The Deeps (Book Three of The Liminality)

by A. Sparrow

  The guys hunkered behind the center car tried picking her off with some carefully aimed shots, but she seemed to be protected by a field that warped the light like a lens and deflected bullets. They pinged off metal posts and sent up puffs of concrete dust.

  I lifted the sword high over my head. I could tell the thing building inside me really wanted to break free, but was stuck like a wild bear in a half-opened cage.

  “Come on. Come on!”

  The guys on my flank had disappeared behind the concrete abutment at the end of the stands.

  The door of the press box flew open and Ellen popped back out, scattering a fresh bunch of shots out into the parking lot.

  “Ellen! No! Get back in there!”

  The gunmen behind the center car turned on her. Weapons on full automatic, they ripped into the press box. Tugga-tugga-tugga-tug! Windows shattered. Bullets pinged off steel supports. Bits of plywood flew as they shredded the flimsy walls.

  Ellen cried out and crumpled to the floor. One of her handguns went skittering down the steps.

  Her scream tore my heart open, but it also unstuck my gears, setting the machinery of some powerful forces rolling free inside me. But as that feeling broke loose, my chest and back began to burn as if run through with a red hot poker. The ghostly remnants of that Hashmal’s arrow were making themselves known.

  I clutched my chest, possessed with the urge to dig my nails into my skin and dig out the thing that had invaded me. But I knew there would be nothing there, nothing tangible, nothing a surgeon could ever extract, not in this world, anyhow, maybe not in any world. My spirit had been tagged forever.

  “Fucking hell.”

  The iPhone chimed. Wendell. This time for sure. I ripped it out of my pocket and dashed it against the bleachers. The screen cracked, but it kept on ringing. I jammed it back in my pocket.

  “Fuck it all. Fuck you! All of you!”

  I swirled the sword not even knowing what would happen and I realized that Billy was back, flopping around on the ground in front of me, grown too bulky for his little moth wings to carry him.

  Stray twigs, bits of trash and leaves adhered to him and added to his frame. And then some bleacher seats started popping their rivets and peeling up. Hunks of aluminum and plastic gathered around Billy and became part of him. He grew, drawing bleacher parts from a larger and larger radius.

  I couldn’t put a name on the creature he was becoming. It was something not of this world with five legs, a central dome and a club-like fists, a sleeker, more highly evolved version of the crab-like thing he had become in Sergei’s parquet basketball court.

  Two of Sergei’s men came around the corner, rifles at their hips and sent a barrage flying up at us. I dodged behind Billy so he took the brunt of it. The bullets rocked him a bit, but he simply absorbed them and clambered after the guys, accreting more bleacher parts with each step.

  The goons emptied their magazines, reloaded and fired some more, but Billy kept after them, taking off into a gallop once he reached the cinder track surrounding the field.

  They turned to flee. Billy swung his knobby fists and clipped one from behind, sending him sprawling. He pinned the guy down with a two-clawed foot and pounded him into the cinders. I almost couldn’t watch.

  Fearing for Ellen, I made my way back to the press box, climbing the bare concrete foundation that had now been stripped of all seating. A string of bullets chased me up the stairs splashing the concrete like a summer shower. Billy put a stop to it, chasing the guy who was firing at me out into the parking lot.

  Things had gone quiet on Urszula’s flank. The goons there had stopped their shooting and Urszula was slinking down the footings and supports along the far end of the bleachers, stalking them like a deer hunter.

  Billy upended one of the cars with the guys still in it. He then went after Sergei and the lead car whose occupants had already recognized defeat and were trying to flee. As it attempted to drive off, Billy slammed a fist down hard on its back fender and blew a tire. The differential dragged across the pavement, scraping a deep gouge. Billy pummeled the vehicle, smashing the windows to bits. Sergei and his men were at his mercy. Even if I knew how, I wasn’t about to hold him back, not after I saw what had they had done to Ellen.

  ***

  She lay on her side, half-in, half-out of the press box door, still clutching one of the pistols. Her chin quivered. She was looking awfully pale. Her sweatshirt was soaked with something dark and viscous. For a fleeting moment, I prayed it wasn’t blood, but I knew better.

  “I’m hit,” said Ellen, her face slathered with tears. “And it’s bad.”

  “Let me see.” I tried to lift her hoodie but she had her hand clasped over her stomach. “Move your hand.”

  “I can’t,” she grunted, “It … spurts.”

  “Jesus!” Through a gap in the cinder blocks, I glared out into the parking lot. A surge of hate went through me and straight into Billy who had pinned Sergei’s car against a light pole. His parts pulled tighter, he strode a little taller, hit a little harder.

  Across the lot, one of the guys Urszula had cornered scurried out of the ditch and hopped into the only intact car of the three. He managed to start it up just as Urszula sent a fiery blob of plasma after it. It singed his paint and cracked his windows, but he still managed to peal out of the parking lot and escape.

  “You need help,” I said to Ellen. “I’m calling 911.”

  She looked at me dreamily but said nothing. She could barely focus her eyes.

  The phone rang just as I dialed nine. Wendell.

  “Nice work there with your little monster. Shame you won’t reconsider our offer.”

  “Fuck you, Wendell!”

  “Yeah. I figured you’d be this way.”

  He hung up, and then there came this pinging sound from the visitor stands across the field. The steel and aluminum structure was rising up and folding itself into something with a vaguely human shape.

  I watched the thing grow as I called for help.

  “Hanover 911. What is your emergency?”

  “There’s … there’s been a shooting.”

  “Is anyone hurt?”

  “Fuck yeah! Why do you think I’m calling?”

  “Please. Try to keep calm, sir. What is your location?”

  “Some stadium … at Dartmouth. A soccer field.”

  “And the person who did this. Are they still on the scene? Are they still carrying a gun?”

  “Some of them … yeah.” The metal man across the field was now complete. It stretched its lanky limbs and took its first stride towards us. It walked like Wendell.

  “I … uh … I gotta go.”

  “Stay on the line, please. Are we talking about more than one weapon here?”

  “Yeah. You might want to bring a tank, if you got one.” I left the phone on, but put it down and started down the concrete steps, but I stopped, feeling ridiculous with that skinny sword. I was like a mouse going after a grizzly bear with a pin.

  A crunch of cinder blocks behind me startled me. Billy emerged up the back of the bleachers dragging the shattered remains of a landscaper’s trailer that had been parked in the lot. Sergei flopped limply in his other fist, apparently unconscious, his face all scratched and bloody.

  Billy was bigger than before and he continued to gather more parts, incorporating bits of wood and glass from the press box. His body elongated and segmented into a thorax and abdomen. Tarps became wings stretched taut over a tubular metal framing from a picnic tent. A pair of barrel-like planters came together to form a head with axes as mandibles. Saws and machetes aligned themselves as spines on a pair of forelegs that came together as if Billy were praying. Billy had become a mantis.

  Wendell’s metal man turned wary, pausing in the middle of the field and taking a step backward. A shed behind him exploded. Its fragments and contents came tumbling across the grass. More aluminum benches in the visitors’ stands popped their rivets and joined the
train of material assembling and converging with the metal man.

  It hunched over on all fours and began to transform itself, reabsorbing its head, sprouting extra legs and a long arched tail tipped with the blade of a scythe. Wendell’s familiar was now a massive scorpion.

  “I’m … scared,” said Ellen, feebly.

  “Don’t be. Billy’s got this under control.” But Billy was just standing there, watching. Sergei, clasped in his spiky forelegs started to rustle.

  “I’m … not ready … to die.”

  “Stop talking like that. Nobody’s gonna die.”

  “I need to know. The other side. It’s not so bad?”

  “Depends … on where you go. You probably won’t go … where I go. And that’s a good thing. But … let’s not even talk like this. I mean … you’re not going anywhere.”

  “I’m hurt bad, James. I can’t stop shaking.”

  I pulled off my fleece jacket and laid it over her.

  “I called it in. They should be here soon.”

  “James. They can’t just come here … not with this going on. You need to warn them. They need to know what they’re dealing with. James?”

  “What do I tell them? Watch out for mech monsters?”

  Sergei’s eyelids twitched and his eyes went wide when he saw me. He reached frantically into his coat and pulled out a gun. Billy clamped his hedge clipper mandibles over Sergei’s forearm before he good get off a shot. There was a crunch of bone. Sergei howled. The gun fell onto the concrete.

  Billy flared his wings and hopped around to face me, presenting Sergei clasped in his forearms to me like an offering.

  Sergei’s face was inflamed with fear and pain. Blood smeared his cheek and seeped down his shredded arm.

  “Fuck you!” said Sergei, his eyes wild and crazed. “Fuck this fucking shit! What the fuck? How are you doing this?”

  “If we let you go, will you leave us alone?”

  “Not a chance,” said Sergei. “We will get your ass. You kill me, I have brothers. This is not over until it is over.”

  “If you die, do you even know where you’re going, Sergei? Huh? Do you have any idea where you’ll end up?”

  “I don’t care. All that matters is that someone shows you how to respect me and the cartel. This shit is bigger than just me. We’re talking about honor here. Honor!”

  With a casual twitch of his forelegs, Billy tossed Sergei over the bleachers. He fell flailing his broken arms, hitting the pavement with a thud.

  “Holy crap. Did I just do that?”

  “You did,” said Urszula, clambering up the shattered concrete. “And very well.” She gasped when she saw Ellen and swooped to her side.

  I caught a peek at Meg, lying unharmed inside the press box looking all pleased with herself. I had half a mind to have Billy toss her over the side too. But in truth, I was controlling none of this. Billy had his own mind, parallel but independent to my own, less enslaved by emotion, more prone to cold practicality.

  With a leap and a burst of wings he took flight, landing on the track at the base of the bleachers. He lumbered onto the turf like a heavyweight boxer entering a ring. Wendell’s metal scorpion wheeled around to face him, clacking its pincers.

  Billy pounced and struck the first blow. His forelegs lashed out, lightning swift, raking his steel spines against the scorpion’s shoulder. Chunks of aluminum debris went flying. The scorpion whipped its stinger at Billy’s head. As Billy dodged aside it darted forward and seized Billy’s foreleg in a pincer.

  I narrowed my eyes and focused on Billy, straining to funnel every last bit of anxiety, anger and energy into him, to give him more strength. He slashed at the scorpion with his free foreleg, tearing chunks loose from its junkyard carapace. But Wendell’s beast was nimble. It spun out of Billy’s reach and slammed him with its stinger, impaling his abdomen, pinning him to the turf.

  Billy bent around and snapped at it with his mandibles but a pincer lashed out and seized one of his forelegs, clipping off the end. Unbound by whatever force had kept them together, the parts constituting the severed limb disengaged and clattered to the ground.

  The other pincer latched onto Billy’s other foreleg and the battle was as good as done. He could only kick and claw with other legs and bite with his mandibles. The scorpion pinned Billy down with its tail while it systematically disassembled him with its pincers.

  As I stood there, shocked and appalled by my impotence, my inability to give Billy even a fighting chance, Urszula raced down the steps and onto the field. She flung out her scepter and sent a goopy blast of plasma hurtling towards the scorpion’s cephalothorax. Most of it missed but a few strands clung on and tethered the scorpion to the turf, though it still managed to turn and face Urszula.

  Billy flopped on the turf, almost completely dismembered, most of him now rendered into a heap of inanimate junk while the scorpion remained largely intact.

  The scorpion pounced towards Urszula, stretching at its binds, whipping its tail. Urszula dove aside but the stinger found her, piercing her shoulder, pinning her to the ground just as it had done to Billy. Her scepter slipped from her fingers and the scorpion kicked it out of reach.

  “Nooo!” I trotted down the steps and onto the track, waving my crappy, little sword. Why did my spell craft abandon me when I needed it most? Why did it have to be so erratic? Two of my friends had now paid for my incompetence and Wendell had probably not even broken a sweat.

  There was little left of Billy by this point, just a shapeless, writhing, uncoordinated junk heap, not a trace of the glorious, giant mantis he had just been.

  A door slammed. Wendell exited the white van. He tossed aside a cigarette butt and strode across the field. The scorpion kept Urszula pressed to the ground with his stinger while it scavenged among Billy’s parts, repairing itself, making itself even larger and stronger.

  I hung back, trying again to get my spell craft churning properly while Wendell walked right up to Urszula’s scepter and picked it up, running his hand down its length.

  “Nice bit of carving. Love the bug motif. We ever get peace in Root, you guys should open up some curio stands. The Sanctuary folks would snatch these up for sure.”

  Urszula kept calm, though she was bleeding profusely from where the scythe/stinger had penetrated her shoulder. I went and stood over her, sword quivering in my hand, giving the pretense at least of protecting her from further harm. Wendell just looked at me and sneered.

  “Put the fucking sword down or I’ll snuff you out before you have a chance to say goodbye.”

  That power kept rolling like an ocean deep inside me. If only I could tap it. But somehow it couldn’t gain any traction. It found no direction, no outlet even though the obvious target of my ire stood right in front of me.

  The pain, aggravated by the ghostly remnants of the Hashmal’s arrow shaft only made it harder. The more I pushed, the more it hurt.

  “Put down the freaking sword already or I’ll put it down for you! And I won’t be gentle.”

  “What do you want from me? Why don’t you off me already?”

  He rolled his eyes and sighed. “Kid. In the off chance that we meet again in some other world, I want you to understand something. You think you’re special and you are … a little bit … I mean a lot folks have this ability inside them … but it doesn’t come as easy for them. And … as you can see … it means nothing if you can’t put it to any use. Shit like this has to be cultivated. And chances like this don’t come around very often. So the next time someone offers to do you a favor, take them up on it. It’ll be for your own good.”

  “Good? You think what you do is good?”

  “Sheesh! Some of you guys, this messiah business goes to your head. You all think you’re the Chosen Ones, sent to do good work for the powers that be. For the Lord. For God. Whatever you want to call it. But in reality, mister, it’s every soul for himself.”

  He looked around the wreckage and carnage scattered
around the field and parking lot. “Christ, what a freaking mess you made. You guys have made it really hard for me to conduct business up here for a long time.”

  Finally, I heard sirens. What was taking them so long? How many soccer fields could there be at Dartmouth?

  Wendell leered down at Urszula. “You know this gal’s got some spunk. I might keep her around a bit. Might be fun to play with. But this is it for you … Jimmie. I’m done with you. Say goodbye to your girlfriend.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him and stared, trying to focus every smidgeon of my will against him. The forces in me were churning like the turbine of a jet liner. But the pain of that phantom shaft kept everything all bottled up.

  Wendell scrunched his face. He noticed me clutching my chest. “Angel tag, eh? How convenient!”

  He flicked his pen out of his coat pocket, clenched it in his fist and pivoted. Something hard and jagged raked against my heart and lungs, his pen a proxy for the phantom arrow shaft buried in my chest.

  The pain dropped me to my knees. I couldn’t breathe. My heart lurched.

  “How do you like that? I may never be an angel, but it doesn’t mean I don’t admire the hell out of them. They got some good mojo. Man, I wish everyone had one of these implanted in their chest. It would make my job a hell of a lot easier.”

  He wrenched his wrist in the other direction. I gasped and screamed, collapsing to the ground.

  Unseen by Wendell, Urszula stretched, her arm trembling, grasping for the scepter perched on an upturned clod of natural turf just out of her reach.

  Wendell clenched his fist tight and brought it straight down this time. The phantom shaft plunged deep into my belly, bringing its fire to my stomach and kidneys.

  “Oh hell. This shit ain’t any good for killing,” said Wendell. “Torture, maybe. But it’s not doing any damage. Looks like I’ll have to go with something more conventional.”

  Unseen by Wendell, Urszula stretched out her hand and made her scepter rise and drill itself into a patch of bare soil between Wendell’s Italian shoes, polished to a mirror shine, but soiled with bits of dead grass and mud.