by Erik Lynd
“Now looks like as good a time as any to get to the fifth floor,” St. Abigail said.
Silas jerked his foot free from a grasping hand and nodded. They ran up the rest of the stairs. Clawed hands still burst through the walls and steps, but they were a little more hesitant after all the damage they had taken. Silas suspected they were cowards and that is why they hid behind the walls. When they were almost at the fifth floor he had the sudden desire to see what one of the things looked like.
“Time to turn the tables,” he said and punched through the wall near one of the arms.
He grabbed the nearest body part he could find and yanked the owner through the wall and onto the stairs. The thing screeched as it fell on the stairs at Silas’ feet. Instantly the other arms retreated, only holes in the walls remained to mark that they had been there at all. But Silas hardly noticed, he was more interested in the thing at his feet.
“Oh my God,” Abigail said.
There was no doubt the thing at their feet had once been human, though its abdomen and appendages were rail thin. Silas had once possessed an officer at an extermination camp in Poland and this man was as thin as those prisoners on their death beds. His back, shoulders, and head, however, were thick with growth that looked like crustaceans, as though barnacles had grown over the upper part of his body. His eyes were a mixture of fear and madness, but they were definitely human. They were the only part left of him that looked normal. And he was crying.
Silas stepped back as St. Abigail stepped forward. Comforting pitiful wretches was her job.
“Shh…it’s okay. We won’t harm you,” she said quietly.
Silas almost laughed. He had definitely done some harm to these things and would do so again if they tried clawing at him again. The creature’s eyes flicked back and forth. He was not convinced.
“What happened to you?” She asked.
“Transmogrification gone bad looks like,” Silas said. “Yep. This is probably the handiwork of our friend.”
St. Abigail looked at the wall covered with broken holes. He knew what she was thinking.
“Yes Abigail, all of them. He used them as practice for his experiments. It takes a lot of practice to get transmogrification magic to work right.”
“All of them are like this?” She spoke it as a question but Silas knew she expected no answer.
“No,” the misshapen man said in a raspy voice unused to talking. “Some are different, some strong, some stupid.”
“But all flawed?” St Abigail asked. “Who are you?”
“Lived here,” the man said, but slowly as though confused about his past. “This was home.”
“A tenant? You were a tenant of this building?”
The man’s eyes narrowed at her, but he nodded.
“Why? Why was this done to you?” She asked.
The hatred and lunacy flared to life in his face.
“To purify us,. To give us a better life,” the man said, then spit a large green glob onto the floor and laughed hysterically. Lungs, long unused for laughter, produced wracking coughs between laughs.
The man jumped to his feet and ran up the stairs to the fifth floor. Silas tried to catch him and would have, but Abigail caught his arm and he stopped.
“Let him go.”
“What if he goes and gets his buddies?” Silas asked.
“Does it matter? It’s not like they don’t know where we are.”
Silas shrugged.
“Then let’s follow him,” Silas said and waved his arm at the last flight of stairs. “Ladies first.”
They reached the fifth floor and turned down the corridor. A man stood in the middle of the hall, but it was not the poor wretch they had captured on the stairs. He was hunched over, a large bony lump protruding from his shoulder. The lumped shifted, and Silas realized it wasn’t a lump, but a third arm and it was heavily muscled. It looked out of place next to his other appendages, which were as thin as the man’s on the stairs had been. These creatures looked as if they hadn’t eaten in years. At the end of one of his thin arms he held a cane.
“Why have you come to this place?” The man asked, his voice firm and strong even as his body shook from weakness.
“Look buddy, we’re just looking for Mr. Webb,” Silas said.
The man scowled and turned.
“He is no longer here,” he said as he walked down the hall.
“Yep, we kind of figured that one out. What can you tell us about him?” Silas asked, catching up to him.
The man stopped at a door and went through. Silas and St. Abigail followed.
The room beyond was not a normal apartment; it looked as though walls between apartments had been torn down, transforming the whole floor into a makeshift warehouse space. Taking up most of the floor space were chairs and tables holding test tubes, beakers, and other alchemical equipment.
“It looks like a garage sale at a mad scientist’s lair,” St. Abigail said.
“Or a large meth lab,” Silas said.
And it did look more like a drug lab than a sophisticated research set up, like someone had built it strictly from what they could scrounge up. Dust was thick on the equipment. Bunsen burners, test tubes, hoses, and books littered many work surfaces.
“We have touched nothing since he left,” said a voice from the wall behind them.
Silas and Abigail turned to see the man they had followed standing there. He was leaning against the wall for support.
“Were you a tenant of the building?” Abigail asked.
The deformed man nodded. “Most of us were; others were pulled off the street and from the depths of the Undercity. He called us his flock, as if he was some great protector.”
The man limped to a table and with a violent motion smashed his cane across the table, scattering glass and metal onto the floor. Glass shattered and metal clanged.
“It wasn’t by choice,” the man continued, the calm in his voice belying the violence in his action. “He trapped us here, one by one, and performed his experiments. His baptism rites, he called them. Then he left.”
“How long ago did he leave?” Silas asked, trying to cut to the chase.
“Years. Months. Days. I don’t know. A long time I think,” he said and walked to another table, smashing the contents as he had the other. “He said he had found others below the city and on the streets more worthy, stronger in their faith in him.” The man finished with a laughed.
“So he left you behind?” St. Abigail asked.
“At first we were glad to be rid of him; we never saw him as the prophet he saw himself. But he sealed us in with some dark magic. Now we live this way, mutilated and unable to go out into the city.”
“Times are tough all around. Listen did this Webb tell you where he was going?” Silas asked him, ignoring the glare from Abigail.
The guy laughed a little. “Underground, to the depths of the Undercity to create his army for a new dawn.”
“New Dawn?”
The man looked him in the eye, his own cold, gray eyes hardening. “The dawn of a new, pure race to replace the humans. People like us,” he laughed. “Only I expect they will be a little more refined.”
“So you don’t know exactly where in the Undercity?” Silas asked.
As they talked, Silas noticed more of the half-men emerging from other rooms--first one or two, then a dozen, then two dozen. They were all twisted specimens of humanity and all different sizes and shapes, some with extra arms, some with misshapen growths of barnacles or hardened leathery skin. It was a horrible example of the handiwork from a mad man with access to sorcery.
“No, he is gone and we can go no more than a block from this building before we are pulled back. It makes finding food very hard. People rarely get past the veil that cloaks this place. It is hard to come by fresh meat.”
Silas noticed that the creatures had closed in, cutting them off from the door. He had a bad feeling about this.
“I guess we’ll just be going now
,” he said.
“You don’t understand. Fresh meat is so very hard to come by,” the man said and the group drew closer.
Whump! Whump!
The loud thumping sound started again like something was trying to break out from below. The old man slammed his cane down twice, then spoke loudly.
“Yes, don’t worry we will save you a leg,”
“Don’t do this. We can help you,” Abigail said, pulling her blades out.
Silas could tell by the drool they weren’t listening. He couldn’t imagine what they subsisted on, only being able to move in a one block radius. Most likely they fed on rats, garbage, and each other. Coming into this building was like ringing the dinner bell for these things.
Silas turned to one of the tables laden with glass and metal and kicked it into a group of the twisted creatures. With a loud crash the glass flew at the monsters, tiny shards flying like shrapnel. Not stopping to see what effect it had on the others, he grabbed one of the gas pipes descending from the ceiling and ripped it open, bending it toward the group behind him. Natural gas jetted out. He batted aside one of the weaker ones and napped his fingers in front of the gas. He called “fire” and the gas ignited, sending a jet of flame at the surging mass of deformed flesh.
St Abigail had run behind the pipe as he bent it like a flame thrower, washing it across the creatures. A new wave of screeches and the smell of burned flesh filled the air. The majority fell back as the wall of flame smashed into them, but others moved around the tables looking for a way to get behind them.
“This won’t hold them all back,” Silas yelled over the screams and roaring flames.
By now the flaming jet had ignited parts of the wall; the creatures had given up on them and were trying to escape the rabidly disintegrating room.
“Point it at the door, clear a path,” St. Abigail said with a grimace.
“Now that’s the spirit,” Silas laughed and did as she asked.
The flames did the trick and all the creatures scurried away from his fatal hose. Just in time, too, because at that moment the pipe decided it had enough stress and ripped loose from the ceiling, ending Silas’ flame thrower. But now they had a bigger problem. Gas was leaking from the line in the ceiling. In moments the flames in the room around them would ignite the gas build up and explode.
“Time to leave,” St. Abigail said and ran at the burning door.
Silas followed. A flaming member of Webb’s flock leaped at him from the corner as he neared the door. Greasy, half-charred hands grabbed his jacket and tried to pull him down. He punched the man in the face and he dropped away. Two more leaped at him, staggering him as he reached the door. Two blades flicked out and the flame-covered creatures fell to the ground, dead.
Whump!
Outside the flaming room they heard the massive thumping again.
“Hurry!” Silas said and pushed Abigail toward the stairs. “We don’t have much time before this building is going to blow.”
They ran down the stairs, stumbling every time the thumping came. Silas hoped they would never see what could be making such a massive noise. At the bottom of the stairs the floor burst with one final, ground-shaking thump.
A creature at least fifteen feet tall burst through the floor. Thick with muscles, it carried an oversized sledge hammer like it was a tack hammer. With a bellow it celebrated its freedom and then glared down at Silas and Abigail.
“Troll. Or at least that’s what it looks like Webb was going for,” Silas said.
“Look out!” Abigail cried.
The large beast swung his hammer at Silas. He ducked, but was not quite quick enough; the corner of the hammer caught his shoulder, flipping him through the air and slamming him against the wall. Silas had heard a loud crunch as the hammer hit and knew something had broken. He lay in a heap at the base of the wall, pain throbbing through his shoulder. Even as his demonic essence begin knitting the bones back together, he knew that arm would be useless for a while. He cursed his fragile mortal form.
The troll bellowed again, this time in triumph, and took a swing at St. Abigail. But she was quicker, her preternatural speed making her a blur. She ducked under the blow and her blades flashed out, slashing at the troll’s arm. The stiletto skidded down the tough hide of the monster. She jumped back out of the reach of its returning blow.
Silas slid up the wall holding his left shoulder and wondering how the hell he was supposed to fight this thing with only one arm. He looked up and saw flames licking at the railing at the top of the stairs. The gas would ignite any second, only luck had kept it from happening so far.
The troll’s back was to him as it was distracted by Abigail. She was moving quickly, dodging in and out of its strikes. Its attention was focused on her, probably dismissing Silas as dead.
Big mistake.
With three long strides he jumped onto the creature’s back, slipping his good arm under the its neck. In the eighties he had possessed a pro wrestler and had performed a similar move against Andre the Giant. Sure, it was all fake, but when it came to technique, using brute force pro wrestling could not be beat. Besides, it had worked on Andre even though Silas had gone “off script” since he was scheduled to lose that match. Silas was never keen on losing.
The Troll roared in surprise and Silas cinched up his arm, closing off the beast’s throat and cutting the roar short. A large meaty hand slapped at Silas’ back, but at this angle the troll didn’t have much leverage. After a moment it gave up trying to hit him off its back and instead worked directly on the arm wrapped around its neck. Silas pulled even tighter as it tried to pry off his arm. The beast spun about and Silas was almost thrown from its back, but the troll was slowing now and Silas thought his choke hold might be working.
WHUMP!
A blast of heat and embers fell on him from above. The upstairs had exploded. The ceiling collapsed in places and a large piece of wood slammed hard enough against Silas that he was knocked from the troll’s back. Flames and twisted metal fell around him. The entire building was in flames. Now he was in his element. Heat and fire might cause some damage to his mortal form, but it gave his demonic fury pure joy.
St. Abigail would not be as lucky. He quickly climbed to his feet and looked through the rubble and walls of flame trying to locate her. He caught a splash of black against one of the few walls still standing. It was Abigail. She appeared unconscious; a burning log lay across her back.
He started crawling over the debris toward her. He had never possessed a firefighter, but for a couple of days in the seventies he had possessed an arsonist, so he knew a thing or two about moving through a burning building. He kept low as he moved through the wreckage.
The fire was just getting going and he could feel its hunger growing. This room would be at furnace temperature in moments. He was less than ten feet from her unconscious body--at least, he hoped she was just unconscious--when a flaming sledge hammer hit the ground inches from his feet.
Silas turned to see the troll pulling itself out from under a pile of rubble. The beast was horribly burned, and its face looked like it had both melted and charred black at the same time. This may not be a true troll, Silas speculated, just some helpless homeless guy that Webb had experimented on. But he had to give the guy credit; this creature was as tough as any real troll Silas had met. Of course with only one arm, an unconscious partner and a building about to collapse on top of them, it would have been more convenient if the troll had been a pussy.
Another explosion shook the building. Silas thought much of the north side of the building might have just collapsed. The troll ignored the shaking and lifted its giant hammer high over its head, preparing a deadly swing.
There was not much Silas could do. One arm was no good and he was surrounded by flaming debris. He would have to go on the defensive and try to dodge around it. The hammer started its deadly arc and Silas tensed, then it stopped. They both looked up. The head of the hammer had become embedded in a part of the ceil
ing that had fallen a few feet. The troll grunted and tried to wrench it free. Silas didn’t wait.
Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, Silas charged forward and slammed his good shoulder into the abdomen of the troll. He managed to knock the troll back about twenty feet, but it let out a loud woof and doubled over its stomach. Before he could follow up with a punch to its face the ceiling above it collapsed, raining several stories of burning apartments down on its head. The troll was buried instantly.
Silas took only a moment to make sure the troll was down for good before running over to St. Abigail. Pieces of the ceiling were falling around him. He grabbed the beam pining her down and heaved it away, knocking down more of the wall. He caught her jacket collar and lifted her up and over his good shoulder. His arm was still useless, so he handled her like a bag of flour. He was glad she was unconscious; otherwise, he would never hear the end of it.
A mound of rubble had fallen between him and the door, but it was still the quickest way out. He made his way to the door, kicking the smaller pieces out of the way. A handful of large boards had fallen across the door, and he wouldn’t be able to move it without leverage. With his bad arm, that would mean putting Abigail down and wasting valuable time.
He was looking for a safe place to put her when the door shoved inward, dislodging the burning wood. The door moved again and the wood fell away completely. The chauffeur's head popped out from behind the open door. He saw them and smiled.
“Need some help?” he cried over the noise of the fire and collapsing building.
Silas jumped over the flames on the floor in front of the door; the chauffeur stepped back making room for them.
“You weren’t kidding, what you said about explosions and screaming,” Steve said.
In the distance he heard sirens and people were flooding the street to see what was going on. The building no longer hid behind the Pale; it was just another building fire drawing curious onlookers.
