The Flicker Men (33 page)

We were twenty feet apart.

He smiled. Hands distended—the shadows playing tricks—long fingers like blades. I imagined those fingers sinking into my face, piercing my eyes, opening my throat. Then I saw it wasn't blade fingers but my steel shiv gripped tightly in his hand.

“Got you now, little mouse,” Boaz hissed.

This is what madness felt like. Concentrated down into its perfect diamond-hard essence. A piece of coal with the weight of all existence bearing down on it.

I pressed backward, moving as quickly as I could, trying not to think about how this ended.

Boaz's smile grew wider, and his body rose up, filling the gap—plunging us back into darkness.

I was half crawling, half sliding now, the inside of the pipe tarry and smooth. Time ceased to have meaning in the darkness.

The scrape of flesh on steel. Ten feet. Twenty. My own ragged breathing.

My legs hit something solid, and my heart banged in my chest as I realized what I had come up against. A bend in the pipe.

I kicked my legs out, feeling for a gap. And found it.

I thought the pipe might bend to the right or left, but I wasn't so lucky.

It was a bend going down.

I angled myself as best I could, arching my back as the skin came off my shins, and I felt my hips move past the bend—a moment of panic. A moment when I felt gravity begin to take hold, and I pressed against the sides of the pipe with my forearms, stopping myself. There was no telling how far the pipe went down. It could be a drop of ten feet or a full story or even farther if it connected down into a subterranean line. The thought made my skin crawl. There'd be no coming back up. My arms slipped, and I heard myself gasp as I pressed harder against the steel to hold my position.

The scrabbling sound in front of me went silent. Boaz had stopped moving.

“What's wrong, little mouse?” In the pipe, his voice oddly distorted. A sound like madness. “Did you come to the end of the line?”

His eyes seemed to flicker in the darkness again. The distant light behind made a dark, shifting silhouette of him.

He was only ten feet away now. He had been gaining on me. Big as he was in the confines of the pipe, he'd still been gaining. He shifted his position, and the light changed, coming over his shoulders. I saw something in his eyes then—a narrowing. As if he suddenly understood.

He surged forward.

In the blackness, I felt his arms reaching.

There was no time to think. I relaxed my shoulders and let myself go. My belly scraped across the bottom as my legs dropped out from under me—and I almost made it. Almost.

An iron-strong hand clamped onto my forearm.

I screamed and twisted, but the grip was too strong, and I felt myself pulled upward. I kicked my legs out, trying to grip the pipe, while the iron fingers sank into my flesh. The other hand came down, armed with the shiv, jabbing at my face—going for my eyes—so I ducked my chin to take the wounds on the top of my head, using my knees to brace myself. I felt the shiv strike bone. Boaz pulled, and I was a difficult thing to get leverage on, to pull upward—a grown man lodged in a pipe—but his strength was too much, and I felt hot blood raining down on my face from where his grip on my arm had split the skin—and it was like being pulled upward into a fan blade, as he slashed at me with the steel, slicing my scalp open, shrieking in rage. I pressed my knees as hard as I could, but the pull only increased, and with a quick yank, I was drawn upward and felt my arm dislocate from its socket.

The bend in the pipe was suddenly under my stomach, as I was pulled up and forward, and I knew this was the end—I was about to be ripped open from the head down in this filthy dark hell, and then the iron hand loosed my arm to grab my shirt, yanking me closer.

I kicked then, at that exact instant, and I pulled back with all my strength, and I felt my button-down shirt come off over my head, while the curve of the pipe slid past my stomach, raking my T-shirt up to my chin. And then I was falling.

 

43

The fall was three seconds. Maybe less.

There was a sense of distance sliding past my body, my skin coming off against the rush of metal, and then I struck with bone-jarring force.

I hit with my feet, which slid out from under me along the curve of the pipe—while my shoulder flared white agony, and my head banged the steel. Everything went quiet.

When you're trapped in utter darkness, the line between conscious and unconscious can be a matter of degrees.

I wasn't sure how long I was out. Seconds maybe. Or a minute. The first sound I heard was a scrabbling above me. I tried to move, and something popped in my shoulder—the grind of bone on bone as my dislocated shoulder popped back in place. I cried out, and the scrabbling above me stopped.

I heard him breathing. Then scrabbling came again.

I listened carefully, trying not to believe it.

It couldn't be.

He was coming down.

No
.

Even muddled as I was, I knew it was insane. In the tight confines of the pipe, there was no way he could have turned around. That meant he was coming down head first. There's no way he'd risk that. Even if he killed me, there'd be no way to climb back up—not backward. And with me dead in the pipe, blocking the way, there'd be no way forward. He would be trapped. As I was now trapped.

The scrabbling sound grew louder.

I had to move quickly. I shimmied myself along on my stomach as my skin burned. I wondered how much I'd lost to abrasion. I used all the strength in my arms, pushing myself along, backing along the pipe, steel sliding past my knees. Time dilated, moments into centuries.

An eternity later, I paused. I wasn't sure at first, so I concentrated. It took two full seconds to convince myself it was true. A glimmer of light. The faintest possible glow. Even the air was different. Less stagnant. I wasn't sure how much farther I had to go, but somewhere beyond my feet, I was sure the pipe was open.

Please
, I prayed,
don't let there be a grating.

I could imagine it. A steel mesh that my feet would strike first. No way out; no way back. The thing that was Boaz still coming down at me headfirst, shiv in his hand. I pushed the thought away. It did no good to think of it.

The pipe clattered louder. Boaz was coming.

A dozen more feet of grimy steel slid past my stomach, as the light grew brighter from over my shoulder, until I could see my own fingers in front of me, caked black with grime and spattered with blood as I pushed myself backward. I saw deep wounds in my arms, but they didn't bear close inspection. There was no point.

Suddenly, the light was brighter, and my right leg kicked out into open space. There was no steel under my right knee, and then my left, and I was sliding out, gripping the pipe, and it did not occur to me until that moment to wonder how high I was. And then I was out and falling. I slammed to the ground, looking up at the pipe. A fall of five feet.

I sucked air, unable to believe I was free. When I stood, the pipe was face-high, a two-foot-wide hole of blackness. My legs cramped, and I collapsed in a heap, tripping over a small length of steel scrap. I looked around, and I was in a partially disassembled part of the building—as if demolition had been halted midproject. Steel pipes of various sizes and shapes were piled on the floor, along with concrete blocks. High above me, the sheet metal had all been partially stripped away, leaving the skeleton and open sky. I'd read once of corporations that stripped the roofs off old buildings to avoid taxation. Perhaps that process had started here, before the whole issue of taxation had become moot.

There came a sound, and the entire structure above me shook. My legs cramped again as the scraping grew louder. Boaz was almost here. I couldn't run. And there was nowhere to hide.

My hand fumbled for the closest thing—a three-foot length of pipe. It had once been attached to the wall; now it was heavy in my grip.

I climbed to my feet.

First a hand emerged—long and red, soaked in blood—clasping at the edge of the pipe. Then the other hand, still gripping the bloody shiv. The top of his long head came next, as he pulled himself forward, birthing himself from the hell of his confinement.

His face, when he turned it toward me, was contorted in rage, coated with filth. His eyes wheeled toward mine.

I had the pipe raised high—a headsman's stance. He tried to react, but I gave him no time. I brought the steel down on the top of his skull with everything I had.

The pipe struck with the sickening sound of breaking bone. I hit him again, and he jerked—body spasming, blood jetting from the strike; I hit him again and then again and again.

I hit him until the length of steel in my hand was soaked with blood.

I hit him until his pulped body was limp and boneless, sliding out of the pipe in a heap. And then I hit it until I could no longer lift my arms, and the world swam in my vision.

I stared down at him. Skull crushed. Neck broken. No trace of whatever else he might have been. No wasp wings. No aurora flicker.

My vision cleared.

I hadn't killed a living thing since fishing with my father. I waited for it to hit. I waited to feel something for killing this man. Nothing came. I dropped the length of steel in the dirt. I realized then that I didn't believe it was a man that I'd killed. It had been something else.

 

44

I used the holes in the walls, moving silently through the buildings. A particle passing through slits. My lungs burned from all the dust I'd breathed, so I stopped and coughed softly into the crook of my arm, hacking up a thick black film. I pushed onward. How much time had passed? I wasn't sure.

I nearly stepped on Hennig's body again, red mud spreading beneath him. His eyes looked up to heaven, unconvinced. A dozen feet up the road, I found his pack. I kept moving, listening for any sound.

I slid silently through another hole and crossed through a building. Light slanted through gaps in the roof, creating golden pools on the debris-covered floor. I chose my path carefully, avoiding the fallen strips of sheet metal.

It took me a moment to realize where I was.

The lead weight hung motionless from the end of its wire, inches from the floor. The pendulum now still. All the pins knocked over. I approached the weight and looked up toward the rafters where the wire was lost in darkness.

I kept moving.

At the far side of the building near the gap between the bay doors, I stopped and looked out. Here were great hangar doors a dozen feet high, twenty feet wide. They were open in the center—a slit exactly the width of a man.

Beyond the doors was a gravel track, curving off to the left. To the right was an expanse of grass and bush, the fields where we'd gathered wood. Beyond there was the hill, and the fence in the distance.

I moved fast, covering the open ground as quick as I could. Farther out, amid the grass and the brambles, I stumbled over the foundation of an older building that I hadn't known was there. One wall was missing altogether; the others three feet high, no taller than the grass. I put my back to the crumbling brickwork and caught my breath. There came a growl. In the distance, Brighton stood in the gap between buildings. His jacket was filthy.

For a moment, he seemed to flicker in the sun, trying to be two things at once. Behind him, I saw the hound sniffing the air. Its spotted fur bristled across the shoulders like no breed I'd seen before. Its feet seemed to shimmer with a baking heat, my eyes playing tricks again. I'd gotten lucky with Boaz, but there'd be no getting lucky with the hound. If it caught me, it would tear me apart, as it had Hennig.

I stayed low, heading for the fence, hoping I was downwind. When I got to it, I crouched and looked up. A rusted segment of barbed wire drooped harmlessly to the grass. I'd be exposed if I went over the top. Up on this hill, anything that crossed the fence line would stick out like a sore thumb. Along the bottom, the woven wire hugged the ground, buried deep in weeds and soil. There'd be no going under. Not without digging, and I didn't have time.

I stuck my head up to see where Brighton and the hound might be, but they were suddenly nowhere in sight. They might have moved into one of the buildings, or they could have been crouching in the grass, eyes alert, waiting for movement. They could have been anywhere.

There was no point in delaying. It wasn't going to get better than this.

I tossed my pack over the top of the fence and then started to climb. Rust flakes stuck to my hands as I pulled myself up and over, and I chanced a look back. In the distance, between buildings, I saw a feral head turn as the hyena-thing caught my movement just as I swung my leg over and let myself drop.

I picked up my pack and ran.

The downslope was steep, and I followed the ravine, leaves and twigs cascading down. I forged a path with my body. Half running, half sliding. At the bottom of the ravine was a dry streambed, lined with stones, and I followed it down. I ducked under a log and dropped to a lower level of the stream, where I came to what would have been, in wetter times, a six-foot waterfall but was now only a stony shelf. I lay my stomach on the stone and swung myself over, continuing onward. The streambed had nearly leveled out when I heard the hound at the top of the rise. There was the sound of an impact as something hit the fence. I wondered if the fence held. I wondered if the hound could climb.

I leaped another log in the ravine and almost stepped into a hole. The sun was high now, but the shadows were still long this far into the cut. Here in the ravine, it was nearly twilight—the shadows deep and impenetrable.

The smell hit me first, before I saw it. The smell of fish and salt and ocean.

I thought of what Mercy had said,
If you're lucky, and the tide isn't in.

I pushed through dense foliage that had overgrown the creek bed.