The Shadow Men

He smiled again, and this time he meant it. Even in adversity Trix could quip. He wondered where she found the energy, and then thought perhaps such an attitude gave it to her. “I’ll meet you there in an hour,” he said.



“Unless you find them?” And in Trix’s eyes he saw fear. She was afraid that she would lose him, run off into this altered, shattered Boston and never see him again.



“Trix, I promise. If I find them, I’ll pile them into a car and drive there for you. This is all …” He looked around at the damaged city, smelled fire and death on the air, and somewhere in the distance a man was shouting an unidentifiable word again and again. Perhaps it was a name, or maybe an exhalation of pure rage. “It’s beyond us,” he said. “It’s catastrophic. But Jenny and Holly are still my whole world.”



“I know,” she said, but he could still see her disappointment.



“Hey, you’re strong.”



“Yeah. I don’t feel like it.” She smiled and ruffled her hair, displacing a cloud of dust and brightening the color a few shades.



“When we get back, keep the pink hair.”



“I’m thinking of going for matching collar and cuffs, actually.”



“Too much information.” He took her arm and they walked along the street, passing through a group of people heading in the opposite direction.



“You seen home?” one of the men asked them. “You seen home? ’Cause it’s gone far as I’m concerned.”



“Sorry,” Trix said.



“Yeah, well …” The man looked Trix up and down, then walked on with the group.



“In here,” Jim said. As he dragged open the warped, glassless shop door, he glanced over his shoulder, examining the street behind them, trying not to make it so obvious that he was searching for the wraiths. He saw none, but that meant little. He could feel their eyes on him. He’d heard that some people had a sixth sense that told them when they were being watched, but this was the first time he’d experienced it himself. It turned his skin cold.



As he closed the door, Trix was already rooting around the shop. It sold candles and holders, their smell heavy and sickening on the air even though the window had been smashed. “Here,” she said, offering something to him.



He grabbed it, a three-foot-long metal candle stand with a spiked cup on top. Designed to hold a large candle, it would make a formidable weapon.



“Better than a lamp,” she said, and in the darkness he heard her nervous giggle.



“Okay,” he said, suddenly uncertain. The restaurant called him, but so did the sense of solidifying guilt that their actions had caused all this. It was unreasonable and untrue, and yet he could not shake the idea.



“I’ll see you at Sally’s,” Trix said. “You go now, or if they’re watching they’ll figure something’s up.”



“Can they figure?” Jim asked. His fear of the wraiths, their alienness, had barely had time to figure over the past hour. But here and now, their actions and unknown nature suddenly hit home. Can we really fight them? he wondered, and his plan suddenly felt weak and pointless. And Veronica, that dear old lady … can we really fight her?



“What the fuck have we got ourselves mixed up in, eh?” Trix asked.



“Yeah.” She came to him and they hugged, then she shoved him at the door.



“I’ll hide,” she said, “but not for long. Then I’m out the back door and gone.”



“Run fast.”



“You, too.”



Jim nodded in the darkness, and in the distance came another rumble as a weakened building collapsed. He dragged the front door open, smelled fires and dust and fear on the breeze, and then left his friend behind.



Trix counted out a minute, using the counting to try to calm herself. Then she ran like hell. She found the rear door by touch, tugged it open, and emerged onto a wide alleyway behind the row of shops. There was little damage here—only the smashed glass that must be common throughout the city—and the area seemed quiet. Weird. The whole city had been shaken awake, and here—



“Hey!” someone shouted, and that was enough for Trix. Jim was going west, and she sprinted north toward Chinatown as fast as she could. Should’ve taken the envelope and sheet from him! Should’ve arranged somewhere else to meet in case it’s too dangerous there! But there were so many shoulds, because this was a Boston of possibilities.



There were two fire engines and a couple of ambulances blocking the street around the next corner, where a four-story building had collapsed. The structures on either side of it seemed stable and virtually undamaged—their architecture slightly off-center, as if built blind—and she saw the confusion in some of the firefighters’ stances and gestures. They don’t recognize those buildings. But they were professionals, and by the time she squeezed by, they were already in action. She glanced back at the next corner and saw them approaching the fallen building, ready to do their best even in the face of mystery.



She ran through the streets of Boston’s Chinatown. Some areas seemed almost untouched but for the familiar scree of shattered glass splashed across the sidewalks and roads. Others were in ruins. The city had fallen strangely silent, many routes now blocked to vehicles. The quiet was broken on occasion by sirens and shouts, and from some far distance a long, rumbling explosion, but they were islands of noise in a strange, unsettling calm. It was as if Boston was in shock, and unable to speak its usual ebullient language.



Many times over that final block she wanted to stop and help. There were people in need: bleeding in the street, pawing at rubble, wandering in a dangerous daze. But she sensed eyes on her back every step of the way, and she was scared. She was terrified. Lost in a city that should be familiar and yet that was more alien due to its occasional familiarity, she craved the company of someone who understood. She hoped that Jim would find Jenny and Holly, though she doubted it; and she hoped that she would see him again soon, as they had both vowed. But right now, finding the woman named Sally Bennet was her one true aim.



She did not once look back, because she feared what she would see. As she ran, she tried to analyze the wraiths’ capabilities, but laughed at the ridiculousness of what she was doing. Yesterday she was a normal woman in a normal city, with unremarkable concerns and a few personal demons. Now …



What was she now? She was no longer sure.



They killed him when we were there. If they are from Veronica, they couldn’t just kill him on their own. They needed us. They needed the letter. She couldn’t work it out, and her aching muscles and straining lungs distracted her from her thoughts.



At last she reached Beach Street, in the heart of Chinatown, and looked back for the first time. She saw two wraith-things following, though they made some pretense at hiding. They had no faces, yet she knew they were looking her way. The plan had failed—perhaps it had never had a hope of success—and in a display of naked fear, she turned and gave them both the finger. “Fuck you!” she shouted. Her voice echoed emptily along the street.



The road was lined with shops, several of them boarded up, and piles of refuse. There were signs in Chinese and colorful lanterns hanging from lampposts, but they looked as though they had seen better days. Where there ought to have been tailor shops and restaurants, there were mostly dingy apartments and shuttered storefronts. Walls had been sprayed with gang signs, and people were wandering the street in small, threatening groups. Though Chinatown in general seemed more badly damaged than other streets she’d passed down—which meant that it differed dramatically from one Boston to the next—this particular block seemed to have escaped substantial damage.



Trix slowed to a fast walk, glancing back one more time and wondering if everyone could see the wraiths. Why not? Why should only I be able to see them? She had no clue, and not knowing was always more frightening than the truth.



“What the fuck’s up with your hair?” a voice said. The kid was taller than her, maybe fourteen years old, pimply skin darkened by a line of tattoo ants crawling around his neck and up one cheek. There were several other youths standing behind him, feigning attitude but exuding fear. Some were Asian.



Here we go, she thought, saying, “Got a problem with pink, Ant Man?”



He scoffed, bristling when a couple of his compatriots chuckled. “Got a mouth on you, bitch!”



“Bitch?” It was Trix’s turn to bristle. “Your mother know you talk to women like that?” She took a step forward, the boy’s fear apparent, and for a couple of seconds she enjoyed it. “People are dead in Boston tonight, kid. You want to give me shit when a thousand people are buried under rubble?”



He stood taller, glancing left and right—Can he see them, can he?—then looked down at his feet.



“Your families all okay?” Trix asked.



“Yeah,” Ant Man said. “We just dunno what to do.”



“Looks like you got off easy,” she said, “but you could help me. I’m looking for Sally Bennet.”



“You an’ everyone else,” the boy said. He turned and pointed along the street.



Trix had assumed they were just another milling group. But half a dozen buildings ahead, a line of people snaked down the steps from a front door and twenty feet along the street. There must have been thirty people there.



“They’re all seeing Sally?”



“Yeah. Few from round here, some people I’ve never seen before.”



“You give them shit, too?” The boy looked ashamed, and Trix smiled to put him at ease. “Take it easy, kid,” she said.



“Name’s Marcus.”



“It’s a good name.” She passed them by and hurried along the street, and as she approached the queue she made out the people standing there in more detail. Black, white, Hispanic, men, women, and several children, they stood in silence, shuffling forward slowly as a huge woman exited the building and hurried down the steps.



The number of people here surprised her. Had they all gone through some ritual to find Sally, as she and Jim had done at the traffic island and then the restaurant back in their Boston? She doubted that, given the short time since the quake. And she wondered what that said about Veronica—that she had a greater distance between her and the people and city she was there to protect.



So many missing people, Trix thought. She stopped in the middle of the road, and several people glanced at her. One pointed farther along the sidewalk. “There’s a line,” the man said.



“Yeah.” Trix looked back the way she had come. Ant Man and his hangers-on were walking briskly along the street, and none of them seemed to notice the pale figure crouched atop a two-story house at the far corner. Another hid in shadows across the street. Just waiting, she thought. Watching. At least Jim took one of them with him. She pressed her hand to her jeans pocket, pretending to touch the letter she did not have, and then stormed up the steps and into the run-down building.



A few voices of protest followed her in, and she heard shock at her lack of respect. But she’d apologize later. If they knew why she was here, they’d say nothing. If they were aware of what had happened, and that their Oracle’s life was in danger, they’d have piled in behind her and protected her all the way. Inside the building she smelled cooking vegetables and heard loud, pulsing music, and the line of people led behind the staircase and into a low doorway beneath. She’s in the basement as if she’s hiding away. Hands clasped at Trix as she pushed by, and a few more voices rose in anger, but she forced herself down the darkened staircase. She stumbled, missed a step, and was helped on her way by a shove in the back. She twisted as she fell and saw the angry man glaring down at her. “Wait your turn!” he whispered as she slid down the wooden stairs on her back.



She grunted as she hit the cellar floor, pulling herself to her feet and quickly sensing the different atmosphere down here. She looked sidelong at the walls, expecting to see a thin place, but this was something else.



This was humanity in need, in the presence of a power that might give aid.



“Impatient for bad news?” a voice said. Trix turned slowly and looked to the far end of the basement room.



The girl sitting on a ratty wicker chair couldn’t have been much more than eleven years old. She was black, wearing jeans and a grubby Miley Cyrus T-shirt, and holding the hand of a woman kneeling by her side. Trix had never seen a child so haunted and devoid of hope.



“Sally?” she asked. The girl nodded. “Sally, I have something terrible to tell you. I think Veronica wants you dead.”



The girl sighed. “I thought as much. C’mere, lady. You better tell me everything.”



“First …” Trix started shaking. “There are men without faces.”



Sally’s eyes opened wide. And then, in the building above, people began to scream.



Where four streets met at odd angles, and the traffic island was home to a statue that Jim did not recognize, Jenny’s parents’ restaurant sat at one prominent corner. Back in Boston it was called Junction 58, and he was thrilled—and a little chilled—to see that it had the same name here. Its ornate glass frontage had shattered to the street, spilling the outdoor tables and chairs that were stacked overnight beneath the awning, but he was still looking at a sight familiar and well loved, and he felt something right itself in his mind. It’s not all madness, he thought, and then his brief fantasy was blown away.



Jenny’s mother stepped out from the restaurant. They lived in the three-story apartment upstairs, and their first reaction after the earthquake must have been to come down to the street, checking the damage on the way. She was waving a menu before her face as if hot, and she was almost the woman Jim had known for so long. Almost, but not quite. Slighter than he remembered, hair longer and darker, face a little more weathered-looking, this was Jenny’s mother as she might be five or ten years down the road.