Nightwalk 2 Page 20

I gauged the distance to be about twenty-five or thirty feet. The trick would be to watch my step while also remembering to keep an eye peeled for the aerial threats this trip would temporarily expose me to. At least the eaves of the main building were wide and would provide plenty of shelter once I reached it.

  I stepped out into the open, moving at a pace that would cross the gap quickly, but hopefully give me time to stop and recover if I found myself about to walk into something nasty. I had to step over several vines as I went. It was like hopping from one puddle of mist to the next.

  Even worse, I felt the sensation of the ground squishing under my feet. This was supposed to be a paved parking lot!

  “Hey,” I called behind me, “be careful of your footing. It looks like the asphalt is gone.”

  My biggest fear now became stepping over a root and my foot landing in deep water or nothing but open misty space…or just maybe a giant tentacle rising from an adjacent “fog pond” and snatching me down to be horribly devoured by some underworld abomination. I supposed that could always happen. Realistically, it shouldn’t have been a concern, but the word “realistic” simply didn’t apply tonight.

  I clambered over the last root between me and the main building and hustled to take cover under the awning. As I did, the light from my flare shone through the windows of the diner. The scene it revealed inside would haunt me for years to come.

  At first I thought the building was full of white butterflies. They flitted and swirled like a blizzard on the other side of the glass, as if the diner was a giant snow globe.

  But they weren’t butterflies. Several landed on the glass, obviously attracted by my light, and I could see they had as much in common with mosquitos as moths. They were about three inches in size, and an inch-long, needle-sharp proboscis protruded from a head that seemed to be nothing more than a mass of compound eyes.

  But worst of all, the Rocketwash had already been occupied when they appeared.

  Another group of refugees had made it as far as the highway and taken shelter here. Maybe they had heard the gunshots on the other side of the overpass and put two and two together, or maybe they had encountered a survivor like Mickey’s group had. Either way, this is where they had chosen to take shelter and wait for salvation. Instead, they got this.

  The swarm’s appearance must have been during the most recent distortion event, because a few still survived. I could make out darker figures in the snow storm… human forms smothered in creatures now flushed red from feeding on them. They twitched and crawled, shedding gorged insects like flakes of blood, only for more to immediately land and grow red in their place.

  And I couldn’t do a damned thing for them. Breaching the glass would only free the creatures to attack us, while accomplishing nothing to save the people inside. Their fate was sealed. Besides, we had no way to effectively fight such a threat.

  So, sick to my heart, I turned my back on the death throes of my fellow man.

  I motioned for the others to come across, then scanned the blackness above as they started clambering toward me. I had been mildly surprised not to have drawn the attention of one of the flying jellyfish on my way over to the main building. My surprise grew when the others made it across without me having to shoot more out of the sky.

  Had something changed up there?

  Or had something different claimed this patch of sky for itself?

  Neither were particularly happy thoughts. At least the jelly-blimps had been threats I could handle. Not to mention, their burning corpses also provided convenient extra light sources. But the blackness above me remained empty and I had other matters to focus on.

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  I motioned for the others to follow as I led them around the front point of the building. Thankfully my flare had attracted enough of the pale swarm inside so they now coated the windows and prevented any further view of the diner’s interior. I would have hated trying to explain to the kid why we were just walking away.

  I would be explaining it to myself over and over again for a long time as it was.

  We picked our way over the roots and came around to the other side of the building. From there we could see the other long carport at the edge of my light. Vines shrouded it the same as the first. I could only assume it featured the same inhabitants as well.

  “Same thing as last time,” I whispered. “I’ll go first, and when I’m across and say it’s clear you guys come and join me.”

  Once more, nobody offered any objection. I think they were simply focused on the fact we were making progress. With nothing else to say, I started out for the dim structure of the northern carport.

  This time I didn’t make it.

  I had only reached about halfway when the world collapsed again.

  Another distortion rocked the universe around me. Even as I tried to brace myself a ripple coursed through the fabric of the cosmos, causing me to stumble.

  Dammit!

  Not again! How many more times could Chandra’s machine do this?

  But it wasn’t “again”.

  This time was different. And it only took me a few seconds to realize that this time Chandra’s machine might not have been the culprit. This one felt different.

  It had the same sense of distortion, just like the other times, but now the air left my lungs as if something heavy had landed on the world and compressed reality itself. Something immense. I fell to my knees and then down to my side as the atmosphere seemed to compact along with existence. I could barely breathe under the titanic sense of pressure. Panic and the fear of suffocation clawed at my mind as I fought to draw breath.

  But fortunately, unlike the other events, this one only lasted four or five seconds… and yet at the same time it didn’t exactly end at all.

  Because this hadn’t been a distortion.

  It was an arrival.

  ###

  Even before I recovered, I knew things had gotten worse.

  “There’s something up there!” I faintly heard David cry out. “Something’s coming… up in the sky!”

  With a groan, I rolled over onto my back and pointed my gun toward the heavens. I really hadn’t gotten my bearings back and my head swam from the maneuver. My ripped-up back didn’t appreciate the move either. Yet it was all I had recovered enough to do. The Coonan weaved drunkenly in my grip as I searched the skies above me for a threat.

  Nothing but blackness showed from above.

  But David had called it right, something was up there. Something huge. Something so terrifyingly powerful and massive I could actually feel its presence above us as it slowly passed over.

  Worst of all, I could feel it because it so much more real than the world around it… so unbelievably real I could almost make out its outline in the absolute blackness it floated through.

  And I had only encountered one other entity possessing that characteristic.

  The man in white.

  But whatever this was, that sense of hyper-reality was the only impression it had in common with him. Where the man in white gave off a remote, alien vibe combined with dark irony, this being felt almost familiar. I had never experienced anything like it, but it struck a chord on a level so deep within me it suggested genetic memory.

  This thing radiated a primitive savagery that spoke of wild dances around bonfires in primeval forests.

  Its effect struck me with such power I could see images of the past in my mind. Images of the far past. Somehow I knew this juggernaut had hovered in the night sky when the original builders of Stonehenge made its alter run red with blood, long before the druids inherited the place. And this same enormity had blotted out the moon above the ancient, windswept plateau of Göbekli Tepe as shamans performed ritual sacrifices in one of humanity’s first temples.

  Sailing above us in the blackness was an entity whose memory had inspired the bloodiest of the later Bronze Age harvest and fertility gods. But by then it had mostly faded away. At some time far in the past it had with
drawn to the fringes of the world where it lurked for millennia more — worshipped by cults forbidden even in those savage times — before leaving entirely.

  But tonight it had returned, almost certainly drawn by the dimensional chaos of Chandra’s machine.

  It drifted north, gliding like a mighty thunderhead in the impenetrable darkness. Even though it moved in an absence of light, it still cast an invisible shadow that pressed down on us with an almost physical force. We could only cringe under the pressure of its proximity and hope it didn’t notice us. Each second crawled by like a terror-filled eternity under its ghastly eminence.

  And then it passed.

  The monstrosity continued toward the north, and the heaviness of its presence lifted as its impossible shadow followed. It left us fighting to recover on the ground behind it, like ducklings in the wake of a battleship.

  I lay a moment longer in the mist between two roots, trying to catch my breath as I fought to absorb this latest development. How the hell was I supposed to deal with something like this? I had expected monsters, armed and dangerous neighbors, killer plants, and lots of other forms of biological death, but this went way beyond that. This was on the level of gods and titans.

  I couldn’t fight this thing. No man could.

  I would just have to hope I didn’t have to.

  Pushing myself to my feet, I looked back to see the others huddled under the awning of the Rocketwash. They all still looked skyward and in the direction the entity had gone, meaning my own instinctual feeling of which way the entity moved jibed with theirs.

  The same direction we needed to go ourselves.

  Crap.

  Oh well, lying out in the open and waiting for the sky predators to come back and eat me didn’t really count as a better option. I pushed myself back to my feet with a groan. My back, arm, and ankle all protested, but I promised them this would all be over soon. One way or another.

  “Is everybody okay?”

  I know it sounded like a stupid question since nothing had actually attacked us, but it still seemed the thing to ask.

  “Hell no, I’m not alright! What the hell was that?”

  I decided to count that as one “maybe” vote from Mrs. Positivity. The other two simply mumbled something which I chose to believe were enthusiastic “yes’s”.

  “It was something we have no reason to mess with,” I assured them all, “so we’re not going to. We’ll just focus on getting you guys to the pipe and leave the rest to me. Okay?”

  “But we’re heading the same way that… that… creature went,” David objected. “And it’s still out there. I can feel it!”

  So could I.

  We all could.

  It had moved on, but it hadn’t gone nearly as far as I hoped. It still hovered in the night sky to the north… immense, unfathomable, and monstrous.

  “I know, David,” I answered in a soft voice, “but it’s the only way. If we don’t, we die.”

  “Are you sure there’s no other way?”

  “I’m sure. Believe me, if I had an alternative I would be heading that direction this very second. But there isn’t one. This is the only way I know, and it’s the only one guaranteed to get you past the police.”

  The boy looked a whole lot less than sure, but he said nothing else. Darla started to say something, then uncharacteristically cut herself off and looked away. Lupe simply watched us, probably waiting for a cue on what to do next since he couldn’t follow the conversation. I wished I could tell him how little he was missing.

  Now, just like I said before,” I continued in a louder voice, “as soon as I get over safely you guys follow. As far as the thing in the sky is concerned, I don’t think it could care less about us. We’re probably too small for it to notice unless we do something stupid like picking a fight with it.”

  Or unless it had come here for a similar reason as the man in white and was pointedly checking things out. But considering its already potent effect on everybody, I chose to leave that concern unspoken. The fact that I had been sent on this mission by one inhuman, godlike being, only to have another one show up near the endpoint of my quest, didn’t seem like a good thing to point out either.

  It had to be a coincidence. Right?

  Yeah, sure.

  With a weary sigh of resignation, I turned and slogged on toward the northern carport. The sooner I got out of this root-infested, fog-carpeted swamp, the better. Maybe the storage yard would be less oppressively grim.

  I made it to the carport and discovered it to be a twin of the other one. The same seething dance of life and death crawled along the tracery of vine. Only here it had risen to a whole new level. Here a larger and more elongated version of the big ticks had joined the fight. These must have been the soldier version because they gave as good as they got, and the corpses of both them and their foes squelched under my feet.

  And clinging to the ceiling beams of the carport to the east, right at the edge of my flare light, was the reason for this intensified resistance.

  A huge, misshapen tick-spider-thing hung like a bloated sack of heart attacks from the roof about twenty feet away. It was pale gray and about the size of a sofa. Its swollen abdomen squirmed as if living creatures moved inside. I think another one of about the same size clung to the ceiling behind it.

  These must have been some form of queens, for no matter how many of the soldier bugs jumped into the fray overhead, they made sure to maintain a defensive line around the large creatures no red bug could pass. The fact we stood so near the things did nothing for my nerves. I don’t know how dangerous the big creatures were, but I feared getting much closer could result in a swarming death by their defenders.

  I eased a little farther away from them as I called for the others to come over.

  “Okay, it’s clear… sorta… but I want you guys to come in to the right of me. My right, not yours. The highway side.”

  Mr. Communication… that’s me.

  As if all that hadn’t been clear enough, I waved the flare to indicate where they should come. Just to be sure. I feared our increased numbers under the carport would make us look like more of a threat and I wanted to minimize our posture however possible.

  The others quickly complied, and I took solace in the sight of Lupe keeping a sharp eye to the rear as he tailed the others. Even if we didn’t communicate well, he was obviously smart enough to know what we needed of him. I half expected Darla to balk at the heavier bug activity when she got to me, but she just hunched her shoulders, covered the top of her hair with one hand, and looked miserable. It turned out to be David who needed a little extra urging to get under the cover of the carport. I realized we had been asking a lot from a kid his age, and coaxed him in as gently as possible.

  But after getting the kid with us, it was still Darla who complained.

  “Can we not stop here?” she suggested pointedly while peering down at the monstrosities to the east. “This is a perfect example of a place not to stop.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  “It’s only for a second,” I answered while turning my back to her. “I just need you to pull my wire clippers from my backpack, because we’re about to have the storage yard fence to deal with. They have red handles and they’ve probably settled to the bottom.”

  “Right,” she grumbled, but went straight to opening my pack. “What all have you got in here anyway?”

  “Just… stuff.”

  “Stuff?”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “After this was all over, I would sometimes go to a store and see something that would make me think, ‘Damn, I wish I’d had something like this back then’.”

  “Like an air horn?” she replied in disbelief, holding up the pressurized can she had just pulled out.

  “Some of the things roaming around tonight can be intimidated by bright lights and loud noises. Mainly the things with their own bioluminescence. I remembered that when I saw the horn online.”

  “Damn, I’m still tr
ying to wrap my head around you being from the future. If you’re really telling the truth, then you are a complete idiot for coming back here.”

  “Yeah? Well, I didn’t have a choice.”

  “You were forced into it?”

  “We’ve been over this. He told me I’ve got to stop this guy… and if I don’t, civilization dies.”

  “The guy who sent you here said that?”

  “Yeah.”

  Darla didn’t say anything right away. She must have found the wire clippers because I could feel her pulling the flap back down on the pack. It slightly pushed the pack down into the sliced areas of my lower back but I fought down the urge to whimper.

  “Okay, look,” she spoke up again as she fiddled with things, “there’s something I need to say. But before I do, I need you to know this godlike being of yours was the hardest part of your story to swallow. It’s just so… out there. But now with that… thing… flying over, I guess I’ll have to accept you were telling me the straight truth about him as well.

  “Cool.”

  “Not cool. If he’s real, then you’ve got a problem I don’t think you’ve thought about yet.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  I suddenly realized she was stalling while fiddling with the backpack, and it occurred to me she did it simply because she preferred talking to my back. Once again, people are often mysteries to me until I have a long time to think about them later, and Darla was probably more complicated than most. But having grasped that, I decided to let things slide and let her do this her way.

  “Yeah,” she said. “How well do you trust this guy?”

  “The man in white?

  “No, the man in the pretty red dress!” she snapped.

  Sheesh, prickly!

  “Okay, okay,” I soothed, and then turned my mind to the question. “Um, I guess the honest answer is ‘I don’t know.’ He’s never lied to me that I know of, but at the same time he’s often not very informative either. I get the feeling he leaves a lot unsaid, and he definitely chooses what truths to divulge. But he is giving me a chance to stop this.”

  “Out of the goodness of his heart,” Her voice practically dripped with sarcasm.