King Maker

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Winter had arrived and few had noticed. Like the previous few years on memory, the temperatures were chilly but not too cold, in the mid-40s. The wind didn't rob the body of warmth, not in that deep bone-chill way of the harsher winter of childhood memories. No, these days it more often rained than snowed, not that anyone complained. Had it been cold enough to turn the rains to snow, the blanket of snow would have settled six feet if an inch.

The six-story complex ran over two city-blocks long and one block wide, a veritable prison of inexpensive accommodation. To the east, past the back parking lots, Fall Creek wound its length, the thin grove of trees separating the apartments from the rest of the city. To the rear of the buildings which formed the Phoenix Apartments, a gravel trail – overgrown, as if something once stood there – led through a canopy of trees. Brown leaves pooled against the base of the black chain-link fence which circled the outer boundaries of the apartments. Cans of Budweiser littered the playground. Concrete slabs, a desert of cracked pavement choked with weeds and broken glass. Nobody wanted to be here, all equally prisoners in a compound of liberal wellmeaning benevolence. Along the sad array that passed for a playground, the ladder of the slide held more rust than paint. One of the swings looped around the top of its frame. The yellow school bus jungle gym had been tagged. RIP Alaina. RIP Conant. A few more RIP notices, names no one recognized.

The Phoenix Apartments were once central to one of Indianapolis' top neighborhoods, its construction greeted with optimism. One mile east of the state fairgrounds, near 38th Street and Sherman Drive, Edgemere Court ran through the heart of what used to be called the Meadows. In the '50s and '60s this was the place to be as people claimed their pieces of the American Dream, with restaurants and shops crowding the area. But the area saw the ownership of the apartment complex change hands several times over the years and the initial optimism soured. Folks were shuffled into there, the city not wanting to inflict poor black people on their white neighborhoods. Huge swathes of vacant land isolated it. Dubbed too dangerous to patrol by the police, the layers of fencing only further added to the sense that folks were being imprisoned rather than being given space to live.

By day, the apartments had the thinnest veneer of respectability. The red bricks seemed clean and fresh, distracting from the bedspreads which shielded most windows. The decay was there, first seen in the trees. Wine-colored leaves interspersed with green ones, jutting from dead branches. One tree a stark, unnatural shade of white, gnarled and neglected, with green leaves still sprouting from it. Now, with ninety percent of the tenants on Section 8 housing, and crime, poverty, and hopelessness combining for a cauldron of pain and anger, life in the Phoenix Apartments had been reduced to relentless decay and a cesspool of warrants. Churches nestled densely around the property, a bulwark against entropy. Immanuel Baptist. Church of the Living God. Pentecostal Assembly. Nazarene Church. Temple of Praise. Indiana Missionary. Living Water. Their church signs promised passersby "Don't worry, God is still in control".

The engine cooling, the five of them sat in the Outreach Inc. van. Wayne drove with Merle riding shotgun, his window slightly rolled down to cut down on his odor. Lady G sat between King and Lott in the back. King watched the denizens shamble back and forth, the silence conducive to his thoughts. They had bandaged his side and taped it as best they could. King refused to go to the hospital, preferring to end this terrible business that night.

And then there was the matter of the gun.

"Has anyone wondered 'Why us?'" Wayne asked. All eyes fell on King.

"Why not us?" King leaned forward to better see them all. "I don't know about you, but I'm tired. Tired of people having no expectations of us. Tired of not bothering to dream because I don't think I'll be around to see it. Tired of not being able to walk down a street without part of me fearing a brother walking my way.

"Ain't but a few of us here, but even a few good people banded together in the right cause can make a difference. I have to believe that or what's the point of even going on? Good people have to stand for something."

"Damn, man," Wayne said, "I didn't say go all 'Win one for the Gipper' on us."

A brooding silence enveloped the apartment parking lot. Dead leaves skittered along the cracked black pavement on a desolate, cold wind. The silence was as pervasive as it was unsettling. Even during colder temperatures, the Phoenix brimmed with activity because fiends and knuckleheads knew no rest. Despite the appearance of a few bodies in the yard, an eerie stillness settled on the apartments. No cars idled, no music poured from speakers, no loud voices claimed the night as their own. Separated like sentries, though locked in their heroin leans, the bodies became more animated as King neared. Some moaned in distress. One man appeared to be attempting to shave the color off his eyeball with a razor blade.

"It's you. They're reacting to you," Merle said to King.

"How can you tell? They can't even see me."

"Exactly."

"Look at them," Lady G said, "They look-"

"Dead," Lott said. "Remember what Tavon was saying about the fiends falling out?"

The weight of guilt bubbled in Wayne's belly for losing track of Tavon. Some faces looked familiar to Wayne and Lady G especially, having encountered them during their street lives. However, the people they knew were gone. Some shambled about with shorn limbs, some having obviously taken gunfire and ran out of blood, yet still stood. The drugs consumed them a piece at a time, but now it was as if their souls had been snuffed out.

"Got anything we can use as weapons?" King needed the comfort of having some sort of weapon.

"You have the gun," Lott said.

King waited impatiently for the facts to settle in his head. The familiar weight of the Caliburn nestled along his spine. "I know, but… it doesn't feel right. Not yet."

"You'll know when to use it," Merle reassured.

"I have a crowbar, a baseball bat, and a golf club," Wayne fished through the trunk of the minivan.

"A golf club?" Lott asked.

"What? I'm a civilized motherfucker."

"Fine, you the next Tiger, but only one?"

"Shit, I ain't made of money," Wayne said. "Figure I just keep hitting shit till the ball gets in a hole."

"Sounds like a plan for this here game, too."

"You sure?"

"They're already dead."

Lott grabbed the crowbar, then grabbed a couple of the screwdrivers which rolled along the floorboard and shoved them into the sides of his jeans. King opted for the baseball bat, leaving Wayne with his precious golf club. Hardly masked by the slight wind, the smell of rotting meat hit them. The trees loomed, strange fruit dangling from their low-lying branches. As the band approached, the forms coalesced. Small bodies, the flesh peeled back or knotted in chunks hung like ornaments. Birds. Rats. Squirrels. The cloud-occluded moonlight gave the illusion of their tiny jaws still moving. The sight of the squirrel bones especially unsettled Merle.

The copse of corpses had been dead for nearly a two days and slowly made their way here to this place of power, this place that beckoned them. To wait. Though the fiends had to have ridden the same blast within a day of each other, some were wasted in such a way as to have been dead for months. Even the freshest among them had meat falling from them in clumps. Their tattered clothes starched with mildew, the rot of their flesh infested their wardrobe. Vacant eyes – a condition not entirely unfamiliar to the fiends – tracked the approaching skulkers. Folks held hostage terrified to leave the building now noiselessly under siege. As long as it was quiet – because indeed, no bullets rang out – the police considered it secured. Loitering was one of those law violations enforced in lighter neighborhoods.

King took point with Wayne and Lott in lock-step behind him forming a wedge through the heart of the milling bodies. Using the bat more like a staff, King jabbed the hand grip into the gut of the nearest fiend, doubling it over as the action forced air from its insides. Its rancid breath choked him. The fat end of the bat smashed into the jaw of one attempting to sneak up from behind. The creatures amped back up, and found their legs again. It seemed easier to think of them as creatures. Stay down, his eyes pled, but the creature stirred. With the sickening accompanying sound of splintering bone, he planted the bat firmly in its skull.

Wayne took no joy in his task. His goal was to keep the creatures at bay from Merle and Lady G, more a distraction until Lott finished them with a severing blow to the back of the neck or a curt ram through an eye. Distracted by the approach of the first body, three fiends collapsed on him from the shadows of entranceways before he realized they were organized enough to create a feint. Stumbling off the broken curb, Wayne kicked the first one, his foot collapsing the chest of it, then getting stuck on the jagged bones of the shattered ribs once the creature juked. Wayne toppled to the ground, and disappeared under a crush of fiends as they pounced on him. Tavon's face suddenly peered down at him, his open mouth a siege of rotting teeth.

Swinging the crowbar like a sword swung with skill and precision, an exuberance to the grim task thrilled Lott. Black ichor, more than blood, poured from the slit throat of one. A decomposed fist slammed into his skull, the warning cry of "look out" from Lady G arriving seconds too late. Lott staggered to the floor; the creature's desiccated arm lashed out and lifted him from the ground before he could retrieve his crowbar. Its strength flowed from somewhere else, because its brittle arms didn't hold enough muscle to swat at a passing mosquito. Whatever animated them also burned them up. The creature held him up, waiting for others to see his prize and come tear him apart. As if catching his scent from upwind, some undead striders stopped in midmovement and ambled toward them. Lott fished into the side pockets of his jeans and pulled out the screwdrivers. Plunging the twin daggers, he rammed the screwdrivers into each of its eye sockets, exploding what was left of its eye and piercing what passed for its brain. Landing as the creature collapsed, Lott tugged at the screwdriver which was stuck in the bone of the eye socket. As he yanked it free, it flew out of his grasp and tumbled to the ground. As ravenous for a blast as it had been in life, a fiend fell to its knees, grabbed it and jammed it into its arm.

Wayne, his foot still caught in the chest of the fiend who didn't know enough to drop dead, dragged his leg bringing the creature with it. The body crashed into the others, which allowed Wayne to roll through the grasp of one of them. Tavon's rasping fingers found purchase in his side and his side burned as the fingers clawed through his flesh. He grabbed Tavon with both hands and headbutted him. Wayne whirled the body like a shield, shoving the fiends back. He threw Tavon to the ground. Any trace of the man he knew was gone, so Wayne stomped on the back of his skull, smashing its jaws on the sidewalk. A hole opened up among the ranks and he waved Merle and Lady G through it. He chanced one last look at Tavon's still form and told himself that he had to do what he had to do.

Loose Tooth scuttled toward King. In death he seemed to have put on weight. The former old man had renewed vigor as his mouth, his jaw barely attached, dangled open and snap shut as he entangled King in his embrace. Contempt filled his hollowed eyes. King pulled as far away from the chomping teeth as he could, then forced the bat's hilt upward into its gaping maw. A sound, rather like gagging, preceded the creature's arms slackening enough for King to escape. With a hefting swing, the bat connected with the creature's neck, the head held fast by a skin flap of rent flesh and spidery sinew. The creature's eyes followed him. Its mouth moved, tongue black and swollen, words voicelessly formed on its lips though without air enough to express them. In the throes of the brief loss of self accompanying a swift punch to the belly, King couldn't swallow and couldn't breathe. For a moment, King studied the still form, thinking he should feel something more, a vague sense of satisfaction or even vindication. But he felt nothing. Only the hollowness, the sense of waste that came with a pointless loss of life.

Only Merle knew that King had avenged the death of his father.

King waved Lott after him, following the path cut by Wayne. When they got into the main entryway doors, they ran the bat and crowbar through the door's handles to keep it wedged shut.

"That was easy enough." King gulped in the dry air, his strength rushing back to his numb limbs. His skin flushed hot to the touch, a battle fever rushed through his system.

"Knock on wood or something." Claw marks covered Wayne, chunks of flesh torn from his body. Blood coated his jeans, an ugly gash along his leg seen through his torn pants.

"No need. That was hardly its best. Merely its squires called home," Merle said. "The creatures were half-dead when we started. It was like they'd already done what they were called to do."

"Like attack whoever got in their way?" Lott tottered on his feet, hands pressed against his thighs to steady himself until he caught his breath.

"Were they keeping us out or going for Night?" Wayne echoed.

"They were pawns used by both sides until they were used up. Look at them. They aren't even pursuing us now." King reflected on what Omarosa had said, about Night getting his package off Dred's consignment thinking he was safe here at the Phoenix. Taking out a rival in a way that might bite the hand that fed him, but moving others to complicate and disarm or possibly just distract his rivals; now that opened up all new realms of possibility. It created a sea of uncertainty. Change the players, change the game. "Dred's playing both ends against a useless middle."

"What?" Wayne asked.

"Just piecing things together," King said. "All of this feels like a distraction, misdirecting us from the true objective."

"You're learning," Merle said.

"Never a true shortage of crack fiends no ways," Lott said.

"We need to grab Rhee and get out." Lady G tugged at King.

"Yeah, we need to keep going," King said. "We cut this off at the source and hope this whole nightmare ends."

A bank of mail slots lined the foyer wall of the Phoenix Apartments building, each slot large enough for bills, collection notices, and subsidy checks. With the layout of an old elementary school and the design sense of a detention center, two hallways branched from there, each leading to elevators each with signs which perpetually read "out of order" and stairwells whose lights had been busted out. As they essayed further into the building, King noticed bizarre symbols carved into the walls and seen within the swirls of graffiti letters to the discerning eye. The symbols were reminiscent of, though not exactly matching, the ones on the box which held his Caliburn. In the last vestiges of light, the tags for ESG had been spray-painted over with the letters "ICU" within a circle.

A tremulous silence enveloped them, the palpable shadows thick as curtains. The dank odor of piss and sweat mixed with mildew hung cloyingly in the air. With so little light, the walls were cancerous with fungal growth. Women avoided walking the stairwell alone for fear of the shadow denizens grabbing and attacking them. Their nerves stretched like fine catgut, ready for a symphony of terror to be wrung from them, Lady G clutched after King's hand. Wayne stumbled in the darkness.

"You ain't got no kind of creep to you," Lott whispered to Wayne.

"You know what the cops say?" King said.

"What?"

"It's like an underground world over here."

"Hades," Merle added.

"Everyone knows everyone," Lady G said. "So folks trying to hide can always find someone to let them in they apartment."

"Always jumpin'," Wayne said.

"Got to learn to sleep through that mess," Lott said.

King cocked his head in the direction of a sound he thought he heard. The darkness pooled all around them, a living thing in its own way, distorting sound and even their sense of balance. Their voices drifted apart, no one able to determine the location of another, though King's hand tightened around Lady G's. Again, the idea of sound tickled King's ears. An odd, indistinct skritch in the distance.

"Sh!" King said.

"What?"

"What part of 'sh' didn't you get?" King leaned toward the deepening shadows. "You hear that?"

A whir, similar to the hum of current through a power line, thrummed along the walls. The croak began as a whisper. Had they still been outside, they would have seen the mouths of the remaining fiends moving in unison. The shadows swirled like a rushing wind. The apartment foyer, casket-dark and desolate, called out in a mouthless whisper.

"The endgame approaches. Good. So hungry. So tired."

"What do you want?" King shouted at the darkness.

"We await the Pendragon. Alone." The voice, ancient and weary, reverberated through them like a passing foul wind.

"Who are you?"

"I am what was. What won't be again. The Devourer of Dream. The Umbra Spirit."

"The dragon," Merle whispered.

"Show yourself!" King yelled.

"Prove yourself worthy of my attention. Be careful with my little squires."

"Squires?" Lady G asked. "You think he means them fiends?"

"I don't-" King's words were cut short by something hard falling and bouncing from his hand. "What the…?"

A small pellet of some sort landed in Lady G's hair. When she went to swipe it away, it scuttled off on its own. She craned upwards. The shadows churned along the ceiling, brief shafts of light penetrating the wall as if a shifting dark sheet covered the light fixture. When she was about to proclaim her observation, a cockroach fell in her mouth. Its antennae brushed against the roof of her mouth as she gagged to expel it. An undulating wave rippled through, dislodging the insects all at once.

A shower of chitinous shells rained down on them, cockroach bodies pelting them where they stood. Millions of tiny legs created a cacophonous scratching, the bugs scrabbling over one another hitting the group in an obscene wave. Stiff hairs itched along Wayne's body, the soft crunch of bodies underfoot reminding him of treading on vials in alleyways. In his hair, in his clothes, he closed his eyes and covered his nose and mouth as he waded through the sea of roaches. In the wake of them skittering down the stairs, he still felt the sensation of bodies crawling within his clothes.

"It's toying with us," King said.

"You know," Lady G concurred.

"It will get worse from here," Merle warned.

"I can't do this. Not with you here," King told Lady G. He squeezed her hand and let her go.

"I won't leave you." Her voice, full and low, resounded with a grim finality.

"I wouldn't ask you to. But I need to be able to do what I have to do, be who I have to be. I can't face him, whatever he is, and worry about you. And I don't know if I want you to see me be… what I must." King turned to Lott. "I'm trusting you to get her out of here and keep her safe."

"You got it," Lott said, then gave him a fist bump.

"Uh-uhn. You don't get to pass me off when I get inconvenient. And you don't get to sweep me under a rug. I'm not some doll you get to hand off or fight over." Lady G caressed King's face and held her hand along it for an extended moment before letting him go. Chiding herself for being selfish, she wanted to support him, not distract him, but this was her fight, too. "So I'll tell you what: I'm going to go make sure Rhee is OK and get her out of here. If Lott wants to come, that's on him."

King stared at her, seeing her for the first time. "You got it."

Percy squatted at the Phoenix Apartments at the insistence of his mother. She had an arrangement of some sort with Night and his people which allowed them to stay without having to pay rent. Percy thought she had to do bad things with the men who worked for Night, but Miss Jane insisted it wasn't the case. He believed her since she was so open about who she did the bad things with. Night's men secured the building, discouraged visitors, and kept order. Altruism was a side effect. Order allowed them to conduct business, without Five-O or social services crawling up their insides. So when fiends fell over them like a wave of barbarian hordes at the gate, most of the foot soldiers scattered. The scene grew too hot with the prospect of ambos and po-po. However, the emergency services apocalypse never materialized. The fallen fiends circled the apartments and attacked any who entered. Or tried to leave. The remaining tenants were effectively cut off from the outside world. Cell phones wouldn't even work. It was as if a force interfered with their signals. A force that bided its time.

Percy checked on the folks in his care. He wore an Evan Almighty T-shirt stretched over his bulbous frame. Grungy, unwashed for days, he'd pulled it from one of the piles of dirty clothes. Fast food wrappers separated the piles. Mattresses spread out in the back rooms, bodies sprawled over them. Two boys slept with their light on and their door ajar. The first laid face down on the bed in Buzz Lightyear pajamas. The second had only his face visible; his hair wrapped in a bandana.

Rhianna stayed on his couch. Despite the "boy funk", she'd kept herself fastidiously clean. She began her day by running to a cousin's place to shower. Today she wore the same clothes from the previous day. She jumped at the sound of a distant thump.

"Percy, what's going on?" The rasp in her voice thickened with the onset of a cold.

"If you want, I'll go check." Percy loved the longtime smoker's timber of her voice, though the bruises about her neck told him that smoking was not the cause. Part of him secretly hoped she might get sick, not too sick, but just enough to slow her down and depend on someone else. Just enough so she'd let him watch over her properly. He just wanted a chance to prove himself.

"Don't leave me," she said, then quickly corrected. "Us."

"We can't just wait here. If nothing else, things might have changed. It's OK. I'll be right back." He smiled a brave smile as he opened the door. He held his breath and rushed out.

The hall was empty, but smelled of burnt crack, vomit, urine, and BO. His heart thudded, his pulse throbbed at his temple. Blood rushed to his ears, a roar of oceans that muddled his thoughts. The linoleum, bubbled with age and cracked underfoot. Thinking he heard something, he tilted his head to the side. Someone tried to skulk toward him. A figure came into view, with the quiet scrape of a hesitant shuffle.

"Momma?"

Miss Jane held a fiend lean, defying gravity as if caught up in her high. After a few moments, her head at impossible angles, she snapped out of her revelry and staggered toward him. Clumps of matted hair nested at one side, the rest mere wisps which hadn't been pulled free. The corners of her eyes leaked a yellowish fluid, like formaldehyde tears. Dried vomit stained her clothes. Her shirt flapped open, revealing rot across her chest and leaving one sore-riddled breast exposed, ready for him to suckle.

"There's my baby boy. All grown up. Almost a man," she said, her foul breath nearly making him gag. An ancient rasp, her voice wasn't her own, almost like another one laying on top of hers, as if her own back-up vocals. The Miss Jane thing shambled toward him with the gait of someone who had every bone within them broken, yet remained propped up.

"Momma, you all right?"

"If I'm not, what are you gonna do? You so simple. I should've smothered you when I first saw those big doe eyes of yours. I knew then that you didn't have the sense God gave you. No heart whatsoever. Not your daddy's son."

"Don't say that, Momma." Percy clumped as if wounded, a big man deflated which made him appear that much smaller. He wanted to reach out and hug her, to feel the heat of her against him and have her protect him against the world. That was the mother he remembered. The mother before the drugs, before the bad things, before men, life, and need used her up and left this withered thing behind.

"Sh, baby, it's true. Look at you. Ready to cry. Chasing after the Pendragon. That's your destiny, you know. But not the life I'd have chosen for you. I've never been the best mother, but least I could do is put you out of your misery."

She lunged at him, arms outstretched in an eager embrace. Flesh worn soft, her clammy skin pulled from her bone like perfectly cooked ribs. Her putrid breath worsened as her jaws snapped open, her teeth anxious to rend into his neck. He pushed at her as they grappled, not letting her get her balance or purchase. Her spindly frame no match to his girth, he charged her. He kept running until they crashed into the wall next to the stairs.

"Give Momma a kiss." Miss Jane's lips pulled back over cruel teeth.

Percy pivoted and then flung her down the stairs into the maw of shadows. All he heard was the sickening crack of splintering bones.

"I'm sorry, Momma," he said into the darkness. Through the window the remaining fiends shambled toward the building. Events tumbled toward an endgame. Turning to return to his room, a cloud swirled at the end of the hallway. Not smoke. The mist seeped from walls and had a knowing quality to it as it slipped to the ground in an intelligent trawl. It worried him more than his errant mother. He rushed back to the room and stuffed clothes at the crack of the door.

"What is it?" Rhianna asked.

"Precaution." Percy slumped onto the couch.

A smoke alarm dangled from the wall, the light from the previous floor fading with each step along the stairs. The next floor's light had long burned out. Wires hung from the ceiling. In the residual light, they could make out a final graffiti pronouncement along the stairwell: "A city of refuge in a time of great tribulation." Though none dared voice it, all were bone weary. Merle hadn't spoken in so long even Wayne missed his spouted gibberish. Wayne trundled on, vowing to exercise more when this ended. The keloid on the back of his neck ached. King walked point, unfazed by the intermittent light and the peculiar dance of shadows. Each ascending stair step, despite the sense of climbing one's own gallows, was a minor victory as their feet became heavier and heavier. Their ragged puffs reverberated louder than they wished in the stairwell echo chamber. King was the first to turn the corner leading to the final floor and thus was the first to spy Green.

An impassive sentry, he stood there with a burnt brown suit over a burnt orange shirt with a matching orange and brown tie and pocket kerchief. A chinchilla coat rested on his shoulders. No expression crossed his face. No recognition, no resignation, only a flat affect of business. King came to an abrupt halt with Merle and Wayne bumping into him.

"Fallen so far?" Merle began. "An exercise to experience what we experience."

"We now, is it? You consider yourselves one of the mortals, do you?" Green said, his voice the sound of rotted bark giving way. "This, at least, was my choice."

"You were always about choices. How is dear old Morgana?"

Green said nothing.

"What's the matter? Winter got your tongue?" Merle pressed. "I heard a story once. Of a man transformed to exist only as the adversary to the court of chosen knights. Some people knew him as Bercilak de Hautdesert, some as the Green Knight. Part man, part vegetation elemental, he challenged any man to strike him with his ax if he would be allowed to return the blow a year and a day later. One knight took the challenge. But when the appointed time came, the Green Knight barely nicked the chosen one, as said knight had passed all of the tests, made the right choices, set before him. What say you?"

Wayne's keloid on the back of his neck flared with the blazing intensity of a sunburn. He rubbed it but found no solace. The hot pain ran to his core and unsettled him with its sudden familiarity.

"There were many knights. As the age changes, so do its players," Green said.

"So we begin anew. The eternal cycle."

"I got this," Wayne said.

"No." King grabbed him by the arm. "It's my responsibility."

Merle put his hand on King's arm. "No, the first assault belongs to the good Sir."

Without another word, Wayne strode into a sprint, taking the stair steps two at a time. Green remained rooted to his spot. Wrapping his arms around him, Wayne ran through the room and slammed him against the wall. A window shattered behind some cheap venetian blinds. Wayne held him aloft with both arms, attempting to squeeze the life out of Green's trunk-like neck. With a baleful glare of calculating malevolence, Green clapped Wayne's ears, breaking his grip and sending the two of them tumbling to the ground. When they got up, the span of two bodies separated them.

"My turn," Green said simply. His first blow knocked Wayne from his feet. His neck jerked forward and suddenly his mouth filled with the taste of his own blood. The keloid on Wayne's neck burned. Green cried out as vegetal shoots sprouted from his mouth. Leaves blossomed from his nostrils and ears. With a huge sweep of his arm, his fingers became branches, bare limbs of hate scourging King and Merle. Weeds erupted through the floorboards, the mildew spoors given new life: first trapping their feet then, kudzu-winding up their bodies, the roots squeezed them. Turning his attention to Wayne, a jutting spear of a branch impaled him in the shoulder.

"Winter is finally upon you," Merle choked out.

"Senile old fool. Age has addled your magics as well as your mind."

"You see how well you handle it if your mind ages one way while your body ages the other." Merle said. "Still, I have enough left for the occasional spark."

Merle raised his hand, his gaze fixed on his palm. At first, a single ember, little more than a gnat of light, circled in a tight orbit. Soon, a swarm gathered, each light following its own path until they coalesced into a comet of flame. Merle blew on the ball and it leapt from his path landing on the trail of growth leading to Green. Unfortunately, the flames also crawled back toward King and Merle. "Hmm, that might not have been in my best interest."

Green reared back in a frozen rictus of terror, his mouth a blackening maw. His form morphed behind the curtain of flames, until the knots and whorls became the screaming mouth of a scorched tree. Once the flames subsided, the grip of the vines slackened to where King could escape and rush to his friend.

"You all right?" King cradled Wayne.

"Hanging in there. I got me a splinter to end all motherfuckin' splinters, though." Wayne's bravado didn't match his concern at the pooling blood.

"Can you do anything, Merle?"

"A little. But time runs short." Merle plucked an unscorched bud from one of the remaining branches. "For all of us. I fear the bloodwyrm will not take well to us daring so deep into his lair."

"Bloodwyrm?" King asked.

Lott banged on the door, constantly scanning each end of the hall, his imagination afire with all manner of possible attacks. As long as no rats came charging down the hall – because it'd be just his luck for there to be rats – he thought they'd be OK. A lone eyeball flitted across the peephole before the door opened a fraction to double-check what it had just seen. Rhianna opened it fully to Lady G rushing her with a hug.

"What the hell?" Rhianna exclaimed.

"Girl, folks done lost their minds out here, for real," Lady G said.

Their voices faded to white noise as the two caught each other up. Lott again checked the hallway before he made his way in and bolted the door behind them. The dull, shit-colored room reeked of benign neglect. Bullet holes circled the window. Ill-fitting Plexiglas lodged in the frame. A mattress was propped up against the sill. Percy sitting on the couch having paused his Nintendo game at the banging.

"How you holding up?" Lott asked.

"I'm her knight in shining armor," Percy said, lowering his head as if embarrassed at the admission. "That's what she said."

"Yes you are," Rhianna reassured him, not with the voice of someone with romantic intent. The tone, however its raspy delivery, was unpracticed and didn't carry easily from her lips. It was gentle, serious, and true. A rare attempt at vulnerability.

"Are you one, too?" Percy asked.

"I'm hers." Lott pointed to Lady G.

She turned with a smile. A pang lodged in his heart at the sight, though he didn't want to admit to such feelings. Regret, jealousy… longing. King would be a lucky man if he was to get with her.

Percy sang softly to himself. "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so."

"The bloodwyrm formed from a primordial void, the embodiment of all things uncertain," Merle intoned. "In its veins runs the fury of both chaos and creation. They have always been with man, haunting them. This is your journey."

"I know. I've always known, I guess. Part of me anyway. Not the specifics, but a sense of things and how they ought to be." King squatted on his haunches and drew absently on the ground, tracing idle patterns with his fingers. "Take Wayne and get him treated."

King turned his back to Merle and continued into the antechamber to which Green had stood guard. He waited for Merle to get clear then passed through the chamber opening. The grand penthouse he expected dissolved behind the mists swirling about creating a dreamy haze. Journeying inward, King had the sensation of leaving the physical plane of the apartment complex. Feeling his way downward, he descended into himself, the ancient memory of mankind. Through seeming endless darkness, only the occasional soft crunch under heel broke the silence. Sweat buck-shotted his chest through his shirt. The living mist recoiled at King's presence; however, his Caliburn warmed in his waistband.

Plink. Plink. Plink.

"I… no…" he said to no one in particular.

The sky bled and spun gray clouds against a matte the color of a clotted wound. His face flashed with heat, but not the kind usually brought on in temper. Scorched with the nearness of the sun, longing for the cool of an errant stream. His Caliburn. The weight of it so pure and right, yet it was incomplete. Pallid, bloodless faces, the faces of his people hung from poles. Wayne. Lott. Merle. Lady G. Baylon. A few faces he didn't recognize. Flies crawled in and out of their mouths and gave their lips the semblance of movement. Holes replaced their eyes, holes that bore into his soul with the knowing of failure. Phantoms. His Caliburn. The desire to plunge his hands into the fetid earth and make a grave to crawl into. To heap the dirt onto himself. To leave no mark of his passage.

Plink. Plink. Plink.

The room took on the aspect of a cave, the gentle plinks of dripping water not too far away. Scattered gold coins along the dirt-floored pit, the remains of a once-hoarded treasure. A spire of rocks, a cage of stalagmites, ran the length of the rear of the prison. The temperature spiked and sweat dotted his forehead. Only then did he realize he could see, the room lit by the glow from eyes and the gentle phosphorescence of the creature's body.

"Here, there be dragon-slayers. Is that what you are, Pendragon stripling?" Its open maw revealed the constant flames that warmed it. Large unblinking yellow eyes, wholly other, tracked his movements. A spectacular ruin, its scaly body bisected by a row of dorsal spines, the bloated beast was soft-bellied, not sleek and armored as he had imagined. It sank its talons into the earth, shifting its posture as if leaning up in bed after a disturbed nap. Its leathery wings folded underneath it. "You come at last, O Prince of the City."

"Who is the Pendragon?"

"You are, Little Dream."

"Then who are you?"

"Be careful with your name, Pendragon. Knowing a person's true name can give one power over them. The Tempter in the Garden. Ni?hoggr, the serpent that gnaws at the World Tree. Such is my line and I am weary. Long had I slept, my home built around until I found myself caged. Once feared by man, I have become its vassal, to power petty dreams. So I awaited your arrival."

"You're the genie in the bottle. What do you expect me to do?"

"Kill me, of course." Immense boredom settled in its slitted eye pupils. If it were ever young, it dreamt of massive hoards, gold coins, and gems falling from the folds of its wings and skin whenever it stirred. Its mighty wings cramped in its lair, longing for the freedom of the skies to stretch out and soar. It dreamt of swooping down upon an unsuspecting farmer's livestock – nothing but swords and spears, maybe the occasional bow to deter him – gobbling down a juicy cow or succulent sheep within its snapping jaws. A carefree youth. While the elder beast enjoyed the security of an enclosed lair – a fortress in which to sleep, to protect the various things he treasured – somehow security exchanged itself for imprisonment as the years went on. But the creature was only ready to die if the death was worthy. "Or I'll pick your bones clean."

The elder beast shifted its weight, not used to such movement any longer. Its wings, cramped for so long, unfurled with the slow creak of an arthritic spasm. Once proud and mighty, its long neck reared up and revealed several piles of the skulls of innocents. Too many skulls were entirely too small. As the creature stirred, King's footfalls crunched underneath him. A bolt of flame spewed from its vile mouth. King scrambled out of the way of the initial blast; the heat of it scorched his backside. Steeling himself against his fear, King withdrew his Caliburn though he felt awfully small before the immensity of the dragon.

The dragon's head blurred past him. King leapt to the side, the creature's neck bashed him in mid-air, sending him into the wall. The wind knocked out of him, King closed his eyes to focus past the jarring ache in his bones and move before the dragon could take aim for its next strike. The dark passage was more deep dungeon than cavern. King wedged into the passage of stalagmites and ran. The beast coiled for another blow, its slitted eyes tired, and snapped its jaw shut, gnashing its sword-like teeth. The great horned head turned then smashed the columns in its swipe.

The oozy smell of a rotting hole assaulted King. The scales of the creature had been ground to sores. If the dragon hoped to feign even the shadow of its former glory, its body betrayed it. Talons that once ground stone to dust barely held it upright. The Caliburn warmed in King's hands, ready for use. King took aim at its thick hide and fired into what he guessed to be the heart of the creature. The bullets glowed, tracing a path straight inside. The dragon howled, the tenor of its screech changing from one of pained surprise to melancholy relief.

"Like the knights of old. It has been so long. So very… very…" The dragon began to hum, a melodic sigh, serenading itself. Perhaps the last of its kind, the dirge continued for nearly half an hour – heard like the rumbling of a fierce storm for hundreds of miles around – a great song wasted on deaf ears that didn't understand what they had lost. King stood watch until the last note echoed in the chamber and the beast collapsed into the waiting pool.

Plink. Plink. Plink.

With its passing, the chamber resolved itself into the penthouse proper. Suspended on a web of smoke on the far side of the room was Night. His emaciated form held aloft on tendrils of mist. Reed-thin arms raised in objection. Open sores oozed, bloodshot eyes of turgid flesh, he stank of putrefaction. His ashy skin parched with a filigree of veiny cracks and pockmarked by abscesses.

"It is finished." Night's eyebrows whitened. Wrinkles etched his face.

"Was it worth it?" King asked.

"I took what I had to. In this world, you only have yourself to depend on. You can't wait around for folks to give you what you want." A side of Night's face drooped, a palsy of withdrawal, his face appeared to melt. Perhaps the dragon's death severed some connection, the echo of an empowering presence. The vile odor of spoiled offal scourged King's eyes and nose and brought to mind images of maggot infested beef. Fungus crept along Night's skin, a slow parasitic digestion no longer kept in check, devoured the way rust consumes steel.

"Dress it up any way you want. You were a bully and a punk who fed on your own."

"We all live in service to something. Turn on the television and see all those commercials promising what should be ours. Taught to want and get from the time we learned to flip the remote." Night coughed. His wizened arm lifted in protest, but then lowered. Reflective eyes focused on King. "I started at the bottom of a crew, worked my way up, eventually set up my own stand and franchises. I am the American Dream. You can turn your back on me and forget I exist, but I'll feed in the shadows. I'll always get mine."

The battered body gasped for breath, the coils of smoke slackening their grip on him. King finally answered him. "At what cost?"

"My coach once talked about how he couldn't retire from coaching. About how it was all he knew what to do and couldn't leave it behind. Athletes. Coaches. Us. Anyone who is about the game. Once we're done, we die. Or we die and we're done."

With a last gasp, Night's emaciated husk, fully desiccated, toppled from its fading perch and smashed into bits when he hit the ground.

"Yeah," King said. "It's finished for now."