by Ryan Notch
Down on the other end of the hallway was Seth, apparently trying one of the apartments himself. Jack froze, the primitive instinct to hide overpowering his reason. Unaccountably Seth froze too, looking right at Jack. Terra walked out behind him with the soda. She immediately saw what he was looking at and stopped.
Maybe he’ll leave us alone, Jack thought. Maybe he’s trapped too. Maybe we can work together.
Even an entire hallway away, Jack could see the expression on Seth’s face change from surprise to anger. Seth took a step towards them. Just one step, but it was enough for Jack’s freeze instinct to switch to flight.
“Go,” he yelled at Terra.
He ran with everything he had, but she quickly passed him. He felt like he was running in a nightmare, not remembering how to do it. His leg failed him at every step, dropping his speed in half. They ran around the corner, out of sight of Seth. Terra went up the front stairs and he followed, hoping Seth would mistakenly run past the stairs instead. He wasn’t even up one flight before he realized this wasn’t happening though, as he heard Seth lumbering up the stairs behind him, each step crashing like a sledgehammer.
Jack had thought Terra would head for their apartments, but instead stepped out onto the darkened third floor and headed right. Jack knew he wasn’t going to make it in time and turned to face Seth from the top of the flight of stairs, hoping to use the height to his advantage and take Seth with a blow to head from the cricket bat.
Seth immediately rounded the corner and saw Jack at the top of the few steps. He looked like a bull ready to charge, which is exactly what he did.
He can see the bat, but doesn’t know about the knife in my waistband, Jack thought in a flash. Might be able to surprise him.
But before Seth could get in reach something happened so fast Jack didn’t at first recognize it. Precipitated only by a scratching sound on the wood, a creature pounded up the stairs behind Seth and tackled him to the floor.
Jack stood frozen, watching the appalling scene before him. The creature rended and tore at Seth. Its slick, diseased-looking grayish skin and dingy underwear showed it to be the same thing Jack had encountered in Terra’s apartment, but even in the few hours since then it had changed. Bony, sharp looking protuberances had grown out along its spine and sides. Its immense black eyes had shrunk down into its skull, making them less of a target. It had long black teeth and claws which it chewed at Seth with. And for no apparent reason, seemed to have an extra leg growing from its back.
He wasn’t sure what to do. Part of him said to take a swing at the thing while it was distracted with Seth, who was struggling to turn over and face the thing. But another part of him recognized that there was no possible victor in this situation that wouldn’t make things worse for him.
Mostly he was just frozen with fear.
Too his horror, the question was answered for him. With a scream of rage Seth forced himself to his feet, and with the thing still holding on slammed his back into the wall with such an impact it dented in the drywall. The thing made a choking noise and dropped stunned to the ground. Seth grabbed it round the neck and lifted it to eye level, then slammed it into the wall again. With his other hand he started pounding at it. Massive rage filled blows that soon smashed one of the black eyes, which cracked like crystal. The thing struggled feebly, but didn’t have a chance.
Jack ran, hoping to get far enough away before Seth noticed. He went the opposite way down the dark hallway as Terra had, not wanting to put Seth on her trail. He tried the first door he found. Artesia’s, which they had avoided yesterday after the conversation with Noel next door. To his wonder, it was open. He didn’t stop for a moment to look behind him.
Chapter 35
********************
Jack dodged into the apartment, spinning around and locking the door behind him. He froze in place, breath held and head against the door, eyes wide in shock. He stood there for some seconds, unblinking and dead silent.
Not silent because he was concerned about hiding from anything in the hallway. Jack had immediately forgotten any threat from outside the doorway. He was thinking of what he’d seen when he first ran into the room, before he’d turned around and faced the door as he was seeing now. The scene was burned against his eyes, like the afterimage of a flash from a picture. Only for the barest moment had he seen what was behind him, but it was enough that he prayed he had seen it wrong.
“Please God no more,” he mumbled. “Please I don’t want any more...”
There was no help for it, he turned to see if his wish had come true. A nightmare instead.
It was Artesia lying there on the floor, and of course that made sense since it was her apartment. It certainly looked like a model’s apartment. Some part of his mind registered it, though he saw everything in peripheral vision only. Black leather couch, modern art on the walls, fashion magazines on the coffee table. Artesia lying naked on the living room floor, tentacles growing out from the slit between her legs.
Jack walked closer, not exactly feeling scared. Not exactly feeling anything anymore. The only sensation he was aware of was a blackness encroaching on the edges of his vision, and a high far away sound keening in his ears. His mind had gone away somewhere, leaving him to just stare without thinking.
A glance showed that the tentacles were everywhere. Growing into the faucet, the drains, slipping past the electrical socket covers into the walls. Artesia herself looked beautiful. More beautiful than ever, even though she was clearly several months pregnant.
Jack walked over and around the tentacles until he was standing directly over her. Her skin was golden, sun kissed and smooth. Her belly was distended with the pregnancy, her navel having gone from a perfect innie to an outtie from the pressure. Her breasts had swollen to a fuller size. He could see them rising and falling ever so little with her shallow breathing.
Her features were almost glowing. He felt a distant pull at his heart to look at her radiance. Her big brown eyes stared up unblinking at the ceiling, a look of unimaginable horror reflected in them.
Her arms were at her side, fingernails still painted the same glittery red they’d been the last time he saw her. Though they had grown some without being touched up, so the bases of each were clear. Her toenails were painted the same color. Her legs spread wide to make way for the mass of tentacles growing from between them. From inside her.
Jack heard someone try and open the front door, stopped by the bolt. He ran to the closet, his body responding out of a sense of fear his mind seemed incapable of feeling. The closet had slats in the door which he was afraid he might be seen through, so he slid back as far as he could. He felt oddly like he might fall soon, so sat down back behind the shoes. Clutching his cricket bat between his curled up legs and watching the living room through the door.
Soon a key was turned in the lock, and someone walked in. It was Collin, who soon stood staring down at Artesia.
He’ll let us out now, thought Jack. Now that he sees what’s happened.
But instead Collin smiled at her. Smiled in a way that made Jack compress his lips together to keep from screaming.
“Hi sweetie,” said Collin. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to come see you in so long. I’ve had a lot to take care of. Things have gotten a little out of control in the brownstone.”
Collin laid down besides her, curling up against her. Jack started hearing that strange keening in his ears again, so loud that it was a few seconds before he could hear again what Collin was saying.
“...wondered why you were so interested in me. I mean I know I have my charms, but the Artesia Rowes of the world do not throw themselves at the CollinAlthauses. Of course it was obvious that it was from the signal I was broadcasting over all the intercoms, but why that response? Was it a change in me or a change in you?”
Collin started caressing her stomach. Jack felt almost like he was intruding, a pervert. Yet he couldn’t take his eyes off the spectacle.
“Having sex
with you wasn’t what I expected,” continued Collin. “I’d thought about it plenty of times, just like every other guy whose met you, I guess. But it was kind of spiritual. Not like it would be with Noel, but still amazing. I thought for awhile it might be a reward from my God. It wasn’t until recently that I figured it out.
“It needed you to get pregnant, for the fetus. It needed the stem cells, since they are the only types of cells that can turn into any body part. The same cell that could become an eye or a finger could also grow into all of this.”
Collin gestured at the tentacles, the first indication Jack saw that he was even aware of them.
“I’d like to say that It altered your psychology somehow to make you attracted to brainy types, but I doubt it can conceptualize our psychology nearly that well. More likely a simple tweaking of our pheromones was more within its understanding, and certainly within its abilities once we were inundated with the signal from the intercoms.
“I would have been able to figure all that out sooner if I were a biologist, but being a mathematician I was able to figure out the tentacles much faster. I only had to look at the ones in the walls to see the pattern. They’re fractals, you see.”
Collin smiled as he said this, a private joke.
“Well I guess a model isn’t going to know what a fractal is. A fractal is a kind of geometric shape that repeats itself under all levels of magnification. No matter how close you zoom in on it, it still looks like a different version of the whole. Self-similarity on all scales. They can make the most beautiful pictures...
“This fractal though...it’s beautiful too, but I don’t recognize the formula. It’s very complex. The Dark God told me that when it gets complex enough it’s going to create a portal somehow. The whole building will be our Lord’s gateway. Coming through all the walls at once, interior and exterior. It’ll be miraculous...
“It’s already started to work in a few places. It grew new bits and pieces using some of the people in the apartment. Not pieces of itself, but pieces of some kind of body. They left though, floating up off one of the balconies into the night. I don’t know where they were going...”
Collin was silent for a while, contemplative.
“That’s not what I came here to tell you though. I came to tell you why I rejected you.”
Collin moved his hand from her stomach up the her breast. Cupping it and caressing the nipple with his thumb.
“After you got pregnant I know you still wanted to be with me. You couldn’t help it, with your hormones left as they were. I wanted to keep having sex with you too, how could I not? But once I began to realize what was inside you it just seemed wrong somehow. I wondered if Joseph had kept having sex with Mary while she was pregnant with the son of God. Something of an indignity for Jesus, I would think. I don’t know if the Bible is really specific on that case.
“Then again, I think you can guess that I never read it.”
With that Collin kissed her on the cheek gently and got up.
“Take care of yourself sweetie. Not everyone gets to be the mother of God. I’ll come check on you later.”
Collin walked out of the apartment, locking it behind him. Jack sat in the closet a long time. After a while he became aware that he was shaking his head back and forth.
“This is what it feels like to go insane...this is what it feels like to go insane,” he whispered to himself over and over.
He lifted himself to his feet, holding the wall while a wave of dizziness passed. He walked out of the closet and over to Artesia mechanically. He couldn’t even feel himself doing it, as if he was floating. He knelt down besides her, looking into her eyes which seemed now to be silently screaming. Before he knew what he was doing he had his hands wrapped around her neck.
He squeezed. Squeezed and squeezed with all his strength. Her breath became ragged then stopped. He could feel her pulse under his thumbs. Feel it weakening. His vision became blurred, tears falling from his eyes onto her face. Rolling down her cheeks.
Her pulse stopped.
Her expression hadn’t changed the whole time he was strangling her. It didn’t change now. He sat there quietly sobbing, wishing he were dead too.
He jumped back as she inhaled deeply. She resumed the peaceful breathing pattern she’d had before, the sound of it rattling in her damaged throat.
In a fit of mania and unreasoned rage at her, he yanked out his kitchen knife and plunged it into her chest. Finding it only impaled a couple inches, he grabbed and pushed down on it harder, putting almost his whole weight on it as it slid deeper.
Jack sat starring at it in shock, as if the deed had been done by someone else in front of his eyes. Just left of the sternum, cutting just a bit into her left breast. Right in her heart.
He knew it was in her heart, because he could see the knife blade twitch with each beat of it.
A beat that wasn’t stopping.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said as he got up. He didn’t know if he was apologizing for hurting her, or for failing. It didn’t matter, nothing really did now it seemed. He picked up his cricket bat and walked from the apartment, careful to avoid the tentacles which spread out like a web.
Chapter 36
********************
Jack and Terra lay on the bed together.
After Jack had left Artesia’s he’d carefully made his way back to his apartment, passing the beaten corpse of the creature on the stairs. He’d noticed numbly that the leg growing from its back was now missing, but didn’t stop to ponder it. Instead he’d gone straight to his place and found Terra waiting there for him. He’d walked in and without saying a word went into his bedroom and laid down. Also wordlessly she had come and lay beside him, curled up against him.
He laid there for hours, until night had fallen again. He wanted to sleep, wanted it even more than he wanted water to drink. But instead he just stared up at the ceiling, seeing Artesia. Seeing what had become of her. Feeling her warm skin under his hands as he pressed them into her throat. He wondered if her throat hurt now, if he’d just made things worse. Wondered if it felt like his, which was burning from dehydration. His tongue swollen with thirst.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” said Jack. “I don’t care what happens to me. I don’t care if I die, I just don’t want to be here anymore.”
“Me too...” said Terra, her voice small.
Jack thought for a while, though it was difficult. His mind wasn’t clear, and he was exhausted.
“I heard that broken glass is really sharp,” he said. “It might not hurt much.”
“I’d rather hurt Collin somehow,” she replied after a bit. “Burn the place down.”
“No point, those tentacles are fireproof.”
“Guess we’ll have to blow it up then,” said Terra sleepily.
Jack smiled a bit at this. “Sure, we’ll just mail order some explosives.”
“We could call in an air strike,” joked Terra, warming to the game.
“Maybe we could build a bomb from household materials.”
“Or we could just break a gas main.”
Jack’s eyes widened at this, and he sat straight up in bed. Terra looked up at him.
“We actually could do that,” he said. “We’ve still got gas going to the furnace. I could just go in there and break the line.”
Terra pushed herself up on her arms, looking awake.
“Collin...” she started, then stopped and looked down thinking. She got off the bed and paced for a bit. Jack watched her, trying to guess what she was thinking.
“Collin would never let us hurt Noel,” she continued. “It is like a bomb. We don’t have to tell him where the broken line is. Don’t you see?”
He was starting too, but let her tell him the rest.
“We could do it like this,” she said thinking aloud. “We find one of the apartments we know is safe and break the gas line to the furnace in there. Then we put a burning candle or something a few apartments away. We fi
nd Collin and tell him if he doesn’t let us out, we don’t tell him how to stop the explosion.”
Jack thought a bit about it. It wasn’t bad, even if it wasn’t perfect.
“How do we know he has a way out,” Jack asked.
“He’s got to! Well, it seems like it anyway. We’ve barely run into him in days of searching. This place isn’t that big. He’s got to have some way of stopping all this anyway.”
The second flaw was so obvious that Jack brought it up just to see what she would say.
“And what if the whole place blows up before we find him? I really have no idea how fast gas travels.”
Terra just shrugged. “Then at least we know we took this place with us.”
Jack was thinking basically the same thing. “Ok, so which apartments do we use? I think if we use ours it will be too obvious.”
She thought a moment. “What about Artesia’s?”
Jack hadn’t told her how it was in there. He considered it, thinking the poison gas might be just the think to put her out of her misery. But he wasn’t going to ever go back there.
“No, that’s no good,” he said.
“Mrs. Cunningham’s?”
Hup Hup HUP, he thought.
“Absolutely not.”
“What about the marijuana plant apartment,” she asked. “It was creepy but not inherently dangerous. And we could put the candles in Jeanie’s apartment a couple doors down. We know that’s empty.”
Jack nodded slowly. He didn’t like that it was on the first floor, so close to Collin. But there weren’t a lot of options that fit the bill.
“Ok then,” he said. “Anything you want to bring with you, better grab it now.”
“No,” she shrugged. “My keepsake box and pictures of old boyfriends can blow up with the rest. I kind of feel like everything in this place is contaminated anyway.”
Jack had been feeling like the whole country was contaminated, so understood the feeling.
