by C. E. Martin
Then the lights went out.
***
For the stone soldiers, the sudden darkness was only the most minor of inconveniences. Infrared lights around the edges of the tactical visors immediately sprang to life, providing illumination for the tiny CCTV sensors built into the visors. The image from those mini-cameras was then flashed onto the tactical visors, providing instant night vision for the soldiers.
"Looks like the boss is busy!" Johnson declared, slicing a zombie in half from the top of its stump of a neck to its groin.
Flashes of blue-white now flickered in the darkness, like strobe lights as Phillips calmly moved from one reanimated to another—exploding them with his electrokinetic discharges.
"Victor!" Phillips yelled. "Go help Mark!"
"Yes, sir," Victor said, pushing a clawing, grabbing monster away from him. All around him, his fellow stone soldiers were ripping through the reanimated, removing arms and legs, slicing the creatures to bits with little apparent effort.
Victor took off running, headed toward a green flashing diamond in his field of view—Colonel Kenslir's marker on the tactical displays.
He'd only traveled a few dozen feet when he saw something off to the left, behind the long row of floor-to-ceiling shelves in the warehouse. A person. Moving cautiously.
Victor ducked through a gap in the shelves and jumped out in front of the skulking figure.
Kenji Nakayama recoiled in terror at the dark shape in front of him, reflexively raising his hands up to defend himself.
Victor froze, one fist reared back as the psychic's body flashed with a white silhouette and the word Nakayama scrolled out beside him.
"Sorry," Victor said, lowering his stone fist.
"Have you seen your Colonel?" Kenji said. He could barely see in the dim emergency lights of the warehouse. He wished he still had his flashlight from earlier, but he'd dropped it in the crash.
"C'mon, I'm headed his way now," Victor said. He extended a hand. "Victor Hornbeck, by the way. Janus."
Kenji fell into step beside the stone soldier, feeling much better having one of the stone men with him now.
The duo walked quickly through the warehouse, headed toward the far end. As the sounds of the combat with the reanimated ebbed behind them, they could make out new sounds of battle ahead.
Victor glanced at Kenji, then pulled his back up pistol from his leg holster. "Here," he said, offering it to the younger man.
"I'm good," Kenji said holding up a hand to reject the offer.
Victor shrugged and put the pistol away. Then he held a stone hand out, halting Kenji. "Hold up!" he whispered.
Victor eased around the corner of the warehouse shelves, his machine gun at the ready.
He was more than surprised to see the Colonel beating a small blonde woman.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Her name was Decklaa, and she saw herself as a god among mortals. She had lived among them for thousands of years. She had enjoyed their company and their worship. It was far better than the petty bickering of her own kind.
But the awe that men felt for her began to dwindle over time. Particularly as they became more powerful.
Science was her replacement in their hearts. Those that had worshipped her became emboldened by their discovery of the secret workings of the world. They felt they didn't need her as their science conquered the very elements.
At first, she had been intrigued by this non-magical means mankind had turned to. But it soon turned to disgust. Science was worse than the dogged devotion of the Creator's followers. At least they recognized her power and feared her.
The worshippers of science did not fear Decklaa. They felt they were her equal. Then, her superior. Then they stopped believing in her altogether.
And what good was it being as god without worshippers?
Decklaa secluded herself from the world of man, taking with her a select few who did still believe. They were her servants, her companions and even her lovers. But they were mortal. In time, their numbers dwindled and it became harder and harder to replace them.
At long last, Decklaa decided that she would once again live among mankind—but in secret. Many of her kind had done so before—partly for fear of persecution from the blossoming followers of Christianity, but partly for fear of science and its devoted zealots that worked to stamp out anything they could not understand or control.
Decklaa's return to the modern world was more than a little shocking. She was horrified to see what mankind had become. They were as petty as her kind had once been—corrupted by power, with little respect for themselves or nature.
Decklaa may have turned away from the Creator early in her long life, but she reveled in the world He had made. Her world. Being immortal she had not cared for salvation, but she had cared for her home. And mankind was ruining it—polluting it and stripping bare its natural wonders like thieves.
Eventually, Decklaa could not take it any longer. Mankind was a blight on the surface of the earth. He polluted and destroyed without any regard for his own world. And Decklaa simply could not have that. She was going to be here a very long time, after all.
So she had devised a plan. A plan to rid the world of mankind, once and for all. But now, she'd hit a slight snag—or rather, the snag had hit her.
The soldier all in black, who could not be seen with her third eye, who resisted all magic and mental abilities, also seemed an unstoppable horror. No matter what damage she did to him, the soldier recovered, and dealt it right back at her, twofold.
Decklaa could survive much—her kind were far more powerful than humanity. But that power was not unlimited. Eventually, the beating she was taking was going to take its toll. For the first time in many ages, and despite her bravado, Decklaa felt a twinge of fear.
And then the lights went out.
Humanity had feared the dark for many ages. Most of them anyway. But many had learned to use the dark. Decklaa and her kind had never worried about this—their ability to see without their eyes meant that darkness was at most an inconvenience. Ordinarily.
This soldier all in black was far more than an inconvenience. Her mortal eyes could not detect him, nor could her immortal senses detect him. This gave the soldier an incredible advantage. One he was using to literally beat the life out of her.
Eventually, the soldier had her weakened to the point she could barely fight back. That's when he emerged from the shadows and grabbed her by the neck. His grip was inhumanly strong and she was pinned in place.
The soldier continued to work her over, breaking her bones faster than she could repair them. It wouldn't be long now. Unless she could escape.
Her chance to do so came very unexpectedly—in the form of one of the soldier's gray men. One stepped from around a corner, momentarily distracting the soldier.
Immediately, she turned her body to liquid—splashing onto the floor of her warehouse. It was a painful transformation. Green light flared brightly where she poured through the soldier's fingers. She felt intense pain where the light flared—enough that she would have screamed. If she had a mouth.
With all of her concentration, she moved her liquid mass around the soldier's feet, then raced down a drain in the floor. As she did so, she felt the soldier trying to grab her—each hand plunged into her liquid mass glowing green and new pain filling her being.
Fighting past the pain, she flowed down the drain and away.
***
Atlas was wiping his knife clean when the lights came back on in the warehouse. His tactical goggles immediately switched back to normal viewing mode as he looked around at the carnage. Pieces of the undead, most still moving where they lay, were everywhere.
"We need some flamethrowers or something," Atlas said, shaking a piece of moldy flesh off his boot. The floor of the warehouse around them was a mix of blood, flesh and mold—a multi-colored paste of carnage.
"Good work, guys," Colonel Kenslir said. He, Victor and Kenji were walking back from the far end of the warehouse.
"Everything okay, boss?" Phillips asked.
"Girl got away," Kenslir said.
"Girl?" Phillips asked. "A girl is responsible for all this?"
"I'd guess she's actually an elemental."
"She turned to goo," Victor added. "Went right down the drain."
"So now what?" Atlas asked.
"Secure this biohazard, for one," Kenslir said. "Then we wait for her to resurface. Unless you have something, Mr. Nakayama?"
"This is all new to me," Kenji said, shrugging.
"You heard the man," Atlas said to his fellow stone soldiers. "Let's find some shovels or brooms, or some-"
The floor of the warehouse rumbled, almost like an earthquake. The cracking sound of concrete breaking filled the air. Three geysers of bloody fluid sprang up from drains set in the floor of the warehouse, spraying up almost ten feet, and coating the soldiers, Kenji, and the zombie remains in a mist.
Mark Kenslir looked at his arms and hands, glowing a faint green where the spray of fluid rained down on him.
"Oh, crap. Here we go again."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The jets of fluid spraying up, into the zombie end of the warehouse gushed only for a few seconds, then ended. But where they soaked the scattered remains of the zombies, the defeated undead began to move.
Flesh, bone and mold seemed to melt and pull together into one mass. It bubbled and flowed, like a gelatinous construct melting, played back in reverse. The flowing gore rapidly swelled in size, larger than a car, then larger than a bus. A huge, congealed mass of remains.
The stone soldiers began to back away.
"Uh, boss?" Chad Phillips asked. He and Kenslir had seen a lot in their years battling the supernatural, but this was something very new.
The mass of liquefied remains seemed to shrink slightly. It changed from a sickly mix of mostly red to pale white, tinged with streaks of green and yellow.
"Nakayama," Kenslir said quietly, keeping his eyes on the elemental reforming herself. "Get out of here."
Kenji nodded an affirmative, too stunned to talk. He turned and started to sprint away. He only made it two steps.
The mass of flesh and bone suddenly sprouted a long, tendril-like appendage. It shot out of the central mass like a whip—wrapping around Kenji's ankle and jerking him off his feet.
Kenji came down hard, onto his chest. He struck the concrete floor of the warehouse hard enough the wind was knocked from his lungs. Then he was jerked backwards, the tendril solidifying into a white, green and yellow tentacle.
Kenslir reacted quickly, slicing through the tentacle as thick as a man's leg with his Bowie knife. He grabbed Kenji by the shirt and threw him to Victor.
The mass of flesh now broke apart—more tentacles erupting outwards. It had become a mass of nothing but the sickly-white tentacles.
"Get him out of here!" Kenslir yelled.
The tentacles, some as thick as a man's body, snaked out and grabbed each of the stone soldiers—including Victor.
Kenslir again darted forward and grabbed a tentacle with his left hand—producing a bright green flare of light where his fingers met the white, fleshy appendage. With his other hand, he slashed again—slicing through the tentacle, but not severing it due to its girth.
The elemental immediately released its grip on Victor, and a shriek filled the air of the warehouse. The men quickly realized it was not just one shriek, though. It was the shriek of a hundred and one mouths, crying out in unison.
All up and down the lengths of the many tentacles, faces—eyeless human faces— had appeared, arranged like the suckers on an octopus.
Colonel Kenslir tried to dodge the huge tentacle he was clutching, but it was too fast. It doubled back on itself and struck him with terrific force, knocking him off his feet and sending him flying. He was sure he felt most of his ribs break upon impact.
The stone soldiers were firing their weapons now. The storm of lead bored into the tentacles, causing the ghastly tentacles faces to scream and gnash their teeth in rage.
Chad Phillips extended both his hands and unleashed a single bolt of electricity into the main mass of writhing tentacles. The electricity flowed into the nightmarish creature, charring its white flesh and making it spasm and tremble.
But even as flesh charred and burnt from the long, three-second stream of electricity, the monster merged two tentacles together, raised high overhead. Then it smashed the new, larger tentacle down on Phillips.
The electrokinetic stone soldier disappeared under the huge tentacle, driven down into the concrete floor of the warehouse—which exploded outwards as it was broken into pieces.
Another tentacle swept out—as thick as a man's body. The faces along its length snapped and hissed just before it struck Paul Briones—still firing his M60 into the main mass—exploding his stone body into hundreds of pieces.
"Retreat!" Colonel Kenslir yelled, charging back in. He ducked under another tentacle flailing for him. Without any eyes, the creature had to be relying on a sixth sense to see. Which meant he was invisible to the monster—unlike the stone soldiers. On the etheric plane, they all would glow as bright as the sun, charged with the mystic energy that kept them in their petrified state..
Victor Hornbeck was nearly to the exit now—following his orders to get Nakayama out. He felt something slam into his back, throwing him off his feet. As he tumbled forward, he threw Nakayama away from his body, hoping the psychic could survive the impact.
Kenji cartwheeled through the air, striking the pavement outside the warehouse. It was like being struck by a car, all over again. He felt his arm break and maybe some ribs. Then he was tumbling and rolling along the ground for several feet.
When he at last came to a rest, his head was throbbing and his vision was blurry. He pushed off from the ground, glad he had one arm still working. Despite the horrendous pain, he turned and tried to focus on the warehouse.
From the roof, metal and gravel exploded outwards, like a bomb had been detonated. A stone soldier was flung into the air—having been thrown through the roof of the building. Kenji watched as he arced through the air, then crashed down into another building—thrown several hundred feet by the horrendous, tentacled monster inside the warehouse.
The sounds of battle continued. Great crashing noises—the wails of the tentacle monster and the rattling fire of the stone soldiers' machineguns. It raged for what seemed like an eternity to Kenji, but which he knew must only have been a moment or two.
Then a new sound filled his ears.
It was a roaring, shrieking noise, coming from above. He looked up, wondering what this new sound was. Something bright flashed down from the night sky. It moved so fast Kenji wouldn't have even seen it had it not been for the bright fire coming from one end.
Then the warehouse exploded.
Kenji felt the heat from the blast as the roar of it filled his eardrums. A second later, the shockwave knocked him flat. His head struck the pavement, and he lost consciousness.
***
"Wake up!" someone was yelling. Then his face burned. He had been slapped.
Kenji forced his eyes to open, straining to see what was going on.
A nightmare figure was leaning over him—a man with one eye gone, and half the flesh on his head missing. What flesh remained was black and gray—burnt.
"Dammit, Nakayama! Wake up!" Mark Kenslir yelled again.
Kenji's eyes finally began following his instructions and he was able to focus. He was laying outside, looking up at Colonel Kenslir and a night sky. Red and orange light flickered from somewhere nearby.
That the Colonel could even talk was nothing short of miraculous. It looked as though most of the flesh on the left side of his body was gone—replaced by black and gray. The skin on the right side of his face was cut and scratched as well—gray streaks of petrification on a face singed by fire.
"What?" Kenji asked.
Kenslir sat him up, lifting him with a hand behind Kenji
's back. The psychic saw that the Colonel's whole body was battered and torn. Flesh was shriveled and his uniform shredded. Gray stone showed in patches, as though he were turning into one of his men.
"We dropped a missile on the warehouse," Kenslir said. "Blew that bitch to pieces."
Kenji smiled. Despite the fact the Colonel looked more like a zombie than a supersoldier, he seemed to be unconcerned with his own health. So Kenji wasn't going to worry either. And if the woman behind the zombie plague was dead, it might finally be over.
"We won," Kenji said, more than relieved.
"Don't count your chickens just yet," Kenslir said. He stood, helping Kenji to his feet.
The warehouse was a raging blaze now—what was left of it. The end nearby had been blown apart by the super-sonic missile Kenji had glimpsed dropping from the skies above. Debris was everywhere, most of it still burning. Even some of the adjacent buildings seemed to be on fire. The sound of sirens could be heard in the distance.
And the Colonel was glowing.
Kenji had missed it at first. A faint, barely visible green glow, almost masked by the light from the fires. It sparked and popped all over Kenslir's body. It reminded Kenji of fireflies in the yard of his parents' home.
"You okay?" he asked.
"I just need some water," Kenslir said. "And a steak or three."
"So the bones showing and the green sparks are normal?"
Kenslir shook his head from side to side. "That's not me."
He held his hand out, palm up. The green sparks began to flash all over his hand, almost too faint to be seen.
"It's coming from the sky," Kenslir said, pointing up.
Kenji looked up but could see nothing. Then the Colonel said one word that made a chill race up his spine.
"Spores."
Kenji looked back at the Colonel's face and his one eye. He felt like throwing up and began to brush himself off as best he could—he was likely covered in spores now himself.
"Looks like when it got blown apart, that thing in there gave us a final, parting gift," Kenslir explained.