by Norris Black
Dancer drew his revolver and checked to make sure it was fully loaded before slamming it back into its holster and adjusting his belt. His face looked ready for war. In that brief moment, I had seen his new gun also had sigils inscribed in the silvery metal, though not as many and not as intricate as the ones on Parakas.
"Gideon! I know you're up there! I can smell your fear! It smells so sweet!" Ralph seemed to be enjoying the game for now, but that would change soon enough.
Rowe placed a hand on the doorknob, but before he could turn it, Dagda stepped forward and grabbed his arm.
"You don't need to do this," she said. "Come with us."
Rowe gave her a sad smile. "Ah Dagda, you've always been too good for the Seraph, you know that? But you're wrong, I do need to do this. I'm the one who let this thing loose into the world. If I can't stop it, I at least need to give the chance to someone who can."
"Dagda, we need to go," I said, placing one foot on the second step. Todd grabbed a flashlight and started down.
Dagda let go of Rowe's arm. "I will make sure my father knows of your sacrifice here."
Rowe just shook his head. "It won't matter, he will never forgive my betrayal. No one holds a grudge like the mighty Apoch. Know this, you're better than either of us, and the city needs better right now."
"Wait!" I called as Rowe started to turn the doorknob again. I rushed over to him.
"Are you trying to get yourself killed? That creature out there is not going to hold off forever," he said with obvious irritation.
I pulled the grenade out of my pocket and handed it to him. "You don’t want to be taken alive by those things."
He nodded his appreciation. "There seems to be more to you than it would appear at first glance, Mr Brown. Then again, I suppose there'd almost have to be."
I don't think that comment was strictly necessary, but I wasn't about to begrudge a man his dying snark. With no further interruptions Rowe opened the door and stepped onto the landing outside, Dancer following close behind.
"Murder Rowe and his pet dog," I heard Ralph say as Dagda and I started down the steps. "Why don't you run back inside and fetch Gideon for me? I promise I'll make your deaths quick. Not painless though. No, never that." It giggled.
Todd was waiting for us on a landing a dozen steps down. He reached up and pulled a lever mounted shoulder height in the concrete wall of the stairwell. The light from the office above slowly disappeared as the cabinet swung shut.
Todd led the way down, the metal steps changing to smooth concrete and then again to rough stone before finally ending at a tunnel which appeared to have been bored through solid stone. The passage showed signs of great age. At regular intervals worn-eaten beams braced a roof that at the highest was only a foot above my head. Rowe must've tied his quick getaway into some existing structure below the warehouse. A muffled thump shook the air and dirt rained down on us. I was gripped with a momentary panic as I half expected the entire tunnel to collapse and bury us. The rumbling subsided but the worry didn't.
"Looks like the grenade came in handy," I said.
I caught sight of Dagda's pale face as Todd shone the flashlight around, looking for something. Tears had left twin streaks in the dust covering her cheeks. "Are you okay?" I said quietly.
"I don't want to talk about it." Her expression was grim, and I didn’t press the issue.
Todd found what he was looking for, a small, locked chest hidden under a dirt-covered tarp. He popped it open to reveal a small cache of rations and a few more flashlights. He handed both Dagda and I each a flashlight before reaching into the bottom of the chest and pulling out a wide-bladed and curved machete. In the dim yellow light thrown by the flashlights the muscled bodyguard with his fur vest, matted hair and now evil-looking blade looked positively barbaric. I put one hand on the Boxer's grip where it rested in its holster. The giant mute might be on our side, but I wasn't ready to trust him yet.
"This way," said Todd in a surprisingly high-pitched voice before moving off down one of the tunnels, his light leading the way.
Okay, so he wasn't a mute, he just didn't talk much apparently.
The tunnel we found ourselves in was tight and looked to have been chipped out of the bedrock with some sort of crude tools. On occasion, we would pass a side tunnel, but Todd ignored these and kept us moving straight ahead.
"Where are we?" Dagda looked nervously up at the ceiling just a foot or so above our heads. You could stretch your arms out to either side and touch both walls. I'm not one given to claustrophobia but the feeling of all that crushing weight right was making me sweat a little.
"There're tunnels and caves all throughout the bedrock of the city," said Todd. "We mapped out a few of them, set up escape routes when we first took over the ward. Most of these tunnels haven't seen a human step in decades, maybe centuries. "
"They've been completely abandoned?"
"That's not what I said." Todd stopped and motioned us to stay still as he tilted his head one way, then another, like a dog hearing something in a distant room. He turned the flashlight and shone it over our heads, back the way we had come. He stood like that for a long minute. He was listening with such intense concentration I couldn't bring myself to interrupt him to ask what he was looking for. Finally, he grunted and swung the light around and started forward, this time at a faster pace.
"What exactly was that about?" I did what I could to keep the rising panic out of my voice.
Todd kept his eyes forward as he responded. "Something's down here with us."
At that exact moment, as if realizing it had been discovered, something far back down the tunnel let out a piercing hunting cry.
Chapter 22
A thing to know about the Battery is it's always leaking twisted and warped monstrosities into the rest of the city. For all their many faults the Seraph did a good job keeping these incursions contained and, failing that, exterminating any escapees from the wreckage of the Last God's final resting place. Most times with brutal efficiency.
They weren't perfect though. Some Twists were smart enough and human looking enough to remain hidden inside the city's populace. Just another predator stalking the streets. Rumor had it the city's sewer system had its own horrors lurking in its dark depths. A few times a year the Seraph would carry out a massive purge of the city's underbelly and put to the sword all kinds of abominations against nature.
But down here? There was no telling what evils could be lurking in tunnels this deep beneath the city.
The cry came again, echoing in the tight confines of the tunnel. The only thing keeping us from breaking into a dead run was the unevenness of the floor. None of us wanted to risk twisting an ankle down here. Still, our pace quickened, as did my heart rate.
"Any chance we're going to come to a fucking exit any time soon?" I didn't even bother trying to mask the panic in my voice and judging from the expression on Todd's face as he looked over his shoulder at us, he was feeling it too. For her part Dagda remained stern though I hazard she looked even whiter than her usual pale complexion. I pulled the Boxer from its holster and held it ready as we moved. At my side Dagda had produced a shotgun from where she had been hiding it somewhere inside her longcoat. The gun had both its barrel and handle shortened to make it easier to conceal.
My surprise managed to cut through the overwhelming fear that driving me."Where the hells did that come from?"
"Red Market. It was a package deal with the coat and hat."
"I didn't think Seraph used guns."
"I'm not a Seraph right now."
Any retort was cut off unformed as another screaming cry hit our backs. This one much closer. Without slowing, I pointed my flashlight behind while fervently hoping I didn't trip over an outcropping of rock in the process. It was hard to see as the beam of light bounced around erratically with every one of my hurried steps, but I thought I detected movement far back in the darkness. Whatever it was, it was taking up the entirety of the tunnel. "Seriously
, I'll take an exit any time now."
"The tunnel opens up into a large cavern ahead, we'll be able to spread out," said Todd.
"I specifically asked for an exit. What you just described is not an exit."
"We passed our way out a while back."
"What!"
"It's a tight space to get out, a lot of slow climbing. We'd never make it before that thing back there caught us. Best we can do is find a good place to make a stand. Maybe we'll get lucky and it won't be that hard to kill." He did not sound hopeful.
We could hear our pursuer now. Above the sounds of our own pounding feet was a frenzied clattering noise, like hundreds of chitinous legs striking stone. I felt the heft of the Boxer in my hand and considered taking a shot over my shoulder, but this tunnel was old and had the weight of an entire city on it. Any loud noise carried with it the risk of a cave-in and I hadn't yet decided if being buried alive was an improvement over being eaten alive.
Without warning the tight confines of the tunnel opened up into an immense cavern. The ceiling had to be twenty feet high with stalactites hanging down like the jagged teeth of some enormous beast. The gallery was so vast its walls were lost in shadow. Directly ahead was a pool roughly fifteen feet in diameter, its surface still and unbroken. Something in the water was giving off a pale green glow, enough to see by, even without the flashlights. Todd clicked off his and instructed us to do the same.
"Spread out and find a place to hide," I said. "If we're lucky it'll miss us and keep on its merry way."
"And if we're not lucky?" asked Dagda.
"Then we hope it won't be that hard to kill." It didn't sound any more confident coming out of my mouth than out of Todd's. There was no time for further debate as the clattering noise reached a crescendo.
The cavern floor was littered with mammoth columns, many of them with bases as wide as large trees. I hurried to one of these and positioned myself behind it. As I did so, I passed the pond and noticed the green glow was coming from some sort of luminous lichen coating the rocks under the water.
Nearly lost in the gloom off to my right I could see Dagda had followed my example and also found a thick stone column to shelter behind. Casting about to locate the third member of our impromptu crew I was shocked to find Todd standing in full view, machete at his side. The pool of water was the only thing between him, and the dark mouth of the tunnel and the volume of the clattering was rising at an alarming rate.
"What are you doing?" I called.
His eyes never left the tunnel opening. "There's no running from this. Better to die fast. At least I can go down fighting."
There was no chance to reply as the creature burst into the cavern like a speeding locomotive. I could say the lichen's greenish glow gave it a nightmarish quality, but it was handling nightmarish all on its own without any need of additional assistance.
It was almost the size of a city bus, both in span and width. It seemed to grow larger as it exited the tunnel, almost like it had deflated itself somehow to navigate the tighter confines. Along its entire length on all sides was a thicket of limbs, flailing madly in the green light of the cavern. Though it was hard to see clearly, there appeared to be no uniformity to them. What looked like the legs of insects nested alongside appendages tipped in crablike claws, while others still were distinctly mammalian. Long tentacles whipped the air in a frenzy. The Twist had no discernible separation between body and head, its long tube-like body fronted by a gaping maw ringed in wedge-shaped teeth. It came out of the tunnel mouth in a tight spiral. It reminded me of a bullet exiting the barrel of a gun. A gun pointed directly at Todd.
I expected it to flounder when it reached the water. Or maybe change course at the last minute to go around it as those limbs—on top of fueling nightmares for the rest of my life—seemed to give it a lot of traction. I was wrong on both counts. It hit the pool without slowing, its momentum causing it to actually skip across the surface and slam right into where Todd was standing. Or at least where Todd had been standing. At the last possible moment, the scarred ganger sprung to the side and out of harm's way. As he did so, he turned in midair and struck at the creature with his machete, severing a limb that looked like it belonged on a giant praying mantis before hitting the ground in a roll. For a big man, he could move.
Without slowing the monster reached the far wall, then went up the wall and onto the ceiling where it weaved among the stalactites and columns, its many limbs gripping the rocky surface above. As it passed overhead of my hiding spot, I crouched even lower, doing my best to make myself as small as possible. Todd had regained his feet and was standing with machete at the ready once again.
The crawler leaped from the ceiling, arrowing towards the scarred ganger. Todd dove out of the way again, but this time he wasn't as successful. At the same time he swung the machete, the creature whipped out a tentacle as thick as a man's leg that caught the muscled bodyguard across the ribs, propelling him through the air. He hit the stony ground with a thump and rolled before slamming into a column base in a cloud of dust.
The horror didn't slow, running up the wall beside the tunnel entrance it had come from, before turning in a tight arc to hit the ground running, barreling towards Todd's motionless body. It was almost on him when Dagda stepped out of hiding and blasted both barrels of her shotgun into the side of the crawler's head. A fireball lit up the cavern and the monster screamed, veering wildly to the side and up the wall and onto the ceiling again. This time it moved away from us as it threaded its way among the rocky outcroppings on the gallery's uneven ceiling. It disappeared into the darkness beyond the pool's light, the clattering of hundreds of claws and hooves fading until there was nothing but silence.
The stench of burnt fur and flesh filled the air. Threading through it was a strong smell of garlic. Dagda's shotgun must've been loaded with white phosphorus rounds. Effective as it turns out, but I was glad we weren't in an enclosed room the first time she had cause to use the gun. Fire is an indiscriminate killer. I heard Dagda curse softly as she pulled the spent shells out of the shotgun to reload.
I hurried over to check on Todd. "He's alive," I said to Dagda as she joined me. "He's out cold, probably hit his head in the fall. Hard to say for sure though, he's a pretty lumpy guy to begin with, but one of these seems fresher than the others. What in the hells was that thing?" I strained my ears and thought I detected a faint clack-clack-clack sound as if from a distance but couldn't be sure if I was just imagining things.
"It's the Collector," said Dagda in a hushed voice. I think this was the first time I had ever heard fear in her voice.
I shook the unconscious ganger in an attempt to rouse him. Hopefully, he didn't have any spinal damage that I was making worse, but we didn't have time for caution. The crawler could be back at any moment. "Are you telling me you know this thing?"
Dagda was keeping an eye on the darkness in the direction it had disappeared, shotgun loaded and ready. "Not exactly. It's an urban myth. You know, like dragons in the sewers."
"Dragons in the... look, I don't know what the fuck that thing is, but a myth it is not."
"I never believed it was true. It was just one of those stories veterans tell rooks to freak them out."
Todd groaned but didn't appear to be ready to return to the land of the awake yet. I shook him a little harder. "What exactly do these stories say."
Dagda scrunched up her face as she dredged her memory. "It sleeps beneath the city and comes out at night to hunt. It doesn't feed like normal animals do, it absorbs its victims, making them become one with it. 'Collecting' them. The story usually involved some young rook who got separated from his squad and eaten by the Collector, doomed to spend eternity silently screaming beneath the city as part of its collection of souls."
"Fallen's balls, you Seraph are a cheery lot, aren't you? Bad news for us is, it appears the story has some basis in fact." I slapped Todd across the face and was rewarded only with more mumbling. "He's not waking up, and we need to
get out of here, and fast."
"We can't leave him." It was a simple statement and despite every instinct in my body screaming at me to run and hide, it was a statement I couldn't dispute. Todd might be a homicidal brute, but no one deserved to be left to something like the Collector.
"We can't carry him, he's too big for that, and we'd be vulnerable the entire time." I definitely could hear a clack-clack-clack this time, and it was getting louder. I pulled the flashlight out of my pocket and shone it around the room. An idea began to form. A ridiculous, crazy, suicidal idea. But desperate times and all that. "Here's what we're going to do," I said and outlined my idea to Dagda. A large part of me was hoping she'd talk me out of it and present a much better plan, but to my dismay she did not, simply nodding her understanding.
The clack-clack-clack was thunderous by the time the Collector came back into view, weaving among the dripping stone stalactites dotting the cavern's roof. Even with no apparent eyes it zipped unerringly toward Todd's unconscious form. Dagda waited until it was abreast of her before stepping out from her hiding spot and unloading both barrels of the shotgun at point-blank range. As soon as she appeared however, the Collector spun in place, catching the fire-blast on a thick cluster of chitinous limbs on its underside. The creature gave another scream, but the armored appendages mitigated much of the damage. Instead of fleeing it whipped its head around, slamming it into the blonde Seraph and throwing her from her feet.
"Fuck." This was not the plan. The Collector was circling again, its focus now on the one who had caused it pain.
I pulled back one of the hammers on the Boxer and let off a round. Dagda's shotgun blasts hadn't dropped the ceiling on our hands so figured it was worth the risk.
