Shoving Lucy free, plunging in her stead into the tusked maw of what had once been an elephant. The elephant managed only trunks full of grass in life, but this was not life. The hollow's mouth would not struggle to swallow a car. Lucy suspected that this beast could be nothing but mouth. There was no time then to make a study of what a hollow could do, nor did Lucy have the urge to be curious. To a one, the thing these mutants could do is kill her-kill everyone-which was all that mattered.
Lucy didn't have the time to fear what would become of her associate, if not her friend. The other creatures had begun noticing them as aberrant. That gave them only a few minutes more until this probable suicide mission would grow definite.
This was a stupid plan, thought Lucy, but she couldn't help that. A stupid plan, absent a better one, would have to do. Even if she died, it would be no significant loss to the world. At least she would have gone to her death trying to do something for once in her life.
Lucy alone saw Chantel's act of foolish bravery. Admiration almost distracted her, as though at something from a movie. On the screen, what Chantel just did would have been a noble sacrifice that would drive Lucy to do the right thing in the clutch. It just made the odds worse in real life, five against the end of the world.
Did the hollows even eat? Could they digest? Knowing little about them-but more than most ever would-she doubted they had any use for that. Maybe they ate rocks and drank sunlight, but not people. Not like this. It seemed crueler that Chantel, or what was left of her, might remain in the belly of the hollow.
Her mourning was abridged. At her back, something that might have once been a dog wrapped its tentacles around her straight black hair, its teeth on her neck to try to provoke enough of a wound to infect her. Lucy tensed and released her hands, squeezing her face as though on the cusp of crying, charging herself as she had only recently learned she could. A ball of lightning shot from her chest, blowing apart the gray goo from the organic parts it had yet to convert. This creature was dead the moment the goo infested them. There was no sense of being sorry now.
A toddler. They-gender was impossible to tell with this amount of damage-seized, digging furrows into the earth, blood spurting as the bones came loose. If she survived this night, that would be one of the sights that never left her, one that she would relate to a therapist if she ever trusted one again, if there was ever a world in which therapists could prosper.
For the elimination of this abominable memory taking form, death became more appealing. All this was too much for Lucy, but she had ample experience with life being too much. Her coping mechanisms were too overdeveloped to allow this call of the void.
She released another bolt, not out of malice - these things were, at their cores, victims - but because she couldn't spare the thought that this kid was in any way alive. Oblivion had to be better than existing as a husk. It had to be.
Her pity nearly cost her ground. Tim flew overhead, razor-sharp birds trailing him. He was visible, but for the distortion of the air around him, the orb the hollows could not penetrate with their metal and rock beaks. Her reservoir of anxious stress had been flagging after the toddler shuttering. The nervousness of a near-miss filled her up enough that she could blast a few off his trail. The other birds took little notice. They had no loyalty, which might be the only reason humanity might survive if the now five of them didn't fail.
As she startled back, Lucy landed in something that had once been alive, firm and slimy. The metal gashed her leg open. She wiped the goo off her leg, along with a palmful of blood, the former resisting her touch. She would need a tetanus shot if those still existed. She envied Tim that he could float above the gore and havoc, but he had his own cost to pay. The rest of them, earthbound, registered as nothing to the creatures. If they did nothing unusual, the hollows couldn't see them. Tim, the only opponent in the sky, even an invisible one, held the notice of every airborne creature, every bird or bat or something that might have been a tuna until a week ago.
She scanned the sky again for Tim and did not see him. With luck, he had found a way to escape his attackers, having no martial skill but this distraction. She wasn't the praying type, had never bothered, and wouldn't betray herself by starting now. She offered an honest wish to deaf ears that he made it out of here, even at her expense. He was so young. He had potential in the world, potential parents and teachers only pretended Lucy had. She didn't care to ask whether he wanted to live in this world, though.
She heard Diana, but she could not see her. Creature on your right, Luce, be there in two seconds. Duck. Iwazaru's got it.
She knew better than to question this message, crouching instantly, her hands clutching behind her neck. A monkey, skeletal and smoky, used her back like a trampoline to yank something flying at her. A spectral dog caught it midair, chomping it into uselessness. She hazarded a glance around for Samuel, but he would be hiding as best he could.
A snake or the tentacle of a monster lashed her, wrapping itself around her neck, the fine edge of the scales or suckers drawing blood.
It contracted only a fraction of an inch, only to begin choking her unconscious. She was no good to the hollows dead. If they could think at all, they would not have thought they had killed many. The death toll had to be in the millions, if not billions.
She tried for an energy burst. The lack of oxygen drained her ability to do anything but break her nails as she clawed for a reprieve.
The toddler revived, its joints bending with angles they lacked before. It twitched still, hobbling like a puppet with a tangle, but the pale glow around it assured Lucy that it was no longer a danger. The fallen birds danced over, likewise suffused with the glow. They all went to work protecting her.
The reanimated wanted her alive, but Trevor needed them dead first.
The tentacle snake retreated, there pecked open by the zombified birds and pulled apart by the toddler, its every gesture a sickening parody of a child playing.
The closer they got to the source, the stronger and stranger the hollows had become. When the sun set hours ago, it had been as easy as stunning the creatures. Chantel had urged them to remove the metal when it was a human - or looked to be. She thought she could save them, first as a nurse and then with Trevor's skill, but it wasn't enough. Lucy had had to pull Chantel away because their goal was to save the most people possible. Once someone or something had been infected, it was too late. They were no longer able to live without the goo.
Trevor was at her side, his eyes brimming with a concern that she thought was better applied to the dozens of monsters about to murder them.
"You okay, lil girl?"
Lucy rubbed her neck. Her hand came away slick and red. Far too much blood. She wished she didn't know that she was dying. "I'm fine. I'll make it. Get to that portal." She stood, her gait unsteady. "And don't you ever call me 'lil girl.'"
"That's right, lil girl! You get spunky." A buck, the moonlight glinting from its antlers, charged from the brush. She sent a blast its way, but her aim was wide. A few yards before it would gore Trevor, his darkness enveloped it. It collapsed to the ground.
"Want d'ya think? Ride it into battle?"
The trumpet of an elephant blasted through the air, dissonant and sharp. Lucy jerked back, shooting another blast, weaker than the last, but it hit its mark.
Chantel, covered in viscera and green blood, tumbled from the elephant's innards. Lucy's blast hit her exactly right to throw her into a tree.
"Son of a bitch!" she said. "That hurts like a fucker. Pardon my language."
Lucy ran to her, helping her up, finding it almost impossible to get a grip on her arm for all the gore. "I am so sorry."
"Yeah, you be sorry if we don't stop this. Until then, be careful."
Trevor stood at a remove, studying the elephant, standing stolid despite the contents of its torso pouring to the ground.
"I'm gonna ride this."
"Trevor!" Lucy shouted. "We don't have time-" she did not get another word in. Dozens of the metal birds fell from the sky around him, the night around their falling bodies thicker. The elephant's truck twitched, glowing, and lifted Trevor onto its back.
Before she could argue more, his war elephant charged toward the electric purple darkness of the egg. Diana saw this, directing each to support him to stop Trevor from failing. Tim floated onto the back of the elephant, turning visible for Trevor's benefit alone, just in time for his field to repel a swarm of ferrous bats. His thin arms wrapped around Trevor's girth, the black hood of his sweatshirt flipping back in the wind to reveal a pale, terrified, resolute face.
In front of the elephant, the ghostly dog and monkey snatched enemies where they could, crushing them with dexterous arms or foaming jaws, vanishing when hit, and respawning a few feet behind.
Now, she could see Samuel running to keep pace with his pets. He did not see the hooked tentacles of the creature whipping from the tree canopy, one catching him through the calf. Lucy rallied her tension to blast the creature, something that had never belonged to this planet. Its eldritch flailing on the ground revolting something primordial within her.
Chantel raised a sharp rock, pounded it in the one bare spot she could find. Its appendages sought her, trying to tear her flesh free of her bones. The hooks could find no purchase, tearing the flesh and tearing it again as she healed.
Lucy shot it once more for good measure.
Though this battle took only half a minute, Trevor's war elephant was a distant sparkling outline in the gleaming darkness around the egg.
What should I do? Lucy begged Diana.
She felt the hesitation from her as no response came. Diana did not want Lucy thinking, only knowing. Then, It will be okay. If you run, you can get there.
Where are you?
Lucy looked to Chantel, her smooth face showing her confusion, the red and green of the blood floating above the black of her hair. She was not hearing the same message Diana was giving Lucy, but some message meant only for her mind.
Again, hesitation. Not there. Hurry.
I'm not doing well, she told Diana. I'm bleeding too much.
You'll live. Run.
Lucy wanted to argue more, but the beasts were faster in speaking to one another and would be here in greater force too soon. If Diana said it would be safe, she meant it, but she could not mean it for long. Though, if Diana were confident in the potential success, she would be next to Lucy.
Lucy extended her middle finger to the sky, leaving it to interpretation whether she meant Diana or the flying creatures.
The hollows didn't believe they could fail because, as far as she could tell, they didn't believe anything. They just did, just consumed. This was a blessing now. The hollows did not leave this egg, this passageway between the worlds, well-defended. This might have been the only chance Lucy had to survive. Her strength waned along with the stream of blood dripping from her neck. Her whole body constricted as though in a tourniquet.
Lucy ran as through a tunnel, her vision narrowing. She told herself that she did not need to see in her periphery. She told herself that Diana meant it when assuring Lucy that she would live. In the back of her mind, Lucy knew that Diana couldn't see that far. It was not a thought to which she could give her attention. They had to win, or what was the point? If they couldn't beat this, the world wouldn't survive either.
Before the egg, jagged and pulsing, her lungs were steel wool set ablaze. Her muscles no longer granted her their use. She tumbled beside the war elephant, now empty of Trevor's animation.
Samuel had collapsed against a tree. He might have been dead. The dog and monkey were gone, whatever that meant.
Lucy, get up, urged Diana. You survive this. We all do. I saw it. You need to get up and blast that fucking rock.
If you wanted me to move, Lucy thought at her, you would be here to force me.
Opening her eyes required an effort like scaling a sharp incline. Lucy touched her throat again. The effort of the running, the rabbit quickness of her heart getting here, had turned the flow to a river. All her vision tainted blue.
I'm not going to make it. I don't need your lies anymore, she thought. Make Trevor kill me.
Before her, Trevor surrounded the rock with darkness. Its purple light leaked through. Tim squeezed him. The energy of the egg arced off them in a circle, making the field plain. They had only minutes before the egg was going to be too strong for the shield to protect either one of them.
The light had found Lucy. The edges of her wounds burned hot. Diana was not going to save her from being destroyed by the creatures. She needed to die before the hollows to take her.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" demanded Chantel standing over Lucy, her hands on her hips. "How fucking dare you think you get to lay down now? I saved your ass from that elephant for this?" Her eye narrowed, the expression barely visible silhouetted by the egg's light. "You are so worthless, you know that? Everyone thinks that. Everyone always did because you are such a disgusting fraud, a total fuck up. No one ever loved you, bitch. No one ever will because you are broken. That's why your little girlfriend dumped your ass. That's why Tim is embarrassed even to know you. We all can see what you are, some pretender who will never have her shit figured out. You are worthless, you hear me? Even if you survive this, it won't ever be enough to make you feel whole. All these people who died and your pathetic ass wants to take a little nap because you got a scratch?" She leaned in, getting right in Lucy's face. "There is a crack in you. That's why there is nothing good about you. Any goodness would pour out again. There is nothing you can do for that. Broken and disgusting."
These words slammed into her, so like Lucy's own inner monologue that she wanted to cry. This pain and not Diana's insistent shrieking in her mind kept Lucy conscious. All the agony, all the life draining out of her, either via blood loss or proximity to the egg, tempered one last burst.
Lucy tightened every muscle over which she had voluntary control and likely a few that she didn't. She released all the energy she had within her toward the crystalline edges of the egg, her force and Trevor's darkness coupling.
Exhausted, Lucy fell into the abyss and died.
Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled, gifted, and adjudicated. He can cross one eye, raise one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings.
