}}}Kaitlyn. 2013. Los Angeles, California. Costa Soberbia.}}}}}}}}}
The axe bit into the pavers right beside my head. Stone chips stung my face like angry insects, leaving bright tracers of pain across my forehead and cheek. The behemoth in the bloodstained overalls was standing over me, one foot planted on each side of my prone body. In the several stunned, disbelieving seconds I used to stare blankly at him—cut me some slack, I was really not expecting to find a giant with a battle-axe lurking in the ruins of that ’70s split-level—he could have strangled me, crushed my head, killed me in a dozen ways.
But no, he really, really wanted to use that axe. He took his sweet time lining himself up for the blow—maybe he didn’t expect me to be able to move yet—but he didn’t seem upset when I rolled away at the last second. No frustration or surprise on what little I could see of his weathered face beneath the three feet of tangled beard. Just the blank, dispassionate stare of an Empty One.
I don’t know why I was surprised.
Why else would he be down here? A maniac convention?
I just didn’t know they could be so … overt. All the Empty Ones I’d met so far had one thing in common: They wanted to be able to pass for human. At least some of the time. No way this beast could walk down the street without somebody calling the SWAT team. Or Godzilla. Whoever it is that deals with psychopaths of this magnitude.
I army-crawled out from between his legs, scrambling up and over Zang’s body, which was folded nearly in half along a wide gash in his stomach. There was still some spine and meat holding him together, but not much.
“Hey Alvar,” he said, still that shadow of a giggle in his voice. “Long time, no see. What’ve you been up to?”
Alvar didn’t answer. He just patiently worked his blade back and forth until it pulled free of the stones. He repositioned himself, above Zang this time, and heaved the massive axe up over his head. I grabbed Zang’s wrist and pulled. The blade came down, sinking deep into the dirt where Zang’s head had just been.
“Swing and a miss!” Zang cackled.
“Would you shut up?!” I snapped. “This isn’t funny, he’s going to kill us.”
“Well, you say ‘us’…” Zang laughed again.
“Well, he’s going to kill me for sure and probably at least mess up your day,” I said. “Help me!”
I tried to drag Zang further away, but hauling a normal body is hard enough. Dragging one that’s been nearly bisected is basically impossible.
Jesus Christ, I should not know these things.
The giant’s axe pulled free of the dirt easily, but he didn’t come after us. He just stood there staring at me. Or at a spot a thousand feet behind me—it was impossible to tell with the Empty Ones.
Quiet.
Relatively.
The reverberating grumble of waves. The distant, high-pitched, panicked screams of dozens of Unnoticeables. My own ragged breathing.
“What’s he doing?” I said.
“He’s thinking,” Zang said. “It’s not his strong suit.”
“What the hell is there to think about?”
“He likes to chop people apart with his axe,” Zang said, lapsing back into his dead monotone. “It is not so much about the kill as it is the actual act of dismemberment. That was all that remained of him, when the angels simplified his code: his simple enjoyment of axe in flesh. That is not working right now. He is thinking about how to make it work.”
While Zang was droning on, I was butt-scooting us even further away from the behemoth. I only made it maybe twenty or thirty feet. There was muscle now in the gap between Zang’s halves—wet red fibers twining about each other on either side of the spinal column.
“How long until you can walk?” I asked.
“A minute. Maybe two.”
“Do we have that long?”
“That depends on how long it takes him to think of a new strategy.”
On cue, Alvar turned and lumbered back toward the ruined house. He paused on the patio, amidst the druidic circle of ruined lawn furniture. He laid his axe down gently, like you’d set a baby in its crib, then hefted the mangled barbecue in both hands and hurled it at us. I ducked most of it, but an errant scrap of metal clipped me in the temple. My vision swam. I felt a warm rush flood down my neck. Blood. A moment of fierce and blinding panic.
I’m going to die. I’m going to die.
And then I remembered what I was. Or at least, what I was becoming.
Stop thinking like a victim. Stop relying on others. You’re turning into a monster? Fine. Use it.
I kicked loose of Zang’s body and hopped away just as a chunk of flying deck chair caught him in the face. Alvar turned around to find another projectile, so I took the opportunity to close the distance.
Okay. Okay okay okay. This is dumb. This is really dumb. But you can do it: He’s big, but he’s slow. If you can get up on his—
It felt like somebody had strapped a bunch of ham to a wrecking ball and then hit me with it. Just a little give at first, then behind it, the immutable solidity of iron. Alvar backhanded me away like a bothersome fly the second I was in range. He moved like the other Empty Ones. That insectile, unnatural speed was even more disconcerting on Alvar. Seeing it set off ancient, disused alarms in the primal parts of my brain. Alarms left over from when we actually had to worry about charging mammoths and pouncing tigers. Gargantuan beasts closing in on us.
I couldn’t tell whether or not it was just my head spinning, or if I really was still tumbling head over heels. It seemed like I’d been going forever. I pictured myself just comically rolling all the way out of the sunken suburb, back up the trail, into the car, little stars swimming around my head.
Did anybody get the number of that bus? Cue audience laughter.
“Pfffthahahaha.” Zang laughed like he just watched me fall into a pool. “What was that?!”
“Humnurb,” I said. Then, trying again: “Urmble?”
There was a particularly spinny blob in the upward-sideways direction that was doing something worrisome. Alvar, probably gathering his axe and coming over to finish me off. Nice and slow. No hurry.
“Oh.” Zang’s voice went flat. “I see. You thought because he was big, that he was slow. You still believe in some association between physicality and ability. As though our strength comes from muscles; our speed dictated by mass. It is the same as with your eyesight. Why will you not listen? It is because we are partially unbound from this dimension that we are able to exceed its limits. We move quickly because there is a part of us not tethered to time. We strike hard because our power can be gathered and spent instantly—that power is, has been, and always will be there. The very notion of gathering is a petty and human—”
“Shurt ump!” I yelled.
I couldn’t keep my balance, even on all fours. I felt seasick. Like it was the world that bucking, and not just me.
“Okay,” Zang said. “I will. Just one more thing: move.”
I was so addled that I just did what he said without question, my body two steps ahead of my conscious mind. I flung myself forward, felt Alvar’s axe impact just behind me. I kept going, scrabbling madly in the dirt, falling on my face, scooting on my side, trying to stand, to run, tipping over and landing hard, trying again. It felt like running in a dream. So much effort to go such a short distance. I knew Alvar was still there, right behind me, that great blade looming above my head, just about to drop.
Everything in me switched over to survival mode. No thoughts, no worries, no strategy. Just pure and selfish fear.
Run. Run. Live. I have to live. Just run, never stop, survive, survive just you against the world just you—
She screamed.
Jackie.
It stood out from the choral shrieking of the Unnoticeables by virtue of its urgency. They screamed like a matter of fact. There was fear and anger and confusion in there, but mostly it was like they didn’t know what else to do. Jackie’s scream was deep, purposeful, and human. It was pure fear, and it was close. Just the other side of the ruined house.
How did she—
A burning slash raced across my back and then I was airborne. I heard the sound before I even felt the blow. A fleshy thunk with all the finality of a cleaver sinking into a carving board. Then my synapses caught up and started relaying the pain. Every one of my bones echoed the blow of the axe, right down to my toes. It felt like an earthquake localized entirely within my skeleton. Then the hot, wet, flowing pain of an open wound. I hit the ground, tasted dust and mold, and then nothing.
A sleepy, welcoming void.
A scream.
Black like velvet, draping gently over me, settling—
That scream.
Sinking into a warm ocean, no pain here just—
Who keeps screaming? It’s very distracting. I’m trying to die here.
Oh, right.
My best and only friend. The only constant in my life. The one who pushed me to do more. To be more. To treat settling like a small death.
And now here’s the big one. And it’s so nice. I miss my bed.
But she needs me.
It felt like dragging an anchor up through a mile of mud, but I managed to open my eyes. Just blurry dirt.
That’s helpful.
Move your head. Now your hands. On your feet. There’s work to be done.
Alvar had turned away from me to focus on Zang, who was actively knitting himself together: both hands sunk wrist-deep in his own guts, shoving things into places, yanking on his pelvic bone, trying to get it to line back up with his spine. All the while Alvar thunking toward him with weary inevitability. It was like something out of a safari special on the Discovery Channel—you know that long shot they love so much, of a lone elephant trundling through a wasteland with no destination in sight? That’s what it felt like, watching him walk. But I knew Alvar could move like a frightened spider if he wanted.
Why doesn’t he? Is it just scarier this way?
Jackie screamed again. She was trying to make words: “No” or “stop” or “help”—but they kept getting cut off. Muffled by something. Like she was drowning and I could only hear the screams in the brief span between waves.
Up now. Up. Now.
But no matter how much willpower I put into it, one of my legs just plain refused to work. I managed to push myself upright despite feeling like a bloody Jenga tower in mid-collapse, and ran to Jackie’s rescue.
Well, I guess it was more of a hobble.
The nerves in my spine lit up like Sunset Boulevard, but I made it all the way through the dirt yard, skirted the side of the house, and came out onto the cul-de-sac. It looked like somebody was holding a small rave for tuberculosis patients. A dense mass of emaciated and pasty bodies, all knees and ribs and skulls, jostling for space around some central, unseen point. It was from there—the vortex at the center of this maelstrom of angry, screaming, faceless monstrosities—that Jackie screamed for help.
Stumpy to the rescue.
With my busted leg, I couldn’t even get up enough momentum to barrel into the huddle. Instead I just limped up to the wriggling mass and started prying bodies aside. The Unnoticeables weren’t strong—in fact, they all felt strangely fragile, like a strong wind would just blow them away. But it didn’t matter. There were so many of them. I guess simply trying not to die from Alvar’s axe-blow was using up whatever powers I had, because I had never felt weaker. Like I was punching in a dream. But by staying low, well below the nest of outstretched arms and grasping hands, I managed to push my way in.
Jackie’s screams no longer oscillated between moments of clarity and muffled struggle. Just up ahead, beyond the forest of skinny, colorless legs, the pack condensed. They spilled over one another, all jostling for space, trying to get to Jackie. I finished slithering through the gauntlet of weakly kicking feet and bony knees, then climbed what used to be a teenage boy, still wearing the ratty remains of a bedazzled pair of JNCOs—
Jesus, did he just have terrible taste, or has he really been down here since the ’90s?
—pushed up over his thin avian shoulder blades, slapping away bony hands that scratched and clawed and snatched and …
I was through: perched with one foot on the teenager’s shoulder, the other useless leg dangling across his back. Using both of my hands to steady myself over a bobbing sea of angry bodies, I looked down into the eye of their hurricane. A circle of hands, closing inward from every direction. At their center, just a glimpse—one watery eye, open wide—of Jackie’s face. The rest of her lost behind a wall of clutching fingers, pushing her down, holding her mouth shut.
Smothering her.
Ah, well. Nothing for it.
I let myself fall straight into the cat’s cradle of suffocating hands. My weight broke their grasp, just for a second, but the fingers came flooding back in to fill the space immediately. I hovered over Jackie protectively while dozens of fingertips dug deep scratches into my back. Probing into the still-open wound there, pulling it apart. Reaching into me, into my fat and muscle, worming their way deeper—
I wished Jackie would stop screaming. It was just getting them more worked up.
Then I realized she had.
And it was me screaming now.
A place of stillness. Divorced from body. Please.
Please work. Please work. Pleaseworkplease—
The close air, thick with sweat and stale exhalations, seemed to change texture. It took on a crisp quality. Ozone, maybe. Like what comes out of a freshly opened box of electronics. Sterilized, somehow. Artificial.
That’s because you’re not actually breathing anymore, Kaitlyn.
I opened my eyes and saw Jackie’s face, inches from mine, frozen in a grisly mask of pure terror: her teeth bared, nostrils flaring, eyes bulging …
But she wasn’t moving. Nothing was. The gallery of blurry faces around me, like partially erased portraits, had all gone still. Their hands, seized up like arthritic claws, reached no further.
My place of stillness. Removed from time. Just behind and a little over from this dimension. My physical body was nailed down: held in place by the grip and weight of dozens of Unnoticeables. But my point of view could shift where I willed it, like controlling the camera in a video game. I ducked through the storm of skeletal bodies and panned around at ground level, finally finding what I was looking for …
Carey.
One of his fists was sunk deep into the crotch of the nearest Unnoticeable. The other was cocked back, aimed square at another crotch, paused in mid strike. Both of his filthy black Converse, each more duct-tape than shoe, were—you guessed it—crotch-bound. I guess he had decided that this was his plan. This was how he was going out. Just destroying as many crotches as he could.
I panned back to my own body, and felt a bizarre twinge of pity. It was hard to believe that was me. Hard to believe that I fit into that sad little package. She looked so wretched. Her posture stooped and broken. Her broad shoulders folded against the body beneath her, trying and failing to protect her friend. Her blond hair matted with filth. Her clothes torn, her back bloody. And all these wraiths around her—each pitiful in their own right—pressing down, crushing her with their weight.
It was actually kind of pretty. Like one of those melodramatic Renaissance paintings: everybody just wailing and throwing themselves on the ground, beating their breasts and tearing at their clothing.
Such high drama to them, when in reality they’re all such petty things.
We’re all such petty things.
It’s easy to feel detached when time is optional. It’s so much more peaceful here, in the stillness. I could stay forever, only forever wouldn’t exist, so I wouldn’t even have to worry about that.
But no: I owed that pathetic little blond girl something, and I had to deliver.
I let my brain fuzz out. Kind of like trying to see those Magic Eye paintings—you have to unfocus while still focusing, which is hard to explain, but automatic to do once you understand how. Ghostly images began to spring forth. Faintly glowing silhouettes emanating outward from every body and every object, reflecting all of the potential paths they could take. Most of them ended bloody, with the Unnoticeables—their inherent weakness nullified by their magnitude—tearing the girl (me, that’s me, remember that’s me, it’s so important to remember) and her friend to pieces.
“Nullified?” I don’t think I’ve ever used that word in my life.
So many of the potential pathways ended that same way, but with minute variations. In one path, the girl’s body (my body mine mine) was dragged a few feet away before dismemberment. Another path, and the Unnoticeables kill the friend first, before turning on the girl. In this one they start with her mouth; grubby fingers flooding in like foul water, blocking her airways. In that one they start from her feet—a tug of war that only ends with the splash of blood. But there are always other paths. And they will show themselves if you let them.
A boulder comes loose from above the sunken city and triggers a landslide. The majority of the Unnoticeables, along with the girl and her friend, are crushed. The diffuse remnants of a rogue wave enter the bay and flood the cul-de-sac, leaving all ankle deep in brine. The girl is held facedown, and drowns instead.
Paths upon paths upon paths—an infinitude of images tracing ghost routes across the world.
And then, finally, one stands out from the others.
It is utterly preposterous. There are only four permutations of this possible path. Four! That is how unlikely it is to occur. And yet now it is likely, because I am focusing on its image.
—That’s right, I! I am me me remember me come back to me—
I bring one frame from this alternate reality into our own and splice them together, creating a single jump point—a minute change that cascades forever, transforming everything. Instantly, billions of other pathways emerge. It is tempting, so tempting, to stay here and just watch them. To see how things unfold here, in this peaceful place of observation, rather than down there, in the filth and the pain, where things unfold on you.
But I can’t.
For some reason?
I owe the blond girl. I owe her friend.
(Me. That’s me. Her name is Jackie.)
And I’m out of it. Just the lingering echo of stillness and the smell of ozone.
I immediately regretted everything about that decision.
Jesus Christ there are fingers burrowing into my flesh like worms.
Somewhere at the edge of this orgy of horror—I couldn’t see anything but soapstone-colored hands, swollen knuckles, dirty fingernails, glimpses of yellow teeth, blurry faces—I felt a commotion building. The screams of the Unnoticeables were changing. Cutting off abruptly, or else rapidly fading away like a passing motorcycle engine. Then the bodies parted, and I understood why.
Alvar was thrashing through the crowd of Unnoticeables, roaring like an enraged bear and clawing at something on his back that he couldn’t quite reach. His arms were too broad and his neck too thick for that kind of mobility. He thrashed and spun, kicked and punched, jumped and howled—all while trampling the gathered Unnoticeables like weeds.
Zang was mounted up between Alvar’s shoulders like a cowboy, his limp legs fluttering behind him like a flag. One hand was firmly twisted in Alvar’s long, dirty black hair. The other held something small and white that jutted out from the back of Alvar’s neck. Zang was laughing and vigorously wrenching it about like a joystick.
It was a piece of Alvar’s spine.
I saw all of this in the precious few seconds after the grasping hands cleared away, but before the butt came crashing down on my face.
Alvar had smacked one of the Unnoticeables aside without a thought, and sent her flailing through the air right at me. I still had Jackie’s head clutched in my lap, and my instincts were to cover her face, when I should have been protecting my own. I caught a full butt to the head and went down.
After the pulses of dizziness ebbed, I shoved the Unnoticeable off of me. She didn’t protest. Alvar had broken her neck.
Jesus, he didn’t even mean to.
Jackie had fared better than me, at least in the flying corpse-butt arena. She was laying facedown almost exactly where I’d left her, apparently untouched by Alvar and his tornado of bodies. But she wasn’t moving. I crawled over and put my fingers to her neck. Her pulse was strong and steady. I couldn’t see any wounds. Maybe she’d passed out from lack of air.
Or maybe just from sheer terror. Do you blame her?
Zang and his furious mount were rampaging through the remains of a dilapidated ranch house across the street. If we were going to move, now was the time. I yanked on Jackie’s arm, but I didn’t have the strength to drag her.
“Carey,” I yelled. “Help!”
An answering groan from beneath a pile of twitching bodies. Carey dug himself out and flopped on the pavement, looking about how I felt.
“Over here!” I called.
He swiveled his head all around, looking straight at me for a second … and then past.
Oh, right.
“Kaitlyn?” Carey asked. “That you?”
“Yes, and Jackie,” I answered. “She’s hurt and I can’t move her.”
“Move yourself then,” he said, and spat blood onto the cracked pavement. “Come toward the sound of my voice. We’ll try to find cover and figure out what the fuck just happened. If Zang’s still around—”
“He is,” I said. “But there’s this big guy with an axe and they’re fighting across the street…”
“Holy shit!” He laughed. “Alvar’s still kickin’? I mean, I don’t know what would ever stop him, but I haven’t seen that bastard in fore—”
“This isn’t a high school reunion, asshole! Come help me with Jackie!”
“Hey, wait.” Carey peered in my general direction, his eyes trying but never quite landing on me. “You can see down here?”
Crap. I don’t have time to explain this. I don’t even know how to explain it.
“Yes, but it’s complicated. It’s not like normal—”
“No, I got it,” Carey said. He scowled at nothing in particular. “It makes sense, actually.”
“It … does?”
“Well, all right,” he said. “We got a pair of eyes now. Guide me over to you.”
He crawled toward me, patting the ground in front of him first to make sure it was solid.
“It’s safe,” I said. “Just a few little cracks here and there. Nothing in your way.”
“Okay,” he said, but he just kept doing it—pawing at the ground like a curious dog.
“Hurry! Christ.” I struggled to my feet and limped over to him.
Hey, a limp’s a step up from a hobble! I guess the leg’s healing. That’s … something.
I grabbed his arm and he flinched. I helped him stand. His leather jacket was soaked with what, best-case scenario, was just stagnant seawater. Beneath it, his arms felt shockingly thin. The jacket was his armor; I’d hardly ever seen him with it off. He felt so much smaller than he looked.
I guided us back toward Jackie, keeping an eye on where I’d last seen Alvar and Zang. They weren’t there anymore. In fact, the house wasn’t there, either. Half the street was gone, too. Not destroyed, just gone. Lost in shadow. I checked behind us: same deal. Even with my so-called night vision at its best, I’d only been able to see for a hundred feet or so down here. Now the surroundings faded to black in only half that. And the distance was shrinking.
“Shit,” I said. “We need to hurry. I think I’m losing my sight. Everything’s going black around the edges.”
Carey paused. I pulled at his arm. His eyes were all pupil.
“Come on, we have to go.…”
“You sure it’s your sight going?” he said, so quietly I might not have heard him if not for my augmented hearing.
Oh, I guess that’s still working? Weird …
“Yeah, I could see across the street a minute ago and now it’s just … black.…”
Kaitlyn, you idiot.
I could spot the trick if I watched the edges: the point where the blackness just touched the pavement. If I looked there, I could make out their feet moving as they slowly marched toward us. The world wasn’t going dark. The tar men were surrounding us. An encroaching tide of darkness, closing in from every side. Now that I was paying attention, I could even discern the faintest glint of metal on the faces of the ones closest to us. Those gears they had in place of eyes were locking together, and spinning up.
It sounded like an old steam whistle—a sound I only knew from Looney Tunes reruns. You know, that cartoon hand reaching out and yanking a chain; animated clouds coughing out of a bright red cylinder as it howls its tune, announcing the end of a shift.
But beneath that sound, there was another, larger tone. I imagined a massive oil tanker clipping its hull against the rocks. The grinding of metal on stone. It made me a little sick—just that slight vertigo you get when you stand up too fast. But Carey went down like he’d been Tased. He slipped right out of my arms and shocked his head on the pavement. Other tar men were now picking up the song, adding to the chorus. The sound bounced off the walls of the cavernous space, amplified, built on itself. Now the feeling in my gut graduated into full blown nausea. The world was a tilt-a-whirl. I lost my footing. My knees felt like jelly. It was hard, but not yet impossible to stand.
We still had time to run. But Carey was writhing on the ground with his hands over his ears, and I couldn’t move Jackie on my own. I grabbed one of his arms to try to drag him up, but he fought me away, immediately clamping his hands over the sides of his head the second he was free. I grabbed the collar of his jacket instead, curling my fingers into the rough-worn leather there. I tried to pull, but my stupid legs went sideways again.
The tar men were advancing on us glacially. But still advancing.
I’ve always been proud of myself for my strength. Not like other girls. Not weak or fragile. And now, when it actually counts, I’m too god damn weak. Even if I could stand, I could never drag both of them out of here. I’m not strong enough to—
But it’s not strength. Not really. That’s what Zang said, right? It’s not about how big my muscles are, or how exhausted I am. It’s about energy. Energy that doesn’t care whether it’s used in one big burst right now, or eked out slowly over a span of laborious hours. It’s always there. Right there. In that still place, just waiting for me to—
I felt my grip strengthen, the leather of Carey’s jacket squealing in protest as I twisted it into my fists. I planted my feet, prepared to heave with all my might, and found we were already moving. It felt so strange. Like I’d set myself on autopilot and stepped away. There was no physical effort associated with the feat. I just thought about dragging him and it was happening. My biceps weren’t even bulging beneath the thin fabric of my shirt.
How far could I take this? Could I be as strong, as fast as Zang?
The thought was a little exhilarating, and a lot terrifying. I settled for having enough strength to drag one wriggling, aging punk rocker and—god willing—one skinny, unconscious actress.
The tar men sounded like a million rusty nails being dragged across a chalkboard that was being fed into a garbage compactor. But as soon as I tapped into the still place to siphon its energy, most of the vertigo retreated. I still felt crappy, but it had devolved from “standing on the deck of a ship during a violent storm,” to “laying in bed after six drinks.” I lost my balance, corrected, veered off course, and stumbled, but I finally managed to get us over beside Jackie. I hooked my fingers through her shirt and around her bra. It was the best purchase I could think to get with one hand, and she was too unconscious for this to hurt. She’d probably complain about her boobs for the next few weeks, but that’s a small price to pay.
Energy. Not created or destroyed. Not bound by time. A shimmering pool that does and will always exist, just waiting for you to take a sip.
Deep breath.
Take a sip.
Holy hell I’m doing it, I’m really moving them both!
… and now the little problem of where to go.
I’d been so focused on getting us out of here that I didn’t stop to consider what that actually meant. I scanned the perimeter of darkness closing in on us. It was broken only by a few pairs of brass-colored halos—the tar men’s gears whirring away. The blackness was absolute. Even if the tar men were standing perfectly shoulder-to-shoulder, little gaps should have opened as they shifted. Tiny spaces between their legs and arms where I could glimpse the street behind them. But there were none, and that meant …
It wasn’t a circle of tar men surrounding us. It was a flood. There were ranks upon ranks of them, all crowded up on each other so tightly that they blocked out the whole world.
There can’t be that many down here. They wouldn’t fit. Where were they all coming from?
I pictured dark ichor flowing out from wounds in the rocks, pooling on the pavement, rising up to take shape. I pictured black soldiers in formation on the sea floor, just waiting there, silent, at the bottom of the ocean, until the moment they were called. I pictured what would happen to us when there was nowhere left to run—hundreds of acidic arms reaching out, our flesh running away in pink streams.
The circle was maybe forty feet in diameter now, with us at its center.
I almost laughed.
All those health classes we had to attend back in junior high, warning us about the dangers of smoking. Those gross slide shows of goopy and scarred lungs. They worked so well that I’d never even thought about touching a cigarette. And yet if I’d only been a smoker, I could just—
Wait.
Carey, you idiot. You better not have—
I worked my fingers free of his collar—my nails had actually pierced through the leather in a few places—and frantically rifled through his pockets. He didn’t make it easy: kicking, twisting, and writhing in pain, even with his hands clamped so hard against his ears that his fingertips were turning blue. His coat held a museum of worrisome objects. Some fuzzy, some spiky—one pocket was inexplicably wet. Not with seawater, but some kind of lubricant. I forced my mind to stop considering the implications, and focus on the search. Then I found it, stowed in the little coin pocket of his blue jeans.
A faded, scratched, and generally mangled flip-top lighter. Once upon time, something had been embossed on its surface, but it had long since worn away. Just a handful of letters and squiggly lines remained. All that time stumbling through the dark, and he never thought to use his lighter.
Maybe he knew it wouldn’t really help, but just draw unwanted attention.
Maybe he was just an idiot.
It didn’t matter. Right now, I could kiss him, if I wasn’t absolutely positive that would net me some kind of disease.
I knelt down beside him, covering he and Jackie with my body as best I could, and flicked the flint. It sparked, but didn’t catch. The tar men were ten, maybe twenty feet away and still closing. Reaching out for us, probing the air with their stubby fingers. Already stooping to pour over our bodies like lava.
Flick.
Flick.
Catch.
A weak little flame bobbed in a sea of black. It only cast a small aura of light that was almost immediately swallowed by the gloom.
It wouldn’t have helped, Carey, if that’s any consolation.
I said a little prayer to an uncertain deity, and tossed the lighter underhand—so gently, please don’t go out, little flame—toward the gathering black.
It bounced on the cement, cartwheeled through the air, and impacted one of the tar men at knee height. A single tiny spark hovered there, embedded in the liquid of its body. Then a pool of fire spread out in every direction, coloring in limbs that I couldn’t even distinguish seconds ago with dancing orange and flickering blue. The tar man spun slowly in place—just a second of something like human confusion there in its body language—and then erupted like a roman candle. The flames funneled upward, the tar man just a pillar of twisting fire at the base of a burning tornado.
More tar men followed suit, each catching fire and then exploding with an intake of air that sounded like fabric whipping in hurricane gales. In seconds the circle of black had transformed into a solid wall of blinding light and searing heat. I gathered Jackie’s and Carey’s faces closer to me, shoving them into my chest and stomach. I could feel the outer layer of my skin beginning to sear—that uneasy hot flush of a bad sunburn—and then, thankfully, quiet. Darkness.
The inferno ended as abruptly as it began, flash-burning through its fuel source in mere seconds. I could smell my own singed hair and feel the sickly heat of minor burns building in my exposed arms and neck. I did a quick pat down of Jackie, Carey, and myself, extinguishing smoldering spots on the frayed cuffs of Carey’s jeans and feeling Jackie again for a pulse.
Doublethump. Still there.
“Holy shit,” Carey said. His pupils had gone from encompassing his whole eye to just tiny pinpricks of black in the middle. “Was that god?”
“No,” I said. “Just a lot of tar men going away at once.”
“I have the biggest erection right now,” he said.
I checked. He did not.
“Oh shit, did you use my lighter for that?” he asked.
I laughed, but he looked oddly serious.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s probably a pool of molten metal now, but I figured you wouldn’t mind, what with saving your life and all.”
He mulled it over, then finally shrugged.
“At least she went out big,” he said.
My night vision never had been compromised. With the tar men gone, I could see all the way across the little cul-de-sac now. It was littered with piles of smoking meat.
“Oh my god,” I said. “The Unnoticeables! I didn’t even think—they were in that crowd when it went up, I—”
“Stop,” Carey said. “If there were that many tar men around, the poor bastards would’ve been puddles by the time you lit up anyway. And even if they were still kicking, those were just shells. You didn’t kill them. Jie did that job a long time ago. Don’t waste effort feeling guilty about it now. We’ve got a lot more to do before we earn that luxury.”
“Right,” I said. I shuffled this atrocity to the back of my mind, where it joined all the others. If I was lucky, I’d live long enough to be plagued by nightmares for the rest of my life.
If I ever slept again.
“I don’t see Zang and Alvar,” I said.
“Fucking good,” Carey said. “We’ve got a narrow window of quiet and we’re going to use it.”
“No we’re not,” I said.
“What?”
“We aren’t doing anything. You’re worse than useless down here. I’m sorry,” I said, seeing his face twist up. “You know it’s true. You can barely crawl. And we just blew the element of surprise, so now I have to move fast. I can’t do that with you.”
“Don’t you fucking dare to presume to worry about me,” Carey spat. “I’ve been doing this since you were—”
“I’m not worried about you,” I said. “I’m worried about Jackie. She’s still unconscious. You think I can do this while guiding you and dragging her? If I’m going to finish this thing, I can’t be responsible for either of you. I need you to stay here. I need you to protect her.”
“I can provide you with dozens of witnesses that say I’m a crap babysitter,” Carey said. But there was resignation in his voice.
“I know, but you’re all I’ve got,” I said. “If you don’t stay, then I can’t go.”
“Well god damn,” Carey said. He spat on the ground and wiped at his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket. “All these years spent getting here, and now I’m gonna miss the headlining act. Ain’t that just a bitch?”
I smiled. He couldn’t see it. I put my hand on his shoulder. He nodded.
I took his arm and snagged Jackie by her bra-harness, then pulled them both into the nearest ruin. I found a kitchen counter that hadn’t decayed as badly as the rest of the house, and left them tucked beneath it. The cabinet doors had rotted away, but it was the best I could do. When I left, Carey had Jackie’s head in his lap. He stroked her hair in a shockingly non-perverse way.
He must’ve forgotten I could see him.
I stepped out into the ruined cul-de-sac, now dotted with cancerous stains and smoking bones. At the far end of the sunken suburb, beyond where the semicircle opened out into a narrow road, one intact gray building squatted like a stubborn old man who refused to vacate his crumbling home, even as the bulldozers were closing in. I scanned the broken windows of the houses on either side of me for signs of life, but found nothing.
So what’s stopping you, Kaitlyn? Just waltz on up, knock on the door, ask if the angels can come out to play.
The air was thick with waterlogged wood and salt, undercut with notes of barbecue. It was sickeningly appealing. Turns out, put a gun to my head, I can’t smell the difference between grilled pork chops and seared human flesh.
That’s a little fact I could have gone forever without knowing.
At least my legs were working again. My back still hurt—a diagonal slash of pain running from below my right shoulder blade up to the left side of my neck. I felt around and found a raw, sensitive divot where Alvar’s axe had struck. But it wasn’t bleeding anymore.
I should not be healing this fast.
I should not be healing at all.
Car accidents don’t kill you. Axe wounds don’t kill you. Infernos don’t kill you. Exploding other-dimensional angels don’t kill you. So why are you standing here, afraid of what’s inside that building?
I laughed a little.
It was true: I now had more in common with the monsters than I did humans. Let’s go say hi to some new friends.
* * *
She was maybe sixty years old, but wearing it well. Smooth, clear skin, save for a couple of deep grooves in the forehead and on either side of the nose. A handful of delicate crow’s feet branching out from her eyes. Salt-and-pepper hair tied up in a matronly bun. She wore a faded pink sweater, all pilled up, but clean and unwrinkled. Her pupils were black pools that looked out onto deep space. She was an Empty One. An unfeeling human suit, draped over pure absence.
And yet, I swear she was surprised when she opened the door.
What? I went with Plan A: I knocked.
“H-hello?” she said.
“Hi.” I gave her a little half-wave. “I’m Kaitlyn. I guess I’m here to kill you all.”
She looked me up and down—decently muscled blond girl, a bit on the taller side, but wet, bloody, dirty, and desperate. I could tell she immediately wrote me off as a non-threat.
“I can’t say we were expecting you all the way down here,” the woman said. She checked over her shoulder, waiting for approval from somebody, and apparently got it. “But I suppose you should come in.”
She stepped aside, opened the door a bit wider. There were no lights on in the building. There was no need. The only things down here were at home in the dark.
From the inside, I could tell what the building had originally been: a big central lounge for a gated housing community. The reception area still stood mostly intact—the only signs of damage some ceiling tiles that had collapsed and spilled insulation all over the floor. To either side of the desk were two hallways that hadn’t fared as well. A sign above one read “gymnasium.” The other was illegible. Behind the reception area, the foyer opened onto a large, hexagonal main room. Lounge furniture scattered all about—brown leather recliners, wracked with age-splits that sprouted pillowy yellow stuffing like cave fungi; a massive white sectional gone colorless with dust and mold; fancy oaken end tables knocked over and pushed against the walls. There were floor-to-ceiling windows all along the west side of the room. Broken now, and looking out on nothing but still black water and sea rock.
At the center of the room, a small crowd gathered around a massive gray-brick fireplace. It seemed like they were all Empty Ones, save for three people: an old man laying facedown on the floor, and a pair of handsome Indian guys. I say “old,” but it’s not like he was ancient. Or maybe he’d just taken really, really good care of himself. His skin was still smooth, wrinkles only creeping in at the edges of his eyes and mouth. A neatly trimmed beard gone entirely gray, maybe before his time. He wore a dark blue jumpsuit that looked ambiguously military. The younger guys were both just … beautiful. Their faces expert testimony to the value of good genetics. Just looking at them, you didn’t get the sense that they worked for it—primped and preened and moisturized daily—they simply were beautiful. Sweeping jawlines and strong foreheads. There was something in the set of their eyes that said they were family. One sported a single prominent dimple, even when he wasn’t smiling. Which he wasn’t, obviously. He stared blankly ahead, lips set in a perfect line. I wondered what he was staring at, before I remembered that he couldn’t see a damn thing down here. The other young guy was a bit on the waify side. Not skinny—not exactly—but his thin wrists and long neck gave him the look of a philosopher. He looked like he was thinking important thoughts, even as he sat there on the edge of the fireplace, quietly weeping. Dimples lifted one arm—still not so much as a blink—and rested it on the lip of a large set of gears.
The gears.
Jackie, eyes blank, hand outstretched, feeding herself to the whirring cogs already lubricated with blood—
These weren’t nearly as ornate as the set I’d seen in the compound’s chapel, back when all this began. There had been dozens of gears in that machine, all polished and gleaming. Here there were just two huge interlocking wheels, seemingly hewn from the same dark rock as the cliff walls. No clever hidden mechanism to activate these: just a single crank. But I could see a litany of large, dark stains painting the edges of the cogs. They did the same job.
The Empty Ones were a veritable melting pot: There was the elderly lady who first let me in; a clean-faced blond guy in an immaculate pinstriped suit—even his understated tie-pin certainly worth more than everything I owned; three Asian girls done up in a style somewhere between punk, raver, hippie, and gothic schoolgirl—lots of neon hair dye, dangling earrings, torn tights under plaid skirts, spiked bracelets and combat boots; a middle-aged black guy with a beer gut poking out between his rumpled cargo shorts and T-shirt; and a man (at least I assumed it was a man) in a full firefighter’s uniform—respirator, helmet, and all. I could see nothing of his face. A dull red axe dangled from his hand.
The worst was the little girl, still awkward child-skinny but just starting to grow into it. She was feigning adulthood, wearing it like a costume. Hair in a ponytail. Too-tight jeans and T-shirt, clunky sneakers, colorful bracelets marching up one wrist. It broke my heart to look at her and see nothing in those blue eyes.
She smiled at me. They all instantly matched the gesture. There was something unsettlingly similar in their expressions. Their faces might all be different—teeth in varying hues of yellow, lips different sizes—but that was the same smile. Too wide at the edges—so strained it looked painful. Eyes staring intently, without a hint of joy in them.
“Amazing,” said a woman’s voice. She stepped out from behind the pair of immense stone gears. “How did you get past my watchers? And the tar men?”
“Oh, they’re all dead,” I said.
“And Alvar?” she asked.
“Last I saw, Zang was riding him like a mechanical bull.”
“Zang,” she hissed. She snapped her teeth a half dozen times. The sharp clack of enamel on enamel made me wince.
The old black guy bust out laughing, his unblinking eyes never leaving me. He stopped abruptly after a few seconds, when he realized the others weren’t joining him.
“You,” Jie said, “are a much bigger pain in the ass than I gave you credit for.”
“Thanks?”
Her smile lapsed for just a second. Her eyes rolled up in her head. Then she was back.
“So what’s the plan now?” she asked.
I could tell her adopted persona was trying for sexy and playful. She twisted her knees inward, cocked her hips, twirled her hair, and bit her lip. Probably drove middle-aged perverts mad. But it was like watching bad CGI try to be sexy. The poses were memorized, but the movements in between were stilted and uncertain.
“I left the planning stage behind a long time ago,” I said.
“This is the thing that breaks the tools of the Mechanic?” Jie said. Her voice lost its coquettish quality. Featureless and barren. Wind blowing over salt flats. “This is the thing that killed Marco? This is unimpressive. This is small and blind. This came to its death and it does not even know why.”
The Empty Ones all went as still as statues. I felt the air thicken. That moment of unnerving silence when a big cat freezes just before pouncing.
The waifish guy began moaning, a constant hum that seemed to come more from his chest than his mouth. He knit his fingers in his hair and pulled. His heels bounced nervously. The Empty Ones paid him no mind. They studied body language, but they never truly understood it. I did, though, loud and clear. He was getting up his nerve. He was going to make a move. He just needed the chance.
“Wow, you guys sure talk a lot,” I said, channeling every cocky Hollywood douchebag I’d ever waited on.
Jie bent over, the movement so fast I could barely see it, and gagged. Both of her arms shot out to the side like she was being drawn and quartered. She froze like that for a second, then broke and leapt on top of me. Fingernails clawing into my breast bone. Her mannequin smile still etched in place, frothy drool eking out the edges. The other Empty Ones were only a fraction of a second behind her. Their hands grabbed my legs, pulled my hair; their teeth snapped at my face, nipped my skin.
I struggled, but couldn’t shake them. The problem wasn’t strength, or even speed, but reaction time. I couldn’t think as fast as they could move.
I kicked the tubby black guy off my legs and bucked my hips, throwing Jie off-balance, then I twisted, trying to crawl free, but the lady in the pink sweater clutched my face in both hands and began rapidly head-butting me. Everything went blurry. Then something cold and hard hit the floor—I felt the impact in my teeth. A frigid sensation went cascading up my arm, broken glass inside my nerves.
The firefighter had brought his axe down, neatly severing my right hand. Blood gushed out rhythmically, matching the beat of my heart.
And then, finally, the waif spotted his chance. The Empty Ones were all so lost in this feeding frenzy—feeding on me, oh god, my hand, don’t think, don’t think about that—they didn’t see him lean forward and touch Dimples’ face. There was caution in the gesture, a tenderness that drifted toward fear. He needed to see if Dimples was okay, but dreaded the answer. I’d had them pegged as related, at first. Cousins. Brothers, even. That one touch told me I was all wrong. Dimples blinked hard and looked around, like he’d only been daydreaming and somebody had just said his name. They couldn’t have seen a thing in that darkness, but instantly knew the other by touch. They embraced for just a moment, then began blindly crawling away from the commotion.
The air shattered.
Light so bright it would’ve blinded you on a sunny afternoon—down here, after all this time in the dark, it was like a supernova. If any of us had been using our actual pupils, our vision would’ve been utterly obliterated. We’d be seeing nothing but ghostly, luminous spots for days. That’s probably how it would be for the two Indian guys, who made it halfway to the reception desk before the angel arrived. The Empty Ones and I fared better. We all stopped fighting and stared right into that ball of light, just a few feet in diameter, hovering in total stillness above the prone body of the bearded man in the jumpsuit.
“The choice is made!” Jie screamed.
The Empty Ones fell to the ground. They beat their fists on the floor, wailed like Pentecostals, kicked their legs in the air like they were pedaling invisible bikes. Eyes bugged out, tongues wagged—the chubby black guy bit his clean off, but didn’t seem to mind, or even notice—fingers broke as they tried to claw straight into the cement floor.
They had forgotten all about me.
Jie was standing a few feet away, her back to me, reaching out toward the angel with one hand while the other twitched and flopped at her side like a dying bird. Her whole body was shuddering so violently that she seemed to blur about the edges.
The jumpsuit guy lying beneath the angel writhed weakly for a moment, plucking at the idea of consciousness. Maybe he was just in shock and couldn’t process it right away, but he didn’t seem all that surprised to see the angel hovering there. He cocked his head, intently listening to something I couldn’t hear above the static.
The sound the angel emits, but only while you’re looking at it.
I used to think it was like riotous waves carrying loads of tumbled glass, crashing on the shore. Just random noise. But now there was something more in there—in between the screaming and the wind—that was almost discernible. Almost like voices. A radio broadcast just two ticks off the proper frequency. If only you could turn the knob, tune it in, the song would come in clear. The impossible angles that churned incessantly at the angel’s core were likewise less impenetrable. I remember that feeling when I first saw them—barely glimpsed, oversaturated, and hidden in a distant haze—they still instilled a sense of confusion and terror. They didn’t line up right. They didn’t move in a way that the human brain could process. It was something so far beyond us that, when confronted with its existence, our logic centers shut down and the animal brain took control.
Run, the animal brain said. Just run.
But it was like I could see farther into the angel now, to the place where those angles finally connected up. And seeing how they connected, the fear subsided. I didn’t understand it, not quite yet, but for the first time I got the sense that it could be understood.
If only I got closer.
No time like the present.
I rolled onto my back, kicked my feet up into the air, then snapped forward in one smooth motion. I’d practiced it a thousand times. Hollywood loves that little hand-spring. It’s stuntwoman 101. I was on my feet and running instantly, leaping past Jie, toward the angel, into the angel.…
And then I wasn’t. Something had me by the back of the neck, holding my full weight just inches off the ground and shaking me gently, like a naughty puppy about to be scolded.
“Not this time, abomination,” Jie said.
Her fingernails broke through my skin.
So close. I was so close.
I pried at her fingers, I kicked at her shins, I twisted and wriggled and when that made no difference, I spat and swore.
Jie didn’t even grace my efforts with a laugh. She stood stock still, silently squeezing until I could feel my bones start to give.
“Gang’s all here!” Zang said, from somewhere behind me, then Jie’s grip released and I went sprawling to the floor.
I knew better than to waste my one chance by doing something stupid like thinking. I crawled toward the angel as fast as I could. The old man beneath it was clutching his face. He’d doubled over into a ball, rocking in place. Something was happening behind his interlocked fingers. Light spilled out around the edges.
No time. No time for Zang. No time for the man. No time for the Indian guys. No time for Jie or anything else. No time at all.
I reached up, my fingers brushing against the fragile surface of the light. Just the barest resistance there, like thin ice formed over a deep lake. I pushed, and it cracked. I felt myself being pulled along through my own body. My essence leaving my brain, flowing down through my chest, along my arms, pulsing into my fingertips, and beyond, out into the cold, white void.
Before I disappeared entirely, I looked back at Zang and Jie. He had her from behind, both of his legs locked around her midsection, his thumbs digging into the spaces where her eyes had been. He saw me looking and quickly withdrew one thumb. He held it up at me and flashed a gigantic smile.
“Kill us all!” he said, with the same chipper tone you’d use to wish somebody a good day.
And then I saw nothing.