The Aeschylus (41 page)

Feeling his skin grow cold, Linus could see there was not one thing chasing it, but many. The shapes that loped and trundled behind it were vast and terrible. There were so many, they could not be counted. And without having seen the effects of The Carrion, without having known the corpse of Captain Smit, he somehow recognized them for what they were.

They were the damned. They were legion.

With his good hand, Linus grabbed the cross around his neck and prepared for their coming.

Ari dusted the detritus out of his hair and picked himself off of the floor. Someone was yelling, and he couldn't figure out who. His first thought was that he needed to wash the dust from his eyes. The second was that he had dropped Richter's gun.

The ceiling had fallen, the wooden rafters collapsed through the middle of the room. He should be able to see the sky above him, but he couldn't. The dust was too thick. The air had a vaguely pungent smell, and he realized the situation was
moving from bad to worse. One of the formaldehyde cylinders stood upright, exactly where they had left it, but the other had fallen to the floor. It hadn't burst, but as Ari got closer, he could hear a hissing sound. The thing was leaking.

As the dust began to clear, he saw Frece lying face down beside him. He grabbed him by one arm. “Thomas. Thomas, wake up!”

“Huh?” The man started awake. “What's happened?”

“There's been an explosion.”

“An explosion?” He looked around. “Where's Richter?”

In the tumult, Ari hadn't even thought to check. Panic seized him when he saw the chair was not where it should be, the bound man gone from the center of the room. Then Frece grabbed him and pointed to a spot beneath the rafters. The commander lay crushed under three of the ceiling beams, the wood planted heavily in his stomach. The compression was such that it had broken the chair, the wood and rope strewn about the ground.

“Done for,” Frece said. “Thank God.”

“We have to find Dominik. He was out there when the blast went off.”

“He was out
there?
Then he's dead, man! We need to get out of here!”

“We are
not
leaving Dominik! Or Lucja! We're going to find them. We're going to find them, do you hear me?”

Frece looked at him like he was crazy, but Ari didn't care. Dominik and Lucja were his only family now. He'd thought about that a lot over the past month. Wife gone, no children, no reason to keep going, day after day. But they had given him one; he was Uncle Ari now, and he had a purpose.

“We're going after them.”

“With those things out there? There's more of them, more like Smit. Aren't they?”

“I don't know.”

“What do you mean, you don't know?”

“I don't know because I was down here with you, in case you forgot. Now, I'm going up there to look for them. Are you coming?”

Frece seemed to hover. “We need a gun.”

Ari felt a fresh wave of anger, this time at himself. “I dropped it.”

“I saw it, though! It's under the rafters!”

Richter's Walther PPK was lying in the corner beneath the debris. Ari could just make it out through the dust. He coughed again, the smell of the formaldehyde growing stronger. “Leave it. If I stay much longer, I'm going to pass out.”

“I'm not leaving it!”

Before Ari could stop him, Frece dropped to his stomach and began crawling through the wreckage. Ari debated chasing after. The thought of Frece with the gun was all kinds of bad.

The man moved along the ground, climbing over the wrecked pieces of the chair. He passed Richter. And Richter
woke up
.

The commander came to life with a howl, his arms flailing towards the sky. He was crushed, the lower half of his body pinned, but he
sat up
just the same.

He grabbed Frece's legs. “
Where are you going?
”

The other man yelled, trying to kick him off.

Richter's free hand fumbled along the ground, finding a piece of a shattered beaker. He shoved it into Frece's spine, and the blond man yelped, still groping towards the gun.

“
You may wear a white man's skin
,” Richter said, “
but you're a mongrel lover. Aren't you? You just had to interfere
.” He slashed him again. “
We never
”—slash—“
should have
”—slash—“
kept you
”—slash—“
alive!
”

Thomas tried to pull away, but his legs had given up, red soaking through his back. Richter dropped the glass and began to bite the man. In seconds, he was clawing and grabbing and sinking his teeth into the man's neck and head.

The sight finally broke Ari's paralysis. He leapt forward, oblivious to the shape now coming down the stairs behind him.

Dominik's first impression was that Richter had been infected with the black fungus, but when he saw the truth, it was somehow worse. Richter had never looked more human in his life. More human, and more monstrous.

The commander wiped his mouth, the body flopping off of him bonelessly. When he looked up, Ari stopped cold.

“So close, isn't it? The desire to be a hero.” Richter pulled himself an arm's length closer to the gun without taking his eyes away. “You should know better by now.”

“What are you doing?” Ari whispered.

“Maybe you should run while you have the chance.”

“I... no...”

Richter pulled himself again. Dominik didn't know how he was doing it. Surely, his insides could be no more than jelly.

“After more than half a century on this miserable planet, I think you should know you're no hero.”

“I know who I am,” Ari said, yet he didn't move. He was mesmerized by the force of that bloody smile.

And then, Dominik realized it was having the same effect on him. He wanted to rush in and kick Richter in the teeth, to stomp him, to break him, but he couldn't. The man was crippled at the waist, and yet Dominik stood paralyzed. He searched for a sign. He looked for something,
anything
, that could be used as a weapon. His eyes settled on the metal shelf in the corner. All of the beakers had fallen on the floor and broken, all but one. It was resting on the edge, the top plugged tight.

Throwing himself across the room, Dominik grabbed the glass in one quick motion. Richter's eyes darted to him, his face black with hate, but he couldn't stop him. Dominik tossed the glass to the ground, and it shattered. The formaldehyde sprayed out in a whoosh, splashing Richter's face and mouth. It began to vaporize, transforming his head into a bubbling mass as he turned into the light.

Then Dominik heard something he never thought he would hear: he heard the commander wail. His limbs thrashed. His spine twisted. Foam began to run from his mouth, his cries becoming babble.

A moment later, Ari grabbed his friend around the arm. “Thank you, Dominik. Oh heaven, thank you.” He paused. “Ettore?”

Dominik shook his head.

“Then it's just you and me. We have to go, Dom. We have to go!”

Dominik let himself be led, knowing he had to get away from that thrashing form as fast as he could. Then as they passed the surviving tank, he stopped. “Wait.”

The lever on the tank hung in the air, beckoning. A single pull of that lever would open the valves, releasing the formaldehyde through the vents and up into the world above. That had been the plan: release the gas and choke them all, escape in the aftermath.

“I... I can't do it. I can't do it to all of them, Ari. I...” His voice broke. “I don't want to damn my soul.”

The other man hugged him, a gesture both incredibly welcome and incredibly out of place. When Dominik looked up, he saw Ari's eyes were gleaming. “No more,” he said. “I'm tired of being their plaything, Dominik. I don't care if they all end up like Richter. I don't care.”

Dominik shook his head.

“You know they'd do the same to us. What if we had a chance to end it right here and now, to save all the people who will come after us?”

“I don't know, Ari.”

“Well I do. I'm not leaving it to chance. You and Lucja are getting out alive. Me too, if I can, but I'm not risking your lives. Even if you don't want me to do it for you, let me do it for her. Her life is worth a thousand Richters. It's worth more than a thousand of any of them. Now step aside, and I'm going to pull that handle.”

They stared at each other, their friendship as deep as years and decades and millennia.

At last, Dominik nodded. “Together,” he said. “We'll do it together.”

He undid the safety catch, each of them placing a hand on the grip. When Dominik looked into his friend's eyes again, he knew it was time. They yanked the lever down as one, awaiting the hiss that would spell doom for the men they had known and despised for all of these terrible, long weeks.

But no sound came.

They breached the door and stepped into the yard, the plan forgotten. Frece was gone. Ettore was gone. Lucja had disappeared, and the tanks had failed when they had needed them most.

Outside, the soldiers stumbled about desultorily. The young ones scrambled for weapons. The older ones seemed to be looking for officers. But they were all lost, wandering through the explosion smoke as if they didn't know where they were.

“Where are you going?” someone shouted.

Dominik looked over and saw Doctor Gloeckner, the idiot physician. He and Ari kept walking. “Lucja!” Dominik called. “Lucja, where are you?”

The doctor came up behind them. “Take me with you! Take me with you if you're getting out of here!”

Dominik pushed him away. “Get off me!”

The man fell backwards, looking hurt and dazed. “You... you can't leave me here!”

“Get away from us!”

Gloeckner ran, stopping another soldier a few seconds later and getting similar treatment.

Something was wrong here, something far worse than the explosion. No one was stopping them. No one was even paying attention.

They walked all of the way to the gate, Dominik's anxiety growing with each second. Two soldiers already stood at the fence, both of them staring into the great beyond.

“My God,” one of them said.

Half a kilometer away, Dominik saw an overturned motorcycle, its headlamp still shining. It had been carrying two riders, but both of them were laying on the dirt face down. He thought they were dead until one of them began to get up. Seeing long hair drop from beneath the helmet, Dominik felt his mouth sag.

“Lucja!” he cried.

He began to move and then stopped. Over the ridge, he could suddenly see what was coming. The hordes were tumbling upwards from the abyss, rushing towards the base. Men and birds and beasts alike, black as pitch and violent as a hurricane. They spilled over one another, sprinting and running and tearing up the dirt with claws outstretched. Their shrieks rolled towards him like thunder.

Ari and the soldiers disappeared from his view. He was staring only at his daughter, his eyes wide. “I have to get her.”

He ran towards the oncoming horde. He ran towards Lucja.

Lucja pulled her helmet off, her head feeling like it had been sloshed inside of a water tank. “What was that?” She didn't know if Jan was hurt or even alive, but when the man didn't respond, she asked again. “What was that?”

Jan pushed himself slowly upwards. “We hit something.”

“Did you see it?”

Instead of responding, Jan nodded towards a shape on the ground. It lay crushed beneath the sidecar, as black as the things that had grabbed Harald. Her father had told her about them, but she hadn't believed. How could she, without seeing one with her own eyes?

As for the sidecar, it had detached from the bike during the fall. The attachment bar lay bent out of proportion, one wheel strewn some distance away. That didn't bode well for the bike if they hoped to ride it again.

She clutched at Jan's arm without thinking. She didn't know why, but it felt safe. Staring at the thing on the ground, she
needed
to feel safe. His body grew rigid in her hands, but he wasn't looking at her—he was looking towards the crater.

An army of shapes was rushing towards the base, crying and screeching and clawing their way forwards. Jan shoved her aside, a gun suddenly in his grip. For a brief moment, she thought she had felt some warmth in him, but now, she saw him as he truly was. Jan was a weapon. If she were to clutch him again, she'd feel the same comfort she would feel clutching a very large, very well-trained attack dog.

Two stragglers broke off from the pack and charged them. Jan aimed the gun and fired. It took all eight shots to bring them both down.

Lucja ran back to the bike. The wreck had been terrible, but up close, it looked all right.

Reaching beneath the seat, she touched the engine and burned her hands. “
Aa!
”

Jan looked over but didn't comment. He ejected a clip from his gun and thrust in another. More shapes were coming up the path.

Lucja reached under the bike again, being careful to keep her hands off of the metal, and she tried to lift it. She couldn't. The thing felt like it weighed a ton. A few meters away, Jan began firing again. When he was empty, he turned. “If you're going to get that bike up, I suggest you hurry. I'm almost out of shots.”

And then another voice, this one behind them: “Lucja! Lucja!”

As she saw her father running down the path, she was hit with a moment of terrible déjà vu, her mind returning to the shore, to the moment when Hans tore her sister away.

He tackled her. “I love you, darling! I love you. I love you!” Her face was thick with grime, and still, he covered her with kisses. “I'm sorry. I never should have let you go alone!”

“It's all right, but help me. Help me, Papa!”

When she bent down, he bent with her, and together, they put their hands under the bike. They lifted as one, her father's face growing purple with effort. He was never a strong man, her father, but he was strong today. Yes he was.

“There!” he said, laughing.

The motorcycle stood upright once more. She wasn't sure if it would work, but it wasn't leaking any fuel, and the wheels didn't look bent.

We're going to be all right
, she thought.
We're going to be all right, all of us!