“Did you hear it?” I asked. My voice sounded strange in my own ears, high and squeaking. “Did any of you hear it?”

They hadn't heard anything, of course. They had come up to see why the generator had gone off. As Ollie told me that, one of the bag-boys bustled up with an armload of flashlights,

He looked from Ollie to me curiously.

“I turned the generator off,” I said, and explained why.

The Mist 67

“What did you hear?” one of the other men asked. He corked for the town road department; his name was Jim something.

“I don't know. A scraping noise. Slithery. I don't want to year it again.”

“Nerves,” the other fellow with Ollie said.

No. It was not nerves.

“Did you hear it before the lights went out?”

“No, only after. But...” But nothing. I could see the way they were looking at me. They didn't want any more gad news, anything else frightening or off-kilter. There vas enough of that already. Only Ollie looked as if he believed me.

“Let's go in and start her up again,” the bag-boy said, landing out the flashlights. Ollie took his doubtfully. The bag-boy offered me one, a slightly contemptuous shine in His eves. He was maybe eighteen. After a moment's thought, the light. I still needed something to cover Billy took with.

Ollie opened the doors and chocked them, letting in some light. The bleach cartons lay scattered around the half-open door, in the plywood partition. The fellow named Jim sniffed and said, “Smells pretty tank, all right. Guess you was right to shut her down.” The flashlight beams bobbed and danced across cartons of!. Canned goods, toilet paper, dog food. The beams were smoky in the drifting fumes the blocked exhaust had turned back into the storage area. The bag-boy trained his light briefly on the wide loading door at the extreme right.

The two men and Ollie went inside the generator compartment. Their lights flashed uneasily back and forth, reminding me of something out of a boys' adventure story-and I illustrated a series of them while I was still in college. Pirates burying their bloody gold at midnight, or maybe the mad doctor and his assistant snatching a body. Shadows, made, twisted and monstrous by the shifting, conflicting flashlight 'beams, bobbed on the walls. The generator ticked irregularly as it cooled.

The bag-boy was walking toward the loading door, flashing his light ahead of him. “I wouldn't go over there,” I said.

“No, I know you wouldn't.” “Try it now, Ollie,” one of the men said. The generator wheezed, then roared.

“Jesus! Shut her down! Holy crow, don't that stink!” The generator died again. The bag-boy walked back from the loading door just as they came out. “Something's plugged that exhaust, all right,” one of the men said.

“I'll tell you what,” the bag-boy said. His eyes were shining in the glow of the flashlights, and there was a devil-may-care expression on his face that I had sketched too many times as part of the frontispieces for my boys' adventure series. “Get it running long enough for me to raise the loading door back there. I'll go around and clear away whatever it is.” “Norm, I don't think that's a very good idea,” Ollie said doubtfully. “Is it an electric door?” the one called Jim asked. “Sure,” Ollie said. “But I just don't think it would be wise for—”

“That's okay,” the other guy said. He tipped his baseball cap back on his head. “I'll do it.”

“No, you don't understand,” Ollie began again. “I really don't think anyone should—”

“Don't worry,” he said indulgently to Ollie, dismissing him.

Norm, the bag-boy, was indignant. “Listen, it was my idea,” he said.

All at once, by some magic, they had gotten around to arguing about who was going to do it instead of whether or not it should be done at all. But of course, none of them had heard that nasty slithering sound. “Stop it!” I said loudly.

They looked around at me.

“You don't seem to understand, or you're trying as hard as you can not to understand. This is no ordinary fog. Nobody has come into the market since it hit. If you open that loading door and something comes in—”

“Something like what?” Norm said with perfect eighteen-year-old macho contempt.

“Whatever made the noise I heard.”

“Mr. Drayton,” Jim said. “Pardon me, but I'm not convinced you heard anything. I know you're a big-shot artist with connections in New York and Hollywood and all, but that doesn't make you any different from anyone else, in my book. Way I figure, you got in here in the dark and maybe you just... got a little confused.”

“Maybe I did,” I said. “And maybe if you want to start screwing around outside, you ought to start by making sure that lady got home safe to her kids.” His attitude-and that of his buddy and of Norm the bag-boy-was making me mad and scaring me more at the same time. They had the sort of light in their eyes that some men get when they go shooting rats at the town dump.

“Hey,” Jim's buddy said. “When any of us here want your advice, we'll ask for it.”

Hesitantly, Ollie said: “The generator really isn't that important, you know. The food in the cold cases will keep for twelve hours or more with absolutely no—”

“Okay, kid, you're it,” Jim said brusquely. “I'll start the motor, you raise the door so that the place doesn't stink up too bad. Me and Myron will be standing by the exhaust outflow. Give us a Yell when it's clear.”

“'Sure,” Norm said, and bustled excitedly away.

“This is crazy,” I said. “You let that lady go by herself—”

“I didn't notice you breaking your ass to escort her,”

Jim's buddy Myron said. A dull, brick-colored flush was creeping out of his collar.

“-but you're going to let this kid risk his life over a generator that doesn't even matter?”

“Why don't you just shut the fuck up!” Norm yelled.

“Listen, Mr. Drayton,” Jim said, and smiled at me coldly. “I'll tell you what. If you've got anything else to say, I think you better count your teeth first, because I'm tired of listening to your bullshit.”

Ollie looked at me, plainly frightened. I shrugged: They were crazy, that was all. Their sense of proportion was temporarily gone. Out there they had been confused and scared. In here was a straightforward mechanical problem: a balky generator. It was possible to solve this problem. Solving the problem would help make them feel less confused and helpless. Therefore they would solve it.

Jim and his friend Myron decided I knew when I was licked and went back into the generator compartment. “Ready, Norm?” Jim asked. Norm nodded, then realized they couldn't hear a nod. “Yeah,” he said.

“Norm,” I said. “Don't be a fool.” “It's a mistake,” Ollie added. He looked at us, and suddenly his face was much younger than eighteen. It was the face of a boy. His Adam's apple bobbed convulsively, and I saw that he was scared green. He opened his mouth to say something-I think he was going to call it off-and then the generator roared into life again, and when it was running smoothly, Norm lunged at the button to the right of the door and it began to rattle upward on its dual steel tracks. The emergency lights had come back on when the generator started. Now they dimmed down as the motor which lifted the door sucked away the juice.

The shadows ran backward and melted. The storage area began to fill with the mellow white light of an overcast late-winter day. I noticed that odd, acrid smell again.

The loading door went up two feet, then four. Beyond t could see a square cement platform outlined around the edges with a yellow stripe. The yellow faded and washed out in just three feet. The fog was incredibly thick.

“Ho up!” Norm yelled.

Tendrils of mist, as white and fine as floating lace, eddied inside. The air was cold. It had been noticeably cool all morning long, especially after the sticky heat of the last three weeks, but it had been a summery coolness. This was cold. It was like March. I shivered. And I thought of Steff.