MirrorWorld Part 23

They're after something else.

Someone else.

This leaves just one possibility in my mind. They're here for Lyons. Like me, they're ignoring the foot soldiers and aiming for the guiding mind. It's a strategy as old as warfare. Cut off the head, kill the leader, and the enemy no longer functions. Definitely intelligent.

I rev the engine and speed off. The long driveway is empty now, not a person or Dread in sight. The mob has either served its purpose or the Dread met their human quota for how many people are required for a successful a.s.sault. The security gate is in ruins, ransacked by the mob. I work my way through the debris, hit the road, and speed south, pushing the ATV toward its fifty-mph top speed.

The thickly treaded wheels buzz over the pavement. I keep an eye on the woods to either side of the road but see nothing of concern in either dimension. And for a moment, I breathe. The air smells of pine. And water. And deep-woods rot. My body relaxes. I haven't forgotten the stifling chemical scents of SafeHaven. Despite all that's happened and is about to happen, I'm still pleased to be free of that place and smelling real air again.

With a clear mind, I turn my thoughts to my route. Follow route 202 south for three miles. Turn right onto Old Pine Road. A mile farther, the road ends at the Old Pine Memorial Cemetery. I'll be there in four minutes, tops. It's not a lot of time, but it might be too much. I'm in a race with the Dread, but the odds are stacked against me. They have two armies, human and Dread, one on each side of the mirror. I have me. Both sides are vying for the other's leadership, and whoever reaches that target first and kills it wins. Though the stakes are higher for humanity. Should Lyons and Neuro be taken out today, the war will essentially be over. After my four-minute journey, the plan gets shaky, but it's basically "find and kill anything that looks in charge," with the hopes of disrupting the Dread's psychic network of communication, which out here, in the woods, is silent.

The windy road bends to the right. I take the turn fast, tires screeching and then biting, keeping me in my own lane, which is good. If I'd slid across the double yellow lines, I would have plowed right into a brown state-trooper cruiser heading in the opposite direction.

When he speeds past me, driving equally fast in the opposite direction, I'm positive he's heading for Neuro. He'll probably just become part of the problem when he gets there, but at least he won't be my problem.

A surge of whispering fills my head.

It's followed by the sound of screeching tires.

As I round the bend, a look back reveals the cruiser, in a cloud of tire smoke, spinning back around. There's a Medusa-hands half in, half out of the car, very close to our frequency of reality, its yellow-tipped tendrils buried in the officer's head. Two bulls bounce around the vehicle, filling the roadway with intense fear. They're coming for me, and they're using the policeman as a weapon.

Then I'm alone on the road again, speeding down an empty strip of New Hampshire. Movement to the left catches my attention. Deer fleeing the ATV's loud buzz. Movement to the right now, a bull, running just inside the tree line, keeping pace, but not attacking. Lines of green veins covering the world and tall black trees appear as my vision shifts into the world between. The solid road continues here, as well, its solid, unmoving nature stretching between frequencies. The ache in my eyes is dull, like a fading headache. It hurts, but the severity has dulled, reaffirming my belief that the parts of me that are Dread just need exercise. The bull is alone, but not for long. The roar of the approaching police cruiser grows louder, and the car will soon overtake me or smear me across the pavement.

I jerk to the left.

The cruiser flashes past, doing at least eighty.

Momentum carries me off the road to the left. I swerve around three tall pines and then crank the ATV back toward the road. A bull is there, charging alongside me, staring at me with its four round eyes. For a moment, I feel a connection to the thing. Then its face implodes as a .50 caliber round punches through. I holster the Desert Eagle on my chest.

Brakes squeal.

The rear end of the police cruiser races toward me, or me toward it-either way, the effect is the same. I veer right, racing up a b.u.mpy, root-covered incline as I round the cruiser. While I would love to enter the woods and speed away, the tree line is too thick. Following gravity's pull, I angle the four-wheeler back down to the pavement and skid to a stop. I draw the Desert Eagle, twist back, and fire into the police cruiser. Three rounds. The heavy bullets pa.s.s through the gla.s.s like it's not even there, each one hitting its Dread target.

Tires squeal as the cruiser brakes hard and spins around to face me.

The officer leaps out, gun drawn, aiming over the door. "Don't move!" He's no longer being directed by the Medusa-hands I shot. He's just doing his job and is hopped up on fear.

I look around the cruiser. The Dread fell back through the car and now lay twitching on the ground. As it dies, it fades out of the world in between and returns to its mirror world. I look for the remaining bull, but it's nowhere in sight.

"Hey!" the officer yells.

He's lucky my lack of fear is sometimes kept in check by my strident moral code. Instead of simply shooting the officer, I blow his mind and shift fully into the mirror dimension. To him, I've just winked out of existence.

I crouch down, holding my side as the invisible s.a.d.i.s.t goes to work again. The ache fades faster, though, and I'm able to stand a moment later, feeling more normal, or at least the new normal, with each breath of the tangy, ammonia-scented air. The earth around me is soft and moist. Puddles of liquid with swirling, oily rainbows seep into my footprints as I walk toward the cruiser. Once I'm sure I'm past the car, I slip back into reality. I'm just five feet behind the officer, and he doesn't hear me coming. Three pressure points later, he's unconscious. I lay him in the backseat, steer the car to the shoulder, put on his hazards, and leave.

As I return to the ATV, the whispering in my head grows louder. Almost frantic. But I don't think it has anything to do with me. It's Neuro, I think, and understand what the suddenly excited and frantic tone of the hissing voices means: the Dread have made it inside.

The rest of my drive is uneventful. Three minutes after leaving the officer behind, I pull to a stop, one hundred yards from the cemetery, and park behind a stand of trees. On my feet, I stalk a little bit closer, allowing the shadowy forest to cloak my approach. I keep track of both worlds by taking quick looks between frequencies, noting the ease with which I can now shift my vision. It's not really a tactical advantage since the Dread can also view both worlds, but at least I'm not at a complete disadvantage, like most people. And if the Dread aren't also monitoring both worlds, I might be able to walk right up to the front door.

Fifty yards from the cemetery, I lay at the fringe of a fern patch, totally concealed by the lush, three-foot-tall foliage. Of course, all this effort might be for nothing. I have no idea how the Dread see our world. While my eyes can see like them, I'm still human, and still have two eyes instead of four. For all I know, my presence might shine like a beacon, though I don't think so since I'm still alone.

I put a pair of binoculars to my eyes and check out the real world first. If there are any human beings guarding the place, I want to know about it. The graveyard is ancient, the headstones smooth, slate-gray, worn by time and rain. The names are weathered, some of them erased completely. The remains of a church lay to the side of the cemetery, having been consumed by fire long ago but never rebuilt. Given the amount of graffiti and shards of broken gla.s.s, it's probably been a teenage hangout for years. The graveyard is surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Black paint curls back from the posts, revealing patches of maroon rust. There isn't a single flower by any of the graves. The dead here have been long since forgotten by whatever distant relatives survived them.

Keeping my body in the dimension it belongs to, I let my eyes gaze into the mirror. I feel my eyes shift, the pupils splitting and stretching. It's like moving a colored lens in front of my eyes and then removing it. The pain is negligible. The clearing is still there, but the cemetery is gone and everything else has changed. The forest is now a moist, black jungle streaked with luminescent veins of color, not just green. And the sky is purple, casting its weak glow through gathering storm clouds. I haven't seen the sun here. Maybe there isn't one. Or maybe the strange sky just filters out different wavelengths? Could be why nothing grows green here, other than the veins. But really, who knows how this place works? No one, that's who.

What I do know is that there isn't a Dread in sight.

The giant wart that is the Dread colony sits atop the cemetery's location. Closer this time, I can see that it's a dry husk of a thing, like a beehive. It looks almost brittle, but it's big, a diameter of two hundred feet, at least.

I sit still for a full minute, each second putting Neuro in greater danger. I consider some of them new friends, and, while I can't remember her, one of them was-is-my wife. I'd like to think I'm honorable enough to fight for her, memory or not.

I stand from cover. Leaving the bow and arrows clipped to the ATV, I unsling my a.s.sault rifle and jog toward the nearest arched colony entrance. Armed with two trench knives, a machete, a P229, a Desert Eagle, and the Vector, I'm close to a walking a.r.s.enal, but there's no way to know what I'm going to find in the darkness beyond or what it will take to kill it.

I step inside the colony without a second thought and let the rest of my body slip into the mirror world. The sudden pain staggers me, but my body soon adjusts to this distant world just beyond our reach and I'm moving. My eyes adapt to the shade with typical human efficiency-slowly. But it's not entirely dark inside. Veins of color line the walls. It's like everything in this world is alive, pumping luminous blood through exposed veins.

The floor is hard-packed, dry soil, not like the mush outside. Countless oddly shaped footprints litter the dusty top layer. It's normally a busy place, but right now no one seems to be home.

Whispering rises in pulses powerful enough to daze me. Whatever is generating the mental "sound" is nearby. I can feel it, and I'm pretty d.a.m.n sure it can feel me. Probably did the moment I slipped fully into this world.

The shuffling of scurrying feet confirms it. While most of the colony is away, probably part of the a.s.sault on Neuro, some pugs have remained behind. It's a horrible defense, and the sound gives me a direction to head. a.s.sault rifle up and against my shoulder, I head left, toward the scratching.

The sound of small feet ebbs and flows through the tunnel, but the small creatures making the noise fail to manifest out of the gloom. They're just out of sight, darting away before I can see them. But I can hear them. The pa.s.sage leads downward, following a subtly tightening spiral. Alcoves line the outer wall, each one filled with a variety of mirror-world brush twisted into nests. I take aim into each as I pa.s.s, but the chambers are devoid of life.

Ten minutes later, toward the end of what I believe is my fourth full revolution around the colony, at least fifty feet underground, the incline levels out. The air is like a giant's armpit: warm, moist, and rank. The smell is hard to describe. Part ammonia, part rotten egg, part decaying flesh. There's nothing redeeming about the odor.

The whispering surges and then stops.

The scampering quiets.

They're waiting for me.

A large arching entryway looms on the right. I stalk toward it, glancing into the last empty alcove as I pa.s.s. There are a number of tactics for entering a defended s.p.a.ce. I ignore them all, waltzing out into the open, weapon ready. And while I don't fear what I find, I can't say I'm not surprised by it.

There are twenty of the little black pugs. They're holding their ground, bodies stiff, jaws sprung open to reveal writhing maws. The little veins webbed around their bodies pulse with green light as the luminous blood circulates quicker. Behind them are two bulls, their posture similar to that of the pugs, their hippolike mouths agape and ready to swallow me up. None of this is what's strange, though. It's the mound of undulating flesh rising from the earth at the center of the circular chamber that catches me off guard. Tendrils, similar to those of Medusa-hands, but thicker, rise out of the ground. Hundreds of them, writhing and dancing like charmed snakes.

But the rubbery tentacles aren't the only thing coming out of the ground. Veins, pulsing with color-red, green, yellow, and purple-rise out of the earth around the fringe of tendrils, stretching across the floor and rising up the walls, disappearing into the earth. Whatever this is hidden beneath the colony seems to be supplying the blood, for lack of a better word, to the veins covering the floor, and possibly the land surrounding the colony, maybe for miles in every direction. I glance at the nearest pug. Small veins of green rise up from the floor, commingling with those on the pug for a moment. The pug brightens and the veins fall away. This thing controls the Dread and sustains them, at least in part. While individual species of Dread might have varying degrees of intelligence and sentience, allowing them to do things like fight, direct people's fear, and understand English, this thing is the mastermind. It's the source of the big whispers, linking its mind with theirs. I can feel this truth as much as I can logically deduce it. I've found my target.

"Well," I say. "What are you waiting for?"

The tendrils twitch. A pulse of whispering makes my mind whirl. While I don't understand the various sounds and syllables moving through my thoughts, I somehow feel the message in my core.

Don't ... Or is it, wait ...

Either way, it's feeling a bit of trepidation.

And it should be.

I'm firing before I know it, sending quick bursts of sound-suppressed automatic gunfire into the pack of pugs. Five are down by the time they react. Half dive for cover. The rest lunge for me. Those that hide are the smart ones; the others are quickly cut down, the last of them twitching to death at my feet.

I eject the spent magazine and slap in a fresh one.

The tendrils writhe frantically. Frenetic whispering fills the chamber.

It's panicked.

It's afraid.

The irony of this isn't lost on me, but there's no time to dwell on it. The two bulls charge while the remaining pugs flank me.

Focusing on the clearest threat, I turn the Vector toward the nearest bull and introduce it to a barrage of oscillium projectiles. The monster bucks and shrieks but never stops. It lowers its head, preparing to ram me. But it can no longer see me. While firing the vector left-handed, I draw the machete from my back with my right hand and sidestep the beast. As it pa.s.ses, I swing hard, chopping the machete into the bull's squat neck. I'm not sure what Dread anatomy is like, but it appears that severing the spine behind the head has the same effect it does on creatures in my home dimension. The bull slumps to the floor, silent and still as green fluid pours from the external veins severed by my cut.

High-pitched shrieking fills the air as the pugs launch their a.s.sault. Some jump; some come in low. There's no way I can defend against them all, so I don't. While four fall to gunfire and two meet the end of my blade, the rest make contact. I feel the pressure of their powerful jaws latch onto my body, three on the legs, one on my waist. The squeezing on my legs is painful, but the thick plates of oscillium armor on my limbs do their job. My waist is a different scenario. While the pugs' teeth fail to puncture the oscillium fabric, the sharp points and high pressure are still puncturing my skin. I can feel the hundreds of short tendrils in its mouth, writhing against my side.

I cleave the pug at my waist in half, but it remains clung to me in death. Green blood and bright-red innards spill on two of the pugs attached to my left leg. They spasm away from the gore, revolted by it, shaking their little bodies as they stumble oddly away.

I'm about to shoot the fourth pug when I realize the pint-sized attack was never meant to inflict harm. It was a distraction. I turn around in time to see the remaining bull leap clear over its fallen comrade, land in front of me, and throw its armor-plated head into my already-bruised gut.

I saw a rodeo once. On TV. It's a bona fide memory and not just random knowledge left over from my previous self. I sat on the couch in the SafeHaven lounge with Shotgun Jones. We'd been the only two who stayed out of a ruckus at lunch-Seymour never could resist a good sc.r.a.p when everyone was involved-and we had the place to ourselves. Normally, sports with any kind of violence are forbidden, but we'd had our fill of figure skating and tennis and convinced the security guard to put on something else. He was originally from Texas and quickly found a rodeo show on one of the nine-hundred-something channels we normally couldn't access. At first, we were less than enthused. Watching men cling to the back of a raging bull for all of five seconds wasn't exactly a sport. But then one of those bulls got loose. Caught a clown running. With a quick snap of its head, the bull struck the clown's backside and propelled the man into the stands. Shotgun laughed and laughed.

As I sail through the air, I understand how that sorry clown felt. Of course, he was gored in the process, but being in a mirror dimension that is fifty feet underground and full of angry tentacles, I think I've got him beat. And he had a crowd of worried onlookers to catch him. All I've got is the papier-mache-like wall, which is about as strong as you'd expect. I crash through the layers of crisp wall and spill back into the hallway.

I'm twenty feet up the round hallway, out of view for the moment. The machete is gone. So is the a.s.sault rifle.

Grunting as I stand, I draw the Desert Eagle. One good shot and the fight will be over. I take aim down the tunnel, back toward the chamber entrance, waiting for the bull to come tearing around. But he doesn't show. Can't even hear him running.

But I can feel its approach rumbling the ground beneath my feet.

From the side.

I spin and squeeze the trigger three times, but the wild shots miss the bull exploding through the wall. I'm hit hard and shoved back into one of the alcoves, tripping and falling into a Dread nest. The p.r.i.c.kly den is warm and full of gelatinous goop. My feet slip as I get back up just in time to face the bull again, this time without a hard-hitting weapon. All I've got left is the P229, which I've had limited success with, and the two, foot-long, World War I trench knives.

I unclip the blades and slip my fingers into the oscillium knuckles. Then I charge. I've faced off against a good number of these things now and they're never accustomed to my fearless approach. This one hesitates, just for a moment, before meeting my charge head-on. But it's too late to stop me. I plant a foot atop the nest's edge and vault up and over the bull's four-eyed head.

There's no way I can clear its entire body, but I don't intend to. As I drop toward the thing's hindquarters, I thrust one of the blades down, punching the blade through the armored plating. The blade catches. My motion is arrested and I snap to a stop, falling atop the bull.

As the bull rears up with a howl, I start to slide away. But I have no intention of squaring off with this giant in close quarters again. I stab the second knife down hard, puncturing the bull's flank. With two handholds, my fall stops, and I cling to the bull's back like an honest-to-goodness mirror-dimension bull rider.

Yee-haw.

The bull fulfills its role in this mock rodeo, bucking and thrashing, trying to kick me off. But as mean as this son of a b.i.t.c.h is, I'm meaner. And the armor, which has helped me sustain much of the beating thus far, continues to protect my body. All of this allows me to keep my grip, though the metal knuckles wrapped around my fingers help, too.

A surge of whispers makes my head spin but has an immediate reaction on the bull.

It runs. Downward. Back toward the central chamber, right where I want to be. But when the bull charges around the bend and enters the round chamber once more, I only have enough time to register the changes in the room, think what the f.u.c.k, and open my eyes a bit wider. Then the bull snaps to a stop. Its forelimbs bend, its hind legs thrust. I flip up and over the bull. My fingers feel like they're about to break, stuck inside the knife knuckles, but the blades slip free with twin slurps and finish the rotation with me.

I land on my back.

Correction, I'm caught on my back.

The landing is soft. Undulating. The bull has deposited me right into the ma.s.s of tendrils. They planned this.

I swing with both arms, aiming to cut myself free, but my limbs only make it a few inches before being yanked to a stop. Pressure envelopes my body, holding me in place, my arms extended and legs straight down like a mirror-world crucifix.

I stop struggling. It's a wasted effort.

One of the ten Medusa-hands, whose appearance in the chamber surprised me, slides closer. It looms above me, taller than the others. Its four wide yellow eyes stare down into my eyes. Its head c.o.c.ks to the side, no doubt wondering how I have the same split pupils or how I'm here at all. If they're as intelligent as I think, it will see that I'm part Dread.

It leans closer, just inches from my face.

Whispering fills my thoughts. It feels like questions, but I don't understand.

"I don't understand you," I say, knowing it can understand me.

It pulls back a bit, surprised by my words, or perhaps by the revelation that I can hear the whispers. The Dread turns to the others. A sound like wind fills my head as all the Dread start think-talking at once.

A voice, louder than the others, drowns them out, and the mental storm falls silent.

The tall Medusa-hands leans over me once more.

I decide to reason with it. "Why are you attacking people?"

It leans closer.

"If you just left us alone, I wouldn't be here," I say.

My words have no impact.

A hint of a whisper flits through my mind. I'm not sure why, but I fall silent and watch the Medusa-hands above me.

It whispers at me, the cadence familiar, pushing fear.

I feel nothing.

It tries to instill its fear in me again, the whisper louder.

Still nothing.

Moving slowly, it comes in closer. Tendrils from its hands snake toward my head. The tiny tips tickle my skull, looking for entry but finding none. I'm as material here as they are. Getting those tendrils into my brain is going to take physical force.

The Dread pulls back, the tendrils snaking away. With a bow, it slides back.

Now wha- There's a sharp crack and pain at the back of my head. I feel movement for a moment, and then confusion. What's happening?

It's in my head, I think. The tentacles are beneath me; one of them actually punched through my skull and is probing around in my brain. This should terrify me, I know that, but I feel nothing beyond curiosity and anger for being violated. Killing an enemy is one thing, sticking a tentacle in his brain ... It's just not acceptable. It's wrong.

The skin on my legs suddenly goes p.r.i.c.kly. Then stops.

I taste popcorn.