Grinning Cracks

by K W Taylor

  April shook her head. Was I really alive before, anyway? Work, home, out, putting off college, putting off travel, putting off growing up…

  April looked around. “So what do you do here? What is this place?”

  Harry followed April’s gaze to the shelves of boxes, the dim lights swinging on ancient fixtures, the dirty gray walls. “We work for this guy. There’s a lot of us.” He chuckled. “Night job, of course.”

  “You steal shit from the store?”

  He nodded. “It’s really not that much different from a standard theft and fencing operation. Except that we’re faster, quieter, and we almost never get caught.”

  “Jesus, can’t you like hypnotize people into giving you money or something?”

  “Some of us can, but it’s not just this,” Harry replied. “The boss, he has some real estate thing going, too. It’s all diversified. I don’t know. I just hit the mall. Never too much at once. I know Jon’s inventory system so I just adjust stuff.” He got up and walked back to the box he’d put down earlier. “He ever notice? Or you?”

  Had they? April thought a moment. “I don’t think so.”

  “I mostly take what I know isn’t selling. I hit the Seville’s on the second floor, too, and then the Burberry Diamond Exchange on route twelve.” He opened the box and rifled through it. After a moment, he pulled out a necklace. “Gaudy shit, shit old people like. That’s my specialty.”

  April ran through the store names. Wait. “You worked at Seville’s before our store.”

  Harry nodded. “And before that Burberry, yeah. I worked a few places in Indianapolis, too. Sometimes I hit those.”

  April stood up. “Were you...were you this...did they recruit you because you worked for jewelry stores, turn you into this to use you?” She felt a tugging at her chest, her heart beating when before it hadn’t been.

  There was something important about whatever Harry said next.

  If they’d recruited him because of his job, it meant all the years she’d known him hadn’t been a lie, that the shitty luck of what she was now dealing with was just that—shitty luck. Maybe he was stuck, maybe they both were, but being stuck wasn’t the same as choosing.

  Harry sighed, his shoulders slumping. He shook his head. “I’ve worked for them the whole time,” he said.

  April’s heart stopped. She felt herself grow colder all over.

  “You have to climb the ladder, you know?” he continued. There was hardness to his face that wasn’t there before, and his voice was more confident, happier. “I was a mole, then I practiced, and then they turned me.”

  “You wanted this.” April thought of the blood sliding down her throat, the terror coursing through her body as she’d devoured the contents of the cup. She saw her attack back at the store in flashes, Harry dragging her outside while the life drained from her, while her heart slowed and her body grew cold and immobile. “You wanted to feel this way, numb and hungry and...and...angry? All the time? On purpose?” She clenched her fists into balls, her rage rising. So it hadn’t been bad luck. He’d pursued it, had a goal all along, all the pleasantries and covering each other’s shifts and normalcy...lies.

  Harry dropped the necklace back into the box, straightened up, and smiled at her. “You’ll like it, April.” His fangs extended. “I know I do.”

  If I make a break for it, I’ll see the stake again.

  April stayed quiet and still. And she planned.

  dahut and the destruction of ys

  The blistering on the chief’s skin was his first clue.

  He gazed up at the sun and felt its rays start to cook his eyes right in their sockets. He sucked in a breath, willing the pain to subside, and then he looked down, away from the sky.

  “Demon star,” he muttered. He hitched his robes about himself more closely and slunk off to his tent.

  There was still a tingle along his arms and face. It wasn’t going to get better. He would die soon.

  He summoned his right hand, Dahut. She was a princess and magician from another village, and she had run away from her father years before. Now she served only him, the chief of her new home, and now he knew his time was running out.

  “I am to die.”

  Dahut looked concerned but not surprised. “You are immortal,” she remarked.

  He shook his head. “Apparently not.”

  “Shall we elect your heir?” she asked.

  He considered this briefly. “We could,” he said, “or we could let the village be swallowed by the sea so that I may live.” He indicated the sun. “It is what kills me, that damnable orb. I was born a morgen. I must return to la mer.”

  At this, Dahut blinked. “The gods will disapprove. There will be repercussions.”

  He lifted his shoulders. “I do not believe so. I am in good favor with them.”

  His expression darkened as soon as the princess was gone. It was easy to be in good favor with entities you did not engage. It would be no concern of his, in the end.

  The princess would be the one to face the gods’ wrath, not himself. For he would make her be the one to open the floodgates, letting in the ocean to spirit him away.

  The emissary was quick to arrive, walking on the sea toward the only mountain peak left to the village. Ys was once sprawling, and now it was but a singular spire amidst the clear blue sea. “Wicked child,” the emissary said, staring down at Dahut’s defiant form.

  The princess glared at the bearded figure. Around her neck, she clutched a token from the chief, his talisman upon a silver cord. “My leader must live,” she said defiantly. “I care not for the mortals struck down along the way.”

  A lightning bolt shot from the bearded man’s fingertips. The princess screeched in alarm and fell, trembling.

  “You took love and life from others,” the god intoned, “and so I curse thee for eternity to never find love yourself.”

  Another lightning bolt split the air, and the princess’ body convulsed and tore, bones and ligaments splitting and screaming.

  She passed out to blessed darkness, but when she awoke, she found she had been transported away from the ruins of Ys, to a mountainous valley far from the sea.

  Her body, too, was very much changed. No longer a woman, the princess now had the taught, furry hide of a small-statured ruminant.

  Dahut was now a goat.

  For decades, the little goat circled the stones along the summit of the mountain, only able to clop along counterclockwise, as her legs were shorter on her left side than her right. Spinning dizzily, year after lonely year, she lost all sense of her guilt, of her shame, of her sanity. The cursed phrase, however, never left her mind. “Never find love,” the god had sworn her. “Never find love.”

  But at some point, someone else must have perturbed the entity. For as the goat neared the end of her life, she saw that which she’d never thought possible: another goat, but this one with a set of startled, too-human eyes eerily like her own.

  Only this beast’s legs were shorter on the right side.

  The princess bleated and began to race forward.

  EDEN

  Layla dreamed of pillows, most nights, and she assumed it was because she didn’t use one anymore. She camped. She walked. She slept in train cars, inside abandoned SUVs, anywhere she could get out of the rain. She used her arm, her knapsack, one of her dogs as a pillow, but rarely an actual, honest-to-goodness slipcase-covered mound of down-filled cotton.

  Today would be a hiking day, and she was ready and excited because if the map was right, it would be the last day for hiking.

  Pillows...pillows on the floor, on the walls ...soft padding all in shades of light grey. The dream was fading as she walked. And when Layla finally reached the overlook and stared out at the rushing water, she wept. Her head pounded from the mist and her own hot tears that blurred her vision into a Monet painting.

  Two months on foot, veering around abandoned cars, sneaking away from wild animal haunts, avoiding the worst of the midsum
mer weather, and managing to find food, shelter, and not succumb to illness or injury, and she was here, at last, sunburned and with muscles that looked like rope on rubber bands, but she was here.

  Hoover Dam, her first thought had been when the mass disappearance first happened. Hoover Dam will have electricity for centuries without human intervention, unlike anyplace else in the country. And so Layla packed her gear, wondering briefly if she should drive but quickly worrying about crashes and gasoline and explosions. No, it was late spring, she could walk. So walk she did, picking up the requisite animal companions along the way to keep herself company. She and her dogs made it to Nevada exactly sixty days after she set out.

  She watched the water rushing, loud and clean and pure, and remembered someone small, someone excited, pointing at the man-made falls. “Mommy! Mommy!” Wild gestures. Laughter. A man scooping the child up in his arms—

  That was a long time ago, Layla thought. She tugged at the dogs’ leashes and wandered away, shoving things out of her brain. She didn’t notice her hands shaking or that her palms were growing slicker with sweat every second.

  Layla thought of holing up in a hotel, ultimately, living out the last few years or decades of solitude she had left in a penthouse suite or two, foraging for food, reading pulp novels, and staying drunk most of the time if the solitude became depressing. Still, there were animals everywhere—some dangerous, of course—just no more people. It wasn’t that they’d all died; there were no corpses left discarded in houses and ditches and cars or wandering in brain-thirsty zombie fogs. They were just gone. Disappeared. With her left alone with her thoughts and her dogs and her walking.

  “Come on, ladies.” She was at a hotel now, not far from the dam, and she dropped backpack and tired body in the lobby, too exhausted to make it to a suite. The dogs snuggled in beside her as they’d made a habit of, one on either side of her in a protective cocoon of fur. Sugar was a mix of collie and retriever, all gold-blond and shiny with huge eyes like chocolate marbles, and Spice was a spaniel, part cavalier and part cocker. She had the coloring of the former but the nerves of the latter, often leaving puddles of urine in the wake of thunderstorms.

  “You would’ve hated the fourth of July, Spicy,” Layla once remarked as the three of them huddled in a library in Missouri during a particularly bad summer shower. “People made these kinds of noises for fun.”

  Layla had no idea how long she’d been asleep when a wet nose poked at her chin. It wasn’t a dog’s nose in her dream, though, it was Adam, all stubble and soft nudges. “It’s time to get up, baby.”

  “One more snooze,” she mumbled, flinging her arm out to the right where the alarm clock lived. Only there was no alarm clock, there was only cold, worn carpet and tiny warm dog.

  No. Adam was gone, just like all the others. This was Spice, poking at her, and Sugar was...

  Layla blinked. Sugar was halfway across the darkened lobby, staring at a point far off. She looked like a hunting dog pinning its prey. What was down the hall? The only light came in from the lobby windows. It was late afternoon, maybe even early evening, and Layla couldn’t see much beyond the check-in counter. If she ventured much beyond the counter, it would be dark. And if something was down there, turning on all the building lights would just alert it to her presence.

  Quietly, she pulled a few items from her backpack. Clip-on leads for the dogs. Flashlight. And, what had become her favorite weapon of choice in these end times, a retractable baton. It released to its full extension with a satisfying “snick.” Layla locked it into place but kept it close, clutched in her right hand. In the outside of her left boot was a knife.

  She clipped Spice’s leash onto her collar, but then thought better of tying her to something secure while she and Sugar went on ahead to check out the disturbance. If something really was down there and Layla didn’t make it, the smaller dog would need a way to rescue herself, find her own meals and get to safety. Reluctantly, she unclipped the leash and left Spice’s side with just a pat. “You be a good girl,” she whispered. Spice yawned and curled up into a tight little ball.

  Layla didn’t even bother trying to get Sugar on her own lead; the larger dog was more independent, more able to take care of herself. Layla just hoped that if things did get bad, Sugar would be able to look after Spice and the two of them would be okay.

  “Show me what’s going on,” Layla whispered and Sugar, almost with a curt little nod, proceeded on down the hallway. The lobby gave way to a bank of elevators, but Sugar ignored those. To the left was a darker hall, closed double doors that likely led to conference or ball rooms. Layla imagined meetings and weddings that would now never take place within, imagined hundreds of people dancing to music that would never play again. Bouquets and booze, laughter and love ...these were all things humanity would never be able to bring forth on the earth, because she was its lone resident now.

  She shoved aside the deep horror this realization always brought up and continued following the dog. Sugar padded faster and faster as she got closer to the end of the hall. Here, the double doors were metal instead of wood, with the requisite little circular windows that indicated a kitchen. And here Sugar stopped and sat, but still kept her front legs up, ready at a second’s notice to proceed should her mistress wish her to.

  “Stay,” Layla whispered firmly. She clutched the baton tighter and crept to the doors.

  It was hard to see much inside. There was only one window in the kitchen, and it was greasy and covered with wire mesh. Everything was grey, shadowed, indistinct. Except...movement. One of the shadows was not just a shadow but a thing, a sentient, skittering thing. Layla whisked the knife out of her boot and shoved the kitchen doors open with her left shoulder.

  He was maybe eight, maybe ten. Half her height. Scrawny. Big eyed. Mouth smeared with something she hoped was chocolate, because the alternatives were less fun. He looked around. Layla had the lights on in an instant and both weapons held aloft.

  “Don’t kill me!”

  They’d both screamed it, and after a moment’s wild, fearful staring contest, they both began to laugh.

  “I couldn’t find anyone, not for months!” the boy told her once they were out in the lobby, Layla with her own piece of very stale chocolate cake, and Sugar sniffing the boy’s hair and clothes.

  “I couldn’t either,” Layla replied. “Well, except these two.”

  “Two?”

  “I have another dog, just down by the front doors.”

  “Neat! They have dogs here? Our dogs?”

  Our dogs? What? Layla ignored the question, assuming the boy meant that if he traveled with her now, the dogs were theirs both together. “Sure, there are dogs here. And cats and ducks and horses and bears.” Layla frowned. “You don’t want to play with the bears, obviously.”

  “I didn’t think they’d wind up here.”

  Layla regarded him. “Why? It was only the people who went away, not things, not animals. If animals were here before, why should they have disappeared?”

  The boy’s eyes grew wide and then the corners of his mouth turned down. “Oh, no, no, it wasn’t...oh, no.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t the people who went anywhere, it was us. It was you and me and whoever else we just haven’t found yet.”

  “What? No, no, somehow every other human being disappeared. It’s some kind of plague or rapture or—”

  “No.” The boy looked exasperated now. He sighed. “I told you I couldn’t find anyone for months, but I did find someone before I found you.”

  An icy feeling began to spread out from Layla’s stomach. She dropped her cake on the floor. “Who?”

  “My dad. The rope...it was still around his neck.”

  Layla felt a flash of recognition suddenly. Once again, she imagined Adam’s stubble against her cheek as she had when she awoke in the lobby. “It’s time to get up, baby,” Adam had said.

  “One more snooze.”

  There had been a moment of quiet, a moment as if Ad
am had been hesitating, wrestling within himself, and then he’d kissed her neck. The bed had felt lighter once he’d risen.

  When Layla had finally gotten up, she’d screamed at the sight of her husband swinging in the doorway. And she’d screamed again when she saw Evan lying beneath his father’s body.

  “Evan!” Layla clutched her son to her now, in the gloom of the empty hotel, finally recognizing him.

  “It’s okay if you forgot, Mommy. I’ve been gone a long time.”

  Years ago, the very dam that she could hear even now faintly rushing over with gallons and gallons of water. “Mommy! Mommy!” It was him, though he was smaller then, and it was Adam who’d scooped him up, long before his despair made him end everything.

  The dream of pillows...it was years spent in a locked room, screaming her throat raw and crying over her dead family. Years, decades...and yet she was young now, young and spry and just as she was when Evan was tiny, but it wasn’t real, was it? She’d been an old woman with hair the color of iron by the end.

  Layla forced herself into the present, stroking her son’s hair. There was blood on the back of his head, and she screamed when she touched it.

  “Don’t worry, Mommy,” Evan mumbled against Layla’s shoulder. “It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  encounter

  The man was tall and dressed in a black suit and white shirt. His hair was a mix of odd colors—white-blond near the front and blue-black near the back. It wasn’t that he was going grey, but the effect didn’t appear deliberate, either. He kept his thick plastic sunglasses on even after entering the diner and sitting down.

  At the sound of movement within the empty restaurant, the waitress looked up from her magazine and spotted the patron seated in a corner booth, head bent over a menu with what seemed overly-intense concentration. With one long, slim finger, he traced the words as he read them. She hadn’t been aware that the greasy listing of dishes available necessitated such intense scrutiny.