Furnace (20 page)

They’re too slow
, I thought. Yet they’d still done a hell of a job of cornering me, if that was their intention.

Instinctively, I backed deeper into the shadows surrounding the clown’s throne while the undead humans continued their somber, shambling approach. The procession was unnerving. I’d seen similar rituals every Sunday as a boy when the congregation visited the altar to offer a sacrifice or eat the flesh of their crucified savior. Except, on Earth, the parishioners typically hadn’t been mired in various stages of decomposition. Some of these ghouls were missing limbs. Some had their heads tilted at absurd angles from broken necks. Some were even worse.

“Here…here…here…” they began chanting.

I shuffled back toward the statue until I was practically in its lap. For whatever reason, I felt more comfortable in front of the throne than the altar, and more comfortable in front of the altar than out on the street. I guess I should have counted my blessings.

“Here…here…here…”

The low murmur from the undead grew louder as they approached.

Desperate, I turned to face the clown.

“What do I have to do?” I asked.

People will tell you the definition of insanity is performing the same action over and over again while anticipating different results, but I think speaking to an inanimate object and fully expecting conversation with a sentient demon creature ranks right up there with a simple failure to learn from mistakes. In fact, I think it’s a lot worse.

“Why am I here?” I asked again. In case there’s any doubt I’d lost my grip on sanity, you can add the first definition to my resume, as well. Even I didn’t have any optimistic delusions about how far I’d fallen.

Which is why I wound up and threw my fist into the clown’s face as hard as a I could with a hoarse shriek of rage.

“Answer me!” I shouted.

“Here…here…here…” the congregation droned on, shambling nearer with each futile plea to the demon king. Their deity. The lord of Furnace and all its miseries.

I drew my fist back again, ignoring the hot blast of pain where the bones had been badly bruised (but not quite broken) in the first strike. I punched the clown’s head.

“ANSWER ME!”

“Here…here…here…”

I shrieked again. A pathetic, strangled thing which barely escaped my esophagus on its way up. Then I threw my fist into the clown’s face one last time.

The head exploded away from me and slammed against the back wall. It landed beneath a painting of a malformed beast congregating with a spherical object, which might well have been a planet or some alien creature beyond my modest understanding of extraterrestrial physiology.

“Tscharia…Tscharia…Tscharia…” the congregation whispered.

I stared at the gaping hole in the clown demon’s neck, paralyzed by a mixture of skepticism and wonder.

“Tscharia…Tscharia…Tscharia…”

Leaning on trembling legs which barely kept me upright, I stared down into a vision of the cosmos that was utterly incomprehensible for my human mind. I simply couldn’t process it. It was either the essence of God or His utter absence, and both prospects were equally terrifying and magnificent.

Before I could venture deeper or pry open the rest of the statue, however, the entire undead congregation screeched at once and turned their attention my way.

What now?

I slowly pivoted and looked back toward the altar.

Every human had risen. The ones pinned to the walls had wiggled themselves free and assembled before the altar. The squelching heap of corpses had likewise untangled into two-dozen wraiths. Their faces were all covered in shadow, but their white eyes bore into me through the darkness. They sneered as their chant reached a fever pitch.

“Tscharia…Tscharia…TSCHARIA!” they shrieked.

I stepped behind the statue for refuge, terrified beyond rational thought or action.

They all charged at once.

“TSCHARIA!” they howled.

I pulled the SX pistol from its holster and ducked behind the statue, waiting for the first wave to get close so I could use my few remaining bullets as efficiently as possible. There was no indecision anymore. I wanted to get the hell out of the cathedral, and I wanted to get the
Rockne Hummel
the hell off of that planet. I didn’t want to become one of
them
.

“TSCHARIA! TSCHARIA!”

I had no idea what the word meant and I wasn’t about to ask for an explanation. As soon as the first corpse-woman was within arm’s reach, I aimed the pistol between her eyes and pulled the trigger. With the cathedral’s acoustics, the impact was deafening. Her skull and rotted brain blew out the back of her head and sprayed the onrushing wraiths. It didn’t deter them in the least.

I used the back of the throne to kick myself farther away from the attackers and fired another shot. This one caught the intended target—an adolescent boy—directly in the throat. He staggered backward and fell to his knees, clutching his neck with wide eyes as though he hadn’t been dead already.

What
are
these things?
I wondered.
Why are they coming after me? I’m human!

I scrambled backward until I was flat against the wall. The press of the undead was so thick around me that all I could see was caved-in chests, eviscerated stomachs, and twisted legs.

Stay calm
, I told myself, making sure each shot I lined up landed a kill. My brain wanted to panic as they closed in around me, but I fought back.
You can still get out of this. They’re stiff and slow. Just clear the front line and make a break for it. If you push yourself, you can beat them to the door.

I took a deep breath and straightened to stand at my full height. Three corpses made a play for me and I threw my whole weight into them, knowing there was no way I could fire three kill shots before one of them managed to pull me to the ground. The strike worked, at least in the sense that it knocked the three of them onto their backs, but it dragged me down, too.

“Fucking shit…” I growled as I slipped over top of them. A sea of hands enveloped me.

The others were quick on the uptake. Almost like they understood what was about to happen before I’d even made contact with the trio, which told me something beyond blind hunger and an overall bad attitude was spurring them on.

But they can’t be
intelligent
, can they?

It didn’t seem possible, yet they’d filed toward the altar with
some
semblance of order, and then had organized themselves well enough to prevent escape.

A fresh surge of pain exploded through my leg. Then my shoulder. Then my left forearm.

“FUCK!” I screamed.

They’d started biting.

What the hell
are
these things?
I wondered again.
Zombies?

I roared and threw myself backward as hard as I could, dislodging the biters and clearing a few feet of breathing room as I rolled against the wall. I started firing the SX into the crowd again before I landed. There was no point in conserving ammunition if the fuckers were going to
eat
me. I’d been clinging to the faint hope that as former humans (or something like it), they’d listen to reason given enough time. Or at least, you know, not
fucking
eat
me. Half of them didn’t even have chests or stomachs or throats to process whatever chunks they tore away from my body, so I didn’t see the point.

Every shot found a home, but not every shot brought one of the bastards down. They were undead, remember, and nothing but true headshots seemed capable of neutralizing them. I can’t even verify that the ones I hit in the head
did
die a second time. The crowd was so thick that, for all I know, they may have resurrected at some point and rejoined the effort to tear me limb from limb.

I dropped two more of them.

Three.

Four.

But they kept right on coming.

“I’m on your side!” I shouted stupidly. I couldn’t believe how everything had turned so suddenly.

Another one of them crawled over and bit my foot, shattering a handful of its own teeth but causing little damage to my boots or armor plating. It clamped on hard, though, and wouldn’t let go until I put a bullet through the back of its head. I couldn’t tell whether it was a man or woman, and I guess that’s probably for the best.

After all the shit I went through out there, fucking
humans
are going to kill me?

I wanted to be outraged, but as my clip finally ran out and there were still a dozen or more of them within ten feet, cutting off all exits, I was only stupefied. It was paralyzing. I couldn’t get over the goddamned injustice
of it. I was a
human
,
just like them! I could help
them if they let me! Yet here they were, intent on ripping my head off and feeding on my entrails because some goddamned clown with horns and bad makeup told them to. I was more than outraged. I was personally affronted by the idea.

“Fuck all of you,” I spat. “You belong here.”

As soon as the condemnation left my tongue, I regretted it. Not because I thought it would make a difference one way or another, but because I realized the only reason they acted that way was they’d lived on Furnace too long. It’s the sort of place that changes you fundamentally, no matter how hard you struggle against it. I learned that the hard way in about a day. It
changed
me. It warped the core of my being. In a day. Give me a thousand years? I don’t think I would have held up half as well as they did.

I frantically searched the cathedral for an alternate escape, but just like when I’d narrowly avoided a similar fate along the roofs, there was nowhere to go.

Might as well make a run for it
, I thought.

I braced against the wall and prepared to sprint head-on into the group of human corpses. I figured I’d take as many of them down as I could with the element of surprise and then book it to the door as if (and because) my life depended on it.

Before I had a chance to test my genius plan, however, my attackers suddenly stopped rushing me and stiffened up. Some even fell face-first into the altar as their muscles locked. They didn’t attempt to brace themselves.

The cathedral fell utterly silent, but I didn’t trust the quiet. It just meant something more heinous was on its way. Something capable of shutting down the dead in the throes of a killing frenzy.

Slowly, I scooted down the wall until the clown sculpture shielded me from a direct assault. I kept my eyes trained on the corpses just in case they suddenly broke their paralysis and mounted another charge. Their collective inhaled sharply when I passed the clown’s throne, but otherwise, they remained frozen. Their vacant eyes tracked my movements, but they didn’t prevent me from limping away.

I passed just far enough into the shadow to be certain they couldn’t see me, then squatted down and attempted to squeeze between the throne and the wall. As long as I could fit through the opening wearing my space suit, I thought I’d be able to slip past them in the darkness. With their necks locked in place, they would be none the wiser.

I managed to get about a quarter of the way through before reaching the rounded pedestal beneath the throne, and then realized I couldn’t go any further. I wouldn’t fit. And if I wanted to pass on the inside of the statue, I’d have to climb over it. I didn’t like the idea of exposing myself to the sculpture’s grip at all, even if it was an inanimate object that had lost its head. Maybe because of it.

Suck it up
, I told myself, carefully guiding my ribs back to safety behind the sculpture.

Once I’d maneuvered my upper body away from the wall, I stood to my full height again and glanced at the frozen corpses, just to be sure they hadn’t moved since I’d ducked out of sight. They were still locked in place, and now I was beyond the scope of their vision because they couldn’t turn.

Why, though?
I wondered.

I’d expected something bizarre to happen when they locked up, but so far, the stopping itself was the only thing which could be construed as bizarre. At least, relative to the situation. Relative to the location.

I knew I wasn’t out of the woods yet, though. Not by a long shot. Not even in terms of the cathedral. The spooks around the altar could reanimate any moment. Worse, I still felt the presence of the clown king lurking in the shadows.

Where?

I searched the second floor balconies overlooking the marble floors, trying to spot an imposing darkness amid the velvet drapery. There were all sorts of indecipherable statues and paintings leading up to the convoluted mural on the ceiling, but nothing that moved. It still felt like a thousand eyes watched me from perches all along the walls and back near the instruments where the choir would have sat during services (if such a thing as a choir or services existed on Furnace).

And I felt him nearby.

Wherever you go, I will find you
, his voice echoed in my head.