by Dyrk Ashton
Zeke snorts. “I haven’t thought about that since we talked this morning. Doesn’t seem very important now. Was that really just this morning?”
“I know, right? Seems like weeks ago.”
“A lifetime.” His face becomes thoughtful.
Fi can tell he’s thinking about their “breakup.” “Sorry about that little tirade of mine. I am a train wreck, you know.”
“No, you’re--”
“Yeah, I am. Just ask my uncle.” Caught up in Fi’s tactic to help Zeke, Edgar bobs his head in agreement, but when she gives him a sidelong glance he shakes his head adamantly. “And it looks like you don’t have a choice, mister,” she continues. “You’re stuck with me, at least for awhile, whether you like it or not. No ‘break’ for you.”
Zeke smiles wanly.
“You know I’ve never asked. What’s your favorite classical music?”
“Oh... I don’t know. I don’t have a favorite, I guess.”
“While you think about it, I’ll tell you mine. Bach’s ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.’”
“Yeah? I like that too.”
“My mom used to play it on her flute to warm up for rehearsal. I’d just sit and listen and imagine I was bouncing along on fluffy clouds.” Fi feels the familiar constricting sense of loss at the memory of her mom, but swallows it down. No time for that.
She whistles the short bright notes of the song in perfect tone, then nudges Zeke, bobbing her eyebrows in encouragement.
He joins in, “da-da-da”ing along--and can picture what Fi described in the frolicking tune. The notes seem to chase each other up an Escher-esque staircase of clouds in a bright blue sky. He trampolines with them from step to step, and Fi’s face is the sun.
Edgar blinks, his eyes moist. In his odd long life he’s known the most exuberant joy and profound sorrow, the most extreme yins and yangs of human experience. Right now he feels them both in equal measure. His heart swells to bursting. This is magic.
Fi slows the tempo, leans close with those lovely lips of hers, and Zeke becomes lost in her beautiful green eyes. All the pain, shame and desperation of only moments ago drain away, driven by the warm glow of her face, like rays of a new dawn banishing the darkness and chill of night.
Fi gestures surreptitiously to her uncle. He gets the hint and averts his eyes, even covers Mol’s, who doesn’t like it much. But as she leans closer to Zeke, Edgar can’t help but look, and Mol peeks between his fingers.
Fi shuts her eyes, prompting Zeke to close his. She inches closer. He feels the heat of the sun between them. She slides her hands to his face, stops whistling, and as their lips are about to meet, poised at the infinite crux of longing, bliss, and destiny, he embraces her--with both arms.
Fi’s eyes fly open at his touch, accompanied by a sharp intake of breath. “You did it!”
Zeke flushes, confused. “What?” Fi’s song and proximity still resonate through him and it takes a moment for reality to seep back. “Oh...” He sees, and feels, that his arm is free of the wall. “OH! Holy fuck! How’d you do that?”
Fi gives him a peck on the lips, hops to her feet and offers a hand. He takes it and stands, gawking at his arm like he’s never seen one before. “Whatever you did, it worked!”
Fi smiles and shrugs, then turns away and puffs out her cheeks at Edgar, an expression that betrays she had no idea it would.
Men are easily distracted, and she had to do something to stave off Zeke’s panic. They couldn’t leave him like that, and without him they were all ‘fucked,’ just like Zeke said. She pats Mol on the head and steps further into the room, Mol at her heels. Still, it was a cheap trick, using her feminine wiles, and she can’t help feeling a little guilty. She still doesn’t know how she feels about him (who’s had time to consider feelings?), and she’d hate to have him think she was leading him on. But none of that’s important right now, so she kicks the thought down the stairs of her emotional root cellar and trips the door.
“How’d she do that?,” Zeke asks Edgar, baffled.
“First lesson, lad, don’t slip near solid objects until you’ve had extensive practice and instruction. And second,” Edgar pats him on the shoulder, “never underestimate the power of a woman.”
Zeke blushes in understanding.
“Well, what now?” Fi asks, fixing her ponytail and grimacing at the blood and grime on her scrubs.
“My better judgment says we do no more of that dreadful slipping,” Edgar replies, “but we must return to Peter. I’d recommend we remove ourselves to a safe distance on the grounds, then slip back and assess the situation from there. Agreed?”
“Do you think you can find it?” she asks Zeke. “And not get us stuck in another wall, or a tree, or something?”
Zeke runs his hand through his hair, then wipes it on his pants in disgust, then realizes his pants aren’t any better. He resigns himself to being filthy. “Yeah, I think so.”
“You think so, or you know so?”
He thinks about it.
“I mean,” she adds, “what would I have to do to distract you next time?”
Edgar clears his throat.
Zeke blushes again. He concentrates, and responds with more confidence. “I know so.”
“All right then,” says Edgar. “Off we go.” He heads for the nearest egress, the fallen window wall.
Fi follows, allowing herself some small satisfaction at making her stoic uncle uncomfortable. Serves him right, the secretive old bastard. Just wait ‘til we get out of this. He’s going to have some serious explaining to do. And so is Peter!
The four of them pick their way through the fallen remains of the back wall and upper floors laid out on the ground behind what’s left of the house.
The sky is as clear as can be and the moon starkly bright. Its blue-green light illuminates the landscape like a sunlit seabed under shallow Caribbean waves. The twinkling river below is smaller than on their world and follows a more winding path.
It’s uncomfortably warm. The only sounds the soft scratch of branches in the wind and rustle of dry leaves. Except there is no wind. The air is still as death. No trees either, just clear rolling landscape on both sides of the river.
Mol snuffs at the air.
“Do you smell that?” Fi asks.
“Smoke.” Zeke replies.
A fiery glow rims a debris strewn knoll to the north. As they approach, the odor becomes stronger and they hear the distant laconic wail of sirens, the kind intended to warn of approaching tornados or other pending disaster. They crest the knoll and halt. The entire skyline is burning, searingly bright, most intense where downtown Toledo should be.
“Dear Lord,” Edgar exclaims.
Ebony columns plume over the city, rimmed in silver by the light of the moon--but something else moves in and around the smoke. A living black cloud, swarming above the city, accompanied by a barely audible hum which rises and falls in pitch as it climbs, banks and dives of its own accord.
Perspiration erupts in beads on Zeke’s forehead.
Fi’s scalp tightens. “What is that?” she asks.
“I don’t--” Edgar begins to reply, but stops short at the sound of a tense growl forming in Mol’s throat and the sight of the hair rising on his back. Mol has his forepaws up on a masonry stone, peering at the valley below. They move forward to see what’s got him spooked.
The ground beyond the rubble, down the rolling hill to the river and spread wide to either side, appears to be tiled with long tapered blocks in shades of brown, green, black and gold, metallic and satin-sheened like massive alien scales. Sprouting from one end of each is a pair of short segmented stalks, and all have taller spiky sticks rising from the cracks between them.
Edgar touches Mol. “Shh...”
A set of the segmented stalks nearest them twitches and begins to wave in a circular motion. The “tile” does a pushup on four bony forelegs to gaze at them with enormous multi-lensed oval eyes.
Fi freezes. “What..
. is that?”
Edgar is at a loss.
“It looks like a grasshopper,” says Zeke.
The creature jerks its antennae forward then stands fully upright on skinny but powerful spiked back legs with back-bending knees. Nearly five and a half feet tall, it appears to be part biological, part synthetic, with an exoskeletoned thorax and abdomen, four jointed arms, saw-toothed claws of shining silver, and an ingrown helmet that gleams like golden chrome.
Fi gulps. “A really big grasshopper.”
“This is no natural orthopteran,” says Edgar. “I have never heard of such a creature. Except... but no...”
“Locusts from hell,” Zeke whispers.
“What?” Fi asks.
“Revelation. The Apocalypse.” Zeke gazes at the animate cloud above the burning city. “‘Out of the bottomless pit, an army of locusts will come upon the earth, and to them is given power.’ Or something like that.”
“Something like that,” says Edgar. “But these can be no such thing.”
“You sure?” Zeke asks.
It takes a moment for Edgar to answer. “Pretty sure.”
The standing locust tilts its weird insectile head and inspects them coldly. Animal, machine, both or neither, there’s a sinister intelligence in its eyes.
“Guys,” Fi says, “it doesn’t really matter, does it? Whatever it is, it doesn’t look friendly.”
The locust works its multiple mouth parts, then spreads its serrated mandible pincers and shrieks, sending black spittle flying--the shrill chirr of a monster cricket and aching creak of claws on slate.
Mol howls. Zeke, Edgar and Fi wince at the sound.
When it finally stops, Fi huffs, “I wish things would quit screaming at us!”
The locusts to either side of the one that shrieked push themselves up on their forelegs in unison. Behind them, the rows rise, wave after wave. Then, beginning at the river, they all stand up on their back legs in an undulant forward ripple. An army snapping to attention.
“Ohhh.” Zeke takes Fi and Edgar’s hands. “Ready?”
The lead locust spreads a double set of veined translucent wings at its back. Its fore-wings begin to vibrate. The noise they generate is like the wail of a cicada, but much louder and far more alarming. The furthermost row of locusts near the river hops into the air and flies forward, the rest of them rolling up ranks to follow. Combined with the call of the lead locust, the chitter, click and buzz of the swarm is deafening.
Edgar grasps Mol by the scruff. “Ready, lad.”
As the flying locusts get closer, those in the nearest row drop back to their forelegs, readying to spring.
“Are you?” Fi asks Zeke.
Zeke shifts a little this way, then that, squinting into nothing. “Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”
Edgar watches the swarm close in. “Zeke, my boy...”
Zeke closes his eyes and exhales slowly.
The flyers are almost to the locust front line, which screeches and launches in a unified sailing grasshopper leap.
Zeke takes a baby step back from the oncoming host. “Slip.”
* * *
Zeke opens his eyes and looks around. “Uh oh.”
There’s no house, only a bare rocky hilltop where they stand. And the river valley is an ocean as far as the eye can see. A metropolis of crystal towers rises majestically from its surface, gleaming in the moonlight--but shattering and toppling in glittering shards to splash in the waves under the assault of a hurricane of locusts. Flying glass cars plummet and crash, sleek watercraft founder and sink.
The light of the moon flickers and they hear a clicking, clacking, clattering whine. The sky is filled with locusts. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. The cicada wail rises. The swarm turns in on itself and dives straight for them.
Fi shouts, “Zeke!”
“Slip.”
* * *
A red rock landscape and they’re in the contracting eye of another locust storm. Edgar takes a gash to the arm, but keeps his grip on Zeke and Mol. No time to say slip, Zeke just does it.
More worlds, one after the other, all infested with locust vermin.
* * *
They trip into a muddy forest clearing, the surrounding trees the size of redwoods. Livestock pens and a coop lie in ruin. Bits of skin, fur and feathers of the animals they once contained litter the ground. A wildfire rages through the underbrush. The acrid smoke-filled air seethes with locusts. Several fight over the remains of an elk, crunching its bones and antlers like breadsticks in their mandible jaws. Others shred greenery and bark from the trees.
Out of the smoke and noise a locust barrels into Fi, Zeke and Edgar from behind, knocking them to the mud.
The creature crashes and skids, rights itself, casts about with its antennae, scratches at its hard ocular shells to clear the muck and pine needles.
Zeke swipes mud from his eyes. Fi coughs and shouts his name. He fumbles in the smoke, finds her hand and they help each other to their feet.
The locust whips around, locates them, and screeches, but it slides on the muddy slope as it tries to leap. Others have heard, however, and take up its cry.
“Inside!” Edgar scrambles toward them, pointing to their backs. “Get inside!”
Fi and Zeke turn and run without question, only then seeing a log cabin right where Peter’s great room would be. They shove through the broken door and by the light of an oil lamp see what’s left of what could be several people, including the bloody remnants of a child’s dress hanging from a gorging locust’s jaws. Fi chokes back a scream.
Zeke focuses intently on the next slip--as bad as it was in Peter’s home, they have to get back, and now. He can’t afford to make any more mistakes, for all their sakes.
The swarm is at Edgar’s back as his hand reaches the door jam. The locust inside drops the shredded clothing and lunges. Zeke grabs Edgar’s hand, pulls hard, and the locust shoots through empty space to slam headfirst into the wall.
* * *
In the corner of the great room near the desk, Zeke and Fi stumble backward, Zeke dragging Edgar as if out of thin air.
Cù Sìth’s roar, grunts of Kabir, bellowing Mahishas, the slice and sizzle of Gungnir. Piles of werewolf and wampyr bodies lie in a crimson flood, none left alive. There are more holes in the walls than when they slipped away, and a portion of the ceiling has collapsed. But they’re back. There’s no unbearable cry of Tengu-Andrealphus--and they see why. Peter has a hand around his throat.
The creature looks up at him with lifeless eyes and croaks in an old Slavic tongue, “Thank you.”
Peter says dispassionately, “Be at peace,” then drops his spear, jams his arm down The Peafowl’s throat and yanks out his guts, practically turning him inside out. The body crumbles and flashes to dust in his hands.
Fi blinks at the awful sight, then glances around and grabs Zeke’s arm. “Where’s Mol?!”
“Dear Lord.” Edgar scans the room and moans, stricken with the realization, “I lost Molossus.”
“We left him!” Fi sobs to Zeke.
Before his better judgment can prevail, he pulls away from her. “I’ll be right back.”
Edgar lunges, “No, lad!,” but he slips away.
“Edgar!” comes Peter’s resounding voice. He storms toward them, hops to the back of a Mahisha that blocks his path. Gripping it with his knees, he takes hold of its horns and twists, breaking its neck. It falls forward, burns and wafts away, leaving Peter to land on his feet without missing a step. He holds his hand out to his side as he comes, mumbles something, and Gungnir shoots from the floor to his hand in time to dispatch another Buffalo Demon.
He kicks bodies aside and glares at Edgar. “What in the name of all that is good are you doing?! Where is Zeke?”
“He’s gone back for Mol!” Fi answers.
“Gone where?!”
Edgar looks sheepish and ashamed.
“Slipping!” Peter roars.
“The worlds are swar
ming, milord,” Edgar warns.
Peter scowls, “Swarming?”
“With locusts,” Fi replies.
Peter’s features twist with skepticism and confusion. Quietly but vehemently he says, “I must end Mahishasura here, before he spreads like a virus.” He jabs a finger toward Edgar and Fi. “You get to the chamber, now.”
“Not without Zeke,” Fi protests.
“Fi, do not defy--”
“He saved us!” she cuts him off. “I’m not leaving without him!”
Peter’s eyes flare. He growls like an animal. “Zadkiel!” he summons over his shoulder, then steps menacingly toward Fi. She draws away, taken aback by his aggressive rage, but before he reaches her, he disappears.
Kabir disengages from the brawl with the Mahisha, leaving Cù Sìth to it, and makes haste to Edgar and Fi. Buffalo Demons give chase. Edgar snatches up his sword and shield, climbs a heap of bodies, hacks the mace arm off a Mahisha, then spins and removes its shaggy slobbering head.
* * *
“They’re back, but without the hound!” the wampyr policeman reports, observing the great room through the goggles. “But the boy disappeared again, then the guy with the spear. Maybe to go after him. He didn’t look happy about it.”
“The boy?” Kleron snatches the goggles and looks.
“How can that be?” Max chuckles. “Hee hee!”
“I suddenly find myself intrigued by this parvulus man-child. He may not be as irrelevant as I presumed.”
Max holds out a grotesque tri-fingered hand. “Master, may I?”
Kleron hands him the goggles. Max fumbles with them to find the best position over his multiple pairs of sunglasses. He finally gets them situated, holds still while he observes the pandemonium in the house, and giggles.
* * *
Coughing and waving his arms, Zeke emerges from the log cabin, which is now on fire. Locusts whiz through the smoke overhead, but the majority of the horde appears to have gone elsewhere.
He shouts, “Mol!” The crackle of brush fire and buzz of locusts are the only reply. He stumbles further into the clearing. “Molossus!”
He can’t tell from what direction or distance it comes, but there is a frantic bark, followed by a heartrending yelp.