by Jack Conner
Avery played his light over the monstrosity, noting the masses of whitish flesh clinging to the engine compartment where the train had driven into it, and the weird white ichor that spilled on the ground around it.
“Still wet,” he noted. “The thing was alive when she struck it. It must have slithered or crawled across the tracks just as she drove down them.”
“A suicidal bug,” Janx grunted.
“I doubt it,” Layanna said.
“Worry about it later. Let’s get what we came for.”
They swung their lights into the engine compartment. Only twisted metal greeted them. Smoke and flames gushed from the furnace, making it difficult to see. But there was no sign of Sheridan or the Device. The three searched the other compartment to the same lack of results.
“We can use these,” Layanna said, scooping up a pile of maps and handing them to Hildra, who had limped out to inspect things.
“We can’t use anything,” Janx said. “Not unless the way is clear. Can you ... ?”
Layanna frowned. “If I do, I’ll be weaker, and we might need my strength later.”
“We won’t need anything anywhere if we aren’t able to continue up the tracks.”
Agreeing, she exerted her other-self and dragged Sheridan’s flaming wreck off the tracks, piece by piece. With obvious effort, she dragged the great maggot-thing off, too. Avery and Janx picked the tracks clean of the smaller bits that had glommed onto them, glistening and sour-smelling. Avery wiped his hands thoroughly afterward. At last the tracks were clear and Layanna collapsed her other-self, leaving her visibly shaken.
“Are you okay?” Avery asked her.
She placed a hand to her head but nodded. “I’m fine. Let’s just get the Device.”
They stared at the ruins of the ancient city. Dark buildings heaped up like alien fungi in all directions. They stood in the very center of the settlement. Strangely shaped doorways beckoned.
“Viz’ig’ni, must be,” Layanna said. “The intelligent Carathid race. It’s so insectile. Their civilization had many nests in this region.”
“Nests,” repeated Hildra distastefully.
Flames crackled, and somewhere bats fluttered and shrieked. A flail hooted.
“Guess there’s nothing for it,” Janx said. “We have to go in.” To Hildra, he said, “You stay here.”
“Fuck that,” she said, but she made no effort to follow them.
Avery swept his flashlight on the ground and found drops of blood leading away from the engine compartment. They were hard to make out in the darkness, but he had expected them.
“This way,” he said, shining his light in the direction they led.
The three glanced at each other. For the first time in what felt like days, Janx met Avery’s eyes. The big man looked tired.
“Alright, then,” Janx said. “Off we go.” His eyes lingered on Avery’s, and they were hard. “But when we find the bitch, nobody better stop me from killing her.”
Avery refused to drop his gaze. “She has my daughter.”
Janx’s jaws bunched. “Hasn’t looking out for your daughter done enough damage?”
They stared at each other while the flames crackled behind them, neither giving. At last Layanna placed her hands on their shoulders and said, “We have a job to do.”
Reluctantly, they agreed. As one, pistols at the ready, they marched into the city.
* * *
Firelight from the still-burning engine licked at the sinuous walls, ramparts and domes. Great, strangely-shaped towers rose above, merging with the shadows of the cavern ceiling. Just at the edge of Avery’s vision, huge stalactites drooped down, bats swirling about them. The firelight diminished behind them. As the shadows encroached, Avery felt suddenly colder. It seemed like a very long way back to the safety of the train. He swung his flashlight about, starting at every sound, real or imagined.
“You know,” he said, partly to distract himself, “that thing on the tracks ... It was almost certainly a Carathid.”
“Weren’t those extinct ages ago?” Janx said.
“So it was thought. But Layanna told me at Golna that the smugglers had several Carathids penned for use in their execution pits.”
“It’s true,” Layanna said.
“What if the smugglers learned to breed them? To tame them?”
“Interesting theory,” Layanna said. “But there’s another, equally valid theory.”
“What?”
“What if some remnant of the Viz’ig’ni race is still alive?”
“Not only alive,” Avery muttered. “But in residence.”
Layanna blinked. Slowly, she said, “Unless, of course, the Carathid back there was wild.”
“One would think a population of wild Carathids would have been noticed, but yes, perhaps, with the present depth—”
“Would you two shut it!” Janx said. “I’m tryin’ to listen. Think I heard somethin’.”
A shiver of ice coursed up Avery’s spine. “What?”
“Dunno ... Scuttling, maybe.” Janx’s face bunched into a frown. As it did, the flashlight’s up-flinging illumination caused his furrows to appear in sharp relief. His eyes seemed to be dark wells with pools glimmering in their centers.
“Scuttling,” Layanna repeated. She cocked the hammer of her gun back.
Avery did likewise. Together the three stepped forward more cautiously into the ruins of the city. Avery shone his light on the trail of blood, sometimes having to go several yards at a time before finding the next droplet. Sheridan was bleeding, but not at a rate to kill her, at least not swiftly.
The Viz’ig’ni buildings took on strange but orderly shapes, large towers and domes more grown than built. Segmented sections jutted out in radial points like the spokes of a wheel. The buildings were assembled out of what looked like hardened secretions, the older areas gray and dusty, but newer sections overlapped them in startling shades of tan and green. The splotches hadn’t dried neatly but had caused streamers to drip down from the main areas like melted candle wax. The whole place reeked of something undeniably ... buggy.
If the Viz’ig’ni truly did breed Carathids, Avery thought, that was fascinating, but also disturbing on a more immediate level. Assuming the Viz’ig’ni still lived, that some fragment of their race had survived into the present century, as the fresh secretions seemed to indicate, then surely they would not have sacrificed their last captive Carathid to destroy Sheridan’s train. In which case, there might be oth—
A horrid shriek drove him backward. He leapt just as a huge form burst from an alleyway and plowed toward him. His flashlight picked out large, multi-faceted eyes, too many of them, and clicking, gnashing mouthparts. The whole awful, alien face towered over him.
Avery screamed.
Larger than the train, the great maggot-thing surged forward.
Avery fired point-blank into its face. So did Janx and Layanna, even as they stumbled back. It was as if they fired blanks.
The massive beast thundered at them, stalks shaking, mandibles clicking. The vibration of its movement reverberated up Avery’s soles. Weird shrieks and warbles issued from the creature’s maw.
They ran.
Before they had gone ten feet, another maggot erupted out of a side road before them and reared overhead, eclipsing the last remaining firelight, its hundreds of cilia-legs waving. It rose up like a mountain, and when it smashed back to earth the impact nearly flung Avery off his feet.
Janx grabbed him by the collar and jerked him down an alley. Layanna ran ahead. Avery followed, breathless, heart pounding.
A huge grinding noise filled the air. He looked back to see one of the maggots plunging down the alley after them, its insectile reek billowing before it. Strange masonry showered all around as the thing burrowed between the rearing walls, which were too narrow for its tremendous bulk.
Avery stumbled. Ran. Layanna led down one alley, then another. The behemoth vanished from sight for a moment, and Avery
and the others pressed their backs against the wall, panting, hoping that they had eluded it.
The maggot blasted through the wall, showering chunks of secreted masonry, and drove at them like a juggernaut. Rubble rained around them. One piece struck Avery’s shoulder and staggered him as they ran. He kept going. He could feel blood trickle down his back.
When they had put a few corners between them and the creature, they slipped inside a building and crouched in the shadows, gasping for breath.
This time it worked. Moments later, the maggot thundered by, not seeming to notice them. Avery felt a shiver of relief as the noise of the monster receded. There was no sign of the other one. How many were there?
Avery, Layanna and Janx panted in the stillness of the building. All Avery could hear was breathing and the sound of his heart smashing against his ribs. He had to strain to hear one of the maggots, a vague rumbling in the distance.
“I think,” he panted. “I think we lost them.”
“Don’t jinx it,” Janx said.
“What now?” said Layanna.
Avery wiped sweat from his brow. “We need the Device.”
“Yeah,” Janx said. “It’s now or never. No tellin’ where Sheridan’ll be if we wait. But where to go from here?”
Avery frowned. “Let’s assume that if she’s still mobile she’ll see that the tracks have been cleared and make for the train. Now that we know it’s dangerous here I see no other course for her. She won’t attempt to journey upward to reach one of the cities.”
“What then?” Layanna said. “I don’t even remember where the trains are.”
“Me either,” Avery admitted, and Janx rubbed his head thoughtfully.
“This building looks high enough,” Avery mused. “What say we go up, scout out the lay of the land? Maybe we can see the way back to the tracks.”
They doused their flashlights and stumbled down a hall, found a ramp-way and started up. Avery hadn’t gone far when he felt something cold and hard shoved into the small of his back.
“Stop right here,” a voice said in his ear, a voice he knew all too well. Sheridan was pressed up against his back, and her left arm whipped around and locked about his neck, preventing him from escaping. He felt a warm wetness seep into his back from her belly. How badly was she hurt?
Spinning, Janx and Layanna raised their guns, but Avery was Sheridan’s shield. He could feel the sudden tension coming from Janx.
“You,” the whaler snarled. “Lurkin’ in shadows as usual.” The words almost sounded chewed.
“I saw you go in here,” Sheridan said, her voice ragged. “I followed.” Avery could feel her hot breath against him.
“For what purpose?” Layanna said.
“You help me, I help you.”
“Why should you help us?” Avery asked.
“Because I need you, Doctor. The rest can go to hell, but you I need.”
That was probably true. Without medical attention she would likely die, judging from all the blood he’d seen.
“What can you do for us?” Janx said. “Other than hand over that fancy backpack of yours, I mean.”
“How about I don’t shoot you?” She had shifted her aim so that her gun pointed at Layanna now—but it could quickly shift to Janx, Avery had no doubt.
Janx sneered. He squinted down the barrel of his gun, taking sight on Sheridan’s face, a sliver of which was probably just visible over Avery’s shoulder. But just a sliver.
“I could take you out right now,” he said.
“Maybe. But you’d likely have to kill the doctor to get me. I know from your records that you’re no marksman.”
Janx hesitated. His jaw bunched.
Avery felt cold beads of sweat on his brow. Shaking, he said, “Do it, Janx. Don’t worry about me. She has the Device.”
Janx’s gun arm bulged, like a tree limb thickening. His eyes glared. “I should,” he said. “I really should.”
“Do it,” Avery said. “For Hildra.”
Janx hesitated, then sighed and lowered the gun. “Fine. The bitch can come, but only till this place is behind us.” With a glance at Layanna, he said, “That okay with you, darlin’?”
Reluctantly, Layanna lowered her gun, too, if fractionally. “I suppose that’s the way it has to be. We may need her help before this is over.”
Avery could feel Sheridan’s sigh of relief against his ear. She released him, and he stumbled back, then turned to look at her, thumbing his flashlight on. Blood stained her shirt, but more blood trickled from her right leg, and he could see torn flesh through a long rip in the fabric. Her face was pale and besmirched beneath a tangle of disarrayed hair, and it required a visible effort for her to stand. Nevertheless, her gun arm was steady. The Device rested safely on her back, and she stood slightly stooped under its weight.
“Any of you have second thoughts, remember that I can take out the goddess with a pull of my finger.” Sheridan’s gun was the same one she had slain Yaslen with, and it was trained on Layanna.
“Soon as you do, you’re dead, too,” Janx said.
“Understood.” To Avery, she added, “Get that light out of my face.”
He did, and they stood tensely for a moment in the humid darkness.
“Perhaps we’d better—” he started.
Outside, a behemoth maggot shrieked and ground against a building as it passed.
They resumed the way up. Sheridan’s breath hitched with every step, and she favored one leg, but she did not ask them to slow down. They emerged at last onto a rounded dome roof of the tower, which sloped away in rounded tiers like a half-melted bee hive. Other hive-like towers stood all around, and from this height Avery could see they occupied a certain spiraling pattern around what appeared to be the city center, where the towers mounted ever higher before reaching a broad, palatial dome. The home of the queen, if indeed any Viz’ig’ni still lived? Above him, bats chittered against the cavern ceiling.
“There’s the train,” Layanna said, pointing. “I think we can get there by that wide avenue ... there ... It sort of curls around that large structure, see ... and then hooks directly toward the tracks.”
“That’s a lotta walkin’ in the open,” Janx said. “Maybe we should cut through the buildings. Stay unseen.”
“I concur,” said Sheridan.
Avery peered at her skeptically. “Going through the buildings will take us on a roundabout route. It’ll require even more walking. Are you sure you’re up to it?”
“As long as you can fix me up at journey’s end, I’ll be fine.”
“Layanna?” Avery asked.
“I’m agreeable.” Then, looking at Sheridan: “As much as I can be.”
They started for the inner ramp, but before they reached it Janx raised a hand. “Wait. I hear something.”
Avery strained his ears but heard nothing. Relaxing somewhat, Janx started down, leading the way. Next came Layanna, then Avery assisting Sheridan.
“You fall behind, we leave you,” Janx called over his shoulder.
“Duly noted,” Sheridan said.
They rounded the first bend. Avery had time to see Janx stiffen and raise his gun and for Layanna to do likewise. Then he breasted the curve and saw, scuttling toward them very quietly, a tide of giant insects.
* * *
Avery clicked on his flashlight as he raised his gun and disengaged from Sheridan. The light picked out rows and rows of huge bug-things skittering toward him. He had assumed that the Viz’ig’ni would walk erect, as most intelligent beings did, and the size of the tunnels had seemed to corroborate this, but no, they crawled along the ground like any other bug, if higher, boasting long, segmented legs bristling with spines. The creatures were huge, though, and something like tree roaches in appearance, with the suggestion of the horned beetle about them, too. They glistened sickly, their carapaces both hard and yielding at the same time, and they emitted constant chitters and ticks. They flowed along ground and ceiling and wall alike—the
reason for the size of the tunnels—moving toward Avery and the others in an indomitable and utterly alien wave. Avery couldn’t tell if they were intelligent, but their heads did seem disproportionately large compared with other insects.
As soon as they saw Janx and those behind them, they ceased their quiet, orderly procession. As one, they surged forward.
Janx fired a bullet through one’s head. Yellow ichor burst out the other side. When it halted, others simply rolled right over it, barely slowing. They reached Janx and reared up, actually lifting off the ground higher than Janx was tall. Avery saw complicated limbs with alien grasping parts—prehensile, possibly. Mandibles snapped. The blades at the end of their upper two limbs sliced the air, nearly cleaving Janx in two. The whaler gasped and stumbled back, firing.
He and Layanna retreated, both shooting as fast as they could, falling past Avery. Avery fired, too. Sheridan, by contrast, shoved her pistol through a belt and pulled out another one, a conventional weapon by the looks of it. She refused to sacrifice the precious god-killing bullets to slaughter insects. Sensible, if amazingly level-headed.
Avery and the others fired even as they fell back, and the hallway filled with gun smoke. Janx’s revolver clicked on an empty chamber. One of the Viz’ig’ni drew too near, and he smashed it in what passed for its face with the butt of his pistol, cracking a mandible. It shrieked and fell back. Others rolled over it.
Back and back the humans went, at last forced out onto the rooftop. Janx slammed the door (which resembled a sort of shaped carapace) shut, and the horde of insects bashed against it. All four threw their weight against it, trying to keep the door from opening. Thump! Thump! Avery could feel the door shove into his chest, his cheek. One blow nearly knocked him away. Digging in his heels, he shoved harder.
The door bulged out. It dug into Avery’s shoulder, scraping his skin. He grit his teeth and fought. He tried not to think about what the bugs wanted him and the others for.