Applegate, K A - Remnants 03 - Them

by Them (lit)

  She looked back from time to time, half expecting pursuit. Yago would be furious: Hed be deprived of his intended victims.

  It was a victory for 2Face, but a pitifully small one.

  They walked for a time, maybe a half hour, maybe less. And now 2Face was just weary. The rush of escape was long past and the exhaustion was causing her feet to stumble and the spear to lie very heavy on her shoulder.

  Youre probably tired, she said to Edward. Anyway, we wont find Jobs in the dark, right, kid?

  I guess not.

  Okay, well, lets see if we can find a place to lie down.

  There was an archway, one of the endless series of archways always to their left, always threatening. We cant lie down out here in the open, 2Face said, trying to convince herself. Truth was, neither choice looked good. Out in the open they might be seen by Riders. But who knew what lay beyond any of the arches?

  2Face hushed Edward unnecessarily and strained to hear. Nothing. She stepped closer to the dark, open door. Nothing inside.

  Im scared, Edward said.

  Dont be scared, 2Face said. The Riders will worry about the main group back there. They dont even know were here, right?

  She took Edwards hand and led him through the archway.

  Her foot landed on nothing and she pitched forward. Instinctively she tightened her grip on Edward and drew him after her. They fell, tumbling, head over heels, screaming, falling farther than she had ever fallen before. Long seconds, flashes of dark red shapes, eerie forms, and still they fell.

  Smothering!

  2Face had fallen into something sticky, into and through something that felt like warm taffy covering her entire body. She couldnt breathe.

  Then, air! She sucked in deeply. Air. She could breathe and see and yet she felt the sticky, pliable covering over her entire body, every square inch and

  She fell away from the ship. Fell into space. Fell toward a raging inferno of exploding gas. A billion nuclear explosions. A sky-filling, universe-filling mass of seething yellow and orange fire.

  She slowed, stopped, hung in midair, only it was not sky but space.

  The ship was above her. The hole shed fallen out of closed and disappeared. With a psychic wrench that left her wanting to be sick, the ship above became the ship below. Her perspective shifted and now she was floating above the ship, above a vast, endless topography of dull metallic extrusions, and glowing bubbles, and snapping arcs of what seemed to be red and purple neon.

  It was impossible to understand. Impossible to make sense of.

  Above her head now, the star. So close she could see whirlpools in the superheated gases, trembling seas of light, and sudden volcanic eruptions that shot planet-sized streamers into space.

  The star seemed close enough that she could reach out and touch it. She held up her hand and saw clearly the transparent goo that covered her, that fed her oxygen, that bled away the blowtorchtip heat, that she hoped and prayed would shield her from the murderous storm of radiation.

  She saw Edward, just a few feet away, like herself encased, like herself staring wide-eyed.

  The ship was passing so close to the star that it could only be deliberate. The galaxy was a big place and so empty that all the stars and planets together didnt amount to more than dust. Yet, here she was, within cosmic millimeters of a star.

  The ship slid past the star, fast enough that 2Face could actually see the star passing by beneath them like the ground seen through a car window. It was an impossible speed. A speed unlike anything any human had achieved.

  2Face cried out in awe. She was an insect crushed between hammer and anvil. A cinder twirling above the fire.

  Suddenly two massive pillars of blinding yellow light stabbed from star to ship. It was impossible to tell the size because it was impossible to tell the distance, but 2Face felt their vastness, felt them to be miles thick, an energy stream of sufficient power to light Earth forever.

  Just as suddenly the beams of light terminated. The ship had replenished its energy.

  2Face found she was panting, gasping. Not for lack of air but overwhelmed, stunned.

  Back. I have to get back, she said and heard her voice vibrate through the bone.

  She began floating back down, falling in slow motion toward the ship. How? A body in motion . . .

  What had moved her?

  Have to get Edward, she said, once again feeling rather than hearing her own voice.

  She began to drift toward Edward, who still stared at the sun.

  He could go blind, 2Face thought, but at the same time she realized that she had not. The goo, the film around her had shielded her eyes.

  Some kind of space suit for going outside the ship. That was clear enough. She and Edward had fallen down a hole that must have been part of the original architecture of the ship, not part of its art-derived artificial environment.

  Whoever had built the ship must use the wells as a quick means for exiting the ship. The gooey suit was applied automatically.

  Why? For the ships crew to do maintenance? Surely not. A ship this advanced must have easier ways to deal with external maintenance.

  And was it mere coincidence that the ship was passing so close to a star? What were the odds?

  Sight-seeing? Was that it? Was the ship merely providing her with an awesome sight? Jump down the well and see a star up close and personal from the cozy safety of a high-tech space suit?

  A trickle of suspicion. A ship with the power to create vast artificial environments, a ship that allowed passengers to literally jump out into space as she had done? It was like an amusement park: rides and Sims and animatrons. It was Disney World and Universal Studios.

  Surely not. That couldnt be it. Who built a ship this vast for entertainment?

  2Face reached Edward. She tapped him with a goo-covered hand. Edward. Can you hear me?

  He turned in response to her touch. When he spoke she could not hear his words. She motioned back to the ship. She mouthed the words, Back to the ship.

  The two floating bodies began falling once more, slow but steady. The visual field shifted once more as 2Faces brain struggled to cope with the irrational. Her stomach lurched and she vomited.

  The vomit passed through the goo. In seconds it steamed and evaporated, leaving nothing but a smudge of dust behind.

  Now the ship was definitely above her once more and she felt herself no longer to be falling, but rather being sucked upward. The hole, or at least a hole, appeared again.

  Together 2Face and Edward fell/rose toward a round, black cave.

  Shadow wrapped around them, the hatch closed, the absolute loss of the stars light left 2Face feeling blind.

  She could feel the goo covering sliding away, slipping off her body, puddling, and then whisking off on its own.

  A current of warm air billowed beneath her and she and Edward floated upward.

  That was cool, Edward said.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN GET UP OFF YOUR KNEES AND DEAL WITH IT.

  It was one thing for Jobs to act like the demons were just figments of someones imagination. MoSteel wasnt so sure. Who was to say that Bosch or whatever his name was, the old, dead artist, who was to say that he hadnt gotten a sneak peek at what the real, actual hell looked like?

  If these things creeping and slithering and chattering in the dark werent actual demons, actual residents of the inferno, they were close enough. They were all that MoSteels grandmother had ever led him to expect of the real, actual hell.

  He hadnt heard much about such things from his parents. The whole family was Catholic, but MoSteels mother and father were Catholic by way of M.I.T. and U.C. Santa Cruz and Northwestern University. His nana was Catholic by way of a tiny village in the Chiapas region of Mexico.

  Olga would have been shocked and a little offended to find such ideas occupying a place in her sons mind. But Nanas stories had made a bigger impact than Olgas lukewarm reassurances.

  MoSteel had always favored the more extreme version of j
ust about any story. Eternal damnation wasnt much of a peril in Olgas version of events. Like jumping over a puddle as opposed to leaping a bottomless canyon. Nanas view was extreme and bizarre and imaginative, and MoSteel liked his risks big. A desire for comfort and security had never registered with MoSteel.

  Nana had an imagination. She had been a cleaning woman most of her life, married to a handyman. She looked older than she was, probably. To MoSteel she looked about ninety, though that couldnt be the truth.

  And Nana told great stories. She could have been a writer. But shed come up with nothing any weirder and more disturbing than the distorted, insane, absurd, half-man, half-beast things that shadowed MoSteel and his friends through the Tower of Babel.

  Thats what made MoSteel wonder if they might not be real. At least real in the sense that the artist had somehow gotten a glimpse of the actual hell.

  He didnt mention any of this out loud. Jobs would have rolled his eyes. Olga would have made a face. Violet would have patiently explained that what they were confronting was only an animated version of a painters vision.

  MoSteel wondered about Billy Weir, though. What did he think of it? What did he see?

  Always down, Jobs muttered, not for the first time. Theyre definitely forcing us downward.

  Our alien friend seems not to object to the direction, Olga observed.

  Why dont they just move in and force us to fight? Jobs wondered.

  Because the devil dont live in the attic, migo, MoSteel said.

  What?

  Nothing.

  I wonder how far down weve come? Jobs asked no one in particular. There has to be a bottom eventually.

  Four-hundred-nineteen steps, MoSteel said. The risers probably average about nine inches, so thats three-thousand-seven-hundred-seventy-one inches, or three-hundred-fourteen feet and three inches.

  Thats quite a talent, Violet said. Do you do square roots?

  MoSteel grinned. Pick a number.

  Four hundred and seventy-one.

  MoSteel considered for a moment. Twenty-one point seven oh two five.

  How do you do that?

  MoSteel shrugged. In goes the question, out pops the answer. Just one of those things.

  Olga came over and gave her son a walking hug. I should have had you earlier. You could have helped me through calc.

  MoSteel felt his mother trembling. She kept glancing back at the pursuing shadow.

  So, MoSteel thought, Nana told you some stories, too.

  More stairs, Violet reported from slightly ahead.

  The demon army edged in closer now, just a few arms-lengths away. A wall of grinning, insinuating, leering, deformed faces.

  The Blue Meanie limped down the stairs at an unhurried pace. Its lighter down there, Violet reported.

  MoSteel shifted his grip on the stretcher. He glanced back at Jobs, who shook his head, indicating that he didnt need a rest.

  MoSteel saw the Blue Meanie below. Hed stopped. He was waiting for them to catch up. The mirrored surface of his armor gleamed.

  They started down the stairs. The demons set up a sudden loud, triumphant squall of catcalls and laughter and curses, and MoSteel almost dropped his hold on the stretcher.

  They reached the bottom of the stairs and were no longer in a blank stone chamber.

  In the distance, what looked very much like an old picture of a bombed-out Berlin from World War II. Wrecked buildings, smoldering fires, a landscape buried in ash, air full of sparks, shadows within shadows. Within the blasted landscape MoSteel could see things moving, writhing, like maggots on a piece of meat.

  Closer at hand, a more vivid nightmare. Scenes of torture, scenes of horror, sights that made the flesh creep and the mind recoil.

  At the base of a tree a hand reached up out of the dirt, a hand belonging to someone buried alive, a hand that beckoned for recusal.

  On the flat tabletop roof of a low building scurried a creature with a white-bearded human head that seemed to be attached with a sharp stick to two scurrying rat legs.

  Two men were yoked to a massive red millstone. They pulled it around and around on a spiked turntable. Where the millstone should have been crushing wheat it crushed people.

  An army of goblins drove herds of starved men while others were swallowed into the dirt or cooked alive or . . .

  MoSteel dropped the stretcher from numb hands.

  There was a sound coming from him, a low keening sound, a weird unnatural sound like nothing his own voice could produce.

  MoSteel backed up the stairs, slipped, and fell hard. He turned and on hands and knees scrabbled up, stopped when he saw the army of demons descending toward him.

  MoSteel heard Jobss voice coming from somewhere, far away, another planet, a million miles from this place.

  Strap it up, Mo, strap it up.

  MoSteel couldnt answer, could only wail, could only cringe and cry.

  He felt someone holding his head and heard singing. Singing that couldnt begin to drown out the screams and shrieks and cries of agony from everywhere.

  His mother was holding him, rocking him, but she was crying, too, whimpering like him.

  Suddenly rough hands shoved Olga away. A startling slap. A sharp pain on his face. Another slap. Another.

  And then all he saw was Violet Blakes furious face, right in his.

  We already have one coma patient, we dont need another, Violet barked. Its just a painting. Its just a painting. Get up off your knees and deal with it.

  MoSteel stared, uncomprehending.

  Violet Blake slapped him again and winced at the pain it caused her. Move! she yelled, furious, red in the face. Get up and move!

  MoSteel stood up on shaky legs. He moved.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN WE HAVE TO RUN. CAN YOU RUN?

  Edward looked at his arm. It was dark, gray, kind of rough-looking. Like gravel kind of. Like the walls and floor around him.

  Too weird.

  The Chameleon.

  2Face was saying something; he only listened in bits and pieces. Something about how they were lost. Hello? Of course they were lost.

  They should have stayed on Earth. Everyone said there was no way to survive, but how about digging really deep tunnels, or those places where they stored nuclear waste? Those were deep tunnels.

  It had to be better than this place. At least there werent Riders.

  Edward turned his thoughts away from the Riders. They scared him and he didnt like being scared. His mom should be here. Sebastian said she was dead. His dad, too. But Edward hadnt seen them himself.

  Another thing not to think about.

  Why was this place so creepy? There were all these little sounds, these little scurrying sounds. Rats maybe.

  That was okay. He was the Chameleon. A superhero.

  Its like some kind of a maze! 2Face raged, speaking loudly, too loudly. Every time we start off going one direction, we end up going another direction.

  The Chameleon. That would be cool. Wasnt there a superhero by that name already? Probably. But Edward was real, not made up. And anyway, there were no TV shows or comic books here.

  TV. That would be great. TV.

  And some of his friends. Like . . .

  Edward frowned. He couldnt immediately recall any of his friends. Hadnt he had friends? He must have. He remembered the feeling of having friends.

  Oswald. He was a friend.

  Yeah, like in kindergarten.

  There had to have been friends. Definitely. Anyway, there was TV and some of the people on TV were like friends.

  I dont know what to do, 2Face said. Were lost. I know I shouldnt tell you that, being a little kid or whatever, but were lost. I didnt really think this through, you know? This tower is so big. Its like . . . like being an ant lost inside the worlds biggest beehive or whatever, just rooms and rooms and rooms and theyre all pretty much the same.

  Edward glanced at 2Face. Her normal face was toward him now as they walked along. Edward was disappointed. He kind of
liked her melted face. It was cool. It was creepy and gross, but he was used to it. It was something creepy that he could deal with because it was her face, because he knew what it was, what it meant.

  We need to find your brother! 2Face practically shouted.

  She was scared, Edward knew. Thats why she was talking so loud. He could tell from the way she kept touching her face. From the way she kept twisting her hands together.

  Do you think that was the sun? Edward asked. What? 2Face was confused.

  Was it the sun? Our sun, I mean?

  Oh. The star? She shrugged. I dont know. Maybe. I dont know. How would I know? Ive never flown like ten feet away from a star, so its not like I could say, Oh, look, its Aunt Doras house down there, this must be good old Sol.

  Whos that?

  Aunt Dora?

  No. Edward pointed. Him.

  It was standing there staring at them. A deer, only walking standing up like a person. It had big antlers and a red cape.

  Deer Man. What superpowers did Deer Man have?

  Back up, 2Face whispered. She reached out for him, took his arm, and squeezed too tight. But as they backed up they heard a sound and spun to face a thing, a creature, with the face of a bird, with a strangely long, sharp beak. The bird creature, too, was walking upright.

  The two apparitions just stared. The deer blinked. Stared. No one breathed, no one spoke. 2Face dug her fingers into Edwards arm.

  Just edge away, she said. Come on. Follow me. Slowly. Slowly.

  They backed away, keeping an equal distance between themselves and the demons.

  The Bird Man cocked his head sideways, exactly like an inquisitive robin.

  Back, through an open archway. Then 2Face released Edward. He rubbed his arm.

  We have to run, she said. Can you run? Sure.

  Stay with me. And run!

  They took off as fast as they could run, Edward straining to keep up with shorter legs. And now that he was running the panic took hold. He glanced back, no one was chasing them, but it didnt matter, he could feel eyes watching him, could feel his skin tingling as if he were pursued by a cold wind, felt the hair on his neck stand up, felt his heart trip and miss beats.