Fading Light: An Anthology of the Monstrous: Tim Marquitz (36 page)

“Cute,” Lester said.

Carla led and Lester followed, hugging the box in his arms. They
entered a shallow chamber, but Lester couldn’t see any tunnels
for them to travel when he looked around at the dripstone walls.

“Dead end?” He watched Carla, who seemed distracted by
something at the back of the cave. She walked over and held up Moon’s
lantern. The wall faded like a shadow, revealing a narrow tunnel that
sloped downwards into only God knew where.

“How far do you think this goes?” Carla asked, a sense of
wonder soaked in her voice.

“Too far, by my measure.”

The outside fell away as they made their descent. Lester kept looking
back at the mouth of the cave until he couldn’t see it or the
lightning flashes that lit it up.

“Carla?”

“What?”

“What if we just kept going?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what if we got back in that cop car and just ... kept
going?”

Carla stopped. She stood rigid with her back to Lester. He hoped
she’d see his side of things, cut their losses, and find
someplace to hide out until the madness ended. She looked over her
shoulder at him. A resigned expression on her face.

“Where would we go, Lester?”

“I dunno. West? Anywhere but here.”

“Do you really think there’s anywhere left for us to
run?”

She turned her back to him and continued down the tunnel. Lester
watched her go. He still had his night-vision goggles draped around
his neck. He imagined he could put them on and find his own way back.
Hugging the box, he looked back the way they came—into the
nothingness—then at Carla in the moonlit glow that surrounded
her. He never tried to stop her when she dumped him and moved to
Knoxville. She was the hero and he was the thief. Things hadn’t
changed much.

“You coming?” she called back.

“Right behind ya.”

After some time, a soft, amber light appeared ahead. It grew stronger
as they reached an opening into a chamber. More of a chasm to
Lester’s reckoning. The floor dropped down a good eight feet or
so, while the ceiling stretched upward into shadows. The chamber
itself must have been as wide as a football field. Massive would have
been the word to creep into Lester’s mind, but one other word
was consuming his thoughts:
dragon
.

The source of the light was the golden scales of what he could only
classify as a dragon. It lay curled about the circumference of the
chamber, its sleek, horned head at one end and its tail at the other.
The scales shimmered light with each breath it took. What Lester had
assumed was an air current moving through a vent somewhere was
actually the steady breath of the beast as it slept. Carla tapped his
shoulder, and he winced and stifled a shout, then she pointed out a
mound of stones and branches piled into a nest at the center of the
chamber near the dragon’s side.

“Time to shine, thief of mine.” She gave him a kiss on
the cheek for luck.

A thrill of heroism washed through his veins for a second, until he
looked back at the beast below and all lingering thoughts of valor
seeped out of him in rivulets of sweat. He climbed down the steep
stone steps into the chamber, took the box from Carla as she handed
it down, and froze when the dragon’s plated tail twitched,
kicking up a cloud of silt at his feet. What was huge from the ledge
became gargantuan at ground level. He looked up at Carla, who had
fallen back a ways to hide the lantern’s light. She mouthed the
words, “Hurry up.” He nodded and made his move to the
nest.

The structure sat chest-high and he saw the branches amid the stones
were actually bones of some animal he didn’t want to imagine.
He set the wooden box on the edge of the nest, gingerly climbed in,
then gazed at what he estimated was an impossible task. The egg
looked to be made of stone and twice the size of the box.

You’ve got to be shittin’ me.

He opened the box. Inside, he found large black scales, from Gulega’s
hide he imagined. He set them next to the egg. The heat coming off
the dragon’s belly was sweltering, the air filling his lungs
felt stifling and rank. He hefted the stone egg up, ignored the
twinge in his back, and prepared to set the egg on the edge of the
nest next to the box to figure out his next move. But the egg
gravitated towards the box, and in a mind-bending display, shrunk in
size as it neared the top of the box until it was just small enough
to fit inside. When Lester closed the lid, climbed out of the nest,
and lifted the box, he marveled at how it was no heavier than before.

Well, that possum’s on the stump.

Carla helped him back up to the ledge, but the rocky edge slid loose
in spots and rained down into the chamber. They stared down at the
dragon’s head. Breath fumed from its nostrils and rippled the
air. Its scales brightened. Then the eyelids shifted.

Carla leaned into Lester’s ear. “Move. Your. Ass.”

Lester grabbed the box and scrambled to his feet. Carla was already
ahead of him, snatching the lantern up and leading the dash out of
the cave. A fiery glow radiated behind them, followed by a roar that
echoed off the walls and chased them into the night.

The storm clouds over Knoxville rippled with lightning. Lester
couldn’t believe they were actually racing towards it. He
recalled Moon’s words about Gulega, describing him as a giant
black serpent. Lester figured it couldn’t be any worse than the
giant gold dragon he’d just pissed off royal.

“This is fucked, Carla. I just stole an egg from a dragon.
That’s the kind of thing that gets a fella dead—and I
don’t wanna die.”

“That makes two of us, but we’ve got to see this
through.”

Thunder rolled behind them, but there was something different to it.
Deeper. Lester checked the rearview as they reached the city limits.
He could see the horizon. A golden light plumed in the distance.

“Oh shit, now I get it.” Lester smacked a fist on the
steering wheel. “That crooked sonofa—”

“What?” Carla looked at him, bracing her arms against the
dashboard as Lester weaved through the abandoned vehicles in the
streets.

“I thought Moon meant that egg was a weapon, but it ain’t.”

“Then what is it?”

Lester swung onto what the sign said was Henley Street, and aimed the
police cruiser south towards the river.

“Bait,” he answered.

They looked out the passenger-side window and the light to the west
they might have otherwise mistaken for a sunset. Twenty miles or so
away, the dragon soared up until it disappeared into the clouds.
Lester glanced back at the box in the backseat next to Moon’s
lantern, sitting there like a damned beacon for the dragon.

“We gotta get rid of that thing,” he said.

“Then get us to the river, already.”

He got them as far as the corner of Clinch Avenue, but had to pile on
the brakes. The cruiser’s headlights pointed down the long
stretch towards downtown and the riverbanks. Thousands upon thousands
of afflicted crowded the streets. Rain pelted the car, and between
thunder crashes, Lester and Carla listened to the incessant chants of
the saturated worshipers. There was a third of a mile between them
and the Tennessee River, all of it consumed with humanity. Like
Woodstock had come to Knoxville, headlined by Satan himself.

“I don’t reckon we’re getting any closer unless we
find ourselves a cowcatcher,” Lester said with a sigh. “Got
any ideas there, eagle scout, ’cause this coyote’s too
spooked to think?”

Carla hung her head, sullen, and for the first time since Lester
found her holed up in her cousin’s house, she started to cry.
Lester leaned over and wiped a tear from her cheek and let his hand
linger. She flinched at his touch and looked away, never one to let
other people see her vulnerable. Lester let out a sigh and got set to
put the car in reverse, maybe find some way to go around the sea of
humanity, or a ditch to curl up and die in. But Carla slapped a hand
on the passenger side window, let out a gasp, and damn-near gave
Lester a heart attack.

“What …
what?
”

“Go right,” she said. “I know what to do.”

Lester turned onto Clinch Avenue heading west. The dragon’s
burning aura soared closer, by the looks of the storm clouds that
way. Then he saw what Carla saw. The Sunsphere tower.

“I’ll be damned,” he said. “If I didn’t
know any better, I’d say Moon Man had this mapped out from the
get-go.”

He stopped the cruiser in the street and they got out. Carla
retrieved Moon’s lantern, while Lester grabbed the box. After a
moment’s hesitation, he grabbed the shotgun. It probably didn’t
amount to more than a security blanket, but he felt a mite braver
with it than without it. Turned out to come in handy in busting open
the doors to the Sunsphere’s lobby. Once inside, they hoofed it
upstairs. Lester had never been inside the tower before, and
half-expected the place to be littered with wigs like in that episode
of
The Simpsons
. What he found instead was a nauseating aerial
view of the city skyline—and their first glimpse of Gulega.

On the riverbanks five blocks away, bonfires bloomed like angry
roses. Between the two bridges that stretched across, risen several
stories high like a black spire in the river, the serpent looked down
on its worshipers. Its head was the size of a damned Mack truck, and
even from a distance, Lester could see the glint of lightning flash
in its dark, calamitous eyes.

“Jesus. I think I’d rather take my chances with the
dragon.”

“If we don’t do something quick, you’re going to
get your wish,” Carla said and pointed out to the west. The
dragon’s golden luminance moved swiftly through the storm
clouds in the distance, drawing near and circling out around the
city’s outskirts. “We can’t get to the serpent, so
we need to make it come to us.”

“Oh great. And how do we do that? Whistle?”

“Not what I had in mind.”

Carla lifted Moon’s lantern out to the large viewing windows.
Its ambient blue glow strengthened until it threw out a harsh beam of
light directly at the serpent. The beast’s head broke its gaze
on the fires below and whipped round to glare across the rooftops at
them. Lester’s bladder gave out a little bit when he met its eyes.

“Is it just me or do you feel like a worm on a hook right about
now?”

“Lester,” Carla said, eyes fixed on Gulega as its head
lowered to the ground and wound its way through the streets towards
them. Pavement, glass, and bones crunched in its path. “Get
ready to throw that box.”

“Where do you expect me to throw—”

Carla set the lantern on the floor, marched over to Lester, and
snatched the shotgun by its strap from his shoulder. She racked a
shell, took aim, and blew out one of the windows. Lester flinched at
the blast and shattering glass.

“Hey, Gulega!’ she shouted into the night. “We got
something for ya. Come and get it!”

“Oh my god, did you just taunt the giant demon snake?”

“Just be ready with that box.”

Gulega slithered across the man-made lake in the park grounds until
it reached the base of the tower. Lester and Carla stared through the
downcast windows at their feet and watched the serpent wind itself
about the tower, climbing up. The floor trembled and the tower
groaned as the thing climbed ever higher. A massive rain-slicked
skull of blackness and malevolence emerged before them. It looked
from the lantern to them, and Lester could have sworn it smirked.

“Are you ready?” Carla asked.

“No,” Lester whimpered, eyes locked with those of the
serpent.

“Well, you better remedy that.” She racked another shell
in the shotgun and squeezed the trigger. The buckshot peppered
Gulega’s snout, but did little more than divert its attention
to her. “Now, Lester! Throw it now!”

Carla dropped the shotgun and grabbed Moon’s lantern, swinging
it round and hurling the harsh light into Gulega’s baleful
eyes. The serpent’s jaws opened, hissing as it reared back from
its perch on the tower, eyes narrowed against the light.

Lester heaved the box through the window and past the gaping fangs of
the serpent. The box disappeared into the beast’s gullet and
looked no bigger than a pebble doing so.

“Now what?” Lester said, looking to Carla.

Carla shrugged. “Run!”

They bolted for the stairwell in the center of the observation deck.
Gulega’s snout battered against the glass framework, smashing
its way inside. Lester shoved Carla ahead of him as the serpent’s
jaws snapped inches from his back. The lantern bathed the stairway in
moonlight, while Carla and Lester tumbled down the steps. The tower
shook violently and they careened into the wall and fell into a
tangled mess even further down the spiral steps.

The walls around them moaned with the force of the serpent’s
body squeezing tighter on the tower’s frame. Cracks appeared in
the walls. Fragments fell from above. Then, a new noise rose above
the din of the Sunsphere’s demolition. A deep, raptorial roar
high overhead.

“Here comes Mommy,” Lester grunted. He helped Carla to
her feet and they trundled down the rest of the way. Once at the
bottom, they raced out to the lobby.

The outside was bathed in vivid light. The Sunsphere above them
quaked again, but this time something gave. A bone-rattling crack
joined the metallic groans. A shadow loomed outside, stretching out
across the man-made lake next to the amphitheater. The tower
followed. With Gulega still coiled around its base. The sphere itself
crashed into the water and sent up a great plume of water that shone
like gold dust in the air. Lester dove on top of Carla and shielded
her from the torrent of water and glass that battered against the
lobby windows.

When they looked up, the dragon touched down next to the fallen
Sunsphere, lowering her head with a growl as she glared at Gulega.
For a moment, Lester felt like he was watching a Japanese monster
movie. Until the dragon lunged at Gulega and chomped down on the
serpent’s throat. The serpent lashed its tail, which sliced
through the lobby’s windows, raining shards of glass and other
debris on Lester and Carla. The dragon seized the serpent’s
tail with its front claws, then launched itself into the air again.