by Tim Lees
I was aware of figures near us, dancing, leaping, and the voices I’d been hearing were no longer in my head. I called out, “Hey! Hey—”
“In the old days, Chris, they would be proud to come. To be one. To give us feet and hands, to let us breathe the warm, strong air. Those days will come again. We’ll be together, you and I. Don’t be afraid, Chris. You won’t die. They don’t die, those who give themselves to us. There is a mix, a blending, and we live forever. I am the blade you press against; no matter how you run, you all come back to me. You’re built like that, it’s how you’re made. Look at them, these little ones; look at them whirl! They know that it will burn them, and yet still—”
The shot was so close, I thought at first that I’d been hit. The smack of gunfire trailing into white noise and tinnitus, and I squirmed like a fish in a net.
Someone moved into my line of sight. I knew her.
“Chris. Up, please. We go. Now, please. Do not be stupid about this.”
Her mouth moved right in front of me, but her voice was several miles away.
“Anna . . .”
I scrabbled on the floor, but when I couldn’t find my feet, she reached a hand down for me. She kept looking at the god. He lay there, three yards off. His body jerked and spasmed. It was an ugly thing, to see myself like that, yellow foam bubbling on my lips. From his throat there came a helpless bray, no longer human, more like the crying of an injured goat or hog.
He was clutching at his side. The light was poor, yet it seemed that, under his fingers, a huge chunk of his rib cage had been blown out, far more than seemed possible. He dragged himself into a sitting position, still clasping his side, and reached towards me with his free hand.
Anna said, “He is not human, I think.”
“No.”
“Good.”
I realized, too late, what she was going to do. I held my hand to stop her, but I couldn’t get a word out. The gun cracked—once, twice, three times.
He didn’t die. It wasn’t one of his abilities. He didn’t bleed. But with each shot, the substance of him spattered out like beads of mercury, racing off over the wet floor in great, fan-shaped arcs. His shoulder was already gone; his lower chest was holed. But he looked at me and his mouth crimped up into an awkward, fractured grin.
“Chris. So good—to talk—with you again.”
He dropped down, and the water rippled over him. He struggled for a moment like some deep-sea creature flung into the shallows; then sank down, quivering . . . dissolving in the murk.
CHAPTER 58
A WAY OUT
“He isn’t dead.”
“We must go, please, Chris.”
There was more light. Or there was light in places where there hadn’t been before. The floor was slick with water, and the ceiling lights reflected in it, doubled, like stalagmites and stalactites. The sparks I’d seen at people’s feet were water spray, caught in the glow.
I tugged at Anna’s sleeve. “Who are these guys? What’s going on?”
“They are pilgrim people. They are everywhere. It is chaos here. We must go, Chris.”
Roused by the activity, the gods were stirring. I couldn’t see them move, but I could feel the ripples in the air, catch the rustle of their thoughts. They were aware; they were awake.
I said, “The circuits are under the floor.”
“I must go, Chris. I cannot stand this. You must go, too. With me, yes?”
“The floor’s wet.”
“Water pipes are open. Someone opens them. Come on!”
“It won’t hold. They’re moving. I can feel them. They’re talking to each other.”
“Fuck hell, Chris! Come on, or I shoot you now!”
The water dragged on our ankles. When we tried to run, it splashed up in great sprays, flashing like fireworks. There were people everywhere. They were crawling on the vast machines, climbing like insects, like lice upon the flesh of the divine. They seemed to have no sense of danger, no fear. They were drawn in, unable to prevent themselves.
“We cannot save them, Chris. They want this. They ask for it.”
“Containment’s going to fail.”
“Then we must be far away, I think.”
“Water’s going to short it out. Unless they’ve built it better than I think they have. Jesus Christ—”
I looked for the door. It had seemed so close when I’d sent her there. Now it took too long to find, and when I did locate it, it was much farther away than I’d expected.
“Is something happening? I don’t recognize this.”
“I know, Chris. I know. Is why it took me so long to come back. Everything is stretching. Everything is wrong . . .”
The water rippled up ahead of us. It seemed to shift all of its own accord, gathering into a mass; a wave broke on our shins, almost knocked us off our feet.
The water wasn’t deep enough for that. The place was changing, somehow. Even the shape of my own body became unfamiliar. I felt wrong inside; too big, too long, a step felt like a stride, everything was pulled out, stretched thin like toffee. There was tension in the air, a horrible, electric feel. My skin prickled. My head ached. I splashed and floundered. I was going in the wrong direction. I was like a traveler in the desert, walking in circles till I died. Except I wasn’t in the desert. I was indoors, in a finite space, a hall. It wasn’t possible to lose myself like that. I tried to focus, tried to concentrate. The noise swelled, twittering, whistling, rising suddenly, then—
Lightning cracked. I had a stark glimpse of the girders in the ceiling, caught in a sharp white light, then darkness.
The floor shook. The water seemed to boil, leaping and dancing, and the noise felt like a solid thing, pushing me down, and it went on and on. Then Anna caught me, and she dragged me forwards. We were stumbling for the door. The spray whirled around us. It rose up like a wall, full of faces, and they were all his face, my face, twisted and laughing, or sad and clownish, a hundred mock emotions passing through his features. He stood before me and I lashed out and he fell away as water once again, raining down, spattering my pants and shoes.
He could not reshape himself. He needed time, and he did not have time. He rose up and I slashed him down. I chopped my arm across him, sliced him through the chest. Cold liquid tumbled over me.
Then we were at the entranceway. It reared above us, seeming to veer and turn like a sail in the wind. We slipped through into sudden hush. Waves slapped at a beach of tiles. Behind, a voice called, “Chriiiiis,” long and mocking. Unless it was the rush of water, or the howl of failing engines, or just my own imagination . . .
My chest hurt. My legs hurt. I tried not thinking of how far we had to go. At the next door, a little pile of clothes marked Thoms’s last resting place. Clothes and a thin gray powder, like bonemeal . . .
We were on the stairs. The air was thick with dust. I couldn’t get my breath. Then in the upper corridor, still running, stumbling.
She was younger, faster, always up ahead. I shouted, “Wait, wait—”
Thunder rumbled underground, the sound of someone dragging an impossibly heavy object over broken stones.
I sucked great lungfuls of the stale air. I coughed, could hardly speak.
“Flask,” I told her, “one of these doors . . .”
“Chris. This is not safe. Everything shakes, the doors are rattling. We cannot . . .”
“Do you want him?”
“Yes, but—”
“Do you want him?”
“He is there, not here. I shoot him, he is still not dead. What else is there?”
“He’ll follow us. He’ll follow me. And we’ll be ready for him. Right?”
CHAPTER 59
TREMBLOR
I found the place. I almost walked straight by it, till I saw the flask there on the floor.
But that was good: if I missed it, then maybe he would, too.
The doors were held back with magnetic clamps, and when the shakes got bad they stammered like road drills. But they stuck. The cables went behind them, taped around the door frame, full circle. A rush job, but not a bad one. Or I hoped not, anyway.
Only the flask and the control console were in the open. They’d not been touched. So if he’d come this way, he either hadn’t seen them or hadn’t cared. With luck, he’d gone some other route. But I knew he’d come up after me. He’d follow if he could.
There was a junction in the corridors a few yards back. We reeled out the extra cable and set the flask around the corner, out of sight. I got it prepped. Then I gave Anna probably the fastest crash course in all history on how to use it.
Somehow, she still seemed to take charge.
“We wait five minutes, yes?” she told me, holding up her fingers. “Five, and we must go. Two of us, we go. Not only me.”
“Five. OK.”
Another shudder grumbled through the walls. The tremors built, and kept on building, and I began to wonder if we’d even get five minutes, or if this time they’d go on and on, and everything would fall. But then they softened, paused, and we were left, waiting for the cycle to begin again.
And it did begin. The tremors built, and died. Built, and died. Like birth pains, you could feel the rhythm, a bit quicker, a bit stronger every time. Rising, always rising . . .
Anna said, “Chris . . .”
I held a hand to hush her. “One more minute. Then we’ll go. One more . . .”
In the stillness between quakes, I heard something snap. Something deep inside the fabric of the building, I could not tell what. A long, slow creaking, and then: snap.
I stood in full view, Anna hidden, waiting for the sign. I’d stay until the next quake. The next one. Not yet. Not now . . . But the next. The next . . .
I was near to giving up, ending it, when something happened.
A thin gray flap unfolded from the wall. It opened without sound, a long gray shape that slowly thickened out and hung there, blocking off the hall. I was so disoriented that I didn’t even register it as a door; I didn’t rationalize. I only knew it was the thing I’d waited for, the reason I was there.
I held my breath.
Into the frame, a head protruded. A head like my head, my face. Hair a little longer, darker, but still my hair. My nose, my eyes. My mouth. My profile, clear as looking in a mirror.
He thrust his chin out, raised his nose, and sniffed the air. Then swiveled around and looked at me.
It was a face without emotion, with nothing in it I could recognize as human.
He stepped into the corridor.
He was naked. His toes flexed on the tiled floor; his fingers settled on the breezeblock wall, seeming to trace a message there, reading it like brail.
The face was mine. The body, too, might have been mine, perhaps, though in a different life; no larger than mine, and the proportions much the same. But it was sculpted, lean and muscular, glistening with sweat or water—I don’t know which—and it was beautiful. It was beautiful in a way I knew I wasn’t; not just toned and strong but gifted with a grace, a way of moving that mixed power and delicacy, the poise and beauty of a dancer or an athlete. It—he—stood, flexed himself, as if waking from a long sleep; the curve of thigh and hip, of muscled arm, the gleaming slab of pectorals, like something from a Michelangelo. He looked about him, and I remembered how he’d looked around after emerging from the mirror, testing his senses, taking in the sights and sounds and smells of this, our world, reveling in sensuality.
He said, “Christopher.”
It was all that I could do to stop myself from glancing back at Anna and the flask.
I made myself look straight ahead. Straight into his eyes.
“It’s going to happen, Chris, just like I said. I think you know that, don’t you? You know it, and you want it.” The building growled and moaned. His voice was honey, and it soothed, it pulled me in. It made me want to listen, made me think, if only for a moment, that maybe what he said was right, and true—and good. “To learn to be a part of things again. Do you dream that? To be one with the seasons and the world? To smell the soil warmed by the sun, the gentle thrusting of the grass, the pressure of all living things to be born, to grow, and die . . . to be a part of that, Chris. To get in—on the ground floor, as it were. Right at the start. A new beginning, a new genesis . . . Soon the world will shrug, slough off its skin of oil and concrete. Life will begin again, as once, long ago. Back, before . . . all this.”
He took a step, pointing his toes exquisitely, his feet just barely brushing on the floor. He seemed to flow towards me. The ceiling lights moved over him, changing as his muscles flexed, gleaming on his chest, his arms, his shoulders . . . as if he was the one fixed point. As if all else stirred and shifted, and he alone was still.
“You and I, Chris. You and we. The same name, our name. Chris, Christopher. The name you gave to me, and I give back to you. I give to you, Chris. Don’t forget. We won’t die, oh no. Together, we’ll be strong; stronger than we’ve ever known, your kind or mine. When the world is changed again, when all the small annoyances of history are swept away . . . Then, Chris, then . . .”
The words made music, dancing in my ears. His steps matched time to them.
His stride was elegant, implacable. I felt, then if I tried to stop him, he’d just walk straight through me. Without effort. Without blinking. Straight through . . .
From a fuzz of thick, dark hair, his penis swung, and I recalled his victims, the dead of Budapest, the sexual wounding, rape without sperm or DNA, with nothing human, nothing animal . . . only the violence. The force, the domination . . .
And I came back to myself at once. It had been an instant, that’s all, but I’d phased out—forgotten everything that I was trying to do—the flask, and Anna—even myself.
I took a step back. Another. And I hit the wall.
He, too, came to a halt. He put his head on one side, deep lines crumpling his brow.
“What’s wrong, Chris? I know that you don’t want to run from me. Perhaps you feel you ought to? Some vague obligation? Look into your heart; you don’t want to run. You want us to be one again. Together always. This—this is why your kind exists. This is the reason you were born. Together, in the Earth and air. We can go anywhere, do anything. No more pain. No more fear. As it was in the beginning, so again, now and forever . . .”
He was almost at the doors. I forced myself towards him. Raised my arm, held out my hand, as if we were about to shake.
And he moved, likewise. One pace. Two. One more, one more . . .
I dropped my arm. It was the signal. He seemed to freeze in mid-step, right there in the doorway, and his eyes grew wide. His hands came up, as if to fend away a blow; his mouth dropped open and a shudder rattled through him like a seizure, shaking his cheeks, his lips, making his arms jerk helplessly.
“Chris—” he said.
Astonishment—shock—accusation—even sorrow—
“I had hoped—had hoped that we—”
And he was gone.
Anna pushed the console at me. She’d done exactly as I’d told her, but the levels were still off the scale. I’d never seen it this way, the gauges flickering, all up in the red.
Containment works on gradients; the trap we’d rigged had simply zapped him in an instant. No finesse, no subtlety. I tried to compensate. I made adjustments, boosted up the outer rings, dropped the inner, and then gradually, when nothing bad happened, I equalized the two. The readings stayed up high, then dropped, and stabilized.
The floor began to jump.
The steel doors rattled like machine-gun fire. I bent over the flask and locked it, double-locked it. I had him, I was sure. I pulled the cables
loose. I picked the flask up. It thumped on my leg. The console dragged along the floor. I unplugged that, too, and discarded it.
“Please. We must be out of here.”
Dust fell from the ceiling. First a trickle, then like smoke, filling our eyes, our throats. Tears ran down my face. Another door, another flight of stairs. Everything shaking, clattering. Then we were up, ground level. Offices where papers spilled across the floor. Cabinets rattling. Lights out. Screens dead. Moonlight through the windows, and the barn a big pale block off in the middle distance, and closer, much closer, one of those electric golf carts. That was promising. I tugged the window frames. They were locked down tight.
“Chris. Cover head, please.”
She had a chair in her hands and swung it, shattering the pane from top to bottom. Night air poured in over us. Glass speckled her hair, her sleeves.
“Now exit, please.”
We ran, bent double. No one shot at us. The flask clunked on my leg. I tripped, I stumbled, but I didn’t dare stop. The rumble in the ground was constant now. No more reprieves. The earth itself felt fragile, a thin crust breaking into pieces. I grabbed Anna’s arm, pulled her to the cart, praying it would start. Sudden relief as the engine caught. We lurched, trundling forwards. Hideously slow. I thumped the seat as if to urge it on. A fat, gold moon shone down.
The place had changed.
The fences had been breached. A short stretch here, another there—not cut but trampled to the ground by sheer brute force, by weight of numbers. Trampled flat.
The pilgrims had arrived.
They scattered through the compound, gathering in groups up on the rise. I’d never seen an open-air revival, but there was no mistaking: in the midst of all this chaos, that’s exactly what was going on. Somebody declaiming in a rich, bass voice loud cries of “Praise Him! Hallelujah!” like a Sunday in some small Midwestern town. Singing started in a loose, haphazard fashion, suddenly boosted by a choir, with firm, vivid harmonies. I caught a fragment of “Lift High the Cross.”
