Filaria (30 page)

Able-bodied rescuers tried to drag victims out of the creature’s path; others attempted to distract the beast by waving, shouting, tossing clods of mud, wanting the sloth to veer away from the defenseless, but these objects bounced off of the scorched flanks as if they were nothing. The injured people alert enough and able to had begun to drag themselves away. The sloth swung its head toward Mereziah, as if seeing him there, and cried out an otherworldly roar.

“Stop,” Mereziah shouted, stepping forward. His legs trembled. Did the beast know he was responsible for its painful burns, for the ruination of its home? “Stop!”

Waving one arm, croaking out calls, Mereziah hobbled. He strove to attract those huge claws, possibly lead the beast back toward the hole — from which now came a belch of black smoke, jetting straight upwards, and another sloth, emerging, claws hooking onto the edge as it came, moving slowly.

Notions of sacrifice and redemption blinded Mereziah as he stepped among the wounded. Some looked up with glazed eyes. A few reached out: a blackened child with weeping burns, making a thin, consistent whining sound; a young woman with a bandaged torso; a chubby man in a singed white suit who managed to touch Mereziah’s leg —

Mereziah had no time to spare. He pulled free, his voice stronger than it had been in years, rising above the trumpeted pain of fellow man and tortured beast. He could not let his eyes waver from the rheumy gaze of the nearing sloth. Yet stepping among these wounded, how could he ignore the horrific nature of the injuries? People were bleeding their lives out into the mud, most so injured that they no longer seemed to have once been human. That sickening stench of burned flesh again, eroding his resolve. People were dying because of what he’d done. They would never return to life, nor cease to die, regardless of his attempts.

Surely, he might save a few? Wouldn’t that make a difference?

“Here!” he shouted, trying to keep his momentum. “Over here!”

Someone dressed in a brown uniform, with the same incomprehension in his eyes that Steven had, tried to stop Mereziah from getting any closer to the giant sloth; Mereziah wheeled. “That beast and I are from the same place! We must both go back!”

Uncertain, the man released Mereziah.

The sloth was perhaps a dozen metres or so from the nearest row of wounded, who had been arranged on coats and blankets by rescuers, filthy with mud and rain.

The second beast was fully emerged from the shaft, following its companion. Massive claws lifted, came down, slid slowly forward over wet grass and ichors.

A sudden whiff of wet, singed fur, as nauseating as the stench streaming up from Mereziah’s own comrades, and the equally foul breath of the sloth, looming over him, cascaded like an ill and roaring wind.

Sounds of a body being stepped on were not what Mereziah had expected; the human form gave up its shape with veritable silence, not much different in tone than the sound those huge claws already made as they came down on nothing but mud and water and blood; it was the shouts of those lying helpless nearby — and who had watched this death, and were next to die — that raised hackles.

Mereziah screamed for the creature to stop, not sure what to expect next, or what to do — close enough now to the sloth to see his own lanky reflection trapped upside down in the tiny, fear-scarred eyes. He said, “Let’s go back, where we belong . . . We’ve done enough damage here.”

The creature stopped its advance, panting, one huge foot lifted over a man who, thankfully, was unconscious or already dead. The hot rancid breath fell all around Mereziah —

Then everything changed: a warm yellow light erupted, spreading out from above, falling over Mereziah, the beast, over the myriad wounded arranged at their feet. Mereziah’s eyes watered anew. He felt his uniform and areas of his exposed skin instantly warm.

The sloth came no closer. Mereziah was close enough to lay a hand on the quivering, mucus-strung snout.

The second beast had also stopped, sniffing the air, blinking in the new light. Even the moans of those hurt in the fire and collapse of the world had stilled, poised in the new warmth, as if for resolution.

Mereziah waited for that big-clawed fist to finish its arc and smear him down into nothingness.

It did not move.

He broke contact with the animal’s stare, looking up to see what could only be two shining suns, one almost directly overhead, another more distant, burning high against the roof of the world. All about him, the air was moist and steamy.

The light forced Mereziah to look away. But he had gazed upon the suns. He had seen their brilliance.

Perhaps his efforts to return himself and the beasts to the gloomy shaft from whence they had emerged were not futile. All he had to do was follow through, lead both creatures back to the hole, send them down, and vanish along with them. He might not be able to reverse time, or bring the dead back to life, but saving what lives he could was worthwhile, repair some damage, put a few things back where they belonged.

As if attempting to seek what small encouragements Mereziah had spotted in the clearing sky, the sloth lifted its head too, opening its mouth to show those grinding teeth, big enough across to be used as beds. Between the cuspids, in the fetid gape, a great black tongue rose and fell. The sloth took an awkward step backwards.

“Yes,” Mereziah said. “Return.”

With grace — the existence of which Mereziah had not previously suspected — the nearest sloth turned, shedding water and mud from its pelt.

There was a cheer, and other noises of relief, as if all breath had been held. No one was more shocked and elated than Mereziah. “Wait for me, brothers! I’m coming with you! Wait for me!”

But as he took a step, his legs simply folded under him without warning, without any further pain, and he fell to splash on his side in the mud. He could not move. Despite the membrane, there was foul mud in his mouth. He lay there, between two wounded men, as if he had been part of their numbers all along, as if this spot had been reserved for him.

When the pain finally did return, it grew in great surges, coming up his left side. Yet he could do nothing but curl slightly in the mud, rocking like a helpless infant. As his vision darkened, he could not even see the retreating beasts, though the ground shook under him and he was dimly aware of their fading moans.

He focused on the face of the man lying next to him: handsome, middle-aged, with a neatly trimmed moustache and the pale green eyes of someone who had lived his life in the light. The face was alert, watching Mereziah. A very faint voice said, “You are brave . . .”

Mereziah remained silent, teeth grinding against each other as agonies whirled around and around inside his body and his vision grew darker still; whatever drug Steven had given him had clearly worn off.

All around, people were resuming efforts to assist the injured. Had both sloths gone back down? He could not raise his head to look. No one came to attend to him. For that he was grateful. On his wet skin and soiled uniform, which lay heavy on his body, the warm light still fell.

Blood crusted the man’s forehead. More blood caked the dark hairline. And mud, of course, on the man’s cheek, where it was pressed into the ground.

Mereziah said, “I betrayed my position, my family. I betrayed the
world
.”

With his mouth grim and tight, the man responded: “You have saved lives. You saved my life. I am a good judge of character, if nothing else, and I know you are a good man. Qualities show, on your face.”

“It is not true. But you are kind to say that.”

“I would like to help you, as you helped me, would like to extend my hand, but I am unable to move.” The man closed his eyes. After a long pause, he opened them again. “Your guilt cannot match mine. I sent my family away. My girls. I sent them all away.”

Mereziah did not want to hear anything about family. Especially about girls. But perhaps this was part of his penance, to listen to this story as he lay dying. Not long ago he had lain his own confessions down, upon the madman, whom he’d then abandoned in the stalled pod. That unburdening had made him feel better, at the time. So now he would listen. He would listen . . .

“I don’t even know if they’re alive. The wound I’ve received — a spinal injury, I’m told — is nothing compared to that hurt.

“I came to understand information they were not aware of. I was caught up in events and I did not consider them. They were my family but I dismissed them. I thought they complicated matters. And so I sent them away . . . They trusted my judgement. Even my beautiful wife. Without question. She cut all her hair and took my kids in the wagon. They trusted me, and I sent them away.”

“Maybe they are alive.”

“It’s also possible I sent them to their doom. Before you try to console me, I heard from several sources that my youngest daughter, my baby, was abducted. By beasts, no less, and taken away . . .” The man was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “All that matters is that my girls are not with me in these last moments, and that I failed them.”

Mereziah stared. The voice had been fading, replaced by a thrumming sound from within his own skull. He thought:
I did love my brother, I did love Merezath
.

“ — to create creatures for a living. Tortured, wretched beasts . . . I did not reflect upon their fates. Vivisections, tortures in the name of progress. We tried to
create
lives. We ended lives. When those two monsters appeared, I thought they might even have been made by me — ”

Only the roaring in Mereziah’s head now, going on for some while, before the man coughed dryly and continued: “I knew there was a hole in the sky. From the outside. And I knew that corrupt soldiers were being formed in the bottom of the world. My people told me. I also knew there was fighting and still I refused to go with my family. Because I was negotiating the sale of crops, holding out for more money, expecting food stocks would increase in value if there was a war . . .”

Overhead, the suns must have flared because the light intensified, became whiter, and hotter. And Mereziah saw it now, through the increasing nimbus of light; he saw the hole in the sky. Directly above him. The intense light was coming through, seeking him where he lay. And something else was happening up there, some activity, some struggle, but he could not look at it for long, could not be certain.

“Goodness,” the man lying next to Mereziah said, squinting, and was then consumed by the glare.

But inside that growing light were other faces, coming to the fore. The faces of Mereziah’s parents. They were not stern. Holding forgiveness in their eyes. They beckoned to him kindly, so Mereziah moved upwards, to be reunited with them at last.

Tran so Phengh stopped at a primitive canteen and drank three glasses of tepid water. He thought about the parasites the dark god had removed from his eye and he wondered if the giants were hunting him still. After eating most of a stale cake that the deity lurking behind the wall unit offered him, he bent to rinse his hands and face.

At his feet, the tiled floor was merely damp but in other places this long hall had been flooded to his knees. Almost totally dark, the ceiling was low enough to touch. Pipes clanged and howled. Some dripped on him. He had passed a few pipes torn completely from their moorings; these, spraying, had drenched him. He was now soaked to the skin, and his skin, irritated, tingled.

Dim lights flickered, brightened momentarily, became dimmer still.

Chewing, and licking at his teeth, Tran so opened his fly to piss into the dirty gutter. He looked both ways and muttered, “Management, my ass,” for either he had been intentionally sent astray by the clerk or he had ended up in the wrong place by his own inability to follow directions: there certainly did not appear to be any form of higher god down here. In fact, the fetid place was deserted and crumbling before his eyes.

Soon, he told himself. If there was no change in the situation soon, he would turn back, re-ascend, and go home to Minnie sue.

For a second, he considered stopping off, apologizing to Sandra, but he could not trust himself to see her again and he was still somewhat stung by embarrassment.

He shook his penis dry. He did not tuck it away.

The air was thick here and the stench strong. Yet not altogether unpleasant.

Sandra
. When he had finally found her, straightening the sheets on a bed, he had told her how he felt, what he wanted to do . . . The experience of being summarily rebuked had been a further blow to his ego, almost a physical slap. But how could the situation have ended any other way? Had he really expected Sandra to agree to his proposal? She had just stared at him. The look on her face, as she stepped back — the expression of disdain, and fear — had been answer enough.

Reflecting upon this now, in isolation, he felt that the rejection had a cathartic effect on him, seemed to have broken the spell he’d been put under. He felt closure, release.

What had possessed him? Had parasites of a more insidious nature than the ones from Lake Seven remained inside him, eating away at all he had held precious? How could he possibly have fallen for Sandra so completely and expected her to feel the same?

He was grateful that affection for his wife was rejuvenated. He had recaptured precious memories of Minnie sue, and put them back where they belonged.

Closing his eyes, he forced these images of his wife to remain in his mind. Slowly, he masturbated, tribute to Minnie sue, to their life together. He thought of her mouth, her breasts, her ass. His cock was hard and he came almost immediately, grunting and opening his eyes in time to see his jism falling in lumpy yellow streaks against the damp and mouldy wall. His seed trickled down to the water spigot.

And then the world shook, literally, and he just stood there, knees weak, grinning and panting.

He waited for his erection to subside. Love for his sick wife swelled and pulsed inside him.

He wiped his hands on his pants.

“Hello?”

Tran so wheeled at the voice.