Ghostlands

FORTY-SIX

Since the time he was ten, Theo Siegel’s favorite book had been The Time Machine, and its most harrowing chapter the sequence where the Time Traveler lost his beloved Weena to the burning woods and the Morlocks.

(Not that Theo ever suspected he himself would someday be a Morlock…)

Now he ran wildly about for a time, calling frantically for Melissa, peering in the shelter of trees and any dark vacancy she may have crept into in search of solitude and clemency. He stayed mostly to the rolling expanse of the Sculpture Garden, knowing full well that in her weakened, transmutative state she could not get far.

He found no one. Finally becoming mindful of his own danger, he looked out to see that the onrushing tide of foul, purple-blue-green moldlight was almost upon him. From his vantage point on a grassy rise, he saw to his alarm that the crashing waves of luminance had encircled his position, that he was trapped, with no way out. Living and conscious-no, he corrected himself, with some nameless consciousness driving it-it swept up splashing, stretching toward him, his small realm of greenery shrinking rapidly as it encroached.

Casting desperately about, he peered back and saw the grouping of glowing, diseased structures on North Campus, the physics and other natural science buildings, all engulfed, devoured, transformed.

All save one; although its base was roiling and shimmering with the Source corruption, its domed crown was unsullied, intact. Almost as though the Mind behind the invasion was deliberately keeping it separate, as-what?

A holding place, a nest…

Theo knew where Melissa was.

Hundreds of yards off, impossibly away, across the undulating sea of devil light.

Just then, the gleaming blue tendrils surged up and grabbed him. He cried out, it stung hot like burning cold ice, shooting all the way up his arm into his cheekbones and the sockets of his eyes. He pulled free and scampered away from it, scurried up into the canopy of the lone, untouched tree standing sentinel at the peak of the rise.

Aw man, this is just not my day, Theo thought, and barked out a frenzied laugh as it occurred to him how much he looked like a newspaper cartoon at that moment.

He quieted abruptly as he heard the sound of metal creaking and distorting. From on high in the damp gleaming, he could see the sculptures, Rodin’s Walking Man and Degas’s Little Dancer Aged Fourteen and that funky thing with arms like a windmill, all suffused, inundated with hell-light, coming to life and crunching toward him, with a racket like a demolition derby.

They smashed into the tree, battered it, leaving smears of patinaed bronze on its bark, brought it thundering down. Theo flailed through the air, landing square in the midst of the energy pool. He felt it course over him, submerge him.

The pain was like a swarm of wasps adhering to him. But even so, it wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be. For one thing, it wasn’t devouring or absorbing him, somehow wasn’t able to get inside him (although he could dimly sense voices in his head trying to-well, the best description would be mind-fuck him, mess with his thoughts, get an upper hand on his will; but it wasn’t happening, it felt more like a customer in a restaurant shouting for some attention while being roundly ignored).

It can hurt me, but it can’t kill me, he thought, and it gave him an odd, giddy confidence. And he knew something else, too, although he couldn’t have said how-that the part of him it could hurt was the part that was still human, that had not completely changed.

The realization was momentary, fleeting-just before the huge bulk of metal surged up and encased him.

He recognized the piece, could put a name to it, thanks to the modern-art-appreciation class he’d taken to fulfill his breadth requirements, so he would have what the administration deemed a fully rounded education.

This is fucking ridiculous, he thought as the Henry Moore squeezed the life out of him.

With a rush of adrenaline, he felt the inhuman strength pervade him again, pushed with all his might against the crushing, indifferent bronze. He felt it begin to give way.

Shimmying and grunting, he pulled himself clear of the mass of metal, fell and gained his footing and ran through the living light as it whipped at him and stabbed deep with glowing barbs like Portuguese man-of-wars. The pain was screeching at him, filling his universe. Strobing black flashes filled his vision. He knew any moment he’d pass out, and then it would be adios, amigo.

Theo tripped and sat down hard, gasping as the light overwhelmed him. The world fading out and retreating on him, he felt the last reserves of his strength dissipate, eddy out into the larger, glowing sea.

Suddenly, he felt a strong hand grab him by the scruff of the neck and yank him roughly to his feet.

“Jesus, boy, whatcha doin’? Waitin’ for a streetcar?”

The other figure got a firmer grip on him, around the waist with one long, wiry arm, and then leapt almost straight up, grabbing hold of a ledge on an untouched building with his free hand (Theo knew it to be the Aaron Copland Music Building). He dragged Theo along the precipice, then pulled him into an open window.

The room was pretty dark, but Theo found it was getting easier and easier for him to see in almost no light. There were a number of folks there, and he recognized them all-Krystee Cott, Rafe Dahlquist, Al Watt, almost everyone who had been in the plasma lab; relief flooded him at the thought they’d all gotten away.

Except Jeff…

“Christ, son. You look like shit.”

He turned and saw that the speaker was the one who had hauled him up here and saved his bacon. Brian Forbes, the grunter who had joined Cal Griffin’s band of strays in the blood-drenched snows outside the Gateway Mall, gaped at Theo with enormous eyes the color of albino cave fish.

“Yeah, well, you aren’t exactly an American Beauty yourself,” Theo retorted. Then, abashed, he added, “Thanks.”

Forbes shrugged, and nodded.

Theo recalled how the other had moved through the stinging light, seemingly unharmed.

“That energy crap,” Theo ventured, inclining his head toward the open window and the campus beyond, “Did it hurt you to move through it?”

“A little, not much,” Forbes replied. “Gets kinda noisy in your head, but hey, I’ve hadda screen out crazy bad noise my whole life. I’m from Detroit!”

So I’m right about it, Theo thought. The less human he became, the weaker grip it would have on him.

Krystee Cott stepped up to Theo. He saw she had three rifles strapped across her back, along with ammo belts. “We’ve got the horses saddled and waiting on Coulter Street. We’re getting out of here, away from town, while we still can. Then we’ll regroup and formulate a response.”

What kind of response? We got our asses kicked. Thanks to that dragon, the one who had arrived on metal rails and departed on the storm.

Theo gazed out the window, at the dome that rose above the sea of infection, that gleamed pure in the moonlight.

“I can’t come with you,” he said to the others.

He climbed back out the window, and was lost to the night.