There was a depression in the floor. The fog was toppling into it, telling me that it was a rather big hole. “Z?” Holly called from inside. Her voice reeked of desperation. “I need help. Get a rope.”
It could have been a trap, but I didn’t have time to think through the consequences. “Is that really you?”
“No. I’m the Easter Bunny. Rope, now, asshole!” That certainly sounded like the real Holly, but then something else snarled at the bottom of the hole. I tossed the glow stick down. It fell about a dozen feet, cutting through the gray, until it hit the ground between two figures. One was Holly, covered in mud and holding something gray and pointy in her hands, using it to ward off the second figure. The other person was in far worse shape, ragged, tattered, so absolutely filthy that I could barely even recognize it as a human being, and couldn’t even tell what sex it was. “A little help would be nice, Z!”
The batteries on my holographic sight had died along with everything else, but it was an easy enough shot. The silver buckshot hit in a loose wad, blowing a hole through its jaw, neck, and shoulder. The body hit the far wall of the pit, but kept on snarling.
“Hold on,” Holly snapped. I took my finger off the trigger. She used the distraction to lunge forward and plunged her weapon into the creature’s chest just above the sternum. Holly levered it up, then drove it down with a sick, wet crack, right through its heart. She put her foot on its stomach and shoved it away, where it rolled to a stop.
“Good shot,” I said.
“Rope, Z,” Holly demanded, and then I realized why she was in such a hurry. The one with a now perforated heart hadn’t been her only problem. The glow stick hadn’t landed on ground. The floor was an uneven layer of dead bodies. The entire floor was squirming. It was a vampire feeding pit, and the newly minted undead were waking up. Holly had to brace herself against the wall as the man she was standing on tried to rise, knocking her off balance. She stomped ineffectually on his head. “Hurry.”
I didn’t have actual rope, but I always kept a small roll of paracord. It was nearly as useful as duct tape. I wrapped one end around my hand a few times, then tossed the remainder at her. “Catch.” She found the roll and held on for dear life. I pulled hard and dragged her up. Her weight made the narrow cord slice into my flesh and cut off the circulation to my fingers, but there hadn’t been time to secure it any better. Holly got her shoes on the side and tried to kick her way up the mud wall. Hands came out of the fog, grasping listlessly for her.
Holly latched on for dear life as she cleared the edge. I let go of the cord, grabbed her by the wrists and dragged her to safety, cutting a path through the fog. Her fake FBI windbreaker had been shredded. Holly lay there gasping for breath. “I thought I was toast.”
Holly had survived one of these in real life; of course the monster would use that against her. “The Nachtmar is getting into your head—”
“Yeah, yeah. I figured that out. He probably thought he could ruin me with this.” She took a deep breath. “He’ll need to try harder. The real one was worse. The problem there wasn’t when our dead occasionally woke up before the vampires could drag them out and chop them up. It was the starvation and the monotony.” Holly snorted. “He went for flash and missed the whole point.”
I couldn’t even imagine. “Good thing you had a stake.”
Holly shook her head. “I wish. I ran out of ammo and had to improvise. That was a jagged broken femur…Just like old times…”
“Can you move?”
She must have seen how I was standing, favoring one leg. “Probably faster than you.”
“Where’s Mosh?”
“I don’t know. Once things got weird, we were separated…Wait, you guys are back?” A smile split her filthy face. Despite everything else, Holly was actually an optimist. “We did it. Awesome.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Long story. Come on.” Dragging Holly out of the hole must have messed with the Nachtmar’s plans. The fog seemed more erratic, more desperate. I helped her up. “We’ve got to find somebody named Marcus Kitashima.”
“Marcus…I think we met. Dr. Blish said that name. Undead, dark, and creepy, plunged the world into a psychotic nightmare? Yeah, he took that doctor you told me to find. I heard him die screaming. At least I hoped he died, because it sure did sound awful otherwise.”
“That’d be our guy.”
“Marcus…Project Thirteen…Mark Thirteen’s a nickname? Son of a bitch.” Holly was excited. “So we kill this Mark dude, we fix everything?”
“Actually, I’m here to save him.”
Holly sighed. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Really, Z? Did you at least bring help?”
“Ed, but he’s upstairs fighting a dragon.” There was a sudden bang from the opposite end of the storage room. That had been a gunshot. “Mosh?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“I haven’t seen any of the nightmare creations use a gun yet.”
“Quiet, Z. You trying to give him ideas? It might be Mosh, or there were a few of the PT boys here too when everything went to hell.” Then there were several more shots, followed by a crash. “One way to find out.”
I cracked more glow sticks, gave Holly some, and since her gun had long since been emptied on newly minted vampires, handed over my compact .45. We found my brother at the opposite end of the storage area, only he wasn’t the one in need of rescuing.
The area was actually well lit, having taken on the guise of the mortuary in New Zealand where my brother had been tortured. The fog had curled inside the lightbulbs and was fueling them with a sick pale light. The nightmare creations had been cultists from the Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition. There were four of them, but their red robes had been riddled with bullet holes.
Mosh was standing in the middle of the area, over a fifth body. He swung around and pointed a pistol at us when he heard our footsteps. He was shaking so badly I was amazed that he didn’t just shoot. “Owen?”
“Yeah, man. It’s me.” I was flooded with relief. “It’s okay now.”
He’d been cut, beaten. His face was a mess of spreading bruises. His clothing was hanging in strips, and his flesh had been abraded beneath that. Blood was dripping down his arms and splattering into the fog. He held up the hand without the pistol and wiggled his fingers. “Kept them this time. They tried to take them again, but I wouldn’t let them.”
“What happened?”
“I…I don’t know. It was like before, only this time I knew what was going to happen.” He held up the nickel-plated Browning Hi-Power. “I stole this earlier off one of those PT guys. I don’t know how I got a hold of it now…But I got them. I got them all. Even her.” Mosh stepped aside, revealing the last corpse. “Remember her?” Intellectually, I knew it wasn’t the real Lucinda Hood, but it sure was a convincing facsimile. She was a rather attractive young woman with a hacksaw in one hand, but it had been twisted, wedged up under her chin and stuck clear through her throat, surely driven by desperate strength. Mosh giggled. “Bitch didn’t see that coming.”
My brother was seriously out of it. “I’m impressed. I didn’t know you had it in you. Now let’s get you out of here.”
“I should’ve did that the first time.” Mosh was going into shock. “But I’m not like you.”
I put my arm around his shoulder and steered him toward the exit. “Only in the good ways.”
I’d get these guys out, then I had to go back. I had to find Marcus and break the Nachtmar’s spell. There were hundreds of feds and rescue workers trapped in the foggy area, and if the Nachtmar was feeding on all of them, then there was no telling how strong it was going to become.
Lucinda Hood spoke. Mosh had nearly removed her head with the saw blade, but the Nachtmar didn’t need vocal cords or air to speak. “Wait, Chosen.”
“I already told you, no autographs!” Mosh turned around and shot Lucinda half a dozen times. The slide locked back empty, but he kept jerking on the trigger uselessly. “Fucking die already.”
I pushed the empty pistol aside. “Get him out of here, Holly.” She took my incoherently shouting brother by the arm and pulled him away gently. “What do you want, alp?”
The Nachtmar hissed. “I see now you are stronger than my last. Parlay with us, Chosen.”
“Sure. You go back to where you came from, leave us alone, and I don’t destroy you forever.”
“No. I am and always have been. The old realm can no longer satisfy my hunger. The mind worlds have all been explored. Their stories have been told. It is silent now. I would starve there. To go back is to end that which has always been. Ally with us.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Together we will shape this world in whatever fashion you see fit. You wish to halt the coming war? We can help you. We ask little in return. We will heed your stories. We will serve you. We will turn aside the invasion, for you will be the teller of this world, not a mere harvester of the flesh. You are stronger than the last. With our help, only that which you wish shall be.”
I scowled. The evidence all pointed to something big on the horizon, and the mysterious mark had been inscribed into this thing’s tomb in Dugway. “You know about the invasion that’s coming?”
“Yes…I am and always have been. We have seen his stories told before. His stories are beautiful. Even his silence is art. It was he who awoke us from our slumber. It was he who sent us forth to travel your mind worlds and tell your stories in flesh.”
“Why?”
“To test his foes.”
“Who is he?”
“He is that which ends all things. He will end you as well, if you do not accept our alliance. We will show you.”
The fog changed color, becoming a deep red the color of fresh blood. Lucinda and the fake cultists disappeared, to be replaced with brief flashing images, stacked on top of each other, going on forever and ever. I saw the world I knew in flames, cities collapsing into great tears in the earth. I saw everyone I’d ever known, and I saw each of them die horribly. Last of all, I saw Julie, only she’d been changed, every inch of her was covered in the marks of the Guardian. She had become nothing more than a desperate weapon, and had lost all of her humanity in the process. She alone survived, but at that point, it no longer mattered, because she was no longer her anymore.
The images stopped flashing. Above the chaos there was a single mastermind, plotting. He was watching me right now. The red faded and the false Lucinda reappeared before me.
“I’m sick of nightmares.”
“Those are not your nightmares, those are your future. We know this is not the story you wish told…Ally with us, Chosen.”
If I’d learned anything in this business, it was that you never made deals with the devil. “You know what I think of your offer?” I went over, slammed my boot down on Lucinda’s chest, grabbed the saw, and finished what Mosh had started. A few seconds later, the head went rolling away. “That’s what I think of your offer.”
When I finished sawing the teenage girl’s head off, I realized a mummy was politely waiting to speak with me.
It was as if he’d grown out of the fog. His flesh was desiccated, skin pulled tight and parchment thin over the bones. The eye sockets were empty black pits. The hair had long since fallen out, and the skin had split in places over the top of the skull, revealing white bone beneath. I recognized the cut of the uniform from when I’d met him before, only now it was ancient, frayed, and falling apart, bleached nearly colorless by decades of rotting away beneath the sands of a chemical weapons dump.
“Marcus?”
The mummy nodded. The lips had long since peeled back, revealing yellow teeth. The jaw moved, as if he were trying to speak, but no sound came out. The parts that could make sound had long since turned into jerky.
I’m remembering. That was my name once.
The fog was swirling around us, furious. The Nachtmar was gathering its energy, preparing to try another tactic, but it couldn’t stop what I was about to do. It had been a long time since I’d embraced the power granted to me by the Old Ones’ foul magic. Mordechai had understood what I could do. There was a reason he’d risked Mosh’s life to get me here. “I told you I’d help. I kept my promise. I know how to find the woman you’re looking for. Come with me. I need to show you something.” I held out my hand.
The handshake was like grasping iron bars wrapped in a thin leather glove, and a wave of unbearable cold rushed up my arm and threatened to seize my heart.