Kill All Angels

by Robert Brockway

  “You have no idea what I’m going through,” Jackie said. She fiddled with the button for the window.

  “I do. When Stacy died in the fire, I—”

  “Fuck your dead sister,” Jackie said. She looked me straight in the eye when she said it.

  I made a bunch of disbelieving sounds, but no actual words.

  “That is not the same thing,” Jackie continued, poking at the little toggles set into the armrest. “Your sister died what, fifteen years ago? You told me yourself that you barely remember it.”

  “That doesn’t mean I—”

  “What did her skin look like, when she burned?” Jackie asked.

  Holy shit.

  “No answer for that? What did it smell like? Did she scream? For how long?” With each question, Jackie stabbed at the controls. They didn’t respond. “My parents died like five minutes ago, K. And I am a god damn adult. I saw every second of it. Every detail. I watched my mom’s face disintegrate into my dad’s. I heard how it sounded. Look!”

  She showed me her bare wrist, the soapy white skin spotted with red.

  “That’s their blood! That’s their fucking face blood, Kaitlyn! Your distantly remembered, romantic little childhood trauma isn’t like this! It isn’t the same! And oh my god, why doesn’t this window roll down?!”

  She yanked the switches as hard as she could, and punched the armrest when they didn’t break. Her barks of fury quickly devolved into hyperventilating sobs. I tried to put a hand on her shoulder, but she slapped it away.

  “Oh hey,” Zang said, entirely too chipper for the situation. “Got the child lock right here. There you go.”

  Jackie’s window rolled down of its own accord.

  “Who the hell is this guy?” she said. “No, what the hell is this guy? Is he like you, K? I saw him moving in the house. He’s crazy fast. And I’m pretty sure—yep, I’m definitely staring through his empty eye socket into his brain right now, yet he’s still driving a car. Somebody wanna fill me in on this?”

  “That’s Zang,” I said, then faltered.

  How do I tell her that he’s an Empty One, one of the things that just butchered her entire family right before her eyes? And that he’s on our side? Especially when I’m not even sure of that last part.…

  “He’s an Empty One,” Carey said. “He’s on our side.”

  “He’s … a what now?” Jackie said. “He’s one of those things? Like the Asian girl?”

  “Yeah,” Carey answered. “Actually, she’s kind of his girlfriend.”

  “Ex,” Zang added.

  Carey laughed.

  “Ex-girlfriend,” he corrected.

  Jackie was silent for a long, stunned moment.

  “Would you pull the car over?” she finally asked, dangerously polite.

  “Nope,” Zang said. “We detoured to save you, but we have somewhere important to be right now.”

  “Save me?” Jackie said, carefully. “That’s what you call this? Saving me?”

  Nobody knew what to say.

  “Kaitlyn…” She turned to me, slowly, like any sudden movements would see her head fall off and bounce away. “I was gone for, like, a day, and in that time you not only met, but teamed up with one of these monsters? Then you brought them all to my home, and watched as they massacred my parents right in front of me? And now you have one chauffeuring us around?”

  Jackie laughed that insane giggle again.

  “We didn’t bring them to you,” I said. “Jie was there first, she had you tied up and your house surrounded, if we didn’t—”

  “There’s no ‘we’!” she shouted. “There’s you. There’s you and the monsters, and I’m starting to think you’re one and the same. This all started with you—you and your creamed jeans over Marco.”

  “What? You set me up with him! You insisted!”

  “Oh sure, and there was soooo much protest. You couldn’t wait to climb that flagpole. And you know why? I think you knew. I think you sensed what he was. One freak to another.”

  Fuck. You.

  I didn’t say it—I knew Jackie was just messed up and lashing out at me—but I sure thought it as hard as I could.

  “You did this,” she said, quietly.

  “Jackie, come on, I didn’t—”

  “You did. This shit has been floating around you ever since you were a kid. You and your mutant little finger.”

  I froze inside. We’d fought before, sometimes even viciously, but Jackie never brought up my extra pinky. Not even as children. It had always been out of bounds for her.

  “You’ve been a god damn weirdo forever, and I keep trying to drag you into normality. In school back in Barstow. Moving out here to L.A. Taking you to those parties. It was charity work: me, just trying to show you what real people are like. But it was all a waste. Because you’re not one. You’re one of the monsters.”

  I kept my mouth shut. But I couldn’t keep the glare out of my eyes.

  “Oh, you don’t like that?” Her laugh again, like icicles crashing on frozen ground. “Little Katey still thinks she’s human? When’s the last time you slept, K? Weeks?”

  It’s been months.

  “When’s the last time you ate?”

  What?

  “You don’t even realize it. You haven’t eaten in days. Maybe longer. Do you even need to? I wonder, how long can you hold your breath now? Are you sure you still have to breathe? Or is it just going through the motions for you? You’re not my friend. You’re not even the weird little girl I once took pity on. You’re already gone, Kaitlyn. This is a car full of monsters. And I want out. Now. Please.”

  She folded her arms and waited.

  “I’m still mostly human,” Carey piped up, breaking the sullen silence. “I mean, some say I’ve got a python for a dick, but that’s just metaphor.”

  Nobody laughed.

  “Should I pull over?” Zang asked, his voice flat and empty.

  This situation was clearly beyond the scope of his limited humanity.

  “Yeah,” Carey said. “What the hell. Why not? If she’s not gonna laugh at my jokes anymore, it’s not like we need her.”

  I should say something. Stick up for Jackie. She doesn’t mean what she says. She’s just hurt.

  I should say something.

  I can’t help but notice that I’m not saying anything.

  When was the last time I ate?

  “If we do not need the girl to kill the angels, then she should go,” Zang agreed.

  “What?” Jackie said.

  “You should go,” he repeated.

  “You know how to kill them?” Jackie said. “As in, all of them?”

  “We think so, yeah,” Carey answered.

  “Then keep driving,” Jackie said. “I’m in.”

  “You don’t have to—” I started, but Jackie cut me off.

  “I’m not helping you,” she spat. “I’m hurting them.”

  “I like her,” Zang said.

  He delivered it like a punch line in a sitcom. The more I saw of the dead-eyed, emotionless vacuum of The Empty Ones in their natural state, the more intolerable their human façades became.

  “If that thing touches me,” Jackie replied, pointing at Zang, “I’ll castrate it with my teeth.”

  “I really like her.” Zang laughed.

  We fell into an awkward silence. I thought of a thousand things to say to Jackie—the most heartfelt condolences, the perfect explanation for what had happened, the best anecdote to remind her of our friendship (when we were thirteen, and she got her braces caught in my hair, clearly)—but I didn’t voice any of them. There was a hollow anger in my stomach over the hurtful things she’d said, followed by a dull and aching emptiness whenever I thought about how true they were.

  When was the last time you slept?

  When was the last time you ate?

  Just going through the motions.

  You’re already gone, Kaitlyn.

  I knew that if I didn’t get out of my own h
ead, I would do some serious and lasting damage.

  “Fine, then,” I said, answering a question nobody asked. I locked eyes with Zang through the rearview mirror. “You said you could find an angel.…”

  “Costa Soberbia,” Zang said.

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “It is a place where we will go and kill things.”

  Carey sighed and slapped Zang in the arm—the flesh there was already gluing itself back together, like watching somebody tear up a wad of Play-Doh, but in reverse.

  “Tell them the whole thing,” Carey said.

  “It is a very long story,” Zang said.

  “It’s an hour-and-a-half drive, and apparently nobody in this car is going to be any fucking fun. We’ve got time for long stories.”

  EIGHTEEN

  }}}This story is told by Zang. This was a very long time ago. The exact year is lost. The location is the city of Eridu in Sumeria.}}}}}}}}}

  In ancient Eridu, there was a man. This man’s name is not important, because names are not important. They are road signs in the desert, indicating nothing. Man itself is not important, and so believes that by giving itself names it can stave off—

  “Jesus, fuck, Zang,” Carey snapped. “Leave off with the loony speeches, all right?”

  “Yes, fine,” Zang said.

  This story involves angels. This story involves Empty Ones. This is not the story of the first angel. The angels have been and will always be. This is not the story of the first Empty One. As long as humans have been, there have been Empty Ones. This is the story of how the Empty Ones learned to best serve the angels.

  When society first began, the angels came. Man thought that society was a blessing, but society is an abomination. The universe is a lifeless, unthinking, beautiful machine. It is void of doubt, and fear, and hate. It simply is. The angels understand this. When man first inflicted thought upon himself, he embedded within him the most dangerous of things: a language. A language is a code. A code can be manipulated. And so the angels used mankind’s own curse to save it. They found man, and they reduced his code, until he was once again nothing. All of the energy that man had been wasting on frivolous complexity was then used to feed the angels, and to further serve the universe. This was good. This was right. But this was not enough.

  The code of humanity was sloppy. Sometimes, it did not reduce cleanly, and there were remainders left over. These remainders you know as the tar men and the Empty Ones. The tar men were lucky. They are the animalistic part of man. They are not burdened with thought or desire. The Empty Ones were not lucky. They are the thinking part of man. They were cursed to know the perfection of nonexistence, while also doomed to exist forever. But the Empty Ones did not live in hate. Hate was man’s house. The Empty Ones instead dedicated themselves to helping mankind, by assisting the angels in their quest to reduce the needless complexity of life. They sought to return humanity to the universe.

  So they watched. And they waited. For a very long time.

  They discovered that the angels were patient creatures. They appeared rarely and seemingly at random. They blessed only a few humans a year with oblivion. This is fine for the angels. They are beyond time. This is bad for humanity, who are mired in time. Man would have to wait millennia—more, perhaps—to be fully returned to the universe. The Empty Ones could not stand to let humanity endure such torture. They sought a way to force the angels to not only appear, but to procreate. More angels would speed the job.

  One day, in man’s oldest city, the Empty Ones found their way.

  The Empty Ones knew they must work within the world of man to save him. So they lived in his city, and attained positions of power. They took nothing men and nothing women from the city streets, and they experimented. The people they took sometimes suffered greatly before expiring, but their pain was trivial when weighed against the pain of the species. The man in this story did not agree. One such experiment involved the man’s youngest daughter. A deformed young thing with one extra finger on her left hand. The man loved her despite this inferiority. He mistakenly believed that blood ties create a relevant bond, and lapsed into a state of insanity that caused him to act irrationally. He sought justice for his daughter.

  This man had two other children. They were much older than the daughter. They were males. They were strong and willful. All three fought the Empty Ones. They struggled against the systems that the Empty Ones had put into place. They killed human soldiers employed by the Empty Ones. They kidnapped bureaucrats enforcing the will of the Empty Ones. They burned a structure used by the Empty Ones for their experiments. In this, they made a mistake.

  The man was hurt badly while escaping the fire, and his sons, suffering from similar familial insanities, refused to abandon him. They helped him to flee, but he slowed them down. The chase was short lived. Their pursuers were mostly human, but among them were two Empty Ones. No matter how hard the three fought, they could not prevail. One son was wounded, badly. At last it was clear to the remaining son that he must flee. But he could not escape with both his father, and his brother. He looked to his father, who was old, and hurt. He looked to his brother, who was young, and may have healed. The son chose to save his brother and abandon his father. At that moment an angel honored them with its presence.

  By virtue of the son’s actions, something within the father’s code had become ready. The angel used the complicated series of tragedies that the man called a life to create something meaningful. It created another angel.

  When it was done, the Empty Ones rejoiced at the miracle. They sought to replicate these events. It took years of practice, but at last they managed. They re-created the chase, just as the father and sons had fled. They re-created the pain, the panic, and the emotional distress those original three endured. They re-created the choice they made, and the abandonment that followed—the young choosing the young over the old, as all life must do. And angels appeared.

  The process was not perfect. Not just any human could serve in the roles. There were certain personality archetypes that had to be present: A personal tragedy in the distant past, which left psychic wounds that could not heal. A reactionary disdain for authority. An absence of clear want and direction. These aspects made up major chunks of the original man’s code, and so for the ritual to work, future candidates must share those attributes. As the ritual was refined, more angels were brought to Earth. More humans were solved, some of them incompletely, and so more Empty Ones were made, who, in turn, performed more rituals, to bring more angels. The ultimate solution of humanity sped ever forward, and at last its return to the universe was imminent. The cycle of creation will peak soon, and there will be nothing left but angels and Empty Ones. The Empty Ones know they cannot be solved. They are forever cursed. They realize this. Yet still, they try to save humanity from suffering existence. It is their sacrifice.

  NINETEEN

  }}}Kaitlyn. 2013. Los Angeles, California. 405 South, from Inglewood to Long Beach.}}}}}}}}}

  “Okay,” Jackie said. “That’s a bunch of crazy bullshit. Thank you for sharing.”

  “It may be,” Zang said. “I was not present to account for it. This is what the Empty Ones believe. This is what they strive for. But the ritual is real. Everyone in this vehicle can account for that.”

  A small, stone church in a walled compound at the base of dark mountains. A burning light, jarring static, white space …

  “So what does that have to do with now?” I asked.

  “They’re doing another ritual tonight,” Carey said. “Poor son of a bitch is probably already going through the ringer.”

  “The chase would be on right now, yes,” Zang said.

  “Once he’s all done up to their liking,” Carey said, “an angel will turn up to put its celestial dick in his ear—”

  “The angels do not have genitals,” Zang corrected.

  “Figure of speech,” Carey said.

  “Those are difficult.” Zang nodded.

&nb
sp; “And that’s when you do your angel-murder thing. If your uh … vision … is real, then that’s the end of all this stuff. But hey, even if you’re wrong…”

  “You will still kill an angel, and all of the Empty Ones around it,” Zang finished. “Jie will be running tonight’s ritual. I will see her dead.”

  “But why are you doing this?” Jackie asked. “Nobody finds that weird? This fucking thing starts ranting about how perfect and beautiful the angels are, and how disgusting people are, and nobody thinks ‘oh shit, this guy is probably leading us into a trap’? Seriously?”

  “If I wanted you dead I could steer this car into oncoming traffic. It would not matter to me,” Zang said, his voice as barren as a desert. “But I do not want that. Jie and I are connected. The angels created us together. They made a mistake. The thing I am cannot help but worship them. The thing I used to be remembers what they took away, and cannot forgive it. And Jie…”

  There was genuine longing in that pause. A dusty, nostalgic kind of regret, like an old man looking at a picture of his wife, back when she was young.…

  “Jie should not continue like she is,” Zang said. “She wouldn’t want that. She doesn’t deserve it.”

  We all allowed him a moment of silence.

  “And what’s Costa Suburbia?” I asked, when I thought enough time had passed.

  “So-ber-bia,” Carey corrected. “It’s a subdivision they built back in the seventies. Supposed to be real high class shit. Where the families of studio heads could live safely, without ever being in danger of seeing a Mexican that wasn’t mowing their lawn. Built it right on the beach on top of these gigantic cliffs. Then a big one hit in seventy-one, and the whole thing collapsed. Didn’t even get to finish construction. The earthquake broke the cliffs clean off, and sent the whole neighborhood a couple hundred feet down into the ocean.”

  “So we’re going scuba diving?” I said.

  “No, most of it still sticks up above the water at low tide.”

  “Jesus, these guys sure do love their dramatic set pieces.” Jackie laughed.

  I smiled at her. She returned to staring out the window.