by C Bilici
She stared at him, then sneered. “You’re such a fucking cock for using that against me!”
Fenton smiled. “As long as it works.”
Stacey yanked her arm out of his hand shaking her head. “Fine. But when I see you after I’m going to kick the ever loving shit out of you.”
“Believe me, I look forward to it.”
Stacey turned, stopped, and turning back gave him a hug, squeezing tight. Fenton grunted in pain and she unlocked her arms. “That’s for using my daddy issues against me.”
He smiled. “Just go while I still have some mobility left to fight.”
She turned and jogged down the street, not daring to look back. If she did, she knew wouldn’t be able to keep her promise.
She followed the curve of world with her eyes and wondered if the other sectors were coming to the rescue or whether they were under attack also. She came to a corner where she would have to deviate from the path she was on and stopped. She couldn’t resist and looked back.
He was already gone.
“You better fucking come back,” she yelled.
The hulking arch of the worm heaved in the distance. She turned with a shudder and ran on, each step making her stomach feel like an ever deepening mire of despair.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
FENTON RAN THROUGH streets awash with blood and viscera. Here and there were Umbra creatures, split off from the worm and roaming, collecting stragglers or pieces of what remained of them. No doubt they were taking their prizes back to the body to absorb and add to its bulk, like ants back to the nest with food. They were easily avoided or dealt with, the grateful living sprinting away from him when they saw his state. He didn’t much blame them. Apart from the Cardinals and select inner few, no one knew of his condition.
The destruction about him was terrible. Over the centuries the Wards had built, as any civilisation did, on the backs of their ancestors, the rudimentary buildings growing and being improved on over time. Now a great swathe had been cut through those ancient buildings and they, like their long dead first occupants, were gone. Fenton was too concerned with the ones still extant, though, to grieve for mere buildings.
He arrived near the house they’d occupied, the root of the worm still there, and jumped over rubble into another half crushed house diagonally opposite it. Running low, he stopped at a window frame that had been warped, the glass strewn around him. He lifted his head to peer over the jagged teeth of what remained, grimacing as his left shoulder brushed the wall.
The base of the worm was now huge, the building it had sprung from utterly destroyed. The thing must have been the diameter of an average house and, even as he watched, more of it flowed out and it seemed to grow wider yet.
He assessed the vicinity. It wasn’t guarded, but then it didn’t need to be. The number of faces and limbs along its length were the most effective security measure it could ask for.
He would only get one chance and even then there was no guarantee he would slow it, never mind stop it. He readied himself mentally and carefully picked the glass remnants from the window. Now safe for him to vault, he paused anyway. Gritting his teeth in self-loathing, he started to rise as the ground beneath him began to shake violently.
He ducked back down as the rumbling continued, knocking him into the wall and lancing pain through his arm once more. He wasn’t sure what was going on but expected a hidden limb of the worm, or perhaps a new one entirely, to sprout below him and swallow him whole.
The earthquake raged on unabated though, and when what was left of the floor didn’t split below him, he rose to look through the window once more and saw that the surge of the worm seemed to have stopped. Its limbs stretched out scanning in all directions for the source also.
It was just as clueless as he was.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
STACEY JOGGED THROUGH the ghost town-world in the direction that Fenton had pointed her in, keeping the worm to her back. She turned and looked every so often, but all she could see was the curve of the worms length and the swathe it had cut in the buildings. The optimist inside her told her that they might vanquish the beast and she could return.
It raged on and seemed to be bigger if anything.
After running some more, she stopped to look up, then back. She was almost out from under the mesh high above, and couldn’t discern any details on the alien giants hide. That was something. She continued her jog down a wider main road. After only a few steps, the ground shook with a deep bass rumble and she froze. It was like the shaking she’d felt when the worm had burst through the house, only far worse.
Kicking into a sprint from fear, she didn’t make it far as the quake heightened and she could no longer keep steady. She fell against a building for support and looked up and down the road while she waited for a crash of rock and wood. With the amount of shaking, she reasoned she had run into the beasts path and it would burst out below or near her, crushing her with debris, if she was lucky.
There was a loud crack, followed by a deep metallic boom that resonated through the very Enclave and her bones.
Silence.
She sat and waited, looked about in panic, but nothing happened. Apart from some fallen shingles and cracked windows, nothing was worse for wear. Whatever it was had sounded mechanical, but that didn’t reduce her trepidation. She eased up the side of the building.
When nothing came after her, she continued up the road.
With a screech of metal, Stacey tumbled to the ground as the ground shifted beneath her. Flat against the road, Stacey glanced up and down the way she’d come.
Nothing.
She jumped to her feet and turned toward her target. And stopped, unable to believe what she saw.
Not far from where she stood, the ground had split. A dark, widening line stretched as far as she could see. She followed the line upward to where it met the wide, circular base of the temple. Another line ran up all the way to the base of the pillar high above it.
A whole quarter section of the Enclave, like a section of an orange, had come free and was drifting away from the rest at speed.
Stacey ran to the edge, and stopped. It was too far to jump without risking serious injury, or risking falling into the pitch black space outside. That darkness was unlike anything she had ever seen. Compared to the Void, or the studded darkness of space, this was absolute night. The total absence of light or matter. A true void.
It was so dark she felt like she could almost reach out and touch it, almost seeming to be a solid wall. Staring into it messed with her vision and mind. What would happen to her if she fell into that infinite insanity, she wondered. She felt herself teetering forward as she stared into that endless forever, as if it were pulling at her.
Spinning about, she looked at the buildings to ground herself and re-found her balance, and saw the shifting shadows. She turned and looked at the rings of light above and below, the virtual suns that provided the Enclave with lighting via the Nexus, moving away.
“Fuck!”
Those lengthening shadows would soon merge with the darkness and she wouldn’t have to wonder about being lost in there any longer.
A second and more immediate terror joined the first.
The worm was trapped on the same section of Enclave and had turned from its assault on the Wards and was rushing toward the edge in an effort to escape.
Rushing toward her.
“Fuck!”
She turned and knew it was true what they said. Bad things really did happen in threes.
The three quarter sphere of the Enclave was slowly closing.
Soon she, along with the worm and anyone else alive on the slice, were going to be shut out from the Enclave completely.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
DESPINA LOOKED ON in disbelief as the section of the Enclave floated free. The other Cardinals had chosen to exercise that ancient security measure, a thing never before in the history of the Wards th
at had been contemplated, let alone actioned. She’d known they would. They danger was far too great and, in their position, she would have done the same. Things had seemed hopeless as the worm had borne down on them. Now they were truly doomed.
Disconnected from the Enclave, the transfer pads no longer worked and she was certain of their deaths. The worm had been upon them, about to strike their group, when the sector disengaged and took all of its attention. The momentary sense of relief was snatched away.
The wound in the skin of the Enclave was healing, and the worm bellowed its rage, turned about, and made a dash for the closest edge.
Her eyes widened in understanding.
“It means to escape to the Enclave.”
With its size and metamorphic abilities, Despina knew it would be able to do it.
“Everyone, quick, attack the beast! We need to stop it from escaping.”
Someone turned on her. “What do you expect us to do? We’re powerless.”
“He’s right. We can’t exactly slow it down with our dead bodies,” someone else said.
“If we let that monster escape to the Enclave it will destroy everything, kill everyone, and then the Earth will be lost!”
They stood around gawping awkwardly at her.
Despina spat a curse in Greek and ran toward the thing, a primal scream that had been building since she had seen the creature claim its first victim now unleashing.
Someone joined her. Then another. And another. Soon the whole crowd surged forward, all yelling their battle cries.
The worm paid them no heed as it rushed headlong to the edge, not bothering to bat them away, capture or kill them. Nothing they did slowed or altered its course as it sped away faster than they could run. The great coil of its body, that had curved out toward the temple, swept clean a huge plane of the landscape, scraping away Wards and buildings alike, rendering their remains in a smear of colour and debris.
It had vacated its entry point into the Enclave, and Despina watched its tail pull away. She slowed in frustration, despair written on her face. There was no stopping it. The worm would make it across.
She stopped and doubled over, panting and gasping for air.
“Look!” someone yelled.
Despina looked up to see a chain wrap around the body of the beast below its head. The chain cinched and cut into the things flesh. It bucked and writhed, and as it did it slowed.
The creature roared as the garrotte lit up. Flames tore along its length and through the worms neck. Steam, gore and smoke pissed into the air and street as the body whiplashed upward, throwing off its attacker, and then resumed its flight.
A figure flew high into the air, tumbling out of control. Multiple black chains erupted from the figure and again burst alight as they shredded the shield high above to pieces.
“Fenton…”
Several hooked chains worked to propel him ever faster away, and Despina couldn’t see his face, but his body, bare now the creature within him had erupted forth, was darkly veined.
The chains carved huge slices out of the webbing, and as they did those frenzied weapons seemed to grow, absorbing the Umbra. Large sections of he mesh fell to the ground in his wake.
Despina’s head snapped to her side as she heard a loud crack. A Ward stood there, hand raised, sigils glowing.
Baring her teeth, Despina let her own now free power flow. “Attack!”
The Wards surrounding her, at first stunned by Fenton’s appearance, surged forward with renewed force.
High above, Fenton — or whatever was now in control of his body — catapulted forward. His hands whipped out in front of him and and extended, splitting into multiple lengths and tearing a massive hole in the shield. As he fell, those lengths converged, as thick as his upper arms. Tendrils of fire streaked through the air toward the Umbra creature.
With another roar, those great fiery cables split the worm up the length of its tail. Flaming flesh cascaded outward as the still falling tips of the cables rushed down and disappeared into its bulk halfway along its length.
Hurt, angered, and diminished as it was, the worm did not stop. The front half of the thing ripped free of the dead, burning meat. Its mass now reduced, it rushed to the edge with renewed speed.
Whatever Fenton now was, Despina could on watch as he took chase at an inhuman rate.
Despina crossed herself. “God help us all.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
STACEY WATCHED IN renewed horror as the now smaller worm sped ever faster toward her, up the same main avenue that she was travelling. Behind it, something that she could only assume was Fenton chased after it. The thing inside must now be loose.
She wasn’t sure which sight was more frightening.
As he — it — ran, his arms thrashed about, his broken bones seemingly mended. It was flaying the worm to pieces from the rear with burning chains. Great hunks of dark, burning flesh flew about as it reduced the thing piece by piece.
He’d said it was strong, but just how powerful was that thing? From the flames it was clear to Stacey, it was somehow accessing the Nexus, and along with it Godfrey. But how had it bypassed the shield?
She knew it had to be in control. A person with half a brain would have known if they’d reduced the mass of the creature it would be able to speed up and allow it to possibly launch itself across the widening gap to the Enclave.
The worm, seeing it too now had a chance, put on speed.
“Come on, Fenton,” she muttered angrily. “Snap the fuck out of it!”
The Fenton-thing raised a hand sharply. The burning chain whipped violently through the air, embers gouging a line in the air, glowing brightly. Just as she thought it would deliver a devastating blow, the chains retraced.
What was it doing?
A wave of energy and a psychic sonic boom caused Stacey to stumble. She caught herself.
Fenton disappeared.
It had used the Nexus. Somehow, the thing had forced a hole into it.
Stacey was alone, facing the worm.
It saw her and roared, its split face opening wide in what looked like a grin.
Her stomach constricted with a gut-punch of fear.
She was left alone and powerless to face the monster.
The debilitating knot in her stomach melted into acid and flooded to fill her skin. Above the worm, travelling almost apace with it, a shockwave of fire consumed the shield.
Her fingers curled into her palms.
The corrosive fear in her flesh, ignited by the flies on high, turned to magma. Before she knew what she was doing, she was bearing down on the giant, a throat hemorrhaging roar to match the worms blazing a trail before her.
She had one shot. She could get to the worm as the shield failed.
Eyes the size of beach balls bubbled to the surface above the worms mouth. Human eyes.
Familiar human eyes.
Stacey bit her death cry short as her teeth clamped together in loathing. Her arms and legs, injected with the fuel of hate, pistoned. They were almost on one another, and there was no way one of them was leaving the free floating sector of the Enclave alive.
A thunderous crack split the air and that same wave of energy that preceded Fenton’s departure faltered her advance, only this time it was a tsunami.
Massive arms appeared in mid air just above and forward of Stacey. As they pushed forward, they saw bisected muscle, flesh and cloth, like a live, full colour cat scan. A leg thrust out, the massive corded tendons and bones rotten to the core.
Godfrey strode into reality, the Fenton creature riding on his head, a chain from one each of its arms embedded in the giant helm, burrowing into the avatars skull.
The worm reared in panic and tried to veer, but it was going too fast.
Stacey brought herself to a halt under Godfrey’s legs and, as he opened his great jaw to spew hellfire into the creatures maw, backed away.
The worm screamed and screeched. Its flesh already rendering, it attempt
ed to separate and escape, but the firestorm followed its every move.
With a grind of metal, Godfrey drew his massive sword, stepped in and hacked away, great gouts of fire still jetting from his jaws.
Stacey watched in horror as he hacked endlessly.
The creature atop Godfrey came into full view as he trampled and swung. There was little resemblance to Fenton. The creature had taken on an almost androgynous form, skin smooth and grey. In no way did his new visage soften its madness.
It was revelling in the carnage.
Stacey looked up in shock as a sizeable section of flaming, melting blackness slopped and rolled toward her through the conflagration. She ran until she was upon the darkness, the flames chasing back the shadows as the Enclave wound drew ever closed. The projectile rocked to a halt as she did.
It was the worms skull.
As Stacey watched, it cracked open like an egg, and birthed a figure.
The last of the shield fell around them in glowing embers.
Disfigured and asymmetrical in form, the figure limped toward her, hair hanging and flapping like necrotic loops of intestines and worms. One of its arms was overlarge with muscle and ended in a clawed club of a hand. One of its eyes, the eyes that she had recognised, hung on its cheek. The leprous cords that held the slimy, fire singed eye writhed and attempted to reel it in, but the body was too damaged.
“You look like shit, Tammy.”
The once-girl gave a rasping laugh. Her breasts, one of them an overinflated sac, its areola comprised of snapping worms, heaving as she hobbled. “I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you, Stacey.”
She had been the driver of the worm, its brain. She had killed all those Wards. Just like Paul, the Shadow Man had used her.
“He’s not here, is he?”
Tammy leered, mincing and relaxing her large mutated fist. A tic played at the corner of her mouth and good eye. “Of course not! Why would he get his hands dirty in the filth here?”