Алан Дин Фостер - To the Vanishing Point

More laughter. He dropped the receiver, letting it bounce against the wall. Red worms began oozing from the handset and smoke from the housing.

"It’s here," he mumbled dazedly to himself. "In Los Angeles. The Anarchis."

Maybe not. Maybe it was just the turn of this reality to come apart as the threads of its existence started to unravel. His reality was twisting, snapping all around him. He fancied he could hear it groan. Screams and shouts and other less pleasant, less human voices were coming from the outer offices. He ran to the door and flung it wide.

Madness had advanced further and faster here. High-pitched yowls and inhuman gruntings rose above the noise of broken terminals and whining phones. Overwhelmed ceiling sprinklers deluged the whole floor with tepid water.

The inhabitants of the building were no longer recognizable. Some had grown enormous chests or bellies and had split their clothing. Others sported horns or long curving fangs protruding from prognathous jaws. Very few looked passably human.

They were doing battle with one another and with the machines. Guts and intestines exploded from computer terminals. Wires and conduits flailed wildly, searching for something soft to grasp, suckers pimpling their formerly smooth surfaces. Blood and black slime covered the floor, making footing uncertain as he stumbled blankly toward the hallway.

Two abominations that had once been human crashed past him, locked in each other’s grasp, tearing and ripping. They snapped at each other with sharp teeth an inch long.

Frank had to duck behind a still-intact desk as they tumbled by, torn by their own frantic, demonic energy. He didn’t see the ugly yellow eye staring at him. Once it had been the innocuous faceplate of a calculator readout. Now it turned with a malevolent sentience. Black, rubbery conduits rose and reached for him. He sensed movement and threw himself aside as they smashed the desk to splinters in a violent, spasmodic attempt to clutch and rend.

He crawled the rest of the way, trying to hug the wall, barely thinking but knowing that he had to get out, get away. There was no sign of Nina Defly, or anyone else he might recognize. They were taken, transformed, damned.

He rose to his feet and staggered out into the hallway. It was a little quieter beyond the offices. The nightmarish conflagration had not yet spilled this far. The receptionist’s desk was a shambles. Gasping for air he leaned on the wood for support.

"Ellen? Ellen, you back there?" He looked toward the overturned chair.

A blue-green snake as big around as a man’s thigh looked out from its coils and prepared to strike. He screamed and stumbled backward. The head rose on its muscular neck to stare back at him. It was of undeniably feminine cast. One hiss, a single flick of the long tongue, and it struck.

He threw himself toward the elevator and the gaping jaws missed. A hand slapped wildly at the call button set in the wall. Again the monster struck. Frank rolled and the fangs bounced off the steel doors. He could hear the cables rattling in the elevator shaft and prayed the cab was only a floor or two away.

He nearly threw himself inside when the doors parted and just barely caught himself in time. If it hadn’t been for the soft, chuckling growl he wouldn’t have hesitated.

In place of the empty elevator cab was a huge, rectangular mouth, all soft and pulsing wet. Scimitarlike teeth lined a dark narrow throat leading to unimaginable death. The elevator roared and reached for him. As he turned, a tooth the size of a gallon bucket caught his sleeve. He felt himself being dragged downward. Fear lent strength to his legs as he fought for purchase on the slick hall carpet. As his shirt tore free, the sliding jaws of the elevator slammed shut like a couple of compact cars meeting head on.

At the same time, the snake-thing was striking anew. It shot past Frank’s head and turned, only to shriek once as the elevator jaws caught it behind the skull and bit through. Headless coils lashed the walls with frightening energy.

Frank flung aside the door that led to the emergency stairwell and paused at the top of the steps. Below lay only concrete stairs and an iron railing painted bright yellow. He plunged down, taking two steps at a stride. Once he stumbled badly, feared he might have broken an ankle. It was only a cramp. Struggling erect, he braced himself against the railing as he continued his mad descent, checking each new level carefully before hurrying on.

When he reached the fire door that opened onto the second floor, he stopped. Horrible noises came from the other side and blood began to ooze beneath the barrier. It poured across the landing and down the stairs in a crimson flood. Taking a deep breath, he cleared the landing in a single bound. Nothing burst in upon him.

He reached the bottom, ripped open the door that led to the main lobby. Blood flew from the soles of his shoes as he stumbled out into the well-lit atrium. The security guard wasn’t at his circular station. In his place was a writhing silicon hydra. Each head consisted of a dislodged security video terminal. They wove hypnotically at the ends of heavy-duty cables like parts of some berserk alien anemone.

Every one of the decorative plants, which had adorned the lobby, had sprouted teeth and claws. Roots erupted from constraining pots and planters as palms and ferns dragged themselves across the floor to rip and rend their neighbors. Two of the security-terminal hydra’s cable-tentacles clutched pistols, which had belonged to building security. Frank winced as he heard one go off, saw the bullet score the marble pavement off to his right. He expected more shots, but none were forthcoming. Evidently the monstrosity had emptied the magazines of both guns prior to his arrival.

Frustrated, it threw the empty guns at him. One struck him in the ribs, making him ache in pain. The movement carried him close to a palm with bladelike leaves. It swiped at his neck, just missing the jugular.

He ran the feral floral gauntlet all the way to the main exit and reached for the gleaming brass handle. Tendrils clutched at his legs. They lined a glistening green-black maw that made sucking movements in his direction like some perverted flesh-eating gourami. Before they could reach him, he yanked the door open and stumbled out into the dim, unwholesome daylight.

It was worse outside the building. Smoke and flame billowed unrestrained from several structures across the street. Living things leaped or were thrown from shattered windows. A confusing metallic pileup jammed the center of Beach Boulevard. Some of the broken, crumpled vehicles had undergone the same hellish change as his employees. Steel and aluminum hulks crawled about on flexible tires or rubbery, uncertain legs, chewing and tearing at anything within reach. Gasoline and diesel mixed with blood in the gutters.

As he looked on dazedly, half a dozen newly sentient automobiles pawed the remains of what had been a big tractor-trailer rig. Now it more closely resembled a beached humpback whale being torn to shreds by a pack of killer whales. The rig moaned in agony — a chilling, grating, mechanical cry. Frank turned away, his stomach churning.

The street was full of mangled, broken bodies, some of which were still recognizable as human. Others were bloated or distorted like the raging occupants of his own building. While he stood staring, a man and woman tried to cross the street, angling for the safety of an alley. They were instantly run down by a car whose wheels were still round, but whose headlights and grille had been transformed into a cold inanimate face. Both hapless pedestrians went flying. They bounced off the pavement and lay motionless. As Frank looked on in horror, the car-creature ran over them repeatedly, until little remained save darker stains on an already mottled street.