“We must find somewhere to hole up for the day,” Layanna said, as the group joined Avery at the edge. “Wait for night to see where the ghost flowers come from—somewhere in this city, we know that much.”
“No need,” Avery said, as Janx tugged at the vines’ roots, selecting the firmest ones. “I know where the ghost flowers come from.” He indicated the great black dome that rose from the center of the city.
“I guess you saw that last night also,” Layanna said.
“Yes.” He met her gaze, then glanced away.
Noise from the hole grew louder. It wouldn’t take the Infested long to realize they had only to use their bodies to form a pile that others could clamber up. Perhaps they’d already started.
Layanna was still staring at the structure. “Where the Key is ...”
“You must wake the Sleeper,” Hildra said. “Have any notion what that means?”
“No, and I’m not altogether sure the ... creature ... was rational.”
“It was rational,” Sheridan said, softly, and the others regarded her. Instead of elaborating, she said, “We’re wasting time.”
She swung the submachine gun behind her back, letting it dangle from its strap, touched the grenade belt to make sure it was still in place, grabbed a vine and lowered herself toward the next tier. As quickly as they could, the others followed. As he crawled down, hand over hand, Avery heard his stomach growl. He was weak and shaky, tired and sore. He hadn’t even had his morning coffee, let alone breakfast. What he wouldn’t give to brush his teeth! At least the others were speaking to him again.
Something troubled him: Sheridan. Not them being caught together (though that too, oh yes), but the fact of her apparent camaraderie. Now that they were free and Layanna was unable to exert her other-self, Sheridan could very likely kill her with a conventional bullet. Sheridan should at least be trying. Perhaps Avery had misjudged her motives. Or perhaps she was just waiting for ... something.
Their feet touched ground, and they all flexed their arms, rolled their shoulders, and worked cramps from their hands. Thorns in the vines had cut Avery’s fingers and palms in several places to go with the scrapes he’d gotten climbing the tree last night—what seemed like years ago—and he thought something may have given him a rash on his cheek.
Noises sprang from the right.
Dreading what he would see, Avery looked. He wished he hadn’t. A wall of Infested was just then rounding the bend of the palace. The elephant his group had ridden in on strode at the horde’s forefront. No Infested rode it, but others rode giant worms and lizards to either side of it. As soon as the group saw the horde, the horde saw them.
“Damn,” said Janx.
The elephant barreled straight for them.
Sheridan fired at its head, to no effect. Avery could feel the thunder of its coming through vibrations in the ground.
“Run,” Layanna said.
They pelted across the lane and into the forest of pillars holding up a section of the neighboring building’s roof.
The elephant charged, weaving in and out of the great pillars, which were spaced widely enough to accommodate it but close enough to slow it down. Not enough, though. The thing was fast. The overmind pushing it on drove it mercilessly, and when Avery looked briefly over his shoulder he saw the great, lumbering corpse barreling down on him, its flesh rippling with maggots in places, in others hanging off in discolored sheets. Real maggots, not those of the Colony, writhed in sores along its sides, and it stank like an open grave.
Its trunk, long and grasping, snaked toward Avery, the slowest runner, and it too squirmed with tiny white shapes. With a scream on his lips, he ran faster.
The others rounded a bend ahead of him and made for a ruined building. Partially collapsed, many cracks showed in its sides, and the group threw themselves into the deepest-looking hole, perhaps hoping it went all the way through and would admit them into the interior of the structure. Avery piled in after them, finding himself in darkness trapped in a shallow nook.
Outside, the elephant trumpeted.
Its trunk thrust through the opening and grasped at the nearest person—Hildra. She slashed it with her hook and edged backward, but the hole they were in didn’t go far enough for her to outdistance it. The trunk crushed her against the wall, then, getting a feel for her dimensions, curled itself around her middle. The others beat at it, and Janx fired into the beast’s skull.
Heedless, it lifted Hildra screaming off the floor, began to drag her out—
Layanna laid her hand on the trunk (Avery wincing as her bare flesh touched it), and the air blurred, just briefly. The elephant shrieked, dropped Hildra, and staggered back, taking its trunk with it. Hildra slapped at her shirt, knocking off any maggots, then stomped the ground with her boot heels.
“Fuck fuck fuck!”
“What did you do?” Avery asked Layanna.
“Usurped its master’s control—for a moment.”
“Can you do it for longer?”
“I—don’t know.”
He studied the others. It was dark in here, but there was just enough light spilling in to see his own desperation reflected back at him. The Infested had found them. There was no way they could reach the Dome with the whole city boiling after them, and that was if they could even get out of this damned nook without getting trampled.
“Can you control it long enough for us to ride it to the Dome?” Avery asked.
A panting, shocked silence followed.
Slowly, Layanna nodded. “Maybe. I couldn’t control a person, but an animal, already dead and used to being controlled ...”
“Do it,” said Sheridan.
Hildra shot her a glare. “I think we should take those grenades of yours, ace.”
“Try it.”
They stared at each other. Outside, the elephant trumpeted, and in the near distance came the sound of shuffling feet: the horde had rounded the bend.
“Let’s hurry this up, folks,” Janx said.
