Too Close

Grant does not wait for a vote.

Mary is still pulling a shirt on when he says it.

“I’m taking the fields. All of them I can reach. If that thing comes for this building I want more than five hundred and a shotgun table.”

“That’s a lot of women and a thing that eats hundreds,” Mary says. “You watch the map the whole time or you don’t go.”

“I’ll watch it.”

“I’m coming.”

“You’re the landing pad. If I have to leave, I leave to you. You stay in the penthouse. You don’t move. If I step, I need you where I left you.”

Her mouth goes tight.

“That’s a shit job.”

“It’s the only one that gets me home. Zoya on the bus with Jose. Eve on the roof. Leanne on two. Garret stays in the garage and keeps his head down. I mean it. He does not walk the block.”

Garret, from the stairs, already pale:

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.”

The web leans on him. Piper, Brooke, Ashlyn, Nell — heat, want, their master sitting in their mouths. He doesn’t have time for it.

“Later,” he says.

A dozen unhappy yes, masters.

Jose has the engine on.

“We are driving around looking for a ghost?” Jose asks.

“No. We are driving to claim women the ghost already walked through. You turn around if I say. You do not look for trouble. We see it, we leave fast.”

“Copy, Boss.”

The five miles is now a clean board except for two stains.

The unreadable man, east-northeast. Still. Alone.

The smear, south, sitting on the far-bank field like a scarecrow.

The south camp — the first hundred’s women — is between Grant and that scarecrow. One hundred plus blank tags. Close enough.

“There,” Grant says. “Jose, you drop me and you roll a block north. You do not sit in the field.”

“And if it moves?”

“You go home without me. I have Mary.”

Zoya checks the shotgun.

“I stay with you.”

“You stay with the bus. If I die in a field I don’t need you dying next to me.”

“Yes, master.” She hates it, but she can’t argue with him.

The camp is a wreck of tents and a burned truck and women who have been ownerless since last night. Some run when they see him. Some swing. One fires a pistol into the dirt because her hands are shaking too hard to aim.

Grant watches the smear.

Still on the far bank.

“Mine.”

The blast goes out. Two hundred feet. Through canvas. Through the truck. A chunk of the field locks. Names he does not catch. He walks. Blast. Walks. Blast. The want is a drum. Zoya’s bus is a dot on the road.

580.

600.

620.

640.

The smear moves.

Not toward him. Sideways. Along the far bank. Grant’s stomach drops and then steadies. Still not his field.

Keep going. I must get stronger.

He does.

675.

A girl with a split lip says her name is Tasha and then master and grabs his sleeve. He points her toward the road.

“Bus. Don’t wait for me.”

Jose is already rolling a load north. Good.

The smear skips.

The skip is wrong. It is not a line. It is a cut. Far bank to the river road. Then the river road to the south edge of the camp Grant is standing in.

Fuck.

He takes the last clump in front of him anyway. Blast. Twelve more.

687.

The smear is at the burned truck.

Grant turns.

For the first time since the smear appeared on his map, he sees a shape instead of a smudge.

Not a number. Not a weight.

A woman.

She is walking out of the heat-haze over the asphalt like she has all morning. Mid-twenties. Black hair pulled back. All-black outfit with combat boots. No gun. No hurry. The air behind her is wrong — not empty, not full, like the map is trying to draw her and the pencil keeps breaking.

She looks at him. Her eyes are blacker than her hair — solid black.

She smiles.

It is not a nice smile. It is not a crazy smile. It is the smile of somebody who just found the last name on a list. Almost predatory.

Wait. What is wrong with her teeth? They look — off.

Grant’s mouth goes dry.

That’s why she doesn’t read on the map. She isn’t an owner. She’s—

He does not finish the sentence.

She takes a step that covers the truck and the dirt and the space where a hundred-plus died, and the distance between them is suddenly a bad joke.

He thinks of Mary.

The penthouse.

The bed.

Mary’s face.

He is there.

The camp is gone. The woman is gone. Mary is standing where he told her to stand, pistol in her hand, and Grant hits the floor on his knees because the step does not usually feel like running that hard.

“Grant—”

“Stay there. Don’t come to the window.”

The five miles slams open.

The smear is not in the field.

The smear is on their block.

She’s in the garage.

Garret’s point is a fast hammer.

Then it is not.

Gone.

Jose’s point stutters and stays. Alive. Moving. Back of the bus, like he said.

Zoya is on the bus, north of campus, still rolling, still his.

Garret is just gone.

The smear sits on the garage for half a second — long enough for Grant to feel it looking at the building, at his women stacked in the floors, at him — and then it is not there.

Not south.

Not east.

Off the five miles. Gone.

The unreadable man has not moved.

Mary is on the floor with him.

“What happened, Master? Are you ok? What did you see?”

He looks at her. The smile is still in his head. The black eyes. The familiar, but somehow very wrong teeth. The way the map would not hold her.

“It’s a woman,” he says.

Mary stares.

“What?”

“The smear. It’s a woman. She looked at me. She smiled. She isn’t an owner. That’s why she doesn’t read. I’m not sure she is completely human though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Her eyes. They had no white to them. Just the deepest black… and her teeth. They just weren’t normal. I can’t describe it.”

“Did she follow you?”

“She went to the garage.” His voice sounds like somebody else’s. “Garret’s gone.”

The web feels it a second later — not Garret, they never had Garret — they feel Grant. The flinch. The heat goes cooler. Piper is already in the hall. Eve is shouting down the well. Leanne is on two with both hands on a rifle.

Jose’s voice on the stairs, raw:

“He was in the garage! I told him to stay on the bus. He went back for a water…Boss. He’s— he’s not there. There’s nothing there. Not even—”

Jose stops.

Grant stands up.

“Nobody leaves,” he says. “Nobody goes to the garage. Eve stays on the roof. If you see a woman in all black, you do not shoot and you do not talk. You get off the skyline and you tell me.”

“Yes, master.”

“Leanne, find a room for Jose — and only him. We can watch the bus from a safe distance.”

“Yes, master.”

Mary’s hand is on his face.

“How close was she?”

“She almost touched me.”

“And you came here.”

“I came here.”

She lets out a breath that is almost a laugh, but it’s not.

“Good. That was your plan. You did it.”

He nods. He does not feel good.

Six hundred eighty-seven points in the building, plus the bus still coming, plus a hole in the garage where Garret was.

Noor will want a number. He gives it to her when she appears with the list and a face that says she already felt the missing man.

“Six hundred eighty-seven,” Grant says. “South field. We left the far bank. We left whoever ran. Garret’s dead. The thing that did it is a woman in black. I don’t have an explanation for that yet.”

Noor writes it down. Her hand shakes.

“Yes, master.”

The bus comes in the back way.

Zoya has the second load. She sees Grant and then she sees Jose and then she does not ask where Garret is.

They pack the new ones onto two and three. Master is in a pile. Hands on him. Heat. The 500-hunger does not care that a man died in the garage. Tasha tries to drop to her knees in the lobby. Mary pulls her up.

“Later,” Mary says. “He said later. You can want him and still walk.”

“Yes, master. Mary. Sorry.”

Grant stands in the penthouse window and does not look at the garage.

The five miles is empty of owners.

Smear: gone.

Unreadable man: sitting.

He can still see the black eyes and her strange smile when he blinks.

Mary comes up behind him. She does not make him eat. She puts her forehead on his back.

“You got stronger,” she says. “That was the point. Don’t you dare go back out there tonight to get the rest.”

“I won’t.”

“Say it like you mean it.”

“I’m not going out there tonight.”

Piper is in the door. Brooke. Ashlyn. They want. He can feel it like a fever. He shakes his head once and they stop at the threshold, miserable and obedient.

“Yes, master.”

Jose sits on the stairs and puts his face in his hands.

Grant opens the map again.

Nothing moving.

A woman in black, somewhere past five miles, with a list that just lost a target and gained a reason to come back.

He does not sleep.

687.

One of his fell today for the first time.

And Grant still sees her smiling.