Milo’s trip to the subway entrance was less eventful than Henry’s, but no less distressing.
He was still trying to get the hang of gravity after floating around for as long as he had been, found it severely limiting to have to move muscles and such. The sensation almost made him wish he were invisible again.
Somehow, Adelina had done this for him. Through whatever power she had, she had essentially brought Milo back to life. And now here he was using that life to try to save someone else’s.
Faye’s head bobbed against his chest while he ran – well, walked quickly. What he was doing as he took the back stairs down to the ground floor – successfully avoiding questions, or even being stopped by police or firemen – couldn’t rightly be called running. His desperation to get Faye away, get her someplace safe, was overwhelming. It sped up certain experiences while slowing others down. But while his newly regained physical limitations were subjected to this effect, his brain had only one speed: overclocked.
Once outside the building, as he struggled to get over curbs and snowbanks, his mind reeled with everything that had just taken place. Images and voices swirled in a maelstrom of confusion. Several times he needed to physically shake his head to make them stop because his vision was blurring.
If he had taken a different route to the old subway tunnels, he would have seen Henry and the four men who’d intercepted him, which would have changed the entire outcome of that situation. He might have seen Palermo, too. But he hadn’t; the route he’d taken was the most direct one, on main streets. Two or three people passed him, but they were all rubberneckers, and each of them had asked if there was anything they could do to help. He had just shaken his head and carried on.
Milo, too, felt the new snowflakes falling down around him, just before he entered the old subway tunnels – not long at all after Henry had gone down. He relished their coldness on his burning skin.
When Milo was safely inside the darkness of the entrance, away from streetlights, sirens, and the eyes and offers of well-meaning strangers, he gently set Faye down on the concrete at his feet. Just to get a momentary breather.
And in that darkness, below him, down the stairs, he heard the hiss of escaping air. Saw two burning coals in the dark, and knew that his friend, Henry, was close.
Marcton was unable to move for a few minutes after the monster disappeared into the abandoned subway tunnels. He consciously sent instructions to his legs to work, but they would not listen. He wondered dreamily, his mind in a fog, if he was broken. Maybe nothing would work again, and he would just stand here in the street, as snow piled up all around him. He had an intense vision of suffocating under a mountain of white, and that’s what finally got him moving.
Breath caught in his chest, and he hitched in oxygen. He blinked rapidly, looked around. Cleve, Bill, and Melvin had similar expressions, but they seemed steadier than him.
Cleve reached a hand out, said, “You alright, Marcton?”
Marcton’s second and third breaths came easier. “Yeah, um… Yes. We should call the warehouse.”
“Definitely,” said Melvin. Waited a beat. “Any idea what that was, Marcton?”
“Nope.”
“Thought not. Well, whatever it was, I’m glad it didn’t stomp us. ’Cause that would have hurt.”
“Only for a second,” Bill said. Tried to smile. Failed, managing only a weird half-grimace. His hands shook. “I need to sit down.” He moved to the curb, sat down unsteadily.
Melvin looked like he wanted to say something, but wasn’t sure. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, then finally spat it out. “Should we call Kendul? Now that Palermo’s, well… gone.”
“We don’t know that for sure yet,” Bill said.
“We need to confirm, at least,” Marcton said. “And we can’t wait for the news tomorrow.” He thought about that for a second. “Not that they’d be able to identify the body.”
“Can someone else go?” Bill said. “Not sure my legs would get me all the way there. They’re still shaky as shit.”
“I’ll go,” Cleve said, and headed in the direction of the nurse’s building. “Might clear my head a bit.”
“Don’t be seen,” Marcton said as Cleve walked past him. “Only get as close as you need to, then come back.”
“Yep, got it.” He walked away, turned a corner, and was gone.
“So. Kendul, yeah?” Melvin said.
Marcton sighed, walked over to where Bill sat on the curb, joined him. “I guess we should. They were old friends. He should hear the news from us.”
“If Palermo’s dead.”
“Yeah, if.”
But they both knew he was. Marcton, especially, felt it in his gut.
The three men passed the remaining time before Cleve’s return in silence, just watching the snowflakes come down. Feeling the wind pick up. Turning their collars up against it – except for Marcton, who, as usual, still only wore a T-shirt and jeans.
Soon, Cleve came back around the corner. It was hard to tell from his face what the news was.
Marcton and Bill stood up. Melvin came closer. Cleve had to nearly shout now to be heard over the wind: “Two bodies. Well, one and a half. Neither are him.”
It was not at all what Marcton expected to hear. “What? You’re sure? Absolutely positive?”
“Positive, man. Didn’t recognize either body. They were both fairly smooshed and all, but their faces were pretty much intact, and I swear neither was Palermo.”
Marcton turned around in the direction of the subway entrance, put his hand over his mouth, turned back, said, “Well, we don’t know what happened inside. If the thing was tossing bodies out of windows, it might have left a few inside, right? We don’t know the body count indoors.”
Everyone nodded.
“So how do we find that out without trying to get inside?” Melvin said. “Rubbernecking from a safe distance is one thing, but no way we’ll be able to get in there. At least not till the cops are gone… But hey,” Melvin continued, “maybe Kendul can get inside. Would the leader of the Hunters have any pull with the city cops?”
“Dunno. Maybe,” Marcton said. “I’m just not particularly looking forward to that conversation, you know?”
“Well, since we don’t know – for sure – if Palermo’s in there, you don’t have to lead off with, ‘Hey, so your old buddy’s dead. Can you help us identify the body?’”
Marcton thought about it. “Yeah, maybe I just ask if he can put me in touch with someone who can get inside. That way, he won’t have to find out through some dumbass cop.”
“There ya go,” Melvin said. “Thinkin’ with your noodle now.”
Marcton smirked. “OK, I’ll make the call. You guys keep quiet in the background. Gonna be hard enough to hear over this wind as it is.”
After calling the warehouse to get Kendul’s cell number (not the quickest task, since the Runners and the Hunters didn’t exactly make a habit of gabbing to each other), he stepped a few feet back from them, dialed, waited. Kendul picked up on the fourth ring.
“Kendul.”
Christ, now that he had him on the line, what would he say? How would he tiptoe around this?
“Yeah, hi, Kendul, it’s Marcton. Listen,” he said, deciding to dispense with pleasantries. “I need access to a building where some crazy shit has gone down. Cops are swarming it, though, so I can’t get inside. I need to find out if one of ours is down. Do you have any connections, anyone you could put me in touch with?”
“Got one guy you can use: Anton Eckel.” Kendul rattled off his number.
“OK, thanks. I’ll–”
The line went dead.
Marcton pulled the phone away from his head, stared at the screen. “Well, shit. Didn’t have to worry about prying questions from that guy.”
One phone call to Eckel and ten minutes later he arrived, flashed his badge around, and strolled into the building. Marcton and his guys watched him go in from a safe vantage point a hundred feet away. Then they walked back to the Hummer through the ever-thickening snow, got in, headed back to the warehouse.
The sun would be coming up in a couple of hours, and Marcton was itching for word so he could proceed accordingly. If Palermo was dead inside, he was going to launch the biggest manhunt the Runners had ever been part of – and they’d been part of plenty over the years.
Well, machinehunt in this case, I guess. Or whatever the hell that thing was.
And he saw exactly where the thing went. He thought he would probably have to bring all the Runners together to explain the situation, though. This was not business as usual; this was beyond business as usual in every respect. They’d need to know exactly what they were up against.
Time was wasting, though – sure, the creature had lumbered into the old tunnels, but it could probably move fast if it wanted to, and could be anywhere by now. But the same way he’d felt Palermo was dead – deep in his gut – he sensed that the thing had retreated to the tunnels because they were a good hiding spot, tough to maneuver, tough to track through. You don’t go into a nice dark hiding spot just to pop out again into the bright sunlight and keep running – not unless you’re a complete idiot (especially not if you’re as tall as a streetlamp), and Marcton knew the creature was anything but that. He sensed a great intelligence in those eyes, in those mannerisms.
He’d told Eckel to call him ASAP with whatever he discovered, but he hadn’t heard a thing and they were almost back to the warehouse. What the fuck was the holdup? Just go in, poke around, see if any of the bodies inside matched the pictures of Palermo that Marcton had asked dispatch at the warehouse to email, then confirm or deny. No reason it should be taking this long. No reason for–
They were just pulling into the driveway of the warehouse when Marcton’s phone rang; he picked it up before it even finished the first ring.
“Yeah.”
“Bodies inside, but none of them Palermo’s.”
Marcton closed his eyes. Relief flooded through him. But then–
“However…”
“However? However what?”
“I did a quick sweep of the surrounding streets, too, and found Palermo’s body next to a tree. Back broken, head pulped.”
“If his head was pulped, how do you know–”
“We go way back, kid. Tattoos matched.”
Silence on Marcton’s end, then:
“Thanks,” he said. Hung up.
Marcton steered the Hummer around the back of the warehouse, cut the lights, cut the engine, said one word: “Dead.”
No one said anything. Just listened to the engine tick as it cooled.
There were about thirty steps leading down into the subway tunnels. Water-stained, crumbling, and slippery, every one of them.
Milo picked Faye up off the concrete at the mouth of the entrance, started down those steps, twice nearly losing his tentative grasp of how gravity worked. But each time he righted himself before tumbling down the steep steps – a trip which likely would have resulted in them both breaking their necks, or at least an arm or two.
As he got closer to the bottom, his mind wandered momentarily and he found himself wondering why such a clearly dangerous area wouldn’t be cut off from the public. But when he reached the final step, he saw that, sure, you could maybe get drunk and fall down some wet stairs, but that’s as far as you’d roll: a gate with thick bars ran across the actual entrance to the tunnels themselves. Or, rather, used to run across the entrance; nearly every bar had been bent out of shape, as though something massive and incredibly strong had passed straight through this spot – which, of course, it had.
And, he noticed now, as his eyes adjusted, that the stairs had been boarded up at street level, but someone had kicked – or otherwise split – the board in half and thrown it down here.
Milo imagined Henry squeezing his frame through this opening. He must have been on his belly, crawling. No other way he’d’ve fit.
Milo heard the hiss of air again, looked up toward the sound. His eyes had adjusted to a certain extent, but they seemed unable to penetrate deeper than a few feet into the dark.
“Henry?”
The telltale eyes were no longer visible. Maybe his back is turned? Milo thought. Once beyond the bars, the station opened up much wider and could easily have accommodated Henry turning around, even standing up. Partially, anyway. Only inside the tunnel where the subways actually used to run would he be able to properly stand – if he were on the tracks themselves.
A choking sound came from the dark.
“Henry, it’s Milo, where are you? I can’t see you.”
Another choking sound, then something shuffled, scraped along the ground. Milo imagined Henry dragging his arm or leg into a different position along the concrete.
“I can’t see shit in here, Henry. We need light. Can you say anything at all? Are you stuck or something? I hear you moving, so I’m just going to walk in that direction, OK? Don’t make any sudden moves or you’ll flatten me.”
Milo checked on Faye again where she still lay in his arms, made sure she was OK. Her breathing was shallow, and she would need medical attention soon. Or at least some materials that she could work with herself, with Milo’s help. Her leg wound had stopped bleeding for the most part, but the bullet had lodged in her body and he had no way of knowing how much damage it had done.
Milo set Faye down, said, “I’ll be right back. We’ll get you help soon. I promise.”
He knew she couldn’t hear him, but he felt, perhaps absurdly, that his voice could help her in some way.
“Coming now, Henry. Stay still.”
Milo moved forward, past the bent-to-shit gate, into the darkness proper. It was instantly inky to the point of claustrophobia. This wasn’t just lights-out-in-the-bedroom kind of dark; this was black-at-the-bottom-of-the-ocean dark. Abyss dark. What was that word he’d read in old Lovecraft stories?
Stygian. Or at least it seemed that way until his eyes began adjusting.
Now that he’d thought of Lovecraft, though, he had horrible tentacled things in his mind. Imagined their suckered awfulness groping blindly for him, wrapping around his body, squeezing the breath out of him. With these images in his head, when he bumped into Henry’s leg he nearly squealed. He felt along the metal, the alien landscape of his friend’s new body.
What would it feel like on the inside? Milo thought. To be encased in this body with the same mind you had when you were a regular person. Well, a regular person to a certain extent, anyway. As “regular” as any of the Inferne Cutis could be. And did Henry even have his regular mind anymore?
When he reached Henry’s midsection, his hands fell on something warm, slightly damp. He squeezed it gently, trying to figure out what it was.
“Leave her,” Henry said. His voice sounding hewn from stone. He coughed, made the same choking sounds Milo had heard earlier.
The woman groaned, squirmed where she lay cupped in Henry’s palm. The bottom part of her legs hung outside of his hand.
“Is she hurt?”
Henry just breathed.
“Henry?”
More breathing. A slight twitch of one of his legs.
Milo glanced back in the direction of the entrance, saw faint light there, knew he had to get back to Faye. Knew he had to help her. If she died down here it would be his fault; he’d brought her here, so what happened to her now was on him.
What he should have done, he knew, was taken her to the hospital. Even just dropping her off out front, yelling for help, and running away would have been better. But some instinct had taken over. He thought bringing her to Henry was better for her. In some way that would keep her safe. He also knew that gunshot wounds always needed to be reported, which would involve cops, and that road led nowhere good for any of them.
He wondered, then, where Adelina was, whether she would ever come back.
Henry’s breath seemed to quicken then. Milo heard it puffing out of his mouth farther away in the dark.
“You OK, Henry?”
Christ, it’s not going to happen again, is it? He’ll bust up through the fucking street if he doubles in size again. And I’ll be crushed to death.
And then there was the faintest light splitting the black. At first, Milo couldn’t sense where it was coming from; his eyes were unable to process its source. He could tell it was coming from close by, though – maybe underneath Henry? Maybe Henry himself? Some other insane transformation taking place?
He suddenly felt the need to back away, give Henry some space. In case shit gets expansive again, he thought, staggered back a few feet, feeling suddenly exposed, vulnerable.
The light got brighter, and Milo saw where it was shining from: it was the woman in Henry’s hand. The woman herself was glowing. Mostly just the exposed parts of her skin. She wore bikini-style underwear and a tank top, so the light came mostly from her legs, arms, and face.
Milo watched as the light grew in intensity. Henry’s breathing quickened even more, and now the light was sufficient for Milo to see the position in which Henry lay: he was flat out on his belly, nowhere near anything that could have gotten him stuck. Whatever reason he’d stopped – maybe to wait for Milo – he seemed to have done so, then simply found himself unable to move.
The light from the woman’s skin flickered, her eyelids opened slowly; her mouth, too, opened, and she seemed to want to speak.
“Faye,” Henry said, his voice a little clearer than before. Smoother. The battle in his head to keep the new darkness in his mind at bay was taking up nearly all his strength. He knew he was losing, but he also knew that once he gave up he would probably never be able to get himself back. Confusion regarding Faye still distracted him, and it was all he could do to try to maintain a grip on the true situation – or what he felt was the true situation. And even that seemed to be slipping through his fingers now. Everywhere in his mind was uncertainty, an ever-growing alien darkness, and a blinding, oversimplistic need to just try to understand.
“She’s here, Henry,” Milo said. “She’s safe. But I don’t understand what’s happening with–”
The woman’s skin lost some of its glow, then. Whatever internal source had been powering it was fading. Pulling back.
Then the woman slid from Henry’s hand, used her arms to steady herself. Stood up, moved away from Henry several feet.
Then she spoke.
In Adelina’s voice.
Before Adelina appeared in the woman’s body, she’d been back in her strange Otherland – the alien swirls and occasional lightning storms less a soothing balm than usual. She knew time was short, and the way she received messages in this place – the way she knew what to do and say when she returned to the world – was changing. Before, she was given no insight into the reasoning behind any of the things she was told. The thought would just appear in her mind and, moments later, she would appear near Milo to impart what she could. Why Milo had been chosen in the first place to receive her instructions was still a mystery.
There was certainly something compelling about him, but Adelina could never put her finger on what. She knew only that when she’d first laid eyes on him she felt awkward, but at the same time as though she’d known him for many, many years. Each time she appeared to him, she felt emotionally closer. Maybe it was nothing deeper than the fact that he was able to see her when so many others couldn’t.
Whatever force sent Adelina to Milo in the first place had created the imprint of memories in her mind of a life she’d never had with him. The imprint was such that it didn’t leave true memories – memories that could be accessed and replayed on the screen of her mind – but rather that the residue of the memory remained. These were memories that could never be given direct voice. No one event could be pointed to. The same had been done to Milo.
For a while, in the beginning, she had tried to communicate with whomever had been putting these thoughts into her head. But there was never any answer, no two-way communication. She eventually gave up. But now that she felt things coming to a head – though she had no way of knowing what kind of head was approaching – she felt she needed to try again.
She decided the best way would be to focus on something she could see, like a lightning fork in one of the many storms that raged around her. Once focused, she would close her eyes and try to communicate using the specific imagery still burned into her retinas. At first, it didn’t seem to be working, but then she’d used this process after telling Milo that she would try to let people see him.
This time, when she asked, she felt no response per se, but felt a subtle shift. It was so small as to be no more than a molecular distinction, but enough that she knew someone had heard her, and what she’d requested had come to pass.
Feeling empowered by this discovery, when she’d returned to her Otherland, she tried the same thing again – this time asking that she be allowed to return herself. To let people see her now.
She didn’t know how it would happen, or if it would happen at all, but then she had vanished from her Otherland and appeared in Henry’s hand.
In another woman’s body.
The moment Adelina arrived in the woman’s body, she sensed everything around her, immediately knew the situation. Was aware of every detail as intimately as if she’d witnessed it herself.
She sensed Milo’s hesitation in speaking, said, “This woman – the woman whose body I’m in – her name is Margaret Shearman. She is very sad about her husband’s death, but she wants to live. She wants to carry on without him.”
“Well, yeah. Why wouldn’t she?”
“Grief can be debilitating, Milo. Sometimes impossible to overcome. Impossible to see your way through.”
“Are you going to let her go? She’s not yours. I mean, you’re not her. Whatever.”
“She’s got barely any life left, Milo. She’s as good as dead already, and there’s nothing I can do to save her.”
Adelina felt something black and hateful tugging at her psyche, then, trying to yank her back to her Otherland. Some deep part of her understood at that moment that she was being manipulated – that whatever agency she had in this world was due to her own will. And that this other presence was fighting her every step of the way. She didn’t know what it wanted, but she knew it didn’t want to help Faye – didn’t want to help anyone. Not toward any positive end, anyway. She felt shame well up inside her, felt this as strongly now as she’d felt any emotion in her entire life.
“Listen, Milo, I don’t have much time. We’ve all been manipulated. I know that now. I feel something pulling at my thoughts.”
Something hopeless, formless, filled with despair, inhabited her mind, ripped into her thoughts sharply, made her head spin, trying to cut her off, but she carried on. “I think I’ve been a big part of that manipulation, too. I just don’t know why, or to what end. But I think we’ll find out what it all means soon. I’m going to–”
She opened her mouth to continue, but then suddenly crumpled to the ground next to Faye.
“Adelina!” Milo said, crouched beside her. His initial alarm gave way to faint relief, as he realized that she’d just been pulled away from this body, back to wherever she went when she disappeared.
Henry, however, did not understand what was happening. In his addled state of mind he thought Milo had done something to “Faye” – the woman he’d brought with him in his hand from the apartment. For him, the two women on the ground blended into one.
Crouched low, back scraping the ceiling, he advanced on Milo, his eyes having adjusted enough to the near-pitch dark that her could just make out his shape. Milo glanced up at the sound, stood up, put his hands out in a supplicating manner, realizing that something protective in Henry’s scrambled brain must’ve just clicked in.
“Whoa-whoa-whoa, Henry, hang on, man. I don’t know what you think just happened, but Faye’s OK.”
Henry kept coming, looming over Milo now.
“Faye’s fine, man. I think. I hope.” He glanced down at her still-unconscious body at his feet. “Ah, Christ,” he said, took three steps behind him, now backed up flat against the wall.
Henry brought his face down close to Milo’s. Stared, breathed hard.
His breath smells like furnace ash, Milo thought, then shut his eyes, and waited to be pulped by Henry’s massive hands.
But then: “Henry?” a thin, female voice spoke near their feet.
Milo cracked an eye, looked down at the sound, his own eyes now adjusting to the gloom. Faye was stirring.
But did Henry hear her?
“Henry! Henry, look down, man. Look down!”
Henry did not look down. His gaze just burned a hole in Milo’s face – the only thing stopping him from flattening Milo likely being whatever recognition Henry still had of their friendship. But Milo knew that might not be enough if he actually thought Faye was dead.
Milo had to take a risk. He lifted his hands slowly upward. “Look, look,” he said. “I’m moving my hands, man. Take it easy. Just wanna show you something.”
Henry’s eyes darted to either side of his head, tracking Milo’s hands. Then the hands settled on the sides of Henry’s massive cranium – Milo’s arms were outstretched as far as they could go – and tried to angle it down to see Faye.
At first Henry resisted, his scowl darkening, but then he let Milo guide his gaze.
Faye, he thought. There you are.
By this time, Faye had maneuvered herself into a sitting position, and was rubbing her head. She glanced up to see Milo and Henry looking down at her.
“Everything hurts,” she said.
“I bet,” Milo replied, still breathing hard, but only mildly terrified for his safety now that Faye was awake. Milo smiled, looked at Henry. “See? She’s OK. For now. I had hoped the bullet had gone right through, but I don’t think it did. We need to patch her up, at the very least.”
Henry moved his head away from Milo, stepped closer to Faye, leaned back, and sat down hard on his butt, making a crater in the concrete. He rested his elbows on his knees.
The Casual Monster, Milo absurdly thought.
Something like the sound of a cement mixer starting up crunched in Henry’s chest, and one word came out: “Faye.”
Faye looked at Milo, said, “Gimme a hand?”
Milo helped her up. She brushed herself off, careful to avoid the bullet wound.
“Henry,” she said, walked toward him, realized there was nothing she could hug on his body except maybe an arm or a leg. She moved toward the closest leg, wrapped her arms around it as far as she could, like it was a tree trunk. Pressed her face against the cold steel there.
“Patch her, Milo,” Henry said.
“Yeah, I was thinking about how to do that. Shirt, maybe?” Milo took off his shirt, bit into one of its edges, then tugged furiously at it till a strip came free that was long enough to wrap around Faye’s armpit and shoulder. She winced as he applied pressure to the wound while he wrapped.
When he was finished, Milo shrugged what remained of his shirt back over his torso. “Better than nothing,” he said.
“Barely,” Faye said, and smiled.
Milo didn’t know where they were going to go, but he knew that staying still wasn’t a good plan, knew they needed to keep moving to avoid the police – and anyone else who might’ve been put into the service of catching the giant beast rampaging around the city.
“We need to keep going, Henry.”
Henry appeared to think about this for a few seconds, then said, “I remembered you telling me to come here. To meet with Faye. But I also knew I needed to hide.”
“You’re kind of big for that, don’t you think?” Milo said, but didn’t get the desired reaction from Henry, who just looked away toward the tunnels. When he brought his eyes back toward Milo, they settled on the dead woman on the floor.
Milo saw him staring at her, said, “Margaret Shearman.”
Henry looked at Milo blankly for a moment. Then: “What did I do?”
“Her husband died, Henry,” Milo said. Because of you, he thought but didn’t say. “And then she died of her… her wounds,” he finished.
Inside Henry, something broke. Up till now, he’d been effectively distanced from nearly everything that had happened – the results of his rapid transformation into something he couldn’t possibly understand. The strains on his mind and body were incredible, but he’d gained a sort of equilibrium during the recent respite from activity – from the growth spurts and the constant running away from everything he was becoming.
Flashes of the scenes in the apartment building blitzed through his brain, and he knew Margaret Shearman and her husband were not the only ones dead because of him.
He felt a sadness so profound settle in his chest that he didn’t know if he could move at all, let alone continue running. Tears were no longer physically possible, it seemed, but grief assailed him where he sat on the floor of this abandoned subway tunnel. It gathered in his heart, immobilizing him.
Milo saw the shift in Henry’s demeanor, but didn’t know what he could do to make him feel better. He had killed people – some innocent, some not so innocent. Maybe through no direct fault of his own, but he was responsible. All Milo could do was try to let his friend deal with it the best way he knew how. And better still was to just keep running.
Always keep running.
“Come on. Let’s use the tracks themselves, Henry. At least there you can fully stand up. He moved to take Faye’s hand, started walking toward the tracks. “Seriously. Hanging out by the entrance is ridiculous. We need to get deeper inside.”
Henry nodded once, slowly. He got to his feet, then, back bent under the ceiling. But instead of turning around to follow Milo and Faye, he moved one hand toward Margaret Shearman’s body, did his best using his huge steel fingers to arrange her corpse so that she was lying flat, instead of crumpled in a heap.
The wind whistled through the tunnels as the storm aboveground raged on.
He turned, then, and followed his friends into the deepening darkness beyond.
Back at the warehouse, Marcton assembled his crew. They sat on crates and boxes, as they’d done when Palermo had killed Carl Duncan. It seemed like years ago.
Marcton stood in the middle of the group, pacing, still hopped up on adrenaline from the night’s events. He brought everyone up to speed as quickly as he could, then opened the floor to suggestions about how to proceed. He had some ideas himself, but they were fairly weak, and he wanted to get input from his people in case something they said bolstered his own plan – if “plan” could even be applied to the handful of halfbaked notions bumbling about in his head.
As for the term “his people,” he realized that’s exactly what they were now – his. With Palermo gone, he was now officially in charge. The idea simultaneously thrilled and terrified him. Palermo had a certain weight to him. A gravitas that he wasn’t at all sure he could muster. Not that he had much choice. He knew that to effectively lead, people had to believe in you. Really believe. They needed to feel that what you said and did was what was best for the group – whatever group you might be trying to lead. And this group had history. This group – and Kendul’s Hunters, too – went back a long, long way.
As if thinking about Kendul at that moment had somehow summoned him, he walked through the back door, his own crew in tow. Marcton had immediately called him again upon learning of Palermo’s death. Even under more normal circumstances, Kendul would’ve been called due to his and Palermo’s long relationship, but these were nothing even close to normal circumstances, and Marcton knew he could use all the help he could get. So not only was Kendul invited, so were all his Hunters.
For Marcton’s Runners it felt bizarre and vaguely uncomfortable to be so close to the Hunters. As they filtered into the warehouse, the air itself seemed to stiffen somehow, became harder to breathe. A certain tightening in the muscles that every man and woman in this warehouse felt deep in his or her bones. There was an understanding between the crews – and they knew they’d all been brought together for a purpose that profoundly affected them all – but the predator/prey dynamic was ingrained, and came with no on/off switch.
“Marcton,” Kendul said as he approached. He extended his hand. Marcton took it, then drew him in close. The men embraced briefly, slapped each other’s backs, the clapping sound echoing loudly around the rafters.
“Kendul,” Marcton said, returning the greeting, stepped back and began pacing again. He found it difficult to catch any of the thoughts whizzing around in his head and, as a result, his speech was even more clipped than usual, as if the act of providing additional details was just too taxing. He quickly filled Kendul and the Hunters in on what had happened.
Then: “Thoughts?” Marcton said to the room. “Anyone?”
A man sitting cross-legged on one of the stacks of skids piled up nearby cleared his throat, said, “Well. We fucking kill it.”
A few chuckles, some uncomfortable shuffling. The man smirked, glanced around, apparently happy with his contribution.
Marcton said, “Insightful,” and gave the man a withering glare that wiped the smirk off his face. “Anyone else wanna tell jokes? If so –” he lifted an arm, pointed “– there’s the fucking door.”
Silence. A few coughs. More uncomfortable shuffling.
“Actually, kid–” Kendul said.
“Don’t fucking call me kid,” Marcton said. “Do not.”
Kendul raised both hands, palms out. “Actually, Marcton,” he said, “can I have a private word? My crew can get weapons ready. Your crew can jerk it. Or whatever the fuck they do when they’re not being run down by my Hunters.”
A few people way at the back chuckled, but quickly stifled the sound.
Marcton cocked his head. “Over here, old man.”
The two men broke away from the group, their footfalls like rifle reports in the ensuing silence. Once they were out of earshot, the larger group divided itself into Runners and Hunters, with only the occasional cluster of both – unlikely friendships formed in the heat of battle.
Marcton brought them back to the warehouse’s main office, closed the door behind them.
“Listen, Marcton,” Kendul said, leaning against the doorframe. “This is gonna sound melodramatic, but… we have a secret weapon.”
Marcton barked out a laugh, then another. When he realized Kendul wasn’t joking, he frowned, said, “What, you’re serious?”
Kendul waited a beat, then said, “Adelina.”
Marcton’s frown deepened. His mind scrambled.
“Palermo’s daughter,” Kendul continued when Marcton didn’t respond.
Marcton moved behind the desk, sat down in the office chair – now, he realized distractedly, his office chair. “Yeah, I know the name. And?”
“She’s alive,” Kendul said.
“Like fuck she is.”
“Well then fuck is alive and well, Marcton, ’cause I know exactly where she is, and I might know how to reanimate her body so that–”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, back the fuck up, Kendul,” Marcton said and stood. “What kinda crazy bullshit do you think–”
Kendul moved forward quickly, got right in Marcton’s face, his voice now dropped an octave. “This isn’t bullshit, and you need to shut your fucking hole and listen to what I have to say, you little dickhead. We don’t have time for anything else. It sounds ridiculous. It sounds impossible. I get that. But that day in that house when Adelina… changed… whatever Palermo told you happened, that ain’t what fucking happened, OK? He thinks she died, but she didn’t.” Kendul stepped away from Marcton now, slowly. He dropped his eyes to the floor, raised them back up to Marcton. “She didn’t.”
Marcton’s face clearly showed his confusion. His mouth opened and closed several times, words nearly coming out, but never quite making the leap from thought to speech. Kendul wanted to keep explaining, knew that time was of the essence, but he also knew he had to let Marcton process this information, or nothing else he said would properly filter in.
Marcton sat back down in the chair, looked out the window into the warehouse. His eyes darted from person to person, never settling on any of them. Processing, processing…
“OK,” he finally said. “Let’s say Adelina is alive. She’s one person. How the fuck does that help us?”
Kendul said, “She’s not a person, kid. Not by a long shot. Not any more.”
Marcton let the “kid” remark slide. Kendul’s words hung in the air between them for a moment longer, then Marcton said, “You’re going to have to just fucking say it, man. I am completely lost, and in no mood whatsoever for guessing games. Spit it the fuck out.”
“She’s a machine,” Kendul said. “Well, not entirely, but mostly. About the same as what you describe this… beast as.”
And just in that split-second hesitation before Kendul said “beast,” Marcton had a flash of insight, knew Kendul hadn’t originally intended to use that word. He was about to say something else.
“What were you going to say instead of ‘beast,’ there, Kendul? What do you know that you aren’t saying? I find it very fucking hard to swallow that this is your only secret in this situation.”
Marcton stood again, walked over to Kendul, looked hard at him, watched his eyes. Kendul was good – very good – at schooling his face, but not quite good enough for Marcton. The new leader of the Runners saw it in Kendul’s eyes, saw it as though it were written right on his forehead:
“You know, don’t you? You know what this thing is. Because it’s happened before.” Marcton saw the truth of it plain as day on Kendul’s face. “And it was Adelina. Jesus fucking Christ!”
Kendul knew there was no point in trying to hide it any more. Besides, there was no time for games. Palermo was dead. The whole society was at risk of exposure with Kyllo now rampaging around. “Yeah. Henry Kyllo is the guy’s name,” Kendul said, sagged against the wall near the office window. “We tried to hide it again – just as we tried to hide it when Adelina ascended.”
Marcton was genuinely shocked – but mostly at the first part of Kendul’s little speech; he barely heard the second part. The color drained from his face. “Wait, what!? This? This fucking abomination is ascendance? This is what we become when we reach–”
“Yes!” Kendul shouted. Then: “Yes,” he said again, quieter. He couldn’t look Marcton in the eyes any more. Just stared down at his feet. “We didn’t know what would happen if people found out. We thought it would be over. Everything. Our whole way of life. To be fair, though, we didn’t know – still don’t know – what the final ascension looks like because we stopped it happening in Adelina. Palermo couldn’t bear to lose his daughter, even for something that was supposed to be an honor. We knew it would happen again, but we hoped it wouldn’t be while we were leaders. But it did. And he’s bigger than Adelina was, and certainly more exposed. We thought we could contain it, thought that by the time it happened, we could–”
Marcton launched himself across the room, tackled Kendul. Both men crashed against the window behind Kendul. It bulged, but didn’t shatter, then they were on the floor, Marcton on top of Kendul, right fist pummeling his face over and again.
At the sound of the scuffle, Cleve, Bill, and Melvin came running. The door was open and they burst in. Cleve immediately grabbed Marcton by the shirt collar, yanked him off Kendul. It took both Cleve and Bill – one with each arm – to subdue Marcton. He didn’t say a word, just stared at Kendul where he lay bleeding on the office floor, and struggled against Bill and Cleve’s bulk, trying desperately to break free so he could pulverize Kendul’s face some more.
Melvin stepped outside the office, told everyone everything was OK. A friendly disagreement. Sorted out in a matter of moments.
“What the fuck happened?” Cleve said in Marcton’s ear. “Calm down, man. Come on. Calm down.”
At Cleve’s words, Marcton struggled a little less, sanity slowly filtering back into his brain. His breathing calmed, arm muscles relaxing enough so that Bill and Cleve felt safe releasing him. Marcton shrugged his shirt back into position, smoothed his hair back, said, “This piece of shit killed Palermo. It’s his fault.”
Bill and Cleve said nothing, just looked down to Kendul for his reaction. Kendul pulled himself into a sitting position on the floor, back against the front of the wooden office desk. Caught his breath. “Sure,” he croaked, leaned to the side, coughed twice, spat up blood. “I killed him. He killed himself. I guess both are true.”
Cleve and Bill just looked to both men, confused.
Kendul stood up slowly, arranged his clothing so it settled on him properly, wiped blood from his nose, said, “We let it happen, Marcton, and we shouldn’t have. We should have told people. At least you. Probably others. But we didn’t, and Palermo’s dead. That’s on me. That’s on Palermo. But there was something… intangibly bleak about Adelina when she started changing. It washed over Palermo and me in that house. By stopping her ascension, we felt like we were simultaneously saving her and damning her… But listen, we can do something about it now. We can take Kyllo down. Bury him. Like we buried Adelina all those years ago.”
“Why not just let him ascend?” Marcton said. “What’s he to you? You’re not saving a son or brother or something, so just let it run its course.”
“Marcton, that’s what I’m trying to say: I don’t think ascension is a good thing. If you’d felt what we felt back then… You’ll have to trust me on this. Kyllo needs to be stopped. Hell, the Inferne Cutis as a whole probably needs to be stopped. Palermo could have put this in clearer terms, but I think there’s just something cosmically… wrong with us.”
Marcton went silent.
“All that aside, I know where she is,” Kendul continued. “And I think I know how to bring her back. I have no idea how – or even if – we can control her, but it’s our best shot.”
After a long moment Marcton said, “You said she’s a machine. Like Kyllo.”
“Pretty close, yeah. By the sounds of your description, she’s a bit smaller than Kyllo, but probably not by a lot… And if we can bring her back, she needs to know that Kyllo killed her father. That could be our ace. Once she knows that, it might be enough for us to control her – to a certain extent, anyway. She can bring down Kyllo, then we put her back in the ground, just like we did the first time. Then we fucking well leave this place. Try to set up again in some other part of the country, far away. Or hell, another country entirely. We’ll do what we’ve always done because what other choice is there?”
Time ticked by. Bill and Cleve remained silent, thoroughly in the dark about most of what was said, but smart enough not to ask questions right now. Outside the office, every pair of eyes was aimed toward the window. Marcton glanced out at them, felt the weight of his responsibility to them, then looked back at Kendul.
Finally, Marcton said, “We do this last thing together, then you step down. I think we can agree that your views on our society leave a lot to be desired – especially in a leader. Agreed?”
Kendul turned his head, spat more blood, turned back, looked down at his boots, said, “Agreed.”
“OK,” Marcton said. “Show me.”