The Drain

The front of the building looks like a mouth.

Leanne and Zoya nail plywood over the hole before the sun’s all the way up. Eve stays on the roof anyway. Bren is back in the garage hall with the hatchet and new orders: yell if the plywood moves.

Raven is in a unit on three.

No windows that face the street. Mary’s idea. Jose is still on four and has not come down.

Grant eats half a can of something that used to be chili and tastes like the can. The pantry math is worse in daylight. Six hundred eighty-eight mouths.

Mary tips her head at the stairs.

“You ready?”

“No.”

“Yeah. Me either. We should go anyway.”

Grant nods.

Raven sits on the edge of the bed like somebody told her to sit and she is still doing it.

Black clothes. Solid black eyes. When she talks, the teeth still sit wrong in her mouth.

“Hi Master. How can I serve you?” She says calmly.

Mary stays by the door. Pistol down. Not holstered.

Grant leans on the dresser.

“We need you to talk,” he says. “Everything. How the power works. How you got it. What he meant by a long time. What you meant when you said it wasn’t like mine.”

Raven nods.

“Yes Master.”

She looks at her hands first.

“There’s a few things. The one you saw. If I put my hand on somebody and I mean it, they go. Not dead on the ground. Not a body. Just not there. Clothes, blood, none of it is left behind. I did that to the men he pointed at. I did it to your guy in the garage because he said any men I saw, even the ones that weren’t targets yet. I can still do it. I can feel it in my fingers. I don’t want to use it unless you tell me to.”

“Men only?” Mary asks.

“No.” Raven’s voice stays flat. “Anyone. He didn’t want me touching the women. He wanted the owners gone so the girls would be free. I don’t know what happens if I touch a girl. I never tried.”

She flexes her fingers once, like she’s checking they’re still hers. A subtle distortion in the air appears around her fingertips. It is small, but it makes Grant and Mary shiver.

“That’s not all of it. I can go through solid things. Walls. Doors. Cars. The ground if I push it. It feels like falling sideways. I don’t like doing it inside this building unless you say. And I can… move wrong. Short bursts. Not running. It’s more like I drop and I’m across the lot, low, like something with too many ts. Fast. A block, maybe two, then I have to stop or I throw up. That’s how I got to you in the field. You were looking at the map. I came in through the dirt and the truck and I was just there.”

Grant sees the burned truck again. The smile. The distance turning into a joke.

“Yeah,” he says. “I .”

“How’d you get it?”

Raven is quiet a second.

“Before Claim Day,” she says. “Years. I was twenty-two. I worked nights at a bar off campus. He came in a lot. Ellis. That was his name. He wasn’t special then. Just a guy who tipped too much and stared too long. Then one night he asked me to come to his place after closing and I went, because I was lonely and he seemed like a nice enough guy.”

Mary’s jaw flexes. She doesn’t interrupt.

“He didn’t drag me downstairs,” Raven says. “He asked if I wanted to see a project. I thought he painted. There was a room under the house. No windows. The floor was concrete he’d carved into. Not a pretty circle. A cut. Deep enough I could put my fingers in the groove. The cut was packed with stuff I didn’t want to look at. Hair. Teeth that weren’t his. Dark stuff that had gone sticky. In the middle there was a drain that didn’t go to a pipe. You could hear air coming up out of it. Cold. It smelled like a freezer and a wet animal.”

She swallows.

“He asked me to stand in the middle. I laughed. I asked if this was a sex thing. He said no. I stood in it anyway, because leaving felt rude and I was pretty drunk at that point. He started talking. Not English the whole time. Not anything I knew. The cut filled. Not with water. With this black that came up out of the drain like it had been waiting. It went over my boots and then my knees and it was cold, master. Colder than it had a right to be. I tried to step out and my feet stuck like the concrete had hands.”

Mary’s pistol hand is white on the grip.

“It climbed,” Raven says. “Up my legs. Under my clothes. Into my mouth. I couldn’t scream right. It got behind my eyes. That’s when they went. I felt the whites go. I felt my teeth change in my head — not pulled, just… rewritten. I bit through my tongue and it healed around the new shape. Ellis stood outside the cut the whole time and watched. He wasn’t smiling like he did before. He looked hungry. When it dropped back down the drain I was on my knees and I belonged to him. Not boyfriend. Not husband. Belonged. He said the drain had taken the part of me that could leave, and what was left was his.”

She looks at Grant.

“I tried to walk out the next morning. I made it to the porch. My feet stopped. Three years of that house. I could go to the store if he sent me. I could go to the bar if he wanted a drink. I could not go home. I could not call my mom. If I thought about running too hard my eyes would hurt and I’d end up back in the basement sitting in the cut until he said I could come up.”

“Claim Day,” Grant says.

“Yeah. He was thrilled. He went out and started grabbing girls the regular way. It worked. He got strong fast. Stronger than your map would show. That’s why you couldn’t read him. He was already something unnatural and the day stacked on top of it. He tried to do the regular claim on me. It didn’t take. I was already his the old way. So I stayed the same. No tag. No number. I went where he pointed. Through walls. Spider crawling across lots on my hands. Erased the other owners so he could walk through their camps after.”

Mary lets out a breath.

“So you’re not from Claim Day.”

“I’m before it. That day made him worse. It didn’t make me this. The drain did.”

“He said a long time?”

“Three years in that house,” Raven says. “Then Claim Day. Then he ran me all over town wiping men. I don’t know how many. The two hundreds. The little ones. I wasn’t counting names. I was counting his voice. When you killed him it broke. I was freed from him, but I still look like this. I still have the hands and the walls and the crawl. Your claim is on top of it. I can feel both. Yours is louder.”

“Can you undo the erase?” Mary says. “Bring somebody back?”

“No.” No pause. “Your friend’s gone. The others are gone. I went back to the drain once, early, when I still thought I could spit someone out. There’s no one in there. It’s just cold air and that smell. There is no fix.”

The room is silent.

Grant rubs his face.

“The women he left sitting. The ones whose owners you wiped. They’re still out there.”

“Most of them,” Raven says. “Some ran. The far bank is a lot. Some of the highway ones drifted. I can tell you where I dropped the last few if the map isn’t enough. I can take you through a wall if you want. I won’t guess.”

“The map’s enough for five miles,” Grant says. “I’m taking all of them I can reach today. You stay in my sight. You don’t touch anybody. You don’t go through anything unless I say.”

“Yes, master.”

Mary looks at him.

“You’re taking her?”

“She knows the ground. And I want her where I can see her hands.”

Mary hates it, but she agrees anyway.

“Then I’m the landing pad again. You miss, you come home. If I feel her go through a wall without you I am going to lose my mind.”

“You’ll feel her next to me.”

Raven nods once, her black eyes on the floor.

“Ellis used to send me ahead,” she says. “Through the floor. Into the room. I won’t do that unless you tell me.”

“Good,” Grant says. “I’m not him.”

“I know, master.”

The five miles is a mess of loose tags.

Far bank. A spray along the river road. A parking structure west. A strip mall. A yard that still has six from one of the twenties. No owners. Just women sitting on yesterday.

Jose is on the stairs when they come down. He sees Raven and stops dead.

“S-She’s going with you?”

“Yeah.”

“But Boss—”

“I know. She won’t touch you. She won’t come to four. You stay put.”

Jose looks at the black eyes and then at the floor.

“Bring food back if you can find any. We’re eating dust.”

“I’ll try.”

Zoya drives. She does not look in the rearview at Raven if she can help it. Raven sits in front of Grant and keeps her hands in her lap the whole ride.

“Far bank first,” Grant says. “Biggest group.”

“Yes, master.”

The far bank is tents and a burned boat and over 100 women who have been ownerless since the second one hundred man died. Some run. Some swing pipes. One has a flare gun.

Grant does not give a speech.

“Mine.”

The blast takes the bank, the trees, the boat. A chunk locks. He walks. Blast. Walks. Blast. Raven stays ten steps back and does not lift her hands. Names stack in a pile he will dump on Noor later.

700.

720.

740.

A girl with river mud on her knees says her name is Paige and then master and starts crying like that is the first thing that has made sense in two days.

Zoya loads the bus, rolls north, comes back. Two trips. Three. Grant does not watch the road. He watches the map and Raven’s hands.

Strip mall next. Nineteen. Blast. Lock.

Parking structure. Thirty-two, packed in stairwells. Blast through concrete. Lock.

Yard. Six. Lock.

Highway drift. Twenty-two. Lock.

A laundromat he missed because they were sitting on the floor. Eleven. Lock.

800.

820.

831.

Raven points once, quiet.

“There was a house two streets over. A twenty. I dropped him in the kitchen. His girls hid in the attic.”

Grant takes the house. Attic. Four more.

835.

The five miles is thin now. A few tags at the edge, moving out. He lets the ones already leaving go. He is not chasing five miles on foot while the tower has a hole in the door.

“That’s all I can reach today,” he says.

Raven nods.

“You got almost all of what I left in range. The rest ran farther than your map.”

“We’ll see tomorrow.”

Zoya’s last load smells like river and sweat. The bus is now full of hungry hands that want to grab him. Grant stands in the aisle and lets them look and does not start anything on the ride home. Mary’s landing pad rule is still in his head. So is the chili can.

Leanne meets them in the garage like the plywood out front isn’t her problem.

“How many?”

“Hundred forty-seven,” Grant says. “Eight thirty-five total. Noor’s going to hate me.”

Noor is already there and has the notebook.

“I could never hate you, master. I just need a bigger book.”

The new ones spill onto two and three. Heat in the web. Hunger on top of hunger. Paige drops to her knees in the lobby. Mary, who walked down when the bus pulled in, pulls her up by the elbow.

“Later. Walk first.”

A confused Paige looks to her master and then cooperates with Mary after he nods.

Raven stands against the wall with her hands visible. The field women stare at her eyes and give her space. Nobody asks what she is. They can feel she is his. That is enough for now.

Jose watches from the stairs and does not come closer.

Grant takes Raven back to three.

Mary shuts the door.

“You eat,” Mary says to Raven. “Even if you don’t want to. Then you stay in this room unless he calls you. You don’t wander. You don’t ‘help’ with your hands.”

“Yes, Mary.”

Mary looks at Grant.

“You believe her?”

“I believe the claim. I believe Ellis is dead. I believe she can’t bring Garret back. The three years in a basement I’ll sit with.”

“Yeah.” Mary is exhausted. “Me too. You still almost died last night — again — and then you went shopping. Please eat something that isn’t a can. Then you deal with the line at your door, because they can feel you and they have not gotten less hungry.”

He almost argues.

He doesn’t.

Raven sits on the bed again. Black eyes on the floor.

“Master,” she says, before he leaves. “If you want the hands for something — a man, a lock, a door — you tell me. I won’t guess.”

“Good.”

“Ellis would use me for other things too. My body is yours now.”

“I’m not him.”

“I know.” A small breath. “You are still a man.”

He turns away and shuts the door as he leaves.

The five miles is empty of owners.

Eight hundred thirty-five points in a building with a plywood mouth and a pantry that’s laughing at them.

Somewhere past the edge, a handful of loose tags keep moving.

Grant goes upstairs, eats the rest of the chili, and lets Mary shove him toward the bedroom because the web is a fever and he is still the only fix they have for that part.

Raven stays on three with her hands in her lap.

The circle on Ellis’ floor is still out there, in a house Grant has not seen yet.

He puts it on the list.

Tomorrow.