Just then, there’s an unholy roar, a noise like the earth splitting in two. And it is. The ground trembles beneath us, sending cascades of sand downhill. We look to the bonfire and watch as it’s snuffed out like a candle, the rubble beneath it collapsing and sinking into the sand. Belatedly, I reflect that I should have dug up my remaining rations. Even though surviving the next sixty seconds is the real concern.
Then, the sand around the debris pile sinks, disappearing in a widening cone of destruction. As the disaster area stretches by five yards, twenty, then fifty, there’s a sharp smell of sulfur in the air, and all we can see at our spot on the beach is a writhing sinkhole.
It’s here.
What was a churning crater seconds ago erupts, raining sand on our heads. Despite myself, I shield my eyes with a trembling hand and look up. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lee do the same.
The monster before me is so unnatural, so alien in its appearance that my eyes flicker and rove around the beast as I try to make sense of it. All I can discern at first is a gaping mouth the size of a schooner. The serpentine trunk rising from the sand is large enough to cleave an armored frigate in two. And that’s just the portion of the abyssus I can see. A glow deep within the monster’s belly lights up circular rows of teeth, each the size of a man. I am suddenly grateful that the beast is likely to crush us in a few merciful seconds.
The creature’s long, sinuous trunk twists and flails like a worm pierced by a hook. It screams, a sound like warping metal, and shakes the sand from between its bark-like scales. Its mouth snaps closed for the briefest of moments, and the world goes dark. The abyssus has sucked the light from the full moon.
Its mouth opens again, pointed toward us as if seeking us. The rounded jaws pulse. There are no eyes on its knotted prehistoric head. I have read that many creatures of the deep are sightless, but I am sure it senses us.
I look at Lee just in time to see him point the flare gun inland.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving us a head start,” he says. He fires.
The abyssus shrieks, and even with my hands pressed over my ears, the noise tears a scream from my own throat. Heat washes over me in the furnace blast from the monster’s maw. It chases after the flare, the thrashes and jerks of its trunk aided by paddling appendages tipped with claws.
Lee grips my shoulder. I can’t hear much over the ringing in my ears and the earth-shaking rumble of the frantic creature, but his mouth moves in the long, wide syllables of a shout, and he points us away from the abyssus’s frenzied path. We run.
The abyssus is a faint glow over the hills behind us, and the way ahead is almost completely dark. Lee skids to a halt, and I bowl into him, knocking both of us into a heap of wood and scrap.
I feel something sticky and viscous on my arms, and I’m sure one of us is bleeding until a pungent smell hits my nose. Pitch. Lee’s face appears suddenly in the warm luster of a little flame. I recognize my lighter in his white-knuckled grip. He holds a split plank to the flame and tosses it into the pile.
As the blaze engulfs the mound, I consider pushing Lee into it.
I grab his arm and spin him round to face me. “What the hell are you doing?” I can feel that I’m shouting, but my voice still sounds muffled.
“Keep it chasing the fires!” he yells.
“How do you know it won’t chase us?”
He shrugs and waves his hands. Either he didn’t hear me or that’s his answer. Before I can repeat my question, I notice that our fire is suddenly, and strangely, dying.
Lee pushes me forward. “Run!”
We take off across the hills, in what I can only assume is the direction of the next fire. The ground shakes as the abyssus draws nearer, headed for the fire we’re leaving behind.
The glow appears behind the hills ahead of us and to the right. It’s getting brighter. Our path is set to cross the approaching monster. I push my legs harder.
When the abyssus bursts over the hill, it’s moving faster than I would have thought possible for something meant to live in the depths. Its flailing movements look frenzied and absurd, but its size and strength compensate for the inefficiency.
By the time we’re level with the abyssus it’s one hundred yards away and closing, leaping downhill. It roars again, and my right side tingles with the burst of heat. Lee pushes ahead, throwing himself into a sprint. No matter how hard I run, the tuft of hills ahead of us doesn’t seem to be getting any closer.
I hear and feel the beast’s thumping progress, and I guess that it can’t be more than fifty yards behind me. If it’s going to come after us, it will change its course now.
But the rumbling and roaring gradually recedes as the abyssus thunders toward the fire, and Lee and I race for the hills. When we stop again, I pitch forward. My legs are as limp as boiled cabbage, and my chest is filled with ice.
Looking up, I see another heap of pitch-sodden wood.
“Not another,” I pant.
“No choice.” Lee’s words are punctuated by desperate, heaving breaths. “Got to keep it on the island. One more. Should be enough.” He points to the horizon. “Look.”
The sky is a luminescent, predawn gray, and I understand why I can see the woodpile.
I sigh. “Just a few minutes more. Rest.”
In the lowlands beneath us, the abyssus shrieks.
“No time,” Lee says. He takes my lighter and has the pile burning in seconds. We don’t watch it for long.
“Which way?” I ask as we leave the fire behind us.
“Doesn’t matter now.”
We’ve barely crested the hills when we hear the monster again behind us. In the time that it’s taken us to get out of sight of the newest bonfire, the abyssus has closed half the distance to it. There’s another roar once the creature reaches it, followed by several seconds of churning devastation. Then, the timbre of the ruckus changes. It’s chasing after us.
The sky is just starting to show pinks and purples. It will be a beautiful sunrise if we live to see it.
We race downhill, following the steepest slope we can find. It would probably make sense for us to split up, but neither of us is willing to cede the slope. Our bodies lean forward, at risk of tumbling over, but we’re moving fast.
Or so it seems until I feel the abyssus’s smoky breath on my back.
And just then, the world flattens out. There’s nothing but my legs to push me forward, and with the ground shaking beneath me, I’m one good jolt away from a fall.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see yellow break the horizon. The abyssus roars, and for just a moment, the shaking stops. I slow down enough to look over my shoulder.
“Keep running!” Lee says. Sure enough, the earth begins to move beneath us again, but this time it’s chaotic and arrhythmic.
But it’s strong enough to knock me down. My legs collapse under me, joggled into critical harmony. Lee looks back, briefly, but he keeps running. I would have done the same. I turn around for a final glimpse of the abyssus.
Its body is thrown into an arc against the bronze sky. The bright glow from its open mouth makes it a strangely beautiful sight.
It doesn’t seem to have noticed me. It’s wriggling and thrashing, beating itself against the ground and whiplashing through the air. It reminds me of an unfortunate midshipman I once saw trying to put out a fire on his coat.
As I watch, the blaze within the creature’s mouth grows brighter until it’s too much to look at. I cover my ears, anticipating another deafening roar, but when it comes, it’s choked and cut short.
The abyssus is dying.
Just as I begin to wonder how, the glow within the creature seems to break through its skin. It happens in a handful of places first, perhaps at the joints that are straining with all of its violent jerking, scars that seem to tear and lengthen. Smoldering fissures erupt from them, running between the beast’s scales in a hellish map. Soon the skin starts to rupture like a rotten wineskin, and with a final sque
al, the abyssus is ablaze.
I look at the sky, where the sun has just started to peek over the horizon. It’s as brilliant as ever.
But my attention drifts back to the monster, which is still burning brightly and throwing up thick, black smoke. I cough and stumble away, aware of the blistering feeling on my skin.
There’s a hand on my shoulder, and I look up to find Lee.
“You said you could get us out of here.”
He laughs. “There’s not a ship for miles that can miss this. That hulk is going to burn all day.”
He doesn’t sound worried. But then he never sounded worried about any of this.
“You’ve got a ship on the way,” I say. He doesn’t have to nod. “Which side?”
He shrugs. “Russian.” It might as well have been either.
Burning flesh collapses, exposing a gauntlet of flame and bone, and suddenly I can’t look away. I’m looking at the fires that will burn in every port town from Naples to Aberdeen, and then, once the Ottomans and the rest of Europe figure it out, from Sevastopol to St. Petersburg, for as long as the war continues. I’m hearing the screams that will ring across the rim of a continent.
“I suppose it’s time I gave this back,” Lee says. He pulls the flare gun out of his waistband and offers it to me, handle first.
I take it and stare at the brass barrel, cold and yellow as a coward’s death.
Lee turns his back to me and takes a step toward the burning abyssus. “Makes you wonder what’s inside, doesn’t it? Maybe nothing.”
The flare gun isn’t much larger than my outstretched hand. But it’s heavy.
Lee laughs. “I hope you don’t live near the sea.” He’s still watching the blackened monster.
I raise the gun over my shoulder. I throw my weight into my arm and smash it into Lee’s skull.
Lee falls forward and I hit him again. The thick cracking sound, and the gurgling noise as he tries to turn his head, stops me.
“Monster,” he wheezes.
I hit him again. I don’t stop until he’s as silent and featureless as the thing burning in the dunes.
Copyright © 2014 Carrie Patel
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Carrie Patel is a writer and expatriate Texan living in southern California. Her first novel, The Buried Life, will be published by Angry Robot in July 2014. She also works as a narrative designer for Obsidian Entertainment. You can catch up with her on Twitter at @Carrie_Patel and at www.electronicinkblog.com.
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COVER ART
“After the Giants War,” by David Demaret
David Demaret is an art director/artist from Paris, France. He is a senior graphic artist working in the videogame industry for 20 years, and he does freelance and contract work for illustrations and concept art. View his work online at themoonchild.free.fr.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1076
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Compilation Copyright © 2014 Firkin Press
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