George slipped an arm around her waist. “She’s got a point, man. Even if we can hold back the rest of the town what are we supposed to do against the boss?”
A voice like the jangling of crystal whispered from the rocks, “You’ll do nothing, George Rhodes.” Will’s gut went tight and his mouth set. Erica’s muscles tensed. George scanned the cavern. Loraine ducked her head into her shoulders. Kiddo pulled Darwin close to him. “Humans for humans. Angles for demons. Djin for djin.” The giant pillar of rock shivered and the humans stopped breathing, each and every one, as the great dragon unfolded out of it.
Dampf towered over them; its wings stretched and filled half the cavern. Its huge head, all spikes and thousand year eyes, curved over on the end of a neck like a tremendous question mark. That low, heavy jangling voice came again, the sounds of planet shards rubbing against each other in a quasar, “Dragons for wasps.”
“Holy mother of God,” Loraine whispered.
“We are older than that, Loraine Howard. So much older.”
Erica’s mind cleared. All thought, all emotion was plowed under by a single wave of terror. It passed over her and only the essence of Erica remained. That pure person saw the dragon and smiled. “Beautiful,” she said.
Will finally put his gun back in its holster. The part of dragon would be played tonight by Dampf not Smaug. His fear that something was off, something wrong melted away with a look into those eyes. Everything would be more than okay. They were so going to kick the Pompiliad’s ass. He started grinning like a kid. He nudged George, “Eh? Eh? We’re totally going to win, buddy.”
George scowled and muttered, “Where is it? Where is it?” His eyes ticked off the dragon’s body. “It’s gotta’ be there.”
Will started to feel a little like George was shuffling baseball cards in church. “Dude, would you pay attention?”
“Yeah, sorry.”
Will took a deep breath and stepped forward on shaky legs. “Dampf,” he pitched his voice to cross the distance. “We’re the only one’s left. Everyone else in town has been taken over by The Pompiliad.”
The dragon tilted its head toward Two-Bears McFarlan. George thought it seemed amused. “I know, Constable. I know everything. You have done well.”
“Done?” George shouted. “We haven’t done shit. We just survived.”
Will glared at George and spoke up fast, “Dampf, what do you want us to do?” He felt Lorain’s hand slip into his and squeeze. “How do we help?”
“Fight the swarm, little Constable. Fight the swarm so I may save my energy for The Pompiliad.”
“Swarm?” Erica whispered. “What’s it talking about?”
“I think—” Will started and stopped, head cocked to one side. “You hear that?”
Dampf began to fade back into the stone column, but Will’s attention was on the strange sound from the other side of the cavern. “Sounds like sacks of potatoes or something.”
“Fight the swarm.”
George unslung his rifle. “It’s them,” he said. “It’s the walkers. They’re dropping through the hole in the ceiling.”
Will’s eyes widened. “Okay,” he said, “everybody back behind that slab.” They scrambled and tossed themselves over the low redoubt. Erica, Childe and Darwin and Lorain huddled in the middle with their heads down. Will and George looked over them from the ends. George looked stony, calm. Will thrummed with energy and fight. He pulled Smaug and said, “Take their heads clean off, Georgie. There’s only a few of them left.”
“We can take ‘em,” George said. He pulled the bolt on the M16 then blinked, said, “Shit,” and clicked off the safety. “Okay, now we can take ‘em.”
Will smiled. He popped up from behind the slab and sighted as the first of them rounded the giant pillar. It was one of the migrant workers, stumping along on a broken ankle. Another came after, Meg Tooley, but her brittle bones had shattered when she hit the cavern floor. She dragged herself along with her hands, her legs a useless, twisted train. After her, there were another five or six and now they looked like a proper scene out of Night of the Living Dead, the fall having ravaged their limbs. They crawled and limped, broken arms outstretched, some dangling. “Wait’ll they get closer,” Will said. “Wait’ll they show the wasps.”
“I got the three in front,” George said.
“Okay,” Will breathed. “Okay, okay, okay.”
They were coming. They were close. Meg Tooley opened her mouth.
* * *
I should be yelling something, Will thought as he squeezed the trigger. Some war cry or something. His gun filled the cavern with light and noise, but silence had hooded his mind. Will’s ears registered but did not hear as his first slug caught one of the migrant workers in the cheekbone and sheared away the entire left half of its head. In the stuttering flashes from George’s M16, Will made out the wasp inside the migrant’s head. It was struggling, dying. The walker went down. Meg Tooley dragged herself over it like a salamander over a rotten tree branch. George had already put two in her but the machine gun was hard to steady even for a natural like him, and he’d done little more than break her collarbone and shred the shoulder. Will let her come on. Just a few more feet and it’s over, Meg. Just a few more… There! She swiveled her head and gave him a perfect view of the wasp on her furred tongue. ‘Night, Meg. The .357 bucked and old Meg Tooley was still.
Will glanced at George—he was squeezing off bursts, the rifle looking as much like a fire-spitting magic wand as a gun. But he wasn’t doing much, just wasting ammo and driving them back a few paces. George’s mouth was set in a snarl. Will waved at him, but his friend lived at the end of his rifle now. Erica saw what Will was trying to do. She pulled her fingers out of her ears and whapped George on the leg then pointed at Will. George pivoted like a piece of clockwork and for one frosty second Will was sure his best friend was going to open fire on him. Will held up his hands and George shouted, “What?”
“Put the selector lever in single shot like I showed you!” Will yelled back. “Use it like a hunting rifle.”
“Look out!” Loraine said as a woman she thought she recognized from over on South Ave drew near. “Look out, Will!”
Two-Bears felt the adrenaline rise in him but shut it down. He took a long slow breath, turned and waited for the woman—it was Jean Dalton—to get within a finger’s grasp of him. Her lips reminded Will of over-ripe plumbs. They split and revealed the spikey wasp. Grimacing, Will raised the pistol and put the barrel an inch from her mouth. He fired. She died for the second time in as many days. He had four bullets left.
George didn’t wait to make sure Will was okay. Two-Bears wasn’t about to miss at that range. George flicked the selector all the way down to single shot and sighted along the, long insectile barrel. There were three of them coming in from the right; each staggered about three feet apart from the others. George breathed in, out, in, held it... fired. The round tore through the teeth and lips of the first walker (he didn’t recognize the guy, which made it only slightly easier). On the same breath, George rolled the rifle sight an inch, squeezed. The second walker’s head came off. George blinked. Something somewhere inside his own head started screaming.
The third walker in the line could have been anyone. Its face was hamburger, like someone had set off a cherry bomb as a sinus cure. But still, something about this one was familiar. Fuck it. And fuck you, too, buddy. He fired but the slug plowed through the top of the man’s head. The wasp, clearly visible in the raw hole that used to be the poor slob’s mouth flicked iridescent wings and took to the air like a puff of evil smoke. The wasp tickled George’s peripheral vision then disappeared.
Will caught what happened with the now headless walker. He planted one hand on the top of the rock slab and vaulted over. Just as the wasp was chewing its way through its host’s decapitated head, Will jammed Smaug against its cheek (its white-out eyes rolling toward him) and fired twice. The wasp was vapor. The vulnerability of Will’s pos
ition rammed home as young Maggie Owens clamped her dainty hand onto his shoulder.
Will cried out as her fingers taloned into him and the bones in his shoulder ground together. It was his gun arm and Smaug clattered to the floor, empty. Somewhere far off, Kiddo shouted, “Will!” Maggie’s rose petal mouth yawed in a grotesque train tunnel as she leaned in to give the good Constable a kiss. She stopped and jerked back a step. Darwin had crushed her ankle in his jaws and shook her back and forth for all he was worth. Supernatural circumstances or not, Maggie was only a hundred pounds soaking wet. The sturdy beagle dragged her back a few steps before she reached down and picked him up by the tail. He thrashed at the end of his tail, breaking a few of the small bones, and throwing whining shrieks. Maggie tilted her head and leaned in toward his open mouth, the wasp climbing up from her throat.
George pirouetted and trained the M16 on the walker-girl. He took a breath, held it—and jerked the gun back as Childe Howard jumped in and obscured his shot. “Kiddo! Fucking move!” But the boy was tearing at Maggie Owens, tears of rage and fear streaming down his face. He pounded her on the back and ripped at her hair. It came out in chunks, but did little to stop her. With her free hand she grabbed hold of Childe by the throat and bent him to his knees. Now she redirected again and began to lean her gaping maw toward his face.
Loraine surged up from behind the block, stone silent, the intent on her face louder than any lion’s roar. She saw Childe jump up to go after Darwin too late and now she would see her only son die. Yes, she was certain, she was just a couple of feet too far away to make it in time. Maggie Owens’s tongue slipped from her mouth and the wasp flared its amethyst wings.
And then Maggie was flying.
Loraine stopped in her tracks, her tennis shoes making a little freep! on the metallic deck. She watched open mouthed as Maggie dropped her son and the dog then levitated straight up, rotating like a leaf on the wind. When she reached the ceiling, Loraine understood. They all stared up. Childe let out a “Yeah!”
Yïn.
The great spider hauled the thing wearing poor Maggie Owens’s body up a line of silk. The wasp tried to escape, flicking off her tongue into the air, but Yïn spat a glob of venom at it. The poison struck dead on and dropped the wasp in a steaming heap at George’s feet. He jumped back a step and spat on it himself just for good measure. Yïn reeled Maggie in and speared her with two of her free legs. Everyone turned away as the spider made short work of the last walker. Except Loraine. She gathered her son into her arms and watched as the avatar of her own intent unmade the evil thing.
Will picked up Smaug and stood, rubbing his shoulder. The floor of the cavern was littered with bodies, but none of them moved. He ticked his eyes off Childe, Loraine, Darwin, Erica and George. The swarm was gone and they were still here. He felt like crying and throwing up and dancing. He shook his head and smiled. “That was some fancy shootin’, Georgie boy.”
George held the rifle with shaking hands. The adrenaline dregs were already pulling at his guts. Still, he smiled back. “Don’t tell me about good shootin’, man. You were Jesse James, Billy the Kid. You were Han Solo, Constable.”
“Holy shit, George.”
“What?”
“You called me ‘Constable’.”
George began to chuckle, but it died on his lips as his eyes grew wide. “Look out, Will! Look out, now!”
Will began to turn just as the wasp that had eluded George’s rifle moments before alighted on the back of his hand like a black snowflake. It wasted no time in jabbing its cruel stinger between the bones of his middle and ring finger. Will crushed it with his other hand, but the poison was already in him. Fire raced up his arm. He held up his hand and watched as the veins turned cobalt.
“No!” George screamed. “Oh, no! Ah, God. Ah, no!” He raced over to Will just as Two-Bears slumped to the ground. George caught and guided him gently down. The others clustered around but no one spoke. George rasped at them, “Back up, damn you! Give ‘im some space.”
Will started to convulse as the black poison traced back his blood. It slipped up under his shirt sleeve and ran toward his heart. His teeth clenched hard enough to crack a filling loose. Rolling on that sea of pain he was aware of the little piece of silver on the back of his tongue. There were no thoughts, no emotions, only pain and pain. George’s sweaty, unshaven face filled the universe like an anguished moon. He was shouting something, something. Then he was gone, shoved aside and replaced with eight more perfect spheres. Crimson planets rose over his death in cold observation.
Yïn could smell the poison in the little Constable. The wasp was dead, the swarm gone, but its venom would still take him even with no rider to steer his corpse. It was a toxin much like her own, eternal and powerful: death as elixir. Not even she was immune to it. She looked at the little Constable, felt him fade and pulled an image from his head. Yïn, the trickster, the story teller made her decision. Her pincers jigged.
George got up, fists ready but Erica grabbed his elbow. “Look,” she whispered. “Look what it’s doing.”
Yïn skinwalked. A young woman with long, black hair and high, round cheekbones knelt over Will. Her brow was smooth and her eyes clear and fast. She was dressed in a simple apron and jeans, the kind of thing a waitress in a diner might wear. A sob caught in George’s throat. “That’s Jolene. Will’s mom,” he said. “She looked like that when we were kids.” She glanced over and tipped George a wink.
Jolene Two-Bears took Will’s savaged hand and placed her mouth over the wound from the stinger. The poison singed her lips. She began to pull at it, slow and deep. The black sludge backed out of Will’s veins, returning them to their normal cerulean.
* * *
Wind on his face, smelling of tannins and rich forest soil. Cool and clean, not a trace of hydrocarbons, no coal smoke. Warm sun on his shoulders. Will opened his eyes on the little clearing where he’d first met Amy James. She’d been sunbathing naked on a granite outcropping; the same one now warming his butt through his jeans. Trees waved in the breeze, their new leaves like jade chips. A few wild daffodils splotched the long grass like discarded candy wrappers. This couldn’t be now. This couldn’t be Shard. This close to the shaft, his nose would be full of sulfur. And this looked more like springtime than the end of summer.
“It’s not, Shard, you’re right.”
Will turned his head at a familiar voice. His mother sat on the other end of the rock, dressed like she was headed off to work. “And you’re not my mother,” he said.
“Good guess.”
Will shifted so he could face her. “Well, pretty easy. Mom’s been dead almost as long as dad. You really dig on messing with my head through my parents, don’t you?”
She smiled and shrugged. “It’s something to do. A way to bond.”
“How come you’re talking? You don’t talk.”
“I talk all the time. I talk with pictures and ideas, actions.”
“Where are we?” Will’s face fell. “Shit, did I die?”
“In a sense.”
“A sense? So, I’m dead.”
“Ha!” she barked. “No, you’re not getting off that easy, I’m afraid. More to do. Always more to do.” She fixed him with a hard stare and there was nothing of his mother in those black eyes. “I, however, am finished.”
“What’s that mean? You’re finished? And if I’m not dead, where is this?”
“Just your mind, little Constable.” She waved an arm in a wide arc, “This is all from you. A good place to show you.”
“Show me? Show me what?”
Yïn closed her eyes and breathed in the redolent air. “Everything,” she said. The air above and behind her began to shimmer. Will looked into it and saw spinning stars, galaxies pin-wheeling, colliding, combining, civilizations rising and falling in supernova as common as thunderstorms. And more, and more, and more. It entered him, changed him, and made him new. Yïn vanished.
* * *
William Two-B
ears McFarlan came back to consciousness just as his mother staggered away from him. Yïn was everywhere in his head like the scent of strange perfume on skin. He knew this woman wasn’t really his mother, just a last joke from a funny monster. But she didn’t look funny now. Blackened blood vessels mapped her face and arms. Yïn tried to change back before the poison took her away, but didn’t have the strength. She lay on the cave floor, an amused smile on her face, and closed her eyes on the universe. Finally.
* * *
“Is she dead?” Erica said.
“Yeah,” Will answered after a little while. “She’s gone. She took the bullet for me. Pulled that shit right out of my body before it could get to my heart. ”
George put a hand on his shoulder. “That’s your mom, right? That’s Jolene?”
Will had been so angry at the spider for impersonating his father, messing with his head like that. This, though—somehow it was more like a gift. “No, Georgie. My mom’s been gone a while. That’s a faery.” He smirked. This horrendous, mind-bending monster, this most terrifying of all the old fears, a spider, had been a Faery. In his heart he knew that was the closest to true. At least that would be how he chose to remember her. It was a shame she was gone. He would have liked to start calling her Tinkerbelle. That really would have pissed her off. She’d have laughed, though, he bet. Or, whatever, done that heinous thing with her pincers.
“Hate to break up the family reunion,” Loraine said. “But I think we’re still in trouble.” She pointed up as a clunky motorcycle boot and leather clad leg sprouted from the hole in the ceiling like a questing root.
“You all feel that?” Erica said. “It’s really cold.” The last three words came out on puffs of steam. She wrapped her arms around George and whispered. “Keep me warm big fella.”
“You first,” he muttered.
The Pompiliad slipped through the hole and hung suspended in space above the cavern floor. Not by rope, but by the cloud of blurry air behind it. Its wings thrummed with a bass that shook their ribs, but it kept its human form—a dark angel on insect wings.
“Will?” George asked.