Kill All Angels

by Robert Brockway

  “No we’re not,” I said.

  “What?”

  “We aren’t doing anything. You’re worse than useless down here. I’m sorry,” I said, seeing his face twist up. “You know it’s true. You can barely crawl. And we just blew the element of surprise, so now I have to move fast. I can’t do that with you.”

  “Don’t you fucking dare to presume to worry about me,” Carey spat. “I’ve been doing this since you were—”

  “I’m not worried about you,” I said. “I’m worried about Jackie. She’s still unconscious. You think I can do this while guiding you and dragging her? If I’m going to finish this thing, I can’t be responsible for either of you. I need you to stay here. I need you to protect her.”

  “I can provide you with dozens of witnesses that say I’m a crap babysitter,” Carey said. But there was resignation in his voice.

  “I know, but you’re all I’ve got,” I said. “If you don’t stay, then I can’t go.”

  “Well god damn,” Carey said. He spat on the ground and wiped at his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket. “All these years spent getting here, and now I’m gonna miss the headlining act. Ain’t that just a bitch?”

  I smiled. He couldn’t see it. I put my hand on his shoulder. He nodded.

  I took his arm and snagged Jackie by her bra-harness, then pulled them both into the nearest ruin. I found a kitchen counter that hadn’t decayed as badly as the rest of the house, and left them tucked beneath it. The cabinet doors had rotted away, but it was the best I could do. When I left, Carey had Jackie’s head in his lap. He stroked her hair in a shockingly non-perverse way.

  He must’ve forgotten I could see him.

  I stepped out into the ruined cul-de-sac, now dotted with cancerous stains and smoking bones. At the far end of the sunken suburb, beyond where the semicircle opened out into a narrow road, one intact gray building squatted like a stubborn old man who refused to vacate his crumbling home, even as the bulldozers were closing in. I scanned the broken windows of the houses on either side of me for signs of life, but found nothing.

  So what’s stopping you, Kaitlyn? Just waltz on up, knock on the door, ask if the angels can come out to play.

  The air was thick with waterlogged wood and salt, undercut with notes of barbecue. It was sickeningly appealing. Turns out, put a gun to my head, I can’t smell the difference between grilled pork chops and seared human flesh.

  That’s a little fact I could have gone forever without knowing.

  At least my legs were working again. My back still hurt—a diagonal slash of pain running from below my right shoulder blade up to the left side of my neck. I felt around and found a raw, sensitive divot where Alvar’s axe had struck. But it wasn’t bleeding anymore.

  I should not be healing this fast.

  I should not be healing at all.

  Car accidents don’t kill you. Axe wounds don’t kill you. Infernos don’t kill you. Exploding other-dimensional angels don’t kill you. So why are you standing here, afraid of what’s inside that building?

  I laughed a little.

  It was true: I now had more in common with the monsters than I did humans. Let’s go say hi to some new friends.

  * * *

  She was maybe sixty years old, but wearing it well. Smooth, clear skin, save for a couple of deep grooves in the forehead and on either side of the nose. A handful of delicate crow’s feet branching out from her eyes. Salt-and-pepper hair tied up in a matronly bun. She wore a faded pink sweater, all pilled up, but clean and unwrinkled. Her pupils were black pools that looked out onto deep space. She was an Empty One. An unfeeling human suit, draped over pure absence.

  And yet, I swear she was surprised when she opened the door.

  What? I went with Plan A: I knocked.

  “H-hello?” she said.

  “Hi.” I gave her a little half-wave. “I’m Kaitlyn. I guess I’m here to kill you all.”

  She looked me up and down—decently muscled blond girl, a bit on the taller side, but wet, bloody, dirty, and desperate. I could tell she immediately wrote me off as a non-threat.

  “I can’t say we were expecting you all the way down here,” the woman said. She checked over her shoulder, waiting for approval from somebody, and apparently got it. “But I suppose you should come in.”

  She stepped aside, opened the door a bit wider. There were no lights on in the building. There was no need. The only things down here were at home in the dark.

  From the inside, I could tell what the building had originally been: a big central lounge for a gated housing community. The reception area still stood mostly intact—the only signs of damage some ceiling tiles that had collapsed and spilled insulation all over the floor. To either side of the desk were two hallways that hadn’t fared as well. A sign above one read “gymnasium.” The other was illegible. Behind the reception area, the foyer opened onto a large, hexagonal main room. Lounge furniture scattered all about—brown leather recliners, wracked with age-splits that sprouted pillowy yellow stuffing like cave fungi; a massive white sectional gone colorless with dust and mold; fancy oaken end tables knocked over and pushed against the walls. There were floor-to-ceiling windows all along the west side of the room. Broken now, and looking out on nothing but still black water and sea rock.

  At the center of the room, a small crowd gathered around a massive gray-brick fireplace. It seemed like they were all Empty Ones, save for three people: an old man laying facedown on the floor, and a pair of handsome Indian guys. I say “old,” but it’s not like he was ancient. Or maybe he’d just taken really, really good care of himself. His skin was still smooth, wrinkles only creeping in at the edges of his eyes and mouth. A neatly trimmed beard gone entirely gray, maybe before his time. He wore a dark blue jumpsuit that looked ambiguously military. The younger guys were both just … beautiful. Their faces expert testimony to the value of good genetics. Just looking at them, you didn’t get the sense that they worked for it—primped and preened and moisturized daily—they simply were beautiful. Sweeping jawlines and strong foreheads. There was something in the set of their eyes that said they were family. One sported a single prominent dimple, even when he wasn’t smiling. Which he wasn’t, obviously. He stared blankly ahead, lips set in a perfect line. I wondered what he was staring at, before I remembered that he couldn’t see a damn thing down here. The other young guy was a bit on the waify side. Not skinny—not exactly—but his thin wrists and long neck gave him the look of a philosopher. He looked like he was thinking important thoughts, even as he sat there on the edge of the fireplace, quietly weeping. Dimples lifted one arm—still not so much as a blink—and rested it on the lip of a large set of gears.

  The gears.

  Jackie, eyes blank, hand outstretched, feeding herself to the whirring cogs already lubricated with blood—

  These weren’t nearly as ornate as the set I’d seen in the compound’s chapel, back when all this began. There had been dozens of gears in that machine, all polished and gleaming. Here there were just two huge interlocking wheels, seemingly hewn from the same dark rock as the cliff walls. No clever hidden mechanism to activate these: just a single crank. But I could see a litany of large, dark stains painting the edges of the cogs. They did the same job.

  The Empty Ones were a veritable melting pot: There was the elderly lady who first let me in; a clean-faced blond guy in an immaculate pinstriped suit—even his understated tie-pin certainly worth more than everything I owned; three Asian girls done up in a style somewhere between punk, raver, hippie, and gothic schoolgirl—lots of neon hair dye, dangling earrings, torn tights under plaid skirts, spiked bracelets and combat boots; a middle-aged black guy with a beer gut poking out between his rumpled cargo shorts and T-shirt; and a man (at least I assumed it was a man) in a full firefighter’s uniform—respirator, helmet, and all. I could see nothing of his face. A dull red axe dangled from his hand.

  The worst was the little girl, still awkward child-skinny but just starting
to grow into it. She was feigning adulthood, wearing it like a costume. Hair in a ponytail. Too-tight jeans and T-shirt, clunky sneakers, colorful bracelets marching up one wrist. It broke my heart to look at her and see nothing in those blue eyes.

  She smiled at me. They all instantly matched the gesture. There was something unsettlingly similar in their expressions. Their faces might all be different—teeth in varying hues of yellow, lips different sizes—but that was the same smile. Too wide at the edges—so strained it looked painful. Eyes staring intently, without a hint of joy in them.

  “Amazing,” said a woman’s voice. She stepped out from behind the pair of immense stone gears. “How did you get past my watchers? And the tar men?”

  “Oh, they’re all dead,” I said.

  “And Alvar?” she asked.

  “Last I saw, Zang was riding him like a mechanical bull.”

  “Zang,” she hissed. She snapped her teeth a half dozen times. The sharp clack of enamel on enamel made me wince.

  The old black guy bust out laughing, his unblinking eyes never leaving me. He stopped abruptly after a few seconds, when he realized the others weren’t joining him.

  “You,” Jie said, “are a much bigger pain in the ass than I gave you credit for.”

  “Thanks?”

  Her smile lapsed for just a second. Her eyes rolled up in her head. Then she was back.

  “So what’s the plan now?” she asked.

  I could tell her adopted persona was trying for sexy and playful. She twisted her knees inward, cocked her hips, twirled her hair, and bit her lip. Probably drove middle-aged perverts mad. But it was like watching bad CGI try to be sexy. The poses were memorized, but the movements in between were stilted and uncertain.

  “I left the planning stage behind a long time ago,” I said.

  “This is the thing that breaks the tools of the Mechanic?” Jie said. Her voice lost its coquettish quality. Featureless and barren. Wind blowing over salt flats. “This is the thing that killed Marco? This is unimpressive. This is small and blind. This came to its death and it does not even know why.”

  The Empty Ones all went as still as statues. I felt the air thicken. That moment of unnerving silence when a big cat freezes just before pouncing.

  The waifish guy began moaning, a constant hum that seemed to come more from his chest than his mouth. He knit his fingers in his hair and pulled. His heels bounced nervously. The Empty Ones paid him no mind. They studied body language, but they never truly understood it. I did, though, loud and clear. He was getting up his nerve. He was going to make a move. He just needed the chance.

  “Wow, you guys sure talk a lot,” I said, channeling every cocky Hollywood douchebag I’d ever waited on.

  Jie bent over, the movement so fast I could barely see it, and gagged. Both of her arms shot out to the side like she was being drawn and quartered. She froze like that for a second, then broke and leapt on top of me. Fingernails clawing into my breast bone. Her mannequin smile still etched in place, frothy drool eking out the edges. The other Empty Ones were only a fraction of a second behind her. Their hands grabbed my legs, pulled my hair; their teeth snapped at my face, nipped my skin.

  I struggled, but couldn’t shake them. The problem wasn’t strength, or even speed, but reaction time. I couldn’t think as fast as they could move.

  I kicked the tubby black guy off my legs and bucked my hips, throwing Jie off-balance, then I twisted, trying to crawl free, but the lady in the pink sweater clutched my face in both hands and began rapidly head-butting me. Everything went blurry. Then something cold and hard hit the floor—I felt the impact in my teeth. A frigid sensation went cascading up my arm, broken glass inside my nerves.

  The firefighter had brought his axe down, neatly severing my right hand. Blood gushed out rhythmically, matching the beat of my heart.

  And then, finally, the waif spotted his chance. The Empty Ones were all so lost in this feeding frenzy—feeding on me, oh god, my hand, don’t think, don’t think about that—they didn’t see him lean forward and touch Dimples’ face. There was caution in the gesture, a tenderness that drifted toward fear. He needed to see if Dimples was okay, but dreaded the answer. I’d had them pegged as related, at first. Cousins. Brothers, even. That one touch told me I was all wrong. Dimples blinked hard and looked around, like he’d only been daydreaming and somebody had just said his name. They couldn’t have seen a thing in that darkness, but instantly knew the other by touch. They embraced for just a moment, then began blindly crawling away from the commotion.

  The air shattered.

  Light so bright it would’ve blinded you on a sunny afternoon—down here, after all this time in the dark, it was like a supernova. If any of us had been using our actual pupils, our vision would’ve been utterly obliterated. We’d be seeing nothing but ghostly, luminous spots for days. That’s probably how it would be for the two Indian guys, who made it halfway to the reception desk before the angel arrived. The Empty Ones and I fared better. We all stopped fighting and stared right into that ball of light, just a few feet in diameter, hovering in total stillness above the prone body of the bearded man in the jumpsuit.

  “The choice is made!” Jie screamed.

  The Empty Ones fell to the ground. They beat their fists on the floor, wailed like Pentecostals, kicked their legs in the air like they were pedaling invisible bikes. Eyes bugged out, tongues wagged—the chubby black guy bit his clean off, but didn’t seem to mind, or even notice—fingers broke as they tried to claw straight into the cement floor.

  They had forgotten all about me.

  Jie was standing a few feet away, her back to me, reaching out toward the angel with one hand while the other twitched and flopped at her side like a dying bird. Her whole body was shuddering so violently that she seemed to blur about the edges.

  The jumpsuit guy lying beneath the angel writhed weakly for a moment, plucking at the idea of consciousness. Maybe he was just in shock and couldn’t process it right away, but he didn’t seem all that surprised to see the angel hovering there. He cocked his head, intently listening to something I couldn’t hear above the static.

  The sound the angel emits, but only while you’re looking at it.

  I used to think it was like riotous waves carrying loads of tumbled glass, crashing on the shore. Just random noise. But now there was something more in there—in between the screaming and the wind—that was almost discernible. Almost like voices. A radio broadcast just two ticks off the proper frequency. If only you could turn the knob, tune it in, the song would come in clear. The impossible angles that churned incessantly at the angel’s core were likewise less impenetrable. I remember that feeling when I first saw them—barely glimpsed, oversaturated, and hidden in a distant haze—they still instilled a sense of confusion and terror. They didn’t line up right. They didn’t move in a way that the human brain could process. It was something so far beyond us that, when confronted with its existence, our logic centers shut down and the animal brain took control.

  Run, the animal brain said. Just run.

  But it was like I could see farther into the angel now, to the place where those angles finally connected up. And seeing how they connected, the fear subsided. I didn’t understand it, not quite yet, but for the first time I got the sense that it could be understood.

  If only I got closer.

  No time like the present.

  I rolled onto my back, kicked my feet up into the air, then snapped forward in one smooth motion. I’d practiced it a thousand times. Hollywood loves that little hand-spring. It’s stuntwoman 101. I was on my feet and running instantly, leaping past Jie, toward the angel, into the angel.…

  And then I wasn’t. Something had me by the back of the neck, holding my full weight just inches off the ground and shaking me gently, like a naughty puppy about to be scolded.

  “Not this time, abomination,” Jie said.

  Her fingernails broke through my skin.

  So close. I was so clos
e.

  I pried at her fingers, I kicked at her shins, I twisted and wriggled and when that made no difference, I spat and swore.

  Jie didn’t even grace my efforts with a laugh. She stood stock still, silently squeezing until I could feel my bones start to give.

  “Gang’s all here!” Zang said, from somewhere behind me, then Jie’s grip released and I went sprawling to the floor.

  I knew better than to waste my one chance by doing something stupid like thinking. I crawled toward the angel as fast as I could. The old man beneath it was clutching his face. He’d doubled over into a ball, rocking in place. Something was happening behind his interlocked fingers. Light spilled out around the edges.

  No time. No time for Zang. No time for the man. No time for the Indian guys. No time for Jie or anything else. No time at all.

  I reached up, my fingers brushing against the fragile surface of the light. Just the barest resistance there, like thin ice formed over a deep lake. I pushed, and it cracked. I felt myself being pulled along through my own body. My essence leaving my brain, flowing down through my chest, along my arms, pulsing into my fingertips, and beyond, out into the cold, white void.

  Before I disappeared entirely, I looked back at Zang and Jie. He had her from behind, both of his legs locked around her midsection, his thumbs digging into the spaces where her eyes had been. He saw me looking and quickly withdrew one thumb. He held it up at me and flashed a gigantic smile.

  “Kill us all!” he said, with the same chipper tone you’d use to wish somebody a good day.

  And then I saw nothing.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  }}}Carey. 1983. Los Angeles, California. East L.A.}}}}}}}}}

  Before the little boy with the hammer bashed my skull in, the last thing I saw was Rosa, upside-down, balancing on one hand, before finally losing it and collapsing, feet-first, into the angel. Nobody had as much fun with it as her. Not before, and not since.

  There was a big white flash, and then the sweet comfort of unconsciousness. I love unconsciousness. We’re real good friends. Whether it’s sleeping late, passing out from drinking too much, or getting kicked in the head by a big guy who doesn’t like being called a condom-drinker, I’m generally on good terms with being put down. Waking up, on the other hand—we don’t get along. Especially when I’m doing it with a three-inch gash in the side of my head from the wrong end of a claw hammer. Felt like I was going to throw up a bucket full of rusty nails.