by M. C. Norris
What should I do, Dad?
“It comes down to a choice between one lost life, or many.”
“What?” J.J. cast a glance over at Jill, who hadn’t stirred from her slumped position, hadn’t opened her eyes. He couldn’t even be sure if she’d actually said anything at all, or if he’d just imagined it, because her voice had sounded so ethereal.
“It’s the best lesson I can ever give to my child, if I’m only allowed to give once.” Jill’s chest rose and fell. Her face appeared to glow with a sheen of perspiration. “Give, completely, for the ones you love—if you’re only allowed to give once.”
J.J. sniffed at the moisture that suddenly filled his nostrils. He smeared at the corners of his eyes. Saving Jill’s life at all costs was just him being selfish. He understood that, now. Reuniting her with her daughter, as important as that still seemed, would never bring his missing father back, nor would it supplement his malnourished life of forever striving to become the man that might’ve made an imagined father proud. Jill’s plea was for something greater than the right to sacrifice her own life for the lives of her friends. It contained a deeper message, one perhaps sent to him from the outer rim of the universe in an effort to convey an important lesson that a father might’ve taught to his son. What J.J. heard between her words was that avoiding regret was rarely a luxury of life’s bravest decisions, because not all repercussions will remain under our control—including the worst ones.
“Alright,” J.J. said, clearing the tightness in his throat. “I get it.”
He raised the port flaps, throttled up, and banked the Devil Ray back into the eye of the storm. Reaching across the aisle, he took Jill’s hand and gave it a squeeze. There was more to his gesture than reassurance meant for the girl slumped in the copilot’s seat. It was also his reply. It was his message of understanding and forgiveness, racing off to the outer rim of the universe. After a moment, the universe squeezed back.
***
The monster plunged its clawed appendages into a mountain of fire. Lifting what once were architectural marvels like an armload of burning garbage, it heaved the smoldering rubble against the base of the hospital building. If it was at all affected by the pain of molten steel that hissed and squealed against its flesh like a steak on a grill, it didn’t show it, almost as though pain was a sensation that it appreciated. Considering the self-inflicted facial mutilation, the pirate’s penchant for masochism should’ve come as no surprise, nor the fact that the only pastime a monster like him might’ve enjoyed more than enduring a considerable amount of pain was perhaps inflicting greater amounts onto others.
Skyler covered her face and screamed. There was no escape from the rooftop. The heat of the swelling fire was already intolerable, and another great scoop of glowing girders and debris was tumbling down into the hellish pyre that resembled a bed of coals in a cooking fire, and that’s exactly what it was. What had been a rooftop sanctuary, only moments ago, had become transformed into an enormous skillet. They were being cooked alive.
For a few moments, she’d had hope. The monster had frozen, sank back to its paws, and began to exhibit normal behavior. It was almost as though the puppeteer’s cords had been snipped. The man behind the curtain was gone, and then, like a sick joke, he’d returned.
“I want to feel you inside of me,” the demon said, hooking a claw at its masticating mouthparts. Ropes of slobber oozed from the cutting plates, and swung like a glistening bower from its pebbled chin. Hunkering on its flabby haunches, it blew gently on the cooler spots until they blazed back to life.
It felt like her hair was moments away from combusting. She could feel the exposed skin on her cheeks beginning to blister. The demon could’ve added an armload of fuel right on top of them, sparing them the agony of slow roasting, but the monster seemed to know just how to fan the flames in order to bring her pain to a stinging threshold, and it knew just when to stop. It studied her suffering, as though appraising the upper limits of her agony in order to relish her torment for as long as it could possibly be extended. In the end, she knew that it was going to eat her alive.
Collin moaned and lolled his head. Blisters rose on his cracked lips. Skyler could only hope that his envelopment in a semiconscious state was by some measure insulating him from the most acute sensations. The dog clawed at the searing gravel with its forelegs, while baring its fangs at the superheated air. Mindless with pain, the poor animal was slave to its misfiring instincts.
Skyler crawled over to Collin’s side. Beetling over his chest, she tried to shield his flushed and battered face from the inferno. He’d suffered enough punishment already for one day. They’d tried. God knew they’d tried, until the final second of the final play on the clock, but their fight appeared to be over. Skyler couldn’t be sure if what she was doing was easing his pain much at all, but it was the best that she could do for a guy who’d done nothing to deserve such an awful death. His was a childlike soul, whose scientific passion and his love of animals had turned against him.
A double-buzz from Collin’s breast pocket vibrated against Skyler’s cheek. She raised her head enough to discern the rectangular shape of his phone. Clawing at the button’s snap, she jerked the device loose, and read the incoming text that blazed across Collin’s screen.
All of the air egressed her lungs in a single chuff. The message was from J.J. They were coming back. Without drawing the attention of the purring demon, Skyler stole a glimpse at the horizon through squinted eyes, and strained her ears for the drone of an engine. Seaward, in the same direction in which the Devil Ray had departed, she discerned the dark outline of an approaching aircraft, just beyond the billowing curtain of smoke.
“Please hang on,” she whispered into Collin’s ear. The rank stench of burning hair assaulted her nostrils. She couldn’t tell if it was hers or his. She noticed a thin crackling sound, so close that it was distracting. Unable to determine where it was coming from, she decided that it must be the edges of her ears. Flames lapped up the walls of the hospital. Trapped pockets of gas in the building materials released in the rising temperature, emitting sharp pops. It wouldn’t be long before the building collapsed.
“Being eaten,” the demon said, slavering at the mandibles, “it’s our oldest and deepest fear—being dragged into the night, far away from our families, where only the monster hears our cries as we’re pulled apart, as our flesh rips away from our bones, as we feel its lapping tongue swishing around in our guts … that’s what nightmares are made of. That’s why you’re afraid of the dark, and things that go bump in the night.”
The monster’s titanic voice seemed to divide in two. An accompaniment in higher octave resounded from somewhere distant, somewhere in the skies above. Skyler searched the clouds for what her ears insisted she was hearing, and she heard instead the thumping rotor blades of an approaching helicopter. Hopes plunging into the darkest pits she’d ever known, she acknowledged that in fact the seaward aircraft was not the Devil Ray. It was him.
“That’s why we’re all afraid of death, Skyler Hale, because some part of us remembers those days.” The demon’s tandem voices bellowed from the monster’s throat, as well as through a loudspeaker on the chopper. She could see that face leering down at her through the windshield. It was that nightmarish face she’d first glimpsed through an axed hole in her ship’s cabin door. “You still remember it, don’t you? Some part of you is still scared of being eaten alive by a monster, because you know there’s no worse way to die.”
The demon rose from its haunches. It stood upon its hind legs until its malformed head touched the clouds. Webs of slobber harped in the tornadic winds. The helicopter made an awkward descent, pitching and fishtailing, as though the maniac at its helm was barely capable as a pilot. Splaying its hooked claws, the looming demon reached out for her.
“Scream for us, Skyler!” As if to show her how it was done, the psychopath screamed into his microphone. His shrill screech pealed over the resonating bellow of the demo
n. The roar came with a blast of putrid air from the fathomless depths of its gullet. “I’m going to eat you, Skyler, and you’ll be a part of me forever and ever!”
Sadistic cackles accompanied the moist huffs of air that reeked of bloated death. The demon’s clawed hand cast a wicked shadow that slid across the rooftop, until that clutch of owlish talons was closing around her tiny body. It was as though her death at the hands of that man was something that was always predestined, and now, it was going to be even worse, having been delayed by two years of recovery. She’d pushed herself so hard in a single direction, only to have reached the dreaded curtain. Only now, she knew, without ever throwing the curtain back, what was in store for her behind it. For all of her work, her sacrifices, her struggle, she only mattered by the measure of her failures. Behind the curtain was nothing.
A squawk from the loudspeaker made her eyes flick open. The looming monster seemed to be off-balance, and appeared to be levitating skyward. Canting sideways, the water bear’s stumpy legs paddled helplessly at the air. Its rippling body lifted higher and higher, until it thrashed over the head of the Charybdis.
The helicopter spun like a slow top on a wimpling axis. Enraged screeches from the maniac blasted over the loudspeaker. He was losing control over both bodies, both worlds simultaneously, as separate streams of consciousness converged, and gushed over some psychological levee. Skyler grabbed Collin by his shoulders, and began dragging him out of the danger zone. That chopper was coming down.
While the whirling machine pirouetted from the sky, the mighty Charybdis turned back toward the city, still holding his rival overhead. Indigo blood spilled from the gaping crack in its carapace, where organs vacillated and throbbed. It lumbered purposefully toward the tallest skyscraper in Shanghai, a mirrored wonder of streaming neon, still gripping the squealing water bear by pinched wads of flesh. At the same instant the madman’s helicopter smashed down upon the rooftop, the Charybdis slammed the body of its mortal enemy over the structure’s needled point, impaling the demon upon on a neon stake.
The helicopter impact evoked a groan from the burning building. Structural elements detonated with reports like gunshots. Flames surged over the walls, trapping them inside an infernal enclosure. Still no sign of the Devil Ray.
A bare foot smashed through the downed chopper’s windshield. Another couple of kicks, and the pane of glass toppled. The pirate in the wire mask came crawling out.
There stood her worst nightmare. Clutching his innards against a new hole in his belly, he lurched forward. The mask of wires had sprung from their anchor point behind his head, and they wagged from his lips like steel whiskers. For what was perhaps the first time in the monster’s life, he appeared to be scared.
Gripping her cane, Skyler hitched a step forward to meet him, flanked by her growling dog. The animal seemed to sense the undiluted evil that emanating from the killer, and already, it had made up its mind. Hotspot launched from her side like a shaggy missile, teeth bared, and hurtled toward their common enemy.
The pirate cocked his head. He didn’t seem the least bit alarmed by the prospect of a mauling. In fact, he seemed quite interested, as if a dog was not an animal that he’d ever seen before. In the next instant, Hotspot skidded to a halt in the gravel, midway between Skyler and the psychopath.
“Well, well,” the pirate said, licking his slackened lips. “Well, well, well.” He strode up to the motionless animal, who appeared so rigid that he might’ve recently paid a visit to a taxidermist. The pirate bent to tousle the dog’s hair. He rose again, clapped the dirt off his hands, and pointed at Skyler. “Kill that bitch.”
As though reactivated from its torpid state, Hotspot spun, curled back its black lips, and emitted a terrible roar unnatural to any canine breed. The hate that filled its eyes belied an emotion that was neither animal nor human. It was something else. It was something straight from Hell. Backlit by the raging inferno, the animal charged.
“Nobody hacks my dog but me.”
Skyler heard Collin’s voice behind her, and in the next instant, she could hear no other sound but that of the screaming pirate. Hands pressed to the sides of his head, his ruined mouth gaped wide. As though his every physical sense was being simultaneously assaulted, he fell to the rooftop to writhe, howling in the gravel. Hotspot folded at the waist, mid-charge, and tumbled end over end in a lifeless heap.
***
Something was wrong, terribly wrong. The stream of consciousness between Mr. Krupin and the dog had quite suddenly and inexplicably reversed directions. Rather than imposing his own will on the animal, he’d become the unwilling recipient of a bombardment of obscure sensory data that flooded every corridor of his mind. Senseless imagery had somehow spirited him off the burning rooftop to another world, one ruled by a dancing man with a red pompadour of hair.
While Krupin floundered in the current of the back-flowing stream, the dancing man appeared to mock his predicament. Smiling seductively, the dancer twirled, whipping his wrists from side to side. Locations changed. Costumes changed. The dancing man swapped his black jacket for a khaki trench coat in a flash, without ever breaking eye contact with Mr. Krupin. The only aspect of continuity in this bizarre realm was the background music score. String pop synthesizer chords ramped up with an unseen section of champing brass, until the dancing man parted his lips, and began to sing.
“We’re no strangers to love. You know the rules, and so do I.”
“Who are you?” Krupin shouted, taking a wild swing at a man he knew he couldn’t touch, because this was all just some sort of an illusion. He hadn’t really been transported from the rooftop. He could still feel the heat of the flames, the sharp gravel beneath his bare feet, but he could not escape the cruel trappings of what appeared to be a dated music video from some bygone era.
“Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you. Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye …”
Krupin felt the brunt of a realization that he’d just been outwitted, imprisoned in the dungeon of his own mind, where there was no chance of escape. This was the end of the road for him, bottled forever like a bug in a dirty jar. Mr. Krupin raked his nails down his face, threw back his head, and screamed.
***
The last time she’d faced him, and had managed to escape with her life, Skyler made herself a little promise. The prospect of ever being so powerless again, at the mercy of a looming madman with her life dangling by a thread, well, it was not a situation that Skyler would ever permit herself to suffer again. Not if she could help it, anyway. She valued her life too much to leave everything up to chance, and to allow herself to be defenseless ever again.
She hitched forward on her cane, hair snaking in the infernal winds. As she gazed down upon his twisted form, she almost felt pity for the pirate, who appeared to have been damned to some neurological hell. She knew all too well how it felt to be crippled, powerless before the executioner, but she couldn’t afford to take any chances. Not with this one. Skyler twisted the crook of her cane a quarter-turn, and withdrew the gleaming blade that was sheathed inside of the titanium shaft. She never went anywhere without it.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, wincing in the fiery reflections that flashed off her saber’s edge. She placed the point of her weapon over the demon’s corrupted heart, and she pushed until the blade struck gravel.
A massive shadow spilled over the rooftop. Even the raging flames were tamped by an accompanying change in pressure, indicative of some massive presence. Skyler withdrew her saber from the slain demon’s chest, but she dared not gaze up into the face of her destroyer. If this was to be her end, she preferred not to know what breed of alien abomination had come to collect the meager balance of her life. She jolted when the snarl of para-cord flopped down over her head.
“Strap into the harness and hang on tight! That building’s about to come down.”
The sound of J.J.’s voice blaring over the Devil Ray’s l
oudspeaker brought her to tears. Skyler squinted up at the rotating slab of black steel, and heard a small laugh escape her throat. She smeared at the salty streams that burned her seared cheeks, and gave a nod of affirmation to the dark angel in the sky.
Chapter Seventeen
Collin opened his eyes, and blinked in the thin morning light. A draft of conditioned air wafted up through vertical blinds that shivered before the single window. A drab bird lit briefly on the sill, cocked its head, and then burst back off into the sunlight. Beyond, ranks of mirrored skyscrapers loomed. Frowning, he glanced around his cramped quarters. The room was devoid of décor. Its only furnishing was a lonely chair situated in a corner. If it weren’t for the steel rails on the sides of his bed, and the needle taped into the bend of his arm, he might’ve been more confused. Sharp footsteps resonated down a hallway, where he heard voices chattering in a foreign tongue.
It occurred to him that his face and ears stung. His skin felt tight, as though it had shrunk two sizes while he slept. He lifted a hand, and dabbed his fingertips against cheeks and cracked lips. The moment Skyler walked into his room, looking a little flushed in the face, but beautiful as ever, it all came rushing back to him.
“Hey,” Skyler said, sliding in for a quick hug, “I heard you were starting to come around, but I had to see it for myself. It’s kind of hard getting straight answers around here when you don’t speak Japanese.”
“We’re in Japan?”
“Nagasaki. This was the closest friendly hospital to Shanghai.”