by Dan Wells
The plan was simple: to trick Rack into a confrontation and get Elijah close enough to drain his mind. Seeing it through would be much harder. Potash was leading the way, a cannula in his nose and a portable oxygen tank strapped securely to his back; he wore his steel machete in a sheath beside it, a combat knife on his belt—a new one, since I still had his old one—and enough guns to arm half the police department. Diana was with him, armed more simply but looking no less imposing. I had, again, suggested that we leave her outside to guard an entrance, but Trujillo had insisted that she be in the first wave. If Rack tried to flee, we’d lose him, no matter how many police officers surrounded the building with automatic weapons. We had to force a showdown, and that meant bringing in the main team. We had to make him want to kill us.
I didn’t like the plan, but I agreed with it. I hoped we lived long enough to see it through.
Ostler was outside, coordinating the attack, and Trujillo and Nathan were staying back in the office, as far out of harm’s way as we could keep them. They weren’t combatants. I wasn’t either, but I was the only person willing to get close enough to Elijah to help him. I didn’t want to like him, but I found myself trusting him in spite of myself. Maybe because we were both the outcasts on the team? I don’t know, and I preferred not to think about it.
I kept my knife in my pocket, my fingers tight around the nylon-sheathed blade. Elijah had no weapons but his hands and whatever ancient power resided within them. He kept patting his pockets, then mumbling and shaking his head; after the fourth or fifth time I whispered softly.
“You missing something?”
“It’s nothing,” he said, “Just a nervous habit. I keep my keys on a lanyard, so I won’t forget them during the times my memory’s all patchy. Sometimes I can’t even find my car, I’m so messed up, but I always have my keys. It’s a comfort thing, I guess, and I’m nervous right now, so…” He shook his head. “I’m fine.”
We were crouched in the shadow of a minivan parked on the street one door down from Rack’s house. Potash was ahead, scouting, and when Ostler gave the word that it was time to move, we’d run up to join him in the first wave. I looked at the house: a blue two-story, made gray by the moonlight. Everything was dark. I looked back at Elijah. “You’ll know him when you see him?”
“He’s hard to miss.”
“I guess that’s true.” I pulled out the knife, turning it slowly in my hands, thinking about the death of Mary Gardner. That’s how I tried to think of it—not as my attack, but as her death. I had nothing to do with it, or at least I didn’t want anything to do with it. I remembered the knife going in, coming out, going in. I remembered the feeling of it, a dizzying blend of horror and elation, of rage and unfettered joy. I had loved it, and that was the worst part: I was lost in a frenzy, far beyond my own control, and I loved every minute of it. I couldn’t allow myself to do that again. To feel that again.
And yet there was a part of me that wanted to feel that more than anything in the world.
“Your knife’s not going to help you,” whispered Elijah.
“Not tonight,” I said. I didn’t say anything else.
The night was silent and dark.
“Go!” said Agent Ostler in my ear, and I rose to a run. Elijah stayed close behind me, and we reached the door just as Detective Scott broke it open with a heavy metal ram. Potash went in first, Diana right on his heels, assault rifles up and scanning the corners, hunting for monsters in the shadows. Elijah and I followed behind, hoping that Rack’s attack, when it came, would involve something more targeted than a grenade or a spray of bullets. Everything about him suggested that he would want to finish this in person, face to face, and that was our only hope for success. I held my breath and stepped through the door. Detective Scott brought up the rear, with a half dozen armored cops behind him. Their whispers echoed in my earpiece:
“Clear.”
“Moving up.”
“On your six.”
“Clear.”
A stairway in the main entry led up to the second floor, and two cops watched it while the rest of us snaked through the main floor, making sure it was empty. The house seemed normal, almost disturbingly so, but here and there we saw a hint of something more: one of my Pancho’s Pizza flyers, pinned to the wall with a thumbtack. News clippings about the three victims held with magnets to the fridge, like a proud display of a child’s latest drawing. Stains on the living room couch and carpet, which might have been blood, or might just as well have been anything.
“Soy sauce,” whispered one of the cops, as if he was trying to convince himself that the worst-case scenario wasn’t true.
“He doesn’t have a mouth,” I reminded him. The cop gulped nervously.
We found a basement door near the back, and two more cops stayed to watch that, guarding against a surprise assault from below. Elijah and I stayed close to Potash and soon found ourselves back at the base of the stairs.
“It’s now or never,” said Diana. Potash grunted and started the climb.
“Go carefully,” said Ostler, her voice crackling in our ears over the radio. “Don’t try to kill him, just get Mr. Sexton close.”
“Roger that,” said Potash as he reached the top of the stairs. We paused to listen.
“Welcome to my home,” said a soft, whispering voice. I gripped my knife, pulling it out of the sheath, knowing it was useless. Potash and Diana both turned to the left, identifying the source of the words, and we moved forward cautiously. A door at the head of the landing was open—the door leading in to the master bedroom, I guessed, based on what I’d seen of the house. Was he simply waiting inside for us? Had he known we were coming?
How was he talking?
Potash counted silently, locking eyes with Diana, and on three they burst into the room, all subtlety gone, shouting out commands to get down, to put his hands on his head, and the rest of us surged in behind them ready to run toward the killer, ready to sacrifice anything we could just to give Elijah the opening he needed, but nothing moved, and all we heard was a soft, wheezing laugh.
There was a body in the bed, lying on top of the covers: light hair and fair skin and most of the flesh on his torso missing, chewed to bits by human teeth. The head, as before, was untouched.
The lips were moving.
“Put my hands on my head,” said the voice. The corpse’s eyes were unfocused and glassy. “Of course you would say that. But which hands, and which head?”
Potash and Diana scouted the room quickly, checking corners and closets and any nooks or crannies that might conceal an attacker. The master bathroom was attached, and Diana opened the door only to stagger back, gagging. Potash looked at her in alarm, but she shook her head.
“Clear,” she coughed, “and no need to double check. I can go my whole life not knowing what’s in that tub.”
“It’s meat,” said the body on the bed. There were flies on his wounds, buzzing in small circles before landing lightly and rubbing their forelegs together, licking the bloody flesh with tiny black probosces. The mouth moved by itself, as if it were completely independent from the rest of the body. “Puppets can bite,” he said softly, “but they can’t swallow.”
I nodded. “If he’d left gobs of flesh behind anywhere we’d have found it,” I said. “He had to hide it somewhere.”
“He could have burned it,” said Diana.
“I saved it for you,” said the corpse. I walked closer, looking at the thing’s pale skin, and its mouth twisted into a leer I could only assume was a smile. “Do you like it? I don’t have guests often, you’ll forgive me for not being here to receive you in person.”
“Are you close?” I asked.
“Hello, John.”
He could distinguish voices. Or was the room bugged? I didn’t know what he was capable of supernaturally, and what he might need to augment with technology. I’d never known the Withered to have much range on their powers, though, so wherever he was he probably wasn’t far. I
frowned and thought of another mechanical question: how long could he use a corpse after he killed it? Elijah said he could only drain a corpse within about twenty-four hours—did Rack’s power over the dead have a similar limit? Twenty-four hours ago we hadn’t even known we were coming. I touched the body’s arm and tried to lift it; it was stiff.
“That’s evidence,” said Diana.
“That’s rigor mortis,” I said. “This body died somewhere between ten and…” I tested it again. “Thirty hours ago.”
“The mouth moves just fine,” said Potash.
“I could—” said Elijah, but I cut him off with an urgent hand motion. If he was using the corpse’s ears to identify our voices, he might not know Elijah was with us.
But then I realized with mounting horror that he might already know. He claimed to know everything. How could he have prepared this corpse to meet us unless he knew we were coming?
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said.
“We haven’t even cleared the upper story,” said Diana. “You’re just going to trust him when he says he’s not here?”
“I guarantee he’s here,” I said. “This is a trap and we need to get out now.”
“Too late,” the body whispered.
Someone downstairs fired a gun.
It started as shouts, shocked and desperate: “He’s here!” “Look out!” “Behind you!” Urgent and angry, perforated by gunfire, and Potash ran for the door while Ostler screamed in our ears to know what was going on. All too soon, though, the shouting turned to shrieks of pain, howls and sobs and horrific death yells as whatever was attacking tore our armed escort to pieces. Potash roared in defiance, and we shouted for him to come back, to stay together and force the confrontation we needed, but he was gone. Diana swore and followed him back to the stairs, shouting at us to stay with her, and I ran after her with Elijah close on my heels. A spray of bullets tore the floor ahead of me, showering the stairway with splinters, and I fell back, covering my eyes. Elijah steadied me, and I counted to three before running again, steeling myself to face another barrage of friendly fire. As I ran I tried to visualize the house in my head, estimating that the errant bullets had come up through the floor from … the kitchen. The top of the basement stairs. We reached the main floor, jumping over the fallen bodies, slipping in the blood, and ran through the hall toward the battle. Another burst of gunfire tore through the wall, but it was ten feet to the side—a mile away in close combat—and we kept running.
“What’s going on in there?” Ostler demanded on the radio. “Somebody talk to me!”
“We need—” said Diana, but she stopped abruptly. I reached the kitchen just in time to see her fall to the floor, her arm, still clutching her rifle, ripped from her body. Rack was no more than a shadow, seeming somehow unreal and enormous at the same time. He threw the arm at me and I ducked, and Potash roared again and attacked, muzzle fire lighting up the room in a staccato strobe. I caught only a glimpse of Rack’s chest, a roiling mass of ash that seemed to burn his skin around the hole, the dirty yellow bones of his shattered rib cage protruding grotesquely from the edges. His face was a nightmare: wide eyes above, human and furious, a black, greasy hole beneath them. He had no nose, mouth, trachea, or chest. As he stalked through the center of that maelstrom, heedless of bullets, blood streaming from his fingers, I couldn’t help but wonder: we got our concept of “king” from this creature?
Did we get “heartless” from him as well?
“We need backup,” I said into my radio. “And every doctor you can find.”
Elijah ran toward the Withered, screaming, but Rack turned suddenly and slipped through the door to the basement. Potash paused to reload his rifle, slapping in another magazine, but Elijah ran straight for the door, only to stagger back as a hail of bullets struck him in the chest. He fell, and Potash crouched just outside the doorway.
“He was ready for Elijah,” I said. “He planned an escape and a ranged weapon to deal with him—he knew everything before we even got here.”
Potash brandished his machete. “This ends tonight. One blow to the neck, remove the head before it can heal.”
“You’ll never get close enough.”
“To hell with that,” said Potash, and he fired his gun around the corner, clearing the stairs before charging in himself.
“Come back!” I shouted. “You can’t kill him without Elijah!” Rack had known we were coming; he’d laid this entire thing as a trap—perhaps this was his end game, to lead us along with a false investigation, culminating in an obvious attempt to contact Brooke and lure us here, completely unprepared for what he really was. Even knowing what he was, we weren’t ready.
I flicked on the light and crawled across the bloody floor to Diana. Her breath was coming in short, pained bursts. Her arm had been torn off at the shoulder, and I shuddered to think of the strength it must have taken to do such a thing.
Diana looked at me, her gasps arrhythmic, almost like hiccups, too weak to speak or even move her remaining arm. As I looked around for something to stanch the flow of blood, Elijah sat up with a grimace.
“That hurt,” he said.
“You’ll be fine,” I said, grabbing a towel from the stove handle. “I’ve seen you heal from worse. Find me more towels.”
“The only injury I’ve had that was worse was…” He grimaced. “Getting hit by that truck.”
“And you were fine,” I said. “Now find me some towels!”
He looked at me oddly, then stumbled across the blood-slick floor to rummage through the cupboards. I folded my lone towel into a tight wad and held it to Diana’s bloody shoulder as tightly as I could, gritting my teeth against the pain I imagined when the touch made her wince. Her muscles convulsed, her chest curling forward as her body tightened, her breath coming in ragged, desperate gasps.
“Death is weak,” I hissed at her, trying to think of anything I could to keep her fighting. “You will not die because you’re not going to let him win, all right? We’re going to stay alive and we’re going to find that demon and we’re going to kill him together. Are you with me Diana? Can you hear me?”
Her eyes started to roll back in her head.
“I found more towels,” said Elijah, dropping down beside me, but we both started suddenly when Ostler shouted in our ears.
“Everybody fall back! He’s outside! Fall back!”
I looked at Diana’s stumpless shoulder. “I don’t even know how to put a tourniquet on that.”
“Here,” said Elijah. He took off his belt and wrapped it around Diana’s shoulders, covering my hand on the towel. He cinched it down and I pulled my hand free; he tightened it further and Diana groaned.
“Did you hit me with that truck on purpose?” asked Elijah. I didn’t answer.
“You’re going to be fine, Diana,” I said, hoisting her onto my back. “We’re going to kill that thing together, do you hear me?” I stepped carefully across the floor, staggering under the weight, headed for the front door. “You and me,” I said, “up close and personal. We’re going to tear off his arm and beat him to death with it.” My radio was filled with screams. I clenched my teeth and walked to the front door. “Elijah, can you see anything? What’s going on out there?”
There was no answer. I turned, slowly, and saw no movement in the house behind me. Orange light spilled out of the kitchen, glinting off the pools of blood and shining on the dark black helmets of the fallen police.
“Elijah!”
He was gone. I struggled to the door, murmuring “fight back, fight back,” to Diana, and when I looked outside, the screams were finished, the gunfire was gone. Even Diana had grown silent and motionless on my shoulder. I turned, trying to see her, but her one arm hung limp and lifeless.
My radio crackled with static, empty white noise seeming to fill the entire world. Everyone we’d brought was dead. I let Diana’s body slump softly to the ground.
A tiny whisper came over the radio: Ostler’s voice,
thin and reedy, like all the strength had been pulled out of it, and nothing was left but the words.
“Isn’t this what you wanted, John? Calm, peaceful silence, and all the dead bodies in the world.”
17
I ran through the darkness, dodging pools of lamplight, slipping on ice and snow. All around me the world came slowly to life, waking up from one nightmare to another—lights came on in bedroom windows, terrified faces peeked out through windows splashed with blood. The street was a scene of gruesome devastation, and somewhere in the middle was the creature who had done it, the Withered king, smiling with another man’s lips and speaking with a dead woman’s voice. I had to get away—I didn’t know where, I just knew I had to go, to run, to get as far from that place as I could.
“You can’t run forever, John.”
I tore my radio from my vest and threw it down, leaving Ostler’s dead voice to whisper alone in the shadows.
Had Elijah betrayed us? I didn’t think so—he didn’t feel like a traitor—but how could I possibly trust my feelings? I didn’t even know how to use them. Elijah was nice to me, he was similar to me, and I felt that we shared some kind of … what? A bond? Because we lived on the fringes of the world, avoiding other people? That didn’t make us instant friends, it made us two people with all the more reason to avoid each other. He worked in a mortuary—for all I knew that was part of the trap, to win my confidence through association with the one thing left that I loved.
I’d built my life around this: getting to know people, making them think I was their friend, all so I could find their weak spot and hit it as hard I could. Now someone had done it to me.
But Elijah had been helping us. Even after the trap was sprung, he’d stayed with me, he’d tried to save Diana, he’d even tried to attack Rack. If he was part of Rack’s plan, wouldn’t he have turned on us? He could have drained my mind a dozen times tonight, leaving me in a blank, mindless coma. Instead he’d run away. Was he too much of a coward to fight us directly? Or had he felt the same link to me that I’d felt with him, and when the moment came he couldn’t go through with it?
