by Alana Melos
From the wilds surrounding us, mutated animals poured into the clearing. Most of them were pretty small--rats and mice--but some of them were as big as a man or even larger. Cats, dogs, and heck, even a couple deer with sharpened antlers charged into the cleared street, going right for the people. Most of them were bloated, puffed up by something injected into them, presumably from the forest. They were changed in grotesque ways, yet still recognizable as the strays you’d see on the streets everywhere. Plant matter wove in and out of them much like they did on Rory’s arms when he was in his wolf form and I slid my eyes over to him, watching his reaction. His brows were knitted up in an expression of worry, but it wasn’t for the people. As one of the construction workers smacked a rat four feet long with a sledgehammer, he winced.
“This isn’t normal, Rory,” I said. “You know that, right? They’ll kill everyone here.”
He shook his head and looked to me, his bright green eyes saddened. “I can feel them,” he whispered. “They’re… I don’t know. A part of me. The other guy, I mean. The wolf.”
“You’re not changing here,” I commanded Rory as I stood up. I drew my blade and nudged Alistair with the very tip of the blade. “This is just the beginning. Dante, are you with me or not?”
Alistair’s head whipped around fast enough that I thought it was going to twist right off his neck. “What did you call me?” he asked a few seconds later, but I was already gone, out the door to fight the mutant beasts. The boys might have sat around and did nothing, but that wasn’t me. Right or wrong, I was a woman of action. Standing still and doing nothing would have been like torture. Besides, both of them had irritated me enough I wanted to slice something in half. It might as well be mutant animals.
Chapter Thirteen
As I exited the tiny trailer office, I scanned the area to assess the biggest threat. Something dove at me from the sky. I reacted out of instinct, cutting what looked to be a sparrow the size of a large pigeon in half. As the two halves of the small corpse hit the ground, they splattered the dirty snow with smears of green instead of red. I held no doubts this was the opening salvo for the plant, which I finally named Pangea, after the project name. I had to have a name for it. It got tiresome thinking of it as a plant when it obviously had intelligence and deserved a name.
Whatever the intent of the opening move of surrounding the buildings, what it was doing now was creating panic. The construction workers and passers by shrieked, running away from the mutated animals. A few of the workers fought with what weapons they had at hand, killing some of the smaller creatures and warding off the bigger ones. I slipped my hand into my coat and took out my mask to put it on. No matter if I was crippled or somewhere my brain refused to open my ‘pathy, at least I wouldn’t be distracted by the fear and repulsion which had to be circling around the psychic plane.
I flew forward and narrowly missed colliding with a big Rottweiler. Instead of just being a really big dog, it was a really big dog with tentacles waving from behind its shoulder blades. Course correcting, I wobbled in the air as it leaped towards me, bouncing off of my telekinetic shield. Slavering drool dripped from its jaws as it attempted to chew through nothing. With a pang, I remembered the coyote dying in its cell. I didn’t want to kill the animal, but better him than me. I lowered the shield and allowed the mutant mutt through, only to stab it in the chest with my blade. It slid off and hit the ground unceremoniously, life ended.
I moved, my blade whirling faster and faster as I cut through the beasts. It was easy to end life when they weren’t paying attention. Rather, the animals appeared more intent on whatever target they’d settled on, harrying the people further and further away from open areas. I kept my telekinetic shield up to cover my back. Several of the fat mutant birds with razor sharp talons bounced off of it. They didn’t stop trying as I tried to take care of the tide of their brethren attacking the people.
One of the cats jumped from below and gripped onto my leg like some demented kitten trying to claw its way up to my shoulder. In a kitten, that was cute. A thirty pound cat with claws over half an inch long? Not so cute. I hissed in pain and shook my leg trying to get it off as its back claws raked through my clothing easily, scoring deep gouges on my calf and knee with its back legs. When it hissed at me, its eyes glowed green, much as Wolf’s did. My blade went through its mouth and it dropped. I landed and inspected the wounds as enveloped myself completely with the teke shield. Where the cat had clawed me, I ached. The pain spread through my leg with frightening speed, turning it numb. Its claws had been poisoned. I split my attention and imagined a tourniquet over my thigh, high up, and cinched it tight. That would slow the poison, but not stop it.
“Dammit,” I muttered. A few of the animals still tried to work their way through my shield while others raced after the few other people on the street. A squirrel from hell sat right over my head, its tiny claws scrabbling over the smoothness of the shield while a couple of rats lurked at the edge of it, trying to dig under.
Standing up, I looked around. All the animals, the crazy, mutated, sick beasts they were, lurked outside the buildings, hissing and growling. I watched as a lady fled into an apartment, slamming the door so hard behind her the latch didn’t have a chance to catch. The door bounced open, and I expected the large mutant German shepherd to jump in and rip her to pieces. Instead, it stayed outside the door and growled, its normal black and amber fur turning black and light green as I watched it.
When I looked around, all of them were like that, save for the few which were still attacking the last remaining pedestrians on the street. People in cars had long sped off, running over anything in their path to get away from the madness. It wasn’t just random attacks. These had purpose. They were herding people into buildings.
With that realization, I jumped as a blast of eldritch green energy wiped that bastard squirrel off the top of my shield. Another focused burst, and the rats were gone. One of the dogs--it looked to be originally a springer spaniel maybe--turned and growled at Alistair. His gloved hands glowed with sickly green light. When a large cat without a tail hissed at him, he turned and blasted it. The thing retreated just in time, spitting hate and bile the entire way as only a pissed off cat could do.
I lowered my shield as he approached. Rory moved along slowly behind him, his face screwed up in an expression of disgust as he watched the mage use his magic. “They don’t like you,” I said, “but I’m happy to see you.” My leg ached. It’d stopped bleeding thanks to the tourniquet, but I couldn’t feel my leg at all. Jesus, I wasn’t even doing that much and I was getting the crap beat out of me in the last few days. After this shit was over, I was taking a vacation to Tahiti or something.
“What happened?” he asked, gesturing for me to show him the wound. When I did, he carefully moved aside the shredded cloth and sucked in his breath. “This is bad.”
Rory came up behind me, having circled wide around Alistair. He too looked down at my leg and scented the air. The animals gave us a wide berth, but I wasn’t sure if it was because Rory was telling them to, or because Pangea didn’t like Alistair’s magic. Either way, I was glad for it. There wasn’t anything else I could do here to stem the tide of mutant urban animals. At least no more seemed to be coming from the forest, but there were simply too many of them to try and wipe out with a single blade.
“It’s poisoned,” Rory said after he sniffed.
“No shit,” I snapped. I looked down at the wound and saw it festering. The flesh around the edge of the wound had turned putrid yellow and was curling away from the healthy flesh inside. Since there wasn’t much blood, I saw the pus and rot clearly. As Alistair cleaned the edges of the marks so he could see it better, the rot grew. It was a miracle hadn’t reached my heart. I’d’ve been gone in a matter of minutes with how fast it grew and spread.
“This is going to hurt,” Alistair said as he put his gloved hands on either side of the massive scratches. “A lot.”
I braced myself, but scr
eamed anyway when he squeezed and pressed down simultaneously. His fingers burned where they touched me, but they forestalled the poison or infection and gathered it in the center of the wound. Pus oozed out between his fingers and dripped from my leg. After the first initial scream, I was able to bite the rest of them back, swallowing them bitterly as my hate for Pangea grew. Stupid plant. It first took my friend from me, then it was trying to take my city, and now it scarred me up. I shook my head, trying to toss loose hairs out of my line of sight. It was going to pay.
Being angry helped me to shove away the pain as Alistair forced the infection out and let it drip harmlessly on the snow. When it was gone, the glow around his hands changed from ghastly green to golden yellow. Warmth suffused my leg and I sighed as the wound closed over, leaving an ugly thick scar behind.
“You knew,” I hissed as I raised my mask. I turned around to Rory once Alistair was done and stood up straight again.
“I didn’t,” he said. “Not specifics.” He raised his hands defensively, looking unhappy. It was good he looked guilty, the filthy traitor.
“I sacrificed my mind to get you back to normal,” I said, my voice low and harsh. “I thought… I thought if we were together, if you saw me working to try and save the city, you’d trust me. That you did trust me. That you’d know, then, that Adira was able to be trusted. I thought it’d bring more and more of you back. Instead….” I waved my hand to indicate the animals which roamed outside. Not a single person was to be found, save for looking outside of windows, their eyes wide and full of terror. In the distance, police sirens sounded, echoing through the empty street.
“I am your ally,” he said, his voice thin and pained. “I knew it was going to do something, but…” He looked around and shook his head. “It’s all murky, fuzzy. Like I blacked out. I get the feeling she wants me back, but she doesn’t speak to me like in that place. Not in this form.”
Alistair stood watching the two of us as we spoke, a troubled look upon his handsome face. “How can I trust you to watch my back?” I snapped. “There’s no way, none.”
“You beat me in a challenge,” he said. “My loyalty is yours.”
“A challenge? That’s what making you follow me?” I laughed to cover up the slight pang of hurt which stabbed me. “That’s great. So when someone else beats you in a fight, you belong to them.” I barked another laugh, derisively, wanting to hurt him for hurting me.
It worked. He shook his head and wilted where he stood. “No,” he said, his voice hushed. “That’s not how it works. I have your back, Caprice.”
Those words stopped me. My father had never told me he loved me. He wasn’t that kind of man. Instead, he showed me in a thousand different ways. The closest he ever got to saying how he really felt about me was when he was teaching me something new or dangerous, like to swim for example. Any time I’d been hesitant, he’d urge me on saying, “I got your back. I got it.” Those words expressed a promise he couldn’t articulate any other way. Hearing Rory say them cut through my anger and hurt, drawing me up short to reevaluate.
“This is not the time or the place,” Alistair interjected, his voice projecting calm rationality as he snapped me out of my reverie. “Let’s… oh by the Great Old Ones…” His voice trailed off and his eyes widened.
A thunderous crack from nearby ripped my eyes from Rory. I looked at the nearest building. The vines and branches which covered it pulsed, growing thicker and thicker as they squeezed the brick. People shouted and screamed from inside. Blasts of green energy shot from behind me into the vines. It may have been my imagination, but I thought I heard the vines themselves squeal as they were hit with the magical energy. They withered and fell off the building, but it wasn’t enough. I stood there dumbly next to Rory watching Alistair strive to save the building and the people inside, but all of Pangea’s limbs were squeezing. They grew as Pangea pumped more power into them, thickening them so they were as big around as a great old oak. It wasn’t just the one building; it was all of them.
The vines hadn’t touched Alistair’s brownstone, nor anything close to the wide circle where his portal had been, but they coated everything else nearby. Lamp posts snapped. Cars were bent and twisted. The entrances to the buildings, which had been cleared before, were swallowed by a sea of green and brown. Alistair kept the one building clear, blasting any vine which dared to try to envelope it, but the rest of them soon disappeared under the undulating assault. Decades--in some cases over a century--of history crumpled and fell as we watched. Words left me; the power of Pangea astounded me, striking me dumb.
“I can’t,” Alistair panted, lowering his hands and wobbling where he stood, exhausted. “I daren’t channel any more. I can’t.” He looked pained. “All those people.”
“You’ve saved one building,” Rory said quietly. Even so, his words were swallowed by cracks and screams as the thickened vines burgeoning with power crushed the buildings, homes, and businesses into nothing. The structures crumpled like they were made out of toy bricks. Muted crashes hit us and, sooner than later, the screams stopped. The green animated vines picked through the rubble it left behind, soon joined by the mutant beasts which lurked in the middle of the mostly untouched street. I looked over to the east, and saw in the distance the forest where the heart of Pangea lay. I hadn’t realized Alistair lived so close to the crash site, but his house was on the edge of the Wastelands, which was on the edge of the crash site….
“The ghouls,” I said as I grabbed Alistair’s arm and shook him, trying to snap him out of his mournful daze. “They’re going to be next.”
“How do you know?” Rory asked, his green skin faintly tinged with yellow.
“Because it’s the next neighborhood over.” It wasn’t going to stop here. This was just the first thundering step to the utter destruction of my beloved city.
Chapter Fourteen
As little as I wanted to fly all of us over there, there was no way in hell we were getting a taxi through the mass of rubble and invading plant monster. Alistair hadn’t wanted to go at all, but I refused to let him sit there and whine about how he couldn’t save everyone. It was only when the animals and mutant vines began dragging out corpses and broken victims that his face formed into a hard frown rather than the mopey sadness it’d been before.
“What are they doing?” I asked, not really expecting an answer.
Rory glanced over to where I looked, then grimaced. “You don’t want to know.” I stared at him until he answered, shifting his feet and looking down at the ground, “Looking for more warm bodies to possess.”
The construction crew of metahumans had mostly hid in the remnants of Alistair’s brownstone, those who hadn’t gotten killed anyway. When they realized the changed animals wouldn’t touch the foundation, they had gathered in the open former hall and watched the buildings around them go down. Now that the mutates were active again, the workers stood there, most of them on their cell phones, afraid to leave the apparent safety of the brownstone ruins.
The sirens from down the street got louder, and I saw a splash of red and blue light over the rubble of the buildings. The mutant animals ignored it and the standing survivors, choosing to go after the weaker ones. “We should go,” I said. “The ghouls need warning.” And I want their help, I thought, brooding on the problem. Pangea had spread itself over half the city, maybe more. There simply weren’t enough people I knew or trusted to deal with the problem, especially since Alistair was less than helpful. Some big gun he turned out to be.
“I’m going to stay here,” Alistair said, his voice tired, defeated. I gave him a scornful look. He had the power, he just was afraid. I shook my head minutely. Even though I sometimes felt fear now, I worked through it as best I could. I didn’t let it affect me at all.
Oh, the lies we tell ourselves. I pushed the thought of fleeing from the forest out of my mind. I wasn’t running now. Now, I was pissed.
“Come with us,” I urged. “We need to gather our forces,
stay together.”
He shook his head. “I know what you want from me, Caprice, but I can’t give it to you.”
I ground my teeth in frustration, took a deep calming breath and let it out slowly, then nodded. “And if anything happened to you, Rebekah would never forgive me.”
At the mention of her name, he paused, then raked a hand through his disheveled black hair. “Fine,” he said, wincing as someone screamed in the rubble. “But I feel I should stay and try to help here.”
“Cops are on the way, and the ghouls need to know what’s up,” I replied. “Maybe Pangea will go a different direction, but I don’t think so. I think it’s building up, building an army.” Rory nodded in agreement with me.
“That feels right,” he said. “It’s what I would do, anyway. The pack survives together, and the bigger the pack, the better the chances of survival.”
I nodded. It’d be fair to assume it had gleaned information from Rory’s mind, which was both good and bad. I expected Pangea to think more like a wolf, out of instinct, but it could have picked up tactics from his time in the Reich too. That being said, we had a point to start from. The first step was to gather a defense. Even though Alistair wouldn’t be as effective as I’d hoped, he’d still help and give advice, after I bullied him a little. For this, we needed a lot of manpower. If we gave the ghouls a head’s up, we not only might stop the advance for the moment, but also gain a couple of chips to call in.
“Are we ready?” I asked the two of them. Rory nodded, while Alistair looked at me, his eyes showing his resignation and relief. I understood both reactions. He didn’t want to take on the mantle of leadership, of making decisions. Rather, he wanted someone to tell him what to do. I had no problem taking that responsibility, even if I had to beat him into doing what I wanted.
