by Peter Clines
Something about his silence made Clive think of fish. He wasn’t a huge documentary fan, but he’d seen a few undersea shows on the Discovery Channel back before he and Debbie realized how much money they were wasting on cable for the one or two nights a week they watched television. There were plenty of eerie things in the sea, but the part that always gnawed at him was how quiet everything was. It was natural and unnatural at the same time. Sharks hunted without a sound—-no growling or gnashing teeth or sniffing for scents. Fish swam in silent packs. When there was an attack, the victim would thrash and fight, but never made a peep. It was a whole world where everyone was mute.
Andrew was quiet that way. It looked okay on the surface, but his silence ran deep. Natural but unnatural.
Clive shifted his grip on the shotgun. It was heavy enough to be reassuring, but not to the point that it tired him to hold it.
“I think that’s it,” said Xela. She tucked the pencil behind her ear again and crouched by her assembled sketches. Her hand gestured at the controls. “I’ve got those three banks of switches, the upper and lower rows of knobs, the levers on both sides...”
“What about the dials?” asked Debbie.
The corner of Xela’s mouth twitched. It almost looked like a grin. “We know where all the needles are supposed to be,” she said. “No point in drawing those.”
“Maybe just for reference,” Debbie said. “Not having things written down is what’s caused all this.”
“Point taken.” Xela pulled the pencil out and looked up at the panels again.
Clive leaned over her shoulder. “What’s the shading mean?”
“Those are the ones that don’t need to move,” she said. “That way we can color them in as we flip them and know which ones are done. We don’t want to be flipping the same switches back and forth.”
“Maybe you should make another set of pictures,” said Debbie. “Just in case something goes wrong.”
“Also not a bad idea,” said Clive. Something moved in his peripheral vision. His attention snapped back to the prisoner.
Andrew’s head was up and his eyes open. He smiled and it stretched across his face. Clive thought it made him look like the Joker. Not the ragged-mouthed Heath Ledger one, but the curling, plastic Jack Nicholson one.
“The Lord is coming,” said Andrew. He said it the way most people talked about grocery lists or the Netflix queue. His head drifted side to side, like a charmed snake. “He’s coming to smash this awful place to dust.”
* * *
Nate pumped the pedals of his bike. He could see Tim leaning over his handlebars and Veek churning her feet in circles. Roger grunted behind them.
They were ten minutes and a good quarter-mile away from the ridge when the first shift hit them. The Kavach Building jumped out to the horizon, a distant speck. They kept cranking the pedals.
Nothing had come out of the pit yet. At least, nothing they could see. There was noise, though. A low rumble. It was the sound of hundreds of feet in motion. An avalanche of footsteps. A stampede.
The four of them urged their bikes to go faster.
Tim glanced over his shoulder and frowned. “Why isn’t it chasing us?” He sounded annoyed by the idea.
Nate looked back, too. The distance shifted again for a moment as he did, doubling or tripling behind them. He could see figures coming over the ridge, but the air was still empty. He thought about the Great Squale feeding in the pit and choosing its targets.
“We’re running,” said Nate with a glance at Veek. He looked forward again. “It likes it when we try to run.”
“They’re out of the pit!” shouted Roger.
“I saw,” he called back.
Veek threw a glance over her shoulder. Her glasses shifted and she had to grab at them. The bike wobbled and she dropped back a few feet. “What are they riding?”
Roger turned his head back to the ridge. “Looks like they’re riding big bugs or something.”
“Bugs?” Nate checked where the other three bikes were and took a long look over his shoulder. He saw dozens of scuttling figures in the distance with their cloaks whipping behind them. Maybe hundreds. His mind fought the image for a minute, insisting it had to be another trick of the light.
The overseers had dropped to all fours. Two legs and two arms splayed out and grabbed at the ground. They looked like insects skittering up a wall, or crabs scuttling across the ocean floor. They clawed and pulled themselves across the sand after the bicyclists.
Their torsos folded back at an angle that would doom a human to life in a wheelchair. They looked like stunted centaurs, joined to their mount halfway up the ribs instead of the hips. Two legs and two arms on the ground meant they had one free to hold a spear up over their lopsided shoulders, ready to be thrown like a javelin.
Their hoods had fallen back. Nate was too far to see details of their faces. He was sure it wouldn’t be pretty.
The overseers moved as fast as the bicycles, at least.
Roger let go of the handlebars with one hand and fumbled with his holster.
“Don’t bother,” Tim called over to him. “It’d be a tough shot if we were standing still. You’re never going to hit anything.”
“Might scare ‘em,” said Roger.
Veek shook her head. “They see that thing every day of their lives and you think a pistol’s going to scare them?”
“Just keep going,” yelled Nate. “The only place we’re going to be safe is back in Kavach.”
“And stop looking back,” said Tim. “It just slows us down.”
They pedaled hard for another ten minutes. Nate was sweating. It wasn’t warm, but they’d been pushing themselves for almost half an hour now. His eyes flicked to either side. Veek was dripping and he could tell she was fighting to keep her breath even. Roger was panting but keeping up the pace.
Reality flickered again and the Kavach Building jumped a mile closer. It was a few hundred yards away. They could see the slabs of concrete between the windows, the faux columns, and the lintel over the door.
Nate risked a glance back. The overseer-bugs had fallen behind. Or maybe it was just the shifting perspective. One of them flicked its third arm, something rippled in the air near the shift, and a dark line raced past Nate’s temple. A heartbeat later he felt a breeze shift his hair and heard something slice the air. A clatter came from the concrete slab of the building. He turned his head and saw Roger’s wide eyes.
“Oh, shit.”
Another spear whizzed by them like a bullet. Its tip cracked on the concrete ahead of them. A third one hit the ground and buried itself halfway in the sand.
“Jesus,” said Tim. “How fast are they throwing those things?”
It was another three hundred feet to the building. Then two hundred. Veek wheezed hard but waved for them to keep going. Roger pulled ahead and took the lead of the little pack.
Tim coughed hard, and out of the corner of his eye Nate saw the other man pull something out of his shirt. He glanced over and remembered Tim was wearing a tee shirt. There was no way to pull something out of it. Or to hide anything under it.
Tim stopped pedaling. He was holding something up to his chest with one hand. It looked like a shorter version of the javelin the guards were throwing. This one was a foot long, and it glistened in the dim light as if covered with wet paint.
Tim plowed into the sand.
Nate skidded to an awkward halt. Veek swerved around him, saw what he was looking at, and stumbled to a stop. “Oh, hell.”
Nate leaped off his bike and ran to him.
Tim’s face stretched and twisted. He coughed and blood flecks sprayed across the sand. His shirt was red and slick where the spear had pushed between his ribs and his sternum. Five feet of it hung out his back and kept him lying on his side.
“Come on,” Nate said. He squeezed Tim’s hand. “Come on, we can make it. It’s right over there.”
Tim looked up at them and shook his head. He waved them away.
“Go.” Something wet filled his throat and made him gargle his words. The blood around the spear hissed and sucked at the air.
Nate looked up. The overseers were close. He tried to guess where the shift was and if they’d passed it already.
Veek grabbed Tim’s arm. He shook her off and tried to roll away. The spear shifted in his chest and he screamed. He grabbed Nate’s shirt with his bloody hand. “Go!” he yelled. “Get everyone safe.”
“Everyone means you, too, old man.”
He slapped Nate, but the strength was gone from his hand. “Told you I’d kick your ass,” Tim wheezed. His head lolled back to look at the overseers and he pawed at his holster with weak fingers. “Get home. I’ll buy you some time.”
And then he died.
Seventy Six
In the movies, Nate knew, he would stay by Tim’s body and wail. Veek would break down and cry with him. Maybe he’d throw his friend over his shoulder and lumber back to the building where they’d save him with a last minute miracle. Or they’d make a quick booby trap of his body with some explosives they’d find in Tim’s pack. At the least, they’d close his eyes, like people always did.
In reality, a pair of spears hit the sand a few feet from them moments after Tim’s last words. Veek threw herself backwards on the sand. Nate yelped and fell on his ass. A third spear landed between his leg and his hand. His hip throbbed and blossomed red where it’d grazed him.
They scrambled to their feet, left Tim’s body and the bikes, and ran the last hundred feet to the Kavach Building.
Roger was already up on the slab. A spear quivered on the concrete next to him. He reached down, grabbed Veek’s arm, and hauled her up onto the landing. She rolled to her feet and dashed up the steps. “What about Tim?” he yelled down at Nate.
Nate shook his head and heaved himself halfway up onto the slab. Roger grabbed his belt and dragged him the rest of the way. Another javelin hit the sand below his feet, and one more cracked against the concrete to his right. The thought flickered through Nate’s mind that it wasn’t wood, but a long piece of bone.
They followed Veek up the steps. She sucked on her inhaler as she held the security door open for them. They yanked it closed behind them. Nate twisted the lock and a spear clanged against the metal mesh.
Roger was already on the second door, the big wooden door that was old-fashioned wide and always open. He slammed it shut and looked for a deadbolt or knob to twist. “Shit,” he said. “This door doesn’t lock?”
“No one ever closes it,” said Veek.
Roger looked through the glass panes. “We got maybe two minutes,” he said. “They’re almost to Tim.” He kicked his foot up against the base of the door, bracing his heel against the hardwood floor. The echo of another spear rang against the outside.
“Get Clive,” Nate told Veek. “We need a hammer and nails and some boards.”
She ran up the curving staircase.
Nate’s hip throbbed as he ran to the mailboxes and looked for something to barricade the door. There were some dusty phone books and the trash can where people dumped junk mail. He thought about prying one of the brass plaques off the wall.
“They’re past Tim,” said Roger. “First one’s here and climbing up.”
Clive galloped down the stairs with his bright yellow screw gun. His other arm pinned some short boards against his side. He dumped the boards, caught one as it fell, and jammed it next to Roger’s foot just as something large smashed into the security door. Nate glanced over Roger’s shoulder and saw two bulging eyes glaring back at him.
No, he thought, three eyes.
The DeWalt whirrrred twice and the board stood on its own. Clive fired two more screws into it and then stood up a second jack. The security door rang like a cymbal set.
“They look pissed,” said Roger. He still had his foot against the door and showed no sign of moving it.
“Yeah,” Nate said.
“Tim dead?”
Clive stopped. He looked up at Nate with his mouth open.
Nate closed his eyes. He grabbed for memories of drinking beers on the roof and saw a glistening spearhead sticking out between ribs. He tried to remember Tim cheerfully deflecting questions about his past and saw the twisted head and blank eyes looking across the sand. “Yeah,” he said. “He’s dead.”
Roger looked at the things outside the window. Three of them pounded the steel mesh and snarled. More climbed up behind them. “You sure?” he asked.
Nate looked out at the creatures and realized what Roger was really asking. “Yeah,” he said again. “It was quick. He didn’t...I don’t think he suffered much.”
Clive made a sound they couldn’t decipher and bent back to work. He ran a third board flat on the floor alongside the door and fired a handful of screws into it. “Best I can do for now,” he said. He pointed at the door and swept his arm back down the hall. “We can wrestle one of the big legs from the loft down here and I can run it right from the center of the door to...shit.”
The word sounded clumsy, like he was speaking a language he wasn’t fluent in. Nate realized he’d never heard Clive swear before.
He followed Clive’s gaze down the hall.
The back door was open.
* * *
Debbie scooped up the shotgun when Clive ran downstairs. She didn’t like guns. Not at all. But she’d come to realize she liked Andrew even less. The bruise on her jaw kept that fresh in her mind.
Andrew still hadn’t moved. She hoped it was because he was intimidated by the shotgun. She kept her finger on the guard, not the trigger, just like Clive had been doing.
Xela showed Veek her diagrams and highlighted the dust with the flashlight. “I would’ve done most of them already,” she explained, “but I didn’t know if there was a tipping point. Maybe we’d get halfway through and hit the one that makes the building switch back. I didn’t want to leave without you guys.”
“I appreciate that,” said Veek. She looked at the elaborate sketches. “How long is this going to take? To flip them all?”
Xela shrugged. “Five or six minutes, maybe. There’s over fifty of them.”
Veek glanced at the broken windows. The sound outside grew louder. She imagined it was the noise a swarm of angry lobsters would make.
“He only spent two or three shutting it off,” Debbie said. She tipped her head at Andrew.
“Yeah, but he didn’t care what he was doing,” said Xela. “We want to make sure we get it right. Everyone’s inside now, right?”
“Everyone...” Except Tim, Veek was about to say. Part of her wanted to believe the not-a-publisher was going to appear in the doorway. If there was a book on not dying from impalement and other traumatic chest wounds, his imaginary small press probably put it out. “Everyone’s inside,” she said with a nod.
Xela reached out to flip the first switch.
A sharp snap echoed in the apartment, the sound of plastic cords breaking. It was just loud enough to hear over the sounds outside. Debbie lifted the muzzle of the shotgun. She moved her finger to the trigger but she went too far and couldn’t find the little lever. She was sliding her finger back and forth beneath the guard, not inside it.
Andrew stood right in front of her, baring his teeth in a smile. He swept the barrel away just as her finger found the trigger. The noise was like thunder in the apartment and the smell stung their noses.
Xela flinched and Mandy started screaming again. Veek threw up her hands and felt a hard kick. She’d gotten in a nasty fight once and been punched in the gut. It felt like that, but hard enough that she felt it straight through to her back. She wasn’t sure who’d hit her this time.
Andrew snatched the shotgun away from Debbie. He swung it like a club and hit her across the face. The swing became a throw that hurled the weapon across the room at the windows. It hit one of the broken mullions and spun out over the desert.
Mandy howled and launched herself at Andrew. Her frustration, confusion, and anger all
boiled over and she clawed and punched and kicked at him. He retreated for a moment and then the back of his hand sent her tumbling across the room. Fresh blood sprayed from her nose and mouth.
As Andrew marched out the door, Veek dropped to her knees and fell over.
* * *
Clive thundered down the hall with Nate a few steps behind him. His bleeding hip was getting numb, and he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. For now, it was good.
They dashed through the lower fire door and down the short flight of steps to the landing. The back door swung outward. He needed to reach outside and kick away the broken cinderblock everyone used to prop it open. Just opposite the door he could see a row of feet—the bodies of the Family.
Nate stepped outside. He felt exposed out on the broken slab of concrete. The wide expanse of sand stretched out behind the building. The blood-colored sky loomed over him.
The back door was much newer than the front one. It was wrapped in metal with a wire-reinforced window at the center. A hinged arm with a piston at the top made sure it wanted to stay shut. The knob was a ball of brushed steel. It had, much to his satisfaction, a small dial at the center to activate the lock.
Nate kicked at the cinderblock, missed, and his hip flared. He felt the block’s rough edges grate on the bottom of his sneaker. He kicked again, lower, and it shifted a few inches. The door moved as much and they both came to rest again. He pulled back his foot to kick again and heard a noise behind him. It was a horror-movie sound. Clive made a strangled noise and he knew he was right.
It was a body shifting on concrete.
He looked over his shoulder while his foot felt around for the cinderblock. The old woman—Andrew had called her “Auntie”—had rolled up on her side, her back to them. For a moment Nate thought she was admiring the view, stretched out alongside the ten foot drop like a bloated poolside beauty. Her misshapen head hung limp and grazed the concrete.