Worm

by John Mccrae Wildbow

  Krouse didn’t have two seconds to wonder what was going on before he felt a momentary weightlessness. He felt himself tipping over, stepped back to catch his balance, and found the floor tilting, out of reach of his foot.

  A heartbeat later, the windows were directly overhead, and he was falling. He started to scream, but he managed only a monosyllabic, “Ah!” before he fell onto the side of the dining room table, tumbled to one side and slammed into the chairs, the wind knocked out of him.

  Noelle wasn’t lucky enough to have the dining room beneath her to break her fall. Wood splinters flew as she hit the chair. The table that had held the computers followed her, striking hard and then sliding across the wall to rest against what had been the ceiling.

  The wires connecting the computers to the power bar and the power bar to the wall came free. One computer tower dangled, swung, bounced and fell, a projectile aimed directly for Krouse’s head. He threw himself toward the space under the dining room table, as much as he could with the chairs beneath him. The computer punched a hole in the wall.

  Noelle wasn’t so lucky, nor was she as free to move out of the way. The remainder of the computers and computer monitors came free of the wall and fell on top of her.

  The others had been further back, had fallen against the wall that framed the kitchen, to Krouse’s right. He could only hear their shouts and screams, the heavy thuds of bookcases, books, couch and television falling on top of them.

  Then stillness, with only the sound of a high, steady scream to break the silence.

  The apartment had turned on its side. The windows loomed high above them, curtains hanging straight down. Dim light streamed down into the otherwise dark room.

  “Noelle,” Krouse gasped, staggering to his feet. He climbed over the heap of furniture, tentatively setting foot on the wall to circle around to get to her.

  She was limp, blood streaming from her mouth and nose. She wasn’t the one screaming.

  “Come on,” he muttered, making his way to her and carefully dragging her out of the pile of computers. He checked her pulse: not strong, but there. Her breathing was thin.

  Had to get her help. Just had to get out of there. He looked around. The kitchen door was a solid ten feet above the new ‘floor’, the ledge that the others were on, the wall that had encircled the kitchen, was five or so feet above that. Every surface around him was flat, featureless, with nothing to climb.

  One of the girls on the upper level was muttering, “Oh god, oh god, oh god,” over and over. Marissa or Jess. The girl who wasn’t repeating the words said something he couldn’t make out.

  And that keening, it wasn’t stopping. Didn’t she need to catch a breath? He covered his ears.

  It didn’t help. Must have hit my head.

  “Hey!” He shouted. “We need help!”

  Luke peered over the edge, face pale as he looked down at Krouse.

  “Noelle’s hurt,” Krouse said, a tremor in his voice.

  “Chris is dead,” Luke replied, oddly calm.

  They stared at each other, eyes wide, experiencing mutual shock. Luke seemed to break free of the spell first, disappearing from sight.

  It was a few minutes before Luke returned, throwing down a knotted sheet.

  Carefully, Krouse picked Noelle up and arranged her so she draped over one shoulder. It was awkward; she was nearly too heavy for him to lift. He managed to keep hold of her with one hand and gripped the knotted sheet with the other, wrapping it around his hand and wrist so he couldn’t lose his grip. He could hear Luke giving orders to the others. They began hauling him up.

  Once he was high enough, he set foot on the doorframe by the kitchen, stepped on the half-inch ledge as they lifted him again, then accepted Luke’s hand in getting up to the ledge.

  Jess was caught, her wheelchair trapped beneath the couch and a bookshelf, and she had a thread of blood trailing from the corner of one eye, which was bloodshot.

  Cody was reeling up the knotted sheet, avoiding looking back at Chris while Oliver attached another sheet at the end.

  Krouse glanced at Chris and then looked away. The boy lay against the wall, his head bisected by the top of the bookcase. Already, Krouse could detect the cloying odor of mingled blood, urine and shit. Marissa knelt by her friend’s body, holding his hand, unmoving. She’d stopped chanting in shock.

  “What happened?” Oliver asked, sounding very much like a little boy. Not that he was. They were in the same class, the same age.

  “Could have been an earthquake” Luke suggested, still sounding strangely calm. “We need to find out how to get out of here.”

  “Noelle needs a hospital,” Krouse said.

  “We need a way out of here first.” Luke looked up at the windows, ten feet above their heads. Neither the floor nor the ceiling offered anything to grip. “All the stuff from the bedroom and closet fell into the front hall.”

  “Then we go out the window,” Krouse said, looking up. “We can use the couch and bookcases like ladders.”

  The work was grim, quiet, as they moved the furniture, sharing the burdens between four of them at a time. Nobody looked at Chris, nor did they touch the bookcase that had fallen on him.

  Twice, they had to rearrange and reposition the parts of their improvised ladder as resounding impacts shook the building.

  Krouse was first up, followed by Luke, who carried Noelle. As her boyfriend, it smarted to let someone else carry the burden, but Krouse knew Luke was stronger, more athletic. Going first meant he could help them up and ensure Noelle didn’t fall.

  He was glad the snow had stopped, but there was a strong wind, and it was painfully cold. They hadn’t brought jackets and gloves up with them, and getting clothes from the front closet would be nearly impossible. They’d have to find shelter soon. He perched on the building’s concrete exterior, waiting for the others.

  He stared out at the city around him. Snow had been stirred into clouds, and half a dozen buildings had obviously been knocked down, judging by the remaining wreckage. Luke’s apartment building had toppled. How did it not collapse in on our heads?

  He turned his attention to his girlfriend, reached over, and squeezed her hand. Noelle still hadn’t woken up.

  Cody came up with Jess riding piggyback, her wheelchair abandoned. Oliver and Marissa were the last to ascend.

  “That music,” Marissa complained. “Driving me crazy.”

  “Music?”

  “Like an opera singer singing a high note and never stopping for breath. Only it changes a little if I pay attention to it.”

  The scream.

  “You hear it too?” Krouse asked. He pressed his hands to his ears to warm them.

  “I thought it was a siren,” Oliver said.

  “It’s not,” Krouse replied. “It’s in our heads. Try covering your ears.”

  One by one, they did.

  “What the hell?” Luke asked.

  But Krouse saw Jess’ face, the dawning look of horror.

  “What is it?”

  “I know what it is,” she said. She started looking around, twisting around from her perch on Cody’s back to search the cityscape around them.

  Another earthshaking crash and a flash of light drew their eyes to the same spot.

  Three buildings floated in mid air, a distance away, the lower floors ragged where they had been separated from the ground. One by one, they were hurled through the air like someone might lob a softball. Even with the impact happening half a mile away, the ground shook enough to make them stumble.

  There was a flash of golden light, and the mass of some irregular shape hurtled in their general direction. The impact seemed mild for the size of the object that landed. It was hard to make out through the cloud of snow and debris.

  Then it unfolded, so to speak. No, it isn’t that big. But ‘big’ was a hard thing to define.

  She seemed human, but fifteen or so feet tall, waif-thin, and unclothed. Her hair whipped around her, nearly as long a
s she was tall and platinum-white. The most shocking part of it all was the wings; she had so many, asymmetrical and illogical in their arrangement, each with pristine white feathers. The three largest wings folded around her protectively, far too large in proportion to her body, even with her height. Other wings of varying size fanned out from the joints of others, from the wing tips, and from her spine. Some seemed to be positioned to give the illusion of modesty, angled around her chest and pelvis.

  Each of her wings slowly unfurled as she stretched them out to their limits, and the snow and dust around her was gently pushed away. The tips of the largest three wings raked through the building faces on either side of the four lane road, tearing through concrete and brick and bending the steel girders that supported the structures.

  She rose off the ground and settled on her tiptoes, as if the massive wings were weightless or even buoyant. There were parts of her that were see-through, Krouse realized. Or not quite see through, but porous? Hollow? One hand, one leg, some of her hair, her shoulder, they were made up of feathers, the same alabaster white of her skin, intricately woven and sculpted into a shape that resembled body parts, with enough gaps that he could maybe see the empty darkness beneath.

  She turned to one side, and Krouse could make out her face. Her features were delicate with high cheekbones. Her eyes were gray from corner to corner. And cold. There was nothing he could point to, no particular feature or quality that could help him explain why or how, but seeing her face made it harder to ascribe any kind of human quality to her. If he’d been thinking she had a sense of modesty before, he didn’t now.

  She raised one wing to shield herself as a beam of golden light speared through the clouds. Feathers glowed orange-gold as they were blasted free, disintegrating into tiny sparks and motes of light as the remains drifted away.

  The screaming in his head was louder, Krouse realized. There was a new undercurrent to it, a thread that seemed to point to the sound taking shape, altering subtly in pitch. What had been a single note was now shifting between two.

  “It’s the smurf,” Cody breathed.

  “The Simurgh,” Jess corrected, her voice small. “What is she doing here? Why is she here?”

  “Shut up and run,” Krouse said. “Run.”

  17.02

  They ran, their feet sliding on the side of the building. One misstep meant possibly stepping through a window, slicing a leg open, or falling through. Making things even more hazardous, the concrete of the building’s exterior was slick with moisture and ice. Luke was in the front, carrying Noelle. Twice, Luke lost his footing, but he managed to keep from sliding through a windowpane.

  But it was slowing them down. There were countless reasons why they couldn’t take their time. The upper half of the apartment building had collapsed, and smoke suggested a fire was spreading somewhere. There was the fact that Noelle was bleeding, unconscious and might very well be dying as Luke carried her. And then there was the more immediate threat, the Simurgh. Krouse cast a nervous glance towards the Endbringer, who was rising into the air.

  There was another figure there too, higher in the sky. A man with a muscular physique, golden skin, golden hair and a pristine white bodysuit. Krouse recognized him: Scion. Definitely not someone he’d ever expected to see in person.

  Scion and the Simurgh both moved in the same instant. A beam of golden light turned the road into glowing dust, and the Simurgh evaded by flying to the left, taking cover on the other side of a nearby skyscraper. Scion followed, turning the beam her way. The lance of golden light sheared through the building as if it wasn’t there.

  As the remains of the skyscraper crumbled to the ground, the already-difficult run across the side of Luke’s toppled apartment building became impossible. Krouse let himself fall, kicking out with one leg to brace a foot against the corner of a window. He caught Marissa and stopped her from sliding onto the window and falling through.

  “Fuck!” Luke shouted. “Fuck, fuck me!”

  Third time isn’t a charm for you, Krouse thought. Luke had put his leg through a window and his leg was slit open from the base of his foot to his knee. Krouse belatedly realized his friend was wearing socks. He’d taken off his shoes as he’d stepped inside his apartment. No wonder he has no traction.

  “How-”

  He was interrupted as Scion fired another beam further away, following the Simurgh. It was surprisingly quiet for a weapon that was obliterating three or four hundred feet of road and felling two or three buildings with each two second burst, but the resulting chaos of falling buildings was deafening. Krouse was torn between staring and averting his eyes in fear; he went with the former: he wanted to be paying attention in case Scion happened to turn the beam their way. Not that he’d be able to do much.

  “How bad is it?” Krouse finished, glancing at Luke.

  “I… I’m not sure. It doesn’t hurt that much.”

  “Can you move your foot?” Marissa asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” Krouse said, “Give me Noelle.”

  Luke didn’t argue. Krouse crawled on his hands and feet to get to his friend, helping him up. Then he got help from Luke and Marissa to rise to his feet with Noelle in a piggyback position. Marissa tied the sleeves of Noelle’s sweatshirt together so Krouse could hang the loop around his shoulders. With his hands, he kept her toes from dragging on the ground.

  The fight was getting more distant as Scion continued to fire at the retreating shape of the Simurgh. Krouse could make out her alabaster form, wings spread, as she swooped and darted between buildings to evade Scion’s fire. The cloud of dust and debris that had followed Scion’s attacks in their immediate area blocked his view as they continued their progress across the city.

  We’re safe for the moment.

  He turned his attention to their present circumstances. Luke had no traction, and his leg was hurt, now. Krouse didn’t trust himself to manage with his burden, which meant someone else had to lead the way. Someone that wouldn’t slow them down.

  “Marissa.” She used to dance. She’s the most sure-footed of us. “Take the lead? Check our path is clear?”

  She nodded. Her eyes were wide, her gloved hands gripped the zipper-tag of her sweater’s collar, fidgeted. She’s in shock. Saw her best friend die.

  But she would have to deal. They didn’t have time to mourn, to tend to their wounds or play it safe. They had to escape, before the fight came back this way.

  We still have to get down from here, and we aren’t well dressed. The temperature, last he’d looked, was supposed to be fourteen degrees Fahrenheit, or somewhere in that neighborhood, but it felt colder. If we have to climb-

  Jess shrieked, and Krouse turned his head to see why. Jess was pressing her hands over her mouth, as if to keep herself from making any more noise. He followed her line of sight…

  The Simurgh. She was stepping out of the cloud of dust that Scion’s attack had left. As though she were light as a feather, the Simurgh took one step forward and lifted into the air. She floated down the length of the street one block over, the opposite direction they were traversing the building, her wings folding around her as she landed.

  Judging by her lack of a response, the Simurgh hadn’t heard Jess, nor had she seen them.

  How is she here? He’d seen her disappearing over the horizon, Scion in hot pursuit. Did she teleport?

  The Simurgh stopped and raised one hand. Pieces of machinery began to flow out of a gaping hole in the side of the building nearest where she’d landed, stopping when they reached her immediate vicinity. A massive box that looked like an oversized washing machine, a large engine with blue L.E.D.s lining it, and tendrils of electrical cords with frayed ends still sparking with live current.

  Telekinesis. She’d created a false image of herself out of snow and ice, baiting Scion away. Judging by the sound of Scion’s continued onslaught, she was still controlling it. Controlling it even though there was no way she could see what it was doing b
y eyesight alone.

  The screaming in his head hadn’t let up. If anything, it was worse: too loud to ignore completely, but every time he paid attention to it, it seemed to distort, rising in volume. Jess’ shriek had brought it into the forefront of his mind, and he couldn’t seem to shake it.

  “Go,” Krouse urged Marissa, “Fucking go!”

  She moved twice as fast as Luke had, and Krouse tried to follow her footsteps, matching his foot placements to hers to help avoid the spots where there was ice, cracked concrete or snow layered just finely enough to fill the treads of his boots.

  Marissa slipped, landing hard, but was climbing to her feet a moment later. Krouse chanced a look at the Simurgh. The Endbringer had folded her wings up, forming a protective cocoon around herself, and was relying on telekinesis alone to manipulate the machinery. She was still calling other things to her, bringing desktop computers through the holes the larger machinery had made, tearing them apart and connecting components. Insulation stripped itself away from the wiring, exposing metal that moved to entwine and splice into other wires.

  Where are the heroes? He wondered, as he turned his attention back to the task of getting down from the side of the building.

  No. The better question to ask was where is everyone? The streets were almost empty, only twenty or thirty people running for cover, hurrying away. As far as Krouse could tell, the area was deserted. He felt a chill that wasn’t just the cold weather.

  They reached the far end of the building, the lowest floors that they could access. Concrete and rebar jutted out, ragged, where the Simurgh had torn the building free of the ground.

  “We’re going to have to climb down,” Krouse said.

  “We try that, the concrete’s going to crack and we fall. And we don’t have gloves,” Luke said. “If we have to hold on to cold concrete and rebar, we’re going to get frostbite. Or our hands will go numb.”

  “Or we’ll slip on the snow and ice,” Jess said.

  Krouse leaned forward as much as he was able with Noelle on his back. It was a solid hundred-foot drop to the street below; there were areas that would be easy enough to descend, where rebar offered handholds and even ladders. But other spots… there were areas where the concrete might break away under a person’s weight, other spots where they’d have to move horizontally, hanging by their hands alone. Doing it with another person’s weight on his back? With Noelle?