The Games

Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN



Silas gazed up at the slash of night and the gleaming shadow that spoke, and what there was left in him of reason and rationality passed out of existence. The face stared down. Silas felt the change in his head, this partial death, very clearly, and wasn’t too disturbed by it. Because he knew it was necessary. Because what now remained was hard, and cold, and believed in monsters.

He waited for the gladiator to speak again, to fill the gaps with its inhuman, rumbling voice. But the seconds ticked by with only space between them. The gray eyes looked down on him as if in expectation, the shiny backsides of its retinas glowing in the dim, faraway luminescence of his flashlight. It was waiting for him to react, he realized. It was waiting for acknowledgment. Silas had none to give. Next to him, Vidonia was climbing her own mountain back up to speech; her jaw hung open, throat working some soft sound.

“I think we need to hurry,” Silas said.

Vidonia only stared.

And then the creature’s voice did come again, scraping on his sanity, so alien it took his mind a moment to decipher the words: “I come for you, Shilash.”

It was a voice without inflection, without a trace of anything he could recognize as human. Silas could think only that the movies had gotten it wrong for so long; when finally the monster came for Man, it would be behind a voice like growling dogs.

Silas moved first. He jumped against the wall and thrust his right arm as far back into the duct as it would go, groping blindly. His hand touched something, went through it. Warm, wet slime coated him past the wrist. He curled his fingers and tried to pull the gelatinous mass from its position against the wall of the duct, but his hand came free, fingers slipping easily through the egg mass and coming away with nothing. He looked down at his greasy fingertips for a moment, trying not to hear the sounds above him. Then he threw himself at the duct again, reaching, cupping the mass against the flat of his palm.

“Hurry up!” Vidonia shouted. “It’s coming!”

Above them, the gladiator was busy.

The ceiling meshwork buckled.

It was like the scene at the competition, except exactly backward, and much, much more personal. And this mesh was stronger, resembling rebar more than any sort of cable.

Silas scooped against the gelatinous mass, feeling the hard Ping-Pong-ball-size eggs. It oozed toward the edge of the duct, flattening out under its own weight into something like a lumpy puddle.

From high above came the sound of tortured metal, and the first rod snapped under the force of the gladiator. Steel jarred. A chunk of concrete broke free and crashed to the floor in an explosion of sound and dust. Vidonia coughed in the billowing cloud and moved closer to Silas, pulling the light from his grip where it pointed uselessly at the floor.

The slime puddle slid toward the lip of the duct, then over it, parting like water in Silas’s outstretched hand. It hit the floor in twin glops. There were now two gelatinous masses to contend with. Vidonia shone the light through the sticky crumple of straw, parting the loose heap with her other hand.

Silas stooped and tried to disengage the slime from the stalks of straw but soon found the task impossible. A slick coat of viscous sludge spread everywhere, making the straw gleam in the close attention of the flashlight. Small black eggs appeared in the mess, and Silas plucked one from its sheath of slime and tried to crush it between his forefinger and thumb. It was solid as a marble. He dug a hole in the straw with the brush of his hand and set the egg firmly on the hard concrete floor. He raised his leg and stomped with all his force. Pain lanced through his ankle, but when he lifted his foot the egg was still intact, completely unaffected. Perhaps egg was not the right word for what these things were. They were more like hard, round seeds.

And what pestilence will sprout from them?

He’d need something stronger, he decided. Something with the force of a nutcracker, to do them damage. Silas glanced up and saw the gladiator caught halfway in the act of being born, wriggling through the narrow gap in the grating. Its inhuman cries added to the unreality.

Silas looked down at the glossy, unbreakable spheres, then at Vidonia. They were out of time. “Pick them up,” he said. “We have to pick them all up.”

He crouched and frantically began gathering the small black objects. When there were too many for him to hold in one hand, he cradled them in the front of his shirt.

Vidonia dropped her face nearly to the straw as she plucked the eggs, one by one, from their clutching pools of slime.

Silas heard noise and glanced over his shoulder.

“Run,” he told her.

She didn’t hesitate.

Another sound jerked his eyes upward. It was coming.

The wings were through the hole now, the legs sliding inside even as the gray lights wheeled toward him.

Silas launched into a sprint, holding the eggs against his bloodied T-shirt with both hands. The gladiator howled, and the leather slap of wings told him the birth was complete. He didn’t dare look behind him. Instead, he concentrated on the rise and fall of his legs, the placement of his feet in the wide mass of straw. If he tripped on a buried obstacle, he would die. It was that simple.

Ahead of him, Vidonia burst through the open gate, grabbing at the door as she spun to look at him. Her eyes widened suddenly, and he knew it would be close. He knew what her eyes saw. Hot breath kissed the back of his neck as he leaped toward the closing gate.

He hit the ground wrong, skidding on his side, as Vidonia slammed the door home. The gladiator crashed loudly against the bars in the next second. Silas tried to sit up. His breath wouldn’t come. Eggs spun away on the hard concrete in little elliptical orbits. Vidonia was flat on her back, suddenly behind him somehow. He finally managed to suck air into his body, and a hot stab of pain lanced his right side. He took another breath, and his mind cleared a little. Vidonia moaned. He turned his head toward her, and in that moment felt his foot caught in a vise. An impossibly long black arm lay snaked between the bars and across the floor to his foot. The arm pulled, and Silas thought he was a dead man. Then the shoe popped loose and he rolled away, kicking wildly as the huge, black hand clutched at his legs.

The gladiator’s eyes were gray spotlights of rage that bore into him from beside vertical iron. The creature didn’t speak now. It didn’t have to. Silas scooted away on his butt, flailing at the eggs, driving them back from the bars with his hands and arms and legs. Vidonia’s eyes were open, but he could see she was only just now rising up inside them. A red welt ran the length of her forehead. She’d been standing at the bars when the creature slammed into them.

She looked at him as if surprised he was alive. “Do we have them all?”

Silas glanced at the scatter of black orbs, some still rolling. “I think so.” He caught them in the corral of his arms, and they clacked with the sound of billiard balls as they came together. The flashlight was against the wall, spilling illumination across the floor and sketching long shadows behind each egg, making them easy to see even in the dim light.

The gladiator hissed and receded from the bars, becoming shadow again. Wings whispered in the darkness. A puff of air hit Silas’s face. Above, in the distant slash of sky, the stars were blotted out for a moment as the gladiator climbed back into the womb of night.

“It’s gone?” Vidonia said.

“No. It’s not that easy.”

“That was easy?”

Silas stood and began to stuff the eggs into his pockets. He counted them as he did so, and there were eleven. He silently hoped that they hadn’t lost one, and started down the hall in the direction from which they’d originally come. Vidonia was close behind him. He clicked the light off and found the halls less distracting in the near dark. There was no contrast of shadows, no sweep of a sharp, bright flashlight beam. A suggestion of light filtered through the open doorways of the labs.

They turned left, taking the hall deeper into the building. They slowed at an intersection.

“Which way?” Vidonia asked.

Silas hesitated. “That way,” he said, pointing to the left, and then they were running again. Twenty meters down the hall, he swung them right.

“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” Vidonia asked, as they slowed past a series of doorways.

Silas wasn’t sure one bit. “It all looks the same in the dark.” He stopped. “I think this is it.”

He pushed the half-open door and stepped into the lab. Starlight filtered through the broad windows, throwing the room into twilight. He could see the vague outlines of lab benches against the far wall. Silas motioned for Vidonia to stay where she was, but she followed him closely as he entered deeper into the room. Glass crunched underfoot as he neared the windows. They were in the right place. He paused, listening. Outside, the moonlit oaks swayed in the breeze. The only sound was the rustle of leaves. He took a few steps closer to the window, and their car was visible over the top of the sill. It was conspicuous as hell parked against the wall like that, and his eyes scanned the black sky, looking for movement.

“Something doesn’t feel right,” he said.

“What do you want to do?”

He was silent, weighing their options for a moment before admitting, “What choice do we have?”

His foot brushed the lug wrench, and he bent to pick it up. It felt ridiculous in his hand. What good would a lug wrench be if that thing got hold of him? Every nerve was tingling as he moved toward the narrow gap in the frame of windows. He angled his head alongside broken glass and looked down the side of the building. Small stone outcroppings at the far side of the windows kept him from seeing very far. It was going to come down to a matter of faith. That thing was either out there or it wasn’t. He took a deep breath and extended his head through the window, quickly glancing left and right. Nothing. Still no movement. Still no sound other than the rustling of the trees.

“Doesn’t feel right,” he said again, softly.

“Be careful,” Vidonia said.

“I’ll do my best.”

He couldn’t see it, but everything he knew about the gladiator told him that thing was out there, waiting. This was a trap.

He backed away from the window, and the sound of rustling leaves grew suddenly louder. A huge black shadow arced down from the upper branches of the nearest oak, and Silas sprang backward as the shape crashed into the bank of windows.

Glass exploded inward, but the metal frames held. Silas scrambled to his feet as the gladiator roared and thrashed. There was a screech and a loud pop as the window frame broke free from the wall on one side.

Vidonia screamed.

“Come on!” Silas grabbed her hand and jerked her through the open doorway and into the hall.

They ran blindly at top speed, concentrating only on putting distance between them and the gladiator. Silas felt like a mouse in a maze, and the cat was coming. They went left. Then right.

There was a loud crash in the distance, and the sound of breaking glass. The gladiator was inside now. They stopped.

“Which way?”

“That way,” she said, motioning to the left.

Silas set off, running again. He stopped at the next junction.

“Take off your shoes,” he said.

“Why?”

“We’re making too much noise. It’s going to listen for us.” Silas unlaced his single remaining shoe and pushed it against the wall.

“My hands are shaking too much,” she said. Her voice cracked.

“Try to breathe quietly,” he said.

“How the hell do you breathe quietly?”

Silas put his finger against her lips to silence her. She was near tears.

He bent to help her and pulled the lowtops off her heels. A sound reverberated down the hall. A big sound. He slid the shoes against the wall near his, thought better of it, then tossed them down the opposite hall as far as he could throw. The sound came again, closer, like the sound of a big dog running on tile, the tap of claws on tile.

He pulled her to her feet. “C’mon, fast and quiet.” They sprinted on their toes. Silas no longer tried to keep track of their position within the building. He went left and right in a zigzag pattern, trying to lose the sound that rattled occasionally through the halls behind them. Fear pushed him faster. The clack of talons was closing the distance.

Silas’s feet were suddenly on soft carpet as they came to the entrance foyer. He tried the doors. Locked. They ran again, taking the first hall to the left.

Here the darkness was nearly absolute. There were no windows for starlight to seep through. Silas gripped Vidonia’s arm with one hand and held the other out before him as he walked, feeling for obstructions. He had no idea where he was.

The steady clack of talons quieted for a moment, and Silas knew the creature had moved onto the carpet. It was too close now. They’d run out of time.

His fingers brushed against a smooth, hard surface. He ran his hand along the wall until he felt a doorway, and then he pushed through into a lab, catching the doorjamb with the palm of his hand and swinging inside. Vidonia rushed in behind him, and he shut the door quietly.

He moved past the long countertops to the edge of the window. He pulled the curtains wide, and the dimmest wedge of ambient light filtered into the room.

There was no broken scatter of glass on the floor. No lug wrench. But other than that, this room was identical to the room they’d entered through.

He checked if the windows opened. They didn’t. He cursed silently.

His eyes cast about, looking for something to break the glass. The room was stocked with a familiar array of scientific equipment: liter bottles of sulfuric acid, centrifuges, sinks, and microscopes. A large desiccator sat on the counter near a rack of test tubes and volumetric flasks. A bank of computer terminals ran along another countertop.

They had probably stumbled onto the wing on the opposite side of the building from their car, but he couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t going to risk moving back out into the hall to find out. His hand reached for the biggest, heaviest microscope he saw. They’d get their bearings straight once they were outside.

The sound at the door froze him in place.

Breathing.

The knob slowly turned.

He dropped to his knees behind the counter, pushing himself against the cool wooden cabinet. He’d lost track of Vidonia. The door creaked, then swung slowly open and banged against the doorstop. Then was no sound at all. Seconds passed.

“Shilashhhhh.”

He swallowed hard. The chase was over. This became something else now.

Talons clicked across the floor slowly as the gladiator ducked into the room.

Silas looked for Vidonia, but she was nowhere. She’d been closer to the windows and must have dropped behind another counter. Tay rose in Silas’s mind. Is this what the man felt as the gladiator finally broke into the room? Is this what he felt when he saw death coming for him? Talons clicked against the floor, moving closer. The gladiator walked along the far wall, swinging nearer to the edge of the counter.

“Shilashhhhh.”

The voice was enough to drive a man crazy. It was an animal snarl shaped into human words.

“Hunnnngry, Shilashhh.” The voice rounded the corner just ahead of the massive, dark body. Gray eyes found him in the shadows. Silas knew he should run, should move, should do something, anything, scream, rage, crawl, beg, but he couldn’t make his body work. In his mind, he clearly saw that anything he did quickly left him dead, so he did nothing. Looking up at the smiling maw of teeth, he stared at his future.

“Shilash.”

Silas’s hand tightened around the microscope. The talking had done it. Actually seeing words born from that mouth was too much for him to bear. He could move to silence those words, if not to save his own life. He flung the microscope as hard as he could. The gladiator’s hand moved faster than Silas’s eyes could follow, batting the microscope away with enough force to embed its pieces in the far wall. The creature bared its teeth in a leering smile and took a long step toward him. Silas feverishly plucked another microscope off the counter and hurled it. The gladiator impatiently knocked the assault away with a fist, sending the instrument across the room in chunks.

The gladiator’s eyes changed. The grin became something less human, more predatory. It moved toward him. Silas stumbled back, clutching blindly across the countertop. His hand found the neck of a bottle, and he swung it over his shoulder with all the force of his body. The charging beast swatted at the incoming bottle, shattering it.

The charge stopped dead, and the gladiator screamed.

The rotten-egg smell of concentrated sulfuric acid stung Silas’s nose. He cupped a hand over his mouth, gagging. The fumes burned his eyes, blinding him. The gladiator’s howls continued, rising to an agonizing screech that hurt Silas’s ears. Wood crunched as the gladiator thrashed in agony, knocking the counter from its base.

Silas fell backward, snatching air painfully through his cupped fingers. The gladiator lashed out, spinning like a tornado, slamming into the walls, knocking equipment across the room. Silas crawled along the floor to the wall and scrambled to his feet. He found Vidonia through squinted eyes and pulled her toward the door by her hand. The gladiator’s screams continued as they burst into the hall.

Though concentrated sulfuric acid looks like water, it has a consistency closer to that of maple syrup. It sticks to what it touches and, with a pH approaching 1.2, can carve out a hole in flesh.

The screams continued, changing, shifting from pain into rage.

They ran.

They sprinted in blind panic, any thought of exiting the way they entered erased.

They paused for breath at an intersection.

“Which way?” she asked, hands on her knees.

“I’m not sure.”

“Do you think it’s going to follow?”

Silas didn’t answer.

The screams stopped. Silas looked at Vidonia and realized neither of them believed the gladiator’s injuries had been fatal. It was coming again.

Silas looked down the forward hall. In the distance, starlight cast hazy runnels of shadow into the lobby.

“We can break out one of those windows,” she said.

“It would hear us. We’d never make it to the car.” He thought of when he’d last looked up to the stars for Orion. He hadn’t been able to find the constellation in all the wash of light. But the cities were dark tonight. The archer would be out as he hadn’t been for a very long time. The archer.

“No, not the car,” he said, pulling her down the side hall by the arm. “I have another idea.”

“What is it?”

“My office. We need to get there. We’re going the wrong way.”

“Your office?”

“This way.”

They backtracked a short length of hall, and Silas pushed through a door.

“Another stairwell?” she said.

“Can’t be any worse than the last.”

And it wasn’t. At the top of the landing was a single shining emergency light. One flight up, Silas pushed into another dark hall. This space he knew by heart. He’d walked it every day for the last twelve years. His office door was locked. He dug for the key, but his pockets were empty except for the eggs. Had he left his keys in the car? It didn’t matter. He stepped back and threw his shoulder into the door. It snapped from the jamb easily and swung inward on warped hinges.

Vidonia followed him into his office, shutting the door behind them. Silas went to the window and looked out. Darkness. Swaying trees. Above, Orion with his crooked belt.

Silas opened the closet and pulled the bow from the top shelf. Two arrows leaned against the corner. The first, he knew, was bent beyond use, knocked crooked by the corner of the target he’d used on the property behind the lab. The second arrow would have to do. He picked it up and ran his thumb over the field point. It was not so dull as a spoon, but it was close.

Silas decided not to think about it. It was the only weapon they had. It either would or wouldn’t be enough.

They waited.

“This isn’t how I wanted it to end,” Vidonia said.

“Who says it’s going to end this way?”

“I mean, if it does. If it does end like this …”

“What?”

“I wanted more time,” she said.

“We’ll have it.”

After a short while, they heard the clicking. It had tracked them.

“Get in the closet,” Silas said. “No matter what, stay there.”

She nodded and slipped inside. “Silas,” she said from the shadows, the beginning of a question.

He motioned for her to shut the door. She did.


SILAS MOVED behind his desk, bow slick in his sweaty hands. The clicking talons moved steadily closer, the sounds growing louder as the creature progressed down the hall. It was almost there. Silas touched the dull tip of the field point again, hoping it could still bite. It had to. But he’d have to be close in order to make sure that he didn’t miss. He didn’t trust his nerves.

The footsteps halted just outside the office door. Silas dropped to the carpet behind the desk, gripping the bow tightly. His heart beat in his ears. His mouth was bone dry, throat closing in on itself.

The doorknob did not turn this time.

The door exploded inward and splintered against the wall. Silas heard the creature enter the room, heard its breath coming in long, ragged drafts. Silas waited. The talons were silent on the carpet, so he tracked the creature by its breathing. It stank of sulfuric acid and burned flesh. It moved along the far wall toward the closet. The breathing stopped.

Wood crackled, and Vidonia screamed. The creature yanked her from the closet by her leg.

“Hey!”

Silas jerked to his feet and cocked the arrow back. The gladiator held Vidonia upside down by the calf, shaking her violently. The skin on its face and chest was a tattered ruin, sprouting great white sheaths of dead flesh that drooped like potato peelings.

One eye looked out from the wreckage of its face, wheeling toward Silas.

Aiming for the eye, Silas released the arrow.

He knew immediately that it was high.

The shot went wide and imbedded deep in the upward arch of the gladiator’s wing. It screamed and dropped Vidonia to the floor. She landed on her head with a thump, then rolled away toward the wall.

The creature turned its head and reached over its shoulder, gripping the arrow in its hand. It snapped the shaft off, and Silas could see that the wing was torn. Dark blood poured from the wound. The single remaining eye rolled on him again, filled with rage and pain.

It roared loud enough to shake the room, and the useless bow slipped from Silas’s hand and thumped to the floor.

It came for him.