The Conformity

by John Hornor Jacobs

  I gnawed my lip. Ever since Booth’s death, I couldn’t think of much except finding Vig, dreaming of ways to bring him here, maybe. Keep him safe. For the moment Jack was good here; I needed to go back to my brother. In a weak moment, I’d given in to my urges and taken Vig’s location from Tanzer’s mind, and I didn’t think she’d noticed. But Atlanta was four thousand miles away. Once again, I would need to steal a car.

  As the session ended and the others filed out, Priest looked at Jack and me. “Please, you two, sit back down. I wanted to speak to you. I would like to apologize for all of the hardships you have endured.”

  “Why?” Jack asked. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I’m afraid some of it is. Hiram was my student, and it seems it fell to you two to bear the brunt of some of his—” He searched for the word. “Enthusiasms.”

  “He was an enthusiastic sonofabitch,” I said.

  A small laugh escaped from Jack, and I wondered if Armstead Lucius Priest was well-versed enough in bitterness to hear it in that sound. Priest bobbed his head in understanding, but I wondered.

  “In penance for some of my past sins, I offer to answer any questions you might have, in hopes of getting you to commit fully to our cause.”

  “Why?” It was strange—I kept expecting this man to cock his head, stare at me with dead eyes, Quincrux once more. Getting to know someone is just a set of expectations. His mannerisms, the ease of his smile, the way he held his body, the shadow of unshaven beard on his jaw told me this was not the man he once was.

  “It is my wish that you remain here with us. I need you to be an active part of the planning. You have a special sensitivity to the Conformity. You have the abilities and strengths of Hiram Quincrux, but without the cruelty. I need you … how do they say it these days?” He smiled, sadly. “I need you on board. As if this endeavor were some sort of dinghy.”

  “What I’m concerned about is my brother,” I said, standing and walking nearer to Priest. “I could take a Jeep. I need to get him, bring him here.”

  Priest’s face grew still. He bowed his head, pursed his lips, thinking. “Shreve, this thing, this dark movement toward conformity that the entity possesses—it is my fault it is here.” His voice sounded raw. I realized that, whoever this guy was, the body he wore had been thrown across the testing room and into a bank of plasma screens just a few days prior. He had to be sore all over.

  “I was proud. Overconfident. I was the strongest mind of many generations, and I abandoned my body to fly to unknown planes and far-off etheric heights, only to return to discover myself unseated from my body.” He trembled with real terror. His willingness to show his vulnerability was frightening in and of itself. On the inside, you show vulnerability, you’re meat. “While I was out in my arrogant pursuits, I left the perfect vessel to be filled. The greater the mind, the greater the void when that mind is absent. And the void calls. The void wants to be filled.”

  “So, while you were slipping out, something else was slipping in.”

  He nodded. “You understand me.”

  “What does this have to do with my brother?”

  Priest reached for the computer, opened another video file. The screen filled with light. A backyard, somewhere in America. A familiar backyard, wooden fence, trees showing over the top. I’d seen this one before, when I first came here to the Society of Extranaturals and Quincrux stuffed me in a hole in the ground and showed me videos of Vig being beaten. That video was the leash that kept this mongrel dog from jumping the fence and going feral once more.

  “I’m so sorry, Shreve,” Priest said.

  Two boys stood in the yard, looking up into the sky. A shadow fell over them. One turned, a horrified look on his face, mouth opened in a scream of terror. The other thrashed, twisting, as some invisible hand took him in its grip and lifted them both from the ground.

  A walking tower of human flesh appeared above the tree line. My brother and his foster brother rose into the air to join it.

  Jack put his hand on my shoulder. I hadn’t even known he was standing by me.

  “So, Shreve,” Priest said, very distinctly. “I need you to be present, here. To commit to us, without reservation.”

  I thought I knew desolation. I thought I knew grief. There was nothing for me then. Nothing except saving Vig. My heart throbbed in my chest. My tongue tasted of ashes and ruin.

  It took a while before I could speak again.

  “Answer a question for me,” I said.

  “Anything you wish, Shreve.”

  “When you were a Rider—” I said, wiping the tears from my eyes. I tapped my temple. “When you were riding around in people, you kept telling me to go to Maryland. I don’t get why.”

  Priest’s face stiffened, like someone had just pricked a long pigsticker into his belly.

  “Certain minds are like beacons, Shreve,” he said through bloodless lips. “You have seen them, have you not?”

  I thought of all the people I’ve known, both in real life and in the twilight of the shibboleth. The match flames of minds. Some blazed bright. Some shone dull. But some incandesced beyond all imagining. “Yes.”

  “Of all the humans I’ve ever encountered, the brightest, the most luminescent, the most brilliant consciousness I’ve ever known was Hiram Quincrux.” He raised his index finger. “Save one.”

  “One?”

  He smiled again, but it was forced. The finger lowered and pointed directly at me.

  “What are you saying?”

  “You think Hiram gave you this terrible gift? He did not. He only awakened it.”

  I tried to digest that, but it was all too much. “That doesn’t change anything,” I said. “Why did you tell me to go to Maryland?”

  In the fluorescent light of the Admin conference room, his face—once Quincrux’s loathed visage—looked ashen and wan. “I thought you would draw it out,” he said simply. “If not you, then Quincrux, who pursued you so closely.”

  Another bomb. The guy was just full of them.

  I laughed. It was too funny. For a long while, I couldn’t breathe I was laughing so hard. “I was bait! I knew you were too good to be true. You were going to use me as bait!”

  “We are at war,” Priest spat. He’d lost his composure at last. And there you go. I hadn’t lost it. I could still get under the skin of the best of them. “I thought if I could draw the entity out by presenting it with something as bright and full of life as you, I could reseat myself in my own flesh and then contend with the monster.”

  “Bait,” I said, shaking my head in wonder at it all. “Hey, Jack?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Meet the new boss,” I said. “Same as the old one.”

  “Shreve—” Priest rose, clutching his cane. He took two weak steps toward me.

  “No. It’s okay. I just like to know who I’m dealing with. And now I know.”

  Priest remained silent for a long while, thoughts churning at his features. “So you will stay? You will help me defeat this thing?”

  Not for you, asshole. For my brother.

  three

  The second Conformity soldier bellows with its multitude of mouths, a foghorn ululation that makes my skin prickle. It lumbers up and over the meeting of mountains, framed for an instant in a sky pink with the rising sun, and pounds down the slope, brushing trees away with mighty sweeps of its multi-formed arms.

  It’s coming for us! I send.

  We didn’t plan for two soldiers! Danielle says in my mind, and I get a visual flash she’s projecting of the first Conformity soldier swinging its massive arm in a slow arc, the details of its “skin” coming into focus, hundreds upon thousands of people gripping each other tightly, running with the fluids and excrescence of humankind, straining against one another, mouths open in screams and moans, eyes wide in terror.

  The stench of it assaults me through Danielle.

  Then the sensation is gone.

  Bernard sends, I’m at the manual trigger do
wn by the generator, man-child. Where’s the Director at? Ain’t he supposed to be here by now?

  I ignore that and lift the walkie-talkie Davies gave me before I ascended the tower.

  “Uh, Red and Green Teams, we have a second soldier.” I try to keep the terror from my voice. “And the bastard is right by the water tower. Split up the teams! Red Team, intercept the soldier nearest the tower!”

  “Negative,” the walkie-talkie burps. “Negative, we have orders from the Director to engage the soldier approaching from the south. I repeat, we have orders to engage the soldier approaching from the south.”

  “I could give a shit if you’re following orders! We need help here! Soon!” I race over to the Helmholtz array and begin tugging at it to turn the focal lens thingamabob just like the R&D guys trained us. It squeals in protest.

  Here, Casey sends, let me help. She doesn’t move, but the array squeals louder, trailing the power cables that snake away from it and run down to the generators on the ground, so far below. It’s taking far too long to turn the Helmholtz array. Far, far too long.

  The radio squelches again. Hissing. And then, “This is Director Priest. I repeat, this is Director Priest. En route to water tower with reinforcements. Until that time, Shreve Cannon is in charge. Follow his orders until we’re in situ. I repeat, follow Shreve’s orders until we’re in situ.”

  Hissing.

  “Roger that,” says Solomon, indifferent.

  “Copy,” says Blackwell. That isn’t sitting well with him. The world’s ending, and he’s worried about his dick getting snipped a couple of inches.

  “Red Team,” I yell, pressing down the transmitter. “NOW! Move to intercept!”

  The Conformity soldier slumps forward, a half mile away now, moving faster than you’d think a walking tower of naked screaming people could move. It doesn’t even have feet, just flat bloody truncations that resemble an elephant’s feet, but they get the job done. Each of its steps hits with a boom, and I can feel the percussive impact of the footfalls reverberating like shockwaves down the mountainside, up the metal struts of the water tower. The tower shakes and groans, almost in answer to the soldier’s terrible call.

  My stomach turns, my bowels begin to loosen I’m so scared. The thing grows.

  I inhale the stench of it. The smell, like the noise of its thousands of mouths, is a multilayered thing, reeking of all the terrible fluids of mankind—blood, sweat, tears, shit, semen, pus. My nostrils burn and my eyes water. On the metal structure, I fall to my knees and a thin, sickly stream of yellow bile pours from my mouth.

  Shreve! From Casey. We need you, no time for partying! I feel a massive hand steadying me, gentle but inexorable. I rise and stand. Turn the array to face the soldier!

  The Conformity is almost upon us. We’re looking up into its chest, and I can see with my own eyes the individual screaming faces of the subsumed, the nude torsos and arms straining, each one sheened in goo and grime. It’s a window into Hell. And I’m no praying man.

  And I thought conformity was just a bunch of dicks dressing alike, Tap sends. Mean girls at school.

  Shut up! Danielle sends. There’s a quick image of her whipping forward on currents of air, gun in hand. Then it’s gone.

  The torso fills our field of vision, tremendous and ever-expanding.

  Thousands of people, many thousands coming toward us in a wall of flesh.

  The arm rises.

  I’m raising the walkie-talkie to my mouth to scream again for Red Team to get their asses over here when something streaks into my line of sight like a falling arrow, fast and deadly.

  I got you, man, Jack sends. I get a distinct impression of him extending his hands, fingers splayed wide, and giving a massive burst.

  The Conformity soldier’s arm distends and expands in a widening shockwave of impact. The messy end of it—what we’d think of as a hand but really just a mad jumble of human bodies—shudders and falls away, the poor souls loosed from the hideous gravity that held them in mockery of the human form. Their bodies wheel and pitch overhead, falling.

  Falling.

  The Conformity soldier rears backward, and now I can hear the chatter of gunfire again. All of the people comprising the thing turn their faces, each individual head swiveling on a gimballed neck, and fix their countless gazes upon me. The multitude of mouths open.

  ONE WITH US.

  It’s speaking. Such a heinous sound.

  I feel a tugging in my guts, as if all gravity is gone and I’m falling, weightless. It’s the telekinetic force of the soldier trying to draw me in, to subsume me within its captive population. I fight. I squirm. I flee my body, the shibboleth shimmering and wild within me, and I move into the ether to find some way to stop the monstrous thing.

  In the ether, it appears as an incandescent tower of flame, each individual that makes up its form a burning mote, a human molecule, part of the greater whole. I move around the thing, probing with my shibboleth self, bodiless, a ravenous ghost, desperate.

  It’s a pillar of flame and pure force. It’s incomprehensible, its power—the raw telekinetic power that holds so many humans in thrall, the telepathic power that controls each bit of it in turn. And there …

  There!

  I see a golden filament, beaten thin as ghostly wire, streaking off into the east. It’s the puppet’s string. It’s the connection to the Conformity itself. Coming not from the “head” but from the crotch.

  Figures.

  I flee back to my body.

  WORSHIP US. SERVE US.

  It’s hard to make out the words that the mouths chant. Other half-understood phrases are mixed in with the chthonic sounds, and I catch servire and adorate. My consciousness reels, and I feel like I did when the cacophony of minds at Casimir came crashing down in a collapsing event horizon. Right before they sent me to the nuthouse.

  It’s the sensation of incipient madness. The visage of this horrible thing, this walking monster, tries my sanity, and I feel all the languages of the world burning on my tongue once more like embers.

  Screw that noise, Bernard sends. That Helmholtz array in position, man-child?

  I steady myself. The metal squealing ceases, and the array points like a shotgun barrel right at the torso of the ungodly thing.

  I yell into the walkie and send simultaneously, “Juice it, Bernard! Juice it!”

  Comin’ up, my man! Something begins to hum, and the ether begins to seethe and skitter.

  The Conformity soldier erupts.

  four

  Whatever cohesion holds the thing together loosens at the area where we point the Helmholtz array—it is, after all, a field that negates telekinetic and telepathic powers—and the speed with which the mass of humanity begins to erode is terrifying. It’s an avalanche of shrieking, falling people, plummeting to their deaths.

  I catch a glimpse of one face, so near to me, a woman’s face, skin smeared with reddish-brown, viscous fluid, her hair in a wild clotted mess, eyes wide in absolute terror, mouth open in the shape of a bell. Just a fleeting image burned into my retinas and then gone and others are falling, a demented jumble of whirling bodies and the spray of septic fluid now landing on us in fine droplets.

  The water tower shudders and reverberates like a gong being struck as the bodies land near us with horrifying wet thumps. They slide away down the slope of the water tower surface, leaving bloody streaks.

  Shut it off! Bernard! Shut it off!

  The Conformity soldier teeters, sways.

  “Shut off the juice, Bernard!” I bark into the microphone so that all the teams might hear.

  The ether hiccups and begins boiling once more, then falters and dies.

  The soldier groans and swings an arm out, drawing it back to swipe me, Casey, the Helmholtz array clear of the tower’s summit.

  There’s a chatter of gunfire, and I whip my head around in time to see three red blurs arcing across my field of vision.

  I can’t be bothered with the walkie-tal
kie anymore. Half-divesting myself from my body, I go far enough into the ether to take in all the burning motes of light—the incendiary souls of extranaturals wheeling about the huge column of equally bright Conformity subsumed—and project with my mind, the shibboleth white-hot and burning inside me, Aim for the shoulders! Aim for the feet! Drop the damned thing!

  I’ve got the legs! Jack sends.

  We’ve got your back, someone responds, and suddenly I’m aware of the mental presence of Ember. Red Team is with you. There are crimson blurs in the sky, lancing downward.

  Have I given this telepathy to everyone now, with my shout?

  There’s a hollow thud next to me as Tap lands, holding a massive automatic rifle. His nose streams crimson.

  “Hold off on the fucking volume, would you, Shreve?” He chucks another round into the launcher and sights on the soldier, which now bringing its arm forward. He gives a quick glance at Casey, whose nose also pours blood.

  Tap manhandles the weapon. Thwup! Kachunk. Thwup! The sound of grenades being launched. They make bloody craters in the conglomerated flesh of the soldier and explode with dull chuffs. Three members of the Red Team whiz by, blazingly fast, and I hear more chuffs of launchers, watch the wet, red impacts they make in the morass of walking flesh.

  The soldier’s arm stops its forward movement as the small city swinging toward us on the tower is severed from the main body of the beast. Hundreds of people, freed now from the telekinetic form, go flying, the momentum of their passage hurling them directly at us.

  Thoughts flicker like lightning between us.

  Casey, I’ve got you! Tap moves quicker than you’d think; two long steps and he’s grabbing her around the waist and launching himself into the air.

  No! she sends. Shreve’s on the tower—

  My mind is barraged with images coming from Jack—hands out, pulsing—quick glimpses of Ember, Blackwell, Galine, and the rest of the Red Team flying in formation, launching grenades, chucking rocks at the Conformity soldier’s legs, using glamours and wardings to slow the teeming thing’s approach, great heaving impacts that send groaning shudders through the creature.