Kill All Angels

by Robert Brockway

  “Take a picture buddy,” she said, laughing and punching me in the shoulder.

  It was a friendly gesture, but she still put too much into it. Sent me back on my heels.

  “Sorry,” she said, and rubbed the wound. She left her hand there a little too long, and the both of us got all dumb and bashful.

  “Any time you’re through,” Zang said.

  We looked up to where the other Empty Ones had hung him, before Rosa pulled them apart: He was impaled on a metal hook meant to carry fur coats along a conveyor belt. They’d sunk the hook straight into his spine, right between the shoulder blades, making for an awkward placement—he couldn’t reach back to pull it out, and he couldn’t get his hands on anything to lever himself off. He needed our help to get down.

  “One second,” Rosa said, stepping over the twitching torso of the blue-eyed Empty One, useless without its head and limbs.

  She skirted the blackened asterisk left behind on the floor when the angel exploded—taking most of the Empty Ones and more than a few tar men with it—and stopped at the conveyor controls mounted beside the big rolling door.

  “I think it’s this one?” she said, slapping a faded red button.

  The conveyor belt clanked into action, taking Zang with it. He glided slowly around the room, arms and legs drifting out as he took the corners, his body limply swinging about the ceiling, a look of blank unhappiness on his face.

  Me and Rosa, Christ, we about had a hernia laughing.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  }}}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 w
e 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 Unno
ticeable. 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.