by Sean Platt
“Let’s climb the shelves!” he yelled, pointing up. “I don’t think they can climb!”
“Better idea!” Lisa shouted. “There’s a ladder around the corner, leading to the roof!”
Ed gave her a thumbs-up, and they raced toward the back of the store, climbing the ladder as the sound of destruction echoed from the store and into the stockroom.
Rojas went up the ladder first, pushing the hatch open, then peeking out to make sure no aliens were on the roof.
“All clear!” Rojas shouted from above.
They followed him onto the roof one at a time, with Billy going second, Lisa third, and Brent next. As Brent began to climb, two aliens made their way in through one of the other doors in the rear of the store. He raced up the ladder behind Brent, his face practically in Brent’s ass.
Ed heard shrieking beneath him, but didn’t dare look down. He hoped to be up and out of their line of sight before the aliens could see where they’d gone. He’d hate to find out this way that they could climb. If the aliens got onto the roof, it was only a matter of time before Ed and the group were overrun, even if they were able to pick the fuckers off one by one as they crawled through the hatch.
Once Brent was standing up top, he reached down and pulled Ed the rest of the way. Then they quietly closed the hatch.
Ed stood on the gravel, and let out a gasp, “Holy shit!”
Ed leaned over, sucking wind, his legs in pain from being forced into action after three days of inertia. He caught his breath while staring at the hatch, hoping like hell it wouldn’t pop open.
“Oh my God!” Brent said, looking out at the parking lot.
Ed stood, went to where Brent was standing, then stared out at the sea of creatures. The lot was packed with more aliens than Ed had seen during his entire time patrolling New York.
He saw hundreds. Maybe a thousand.
All of them waiting for something.
Six
Boricio Wolfe
Mary’s little lamb took 10 minutes to start batting her eyes. She was probably getting the man-kid’s kibbles ‘n’ bits to do a little batting, too. Weird how Boricio didn’t see the aging happen, it just was, like when you look down and see the blood but wonder when in the fuck you were cut. He looked over at Luca, poor fucker looked older than he did, maybe over 40 and not even half as handsome.
Boricio wondered if maybe he should just get the flying fuck-all out of Dodge while the gettin’ was good. It wasn’t like he’d never been the only one howling at the moon before. Maybe he’d find out where those fuckers Charlie and Adam got off to.
Mary’s little lamb may have been able to bat her eyes in 10 minutes, but she took a year and a goddamned half to open her mouth, and when she did, it was to give the man-kid a bullshit “thank you.”
Luca petted the side of her cheek and said, “I need you to help me.”
Her response wasn’t much more than a whisper. “What do you need?”
Luca smiled, fucker looked like he was half crying, then said, “I want to save your mom.”
A tear fell from the lamb’s cheek, and she said, “Thank you, Luca,” her voice about cracked in half, like she was choking on a chicken bone before she managed to squeak another. “Thanks so much.”
“But,” Luca got ready to thicken the plot. Boricio smiled. “I can’t save Desmond.”
The girl’s eyes went glassy. “I just can’t.” Luca shook his head. “I love Rebecca. I have to save her.”
“Why can’t you save them both?”
“I’ll be too old. I can only save three people. You, your mom, and Rebecca.”
He looked down.
Paola said, “Oh,” as though she just realized how old Luca really looked, even older than he did before the monsters stopped her breathing. Shouldn't have been too hard to see, since Luca’s hair had a bunch of salt where there’d only been pepper before.
“Mary’s going to be mad at me,” he said, eyes getting watery as a bucket. “And I need you to help me make her not mad.”
Boricio was getting bored of the live action Disney Channel movie scene. Mary’s little lamb finally said, “Okay.”
After a pause, Little Lamb added, “Are you sure? About Desmond?”
Boricio said, “And circle gets the fucking square!”
The man-kid didn’t even look, like Boricio wasn’t talking at all.
Boricio paced in a circle, waiting for their scene to finish while wondering what sort of shit Luca had actually “fixed” inside him. Shit seemed broken, like the wrong feelings were assigned to the wrong shit. Like he knew what he wanted to fucking order but the goddamned waitress kept screwing the pooch with the wrong dishes in each of her hands. You could kill a waitress for not getting shit right, but what were you supposed to do when the shit that was wrong was coming from inside you?
Boricio still felt a driving need to follow his favorite set of Darwinian directives — fuck and kill — but the passion almost seemed gone. He still thought tearing the head from a fucker’s neck, then using it to knock down enough pins to celebrate a strike, would be funny, but for the first time since Tom taught him how to make everything black, he felt bad for having the feeling. Maybe not bad, exactly. But almost like he felt bad for not feeling bad. That meant shit was broken, not fixed.
Fuck!
Boricio wasn’t the sitcom dad on some laugh factory fuck-all. He needed his instincts, had to know he could do what needed to be done without some mystic shit slapping the pause button and making him hesitate.
Luca and his little lamb were trading mumbles until Paola finally stopped sobbing long enough to say, “Okay, Luca. I understand.”
Boricio walked up to Luca, put a hand on his arm, pulled him to his feet, then led him out of the basement, into the courtyard to a car that had died, along with the driver’s hope, a hundred or so feet from the front gate.
Boricio turned him to the window and his reflection against the dying orange flames behind them. “See yourself?”
Luca nodded.
“You probably look older than your old man, am I right?”
Luca swallowed, then slowly nodded.
“Think about it, man. Do you really want to be any older than that? One more time with you raining sunlight, or whatever the fuck it is you do, and you’re gonna be old enough to cash all the Social Security checks you ain’t never gonna get. One after that, and you’re a bad cough from lining a coffin ain’t no one gonna lay you in. If you’re gonna save the girl no matter what, and I can see by staring at that too-stupid-to-know-what-the-fuck-you’re-doing face of yours that you’re going to, then fine, save your girl, and let’s get the fuck outta’ here. But do not save Mary.”
Luca shook his head. “I can’t do that, Mr. Boricio. I have to save Rebecca, and Mary.”
Boricio shook his head, though he wanted to shake Luca, at least long enough to rattle a lick of sense to the center of his insides. Not enough beatings in his life had clearly turned the Tiny Tim half stupid.
“Listen, man, I’m serious.” Boricio held his hands in the air. “No ulterior motives. Honest Injun and all that shit.” He made the peace sign. “I think you should put yourself first for a second. It isn’t like you’re going around chopping fuckers up. They’re already dead. You’re not making them any deader than they’d be without you.”
“Sorry, Mr. Boricio,” Luca said again, still shaking his head, like he didn’t know how to do anything else. He turned from the car, went to Mary’s body, then knelt on the ground beside her. Luca ran his hands along Mary’s face, then over her hair as he stared at her. After what seemed like a surprisingly long time, Luca finally closed his eyes and started rocking slowly back and forth.
Probably in the woman’s head. Like he was in mine. And now I’m fucking broken. Boricio don’t like to be broken.
Her eyes fluttered, and her lip twitched. Then her right hand spasmed, followed almost immediately by her left. She started to murmur.
Luca stood
up, his head down, and walked toward the stairs leading down to the basement, his head in his hands. Boricio couldn’t see his face, but he looked to be crying. Boricio looked away from Luca and back to Mary and Paola, who were hugging one another.
“Oh my God,” Mary cried. “Is everything okay?” She lifted her head and looked around. “What happened?”
She was pinching her eyes as though that made remembering shit faster.
Paola said, “We’re going to be okay. Luca saved us!”
Mary turned to Luca, who was still turned away from the group. “Thank you,” she said. She swallowed, then said, “You’ve helped us more times than I can count.”
Luca nodded, though he was turned away from them still.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Luca nodded. “Yeah, I guess,” he said, turning to them.
Mary and Paola both gasped. Boricio stared in disbelief. Luca had aged a hell of a lot more than he should have. The pepper was all gone. Luca’s whiskers were pure white, everywhere on his face, and long. His hair wasn’t quite as white, more of a dirty-silver gray, hanging slightly past the tips of his shoulders, and spilling toward his chest along both the front and back.
He looked close to 90.
“What?” Luca asked, his voice creaking.
Boricio went over to Luca and helped him up the steps and back to the car to see his reflection.
Luca’s eyes widened in disbelief.
Boricio stayed silent, letting Luca go toe-to-toe with the truth. Finally, Luca couldn’t take it anymore. His bottom lip started to tremble, and both of his eyelids started to twitch. His shoulders rose, then fell, then rose higher. For a second, the old kid looked as if he would manage to gather his strength and force the moment to pass. But he didn’t, or couldn’t, and collapsed into tears instead.
It was a heaving heap of horrible shit, watching the man-kid cry. Part of Boricio wanted to slap the crying right out of him, maybe even kill him to shut him the fuck up. But those impulses were faded, barely there, and far from doing a titty dance like they’d done for Boricio's entire goddamned life.
It was the weirdest fucking thing in the world, but Boricio couldn’t deny it — he was tuned into the pain. Like when some asshole’s stomach growls and you feel hungry, or how when a bitch yawns in line it would make you yawn, too.
That’s what Boricio felt as he stared at the old man in front of him crying, staring at the mirror like it showed anything more than a Santa without any toys.
Boricio had to take a step back and look away.
No, he shook his head. This can’t be happening.
He was actually feeling sympathy for the child turned old man. Feeling pain for what Luca was going through, and how he’d selflessly sacrificed his youth to save the others. He’d always been able to recognize emotions, sure as the smell of shit on a toddler. But this was the first time he’d ever felt a response to anyone’s pain.
As Boricio fought the tears welling up in his eyes, he cursed Luca for “fixing” him.
Seven
Will Bishop
This wasn’t an ordinary dream, Will realized as he drifted above the balcony, floating like a disembodied ghost, watching Mary and John in discussion below.
Mary was frantically yelling at John, telling him something was wrong. Brother Rei was planning something big. But John didn’t seem too concerned.
This is how the end began.
Though Will hadn’t been there, he’d seen enough in his visions to know that this was the spark that lit the fuse that ended in the wholesale destruction of nearly everyone at The Sanctuary.
Will watched as Brother Rei stepped forward from the house and onto the balcony, put the gun to John’s head, and fired. The shot was thunder, cracking the night into two ugly halves. John remained standing, half his face missing, before his body finally fell to the ground.
Mary screamed before being rushed from the balcony and into the house by Rei’s men as the courtyard below erupted in chaos.
Will tried to follow them inside, but his body didn’t move. He was meant to stay — to see something else. He floated in the moment’s confusion, looking around as people ran below, screaming.
What am I supposed to be seeing?
Then he saw it — the dark shape flowing from John’s corpse. The darkness, the thing he’d been seeing in his dreams ever since the day his Air Force unit had found the thing they shouldn’t have found.
The darkness oozed from John’s body, rising like twisting vines of liquid smoke as it floated into the house. Will followed, also floating, watching as the darkness flowed above one of the Brothers, who took a shot but did no damage, then entered the mouth of the man standing outside a doorway, its entire mass flowing through the man’s throat until it vanished entirely into him.
The man then turned, opened the door, entered the bedroom, and looked down at The Prophet, lying in his bed. The man’s mouth opened. The darkness slipped out and then into The Prophet, taking command of his brain, along with his breath.
Will woke with a start, lying in the back seat of the car alone, cold and shaking. The orange glow from the burning buildings bled through the snow-covered windows in spattered speckles and dancing dots, painting the car’s interior with a lightly smeared tangerine hue. He looked down to see that his wound had grown worse, blood now staining the entire front of his shirt in soaking-wet crimson.
A gallon of blood must have fled his body. The pain in his gut had receded to a dull ache, and he could feel the Grim Reaper creeping as sure as he’d felt him in the hospital room a decade back when he came to claim Sam.
No loopholes.
And fuck you, Reaper.
A shadow draped the car as someone approached from the front.
Will had hoped to die before Luca’s return. Will couldn’t stand to see him as a man older than himself. Nor could he stand to see the boy come to the realization that Will had lied, and would indeed die. That would shatter what was left of Will’s heart.
But the shadow carried only one body behind it.
The Prophet. The darkness. It has returned.
I have to warn them.
Will swallowed the phlegm in his throat as the shadow drew closer, then he leaned over and into the front seat, desperately trying to reach the horn on the steering wheel.
The seat bit into his gut, and the dull pain turned as sharp and sudden as the flat of a cold blade.
Will screamed, then fell back against his seat, unable to reach the horn. The pain was overpowering. He struggled to gain enough strength to try a second time as the figure outside the car drew closer and its shadow grew large on the windshield.
The footsteps outside were a few feet away.
Oh God.
Will leaned forward again, and the pain stabbed harder into him.
The shadow grew smaller as the person on the other side approached the door. Shadow met form on the other side of the window, as a figure reached for the door handle.
Will cried out, bracing for a violent end. He hoped that the darkness wouldn’t go into his body next.
Oh God, it could enter me, and use me to get to Luca.
No, no, no.
The shadow on the other end tugged at the door.
Will reached for the lock, though he’d only be able to reach the door closest to him. If another door was unlocked, the darkness would enter.
Must reach the lock.
Will’s fingers were centimeters from the lock when his door swung open. He was too late.
It wasn’t The Prophet, or the dark thing, or anyone he expected to see on the other side. It was Luca, as a child.
“What?”
Will blinked his eyes. He must be dreaming, or already dead.
Luca was 8 again, looking almost exactly as he had when Will first met him, and how he had appeared to Will for years in his dreams, except he was wearing pajamas.
“Daddy?” Luca said.
Daddy?
“No,
it’s Will.”
Luca nodded, as if he knew he wasn’t his dad all along, then looked down at Will’s wound. “You can see me?”
“Yes,” Will said, wincing as a sharp pain stabbed him fresh in the gut.
“Oh God,” Luca said, “What happened?”
“One of the monsters got me,” Will said. “How are you young again?”
“I’m not your Luca,” he said, looking around. “I tried to talk to him, but he can’t see or hear me. Then I keep going back.”
“What are you talking about?” Will asked, every word an effort to cling to consciousness.
“You and Luca aren’t from here. You were . . . brought over here. This isn’t your world.”
“What are you talking about?” Will said, confused.
“You have to find the other Will. You have to go to Black Island. It’s in New York. Tell them that Luca sent you. They will let you in.”
“What are you talking about?” Will asked again.
“Find the other Will and tell him I said to look in the moon. I think he can bring you home.”
“The moon?”
Luca was about to say something when an anguished scream tore through the dream, vision, or whatever it was, and shoved Will back into the harsh reality of the burned-out compound.
Though his voice was different, the scream belonged to the same soul he’d been connected to, deeper than anyone since Sam: Luca.
Eight
Edward Keenan
Ed blinked a half dozen times, but he still didn’t believe his eyes, even though the acrid scent of the monsters’ sweat, or whatever it was, should have made it easier.
Ed stared over the edge of the roof, shaking his head at the sea of aliens below. With his nerves frayed and attention divided, Ed was half tuned to the hatch that might pop open at any moment, while the other half was focused on the certain death below.
The aliens didn’t necessarily look like they were making a formation to attack, but they did look like they were waiting for something. They were milling about the entrance, with some of them heading into the store, but they weren’t charging inside like Rojas said they had been earlier. They seemed almost orderly, as though waiting their turns.