The Dead Spore Collection, page 39
“That was close,” Kenny said. He turned around in her arms. “Too close, what the hell happened?”
“I only saw the danger when your body obstructed the light.” He looked behind him. “Oh, this is just unreal, Kenny. What the hell is this place?”
Kenny turned back around. The light had now faded altogether, giving him an unparalleled view of the cavern. Dozens of dark orange crystal shards hung down from the cavern’s ceiling. He tilted his head up, gazing in wonder at the spectacle. What were they? The ceiling had to be at least a hundred meters from where he stood and yet some of the thicker shards grew down, past his eye line, disappearing into the blackness.
“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life,” he said, tracing the smooth line of the closest shard. The edge looked sharp enough to split light. He reluctantly took his eyes off the structures and looked to his left, smiling when he saw the path wound around the rough cavern wall. At least this wasn’t a dead end.
“Are you still feeling like you’re doped up, Kenny?”
He nodded. “Right now, I feel like we’re in the presence of God. This is part of the reason why these three worlds were able to connect, Diane.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s just a gut feeling that I have.” That felt like a lie. Kenny’s mind and body had altered when his other world sister had bitten him. The more he shifted through the worlds, the more his body adapted to the transition. It was as if he had become linked to all three worlds. Kenny smiled to himself, deciding not to share those thoughts with Diane. He had no wish for her to think that her brother was losing his grip on reality. His grin turned into a smirk when he realized that was just what was happening to him.
“Come on, Diane, we need to keep moving,” he said, taking her hand. Kenny stepped out onto the ledge and flattened his back against the rock face. “Are you going to be okay here?”
“I think so.” She followed him out onto the ledge. “You had better quicken your pace though, Kenny, I can hear footsteps.”
He looked past his sister and saw shadows on the tunnel wall. Kenny slid his feet faster along the ledge, hoping that those bastards wouldn’t be able to see the cavern and would tumble over the crevice. He moaned when he saw a head appear. It glanced at the crystal formation for a second before turning to face them.
Kenny saw the man slowly grin before squeezing his body onto the narrow ledge. The other two followed him out. Kenny moaned again and tried to increase his speed. Unlike him and Diane, the men were choosing their steps carefully; they had no other option. Each guard equalled at least three of Kenny in body mass.
“Why are you even doing this?” Kenny shouted. He saw them all look up in surprise. He guessed that none of them thought that their prey would ask them questions. “Look, can’t you see how dangerous this ledge is? Just go back and say you lost us. Who’s going to know? Come on, you all must know that there’s a good chance that you could fall here.”
None of them bothered to respond, not that that surprised him that much. They had their orders. Kenny pushed on, noticing that the ledge had started to narrow. Would those clowns attempt to cross that? “You had better watch your step here, Diane,” he whispered. “Our journey is about to become rather tricky.”
“It’s not like we can go back, is it,” she answered. “Stop worry about me, you’re the clumsy one. Just try not to take me with you if you do lose your balance.”
“Oh my, you are so compassionate.”
“Come back right now, and I promise we won’t damage you.”
Kenny looked past his sister. The three of them hadn’t moved forward. Kenny nodded to himself; perhaps they had more sense than he gave them credit for. The blond man’s face suggested to Kenny that he wasn’t finding this very funny. The man reached to his side and pulled out his gun.
“No more warnings!” he shouted, pointed the evil-looking device in Kenny’s direction.
Kenny sighed and turned away; he remembered what Rossini had said. These clowns wouldn’t dare shoot them.
“Don’t you turn your back on me, you little fucking shit!”
He yelped as a flake of rock close to his face fell into the abyss when one of the goons fired. His foot slipped. If it hadn’t been for Diane slamming her arm against his chest, he would have followed that tiny piece of rock. He couldn’t believe that they had actually fired on them.
The others followed Blonde Bastard’s example and steadily raised their weapons. It only took a moment for Kenny to realize that he should have kept his mouth shut. The man’s slow brain had eventually reached the same conclusion as Kenny. They wouldn’t be able to reach them; this ledge would not hold those guys.
“Fuck, Diane, we’re going to have to give ourselves up,” he muttered. “He missed once, but I doubt we’ll be that lucky twice.”
His sister wasn’t even looking at him. He gritted his teeth, watching them take aim. “Don’t sho…” An explosion of gunfire silenced Kenny’s words. He gaped in astonishment as the blonde man fell to his knees, dropping his gun. He fell forward, lying on top of his weapon.
Kenny twisted his head and found another group of men on the other side of the cavern, every one of them armed with rifles. “Where did they come from?” he muttered. The man at the front of the group took a step forward, brought his rifle up and pushed the stock into his shoulder. He felt his sister stiffen.
“Oh no, not him.”
Kenny took her hand. “It’ll be okay, I won’t let him touch you, I promise.” He saw that the man’s actions were enough to get the two remaining guards to stumble back, before they both spun around and fled back through the passageway.
“It’s going to be alright,” Kenny said. The man lowered his weapon and stood back to allow two very familiar people to show themselves. Kenny smiled to himself at the sight of the thick-set man standing next to the other Tony.
Kenny squeezed his sister’s hand. “Are you okay to continue?”
She took her eyes off the man holding the rifle and slowly nodded. “There’s no other choice, is there?” Her face darkened. “Just be sure of this though. Kenny. If he even leers at me, I’ll push him off that fucking ledge.”
The large man held out his hand. “I’m happy to see you two again.” He looked at the man standing beside him, then frowned at Kenny. “What happened to the one who looks like my Tony?”
Kenny shrugged. “I don’t know. We got separated and we lost him.”
“If he’s anything like my Tony, he’ll survive.” The big man nodded to himself. “If he does come through, I believe he’ll show up close to us, anyway. It looks as though we are all destined to be together.”
The man with the rifle clicked his fingers and his men ran past them. Kenny felt his sister cringe when her attacker squeezed past her. The big man frowned, switching his gaze from Diane to the man at the back of the group. “I heard there was trouble while I was away,” he said. “I think I can guess what happened, Diane.” He nodded at Kenny’s sister. “Mistakes were made, although one particular incident will not go unpunished. You have my word on that.”
The big man wrapped his arms around Kenny. “I owe you my life,” he said. “What is mine is now yours. As for your friends, my men will deal with them. Come on, I think you should follow us. I have something to show you that will blow your mind.”
He spun around and walked back through the entrance. Kenny took one last look at the unusual rock formations before he and Diane hurried after them, his statement about them always meeting up with the same people stuck in his throat. Kenny stopped dead and looked back at those formations. “Why haven’t I run into another version of me?” he said. “And how come you know my name?”
The man sighed. “I thought that you would have already worked that out, Kenny. The other Kenny died during the outbreak.” He walked back and placed his hands on Kenny’s shoulders. “Our Joseph made me promise to find you and make sure you were safe.”
“But why? I really don’t understand any of this.”
“Come on, It’ll be better if I just show you. This is going to blow your mind, son.”
“Hush down, Kenny,” whispered his sister. She took his hand. “He’s already told us that he’s going to answer your questions.” She paused and tilted her head. “Is that rain?”
Those crystal shards called to Kenny. Each one resonated with a unique song. He knew the others had left the cavern; even his sister had abandoned him. He didn’t care about such trivialities. The songs were all that mattered. Their calling compelled him to move as close as he dared to the edge of the precipice. Even under their spell, Kenny wasn’t stupid enough to allow their seduction to cover his senses with their beautiful voices. There was another voice demanding to join the choir. Compared to the harmony of the shards, this voice sounded like nails screeching across a school blackboard. His bones vibrated as the harsh voice continued to torment his ear. Kenny grounded his teeth and slammed his hands against the side of his head, cutting off all sounds.
The sea of silence was only interrupted by a soft splashing of raindrops into small puddles all around his crouching body.
“Where did you go?”
Kenny reluctantly raised his head. Although the drops of florescent liquid forming a hand-sized pool directly in front of his head was infinitely more appealing than replying to the voice, he knew his mission couldn’t end here.
“You said that I ask too many questions,” he said, watching the glowing rain. It felt rather pleasant to feel it land on his face. Kenny tilted his head back even further and opened his eyes as wide as they would go, needing to feel the warm liquid drip directly into his eyes. His desire never came to fruition as a black shadow obscured his vision before forcing him back up onto his feet and dragging his limp body out of the cavern and into another passageway.
With his back slammed against the rough wall, he found a deeply lined face staring into his. Kenny’s dreaming mind followed the wrinkles, seeing cracks in stone. Had the rock come alive? He heard a deep voice, presumably belonging to the cave monster, telling the blackboard voice a story about how some of their wildlife under the earth could affect how some individuals perceived the shards. Kenny closed his eyes, picturing himself dancing through a glowing forest of bright orange crystals.
“Please, I need you to snap out of it.”
“Is there any sign of activity?”
“Stephen, what happened to him? Seriously, I need to know the truth.”
Kenny heard the voices; they blasted through his brain like bullets, ripping holes in the comforting fabric of clarification that had settled over his tired body the moment the liquid in the cavern had begun to fall.
His lifted his eyelids, looking past the faces of Stephen and his sister.
Cave Monster and Blackboard Voice.
“Where am I?” The shard voices hadn’t left him; he didn’t think they ever would, not now, but their soft tones now competed with human sounds and mechanical interference. He blinked, enjoying the confusion rippling over Stephen’s rugged face. He did feel a twinge of guilt at the sight of his sister’s agonizing worry.
His world righted itself, showing him the interior of a grey-painted room. When he lifted his body off the cold, hard floor, evidence of his whereabouts wasn’t hard to spot. Where the rocks jutted out from the flat surfaces, they had either been painted over or covered with fabric, as if the designers were ashamed of the room’s origins.
“We haven’t gone very far, Kenny.” Diane’s face threatened to crumple. “You really had me worried, you idiot. As soon as all that water fell and you started to stumble, I honestly believed that you were having a fit.”
Kenny wrapped his arms around her body, noting that his wet clothing retained a little of the liquid’s fluorescent properties. “It’s okay, Diane, really it is. I’m fine. I guess my body is taking time to adjust, that’s all.” Even to his ears, his voice sounded false. There was nothing he could do about that. It was ironic that Stephen was going to show him something that would blow his mind and in the end, it was the very objects themselves that opened him up like petals on a yellow rose.
The other voices in this dull room belonged to strangers, except for one. Kenny offered a tentative smile at Stephen’s partner, standing in the middle of a group of young, dark-haired men. Her own smile, directed at Kenny, caused him to sigh with gratitude, pleased that the woman hadn’t come to any harm. The woman gave Kenny one final nod before she resumed her previous task.
“You’re not the first, Kenny. Those unique rocks have a power greater than you could ever imagine. Over the years, they have melted the minds of at least a dozen individuals.” Stephen leaned over Diane and pulled him to his feet. “I’m just glad to see that your mind hasn’t been turned into Jell-O.”
Stephen clicked his fingers and one of the young men wheeled a black chair across the tiles. It amused Kenny to notice how out of place this group of men looked in comparison to everyone else he had met in this world. With their pressed trousers and gleaming white shirts, none of them would have looked out of place sitting at one of the terminals on the floor where he worked.
“I think that what I do have to show you, Kenny, will turn your mind into Jell-O though. I hope you’re prepared.”
Stephen carefully picked what looked like a rock fragment off a metal desk to the left of him. “This is our good luck memento,” he said, smiling. “It’s the only piece that we have ever been able to retrieve.” He approached Kenny. “Open your hand please.”
He did as instructed and flinched when the man dropped the rock into the palm of his hand. Apart from the weight, Kenny could tell immediately that this wasn’t rock; it felt soft against his skin, like an overripe pear.
“Is this part of one of the shards?”
The big man grinned, while nodding. “Our Joseph used that to start up his project.”
Kenny gently touched the fragment, watching his finger sink though the surface. “Oh fuck,” he muttered, jerking his finger back, “it’s as cold as ice inside.”
“Yeah, I know, the fragment lost its warmth about a week after Joseph found it.”
“Oh fuck, it died!” Kenny buried his head in his hands. He looked up. Both Diane and Stephen’s bemused expressions told him that they had no clue as to what he meant. “It should have a voice!” he shouted, “a resonance!” Kenny stood up and placed the fragment carefully back on the desk and walked over to Natalie. He looked up at the black, loose-woven fabric hanging from the ceiling. His bones had already told him what lay beyond it. There were no jutting-out rock pieces concealed under this piece.
“This is what you wanted to show me, isn’t it?” One glance at the woman’s face told him he wasn’t wrong.
She looked across at Stephen before ripping the fabric away. Despite already knowing and preparing himself, Kenny still fell back, hitting the chair, awed by the sight of every shard filling his head with their endless harmonic tune. Kenny tore his gaze away and focused on the hard rock edge, seeing the stones formed into an arch over ten meters high and six meters across. From this perspective, the shards lined up, continuing the archway into what appeared to be infinity. “This is how Joseph was able to move from this world to ours.” The songs flowing from the shards would never be in sync. Kenny saw that now. That man had not found the fragment, as Stephen had claimed. He’d ripped it off one of the shards and it was their new frequency, their imperfection that had broken the skin from this world to the next.
“Is there any point in me talking, Kenny, you seem to know everything now.”
“I don’t know when your plague almost wiped out your population,” said Kenny. Shallow circles rippled across the skin of the shards. Their tune shifted frequency. He took two steps back, feeling the hairs on his head vibrate.
“It’s been at least a decade now, Kenny. Look, I’m not sure what any of this has got to do with anything. We need you. Joseph told us what you would eventually be.” Stephen gripped his shoulders, blocking the gateway from Kenny’s view. “We can shut off the gateway at any time, but if we did that, we would all be dead. It’s only the medication from your world that’s keeping us alive.”
Stephen’s fingers dug deeper. “Will you help us, please? If we don’t sever the cord, they’ll turn what’s left of this world into a charnel house; they won’t stop until they bleed us all dry.”
“How do they enter your world? Do their soldiers come through this gate?”
Stephen violently shook his head. “No, it’s one way only. This location is one piece of information that they were never able to torture out of Joseph. We have no idea how they travel here, the bastards just appear.”
“You might want to revise your information, Stephen. Look at the archway.”
The big man’s fingers gripped Kenny tight. “Oh fuck, I can feel the vibration!” He slowly turned his head. “No, no way.” Stephen ran over to the archway. “We have to get out of here, I mean, right now.” His fingers danced over several buttons on the fist-sized console embedded in the pillar next to the archway. “They’re coming through the gateway! It’s not possible, how did they manage to open it?”
A single scream ripped through Stephen’s frantic cries. Kenny spun around and ran over to his sister, grabbing her wrist and pulling her away from the wall. He felt the change in the air and knew what was coming next, and it wasn’t going to arrive through the archway. A pair of dead-fish eyes materialized next to a technician.
“Move out of the way!” The man had no chance; the rest of the dead thing appeared as soon as Kenny shouted out his warning. It lunged at the unwary man and bit into the side of his neck. Three more dead things appeared behind the first one and fell onto the shrieking man.
