Black Glass Rain

"Do not stop moving."

"I am bleeding, Pelia."

"I do not care. Move."

The spring thaw in Northwestern Ontario is not a season of renewal. It is a season of rot. The snow melts back to reveal the garbage we buried in November. The mud is thick, freezing, and smells like ancient pine needles and decay. My boots sink into it with every step, a wet, sucking sound that threatens to pull me under. We are running through the dense woods just past the city limits of Thunder Bay. The air is heavy. It tastes like copper and ozone.

Karl is three paces behind me. He is wearing the dark green jacket of the South Side Syndicate. I am wearing the grey hoodie of the North End Runners. Under normal circumstances, if we crossed paths near the grain elevators or the train yards, one of us would end up in the lake. We have spent the last two years actively trying to ruin each other's supply drops. But twenty minutes ago, someone ambushed us near the hydro line. They did not wear colors. They wore tactical gear, and they carried rifles that hummed before they fired.

And then, the sky broke.

I trip over a submerged root. My knees hit the mud. The impact jars my spine, rattling my teeth. I scramble up, ignoring the sting in my palms. My lungs are burning. I am nineteen years old, and I am entirely burned out. I have spent four years running burner phones, stolen hydro-pills, and cash across this city for men who do not know my last name. The exhaustion is absolute, a physical weight in my bones. But the adrenaline pushes the exhaustion down.

"Get up," Karl says. He grabs my arm. His grip is desperate.

"Let go of me."

"Look up," he says.

I look up. It is not raining water. The clouds have turned a bruised purple, and falling from them are jagged, geometric shards of black material. It looks like glass, but it is too dark. It absorbs the light. A piece the size of my hand hits the trunk of a white birch a foot away. It embeds itself an inch deep into the wood with a sharp, violent thud.

"Run," I say.

The noise begins. It sounds like a car crash happening everywhere at once. The black glass falls faster, tearing through the pine canopy. It slices through branches, showering us in green needles and sap. The world is a cacophony of shattering and thudding.

A piece clips my shoulder. The fabric of my hoodie rips. The skin parts. A line of intense heat flares across my collarbone. I do not stop. I just keep moving forward. Karl is breathing heavily behind me, a wet, ragged sound.

Through the dense trees, I see the grey, rotting timber of an abandoned logging cabin. It sits in a small clearing, surrounded by overgrown blackberry bushes that are just starting to push out tiny, bright green leaves.

"There," I point.

We sprint across the clearing. The glass storm intensifies. It feels like we are running through a swarm of angry wasps. Shards bounce off the rocky ground, splintering into smaller, razor-sharp fragments. Karl trips. He goes down hard, landing flat on his stomach in the muck.

I stop. I look back at him. My brain calculates the odds. If I leave him, I make it to the cabin faster. He is the enemy. He has stolen money from me. He has threatened my crew.

But the sky is falling.

I turn back. I grab him by the collar of his jacket and heave. "I said, do not stop moving!"

He scrambles to his feet. We hit the door of the cabin together. It is heavy, swollen with the spring damp, but the hinges are rusted. It gives way under our combined weight. We fall inside, tumbling onto the dusty, splintered floorboards.

"Close it!" Karl yells.

I kick the door shut. There is no lock, just a heavy iron latch. I throw it into place. The noise of the storm is muffled instantly, though the roof groans under the constant impact.

I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling. The cabin smells like mouse droppings, damp paper, and old wood. Dust motes dance in the faint light filtering through a single, grime-covered window.

For a long time, there is only the sound of our breathing. It is harsh, scraping against the walls.

I sit up. My muscles ache. My shoulder is throbbing. I reach up and touch the tear in my hoodie. My fingers come away wet and dark.

Karl is sitting against the opposite wall. He is holding his right side. His face is pale, his dark hair plastered to his forehead with sweat and rain. He looks terrible. He looks exactly how I feel.

"Are you dying?" I ask.

He lets out a short, hollow laugh. It turns into a cough. "Not today. But I am heavily inconvenienced."

"Take your hand away. Let me see."

"I do not need your help, Pelia."

"We are stuck in a box together. If you bleed out, I have to deal with the smell. Move your hand."

He glares at me. The old rivalry flashes in his dark eyes. The South Side pride. But it fades quickly, washed away by the sheer absurdity of our situation. He pulls his hand back. His jacket is torn, and a piece of the black glass is embedded in his ribs, just below the armpit. It is roughly the size of a folding knife blade. Dark blood is soaking into the green fabric.

My stomach turns over. Not from the blood, but from the reality of the wound. If that hits a lung, he drowns in here.

"Take the jacket off," I say.

"You will enjoy that too much," he replies, a weak attempt at a smirk.

"Do not flatter yourself. I need to see how deep it is."

I push myself off the floor. My legs shake. I walk over to him and kneel down. The proximity feels entirely wrong. For two years, my only interactions with Karl have involved shouting, running, or throwing punches in dark alleys. Now, I am close enough to smell the sweat on his skin, the damp earth in his clothes, the metallic tang of his blood.

He struggles out of the jacket. Underneath, he is wearing a dark t shirt. The glass has sliced right through it.

"Hold still," I say.

I reach out. My fingers graze the skin of his side. He flinches. His muscles are tight, coiled like a spring. I grip the edge of the black glass. It is cold. Completely freezing, like holding a piece of dry ice.

"This is going to hurt," I tell him.

"Just do it."

I pull. The glass slides out with a wet sound. Karl bites down on a scream, his jaw locking, his head throwing back against the wooden wall. The piece of glass drops from my hand. It hits the floorboards with a heavy, metallic clink. It does not sound like glass. It sounds like dense iron.

Blood wells up immediately.

"Press this against it," I say, ripping a clean section from the bottom of my own hoodie. I hand him the fabric. He presses it to his ribs, his breath hitching.

I sit back on my heels. I look at him. Really look at him. He is not the arrogant South Side enforcer right now. He is just a terrified kid, shivering in a rotting cabin while the world ends outside.

"Why did you wait for me at the hydro line?" I ask. The question has been burning in the back of my throat since the ambush.

He keeps his eyes on the floor. "I was not waiting to kill you, if that is what you think."

"Then what were you doing?"

He looks up. His expression is stripped bare. The theatrical tough-guy front is gone. "I was trying to warn you. The Syndicate knew about the hit. They knew someone was coming for the runners. All of us. North and South."

"You risked your life to warn me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

He swallows hard. He leans his head against the wall, staring at the ceiling. "Because I am tired of the war, Pelia. I am tired of Thunder Bay. I am tired of freezing in the dark for men who sit in heated offices. And..." He stops. He looks directly into my eyes. The intensity in his gaze makes my chest tighten. "Because your survival is the only thing that matters to me. I do not care about the South Side. I do not care about the money. I only care that you breathe."

I stare at him. The words hang in the dusty air. It is a confession. Raw, dramatic, and entirely unexpected. My mind scrambles to process it. The cognitive static is deafening. I want to deflect. I want to use sarcasm. Irony is my shield.

"That is profoundly stupid," I say, my voice shaking.

"I am aware," he says quietly.

I look down at my hands. They are covered in mud and his blood. I realize, with a sudden, sinking feeling in my stomach, that I am not angry about it. I realize that every time we fought, every time we chased each other through the train yards, I was looking for him just as much as he was looking for me.

"Let me see the wound," I say softly.

He moves the makeshift bandage. The bleeding has slowed. I reach into my pocket and pull out a small roll of medical tape I always carry. I tear off a few strips.

"Lift your arm."

He obeys. I lean in close. My face is inches from his neck. I can feel the heat radiating from his body. I place the fabric over the cut and tape it down tightly. My hands are steady, but my heart is hammering against my ribs. When I finish, I do not pull away immediately. I stay there, suspended in the narrow space between us.

He turns his head slightly. His lips brush against my temple. A deliberate, gentle touch.

I close my eyes. For a second, the cold, the mud, the ruined city, and the black glass all disappear. There is only the warmth of his skin and the quiet rhythm of his breathing.

Then, the howling starts.

It is not a normal wolf howl. It is distorted. A wet, tearing, mechanical sound that vibrates in my teeth. It cuts through the noise of the glass storm outside.

I pull back instantly. The moment shatters.

Karl scrambles to his feet, ignoring the pain in his side. We both look toward the single window. The glass storm is tapering off. The black shards are no longer raining down, but the ground outside is covered in them, a jagged, dark sea.

Something moves in the tree line.

It is large. Too large for a wolf, but it moves like one. It steps out of the shadows. My breath catches in my throat.

It was a wolf, once. But now, pieces of the black glass are embedded in its flesh. They protrude from its joints, its spine, its skull. The glass seems to have fused with the animal, mutating it. The wolf's eyes are solid, lightless black. It opens its mouth, and another mechanical, tearing howl rips through the air.

Two more step out from behind it.

"They are infected," Karl whispers.

"They are angry," I correct him.

The lead wolf charges the cabin.

"The door!" Karl yells.

We both throw ourselves against the heavy wooden door just as the animal hits it from the outside. The impact is massive. The wood splinters. The iron latch groans. The hinges scream. I feel the shockwave travel up my arms and into my teeth.

"Push!" I scream.

Karl grunts, planting his boots against the floorboards and shoving his shoulder against the wood. The door buckles inward for a second, then holds. The wolf scratches frantically at the wood outside. The sound of its claws—mixed with the scraping of the black glass embedded in its paws—is horrifying. It sounds like knives on a chalkboard.

"We need something heavy!" Karl shouts over the noise.

I look around the empty cabin. There is nothing. Just dust and debris. Then, in the far corner, half-hidden in the shadows, I see it. A rusted iron wood stove.

"The stove!"

We run to it. It is massive, a relic from sixty years ago. We grab the edges. The iron is freezing and rough.

"On three," Karl says. "One. Two. Three!"

We pull. The stove barely moves. It screeches against the floorboards.

Crash.

The window shatters.

One of the wolves has smashed its head through the glass. Its jaws snap violently, snapping at the empty air. The black glass protruding from its snout cuts into the wooden window frame, tearing chunks of pine away.

"Keep pulling!" I scream.

We heave the stove again. It slides a foot. The wolf at the window struggles to pull its massive shoulders through the narrow frame. It thrashes, destroying the wall.

Karl lets go of the stove. He looks around frantically. He spots a heavy iron fire poker lying on the floor near the chimney. He grabs it, rushing to the window.

"Get back!" he yells at the animal.

He swings the iron bar. It connects with the side of the wolf's head with a sickening crunch. The animal does not flinch. It does not feel pain. It simply turns its solid black eyes toward Karl and snaps its jaws, catching the iron bar in its teeth. The wolf yanks its head, ripping the poker from Karl's hands.

Karl stumbles back, clutching his bleeding side.

The door takes another massive hit. The top hinge snaps. The wood splinters inward.

We are going to die in here. The thought is clear, cold, and entirely rational. We cannot hold the room.

"Pelia," Karl says. His voice is strangely calm. He is looking out the broken window, past the thrashing wolf, toward the clearing.

"What?"

"The bike."

I look. Twenty yards away, parked behind a thick stand of pines, is my dirtbike. A scratched, heavily modified Yamaha. I had hidden it there before the run, planning to use it for the extraction.

"We cannot reach it," I say. "There are three of them out there."

"I will get the bike," Karl says. He turns to me. His face is set in stone. The theatricality is gone. This is just brutal efficiency. "I will run out the back. I will draw them away from the door. You wait for the engine to start. When I pull up, you jump on."

"No. You will die."

"I would rather die out there than watch them take you in here," he says.

He does not wait for an argument. He turns and sprints toward the back wall of the cabin. There is a small, rotted maintenance door near the floorboards. He kicks it. The rotted wood shatters easily. He crawls through the hole, disappearing into the mud and the blackberry bushes outside.

"Karl!" I yell.

I am alone. The wolf at the window pulls itself further inside. The door takes another hit, bowing completely. The latch is bending.

I grab a heavy piece of splintered wood from the floor. I stand in the center of the room. My heart is beating so fast it feels like a continuous vibration in my chest. I wait. I listen.

Outside, I hear a shout. Karl. He is yelling, making noise.

The wolf at the window stops. It pulls its head out of the frame, turning toward the sound. The pounding at the door ceases. They are going after him.

The silence that follows is agonizing. I count the seconds. One. Two. Three. Four.

Come on. Come on.

Then, the sound cuts through the damp air. The sharp, aggressive whine of a two-stroke engine kicking to life. The Yamaha.

I do not hesitate. I throw the latch on the door and pull it open.

The clearing is a nightmare. The ground is covered in the black shards. The three mutated wolves are sprinting toward the pines. Karl is on the bike. He revs the engine, the back tire spinning in the mud, kicking up a massive spray of dirt and black glass.

He points the bike straight at the cabin. He dumps the clutch. The Yamaha launches forward, tearing across the clearing. The wolves pivot, giving chase, their unnatural speed terrifying.

I run. I sprint out the door, my boots hitting the mud. Karl slides the bike sideways as he nears the cabin, the rear tire kicking out. I do not stop. I launch myself forward, throwing my leg over the back seat as the bike is still moving.

I hit the seat hard. I wrap my arms around his waist. I grip him as tightly as I can.

"Hold on!" he screams.

He twists the throttle. The bike roars, the front wheel lifting slightly as we accelerate away from the cabin. I look back over my shoulder. The wolves are right behind us. The lead animal leaps, its jaws snapping inches from the rear tire.

But the Yamaha is faster. We hit the old logging road, the tires finding traction on the packed dirt. We accelerate, leaving the cabin and the snarling beasts behind.

I press my face against Karl's back. I can feel his heartbeat through his shirt. I can feel his ribs rising and falling. The smell of exhaust fumes mixes with the ozone and the damp spring air. We are alive. We are moving.

I look up at the sky. The storm has passed, but the world is not the same. The clouds have parted, revealing a sky that is fractured. Massive, geometric plates of light and dark intersect above us, like a shattered mirror reflecting a broken sun.

The road ended miles ago, but the glass sky opened up, and we drove straight into the fracture.