All of Them

The group going up is not a plan. It is a panicked stampede.

Almost forty women who were Holt’s two minutes ago, pounding the stairs toward the top. Grant’s stomach is still knitting. He can feel the hole thinking about being a hole. He runs anyway.

If I sit down they go into every room. Then I spend the night digging them out of closets. I need to move.

“Mary. Eve. Funnel them. Don’t kill them. I need them in a room.”

Mary does not ask why. She already felt the last blast. She knows what a room is for.

The stairwell is a mess. Dale’s leftovers mixed with Holt’s. Some swinging. Some crying. Some just climbing because up feels like getting away from the blasts. Zoya turns a landing into a gate. Leanne blocks a hallway with a cart and a look that says she is done being polite.

Grant hits the third floor first.

A cluster in the wrecked unit he and Holt went through the window from. Eight of them packed against the far wall like the broken glass is a plan.

Don’t talk. Don’t give them a speech. Get them in the ring.

Now.

The want goes out. The ring goes out a hundred feet in all directions. Eight lock. Names stack.

“Maren. Yours.”

“Tess. Yours.”

298.

299.

He takes the hall.

Noah’s door is shut. Cindy is a small point behind it, on the floor, where she has been since last night. Grant does not stop.

Utility closet on five. He kicks it open. The blast takes the ones inside and two who were running past.

310.

The map is a headache. Loose points everywhere. Street. Garage. Roof stairs. A clump already in the penthouse foyer because Ashlyn could not hold a stampede.

Grant goes up.

Ashlyn has a broom and a split lip. Priya has two women by the wrists and looks like she might bite someone.

“Hold them in the big room,” Grant says. “Both units. Push them toward me when I say.”

It is ugly work.

Not a fight like Holt. A harvest. His people herd. He walks. When a bunch packs inside a hundred feet, he lets the blast go. A small number of them hide from the blast behind furniture or other obstacles, so he runs them down and does it the old way: wrists and words.

“I claim you.”

“Sable.”

“I claim you.”

“Willa.”

340.

This is taking too long. Holt’s people are still in the street.

He takes the stairs back down with Mary and a line of the faster ones. Ten percent is enough to cut off an alley. Not enough to look like him.

A pack of twenty in the side lot, near Holt’s body, like they are trying to decide what to do with it or they still can’t believe someone was able to kill him. They don’t notice Grant in time to run. He appears in the middle of them and the blast takes them all.

Names in a pile he does not catch.

360.

380.

Still no changes since two hundred. Three hundred wasn’t the next number. Must keep pushing.

Jose has the bus. Grant puts him on the block to cut off the street.

“I don’t know if this will slow them down that much,” Jose says.

“It will be enough.”

Grant opens the map and then sweeps the block.

A laundry room that smells like wet heat. A parked van with two women in the back who try to shut the door on his hand. The box truck Holt folded. Three under a loading dock who crawl out when Zoya kicks the chain.

400.

Still nothing.

450.

Mary’s arm is purple where the pipe hit. The slow healing is working, but not fast enough for her liking. Grant sees her flex her fingers and put the bat back in her good hand.

She shouldn’t have to do that. I should have ended Holt in the lobby. I should have been better prepared.

“How many left?”

He looks at the map again.

“Enough.”

Four hundred eighty-eight in the courtyard behind the building. Twelve in the garage. He takes the courtyard first because the pressure under the count is sitting there, waiting.

He moves into the middle of them.

They try to run. Zoya and Eve and Dara from the dock close the gaps. Grant does not shout.

He wants them.

The blast goes out.

The courtyard locks.

He grabs the wrist of a woman just outside the blast who says her name is Piper. Then it happens. His whole being expands like an exploding star reaching out in every direction.

500.

He thought he was getting used to the evolutions, that the next one would feel like two hundred.

It does not.

The speed hits first.

He shifts his weight to take a step toward Piper and the step is already over. His foot is three yards past her. He has to lock his knees or the courtyard wall is next. The strength under it arrives in the same breath. His hands close and the air feels thin, like he could tear a rail out of the concrete if he was careless.

Don’t move. Don’t test it on a person. Stand still until you know what you just did.

He locks down. His stomach wound is gone.

He felt it happen. Not the warm itch of two hundred. Instant. One second there was a hole Holt put in him. The next second there was skin. He puts his palm there, under the ruined shirt, and there is nothing to find. No ridge. No heat.

Okay. That’s new. That’s — later. What else first.

The map blows outward before he decides to open it.

Five miles?

It is too much.

Not tags anymore. People. All of them. His, stacked in the building. Newly unclaimed, hiding, in the garage. Other men’s too, but farther out. Ordinary hearts. A kid on a bike six blocks over, turning a corner Grant can almost see. The store on 12th, empty, a can on its side from the rush. North lot, empty. Campus. The river. Bodies in rooms. He can tell a man from a woman. He shrinks it by flinching, the way he used to shrink a mile when it was too loud. It does not fully shut. Five miles sits behind his eyes whether he wants it or not.

His hands feel too full.

He looks at them like they belong to somebody else. The blast is still there. The edge of it is wrong. Bigger. He can feel a hundred feet the way he used to, and then more, a second ring sitting out at two hundred like a door that came unlatched.

Did I know that or did I just feel it? Stop naming it. Use it when you have to, but not before.

Mary is staring at him.

He has not said a word.

“Grant?”

He holds up a hand. Wait. Something else.

He thinks of Eve on the stairs. Not a sentence. A place. The pull of her, the way the web has always pointed at her.

He is suddenly on the stairs.

No running. No blur he can track. One breath in the courtyard. The next on the landing next to Eve, who swears and almost hits him with the rifle.

“What the fuck was that?” She says while holding her chest.

His stomach is in knots. His feet are on concrete he did not walk on. He looks down the stairwell and sees the courtyard two floors below, Mary’s face tipped up, her eyes wide in shock.

I went to Eve. I thought about her and I was here. That’s not speed. Speed is a line. This is something else. Teleportation?

He thinks of Mary.

He is in the courtyard.

Mary’s fist is already up. She does not swing. Barely.

“Grant?”

“I went to Eve. Then back.”

“You vanished.”

He closes his eyes and thinks of the grocery store.

Nothing happens.

Ok, so he can teleport, but only to his women, not just anywhere. He has to say it out loud to believe it.

“I went to her. I think I can go to any of you. Not sure how far yet. Only to my claimed though, not to a place.”

He does not say it like a trick he is proud of. He says it like a door he does not fully trust.

Something else is happening in the courtyard while he talks.

Mary’s purple arm is fading. Not the slow fade from a hundred. Faster. She flexes the fingers and the bruise is just a shadow.

Eve, still on the stairs, yells down at him that she felt Magdalena in the garage without looking. Surprised, Grant tries to focus. He feels the web change. His women light up to each other. Not just to him. Mary’s head turns toward the building, toward Eve, toward Zoya on a landing, without a word.

They can find each other now. Calling that useful would be an understatement. That’s also going to make privacy within their group impossible. He almost laughs to himself.

He sees Dara move to cut off a runner and get there sooner than she should have. The speed in them ticked up too. Ten percent of whatever he just became. Not a miracle, but a nice upgrade nonetheless.

Back to the map.

The twelve in the garage are still loose.

He doesn’t walk this time.

He thinks of Magdalena at the garage door.

He is there.

Magdalena does not swing at him. Her eyes go wide, but she has seen worse in the last hour. He lifts his hands and the blast goes out, wider than he meant. Two hundred feet eats the garage and the ramp and a sliver of the alley. Twelve lock. Names. It went through cars. Apparently obstacles aren’t an issue anymore. Good.

512.

He keeps going until the map inside five miles has no ownerless women left from this fight.

Roof. He thinks of a girl already up there, one of Harlan’s who took the hatch without being asked. He is on the roof. Blast.

520.

West alley. Two. He runs those, on purpose, because he needs to know he can still use his legs. Wrists.

522.

The last one is in the bus, hiding behind a seat like Jose would not notice. Jose notices.

Grant claims her in the aisle.

“Lena.”

531.

He stands in the garage and counts twice because the number is ugly in a new way.

Five hundred thirty-one.

All of Dale’s that were still loose. All of Holt’s that were still loose. The building. The block. The lot.

That’s all of them. From this. Not all of the city. Don’t get greedy. Not yet.

Mary finds him there. Her arm looks like new again. She is looking at him like he is a different person than the one she left on the asphalt.

“That’s all of them?”

“Yes.”

“And you?” He can see her picking the list out of his face. “You went to Eve. Your stomach’s healed.”

“Five hundred,” he says. “I didn’t get a manual. I took a step and almost hit a wall. I thought about Eve and I was on the stairs. The map opened on its own. It’s five miles now. I can see people in it. Not just tags. The blast reached the alley from in here. I didn’t tell it to go that far and it goes through objects now to claim them.”

“Don’t use the teleporting thing to scare us,” she smirks while playfully punching his shoulder.

“Too late.”

Leanne leans on the bus.

“You brought an army here, killed two men, and now you own the army.”

“That’s the short version.”

Grant opens the five miles on purpose this time.

He looks for men.

The first ones are easy. Small weights. Twenty-plus. He counts them because he is tired of being surprised. Nine. Scattered. A house. A gym. A lot off campus. One in a chair who has not moved in an hour.

Not an urgent threat.

Five sit heavier. Fifty-plus. One in a school. One by the highway. Three in a spread that looks like they already know about each other. A triangle. That is a problem with a shape.

Two sit at a hundred-plus. One south. One across the river. The same wrong calm Dale had, before Dale got greedy.

And one more.

East-northeast. Almost at the edge of the five miles. A man that his strength does not read.

Not twenty. Not fifty. Not a hundred. Not two hundred. The map gives him a person, a body in a building, a direction — and then nothing. No number. No calm he can name. Like looking at a wall where a floor should be. No women around him, but something is off.

Grant’s mouth goes dry.

That’s worse. A hundred I understand. Two hundred I just killed. This is a blank on purpose or a blank because I am not big enough to see it. Either way I am not walking there tonight.

Mary reads his face.

“How many?”

“A lot of men. Nine small ones. Five bigger. Two at a hundred. And one I can’t read.”

“Can’t read?”

“I can see him. I can’t tell what he is though. That’s worse.”

Noah is still a dull star on six. Cindy under him. Door shut. The stampede never made it in.

He flexes his hands. The bigger blast sits there. The step sits behind his eyes, waiting for a name.

I could be on the roof. I could be on 12th. Maybe I could be next to that blank if I had a girl that far out. I don’t. Probably for the best.

“I’m not going tonight,” he says, before Mary can.

“Say it like you mean it.”

“I’m not going tonight,” he sighs in resignation.

Five hundred thirty-one points hold still.

The new web hums. Mary knows where Eve is. Eve knows where Magdalena is. The building is connected more than ever.

East-northeast, at the edge of five miles, the man he cannot measure does not move.

Yet.