The Flicker Men (31 page)

“Well, don't risk insomnia for my sake.” I tried to picture her in a normal life, going to college, dumping boyfriends. The image wouldn't come. Her pink, shattered hand clutched at her ceramic cup.

“No, it's fine. Tonight I'm in no hurry to sleep. Puts off the bad dreams.”

I looked at her fingers wrapped around the mug. Raw, pink flesh. Six months healed, maybe longer. I wondered how it had happened. Nothing about the injury looked clean. No straight edges. Just missing bits of flesh, as if a firecracker had gone off in her hand.

“So you think their plans will fail?”

“I think we're going to die. Every single one of us.” She sat down next to me, legs stretched out in front of her, pointing at the fire. “Like this world is gonna die. Like all worlds die. Over a long enough timetable, nothing escapes entropy.”

“But that's the key, isn't it? The timetable.”

She didn't respond. Instead we sat silently for a while, and I waited for her to say more. She didn't. She sipped the coffee and watched the fire.

“How did you get pulled into this? What happened?”

“
They
happened.” She stood and walked a few steps into the darkness. She bent and pulled something large from the shadows, and when she returned to the glow of the dying fire, I saw it was a tattered cardboard box. A scrap hoarded from the yard.

“The flicker men.” I said.

She nodded and tossed the cardboard box on the fire. At first, all light died from the world—snuffed out, the blackness complete. Then a yellow flare bloomed at the cardboard's lower bottom corner as the fire caught, growing larger by the second until the whole box was aflame. She warmed her hands. Now the fire lit up the room, and I could see rust peeling off the rafters overhead and the dark rectangles on the walls where windows had once been, and I could see her face. Pale and angular.

“The first time I saw them … later, I couldn't even remember how it all happened. Still can't. There are gaps.”

“Gaps?”

“Things I can't remember.”

“I don't understand.”

“She didn't even tell you, did she?”

“Tell me what?”

“What they're really like. The reason we call them the flicker men.” She tossed a twig into the fire. “I don't think your mind can even process it, what happens when things go bad. You fill it in later yourself. For a long time, I thought I was going crazy, but if you're crazy long enough, it just begins to feel normal. Maybe you know a little about that.”

“Maybe a little.” I wondered then how much she knew about me. Or maybe she just saw it in my eyes.

“I mean, what kind of thing does that to you?” she asked. “What is so awful that you can't even see it, and you have to fill it in?”

“I don't know.”

“You can sometimes choose not to see them at all if you work at it. And I think that's how most people see them. Or don't see them. Most people just see them in the way that they can handle. In the way that they want to see them.”

“What about you?”

“It's not always a choice.”

I thought of my mother. Belief like a superpower.

“Their pets are even worse.”

“Pets?”

“Hunters,” she said. “You don't ever want to see those. Some things are more than they seem.”

“What about me?”

“Don't feel special. Some people, it's like they get pulled into this just so they can die. I've seen it before.” She was quiet for a moment, but then added, “Though you do seem to have the knack.”

“What knack?”

“For surviving.”

I took another sip of my coffee. “Vickers said that she used to work for them. Did you work for them, too?”

She shook her head. “No. Some of us … it draws us in. Pulls us like we were a part of it somehow, even if none of it seems connected. For me, I thought I was just at the right place at the wrong time. But it was more than that.”

“More?”

“Maybe I've got a knack as well.”

There was a sound behind me. I turned my head, and Hennig stood at the doorway, watching us. I wondered how long he had been there. Maybe he'd been there all along. He had a rifle barrel clasped loosely in his right hand, wooden stock resting on the floor. His face looked wooden in the warm glow of the embers. He lifted the rifle and faded back toward the darkness

When he was gone, Mercy whispered, “Be careful of that one.”

“What do you mean?”

She waited a moment to answer. “He used to be one of their guards.”

“One of Brighton's guards?” The news shocked me.

Mercy nodded. “They were done with him. Thought they'd killed him, but Vickers brought him back from the edge, stashed him away, sewed him up. Now he's her bulldog.”

I stared into the darkness.

“He's loyal to her,” she said. “Other people, though, he bites sometimes.”

My hand trailed absently across the cement in front of me. I picked up a flat, thin piece of steel from off the floor. Just a piece of scrap. I checked its flex. I folded it in half, corner to corner. I folded it again. Bringing it to a fine point.

 

40

I woke at dawn.

It was a sound that woke me, a low reverberation at the edge of perception. The sickness already rising in my stomach. Sleep was a fragile thing, easily broken. That's why I heard it first.

I opened my eyes. Mercy was a few yards away, face turned to the shadows. I rolled onto my stomach and slid toward her across the filthy floor. I felt the shiv of folded steel in my pocket.

“Hey.” I shook her arm. “Where's Vickers?”

Her eyes fluttered open, confusion showing. “What?” She sat up, rubbing her eyes.

“Where is Vickers?” I repeated.

Across the burned-out ashes of the fire, Hennig pulled himself upright. He'd heard it, too.

The engine sounds grew louder, closer. “Cars,” Hennig said. “More than one.”

Color drained from Mercy's face.

“Here?” she said.

“Where the fuck is Vickers?” Hennig snapped.

At that moment, in the distance, Vickers spoke. “Two vehicles.” She was standing in the shadows near one of the smashed-out windows, looking outside.

For a moment, no one moved. Then Hennig sprang to his feet and crossed the room. He stood near Vickers, craning his head through the gap in the wall, looking out. When he turned back toward us, his face was pale. “It's them,” he said. Hennig turned and sprinted for the weapons. “This is going to be ugly,” he said, voice a snarl.

Mercy was silent. She only crouched on the filthy floor, trembling like she was freezing, though the room was near seventy degrees.

“What do we do?” I asked.

They ignored me. Vickers crossed the room and pulled a plastic tub out from beneath the table where the guns were kept. The tub was heavy, and it scraped a path in the dust. She bent and pulled the top off the plastic bin.

“Bug-out bags,” she said. She tossed one to me.

I pulled the pack over my shoulders. It was old army surplus by the look of it. Maybe ten pounds, half-empty. I saw my phone at the bottom of the bin. I grabbed it and stuffed it in my pocket.

“We need to move quick,” she said. “We stay together. If we can't stay together, we regroup at the other hide.”

Hennig grabbed a pack and opened it, scrambling to fill it with ammo from the table.

“And where is that?” I asked.

“No time,” Vickers snapped.

I snatched the last handgun from the table, expecting them to stop me. Hennig eyed me close, but said nothing. Mercy shouldered her pack while Vickers headed for the hole in the wall. “Follow me,” she said. She glanced toward me. “Stay close.”

*   *   *

We ran. Single file, keeping low. We moved quietly, keeping our heads down, moving through the building, crossing from room to room.

We came to another hole in the wall, but instead of diving through as before, Vickers stopped. She bent and peered through the hole.

“So what's the plan?” I asked.

“Don't look back,” Vickers said.

“And if they catch us?”

“You don't want that to happen.”

Hennig had his back to the wall, scanning the room behind us while Vickers looked forward through the hole. Her face was a mask of concentration. She crept farther through, looking both ways. She pulled back.

“I don't like the look of this.” She stood. “Come on.” She crouched low and led us across the building in the other direction.

We passed through another empty room and through a door that funneled us down a long corridor. Metal paneling covered the walls. The dust on the floor was an inch thick. Nobody had walked here in decades.

We came out of the corridor and into another large room—a place that might once have been a factory floor, but which had long since been gutted to serve as another warehouse. We were halfway across the room when we heard it.

Just outside. The thud of a car door. Then barking. Though there was something strange in the sound. The tones deeper than normal. Vickers froze. The rest of us came to a halt behind her.

“Too late,” Hennig whispered.

The barking grew louder.

“Dogs,” I said.

Mercy shook her head. “Worse than that.”

“The hounds,” Hennig said. He glanced down at my gun. “You might be tempted to shoot me with that,” he said. His eyes met mine. “If that's your plan, then I suggest you wait until
after
what's coming.”

I nodded. “I won't shoot you.”

At that moment, outside, I heard a sound—the clatter of metal, something large running across a fallen section of corrugated siding.

“Come on,” Vickers said. “This way.”

We followed.

We ran through the building, leaping over a pile of bricks and passing through a man-door into a smaller room filled with pipes and large steel tubs. Hennig stopped, then turned and made a
shhh
sign with his finger and lips. We flattened ourselves to the wall, keeping in the shadows.

From behind us came the sound of heavy feet, then a moment later, a loud crash. It came from the room we'd just left. There were several voices, and then I heard what sounded like the snort of an animal. The heavy in and out breathing of something large.

From where I stood, I could see through the doorway into part of the other room. A moment later, light footsteps. Then a soft chuckle and an answering murmur.

“They're here,” Hennig said.

At the far end of the room, a figure stepped into view.

 

41

As a boy I had played on the old breakwater near where my father moored his vessel. Out on the water, an old rotting log floated in the shallows—immense and barnacled, bound to pilings. To call it a pier was too kind.

From where I sat on the breakwater, ripples crossed the water in bands, except at the edge of the old log. All around the log the ripples were different. Unaligned. There the currents were disturbed and the shine moved differently. It wouldn't have stood out in photographs, but it stood out as you watched, the glints coming quicker—a place that didn't behave like the rest.

For just a split second, that's what the figure looked like as it crossed through the shadows. A man but something else, too. A perturbation. An area of irregularity where the ripples were busier.

He followed our tracks across the filthy floor.

Hennig was the one who broke first.

He shouldered his shotgun and fired, and the figure looked up—those ripples unfolding like runnels of flame—a seething aurora, and the shape was suddenly crossing the room, eating up the distance in long, lunging strides. I froze, unable to move, unable to think, while Hennig bellowed and fired, and Mercy screamed.

“Go!”

I ran.

Blind panic.

Leaping through a hole in the wall, I sprinted across the empty warehouse and then down a hall, running full blast. When I crossed through another hole, coming out the other side into open air again, my foot caught on something—and I sprawled in the dirt, scraping my face on the ground. Pain shot through my broken nose. I breathed and opened my eyes.

The sun cast a harsh shadow across the path. I climbed unsteadily to my feet, as I felt something warm running down my face. I rubbed my nose with the back of my hand and it came away red. Bleeding again.

I headed for the nearest building, entering through a hangar door. Once inside, I aimed for the darkest shadows, hoping to lose myself.
Where was everyone else?
I felt faint. My head was spinning. When I could run no more, I collapsed near a pile of rubble and wedged myself against the wall.

My vision seemed to retreat, like I wasn't getting all the information from my eyes. Like the concussion from the fire. I heard a gunshot. Then another. Screaming in the distance. Through the open hangar door, I watched Hennig cross between buildings. His face was streaming blood. Eyes wild.

The hound caught him. Or what must have been the hound.

Huge, like a pale rottweiler, but even larger, like no dog I'd ever seen—a thing I couldn't understand. But Mercy was right, the mind fills in.

And I could see it different ways. Just a split second. Something like a hyena—spotted and wild—as it tore his arm. Blood sprayed the ground—and then I saw it the other way. Just a huge muscular dog.

I remembered the gun then—the gun I'd picked up from the table. But when I checked my hands, they were empty. I turned, and it wasn't out on the floor next to me either. I remembered the fall. When I'd tripped, I must have dropped it.

Hennig's screams changed—a sound I did not know a man could make. A sound I wish I hadn't heard. Then silence.

I closed my eyes. I listened and waited.

When I finally looked up from my place in the shadows, several minutes had passed. The clearing beyond the hangar doors was empty, save for a small red shape in the grass that did not move.