Ascendance

by John Birmingham

  The camera cut away to the interviewer, some anonymous haircut trying to look as though he wasn’t freaked the hell out by asking this girl about her trip to monster land.

  ‘And they just let you go?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Polly, then, ‘No. They didn’t just let me go. I had to promise the smaller one, the Threshrend, to make his video. In return they let us go.’

  ‘And let’s have a look again at some of that remarkable statement from the . . . er . . . spokesmonster for the Horde . . .’

  The screen filled with vision of Threshy and Guyuk standing in front of a line of Grymm. Threshy was telling the world there were worse things than the Grymm in the underworld and promising to protect any who submitted to She of the Horde. Guyuk shifted his massive bulk next to him with a clanking of armour and the rattle and clink of mail.

  ‘Yadda yadda yadda,’ Threshy said. ‘We’ve seen this bit already.’

  But Guyuk was entranced by his own appearance on the big screen.

  Ego-fucking-maniac, thought Compt’n ur Threshrend.

  ‘How would we secure this magick for the Horde?’ Guyuk asked, not really listening to the answer. He seemed hypnotised by himself up there behind the bar.

  ‘Oh, a couple of thousand years of intellectual evolution,’ Threshy muttered to himself in English. ‘A Reformation, an Enlightenment, some materials science, some physics, maybe a little less bathing in bloodwine, a little more respect for Threshy . . .’

  ‘What’s that you say, Superiorae?’

  ‘Oh we could catch some guys and totally eat their brains for sure, boss.’

  Polly was back explaining that she didn’t really expect the Horde to honour their word. She’d agreed to help them because she thought that at least she might be able to help a few of the other prisoners.

  ‘But they let them all go. And me,’ she said, shaking her head, obviously having trouble believing her luck.

  ‘So he can be trusted, this Lord Guyuk?’ the male voice asked off screen. ‘After the terrible things he’s done? The things he’s still doing.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But he kept his promise to me. Maybe he can be trusted but others can’t. The monsters have been fighting each other forever. Maybe he wants an alliance or something. I don’t know.’

  ‘Booyah!’ roared Threshy, punching the air and nearly jostling Guyuk’s drinking arm as he did so. Luckily the Grymm Lord’s drinking arm was as thick as a tree trunk and not easily jostled. None of the beer spilled over him.

  ‘It’s working,’ Threshy said. ‘They won’t believe this shit coming from you or me. But from pretty little Polly, who’s been all the way to Hell and back. Dude, the surrender monkeys will eat this shit with chocolate topping for breakfast.’

  Guyuk belched and wiped his lipless mouth. Chumley startled at the thunderous sound and nearly fainted away.

  ‘More beer, sir?’

  ‘Beer! Prork!’ the lord commander barked. The television was filled with images of Grymm Legions manoeuvring on the Clan’s training grounds; all shot on Polly Farrell’s phone cam.

  ‘I guarantee you, G-Man,’ Threshy said. ‘This won’t stop the cattle shooting back at us, but by the time the breakfast cable news shows are on, half of them will be crying like bitches, blaming themselves for everything and demanding their warlords stop fighting and sue for peace.’

  ‘If this comes to pass,’ said Guyuk, ‘you will have done well, Superiorae. It is the role of the Threshrendum to confuse and dispirit dar ienamic, but the scrolls have always deemed it to be a duty of little import and no honour. Perhaps that will change if Her Majesty be well pleased.’

  ‘Oh she’ll be pleased, jefe. You can bet your leathery ass on that. Especially with all the losers in the other sects still rolling up to get their asses kicked wholesale by the cows.’

  Guyuk came out of his reverie, almost as if he noticed where he was for the first time. The low roof, scarred by blade and bludgeon work. The pools of blood and random scatterings of body parts. The destroyed furnishing and the stone-still figures of the Sergeants and Lieutenants Grymm arranged about the wayside inn.

  ‘We must away soon, Superiorae. The Masters of the Ways will have prepared our transit by now.’

  ‘So we’re done with this guy?’ Threshy asked, jerking a claw over the bar at Chumley. As soon as Guyuk nodded, the Threshrend daemon launched himself across the pork scraps and the empty beer bucket. His roaring fang tracks closed around the human’s head and sheared off the upper third, allowing him to suck out the hot, quivering grey matter. Chumley didn’t even have time to scream.

  ‘Huh,’ said Threshy as he licked bloodwine and bone flecks from his slowing fang track. ‘I understand the derivatives market now.’

  Guyuk’s eyes slitted as he watched video of the Djinn being slaughtered by human forces in the demesne known as Nebr’skaa. Guyuk did not take his eyes from the screen. He could not know what the voiceover was saying, but he could read a battle clearly.

  ‘It is not necessary that you refer to them as cattle, Superiorae,’ the lord commander said in a low voice. ‘Your allegiance is not in doubt, and we defeat ourselves if we treat this foe as being unworthy of respect. They will teach us otherwise, as they have taught the Djinn, the Morphum and the other sects who sought them in the open field. We must know them as they know themselves, and so we call them as they are, Superiorae. Call them Men.’

  26

  It was only when the twin-bladed hybrid cleared the rooftop of the buildings surrounding the armoury that Dave could truly appreciate the extent of the disaster. The Chrysler Building, that art deco icon, was awash in flames, spilling a column of black smoke into the air. Muzzle flashes chased shadows in the alleys, barricaded by burning tyres and trash dumpsters. Tracers whipped down avenues, bouncing off the streets, adding more fuel to the burning inferno. Fires fanned out from the central focal point that was Times Square in a massive X pattern. Sown, according to the loadmaster who helped to seat them, by small teams of Sliveen leaping from rooftop to rooftop carrying fuel and fire. Sirens screamed out against the mayhem, trying to clear the streets in order to get to a place where they could do some good.

  Manhattan was disintegrating in fire and chaos. Across the water, on the mainland, he could make out individual eruptions of violence. The concussive thump of explosions. Bright, almost playful coloured lines of tracer reaching out across the night, and once, as they lifted clear of the skyline and banked around the northeast, a jet of some sort sweeping in low and dropping a load of bombs which detonated like a string of giant firecrackers. But this was a muted echo of the savagery unleashed on the island.

  Full dark lay over half of Manhattan where the power grid had failed, but it was a darkness shot through with fire and lightning. Dave thought he could hear a dull roar down there, not just the noise of the crowds, like the heaving moat of asylum seekers which surrounded the armoury but a much greater, deeper roar; the thunder of millions, all crying out in terror.

  ‘Shit,’ Zach breathed next to him, shaking Dave out of his gloomy reveries. It struck him that he had only heard the man curse once before. For a sailor, Zach Allen was careful with his cussing.

  They stood by the Osprey’s troop ramp, which was lowered enough for a crewman to man a large, old machine gun. A loadmaster stood near them, imploring them to step back a bit further from the edge. Dave figured he could probably survive the fall but that would not do his kids any good.

  Igor stood stony-faced beside his comrade, staring at the dark skies riven with a blood orange light. Dave had another moment of insight. Two right after each other. He was gonna have to buy a lotto ticket.

  ‘Igor,’ he spoke into the headsets each of them had been given.

  The commando didn’t seem to notice. Dave tapped his toe against Igor’s boot.

  ‘Hey. Igor.’

  The SEAL came back from wherever he’d been.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your, ah . . . your part
ner. Sammy? He’s nowhere nearby is he?’

  Igor levelled a stare on Dave that could have crushed coal into diamonds. There wasn’t much light in the cabin, and what there was came from small red globes, casting an eerie glow over the hard lines and deep shadows of Igor’s already intimidating face.

  ‘No,’ he answered at last. ‘West coast. San Diego.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ Dave said, searching for something to add. ‘Well, I’m sorry you’re here.’ That hardly seemed enough. ‘I’m sorry about everything,’ he added.

  Igor’s expression didn’t soften in any appreciable way, but he did sketch a brief shrug as he said, ‘If I wasn’t here I’d be somewhere else. Not at home.’

  Zach returned from talking with the loadmaster and sat down. Turbulence shook the plane, forcing him to hold onto the webbing that lined the inside of the fuselage. Igor and Dave took the seats across from him and Karen. The aircraft dipped one wing and the engine noise increased. Dave tried to catch a look out of the windows but the angles were all wrong and he found himself looking up at the sky. He couldn’t even see stars out there.

  ‘Sammy will be fine, buddy,’ Zach said into his own headset. ‘He can look after himself. And he’ll go to the base, first sign of trouble. He’ll be there already if anything is wrong.’

  ‘I know,’ Igor said, before clamming up and returning to the far away place from where Dave had fetched him back.

  Dave wondered then about Heath. He’d mentioned a few days ago that he had a daughter, but he hadn’t mentioned her again. Where was she? Where was her mother? Were there any other kids? And what price was Heath paying for not being with them, while Dave got to fuck off and chase after his family because . . . well, because he was Dave, and that was what he did. He fucked off and chased after his own interests. All the time. It was like his philosophy or something.

  They gained altitude quickly on the new heading, seemingly unencumbered by the weight of a vehicle strapped down in the middle of the hold. Olive green in colour and festooned with equipment, it looked like a jeep from an old war movie and sported two machine guns: one large, one small. Igor, a man prone to excitement at the presence of such things, had walked past it without a single glance. His work car, Dave supposed.

  The seating wasn’t comfortable; he could feel the vibration of the engines and the oversized propellers boring into his spine as his ears got ready to pop. This was nothing like the luxury jet they’d chartered out of Vegas. Man, he was missing that jet like he missed the ’90s. Chances of scoring a boutique beer and a nice steak on this flight? Less than zero. The aircrew and loadmaster busied themselves with their duties, not Dave’s comfort. Across the aisle, Karen was consuming energy bars one after another and stuffing loaded mags into an army tactical vest. She’d secured the katana in the fuselage webbing and busied herself with the more conventional weapons Colonel Gries had provided for her. A short, stubby assault rifle and a pistol. Hand grenades dangled from clips on her armoured vest and a thick black canvas belt. She also wore a fighting knife like the one Zach had offered Dave down in New Orleans, although if it ever came down to her needing that they were probably fucked, he thought.

  Dave carried no weapons besides Lucille, who seemed to be asleep next to him. She’d been singing her mad woman’s opera in New York, but it seemed she’d fallen quiet when she knew he was resolved to leave the city. Gries had offered him a pistol and some quick and dirty training, but Dave had declined, just as he had when Trinder had wanted him to carry a handgun into the Russian consulate.

  ‘You need to eat, Hooper,’ Karen reminded him, without looking up.

  She was right, even though he didn’t have much of an appetite. Rooting around in the small backpack full of high protein snacks Zach had rustled up for him, Dave figured he could at least start with something that didn’t taste like tree bark and dead monkey ass. He fetched out a couple of Atkins chocolate-orange bars, which he normally didn’t mind, but he soon found himself eating purely for the fuel, ignoring the nausea and acid reflux that made him want to gag as he occasionally took in the cataclysm below.

  It was worse flying over those parts of the island which still had power. He could see more. The worst of it were the vast swarms of humanity surging through the canyons of the city, reminding him of Brad Pitt’s zombie movie, which reminded him of how much fun he’d had in LA with Pitt and Boylan, and just how far he was from that one, bright shining moment in the madness of the last week. Looking down on the death of the greatest city in the human world, he didn’t think he’d be getting back to Brad or Jennifer or LA or any of that good shit any time soon. Looking down on the fall of New York his stomach clenched and twisted into knots which made it difficult to force down any sort of food.

  But still he ate. After finishing the Atkins bars he chewed on some other tasteless protein slab while below him the high towers burned and fell and rivers of bloodwine ran hot and free in the streets. What the hell was he doing? Wasn’t he needed down there?

  Compt’n had somehow turned New York into a gigantic blood pot in the space of a few hours. And Dave had made no fucking difference at all. The city was a roiling cauldron in which monsters ran free and hunted as they wished, but worse than that was the way people had turned on each other so quickly. Dave stared out of one of the small armour-glass windows, wincing against the painful flare of a massive explosion which atomised the top floors of a high-rise at the northern end of the city.

  ‘There is nothing to be seen out there,’ Karen said, not looking up from her weapon check. ‘We did what we could. Now you should eat and rest. Don’t torture yourself with what-ifs and what-might-have-beens. Prepare for the next battle.’

  Igor flicked a weary, almost contemptuous look across the cabin at her, but said nothing and did even less, withdrawing to that far away place of his. San Diego perhaps?

  Dave hadn’t seen mention of it on the board back at the armoury, but then there were plenty of places in annexe 3 which didn’t make the board. He unscrewed the cap from a bottle of water and washed down the mouthful of protein bar he’d been chewing. The engine noise had levelled off and they seemed to be set on a flight path now. He assumed the pilots would take them directly to Camden Harbor. It wasn’t like they needed an airfield to land. This thing could set down in any sort of open field, or even on a roadway.

  ‘How long ’til we get there?’ he asked nobody in particular.

  Zach answered.

  ‘They’re pushing it hard, and we won’t be slowing down to refuel. Won’t be much more than vapour in the tank when we get there. Call it an hour, depending on the prevailing winds. Or, you know, dragon attacks.’

  ‘Yeah, okay, I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘I did,’ Karen said, apparently finished with her equipment check. Like Dave, she was hydrating and protein-loading. She tapped the side of her head. ‘Monstr radar,’ she said. ‘I’ll know if one’s around. Drakon are such smug, superior bitches.’

  ‘So you’ll recognise one of your own?’ said Igor, not bothering to open his eyes.

  Karen gave him the finger, but casually. There was nothing behind it.

  ‘A dragon wouldn’t be able to help it,’ she said, as though delivering a little TED Talk. ‘She’d be pissing her britches she was so pleased with herself. So I’ll know. Don’t sweat it.’

  ‘I’m not sweating it,’ Zach said. ‘We’ve got AWACS cover all the way.’

  Dave dipped into the backpack for a Hooah Bar.

  Karen leaned back as best she could in the uncomfortable seating, closed her eyes, and commenced eating again.

  Nobody spoke for about fifteen minutes. Zach stared out into the dark. Dave forced himself to ingest as much protein as he could stomach, and then some. He didn’t need to shovel fuel into the furnace the way he had when his Marvel menopause came on, his superhero Change. Back in those first hours he’d been something akin to a nuclear-powered garbage disposal. Now? He wasn’t sure, but he’d heard about athletes who�
��d eat 15,000 to 20,000 calories a day during their most intense training periods. What was that? Ten big steaks with all the fixings? That sounded like something he could do.

  Karen finished the last of her protein bars and he thought she might sleep. She still had her eyes closed, as though meditating on each bite. Instead, she sipped at her water bottle, opened her eyes and spoke to him again, ignoring the SEALs.

  ‘The asterisks on the white board. Did you notice them?’

  Igor’s eyes were open now. He didn’t say anything, but Dave could see him concentrating to hear them over the engine noise.

  ‘I didn’t pay them much heed. You know I don’t understand most of the shit that goes on with these guys. The military. Ashbury’s outfit.’

  He assumed Emmeline was the boss of OSTP now Compt’n had been, well, eaten. She’d said as much, hadn’t she?

  ‘Yeah-yeah-yeah,’ Karen taunted him. ‘My name’s Dave and I’m just here to chew gum and kick ass.’ She dropped out of the cruel imitation. ‘You need to step it up, Hooper. Start paying attention and controlling what goes on around you instead of being controlled by these people. The asterisks on the board and in Ashbury’s printed reports marked locations where individuals, almost all of them civilians, are reported to have defeated incursions by UnderRealm hostiles.’

  ‘So what? People been fighting these things since they showed up. Beating them too. Sometimes.’

  ‘Yeah, with automatic weapons and high explosives,’ Karen said. ‘But if you’d taken the time to read the report, or even just asked Ashbury, you’d know there are five confirmed cases of what the military is calling individuals with “enhanced capabilities”. Five, including us. You were number one. I’m two. There’s some woman in Georgia, a sheriff in some delightfully bucolic shithole called Fester. Another guy in LA, a gang banger of some sort. Be cool to put them together and see what happens, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Champions?’ Dave ventured, feeling silly as soon he said the word. But it wasn’t his choice of word, was it? That’s what Scaroth had called him. It’s what the scrolls thought him to be. And that little Threshrend ass-wipe, of course. Compt’n. To Compt’n he wasn’t just a champion, he was the ur-Champion. The Dave.