by VK Fox
A girl was sitting cross-legged, barefoot and in a thin cotton dress. Glacially white skin made the snow look beige, and the sun caught in her glass eyes, filling them with buttery light. Silver hair hung loose around her shoulders, and if her backward hands made it difficult to play the penny flute, Dahl couldn’t tell. The song was sublime: fierce and courageous and magnetic. Muffled through ear protection, it failed to fully pull him in, but once those first few notes violated his mind the world was confusing and slow.
Next to the girl a woman lay on her back, naked and moaning. For a sick instant she resembled Jane. At this angle her features were meaningless, but her swollen, ripe abdomen took Dahl back to the Grit Room several nights ago when Jane had laid on the table, unconscious, while they cut her open. This woman had been opened up too. From the yawning slice in her belly, hogs squirmed out by the dozens, spewing into the fluid-stained snow—frenzied and freshly born to charge forward in a single-minded pack. Dahl ducked back behind the building and focused every ounce of energy on swallowing the sour vomit rising in his throat.
He came back to himself when Fitz tapped him on the shoulder. They were sitting in the snow, and Dahl’s nose was dripping blood onto his lap while his head lolled forward. Fitz tapped him again and Dahl sucked in a huge breath, much more noisily than he meant to, but it somewhat cleared his head.
Fitz tapped him for attention a third time and signed. “Flute.”
Dahl was stupid with the melody and couldn’t focus enough to respond. The girl was using music to call the freakhogs through a portal into their reality except, in this case, the portal was the abdomen of a woman. Squeezing his eyes closed, Dahl tried to recall any details he’d gleaned about the figure laying on its back. Something about her was misshapen, inhuman—even beyond the whole extradimensional uterine gate. The mother of monsters pouring her children into his world.
Fitz stamped his foot and signed. “Flute!”
Dahl shook his head in response and signed. “Not now. Quiet!”
Fitz scowled and kicked at the snow. Dahl’s mind reeled against the song winding through the air: louder than the squeals of the dying, louder than the rapid gunfire, louder than his own surging pulse.
Dahl caught the movement above an instant before Megan and Frost hit the ground like a shockwave, knocking freakhogs aside as they threw themselves into the fray, Megan bounding and rebounding while Frost, rippling and bulging with power, tore into the pack like a muscle-bound force of nature. Gunfire punched from the roof as Everest and Sister Mary took out hog after hog from their vantage point above. A catty hoot echoed, and the flute shimmered a heartbeat before the weird melody guttered out. Dahl’s mind lurched precariously in silence before music resumed, but it wasn’t the spellbound tune burrowing into his brain. Instead, a painfully flat version of The Macarena split the thin air. For a moment Dahl sat, freezing and dribbling blood, and he couldn’t decide if the change was an improvement. At least without the marching tune no more freakhogs wriggled out.
It caught Dahl by surprise when Fitz lost his shit. A blood-curdling howl tore from his tiny lungs and he launched himself across the frozen ground, clutching at the penny flute in an attempt to wrench it from the girl’s backward hands. Even fueled by just rage, Fitz was no match for her strength, and the penny flute failed to come back under his command. So he went for the eyes.
Nimble little fingers scooped out two glowing glass orbs. The girl pitched forward, groping on all fours in the snow, still grasping the flute, awkward on her wrong-way wrists. Ooze like maple syrup trickled from the empty sockets, painting her cheeks as Fitz, still fury crimson, gaped at the clear balls in his hands. “Go for the eyes” had never played out so epically in his little life, and with an ululation of triumph he threw the spoils of war in the most flagrantly horrible, vindictive place within flinging distance: into the abdomen of the mother of monsters.
The girl scuttled forward, hesitating at the edge of the body portal, scrambling to her feet, hands blindly mapping the woman’s body. Fitz grabbed the flute, yanking with all his might against the extranatural Child who was a full head taller as Dahl dashed forward to snatch his tiny son. They had to get behind cover, away from the freakish skirmish.
Through the gaping belly Dahl could see endless, swirling red—torrents of dust framed by torn flesh. Lamashtu lay empty and convulsing, a gruesome, discarded prop. Fitz kicked to free himself from the confining safety of his father’s embrace as Dahl tried to wrench him away from the yawning abdominal gate, holding him with his golem arm and using his other hand to pry Fitz’s fingers off the contested penny flute. When Fitz lost his grip, Dahl stumbled backward, landing on his bruised hip pinned by his son, but the girl… the blind girl also fell. She disappeared into the monster mother’s belly with a scream that Dahl knew he would remember every day for the rest of his life.
The woman on the ground writhed. Lids peeled open over coal-bright eyes, lips splayed across steaming tusks, naked tail worming out from underneath her as she clawed and fisted the polluted slush. Dahl turned Fitz away before putting a bullet in her horned head. The gate winked out, leaving only an overflowing wound. Thick blood poured in rivulets over the snow, melting gory indents before getting sipped up by the thirsty ground, a pattern of red lace—delicate and feminine—against the cold white.
Dahl couldn’t keep from vomiting when her body began to crumple, puckering desiccation shrinking the corpse in on itself. Tusks receding into her throat, breasts shriveling to nubs, fingers wilting and knotting together while all the liquid inside her pumped out: blood and phlegm and amniotic fluid, shit and tears. The ground reeked, tie-dyed a putrid rainbow while the body became less and less. Her legs kicked spastically as bone creaked and flesh withered, tail crinkling like a sunbaked worm. Dahl kept his hand over Fitz’s eyes until the thing on the ground was still—a dirty ragdoll in a wash of filth. Nothing more.
When Dahl could sever his gaze, he carried the little boy back around the corner of the building, away from the mess, and held him like a lifeline until the gunfire slowed, stopped, and the world was returned to gorgeous silence except for the echoes in his head.
Dahl stormed back into the Grit Room without washing the gore from his face and hands. Management was seated in a chair, crossed-legged and poised, while Palahniuk hovered at his shoulder. She was visible, now, beautiful and pale—wrapped in a coat. Management had likely ordered her to switch her power off before she became a complete sociopath, but the emptiness in her albino-blue eyes showed she was on the edge. Dahl couldn’t care less.
“My turn to talk, you little shit.” Dahl purred the vomit-scented words as he smoothed a crusty hand over Management’s starched lapel. “I don’t work for you anymore, so trying to fire me is a bit of the runt declaring how much he hates cream.”
Megan and Zack flanked the door. Megan was carnage-soaked, and Zack’s grin would have made Pennywise whimper. Dahl pressed the sat phone into Management’s chest hard enough to mark while he kept their faces a bare inch apart. “Now I want you to consider your position for a moment. It took Everest forty-five seconds to flip Frost, and he’s staying with us. Palahniuk looks like she’s ready to cut your throat if she thinks it would get her a snack cake—something you should have considered before letting her burn so much magic she replaced loyalty with logic.
“I will graciously allow you safe passage back to the cluster fuck at headquarters if, and only if, you place a call. Instruct your peers sitting at their boring mahogany desks to courier the information we need to address this crisis. We are cleaning up your septic shit. We are fixing your all-powerful fuck up. You will say thank you, look ashamed of your impotence, and support us in any way you possibly can, because with God as my witness, I will paint the floor with your brains if you try any more corporate douchebaggery in my house.” Dahl released the phone with a final jab. “Now dial.”
Management dialed with shaking fingers.
Chapter Eighteen
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��You’re seriously at Camp Nowhere? Right now?” Jane couldn’t keep the squeak out of her voice. She tried to pin the sat phone between her ear and shoulder, losing the bulky handset as it thumped to the blankets. By the time she recovered it, Alma was already speaking.
“... and my new partner. Dahl gave a compelling recruitment speech and offered me snack cakes.”
“Who’s your new partner?” Jane snuggled further into an in-cabin, queen-sized bed on the luxury jet Ian had chartered, propping the phone with pillows.
“Some kid.” Alma paused for a few heartbeats. “I think his name’s Frost.”
“Wow, don’t get attached so fast.” Jane grinned.
“I’ll commit more to memory if he survives year one without pissing me off.”
“Impossible.” Jane chuckled.
“Without pissing me off too much.” Jane could hear Alma’s eye roll. “So far he’s been a litany of stupid questions and annoying habits.”
“Such as?” It was so good to hear her voice. “Come on, let it out.”
Alma’s impression made her new partner sound like a caveman jock. “‘Why did you pick the name Palahniuk?’ Rube.”
“Hey, why did you—”
“Oh, stop trying to push my buttons.” Alma paused for a moment before begrudgingly adding, “everyone knows the first rule of being named Palahniuk is you can’t talk about why you’re named Palahniuk. Then he asked where I wanted to get lunch.”
“So he asked a polite question about you and then considered your taste in food. Sounds like a fucking nightmare.” Jane’s cheeks hurt from smiling. “I can’t wait to see you when we get back in.”
“We’ll have to catch up later. Dahl’s putting us in the field. He says there’s trouble with a tear in the barrier somewhere in Pennsylvania, but really I think it’s because he doesn’t know if he can completely trust us. That, and my partner can’t stop making hero-worship eyes at Lovecraft.”
“Kennett Square?” Jane perked up.
“That’s right. I guess a few more monsters have been spotted. Apparently there’s issues here and there. We can’t cover them all, but some is better than none.”
The barrier was failing. Jane hugged the phone closer. “Do you know what kind of monsters?”
“Nah. Just going on tips from locals. I’ll also be happy to leave Camp Nowhere. It’s better if Sana Baba doesn’t know where to exactly find us, in case it’s not all goodwill and handshakes from here on out.”
“Be careful. Kennett Square may seem like a sleepy town, but I speak from experience. There is nightmare fuel in those woods.” Jane’s heart was ramping up. “Are you out of Sana Baba for good, then?”
“I guess we’ll see. I gotta run.” Alma’s hopefulness wasn’t entirely covered by her blasé veneer. “Don’t forget you owe me a night on the town when we get back.”
“Yeah, cool. I can’t wait.” Jane tried to infuse her voice with some cheer. Maybe they’d live long enough for her and Alma to have a girl’s night. “Catch you later.”
“Later.” Alma clicked off.
Jane closed her eyes and tried to force optimism down her throat. They were doing the best they could. Ian was snoozing next to her, and the girls had been fed and were snuggled against each other in their bassinet. France had been a huge step forward. Alma was safe and they had two new agents to lend a hand. Today was better than yesterday. One foot in front of the other.
As they flew back across the Atlantic to Camp Nowhere, Jane opened the folder from Brother Curtis which explained the end of the world. Figuring out how to fix the barrier was the next piece of the puzzle. Jane could do this. If Brother Curtis was to be believed, she was chosen to do this. Pouring over the neatly typed pages, however, Jane reverted to her earlier assessment: reality was pretty well fucked.
“Hey, babe, you awake?”
“No,” Ian mumbled.
“That’s okay, I just need to think this through out loud. I’ve been picturing this backwards.” Jane pushed her hair out of her eyes and kept reading. “When you told me about the barrier, I imagined it like a poncho: poking little holes doesn’t matter, but a rip would mean what was outside could get in. In truth it’s more like a water balloon, right? Swelling from the inside and, again, little holes don’t matter, but a tear could compromise the whole thing, or it could bust if overfilled.”
“I think so.” Ian nodded without opening his eyes.
“So people’s ideas, thoughts, and imaginations are filling the water balloon. More people means more pressure.” Jane licked her fingers and thumbed another page. “But it’s more complicated than that, because tears can also let things in, and the barrier becomes less effective as it thins. That’s why there has been an upswing in people with reality-bending powers, isn’t it?”
Ian grunted in affirmation. Eileen had been dangerous because she could change reality with her fear-driven thoughts, but Zack could also bend the world to his whims. Maybe there was a reason the two thin spots they knew about were at Zack’s and Eileen’s houses.
Not to mention the hippo in the room: Jane’s impossible power, tweaking reality ever so slightly. Could Jane be causing the barrier to thin wherever she was? Had her constant traveling saved the world from yet another tear? A shudder raced from her scalp to her toes. Hopefully fixing the shit out of the whole protective shield would solve that little issue at the same time. A healthy barrier wouldn’t be shredded by a couple of people wishing for babies and conjuring whoopie cushions, would it?
Ian was awake now—watching her, reading her worry. He reached out and squeezed her knee. “It’s going to be okay, Jane. All magic bends reality a little. In most of Sana Baba’s history the kind of powers you and Zack have wouldn’t be a problem. Eileen was really dangerous because her link was awakened—like Mordred. She had an intruder pushing in her mind and she wasn’t strong enough to fight it.”
Jane chewed her lip. “Is it dumb that I feel guilty about her?”
“Not at all.”
“But she did so many awful things.”
Ian shrugged. “Fighting is only simple in the moment.”
Jane shook off the funk, refocusing on her file. “So writing, a better alphabet, and the printing press bound the extra energy, preventing it from pressing on the barrier. Something else should have been done before 1987 when the global population passed five billion. The only good news is we aren’t the first people to arrive in the eleventh hour. Writing was invented about a thousand years after the world population reached five million, which was the first time people’s thoughts put strain on the barrier. That must have been a strange period in history. I guess we got lucky the barrier didn’t rupture while the Sumerians worked out the original solution: the written word.”
Ian picked up the conversation. “After Sana Baba was formed, it took care of the next two times the barrier needed to be reinforced. There are some records of lesser extranatural contact around those periods, but nothing like what’s in Sumerian mythology.”
“So it all boils down to stories.” The words gave Jane goosebumps. How could something so human be so fantastic? “Stories are stabilized, solidified, human-generated magic.”
“Yeah.” Ian was nodding and sounding more awake. “And since stories are magical, some are more magical than others: linked books.”
“Right. Linked books are anomalies among fiction. Written words so deeply connected to magic that they can bind the right person to magical powers.” Jane scrubbed her hands over her face. “But the crisis of the moment is we need a way to stabilize all the extra energy, double time.”
“Everest thinks Mordred has been working inside Sana Baba for eighteen years.” Ian’s voice was sad and blunt. How many kids had he known who had suffered through that particular brand of hell? “He probably stopped whatever Sana Baba had in the works.”
Jane reached out for his hand. “So, we’re starting from square one.”
Ian gave her a tired grin. “Brainstorming session?�
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“Let’s sleep on it.” Jane stifled a yawn. Her thoughts were mush.
“Ok, sweet girl.” Ian’s arms were around her: warm and strong as tree trunks. Jane snuggled in. The world drifted comfortably as Jane fell asleep.
They hit turbulence sometime during the night, jerking Jane to consciousness with a sickening lurch. Mercury light from Ian’s magic circle painted the walls and made mirrors of the cabin windows. He must have used his power after Jane had drifted off. Putting up circles had become a routine. Ian said they kept out what should be out and in what should be in. Jane relaxed in the liquid light, watching the patterns play across the ceiling. Ian’s face was smooth, but his lips moved, murmuring as he sometimes did in sleep. Jane grinned and leaned on his chest, his breath on her cheek. A flicker in the window caught her eye.
On the silver surface, two girls were playing. Their brown arms were long and the knees of their pants grass-stained. They must have been twins, except one girl’s short hair stuck up in gravity-defying tufts and the other’s curled sleekly around her shoulders. Ida and Beth, aged eight years. Jane’s initial rush twisted as she took in the details: Ida’s thin hands weakly grasping at dandelions; Beth’s gaze shifting and unfocused, skipping over the edge of the forest while she hugged her knees against the encroaching dark.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” Ian murmured. “I’ll protect you. I promise.”
They were coming apart. Ida was little more than a skeleton: cheeks hollow, belly distended under her pink t-shirt. Beth rocked herself and squeezed her haunted eyes closed as their circle of light contracted. Any second the darkness would claim them. Jerking her head back to Ian on the bed, Jane grasped his shoulders with frantic hands.
“Ian!” Jane was shaking him. “Wake up! Something’s happening!”
Ian stirred and his eyes shot open, the window returning to uninterrupted silver. “Jane? What’s wrong?” He was levering himself on his elbows, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
