“They are my friends and must go with me.”
“No.”
Avery swallowed. He met Layanna’s eyes over the backs of several Infested and saw how pale she looked, how weary.
“They must go with me,” Layanna tried again, “or I will not wake the Sleeper.”
There was a momentary flutter among the Infested in the Throne Room, a susurrus ruffle. In the end, the Infested on the dais turned more fully to confront her, while a smaller shape, slim and lithe, moved backward, slipping through their rear ranks.
“You WILL wake the Sleeper,” said the voices of the great maggot. “It is why you are here. It is your reason to be. These others go to Become. Rejoice for them.”
The Infested moved forward, herding Avery and the others toward the bowl filled with squirming maggots and corpses—and that one terrible, glistening mound. In that moment Avery realized the corpses had come from Infested that had outlived their usefulness, that had deteriorated too badly and whose remains had gone to feed the maggot lord, while the infesting maggots themselves, possibly joining others excreted by the titan, waited for new hosts.
“I don’t think so,” said Sheridan.
While the Infested had focused on Layanna, Sheridan had used their distraction to thread her way through their numbers until she found one, an undead soldier, carrying the weapons she desired. As Avery watched on, she relieved the man of his belt of grenades, removing one and tearing its pin out with her teeth, then lobbed it into the bowl. At the same time she wrested a submachine gun from an Infested lizard-thing.
“Duck!” she said.
Avery flung himself to the floor just as the grenade exploded, showering the area with shrapnel and minced maggot and corpse-flesh. The shrapnel sliced into the surrounding Infested, either disabling them or hurling them off the dais.
Cursing, Janx and Hildra rose from the floor, and Avery did likewise, wiping at the mess on his shirt in revulsion. Fortunately all the maggots had been cut to pieces.
Smoke rose from the crater where the great maggot had made its lair. All around, the Infested shrieked, tearing at each other and howling in their awful radio-static din, driven mad without their overmind to tell them what to do, without it to link them to the group mind.
“Come!” Sheridan said, strapping the belt of grenades about her waist. “Get your asses moving!”
She rushed past Layanna, down the ramps and onto the main floor, firing where necessary, clearing a path through the bewildered Infested with her gun but using her bullets conservatively. She gathered more clips of ammunition as she went and tossed guns in her wake for Avery and the others to scoop up.
“Gods,” Janx said, “but she is a terror.”
Without another word, they followed.
* * *
Before they’d even reached the hall leading to the stairway, the Infested were already beginning to recover, and by the time they reached the stairway itself, Infested were swarming up it toward them.
“How?” Hildra said. “Their master’s dead!”
“Later,” Avery said.
They ran. Avery’s knees creaked and blood rushed behind his ears. He felt that every step could be his last—he’d been exhausted before this even started—but he thought of Ani and pushed himself on.
They took one side hall, then another, the Infested shambling behind them. The corridors grew smaller, lower and tighter. The halls leading to the Throne Room, or whatever it had really been, were built in grand fashion to impress visitors with the power of the occupant of the dais, but these smaller halls were the corridors those who actually served in this institution had used to carry out their everyday business. They were not cleared of debris as the other portions of the building had been, and the group was forced to navigate around large sections of collapsed ceiling material and at times leap across rifts in the floor. Avery nearly fell in one such abyss, but Janx jerked him back.
The Infested swarmed behind them, gaining ground with every second. They did not tire, and those who drove them on (for someone must) did not care if the creatures were pushed to their breaking points—literally. Once, glancing over his shoulder, Avery saw the leg of one infested woman snap off. The woman fell, only to be trampled by those behind her. She did not seem to care. Neither did they.
Avery’s group rounded a bend. A wall of rubble stopped them. The ceiling of the chamber had collapsed eons ago and the whole of it was covered in grass, shrubs and spindly trees. It sloped awkwardly toward the sunlight above.
“Now what?” Janx said, checking the cylinder of his gun.
“We can reach the top,” Sheridan said, and began picking her way up the slope. Having little choice, the others followed, slipping and unsure on the spiky, uneven ground. Points of stone jutted from the earth in places, and small animals scurried out of their way.
At the top they saw that the distances had deceived them again; the ceiling was fully fifteen feet higher than the mound of rubble.
“Hell,” said Janx.
“Give me a boost,” Hildra told him.
Climbing on the big man’s shoulders, she grabbed some vines that spilled down from the jut of ceiling and hauled herself up and over the lip. Moments later she reappeared, having ripped up more of the vines, and threw their loose ends down. One at a time the members of the group crawled upward, and Hildra helped them over. Avery’s arms strained when it was his turn, but the sound of Infested entering the chamber behind hastened him on.
Now that they could stop, some of the Infested took aim with their weapons, and Avery nearly lost his hand-hold at the first crack of a rifle. When he didn’t die, he renewed his efforts. Janx and Sheridan rained down bullets on the enemy from above, but Avery didn’t bother turning to see if they struck anything, or if striking anything mattered. He was shaking by the time he reached the top, and both Sheridan and Layanna helped pull him up. Immediately they dragged the vines up so that the Infested couldn’t follow them, at least not instantly, then drew back from the hole. From it issued ever-louder sounds of rushing footsteps and radio static moans.
“The big one died,” said Hildra. “How ... ?”
“I think there are—others,” Avery panted, having grabbed his knees. “Sheridan and I—last night—we saw several centers—of activity, all grouped around—big buildings like this. Five of them, I think. There—might be four other large maggots.”
“Balls,” said Hildra, but she glanced around, studying the city more closely. “Like that one?” She pointed with her hook toward another grand structure some miles away, and Avery nodded.
Janx was regarding Sheridan gravely, perhaps wary of her moving against them now that she was armed. Indeed, Avery noticed that Janx and Hildra had, very casually, aimed their guns in Sheridan’s general direction, and she had aimed hers toward Janx. Nobody pointed their weapon directly, but the threat was there just the same, and Avery hadn’t even been aware of it till now.
“Can we get off this roof?” Layanna said.
Avery walked to the edge and peered off to see another surface below, and another below that. “It’s arranged in tiers,” he said. “And every wall is covered in vines. I think we can manage.”
