Vultures

by Chuck Wendig

  The baby on the screen floats in the void. When it—oops, she—turns, Miriam can feel that movement inside her.

  It’s disconcerting, and she says so.

  “You will grow comfortable with it,” the doctor says. “The brain releases chemicals that help you respond pleasantly to the sensation.”

  A parasite has hijacked my body and has tricked it into liking it.

  To her credit, Miriam does not say this out loud.

  Though she still thinks this, and she reminds herself right now that it’s probably high time to stop thinking of the baby as a parasite. It’s just too weird. A tinier human has taken up residence inside her, the larger human. And it (she!) grew there from the size of a raspberry seed, swelling and swelling, and already now it’s (she’s!) got a fluttering heart and wiggling fingers and kicking feet (only two of them, but it honestly feels like a whole karate tournament in there). The baby is the size of a banana. One day, it will be the size of a cantaloupe, and then it will kung-fu kick its (her her her) way out of Miriam’s vagina, probably—tearing the tract of skin leading up to her butthole along the way, because as it turns out, passing a cantaloupe through your vagina is naturally unnatural.

  Oh! And maybe, just maybe, she’ll shit herself.

  Shahini explained that on their first visit to her. That, along with every other bit of body horror that will slowly unfold. All the heartburn and cramping, the bladder weakness and the hiccups and how the baby is in there gulping down amniotic fluid—which the child will then eventually poop out in some kind of rotten-seaweed, road-tar spread. Miriam’s supposed to want this. She’s supposed to love it.

  And she’s supposed to save it.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  The Deluge

  Miriam cries forever. That’s how it feels, anyway. She sobs on the way home. She weeps in the condo. She cries on the balcony of the condo. She spills tears in the bathroom because she has to pee, again, always again, always with the peeing. Crying while peeing, dehydrating her double-time.

  Gabby, to her credit, lets it go. She doesn’t push. Doesn’t try to stop it or dam up the flow. She either knows that it needs to happen or she’s figured out she can’t cork that bottle.

  Either way, she stays near.

  Anxiety tears at Miriam like a starving animal. It feels like she’s standing in a dark tunnel. A train is coming—one that is traveling far faster than she can run. Except here’s the Shyamalan twist: it’s not one train but two—even if she could outrun it, another one is rushing toward her from the other direction, and the two trains will crash, a sandwich of screaming metal. She, and her baby, and Gabby, are the meat. Somewhere, maybe there’s a doorway hidden in the dark, an exit. Or maybe a lever she can pull to switch tracks and send one train screaming past the other. But she can’t find them. She doesn’t know where they are. She’s lost. She’s bleeding time.

  You’re the Riverbreaker. You can change the course of the river.

  But it’s not a river, she tells herself. In this metaphor, it’s a pair of fucking trains on the train track; keep up, you daffy bitch.

  So, break the trains.

  Shear the tracks.

  Be so big, so fucking impossible, that even two screaming banshees of iron and steel cannot touch you even as they collide.

  Change fate.

  That’s it.

  Miriam blows her nose, throws open the door. She nearly runs into Gabby, who was clearly waiting by said door.

  “You okay?” Gabby asks.

  “Better than okay. I have a plan.” She frowns. “Okay, I have no plan, but I’m starting to think there needs to be a plan. But first I need food. I need protein and carbs and fat and sugar. I need an In-N-Out burger. If I can’t have a cigarette, if I can’t have a jug of liquor, then I need that.”

  “I’ll get the car.”

  “And we will dine like queens. Thrifty, meat-loving queens.”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  THRIFTY, MEAT-LOVING QUEENS

  They hit the In-N-Out on Sunset and Orange, across from the IHOP and near those storage units with all the cartoon faces graffitied all over them. It’s the middle of the day, and on the corner there’s a black drag queen yelling at a little old Vietnamese guy—just knock-down, drag-out screaming, their fists in the air, everybody frothing.

  Miriam loves this city.

  They sit outside at one of the two-tops.

  With a mouthful of burger-meat, Miriam says, “I’ve been playing defense. I’m tired of playing defense. It’s time to play offense.” She narrows her gaze and pauses chewing. “That’s a sports thing, right?”

  “Sports and war,” Gabby says with a shrug. Gabby, too, eats the burger with great vigor, which only makes Miriam more enamored.

  “Like, I’m just sitting here, waiting for something to happen. I go into the trailer, I meet with Guerrero, we go out, I shake hands, I see how these vapid little fuckboys are going to die, and I’m no closer to finding the Starfucker. Which means I’m no closer to Guerrero giving me the name of that medium, which means I’m no closer to getting in touch with the Trespasser and saving your life, my life, and hopefully, the baby’s life.” That last part, she knows, is a little wifty. The Trespasser may not know anything that can help her, but, her intrusive demon also told her, point-blank, that it would try to stop that child from being born. So maybe, just maybe, killing the Trespasser will save their future.

  “How are you going to go after the Starfucker?”

  “I’m not,” she says, swallowing an unctuous wad of delicious grease, cheese, and cow. “Fuck the Starfucker. I don’t care. He’s killing actors in Los Angeles—cutting off faces, emptying their guts, it’s gross, it’s twisted, and it’s not my problem. I’m not here to save the world, and it’s not like these dudes are sad kittens or lost puppies. Half of them are venal, trustafarian idiots. The other half will become that way. Who cares?”

  “But that’s what you need to do to get the name from Guerrero.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe I just steal the name.”

  Gabby pauses in eating. She looks worried. “What does that mean?”

  “He’s got to have the name somewhere. He said he had a . . . a whaddyacallit, a spreadsheet. It has to be on his work computer, right?”

  “Miriam, I don’t know. You know that the Starfucker is going to try to kill that Bowman guy in two months. That’s not a long time. Instead, just bide your time. Wait for the opportunity. Be patient and we’ll get there.”

  “I’ve been patient. I don’t do patient. Being patient has just left me frustrated, with time bleeding out on the floor like a throat-slit dog.”

  “You know I’m eating, right?”

  Miriam shrugs. “Sorry. I’m just saying I want to handle this. I want to go after it. Fuck Guerrero if he thinks he can dangle this over me.”

  “This is dangerous. He can take all of what we have away. He can throw you in jail!”

  “Ah, but only if he finds out. I don’t intend to tell him. Do you?”

  “You’ll steal the name and keep playing along? Miriam, you didn’t even know how to call a Lyft. How are you going to crack his computer?”

  “Uhhh. Answer unclear, ask again later? I’ll figure it out. I need that name.” She wipes a smear of ketchup and mustard from her mouth. “Are you with me?”

  But Gabby isn’t with her.

  She can see it in Gabby’s eyes—hesitation flashing like light on the blade of a knife. Gabby hesitates. Looks away. Miriam follows her gaze and sees that on the corner, the drag queen and the little Asian guy are now hugging and swaying back and forth like late night bar-drunks lost to the rapture of Journey on the jukebox. Finally, Gabby groans and says, “I don’t know. This sounds risky as hell.”

  “I need you with me on this. We can do this. Tell me you have my back if I need it.”

  “You don’t need me. You . . . do what you want, when you want.” Gabby pushes her burger aside.

  “And I’m tired of doing that. You say
you’re with me? Well, reverse it. I’m with you. You tell me not to do it, then I won’t do it. I’m done with running off, half-cocked, doing the thing without asking anyone else. I’m asking you. I’m begging you for your permission.”

  A narrowed gaze meets her. “What if I don’t give it?”

  “Then I . . . throw a tantrum?”

  “Miriam.”

  “Then I don’t do it. End of story.”

  And here’s the thing—

  It’s true. Miriam is floored by that internal revelation. Because, truth be told, she’s the type to make this kind of promise and immediately break it. She won’t be saddled, bridled, led around the yard like a show pony. She’s Miriam Black. Fate’s Foe, Riverbreaker, Kicker of the Grim Reaper’s Skeletal Testes. She doesn’t just not do the insane shit she proposes she do. That would be, well—

  That would be very un-Miriam.

  And yet she says it.

  And she means it.

  Two things that for her are usually very different.

  That’s when she realizes Gabby’s going to tell her no. She’s going to say to play it safe, play it easy, and that’ll be that. But maybe, Miriam tells herself, that’s the right call. It’s not like running off half-cocked has really been the good decision, mmm, ever. She’s a cat chasing a laser pointer into the mouth of a woodchipper, every time, right? Wouldn’t it be smart to do the opposite for once? Just once? Gabby’s going to tell her no, and that would be for the best, really, it would be the smartest decis—

  “Let’s do it,” Gabby says, a wicked grin forming on her face.

  “For real?”

  “For real.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “You should really come up with a plan.”

  Miriam agrees: “I should really come up with a motherfucking plan. One more burger, though. You know. For brain energy. And I’m eating for two now, I hear.”

  FORTY-NINE

  THE MOTHERFUCKING PLAN IS…

  “What?” Steve Wiebe asks.

  He’s at the condo pool again. Not in the pool this time, but rather, on a patio chair, sprawled out with a Laura Lippman paperback tented on his chest. He does that quintessential 1980s move where he dips his white-rim sunglasses down over his nose so he can stare out over the top. Miriam casts her shadow upon him, blocking the midday sun.

  “Yeah, I’m not getting it either,” Gabby says, arms crossed. “And I’d like to get it real soon, because otherwise, I’m gonna be late for work.”

  “Steve,” Miriam begins, “knows shit about shit. He can help us hack into Guerrero’s computer.”

  Steve stares. “I can?”

  “You can.”

  “I . . . don’t think I can.”

  “But you said all the fancy words. In our first cab ride, you talked about cryptocurrency and eight-bit-coins—”

  “Bitcoins. And it was a Lyft, not a cab.” Under his breath he says, “We’ve been over this like six times.”

  “Whatever. I’m just saying, that stuff you said, that’s hacker shit.”

  “It’s not hacker shit, it’s just . . . millennial internet shit.”

  “But you know hackers.”

  “I . . . don’t think I do? I mean, I might, but they don’t advertise it.”

  Miriam is growing frustrated. “You drive all these people around, and you don’t know a single hacker who can help me hack a computer.”

  “Again, maybe; people are chatty. But I don’t have their private information. I can’t . . . just find them and say, I need you to hack the FBI for me, cool hacker guy.”

  “And you’re sure you’re not a hacker.”

  Steve’s mouth purses into a dubious pucker. “Do I look like a hacker? I don’t see a black hoodie and a sickly pallor. I’m colorful. I’m at the pool.”

  Miriam growls and petulantly steps aside, letting the sun’s angry rays punch him right in the eyes. Steve swats at the light as if it’s a swarm of biting flies before pushing his sunglasses back up into his face.

  But the rage doesn’t last long. Strange, in a way, because for Miriam, rage is a kind of fuel, long-burning like an underground coal fire. Her rage has sustained her. Suddenly, though, as fast as it arrived, it’s gone again. And in its wake is a special kind of despair. She can feel those two trains bearing down on her and all that she loves.

  She doesn’t bother kicking off her boots when she sits down at the edge of the pool and dunks both feet into the water.

  Gabby comes up on one side. Steve on the other.

  “It’ll be all right; we’ll figure something out,” Gabby says.

  But we won’t.

  I won’t.

  You won’t.

  Steve says, “Besides, I’m not sure hacking the FBI is . . . advisable? They have to have pretty intense security. That building looks like an uncrackable rock. Cameras everywhere, a secure network—”

  “I don’t work in that building,” she says, bleakly.

  “Where do you work?”

  “In a trailer. In a parking lot. Across the street.”

  Steve half-snorts a laugh. “Wait, what? You work in a trailer?”

  “We’re kinda off the books.”

  “Is the computer you want to access right there in the trailer?”

  She shrugs. “Yeah.”

  “Can’t you just . . . access it when he’s off taking a whiz?”

  “I don’t know that Guerrero does piss. And the only time Julie leaves the trailer is to, I dunno, change her fucking robot batteries.”

  “Is that it? You work with two other people? Gimme all the deets.”

  So, she does. She tells Steve and Gabby the ins and outs of her days: most of the time, they’re off-site, on sets, shaking the hands of actors and witnessing the unfolding array of overdoses and car crashes that end their precious, preening lives. All in search of the elusive Starfucker. When they’re in the trailer, it’s the three of them. It’s Guerrero, so tense that she can see his heartbeat pulsing in his jaw, looking through papers, or on his phone, or on his laptop. It’s Julie, who floats in and out between the trailer and the big building, apparently working cases that don’t intersect with this one, at least as far as Miriam can tell.

  “Does he lock the computer when he walks away from it?”

  “Like with a fucking padlock?”

  “No, I mean—does he close the laptop, does it go back to a black screen? Do you need to re-enter a password to get back into it?”

  She tries to think back. “Shit, I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  A shadow passes over Steve’s face. “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, no what?”

  “Oh, no.”

  Gabby and Miriam share a quizzical look.

  “What’s your prob, dude?” Miriam asks.

  “I have an idea.” But the way he says it, it’s like the idea is pure ash in his mouth. Like he’s somehow simultaneously sad about the world and disappointed in himself. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I can help you.”

  “Seriously?”

  “I’m going to regret this.”

  “Probably,” Miriam says. “But you have a plan?”

  “I think I have a plan.”

  “Is it a motherfucking plan?”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t know what that means.”

  Miriam slaps her hands together. The despair she felt is suddenly golden, glowing with the renewed flames of hope and chaos. “Sounds like we got ourselves a brand new motherfucking plan. We’re gonna do this.”

  “Ugh.”

  FIFTY

  RED WREN

  It’s late. Or it’s early. Miriam’s awake, standing in their little galley kitchen, drinking a glass of milk. It seems to help the heartburn, which presently feels like someone ran her throat over a citrus zester. It’s so bad, her trachea flutters, like a spasming snake.

  So, there she stands, drinking milk in the dark.

  Fear pushes through her like fingers in dirt. Grabbing wh
ole clumps of her, roots and stones and earth, and flinging it into the void. And every time a part of her is ripped away, more fear slithers into that wound.

  Tomorrow is the big day. The Motherfucking Plan, Part Two. And it could go very poorly. If she gets caught, that’s it. It’s game over for them.

  Someone steps into the kitchen with her. A familiar shape.

  “Hey, Gabs,” she does not say so much as she croaks.

  “Miriam,” says Wren.

  A sliver of half-light from the microwave confirms it:

  It is Wren. Still looking like Miriam. White T-shirt, knife-slashed jeans, big black boots. Her hair is dyed red like Louis’s blood, and the bangs are ratty and uneven. Miriam moves fast, her hand darting out like an eel to seize its prey—and in an instant, she’s got a chef’s knife in her hand, the angular blade slashing the air: less a threat, more a promise.

  “I told you,” Miriam seethes, “that if I ever saw you again, I’d kill you. You little fucker.”

  Then Wren laughs. It is a wretched sound: wet and splashing, like it’s gabbling up through the water and mud of an old, algae-slick pond. Miriam can see black water pushing through the girl’s mouth, forcing over her lips like high tide over a rotten boardwalk. It spatters on the linoleum.

  It’s not Gabby.

  And it’s not Wren, either.

  “You,” Miriam says to the Trespasser.

  It has been some time since she’s seen the demon. Not since that night nearly two months ago, when Gabby spoke with its voice here in their bedroom. Miriam still holds the knife, now as less of a threat and more of an accusing finger. She knows she cannot kill this thing. Not here.

  Not yet.

  “Haven’t caught the Starfucker yet,” Not-Wren hisses. “Tsk-tsk. Those pretty boys, dying with their faces sliced like fancy ham.”

  The Trespasser takes a step into the kitchen. Toward the knife.

  “That what you want from me? To solve that case? Catch yet another killer? Too bad, fuckhead. I’ve already given up. I don’t care about it.”

  Wren laughs, shaking her head. “No, no, no, you just think you’ve given up. Like so many times before. You don’t see it, do you? I don’t make you do these things. You do them because you’re you. I’m the gun. You’re the one that points me and pulls the trigger. You can’t help doing what needs to be done, because I chose you well.”