edged in mercury
an excerpt

MONDAY
NOVEMBER 6TH
20:21

I’d
hoped
he’d been dead.

He’s choking on air now and Corosa can’t do anything about it, just counts everything as it all falls to pieces -- four three two one one one (ringing in his ears, just like a phone). And time’s laughing, time’s freezing, time’s just mocking and tantalizing them with that one shatter of a second in which Satero’s pulse just stops, just stops--

’91. Or ’92. Or somewhere around there, give or take five, ten, fifteen twenty years. He boarded a train and got the hell out of there. But all the noise and all the wheels and all the glitter in the world couldn’t drown out, grind down, smooth over the time he’d served. Now it haunts him. Now it outlines him. Now it sinks and twists through the fibers of his heart, and now it is him.

“It’s o--”--kay, he would have said, except Corosa’s phone was ringing away. It wasn’t the time. It was never the time, because Satero’s heart never stopped. Time never stopped. Nothing ever stopped, save for themselves and their footsteps. And they’d only stopped because Corosa’s phone was ringing.

Satero makes a grab for the phone just as soon as Corosa does, but Corosa gets there first, fingers snapping down with a crack like bone on bone.

The number is Mukhari Sharak’s.
There’s someone on the other end.
The signal goes dead.

And they all go back to counting time, again, in the units of their footsteps.

He was a wanderer, and when he finally chained himself down he let the wanderers pass in and out of his life. Their stories, hearts, memories, all filtered through the quiet mechanics of his own processes of thought. Stored away there. Interwoven into the fine lattice of his mind. And then they leave his life again, content with the knowledge that somewhere, they have set down one tiny hook of an anchor. They can drift-float forever, never touch the ground of lives again. One mind out there that will remember them. But sometimes he wonders. Where is his--

Satero’s still suffocating, clawing at Corosa’s shoulder, hands tight. Steel clamp. Corosa wishes he would hold on tighter. Don’t let go, don’t let go.The mist’s gotten thicker now and Corosa’s sure that’s the source of it. Even he feels it -- a thickening, deadening of the mind and senses. A numbing. A definite numbing. He feels like he’s losing control, and it frightens him. He feels like the mist is draining everything out of him. Nerves first. Control first. His legs are slowly giving way, and he doesn’t want them to.

Satero’s a black hole for magic. What does this make the mist, then? A black hole of black holes. It’s killing Satero, the same way Satero kills most magic.

“Fuck,” Satero says, just once, in a quiet voice Corosa has never heard him use. And he gives up. Without a sound. Without a sight.

Frozen time again. Freeze of life. Corosa goes to his knees under Satero’s dead weight, gasping and swearing and--

“No, goddammit--” he hisses, somehow managing to straighten again. His back hurts. His arms hurt, his legs are numb, there’s a headache pounding away in his ears but he has to keep going because Satero won’t.

Satero’s grip has slackened. That one ease of pain frightens Corosa more than anything.

He tightens his own grip to make up for it. Strains on.

The mall is a graveyard.It opens in the morning, allowing for the trickle of the earliest. It closes at night, allowing for the trickle of the lag-behinds to become trapped. The keepers shuffle through the afterdust of a thousand crowds and lock it all in, where it festers away overnight. By morning it’s all collapsed in on itself. The faded, voiceless ghosts are swept out by the cleaners and the mall opens itself up once more, sunlight streaming in with the trickle of the earliest.

The cycle repeats itself. The reaping of new lives. New deaths. New ghosts.

Corosa nearly laughs when he slams up against the wall, nearly drops Satero, who has gone completely unconscious. Corosa presses his lips against Satero’s ear in a feverish kiss, whispers we’re almost there, almost there--“Hey, Nyem. I tried callin’ ya. I think your phone died.”

Corosa whips his head around, staring out at the world through the narrowed slits of his eyes. And the world, right now, consists of one ragged wanderer. The man’s hovering over the two of them with a cigarette dangling from his bottom lip, between the two lip piercings. There had once been two, anyway. It looks as if one of the hoops has been ripped straight out.

It doesn’t seem as if Mukhari Sharak cares. It doesn’t seem as if he will care about much from now on. His hair is matted with blood. There’s something horribly wrong about his left arm, and it takes Corosa a little while to realize that it’s only connected by a few fraying threads of skin.

Sharak’s shirt is black. It hides the bloodstains.

Mukhari Sharak raises his other hand in a lethargic wave. Not like him, Corosa thinks, backing away and taking Satero with him. Not like Sharak at all. Sharak was the most animated man he had ever known.

“Bites hurt like a motherfucker,” Sharak says.
“You should go inside,” he says.
“The rest of them are dumb,” he says.
“They don’t know how to get in,” he says.

Corosa’s already gone. He doesn’t spare a glance over his shoulder, doesn’t wait for Sharak to finish his disjointed thoughts and sentences. Doesn’t try to find out what has happened. He can see one of the entrances up ahead, and he hopes with a dull desperateness that he can get in.

Mukhari watches Nyem run, and wishes he got to talk to Satero.He reaches up, grabs ahold of his slowly-detaching left arm, absently grinds the stump into the stump of his shoulder as if that will reattach it.

It should hurt, he thinks, but it doesn’t.

The cigarette’s burned itself away, the smoking fragments straight against his lip. He doesn’t notice.

They swarm, like so many bees, except so much worse and so much more vicious. They are falling apart. They are meat connected to bone, blood hanging off a framework of bone, and all of it will dissolve away, given time. Given time, and given nature.Corosa can already smell some of the rot from here. He would vomit, but he feels so empty that there is nothing to throw up. Empty enough that he can’t be bothered to wonder, can’t be bothered to think, can’t even consider trying to comprehend how this had all happened.

He tries anyway. He tries his damndest.

It’s the mist, he thinks, taking a careful step forwards. The corpses have not noticed him and Satero’s body yet. They are fixated on the entrance. Corosa thinks he can hear sobbing and screaming from inside. And it is, oddly enough, comforting. It means there are still humans on this world. It means that he is not quite alone yet.

He may be, soon.

It’s the mist, he decides again. Satero had told him that earlier, when the fog had first drifted in. The man had promptly curled up in the corner and looked sick. Don’t like this, he’d growled. And he hadn’t responded when Corosa checked to see if he had a fever. He hadn’t, but Corosa had known something was wrong anyway. Any other day, and Satero would have grinned and shot off some dirty comment.

An hour ago, Satero had suddenly decided he wanted to go for a walk.

They have slowed to a walk now, because Corosa can no longer support Satero’s weight. And then they slow to nothing.

Corosa collapses against the wall, unable to take another step.

There is a door--
--yards away. Miles away. Aeons away. He cannot make it without taking a chance, without taking a sprint, and Satero has not yet awoken. Corosa can not make such a dash in this state,. Especially not with dead weight dragging him down.

He inches towards the edge of the wall. Doesn’t lean out, because that will draw attention to himself. But he listens hard.

They are not talking, he realizes. No communication, just animalistic groans. His mind flickers back to Mukhari Sharak, crooked grin and torn-off arm. Tongue functioning just as it always had. Emotions functioning quite a bit differently. Mind glazed with lethargy, but still a mind nonetheless.

These people do not sound like Mukhari Sharak. The only part of that realization which concerns Corosa is that they, unlike Sharak, are looking to kill. True zombies, then. Perhaps Sharak was not one. You could live a while after having your arm torn off, until you bled to death.

He wonders whether he should have abandoned Sharak so quickly.

Corosa returns to Satero, runs his hands through Satero’s hair, looking for some comfort that an unconscious Satero can not give him.

It would be easy, he thinks. There are a quite a large number of the dead. They would swarm, they would smother, and it would be painful for a few seconds. Ten seconds, perhaps. And then they would both be dead.

Mere speculation. Corosa has not survived this long just to give up now. Nor is Satero’s life his to give away.

Breathing is painful. Thinking is painful. He thinks anyway.

Senseless. Mindless. Numbed and dead. All speak of a loss of control that Corosa does not ever want to experience. After all, he realizes, there is no controlling life when you have none.

20:32, Corosa Nyem’s watch says, and he braces himself.Streak against the grey sky. He can feel his body collapsing. Lungs rupture. Muscles tear. Heart explodes into action, explodes into pieces. And there is the attention; he feels the pairs of lifeless eyes turn on him and follow the movement, the warmth, the blood, the life.

They swarm the way he always imagined, and in no way he could have ever imagined.

But the door swings open as soon as he slams his shoulder into it, he sees men and women -- alive, healthy -- crowd in, try to close the door, try to shut him out with the corpses, screaming don’t come in, don’t let them in, don’t let the door open, no god please no don’t let us die but he snarls and forces his way in anyway, shoving through as the door shuts too late.

A woman has been dragged outside by the mob of corpses. She disappears under a wave of hungry mouths, and the ones inside do nothing but listen to her scream.

He slumps to the ground and pulls Satero into his lap in the back of the store, away from the others, though he can still hear them. They are panicking, but he no longer cares.Gently, he runs his hand over Satero’s brow. The man is still not awake. His skin is cold.

Corosa’s hand wanders to Satero’s throat. Fingers apply light pressure, and receive a faint pulse in return.
Satero groans something.

20:43, Corosa’s watch says, and Satero’s eyes open.

“It’s gone?” he asks, voice hoarse, not looking at Corosa but at the opposite wall.

“It’s outside,” Corosa says.

“Still,” Satero adds, and then laughs bitterly. He manages to sit up, in a series of pained movements. Corosa does not move to help him. Satero nods his head in acknowledgment, in thanks.

“It’s better in here,” Satero says, slumping against the wall next to Corosa. “Where?”

“Mall. Closest.”

Satero shakes his head, scowls. “What made ya think it’d be better inside? I wanted to go out ‘cause I was dyin’ inside.”

“Are you feeling better now, then?” Corosa asks, with a hint of irritation. He remembers the pains he took to get Satero in here, and Satero is not grateful in the least. But Satero never was that sort of man.

“Fuck. You angry?” Satero asks, pulling Corosa into a one-armed hug. He whispers his next words into Corosa’s hair. “‘Course I’m feelin’ better. But you look like shit.”

Corosa never does answer Satero’s initial question, as to why Corosa brought them both indoors. Keeping his silence means not having to say anything of Mukhari Sharak.

Corosa’s watch says 20:66.The phone rings. The screen is dead, black, lifeless. But the phone still rings.

It is not Corosa’s ringtone. It is a low, persistent buzz, and there is no telling how long it has been going. Perhaps it has been ringing this whole time, while they have been staggering to nowhere. Perhaps it has been ringing their whole lives, while they have been staggering to nowhere.

Corosa answers.

“Who is this?” he asks, deadened, not wanting to think about why his phone is ringing when the batteries are dead.

“Still love you,” a voice whispers. Hoarse. Ruined.

The phone goes dead again.