by Conner, Jack
“Believe it or not, but we—that is, my people—have little presence there, across the sea.”
“There are more of the old races there,” Sheridan said quietly, and, reluctantly, attention turned to her.
“Wouldn’t that make her people more likely to have a presence there?” Janx said, indicating Layanna.
“I think they picked humans because we’re young,” Sheridan said. “Impressionable. Malleable. They picked us because we were easy. That’s why they never went over there. They didn’t need to.”
Hildra glowered at Layanna. “That true, blondie?” When Layanna didn’t answer, Hildra turned back to Sheridan. “Speak for yourself, bitch. Octung was the easy one, not the rest of us. You people were the gullible bastards.”
“We nearly seized the world by the throat,” Sheridan said, “and might yet.”
“I had you by the throat not long ago,” Janx said. “Keep squawkin’ and I might give it another go.”
It was a long ride to the city center, but eventually what Avery perceived as a palace made for alien giants loomed before them, and some distance beyond the palace reared the great black dome structure ... but up this close it was revealed as not just massive but mountainous. What was in there? The whole city was in its shadow, as if the city was simply fungal growth around a tree.
The elephant knelt before the palace steps and a myriad of Infested ushered Layanna off, barely waiting as the others scrambled to keep up. The Infested had built wooden ramps and human-sized steps to make mounting the grand staircase possible, or at least easier, for non-giants, and they showed Layanna to the newly erected walkway, escorting her in their slouching, bilious way toward the great doors above. Avery and the others hastened after, careful not to let themselves brush against the Infested as they went.
Avery gasped as he entered the great building and the massive environs of the inside became clear. He had been inside cathedrals and other grand structures which had made him feel tiny before, but this ... the walls seemed to stretch miles to either side, and the ceiling vanished into distance high above. The giants who had dwelt here must have felt like he had in those cathedrals. But if they had felt like ants here, he felt like bacteria.
It was all overgrown in vegetation and showed the ravages of time most clearly. Sections of the high-flung ceiling had caved in, admitting shafts of light into the gloom, illuminating the great heaps of the broken ceiling sections, or what must be them; it was impossible to tell, exactly, as they were overgrown with dirt, grass and trees, basking in sunlight from above. Grand columns, carved into terrifying if mostly overgrown shapes, towered about the chamber, holding up what was left of the ceiling—which, in fairness, was most of it. Some of the pillars had broken, though, and great cracks showed in the floor where their overgrown remains lay. Even the cracks had been filled in by earth and shrubbery. Rats and squirrels scampered about, then retreated when the Infested and their charges came close. Other, larger animals, stirred behind the trees. An unintended park had risen in the ruins. Well, not a park, really, Avery amended, noting the carcass of a deer whose throat had been torn out (by a tiger, perhaps?) and its belly gnawed upon—but an extension of the jungle.
The Infested led Layanna and her party to another staircase and showed her up the ramps and scaffolding that had been built here, too. The Infested had been busy during their time in the lost city, however long that had been, and Avery saw teams of them hauling away blocks of stone, clearing away shrubbery or erecting more scaffolding on other giant staircases here and there. They moved in unified shuffles, acting in concert with each other like marionettes on the same string.
Avery was huffing and puffing, with sweat soaking into his clothes by the time they reached the top of the staircase, and he could tell the others were winded, too, all except the Infested. They said nothing, nor did their expressions or body language betray sign of any individual thought—though they could act separately, perhaps in some measure independently, one gesturing forward while another took up the rear, one going forward to ensure the sturdiness of the ramps while others kept an eye on their charges. Avery wondered if they were controlled like Virine had controlled the glabren, just wound up like clockwork toys and left to run.
The Infested led the group down a massive hallway, around heaps of overgrown rubble, and through an equally grand doorway into what must have been the Throne Room or equivalent of the vanished race of giants. Many Infested gathered here, ranks of them, some holding rifles or submachine guns, grenades—Sheridan’s eyes lit up when she saw those—or machetes. The people and creatures bearing the weapons had probably been doing so in life, or at least before the maggots had taken them, proof of the conflict in the area, and Avery wondered if the knowledge of the host passed into the group consciousness when the host was absorbed, when he or she Became. It must be. Otherwise the Infested would not know how to erect scaffolding or use firearms; what did maggots need with such things?
There must have been hundreds of Infested in the room, silent guardians to their master, and their reek, the stench of rotting and rotten meat, was nauseating. Even as Avery watched, the arm of one man, who was gray and more dilapidated-looking than most of the others, actually fell off, to no sign of discomfort on the man’s part, and neither he nor anyone else bent to retrieve it, or even seemed to notice its falling. Flies buzzed about him, and others too, crawling on faces and oozing eyeballs.
The Throne Room was not arranged like the typical human version of the same chamber, with a dais along the wall opposite the doorway with a kingly seat upon it, but rather like a pentagram, with a raised portion in the center and giant-sized stairs leading up to it. Once more Avery and the others were forced up another set of ramps, though this one was shorter than the others, and onto the dais where, at some distant time in the past, the king or high priest or insectile queen or seed lord had made its lair, but where that place may once have been was now a bowl scooped out of the stump of the dais and filled with a sight that sent shivers down Avery’s back.
A great maggot the size of a truck squirmed in the bowl, literally in a bed of countless smaller maggots ... and many, many corpses. The reek that rose up from the bowl made Avery stagger back. One of the Infested shoved him forward, and Avery teetered on the brink, then drew back. For a moment, he panicked at the contact, then realized the thing had touched him only with the butt of its submachine gun. Relief flooded him.
The great maggot glistened and moved, however sluggishly, below them, and at the motion the Infested on the dais opened their mouths and emitted that awful radio-static hum. Avery gnashed his teeth against the sound.
“For fuck’s sake shut up!” Hildra cried, covering an ear with her one hand.
“Allow me,” said Layanna, and stared hard at the maggot overmind, if that’s what it was, perhaps communicating with it on some other level. Though denied the power to bring her other-self over, she seemingly could still use her psychic abilities. It must be so, for the Infested ceased their awful din.
“What’d you tell it?” Janx asked.
“I said to speak Ghenisan, if it could.”
It could. In wet, garbled voices, all of the nearest Infested said in unison, “We have waited your coming for a long time, O Waker. You are welcome to our home.”
“Waker?” Hildra repeated, wrinkling her nose.
“Why have you awaited me?” Layanna said.
“You must wake the Sleeper. You must retrieve the Key.”
“Shit on that,” Hildra said. “Ask it if we can go already.”
Looking around, Sheridan said, half under her voice, “I agree.”
Instead, Layanna asked the maggot, “Is that why you dispatched your emissaries to Ezzez—to find me?”
“The Waker must be found.”
“They must have been using the cult of the Restoration as a cover to search for this individual,” Avery said. “And to disguise what they truly are.”
“And to spread,” Janx said. �
�Remember, they were makin’ more of ‘em.”
“We came here for the nectar of the ghost flower,” Layanna told the maggot. “It’s a bloom that glows only at night. Can you help us find where it originates?”
“You will be taken to the Dome. You must awake the Sleeper. You must retrieve the Key.”
“It’s a broken fuckin’ record,” Hildra said. “Don’t bother.”
“What are you?” Layanna asked it.
“We are the Those Who Seek the Waker.”
Layanna frowned. “That’s your only purpose?”
“Yes, O Waker. To draw attention. To enlarge. To bring One Who Knows here. Long have we awaited your coming.”
“Why do you think I’m the Waker?”
“Only one with abilities beyond this world can wake the Sleeper. You are the first such one to arrive. You must retrieve the Key. You must wake the Sleeper.”
As if against her will, Layanna turned to Avery, and he could sense her unspoken solicitation of advice.
“If it will get us out of here,” he said, “agree to anything.”
She seemed to sense the wisdom in this. To the king maggot, she said, “Take us to the Dome.”
Several Infested stepped forward and surrounded her. Without touching her, they indicated she should return down the ramp. Layanna complied. Avery and the others tried to follow her, but the Infested blocked them off.
“My friends are coming, too,” Layanna informed the maggot lord, and Avery could hear the strain in her voice.
“You must wake the Sleeper,” spoke the voices of the Colony. “These others are not Wakers.”
“They are my friends and must go with me.”
“No.”
Avery swallowed. He met Layanna’s eyes over the backs of several Infested and saw how pale she looked, how weary.
“They must go with me,” Layanna tried again, “or I will not wake the Sleeper.”
There was a momentary flutter among the Infested in the Throne Room, a susurrus ruffle. In the end, the Infested on the dais turned more fully to confront her, while a smaller shape, slim and lithe, moved backward, slipping through their rear ranks.
“You WILL wake the Sleeper,” said the voices of the great maggot. “It is why you are here. It is your reason to be. These others go to Become. Rejoice for them.”
The Infested moved forward, herding Avery and the others toward the bowl filled with squirming maggots and corpses—and that one terrible, glistening mound. In that moment Avery realized the corpses had come from Infested that had outlived their usefulness, that had deteriorated too badly and whose remains had gone to feed the maggot lord, while the infesting maggots themselves, possibly joining others excreted by the titan, waited for new hosts.
“I don’t think so,” said Sheridan.
While the Infested had focused on Layanna, Sheridan had used their distraction to thread her way through their numbers until she found one, an undead soldier, carrying the weapons she desired. As Avery watched on, she relieved the man of his belt of grenades, removing one and tearing its pin out with her teeth, then lobbed it into the bowl. At the same time she wrested a submachine gun from an Infested lizard-thing.
“Duck!” she said.
Avery flung himself to the floor just as the grenade exploded, showering the area with shrapnel and minced maggot and corpse-flesh. The shrapnel sliced into the surrounding Infested, either disabling them or hurling them off the dais.
Cursing, Janx and Hildra rose from the floor, and Avery did likewise, wiping at the mess on his shirt in revulsion. Fortunately all the maggots had been cut to pieces.
Smoke rose from the crater where the great maggot had made its lair. All around, the Infested shrieked, tearing at each other and howling in their awful radio-static din, driven mad without their overmind to tell them what to do, without it to link them to the group mind.
“Come!” Sheridan said, strapping the belt of grenades about her waist. “Get your asses moving!”
She rushed past Layanna, down the ramps and onto the main floor, firing where necessary, clearing a path through the bewildered Infested with her gun but using her bullets conservatively. She gathered more clips of ammunition as she went and tossed guns in her wake for Avery and the others to scoop up.
“Gods,” Janx said, “but she is a terror.”
Without another word, they followed.
* * *
Before they’d even reached the hall leading to the stairway, the Infested were already beginning to recover, and by the time they reached the stairway itself, Infested were swarming up it toward them.
“How?” Hildra said. “Their master’s dead!”
“Later,” Avery said.
They ran. Avery’s knees creaked and blood rushed behind his ears. He felt that every step could be his last—he’d been exhausted before this even started—but he thought of Ani and pushed himself on.
They took one side hall, then another, the Infested shambling behind them. The corridors grew smaller, lower and tighter. The halls leading to the Throne Room, or whatever it had really been, were built in grand fashion to impress visitors with the power of the occupant of the dais, but these smaller halls were the corridors those who actually served in this institution had used to carry out their everyday business. They were not cleared of debris as the other portions of the building had been, and the group was forced to navigate around large sections of collapsed ceiling material and at times leap across rifts in the floor. Avery nearly fell in one such abyss, but Janx jerked him back.
The Infested swarmed behind them, gaining ground with every second. They did not tire, and those who drove them on (for someone must) did not care if the creatures were pushed to their breaking points—literally. Once, glancing over his shoulder, Avery saw the leg of one infested woman snap off. The woman fell, only to be trampled by those behind her. She did not seem to care. Neither did they.
Avery’s group rounded a bend. A wall of rubble stopped them. The ceiling of the chamber had collapsed eons ago and the whole of it was covered in grass, shrubs and spindly trees. It sloped awkwardly toward the sunlight above.
“Now what?” Janx said, checking the cylinder of his gun.
“We can reach the top,” Sheridan said, and began picking her way up the slope. Having little choice, the others followed, slipping and unsure on the spiky, uneven ground. Points of stone jutted from the earth in places, and small animals scurried out of their way.
At the top they saw that the distances had deceived them again; the ceiling was fully fifteen feet higher than the mound of rubble.
“Hell,” said Janx.
“Give me a boost,” Hildra told him.
Climbing on the big man’s shoulders, she grabbed some vines that spilled down from the jut of ceiling and hauled herself up and over the lip. Moments later she reappeared, having ripped up more of the vines, and threw their loose ends down. One at a time the members of the group crawled upward, and Hildra helped them over. Avery’s arms strained when it was his turn, but the sound of Infested entering the chamber behind hastened him on.
Now that they could stop, some of the Infested took aim with their weapons, and Avery nearly lost his hand-hold at the first crack of a rifle. When he didn’t die, he renewed his efforts. Janx and Sheridan rained down bullets on the enemy from above, but Avery didn’t bother turning to see if they struck anything, or if striking anything mattered. He was shaking by the time he reached the top, and both Sheridan and Layanna helped pull him up. Immediately they dragged the vines up so that the Infested couldn’t follow them, at least not instantly, then drew back from the hole. From it issued ever-louder sounds of rushing footsteps and radio static moans.
“The big one died,” said Hildra. “How ... ?”
“I think there are—others,” Avery panted, having grabbed his knees. “Sheridan and I—last night—we saw several centers—of activity, all grouped around—big buildings like this. Five of them, I think. There—might be four other
large maggots.”
“Balls,” said Hildra, but she glanced around, studying the city more closely. “Like that one?” She pointed with her hook toward another grand structure some miles away, and Avery nodded.
Janx was regarding Sheridan gravely, perhaps wary of her moving against them now that she was armed. Indeed, Avery noticed that Janx and Hildra had, very casually, aimed their guns in Sheridan’s general direction, and she had aimed hers toward Janx. Nobody pointed their weapon directly, but the threat was there just the same, and Avery hadn’t even been aware of it till now.
“Can we get off this roof?” Layanna said.
Avery walked to the edge and peered off to see another surface below, and another below that. “It’s arranged in tiers,” he said. “And every wall is covered in vines. I think we can manage.”
“We must find somewhere to hole up for the day,” Layanna said, as the group joined Avery at the edge. “Wait for night to see where the ghost flowers come from—somewhere in this city, we know that much.”
“No need,” Avery said, as Janx tugged at the vines’ roots, selecting the firmest ones. “I know where the ghost flowers come from.” He indicated the great black dome that rose from the center of the city.
“I guess you saw that last night also,” Layanna said.
“Yes.” He met her gaze, then glanced away.
Noise from the hole grew louder. It wouldn’t take the Infested long to realize they had only to use their bodies to form a pile that others could clamber up. Perhaps they’d already started.
Layanna was still staring at the structure. “Where the Key is ...”
“You must wake the Sleeper,” Hildra said. “Have any notion what that means?”
“No, and I’m not altogether sure the ... creature ... was rational.”
“It was rational,” Sheridan said, softly, and the others regarded her. Instead of elaborating, she said, “We’re wasting time.”
She swung the submachine gun behind her back, letting it dangle from its strap, touched the grenade belt to make sure it was still in place, grabbed a vine and lowered herself toward the next tier. As quickly as they could, the others followed. As he crawled down, hand over hand, Avery heard his stomach growl. He was weak and shaky, tired and sore. He hadn’t even had his morning coffee, let alone breakfast. What he wouldn’t give to brush his teeth! At least the others were speaking to him again.