by Tim Clare
The water exploded. A hissing beast leapt at her. It slammed downwards with long dripping arms; she blocked with the shotgun but the blow was so hard it popped the sling swivel and knocked the weapon from her hands. Multiple red eyes flashed round a maw of flexing stylets. A second pair of arms lunged for her throat.
She twisted back, smacking her head against the wall. Rough fingers grabbed her windpipe. The thing’s mouth dilated, then its face exploded with a bang. Butler stood with his handgun outstretched, a green laser sight cutting through clouds of vapour. The weight of the smoking torso dragged her forward. She felt the floor give way beneath her heel. With a crunch, part of the walkway disintegrated.
She clutched at air. Alice yelled. Delphine’s chest slapped into warm sewage and she was under, submerged.
She clamped her lips shut, tore dead fingers from her throat. Her knee sank into slimy silt. A rubbery skein of something snagged across her face. She felt it stretch in the current, snapping. She planted her foot and pushed. As her head met the surface, instead of breaking, the water clung in a skin, yolky and amniotic. She tried to breathe. The skin formed a seal over her mouth, sucking in. She yanked the sickle from her belt and punched up. The sac slit with a gassy sigh. Voices were calling her name. She clawed the caul from her lips and breathed.
Shapes rose from the water. Sewage streamed from broad backs, down muscular torsos, each with four long arms. Their slick dark fur was clotted with shit and rancid fat, tangles of fishing line, small sharp bones. Red eyes blinked in bulging clustered tumours. She staggered back, up to her belly in warm, viscous sludge. Three creatures, nearly as tall as her. In place of heads they had smacking, sucker-like mouths lined with hooked stylets that wept slime. Sensitive hairs quivered across their shoulders and backs.
Lightning flashes. Bangs. Muzzle flare lit Alice and Butler up on the walkway, shooting back to back as more of the six-limbed creatures swarmed them from both sides.
Delphine raised the sickle.
The nearest to her spread its palms. Spines extruded from all four wrists like punch daggers. Its maw, red-pocked eyes and all, rotated through 180 degrees.
She sensed movement to her right. Instinctively she pivoted and cleaved. A creature broke the surface and she felt the blade hack through its shoulder. It rolled sideways with a slop of thick fluid.
The first beast flung itself at her, flailing its arms. She swung the sickle, thumbing the release switch; the shaft snapped to full-length, the crescent blade slicing through the creature’s blistered abdomen. Still the thing came, thrusting at her throat with a wrist spine. Its midriff crunched; grey juice splattered from the long horizontal wound in its belly. The spine’s tip juddered an inch from Delphine’s eye. The creature burst apart and on the other side Delphine saw Patience, gripping the two twitching halves with pink ropes of muscle, her tendrils slamming another of the creatures against the wall, over and over, then punching through its chest with a bone spur. Another of the creatures latched onto Patience from behind and sank its hooked fangs into her scalp. She wrenched her mask down and yelled:
‘Get out the water!’
Breathless, Delphine began wading towards the walkway. The sewage was thick and her feet kept slipping.
‘Quick! Quick!’
Alice had set her torch down and was leaning over the edge of the walkway with her hand out. Martha swooped in, grabbed Alice’s hand and extended her own, forming a chain. Delphine lunged for it, missed, then on the second attempt caught hold and Alice and Martha hauled her onto land.
She dropped to all fours, coughing, spluttering. She tasted shit and retched. Bangs filled the tunnel.
‘Can you stand?’ said Alice.
Delphine retched again, her back arching. Her hair was slicked into an oily kelp. She wiped and wiped at her lips but could not get rid of the slimy film.
She nodded.
Bangs.
She grabbed her shotgun from where she had dropped it and staggered to her feet.
Ahead, muzzle flash illuminated a bright cylinder of tunnel. Butler was on one knee, shooting. She ran to him, swung her gun light up. Her breath caught; hanging across the tunnel was a huge, sagging net. It blocked the walkway. Wet ropes dripped with a substance like congealed fat; at the base, sewage sluiced through a dam of refuse and carcasses. Flies buzzed in a black mist. More of the creatures were crawling all over it, now picking their way like spiders, now swinging like monkeys. The stench was horrendous.
One of the creatures threw itself at Butler with a screech. He blasted it in mid-air. Its swollen hindquarters blasted open in a pulp of innards and the body thudded into him. He grunted and shouldered it into the water. One of his ears was missing. His shoulder was slashed through to the bone.
He spotted her. ‘Venner! When I say break, we push forward.’ He ejected a magazine, pulled a fresh one from his holster. She worked the Remington’s pump action, chambered a round. Still dry. Thank God.
Pale strands twitched. More of the creatures were plucking their way across the sticky net, heads swivelling. She saw now she was looking at a colossal web. Mouldering, limbless carcasses hung wrapped in what looked like dozens of layers of cellophane.
She took a step and fired, blowing one creature clear into the water and making a second hiss and shield its face.
‘Ready!’
More were wriggling from a fissure in the ceiling. Patience had anchored several long ropes of tendon to the garbage dam. She glanced at Butler. Butler pointed. Patience wrenched. The web ripped from the black bricks, creatures splattered into the water, and the entire dam gave in a sucking cascade.
‘Break!’ said Butler.
Her gunlight swayed, her shoes slapping stone. Adrenaline made everything pulsing, technicolour. Multi-limbed shapes flashed out of the darkness, scuttling, flanking them.
One dropped from the ceiling; she slashed at it, felt the sickle cut fat and muscle. She clipped her head on a low pipe; Alice tackled her from behind, forcing her onwards.
Her trousers were wet, heavy. She could hear the beasts hissing, shrieking. More were joining the chase.
Butler swung left, up a sloping side tunnel where the floor was curved and slippery. After a few yards, they reached a chokepoint where the roof had partially collapsed. A big slab of rock created a triangular void under the dirt and rubble. Butler turned and fired into the pack pursuing them. Martha went into the crawlspace first, then Delphine, Alice, Patience. Delphine had to drop onto her belly, scrambling over cold damp soil.
As she pulled herself up on the far side, Butler had almost crawled through. As he emerged he swatted at her angrily.
‘Don’t just stand there! Move! M—’
There was a thump and loose dirt fell in showers. His face contorted. He clutched at the earth beneath him.
‘Butler!’ Patience wrapped a tendril around his arm. There was a wet scratching sound behind him, then a huge beast, the biggest yet, slammed through the gap and sank its teeth into his legs. Its corpulent, furry body wedged beneath the rock slab, fat bunching around its shoulders. Patience turned her angel-arm into a bone-blade on the end of a fleshy lash and began slicing at the creature. With two muscular arms it pinned Butler down and with a third it ripped the wings from his back with a krrrrakkk.
He glowered at Delphine. ‘Go!’ He thumped the floor. ‘Would you fuck . . . off?’
Delphine chambered a round and charged. Butler yelled, ‘No!’ then one of the creature’s stinking arms swung round, extruded a two-foot spear of bone and thrust at her chest. She threw herself flat against the wall. The spine struck stone just left of her ear, raking downwards with a screech. She sidestepped, cleared the last few feet and fired point blank into the creature’s flank.
Flesh cratered, splattering her legs with blood. Loose skin hung in bedraggled rinds. Yellow fat oozed over exposed bone. She could see Butler’s shattered legs inside its oesophagus. Patience yanked; his torso tore loose. She dragged his mutilated upper body free.
Bloodied, the creature’s rage turned to panic. It tried to withdraw, shoving backwards with its piston-like arms; the slab holding the gap open tipped.
‘Get back!’ yelled Alice. There was a great crash as tons of rubble slid into the passageway. Dirt billowed up in a smothering cloud.
Delphine fled, stumbling, blind. She slumped against a wall. As the dust thinned she saw the glow of a torch. Alice was standing a few feet away. She shone the light back in the direction they’d come. A landslide of dirt and rubble completely blocked the passageway.
‘Everyone okay?’ Patience stood beside the upper half of Butler. His arms were limp, his head sagging to one side. A length of intestine trailed from his pelvis.
Alice swung her torch in the other direction. The tunnel continued for approximately thirty feet before terminating in a dead end – a flat wall of amber stone.
Patience looked a little unsteady. Her angel-arm lay puddled on the ground, dissolving into a pool of fizzling godstuff. Putty-like flesh hung from her shoulder in strands. ‘I’m all right,’ she said, slurring her words a little. ‘It just . . . takes it out of me, you know?’ She yawned. ‘Give me a . . . moment.’
Delphine was still trying to catch her breath. ‘What . . . the hell . . . were they?’ ‘Simaraks.’ Butler rolled himself onto his back. Little shoots of cartilage were pushing out from the lower half of his body, bone accruing in milky deposits. ‘One of the Grand-Duc’s old . . .’ He tilted his head to one side and spat out broken fangs. ‘One of his old manias. Evidently they’ve found an ecological niche.’ He hauled himself up onto his bloody buttocks. ‘What the hell were you doing, Ms Venner?’
‘Saving you.’
‘I told you to leave.’ Networks of bone and tendon branched behind him as his wings regrew. ‘You nearly got killed.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘No.’ He slapped the ground. ‘No! This isn’t some condescending lecture from a . . . some blustering authority figure you have to prove yourself to. You. Will. Get. Killed. I’ve watched people die and die and die, and you know what? They’re always surprised. All of them. It’s not a moral failing. It’s not a competence issue. You’re immensely skilled. There? Is that what you wanted to hear? You’re up there with Judge Easter. Doesn’t make you impervious to traumatic amputations. I am.’ He gestured at his coagulating legs. ‘Not a virtue. Not proof of my superior skill. Just a fact. Putting yourself on the front line places us all in danger. It’s poor tactics. And if you ignore a direct order one more time I’m aborting the mission. Do you understand?’
Her face felt hot. She folded her lips over her teeth and pressed them together. She nodded.
‘Yes, Butler.’
Tendons were tightening, hoisting bones into position so meat could set around them. He watched her a moment longer.
‘Um.’ Alice cleared her throat. ‘We’re trapped.’ She shone her torch at the dead end.
Butler click-popped at it. He squinted.
‘Hold on,’ he muttered. ‘Let me check the map.’ He tilted to one side and reached into his trouser pocket. His slim fingers emerged through a ragged hole several inches down, where the leg had been bitten away. ‘Oh for pity’s sake!’
As Butler cursed and punched the ground, Martha approached the wall at the end of the tunnel, her eyes burning fuschia. Rik-ik-ik.
Delphine went after her. ‘Martha?’
Up close, the stone had a glassy lustre, cloudy and semi-translucent. It was completely smooth, lukewarm to the touch.
‘Do you recognise this, or something?’ said Delphine.
Martha pressed her bristled fingers to the wall. Her eyes shifted down through the spectrum to a warm amber-gold. Her body began to vibrate.
‘Martha?’
Slowly, her fingertips sank into the stone.
‘Martha!’ Delphine reached for Martha’s arm.
Martha withdrew her fingers. Her eyes fluxed back to a soft mauve. Her antennae were trembling.
She turned back down the tunnel, riffle-clicked something. Butler replied, and they had a short back-and-forth.
‘She says she wants us to take a few minutes to rest,’ he said. ‘She needs time to talk to the wall.’
Delphine threw away her shirt and hacked out the claggy parts of her hair with the sickle. Her rucksack was ruined, clumped in shit and dust, but the water bottle inside was still sealed. She took out a little set of tools, sat crosslegged in her vest and stripped the shotgun. Using Patience’s face mask as a cleaning rag, she cleaned out the chamber and wiped down the cartridges before she reloaded.
The ritual was grounding. She was quick, precise. Her hands knew what to do without her thinking. She tested the slide action, pumping shells through the chamber until the magazine was empty. Her system was still flooded with adrenaline. She reloaded, did it again. Ka-chuk. Ka-chuk. Ka-chuk. The pain in her shoulder faded into the background.
Meanwhile, Martha stood with her arm plunged up to the elbow into the amber stone, eyes pulsing sympathetic hues, body blurring with resonance.
Alice swept her torchbeam around the tunnel. The walls were rough-hewn grey stone, the few flat patches covered in carvings and chalk pictures. Little ideograms were accompanied by scratchings that might have been text, and stylised pictures of lanta riding on what looked like ostriches, lanta on huge boats, giant monstrous lanta with horns and pincers, pictures of birds and spiders and fires between pillars, and an image of a tall tree with figures apparently spitted on the branches. Some of the pictures were quite accomplished, intricately etched and shaded with hundreds of tiny, stippling strokes; others were crude and juvenile – some of the chalk images had been drawn directly over the carvings.
Delphine was starting to feel faint. She swigged her water. She wondered how much air they had left.
Martha stepped back from the wall. For a moment, Delphine thought she saw the stone yield like treacle, then Martha’s hand was free, the surface perfectly flat.
Alice walked up behind her. ‘Did it work?’
Patience was squatting on her hams by the oil lamp. Her angel-arm had coalesced into a lump of grey flesh. She pushed up her goggles.
‘Doesn’t look like it. I could try to dig us out the other end.’
‘That’ll take hours,’ said Butler. He dropped onto his palms and began dragging his half-formed legs towards them. ‘There are still simaraks on the other side. And it’s the wrong way. It’ll be too late.’
Martha’s antennae reared up and lashed in unison. The amber wall dented in, as if an invisible wrecking ball had struck a huge block of warm toffee. The centre of the dent sucked back towards them, thinning and turning translucent. It broke like a bubble in beer. A hole swelled wider and wider. Martha’s antennae sagged, her eyes turned blue, and the stone fell still.
The wall now contained a four-foot opening, heading back ten feet into an open space on the far side. The edges of the hole had thick, wrinkled pleats. Delphine walked up and touched it. It was hard, faintly warm.
She looked down at Martha. ‘Is it safe?’
Martha bopped her fist once.
They crawled through in turn. On the other side was a wide passageway with a low, curving roof. The walls had alcoves set into them at intervals, all made of the same amber stone. There were no bricks, as if the passage had been shaped from a single piece of rock, or melted together. The floor was crusted with grit.
Butler took some time looking up and down. He consulted with Martha. At last, he pointed off into the darkness.
‘This way.’
Each of the alcoves was about three feet high, covered by diamond-shaped panels made of a clear substance like glass. Delphine shone her Maglite on the nearest. Inside were three smoked crystal statues of lanta, coloured green, red and blue respectively: a big one with broad, scissoring horns, one that looked like Martha, and a third, the blue one, with a narrow segmented body, elongated forelimbs, and a stunted, disc-shaped head.
�
�What is this?’ she said.
‘This is how you consolidate power.’ Butler stopped beside her. ‘Conquer people, bury their culture alive, then build your own history on top of them.’ The statuettes seemed to drink light, a glow bleeding into the ribs of the thorax, the hooked mandibles. ‘This place was a lantian temple-city, once. Morgellon stole it, and built his gaudy summer palace on top. And he wonders why the Hilanta don’t like us.’
They pressed on through the tunnel, Butler leading in his tattered trousers. The diamond panels continued at intervals, the crystalline sculptures growing increasingly abstract: pyramids, concentric rings, whorls composed of dozens of tapering strands all twisting and pushing outwards. When the torch passed over it, each sculpture held its glow for a few seconds before fading, like the tip of a cigarette. A few of the hollows were empty, their panels staved in. One was flooded with turbid brown water.
‘Morgellon used these halls for his underground boating canals,’ said Butler, glancing at the damage. ‘Wait.’ He touched two fingers to his brow. ‘I just . . . I can’t remember how it was laid out on the map.’ He took a deep breath, gasped. ‘Ah, damn it all.’
While he was standing there, lost in concentration, Delphine felt a tap on her thigh. She looked down and there was Martha. Martha pointed to the sickle, made a grabbing gesture with both hands.
‘Of course,’ said Delphine, handing it over. ‘What do you—’
Immediately Martha flipped it round and began scratching lines in the dirt. She worked with speed and precision, using the hooked tip to draw curves, parallel lines. Oh.
‘Uh, Butler?’ Delphine glanced up.
He snapped his eyes open, annoyed. ‘What?’
She pointed down. Taking shape on the floor was a replica of the palace floorplan, approximately 4:1 scale. Delphine could not say for sure if it was accurate, but it was detailed, complete with text, crosshatched areas, and what looked like a rendition of a waterstain in the top right corner.
After a few minutes’ work, Martha stopped. She handed Delphine the sickle.
