Paradox Bound: A Novel

by Peter Clines

  “What?”

  He waved a hand back at the trapped Hornet. “When we saw…me, I remembered, back when I was a kid, a bunch of us would come out here and throw rocks at an old rust bucket stuck between these two trees. It’d been there for about a hundred years.”

  She stared at him, then at the Hornet.

  Eli shrugged, but wasn’t sure his fatigued muscles actually followed through with the movement. “It just hit me a few minutes ago. I think it’s one of those…what did John call them? A transparent paradox?”

  Harry snorted a breath through her nose. “His transparent aluminum defense. A predestination paradox.”

  “We’re lucky this is such a boring town,” Eli said. “If there was anything else to do, I wouldn’t’ve been out here throwing rocks so often.”

  She barked out a laugh. “You poor thing,” she said. “In my day the kids only snuck out to the woods for a bit of bread and butter.”

  The term meant nothing, but her naughty smirk made him laugh anyway.

  A stick snapped behind him.

  “Stop laughing at me,” growled Zero.

  39

  The mask hung around Zero’s neck. A dozen nicks and punctures covered the smooth flesh of his face, each one trailing blood. A red gash stretched across the space where his left eye should’ve been.

  He took a step toward them. His trip over the steering wheel had broken his arm in at least two places. Possibly a few ribs too, the way his chest sagged on one side.

  “You’ve been laughing at me my whole life,” muttered Zero, taking another step. “Making my life hell. Not anymore.”

  “Zeke,” said Eli, “we need to get you to a doctor. You’ve been—”

  “Not anymore!” roared Zero. The skin around his jaw stretched tight and shook like a drum. His working arm swung up to grab at Eli.

  Eli smacked the arm away, but numbed his hand in the process. It felt like stopping the casual swing of a baseball bat—yet another sensation he knew thanks to Zeke. He took a few steps back.

  Zero limped after him. With his swinging, twisted arm it gave him the gait of a B-movie zombie.

  “Turned everyone against me in school,” snarled the faceless man. “Then in the whole town. This is all your fault! They turned me into this because of you! To help them find YOU!”

  His fingers stretched out, flexed, and Eli had no doubt they could crush bone.

  He ducked and slammed into Zero. He drove his shoulder into the faceless man’s gut and kicked at the ground. Zero slid back and crashed against the Hornet’s wide fenders.

  The faceless man brought his arm down hard. Eli’s back shuddered and the muscles on one side spasmed. The impact shook his spine and forced his eyes so wide they watered. He tried to keep Zero pinned against the car, but the pain crumpled his body and he slid to his knees.

  Zero’s head twitched, just a moment before a rock hit him in the side of his jaw. He growled, more annoyed than hurt.

  Harry bent down, grabbed another egg-sized stone, and flung it. Zero reached out and caught it. His head never moved. He flicked the rock back at her, and it struck just under her chin. Harry dropped, wheezing, to her knees and grabbed at her throat.

  Eli gritted his teeth and straightened his back so he could stare at Zero’s blank face. Blood soaked the sleeve of the faceless man’s broken arm from biceps to wrist and dripped from his fingertips. Across one cheek, a purple bruise worked its way up from beneath the skin.

  “No more,” Zero whispered to Eli. “My whole life’s messed up because of you.”

  Eli’s hands dropped, and his knuckles scraped something hard. His fingers explored and found its shape. Harry’s first stone. Eli wrapped his fingers around it.

  Zero grabbed the front of Eli’s shirt and dragged him to his feet. The motion took next to no effort, as if he were hefting a gym bag. The forest whirled and Eli slammed against the car. The Hornet’s front end wrenched his back and set off another spasm. His hands flailed and he almost dropped the stone. His fingers pulled it close to his palm and tightened his grip.

  “I’m the hero now,” said Zero. “I’m going to take care of you, and then your damned searcher girlfriend, and then—”

  Harry’s pistol came whipping into Eli’s line of sight. Zero grabbed for it, but Eli’s shirt held his fingers. The fabric tore, half a second too late, and the steel barrel caught the faceless man in the side of the head. Certainty let him dodge the pain, but not the actual attack.

  “Fucking bitch!” he roared. He shook the scraps of cotton twill from his hand and reached for Harry.

  Eli brought the rock up, ignoring the pain in his back as he twisted around. The stone smashed into Zero’s temple, right across from where Harry’s pistol had struck. Right where a walnut-sized chunk of gravel had hit Eli almost sixteen years ago. He felt bone shift under the blow.

  Zero made a muffled, bubbling sound deep in his throat. His hand came back around, fingers wide, but the movement threw him off balance. He teetered for a moment.

  Harry pistol-whipped him again, cracking it across his temple.

  Zero made another gargling noise. His knees folded and he collapsed to the ground, stretching out like a line between them. He twitched two more times and grew still.

  Eli glanced at her. “Is he dead?”

  “Maybe?” She coughed twice, rubbed her throat, and watched the body. “He’s not breathing.”

  “Do they normally breathe?”

  “I don’t think so. No?”

  Eli bent his knees as slow as he could, but when he dropped it still jarred his back. He fell to all fours and took a moment. Three deep breaths helped him calm the pain.

  Harry crouched next to him. “Are you okay?”

  “I think so,” he said. “In the long run. Nothing a long hot bath and a dozen aspirin won’t fix. Or a bottle of whiskey.”

  “If we make it out of this, I’ll see what I can arrange.”

  “How about you?”

  She coughed again. It had a raspy edge. “I’ve been better,” she said, “but I’ll be fine.”

  He reached out a cautious hand and pressed the fingers against Zero’s neck. It took three tries to find a pulse. “Still alive. His pulse seems…good, I guess? Steady, at least.”

  “I can take care of that,” said Harry. The pistol spun in her hand. The grip came to rest against her palm and her finger settled on the trigger.

  “Whoa! We can’t kill him.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s a victim. They did this to him.” He replayed Zero’s rant in his head. “They did this to him because of me.”

  “Eli,” she said, “I think it’s wonderful that you care so much about your childhood bully, but he’s one of them now. He’s a faceless man, and that means he’s the enemy.”

  “So we kill him and then what?” He waved his arm across the field to where the Model A sat. “Do we have time to fix Eleanor’s tire?”

  “Doubtful, since we left the toolbox back with little you.”

  “Dammit,” he muttered, “that’s right.”

  She looked at the Hornet. “Do you think we can get it free of the trees?”

  Eli frowned. “I don’t think it’s moving any sooner than Eleanor.”

  “We…we’ll have to steal a car.”

  He looked around. “I’m not sure there are any cars here. Yet.”

  A low growl rose up in the distance.

  “Excellent timing, Mr. Teague.” She sighed. She looked down at Zero, shook her head, and holstered the pistol.

  “Okay,” he said. “We can’t get away through history. We can’t get away on foot. Can we hide?”

  She shook her head. “Certainty. They’d know where we were as soon as they got close. No hiding, no disguising, we just can’t be near—”

  “Yeah?”

  She stared over at the Founders House, just visible through the thin trees. “We’re near them,” she said. “We’re sometime around 1900. Right under their n
oses.”

  “What?”

  She rolled Zero over and reached into his coat.

  Eli watched her frisk the faceless man. “You looking for his pistol?”

  “No,” she said, moving on to another pocket. She pulled out a notepad, tossed it aside, continued her search. “New plan. We’re not going to look for the dream.”

  Harry held up her prize. Zero’s badge.

  “We’re going to go in there,” she said, “right now, and we’re going to steal it.”

  40

  They ran across the field, away from the growling engine, through the gravel, and around the Founders House. Spikes of pain jarred Eli’s back with every step, but after a few minutes they’d calmed enough for him to run without help from Harry.

  The sprawling structure had two back entrances and a side entrance. Each was chained and locked. In his gut, Eli already knew the only way in was through the front door.

  At the base of the broad stairs, Harry pushed the badge into his hand. “You hold it,” she said.

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “Faceless men, not faceless women.”

  “D’you really think it matters?”

  “Do you really think it doesn’t?”

  He wrapped his fingers around the badge and they headed up the steps.

  At the first landing, the dread hit. The childhood nervousness and confusion in the pit of his stomach. The feeling of being watched. He stumbled to a halt. Harry took another step and did the same. She glanced at him with worried eyes. “You too?”

  He nodded.

  The growl of the big engine echoed across the town.

  They ran up to the next landing, stumbled again, then hit the top of the staircase, almost fifty feet above the road. Eli looked for a Hudson Hornet and was stunned for a moment by the view he had of Sanders. He could see the roof of the Silver Arrow, the fabric store just past it, the movie theater…

  Harry shook the door. One of the small glass panels rattled. She brought her boot up and slammed her heel beneath the knob. On the third kick the wood splintered. It tore free on the fourth, and glass shattered as the door slammed back against the inside wall.

  She grabbed Eli’s arm and dragged them inside.

  A few sheet-covered chairs slouched around the first room of the Founders House. An impressive fireplace stood at the far end, swept clean of all signs of an actual fire. A long, barren counter stretched off to the left, and an American flag stood next to it. Eli had seen many rooms like this as a teen, closed down for the winter until what little tourist trade Sanders had came back.

  “Here,” said Harry. She’d found a set of double doors leading away from the lobby. They were half glass, and Eli could see color and light beyond them. They each grabbed a handle and swung the doors open.

  They speed-walked down a long hallway with patterned carpet and waist-high molding. A chill hung in the hall, like an overpowered air conditioner. Wall sconces provided light, and between them hung small portraits of men in colonial clothes like Harry’s. Eli saw Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and someone who might’ve been Thomas Jefferson, but he didn’t recognize most of the ones he got a good look at.

  He glanced back over his shoulder and saw the distant patch of sunlight that marked the lobby. “How long do you think this hallway is?”

  Harry looked back, then ahead. “Fifty, maybe sixty yards? Why?”

  Eli shook his head. He fumbled with the badge. On television, police and FBI agents made flicking it open look so casual. He couldn’t figure out how to brace his fingers across the leather panels to expose the oval disc of silver and gold. Words stretched across it, but in the uneven light of the sconces they either made sense or looked like a jumble of Latin. In the dimmest parts of the hall, they could’ve been Egyptian pictographs. “Do you know how this thing works?”

  “It makes people see what the holder—”

  “Yeah, but how? Do I just hold it or is there a code word or a spell or something?”

  She frowned. “I don’t know.”

  They passed a double door with big steel push-plates and large windows honeycombed with wire. It would’ve looked more at home in a school or hospital. Through it, Eli glimpsed a long, tiled hallway.

  The main hallway came to an end at a set of wooden doors carved with intricate reliefs and scrollwork. Eli couldn’t focus on any one element through all the thick detail. Above the doors, a Latin phrase had been carved with just as much skill and precision.

  AB INITIO

  Harry grabbed his free hand. Her grip made the bones of his palm ache. “Ready?”

  Eli nodded, took a deep breath, and held up the badge.

  They pushed open the ornate doors and marched into the cathedral chamber on the other side.

  Desks sat in endless rows, as did wooden and metal file cabinets, the ultimate open-plan office. Standing maps, much like John Henry’s, appeared here and there. Eli’s gaze followed the maps up and found chandeliers the size of swimming pools, and a spiderweb of clear pipes suspended above it all. As he stared, something whizzed through one of the pneumatic tubes and vanished into the distance.

  Harry squeezed his hand and they stepped away from the doors, deeper into the room. Eli’s gaze drifted back to ground level in time to pass a broad table covered with a huge map. The people around the table moved small models and tokens with long sticks.

  Not people, he realized.

  Faceless men.

  They sat at desks and stood by maps and gathered in small clusters with file folders and loose papers. Some wore shirtsleeves and suspenders. Others had suit coats and vests. Eli saw short, wide ties and long, narrow ones. He saw a few wearing tall boots and long dark frocks like Harry’s.

  None of them had masks. Just blank ovals of flesh. Not even the weak illusion of identity here.

  He’d expected a few dozen faceless men. A platoon or squadron or something. Not hundreds.

  Maybe thousands.

  Could there be a faceless man for every searcher? Did Harry have it backward? How many others, supposedly dead, had been converted into faceless men? Ones from Chains that didn’t involve her or Porter?

  Harry’s hand tightened around his. Eli’s fingers stiffened around the badge. He lifted it, placing it between them and the room.

  A faceless man in a long coat and top hat walked by them without reacting. Another one stepped around them, barely registering them as he did. Two walked by, side by side, and didn’t acknowledge them at all.

  “It works,” he murmured.

  “Stating the obvious,” she whispered back.

  They walked forward blindly, farther into the throng, hands tight and shoulders pressed together. Faceless men passed in front of them, walked alongside them, watched them go by. Harry’s fingers tightened around his.

  “Hey, nimrod,” someone shouted.

  Eli’s neck stiffened, and the edges of the leather badge case bit his fingers as they clenched around it. His pace stumbled, and Harry dragged him along. “What?” she whispered, studying his face.

  He turned his head. “I think they found us.”

  A clearing formed in the swarm of faceless men, an open space they all walked around and avoided. Eli and Harry meandered along the edge of it. A few yards away stood a pair of faceless men flanking a wheelchair. Strapped into the wheelchair was a man—a normal man—in a Sanders police uniform.

  “Zeke,” murmured Eli.

  “Abraham,” muttered Harry.

  “That was me,” said a faceless man on the other side of the clearing. Eli recognized that voice too. He fought the urge to turn and look.

  “Damn straight it was, moron,” snarled Zeke. “Hittin’ a guy in a wheelchair?! What the fuck’s wrong with you? Watch where you’re going!”

  Harry tightened her grip and pulled. He glanced at the knot of faceless men once more and then let her lead him back into the crowd. He stepped up to her side and held the badge out in front of them. A faceless man at
a desk turned his head to them as they walked past, then returned his attention to his paperwork.

  Eli looked back as they passed a long cabinet of pigeonholes stuffed with envelopes. The far wall had almost vanished in the dim light. It had to be close to half a mile away. “Wait,” he said.

  Harry took another two steps before she stopped. “What?”

  He looked back again, then leaned in close to her. “We’ve been walking pretty much in a straight line from the lobby.”

  She nodded.

  “That first hallway, the main hall, was about fifty yards. And this room got to be almost a thousand feet across. Maybe more.”

  She glanced around them. “Yes?”

  Eli looked at the room. “The Founders House isn’t that big,” he said. “If we’ve walked a quarter-mile, we should be out the back door and somewhere in the baseball field. We might even be past the first-base line.”

  “I don’t mean to sound shallow,” she murmured, “but at the moment my greater concern is being noticed and shot in the head.”

  “Okay. Yeah.” He glanced around the huge room. “Where should we be going?”

  “What?”

  “Where’s the dream supposed to be? Normally?”

  Harry blinked. “Why are you asking me?”

  “I thought you knew where we’re going.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been following you.”

  “What?”

  A faceless man turned his blank skull to them as he walked by. Eli held the badge a little higher and the agent continued on without pausing. Other faceless men stepped out of the way without hesitation, never turning or even registering them. A few turned their heads as Harry and Eli passed, but overall he sensed they had more important things to do.

  Harry tugged on his hand and got them moving again. She muttered in his ear as they passed under a chandelier. “Why would you think I’d know?”

  “I thought there’d be some stories or something,” said Eli. “You’ve got a story for everything about this.”

  “Nobody’s ever been in here before,” she said. “At least nobody who ever came out.”