"The jail is under the square. Are we going to parade all these kids by those bastards in there?"
"You have a better idea?"
Priole shook his head.
Rorid spoke up so the others could hear: "Everybody, we're going into this building and taking a path that leads underneath the square. When we come out the other side, we're getting on a boat. You kids, I want you all to get in a line and hold onto the shirt of the person in front of you. It might be dark where we're going."
A little orphan boy began to bawl. Drexel knelt down beside him. "Hey, hey, shhh. You see those two men right there?" Drexel pointed to Rorid and Priole. "They could each take on five Steel Jacks and win! Look at my dad. Monsters have nightmares about
him
! All the things you're scared of? They're scared of my dad. He wouldn't take us anywhere unless he knew it was safe."
They boy ceased his sobbing and dried his tears. Drexel put an arm around him and beamed at his father.
Drexel was an amazing son. Rorid could have shed a tear of pride, but that would have to wait.
When they got to the rear entrance of the Steel Jack building, Rorid pushed on the door. It swung open. Priole brought up the rear, and as the door closed behind him the chaos outside became muffled and distant. Flickering sconces shed their light on the dark metal walls and floor. The lobby stood empty, except for a handful of bloody guardsman corpses.
Rorid couldn't make out who these fallen guardsmen were, but he knew each man that wore the red and crimson. Whoever they were, they'd been his comrades.
The orphans cried and cringed as they stepped past the dead men. They fed each other's fears in a rising tide of terror. One of them stopped and refused to move further.
"We gotta move! We gotta move!" Priole's shouts could barely be heard among the cries of the orphans. When he crashed his shockspear against the wall, however, the flash and the crack and the shower of sparks got their attention.
"We'll all cry later, when we're safe." Rorid's voice echoed off the steel walls. "Right now we have to move!"
"It's going to be okay, I promise," Drexel said. "Just don't look and it's like nothings there."
The kids squeezed their eyes shut.
Their footsteps echoed as they crossed the wide expanse of the lobby. A barred gate blocked the stairway that led down into the sub-floors.
Rorid triggered the release on the wall and heaved with all his might. He couldn't slide it open, and his worried eyes turned to Priole.
The younger guardsmen handed his weapon to Rorid. His held his left arm tight to his stomach. With his right hand, he tried to shake the gate, but it held firm. He put a foot up on the wall and heaved on the gate. With one arm and one leg, Priole forced the gate sideways. As he grunted and huffed, it gave way. Even injured, the man was twice as strong as Rorid.
Rorid guided the troop down the dimly lit metal stairs. They entered a hallway lit by flickering blue light, not unlike that of the shockspears.
Rorid heard movement. He stopped the line and held his finger to his lips to signal for quiet. He stepped cautiously in the direction of the sound. He rounded the corner.
A mass of quivering flesh emitted wet moans and grunts. Another flickering blue light shone down on the thing and the mirror next to it. A single word was written on the mirror in glowing Steel Jack paint:
Haste
.
Rorid covered his mouth, fighting the urge to vomit as he stepped closer. The thing had eyes. Human eyes. This bloody, trembling mass had once been a man. Rorid felt the room spin.
Haste, or what remained of him, stared blankly at his reflection.
"Sir," Priole called out. "Coming through?"
"No!" Rorid roared. "Hold your position."
The Steel Jacks hadn't left Haste with any means of locomotion. His leg muscles, if he really flexed them hard, served only to stretch open the vast cavern of his new mouth. Rorid gasped as Haste strained against his new physiognomy.
They'd left him with one semi-functioning arm, transformed into one long, multi-jointed claw. With great effort, the Haste thing could straighten the arm. With slightly less effort, he could curl it toward his mouth. At the end of it, all his digits had been removed except the middle finger. The flesh at the fingertip was stripped away, exposing the sharp white bone.
Rorid froze as the thing that had been Haste stretched its arm and mouth. He took a series of short, heavy breaths and let out a squeal. He pushed his legs, straining so hard the body shook violently, to stretch his mouth open further and further. Inch by inch, he worked legs and jaw, making the bones creak. A snap reverberated through the room as the lower jaw reached its breaking point, and split in two at the chin. Next, the jaw hinges popped out of their sockets. Haste let out a groan of equal parts agony and relief.
His leg muscles remained tight, keeping the jaw open. The finger at the end of his arm curled and uncurled. His airway sounded obstructed, almost as if he were snoring.
The arm curled in. The finger probed the back of the mouth, then the throat. Haste squeezed and pushed, shoving that bony claw further down and in. He gagged, over and over. His whole body convulsed. Gagging, choking, Haste clawed at his esophagus. The claw pushed in deeper.
Rorid could hear the sloppy, wet beating of Haste's heart.
Haste dug furiously.
The wet choking ceased, replaced by a quiet gurgling.
Rorid found a drop cloth on the floor. He threw it over the dead Haste thing and hurried back to the line of refugees.
"What happened?" Drexel's voice was a nervous whisper. "What did you see?"
Rorid felt like puking, but inside a kernel of something, satisfaction maybe, grew.
Shola raged from atop her contorted perversion of a scarecrow spider.
The spider seized Chuggie and lifted him high. Chuggie fought free and tumbled over the spider's back. Before Shola could turn, he threw the anchor. The blow landed between the witch's shoulder blades.
She screeched with pain.
Shola tumbled from the seat and landed hard on the cobblestones. Her head hit the ground like a hammer. The bones in her neck cracked. Her arms flopped limply at her sides, useless as rags. She kicked her legs with ferocious passion and pushed herself in circles.
Chuggie pinned her shoulder with his knee and raised the bone dagger over his head.
He grabbed the goat-face purse from around her neck.
"You… you can't kill me!" She snarled and spat. "I control you now, Brother Drought."
"We'll see." Chuggie opened the purse and held it in front of her face.
Her eyes lit from within, brilliant blue and dazzling white. She gasped over and over as if a new breed of madness cascaded through her mind. Blood trickled from her nose and gushed from her eyes. A flash of lighting lit up the sky as bright as mid-day.
Chuggie raised the Bleeding Jaws of Glughu, gritted his teeth, and got tackled from behind by a scarecrow.
He somersaulted. Using the scarecrow's momentum, he swung to his feet. He kicked. His blow launched the scarecrow. It crashed into a pole and smashed into useless pieces.
Chuggie stuffed the goat-face purse into his armored satchel.
Dozens of scarecrows ran to help Shola. They hoisted her back up on the spider. She wailed and roared a stream of nonsense as if issuing commands. One of her minions held her head up. Broken bones poked through her leathery skin.
The spider stumbled and lurched like a drunk. Scarecrows, one after another, dropped their weapons, deflated, and collapsed to the ground. The injury to their mistress seemed to injure them too. Shola shrieked as her head flopped to the side and the spider crashed under her.
White-hot pain shot up Chuggie's leg, as if a thousand wasps had stabbed metallic stingers into his calf. Blinded, he slashed at the pain. The Bleeding Jaws of Glughu skewered a small creature. Lifting it up, he blinked. He blinked again until he was sure his vision was clear.
"In death, you will serve the Gooch!" the creature hissed at him.
Dread crawled up from Chuggie's belly and lodged in his throat. Maybe one of the skittering beasties had strayed from the Desecration? Maybe that's what happened —.
The Gooch thundered into the square, pounding his massive arm into the corner of a building. The structure collapsed, section by section, as if in slow motion. The Gooch stormed into the crowd.
The Gooch's desecrated minions swarmed into the plaza. They outnumbered, by far, man and scarecrow combined.
The storm pounded Stagwater with renewed savagery.
The citizens of Stagwater erupted in a fresh chorus of terrified screams.
"Get to the bridge! Get out of the city!" Chuggie roared. But no one could hear his shout.
The Gooch grabbed the living and the dead in his massive infant hands. He stuffed them into his mouth, devouring them with a gulp.
Chuggie raced across the square and headed for the bridge, shouting at those he passed to do the same.
He slammed to a stop. A face he knew blocked him, though its body was twisted and strange.
"Dawes?"
With Rorid in the lead, the group raced out the back entrance of the Municipal Building and charged down to the dock.
No boats awaited them.
Consecutive flashes of lightning revealed little more than floating wood.
More lightning showed the bridge supports to be teeming with shadowy figures.
"We have to cross the bridge!" he called to his group. "And fast, before they tear it down!"
As they made their dash for the bridge, the horror and hopelessness of their situation crashed down on Rorid like a brick to the face. The scarecrows were no longer his biggest problem. An even bigger army of slimy, rotting abominations replaced them.
"Get to that bridge, people!" Rorid yelled. "That's our only damn chance!"
Chuggie bashed the desecrated Dawes aside with a swing of the anchor.
Faben's former apprentice raised Faben's podium and screamed up at the sky. The two goat faces grafted to the sides of his head bleated with rage of their own. The kid was shirtless, and patches of goat hide mixed in with his skin. His midsection looked like it had been clawed open and glued back shut. Dribbles of black slime oozed from the seams.
"You still in there, Dawes?" Chuggie pointed with the bone dagger. He could see Dawes' invisible aura. It moved like slow fire, and tendrils poured out of it toward the Gooch.
"In death, you will serve the Gooch!" Desecrated Dawes lowered the podium blade and rushed at Chuggie.
Chuggie threw the anchor at Dawes' feet in an attempt to trip him up. The throw missed, but Chuggie snagged Dawes as he yanked the chain back.
Dawes veered off course. He stumbled.
Chuggie hacked at him with the Bleeding Jaws of Glughu.
Dawes deflected Chuggie's lunge with the podium blade. He swiped the podium prongs at Chuggie's stomach.
Chuggie dodged and grabbed the podium's shaft.
Dawes let it go and wrapped his hands around Chuggie's neck.
Dawes didn't seem to notice as Chuggie stabbed his stomach over and over.
"In death, you will belong to the Gooch!" Dawes squeezed Chuggie's neck.
Chuggie thought his desecrated breath could've choked a fuggin' Steel Jack.
Chuggie stabbed the prong end of the podium through Dawes' neck.
Dawes howled. He gripped the podium and tried to pull it out.
Chuggie wiggled free of Dawes' clutches and kicked him in the chest.
Dawes tumbled backward into a group of goatmen.
Chuggie jumped behind some overturned carts to hide out while he plotted a course to the bridge. There'd be nothing to gain from battling all day with Dawes and his squad of desecrated goatmen.
"This is for Jaron!" screamed a voice from behind him. Ragged and bloody, Stinkface Dan plunged a dagger into Chuggie's back.
The blade didn't stab Chuggie's heart. It was a weak blow in that respect. Weak or not, the pain brought him to his knees.
A frenzy of violence erupted in Chuggie. He jumped to his feet, spun, and grabbed the young man by the throat.
"Look me in the eye," Chuggie howled. "You could have lived through this."
Dan kicked and clawed.
Chuggie held tight. He pulled at Dan's water. The life in Dan's eyes guttered out as Chuggie reduced him to bones and tightly stretched leather. He flung Dan's corpse into the bedlam of the square to be trampled to bits.
Chuggie realized that he possessed fine control over his Drought power when he held the Bleeding Jaws of Glughu. It made perfect sense, but the notion didn't sit well. If he survived this night, he would have to study up on the bizarre artifact.
Up on the bridge, a couple of guardsmen struggled to get a scraggly bunch of kids across. Screaming children clutched each other. One lady, looking about ready to collapse, clung to a howling little girl. They were innocent people running for their lives. Maybe somebody could make it out of this alive. Just maybe. Chuggie charged toward the embattled refugees.
The Gooch's roar shook the ground.
With the knife still sticking out of his back, Chuggie raced onto bridge. "Lemme at 'em, lemme at 'em," he hollered.
Chuggie readied his anchor for attack. The Bleeding Jaws of Glughu should have been slippery from the rain and the blood, but it stuck to his hand as if it'd been grafted there.
Just ahead, a weary guardsman hacked and slashed at the Gooch's abominations. He impaled a creature on his shockspear. The cackling beast pulled the spear into itself until it got within arm's reach of him. It wrapped its dead arms around him.
The guardsman lashed out, kicked and heaved. The monstrosity, shockspear and all, sailed over the side of the bridge.
Chuggie shoved past the guardsmen and lunged for the desecrated warriors.
"Thanks!" the guardsman yelled as he swung his remaining spear.
Chuggie was a whirlwind of bone and chain. His dagger slashed, his anchor bashed, and the desecrated beasties were torn asunder. It felt so easy and natural he could have laughed triumphantly, but he'd lost so much he didn't have any laughs left in him.