Netherkind

by Greg Chapman

  “Oh my God!” Thomas said.

  “God has nothing to do with these bastards—not even Okin!” Nero told him.

  “What do we do—do we fight them?”

  Nero slammed his fist into the wall in desperation. Then he turned to Thomas, his face dripping with sweat.

  “No, we run!”

  9

  The cry of the Lepers was constant, a mantra of harrowing proportions. It was like the sound of cattle being led to their slaughter, only they were already dead.

  The din rang in Thomas’ head as he and Nero fled through the dark, scouring the walls outside the city for a way out—or back—anything other than facing the deformed beasts that pursued them.

  Thomas braved a look over his shoulder and saw one of the Lepers bounding, gaining ground with every leap. The abomination was driven by hunger, a perverse, insatiable desire.

  “They’re gaining on us!” Thomas said to Nero.

  “Then move your ass—unless you want it deep fried!”

  His lungs already beginning to burn, Thomas pushed himself harder to catch up with Nero, whose eyes were focussed on the multitude of cracks in the wall.

  “Have you found a way out?” Thomas said with a ragged breath.

  “Does it fucking look like I’ve found a way out?”

  Another moan, long and loud flushed Thomas’ skin with terror. He turned and saw the Leper fall to the ground ungracefully a hundred feet behind them. It lowered itself behind a boulder and watched.

  “Why isn’t it attacking?” Thomas said.

  “It’s biding its time,” Nero said. “They might look like brainless freaks, but it’s their bodies that are rotten, not their minds.”

  Thomas tried to imagine how such a thing was possible. “So what happens if they get near us?”

  Nero looked Thomas in the eye, serious. “Don’t let them near you, okay—that’s all you need to know. Just keep an eye on the fuckers while I try and find this door.”

  Thomas turned back to the spot where he last saw the Leper, the thing was still there, leering, gasping. Even from this distance, Thomas could hear its guts gurgling and smell its stench. Slowly, the Leper was joined by the rest of its horde, who stumbled out of the shadows. They all joined the queue to observe the Phagus males in their fit of desperation.

  “They all look…so deformed,” Thomas said.

  “Yeah, well, that’s because of the inbreeding,” Nero said. “Each fucking one comes out worse than the last and twice as hungry.”

  “They eat us?”

  “Any flesh—human, animal, Phagus, Stygma, Skiift—they’re scavengers.”

  Thomas stared at the horde and tried to imagine the shock that would have taken over the tribes when the first Leper was born. No wonder they went to war.

  “I see why inter-breeding between the tribes didn’t work, but why aren’t there any Phagus children?”

  “Will you shut the fuck up?” Nero said. “I’m trying to work here!”

  Thomas looked over his shoulder to see the Lepers had recommenced their slow crawl, their seething bile-soaked masses looking like living dead, only eaten and regurgitated by some hideous beast.

  “Then you’d better hurry Nero—they’re on the move again!”

  Gerhard Vorn had ventured into many dark corners of the earth in search of the obscure, but never a sewer.

  His nose covered with a black silk handkerchief, he scanned the running stream of filth with a reluctant eye. His methods of deduction and their corresponding determinations told him the creature he was searching for had come down here into the sewers. Regrettable as that was, Vorn knew beasts of its type were more than likely to dwell in such places.

  Vorn tried to focus on his task and kept his back pressed against the wall, careful not to let his leather shoes touch the waste of humanity. The smell was atrocious, but the sight of excrement, freely flowing under the city made the whole scene all the more nauseating. The tunnel was dark, cold and wretched and he couldn’t wait to escape it once he’d snagged his prize.

  Vorn wrapped his cloak tight around himself and tread heel to toe with the deftness of a trapeze artist. He slipped the leather glove off his right hand and clicked his thumb and forefinger. A second later, a spark erupted in the air and took on the shape of an orb of flame roughly the size of a marble above his palm. The tunnel and all its shadows faded in response, falling back to darker territory. Now Vorn could see every skerrick of filth that surrounded him, but again, he reminded himself the filth was part of the creature’s domain and where there was filth, there would be the creature.

  He waved his hand gently through the air and the orb tracked its path. He was searching for evidence of the creature’s comings and goings, signs of its nest. What he had discerned about the creature was very little—they were predatory, reliant upon the flesh of humans for nourishment and were reputedly the descendants of a race known as the Homo Anthropophagia; a mythical band of Hominids widely regarded by historians and scientists as impossible.

  But Vorn had sensed them, his highly-attuned abilities warning him of their presence when he first visited the city more than half a century ago. Then, he was a boy and unaware of the extent of his senses, his unnatural view of the world. Now a grown man and adept in the arcane, Vorn was more than able to prove the creatures existed.

  The fact that Niles wanted to pay top dollar for that proof made the task even more enticing.

  Vorn didn’t like Niles’s penchant for the obscure because it differed from his own. Niles collected objects and creatures because he believed he should own them, and he would stop at nothing to fulfil his wish. He was like a spoilt child, but Vorn knew he was playing with fire and his greed would eventually come back to haunt him.

  Still, he and Niles were sharing an incredible discovery and Vorn could take refuge in the fact that his soul, unlike Niles’s, was protected.

  A tall vertical glint of light, rising from the floor of the tunnel to the ceiling, attracted Vorn’s attention. It was a narrow crack about half an inch wide. The orb’s light illuminated a space on the other side, a tiny room made of copper or bronze. In his search through the filth to find a monster, Vorn had stumbled upon something truly beautiful.

  He ran his hands over the edge and quickly discovered he was standing in front of a door, but how to open it and where did it lead? He withdrew his hand from under the flame sphere and obligingly it sat suspended in mid-air. With both hands free, Vorn could feel for the door’s lock.

  It was so small that even he would have missed it if he hadn’t been focussing his gifts. His eyes worked outside the normal human spectrum, dark objects were bathed in light, secrets unearthed, and gateways opened.

  Gateways exactly like this door.

  Vorn pressed the button and the door slid back to reveal—much to his delight—an elevator.

  The Lepers circled Thomas and Nero relentlessly, snarling and snavelling mouths running with saliva, eyes moving independently of each other, yet still sizing up their meals, wet breaths, choking, gagging on the urge. The Phagun males would sustain them for a long while.

  They waited for their leader’s next move, for only he could make the first kill. One of the Phagus they’d smelled before, the fidgeting, obscene one, but the other, his scent was new. His skin carried the hides of many humans, yet there was a layer beneath which made their mouths water at the thought of tasting it.

  The leader leapt onto a rock and slammed his bony wrist upon it—the signal to attack.

  Let the feeding begin.

  Thomas braced himself as the mutated Lepers came for them. The wheel of fate had turned, for the first time he was the prey and not the predator. The irony terrified him.

  This would be a fight to the death and if he was to die here, he would take as many of the Lepers with him. He arched his back and bared his chest, muscles rippling in response. He let out a roar of defiance. Then he felt Nero grab him.

  “Don’t even fucking think abou
t taking them on!” he said. “You can’t let them touch you!”

  Thomas scrambled backwards, confused as the Lepers charged. “Well, what do we do for Christ’s sake?”

  Nero picked up rocks and started throwing them. “This!”

  The rock hurtled through the air, powered by the might of Phagun muscle. The rock collided with a Leper as it slinked over a boulder, hitting it squarely between the eyes. Its skull split with an eruption of blood and brains. The freak fell dead in a heap.

  “That works for me!” Thomas said as he bent and grabbed as many rocks as his hands could hold and catapulted them at the horde. Many missed, but others found their mark, tearing off decrepit arms, gouging out eyes and punching holes in chests. Soon, the horde was literally cut in half.

  “Take that you fuckers!” Nero said, tossing rocks like a madman.

  Despite their best aim, the horde’s leader was incredibly elusive, darting about in the air, like a dragonfly over water. Thomas and Nero sent an entire volley of rocks its way, but the Leper, whose flesh appeared slightly more intact than the others, avoided them all. He was just a few yards from having the Phagus males in his grasp when the ground began to shudder with the force of magnitude ten earthquake.

  Great plumes of grey dust tainted the ebony air and the Phaguns and Lepers turned to watch one of the walls crack open like a thunder egg. A shape, huge and slumbering, fell out of the wall and slid into the dust cloud. The Lepers let out shrieks of fear, only heightening Thomas’ own.

  “What…was that?” he asked Nero.

  His guide stood white-eyed, face gaunt; the rocks slipped from his trembling hands.

  “Oh hell no!!”

  Thomas turned back to the place where the wall had exploded and saw the dark form, jagged, multi-legged. Its breath slapped the air like a train whistle in the dead of night.

  “What is that Nero?” Thomas called.

  “It’s a Skiift!’ he said. “It must have heard us fighting. Fucking move! Rocks aren’t going to do jack shit now!’

  The Skiift—or the shape it had taken—crawled after them. The Lepers made great haste to get out of its way, seeking refuge in the dark. As the Skiift loomed into the half-light Thomas finally beheld its true size and nature. It must have been the size of a city bus, but a vile mix of carapace and scales, a marriage of insect and reptile. It whipped its body across the ground, stirring up the dust, the particles settling on its black exoskeleton. The beetle-snake tossed its great horn and curled its gargantuan tail, the tip rattling inside the cavern like chains.

  “It’s not interested in the Lepers!” Nero said. “It wants us—now move!”

  Nero pulled Thomas away and they ran for their lives, hurdling boulders as they went.

  “Is there no way out?” Thomas gasped.

  “We’ll have to find the door back to the Flaeschama—we’ve got no other choice!”

  But the Skiift had them in its sights. It slammed its horn into the ceiling and great shards of rock and dust rained down, slamming into their bodies. Nero was struck in the head by a chunk of rock and he fell—unconscious or dead Thomas had no time to contemplate. Thomas felt rocks on his back, several ribs cracking in response. He stumbled to his knees as the ragged shower threatened to bury him alive.

  Above him, the Skiift beast reared its head in victory and licked its blood-red mandibles with a forked tongue.

  Gerhard Vorn stood in awe of the beast.

  A grotesque amalgam of nature’s fury, either through magic or evolution, Vorn was uncertain, but it was yet another remarkable revelation.

  He never expected the elevator doors to reveal such a spectacle, and when he felt the earth move on the journey down, he feared he was finally being dragged to Hell.

  He was amazed at the numbers of beings lurking in the dark beneath the city: creatures with toxic flesh, others with animalistic tendencies and beasts that he thought were the stuff of myth and legend—until now.

  Vorn kept to the relative safety of the elevator and watched as the beetle-snake beast morphed and shrunk before his eyes, dropping down to a tenth of its size in just a few of his thundering heartbeats. Soon the creature resembled something considerably more humanoid, but with skin flaring red in the darkness. He watched it bend down and scoop up one of the animal men it had attacked and in a flash of dazzling light, the beast and its prey were gone.

  Yet, were there not two victims?

  Vorn waited a few moments until he was certain the beast wouldn’t return and ventured out into the battlefield. He walked to the spot where the beast had last stood and searched the ground. He saw footprints, narrow and three-toed and blood, dark and gelatinous. His eyes followed the drops to a pile of rocks, and he gasped.

  Under the pile rested the still breathing body of a Homo Anthropophagian—the one he’d been tracking all along.

  Vorn smiled and cackled; the noise echoing inside the cavern.

  “Oh, Niles will be pleased,” he said.

  10

  Thomas was floating on air.

  In between the blackouts, he glimpsed the catacombs of the sewer, then when he briefly emerged from his stupor sometime later, felt the early morning sun and heard the sounds of the human city. He heard car horns, voices, but they were distant, as if beneath him. Again unconsciousness claimed him, but his senses continued to pulse. He smelled wet soil, dew-soaked grass and the musky scent of pine cones.

  There was a sense of time blurring, like he was on an out-of-control Ferris wheel, spinning and falling, spinning and falling.

  When he could open his eyes (all he could manage were slits) he was amazed to see a thick curtain of trees, their branches seemingly reaching out to him. As he tried to fathom this impossibility, something red seeped into his vision and, for a moment, he thought his eyes were bleeding.

  His eyes came open in fright when he realized it wasn’t blood, but rather the bright red face of a ghastly figure grimacing down at him.

  Malik found his father weeping softly in the Sederunt.

  The firelight gave the King an endearing quality, a shade that suited his regal status, but to Malik the light of the flame was a glimpse of Hell—a concept he thought was more fitting to someone of father’s reputation.

  Malik stepped into the court, keen not to let the light claim him too. Gavenko saw his son and quickly wiped the tears from his eyes.

  “Son,” Gavenko said. “What brings you here?”

  “I heard about what occurred with the one named Thomas,” Malik said. “You should have called me to assist you.”

  “I had it hand—Thomas has been banished.”

  “Another outcast?” Malik said. “Surely we don’t need any more of those?”

  Gavenko turned frowning, his mouth a thin line. “Why do you continue to question my decisions?”

  Malik paced the court, his eyes on the fire. “I’m simply concerned for your well-being, father. The very mention of Calea must have come as a shock to you after all this time.”

  Malik watched his father as he studied the flickering flames, the sparks dancing in the air. He wished his father would speak his mind. All he wanted to do was help him.

  He could sense his father’s anxiety, but he had to push on. “There was an attack outside the city walls,” he said, drawing the King’s gaze from the furnace.

  “What?”

  “A Skiift attacked a band of Lepers. Scouts found three Leper bodies and traces of Phagus blood: two males—Nero and the intruder.

  Gavenko rose from the chair. “What happened to them?” he said with genuine concern.

  Malik shrugged. “There were no bodies, apart from the Lepers. One can only presume the Skiift devoured the two outcasts.”

  Gavenko sighed and pressed his palm to his forehead. The display confused and infuriated Malik.

  “I thought you would have been pleased father?” he said.

  Gavenko shook his head and moved back to his throne, exhausted. “‘I need you to send out a search
party.”

  “Father?”

  “There’s a chance the Skiift simply took them back to its lair. It’s happened before—we know they use them as slaves.”

  “But father, what does it matter, you cast them out?”

  “What I decide to do is not your concern Malik! You are here to follow my command!”

  Scorn played across Malik’s face. “This conversation sounds so familiar.”

  Gavenko pointed at his son. “Do not bring her into this!”

  “Why not?” Malik sneered. He’d had enough of his father’s dismissal of him. “Is that not what this proposed rescue mission is about—this Thomas being the last Flesher to see Calea alive? Oh, that’s right, father, I’m not as stupid as you think! Perhaps you’d do best to banish me as well?”

  Gavenko crossed the floor in an instant and latched onto his son’s throat. Malik felt his father’s fingernails pricking at his skin and the King’s once pristine face split with a violent rage.

  “What if I just have you killed, you impudent little bastard? I will not have any more of my children speak against me! Now do as you are told and find them!”

  Gavenko thrust Malik to the ground. The King’s son touched his throat and found blood on his fingertips. He snarled at the sight of it.

  “Of course father, I’ll run your little errand.”

  Malik got to his feet and bowed before turning to leave the Sederunt, but he left his father with one final, stinging rebuke:

  “But you may not like what I bring back!”

  Roots twisted like the broken spines of giants, their blood become man, red statues pulsing in the gloom, watching, hating.

  Thomas was wrapped in thick wet moss, its weight slowly crushing air from his lungs. He was buried by it, consumed and immobile at the mercy of the red Fleshers—the beastly Skiift. Yet now they had revealed their true forms, guises he knew could fly apart at any moment.