The Raptor & the Wren

by Chuck Wendig

  It was like falling down a rabbit hole. I found this subreddit where people were talking about someone who was this angel of mercy, this woman who went around saving people like some kind of superhero, but not. An anti-superhero. The Angel of Death didn’t save people from getting hit by cars or from disease. She saved those about to be killed. She killed the killers.

  Nothing really connected to the stories where you were involved. But there were always close sightings. In Miami, Philadelphia, Charlotte. And I thought, this is it. This is you. Miriam Black was the Angel of Death.

  I started dreaming about you. I was home then, back out on the West Coast, and I couldn’t shake you. I wanted to find you. I wanted to know what you saw that day. What happened to you? Why did my friends have to die? Why couldn’t you save them? I wanted to find you. I needed to find you.

  But I didn’t know where to begin.

  That’s when my dreams brought me another name.

  The shadow with Xs for eyes said your name, Louis.

  Louis Darling.

  I found you. You were easy enough to find. You left a truck behind after the Mockingbird murders, and all I had to do was call the trucking company, and they told me you had gone to work for someone else and . . . Three or four calls later, I found out where you were, where you were living, and I got a job there. At the company. Just part-time, working the dispatch.

  But that put me in touch with him. With you, Louis.

  I fell in love with you. I started to feel more . . . normal, more like myself. I had more time back to myself. I stopped losing hours and minutes. I felt good again. Clean, safe, like I had stopped going crazy, like I was going back the other direction. But still, I couldn’t help that one thing. That name. Your name. Miriam Black. Crawling through my head like so many worms. Then came the day Louis told me about you—not much, just who you were, but he said your name. And it was like everything went dark again. Like I was being pulled backward. I saw that shape, that big shadow, and I felt rough, hard hands behind me, urging me forward. Pushing me where I didn’t want to go.

  I heard myself tell Louis I wanted to meet you. And he said that was strange, but I kept pushing and pushing, just like I was being pushed and pushed. I felt parts of myself lost, gone, stolen away. And I rationalized it. I said, it was just trauma. I told myself this was normal. PTSD from the shooting. And I convinced myself that this was fine, I wanted to meet you because of closure, and that everything was fine. Then I met you. And it was like an electric shock.

  Next thing I knew, I woke up in the hotel room. I had a memory, more like a dream than a thing that happened, of stealing that feather from you. Sneaking into your secret places. Searching through your things. Your name perched on the end of my lips, never spoken but always there.

  I kept thinking, too, I knew you. Somehow, I knew you. Not just from that day down in the Keys, but from much longer. Like I understood you. I thought maybe one day we would be friends, the best of friends, which—I know, I know, that’s absurd, and I don’t even think it was my thought. I also remember thinking I knew it was dangerous. I knew you were dangerous, Miriam. But that only gave me more of a thrill. It felt like I knew a secret nobody else knew. I’d taunt the people on the forums about knowing who you were. I took the bird name because I knew you liked birds. I stole that feather from you. I looked at it every night before bed. I never took it out of its glass. I just held it. For one minute, maybe five, whatever I could get away with. I thought of you. I thought of that day in the bar. I would sometimes cry, or sometimes laugh, and then I’d put it away again.

  Then Louis left me and I lost myself again. Sometimes, I’d lose hours. Other times, whole days. I don’t remember writing Gordon, but I did. I don’t remember renting this car. I only remember parts of the drive through the dark, through the snow. Even now, I have pieces missing. I don’t even know if I’m really here or if this is really a dream. Please. Tell me. Am I really here?

  I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Louis. So sorry, Miriam.

  Please forgive me.

  Please believe me.

  Please help me.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  A QUESTION, UNANSWERED

  Her guts churn like she’s on a carousel going too fast. Round and round, the colors whipping past, the madness of calliope music in the background. Miriam’s not sure what to do or what to say. She doesn’t give a thimbleful of rat piss about Samantha’s obsession with her. Trauma dug its claws into that woman on that day, and those leave holes that never heal. Holes that things can crawl into.

  Holes that the Trespasser seems to have crawled into.

  That’s the fucked part. The X eyes, the big shadow—that’s her demon, that’s the Trespasser. And that twisted fucking specter did not merely whisper in her ear. He slipped into her mind like a parasite. Has he been in my mind, too? She has always felt in control. But Wren . . .

  Wren hasn’t. Wren said it herself: It’s almost like it’s not me. It’s like I’m the knife. When I killed Bob Bender, I held the knife . . .

  But it’s like something else was holding me.

  Forces are aligning. And she doesn’t understand why, or what they are, and she’s damn sure there’s more to come. Is Miriam a gear in a larger, crueler machine, or is she the target, like the whole goddamn contraption is designed to come crashing down on her head at any moment? She feels sickened by it, by all the unanswered questions, by the overwhelming fear she’s at the center of this strange and shadowy storm. And that the Trespasser is behind it all.

  Miriam flicks her gaze to Louis. He looks lost in his own head. Unmoored. She’s seen that look before. (She’s caused that look before.) He turns away from Samantha. He paces a short space in the crowded room.

  Miriam sets down the rifle.

  “Whaddya wanna know?” she asks in as calm a voice as she can muster.

  “What?” Samantha asks.

  “I’m saying, whatever you want to know, I’ll tell you. You’ve got some kind of boner for me—well, here I am. You have holes that need filling—that sounds pornier than I mean it, sorry—then, hey, ask. This is your shot.” Maybe, Miriam thinks, if I help give her clarity and closure, that’ll shut the Trespasser out. Shine the biggest, brightest light and make the roaches scatter.

  “Miriam, don’t give her the satisfaction,” Louis growls.

  Wren sneers but stays quiet.

  “It’s fine,” Miriam says. She thinks but does not say to him: There’s something bigger going on here, something we need to figure out. “I’m fine. Go on, Samantha.”

  “I . . .” She sucks in a delicate, dainty breath. Like she’s not sure how to proceed, like anything more dramatic will pop this bubble. She stands up, her hands clasped together, massaging one another nervously. “I wanted to—”

  It happens so fast, Miriam only parses it after she’s got the blood all over her face and chest. From outside, a barking chatter as bullets chew through the wood of the cabin, stitching a pattern that leads to the window. The glass shatters, and next thing Miriam knows, Samantha is in her arms, blood gently pumping from a hole in the side of her neck. Samantha’s mouth works soundlessly. Louis grabs them both, pulls them to the bed and then over the edge of it. Wren ducks down with them.

  It’s then that Miriam’s mind catches up to the reality of their situation.

  Someone is shooting at us.

  She puts her shoulder underneath the box spring and mattress, and with Louis’s help lifts it up high. It won’t stop bullets, but it’ll slow them down a little.

  Another salvo of automatic-weapon fire perforates the cabin.

  Miriam, breathing fast, checks her people: Wren’s all right. Samantha’s not. Already, Louis has a strip of bedsheet that he’s winding around her neck; blood already soaks the white cloth. Samantha’s eyelids flutter. But she’s still alive. Louis has her blood on him—

  No. That’s his blood. A tear in the sleeve of his shirt shows a black-blooded furrow in the meat of his bicep. Fresh r
ed flows.

  “You’re hurt,” Miriam says.

  Louis looks down. “Oh. I’m all right.” Then he looks at her, eyes pleading. Whatever control he had over this situation is flagging. Why wouldn’t it be? “What do we do? Who is—”

  Another chatter of bullets chewing into the wood. More glass breaks. A painting behind them leaps off the wall like a frog stung in the ass by a wasp. Wren screams, hands clapped over her ears.

  “Who is doing this?” Louis asks.

  INTERLUDE

  HARRIET

  Then:

  Harriet stood, eyeless and broken, outside the monster’s house. She could not see the bone that jutted out of her arm, but she could feel it. She could also smell the greasy, coppery stink of her own blood, freshly drawn. Her knee was out of joint, too, from where the bitch kicked it.

  She quieted herself and listened as Miriam fled into the forest. Her senses were stronger now, since coming back. Each sharp as a thumbtack. Even in the air she could taste Miriam’s fear: the brine of sweat and cowardice that made her run instead of fight.

  Already inside her, things were beginning to shift. Bone grinding against bone. The boil of white blood cells. Internal organs tumbling together like so many stones. To any other, these injuries would be grievous. And to her, they were too. But only temporarily. Already, the edges of her eye sockets had begun to itch, signaling the healing. Already, her arm had begun to feel dead, like a sack of ground sausage hanging from her shoulder in its casing. The bone spearing from her skin would dry out and break off like a half-rotten stick. The skin would heal over. The bones would mend aggressively and with great pain.

  But pain was now a distant concern. Harriet felt pain the way one might feel the poking and prodding of surgical equipment while under anesthesia. It was there, yes. She detected its presence, was vaguely aware of its sting.

  But she could no longer muster the ability to care.

  The leg would mend first. Then a race to see whether her eyes came back next, or whether the use of her arm would be returned.

  After that, she would hunt Miriam. She would find her, kill her, and eat her heart and take her power because she has been assured by the voices that this is how things work. The circle of life. The tangle of death. The transmission of power, and the evolution of nature to supernature. Eat the meat of another and consume its life, gain its energy. Eat Miriam’s heart and gain her power: the power to see the weave and weft of death. The interplay between light and dark, fate and free will, liberty versus destiny.

  But how to find Miriam, exactly? Now that she’d fled again?

  What was it that the little kitten said?

  You could’ve just Googled me, you stupid fucking bitch.

  Perhaps that was where to begin.

  It took time, of course. But already, the news media did half her job for her: tying Miriam to some online Internet-only urban mythology, some figure called the Angel of Death. Harriet did as Miriam once suggested, using the Internet to drum up answers. Searching for it took her to a forum discussing the Angel of Death legend, and took her similarly to a woman under the handle scarlet-tanager99 claiming to know exactly who the Angel of Death was.

  Harriet created an account.

  And then she sent this woman a private message on the forum.

  I WANT TO MEET THE ANGEL OF DEATH.

  I CAN PAY CONSIDERABLE MONEY TO YOU IF YOU CAN FACILIATE THIS FOR ME.

  And then she waited.

  And waited.

  She considered an alternative route: after all, she knew Russians from her days working with Ingersoll. The mob was changing these days, flush with hackers—most of them working the so-called carder market, meaning they stole and sold credit card numbers in bulk on the deep web. Others performed ransomware: hacking control of anything from a single thermostat in a wealthy man’s house, to stealing all the data and function from an entire hospital network and then demanding payment to return control to the host. It would be easy enough to put a bid out to hack the scarlet-tanager99 account.

  But then, fortuitousness.

  Weeks later, a response hit her inbox.

  And so began her communication with scarlet-tanager99.

  The woman did not identify herself. Not immediately.

  But she did say that she knew the identity of the Angel of Death. That the news was correct. And that soon, she would know where she was.

  The woman was unguarded. She shared information freely.

  Including her name: Samantha Ardent.

  It became clear that this woman was obsessed with Miriam. That she was experiencing trauma and psychological issues resulting from a shatterpoint moment—this Miss Ardent was present for the shooting in the Keys, whereupon Ashley Gaynes shot up a tiki bar and abducted Miriam. (Idly, Harriet thought back to that time in Ingersoll’s car when they sawed off Ashley’s foot. Those were good days, working for Ingersoll, and she missed them terribly.)

  It also seemed quite possible that the woman had suffered, or was presently undergoing, a psychological break. And that break meant leverage. Any fissure, however small, gave Harriet room in which to move, in which to intrude—like how a small tendril can, over time, wind its way through the crack in a wall and grow in that space, slowly but surely breaking down what seemed to be sure to stand.

  Even still, Harriet grew frustrated. This was taking too long. This broken—and still breaking—woman was not giving her anything of value. It seemed a dead end. Fun, in its way, to help chip away at the woman’s mind, but it gave her little more than an illicit thrill. She still had no Miriam.

  And then came the day in December.

  A message from Samantha led with the subject:

  I know where she is.

  Harriet wrote back:

  TELL ME.

  And then Harriet formed a plan. She asked to meet with the woman, and meet they did, in a small Pennsylvania diner. Harriet had black coffee and nothing more. The woman, Samantha, picked nervously at a piece of huckleberry pie—though, toward the end, something interesting happened. Samantha, who looked timid and indeed quite broken, suddenly . . . changed. Her demeanor shifted. Her eyes flashed with newfound confidence and a brash, flinty carelessness. And in an instant, she demolished the pie like she had been starving, like she’d never before gotten to taste pie and this was her one chance to have that flavor in her mouth, that satisfying lump in her stomach. She didn’t even wipe her mouth at first, just grinning out across the table, mouth smeared with berry guts. Predatory. Feral, in a way. Harriet understood her in that moment. And also recognized that not only was the woman undergoing some fundamental shift—a genuine psychotic break in her personality—but something potentially deeper, stranger, altogether unnatural.

  Samantha said then, “I’ll take you to her. Miriam needs a push.”

  Harriet nodded and, though gratitude is not something she easily can stomach these days, forced out a thank-you.

  And then, like that—snap—Samantha returned. She wiped her mouth hurriedly. She pushed away the pie and burped quietly into her fist before having to run to the bathroom. Harriet smelled the sour mash of puke-stink on her later.

  And together, they got in Samantha’s rented Ford Focus.

  Together, they traveled to Miriam.

  Harriet sat in the passenger side for most of the trip—and then, upon finding the drive, she clambered into the backseat, throwing a blanket over herself. Little did Samantha know, while the woman was in the bathroom, Harriet popped the trunk and put in there a pair of friends: the Uzi (technically a Mini Uzi carbine, modified from semiautomatic to fully automatic) and the machete. The machete is a brutal affair, imprecise in the wrong hands. But she is surgical with it. And oh, how the blade is sharp.

  It will do well to chop Miriam Black to bits and to cut out her heart.

  And just in case, she has a lockback hunting knife in the back pocket of her corduroy pants. For the finer cuts.

  (And she has a .380 SIG Sauer strapped t
o her ankle.)

  (So, make that four friends.)

  Harriet waited as Samantha parked, and now here she sits. It is time. She throws off the blanket. She reaches into the front seat and pops the trunk latch. Then Harriet leaves the vehicle and rescues her friends from the trunk.

  She checks the submachine gun and jacks the action. Her arm still feels a little loosey-goosey, like a transmission nearly slipping out of gear. Soon it’ll be fine again. The question that has yet to be properly answered is: is she functionally immortal? She feels more alive than she ever has. Will her body stave off disease? Does she age? Is aging just a disease or a natural, necessary entropy?

  (Can’t kill me, she thinks. I always come back.)

  This is a question that won’t be answered for a long time.

  And it has no bearing on the situation at hand, which is:

  Harriet has found Miriam Black.

  She intends to kill her, cut out her heart, and eat it.

  Harriet stands, Uzi in hand, machete in a sheath at her side. Ahead of her is a window, and in that window she sees shapes moving by the light of the cabin’s interior. It’s enough of a target. The Uzi needn’t be precise. It isn’t here to kill them. It’s just here to announce her presence.

  So, announce her presence she does.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FIGHT OR FLIGHT

  It’s when the bullets stop that Miriam knows they’re in trouble.

  If this is Harriet, then she’s not done. And she’s not going to stop.

  Louis is talking to her. Wren is too. Samantha is bleeding. But she can’t hack any of that right now. She needs eyes. So, she finds them.

  Her own eyes close.

  And Bird of Doom’s open.

  The owl stirs in the dark. Wings up and out, she descends with Miriam riding inside her mind. The bird swoops low through the trees, the glow of the cabin not far. There, in the driveway, sits the car. Near it, a boxy submachine gun.

  But no Harriet.