by Rysa Walker
Ben shakes his head. “I’ve played a few first-person shooters over at Chad’s place.”
“Overwatch,” Dani says, holding her hand up to high-five him across the table.
He leaves her hanging for a second and then returns it. “Yeah, once or twice. Others, too. I never had much time for it, to be honest.”
“Me, either,” Tucker says. “Played a bit of World of Warcraft back in high school. The past few years, though, if I play anything, it’s solitaire on my phone.”
“Well, we do know a few things,” Luke says. “First, we can assume it’s multiplayer. Otherwise, what’s the point of this meeting, right? I’m thinking it’s not massive multiplayer, because even though we’ve got a ton of NPCs running around, we’ve only encountered a handful who seem to be real. It might be a role-playing game, although if so, I think it has to be random character assignment. Because if I’d been given choices, there’s no way in hell I’d be married to Carly and working at the plastics factory.”
“Sounds like you’ve played a bit,” Julie says.
“Some. But…it does kind of shape how you think. Like I said before, I tend to make some parts of my life into a game. Makes it easier to get through the day.”
Julie nods. “Rewarding yourself for hitting certain objectives.”
“I guess. Or just avoiding having to think about my failing marriage and my boring-ass job.”
“Stress avoidance is a reward, too,” Julie says. “And I think that leads us to one of the things we need to figure out about this game. Is it one with rewards? Are there quests and side-quests? Key goals and objectives? Or is it more like The Sims?”
Daisy looks a little amused. “Do you play?”
“Occasionally,” Julie says. “I like Skyrim. A few others. And I played Dungeons and Dragons with a group of friends back in the day. But the notion that we exist inside a simulation, and that there might be multiple simulations going on at the same time, is a theological debate. Maybe God is just a dungeon master or an alien with an infinite number of games playing simultaneously. That’s not the kind of speculation the folks in my congregation would approve of. I’m sure Scott Jenkins would even call it heresy. But it’s a good mental exercise to think about things like free will—” She stops, giving them a nervous smile, and Tucker notices that her eyes linger for a moment on Dani. “Sorry. I tend to go off on tangents when I’m tired. To get back to the point, though, I think we have to assume that this is a game with objectives and end goals.”
“Why?” Ben frowns. “Why do we have to assume that?”
“Because otherwise, what’s the point?” Luke says. “It’s the same as with real life. If there’s no objective, no purpose, we might as well just end it. Assuming the game lets us end it. Maybe we’re stuck in purgatory or hell, or whatever. And yeah, I can’t believe I’m the one saying that instead of the Reverend. I’m barely even religious.”
“Not all preachers believe in heaven and hell,” Julie says, “let alone purgatory.”
“No heaven or hell?” Dani rolls her eyes. “Where’s the fun in that? It’s like a season of Survivor where no one gets voted off the island.”
Tucker can tell something about that comment bothers Daisy. She gives her sister an annoyed look and then says, “We heal faster than normal, or at least some of us do. There seems to be some evidence, based on Barb Starrett, that at least the not-real characters can be resurrected. So maybe those are rewards. Because as Luke said, if there are no goals, no way to win, no way to break free, what’s the point? We’d just be…prisoners. I think we need to assume we’re in a game with a finish line.
“Or maybe an escape hatch,” Tucker says. “We haven’t checked all of the roads. There could be a physical way out of here, and if so, our goal should be finding it. But we also need to find Chase and Luke’s baby.”
“And…we need to at least check on Marybeth,” Daisy adds. “I know what you said, Ben, but…”
“You think I want MB to be…gone?” Ben asks angrily. “Or not real? If Dani says she came down to the bonfire, then we need to check. But I know what I saw. And either way, my first priority is—”
“Chase,” Tucker says. “Absolutely. So, we have three objectives. First, look for a way out of town. There are only a few roads leading out, even if you count dirt and gravel. I’ve got detailed town maps, the paper kind, in my cruiser, so I can handle that. Second, find Chase and Aali. We’ll all be on the lookout, obviously, but that clearly needs to fall mostly to Luke and Ben, since you’ll have a better idea where to look. You’re going to need a vehicle, though—”
Luke cuts him off. “Carly’s car is at my place. I want to check there again anyway, so me and Ben can walk over and get it once we’re done here.”
Tucker nods. “And finally, we need to check on MB, although I’d change that to a general check through the town. Two hours ago, we had no idea that Luke knew about any of this. There could be others. I think we should split into three groups.”
Daisy’s expression grows uneasy, but whatever she was about to say is cut off by Dani’s dramatic sigh. “Which means I’m stuck with the Rev. No offense.”
“Not necessarily.” Daisy looks over at Tucker. “I guess Julie could go with you, and I’ll—”
“Oh, puh-lease.” Dani gives her sister a sly grin. “You and Tucker have that whole afterglow thing going on. It was cute for a little while, but I’m about maxed out on adorable. Julie and I will be fine.”
Daisy’s face turns a deep shade of pink, and Tucker feels a blush creeping up his own neck. He could cheerfully throttle Dani right now. On the other hand, the comment is actually more like Dani Gray than most of what she’s said since she came through the door.
“We’ll be fine,” Julie echoes, holding Dani’s gaze. “It will give us a chance to talk.”
The first rays of sunlight are peeking in the windows as they pile the dishes into the sink. Daisy glances up at the clock over the stove. “Five twenty? Is that correct?”
Julie confirms the time on her watch and says, “Yeah. Looks like the sun is a bit ahead of schedule.”
“Definitely.” Luke looks out the window over the kitchen door. “I usually get up around this time. It’s still dark until about six this time of year.”
He opens the door and steps outside. Tucker follows. The sun isn’t quite above the horizon yet, but the lower half of the sky is now a deep blue with a streak of pinkish orange just above the rows of corn.
The early arrival of the sun isn’t the oddest thing in the sky, however. Even more strange is the shifting nature of the light. A black porous cloud hangs directly above them, with small chunks of color shifting in and out of focus.
It takes Tucker a moment to realize it’s not an actual cloud. “Those are…birds,” he says.
Luke looks up. “Holy fuck. I’ve never seen that many.”
The others join them on the deck. Daisy tugs on Tucker’s arm and nods to the west, away from the rising sun. While they’re harder to see against the darker backdrop, birds cover that part of the sky as well. He turns slowly to get the full view. The birds hover, thousands of them, for as far as he can see.
“I guess the marquee at the Hart wasn’t lying,” Daisy says.
Ben leans back against the deck railing. “What’s really weird is that they look almost…peaceful. It’s kind of hypnotic.”
“Not if you watch horror movies,” Daisy says. “It’s not just The Birds, either. I keep remembering that scene from The Dark Half. Sparrows, not crows, but they ripped the bad guy to pieces and carried him off to hell.”
“Psychopomps.” Julie laughs softly at their questioning looks. “Many cultures have legends about beings that carry souls to the afterlife. They’re called psychopomps—soul guides. Swarms of birds are fairly common. They don’t generally rip the soul to shreds in the legends, but…I don’t think we can assume these birds are friendly, even if they look peaceful right now. Ben and Luke might want to take Dan
i’s car instead of walking.”
Dani pulls the keys from her pocket and holds them out. “Good luck. Like I said, that tire is crap. You may end up walking anyway.”
The six of them go back through the house and out the front door, moving slowly and watching the skies as they approach the vehicles. A trio of birds dips down lazily toward Ben as he walks over to grab his gun from Tucker’s house, but it’s less an attack than a casual taunt. They caw merrily when he ducks and then head back up to join the rest of the flock.
Daisy is walking ahead with Dani, so Tucker hangs back for a moment to speak with Julie.
“You sure you’re okay with this?” he asks, nodding toward Dani.
Julie nods. “Regardless of how I may feel about Scott Jenkins, Marybeth is a member of my congregation, too. I need to check. As for Dani, it’s possible that she’s real or at least a friendly. And if not…” Julie tips her hand toward him, and he sees the little flashlight-pepper-spray combo that Daisy had noted on the counter earlier. “Just hope it works on NPCs.”
Tucker slides into the car. Daisy is waiting on the passenger side, watching miserably as the other cars pull away from the curb.
“You okay?” he asks.
Daisy nods. “Yeah. But I can’t shake the feeling that this is a mistake. Splitting up, I mean.”
“Divide and conquer, right?”
“Maybe. But it never seems to work that way in the movies, does it?”
Three
LUKE
Luke glances uneasily at the black cloud of crows circling above the Sorento. Twice now, when he’s slowed down to make a turn, one of them has broken from the flock to divebomb the tires.
“Maybe we should head up to the Grimshaw place first.” Ben’s eyes have been fixed on the old house since they got in the car. “You said you already checked your place. And…Chase is up there. I know he is.”
“This piece of junk won’t make it up that hill, Ben. It doesn’t even have all-wheel drive. We’ll be lucky if Carly’s Acura makes it.”
Another feathery black bomb zips down from the sky. This one, however, miscalculates. There’s a thud and a tiny bump as the Sorento’s tires flatten the creature.
“Good,” Luke says. “Any of you other fuckers in the mood to play kamikaze?”
He can see the downed crow in the rearview mirror. Was it the same bird who sat on his deck the previous morning? The odds seem slim given that there are thousands of birds circling the town.
This time yesterday, he had been clocking in at the plastics plant, pushing through the tall metal turnstile. Listening to the officious little beep and whirr of the bars as the next person followed him inside. Looking forward to seeing Kyle later. Dreading the confrontation with Carly. Aside from that, it had started out as an ordinary fun-filled day of shoving little bits of plastic into the chute.
Things got weird fast, though. Anytime he thinks about work, all he can see is the bloody handprint on the inside of the chute. A woman’s handprint. One long streak, as if the hand had been struggling to gain purchase on the smooth metal surface. And then the print was gone.
By the time he left the factory around two, he had almost certainly lost his job. Worse yet, he was half convinced that the handprint (now you see it, now you don’t) belonged to Carly. He’d killed her the night before and disposed of the body at the factory.
And if he could do something like that, maybe he’d killed the baby, too.
Never mind that he doesn’t have a key to get into the factory after hours. Never mind that both Carly and Aaliyah were alive and well when he left for work.
By the time he met Kyle at the Pinewood, he’d managed to convince himself that it had just been stress. That he was only a little bit crazy. Then that horror movie reject appeared in the hotel room with a butcher knife, and it was Kyle bleeding out in the shower (now you see him, now you don’t). Only now, he’s pretty sure Kyle was never there at all. He’d left the Pinewood in such a panic that he wound up crashing his truck. And the thing he regrets most about that is that his guitar was in the truck, quite possibly wrecked. Right now, that guitar seems like the closest link he has to that life he keeps getting glimpses of. The one where he and Kyle are together and raising Aali. The one where he’s on the verge of being able to make a living with that guitar, instead of shoving chunks of plastic down a chute for ten dollars an hour.
He’d capped off the previous night by hitting his zombie ex-girlfriend in the head with a freakin’ bird cage.
Wife, dumbass. She’s your wife. Was your wife.
But ex-girlfriend still feels correct. Maybe that’s what she is in this other world. Either way, he’d bashed in the head of someone or something in that graveyard. And he’d had the odd sensation of watching someone do the same to Ralph Rey, at almost the exact same moment. Not with a birdcage, but with a baseball bat. He’d assumed it was Ben, but…
“So…Chase was the one who took Ralph out?” Luke broaches the subject tentatively, knowing it’s probably a sore spot with Ben.
And he’s right. Ben gives him a sour look and then stares back out the window. “Yeah. Or at least I assume he was. Son of a bitch knocked me unconscious. Last thing I remember was taking a second punch to the head. When I woke up, Ralph was dead, and Chase was missing. So I sure as hell hope Chase took him out, because otherwise…” Ben turns to look at him. “He asked about you. Chase, I mean. A couple of minutes before all the insanity with the bird started. Said he heard you saying something about a dragon.”
“Yeah,” Luke says. “I think I heard him, too. Maybe another one of those glitches. One second, I was in a weird graveyard running from that Carly thing. Next thing I know, it’s like I’m in your trailer, with my hands wrapped about a baseball bat. Only they’re not my hands…I thought it was you, but come to think of it, the hands were kind of small. And then I’m back in the graveyard, swinging a birdcage instead of a bat. Would rather have had the bat, to be honest, but the birdcage did the trick.”
He shudders, remembering the sound when the cage hit Carly’s face. But there hadn’t been any blood. She just poofed out. Vanished.
Another bird dips down from the black cloud. Luke swerves slightly to avoid it and then quickly pulls the car back into his lane. He’s not sure why he bothers. They haven’t encountered a single car—or a single person, living or dead or undead—since they left Tucker’s house.
Is this what the end of the world looks like? Most of the houses are empty, more like facades than actual places where people live. They have an almost two-dimensional feel. Luke looked back in the mirror once, right after they passed the Weavers’ house, and the building disappeared for a second before grudgingly popping back into view.
There are some odd details, though, like the trash bag fluttering across the road up ahead. It’s one of those pumpkin-shaped bags people use to hold dead leaves in until the truck picks them up. This one, which seems to have lost its leaves, snags itself on a fallen branch at the edge of the road and billows out like an orange flag.
His memories have that same two-dimensional quality. It’s like there’s all this stuff he’s supposed to know about living in Haddonwood, and he does know it, but only in the vaguest sense. He knows he was on the football team when he was in high school. Basketball, too. Not the best on the team in either sport, but he was more interested in them than he had been in his classes. He has a very vague memory of a few games. Carly cheering on the sidelines. And he knows he dated two girls regularly before Carly…but he couldn’t tell you their names if someone held his feet to a blowtorch.
Luke is pretty sure he grew up in a place like this town. Some parts of it feel right. A trailer park in a small town. Small family. And he does get the sense he knew Ben, which has him wondering if maybe they’re connected over there. On this other side that all of them—well, all except for the preacher—seem to remember.
He glances at Ben, wondering what he’s thinking. Pretty sure that it has something to do
with that goddamn house up on the hill. But apparently Ben’s thoughts were on pretty much the same path as his own, because he says, “We used to ride bikes out this way. Remember?”
“Kind of,” Luke says, pulling up one of those tissue-thin memories. “But I don’t think it was…here.”
Ben gives him a questioning look. “Not here? Maybe you’re right. Might have been on the other side of town. Maybe I rode down this way with my brother.”
“No, I mean not here. Some other damn universe, but not here.”
Thinking about all of this makes Luke’s head throb, and it doesn’t help that Ben keeps…hell, he doesn’t even know what to call it. Relapsing, maybe? One minute, he’s talking about Chase like he’s his brother. The next, he’s saying the kid is his son. Which would normally inspire Luke to make a joke about redneck family trees, but the guy is serious.
And what’s doubly weird is that he’s pretty sure Ben is right. Chase isn’t his brother in that other place. Just inside this fucked-up game.
“If everything is so great in this other reality you guys keep talking about, why does anything that happens here even matter? What if we’re just supposed to let things play out? What if we’re just supposed to do…nothing?” Ben asks.
Luke frowns. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, if all of this really is a game…some fill-in-the-blank horror story where we don’t even really get to choose our own adventure, then does it really matter if you find Aali? You said she’s older over there. I’m guessing that means you are, too. I’m apparently middle-aged, with a twelve-year-old kid. So does it really matter if I find Chase here? Or if you find Aali? We don’t even know if they’re real. Hell, we don’t even know if we’re real.”
Luke pictures his daughter’s face as he saw her yesterday morning, her dark eyes sparkling up at him from her crib.
And then he gets a flash from that other life.