The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine (41 page)

“Can she eat?” I ladled soup into
a bowl and pushed it toward him, then filled a second when Jackson nodded. I
started limping toward the stairs, bowl on a plastic tray.

“She’s probably sleeping,”
Jackson said. “And she’ll be groggy, even if she’s not. Make sure she doesn’t
choke, Randal—she’ll need some practice before she’s used to swallowing with
the prosthetic.”

The whole gang arrived while I
was climbing the stairs, loud caws and laughter shrill in the alleyway. I
ignored them and kept climbing, opened the door to Rose’s room. She wasn’t
sleeping, but her eyes were glassy from Jackson’s painkillers. She was
insulated by the drugs, able to look into my face without flinching. She seemed
numb to the point where even the noise outside was absent. I sat down next to
her and she smiled at me, wincing. “Randal,” she said. Her new tongue stumbled
around the name, blunting the
n
, but I could recognise the word through
the awkwardness. “Your name is Randal.”

“I brought you food,” I said.
“Something soft. Soup. Jackson wants you to practice swallowing.”

“I can hear birds,” she said.
Her face turned toward the window, toward the aftermath of sunset lingering
behind the skyline. The song of the Corvidae filled the air.

“Nothing to worry about.” I
tried to look her in the eye. “You should eat.”

I held a spoon before her face,
the soup steaming and thick. I watched the patchwork plastic and Kevlar move
when she opened her mouth, the faint flicker at the base of her throat as
Jackson’s prosthetic worked with the torn scraps of her real tongue. Jackson
was right—it was ugly work, but Rose remained beautiful. I fed her a spoon at a
time, using my good hand to guide the spoon. The crow calls grew louder,
cutting through the groggy haze. She stopped eating and turned to the window,
shuddering.

“It’s them.” She said.
“They...hated me. They told me to leave. Why are they here?”

“No one likes to lose,” I said.

She blinked back tears,
remembering. “Why am I here? Why aren’t I dead?”

I thought of Jackson, sitting
downstairs, working his way through a bowl of soup. “Jackson likes old
stories,” I told her, and she frowned. “Fairytales and stuff. You needed help
and he helped you.” I clenched my fist, listening to the gears creak. “He does
that, sometimes.”

The painkillers kicked in,
responding to her stress. She drifted off, unable to fight Jackson’s drugs, and
I went downstairs to listen to the bird calls. Jackson was by the stove again,
hidden in the corner of the workshop. He cradled a half-full bowl of soup in
his lap. The Corvidae were right outside now. I turned the lights off, one by
one, relying on the shadows to give us some cover.

“She’s scared,” I said,
settling into the stool next to him.

“She’s a smart girl,” Jackson
answered. He lowered his head and stared into the murkiness of the soup, wispy
hair falling in front of his face. Something thumped hard against the front
door and the charge went off, filling the air with ozone. We listened to
something young and birdlike squeal in pain, then the sound of a limping body
retreating into the distance. “We should have closed-circuit,” Jackson said. “I
don’t like hearing them without seeing what they’re up to.” The second thump
was more solid, prepared for the shock that followed. The sound echoed across
the workshop as the taser’s hiss cut through the darkness.

“Pelican didn’t have any
cameras,” I said. “It’d take at least a week to get some in.”

Jackson slept in his chair,
fitful, flinching with every measured assault against our doorway. I stayed
awake, keeping vigil, the poker gripped in the clockwork hand. My slow hand,
the hated hand, but it was strong enough to shatter bone if I could land a
solid blow. Jackson used to tell me stories about a broken boy who was put back
together by kindly elves with a talent for magic and clockwork. He would tell
me the boy’s arm was magical, that his heart was a wonder in a world where
hearts rarely beat, where all too often hearts were lost for no reason. Love
was a powerful thing in Jackson’s stories. It could conquer armies and rewrite
time. It could make the broken whole again.

I passed the time by counting
the thumps of Corvidae against the door, the rattle-rattle-buzz of claws
against the window bars, the electrified charge sending bodies reeling back
with scorched hands and strangled cries. They paced themselves, syncopated the
assaults, used the silence as a weapon to keep us on edge. I counted the
thumps, one after the other; one bird, two birds, three birds burned. Four
birds, five birds, six birds harmed. Occasionally I stood by the doorway,
listening to the quiet scuffle of clawed boots against the concrete. Sometimes
they were swift and raucous, using the echoes of the alley to their advantage.
They filled the air with birdcalls, making it impossible to be sure of their
numbers. Other times they were silent, murmurs in the darkness. I figured there
were twenty three of them out there, including those who’d been shocked by the
taser bank on the door, birds shocked by enough voltage to leave them twitching
and stunned until morning. Sometimes I pressed my weight against the door,
keeping it steady against the assault.

Around 2 a.m. it all went
quiet. I listened to the steps of someone loping up to the doorway, leaning in
without touching it. “We know you’re in there, Tick-Tock,” Rook3 whispered.
“Me-and-I hear your heart; tick-tick-tick.”

“No-one here but us chickens,”
I told him, voice cracking. I picked a spot by the door, raising the poker
high, just in case. “Bars on the windows and steel plates on the doors. Go
bother someone else, little bird.”

Rook3 knocked, three sharp raps
that echoed on the steel. The air filled with a whiff of ozone and Rook3
screamed, then cawed and cackled as his screams turned to laughter. “Nothing
save you from me-and-I, Tick-Tock,” he said. “You come out, sun or no-sun, and Rook3
be waiting.”

There was no more knocking
after that, no more electrical discharge or rattled windows to break the
silence. Later, as the sun rose, I peeked through a crack on a second-floor
window and watched the Corvidae perched on the fire-escape next door, waiting
and watching like an army of twisted shadows. I woke Jackson and pointed.
“We’re locked in,” I said. “It appears they’re laying siege.”

Cops are an expensive
proposition in Downside, but Jackson tried calling them anyway. His first
attempt got him a busy signal, the second just the hazy buzz of a scrambler
attached to the line. The third call was answered by Rook3’s croaking laughter.
“Nobody going to help you, Patch. You goin’ to die if you don’t give me-and-I
back da girl.” Jackson hung up. His knuckles were pale and his hands trembled,
but he drew himself straight as he glared at the door. Defiant, angry, but that
wouldn’t last. I could see the fear there, lurking behind his eyes.

“We should go,” I told him.
“Use the tunnel, get out while we can.” Jackson didn’t answer. He went back to
his chair and rocked, his face pinched so tight I could barely see his eyes
beneath the press of wrinkles. Small, gentle Jackson, determined to do what was
right. “So many of them,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting there to be so many.”

I left him there, huddled
against the darkness, and checked on Rose myself.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Rose told
me, fighting against the painkillers. “All the noise, it was like being back
there. Like living with them.” She was still weak, barely able to lift her head
off the pillow, but there was life in her cheeks. She winced with every s she
used, a sting of pain from the sutures as the tongue touched her teeth. It gave
her voice an old lilt, at odds with the face full of bruises and patchwork
stitches. So many grafts, so many repairs.

“No one slept,” I said. “Don’t
worry, they can’t hurt you here. We’ve locked the place up tight, and we’ve
held off worse than this.”

Rose pursed her lips and
frowned at me, the patchwork tongue bulging against her cheeks. It was a little
too large for her mouth, the mechanism heavy against her jaw. She would never
look right with her mouth closed, but at least she could speak.

“How...” She shook her head,
trying to dislodge the question, but her hand reached out anyway. The dark
nails and fingers withered into claws, hovering over the steel, preparing to
stroke it. I pulled away, the cogs grinding.

“Jackson found me when I was a
kid,” I said. “Beaten, cut up, almost dead. He put me back together, the same
as you. Replaced the parts as I grew older so I didn’t get lopsided.” I raised
the arm and looked at it, flexed my fingers and took her withered claw in mine.
“He’s a good man. Foolish, really, and stubborn, but a good man nonetheless.”

Outside there was a loud caw,
the fizzing snap of a rock thrown against the windows. Rose flinched. “You
never...there are other options,” she said. “You could get it replaced.”

I shook my head. “Jackson calls
it his finest work,” I told her. “The arm, the heart, the knee. Replacing them
would break his heart.”

I stood there until Rose gave
in to the painkillers, drifting off into sleep with a frown across her face. I
held her hand, studied her scars, wondered how far she could make it. Jackson
was wrong; we could move her if we had too. Slowly, using a gurney, with enough
drugs to keep her sedated and free of pain. We could run if we had to, but we
might not get away. The tunnel could get us out, but they would have someone
watching. Just in case we had allies, on the off chance someone heard the noise
and could be bothered to investigate. If we were spotted as we left, if they
saw us sneaking out...

I went downstairs. Jackson was
huddled in his chair, shaking. “They won’t stop,” Jackson said. “They’ll never
leave us alone, Randal. They just won’t stop.”

“Then we run,” I told him, and
I laid out the plan. Jackson listened, eyes flat, and nodded when I reached the
end. I sent him upstairs to get things ready. When I was alone in the workshop
I let myself shake, skin crawling against the prosthetics. I tightened my grip
on the poker, steel grinding against steel. My heart tick-tocked, slow and
steady, heedless of my fear.

The Corvidae left us alone
during the day, disappearing into the shadows or lingering in knots of two or
three, hanging on the fire escapes like birds on a wire. I spent the afternoon
taking practice swings with the poker, trying to get comfortable with its
leverage and its weight. Violence is easy to practice: swing, parry, thrust;
make use of my longer reach. Don’t let them get close enough to use speed
against me, try to take them down before they rip me apart with their claws.
Jackson watched me, lips drawn, trying not to state the obvious.

“You’ll need food,” he said.
“Sooner or later, you’ll run out of food.”

“I won’t run out of food,” I
said. “And you’ll need it more than I do.” I smiled at him, awkward and
lopsided. Jackson hugged me and patted my arm.

“It’ll be dark soon,” I said.
“You should get ready.”

“Sit,” Jackson said, and he
waited until I did. He told me a story. “It’s easier,” he said, in the silence
at the end. The shadows inside the workshop were growing longer and darker. “In
the stories, it’s always easier.”

“We should get her ready to
move,” I said. “You’ll need help with the gurney, for the first part at least.

This time the bird calls
started right on sunset, a whole murder of Corvidae starting their mockery at
once. I sent Jackson upstairs with two bowls of soup and a pair of spoons,
keeping up appearances in case their spies had an angle to see into the house.
He pretended he was weary, stomping as he climbed the stairs. He snuck back
down quietly, taking each stair with a graceful limp. The wood didn’t squeak
beneath him, and perhaps the ruse was pointless at this late hour; the plan
would work or it wouldn’t, whether we maintained the ruse or not. He nodded at
me, eyes shining. We turned out the lights.

“Tick-Tock,” Rook3 said,
calling through the door. “Hey, Tick-Tock? We-and-I getting bored. We be
cracking your cage tonight.” I heard the regular chk-chk-chk of the taser
discharge, the sharp squeal of nails against the metal bars over the window.
“Insulated, Tick-Tock,” Rook3 taunted. “Me-and-I saw your little friend, saw
the fat little Pelican. Got me what I need to break down your little toys.” He
knocked on the door again; rap-rap-rap. This time it wasn’t followed by a
scream.

I heard the door to the tunnel
slide shut, the quiet click of a lock settling in place. “Me-and-I eat your
eyes tonight, Tick-Tock. Eat your eyes and taste the sweet-meat upstairs, after
we gut da patch. He shouldn’a saved her, Tick-Tock.” Chk-chk-chk as the taser
spluttered, useless, against the claws sliding over the door. Nails on the
metal, sharp squeal like a knife to the gut. The sound drew goosebumps from
what flesh I still possessed.

I readied the poker and stood
next to the door; if I was lucky I could brain one as he came through, crack
his head open like a stale egg and be done with it before the others swarmed.
Maybe I could frighten the rest of the pack off, make them think we were
dangerous, better equipped than they’d suspected. They struggled with the
windows and kicked at the doors, insulated against the taser discharge but
still struggling to break down the barricade. It would take time, but not a
lot. I waited. I waited, and the minutes ticked by. I thought about Jackson and
his stories, about Rose and her mangled tongue, the patchwork scars that will
cover her body when the stitches are pulled out and she’s finally healed for good.
Jackson was right, she wouldn’t be beautiful, but I was right too. I knew it.