Storch had died and almost died so many times now, the pain was almost welcome, a familiar friend amid all the weirdness, now. He managed to bring both his legs up under him and tried to pump them to run across the ground, but he hit off rhythm and his right knee locked up and blew out. His femur tore out of its cartilage coupling where the knee had been and sheared through the meat of his calf. A piercing scream escaped his lips before his jaw hit and bit the end of his tongue off. With his left leg, he managed to fling himself into the crowd with his claws out. Die with your hands around His neck—
It seemed that he went right through one and drove his arm up to the elbow in the abdomen of another before he fell down. The grenades exploded, blinding supernovas, but he couldn't see if they thinned the crowd any. All he could see were those goddamned sad gray eyes inches away from his, forgiving him.
"You keep doing this—" Keyes whispered.
Storch, lying across the body, drove his other fist down the man's throat and tore out everything he could get a grip on. It would take a hell of a lot more than that to kill the miserable bastard, but at least it shut him up.
The others around him backed away, each and every one of them still hissing the formula. Then they all closed their eyes in unison and sighed, a soft fist of wind that stirred the curtain of rain. "IT IS ACCOMPLISHED, He said. "THE WORLD WILL BE ONE." The crowd parted, and a giant form stepped into the space between Storch and the inner pit.
It looked like a dinosaur, or what dinosaurs would imagine their Devil looked like, if they had lived long enough to get religion. It stood ten feet, from its backward-jointed legs to its wedge-shaped head, which combined the cruelest traits of a tiger shark, a tyrannosaurus, and a triceratops. Obsidian scales rippled on the uneasy slabs of muscle on its vast shoulders. A rack of horns like sharpened baseball bats crowned the skull. Its eyes were smoldering red-black spots low on either side of the upper jaw. The bones of its arms arced out in curling scimitars that twisted and grew longer as the monster drew closer. Storch knew it could only be one man.
"Damn, boy," purred Brutus Dyson, "I was starting to think you weren't never gonna show up."
Storch tilted his head back and drank the rain. The concerted might of Keyes' brain felt like armored fingers closing around him, like lightning gathering to strike. His broken leg mended, stronger and more flexible than before. "It stops, Keyes!" he called out. He pointed at the pit. "You open the door, I'll open a door. You know what the fuck I'm talking about."
All of Him seemed to look inside themselves for a few seconds, like a newscaster on a shaky satellite feed, waiting for the signal to bounce off the ionosphere and into his ear. There were thousands of Him scattered all over the globe, hearing Storch's words, thinking what to do with him.
"WE HAVE NO MORE TIME FOR YOU, ZANE" Keyes rumbled. Rocks shook loose off the walls. "DYSON, RESOLVE THIS."
Storch circled around Dyson, but the bigger mutant outflanked him and lunged. All around them, Keyes turned and walked towards the pit.
Storch met the incoming Lieutenant with a spurred forearm. He tore a divot out of Dyson's leathery hide, but a massive arm pistoned into Storch's side again and again, a blur, crushing his ribs and right lung to jelly. Then, before he could fall, the horns gored him under the arm and the ground went away, and he was in the air again at thirty thousand feet, those horns inside him, and this time, he was never coming down—
But he did come down, and harder than any of the other times, spread-eagle on the unforgiving black rock. The rainwater vaporized where his blood mingled with it.
He lifted his head and looked for Dyson, saw very little else. The Lieutenant knelt before him and shook his huge, horned head. "I gave you so many goddamned chances, son," he said. "I even made you one of us, didn't I?"
Beyond Dyson, the first row of Keyes reached the lip of the inner pit, and stepped off into it. Silently, they just dropped out of sight and the next row took their place. For the moment, there wasn't a thing he could do about it.
"I don't see your boyfriends around, Lieutenant." Storch tried not to sound like one of his lungs was full of blood, but the words were still mostly red foam. "You let him split you up?"
Dyson looked stung. He stood and walked away from Storch as if he just didn't want to play any more. "Them boys dug their own goddamned graves. Couldn't adapt, in the end. You try to hold on too tight to what you think you are, you become it, and you ain't fit to live."
"And how do you stay alive, old man?"
"I adapt. I become what this bad old hogbitch of a world wants me to be. Every minute, son, I'm a whole other animal. That's the only way to stay alive, when you're like us."
Storch leapt to his feet and showed Dyson the rest of his good stuff. "I ain't like you."
It looked like a gun, only worse. Shorter than Storch's arm, with a drum magazine behind the stubby barrel, yet it was designed to be fired from a bipod. Storch had never seen one before, let alone fired one, but he'd read about it in Soldier Of Fortune. They called it the Tank Killer. The Russians made it as a lightweight anti-tank weapon, but in Chechnya, had taken to clearing houses with it. A single 30mm shell fired through the brick wall of a house or bunker would reduce the inhabitants to ashy wallpaper. He doubted it would seriously harm Dyson, but anything was worth a try.
Seething disgust turned Dyson's inhuman face even blacker. He thumped his barrel-chest with a taloned fist and charged. "You fucking faggot! Put down that shit and fight like a man!"
Storch leveled the tank killer and fired. At thirty feet, the shell exploded out at Dyson, but he seemed to have all the time in the world to dodge it. Behind him, the shell punched a big wet hole in the wall of moving Keyes. Without losing a step, Dyson rolled and popped up within arm's reach of Storch before the next shell jacked into the chamber.
Dyson swatted the tank killer out of Storch's hands and smashed his chest with both fists. Storch staggered back, and everything went white.
Both arms went numb and limp. He fell down and tried to roll over, but Dyson was on him, pinning his arms down with his knees.
"Last time we were here, I gave you something, and you ain't done a damned thing with it, so I want it back." Storch wriggled helplessly. Dyson drummed on Storch's chest with one fist and, shifting his weight, drove the other fist into Storch's abdomen. His talons raked the iron-hard muscle there, rending it but not penetrating. Storch screamed and snapped his head back and forth. Desperate, he sank his teeth into Dyson's left thigh.
Dyson's probing claws found the relatively soft meat just above his hips, and plunged into it up to the wrist.
All the air went out of Storch, and the sky became a rippling sea of silver dots. Through it, Dyson's eyes glowed like blood-flecked black moons. "I need what I gave you back. There's only me now, and I need to be strong for what comes next. You understand, don't you, son?"
He got off Storch, who didn't need pinning, now, and tore open the pouch of his gut. If Storch lifted his head and tried very hard to stare through the silver dots, he could see Dyson ripping out his liver and intestines in a great bloody bundle, like wet laundry, but he didn't really want to. He wasn't seeing the real world anymore, his dying mind was playing tricks on him, because his intestines seemed to come alive in Dyson's hand and writhe up his arm toward his face. And Dyson seemed to be screaming bloody murder.
Storch suddenly understood something about Ely Buggs that had never made sense, but never merited much chewing over, something he would rather not ever have known at all. Buggs constantly ate shit food, yet never gained an ounce. He told everyone he was an animal-lover and had many pets, yet Storch had never seen so much as a guppy in his trailer in Thermopylae. Buggs always talked a lot of shit, so he never questioned it. Now, he knew.
Buggs had worms.
Shit, barefoot Alabama dirt-farmers and untouchable trash-pickers in India have worms. Buggs collected worms the way bikers collect tattoos, the way spinster shut-ins collect cats. His GI tract was a thriv
ing menagerie of intestinal parasites from every far-flung corner of the earth when Storch took possession. It was just, he supposed, one of those things you had to watch out for when you stole someone else's body.
When Storch began to rebuild Buggs from the inside out, he'd been more concerned with repairing the horrendous damage the fall had incurred on the body than patrolling for parasites. They were still relatively small at the time, but as Storch supercharged Buggs's metabolism and feeding habits to include a vast portion of all that swam in the Pacific Ocean, they had begun to grow. And when Storch began to change three days ago, digesting damaged cells to recycle into the new structures he'd need to fly to Iraq, they, too, changed. They sapped too little of his strength to become a nuisance to Storch, but out in the open, they became far more to Dyson.
Dyson sprang backwards and dropped Storch's guts, but most of the parasites had attached themselves to his hand and forearm, and either tried to bore in or migrate to the nearest safe harbor on his body. There were hundreds of them—hookworms, whipworms, pinworms, dwarf tapeworms, flukes, and a giant nematode (Ascaris lubricoides, but Buggs actually had a name for it, which swam up, unbidden, from the mush of Buggs's memories—Dr. Teeth). A monster as big as a timber rattler, it now had a rudimentary mouth like the multi-faceted drill of a mining engine. The whirring knob of grinding teeth darted straight for the nearest, softest tissue, which happened to be one of Dyson's eyes.
"Ah, FUCK!" Dyson howled. He grabbed at Dr. Teeth, but the end of the worm popped in his fingers and the rest slithered, frictionless, into his eye socket. "What've you been eating?"
"I swear to God, LT," Storch said, "those aren't mine."
Dyson looked almost comical, dancing around with his arm engulfed by wriggling, flapping fanged spaghetti. His head cocked back and his remaining eye squinted shut, looking as if he was about to vomit—and then he did. A thick spray of gray-green bile exploded out of his gaping maw. The instant it hit the air, it ignited, and splashed all over his infested arm. It was like napalm, or the incendiary Greek fire the Byzantines used to throw on invading ships. It clung to Dyson's arm and shot out spiky feathers of white flame like the tongue of a welding torch. The parasites were cremated, but Dyson's mighty limb was reduced to charcoal in thirty seconds. The whole time, he just stood there roaring and staring into the fire as if the pain were the most real, and thus the best thing, that had happened to him in years. Or maybe it was just Dr. Teeth eating into his brain.
Storch didn't care much, either way. He used the Lieutenant's reverie to crawl to the pit. He had a punctured lung and shattered ribs, and nothing between his esophagus and his asshole, but the bleeding had stopped, and things were trying to grow back already. He made them stop. His resources were needed elsewhere. Just don't try to eat or breathe, and you'll be fine.
The canyon was empty, but for the two of them. A few Keyes lay pinned under the boulder. They struggled, grimly, silently, to drag themselves out from under and join the others, who had all, apparently, just jumped into the dark hole. One of them scuttled by, oblivious to him, just a pair of arms and a mostly flattened head. It dragged itself to the edge and went over. He did not hear it hit the bottom.
He could hear nothing over the ringing of his ears and Dyson's gobbling screams and the drumming of the rain. When he looked down into the pit, he could see only that the whole floor moved. He looked over his shoulder at Dyson, but there wasn't much to worry about, there. The devil dinosaur rolled on the ground like a flea-crazed dog, foaming jaws snapping, claws buried in his eye socket and going down his throat. His screams, though not even remotely human, still contained words. "I'll fix you good, you hogbitch! I'm Spike Team Texas, Dr. Teeth! My war is forever!" How Dyson knew the worm's name was, again, one of those things he'd rather not know.
Storch took a deep, deep breath, stifled a scream as his right lung reinflated and pushed shards of rib out through his skin. The new ribs growing in were like the double-walled hull of an oil tanker. He felt like he was on fire, his body tearing up some parts of him to fix others. For one unthinkable instant, it seemed like a really good idea, almost an imperative, to kill and eat Dyson. Maybe one Keyes—
No. That was not what he was.
What Storch was, was scared shitless. Not of Keyes, but of what lay beyond. It was the place beneath them. Of all the hidden, unspeakable places in the world, it was the one he did not want to go into. Hundreds of people went down there, trying to open it up. He held the breath, swung his legs out over the pit, and lowered himself into the dark. Down into the earth one more time, sickening with the certainty that he was, once again, too late—
The walls were slick with burning slime, but the rough edges of the blasted concrete and basalt offered easy purchase. Rebar and twisted stubs of steel girders jutted out of the rock, so he was able to half-crawl, half-fall down to where the walls were planed and shaped by the original builders. Storch shuddered as he touched the smooth stone. The walls about two hundred feet down were as smooth as polished marble but there were circular handholds, like the pores in rock at the seashore, but their uniform shape and spacing testified to a purpose. In the gloom, he could only feel the cold stone, but the circular holes were everywhere, like a negative Braille. And then it hit him, that this was exactly what it was. The walls of the pit were covered in writing, extending all the way down to the floor, to Keyes—and the door. He was glad he couldn't read it.
As he descended, the turmoil above faded, and he began to discern something happening below. There were bodies down there, but they were blurred, indistinct. Had they all simply jumped to their deaths? No, they couldn't be killed that easily. Keyes had a reason for everything. Certainly, there was a reason for this.
He reached his foot out for another hold, and touched the floor. Something soft and hot brushed against him, and he retreated back up the wall, blinking, willing his eyes to grow and make sense out of the sea of heat, below.
They were all here, right below him. Twisted, broken limbs stretched out of the mass of bodies piled ten or twenty deep on the narrow floor of the pit. They had fallen a long way down, but not far enough to account for this. They looked smashed together as if by a steamroller—but no. They were melting together, flesh liquefying and fusing with the mass. Limbs and senses migrated and coalesced into great siege-engine weapons and unblinking compound eyes. The mob became a black ocean of protoplasm, quivering and bubbling with the potential to become anything, everything. It gathered itself together and rose up before him like a tsunami in the gloom. Slowly, but with horrifying vitality, it rose and became something worse than the sum of its hundreds of parts.
Storch tried not to cower.
In the small space, its massed voice was crushingly loud. "YOU LIVE IN US, ZANE," it said. "YOU ARE REDUNDANT. YOU ARE HOSTILE."
"Goddamn right I'm hostile, motherfucker."
Between them, now, he saw the gate. It was a circular portal of unidentifiable metal, like an enormous manhole cover, set into the floor. So scarred and burned by chemicals and force and the teeth of eons that it looked like a single piece of raw ore, or the chastity-belted womb of a mummified woman, and in the truest sense, it was.
"YOU ARE OBSOLETE," it said, and fell on the gate
Though it smothered the portal, Storch could hear and feel it prying at the frame, feel the stone flex under him, and begin to crack. It still had more than enough flesh left over to engulf him. Storch waded into the mass and tore at it with his bare hands, but it was like trying to beat back a wave. The viscous protoplasm ran through his fingers. He fought to drive it back, but the mass extruded a looming battering ram, which slammed him into the wall. It wove a cocoon around him that became a stomach. Acid burned his skin. Teeth and lamprey-fanged suckers gouged him, tentacles paralyzed him, and this had all happened before, would always happen, because he never, ever learned.
When he was eaten this time, he swore, no more coming back. Please, God, whatever you really are…
A
ll around him, Keyes's body shook, tremors running through it, and it just split open and fell away.
Storch sank to the ground and contracted into a fetal ball. He didn't even care enough to see what had answered his prayers, not yet. He'd seen too much, already.
Presently, he opened his eyes. It wasn't dark down here, anymore. A frigid blue phosphorescence poured up the pitted, eons-old walls. It came from the gaping hole in the floor of the pit. Of Keyes, there was no sign.
Storch looked up at the disk of night, at the clouds rended to shreds on the raging wind that brought him here. Stars peered down the shaft at him, stealing their first glimpse down the hole beside him in over a million years.
Storch remembered his Bible. He didn't expect to see any Cher'ubims, or any flaming swords, and he didn't get any. There was just him alone. There was always, it seemed, one more hole to climb down, one more impossible thing to be done by him, alone. Just to keep the shitty, fucked-up world the way it was. Because he was the only one, it seemed, who didn't seem to know better.
His stomach gurgled, the first he noticed that he had one, again. Without looking down the hole, Storch held his breath and dove into Eden.
The Bible got it all so fucking wrong.
Storch knew how it was. You lied to yourself about home. It was always the good times, the best years of our lives, but getting through it was night terrors and wet beds with monsters under them, if you were very lucky, as few kids really were. His Daddy lied to him about the Army, made every day in the infantry sound like a frat party in Valhalla. All mankind was the same, apparently. He lied about the Garden of Eden, because one step over the threshold, Storch wanted to get out and never come back.
There were no trees pleasant to the sight and good for food, no river out of Eden parted into four heads, and the beasts of the field here were of a type Adam never got around to naming. Adam must have lied to his children about this place, because it was nothing like the pastoral paradise under glass that men were meant to weep for. It was a crucible, a bottle where life had been tested to destruction for hundreds of millions of years, a runaway killing jar experiment to make a better beast of burden. And every so often, it had boiled over and infested the world. Once, the ancestor of all human beings had escaped from this place, but it must have changed a lot since then.
Ravenous Dusk Page 73
