Monstrocity

by Jeffrey Thomas

  “You saw one of our precious little babies, from the nursery in there.” She gives a tilt of her pretty chin. “The first hatchling, so to speak.”

  “What are you people making in this place, Dawn?” I ask in a tremulous voice.

  “You really don’t know, then?”

  “Why would I know?”

  “I saw those weird patterns on your computer screen. Geometric designs, of various sorts. I looked into your file after I saw that, to see what your background was, but it seemed innocent enough. Then again, you were recommended by Mr. Yekemma-Ur’s daughter...so I assumed...”

  “I don’t know what you’re saying, Dawn...”

  “You aren’t one of them, then? One of the followers of the Outsiders?”

  “Me? One of them? If I was, why would that guy have been seconds away from killing me?” I nod at the man she just murdered.

  “That’s the reason why I haven’t killed you yet, Christopher. But you seem to know what I’m talking about, when I mention the Outsiders.”

  “Yes, I do know about them. But I had no idea there was anything going on in this place. What about you, Dawn? You mean to tell me that you don’t have something to do with that animal I just saw?”

  The personnel director smiles tightly, proudly, flicks her hair out of her eyes with her free hand. She still looks very much the sharp businesswoman despite the dust and grit on her. “Would I have killed that man if I was on his side? I’ve infiltrated them, Christopher. So as to destroy them from the inside...”

  I lower my gun muzzles at last, as if out of respect and awe. I realize what Dawn Andrews is. “You’re one of the Children of the Elders...who’ve suppressed the Necronomicon...who fight against these cults...”

  Her smug smile falters a bit. “How do you know so much, Christopher? Who are you, really?”

  Now it’s my turn to smile. “I’m like you, Dawn. We’re on the same team.”

  “Prove it,” she says.

  “While you were infiltrating this place, I brought down Cephalon Corp.”

  “Cephalon. Then it’s true about them. We wondered.” She nods slowly, and at last she lowers her gun, too. She tips her head toward the doorway that monster tried squeezing through. “We’d better stop squabbling, then, and get in there and stop the rest of them from waking up.”

  “Rest of them?”

  “This is a factory, Christopher, isn’t it?” And then she leads the way into the haze.

  ***

  EVEN THROUGH THE mist, I can see it’s like any of the other farm chambers. High ceiling. The gargling of nutrient solution being circulated. And a living corridor of large, insensate bodies hooked up to life support, monitors silently scrolling figures and statistics. As in the other chambers, some bodies are crushed under girders and sections of fallen ceiling, though the blood that flows in here is translucent and syrupy, like the sap from a plant.

  In facing rows are more of that dark purple creature, perhaps a hundred of them, stretching off until they’re lost in the haze, as if their ranks have no end.

  They seem to dream, patiently, waiting for the right time to be awakened. Their tentacles are tightly coiled inward, hiding the inner nest of white tendrils, as spiders will clench their bodies in death, but I can see their gill slits rhythmically opening and closing. I see one of them shift its half-formed paw slightly, like a fetus moving in its womb. A nursery, Dawn called this...

  How big will these things grow?

  Not far from the door, one of the creatures holds a dead man in its furled limbs, like a child clutching a teddy bear to its sleeping breast. It must have woken, seized this lab worker, then returned to its slumber. This must have been the man whose shrieks drew me toward this room. He is flattened horribly in some places and bulging even more horribly in others.

  “They’re not the Outsiders themselves,” Dawn informs me, watching my face as I take it all in. “They’re spawn. They’re an army...”

  Drawing closer to another of the animal-like beings, I see that its life support monitor shows a flat line. I hear another monitor buzzing an alert, nearby; another creature is flat-lining. The earthquake has taken its toll on them. Just as it seems the followers of Ugghiutu brought about the first great earthquake in Paxton, two decades ago, I wonder if the enemies of Ugghiutu have brought about this one. To tear his massive, dreaming form. To break his body and break his hold on this city.

  Or was this earthquake simply the work of the blind god of Nature?

  Suddenly I think of Falco, Pete and Hoop down in the underworld. I hope they’re all right, that they survived this. This time has the Church of the Burning Eye been totally buried, flattened?

  I think about Saleet. Is she safe, wherever she is out there in the city? How extensive is the damage? Is this, then, the Apocalypse?

  “Help me kill the rest of them,” Dawn says, “before anyone sees us, or more of these things wake up.” And she doesn’t point her gun at the first of the spawn, doesn’t need plasma. She simply goes to its life support unit, touches a few keys, and flips a single switch. I lean over her shoulder to watch what she does. I follow her to the next unit, just to watch her again. It looks simple enough, so I cross to the opposite wall of monsters. We work our way down the line. There are no visible reactions in the sleeping infant monsters that have been grown in this factory...but yes, I do notice something. The gills are starting to pulse more erratically, more slowly, and then they are becoming still. Several beasts quietly snort a few mucus bubbles from these gills, which burst and trail fluid down their flanks. But there is no heaving, no convulsions, the tentacles do not come uncoiled. Peaceful euthanasia. Or, more properly, infanticide.

  “When we’re done,” Dawn calls over to me, “give me that gun. It has rockets in it. I’m going to set fire to this room. There are some other rooms, too, we need to destroy.”

  I glance at the gun slung over my shoulder, even more afraid of it than before. Rockets? I ask, “Why didn’t you shut these things down earlier, Dawn, if you were trying to destroy this place from the inside?”

  “I’ve been sabotaging their efforts all along, since I started with them four months ago. They didn’t know it was me. These things would all be bigger than houses and roaming the streets now if I hadn’t been mucking with the works. I did everything I could without giving myself away. I was waiting to get closer...they were starting to trust me...”

  “The one that came awake – is it because they’re ready to go on their own, now?”

  “No, they aren’t ready. But it was awakened prematurely by the quake; it must have disrupted its life support in such a way as to give it a jolt, I suppose.”

  We are nearing the end of the hall, at last. We’ve had to clamber over a small mountain of debris to reach the last of the spawn, and I take Dawn by the waist to help her hop down off a fallen girder. Monster-killing is a bit awkward for her with those high-heeled shoes of hers. When I’ve lowered her down, she smiles up at me. “I’m glad I’m not alone in this, Chris.”

  “Where are the rest of your people, Dawn? Why were you alone here?”

  “There aren’t many of us left. They’ve killed most of us. Not that there ever were many of us. But the others have other battles to fight. On Earth. On other colonized worlds. We have to spread ourselves thin...”

  “I’m glad I’m not alone, too,” I tell her.

  “You need to join us, Chris.”

  “I don’t know...I know I should...but I never wanted to make a career of this. All I ever wanted to do was avenge my girlfriend.” I sigh, “I lost her to them.”

  “If you really did bring Cephalon down on your own, then we need you, Chris. You can’t be selfish, when you know what we’re facing here...”

  “It isn’t that I’m selfish. It’s just...just that I do what I can. And I’d rather do it alone. Well, alone except for my new girlfriend. She helped me against Cephalon...”

  “Where is she now? Who is she?”

  “Sh
e’s Saleet Yekeema-Ur. Petar Yekemma-Ur’s daughter.”

  “Petar Yekemma-Ur?” Dawn looks suddenly horrified. “Chris, don’t you realize?”

  “About what?”

  “About Yekemma-Ur? For God’s sake – he’s one of them!”

  I stammer, “One of them...Saleet’s father...”

  “He isn’t just one of them, in fact...I think he’s their leader, here in Punktown.”

  “It can’t be...”

  “Why can’t it be?”

  “His daughter’s a police officer!”

  Dawn throws up her hands. “And? How much do you really know about her, Christopher?”

  “I told you!” I snap. “She helped me ruin Cephalon!”

  “Saleet did that?” a voice behind me says.

  I begin to spin, but halfway through my spin it turns into a duck. Shots are cracking, first from one direction and then the other. But Dawn’s shots come second. And they come too late. I see her stumble backwards and fall, with blood spattered across her crisp white blouse.

  Springing back to my feet, I raise the assault engine to find that Petar Yekemma-Ur is sheltered underneath the debris Dawn and I climbed over, and pointing a pistol at me over the top of a slanting girder. He could have already killed me, too, if he’d wanted.

  “Fucker,” I hiss, my fingers aching to press every trigger on my killing machine. But that cold cyclops eye is staring me right in the face. And behind it, in shadow, floats the gray handsome face of my lover’s father.

  “Just what have you gotten my daughter into, Mr. Ruby?” he asks sternly, as a father would do when confronting the boy who’s impregnated his princess.

  “Tell me she isn’t in this with you!” I blurt.

  “You know she isn’t. But I only wish she wasn’t in this with you, Mr. Ruby. I had no idea I was hiring such trouble makers.” He jerks his chin past me, in Dawn’s direction. “Then again, look who’s been doing my hiring.”

  “I don’t want to have to kill you,” I bluff.

  “You’d never get a shot off before I’d cleaned out your skull, little boy.”

  “These things you’re making...you think they’ll spare Saleet? And spare you?”

  “When the Great Old Ones arise again, we who were their chosen servants will be at their sides.”

  “You’ll be under their feet, like bugs. They won’t need you anymore.”

  “My daughter...” Yekemma-Ur changes the subject “...you’re romantically involved with her, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I reply defiantly, but I hear my voice crack. I know he’ll want to kill me more for this fact, than the fact that I’ve just helped exterminate the brood of his gods. I expect to be shot right this very second...

  “Have you...have you slept with her?”

  A beat of hesitation. My finger ever so lightly caresses a smooth trigger. I have no idea what it might unleash from the weapon’s combined arsenal. Would I even hit the Kalian, set back amongst the debris as he is, that metal girder angled in front of him? But he has a clear shot. I can feel that gun muzzle as if it presses against the skin of my forehead.

  “Yes,” I answer quietly.

  Another beat. He nods resignedly. “Then I’ve lost her. I’ve lost my daughter as surely as if you had raped and murdered her, Mr. Ruby.” He says this so calmly. That’s the scariest part of all. “You dirtied her. You stained her very soul. She is irredeemable now. Lost to me.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

  “She must die with all the rest, now. In fact...in fact, Mr. Ruby, I want you to know this. That I am now going to have to kill Saleet myself.”

  “You don’t love her.”

  “How dare you!” he bellows. I flinch. It’s as if he just fired his gun over my head. “How dare you suggest I don’t love my child! It is because I love her that I must kill her! Destroy the blasphemy you have made of her!”

  “You can’t kill her if you love her. And you can’t kill me, because she loves me. If you killed me she’d hate you. She’d hate you, Petar...”

  “That is because you have poisoned her mind!” Yekemma-Ur roars, spittle flying from his fanatic’s lips. “You’ve defiled her! My beautiful child!”

  “Please...” I whimper, my appeals to his reason and his emotions having failed. Now panic and despair are rushing in. Terror.

  “Please spare you? Spare you, is that it? After you murdered my daughter? The only reason you are still alive is because I can not conceive of a death that befits...”

  To my left, something huge and dark rears up, tearing cables out of its life support system, snapping a tube that sprays a life-giving solution. I look up to see a rubbery purple tree looming above me, a swarm of serpentine limbs waving at its summit. It’s as if Yekemma-Ur’s shouting voice has woken this entity from its sleep...

  I hurl myself away from it, ducking between two of its sleeping brothers. The last of the brood, which Dawn and I didn’t have the chance to kill yet...

  Distracted by the awakened monster, Saleet’s father fires after me, but too late. I hear a bullet thunk into the hide of the slumbering creature I throw myself behind.

  The roused monster falls forward onto its belly, its tentacles still snaking in the air. It drags itself a few uncertain steps forward.

  In my direction...

  “See, Ruby!” I hear Yekemma-Ur cry out, with the fervor of an evangelist. “Ugghiutu’s children rise to avenge me!”

  From the floor between the two sleeping spawn, I watch the one that crawls toward me. The white tendrils move as if tasting vibrations, fingering the trail of air molecules I have displaced in my wake. Lying on my back, I lift the assault engine up and point it at the encroaching nightmare. I want to scream, but the scream turns to stone in my constricted throat. Those snakes...Medusa...

  I squeeze one of the triggers.

  A whoosh, a streak, and an apparently largish projectile disappears inside the creature’s front, just below the ring of its tentacles.

  A single beat...

  And then it explodes from within.

  Rockets, Dawn said.

  Meat flies in all directions, in all cuts from steak to hamburger, and all of it vile. It splatters around me and across me, slides wetly down the sides of its dozing brothers. A great waterfall of sap is disgorged out of the huge, ragged pit in the beast’s chest. It slumps forward and the tentacles smack the floor, lie inert, without so much as a tremor or nervous convulsion. Now I can see that the back and sides of the thing have long splits, like cracks that show the white meat under the purple.

  I spring to my feet, slabs of flesh dropping off me, jump out from between the sheltering monsters, and – without aiming – launch a second missile into that mountain of debris. Then I’m diving for cover again...

  There seems to be yet another earthquake behind me.

  Fragments of rubble rain, clatter, then the rain subsides. There is relative stillness, though klaxons still wail beyond this room. Fire crackles. Aching, covered in the blood of a god’s offspring, I hoist myself to my feet, stumble warily out into the center of the hallway...

  I don’t see Yekemma-Ur inside the now even more twisted heap of ruin. But through the smoke I’ve added to the mist already in the air, I hear one long, drawn-out, utterly pitiful moan of agony.

  I go to him, stepping over this hunk of ceiling, stepping over that wrenched support arm. And there he is, lying on his back, half under the wreckage. Crouching down next to him, keeping the gun trained on him (though I won’t use that trigger again), I ascertain that he doesn’t have his pistol any more. After all, one arm and half his chest are pinned under that big girder he was hiding behind, and the other hand hangs off its wrist by just a scrap of tissue.

  His eyes slowly open, black and deep as space, but they don’t appear to be seeing me.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper to him.

  “Why?” he gurgles, through the blood in his throat.

  “Because I love your daught
er,” I tell him.

  “She’ll hate you now,” he croaks. I expect him to smile, triumphant, gloating, a small sadistic vengeance. Instead, after a moment, blindly staring, he says, “Save her from them, if they come. If they come...protect her.”

  I nod. “I will.”

  “I do love her, you know,” he rasps. “I’m...proud of her.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  And I watch his eyes close.

  ***

  ON THE VT news, they show the fires. Alvine Products is just another of these fires, and I’m certain no one will look closely into it. No one will know how the fires were aided by rockets and beams. How a lab filled with tank after tank of aquariums – in which were piled thousands of small tentacled creatures in amniotic baths – was riddled with bullets and voracious plasma capsules before it, too, burned. I hope no innocents, trapped in rubble, lost in the building’s maze, were killed as a result of my actions. It is a war. It is very ugly, and very sad...

  There is a huge crack that runs diagonally across the wall of my flat, and it caused dozens of shiny banana-colored tiles to drop off like autumn leaves. I gather them up. I try calling Saleet again on her remote comlink. She isn’t answering. I look out my window and see it’s raining below ground, and there’s lightning too, but that’s only burst water pipes and sparking cables overhead. I have power, but I can see there’s a blackout on the next block over. Sirens still ululate.

  My computer beeps, and I rush to it. On the screen, her gray face shiny with sweat and her hair coming frizzily out of the thick braid that tries to contain it, is Saleet, calling from a payphone. Someone is sobbing in the background.

  “Thank God!” I cry. “I thought you were dead!”

  “I thought you were dead!” she snaps. “Didn’t they teach you the fire drill at Alvine? All personnel were supposed to gather for a head count in the parking lot, not go home.”

  “Come on, Sal, I’m sure not many people stuck around for that...”

  “Chris,” she says, and suffering flows suddenly and fully into her weary face, her ritual scars making it looked crudely patched together from cadavers’ flesh, heavy unified brows contracted in intense misery, “my father isn’t accounted for. And he didn’t go home to my mother...”