43. George – Angels & Demons

It was a dark and stormy night; the frost churned in torrents – except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it was in Shipyard City that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flames of what remained of hastily constructed pyres that struggled against the darkness.

The remnants of humankind also struggled. Their leaders were, at best, semiconscious. One of them wasn’t even that. At worst, they worked their troops to death, while those with enough agency of reason retreated from the storm of fire, ice and eroding platforms drowning in frost. They ran for the relative safety of higher, less exposed rooms. Those that didn’t, well, they were no longer an issue.

Only one person didn’t move. George lay in the grit, bleeding and out cold, his body growing colder. The blood gushed from his head and down his shoulder, to his hand dangling over the edge of the last step. Red drops fell into the wind and filled the air with a metallic aftertaste. Rhea turned back halfway up, to reach oit for him, only noticing then he wasn’t with the pack.

“George,” she cried, and ran back down.

She skidded in the frost, almost barreling over the edge herself. Only snagging her hand on George’s boot saved her life. Rhea cried out as the stone collapsed under her, and clambered back onto relative stability. She pulled on George’s foot, yanking him leg first up to ground level, but his boot slid off and she fell on her ass. With a frustrated roar, she threw it at a wall and grabbed him again, this time degloving him of his sock.

“Here,” Holden said, appearing beside her. “His arm’s caught.”

He unhooked George’s inner elbow from a crack in the rubble and hoisted his friend up with strained exhaustion. Rhea bore George’s bare foot, and Wendy and Bobert reached down to take his remaining limbs. They carried him up the ruined staircase, fast as they could, as lightly as the disintegrating brickwork allowed. Each step loosened more stones, and only when they neared the first floor did they speed up into a run. They fell into the lobby as the remains of the steeple crumbled away behind them.

“Is it bad?” Wendy said, parting George’s hair. Her fingers came away bloody. “Oh, it’s bad.”

“What happened down there?” Holden said. “I remember a fight and then half the tower was gone.”

Rhea fell to her knees. “My dad gave him the same injury he had.”

“Will he be okay?” Jamie said.

Rhea didn’t say answer him. She grabbed her husband’s collar and pulled him further in. Wendy sat with him and Zeke backed away, leaving Jamie alone in the darkened room. The small boy was met with a circle of staring accusations.

“It’s my fault.”

“We have him covered,” Rhea said. “Oh, go fetch your damn cat.”

Grandma Bobert draped a towel over George’s bare foot and Holden drew a wrench from his toolbelt. He left for the bridge and Alfredo and Bobert guided Jamie after him. The remaining survivors sat or stood around George, pretending they couldn’t hear his chest rattle, and prepared themselves to wait out the storm.

Across the street, a cat’s meow cut through the wind.

…

I think I died.

I felt weightless, drifting through a void, and in and out of consciousness. It was no use fighting it, no use fighting to keep a thought or sense of self alive. The fight had been knocked out of me.

Who was I? Where was I? Was it important?

I cracked open an eye and didn’t see the world. Didn’t see my arms or legs or body, either. I floated, a disembodied consciousness in flat darkness, until an eye-shaped slit of light widened in front of me. Beyond it lay my missing world, and with that, the realization I was nothing a goldfish trapped in a bowl, unable to react to or affect anything outside my bubble.

A giant Holden held a burning splinter to the skin of my eye-shaped window. I didn’t feel the heat

.“George?” Wendy’s muffled voice said. “George? George, honey, you gotta wake up.”

Holden moved the burning twig from away and raised his hand out. “George, please, we need you.”

The slap echoed through my skull, unfelt but loud. Then a shadow drew over the view, the darkness behind me stretching forward across my window. It took a moment to realize it was a blink. My real body blinked, and I was trapped behind my eyes. The movement of my lids carried weight, heavy and slow. When they opened again, Holden and the background blizzard were gone, replaced by Rhea peering in from a dark tunnel.

“I need you, George,” she said. “Don’t you dare go leaving me.”

She hugged my body and I blinked again, this time reopening my eyes to a bright light. Rhea was gone and this time Holden sat across the way, cross legged, in a concrete passage. He swigged from a plastic water bottle and threw the last drops at me.

“Buddy,” he said, “I know all the techniques, but you’re the only one who knows how to explain it to these saps. I need my TA back. You need to snap out of this.”

I looked on from the dark place as water ran down the physical exterior of my eyes.

“I just had the living daylights beaten out of me,” I said. “Can’t I rest for five minutes?”

The words echoed, but no sound passed my lips, not my real ones, anyway. It seemed communication with the outer world was out. I couldn’t even let them know I was awake.

My body blinked again.

…

As his son lay comatose, sipping a freshly unsealed mango juice box Zeke had salvaged from a storm-wrecked vending machine, the cold outside seeped in to nip at the exposed toes of his one defrocked foot. Zeke contemplated the atmosphere, feeling more or less alone. His suitcase lay open aside him, empty save for a blanket and one last bottle, and that bottle was half empty.

He wiped George’s mouth with the edge of the blanket and packed it away again, then stood and swayed at the edge of the exit, on tiptoes, never quite managing to overbalance and fall over. He scoured the bones of the city with eyes clear and understanding for the first time in decades, marred only by the virtue of being the eyes of a skull shaking from uncontrolled withdrawal. The pounding in his head hit critical and he clutched at its sides, raising one foot forward, out over the sky. It hovered there, outstretched under the exposed world. Zeke teetered on the edge, digging his fingernails into his scalp, hoping to ground himself with enough pain before desperation took complete control.

As the weight of his outward foot won over his tattered sense of self preservation, a more grounding pain than he ever asked for smashed into his Achilles heel. He toppled backwards with a yelp, instantly grounded in the tunnel. Jamie stood over him and raised his other foot, ready to kick Zeke’s next exposed area if necessary.

Zeke clutched his throbbing tendon. “Gyargh! What are you doing, son? I need these feet to stand on, you know.”

“You were trying to leave me,” Jamie said, “just like my parents and Miss Bennett.”

“I’m not trying to leave anything,” Zeke said. “Okay, it crossed my mind, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to actually do it. I’m just, ugh, it’s just this migraine talking.”

“Then kill it with another bottle.”

Zeke reached over and pulled his last one from his suitcase. “That Rhea lass and her dead boyfriend back there, them and their friends took it all. This is all I got now, see? I have to ration it.”

Jamie leaned over the old man. “Then maybe it’s time you gave it up.”

Zeke scoffed at him and held up the clear liquid. “Everybody thinks that’s so easy. You might as well have said give up air.”

“You need air. You don’t need this.”

“Addiction’s nature’s way of making babies breathe, boy. You spend nine months before birth getting oxygen through your bellybutton. Addiction is how your brain tricks you into taking more breaths after your first lungful. It’s what keeps you breathing forever.”

Jamie’s face crinkled up. “My mom used to say people find out anything they can to justify their habits.”

“And a smart woman she was, too. But it don’t stop it from being true. You can hold your breath over three minutes before your brain even begins to suffer, but you never reach that long. You get that overwhelming urge to inhale. That’s the part of your brain that deals with addiction, and it’s the part of my brain that likes to drink.”

Jamie glared at his latest father figure and sat next to George. “I’m gonna hold my breath for three minutes. If I can do it, you can stop drinking.”

He didn’t wait for Zeke’s reply. Jamie took a deep breath, pinched his nose tight and clamped his mouth shut, and in less than fifty seconds, his face turned purple.

…

I lay propped up against a column, tied in place with a long scarf. My eyes hung open, watching through a fog of thoughtless frowns. Rhea had tended to my wound, stopping the bleeding fast enough to keep at least the opposite shoulder of my t-shirt getting dyed red and attracting flies. As the other survivors buzzed around, dismantling the bridge to slip its separate sections through narrow cuts of wall and rubble, she kept me out of the way and pressed her skin against mine under a blanket. I wanted so badly to feel the warmth of her body.

When her shift was over, Holden took on the task of watching me. He left me tied in place, upright where I could see it all. My lids blinked methodically, every eleven seconds, like clockwork, enough to keep the eyeballs moist. When they poured drinks into my mouth, it swallowed automatically, keeping me hydrated as least. As the latest sunset began, or the twilight that passed for one in our upside-down world, the sweat-drenched Holden lay back and used my thighs as a pillow.

“I could really use my partner right about now,” Holden said, panting. “Burnout’s a bitch and she’s only got me to focus on. Not that I don’t blame you for wanting a nap. I’m could use one, too.”

“Holden, what do we do now?” someone called from around a corner.

“I’ll check in a minute.”

Another voice chimed in. “Where does this clamp go, Holden?”

“It…somewhere.”

“Holden, do we guide it in through the window now?”

“Holden, about these cables?”

“Hey, Holden?”

He bit his lip and moaned under his breath, then flung himself to his feet and stomped back to the rest of the crew. I tried to call out, my mouth even floundered open, but if any sound flowed through, it was drowned out by shouting and the hammering from the bridge.

…

“You’ve got it all backwards,” Holden said, “and you expect it to fit? Where’s the long piece that goes here?”

Cazz pointed to the building’s edge. “It kind of rolled off there.”

“How?”

“I dunno. Everything seems to be rolling that way.”

She placed a short pipe on the concrete ceiling and sure enough, it rolled towards the mountains.

“But we’re past the park,” Holden said. “The pastor said the marble was rolling towards the park.”

Wendy rolled her eyes. “He also set fire to the building he was in and convinced half the world’s remaining population to kamikaze dive into the sky.”

“I wish Eddie was here,” Laura said, “he’d have a theory at least.”

 “Don’t mention him,” Holden said, pointing a thumb back where Rhea sat with George. “We aren’t mentioning the E-word.”

“Well I don’t think down is below us anymore,” Wendy said. She raised a leg and pirouetted on the spot. On her third rotation, her body tipped forward and she caught herself before falling. “I mean, obviously it is below us, but below is moving somewhere between the sky and the mountain now. But that’s good because that means it’s all downhill from here! Everything should just fall into place.”

Behind her, a blue faced Jamie fell on his.

…

I turned away from the melodrama. It was too distant, no longer important, a distraction against the peace promised by the fluid silence in my head. I pushed away from the light to sunk further into it.

“What are you doing here?” O’Toole’s voice whispered in my mind’s ear.

I whirled and jumped back. O’Toole’s nose was an inch from mine.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“I asked you first, boy.”

I looked around at the back of my eyelids. The walls were fleshy, the flesh of a body’s insides, pink and smooth and translucent, and apparently fertile, if the moss and grass sprouting at O’Toole’s feet were anything to judge by.

I poked O’Toole. “Is this a dream?”

“Dream? If this were a dream, you think I’d want to see you?” O’Toole said. “If I was in a dream, I’d be having that wedding night I missed.”

“Oh, so you’re a nightmare, then.”

O’Toole tugged on my toolbelt. “Thought so. You have the spanner. It must be interviewing you.”

I held it up. “Interviewed by a spanner. Not a dream or a nightmare. This is a mental breakdown.”

“Make yourself at home,” O’Toole said. He hopped off an oversized toadstool and stood in a circle of grass, half the height his real life self had been. “Sorry for my office’s sparseness but I’m holding out until your apocalypse ends. Gonna use the wreck of the city as décor.”

I sat on the toadstool. “Y’know, it never occurred to me bewilderment came standard with madness. All those crazies on street corners seemed so certain about whatever they screamed about.”

“A perfectly round, precision engineered island like Shipyard City’s is rare,” O’Toole said, “even in my trade, so of course I want to save it here. Might put in mountains round the edges to make a sort of lagoon, though. It’s hard to make a bay when you’re in a bubble. Hard, but not impossible, mind you.”

I gave him a nod. “Right, ‘cos here, my imagination’s the limit. Why am I imagining you?”

O’Toole scribbled something on a notepad. “Maybe I wanna hire you. You have good hands. I think I’ll even keep it upside down. A city like that’s not just rare, it’d be unique. The other Garden Gnomes will be impressed!”

I didn’t question his rambling. The man, much shorter and dressed more colorfully than I remembered, adjusted his pointy hat and took a puff from a pipe he produced from nowhere.

“So what do you think?” he said. “Keep it as a bay or lagoon it with mountains?”

“If you can bring us a mountain,” I said. “I’ll help you do whatever. We’ve been trying to reach the last mountain you worked on since this began.”

“Then maybe I got something to show you.”

He smirked and left the grass, gestured for me to follow and pointed to the wall of my flesh. On the other side of the translucent membrane, a large bubble floated up, illuminating us in flashes. It held a storm within, brain-like in configuration. O’Toole waved at it, double handed, like I’d won some prize on a gameshow.

“That could be you, y’know. A Carnalair. It’s literally headspace, your very own immortal sphere of influence.”

“It’s literally a brainstorm.”

“No, think about it. A place where the laws of physics bend to your will, even if the outside’s barely bigger than a house. You could make the inside anything you want, look after anyone you want, as well, as long as you’re willing to pitch in to maintain this place. Eternity ain’t free, y’know?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Either Grandma Bobert gave me some bad mushrooms or I died with Cheppard and you’re touting afterlife tickets.”

“If you like,” O’Toole said. “Here, I’ll give you guest access. “Think of somewhere you feel at home.”

As soon as I heard those words, the perfect place popped into mind and the grass and moss at my feet split into plush carpet hairs. The chamber rippled and morphed into a box-like structure, its nebulous colors solidifying into the welcome interior of the familiar, darkened room.

“See, you’re a natural,” O’Toole said. “Where are we?”

I took in my surroundings. “This is Rhea’s bedroom.”

“Oh? You are a naughty boy. Trying to rekindle a bit of the old romance, I see.”

The two doors of her room creaked open, showcasing nothing but darkness beyond. Then, from the depths of her closet, a ghostly red herring floated in, filled with clouds and lighting. From the hallway door, a blue herring entered likewise, followed by that damn fichus. It hopped in and planted its pot in the nearest corner. Then the doors slammed shut and the bubbles homed in on my face.

I backed away and the fish zoomed around the room, orbiting my head. They got faster and faster, until they crackled and popped, and from the puffs of colored smoke, a tiny blue-collared devil Holden and an red-winged angel Cheppard flapped to clear it. They were cartoons.

“Well, well,” Angel Cheppard said. “I had my suspicions but I didn’t want to believe my little girl was sneaking strange men into her room. Now I’ve caught you. How dare you summon this place as your refuge. You’re not worthy of it.”

“Hey,” Devil Holden said, “it took the two of them to do the mattress mambo. Besides, George has been looking out for her ever since. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

 “He only wants a place to save his own family.”

“A family Rhea’s now part of, thanks to you.”

O’Toole puffed on his pipe and jabbed the sucking end at me. He blew a perfect circle of smoke as he spoke. “Is that true?”

“Yeah.” I said, “I promised I’d take her to safety.”

Angel Cheppard pulled back the curtains. Outside the window was my true vision, still watching everyone in the real world. The grime and sweat poured from their faces as they struggled to lift their tools, even in the lowered gravity. Jamie started a song, but although Holden joined in, it fizzled out after a verse.

“Look at me,” Devil Holden said, pointing at his real life counterpart. “Real me has the skills but he doesn’t have your way with people. They need you out there.”

O’Toole whistled and the fichus hopped over to the window. He climbed it to look outside. “So you promise you’d get them somewhere safe?”

“I said I’d teach them what to do,” I said, “that’s all.”

O’Toole sighed. “I don’t know if I ever taught you this, since Holden’s always been the business minded one—”

“Glad you noticed,” Devil Holden said.

“But the first rule of business is, a deal’s a deal. Okay, so you never promised you’d save them. But you did promise that girlfriend of yours, didn’t you?”

“Wife, in fact,” Angel Cheppard said. “I married them myself.”

“And that’s a contract in of itself, to take care of her in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, all that jazz.”

“Until death do we part,” I said, “so all I have to do is stick it out for a few more days.”

“And in the meantime, you’re not upholding your end of the bargain. Placing your bets on some arbitrary limitation is a copout.”

Outside, a bleary eyed Holden slotted a bar in place and tightened its bolts. On closer inspection, the bolts connected to nothing.

“Look,” Devil Holden said, “I’m making mistakes out there. Real me’s going to get someone killed if you don’t help them. He needs you to let him rest.”

I raised my hands in surrender. “Look at me. What can I do from here?”

…

Cazz walked past the bolts and stopped. She stepped back to inspect them. As Laura shuffled past with an armful of steel pipes, she tugged on her jacket and pointed.

“Does that look right to you?” she said.

Laura shifted the poles in her arms and peered over to where her friend pointed. “Does it look wrong to you?”

“This bar doesn’t connect to anything. And there’s no support on that rail.”

“Should we ask about it?”

Cazz unfastened the bolts and reinforced the lonely rail. “No, I’m pretty sure this is right.”

“Huh. What’d they do without us?”

Satisfied the mistake was corrected, Cazz helped Laura carry her load to the next stage of construction.

…

“Y’see?” I said. “They know what they’re doing.”

“But does their leader?” O’Toole said.

He pointed to the real life Holden, who swayed in the middle of a grousing speech. Cazz and Laura joined him, in what was beginning to look like a flock of Holden’s own.

“We only have a couple of days left,” he said, “but at least there aren’t any extra mouths to feed and no naysayers dragging us down or sabotaging our work. We can have twice as many rations, get twice as much work done and not have to worry about getting stabbed in the back. So that’s something, right?”

“Wow,” O’Toole said to Devil Holden, “I feel so invigorated. That’s real leadership talk, that is.”

“Hey,” Devil Holden poked him with his pitchfork, “you try pulling twenty-four hour days without proper nutrition or real hydration, and see how well your speech writing comes out.”

“I fall back on psalms in these situations,” Angel Cheppard said.

A large eye peeked into the room, making all four of us jump. When it pulled away, Afredo’s face blurred into focus.

…

“I think he’s coming round,” Alfredo said, cupping George’s face, “I could have sworn I felt him shudder.”

“Well I hope he’s some use to us when he does,” Holden said. “Cheppard bashed his head in the same place he fell on, and we don’t need another suicidal psycho trying to kill us.”

…

We turned to face the Angel Cheppard. He fluttered back and waved off our hostile gazes.

“Now, to be fair,” he said, pointing at me, “that was the real Cheppard. I’m simply a figment of this young man’s imagination.”

Devil Holden bashed the angel’s head with his pitchfork. His crumpled halo wedged itself halfway down his face. Before Angel Cheppard could retaliate, though, the room shook and I was slammed into the window. Barely an arm’s reach on the other side of the glass, the real Holden’s oversized eye peeked in.

…

Holden shook George’s head again. “Come on, wake up! You’ve been gone three days already. Any longer and you’re fired.”

Alfredo knocked Holden’s hands away. “Hey, would you chill? This man got you halfway across an upside-down city. Cut him some slack.”

“And I’ll be damned if I don’t return the favor,” Holden said, “but what if he’s stuck like this? What then?”

A third face pushed through and Holden and Alfredo shut their mouths. Rhea leaned in and also cupped George’s face, gently compared to the other two. Her expression was blank.

“Then I’ll make him as comfortable as I can,” she said, “for as long as he needs me to.”

…

O’Toole picked himself off the floor and patted my thigh. “Now that’s a lass who cares. Are you really going to welch on your promise to her?”

Angel Cheppard floated down and perched on my right shoulder. “Look, I don’t like you, and you don’t like me.”

“Any surprise why?” Devil Holden said, perching on my left.

“That happens to be my daughter out there, and for some ineffable reason, she chose you to love. So I’m ordering you, on her behalf, save her or save her soul.”

Devil Holden rolled his eyes. “Have you ever tried asking nicely, first? Of course he’s going to save her. We have to prove you wrong.”

I didn’t reply and they fell into bickering. Out in the real world, Holden led Alfredo, Bobert, Laura and Cazz in the creation of the next long bridge. Even in harsh gales and whipping frost, through frozen clouds and exhaustion, they kept their pace, though suffering was written on every face

It was no small bristle of pride I felt in how fast they’d learned the skills we’d taught them. Rhea sat with me, keeping a shawl or towel from blowing away, keeping my hands cupped in her own. Across from us, Wendy and Zeke nestled Jamie between their bodies as he hugged his cat box.

“Now that’s teamwork,” O’Toole said. “No, more than that. That’s family.”

“And it’s all accomplished without me,” I said. “See? They don’t need me. Look at me, I’m practically a corpse. I’m just holding everyone back. And I’m listening to advice from the two people who should have a nationwide ban on giving it. Why are you being played by the cast of Looney Toons? And O’Toole, no offense but I’m not taking advice from a man who left his wife and life to go join the Lollypop Guild.”

“We’re just here to gove you different perspectives on what to do.” O’Toole said.

“Yeah, but you’re not, are you? You’re all hallucinations. It’s like talking to myself, but with extra steps. I wouldn’t be any use to them.”

Angel Cheppard leaned down. “Don’t think me harsh, but that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you for the past week.”

“What is your problem?” I said, jabbing him in the belly. It sent him flying. “I knew loads of people who believed. I can even respect it, but you? The only people I ever heard preaching all your doom and gloom crap were nutters on street corners or those tax-dodging mega church billionaires.”

“To be fair,” Devil Holden said, “it was probably his the blow to his head talking. Having half your brain pulsing out the side of your head has to do something to your sensibilities.”

Angel Cheppard flittered back down and lifted a flap of skin on the side of my own head. “Thank you, Devil Crayson. I didn’t think I’d ever be defended by you. And with an injury like this, one might even find himself locked in his head for the rest of his life with only his hallucinations for company. In which case, better take a leaf out of Devil Crayson’s philosophy and make peace with us. It’d be making peace with yourself.”

“It’s like you said, boy,” O’Toole said, “We’re just you talking to yourself.”

Devil Holden fluttered down. “So better ask yourself, exactly why do you feel this way?”

…

Rhea and Wendy hoisted George between them and guided his real body to the bridge. His feet moved on autopilot, following his wife and sister. When they stopped at the midpoint to readjust their grip, he looked out over the edge of the chasm and stretched his foot out.

“No you don’t, son,” Zeke said, nudging it back onto the platform. “We’re going that way.”

“Is he okay?” Holden said behind him.

“Probably disoriented like me. It feels like we’re walking down a ramp, not crossing a bridge.”

A sharp snap and rending metal made them freeze. A misshapen tower block, barely a skyscraper itself, fell from the Earth. It slid through the air, pulling in wind as it sailed overhead, raising dust and clouds of grit. It was miles in front of them when it hit the clouds.

“Is it me, or is gravity changing again?”

Behind them, the old buildings of the innermost ring road around Center Park, crumbled and followed the skyscraper. Stone crumbs blew beneath their feet, towards the mountain and past it.

“We gotta get outta here.”

Zeke flung George across his shoulders and hurried the women on. When they reached the next block, the building shook and its superstructure screeched, eliciting yelps and cries from everyone. Holden harried them into helping set up the next crossing.

…

Zeke set me down and looked into my eye, into the bedroom window O’Toole and my warring consciences clustered around, The old man spluttered and coughed uncontrollably before he found the words he wanted to say.

“I saw what you were trying to do, son.”

I sat on Rhea’s bed. The cartoons exchanged glances, but said nothing. Then Angel Cheppard flew over and patted my head.

…

Wendy watched Holden sway with the pile of pipes in his arms. She didn’t move until one teetered at the edge of his fingertip, then missed catching it as it slipped fully and clattered to the floor.

“You’re tired,” she said, picking it up.

Holden yawned and shook his head. “Nothing three shots of espresso and a deep fried Mars bar can’t fix.”

“I think you should lie down for a bit.”

“Frankly, I’d love to, but what if I wake up and find the building’s fallen around us and my bed’s floating off into space? Better to keep moving.”

Wendy slapped his hand. The rest of the pipes fell with a clamor.

“If you keep moving without rest, you’re going to fall into the sky whether or not you fall asleep. Go lie down.”

“But the bridge?”

Wendy’s hand moved faster than Holden registered. It wasn’t a hard feat, given his failing mental state. Her fingers coiled around his collar and dragged him to the building’s inner rooms.

“Everyone take some time off!” she said. “Find food or sleep or play with yourselves or something.”

She pulled Holden over a lintel, into a windowless room, where George was laid out in a corner next to a snoozing Rhea. Jamie was curled up against a lightly snoring Zeke opposite them. Wendy shoved Holden onto a makeshift bed of paper and a rolled up carpet.

“What are you doing?” Holden hissed.

She kicked the back of his knees and laid him flat on the pile. “I’m getting you into bed.”

“Is this how you do it with all the other men in your life? There are other ways, you know. Like flattery or Rohypnol.”

“Oh, you want Rohypnol?” Wendy said, feeling around her waist. “I might have some in my jacket lining,”

“I wasn’t suggesting it.”

Her hand came up with a sticky mess covered in lint. “Huh, the last one’s all mushed up.”

Holden sat up. “Why do you have date rape drugs?”

“It’s prescription. It does have uses other than getting women back to your apartment, y’know.”

“I’ve never touched that stuff in my life and I resent you thinking I’d do that to a woman.”

“Well of course you don’t need it. You lift heavy metal all day. That’s got to tire you out.”

Holden waited. “And no retraction about drugging my dates.”

Wendy sat in the dark, her expression unreadable. Only a crack of light from the door’s edges illuminated her silhouette. She shook her head.

“You and George have your work. Dad has his booze. I need something to sleep at night.”

“I honestly thought you were just really, really mellow. And maybe a little dim.”

“Well, you’ll get to meet the real me soon. I’m out.”

“And I can’t wait to meet you. Listen, since you’re being so open and concerned for my health, and have me in your bed, would it be weird if I asked you out?”

“I think your groupies would be disappointed.”

Holden chuckled. “I just meant it’s nice to know someone genuinely cares. I’d actually like to get to genuinely caring about someone else, myself.”

“But I don’t want to be your carer. I’ve been doing that all my life for those two idiots.”

She pointed at George and Zeke. Zeke opened his eyes with a grunt.

Holden leaned into Wendy’s face. “You’re strong when you need to be and we both know you don’t need me, so I was kind of hoping you liked being with me because you, well, liked being with me.”

“Look, Crayson, what I need from you is to get us out of danger. And for that, you need to recuperate.”

“And you need to learn to stop being so defensive. I’m asking if we can get go know each other better, not elope.”

Wendy leaned back and starfished on a roll of carpet. She said nothing for a moment, then “If we survive this, you can start by buying me a drink.”

Zeke coughed. “That might take a while. He’d have to build the bar first.”

“I’ve already got the tools for the job,” Holden said.

“You got any jobs going in this pub?” Rhea said. “I have plenty of experience looking after drunk morons.”

“I’ll need references first.” Holden said. “And don’t worry, Zeke, we’ll have it up and running in no time.”

Zeke stood, laying Jamie down gently. He picked up his remaining bottle, smashed it against the wall and speared the air in front of Holden’s face. The sharp points hovered close enough to Holden’s eyes, he felt them brush his eyelashes.

“Laugh at me all you want,” Zeke said, “make fun of me, I don’t care. I know what you all think I am. Some failure who couldn’t hack being a dad, and maybe that was true then, but that was twenty years ago.”

“Twenty-six,” Wendy said, “and every day since then. Including today.”

“Can you not help the madam holding my fave hostage, please?” Holden said.

Zeke ignored them. “I’ve been looking after another man’s son for twenty six years. I can look after another.”

Wendy raised a hand. “I’m the one who’s twenty-six. George isn’t even twenty-four yet.”

“Jamie, lad,” Zeke said, dropping the bottle. Holden sighed and scrambled away. Zeke shook the boy. “I’m hereby officially adopting you. You can have George as your little brother and Wendy here can be your mom like she was to him. And your cats can live with us, too.”

Jamie sat up, rubbing his eyes. He stared at Zeke, blinking and squinting before realization crossed his face and he fell on the man with a hug. Muffled sobs followed.

“I never knew dad had it in him,” Wendy said.

Zeke looked up from cradling Jamie and whistled at Holden. “And you take care of my little girl. You do that, you’re welcome in the family, too. You don’t, I’ll shove this bottle up your ass, sharp end first.”

He picked Jamie up and handed him to Rhea. “Same goes for you, girl. Now if you’ll kindly take my new youngest, I’d like some alone time with George.”

Rhea took Jamie, who smiled at Zeke, and carried him out of the room. Wendy nudged Holden, who mumbled about not getting the rest he was promised, but followed her out. When they were alone, Zeke slid to the ceiling with his back to the wall and patted George on the back.

“You tried to walk off the edge,” he said, “I know, ‘cos I did that myself. It was only the lad getting upset that made me reconsider. Is there something about getting hit in that part of your head that makes you all want to top yourselves?”

George drooled on his crotch. Zeke held the broken bottle to his nose and took a sniff. His hand shook hard, enough to leave a small cut on the bridge of his nose.

“This stuff,” he said, “drinking this was the best way to top yourself. It’s slower, but you’ll enjoy yourself more.”

George slumped against Zeke.

Zeke shifted away to let him slide onto the carpet. “You know, I’m kind of glad you can’t speak. You’re always arguing. Now, for once, I can say my piece.”

He took a deep breath and prepared to make a long suppressed speech. George dribbled in anticipation as his father stuttered and started repeatedly. Zeke ran his finger down the inside of the bottle and collected the alcohol residue to lick, then he put it away in his pocket and lightly punched George’s arm.

“You’re right. I am a cunt.”

…

“Twenty years I waited for that,” I said. “I think I actually feel justified for how I treated him.”

O’Toole exchanged looks with Devil Holden and Angel Cheppard. They shook their collective heads.

“Kind of anticlimactic,” he said.

…

Holden dragged everyone back to work, ferrying supplies across a bridge Cazz and Laura had finished during the nap he hadn’t taken. In his absence, Alfredo and Bobert had freerun the block and returned with an entire, whopping bag of chips covered in mold. They happily divided it, and Holden held the three slices of fungi-tinged fried potato between his lips and savored their stale, salty sourness.

With lunch done, he sent Wendy to call her dad and fetch George. The rest of the gang hoisted their belongings up and marched down to the next block. The Tilt, they’d dubbed it, was now impossible to ignore, regardless of any absent marbles to measure it. They traipsed down the ramp, the top of the next building now swaying below them. Then another snap brought their attention up.

It was closer than before, and not followed by screeching metal. A large chunk of congealed stone flew past Rhea’s face and Alfredo reflexively snatched it, midair, before it hit Cazz in hers.

“Why are there chunks of masonry floating about?” Bobert said.

His only answer was more chips and flakes. They rained down from the building they’d left, pinging off the metal and showering them in the painful flecks. A coalesced corner of brickwork cracked away from the main structure and crashed into the lower half of their ramp. The survivors covered their eyes and grouped together in its center, holding the handrails and each other tight. The tilt was worsening. Their ramp, née bridge, was beginning to feel more like a slide, and that slide was set up under an avalanche.

Their screams pierced Wendy and Zeke’s ears as they dragged George out from the backrooms. The floor bent away an unnatural angle, even more so than being upside-down. They stooped and held George up, not understanding what they were seeing, or feeling, as their footing angled downwards and scraps and loose stone slid towards the bridge. It rained debris from the floors above and across their own, pelting their friends and their loved ones tangled in a defensive bunch, suspended in the air, still holding on for dear life. If they lost their grip, they’d reach the next block in fatally record time.

Wendy dropped George. He fell sideways, dragging their father down with him.

“Holden!” she screamed, and grabbed a cable.

She threw it at the group and it bounced off their heads. Nobody looked up in the maelstrom. They just screamed, not for help, not to share ideas of escape. They just screamed. And in the middle of it, Jamie screamed loudest.

Zeke pushed George off and scrambled to the ramp. He took Wendy’s cable and slid down to grab his newfound son. Wendy pulled it tight, fighting his movements and the winds and the chaos. Her dad slid to the bottom, then slid off into the scum. He was trapped with the rest of them, and his weight added to theirs. Wendy swore.

…

“This is your chance,” Angel Cheppard said, “now, while your sister’s facing away. You can end their suffering, just like you planned to do with me. All it takes is one little push.”

Devil Holden jumped onto the window pane. “Don’t. It’s always darkest before dawn, bud. Take it from me. I’m the Morningstar.”

Angel Cheppard clamped his halo down around Devil Holden’s mouth and gestured at the scene outside.

“Would you rather face an unknown world, a world of hardships where you’re not welcome, or a quick and painless death? I know your first instinct is to automatically say yes, but think about it, really think. You’ll be in a world where people like you are shunned. Your child, Rhea’s child, Rhea herself, will be at their mercy, and we already know they have none. They proved that when they left you behind.”

“I’m no murderer,” George said, “and after a long think about it, it’s because I really don’t think I believe in afterlives.”

“So you don’t believe in heaven or hell, but your death isn’t going to be over in scant seconds like it is in the physical world. Those feelings of regret and loathing, or love and peace, they stretch on in a fading mind, and as your brain slows, you’ll be trapped feeling those emotions for what seems like eternity. You can call that your afterlife.”

I didn’t have an answer to his claim, although technically it was my own justification. Beyond the window lay all my regrets, playing out just to torture me. Jamie cried as his box and cats were crushed. Zeke barely held on to someone’s hair. Wendy cried as the others flailed for her cable, overwhelmed by their sheer weight even in reduced gravity. Rhea just cried.

As Devil Holden struggled against his holy gag, Angel Cheppard whispered in my ear. “End their suffering.”

O’Toole perched on the tip of the fichus, its leaves somehow unbending beneath his weight, his face wrinkling behind his pipe.

“You know what?” he said, “I never really cared much for endings. The next job was always what mattered.”

“I know,” I said, “you never stuck around for the painting and decorating. You aways wanted a new beginning.”

“That’s all life is in the end. A series of what’s next, what’s new? And the angel’s right. A dying brain can’t move on from its regrets ‘cos there’s nothing to move on to. And you can’t move on until you finished what you started, and you started all this to keep your lady safe and see her off to my mountain.”

Devil Holden squeezed out of the halo and unlatched the window. He glared at Angel Cheppard and threw it like a Frisbee into the sky outside. Angel Cheppard scowled and flew after it.

“You don’t really need us. We’re just sounding boards and you already know what you want to do,” Devil Holden said. He flew out after the angel, “but, in return for helping you reach some clarity, a little clarification on how you feel about real me asking your sister out wouldn’t hurt.”

He winked and flew up into the Earth, splatting animated lava as he dove into a dripping fissure. Down in the sky, Angel Cheppard descended into a shaft of light.

“Well, I guess I ought to be moving, too,” O’Toole said, handing me the spanner. “Good seeing you again, lad. Hold onto this. I have a feeling it likes you.”

He hopped off the fichus and room behind us was a void once more. O’Toole walked into it, giving one last wave before he disappeared from the light of the window.

I waved goodbye to my old friend and mentor, took in a deep breath and hopped onto the ledge. The real world called, and I stepped out. The transition was disorienting, it warped my senses. The world tilted around me and smacked my face with the ceiling of the building. My imagined body stumbled amd fell into the exact position of my physical self.

…

Wendy’s fingers strained inside the knot of twisted cables. The noose crushed her fingers, popped one from its knuckle as she pulled hard against the entire world’s remaining human population. They screamed at the other end of her line and she screamed with them from hers, while between them all the cable screamed with tension.

The tilting Earth pulled her forward, down to the edge of the windowless ledge and she braced herself against a column, wedging into the corner between it and the ceiling. Where the two met was now the direction of down.

Another pop from a second finger, followed by a second scream, and Wendy lost her grip. The cable slid from her hand, burning her palm as it escaped and whipped her ear with its trailing end.

“No!” she cried, and lunged for it.

The screams of those below grew and she saw, in slow motion, as they rolled down the splintered wood gantry and makeshift metal sides. Her hand caught the line and wrapped around it, stretching her loosened fingers further into more pain, and then pulled the rest of her with it. Jer feet left the groove and she slid off the edge of the building.

“Daddy!”

“Wendy!”

…and the human wrecking ball stopped in midair, and Wendy stopped falling after it. The cable struck a chord and bounced, taut, then lowered them slowly and safely to the next block. As her feet touched bridge and she clung to the handrails with gasps of pain, she and everyone looked up.

George Travers stood in the groove between ceiling and column, aligning the cable with its intended targets. Once he saw she was safe, he let go and it fell, snaking away into the winds, and he unlatched the ties up on his end, and pushed the bridge away. He rode the top like a pole vaultor, across the street, to the building where his friends waited.

The bridge laid itself onto the side of the duplex and rested there, held in place at the bottom by Holden’s safety lines. Before the dust settled, George descended the railings and pulled Wendy into a hug.

“It’s me,” he said. “I’m back.”

“You’re back?” she said, her voice barely a wavering whisper.

George nodded and kissed her forehead.

“I’m back.”