by Myke Cole
And then, a brief and hideous silence broken by the sharp clicks of magazine releases as the cops reloaded. “Ohshitohshitohshit,” one whined.
A bone spur, long as a spear, shot from the mass, catching him through the throat. Another cop simply detonated, spraying them all with the gobbets of meat he had suddenly become. “Get the hell out of here!” the captain shouted, grabbing one of his men by the drag handle on his body armor and hauling him backward.
Downer stepped up, gesturing at the water again. “This isn’t going to do it! I need something more to work with!” Britton opened a gate and sent it sliding past the retreating cops. The blob didn’t even make an effort to dodge, the lurching flesh barreling directly into it. The gate sliced it neatly in half, the edges peeling back to reveal a stack of gristle and organs that followed no anatomical pattern that Britton knew of. It fountained blood, shaking as if in rage, halting.
And then the flesh simply flowed over itself, growing back together and moving forward. A curtain of biting insects swarmed over its surface, magicked along by Richards. Britton thought he glimpsed slithering shapes in the water biting at the Selfer, snakes or rats. It hardly slowed. Another two cops went down, bent into shapes that made Britton nauseous.
We’re outclassed, Britton thought. Time to get out of here.
But then Downer let out a wet shriek and collapsed, her pelvis and legs twisted into a bloody corkscrew. She twitched, screaming. Therese knelt at her side, eyes closed, magic pouring out over Downer’s mangled body, rolling back the damage.
“Some of it’s dead!” Truelove yelled, his own current reaching out. The Selfer froze, shivering. Deep within the recesses, flesh piled upon flesh, layers of it had turned gangrenous, necrotic strips marbling the lumbering whole. They spread, biting, squirming, the body attacking itself, dead and alive struggling to control the motion of the mass. “It won’t hold her forever, Keystone!” Truelove shouted. “Do something!”
Do what? Cutting and shooting the thing wasn’t going to help. The Selfer’s body had been so completely transformed, he wasn’t even sure if there were vital organs anymore. They’d have to burn it. Maybe that was why it was down where fire would never go? But he had no fire. Coven Four was without a Pyromancer.
The cops retreated past them, still futilely pouring bullets into the mound of flesh. The Selfer leisurely reached out with her magic, twisting them into screaming corpses, one by one.
Britton threw open a gate and barreled through into the SASS schoolhouse. He’d wagered right. Class was back in session, and he scattered desks and tables as he charged Pyre. “Jesus, Britton! What the hell do you think you’re…” Salamander began before taking in Britton’s battle dress and the scene beyond the shimmering gate and lapsing into silence. Britton grabbed the young Pyromancer’s lapels. “Fire! Through that gate! Right now!”
“What?” Pyre squeaked. “No! I can’t…”
Britton raised a hand and clipped him across the face. “Now, you fucker! Right fucking now! Downer!”
“I’ve got it!” she mumbled weakly, her legs untangling beneath Therese’s ministrations, flesh coalescing, bones straight-ening.
Pyre’s head rocked to the side and snapped back, his eyes narrowing. Britton ducked as the flame erupted from his chest, pushing over his shoulder and through the gate. It passed into the sewer and over Downer, who screamed with the effort of shaping it. Britton followed, shutting the portal behind him, not looking to see the reaction in the SASS.
Downer’s work was done by the time his boots hit the catwalk. Five elementals had sprung from the blaze, hunched humanoids with flat heads on flickering shoulders. They leapt across the water, pounding the Selfer with burning fists, igniting patches of greasy skin with every blow. The Selfer screamed in earnest, pain howling from a dozen mouths opening for that express purpose, the teeth glowing and popping like gunshots as the elementals covered it. The corridor was quickly choked with greasy smoke. The stink of cooking meat sent the remaining cops to their knees, retching through their balaclavas.
Britton could feel the current of the Selfer’s magic turn inward, focusing on reconstructing her own flesh. He glimpsed the bubbles of healing flesh through the smoke. The elementals strained, their bodies stretching as they spread their fire across her.
Britton glanced at Downer, the blood unpooling around her, leeching back into her knitting skin. Therese nodded at him. “I’ve got this!”
Britton lurched forward, grabbing one of the cops by his shoulder and hauling him upright. He slapped the bottom of his gun, sending the barrel up to smack his chin. The cop turned to Britton, his eyes wide. Britton shook him, pointing at the Selfer’s burning bulk. “Pour it on! Now! We don’t get another chance!”
The cop shook himself, raised his weapon, and pulled the trigger. The echo of gunfire competed with the roar of the flames. It galvanized the remaining cops, who turned and knelt, adding their own fire to the din. The bullets passed through the flame bodies of the elementals, ripping into the Selfer’s solid flesh as it shrank beneath the flames. A low moaning erupted from the smoke, which began to overtake the corridor, until Britton could see no flesh at all. Britton pushed his flow deep into the thick wall of smoke and opened a gate. He couldn’t see it beyond the tiniest flickering line in the smoke, and from that he worked it up and down, moving it like a cleaver, chopping into whatever remained of the burning bulk of the Selfer.
Her current waned. The smoke began to dissipate, the burning brighter. The conflagration shrank as the elementals consumed what fuel remained, smaller, smaller, until at last a misshapen lump smoked in the center of the shallow water, immobile, stinking.
There was no indication at all that it had ever been human.
Britton felt the magic current gone and rushed to Downer’s side. The girl was sitting up, gingerly moving her legs. “Sarah! Are you okay?”
Downer nodded, her lower lip trembling, eyes going wet. “Oh God, it hurt so bad…” She looked at Therese, who leaned forward, gathering the girl into an embrace.
“No,” Downer said, breaking free, sniffing up her tears. “I’m fine. I should secure the area.” She got to her feet, shaky and wobbling, and limped off, heading toward nothing in particular. The elementals winked out, dispersing into the remaining tendrils of smoke.
Therese made to follow her, but Britton stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t.”
Therese looked at him and nodded. “I know. It’s just that, for a moment there, she was her own age.”
Britton nodded back. “Magic makes you grow up fast. Nobody can fix that.”
Britton turned to Rampart’s corpse, then back to Therese. “There’s nothing you can—”
“Nothing,” she cut him off. “He’s dead.”
“He saved me when I first got to the Source. Saw me through a firefight and got me to the FOB.”
Therese nodded. “It was his job, Oscar. He knew what he signed up for.”
The NYPD captain moved among his remaining men, blubbering. Of the twenty ESU officers who had set out, four remained. “Oh Jesus, oh Jesus fucking Christ,” he whispered, his eyes raw and red-rimmed, from the smoke or the tears Britton couldn’t tell. He knelt by one of his men, scarcely more than a pile of cloth and flesh scraps. He reached out a trembling hand, jerked it back, reached it out again.
“What the fuh, fuh…” he huffed, turning his dazed expression toward Britton. “What the fuck did you do? What happened to my men?”
Britton shook his head, heading toward what remained of the Selfer’s corpse.
“Where are you going?” the NYPD captain shrieked, waving his gun. “What about my men?”
“Sir,” one of the remaining cops said, reaching out.
“Get the fuck off me!” The captain slapped his hand away. “You!” he shouted at Britton, raising his weapon.
“He’s off his rock,” Britton said. “Somebody secure him.”
“Got it,” Richards said, gesturing. An outcrop
ping of natural rock rose out of the water, flowing like liquid concrete into a fist around the captain’s torso, holding him fast. “Fuck off me!” the captain shrieked. “The fuck off me! Sergeant Torres! Shoot that man!”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Britton said, but the cops didn’t appear to need the warning. They were busy clustering around their captain, talking in soothing voices.
Britton turned back to his task. “To the captain’s original question,” Richards said, “where are you going?”
“Hayes wants tissue samples, right?” He slopped down into the water beside the hulk of smoldering flesh. Up close, Britton could make out the remains of severed vessels, half-formed organs. He conjured a small gate and cut out a brick-sized sample, thick flesh marbled through with half-formed remnants of Lord knew what. There was at least one cooked eye and something that Britton swore was a flexed elbow. The stench was overpowering.
He climbed back onto the catwalk and opened a gate back on Trailer B-6. “Downer!” he called down the catwalk. “Can you walk?”
The Elementalist turned, took a few steps, shaky but surer than before. “I’m fine,” she said.
“All right, everyone back through. Tell ’em the job’s done and to get a cleanup crew down here. I’ll give a report to Fitzy.”
Richards and Truelove stepped right through without any hesitation, responding to the natural tone of command in Britton’s voice. Therese hesitated at the threshold. “What about you?”
Britton hefted the chunk of meat. “Tissue sample. I’ll be along once I deliver it. Promise. Thanks for everything, Therese.”
Therese nodded and stepped through, but Downer paused, facing him, eyes narrowed. “Who the hell put you in charge? Fitzy’s the Coven Commander.” Britton could see the whirl of emotions competing across her face, scarcely under control even with the Dampener’s help.
He put a hand on her shoulder. “You were very brave, Sarah. Hell, you pretty much saved us all. I’ll make sure Fitzy knows it. I’m proud to serve with you.”
Britton could tell it wasn’t what she had expected, but her face was stone otherwise. After a long silence, she turned and walked through the gate. Beyond the static shimmer, Britton could see medics and Goblin orderlies fussing over the team. Certain that they were safe, he shut the gate and opened a new one, stepped through.
The cold hunched his shoulders, and he wrinkled his nose at the chemical-preservative smell. Behind him, the plastic curtain rippled, gently ruffled by the currents of the giant chiller in the center of the room. All around him, corpses lay on tables in various states of dissection, a macabre review of the bestiaries he had marveled at as a child. The fauna of the Source spread out before him: giant eagles, horned lions, small dragons, double-headed serpents. Here was a leopard with a human face, its tail hacked off, the flesh avulsed to reveal the articulation of the bones. There was a unicorn of storybook legend, the skin around the horn flayed back to show the attachment to the skull. Colored dye had been injected into the major veins running beneath the surface.
And Goblins, everywhere Goblins. The desecration of their corpses shouted the central message of the Special Projects tent: just another animal. Source fauna.
Britton’s lip curled at the sight. He had to get out of there. He cast about, looking for a flat surface on which to leave the tissue sample. The only flat surface proved to be a folding aluminum writing desk strewn with files. He placed the meat on the clearest portion. A stack of files had toppled over sometime ago, spreading each one out in a stepped path, the titles stamped in antiquated font theatrically stereotypical for the military. AMPHISBAENA, read one, SPITTING SERPENT. Another read UNICORN, HORNED EQUINE. Britton began to leaf through them, eyebrows rising at the identities of the corpses laid out around him.
Then he froze.
SCYLLA, one read. HUMAN NEGRAMANCER. Someone had written UNCOOPERATIVERECAL across the front in red marker. Britton took a glance over his shoulder, then peeled back the cover and began to read.
…remains steadfast in her refusal to act in her own self-interest. While it is impossible to be certain if Andrews’s theory is correct regarding the elemental foundation of her magic, I see no harm in obliging him. We certainly lose nothing by trying, and, frankly, right now she is little more than a drain on the taxpayer resources necessary to house and guard her. We’ve had outstanding success in prefrontral cortex intervention with other subjects, and I don’t think I’m overstating the case when I say that it has handed this army a functional Portamancer where we’d otherwise have had a serious problem. In this case, the use of the Orbitoclast rendered the subject particularly vulnerable to the influence of his mother, who, fortunately, is cooperative and patriotic. While there is no such influence in “Scylla’s” life, I respectfully request that a hard time limit be set to allow the PSYOPS team to finish their work. If IO isn’t the answer here, then surgery certainly can’t hurt us. We should set a deadline for prefrontal cortex interception and see where that takes us…
Footsteps. Britton slammed the folder shut and stood back from the table, his mind swamped with images of Billy drooling, his mother draping her pale arms around his neck, crooning in his ear.
Hayes stepped through the flap and squeaked at the sight of Britton, his jowls shaking. He took a step back and nearly tripped over himself. “What the hell are you doing here!?”
Britton pointed at the chunk of meat on the desk, and croaked “Tissue sample, sir. Fitzy said you’d want it.”
And then he shouldered past the captain without another word, not trusting anything he might say.
Billy, drooling, compliant, opening and closing gates at their will.
They’d do the same to Scylla.
If she didn’t play ball, they’d do the same to her.
Fitzy took Britton’s report stone-faced. He nodded curtly and sat Britton in front of a laptop, where he typed out in meticulous detail all the events he had just recounted. It took Britton over an hour to ensure he’d captured it all, Fitzy making low conversation into a radio while Britton typed.
Eventually, Britton stopped typing and turned, looking at the chief warrant officer while he paced the trailer. “What’s your problem?” Fitzy asked eventually.
“It’s Rampart, sir. I just…I’m sorry.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
Britton was silent.
Fitzy paced forward, his shoulders bunching. “Rampart was SOC in his bones. That man had more steel in his dick than you do in your entire body. He doesn’t need your sorry.”
Britton was used to Fitzy’s posturing by then, and after what he’d just been through, it failed to impress. He shrugged. “Will there be a funeral?”
“There might be, but not for you. Rampart didn’t know you and didn’t want to know you. For you there’s work, and that starts tomorrow at 0600 sharp.”
And 0600 turned out to be more MAC practice. When Britton arrived, Truelove stood beside a wooden pallet covered with a blue plastic tarp. Ashen toes and pointed ears poked out from beneath it.
Truelove looked embarrassed. “Hi.”
“You okay?”
Truelove shrugged. “It’s what we trained for. I’ll be fine.”
“What about Downer?”
“Physically? She’s doing great.”
“Mentally?”
“I don’t know,” Truelove said. “She…she was hurt pretty bad. But she’s not talking about it.”
“What…”
“You got a jump start on your GIMAC,” Fitzy cut him off. “And if you’re done socializing, we might as well get moving with that.”
“We’re gonna MAC?” Britton asked in disbelief, then regretted his tone, as Truelove’s face fell. Truelove was Fitzy’s height and lacked the chief warrant officer’s build.
He struggled to find something placating to say, but Fitzy interrupted him. “Hell, no. Rictus couldn’t MAC with a twelve-year-old girl. This is GIMAC for you, remember? Rictus has integrated MAC of
his own.”
Truelove nodded nervously and dropped into a guard.
“We’ve been practicing on our own, while you worked with Fitzy,” he said, his voice apologetic. He raised his arms, and the pallet shuddered. The tarp flew off as ten Goblin corpses jerked their way to circle Britton. Their sightless eyes turned toward him, heads slewing on broken necks. Here, a nose was missing. There, a bit of jawbone protruded. Fresh from some meat locker, the corpses emanated cold. Britton could see traces of frost on what remained of their ears and noses. Truelove closed his eyes, spread his arms, and the zombies dropped into MAC guards of their own. “Hee-yah,” one of them groaned. Truelove smiled.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Britton said.
“No joke,” Fitzy said. “Feel free to gate in and out of Portcullis as needed. Richards’s dog pens are full. Pluck from them as needed to even the odds.”
“Ready or not.” Truelove smiled. “Here I come.”
They swarmed him with surprising speed. The first swiped for his arm, cold, dead fingers brushing his wrist, raising gooseflesh. He leapt backward, and one of the zombies grabbed him around the waist. They were small, but their dead strength was terrible and Britton felt the air squeezed out of him as the withered arms locked over his stomach.
He hammered his elbow backward, cracking the thing hard in the face, while simultaneously twisting his ankle behind it and sweeping its leg. It flew backward into another zombie, and Britton was already turning, pistoning a fist into the face of another opponent, seeking a way to break through the circle.
A zombie leapt into the air, kicking Britton hard in the chin, one frozen toe snapping off as his head rocked backward, knocking Britton into another zombie, which pinned his arms at his sides. Three more rushed him from the front.
He slid a gate open behind him, then pushed off with his thighs, driving himself and the zombie through the portal, crushing it against the hard concrete of the loading-bay floor. Two of the zombies stepped through the gate as he shut it, leaving a heap of half faces and torsos dropping to the concrete.
