Then he saw the crows.
They completely covered the ground between him and Mercy. Normally loud and very social creatures, these crows were almost silent and pecked at the ground while moving with complete awareness of all the other crows. If not for the strong moonlight reflecting off their backs, the crows would bled into the ground and make it appear to ripple as if alive.
“Stay away from me,” Mercy said. Her voice shook as if she were cold.
“I certainly hope you don’t plan on jumping,” Victor said. “It’s a long way down, but the fall might not kill you.”
She sobbed once and then spoke with more fierceness than she really had. “If you don’t stay away, it won’t be me falling off this cliff.”
Victor laughed. He trailed the beam of his flashlight over the black bodies of the crows. “People all over the world are afraid of crows,” he said. “Farmers blame them for destroying crops. Cultures in all corners of the world associate crows with death. A gathering of crows is even called a murder. It’s because crows were commonly found on battlefields, picking at the flesh of the newly dead. That started their reputation as evil messengers.”
Victor pushed his foot through the birds to take a very short step toward her. While he spoke, he continued this almost imperceptible advance. “You could fall and not die, but it wouldn’t be long before these crows found you and began to feast. They’d probably start with your eyes. Can you imagine what that will feel like, having your eyes pecked right out of your head? It wouldn’t kill you. You could still be alive for quite a while before they finally torn you open enough for the blood to really flow.”
“Stay where you are!” Her scream was pathetic, the panicked growl of the beast at bay.
“I like crows,” Victor said. “They are misunderstood creatures. They are survivors. They travel in broods of thousands and communicate with several hundred different calls. They defend each other, including crows unrelated to their brood. They mate for life. There are, actually, the best example to Man for how he should live. And once the Transition begins, crows will forever endure as a symbol of why humanity fell.”
“What transition?” Mercy asked.
She was stalling, of course, but Victor didn’t care. There was nowhere for her to run. He stopped about halfway to her.
“Crows are not evil messengers from Hell, they are extremely intelligent creatures that can intuit future events. Crows didn’t simply find battlegrounds where the dead had fallen; they swarmed the places where a battle would soon transpire and waited for the bloodshed to begin. These crows are not simply feeding here, they knew something was going to happen at this spot. They are waiting for the real feast.”
Mercy stilted her body into something resembling a fighting stance. She held a broken flashlight. Victor continued his approach.
“There are a hundred crows crowded on this mountain ledge, perhaps more. But crows rarely travel in such a small number. The others are around somewhere, waiting for whatever big event is about to transpire. But we know what that is, don’t we?”
He stepped closer. The crows parted for him without complaint. They knew what was going to happen and they had no interest interfering.
“Stay back,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Think of how amazing it will be when the other crows appear, when they take to the air as one and descend upon the fresh kill. Maybe I’ll let you live long enough to hear the deafening drone of their thousands of flapping wings. It will sound like angels coming to carry you away.”
“You’re fucking crazy.” She was trying to sound tough but fresh tears muddled her words.
“Don’t worry, though, I’m sure you won’t last very long when they start feeding. They’ll clean you right down to the bones. Then I’ll take a few of your bones and carry them with me. They will keep me company when the Dark Time comes. They will remind me of the time we’ve had together. Of the smoothness of your flesh. Of the wetness inside you.”
She crouched at the edge. Her hands gripped at the sides of her head and she cried. “Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t do anything to me.
He was almost within an arm’s reach of her. He paused again. He could knock out all her teeth and then fuck her mouth before gutting her and letting the crows at her. He could hear the choked gagging noises she would make and he grew eager to have her again.
“Don’t worry about your father, either,” he said. “I will place him by your side. You may think I’m a monster but I’m not heartless. I would have gladly let him live if you hadn’t made this all so difficult. You could have been mine. You could have stayed with me and survived the End of Everything. Instead, you’re going to die on the side of this mountain. But not before I have you one more time. Not before you give me what I want.”
He stepped toward her, cast the light on her face. It was hidden behind hands grimed in dirt and blood. He reached for her head with his injured hand. The fingers had swelled up even further and blood trailed down the back of his hand and dribbled off his wrist onto the back of a crow.
A monstrous scream rose in the air like a piercing siren through a town falling before a tornado.
For a moment, Victor thought it was coming from the girl and then he realized what was happening and when he looked behind him, he gave the bitch the chance she needed.
Caleb launched out of the wall of bushes with the scream still croaking out of him and Mercy Higgins jumped to her feet and smashed Victor in the side of the face with her flashlight.
As Victor turned back to her, the crows took flight.
FORTY-EIGHT
She begged for him not to hurt her and that was factual but not altogether true. She didn’t want him to wreak any more pain upon her, but she knew her pleas would only encourage him and that’s what she wanted. Get him close enough and then attack. A strong enough hit could give her the time she needed to run. After that, well, it was time to see just how tough a bitch she could be.
The scream might have been in her mind. It came from the bushes just as she adjusted her grip on the flashlight and pounced up and toward him and that scream could have been her desperation for this to work, for her to have a chance to survive.
But it was Caleb, somehow finding his way back down the mountain and right to this very spot. That wasn’t good because what the hell was she going to do against both of them? But when Victor turned his head, Mercy was immediately thankful that the other asshole had tracked her down.
The flashlight’s silver plastic casing reflected in the moonlight and a thick puff of hot air from her frantic breathing obscured it for a moment before the head of the flashlight connected with Victor’s cheek and his head snapped to the side as if from a massive punch.
Then the crows took to the air in unison. For the length of a snapshot, they hovered at waist height and Mercy saw Victor turn back to her with blood running down his cheek and behind him was Caleb lurching toward them, his mouth a beastly rictus full of spit. Then the crows were up and the moon was blacked out. Mercy was lost in a darkness alive with flapping wings and human hands desperate to claw her flesh and rip her wide open.
Feathers brushed her face from all sides and she thought of being smothered beneath rolls of silk. To die in such comfort was uniquely disturbing. Then the thought was gone and Victor’s fingers were tearing at her face and entangling in her hair.
She screamed but her shouts were lost in the incredible thumping beat of the crows’ wings and somewhere under that was Caleb’s distorted screech. She managed to hit Victor in the head a few times more with the flashlight before it fell from her hand and was gone, but his grip on her hair tightened and his other hand groped at her cheek, found her nose, and squeezed.
This scream rang in her mind as one whitewashed wall of pain that obscured everything else. She clawed at his hand but his fingers squeezed harder and then snapped to the side. The breaking of her nose was more intense than her anguished scream and for several seconds the pain was too great to process even as some mammoth wall of misery. She was merely nothing, only pain. When some semblance of rational thought returned, she wanted to sprout wings and fly off with these crows or even jump from the cliff and plummet to her death. Either flee or die. One or the other. She could not endure this pain any longer. It would drive her insane.
You could fall and not die, but it wouldn’t be long before these crows found you and began to feast. They’d
