6)

The two bikes were a dark green, heavy framed, old fashion, woman’s bike with basket and panniers, the other was a navy blue men’s bike with a trailer hitch for a two seater children’s wagon. I had rigged up a shopping cart to get towed along behind the older bike as well.

Me and it set off for the Home Despot first, I remembered seeing torches there when we raided the place for solar panels, solar garden lights, and other goods.

Most every backyard with sunny patches in a five block radius was now planted with those little seed packets from the dollar store. If nothing else the squirrels would eat well.

That worked for me. Squirrels could be eaten. Go ahead tree rats, get nice and fat.

I had seen signs of other people having hit the big store beside me and had even ran into a few people as well. I carried a cable bill with me to pass over to people to read out loud. Nightmares, even the ones shaped like people couldn’t read. The parts of our mind we dream with don’t do that and neither can creatures created from those parts.

A car was sitting in front of the builder's supply store. A big yellow Humvee with what looked like a homemade flamethrower on top. The Fetch said what I was thinking.

“So cool.”

I shook my head at it and pointed down to the four flat tires. "Not cool. It must have been sitting out here at least overnight to get its tires popped. Which means they went in but didn't come out."

It sighed. “Crap.”

The Humvee was parked about twenty feet in front of the front doors, nose first. Looking inside the truck I could see that the lights had been left on long enough for the batteries to die.

The Fetch saw the same from the passenger side window. “Very not good. Are we still going in?”

I thought it over. “The torches are near the garden section, there’s a lot of windows over there, and a separate entrance from the outdoor plant area.”

It nodded after a moment. “Time to shop.”

As I snapped the center of the glow bracelets and necklaces and then strapped them on, identical ones appeared on the Fetch. The lights weren't bright enough to hold back a Nightmare, but it would hurt them to touch the neon glowing tubes. Not enough to injure them, but enough to distract them from trying to bite through them.

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Walking into the stuck open sliding door from the plant nursery I could see the Tiki torch display. “I’ll fill a cart, you keep watch.

The Fetch gripped the spiked club in its left hand and held up a can of foaming oven cleaner in its right with its finger on the button. I didn't know how well it would work, but I was always willing to let it test out new things instead of me.

I grabbed a regular cart and pushed it in, I had gotten about a dozen Tiki torches into it when the stacked poles shifted and clattered over onto one side of the cart.

The sound echoed through the store.

The Fetch glared at me and whispered. “Fool of a Took…”

I and it heard a voice call out, “Run, get out of here. It’s big and bullets don’t hurt it…” Something gave out a metallic sounding shriek and then there was a crash as the person who called out the warning shouted and cursed.

“Screw you Sea Biscuit!” Me and the Fetch looked at each other, then at the display of Tiki torch fuel bottles. It held up its hands, "Not the Citronella, save that for us. Let's go with the kerosene instead, it should burn best.”

I had dealt with things I couldn’t hurt with bullets, knives, or even cars. But in addition to anything in my Duplicate’s hands, fire always worked.

While “Sea Biscuit” continued to attempt to ram down what sounded like a heavy metal shelving unit, me and it filled a dozen torches and lit them up. As well as filling up a shopping cart with cardboard boxes topped with garden seating cushions before dosing all of it with kerosene. A second cart had six buckets filled with paraffin based fuel and a lit Tiki torch wedged into the fold down child seat.

This was of course after securing our own stuff outside. It sounded like the person inside has time, and was being a great distraction.

I asked, “Is it safe.”

It answered. “Nope, but it isn’t our place, so let the mother burn.”

Wheeling our way into the darkness, we flipped on the flashlights taped to our arms, and the headlamps on the front and backs of our heads. There wasn’t any point in trying to hide in darkness from a Nightmare, so we might as well make sure we could see.

The crashing sound stopped and something snorted deeply just before we came around the corner.

The dark horse shaped Nightmare was tall enough to stand shoulder high to the top of the big Humvee outside, with burning red eyes and just for a moment, streamers of darkness wiggling around from its outer edges like tentacles.

Then the light hit it and it solidified as it screamed at us.

Me and the Mirror screamed back at it and shoved the cart forward before throwing a road flare on top of the flammable contents filled cart. The cart nearly burst into blue flames as it crashed into the front of the nightmare and fell over on its side, spilling it sopping wet contents on the floor between us and the Nightmare.

I noticed that we had made our way into the lumber aisles as the burning kerosene spilled out along the floor. The voice called out from on top of the dented metal shelving. “Oh son of a…”

Then I threw the first bucketful of paraffin oil on the nightmare. It was unhappy, on fire, and now coming my way. The Fetch had already run off towards the doors.

Right to where we had dropped off the next to the last bucket. By the time I was running past the Fetch, it was throwing that bucket load toward the screaming, burning Nightmare.

A lot of it even hit the evil horse thing, and even more, flew onto the plywood filling the nearby shelves.

I yelled out, “Forget the rest of the buckets, just run!” as I raced by the Fetch.

I got far enough ahead of the Duplicate to pause to kick another bucket over as it ran past me. I was close enough to the door I thought I could get out before the now flaming horse thing could catch me.

In my defense I was right, I just didn’t expect it to follow me outside. Turns out being out in sunlight doesn’t bother a Nightmare which is already on fire all that much.

I ended up getting a row of shelving full of half dead house plants knocked over on top of me as I tried to hide behind it. The Fetch threw another potted plant at the Nightmare’s head and then ran back into the store.

No. No way was it being brave. It had to have a plan.

Not that I was all that concerned, at the moment I was trying to dig myself free before the horse thing came back.

That’s when the voice from inside the store asked if I needed any help.