She watched a pit of deeper darkness yawn wide beneath him; saw Jack reaching to grab onto the sides of the hole but slipping, slipping, then salvation wrenched away from him. She saw his eyes widen, mouth moving, struggling to form a scream as the edge of the hole leapt upward to meet him, his face twisted into that horrifying awareness that accompanies impending death after horrible agony; and then the ragged edge, joining flesh in a fixed battle for dominance. The bricks and stone shearing away the skin of his handsome face, her loving husband's beautiful face, grinding through bone and shattering the very map upon which his beauty was drawn.
And finally the flutter of his hair as he sank below the edge, leaving a crimson signature on the concrete behind. A sobbing gurgle and nothing more. The ensuing silence was ephemeral; it lasted only long enough for realization to dawn on the bloodied, shocked woman lying on the floor, her fingertips inches away from the hole, that she was next.
The quiet, mere seconds, hurt her already pounding head. She deigned to break it with a scream of anguish that echoed off the still-quivering walls. They breathed a chuckle of dust in response.
"Why? Why is this happening?" she cried, weakening. She dropped into shock, her blood turning to smeared paste in the dirt.
The city answered in the only way it knew how.
Upstairs beneath the kitchen sink, Perry cowered and shook, deafened by the screams of an outraged deity.
The house swallowed itself.
* * *
"Walt, are you seeing this?"
Inside the police cruiser, forced into stopping with the front wheels mounted on the curb, the real wheels garroted by broken glass, Brad Haines stared out the windscreen at the miasma Lake View Estates had become.
Beside him, his partner, Walt Greenwood, nodded silently. "I am, but I'm hoping any minute now you're going to tell me I'm asleep."
Lake View Estates: Stanchion of the wealthy, complete with private pool, was now nothing more than a mass of rubble and bodies. The two policemen had been forced to sit stunned as a buttress the size of an Oldsmobile toppled and crushed to death Senator Mayfield and his wife and daughter. What little water remained in the swimming pool was now crimson and host to innumerable floating corpses. The half-mile long semi-circle of three and four story houses now looked like a war zone, blood and smoke drifting into the breeze to summon flies.
The palaces of the rich were tumbling.
"What do we do?" Haines asked. His face was pale, mouth agape. His gaze was still glued to the apocalyptic scene beyond the windshield.
Greenwood had to struggle to keep his voice calm. "It doesn't look like there's much we can do, but getting our asses out of here sounds like a reasonable course of action at this point, wouldn't you say?"
He moved his hand to the door handle but Haines stopped him. "Wait, what in God's name is that?"
Haines was pointing up at the sky, over to their left where the horizon was reddened by fire and seething. Greenwood looked and his eyes went wide. The blood drained from his face, leaving nothing but the broken capillaries visible on his drinker's nose.
"What the hell?" he gasped. "Is that a fucking octopus, or something?"
Off in the distance, above the fires and toppled citadels of Delaware, enormous white tendrils reached far into the sky; writhing and snapping, forcing the smoke to shift to accommodate their very real presence. Chunks of stone and glass tumbled from one as it erupted to ricochet away as another appeared; each rose up as if greedily sniffing the filthy air.
Greenwood's panicked mind managed to register that there were eight of them but then his partner's fumbling hand on his shoulder, beckoning him to look in the opposite direction, immediately proved him wrong.
From the ruins of Lake View, three more of the creatures sprouted, sending debris flying in all directions, rising into the air and twitching…
"Oh my God, Walt. What are those things?"
Of course Greenwood had no idea, either. He doubted any sane person on the planet did. Up close, the things looked like oddly slimy, bleached redwoods without limbs; they were swaying liquidly to and fro, like something from a snake charmer's darkest nightmare.
"Jesus, Walt. We have to get out of here."
After a quick look in the rearview mirror confirmed his worst fears, Greenwood sighed and barked a nervous laugh. "Sure, but to where? The damn things are popping up all over the place. Where can we go?"
Eyes brimming with panic, Haines spun around and looked out the back window of the cruiser. More monstrously tall shadows were swaying at the end of the street.
"Oh, fuck me."
"Somebody damned sure has."
Greenwood stared at the shattered street in front of them and unclipped his holster. Haines' frenetic flinching ceased for a moment as he watched his partner withdraw his gun.
"What are you doing?"
Greenwood shook his head, eyes watery, and nodded at Haines. "There's no way out, buddy."
As if on cue, the hollow in the road ahead of them, the road that had once led to a beautiful row of houses coughed smoke. The tip of something red-gray and slimy began to wriggle free of the debris. The ground rumbled, the police car squeaked and groaned. Greenwood shoved the barrel of the gun into his mouth.
"Oh Jesus, WALT!"
The bang deafened Haines. He already knew before he looked it was too late for his partner. The steady, dripping wetness on the side of his face told him. The car filled with the smell of copper, cordite and human waste.
Haines kicked open the door. He fell to his knees on the sidewalk. Warm vomit burst from his mouth. "Aw shit, Walt…" he began to cry but knew there was no time to grieve. A tremor pulsed through the ground. It knocked him over. He rolled onto his back, tears streaming from his eyes. Night had fallen without warning, the dim light stolen by an impossibly tall shadow looming over the squad car.
"You can have the fucking city then," Haines mumbled. He spat bile and reached for his own gun.
* * *
The weathered man named Kane grinned, but without mirth. Caressing his chin with a hairy forefinger, he raised an eyebrow at the sound of the gunshot down the street. She's stripping them.
The room he and Isaac occupied was calm, steady and completely untouched by the chaos.
Across from the old man, on the other side of one of the small round tables taken from the stack propped up on the bar, Isaac was concentrating on a scarred pattern he'd engraved on the wood.
The bar was deserted, but for them and the dulcet tones of Frank Sinatra pouring softly from the radio behind the counter. Set 'em up and let's drink to our friends…
"She's just a baby," Kane said. He shook his white head in amazement. Isaac picked up his pocketknife and, sweeping aside a bundle of wood shavings, carved a circle in the center of the intricate pattern. He dug the point of the knife into the shape and twisted it until a respectable hole was made before he answered.
"Yes. She's one of the youngest. This city is an infant. That makes it much easier to get them to listen. The book says that the older ones will often prove more difficult."
Kane nodded. "How soon?"
"By sundown she'll be ready to break free of her moorings."
"What about the survivors? The ones she doesn't eat, I mean?"
Isaac gave him a wry smile. He nodded at the small holes in the center of the carving. "The Magroth Points inspire suicidal ideation. We don't like to use that particular spell, but the damned survivors just migrate to other cities, other children, and infest them like ticks. So that just means more work next time around. And as for me, I'm getting too old for such concerns."
Kane returned his smile. "Then it's my turn."
"Indeed," Isaac said. "I think you've watched long enough. If you remember how long they've slept, and treat them like the cranky children they are, you'll be fine. They were bred to guard this spinning rock until the Old Gods saw fit to return. Our responsibility is to guide them, to ensure the children don't forget their pla
ce in the scheme of things."
Kane nodded. He looked at the garish orange and red light flooding through the mullioned window of the bar. "Seems like an awful waste of life though. You'd imagine there'd be some use for the humans. I mean, considering the sheer number of them."
When Isaac looked up, his eyes had reverted to their natural opaque luster, broken only by a vertical black slit in the middle. He glowered with impatience. Something harsh and inhuman infected Isaac's voice and Kane trembled. "It's thoughts like those that keep you in the position you hold now, Kane. There is no room for such specious considerations when dealing with something of such…immensity. The guise you hold now is that of a human. Imagine being confined to it, stripped of your power and a myriad of extra senses. Does such a primitive existence strike you as being of much use for anything?"
Kane shook his head. "No, of course not. Forgive me."
Isaac returned to the engraving in the wood. He drew a crude 'S' shape in the center of the table and flicked the knife closed. Returning it to his inside pocket, he sighed. "Relax. You'll understand eventually. There is no higher education than the one offered by the Gods." He took a moment to brush the shavings from his trouser legs then stood. "Come. The last of the restraints lies right beneath us. My human voice would seem far too loud and callous, now. I must speak her language if she is to hear me at all. Let us go outside and take in the majesty of her release."
He held out what passed for a hand. Kane took it and they shared a smile as they walked outside and into the hot, suffering rubble.
* * *
It is awake at last.
Its joints are young and underused. For too long it has served as a slave to humanity, crouched into submission while mankind treads a path of disrespect across its holy, asphalt flesh. The release takes longer this time, because the strength has been siphoned from its body; those human tunnels are like gaping wounds; buildings, statues and monuments are needles jabbed into its body.
The path to freedom brings agony, but this kind of pain is sweet. The sensation of their crude structures sliding from its back is blissful as it gathers its first breath, sucks the wind into its mud-choked lungs…and roars.
What is left of humanity is deafened by her bellowing birth. She raises her head to the sky, sees familiar faces. Her parents, brothers and sisters…smiling. And of course, Father of them all.
The Old Gods are pleased, for she is but the first.
About the Authors
Kealan Patrick Burke is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Turtle Boy, The Hides, Vessels, Kin, Midlisters, Master of the Moors, Ravenous Ghosts, The Number 121 to Pennsylvania & Others, Currency of Souls, Seldom Seen in August, and Jack & Jill.
Visit him on the web at: http://www.kealanpatrickburke.com or http://kealanpatrick.wordpress.com.
Harry Shannon has been an actor, a singer, an Emmy-nominated songwriter, a recording artist in Europe, a music publisher, a VP of Carolco Pictures (Terminator 2, Total Recall, Rambo), and worked as a free-lance Music Supervisor on films such as Basic Instinct and Universal Soldier. He holds an MA in Psychology and is currently a counselor in private practice.
He is the author of the 'Night Trilogy' of horror novels: Night of the Beast, Night of the Werewolf, and Night of the Daemon (later rereleased as Daemon)., the crime noir novels Memorial Day, Eye of the Burning Man, One of the Wicked (all featuring amateur sleuth Mick Callahan) and the thriller The Pressure of Darkness.
He also scripted the horror film and novel Dead and Gone for photographer/director Yossi Sasson, and played a bit part as the Sheriff. Lionsgate released the DVD. His collection of short fiction A Host of Shadows was released by Dark Regions Press in May of 2010, as was the novella Pain.
You can reach Harry via his website at www.harryshannon.com
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