The Very Last Days of Mr Grey (20 page)

Mason stopped at the sound. “Are you all right?” He helped him up.

“I’d greatly appreciate it if you wouldn’t leave me behind like that,” Martynn said as he rubbed his head.

“Sorry.”

Martynn looked at Mason’s shirt again. “How are you still alive?”

Mason followed his gaze. Then his eyebrows raised. “Those stitches really aren’t doing their job.”

“You were—” Martynn stopped himself. If Mason could manifest things, pull them from one place to the next, maybe telling him that his wound was more dire than he thought wasn’t such a good idea. “Yes,” he said instead. “Quite poor stitching. We should get you to someone more capable.”

He looked around the shop they were in, surprised. Then he looked back out the still-open door. The scene was the same strange town filled with the same strange creatures. “Where are we?”

Mason shrugged. A door appeared. He opened it, stopped, looked at Martynn. “You coming?”

The place that followed was another like Martynn had never seen. Other places the doors had led had been disorienting, foreign. But this, this was something entirely different. ‘Disorienting’ was inadequate in the same way as calling the universe ‘large’.

Above them in the sky floated the Blunderbuss, except it was doubled, as if the sky were a lake reflecting the top half upside down. But if that were the case, they’d be underwater. And they weren’t.

It floated there, with no apparent support, bellowing steam of greyest grey from both ends. Nothing like the Blunderbuss he was used to, which bellowed white from the top and black down below.

There came a sound like something breaking, and Martynn’s attention was drawn to Mason, who had stumbled through another door. There were several around them now, and Mason still appeared to be taking them at random.

Mason passed through the threshold, and Martynn ran after. Behind was pure white, purer than the most unblemished, highly bleached sheet of paper.

The door began to close and Martynn had to turn his body to the side to make it.

With the closing of the door came darkness. Pure, and complete. Martynn opened his eyes, but they were open already. He could see nothing.

He turned, reaching out for the door. But it was gone. He recalled the sound of breaking he’d heard, and wondered, Was this death?

Mason collapsed. He was so tired. It felt so good to just rest. His chest ached for some reason, though it seemed to be getting better now.

He knew that Martynn was worried, was wondering if he was dead.

Who’s dead
, the voice said.

Mason lay down. He floated on the floor of nothing.

We are dead. Who? You? Him? Us both? This is the end.

“Shut up!” Mason shouted, and his voice boomed. A thunderclap in a concrete cell. Something shattered—
shatter, shatter, shatter in the mind. The soul is shatter when the clocks realign
—and the darkness crumbled like a broken mirror, falling away in glistening shards.

They were plummeting now. They were stopped with no transition. Grass was under them, and Mason realized they were in a park.

Martynn gasped at the sudden appearance of something, anything. He looked around. “Is… Is this beyond? Beyond the Fog?”

“This is New York,” Mason replied. He’d never been to New York.

Before he could say more, a great gaping void opened in the sky.
What are you running from? Is it from me?

Martynn was one of the first of many to look up, open-mouthed and gaping, at the opening, from which emerged something impossible. Something this world had never seen.

New York City. Early Evening.

The sky is scarlet like it is wont to be at this hour. The city below is busy, going about its important, its unimportant, its trivial, and its completely worthless tasks.

From this height, individuals aren’t even visible. They aren’t even ants.

But below, the people on the street, were they to look up, oh, they would see.

A great rend opens in the sky, spilling fog thick as water. It oozes through, and there is a thunderous roar as the two atmospheres collide.

This is not the interesting part.

That first thing to spill from the hole will go unnoted for a long time. It will only be recognized after it’s too late.

For now, everyone will be focused on what comes next. Oh, and here it is.

Children are often the first ones to spot the strange and unusual. Perhaps because they have fewer things to worry about. Or perhaps because their worries are so inconsequential, so transient, that it’s easy to distract them. Perhaps they are just more observant.

None of this matters, except to note that the first person to see the gaping hole where stars should have been was a little boy. But he sounded no alarm; he was too busy imagining a story. He would call it, Cloud Riders. He bit his lip. Or maybe… CLOUD MONSTERS. Yes, he liked that.

The next person to see this, just seconds following, was also a child. She was slightly older than the boy, so perhaps this is why she looked over at her mother and said, “What’s that?”

The mother, busy on her phone but still enamored enough with her young daughter to not be jaded, glanced at the child, then followed her upturned gaze.

The screen of the phone shattered as it collided with pavement, and the man on the other end was shouting now. Ms Finley didn’t care anymore. Either what she was seeing was real, and what Tom was saying didn’t matter, or she was crazy, and nothing did.

It didn’t take long after this. When two people are frozen, looking at the sky, even in a city like New York, people take note. A teenage girl with a new cellphone, who lifted it to the sky and hit record. A teenage boy stopping for first this girl, then for other, more awe-inspiring sights. A fat man in a suit and hat.

Not a lot, but enough, when what they were looking at was so impossible that those who spot it completely forget everything else in their life and surroundings. And in that way, they too become children, if only for the briefest moment in time.

Normally the government, the military, they would be on top of something like this, have it on radar, satellite. But when something comes from literally nowhere, there is little they can do.

And so it was that a vast shape flew screeching and shooting fire into the night, and so it was that no jets intercepted it, and so it was that the people who thought it to be fake, a projection, or a demonstration of some billionaire showing off his wealth, were quickly proved wrong as the flames collided with a skyscraper, and immediately set it alight.

“Genevieve, run. Run!”

Her daughter listened. Then Ms Finley took her own advice.

A nearly empty rooftop.

He was inexperienced, but God was he hot. And young. And hot.

Did she mention hot?

His jeans fell to the roof. She smiled. Oh yes, her suspicion was correct.

She slunk toward him, shedding layers as she went.

He embraced her, and lifted her from her feet. She squealed and laughed, throwing her head back to expose her neck.

Then all sound emanating from her ceased, the man’s—boy’s, she thought now—seeking mouth, his insistence against her stomach, seeming petty and annoying.

But she didn’t have the presence of mind to do anything but push his head away.

“Oh, feisty eh? I know how you…” But he too was now looking at the same thing, having inadvertently followed her gaze, and his autonomic nervous system decided to change where it was storing blood to redirect it to more useful areas as the first screech filled the city, and fire lit the sky.

“What was that?”

“Don’t try to distract me you a-hole! You are not getting away with it that easy.” She sliced at the air. “Not this time. You are going—”

“Shut up,” he said mildly. He waved a hand at her, looking out the floor-to-ceiling window.

Her mouth worked, so angry she couldn’t even speak. She wanted to curse. She managed not to, but inarticulate sounds escaped her throat. She couldn’t take it, that mother— stupid dumb— idiot, the —faced —er. She stormed toward him, ready to slap his piece of —— mother— stupid head, and then maybe stab a —ing —— into his —— ear. That stupid piece of—

Then she saw what he was looking at, and she screamed.

6:01PM. An alley near W 39th Street.

“Don’t make me say it again! Now!”

“Jesus Mark just give it to him,” Jackson said.

“I’m not giving this waste of humanity anything.” He looked at their assailant. “Look at him. He’s shaking. He’s not gonna shoot me here.” He gestured around at the area.

The deserted area, Jackson thought. They were all alone. He’d had a feeling it was a bad idea to take a shortcut. He wasn’t glad he’d been right.

“He’s a coward,” Mark said.

“Man, I will fucking shoot you.” The robber—one Phillip Robinson, a misdemeanor and three speeding tickets to his name—held out his free hand for the wallet.

When Mark reached out to finally give it, there was obvious relief on the robber’s face.

This turned to rage when, using the wallet, Mark slapped the hand instead and then withdrew the wallet before Mr Robinson could get a grip on it.

“You!—” The robber rushed Mark, got right up in his face and put the gun to his head. He grabbed for the wallet, but Mark moved it out of his reach. “Man I am going to fucking end you.”

“Then do it you little coward. Come on.” Mark leaned into the gun.

“Mark,” Jackson said, warningly. “Come on man, just give it to him.”

“Yeah you raghead, listen to your friend.”

“What did you call me?”

“You heard me. Sand nigger.”

Mark glared at the man. “You’re black you know.”

“Man, I’m not black.” He pulled back the hammer. “Now give it here.”

Mark shook his head, the skin on his forehead creasing as it was kept in place by the barrel. “I fought for you. I regret very few things I’ve done.” He pushed the man away from him. “Fighting for your shitty life is one of them.”

The robber raised the gun, his mouth working. “Man I warned you.” He looked to Jackson. “I warned him.” He raised the gun higher, his head shaking from side to side.

Then a building caught on fire, followed by what sounded like some kind of missile, and all Mark could think, as he dropped to the ground and covered his head, was that he had just been saved by terrorists.

Then everything was chaos and the robbery was forgotten by all involved.

It would be days before any of them recalled what had occurred just minutes, seconds, before that initial impossibility. And one would never remember anything again.

Bellevue Hospital. 2nd Floor. Maternity ward.

“Push!” her husband shouted.

“Actually, don’t,” the nurse said. He looked at the soon-to-be father, tried a smile. “That just makes things worse.”

Her husband frowned. “Really? I don’t think so.”

“It’s best to let her do what she feels she should.”

She couldn’t take it. “Shut up, shut up! I’m having a baby.”

“Sorry hun.”

Her next scream shook the floor.

No, that was impossible. The husband attributed the illusion to the stress of the situation. But then glanced around, and saw the others in the room wearing expressions of shock that expressed how he felt.

His wife had not paused her labor, however, and screamed again. This time it didn’t shake anything except already frayed nerves.

Frowns were exchanged all around. They’d all felt it. An earthquake? Odd timing, but not impossible.

In unison, they turned back to look at the wife.

Having previously asked for just this outcome, she was now made uncomfortable enough by the silence to, between heavy breaths, ask, “What?”

Then the screams began, except they weren’t from her.

A delivery room normally doesn’t offer the best views of the hospital, for various reasons, but the husband had been late and the door still stood open, which several of the nurses and the doctor only now noticed, as they all could see the hallways of the hospital filling with people running to the windows. There was even one doctor, gloved hands covered in blood, holding them up in front of him like he was about to go into surgery.

All present hoped he’d left someone with a bloody lip, perhaps a scalp wound at worst, and had not stopped in the middle of a delivery to run to the window and investigate. However the floor he was on didn’t bode well for any of those. What he was in such a rush to look at was what moments before every single radio and television station and most websites were reporting in murky and unsure terms. But the video the TV stations were showing and the websites were linking to spoke for itself. In the face of something like that, many people would snap.

Many did.

The doctor’s bloody scrubs and the screaming nurse running out behind him did nothing to alleviate the concerns of the four people next to the soon-to-be-mother’s hospital bed.

But then fire engulfed the building, windows shattered, and John Tomas Edison was born earlier than anyone had expected, especially him, and they all suddenly had more pressing things to worry about.

Floors below and many buildings north, a woman lay dying. No traumatic event had occurred, and she was ready to face death—whether to meet her maker or mere void, she’d availed herself to both possibilities.

Her life had been good and long, and fulfilled.

Looking back now, which she did often and so wasn’t so very special, she couldn’t think of anything she regretted doing. There were a few things she regretted not doing, but she supposed that was the cost of doing business—this business of life. It takes years to learn that the greatest regrets will be the things you don’t do, and by the time that realization dawns, by the time it really sinks in, those events have already occurred, and were likely the cause of the epiphany in the first place.

She looked around the room, her gathered family. It was all very Norman Rockwell. If that master of social commentary had painted vultures instead of dogs.