I think.
She flew with a predictably startled yelp and smacked against the tusk from a humanoid body with the head of an elephant. Her eyes immediately snapped shut and her body went limp.
Damn it, I thought. I’d hit her harder than I’d meant to, but like I said, I was desperate. Anyway, she wasn’t dead. I quickly checked her pulse to be sure and there was still a slow beat against my fingertips. I was relieved for the time being, but in the back of my mind, I wondered if she’d put us at risk again. I’m ashamed by how my self-preservation instincts calculated the risk so coldly.
What about Katrina?
I looked back at her collapsed form a half-dozen steps away. My breath stopped. Her left leg had twisted behind her to make a forty-five degree angle with her opposite hip. Her shoulder was visibly dislocated, and not the one that had already been damaged. In other words, she was fucked.
All because of me.
No.
I scrambled to my feet, carefully avoiding the flailing arms and legs of the crucified aliens, and rushed to her side.
“Wake the fuck up!” I shouted, no longer caring about the noise. Our cover, or whatever measure of cover we’d had, was already blown.
Katrina was conscious, though. In fact, her eyes were wide open and staring down the row of corpses behind me. “Here…” she whispered. Her jaw dropped with an audible creak. She started gasping repeatedly. She didn’t seem to notice her broken leg at all, even though it had fractured severely enough to bend her suit’s armor plating.
A chill shot up my spine to my neck so violently that it stung the cuts above my shoulders, then shot back down with greater intensity when her eyes rolled to the whites. Her head dropped back until she was staring at the sky and she started chanting, “Here…here…here…” over and over again. Like she was waiting for something. Or calling to it.
I sensed movement from the corner of my eye and jerked away, dragging Katrina’s exposed tibia along the dirt in the process.
It was Aziza. She was slowly gathering herself from our collision, but her reaction was still unsettling.
“Shit!” she exclaimed, looking behind me. She scrambled backward and tangled in the low-hanging tentacles of a pale-skinned bipedal with long, bristled hair. Its soupy blood dripped orange over her face and into her eyes. There was a sizzling sound as the acid burned her already-damaged cheeks, but she didn’t seem to notice it any more than Katrina noticed her compound fracture.
Knowing Aziza, whatever specter had worked her up enough to retreat was nothing to fool with. I picked up the pace.
I couldn’t avoid looking back, though.
Against my better judgment—not to mention the survival instincts within me that raged at my stubborn audacity—I turned and found myself staring into the eyes of evil incarnate.
It was one of the giant masked creatures with charcoal-black skin that I’d seen from the mountain. A Watchman. Its red mask had been carved into a crude representation of the demon clown’s grin. It dragged an axe through the dust with a blade longer than my torso, sending swirls of gray and orange in its wake while its head cocked slightly to the side. I saw black bile worming through its yellow teeth while bubbles of gray-white puss popped along its skin and quickly vanished. It raised its left arm—the one that wasn’t dragging the axe—and pointed one gnarled finger at me.
“You,” it said in perfect English. Not even Standard, but the language of my native land. My country.
My home.
“Here…here…here…” Katrina gasped in response.
The crucifixion victims that were still alive let out a simultaneous howl of terror. Come to think of it, I’m sure even the dead ones joined their chorus.
“Here…here…here,” Katrina chanted.
I couldn’t hear her over the howling creatures, but her mouth moved along in the same strangely hypnotic rhythm. I knew exactly what she was saying.
“Here…here…here…”
The red-masked behemoth growled and beckoned me forward, then used both arms to raise the axe over its shoulder for a strike.
“Run!” I yelled. Aziza was already moving and Katrina couldn’t move at all, though, so I guess it was more of a reflex than anything.
I leapt to my feet again, ignoring the pain in my stomach, and dragged Katrina through the row as the behemoth picked up steam. It started sprinting toward us, puffing deep, demonic growls with each thunderous step.
I couldn’t carry Katrina. Even under the best of circumstances, there was no way I could have lifted her by myself with all our gear and still achieved any measure of speed, and especially not enough to outrun a powerful creature like the masked demon with its mammoth axe slung back for carnage. But I couldn’t bring myself to drop her, either, even knowing it meant certain death for both of us. I hesitated for a split-second while I reconciled myself to the idea, but by then it was too late. My indecisiveness had made the decision for me.
“Come on, Katrina!” I screamed in her face, shaking her violently. “Wake up!”
Her eyes were still rolled to the whites. Her breath kept pushing out in the single, moaning exhalation of the word ‘here’ over and over again, speeding up along with the demon’s footsteps as it drew nearer.
I tried—futilely—to continue dragging her, but this time she actively resisted with both legs.
“What the hell are you doing?” I shouted.
Something struck me on the back of the neck and I rolled over top of Katrina, cursing as I fell face-first into the dust. I thought I was dead. In fact, for about the fifteenth time since I’d left the ship, I was sure of it. I could practically hear the axe-blade singing toward my head through the haze, but then Katrina contorted so forcefully that I was thrown clear of the strike and landed against the base of another pillar. I felt my ribs crack beneath the armor plating, but I was up and running within moments like nothing had happened.
The axe struck the earth where I’d been laying a moment earlier. The ground rippled outward as the blow landed, spreading dust and blood across the flatlands. I glanced back at Katrina and was relieved to see she was still alive, but the feeling was short-lived. The demon had already muscled its axe from the ground and was less than ten feet away from her. Rather than screaming or running though, she continued chanting, “Here...here…here…” as her eyes rolled slowly forward again and she regained some form of sentience.
“Katrina!” I yelled, desperate to get her attention before the behemoth struck.
But even in waking life, she didn’t seem all that concerned by the monster’s appearance. She stopped chanting and raised her head ever so slightly, but her expression didn’t change and she didn’t voice a protest of any kind.
It’s too late for her, I thought.
So I started running.
Tears formed in my eyes. I want to say it was from the noxious fumes of the corpse fields and the wind as it whipped against my eyeballs, but the truth of the matter is that I already felt terrible for knocking Katrina over to get at Aziza, even if my intentions had been pure. I don’t know what being possessed Katrina once her leg broke and her eyes rolled to the whites, and I don’t want to know, but it stands to reason that her proximity to death allowed the possession in the first place.
And yet I still had one last reason to be grateful she’d survived the trek through the mountains even as life drained from her body. It’s the lone consolation I have when I think back to how I left her at the feet of a crucified alien zombie and an axe-wielding demon-giant.
As awareness re-spawned in her eyes, Katrina struggled onto her broken leg, bracing herself against the pillar at her back and scooting forward until her crooked leg had enough room to avoid pressing against the surface.
I watched over my shoulder, still running, as the demon reared back and prepared to charge me again, and then my legs tangled in the corpse of a bipedal lizard that had slipped to the bottom of its crude cross. I went tumbling yet again.
Fucking
idiot, I cursed myself. You’re done now.
I scrambled to my feet quickly, falling twice among the bones and sinew of a Kalak corpse in the process, but the killing blow that I anticipated never arrived.
“What are you doing?” I heard Aziza screech faintly. “Get out of there!”
Rattled, I started moving again. She wasn’t talking to me, though.
The demon roared louder than the entire chorus of crucified aliens combined. I turned back to find out why.
Somehow, Katrina had unholstered her rifle and pointed it at the demon’s head.
“One move,” she warned. Even if the demon had understood English, she wouldn’t have needed to complete the threat. The rifle spoke for itself.
Despite the forest of bodies screaming and thrashing and trying to grab hold of me to prolong their miserable lives, I stopped in my tracks to watch the exchange between Katrina and the demon. I wanted to see if she would survive in case I had the chance to atone for abandoning her, but I also wanted to see whether or not the demon was susceptible to pulse rifles. If it was, that would change my whole outlook on the return journey to the Hummel. At the very least, it would give me a fighting chance until the ammunition ran out.
Slightly dazed by the hyper-surreality which always permeates life and death situations for me on the battlefield, I watched Katrina unload her pulse charges into the monster’s body, tearing it apart like it was no more formidable than a human or some cannon-fodder Kalak. The efficiency of the pulse rifle was incredible. The way the monster’s tar-black skin first folded then exploded, spraying its acid-blood everywhere, mesmerized me. The blood itself burned through the skin of the nearest crucifixion victims. All from a few pulse charges.
Now we’ve got something, I thought, quickly drawing Salib’s pulse rifle from the holster on my back. Maybe I had a shot at playing hero, after all.
In the end, though, Katrina’s defiant stand was her very last gasp. Streams of acidic gore rained over her bare skin as blast after blast tore through the demon’s body, dissolving her organs and exposing her veins to the gray-orange atmosphere.
“Kat!” Aziza screamed.
The crucified aliens suddenly ceased howling. The red-masked demon’s body—or what remained of it—crumpled to the ground with a wet squelching sound that coupled oddly with the pop and sizzle of Katrina’s skin as she fell to the earth beside it.
And then the whole field fell quiet. All eyes turned to the two shuddering corpses leaking and spraying what was left of their lives at the foot of two crucified giants from another universe.
Damn, I thought. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from them, even though the rational part of my brain begged me to run with my pulse rifle at the ready.
After a few tense moments, Aziza was the first to break the quiet stillness. She cried out and stumbled over to Katrina, tears bubbling over the angry infection that had overtaken most of her face.
“No!” she sobbed, dropping to her knees beside her fallen friend. She cradled Katrina’s head even as the demon’s acid-blood dripped over her hands and peeled away her skin. She didn’t seem to notice.
I watched them for a moment, then sensed movement all around me and shifted my attention. The eyes of the damned souls still nailed to the pillars all turned to me. They howled again in eerie dissonance that made my stomach roll, then I saw the Watchmen approaching through the rows of corpses. They came in all shapes and sizes and each carried a unique weapon, yet not one among them was any less terrifying than his brethren. They were Nightmare incarnate.
There wasn’t time to check on Aziza again. As far as I was concerned, the corpse fields had officially become an every-man-for-himself shit-show. I started running for the hills opposite the mountains. I couldn’t exactly see them since the pillars stretched seemingly forever, but I’d somehow kept my bearings enough during the struggle to know I was headed in the right direction. I may rely too heavily on my suit for calculating time and distance, but my internal compass has always been reliable. I figured as long as I moved away from Katrina and the demon corpse, I would eventually wind up someplace safer. I would settle for someplace else.
Something could kill you before you get there.
I doubted I could avoid running into at least one Watchman before reaching the hills, but I took heart knowing that Katrina had pulverized one of them with her pulse rifle. The fact that it had taken nearly all her ammunition to do it was beside the point.
While I was distracted by the masked demons, several impaled aliens snapped out with their legs, tentacles, or slender, drooping arms to scoop me up. I managed to slip away without being caught, but it grew exceedingly difficult to avoid their grasp the longer I ran between them.
“Here…here…here…” they chanted. All in dissonant English. My native tongue.
Thinking back, I still don’t quite believe I lived through this nightmare. These beings came from other galaxies, other universes, perhaps other dimensions altogether, and we were in the deepest, impossible corner of deep space. They were terrified, angry, confused, and wanted to kill me. There was no way they could have known Standard, let alone English, and yet I heard them as plainly as I heard anything on that planet.
‘Anything on that planet.’
It’s an important distinction. I have to remind myself of the context, because if I truly misheard or hallucinated their voices, I may have hallucinated Salib, Katrina, and Aziza, altogether. Maybe even Teemo and the clown demon, too, and I know they were real. They had to be.
Right?
Within ten minutes of running, my stomach started to burn. I heard the rapid, pounding footsteps of the masked Watchmen in pursuit, along with the howls and chants of the damned in a rhythmic, soul-crushing monotony. I caught flashes of movement between the rows of corpses as the fearsome predators stalked me, then suddenly one of them stood directly in my path. A Watchman, with a hood drawn over its face to cover its mask and horns. Not running. Standing completely still, in fact, with a scythe gripped in the black glove of its right hand. Breath steamed out from the shadow of its hood, and the sheer force of the billowing tendrils froze my heart.
Him, I thought, remembering the overwhelming dread the clown demon had evoked in me the first time around. Except I knew it couldn’t be him. The sensation was similar, but not exact. This creature served the clown, maybe, but that wasn’t the same as being the clown.
And the movement continued behind the rows.
My legs refused to stop moving. They must have known it wouldn’t do me any good.
“Here…here…here…”
The chanting increased in speed and intensity.
“Here…here…here…”
Hell’s empty, I thought, bringing the pulse rifle to bear as I ran. All the devils are…
“Here…here…here…”
The red-masked Watchmen closed in. They were worse up close. Taller and stronger than any living thing had a right to be. Gravity didn’t seem to affect them at all, unless it made them stronger somehow. I couldn’t imagine how heavy their weapons would be on the surface without a gravity-equalizing spacesuit to assist them.
“Here…here…here…”
Somewhere in the distance, a woman screamed at the top of her lungs. The sound lasted a full three or four seconds before she was abruptly silenced by a resounding thud that bulleted across the flatlands. As soon as the echo died down, I realized the scream had come from the dark storm-cloud which had formed behind the Watchman up ahead.
“Let her go!” I shouted, gripping the pulse rifle’s trigger.
I watched in horror as three red-masked demons pinned Aziza’s limp, semi-conscious body against two fresh pillars.
“Stop!” I screamed.
“Here…here…here…”
One of the crucified aliens whipped out a soggy tentacle that knocked me flat and the impact with the ground forced my finger against the trigger. I wasted four precious pulse charges before I recovered enough to pull free.
I was so irrationally angry when I got to my feet that I wasted three additional charges shooting the ugly bastard in the head. Then I realized there were other Watchmen behind me as well, all with hoods drawn over their red masks.
“Fucking great,” I said aloud.
There was no escape.
A storm-front thicker and more potent than any Oklahoma tornado descended over the corpse fields. The screams and chants of the damned souls had morphed from a repetitive monotony of “Here…here…here” into low, indecipherable growls punctuated by barking voices that spoke in a language a lot like ancient human tongues.
So this is it, I thought. This is how I die.
I can honestly say that of all the crazy, fucked-up deaths I’d feared as a fleet navigator in deep space, I never in my wildest dreams (or nightmares) imagined something even remotely resembling the grotesque theater I’d unwittingly stumbled upon.
The three Watchmen flanking my main adversary hoisted Aziza onto the pillars with ropes. One of them reared back and hammered a spike through her right hand so hard that it ripped her arm from her shoulder.
“Stop!” I pleaded.
Aziza’s body slumped now that the nail and ropes no longer supported the right side of her body. The red masks continued, undeterred. The next nail held true, and so did the one they put through her stomach and then the one they used to connect both feet to the stone.
The voices of the damned grew into a fever pitch, and then morphed into deep, garbled laughter.
I dropped to my knees with the pulse rifle still aimed at the vacant stare bearing down on me. The hooded demon retrieved its scythe from the ground and stomped briskly in my direction.
“Tscharia,” the damned souls whispered. Then they all fell again.
I was out of time. The hooded Watchman would reach me in seconds, and its scythe would rip the head from my shoulders so the red-masked demons could eat my brains and desecrate my corpse. The others just watched. Even the ones who’d crucified Aziza stood completely still with their bald heads titled sideways and the eternal grins of their horned clown-masks. Looking at them made me realize there was an empty pair of pillars right beside Aziza, and I didn’t need a name plate on either of them to know they’d marked one especially for me. How they’d managed to assemble it so quickly and also smuggle Aziza past me without drawing attention was beyond my understanding. Like a lot of things, I guess.
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