The more you know. Cue the rainbow star.
In Crazy’s dimension, he narrowly averted a full scale war with the Dread by becoming part Dread himself. Now he can move between frequencies, existing in the MirrorWorld, or our world or both simultaneously. He can also make friends with the Dread in our reality. So yeah, kind of a good guy to have around, even if he scares the partly digested Nick’s Roast Beef I had for lunch from my large intestine.
“Were you successful?” Cowboy asks. The man is perpetually on task and sometimes makes me feel like a distracted cat, swatting at anything interesting that happens past.
Crazy pulls up a chair, sits down beside me and takes the plate of fried pickle chips I ordered. He tosses one in his mouth, chews and then says, “On my Earth, the Matriarch only bothered to engage me because destruction was mutually assured.” He chews a second pickle chip with military efficiency. “On this Earth, my presence was...unwelcome. It took some convincing.”
“But they’ll help?” Collins asks.
“I’m not sure yet.” A third pickle enters his gullet, and he has yet to savor the taste.
“That’s not very reassuring,” I say, garnering an unconcerned shrug.
“Did you even try?” Maigo asks.
Crazy pauses before the fourth pickle enters his mouth. “I left a trail of green and yellow blood in my wake. I can take you there and show you, if you’d like.”
“You could try,” Maigo says.
“What she’s trying to say,” Joliet says, “is that you don’t seem very concerned.”
The fourth pickle chip is devoured. “That’s because I’m incapable of feeling concerned.” He turns his cool eyes on Joliet. “But I know the stakes, for this Earth, and for my own, where there are people I love. I would do—and have done—horrible things to protect them.”
I clap my hands together. “Well, isn’t this pleasant.”
“I think so,” Crazy says. “For the next thirty seconds, anyway.”
The whole table freezes, watching our mysterious ally eat my fifth pickle chip.
“Uhh, what happens in thirty seconds?” I ask, and I see Cowboy’s hand slowly sliding down to his revolver. I shake my head at him, and to my delight, he follows my lead and pauses.
Crazy takes my Nemesis beer, tips it back and drains it. My sixth and final pickle chip follows it. “These are good.”
“I know.” I’m trying to seem unruffled, but I’m counting down in my head. Ten...nine...eight... “So, what’s going to happen now?”
He swallows, wipes his mouth, and gives me a smile.
Three...two...
“She asked to meet you.”
“What now?”
His eyes shift from human to something like a split-pupiled goat. He looks around at things we can’t see. “She’s here.”
“The Matriarch?”
He puts his hand on my shoulder. My vision stutters like someone has just turned on a strobe light. Reality flickers away, as Collins, Maigo and Cowboy rise to my defense. I can hear them shouting, but it sounds like they’re on the far side of a box fan.
And then they’re gone, along with the table, Moxy, all of Portsmouth and the floor beneath me. The only thing familiar about the purple-sky world I find myself in is gravity, which tugs me downward. I shout as I fall ten feet, back-flopping into waist-deep water. It surges into my mouth and tastes like liquefied skunk ass.
I rise from my MirrorWorld baptism, sputtering and coughing. Then my body convulses, and I barf my short ribs into the inky water. A chuckling pulls my eyes upward. Crazy is seated on the branch of a black tree that’s covered in coils of black vegetation. It looks like Spanish moss, but gelatinous.
“Takes time for the human body to adjust to new frequencies. You’ll feel better soon.” Crazy slides from the branch and lands in the water like a ten foot drop ain’t no thang.
“A little warning next time.”
“Sorry,” he says, in a way that makes me think he means it. “I sometimes forget how easily people feel afraid.”
For some reason, this ruffles my feathers. “I’m tougher than I look.”
“We’ll see,” he says.
“What’s that supposed to—”
“Turn around,” Crazy says, real quiet-like—his voice a warning. “Do it slowly, and try to make a good impression. And by good impression, I mean try not to shit your pants.”
“Listen, Brosef, making jokes is my deal, okay?”
He smiles. It’s fake. “Wasn’t a joke.” He points behind me, and I follow his finger, turning around.
I handle myself well, at first. The monster standing before me is far smaller than Nemesis, but at least a hundred and fifty feet in length. Maybe fifty tall, at the moment. Its face looks like something out of an anime perv’s wet dream. It’s like a star-nose mole, the center of its face showing the tips of wriggling red tendrils.
It’s ugly.
Really ugly.
But I can handle it.
But then its mouth—or whatever this thing has on the front of its gnarly face—splits open. A writhing mass of tubular mini-tendrils spill out. Some stretch in the air, reaching...for me. Others snake through the water. They’re agitated, or excited. Anticipating something.
And then it hits me.
Fear.
Fear, like I’ve never felt in my life.
I stagger back.
Tears fill my eyes and my muscles twitch, as an adrenaline dump narrows my vision and sets my insides quivering.
“Fuck...my...ass,” I say between gasps. On top of all this, I’m embarrassed by my terror, but I manage to stay upright without pissing myself.
So there’s that.
And then I feel a shift inside me. In my head. A presence. At first I think it’s this thing, which I know to be the Matriarch that Crazy told me about. The Dread, like ants, have queens that oversee their hives around the planet. Unlike ants, the queens are all interconnected and cooperative. The Matriarch is the oldest and most influential of the queens. Their leader. But the consciousness sharing my psyche isn’t the Matriarch—it’s Maigo. The tether linking us hasn’t been diluted by the frequency shift.
I’m with you, I hear her say.
The mental voice is distant, but I feel the strength of the girl who shared headspace with Nemesis buffering me. And it’s enough. I stand taller against the wave of fear plowing into me. Then I turn and look at Crazy, who looks genuinely impressed by my ability to not soil myself.
“What...does it want?” I ask.
“A hug,” he says.
Of course it does.
I turn and face the writhing tendrils, and against my better judgment, I take a step forward. I push against the fear with everything Maigo and I have. With each step forward, the fear builds in intensity. Every fiber of my being is telling me to run, screaming like a madman. But I can’t. We need help, and this nasty looking S.O.B. is a good start. The tentacles dangling from an Aeros face, or even the kaiju known as Lovecraft, are downright pleasant compared to the ones on the Matriarch. And if this monster can push the same kind of fear on them...
A tendril tickles my arm.
I flinch back, but I’m caught.
I feel a quick tug forward, and then hundreds of thin tentacles wrap, slither and embrace my body and face. The warm, fleshy cocoon muffles my screams.
3
My life flashes before my eyes, but I don’t think I’m dying. The Matriarch is in my head. I recognize the feeling. And she’s twitching her mental finger on the View-Master of my memory, sifting through my life with the casual indifference of someone socially obligated to flip through a friend’s high school photo album. Then I see Collins, dressed in her sheriff’s uniform, standing at the door of the Watson family cabin, hands on her hips, disapproving look on her face. I see the bear, Truck Betty and the chase through the woods that led Collins and I to the decimated laboratory where Nemesis was reborn.
The playback pauses on Nemesis’s stage on
e face, bursting out of the brush. I relive the chase through the facility that left us hiding in a morgue. I feel the fear, but the memories seem to focus on something else—how I handled the fear, and reacted to it.
It’s assessing my character by how I respond to fear, I think.
The playback speeds forward through the initial confrontations with a growing Nemesis. I relive running down Main Street in Ashton, Maine, headed toward the little girl I saved, and toward Nemesis tearing through a church building. Then I’m in Helicopter Betty, peeling away from Nemesis’s snapping jaws. A sudden shift in view leaves me feeling disoriented, but then I’m leaping from the helicopter, gliding through Boston with a wingsuit.
The memories skip forward again.
I’m standing on the roof of the Clarendon building. Alexander Tilly is on his knees. Nemesis hasn’t noticed us yet.
I scream her name, and then Maigo’s.
There’s a moment when I’m staring at the colossal kaiju straight in the eyes, and I feel it again. The calm. The understanding. They outweighed my fear, and I made the call that focused all of Nemesis’s considerable wrath on a single person. It kept her from laying waste to the world. It was a defining moment for the monster, and for me as a person.
And it’s also the singular moment of interest for the Matriarch mind-fucking me. I see the rest of my life flash past in seconds. Battles with kaiju of various sizes and abilities. The Ferox. Gordon. Endo. But in the end, we return to that moment on the roof when I made a sacrifice, not only of Alexander Tilly, but of my own notions of what is right and wrong. It was a very Spock-like ‘needs of the many’ choice, but it seems to resonate with the Matriarch.
Then something completely unexpected happens.
I’m no longer seeing the memory through my eyes, but through Nemesis’s. I look tiny on the roof, standing over Alexander Tilly. Judge and jury, but not executioner. Surges of color fill my vision. I see myself and Tilly in shades of bright red. Then I hear myself shout. “Maigo!”
Nemesis’s attention zeroes in on me. I feel her rage ready to explode, just seconds away from erasing my life from the world. Then she sees Tilly at my feet, weeping and horrified. And she understands. I delivered Tilly.
As Nemesis focuses back on me, I feel a trace of emotion. Relief. Thanks. Sorrow.
Maigo.
These are her memories.
The Matriarch used my mental tether with Maigo to slip into her thoughts as well.
And that, I think, is a mistake.
When the scene shifts again, I wonder why the Matriarch has taken me back to my childhood. But then I notice the living room décor—a Christmas tree, bright red stockings hanging above the fireplace, and a ceramic Christmas village.
The Matriarch didn’t bring us here. Maigo did.
I’m my childhood self again, dressed in yellow and brown Donkey Kong Jr. pajamas. Maigo stands beside me, ten years old, dressed in Hello Kitty footy pajamas. And the Matriarch...
Oh, God. I try not to laugh.
The fugly creature has been reduced to a larval state, looking more like a star-nose mole than ever, but it’s also pale white and bulbous. It wriggles on the floor, dressed in...
“A tutu?” I ask.
Maigo shrugs. “Its invasion of our thoughts was humiliating. I thought it deserved to know what that felt like. And that we’re not people who can be screwed with that way. If they’re going to help us, it’s not going to be because they’re our benevolent overlords. It’s because we’re in this together, because this isn’t just their planet, it’s ours. All of ours.”
I realize she’s talking to the slug-like Matriarch more than to me, and I wait for a reply. When it comes, I once again try hard not to laugh.
“We have many reasons to distrust humanity.” The voice is high-pitched, like Alvin and the Chipmunks, coming out of a little slit of a mouth at the center of its peeled open face.
I tap Maigo’s arm. “C’mon, I can’t do this...like this.”
She smiles at me. “Fine.”
When I look at the Matriarch again, she’s not only human, she’s a spitting image of Uhura from the original Star Trek series.
“Better?” Maigo asks.
“Kid,” I say, and it sounds weird coming out of my younger self’s mouth, “you know me too well.” Then I say to Uhura, “From what I’ve heard, we have many reasons to distrust the Dread as well. Maybe you haven’t learned this yet, but no human being since Adam and Eve noshed on the forbidden fruit has ever made a good decision based on fear. Maybe you could try pushing a little joy and love into the world instead?”
Uhura Matriarch stares at me, the silence dragging on for twenty uncomfortable seconds.
“You are a confusing human.”
“I try.”
“It appears effortless,” Uhura says.
Maigo barks a laugh. “Nice one.”
“Nice what?” Uhura asks.
“Joke.”
“We do not joke.” Uhura looks at both of us, then at the colorfully festive surroundings. “What about our current predicament strikes either of you as humorous?”
“You mean aside from you in a tutu?” I ask.
She waits for my serious answer.
So I give it to her. “Hope. We have hope that the worst things in life can be overcome, whether that’s a murderous father, a skyscraper-tall kaiju, an alien invasion or El Guapo.”
“Who is...El Guapo.”
“A big, dangerous man,” I say, and I wave the subject away. “The point is, if there is even the slimmest chance that the worst life throws your way can be overcome, why not enjoy the ride? Life can be rough, but I’ve got a wife—” I put my arm around Maigo’s shoulder, pulling her close. “A daughter. Friends. And more adventures than you can shake a tentacle at. Sure, it might all come to an explosive end, but so what? I’m going to die someday. So will you, I think. And eventually, the sun will become a red giant and swallow up the planet. Life shouldn’t be about avoiding death. It should be about enjoying what we can, while we can.”
She stares at me again.
“By the way, you can buy my book, ‘When Life Gives You Lemons,’ at the back of the auditorium.”
I think I see just a hint of a smile on Uhura’s lips, and then the Christmas scene is ripped violently away. I reach for Maigo, but she shrinks to nothing, too, her voice and presence in my head fading.
Black surrounds me.
It’s warm. And moist.
Oh...oh, God.
It feels like I’m being molested by a giant worm orgy.
And then I’m free, expelled from the mass of wriggling flesh and catapulted through the air. The sky above is purple. The MirrorWorld. I realize what’s about to happen and I hold my breath, pinching my nose and clutching my eyes shut. I cannonball into the swampy water, plunging to the bottom. My back strikes the thick layer of mulch. I push away and surface, wiping my face clean before opening my eyes.
The first thing I see is the Matriarch’s back side, trudging away through the purple and black swamp. It’s surrounded by hordes of other creatures, fantastic and strange. Some run through the swamp, some move through the trees and several more types fly through the air, including what looks to be a giant centipede with wings. Flickering yellow light beneath the water makes me take a step back. Something… Several somethings are trailing the Matriarch, moving so smoothly through the water that there isn’t even a ripple to show their passing.
These things—this whole world, is horrifying. And it’s all just a sensory perception away from our reality.
“Hey,” Crazy says, putting his hand on my shoulder.
I reel around, shouting out.
Crazy smiles at me. “I can’t decide if you’re brave or crazier than me.”
“Thanks, I think.”
“What you did back there, walking toward the Matriarch? That was...impressive.”
“Was that what she—it—thought, too?”
He shrugs.
; “Are they going to help us?”
Another shrug. “The Matriarch didn’t tell you?”
“No.”
“Then they haven’t decided yet.”
“That’s not good enough.”
Crazy looks around, like he’s seeing things I’m not. He’s on guard, ready for action. And that’s when I realize he can see things I can’t. That means whatever he’s seeing in the real world is what’s bothering him.
“What is it? What’s happening?”
He looks around, and then up. “I think we’re running out of time.”
I get in his face. “Take me back. Now.”
He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Before we go, know that Woodstock already picked up the others. What you’re going to see happened while you were with her.”
“How long was I...with her?”
“Just ten minutes.”
“What could have happened in ten minutes?”
There’s a flickering of realities, and then we’re back in the real world, standing outside of Moxy...or what’s left of Moxy. The top half of the building is a smoldering ruin. As are several of the other buildings surrounding us.
“What happened?” I ask.
The answer comes in the form of a wet, baritone roar I recognize.
Lovecraft.
4
What should be a quick run to the five-story parking garage at the center of town turns into a five minute slog, as crowds of people rush past, abandoning their homes and vehicles. Crazy and I push against the flow of humanity, and while I try to maneuver my way through, my fearless friend puts his lack of social restraint to good use. He clears a path, first with his elbows and shoulders, and then by firing several shots in the air.
The booming report of a .50 caliber bullet being fired sends scurrying people to the ground, and for a brief moment it silences their screams. I take full advantage of the silence, shouting, “Jon Hudson, FC-P! Clear a path!”
Project Legion (Nemesis Saga Book 5) Page 2