This Fond Madness

  She paused in front of the mirror. The scratches in the matte black painted surface revealed swaths of the glass. Before things changed, she’d spent hours looking in that mirror. Then, she had prided herself on her healthy appearance. Harmony knew that it wasn’t likely that she’d enjoy seeing her full reflection now; better to see only fragments.

  When she had first painted over the mirror, she’d dragged her then-manicured fingernails over the still-tacky paint. Tonight she trailed her now-short nails over those scratches in the ritual she enacted every time she went hunting. She couldn’t swear that the rote actions had any real impact on her survival, but that first time, not quite two years ago, she’d left angry and untrained—but somehow survived. Now, she was composed and trained. She couldn’t do anything more to guarantee her safety, but she took comfort in the small rituals she had. Ritual worked; faith mattered. Everyone on Earth knew that now.

  “Blasphemer!” her father yelled again.

  His fists thudded on the door; the shelf she kept in front of it shuddered. Her mother’s porcelain angels, remnants of an old forgotten faith, rattled in time with the pounding as Harmony leaned in close to the mirror and outlined her eyes with smudged kohl, giving herself a sickened look. The shadowed eyes added to her regular pallor and made her whole face look wan and vulnerable.

  He threw something in the hall. The tinkle of glass was followed by the bitter stench of alcohol, confirming that he had thrown another bottle. She couldn’t see the mess, but she knew what she’d see tomorrow.

  As Harmony surveyed her eyes in the exposed stripes on the mirror, she lifted her hand to touch her shaved head. The first night she’d gone hunting, she’d hacked her hair off before shaving it. Now, she could only shave the stubble. It wasn’t exactly the same, but it was the closest approximation of the ritual that she could manage.

  “They’ll find out what you’re doing and kill us both. You’re as bad as your sister was, and look where that got her,” he called through the door. That was almost a ritual too. Sometimes she wondered if she stayed here out of love or because she’d come to associate these pre-hunt rants with survival.

  He was sobbing now, drunk and broken, but she’d learned months ago that sobs would shift back to curses if he saw her—and that curses were followed by punches all too quickly.

  “Wear your charms,” he begged.

  A flash of silver was shoved under the door. She paused and stared at it. The chain held a tiny locket, a heart, and a few other trinkets. She had once insisted Chastity wear it, believing it brought her luck, and after her death, Chris had returned it.

  “Thank you, Daddy,” Harm whispered.

  She fastened it around her throat, and then she returned to the mirror. She finished shaving her head, not needing the slivers of mirror for this part of the routine. She closed her eyes and completed the task with the same precision she’d once used for curling her hair. It seemed like such a long time ago that she’d been so foolish, before she understood how dangerous Nidhogg was, before Chastity had died.

  Before I knew that gods could be monstrous.

  He started pounding on the door again; this time he kicked it too. “I won’t die because of you. Are you listening? Harmony!”

  She walked over to the door and reached a hand between the shelves barricading it. She laid her palm flat on the door.

  “I am,” she whispered. “I listen to every word, Daddy.”

  He couldn’t hear her, but their best conversations always happened when he didn’t hear her.

  “I’ll be home late tonight,” she whispered.

  She pulled her hand away as he began quoting from the New Scripture. He’d obviously been drinking early if he was already on scripture. Before the New Religion, he didn’t drink, but she was grateful that he did now. When he was drunk, he was more likely to stay home where he’d be safe.

  Harmony slid a homemade dagger into each boot; then she grabbed her prized blade: a real machine-made serrated eight-inch knife with a good handle that didn’t get too slick when it was bloodied. She kissed the side of the steel, as she had the first night, and carefully slid it into the front pocket of her trousers, through the slit in her pocket, under the fabric, and into the sheath on her thigh. Her pants were loose enough now that it didn’t show.

  “Stay safe, Daddy,” she said loudly enough for him to hear. She didn’t tell him she loved him anymore. She hadn’t said those words to anyone since her sister died.

  Harmony opened the window and jumped toward the branch nearest the house.

  Love is a mistake when we’re all going to die any day now.

  The familiar burn of her palms connecting with the bark was quickly followed by the thud of her boots hitting the ground. The calluses on her hands dulled the sensations, but it was the reenactment of the steps that mattered, not the sensations themselves.

  Chris waited, not nervously but with the ever-present edge that came from the fear that tonight would be the night that she wouldn’t show. He’d tried to convince her that sharing quarters was wiser. Most teams did. For reasons he couldn’t understand, she refused. Most days, she claimed she couldn’t leave her father—but other nights, she insisted that she couldn’t step into her dead sister’s life.

  Although we both know that she already has.

  He flicked ash onto the street, realizing as he did so that he’d only taken one drag from the cigarette. He was just about to pinch the cherry off—smokes were far too expensive to waste—when he saw her. She stayed to the shadows, but her movements were deliberate. She looked nothing like prey.

  Yet.

  Within another hour, that would change. Harmony would adopt the guise of a victim. She’d become the very thing that the devotees of Nidhogg found alluring: weak, sickened, and ready to be delivered to their god.

  “You’re late.”

  Harmony shrugged, snagged the cigarette from his hand, and took a drag. It was more ritual than necessity. The first night she’d killed one of them, this was how they met. She clung to those little details, like they would save her. Maybe she’s right. He didn’t try to understand the whole ritual or faith thing. All he knew was that a few drags on a cigarette wouldn’t deaden her sense of smell nearly as much as either of them would like. He smoked more often. The childhood warnings about cancer weren’t relevant anymore, not to them. If they stayed here, kept fighting, they’d die before there was any time for the carcinogens to have an impact, and the cigarettes helped. Even a slight deadening of scent and taste was a benefit in their line of work. Corpse-feeders stank.

  Chris took the cigarette back. “Trouble?”

  “Not really. Drunk earlier than usual. Sometimes, I think he hates me.” Harmony shrugged and looked away, but not before he saw the flicker of sadness she would deny if he asked about it. For all of her strengths, she still wanted a life that they’d never know again.

  When the god awakened, society changed, and short of killing Nidhogg, the odds of finding the sort of society they’d once known were exceedingly slim. Of course, the odds of killing a god were slimmer still. Nidhogg was here, was real, and was staying. To those who questioned, it was pretty obvious that he wasn’t as omnipotent as he claimed. If he were all-powerful, they wouldn’t be resisting, killing his devoted Nidos, and refusing to obey him.

  However, the faith that strengthened him was impossible to negate: he was real. Denying his existence was hard to do when he lived, breathed, and consumed them. The more they believed, the stronger he grew. Even those who wanted his death strengthened him with their thoughts of him. It didn’t matter whether they loathed or loved him. They thought of him, and that was enough.

  How do you deny what is undeniably here?

  The answer to that question was one the philosophers in the resistance pondered at length. Chris wasn’t a philosopher; even now that a god had come to earth, he wasn’t prone to a lot of metaphysical contemplation. His skills were far more practical: he killed monsters.

&
nbsp; “Which area did we draw tonight?” Harmony walked close enough to his side that she appeared to be with him. Together they looked like a couple undaunted by the regulations that had spread up most of the eastern part of the country.

  “Old Downtown.” He draped an arm around her shoulders, reminding himself that they had agreed that it wasn’t personal for either of them. Even though that’s a lie. The illusion required acting like a couple often enough that a good team had to be able to appear completely at ease. They had to look like they were together; teams were a harder target if they were convincing. The challenge, of course, was remembering that it was to be an act.

  He and Chastity had allowed themselves to forget, and when she died, he hadn’t been sure he wanted to keep living. Of course, loving her was the only thing that had made living matter in the first place. He had no religion, no family, nothing but the fight and his partner. When he lost his first partner, he had tried to lose himself in a drunken haze he’d had absolutely no intention of coming out of.

  He lifted bottle after bottle, shook them, and tossed them aside. “Empty. Every damn bottle is empty, Chas.”

  Saying her name wasn’t enough though. He’d kept on talking to her like she was there, but she never answered.

  Three more bottles were rejected. The fourth had a good inch of liquid—hopefully gin—in it. Unfortunately, it also had a cigarette butt floating in it. He paused, shrugged, and lifted the bottle to his lips.

  “That’s disgusting, Chris.”

  He turned. “Chas?” He lowered the bottle, holding it loosely in his hand. “You’re dead.”

  She didn’t say anything, but her head bowed momentarily. After what sounded like a sob, she crossed the room and took the bottle from him. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I was late. If I hadn’t been late—”

  “You’d be dead too,” she interrupted.

  “I’d rather be dead.”

  She slapped him. “You’d rather let them kill you? Let him eat your corpse? What happened to fighting?”

  “I can’t fight without you.” He pulled her to him. He knew now that it was a dream. It had to be a dream because dead girls don’t slap people, but he would rather sleep than wake if that meant Chastity was with him. “I need you, Chas. I love you.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but he kissed her before she spoke. Her kisses were different, but he couldn’t expect a dream to be the same as the real thing.

  When he pulled away, he told her all the things he had told her since they’d first fallen into bed. “I love you. I can’t do this alone. I need you here. Now.”

  “You’ll fight?” She stepped away. “Promise me, Chris. You’ll fight. No giving up.…. They killed Chastity. You have to fight. Help me fight them.”

  “I will,” he agreed. Something in her words was wrong. He paused, but then she kissed him.

  Chastity let him undress her, and they made love.

  Later, when he sobered up, he realized that it wasn’t a dream at all—nor was it Chastity.

  “I need you to train me,” Harmony said. “My sister wouldn’t want you—or me—to die.”

  “You’re not…” He put an arm over his eyes. “I didn’t mean…

  “I said yes, Chris. You needed to think I was her, and it’s probably for the best. Partners need to be at ease with each other. Now, you… you should be at ease with me, right? It’ll help.”

  “Partners?” He moved his arm and stared up at her.

  “I’m not interested in replacing her”—she made a vague waving gesture toward the mattress on his floor where she’d just been—“there. I want to be your partner on the streets, though. You trained her. Train me. I’ll fight.”

  “No.”

  Ten months later, she was every bit as good a fighter as Chastity had been. A year after that, she was more lethal and still looked enough like Chastity that more than a few people mistakenly called her by her dead sister’s name, but there was no way he’d ever mistake them for one another now that he’d gotten to know Harmony.

  The elder Davis sister had been a good soldier, devoted to the fight; up until the day she died, Chastity had done her job and done it well, too. She killed any of the creatures—human and other—that served Nidhogg. She was still soft though; she wept when she killed humans, not in the moment, but afterward when they were home. Harmony, on the other hand, didn’t cry. She also didn’t laugh the way Chastity had. Sometimes, when she’d won in a fight where she been outnumbered or overpowered initially, she smiled with the sort of relaxed joy that Chastity often took in little things. But the only things that seemed to make Harmony that happy were victories in the almost-lost fights. Getting close to the edge of death and winning, that was where Harmony found her joy.

  Chris stuffed the extinguished cigarette butt into his pocket. The nicotine-stained filters would be recycled again and again until they were so noxious that they were of no use as cigarettes. Some fighters tore little bits of them off to use as nose plugs, but he hadn’t yet gotten to that point. If he survived long enough, he would, but counting on surviving was foolish. Maybe if they lived farther north, they’d have better odds, but if they stayed this close to the god’s lair, they were just biding time. In the days before the god’s arrival, people stayed in dead-end towns, in dead-end jobs, in dead-end relationships rather than take the risk of something new. He’d sworn he would be different, but here he was, staying in a town where dying young was inevitable. Because Harmony won’t leave. If he could convince her to move, they could try to find a safer place, but she only cared about the fight. And I only care about her.

  He hadn’t meant to fall in love with his dead girlfriend’s sister, but he had—not that he’d be foolish enough to tell her: Harmony didn’t believe in love. She’d told him early on, “Two of the three people I’ve loved are dead. The third is a drunk. Love’s a bad idea.” So Chris kept the words to himself and did his best to keep them both alive.

  ***

  As usual with Chris, Harmony didn’t feel the need to distract either of them with unnecessary chatter. As he did that first night, he kept his arm around her as they walked. Silently, she checked that item off her mental list, too, and he didn’t comment on her insistence of replicating so many small details every night they went hunting. All he ever said was that it provided an excuse to keep their voices low as well as presenting a unified front against any watching devotees of the New Faith. Sometimes, in the thoughts she never shared, she thought of her fellow fighters as devotees of a faith, too. They were devoted to a god who hadn’t yet appeared, who maybe never would, but she believed he or she had to be out there in the universe. It was a quiet belief, with the sort of small rituals and whispered prayers that wouldn’t draw attention—or maybe it was a fantasy as much as Chastity’s dreams of a different future. Either way, it was better than the New Faith.

  Most of the faithful were zealots, and like all zealots, they focused on some facts to the exclusion of all others. They had proof that their faith was true: their god was here on Earth. They didn’t want to discuss the fact that their god required human sacrifice, that he ate corpses, that a great destroyer wasn’t doing any favors to the civilization on Earth.

  Within months after Nidhogg’s devotees revealed the presence of their corpse-eating god, all flights and ships from North America were refused docking or runway access across the globe. Any flights attempting access to foreign nations were summarily shot down; boats were sunk. Humans helped the Nidos—the reptilian creatures that had appeared and served Nidhogg—and the New Faith spread to South America within months. Within two years, most of North and South America was reduced to sporadic internet and telephone access with the outside world.

  All of that had happened when she was still a kid. She’d never been outside the country, that she could remember. There were pictures of a trip to Europe when she was in elementary school, but by the time she was nine, everything had changed. There were vague memori
es of a life before the New Faith, but most of what she’d known was after Nidhogg. At seventeen, she’d lived half of her life under the pall of the New Religion. Sometimes, Harmony thought it was for the best: she didn’t want to remember a life that would never be again.

  Since Nidos, despite their mostly human appearance, were—like Nidhogg itself—reptilian, they were unable to flourish in the upper reaches of North America. They could also be killed, and that was the chief victory of the resistance so far: they killed monster after monster. No one knew if it had any real impact. Killing the creatures, and the humans who supported them, had led to a few reclaimed towns—and the scant bit of useful intel that they had.

  Despite some small victories, the exodus north had continued, but that was as far away from the corpse-eating new god that one could get. Although the access point between Alaska and Asia had not yet been breached by the Nidos, the fear of it was enough that humans weren’t allowed to cross into Asia either. People still tried, and stories circulated online of people claiming to have succeeded, but the truth was that anyone who tried to cross that barrier ended up dead for their efforts. The world that Harmony had been born into was long gone, and unless they could kill a god, it wouldn’t be returning to the relative safety they’d once known.

  Chris finally asked, “Did you hear about Taylor?”

  “He was a good guy. At least he got a clean death.” Harmony respected Taylor’s partner, Jess, a little bit more for putting the bullet in Taylor. Bullets attracted attention, but Jess had risked it to assure that he wasn’t thrown into one of the Nidos’ vats while still alive. Everyone who knew about the urns filled with decaying corpses was terrified of drowning in one.