The Man From Taured (30 page)

Then dragged down into the pit.

"Get back!" Shaw called. "Head into the woods!"

"Jesus," Noble muttered.

He followed Shaw as they headed off the path and into the brush on the right side of the road. Whatever light there was from the glowing Tower or the moon vanished. Noble felt as if he had already been swallowed by the Void. They had not taken four steps into the woods and suddenly the trees themselves came to life.

Gunfire and some kind of plasma energy flashed into the night, striking the trees, blasting them apart, setting them on fire. Noble saw one of the taller trees reach down with branches that resembled the talons from whatever creature lay within the pit behind them. Someone was lifted into the air, machine gun firing wildly, kicking and screaming, and then vanished into a dark maw that must have been what passed for a mouth.

Noble opened fire. He didn't know which trees were from some other hellish dimension and which ones were normal, so he fired into everything and anything. There were more screams and Noble realized, after a few moments, that the trees were also screaming.

"This is a fucking nightmare!" he cried.

"Just keep moving!" Shaw called, reloading his own gun. "Keep moving! Whitten and Void are using the weak spots that we probably created by bringing everyone over into our world to create these pocket dimensions. It's only going to get worse!"

"Did you know that this was going to happen?" Noble asked, firing into another tree that had suddenly formed a face, complete with a mouth ringed by wooden fangs.

"We thought that this might happen," Shaw admitted, having now reloaded his gun and firing away. "That's why we brought such a large number across with us."

"You guys are insane."

"Noble, we had to get you to the Tower," Kolthrax's voice was in his ears now. "We knew the risks. We asked for volunteers. These men all agreed to risk their lives for you. Now quit complaining and focus on the task at hand. The walls are getting weaker with each moment. We just got word that two more dimensions have been lost to the Void. We also have heard that Knorr is experiencing supernatural phenomenon unlike anything they have seen before. More people are dying than just those with you. Move!"

Noble decided that the man had a point. If he just sat here whining about this, he'd end up dead. That wouldn't help anyone, including his wife. He ran, kicking at the shrubbery, vines and branches that grabbed at his legs and threatened to trip him. He fired into the trees as he ran, heard more men screaming, but didn't stop until the trees were no longer moving and growling and grabbing.

Noble stopped suddenly. Dash and Shaw came to a stop behind him. Noble looked around. There were maybe twenty of them left. Orval came stumbling out of the tree-lined area, his own guns firing, moments later. The man looked exhausted, his head bloody from deep gouges. Dash and Shaw both looked tired and both of them were bloody as well.

"How much more of there is this?" Noble asked.

"We still have about a mile to go before we can get to the tower," Shaw said, pointing to the horizon.

Noble looked up, seeing the rest of the men silhouetted against the horizon. The glow of the lights were so bright now that he had to shield his eyes. The entire building appeared to fade in and out of existence. All around them there were sounds of things moving and they were much closer.

"Everyone reload," Shaw announced. "There's more inside these woods. I have no idea what -"

Just then something burst from the darkness and the shrubbery. Noble caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. Whatever it was it grabbed one of the men. There was screaming, gunfire, and then he saw blood, black against the sky, flying into the air. There were more screams that abruptly cut off and there was the sound of crunching bones and wet noises.

"We'd better keep moving," Noble said. "We have to keep pushing forward."

The group of nineteen began running once again. Noble saw things darting around in the darkness on either side of them. There were things on four legs and there were things on two legs. There were things that roared, some that snarled, and some that had tentacles.

Up ahead several things came staggering out of the woods, into the foot path that the group was running on. It took a moment for them to realize that it was people standing there. All nineteen of the men stopped in their tracks.

Men. Women.

"Those are Gemini employees," Shaw whispered.

They staggered forward like zombies. Noble noticed immediately that their eyes were black pits. Their skin glowed with an eerie white. Their arms were outstretched like Frankenstein's monster.

"Are they still in there?" he asked. "Are they alive?"

"I - I don't know," Shaw said. "I don't know if Void takes them over entirely, scooping out their souls, or not. Kolthrax, Ezekiel, what do we do?"

"They have been emptied," Kolthrax said. "Void does not rent bodies. He takes them over, replacing whatever it was that made them who they were with his own essence. Those beings that are stumbling toward you are no longer alive. They are robots, controlled by the Void."

Noble stepped forward, aimed his pistol, and fired directly into the head of a man staggering toward him. The man was wearing a suit, his hair perfectly sprayed and coiffed. The bullet plowed through the forehead and a black substance erupted from the back of his head. The man staggered backwards, then his skin began to leak that same black substance, then his entire body fell apart, turning into the signature black goo of the Void, before vanishing.

"Shoot them," Noble said. "Put them out of their misery."

One of the black-eyed men stepped out of the woods and grabbed someone else from IDEA. There was that piercing scream and a flash of light and the man in the long coat was gone. The gunfire erupted in earnest. The avatars did not scream, they just burst apart. Noble fired and fired, reloaded and then fired again. The arms and legs and heads and hands were everywhere, coming out of the darkness.

How many employees did Gemini have? How many had been turned? Being near the energies that Whitten and Void had released must have warped them, weakening them, turning them into weak spots in the walls of reality. The Void must have come to them, taking them over, yanking their consciousness out of their bodies, their souls removed from their bodies. One moment they were at work, sitting in cubicles, studying spreadsheets, and then they were just gone, part of the screaming nothingness of the Void.

At some point, while putting a bullet into the head of a young woman dressed in a skirt and a nice blouse, he began weeping.

One by one the former employees of Gemini fell. They each fell apart, bursting into black goo and then vanished. Noble wiped away the tears, the horrible feeling that he was killing his fellow humans, and at some point he realized he was hearing laughter. Deep, resonant laughter inside his head and in his ears.

Whitten and Void. Together. They were seeing this through the dead eyes of these people and they were laughing. This was meant to break them. It was meant to tear the team apart as they shot people who were not creepy black-eyed children composed entirely of some kind of Void substance. These had been real people, with real lives, until something beyond their understanding took them over and yanked their souls out of their bodies. It was beyond cruel.

The gunfire went on and on. The black-eyed people moved so slowly that none of the men in long coats felt like they were in danger at any point. No more of their number were lost. They reloaded again and again, taking them down, littering the path with bodies that soon vanished.

Then they were gone.

There was just the silence of the night, the glowing of the air and the vibration on the ground. Added to that was the deep and heavy breathing of the men from IDEA. Noble put his hands on his knees and vomited.

"I am going to kill that son of a bitch," Noble said. "I am going to rip his fucking heart out and show it to him while he dies."

Shaw put a hand on Noble's shoulder and he turned and saw that even Shaw's impenetrable exterior was gone and the man was weeping, too. Silent tears traced their way down his face and dripped off the side of his face. Even Dash appeared shaken.

"Let's go," Shaw whispered, his voice cracking even with just those two words.

They moved on in silence. The Tower grew closer, still blinking in and out of existence. How were they even going to get into this building? There would be a way. Noble knew it. They had been led along by the nose this entire time. They had never been in control. He had never been in control of himself or his life from the moment he was born.

There was growling.

Noble froze. Shaw bumped into his back.

"What?" Shaw asked.

"Can't you hear it?" Noble asked.

Just then something leaped out of the darkness and landed on one of the members of IDEA. The growling grew in intensity and Noble saw the flash of white teeth and they sank into the man's neck.

"Coyotes!" he yelled.

Noble quickly noticed that the coyote had black eyes. Just like the Gemini employees. The infection of the Void was spreading to the flora and fauna.

He whirled and fired at another coyote off to his right, catching it in mid-leap. The coyote let out a quick yelp and then exploded in black goop that splattered all over him and vanished.

There was more growling. This was followed by gunfire, plasma fire and screaming. Another of their number went down as two coyotes grabbed him and pulled him kicking and screaming into the brush.

"How much more of this?" Noble muttered.

"None for you."

Noble spun around. He was getting dizzy from all of this spinning around and things jumping out beside him and behind him.

Whitten stood in the path. He was still dressed in his natty suit and vest. His eyes were black, as well, but also tinged with red and red motes and dots floated in the deep wells of his eyeballs. Whitten's skin was white and nearly glowed as bright at the moon. He smiled and the smile stretched up much further than it should have, the ends of his lips nearly reaching up past his nose.

"You're coming with me," Whitten said and reached out to Noble.

The man moved so fast that Noble barely noticed. The hand clutched his throat. Shaw and Dash were busy fending off the coyotes. Noble could not utter a sound and he was unable to lift his weapon. Part of him didn't want to, however. He wanted to be alone with Whitten. Whitten's smile got wider, the edge of the lips now reaching up past his nose and toward his eyes, blackness oozed from the corners of his mouth as the skin split.

"Noble!"

It was Orval. Good ol' Orval, although Noble had just met the man yesterday, it felt like he had known the man for decades. Maybe he had. With the inter-dimensional stuff, who could be sure of anything anymore? He twisted his head and saw Orval running toward him, both guns blazing. The bullets hit Whitten in the chest, but the old man just waved his other hand and three coyotes emerged from the woods, grabbing Orval around the ankles and dragging him to the ground.

Then there was that now-familiar whiteness and feeling like he was being turned inside out. This time it was accompanied by tremendous pain, the Void not worried about doing things gently.

An instant later Whitten and Noble were in his lab. Outside the window there was a spectacular view of the Gemini campus. The walls were glowing. All around Noble were splits in reality. He saw images of other people, other creatures and hideous things of all sizes, shapes and design.

Noble fell to the floor and threw up – a lot. Rather than feeling afraid, he was surprised. He didn't think he had eaten all that much in the past couple of days. Who knew you could throw up so much without there being food in your stomach?

"Welcome to my home," Whitten/Void said.

Whitten/Void was doing some kind of odd twirling dance around the lab. His arms outstretched and that infuriating smile still there.

There was equipment packed into every corner, although Whitten/Void apparently quite liked the view as well.

"That is the collider," Whitten/Void said. "You can't see it right now, but there is a transmitter there. The collider is working, making its collisions and generating energy. It transmits here. You see, that was always the problem before, generating enough energy to open the portals and keep them open. Shaw came close, but he wasn't allowed into the collider. When it was off-lined, well, I was able to step right in. Things got a bit loose around here when they shut down the collider. We were able to get in so easily, start converting the people to our way of thinking."

"You killed them," Noble said, his throat raw and raspy. He stood up, but the floor beneath him felt soggy and weird, as if it were drooping just like the soft watches in a Dali painting. "You reached into these people who were just trying to work and you ripped their souls out."

"They weren't killed," Whitten/Void said. "No one is really killed, Noble. You won't be killed, either. You become part of us. You become part of a greater thing. We are all one now with the Void. With me. With us. Them. They. You. Me. Us. Us. Us. Us"

Whitten began spewing words, his head twitching as he spoke, black spittle flew from his lips. Black tears streamed from his eyes and he wiped them away absently. The words went on for a while and then he stopped, looked around as if he were surprised to see where he was and then he looked at Noble again, his smile returning.