The Altonevers (10 page)

I was letting them all go, but as they
were filing through the front door the pencil pushers yelled my
name again. Then opened fire on a guy they thought was me, it
wasn't, but they can't shoot straight. Missing the guy entirely,
instead killing a seven year old child, who died in the doorway on
the edge of safety, safety from me. I took cover behind the clerk’s
desk and shot back, before feeling absolutely sick with guilt.
Nauseating to my starving stomach looking at myself in the tattered
clothes, feeling the dirt masking my skin, my face, the mud in my
hair and under my fingernails. The blood on the carpet was not my
own. Asking myself, what about my own life is worth more than that
kid’s? that question plays through my head at least once a day for
as long as I’ve been alive. I knew I couldn't live with it, that
guilt, of knowing that a child's life is collateral damage to my
own. To surrender, I would be locked in a cell alone with nothing
else to think about, so I resigned to take my own life.”

“
You don't have a hole in
your head.”

“
No lead left,” he says, “I
took a letter opener from the desk and opened my arms and thighs.
It stung, but my heart was pumping with adrenaline and panic. I was
weeping and stumbling as they were again wildly firing. I passed
out a minute later and bled out in the bank vault, alone, and
lifeless...for awhile anyway.”

“
For a while?” she whispers
her question.

“
I heard a man’s muffled
voice speaking to me, calling my name. It sounded like I was under
water and he was speaking from above its surface.”

“
Then what?”

“
I woke up under the water
of a giant fountain, in the center of a city square. Of a place
with things I couldn't've imagined before that day. Taking my first
breath of an Alto that wasn't my own. Muddying the water with the
dirt of the wilderness washing from my skin and clothes. Empty
pockets but for an empty handgun. A man’s hand stretched out to me.
He was there, Alister, a Death, as you likely think of him. His
archaic mouth of blue teeth smiling, with the gravitas of eternity
personified, and welcoming me back to the living as the greatest
vault knocker the Altonevers has ever seen. Living through an
infinite number of days, and places, and perceptions, but always on
the run from one place to the next, always alive in my dream. It’s
been so long a time since then.”

“
So it kinda worked out
right?” she says through confused discomfort.

“
I am what I am. There’re
casualties sometimes though none intentionally. I’m not as
bloodthirsty as the others. Sensitive, he teasingly calls me, only
him though. He collects the life of each being slain by a Raven’s
hand. And with each one of mine, the wounds of that day resurface,
the stinging agony of the scar tissue stripes on my arms opening
again, and again. The heartache of that day, the surges sorrow
through the whole of my being, like it’s the very blood pumping
through my veins,” he says rolling up his sleeves to show her the
rose colored scars of slashes up his forearms.

“
Did you get
tattoos?”

“
Oh right, yeah it’s like
the cut here dots on plastic and stuff.”

She says nothing, just letting time
pass as pieces of percussive rhythm rise to her from the random
splashing of rain. She watches the Jollies roll by, lifting and
dropping millions of momentarily glimmering grains of water at a
time.

“
Do you ever think of their
lives, the one's you've taken? of what they're losing, of waking
up, eating, laughing, crying, of dreaming, of a chance to live?”
she asks.

“
Anna, I know exactly what
they're losing, because it's what I've taken from myself, and every
time I’m reminded of the price of my persistence.”

“
But, does that mean you
understand what their lives meant to them, of how they feel, or
their loved one’s feel?” she asks.

“
There are billions of
stars in one sky, there are infinite skies Anna. Trillions times
trillions times trillions isn’t enough to explain how many skies
there are. Endless variations of that person under just one of
those skies, if one of them ceases to exist there are an infinite
number that don’t, that continue living.”

“
And an infinite number
that do not,” she says.

“
If it happens that one
were to end because of my actions, is it me? or am I simply an
instrument of possibility, all possibilities must play
out.”

“
That sounds sparing to the
conscience,” she says.

“
I can only be what I
am.”

“
Do you have one?” she
asks.

“
Who knows, it's all just
the pursuit of pleasures.”

“
What a terrible thing, to
have done. To have to have done, and have that with you wherever
you go,” she says, “I understand why you did what you did, and to
be in that position, you did the best you could do, but to actually
have to done it, is…”

He doesn't reply, only nurses his
smoke avoiding her eyes.

“
A soul, to live free in
all of infinity, as a slave to death,” she says.

“
The good fortune of a
tragic fate,” he says.

“
We should be on our way to
the station,” she says with a smile, seeming honest to him and
softening his tense spine, he clears throat of welling sobs. Seeing
she's not running from him like the monster he thinks of himself,
but is already looking back, waving and waiting for him to follow,
to lead her home as he promised.

“
Walk a girl home?” Anna
asks bashfully.

“
Sure thing,” He says. She
walks ten paces onto the rooftop before throwing a look meant to be
alluring over her shoulder for him to see, then yelps “AH!” And
squirms. Realizing it’s still raining she laughs her way back under
the cover of the water tower, a laugh that follows her to rub off
on him. She spends the night hardly able to catch a wink of sleep,
instead watching the rain being swept by the wind, and lifted and
dropped by the million when jollies roll past. She drifts away with
her eyes closed tight, not awake and not yet asleep. Hearing the
pitter patter of the rain as patterns rising and falling from
randomness into minutes long rhapsodic ear pleasing rhythms of her
minds design.

Rotten Apple

“
Would you kill a fly?” he
asks her at first light.

“
I wouldn’t want to, but if
it was really annoying, I guess” she says.

“
So you would?” he cracks a
smile.

“
People aren’t
fly's.”

“
No they’re not, but what
if that fly was Larry or Larry to someone?”

“
I get your point, but
that's dumb, because that doesn’t change that it's a fly to me, or
you.”

“
My point is, do you only
value lives you understand to be living, or do you value anything
that is alive?”

“
What's the
difference?”

“
Only your naive perception
of existence. It's just something to wonder?”

“
Oh, and your all
knowing?”

“
The coast isn't clear, so
we have to be careful. The odds creep up on the careless, and it
only takes one slip to do us in. Plus the pesky pencil pushers have
all of time to wait,” he says tiredly.

“
And he, is a friend of
yours,” she asks.

“
A good one, and a good one
to have,” he says laying back on the cross beam of the water tower
and she curls against the corner of its leg like a cat. Resting
their eye’s for an only hour when the town's window's start
lighting up, speckling the view with yellowed rectangles, though
looking like big fireflies in a smoke filled room.

“
It's almost sun up
Carrots,” he says, nudging her awake by her shoulder.

“
Time to get going?” she
yawns and stretches. Opening her eyes and seeing him as a scared
kid barefoot foraging through a forest forever looking for a vault
that'll satisfy his unquenchable thirst. As a pauper perpetually in
pursuit of an unattainable feeling. A feeling that persists only in
his memory.

“
Always,” he
says.

“
I need to shower, and to
eat,” she says as they saunter out of the alleyway. Sleepless and
disheveled in damp clothes from the night before. Again weaving
with their heads down through the morning crowd’s of the crisp and
awake, clean shaven people flooding toward to their nearest
InterAlto rails. Still unsure if she's running to safety or from
it, she runs behind, beside him. He snatches a pink plaid scarf
from a passing woman, and gives it to her, it sits loosely around
her neck.

“
Thank you,” she says,
thinking he meant well.

“
Certainly. Stop for
something to eat?” He asks.

“
I could go for a cup of
coffee,” she adds. The two are now next to each other, together,
with familiarity of the other’s walk. They stop in a dusty deli and
Anna orders first, then steps aside waiting for her
coffee.

“
And you sir?” asks a
balding stocky man from behind the counter. Of average height and
an ambivalent expression you’d expect of a man who's been a clerk
for ages to have.

“
The register,” Cider
says.

“
The register?”

“
Yeah, the register,” Cider
says pulling his piece and pointing it to the man's gut.

“
The register,” the man
complies.

“
What the hell are you
doing?” Anna yelps, afraid.

“
What? we don't have any
money.”

“
It's just a coffee you
lunatic,” she says. He glances over to her, taking his eye off the
clerk and shrugs while giving her an apologetic face The clerk, who
has an ice block of a body, jumps the counter, tackling Cider into
a rack of candy and grabbing at his gun.

“
Oh crap,” Cider says as
the man wrestles him to the ground, knocking over the rack of candy
and cigarettes, two shots go off in the tussle, though hitting no
one.

“
We have to get out of
here,” she yells.

“
One minute,” Cider grunts
as the man snarls with a blood flushed face, raging with all the
instincts of survival he has, and gets the upper hand enough to pin
Cider down to the linoleum floor. Restraining his arms, and
screaming with spit flying from his mouth, when Cider shoots
grazing the man’s glazed doughnut filled stomach, and bursting his
right bicep clean off his arm. The man kicks and screams in shock
and agony. Cider pistol whips him and rolls his dense body off to
flail on the reddening floor.

“
Oh my god!” she screams
struck with horror, “I thought you were supposed to be good at
this?”

“
The best,” he says, “what?
I didn’t kill him. About his arm is a shame but I was going for a
graze of the stomach.”

“
No!” she shouts drawing
the chrome he gave her from her hoodie pocket. Breathing heavy
rapid breaths on the verge of hyperventilation. Holding the barrel
down her line of sight as best she could in trembling hands, and
fumblingly shoots to the left of Cider, through the open front door
of the store. Her expression shifts from disbelief to mortified,
then she breaks into a hysterical bawling. He looks through the
door to see a man holding a gun and a badge, gasping for air and
clutching at his own bloody shoulder. Falling to the ground with a
grave wound but not a mortal one, if help arrives soon enough. She
drops the hot weapon, and puts her palms over her eyes, distraught,
refusing to see what her hands have done. Thinking the bang was so
loud the shot must have killed him.

“
Oh shit,” he says looking
to her as consolingly as he can muster, though also seeing her with
a twisted sense of admiration, of her becoming a bit more like him.
She covers her face with the scarf he gave her, already tear soaked
from her uncontrollable sobbing. With her eyes closed she sees the
split second she pulled the trigger, the flash of the muzzle and
deafening noise, the heat of the gun and the man falling to the
street under a morning sun. The scene replays in her mind over and
over again, thousands of times over a few seconds that feel like an
eternity.

“
Are you okay?” he asks
softly.

“
Hey! Anna! Anna! Carrots!”
He picks up the warm gun. She roars like a mourning lioness, before
she uncovers her eye's showing him her dismayed face of sobbing
tears as big as slugs sliding down her blood red cheeks, soaking
her new pink scarf wrapped loosely around her neck. He stands
close, a nose away, staring directly into her distraught eyes, and
speaks as soothingly as he can.

“
Are you coming?” he asks
not wanting to persuade her, not having the heart to force her to
follow him, but wanting for her to make her own choice, take her
chance. He silently relishes watching her face, his expression is
seething with suspense for her reaction, a feeling sullied by the
guilt he feels for her present circumstance.

“
Home,” she
mutters.

“
I promise,” he says,
taking her trembling wet hands, warm with her crying eyes. Linoleum
then concrete underfoot as they step over the writhing clerk, and
the barely breathing authority. The two weave back into the morning
light, him leading her by the hand through the morning crowd, with
heads down. She starts dry heaving, and the crowd of people open
around her. She gets a hot flash and a gush of fluid from her
stomach into her mouth, then vomits on the middle of the sidewalk.
Of all the passing pedestrians passing judgment, one woman blurts
out “junkies” in seeing their dirty clothes and unwashed, stressed
out faces looking strung out.