The Beauty of Destruction

by Gavin G. Smith

  It had been through the head that they had risked looking for sane minds in Earth’s now insane and extensively redesigned communications network. He wasn’t sure if he had made contact with someone or not. He was sure that he couldn’t take another attempt.

  Command and Control stank. Lodup had no idea how long they had been living there for. They had intermittent power, and the lower deck of the habitat had been partially flooded when the structure had shifted. He knew there had been significant changes outside. He had felt them, just like he felt the still-slowly-wakening minds. Something was protecting him. Some vestige of how they had once been before they had made contact with the thing that lived through the tear in the sky, before Germelqart had unwittingly sacrificed the boy to it. Lidakika, the octopus god who in myth had created Lodup’s island home of Mwoakilloa, was the name the protecting entity had taken. Whether it was literal or not he did not know. Lidakika’s protection felt like a thin membrane with the immensity of the sleeping minds pressing against it. The city was a palpable presence, glowing with energy, crawling with life, an unseen surrounding pressure.

  They hadn’t gone back into the water since they had seen the congregation of clones around the waking, living city. Since they had seen the black thing from the cold sump, growing like a tree, the thing that they all somehow knew, from ancient racial memory, hated life.

  They had mostly been left alone in C&C. Sometimes Siraja, the dragon-faced AI, would appear and watch them through many eyes. Each time, his appearance was more warped than the last. Yaroslav screamed, drooled, and reacted the only way he could remember, with violence, even though the AI was just an image in the cracked smart matter of the wall, and then ricochets would fill C&C for a while. They had seen some of the wedge-headed creatures, reborn out of the city’s stone, but those had left them alone as well. Other times the black-eyed clones, who had once worked on the city, came to stand and watch them from the moon pool, or even out in the corridor. Yaroslav fired on them when they were close enough. They stood there taking round after round until their physiology gave up and they collapsed to the floor.

  The worst times were when Sal came on her own to stand in the Moon Pool and look up at C&C’s oval window. Even when he hid from the window she knew he was there.

  Yaroslav, the once taciturn Russian security chief, was pushing for a suicide pact. It seemed like he had been talking for days now, mostly in Russian. He was very enthusiastic about it, ranting, waving his gun around. Sometimes he curled up in a corner and rocked back and forwards, switching between nonsense words in English, Russian and German. He seemed to be reliving something from his past. Lodup kept hearing the word Leningrad.

  It was Siska, however, who he was most frightened of. She was mostly silent now. She stayed in the darkest corner of C&C, moving little, but when she did she moved sinuously. He had only caught a glimpse of her eyes recently. They were reptilian slits. Her skin was starting to scale, and the few words that she had muttered had put emphasis on the sibilants. She made him feel like prey.

  This was survival as a habit. Lodup was half convinced that Yaroslav was right, though the solidly built Russian hadn’t taken his own life yet. The only thing that stopped Lodup putting a gun in his mouth was the knowledge that the modified seedpods were still there. There was a chance they could leave this place. Lidakika had told him this. He was learning to despise hope.

  The sky was the colour of a bruise, and a strange storm was coming in from the Pacific. The sea was unnaturally dark. Beth didn’t like having to dip her arms into the water to paddle the surfboard. She had stripped off her jacket and boots and much of her webbing, transferring the pistol holster and the pouches for clips to the belt of her combat trousers. The OHWS was loaded with the magazine of nanite-tipped rounds.

  She was wondering how much of what was going on she was able to deal with, because it all felt so unreal, like she was in a film. She might understand that the people she had killed were already dead, little more than vessels for alien madness, but they still felt human when flesh impacted on flesh, when warm blood splashed across her face. The sound of shouted warnings and crying was becoming fainter now. She felt weak, emaciated, her body feeding on itself to heal her various wounds. She knew she should have eaten some of the energy bars before she paddled out.

  She was coming to the conclusion that the sea calmed her. This wasn’t like Southsea, however. There was the constant feeling of a presence under the water, though she supposed it had been the same in the Solent. Even though she was being glared at by surfers with crude swastikas carved into their flesh, many of them wearing skin masks cut from the faces of their victims, paddling out on the water was still the calmest she had felt since she had arrived in LA.

  The surfboard tipped into a shallow trough between waves – it felt like she was sliding downhill – and then she was next to Inflictor Doorstep. He was sitting on his board, bobbing up and down in the swell. He paid her little attention. He looked the same as he had the last time she had seen him up close. Monstrous physiology on the edge of what the human frame could support: tough looking leathery skin, and the inhuman features of a comic book-demon. The only differences were the wetsuit, the dreadlock-like tendrils of flesh hanging off his head, and this time he wasn’t pointing a massive pistol at her. She thought about drawing the OHWS to cover him, but he didn’t seem very interested in her, and he was unarmed. He was just looking out to the east. The sun was a red ball just above the horizon, its reflection a path of fire across the surface of the dark water.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ It hadn’t been the question she had meant to ask.

  ‘A break from the tedium, same as ever.’ He still didn’t look at her. ‘It’s the apocalypse, and everyone has been assigned their roles by central casting. It’s like we all still think that we’re living in a reality TV show.’ His chuckle was a dry rasp. ‘The real reason for a surveillance society.’ This was little more than a whisper. ‘Maybe in Norway it’s like Ragnarok, or in Africa … they’re doing … African … things, but here it’s the apocalypse and we all know how to act because we’ve played the games, seen it on TV, watched it at the movies.’

  ‘You’re bored?’ Beth asked incredulously. Now his monstrous head turned to look at her.

  ‘Yeah,’ he nodded. ‘They’ve made madness boring, how the fuck’d they manage that?’

  ‘You don’t feel special any more?’ Beth asked. Demonic eyes regarded her. She suspected he was trying to work out if he was being mocked or not. He was. Gunshots rang out over the water from the beach, but neither of them turned around.

  ‘We used to be monsters,’ he said quietly.

  You used to be bullied kids with ridiculous levels of entitlement, Beth thought. ‘Now you’re just the same as everyone else. Where’s King Jeremy? Where’s the nuke?’

  Inflictor turned back to look out to sea. ‘You know they’re burning A-list actors in wicker men up by the Hollywood sign? It’s being done by every waitress, office clerk and bathroom attendant who never got a break. In Beverly Hills the plastic surgeons are operating on people’s larynxes so they can speak the new language. It’s this year’s big thing, like breast enlargements, or the latest smartphone. In the valley, porn stars lived next door to soccer moms. Sometimes they were the same person – or was that just a fantasy? Now the whole valley is one big orgy, one big orgasm, one big organism. This is what we want. A Pavlovian response to pornography: violent, sexual, both. Everyone wants to rape someone, just to prove they can. It’s the dominant social discourse of the twenty-first century. It’s an alien invasion, right? Bullshit. They’ve been here longer than us. They’re that thing, foetus-curled around my brain stem, the old reptilian part. This is all just supply and demand.’

  ‘How much more of this shit am I going to have to listen to?’ Beth demanded. What was getting to her was that that Inflictor had made himself this way without any alien involvement. ‘Where’s King Jeremy?’

  ‘Tell
du Bois I let Silas go.’

  ‘He knows,’ Beth told him. Inflictor’s frown lasted for a moment.

  ‘They’re supposed to have driven us mad? All they’ve done is put everything that was on the inside, and not that well fucking hidden, on the outside. Nothing’s changed. We’re the alien invasion, have been for a while. Maybe since we first felt that satisfying thud running up our arm, the warm salt spray of blood when we took a rock and used it to cave in some Neanderthal’s head.’

  ‘You’ve given this a lot of thought,’ Beth said. Pseudo-intellectual, philosophical bullshit! ‘Do you understand that I don’t care? To me you’re just another sociopathic little shit. Now, what do you want to do? Talk or get shot?’

  ‘It’s a small price to pay,’ he said. She wasn’t quite sure what he was talking about.

  ‘This isn’t a confessional,’ she told him. She again considered drawing the OHWS but she was beginning to suspect that he was well beyond threatening.

  ‘No, but it is a church. I understand why you hate me, fear me …’

  ‘It’s more disgust,’ Beth said, but she foresaw a monologue and made herself comfortable. She was trying to decide how much of it she was going to put up with before shooting him in the head.

  ‘… but nothing we did matters now. They would have ended up the same way.’

  Beth thought back to Elizabeth in the warehouse in Massachusetts. She just about managed not to draw the pistol and kill him then and there.

  ‘You’ve been superseded?’ Beth said. ‘Poor baby.’ This wanker thinks he’s in some kind of atrocity competition.

  He turned to look at her again. ‘Tiger shark embryos fight in the womb. The winner gets to be born. We’re not going to be the winners.’

  ‘Do you owe King Jeremy anything?’ Beth asked, her voice brittle.

  ‘Everything, in some ways, but he’s a motherfucker. He’s at Terminal Island. Look for a submarine. That’s all I know.’

  Beth drew the pistol and pointed it at Inflictor’s head. He showed no reaction whatsoever.

  ‘You know, don’t you?’ she asked. He didn’t answer. ‘Doesn’t matter what you’ve become, what you’ve done, the power you think you have, you’re still the same frightened little boy, aren’t you?’ He said nothing. Beth holstered the pistol. He couldn’t cause any more damage, he was right about that at least. The worst he could do was just join in. She turned the surfboard around and started paddling back towards the shore.

  ‘Don’t you want to surf?’ he called after her.

  They cleared most of the rubbish out of the back of the Cougar and took that. It was less damaged than the ECV. They made their way south-east along the Appian Way. Beth’s last glimpse of the ocean was of the surfers rising on a large swell, the water obscuring something dark and huge just underneath the surface.

  Things that looked like a cross between tendrils and vines shot from the water, taking root in the ground, climbing up buildings, explosively making trenches in the beach sand. They burst open, the spores just about visible, like a heavy pollen fall in the haze of the morning sunshine and smog. The buildings started to warp and change, splitting open as if to reveal a new world inside, independent life growing from the matter and tearing itself free.

  Alexia steered away from the sea front. Du Bois ran his tanto over her skin. The cut didn’t bleed. He cleaned the blade and did the same to himself. Grace was doing likewise. Beth could feel the blood-screens filling the armoured vehicle. The Seeder spores from the sea were like a bad itch. She drew her grandfather’s bayonet and used it to release her own blood-screen to help fight the spores and wished things were different.

  They drove towards the smoke and fire still surrounding the ruins of LAX.

  They were in a gun shop. She knew where she was geographically, but the place names were pretty meaningless now, just raw information that had only been relevant before the Seeders woke up. The place had been pretty extensively looted, unsurprisingly. Beth was trying to ignore the dead bodies, but one of them had been run through with a hunting rifle. She couldn’t stop smiling at the absurdity of this. She was starting to worry about herself.

  ‘Fuck!’ Grace screamed and kicked at one of the display cases. She had managed to retrieve the fighting knife she had been holding when she’d hit the bonnet of the ECV during the chase. It had got lodged in the grill at the front of the vehicle. She had, however, lost one of her Berettas. ‘It’s like balance, y’know?’ Beth didn’t know. The punk girl continued searching through the detritus. Alexia was by the door, crouched down, leaning against the wall, chain smoking.

  ‘I don’t think you’re going to find what you’re looking for,’ du Bois said. They hadn’t come here looking for another Beretta; they were pretty sure that most of the guns would have already been stolen. Instead they had come for another scope for the Purdey. At some level it annoyed Beth that she knew the replacement scope for the custom weapon wasn’t as good as the first one, which had been destroyed during the chase. She didn’t want to know this much about guns and military stuff, let alone have to utilise the knowledge. Though she was managing it better than Alexia, it would seem.

  It’s because you’ve always liked fighting. She tried to ignore the thought.

  ‘We need to get moving,’ du Bois said. He was affixing the new sight to the Purdey. Grace glared at him, and then went back to kicking boxes around with the toe of her motorcycle boot.

  ‘Why? What are we going to do?’ Alexia asked. ‘Everyone’s already killing everyone else. What more have we got to offer?’

  Grace straightened up and looked over at Alexia.

  ‘We’re killing Mr Brown,’ she said simply. Beth was aware of du Bois taking a deep breath. She looked over at him. Grace saw the look.

  ‘Why pick a fight with him?’ Alexia demanded.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Grace asked du Bois.

  ‘There’s a way out,’ he said. Grace choked off incredulous laughter.

  ‘There might be a way out,’ Beth corrected.

  ‘There’s a way out if we can get to Kanamwayso,’ Grace said, pointing towards where she knew the ocean was, ‘where all the bad shit out there is coming from; and your evidence that there’s a way out is the hallucination you had during a psychotic episode, brought on by contact with the same fucking Seeders at the Federal Building. You know if we fucking hesitate here Mr Brown gets away!’

  ‘How are we going to kill him?’ Alexia demanded.

  ‘The nuke,’ Grace said irritably, barely glancing at Alexia before turning back towards du Bois.

  ‘You’re out of your mind,’ Alexia said. Grace rounded on her.

  ‘What did you fucking think we were doing?’ she shouted, making Alexia flinch. ‘Did you think we were all going to become fucking astronauts? Grow up!’

  ‘That’s enough,’ du Bois said.

  ‘Is it? This was why I was fucking helping you! Were you lying to me?’

  ‘It’s a bit more complicated than th—’ du Bois started.

  ‘Were you lying to me?’ she screamed at him.

  ‘We misled you,’ Beth said. Grace turned round to look at her. The punk had shifted her carbine so she could more easily bring it to bear. Beth was pretty sure it was an unconscious gesture but it made her uneasy. She tried not to do the same with the LMG hanging down her front on its sling. ‘Not entirely on purpose. We’re making this up as we go along.’

  ‘So what’s your plan?’ Grace asked. She looked between the three of them.

  ‘Palm Springs,’ Alexia finally suggested, but nobody laughed.

  ‘We use King Jeremy’s leverage—’ du Bois started. Grace nodded.

  ‘Negotiate?’ Grace asked quietly. Du Bois didn’t answer. ‘The leverage is a threat. In order for it to work he needs to know there’s a possibility he can survive. You’re going to let him live, aren’t you?’ Du Bois still didn’t answer her. ‘Want to hold me down so he can rape me again wearing your face?’ she asked very quietly.
Du Bois looked away from her. ‘Look me in the eyes, you cowardly piece of shit!’ Du Bois didn’t.

  ‘Tell her,’ Beth said.

  ‘Tell me what?’ Grace asked.

  ‘Remember when we thought we were doing good work?’ du Bois asked, though Beth was pretty sure he was still struggling with the punk girl’s actual existence and couldn’t remember what they had actually done together. ‘When we thought we were saving the souls of the best of humanity, the scientists, artists, engineers, poets, musicians?’ Grace barely nodded. Du Bois tapped his head. ‘I have them. Up here. The Brass City stole them. Hamad gave them to me when I killed him, and then I hid the knowledge, even from myself.’

  ‘And?’ Beth prompted.

  ‘And the City of Brass found them,’ du Bois said.

  ‘They’re like the Library of Alexandria,’ Grace surprised Beth a little by saying. ‘They would have taken a copy.’ Du Bois nodded, still struggling to look at her. ‘So they’re safe.’

  ‘They’re not human in there,’ du Bois said.

  ‘They only exist until they are compromised,’ Beth added.

  ‘So?’

  ‘This is hope,’ du Bois said, finally managing to look at her.

  ‘No,’ Grace said. ‘This is an out-of-control messianic complex and one too many Charlton Heston films. “Let my people go,” Malcolm? Really?’

  She was right. Beth knew she was right.