“Good day to be a bird. Nothing on me! I’m naked! Right Sushi?”
Green Eyes didn’t respond.
“Sush- Green Eyes. I’m sorry I called you sushi, and said I’d cook you. We’re buddies, right? You’re not mad?”
“I’m not mad, nugget,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. We’re good.”
But she didn’t say anything else. Her demeanor didn’t change. Quiet, grim.
“You might be naked, kid, but those beady black eyes are a problem,” Rose said. “Evolution gave you almost three-hundred and sixty degree vision. That’s three hundred and sixty degrees of access the Barber has.”
“I’ve dealt with him before.”
“Just… be safe. Head down, eyes closed. Ride on someone’s shoulder.”
“With Blake! He’s kind of shoulderish! With fingers, and an eye. But I don’t discriminate.”
“Sure,” Rose said, and she sounded very tired, her words clipped not on purpose, but with the tension, the simple fact that she didn’t have a wealth of focus to spare. “Same idea for Green Eyes and the…”
Rose gestured, her right arm still around Peter’s shoulder for support.
“Rat pack,” Mags suggested, for the vestige kids.
“Sure,” Noah said. “Eyes down, extra careful.”
The tension was palpable. Though they moved furtively, patting themselves down, glancing each other over to point out little things, like buckles or buttons, things were still. The group a small tableau in the midst of a city that was roiling more than an ocean in high storm. With the way everything was coming to pieces, the walls thinning out, the little details being washed away, it looked like a city made of candlesmoke, ready to simply puff out of existence.
Peter untucked his shirt beneath his coat to cover up his belt. Mags pulled off the metallic hairband that had been failing in its duty to keep her disorderly hair more orderly.
After all of the bases were covered, the group began edging forward.
“Don’t look directly at it. Resist any bait,” Rose warned. “Don’t look at it in surprise, don’t look back, don’t wonder. Keep moving forward.”
The group moved around the crater, splitting into two groups, one going right, one going left.
The Barber made a sound, guttural and inhuman. I imagined it was akin to the sound a giant might make if it managed to howl loud enough to be heard from beneath a river of tar. It came from a deep, dark, place, past a great deal of resistance.
In the moment the scream reached its peak, Johannes died. Every member of the group flinched as he popped, the container of the human body no longer enough for what dwelt within. The contents banked against the sides of the crater, dusting the group.
“Good,” Noah said. His eyes were fixed forward.
“I wouldn’t call it good,” Rose said, her voice tense. “But I get the sentiment. Keep moving. Don’t look.”
The Barber unfolded, reaching out, flexing, a fresh body in the making. The sea of dust only absorbed his feet, the pavement cracked underfoot. He made progress, his form alien, reaching, forming new body parts just to find more traction or hold onto what he’d managed to get, but it was glacial, slow.
The group wasn’t much faster. Too many people limping or barely able to walk. The ones who were strong were carrying heavy burdens. Even Peter, with his injury, was supporting Ainsley and Rose both.
Tkkkkk.
The sound of metal on pavement.
“Don’t look,” Rose said, again. “He will take anything he can get. Trust.”
“He went back for the sickle,” Lola said. “You can hear it. I can sense it. He can throw it, like he did before.”
“He’ll fail, like he did before,” Rose said. “Three times, we’ve gone to war with him. Three times, we’ve beaten him.”
“Here,” Ainsley said. “When did you fight him before?”
“The Abyss,” Rose said. “That was the second time.”
“Was there a time before that?”
“The day he was bound,” Rose said. “If bloodlines count enough to drag me into this whole mess, they have to be strong enough to let my grandmother’s victory carry forward.”
Tk. Tk. Tk-tk.
Ainsley shot Rose a look, and it was one of alarm.
As justifications went, Rose’s was pretty thin.
But saying so would be more dangerous than anything. It could break the spell, or sunder the confidence of the lesser members of the group.
There was a scraping sound, not the sickle, but the sound of the pavement moving, being pushed aside.
The scrape that followed was sharp, a sudden movement. It went hand in hand with a crash, and an impact that reached out a hundred feet ahead, serving as the push that some of the sections of pavement had needed to finish breaking. Dust was knocked upward, and dust was sent cascading forward from behind.
“Trust,” Rose said, and her voice didn’t have the slightest sign of weakness. “Believe.”
But, and it was a hard thing to see in the cloud of dust that had surrounded us, Rose’s head trembled. The muscle at the left side of her jaw was standing out, distinct.
The Barber moved. Not one sharp sound, but several. Moving fast enough and violently enough that whole sections of pavement were being pushed aside.
Another crash, more dust filled the air, and parts of nearby building faces fell away. A fast food building shed pieces of sign and fragments of glass. Heavier things fell with thuds.
The heavier impacts sounded like footsteps.
The shadows that stirred in the clouds of the group took on shapes.
A roar echoed around us, that same tar-thick howl, only with an edge to it.
They kept moving forward. They didn’t look back.
There were more crashes, more explosions of dust, another roar.
Further back.
He was mired. Caught, to be swallowed up.
“Mags,” Rose said.
“Yeah?”
Rose pointed. As the clouds of dust thinned out, I was able to make out a dip. A fold of pavement that was lower than the rest.
“You’re sure?”
“She’ll come after us again, otherwise.”
Mags shifted her grip. Ms. Lewis struggled, and I could sense the hesitation on Mags’ part.
She had no problem shooting monsters or tormenting goblins, but doing this was something else entirely.
Ms. Lewis doubled over, trying to push forward. The vestige kids got in her way, Noah and Benny each catching one of the lawyer’s shoulders.
“Buttsack, do you-”
Buttsack didn’t wait for the question to end. He hauled on Ms. Lewis’ belt, driving his shoulder into her stomach, and tipped her. She fell sideways, into the dip, a ditch toward the center of the road.
In contrast to the Barber, all eyes were on her as she tumbled. Pavement broke as though it were nothing more than compacted sand. Still-intact slabs fell around her, disintegrated on landing, leaving her half buried.
Her struggles to get out from under only served to drive her deeper. She sat up, but her legs sank. The sand seemed to scrape and abrade. The Abyss at its basest form.
Ms. Lewis was trying to spit out the tissues that had been stuffed into her mouth.
“A little forward?” Rose asked.
Paige and Peter helped her get closer.