The Simple Thing

Grant does not walk to the elevator.

He moves.

The man’s knife arm tightens first. Grant hears the muscle catch before the blade does. He is already inside that half-second. One hand on the wrist, one on Noor’s waist, and he rips them apart. The knife nicks her collarbone instead of her throat. She gasps and drops to her knees, blood already warm on her shirt.

The man is fast. He said he was and he proves it.

He lets Noor go like she is already dead and hits Grant in the ribs with his empty hand. It lands. The bone complains. Not broken. Close. They slam into the terrace glass hard enough that the whole pane booms and the night air presses through the cracks.

“Stupid choice,” the man says, almost pleased.

They wreck the second unit.

A chair goes over. The knife comes back. Grant catches the forearm and the blade still opens his sleeve from elbow to wrist. Blood, hot, his. The man knees him. Grant takes it and drives him through the cut wall, bookcase and all. Wood explodes into the first penthouse. Girls scream and then they try to rush in and help Grant.

“No! Stay back! No one else gets hurt.” He barks at them while narrowly dodging another knife attack and countering with a punch.

Eve dives for the rifle.

A woman who is not Grant’s comes through the foyer and kicks it sideways. Eve and she go down in a pile of elbows. Zoya pulls the stranger off her by her long hair. Magdalena meets the next one at the stairwell door, a woman with a piece of pipe who is trying to get past everybody to protect her owner and does not care who she hits.

Mary hauls Noor behind the island.

“Stay down.”

“I’m fine—”

“You’re bleeding. Stay down.”

The man gets up grinning. His lip is split. His heart is still too calm.

“See? War zone. I told you.”

He comes again.

Grant meets him in the middle of the stone floor. They are both too quick for the room. Grant hears a water case tip before it tips and still almost trips on it. The man grabs a pan from the spilled foyer pile and swings. Grant takes it on his shoulder and the metal folds around the hit. He puts a fist in the man’s chest. The man flies, hits the terrace door, and the glass spiderwebs from corner to corner.

Down in the stairwell, the mix of blanks and invading claimed hits the landing hard.

Lily, split lip and all, throws a vase down the steps. It does not stop anyone. It makes them bunch. Harlow slams the foyer door on an arm. Somebody howls. Tessa is on the floor dragging the rifle back toward Eve with both hands. Priya is in the bedroom doorway with a lamp, waiting for an order, not swinging yet.

“Priya, stay,” Grant snaps, and she stays.

The man on the terrace spits blood.

“You should’ve taken the elevator.”

He pulls a second knife from his belt. Smaller. He throws it.

Grant hears the flick of the wrist. He still almost gets cut. The knife instead goes through the space where his neck was and sticks in the cabinet behind Mary, vibrating.

Mary does not scream. She throws the kettle.

It hits the man in the mouth. Not enough to drop him. Enough for Grant.

Grant crosses the room and puts him on the glass a second time. The pane gives. Cold air rushes in. The man hangs on the frame with one hand, laughing through red teeth, city lights all over his back.

“Kill me and they all go loose,” he says. “You ready for that many in your hallway?”

“Yes,” Grant says.

He hits him once more.

The man loses the frame. For a second he is just a shape against the city. Then he is gone, down to the concrete below, and the sound that comes back up is not a person getting up again.

Grant stands in the broken glass and waits for the map to lie to him.

It does not.

Every woman in the stair who belonged to that man goes blank at the same instant. A wave. He feels it like a building full of lights switching off and then coming back as holes. Fifteen. Eighteen. He cannot count clean while his ears are full of screaming.

Noor is still alive. The nick on her collarbone is a thin red line.

Mary stares at the open terrace.

“Grant.”

“I know.”

The hallway is already moving. Newly unclaimed women and the leftover loose ones from the garage on Third. Some run down. Some freeze. Some look at him and understand what just happened and start backing toward the elevator with their hands up.

Eve has the rifle again.

“Orders?”

“Hold the stairwell. Nobody goes out the terrace. I’m taking them.”

He goes into the hall.

The first one swings a broken chair leg. He takes it out of her hands and grabs her wrist while she is still swearing at him.

“I claim you.”

She drops into it at once.

“I’m Viv. He just died. I felt it. I’m yours now. What do you need?”

“The next ones. Don’t hurt them.”

“Yes sir.”

Fifty-nine.

The elevator button girl slaps the panel like it will save her. Zoya pins her there.

“I claim you.”

“I…I’m Dina. I want to help.”

Sixty.

A third crawls out from behind the fallen bookcase, shaking her head, already crying.

“I claim you.”

“Ruth. Tell me where to stand.”

Sixty-one.

Magdalena has one by the foyer. Pipe still in the woman’s hand until Magdalena takes it.

“I claim you.”

“Elsie.”

Sixty-two.

That is the easy four. The rest are in the stairwell.

Grant takes the steps two at a time and has to force himself not to take them too fast. The stairwell smells like sweat and dust. A blonde with a split knuckle tries to shove past him toward the lobby. He catches her around the waist and claims her against the rail.

“Pax. I’m Pax. I’m not running anymore.”

Sixty-three.

Two more on the next landing try to go over him as a pair. One has a flashlight. She swings it at his face. He lets it hit his shoulder and takes both wrists, one after the other.

“I claim you.”

“Shay.”

Sixty-four.

“I claim you.”

“Britt. God. Okay. Okay.”

Sixty-five.

Eve is behind him now, rifle up, not firing. Mary is at the cut wall shouting the house into order: guest suite stays shut, nobody follows him down, Willa to Noor with the kit.

A woman on twelve tries the fire door. Jaycee — home from the noise, or never having left the floor, Grant does not have time to sort it — blocks her. Grant claims her there, breath hard.

“Loni.”

Sixty-six.

The lobby opens under him. Blanks scattering across the tile. One makes the front glass. He is there before she hits the street. She fights, kicks, tries to bite. He claims her on the sidewalk anyway.

“Nia. Yours. I’m sorry. I thought if I ran—”

“Inside.”

Sixty-seven.

He turns back because two more are trying the side alley. Magdalena and Viv, already his, cut them off. He claims both against the brick. “Callie.” Sixty-eight. “Ren.” Sixty-nine.

His rib is throbbing. His sleeve is soaked. He does not stop.

A redhead in the mail alcove has her hands up.

“Don’t. Please don’t.”

He claims her anyway.

“Laura. I won’t fight you. I just— he made us come up. I didn’t want the knife thing.”

Seventy.

Mary’s voice from the stairs:

“Grant. You’re bleeding. How many more?”

He opens the map to greater range.

The building is full of his points now, stacked from lobby to terrace. The holes are fewer. Three blanks still moving. One in the service elevator, going down. One in the basement hall. One already outside, running east, almost off beyond the max distance of his map.

“Three left in range,” he says. “I’m taking them.”

“Then take them and come back up. I mean it.”

The service elevator opens on the garage level. The woman inside tries to shut the door on him. He puts his hand in the gap, the motor complains, and he claims her before she can squeeze past.

“I’m Maureen. Don’t hate me. I opened the door for him. He said he’d kill the ones in the street if I didn’t.”

“Upstairs. Now.”

Seventy-one.

Basement hall. Dark. A mop bucket. The last one inside the building is behind a boiler, shaking so hard he can hear her teeth.

“I claim you.”

Silence, then the flip, complete.

“Bea. I hid. I’ll come out. I’m coming out.”

Seventy-two.

He takes the stairs back toward the lobby because the last blank is already in the street, east, speeding up. He hits the night air and the city is too many sounds at once. He picks her footsteps and drops the rest.

She is fast.

He is faster. He catches her at the corner by a dead newspaper box.

She tries to kick him. He dodges it and grabs her leg.

“I claim you.”

“Lucia. Damn it. I shouldn’t have done that. I was confused. I’m yours now.”

Seventy-three.

He stands on the corner with her and turns the map all the way open.

Most of the dead man’s pack is his now. Not all. Two holes are already outside five hundred feet. South. Then gone. The rest of the Third Street leftovers that never came in the building are scattered west, also fading.

He walks Lucia back to the lobby.

The foyer looks like a kitchen exploded. Pans. Glass. Blood. His people and the new ones packed in a way that would be funny if anyone had the air to laugh. Noor is sitting on the island with Willa pressing gauze to her collarbone. Eve has the stair. Mary counts heads out loud and does not care that her voice shakes.

Grant leans on the stone because the rib finally gets to be a problem.

“How many?” Mary says.

“Seventy-three. I missed two from the stair and whoever from Third never came in. They’re off the map already.”

“And the ones you got?”

“They are here now.” He looks at Viv, Dina, Ruth, Elsie, Pax, Shay, Britt, Loni, Nia, Callie, Ren, Laura, Maureen, Bea, Lucia, and the ones still telling their names to Noor because they want him to have them. “Almost all of his. Not all.”

Mary nods once.

“Good. Now we board that window before the whole city climbs in.”

They do that first because she is right. Zoya and Magdalena pull a dining table up on end and wedge it into the broken terrace frame. It will not stop a determined man. It will stop the wind and a casual look from another roof. Eve stays on the stairs with the rifle. Harlow and Ashlyn start picking up pans because somebody has to do it.

Grant sits on the floor with his back to the island and lets Willa wrap his arm. The cut is long and not deep. The rib is worse. Priya kneels next to him with water and does not ask if he wants it. He drinks.

Noor looks down at him from the island.

“I told you not to freeze.”

“I didn’t.”

“I know.” Her mouth shakes once. “Don’t ever let someone get that close to you again.”

“I won’t.”

He opens the map again, gentler this time.

Two blanks south, already gone. A thin scatter west. And farther, at the edge of what he can see if he really pushes — nothing. The river van is not in range.

Mary sits on the floor across from him, knees up, tired from the recent battle.

“Say the plan before you pass out and I have to make one for you instead.”

Grant keeps it simple.

“Tonight we hold. Board the glass. Reset the stairs. Nobody leaves this floor except a watch in the lobby. Tomorrow I hunt the ones that ran. The map only goes about five hundred feet, so we take the bus on a grid. South first, then west. I want those last girls before somebody else finds them first.”

“And after that?” Eve says as she stands up wearily.

“The van.” Grant looks at his wrapped arm, then at Mary. “Those two from 12th went back to the river and told this guy where we live. He came here to kill me so the whole house would fall to him. I’m not waiting for the next one to try it. We find the van, find the rest of his people, and we end that side. Store stays secured. Leanne stays there until I say otherwise. If they hit the grocery while we’re hunting, she honks and we abort the grid.”

Jose’s voice floats up the stairwell, careful, like he is not sure he is allowed to exist.

“Do I still have a job?”

“You still have a job,” Grant says. “Tomorrow you drive the grid. You do not get brave. You do not talk to unknown women. You stop when I say stop.”

“Copy.”

Mary watches Jose the way she does when she is checking for a bad idea.

“This is not a victory lap,” she says. “It’s cleanup.”

“I know.” Grant sighs.

She glances at the table in the window, at the new girls packed along the wall, at Noor’s gauze. “You claimed almost a dead man’s whole house in a stairwell. Do not get used to it being that easy.” She smirks.

“I won’t.” He almost laughs. That was far more difficult than he expected.

He can’t underestimate the next guy. He knows that. She knows he knows.

He closes his eyes. The city is still loud. The fridge kicks on in the other unit.

Tomorrow he hunts the runners.

After that, he finishes what the van started.