The Fall

The exotic-looking weaponry piqued Creem’s interest. But he was still wary of the driver, Quinlan. “All right. What about the green?

Quinlan opened the handles of the leather bag. Filled with bundles of cash, anti-counterfeiting threads glowing under the indigo eye of Gus’s UV light.

Creem started to reach into the bag-then stopped. He noticed Quinlan’s hands gripping the bag handles. Most of his fingernails were gone, his flesh entirely smooth. But the fucked-up thing was his middle fingers. Twice as long as the rest of the digits, and crooked at the end-so much so that the tip curled around his palm to the side of his hand.

Another scream split the night, followed by a kind of growl. Quinlan closed the bag, looking forward into the trees. He handed the money bag to Gus, trading him for the long gun. Then, with unbelievable power and speed, he went sprinting into the trees.

Creem said, “What the…?”

If there was a path, this Quinlan ignored it. The gangsters heard branches cracking.

Gus slung the weapons bag onto his shoulder. “Come on. You don’t want to miss this.”

He was easy to follow, because Quinlan had cleared a path of downed branches, pointing the way straight ahead, weaving only for tree trunks. They hustled along, coming upon Quinlan in a clearing on the other side, finding him standing quietly with the gun cradled against his chest.

His hood had fallen back. Creem, huffing, saw the driver’s smooth bald head from behind. In the darkness, it looked like the guy had no ears. Creem came around to see his face better-and the human tank shivered like a little flower in a storm.

The thing called Quinlan had no ears and barely any nose left. A thick throat. Translucent skin, nearly iridescent. And blood-red eyes-the brightest eyes Creem had ever seen-set deep within his pale, smooth head.

Just then a figure broke from the upper branches, dropping to the ground with ease and loping across the clearing. Quinlan sprinted out to intercept it like a cougar tracking a gazelle. They collided, Quinlan dropping his shoulder for an open-field hit.

The figure went down sprawling with a squeal, rolling hard-before popping right back up.

In an instant, Quinlan turned the barrel light on the figure. The figure hissed and flailed back, the torture in its face evident even from that distance. Then Quinlan pulled the trigger. An exploding cone of bright silver buckshot obliterated the figure’s head.

Only-the figure didn’t die like a man dies. A white substance geysered out from its neck trunk and it tucked in its arms and collapsed to the ground.

Quinlan turned his head fast-even before the next figure darted from the trees. A female this time, racing away from Quinlan, toward the others. At the others. Gus pulled the scimitar from the bag. The female-dressed in tatters like the filthiest crack whore you’ve ever seen, except that she was nimble and her eyes shone red-reeled back from the sight of the weapon, but too late. With a single, clean move, Gus connected with the tops of her shoulders and her neck, her head falling one way, her body the other. When it all settled to the ground, a pasty-white liquid oozed out of her wounds.

“And there’s the white,” Gus said.

Quinlan returned to them, pumping the long gun and raising his thick cotton hood back over his head.

“Okay, yeah,” said Creem, dancing from side to side like a kid who had to go to the bathroom on Christmas morning. “Yeah, I’d say we’re fucking in.”

The Flatlands

USING A STRAIGHT razor taken from the pawnshop, Eph shaved half his face before losing interest. He zoned out, staring into the mirror over the sink of milky water, his right cheek still covered in foam.

He was thinking of the book-the Occido Lumen -and how everything was going against him. Palmer and his fortune. Blocking every move they could make. What would become of them-of Zack-if he failed?

The edge of the razor drew blood. A thin nick turning red and flowing. He looked at the blade with the smear of blood on the steel, and drifted back eleven years to Zack’s birth.

Following one miscarriage and a stillbirth at twenty-nine weeks, Kelly had been on two months’ bed rest with Zack before going into labor. She had a specific birth plan going in: no epidural or drugs of any kind, no cesarean section. Ten hours later, there was little progression. Her doctor suggested Pitocin in order to speed things up, but Kelly declined, sticking to her plan. Eight hours of labor later, she relented, and the Pitocin drip was begun. Two hours after that, after enduring almost a full day of painful contractions, she finally consented to an epidural. The Pitocin dose was gradually increased until it was as high as the baby’s heart rate would allow.