Broken: A Plague Journal

by Paul Hughes

  There had been other mornings in other cities, or in cities at all. He looked out the window and saw fifty beef cattle across the road. He heard geese. The grass was too long; it was his responsibility.

  Stirred the coffee and wondered if he’d painted himself into a corner. Two gallons of paint had been enough for eight corners, but there was still so much to do.

  The kitchen had an island. He’d bought two stools for it in the hope of someday sitting with her. He’d have coffee; she could have tea. He could boil water. Quiet mornings sitting together. That’s all he wanted. Counted the chairs in his house, the seating surfaces: twenty-four. There was one of him.

  Swished the coffee in his mouth and swallowed. Chained a smoke to it.

  Went to the bathroom and ate an antacid tablet, because when all you consume is nicotine and caffeine, the stomach attempts to burn itself apart. Two more painkillers to be unsafe.

  Sat back down, his back to the window. He could hear the birds. The cat glared at him. There was room for three other people at his table. She could choose any of them. He’d give her his chair. She could use his lap. He could feel her weight against him. She had been so small. He had felt so much smaller.

  Such thought shunts the mind down recollections that break. Remembered the feel of her legs around him, in a chair, on a couch. In bed. His name, whispered. Oh, Paul Hughes. I love you, Paul Hughes.

  Reached for the cup, and his hand shook enough to spill the bottom two thirds. Brown plastic clattered to brown china. Coffee rivuleted out to the place the newspaper should have been.

  His hand shook more than usual. He held it in front of his face, looked, knew. Wondered if his hand could still bend to the curves of her by sense memory alone. Wondered if he could remember her textures and tastes and scents. The architecture of her laugh. A face framed by sculptures of plastic and metal. The way, as she looked down at him, her tears had skated across her glasses, and how once, in the dark, one of those tears had fallen to his face and broken his heart as he held her tiny, shaking form closer.

  He slumped out of the chair and fell to the kitchen floor. His head bounced from linoleum he’d glued down. The cat looked on, mildly amused.

  A line of silver snaked lazily from the holes in his face.

  “Midsagittal plane breached.”

  “It’s spread into—”

  “Ready lesioning probe on my—”

  “Physiologic confirmation of the target location.”

  “Initial pass in three... two...”

  Alina ran after him, just barely getting through the door into the construct before it slammed shut.

  He spun, made to say something, didn’t know what to say.

  “It wasn’t her, Paul.” Alina walked closer, remembered holding a hand and what had seemed something deeper. “Just Maire. Hope’s—”

  “Merged. Maire took her.” He slumped into a chair that flashed to existence just before his behind made contact. “And now—If Maire’s merged with Hope, she knows everything that Hope knew.”

  Alina stood a distance.

  “If Maire has Hope’s code...”

  “It’s bad.”

  “More than bad. Hope had calculated the A/O line to almost perfect half. Now Maire has the modular calculus. The bleed—It’s going to get a shitload more than bad.”

  Alina didn’t know what to say. She thought about the rough plain of his hand.

  “And you—Jud, you there?”

  “She’s here.”

  Paul nodded. Something flickered behind his eyes. “I take it she needed mobility.”

  “Something like that.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “If it helps.”

  He scoffed, tugged at his whiter hair. “I need to get back to the pool. I can find an answer in there, I know it. If Maire has Hope’s code...” He studied his hands on the table’s top. “I need to get back into the silver.”

  He stood to walk past her, and she shoved him to the wall. His look was disbelief and confusion. His eyes were a foot above hers, and looking down was like falling. She bridged the gap and kissed him, standing on toes to do so. He bent to make it easier.

  Frantic, grasping, they went to the floor, knees and elbows, rolling, combat for position.

  He pushed her away and from the distance tried to see behind her eyes. “We can’t. I’ve been in the silver. You’re not—”

  “Shut up.” She pulled him back down and cut off the possibility of further uncertainty with her tongue and lips.

  They collided.

  She felt him smile against her thighs. Enveloping, bounding, penetrating her sex. She shuddered and gasped

  “Don’t let go,” hitched out through sobs. Adam held her tighter, the stubs of once fingers smearing against his chest.

  “It’s spreading.” Reynald fingertipped the glass, dragged a new plan into place. “Hank, reverse the phase.”

  He shifted. Nodded once. “Target locked.”

  Reynald’s claw hesitated. Sweat blossomed across his brow. “Probe ready. Pass in three... Two...”

  To fail to hit, reach, catch, meet, or otherwise make contact with.

  To fail to perceive, understand, or experience.

  To fail to accomplish, achieve, or attain (a goal).

  To fail to attend or perform.

  To leave out.

  To omit.

  To let go by

  To let slip.

  To escape or avoid.

  To discover the absence or loss of.

  To feel the lack or loss of.

  To be unsuccessful.

  To misfire.

  To fail.

  A young woman.

  Miss.

  Something’s wrong.

  “Jim?”

  shut up.

  “Jimbo?”

  shut UP.

  “Come on, pardner. You gotta talk to me sometime.”

  no i don’t.

  “You just did.” Hank grinned from his command chamber. ”Anyhow, what’s it look like out there?”

  whiter than jo’s inner thigh.

  “That white, huh? That must be pretty white. You know, one time I was at a saloon in—”

  for the love of all things holy, shut UP.

  Crawl, crackle.

  “You feel that?”

  certainly did. initiating full sensor sweep.

  “Looks like we ain’t alone out here, buddy.”

  indeed.

  “Think it’s Hunter and Lily?”

  ...

  “Jim?”

  secure your tether to the ME.

  “What in—”

  do it, hank. now.

  The cowboy was disconcerted by Whistler’s tone, urgent, honest. Afraid. “Show me.”

  The command display sparked to life as Whistler fed the exterior view of the Timestream to Hank.

  His gasp was audible. “That ain’t... Hunter. Or Lily.”

  secure your tether, hank.

  His knobby hands skittered over the controls on his cardiac shield. He felt the tug of his constituent particles locking back into place on the Judith line. In an instant, he could be downloaded back into the thought ocean made possible by the author and shaped by the wounded god.

  Following them through the Timeline was a nightmare armada.

  “What is—”

  enemy.

  “Jesus fuck.” Hank instinctively stroked his handlebars. “You runnin’?”

  varying phase to lose them.

  “S’it workin’?”

  no.

  “Shit.”

  There were hundreds, thousands, an incomprehensible number of vessels reaching toward them, an undulating mass of black edges flashing with silver, a school of embodied hate and desire. At its center, something horrific and laughing. They could feel the reach of fury.

  Whistler dug deeper into Hank, tapping the pattern for something, anything that would throw the Enemy off their trail. His nacelles glowed with the eff
ort, leaving a veil of desiccated lifetimes in his wake. The howling fleet lurched closer, smashing the fragile fabrics of reality, clawing toward the soul cache hidden away in Hank’s marble.

  “Uh, Jim?”

  quiet, hank.

  “We ain’t getting out of this, are we?”

  The vessel dived and shattered as an Enemy gained hold. Hank fell to the floor of the command chamber, his cardiac shield sputtering an alarm.

  you are, old friend.

  “Jim, don’t—”

  Hank flashed from the Timeline in a burst of static and dust.

  come now, maire. show yourself.

  The Black tendriled over his surface, piercing and stroking, merging and solidifying. Absorbing. Whistler felt a scrape across his pattern, dislodge, reformation. He found himself shifted back into human form, alone in an echoing cavern of burnt mercury, a blinding light lasering down to scan his image.

  “Bravo, Whistler. Bravo.” The ruined child walked from the shadows.

  He smoothed his cloak and stood defiant.

  “You,” she poked his thigh with one taloned, tiny finger, “were supposed to be on my side. Our side.”

  “He made a better offer.”

  She snarled. “I could have given you everything, James. The universe. History.”

  He scoffed. “What possible use could I have for all that, poppet?”

  “I trusted you.”

  “You’ve a lot to learn, child.” He adjusted the tips of his gloves.

  “Why’d you do it?”

  “I’m tired.” He bent to her level, put his hands on her shoulders. “I was meant to be gone a thousand years ago. To be with Jo again, wherever that might be. When you tore me from that slumber, you ruined my heaven. Paul offered me a chance to sleep again.”

  “Tired of bouncing around in his head, huh?”

  “Your head, too.”

  She nodded a smile. “You were good to me, bringing Lilith in. I can forgive this transgression. I’ll let you rest.”

  “Dear child,” his eyes glinted, “thank you.”

  “Just one more thing.” She took his hand, gently, tenderly. “Who does his maths?”

  “Hmm?” Whistler frowned.

  “You can tell me, or I’ll just take it from you. Who’s calculating the bleed? Who’s zeroing in on me? He’s no good with numbers. Can’t be his brawn, West. Is it Benton?”

  Whistler’s lips opened over clenched teeth.

  Maire’s tiny fist punched through his chest and closed over his silver projector. He gurgled with blood and shattered bone as silver laced through the mash of his heart and lungs. She yanked her arm out, leaving his dusted form to fall in a flop of grit and glitter to the floor.

  Her fist shuddered over the marble, absorbing everything that Whistler had been. One more crack in the author; one more influence torn away and consumed. She looked through the folds of memory and saw that everything hidden from her echoed through the heart of one Hope Benton. The modular calculus that equaled her undoing, the intricate lattice of defense around the author’s fading mind—it would be hers.

  Her dimples deepened.

  Said while walking through a door: “Paul, Hank’s—”

  West cut himself off.

  Paul sat on the edge of the silver pool, his legs dipping in. He turned around slowly, and West saw something horrible flash behind his eyes.

  “They’re back?”

  West just shook his head, trying unsuccessfully to bury a wash of confused emotion. The author hadn’t been the same since Hope’s murder. He’d been spending more and more time in the silver containment chamber, that cache of machines gathered during their various engagements of Maire’s forces. “Hank’s back.”

  “Just Hank?”

  West nodded.

  “And Whistler?”

  West inhaled. “Get out of there, and we’ll talk about it.” He turned and left.

  “Shit.” Paul’s hand went to his temple, kneaded.

  Hank scooped another nervous pinch of chew into his already-dribbling mouth. The old cowboy’s face was more wrinkled, stubblier. The downward slopes of the distinct halves of his moustache only reinforced the image of his broken heart. “I didn’t—I would have stayed. We could have fought, but—There were so many of them. I would have stayed.” He blinked over glistened eyes.

  The newly acquired Jean Reynald baritoned the chamber. “No. That would have solved nothing.”

  “It’s for the best that Whistler sent you back, Hank.” West leaned toward the shaking man. “If she’d gotten your pattern—”

  “Hope could have changed the math.”

  Nobody knew how to tell him.

  “She’s dead.” Judith.

  He chewed faster, brow furrowing, squeezing out two distinct lines of wet. “But—What the fuck next? Hope’s...?” He let the question fade away.

  “Maire’s getting better at this.” Jud curled deeper into her chaise. “With Whistler’s pattern—”

  “I’m going back in.” Paul stood and walked toward the door.

  “Where?” Jud frowned.

  He hesitated. “Back into the silver.”

  “Paul, please.” West couldn’t look him in the eyes.

  “I have to. Maire’s—I have to.”

  “Paul—”

  He whirled, fangs bared, his eyes swirls of black and metal. “Don’t.”

  As the door cycled shut behind the author, the assembled remnants of Judith Command sat through a heavy silence.

  Hank spit tobacco juice to the floor. Whistler’s chair was empty next to him. “What next?”

  Nobody answered.

  “Jean?” Judith rose and walked to the window. “I want you to take over operations for the time being. Paul’s... You know.”

  Reynald nodded.

  The air hurt.

  “Listen...” Judith said, her voice bouncing from the window. “I know it hurts. Whistler. And Hope. But we’ll get by. We’ll do this.”

  They all tried to believe her.

  His eyes raced behind fluttering lids. The cat, curious, approached slowly, stuck out a paw, carefully padded his cheek until another seizure wracked his body. The cat reared back, came to rest sitting up. It sniffed the linoleum, reached out, withdrew. It bent down and licked at the growing slick of blood. At the taste, the cat bristled and ran to hide under the couch, leaving a trail of red prints across the gray carpet of the living room.

  Somewhere behind bone, pressure built, soft gray curves flooded. The newspaper arrived. The cat hissed at its still owner silvering out in the kitchen. Somewhere, a clock ticked. Somewhere, nobody thought of him.

  “Are you leaving?” she asked, half asleep. His impression marked the sheet behind her, a curved kidney bean spooned into position over half a dozen hours and thirty thousand heartbeats. He pulled the blankets back over her shoulders, concealing any evidence that he had ever been there at all.

  “Need to get back into the silver.”

  She woke in earnest, sat up. She wiped sleep from her eyes and tried to focus. “Don’t go.”

  “Al—”

  “Please.”

  “I have to.”

  A sad shake of the head. “Don’t go.”

  He bent to kiss her cheek. She pulled back and forced a locked gaze. “Please.”

  His lips hovered inches from her. He frowned and

  Maire smiled, bent to help Richter to his feet. He coughed another glut of phase to the floor. Tendrils and thick loops of the sludge slicked his chin and chest. He rocked against her, still solidifying, and she altered her form to match his memories of Benton. He was blinking away the birth blindness; she couldn’t rely on a stolen voice alone. She cut into the remnants of Benton’s pattern and searched for convincing.

  “Hope?” he repeated, his hands now surveying Maire’s face, which molded to the memories she pulled from him, the histories stored within herself. His hands traced down her sides, came to rest on hips that hadn’t been hers for
long. “Where are we? I thought—That light—”

  “Shh, baby.” Maire smiled with Hope’s face. “It’s going to be okay now. You were right. About everything. I knew you’d come for me.”

  “Baby—” He looked at the metallish expanse, the uplink chamber swaying at the top of a tower city jutting from a dead future. “Where are we?”

  She stood on tip-toes, wrapping her arms securely around him. Richter tabled the question and responded, burying his face in her hair, dragging lips along her cheek, coming to rest in the angle of her neck. “I thought you were gone.”

  “I’m right here.”

  “I needed to see what was in the light.”

  “It’s heaven, James.”

  “I thought—I needed to see. To find you.”

  “You did.” Maire tugged with Hope’s colorless eyes, and for an instant, a deeper blackness existed.

  Richter’s grasp on her weakened.

  Maire lashed out with her claws, Hope’s shape and form dissolving into nothing. Richter’s neck hung in tatters; his look of surprise was endearing. Maire sneered with delight as she grabbed his head and bit the rest of his neck through. The assembly of blood and meat flopped to the floor. She took her time excising his projector.

  “Too easy.” She licked her lips and sucked wads of his viscera from the marble.

  One step closer to Jud. Another piece of Paul fell into

  the place was empty, just a scatter of overturned tables and splintered chairs. Napkins dispensing lazily from dented stainless bricks. The door shut the city out behind him, squeezing down and crimping off the sound of wind and the staccato vibrations of war.

  A sign sat on the neglected counter: UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.

  Richter walked to the counter, was drawn to the sign. His hand, finding purchase, marred clean paths into the veil of dust. There was an empty cigarette pack on the floor. There was the flapping cellophane skin of a Zinger, the bottom residue of cream and unnaturally red coconut slowly yellowing across one plane of it. The tip jar was empty except for a small blue marble, clouded.