14

by Peter Clines

  In all truth, she knew she hadn’t created anything worthwhile in months. Nothing that felt good enough, anyway. One of her teachers had told her being able to accept your work was no good was a vital step, a sign of growth and maturity in an artist.

  Xela was very ready for the next vital step.

  She toyed with the idea of grabbing her stubby little roller and covering the whole thing with titanium white. It’d be awesome to be able to cut canvases to shreds with a knife, or to smash their frames and burn them. Probably a great emotional release.

  She couldn’t afford new canvases, though. As it was she had to work with the cheapie ones from Michael’s Crafts. And she had to paint over those four or five times, until they were too stiff to use.

  The streetlight flared. For a moment she thought it had burned out, but then it went back to its regular levels. Then it flashed again. And a third time.

  Xela glanced out the window and all thoughts of painting vanished from her mind. She yanked out her headphones and the hum assaulted her ears. She dashed into the hall just in time to see Nate and Veek following Tim down the back stairwell.

  * * *

  Mandy sat at her computer and checked her credit score. Someone had told her they were updated once every four or five days, but she was sure the bad news got updated more often. The news of Mrs. Knight moving out had convinced Mandy she was guilty by association. Everyone knew the banks and the government were one big socialist group, so it made sense they’d try to damage her score even more now.

  While she waited for the website, the screen jumped like an old television. The image scrolled up and back so fast she could’ve blinked and missed it. But Mandy hadn’t blinked and she’d also heard the low, distant rumble.

  She looked away from the monitor and saw the summer evening had become dark and dreary. A haze of fog hung outside her window, and she heard another rumble of thunder. This one shook the building.

  And the building kept shaking. Her window panes started to rattle.

  She heard someone bang on the door across the hall. Nate’s door. There were raised voices and running footsteps.

  Her computer screen went blank and her heart sank. She should’ve unplugged it at the first sign of thunder. She wouldn’t be able to get it fixed. Unless Veek would be willing to fix it in exchange for...well, whatever Mandy could give her that she wanted.

  Then the monitor lit back up. Mandy took a relieved breath and then her heart sank again. The screen was all nonsense. Green squiggles scrolled up the screen. They looked like Chinese or Muslim or one of those languages that used chickenscratch instead of proper letters.

  Her whole room was shaking and the roar of thunder wouldn’t stop. Her tall lamp tipped over and a picture of her parents dropped off the wall. Out of the corner of her eyes she could see flashes of lightning through the fog.

  A circle appeared on the monitor. It was filled with more squiggles. And the squiggles moved across the computer screen like little worms.

  Or little tentacles.

  * * *

  Andrew stood before the control panel. Auntie Bradbury had given him the honor of shutting the machine down, but it didn’t feel right to do it all by himself. That would be selfish. This was a joyous moment which needed to be shared with as many people as possible. He’d insisted Auntie be first. The old woman had smiled with pleasure, selected a large lever, and pulled it down.

  Debbie and Clive had yelled and shouted. They still didn’t understand what was going on. Clive fought to his feet but Charles grabbed his arm and Andrew punched him once in the stomach. Clive dropped back to the floor.

  Zebediah and Lucas each picked a knob and gave them a hard twist. Howard set his hand across a row of switches and pushed them all down. Charles pulled another lever. And then Andrew flipped down every switch he could see.

  One needle pegged itself to the far side of the dial. Another swung back and forth like an inverted pendulum. One twitched between thirty and forty.

  They all heard the arcs of electricity behind the panels and saw the flashes. The machine howled and the air in the building roared back. Andrew could see the sky changing outside the windows, and for the first time in his life his faith was rewarded with the sight of one of his lords, soaring in the sky by the dying sun.

  He reached out to either side and held hands with Auntie Bradbury and Brother Charles. The group formed a chain in front of the control panel. Auntie led them in a prayer.

  At last, Andrew thought, the time is right.

  * * *

  Roger parked his truck and walked home down Beverly. Home before nine on a Friday. It was going to be a good weekend.

  He’d expected to see midnight on set. There were ten and two-eighths pages on the call sheet for that day. The whole crew had started the day with doom hanging over them.

  But the actors had their shit down today and the director had kicked serious ass. He’d minimized setups. He rearranged the call sheet so they could block-shoot three scenes. Two of the others he did as one-ers. The assistant director called the martini shot at seven-thirty, and even with a last-minute olive they’d wrapped by eight-oh-nine. A few of the guys had invited him out for drinks and Roger’d been surprised how cool it felt to tell them his woman and some friends were already waiting on him.

  He pressed the button for the walk signal and glanced up Kenmore towards his home.

  All thoughts of Thai food and movies and fooling around with Xela up on the sun deck under the stars vanished.

  The Kavach Building was glowing. At first he thought everyone had their lights on, but it was the building itself. A flicker raced around the edges of each brick, the way static chased fingertips across an old television screen.

  Roger took a moment to check traffic and then crossed the street against the light. By the time he reached the far curb he was running.

  Power hung in the air. It prickled his skin and tugged at his hair. He could feel the hum in his teeth and hear glass trembling in the windows.

  A few people from nearby buildings looked out windows or stood out on their stoops. There was a crowd gathered around the gate, almost two dozen men and women Roger didn’t know.

  He sprinted past the green Taurus, noticed its airbag had gone off, and was at the fence. Roger shoved through the crowd and the open gate. Some of them grabbed at him and he let them pull away his toolbelt and backpack. A woman yanked at his arm and he slammed his fist into her face.

  He forced his way up the front steps. The air around the building was clotted, like old milk or blood. It felt like he was pushing through millions of invisible bees, each one letting its razor-sharp stinger brush across his skin. The air roared at him, warning him to stay back, and Roger yanked open the security door and dove into the lobby.

  Just in time, he told himself. He didn’t question how he knew this.

  * * *

  The Kavach Building shuddered and groaned. It bent in ways brick and stone and concrete weren’t supposed to bend. It twisted along angles most human minds couldn’t comprehend. It let out a long howl, and then, like a spinning top that built up enough speed to leap up off the ground and into the third dimension for a moment, the building shifted in space.

  And it was somewhere else.

  NOT ON BLUEPRINT

  Sixty Six

  Nate felt sick.

  Violently sick.

  He’d gotten drunk at college a few times. And while there was no denying the hangovers were bad, he knew the real pain was at night when you crossed the line. When you went from fun-drunk to horribly-sick-hugging-the-toilet-drunk.

  Somewhere between the lounge fire door and Veek’s door, while the building was roaring and the air had been filled with static, he’d crossed that line. But the taste in his mouth was bad milk, not booze. Gray, cloudy milk that had curdled and separated and turned rancid. Just the thought of it made his stomach churn even more.

  He was on the floor outside Veek’s apartment. He didn’t remembe
r sitting down or falling. Veek sat next to him. Her lips trembled and told him she felt the same thing he did.

  Tim was still on his feet. The older man looked queasy, but he kept himself upright, somehow. And past Tim, Nate could see the window at the end of the hall. Something was wrong about it, but he couldn’t figure out what. It nagged at the back of his whirling mind.

  It was quiet. After all the noise the building had made, the quiet boomed up and down the hall like the hour after a concert.

  “Are you okay?” Veek patted his arm with a clumsy hand. Her voice sounded muffled. She wrinkled her brow and he realized she’d heard it, too. She reached up and touched her ears, then closed her eyes and swallowed twice. “My ears popped,” she said.

  He swallowed and his stomach rumbled. For a moment he thought he was going to throw up on her, but he got it under control. He swallowed again and felt a quick rush from his ears. “Gahhhh,” he said.

  “Better?”

  “Yeah, thanks.” They struggled up to their feet.

  Tim lifted his foot and slammed it into Debbie and Clive’s door. There was a crack of wood, some splinters flew from the lock, and the door smashed open.

  A dark-haired man none of them knew raced out of the apartment. He swung a wide punch and Tim did something fast with his hands. The dark man grunted and a knife clattered to the floor. Tim slammed his head forward into the other man’s nose and drove a punch into his gut. The man tried to drag Tim down as he slumped to the floor and Tim hit him in the face with a knee. He grabbed the man’s jaw, pulled hard, and a sharp crack echoed in the hall.

  Nate stepped forward, even though he had no idea how he could be helpful, and heard a roar inside the apartment. Another man charged through the door.

  Tim had a large television remote in his hand. Just as Nate was registering the absurdity of that, and realized what the older man was really holding, the television remote thundered twice and spit brass out its side. The man in the apartment staggered a few more feet and Tim fired again. The man crumpled to the floor.

  Tim marched into Clive and Debbie’s apartment. Nate and Veek stumbled after him.

  The walls were open and the controls exposed. With the wooden panels slotted away Nate could hear the whining of the machine and a sound like a grinding transmission. Electricity sparked and crackled behind the instruments.

  Andrew stood in front of the controls with an older woman. A larger man, his face shadowed by a gray hoodie, stepped toward Tim. Another one crouched by Debbie and Clive, both prone on the floor and coughing. Clive had the unmistakable wetness around his mouth of someone who’d just thrown up.

  The crouching man had a knife.

  Tim fired once. The blade flashed and hurled itself across the room. The man howled and exposed a mouthful of crooked teeth. A second shot hit him in the side of the head and knocked him down next to Debbie. She and Clive screamed.

  The larger man, the closer one, growled and reached out. Tim grabbed two of the grasping fingers and twisted them. They made a bubble-wrap noise. His other hand swung forward and pistol-whipped the large man twice, back and forth across his broad jaw.

  The giant spat out a tooth and growled again. His mouth opened and it split his head in half. Nate glimpsed it from the doorway and thought the man’s head had somehow been chopped off and was getting ready to tumble.

  Tim fired point blank into one of the man’s wide eyes. The giant dropped to the ground. The old woman howled and waddled forward.

  “Auntie, no!” shouted Andrew. “It doesn’t matter.”

  The old woman lumbered to a halt halfway across the room. Nate, Veek, and Tim could see she had the same wide mouth and swollen eyes as the giant on the floor. They were even more distorted on her face.

  “Down,” said Tim. “No fucking around. On the floor, now.”

  The old woman sighed, crouched, and lowered herself to her knees. She panted when she was done. She raised her arms awkwardly. They were too heavy to get them much above her shoulders.

  Tim suddenly had another pistol in his left hand. This one stayed on the old woman while the first one shifted to cover Andrew. “Step away from the controls,” he said. “On the floor.”

  If Nate was right, it had only been fifteen seconds since Tim kicked open the door.

  Tim angled his head back without letting anyone out of his sight. “Nate, can you look in Clive’s toolbox over there? He should have some rope or zip ties we can use on these people.”

  All four men were dead. Tim had killed all of them in fifteen seconds. He’d made it look easy.

  “Nate?”

  “Ummm...sure.” The toolbox was by the window, and there was something wrong with the windows inside, too. Nate couldn’t spare the attention to figure out why.

  “Veek,” Tim said, “why don’t you check on our friends.”

  Veek made her way around the creepy old woman to Clive and Debbie. Clive looked stunned. Debbie seemed to be doing better. She looked up as Veek touched her arm. “Veek,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m good,” she said. “I think we’re all good.”

  Debbie squeezed her arms. “What happened?”

  “Freedom has happened,” said Andrew. A blissful smile spread across his face. “Freedom from a tyranny on all our souls for over a hundred years.”

  Tim looked down the pistol sights at Andrew. “No more talking,” he said. “You don’t speak unless you’re spoken to. Clear?”

  “If you wish. It makes no difference. The path has been made clear and soon our Lord and his fellow gods will come to reward us for—”

  “Shut up, Andrew,” Tim said.

  The skinny man’s smile got wider. His head went side to side.

  “You have a gun,” Debbie said to Tim.

  “I’ve got two,” he told her. “If it makes you feel better, you can hold one of them.”

  “Clive,” said Nate. He’d gone through half the drawers in the large wooden chest. “Help me find this stuff.”

  Clive blinked a few times. Debbie rubbed his arms and Veek tried to clean up his face with a wad of paper towels. “M’okay,” he muttered. He took a few deep breaths. “I’m okay.”

  “Nate could use some help, Clive,” said Tim. “You know your tools better than anyone else here.”

  Clive stumbled to his feet with some help from Debbie. They went over to the toolbox. He pushed Nate out of the way and crouched to one of the lower drawers.

  The floor creaked by the door. Tim spun, keeping one pistol on the old woman. Xela shrieked and Roger threw his hands up. “Whoa!” he shouted. “It’s us, bro.”

  “Sorry,” said Tim. “Old habits.”

  “Fuck me,” said Roger. He spit a mouthful of stomach acid into the hall and looked at the bodies. “Look at the old man, going all Bruce Willis on us.”

  Clive pulled a bundle of black plastic zip-ties from one of the drawers of the chest. Each one was at least a foot long. He split the bundle and gave half to Nate.

  “Are they...are they dead?” asked Xela.

  “I hope so,” said Tim, “but I’m not feeling confident about anything right now.” He gestured at the big windows.

  Weak sunlight streamed through the glass. Clive looked at the wall clock that read ten past nine. Debbie looked up at it, too, and then stepped to be near her husband. Xela and Roger moved to join them. Veek went to stand by Nate at the window.

  “Guys,” said Xela, “where are we?”

  The brick building which stood a dozen feet to the south was gone. So was the building behind it, and the one past that. As far as they could see was rocky hillside spotted with patches of yellow grass and a few sickly palm trees. It looked like the prehistoric setting for dozens of B-movies.

  Veek pressed her face to the glass and looked toward the front of the building. There was more wasteland. The same behind them. All the other buildings on the street had vanished. So had Kenmore Avenue itself, as far as she could tell.

  The shr
unken ball of the sun was a bright spot in the blood-colored sky. It was an ember, the last remnant of a holiday bonfire that had burned out the day before.

  “Everything looks dead,” said Debbie.

  Tim cleared his throat. “Speaking of which...”

  Clive bound Andrew as Nate cinched a zip tie on the old woman’s left wrist. She had fat wrists. Her arms were so blubbery she couldn’t put them together behind her back. He ended up making a chain of zip ties to hold her.

  The woman’s skin was pale and decorated with spots that were too dark to be freckles. She smelled damp and cold under a cloud of floral perfume that might’ve just been a generous coat of Lysol. Nate felt a pulse in her wrist and she yelped when the zip ties bit down, but he couldn’t shake the feeling he was tying up a waterlogged corpse.

  He also felt the thick muscles under her blubber, and decided to add another set of bindings, just to be safe. Maybe two more.

  “So,” Veek said. She stepped back from the window and looked at Tim. “You learned how to shoot because you published a book on it?”

  His lip twisted in a wry smile. “Not quite.”

  “So, what’s the deal?” asked Nate. “Are you like...a hit man or something? An assassin?”

  “Let’s just say ‘or something.’ Before I retired, I worked for an outfit best known by three letters.”

  “Holy shit,” said Roger from the window. “You learned all this at IBM?”

  Tim smirked. “Yeah, IBM’s got one hell of an employee training program.”

  “Fuck me,” Roger said.

  “I’m guessing telling us this violates some rules or laws or something,” said Veek.

  “Tons,” said Tim. “And at least one act of Congress. But like I said, I think we’ve got bigger prob—”

  “Guys,” said Xela, “what the hell are those?”

  “Oh my God,” said Debbie.