B. Larson - Shifting

The optometrist’s third of the building had now become a pit, an abyss of dust and rubble. One of the trees was down on its side, not moving. The other, which had the look of a huge black oak, was leaning and struggling to rise. This tree had two arms. One huge branch was straining downward as it leaned on it, trying to raise its fantastic weight with it. The other arm reached up and grabbed the lip of the shelf that had been our corridor, it clamped onto the crumbling remains of carpet and floorboards. I saw the missing finger on that hand, and recognized this was the one that had swooped down and dragged Jimmy Vanton out of the lobby.

I fell upon that hand, chopping with my unnaturally sharp saber. I used both hands, and I shouted while I did it, furiously. Spit ran from my lips and I chopped a finger away, then another, and then split the wood of the hand itself. It shuddered, and groped for me, and then the Preacher was at my side, his axe chopping at it with great heavy thunking sounds. It jerked back the arm, clearly in pain, shuddering, and toppled over backwards as it overbalanced. The small part of my mind that was not in an animal state realized that trees, once free of the earth, had a hard time standing up straight. Like walking telephone poles, balance was not easy for them. Most of my mind was in a barbaric state just then and that part of me loosed a victory howl when I saw the great oak sag down and thrash there in the ruins of the basement, looking like a devil in the very black pits of hell itself.

“Everyone sound off, who have we lost?” demanded the Preacher.

I called out my name, as did others. Carlene Mitts was gone, as were Jimmy Vanton and Mrs. Nelson and the rest of the Nelson kids, only Holly and her father were left. Monika had Carlene’s baby now. She held her with both hands, shushing her. But the baby cried steadily, inconsolable. They weren’t loud cries but rather formed a hoarse, hopeless, keening sound mixed with coughs.

I looked around at them. There were less than a dozen of us left. Normally, any commander would surrender now, but there was no one to accept our surrender, no one to give us quarter. Surely, not the Hag. There was no mercy there, I knew, for I had looked into her shining eyes.

“John, we have to kill the Hag,” I said.

The Preacher looked at me and nodded.

Around the corner, back where the lobby would be now, the lights were wrinkling the air around us again. Looking up, I could see threads of liquid amber and rosy pink and glaring orange. They reflected in the dying smoke and steady raindrops.

At my side, Monika leaned up on her tiptoes, I bent my lips to her and we kissed. Holly came to stand behind me, as always.

The Preacher had his axe out, and he stepped down the corridor toward the lobby. The corridor was shorn in half and full of debris. It made treacherous footing in the wet and dark night. I opened my mouth to protest, to tell him I would go first, but he was already moving forward. The words died in my throat. It was very likely I would get my turn at the front, I knew. We worked our way along the ruined corridor, a cliff into a deadly pit at our feet, ready to swallow us up. His axe’s black blades shone where there was no light to reflect. My saber glimmered faintly as I took my position behind him.

Things were coming down the half corridor now, around the bend up ahead. Now that our inner doors and barricades were gone, there was nothing stopping them, these abominations the Hag was making. They were worse now, now that she had her lantern and she was in the open air of a hellish storm on All Hallows Eve. Her power, I reasoned, was at its peak.

The first thing to come around the bend was the X-ray machine. It took me a moment to recognize it. That strange, elongated arm like an ostrich’s neck with a wide unblinking eye at the tip. The handles on the side of the projector had grown into curved blades. It didn’t walk, so much as dragged itself with appendages grown from the sides of the base. Its power cord now served as a whipping black tail.

It was the first time I’d seen a machine shifted. Always before the changelings had been animal or plant, something alive, but now the rules had changed. Heat emanated from the projector, and I felt the hot kiss of the beam as it touch my cheek. Somewhere in the back of my mind I worried, briefly, about radiation and the retinas of my eyes if the beam were to shine into my head, even for a second. The Preacher cried out something, I think it was something about Joshua, and then he went in hacking with his flashing axe. I hung back, not out of fear of the machine but of his axe. One does not get too close behind a furiously wielded double-bladed axe.

The tail was the first thing to go, it whipped out and wrapped around his ankle, but only for a moment before it was severed and flopping. Then the projector itself darted forward, like the beak of a dinosaur. It smashed into his shoulder and spun him around. I smelled burning cloth. But he was ready for it, he was good. He grabbed the metal neck and hacked wildly at the joint. A normal weapon could never have cut through the aluminum skin of it, but his axe was anything but normal. He had worked his way down to the vital wires in three strokes. The head whipped violently and then the hot lashing beams stopped and the head came off. Still the heavy base of it thrashed horribly.

“Help me,” he grunted and I rushed forward and we heaved it over the edge to smash down into the basement. The oak tree reached over and groped blindly for the thrashing machine, and crushed it. Soon there was silence again down there.

The next things to come around the bend were a pack of bulbous creatures like black jellyfish. There were a lot of them, and they rolled at us like beach balls. But these beach balls had fangs and hard white eyes.

The Preacher took the brunt of it, but some got past his kicks and his swinging axe. Those that got past were left to me and Holly and Vance, we fell on them and stabbed and chopped them up. Once they were punctured, which was hard to do, as they were tough, a mix of air and vile liquid sprayed out. This process reduced them to flopping, fish-like things. It was only when I caught the smell of them, that powerful rubbery stink. I knew then what it was we were fighting.

“Tires,” said Vance in a wondering tone. “Those were tires from the cars out in the lot.”

Panting, I nodded. I dared to let my hopes grow, for we were winning, we were beating everything she could throw at us. It had to take some length of time for her to make these abominations. The Preacher was good, better than I had any right to hope. But I could tell he was getting tired, that he could not keep this pace up forever. Soon, it would be my turn at the front, after something got him. I thought of telling him to take a breather, to let me take the point for a while, but I knew without asking that he would refuse. I knew the bloodlust he had in his eye. I had felt it myself. When you wielded one of these shadowy weapons made from the very stuff of the shifting, it was hard to quit fighting while there was a fight to be had.

We followed the Preacher, but had only advanced a few more steps, perhaps we were half-way to the bend now, when the next horror came into view. This one made us all gasp and I heard a wail of despair from behind me, but wasn’t sure who made the sound. It could have been any of us.

What stood before us was Jimmy Vanton. He wasn’t quite the same anymore, however. He was dead, of course, and he had been melted together with that shotgun of his. His arm ended just past the elbow and turned into the barrel and firing mechanism of a twelve-gauge shotgun. He raised it slowly, but not slowly enough. The Preacher’s downward stroke lopped off that monstrous fused arm of his, but not before he got off a booming shot.