by Joshua Ingle
The voracious army closing in on him, the Judge flew right toward the car.
Oh, hell no. Thorn turned to Crystal. “Speed up.”
“What?”
Thorn caught a brief glimpse of Virgil’s bedraggled reflection in the rearview mirror. Dark red bruises and scrapes covered his face more than did undamaged skin. He wished he had a more presentable body to use for communication. Maybe then the humans would have trusted him more.
“They’re coming up behind us. We have to speed up if we want to lose them.”
Crystal checked the mirror as well, and with her limited human vision, she found the space behind the car empty. “I thought you wanted to go back to the condo.”
Indeed he did, but he was even more keen on avoiding the demon army that the Judge was leading right to them. “Speed up!”
“Okay, okay!” She eased her foot down on the gas pedal, and soon they were whizzing through downtown Miami’s streets, past red lights and their flashing cameras at sixty miles per hour—close to a demon’s top speed.
And as the car sped up, the world around them started to shift.
Thorn barely noticed it at first. The road bent a little, the streetlights flickered, and the stars seemed to waver as if the sky were a giant rug being shaken out. The demons behind the car continued their pursuit, but they were forced to break formation as they encountered the same disturbance. The car passed seventy miles per hour, and they approached a darker area of downtown so black that it seemed to swallow all light. As they drew nearer, Thorn could see that the road abruptly curved downward, as if falling off the edge of the world.
“What the hell?” So Crystal could see it too.
But before she could hit the brakes, new road sprang up from below, paving the way for the car to continue on its path. In the distance ahead, new skyscrapers bent upward from the ground like great titans awakening from the earth. New streetlights and road signs sprang up at street corners. Down a side street, Thorn saw a four-story-high splash of water as a new tract of Biscayne Bay popped upward into existence. A marina soon followed, rising out of the water.
“What’s happening?” Fear in her voice, Crystal slowed the car a bit, but kept driving.
“We’re crossing the Sanctuary’s boundary faster than it can generate new space.”
“English or Spanish, please. I don’t speak Crazy.”
“The boundary is the point that you’d never have naturally crossed no matter what choices any of you made. But them being here changed all that, and now here we are. Turn down one of these streets and loop back around. Drive as fast as you can to keep ahead of our pursuers, but it’s very urgent that we return to the condo.”
Thorn was especially worried about what would happen if the ballooning boundaries brought enough new humans into the Sanctuary that it reached its maximum capacity—around a hundred people. Would the Sanctuary end prematurely? Would the whole place collapse, killing all those within?
Crystal tapped the steering wheel repeatedly. Her eyes glanced from the new adjustments to reality emerging ahead to the furious windstorm whirling behind. She then looked to Cole, but he offered no guidance. “Every bad thing that’s happened tonight has happened at that condo,” she said. “It’ll be safer for all of us at the police station.”
Thorn clutched her shoulder. “The condo is the place where everything happened… because the condo is the only place that exists.”
“What?”
Thorn hesitated to reveal too much; he didn’t want Crystal and Cole growing so curious for knowledge of the spirit realm that they’d ignore tonight’s important choices. Worse, Thorn might accidentally reveal his own identity if he said the wrong thing. He walked a tightrope as he explained. “This, uh, this place. This… Sanctuary. That’s what they call it, a Sanctuary. Well, at least it’s supposed to be a safe place. A testing ground of sorts. Most Sanctuaries aren’t attacked like this one was.”
Crystal seemed more perplexed now than she had before Thorn’s explanation. She looked like she had a caustic word or two for him, but the strangely shifting reality ahead of the car restrained her tongue. “So why not go to the police station?” she said, like a broken record. “It’s safe there.”
“You’re not safe anywhere out here. What do you think this is?”
“It was just a pleasant night in my condo until you went nuts,” Cole said.
“It’s a test.” Thorn regretted telling them that much. Would they still make the same choices if they were aware of the cosmic weight those choices carried? “Turn and go back to the condo.”
“Thornyboy!”
Speeding as fast as he could alongside the car, the Judge interrupted Thorn’s argument with Crystal. He tried knocking on the glass, but his physical influence was so weak that his knocking wasn’t audible above the car’s engine. “Dude, come on. Help me out here. Roll down the window!”
Thorn released his hold on Virgil’s voice box and spoke to the Judge in the spirit world. “Why are you here?” He had to be sure that the Judge would be an ally and not a burden—or even a different breed of foe. After all, the Judge himself had sent Thorn here.
A demon latched onto the Judge’s heel and dragged him back behind the car. The Judge frantically shook him off and shoved him away, then strained to reach the car’s back window again. He looked terrified—totally overwhelmed by the lawlessness he’d found in the Sanctuary. Nevertheless, he tried to offer Thorn an enthusiastic grin. “I’m here to rescue you!”
“How did you know what was happening?”
“You think I don’t know what goes on in my own damn city? An influx of demons from Central Africa, then they all disappear right when you’re shipped off to the Sanctuary? It raised a few eyebrows, including mine. Augh!” He swatted away another demon who’d snuck up beside him. “Shit, shit, shit. I, uh—I really didn’t think this through. Uh…”
Thorn took full hold of Virgil again and quickly rolled down the window. The Judge kicked another demon away as he slid through the narrow opening and collapsed next to Thorn. Thorn rolled the window shut again before any demons could get in.
“Whoa, what’d you just do?” Crystal said.
“Just needed some fresh air,” Thorn said through Virgil’s corpse. In the spirit world, he railed at the Judge. “You fool! Why didn’t you bring backup?”
Dazed after his brush with death, the Judge was slow to answer. “Uh, I couldn’t—I couldn’t get anyone to come in here with me. You know how everyone’s afraid of these places.”
“So you thought you’d huff and puff and Shenzuul’s army would go home?”
“I do believe the appropriate words are, ‘Thank you, Judge. You just saved me from the fate of the dodo bird.’ Now. How do we get out of here?”
“How’d you come in? Can we get out that way?”
“Nah, my followers destroyed the transit door behind me. It’s procedure so the angels can’t track us. I’m in this just as much as you.”
“So how did you plan to get out?”
“Kill the humans and end the Sanctuary. What else?” He seemed to notice Crystal and Cole for the first time. “Dear Lord! What are you doing with two of them? Are these the last two? Let’s drown ’em and blow this joint.” The Judge rose above the seats and waved a hand through Crystal’s mind. The car immediately started to slow as her foot relaxed on the gas pedal.
“Everything okay?” Cole asked, but Crystal said nothing. The Judge eased her further into a trance.
“Judge, wait,” Thorn said. Demons surrounded the car as it slowed even more, calling out insults and swearing death to those inside, but the voices grew so numerous that Thorn was able to drown them out as white noise. He looked up at the Judge, and felt very small. He’d seen kids come out to their parents as gay or as nonreligious, but he’d never expected to be put in the hot seat himself.
“Please don’t kill them,” Thorn said. He broke eye contact, unable to face his respected peer with his confession.
“Just as you’re trying to save me… I’m trying to save them.”
The Judge chuckled casually. “Save them? What for?”
“Because, like you and me, they have minds, and hopes, and dreams, and futures. Because they don’t deserve to die. Because it’s the right thing to do.”
The Judge’s eyebrows furrowed. He nearly frowned, then his whole face lit up with a big grin. “Naw, you killed all those kids at the daycare. I mean you’re—you’re Thorn. You’re one of the most cold-blooded killers I’ve ever met.”
“I was whispering to Jed to try to stop him. The shooting wasn’t my idea. The local demons just attributed it to me.”
The Judge gaped, and the car eased to a total stop in the center of a downtown intersection. Paper, cans, and other bits of urban debris skipped over the ground in the mighty wind outside. The traffic light turned from green, to yellow, to red. “You mean the other demons were right about you?” the Judge asked. He removed his sunglasses to look Thorn in the eyes. In Thorn’s dreadful imaginings of this moment, he’d pictured the Judge fuming—attacking him, even. But the Judge’s shoulders were slumped and his eyes downcast; he didn’t look angry at all. He looked… hurt.
“They were,” Thorn said.
A long silence hung between them. Thorn didn’t look up the whole time. When he twisted his body to check his wounds, searing pain shot through him again. He looked down at the deep gash in Virgil’s knee, still bleeding thick, dark blood as livor mortis set in.
He checked Virgil’s watch. The night was halfway through, and he hadn’t even gotten the humans to trust him yet. Them failing to make their Big Choices by dawn was now a very real possibility. If the Sanctuary ended and they were all erased from existence, Thorn’s last stand in the Sanctuary would be for nothing. What a wasted life he’d lived. Millennia of fighting for his own selfish glory, then a few months of a futile search for answers after realizing that his life had been meaningless. Will my death now be meaningless as well?
Thorn wasn’t even sure why he’d chosen this as his last stand. Saving these humans was something that the Enemy would want—not the enemy swarming just outside the car, but the Enemy far above, watching down on them all. How am I supposed to convince Crystal and Cole that their lives have vital purposes when I’m so lost myself?
As the Judge completely left Crystal’s mind and slunk into the back seat, Thorn repressed his pain, leaned Virgil into the front of the car, shifted it into park, and grabbed the keys from the ignition.
“What? Hey, give me the keys.” Crystal still looked panicky, and rightfully so. Hundreds of monsters she couldn’t see were crowding around the car, staring in at them. “How’d you stop the car?”
Cole chimed in. “What’s happening? Virgil, please give back the keys, and we’ll go back to the condo where it’s safe.”
“With Brandon?” Crystal shook her head.
“I’ll take care of him if it comes to it,” Thorn said.
Cole started dialing on his cell. “Maybe I can get ahold of one of the other residents and ask for help.”
“There are no other residents,” Thorn said. “Not tonight. You two and Brandon are the only humans left.” Until the damn cops you called show up.
“Huh?”
Thorn realized he’d been neglecting Cole in favor of Crystal, so he repositioned Virgil’s body to give the blind entrepreneur in the passenger seat better eye contact. “Cole, tell me about yourself. What do you often think about? What worries you?”
“I’m worried that we’re stuck in a car with a lunatic.”
Thorn ignored the jab. “Are you worried about Brandon? Do you have any pending, uh, choices you’re considering? How is your relationship with each other?” Thorn noted that Crystal huffed at that last question.
“Mind if I ask why you give a shit?” Cole said.
“I can’t tell you. I don’t want to affect—”
Cole suddenly snatched the keys from out of his hand. “Okay then. Let’s go.”
Thorn could have retaliated and seized the keys back from Cole, but it wouldn’t have gone far toward earning the humans’ trust. I might as well tell them the truth. Cole started the ignition and gestured for Crystal to drive forward. “Wherever you want, love. The police station or the condo. I trust you.”
Crystal gazed at him for a moment, a faint smile on her lips.
“Millions of choices in a life,” Thorn began, before she could start driving. Crystal’s and Cole’s attention turned back to Virgil. “Every moment is a choice. But there are a few, just a few choices, powerful enough to define a life. Before dawn, both of you will have to make such a choice. I have no idea what those choices are, and I need your help to—”
Scratch. All three of them froze. Thorn looked over at the Judge, who was still brooding in the corner, nearly motionless.
Scratch. This time the noise was accompanied by an icy cracking sound. A long scrape had formed on the driver’s window, running from top to bottom. Crystal eyed it with trepidation.
“They’re just trying to scare us. They can’t get in.” Thorn said this to comfort the humans, but he wasn’t so sure it was true. The thicker windows of the condo would have taken days for the demons to break. These car windows, on the other hand…
Crystal stared at the empty air outside her door. She exchanged a frightened glance with Thorn.
“Guys, what’s happening?” Cole asked.
Scratch. This one came from the window to Thorn’s left. “We know what you did, Thorn,” one of the disheveled beings outside the car said. “You kill our leader.”
I didn’t mean to, Thorn wanted to say. Marcus tricked me into it so that you would seek vengeance on me. But he kept silent. He wouldn’t give these vile creatures the dignity of argument.
“It not too late, Thorn. We can forgive. Come out to us. Join us. Or better choice, murder the humans to prove we should let you live.”
Thorn had seldom been in situations as dire as this, and the derision from his own kind made his fear even harder to swallow. Months ago he would have enjoyed these creatures’ adulation. But now, whoever killed him here tonight… would be made a hero.
Suddenly, every demon in the mob raised their hands and dug into all the windows simultaneously. Hundreds of scratches creaked down the safety glass, and a shrill cacophony blared through the car.
“We need to move,” Thorn said.
“Where?”
“The parking garage at the condo is gated, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go there. Fast.”
For once, Crystal did as he asked.
•
Brandon stood in a corner of Crystal’s bedroom, by a window overlooking the bizarre scene ten floors below. Heather’s mutilated wreck of a body had been broken in dozens of places, crushed by her own car. Yet that same body had thrashed on the ground for the last several minutes, prying off her fingernails in the process of trying to stand up, which she couldn’t do with all those broken bones. She’d only stopped squirming about thirty seconds ago, long after she should have died from her injuries. Her intestines were spilled out on the ground a short distance away, perhaps dragged along by the car as it made its escape. The grisly tableau disturbed even Brandon: he’d grown quite fond of Heather. And now she was dead and disemboweled.
If any one of us dies, who notices? We are all just specks on a tiny planet circling one small star in all of space.
He had his gun now, snug in his back pocket, but he might not need it. It was mostly a precaution against Virgil, in case the lunatic returned and assaulted him again. That the guard was alive and spry after his leap from the balcony offered even more reason to fear him, whatever he was. A bullet to the head would shut him up though, and Brandon could probably even excuse it as self-defense, what with Castle Doctrine and all that. He wouldn’t have such luck if he killed Crystal, but that wouldn’t stop him; sometime in the next few days he’d find her, and he wouldn’t hesitate to end
her life. If she were to pop out the kid—his kid—Brandon’s future with Cole would be compromised, and worse, his bank account would be decimated by all the child support he’d have to pay that freeloading bitch over the next eighteen years. He wouldn’t let himself go through that nightmare again. Brandon would rather die than let himself become a victim of the weak’s underhanded war against the strong. And now that he knew the kid was a piece of him, he’d feel justified in destroying it along with Crystal. Then, even if Cole turned him in, Brandon wasn’t afraid of suicide. It’d be a small price to pay for victory.
Go out with a bang instead of a whimper.
Brandon had changed into a comfortable black T-shirt. Had he not been watching zombie girl get vivisected outside, he could almost have pretended this was just another casual night at home, with Cole and his whore out for the evening. If only.
Living is not good or bad. Dying is not good or bad. The Universe does not care about me, so I do not care about the Universe.
Heather’s car rounded the corner and drove back through the condo’s entrance, with Crystal still at the wheel. Why were they coming back? Didn’t they know he’d be waiting here for them?
Brandon shed a tear for Heather, or maybe for himself, but wiped it aside the instant it left his eye.
I am indifferent.
•
Crystal peeked through the scrapes covering the windshield to see the parking garage gate clinking open. She checked on Virgil via the rearview mirror and noticed him scanning the area just outside the garage. “Something’s wrong,” he said. “They’re all going back up to the windows outside Cole’s condo unit. None of them followed us here.”
“Maybe Brandon’s doing something to distract them,” Crystal said. She’d decided to play along with Virgil. Maybe she even half-believed him. All she knew was she’d never seen anything like what she’d just seen in the city—whole new places just appearing out of nowhere—and it had really freaked her out. She still wasn’t sure that returning here would be the safest option, but Virgil did seem to want to help her and Cole, and after the drive she’d just taken, she was starting to think maybe he wasn’t completely off his rocker.