“Vee!” Shua says, rushing to my aid, and if he gets much closer, to his own demise.
“I can handle this!” I shout with a bit more anger than intended. But he stops short, once again respecting my wishes. It’s one of the things I like most about him. In a world ruled by violent men, Shua is a welcome and gentle aberration. He should see another day, even if I don’t.
Lew rushes in, as I get to one knee. I throw a punch at his gut and connect, but his forward momentum carries him into me, his knee driving into my chin with enough force to really hurt. My head cracks against the hard floor when I’m sprawled back. Lights spiral above me, and then Lew stands over me.
I reach up for him through a haze, hoping to grasp some part of him and squeeze. Instead, my hand is pinned beneath his foot. Then I see the bottom of his other foot, rising up to stomp on my face. How many stomps will it take? To crush my face? To kill me?
When his heel drives into my nose, I know the answer is: more than one. The taste of blood fills my mouth. He’s broken my nose. The foot rises again. My instinct is to close my eyes, but I don’t. Instead, I look up at Lew, into his charcoal eyes, and say, “It’s not your fault. You did your best.”
There’s a moment of hesitation, and then the foot descends.
But it never lands.
Lew arches in pain, his foot crashing to the floor beside my face as he attempts to stay on his feet. He reaches back over his shoulders, grasping for something out of reach. A roar of frustration bellows from his mouth, but becomes a sharp shrieking sound. He spins around, still reaching, to reveal an arrow embedded in his back.
Damn it Del, I think, looking for the girl. She’s lowering the bow, a hundred feet away. When he forgets about the arrow, and me, she’ll be his next target. Possibly his next meal.
But she’s not alone. Salem stands with her, both of them in danger. But then I see Bake, their protector, weapon drawn and as ready for a fight as ever. But it’s still a fight none of them can win.
Why is no one backing away?
They just stand there, watching.
Waiting.
What the hell for?
That’s when I spot the glass cylinder in Salem’s hands. It’s full of a viscous black liquid.
“I think it’s working,” Salem says, eyes hopeful, like when he would ask me about the world, and unlike my father, I stayed silent. How often did I see this look, only to crush it? It’s no wonder he left. Even before Plistim’s influence, he longed for freedom. And now, here he is, fighting for that long elusive idea that had been so important to our ancestors, and so dangerous to survival under the Golyats’ rule.
Lew stops reaching for the arrow in his back when something far more painful and unseen wracks his body. He convulses in waves, stumbling back, gripping his head. He screams, and for a moment, I hear an echo of his former human self.
His skin dries out and begins curling back in sheets. Clear liquid oozes out through fresh fissures crisscrossing his body, torn wide with every agonized movement.
The pain of his Golyat unbirth appears even worse than the transformation I had been going through, and when he speaks, I know it’s because the still-human part of him remembers and regrets his actions.
“I am…sorry.” Lew’s voice is raspy. Barely there. But I can hear him because the apology is directed at me.
“Not your fault,” I tell him, and he looks even more wounded by the grace I’ve extended to him. “You’ve done more than anyone else could.”
He falls to his knees, quivering. His end is near.
“How long?” he asks.
How long what? I wonder and then I guess. “Five hundred years. Roughly.”
He closes his black eyes. “But we survived…”
“We did,” I tell him. “And thanks to you, we can finally fight back.”
“Kill him,” Micha says. He’s snuck up behind me, fists clenched.
Shua answers for me, holding his partially digested sword toward my husband’s chest. The fact that Shua would like nothing more than to strike my husband down is easy to see. Micha has a hard heart and lives by an archaic law that I now know to be corrupt at heart, but he’s no fool. He opens his hands and takes a step back.
“You did this?” Lew asks, looking at my son.
Salem nods.
“You understand what needs to be done?”
“I found your journal at the FEMA bunker,” Salem says. “And here. We know about the inoculation.” He points to Dyer, who’s picking herself up, and then to me. “It worked on both of them. And the anti-bacterial…it worked on you.”
Lew shudders, grinding his black teeth. “I can…see that…” Lew motions for Salem to come closer, and my son obeys. Despite the obvious danger, I let him. Lew is back, and I can’t help but trust the man whose five hundred year old action provided the hope for our future.
“You’ll need to make more,” Lew says, his voice growing faint. “You’ll need the keys to my kingdom.
“Login: DeepBlueCT, all one word. D, B, C, and T are all capital letters. You understand?”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, but Salem says, “Yes. You’re talking about the computers.”
Lew nods. “This will give you access. The password is…” Lew coughs as his stomach peels open, spilling dull orange liquid over his lap, the fury taken out of it. “…JackSiglerWasHere, all one word, capital letters on the J, S, W, and H.”
More liquid burbles from his gut as he laughs.
Jack Sigler. The Sig.
“He was my ancestor,” I say, and then I point to Salem. “And his.”
Lew smiles at this. “You have his eyes.” His eyes drift to Bake and his smile grows. “Know your eyes, too.”
With that, he collapses forward, landing in a puddle of himself. The room is silent for several seconds, as we watch for signs of life.
We see none.
The silence is broken by Shua shouting, “No!”
Once again, I’m struck from behind and stabbed with something sharp, but this time it’s not Del, or a syringe.
It’s my husband, and a knife.
54
The pain is intense, but localized, and compared to the agony of Golyat transformation, more of an irritant than incapacitating. It’s logic that keeps me frozen in place. The blade is an inch inside me, severing skin and muscle, but nothing vital yet—I think.
“Any of you make a move and I’ll gut her,” Micha says.
Shua tenses, but remains rooted in place. Despite his stillness, I can see him working through his options. There are plenty of strategies and attacks he could employ to disable or kill Micha, but every single one of them ends with me dead.
Bake inches her way closer, slow enough to not be noticed, but she’ll never get close enough to make a difference. Salem and Del obey the command, but I can see Del’s eyes wandering, looking for arrows on the floor. She won’t find any.
“Haven’t really thought this through,” Dyer says. She’s the closest to Micha and in the best position to act, but I doubt I’d survive. She flexes her charred arm, already comfortable with the horrific, but powerful partial transformation. “She dies, you die.”
Dyer holds her open hand up toward Micha’s head, curls her slender black fingers like she’s squeezing it, and then crushes her hand together. It’s not an idle threat, either. She has the strength to do it.
And so do I.
While I’ve been spared a full physical transformation, my brown skin is still marbleized with black streaks. But on the inside…I suspect the change is more significant. My mind and hunger are unaffected, but the density and strength of my muscles has increased to the point that when Micha moves me between himself and Dyer, the muscles in my back contract, gripping the knife. I’m not sure Micha could push the blade any further without an intense effort.
I’m also feeling less pain. That doesn’t mean the damage is any less severe, as far as I know, but despite the knife in my back, I’m not ov
ercome by the pain like I should be.
The mountain shakes from the violence above. Something in the floors above us cracks. It’s followed by the rumble of a cave-in. The facility can’t take much more abuse.
I’m about to lecture Micha about the futility of what he’s doing, to explain that we have a real chance to defeat the Golyats, to offer a truce. But he knows most of that already and still proceeded with his treachery. His allegiance to the Prime Law is blind and unwavering. There was a time, perhaps when the Law was untainted by the desires of men, that his commitment would have been commendable.
Still, if I can just make him see…
“You’re being foolish,” Salem says, beating me to the punch. “You’re an elder. Your job—your only job—is to ensure that the people of New Inglan are protected.”
“Says the Modernist bastard responsible for bringing hell to my land.” Micha spits at my son, but the wad falls short. He nods at Lew’s motionless form, “Who colludes with our enemy. If there are people alive to remember our history, I will ensure it is your name they associate with the destruction of New Inglan. My only mistake was not slitting your puny throat when you emerged from your adulterous mother. I was merciful then. I will not make the same mistake now.”
He gives the knife a twist, but I grip it in place by clenching up my back.
Theory tested, my confidence grows.
The room shakes again. This time, dust falls from above. Little chunks clatter off the lab and computers, which I still don’t know how to operate, but I understand their importance. If they’re destroyed, everything we have sacrificed and accomplished will have been for nothing.
“Go,” I tell the others, “Leave me.”
“What?” Shua and Micha say together, both men equally baffled.
“The laboratory is more important than my life.” I turn to Salem. “You have what you need to stop them?”
He looks mortified, but he nods and holds up the black liquid. “We just need a delivery system.”
“The arrows,” Del says, looking back at the doorway that leads to the armory and the exit. “It worked on Lew.”
Shua catches my eye, his gaze asking a silent, ‘Are you sure?’
I give the slightest of nods and say, “I’m okay. You all need to go…”
The ceiling booms, and this time I swear I hear a Golyat chatter through the earth and stone surrounding us.
“Now!” I shout.
When Bake all but drags Salem and Del toward the exit, and a slightly more reluctant Shua and Dyer follow them, Micha grips my arm tighter and shouts. “Stop! Now!”
He’s not used to being disobeyed, but defying the Prime Law’s authority, and those who represent it, is our specialty. And Bake, well, she’s guided by a different set of laws that says ours is a bad joke. She’s also been fighting this fight far longer than the rest of us, and she understands that my life is worth sacrificing if it means ridding the world of Golyats. Lew understood that, too, as did our ancestors, who created the safe zones and passed my family’s knife down through the ages.
The knife of Sig—of Jack Sigler—which is still tucked into my waist.
“Stop!” Micha roars, as Bake waves the others through the door, gives me an approving nod, and then hurries after them.
“I’m going to kill you now,” Micha whispers through clenched teeth. “And then I’m going to slit—”
“Do it,” I say, clenching my muscles. “If you can.”
“You believe I won’t?” he asks, confused by my resignation. “That I have feelings for you? That I ever did?”
He’s trying to get a rise out of me, but our marriage has always been loveless.
“Love is a concept beyond your comprehension,” I say.
“Does he understand it?” Micha lets go of my shoulder to point at the exit.
Almost, I think, inching my freed arm toward my waist.
“All of them do,” I say. “It’s what guides them. Makes them strong. It’s why they’ll defeat the Golyats. And it’s why I’ll stay here, with you.”
“You’re not dying for them,” he says, and I can feel his grip on the knife tightening. “You’re dying before them.”
“One of us is,” I say.
Micha’s moment of confusion coincides with a quake that rattles the floor beneath us. Drawing my blade from my waist, I spin.
Micha is fast but slowed by his confusion for only a moment. Even as I spin, he thrusts the blade, but it’s caught by cords of solid muscle and pulled from his grip.
My blade sings through the air, glinting in the room’s overhead lights for just a moment, before being coated in red.
Micha staggers back, eyes wide, questioning: ‘What did you do?’ He gets his answer when he tries to ask the question aloud. A bubble of air pops from his open neck, spraying blood to the floor at my feet. His hands clutch the slippery flesh as a curtain of blood flows down his body. He gives up when his frantic hands slip inside the gap, filling his throat.
Micha drops to his knees, his breaths hissing through his neck.
“When the day is done, Kingsland will be saved and I will make sure that history will not remember you, or the Prime Law, at all.” He slumps to the floor, lifeless. I take little satisfaction from his demise. He could have helped unify Kingsland against the Golyats. I would not have enjoyed his presence, but I would have accepted his help.
A Golyat roar rolling through the exit hallway twists me away from the sight of my dead husband-no-more. I run for the open door, unsure of what to expect. I race down the hall, passing the armory without stopping, and a moment later I re-enter the light of day.
Through squinted eyes I behold a sight far more horrific than I’m prepared for.
The moss-coated, colossal Golyat stands just one hundred feet away, downhill, putting its head seventy-five feet above me. If there were any trees left standing, the beast would be hidden from view, but the mountainside has been cleared by Golyat tantrums.
Two more goliaths, including the monster that has pursued us from the start, arms still dangling from its ribs, race up the mountainside toward their staggered brethren’s back. Their teeth chatter as their stomachs roil with fluids and orange light. Their eyes aren’t on the wounded moss-Golyat. They’re focused on the collection of people just ten feet in front of me.
“It’s working,” Salem shouts, as the mossy Golyat sheds its greenery, and then its flesh. Great sheets of greasy, black meat peel away from the bones, thudding to the tree-littered ground. The air is an odd mixture of Golyat tang and fresh-split wood, both pleasant and repulsive at the same time.
The Golyat roars, raising its arms as if to say, ‘Why me?’ and then the arms slurp from their sockets and fall to the ground, shaking the earth with the force of fallen trees.
“Everyone move!” I shout.
The group spins to face me, relieved and surprised.
“You’re—” is all Shua gets out, before I shout, “It’s coming down!” and I shove Shua to the side. A shadow falls over us as the mossy monster topples toward us. Its black eyes slide from its head, falling first. Then its remaining skin and muscle sheds, falling straight down and leaving its black skeletal form to plummet toward us.
The ground convulses beneath our feet when the moss-Golyat’s bones strike. I stumble and recover, but everyone else falls. Bake is a little more graceful than the rest, rolling back to her feet.
She points downhill. “Incoming!”
Del scrambles up, nocking an arrow from her replenished quiver. “Salem. I need more—”
“We have a problem!” Salem shouts, arms spread wide, eyes turned down. The glass vessel in which he held the antibiotic sludge is shattered, its contents filtering into the toppled tree’s branches and pine needles.
“Can we get more?” Shua asks.
“It will take too long.” Salem motions to the facility’s entrance. The fallen mossy Golyat’s leaking skull lies atop the opening.
Before the vis
cous liquid can drain away, I stab my knife into it, coating it in a thick layer of the stuff. While Del does her best to coat her arrow tips, I turn to Dyer and say, “Throw me.”
55
“Say again?”
“My whole body is as strong as your arm,” I say, turning to face the incoming Golyat, blade dripping black. “Now, throw me!”
“Mmm, okay.” Dyer grabs the back of my belt, hoists me off the ground, spins once, and lets me fly. Thanks to her inhuman strength and our elevated position on the mountain, I sail toward the Golyat that I don’t recognize from our past encounters. It’s a hundred feet tall and now missing an arm, no doubt lost when competing against his larger brethren for Micha’s men.
I careen in an arc that takes me higher than the one-armed monster’s head and then drops me straight toward it. Black eyes track my progress through the air. Its head turns up to greet me, teeth chattering, the sound nearly powerful enough to slow my progress. But gravity has me now, and pulls me toward the monster’s chomping jaws.
As strong as I might now be, a single bite from those massive teeth will pulverize me. Before I have the time to fully regret my rash strategy, an arrow whistles past beneath me. The one-armed Golyat stretches for me, mouth gaping open to swallow me whole. Then the arrow pierces its left eye. Fluid bursts out, deflating the orb and blinding the beast on one side.
The creature’s teeth slam together, narrowly missing my reaching arm. I catch hold of a curl of skin and hold fast. The ancient, stretched flesh peels from the face as a long sheet, lowering me to the monster’s shoulder, where I drive my blade into its meat. When I withdraw the knife, much of the black fluid is gone, but a thick smear remains—as does the blade. I’m not sure if the antibiotic fluid works fast enough to stop a Golyat’s insides from melting the blade, if the thick goo acted as a shield, or if my ancestor’s weapon was forged from a Golyat-resistant metal, but the blade shows no sign of degradation.
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