by Norris Black
My eyes darted around the room again. Something had changed. It took me a moment before I realized what it was and, once I did, goosebumps erupted up and down my arms.
The heads of every limbless torso in the room had turned and were staring directly at me, mouths agape.
Then the screaming began.
Chapter 4
A wail erupted from the corpses' mouths. It began with only one, the corpulent one I had checked on when I first made my way across the room, but the others soon joined in, adding their voices to the din. Within moments the sound had risen to a nerve-rattling cacophony that overwhelmed the senses. I may have joined in with a distressing high-pitched and terrified screech of my own, but thankfully everyone was too distracted by the spidery things now scuttling across the gore-streaked floor towards us to notice.
Guns roared as the henchmen still clustered around the entrance opened fire. Beside me Dancer drew his absurdly large pistol in such a quick and fluid motion I wondered if he spent a lot of time practicing in front of a mirror. He fired right into the face of the creature closest to us. The fiend had a coldly beautiful face with striking blue eyes. Whoever this had been, she had been a looker, I thought, right before her head came apart, exploded like a ripe melon by Dancer's bullet.
His gun was only inches from my head when it went off and the roar from the shot slammed into me like a boot to the eardrum. Jerking my head away, I staggered a few steps to the side. The wailing, the panicked screams and the sporadic gunfire all vanished, replaced by a high-pitched whine.
A half dozen of the spider corpses surged towards us and I saw Dancer fire again, this time twisting his lips as he spoke a word, like he was spitting out something foul. The creatures closest to us went up like dry tinder struck by lightning. Orange flames burst from them, filling the air with a fierce heat. The stench of burning, rancid meat assaulted my nose and I swore to myself I would never eat bacon again. The fire didn't appear to have slowed the monsters down at all. Now, instead of corpse spiders clawing their way towards us, we had flaming corpse spiders clawing their way towards us.
"You! Are! Not! Helping!" I yelled at Dancer, gritting my teeth as I fumbled the revolver out of my jacket pocket. Clicking the hammer back I managed to snap off two quick shots. The first blew the arm off one of the creatures, causing the corpse spider to pinwheel away before knocking over a nearby table and becoming trapped beneath it, legs and hands clawing frantically at the concrete floor in a bid to escape.
The second shot had been aimed at the torso of a huge man balanced comically on a half-dozen spindly limbs. His massive chest and no discernible neck made it likely he had been one of the club's bouncers. The shot missed the mark and my bullet went wide.
Before I could fire again the horror was on me, one of its arms flicked out and grabbed my ankle, tearing me off my feet. With frantic desperation I kicked at it with my free foot and had the satisfaction of hearing its teeth shatter and clatter across the floor like thrown dice. Still it held on, its awful grip crushing my ankle as it dragged me closer.
Switching tactics, I brought the butt of my gun down hard on the hand gripping me. My hearing had mostly returned by then and the fingers broke with a sound like snapping twigs. Kicking myself free I fired, point-blank, right into the screaming mouth, blowing out the monster's brain stem in a flash of gun smoke and red mist. I kept firing until the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. Then I pulled the trigger three more times in case I had somehow missed a bullet.
All chambers were indeed empty, but it turns out any bonus bullets were unneeded as the stack of stitched-together body parts was no longer menacing me and instead laying still, like proper dead bodies should do. Just to be sure I gave it an extra kick. Once certain it wasn't going to leap back to life, I gathered my wits, along with my fraying courage, and assessed the situation. The henchmen near the door were much fewer now and while I watched another was pulled from his feet and torn limb from limb by the howling, grotesque mob.
A thundering crack to my left brought my attention around. Dancer moved through the raging inferno the bar had become like some avatar of murder, deftly sidestepping corpses as they lunged at him before blowing their brains out from close range. He made sure every shot was a headshot. I couldn't tell if that was because of its apparent effectiveness in putting these things down or if he, as a general rule, enjoyed shooting things in the head. He seemed like that kind of guy. Either way, you couldn't argue with the results.
One of the corpses scrambled in too close for a clean shot and the lanky gunwych—without missing a beat—spun the pistol in his hand and brought the butt of it down hard, caving in the creature's skull, before twirling it back and shooting a second one as it closed in. The painful lump on the back of my head throbbed in mute sympathy.
I snapped open the cylinder of my revolver to reload. As I fed in the first bullet with shaking hands something slammed into my back and bore me to the ground. Flailing, I managed to twist around as clawed hands ripped at my clothes. One of the creatures had dropped down from an overhead beam where it must have been lying in wait. My gun had clattered away when we hit the ground, and it was all I would do keep the monstrosity from tearing my throat out.
So, this was it. This was how it was going to end, choked to death on a blood-drenched nightclub floor by an abomination stitched together from catgut and necrotic flesh and animated by some sort of evil magic. Out of the ways I figured I might make my final exit from this shithole of a world, this surprisingly hadn't made the list.
Time froze.
I don't mean metaphorically, like it 'felt' like time stood still. I mean it literally stopped. One moment I was fighting for my life as screams and gunshots and the crackling of fire surrounded me, and then it all stilled. The world went silent, unmoving. From the corner of my eye I saw Dancer, frozen mid-swirl as he moved around a burning corpse that was missing its head. The flames, which moments before had been rampaging through the room like a hungry, feral beast, were now still as statues, edges looking so sharp if you brushed up against one, you'd come away bloody. One of the creatures was frozen mid-fall a few feet over the unsuspecting Dancer’s head. There must have been more than one of those spidery buggers up in the rafters.
Out of the quiet came the click-clack of boot heels on hard concrete. They were faint at first, from a distance, but grew louder with every stride. Each step rang out with absolute clarity in the otherwise pin-drop silence as they descended the stairs outside the club. The steps paused for a moment before the telltale protest of dry hinges announced the opening of the club's front door. Despite being pinned to the floor by a time-frozen nightmare I had a decent view of the entrance way, but all the smoke hanging suspended in the air like ashy clouds prevented me from making out much of our mysterious visitor.
Click, clack. The steps again, this time coming toward me. An odd thing happened then, as if all this wasn't odd enough. With every footstep the smoke that had been hanging unmoving like everything else, wrapped itself around the advancing figure in a concealing shroud. With each step the blood and bony bits littering the ground flowed out of its path. The shattered teeth I had kicked free of a frothing mouth a moment ago clattered across the floor a second time, tumbling out of the way moments before a steel-shod boot heel would've crushed them into powder. The smoke flowing around the figure was thick now, impenetrable. Still, I could feel its eyes upon me.
"Why, there you are Gideon. What are you doing under that... thing?" The voice might as well have been made of the same smoke whirling inches from my face. The sound of it was weightless, without form or defining feature, impossible to tell if the voice belonged to someone old or young, man or woman. Even with that ambiguity, every word was spoken clearly.
On any other day I would have replied with something witty—and most definitely with a hefty peppering of profanity—but I presently had the brown-spotted and wrinkled hand of a probable life-long, now-dead, alcoholic fastened around my throat. Whil
e I had enough air to breathe, there was no way I was going to be able to force the sharp edges of words past that literal death-grip. There was movement within the smoke as the visitor appeared to survey the room.
"He certainly went to a lot of trouble with this snare," it said. "So much power used. I'm almost tempted to let it play out, to see if you're made of 'the right stuff', as they say. But you do seem to have gotten yourself into a bit of a bind, and I'm not ready to give up on you quite so soon."
It reached out, gently touching the corpse spider pinning me to the ground with a single outstretched finger. With a soft sound it turned to ash that hung in the air for a moment before being sucked into the swirling vortex of smoke and cinders leaning over me.
As the pressure vanished, I drew in a ragged breath through my abused throat and immediately broke into a coughing fit before I found my voice.
"Hey, if you have the time, and you appear to have all of it for some reason, would you mind, you know, fingering the rest of these fuckers," I said, jabbing my finger like a dagger in the general direction of the remaining creatures where they were frozen in a macabre ballet of brutality. "Except maybe for that one," I said, gesturing at the one above Dancer's head. "Fuck that guy."
"Oh no, where's the fun in that," came the amused reply. Without further word it straightened and made its way towards the exit. I tried to stand, but whatever mojo was allowing me to speak and wave my arms about hadn't invited my legs to the party. So instead, I waved my arms about. It didn't accomplish anything but beggars and choosers and all that.
"Look, asshole, you can't just leave me here like this."
It opened the door and paused. "We're all depending on you Gideon. Try not to let us down, okay?"
And then it was gone.
The door clicked shut and all hell broke loose for a second time.
Chapter 5
Time snapped back into full motion, the effect so abrupt and jarring it would've floored me if I hadn't already been splayed out on my back.
The smoke wreathing my mysterious visitor had flowed back into the room and returned to its original position as if nothing had happened. Near me, I heard a loud impact followed by a grunt and the clatter of something heavy bouncing along the floor. The falling corpse spider must've finished its descent and taken poor Dancer down under its weight. Couldn't have happened to a nicer sociopath.
Captain Smokey's exit had left me a clear path to the door, but one that was shrinking rapidly as the remaining spiders pulled themselves along by the tips of their fingers and the heels of their feet, to fill the gap. Spotting my revolver nearby I grabbed it and scrambled to my feet to make a run for the door. For just a moment, it felt as if the gun twisted in my hand causing me to almost drop it. Grabbing it more firmly, I jammed it into my pocket. There was no time to dwell on the fleeting sensation as clawed hands grasped at my ankles and bloodied feet flailed at my shins. The wet slapping sound they made on the blood-slick floor was almost as dreadful as the screaming.
With a few hops, some skips, and a fair amount of kicking I made it to the door. Smoke billowed out around me as I stumbled up the steps, coughing. It was almost as if the smoke was in as much of a rush to escape the nightmare scene unfolding within the Underground's walls as I was. The wicked keening of the macabre constructs still resonated through the club's thick door and up the stairwell, but now it was joined by a different type of wailing. A Seraph siren was sounding, and it was approaching at an uncomfortable rate of speed. Sticking around until they showed up was not conducive to what little good health I was managing to hold onto. None of the spiders had followed me out into the light, so I had that to be thankful for at least.
I struck off down an alleyway, moving away from the approaching alarm as fast as I could. So far, the day had been one unpleasant encounter after another, and the one thing I needed, more than anything, was information before it went even more pear shaped.
On one hand, I'm not sure how it could get any worse than it had been so far, and on the other I knew from experience things could always get worse. I was in no hurry to see what worse looked like here.
I briefly considered going back to Rowe but as a rule I don’t trust people who abduct me at gunpoint. Not to mention he knew more than he was letting on and I couldn’t escape the feeling I had just been used as a big juicy worm on a hook. No, better to avoid that man and whatever shenanigans he’s got going on. I also still didn’t like his face.
Most of my old contacts were either dead or would be happy to make me dead. Hey, I'm a strong personality, deal with it. There was one person I might be able to call on for aid. I'm sure she'd forgiven me by now. I hoped.
It took me better part of an hour to make my way to the apartment complex known as Five Points Plaza. I stayed to back alleys as much as possible to avoid the possibility of running into any Seraph who were for sure converging on the area. On my best days I'm a bit of a suspicious-looking character. Being covered in blood, soot and shit didn't lessen that any. No, I'm not going to expand on that last one. I dare you to go through what I just did and come out the other end with clean underwear intact.
The plaza was a cluster of rundown tenements on the eastern edge of the Battery. An overgrown square ringed by the five identical, slender, and cylindrical towers which gave the place its name. Visible were the remnants of walkways once connecting the buildings to one another, long since broken and fallen. Like many parts of the city that fetched up against The Battery it had changed remarkably in the last fifty years. The apartments were once a launchpad for young professionals striking out on fresh and hopeful paths. But of course, that was before the world had changed, before Godfall. Now they stood out as stark reminders of hope turned to dust. Each time I saw them I couldn't help but be reminded of skeletal fingers rearing skyward and tearing at the underbelly of the heavens.
Mara had set up shop on the top floor of the middle tower. She said she picked that one because it was like giving a big fat finger to the whole city all at once.
I've always admired her style.
The door at the base of the tower had disappeared long since and stepping inside the dusty foyer I was greeted by a set of old elevator doors, now covered with a hefty coat of grime and graffiti. From experience, I knew some juice still sparked in the wiring that ran through the building like worms in rotten wood. Like many buildings in the city, the existing electrical had been tied into the Battery through some arcane means beyond my understanding. Which meant the elevators were still technically functional, but these towers hadn't been maintained in decades. Any attempt at ascent by elevator had a good chance of resulting in an unreasonably quick descent, pancaking any occupants of said elevator into the ground in the process. So, despite groans of protest from both my knees, I took the stairs.
By the time I got to the third landing I had been thoroughly reacquainted with how much of a bitch gravity was. By the sixth floor I had exhausted every curse I knew and had started trying out freshly invented ones. By the ninth, I had given up on even that and concentrated on physically dragging myself up each and every tortuous step. Reaching the top floor, lucky number thirteen, I stumbled out of the stairwell gasping for breath as my vision blacked out from the strain.
It wasn't until the thundering of my heart had returned to a more normal, if still slightly erratic, pace that I found my sight hadn't left me after all. Despite it being past noon outside, the interior of the top floor was pitch black.
Panic gripped me as I wondered if my recent exertions had triggered some sort of medical event leaving me blind. That fear was put to rest as I realized I could indeed see something. Of course, a whole new fear took its place as that 'something' was a pair of lambent yellow eyes the size of small dinner plates. They glowered out of the darkness in front of me and the musky scent of some wild beast filled the air. Those eyes pinned me to the spot with hostile malevolence and there was a growl so deep I felt it as much as heard it. I immediately reevaluated my fondness
for stairs. Suddenly they were the most wonderful invention in the world, and I should go back to enjoying their marvels right away, especially the part where I go back down them very quickly.
"Garm," A woman's warm voice called from the darkness. The growling ceased, cut off by a brief whine and the eyes disappeared. The air moved as something distressingly massive glided away from me.
I squinted my eyes closed as sudden light flooded the hallway, my ever-present headache sending a spike of pain through my head.
"Gideon." The voice contained none of the warmth it had when it had called off the guardian beast. You could almost see the frost forming in the air as the word traveled from her lips to my ears. The light spilled from an open door at the end of the hall, about ten feet from the stairwell entrance, and in that doorway stood the silhouette of Mara Valentine.
Despite the fact she stood barely over five feet in height she was an imposing presence. It was more in how she held herself than any physical stature. She radiated an absolute authority that couldn't be counterfeited. One look and it was obvious she could handle anything the world dared to throw at her. She kept her night-black hair gathered up into a single tight braid running down the length of her back, and she wore an unadorned colorless dress from neck to ankles covering both arms including the backs of her hands. Expressive eyes, a deep amber in hue, assessed me coolly from a dark, oval face. It was difficult to put an age to Mara, her skin was smooth and unblemished, but her eyes held a wisdom that belied her youthful appearance. She had looked the same for as long as I'd known her.
"Hi Mara," I said, somewhat sheepishly, as I leveraged my ass off the floor and walked over to greet her. "Who's your friend?" There hadn't been any giant beasts slinking around the last time I was here, and that's the sort of thing one is likely to remember.
"I could ask you the same," she said, glancing at my coat pocket for a moment before meeting my eyes again and lifting one impeccably groomed eyebrow. "Garm keeps the riff-raff away and lets me focus on my work. He's paying off a debt. Some people still do that sort of thing you know," she said, words again dripping with ice.
