by J. T. Warren
Simple.
So simple to kill a person, is it?
Whose voice was that? Perhaps a teacher she had in high school, the one who always dared to question students’ perceptions of the world. Mrs. Trolliver. Mercy had gotten mostly A’s in her class. Except on that persuasive research paper. Mrs. Trolliver refuted Mercy’s opinion on abortion in a half-page response written in red pen in which she insisted that one day Mercy would recognize the sanctity of life.
Her statement began, So simple to kill a person, is it?
Yes, you bitch, it is, Mercy thought and grinned.
Perceived confidence aside, she was already wondering what she’d say to the police and how many nightmares she would suffer and how she could live a normal life after taking someone else’s.
But he’s trying to kill me.
But he was gone. His next scream came from farther away, somewhere up the mountain a way. A crow in the middle of the gathering raised its head and cawed.
FORTY-FIVE
Victor was playing hide and seek again. It was almost funny. After finally ridding himself of his mother, here he was hunting for her in the woods. But it wasn’t his mother hiding out here among the trees. And when he found the girl, he would prove that to himself. He’d prove it in the most assured and intimate way.
Time to give Momma her prize.
Caleb was ahead somewhere, now a nonsensical screaming voice that warbled through the night like an audible, angry wind. If he were right in front of him, squawking away like a deranged fool, Victor would bury one of his knives into Caleb’s back. He’d use the one with the gut hook, so when he slid it free from the flesh, the man’s guts would come with it in one long, slippery crimson ribbon.
Caleb claimed to be a cleanser. Victor had accepted him for the advantages it offered rather than for the veracity of his claim. There were cleansers, after all, and then there were cleansers. Caleb was a maniac who wanted to rape and maim and kill and that had its usefulness for Victor, but when it came right down to it, Caleb was not going to survive the transition. An authentic cleanser would never allow it. The future belonged to the disciplined.
Victor had found him on this very mountain and had taken that as a sign that the universe intended them to meet, and the man had been useful so far, but now Victor dared to question if it hadn’t been a sign at all, was in fact a test of his will. Could he do the right thing?
The life of a cleanser was a solitary one. That was the point. Sure, there were others like him, thousands even, and there were specific “grounding points,” or meeting places (typically a “marked” place) where they could associate if needed, but the essence of the calling was the single-minded primal man who, though he might long for a family or clan, understood that true survival, the purest form of it, meant a life alone, constantly on the prowl for nature’s next offering.
He had been confused with the girl. Watching her from afar in the bookstore, following her home some nights, stalking her up this mountain--those were the signs of a desperate man. A pathetic man. He had wanted to believe he was being disciplined, wanted to believe that she was a potential life mate who would travel the dark future at his side. Again, he had misread the signs. This was another test.
Part of survival was internal equilibrium. That required a frequent letting of his fluids. He did that numerous times a day. Instead of relying on himself, or simply taking the girl and being done with it, he had fooled himself into believing she might realize his prowess and pledge her devotion to him.
If he could make himself vomit he would, he was so disgusted with himself. So pathetic. He had believed in love.
He knew better now. Love was a beast that hooked its talons deep inside you and infected you with some poison like a sedative that convinced you it was okay to be trapped, okay to be this beast’s victim. Okay to die in its embrace.
The trail grew steeper, Caleb’s screams closer, and Victor stopped.
His mind was clearing and sharpening. He knew the error of his ways and continuing to follow that idiot up the mountain was another error in this recent streak.
The girl didn’t scale this whole mountain. She would never make it before Caleb overtook her and that would be that. No, she was much closer.
He knew that with the certainty that primal man knew there were deer grazing just the other side of hill. Instinct guided the earliest men and it was all the purest cleansers really needed.
The girl was close. Very close.
Playing hide and seek with him.
FORTY-SIX
Mercy walked to the edge of the cliff. What would it feel like to jump off and plummet to the darkness below? The free fall would be exhilarating and horrifying, but her death might be long and protracted if trees cushioned her fall. She could end up lying as a broken heap of bones and torn flesh, paralyzed but alive. She would starve to death. The crows might pick at her skin, slowly eat her alive.
Okay, sweetie, her mother’s voice said like Mercy was six and it was time to wash up for dinner, time to come back from the dark side.
She wasn’t really contemplating suicide. Just curious, that’s all.
She could no longer hear Caleb, so he was either well up the mountain or perhaps his vocal cords had finally given out.
Or he’s doubled back and once you turn around, there he’ll be, grinning and calling you a bitch.
Victor was probably with him, too. That way they could take turns with her until she was too exhausted to fight back and then they’d double-team her before beating her to death and throwing her over the side.
She had heard something behind her but it couldn’t be him. That was too cruel, too nightmarish, too damn unfair. She turned slowly.
The surrounding trees stood still and dark like giant bodyguards. The crows continued grazing. They went about their scavenging in peace, slowly moving to grant each bird equal access to every spot of grass. A bird or two flapped into the air for a moment before settling back again, but there was no tension in them like birds usually had when anything got close to them. Birds were small and vulnerable. They took few risks. They had wings, after all. Better to fly away. Only pigeons crowded around people. They had learned in the big cities that people were slobs who dropped food everywhere like deer droppings. Those birds never got tense, just crazed for food.
If only I had wings, Mercy thought.
She had thought the same thing when she sat in the hospital room where her mother spent her last few days. Her mother’s chest strained to suck in enough air to keep living, sounding like a high-pitched whistle. Her head lolled back and forth on the bright white pillow and her eyes rolled in their sockets. She was loaded with morphine. The doctor said she was in another world at this point, a constant dream state. But sometimes when Mercy would look up from a book, her mother would be staring at her, eyes wide. Those eyes tried to convey what her voice no longer could. Her final noises were phlegmy chokes and that whistling sound like a little kid with a gap between his front teeth might make.
Mercy wanted to run from her room, hide somewhere, and sleep for days, years. She wanted to sprout wings and leap from the large hospital window, fly far from this hospital and her dying mother, fly to the other side of the world if she could.
But she didn’t have wings. All she could do was toughen up.
Be the toughest bitch you can be.
Tough bitches were strong and rational. They didn’t ponder death or daydream about flying fantasies that would never come true. They accepted the conditions of their situation and did whatever was necessary to survive.
The doctors had wanted to sedate her mother even further, essentially send her into a coma. They insisted it would be less painful for her. Once the muscles relaxed, her breathing would slow and stop and she’d be at peace. Dad had almost agreed but Mercy stopped him. “She wouldn’t want you to,” Mercy had said. “She’d want to tough it out.”
She had toughed it out like a true bitch until that last gasp that stiffen
ed her whole body as if Death had seized her and then she collapsed into the bed, finally at peace.
Whatever was necessary to survive.
Right to the bitter end.
She took a deep breath and didn’t wince at the pain in her nose from the cold air or the misery running rampant throughout the rest of her body. She could be tough. Had to be. She had only to figure a way out of here, down off this fucking mountain.
The evergreen rustled as if an animal were crawling up the trunk. Maybe that’s all it was. But she knew better. Even before Victor Dolor stepped out of the tree as if emerging from another dimension, Mercy Higgins knew she had waited too long to get tough.
Now, it was either do or die.
FORTY-SEVEN
She was a blacked-out figure set against an impossibly bright moon that was far too big, as if this mountain’s peaks grazed the edges of the upper atmosphere. The moon’s light bathed over his own face and that was good. She could see the smile on his face and read the predatory determination in his eyes. He didn’t need to see hers to know she was scared out of her mind, even contemplating a leap from the cliff.
That would be a shame, but he’d get over it. Once Caleb made his way back down, Victor might throw him off the edge, too. Then he could put all this shit behind him and refocus his attention on the approaching Dark Days.
Then he saw the crows.
They completely covered the ground between him and Mercy. Normally loud and very social creatures, these crows were almost silent and pecked at the ground while moving with complete awareness of all the other crows. If not for the strong moonlight reflecting off their backs, the crows would bled into the ground and make it appear to ripple as if alive.
“Stay away from me,” Mercy said. Her voice shook as if she were cold.
“I certainly hope you don’t plan on jumping,” Victor said. “It’s a long way down, but the fall might not kill you.”
She sobbed once and then spoke with more fierceness than she really had. “If you don’t stay away, it won’t be me falling off this cliff.”
Victor laughed. He trailed the beam of his flashlight over the black bodies of the crows. “People all over the world are afraid of crows,” he said. “Farmers blame them for destroying crops. Cultures in all corners of the world associate crows with death. A gathering of crows is even called a murder. It’s because crows were commonly found on battlefields, picking at the flesh of the newly dead. That started their reputation as evil messengers.”
Victor pushed his foot through the birds to take a very short step toward her. While he spoke, he continued this almost imperceptible advance. “You could fall and not die, but it wouldn’t be long before these crows found you and began to feast. They’d probably start with your eyes. Can you imagine what that will feel like, having your eyes pecked right out of your head? It wouldn’t kill you. You could still be alive for quite a while before they finally torn you open enough for the blood to really flow.”
“Stay where you are!” Her scream was pathetic, the panicked growl of the beast at bay.
“I like crows,” Victor said. “They are misunderstood creatures. They are survivors. They travel in broods of thousands and communicate with several hundred different calls. They defend each other, including crows unrelated to their brood. They mate for life. There are, actually, the best example to Man for how he should live. And once the Transition begins, crows will forever endure as a symbol of why humanity fell.”
“What transition?” Mercy asked.
She was stalling, of course, but Victor didn’t care. There was nowhere for her to run. He stopped about halfway to her.
“Crows are not evil messengers from Hell, they are extremely intelligent creatures that can intuit future events. Crows didn’t simply find battlegrounds where the dead had fallen; they swarmed the places where a battle would soon transpire and waited for the bloodshed to begin. These crows are not simply feeding here, they knew something was going to happen at this spot. They are waiting for the real feast.”
Mercy stilted her body into something resembling a fighting stance. She held a broken flashlight. Victor continued his approach.
“There are a hundred crows crowded on this mountain ledge, perhaps more. But crows rarely travel in such a small number. The others are around somewhere, waiting for whatever big event is about to transpire. But we know what that is, don’t we?”
He stepped closer. The crows parted for him without complaint. They knew what was going to happen and they had no interest interfering.
“Stay back,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Think of how amazing it will be when the other crows appear, when they take to the air as one and descend upon the fresh kill. Maybe I’ll let you live long enough to hear the deafening drone of their thousands of flapping wings. It will sound like angels coming to carry you away.”
“You’re fucking crazy.” She was trying to sound tough but fresh tears muddled her words.
“Don’t worry, though, I’m sure you won’t last very long when they start feeding. They’ll clean you right down to the bones. Then I’ll take a few of your bones and carry them with me. They will keep me company when the Dark Time comes. They will remind me of the time we’ve had together. Of the smoothness of your flesh. Of the wetness inside you.”
She crouched at the edge. Her hands gripped at the sides of her head and she cried. “Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t do anything to me. Please.”
He was almost within an arm’s reach of her. He paused again. He could knock out all her teeth and then fuck her mouth before gutting her and letting the crows at her. He could hear the choked gagging noises she would make and he grew eager to have her again.
“Don’t worry about your father, either,” he said. “I will place him by your side. You may think I’m a monster but I’m not heartless. I would have gladly let him live if you hadn’t made this all so difficult. You could have been mine. You could have stayed with me and survived the End of Everything. Instead, you’re going to die on the side of this mountain. But not before I have you one more time. Not before you give me what I want.”
He stepped toward her, cast the light on her face. It was hidden behind hands grimed in dirt and blood. He reached for her head with his injured hand. The fingers had swelled up even further and blood trailed down the back of his hand and dribbled off his wrist onto the back of a crow.
A monstrous scream rose in the air like a piercing siren through a town falling before a tornado.
For a moment, Victor thought it was coming from the girl and then he realized what was happening and when he looked behind him, he gave the bitch the chance she needed.
Caleb launched out of the wall of bushes with the scream still croaking out of him and Mercy Higgins jumped to her feet and smashed Victor in the side of the face with her flashlight.
As Victor turned back to her, the crows took flight.
FORTY-EIGHT
She begged for him not to hurt her and that was factual but not altogether true. She didn’t want him to wreak any more pain upon her, but she knew her pleas would only encourage him and that’s what she wanted. Get him close enough and then attack. A strong enough hit could give her the time she needed to run. After that, well, it was time to see just how tough a bitch she could be.
The scream might have been in her mind. It came from the bushes just as she adjusted her grip on the flashlight and pounced up and toward him and that scream could have been her desperation for this to work, for her to have a chance to survive.
But it was Caleb, somehow finding his way back down the mountain and right to this very spot. That wasn’t good because what the hell was she going to do against both of them? But when Victor turned his head, Mercy was immediately thankful that the other asshole had tracked her down.
The flashlight’s silver plastic casing reflected in the moonlight and a thick puff of hot air from her frantic breathing obscured it for a moment before the head of the fla
shlight connected with Victor’s cheek and his head snapped to the side as if from a massive punch.
Then the crows took to the air in unison. For the length of a snapshot, they hovered at waist height and Mercy saw Victor turn back to her with blood running down his cheek and behind him was Caleb lurching toward them, his mouth a beastly rictus full of spit. Then the crows were up and the moon was blacked out. Mercy was lost in a darkness alive with flapping wings and human hands desperate to claw her flesh and rip her wide open.
Feathers brushed her face from all sides and she thought of being smothered beneath rolls of silk. To die in such comfort was uniquely disturbing. Then the thought was gone and Victor’s fingers were tearing at her face and entangling in her hair.
She screamed but her shouts were lost in the incredible thumping beat of the crows’ wings and somewhere under that was Caleb’s distorted screech. She managed to hit Victor in the head a few times more with the flashlight before it fell from her hand and was gone, but his grip on her hair tightened and his other hand groped at her cheek, found her nose, and squeezed.
This scream rang in her mind as one whitewashed wall of pain that obscured everything else. She clawed at his hand but his fingers squeezed harder and then snapped to the side. The breaking of her nose was more intense than her anguished scream and for several seconds the pain was too great to process even as some mammoth wall of misery. She was merely nothing, only pain. When some semblance of rational thought returned, she wanted to sprout wings and fly off with these crows or even jump from the cliff and plummet to her death. Either flee or die. One or the other. She could not endure this pain any longer. It would drive her insane.
You could fall and not die, but it wouldn’t be long before these crows found you and began to feast. They’d probably start with your eyes. Can you imagine what that will feel like, having your eyes pecked right out of your head?
He had broken her nose but he wasn’t letting up on it. He snapped it back in the other direction and then back and forth again. He didn’t want to simply cause her pain--he wanted to rip her nose right off her face.