He tossed Hunger aside and strode towards his destiny.
59
From the ground I saw Prime walking towards the tree, head bowed and palms up in supplication. His back rippled with oily thorns as he walked, solemn as any priest.
The townspeople began to topple, one by one, as the Bone Tree consumed their lives as fuel. The wooden men let them fall as they went boneless in their grips.
I moved my head, my torn cheek scraping against the dry ground, and saw Anne and Leon thrashing in the arms of the shaggy monsters holding them. They struggled like insects pinned to a board, arms and legs flailing uselessly.
Far out of my reach I saw Hunger lying in the dirt. The moonlight slipped across the strange texture of its metal skin, making it seem to glow. As always, the light writhed across it, suggesting movement that wasn’t there.
And I saw one more thing.
The fox. Bounding out of the trees and into the open glade. Behind it, dozens of hairless, muscular shapes running on all fours, their massive claws churning up the earth as they ran.
The Eaters of the Dead.
In front of the pack ran one covered in ritual scars, some fresh. Each Eater behind also bore new scars, a dome with two circles like eyes and where a mouth would be, three wavy lines. The sign of the Devourer.
The pack screamed together, an ear-splitting metallic shriek that felt like it was scraping against my bones.
The shaggy giant that had ripped Hunger from me staggered as two Eaters leapt onto it. Claws that could rend stone sank into its wooden body. It shook as the Eaters tore at it, gouging out chunks of wood.
More Eaters landed on the back of the monster holding Anne. The creature dropped Anne and reached behind its head, grabbing the Eater by one shoulder. Anne rolled aside as the towering construct hurled the Eater over its head and down into the ground, just missing her. The Eater hit the earth with a sickening crunch and was still.
Leon was tossed aside as his captor came under attack, and together he and Anne ran towards me.
By the time they arrived, I had pushed up to a sitting position. Anne started to wipe at the bloody grit on the side of my face, then stopped. “Abe, don’t move.”
She raised her pistol and pointed it at the heavily scarred Eater that was racing towards us with Hunger between its jaws.
I put a hand on her arm. “Don’t.”
The Eater skidded to a stop in front of me and spat Hunger on the ground. Foul breath washed over me as its sides heaved in and out. Shiny black eyes met mine, just for a moment, then it spun and dashed away to join the pack that was circling Prime.
I wrapped my hand around Hunger. The weapon was fever-warm and flexed against my palm. Relief swept through me.
“You two start hauling the townspeople out of here. I imagine that whatever happens when Prime uses the tree, it’s going to mean a sacrifice. A big one. I’m going to try and take him down, but if I don’t make it, I’m counting on you to save those people.”
Anne’s reply was drowned out by Leon’s scream. Blood gushed from his calf as one of the Eaters slashed the back of Prime’s right leg.
Leon fell to the ground next to me. “Anne, go. I’ll be right behind you.”
She gave him a long look. I couldn’t tell how much of it was anger and how much was sorrow.
He refused to meet her eyes. She turned and ran for the townspeople.
“I’m sorry, Leon. I wish there was another way.” Hunger stretched out into an impossibly sharp, three-foot-long, leaf-shaped blade.
He nodded. “I know. Tell Uncle Henry, if we win, that I ended up doing the right thing after all.”
“I’ll tell him.”
I left him and moved as best I was able towards Prime, staying behind him while the Eaters held his attention.
When Hunger plunged through his back, Leon screamed.
60
Prime dropped to one knee, transfixed by Hunger. The blade had entered between his shoulderblades and come out the center of his chest. An Eater lunged for his face, but ended up with its jaws around his upraised arm instead. Two more Eaters circled, darting in to rake open wooden furrows on his thighs and belly.
The first Eater to die was the one on Prime’s arm. It jerked back and clawed at its open mouth, the flesh inside filled with thorns. The sacs on the end of the thorns began to swell, forcing the Eater’s jaws open until they cracked apart, splitting the skin of its face.
Its claws and fangs punctured the sacs, revealing the black, gelatinous flesh inside, but they could do nothing to stop the process. In seconds, the Eater was reduced to a leathery husk.
Prime swung his newly freed arm and caught a second Eater across the shoulder, leaving black streaks of thorns where he struck. The third darted in under the swing and raked its claws across his bristling skin and picked up its own cluster of thorns in doing so. Both Eaters died in agony.
Prime lurched forward, the sudden motion tearing Hunger from his back, and ran for the tree.
Anne had reached the townspeople, but instead of freeing them, she found herself in the midst of a pitched battle between the wooden men and the Eaters. The glimpse I got of the fight showed me an Eater with its belly pierced by sharp wooden hands, even as its mouth and claws were filled with chunks of wooden anatomy. Anne crouched over a small boy, arms covering his body as an Eater leaped over her.
I looked away and went after Prime, slower now than I used to be, but still faster than that lumbering piece of shit. Coming up from behind, I hit him in the side of one knee, Hunger now back in the form of a baton. There was a crack and Prime stumbled.
I tried to put Leon’s screams out of my mind and hit him again. The knee split apart and Prime dropped, his good knee and both hands driving into the ground.
Even a few weeks ago, I wouldn’t have needed two blows. There was so little of me now that the hunger hadn’t taken. The skin on my chest and stomach remained torn, my ribs grated together as I moved, and I was weakening fast.
I threw myself onto Prime anyway. A hundred thorns pierced me when I landed on his back, but they could do no more to me than that.
*I knew it when I first crawled out of the cold ground. That your kind would do anything to keep feeding on the corpse of the world. Maggots in the heart of everything.*
His leg was almost knitted together, so before he could regain his balance, I grabbed Hunger by both ends and slipped it over his head. When it got past his chin, I hauled back with everything I had, the bar catching him across the throat.
I wasn’t expecting that Prime would react like a man, breath trapped behind a crushed windpipe, but I had hoped that wrenching him backwards by the neck would have some effect. Instead he simply stood up, letting me dangle from his back like the world’s ugliest cape. He started towards the tree once more.
*It’s all coming back. The lifeblood of the world will flow again and sweep you from her wounds. There will be beauty and glory and power once more. Because of me.*
I strained harder and he continued to ignore my efforts. Right up to the point where Hunger thinned and sharpened between my hands and bit into his neck. I yanked backwards and Leon’s cries cut off in a wet burble.
I couldn’t let myself think about that now. Later I’d have time for regret and the dull ache of sacrifices done in the name of duty or honor or whatever other bullshit we need to blame our actions on. But right now I concentrated on the strength left in my arms and bite of the blade as it slid deeper into the tough wood of Prime’s throat.
“One man’s glory is another man’s mass grave, jackass. Speaking for the maggots, you’re not touching that goddamn tree.”
He pulled up short and arched his back trying to get away from the blade. His hands came up and clamped over mine. He was able to keep me from cutting deeper, but not able to force the blade out of his neck entirely. Even in my weakened state, I was able to hold on to that much.
He let go with one hand long enough to drive a spiny elbow into my s
ide. The blow landed where my ribs had been grating together. Blood flew past my lips as air was forced out of my body. It was all I could do to hang on to Hunger and not slip to the ground. Black spots crowded my vision and breathing became something I had to work at.
But I hung on. He tried again, but I had moved slightly towards the other side of his back, so the punishment to my ribs was considerably less. So he did it again. And again.
I still hung on. I yanked back on Hunger, a move that sent dangerous warnings from my side and earned me another mouthful of blood, but I did it anyway. Heedlessly. Gladly.
I was past my time anyway, by decades. If I was going to die, then I would be happy to go this way, fighting for something, instead of helpless in bed the way all my friends had gone. The way Maggie had gone.
Prime quit hammering his elbow into me and stood up to his full height, both hands once again clamped over mine. Then he threw himself backwards. Five-hundred pounds of iron-hard wooden flesh wrapped in thorns slammed into me.
Everything went soft and hazy and dark.
When the world came back, Prime had reached the tree, arms outspread. The tree blazed with spectral fire and the branches flexed, the bones grating against each other with the movement.
Prime reached a hand out, reverently, and placed it on the Heart. The fire leapt to his body, outlining him in shifting silver flames and black smoke.
The tree swayed in place as if caught in a strong wind, and then all of the outspread limbs snapped down around him in a shocking instant, engulfing him.
The world of man began to end.
61
I flinched when the first of Prime’s screams ripped through my head. There was no intelligence there, no sense of self, nothing left of the creature that had worn Leon’s face for the last week. Just raw, animal anguish. And then nothing.
Prime had been one of the Fox’s victims all along. He’d gotten to the end of his road, but instead of being rewarded with godhood he turned out to be just another sacrifice.
Prime unraveled in the embrace of the tree, losing the form and substance of his body to become one with it. The vines that had been so compactly sculpted into Leon’s image burst apart, snaking around the bones of the tree and plunging into the white-hot starburst of the Heart.
They thickened and coiled around the tree, racing up the limbs and down the trunk, until the bones were no longer visible. The ground rippled as fat vines punched down and out, burrowing under the grove in all directions.
The trunks of the surrounding trees split with gunshot reports as the invasive vines climbed up through their trunks and thick tumors of gray fungus burst outward. The sound raced away in all directions as the contagion of the tree spread at incredible speed.
Shadows raced across the ground in dizzying patterns as the forest writhed under the gigantic moon overhead, branches reaching and stretching out towards the center. Trees that had stood a hundred feet tall or more bent and split and joined with other trees, creating a landscape of thrashing chaos in all directions. Branches disappeared under the spreading fungus until the weight of it began to cause them to sag and break.
The Heart blazed with a harsh, actinic light and rose into the air as the corrupt god that Prime had played midwife and sacrifice to grew.
I witnessed all of this while lying on the ground in a pool of my own blood, trying to suck air into my one functioning lung. To make things worse, my left eye seemed glued shut until I touched the ruined socket with one shaky fingertip and discovered that it was gone. Must have been one of Prime’s spikes when he landed on me.
Fuck it, not really my body anyway. I rolled over, slowly at first, until I toppled onto my face, and got my hands planted on the ground. Pushing up to my knees was all I could manage, and I won’t lie, I was pretty damn proud of myself for managing it. I crawled to the center of the grove.
A column of vegetative and fungal mass slowly pushed itself from the earth, rising inexorably, foot by foot. I pulled back the hand that still clutched Hunger and drove the shaft in deep. Hunger rose with the growing mound, pulling me into the agony of a standing position and then, because I wouldn’t let go, lifted me off the ground.
I shouldn’t have been able to hang suspended like that, my chest pretty much a sack full of loosely connected broken bits, but it seemed like this vessel that I had been forced into was capable of a kind of hellish endurance. No respite from the pain, oh no, but still subject to my will, past the breaking point of ordinary flesh.
Above me the Heart burned and smoked in its socket. Below me Anne and Chuck pulled survivors into a tight knot, protected from the grasping tendrils erupting from the nearby trees by a ring of Eaters. A ring that was shrinking as the invasive vines plunged into their bodies and consumed them one by one, turning them into empty husks in seconds.
I wanted to let go and plummet to the earth. To join them in their final moments and rest.
But I couldn’t. The Heart was calling me now, the blue-white burning star above me singing silently, somehow resonating through my body and drawing me upwards. I clamped my free hand onto one of the fat vines making up the body of the new god for leverage, then yanked Hunger free and plunged it back in higher. Hunger’s barbed shaft anchored in alien flesh that was no longer wholly plant-like as had been its progenitor.
My chest heaved as I climbed, blood flowing freely from my mouth. Force of will drove me, flogging my dying body past all endurance.
I reached the charred socket where the Heart was embedded and hung next to it, the heat blistering the skin on my face and lips. Inside the silent conflagration of silver flame, the heart pulsed and throbbed, translucent with its own light. Its power washed over me, a physical pressure against my body.
Holding tight with my free hand, I drew Hunger back, prepared to ram it into the Heart, but the nascent god was ready for me.
A white-hot tendril burst from the surface of the Heart and plunged into my empty eye socket and into my brain.
62
I lived because I don’t know how to die. A young woman once shot me through the chest to save her father, but failed to kill me or save her dad. A few days later I drove a shaft of metal through my own heart to stop the Devourer from entering our world. Having my brain pierced by the roots of a fledgling god was no different. I was still here.
Except that it wasn’t trying to kill me outright. It was trying to eat me, hollow me out like the rest. It pulled at me, drawing the strength from my limbs and making my thoughts sluggish. I resisted, but it just dug deeper, sucking at my essence and my will.
I put up a fight. No surprise there. If nothing else I’m a contrary son of a bitch, but I shouldn’t have had to fight in the first place. Things don’t feed on me. I’m the opposite of food. But it turns out that wasn’t entirely true. You just had to be powerful enough to pull it off. But even so, I was able to resist, to slow the process down by sheer cussed determination.
The god tried to sweet talk me into letting go, joining the home team. It had no words, I don’t think it was conscious in that way, but it could still communicate. It injected me with feelings that it thought would sway me. Belonging. Restfulness. Satisfaction. It vomited up images into my brain at the same time, an alien landscape that reached to the horizon in every direction. Slimy gray fungus covered the earth in knots and tangles as far as the eye could see, and towering above it, a mountain of the same material, rising above the clouds. No people, no animals, not even any trees or plants. Just an endless expanse of the god’s flesh, resting on the dried corpse of the earth.
Somehow, that didn’t inspire me to lay down and die. I struggled harder, but I was weakening. It wouldn’t be long now.
Long, slender thorns grew out of the vegetative wall that I clung to, pushing through my body and pinning me in place as the god stole the strength of my limbs. My grip on the vine went slack and I sagged against the thorns, suspended by them.
It burrowed deeper, seeking out the power that fueled t
he undying vessel that I inhabited, trying to get at the essence of it. Of me.
Of the Devourer.
And then it won. Despite every bit of strength that I could muster, it pierced me, and touched the true center of my being. Voracious, unending, desperate hunger. A void so vast and deep that nothing could ever fill it.
The god recoiled, but it was too late.
The emptiness inside of me took notice of this new thing, this delicious offering, and began to stir. At first I tried to force it back down just as I always had. But thinking about the end of art and music, laughter, of curiosity and wonder, all of mankind’s shared victories over an uncaring and unfeeling universe, I realized that was no longer an option.
I no longer mattered. Not as Abe, old soldier. I had spent so much time trying to deny what I was that I never understood what I could be. This thing that had me, this horror that wanted to sweep aside everything that I loved, only saw me as a man foolishly standing his ground, like an ant defending his nest from a farmer’s boot.
The truth was that I could longer afford to be just a man. Letting go was like letting Maggie’s wedding ring slip from my finger over the ocean. I knew that what I let go of now, I would never get back.
It was worth it. I felt the god’s body through our connection, absorbing trees and earth and towering over me, and I smiled my bloody smile.
Abe was gone. There was only the great void inside of me, rising like a howling typhoon. Hunger uncoiled in my fist, showing its true self now that I had shown mine. The end split into five sinuous tendrils, twisting and grasping at the night air, jagged silver teeth gleaming on their undersides.
Together, Hunger and I reached for the Heart. The grasping tentacles wrapped around the writhing, incandescent mass and squeezed.
Satisfying, delicious power surged into me. I gulped at it, beyond starvation. I could feel the god trying to free itself from the bond that it had forged, to prevent having its own essence consumed like so much raw meat, but it was useless. The flames sheathing its titanic body guttered and went out. And still I fed.
Liar's Harvest (The Emergent Earth) Page 22
