Authors: Alex Ziebart
Not sure. Not screwing with you, honestly not sure.
We’re going out tonight. Come along?
Will let you know ASAP.
She pocketed the phone and returned to her search, walking down the hall with quiet steps. In sudden panic, she froze at movement ahead. Her eyes snapped forward and she met her own gaze, a copy of her at the end of the hallway.
A full-length mirror hung there with a crucifix displayed above.
Idiot.
Kristen put a hand to her chest to quiet her heart and peeked into the bathroom. She found it a mess, but a lived-in mess with no sign of struggle: brushes and makeup on the sink and counter, towels on the floor, and an overflowing trash can. Onward from there, she found the bedrooms: a master bedroom with its clash of lace and meat-and-potatoes bear-wrestling manly-man-stereotype, the kids’ room bedecked in pink and frills, and a play room that looked like someone put crayons and LEGO bricks in a blender and forgot to put the lid on. Again, while all were a terrible mess, nothing screamed conflict. Nothing obviously broken. No blood.
Just as Kristen turned to leave, she took a second look at a mound of stuffed animals in the playroom. They weren’t moving much, but they seemed to be breathing. One of the toys, a puffy white cat, rolled over and jump from the pile.
Oh, duh.
The cat arched its back in a stretch and padded over the minefield of toys to sit upright at Kristen’s feet. It looked up at her without discernable emotion; Kristen thought it seemed expectant only because cats always expected something of someone.
“What’s up, buddy? You don’t know where your people are, do you?” Kristen crouched and scratched the cat’s head. Her voice became saccharine. “Of course you don’t. Because you’re just a dumb kitty. Aren’t you? Aren’t you stupid? It’s okay that you’re stupid, because you’re so adorable!”
Offended, the cat swatted her hand and walked down the hall to reclaim its dignity.
“Yeah, well screw you, too. Dumb cat.”
Kristen stood upright again. She rubbed her face, trying to think of anything she might have missed. Living room? Check. Kitchen? Check. Bathroom? Check. Bedrooms? Check. Attic? She looked up and down the hallway for a hatch, but found none. Back yard? She went to a window and peered out. Just grass. Basement?
Kristen retraced her steps through the house looking for stairs and finding none. She did, however, find a door in the living room she’d previously written off as a closet. Pulling it open revealed the basement stairwell. Better than a baby gate, that’s for sure. She flipped on the light switch and descended.
A shiver crawled up her spine when her foot hit the bottom stop. Though she had no fear of monsters, basements had an aura of sorts. Whether they were livable or just for storage, dimly lit or bright as day, something about being underground was downright creepy, like crawling into a tomb.
Kristen steeled herself and ventured in. To her right, a doorway opened to what she guessed was the laundry room—a solid guess, given the washer and dryer. Their modern design surprised her; they were the button-operated sort with digital displays, not the old-fashioned manual turn-dials. For a man hard up for work, Todd didn’t seem to cut any corners. Kristen knew people with perfectly stable jobs who opted for older appliances.
Moving beyond the laundry room, her eyes went wide. Though the palpable sensation of being below the earth’s surface remained, what lay before appeared every bit like a cabin in the woods. There was a carpeted living room, an adjoining kitchen, and a pair of bedrooms beyond. Though the decor above had hinted at Todd’s affection for rustic living, it was overwhelming below. Wood paneling covered the walls, and from those walls hung gun racks, paintings of Wisconsin’s white pine forests, and another buck head. Various taxidermied critters posed on staggered shelves. An old, ratty brown couch faced one of the biggest televisions she’d ever seen, and on the back wall was a genuine fireplace, its stovepipe running up through the ceiling.
She passed through to the bedrooms, first checking the one on the right. Pushing the door open revealed what she supposed was a workshop. Tools lay scattered everywhere. Though a vacuum stood in one corner, sawdust coated the surface of a nicked and beaten workbench and part of the floor—concrete, but painted over with grey. In another corner lay a pile of ammunition, all sorts of ammo boxes neatly in a pile. Kristen couldn’t claim any knowledge of firearms, but assumed for every gun Todd had on display, he had the ammo to match.
She wondered if he’d have stood a better chance against the changelings if he’d seen them coming. He had a damned armory at his disposal.
Kristen closed that door and moved to the other room. Exercise equipment filled the space, including a treadmill, a recumbent bicycle, and a yoga mat. No weights, she noted. A computer desk sat in the far corner with a yoga ball as a seat rather than a chair. Given what she’d seen in the rest of the house, the pastel pink trim along white walls suggested the room belonged to Todd’s wife.
Moving to the center of the room, Kristen took a slow turn. In that room, she found common ground with the man’s wife. What did Jane say her name was?
Katy.
In her mind’s eye, she tried to paint a picture of Katy. Her gut rolled as she did. Trying to create a profile of the woman based on stereotypes made her sick, but it was all she had. Katy was most likely a housewife. Not only did she have three children, she’d undergone fertility treatment to have them. She had workout equipment, but none of it was for strength training. Katy wasn’t athletic. She just wanted to stay in shape rather than get fat after having children. Katy probably had some sort of workout regimen. Being a busy housewife in the modern era, but without the money for a personal trainer, Katy would have had a simple way to plan her day and track her progress. The simplest option would be a wearable device, like a pedometer to track steps and general movement.
Kristen’s gaze drifted to the computer. She turned on the monitor, flicked the mouse to banish the screensaver, and looked over the open web browser. The active window was just a bunch of cutesy crap, all of the stuff Jane had described: Katy gushing about her husband and children on social media. Clicking through Katy’s bookmarks, Kristen found what she wanted: a link to Katy’s online fitness log, complete with a step tracker. The log for the day indicated she hadn’t walked much. In fact, she hadn’t been active at all. Bold letters at the top of the page declared,
Don’t drive! Take a walk!
Because though she hadn’t been active, she had moved.
Katy’s accelerometer had GPS connected to the cell network.
Kristen ran for her car.
Chapter 8
Kristen crouched among the trees of Zablocki Park as she peered out at the old Chocolate House building. The Chocolate House was a squat brown storefront attached to a long, white factory sat on a wedge of land squeezed between the park and Arlington Cemetery. Zablocki’s treeline extended right up to the road, providing excellent cover. Though the white outer walls of the factory somehow remained as bright as ever, the roadside sign screamed abandoned. Its chocolate-brown lettering and pink banners had faded, and the manual marquee perpetually read Closed. Kristen looked down at her phone and felt like grieving an old friend; the online map of the local area hadn’t updated its pictures since before the place closed. In the picture, the sign still vibrantly declared:
WHIPPED CREMES
99¢
A LB BAG
Easter morning wouldn’t be the same without The Chocolate House’s whipped creme eggs. Wisconsin really seemed to have a knack for destroying nostalgia.
Kristen shook her head clear. Not an appropriate time to think about candy.
She lowered her phone and looked past the sign to the lot beyond. The GPS on Katy’s accelerometer put her position directly on that lot. Using an abandoned building for a hideout made sense. Using an abandoned candy factory for a hideout was just rude. Kristen saw no cars in the lot, but the factory’s loading bay doors were at ground level. Though closed now, a car could’ve easily fit through them to park inside. Curtains blocked the storefront’s windows, and the factory windows were bubbled glass blocks, impossible to see through. Nobody seemed to be watching the building from the outside, either.
Of course, they were changelings. They could’ve been birds in the sky for all she knew. She couldn’t let that be a deterrent, though.
Kristen broke the tree line and crossed the street at a trot. As soon as she entered The Chocolate House’s lot, she ducked below the windows to crabwalk her way along the walls. She stopped beside the first set of loading bay doors—a set that faced the roadside. Anyone driving by could see her, which wasn’t ideal. She waited there for only a moment to listen for any noise coming from inside. Hearing nothing, she quickly moved on, swinging around the corner of the building. She shuffled down to the next set of doors and listened.
Still nothing. Kristen was suddenly at a loss as to what she was supposed to be doing—or what she had intended to do in the first place. She couldn’t hear through walls, and those loading bay doors weren’t exactly paper thin. She wasn’t sure she’d hear it even if someone were screaming bloody murder inside. She couldn’t see through the windows. She didn’t have X-ray vision. She didn’t have any gadgets. Why didn’t she have gadgets? All superheroes had gadgets.
No.
No.
She
did
have gadgets. She had smartphones. Comic book detectives would kill for a smartphone.
Most importantly, she had Katy’s smartphone. She whipped it from her pocket and scrolled through Katy’s apps until she found the partner app to her pedometer. Kristen had bought one for Emma for Christmas the year before. Emma never used it, but that was neither here nor there. One of the app’s features was a proximity locator for the physical device. If you lost the pedometer, you just walked around until the app picked up the signal from the actual device. It had a range of ten, maybe fifteen feet.
Watching the phone’s screen, she circled the building and waited for it to sync. When she reached the rear of the building, where the white paint gave way to vibrant red brick, Katy’s phone picked up the device. Kristen crouch-walked back and forth, trying to find the very edge of the accelerometer’s range. She found it halfway down the wall and tried to picture what was about to happen.
Breaking straight through the wall was the best way to go, she figured. Sure, someone would complain about property damage, but lives were more important. She’d break through about ten feet to Katy’s right. Kristen assumed the children were with her—or dead. If they were alive, the best place to keep them happy and quiet was right next to Katy. There wouldn’t be many guards inside. In comic books, the bad guy always had an endless supply of mooks, but this wasn’t a comic book, and Kristen had already pummeled a good number of them into the ground. There’d be enough guards to be a deterrent. The rest would be out looking for Todd.
Break through, take stock of the guards, take advantage of the shock and awe, dispatch the changelings, protect Todd’s family.
Easy enough. Right?
Kristen considered for only a second before dialing 9-1-1 on Katy’s phone.
She laid the phone on the ground, rose to her full height, and turned to face the wall. Drawing a deep breath, Kristen took a few steps back, and charged shoulder-first. She crashed through the wall with a clatter of shattered bricks, chips of stone and mortar flying into the air. Time seemed to slow as she came out the other side, her mind trying to process everything all at once. Through the dust she saw Katy and her children huddled to her left, an assault rifle trained on them by a wide-eyed changeling in a folding chair. There were two other changelings beyond him, a man and a woman caught in conversation. All three wore their black riot gear except for the helmets, which lay at their feet.
Time caught up.
Kristen snatched a flying brick out of mid-air and hurled it like a football at the changeling in the chair’s head, toppling him over backward. She set her feet and cut directions to place herself between Katy and the other two hostiles. She hooked her foot beneath the man she’d toppled, heaving up with her leg to toss him in the air like a soccer ball. She caught him cross-body, then threw him forward to bowl over the other two. All three went down in a tangle of limbs. Kristen pounced. Her fist hammered one skull into a pile of gore. She grabbed the other by the collar of his armor, pulled him up, and then slammed him back down to crack the concrete below. Beneath her hands, Kristen felt the whole of him simply collapse.
Kristen pushed off her feet and pedaled backward, eyes darting around the warehouse, wary for any others. She saw no one.
In only seconds, it was over.
She looked at the corpses, then at the blood and gore on her hands. Again, her perception slowed to a crawl. Everything stopped but for the shaking of her hands. Adrenaline raced through her veins and her guts churned, thrilled at the victory, disgusted by the brutality. That part was never in the comic books. Super strength sent people flying. It didn’t burst their skulls like melons. She hadn’t conveniently knocked them unconscious.
She’d destroyed them.
It all felt so…she struggled for the word. Fake? Her mind fought against her; she tried to recall how she felt breaking through that wall and found a blank. She felt nothing. There was no impact of body on stone—no resistance at all. She passed through it like a cloud. Breaking the changelings carried no more weight than what an idle mind conjured in a dull classroom.
But the blood was heavy on her hands.
She wanted the changelings to be a challenge. That, she knew, was the dream. For years, all she'd wanted was a challenge: something too heavy to lift, too fast to chase, too strong to topple with ease. The changelings were supposed to be the hurdle, an ancient evil, the kind of opponent that would necessitate she struggle.