by Peter Clines
A quartet of green shapes soared through the air a mile or so up, in that altitude reserved for passenger planes or the occasional fighter jet. It would’ve been easy to call them whales, but it would’ve been wrong.
Wings stretched off the enormous bodies. They were thin, bony wings that let the weak sunlight through them. If they were smaller they’d be bat wings, but on this scale the unspoken, unnecessary agreement was they were the wings of a dragon.
Beneath the base of the wings sat wiry arms with talons, like a bird’s legs tucked away for flight, or the small forelimbs of a dinosaur, armed with curving claws that were never used. Their bodies tapered to a reptilian tail.
Where there should’ve been a head, or at least some type of face, was just a mass of tentacles. At least two or three dozen ropes of muscle stretched out from each whale to pick and snatch at the air. The tentacles had to be forty or fifty feet long, although it looked like each creature had a few as long as its body.
The smallest was over two hundred feet long. The largest one, an alpha among alpha predators, was at least four times that. Even as high up as they were, its monstrous wings cast shadows across the ground. They coasted at a lazy pace, drifting on unseen winds.
Their path led them across the wasteland and towards the Kavach Building.
Sixty Seven
“They’re coming this way,” said Veek. She managed to hide the tremor in her voice. Clive and Debbie squeezed each other’s hands and turned their knuckles white. Xela still stared up at the things in the sky.
“They’re coming for us,” said Andrew. “Coming to reward the faithful.”
Tim leveled his right-hand pistol at Andrew’s eye. “I think I was very clear about you not talking,” he said.
A throat cleared and Tim whipped around again.
Oskar stood at the door. Mandy lurked behind him, her eyes wide. She looked like a cornered animal and shrieked when the pistol came to rest in her direction.
The building manager muttered a string of German words Nate was pretty sure were swears. He walked into the apartment and shook his head. “I warned you,” he said. “What haff you idiots done?”
Veek glared at him. “What do you mean, what did we do? Forget that. Where the hell are we?”
“We are somewhere we are not supposed to be,” said Oskar.
Mandy scampered past Oskar and pushed herself into the corner between Clive’s tool chest and the wall. Her eyes were wide and her cheeks were lined with tears. Clive stepped away from the window. “How did we get here?”
“How did the building move?” asked Xela.
“Do not be stupid,” Oskar told her. “The building did not moof.”
Nate blinked. “What?”
“It is still in Los Angeles,” said Oskar. “Right at Befferly and Kenmore. If it was not in Los Angeles we would all be dead by now.”
Roger waved his arm at the window. “If we’re in Los Angeles what the fuck is all that?”
Oskar raised an eyebrow. “That is not in the building, is it? That is where we are not supposed to be.”
“It’s precisely where we’re supposed to be,” said Andrew.
“Last warning,” Tim told him.
Oskar glared down at the bound man. “You are the one who did this?”
Andrew pressed his lips together in a smug smile and tipped his head at Tim.
“Yes,” said Debbie. “It was him and these other people.” She kept her eyes up and didn’t look at either the prisoners or the bodies on her floor. “They broke in here, beat Clive and me, and opened the walls. Then they just started flipping switches and pulling levers.”
She walked over and wrapped her arms around Mandy. The other woman was still wide-eyed. Her lips moved but didn’t make a sound. Nate thought the farmer’s daughter was deep in shock. He shot a glance at Veek and saw the same thought in her eyes.
“Is there anyone else in the building?” Nate asked.
“I think the guy across the hall from me works the night shift,” said Roger. “He’s probably not home.”
Oskar nodded. “Mister Cook,” he said. “Also Mister Brogen in apartment one and Miss Little in twenty-four. All of them work late. I am not so sure about Mr. Kamen in eleffen or Mrs. Knight in four.”
Debbie and Veek both jumped at the mention of Mrs. Knight. Roger threw a look over his shoulder. “Think she’s dead,” he said matter-of-factly.
Oskar’s brows twitched and he sighed. “That is too bad,” he said. “She was a good tenant.”
“Oskar,” Nate said, “It’s time to talk. What do you know about this place? We need to know everything.”
The older man looked at their faces and sighed again. “I do not haff all the facts,” he said. “Only what they told me when I was giffen the job, and some things I also figured out on my own. It is like knowing a car needs gasoline to run, but not knowing what it does with the gasoline that makes it run.”
“Who gave you the job?” asked Veek.
“A man in a suit.” Oskar put up his hands and shrugged. “I think he was from the government.”
“Why?” asked Tim.
“My paychecks, they come from the Department of the Treasury. They haff the Statue of Liberty on them.”
“What branch of the government?” asked Tim. “What office?”
Oskar shrugged again.
Nate gestured for him to continue. “What’s going on? Do you know?”
Oskar’s fingers fiddled in the air in front of him. “Picture a lock and a key,” he said. “The key goes into the lock, so most of it is on the one side, but part of it is between the two sides. Does this make sense?”
A few of them nodded. Veek tilted her head in her thoughtful way. “Go on,” said Nate.
Oskar’s head bobbed up and down. “This is the Kavach Building. It is a key, built to ensure a certain doorway stays locked shut. Do not ask me how or why. I do not know.” He held up his hands with the palms facing each other. “Now, what many people do not consider is that a key can fit into both sides of the lock. The same part stays between the sides, but it does not matter which side the rest of the key is on.” He wiggled one set of fingers, then the other. “That is what they haff done. They haff altered the balance and put us on the other side of the lock.”
Andrew’s mouth was a flat line.
“Question,” said Veek. “You’re saying we’re on the other side, but is the key still in the lock? Is it still doing what it’s supposed to be doing?”
Oskar nodded. “It is. If it was not, as I said, we would all be dead.”
“Dead how?” asked Clive.
Oskar gestured at the window. “From them, I belief.”
“Super-ginormous alpha predators,” murmured Xela.
“Damn,” said Roger. He was back at the window. “They’re really close.”
Nate followed Veek to the window. Even Tim stepped closer, still keeping a clear line to their prisoners.
The whale-things coasted a few hundred feet above the ground. It was like watching planes make their final approach to a runway.
The smaller ones led the way, wind rippling the skin of their wings. The ground swirled as their passing stirred up dust and dirt. The walls shook as they passed over the building and the air rumbled like a brief storm. Sand and stones rattled against the windows. A large rock made a spiderweb that stretched across one of the recently-replaced panes. Something solid hit the wall outside with a large thunk.
The chandelier chimed as it swung back and forth.
“Shit,” muttered Roger. He had one arm around Xela. “Everybody okay?”
Mandy sobbed and Debbie hugged her tight.
“Everyone get away from the window,” said Tim. “Now.”
Nate glanced at him, then back out at the wasted hillside.
The great one, the largest of the beasts, came at them. Its tentacles writhed like a nest of worms. It was night beneath it. The beast blocked out the sky and it was still hundreds of yards away.
Every sweep of its wings—each one bigger than a football field—pounded air against the ground like an artillery strike. The hill broke apart under the relentless battering and the rubble was dragged along in the monster’s wake, a tidal wave of earth.
The residents of Kavach took a few steps back. Then they threw themselves behind the couch and under the table. Debbie dragged Mandy down behind the toolbox, and Clive wrapped himself around both of them.
Nate looked back over his shoulders and saw nothing but tentacles. Thick cables of muscle filled the window, each one flailing at the sky.
And deep inside the twisting mass, just for a moment, he glimpsed something else. Not shadows. Whatever he saw at the center of the tentacles gleamed like an unlit pool or a mirror of dark glass. The beast was still at least sixty or seventy yards away, so what he saw had to be huge—thirty or forty feet across, at least.
Then Veek dragged him to the floor and they covered their heads.
The window exploded as the creature flew by. Its bulk hid its speed, like a freight train or jumbo jet. Glass flew across the apartment and hit the furniture like flying blades.
Hunt You Kill You Eat You Prey Food Feed FEED
The air roared around them as a tornado smashed through the apartment. Plates and silverware whipped out of the sink to smash themselves against the walls and floor. The couch slid halfway across the room, dragging Andrew with it. Clive’s tool chest swung away from the wall and rolled a few feet before it tipped over and crashed to the floor next to him and the two women in his arms. The loft creaked, leaned, and collapsed. The kitchen table threw itself against the far wall.
FOOD FOR ME MY SERVANTS MY MORTALS MY FOOD MY PREY
Veek threw her hands over her ears and Nate wrapped his arms around her head and shoulders. He wasn’t sure where the words were coming from. Was he hearing them over the wind or feeling the vibration of them in his gut? There was blood on his arm. A shard of window stuck out near his elbow.
The old woman rolled back to her knees. She was laughing. Nate couldn’t hear her but he could see her wide lips flapping up and down below joyful eyes. A piece of glass the size of a pizza slice appeared in her head and her lips stopped. She fell forward and the glass cracked apart as her head hit the floor.
The building rocked with earthquake force. Plaster cracked in the roof and rained down on them. The floor shuddered. One of the bookshelves, picked clean by the wind, crashed down on top of Roger and Xela.
MY FOOD MY PREY MY CATTLE MINE
The words crushed them. Blood ran out between Veek’s fingers. Nate felt wetness across his lips and figured his nose was bleeding. He squeezed his eyes tight and tears rolled down his cheeks.
The roar of wind died down. The scraps of dirt and paper swirling around the room settled down to the floor. Nate released Veek and met her wide eyes. Gobs of blood were under her nose and ears. There were trails of it from her eyes and a small line along the bottom of her glasses. She’d cried blood.
Veek reached up and dabbed his cheeks. Her fingers came away red. He’d been bleeding, too. He squeezed her arm and gave her forehead a quick kiss. It was the only part of her face without gore on it.
“Is everyone okay?” he called out. A few people winced and Nate realized he was shouting after the onslaught of noise. He dropped his voice a few decibels and tried again. “Anybody hurt?”
Clive unwrapped himself from Debbie and they both stuck their thumbs up. Both of them had streaks of red coming from their nose and mouth. Mandy had pulled herself into a ball between them, but Nate saw blood on her ears.
He looked over at Tim. He looked like the monster in a hardcore vampire movie. Dark blood covered the lower half of his face and soaked the chest of his t-shirt. He’d tucked one pistol into his belt and had the other one back on Andrew. He gave Nate a nod and a thumbs up.
“More new windows,” muttered Oskar. He wiped the back of his hand under his nose and smeared blood across his upper lip and cheek.
The bookshelf shifted as Roger and Xela pushed it off themselves. He had a gash on his arm and the start of a bruise across his forehead. A knife-sized piece of window glass stuck out of Xela’s thigh, but it didn’t seem to be bleeding much. They both had blood on their faces.
“What was that?” yelled Roger. “What the fuck was that?”
Andrew cleared his throat. There were a few spots of blood under his nose, but not much. “Auntie Bradbury’s dead, if anyone cares.”
“We don’t,” said Tim. “Shut up.”
“We’re dead,” said Clive. “That thing’ll come back here and—”
“Hang on,” said Nate. “Let’s not give up yet.”
“Quiet!” snapped Oskar. “All of you!”
His volume bought him a moment of silence. It occurred to Nate that it was too quiet, but he wasn’t sure why.
“Now, listen to me,” Oskar said. “We will all be safe. There is a way to fix this, to get back to our side. We just—”
A thick tentacle smashed through the remains of the windows, wrapped around his head, and dragged him away.
Sixty Eight
Mandy was screaming. Long, powerful screams that carried on even after the tentacle had vanished. In between each howl she took a raw, panting breath that told Tim she was using more air screaming than breathing, which meant she’d stop in a moment one way or another.
Oskar was short, but Tim put him at two hundred-forty pounds, easy. The only time he’d seen anyone vanish that fast before was during paratrooper training, when guys would step out the hatch and be gone before you could register it. Television and movies made skydiving look slow because there were no reference points. It was fast. Speeding on the highway fast.
The tentacle had yanked Oskar up and away that fast.
Mandy’s screams broke down to a hoarse rasping that became tears. Debbie rocked her back and forth like a child.
“Did it kill him?” asked Clive. “Is he dead?”
“Didn’t take him outside to hug him,” said Roger.
Nate stepped toward the window. Veek grabbed his hand. She didn’t hold him back, just stepped to the window with him.
Tim shot a glance at his prisoner. Andrew still looked blissed out. It was the smile and gaze of someone prepared to drink their paper cup of Kool-Aid. Tim stepped over to the window, but made sure he still had a clear shot at the man. That wasn’t hard, since ninety percent of the furniture was now against the far wall. He glanced out at the wasteland.
There was no sign of the squid-whales. Nate leaned out and looked up, left, right before yanking his head back. Then he leaned out again and took his time.
“Come on,” he said. “To the roof.”
Roger’s jaw dropped. “You nuts? You want to go outside?”
“It’s not safe,” said Debbie.
“Especially up high and exposed,” Clive added.
Nate shrugged. “We need to see more,” he said. “You with me, Velma?”
“You got it, Shaggy.”
Xela straightened up, winced, and put on a brave face. “I thought I was Velma?”
“Back off, bitch,” Veek said. She managed a smile. “You’re Daphne. Deal with it.”
“Seriously?” Roger shook his head. “You’re going up?”
“Coming or staying?” asked Nate.
Roger met Xela’s eyes. “I’m in.”
They headed for the door. Tim pulled the pistol from his belt and offered it to Nate. “Just in case.”
“In case what?” Nate asked. “Is it loaded with nukes?”
“Sorry, no. Just hollowpoints.”
“Then I don’t think it’s going to do much good.”
* * *
The fire door to the roof was wedged tight. The four of them positioned themselves on the stairs and pushed. There was a lot of weight on the other side. The door moved a few inches, then a few more. They saw bricks scattered on the rooftop. Some were still cemented together in groups of three or four.
; “Looks like the machine room came apart,” said Veek. “You think they hit it?”
“Wind from the big one was pretty gnarly,” said Roger. “Might’ve just been that.”
The door opened another two inches. “I think I could squeeze through,” said Xela.
“Keep pushing,” said Nate.
“Why?”
“Because if we need to get off the roof fast we don’t want to squeeze through one at a time.”
“Hey.” A voice echoed up the stairwell in a bad stage whisper. It sounded like Clive. “Are you guys making the scraping noise?”
“Yeah,” called Veek. “The door’s stuck.”
“Cool,” he said. “Just making sure.”
They all broke out in grim smiles and pushed again. The opening was two feet wide. Roger put his back against the door and braced his leg up against the frame. He grunted and heaved and the door moved another seven or eight inches. “Good enough?”
Nate nodded. “Works for me.”
He led the way out onto the barren roof. The wooden sun deck and all its furniture was gone. In places the tar paper was torn away in broad patches. One of the air vents was shredded into long strips of metal.
They turned, scanning the skies in every direction. Roger saw them first and pointed. All of them looked north.
The squid-whale pack was two miles away. They’d gained altitude and were soaring up over a set of huge hills like desert sand dunes. One of the smaller ones swept down and plucked a palm tree from the ground with its tentacles. It was hard to tell from their angle, but it looked like the beast swallowed it whole. The pack veered off to the east and coasted across a ridge that ran from the distant hills down past the building and on to the south. They swooped down and vanished from sight.
Nate’s eyes followed the ridge, waiting for them to reappear, and then he squinted. He tried to focus on a distant shape that contrasted against the endless gray of ground and sky. It was at the very top of the hill and was thinner than it was tall. “You guys see that?”
Veek peered over the top of her glasses. “I see something.”