Authors: Jeffrey Thomas
Having finished her salad, H'anna rose from her table and took the rest of her coffee with her past the escalators, down another hall and from there down a short flight of steps to the employees' entrance to the soup kitchen.
She was on the lunch and supper shift, and on some weekends worked a breakfast/lunch shift for extra money. It was barely enough to pay the rent for her tiny tenement flat, but it had to do for now...though she thought she might soon be having to take her meals in the soup kitchen, as well. The gruel was a specially concocted blend of proteins and electrolytes and vitamins and so many other good things that it all became one pasty grayish sludge (with a different artificial flavor added each day). The pita bread was good for wiping the last smears of porridge from the bottom of the bowls. Tying an apron around her waist, H'anna took her place behind the long counter. She had at first worked in the kitchen itself, but the powder of the gruel mix was a constant cloud in the air, seeming to fill her lungs, and the steam from the vats it cooked in made the atmosphere humid and nauseating in their vicinity. The heavy, doughy smell of baking breads had made her feel that she had an oven in her guts. Not to mention the hellish heat in there. So she served out the slop instead.
The challenge in that, of course, was being in the presence of the customers.
The cafeteria had been created only four years ago, walls knocked down to widen it from its earlier basement rooms. There were other such establishments scattered throughout the sprawling city. It spread before her, low-ceilinged and with support beams here and here, and filled with long tables. At these sat nearly three hundred of the Afflicted.
Three hundred people, and there was no chatter, no laughing, no joking, no gossip...nothing but slurping, chewing, the rustle of clothes and clink of spoons. Tumescent heads bowed over tables, sometimes long hair hanging in the bowls of porridge. Men, women, some children. The authorities had never determined why these particular people had become afflicted while othe
rs had not (and there was no in-between). Some had been inside, some outside, during the great cosmic calamity, or alien attack, or whatever it had been (even that was uncertain, and much debated). Some were young, some old, some rich, some poor, some human, some alien immigrants. A number of authorities had gone so far as to wonder if certain personalities had been more susceptible to infection, certain individuals of a particular psychological disposition. (After all, a number of cult and even church groups had been afflicted to the last member.) No one knew, or at least there was no agreement on theories. But here on Earth, and the colonies on Luna, Mars, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, there were 24,000,000 of the Afflicted all told. It was a staggering, unthinkable figure to H'anna, who on a daily basis saw this mere three hundred bodies as a vast expanse of horror, like looking out on a sea of churning blood.
One of these beings now stood directly opposite her; she was always grateful for the length of counter, a protective wall or barrier. In the kitchen they also mixed powdered juice (another choking kitchen mist) with water in a large tank, and she placed a cup of this on the man's tray, where he had already slopped his gruel. They often spilled half their food just getting to a table. Her hand just briefly brushed against his and he smiled at her foolishly around the tumors on his gums, as if she had meant to flirt with him. Thank God for her disposable gloves. H'anna had to remind herself that this monstrosity had once been someone's beloved father, perhaps, a husband, once a cherished child. She had to hold on to the great tragedy and waste of all this.
Next in line was the security guard on duty, John Bell. He was a great improvement over the last man. John had short sandy hair brushed back neatly from his forehead, a trim mustache, wide-set blue eyes in a somewhat haggard but oddly attractive face. She judged him to be about thirty-five. He was soft-spoken but seemed to have that too-solemn demeanor of a policeman wannabe. She felt better with him around, however; felt better about the gun plainly holstered on his hip.
"Hey, kid," he said in greeting. "Do you have any coffee left back there?"
"Hold on." H'anna ducked backstage for a moment, reappeared with a steaming cup, which she handed to him. "Careful; real hot."
"Speaking of hot," he said, after a sip, "it's horrible today, huh?"
"Yeah. It makes it smell worse in here than ever. I think we should hose all these folks down one of these days."
"Well, not all the homeless centers have showers. I think we'd be better off just vaporizing them all."
H'anna laughed uneasily. And she thought she was bad. "That's a horrible thing to say, John."
"Don't get m
e wrong," he told her, that too-grim look in his eyes. "I ache for the people that they once were. But they aren't those people any more. Those people are gone. These people are something entirely different."
H'anna found John's attitude a bit militaristic and cold
-blooded for her taste, but at least his toughness about the creatures made her feel more comforted to have him around. Not to mention that she found herself somewhat attracted to him, though she normally wasn't interested in men of his age. She decided to change the subject, and nodded at the cup in his hand. "You know, the coffee is a lot better down the block at
Le Caffeic
."
"I've never tried there. Still new in town."
"I'll have to take you some time," she said, and wondered what she was thinking as she did so. Did she really want to start this? He didn't seem like a fun-loving date. Then again, she wasn't the most bubbly and chipper person herself, nor did she want to be. Well, she'd acted on a sudden whim, but she could always back out later if she felt that was the better idea.
John's eyes widened, and seemed to brighten, in the most subliminal way. The faintest of smiles touched his lips. "Well, that would be nice," was all he said at the moment, and she liked that...that he didn't pounce on her suggestion like a dog humping her leg.
Peripherally H'anna saw a figure moving up on John's right, and he had already turned toward it. The next person in line, no doubt. She saw that it wasn't one figure, however, but three children. All three were girls of about ten, all three of the same height, and dressed in similarly shabby clothes and ripped tights made all the more grotesque by their cheery crayon colors. Only the placement of their silvery-sheened boils seemed to distinguish them from each other.
In fact, the trio now spoke in unison.
"We know you, John Bell," they said.
It was the first time H'anna had ever heard one of the Afflicted speak in plain English, and ice water flushed through her limbs. John didn't seem to take it much better...particularly where he had been so personally addressed.
"And who are you?" he managed, harshness in his tone; to mask his apprehension, H'anna sensed.
"We are the Dreaming Ones," the triplets replied.
A low but widely-radiating hiss or rustle caused H'anna to look out across the cafeteria, and what she saw chilled her more than before. Every Afflicted at every one of the tables had turned its head to gaze directly at her. Or so it seemed. But her next impression was that they had swiveled in unison to gaze at the back of John Bell.
"John," she breathed.
Either he followed her stare, or he had felt the many eyes fall onto him, but John whirled around to confront his audience of three hundred.
"My God...it's now," he mumbled. And he drew
his firearm from his belt, half-turned, and in rapid succession shot each of the three girls straight through the forehead.
A black ooze like rotted and
liquefied brain matter spattered across the counter and H'anna lurched back with an inarticulate cry. She saw the three children crumple in dream-like slow motion, their gay skirts spreading out around them in lacy pools. She saw, also as if in a dream, the three hundred Afflicted rise to their feet, their three hundred chairs scraping the floor with a terrible grinding as if three hundred coffin lids had squealed open.
John vaulted up onto and then behind the counter. He took hold of H'anna's arm. Though she had just witnessed his execution of three children, strangely she didn't try to pull free of him, and it had nothing to do with any attraction she might have felt for him a moment earlier.
His face close to hers, his eyes fevered, he told her, "We have to go."
And then the Afflicted bore down on the counter in a solid wave, moving surprisingly quickly, if awkwardly, some falling and being trampled in the avalanche of bodies. Other workers behind the counter began to shout and scream, and bolt into the kitchen. H'anna saw one woman become seized by the hair, however, and dragged backwards over the counter. John spun toward her shrieks and fired at the creatures who had her, but not before they had hooked their fingers into her eye sockets and clamped their teeth into her shoulders and arms. One creature tore out an ear and a mouthful of hair before a projectile from John's chunky black handgun plummeted through its skull. In moments the girl was swallowed from sight, and her cries drowned.
H'anna and John were the last to make it into the kitchen alive. As soon as they had passed through its door, John whirled about to close it and tap the red keypad that would lock it. Before his finger could touch the key, however, three of the Afflicted pressed into the threshold in one surge, and wedged themselves there. H'anna saw that the blisters on their faces, necks and hands had begun to rupture, and a thick silvery pus was winding from the wounds. This vile fluid was so sticky that strands of it had spread from one of the poor wretches to the other, as if metallic cobwebs had grown between them.
In unison, the three creatures chanted, "Tibi Magnum Innominandum, signa stellarum nigrarum et bufaniformis Sadoquae sigillum..."
But John's pistol drowned out their words, and destroyed the mouths that uttered them. His bullets hammered them backwards, unstopped them from the door. Others swarmed to take their place, but not before John was successful in stabbing the red button. They heard the lock snick in place a moment before multiple bodies thudded against the door.
John turned back to H'anna. They were alone; the others had fled without a look back. After the explosion of chaos, it was a moment of almost eerie calm.
"It won't be safe with me," John told her, "but it won't be safe anywhere. At least let me get you out of here, and then we'll decide what to do with you."
"What's happening?" H'anna husked. It was a question born of terror and utter confusion...and yet, she also sensed that John somehow knew. When this had begun he had said, "It's now." He had been expecting this, somehow. There was a resigned sort of fatalism in his manner that made him weirdly collected while the others had run off in panic.
With the stare of a fanatical convert, he answered, "The Old Ones are trying to come through again. The stars are lined up favorably again. I tried to anticipate it...I've studied up on astronomy, talked with people, tried to plot when this would happen...but how can you know what stars to look for, in all this universe? How can you really know?"
It was all mad gibberish to H'anna's ears, like the Latin those three creatures had just spouted. But John wasted no further time on it. He took her arm again, and together they wove their way through the kitchen. Once more, H'anna did not resist.
-3-
Emerging into the lobby of the Ambuehl Building, they saw that the security guard robot had pinned two of the Afflicted against a wall with its bulk, and clutched the limbs or necks of three others. But more were beginning to pour into the revolving door; luckily their numbers and their awkwardness had jammed the door temporarily. John and H'anna raced up the escalator, and on the second floor found an elevator. They rode it to the roof, many flights above. All the way, H'anna was terrified that the thing would suddenly become stuck between floors, trapping them, or let go and plummet. Wasn't all of reality in rebellion, after all? But the ride was smooth, and there were no leering, oozing fiends waiting to flood into the compartment when the doors parted open (though John had his weapon ready in case). The hallway beyond was clean. The upper parking lot, when they entered it, was as still as a sprawling tomb, the darkly gleaming helicars like ranked sarcophagi.
John's helicar was a battered old Hummingbird, its iridescent green paint now dusty and scratched. He had to tap out his entry code twice to get it to open up. H'anna was not reassured that she would be flying it it...but no sooner had she seated herself inside than she looked back and saw that a half dozen of the Afflicted were silently threading their way through the parked cars, having found their way onto the roof.
"John!"
"I see them," he said, and started the craft up. It sputtered, jiggled as the fans fought to catch their rhythm. Slow as they were, the creatures were drawing closer. Two of them shuffled together, holding hands like lovers. Further back, three stumbled along with their arms draped over each other's shoulders. What was this sudden display of affection, H'anna wondered?
But then she saw it was more than that. Somehow, these beings were attached to each other. Linking with each other. Strands and ropes of that gelatinous silver pus or mucus wound around them in loops and garlands, even as more of it drooled from their now gaping wounds. And yet it wasn't only the ooze that merged them together; in places, it actually seemed that their flesh was fusing. H'anna was reminded of the pig hearts she had stitched into one obscene organ for her sculpture "Precious Knickers".