“Jump!” I can hear him yelling over the cacophony of tearing earth and tar.
I scramble to my feet. I grab Shaw by the arm and heave her up. Tabitha is already gone. Jumping toward Clyde. I bunch my legs. Our chunk of the world tilts and I stagger, backwards. Teeter toward an edge. Then the tarmac rights itself. The gap between us and Clyde is growing larger. I run. Head down, hand in Shaw’s. We jump.
For a moment I fear we’re not going to fall, that we’re going to just go up, up into whatever maw the Feeder above us has. I fear we’ll be slammed into its impossibly vast hide, liquidated by the impact, absorbed.
Then my feet hit the ground, then my knees, and then not-falling is just a delightful dream. I bellow and sprawl forward. Shaw and Tabitha pull me up.
“No time,” says Shaw, which I have to say, I’d realized already, but it’s understandable that such repartee isn’t up to par with her usual standard of intelligent debate. Anyway, by the time I’ve thought all that we’re running again. Always with the running. I really would have preferred an apocalypse that could have been handled at a more leisurely pace.
Up and down. Leap and grab. Pulling myself onto chunks of floating rock only to drop down into craters of clay. All the time the vacuum above my head growing greater and greater, sucking harder and harder.
And then it stops, and I really fall. I smack to the ground; my chin stops just short of a metal step. The cooling tower looms above us. It sits in a tiny bubble of normal air, of normal reality.
Kayla’s lying there, bloody, bruised, nearly catatonic, jaw working as she mutters unintelligibly to herself—just the way we left her. The Progeny’s monsters, wherever they are—probably a mile above our heads and climbing— haven’t found her. They haven’t killed her.
I look up at the cooling tower.
Now you get yours, you bastards.
And maybe it won’t change anything. Maybe it won’t fix this, or stop this. Maybe we’re still all screwed. But, before the end, you bastards get yours.
I check the safety on my gun, just to be sure.
“Oh no.” Shaw speaks quietly but we all hear her. “No.” She says it again.
“What?” Tabitha, still wired tight, barks out the question. “What is it?”
“The car,” Shaw says. “The car’s gone.”
Oh no. Oh shit and balls no.
“I know I’m late to this,” Clyde says, “but transport home doesn’t seem like our biggest concern right—”
“Ephie,” I say, cutting him off. “Ephie was in the car.”
64
We all look at each other. And despite the Feeder in the sky, it’s this that feels like failure to me. This is why they brought me on board—to save these girls. And now both of them... Both of them gone.
I want to look up, to see if I can still see it up there, to see if the car is still within sight. But looking up means seeing the Feeder, means acknowledging it at more than just the periphery of my mind.
I stare down, stare at my feet. I don’t want to look at Kayla either.
“We still have to fix things.” Shaw is speaking quietly. I can only just pick out her words over the boom and crash of the world tearing itself apart. “Whatever is left to fix,” she says, “we have to try for that.”
No one says anything. We stand there. And I realize we’re all on the verge of running.
Fight or flight. Pick one.
And, like Swann told me, it’s time to grow a pair.
“Shaw’s right,” I say. I try to put some conviction in my voice, and if not that some volume. “Are we going to let this end here? At their doorstep? Them taking Ephie is just another reason to hit them. To hit them as hard as we can. This is another reason for payback.” I walk back and forth in front of the small huddle of them. I feel like I’m doing some terrible impression of Mel Gibson at the end of Braveheart. Just without the kilt or the make-up.
Tabitha shakes her head. “We’re going to die in there,” she says.
“Sod it,” I say. “We’re going to die out here too.”
Tabitha looks at me for a long time, then back at Clyde. “Fair enough,” she says.
“OK,” I say. “I haven’t got much of a plan, but this is what I have.”
65
Clyde blows the door off its hinges. It slams back and embeds itself in the meaty body of one of the Progeny’s monsters. Up to the bloody door handle. The creature keels over. Which only leaves about forty-nine more between us and Ophelia and Olsted.
I come into the tower behind him. Kayla’s over my shoulder and for such a petite girl she does seem to weigh close to a ton. Her hands are where I put them, pressed over her eyes. She’s muttering to herself over and over.
“I didn’t do it. Already dead. Not me. They did it. I didn’t do it. Already dead. Not—”
And I’m muttering right back, talking into her ear. “We’re going to take it away, Kayla. You’re right. It was them. You’re going to make them pay.” And I’ve no idea what sort of pep talk would really get through to her in this state, but I’m going with what I’ve got—promises of vengeance and violence.
Tabitha and Shaw bring up the rear, pointing guns. Shaw has my pistol. I couldn’t really fire while holding Kayla anyway.
“Burn them,” I say to Clyde. “Now.”
He closes his eyes, starts whispering to himself. Shaw and Tabitha open fire. They don’t really aim. Just buying us time. I feel a waft of heat from the walls.
When the flame comes, it’s only for an instant. Steam whips across the walls, the air damp and heavy, but an instant is all we need. Every picture of Kayla’s sister gone to ash.
“Now,” I say into Kayla’s ear. “Now. She’s gone. It’s just the bastards that did it. Open your eyes. Please, I’m begging you, open your eyes.”
Shaw reloads. Tabitha reloads. Quick and fast. But still too slow. Because here the monsters come.
Clyde spits out a battery. It hits one in the chest. And Clyde doesn’t spit far.
“Come on,” I say to Kayla. “Please. For your kids. For the Twins. Open your eyes.”
Kayla’s eyelids flutter.
Clyde blows back one monster. Points at another and it starts vomiting blue, doubling over, heaving out bloody chunks that look like organs.
The third monster gets through. A fist flies forward. Clyde dances backwards but the blow still glances off him, and he barrels over the railing, onto the metal grid below. His new body was meant to run, not fly. He lands awkwardly, a mess of spindly limbs. The monsters that haven’t clambered up onto the walkway with us circle him greedily.
“Come on,” Olsted is shouting. “Come and play my children, my darlings! Come and dance, and sing!”
“Come on,” I say to Kayla. “Get Ophelia out of this.”
And Kayla opens her eyes. She blinks once, twice.
Shaw blows a neat hole between the eyes of one monster. Another one hits her with a fist the size of her chest and she flies back into a concrete wall.
Kayla moves her hands, sluggish at first, groping. She slides off my shoulder, her knees shake but hold. She looks around. A monster looms over Tabitha.
“Please,” I whisper. “Not for my sake. Not for yours. For Ophelia. Please.”
Kayla looks back to me. Her eyes don’t quite catch mine at first; they slip off, her gaze sliding down my face.
And then her eyes snap up, lock with mine. “Feck this,” she says. And she grins.
The monster before Tabitha brings down its arms in a two-fisted blow. Tabitha cowers. Understandably. She’s about to lose her head.
Except when the thing’s arms reach the apex of their curve the fists aren’t attached to them anymore.
The creature swings and misses. It stares at its bloody stumps. And then Kayla’s blood-soaked sword catches it in its throat and the thing drops to its knees and she dances over its tumbling form and throws herself full force, like a whirlwind of knives, into the fray.
Down on the f
loor of the tower, Clyde stands up. Steam is boiling off him. One creature bursts into flames. So does another. Another. Heat is spreading across the floor.
“Come on!” Olsted screams at us. “Do what you can.”
I stand there, flanked by Shaw and Tabitha as they shred the room with bullets. I stand there as Clyde roasts his attackers alive, as he turns their bodies to water, to slime, as he shrinks them to the size of chickens and punts them across the room. I stand there as Kayla dances a ballet of death, of hacked limbs and ribboned flesh. I stand there and watch Olsted’s defense fall.
Then, for a moment, Kayla and Clyde stand face to face. Kayla’s sword rises, and I realize she doesn’t know. I didn’t have a chance to explain about Clyde. Then Kayla hesitates, a quizzical expression on her face.
“Changed my look,” I hear him say as both Tabitha and Shaw reload. “Felt I should after the whole Progeny in the brain sort of thing that I had—”
Then Kayla has passed him, has brought her sword down in another throat, has cut another limb from another torso.
There are fifteen of Olsted’s creatures left. Then ten. And against one wall of the cooling tower I see the shadow of more shapes. Of a small crowd of people. As if something is suddenly coming into focus. I catch glimpses of top hats, of ball gowns, of three-piece suits, the reflection on a monocle, on a pocket watch.
There are five monsters left. Four. The Dreamers stand arrayed behind Olsted. Three. Two. One.
Skull-face stands apart from the main bulk of the group. He has a hand out toward them. “You don’t touch her,” he hisses. “She’s mine. My own. There are other worlds than this. You do not touch her.”
Ophelia, he’s talking about Ophelia.
Ophelia is still standing there. And this confirms it— she’s definitely stopping the Dreamers from taking out the Feeder.
And skull-face is stopping the Dreamers from taking out Ophelia. No... He’s threatening to take them out if they make a move against her. He’s not as strong as Ophelia—he can’t fend them all off at once. But that makes sense. The mind worms seem to have a way of enhancing people—Kayla, the body Clyde’s in. They make people more than they could be on their own. Why should that be different for Ophelia?
So skull-face can’t take them all out. Just the one who makes a move. And none of the Dreamers are willing to stick their necks out.
Sorry excuses for deities, if you ask me.
But why can’t Ophelia just protect herself?
It must be because of the Feeder. She’s protecting the Feeder. She’s left herself open.
The logical move is to take out skull-face. Without him all this whole Mexican stand-off falls apart. And if he tries to take me out of reality... well then he’ll be focused on me. He won’t be focused on Ophelia. Her defenses will be down. The Dreamers will be open to take Ophelia out.
I realize I’m definitely planning on killing her. The girl I’m supposed to protect.
She’s already dead. She just hasn’t stopped moving yet. She’s already dead.
Skull-face just needs to join her.
“Your gun,” I say to Shaw. “I need the gun.”
She doesn’t ask why, just throws it to me.
It’s not a hard shot. His back is to me. I can see the princess looking at me as I line up the shot, but she doesn’t say a word, doesn’t do anything.
I fire.
There’s a crack. There’s the whine of a ricochet. The smack of the bullet as it hits the concrete.
Skull-face is still standing.
Between him and me: Kayla’s sword. It’s bent slightly, dented from where the bullet struck, from where she deflected the shot.
“No,” she says. “No you don’t.”
And Olsted starts to laugh.
66
“No.” I shake my head. It doesn’t make sense. “Not you too.”
Olsted just keeps on laughing. I snap the gun around to him.
“Go ahead,” he still chuckles. “You think you can get the shot from here? Think you can take me out here?”
“She’s my daughter,” Kayla speaks as if Olsted hasn’t. “Of course they’re not in my feckin’ head. I’ve told you that every goddamn day since you feckin’ started. But you don’t get to kill my daughter.”
“She’s not yours,” I say. “She’s theirs. She was your daughter. Was. Not anymore.”
“I will feckin’ carve you apart if you don’t shut your hole.”
There is silence in the room. Skull-face still hasn’t turned to look at me. He’s still staring at the other Dreamers. He’s still got his palms up. Ophelia is still staring up at the open mouth of a cooling tower, up where my eyes want to go, but I can’t let them. Only the princess is still staring me right in the eye.
I move the gun again. I point it right at Ophelia.
“Don’t you feckin—”
“Tabitha, your gun.” It’s Shaw’s voice. Tabitha spins, looking startled. “Now.”
Tabitha tosses the gun.
Kayla watches them, takes a step toward me. And if she decides to go, I’m toast, I’m done. Shaw slowly, deliberately checks the magazine, checks the safety. She hoists the gun.
“Stop him, Felicity,” Kayla says to Shaw. “Don’t let him hurt my girl.”
Sweat’s coming down me now, threatening to blur my vision.
“He’s right, Kayla,” Shaw says.
My whole body seems to quiver with relief. I try to keep the gun barrel straight as the air whips out of me.
“You have to trust him too, Kayla,” Shaw says. “Ophelia’s not your girl anymore.” And Shaw points her gun at Ophelia.
“I will take you all down!” Kayla’s screaming it now. “Not again. I’m not losing someone to these people again.”
“It’s too late Kayla. It’s too late.” It’s Clyde speaking. He spits out a battery from underneath his mask, pulls another from his coat, rolls it in his hands. He shrugs. “I’m so sorry. But it’s too late.”
“All of you,” Kayla hisses the words.
“Give it up,” Tabitha says. “Let it go.”
Kayla stares at us each in turn, arrayed before her. We all know what has to be done. She looks to Ophelia, to the shell of her adopted daughter. She looks back at me. Her lip curls.
And she moves.
And God, Jesus, Mary, and any Holy Ghosts that happen to be in the vicinity... I have seen her move before, I have seen her move like she defies time and space before, but this is something else, this is something different, this is beyond the limits of the human body, surely. I can see cracks opening in her skin for the split second she’s in the space between us, in the split second before she’s on me. I don’t even get to register the sword. I don’t even get to pull the trigger before—
Before nothing.
Nothing happens.
Kayla is hovering in midair before me, utterly still, her sword frozen above her head. Above mine. A bead of blood hangs in the air before us.
For a moment I just stand there too. Watching, staring at the imminence of death, at my own mortality poised in front of me. And then my head and my body and my instincts catch up and finally I flinch away.
Except I don’t. Not an inch. Not a muscle. I’m stuck there. I can’t even twitch my eyes.
Someone walks past me. I see her in the periphery of my vision. And then, as if relenting, the freeze lessens, and my eyes slide in their sockets. That, at least, she grants me. That, at least, Ephie lets me have.
She walks between us all, ignoring us. Her hair is still wet, a dark twisted braid down her still-dripping dress. The water steams here, making the palest of mists around her, lending her an ethereal quality.
“O,” she says, addressing her sister. “Is there any of you left in there?”
I can see Kayla desperately trying to twist in midair, desperately trying to say something.
But only skull-face’s voice sounds in the space. Even Olsted is silent now.
“Come here, chil
d,” says old skully. “Come to your father. She is your sister always. We will all be together when this is over. A family. New blood. New life. New worlds.”
“O?” says Ephie, ignoring him. “O, can you hear me?”
“Come here,” and skull-face’s voice has lost some of its cooing softness now. “Come. Do as your father tells you to do.”
“You can’t save her, Mum,” Ephie says.
At first I don’t know who she’s talking to, but then I catch the look in Kayla’s eyes, the hollowness there, the tears welling.
“You never could. Arthur never could.” She pauses. “I can’t.”
There’s a lump in my throat, a weight in my chest. This is not a child’s decision to make. But she’s not a child anymore, I realize. That’s the price for the Dreamer package. Leaving childhood behind. And so Ephie holds us all still and steady, and she makes her decision.
Ophelia disappears from reality. Ephie grunts, drops to one knee. There is a tear in reality where her sister was. A ragged gap, and again the bright darkness of the void beyond.
As Ephie drops, so does Kayla. I can move again. Olsted is howling. Skull-face screams, a roar of horror and fury. He thrusts out a hand toward Ephie.
But Ophelia, the source of the Dreamers’ fear, is gone. And one of them finally grows a pair.
The princess’s hands go out, something still graceful in the movement, something almost passionate. And she has skull-face beat. And reality bucks and tears, and more than one Dreamer seems to shriek, but skull-face is gone. Then Olsted. Just a dark gash of light. The Dreamers do what they do. They tear out the bits of reality nobody wants anymore.
“Now!” the princess bellows at the other Dreamers, and the whole place shakes. “Do it now before it’s too late.”
As if on cue, the top of the tower tears away. And I can see everything. I can see the world torn apart, the world rising in ragged chunks, the world going to smash itself apart against the great implacable face of a god that truly does not care.
No Hero Page 30
