MirrorWorld

50.

“Can you delay the assault?” I ask, already suspecting the answer. He barely gets a chance to start saying no when I wave off the question and sprint across the traffic circle.

As I leave the macadam behind and enter the lush Couturie Forest, he shouts to me. “They’re going to shoot anything that moves! Don’t be in there when they arrive!”

I don’t doubt his warning. Amped up on BDO he very nearly shot me. Probably would have if he hadn’t recognized me. The potent mix of chemicals might help a human being overcome the Dread fear, but when there’s nothing to be afraid of, the drug sends the user into a manic state. Facing the Dread without it allows me to think more clearly, which is essential, but it also leaves me more susceptible to their effect, not that the drug did wonders for Katzman’s performance.

My pace is slowed by the thick vegetation growing everywhere, but it’s faster than slogging through the mirror-world swamp. I speed up when I come across a footpath headed in the right direction, but I only get thirty feet before I’m struck by an invisible freight train. I’m lifted off the ground and thrown into a marsh.

I’ve pulled my body and armor fully out of the mirror world. They shouldn’t be able to strike me, unless… They’re pushing themselves into this world, just for a moment, just long enough to strike.

I stand, dripping wet, and ready my weapon. Then I slip between worlds, ready to put another Dread out of its misery.

Nearly waist-deep in water, I spin, searching for my target and finding absolutely nothing. I’m just a hundred feet from the curved wall of the colony. Like all the others, a series of arched entrances lines the outside wall, one every fifty feet, raised up just above the waterline by an earthen ramp. Like the city of New Orleans, the Dread colony is barely keeping the water out.

After ten seconds of searching for whatever struck me, I lower my weapon. I’m alone, and the entrances to the colony are unguarded.

A sudden fear clutches my insides.

I spin again, ready to pull the trigger, but am still unable to find a target. With my back to the colony, I search the black, hanging tree line. I see no motion, just bunches of dangling, wet foliage.

A ripple of water rolls past. I spin and fire three shots—into the water.

I’m being toyed with, my fear increasing with each close encounter.

But encounter with what?

I get my answer as the water, twenty feet away, bows up and slides away from a rising form. Four yellow eyes, all atop a flat head, break the surface. Four feet closer, a snout rises, blowing a hiss of air through two nostrils.

I take a step back. If you’d asked me, at any point in my life up until yesterday, whether I was afraid of crocodiles, the answer would have been no. Today the answer is yes; I am most definitely afraid of crocodiles. I don’t think that what I’m seeing is an actual croc, but if it’s anything like the man-eating reptiles, the distance between its snout and eyes mean it’s absolutely massive. A good thirty feet long.

The eyes glide toward me, unblinking, moving through the water so smoothly that they don’t create a ripple.

A metallic-purple light slips through the water to my right. It’s in my periphery, but I don’t look at it. I can’t take my eyes off the monster coming my way… until it stops. The submerged Dread freezes, going perfectly still.

I glance at the purple thing moving beneath the water, gliding casually between the Dread and me. I can’t see much of it, but it looks like a long fish of some kind, its shiny scales reflecting the sky’s purple light.

The four large yellow eyes flicker and turn black as the thing slides beneath the water.

I’m paralyzed, watching the fish swim by, oblivious to the danger. When it’s ten feet in front of me, a shadow moves over the fish and snaps down. Water explodes into the air. The Dread rises from the water, thrashing the fish back and forth. Its eyes flicker brightly, and then the veins covering its wide body come to life like iridescent bulbs, blinking before going solid.

I was wrong; it’s not like a crocodile at all. It’s much, much worse. The mouth is not only deep, it’s also six feet wide, with long black teeth that extend outside the mouth, like a Venus flytrap. The long teeth have skewered the fish. It clamps its wide jaws shut, the teeth forming a perfect seam, carving the prey in two. Rough, glossy skin, crisscrossed with yellow veins, rises up from the curved mouth to the four eyes, allowing them and the tall nostrils positioned halfway to the end of the mouth to protrude from the water without revealing the rest of the beast. The body is, as I suspected, at least thirty feet long, but with legs long enough for it to stand clear of and move quickly through the water, though I suspect its flat tail can move it through the water pretty quickly, too.

In the ten seconds it takes the Dread croc to trap the fish, sever it in two, and swallow the halves, I’ve completed my assessment of the thing: I’ll be just another meal in fifteen seconds if I don’t kill it in the next five. Knowing my magazine is half empty, I eject it, letting it fall into the water. I slap in a fresh magazine with three seconds left.

A loud snapping sound turns the monster’s, and my, attention upward.

A Dread Squad soldier descends through the sky, held aloft by a black parachute, no doubt made of oscillium. He’s made a mistake by entering the mirror world before landing. He’s probably too hopped up on BDO, itching for a fight. But he has captured the croc’s full attention for the moment.

I look into the real world. Three Globemaster transport planes circle the forest. Small black figures spill from the back of each, which are like deer shitting pellets rapid-fire. Soldiers, hundreds of them, fall toward the ground, their black parachutes deploying at what appears to be the last second, and then, one by one, they wink out of reality.

They’re parachuting into the mirror dimension. It’s not a bad tactic, really, except for the fact that they’re going to land in several feet of Dread-croc-infested water. It’s going to be a bloodbath, on both sides, as the drug-amped soldiers unleash their weaponry.

Not that I’ll be around to see it. When the soldier sees the Dread croc, he shouts a battle cry and opens fire. The croc responds by submerging itself and pumping its tail. It surges through the water, heading for its new target.

I can do this, I think.

And then the water to my right flickers yellow.

Then to my left.

Flickering yellow bodies, each as big as the first, come to life, one after another, stretching as far as I can see. I stand still as the light grows brighter.

No, not brighter… Closer to the surface.

An array of glowing yellow eyes emerge from the water.

Feeling what I believe is an appropriate level of earth-shattering fear, I burst back into the real world and sprint forward like a white Bronco from the LAPD. It’s just a hundred feet to the colony entrance.

Luckily for me, all eyes in the mirror world are now looking up.

After a few-second sprint, I slip back into the mirror world, just feet from the colony entrance.

Screams erupt behind me.

A Dread croc rises out of the water, propelled by its powerful tail. Its wide jaws open and shut over a man’s pelvis. He’s severed in half. While his legs are carried away, the still-living man shrieks, out of his mind, his insides splashing into the water below, acting as chum. Monsters swirl through the water, vying for position as the nearly lifeless man continues his descent.

Two Dread crocs make their move at once, each catching a portion of the man, silencing his screams. It’s only a second before a fresh holler of pain fills the air, this time followed by the staccato roar of automatic gunfire. It’s followed by more and more, nearby and distant, thunderously announcing the arrival of the human race in the mirror world. The battle for the colony’s perimeter has begun.

I want no part in it.

I step inside the colony and am greeted by darkness. It lasts just a moment as my eyes adjust, faster than before. Luminous veins line the walls and ceiling, providing a rainbow of ebbing, flowing light. I take the smartphone out, intending to check on Maya’s position, but the screen is black and dripping water. I put the device away and move quietly, stepping down the smooth, curving grade. It appears this giant colony is designed similarly to the smaller one in New Hampshire, spiraling downward toward an open core. This means I’ve got a long journey ahead of me. I think the colony is a thousand feet across, give or take a hundred, so the perimeter is just over three thousand feet. After just my second revolution, I’ll have traveled a mile. At a run, I can cover the distance in six minutes, but there’s no way to know how many circuits the tunnel makes before reaching the bottom. As wide as this colony is, I might have to run several miles before reaching the bottom, and I don’t have a half hour to spare.

But what other choice do I have?

Throwing caution to the wind, I run, setting a fast but not impossible pace. The air smells rank, strong with ammonia, and stings my throat, but I haven’t passed out yet, so there is still enough oxygen to keep me alive.

Three minutes into my run, I haven’t encountered any resistance.

At three minutes, five seconds, everything changes.

Alcoves line the walls on both sides up ahead. In the last colony, these spaces contained empty nests. With all the action outside and the commotion in New Orleans, I expect the same here. As I run by the first alcove and glance inside, I realize my mistake. With the closest thing I’ve seen to a stunned expression on a Dread, a bull watches me pass by.

For a moment, I think it’s just going to let me pass, but then a cry rings out, echoing down the long, curved tunnel. The bellow is joined by a sharp surge of mental whispering.

Barks from far beyond me and all around me explode into the air.

I pour on the speed, instinct telling me to run from the danger while my intellect screams at me to stop because I’m simply putting myself deeper in Dread territory. My flight into danger is short-lived. Thumping feet turn my attention to the left.

A Dread bull charges from an alcove, head down, perfectly aimed. A wave of fear explodes from the monster, tearing through my body, twisting my insides like a giant corkscrew spiraling through my gut. Its four eyes lock on target, confident. With only a second before impact, I freeze in place.