by Heide Goody
10:26am
A shadow fell across Prudence as she turned. A shape moved at a broken window high above.
Yo-Morgantus, monstrous and shapeless, poured through. He moved like liquid, but his brutish bulk pushed masonry inwards to crash onto the floor.
“Into the circle!” instructed Vivian, not shouting, but still loud and clear enough to be heard over the crunch of falling stone.
Gravity pulled the flesh-giant to the floor between Prudence and the safety of the circle. Strands of him still clung to the smashed window frame, pulling away reluctantly. Prudence tried not to think of her mother inside that thing, swallowed whole, held in its control.
Yo-Morgantus pooled on the floor, then launched himself towards Vivian. Pews exploded beneath his weight. Nina swung something and an invisible force rippled through the god’s body, sending waves across the blubbery skin. Two of the donkeys brayed in high-pitched alarm and ran.
For a moment, Vivian and Nina were hidden from sight, shrouded by Yo-Morgantus’s bulk, and Prudence feared they’d been swallowed too. Then he peeled back, a wave smashing against an invisible wall.
“The circle’s holding,” Prudence said to herself.
Pupfish put his big rifle to his soldier and started to fire.
“Blast him with your laser eyes, fleshling!” shouted Steve in her hands.
“I don’t have laser eyes!” she shouted.
“I don’t even see you trying!”
Patches of Yo-Morgantus, like individuals beneath the pink and wrinkled blanket of his skin, recoiled as they were shot, but Pupfish’s attack had little overall effect on the god, except to draw his attention. Morgantus’s bulk swung round, turning to face them even though he had no face.
“Into the circle!” Vivian shouted again, like the only reason Prudence wasn’t doing it was because she hadn’t heard.
Morgantus flowed towards them. Prudence ran, across the aisle, between two pews on the other side of the cathedral. Pupfish began to follow her, too slowly, walking and firing, like he could hold the colossal thing back.
The entrance doors exploded inward. A big metal vehicle sped into the cathedral. Brickwork collapsed onto its roof then slid from its sleek back. There were several shouts, but the overall din was too huge for Prudence to make out any one voice.
Yo-Morgantus flopped and advanced across the aisle. At the sight of the tank-thing, Pupfish retreated faster than he had from the angry god. The tank pushed aside or flattened long pews, not slowing.
Prudence hurried, half-leaping, half-sprinting to the far wall to avoid being crushed between seats. Pupfish tried to run along pews to stay above the mess, but as the tank bore down on Morgantus, he fell and vanished amongst the piled-up wood.
Morgantus shifted to meet the tank. The vehicle plunged into him, head-diving into that gargantuan cushion. Fatty flaps of god flew round it. Blood and juices smeared under still-spinning caterpillar tracks. And then the shapeless arms of Morgantus folded over the tank completely, silencing it.
* * *
Nina waited for Morgantus to do something, but swallowing Rod, Yang and their vehicle seemed to have given him indigestion – or at least pause for thought.
“Come here, now!” Vivian called.
Prudence, who had been staring agog at Morgantus, came to her senses and began to run round the exterior of the seating area, circling back to them. Among the pews, there was a shift of splintered wood and the fishboy started to push his way free.
Small flying shapes battered at the stained glass windows. Even as Nina noticed them, larger ones smashed their way through. Tud-burzu carrying tracing paper thin hort’ech dolls swarmed in. A luminous eyahl-cryd flyer followed, sucker-like feeding tubes on the underside of wing-arms glistening. Nina let loose with her wand of guirz’ir binding. It was a powerful weapon, but the recoil was going to give her repetitive strain injury before the day was done. By the looks of things, the day might be done a bit sooner than any of them would like.
“We can stop this,” she hissed to Vivian.
Vivian shook her head, but turned to her husband donkey anyway. She put her hand to the side of his head. He looked at her, patient and unjudging. Tud-burzu bounced off the walls of the circle around them.
Prudence squealed as one of the curly-spined flying creatures swooped in at her, ready to blast her with flame breath. Steve leapt from Prudence’s shoulder and came down on the flyer’s back, impaling the hort’ech rider with his pencil as he landed.
Prudence stumbled on and into the magic circle. The Tud-burzu wheeled way overhead, with Steve cackling madly on its back.
Nina clutched Prudence to her and threw a blast of magic at the glowing eyahl-cryd as it swooped low.
“Once there was a time when I would have sacrificed a child, any child, to save the world,” said Vivian.
Nina began to say something, but she realised the woman wasn’t talking to her but to the donkey.
“If I could have pressed a button and put every human out of their misery, I would have.” She worked her fingers through his fur. “Not anymore. Shei at-al gha!”
Duncan – Mr Grey – twisted in sudden agony. He fell to his knees, his back buckled in a way that surely did not conform to any donkey anatomy. Hide ripped bloodily.
“What’s she doing to him?” said Prudence.
High above there was the crack of tiles and beams and support struts giving way as Venislarn beings ripped at the roof to force fresh entry.
There was gunfire in the aisle from Pupfish. Yo-Morgantus had got over his big meal and was now advancing towards him. Pupfish was trying to fight a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree skirmish all by himself. His tactic seemed to be swinging his rifle around and firing at random. Nina tried to fire at the flyers above without catching him in the blast cone of her wand.
There was a gasp from the floor. There was a man on hands and knees at the centre of what looked like an exploded donkey. He got to his feet uncertainly. His body was coated in blood and other donkey juices, but he was otherwise naked, sagging skin hanging off his narrow frame. He had a grey tufty beard and moustache. Nina couldn’t decide if this was a hangover from being a bristly chinned donkey, or if Mr Grey had modelled his look on one of them oldy-timey Euro psychologists who thought everything was about sex.
He reached out for Vivian and spoke with difficulty, getting used to have a human mouth and voice box again. “Vivian, love, I’ve had many years to think about what I would say when this moment came and—”
“Yes, we don’t have much time now though,” she said curtly. “Can you fight?”
“But I’ve had time to reflect and I think it’s important—”
“I’m sure it can wait until after we’re done with the current crisis.”
His brow creased with pained confusion. “But we might not survive.”
“Then it won’t matter, will it?” she said.
Panting, Pupfish stumbled into the circle, clattered round Vivian’s writing desk and collided with Nina. “Assholes! Ggh! Everywhere!” Trying to get his breath back, gills fluttering, he looked at the naked Mr Grey. “See? Ggh! Hung like a donkey.”
Nina did see. Well, that explained Vivian’s attraction to him. She wondered what Mr Grey had seen in Vivian, immediately regretting the thought. Old people sex was disgusting. The end of the world was bad enough without that playing on her mind.
Prudence, also staring, tugged at Nina’s hand. “Nina…?”
“I will take questions at the end,” said Nina.
A fierce Kaxid tornado of fire imploded the remaining windows along one wall of the cathedral. From high above the building, a god roared in the sky. Through the cathedral doors, a tide of creatures, dhuis and Voor-D’yoi Lak and sinewy fungoid mi’nasulu, poured in to attack.
“Oh, we’re popular today,” said Nina, desperately unhappy with the situation.
Mr Grey picked up the largest scrap of bloody donkey hide on the floor and tied it around his waist as
a loincloth. “Do we have weapons?” he asked.
A madness-inducing god of the Ogdru Jahad unfolded itself into the church building. Above them, Steve hollered and whooped, apparently enjoying a buckaroo bronco ride while sowing chaos among the Tud-burzu.
10:29am
The interior of the Warrior vehicle was dark, except for a single, dim interior light back in the infantry carrier section at the rear. The engines had died and the lights around the driver controls went out almost immediately.
The horrid flesh body of Yo-Morgantus was pushing its way through the three front observation hatches, coming through like massive rectangular blocks of sausage meat. Rod slammed and locked the panels as quickly as he could. Something burst as he shut the second and sprayed stinking pus across the tiny dashboard and his own legs. As he went to the third one, the god-flesh parted, and a human face looked through: a pale face, wide, terror-stricken eyes and a framing of ginger hair. In the rush, Rod couldn’t see if it was Morag or Brigit. He slammed the panel, pinning and slicing flesh which poked around the edges.
“Turret won’t move!” Yang called.
“Got us in a bear hug,” said Rod, struggling to climb over his seatback and into the section behind.
The panels of the vehicle wailed mournfully as Morgantus tightened his grip. Rod squeezed past Yang’s legs to get to the autocannon ammunition. He looked at her ankle length white socks and patent leather school shoes, and even in that moment of peril thinking they were odd things for someone to wear to face the end of the world.
Metal screamed under the pressure.
“Open the rear hatch and I’ll knife the bastard!” said Yang.
“Here.” Rod passed her a clip of three high explosive rounds. The clip was over five pounds in weight but Yang took it in a single hand.
“Mundane rounds have no permanent effect,” she said, loading it into the magazine nonetheless.
“Full auto. Hi-ex rounds. Either we punch a hole through him or…”
Yang ducked from her turret position to stare at him. “Explosive. Point blank. Hot gases rapidly expanding. Won’t that fucking kill us?”
Rod pulled a face. “A better end than trying to knife him. And don’t swear.”
“Don’t stifle my freedom of speech. I could sue.”
“No courts left to take me to,” he said. Somewhere a rivet popped and the vehicle tilted alarmingly.
“The world has truly ended.” She checked the ammo and prepared to fire.
* * *
Giles Grey created complex gestures with dextrous fingers and bolts of energy shot out at surrounding Venislarn. Pupfish, recognising him as the powerful wizard he was, stayed beside the loincloth wearing mage, firing into the horde. Pupfish’s focus appeared to be mostly on dendooshi and other creatures of the fur and teeth variety. Nina used her wand, but kept well clear of both man and fishboy. Her weapon was powerful but indiscriminate. Together, they kept a wall of firepower between the Venislarn and the circle where Vivian and Prudence stood close together.
There was one, two, then a third crumpled bang. Abruptly, Yo-Morgantus seemed to inflate to mountainous size before ripping apart like a bubblegum balloon. Meaty matter rained down across the cathedral and many Venislarn creatures. Skin, intestines, bulbous organs and gallons of sickly bile washed about.
Rod’s tank thing slid out of the mess, on its side, sticky strands still attached to it.
Nina stood still and stared in amazement and hope.
With a loud wrenching sound, the rear access door fell open and two figures stumbled out, clinging to each other for support. Rod nearly slipped on a pool of something, but Yang kept him upright. For her tiny size, the mammonite schoolgirl was frighteningly strong. Nina hoped she’d never have to face her as an enemy.
Rod held back a moment, stopped to reach for something among the gutted god. Nina saw it was an arm. Yang argued. Rod resisted. Nina hurried forward. She blasted a dhuis to her left and a Presz’ling to her right, and slipped through the edge of the mess of Morgantus to reach them.
On the floor was Morag, dazed and reeling, but very much alive. Nina grabbed her other arm and helped pull her up.
Sections of Morgantus began to contract and pull together. The blob monster Crippen Ai which had threatened Birmingham, both in the past and the present, was a mass of brain and muscle. Every bit of that monster was capable of existing separately. Yo-Morgantus was a single creature, with a single brain in there somewhere. But he was as tough as cancer and nearly impossible to kill. A weeping, bleeding extension of Morgantus reared up to grab at Morag. Nina blasted it with the wand of guirz’ir binding, and neatly severed the limb.
Together, the three of them retreated to the circle. Pupfish and Giles Grey were cutting a wedge into the Venislarn forces. The general situation was hopeless, but for now the last defenders of earth were making themselves felt.
Morag stumbled in the circle. Prudence grabbed for her. Morag fell on her knees, a full head shorter than her daughter. Nina thought the pair were the absolute spitting image of each other, or was that just because they were both gingers. Nina wondered if that made her a racist.
“Are you you?” said Prudence.
“I’m back,” said Morag. “All me.” She stretched up and put a kiss on Prudence’s cheek. “How did you get so big?”
“I grew.”
Morag shook her head. “I shouldn’t have spent so much time at work. I missed it all.”
“Can we go to KFC this weekend? I want a milkshake,” said Prudence.
“Absolutely.”
Vivian crouched over her desk, inexplicably trying to finish her book while all of hell was literally breaking loose around them. Rod, panting with exhaustion, threw a little wave at her.
“Nice to see you, Vivian.”
“I’m trying to write, Rod. And I need more time. I’d appreciate no interruptions.”
“Aye. Right you are.” He looked around. Nina saw how his face focused.
“Is this the King in Crimson here?” She reached out.
“You’ve sort of put your hand in his kidneys,” said Rod.
“I’ll do worse if he tries to take your soul.”
Rod’s expression changed, but Nina couldn’t read it.
“He heard you,” he said.
10:32am
The King in Crimson seemed more amused than frightened by Nina’s words, but Rod appreciated the sentiment. In the current situation, losing one’s soul to a chatty undead god was probably not the worst thing that could happen.
In an action so swift, there wasn’t even time for sound, the roof of the cathedral vanished. A flying shape, bigger than a football stadium, whisked it away in its huge mouth. Yoth Mammon’s circular maw ground masonry and slate roofing down to nothing. A swirling disco light of mind-bending colours filled the open space above. It was no longer the sky. There was no longer enough of the world left to call that space the sky.
Gazing across the scene of monsters and magical misfires, Rod recognised it for the kind of snafu they had been in before, only on a larger, world-ending scale. A spiralling thing, like power cables in a hurricane, wormed its way into the building.
“Yo Khazpapalanaka,” said Nina. “God of time. Don’t let him touch you.”
Weaving in amongst it all was Steve, riding some flying prawn thing. He appeared to have half a dozen paper doll corpses skewered on his pencil spear and he was now trying to prise apart the shell of the prawn thing, like it was a gourmet lobster dinner. The prawn thing was not best pleased.
“All the gods, all in one place,” said Nina.
“Shit just got real,” agreed Rod.
“Oh, you get to say it now, do you? That’s my line.”
“It is time our business was concluded, patron,” said the King in Crimson, hands resting lightly on Rod’s shoulders.
He shrugged. “YOLO.”
Rod didn’t have a weapon to join the firefight. He’d left his rifle in the Warrior and lost his h
andgun long before that. Yang had had the presence of mind to bring her rifle with her, but he wasn’t going to try and take a weapon from that pre-teen sharpshooter.
Yang crouched at the edge of the circle and took patient individual headshots at some of the larger creatures, making every shot a kill. Rod hoped he’d never have to face her as an enemy.
Yo-Morgantus was moving, finding his feet, his metaphorical feet. The god had no feet except those he borrowed from other creatures. As the flattened deity brought himself together, he latched onto the Venislarn around him. Wolf things, corpse things, insectoid things, things Rod would have mistaken for furniture or abstract art if they weren’t actually moving. Like an old man grasping for his Zimmer frame, Yo-Morgantus grasped for any being which might give him support. A tendril even grabbed the prawn thing Steve was flying, and he tumbled from its back to the cathedral tiles. As Morgantus’s presence spread, the wild menagerie of horrors gathered focus and more and more eyes – yellow reptilian eyes, compound eyes, weird antennae things, and unpleasantly human eyes – all turned to the small band of people inside the magic circle.
“It is over,” said Brigit, walking towards the magic circle from the direction of the altar, through the chaos. Her naked body was covered in gore, but it didn’t look like any had come from her. “This comes to an end.”
Though there was fighting elsewhere, her voice rose clearly above it all. Rod realised the other creatures Morgantus controlled were lending their voices to hers. Every possible grunt, bark, whistle and click was modulated to enhance hers. She spoke with the power of a monster choir.
Brigit slowed as she neared the circle. “Magic spells? That’s all you’ve got.”
Yang swung her rifle round. The tentacled arms of a possessed starfish thing flew out. It grabbed the barrel of the rifle and yanked. Yang managed to fire before it was wrenched from her hands. The starfish monster died instantly, dangling from the end of Morgantus’s flesh arm. The rifle skittered on the floor.