Out of the Black (11 page)

The windows were completely polarized, so she had no idea what time it was. A small pang of panic hit her as she realized that she probably hadn't set the alarm last night and might have overslept. She consulted her watch and breathed a sigh of relief as it told her that it was only 6 pm. She still had five hours before she had to be at work. She struggled out of her destroyed clothes and into the shower, fighting her uncooperative limbs every step of the way.

Later, in the kitchen she felt much more normal. It was amazing what a twenty-minute shower, fresh clothes, and an overdose of painkillers could do for you.

Still alive. With the oddest sense of optimism, she reached for the refrigerator door, looking for something to feed the ol' fire. She cried out in pain as her hand smashed into the closed door, fingers crumpling painfully against the handle. As always, she had just expected her hand to close on the fridge handle, but her reflexes had dropped the ball.

As she shook the soreness out of her fingers, she noticed that felt odd too. It was as if she had to think more, envisioning nearly every little movement or her body would do the wrong thing. She took a few steps in the cramped kitchen and noticed that she really had to focus to do it, and try that while chewing gum? ...forget about it.

She shuffled back to the fridge and flexed her sore fingers a few times before trying the door again. Carefully, carefully, she felt the cool metal of the handle, relaxed her fingers and they opened around it- now just a gentle squeeze and she could pull the door open. Unfortunately, just as she was getting into that final squeeze, she started to lose her balance and had to divert her attention to remain standing. Seconds passed and she had her leg muscles appropriately tensed and was ready to turn her mind back to opening the refrigerator. That was when she noticed that her hand had fallen back to her side and she'd have to start all over again. It was amazing she hadn't killed herself in the shower.

She leaned in and braced her left hand on the freezer door for support and tried the refrigerator door again with her right hand. Success! She stared at the fridge's brightly lit contents with great interest.

She was starving! She reached for the milk with her right hand, but her left arm forgot its job and collapsed, slipping down the freezer door as she fell forward. As her hand fell free, her head dented the freezer door. The shock of the impact made her forget about her legs for a second and they forgot what they were supposed to be doing too. Her knees buckled and hit the ground so hard she could swear she saw a bright flash hiding in all the pain.

Her hands didn't automatically go out to catch her, so she rolled sideways off her knees, banging her head on the cupboard, then slumping onto her side. Her reflexes were still on holiday, so her head cracked on the floor. Her legs finally realized they were supposed to be standing and kicked out, leaving her stretched out on the floor before the open refrigerator.

Yeah. Feeling much more normal, she thought, the brief optimism fading somewhat. You know, it really was amazing what an overdose of painkillers could do for you. She rubbed her head, looking up at the open refrigerator.

After a few moments of mental preparation, she made her first attempt to stand. She had never looked graceful while getting to her feet. There was usually a lot of grunting, straining and rocking. But today, it was something special.

Ten minutes later, with only a few (perhaps eight) more bruises, she stood beside the open refrigerator, clinging desperately to the counter with both hands. Sweat beaded on her face, she shivered with effort as she put all her mental energy into standing. Holding knees together, keeping her quadriceps flexed, calves tense... she'd never realized that you had to flex your butt to stand... amazing. But if her concentration lapsed, any or all of these muscles would assume it was someone else's job to make standing work. It was like herding cats through a prairie dog colony.

You never miss your body's autopilot until it's gone, she thought, feeling like a stranger in her own body. This was more than just the medication she took- heaven knew she'd taken higher doses in the past. This was serious, this was new, this was... getting worse, she thought, clawing at the air as she fell backwards again. Panic caused every muscle to go rigid. It was as if her mind had shouted, "Help! Do something!" and every muscle had responded with maximum effort. Tense to the point of cramping, her brittle body crashed to the floor like a fallen tree.

Unblinking eyes staring at the ceiling, she lay helpless for a while. Fear crushed in around her like a gaggle of vultures looking for a super-sized meal, and hot tears flowed from her eyes. She didn't have the ability to sob, so the emotion just simmered at the back of her neck, unreleased. The open refrigerator mocked her from above.

She thought it ironic that she would in all likelihood die prostrate before an open refrigerator. She wondered briefly what her obituary would look like. Well, at least Elvis had it worse.

She felt a weight above her, slowly pressing her back, out of the light. Back to somewhere below the floor, where an enfolding darkness waited. And in that darkness, she knew the dead man was still waiting. She knew because she could hear him calling her name.

Down, into the darkness: floating, falling, and then her eyes opened to reveal a familiar white mist above her. The carpet was gone and she now lay on a bed of wild, unmowed grass, the sound of wind around her. It was the sound of loneliness- air moving through the chambers of a hollow mountain.

She stood up and looked around. She was in the grassy ditch in the median of a six-lane highway by the sea. The cars blurred by; wispy impressions of color and form. The sea was troubled. White waves rolled slowly in, adding a dull roar to the howling wind. The perspective was unsettling: slow moving waves behind the unrealistic speed of cars moving at what appeared to be hundreds of kilometers per hour.

The light seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. Though the misty sky was painfully bright, no sun was available to cast shadows. She seemed to be in the middle of a huge, cloudy fishbowl.

She had been here before. Though she couldn't remember what was next, her heart felt heavy with tragedy, stretched thin with sympathy. Something terrible had happened here, and it was about to happen again.

She squinted into the blurring cars, trying to pick out the van she knew would be here soon. Then time changed and the cars slowed to a crawl, the waves stopped moving. The howling wind dropped to a low hum, barely perceptible at the low end of her hearing. About a hundred meters away, an antique sports car changed lanes before clearing an antique minivan fully. The car clipped the minivan on the front left fender which, together with the evasive swerve the minivan had already begun, drove the minivan toward the median where Anne stood.

Actually, directly toward her, she noticed with a start.

She tried to move, but her legs were made of wood and rooted to the ground. She brought her arms up in slow motion, covering her face as the minivan barreled toward her, throwing divots of grass from locked wheels.

Then the slow motion ended and the minivan rushed her at full speed. She didn't scream as it hit her, but then she really didn't need to as her perspective shifted. When she opened her eyes, it seemed the car had picked her up like a mid-crash hitchhiker. She was now riding in the back seat behind the driver. Out of the frying pan...

The slow motion perspective was back as she looked around the interior of the doomed minivan. A middle-aged man was wrestling with the steering wheel, his graying hair tossing about as he tried to save his family. The minivan swerved, fishtailing and bouncing over the uneven turf, with each swing of the van's tail getting wider. There was a woman in the passenger seat, apparently startled out of sleep by the unfolding accident.

Anne felt a sympathetic pang in the chest as if this were her own mother. She hated to see her so scared, wanted to reach out and touch her, hold her, tell her it was going to be all right. But she knew it wouldn't be. That's why Anne was here... because it wasn't going to be all right.

The woman twisted left, reaching over her partially reclined seat, toward the child behind her. Anne followed the direction of the woman's futile grab and saw first the small metal crutches on the floor behind the passenger seat, then the child just coming out of sleep in the back seatv hp>

Her first thought was of a little startled angel. He was maybe eight years old, but she could tell by the expression on his face that something was different. The small downward sloping eyes held a fuzzy innocence she recognized from some of the 'special' kids she had worked with in the hospital. She really hated drawing blood from the Down's Syndrome kids. Though they were usually brave, in the end they couldn't understand why the lady that talked so nicely eventually brought out the needle.

This was worse.

The minivan's front left wheel slammed into something that Anne didn't see. The car jolted with an abortive deceleration, followed by the start of a twisting roll forward and left. With another shuddering slow motion crunch, the car's front bumper buried itself into the earth of the median. She looked up to see that the van was going over. The cold grip on inevitability tightened around her.

Inside the car, the slow motion was unflinching. Debris from the car's floor filled the air. Empty juice boxes and snack wrappers floated by as the driver's airbag deployed. It drove his struggling arms apart as it expanded, filling the car with smoke. The passenger's airbag deployed, catching the twisting woman in the back, snapping her head back and up. Her hand had almost reached her child, but now it flailed away as the airbag and the fury of the crash had their way with her.

Anne dove sideways, reaching for the child. She wanted to hold him, shield him from the maelstrom, from the grisly events that unfolded in the front seat, as the car's roof crushed downward as it smashed into the ground, but something stopped her cold. The child was looking directly at her with bright, blazing blue eyes. He studied her intently through thick glasses, knocked slightly askew by the crash. The ground then sky then ground passed by in the window behind him, glass and dirt floated through the air between them. His eyes didn't blink; he didn't wince with the impacts. Around them, the fury became muffled, like the slow crashing of waves heard from under the water.

"This is how it started for me." The boy said, his voice clear against the muddy cacophony of the crash. "You've seen how it ends." he said with an ironic smile. "Born of the storm, my life death's whirlwind, it was unavoidable I'd exit with its fury in my ears."

"Wha?"

"They are coming for you, Anne." he said, smile disappearing, "They are coming, and it's up to you now. It's up to you to stop them."

His steady voice was a lifeline in the dissolving sea of violence, and as she clung to it, the scene around them further dimmed. The sound of rending metal softened as they sank inward toward a peaceful emptiness.

"But what about your parents?" She said, voice small with shock.

He glanced toward the front seat and the tragedy that still unfolded there. His gaze seemed to waver as it lingered, softening slightly. "I've missed them for so long now, you wouldn't think this would still hurt."

He paused, "I was the one who was supposed to die first. They always thought the mourning tears would be theirs." Then he looked back to her, grim determination in his eyes. "But they're gone now, and if I ever see them again, it'll be in the next minute or two. We don't have much time."

The metal key thudded at t the smooth biometric pad of the car door's lock. Ping's even features creased in consternation. He withdrew his hand and examined the keys. He'd tried each one twice, but none seemed to fit into the lock. There was a moment of disorientation as he realized that he didn't know which key should work... it had to be one of them.

As he stood by his locked car examining his keys, he felt someone watching him. He looked around and saw a man staring at him from the entrance to Ahmed's lobby. Ping stared back, casually spinning his key ring around his index finger. It was the bristly-haired guy he'd noticed in the lobby on his way into the building. The guy from the lobby didn't look away, seemingly content to engage in a staring competition. There was something odd about his appearance, though Ping couldn't put his finger on it right away- something odd in the shape of his face, in the placement of his features. The watcher's stare seemed to deepen into a silent form of communication. There was something else in his gaze: Concern? Anger? Menace.

Whew, Creepy. The key thudded against the surface of the lock pad again and Ping realized he'd lost the impromptu staring competition. "Hmm." Ping said absently, looking at the ancient keys, then his shiny, new car. He looked back to the watcher, ready for round two... gone. He looked around... really gone. The only movement was the sway of the old trees in the light wind.

Maybe the guy had dashed back into the lobby... maybe there were other keys in his pocket. He fished in the pockets, but came away with nothing. Maybe something was wrong with the lock... he stooped to investigate. The smooth metal of the lock had a few superficial scratches from the keys, but other than that, he couldn't see anything wrong. He rubbed absently at one of the scratches on the biometric pad with the tip of his index finger and heard the accept tone.

He spent a few seconds in terrible confusion before finally shrugging and opening the door.

***

Unseen in the upper branches of a tall tree near the building's entrance, Dek angled for a better view. One hand gripped the tree's trunk so tightly that cracks radiated away from his fingers. The other hand moved a smaller branch out of his way as he craned his head around the trunk. Above him, his right foot hooked around the thinning trunk, holding him inverted while his left foot drew circles in the air. He balanced upside down about six meters off the ground. He loved this, but no smile showed on his smooth features. His business today was death, and he knew the six men and one woman he'd killed since midnight were just the start of a long, dark day.