The Sunken City Trilogy

by Phil Williams

  “Fucking right,” Pax said. “You need to clear this place out. Yesterday.”

  Before Sam could ask why, another high-pitched sound joined the alarm. A nasty, wheezing sound, growing in volume with each gasp. Sam had heard it once before, one of the few times she’d been in real trouble in the tunnels of the Sunken City, when Casaria had defended her from a scaled monster. It was his laughter. The base, uncontrolled laughter of a lunatic.

  Pax followed her gaze to him. He was propped against the door, legs bent under him, face split in a savagely wide grin as he touched the lattice of cuts Sam’s blow had left. Thick blood streamed from his brow.

  His laughter kicked up a notch as he tapped the blood, frantic, terrifying.

  “Damn,” Pax said. “You broke him.”

  “He’s always been broken,” Sam said.

  Another scream shot up from somewhere in the building, far below, more piercing and distinctly pained than the ones before. Then a crash. Something shattering. A tremendous noise of metal sheared in two. The sounds cut off Casaria’s laughter, which reduced to dribbles of sniggers as he started to push himself up. More screams followed. Sam met Pax’s eyes again. What had she done?

  “It’s not me!” Pax guessed her thoughts. “I came to help – so did he.” Pax ducked to Casaria’s side, getting under one of his arms. “Where’s Rufaizu?”

  What was happening? Should she fight them off? Sam spotted the drip, lying a few feet away. Almost within reach.

  “Don’t,” Pax said. “Please – everyone in this building’s in danger.” She lowered her voice to Casaria, positioning him upright like balancing cards. “You good?”

  “Every agent in a fifty-mile radius will be here in minutes,” Sam said. “You can’t –”

  “They’re already too late,” Pax said. “Please, give me Rufaizu. We can’t leave him here.”

  “I’ll get help –”

  “There’s no time!” Pax yelled.

  There was another crash, many storeys below, and another scream, and Pax stared imploringly, pleadingly, into Sam’s eyes. Whatever they’d said about her, Pax had put herself in the path of this catastrophe to help.

  “In there.” Sam pointed at the door she’d fractured with Casaria’s weight. As she approached it, she looked towards the lifts. Casaria was in the way, painted in blood, but he slumped, with Pax, towards the door.

  Someone shrieked below, but was cut suddenly short.

  The corridor to the lifts suddenly seemed hopelessly long, and the thought of getting out of this building alone desperately frightening. What was happening – half an hour ago everything had been normal – Casaria had walked back in and –

  “Can you open it?” Pax shouted. Sam started and her body made the decision for her. She bolted forwards to key in the code to Rufaizu’s room.

  Pax tried to disengage her brain as she raced to unplug Rufaizu. The machines around the room beeped violently, adding spice to the blaring fire alarm. He was okay, judging from the colour of his skin and the fact that he was able to open his eyes in terror, but his pupils looked like tar pits. His hands lifted and flopped back down uselessly.

  “You fuckers drugged him to hell,” Pax snarled.

  “No,” Ward insisted. “I cut it off – he should be clean –”

  Pax shot her a look to shut up. Rufaizu had a bandage around his neck and wore a hospital gown, bare at the back, lanky skin and bone on show with no other marks. He tried to sit up, but couldn’t carry his own weight, so Pax struggled to help.

  “You missed a tube,” Casaria said, somewhat recovered but just watching.

  “Make yourself fucking useful!” Pax commanded. Casaria moved to the other side of the bed to push Rufaizu her way. She turned to Ward. “Got a wheelchair? Anything?”

  “There isn’t one here?” Casaria asked, and Pax gave him a savage look.

  “Think I missed it behind all the room’s emptiness?”

  “The other room,” Ward said, and rushed away.

  Pax and Casaria manoeuvred Rufaizu over the side of the bed, as his head lolled like a rag doll’s. His hazel eyes locked on Pax. “Lookit who’s here – barfly, pretty barfly –”

  Pax huffed irritation. Was this her life now? Tolerating the semi-conscious hindrances of variously incapacitated men? She patted Rufaizu’s cheek, saying, “How far gone are you? You in there?”

  Rufaizu didn’t answer, snapping his head aside like a child refusing peas.

  “Here, here!” Ward reappeared, a wheelchair squeaking in front of her, frame mottled with dark rust.

  “Couldn’t find anything older?”

  The floor shook and the lights blinked off. The fire alarm missed a beat but continued screaming as dull white emergency lights flicked on. The brief respite was torn by a massive piece of furniture breaking below, bits slamming into different parts of a room. Was it directly beneath them? One floor down?

  “What is it?” Ward asked, terrified.

  “I don’t know,” Pax lied, returning to Rufaizu. She pulled him off the bed as he playfully resisted, too doped up to be worried. “Quit it!” Vaguely aware she was doing all this herself, Pax looked at Casaria, watching her questioningly. Ward looked similarly uncertain.

  “What?” Pax shouted. “Think we should stay here?”

  “You know what it is,” Casaria said. “You came in because you know.”

  “I came up here because you were taking so –”

  “Stop bullshitting me!” Casaria shouted, veins popping up under his bloody flesh. Ward backed off fearfully, but Pax just felt fucking annoyed. She stood up straight.

  “Turnbold, that’s what they called it,” Pax told him, bitterly, and Casaria spun away, cursing. “You didn’t guess it was serious?”

  “Take the boy, go,” Casaria instructed. Already halfway out the room.

  “Where are you going?”

  He pointed up the hall. “Obviously there’s no one else in this damn building who can deal with something like that. I’m going to get something that can stop it.”

  He marched out of the room and Pax swore, moving behind Rufaizu and shoving the wheelchair. The wheels caught; the guy was heavier than he looked, moving about, giggling.

  “Help me, already!” Pax shouted at Ward.

  Spurred into action, Ward joined her and together they shoved the rusty wheelchair into the hall. Pax faltered in the corridor, noticing the sensation tugging at her chest. Her eyes were drawn to a nondescript door at the end of the corridor. It looked small, not even another office entrance – a cupboard – why was this buzzing energy drawing her there? Didn’t she have enough to worry about?

  A groan from Rufaizu drew her attention back to the chair. She shook herself out of it, leaning heavily on the handles and racing the other way, towards the lifts. Ward scrambled after her. A door was open on the right, ahead, with sounds of equipment being tossed about coming from inside. As she got closer Pax saw shards of wood across the floor, the door busted in. Inside, the room was filled with metal caging. Casaria was somewhere in the middle, searching for a weapon. Pax slowed down and shouted, “The Dispenser, don’t forget –”

  The lift pinged, drawing her attention back to escaping. She watched the doors open. An older man, square-shouldered, silver-haired, a stern look on his face. At his elbow was a younger suited man, eyes a little too far apart. Both as surprised as her.

  “What the hell is going on?” The older man regained his senses first. “Ward?”

  “Sir, it’s not what it looks like –” Ward started. How would she explain this? She didn’t get a chance, as the corridor shook again. They all stumbled, the men cursing as they banged into the walls. Rufaizu laughed.

  “Oh, it’s coming! Judgement coming up, them that’ve been bad, it’s coming!”

  “Not a reason to be cheerful,” Pax hissed, steadying herself and slamming her weight into the chair. It moved with a piercing squeak, Rufaizu whooping, and the two men staggered out of the way rather
than get hit. Speeding between them, Pax couldn’t slow down entering the lift, the chair and Rufaizu crashing into the far wall. The doors rolled closed on her leg, sticking out, and rolled open again.

  “Sir?” Casaria’s voice bellowed beyond it all. “Evacuate! I’ll handle this!”

  “You’re all going to –” the older guy roared.

  The floor exploded.

  8

  In her brief forays into the Sunken City, Sam had been exposed to a number of its creatures. She’d seen a sickle, at a distance, and the shadow of a passing effundo porcum. She’d heard glogockles and seen the destructive path left by a migrating tuckle. They all exuded enough horror that she’d never needed to see more. Once she’d negotiated her way into Greek Street, they became names and numbers collated in spreadsheets and bar charts. Recent turnbold numbers were below the optimum level for balance in the Sunken City ecosystem; a good ratio of turnbolds reduced excessive sickle numbers. The problem was too many crusads, spider-like creatures which fed venom into the food chain, deadly to turnbolds. The solution was to increase the coverage of wading moss in the northeast quadrant, stimulating the spread of carnivorous buglooms which would, in turn, prey on crusads.

  It was all a game of numbers.

  In late February Sam had drawn up a plan to redress this balance.

  Seeing it in the flesh, she was thankful that particular plan had been rejected.

  The turnbold was a nightmare incarnate: its enormous turtle-like shell slowly rotated above a tangle of thick tentacles, various dark holes in its carapace hinting at the horror of multiple heads within.

  Sam backed down the corridor. The hall was thick with debris, lights flickering. Casaria stood nearby, making noises like he was testing his voice or ears. On the other side of the creature, Mathers was on a knee, trying to gather his senses. The agent with him, Devlin, was coughing on dust. Pax punched at a lift button but the doors weren’t closing.

  The turnbold screeched, a birdlike call that cut to the bone. It came as a series of sounds from different parts of its shell. It rotated out of the mess of the shredded floor, a domed shape the size of a large table. Tentacles rolled up from its base, feeling for purchase. As it pulled itself up, and the dust started to clear, its faces became clearer.

  A couple of tentacles reared up and single, jagged claws stretched out of their ends, hooking into the walls. It pulled itself further out of the hole and another head crept out from one of the shell’s openings. The face stood on a stalk-like neck, wrapped in leathery green skin. In all other ways, it had the appearance of a human skull, its circular eyes shining like copper as the strobing hall light caught them. No pupils, no irises, but clearly looking Sam’s way. Its crooked jaw dropped open and a two-foot lizard tongue flicked out, spraying blood across the floor. It let out another avian cry.

  Sam ran.

  Another flurry of cries and a sudden burst of action answered her panic. Concrete and floorboards snapped behind her, the heavy thump saying the turnbold was clear of its opening and advancing. More thumps, the sound of claws tearing through the walls. Someone shouted. A heavy thwack as it passed Casaria – had to have hit him, knocked him down. But it hadn’t slowed. It was gaining on her.

  Sam aimed for the end of the corridor. She couldn’t turn, no time to open any of the doors. All she had was a square window to aim for. And what? Jump? It was getting faster – moving faster than her – she wasn’t even going to make the window –

  The monster’s climb must have severed the power lines, because the lift wasn’t responding. Pax leant out, looking one way then another. The arrow of a fire exit sign pointed past the monster. There had to be stairs somewhere.

  The creature – Lightgate’s turnbold, it had to be – tore free of the hole it had created. Like a goddamned turtle-mole. It was following Ward’s screams down the hall. The suit by the lift composed himself to stand with a pistol in one hand, but that was it.

  “Fucking do something!” Pax yelled, but he only turned to her dumbly.

  Casaria hit the wall as the monster thundered past.

  Pax leapt out of the lift and tore the pistol from the suit’s hand, lifted it and pulled the trigger. It bucked in her hand with a terrific bang and she almost let go. The ceiling erupted halfway down the hall. That snapped the agent out of his trance; he gave her such a look that she held up a defensive hand and offered the gun back. By the time he’d turned, the turnbold was coming back their way. Two skeletal heads poked out of its shell, bouncing on stalk-like necks, bony jaws chattering hungrily together. The agent spread his legs and raised the gun. The older suit pressed himself against the wall as the monster arrived.

  The gun went off and some fleshy mass exploded with dark liquid. The monster screeched but didn’t slow down. Pax rolled towards the lift as she was hit by a spray of hot blood. The agent smashed into the wall above her and flopped to the floor a metre away. His lower half flapped into the wall on the other side. A tentacle shot over Pax’s head, claws ripping through the wall. The lift panel came off with sparks.

  Pax made it to her hands and knees, trying to crawl out of the way as the turnbold pulled itself along the corridor, rising on its tentacles, jaws gnashing from multiple heads.

  “Casaria!” the older suit yelled, reprimanding on instinct. “Shoot it!”

  The mass of tentacles writhed like worms as the shell spun in his direction, jamming against the wall in the tight space. The man’s scream was cut off by a wet thunk, reduced to a gargle. Pax saw the guy’s lower legs, between the tentacles, raised off the floor, kicking for a second, before they stopped. Blood oozed down the wall behind him. The turnbold lowered itself, the shell obscuring the view but not the sound, as he gargled more desperately, and multiple jaws started chewing.

  Pax heard her own loud breath as she tried to crawl away. Her hands were shaking. Rufaizu shouted from the lift, voice echoing in the tinny confines, “Want trouble turny-bold? Think I’m afeared from you?”

  He got its attention, the tentacles slapping against the floor again, the shell turning. Pax dived out of the way as it lunged for the lift opening. Its broad shell caught in the metal doorframe and it released a series of frustrated screeches. Its tentacles flapped about as it blindly tried to force its way in. The walls creaked under its immense weight, the lift’s frame twisting noisily. Rufaizu laughed. “Best you got? Come at me!”

  The sound of snapping jaws bounced out of the lift.

  Pax jumped to her feet, and something snapped her way. The shell had openings all the way around it, and another stalk head launched at her. Ducking the bite, she jumped to get past the monster. She slipped on the MEE agent’s blood, bringing her down to a knee, just in time to avoid a claw that punched through the wall at head-height. Pax dived out of the way and ran in a crouch, clear of the monster, back to the hole it had risen from. It gnashed and shrieked, and she half-turned to see it was stuck in the lift entrance, heads popping in and out of its shell and tentacles lashing in all directions. The older suit was mangled like roadkill on the floor. Rufaizu drew its attention again: “Ugly sinner, that all you got?”

  Utterly mad – she’d pinned her hopes on him?

  But at least the ferocious attack had woken him up.

  Pax stumbled towards Casaria. He was taking deep breaths, leaning against the wall. Impossible to see if he’d been seriously injured or just winded.

  “Nu...nu...” Casaria wheezed, vaguely pointing at a collection of weapons at his feet. A stubby gun that looked like a toilet roll with a handle. A conventional-looking pistol. A couple of small cylinders that had to be grenades.

  Pax looked from the weapons up the corridor. A fire exit light stood out over a door at the end of the hall. Sam Ward was there, eyes staring their way. For a moment Pax thought she was dead, pressed horrified against the window. But the woman’s head moved, shaking in disbelief.

  “Get out, all of you go!” Rufaizu yelled. “I can’t hold it much longer!”

&nb
sp; Hell, he wasn’t a simple lunatic, he was actually trying to distract it.

  “Pneumatic charge!” Casaria forced it out, with all his breath, kicking the stubby weapon. Pax snatched it up. Two buttons on the gun, a lever at the side, a basic trigger. She aimed down the corridor at the writhing monstrous mass and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened, and the tentacles kept snatching at the lift.

  Casaria grunted, halfway up the wall and reaching a hand her way. She shoved the weapon at him and he pumped the lever, pressed one of the buttons. It made a hissing noise. But he stopped there, slumping, with barely the energy to breathe.

  The lift creaked, the wall splitting around it as the turnbold pressed further inside. Rufaizu couldn’t hide the fear in his voice now. “Yeah – ugly – try it – that your best?”

  Pax ripped the gun off Casaria and aimed again. She braced herself and fired. The tube erupted like a bursting air canister, and a projectile shot down the hall with a plume of gas. It cracked through the left edge of the turnbold’s shell, multiple shrieks coming from the monster. The thing slumped slightly, many of its tentacles going limp, then its heads drew in with an echo of pained breaths.

  “Move your arse, Rufaizu!” Pax screamed as the monster reared up.

  “Go, go,” Casaria gasped, a hand feebly pushing Pax’s shoulder. There was a flurry of movement as Rufaizu scrambled through the tentacles under the turnbold, the creature twitching at its extremities. Casaria gathered his pistol and the grenades off the floor, finally getting his breath back. He gave Pax a harder shove. “It’s recovering.”

  Pax stumbled a few steps, hitting the edge of the hole the turnbold had created. Below, she saw the devastated remains of desks amid blood and lumps of flesh. There was another hole in the floor below. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

  “Go!” Casaria croaked, as he clawed at a grenade. With Rufaizu still back there.

  “No!” Pax yelled, and he caught her eyes before looking back the turnbold’s way. He shook his head, but lowered the grenade, then started moving ahead. Away from the creature, limping as fast as his stunned body would take him.