by Richard Amos
“Are they humans?” I said.
“They look like women,” Andy responded. “Naked.”
The figures lowered, two of them coming closer to our vicinity
“Roses,” Andy said. “They have roses.”
Once the two figures came close enough for my eyesight, I saw what Andy meant. They were naked, and there were roses on their chests. Like the victims that’d been murdered by Parker/Elijah.
“I don’t understand. “
Two heads in the sky turned this way, and they flew down together, tearing through the air, hair rippling behind them.
Red eyes, a red sheen to them, roses blazing scarlet.
“Be ready,” Seph growled, battle stance activated.
I called my siren song to the fringes. Would it work on these pod creatures?
I put a lid on the questions running through my mind. They could be answered later when the threat was neutralized. And they were a threat. No question. It wasn’t as if they were flying down with angry faces to come and discuss the appalling weather, was it?
They slammed on the brakes, coming to a halt several feet above our heads, floating and watching. Then the roses on their chests swelled, and droplets of red pod spilled out from the center of the petals into the water. Crimson shimmered across the surface, sent a glow down into the depths.
The women waited as red lighting ripped the sky again.
“Don’t,” I said to Seph as he stepped forward. “If you touch them, anything could happen to you.”
He growled and cursed in Spanish. I was there with him in his frustration, staring up at dead women ravaged by pod. This was no necromancy at work here, and they didn’t really look dead at all. Just floating and wingless, creatures with pure, cruel magic. Pod and fae power animating them in deadly synergy.
“The water…” Andy said. “We need to get out of here.”
The glow had spread, transforming the pool to a liquid a much brighter red than blood, reminding me of biblical rivers of blood.
Tendrils of red, like snakes, wriggled across the surface in all directions—over to the green spaces of Flevopark to the right of me, and climbing the pillars of the flyover. A car horn blared as a vehicle went along the road, brakes screeching, then the engine revving.
Pod… Spreading pod…
…coming this way.
Oh, dear.
Trapped. There was nowhere to run. The flooded muddy paths, the walls of the pillars, the concrete above our heads was compromised with the red. Wherever the red tendrils touched, blobs followed, morbid chains of pretty color spreading everywhere, inching closer to us.
Using my siren song would end up causing more harm than good, but I could see no other way out.
“What—”
Chains snaked around my waist, gripping me tight. Before I could get any further words out, I was lifted into the air by the kelpie’s deadly weapons/fabulous tools and tossed away with incredible force.
Though a shock, I didn’t scream but angled myself for a landing back at the tram spot. Seph had thrown me hard enough to get me clear of the spread.
I landed in a crouched, then sprung back to my feet, terrified for my men.
Andy came flying through the air next, landing in a roll.
“Please…” I whispered as I took hold of him. “Please let them make it.”
When Seph tossed Pranay, he would be left alone.
“Please…” I repeated. “Please, please…”
A burst of red in the place they stood, their shapes swallowed by it.
“No!” I screamed, lunging forward. “No! Pranay! Seph!”
“Dylan!” Andy cried, grabbing for me. “You can’t go back there!”
The red was weaving this way. The spread wouldn’t stop, would never end.
Parker Smith.
This had all started with Parker Smith and his wretched brother.
My world had been corrupted by him, by his evil. The bubble of my relatively peaceful existence fractured, leaking. Pranay and Seph were trapped, or worse.
Or worse.
Pranay. Seph.
Hurt.
Worse.
Worse could never happen.
I wouldn’t allow it.
There had to be something I could do. I wasn’t losing them. Not like this.
To hell with the risks to the surrounding environment my song would probably cause, to the chaos it may bring. I wasn’t leaving them to die or mutate.
Andy’s hands were lit up pink with his fae magic. Desperation in his face to find some way of getting to them. But he couldn’t. His power wouldn’t do that.
I had to—
A figure, large, coming right for us. Joined to another by a chain. Two large figures. Coming here.
Coming right here.
My breath hitched as the two of them landed, the ground almost shaking at the impact.
Pranay and Seph.
Alive.
“You’re all right,” I said, frozen to the spot. “You’re not hurt.”
“Thanks to this bloke.” Pranay slapped Seph’s back. “Remind me to marry those chains of yours.”
I looked back and forth at the drenched men who had no trace of pod upon them. They were okay. They were safe.
“You’re okay.” Tears pricked my eyes. “You’re okay.”
“None of us will be if we hang around here,” Pranay said.
No time for standing on ceremony.
I got ahold of myself. Time to go, not dwell on the loss that didn’t happen.
On the dash back to the car, a bird’s squark made me jolt to a stop. “What was that?”
There it was again. Not a squark but a quack.
A quack?
The car doors were flung open, and I was ushered inside.
“That was quacking, wasn’t it?”
“That’s how I heard it,” Andy said. “Let’s not hang around to find out. We’re no good dead.”
The red tendrils were inching closer by the second, the green pods on the tram stop platform flashing with excitement. Could pods sense other pods and get happy?
What a disturbing idea.
Pranay put in a call regarding the road above us, a warning to the authorities, but there didn’t seem to be much in the way of traffic anyway. We’d hear if there was because the pod was making its way across the bridge now. Any driver with good sense would see the big red warning light of the pods and not come this way.
Hopefully.
Some folk didn’t have much sense.
Another quack. Throaty, terrifying.
But no duck.
Seph got us moving quickly, tearing away from the tram stops and Flevopark.
The women were gone. I had no idea when they’d departed the scene, but their damage was done.
Was this the plan for them all along? Creatures of chaos?
Lightning in the sky again, forking as far as I could see.
There was a real sense of an ending to everything.
The bad sort of ending.
Apocalyptic…
Twenty-Four
Jake
Red lightning, a boom of thunder, and then a woman landed behind Parker.
It took a minute for my brain to catch up.
Melony. I was looking at Melony, the red rose throbbing on her chest, brilliantly red. No emotion on her face, but not dead. I’d faced reanimated dead things before, and Melony wasn’t like them. Yeah, she was both dead and reanimated, but this was something else.
Pod and fae shit going on.
“Stay back!” a soldier roared.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” Parker proclaimed.
Dick!
“Fire!” someone yelled.
I hit the ground as the wands and guns went off, hands over my ears.
When it was done, there was nothing but a smoking hole where Parker had been standing, and another crack and flash of thunder and lightning.
“Jesus!” I wheezed, getting back to my fee
t. “What the hell?”
“Up there!”
Melony was hovering above us. No wings.
Fuck.
More wand and gun fire. These people knew enough to want her blown to smithereens. Serious shit was going down.
I needed to get back upstairs.
Melony was gone. Only for a few seconds, then back again. Her rose released red power, which looked like silly string. It streamed down and over us as another round of firing went off as a hand dragged me deeper into the hospital.
“Get away from here!” Lars ordered.
I was planning on it anyway.
I ran through the corridors as nurses and doctors watched with open mouths, scared out of their minds like the rest of the people in the corridors.
“What’s happening?”
“There’s something out there!”
“God, help us!”
The ceiling ahead of me came down, crushing a man and woman beneath the rubble. Dust and debris came rushing towards me, tearing down the corridor. I dove into the first door on my right.
“Fuck…” I gasped as a thick cloud went past, as the screaming really kicked off.
Screaming. Death. Chaos.
I was just feet away from the stairwell back to the ward my daughter’s room was on. I had to get back up there.
Returning to the corridor, I froze at the sight of a glaring red pod several feet away, three people inside it, not moving.
That was enough freezing for me. We were getting the hell out of here. I dashed into a stairwell, flying up the stairs as a boom shook the hospital, a crack running up the stairs, taking over me.
A crack filled with red.
I slammed into the wall, kept going. The crack widened. That was definitely pod in there, and it was spilling over the edges, making new worm-like parts that slithered towards me.
Bollocks!
I pushed on, reaching the floor I needed, slamming into the door. I tumbled into the corridor outside the ICU, crawled forward, and clambered to my feet, pushing past the council soldiers and coppers. My heart was a fucking roller coaster with too many loops and G-force, my body a paradox of hot sweat and cold fear.
The door was locked. Had to be, but it didn’t help my panic. I pounded hard. “Let me in!” I didn’t listen to the men and women around me. My mind focused on one thing only: Get Lou the fuck out of this hospital.
A police officer on the other side let me in. I charged past him, bursting into the room, collapsing to my knees when I saw she was okay—as okay as she could be. The room was untouched, and Soph and Luuk were there, and I couldn’t help but sob with relief.
“Jake!” Soph cried. “What’s going on?”
“There’s red lightning in the sky,” Luuk added, staring out of the window. “And pods… Pods spreading across the buildings.”
Getting to my feet, I spotted what he was talking about. Lines of red covering the building opposite the hospital, just like there’d been in that crack on the stairwell. It spread every which way, across the roads and paths, heading for the rest of the city. Blobs of color appeared along those lines, and three women flew above, blazing red roses on their chests, dripping pod energy, watching the chaos unfolding below.
And just like that, after living with the pods all this time, tension in the air every day because of the fuckers, the tide had not only turned but gone wild.
This was it. The days of true bloody insanity.
No time to faff around. “We have to get out of here.” I went to my daughter, disconnected her from the heart monitor and the other stuff. She was still breathing, still a statue. Didn’t matter that this was a hospital. It wasn’t the safest place for her anymore.
Had to get her out of the city. Home wouldn’t even be safe. Get her somewhere safer and wait for Dean to make Orla put things right. Then we’d plan our next move when we were together again.
Luuk yelped, and the window imploded. I threw myself over Lou to protect her against the spray of glass. Wind and rain roared inside, the sounds of terror from outside ringing in my ears.
There was something in here. I heard it gurgle.
Turning, I saw a man standing in the center of the room. A doctor, maybe. Covered in red pods, his hands needles, his one eye the cold metal disc of a stethoscope—red iris on a bed of chrome.
Pod-born. Quick transformation. That eye locked onto me.
Luuk scrambled away, his hair dusted with glass, face cut up. Soph ran to him, went down to him, then turned her focus onto the pod-born.
Soph was normally a calm, sunny person. It was rare to see her face be anything but serene. The kind of person that puts you at ease just by being in the room. Beneath that stuff was a witch ready to blow if she had to. Like now, when the blue magic flew from her finger tips, sending the doctor into the wall so hard his head broke through the stone, leaving him twitching and dangling, blood running down the wall from the hole he’d made.
Ouch.
Taking the respite handed to us by my awesome witch friend, I went to scoop up my daughter. Man, she was so cold.
“You okay, Luuk?” I asked loudly over the sound of the rain. Something went bang outside. It wasn’t thunder.
He nodded, able to walk.
“Let’s go.”
I threw the door open with one hand and turned right in the corridor instead of left this time. Outside the ICU doors was a vicious red blaze, and pod worms were already creeping into the ICU hallway.
“Everyone out!” I yelled at the people lingering. “Get out of the hospital!”
I knew that it was easier said than done. What about the people who couldn’t be moved easily, that were plugged into machines that breathed for them, or anything like that?
This is where I walked the line between wanting to help make the world a better place and what I was actually willing to do. With my daughter in my arms, yelling those words was the extent of the help I’d offer. My priority was Lou, not strangers. I wasn’t a superhero and never claimed to be. I was a dad who wanted to get his kid out of danger, protect her at all costs, even if it left me dead. She always had to be okay and alive and well and safe. Just like Dean, I wanted her sheltered from every single bad thing in this world. Unrealistic to keep her eyes closed. Fine. But I’d sure as hell do everything in my power to keep her heart beating. And if that meant abandoning this hospital to its fate, then so be it.
I wasn’t a monster. I didn’t want anyone in here to die or be hurt or transformed by pod, either. Of course not. But I had to go.
Past wards and wailing people, we reached a fire exit, the door open. There were people leaving by it, no pod stuff coming through it. Yet. Only the rain and wind.
“Come on.”
Stepping outside into the elements and onto the fire escape, I got the full show of what was going on.
The pod really was spreading over everything, and the women were spreading it from their roses, deadly angels in the sky around here, and across the city. The thunder and the red lightning continued.
First, Amsterdam, then the world?
The apocalypse had landed.
The Divine Roses was totally the wrong name for them.
I didn’t even get five steps down the fire escape, and Parker called out behind me. No way was I turning to look at him. Didn’t want to face him. The wanker wasn’t part of my mission.
“Where are you going, Jake?”
It wasn’t going to work.
“I don’t think so.” A shriek and wailing as someone fell.
Did Parker just throw someone off the stairs?
The thud below told me yes.
“You can run, Jake. But there’s nowhere to go. You’ve got to face what you are.”
What I was? Nice try. I wouldn’t be rattled easily. Tunnel vision now. Whatever bollocks he came out with, whatever he tried to do, it would be for fuck all.
I wasn’t stopping.
“Keep moving.” I didn’t need to tell my friends that because the
y kept on coming behind me.
We reached the bottom, Parker calling my name, again and again, making no move. My nerves were frayed by his non-moves. It wasn’t like him to not try something. There must be a surprise coming.
“Where’s your car?” I asked, catching sight of red worms creeping up the side of the hospital, spreading across the stairwell we’d just stepped off.
“Follow us,” Soph said, taking the lead.
The ground shook beneath my feet, loosened, cracked. My right foot was sucked into a hole, ankle twisting. I kept vertical, just, and held tight to Lou.
“Fuck!” I cried in pain.
I was stuck. Proper stuck.
“No!” Soph yelled. She and Luuk tried to pull my foot loose.
It wasn’t moving. At all. Not with the combined pulling from all of us, and not me on my own, not with the spells Soph was performing. I only sank deeper. And there was pod spreading this way.
There was only one thing to do. Man, did it call up a spiky ball of grief to my chest.
For her to live, I had to let her go.
“Take her, Soph.”
“What? Jake? No.”
“Please. You’ve gotta get her out of here. She’s can’t be here.”
“We can’t leave you!”
“Sophie,” Luuk said softly to his wife. His eyes met mine in understanding.
“Soph. Please. I ain’t getting out of here.”
“I’m not leaving you to die!”
“Then, we all do. I might not even die.” Maybe the pod would change me into some fucked up thing. “But she’s at risk. Please, Soph. I know I’m asking too much.”
Thunder cracked. A demonic shriek followed. In the distance, something with claws tore into a group of people.
Soph gasped, shaking as she looked on. “My God…”
“The city’s falling apart,” I said. “Please. You have to get out of here. Both of you and Lou. I’ll follow when I can.”
“What if you can’t?”
The thing with claws leaped at another person as they tried to run, ripping them apart.
“Soph. I’m begging you. Time’s running out.”
“Let me try again,” she said.
Another spell, another failure. I just wasn’t getting free.
“Soph…”
