human hand, bobbing on the surface, lost to the world.

Hal felt very, very alone. He knew he couldn’t face his friends again, not if it meant pulling the boat back to the rocks, his mission a failure. He stuck his head up out of the water and looked around. He was some way from the island. It skulked in the moonlight, black and shapeless. The lighthouse rose up, a sleek white shaft that reflected the moonlight.

At its base he dimly made out his friends and the remaining parents, a small group huddled together in silence.

Waiting for me to come back and save them
, Hal thought.

He reached for the side of the boat, and as he did so he transformed back into his human shape and leaned in. Miss Simone seemed to be sleeping peacefully, surrounded by an odd glow. The others were not so peaceful, and Hal could hear rasping breaths.

At least they’re breathing.

He took Miss Simone’s limp hand and shook it hard. “Wake up. Tell me where the hole to your world is.”

But no amount of shaking and prodding could wake Miss Simone. Hal looked once more to the island, then around at the cold, choppy sea, trying to find some clue that might point the way to the hole to Miss Simone’s world. How did Miss Simone herself find it? Even though she had been through it on numerous occasions, how did she find her way to it when there was nothing to see but endless water. There were no signposts floating on the surface, nothing.

Signposts . . .

He frowned. Then, on a hunch, he gripped the rope between his teeth and dove, instantly becoming a dragon and using his tail and large paws to power through the water. He swam around, his eyes scanning the moonlit surface. After a while he found what he was looking for—the green plastic ball bobbing on the surface. It was easy to spot, and he swam closer to peer at it. It seemed ordinary enough, except that he wondered where it came from. It was doubtful anybody had thrown it into the water from the mainland if the virus was still present in the air. A survivor, perhaps? A child’s ball, lost to the sea? But on the other hand, perhaps it was something more that that. Hal had been looking for signposts, and this was the closest he had come to finding anything remotely like one.

On impulse, he gently ensnared the ball in his mouth, then spat it out, shooting it high in the air. The green ball arced upwards and began to fall, but, impossibly, fell back to the same place it had left, smacking Hal on the snout.

Surprised, he tried again, this time angling it lower so it would fly farther away across the water. But it veered around and returned, once more smacking him on the nose before dropping into the sea to continue its bobbing.

Excited, Hal realized that this was a marker left by Miss Simone so that she could find her way back to the hole. But it was quite a distance from the island, so there had to be more, perhaps a line of them stretching out from the rocks. He positioned himself carefully, putting his back to the rocky lighthouse grounds and the green ball right in front of his nose, so that he was looking out to sea. Then, gripping the boat’s rope once more, he dove and swam in a straight line directly away from the island. He kept his eyes on the surface.

After a minute he found another ball, and gave himself a mental thump on the back. This was it! He’d picked up the trail, and was heading directly for the hole.

He found another ball shortly afterward, and then another. They bobbed in what seemed like a perfectly straight line leading from the island. How manymore were there? He imagined Miss Simone first arriving through the hole and seeing the island in the distance. She must have left herself markers as she swam for shore, and they had been here ever since—these strange, inexplicable balls that floated on the surface but refused to leave.

After the fifth marker he found the hole. His eyes widened as he approached. There was absolutely no doubt that this was what he was looking for. It was a dull black smoky substance, as if someone had just dropped a gigantic clod of soil in the water and it was breaking apart. The cloud was at least ten feet across, without any definable edges, and it floated four feet below the surface, almost lost in the darkness. Miss Simone had said they’d need to swim down to it, and now Hal had another problem to resolve: How could he bring a boatful of unconscious bodies through an underwater hole and expect them to hold their breath?

Well, he’d just have to try. Perhaps if he was quick enough . . .

He reached into the boat and, with clumsy dragon paws, pulled one of the adults out. Mrs. O’Tanner groaned once, but made no other protest even though Hal’s claws accidentally tore through her shirt sleeve and grazed her arm. He lost his grip and she toppled into the water. She woke, gasping, her face pointed skyward . . . but before she had a chance to flounder, Hal grabbed her around the waist, plunged below the surface, and made for the cloudy substance four feet below.

Hal dove through it without effort, and emerged immediately on the other side. Dismayed, he turned around, wondering if he’d missed it somehow. Was there a trick to going through a hole to another world? Thinking of Darcy’s mom, he rose to the surface so she could catch a breath.

The boat was gone.

So, too, was the island. In its place was a land mass so huge that it surrounded him on all sides—flat grassy plains all around, rolling hills, a vast expanse of forest, and towering mountains in the distance, all under a black, starry sky. Hal was no longer in the choppy, salty ocean, but in a calm, freshwater lake, its clear, still surface mirroring the dazzling moonlight above.

This was Elsewhere, Miss Simone’s world.
He had made it!

Overwhelmed, hardly able to comprehend the changed landscape around him, he struck for the nearby grassy bank, clumsily keeping Mrs. O’Tanner’s head above water. With no time to be gentle, he deposited Darcy’s mom on the grass, turned, and dove once more. The cloudy substance was straight ahead. He shot through it, feeling nothing, seeing no change, but aware of a sudden salty taste in his mouth as he headed for the surface again. He saw the boat even before he popped up above water, and knew he was back.

Adrenaline rushing, almost shaking with excitement and relief, he reached for the next adult, his dad, and repeated his trip to Elsewhere, placing him carefully next to Mrs. O’Tanner before returning through the hole to the boat. As he returned from his third trip he was dimly aware of shouts and barking from the shore of the island, but he grimly continued his task until all five adults, including Miss Simone herself, were safely on the grassy bank of the lake.

With an empty boat, he turned to head back to the island. That was when he noticed something he would never forget: the monstrous white head of the sea serpent bearing down on him, its baleful yellow eyes unblinking.

Riding on its back were his friends and all the remaining parents. Some of the adults were upright, blinded by their puffed-up faces and swaying dizzily, but hanging on with grim determination. Most, however, were lying flat on their faces, unconscious, arms and legs dangling on either side of the enormous serpentine body. It was a curious sight. At the front was Dr. Porter, lying flat and motionless, with Abigail clinging to her for dear life; then there was Dewey, sitting between his parents, his dad barely awake behind him and his mom slumped at an awkward angle in front; then Lauren, desperately trying to stop her dad from sliding off on one side while her mom fought to stay on at the other . . . and so on to the rear where Fenton, still in his lizard form, rode effortlessly with his long black tail wrapped firmly around the sea serpent.

Then Hal saw Emily. She was in the sea, swimming
ahead
of the serpent with her hair plastered against her face. She cut through the water with ease, her snake body undulating below the surface, pushing her along.

“This way!” Hal yelled—but instead of words, he roared and belched up a ball of fire. For a moment the night was lit up with orange, and then it faded. But it served its purpose, and if there had been any doubt about where to find Hal in the dark of the night, now there was none.

As the eerie procession drew near, Hal dove underwater and waited by the hole to Elsewhere. Emily dove too, and her eyes widened as she approached. Hal urged her on, gesturing with dragon paws to aim at the strange black cloud and go on through.

Emily shot straight at it, closing her eyes just before she plunged in. Hal, floating to the side, was amazed to see her vanish—first her head, then her long, slender snake-like body, all in an instant. She had gone into the cloud on one side but hadn’t come out on the other.

Before Hal had time to marvel, the sea serpent dove and headed his way. Hal backed off, awed by the giant. He had a moment to wonder about his poor friends and all the adults before the monster thundered by, its never-ending bulk covered with shiny white scales. He saw his friends, eyes tightly closed, cheeks puffed out, rising up from their seats. He saw a number of limp adults coming loose from their perches. He saw bubbles pouring from mouths, eyes opening in terror. He even saw Wrangler leaping clear and beginning to doggy-paddle for his life.

But the serpent was moving so fast that by the time bodies floated clear, momentum was already hurtling them through the water toward the black cloud. Most went through with the serpent in a haphazard fashion.

Others floated wide and missed the black cloud altogether.

Hal went after them immediately. He retrieved Fenton’s mom and nudged her through the cloud with his snout. He used his tail to collect Mr. Morgan and shove him through. He seized his own mom’s swollen hand between gentle jaws and tugged at her, swimming on his back with his mom trailing behind. He gently swung her through the hole, hoping and praying that someone was at the other side playing catch.

The water was suddenly clear except for thousands of bubbles . . . and four thin legs paddling at the surface. Hal had no time to be gentle with poor Wrangler. He rose up behind him, took the dog’s scruff in his jaw, and probably a pinch of flesh too, and dove for the hole.

He had a moment of darkness as he went through, and then he was rising to the surface where numerous legs kicked. He released Wrangler and went for Dewey’s dad again, who was floundering just below the surface. With a careful nudge, Hal steered him toward the bank, where the lake’s sandy bottom rose up sharply.