Vee gripped my arm. “This is it. We kill these, save everyone. If Drews still treats us like things, we’ll enter the wood on our own. After that, we’re free.”
I was still watching the giraffes — massive tanks of flesh that rushed forward on four hideously strong stick-legs. Each bore a neck as long as its body, ending in a lamprey mouth lined with teeth. Their bodies were jet-black — built of the same needles in which Vee and I were baptized.
I bared my teeth in frustration. “Drews is going to start swinging Kaumodaki—”
“Eden. We have to be in agreement on this.”
I flashed her an awkward grin. “Always.” Then I leaped down from the roof and hit the ground running, with her beside me.
Drews shouted after us, “FALL BACK! DO NOT APPROACH!”
A giraffe’s secret weapon is momentum. These were going to smash into the Humvees and send human bodies flying in every direction. We had to get them to turn aside, give Drews an opening to—
One threw back its worm-like head and roared into the sky. Vee and I were unaffected, but behind us, the researchers cried out in agonized nausea and even the hardened soldiers grunted.
“Dominance display! Make yourself as big as possible!” I reminded Vee. Already my arms were elongating, my legs curving. My feet became sharp, stabbing into the ground for stability. My skull— I no longer had a ‘skull’.
Vee’s shoes split apart as her feet warped. She barked in agony — and then she was fine. Those twisted, five-pointed, needle-tipped claws were like her own feet. With each step, she exploded forward, body rippling with power. Her skin turned, a million tiny plates flipping over to reveal glistening back scales.
She was headed for one monster, so I aimed myself at the other. Terror thundered in my ears, but I knew from experience that if I could just continue forward another step— another— another—
My own attack is a blur in my memory; I remember Vee’s better, because I was watching in the corner of my eye. She slammed into the giraffe’s chest at 40 MPH with a body harder than diamond. The force of her tackle crushed the creature’s brain inside its chest. It backed up a step, realized it was dead, and collapsed.
Vee also dropped, writhing in strangled agony. The one-hit kill had come at a steep cost; despite her armor, her shoulder, spine, and ribcage had been hit by the equivalent of a Buick.
Because of this moment spent paralyzed, she blamed herself for everything that came after.
At that moment, the third giraffe was about to pass us, headed for the Humvees. For best results, I knew I should finish off the first one, then attack this last one.
But I saw Vee hit the ground. In the middle of my killing moves, I paused just a moment too long, trying to figure out if she was alright. We stared at each other across the grass. I wonder if she could see me realizing I’d made a mistake.
The first giraffe, though nearly dead, swung a stick-leg at me. By a stroke of evil fate, it pinned me to the grass.
The next minutes were a frenzied nightmare. I wrenched back and forth to free myself. We were awash in sound — explosions, gunfire, the giraffe’s roar, shouting—
—blue—
Veronica stood in the trees, staring down into the dark. A path wound off into the wood. Her feet were already moving down it.
But she needed me, her dream-sister. Only the two of us together would be allowed to walk this way.
She forced herself to stop and turn around. Judging from the much-decreased pain in her shoulder and back, some time had passed. The chaos was dying down outside the trees; gunfire at the Humvees abruptly went quiet. She remembered a blue pulse going off — Drews had used Kaumodaki, far enough away not to hurt us, but hard enough to scramble her mind.
She headed that way, just inside the shadowy treeline, praying I was with them. The terrain rose and fell in low, wooded hills; when she least suspected it, she crested a rise and saw the Humvees.
The scene was devastation. The third giraffe lay dead amid the wreckage of one of the vehicles. Two researchers and a few soldiers were being treated — broken bones and deep cuts, but nothing life-threatening. Most importantly, they weren’t acting like anyone had been infected with the needle parasite.
Drews, a few soldiers, and I were pulling desperately at the Humvee wreckage. With an inhuman bark, I lifted the mess several inches, allowing the soldiers to drag someone free.
Dr. Meer.
And even from a distance, Vee could tell by the way they dragged her across the ground that she was dead. She saw me back away, hands over my mouth, my screams punctuated with sobs.
Vee’s inclination was to emerge from the trees and join us, to offer me some comfort — and to plan our escape together. But a deeper unease filled her, and she recognized the tug of her needles’ killer instincts. She held back, watching from the shadows.
They laid out Dr. Meer’s body in the grass. Drews searched her — for her tools of office, Vee realized, her tablet and phone and notepad and hammer. He looked mildly frustrated; her belt had been broken in the chaos, and some of these items had been lost. That’s when the truth dawned on Vee: Drews had been second-in-command, the Army to Dr. Meer’s CDC. With her gone, he was acting Director.
I was sitting on the ground a few yards away, sobbing uncontrollably into my hands. There was no thought, no experience but pain. And into this void came the needles, tasting the air and hearing my woe and proposing the obvious solution.
Vee saw the way I stiffly sat up and pushed myself to my feet, and her heart flew into her throat. “No. Nonononono.”
Drews had also noticed, and slowly stood. “Go sit in the Humvee. Now.”
I turned and met his eyes, knew instantly that I could not convince him with words of that which I knew in my heart. But I still had to try. “If there’s anybody here who deserves immortal life, it’s her.”
“Eden, I am not going to warn you again.”
The mantle of Oathkeeper fell heavily from my shoulders. I felt free for the first time in my life. “Get out of my way.” My face was wet with tears. “It’s what she would want!”
He drew his sidearm, aimed it at me. “Stand down!”
I launched forward as I had against the needle monsters, with every edge of my body sharpening into a long blade of—
Drews put a bullet through my chest. The gunshot echoed, CRACK, across every surface. I hit the grass and writhed for a moment, then crawled closer, reaching desperately for—
Drews emptied his clip into me, avoiding my head but otherwise obliterating essential organs, until I finally lay still.
Both Vee’s hands were clamped over her mouth to hold in her frustrated, terrified screaming.
“Fan out, find the other one,” Drews ordered loudly. “Tell it this one is hurt and needs its help. Kill it if it resists or even argues.”
“Sir!” Jiminy snapped. “Policy states they’re civilians!”
“Policy just changed. You have your orders.”
Vee’s heart thudded in her chest and her mouth tasted like stomach acid. All she could see were the bodies lying in the grass, clothes and hair nudged by the wind. One of the researchers was changing into a biohazard outfit; another laid out a special black-mesh body bag next to me in the grass.
Vee didn’t want to go alone, and she certainly didn’t want to leave me.
The soldiers were beginning to poke around in her direction.
She asked herself if I would want her to go.
She ran.
Her bare feet flew over rough ground shot through with fossilized roots. Branches tore at her tattered clothes, drew bloody welts across her skin. A hard yank at her elbow, a grasping tendril around her ankle— With a grunt, she wrenched through and onward, not caring how she bled.
Still, she kept to the treeline until she’d put more than enough distance between herself and the soldiers. Sunlight filtered down through leaves and thorns, shimmering across trunk and ground. Her mind wrapped itself in dream-state, se
nding her down pathways into the dark. A million alien eyes watched from the shadows, would report back to their master, the guardian—
With a force of effort, she tore herself from her fugue, exited the trees, and fell to her knees in the grass. There was no sound but the breeze. She’d run about half a mile.
For the next half hour, she withdrew her personality and allowed her needle-instincts to operate her body. The needles, in turn, decided to remain in that spot, resting in the shade and listening for approach. Not in fear or rage or hunger — this was not Veronica, but a placeholder, a meditating predator.
At last, with her body healed and somewhat rested — though her thirst was growing painful — she started walking back, eyes sharp for any movement. The soldiers would not enter the wood if they could help it, and the plains offered no cover — yet at any moment, she expected ambush from all sides.
She couldn’t bear to enter the treeline again. It was not a place to walk alone. Its requirements were sacred, its guardian a force of nature. The needles that burned in her throat, that had entered her blood through a kind but deluded hand, that had sprayed from a dying carnigiraffa, that had infested this alien planet for thousands of years — this wood was the well from which the black ichor had emerged. It was the hole through which this other world had been invaded.
She pictured my body being transported back to the GQZ for ‘containment’. Once my wounds healed, they would no doubt keep me sedated, unable to awaken past a vague semi-consciousness. Vee’s stomach twisted with fear. The empty alien air was suddenly so lonely, the distance so total. She had meant to spend that time thinking about the situation, formulating a plan the way I always did — but her mind was muddled with dread.
She pictured me awakening in bondage, screaming and crying and helpless. She pictured me being lobotomized. She pictured them burying me in desiccant until my needle body self-mummified. She pictured them destroying me using one of the hammers.
She came around a bend in the treeline and spotted the upturned Humvee ahead. The other two were gone. She approached slowly, until she was sure there were no humans waiting for her. My body and that of Dr. Meer were gone. Drews had weighed the cost of leaving Vee behind versus staying out in the open, and found her less threatening than this world and its monsters. Plus, he needed to get me into containment before I regained consciousness.
The smashed vehicle had been left where it lay on its side, half-buried in a pile of black needles — the disintegrated body of the carnigiraffa. Veronica circled it once, ever-cautious. Then she formed her hands into scoops and started digging, hoping to find tools or water or weapons left behind in the rush to evacuate.
By the time she’d uncovered the seats and was nearly ready to push the wreck upright, her wrists and hands tickled with needles. She looked like the victim of an overzealous acupuncturist. To her, it was no different from being covered in dust.
This had been the researchers’ vehicle, so she didn’t find much of use. But on the floor in the back seat, buried in the needles, she found a mace. It was about two feet long, forged of black metal. Its head was smooth, the size of a softball, with barely-noticeable slits all over its surface. There was a heavy-duty switch on the handle.
She’d never held one of the hammers before. They scared her too much. But she knew from demonstrations that the switch on the handle opened wide slits in the head, revealing an orb that glowed with hideous blue light. When used as a mace, the orb could be bounced off solid objects and surfaces, creating a blue pulse that scrambled needle cells within range.
The inscription read ‘#001 MJOLNIR’. Electric dread gripped her, and for a moment, she contemplated throwing the mace into the wood, where no human would ever find it.
But she was also thinking about Drews. He was convinced that we were sent by the needle invaders to weaken Earth’s defenses, and so I would be interrogated about my ‘mission’. By the time she reached me, the torture might have obliterated my mind. She had seen me in such a state once before, and the memory sent a violent chill up her spine. Suddenly, possessing the perfect weapon with which to mercy-destroy me seemed important. She clipped the hammer to her belt.
Over the next few hours, Veronica followed the convoy away from the wood, keeping her distance and retreating whenever they sent up a drone. She saw them attacked one more time — by a dragon, which they quickly killed.
Heliciform, she could almost hear me musing. See how it flies so slowly? Could be elderly, driven from its northern territory. I wonder what their young look like . . .
At mid-afternoon, the convoy reached FOB Barlowe at the foot of the mountain, then immediately evacuated to the nearest portal. As far as Veronica could tell, they didn’t unload their dead at the base, but carried them back to Earth.
She found her own way back. One moment, she stood before a portal out on the plains. The next, she was in the living room of an abandoned house. A lot of little somethings moved in the walls. She got out as fast as she could and found herself in northern Gothic, far from the base set up in the old university. It was dawn.
The abandoned city gave her the creeps, so she found shelter first. In a grocery store, she found shelves still stocked with bottled water, and a little back room with multiple exits. Of course, there was no electricity, so the place stank faintly of old meat left to rot for months.
The area had been cleared of bodies, but the Disaster’s aftermath was everywhere. One grocery shelf had been tipped into another, and they leaned together against a far wall. The third checkout was splashed with a hard, black film.
She worked quietly, staying away from the big front windows. In the break room, she found a backpack full of textbooks and dumped it out, then filled it with bottled water, low-sodium canned soup, and magazines.
The back office had a sofa — and a Ruger in the top desk drawer. She stared down at it for a long moment, then shook her head and pushed the drawer closed again.
She drank the soup cold, straight from the can. Then she gulped down two bottles of water. Her inner clock said it was midnight and she had missed two meals, even though it was mid-afternoon outside.
Closing the blinds, she lay down on the little sofa, staring at the ceiling. Her eyelids were heavy, and yet she couldn’t relax into sleep.
She saw it when she closed her eyes. Pow. A bullet goes through Eden. Yet it was Vee’s body crumpling to the ground, Vee’s mind trapped, dying, captive.
Veronica reminded herself that my brain hadn’t been damaged. I would be fine once I woke up. In fact, it had been hours. I’d be awake by now.
She tossed and turned and faced the wall and closed her eyes.
What if Drews had figured out where she was? What if they were already headed her way? As night fell, she contemplated switching to a different building. But it wasn’t resting in one spot that was dangerous, it was moving around outside, potentially disturbing sharps and drawing attention to herself.
She stared at Mjolnir’s closed metal head and thought about the blue pulse — the big one Drews had used to temporarily clear the city. It had destroyed her body, but her head had still been her original. It fell ten stories and smashed into the alley floor — and the needles embedded in her neck started work on a new body. (Similar story for me, but with human hips.)
After we woke up, we didn’t know our names or how to speak English. We found each other and immediately bonded, staying close if only for wordless, primitive reassurance. We didn’t know we were naked, our skin fever-hot, but we knew we needed water, needed to leave the city. Sometimes she hung from my grip in a daze; other times, she dragged my nerveless body down the road.
Soldiers.
We backed into a corner together, terrified. I curled against her and buried my face in her neck; she wrapped her arms around me and begged the soldiers, in primitive grunts and cries, not to hurt us. There was a sting at my shoulder, making my body limp, my mind as soft as cotton.
We were brought to the facility, wh
ere everything was clean and white and safe. I didn’t know where my companion had been taken. I was under heavy guard. After the tranquilizer wore off, I curled up in the corner underneath my bed and tried to die of dehydration.
Dr. Meer came to me, her eyes kind, her smile reassuring. She babied me until my mind began to recover. She knew my name, somehow. She helped me remember that I was human — rational, cooperative, and possessing the inner strength to go on. She helped me acknowledge my deaths so far, and promised an afterlife of harmony and scientific exploration.
If someone did that for you, brought you back from the atavistic darkness with compassion and hope — if that person lay dead in the grass, her genius brain leaking into her hair — the one person who ever understood you—
The first thing I did with my appleseed eyes — after a mind-shattering forever of building them in between bouts of panic — was search for her body. But it had not been stored anywhere in the facility. I eventually overheard a conversation between soldiers that implied she had been cremated.
In my grief, I run my mental fingers over these memories, tasting them anew and finding them bitter.
Dr. Meer reunited Veronica and I. Drews was brought to the facility. From broken memory, we put together the story of the blue pulse, including my involvement. My best friend didn’t speak to me for weeks. For once, it was me who had fucked up, and it was me being rejected.
I started doing badly again. My self-hatred had returned, and my anxiety had progressed to full-blown audible hallucinations. I would hear a whisper just behind my ear, a soft voice with no rational origin. I would glimpse mad pinprick eyes in the depths of a shadowy room. I awoke fevered and crying from nightmares of thrashing struggle, of my neck being broken, of a fall from a great height.
I dreamed of the man who infected me. He lay on top of me, his body heavy and uncomfortably hot. As I smothered, I remembered that I’d killed him — and then his body disintegrated, burying me in a flood of black needles. Another night, he feasted bare-handed on my entrails, and I knew that if I resisted, he would assault me in worse ways. His eyes, his dark-rimmed demon eyes.
New Night (Gothic Book 2) Page 17