by Conner, Jack
The villagers harvested the nectar of several blooms and returned to the village, where Layanna and Avery broke out the rudimentary in-field science kits they’d brought with them, along with their samples of the Starfish tissue. Testing the nectar with conventional equipment availed nothing. As they’d suspected, though, the fluid, once Layanna had ingested it, enabled her to connect with the tissue even more strongly than it had in Ghenisa, the fluid being so much fresher. Disappointingly, however, the fluid was not powerful enough to do what she needed it to do.
“I must invade a psychic net designed to keep me out,” she said, sounding piqued. “I must have more potent nectar, and lots of it.”
“Can’t you just eat more?”
“It would take truck loads, and we don’t have truck loads. What’s more, I’m not even sure that would work.”
“Shit,” Hildra said, after Avery and Layanna had related their findings. “So we’ve come all this way for nothing?”
“Layanna and I believe that if we can venture into this ‘Gomingdon’, this Holy Place, we can take a sample of the vine’s originating point—seed, root, trunk, whatever. It will likely have a higher concentration of the energies needed to combat the Starfish tissue. What we have almost works, and at its source … It’s our best chance.”
Hildra snorted. “Good fuckin’ luck getting the locals to take you there. They don’t even say the name of the Holy Whatsit without looking like they’re about to puke.”
“Hildy’s right,” Janx said. “And I don’t fancy goin’ there on our own.”
“Neither do I,” Avery said honestly.
“There is no alternative,” Layanna said. “We have soldiers with us. They’ll have to protect us while we harvest the root.”
“What news is there of Private Xarris?” Avery asked. Janx and Hildra had been circulating among the locals while he and Layanna had worked on the fluid.
“They say he’s about to ‘Become’,” Hildra said.
“Become what?” Avery said, but in his mind’s eye he saw the man the priests of the Restoration had brought with them to the temple of the Sisters of Junica—the man who had killed himself, then risen to don a cloak of his own.
Hildra merely shrugged.
“I just thought of something,” Janx said. “Shit. Only priestesses can go into the Hall of the Chosen, right? Priestesses and the sick. And those poor bastards with the maggots are chosen, right—by what? Gotta be gods. That’s why only priestesses tend to ‘em. Because they’re holy. The sick ones.”
“Yes,” Avery said. “I think you’re probably right.”
“Weelll,” Janx said, “if the maggot-sick are holy, and we’re going to the Holy Place, what do you think we’re gonna find there?”
Avery received little sleep that night, and he woke up to bad news.
“The convoy was attacked,” Layanna told him over breakfast—beans and goat meat without spice, as the only spice available was infected. “Something killed all the soldiers along the road and burned their vehicles.”
“Damn,” said Hildra.
They and the soldiers with them had a cook-fire to themselves; for good or bad, the locals were giving them space. The soldiers had obviously already heard the news, and they listened in silence, staring into the flames.
“Lt. Mailos sent a runner to them,” Layanna elaborated. “When he came back, he said they were all dead.”
“The bird-men, right?” said Hildra. “The Nisaar. Gotta be.”
“That means they’re on the warpath again,” Janx said. “And we’re stranded.”
Avery tried not to think about the men and women he’d gotten to know over the last few days butchered like hogs on the road and burnt to a crisp. “We must leave quickly, then. Go north, into the Holy Place.”
“No roads go there,” Layanna agreed. “Having access to the vehicles wouldn’t change anything.” She took another bite of her meal, and Avery winced; alone of their party, she ate diseased food, a pustulant-looking meat dish, with over-long, purple beans that made a whining, electric noise every time she bit down. “When do we leave?”
“We don’t go anywhere till we get Xarris out of that godsdamned hall,” Lt. Mailos said, and his soldiers nodded. “He’s one of us, and I’m not leaving him here to fucking Become. Whatever that means.” His soldiers muttered darkly and shot the villagers unpleasant looks; for their part, the villagers had never stopped gazing at the outsiders with what Avery perceived now as open malevolence. The gratitude they’d shown at first had dissolved.
“I agree,” Avery said. “And, as the private’s doctor, I would consider it going against my oaths to leave him.”
“We might have to, Doc,” Janx said quietly. “Remember, the birdies are on the move.”
“And they’re working with Octung,” Layanna added.
Hildra watched Avery. “With her.”
“I don’t think ... I mean, she can’t be everywhere,” Avery said. “In any case, the lieutenant is right. We can’t abandon Private Xarris.”
“He’s coming with us,” Mailos said.
“If he’s infested with something, that might be a bad idea,” Layanna said. “I don’t mean to sound uncaring—”
“Never,” said Hildra.
“—but that is the situation.”
Mailos eyed her sternly. “We may be here because of you and your lot, miss, but this is my man we’re talking about.”
“We need to leave immediately,” she pressed.
“Then I guess we’d better see to Xarris.” Mailos climbed to his feet. To his soldiers, he said, “Let’s go get him out of that fucking hole.” Without another word, he marched up the hill toward the Hall of the Chosen, and his people followed, clutching their guns.
“You shouldn’t have provoked him,” Avery told Layanna.
“It couldn’t be helped. We must settle this issue one way or another, and now. We must leave. The Nisaar could show up at any moment, and we won’t be able to pick them off at long range this time.”
Avery watched nervously as the soldiers approached the long wooden structure, villagers throwing themselves between the outsiders and the Hall of the Chosen. Avery hurried over, not knowing what he could do but hoping a calming influence might prove helpful. Mailos shouted in the villagers’ own language, gesturing with his gun; his soldiers raised their weapons, too, not aiming at the villagers exactly, but making the threat clear. In response, villagers rushed to arm themselves with lances, bows, machetes and even a couple of rifles.
“Don’t do this,” Avery pleaded with Mailos. “They won’t let you in, don’t you see? Forcing the issue can only end badly.”
To make his point for him, priestesses appeared in the Hall’s main doorway and glowered at the soldiers over the heads of the shouting villagers. Intricate tribal tattoos covered every inch of the women’s flesh, or what could be seen of it. They wore clothes fashioned of broad leaves and flowers had been woven in their wiry hair, if they had hair. Some had horns or shells instead.
“Oh, they’ll let me in,” Mailos said. He sneered and shouted something else at the headman, who stood on the steps of the hall just below the woman who must be the high priestess, the same one who’d taken Xarris originally.
The headman only shouted back at Mailos, spittle spraying around his tusks, and the crowd surged with renewed fury against the soldiers, one of whom fired a burst into the air. The crowd drew back, but only a little. Looking over his shoulder, Avery saw Janx and the others arrive. Layanna’s eyes had gone hard, and she glanced from the soldiers to the villagers and back again.
“Don’t bring your other-self over,” Avery said. “We don’t want to kill all these people, and they will attack you if you reveal yourself.”
“Enough of them are infected that they would sustain me through a long session in that form,” Layanna said, and she sounded almost as if this appealed to her. She sounded hungry.
“Please don’t. There’s another way.” Quietly, h
e said, “Come with me.”
He slipped around the side of the hall, leaving the pandemonium at its entrance, and came on the rear door, smaller and unguarded. Whoever had been posted here had been drawn away by the impending violence out front.
“Janx, come with me. Layanna and Hildra, guard our backs.”
Not pausing to see if they obeyed, he pushed his way through the doorway, and Janx followed. Immediately they were surrounded by darkness and the smell of rot and strange chemicals, perhaps herbs and poultices. Avery had to give his eyes several moments to adjust; the Hall contained no windows. Only a few small candles on holders lit the interior, which seemed to be composed of a network of medium-sized rooms. Around Avery stretched rows of pallets on the floor with shapeless forms wrapped up in thin, hand-woven blankets.
“Does it smell as bad as it tastes?” Janx said, spitting.
The reek was cloying and nauseating, but Avery merely said, “Come.”
He moved down the aisle between pallets, checking each prostrate form. With the low light, it was hard to be sure, but each one looked gray and wan, eyes rolling, foam gathered at the corners of their mouths, which were all open and, as Avery was at last able to discern over the sounds of commotion from the front, all emitting a strange noise, one that did not sound human at all, somewhere between the hiss of radio static and the chitter of a cricket. It was the same noise the maggot-infested man had been making on the road, the one that had infested Xarris. The same noise the priests of the Restoration had made.
Avery stopped and stared at the sick ones, unnerved by the noise rising all around him, threatening to carry him with it into white mists of insanity.
“Fuck me,” Janx said, and at first Avery thought he meant the noise, but then the big man ducked down and pulled at something half concealed by the sheets. Avery started when he saw it. The man Janx crouched over was bound to the floor with ropes drawn tight. As Janx pulled the cover back, Avery saw that not only the man’s wrists were bound but his ankles as well. Each rope was secured to a stake driven deep into the floor.
Going faster now, Janx ripped off another sheet—another. All the victims of the strange plague were so bound.
“The priestesses aren’t worshipping them,” Avery realized. “They’re imprisoning them. Safeguarding the village.”
“Quick,” Janx said. “Let’s get out of here.”
“First Xarris. I have to be sure.”
Things were only getting louder and more violent to the front; another burst of gunfire had gone off, and as Avery and Janx searched through the dark, loathsome rooms, still another cracked. How long before the soldiers outright shot someone? Had they already? Thankfully all the holy women—wardens?—had been drawn to the scene out front, and Avery and Janx had unrestricted access to the victims. The stricken people writhed on the floor, as if excited by the sounds of violence, and clutched dumb fingers at Avery’s feet. As the people moved, small shapes wriggled beneath their flesh, and he realized each one must be completely infested by maggots.
“Here,” he said at last, and knelt over the body of Private Xarris. Like the others, the private was gray and clammy, and his flesh had a life of its own. And, like the others, that awful staticy chirrup trilled from his lips.
“Gods, Doc,” Janx said. “Think we should really let ‘im up?”
Cautiously, Avery reached out and undid one of the straps binding the Xarris’s wrists. Immediately the hand shot out toward Avery, fingers sprouting maggots. Janx jerked Avery away just in time, but he lost his balance and fell.
“That’s why they’re bound,” Janx said. “They’re dangerous.”
“I ... see that.” Sadly, Avery added, “He’s Become.” The story of the runaway farm boy had indeed ended, and not well.
“Think so?”
“He’s just like the others now. It’s like—like he’s joined some sort of hive mind. He’s no longer really himself, if you follow. No longer Xarris but simply a piece in some larger organism comprised of many bodies. The same must be true of the priests of the Restoration. But … if that’s true … that means the hive mind is a conscious mind. It has a purpose.”
“What do you mean?”
“The priests were trying to seize Layanna.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I don’t, either.” Avery sighed. “I think this is what they’re trying to fight, Janx—the Nisaar. You were right. What’s more, I would bet that that’s the cause of all the tribal warfare in the region—the uninfested tribes trying to wipe out the infested ones.”
Avery suddenly noticed that maggots shared the floor with him. Wriggling in the hundreds—thousands—out from their hosts on the surrounding pallets, they thrust their horrid little bodies over the wooden floor toward him, inch by inch getting closer to his exposed flesh. With a cry of terror, he shot to his feet and stamped the floor all about him, feeling his boots crush the life from dozens of the things at a time—but not enough. Never enough.
“We have to leave,” Janx said.
He grabbed Avery’s arm and hauled him away, absolving Avery of abandoning his patient by eliminating his choice in the matter. When they reached the rear door and burst out gasping, Hildra and Layanna stood over the body of a junior priestess—still breathing, Avery was glad to see, but unconscious, a wound on her scalp bleeding. On the other side of the building, another burst of gunfire cut the air.
“What did you find?” Layanna said.
“We have—have—to burn the Hall down,” Avery gasped.
“The villagers would kill us,” Hildra said.
“Doc is right,” Janx said. “Those things could get loose at any time, infest the whole area.”
He was about to say something else when suddenly shouts rang out. All heads snapped in the direction they’d come from, toward the village wall. A group of warriors on the parapet were shouting and pointing their weapons at something beyond the wall, while one man had gone down with a huge arrow protruding from his belly. Other arrows arced over the wall, some aflame.
“Nisaar,” Layanna said.
Gunfire split the air, too, and not from submachine guns of Mailos’s group; these were heavy-duty, mounted machine guns, the kind, Avery realized with a cold sinking in his gut, used by Octunggen storm troopers.
“Hurry,” he said. “No time to worry about burning down the hall. The Nisaar will do that for us. We have to find our armor, rejoin Mailos and get out of here before they can encircle the village.”
Coming around the Hall of the Chosen, they found the groups that had been engaged at the front breaking up, though the shamans still barred the soldiers’ way, all armed with lances aimed at the soldiers’ chests. Mailos’s people would have to kill the women to come through. Everyone else was rushing to the walls, to arms, or to hide their families. Mailos looked emboldened.
“We have to get out of here,” Avery told him. “The Nisaar are attacking, and they have backup. I wish we could protect the village, but there’s no way we can fight them with the weapons they have.”
“We’re not leaving without Xarris,” Mailos said, speaking through gritted teeth. His face was a tortured mask, and his eyes had become mad things. The white scar on his dark face seemed to throb.
“We have no choice,” Avery said, speaking slowly, calmly.
“You don’t, maybe. I do.”
“We went inside. They’re all diseased—gone—there’s no hope for Xarris now. We can—”
But Mailos had lost interest in Avery. Moving aggressively forward, he shoved his gun up against the high priestess’s head and barked something at her. Instead of obeying, she thrust her lance against Mailos’s abdomen—not penetrating, but making her point clear. The other shamans tightened their holds on their own weapons.
Mailos shouted. One of the soldiers, a female, stepped forward and struck a shaman on the side of the head with the butt of her weapon. The woman crumpled to the ground. Another shaman launched her lance, catching the female so
ldier full in the chest and piercing her through. Six inches of sharp wood jutted out her back, slick with blood. One of the soldiers shot the priestess through the head. Another priestess immediately skewered him. Mailos gasped as the head shaman’s lance shoved through him, his gun went off, and they both collapsed, dead or dying. After that it was all a bunch of shooting and sticking, until only three panting soldiers stood over the corpses of a dozen.
After making sure Mailos and the others were in fact dead, the surviving soldiers pushed into the interior of the hall.
“They’re lost,” Janx said. “Even if they get Xarris out without getting swarmed, Xarris’ll have his wrigglies in ‘em in no time.”
“Come’n,” Hildra said. “Let’s get our armor.”
Even as the group moved away from the Hall, shots sounded from the soldiers inside, followed by screams. As Avery rounded a bend, he looked back to see a single surviving soldier stumble out of the Hall and fall to her feet, raking her nails across her face where the maggots burrowed in.
Behind her, Private Xarris, freed by his mates, emerged from the Hall followed by several of his brood—no, many. Radio hissing noises issued from their open mouths.
“The Nisaar are already started,” Avery said, smelling smoke on the breeze. “This place needs to be burnt to the ground.”
He and the others threw their armor on as the clamor of battle intensified—shooting, whooping, the sound of fire eating into wood and flesh. Then, clad in armor, the four moved through the chaos toward the opposite side of the town from that which the fighting took place.
“If they are in league with Octunggen, the Nisaar will have sent troops to the rear to kill or capture anyone who tries to flee,” Layanna said. “Let me go first.”