by Jack Conner
He saw her hesitate, unsure how much of herself she should give away.
“Very well,” she said. “In Octung I am called Layanna. Layanna of the House of Uul.”
He pushed his glasses further up his nose, taking that in. “It’s good to meet you, Layanna. I’m Dr. Francis Avery. Of the House of Avery.”
They reached the long low metal cart. A huge section of the lobster carapace arched atop it. Beneath and around heaped rotting chunks of flesh.
“Your chariot,” he said.
Layanna did not look as disgusted as he would have thought. “It will do. Oh, yes.”
Frowning, Avery helped her fold back a sheet of flesh and crawl underneath the great ribbed length of carapace. When she was in place, he threw a tarp over the cart and with some effort wheeled it out of the laboratory. Tires squealed, and the cart listed to the right. The massed flesh and armor was heavy, which is why he typically sent his assistants in pairs to dispose of the waste. Grunting and straining, he shoved it down one dark, metallic hall after another. The halls stank of mold and cleanser.
At an intersection stood one of the checkpoints, attended by four guards. One stepped forward as Avery approached.
“Another load, eh?” said the guard. “You’ve got the forms, Doctor?”
Avery handed over the paperwork, and the man scanned it. Avery tried not to sweat, tried to get his heartbeat under control.
“Looks in order,” the guard said.
“I saw something move in the cart,” a female guard said. “Under the tarp.”
“The rotting flesh,” Avery said. “It’s settling.”
The female eyed him. “Just get rid of it. It stinks.”
Avery forced a smile. “Will do.”
“Night, Doctor,” said the first guard.
Avery grunted and shoved the cart forward. He rode the lift upwards to the groan of chains and bang of metal. On the level just below the ground floor, he stopped and shoved the cart down another hallway, enduring one more checkpoint before reaching the large metal doors of the incinerator room. Located conveniently to both the sub-levels and the hospital in the wing of the fortress above, it should be unoccupied at this time of night.
Sure enough, Avery found the large, dark room empty save for the roaring flames of the furnace. The room stank of metal and smoke. Shadows clung to great pipes and bulbous machinery.
He maneuvered the cart forward, toward the metal bed that was used to place objects over the fire, and threw back the tarp.
“Come now,” he whispered. “Quickly.”
He dug through mounds of flesh, wincing as the bloody stuff enveloped his hands. It was probably his imagination, but he thought he could feel it gnawing away at him like acid.
He hauled out the last chunk with a groan. There, in the darkness under the carapace, Layanna lay in wait. At the sight of her, Avery sucked in a breath.
“Dear gods, what do you think you’re doing?”
Like a wild animal, she crouched in the rancid shadows, gnawing on a hunk of crustacean flesh as if she had been starved for weeks. Blood coated her mouth and chin, her hands, and it pasted her hospital gown to her breasts. She looked up at him, almost growling.
“You’ve gone mad,” he said.
She ripped another strip of flesh free with her teeth, chewed it and then—with obvious reluctance—set her meal down. Like an insolent little girl, she wiped the blood off her mouth with the back of her hand. She burped.
“That was good,” she said.
“How can you ... ? Never mind. Just hurry up, for love of the Three.”
To Avery’s relief, she climbed out from under the carapace, and he backed away as she unfolded. She seemed stronger now. Her eyes blazed. Her skin was flushed. Firelight from the furnace shone on the gobs of flesh and blood that clung to her cheeks, her dress and hair.
“I don’t understand it,” Avery said. “That flesh is contaminated.”
“To you, yes. To me it contains extradimensional elements that are compatible with my own.” She smiled, and it was a ghastly smile, so much white in all that redness. “It is tasty.”
“But I’ve fed you ...”
“Only food that nourishes this.” She touched her belly, indicating herself. “But there’s more to me than this.”
He shook his head. “Explain later. The next shift will discover your absence any minute, and then we can expect a full lockdown. There, in that corner, you’ll find a new set of clothes, a doctor’s uniform. Yes, that’s it. Use that bucket and sponge. I’d expected you to be dirty from the cart. Not that dirty, but ... yes ... ah—”
Without paying him any attention, she tore off her gown and bathed herself. He caught a brief glimpse of firm breasts and buttocks, and then he hastily turned away. He felt his face grow hot, and tried to think of his escape plans.
“I’m ready,” she said shortly, and he turned.
She looked as professionally dressed as him, although her hair was a little wet, her clothes a little wrinkled. He had hidden them in a dark, dusty corner, and they had suffered accordingly. Still, to look at her one would never know that she had been a feral beast just moments before. Her cheeks were a bit flushed, but that was all.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Walking quickly, they left the incinerator room and made for a stairwell. They needn’t worry about the checkpoint, which was set up to monitor comings and goings from the sublevels. He had already passed it and was considered in the upper portion of the building.
“Don’t say anything to anyone,” Avery warned her in a whisper. “Even in Ghenisan. Your accent will give you away.”
They rose to ground level and entered the medical wing of Fort Brunt. The sleepy bustle of a nighttime military hospital surrounded them. Nurses checked up on patients injured during the lobster attack or some battle at sea. Wounded soldiers called for more morphine or made weary banter with each other. Most slept. The air smelled the familiar odor of rot and antiseptic and offal from bedpans. Layanna eyed the patients with an inscrutable expression. If she had spent as much time in Octung as Avery thought she had, it must be quite a shock to see the results of Octung’s war. Then again, she was trying to stop it, so the results had obviously distressed her before.
They exited the building and cold wind gusted around them, bringing with it the salty, electric scent of the Atomic Sea. A few patrols prowled the grounds, and gnarled trees swayed to the wind. Even at night, bright lights blazed from the exterior of the fortress, illuminating the compound. Avery and Layanna wound through ornamental hedges and statues of Navy heroes, bound for the street that trickled past the fort, bordering its west-facing wall. The walls of the fort’s compound rose high and thick, and to Avery at that moment they appeared impassable.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “The walls are designed to keep people out, not in. This isn’t a prison.”
They passed the parking lot that facilitated people like Avery who worked at the fort but did not live there, and he wished at that moment that he owned a car. A taxi would be waiting for them, though. He had everything arranged.
The guards at the entry checkpoint knew him by sight and waved him through. He wasn’t worried that they would ask for Layanna’s ID. They only checked ID on the way in. Of course, that might change after today.
Avery held his breath as they passed through the heavy archway, under the thick wall. Leering gargoyles laughed down at them. Avery knew in medieval times those gargoyles’ mouths had gushed with burning oil or boiling water during invasions. How many people had died right where he was walking? At any moment he expected the blare of alarms to sound behind him, for the metal gates to slam closed ahead. He had to grit his teeth to keep them from rattling.
Then, miraculously, they were out. He hadn’t noticed the wind’s absence till it reappeared, busily gusting through his thin hair, billowing his coat out behind him. Even Layanna seemed to relax.
The taxi idled just where he had instructed it
to, sulking along the curb on Hangman’s Blvd. just beyond Brunt’s walls. Smoke from the exhaust roiled up into the night, and the cab’s engine made a chugging, purring noise. Somehow it reminded Avery of a great cat.
“Almost there,” he said, hearing the tightness of his voice.
He reached the cab, opened the rear door and gestured for Layanna to get in—
Alarms blared behind them. Avery spun to see activity at the gate. The guard captain reached for a ringing telephone. The peals of the alarm made hairs prickle along Avery’s spine.
“Get in!” he said.
Layanna swung inside the cab, but before Avery could follow the panicked cab-driver screamed, “Get out! Get out!”
“Grab him,” Avery told Layanna.
He didn’t pause to see if she complied—although the cabbie’s screams hinted that she had—but hurried around to the driver’s door and jerked it open; Layanna’s distraction had prevented the cabbie from locking it. Avery seized the man by the jacket front, physically hauled him out of the vehicle and deposited him on the city street. Without hesitation, Avery slid behind the wheel and locked the door.
“You! Stop!” shouted the guards at the entry checkpoint. Avery saw them take out their guns and run toward the cab. Their captain barked something. One of them fired.
The bullet punched a hole in the rear window of the auto. Glass exploded. Shrapnel hit Avery’s ear.
He stomped on the gas. The car jerked forward, its owner beating on the window, then falling away. At the next street, Avery swung the wheel hard left and caromed around a corner. Cars honked at him, and one bumped his rear. He shot forward, teeth set, back hunched.
Just before he passed out of sight of the fortress, black vans barreled out from another gateway, lights flashing from their roofs.
“This could get rough,” Avery said.
Layanna said nothing, merely fastened her seatbelt. Then: “Go faster.”
He obeyed. He swerved down a broad street, smashed against another taxi, and scraped forward. Sirens screamed behind him. He cut hard, swinging into the next side street. Lights flashed on shop windows in his rearview mirror. He mashed the gas pedal.
He wound down one street, then another. He took alleys, back roads, main roads when he had to. Always he avoided the flashing lights that reflected off buildings behind him. When he saw them, he veered away.
Finally he bundled up an alley and jerked the car to a stop. Shattered glass tinkled in the back.
“The police will be on the lookout for this car by now, and the Navy certainly knows it,” Avery said. “We need another.”
He climbed out and looked around. Crumbling tenements reared over them, and the car crouched in shadow. At any time a gang of criminals or desperate refugees could happen upon them.
Joining him, Layanna said, “I’m sorry for all this, Doctor.”
“I knew what I was getting in for.” But Janx’s crew doesn’t.
He grabbed her hand and led her down a grimy alley. He wasn’t even sure what part of town they were in. The Rickles, he thought, but wasn’t sure. He’d been driving too recklessly, randomly.
Noises ahead. Shouting, laughs, singing, young boys playing, people haggling over prices. Music.
Avery and Layanna emerged from the alley into a crowded courtyard. To his surprise, he found himself in the midst of a bazaar. Lights like creeping vines overgrew the stalls, and children in tattered jackets danced around fireworks that snapped in the intersections. Avery could not help but stare even as he hurried along.
Refugees filled the bazaar, people from all over the continent. Exotic clothes swished and jangled. A tall man with thick eyebrows wore a crown-like circlet made of brass coins. A gaggle of women walked by sporting colorful dresses—red, green, turquoise-and-gold—that had seen better days. A little person leant against a post, wearing a proud scarlet tallhat. Priests from Myzkrai begged and prayed in their purple silk robes; square jade buttons flashing on their fronts. Prostitutes from Getsyr shivered in thin jackets yet allowed their long legs to protrude from dresses slit to the hip. Strutting violinists from Ungraessot bore tattoos of the God-Emperor’s crest and symbols of the Tunnels of Ard.
And there were mutants. Many, many mutants. Avery was shocked to see them all. He had never seen so many in one place.
Sirens wailed in the distance, and he picked up his pace.
“We have to find a car,” he said, and Layanna nodded, but her eyes were on their surroundings. So were Avery’s.
A fish-faced man hawked spices. A woman with tentacles where her breasts should be sold doubtful-looking flour to a young boy with the arm of a crab. An old man with shark-like teeth and all-black eyes stood behind him. An otherwise beautiful woman had the mouth of a fish, and she occupied a small stage singing to a rapt crowd some strange and fishy song. Avery and Layanna passed a stall lined with glowing squids in strange glass jars. He saw monkeys chained to posts, dogs being roasted over spits, belly dancers from Icai working the crowd. Greedy merchants offered positions of indentured servitude to desperate refugees.
Mounds and mounds of diseased-looking fish heaped in stalls and were being sold by the pound to willing customers. A man with scales all over his body and secreting a viscous fluid forked over a handful of cash and shambled away with a bag of runny flashfish. A hunched woman with the carapace of a stone crab and the tongue of a sea anemone bought an octopus with a riot of misshapen and misplaced limbs, some of which had eyes growing where the suckers should be.
“I don’t understand,” Avery said. “They’re knowingly eating diseased food. Why would they do this to themselves?”
Layanna didn’t seem bothered by it. “They don’t think it can get any worse. So why starve? They’ve already survived the disease, after all, so they’re not worried about that.”
“But the risk of further mutations ...”
It took him a moment to realize she’d spoken Octunggen. Fortunately the bazaar was too noisy for anyone to have overheard, and amid the many accents and languages he doubted anyone would care. There were other countries besides Octung that spoke dialects of Octunggen. Nevertheless, he warned her to watch what she said.
To his surprise, she seemed relaxed, at ease. To his questioning look, she said, “These are my people. People of the sea. Oh, there! I must.”
She was staring at a fishmonger who sold long, diseased eelfish that bristled with catfish-like tendrils jutting from irregular points along their bodies. Avery knew the creatures emitted bursts of electricity along those tendrils to scare away predators. Of course, in a healthy fish the tendrils would be more evenly spaced and they would not still be moving about, however sluggishly, after death.
Layanna scampered over to the stall, giddy as a girl of eight.
The fishmonger, a stout man whose flesh had the look and texture of a seahorse’s, smiled at her and said, “And what may I help you with, young lady?” His eyes lit up as he studied her.
“I take two,” she said, pointing at the eelfish.
The fishmonger did not raise an eyebrow at her Octunggen accent. “Best ones in Hissig. And I should know. I hail from Wirzal, home of the best fishing in the Axid Isles. All overrun now, of course.”
“I didn’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She sounded sincere. “You pay,” she told Avery, as she accepted the sacked eelfish. Reluctantly, he did, and she beamed like a happy child. To his disgust, she grabbed a wooden fork, impaled one of the eelfish, and began eating it raw.
People around them stared at her, horrified. Even the most heavily diseased of them would clean and cook the things first, and she showed no signs of infection.
“Come on,” Avery growled, taking her arm. “We don’t have time for this—and you’re attracting attention.”
Eel slime smeared her lips and chin as they emerged from the market. To Avery’s great relief, he saw that a fleet of taxis idled on the main road, waiting for custom. He and Layanna climbed in the first one, Avery told
the driver their destination, and they shot off into the night. Layanna continued eating her foul meal there in the back of the cab, and Avery felt his gorge rise. The eelfish stank like a mixture of seaweed and tainted mustard.
The cabdriver stared at her in his rear-view mirror. “Hells, mister, you sure she should be eating that?”
“No.”
Layanna lowered the eelfish. Belched. “I grow strong. Too long without.”
Avery saw the driver’s face frown at her accent, but he did not try to excuse it. The less said the better. Let the driver invent his own reasons.
The cab swung into an artery and suddenly hit a nest of stalled cars, each honking its horn loudly.
“Shit,” said the driver. “What’s this?” Angrily he honked his own horn.
The lines of stopped cars did not move.
“I might know what it is,” Avery muttered, feeling his stomach clench. He grabbed Layanna’s hand, opened the door and hauled her out. The eelfish dropped to the seats, slicking it with mucus. The tendrils still writhed.
“Hey!” the driver said.
“Sorry about the mess. We can’t wait.” Avery threw a couple of dollars at him, turned and set off, tugging Layanna along behind him. Sure enough, when Avery looked up the street he saw that police cars had blocked off the intersection. Cops strolled up the lines of stopped cars, flashing lights into the interiors and showing the occupants pictures.
“They didn’t waste any time,” Avery said. Sheridan must be using her admiralship to orchestrate the manhunt. Well, she can’t have shut the city down entirely.
Layanna no longer looked so childish. Indeed, the abrupt change to adultness was startling. “What next?” she said.
He scratched his cheek. “There’s an L line a few blocks away. Come on.”
Avoiding the main roads, he took her to the elevated train station, which was more or less where he’d thought it would be. That was one piece of luck, at least. In silence they rode the rattling L over the city, and Avery tried not to meet the eyes of his fellow passengers. As they disembarked and made their way through the endpoint station, he heard a loud radio blare through the high, graffiti-covered halls:
