"You killed her!" cried the Incredible Peeling Man, his skin trailing behind him like strands of a mummy's wrappings.
"You must die!" rumbled the Human Warthog, voice emerging from clusters of boils.
The freaks attacked.
They clawed at soldiers. They bit. They lifted stanchions and began clubbing soldiers with the metal poles.
"Stop!" Rowan cried. "We're here to help you!"
But the freaks only shrieked in fury.
"For the glory of Xerka, Queen of Reptiles!" cried Turtle Boy.
"Kill the apes!" gurgled a mass of boils and hair.
These wretched souls kept attacking.
And the soldiers fought back.
Bullets tore through the freaks. The deformed beings cried out in pain as they died. Some begged. Rowan watched with tears in her eyes, not knowing if this was murder or mercy.
A freak came lumbering toward her. A towering beast, its arms and legs formed of snakes. But the creature had a human torso and a human face. Rowan's face.
"Mother!" the creature shrieked. "Die!"
The beast swung its arms. Instead of fists, it had snake heads.
One of the heads bit Rowan's shoulder. She cried out. She raised Lullaby with a shaking hand.
"Don't make me kill you!" she said.
"Die, Mother!" the creature screamed, her voice a storm. "You abandoned us. Die!"
Another arm lashed. Another snake bit Rowan.
She fell to the floor, crying in pain. Her deformed doppelganger rose above, madness in her eyes. The snake-hands rose tall, prepared to strike.
"I'm sorry," Rowan whispered, tears flowing. "I'm so sorry."
She fired Lullaby.
The creature fell, a hole through her heart.
Rowan sat for a moment, tears on her lips, gun hot in her hand.
Is this what you saw in New York, Mairead? Rowan thought. Is this what changed you, broke you?
Bay stood nearby, battling several freaks. The creatures were stabbing at him with horns and claws. He spun in a circle, swinging his rifle like a club, trying to knock them back without killing them. But finally even Bay began to fire too. The rest of the platoon were all firing. Killing.
Scouring, Rowan thought. Cleaning this city.
She saw so many familiar faces among these creatures.
One of the human bats had Mairead's face. Another creature, a strange sphinx with rotting wings, looked like Ramses. A crawling pale worm had a human face. Coral's face.
How did they do this? Rowan thought, forcing herself to think, to replace her terror with logic. How did the basilisks deform us?
"They have our DNA," she whispered.
The battle didn't last long. Probably no longer than ten minutes. And the freaks were all dead, with only four casualties among the soldiers. An easy battle. Yet the hardest battle Rowan had ever fought. And she knew this battle would haunt her more than the great wars in space where millions had died.
Bay took her hand. "That does it. We're getting out of here. Out of this museum. Out of this city." His voice shook. "We'll give the order. We'll nuke the whole damn place from space. We'll—"
"Bay, wait." She looked into his eyes. "We have to keep going."
His eyes widened. "What?"
"They stole our DNA," she whispered. "The basilisks. It's how Xerka became half human. She stole my parents' DNA. They have it here. Somewhere in this museum."
Bay nodded. "All right. A nuke will take care of that, right?"
"No. Because …" Rowan trembled. "She called me mother. She recognized me. Bay, we have to keep going. Deeper."
She stared toward a staircase at the back of the room. It plunged into shadows.
Leaving the carnage behind, Rowan stepped onto the staircase. The others followed. They descended underground.
CHAPTER FOUR
Rowan entered the basement below the Theater of the Absurd. Her soldiers followed, flashlights beaming.
Gone were the velvet ropes, red carpets, polished plaques, and flashy signs. The basement was dingy, all rusty pipes, cobwebs, and dust. Chains hung from the ceiling, swaying. Rusty tools covered the walls: hammers, needles, scalpels, saws. Dry blood coated them. Jars stood on shelves, containing pickled oddities: animal fetuses, hands, shrunken heads.
"This is a lab," Rowan said.
Bay shook his head. "A torture chamber."
Rowan nodded. "Maybe both."
Rowan approached a wooden table. A dusty book lay there, open to a page showing engravings of human and basilisk anatomy. She frowned and looked closer. The book was written in the basilisk language, but there was no mistaking the illustration of DNA strands.
"This is where they built the freaks," Rowan said, raising her eyes to the tools on the wall.
"Why?" said Bay.
She thought back to meeting Xerka aboard her flagship. A basilisk queen with the torso, arms, and head of a woman. Created from Rowan's own parents.
"To understand us," Rowan said softly. "Bay, all of this—the trees in Central Park, the parody adverts in Times Square, the creatures in this museum—these are attempts to understand humans."
Bay scoffed. "What? By mocking us? Deforming us? Killing us?"
Rowan shrugged. "Isn't that what we used to do to ourselves? Back in the old days before we were exiled from Earth? Xerka didn't consume and assimilate my parents to torment me. She did it to understand me. The basilisks didn't profane New York to mock us. They tried to emulate our behavior. To understand what makes us tick. I know it seems ghoulish to us. But remember, they're monstrous beings. Wicked beings. That's the prism through which they view the universe. View us." She sighed. "This isn't a museum. It isn't even a trap. The whole thing, the entire city, is a lab. An experiment basilisks created to understand humanity. Not just our bodies—but our fascinations, our fears, our humor, even our entertainment."
"Entertainment?" Bay bristled. "What the hell is entertaining about this place?"
Rowan raised her eyebrows. "Really, Bay? Thousands of years ago, freak shows were a cornerstone of human entertainment. Millions of humans lined up to see the Elephant Man and other medical oddities. They traveled in circuses. And later on, we watched our freaks on reality TV. We've always enjoyed oddities. To mock them. Even to fear them. Maybe to pity them."
Bay frowned. "So the basilisks lured us here? To see how we'd behave?"
"Maybe," Rowan said. "I'm not sure. But I think this entire city—it's all some giant simulation of humanity. That's why the basilisks maintained New York. They restored the Statue of Liberty, but only knew how to give her a serpentine face. It's the only face they knew well enough to carve. All of New York—it's how the basilisks envisioned a human city. Complete with mock billboards and museums. Bay, no human has lived here for two thousand years. This entire city should be nothing but dust. The basilisks preserved it. Rebuilt it. A giant maze, and we're the lab mice scurrying through it."
Bay looked around him at the bloodied tools. "They couldn't have given us cheese instead of monsters?"
"Nightmares are how we understand ourselves," Rowan said. "It's why they haunt us at night. They expose our weaknesses, test our mettle. Is it any wonder the basilisks would want to run the same tests? Nightmares teach us more than dreams."
"An interesting theory, I admit," Bay said. "The monsters test their victims with nightmares."
"Hypothesis."
"Huh?" Bay raised an eyebrow.
"It's just a hypothesis, Bay. A supposition or proposed explanation made on the basis of limited evidence as a starting point for further investigation. A theory is a coherent group of tested general propositions, commonly regarded as correct, that can be used as principles of explanation and prediction for a class of phenomena."
"Nerd," he said. "A nerd and cheater. I saw you steal my minicom and peek at Wikipedia Galactica."
Rowan allowed herself a weak smile. "That's why you love me."
A whimper came from deeper in the lab, i
nterrupting their conversation.
Rowan stared but could see nothing but shadows. Even her flashlight couldn't penetrate that darkness. She raised her gun and stepped deeper into the blackness. Bay walked with her.
The whimper sounded again. Clearer now.
"Mama. Mama."
Cobwebs hung from the ceiling, filled with dead insects. Rowan couldn't see more than a few meters ahead. She brushed the cobwebs aside, stepping deeper into the basement. Bay and the other soldiers followed, parting the cobwebs with the barrels of their rifles.
"Mama," came the voice from ahead, high and childlike. "Help me. Mama. The snakes hurt me. Mama, please."
Rowan turned toward Bay.
"A hostage," she whispered.
A large bird hung from the cobwebs, feathers matted, wings rotten, perhaps once an owl or hawk. Rowan ducked beneath it. The cobwebs thickened, sticky, grabbing at her. She had to draw her knife and hack at them. Strange, mummified corpses hung from them. Human arms with eyes. Human heads, faces locked in silent screams, with withered bodies no larger than a forearm.
One of the dangling creatures was still alive. It spun toward Rowan on its web. A white, withered thing like wet cloth. Boneless. But it had a red mouth, gummy, smacking, and eyes covered in cataracts like white marbles sinking in paint.
"The owl knows the cave," the creature said, then cackled, swinging on its web.
Another creature spun toward Rowan, hanging from cobwebs. It was like a wet sock, pale and wrinkly, with strands of silvery hair and a face without a skull, a mouth without teeth, a life without a soul.
"Follow the owl," the creature said.
More and more of these pale, withered beings hung through the web, cackling, smacking their lips. They swung toward Rowan, slapping into her with wet thuds, marble eyes spinning, tongues wagging.
"The owl knows. The owl always knows. Follow to the cave. The owl knows the cave."
"Shut up!" Rowan cried, covering her ears. "Shut up, shut up!"
They all swung around her, staring, laughing, slapping against her, gumming her arms. Rowan couldn't see. She stumbled forward blindly. She realized her arms no longer had bones. They hung loosely at her sides. Her body was melting, spineless, her head caving inward, her skull gone, her teeth fallen. The sticky strands caught her. She hung, stretched out, eyes blind and spinning, marbles in white mud.
"The owl knows," she said, dangling in the cobweb. "Follow the owl."
"What?" Bay grabbed her arm. "Rowan?"
She blinked at him. She looked around her. The strange dangling creatures were gone. Nothing but dead insects and mummified cats in the cobwebs. No living beings. No spinning eyes.
"I …" She rubbed her eyes. "Did you see them? The boneless creatures who spoke of owls?"
Bay tilted his head. "Rowan, are you all right?"
She shuddered. She checked her body. Bones were all in place. Teeth were still in her mouth. Crooked as always, alas. But still there.
"Yeah. I …" She shuddered. "Let's hurry. I want to get this over with."
They kept walking between the cobwebs. Rowan could hear the crying from ahead more loudly now. It sounded like a young girl.
"Mama, please," the girl whimpered. "Please help me. Don't let the snakes hurt me."
The soldiers walked closer, flashlights barely piercing the shadows. Ahead, past veils of cobwebs, knelt the figure of a young child. Rowan couldn't see much from here—just a slender frame, scraggly hair, a tattered nightgown.
"Please, Mama, help me." The girl trembled, and the cobwebs trembled with her. "Why do they hurt me?"
"Hello there!" Rowan said, walking forward. "We're soldiers of the Human Defense Force. We're here to help."
The girl's trembling ceased. She froze, silent, her back to Rowan.
"Hello!" Rowan said, taking another step closer.
The girl rose to her feet. She spun around slowly, wispy hair swaying.
Rowan gasped.
The girl was sick. Her face was pale gray, the skin cracked, the eyes covered with cataracts. Her mouth opened, revealing rotting teeth. The girl took a step closer, parting the strands of cobwebs, and Rowan could not stifle a scream.
The girl had a bloated abdomen covered with a suit of clattering bones. Her lower body was the size of a carriage, supporting the smaller human body atop it. Eight limbs stretched out, serrated and white, ending with claws.
The giant spider loomed above Rowan, grinned, and spoke in a mocking voice.
"Help me, Mama. The bad snakes are hurting me!"
Rowan, Bay, and the other soldiers opened fire.
The spider leaped up, dodging the bullets. Belying its size, it moved with incredible speed, vanishing among the webs above.
"Where the hell did it go?" a soldier shouted.
Rowan stared upward, saw a shadow scurry, then disappear.
"I—" she began.
Legs reached down from above, grabbed a soldier, and yanked him up into the shadows. Blood rained.
The soldiers below shouted and fired. Serrated legs scuttled. A spool of webbing shot down, grabbed another soldier, and pulled the woman upward. Her severed limbs fell, thumping against the floor.
"Do you like my museum, little Rowan?" The voice filled the chamber, echoing, demonic. "I prepared it especially for you. I knew you could not resist the lure of my web."
More webs shot down, grabbing more soldiers.
Men screamed and fired machines guns. But they couldn't even see the spider. The webbings seemed to rise forever, vanishing into a dark sky. They couldn't have been too deep underground. The museum should be just above them. But when Rowan looked up past the dangling cobwebs, she saw only darkness, a looming abyss like a starless sky.
And there—a shadow, moving between the strands.
Her.
The great spider.
A goddess.
Grabbing flesh from below. Consuming. Laughing. Always mocking.
Follow the owl.
The blind eyes spun.
The owl knows.
"The owl knows," Rowan whispered.
Follow him to the cave.
"Find the cave," Rowan whispered.
More webs shot downward. More claws grabbed. The spider feasted upon her prey, and the red water rained.
"Shoot her!" Bay was shouting in the distance. "Kill the damn thing!"
But they were lost in a cobweb forest. A place larger than Central Park. A place of infinite darkness. A world of webs, of the huntress and the prey. Here below the Theater of the Absurd—a universe. A dimension. A dream.
"It's a dream," Rowan whispered. "We're trapped in a dream."
A soldier ran up to her. The spider legs pulled him up. The jaws of a little girl devoured the head, crunching, sucking.
The wet, withering things danced around Rowan, swaying, dangling from their webs. Spinning eyes and smacking red mouths, pendulous lips and toothless gums.
Follow him.
"Who are you?" she shouted.
Those who came before you. Those lost. Those devoured. Those whose bones the spider consumed.
Rowan looked at the spider that scurried above, hunting her soldiers. A spider coated with a suit of bones. Human bones. Rowan watched as the spider pulled the bones out from a soldier, placed them on her back, then hung the boneless corpse to dangle in her web.
"Follow the owl," Rowan whispered.
She ran.
She ran back, retracing her steps.
"Rowan!" Bay cried after her. "Rowan, where are you going?"
"Colonel Emery is retreating!" a man called. "Run!"
A few of the men tried to flee. But webs grabbed them, pulled them into the waiting jaws. A strand caught Rowan's wrist, yanking her back. She yelped and sliced the web with her knife. Another web looped around her leg, knocked her down, then dragged her along the floor. Rowan screamed, twisted around, and fired Lullaby, severing the strand. She rose and kept running.
Follow the owl.
She could see it ahead now. The rotting bird dangling in the webs. It swung in the distance, wreathed in mist. The eyes gone. The beak thrusting out from the bundle of webs. The feathers dank. An owl or hawk. It raised its head and stared.
The spider landed before Rowan, grinning. It loomed before her, twice her height, spreading its many limbs. A little girl upon a bloated body. Covered in bones. Within her belly—twisting, kicking, the forms of men.
"I have felt your footsteps from afar," the spider said. "I have long desired to add your bones to my armor."
Rowan fired her gun. Her bullets shattered bones on the spider's back, but could not penetrate the skin beneath. The spider grabbed Rowan with her claws. Webs began to spin, wrapping around Rowan, and she thrashed and fired again, unable to free herself.
An assault rifle sang.
Bullets slammed into the spider, sparking. The girl screamed.
Bay leaped forward, shouting and firing, knocking the spider back with a hailstorm of bullets. He lashed at the webs with his knife, freeing Rowan.
The spider bellowed. The girl's eyes turned black. Her jaw unhinged, dropping down to her navel, revealing a gullet spiky with teeth. The creature lunged toward them, claws lashing.
Bay pulled his trigger, but his gun clicked, out of bullets. He cursed and swung the rifle, hitting the spider, barely fazing it.
"Run, Rowan!" Bay shouted. "I'll hold her off. Run!"
Rowan pulled webs off her legs and ran.
But she was not running to safety. Not like Bay thought.
She reached the mummified owl. Behind her, Bay and the other soldiers were shouting, still firing their guns, fighting the beast. Rowan stood several meters away. Staring at the dangling bird.
"Find the cave," it told her.
Behind her, they were screaming. Dying.
Rowan examined the bird, seeking clues. She rummaged through the rotting feathers, felt the emaciated carcass within, the bones gone. The boneless beings in the web had told her to follow the owl. Yet how could she follow a dangling, mummified corpse?
She tried to free the bird from the webs. The sticky strands tightened, and a chime sounded above.
The Legacy of Earth (Children of Earthrise Book 6) Page 5