by Arthur Stone
So Rock banished all of his doubts and moved with all possible speed, biting his lip and telling himself that his knee didn’t hurt. It was just an itch. His leg could bend perfectly well—he could go sign up for a track race right now and even place. The willpower attempts did little to help, but he kept at them.
Horsefly, meanwhile, was over a hundred feet up ahead, running fast down a wide alley with a narrow grassy median decorated with flowers and the occasional bush. Rock was only able to follow because he avoided the shadows and stayed in plain sight. Suddenly, the man stopped short and yelled back, “Hey, Noob, your pants are done for. Wait till you get a load of this.” He turned. “Hey, you! Cyclops! Come on over here. You heard me! There you go, that’s a good boy!”
What, is he calling his dog over? Or cat, I guess? Or has he just snapped? Rock was going to give him a piece of his mind once he caught up to him.
He had to reduce his speed to a walk, limping heavily and painfully on his bum leg as he pressed forwards. Decreasing his speed also reduced his focus on Horsefly, and he started paying more attention to the area, looking for—among other things—the scrappy dog or the flea-bitten cat which was pushing him to strain his knee.
It wasn’t a dog. Nor a cat.
Rock had suspected something was amiss. Then he saw the being responsible for their change in route break through the bushes. It was at least as big as a man. An adult. The final branches trembled and gave way, and it leaped out.
It was so absurd, he had no idea what to call it. It was not human, even though it had the same basic features. Hands and feet, an upright stance, ten fingers and ten toes. There were some significant differences, though. It was huge. Nearly eight feet tall, despite a significant slouch that pushed its abnormally built shoulders forward and made its overly long arms hang nearly down to its knees and a short distance ahead of them.
They were tensed up, crooked, aiming their massive claws directly at Horsefly. The beast’s deformed head melded right into its massive, swollen jaws. One bite from that thing could consume enough meat to feed a glutton three square meals. The rows of fangs made it clear the thing was no herbivore, and no stranger to violence.
He took in the details. Its wrinkled skin was an unhealthy yellow. No hair was visible except a few small twisted patches on its head. Its narrow eyes had bone-like arcs around it and similar plates around its head and chest. Surreal Christian imagery, including crosses, angels, and excerpts of verses. Wait, those are tattoos. They were just so distorted, as if they had been stretched and warped after being drawn on a completely different person.
Rock finally realized why Horsefly had cautioned him to preserve his pants. The sight of this creature doubtless ruined many a pair. It wasn’t so much the terrifying claws or fangs. It was that the monster looked so human. As every horror author and screenwriter knows, the things we humans are scared of are those which look like us, with just a touch of the monstrous.
Plus, they managed to save on the special effects budget that way and get away with just a little makeup.
Rather than screaming in terror, Horsefly waved his hand rapidly, fearlessly beckoning the monster to himself. “Over here, darling. Come on! Don’t be shy. Look, Noob! We’ll have our fill of spores now. This beast broke off from his pack and he’s about to get punished for it. Getting a bunch of spores right off the bat is a good omen, mark my words.”
We? No, this foolishness could be settled without Rock’s help. The chances of beating that monster with their bare hands were less than zero. What was wrong with this man? He didn’t look crazy. What made him think this would end in anything but disaster?
His partner was a psycho. He saw that now.
The monster gave a deep, rumbling growl and picked up speed rapidly. The rumbling grew into a screech now and then, turning Rock’s blood cold. He remembered the sounds that had accompanied his first death. This sound was similar, but not quite as eerie, as if this were the younger brother of the creature who had leaped onto his broken body from that window. The creature that had screamed from that hallway.
‘Younger brother’? Heaven help us if we ever encounter the older brother!
The beast was still thirty feet away when the monster hurled itself into the air, stretching itself out deftly as it soared. One moment later, and it would knock this foolhardy man’s body clean off his feet and roll on top of him onto the pavement, crushing his every bone and tearing into him with claws and fangs.
Horsefly didn’t move. He threw up his hand. An elusive ripple came out of his exposed palm, like a thick wave of heat off the sun-beaten earth in the middle of the desert. The translucent effect was difficult to see, and Rock had no idea how something so ethereal could affect a massive monster hurtling through the air.
The aftermath came as if Horsefly was wielding a tennis racket weighing at least a ton. The flying hulk was smacked with a colossal overhand.
It was a solid hit. The monster flew backwards much faster than any speed it could generate on its own power. A brutal fifty feet later, it crumpled and rolled along the pavement, slapping its writhing arms and legs into it every which way as if they had no more bones left in them. The blow had stunned it into total relaxation.
Rock thought it might be stunned for good. But then the beast began to rise, as soon as it stopped rolling and sliding. Its face looked drunk, the fight sapped from it. When it saw Horsefly sauntering over, whistling an unpretentious tune, the monster turned and awkwardly tried to move down the avenue.
“Oh no you don’t. Stop! Did you see that, Noob? He was all confident just a minute ago, but now he’s trying to leave without so much as a goodbye. Ain’t they teaching manners anymore? Stop, or it’ll be worse for you!”
The monster apparently thought otherwise. Half-lame, it started picking up as much speed as it could.
“Shit, Noob, catch up to him! Come on, you have to catch him. Hit him! Cut the bastard! At least through a rock or something. It’ll give you some experience for it, at least. You’ll get past level zero, then I’ll give you a name as soon as we get out of here. Come on, hit it! You have to claim a share of the experience. And keep up. I’ll finish him off. Hit it! Come on, hit it! What the hell are you stalling for? Shit, Noob, fine, if you don’t know what’s good for you, well, I ain’t going to babysit you.”
Horsefly picked up speed, and soon the alley was a race track, with the monster maintaining a decent speed even though it was so crippled. It was unclear who would win. But Rock would come in dead last. That insane, superhuman Horsefly would continue pursuing the monster fleeing its magic, but he would lose sight of them soon as he fell further and further behind, his knee growing ever worse.
Chapter 6
Life Three: Up on the Housetops
If nothing had changed—limp monster running along, losing its balance now and then; pursuer shouting angrily at it from a hundred feet back; and pathetically limping caboose trying to press on but losing ground every second—Rock might perhaps have caught up. If something stalled the movement of the other two.
But he lost sight of both of them in the middle of a block of five-story buildings, where visibility was low. Rock assumed Horsefly would be following the monster’s path further, cutting across the parking lot up ahead and hopefully avoiding another visit to his dorm, so he sat down behind a nearby car—at the precise movement another monster swept into the area. It was scarier than the first. Larger, more gnarled, with angular body shapes and ugly polygonal shields where the bone plates had been present on the younger one, including a number on the hairless skull. Its body was hideously arched, its legs absurdly twisted. The creature ran in a bouncing, bustling fashion with loud knocking noises.
Was it wearing horseshoes or something?
Witnessing this, Rock decided he was in no hurry to escape his hiding place. He lay beside the car and squeezed himself underneath it. It was high enough off the ground to fit him. He couldn’t see much, but it made fine cover. And he was thankfu
l for that just a second later. Another bone-knocking monster entered the same square, and then another smaller one, walking more quietly. He had to guess their size based on their legs, since he couldn’t see anything else. A peek would require getting close to the edge, but that would risk the monsters catching him. He’d rather lie here blind. He wasn’t the magical Horsefly with an open-palmed ping pong racket. He had no chance against any of these things.
Nothing happened for a few minutes. Rock was about to peek out when frantic pistol shots rang out nearby, in the direction the three monsters had been going.
It was like a signal. Countless monsters sped off in the direction of the shots. Strangely enough, a lot of people ran among them. At least going by their feet.
Something was wrong with them. All of their legs were filthy, and some were bare, even missing their underwear. Rock craned his neck a bit to check, just to make sure he was right. They were men and women, thin and fat, ancient and young, from all walks of life. He couldn’t tell much from just the legs, of course, but after dozens of pairs went by, he realized the old-looking legs might not have all belonged to old people, after all. Their skin had taken on an unhealthy shade and wrinkled up a bit, as if taken over by a wretched rash of sores.
It was all starting to add up. The bits of information Horsefly had given him, plus those distorted tattoos on the crippled monster’s skin, and now these strange humans—fast and filthy with terrible skin.
Rock was seeing several stages of the process by which ordinary people—the faceless masses, the “digis,” as Horsefly called them—underwent metamorphosis from ordinary zombies into something much more dangerous. The man had said they didn’t stay slow for long. Too bad he hadn’t bothered to explain more. That was the third stage, he surmised, but when that came and what it looked like was anybody’s guess.
So what stage was Rock looking at? What was happening in the city? Was it still in the first stage?
Horsefly could have told him all that, but he had fled the scene, and it looked like Rock would never be able to cross the space between the two of them. It was crawling with an endless stream of monsters. His leg wasn’t even strong enough for him to run away from anything. And the monster his companion had taken a liking to had boasted ridiculous speed. Even with a healthy knee, a record sprinter couldn’t have outrun it.
Not that Rock dreamed of a life lying under a car, listening to shooting, car crashes, explosions, screaming, and monsters grumbling. He had to get out of here, but where could he go? Maybe the bridge. But where was it? He couldn’t even see the river. It might be one mile away or ten, but even the first number made his knee ache.
Crossing the monster-teeming terrain with a worsening leg was a problem. Rock wished he could wrap it up, immobilize it somehow. All he had to do now was wiggle it to produce tears and a muffled groan.
What kind of sadistic game was this? Nothing but pain and suffering. Being forced to leap out the window to his death. Burning alive. Struggling with bad joints. Rock always believed that entertainment should only evoke positive emotions. That was logical, and just good business. But what logic could he expect in a game where they forgot to add an Exit button?
Maybe he could still make it to the bridge, but not right now. It was possible these things didn’t see so well at night, so moving in darkness might work out. Now and then he heard shooting in the distance, too, so perhaps a rescue squad or something like that would arrive. He had to hold out, and this car wasn’t the best spot. All one of those things had to do was duck to view Rock in all his agonized glory.
From far enough away, they wouldn’t even have to crouch. And even if he got out from under the car in time, he’d be cornered.
Rock stopped paying all of his attention to the square overrun with monsters. He turned his interest to looking for a better haven to hunker down in for a few hours.
* * *
Rock may have had serious doubts about his current refuge, but he saw nothing better in the immediate vicinity, and as he was investigating more distant options he witnessed an elderly man running God knows where ambushed by a beast like the one Horsefly had been chasing. The monster overtook him playfully and swung a paw at him, taking off part of his head, then pounced on him and crushed his writhing flesh with a gluttonous grumble, tearing into his neck with its fangs and wolfing down his blood-soaked meat.
And so Rock abandoned his plans to look for a better hiding spot in the distance. His intuition told him to find something close by, and fast—before some massive ravenous beast took the time to look under the car.
He settled on the entryway to an apartment building, but without plans to stay there. Knocking on any apartment doors was a foolish idea. Even with his leg, he managed to climb up the stairs and onto the roof. Thankfully the padlock on the roof access door was just for show.
He had a good view from up here, but he had cover, as well, in the form of a low wall running around the whole roof and ventilation system exits here and there. The perimeter wall gave him great cover from three sides. He would still be visible from the avenue side: Though most of the surrounding buildings were the same height as his, a couple of buildings across the avenue were taller. Someone on an upper floor could look across and see him.
Rock sat with a ventilation structure covering him from that possibility and began to rely on his ears to tell him about what was going on around. For that, they were almost as good as his eyes.
Shots rang out sporadically from all directions. Sometimes, it was just a few rounds—other times, it was one magazine after another, mercilessly emptied into the targets, often for minutes at a time. Screams were heard frequently, too, and whenever one sounded out, Rock thought of that old man he had just seen. The same ambushes echoed throughout the neighborhood. Perhaps throughout the whole city. Cars continued to crash into one another, too, squealing their brakes and revving their engines so hard that Rock knew they were all holding their gas pedals to the floor. There were even explosions now and then, a few of them followed by plumes of smoke. Fires blazed on in dozens of places. One especially widespread black cloud billowed up out of the west of the city. It was silent smoke, but its size made Rock suspect it was a formidable inferno fueled by a hazardous chemical factory or something like that.
He hoped the wind wouldn’t decide to blow the poisonous fumes toward Rock instead of letting them rise into the sky.
As afternoon approached, he began to curse at his situation. The sun only made his thirst worse, and he had nothing to quench it with. Heading back down was out of the question. Rock needed water, not monster adventures. Apartments were apparently not the ideal hiding places he might have suspected, given the continual sounds of shattering glass and joyful ravenous rumblings from below.
The sun was retreating, but at a tragically slow pace. Its rays lit up Rock’s hiding place like a Vegas strip. Moving anywhere would mean being visible from the houses across the way. And then there was the noise beneath him. Someone shouted in the entryway, then glass shattered in one place and then another, and finally a gunshot rang out.
Follow by that grumbling again.
This latest episode soon quieted, but that gave Rock little comfort. He suspected the creatures would begin systematically searching the building and decided that, if he was found, he would dive head first off the top and into the pavement. The old five-story building wasn’t very tall, but it was a chance at a quick death.
Better than waiting to have his intestines chewed up. How could he hope to resist those things with his bare hands?
Those two soldier types had advised him to arm himself. With anything.
They had known everything, and explained nothing.
Dirty shits.
He wouldn’t mind have a weapon. He had nothing. No way to bandage up his knee, no food, not even any water. The world’s worst traveler, in the world’s worst place. There had been so many little shops near the dorm and around here. Couldn’t he have at least bought or stolen
a bottle of water?
Horsefly had been right. Rock would die over and over again until he learned how to actually think for once.
Chapter 7
Life Three: City of Monsters
Only when twilight had come did Rock dare leave the roof. His thirst had reached such levels that his knee no longer occupied his mind, and he thought to himself that death in the jaws of a monster wouldn’t be so bad.
Still, he descended the apartment hallway as carefully and quietly as possible. It smelled like a butcher’s shop with the power shut off, and shards of glass crinkled and crunched underfoot. Rock couldn’t see a thing, but he knew what had happened here.
Despite the waning light, Rock saw the broken-in apartment door on the fifth floor. It was a solid metal door beaten and twisted completely in, and it appeared the unknown bandits had dealt the damage quickly and easily. In the real world, Rock would have assumed a huge medieval battering ram was involved, but there wasn’t enough space in the hallway for anything of that size. Only one of those half-ton monsters could have done it.
Hopefully the beast had moved on to new hunting grounds.
Rock decided to search the apartment for water before he went down any further. Looking around was difficult in the early evening light. He had to rely on touch and began to pray for a lantern or some matches. But perhaps their absence was a blessing in disguise: Their light might attract attention from something watching outside.
To his surprise, the kitchen faucet did indeed produce a thin trickle of water. It was cold, and he had no idea what the filtration system was like here, but at this point he would have lapped water from a toilet. A few minutes later, his thirst was quenched, and he proceeded downstairs, stepping on glass and other crunchy things along the way. Human bones? Perhaps. He didn’t want to know.