Monster Planet

by David Wellington

  “You know, the girl. The girl on the flying bridge. I think she’s one of the navigators. Isn’t she one of your co-conspirators?” The green phantom smiled, his desiccated skin stretching whitely across his sharp jaws.

  Ayaan dropped the sponge and ran. She expected to feel his power wrapping icy chains around her heart at any moment as she stumbled down the stairs, down toward the foredeck. She was just trying to get away from him. Strangely enough, he let her go.

  She rushed out onto the deck, dodging between cook fires and capstans. She saw the Least ahead and knew she would have to avoid him. Beyond that she had no plan. What was he doing? He kept jumping up and down. The whole deck vibrated as he collided with it again and again. Hiding behind an enormous bollard she peered out to see what he was up to. He was trying to touch the end of the ship’s main crane, an enormous long boom made of girders that loomed out over half the deck. Something dangled at the end of the crane, a piece of bloody meat or... or...

  It was the Turkish girl, of course. Ayaan swallowed in horror. They had cut her wrists and her ankles, punched holes in her until her blood ran in sheets down her body but they hadn’t killed her. She was still moving, a spasm here, a twitch there in between long pauses to rest and regain what little strength remained to her. She was still alive.

  Just the way the Least would want her.

  Ayaan slapped her cheeks to try to get her blood moving again and hurried aft. There was still a chance, a chance to do some good. Without the girl on the flying bridge they couldn’t release the underside compartment hatches, they couldn’t flush the Tsarevich’s army of undead. They could still... the fire...

  Ayaan had never known the girl’s name. That had been intentional—in case any of them were caught they couldn’t give each other away. It just seemed horrible now. She had gotten the girl tortured to death, might as well have fed her to that brute herself and for what? For... Ayaan stopped herself. The liches were still all up in the superstructure, in the mess she had just left but the Tsarevich and Amanita were in the tower. If the liches knew about the girl they certainly knew about the Siberian and the plan to torch the tower. They could catch her at any moment, they could kill her from a distance. If she acted quickly enough, however, if she didn’t stop to think, maybe she could still sell her life dearly. It was all she wanted. At least it would be enough.

  He was there—the Siberian—standing outside the tower as she drew near. Just standing there, waiting for her to come and tell him what to do. She rushed up waving her hands and yelling at him, not caring who might hear, screaming at him to start the fire but he just stood there, looking at her, his face strangely empty of emotion.

  She got close enough to touch him but she didn’t. She knew something was wrong. He opened his mouth to speak and then he started coughing, spasmodically, horribly, gagging and choking and spitting. Dark clouds of spores erupted from his mouth, stained Ayaan’s clothing where they flecked across her. The sea breeze tore the rest of them out and away to float over the ocean. The Siberian’s skin darkened, started to turn blue. Not from anoxia, though he was clearly suffocating. It was a creeping kind of mold, like Penicillin growing on bread, that changed his color. It swarmed up and over him, dry smut dripping from his tear glands, furry mold sprouting from his ears, from his nose. He was dead before he hit the ground.

  Cicatrix walked out of the deck-level entrance to the tower. She had the doctor, the hand surgeon from the stern, on an actual leash, a dog collar around his neck.

  “Tell her what you do to her,” Cicatrix demanded, and forced the man to his knees.

  He stammered and sobbed and tried to look up at Ayaan but he couldn’t, he didn’t have the strength.

  “Tell her!” Cicatrix screamed, and kicked the man in his ribs.

  “Stop. I know what he did,” Ayaan told her. Clearly he had divulged her secrets. Given away her grand plot. She couldn’t blame him, either. He had a badly-sutured wound on the end of his right arm where one of his hands used to be. He probably begged them to leave the left one intact, would have done anything for that. Ayaan wondered if he had told them how many bones were in his hand, how many muscles.

  A wave of revulsion for the broken man swam up her innards, blossomed in her throat. He should have died, he should have thrown himself over the side of the boat before confessing. It was what she would have demanded of herself. She tried to tell herself that the threat of death would make this man do anything—anything to survive. It was hardly a unique perspective. It wasn’t hers, though. Ayaan had grown up listening to stories of glorious martyrs, of those who traded their lives on Earth for the greater good amd the Paradise that awaited. She had seen so many things, learned so much, but she didn’t suppose she would ever have real sympathy for such a coward.

  Her mouth filled. She spat on him.

  “You’ve caught me,” she told Cicatrix. “I won’t apologize. As one living woman to another all I ask for is a clean death.”

  Cicatrix smiled at her. “It was clever plan,” she said, ignoring Ayaan’s request. “We talk about it, all this day, Tsarevich and myself. We were being quite impressed and entertained.”

  Clearly Ayaan wasn’t going to get the swift resolution she wanted. She glanced sideways at the rail. She could be over it in a second. It would take only a heartbeat before she hit the water. Ayaan couldn’t swim—it would be over quickly. She’d heard unpleasant things about death by drowning, and it wouldn’t keep her from coming back as a ghoul but still. It would be a better exit. A cleaner way to go.

  Then she felt the energy draining out of her limbs, her muscles, her bones. She could barely keep her eyelids open. Any moment she would... she would collapse... she knew the... green phantom... had her...

  “We like you,” Cicatrix said, bending over her, smiling down at her. Ayaan had fallen to the deck without realizing it. “We think you’re fun.”

  Ayaan’s vision closed down like a black shutter falling across Cicatrix’s face.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Magna helped Sarah down the narrow ladder into the belly of the FNS Nordvind, the most advanced submarine in the Finnish Navy. There wasn’t much competition anymore. “He found me,” she told Sarah, talking about her husband. He had been a warrant officer onboard the Nordvind when the Epidemic began. “They put into port with the dead already coming over the fence. He deserted when he saw what was happening. Well, they all deserted. He came and found me—I was on the roof of the PX. He came and found me and he hasn’t spoken a word since. It was my idea to steal the submersible.”

  The two women passed forward into the bridge of the submarine. Magna’s three children, none of them over ten, scrambled out of their way. The oldest, a girl wearing a captain’s hat with maroon bars, folded up the periscope handles and raised into into a locked position.

  “They’re adorable,” Sarah said, watching the blonde children man the submarine’s instruments.

  “They’re my angels.” Magna touched the springy yellow curls of the youngest who sat at the chart table with her feet dangling from the chair. She brought Sarah to a small room ahead of the bridge, a briefing room for the captain. Her husband Linus sat at a low table there, a plate of salted cod fish untouched next to him. His hair and beard were pure white and draped down over his shirt, clean and carefully brushed. He didn’t look up when Sarah entered. “Lover,” Magna called, but that elicited no response, either. “He’s like this all the time. He’ll eat, if I feed him. He’ll do just about anything if I talk him through it but he would just sit there forever if I let him.” Magna gave him a tiny smile, her face folding in on itself as she hugged her own arms. “Catatonic stupor, they call it. I don’t have the drugs to treat him but I can look up their names in my Physician’s Desk Reference.”

  Something occurred to Sarah, something she didn’t want to consider too closely. If the man had been catatonic for twelve years, and his eldest daughter was only ten at the most... well. People got lonely. Sarah knew a litt
le bit about manners, so she didn’t ask.

  “Normally we stay surfaced for the fresh air and the sunlight. We only dive when someone comes by—I’ve kept us alive this long by cultivating my antisocial behaviors. I fish over the side most days, and some days I just lie in bed and conserve my energy,” Magna told her. “I have a little garden down here, under some ultraviolet lamps. The submariners used those when they went on polar missions, to avoid seasonal affective disorder. Sometimes I need them too.”

  “You dive whenever anybody comes by?” Sarah asked. “Does that happen... often?”

  Magna nodded absently. “There are a surprisingly large number of people like me. People who have surrendered dry land to the deaders. Most of them aren’t as well kitted out as I am. A lot of them are borderline personality types, do you understand? Pirates.”

  “But you surfaced for us.”

  Magna smiled, a smile so wry and complicated it looked like a frown. “Only because you happen to be the friend of a… well. It wasn’t the first time I netted a floating deader. I’ve never caught one who could talk, though. He told me things. Comforting things. These days I take my validation where I can get it. He said his name was Jack, and that a girl named Sarah would find me, that he needed to talk to her. Here, will you help me with this?” She handed Sarah a folding patio chair. “I’d let you to talk to him down here but the smell... I’m sure you understand. He must have been floating for weeks when I found him. I don’t know who he is when he’s at home but right now he’s terrifically whiffy.”

  Together the women climbed back up to the deck where they set up the two patio chairs under a sun umbrella. Magna put out a pitcher of ice water (the submarine had its own desalinization plant, she explained proudly) and a single glass. Sarah’s guest wouldn’t need one. Then Magna untied and unwrapped the tarpaulin-covered mass at the back of the deck. Frowning and holding her face very tight she brought her burden over and dumped it unceremoniously in the second patio chair. “If you need me, shout,” Magna told Sarah. “I’ll be below watching series four of Prime Suspect on DVD. I’ve seen it so many times the perspex has worn right off the disk but I never get tired of Helen Mirren.”

  There were words in that sentence Sarah had never heard before.

  Magna finally put her pistol down next to the pitcher of ice water and left Sarah alone with Jack. What was left of his borrowed body, anyway. Fish had been at it leaving little that looked human. He had a torso and most of two arms. A head like a boiled chicken with some matted hair on the top. No eyes, nose or lips at all.

  “You look like hell,” she said.

  “In Finland they call hell Tuonela, at least they used to. It wasn’t supposed to be so bad. A city under the ground where you went to sleep forever. When you arrived you were still pretty active and there was a welcoming party, they gave you a big beer stein. It was full of frogs and worms but it made you groggy and when you were finished they found you a nice soft patch of ground to lie down on. Sounds better than how it actually worked out, hmm?”

  “I suppose,” Sarah said. It was tough to look at him. She’d seen plenty of corpses in her day but this was bad. He stank of stale brine and sun-baked skin.

  “I didn’t have much choice in bodies,” he explained, “and I needed to talk to you. It’s urgent, Sarah. There are things you need to know.”

  She bit her lip and nodded. “I know that rescuing Ayaan isn’t going to be easy. I’m committed, though, and I’ve got Osman to go along with me. Ptolemy wants revenge, I can work with that—” She stopped. Something fragile and small opened inside of her, a flower of emotion. If she examined it too closely she knew it would collapse. “Ayaan is dead. That’s what you’re here to tell me,” she guessed, her breath very cold in her lungs. “I mean, you would know, somehow.”

  “Yes,” Jack replied. He looked a little like he was melting. “They’re all… down in here with me. All the dead people. If she was dead I would be able to find her, and I can’t. She's still alive, for the moment at least.”

  “Oh.” The feeling inside her liquefied and drained away. It was—it had been—a kind of relief, and now it was gone. She understood that when she had heard Jack wanted to talk her subconscious had assumed it was to tell her that she’d done all that she could, that she’d been very brave but now it was over. But it wasn’t over, it couldn’t be yet. She had actually, in some quiet, small way, hoped that Ayaan was dead.

  The thought wasn't worth the energy it would take to rationalize it away. Sarah looked away from him and changed the subject. “So it’s true, all that religion stuff? There’s an afterlife?”

  “You could say that. Like you could say that a book still goes on even after you’re done reading it and you’ve put it on the shelf. All the words are still there.”

  “That’s… interesting,” she said.

  “Fucking fascinating. Now shut up and listen to me. I don’t want to have to stay in this body any longer than I have to.”

  He looked out over the waves, drew a deep breath. “The one consolation for being dead—the only possible consolation—is that you hear things. Dead people love to gossip, just like the living. If you’re selective with who you listen to you can actually learn something useful, sometimes. I happen to have met somebody who works for our enemy. The Tsarevich, I’m told, is planning something big. He’s been working on it for years—maybe since the beginning. It's going to be the culmination of his unlife. He’s been busy at it, collecting things he needs.”

  “Things?” Sarah asked.

  “People, mostly. People like Ayaan or all those mummies. There’s at least one more person he needs, somebody very special and he’ll stop at nothing to find her, or at least a reasonable facsimile. He’s been making liches at a furious rate, killing most of them because they didn’t have powers or they didn’t have the right powers. He’s been collecting old bits of machinery, too, and documents the Soviets left behind. He took five tons of documents out of a cave near Magnitogorsk last year, research materials, parascience stuff left by Stalin-era scientists looking to find a way to bring dead soldiers back to life on the battlefield. Whatever he found in those papers made him think he needed to kidnap a bunch of mummies. Now he’s moving. He’s moving west. Toward the Source. Do you understand where this is going?”

  “I think so,” she tried, though she really didn’t.

  “It means that once he has this last person that he needs, he’ll be ready to act. It means we have very little time left for dilly-dallying. You want to save Ayaan, fine, and if Ptolemy wants revenge well so be it. But you need to know the Russian bastard has his own agenda, and I can guarantee you it isn’t good. Ayaan plays into his hand somehow so he won’t give her up easily. You're going to have to fight, Sarah. You can't just run along after him for the rest of time, you're going to have to fight. I know that isn't your strong suit. You’re going to need help. Find yourself a couple of atom bombs, raise an army if you need to.”

  “I don’t know how—”

  “Then learn. I gave you your gift for a reason. Use it, now. You’ve got to find things out, you have to learn a lot between now and the end of this.”

  “...Learn things?”

  “Yeah. And some of them are going to make you cry. I’d go do it for you but, well. Since I’m just a disembodied consciousness cut loose in the void, I figure you’re going to have to do the heavy lifting. Understand?”

  “Yeah.” This time she thought she did understand. She’d just grabbed the shitty end of the stick. Sarah poured herself a glass of water. Her mouth had gone very dry.

  “Okay. So I’ll try to find out more, give you a better idea of what you’re up against as we get closer. For now I’m going to let this body go. Once I’m out you know what to do.”

  Jack rocked back and forth a few times and let his torso crash forward onto the deck. Sarah looked down at the knobby back of its neck, the places where the skin of its back had been nibbled away. It turned its ruined face up towar
d her and its jaws clacked shut, looking more like a horribly wounded tortoise than a human being. Clearly Jack was gone. She picked up the pistol Magna had left for her and thumbed the safety. The gunshot passed right through Jack's deliquescent flesh and pranged off the submarine's hull, making it ring like a bell. And then Sarah was alone, completely alone on the rolling water.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Bobbing before her the Least’s face looked like a huge bag of skin dangling in folds from his tiny skull, the eyeballs floating inside, the teeth lost in the great wet flapping curtain of his mouth. He tried to smile when she opened her eyes. It looked more like an exposed muscle jerking spasmodically.

  “Mine, now,” he said, his voice dribbling out of him like syrup. “My blood, my meat, my bones.” He reached out one hand, the fingers swollen and torn like hot dogs cooked too long in a microwave, and touched her breasts, pushed them around, smeared them across her chest. There was no sex in his eyes. Just hunger.

  “If you eat me,” she said, “at least I won’t end up a ghoul.”

  It was the closest thing she could manage to real defiance. It was also a fond wish.

  Ayaan’s clothes had been changed. She wore a white sleeveless t-shirt and a pair of drawstring pants. Surgical scrubs—most of the Tsarevich’s army, both living and dead, wore the same. They were easier to find than real uniforms. Her feet were bare. Her hands weren’t tied, which surprised her a little. She supposed the green phantom could put her back to sleep if she tried to get away.

  “Where are my clothes?” she asked, figuring the Least would either answer her or eat her. Either way she would have one less thing to worry about.

  It was Cicatrix who replied, however. “We had them to burn. You got little too close to Lady Amanita so they went to mildew.”

  Ayaan looked up and saw a small crowd made up of living zealots and most of the liches had gathered around to watch her die. The werewolf, the lipless wonder, the green phantom were there. Amanita was conspicuously absent but the Tsarevich himself stood in a place of honor, directly behind the Least. His pale, pale skin and hair, his dark enameled armor held her gaze. She figured it was probably another projection. He didn’t seem the type to take the risk of being near an unbound prisoner even when she had no weapons but her bare hands.