MudMan (The Golem Chronicles Book 1)

by James Hunter

  I push the visions of my own mutilated body away, force them from my mind. No point thinkin’ on it. I fight against my restraints, flexing arms and legs, going through the same motions I’ve gone through a million times since they strapped me down. Me and my brother, we’re gonna die here, no doubt about it. I hope Ross goes in his sleep so he can die looking his sharpest. Vain as hell, I know, but it’d make him happy. Me though? I’m gonna fight until they cut the beatin’ heart outta my chest. Ross has his vanity and I’ve got my pride. And that dirty Kraut-eater can’t take my pride. Can’t make me stop fighting.

  He can take my arms and legs, cut me open like a side of beef, but he can’t take my pride from me—that’s something I have to give away, and I refuse.

  The vision went as quickly as it came, flashing and retreating with the speed of a synapse firing, and in its wake Levi’s brand flared to new life, burning with the pain of that poor man’s wounds. The vines, with their deadly flowers and digging tentacles, wouldn’t stop him. He channeled rage, tapping into it like a drug and riding it like a wave. He brought his hands up above his head, letting his dual pickaxes blur and melt together, leaving one massive pick in their wake. A roar ripped its way free from Levi’s throat as he brought the tool whipping through the air, crashing into the floor with a BOOM that rattled the walls.

  Slabs of stone bucked and cracked, a personal earthquake rippling through the room, though partially masked by the already heaving floor.

  The effect, however, was unmistakable: A fissure, thick and jagged as a lightning bolt, shot forward, shattering a portion of the golden arc. The energy emanating from the ring guttered and died in a heartbeat, here one second, gone the next. Ryder was doubled over in the center of the circle, gun clutched in one hand, while her other hand groped at her center, as if she were trying to hold her insides, inside. Levi didn’t know what the power field had done to her, but she didn’t look good. Her skin was too pale and sweat matted her hair and rolled down her face. She looked like a terminal cancer patient on their last leg.

  The computer’s words replayed in Levi’s mind: “A viable homunculus has been detected … A viable homunculus has been detected.” Something was wrong with her.

  Homunculus.

  Things were starting to coalesce in Levi’s mind, a rough picture taking shape. Ryder’s inhuman hunger. The reason why Ryder had been left alive, when all the other captives had perished. The way she clutched her stomach, like a pregnant mother subconsciously cradling her unborn child. Even the words from the note made a certain sense: She is the first viable subject in thirty years.

  The Kobocks hadn’t taken something out of Ryder, they’d put something into her. A homunculus. Though Levi wasn’t as well-versed in the mystic or occult as many who ran in the preternatural circles, he knew exactly what a homunculus was—he’d read about such creatures many, many times. First described in De Natura Rerum by a fifteenth century mage and alchemist, homunculi were artificially created vessels, humanoid in appearance but lacking the divine spark of God. Levi knew the term because golems were considered to be such creatures, too.

  Ryder was playing host to something, a manufactured monster using her body as a hatchery. Levi didn’t know how this thing was connected to him, but he was certain there were no coincidences. Far too many similarities for that.

  Chuck darted into view, sweeping into the circle, hooking hands beneath Ryder and hoisting her up to her feet. He paused just long enough to look at Levi over one shoulder, eyes wide as he watched more vines winding their way over the Mudman, pulling him to the floor.

  “Run! I’ll find you!” Levi shouted. Chuck nodded, bent low, and scooped Ryder up, flinging her over one shoulder as he broke for the hallway at the far side of the room. With the pair of them gone, hopefully safe, Levi turned his attention fully to his own predicament. Pickaxes were great for stone, but lousy against weeds, so it was time for a change. His right hand—fully operational—reverted to normal, while the left hand—still lacking fingers—morphed into a wicked, curved-edged scythe.

  Then he went to work.

  His right hand pulled vines taut, his left hand flashed in a blur, carving away great swathes of tangled greenery. Splashes of golden ichor flew free with every vine, but Levi paid them no mind. Pain was irrelevant, only escape mattered. Slowly he fought his way back—first for inches, then for feet—his progress a seemingly Sisyphean task.

  Grab, pull, slash, hack, repeat.

  Chunks of vegetation rained down in sprays of sludgy green.

  Vines shrieked and slithered, a writhing ball of snakes enraged at his defiance, lashing out to ensnare him further. Levi kept his mind to the work.

  He would fight.

  Grab, pull, slash, hack, repeat.

  They could take his arms and legs, but they couldn’t make him stop fighting.

  Grab, pull, slash, hack, repeat.

  He tore creeping barbs from his arms and legs. They lost their tenuous hold, and he yanked free the roots wriggling beneath his skin like IV-tubing.

  Greenery flailed in response, tentacle-vines whipping through the air as black flowers toppled to the ground, rudely shorn off by Levi’s impromptu gardening shear.

  The Mudman backpedaled as he worked, ponderously making his way for the connecting hallway Chuck and Ryder had taken, the one which descended deeper into the bowels of this prison. It took another handful of minutes to break into the clear, but as soon as he managed the deed, he turned and hurled himself toward the exit.

  “Alert! Alert! Alert!” he heard from behind—Siphonei calling to no one. “Hostile threats have infiltrated the facility, all hands alert. Facility lockdown protocol LG19-B3, activated. Termination protocol F13-5, activated. All hands be advised, lesser guardians have been activated. Report to your workstations and stand by with your credentials for verification.”

  The ground rumbled beneath Levi as if the whole building were protesting his intrusion—he spun just in time to find a spongy metal door sliding free from the ancient stone wall, cutting him off from the entry room with its deadly vegetation. Sealing him in. He reached back and ran a hand over the surface of the door. It gave slightly beneath the pressure of his palm—tender like a raw cut of beef—but there was also something rigid and unyielding buried within. He didn’t want to go back that way, but now he didn’t even have the option. Deeper into the prison was the only way now, and if he couldn’t find that emergency exit, this place might well be his prison, too.

  A very disconcerting thought.

  Still, Levi was not one to dwell too long or hard on such things.

  If a door closed well and good—in this case both literally and metaphorically—there was rarely any point in trying to pry it open. Just put your nose to the grindstone and press on.

  He wheeled about, eyes scanning the passageway. The hallway he found himself in was lit with murky purple light, leaking from circular light fixtures affixed to the walls at ten-foot intervals. The light was weak, sporadic, but would manage fine, though he hoped Chuck and Ryder had managed to hang on to their flashlights. He could navigate with his stone sense, but they would have a mite more trouble.

  He hunkered down on his haunches, drawing a few deep breaths as he wrestled with the bone-deep weariness—both from his injuries and his stretching absence from Inworld—eating at him. Every second he languished was a second wasted, a second more for Chuck and Ryder to hopelessly entangle themselves in danger.

  It would be nice to rest, though, just a little.

  Unfortunately, niceties such as rest were for people with time and options. He had neither. With a grumble he pushed himself up, fatigued legs carrying him onward. After a few scant minutes of dreary trudging, a four-way juncture loomed before him—tunnels shooting off left, right, and straight ahead.

  He glanced around, eyes scanning high and low, looking for any sign of Chuck and Ryder’s passing, intentional or not. He’d been hoping one of the two would’ve had the presence of mind to l
eave behind a marker—a piece of trash, say, or a dirty sock—indicating which way they’d gone. But no.

  Nothing. He needed to lower his standards a bit, he suspected.

  He popped his knuckles, rolled his neck, ground his teeth. They’d been scared and under tremendous pressure, he reminded himself, so mistakes were understandable. Completely understandable. He still wanted to smash in the wall. After all, understandable mistakes were still liable to make his job a hundred times more difficult. He bent over and touched the floor, pressing his palm flat and leaning into the limb while his senses trickled into the bedrock.

  This facility continued to rebuff his attempts to infiltrate and read the earth all around him—courtesy of the sentient plant life, he was sure—but he could work around that in a pinch. Now that Levi knew what he was up against he could adjust appropriately. Most of the prison, its myriad of twisting passageways and rooms, lay bare in Levi’s mind like a 3-D map, but there were whole sections of the complex that were invisible to him. As if someone had taken an eraser to those sectors of the map.

  But, those invisible sections did tell him something. Those sections, Levi now understood, were areas heavily infested by the living flowers, tacca chantrieri gigantis, which meant those were the areas best avoided. True, he’d managed to free himself from the tangles of vegetation at the entry checkpoint, but he wasn’t keen on doing it again, not in his weakened state. Next, he shifted his focus away from the temple as a whole, probing for the gentle pitter-patter of feet or immobile hotspots, which signaled life.

  There were several such hotspots emanating from different points throughout the sprawling facility.

  Too many points for Ryder and Chuck to produce alone, which meant they weren’t the only ones in this place. Professor Wilkie was out there somewhere, but so was the person responsible for crucifying and disemboweling Wilkie’s lab assistant.

  He couldn’t tell which hotspots were which, not with so much interference, but he could distinctly sense three different parties: one lingered deep, deep, deep in the complex, near the pyramid’s apex, nestled in a room swarming with blooming plant life. Naturally, that was the room containing the emergency exit. He’d have to make his way there eventually, but he wasn’t looking forward to what he’d find. The second hotspot moved through a corridor off to his right. The last lay only a few minutes from his current location—in a room not far down the left-hand path.

  Most disturbing of all, though, were the pockets of shifting invisibility—five or six of them—patrolling through the hallways. To Levi’s earth sense, those invisible blips of motion held the same signature as the immobile sections of prison infested with vegetation, but these were, without a doubt, on the prowl. Hunting.

  He pushed those things, whatever they were, away from his mind and took the hallway to the left. Since he couldn’t be sure where Chuck and Ryder were, he’d make for the nearest hotspot. The left-hand passageway, identical to the one he’d just come from, ran straight as an arrow for a few hundred meters, before coming to an end at another intersection, this one with a single hallway jutting off sharply to the right. Here, Levi halted, pressing his back against the wall while trailing his good hand across the stone.

  This was it.

  The hallway to the right was actually the entrance to a small room, with two more stony tunnels snaking off in opposite directions. The blip was in that room, though Levi couldn’t discern whether whatever waited was friend or foe. Only one way to find out, he supposed: he curled the fingers of his serviceable hand, then reformed the limb into a colossal double-edged battle-axe. Levi liked to think of himself as an optimistic realist—hope for the best, plan for the worst—but so far, this whole mess had been one bad turn after another. He wasn’t going to take any more chances.

  Should whatever lay in the other room be unfriendly … Levi smiled, an ugly gash across his face. Well, he was in the mood for a little justifiable bloodshed.

  NINETEEN:

  Into the Dark

  Ryder hobbled down the connecting corridor on wobbly legs that refused to work properly. Thankfully she had Chuck by her side, one arm slung around her shoulders, helping her stay upright and moving forward. The sound of battle—of mayhem, chaos, and death—floated to her from the guardroom: the ground shaking and rattling. Levi’s gravelly shouts of pain. The shrieking alarm of black flowers. All those noises seemed to build a brutal soundtrack that shouted for her to turn back. To help Levi. It was the soundtrack of a man dying.

  She’d seen him fight and kill scores of dark and grisly things.

  He’d rescued her from the Deep Downs where she’d been held captive and killed the Kobocks responsible for her abduction. He’d murdered more of the creepy-ass blue-men on the side of the road—not to mention the boar-faced driver from the Caddy. The point was, he was one tough-ass son of a bitch, but how could anyone fight what was in that room? A monstrous plant with human intelligence that had a thousand plus years of experience?

  The way those vines had wrapped themselves around his legs, thorns digging into his body, while those flowers shot their whipping tendrils up underneath the skin, rooting around inside him. Fucking disgusting. Even as she stumbled along, the desire to clutch her stomach was overwhelming. She could almost imagine something rooting around inside of her. She couldn’t help but envision those vines ripping their way inside her, like in that Evil Dead movie. Branches and vines shooting up between her legs and putting down roots right in her guts.

  She shuddered, but kept on moving, refusing to look back.

  “Run! I’ll find you!” The Mudman’s final words echoed in her head.

  Running wasn’t the brave thing to do—better to go back and make sure Levi got clear, like she’d done with the Sprawl wolves.

  Except she wasn’t brave, and that thing with the wolves was a fluke, one great big mistake, though she was ashamed to admit it. Sort of. She hadn’t meant to save Levi, not that she’d really saved him, anyway—more like bought him a little time. She’d tripped while running away and by the time she’d gained her feet, Levi was right there and so was that bat-eared fuck. She’d fired out of fear and self-preservation, not heroics. She was a survivor, a scavenger—she would’ve left Levi to die in a minute if it meant making it out alive.

  Still, she found herself dragging her feet. It was hard to leave him; she didn’t really like the disagreeable asshole, but she owed him, no doubt about that. Nothing could get her back into that guardroom, though, guilty conscience or no, not after what she’d seen during her “body scan.” She couldn’t really explain it, but somehow her mind had connected with Siphonei, tapped into the woman-machine’s subconscious. Horrifying shit. The images kept on cycling through her head as she limped along, just incoherent flashes:

  Her body strapped down to a stainless steel gurney, harsh white light blasting her eyes while a host of tubes ran into her arms, and nose, and mouth—some delivering medication or nutrients, while others vacuumed her free of fluids. Blood, stolen, recycled, altered, and fed into a massive torpedo-shaped flower, big as a full-grown man, which reeked of decay and spoiled milk. A tangle of vines vomited outward from the base of the enormous blossom, snaking their way into her every orifice.

  Next: A portly man with a round face and a swath of brown hair knelt, completely naked, in a pool of congealing blood. She couldn’t remember his name, a sort of forgettable man, but she knew he was an under-warden. A tech analyst or maintenance worker, one of hundreds. That much she was sure. A red pool, thick and viscous, spread out around him; a series of symbols ran over his chubby body, all painted on in glistening crimson. A corpse lay in front of him. An older man with full silver hair, who she knew was the High-Warden, Lir-Thildo. His well-coiffed hair was matted with chunks of skull and globs of more blood.

  The naked kneeling man had caved his head in with a jagged shard of stone.

  Last and worst of all, she caught a glimpse of a monstrous thing, of the thing trapped in this godforsaken plac
e. The wyrm god, the one that kept cropping up—first in the Kobock temple, then in that photo from the professor’s camp. Except this glimpse was no painting or carving. No picture. She wasn’t sure if the vision was some kind of hallucination or memory, but if felt as real as the biting heat of a flame.

  She saw a pool of orange, a pit of churning fire like the inside of a volcano—blacks, reds, and various hues of gold, mixing and swirling in ever shifting patterns. And lurking in those molten waters? A bloated beast, large as a whale and long as a city block. The creature was all chitinous plates the color of a fresh scab, and waving, multi-jointed spider legs. Thousands of the spindly appendages pushed the creature’s bulk through the fiery waves. Worst of all, though, were the eyes. A million glinting insect eyes covering its head and serpentine torso.

  Fuck, she hoped to never see that thing again.

  So no, she wouldn’t go back into that room, not if it meant even a remote possibility of seeing those awful visions again. She had enough troublesome memories without adding in the nightmares of some dead woman trapped inside a fucking plant. Levi will be fine, she told herself. He’s tough as an old dump truck. A grain of guilt lurked at the back of her mind, though, rubbing at her like a piece of gravel in the bottom of her shoe.

  She slowed, hesitated, and after a second, craned her head toward the way they’d come from, searching for the Mudman. Empty hallway all the way back. Chuck tugged at her, strong arms urging her forward.

  “Yo, let’s move it, girl,” he said. “Dude told us to run, so we run. Guy might be screwier than a bag of screws, but he’s also meaner than a roided up pit bull. Don’t sweat it. Levi knows how to fight and he knows how to smoke shit. Let’s just do what he said.”