Rust: Two

by Christopher Ruz

  But still he pulled, and the doors creaked open inch by painful inch, until he could see inside the smoke-filled nave. There were shadows moving in there, tall black shapes against the flames, and some were too tall to be human, far too tall...

  And, slumped beside the door, one of those terrible figures hunched above her, was Mrs Kimberly Archer.

  Goodwell drew and fired in one smooth motion, but the figure crouching over Mrs Archer only snapped up, looking into his eyes. It made a growling, clacking noise, like a rusted chainsaw struggling to start. With the firelight behind it Goodwell couldn't make out anything beneath its tattered hood, but its robes had burned away around its ankles, revealing sharp spurs of bone.

  No. Not bone. Something worse, something surgical.

  The creature reared and he fired again, emptying his magazine. His aim was steady as he stitched the thing from hip to neck, but it didn't so much as flinch. Goodwell swore. "Chan, help me!"

  He threw himself into the heat without waiting to see whether she'd follow. The first step was like forcing his way through a wall of boiling water, and the second harder again. He took one breath and immediately regretted it - his lungs were brimming with smoke. He dry-retched as he grabbed Mrs Archer beneath her arms and dragged her back, towards the open air.

  His heel bumped against something soft. Goodwell glanced down. Another man lying face-down on the floor, a man with tangled hair and a long, smoke-stained jacket.

  There was only one person that could be.

  "Chan! I said help me!" He dragged Mrs Archer as best he could but the smoke had made him weak, and as the cool outside air washed across his temples he felt faint, the ground tipping beneath him. Mrs Archer was heaving, coughing, one hand over her mouth. Not dead, then. His employer would be pleased, if he managed to get her back to Rustwood in one piece. "Goddamnit, there's someone else in there!"

  But Chan was frozen. She'd peered inside the convent and had fallen back on her butt in the grass, mouth hanging open, firelight reflecting in her eyes. Goodwell didn't blame her - he'd probably done the same the first time he'd seen what lay beneath the skin of Rustwood, the first time his Queen came to speak with him. Probably. Those days were a blur of blood and shadow, fire and blades.

  The man lying inside the convent doorway stirred, reaching for the moonlight. Goodwell took a deep breath and ran.

  He shoved Chan aside and got the ragged man by the collar. The man fought weakly, slapping at Goodwell's hands, but quieted as soon as he realised he was being dragged out instead of back in. The ends of his coat were smoking and his palms were blistered, the skin peeling away, revealing raw red flesh.

  And behind him, in the heart of the convent, those tall black figures were still coming.

  They were bowed and burning, jacketed in flame, but they stalked towards the entrance regardless. The one Goodwell had shot was clutching itself, but not in pain. More like it was... holding itself together at the waist. That if it let go it would collapse like shattered glass.

  "Get up," he told the man at his feet. "Get the hell up!"

  The ragged man groaned, vomited, and got on to hands and knees. He reached for the cool grey grass beyond the convent doors. "Help-"

  Goodwell didn't have time to reply before he was slammed off his feet. He saw the creature coming from the corner of his eye, saw it with its hood thrown back and robes burned to cinders, saw it as it really was, before it drove into his stomach and threw him back from the door. They landed together in the muck, Goodwell kicking and flailing, the creature atop him weighing less than a child.

  He punched his pistol into the creature's gut but it was empty, the slide locked back. The creature leaned down as if to press its lips against Goodwell's and in the flash of firelight coming through the open doorway he saw the serrated blades of its jawbones, skin drawn taught over sunken eye sockets, the things squirming inside.

  It had once been human, he knew that much. Time and rot had peeled away most of the flesh, leaving old yellow bone bared to the rain. That bone was pitted in a hundred places with black burrows like termite holes, threaded through with wire and wood and steel like some unholy marionette, twitching and shrieking to the tune of an unseen puppeteer. And in the hollows of its eyes, its throat, between the gaps of its ribs where the skin had peeled away to reveal the cavern of its guts...

  Not just one creature but a hundred, a thousand, a whole nest of them coiling and gnashing and shitting and laying their tiny white eggs, biting the air with toothless gums. So many tangled together he couldn't make out what they truly were, worms or centipedes or something altogether worse, like the slim black carapaces they'd burned in the basement of Bo Tuscon's house. They were bleached pale, as if they'd never known the kiss of the sun. Graveyard beetles grown fat and long on corpse-meat and all of them huge and hungry, the sort that killed fat black rats and dragged them back to their nests.

  He couldn't hold in the scream, but that scream choked off as the creature forced its fingers into Goodwell's mouth. He tasted ash and old leather, graveyard dust and the slick tang of blood.

  His finger still jerked the trigger of his empty pistol. "Geddoff!" Sharp nails dragged against his tongue. "Geddof, you-"

  A gunshot cracked the night in two. Goodwell snapped his head back in shock as the creature's face exploded and skinned his cheeks with shards of bone. He couldn't hear anything but the tinnitus ring of gunfire.

  The creature slumped, even though its blade-thin hands still scrabbled for Goodwell's throat. He rolled aside, kicking the creature and its tattered robe on to the grass where it flopped and curled and finally lay still.

  A shadow stretched across the muddy soil. Goodwell looked up into Chan's eyes. Her pistol hung loose in her right hand. Her left was clutched against her chest, skin red-raw, rain splashing off the ruined flesh.

  She was aiming at Goodwell's gut.

  Goodwell licked his lips. "You don't want to do that."

  "You're right. I don't." Chan's lips were drawn back over her teeth in a feral snarl. "Drop your gun. I'm taking you in."

  "You don't want to do that either."

  "Get up."

  Goodwell staggered to his feet and let his sidearm fall. His right foot was bare, the sock torn to threads in his mad escape from the convent. His suit was soaked through with mud. Worse, the empty holster at his hip made him feel unbalanced. He only ever unstrapped that pistol when he was showering or climbing in to bed beside Hannah. Without it, he was naked.

  Other figures were emerging from the mouth of the convent. They raised their faces to the rain and drank deep, even as the hems of their robes sizzled away. And beyond the convent...

  Eyes in the darkness. Shining eyes just beyond the reach of the firelight. Laughter, grating like steel wool.

  "Now," Chan whispered, "we're going to walk back to the bridge, and we're not going to do anything stupid. And then you're going to tell me everything."

  "So long as you do it fast." He squinted over Chan's shoulder. "They're gone."

  "Who?"

  "Mrs Archer, the woman inside. I hope she's okay-"

  Chan turned her head a fraction but that was all the time Goodwell needed. He darted inside the sweep of Chan's arm and jammed her right hand against her side. She was strong, but Goodwell was stronger. Her pistol slipped from her fingers and they both fell on hands and knees, scrabbling for it in the mud.

  Goodwell got the grip in his hand while Chan snatched the barrel, and for a moment they were caught in an absurd tug-of-war with the pistol pointed directly at Chan's chest. But Goodwell had the better hold, and he finally yanked it free.

  Chan's focus narrowed to the barrel of the pistol. "Fuck you."

  "You'll thank me later. Come on, double-time."

  Chan spat at his feet but obeyed, marching into the tall grass with her hands held high. Goodwell followed, limping, sharp stones cutting deep into the meat of his bare foot. He risked one last look back, just to make sure he hadn't imagined it
all.

  The convent burned high and wild, flames tickling the belly of the sky. The creatures in black roamed the moor, moonlight shining on the bare bone of their skulls.

  Mrs Archer and her companion were gone.

  Chapter 24

  Fitch wished he was drunk.

  The last hour had been a blur of flame and fear. Twice he'd thought he was about to die - the first time when the creatures in the black robes had cornered him against the door, moments before the Archer lady threw her only molotov, and the second time as the smoke crowded in and stole his breath. Twice, he'd whispered furtive prayers - not for salvation, but for a quick death, one without screaming and splinters under his fingernails and all the messy blood-and-guts business he'd seen but never suffered.

  He'd brought twelve beer bottles filled to the lid with napalm but somehow forgotten to slip a fifth of bourbon in the mix. Something to blunt the terror, to get the blood moving. That'd always been his father's remedy for the blues. Cheerios and rye every morning, the old man smelling faintly of sawdust, the aroma of his workshop hanging around him like a halo.

  That was all Fitch could remember of his father. The workshop and the drinking. Sometimes he wondered whether he was even remembering the right man, or whether it was an illusion grown into his head by the town.

  Now, as he staggered from the ruin of the Pentacost Convent, he figured that illusion was just about burned away.

  The things in there, the women, the whatever-they-weres, had followed him out the doors. Not many left now - the napalm had brought most of them low, more than he'd expected, but he didn't have the strength left to fight even one. He cupped the chittering thing in his pocket, hoping it'd calm him. It didn't work. His whole world was panicked heat.

  Kimberly Archer was only a couple yards away, left by her police-friend to roll gasping on the grass, but that distance seemed a mile to Fitch. He was weak, painfully weak. He reached for her. "Get... up..."

  Mrs Archer retched into the grass. "Fitch..." Her eyes were glazed. "I saw it, Fitch."

  "Tell me later."

  "They were talking to me."

  "Later!" He grit his teeth, forcing himself to stand. The world tilted and threw him to the ground. Again, he stood, and this time his balance held. The front of his jacket was stained with vomit and his eyes itched like they'd been wrapped in sandpaper, but Christ, it was better than being dead. Beside him, Kimberly was doing the same. He grabbed her limp hand, and for a moment he thought they'd both tumble back down the slope, rolling together into the fiery mouth of the convent.

  His balance held, and so did hers. He didn't need to urge her on - Mrs Archer was already scrambling up the slope, towards the Pentacost graveyard and the river. Beyond that, freedom.

  The Pentacost graveyard was a quiet stretch of slanted tombstones, bordered by a broken iron fence. Thick mud grasped at Fitch's boots. He could hear the river in the distance, rising over its banks, swollen by the rain. Somewhere on the far bank, an owl called to its mate. Nothing answered but the crackle of flames.

  He glanced back at the convent. The two who'd pulled the doors open - two police, although he couldn't make out their faces - were grappling with one of the creatures less than ten yards from the door. Poor souls. Wrong place, wrong time, but he didn't have the energy or the death-wish it'd take to go back and help them. Other shapes still trickled from the convent, too. The last of the robed figures, three of them, fanning out across the moors.

  They ignored the two cops completely. They had their targets.

  Fitch's stomach dropped through the floor. "We have to move."

  "But..." Kimberly's speech was still slurred, swaddled by smoke inhalation. "It's a graveyard."

  Graves didn't scare Fitch. He'd never feared the dead so long as they stayed that way. He pulled Kimberly into the cemetery, one hand slapping against the stones, tracing the names carved into the granite. The mud came up to his ankles now, like the earth was trying to lock him in place long enough for the creatures to catch up and wrap their hands around his neck. The thing in his pocket squirmed in circles, tensing tiny claws against the fabric of his jacket. He slipped his left hand into the pocket and let it suckle on his finger. "Almost," he whispered. "Almost home."

  Beside him, Kimberly Archer jerked around. "What?"

  "Nothing."

  "What'd you say?"

  "Later!" Two of the things in robes had split across the moor, possibly angling to cut them off before they reached the river. The third was coming straight up the hill. It didn't run but loped, long gangling strides that seemed to cover far more distance than was possible for human legs.

  Except, of course, they weren't human. He'd seen beneath the robes, taken in the ruin of flesh and bone and iron that lay beneath. How long since those poor women had drawn breath? Had they been dug out of the ground before the beast hollowed them, or were they alive and screaming?

  He tried not to think about it as he scrambled up the slope. "Today, lady!" They passed gravestones scrawled with bright teenage graffiti, the weeds around the base of the stones wilted as if the mortar was poison. He could hear the river above the rain now, pounding against the banks as it swelled in the tumult. "Almost. Almost-"

  The convent exploded.

  Maybe it was the stones popping in unison, superheated by the napalm. Maybe there was something more than dusty pews and rotten paper tomes hidden inside the convent, something viscous and catalytic touched off by the heat, a relic of a time when the convent had been a coke-store almost a century earlier. Maybe it was the doorway itself, that strange umbilical between Rustwood and somewhere-else, trying to open once more and collapsing upon itself.

  All Fitch knew in that moment was a giant hand of heat lifting him out of the muck and punching him ten feet across the graveyard.

  He saw, in slow motion, a gravestone flying up to meet his face. He threw his hands out to catch himself but he was tumbling out of control, little more than a leaf caught in a storm.

  Skull met stone. Fitch crumpled.

  For a moment he lay still, the world thudding around him, the sky swelling in time with his heartbeat. His forehead felt hot, wet. He saw nothing but red through his left eye, and when he tried to wipe it away he found his left arm trapped beneath his body. His right felt too heavy, and lifting it to his face was a colossal effort.

  "Kim," he whispered, but the woman was nowhere in sight. Lost somewhere in the gravestones? Dragged low by the thing chasing them up the hill? He had to stand. One leg at a time, knees weak, feet splayed to keep him from falling. He braced against the gravestone, pressing a thumbprint into the bloodstain left behind by his split temple. "Kim-"

  It peeled out of the cemetery shadows like smoke, unfolding in stages until it blocked out the moonlight. Fitch fell back against the gravestone, a scream jammed in his throat.

  It was huge, too huge to have ever been human. Its cowl was tilted back, revealing flesh turned to rot and grease, eyes sealed over by canvas.

  If those poor creatures in the convent had been sisters, this was their mother.

  "I'm sorry," Fitch whispered. "Don't. Please don't." His left arm hung useless against the hip pocket of his coat, where the chittering creature coiled and thrummed. His right hand reached for a molotov that wasn't there.

  The creature leaned in. The canvas sewn across its eyes bulged as the things living beneath squirmed against the fabric. A seam popped, spilling the tail of something white and wriggling across the figure's eye socket. There was something like a mouth beneath the cowl, a hole darker than the black around it, and at the end of that funnel, a tiny point of light. Fitch knew that if he stared at it too long he'd tumble down and be lost.

  "All gone," it said, in a voice as thin as midnight wind. "All gone, now."

  Fitch couldn't speak. The chittering thing lapped over the hem of his coat pocket, biting into the knuckles of his left hand, suckers popping on his skin.

  "End of all things." The creature's hands fell
to Fitch's belly, sharp finger-tips pressing against the soft meat of his gut. "You killed the world."

  Its jaw dropped low, that light dazzlingly bright, the pit of its throat widening until it seemed large enough to swallow Fitch's head whole. "Killed the world," it whispered.

  Fitch swung.

  He meant to punch the thing in the face but his swing went low, his left hand clumsy. The chittering thing was still holding fast to his knuckles, and it spun off the end of his hand, slapping against the dead thing's gaunt white cheek.

  For a moment they were still - the creature with its mouth hanging open, needle teeth shivering in its gums, and Fitch's little suckling companion, lapping at the dead thing's face with curious tentacles, tasting the burlap sewn over its eyes with thin pink pseudopods.

  The chittering thing mewled in disgust. It sank claws deeper into that grey, taut flesh. One spindly limb, a knobbed finger no thicker than a 2B pencil tipped with a nail of bone, rose up, up, up, and plunged back down.

  It pierced the canvas, plunging deep into the dead thing's eye socket. There was a wet sound, a meaty churning, and the creature in the robe reared back. It shrieked, clawing at the chittering thing as it burrowed deeper, but it could only slap ineffectually at its own face. The screaming rose and rose and then died without warning, and the creature sagged sideways into the wet grass.

  Fitch panted, slouched against the tombstone, clutching his bleeding scalp, waiting for the creature to stand again. It didn't. The chittering thing had dug too deep. "Good girl," he whispered. "Come on, back in my pocket, back-"

  "Fitch! Are you okay?"

  Fitch snapped up. Kimberly had sagged against the stone wall of a nearby mausoleum, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as the rain pealed down on her head. "Thought I'd lost you. Are you... Jesus Christ, you killed it?"

  "Got a good right hook." Fitch tried to grin but a stab of pain radiated up his side and left him wincing. "You hurt?"

  "Think my heart stopped a second when that place exploded. Where'd the girl go?"