Beautiful Corpse

by eden Hudson

  Maybe the end of the world had come on a day the library was closed. Maybe the end had started and some optimistic dummy had locked it in the hopes that a fragile glass door would save him. Maybe one of the survivors had found the keys after the end, holed up in the library for a while, then moved on or died, leaving it locked.

  I nudged Nickie-boy aside, saw that we were dealing with a deadbolt, and pulled the RustMelt-60 and a tension wrench out. To see what level of corrosion we were dealing with and how much RustMelt-60 I would need, I pressed the wrench to the spring-loaded lock guard.

  Instead of resisting, the guard slipped aside easily.

  I looked around for my flame kigao.

  No one but Carina and Nick, both of whom looked like they were getting nervous floating out there in the open water of the street.

  I slipped the RustMelt back into my toolkit and pulled out a pick. I picked off each of the lock’s pins and finessed it open with a caress of my wrench. Either this city had made its First Earth locks to stand the test of time and saltwater or somebody was using this lock on the regular.

  I swam back and let Nickie take my place.

  Still no flame kigao. In spite of the creepy surroundings, we were in the clear.

  With the lock disengaged, the door swung open easily. I looked down for the first time and saw a bare arc of concrete in its path. Everywhere else, layers of cold water coral had sprung up.

  Humans or muties, maybe? Just because there weren’t any records of them living out here in the estuaries or sea mouth didn’t mean they didn’t exist. They might go scrounging in the city ruins at low tide. Might even have their homes built into upper floors of the few skyscrapers that hadn’t collapsed.

  Anything’s possible. It’s probability you have to watch out for.

  Apparently Carina was picking up on these blatant improbabilities, too, because she stopped Nick and pointed to the arc where no coral had grown. He nodded. They both turned on the spotlights on the barrels of their UW rifles, then lifted the rifles to a ready position and swam inside.

  The entrance led to a lobby with a wide, circular desk, then opened in both directions. Nick cleared behind the desk while Carina waited, then they each stood guard at one of the openings, waiting for me to pick a direction. Carina was on my right, so I went left, leading with my flare bracelet.

  Long rows of shelving stretched out in a maze. Some had been knocked over, others were broken. Rotting analog texts lay on the floor in piles that gave off clouds of dust as we swam past. The motes caught the green light from our bracelets and made the room seem brighter than it was while also cutting the visibility in half.

  Rather than a solid ceiling overhead, there was a band of flooring about twelve feet wide encircling the perimeter of the room with a pair of catwalks crossing the center. The clear glass railing that had once protected klutzes and retards from tripping over the side was still intact. At least on that floor. Our flare bracelets wouldn’t illuminate any farther up, and the space past the second floor yawned on into darkness.

  We took a lap around the first floor, but didn’t find any salvageable texts. None of the information I’d read on First Earth libraries was very helpful concerning where they kept their real books.

  Just to see what would happen, I touched an analog book’s cover. The board and pages disintegrated, leaving neat holes where my fingers had been. I wiped the muddy dust on my wetsuit, then got Carina’s attention and pointed upward.

  There was an old elevator shaft at the end of the room, but I would’ve rather drank a gallon-sized cum-shake than swim into that pitch-black death trap. We swam up through the center of the room instead.

  Our flare bracelets refused to illuminate the second floor until we passed over the glass railing. Up there, the shadows fell away to reveal even more analog books along the nearest wall. I squinted at them doubtfully. There had to be some real books here somewhere. You wouldn’t go to all the trouble of building a library for texts and then just store the perishable ones in it.

  Toward the far end of the room, the floor plan branched off into an office. The door hung off of corroded hinges with a plastic sign that read Multi-Media Room in First Earth letters. Inside, wooden cubicles—most of them smashed to splintery muck by falling ceiling, others still miraculously standing—had been arranged in formerly neat rows.

  Carina stood at the door, watching the half-open elevator panels while Nick and I inspected the cubicles. First Earth screens lay on the desks that were still standing. Most of these had warped and cracked over the years, but they weren’t what we were after. We wanted the flat boxes the screens were attached to. Those boxes were the great-great-great-times-a-billion granddaddies of the wristpiece: the computer. They could even be credited for the evolution of the First Earth version of a reader. If I was going to store real books somewhere, I would store them in there.

  I popped Nick on the shoulder, then pointed at the screens.

  He nodded, unzipped the dive bag he’d brought with him, then jerked the closest computer free of the cord anchoring it and slipped it into the dive bag. I grabbed the one closest to me and yanked the anchoring cable out. We found five in the cubicles that were still standing.

  When those cubicles were picked through, I gestured to a section of ceiling that had crushed a second group. Nick swam around to the side opposite me and grabbed hold of it, his flare bracelet throwing shadows my way.

  We planted our feet and lifted.

  “The electricity is about to go out,” my flame kigao said, her voice clear and unobstructed by the water.

  The shadows flickered and moved with our motion. Almost.

  I heaved my end of the ceiling section at them as hard as I could.

  My kigao hugged her fiery arms around the boiling lava of her middle. “The electricity is about to go out.”

  Nickie-boy was whipping his head around on his neck, trying to keep his grip on the ceiling section, but I was too busy looking for the danger to care.

  Movement in the corner.

  Along the wall.

  In the crack of the ceiling.

  “The electricity is about to go out,” the kigao said, flitting out of the way as my end of the ceiling section settled to the floor with a soundless but bowel-resonating thud.

  Long-fingered shadows flickered at the edge of my flare bracelet’s reach. The water pressed in on me from every direction. It wasn’t silence, but it was almost as bad. I couldn’t hear anything coming.

  I kicked my legs and spun in a circle.

  “The electricity—”

  The creature froze mid-lunge in front of my face, startled by my sudden one-eighty.

  Shadow-black flesh. Impossibly long, slender arms that ended in horrifically elongated, four-knuckled fingers devoid of nails. A humanoid head with a lipless, toothless, double-hinged mouth stretched open past the points of Wrong and Awful into the realm of Holy Fucking Shit No. Cloudy, colorless eyes rolled under a thin, matte-gray membrane crisscrossed with black veins.

  I saw it all in the space between heartbeats.

  Then smoky black dust swirled in the space the creature had vacated. Just like a crawdad, one second there, the next—poof—just a cloud of silt where it had been.

  I kicked and spun, searching. A shadow on my right. I spun toward it. Already gone. I spun left. The glow of my flare bracelet threw up camouflage for the creature in every direction. Nick’s and Carina’s frantic movements added to the cacophony of light and shadow. There was more than one.

  My heart hammered so hard that I wondered if I was having a heart attack. Remnants of the drowned mages? An underwater mutie colony? A bit of local wildlife corrupted by seepage from the paper magics?

  I kept turning, hoping I could stop whatever those sneaky bastards were from taking an easy shot at my back. My fingers fumbled in my toolkit and came out with the RustMelt-60.

  I turned another one-eighty. Another mutie-remnant-creature appeared from the shadows. Then two. I p
ointed the RustMelt and jammed my index finger down on the spray nozzle, flooding the water with a cloud of noxious acid formulated to eat away the rust and metallic corrosion of centuries.

  They disappeared like the first one had. The brown cloud of RustMelt merged with their left-behind shadow dust. I swam through it, pumping my arms and kicking my legs as fast as I could.

  They were everywhere now—pouring out of every dark place, from behind every shelf and catwalk and overturned table, around every corner. Their long arms reached, their mouths yawned open wide.

  I kicked harder, trying to outswim the army of darkness. I launched myself over the glass railing and plunged down toward the library’s first floor. My arms and legs burned with exertion and adrenaline. I could almost feel the creatures’ nailless four-jointed fingers lock around my ankles, grab the back of my neck. I couldn’t look back. Looking back would slow me down, and they were so damn fast.

  Carina.

  She had survived falling from a helicopter and being starved in a Soam prison pit. She would be fine. If she was smart, she would feed Nick to the creatures and escape.

  She won’t. She’ll die.

  Both of us would die if I went back. That would be a waste, especially of someone with my genius and physical prowess. One of us surviving was better than none of us surviving. Math might be a heartless bitch, but she’s never wrong.

  I was within yards of the library door. I could see my own shadow thrown onto the wall by the flare bracelet, reaching, stretching like the creatures.

  One of the black-skinned remnants flitted in front of me to the door. It looked me right in the face with its milky membrane-covered eyes and turned the deadbolt with the tips of its four-jointed fingers.

  It was locking us in.

  Out of revulsion as much as self-preservation, I put the RustMelt between us and sprayed. I wheeled my free arm, trying to change direction.

  The creature’s double-hinged mouth opened in a silent scream. Its chest, sunken and birdlike, inflated and deflated desperately inside the RustMelt’s oily, brownish cloud.

  The RustMelt was burning it…or suffocating it? Maybe ingesting RustMelt was as poisonous to them as it was supposed to be to humans and muties.

  I held my finger down on the trigger and emptied the can onto the creature. It writhed and wriggled away, its chest hitching and its long fingers clawing at its skin.

  My can ran dry. RustMelt-60 was bottled for quick squirts onto corroded metal surfaces, not protracted bouts of self-defense. I flung the empty can away. My hand shook as I dug another can out of my toolkit.

  I have eleven more cans. Carina doesn’t have any.

  A harsh giggle screamed out of my throat and rattled the inside the mask. I pushed off of the library floor and flooded the water around me with RustMelt, the remnant poison.

  I was only going back because I needed those books. If I got out of this city alive without the books I’d come for, I would die just as dead in three to six months as if one of these damn remnant creatures killed me. Maybe I could lift Nickie-boy’s knife, cut the dive bag strap from around his shoulder, and grab Carina on my way out. If she was right there next to him and convenient. If not, screw her.

  As I came up over the edge of the second floor, a light as bright as a welding arc flashed, followed by the feeling of a pop. A UW rifle.

  I swam toward it.

  One of the remnants had its arms wrapped double around Carina’s legs. Another had pulled off her mask and wetsuit hood and twisted its fingers in her long hair. She slashed at the creature with her knife, but the knife scraped off of its shadowy flesh without penetrating.

  Nickie-boy wasn’t faring much better. A remnant’s elongated arms were tangled around Nick’s arm and rifle like a rope. Another creature had locked its long-fingered hands around Nick’s thick neck and was straining its double-hinged mouth toward his head. The only thing saving Nick from being full-body deep-throated was his thick arm wedged between them, holding the creature off.

  More remnants swooped in and out of the circle of green light coming from the knights’ flare bracelets. As I watched, one darted past Carina, making a grab for her knife, but missing. Another one crept up behind Nick, then ripped off the hose that connected his mask to his tank. Air bubbles rushed for the ceiling. The creature waved its four-knuckled fingers through the bubbles, snapping its big mouth open and shut in what might have been laughter.

  I pushed off of the glass railing toward Carina, spraying RustMelt as I went.

  The remnant-creatures on the perimeter scattered as the oily cloud hit them. I doused Carina with RustMelt. The remnant tangled in her hair whipped and spun like an eel, trying to get away. It ripped out a good hank and disappeared.

  Without bothering to stuff her long hair back into her wetsuit hood, Carina caught her bubbling mask and jerked it back on. She stabbed and hacked at the creatures surrounding Nick.

  She wasn’t going to leave without him, and I didn’t see any knives handy to cut the dive bag away from Nick, so I sprayed him down, too, dispersing the last of the remnants.

  Carina made a grab for Nickie’s air hose, but no more bubbles were coming out. The tank was empty.

  Nick shook his head and made Go! motions toward the exit. Instead of doing what he said, Carina pulled off her mask and put it to his face. Nick’s massive chest expanded as he inhaled.

  The can I was spraying ran dry. I pulled another and waved it in Carina’s face. We didn’t have unlimited RustMelt to work with.

  Nick took one more deep breath, then shoved the mask back at her and pointed toward the door again. Thank dry land Carina listened this time.

  We broke water speed records swimming to the first floor. A few remnants tried to block our path, but I doused them with RustMelt.

  Carina hit the door first. She hadn’t seen the creature lock us in. I elbowed her aside and disengaged the deadbolt, then shoved the door open. We shot out into the street and kicked for the surface.

  Every time one can of RustMelt ran dry, I tossed it and whipped out another. I didn’t stop spraying until we climbed into the APC.

  FIFTEEN

  Every light inside and outside the carrier was on as we sped away from the sunken city. The three of us hunched in the APC’s seats, dripping wet, slowly freezing to death in the APC’s terrible heating system, sucking down leviathan lungfuls of air.

  When I was sure neither of them was going to break the silence, I yelled as loud as I could. Nickie-boy cringed. The yell died out and I shivered all over, one great big rolling shudder.

  Carina took one hand off the wheel and dragged her fingers through her hair. She was trembling.

  In spite of being sore as balls from all of the physical exertion, a burst of black energy twisted and popped in my muscles. I shuddered again and had to shake out my shoulders to dispel some of it.

  “Additionally, you’re both welcome,” I said.

  Nickie-boy gaped at me. “Welcome?”

  “For saving your honey-dipped bacon. That school of soul remnants or whatever they were would’ve eaten you guys alive if not for me. To think, I almost didn’t pack that much RustMelt! Who would’ve guessed that I’d end up using it to save the hired help?”

  “Not me,” Carina said.

  There was a moment of absolute silence.

  Then I threw back my head and laughed until my eyes watered. Carina was laughing, too, full-throated and gleeful.

  When we calmed down, Nick slid down in his seat, jamming his cypress-trunk knees up against the flat dash. “I’m going to catch some sleep, babe. Wake me up when you’re ready to switch.”

  “You got it, sweetheart,” I said.

  “Why don’t you stretch out in the back?” Carina asked. “Van Zandt will trade places with you.”

  “Reluctantly,” I qualified.

  Nick shrugged—obviously a move he’d picked up from being around Carina for so long—then we shuffled around. I sat in his warm, wet seat, and he folde
d my seat into a floor compartment. With that put away, Nickie lay down on his stomach and put his enormous head on one of his big forearms. Less than twenty minutes passed before he was snoring.

  “They’re so cute when they sleep,” I told Carina.

  She smiled. “I think he is.”

  “But I’m still the prettiest. You said so.”

  “And I’ll continue to say so as long as you can’t function knowing someone might think otherwise.”

  “You know I’m hot,” I said. Our seats were too far apart for elbowing her to seem natural, so I just grinned and poked her once in the ribs. She flinched away and covered the spot with her arm. Still ticklish. “You want to bone me.”

  She snorted and shook her head, but she didn’t deny it.

  After a while, she said, “Thanks for coming back.”

  “I needed those books.”

  “Sure.”

  “Hey, sister, I’ll handle the condescending replies around here.” I wiggled a little deeper into my seat puddle, then asked, “Straight shot back to the Upper Swamps?”

  She nodded. “With a stop sometime soon to rinse off and get dry clothes on.”

  “Good. I think I’m getting wetrash on my nutsack.”

  “It’s probably just your chlamydia acting up.”

  I giggled.

  Nickie-boy startled mid-snore and pushed himself up.

  “Clear,” Carina said.

  “’Kay,” he mumbled, then lay back down. “Let me know if you need to switch.”

  “I will.”

  A few minutes later he was gunning down logs again.

  I spent some time on my wristpiece, contacting people who might be able to recover text from a First Earth artifact that had spent the last several centuries submerged in saltwater. Given enough time, I could learn how to do it and get the books off of the computers myself, but time was something I didn’t really have an abundance of yet.

  Out the APC’s windowscreen, magegrass scraped by, bright yellow in the headlights.

  Inside, my flame kigao watched me, molten lava eyes asking me if I really wanted to go down this road. The electricity going out was one thing, but this…this was something I couldn’t come back from.