In the dream, he had been walking through the streets of a city. But the city could not be Punktown. Couldn’t be. Because a city with the feral spirit of Punktown, the pulsing life, the humming vitality – however polluted and diseased – surely could not be reduced to this carbonized ruin. This snuffed-out, three-dimensional shadow.
What buildings remained standing to either side of him (the rest crumpled to mountains of twisted rubble) were mere skeletons of girders. Hollow shells. Blackened husks. Vehicles still clotted the streets, but depending on their material were fused together or melted into barely recognizable shapes like puddles of candle wax. The sky was black with clouds of soot, and scattered fires still burned across the city’s jagged horizon, making the bellies of the clouds glow red.
If this was, in fact, Punktown, where were its people? The millions upon millions of Earth colonists, most of them by now having been born here, and where were the native Chooms? And the many other races that had settled here, in lesser numbers? The gray-skinned Kalians, the tendril-eyed Tikkihottos, the beetle-like Coleopteroids, the sightless Waiai, the scaled Torgessi and so many, many others? He saw no mutants. No clones. Not even their skeletons. No trace of any of them, at all. Unless...unless this black, glittering ash that covered the cracked pavement. Unless this obsidian sand that crunched under his soles.
Gusts of wind swept the dust up into his face occasionally, but he wore protective goggles over his eyes. Patryk’s, maybe. But it wasn’t the dust that caused him to wear them. It was something else. Something he was afraid to look upon with his naked eyes. As much as he dreaded this something, however, it was what he had come here to find.
Finally, signs of life. Voices carrying on the wind, like the ash. Muted, at first, muffled. But as he got closer and closer, they didn’t really become that much clearer, only louder. He could not make out what the owners of those many garbled voices were saying. Whatever it was, they were saying it all at once, their droning voices lifted in a monotonous chant.
Javier turned the corner of a street, and found himself looking down a particularly wide boulevard. It was filled with people from one charred shore to the other, thousands of people perhaps, yet all of them had their backs to him. It was just as well. From the looks of their ragged clothing and their burnt scalps, it was better that he could not see their faces. They looked like an army of the dead. Not only were their voices raised to the sky, but their arms as well. They seemed to have invited this annihilation, and praised it still.
He didn’t study them too long, however. He merely noted them peripherally, because there was something else that commanded his attention, froze him in his tracks as if he had been turned to stone by the sight of it. It was the something he had come here to find.
It loomed at the far end of the street, filling the end of it and then some. It was as tall as some of the intact buildings that flanked the broad avenue. Impossibly vast, impossibly alive.
This creature, this entity, would have soared even taller had it not been crouched on its hind legs, its arms resting on its knees as if it sat upon a throne. Its color was primarily gray, though its swollen belly lightened to a translucent milky white. Its hands and feet looked like the fleshless digits of a skeleton, but were webbed as if it might be an aquatic being, and this impression was furthered by its two great wings, which – large as they were – could not possibly support its bulk in flight. These appendages were tightly ribbed, resembling the dorsal fin of a sailfish, and thus might have been more fin than wing. In addition, the thing’s head evoked incalculable ocean depths, devoid of all light. Without eyes, without ears or any other features except a cluster of squirming tentacles where a face should have been, each tentacle ringed with silver and black stripes, each tentacle thick as a tree trunk. The “ocean” this creature was meant for, however, might have been the ether of another dimension. Or a black gulf that yawned between dimensions.
There was also something about the entity that suggested the mechanical, blended with the organic. Portions of the thing’s skeleton seemed to be external, like the cage of ribs above the swell of its belly, and the complex bones of its limbs, but these structures appeared machined rather than grown. There was a network of pipes snaking between the bones, wires like veins running in and out of the glossy skin, the neck thick with bundles of cables that communicated between head and body. Steam issued from crater-like ports in the elbow and knee joints. Heat that made the air about the entity ripple was vented from grilles – or were those gills? – in its mountainous form. And beneath the skin of the being’s domed head bulged the knotted convolutions of a brain (encephalon, Javier thought numbly) with no skull to contain or limit its growth, its emanations.
Was this the entity’s intended form? Its true appearance? For some reason, rather, it bespoke to Javier a kind of confusion of the flesh. A barely checked chaos. As though, in laboring to achieve its ultimate manifestation, the creature had consciously or unconsciously emulated features of its environment. The building it had gestated inside. And the city that surrounded that building.
Too mesmerized to feel terror or anything much but awe, Javier watched as several smaller forms came scuttling out of vents or gaps in the titan’s body, scurried across its surface, then burrowed back inside. From this distance he couldn’t tell if they were gray, human-like figures crawling on all fours, or huge insects like microscopic nanomites mutated into a much larger state. Or some combination of both.
Yet now his attention was diverted from the creature, back to the crowd of chanters gathered to pay it homage. He realized they had lowered their arms, and that they had all begun to turn in unison. Every one of them, turning to face him.
They had no eyes; those had been fused shut. But they grinned. And as if in a single rumbling voice, the congregation chanted one phrase much clearer than what they had uttered before.
“Kill me,” they all said at once. “Kill me.” Each time, louder. “KILL ME.” Until the sound became so thunderous, it didn’t seem to come from their mouths anymore. It seemed like a booming thought transmitted from the very brain of the colossus, instead.
***
“Javier? Hey.”
With a supreme effort, he tore his eyes away from the creature, turned his head to see Patryk standing there – no, sitting there – beside him. Sitting beside him in the front seat of the lime-green hovercar. Javier didn’t even remember bringing it to a stop in the parking lot, and lowering it to the pavement. The rain flowed down the windshield in sheets. Because it was dark, Patryk could bear to go without his shades, and his eyes peered at Javier with concern.
“Are you okay?”
Javier nodded slowly. After a few moments in which to calm the racing of his heart, he grunted, “Let’s go.”
The two of them, with Theo also lending a hand, unloaded Satin’s mechanical pony. Once on the ground, Satin was able to unfold its limbs and raise himself to a walking position. The pony’s yellow paint shone dully in the murk, but the other four had dressed entirely in black, Javier and Patryk even wearing black ski hats pulled down to their eyebrows.
Javier opened the trunk. In it lay the two suitcases. Rather than lift them out, he merely unlocked and raised their lids to give access to their contents.
Before coming here they had already broken the green clay into pieces, rolling them into soft worms. They had molded other chunks into spheres between their palms, like snowballs. Like grenades.
The explosive compound was a “smart material.” The primitive mind incorporated into its very substance was receptive to signals transmitted from a little device Javier carried in his pants pocket. The material could be programmed in any number of ways. Different chunks could be detonated individually, like grenades if thrown. Or, all of the material could be made to detonate at once.
Satin was too clumsy for stealthy work, and so he would remain with the hovercar to notify the others by hand phone should a forcer patrol car come nosing around. Also, he and his subma
chine gun were ready to cover the retreat of the others, should they come running with Blank People – or that whatever-it-was they had encountered in the basement – in pursuit.
The other four wore pouches with a shoulder strap, and into these they loaded the balls and worms of green clay. Then, they exchanged grim looks, and scattered into the wet darkness.
Barbie and Theo approached the right side, or B-Wing, of the structure together, each of the opinion they were watching over the other. They squeezed between two hedges, then Theo helped Barbie pull her awkward bulk over the low wall of the ground floor walkway, which corresponded with the two balconies above it. On the other side, they immediately hunkered down and reached into their pouches for the first worms of clay. Wheezing, Barbie pressed hers against the base of one of the black metal doors to the apartments. The dark windows spaced across the building made her nervous. Might a number of Blank People leap out at her at any moment? As she rose to move on a little bit, and plant another bit of explosive putty – Theo doing the same in the opposite direction – she eyed the nearest window more closely. The brows of several of her faces knotted in confusion. Had the window been barricaded? There was something pressed flush against the open frame. She took a step closer, and even started to reach out to touch the barricade but quickly withdrew her hand.
It was a slate-gray material, glossy as plastic, that blocked the window’s opening. A wall of living flesh.
Patryk had stolen around to the far side of the building: A-Wing. He, too, began flattening worms of clay against the base of Steward Gardens. He, too, looked up and realized that every open window was blocked by gray flesh. He shuddered, but kept up with his task. This was the thing that had nearly blinded him. The thing they had come here to kill.
Javier had moved to the front of Steward Gardens. He had just positioned a worm of clay against the foundation of the building when his hand phone beeped. He brought it close to his face. “Yeah?” he hissed.
It was Barbie, whispering in blended voices. “Guys, the thing’s gotten huge. It’s pushed up against all the windows. It’s ready to bust out of this place.”
Javier studied the windows across the front of the building, noted the way the city’s distant lights glistened on the wet dark skin that filled them. “I see it. Looks like we can forget about going inside to plant the rest of the stuff. Just keep moving around the perimeter. Boys, you got that? Do not attempt to go inside.”
A pause, and then Patryk joined in the conversation. “Got it.”
“If you say so,” Theo added.
Javier pocketed the hand phone and scurried to the next position. The numbered black doors had made him nervous, before. He had expected one or more of them to fly open and reveal – what? – standing there. But now he knew there was only more of that gray flesh bulging behind them.
He came to the edge of B-Wing’s front, and looked over at the smaller section of the complex that connected the two wings and contained the lobby.
He saw the front doors. He saw they stood open. And he saw there was no glossy gray flesh filling the space. The threshold was black; empty. It gave access to the building’s interior.
Javier had unconsciously risen from his crouch. He began walking toward the front doors, oblivious to the rain that smashed and soaked him. From his pouch, he extracted a round ball, which he held ready in his right fist. From his pants pocket, his left hand withdrew the remote device. His thumb poised itself over the key that he had programmed for the arming of individual grenades. He pointed the device at the ball in his fist so as to link them. And kept approaching those gaping front doors.
Once, he had confessed to Mira that as a Folger Street Snarler he had torched cars and abandoned warehouses for a cut of the insurance money. He had always made certain there was no one inside those warehouses, not even a single squatter. So he had done this sort of thing before. But not with this level of equipment, and not with the intent to kill. His heart hammered. He could not calm it this time.
Just paces from the open front doors now, but still he could not see inside. Javier slipped away the remote to trade it for the hand phone. “People,” he said into it. “Where are you at?”
“Almost done,” Patryk reported.
“Me, too,” said Barbie.
“I still got some left,” said Theo.
“Just leave the bags with what you have left against the building, and get back to the car,” Javier told them. “I’ll meet you in a minute.”
“Where are you now?” Barbie asked.
“Just go,” he commanded.
He switched back the phone for the remote, and then Javier walked the rest of the way to the front doors.
He stood at the very threshold, expecting some trick, some booby-trap to be triggered. This close and he still couldn’t see anything at all within the building. He might as well have been looking into the vastness of outer space. Stupid; he had not thought to bring flashlights for them, maybe too afraid that their beams would be seen by cars moving along Beaumonde Street. And just as he thought this, a light came on in the lobby before him. A single, distant and weak emergency light had stuttered into life. Startled, Javier very nearly pressed the button on the remote that would give the grenade a three-second delay for throwing. He took one step inside.
Another step, and he realized that the light was buried like a fly inside amber. The light shone through a translucent wall of flesh; he couldn’t yet tell how thick. The flesh formed a tunnel through the lobby, seemed to have vaguely ribbed sides and a curved or arched ceiling. Javier grew warier still, fearing that this living chute would abruptly contract, squeeze down to crush and eject him. Or swallow and digest him. But he took another creeping step.
On his fourth step, he saw a figure detach itself from the gloom ahead of him. A figure that became a silhouette against the weak, imprisoned light. Javier halted his advance as their two bodies regarded each other.
“Javier,” said the figure, so small that it might have been a child. But he knew better than that. He recognized her outline, her proportions, even though her head seemed strangely smooth and hairless.
“Mira!” Javier said. The grenade of his heart had been armed. He almost lunged forward right then and there, to grab her up in his arms and run with her out of this place. He almost burst into tears. She was alive! That monster in the cellar had captured but not killed her, and now she had found her way out! She had been waiting for him, waiting for him to return and take her away from here.
“Javier,” she said again, and this time even though he recognized her voice, he realized he was not hearing it with his ears. It was bypassing his ears to go directly to his brain. But she could do that, right? She had her gifts, didn’t she? “Don’t come any closer,” the voice in his mind continued. “I don’t want you to see me.”
“Mira...I got to get you out of here!”
“I can’t leave, Javier.”
She took a few stiff, waddling steps toward him to lessen the space between them just a little. He saw that she held something in one hand. She was dragging a length of rope or cable. He grasped that it was secured to her. She was bound. Still a prisoner.
No, not bound. It tethered her, yes, but now Javier understood the rest. He understood because he saw Mira’s silhouetted flesh glisten around the edges as it moved against the pallid light. The light glistened on the silver and black striped cord, too, though he still couldn’t tell if it were attached to her front, like an umbilicus, or her back. For a moment, because it was uneven and distorted by the ribbed walls of the flesh chamber, a little of the light had slid around the side of her face. It was dark in here, yes, so it might only have been an illusion that she had no face. Might have been, but he doubted it.
“You son of a bitch,” Javier said, shaking his head slowly from side to side. His tightening fingers made indentations in the clay he held. It began to mimic the lines in his palm, like imitation flesh patterning itself intimately after his own. “You son o
f a bitch...”
The familiar outline came to a stop. “It’s me, Javier. He took me. He’s taken others, too. He swallowed his own mother.”
“You’re one of those things!” Javier shouted. “Like the Blank People!”
“You want to destroy me. Good. You have to destroy me, Javier. You have to set us free. Even he wants to die now.”
“Who are you talking about?”
“The Outsider. He swallowed his mother. He swallowed her fear and it hurts him. He’s confused. He’s...lost. He wants it all to end, Javier.”
“This is a trick.”
“You must do what you came to do. I didn’t come to stop you. I only came to say goodbye.”
It was Mira. It was a trick, yes. A forgery. But it was still Mira at the same time. He knew it. He just didn’t want to believe it. And yet, he was also desperate to believe it.
“I’m sorry I didn’t save you,” he croaked. Tears had started from his eyes.
“You can save me now. Please hurry. Part of him wants to die. Part of him wants to stop hurting. But part of him wants to destroy. Destroy everything. And that part is growing. Soon, that’s all of him that will be left.”
The outline extended both its short arms, like a child asking for a hug. A lover asking for a parting embrace. But Javier knew, without her voice in his mind even having to tell him, what she really wanted him to do.
He closed the distance between them. As he came, he thumbed the pouch’s strap off his shoulder. He got just close enough to pass the pouch of explosives into her waiting hands. He did not want to brush her imitation flesh. He did not want to see her face any more clearly. He quickly backed off once she had folded the pouch against her chest.
“Thank you, Javier. You have to go now. Please hurry.”
“I’m sorry, Mira,” he said, backing off further for the doorway behind him. The night and the rain.
“Don’t be sorry. It will be okay now.”
Deadstock: A Punktown Novel Page 29