by P. T. Hylton
“Let’s go,” Will said.
Trevor went through the door first and dashed up the stairs. Will followed, pushing himself to keep up. Whatever was at the top of those stairs, Will didn’t want Trevor facing it alone.
As they ran, Will thought back to that day on Rook Mountain. The day he killed Jessie Cooper. Maybe if he had been brave enough to break his precious cover things would be different today. He had held onto to his cover for far too long. What he had rationalized as caution was really cowardice. The time spent living with his family, even under the oppression of Zed and the Regulations, had been a precious time. But this—standing up to Zed with his family by his side—was even better.
Trevor reached the top of the steps and started up the ladder to the roof. Will stayed right behind him. Trevor stepped out onto the roof and froze. Will followed, grabbed his stepson and stepped in front of him. He didn’t know what Trevor had seen, but he wanted to protect Trevor from whatever it was. Then Will saw it too.
Christine stood near the corner of the roof, a gun in her hand. Three selectmen and the city manager stood in a semi-circle around her. Christine waved the gun back and forth, trying to cover all of them at the same time.
A man lay on the floor between them, a thin stream of blood running from his right ear. It was Frank.
Something hit Will in the back like a sledgehammer. He fell forward, hitting the floor face first. He felt Trevor land on his back a split second later. Then he heard the voice behind him, and the blood seemed to freeze in his veins.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Zed said.
4.
A moment after Christine noticed Frank standing on the roof of City Hall, she felt the police officer who had been pinning her to the ground roll off. She turned and saw Sean. He had his gun held to the head of the other officer.
“Go,” Sean said to Christine. “Help him if you can.”
Christine nodded. She reached down, unbuckled the other police officer’s holster, and pulled out the man’s gun. He grunted his protest, but Christine was already on her feet.
“Let her take it,” Sean said to the other officer.
“Thanks,” Christine said. Sean nodded.
She looked around the stage and saw that most eyes were still on Frank and the Unfeathered swirling above him. She had to get to Frank before they did. She didn’t know what would come next, but she didn’t want Frank to face it alone. She turned and ran for City Hall. Christine was inside before the Unfeathered attacked. She paused and looked back, but it was too late. Tears filled her eyes. She knew there was nothing she could do to help Will and Trevor. She had to trust that they would take care of each other. She sprinted to the top of the stairs, hoping she could reach the roof hatch before the Zed Heads did.
At the top, she saw a ladder leading up to an open hatch. She climbed and stuck her head through. Frank was only a few feet in front of her.
“Hurry! We have to get out of here!”
Frank dropped to his knees. He blinked hard and looked her up and down. It was as if he hadn’t seen her in a long time. Christine realized he probably hadn’t. There was no denying that Frank looked older even aside from his harshly graying hair. The scars crisscrossing his face probably did little to help, but there were also deep wrinkles on his face, a face so pale it looked like it hadn’t been touched by sunlight in years.
She stepped out onto the roof and gave him a hug. He flinched at her touch and didn’t hug her back.
“Come on,” she said.
Frank shook his head. “No. They’re almost here. Listen. The Tools are behind the...” His voice trailed off as he pointed toward the air conditioning unit mounted on the roof next to him. Frank sounded hoarse, and he spoke hesitantly as if unsure of his words.
She looked behind the air conditioner. There they were on the floor. The mirror. The key. The cane. “Where did you get these?” Christine asked.
“Will’s office.”
She reached down to grab the mirror. A flash of blue light and a pool of thick liquid appeared on the floor next to her. She instinctively took a step back. The smell of the stuff hit her—a rotten, tangy smell—and her stomach turned. The middle of the liquid swirled, revealing a human face. A head formed around the face, and then a neck and a torso. The liquid swirled across the forming body adding muscle to bone, skin to muscle, and finally clothes. The whole process couldn’t have taken more than five seconds, and now Selectman Nate Grayson stood before them. A final bit of liquid bridged the gap between Grayson’s right hand and the floor, and suddenly he was holding a baseball bat.
Grayson moved before Christine had a chance to react. He took a step toward Frank and swung the bat like a slugger aiming for the stands. He connected, and Frank went down with a groan.
Christine brought the gun up and pointed it at Nate. “Drop the bat, Nate! I will shoot you dead if you so much as raise it again.”
Nate glared at her and a guttural growl escaped his throat. His face was pure hatred. He dropped the bat. “There are Regulations for people like you,” he said slowly. “You will pay very soon.”
Another puddle materialized across the roof, and two other puddles appears a split second later. The first puddle solidified, and Becky Raymond stood facing them. Another Selectman joined her a moment later. Then another. Then there were four of them. It was four against two.
Christine moved behind Frank, trying her best to protect him, moving the barrel of her gun between Becky Raymond and the selectmen, trying her best to cover all of them at once. They weren’t attacking, but they weren’t backing off, either.
Frank raised himself to his hands and knees and groaned.
The four people looking at Christine reminded her more of rabid animals than government officials. This was a standoff she was destined to lose. If she thought she could shoot them all, she would have done it, but she sensed the other three would charge the instant she fired.
The trapdoor burst open and Christine's heart simultaneously leapt and plummeted as first Trevor and then Will stepped through. Her family was alive, but they probably wouldn’t be alive for long.
Then Zed arrived.
5.
Frank heard the voice before he saw Zed. He was still looking at the ground, trying to get his head straight. Even getting to his knees had felt like crawling out of a spinning washing machine. There was no way he was standing up anytime soon. Even through his daze and his ringing ears, he recognized that voice, the last voice he had heard before going Away. The voice of the man he had come here to stop.
He raised his head and looked at Zed. As he did, he saw some blood on the ground and wondered where it was leaking out of him.
Zed stepped forward. His clothes were torn in dozens of places, but he seemed uninjured. Not bad for a man who had just been attacked by a flock of giant bird monsters.
Frank noticed Will and Trevor sprawled on the ground near him. Bad guys up, good guys down. Things weren't going as well as he had hoped. Except for Christine of course. She was still standing, pointing that gun at anyone and everyone.
That damn smile was back on Zed’s face. “Are you going to shoot me, doctor? Your first husband tried that. If I remember correctly, he was never seen again.”
“It might not kill you, but it would be cathartic,” Christine said.
Zed bent down next to Frank. “Now what are we going to do with you?”
Frank tried to answer and instantly wished he hadn’t. All that came out was a pathetic grunt. He took a slow breath, and then reached into his pocket and took out the Fox, the lock Wendy gave him the day before he was sent away. He slid it across the ground to Will.
“Lock it,” Frank said. He was grateful that words came out at all, and that Will understood. Will closed the lock through the latch on the trapdoor.
“What did you do?” Becky Raymond asked. “The trapdoor looks all… fuzzy. Like it’s not there.”
Nate Grayson looked up at Zed, panic in his eyes. “They did
something. I can’t melt off this roof. I know I can’t.”
“Nobody leaves,” Frank said. His voice was little more than a groan. “We finish this here.”
Zed sighed, but he was still smiling. “I’ve tried really hard not to kill you. You have a mind that… well, it’s remarkable. Somehow you’ve closed it up tight. And the locks! They are marvelous. For example, that necklace lock came from your subconscious. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised you eventually managed to unlock it. In another time and another place, you could have been great. But you never get out of your own way. You have all these ideas brewing in there and no clue what to do with them. You lack the resolve, the confidence to do something special. You have original ideas, but you lack originality. You are completely predictable.”
Frank saw Will helping Trevor to his feet.
Zed stood up and stretched. He had an oddly distant look in his eyes. “There are Tools here. I can feel it… I’ve never felt so many of them in the same place.”
“It enhances your powers, doesn’t it?” Frank asked. “Having all these Tools together makes you stronger.”
Frank was looking at Zed, but he was really talking to Will. Frank knew that he had to get the knife into Will’s hands. Will and his gift at figuring out the purpose of each Tool. Wendy had told Frank the Tools were meant to be used together. Frank knew that his only chance was to get all the Tools in one place and hope Will’s powers of perception came through.
It was risky and it left everything in Will’s hands. In some ways, Will was the one Frank trusted least out of all his friends. Zed was wrong about a lot of things, but he was right about one of them: trust was a must. Frank had to trust that Will would find a way.
“I must say,” Zed said, “This feels very good.” He sounded distracted. Almost not there. “For someone like myself, tuned into the Tools… it’s hard to explain. Thank you for bringing them to me, Frank. I will grant you a quick death for that.”
Frank saw that Will had the knife in his hand. Will was staring at it with a distant look in his eyes.
Zed’s voice was distant as he spoke. “Something is blocking the door out of this place. But with all this power, I think I may be able to send you people… you dangerous people… somewhere far away. Somewhere you will die quickly.” He looked down at Frank. “Starting with you.”
Frank felt wetness in his shoes. He glanced back and he had to stifle a scream at what he saw. His shoes—and his feet along with them—were melting.
Zed said, “And you, doctor.” He turned toward Trevor and Will. “And the boy. And Mr. Book Learning.”
Puddles were growing around Will, Trevor, and Christine’s feet, puddles of shoes and blood and melting flesh.
“Mom, what’s he doing to us?” bellowed Trevor.
Christine’s voice sounded shaky. “It’s okay, Trev. I love you. We’re going to be okay.”
The wetness was nearing Frank’s knees now. He felt himself fading. It was so hard to concentrate. Will was still staring at the knife in his hand.
“This isn’t working,” Zed said. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead. “I don’t know what you did to this place, but it’s locked tight. I’m going to have to push. I must warn you—this will hurt.” Zed squeezed his eyes shut and grunted with effort.
Frank screamed in pain and he heard Christine, Will, and Trevor join him. It felt like his feet were being squeezed in a vice. The agonizing pain was slowly creeping upward.
“Frank!” yelled Will, “Is the cane up here with us? If it is, I need you to push the broken clock symbol on it.”
Zed clenched his fists. “Almost through the barrier.”
Frank took a deep breath. The pain was like a fire inside of him, but it had also cleared his mind. He pushed the agony aside and slid his hand behind the air conditioner. He pulled out the cane, gripped it with both hands, and pressed the broken clock symbol. The cane shot upward. It was all Frank could do to hold on. The end of the cane smacked against the side of Zed’s right pant leg as if drawn there by a strong magnet.
Then everything happened at once.
Will flipped the knife open and stepped toward Zed. He wobbled on his stump of a leg and took another step forward.
Becky Raymond leapt at Will, her fingers extended like claws. She hissed as she dove through the air. She landed on Will, and he fell forward onto his face. The city manager wrapped her legs around him and slashed his cheek with her fingernails. Christine fired, and Becky Raymond’s brains hit the floor behind her with a splat.
The three selectmen sprang into motion, two headed for Christine and one headed for Will.
Will raised himself up on one arm. He drew back the knife and then drove it forward, slamming it into Zed’s pocket and into the pocket watch.
Zed screamed. There was a cracking sound as loud as a gunshot. The scream and the crack blended together into an ear-piercing combination of agony and white noise.
The sound drifted away and time started again.
6.
The air still tasted the same as it had a moment ago. The wind still whipped around them. But they all knew. They all felt it. Things were different. Things were back. Zed’s clock was broken, and the real clock was running again.
They stood in silence on the suddenly dark roof of Rook Mountain City Hall. Zed, the knife still sticking out of his leg, had his head bowed and his fists clenched by his sides.
Christine, Trevor, Will, and Frank’s bodies were whole again. Only the echoing memory of pain remained.
Moments ago it had been morning. Now the sky was dark and the stars shone over their heads.
“This all began in the middle of the night,” Christine said. “We're back where we started.”
Zed raised his head. He was scowling. His face looked different, hardly recognizable without his signature smile. “Yes. We are back where we started. March 27th, 2014. After the lengths I went to in order to quarantine us, to keep what I had to do contained in this one little town, you have brought the world into it again.”
“2014?” Will asked. “What does he mean?”
“He means time started again,” Frank said. He struggled to get to his feet as he spoke. “For the rest of the world no time has passed. For us, it’s been nine years.”
“He means we’re home,” Christine said.
“Yes,” Zed said. “Home. But at what cost?” He nodded toward the cane in Frank’s hand. “You think you understand the Tools? You think that cane is only useful for finding other Tools? You think the lighter just brings back the dead? You have no idea. You’ve only scratched the surface of what these things can do.”
“I understand that your watch ain’t doing shit with that knife through it,” Frank said.
“I didn’t want to be a mass murderer,” Zed said. “I wanted to keep the damage as small as I could. That’s why I took Rook Mountain out of time. I figured if I let this one town live out its natural course and die out, I could take what I needed and return not even a moment after I left. There were the Unfeathered to deal with, but I figured that out too, didn’t I? But you’ve ruined it. Now lots more people will have to die.”
“You’re talking crazy, Zed,” Frank said. “You lost.”
“Not even close. It’s you who’s lost. Humanity. I will get the Tools no matter what it takes, and I will use them here instead of outside of time. I’ll find the coin and I’ll use it. Millions will die. Time itself will pay.”
“Time seems to be doing okay.” Out of the corner of his eye, Frank saw Christine bending down, picking something up.
“Not for long,” Zed said. “You met them. The Ones Who Sing. They can’t be allowed to survive. They will devour all, and their prison is weakening. If I have to kill a billion people to stop them, I will do it.”
Like a blur, Christine leapt forward. She grabbed the handle of the knife and pulled it out of Zed’s leg. In one swift motion, she swung the knife forward, slashing at Zed’s throat.
Frank’s first
thought was, Didn’t we already try that?
Then he saw the blood shooting out of Zed’s neck and he understood. Christine had cut an artery. The blood sprang out in an arching stream with each beat of Zed’s heart.
Christine raised her other hand, the one holding the mirror. Zed’s blood hit the mirror and Zed screamed. It took only a moment for the mirror to pull him into its liquid surface. Zed’s cry echoed through the night as he disappeared into the mirror.
The broken pocket watch hit the ground with a clang.
Zed was gone.
THE UNREGULATED (PART 4)
Falling into the mirror was like diving into a pool of cold water. Jake felt like he was being pulled down toward something. The liquid—if that’s really what it was—was so cold it hurt, sapping the energy from his muscles.
He tried to fight panic as the circular view into Wendy’s living room grew smaller and smaller, shrinking until it was the size of a basketball, then a baseball, and finally a pinprick of light.
His lungs were burning now. He tried to relax, to let himself be pulled down toward whatever world waited below.
The group had argued about whether or not to use the mirror. All they knew was that it took you somewhere else. Will said he had seen something far away in the mirror. It was a forest, but the trees looked different than any in Eastern Tennessee. Will was convinced that the mirror was a portal to another place. Possibly another time.
The group had been evenly split on what to do about the new-found information. Christine, Jake, and Todd had been in favor of sending someone into the mirror in the hopes they would find a way to bring help back to Rook Mountain. The mirror, they argued, was their only way out of town and their only chance at outside help. Sean, Will, and Wendy had argued for caution. Leaping blindly into the mirror was potential suicide, they said. They had no idea what was in there and no reason to believe someone who went in would be able to return at all, let alone bring help.