by Trevor Zaple
He crossed the field and saw that the churning was fresh; the wind was filtering snow across it to fill in the footsteps, but it had not had enough time to even start in on the job. There had been a very large crowd here not long ago, but they had obviously dispersed by now. Or had they? Steve stared across the square but could discern no movement from the shadowy buildings. He stopped, concerned, but in the end decided to press on anyway. He had come this far, after all, and there was little point in turning around and going somewhere else.
The stomped-down snow made his walking easier, and he was able to make it through the flat square without issue. At once point he stepped down and found his foot going through a thin scrim of ice; thankfully he was able to rescue himself before he went completely in the hidden pools. He straightened up after that and tried to carefully think about what direction to take. He tried to remember what the layout of Nathan Phillips Square had been, but that belonged to the sun-destroyed photographs that served as his long-term memory. He simply strode towards the round council chamber that anchored the two curving towers that were City Hall and hoped for the best.
He was able to make it the rest of the way without incident, although he was breathing heavily by the time he made it. As he got closer he saw that the glass walls that ringed the council chamber were shattered, creating dozens of gaping, jagged-edged maws. He felt a deep shiver of unease flutter through his stomach, but he pressed on. He needed to be inside anyway, and he felt as though he might go mad if he didn’t get there. His mind conjured up swelled monsters growing bloated in the darkness contained within those screaming glass orifices.
He stopped at the edge of the ring of broken glass. The interior was immediately opaque. He reached into his coat and pulled out his flare. He lit it and threw it into the council chamber, immediately regretting the expenditure. In the sudden, shocking green glare he saw that the interior of the chamber had been torn up. Chairs lay strewn together, jumbled amongst tipped-over desks. Glass glittered everywhere in an inward arc, giving off a brilliant and eerie Halloween glare. He climbed through a likely-looking opening as carefully as he could, tripping a little on a treacherous chunk of glass but managing to right himself on the other side. He looked around the interior with the careful eye of a paranoid man. There was no one inside, although there was a great deal of blood smeared over many of the surfaces near the center of the room. As he approached the focal point of the chamber, he thought he saw hair, and what might have been part of an arm. He shivered, and the bloated, toxic monsters seemed to flit about just outside what the corners of his eyes could discern. He would lose the light soon, though, and he had not seen any artificial form of light. Whoever had torn apart the chamber (and each other, seemingly) had obviously taken whatever they could from the place. He found his way to the mayor’s seat and checked it over. There were no little gremlins hiding beneath the desk, waiting to bite and gnaw his ankles in the dark. He sat in the chair, tentatively at first, and then with greater relish as he discovered how comfortable the mayor’s chair really was. It seemed ridiculously luxurious as he melted into it. His coats seemed to act like the softest blankets as he settled in, and he suddenly felt every inch of the journey that he had made. Every muscle in his body seemed to jostle for replenishment at once, and he grimaced at the ache. His beard itched and crawled, and he scratched it contentedly.
He felt more relaxed than he had in a long time. Visions of brown-hued monsters vanished from his mind, and in the next instant the flare died. He found himself staring into blindness, and although he told himself that there were no monsters he felt a bit of the nervousness return to tickle his solar plexus with loving, horrid fingers. He pursed his lips and began to whistle, and a moment later he began to sing.
If my parents are crying he sang, then I’ll dig a tunnel from my window to yours. You climb out the chimney and meet me in the middle, the middle of the town. The melody drifted off into the sunless city, echoing out and dispersing into nothing. The clamoring wind obliterated all else.
Seven
Carlos fled down the rattling hallway and Mark followed after. Very closely behind Mark, Olivia was running for dear life, their daughter clutched to her in her sling. Behind and ahead of them came the sharp report of gunfire, and the screams that came as an aftermath. Carlos was leading them towards the access stairway at the west end of the floor, and Mark clenched his .357 with a set jaw. When they tore through the door and started down the wide industrial stairwell he expected that they would have to fight through.
There was another group on the stairway, but they were headed down. They stopped and turned to look at Carlos and leveled their weapons. Mark saw that one of them was Conley, his eyes hard and ready to deal death without discrimination. When he saw Mark, Conley started and lowered his weapon.
“Mark?” he asked, surprised. “Where’s Northdancer?”
“He threw himself off the side of the roof,” Mark replied awkwardly. “I’ve decided there’s very little point in sticking around”.
“Have you now?” Conley murmured contemplatively. He seemed to focus on Carlos for the first time, and his eyes narrowed.
“Who’s this?” he asked aggressively, raising his automatic rifle. Mark held out a hand, wanting to plead with his friend but forcing himself to remain firm.
“He’s a friend, he’s helping us get out of here”
“Is he now?” Conley’s expression became sly. “So, you have a plan to get out, then?”
Carlos nodded. “We’re meeting some others in the basement, and then we’re going to be on our way out. I guess you can try to stop us, but this place is going to be hazardous to my friends and their baby”. Conley waved his hand impatiently.
“I couldn’t care less, buddy,” he said. “You’re absolutely, one hundred percent correct. It’s time to exit stage left and try to regroup later. We should fall back to City Hall and start digging in”.
Carlos and Mark shared a brief, unspoken conversation. Mark nodded.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what we should do,” he agreed. He felt a small pang of regret for lying to someone that he respected as much as Conley.
“There’s a couple of people waiting for us in the basement, and hopefully by now they’ve stolen the explosives you were keeping in cafeteria kitchen,” Carlos explained, and smiled apologetically at Conley. “Some of your people really talk a lot, eh? Especially when their dick takes over their thinking”.
Conley did not look impressed, but he led them down the stairway quickly. As they passed the third-floor landing the sound of battle became very loud. Conley changed the group’s direction with sharp, decisive commands and they were suddenly dashing through the third floor. They ran through a large, picked-over waiting room near the major operating theatres, and hooked around to the left. Silent banks of elevators greeted them, and beyond them was another, smaller stairwell. Conley led them down here and they had to go down two abroad. Mark fell beside Olivia.
“Are you alright?” he asked and she glared at him.
“I’m perfectly alright,” she scolded him. “We’re getting out of here and we’re getting out of this goddamn city and we’re leaving for good. I’m as great as I’ve ever been in my entire life”. Mark grinned and then they were below the sounds of fighting. There was no entrance to either the second or first floors; before long they were exiting the stairwell through an access door. Several of Conley’s men threw open flashlights and they were soon making their way through a seemingly Byzantine series of dark hallways. Carlos began taking over navigation, grabbing a flashlight and directing the group rapidly. Eventually he brought them into a frigid, featureless room that stretched out emptily. From one corner a pair of flashlights flipped on and both parties found themselves temporarily blinded. Then their eyes became used to the situation and it was Emily and Amber that stepped forward. Their hands were held out to shield their eyes and they were squinting. They saw the police grunts and immediately hardened. Amber quickly wit
hdrew a compact submachine gun and Emily’s fingers danced around a light-looking .22. The police raised their weapons without hesitation and Mark had to throw himself between the two before they would agree to lower them again. There was some angry muttering on both sides but the intensifying sound of gunfire and the greater frequency of coughing thumps resulting in bass-throbbing explosions from above drove them to adopt a speedy resolution. Emily immediately lead them back down the passage they had emerged from, trailing something in her hand. Conley began to pointedly ask what the point of it was and Emily distractedly hushed him.
“One second,” she hissed, and appeared to be straining to listen to the growing sounds of the battle that was raging above them. There was another of those coughing, wobbling explosions from upstairs and she closed her hand into a fist. A deafening explosion blew through the room that they had met up in; the sonic recoil from it seemed to rattle the brains inside their skulls. The air turned blue with profanity, with Conley leading the charge.
“What in the blue fuck do you think you’re doing?” he shouted, striving to hear himself. Emily waved them onward, towards the explosion.
“The fastest route between two points is a straight line,” she shouted. “Fuck the Gordian Knot, if you’re in a hurry you just gotta cut through it”.
There was a gaping, brick-toothed hole in the wall now, and beyond it was pure blackness. Once the flashlights pored into this new opening, Mark saw that there was a number of cars in the space beyond.
“Into the parking garage and turn left!” Emily shouted, and ran through without waiting for the others. Mark stayed beside Olivia as they proceeded through, his heart racing. They felt their way along, their fingers tracing over freezing steel. The narrow paths of the flashlights made the biggest obstacles obvious, but there seemed to be a thousand smaller obstacles in the unseen to trip them up. From up ahead, Emily’s voice grew excited.
“It’s just up here! Amber, bring the backpack!”
They reached a wall and stopped. Amber and Emily were shining their lights against what appeared to be a corrugated-steel wide garage door and conferring. Amber affixed something to that steel door and then waved them back frantically. Mark grabbed Olivia without thinking and stumbled her along into the darkness. Olivia swore at him and pulled away before she tumbled down. Mark had no such luck; after losing his grip on Olivia he fell face-first into cold, harshly textured cement. A second later another deafening explosion occurred and daylight flooded inward. They picked themselves up and ran out through the hole punched in the garage door, their arms shielding their eyes.
Jason shivered near the crumbling façade of an old pharmacy, his startled heart taking a long time to calm down from the latest shock. He had been standing there, minding his own business. He had finally crawled away from the firefight on his belly, like a dog, and had been trying to hide and consider his next move. The explosion that had suddenly burped out of the back of the hospital had made him immediately crouch and cower; a small squirt of urine had gone into his already-soaked pants. He had watched with superstitious fear as a group of people had exited the hole that the explosion had made, and then had undergone what could be best described as a religious transformation. He was close enough to seem them in some detail, and he saw very clearly that one of them was her. His angel.
He had been skulking about, trying to find a way into the hospital that didn’t involve getting into shooting matches with the people inside. This had been coupled with a grunting urge to put his gun to his head and put a chunk of lead through his brain. The concept of putting his lights out had gained a lot of traction since Taggert had walked into his shop. He had felt blessed when he had overheard the conversation and realized that She was somewhere inside the hospital. He had been crushed once he realized that there was no easy way to gain access that didn’t involve a battle. In truth, he had stopped by the pharmacy to see if there was any use in trying to talk himself out of finishing what he had tried to start all those months ago. He had been trying to remember what his last words were supposed to be when the explosion had occurred.
All thoughts of suicide left him. His purpose was there in front of him, tantalizingly real and close enough to shout at. He forced himself to remain hidden; She was surrounded by those filthy beasts, as well as the killer with the whore’s hair, and they were also accompanied by some of the Mayor’s police. They would shoot him on sight, anyone would shoot him on sight. Neither side would hesitate to put a clip full of rounds into him, he was sure. He had to be careful. He had to be sly. His angel was close enough to touch, and his aching fingers longed to touch. His suddenly stiffened penis was clamoring for attention as well.
He followed them at a distance, pacing them like Gollum. Certainly She was Precious enough for him, but he despised the analogy. Gollum had been a weak, pathetic thing. Now that he would soon be reunited with the only Love of his short, misbegotten life, he felt a raw, lusty strength filling his limbs. He would not fail. She would be his. They walked down a street of dead cafes and devastated boutique shops and he followed, keeping to the shadows of the ruined buildings and making sure to keep his movements to a minimum. The streets quickly narrowed and the buildings grew closer together. Jason had only been to Kensington Market once and had found it a disgusting, unappealing visit. It had smelled like foreign food and been full of tourists, Asians, and hippies; it was like the LD50 of what Jason claimed to hate about the city. His second visit was doing nothing to improve his opinion.
The houses that had once been host to a riot of fashion boutiques and OCAD students had fallen together; their crumbling frames were covered in thickly packed snow. There were mannequins in the street, standing haphazardly, snow furring on them. The group that he was stalking did not stop to acknowledge them but Jason had to stop and stare. They were faceless and strange in the setting January sun, and Jason thought that they might haunt whatever dreams might come his way that night. He was transfixed by them, and if he had not forcibly torn himself away he might have watched them until he collapsed from exhaustion. The group had moved on but he followed their tracks in the snow. This task was quite easy, as their tracks were the only major set of tracks in the snow.
They had followed the path of the market through winding, narrow streets and then had made a sharp right turn. They passed the silent, crumbling remains of what had once been a happening coffee shop and then emerged out into Spadina Avenue. The street was deserted, although their tracks were very apparent. Jason walked through them carefully, wondering if he might be walking through the footsteps of his angel and gained a sense of well-being from the idea. As the collapsing ruins of old Asian restaurants flanked him and closed in on him he shrank into himself and tried to focus on the task at hand. He tried to gauge how long he had stood in the Market and looked into the blank faces of the mannequins. With a deepening sense of disquiet, he realized that he had no idea how long he had stood there. Time had grown very elastic.
After a few blocks the tracks turned again, back onto Dundas. They stretched along two blocks of silence and Jason forced himself to hurry along. If he lost his angel now he would collapse and die, alone amongst the dead buildings. The snow would drift across and cover him until he was a part of nothing at all. His legs ached but he pushed at them, forcing them to work through the complaints. He followed them until they reached the sweeping, strange, glass-and-steel design of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and then threw himself into despair, thinking that the tracks had disappeared. After a moment’s investigation, however, he discovered that they had not disappeared, but turned inward, into the AGO. He stood and pondered the doorway for a time, trying to figure out his next move. His face grew very hot despite the frigid wind that blew at it; he felt as though the doors would fly open at any moment and the things that had kidnapped his angel would emerge with knife-smiles and gouging hands.
He ran without thinking across the street, stumbling through the deep parts of the snow. There were a number of old
cafes and smaller art galleries and he chose one at random, diving through the gaping window and collapsing into a heap on the other side. He lay there shivering for a long moment and then made himself get up into a position where he could look out the window. He would watch, then, and wait. They would emerge eventually, they had to, and then Jason could begin his pursuit again.
“So there’s no way to convince you to come with me to City Hall, then?” Conley asked Mark. They were sitting in the cafeteria of the AGO, eating listlessly from cans and staring around dully. On any other late afternoon or early evening the cafeteria would have been abuzz with activity; school field trips would have been getting a bite before they left, late-coming stragglers and artists would be grabbing a coffee before they toured the exhibits. Now it was silent, except for the wind howling against the glass outside and the private consternation of those who huddled within.
Mark shook his head. “This city is finished, Conley, and you know it. We’re getting out of the whole thing. We’re going to walk until we can’t see skyscrapers anymore, and then find a farm to ride out the rest of winter on”.
Conley seemed to consider this, and then hung his head.
“Mark, son, are you sure that’s the best plan? How long do you think it’ll take you to go that far? A week? Two weeks? More? How much food do you have? How cold will it get? Will there be another blizzard? Will your baby be able to survive that? Plus, even if you do make it out there, what guarantee do you have that there will be any food out there? Or that those farms won’t be occupied by people? People with guns?”