by Ben Farthing
Sherri was gone, and it hurt. But Chris would mourn for a while and then be okay again.
As he thought over his life, none of his problems went away. None of the worst case scenarios he imagined changed. What changed, was that his mind considered those worst case scenarios with the same likelihood as any other outcome. And his physical reaction was gone.
"Is this what people without anxiety feel like all the time?" he whispered.
"Huh?" Eddie leaned around him to look again.
"I don't know if you should," Chris said, but didn't stop him.
Roberts let out a single sob.
"What is it?" Chris asked.
The big man shrugged. "I don't hate my ex wife."
"That's... good."
"It's not just that. Look at this," he gestured at the light. "It's amazing. This could change people's lives everywhere."
"You think this is what Micah was hoping to find?"
He shook his head. "The Deviser is good. Was good. All the other buildings brought people together. Then this one, what did it do to Dr. Terry and Leon? And that thing we saw through the window downstairs--you and me both felt how wrong it was."
"What thing?" Eddie asked.
"Nothing," Chris said.
"But now this," Roberts said. "This right here was built by the same Deviser that gave us pane glass and air conditioning and steel towers. I wanted to believe it was two separate builders but it's not. And if the same thing that took Dr. Terry and Leon and is making them suffer, if that same thing built this, then what is this for?"
Something shattered at their feet and they all jumped.
A glass paperweight had flown in from the orange mist and left a crack in the floor.
Another landed at their feet. The floor broke with an audible crack.
Micah shrieked triumph from somewhere in the fog.
A wall of lurchers approached them.
57
Chris picked up Eddie, who frantically looked around.
"Who's that? Is it the old lady?"
Micah yelled again. "I've worked too hard for this!"
The sounds of lurchers came through the fog from all directions, hopping and dragging themselves along the tile.
Chris staggered away from Micah's voice. His thighs ached. His hand throbbed, and he felt blood seep through the bandage. Eddie was too heavy, and he was exhausted.
Roberts scooped Eddie into his arms.
"Dad?" Eddie whined.
"It's okay. He can carry you faster. We're gonna run now."
They ran along the wall, away from Micah's screamed threats, and the shattering of the tile floor as she smashed it.
Chris ran alongside Roberts, who spoke calmingly to Eddie as his long gait jostled the boy.
A loose brick clattered past their feet.
Shadows in the orange mist ahead revealed themselves to be a wall of lurchers, heading for Micah, with Chris, Eddie, and Roberts in their way. They hunched forward, and the gaps in their blank faces slid open to unleash the writhing swarm of tentacles.
Roberts turned so Eddie couldn't see them. "When they get close," he said, "I'll toss your boy overtop of them."
"They're not after us," Chris said. "They want to fix the floor."
Roberts waggled his wounded fingertip. "If we're in the way, they'll fix us too."
Eddie wriggled to try to get down. "What's that mean?"
Roberts held him tight.
"Just walk forward," Chris hissed. "Slowly."
They crept away from the brick and the gouge in the floor.
Eddie craned his neck enough to see behind him. He spotted the lurchers--now less than ten feet away--and let out a fearful moan.
Roberts squeezed him to his chest. Chris reached over to hold Eddie's trembling hand.
"They don't care about us," Chris whispered. "Close your eyes and they'll leave."
The lurchers hopped and dragged themselves closer. Chris and Roberts played a delicate game of Red Rover, finding gaps in the oncoming wall of creatures.
One brushed Chris's shoulder, and pain exploded in his flesh, the same as when Leon had merged their fingers. Then the lurcher continued past, and the pain vanished.
Chris caught his breath. "Keep moving."
He watched as Eddie stared in terror at the lurchers over Roberts' shoulder, then positioned himself so his son couldn't see.
He quickly searched for anything on the cinderblock wall--doors, windows, vents--but it was blank.
Something crashed into the tile between Chris and Roberts, then bounced to a stop ahead of them. It was a disk drive, ripped out of a computer, or plucked from an abandoned pile of them somewhere on this top floor.
Another smashed down off to Chris's left.
Chris looked over his shoulder. A lurcher leapt towards him. It came down well short, and folded over to fix the damage to the floor.
More office junk crashed around their feet.
A glass paperweight struck Roberts in the head, then bounced to the floor, which it cracked. Roberts fell to his knees. His weight dented the tile. He dropped Eddie.
Chris yanked Eddie to his feet, and tried to do the same for Roberts. "Get up, let's go."
Roberts squeezed his eyes shut. He grunted.
Another paperweight hit the floor to bounce into Chris's shin. Lurchers hopped towards them. Chris pulled on Roberts' wrist. "Get up."
Eddie tried to help, pulling on his other wrist.
"I can't..." Roberts got one foot under him, then fell again. His hip hit the floor. It bashed a shallow crater in the weak tile.
"Daddy!" Eddie yelled.
A lurcher appeared from the mist. It folded over, lowering its head towards Eddie. Its blank face slid open, and tentacles slithered out.
Chris shoved Eddie out of its path.
Roberts still lay atop the damage his fall had caused.
Chris dropped into a squat, braced his hands against Roberts' side, and shoved. Roberts tried to help, seemingly still aware of the danger he was in, rolling to the side, but then his weight crashed back down.
Eddie ran to Chris's side to help push.
"No!" Chris yelled. "Get away."
Eddie pushed anyway, as the lurcher dipped its tentacles into Roberts' shoulder. Roberts screamed. He flinched upwards, and in that movement, Chris and Eddie pushed him hard enough to roll him onto his back, away from the damaged floor.
Eddie's momentum carried him into the yellow leathery side of the lurcher.
Eddie screamed.
Chris felt his son's pain in every cell of his body.
Eddie fell into the lurcher, sharing the same space from his shoulders to his gut.
Chris dove for his son. He grabbed Eddie's hands to drag him away from the lurcher and into his arms.
Eddie sobbed into Chris's chest. Eddie squeezed him. "It's okay. It's over."
He knew the pain was gone, that Eddie was now only crying from the shock of it. He wanted to make it so Eddie had never felt that pain, but he couldn't change the past.
A loose door handle flew out of the mist. Chris reached up and caught it.
"I won't let her hurt you again." He picked up the glass paperweight. It was heavier than it looked. It had broken to leave a jagged edge.
He looked Eddie in the eye. "I need you to stay with Roberts until he can stand up again."
Eddie stared at the lurcher as it hovered its face inches over the cracked floor, its tentacles quivering against the damage. "No, I'm coming with you."
"Roberts, can you keep Eddie here with you?"
Roberts grabbed Eddie's ankle. "Stay with me a couple minutes. Your dad will be right back."
Eddie kicked. "No!"
"I promise, I'm not leaving you."
Roberts locked eyes with Chris. He looked at the jagged paperweight in Chris's hand. He still looked dizzy, but a calm knowing rested in his expression. He nodded.
Chris walked into the orange fog.
58
Chri
s found Micah twenty feet back.
She stood atop a low hill of EXIT signs which all glowed green. She'd found a shoulder bag, and filled it with doorknobs, paperweights, computer drives, and anything else heavy and throwable.
Chris adjusted the glass paperweight in his hand. He held it so the jagged edge pointed down.
Micah's hair was wild. The little makeup she wore smeared black around her eyes. Her forehead already had a gash in it, as well as her hand. She must have fallen.
The calm, controlled authority that she carried in her gaze had been replaced with mania.
She held a chunk of tile, arm cocked back, ready to throw.
Chris squeezed his weapon. He avoided imagining what it would feel like to strike this old woman. "You get one chance to walk away."
Micah laughed. It devolved into a giggle. "So you can follow me down?"
Chris loosened his grip. "Do you know a way out?"
"The elevators."
His brief hope slipped away. "Bullshit. It won't let us go back down."
"The elevators go any which way for me. The Deviser has no use for me. It does for you."
"Why? You're the devoted disciple."
She laughed. "It's unaware of my devotion, or your indifference. It may not know we even think or feel or emote. We're only potential cogs in its machine. Warped and useless, until it spent the last six thousand years forming us into exactly what it needs. Now a bit of final polish," Micah gestured to the building around them, and to the light through the mist, "and we're ready. Or you're ready, I should say. Not me. I don't fit into its machine."
Chris stood at the bottom of the hill of EXIT signs. He couldn't sprint up to Micah without his footing collapsing beneath him. He took a careful step forward. He needed to keep her talking. "What machine? What is it building?"
She laughed again. "We couldn't understand that any more than it can understand our minds. Maybe it's a great battleship to wage war against other Devisers. Maybe it's a bauble to amuse itself. It's not the first and it won't be the last."
Chris climbed closer. She was ten feet away now. "There are other Devisers?"
"I don't know. I felt its mind, but all I recognized was desire."
"For us."
She shook her head. "To devise. To plan. To build. I recognized it because I share that desire. I've waited and watched, and now I've found the Deviser. It owes me what it gave those past architects and visionaries."
"It's done with gathering us. You just said so yourself. Now it's harvesting."
"It's building. Creating. But I've brought you here. That must count for something. I'm content to beg for scraps if the master's scraps will make me a legend. The only way I have to get its attention is to give it what it wants. More cogs. You." Micah hefted a piece of cinderblock from her shoulder bag.
"Stop calling the lurchers," Chris said. "They didn't take Leon or Dr. Terry. If those two men are now cogs like you say, it wasn't lurchers that took them."
Micah hesitated.
"You saw the building take Dr. Terry. The wall reached out and absorbed him. It wasn't a lurcher."
Chilled resolve filled her face. She ignored his reasoning to repeat her claims. "The Deviser will take you once you're nice and polished. I'll point to you with the lurchers."
Chris squeezed the paperweight. Micah'd lost her mind.
Micah flung the piece of tile at Chris. It flew wide to bounce at the bottom of the pile of EXIT signs. Chris heard the hopping and dragging of lurchers behind him.
The calming effect of the light still reverberated through Chris's body and mind. He climbed the hill, the signs shifting under his feet.
From through the fog, Eddie yelled. "Dad!" Fear filled his cry, but not panic.
Chris told himself his boy was still okay.
Micah locked eyes with Chris, and through her madness he saw a remnant of her cunning ruthlessness. She pulled a doorknob from her bag and hurled it in Eddie's direction.
"No!" Chris leapt at the old woman. He swung the paperweight, bringing it down towards her hand, making contact only after she'd released her makeshift projectile.
Bones cracked and skin broke. Bright blood splattered across the white and green EXIT signs.
Micah cried out and cradled her wounded hand. She stumbled down the hill, towards Eddie.
Chris rode a landslide of EXIT signs to beat Micah to the bottom.
Even with her fit, muscled form, she now looked frail and vulnerable. But Chris's sympathy vanished when he saw the hateful determination in her gray eyes. She flung a brick at the Chris's feet.
Chris grabbed her and dragged her away before the lurchers arrived to fix the floor.
She fought his grasp to pull a broken table leg from her bag. She reared back to throw it towards Eddie.
Chris again remembered Eddie's scream as he'd passed through the lurcher's pale, ethereal flesh.
He snatched the table leg from Micah and shoved her to the ground. She cried out as she hit the hard floor.
Chris stood over her, wooden spike in one hand, heavy glass club in the other.
Micah winced. With her good hand, she rubbed her hip. "You should embrace joining its machine. What option do you have? The Deviser wants you--the elevator won't let you back down. And I won't let you get back to it anyways. I'll point the lurchers to you before you make your way back."
Maybe he could still figure out how to make the Deviser not want him, but not with Micah hunting them. Chris realized his only option. The calm that the light had injected into him was shaken. "You won't hurt my son."
"You can't stop me."
Chris raised the table leg.
Realization appeared on Micah's face. For all her billions of dollars, for all her magazine cover shoots, for all her pioneering of construction breakthroughs, her bones were just as brittle as any other 60-year-old.
Chris broke the table leg over her knee.
Bone popped. Micah screamed. Something broke inside Chris. He'd done it to save Eddie, but he'd still intentionally inflicted violence on a defenseless old lady. He'd felt her kneecap give way through his grip on the table leg.
He tossed away the broken piece.
Micah's scream of pain turned to one of a wild fury. She hurled another brick into the fog. It didn't travel far. Spittle dripped down her chin. She dragged herself towards Eddie. She shrieked and growled like a cornered animal.
"Stop!" Chris ordered.
But Micah was determined, lashing out in a frantic, focused way. A lifetime of ambition now honed down into a single goal: hurt Chris by targeting his son.
Chris's stomach churned. He didn't know how long it would take them to find a way off this top floor. He couldn't leave Micah to crawl after them, appearing through the fog to hurt Eddie again. He hunched over the crawling old woman. He brought the paperweight down on her other knee, then he walked around her to smash her other hand. He felt her bones break.
He turned and threw up. He tried to think of anything else, but his mind only replayed the sensation of Micah's bones breaking.
Micah screamed louder. The cunning in her eyes was gone. She ranted and spit hateful nonsense.
"I'm sorry," Chris whispered.
Micah slammed her face into the floor.
Chris jumped back.
She did it again.
Her nose shattered and flattened. A split above both eyes.
The tile floor cracked.
Chris backed away.
Micah swung her head down a third time, no doubt aiming to attract the lurchers as one final fuck you to Chris.
The sound of her skull cracking was louder than the tile cracking.
Micah's head drooped. She lay still.
Chris waited. Watched for her back to rise and fall with the rhythm of breathing.
Nothing.
A single lurcher hopped and dragged itself out of the fog. It hunched over Micah.
Chris watched, wondering why it didn't go straight for the damaged tile
.
The creature's blank face touched her knees, then her hands. It hopped to her head, hunched down, inspecting. It nudged her head around. Her body followed, yanked around by her neck. Micah stared lifelessly into the fog above. Blood pooled in her left eye. It ran down her cheek to paint her bleached teeth red.
The lurcher's face opened. Its tentacles reached out. They wriggled over Micah's eyes, spread out like a wet mop over her face. They continued to extend out of the lurcher, longer than Chris had seen before, thicker at their roots. They entered Micah's eyes, squeezing between the eyeball and the socket. They entered her nose, her mouth, her ears.
Chris couldn't understand what happened next.
Micah's leg stiffened and rose upwards like a Rockette marionette. It continued its arc to swing down against her chest. Into her chest. Out the other side. Her body grew ethereal to allow its passage, but not entirely. Liver, intestine, stomach were dragged along as her leg completed its rotation and started another.
Her torso lifted into a sit-up position, her head dangling behind. She folded into herself, down through the floor, rotation opposite to her leg's. Her half-etherealness dragged tile, wiring, and steel studs up out of the floor, now merged with her flesh.
The lurcher hopped away, its repair job complete.
Chris backed away.
Micah's rotation stopped. Her hands rested on the floor. One sunk inches deep, like she was squatting in a puddle. A steel stud merged with her forearm, in one side and out the other at an angle. Sinew and muscle wrapped around it. Her major organs were outside her clothes, stitched to her body with pieces of tile and copper wires. Her head flopped to the side, shoulder and ear taking up the same space. A pipe stuck through her head, coming out her eye. Nothing was static. She was a sludgy, shifting mass of flesh and building materials. She smelled of bile and shit and iron.
Her remaining eye opened. It was stained blood red. The pupil glittered.
She looked around.