Noah awoke some time later feeling terribly lightheaded. He groaned and rolled over, causing the hand warmer which had long gone cold to tumble to his side. He looked around, rubbing the back of his head and remembering where he was. One of the flashlights was still on, which let him see his friends passed out in a row on the floor to either side of him. A couple of Brian’s hand warmers were scattered around their prone forms.
Noah stood up slowly, grimacing as he felt all of his limbs alight with pins and needles. He stretched gingerly and wiggled his fingers, but couldn’t seem to work the blood back into his limbs.
Wondering what time it was, he gave up stretching and walked over to the door, pausing to listen for any wolfish sounds outside. He couldn’t hear anything, but then again, Leah and Brian were both snoring like a couple of buzz saws. He tried to wait for a moment of silence, but they seemed to be synchronizing their breathing to produce a constant racket. Frustrated, he considered just waking them both up, but figured it couldn’t hurt to just crack the door slightly to gauge how bright it was outside. In the unlikely event that a wolf had sat patiently right outside for hours on end, he wouldn’t be opening the door wide enough for it to get in.
He took a deep breath and pushed the door open just an inch. Sunlight poured into the mausoleum, probably for the first time in a great number of years. The thought brought a grin to Noah’s face. Feeling confident, he peeked out to scan the clearing outside and then pushed the door open as much as he could.
As the door opened, he saw for the first time just how much smoky dust had been trapped in the mausoleum. It had been difficult to gauge how much was swirling around them with the single-point light sources of the two flashlights. Noah gulped nervously as dark clouds streamed out of the crack in the door and dissipated into the bright day outside. It was an awfully high concentration, especially considering how long they had been sitting around in it. And this was what was left of it after a large part had escaped through the mausoleum’s hopefully highly effective ventilation system.
Noah patted his chest nervously but couldn’t sense any obvious pain in his lungs. Maybe we accidentally stayed out of the worst of it by sleeping on the ground, he mused. It was possible the smoke from the pendant acted like normal smoke that rose from a fire, and naturally drifted upwards. Or maybe it’s the heat that causes it to rise, Noah reflected. He couldn’t remember the exact mechanics of why smoke behaved the way it did.
There was no point worrying about that at this point. Now that he knew it was morning, Noah had no qualms about waking his friends up. May was already stirring a little, as the ray of sunlight happened to strike her across the face. She protested the sun’s brightness with a hand thrown tiredly across her eyes and unhappy grumbling under her breath.
Leaving her be, Noah walked over to stand between the pair of snorers and nudged them both with his foot until the grating noise mercifully trailed off into blissful silence. They awoke quickly, although their quick transition to awareness may have been expedited by Noah kicking them with a little more force than was strictly necessary.
Once the four of them were all fully awake, they were all more than eager to get out of the cramped room of the mausoleum.
“Do any of you feel kind of lightheaded?” Leah asked after they were all outside. They filed onto the gravel path, finding it a lot more pleasant in the light of day than they had last night.
“You’re feeling it too?” Brian asked with a surprised look at his sister.
“I’m definitely feeling it,” Noah confirmed.
“I am as well,” May said.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Oh no, there was definitely something in that smoke,” Leah said worriedly.
“You think it was the smoke?” Brian asked, kicking a pinecone along the path.
“Well, what else could it have been? I suppose there could have been fumes or something in the mausoleum, if it didn’t have proper ventilation.” She frowned. “Corpse fumes, that doesn’t sound any better.”
“I’m also having a little trouble waking up my arms and legs,” Noah said. He almost kept that to himself, but now that he knew they were sharing at least one affliction he was curious if there was more to the uncomfortable pricking in his limbs than a simple bad night’s rest
Leah’s head snapped over to him. “Same here.”
Brian and May just nodded with grim expressions.
Noah rubbed his forehead. “Now I’m scared to wonder what we were breathing in. I thought it was just dust or something.”
“That much dust in a little pendant?” Leah said incredulously. “No way that was normal dust. I’d bet you anything that whatever was going on to make the corpse act like a zombie is very closely related to whatever produced all that smoke.” She paused and tilted her head. “Was it dust? It kinda seemed like dust to me at first, but it filled the space and stayed in the air like smoke.”
Brian shrugged tiredly. “Does it matter?”
Leah scowled at him. “Hey, I’m just trying to reach a consensus here.”
Brian rolled his eyes. “It looked like smoke to me.”
Noah raised an eyebrow. “I was thinking it was dust,” he insisted, mostly to be contrary.
Leah looked pointedly at May, who looked between the three of them with a startled expression.
“I don’t know, it kind of seemed like dust,” she said uncertainly.
“There we have it. We’ve been infected with a terrible disease, probably on par with the Wager, by mystery corpse dust,” she said with finality.
They reached the fork in the path and chose the correct trail to take them back to the road, looking awkwardly at each other as they proceeded onto the right path.
“To think we would have had a perfectly nice, normal night in our own beds if we had just picked the right way home,” Brian said wistfully.
“I don’t know, it kind of makes for an epic story,” Noah said. “Provided we survive the terrible dust disease, of course.”
“I hope Paul didn’t worry too much last night,” Brian said, then chuckled and continued sarcastically, “I’m sure he immediately took note when we weren’t back at the dorm at our usual time, and filed a missing persons report, along with notifying our housing advisor and campus security.”
Paul was the roommate of Brian and Noah. He was a nice enough person, but Noah doubted he had put much thought into their absence, if he even noticed it at all. The kid went to bed at an entirely too reasonable hour and usually woke up after Brian and Noah had left for their morning classes.
“I want to stop at the corner shop before we go back to campus,” Leah said.
“Yeah? What for?” Noah asked.
Brian shook his head with a sigh. “She’s gonna get canned soup and claim it’ll cure death itself.”
Leah glowered at her brother. “Canned soup is the ultimate treatment for any ailment. It’ll take care of our deadly dust disease before we even get into the first stage of debilitating weakness. Minestrone, to be exact. You doubt now, but just you wait. You’ll see how right I was when you’re miraculously cured.”
Brian shot a sideways look at Noah. “She’s somehow maintained this opinion for eleven years despite never seeing the slightest evidence in favor of it. Her belief in soup is inspiring in its unwavering inanity.”
Leah stuck her nose in the air. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
Brian nodded, continuing to talk to Noah as if his sister wasn’t right beside him. “Yeah, that must be how she manages it. She ignores the multitudes of signs that she’s an absolute lunatic.”
Leah pointedly turned away and struck up a conversation with a baffled May.
Brian chuckled, and after a moment Noah cracked a smile as well, letting the joy of a beautiful morning fill his thoughts. He never thought he’d hold such an appreciation for a regular old breeze, but he found himself enjoying the fresh air as it stirred gently through the trees. The sound of the leaves rustling seemed like the most pure and calming noise in the world. He was disappointed when the rumbling noises of traffic gradually overcame the quiet of the woods.