“How did you do that?”
“Oh no big deal, she said, just warping reality to my will.”
Warping, warping, the word triggered something, but I couldn't remember what.
Now that there was a break in combat, Gwen seemed to lose most of her functionality. She walked around the hall, muttering and brushing at her skin like she was covered in invisible insects.
I felt pity for her and rage for the one who had made her this way.
“Will we be safe in here?” I asked.
“We should be,” Code replied, “unless they can find another way in.”
“Eh, Code?” It was Rincewind. “There's something you should see.”
He stood next to the Round Table, where the inscribed pentagram was glowing bright red.
“The bastard, he thought of everything,” she said.
“What?”
“It's the pentagram, the demons can use it as a gateway.”
“Can we rub it off?”
“No time, but we can make sure they don't get a pleasant welcome.”
She shed more blood and used her magic to create bony spiked barricades on all sides of the table.
I caught her as she almost fell over from the blood loss.
“Don't worry about me,” she said, “I'll just need a blood transfusion after this is over.”
“Take it from him,” I said, pointing to the balcony where Matthews had stood moments before. “What happened to him, do you think the Glitch affected him in some way?”
“I don’t think so, he claimed it didn’t affect him at all.”
I felt I was missing something vitally important but I didn’t know what it was yet.
There was a low rumbling and sulpher-smelling blue smoke issued from the table, the portal was opening. Code and Rincewind took up positions around it while Gwen sat down to an invisible dinner with the body of Slaine.
“Get ready!” Code shouted.
The first red scaly hand was groping its way through the smoke when it hit me.
Like a switch being flipped, the room began to fill with demons, the first wave were impaled on Code's spike trap but the next simply crawled over the corpses of their comrades to reach us.
I shouted at Code: “Matthews was the only Knight not to be affected by the Glitch, why was that?”
She was fending off a cloud of flame-spewing skulls, “This isn't really the time!”
“I have a theory,” I said, “I'll be right back!”
“Tag, no!”
I tapped my temple twice and everything vanished.
15.
I still wasn't wearing pants and I rubbed my chilly legs together to warm up, cursing reality. I peeled the silver nubbin from my head and crawled out of the chair into the corridor. I found a vending machine and levering myself between the wall I managed to knock it over.
There were rumblings from inside and a pristine can of Dr. Pepper rolled out onto the carpet. Feeling like I’d just found a secret power up I gulped it down eagerly.
Though I was now safe, my friends were still in the machine with Matthew's demons. If I was right, Matthews still had a body, hence why the Glitch hadn’t affected him, and that meant I could kill him.
I stumbled through the corridors, on wobbly legs refilling with blood. Finally, I found what I was looking for, a map of the building’s fire escape routes, with my location pinpointed in red. The entire top floor was given over to one room labelled “The Warlock's Lair”.
~
Standing watch at the entrance to Matthew's room was an android security guard. He had long since powered down and there was a dusting of cobwebs on his Taser gun. Searching his pockets I found a key card which I used to gain entry.
Opening the door, I was assailed by a powerful odor that I can only call man-smell.
Matthews’s office was one part rich kid's bedroom, one part serial killer's basement. There were lovingly restored 20th Century arcade machines that spoke to the child in him and a harem of well-used female androids that spoke to the man he had become.
Matthews himself was sitting hunched over a computer monitor, too absorbed in his video game to notice me come in. This video game starred my friends as the victims and cast him in the role of the dungeon master.
Matthews was about a hundred years older than he had presented himself in Ember. He wore a blanket and resembled nothing less than a wrinkly prune inside a burrito. There was a replica great hammer hanging from the wall, made from hardened plastic resin. I took it down.
This, I knew, would be easy.
He was laughing to himself and about to order a big pink demon to disembowel Rincewind when I tapped him on the shoulder.
“Matthews?”
I brought the hammer down before he had a chance to look up. I didn't want to see his eyes. His skull broke apart like a fresh walnut and he flopped forward in the chair, his brains leaking onto the keyboard.
I must have cut a strange figure. The "no-pants killer.” Pushing him aside, I moved the mouse and called up the menu commands. There was one for a full retreat. I selected it and exited out of the game.
~
I logged back into the banquet hall. The walls dripped blood and a mountain of corpses lay over the now closed portal. Rincewind and Gwen were safe inside a bone cage. The extra bloodloss had been too much for her and she lay staring at the ceiling, taking in air in long jagged breaths.
I took her hand through the bars.
“Is she safe?” she asked me.
“Yes, she's right here,” I said. Gwen was staring into space, not processing what was happening. But she was still alive.
I had read somewhere that if you keep a person talking it can help them stay conscious so I tried.
“You never told me how you got your name,” I said.
But she was already dead.
***
In the next few months Rincewind and I cared for Gwen as best we could. It did not come easily to us. I thought about what Code would have wanted and that helped. Matthews had cut Gwen very deeply and had almost destroyed her. Several times I found her at the top of the battlements, staring longingly at the stones below.
I don't know what it was that made her cling to life but if you're not dying you're probably healing and so it was with her. Cleaning the castle, burying the bodies, lighting the fires. These things helped. One day there was nothing left to do but go for a walk in the forest.
Gwen was walking ahead when I noticed a butterfly had landed on her shoulder. One of its delicate wings was orange and the other green. It landed by her ear and from where I stood it seemed to be whispering to her. She smiled and I knew she would be alright.
~
I was not needed anymore. I had my own quest that I had neglected long enough. I didn't say goodbye to the others, that would have been too painful, just slipped quietly away.
My old body was a house of hunger and pain that wasn’t too happy to see me. Despite that, I felt a new sense of confidence. After all I had been to Hell and back and survived. What could possibly stand in my way now?
On my way out of the building I met Bethor, the skeletal dragon head.
“Hey buddy, how did the interview go, did you get the job?”
“Yeah, but I quit.”
“Sorry to hear that. We at E-Scape wish you every success in the future!”
PART 3: FREEDOM
"The Nephilim were on the earth in those days...when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown."
- Genesis 6:4
“As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.”
- Mark 16:5
Let Me Tell You How America Died…
The American military was good at responding to threats. Even ones that hadn’t happened yet. That's where the Department of Potential and Actual Danger (DPAD) came in. They figured out what was comin
g and how to stop it. They even had a contingency plan for the second coming of Christ.
DNA was a potential harbourer of future terror. Look at what happened to the Neanderthals. Rather than waiting for Nature to knock at their door humans opened it themselves, using their new toy of gene editing. In 100 labs all over the country, Homo Novus was born.
The Novus had an unforeseen ability. The power of suggestion. Any who heard their words felt compelled to obey. This so titillated top brass that they kept them alive for further study. They broke from captivity without a shot being fired.
The DPAD made a virus, designed to target Novus DNA. But evolution is a funny thing, and many people already had a bit of Novus lurking inside them. In 6 months 100 million people were gone. The Evolutionary War had begun.
The remaining Novus were bitter and scarred from the plague. Like their forefathers, they had a love for war. They were only 36 but they found it easy to recruit others to their cause. Their suggestions could stay in the mind for weeks before coming to bloody fruition. No one was safe.
The military unleashed every black book project they ever had. The zombies of Project Romero, the alien spores from Area 51, man-eating plants taken from the Soviets, all were enlisted to fight the mutant threat. They tore the country apart until only one mutant remained.
Jonah-36 was the most vicious of his race. For every one of his brothers and sisters who fell he took on their strength as he took on the mantle of vengeance. He carved highway long gashes in the country, the blood of the brave was his war paint.
Years Later, when the war was finally over and the last human scream had faded into memory, Jonah reflected on how easy it had all been. No one had been able to stand against him, no one except that brave boy from a robotics lab in Boston.
He hoped they would meet again.
1.
Tag was out of water. He had a headache that was giving birth to other smaller headaches. You can’t go for two days on one can of Dr. Pepper, it isn't medically sound.
Once again he found himself in an exurb development of the kind that crisscrossed America like varicose veins. The houses were pretty but closed off, like the faces of commuters on a late night train. The door of the last house on the left was open. He rushed inside, imagining taps over-flowing like waterfalls.
~
The house was unmarred by the passage of time. A small team of dog-like robots kept up appearances, hopping around and cleaning with feather duster attachments at the end of their legs.
Tag went into the kitchen to fix himself a glass of water. The tap turned but nothing came out.
He got a glass from one of the cupboards and pissed in it, drank it quick, throwing it past his tongue so he wouldn't taste it. No matter how much he tried to tell himself it was apple juice it still tasted warm and salty.
In the dining room there was a family sitting down to dinner. There was a Mother, a Father, and two small children. None of them paid the slightest bit of attention to Tag when he sat down beside them.
Dad poured everyone a glass of water. Tag tried to drink his but while the glass was real the water wasn't. It felt like pins and needles on his lips. When he tilted his glass just so the water broke down into a dot matrix of color.
Holograms, light projection with no real substance. Mom brought out a meatloaf that looked great but had no smell at all. It was the torment of Tantalus to see the happy family eat and drink.
He hadn't seen a soul since E-Scape and it was a relief even to be among these phantoms. Dad ruffled son's hair, Mom wiped daughter's face with a napkin. They gazed at each other with love and contentment. God, I want that, he thought, why can't I have that?
He felt homesick. He missed his old gulag, the Prison. He thought about Sophie and felt a knife in his chest. His Mother was dead, long dead, and no mission across the Wastes would bring her back. He put his head in his hands and cried.
~
He woke up, his neck feeling stiff. He had cried himself to sleep at the table. The family was gone and night had fallen outside the house. He groped his way upstairs in darkness to find a place to pass the night.
He took residence in one of the kid's beds. It was much too small but he didn't want to be an adult anymore anyway. It was a balmy night and after an hour of restless sleep the sheets were wrapped around him like a toga.
In his dreams he was back in the Prison. In a cell so small you had to wear it. There was no door, no window, just a tiny crack for the light to get through. He pressed his eye against it to see what he could see.
On the other side of the crack was everything; jazz bands, unicorns and waterfalls. All the other prisoners were there, sleeping in the tall grass by the river, their orange scrubs hung out to dry on the trees.
He found that if he concentrated he could shrink himself. He tried to make himself tiny enough to get through the gap and be with the other prisoners. He got all the way down to the size of a small child and then gave up in frustration.
Waking up his body ached with tension. He had made himself into a tight little ball. He relaxed and stretched out on the bed. His eyes adjusted to a faint silvery glow and he looked up to see if he could see the moon.
The holo-family were standing there at the foot of his bed. The glow came from the silver mirrors of their eyes. Terrified, he slid slowly out of the bed towards the door, clutching the sheet to his chest as a pathetic shield.
They watched him as he crept onto the landing. He for the stairs only to find the holo-family were already at the bottom waiting for him. The kids broke off from the parents and ran up the steps two by two. He ran into the bathroom and locked the door behind him.
He checked the toilet cistern and found a small quantity of water. It smelt like chemicals and he couldn’t bring himself to drink it. The only possible means of escape was a tiny window. It was just for letting air in, with a bar that stopped it opening all the way.
While he was judging whether or not he would fit the Mother and child holograms appeared in the bathroom. In an unnerving display they flickered back and forth between two different scenes; in one the kids were having a fun bathtime while Mother rubbed shampoo in their hair, in another the water turned to froth as a vacant-eyed Mom held them under until they stopped moving.
The animation finished and Mother and children stood before him, the kids naked and dead.
The Mother, who Tag guessed would be pleading insanity come trial, reached out and touched his shoulder.
He felt an intense burning, like the pins and needles from before, but a hundred times worse. He twisted away, feeling burnt clothes and flesh where her fingers had made contact. The kids fixed him with a malevolent stare.
He was . If he tried the window he'd get stuck half-way and the family would play roast the marshmallow with his ass. He felt fear but also some of the old defiance.
“You've been great hosts,” he said, “but I really should be leaving.”
They were a bad audience. He watched as the bathtub filled itself up with water. The Mother was using her electric touch to prod him closer to the tub while the kids guarded the door. The bubble bath looked warm and inviting, it was hard to believe it offered death.
His face inches from the water, the Mother's hand like a flaming brand on the back of his neck, he begged his brain to come up with a solution. Why was this house open to visitors and the others weren't? What were the family doing here unless to show off how good everything looked?
Show...that must be it.
“I'd like to make an offer,” he said, desperately hoping he was right.
The lights in the bathroom came on. The water vanished, along with the infanticidal Mom. In her place was a middle-aged woman in a red blazer, holding a clipboard.
“That's great,” she said smiling, the house is currently on the market for 12 Million.”
“Would you accept 11.9?”
“You have yourself a deal," she said, holding out her hand for me to shake.
“
That's okay,” he said, “I left my papers in the car, do you mind if I go out and get them?”
“Not at all, I'll be right here, you have 10 minutes to complete this transaction.”
“I only need five.”
He burst out of the bathroom and down the stairs like a kid on Christmas Day. He saw the Dad hologram was at the kitchen table doing his taxes, a pair of glasses slipping down his nose. When he saw Tag he gave a friendly wave.
2.
Tag walked and walked and walked, but everything just got further away. When he couldn't walk anymore he lay face down on the sidewalk like a piece of fruit that had fallen out of a shopping cart. Death, his travelling companion, spoke softly in his ear:
"Chris, would you like to see your Mom? I can take you to her."
"Fuck you," he said in a whisper and rolled over. If he was going to die in the middle of nowhere, he would like to see the stars. They shone brightly, pointing the way ahead, if only he had the strength to follow.
~
I woke in a soft bed, covers up to my neck. I felt like crying. Someone had cared enough to tuck me in. I didn't even care if they were cannibals. I was in a small wooden hut that looked handmade. There were leaves outside my window.
A pitcher of water and a glass stood on a bedside locker. I drank slowly so as not to make myself sick. There were two pieces of bread sitting on a plate. They were dry so I had to soften them in the water before I could eat.
I got up and checked myself in the mirror. I had grown a beard in my wanderings which they had trimmed for me. A set of clothes hung on the back of a chair. I put my sweat-stained underwear to one side and put them on. They were a bit loose but comfortable.
I heard the sound of voices outside. A woman and a child. I felt the stab of fear other people always gave me but there was something in their voices that told me it would be okay to go out and greet them.
Stepping outside, I saw it was a mother and son, wearing the same simple clothes as me. The mother was beautiful, somewhere in her 30s, with an angular face and a slightly embarrassed look. Her son must have taken after his father, he was round of face and had messy brown hair. They were facing the rising sun and doing some kind of exercises with their bottoms stuck up in the air.
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