Darwinia

But the mortal fraction of Guilford Law swallowed his fear.

He moved among fractured stone walls toward the center of the City, the way he had come that dreadful winter almost half a century ago, toward the Dome of the Well, the absolute edge of the phenomenal world.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Matthew Crane had turned off his overhead light. He sat in a darkened corner of the office. He had left his desk light on.

The desk itself had been cleared. In the illuminated circle of the lamp resided a single object: a pistol, an old-fashioned revolver, polished and clean.

Lily stared at it.

“It’s loaded,” Matthew Crane said.

His voice was gelatinous and imprecise. He gurgled when he spoke. Lily found herself calculating the distance to the desk. Could she beat him to it? Was the risk worth taking? What did he want from her?

“Don’t worry, Little Flea,” Crane said.

Lily said, “Little Flea?”

“Thinking of the poem. Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em, and little fleas have littler fleas, and so ad infinitum. Because you were my Little Flea, weren’t you, Lily?”

She groped for the light switch. Crane said sharply, “Don’t.”

Lily lowered her hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Too late. Too late for both of us, I’m afraid. I have my spies too, you know. Little Flea had a Littler Flea on her back when she visited the museum yesterday.”

I could run, Lily thought. But then, would he shoot me? Hard to think. The chemical stench was making her dizzy.

“We know what we are,” Crane said. “That makes this easier.”

“Makes what easier?”

“Think of us,” Crane said wetly. He coughed, bent double for a moment, straightened before Lily could take advantage of his weakness. “Think of us together all these years, Big Flea and Little Flea, and to what end? What have I accomplished, Lily? Diverted a few weapons shipments, shared state secrets, did my small part to keep the civilian government preoccupied with wars or doctrinal disputes, and now the battle is being waged…” He made a gesture that might, in the darkness, have been a shrug. “Far from here. My god, why hast thou forsaken me?”

“That’s not fu

“I agree. I’m changing, Little Flea, and I don’t know why.”

He stood up and came a little closer to the lamp — to the pistol. He let his long overcoat fall away. The stench intensified. Lily was able to see the pebbled skin beneath the tattered shirt, the pustulant eruptions, the skin of his face separating like torn tissue paper. His skull had begun to take on a new outline, the jaw thrusting forward, the braincase writhing beneath islands of blood and hair and thick yellow plasm.

Lily gasped.

“As bad as that, Little Flea? I don’t have a mirror. But yes, I suppose it is that bad.”

Her hand groped for the door.

“Run,” he said, “and I’ll shoot you. I really will. Point of honor. So let’s make it a game instead.”

She was as frightened as she had ever been — as frightened as she had been that dreadful night in Fayetteville. Then, the enemy had at least appeared human. Crane didn’t, not anymore, not even in this dim light.

She breathed, “A game?”

“Forget how I look, Little Flea. That wasn’t supposed to happen, I think, at least not yet. I have no control over it. Oddly, neither does my god.”

“What god?”

“My absent god. Absent. That’s the problem. That still, small voice falls silent. Busy elsewhere, I suspect. Unscheduled emergencies. Your people’s work. But this… process…” He held out his blistered hands. “It hurts, Little Flea. And as much as I pray for a little relief… those prayers aren’t answered.”

He paused to cough, a long liquid spasm. Drops of something pink and watery landed on the desk, the carpet, her blouse.

Now, Lily thought, but her legs felt paralyzed.

“Before long,” Crane said, “I won’t be myself anymore. I should have known. The gods, whatever else they may be, are hungry. Above all else. They don’t want Matthew Crane to survive any more than they want you to live, Little Flea. So you see the position I’m in.”

He took another shambling step forward. His legs bent in the wrong places. Flesh cracked with each step; yellow bile leaked out of his cuffs.

“A contest. The pistol is loaded and ready to fire. Ugly as these fingers of mine are, they can still pull a trigger. And so can yours, of course. I’m not as agile as I might have been, but you’re not young, either, Little Flea. I reckon you’ve entered the support-hose and orthopedic-shoe stage of a woman’s life, correct? Maybe you’re even a little arthritic on damp nights. You don’t care to run for a bus these days.”

All true.

“A game. Called ‘grab the pistol.’ I think the odds are more or less fair. Just don’t wait for me to say go.”

She didn’t. Lily moved at once, one furious step after another, but it was like ru

She saw the pistol in its circle of light, gloss black on buffed mahogany, lamplight catching the notches and angles of the weapon in bright constellations.

The stench of Crane’s transformation was thick in the air. He made a sound Lily barely heard, a shrill animal screech.

Her right hand touched the grip of the pistol. It slid away from her a precious inch. She felt Crane’s proximity now, a sulphurous heat.

But suddenly the pistol was hers. She closed her fingers on the grip. She took a step backward from the desk, tripped on a heel, found herself sitting on the blood-stained carpet with the pistol in both shaking hands, holding it in front of her like a dime-store crucifix.

Matthew Crane — the thing that had once been Matthew Crane — reared up before her. The desk lamp fell sideways, raking harsh light across his blistered face. His eyes were cherry red, the pupils narrow black slits. “Little Flea!” he cried. “Good work!”

She fired the pistol. Her aim was low. The bullet clipped a rib, spraying a gout of bloody substance against the far wall. Crane reeled backward, supporting himself on a rack of congressional reports. He looked down at his wound, then back at Lily.

She stood up cautiously.

He smiled — if that was meant to be a smile — past the stumps of his teeth.

“Don’t stop now, Little Flea,” he whispered. “For god’s sake don’t stop now.”

She didn’t. She didn’t stop until the pistol was empty, not until what remained of Matthew Crane was motionless on the floor.

Chapter Forty

A spasm of mortar fire collapsed what remained of the Dome of the Well. Vast intact slabs of shaped rock fell and shattered, lofting pillars of dust into the autumn air. Guilford advanced through the rubble, rifle in hand. His wounds were grave and his breathing was ragged and painful. But all his limbs worked and his mind was as clear as could be expected under the circumstances.

A reef of cloud had drifted in from the mountains, turning the day cold and wet. Drizzle chilled the City and painted the ruins a drab, slick black. Guilford darkened his face with a handful of mud and imagined himself blending into these tortured angles of broken stone. The enemy had abandoned order and were stalking the human intruders almost at random — an effective strategy, since there was no guessing which corner might conceal a demon. Only their stench betrayed them.

Guilford put his head around an intact foundation stone and saw one of the monsters less than a dozen yards away.

This one had left its human origins far behind. The transformation was nearly complete: it stood over seven feet tall, its rounded skull and razor jaws similar to the specimen Sullivan had shown him in the Museum of Monstrosities. It was systematically dismembering a man who had stumbled into its clutches — no one Guilford knew personally, small consolation though that was. It razored the body apart, inspecting and discarding the pieces methodically while Guilford choked back nausea and took careful aim. When the monster reared back with some fresh nugget of human flesh, he fired.