Matthew and Epp, Probability Angels: Part 9

Probability Angels: Part 9

Probability Angels

Part 9: Where Sarpedon’s Body Lay

By

Joseph Devon

Eyeball and Printer Friendly Version

(Please note: This story is the ninth part of a series of stories beginning with, “Probability Angels: Part 1,” and while it is designed to stand alone it does draw heavily on the foundation of characters and events that were created in “Probability Angels: Part 1,” and continued through Parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. Basically, I have to highly recommend that you start at “Probability Angels: Part 1” and continue on in order. You can find the parts labeled and all in a row over in the categories section on the side of your screen.

Or you can go here and buy the book or go here and view the book in its entirety.)

 

Kyo stepped into the snow on the heels of a young tester who had volunteered to be his invitation back to the mountaintop. When he had left an hour ago volunteers had been in short supply; nobody wanted to be the one who had to pass out after Kyo returned with his news.

Kyo stared down at the rocks, his head tilted, his eyes so intense with thought they looked angry. Testers’ heads started turning, conversations stopped and most took a few hesitant steps in his direction in order to make sure they could hear whatever it was he was going to say.

Kyo showed no sign of noticing any of this; he only stared, his eyebrows drawing down on his face, his hideous thick knit suit flapping absurdly in the wind, one thumb reaching up to scratch the thick bit of stubble along his chin.

In the end the tester who had escorted him spoke up as he prepared a comfortable piece of snow to rest in. “He’s not there,” the tester said moments before a tremendous yawn cut off his words. When he had regained control of his mouth he closed his eyes. “Epp’s body wasn’t there,” he said, then fell into a deep sleep.

Kyo only stood there thinking.

“Well what does that mean?” someone shouted from the crowd.

Mary, standing next to Matthew, snorted to herself and shook her head. “How long do you think we would have stood here waiting for him,” she pointed at Kyo with her eyes, “to say something?”

“Would’ve been awhile,” Matthew said, his tone less judgmental than Mary’s, more like someone sharing an inside joke.

Mary turned to walk away. She made it a few steps before being shaken from her thoughts by the sound of chains clanking and she jumped sideways with a yelp as she stepped too close to the rotted thing that Kyo had dragged up to the mountaintop a few hours earlier. The digital clock planted in the snow next to it was ticking down and both Mary and Matthew noticed that there were only minutes left on it.

“Uh, Kyo,” Matthew shouted, his eyes never leaving the whir of LED’s that constituted the hundredths of seconds ticking away. There was no response.

“Kyo!” Mary shouted. Matthew got the feeling that Mary did not have room for much more Kyo in her day.

The clock continued its mad flashing dance as the minutes all vanished and suddenly there were nothing but seconds left.

The thing struggled to lift its head under the weight of its chains and it eyed Mary’s calf with a toothy grin on its face.

“Kyo!” Matthew shouted, and now the crowd that had gathered to watch Kyo’s return began to shift its focus to the clock ticking down. A few more people began shouting and Mary backed away as the seconds ticked down past ten.

“Kyo!” Matthew yelled. Then more and more people began yelling, some of them walking over to him and trying to get in his face. As the final few seconds ticked away, Kyo lifted his head and, with eyes squinted nearly shut, stared across the snowy expanse of rock at Mary.

The clock sat there blinking all zeros and nothing happened for a few thick, plodding seconds. Then the chains holding the thing down disappeared.

The thing stood up slowly, wriggling its shoulders in its ragged coat, testing to see if it really was free. Then it sniffed the air all around and smiled. Matthew was tensed, waiting for it to pounce or jump at one of them, but the thing seemed to be unable to come to grips with its surrounding and for awhile stared around at all of them, grinning hungrily. Then it lunged at Mary, who was just out of range. Mary took a few quick steps back as the thing lost its footing in the loose snow and, falling onto one hand, it braced itself then launched forward like an animal, hands out in front to balance its shambling run, its toes pushing it forward with strong strides until it noticed that Mary was much further away than another tester who was off to its right and it veered, teeth bared, eyes peering out of its rotted face at its new target.

“Kyo!,” Mary screamed, breaking the silence, and then action and noise erupted everywhere as the thing charged across the mountaintop, getting more and more familiar with the terrain, making its turns tighter and better, getting its feet under itself for powerful leaps forward as a handful of testers on the peak slowly began to be herded closer and closer to the edge of the mountain and Matthew found himself standing next to a breathless Mary and a thoughtful Gus, among others, with a thousand foot fall back to the rest of the world at his heels and the thing standing in front of them, rearing up to its full height, taking all of them in with a sweeping dead gaze.

Then it leapt and Matthew’s little group broke and scattered but the thing knew enough to pick one target and stick with it and Matthew fell into a cower, his knees slamming into his chin while his arms locked over his head as the thing pounced.

Then nothing happened.

Matthew peeked out from behind his tuxedo jacket and saw the thing’s teeth, inches from his face. He jumped back and the thing’s teeth chomped down to take a bite at the air as it was pulled up short.

“Easy there,” Kyo said, holding onto one end of a chain that was wrapped around the thing’s neck like a leash. The thing lunged again and Kyo’s feet slid an inch across the rock before he dug his heels in, looping another wrap around his forearm, tugging the chain taut across the thing’s neck.

“Kyo, god damn you!” Matthew shouted, walking back towards where Mary and Gus were standing. He turned with assumed camaraderie to Mary, expecting her to tear into Kyo herself, but when Matthew looked he saw that she was whispering with Gus, her face absent of anger, Gus’s red hair and plain face nodding along as she spoke.

When they stopped whispering Mary looked up at Kyo, their faces the exact opposite of what Matthew would have expected, with Kyo the one looking angry while Mary looked penitent.

“You disappoint me,” Kyo said through gritted jaw, “but I honestly think if Epp were here that he’d be more pissed off than I am.” And the thing gave another lurch against its stainless steel chain and Kyo’s feet slipped another inch across the rocks before he braced himself and yanked the thing to a halt.

“Can we have a minute?” Mary asked.

“Then what?” Kyo said.

“Then you can release it again.”

“What?” Matthew said, now backing away from Kyo, the thing, Mary and Gus, everyone really.

Kyo stared at her, then threw an empty hand down at the snow where another clock appeared with one minute already ticking away on its glowing red face.

“And I want everyone else out of the way,” Mary said. “In case I’m wrong,” she added as an afterthought.

“Behind me, kiddies,” Kyo shouted out. The testers who were gathered watching all shuffled nervously around to stand behind Kyo, Matthew falling into the crowd as well, a few people standing up on tiptoe to see better.

“I think I’ll stay here, thank you,” Gus said.

“You sure?” Mary asked, looking him up and down.

“Ya,” Gus said.

They both stood side by side, staring at the thing, their heads leaning towards each other as they began to whisper again, nodding and talking, correcting and thinking as the clock ticked down. Their nodding became more frequent and their whispers less and less as they came to a number of quick agreements and then the clock struck zero, the chains fell off, and the thing’s feet pushed off against the rock and it began hurtling across the mountaintop towards Mary and Gus.

Mary and Gus split apart, both circling to get around to the side of the thing, which faltered as it watched them separate. “On me, on me, on me,” Mary said over and over again and the thing made up its mind and veered to chase her down. She stared as it charged, her head lowered as she concentrated, her hands, palms up, held loosely at her sides.

The thing ran along the edge of a rock outcrop, splinters and broken sheets of stone rattling down the slope as its feet pounded their way forward. Mary stared, waited, and Matthew watched the hairs on the thing’s head began to raise off its skull and then Matthew looked down and saw Mary’s fingers snap one after the other and the entire mountain top lit up in first one, then another bolt of lightning that struck down in the thing’s path sending it skittering off balance as it ran. A few steps later it regained its footing and Matthew heard Mary whisper, “Shoot,” to herself as the pungent odor of ozone wafted through the air.

The thing was rattled, its run was slowed but the lightning had missed and, with its balance back, it began to pick up speed as it ran towards Mary. But then Gus was behind it, a roll of tape in his hand which he tossed to Mary, who tossed it back to Gus, who tossed it back to Mary, as the thing became haphazardly entwined, its legs tripping up and one arm getting pinned behind its back as the tape randomly drew crisscrosses over its body.

It paused again, and Matthew could see it straining before its pinned arm broke free, tape snapping and ripping in long elastic strips, and it turned again to look at Mary, only Gus was much closer now and was really working it over with the tape, parts of the thing completely hidden, strange things happening in the air all around as time and space were altered by the roll of caution tape.

But then it got another hand out and Gus got too close and the thing landed a savage backhand, its entire body twisting to put power behind the stroke and Gus was knocked onto the ground, stunned.

The thing turned one last time to look at Mary. It reached one hand up and, with effort, ripped its other hand free. Then both hands reached up and its fingers dug into the thick layers of yellow plastic coating its chest and it pulled, popping and crinkling and snapping sounds emanating from where it stood as it got the better of the tape, pieces of its shirt ripping off as well, and it became free.

Mary watched all of this without wavering. More and more tape fell to the ground all around the thing as it panted hungrily through rotted lips. Mary extended one arm out in front of her, her elbow bent at a relaxed angle. And, with the thing stuck in one place long enough for her to get a bead on it, she snapped, the dry pop of her fingers sounding barely half a second before a great bolt of lightning ripped through the air and spiked through the thing like some great glowing nail being hammered home.

The thing stumbled with a drunken lurch to one side, put a leg out in front to try and take a step forward, then collapsed over backwards.

Mary looked down at the unconscious thing and her arm extended again, her fingers poised for another snap when Kyo stepped forward and with freakish dexterity lassoed the thing’s foot with a length of chain, tugging it across the mountaintop on its back, away from Mary. “I think he’s had enough for now,” Kyo said, “don’t you?”

Mary looked up, dreamily, the fight slowly fading from her, her chest rising and falling as she took quick breath after breath. She pursed her lips and exhaled, trying to release her adrenaline through her mouth. Then she turned and walked over to where Gus was sitting up and feeling his jaw. Before she could even ask he held up a hand and nodded, letting her know he was fine.

Mary turned and looked over the crowd that had been watching. She scanned the rows of eyes watching her, carefully looking over all the faces to see that they had been paying attention. “They’re very powerful…but they’re not invincible,” she said simply. Then she added, “We can fight them.”

“Took you long enough,” Kyo muttered, stooping down and hoisting the thing up over his shoulder.

“I want anyone who doesn’t have a task requiring immediate attention to gather around the dry-erase board in ten minutes,” Mary said. “Tell everyone. I want every trick, every tool, every little way anyone has ever come up with of interacting with this world up on that board by the end of the hour.”

There were some questions, some people shouted a few things over each other, some groups broke off into separate conversations and a lot of people stood still as the crowd drifted and broke apart around them. The most common questions being shouted out, despite the past few minutes, were still about Epp.

“He’ll find us,” Mary was saying, “or we’ll go out and find him. But to do that we’ve got to be able to survive out there. So lets just focus on the first thing and…Kyo?” she searched the crowd as she shouted his name. Kyo stopped, the thing still slung over his shoulder, and turned to look back at her, eyebrows raised. “Kyo, I’m assuming you’re going to start looking for Epp?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Kyo shouted, waving over his shoulder as he turned and continued walking. “Not a problem.”

Matthew was still trying to come to grips with what he had just watched when Kyo passed carrying the thing’s rotted body. “Come on,” Kyo said. Mathew followed after, walking in Kyo’s footsteps.

“We’ll bring him over there,” Kyo said, pointing to a far off peak. Kyo’s form wavered with the thing over his shoulder and he flashed a few feet forward before tripping up and falling to his knees with an exasperated grunt.

“You alright?”

“This isn’t nearly as easy as it looks,” Kyo said, an annoyed scowl on his face, and he struggled to pick the thing up. “It’s hard to jump with an unconscious body over your shoulder.”

“Can’t say I’ve ever tried it,” Matthew said, catching up to him.

Kyo put the thing down on a bit of ledge sheltered from the wind. “I had to try and lead an unconscious Epp back home once,” he said. His face was stern as usual, but there was something rippling underneath and Matthew knew enough to stay quiet. Bit by bit recently the topic nobody had wanted to discuss had come up in the form of stories and tales. “But at the time he was rather closely bound to Isaac Newton.” Kyo smiled, remembering. “And even then the landing wasn’t the smoothest thing in the world.”

Matthew watched Kyo get a hold of himself, the brief surfacing of emotion now fading as he turned back to the thing and tried to move quickly again, his form wavering, then stumbling.

“You got him up here,” Matthew said, chuckling.

“Up is easy,” Kyo said, happily diving into the conversation and letting Epp’s memory get washed away by the discussion of trivial nonsense. “Getting up to the mountaintops is a whole different type of jump. But traveling with one of you while you’re unconscious is like lugging a sack of rice through a bog.”

Matthew thought about this. “Isn’t rice grown in a bog?”

“Shut up, Matthew.”

“Gotcha.”

“And speaking of Epp, how much of our little theory did you tell to everyone else?” Kyo asked, kneeling down and gripping the thing’s chin between thumb and forefinger and lifting its head up to examine its eyes.

“I don’t know,” Matthew said. “You started screaming all over the mountain about how you needed an escort because you were headed back to the cathedral and then you were off. I got a lot of questions, tried to answer them but wasn’t even sure what I knew, to be honest. Then you were back. That was it.”

Kyo didn’t respond at first, he only continued examining the thing’s face until he seemed satisfied by what he saw there and, giving it a quick slap on the cheek, he stood up and forgot about it.

“Anyone have anything helpful to say?” Kyo asked.

“Not really.”

Kyo had once again stopped listening, though. Instead he was looking over Matthew’s shoulder. “Wonder what he’s up to,” Kyo said to himself.

Matthew turned around and saw Gus walking alone down an empty spine of rock away from the mountaintop.

“You think he knows something about Epp?” Matthew said.

“That guy?” Kyo said, laughing. “Gods no. It was an honest question, Matthew. I just wonder what he’s up to.”

“You could ask him.”

“Yeah, I could do that.” Kyo stared off at Gus disappearing over a ridge. “Anyway,” he said, turning back to Mathew, “I’m supposed to start looking for Epp. Now…you don’t happen to know where Epp might be, do you?”

“Not really, no.”

Kyo nodded and sighed. “Well I’m fresh out of ideas, then.” He smiled and started walking away. “Think I’ll go for a walk instead.”

“Wait? What?” Matthew asked, perplexed, watching Kyo head off down the mountain.

—–

 

The whine of a lawnmower somewhere in the distance mingled with the ever present buzz of insects in the surrounding area. The grass on the front lawn was the dappled yellow of Van Gogh sunlight, the green long since pressed out of it by the imposing heat of summer.

A two story brown wood house stood set back from the road, the brambles and bushes of the wild popping up instantly where the hand of man stopped at the lawn’s edge. A car was parked in a detached garage that sat at the end of a driveway that came off of a road that led out to a highway.

Inside the house, Zachery Tyler, Zach to his friends, was sitting on a couch upstairs flipping through the channels of an old television set and wondering what he was going to do with the rest of his weekend. His parents were upstate visiting with his mother’s sister and wouldn’t be back until that night. He debated calling up some of his friends, but none of them had real jobs for the summer whereas he was due at his father’s paint store in town no later than eight o’clock tomorrow morning. It seemed best that he find something more low key than what his buddies might be up to rather than suffer through another hung-over Monday morning smelling paint fumes. He didn’t quite know what that might be, but for now he felt safer just sitting back and flipping through the television channels. The air-conditioner was broken and the window was open to combat the stifling heat. Outside the sound of the lawnmower disappeared leaving only the buzzing of the insects hanging in the air. Far off the high-pitched honk of a diesel horn sounded as somewhere out in the prairie a train made its way along.

Unnoticed by Zach, a thick length of strong rope was tied around his waist. The other end of the rope was strung out all throughout the room, sometimes drifting off into the rest of the house, as if it had been left to simply dangle and drag wherever he went.

Gus, standing in the doorway to the room, equally unnoticed by Zach, sighed sadly, then reached down and picked up the rope. He began running it in lengths through his hands, making loops that collapsed neatly against his waist in a strange coil that seemed capable of holding any amount of rope without ever bulking up too large. Gus was five minutes into what was shaping up to be a lengthy process of untangling and coiling when a voice behind him spoke up.

“You know, the rope is largely symbolic,” Kyo said.

“I do not believe in short cuts, Kyo,” Gus said, continuing with singular determination to collect and organize his rope. “However symbolic, this rope was the commitment I made to Zachery here, and this rope is the one I’m going to use.”

Gus had a strange drawl to his voice that Kyo couldn’t place and when he spoke longer sentences, Kyo was noticing, Gus had the habit of pausing with his whole body before speaking, as if every sentence coming out of his mouth had been labored over for centuries, then forgotten entirely in the split second before it was spoken.

Kyo watched Gus patiently unknotting a particularly sticky piece of rope. “This is going to take awhile, isn’t it?”

“You don’t need to be here, Kyo. I never asked for your help.”

Kyo walked over to the couch and sat down, the couch doubling in appearance as a phantom couch reacted to Kyo’s weight while the couch Zach was sitting on didn’t move at all.

“Sure thing,” Kyo said, turning to watch the television. “I’ll just leave. Walk away from Gus and his Mysterious Push of Doom.”

Gus stopped what he was doing for a minute and turned to look over his shoulder at Kyo, confused.

“I don’t know what it is I’m supposed to be doing, so I’m going to bother you until I figure it out,” Kyo said, responding to Gus’s look. Kyo held his hand in front of Zach’s remote causing Zach to click ineffectively over and over again, holding his hand up at an angle, then pushing the button very hard as if that would help before Kyo took his hand away and the television went back to responding to the remote control.

“Looks more like you’re bored,” Gus said.

“Maybe. Although bored isn’t quite right,” Kyo said, fingers drumming the arm of the couch as he turned to stare out the window. “Restless maybe? Look, I don’t like not knowing what to do. That’s all. So I saw you leave the mountain and I decided to see what was going on.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be looking for Epp?”

“Oh, right, let me just do that.” Kyo lifted up one of the couch cushions, then plopped it back down. “Well he’s not under there.” He looked up. “You think I should check the closet?”

Gus shook his head and turned back to his work.

Kyo, a little unnerved himself by his own attitude, regrouped and started again. “Look, either Epp’s okay, in which case he’ll find us. Or he’s not okay, in which case he won’t find us and there’s no telling where he is. Or he’s just gone, in which case nobody finds anyone. But those are the options and I don’t figure into any of them.”

“You could at least try.”

“I tried,” Kyo said, and the bitterness in his voice made Gus shift uncomfortably as he worked. “I was way too late getting to the cathedral to get a bearing on Epp. But I looked around, and then I started looking in the most likely spots Epp might be, and you know what? I realized rather quickly that this is Epp I’m trying to find. The guy’s two thousand years old. And he loved everything that humans do. He loved Buddhist temples and garage rock concerts and bush camps and ice fishing and salt mines and battlefields and distilleries and nude beaches. So after I popped through the first ten possible spots that came into my head and I had already traveled twice around the globe I realized that looking for Epp in all the usual places meant, essentially, looking everywhere on earth. I have the same odds of finding him using a methodical search that I do picking places at random. He could, quite literally, be in the coat closet in the hall. So I thought I maybe needed a better plan. Only I don’t have one.” He looked over at Gus. “So I decided to settle for a riddle instead.”

“Riddle?” Gus asked, taking offense to the term.

“Yes. Why does the mysterious Gus opt to come down here with the things in order to make Zachery here a better person?”

“This is what I do, Kyo. No riddle about it,” Gus answered, taking another length of rope and looping it calmly over his arm, then settling it into the never-ending loop at his side.

“You’re going to die, you know. I’m not going to stick around here forever.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“So that’s it then. This is creative self-destruction?”

Gus shook his head, a blush of anger rising in his neck. “This is what I do, Kyo,” he repeated. “If I’m to die doing it, than that’s what will happen. But I’d rather die doing this than live doing anything else.”

Kyo stood up and walked through Zach and past Gus. “This is fucking ridiculous,” he was saying under his breath.

“Leaving already?” Gus asked.

“No, not leaving,” Kyo said pacing angrily, “just going to poke around in the coat closet.”

“You should check the one downstairs, too.”

Kyo stared at Gus, flat faced for a moment, then burst out laughing. “What am I doing?” he asked wearily before walking back over to the couch and sitting down.

Gus paused in his work, his body wavering slightly as he debated opening his mouth again. Finally he spoke. “I have to admit, this whole thing seems to have you rather rattled more than I’d expect.”

“I haven’t been this lost in quite awhile,” Kyo looked up from the couch. Outside, the lawnmower started up again, its harsh distant roar mixing with the incessant buzz of the insects. “Not to mention, there’s only me out looking for him. They have who knows how many people looking for him. They’re going to find him first.”

“Couldn’t you track one of them down? Try to get some idea of what they know?”

“It’s hard to get any information out of them unless I happen to catch one of them on their way to go see Epp. What I need, really, is someone who’s just hanging where a bunch of them are around, just kind of watching and waiting.”

“Well, I’m here. And you’re there. And everyone else is up on the mountains.”

“Yes.”

“So I guess that option isn’t about to happen.”

—–

 

Bartleby sat at the bar next to the bowling alley in New York’s Port Authority bus terminal. He had wandered the city for the past few hours trying to figure out what he should do, trying to figure out what on earth was happening. He had turned his phone off a few hazy days ago and turned it back on only recently. He had pieced together some of what was going on from the texts and messages that had piled up, although he was lost on a lot of things, not to mention everyone sounded so angry on their messages, like he was doing something wrong by not being instantly available for whatever they needed. The sound of Mary, calmly leaving messages, then angrily leaving messages, then angry but trying to sound calm leaving messages, made him scared and a little nauseous and he felt even less like contacting someone now than he had before he had turned his phone back on.

But he had wanted to talk to someone about something, anything, and had come to the Port Authority on the off chance that some newbies were hanging around. It had been a long shot, from what he was able to understand from the messages, that there was anyone anywhere but he decided to try. Having scanned the bar and seen nobody of his kind to say hi to, Bartleby had assumed form, sat down, and started talking to the bartender.

And that’s what he was doing, a Diet Coke in front of him, the glass sweating beads onto the smooth bar, when he heard them.

“Told you there’d be nobody here,” one of them said. “This place got picked clean days ago.”

“Guess you were right,” the other one said.

Bartleby pinned his smile to his face and stared at the brass beer taps while the bartender giggled and continued telling him about some band she was going to listen to that night and Bartleby nodded and watched in the brass as the two things behind him walked through a few paying customers.

“Call Hector, tell him it’s empty here. No sign of Kyo. No sign of anyone.”

“You sound testy,” the other one said. “Maybe you want to call him yourself? Give him a little what for?”

“This is starting to suck,” the other one said. “Nothing here but bones and muscle. You know? This one has a body,” and he swatted at the back of the head of one of the drinkers sitting at the bar. “And this one has a body,” he swatted again, “and this one and this one.” Swat and swat. Bartleby was next in line and his hands gripped the edge of the bar as he watched in the brass while the bartender continued talking, completely oblivious to what was standing across the bar from her.

“You know?” the one who had been doing the swatting said. And he stopped swatting, but while the other one dialed his phone he came and peered across the bar at the bartender, then at Bartleby, just taking in the scenery Bartleby was sure, but his fingers were growing hot where they were pinching the edge of the bar and there was nothing in his head but smile and nod and stay calm stay calm stay calm.

“You want another soda?” the bartender was asking, and Bartleby wasn’t answering because he wasn’t sure what would happen if he opened his mouth. For that matter he wasn’t sure what would happen if he turned to look at the thing on his right, or if the thing swatted the back of his head, or if they caught on that he was only flesh and blood temporarily. All he knew was that he could still smell the disgusting odor of flesh roasted with burning clothes from his last run in with some of these things and why did the bartender have to ask him if he wanted a refill now?

“Yes,” Bartleby managed to say, and his concentration was slipping and he could feel the bar getting hot under his fingers.

“Were you drinking diet or regular coke?” the bartender asked.

Bartleby wasn’t sure but he thought there was smoke starting to drift up from under his fingers and the thing next to him was sniffing the air.

“Anyway, nobody’s here,” the first one said.

“Yeah, let’s try out in the alley.”

“Sounds good.”

And then they were gone.

Bartleby jumped off his stool, catching it just barely before it toppled over backwards onto the floor and walked then ran into the bathroom where he locked himself in a stall and found himself breathing uncomfortably fast for a few minutes before he managed to calm down.

With every breath he took, the memory of charred flesh lingered in the back of his throat.

—–

 

A few days later Gus stood as Zachery stared out the window at the night settling over the grassland to the east. Fireflies were glowing, their green flashes sprinkled over the landscape. Warm air was billowing through the screen like a furnace door; far off on the horizon heat lightning flashed silently.

“Hello,” something shouted from the front door. “Anybody home?” Gus heard someone rapping on the door jamb, then heard footsteps coming up the stairs. He turned as two things walked into the room. One was mostly skeleton; the second was mostly whole with only an ace bandage wrapped firmly around one of his hands.

“Didn’t believe it when I saw you today,” the nearly whole one said to Gus.

Then Kyo was in the room and the mostly rotted one collapsed and the mostly whole one was up in the air, Kyo’s hand lifting him up by his neck. Kyo’s hand was tight enough on the mostly whole man’s throat that his mouth was open, guttural sounds choking out of it, his tongue swelling up through his lips.

“You know who I am?” Kyo asked.

The man tried to answer.

“You come here again, you’re dead. Anyone else who wants to come here, has to come through me, you understand?”

The thing made some noises.

“Okay,” Kyo said, “now give me your cell phone.” He dropped the man to the ground where he gasped and held his throat tenderly then searched his pocket and handed over his cell phone before skittering back into the hallway, disappearing.

Kyo clacked the buttons on the phone, searching through it before tossing it over onto the couch where it eventually disappeared.

“Nothing,” he said.

“So you’ve decided to stick around?” Gus asked.

“Haven’t decided anything yet, but they don’t need to know that.”

“I thought I saw something when we were in town today.”

“Me too,” Kyo said. “It was only a matter of time.”

“And what do you think is going to happen now?”

“They’re going to leave us alone forever.”

“That’s what I was hoping.”

Kyo smiled. “You know, it does bother me a bit that you’re so damned sure that I’m going to stay here and protect you.”

“Get over yourself, Kyo. I’d be crazy to be doing this with the notion that you’re going to protect me. Just how many of them do you think you could keep off of me? Five or six? More than that and, sure, you’ll be fine, but I’ll be dead.”

“So what is it you’re counting on?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that this,” and Gus looked at Zachary, “this is what we do. If we lose track of that, we lose track of everything.”

Kyo’s eyes roamed over Zach, over Gus, then out to the deepening bruise of twilight outside.

“No new ideas on how to find Epp?”

“It’s Epp,” Kyo answered. “If he’s okay then he can take care of himself.”

“What else would he be?”

“I don’t know,” Kyo said. He looked down at the thing lying on the floor with a knife sticking out of its throat. “But if he’s not Epp I don’t think I want to be the one who finds him.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Me either.” Kyo scratched the back of his head and changed the subject. “Look, are you for real? Or are you just doing this because you’re an idiot?”

Gus smiled, the past few days spent with Kyo having done a lot to mellow his attitude towards him. “I made my choices Kyo. Same as all of us. I chose to serve them, and I intend to do so. I’ll not have those things deciding what I do and I certainly won’t have them overturning my choices for me.”

“Your choices,” Kyo said with a bit of disdain. “I never quite got to make those.”

“If you don’t mind me saying, that’s a bit of a lie. You cared enough about something other than yourself to wind up here. You lived a certain kind of life, walked a certain kind of path, you chose all the footsteps right up to those before you died. I’m of the mind that those last few choices are simply the tail end of a much longer train of decisions. You made your choices just the same as all of us.”

“I never agreed to stick around here. That was sort of thrust upon me.”

“Again,” Gus said, “you’d have to claim that your entire life was thrust upon you to negate the place you now stand as anything but where you were meant to be.”

“Sure,” Kyo said, conceding without any real feeling in his voice, and again he flipped the conversation over. “So, what, you make little Timmy here–”

“His name is Zachery.”

“…Zachery into a better corn husker and everyone gets to be happy? That seem like a fitting use of your eternal rest?”

“It doesn’t to you?”

“Seems like a waste of time. The odds of him doing anything monumental with his life are barely present.”

“Just as long as he becomes great at whatever he chooses, that’s what important.”

“So if he wants to be a great rodeo clown, this will all be worthwhile? You’ll have risked your life and dragged me along for the ride for good reason?”

“How far do you think you get in finding the cure for polio if you haven’t made significant advances in indoor plumbing? You think the sterilization needed is possible with hand pumps and wood fires? Yet few people bother to applaud the person who perfected solder, or who figured out how to make cheap copper piping, or who invented the elbow joint. Everything relies on everything else. Greatness anywhere is greatness everywhere. If he becomes a truly great rodeo clown, then, yes, I’ve done my job.”

“You don’t,” Kyo rubbed the stubble on his chin, “you don’t exactly have a lot of cynicism in you, do you?”

“And this upsets you?”

Kyo didn’t answer.

“You’re afraid of me, aren’t you?” Gus smiled. “You can’t not protect something when you’ve come to identify with it, can you? Once you commit you even forget all about yourself, and that’s become tiresome for you? Ya?”

“Shut up, Gus,” Kyo said, looking around the room. “And what is with that ‘Ya?’ I keep hearing you use that syllable with that funny accent, what is that? Dutch?”

“Ya.”

“What were you? A sailor or something?”

Gus didn’t answer, only watched Kyo stare his hard stare, the thoughts rumbling behind his eyes practically audible. “No,” Kyo said. “Not a sailor. This is home for you, isn’t it?” Kyo looked out the window. “Not this house in particular, mind you, but the wide open grasslands, the prairies, all this crap. This is where you’re from. Dutch, hard working, no sarcasm, I’m guessing eighteen hundreds or thereabouts. Right?”

Gus found himself smiling in spite of himself as Kyo’s mind carved out his identity.

“You were a homesteader, weren’t you? You farmed this land way back when. But then what happened?”

And Gus’s smile departed.

“You get run off your land? Some dirty cattle rancher tried to run you off your claim? Now that would explain a lot.”

“I don’t care to talk about that.”

“Oh?” Kyo asked, getting away from himself a bit. “And why not?”

“You want to tell me how you died?” Gus asked, and Kyo immediately shut down.

“Fair enough,” Kyo nodded. There was an awkward silence, things had slid into uncomfortable areas for both men and for a shaky few moments a faint hint of anger hung in the air with the heat lightning in the distance. Then it faded.

“So,” Kyo said. “What’re you going to do with Johnny here?”

“Zachery.”

“Zachery. You going to break his legs?”

“I’m what you might call a purist. I intend, once I’ve studied him enough, to simply reach into his heart and push it down, then see from how dark a place he can bounce back from.”

“You haven’t even started yet?”

Gus shook his head. “No, I’ve only been doing research so far. Haven’t actually pushed yet.”

Kyo turned back to Zach. “Always seemed a touch barbaric to me.”

“That’s because you’ve never done it, no? It is how we bring out the best they have to offer.”

“Nope, never pushed. Everything got decided for me in one instant lump, and I never had to draw energy like you. So I guess I can keep going without needing it.”

“And what happens if you do push?” Gus was curious.

“I’ve never tried.”

“Because you can’t or because you won’t?”

“I’m not real sure you want to be having this conversation with the one thing that’s keeping you alive right now.”

“I suppose you have a point there.”

Kyo squinted and looked out the window, then brushed past Gus to get a closer look. “That was fast,” he said.

Gus joined him and looked out onto the rear lawn where two of them had just appeared.

“I guess he didn’t listen,” Gus said.

Kyo shook his head. “Those are two new ones.”

Then another two forms appeared in the gathering darkness. At first these new two weren’t noticed by the other two on the lawn, but eventually they all saw each other and came together, each pair striding across the lawn, snippets of noise drifting up to the window when their talking become loud enough to hear, everyone gesticulating and waving their arms and pointing up at the house.

“What are they doing?” Gus asked.

“They’re arguing over who gets to eat you,” Kyo answered.

Gus swallowed, nodded to himself for reassurance, then turned away from the window and focused back on Zach, who was lounging at the far window and talking on his cell phone.

“Guess I’ll get ready for wave two,” Kyo said, and he slipped his jacket off before folding it neatly over the back of a chair.

—–

 

“I want information and I want it now,” Hector was saying as he walked up and down the narrow patch of carpeting between two long rows of desks, all of which were full of his people manning phones.

“I want to know what people are doing, I want to know who’s gathered where and who I haven’t heard from, I want to know where Kyo is, I want to know if anyone has made it onto a mountain, I want to know if any of them have come down. I want to know anything anyone knows and I want to know it as of yesterday.”

Everyone at the desk was wearing a headset plugged into a phone and they were all half listening to Hector while they sat as comfortably as possible in their chairs and carried on their conversations, the hum of which mixed with ringing phones.

“I want to know-”

“That’s another phone call about something in the mid-west,” Nyx said, leaning back in her swivel chair, feet propped up on her desk while she chomped on a piece of gum.

“One lone tester is nice and all,” Hector said, leaning down, placing his hands on her shoulder and speaking low at her ear, “but he won’t last long. What we need is hundreds, thousands, of testers out in the open. Anyone at the farm house stumbles onto a way to get that to happen, you let me know.”

“It’s not just one tester,” Nyx said.

“Two testers then, it doesn’t really matter,” Hector said, turning away and starting to walk down the aisle again. “What we need-”

“It’s not two testers either,” Nyx said, her gloved hand draped lazily over her mouthpiece. “It’s one tester,” she held up her free hand with one finger extended, “and Kyo.” Another finger popped up.

Hector stopped and looked back, Nyx’s face reflecting back at herself in his mirrored sunglasses.

—–

 

“It looks like it’s really going to start coming down,” Zach said to his friend on the phone. “The wind’s kicked up like crazy here this past hour.” He walked across his empty living room, strips of cheap pine painted white lined the walls and a couch sat on top of an old area rug. The television was on with the sound muted, images flickering across in rapid succession during an advertising break.

“Nah,” Zach was saying. “My parents are out again. Nobody’s here.”

One of the things stumbled backwards through him as Kyo, arms full with another one, had to settle for a kick to its face.

“It’s just me here alone,” Zach went on, turning away from the window and walking through Kyo struggling to keep three of the things occupied while Gus watched from the rear wall.

Then Kyo got a good enough grip on the one struggling the most and, with Gus safe for the moment, he was able to concentrate, his blade appearing in his hand as first one then another of the things fell to the ground. The third he caught by the ankle as it was trying to crawl away and pulled it across the floor.

Gus turned away as it died.

The fourth had recovered from Kyo’s kick and was standing still, hand braced against the wall. Kyo started toward it and it broke to the left, bounding over the couch to the window, which doubled, one window remaining whole while a second ghostly window crashed to pieces as the thing jumped through it.

Gus watched Kyo walk to the window, then saw his shoulders sag and heard him sigh. Something caught Gus’s eye and he looked out his own window to see two more things appear on the front lawn.

“Kyo!” he yelled across the room. “There’s two more over here.”

“There’s five more on this side,” Kyo said. Gus heard him breathing heavily through his nose. “Well that got real hard real quick.”

Gus went back to looking out of his window, one finger hooked against the curtain, drawing it all the way back as the rain began to come down in hot violent sheets. The two things on the front lawn shrunk a bit as they huddled under the torrent of water, one of them flipping the collar of his shirt up to little effect. Gus watched them look over the house, then one of them spotted him and pointed and they began to walk towards him.

Then Gus recoiled from the window, his head turning automatically, his eyes shut tight, a bright after image of a lightning bolt flashing across his eyelids and a clap of thunder sounding so loud he heard the panes of glass rattling in the window.

“Oh my God!” Zach screamed into his cell phone. “That was right next to my house!”

Gus blinked and looked across the room to Kyo’s window where two more bolts of lightning struck the lawn outside.

“Kyo?” someone shouted from the hallway.

“We’re in here, Mary,” Kyo shouted back, watching as Mary stepped into the living room. “Took you long enough,” he said.

“Unless we are absolutely needed down here as many as possible are going to stay up top,” Mary said, joining Kyo at the window. “Everyone needs all the time to practice that they can get.”

They both watched as five things retreated to the bushes at the edge of the lawn eying the house with caution.

“Lightning is nice, but what happens if they make it inside?” Kyo asked.

“We’ve worked out a few more tricks,” Mary answered.

 

—–

 

“Hold, please?” Nyx said into her mouthpiece as she punched a button on her phone. She listened for a few seconds to the new call, “Hold please,” she said, and another button was hit. “Thank you for calling, how–” she started before getting interrupted, pausing, listening, then starting again. “Hold, please,” and she punched another button.

“There’s more and more of our kind showing up at the farmhouse,” she called up to Hector from her chair as he walked past.

“I know,” Hector said.

“And more and more of their kind seem to be showing up as well.”

Hector’s sunglasses were glaring at the wall at the end of the aisle.

Nyx listened for a few more seconds, then her head tilted as she took in another piece of information and shunted it off to its proper location in her mind. “And someone else has seen Epp,” she said.

“Splendid,” Hector said, walking to the wall where maps of the world and a number of countries were pinned up. “And is he with Elvis this time or is he alone?”

“Alone,” Nyx said.

Hector took a red push pin from a pile on a nearby desk and turned to face the maps again. “And where is Epp now, supposedly?”

Nyx spoke a few questions into her mouthpiece, then nodded as she listened. She swiveled around in her chair. “Manhattan,” she shouted up at Hector, “34^th Street PATH station.”

“I’m not sure how this wonderful joke got started,” Hector said, putting the red push pin into the map on New York City, “but I’m getting sick of people ‘sighting’ Epp with nobody actually seeing him.” And he stepped back to look at the maps, red push pins stuck into hundreds of locations all over them.

“Send someone to check it out,” he said to Nyx with little care in his voice.

—–

 

Bartleby was following two of them down Park Avenue, a boy and a woman. He had been trailing them for awhile now for reasons he wasn’t entirely sure of. Part of him was curious, part of him felt safer with his eyes on them rather than it possibly being the other way around. He had been in physical form for days now and still occasionally walked right into an oncoming pedestrian, bumping him back on the sidewalk, getting strange looks or swears as he continued on, never acknowledging the human he had just plowed into, his eyes only fixed on whatever things he was currently watching.

The two he was following now had been making phone call after phone call to someone who was very busy, and had been exchanging all sorts of information, a lot of which Bartleby didn’t understand.

Another phone call came in and one of them stopped and stood in the sidewalk, people passing through him as he took out his phone and began talking. Bartleby walked past, trying not to look, trying to act like just another one of the humans.

“Come on,” the thing said. “Hector put a call out for someone to go down to the PATH station. He says someone saw Epp there.”

Then the two things vanished and Bartleby stopped walking. Then he rippled and disappeared.

—–

 

The PATH station was brightly lit by obtrusive white neon bulbs that ran up and down its three train tracks. The walls were filled with posters for musicals and the steel beams every few yards were thick with drab blue paint.

Bartleby stood at one end of the platform trying to stay out of sight. The things he had followed were a few yards ahead of him. A few yards ahead of them, sitting on a wooden bench in the middle of the platform, was Epp.

One of the things punched the other on the arm. “Holy shit it’s really him,” she said.

“I don’t believe it,” the other one said, creeping sideways to get a better look down the platform. “He looks weak.”

Bartleby, keeping back, walked quietly to the side as well and when he got a better look at Epp he found himself agreeing. Epp’s suit was crinkled and stained and his face was haggard. He looked tired, barely able to even support his own weight just sitting on a bench. Bartleby was unsure if he would be able to stand up.

“He does look weak,” the female thing said. She looked around at the mostly empty platform. There was really only them, Epp, some people way at the other end and some guy dressed in black waiting for a train behind them. “What do you think?”

The other one smiled. “He looks pretty beat up,” he said. “I think maybe we could take him.”

But the other one had already started forward in a quick walk, which turned into a jog, which turned into a run as the first one’s footsteps slapped on the concrete and all either of them could think about was feeding.

Bartleby shook his head. He whimpered, his face grimacing as he realized what he had to do, and trying not to watch he lifted one of his feet off the platform then tapped down hard. Two lines of deep glowing red shot out from where he was standing as the concrete blazed with heat, racing after the things and catching them a few yards from where Epp was sitting, their feet catching fire before the rest of them burst into flames and they fell, their bodies skidding forward across the floor.

Epp glanced down as what was left of them came to a rest a few feet from him. Then he looked up at Bartleby who was walking towards him. Bartleby made a wide arc around the things’ bodies, turning his head away he refused to look at them as he held his breath and made his way past before coming around to stand in front of Epp.

“Hello,” Bartleby said.

“Your name is Bartleby,” Epp said. He looked down at the bodies. “How did you do that?” Then he became puzzled. “Can I do that?”

“You don’t look so good.” Bartleby said.

“I don’t feel so good.”

“Well you were dead there for awhile. That can’t help.”

“I remember that. Kind of. There are all sorts of chunks missing.”

“Where have you been?”

“Everywhere, I think.” Epp looked down again at the two bodies. “People keep trying to kill me.”

Bartleby stared down, he could feel that the outsides of him were calm, his face was calm, his hands were calm, but just under the surface things were roiling with emotion. “Yes,” he said. “There are some strange things going on.”

“Like what?” Epp looked up.

“How much do you remember?”

“I don’t know. I’m not really sure where to start.”

Bartleby looked down. “I think I can probably catch you up. But we should get out of here; I’m not sure how safe it is. There are tons of those things in the city.”

“Things,” Epp said softly, mouthing Bartleby’s word. “And what are they exactly?”

“I…I’m not…let’s just get out of here and we’ll start nice and slow, okay?”

Epp looked up at Bartleby, and as Bartleby watched a wave of something very unpleasant passed over Epp’s eyes before fading.

“There’s something else,” Epp said.

“I’m all ears.”

Epp leaned down and began sliding one leg of his pants up. “My limp didn’t exactly heal the way I thought it would.” Epp slid his pant leg up until it revealed a large chunk of leg rotted away above and below his knee.

Then Epp started breathing heavily, slow breaths at first, then faster as Epp struggled to keep something welling up inside of him under control. “You need to get out of here,” Epp said finally through his teeth.

“Oh?” Bartleby asked.

“I’m not kidding, Bartleby. There’s been trouble already. I keep running into trouble. I’m…hungry,” Epp found it hard to use the word in such a context.

“Aw,” Bartleby said. “Is Epp having a little bit of trouble?”

“You have no idea what this is like,” Epp said. “Just listen to me now, Bartleby and-”

“God you’re arrogant,” Bartleby said, reaching down and clamping a hand onto Epp’s shoulder. His hand was there for only a few seconds before Epp screamed and tried to wriggle away, smoke starting to drift up from his jacket.

Bartleby smiled and let go. “If any of your kind touches me that’s what happens. So I think I’m safe from your hunger.”

Epp was wincing, rubbing his shoulder. “How did that happen?”

“You did this to me,” Bartleby said, a bit of anger rising up in the back of his throat.

Epp looked up puzzled.

“Never mind, for now; but believe me we’ll get to that. At the moment we just need to get out of here.”

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to start with a crash course in all things Epp,” Bartleby said. “I know a good place to start. Now move.”

Epp stood up to follow. “But where is everyone else?” he asked.

—–

 

A young girl, her face mostly rotted away, was hovering upside down in the doorway to Zach’s living room. She was kicking her feet in the air, trying to get a grip on something, her arms flailing about trying to do the same.

“See,” the tester holding her in place was saying, “I figured out that the electrons surrounding-”

“Couldn’t care less,” Kyo said walking past him. “Just continue keeping them out. Mary!” he shouted.

“I’m upstairs,” he heard her shouting.

“We pick a room, right now,” he said, stepping into Zach’s parents’ room. “And that room becomes home base. Everything we know gets funneled into it. I’m sick of walking through the entire house trying to figure out what’s going on.” Kyo stepped into a corner of the room and shoved an intercom speaker into the wall.

“How about here?” Mary said, only half listening, the other half of her looking out the window. She shook her head. “A bunch more just showed up.”

Outside there was a group of them standing on the soaking wet lawn. The rain storm had weakened and showed signs of letting up entirely.

“Don’t care right now,” Kyo said, looking around. “This room is fine. We both take a run through the house and get anyone who isn’t doing anything immediate up here now. I want them making phone calls and using the intercom.” Kyo pulled a dresser away from the wall and conjured up an intercom. “Everyone has had enough time to practice. We need them here now. From the Rockies, from the Andes, from the Alps, from everywhere. And I’m sick of peeking out of windows. We get someone up on the roof immediately and we get whatever else we need up there to protect them.”

“Anything else?” Mary asked, a little sarcastically.

“Get that thunderstorm back here.”

“I’m trying,” Mary said.

“Try harder.”

—–

“Thank you for calling, please hold,” Nyx rattled off for the tenth time, her finger jabbing down at the phone.

“Hector,” she yelled. “That’s a bunch more.”

“I got six more calling in,” another voice shouted.

“Five from me,” someone else chimed in.

“What are they all doing there?” Hector asked, annoyed. “This is ridiculous. What we need is a way to draw them down from the mountains.”

“Hector,” Nyx said, frustrated. “Everyone who calls in says more and more of them are showing up as well.”

“But why?”

“Does it matter?”

Hector stopped pacing and stared at the wall.

Nyx shouted from behind him. “It’s happening, and it’s happening now.”

Hector shook off everything else and came around as quickly as he could. “You’re right. You’re right you’re right you’re right,” he continued saying as he studied the local map with the rural house circled on it.

“Please hold,” Nyx said, punching another button, then she pushed the phone aside and yanked her headset off before standing up to go stand next to Hector.

“Okay,” Hector said. “Okay,” he was talking to himself as he thought. He ran a finger along the map, then turned and slid a spare laptop over to him, looking up a webpage. He looked back at the map, then typed a few more things onto the laptop.

“Okay,” he said one last time. “This is all way too all over the place right now. We need to regroup.”

“It’s a fucking mess,” Nyx said. “And, like you just said, it’s all over the place. We’re having a hard time getting a hold of anyone who’s out there. They’re a little preoccupied.”

“That’s okay,” Hector said. And he was typing a few quick lines out on the computer. He read them over, thought for a bit, changed a few words around. “I can get them back under control.”

“How?”

“I shall do what countless others before me have done in order to gather large numbers of people together,” Hector said absently, his fingers still typing. “I’m going to offer up free food and booze.”

He moved back to the wall, his finger crinkling the paper as he ran it down the map. “Here,” he said, jabbing a finger at the map. “We go here. And send that message,” he pointed to the computer he had just been typing on, “to everyone who’s already at the house. Then we move out.”

—–

 

Zach was digging into his parent’s liquor cabinet while he played Halo up in his bedroom. A glass of warm scotch was sitting on the arm of his chair.

Unnoticed by Zach, Gus was standing over him while Kyo was kneeling to examine the body of a tester that was splayed out on the ground. He looked up at Mary and shook his head.

Mary sighed sadly.

“We need more people,” Kyo said.

“They’re coming,” Mary answered.

“We need more people,” Kyo repeated. Then the window crashed in and one of them was crouched on the floor.

It looked up at Gus and lunged, Kyo reaching out and catching it before it got too far. Kyo looked over its body, then examined its face as the thing struggled.

“What is it you look for?” Mary asked, watching Kyo’s examination.

“I don’t know. I just know,” Kyo answered. The thing’s cell phone rang. Kyo rifled its pockets and pulled out the phone. Mary turned away, caught off guard, as Kyo snapped the thing’s neck.

When she looked back, Kyo was staring down, puzzled, at the thing’s cell phone. “What does that mean?” Kyo asked as the cell phone disappeared in his hands.

—–

 

“I don’t get it,” Nyx said.

“You will,” Hector said, standing in the pitch black of night. The wind was blowing; a storm had just been through. He took out his phone and began sending messages.

Nyx, her curiosity piqued, stood on tiptoe and looked over his shoulder. “Now watcha doing?”

“I don’t want Kyo tracking us down before everyone has had a chance to dig in.”

—–

 

“What did it say?” Mary asked.

“Something about a snack.” Kyo said. “And it was from Hector.” Kyo thought for a few seconds, then his head began turning around, looking from one area of the house to the other.

“What is it?”

“It’s quiet,” he said.

“Kyo!” someone yelled over the intercom. “North side!”

“South!” another voice shouted.

“Everywhere!”

Kyo dipped his body then leapt up to the roof, landing in a crouch he began turning around. There were about ten of them strung out in a loose circle all around the house. When they saw him look out they began to disappear, one by one. Kyo started to take a step forward only to stop, then start again, then stop, his body jerking in stutter steps, over and over again until he gave up and stood there dumbly.

“Where did they go?” Mary asked, as Kyo dropped back in through the ceiling.

“I don’t know. Everywhere. They all jumped to different places all over the place, then again, then again.”

“They ran away?” Gus asked.

“The hell they did,” Kyo growled, turning away from the window and running into the room across the hall. “That was diversionary. They didn’t want me chasing them.” He looked out of a window on the other side of the house. “They’re gone,” he said, looking around with worry. “They’re all gone.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know,” he said. Then he stopped. “They’re regrouping. Hector’s coming out here and he’s regrouping everyone.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know!” Kyo shouted. “But he promised them a snack.” Kyo was walking through the house, checking in on the various rooms and sizing up the testers manning them as he went. “What does a snack mean?” he asked. “Don’t they feed on you?”

“Feed, yes,” Mary said. “But I don’t think they’d call us a snack.”

Kyo stomped his way back upstairs to Zach’s bedroom. “So what’s a snack for them?”

Mary and Gus thought about this.

Gus looked at Zach. Mary looked at Zach. Kyo looked at Zach.

“Oh, I don’t like this at all,” Mary said.

“Me either,” Kyo agreed. “This is bad.” He began snapping his fingers quickly while he spoke. “All right. Let’s think here. They can’t go far. They need to keep an eye on this place and they need to back up the ones who are doing the watching. Right?”

“If you say so.”

“I say so. So they’ll be local. Now chaos doesn’t help them anymore than it helps us. So they’re not just going to run around like crazy hoping for a snack. They’re going to look for a gathering. Somewhere a lot of humans are gathered and can be contained easily.”

“Like a concert?” Gus asked.

“Yes, a concert, a rally, a football game, anything. Does anyone know about anything like that happening nearby?”

Mary and Gus began talking with the intercom buzzing along as everyone throughout the house began thinking and chattering.

“Wait,” Kyo said. Nobody responded. “Wait!” he yelled. “Everyone shut up for a second!”

Everyone quieted down. Kyo said nothing.

“Well what were you going to say?”

“Shut up!” he yelled. “Just shut up and listen.”

Coming in through the window, faint and barely audible, was the sound of a train’s diesel horn blaring in the night.

“Do we know if that’s a passenger line?” Kyo asked.

—–

 

 

Hector stood between the railroad tracks in the darkness, watching the train hurtling towards him, its lights eerie and phantomlike as it rounded a curve.

He swung a foot and the side of his Italian leather loafer kicked the stretch of track. A length of rail moved slightly, rocking up a bit, a few of the spikes giving way before it settled back into place. He swung his foot again and kicked harder, and this time the length of rail rocked up on its side, spikes rattling off and losing their grip, before it rolled back over on its thick heavy bottom and thunked back down. The train’s horn was screaming in the darkness and its lights were bearing down on him. He swung his foot one last time and tapped the stretch of rail with his toe, it rolled up, completely free now, and then toppled over, sliding off the tracks to bounce heavily down the embankment.

Hector turned to face Nyx as the train, like a nightmare in the dark, hurtled up from behind him.

Nyx watched as he mouthed something but then the train was rushing past them with metal screeching and then they were inside it and Nyx’s perspective got all screwed up so that she had the strange sensation that she was moving forward and the train was standing still as she slid through car after car, lights flickering, people screaming, everything tilting and rising up at horrible angles, and then it was past.

“What did you say?” she asked Hector.

“I said, ‘Soup’s on,’” Hector answered, looking behind her at the giant snake of twisted metal still crashing its way to a stop.

The air was filled with the sounds of people screaming and the things cheering as they hopped, like insects from the grass, up onto various parts of the train wreck, metal shrieking as they tore open train cars and hopped down to enjoy their snack.

“Start getting me some numbers on who is here,” Hector said to Nyx. “And you,” he shouted to one of his things that was making his way towards the carnage. “The bar car is the second to last one. Open her up and see what you can find.”

—–

 

“I’m going out there,” Mary was saying.

“We are spread way too thin as it is,” Kyo was yelling. “Until we get reinforcements we need-”

“I don’t care,” Mary said stubbornly, and she turned and vanished.

“Mother-” Kyo bit off a swear. A few more testers disappeared. He turned to everyone else, then stormed to the intercom and held down the button. “You all stay right here and you protect Gus, I’ll go after them. They have the option of moving. Gus does not. Stay. With. Gus.”

Those in view nodded.

“And I want them reacting to us for a change. They’re watching the house for sure. I want you to figure out a way to disrupt that.” He looked around. “And after Zach passes out, I want you to rearrange all the furniture throughout the house,” he added. He looked up. “Okay? Just…just do things.” Then he turned and vanished.

—–

 

“You need to come with me now,” Mary was saying to two children, one of whom was bleeding above the eye, the other one was staring glassy eyed at the train wreck. “Hello? You two need to come with me. They’re not listening,” she looked at Kyo who had just shown up. “They’re not listening.”

“You’re not visible,” Kyo said. He heard a crunch off to his left. Kyo lost all hope of getting the other testers who had come out here back to safety. “Mary listen to me, this is not safe.”

Mary’s form rippled and the children turned, startled, to see a woman standing next to them. “Kids, you need to come with me, okay? There’s a house not too far from here and you need to get there. You’ll be safe there, okay?”

“Mary,” Kyo started, but then there was a thump and a scream and his words became muffled.

Mary turned back to see him fighting with two things as all around her the sounds of people yelling out drifted through the prairie grass.

“Mary get the hell out of here!” Kyo yelled.

Three more things appeared. They began spreading out and surrounding her. One of them jumped and Kyo rose to meet him, then another charged.

The children grew scared as they watched the seemingly nice woman start to look frantically all around her, reacting to things that weren’t happening. Then she jumped back away from some attack they couldn’t see and with a thump she collapsed into the grass unconscious.

“Mary!” Kyo was yelling. Four more things appeared.

“Mary!” he yelled. And then he had a hold of her arms and he was safe, moving with her away from the train, only she slipped and fell out of his hands and he stopped and moved back. Struggling to gather her limp body up he got an arm up and then threw her body over his shoulder and tried to run again but he tripped and felt her skin sliding out of his hands as he fell onto his knees in the wet grass.

“Mary,” he said. “Mary you’ve got to wake up now.”

He tried to drag her along but one of the things grabbed her leg and he beat it off only to pull her a few more yards while three more things popped into place around them.

There was a groan and Kyo turned to see a human lying in the grass near them, his leg twisted horribly.

“Hello?!” the man shouted through dry lips. “Hello can anyone hear me?”

“Mary,” Kyo shouted at her face, kneeling over her.

Four more things.

“My leg is broken,” the man groaned between sobs.

“Mary?” Kyo said, huddling her up near him, trying to cover her with his arms.

“Somebody help me?” the man shouted.

Three more things.

“Mary?”

And the prairie grass whispered in the night.

—–

Click here to buy Probability Angels now!

 

Or click here to read Part 10.

Popularity: 2% [?]