by Tim Lebbon
Briefly wondering if I was about to do something awful and unforgivable, I pulled the trigger.
The pad struck the demon in the chest and blew straight through, punching a hole the size of a dinner plate. It took out the side of the powerboat as well. There was a huge splash in the mud twenty yards away and the air turned red, blood misting on the steady breeze and settling on the faces of those watching. Clots of flesh fell from the demon and pattered lightly around its feet. It looked down at its chest. For a second I thought it was going to come at me again, uninjured, hardly even inconvenienced
blood, it bled, it was just like us
and then it toppled back over the smashed gunwale and disappeared into the mud.
“Holy shit,” someone said. I heard awe in the voice. “They bleed. They bleed.”
Our boat listed as tons of mud surged through the rupture in its side. The gunfire opened up again, and for a few seconds bullets whistled past our heads from every direction.
They’re shooting at me, I thought, I’ve destroyed some illusion, ruined something fundamental to their existence here, and they’re trying to kill me.
But then I realised that the weapons were aimed elsewhere. A demon danced on the bow of the boat as bullets struck it, before falling back and landing by my feet.
There were several other demons circling the scene above our heads, and a couple of them opened fire with their own weapons. Air flash-fried as the tazers struck downwards. One burst hit the bandstand we were moored against and danced across its timbers like St Elmo’s fire. A woman jerked and spat as the charge entered her and seemed to light her from the inside, exploding from her eyes, ears, mouth. The demons cackled and croaked and fired some more, some of their shots finding targets. But they were no match for the firepower arrayed against them. Fighters on the boat and all three bandstands had opened up against the demons, and within thirty seconds all but one had been brought down. Most of them hit the mud screeching, clicking for help, bleeding, wings trailing and tattered. And on each impact, a cheer went up from their intended prey.
The one remaining demon, wings pushing frantically, tail trailing like a streamer behind it, rose out of range of our weapons and stayed there, circling on warm currents. It was so high up that we could barely see it. A few bursts of gunfire still cracked out, but all aimed skyward. Down at our level calm had descended, as if none of the people could remember what they had been fighting for.
I wondered what was to come next.
“Dad,” Laura said, “she’s still alive!”
One side of the boat was submerged now, and its passengers were scrambling across to the bandstand, those already there helping them up. I looked at Chele. Her face was a ruin, both eyes shattered by the bullet, her nose exploded outward … and Laura was right! There, where her nose had been, bubbles appeared in the blood and ruined flesh. They enlarged, withdrew, grew again and popped. Her mouth was open and her tongue was moving like a wounded fish in its red-water cave.
“Jesus.” For a crazy second I was going to leave her in the boat. Grab Laura, get up onto the bandstand, take the pad-rifle with me and try to get us out of here, out of Hell, back to that place we called normal but which I thought would never be normal again. She was awfully wounded and even if she did survive, what would the future hold for her? A lifetime of operations, plastic surgery, engineered flesh replacing her own, artificial eyes giving her a sterile view of her world … and perhaps, eventually, a trip back here. To show her that things weren’t so bad after all.
I laughed out loud.
Laura frowned, and several people turned to look at me, some of them only half-way to escaping from the sinking boat. “What?” I said, smiling. Laughter must be something none of them heard very often. I smirked at Laura and she actually smiled back, even though she had no idea of the source of my mirth. Then I looked down at Chele and my good humour vanished.
She was my responsibility now. I knew that, and I hated it, and I hated myself for hating it.
“Help me with her,” I said. Laura grabbed her feet and I lifted her under the arms, holding the pad-rifle pressed between my arm and side. As we shuffled her towards the high side of the tilted boat her head tipped back. She coughed and cackled deep in her throat. She would choke on her own blood if we didn’t get her upright soon.
“Help us!” I said, and hands reached out.
We managed to haul the unconscious Chele up the sloping deck, over the gunwale and onto the bandstand. The boat drifted away seconds later, caught by the current now that no one was holding onto it anymore, and as it spun lazily towards the street we’d come up a few minutes before it tipped over. Mud gurgled in and sucked it down, down to whatever the depths held. Soon there was only a whirling pattern on the mud where the boat had been.
Seconds later even that vanished.
I stood on something wet and red and disgusting, wondering which piece of Black Teeth was beneath my feet. His heart, empty of pity? His mashed eyes, and all the terrors they had seen? Perhaps it was his hands, his fingers that had wrapped the wire around Laura’s wrists.
I ground my feet and smiled. I’d never, ever killed anyone before. The closest I’d come was thinking about killing myself.
“She’s still breathing, I think,” Laura said, kneeling next to Chele’s prone body. I looked, so helpless.
“What now?” someone asked. “What now, now that we’ve killed the demons? Are we free? Can we go?”
“Don’t be so stupid,” someone else answered.
“How long has this been happening?” I said, looking out over the mud and hefting the pad-rifle.
“What do you mean?”
“How long?”
“Forever.”
“Minutes…”
The answers were all wrong, though all the speakers obviously felt them to be right. I could sense no confusion there, no doubt.
And then I saw something that was nearer to home than anything I’d seen since escaping the coach with Chele: a disturbance in the mud, halfway between the bandstand and the ruined houses. At first I thought it was the mud river passing over a ditch or culvert, but I noticed that the hollow in the surface was moving, passing across the lake like the concave shadow of a cloud. It was a wave caused by something unseen, an outside influence in here.
And it was so close to home because I knew exactly what it was.
“There!” I said, pointing.
“What? Where? What?” They all spoke, and the tone of their voices all said the same thing.
“How can you accept all this so easily?” I asked, disgusted. The people looked at me, a couple of them frowning as if they’d forgotten something vital. I brought up the pad-rifle and glanced at Laura. She knew what was about to happen and ducked down, covering Chele’s wounded face with her own body. I felt so proud.
Still nobody answered my question, so I opened fire at nothing.
The third shot opened a window to reality.
There was a face revealed there, cringing away from the rupture as glass exploded around them. The woman looked out and the shock was rich and honest. The blood made it so, because she must have never expected to end that day bleeding. And it was as if she saw this scene as it really was for the first time. Before, behind the protective glass of the coach, it was played out for her; a holo clip, a flash of history or a keyhole onto the future. Now it was different. Now she could see and smell and sense the truth of things.
The rest of the coach was still invisible, but the wound in its side located it. I could imagine where it was, if not actually see it, so I swivelled a few degrees and fired again, blasting out a panel and revealing the fluid workings of its engine. I turned again — I saw the woman’s fear as, for a split second, she stared into the pad-rifle’s barrel — and fired twice more, smashing holes in the rear of the coach. They were sharp-edged rents in its skin, like shrapnel wounds bleeding reality. More faces stared out. One of them screamed; I could hear him, hear the pain and sh
ock as he tried to dig shattered glass from his throat. I knew that no one could help him because they were all strapped in. Hell … it was a very personal thing.
The last thing I could feel was regret or pity.
“We can get out,” I said, turning to Laura where she knelt beside Chele. “We can get on this thing and get out of here.” I looked around at the others, their gazes switching between me and the strange, stark holes in the false facade of their lives. “You’re an entertainment, you know that don’t you?” Even as I said it I knew it was untrue — they, and we, were far more than that — but my loyalty was clearly defined: my daughter. That was it, the be all and end all, the reason I’d come here in the first place. The fact that my visit had given me the opportunity to rescue her and actually bring her back to me … that was a stroke of luck and fortune I could not consider. Right then, getting out was my prime concern.
The idea that I could be destroying this for everyone didn’t cross my mind.
The woman in the coach stared at me, unable to move, awaiting her fate with sad, staring eyes. I turned away but still felt her gaze, accusing, confused.
“You do know,” I said again, and the people on the bandstand stirred as if an invisible breeze had raised their heckles. “You all remember what you were —”
“Of course we do!” a woman said. “And we know where we are, and why we’re here and … we’re not as stupid as you think. But …”
“But what?” I prompted.
“But the demons,” one of the men said. He was looking over my shoulder as he spoke, and I knew that that we were still a long, long way from the end of things.
I looked back at the coach. It was motionless and the sharp-edged rents I’d blown into reality danced with dark shapes. Struggling people joined them at first, but then they were totally blotted out as the shapes took control. New faces stared out … faces with antennae and visors reflecting nothing of our fear and confusion. And then the demons came out. Not only through the holes I had created with the pad-rifle, but also through new gaps in the background scene of houses and mud and mist. Trapdoors opened in the coach’s roof, shedding demons like confetti to the sky. They spiralled upwards, ten of them, fifteen, twenty, and others flowed into the mud, burrowing just below the surface, aiming for the bandstand and casting strong wakes behind them.
People started screaming. They’d brought down a few demons, yes, but the initial flush of success was smothered by the sight of dozens more vectoring in on us. Back came the fear. Back came the supernatural awe that these things inspired.
I aimed the pad rifle at the swimming shapes and fired into the mud. It exploded upward and outward as if a depth charge had blown, scattered wet filth to the breeze, raining down around us brown and black, and red where I’d hit one of the damned things. More came in, lines of bubbles the only evidence of their route now that they’d gone deeper.
“Open fire!” I shouted, looking around at the terrified people. Their guns aimed tentatively at the skies, the mud, and some of them fired a few rounds.
In their eyes, their stance, I saw only hopelessness.
The sky darkened as a dozen demons swept in. I shouted at Laura to drag Chele to the centre of the bandstand floor I wondered whether any tunes had ever been played here, any brass victory marches or string pleas for peace and I fired again. The gun thumped in my hands as it expelled a shot; until now it had been recoilless. The round hit a flying shape and turned black into a rain of red, but when I fired again there was a loud hiss of gas, a broken thunk from inside the rifle, and it died in my hands.
I spun the weapon around to use as a club. But I didn’t need it.
The demons didn’t come for me or Laura. Not even for mortally wounded Chele. It was as if we were invisible observers, and the slaughter was a show put on especially for us.
The clicking of their communications was a low, seismic tickle through my spine, standing my hair on end, sending pains through my teeth. Everything went hazy and dim, as if my sight was picking up atmospheric interference.
Mud-covered demons emerged and squelched up onto the bandstand. Others landed from the sky. They walked with the same gait, struck with the same deadly precision.
Not one of the people fired again before they died.
The demons lashed out with lengthened limbs, claws slashing through clothing and flesh, the air turning red, bodies spinning away as insides leaked out, other demons catching them and crushing their heads, paralysing with stun-guns, gutting with elongated claws protruding from where their elbows or knees should be, pushing them from one to another like cats playing with a mouse, slashing or stabbing, moving on, plucking out an eye, emptying a gun into a chest, moving on again. The bandstand floor was awash with human stuff. It ran over the edges and flowed away with the flood, spreading like a bruise on its surface, heavy bits sinking, lighter pieces — scalps and eyeballs and flayed skin — floating towards their final resting place.
There were screams and gasps and the air stank of blood and shit. I felt the greasiness of the slaughter coat my skin, tasted death.
It lasted for thirty seconds.
Everyone was dead but us. Most of the demons turned to leave, but two came our way. They were clicking and clacking quietly, a casual chat during a walk in the park. Their dark body-armour — grown or worn, I still couldn’t tell — was slick with blood. I despaired at the hopelessness of it all, the unfairness, and I selfishly turned away from Laura. No man should see his daughter die.
I looked out over the sea of mud and waited for the end.
“Dad!” Laura hissed. Her voice was so imploring I had to look.
The demons had nudged her to one side and were standing over Chele, kicking her with their clawed feet. When she did not respond or move one of them slung her easily over its shoulder. Blood dribbled from her wounds and added its own signature to her carrier’s armour.
I stepped towards them. There was nothing I could do, but it was an automatic reaction.
They stopped dead-still and the crackling of their communication increased in tempo and volume. It went for a gentle hush to a chaos of static, a white noise in which anything could have been said. The unencumbered demon brought up its stun-gun and aimed it at my face. Laura gasped. I looked at Chele’s back, trying to make out whether or not she was breathing, but I couldn’t tell.
The thing holding Chele dropped over the side of the bandstand and into the mud, skidding across the surface. It disappeared into the mists just as the second demon suddenly took flight, climbing until it was little more that a speck against the brightening sky.
“They left us,” Laura said. “We’re still alive. They left us alone. Why would they do that, Dad?”
I looked across at where the coach stood still and holed, and shook my head.
“I’m cold.” She was shivering. She may have been shivering for twenty minutes but I hadn’t noticed. I went to her and held her, careful not to touch the weeping wounds on her wrists as fresh tears fell onto my arms. They darkened the mud dried there.
“We should go,” I said, understanding none of this.
“Where have they taken her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was she dead? Dad, do you think ”
“I don’t know, honey. Let’s go.”
“Where?” Laura looked around, so frightened and vulnerable that I never wanted to let her go again.
“There.” I pointed at the coach. Its outline was becoming visible now, a haze around the holes like heat-haze on a blazing summer afternoon. “That’s the way out. Wherever we are, if there’s a doorway that’s it.”
We walked around the bandstand, avoiding the bodies and body parts, looking over the edge into the flowing mud. On the opposite side to where we’d landed we found a tatty old boat, barely capable of floating under its own weight. There was an oar there, though, and it pulled at its rope like an eager puppy.
Things were calming. I looked around, trying to
make out exactly what was changing, but I was trying to see something that wasn’t there rather than something that was. Perhaps the mud was a shade lighter, moving a touch slower. Or maybe the light had faded slightly, and all the wrongness was simply less visible now. The houses were still there, but the street we had paddled up was indistinct, an accidental break between buildings instead of an intentional roadway. The smells were diluted too: blood yes, but old and stale; shit and mud, faded and dry; the tang of the memory gunfire.
Slowly, now that the events were over and things had changed, the scene was shutting down.
“Into the boat.” I helped Laura over the handrail and held her hands as she lowered herself down. I followed, careful to spread my weight squarely, but the dinghy was surprisingly buoyant and steady. As I untied the mooring rope and pushed us out into the current, I found that we were being carried straight towards the prone coach. I didn’t even need to paddle.
The nearer we approached, the clearer the coach emerged, until by the time we nudged its side I couldn’t believe it had ever been invisible. Its surface was matt-black and smooth to the touch, all curves and arcs without a sharp angle in sight. We’d arrived directly beneath one of the windows shattered by my pad-rifle fire, and I stood in the dinghy and hoisted myself up to look inside.
The smells should have warned me, but by then I was exhausted and turned off to everything.
I could see the occupants of two seats through the smashed window. They were both blackened husks, still smoking from boiled eye sockets and violent red rents in their skins. Clothes were burnt off or melted into their flowing flesh. The one farthest from me seemed to be slipping slowly to the floor, scorched flesh allowing the body to pass fluidly beneath the restraining belt.
Something dripped.
And then I heard the frightened voices from further along the coach.
“Come on.” I warned Laura about the sight that awaited her and boosted her through the smashed window. She took her time getting in, trying to avoid the sharp glass teeth that sought her soft skin. She had enough wounds already. I followed her quickly, taking some cuts but not caring.