“No,” he moaned. “How?”
“Caught my wrist when I touched the one at the camp.” She pulled her sleeve up. The unnatural color extended up her arm. “One scratch,” she murmured. “That’s all it took.”
“Lilli, no! We might be able to treat it.”
“I don’t think so.” After sending a warning shot down the corridor, she unzipped her body armor and yanked the collar of her T-shirt down. It had already reached her collarbone. “Sorry.”
“Sorry?” he choked.
“That’s all you get to see.” She stretched a grin over gritted teeth. “Can’t finish the game. I forfeit, but I’ll have to welch on the bet.”
“Lilli,” he began, reaching for her.
“Don’t touch me.” She backed away. “You can’t touch me.”
“Jordan can—”
“No, she can’t. I know what this is now. I can feel it spreading. Corruption. Uncontrolled growth. That’s how they change so quickly. The bauks are walking cancer.” She shook her head. “I won’t let it happen.”
Another explosion tore through the building, but Crozier didn’t even blink.
“Lilli—.”
“You need to go now.” She turned to Bob. “These enough?” she asked, gesturing at the grenades on her belt.
He nodded with his eyes closed.
“Okay. Get out, and take him with you.”
Crozier felt Bob pull at his arm, but the sensation was remote, delayed.
“Rupert?” She smiled. “It’s been fun. Now go…please.”
Behind them, the bauks resumed their advance. Denying him the chance to argue, Lilli walked straight toward them.
As she closed in, the first of them leapt forward, raising an arm as if to strike. It stopped. Circling her, it sniffed the air. Then it backed away. Lilli walked on without looking back. Then she was gone, lost amongst them.
“We’ve got to go!” Bob hissed, grabbing his arm. “Now!”
They ran. Crozier followed Bob with his gun ready, but had no idea what he would do if attacked. Later on, he would realize he had no recollection of their dash through the building. There were fragments, a few sights and sounds, but he made the journey on autopilot. Filled with grief, his mind had no space available to process anything else.
They emerged into a warzone. The domino effect he’d begun with the demolition charges was still expanding. Each explosion propagated two others. A rattling sound came from an outbuilding as thousands of rounds of ammunition cooked off in the fire. Triggered by another blast, anti-tank missiles chased them from the warehouse. Crozier saw exhaust plumes pass by. The warheads destroyed part of the perimeter fence, but fortunately no creatures were close enough to benefit.
Once clear of the buildings, they began to head for Rajiv’s position.
“What if she doesn’t do it?” Bob panted. “What if she changes…?”
“She’ll do it.”
Deep down, a part of him hoped she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d walk out. Maybe she could be saved.
Crozier didn’t see the explosion. By the time he’d registered the flash of light, the blast had already swept them from their feet. Debris swept over them, smashing into a fence already bowing under the pressure.
When he recovered enough to look back, a mushroom cloud was expanding above the camp. Vast dust plumes enveloped everything below, but logic said there could be nothing left to see.
Even then, it wasn’t over. One by one, outlying arms stores began to detonate. A rocket snaked across the site at head height, slamming into a building behind them. Another, misfiring, raced skywards before failing. Arcing back down, it landed amongst the houses south of the site. Black smoke rose into the air.
“Oh God,” Bob whispered.
Others followed. Obviously damaged, another launched but immediately spun out of control. It looked like a firework until it hit a truck on the highway.
Ignited by the heat, artillery shells whistled into the air. Some fell harmlessly back into the ruined camp. Others followed a ballistic curve, sending a rolling barrage into the neighborhood beyond the fence.
Crozier slumped down and put his head in his hands. It was better not to look.
“Kraken?” Emma said, studying the label. “Well, keeping your sense of humor is half the battle.”
“It’s the strongest thing they’ve got.” The bottle was already half-empty, but Crozier didn’t feel remotely drunk. Resolving to try harder, he filled another glass with rum and turned back to the television.
“It won’t help. Then again, it’s always worth a try.” Sighing, she signaled for another glass. “Watching that definitely won’t,” she said, as the news show resumed speculating about events in Pakistan. Switching to perfect Italian, she asked the bartender to change the channel.
“I didn’t know you could speak Italian.” Crozier filled her glass.
“I was here a long time ago.” Emma took a drink. “Bloody hell,” she wheezed.
“And why are you here now?”
“To find out how long before you start behaving like an adult.”
“Over a thousand people dead—and counting—and you want business as usual?” He forced a laugh.
“Ah. So conscience is the problem.” She sipped her drink. “How many is okay, then, Crozier? One, a hundred, ten thousand—it makes no difference. None. We act to protect the species. The numbers are irrelevant.”
He froze with his glass halfway to his mouth. Although he was used to it, Emma’s dispassionate pragmatism still had shock value.
“And Lilli—is she irrelevant?”
“Irrelevant, no. Replaceable, yes. Like you. Like me. We pick up the pieces and move on.”
“Easy as that?”
“There’s no choice.” She shrugged. “The job will never be finished.”
“You’re assuming I want to move on,” Crozier objected, but he returned his glass to the table untouched.
“Do what you came to do.” She got up. “We’ll talk when you get back.”
“Emma?” Crozier looked up at her. “What do I say?”
“That’s easy. You tell the truth—that Lilli made a difference.”
“And when he asks if she suffered?”
“That’s where you lie.”
After she’d gone, Crozier walked the streets around the Piazza San Marco until his mind was clear. Only when his emotions were safely locked away did he cross the bridge into Dorsoduro. The chaotic house numbers proved difficult to follow, and in the end it was Lilli’s grandfather that guided him home. It might have been family resemblance, or perhaps something more, but Crozier recognized the man sitting in the sunshine at twenty paces.
“Signore Barovier?” He hesitated. “I need to talk to you about your granddaughter.”
Daniel Durrant is a new author writing mainly in the horror and science fiction genres. The author of several short stories, he is currently working on his first full-length novel. He lives on the Norfolk coast in England.
The End of Things in Underthings
T.W. Garland
The surviving patrons of the Lost Guinea gin palace would later recount the rise of the tentacled colossus from the Limehouse docks and its inland path of destruction. The initial reaction of the penny press, reporting from the safety of Fleet Street, was to pour scorn upon the accounts of traumatised patrons as the exaggerated tales of drunken sailors. More reputable daily publications utilised the stories as a driving force for social change against the threat of ingesting seafood from the polluted Thames. Yet stories of the Limehouse leviathan quickly spread panic through the east of London as only a terrified sailor screaming for his life like a mistreated dollymop can. Within minutes of the catastrophe at the Lost Guinea, everyone from Shadwell to Stepney had descended into the mayhem of a mauley lil fleeing from the retributions of her charley bleeder. Crowds at the doors of St. Katherine’s Convent of Mercy created such a frenzy that the hinges which had held against the Black Death collapsed.
For Violet Reincastle, whose long blades were poised and ready, there was no confusion. Her battle had begun before her earliest memory and she had been fighting for her life ever since her mother had thrown her out to make way for a gentleman with unusual tastes and a regular income. Violet had been forced to use whatever means she could to survive the dangerous nights in the East End. Battling a gargantuan beast in the soiled slums of London was just the latest in a long line of apparently futile conflicts where triumph was an illusion and survival a victory. The only difference this time was that Violet knew survival was an impossible objective. Her blades, her armour, her resolve and skill were nothing compared to the ferocity of the gargantuan horror she faced.
Violet had arrived only moments before the beast rose from the Thames. She was a vision of respectability. In the foggy grey darkness of the midnight hour, her high-collared tailored travelling cloak added piety to her appearance. A wretched gaglow would have thanked his lucky stars and taken her for a reforming angel conducting charitable work. Except that night there were no gaglows, lashingtons, late workers or even stray dogs scavenging rotting fish entrails from the day market. An eerie expectation had descended that induced any soul with a modicum of sense to run and hide.
In close proximity to an electric beast a buzzing would ring round Violet’s skull. In close proximity to a tentacled monster a vile smell would crawl up her spine and afflict her with an angry nausea. This was something different. She had not known what was coming, only where it would arise. So she stood, waited, and sorted through the distressing thoughts of remorse and regret that crowded into her mind. Were it not for her albeit brief meeting with the professor, she might have arrived to forestall its creation. Yet she owed him her life. He was her mentor, her benefactor and the man who had saved her from the tentacled creatures only to lose the use of his legs and right arm in the process. The man she had recently risked her life to save from the electric beasts.
She felt it coming and now her vision was obscured by a perilous haze of emotions; she needed to focus, she needed to see clearly and most of all, she needed to be ready.
On the sludge-drenched banks of the Thames at low tide, Violet had the advantage. Elevated by her position on the retaining wall, Violet observed its slow movements up the riprap stairway and judged her best strategy. The large shifting mass of the creature surged in different directions making it difficult to distinguish the monster as a unified entity. Violet was not thinking about her inability to comprehend the beast or its uniqueness. Her hawk-like eyes were scanning for weakness. It was obvious that miring herself in the mud would give the beast an advantage. To attack from a distance and prevent its arrival on land was the rational solution.
Still watching the beast as it pulled itself free of the imprisoning mud and move through the mist rising from the Thames, Violet wished she could be somewhere else. Casting off her cloak and leaving it to fall into the manure and assorted refuse of the dock, Violet unbuttoned the jacket of her broad shouldered stone grey Shaftesbury dress from the waist up to her neck. The dull sheen of her black corset made of toiled leather gave way to the shine of a dozen slim blades slanted across her ribs and two heavy daggers angled down her stomach. Her cast-iron gaze fixed securely upon the beast, Violet plucked blades from her corset and unleashed a torrent of throwing knives at what seemed to be the beast’s head. The beast continued its progress unhampered.
Sliming forward, the beast grew in stature as it pulled itself out of the hideous Thames from which it had been created. Violet shifted her weight onto her back foot, unwilling to relinquish any ground to the monster’s advance and preparing for her next offensive. Violet reached round to the back of her dress and unclasped the large bow embellishing the top of her bustle. Sliding her hands down into the apparently empty space of her dress, Violet gripped the reassuring handles of two gauntlets and expertly withdrew two long broad blades that effortlessly became extensions of her arms. She checked her grip with satisfaction and fixed her posture in preparation.
The first tentacles slid over the retaining wall. Violet waited for her moment, waited for the beast to be as its most precarious, balancing on the wall, neither on the shore nor on the dock. She swung, cutting deep into the slimy appendages before slicing at the top of the rising monster. The blades slashed heavy furrows into the monster’s flesh but failed to halt its progress. Its body rose higher and higher. Violet angled one blade up into the front of the beast and swung the other blade round to its side to exact a pincher movement to crush its internal organs from two directions. The beast registered slight annoyance by swiping at Violet with a tentacle. She staggered back, corrected her posture before speeding towards the beast and using her momentum to thrust her blades deep into the beast’s body. The gelatinous body of the beast jolted slightly and seemed to crackle. Violet was trapped in a moment of uncertainty. Had she injured the beast? Her blades remained securely entrenched as Violet looked for signs of injury. A long tendril twisted unobserved towards her. The tip of the tendril sought out the metal blades remaining in her corset and gently touched her. A jolt exploded through Violet’s body launching her backwards, her blades ripping free of the beast’s unfeeling flesh.
Violet’s training and her armoured corset took the brunt of her impact with a decrepit hawker’s cart. Rising from the splintered wood and decaying rope of the cart, a sulphuric smell burnt the inside of her nose. She had landed only inches away from a barrel of wood tar constantly heated into a viscous state to repair the hull of ships.
Violet paused for a moment to assess her next strategy. The low and close attack had failed and the advantage of the sea wall had been lost. It was time to seek higher ground and launch an aerial attack.
The beast’s movements were predictable and, to Violet’s annoyance, she had not yet attracted its attention. Lumbering onwards, the beast began to carve a path of destruction. Time was the only obstacle keeping this goliath from taking a human life.
Easily manoeuvring round the slow moving beast, Violet took up position on the second floor of a derelict shipbuilding warehouse. Violet waited at the loading door ten yards above the dock for the beast to slime towards her. Growing in stature, its body rose up as it progressed further inland, moving inevitably towards an unassuming populace and inevitable human tragedy.
As the beast approached, a mass of slim stems blossoming from the creature’s apex caught Violet’s attention. Laborious hours with the professor had provided Violet with a rudimentary understanding of anatomy. She had no patience for the professor’s enthusiastic outpourings on the wondrous complexity of the animal kingdom; she merely wanted to know where to attack.
The smooth appearance of the tendrils and absence of defensive spikes and spines that protected the lower regions of the beast reminded Violet of sea anemones. The darting action of the stems evoked memories of a snake’s tongue. Assuming that she had located the beast’s sensory organs, Violet decided attacking the stems was the best way to halt the beast’s progress.
The sluggish movement of the beast brought it close to the building, but not quite close enough. Sparing only the slightest concern for the feelings of her dressmaker, Violet cut away the material of her dress below the knee and tested the joints in her corset. Running the length of the building, using her long blades to create momentum, Violet launched herself onto what she assumed to be the head of the beast.
The force of her leap allowed Violet to sink both blades deep into the blossoming stems. The beast seemed to hold itself still for a moment. Violet watched for the attack of the tendrils, her blades committed deep into the beast, her arms angled down into its body, her hands unwilling to relinquish their grip of her blades. The stems stretched up towards her, moving round her arms and legs, touching her face, not gripping, not attacking, just experiencing her.
Aware she had lost the offensive position, Violet braced herself, unsure from where the inevitable attack would originate. Sensing movement below her, Violet loo
ked down to see the stems retract as her blades were pushed effortlessly up and out of its body causing Violet to fall backwards and tumble down the creature’s side. Violet swung her blades, attempting to dig into its flesh and slow her descent. The layer of slime covering the beast’s body provided little gain and she bounced and tumbled off its barbed and thorny skin, her clothes ripping and tearing as she fell.
Violet rolled off the beast’s body and along the wooden boards of the docks before landing in a pile of fish heads and guts. She quickly readied herself for a secondary attack. There was none. Either it was too stupid to finish her off or it had nothing to fear from her. Violet feared it was the later.
Rising slowly to her feet, Violet’s wounded dignity ached more than any injury. With the single-minded attentions of a soldier Violet checked the state of her armour. Her corset was completely exposed but intact. The remnants of her dress had been torn away and her bustle was gone. By some unknown wonder, the large taffeta bow had remained to uphold her honour. Her arms were bare except for her long black gloves that fed into the gauntlets of her blades. The final shreds of her jacket hung pathetically from her shoulders like a poor alternative for a bolero. Her once black stockings were so streaked with rips she seemed to have the striped legs of a can-can dancer.
Standing on the docks in a dishevelled state of undress, Violet’s thoughts returned to her life on the Radcliffe Highway before a smaller tentacled beast had mutilated her body. Surviving as a tuppenny tart, being forcibly undressed by an uncaring patron. It had not been so different; except now she carried long blades and thrust back.
For the sake of modesty and manoeuvrability, Violet tied the remnants of her jacket around her legs to fashion a short pair of pantaloons.
With her back to the Thames and the beast moving ahead of her, Violet was cut off from the monster’s advance but not from the screams of terror of those unable to avoid its approach. The beast had reached the Lost Guinea gin palace and its residents were as terrified as a fully laden powder monkey facing a naked flame.
Use Enough Gun (Legends of the Monster Hunter Book 3) Page 11