Jack digs into his pocket. Tosses an unused bullet into the falling mist.
He fires once more. Hits the primer of the tumbling cartridge.
It explodes. The gunpowder ignites. Flashes brilliant in the dark. The napalm catches and brings down a torrent of hellfire that engulfs the pale things.
Jack pushes himself through the tight cavern. Forces himself through the fissure entrance. He lands hard on his side. He watches the pale things’ horrid eyes catch and light and burn and burst.
Rocks fall. Big ones. The cave-in eradicates any chance that the Tribe can be followed.
Jack stands. He’s smoking. In the literal sense. His face and clothes are singed. He’s dripping blood. His own and the pale things’.
Caleb and Catarina leave him alone while he finds his balance.
Face black with grime and gore, Jack holsters the Colt. He squints his eyes. Relaxes them. “Well done. One small criticism: Make sure the guy with the gun knows what’s following him.” He arches his eyebrows. “Okay?”
Caleb and Catarina nod.
Caleb starts, “Jack, we’re—”
Jack holds a single, blackened finger to his lips. “Need a minute.” Shhh. He stumbles over to Catarina’s bag. Appropriates a spool of cotton gauze. Antibiotics.
He checks his wrist. Sneers. Lathers it with hydrogen peroxide. Neosporin. He pulls a strip of gauze free from the spool with his teeth. Layers it over his wrist and hand. Interlaces it between his fingers. The fabric turns maroon.
Catarina walks over to him. “I can do that, let me—”
Jack shoots her a look. Leave me alone.
He tosses the soaked bandages. Rewraps his wound.
It would have broken Catarina’s heart if she didn’t already know that when Jack is in pain, he’s best left alone.
But it still hurts.
He totters on shaky knees. Sits on the dusty ground. Relaxes his back against a marbled wall that faces the cavern he barely escaped from. He reaches into his jacket. Frees a cigarette. Lights it. Inhales. Swirls the smoke around in his mouth. He takes his hat off. Runs a hand through his hair.
Catarina says, “Why don’t you come over here? Sit over here.” She points to the dirt at her feet. She gives Jack the same look a mother might give her child after he’s seen with his hand in the cookie jar.
Jack eyes her with disinterest. Reloads the Colt out of habit. He shakes his head. “Just give me a couple to catch my breath.”
Caleb steps forward. “No, man, really, come over here.”
Jack holds up a hand. Eat shit. I’ll go when I’m ready.
The wall moves behind him.
Jack jumps. He dives. Spins. Spits out the cigarette between his lips. He raises the Colt, but it takes effort. His hand trembles from the trauma done to his wrist.
The wall Jack had been leaning against rumbles.
It isn’t a wall at all. It’s the pock-marked skin of some enormous being.
The armored exterior shivers. The titan turns. A living mountain shifting underground. It faces them. Its tendrils peel back. Its legs make the ground quake. Its eyes regard them. Blazes with an intense, ancient intelligence.
Kin, the Hroza growls in their heads.
For once, neither Svoboda feels pain in their minds.
Jack observes the titan for a moment. He sucks air through his teeth. He looks to his broken cigarette on the ground. “You are such a dick, Three.”
Chapter 25: Three
Jack spits blood at Three. Lights a fresh American Spirit. He hooks a thumb in his gun belt. Struts toward the cavern edge and Three’s wall-sized face. “You’re a big one. I had no idea how goddamn ugly you’d be.”
Jack’s right on both counts.
Three isn’t the largest Hroza to have lived, but he’s still huge. The Tribe can see, thanks to his slight bioluminescence, that his body spans the length of the burrow. Fills it. One hundred feet from face to tail and about forty feet from foot to skull.
In terms of being a looker, Three isn’t one. The peculiarities of his evolution have destroyed any chance of attractiveness or cuteness. At least as far as human tastes are concerned. He’s a beast born to do only two things: Think and kill. His race has no use for sexual selection.
Three’s eight load-bearing appendages hint at an arachnid forebear. He also has tentacles that hint at cephalopod ancestors. His chitinous armor and fan-like tail call to crustacean ancestry.
Then there’s his mammalian skull—totally hairless and nearly fleshless. Embedded within it is one gigantic red eye and one gigantic blue eye. Underneath the jaw is a forest of tentacles that give the monster a strange, bearded look.
But it’s the eyes that stand out. Those eyes make Three a freak. Even within his own bloodline. The others of his race have only black eyes.
He’s a freak just like Jack, Caleb, and Catarina.
Caleb recognizes the eyes.
Jack says, “Why can we hear you without, you know, losing our shit?”
Three’s voice is a gravelly, booming baritone. Three Vin Diesels who’ve had their throats scraped raw by steel wool. “I will speak now to maintain clarity. So that you can hear me together. The female allows me to communicate without pain.”
Catarina looks to Jack, insulted. She mouths, The female?
Three ignores her. “The female’s gift, combat prowess notwithstanding, is more that she can act as a relay station. Her mind can filter our words. The Earth-bound of us. Strip them of their negative impact. That is her importance. She is a translator.”
Catarina crosses her arms. “And I can kick ass because why?”
“Because if you could not, then you would not be alive to hear what I have to say.” Three sounds indignant. “Is there much point in asking ‘Why’ at this stage?”
Jack says, “You’ve really found a way to use us in the most degrading ways possible. What would happen if I blew out your eyes with my Colt?”
Three focuses on him. “It would hurt,” the giant admits. “But it would accomplish nothing. And you would have only a blind, thrashing ally. I know that you want me dead, gunslinger. And you may get your wish. But it will not be from your hands that I meet my end.
“Save your hate. We have too much to do. We must stop the mad ones.”
Caleb walks forward. He raises a hand as though he’s still in school. “That’s something that’s been bugging me. Why, exactly, are you on our side?”
The Hroza shifts. The ground quakes.
Jack’s hand hovers over his machine. He glances at Catarina. She’s equally on edge.
One of Three’s tentacles appears over the edge of the cliff. It snakes forward and loops around a shocked Caleb.
Jack and Catarina scramble forward.
In their heads, they hear, I mean the boy no harm, I just—
Jack leaps onto the tentacle that snatched up Caleb. Catarina’s beside him on top of it. She hacks away at Three’s appendage. Gouts of blood burst up in her face.
Caleb squirms.
The tentacle retracts.
Jack jumps again. This time he lunges for the fleshy ridge above Three’s right eye. He grips the rim like an NBA player dunking. Shoves his Colt into Three’s ocular orb. “You’ll never shoot hoops again. Put my brother down.”
Three gets angry. Three screams.
This time, it does hurt the Tribe. Jack and Catarina paw at their heads. They drop their weapons.
Catarina tumbles. Into the darkness below.
One of Three’s tentacles saves her from the fall.
Jack is more resilient. “I won’t forgive you for what you’ve done to us. I’ll never forgive you for the way you used Patrick. Never.” He kicks out, left hand clinging to the thick ridge above Three’s eye. His boot strikes the ancient monster in the iris.
Once the mental assault becomes so intense that blood trickles from his ears, Jack lets go. His hat flutters away. And, as swiftly as Three had rescued Catarina, so too does he save Jack’s fallin
g form.
Three places Jack and Catarina back on the ground near the edge. Like he’s dealing with delicate, stupid kittens. Two new tendrils appear. One holds Catarina’s machete. The other, Jack’s Colt. A third retrieves Jack’s hat.
The tentacles rest the weapons down beside the recovering humans. Hovering near Catarina and Jack as the two regain their senses.
Three says, “Your...tenacity. Tenacity is a good word. Your tenacity is admirable. But. Please refrain from doing that again.” The deep cuts in his tentacle are already clotted. Healing.
Jack growls. Catarina does the same.
They both crawl to pick up their tools.
Jack steals his hat away from the monster.
Catarina says to Jack, “Worth a shot?”
Jack nods. Wraps an arm around his love.
Three brings Caleb up to his eyes. The boy bobs in Three’s tentacle. Floats over the deep, deadly gorge of the titan’s burrow.
Jack and Catarina can’t hear the conversation between child and giant.
They aren’t allowed to.
Chapter 26: Nothing Will Be “All Right” Again
It all takes place in the darkness of their minds.
Three’s voice is inhumanly deep.
To answer your question, If my kin come back, then they will kill me. And then they will kill my Earth-bound brothers. And then they will destroy everything your race and mine has tried to build. They are mad. Insane. They were corrupted by the black.
Caleb’s is strong. Angry.
“Space, you mean. And what they found there.”
Yes. They sought not knowledge but approval.
“I don’t understand. I really don’t fuckin understand. I’ve listened to you. I’ve listened to the Corrupted.”
The great schism brought ruination. Yes, some believed that heading to the strings was what needed to be done. The rest of us thought that we needed to study and better understand what was going on. It is simple, really. We believed that by eating selectively, and adapting to hibernation, we could persist. Keep learning. Or, at least, keep alive what we have learned.
“So here, you and your brothers, you’re scientists of a sort.”
Of a sort. We understood that our time of dominance was coming to an end. We sought to preserve what we had learned. To keep the knowledge safe. We are living libraries, my brothers and I. And we realized, too, that we had to... How would you put it? Foster new talent.
“Humans.”
We knew that you mammals would rise to prominence. But we kept a particular eye on the special ones amongst you. The ones who shared the right genes. We followed your lineages. And then emerged when we thought you would be ready.
“I wasn’t ready. None of us were. And don’t feed me this altruistic bullshit. I know you eat humans. I know you use our corpses like puppets. I saw that in your head when you plugged into me on Halloween.”
Child, the unfortunate reality of the situation is that an entire race of beings was starving to death. I will not apologize for what we have done to stave off extinction. I will say that we never feed on our human kin. You gene carriers. And when possible, we always feed on the dead instead.
“For all your noise about humanity being special, you sure do use us like tools.”
We have done only what was necessary.
“The Corrupted feel the same, I’m sure. Why are we talking like this? Why did you have to cause a goddamn scene and drag me off?”
Because you, more than the other two, have the right mind. Your brother is too reactionary to understand what I am saying without attempting to murder me. The female is similar, though not as psychotic. Her focus is on reducing the grief you might suffer.
You will relay to them what I have told you. If I do it, they will respond violently. Which is to be expected. I pass no judgment. As the female exists to allow us to converse without damaging that meat between your ears, your brother exists to keep you alive. And you in turn exist to stop this planet’s destruction.
“You’re pretty fatalistic, did you know that?”
I do not know what you mean.
“I mean you’re just assigning roles to us. Assuming that we have fates or destinies. Futures we can’t change. Which is horseshit.”
I doubt that you will allow the Corrupted to come back from the dark and lay waste to your planet.
“Oh, we’ll fight those assholes. Make no mistake about that.”
Your language is very...colorful. Fuckmom.
“Comes naturally. And it’s ‘motherfucker,’ not ‘fuckmom.’”
I do not understand.
“I don’t think you need to, Three.”
I can accept that. I would like to end this palaver.
“Few questions, first.”
Ask. Motherfucker.
“Stop cursing. You’re not good at it. Now, you said ‘lineages’ when you were talking about humans. The emergent kin. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it means something like knowledge keepers? Or gene carriers?”
Correct.
“And by lineages you mean what? That there are other people besides me and Jack and Catarina who are gifted?”
Of course. In a manner of speaking. You did not think you were the only ones, did you?
“Will the other emergent help us?”
No. They cannot. They have not awoken yet. Some have not been born. Their time will come. You are the only ones, right now.
“How thrillingly cryptic. Where will the Corrupted come down?”
There are five remaining. They will arrive strategically. Which is to say, They, knowing that you and my direct kin are their biggest threats, will come to where we are. They will land here.
“You’re fuckin with me.”
I have heard that expression twice now, and I am not copulating with you. How would we even accomplish such a task?
“Forget it. How are we going to fight five insane titans like you? Jack and Catarina are good and all but—”
They are landing where the biggest threats are. You scare them. You and your Tribe are unique. Their ferocious desire to eliminate you should provide some sense of accomplishment.
“Sure. I guess if we’ve pissed them off that much, we must be doing something right.”
We will not be fighting alone. My brothers are on their way.
“The ones that had been hibernating? So we get a giant creature rumble melee? Oh joy. I’ll make the popcorn. It’ll be like Godzilla and Mothra. Or that Kaiju stuff where dudes dress up like movie monsters and wrestle. Except you’ll stomp the city flat and millions will die.”
That is why you are here. You can stop the Corrupted.
“I’ll get right on that, man. Soon as you come up with a ‘how.’ One more question, and then you put me down. You said the Corrupted were seeking approval. Approval for what?”
Approval for the destruction of those who don’t share their views. The sublimation of your kind. They want nothing less than to retake the planet. Shape it as they see fit. And in their own mad minds, they’ve found that approval. They believe it to be their calling. Their duty.
And it gets worse.
I am sorry.
* * *
Three places Caleb back on the ground. His tentacle uncurls.
Jack furrows his brow. “You all right, little dude?”
Caleb shakes his head. The full weight of what’s going on—and his conversation with Three—takes its toll. No more jokes.
He reaches his arms out. Digs his face into Jack’s chest.
In the background, just the deep breathing of the Hroza.
Jack holds Caleb. He feels the young boy shake as he’s wracked with sobs so hard that they move him on his feet.
Catarina puts a hand on the back of Caleb’s neck.
Jack looks up to her. “I think I know what’s gonna happen.”
Catarina frowns. She wipes a tear from the older Svoboda’s cheek. Then puts her arms around both of them.
Cale
b mutters. “It’s gonna be bad.”
Three watches all of this. Says nothing.
Caleb pulls away from Jack. Eyes red. Puffy. He walks. Heaves. Cries. He stands at the edge of the ledge. Runs palsied hands through his hair. Glares at Three. “Was Halloween necessary?”
Three shifts. Stays silent for a moment. Then, “Yes. It was.”
“Wait,” Catarina says. “What does that mean?”
Jack fumes. “Yeah, I need a real good fuckin explanation.”
“Halloween was just for us,” Caleb says. “It was a special presentation to get us riled. Trigger us. Start up our gifts. Make sure we’d be good fighters. Isn’t that right, Three?”
Three shifts his weight again. Nervous. “I had to make sure you were prepared. So I...I Infected members of the population around you.”
Catarina says, “And if you hadn’t, none of this would be happening.”
“It would all be happening. And you would die without those gifts. I did not beckon the Corrupted back to Earth. In a way, I have saved you. I have ensured your survival. You should be grateful.”
“How did you do it?”
Three seems reluctant to say. Ashamed, almost. “I made those creatures.”
“How?”
Caleb remembers a nugget of terrifying information from when he and the Hroza plugged into one another. “A parasite.”
Jack says, “Not the big bug bastards.”
“No. A parasite that travels in the bloodstream. A squirming carrier of the genes we all share. Mutates regular people. Makes them monsters. Distorts the flesh and takes over.”
Catarina’s voice is sorrowful. “All those things we killed. They’d been human.”
Caleb nods. “Three infected them. Turned the parasite loose outside to get us going.”
Three says, “You will come to understand that what I did was for the best.”
Jack says, “You better hope we don’t survive whatever’s coming next.” He bites his lip. Hard enough to draw blood. “Because I’m gonna kill your whole fuckin family.”
Chapter 27: Down in a Hole
Catarina flicks a small rock into the darkness. “What do we do now?”
The Tribe sits cross-legged near the cliff edge.
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