by T. J. Klune
If he’s even here at all, the bees whispered.
Which, okay. Fair point. But he couldn’t think of that. Couldn’t think about how big the world truly was. How easy it was to get lost in it. Patrick could have taken him anywhere. Could have taken him back to wherever the Dead Rabbits called home. Could have taken him deep into the forest. Or to the ocean. Or the snows of the north. The deserts of the south. He could be miles away in any direction, and Cavalo would never know.
So he didn’t think about that. He told himself Lucas was here. That Lucas was close. He told himself he could feel Lucas nearby. He almost believed it.
“Fuck,” he growled as they turned a corner that led down another long hallway. There were a few doors ahead on either side. They’d already come across a few rooms. Some were locked. Others blocked from the inside. A few doors had opened, revealing offices. Silent machines. One had a man hanging from a metal pipe, a wire wrapped around his desiccated neck. Enough light had spilled into the room to show large letters etched into the far wall: I’M SO SORRY MARIE. He had closed that door rather quickly.
Too many smells, Bad Dog said miserably. All over. Everywhere. Bad guys and Smells Different. Smells Different and bad guys. Blood and death and fire and ashes.
“He’s here?”
Yes. He was.
That didn’t mean shit now. Cavalo believed, he really did, but the seed of doubt was growing, and he could do nothing to stop it.
“We’re running out of time,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face.
“We’ll find him,” Richie said quietly.
“We don’t even know where the fuck we are,” Cavalo snapped. “It’s not as if—”
“Hi, Daddy!”
Cavalo closed his eyes.
He broke through the cold. Breached the surface. The bees crawled along his skin.
Not there, he thought. Not there.
Bad Dog growled.
“Daddy!”
Cavalo opened his eyes. Jamie stood down at the end of the corridor as the lights flickered around them. He held Mr. Fluff in one hand, the stuffed rabbit dragging on the metal grating of the floor. He raised his other hand and wiggled his fingers at Cavalo. “Hi,” he said with a large smile. “Hi, hi, hi.”
“Not real,” Cavalo muttered.
“Cavalo?” Richie asked from behind him.
Cavalo ignored him because Jamie was calling to him, laughing and saying Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, and he felt the oily sweat on the back of his neck. The way his hands clenched. The whistling breath from his constricted throat because Bad Dog was looking at Jamie. He was looking at Jamie and growling, like he could see him, like he was real.
Jamie waved at him again as Cavalo asked Bad Dog, “What do you see?”
I… don’t know. Smells. Like… fire. Smoke. Lightning. I can’t see… it. Bad Dog cocked his head, confused. MasterBossLord, what is it?
“I don’t know,” Cavalo croaked.
“Silly puppy,” Jamie said with a grin. “Silly Daddy. Hi. Daddy, guess what?”
Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
He did it anyway. “What?” he asked.
“I can find him.”
“Who?”
Jamie rolled his eyes, and it was so familiar, so achingly and ridiculously like him that Cavalo thought for a brief, shining moment he was real.
“The Not-Monster,” Jamie said. “The Not-Cannibal. Smells Different.”
“Lucas?” Cavalo whispered.
Jamie nodded. “Do you remember? What I said?”
He’s not who you think he is.
“He’s… not?”
“Not him.” Jamie sighed as if his father was the most frustrating man in the world. And he very well could be, for all Cavalo knew. He never had the chance to ask his son otherwise.
“Cavalo,” Richie said, sounding nervous. “I don’t—”
“It’s not him,” Jamie said again. “It was never him. Silly Daddy. Silly James Cavalo. Mr. Fluff says you’re not listening.”
“I always listened to Mr. Fluff,” Cavalo croaked as Bad Dog whined. And he had because Jamie had always told him stories with Mr. Fluff and—
Jamie grinned again. “Do you? Did you listen to him when you threw him in the river? He floated away, Daddy. Like a paper boat. But I found him.”
“Oh my God,” Richie moaned from somewhere.
“I can see that,” Cavalo said, taking a step toward his son. “Why are you both here?” Because they were, they were here and nothing could convince Cavalo otherwise. Not anymore.
Jamie cocked his head. “I thought you knew. I thought you knew all this time. We’re here because of this moment. We’re the god from the machine, Daddy. Didn’t you know?”
“No. No, Jamie. I didn’t.” He made an aborted attempt to reach out for his son, but Jamie took a step back, and Cavalo felt the stingers of the bees stabbing behind his eyeballs, crawling along his brain. Their legs and silvery wings brushed against gray matter.
“Daddy?”
“Yes,” Cavalo said, hands trembling.
“Catch me!”
And he took off quicker than Cavalo had ever seen him move in life.
Cavalo didn’t hesitate. Richie squawked in surprise when Cavalo ran down the causeway, feet clanging against the metal grating that lined the floor. Bad Dog let out a solid woof and followed without question.
Cavalo turned left and caught a flash of Mr. Fluff’s ears, the skin of his son’s ankle. He didn’t stop to think if the bees had finally consumed him, if all the rubber bands had finally broken. He didn’t have time for such frivolous nonsense. His son was running deep inside Dworshak and they were lost and the minutes were wasting away. Lucas was either here or anywhere. They would either live or die. He was tired. He was so very tired.
A right turn. Another right. Through a doorway already open, and the bees screamed at him to slow, to quiet, to shut the fuck up because someone would hear him, someone would find him and eat his toes and eyes and—
The clank of Bad Dog’s toenails rattled behind him.
The quick, sobbing breath from Richie’s throat.
Cavalo ran.
He only caught vague glimpses of his son, but others were with him too. He saw his father on a decaying poster embedded on the wall, wearing a hardhat, an animated talking balloon coming out of his mouth asking if Cavalo knew about SAFETY FIRST and KEEPING WALKWAYS CLEAR and DRINKING WAS THE ONLY THING THAT NUMBED THE PAIN OF LIVING. His father winked at him from another poster, neck crooked at an odd angle, bones protruding through his throat because he had died when he’d fallen from a horse, he’d died when—
Warren stood inside a closed office door that Cavalo ran by, only the outline of his shadow visible, but Cavalo knew it was him, knew that if he’d only seen him first, so many things might have been different, so many things might have changed, and he could have saved him, he could have helped him to—
Snarling coyotes scratched down the hallway to the right as he turned to follow Jamie to the left, and he heard the door there grate open, and the woman inside shrieked at them to come, to finish this, that she wanted to die that she wanted it all to be over, and when they descended on her, when they tore into her flesh, she screamed again, but it was in such relief, and she laughed—
David begged Cavalo not to shoot him as he crawled underneath the metal grating below Cavalo’s feet, begged him not to pull the trigger because he hadn’t stolen anything, he hadn’t taken anything from Cavalo, he would never do that, he would never do that because they were friends, they were friends, and he wanted it to be more because he loved Cavalo, he loved him and he didn’t want to die—
“Catch me, Daddy!”
There was a stitch in his side. His knees hurt, but that was because he was getting older and it was damp here inside this hellhole. Water trickled down around him, the walls groaned and shifted. Steam poured from a cracked pipe. He was old, this place was old, it was a tomb, and he would be buried here—
> He saw others, faceless strangers whose blood was on his hands. They reached for him, they shied away from him, they screamed and cursed his name, offered their forgiveness and thanks, told him he would die in this place, under hundreds of tons of steel and metal built by men from Before, when all people worried about was working that nine-to-five, paycheck to paycheck, living for the weekend to kick off their motherfucking shoes and relax.
“Cavalo,” Riche gasped from somewhere behind him. “Please.”
MasterBossLord, Bad Dog called sharply, and did he? Did he really call anything? Because for a moment, Cavalo thought that maybe Bad Dog didn’t speak at all. That Lucas couldn’t speak at all. That it was all in his head and—
“Mutts can’t talk,” his father told him as he took another swig from an ancient flask that said OAKLAND RAIDERS. “You’re fucking crazy, my boy, because mutts can’t talk, Lucas can’t fucking talk, and you lost something, Charlie, you fucking lost your goddamn mind—”
He turned a corner, and there stood a tree in the middle of the causeway, in the middle of a dam, in the middle of a time long after Before.
He stopped.
Took a shuddering breath.
The tree-wife said, “Do you know what it felt like, Cavalo? To die? It hurt. Not the bullet. Not the way it shattered my face. No. It was the betrayal. The way you betrayed me. The way you killed me.”
And she leaned for him, her branches curling around him, and he opened his mouth to scream—
But there was nothing there.
He opened his eyes.
The walkway was empty.
The tree-wife was gone.
Jamie and Mr. Fluff were gone.
Everyone else was gone.
He didn’t know where they were.
But there was something—
Bad Dog reached him first. He rubbed up against Cavalo’s legs. You can’t do that, he scolded. You can’t just do that, MasterBossLord. What if I lost you? What if I couldn’t find you? I would be sad, and Tin Man would be sad, and he would say it was Bad Dog’s fault. You can’t do that to me, you can’t—
There was something—
“Cavalo,” Richie said, panting behind him. He bent over, hands on his knees, struggling to catch his breath. Sweat dripped from his nose onto the floor. “What the hell is going on? Are you out of your fucking—”
The bees laughed at the foolish boy. Stupid man, they said. Stupid child. Of course he’s out of his fucking mind. Of course he’s fucking—
Voices, then. From down the hallway.
Muffled. Dark.
Richie’s eyes went wide.
Bad Dog’s ears flattened on the back of his head, tail rigid, hackles rising.
It’s real this time, Cavalo thought.
Is it? the bees asked. Are you sure?
Well, no. He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure about anything anymore.
He pulled Lucas’s knife from its scabbard.
He thought he heard the faint whisper of his son’s voice, saying the god from the machine had led him here. That it was up to him to do the rest.
“Keep low,” Cavalo muttered. “Keep quiet. Don’t do shit until I say. Turn the light off.”
Richie hesitated, eyes wary.
“Richie.”
He nodded, a bead of sweat trickling down his forehead. He switched off the lantern and they fell into semidarkness.
Cavalo crouched down near Bad Dog’s head. “Is it him?” he whispered.
Blood, Bad Dog said. Blood. Smells Different. Blood. Blood. Blood.
Cavalo’s grip around the knife tightened.
They needed to move. They were running out of time.
The voices down the corridor carried, but Cavalo couldn’t yet make out the words. There was a grating laugh, rough and wet. He saw no movement. No shadows. The dam creaked around them. The wall on the right was wet. The air spoke of must and mold. Cavalo could taste it on his tongue.
“Back,” he said.
Bad Dog glared up at him as he stood but followed the command and moved behind Cavalo.
Cavalo reached out and felt along the wall, splinted wrist twinging sharply. His footsteps were light and slow. There were three distinct voices now, all male. The words were still inaudible, but they began to take shape. He picked out here and watch and a string of we can’t begin to.
They came to a metal stairway. The left went up, the handrail hanging off the wall. The right went down, the dark seemingly darker. The corridor continued on straight ahead. Farther down, someone had painted an arrow on the wall, crude and green. Underneath, a childlike scrawl: THIS WAY TO THE LIGHT.
He looked down the stairs.
Mr. Fluff lay at the bottom, hidden partially by shadows that flickered along his prone body.
The voices floated up the stairs.
They said:
“How much longer we gotta stay down here?”
“Shut the fuck up, Aggie. All you’ve done is bitch and moan.”
“I don’t like it here. I don’t like it here. Right? It’s not—”
“I swear to God if you don’t shut the fuck up, I’ll kill you myself.”
“Ah. Ha. Ha. Ha. Hahahahaaaaa.”
“Jesus Christ. Of course I get sent with the fucking nutjobs.”
“I’m not a nutjob! Not like Zag. All he does is sit there, rocking and laughing and—”
“You’re just as bad. You’re just as bad as him. Both of you shut the fuck up.”
“Ha! Ha! Haaaaaaa!”
“And you. What the fuck are you looking at?”
“He’s smiling, Dory! Why is he smiling?”
“You smiling at me, boy? You fucking smiling at me? He ain’t here, you know. Daddy. He ain’t here, and we could do anything we want to you.”
Silence.
Then, “It doesn’t have to be your mouth, boy. You have other holes.”
“We could do things,” Aggie said, voice rising. “We could. He couldn’t tell. I’ve never—never been with. Anything. Anyone.”
“Ha ha ha ha aaaaahhhhhhh.”
“He’d like it too,” the one called Dory said, and Cavalo decided he would die first. If this is what he thought it was, if this was where the ghost from the machine had led them, then Dory would die first. He needed to be sure. His eyes were adjusting to the dark, and he needed to be sure. “Use blood or spit. Break him in. He’d like it. He’d like it. Like a little girl. Tight and warm.”
“I get a turn after you,” Aggie said. “I want to go. I need. This. They won’t. Back at home. They won’t let me touch.”
“That’s because your face is a rotting mess,” Dory said. “You’re fucking disgusting.”
“HA HA HA HA!”
“Shut the fuck up, Zag!”
“HA HA HA HA HA—”
“Aggie, don’t get so fucking close to the goddamn mute. Don’t get so—”
But that was all Cavalo needed. He moved on the word mute. It was foolish, he knew. Desperately so. Just because there were three voices didn’t mean there weren’t more. Didn’t mean there wasn’t an entire goddamn army of Dead Rabbits underneath this dam, down those stairs and waiting in the dark.
But it didn’t matter. He was here; Cavalo had heard the word mute and sank below the surface, down into the cold place underneath the waters where the bees swarmed around him, crawling out of his mouth and ears and nose, whispering their sweet assurances to him. We love you, they said. We need you, they said.
Kill them, they said. Kill them all.
He didn’t jump the stairs. He couldn’t take the risk of landing wrong and breaking his ankle. He was already down a hand and would be cutting it close as it was. He took each stair one step at a time, moving quickly and quietly, knowing Bad Dog was at his heels, not giving a shit about what Richie did if he was being honest with himself. As long as he stayed out of Cavalo’s way, he could dance a jig or cower in a corner for all the fucks Cavalo gave.
He was a killer now. Again. He moved w
ith purpose.
He reached the bottom of the stairs and followed the voices, remembering Dory because Dory would go first, Dory would have that honor.
Another corridor stretched before him. He couldn’t see how far it went. It didn’t matter, though. There was low light spilling through an open doorway. The door itself opened out into the corridor, heavy and metal. There was a circular window at the top of the door, the glass broken out.
Cavalo felt Bad Dog on his heels and thought, If there’s three, I’ll get two, and you get the other, and Bad Dog said, Okay, I’ll go left, and you go right, and no one will touch Smells Different. He ignored the cold chill that ran through him when he realized he hadn’t spoken aloud and Bad Dog had responded anyway. He could worry about that later, if they survived this.
Now, Bad Dog had his orders, Richie was dancing his fucking jig, and Cavalo held Lucas’s knife in his hands, and the man named Zag was hyperventilating, his HA HA HA growing reedy and thin. Cavalo reached the door, sidestepped it, filled the entry.
Everything was cold and sharp.
The man named Zag, balding and missing teeth in blackened gums, had a line of spit hanging from his mouth as he bent over, laughing toward the floor, face flushed red, eyes bulging. One stuck out more than the other, yellowed and obscene, as if it was being pushed out from inside the socket, and he laughed.
The other two stood on the other side of the room, staring at the wall in front of them. One of them breathed heavily, chest rising up and down, shoulders shaking. Aggie. The other reached to unfasten his pants. Dory.
Lucas. Lucas was on that wall. Lucas, with his arms chained above his head, face beat to hell, left eye swollen shut, blood dribbling from his lips. He snarled silently at Dory and Aggie, his teeth stained with blood, that clever monster, that clever cannibal. He pulled on the chains hard, harder, and Cavalo thought maybe his arms would rip from their sockets. He was shirtless, the tattoos on full display, but not a single mark on his torso. Not a single bruise or cut on his arms. They’d probably been ordered to leave the tattoos unmarked. Patrick couldn’t use them if they were blemished. He couldn’t—