Before anybody could answer, he launched himself at the rise, battle-axe raised high above his head like a shitty Viking as he began to zigzag between trees, screaming profanities.
Ignoring all the incredulous looks now pointed my way, I turned back to the others.
‘Okay. Let’s, uh... go save the world, or whatever.’
They cheered and set off after Frankie—all except for Espinosa and Mr G, that was, who simply fell in line next to me—which, if I’m honest, I was fine with. Because, you know—“human shields”. Like Pokémon, you can never have too many.
Heads lowered and weapons bared, we chased them up the rise towards the top.
And our destinies.
***
So we ran. Up the ever steepening rise, chests heaving, thighs burning. Snow whipped constantly around us, bending the trees fleeting past as we ran, making an already hellish journey even worse.
I thought about escalators. Nobody ever appreciates escalators when they’re in abundance. They’re just those shiny things they have down at the mall that you’re still ninety per cent sure won’t kill you when the time comes to get off them, but that you get on anyway because the only thing that outweighs your fear of death-by-escalator-treads is your sheer, unashamed laziness. Even if there was a ten per cent chance I’d be sucked down into its gears like a fucking hotdog down a garbage disposal, saving the world shouldn’t be this exhausting.
We pressed on, hearts pounding, lungs burning in our chests, until, after a mammoth effort, we finally reached the top.
I spotted Frankie kneeling behind an outcropping of jagged rock and quickly joined him.
‘Anything?’ I said, having to shout to be heard over the wind.
He nodded over the rock. ‘See for yourself.’
I peeked over the top.
It was some small clearing, about the size of a football field, set inside a natural depression in the “mountain’s” peak. Large outcroppings of sharp-looking rock and stone stood on all sides, providing at least meagre protection from the storm, giving it an enclosed feel. Several of what looked like industrial-scale digging and construction equipment lay scattered around and abandoned, snow accumulating on them like rust. A small army of floodlights, positioned in a rough half-circle near the back, shaking wildly in the wind.
I’ll admit, it was a lot less sinister a gathering than I was expecting. No occult symbols or sacrificial plinths. No men in robes uttering murmured chants to each other. I didn’t know what opening a door into another dimension was supposed to look like, but I had the feeling this wasn’t it.
Banners. Balloons. People in suits and gowns—presumably Phonies—holding glasses of some unknown substance that I’d like to have said was blood, but that was really probably just wine. A large, round structure stood positioned at the space’s far end, made of thick stone and covered in more of those hieroglyphs like the rock-thing had had—what may or may not have been a Stargate, but for legal reasons we’ll just say wasn’t. Sure looked like one, though. Among the cluster I spotted more of those weird-looking garbage men who had jumped us back over at Speedy’s, standing around and doing nothing, faces still, unfortunately, like that of a badly drawn child’s painting.
I scoffed.
Guess if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em...
Laughing. Cheering. Fucking high-fives.
And not a single guard in sight.
‘This is not what I was expecting,’ I said.
And it wasn’t. This was the Phonies’ end game; what they had been planning—presumably—from the very get-go. Whilst I knew from experience that the O’tsaris were an arrogant bunch, I found it hard to believe they would be so nonchalant as to attempt to perform a dimension-bridging ceremony without so much as a single guard present. I mean, even for multi-dimensional brain-parasites, that was just tempting fate, wasn’t it?
Frankie shook his head. ‘Yeah. I don’t like this, Dan. Something’s not right.’
We waddled back down the rocks towards the others.
I turned to Havisham, stood waiting beside a handful of his men whilst the others ventured forth to go get into position or whatever.
‘No good. Something’s wrong.’
I explained to him about the whole “no guards” situation.
Before I could finish, he suddenly raised his hand to his ear.
‘Do you have eyes on the target, over?’ A moment of silence, then. ‘Roger. That’s a go. Let’s hit these fuckers hard and fast before they know what hit them.’
I blinked. ‘Wait—didn’t you hear what I just said? Something’s not right. We have to rethink this thing.’
Whether he heard me or not, I’m not sure.
Whichever the case, he strode past me in that dick-way people in authority always do, chest pushed out and one hand raised in the air, no doubt giving a signal to the others.
From beside me, Espinosa shook her head. She looked very cold, and mad, but mostly just cold. ‘Idiot. He’s going to get them all killed.’
I leaned towards Frankie, hand cupped around one side of my mouth. ‘Should we, like, stop him or whatever?’
He shrugged. ‘Hell if I know—besides, I’m way too drunk to be making decisions right now.’
We followed them back up to the lip of the depression, where we waited for the black-clad soldiers to manoeuvre themselves into position.
I looked back towards the party.
I still couldn’t see any guards. Just more party-goers, laughing and talking excitedly with one another.
The soldiers started to make their way down.
It was then, watching from the relative safety of our impromptu hiding place, that I first saw it—movement, from the tops of the jagged rocks circling the enclosure.
I must have been making a face, because Frankie suddenly turned to me, frowning. ‘What? What’s wrong?’
I squinted and leaned forward, unsure of what I’d just seen—if, that was, I’d even seen anything at all. It was snowing pretty hard, after all. And it wasn’t like I had the greatest—
The shape suddenly moved again.
Then before I knew it, I was on my feet, leaping over the rock and sprinting towards the hundred or so men currently making their way down, arms held high over my head and waving back and forth like a man attempting to flag down a taxi.
Somewhere far away I heard voices shouting my name, pleading at me to stop, to come back.
I barely heard them.
‘WAIT! STOP! DON’T GO! IT’S A TRAP! DON’T—!’
The shapes creeping along the rocks began to move.
To the soldiers’ credit, they were quick to react—even if, granted, it was still already too late.
The soldiers descended on the party, guns drawn, voices shouting a barrage of orders; a black swarm, like a small army of large, heavily armed ants.
The party-goers all turned to look at them, but didn’t move. Just stared at them, the faintest of smiles lighting up the corners of their mouths like they were nothing more than amused by the sudden gate-crashing of their happy little shindig.
One of the soldiers stepped forward, gun rammed tight against one buff shoulder—
And that was when they struck.
They came in a frenzied wave, swooping down from the enclosure’s rocky sides before quickly swarming the soldiers like piranhas at a bleeding piglet; dozens of malformed, winged creatures, each about the size of a large dog, with huge, reptilian eyes and little black, furry bodies, hidden mostly—and for reasons I am still unable to explain—beneath what looked to be studded, leather gimp-suits.
Yeah—I know. Tell me about it.
The sound of panicked gunfire filled the air as the soldiers desperately attempted to defend themselves, punctuated every few moments by screams of pain and surprise as the little winged creatures quickly went to town on them, biting, clawing, scratching, picking some of the soldiers up before letting them fall back to Earth with a meaty splat I could feel in my very soul
.
It was all over in the blink of an eye.
The remaining soldiers, acknowledging their situation, quickly threw down their weapons and raised their hands over their heads in what was the universal gesture of surrender.
The winged Gimp-beasts promptly encircled them, snapping their little jaws as fresh blood dripped from the fabric of their nipple tassels.
I stood there, watching from across the clearing, unable to move—hell, or even breathe—shit pooling once more in my pants, until—
Something cold and hard pressed into the back of my neck.
I gasped and went instantly rigid, my own hands suddenly in the air, as a woman’s voice hissed, ‘Kingslayer...’ directly into my ear canal.
I risked a look back over my shoulder.
It was indeed a woman. Dark-haired. Tall. A mole on one cheek I thought was called a beauty-spot, though probably wasn’t. Eyes as white as the snow currently beating down all around us.
I swallowed.
Oh, great job, Dan. Seriously, great stealth work there.
She led me over at gunpoint towards where the remaining soldiers all stood cowering, the two of us having to tiptoe our way over a carpet of mutilated bodies and what looked to be a river of quickly accumulating blood, steam rising off it like a mirage.
I fell in line and tried to keep my eyes off all the viscera at my feet.
It’s okay. Don’t panic. They might have captured you. But Frankie and the others are still out there. We can still—
‘Hi, Dan!’
I looked back over my shoulder as Frankie and the others suddenly appeared behind me, surrounded by yet more glowing-eyed, heavily armed party-goers.
I groaned.
Well. Guess that’s us fucked. At least nobody can say we didn’t try.
Frankie came and stood next to me, looking his usual unperturbed self.
He looked the Gimp-beasts over, his eyes eventually settling on their nipple tassels. ‘Are those—?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, they are.’
There was a murmuring from somewhere on the crowd’s other side.
A familiar woman’s voice shouted, ‘Step aside!’
I let out a groan.
Boot.
‘Well, hello again, Kingslayer!’ she cried, emerging suddenly through the crowd like a game-show host through a curtain. ‘Fancy seeing you here!’
She looked different from the last time we had met. She was still wearing the same Korn hoodie, true, and her hair was still that stupid, tousled style it had been the last time our paths had crossed. Same baggy jeans, too. But there was something... different about her.
For no reason I could pinpoint, I thought she looked even more insane.
I sighed. ‘Hello, Boot.’
‘Have you come to witness Mother’s grand arrival? Because if so, you’re just in time.’
I looked over her shoulder at the Not-Stargate. ‘Where’s Gizmo—I mean, the Novamite? What have you done with him?’
‘See for yourself—boys!’
The crowd suddenly parted.
It was then that I saw it.
They came out from behind a stack of large, copper tubing; more Faceless Men, dressed in high-vis construction overalls and pushing what looked to be some kind of large, steel coffin between them, like the ones hospitals use for patients with breathing difficulties—iron lungs, I thought they were called. Thick, coiled cabling trailed off it like tentacles, leading off to some place further back I couldn’t see. In the side of the steel coffin was a large, round window, like a porthole.
Frankie gasped.
‘Gizmo!’
He was strapped down to the inside of the coffin, a combination of different wires and cables poking out of him from a myriad of different and unthinkable places. Plugs in his mouth, his belly-button. Other places. Thick and exotic-looking cables ran down from his ears and into some kind of conduit in the coffin’s side.
Jesus, look at him. They’ve turned him into a goddamn pincushion.
At the sound of his name, Gizmo slowly turned his head. His eyes were half-lidded, his little monkey face ashen and pale. He looked awful. I was amazed he was still alive.
He placed a small paw on the glass.
Even though we had never gotten along, I couldn’t deny I felt bad for the little guy. Even if he was the “destroyer of worlds” the others claimed him to be, he didn’t deserve this. Hell, nobody did.
They wheeled him over towards the Not-Stargate, where they immediately began hooking him up to what looked like your normal, everyday portable generator.
Almost immediately, the hieroglyphs on the Not-Stargate began to flicker.
And then, just like that, I understood.
They’re sucking the life out of him. Like a battery. Using his life-energy to power up whatever the fuck that thing is.
Boot paced in front of the Not-Stargate, her eyes alight—and not in the usual, alien way.
‘This is it,’ she said, staring enrapt at it. ‘The moment we have waited countless millennia for.’ I noticed she looked even more insane.
She turned back to me. ‘Watch, Kingslayer. Watch the beginning of your planet’s destruction!’
Before I could say or do anything, she turned back to the steel coffin and nodded.
The man at the generator hit a switch.
What happened next is still fuzzy in my memory, for reasons that will become apparent shortly.
There was a blinding flash of light. A deafening crack of electricity—so loud it felt like my entire head was splitting in two.
In the millisecond interim before the doorway opened I had time to think of those old test-clips they’re always showing on documentaries of those early nuclear bomb-tests, the way the trees would bend backwards with the force of the blast before them and everything else unlucky enough to be caught in its vicinity got levelled to ash—because that’s what it felt like.
With a sound like the world’s largest telephone book being ripped in half, the doorway between our two dimensions tore open.
The force of it pushed us to the ground, sent us spiralling backwards, humans and non-humans alike.
When it was over, I looked up.
Whereas before, the similarities to a Stargate had been obvious and plentiful, here they ended as abruptly as a swan-dive onto a concrete sidewalk.
Instead of the shimmering wall of white I’d been expecting, inside the circle was a black hole. Just completely black—so awfully, terribly black it was almost painful to look at. It was the absence of light. All the universe’s dark matter concentrated into one, eight-by-eight-foot space.
I turned my gaze away, unable to bear it any longer.
‘HA-HA-HA-HA-HA!’ cried a voice from somewhere up ahead of me.
I shifted my gaze.
Boot.
She was on her feet again, arms splayed, face pointed at the Not-Stargate, a look of absolute fucking insanity playing across it. Eyes so impossibly wide I was amazed they didn’t simply up and fall right out of her head.
‘BEHOLD! SHE OF MANY NAMES! THE MOTHER! THE R’IN! BELOVED KICKER OF ORPHANS!’ She dropped to her knees in the snow, arms splayed. ‘COME FORTH—NIDRETH!’
The black wall of nothingness danced and shimmered and twitched as something on the other side began to make its way through—a black canopy, pawed at from the opposite side by reaching hands.
A hand emerged.
Then a foot.
A leg.
The ripple-murmur of excitement from the non-humans around us ceased, as suddenly as hitting mute on a TV set. They all turned and looked at each other, Phonies and Gimp-beasts and Faceless Men alike, united in this moment through a mutual sense of utter confusion and bafflement.
Boot blinked, face now pinched tight, eyes squinted almost comically. ‘But... I don’t—this isn’t right. This isn’t what’s supposed to happen. You’re not—’
I followed my gaze back over to where she was looking.
&nbs
p; I gasped.
Bear!
Now, in the interest of clarity, I should clarify the thing I was looking at was not a bear—at least, not in the usual sense of the term.
Big. Stocky. Maybe nine feet tall. Thick dark fur covered its body almost in its entirety, save for a small patch on its chest, where a cluster-fuck of what looked like inch-long nipples stood hard and erect in the freezing wind. Paws like shovels, long claws sticking out of them, looking like something out of the fucking cretaceous period. But really, it was the bear part that caught my attention.
It leaned back on its hind legs and clacked its jaws, being overly bear-like, and sending a fresh bout of fear-shit shooting out the back of me.
Then, just as I was beginning to think things couldn’t possibly get any worse, from over its shoulder I saw something else beginning to make its way through the Not-Stargate.
I gasped again.
Two bears!
Wait—no. Not a bear. It was too small, for one thing. And pink. Just some kind of amorphous blob-thing, actually, like a giant, pulsating booger.
Other things were beginning to flood through the Not-Stargate now. Strange, awful things, things that defied description on account of how utterly strange and awful they were.
I’m not sure who fired first, or which particular strange and awful thing they were firing at.
All I know is, it was like a starting pistol.
The hell-creatures charged us—humans and Phonies alike.
That was when everything went to shit.
FOURTEEN
Gunfire. Screaming. The whip-splash of sprayed blood and tissue as pieces of people and creatures who were not people became spontaneously detached from said persons’/creatures’ bodies.
It was like one of those scenes they always have in war movies where the poor soldiers are forced to charge right into the thick of it, even though that’s probably a great way to get shot to death by Nazis. There’s always explosions and gunfire, and at least one guy lying on the beach with his legs blown off, crying for his mommy or a fucking medic or whatever as the life quickly drains out of him like a hole punched in the side of a juice box. I mean, true, nobody was shooting at me, and I couldn’t see any Nazis (at least, not yet).
But it was still very scary.
Dan and Frankie and the End of Everything Page 18
