Splinters

by Matt Carter

  “Trust me,” said the one with the scythe, which seemed to me a very odd thing for one Splinter to say to another. They had to be really fine-tuned. “Everything’s right on track.”

  “How long are you going to keep saying that?”

  “Until it’s time to start saying ‘I told you so’ instead.”

  The non-scythe arm stretched a few feet out of the sleeve of the hoodie toward the one in the blanket, but it backed away.

  “Why are you even here?” asked the scythe Splinter.

  “Better here than walking up to you in broad daylight to tell you that she’s got every chance, every possible form of access—”

  “Give it time. In a couple days, we’ll get to take our biggest liability and make it our best tool.”

  “Two biggest liabilities,” the blanket Splinter corrected. “And I told you, she’s too young. You’re not going to be able to control her that easily.”

  Ben gave me an awkward sideways glance, and I knew he was guessing at the subject of the conversation along the same lines I was.

  “A couple of days,” the scythe Splinter repeated. “A couple of days, and she’ll do exactly what she’s told.”

  It should have frightened me. If they were talking about me, I had some rough days ahead. Nothing any Splinter could do to me would ever make me cooperate; of course that didn’t mean I wanted to see them really try.

  But all I felt was a rush of hope. If I was counted as one of the Splinters’ two biggest liabilities, if I actually had them worried, it meant there was a real chance, however small, that I could actually stop them.

  Then again, it was more likely that they were talking about some other “she,” and I had nothing to do with it at all.

  That was the only thing that was able to draw my attention away from trying to catch a few more words to make sure: a shout from closer to the fire that definitely was about me.

  “ . . . What if it had been someone who knows what to look for? Diana, or that revenge-happy bastard kid of hers with all the ‘theories?’ ”

  The breakfast food squabble had escalated. Jess, from the theatrical society, was talking to a man with graying hair the way people talk to hyperactive toddlers. Jess usually reminded me a bit of a hyperactive toddler herself—she was one of the society’s younger members, just thirteen—but this evening she had her body elongated to be even more unnaturally tall than Jess was supposed to be. She had stopped shifting her weight back and forth and playing endlessly with her hair, and she was speaking with a calm firmness that would have made my mother proud. With hardly a signal between us, Ben and I inched closer to listen.

  “That kid wouldn’t think twice about it!” the man protested. “Lots of people wouldn’t! It’s not that strange! They do it all the time!”

  “Not like that, they don’t.”

  “I enjoy it. That’s normal. They all think so.”

  “That’s different. You know that. They were born enjoying things. You can’t expect to be able to handle it the way they can.”

  He grabbed her hand, forcing me to swallow a fresh wave of bile, but Jess just looked annoyed and pulled away.

  “At least talk like a human when you’re telling me you can act like one.”

  “I’ve been out here for four hundred years!” the Splinter man tried for indignation, but there was a hint of petulance around the edges. “And I know what he knew after forty-seven more!”

  “Talk to me when you’ve been out for four thousand.” Still so poised, Jess drew herself up a little taller. “But you’re right. You’ve had a good share of practice. Enough that I honestly thought you’d be better at it by now.”

  The Splinter man tried to do the same, but ended up a much less graceful, more lopsided pillar. “Four hundred years, and I made one little mistake that no one even noticed! It’s not a problem!”

  “One problem would be too many,” said Jess. “We’re counting on you. I said we should have used someone more experienced, but no, Sam vouched for you, and far be it from me to argue with what Sam wants. I knew I should have volunteered myself.” She looked down at the distortion of Jess’s body like it was a Christmas present she’d begged for but couldn’t remember why.

  “I’m doing fine. I’m doing exactly what they expect me to do!”

  “It’s not an expectation. It’s a caricature.”

  “They’re just donuts!”

  Ben let slip a tiny, nervous laugh and then went back to looking painfully tense.

  “Two dozen!” Jess went on. “In one sitting! In a public parking lot!”

  “I’m sorry! They were really good! It won’t happen again!”

  “Mina,” Ben whispered so softly that I almost thought it was a leaf rustling the syllables of my name by coincidence. “Is that . . . ?”

  I started pleating and re-pleating the flap of my bag by feel, trying to see and hear everything just a little more sharply, trying to bring the slim, visible edge of the man’s face into focus through the dimness and smoke, to filter out the Splintery, uninhibited whine in his voice and imagine what it would sound like, wholeheartedly imitating the more dignified mannerisms that would have come ingrained in that sort of body.

  “For that matter, what were you doing, intercepting the Todd brat yourself when you could send someone? Just because she’s contained for now doesn’t mean you have to hand her reasons to suspect you!”

  “I was in the nearest car when we got the call.” His voice leveled out with confidence then, and I knew, even before he turned away from Jess in our direction, who he was.

  Ben clapped a hand to his mouth, but it looked like he was less stifling sound and more trying to restrain himself from striding forward and ripping through Sheriff Diaz’s jugular. Slowly, he pulled it away. “That . . . that . . .”

  But either he couldn’t think of a word strong enough to call him, or he could and couldn’t bring himself to say it quietly enough.

  “Yes,” I agreed as quietly as I could while still making sure he’d hear me. “That’s him.”

  Ben buried his face in his hands for a moment. “Stupid,” he muttered. “Of course, they’d take the cops. Why would I think—”

  “Shh,” I reminded him. I couldn’t blame him a bit for his reaction. The fear and anger were there and obvious, but they hadn’t caused any errors yet. He was still in the shadows with me, thinking clearly, carefully avoiding twigs when he shifted his position to shake the nervous energy. Considering his greenness, I couldn’t have hoped for a better ally.

  Especially considering the fact that I wasn’t feeling quite so rational myself.

  Sheriff Diaz was on the Town Council, somewhere I’d never seen a hint of direct Splinter activity. That was my mother’s domain, a place of secrets, of corruption and collaboration but not of infiltration, not a single sign of it in all the hours upon hours of audio I’d captured. By definition, all Council members had been Very, Very Probable Non-Splinters, until now.

  She couldn’t know.

  Of course, she didn’t. Jess had just admitted as much.

  Badly missing my good phone, I dug through my bag for my old digital camera.

  “I need proof of this one,” I whispered, scanning the darkness for any other, less consequential faces, any more information lying around for the taking, before I’d have to risk forcing an early exit. “Be ready to run, just in case.”

  Ben adjusted himself on his feet, ready to spring out of his crouch, and looked at me warily.

  I checked that the flash was turned off, centered as much as I could of Sheriff Diaz in the frame, with a little bit of Jess for good measure. He turned our way again, and I pressed down on the button.

  Ben winced next to me at the sound, but none of the Splinters gave any indication of hearing it.

  Sheriff Diaz certainly hadn’t stopped to listen. The image was nothing but a dark blur of colors.

  “I need a better angle. Wait here.”

  I did my best to make out the shape
of the trees ahead, farther toward the driveway, the opposite side from the scythe Splinter, closer to the fire. I’d get a better look at the Sheriff’s face while he and Jess argued, a better chance of catching something usable when he wasn’t moving around. The way looked clear enough if I took it slowly. I’d be back next to Ben within a few seconds.

  Just as I found another good space to peek between the trees, the Sheriff turned right in my direction for a good, lengthy sulk, his arms stretched long enough to drag on the ground even while they were knotted loosely together in imitation of how human arms fold.

  I got the shot, and it stayed sharp enough on the view screen to be recognizable, but he turned farther, back toward Ben again, before I could take another.

  I inched a little farther forward, hoping for another head-on shot if he turned back toward Jess. I was still a few feet shy when my shoe caught something that definitely wasn’t a twig or a root, something of a texture I knew only too well.

  I knew the chance I’d taken. It had been a worthy risk-to-benefit ratio, but I’d lost. I don’t like to wonder what that tangled Splinter was doing in the trees alone, with all those boneless strings of itself draped all over my improvised path, before I interrupted it by tripping face-first into the row of glass bottles it had arranged around itself, releasing the aromas of chocolate and baby oil.

  Even the Splinter’s face was distorted, but it re-formed right next to mine, its eyes reflecting my camera’s red light, and greeted me with something like a scream, a piercing, high-pitched sound like grinding metal, punctuated with chittering little pops.

  The Splinters in the lot echoed it, and before I could find my shoe to free it, they were stampeding into the trees toward us.

  18.

  We Need a Trail of Breadcrumbs

  Ben

  Mina yanked her foot from the tangle of the hanging Splinter’s body, pulling a stun gun from her bag and ramming it into the creature’s screaming mouth in one smooth motion. It shuddered and jerked as it fell from the tree in a trembling mess. I ducked down quickly, helping Mina to her feet before I checked back on our pursuers. They would be on us in a matter of seconds.

  We made a break for the forest, bolting into the pitch-blackness of the trees and hoping for the best. It wasn’t easy. Even fifty feet away from the nearest yard, it was so dark that you could barely see your hands in front of your face, let alone the redwood trees the forest was thick with. I kept bouncing off of trees, stumbling over heavy roots, being goaded on by Mina as she kept tugging at my arm. How she managed at night with eyes as bad as hers, I’ll never know. I just hoped she could see better at night than they could, that we would have some advantage, no matter how small, that would get us out of this alive.

  For a few moments at least, I thought we had reason to hope. As frightening as their new forms were, they seemed large and cumbersome, ill-equipped to dodge between the trees with the ease we could manage. Several times I could hear them howling and cursing in their inhuman tongue, snapping tree limbs in frustration as they searched for us. I know I could hear Alexei’s voice, clear and in English calling out, “Do not worry. They are ours soon. You will see!”

  If he was confident, I could swear we had to be in the clear.

  We were getting some distance, and their voices seemed farther away. They sounded confused. I was actually beginning to feel good about our chances of getting away.

  Then Mina put her hand on my chest, forcing me to stop.

  “Listen,” she said.

  I stopped. I could hear the faint sound of the wind rustling through the trees above us, the faint snapping of a pine cone falling not too far away, but other than that, dead silence.

  “It’s quiet,” I said softly.

  “No,” she said, “Not that, it’s almost like . . .”

  Her eyes widened, and before I could ask her what was going on, she clapped a hand around my wrist and pulled me into a nearby thicket of bushes. I almost protested, then stopped myself. Mina’s instincts had served us well so far. I was not about to argue with her.

  Less than a second after we were completely concealed within the bush, I could hear them. The low, droning beat of wings. A faint beam of moonlight penetrated the trees near us, allowing me to see the horrors that had been sent after us. There were three of them that I could see, each about the size of a basketball, each with massive, dragonfly-like wings that fluttered and hummed as they weaved their way through the trees. It was only as they passed through the light that I could see what they really were.

  Spare parts.

  A hand, a foot, an extra head, parts that the bodies no longer needed, given wings and sent out into the forests as scouts to better track us down. They had probably sent dozens off in every direction. The head and the foot flew off, bobbing and weaving into the distance. The hand landed on a tree no more than ten feet away from us. It crawled up and down, its seven fingers making scrabbling, scratching noises as they fought for purchase on the bark. Two far-too-human eyes on stalks jutted from the severed wrist, looking around as if they sensed something. Its wings twitched. I tried not to breathe.

  The hand shuddered, arching its back as a set of small holes broke through its carapace. At least five small, bright red snake tongues flitted through, tasting the air as it tried to find us out.

  It must not have liked what it tasted. The tongues retracted, it flitted its wings heavily, and once more it was off buzzing into the forest.

  “They’re forming a perimeter,” Mina whispered. “Next they’ll pull inward, tighten the snare.”

  “We were able to dodge them there,” I said, hopeful.

  “Yes,” she agreed, “but next time they’ll try harder.” We stepped silently out of the bush and continued through the forest. I could hear them in the distance, stalking, searching for us, but they had lost their fury. They were organized now, planning things out. We would have to wait for them to close the trap and then hide again, as close to its edge as possible, to let them pass right over us as their drones had. Then we could make a break for the town. Of course, that meant having to deal with those drones again.

  On the plus side, I was pretty certain we would be home free if we could actually manage an escape here; none of them had really gotten a good look at us. If we could wait them out, if we could get out of here, and if we didn’t run into any more Splinters in the town proper, we’d be in the clear.

  Yeah, those were some pretty big ifs.

  I had a pretty good internal compass, so I had a fair idea of where we were in relation to the town. If I always made sure to keep the town on my left, I figured we could hike a good mile or two into the forest if we really had to, but I hoped it wouldn’t be necessary.

  We had just made it to a crossing in a shallow river. With moonlight glimmering off the water, I was trying to figure out if it was shallow enough to walk across, or if we would have to use a nearby fallen tree that spanned the river as a bridge.

  It was then that we heard the inhuman roar of rage and frustration in front of us. There was a sound of great violence as if trees were being ripped from the ground, and a few seconds later a boulder the size of a Volkswagen bug was hurled from the trees before us into the river. The thing was coming right for us. I looked at the boulder in the water, trying to gauge how deep it was. When I heard the creature’s pace quicken, I decided the answer was “deep enough.”

  It was my turn to lead Mina by the wrist. I pulled her into the river, the icy mountain stream shocking me as it splashed around my knees. I pointed under the fallen tree. Mina understood. Quickly hiding her bag in a nearby thicket, she dove beneath the downed tree. There was a narrow gap, but she could keep enough of her head above water to breathe.

  I dove in after, half-swimming, half-crawling as I squeezed in beside her. I could barely, just barely keep my nose above the water and stay concealed. The water was cold. Too cold. We couldn’t last long here.

  We couldn’t see it, but we could hear it as it came o
ut of the forest. Its growl was low and deep, mixed with that popping, clicking sound. As it searched the banks of the river, I could vaguely see it walking on four long, powerful legs ending in clawed hands. It soon came to our log, and for the briefest of moments I hoped it would walk on by.

  There was a dull thud as it experimentally touched the log, pushing it a few inches to the side. We were still concealed beneath it, barely, but we had to shift positions. This difference was enough to push my nose completely underwater. I held my breath, hoping its inspection would be short enough to offer me the chance to breathe soon.

  Another dull thud. Then another. A scratching sound on the log. My heart started pounding heavily. It felt like it was trying to move the log, trying to pull us from our hiding spot. Any second now it would find us and—

  Another thud. No, it wasn’t trying to find us. It was trying to do something worse.

  It was walking across the log.

  Its heavy footsteps above us strained and splintered the wood. Its scrabbling, clawed feet fought for purchase as the log bowed slightly under its weight, pushing my head even more underwater. My lungs were burning, I wouldn’t be able to do this much longer.

  Then it stopped. Right above us. It had found us. I knew it. This was it.

  One of its long, three-fingered claws came into view, dipped into the water in front of us. At any moment it would grab my shirt and pull me free. I hoped that Mina at least would be able to make a break for it as those claws dug into my chest. The claws came closer, closer . . .

  And then they curled together as the hand cupped water and retreated above the log. We listened as the Splinter heavily slurped the water and then bounded across the log into the forest where we had come from.

  I waited a few seconds, but the forest stayed silent. I pushed out from under the fallen log, taking coughing, painful breaths. Mina, shivering heavily, soon followed, grabbing her bag from the thicket.

  “We gotta get out of here,” I said through painful, chattery teeth, “Get warm, hypo—”

  “I know,” Mina said. Normally so tough, so strong despite her frail frame, it was almost painful to see her like this. I pulled her closer to me as we both stumbled through the forest. Though I half expected her to push away, she didn’t fight me. Under the circumstances, warmth was warmth.