The little boy returned home to a familiar scene. His mother was kneeling in prayer before a small portrait of the Madonna. "Of course I will follow God's will in this matter. But please, my husband and children are sick," she pleaded.
Pepe kissed his mother on the cheek and stopped to check on his younger brothers and sisters before he took his new found treasure from the box and placed it with his other pets. At one point he owned a dozen lizards, but most had died. Now the boy was down to just three: two green ones and the red-striped one. The green ones both looked bloated and diseased, they would probably die in a few days, but this new one seemed stronger and livelier than any of the others he'd caught.
*****
Dr. Franks was in a foul mood. The article from his interview a month ago appeared in the morning's paper and it was far from a glowing review. It made him out to be some kind of monster! The members of the foundation wouldn't be happy with the bad publicity; they might even cut back on his funding.
As he pulled his Mercedes into his personalized parking spot, he noticed his intern running towards the car. With a push of a button, he lowered his window.
"She's escaped!" George yelled frantically.
"Take a few deep breaths," Dr. Franks instructed.
George did as he was told and when he regained some degree of composure he explained how specimen number six had broken out of its cage, killed the security guard, and flew away from the facility.
"What are we going to do?" the intern asked.
"We can make another one," the doctor said.
"What about the one that got away?"
"You worry too much, George. That creature is one of a kind. It'll live a lonely existence and pass away."
*****
Pepe's mother hesitated. She knew her boy loved his red-striped pet, but it had grown so much over the last year that it was starting to worry her. Not only was it another mouth to feed, it was becoming aggressive, snapping at the other children without hesitation. She knew it would break Pepe's heart, but her mind was made up. The beast had to go.
A short time later, two men showed up at the door with a large burlap bag. "Are those wings?" one of them asked as they approached the creature.
A struggle ensued and blood was spilled as they cornered their prey and wrestled it into the bag.
"Do you want us to kill it?"
"No,” Pepe's mother said. “Just take it to the edge of the desert and let it go. I'll tell my son it ran away."
*****
The two creatures, specimen number six and the red-striped lizard, wandered the Earth for years before they met. In time they gave birth to a litter of six. Four died within days, but two—a male and a female, both with a red stripe—grew strong. When their wings sprouted, they left the nest and flew off to explore the world together.
The End
13 - Legendary
The wreck happened just two weeks shy of Inza's 6th birthday. The wreck that killed her mother. The wreck that crippled her right leg.
Her father, Galen Lombard, was left to pick up the pieces. The first thing he did was take a sabbatical from his job as a science professor. The second thing he did was make arrangements for his daughter's birthday party.
"What would you like for a present?" he asked.
"A book," Inza replied.
"About what?"
"Dragons and knights and magic spells and fair maidens. You know, that kind of stuff."
"Oh, I think we can find something like that," he said with a smile.
The book he found detailed the mythology of Scandinavia and he read it to her night after night, over and over again, in the coming years. They both looked forward to this special father-daughter time, a shared escape from the realities of this often-troubling world.
The book was a thick compendium that detailed thousands of years of storytelling. Inza enjoyed everything the tome had to offer but took particular delight in the tales of King Roland and his champion, the unstoppable Black Knight.
Her father also found the tales fascinating, especially the origin of the Black Knight. While no particular date was attached to the events, the story was most likely set in the Dark Ages, not long after the fall of the Roman Empire.
The warmonger Neron and his fleet of Viking longships appeared off the coast of Scandinavia, a stretch of land that forms the southern borders of modern-day Norway and Sweden.
Neron was a Svengali, a charismatic figure whose rule could best be described as a cult of personality. He pursued a vendetta against King Roland for murdering his father.
With his country on the brink of disaster, Roland begged his pagan gods for salvation and that same evening his prayers were answered. A star fell from the sky. He went to investigate and found the Black Knight, silent and waiting. The grand champion didn’t move until King Roland ordered him to destroy Neron.
In the weeks and months that followed, the Black Knight did anything and everything that Roland commanded. And years later, when the good king passed away, his champion refused to leave his side. According to legend, he still stands guard in King Roland's tomb.
*****
His daughter became a teenager and then a young woman in the blink of an eye, or so it seemed to Galen Lombard, who had gone prematurely gray not long after the accident that left him a widower. And though she put on a brave face and steeled herself to a lifetime of cruel taunts, Galen knew that her crippled right leg was a heavy burden for Inza to bear. What she needed was a champion. And he was bound and determined to find one for her. Indeed, he had spent almost two decades obsessively pursuing that very thing.
*****
"I've finally found it," Galen proudly announced to his daughter a few days after her 24th birthday.
"Found what?" Inza asked.
"King Roland's tomb."
"Dad, that's a myth. King Roland never really existed."
"I assure you, he did."
"And I suppose the Black Knight is still watching over him?"
Galen held up two plane tickets. "That's what we're about to find out," he said as a wide grin spread across his face.
They left that afternoon. On their flight across the Atlantic, Galen explained how he and a team of professors had pieced together the location of the legendary tomb of King Roland.
They landed in Oslo, Norway, where they were met by some of Galen's colleagues. Though the calendar said it was spring, the weather was still decidedly winter-like. A cold snap had dropped the temperatures well below zero forcing the entourage to hole up in a hotel for the next three days.
When the weather finally broke, they piled into a Range Rover and headed north.
"So nobody's been inside yet?" Galen asked.
"No, not yet," one of the team members replied.
"Good. If it's okay with everybody, Inza and I would like to go in first."
"We knew you would. That's why we waited."
Four hours later, they reached their destination. Father and daughter then proceeded into the tomb, with Inza leaning heavily on a cane specially designed to compensate for her damaged right leg.
Galen held a lantern above his head as they proceeded slowly and cautiously through two antechambers filled with diamonds and rubies. The precious jewels sparkled in the first light that had fallen on them in a millennium.
His heart was pounding against his chest like a jackhammer. "Are you ready to go into King Roland's tomb?" he asked through his suddenly dry mouth.
"I've been ready since I was six years old," Inza answered.
"I wish your mother could be here," he whispered as they entered the ancient sepulcher.
"Me, too," she said softly.
When you dream about something for so long, it's almost inevitable that the reality is disappointing. Not so for this sacred place. It was every Galen and Inza had hoped for and more.
And there, beside King Roland's withered bones, was the legendary Black Knight, perfect, spotless, as if he'd been freshly carved from
a block of obsidian.
"Dad, it's impossible. How can that be?"
"It's time for me to explain a few things that I've long suspected but never shared with you. The Black Knight is a robot."
"A robot?"
"A robot from a downed spaceship whose metallic casing made him look like a knight."
"He wasn't an answer to King Roland's prayers for help against Neron?"
"No. It was just a fortunate coincidence that he showed up at that time. He was most likely a helper to the beings who perished in the crash. The Black Knight probably suffered some damages during the wreck. That's why he locked onto King Roland's voice and followed his commands."
"How were you so sure?"
"I wasn't until I got my hands on this," he said as he pulled a piece of black metal out of his pocket. "I've run hundreds of tests and its provenance is without question. There is no such metal on the Earth. It's a piece of the spaceship."
"This is amazing!" Inza declared.
"There's more," Galen said, his voice positively overflowing with excitement. "It's been so long since King Roland passed away that there's a good chance the Black Knight's command circuits have reset. Why don't you ask him to do something?"
Inza looked at her father and her jaw dropped wide open.
"He's to be your champion now," Galen proudly announced. "That's why I devoted my life to finding him. Go on, give it a try."
Inza cleared her throat and spoke in a loud, clear voice. "Black Knight. Step forward."
Father and daughter waited anxiously.
Ten seconds went by without anything happening.
Thirty seconds and still nothing.
A full minute had passed.
And then the Black Knight took his first step in more than a thousand years.
The End
14 - Subterranean
Part 1 - The Great White Worm
New York
1980
Sergeant Martin was finishing up some paperwork when he heard a knock on his office door. "Come in," he barked.
It was a street cop named Knox. "Sarge, you got a minute? I'm onto something above my pay grade."
"Yeah, sure."
Knox brought in a suspect in handcuffs. "This is Richard Allenby. He works at an accounting agency downtown. Ran into a little trouble on the subway."
The Sergeant reached for a cigarette and motioned for Allenby to take a seat.
"No! Not the smoke! I can't deal with the smoke!" Allenby yelled hysterically. "It reminds me of that horrible place."
Knox walked around the desk and lowered his voice so only the Sergeant could hear him. "You're going to want to bring Doc Huggins in on this case. This guy is cuckoo. They found him walking in an abandoned subway tunnel with a thousand-mile stare."
"Huggins is downstairs. Go get him," the Sergeant replied. While Knox was gone, he took a look at the man sitting across from him. Mid-thirties. Average height. Average build. Sweating profusely. Fear in his eyes.
Knox and Doc Huggins arrived a few minutes later.
"Who's this guy?" Allenby asked. "He better not be a shrink because I'm not crazy! I know what I saw down in the smoky, blue haze of the subway tunnels. Braaxikudlu. The Great White Worm. You gotta believe me!"
"Calm down, Allenby," Doc Huggins said as he got out a yellow legal pad and started to scribble down some notes. "What was that name you mentioned? Braax something or other. How do you spell that?"
"I don't know! What difference does it make?"
"Hold on," the Sergeant interrupted. "Knox. Take off his cuffs and go see what else you can dig up on the case."
Doc Huggins waited until the street cop left before he continued. "Now Allenby, try and relax."
"Why don't you start at the beginning and tell us what happened," added the Sergeant.
Allenby nodded and took a deep breath before he began. "I was leaving work…"
"How was work?" Doc Huggins interjected.
"Awful. The boss has been riding me hard ever since I messed up the country club account a few weeks ago. But that has nothing to do with this! I left work, caught the subway, and took my usual seat. All the regulars were there."
"Who are the regulars?" the psychiatrist asked.
"Woods was reading the sports page. Caroline was a couple of rows in front of me, but I could still smell her perfume."
"Go on," the Sergeant said.
"There were some people I didn't recognize, but that's not unusual so I didn't give it much thought. Until…"
"Until what?" Doc Huggins prodded.
"I noticed that whenever we were in a darker section of the tunnel this man's eyes were glowing."
"What do you mean glowing?" the Sergeant asked in a brusque tone.
"Exactly that! Glowing. A sickly green color. And then a couple of stops later, when just the three of us were left, he got out a gun."
"Then what happened?" asked the psychiatrist.
"At the next stop, he made us get off the train. He took us through a series of twisting tunnels to an old cavern that was filled with a haze that looked like cigarette smoke. At first, it smelled like peaches, but deeper in the cavern it took on a fishy odor."
Allenby lapsed into silence and refused to go on. The Sergeant, who was a prickly man known for his lack of patience, quickly grew irritated and threatened bodily harm unless he continued.
"I don't want to talk about the things I saw!" Allenby insisted.
"That's it!" Sergeant Martin raged. The veteran officer got up and repeatedly slapped Allenby across his face until he continued his story.
"The gunman said we were to be sacrificed to Braaxikudlu, the Great White Worm! It materialized out of the haze, over ten feet high and fifty feet long. It ate Woods alive! My God, I've never known such visceral, unreasoning fear!"
"Well you're here, telling us this cock and bull story," the Sergeant barked. "So I take it you managed to escape."
"The beast turned its attention to Caroline. The gunman was behind me. I couldn't go back, so I ran forward instead, past the leviathan and into the darkness from which it came. If only I'd known of the loathsome horrors that I would encounter in that abyss! Being eaten alive would have been preferable to that nightmare world!"
"Describe the things you saw," Doc Huggins suggested as he continued to scribble notes on his yellow legal pad.
"No! Never! Of those hours I wandered in that stygian abode I will not speak!"
A sudden knock on the door made Allenby jump. It was only the street cop returning, but he’d reached a breaking point and began to sob uncontrollably.
"What is it, Knox?" the Sergeant demanded.
"I got the scoop from my partner."
"Spill it," the Sergeant said.
"He talked to an old lady by the name of Frances Gower. She's a regular on the subway but she was off work today. She says that Allenby went off the deep end when things got acrimonious at his job a few weeks back."
"He mentioned his troubles at work," Doc Huggins chimed in before Knox continued.
"Allenby used to be fastidious, but he's been increasingly volatile and distraught. He used to date another passenger. A demure girl who always wore peach perfume but they had a falling out. He was contrite and tried to apologize, but she wanted nothing to do with him. They started to argue and another passenger by the name of Woods had to step in. Ever since then Allenby's been holding a grudge against them both."
"He also mentioned Woods and the girl. He said her name was Caroline," Doc Huggins said as he looked back through his notes.
"But he didn't say anything about that argument," the Sergeant growled before he turned his gaze back to Knox. "Anything else?"
"Allenby's constantly making a scene when people light cigarettes on the subway. Says he's allergic to the smoke."
"Well, we seem to have all the facts. You want to know what I think?" the Sergeant asked. "I think Allenby killed them both and cooked up this ridiculous story so he would have an alibi
."
"I don't know," Doc Huggins said. "I think he might be suffering from a nervous breakdown."
"You're both wrong," Allenby said as he choked back tears. "I didn't do anything to Caroline or Woods. It wasn't me. It was Braaxikudlu. The Great White Worm! You gotta believe me!"
Subterranean
Part 2 - That Which Survives
New York
2034
For years there were rumors of odd occurrences in the abandoned sections of the old subway system. Members of a queer cult were said to hold depraved rituals there on All Hallows Eve. There were even whispered tales of a Great White Worm, over fifty feet in length, which craved human flesh. Some had given this behemoth a name. They called it Braaxikudlu.
But the world had far more pressing concerns. Tensions around the globe were rapidly escalating. In the end, war was inevitable.
The last worldwide clash had ended with the detonation of two nuclear weapons. Fat Man and Little Boy had managed to bring an end to a conflict that saw the deaths of an estimated fifty-five million people.
Those numbers were paltry in comparison to the wholesale slaughter that was now unleashed upon the Earth. By the time the mushroom clouds dispersed three billion souls had been lost. The woe of aftermath was exponentially worse.
The blue skies were gone, never to return. The smoke and soot lingered in the atmosphere for years. With the sun blotted out and the waters fouled it was only a matter of time until entire ecosystems began to collapse. In the resulting nuclear winter, mankind descended into carnage and cannibalism.
That, however, was not as terrifying as the mutations that resulted from the radioactive fallout. The extra limbs of polymelia, the rapid aging of progeria, the excessive hair growth of hypertrichosis, the single eye of cyclopia, and the conjoined twins of polycephaly were all commonplace. Even those chilling aberrations paled in comparison to the truly horrific ones, the mere sight of which would send people plummeting into the bottomless pit of insanity.
The animal kingdom was affected as well. Enormous crabs left the oceans and roamed the streets of coastal cities devouring any humans they chanced upon. Two-headed snakes were worshipped as gods in the deserts of the American southwest, white apes took control of much of Africa, while massive frogs terrorized the Australian Outback. An eight-legged goat in Venezuela was considered by some as a sign of the coming apocalypse, while others argued that Armageddon had already occurred.
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