by Anthony Izzo
He realized those weren’t the most comforting words, but it was all he had.
Laura watched Jenny and Frank run across the lot, Frank holding the strange, glowing stone over his head, the beams shining outward as if from a star. She helped Debbie get Milo to his feet and they went inside the guard shack. They laid Milo down, Laura letting him use her coat as a pillow. They found an old wool blanket in a supply closet, where it was stored with a cardboard box marked EMERGENCY SNOWSTORM SUPPLIES. She took a look in the box; there were candles, matches, canned soups, and a radio.
When Milo had been made reasonably comfortable, Debbie took Laura aside and said, “What is that stuff on him? Is it infected?”
She wanted to stop short of telling Debbie the truth. “It’s something to do with their weapons. I saw a case of it at the hospital. It’s not contagious, whatever it is. But it is serious.”
“How serious?”
“He’ll need medical care ASAP.”
“Can I do anything for him?”
“Comfort him, hold his hand. That’s about all for now.”
Debbie took her advice, however flimsy, and knelt at her father’s side and held his hand. He groaned every so often.
As bad as she felt for Milo, Laura had her own worries. She went to the window and looked out at the sea of concrete, and beyond that the mill buildings and furnaces. She hoped Sara was okay, hoped Frank and Jenny knew what they were talking about. She pondered what would happen if Sara didn’t return, if Engel killed her. The thought of taking a nice handful of those sleeping pills and a tumbler of vodka occurred to her. She could slip away, maybe join the girl forever. Wherever that was.
But if Engel killed her and his monstrosities were loosed on the world, it wouldn’t matter, would it?
Nothing would.
Sara came to a set of railroad tracks near the blast furnaces. There were a few rusted cars on the tracks, which she imagined had been used to transport ore pellets. Straight ahead was a black building and from that building the furnace rose for what looked like a mile. There were six of them, standing like alien sentinels in the darkness.
She saw the partially opened door and slipped inside. The building rose several stories, and one windowed wall admitted a small amount of moonlight. In front of her were a maze of stairs and catwalks and pipes that rose up to the ceiling. She went to the steps and began to climb, praying she wouldn’t slip and break her neck.
As she climbed, she thought of Robbie and felt a pang of guilt that she hadn’t called him. If she made it home, she intended to plant the longest, wettest kiss possible on him and tell him how much she loved him. Not like puppy love, when in the seventh grade she’d had a crush on Stevie Winchell, but maybe the real thing, like she could tell him anything, her deepest darkest secrets, and he wouldn’t laugh or tell the guys on the lacrosse team. And maybe they’d go to college together, and beyond that, who knew? But first she had to get out of here.
Below her, the door opened and closed.
She turned down a catwalk, then turned again, trying to walk as softly as possible. She heard footsteps down below. Peering over the rail, she saw Engel, moving as if one with the shadows. He seemed to glide in the darkness.
She found a set of large pipes that went up to the ceiling. There was enough room between them and space behind for her to slip through. She slid between the pipes and ducked behind one.
Something brushed against her face. It was only a cobweb, but it still sent a shiver down her back. She brushed it away.
She heard footsteps on the metal stairs.
Sara peeked out from behind the pipes. On a catwalk parallel and higher than hers, Engel glided along, head scanning from side to side, looking for her.
He can’t see me, can he? She didn’t dare move.
He turned and looked in her direction. The moonlight caught his eyes, twin silver pinpricks in the dark. He appeared to be looking right at her. She could barely swallow and had to remind herself to take a breath. Remain totally still, she thought, feeling like an animal in the hunter’s sights.
He moved along, and she took the opportunity to duck behind the pipe. That was foolish, looking out, but she had to at least give herself a chance to spot him. She plastered her back against the pipe and drew her arms in tight against her sides.
More footsteps echoing on the metal.
Was he getting closer?
She debated moving from her spot, hoping the darkness would hide her, but Engel operated in the darkness, didn’t he?
This was bad. Worse than playing hide-and-seek with her friends as a young girl. She would always hide in the big walk-in closet in her house in Portland. Stuffed behind David’s Carhartt gear and a stack of Christmas decorations, she would feel a delicious knot of fear in her belly until found. The difference now was that the seeker tortured and killed you.
Best stay put.
The footsteps got closer. He was approaching and she got a whiff of his rotted scent. He must have seen her.
She resigned herself to go, and slipped between the pipes and back on the catwalk. She looked left and there he was, grinning a black-gummed smile. Hand raised, he beckoned her with a finger. “Come, child, it is time.”
Ahead was another set of steps. She whirled and fired a beam, but this time he raised his hand, palm up, and something black and shield-shaped rose in front of him and her beam bounced off it, showering sparks over the railing.
She made the stairs, and as she got to the top she felt his cold grip on her ankle. She kicked and thrashed, but his grip held firm. He dragged her down, the steps digging into her back.
She hit the bottom step and he loomed over her.
“Engel!” Frank shouted. “Let her go!” He held up the Everlight, and its glow filled the cast house, making the long abandoned place seem to come alive.
Engel put up his arm to shield his eyes. A grunt escaped him. He was perhaps thirty feet up and Frank saw Sara at his feet. He bent over and hoisted her up by the scruff of her neck. Her arms and legs flailed and she tried casting a beam at him, but it rocketed harmlessly into the darkness.
“I said let her go!”
“Put down the damned stone first. Then I’ll talk. Otherwise she dies now.”
Sara felt like a marionette. Engel had lifted her as if she’d weighed no more than a paper bag. Now she was pressed against the waist-high railing and it was cold and dug into her thighs. Reverend Frank and an Asian woman she had never seen stood below. The light from the stone felt comforting, warm somehow.
It went out as soon as it came. Frank lowered his arm. Engel still held her up.
“Now, let her go. I doused the light.” Frank said.
“What do you have to offer me, should I spare her? Will you give up the stone, set it down?” Engel asked.
“Spare her. Let us all walk away from here. I’ll leave the stone. She’s no threat to you without it.”
Engel lifted her higher. She felt her feet begin to leave the floor. “Let me go.”
He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “It’s of no importance, now.”
“Engel?”
“Set down the stone. Back away from it. I’ll let those of you that aren’t Guardians go free. The rest I will promise a quick end. That is my final offer.”
As if to prove his point, Sara felt herself hoisted higher. Now her feet weren’t touching, and she felt her shirt rise up to her chest and tried to cover herself.
“I’ll throw her over now.”
Frank reluctantly set the stone on the ground, then backed up. The glow from it became muted and dim.
“Good,” Engel said. “She dies anyway.”
And with that, she felt herself thrust forward. Engel’s hand let go of her shirt. Her pelvis smacked the railing, then she found herself flipping over in space and darkness and she saw the ceiling, then the floor, then felt a horrible thud in her ears. The last thing she saw as she lay on the mill floor, back broken, was Engel smiling down at her.
“You son of a bitch!” Frank said.
Beside him, in the darkness, he heard Jenny gasp, and then say, “Omigod, Frank.” Then he was aware of Jenny winding her way around steps and the beams that held up the catwalks and he shook his head as if to clear away the shock. He bent down, picked up the stone, and followed Jenny, hoping that somehow the girl was still alive, but doubting it. He had heard the sickening crunch as her body hit the concrete.
He reached Sara. He was aware of Engel thudding his way down to them. It didn’t matter. They might be doomed to die.
The girl stared glassily at the ceiling. A trickle of blood ran down the side of her face. Her arms and legs were splayed at her side. It made Frank want to weep, but he knew it would only give Engel reason to mock him. Jenny didn’t feel that same reluctance. Fat tears dribbled down her cheeks and she wiped them away with her sleeve. More came.
From behind him, Engel said, “Put down the stone. You knew I couldn’t let her live, didn’t you?”
“I’ll put down the stone,” Frank said, and placed it on Sara’s chest. “I’ll put it right here for safekeeping.”
“Come now. You waste my time.”
Outside the cast house the group of demons that had been circling over the mill waited for them, perhaps three dozen in all. They surrounded Frank and Jenny and then two of them came forward and forced their hands behind their backs so no beams could be cast.
They shoved Frank along, Jenny at his side, until they reached the guard shack. Then one of them kicked in the door to the shed and Mike came out, helping Milo along. Debbie and Laura were last.
The demons parted as Engel stepped through. He looked paler than ever, his skin almost translucent. “Death awaits.”
“Where is Sara?” Laura asked.
“I threw her from the catwalk,” Engel said. “The sound her body made when hitting the ground was most delightful.”
Frank looked at Laura. Very slowly, she closed her eyes and bowed her head. Then, as they were led away, he heard Laura begin to sob.
Laura saw darkness. Her nose ran and she could taste the salt of her own tears. There would be no need for a dinner of sleeping pills and vodka, after all. She cursed herself for letting Sara come here. They could have run and hid. Thousands of buildings in the city to hide out in, but she had followed Sara here, and now the girl was gone. Again.
They were led into a long, narrow mill building, and as they reached its end, she saw something against the wall, initially taking it for trash, but as she was pushed closer by her captor she saw it was a man. Curled up on his side, arms tied to a beam with thick rope.
Dad.
He was shirtless, and so thin she could count the vertebrae poking from his back. She was shoved to the ground and landed next to him. The others were given shoves and now sat on the concrete next to Laura.
Dad opened his eyes. She could see an array of cuts and bruises on his face. More bruises and lacerations covered his bare torso, from chest to waist. His breathing came in shallow gasps.
She felt her throat tighten up. He had been a kind and good man. Always taking time to put together her dollhouses as a girl. To teach her to ride a bike and get back on even though she had fallen and skinned her knees dozens of times and wanted no part of the bike. And the pregnancy. He didn’t yell, didn’t lecture, only took her face in his hands and kissed her forehead, telling her it was a blessing in disguise. Now the tears came. She couldn’t bear to see him like this.
He opened his eyes and said, “Laura.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Lost track of time. I came to fight him. He won,” Dad said with a weak chuckle.
She moved closer, straining to examine his wounds in the dark. They were mostly lacerations and bruises. A few were infected, but it didn’t appear he had been stabbed with one of their weapons.
“Did you find Sara?”
Her throat felt like it was closing on her. “We did.”
“Where is she?”
A cold numbness seemed to seep through her limbs. “Engel killed her.”
“Then it was meant to be,” he said. “I’m sorry, Laura. I’ve caused you terrible pain.”
“How?”
“I should have sent you both to safety all those years ago.”
“How—how could you?”
Now she felt the tears come and she balled up her fists and tried hard to clamp down on her lower lip, but it trembled, and she put a hand over her mouth, letting out a choked sob. All these years, wondering where her baby went. The sleepless nights, the what-ifs. What if I hadn’t left her? What if I had turned around faster? How could he do this to her? “Do you realize what you put me through?”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I only meant to protect her.”
“Yeah, and it did a lot of good, didn’t it? Why didn’t you send us both away? Warn me, too. We could’ve stayed together!”
“You never would have believed me,” he said, opening his eyes.
“You didn’t even try. You just, just ... took her.”
“To save her,” he said.
“How did you do it? Did you plan it? Did it cause you any guilt at all?”
He let out a tremendous sigh. “A group of Guardians from Routersville helped me. They tailed you to the pumpkin farm that day. Watched your every move, waited for you. When you went to get snacks from that table, they closed in around you. Another one of them grabbed the baby.”
“Did you know her at all? Tell me you didn’t get to see her, at least tell me that. If you got to be her grandfather—”
“Laura, I made a horrible mistake.”
“Yeah,” she said. “You did.”
“I’m the worst father in the world.”
“Really not the time for self-pity, trust me.”
She couldn’t look at him anymore. For the moment he wasn’t her father, but a pathetic, miserable man who had destroyed her life in the name of what he thought was a good cause. She wiped the tears from her face. Then she turned her back on him and waited for what would probably be the end.
CHAPTER 31
Down in the Cobblestone district, flames crackled within the HSBC arena, and the windows that overlooked the lobby had blown out. The buffalo above the entrance had melted into a twisted lump. Outside the arena, it was worse. Piles of bodies, bodies in cars, bodies in the river, bodies impaled on spears and stakes. The cobblestones were slicked with blood.
On Chippewa, the college students that had gone out to the bar scene looking to hoist Guinness and drink Sex on the Beach were left hanging out of broken bar windows. Some still sat at pub tables, faces in pools of beer and spilled booze. At the Alligator, the rich-sweet smell of decay had begun to overpower the spilled beer and soaked-in odor of deep-fried wings and chicken fingers.
At Channel 7, the six o’clock news anchor, a petite brunette by the name of Mary Ford, had stayed on the air. If anyone had been watching, they would have seen the pale monster barge into the studio, and heard her frenzied screams as she was beaten to death with a spiked club.
At the Albright-Knox Gallery, when the first attack hit, a local artist named Phillip Russeau felt he had made it. There had been a reception with cheese and wine, his friends coming and marveling at his paintings. He was another Modigliani, they told him. Now, Phillip Russeau huddled in a darkened corridor of the art gallery, praying to Jesus and all the saints that the things didn’t find him the way they had his friends. Their severed limbs now decorated the grass outside the Albright-Knox.
The Dark Ones moved across the city in hordes. Those that had remained in homes were dragged outside. In the Valley, whole families had been flayed, their skinless corpses left to hang from porches like meat in a butcher shop. In Niagara Square, a row of severed, eyeless heads lined the traffic circle, their mouths opened in permanent screams. On the Buffalo River, where grain had once been king and the long-abandoned silos and grain elevators stoo
d watch, bloated corpses floated, turning the river red.
And the Dark Ones waited. Waited for the master to command them. Next would be another city, and another.
Laura huddled next to Debbie. On the other side of Debbie, Milo lay unconscious, which may have been a mercy. Frank and Jenny were farther down, both sitting, a demon holding their arms up and behind their heads. Only Mike remained standing, hands on hips, defiant. He seemed to be daring the winged creatures that guarded them to make a move.
Now, she heard footsteps, and in the darkness she saw Engel’s pale face. He removed his coat, revealing a hairless, muscular torso. “Which of you will be first? Hmmm?”
“Try me,” Mike said, and lunged at him. Engel put an arm up, grabbed Mike’s wrist, and twisted. The bone gave with a horrific crack. Mike went to his knees, letting out a scream. Engel’s eyes grew wide. He twisted the wrist farther. Mike screamed again. Engel kicked him in the gut, but still held the broken wrist.
“Stop it!” Laura said.
The winged creatures surrounded Mike and Engel. One of them raised up its hand and a curved knife seemed to morph out of the darkness.
“Let’s see what he looks like under that skin,” Engel said.
Laura closed her eyes, stuck her fingers in her ears. She tried to block out the horror that was to come. She only hoped that when it was her turn, she would pass out. Mike let out a scream, a real lung buster that reverberated through the mill. Even with her fingers plugging her ears, it penetrated.
She had to do something. She got up and charged, grabbing one of the demons by its leathery wing and pulling. It turned around and backhanded her, catching her in the lip and sending her to the ground. The salty taste of blood filled her mouth.
She looked at Debbie, who had turned away. Soft sobs escaped her.