Nocturnal

by Scott Sigler

  At least the dogs had kept quiet.

  “Robin, come on,” Max said in a hissing whisper. “You’re a cop, you can’t let these assholes break into your place.”

  “I’m just a medical examiner. Please, this isn’t some meth-head. These people are really dangerous.”

  Max’s muscles twitched just like his dog’s. He wanted to mix it up in the worst possible way. He tensed for a second, then sighed. “Fine. You’re right. I hope Bryan gets here quick.”

  Robin nodded. Bryan would be there any second.

  She had one arm around Emma, trying to keep her baby on the couch. She felt Emma suddenly stiffen. The dog started to growl. Emma stared at Max’s front door, the one that led out into the hallway. A ridge of fur stood up on her back like a furry black fin.

  Billy started growling too. He leaned toward the door.

  Then Robin smelled it. Coming from the door, from out in the hall, faint but unmistakable …

  … the smell of urine.

  Robin reached into her purse and pulled out her gun. She held the subcompact .380 in her right hand, Emma’s collar in her left. Someone was out there. One of Marie’s Children? The Zed-chromosome people?

  Max looped Billy’s leash around a heavy wooden chair. Two big steps took Max to the front door.

  She tried to say Max! but no words would come out.

  He held the baseball bat in both hands as he leaned forward to look out the peephole.

  The door smashed inward, knocking Max to the floor.

  Through the door stepped a man covered in a rancid, blue-and-green-striped blanket. He had a huge head. The forehead alone was two feet wide and misshapen by lumpy, gnarled skin. Beady black eyes beneath that forehead stared right though her.

  he’s one of them he’s got the Zed chromosome he’s going to kill me

  Dogs barking, the sound of a wooden chair scraping across the floor an inch at a time.

  In his right hand, the intruder held a boxy weapon that had a long magazine sticking out of the handle. He glanced down at his left hand — it held a piece of paper. He looked at the paper, then back up at her. He stuffed the paper somewhere inside the blanket, then he smiled.

  Shoot him shoot him shoot him echoed in her head, but she couldn’t move.

  The big-head walked into the apartment, stepping over Max, reaching, grabbing, iron-hard fingers suddenly digging into her shoulders.

  A flash of white and black. Emma’s teeth locked down on the man’s thick thigh. The dog shook her head like a wild thing, putting all of her weight and muscle into it, yanking even as blood sprayed across her snarling muzzle.

  The man’s beady eyes widened in surprise and pain. He let go of Robin and swung the butt of his weapon hard into Emma’s face. She flew across the room, yelping.

  Robin raised her pistol and fired three times before she even registered the motion. The big-headed man flinched away, covering his face with his arms.

  A flash of metal arcing through the air and a ringing thonk. The big-headed man crumpled forward, hands moving from his face to the back of his head. Behind him stood Max, baseball bat in hand.

  Billy kept lurching at his leash and barking madly, trying to pull free as the chair holding him back scooted a little closer.

  A sound of clinking metal, then a crack of electricity. Max contorted so hard his head snapped back. The bat flew out of his hand. He dropped to the ground.

  Behind him stood a raven-haired woman — a stunning, strange image. She held a chain in each hand, one set of links on the floor in front of her, another set trailing behind. Robin registered knee-high boots, vinyl pants and a cut-off Raiders sweatshirt that revealed a slim stomach. A brown cape — no, not a cape, it was another dirty blanket — hung from her neck. Billy lurched again, dragging the chair closer.

  Robin raised her weapon to fire, but the woman flicked a wrist. Robin didn’t see the chain move, just felt an electric zing in her hand that made her jerk away, throw herself back against the couch. Her hand and arm felt like they were on fire.

  The gun was gone.

  The black-haired woman smiled and walked forward.

  The big-headed man stood up, rubbing the back of his head.

  The woman looked at him and laughed. “He did a number on you.”

  “Shut up,” the big-headed man said. “I’ll fix him.”

  He reached down and grabbed Max, who had curled into a fetal position. He flipped Max onto his back, grabbed Max’s wrists and held them to the ground. Max opened his eyes and saw what was over him. He struggled, but from the first second it was clear his strength was no match.

  Billy roared like a demon. The chair squeaked against the wood floor.

  The big man raised his big head, leaning back until his neck muscles popped out like flesh-covered cables. Robin leaned forward to push off the couch and stop the man, but the black-haired woman snap-kicked — the boot smashed into Robin’s mouth, driving her back into the couch again.

  The world wavered. Robin’s body felt numb and unresponsive, but she could still see.

  The man slammed his big head forward in a lethal blur. Max’s face vanished in a crunching splash of red and gray, like someone had hit a watermelon with a bowling ball.

  Robin knew she was screaming, but she wasn’t controlling it, it was someone else, someone still there because she wasn’t really there, couldn’t be there, couldn’t have just seen Max die like that.

  A final screech of wood accompanied the sound of a chair hitting the floor.

  Billy the pit bull lunged, locked his massive jaws on the back of big-head’s neck. The man let out a scream that sounded like it belonged to a little girl. He fell facedown in the gore of Max’s blood and brains, flailing at the back of his head and neck.

  John Smith was as afraid as he’d ever been. He thought he might puke at any moment. He had to force himself to watch the road ahead and not look up at the windows of the passing buildings.

  There are no snipers up there. There are no snipers.

  And even if there were, he had to go anyway. The text message had seen to that.

  BRYAN CLAUSER: MARIE’S CHILDREN HAVE POOKS. GET TO ROBIN’S NOW.

  John saw Robin’s place coming up on the right. He pulled in the clutch and squeezed the brake as he downshifted. A flare of headlights suddenly blinded him as a car cut over from the left lane, tires screeching. John angled his Harley up onto the sidewalk, barely avoiding the collision. He righted the bike, hopped off and dropped the kickstand in one smooth motion. He ripped off his helmet and drew his Sig Sauer.

  The car was a black station wagon. The rear passenger door opened. A man lurched out, clearly hampered by pain.

  “Bryan?”

  Clauser looked like a completely different person. It wasn’t just because of the black peacoat and the skullcap. A makeshift rifle-strap sling held his left arm against his body. A line of metal staples covered a ragged wound from his left upper lip down to the base of his jaw. He held a flat-black sidearm in his right hand. His green eyes burned with a focused rage that promised very bad things to anyone who got in his way.

  A high-pitched scream came from Robin’s building.

  Bryan ran to the apartment building’s front door, a classic San Francisco–style door of glass and wood fronted with a black, wrought-iron grate. Without slowing, Bryan kicked out with the flat of his right foot. The iron grate bent, glass shattered, and the whole thing flew inward, hinges tearing free from old wood. The ruined door skidded across the Spanish tile floor, glass pieces skittering in all directions.

  Bryan sprinted for the stairs and started taking them three at a time.

  John ran after him.

  Billy yanked and lurched, pulling at the man’s shredded neck like he was trying to tear the head right off.

  “Sparky,” the man cried out, “help me!”

  The woman stepped up and snap-kicked Billy’s hips. Billy yelped, his rear legs spinning away, but his teeth stayed clamped on the bac
k of the big man’s neck.

  The raven-haired woman was laughing.

  Robin’s eyes shot to a spot on the floor — her gun.

  She meant to dive for it, but her sluggish legs gave out as she came off the couch. Robin tumbled to the hardwood floor, then urged her unresponsive body forward. She reached for the pistol.

  The big-headed man stood, Billy’s jaws still locked on his neck. The dog’s rear legs flopped limply — he made a sad, hateful sound that combined a deep growl and a long yelp of pain.

  Robin reached out. Her hand closed on the gun. As she started to sit up, the man turned sharply, screaming, twisting, trying to aim his semiautomatic behind him — Robin recognized the weapon: a Mac-10.

  The black-haired woman raised a hand in an instinctive warning gesture. “Bonehead, don’t—”

  The Mac-10 stuttered.

  Robin felt something sting the left side of her neck and slam against her chest and right shoulder. She fell to her back, stunned.

  As he cleared the third-floor landing, Bryan heard the growls of a dog and the screams of a person. He shot down the hall toward Robin’s apartment and the sound changed — the growl became a pitiful yelp of dog’s shock and pain.

  Bryan smelled urine.

  Just before he entered the apartment, he felt the ba-da-bum-bummmm that marked one of the monsters.

  Five-sevens in hand, Bryan turned left into the open apartment door. His eyes caught many things all at once: a man with a big head shooting a Mac-10 madly, trying to hit a pit bull dangling from the back of his neck … a big body that could only be Max lying on the floor, his head smashed in like a bloody, broken hardboiled egg … a woman with long, thick black hair and a blanket around her shoulders, her hand reaching back … and to his right, Robin.

  Robin, on her back, her chest and shoulder red with blood.

  Bryan heard a crack and felt a massive shock as something hit his arm. His body lurched away of its own accord. He landed hard on his right hip.

  Another Mac-10 stutter, a short yelp, then no more growl.

  He saw the black-haired woman move, saw her whipping a chain. The metal rang as it shot forward in a blur toward Bryan’s chest. He turned and ducked — the chain hit his face, then a bright flash and a crack as numbing pain engulfed his body.

  Bryan cried out, tried to roll away, but strong hands grabbed his shoulders and slammed his back into the floor hard enough to crack wood. Stunned, Bryan looked up to see a man with a forehead two feet wide, the gnarled skin smeared with blood, bits of bone and some grayish clumps that were probably Max’s brains.

  The electric shocks seemed to reverberate through his body — his muscles wouldn’t respond fast enough.

  The man reared back and lifted his head high. He snarled, he—

  Gunshots from Bryan’s right, a fast and steady pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-click that made the big-headed man twitch, lurch, fall away to the floor on Bryan’s left.

  Bryan looked to his right: Robin, lying on her left side, right arm extended and gun in hand. She had just saved his life.

  The chain flew across the apartment and cracked into Robin’s hand with a bright spark. Her hand jerked away, sending the gun flying.

  “Fuck this,” the black-haired woman said. She moved the chains to hold them both in her left hand. Her right hand reached into her blanket and drew a Glock, which she aimed at Robin.

  Time moved like it was dragging through hot asphalt. Bryan raised his left hand, felt the rifle-strap sling tearing away, felt his collarbone snap again. He was already bending his hand up to shoot the blade mounted along the underside of his forearm, but he wasn’t fast enough, he wouldn’t be able to—

  Gunfire from behind him brough the world crashing back to fast-forward speed. Bryan saw a splash of blood on the black-haired woman’s right cheek, another on her right shoulder, then she was turning away, her blanket spinning out behind her, making her seem twice as large. She sprinted to the wall and dove through the window, broken wood and shattering glass following her out into the night beyond.

  She was gone.

  “Bryan! You okay?”

  John Smith, standing in the entryway, dropping an empty magazine from his pistol and loading a fresh one.

  Movement on Bryan’s left. The big-headed creature, already recovering, standing up, lifting the Mac-10 toward John.

  Bryan’s extended left hand hung in the air — it was the tiniest thing to point it at the man and flick the hand up.

  A metallic khring sounded as the blade shot out. Six inches of titanium slid into the man’s neck, chonked home as barbs dug in, making the blade stick. Eyes wide, the man stumbled to his right, but his foot wouldn’t hold his weight. He collapsed like a big bag of bones, blood spraying out of his neck in high, arcing bursts.

  John stepped forward and pointed his gun at the man’s chest. “Stay down! Don’t fucking move!”

  Bryan scrambled to Robin’s side. She rolled to her back just as he reached her. He slid his right arm under her neck, lifting her gently. Blood gushed out of the left side of her neck.

  He pressed his hand hard against the wound. A growing bloodstain spread across her chest. He slid a hand behind her back and felt wetness. The bullet had gone through her right lung.

  “John, call a fucking ambulance!”

  The direct pressure to her neck didn’t stop the bleeding — the wound continued to pulse blood from under his hand and between his fingers. He’d seen wounds like this before. An ambulance would take ten minutes or more to get here — Robin didn’t have ten minutes.

  Maybe I’m wrong, please let me be wrong.

  “Bryan,” she said, her voice quiet and resigned. She knew. They both knew.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  She shook her head slowly, once to the left, once to the right.

  “Not … your fault. Where … is my girl?”

  “John! Get the dog!”

  Bryan stared down at Robin. Why had it taken him so long to realize what she meant to him? “Please don’t die.”

  She coughed. Blood sprayed out of her mouth and onto her chin. Her eyes closed tight as waves of pain ripped through her body, then she opened them. “Bryan, I love you.”

  “I love you,” he said. “I always have. I always will.”

  Her bloody lips smiled. Somehow, that made it even worse. It opened the floodgates of emotion that had been blocked by the adrenaline. Tears filled his eyes, blurring her a little.

  She reached up and wiped them away.

  “Tears?” she said. “From you? Nice timing, champ. You got that in just under the wire.”

  John stood over them, cradling a whimpering Emma. The left side of her face was a sheet of blood.

  Only now did Robin looked scared. “Oh God, is she—”

  “Cut on her head is all,” John said quickly. “She’ll be okay.” He knelt down and set the wounded dog in Robin’s lap.

  Now Robin smiled at John. She reached up and touched his cheek, her fingers tracing a line of her own blood on his dark skin. “Looks like you’re not afraid to be a cop anymore.”

  John said nothing. Tears trickled down his face.

  Robin turned her attention to Emma. The dog lifted her torn head and licked Robin’s face. Emma’s blood dripped down to Robin’s chest, indiscernible against Robin’s own blood.

  “It’s okay, baby,” Robin said. “It’s okay.”

  But it wasn’t okay.

  Robin looked up at Bryan, Emma’s tongue still dancing on her face.

  “Bryan, she’s all I have. You take her. You love her.”

  Bryan nodded. He wanted to talk, but he couldn’t. His throat locked up tight.

  She reached up to him again, her cold fingertips tracing the shape of his eye. “Do you promise?”

  Bryan nodded again.

  Robin sagged in his arms. Her eyes didn’t close, not like in the movies, but he saw the life in them fade, then vanish forever.

  She was
gone.

  All the Teeth

  A hand gently pulled at his shoulder.

  “Bryan, we have to go.”

  Bryan ignored John. He cradled Robin closer. He should have never let her out of his sight.

  He couldn’t handle the whiplash of emotions — fury, blind hatred, a crippling sensation of loss, the desire to punish, to kill. She was gone … he couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything other than to gently rock her body.

  “Bryan, I’m so sorry, but we have to go. You’re wanted for murder. Get up!”

  Bryan shook his head. “I don’t want to go. I want to be with her.”

  Now a hand on each shoulder, lifting him.

  “Bryan, she’s gone. Everyone thinks you killed two cops. They’re going to shoot as soon as they see you. Get up!”

  Dead. Robin was dead.

  He would make them pay for this. Not an eye for an eye, not a tooth for a tooth — all the eyes … all the teeth.

  Bryan leaned in and kissed Robin’s forehead one last time. His lips stayed there — pulling away was the hardest thing he had ever done.

  He gently set her down, then he stood.

  He looked across the floor at the three other corpses — Max, who hadn’t done anything wrong, the big-headed member of Marie’s Children, and Billy, broken and shot as he tried to avenge his master’s death.

  Blood continued to spread across the hardwood.

  “John, get Emma.”

  “Bryan, we don’t have time to—”

  “Get the fucking dog!”

  John leaned back, a little scared. Bryan didn’t give a shit. He wasn’t about to ignore Robin’s final wish.

  John ran to the sink and grabbed a dish towel. He placed it over Emma’s torn face and scooped her up. Emma yelped horribly, then tried to get away, tried to lurch toward Robin’s body.

  “Shhhhh,” John said. He squeezed the dog tighter. “Bryan, I’m leaving. Hurry.”

  John ran out of the apartment.

  After all the noise and chaos, now there was only silence.

  Bryan took a final look at the love of his life.