by Marcus Sakey
Brody said, “Look, everybody, we understand the reasons for the rules. But we’re not talking about an average Eater. This guy is—”
“A psycho,” Kyle said. “We get it. How’s that different from the woman you killed the other day?”
“Raquel was just a regular person who . . .” Brody trailed off. Who what? Who died, and took that rage out on the first person she saw? Who had probably killed many times since? The easy mockery in her tone as she stood over him hadn’t come from a tortured conscience.
Arthur took advantage of the pause to segue songs, his fingers going from delicate tinkling to more pronounced chords. Brody recognized it after a minute—“Live and Let Die.” He couldn’t help but snort.
“Half the people in the echo are serial killers,” Lucy said. “Maybe not before, but now. It’s the way of it.”
Claire didn’t respond immediately. He could see her analyzing, that ferocious mind of hers recognizing a dead end and changing course. “How many children end up here?”
Again, there were glances. Kyle said, “Plenty.”
“One a day?”
“Could be.”
“So how many children do you think Tucks will murder while you sit here playing the fucking piano?”
Arthur sighed, and took his fingers from the keys. “When you were alive, there must have been people you knew were evil, but you didn’t just kill them. Why?”
“We’re a little past courts of law, don’t you think? This isn’t about abstract morality. It’s about protecting ourselves. About protecting children.”
“The rules,” Arthur said. “That’s why you didn’t just execute people. Well, there are rules here too. We do not kill unless we are forced to. And you’re right, it’s not about abstract morality. It’s about practical reality. The rules allow us to live together. To have a community.”
Lucy leaned forward, put a hand on Claire’s knee. “I know you mean well. And this guy sounds like he deserves to die. But it’s not about them. It’s about us. It’s about being able to sleep at night without worrying our friends are going to feed on us.”
“It’s more than that,” Sonny said softly. He’d been silent throughout the exchange, sitting stone-faced with his palms resting on the pommels of his knives. “It’s wrong.”
Despite himself, Brody broke out laughing. “Really? The meth-dealing biker is lecturing us about violence?”
“I did some things when I was alive,” Sonny said. “Didn’t bother me then. Fought plenty of times I didn’t have to. Cut on people I wanted to scare. Killed some of them. A lot of it I was high, but really, I just didn’t care.”
Brody shot a glance at Kyle. Remember when I called BS that you and he are in the same place?
“When I got here, I thought shit, turns out God is an Outlaw. This place seemed like heaven. No cops, no cartels. Take anything I want, do anything I want.
“I went on thinking that until the first Eater. I’ve been fighting strong, fast assholes my whole life, I know how to do it. I cut his Achilles with one blade and his throat with the other. And then.” Sonny’s usual poker face seemed to waver a little. “Then I lived him.”
Brody remembered being Raquel. Her backyard birthday party. Makeovers with her friend. Her swim meet, her virginity, her murder. He hadn’t been watching, he’d been her. Felt the things she’d felt, thought the things she’d thought. It was beyond empathy. Some part of him almost loved her.
“It’s funny,” Sonny said. “Wasn’t till I died that I really understood killing.” He shrugged, turned to Claire. “Yeah, we got rules, and they’re good. But it’s not really about the rules. It’s about knowing killing is wrong. Echo just makes it clearer.”
Brody found he couldn’t speak.
“I’ve lost friends to Eaters,” Sonny continued, “and I’ve lost friends because they became Eaters. I see ’em sometimes, people we all knew. I don’t mean memories, I mean out there.” He gestured at the dark city. “But they had to go, because we couldn’t trust them. They’d started to get a taste for it.”
Sonny’s words mirrored the confession Brody had made to Claire only hours before, and the fact unnerved him. He looked at her, saw her looking back.
For a moment, he pondered what it would be like if they went it alone. The empty city. The sound of wind. The lonely shadows of an absent world, and the howls of the people hunting them.
Could they survive? Probably. They were very capable people. They’d have to be on guard. Maybe leave the city, find a cabin somewhere quiet. Only each other for company or conversation, and no “me time”; it would be too big a risk to ever separate.
Still, some day an Eater would try for them. Lose that fight, and one or both of them were gone. Win, and there would be another. And another. Each time would get easier. Each time it would mean less.
One day, they’d decide to attack instead of defend.
Claire was looking at him. If she asked, he’d go. Take her side, and abandon the others.
If she asked. But he stared back, trying to communicate that he really hoped she wouldn’t.
Arthur stood. “Your old life is over. You can pretend that’s not true, or you can join us. Make the hard choice, not once, but over and over. Be a human being. Perhaps,” he shrugged. “Perhaps even learn to play the fucking piano.”
TWENTY-NINE
They lay in the morning dim, legs tangled, sheets like whipped egg whites, heads on their pillows and eyes locked. Too much to say to bother trying. Claire had her hands tucked angel style under her cheek. With the tips of his fingers, Brody traced the bruise across her face. He could smell her breath, and their bodies, the scents mingling, a little sour but warm and homey.
Boom boom boom.
Someone thumping at the door. A muffled voice yelled, “Yo. Wakey-wakey.”
Brody sighed, rolled to sitting. He shrugged into a hotel bathrobe before opening the door. “Eggs and bakey?”
“I wish,” Kyle said. “But I got a smushed Clif Bar if you like. The missus up?”
“Claire’s awake.”
“Good. She hasn’t seen the world yet, time to pop that cherry. Meet you in the ballroom.” Kyle turned, started down the hall, whistling what sounded like the Looney Tunes theme song.
“What’s going on?”
Over his shoulder, Kyle said, “Patrol.”
They found the ballroom by the burble of voices, the overlapping cacophony of a hundred conversations. The room was broad and pretty in a corporate way, high ceilings, unlit chandeliers, white curtains swept aside to show the city. Brody was getting used to seeing the skyline dark, and to the clouds hanging low.
The room could have held several times the hundred or so milling around the center of it. Brody cataloged weapons: lots of knives, lots of baseball bats. A few bows and crossbows. Pool cues. Lengths of pipe, lengths of chain, cans of pepper spray.
An earsplitting whistle shattered the noise. Everyone turned to look at Kyle. “Alright, folks. First off, we’ve got a couple of newbies. If you haven’t met them, that’s Will Brody, that’s Claire McCoy. They’re doing a little Romeo and Juliet the Sequel thing, the lucky kids.”
A hundred people turned to look, muttering hellos, smiling. Brody threw a casual salute back.
“They’ll be going out with me this morning.” He pointed at a map of Chicago taped to the window. Bright red lines broke the city into four roughly equal quadrants, spanning as far north as Devon and as far south as 87th. “We’re gonna break them in easy, take the North Side. Rhonda’s team is northwest, Sonny and Lucy, you guys have the hot spots, southwest and south. As always, if you get an arrival, hustle, but don’t take foolish risks.”
The whole thing wasn’t much different from roll call for law enforcement, or the prepatrol briefings in the Marines, and Brody fell into habit, listening while also looking around. Everyone seemed calm.
“—and no skylarking, okay? Everybody back by late afternoon at the outside. Gets dark earlier these d
ays, and we’ve been cutting the daylight a little fine. Any questions?”
Twenty minutes later, Kyle was doing a head count of his squad, and then they were moving out, north down the middle of the street. They fell into loose conversational groups, pairs and trios, but everyone was alert, hands near weapons. Kyle gestured for them to join him at the front. “Sorry for the wakeup call,” he said to Claire. “You still hurting?”
“I’m okay.”
“So we’re clear, if we happen to come across your boy, leave him be.”
“What if my ‘boy’ feels differently?”
“Hey, if he attacks, you can defend yourself,” Kyle said, “and we’ll all have your back. But don’t get any ideas of trying to make it happen. Stick to the spirit of the rules. Meanwhile, you need to see what it’s like. Hanging in the hotel is the reward, not the life. We patrol every day, rotating so everybody gets a weekend.”
Brody said, “Trying to keep the Eaters back?”
“Nah.” Kyle tucked a wad of tobacco in his lip. “Our job is to get to new arrivals before they become an amuse-bouche. We swing by likely places, dangerous intersections, hospitals. Lotta customers in hospitals. South Side teams haunt gang territory. Everybody keeps an eye on the freeways. But mostly we just walk around, stay ready.”
“Big as Chicago is,” Claire said, “the odds against stumbling on someone must be huge.”
“Would be, only it’s not luck. You can feel when someone arrives here. Sort of a pull in the gut. Professor thinks it’s about how scarce life is. We’re the only energy around, and there aren’t many of us. So when someone new lands, it changes things.”
“Like adding a cup of water to a bowl,” Claire mused in her I’m thinking voice. “Versus pouring it in the lake. How often do we find someone?”
“People arrive most every day, but the Eaters tend to get to them first. Wider net.”
“We could split up,” she suggested. “Break into smaller groups, cover more terrain.”
Kyle smiled. “Lady, once you’ve seen a vamp punch through a brick wall, you might feel different.”
They walked a few blocks north, then cut east. The city right and real in every detail, apart from all the things that made it vital. They passed a darkened Starbucks, and Brody felt a palpable urge for a coffee. Large Americano with an extra shot, and a splash of cream, just enough to round it out.
“Italian beef,” Finn said loudly. The boy—Brody guessed he was seventeen—wore sunglasses with red lenses and a ridiculous leather duster, his compound bow slung over one shoulder. “Dipped, with hot peppers.”
Without missing a beat, the Latino dude in the Carhartt jacket said, “Movies. Tub of popcorn with extra butter.” He turned to Brody. “Love those superhero movies. My luck, I died a week before the new Captain America came out. You see it?”
“Yeah,” Brody said. “A lot of things blew up.”
“Shit,” the man said, mournfully. “Wish I’d seen that.”
A woman carrying a baseball bat said, “Facebook.” Half the group groaned. “What? I liked the pictures. And people complaining about things. Don’t know why I liked that, but I did.”
“The fire pit in my backyard.”
“Video games.”
“Girls in bikinis.”
“Warm barbecue and cold beer.”
“Jesus Christ, Finn,” Kyle said, “do we have to do this every time?”
The boy looked hurt. “What?”
“Every time it’s the same. Food, the sun, and then somebody says hot showers and we all get sad.”
“Hot showers,” said a pudgy girl.
“Fuck.”
They turned onto Michigan Avenue, the Magnificent Mile. Always a misnomer in Brody’s opinion; a mall stretched down a street was still a mall. Jarring, though, to stroll down the middle of the sidewalk without dodging tourists or bumping into performers. No cops, no kids snapping selfies. Unmoving cars stopped at dark traffic lights. He glanced at Claire, saw her in-turned shoulders and darting eyes. “You okay?”
She nodded. “It’s so strange. I was expecting something out of a movie about nuclear war. The buildings crumbling, vines everywhere. But it’s like we’re walking through a photograph of the city. Like somebody took the batteries out of the world.”
“Other way around.” Kyle scooped up a soda can, crushed it, then hurled it absently to bounce off a shop window. “The world is fine. We’re the ones got taken out.”
Claire said, “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Why not? Plenty of life was bullshit. Here, there’s real freedom. No need to do a job you hate. No point saving for a rainy day. No need to mow your lawn or get your hair cut or pay your taxes. No Facebook,” he said, loudly, and the woman shot him the bird.
They passed glittering storefronts with dark windows, double buses with empty seats. Up the length of the Mile, past the ominous looming black of the Hancock. Farther north, they reached Lake Shore Drive. Beyond it, Lake Michigan rolled in, water and sky the same cold color.
Division Street looked pretty much the same alive or dead, an odd blend of parking lots and unfrequented stores. On the El tracks at Sedgwick, a train stood unmoving. Stopped for maintenance? Or just frozen by their presence, locked in a pocket universe that would continue once they were past, the same way broken windows regenerated and smashed doorframes healed?
Several blocks farther north, they stopped in front of a huge REI, the outdoor sports store in a multistory building fronted in glass. Brody said, “We going camping?”
“Shopping. Your attire doesn’t sync with our corporate culture.” Kyle gestured at Brody’s slacks, Claire’s stylish pumps. “We’re a sweatshirt-and-jeans organization. Plus, another upside to the afterlife?” He smiled wolfishly. “No wallets.”
They left half the group to watch the street. The rest tromped inside, and, after a quick check to be sure the store was clear, started pulling things off the racks. The shop was two stories with an open center and glass fronting the whole thing, which allowed just enough light to navigate the darker aisles. Tents were open on the floor, kayaks hung from the ceiling like strange fish. There was something deliciously illicit about it, like sneaking into the library after dark.
Claire shopped with startling focus. No browsing, no chitchat, just hard target search. They picked heavy jeans, thermal undershirts, and moisture-wicking hoodies. Windbreakers, a small backpack each. Underwear—“It’s not exactly Victoria’s Secret, but clean beats lace, right?”—and wool socks. Leather hiking boots that cost four hundred dollars a pair. The others seemed to have favorite items, and often changed on the spot, dropping their old clothes on the floor and stepping into new ones, flashes of pale flesh dimpling in the cold. Brody supposed modesty came to seem rather silly here, but it was still startling, and when Claire followed suit he stared openly. When she caught him, she put a hand beneath each breast and mashed them together, laughing at him.
The new clothes were warm and soft, and the boots felt like pillows. Kyle nodded approvingly. “That’s better. Now. What kind of weapon says ‘Claire McCoy’?”
“A Glock 23 with a Talon grip and Trijicon iridium sights.”
“And your second choice? Most of us carry knives, but you’ll probably also want something else with a little more heft.” He unslung the fireman’s axe from his back. “Like Bessie here.”
“Bessie? Seriously?”
“Hey. Don’t mock a man’s weapon.”
They selected expensive Benchmade knives with scabbards, strung them through their belts. Claire picked up a wicked throwing hatchet, took a couple of practice swings. “I feel ridiculous.”
Half an hour after they’d entered, the group of them left. Piles of clothing on the floor. Display cases smashed. Wearing twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth of new gear between them.
Brody had to admit, it was a kick.
They continued north, in a meandering course determined by whim and interest. Hector, the
movie buff, wanted to walk past a theater to look at the posters. He paced the row, pausing here and there to stare reverently. A woman called Adina wanted to visit her old church. After clearing it, they left her alone, kneeling in the third pew. At the door Brody paused, staring at the woman and the pews and the figure on the wall. Conscious of the cross around his neck, the one Mom had given him before he deployed the first time.
Claire touched his arm. “Do you want to join her?”
“No,” Brody said harder than he intended. He gestured at the world around them. “With all this . . . it just seems kind of silly. I mean, what’s the point?”
“What was the point before?” Claire shrugged. “So you’re dead and it’s not what you expected. Doesn’t mean you have all the answers.”
“Yeah, but what would I be praying to, the architect of the echo?”
“That’s what faith is, right? Belief in things you don’t understand. Belief that there is something behind it that does. Maybe now is exactly the time to pray.”
Brody found he had no reply.
Around noon they raided a Whole Foods, plundering the prepared food counter for Tuscan chicken breasts and couscous salad and grilled salmon filets. Finn filled a basket with bottles of wine and a sleeve of cups. They ate in a playground two blocks away, sprawled across jungle gyms and benches. The clouds seemed thinner today, like the sun was on the verge of burning through. The swings swayed gently, which was odd, because the branches of the trees were still.
When he glanced back at the swings, there were children in them.
Two little girls, sisters by their features, bundled in sweaters and laughing as they arced higher and higher, their hair unfurling like flags. Behind them a rumpled man in his forties stared at his phone while he absently alternated pushing them.
In the grass two boys kicked a soccer ball.
Near the water fountain, a young mother bent over a stroller, adjusting a blanket.
Across the street, a hipster in tight jeans walked a bulldog.
A car pulled to the corner, and the back door swung—