The Swarm Descends

by Jacob Grey

  “It’s over, Caw,” she said, floating in mid-air.

  Caw managed to prop himself up on his elbows, his body throbbing with pain. His arm was gouged from the eagle attack and he felt blood streaming from both nostrils. Something was wrong with his side, making it hard to draw breath – a broken rib, perhaps.

  “Your mother would be ashamed to see you now,” said the Mother of Flies, hovering. “For so many generations the crow talkers kept the stone a secret, but there was always going to be one weak link – a feral who let down his line. That’s you, Jack Carmichael. The time of the crows is over. It is time for the flies to take the throne.”

  “There’s no throne!” said Caw. “You’re nothing but a plague – you and your flies.”

  “I’ve heard it all before, crow talker,” said Cynthia Davenport. “Filthy. Repulsive. Unclean. That’s what they called my mother. That’s what they’ve always called us. But flies are survivors. My army will hunt the old order for sport. And even when the fly line is avenged, and this city is dead, my children will feed from its corpse and grow stronger.”

  “And then?” said Caw, grimacing as he shifted again. “You’re no different from the Spinning Man. You just want power no matter what it costs. Who wants to rule over a dead city?”

  “I’m nothing like the Spinning Man,” said the Mother of Flies. Lightning forked above. “He was an arrogant fool who let himself be bettered twice. I crawled my way up from the bottom. I’ve fought for everything I’ve ever had, and I’ve come out stronger than he ever was. Stronger than he ever could have been.”

  Caw made up his mind. If he was going to die, he would do so defiantly. “If you say so, but I think spiders will always be greater than flies. Your precious creatures die in their webs, don’t they?”

  A flicker of pain crossed Cynthia Davenport’s face. Her flies set her down and buzzed away in a black wave. She reached inside her jacket and pulled out a gun. “Time for your gift to pass to someone more worthy,” she said, pointing the gun at his head. “I’ll do you the honour of making it quick. The Land of the Dead awaits you, crow talker.”

  Caw closed his eyes.

  ang!

  It took a split-second for Caw to realise the noise wasn’t a gun.

  His eyes shot open and he saw that the Mother of Flies was looking behind her, where the door to the stairwell had swung open, hitting the wall hard. Selina stood there, breathing heavily.

  “I won’t let you do this,” she said.

  “You think you can stop me?” sneered her mother. “A child? Your heart was always soft. You’ll never be worthy of my power.”

  “I don’t want anything from you!” said Selina. “And it’s not me who’s going to stop you.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “It’s them!”

  Dozens of foxes flooded through the door, snarling. Caw had never seen so many in one place before. Lydia came behind them, her cheeks pink with running.

  The foxes leapt at the scrawny convict pointing the gun at their mistress, and he staggered backwards with a cry of terror. Then they set about savaging the bonds that tied Velma Strickham and her husband.

  “Save Caw!” Lydia’s mother commanded, and the rest of the foxes ran across the rooftop towards the convicts. The convicts panicked and backed away, trying to use each other as human shields. Others scattered, with foxes on their heels.

  Caw’s heart filled with hope.

  “Cowards!” said the Mother of Flies. “They’re only foxes!”

  Several banks of flies swooped down from the sky. They swept across the rooftop, breaking into small swarms, each group headed for one of Velma Strickham’s creatures.

  The Mother of Flies was distracted now and Caw knew he wouldn’t get another chance.

  Standing sent shocks of pain across his body, but he found his feet and charged. Cynthia Davenport turned at the last moment. Caw ploughed into her, but the next moment she was gone, evaporating into a cloud of flies that filled his face. He fell in a heap and heard a click at his back. The Mother of Flies stood there, pointing the gun at him.

  “No escape this time,” she said. Her finger twitched on the trigger.

  Selina leapt on to her mother’s back with a cry, spinning the Mother of Flies around. The gun clattered to the ground and Caw dived for it, but a foot got there first, kicking the gun, skittering, across the rooftop. Caw looked up to see the pierced convict sneering at him. The man lifted a foot and Caw saw the ridges of the sole as it rose to stamp on his skull.

  “Agh!” the convict wailed, as a barrage of black birds swept into him, knocking him off balance.

  The Mother of Flies was spinning round, still trying to grab Selina, who was clinging to her back. “Get off me!” she yelled.

  “You don’t tell me what to do any more,” said her daughter.

  Cynthia Davenport collapsed to her knees, then her body crumbled into thousands of flies, leaving Selina breathing heavily on the ground. The Mother of Flies reappeared a few feet away, where the gun had come to rest. She picked it up, as Selina stepped in front of Caw.

  The fly feral lowered the gun a fraction. “Out of the way!” she said.

  “You’ll have to shoot me first!” said Selina.

  “Don’t think I won’t,” said her mother, but Caw could see she was hesitating. Come! he willed. Any crow would do.

  “Do it, then,” said Selina. “I’d rather be dead than your daughter.”

  The Mother of Flies’ face turned hard and she lifted the gun. “Very well,” she said.

  The barrel flared at the same moment that Screech dropped, talons first, on to Cynthia Davenport’s arm. A bullet sparked on the ground in front of Selina’s foot and her leg jerked from beneath her. She screamed and gripped her shin with one hand. Caw rushed to Selina’s side. Blood oozed between her fingers. “She shot me!” she said, gritting her teeth.

  Whoomp-whoomp-whoomp!

  The helicopter was stirring into life. In the pilot’s seat sat Lugmann and the others were piling into the back. Some had foxes hanging off their clothes, as they struggled into the already full chopper cabin. They’d left their animals behind, howling and clawing and scrambling in their cages. Velma Strickham and her husband had been driven back near the stairwell by swarms of flies, and the foxes were in disarray, tormented by insects.

  Selina’s mother shook her arm wildly, dropping the gun and throwing Screech off.

  She looked at Caw and her daughter, then at the helicopter. “I’ll deal with you later,” she snapped at the fleeing convicts. She pulled her coat around her, then stopped, hand on her pocket, fear in her eyes. “Where is it?”

  For a moment, Caw didn’t understand, but then Selina opened her bloodied hand to reveal the Midnight Stone. “Looking for this?” she said.

  “How did you …?” muttered the Mother of Flies.

  Caw knew how. Selina had taken it when she was on her mother’s back.

  “Give it to me!” howled Cynthia Davenport.

  “Never!” said Selina. “All this time, you used me. You pretended to care. You used my love for you and twisted it for your own ends. Well, now I’ve got new friends who I really care about and you’re not going to hurt them any more.”

  Caw stood up, stepping in front of Selina to face his enemy. He sensed his crows massing behind him and clenched his fists, summoning more. He let the tendrils of his power reach across the storm-tossed city and called all the crows in Blackstone.

  “Look at that,” he said, “your friends are all running away.”

  The Mother of Flies smiled at him. “I am never alone while I have my children.” She closed her eyes and raised her arms into the sky. Lightning flashed again. Caw looked up and saw that the clouds above were almost entirely black though the rain seemed to have stopped.

  Then with a sinking sensation Caw realised they weren’t clouds at all – they were flies. Millions and millions of flies, in a boiling, swirling swarm. And it hadn’t stopped raining – they were clustering
so heavily overhead that the downpour was no longer reaching the rooftop.

  “See, crow talker!” cried the Mother of Flies. “You still have a lot to learn.”

  Caw glanced back and saw foxes running for the cover of the stairwell, where Lydia and her father were lying on the ground, hands shielding their heads. Mrs Strickham tried to stand, but the tempest of flies drove her to her knees. Selina was half-walking, half-crawling, dragging her injured leg, towards the fire escape.

  The helicopter lifted slowly, its rotors whipping the Mother of Flies’ hair across her face. Then it banked away, climbing into the sky until it looked like a distant insect itself and thunder drowned the chopping of its rotors.

  Cynthia Davenport threw out an arm towards Caw and it stretched, dissolving into flies that swarmed towards his face. As the insects enveloped his head, Caw clamped his eyes closed, focusing all his powers inward, then sprang off the rooftop as a crow. Opening his wings, he let a gust carry him thirty feet into the air. The Mother of Flies watched him with a smile, then exploded into her insect form. She climbed after him, still in the shape of a woman.

  Caw sent his crows to take her on, and they shot towards her body-swarm with beaks open, snapping up flies. She broke apart, but immediately reformed in their wake. Caw called more and more crows in a ceaseless barrage. Wave after wave smashed through Cynthia Davenport, so fast she barely had time to re-form before the next assault.

  Glum swooped past, beak full of flies.

  There are too many, Caw, he gasped.

  Shimmer was leading the other birds, cutting back and forth. Caw joined them, ripping through air so thick with insects he could hardly breathe. He flapped his wings rapidly, fighting upwards, until he broke through into clean air. With his crow-tongue, he tasted the tang of ozone and the promise of lightning. He wheeled over and let the currents hold him, surveying the battle. Crows flitted like blown–black ash-flakes, burying themselves in the flies, then rising again.

  Caw looked about, but he couldn’t see Cynthia Davenport anywhere. Had she fled, using her flies as cover? Looking down he was almost sure the insects were fewer than before. The swarm seemed to be collapsing under its own weight, a slick of flies falling in on itself in a huge whirlpool. Caw drew his crows back with a single thought and they lifted up to join him. He stared into the depths of the fly tornado as clear air and the rooftop became visible again below.

  His blood turned to ice in his veins.

  Standing there was a thing that looked like Cynthia Davenport. But it loomed three times as tall and was growing by the second as more flies poured from the sky across its limbs, clinging to its surface and swelling its size. How was it possible? She must be controlling hundreds of thousands of flies, choreographing each individual flight.

  Er … can you do that? Shimmer mumbled, hovering beside him.

  Caw shook his crow head. He had controlled the flock in his battle against the Spinning Man, but not like that.

  The giant shape of the Mother of Flies stood two storeys tall, then lifted weightlessly from the rooftop. The skin and hair were flies, but the contours of her face were the same as ever, the mouth twisted in a smile.

  “Behold true power, crow talker!” she said. Her voice came not from her lips, but from her whole body, a strange acoustic mixture of buzzing. Her eyes were black orbs, rolling in their sockets.

  She flung a hand in a swatting motion, bashing crows aside like dust motes. Caw sent a wave of birds to attack. They plunged into the black mass of her body, swallowed by flies. Caw waited for them to emerge from the other side, but only half their number smashed free from the insect bulk.

  Another giant hand stormed in from his left. Caw folded his wings and dived away, only to see the other massive hand reaching for him, the fingers formed out of thick columns of insects. Angling his beak he stabbed through the solid mass, feeling the flies tangle in his feathers. He tried to flap, but couldn’t. The flies blinded him, smothering his beak and paralysing his wings. Their buzzing filled his thoughts, so he was unable to concentrate on anything else. He felt his mental hold on his crow form weakening, and through a chink in the swarm he saw his human hand, so white against the swirling blackness. Then his head broke free – his human head – and he sucked in a lungful of air.

  “So there you are!” growled the Mother of Flies.

  Caw was entirely human again, gripped in a fly-hand high above the ground. Rain spattered his face. He writhed, but the flies held him, cushioned tightly, compressing his chest. Even through his fear, he marvelled at the strange sensation of tiny bodies pressed against his limbs. Down below he saw dozens of foxes watching him from the rooftop. The Strickhams, Lydia and Selina were there too, staring upwards. Not a single fly remained. All had been conscripted to the service of their mistress.

  “Stop fighting, Caw,” said Cynthia Davenport. The hand holding Caw gave a further squeeze, making it impossible to breathe. How could creatures so small create such force? “You know, in a way, I was there when your mother died,” she said. “My flies watched the Spinning Man kill her.” Caw’s heart blazed with fury. “She put up quite a fight, even when the odds were stacked against her.” The hand dragged Caw through the air, closer to the fly feral’s face. “She was like you, Caw,” said the booming voice. “Even at the end, she wasn’t ready to give up. Even as his spiders began to consume her.”

  Caw tried again to break free, straining his arms against the flies, but they hardened against him like concrete. “My mother had more courage than you’ll ever know,” he said, grimacing. “Even if you kill me, others will stop you.”

  The giant mouth smiled. “You know, that’s almost exactly what she said, before she died.”

  “And she was right!” shouted Caw. “We killed the Spinning Man.”

  Cynthia Davenport opened her mouth wide. Inside, flies configured themselves into teeth, and a huge rolling ball became her tongue. She began to draw him towards the chasm of her mouth headfirst. From the rooftop below, Caw heard Lydia screaming.

  She was going to eat him alive.

  The darkness closed over him and all he could hear was the hungry buzzing of flies. There was no way to tell which way was up or down. Insects crowded into his ears and nostrils. He tried to clench his mouth closed, but he could feel their stubborn bodies prising open his lips. His eyes were scrunched so tight they ached.

  It couldn’t end like this. He thought of his mother and father dying to protect him. He thought of the crow line who had guarded the Midnight Stone for hundreds of years. He thought of Crumb, and Pip, and all the other ferals who would surely die if the Mother of Flies was victorious. His powerlessness made him furious with himself.

  And through the fear and anger came voices.

  Where are you?

  Is he inside?

  What shall we do?

  Crow voices, tumbling over each other. Multiplying into a tumult.

  Caw sensed their bodies, their wings and beaks and talons. They were waiting for him, waiting for his command.

  The first of the flies managed to squeeze into his mouth, leading others. They scrambled across the barrier of his teeth. Caw tried to ignore them and the threat of paralysing panic. He imagined his body set like stone and impervious. He sent out his consciousness as he had done in the Land of the Dead, searching for the crows. He’d need them all.

  He almost gagged as flies flooded into the upper reaches of his nose.

  He found Shimmer first and his mind enveloped her. Looking down with her eyes he saw the giant shape of Cynthia Davenport. The sky was filled with waiting crows. He latched on to the one nearest to Shimmer, then another. With each crow he gathered to his cause, he felt stronger. His will spread like a net across the flock, and as he possessed them all he drove them in a swirl around the Mother of Flies.

  The fly feral twisted, lashing out with her arms. Caw guided the birds with a single twitch of his mind and they followed in a swathe, riding over the limbs that threatened to sw
at them from the sky. Caw drew more and more birds, until they formed a spinning wall around the Mother of Flies.

  The flies had found their way beneath his eyelids. Caw tried to shake his head but there were too many. His eyes began to sting. Others found their way past his teeth and surged into his mouth, crawling over each other to enter his throat.

  Caw abandoned his body to their assault, thrusting his entire mind into the crows. In an instant he became thousands of birds.

  Now! he cried.

  Their wings angled in unison and the tornado around Cynthia Davenport closed in. The crows opened their mouths with a single shriek as they ripped into her fly-flesh, skinning insects away, crunching them in their talons and beaks. Caw focused all his energy on keeping the flock together, keeping their momentum, tightening the circle further. He heard a strange sound of hissing, desperate agony from the depths of the fly giant. She could do nothing to stop the crows eating away at her, a thousand pricks of pain every second. There were too many, on all sides, constantly moving.

  Caw saw through his crows’ eyes, and all they saw was black. He felt their wings, heavy with insects, his strength sapping fast. At any moment, the sheer weight would drag them down and it would all be in vain. A dim, detached part of his consciousness told him that his body was failing. And that if he died, the crows would be lost too.

  He couldn’t let it happen.

  With his last shred of power, he drove the flock towards her heart.

  aw lost control. He heard a deep rumbling groan of anguish and wondered if it was his own, or if it came from the thunder of the storm. He felt his body falling in fits and starts, caught then released, flipped over this way and that as if he was tumbling through the branches of a thick tree.

  Then clear, cold air …

  He hit something solid, his head slamming down in a burst of white light. He couldn’t breathe and rolled on to his knees, chest heaving for oxygen. His eyes stung so much he could hardly open them. Then from the depths of his guts, a choke ripped through him. He retched helplessly and a throatful of dead flies spattered on to the ground in front of him.