Kill All Angels

by Robert Brockway

  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 th
ere.

  “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.”