Use this to see the fanart which accompanies this chapter: http: /patchworkdove. deviantart. com/#/ d3661f4
Dib stalked purposefully down the narrow concrete crevice, keeping tight to the walls of the warehouses which towered up into the dark night sky. His black-clad body slunk into a pocket of pooled shadow behind a dumpster with practiced, well-oiled ease as he progressed stealthily down the alleyway. He moved like a man possessed because that was what he was becoming; a single-minded advocate for truth determined to expose the deepest secrets of reality. Silent and unseen, he pursued an unknown entity in the night. Armed with his trusty Nikon, Dib was going to capture the supernatural being that he was tailing in multi-megapixel format for the whole world to see.
He wasn't sure what it was yet. His quarry, whatever it may be, had tripped the network of sensors and surveillance equipment that Dib used to keep a constant, watchful gaze over his city. It wasn't human and it wasn't any common urban or domestic animal, or it wouldn't have activated the array. It was something else, something out of the ordinary, and the prospect of discovering the abnormal anomaly thrilled him. He blithely tolerated the mundane plodding of normal, daily life, but this was what he truly lived for. Every adrenaline-spiked, clandestine moment that punctuated his existence brought him to life and left his skin prickling electrically.
This thing was fast. It was so quick and agile whilst also being incredibly quiet that it almost ghosted through the industrial district. Dib considered the possibility of his subject having an incorporeal form. Some dark spirit perhaps? An inter-dimensional interloper? Either way, he was grateful for the years he'd spent tracking and tracing Zim's movements. Without that training and practise, he'd have lost this slippery spectre several times over already.
The alleyway opened out onto the broad and featureless concrete expanse of an access road wide enough for big freight semis to manoeuvre through comfortably. There was no sign of the creature, but the yawning mouth of an open loading bay on the opposite side presented the only logical bolthole for his quarry to have hidden in. Christ, it had covered that distance with impressive speed! Perhaps it was capable of line-of-sight teleportation?
With careful and quiet placing of his boots, Dib loped across the open ground as his long leather jacket rippled behind him. He slipped across the threshold and deftly climbed the sheer wall that hiked the warehouse floor up high enough that goods could be wheeled straight into a big rig's trailer. The place was cavernous, like an aircraft hangar, but cut through with industrial metal catwalks and piping. There were no visible goods or products, suggesting that the property was not currently in use. He started skirting along the wall when he stumbled upon some hard evidence.
Literally. He stepped in something thick and slippery on the cold floor and nearly ended up skidding ass-over-elbow. His childhood had honed his reflexes well and one hand shot out to firmly catch a nearby handrail while the other held his camera aloft and out of harm's way. Once steady, he dropped to a crouch to examine the slick on the floor. Something this wet on the dry concrete of a disused warehouse had to be reasonably fresh.
It was viscous enough to sit in a deep, piled layer, but when he touched it with an outstretched hand it had the slippery-film feel of fish slime. It coated his fingertips with an almost rubbery, gooey layer that then started dripping back to the floor in long, slithering ropes. Dib rubbed his index finger and thumb together inquisitively, then pulled them apart to test the tackiness and stringiness of the questionable substance. Perhaps he really had been tracking some kind of ghostly phantom, and this was an ectoplasmic residue?
He lifted it to his face to give the slop a curious sniff and in an instant his mood changed. It smelled of death. Not of rotting corpses or fetid remains but of blood and flesh. The scent of slaughter and draining carcasses filled Dib's nostrils, with none of that almost-pleasant coppery smell that had become familiar to him from his own wounds over the years. This reeked of fatality and it touched some deep and primitive part of his psyche, the relic parts left over from when humans were the prey of big carnivores. It screamed at him like a terror-stricken wild animal and Dib felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. This slime smelled like the gaping jaws of death itself, and he regretted leaving the safety of his house tonight with every fibre of his being. This was wrong. It was a very stupid mistake. He should never have come here. He needed to leave. Now.
Before Dib could muster the coherency to gather himself together and turn his back on this place, there was the splat-patter of heavy dribbling to his immediate left. It was just inches from his head, landing wetly and heavily on the wadded tail of his leather coat. It was all that he could do over the thunder of his own racing pulse in his ears to cant his wide-eyed gaze to the stringy saliva slathering his clothes. Oh God, he was so hopelessly out of his depth here. This thing he'd been following was so far out of his league.
For better or worse, he looked up to face his mortality as if he couldn't help himself. He could barely see it in the darkness but the long dome of its smooth black head caught the light and loomed out of the darkness from its vantage point above him. Thin black lips peeled back from a set of silvery fangs. The dripping gushed into a slavering river as the cheekless jaws swung wide open on ropey hinges. Within the black pit of its gaping maw something else glimmered in the night, and a hideous tongue equipped with its own abhorrent set of teeth pushed its way towards him. It hissed malevolently.
Dib didn't want to die. He had nothing to defend himself with and no hope of outrunning this horrific abomination, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to try. His life had been one long string of impossible battles and hopeless causes. He was going to die as he'd lived. He wouldn't go down without a fight.
In a flurry of motion he hurled his camera at its grotesque face. The flash went off and the beast snarled and flinched back just as Dib sprang to his feet to run for his life. He tore through the warehouse at breakneck speed and launched himself off the loading bay edge without a second thought. He flew through the air with his arms outstretched for balance, readying for the far-off landing in his leap of faith. Boots striking the ground with jarring force, his knees were set aflame with pain while the wet drool that caked the tread of one foot pitched him over. He caught himself with palms outstretched, skinning his hands on the concrete, but clawed himself back to his feet.
A flash of inspiration cut through his mad-dash for survival, reminding him that his hunter had crossed this road with inhuman speed. Open ground would be the death of him. He jack-knifed to the right and pelted down the dark track, heading for another winding alleyway that he knew would return him to the perceived safety of street lights and populated places. He gritted his teeth and sucked in a breath, pumping his legs and arms as he pushed himself into a flat-out sprint. The entrance to his escape route drew nearer but he barely slowed his pace, heaving his body into the gap and slamming into the wall as he rounded the corner, before darting off down the narrow cut-through.
He daren't look back or slow down, racing round twisting bends and leaping over the trash and boxes that littered the alley floor. He knew it was coming for him, he could feel it in the primordial squirming of his gut. All he needed to do was keep running. It was really all he could do, but as he rounded the next corner he was left wishing it was all as simple as that.
Someone had installed a chain-link gate across the width of this rat-run since he'd last come this way, and it was topped with barbed wire. Dib felt his throat close up in desperate panic as soon as he saw it blocking his path, but he sped up and measured his footsteps. With cowering in a corner and waiting to be slaughtered as his only other option, he was going to try to jump it.
Scowling in grim determination, he aimed for the hinge fixings that coupled the gate to the wall; they would be the most stable points of impact and would offer the best footholds. He leapt up, leg outstretched and the metal bolts caught the deep rubber soles of his boot. The momentum pushed him on as he ran up the corner between the gate and the wall. He reached the top, one foot perched on the barb-studded horizontal bar, and heaved himself over.
The flapping tail of his coat snagged fast on the jagged metal, cutting his fall short. Dib's shoulders were wrenched together as he came to a tangled stop suspended inches above the ground. He twisted and yanked incoherently, but to no avail. He was caught in the unforgiving leather and as he thrashed against his bindings, tears of frustration and panic welling up. This was it. This was how Dib was going to meet his maker; trussed up in the knotted leather of his own stupid coat like a God-damn meat-piñata!
He twisted around, trying to spot his hunter despite the pain of his contorted shoulders, but the alleyway was eerily silent and empty. He could almost have convinced himself that he was safely alone and that it had abandoned the chase, but somehow he knew that wasn't true. The black beast was closing in on him, he was sure of it, even though he couldn't see it. It was out there, somewhere.
A long, drawn out hiss echoed down from above, letting Dib know exactly where his demise was coming from. The creature was crawling slowly and effortlessly down the vertical and sheer warehouse wall like an insect, though it was easily as big as a man. Appallingly humanoid hands and limbs managed to find purchase on the wall where it by no right should, and its body was covered in a ribbed and polished carapace of armour. There were nasty projections poking from its back like truncated, foetally unfinished extra appendages, while its long, fleshless, fish-bone tail snaked about behind it. Like a twisted scorpion, it was tipped with a savage barb.
It was revealing itself because it knew he was defenceless. It knew he was stuck, and that he couldn't escape now. This thing was just getting started, it was obviously intelligent enough to revel in its victory and it was going to play with its prize. The looming prospect of a mercilessly drawn-out and tortuous death was the final straw that broke Dib down into a sobbing, wriggling mess.
A crack of thunder and a flash of bright green light trapped in the closeness of the narrow alleyway saw Dib fall to the floor. The tattered lower half of his coat was a smoking ruin and he threw the offending garment off, the air reeking of burnt leather and ozone. A familiar figure stood in the gap, jacked up on long metal legs and toting a smoking cannon that although pink in colour, screamed of serious firepower. Dib had never been so glad to see anything or anyone in his whole life, than in that moment when he recognized Zim's face. It was the green and scaly face of his alien nemesis, but it was comforting in its familiarity and the weapon ignited a spark of hope in Dib's chest.
Dib ran to Zim, throwing his arms around the Irken's purple armoured shoulders. Despite every threat of violence and savage blow that had been exchanged between the two of them over the years, Zim had never made him feel as helplessly cut-through and gutted with terror as this black beast had. The green alien clutched him back possessively, with one set of claws fisted in his hair while the other levelled the glowing green gun muzzle at the enemy. The black creature shrieked a cry so high-pitched that it sounded almost electronically inorganic as it hurled itself towards them, double jaws agape and claws outstretched. One blast from the laser cannon and the creature's shield-like, domed head shattered in a spray of yellow blood. The acrid-coloured fluid spattered the concrete and began to fizzle and smoke.
Dib stood there in the settling dark with his hands still clutching at Irken armour while he caught his breath, unwilling to let go of the lifeline he'd been thrown in the form of his long-term adversary. Thankfully, Zim didn't seem to be inclined towards throwing him off either; it even seemed like the thumb-claw at his temple was gently stroking his hair.
"Stupid, stupid, stinking Dib-thing!" Zim broke the silence with bizarre gentleness, as if admonishing a silly child for some dangerous act of folly.
Dib swallowed thickly, fighting back the dryness of his throat and the intensifying tremors of shock that came from his adrenaline-drenched muscles. "My God. Zim, what the hell was that?" He whispered low and shakily, as if he were afraid that the carcass sprawled and bubbling acrid blood on the floor would hear him and renew its' terrifying assault.
"Filthy, cancerous Scourge-Serpents!" Zim spat, a façade of rage stretched thinly over the fear in his magenta eyes, even as the cannon in his claws smoked victoriously. "There will be more. Many more. There are much worse things in the Universe than Irken Rule, Dib. Now the Earth is Infected. It is lost."
"What do you mean it's lost?"
"They pervert the bodies of others to swell their ranks, forcing their disgusting embryos into your chest. They will use you as an incubator until their new filthy, mutant soldier digs its way out of you."
With that, Zim flung him away, sneering vehemently. Dib found the huge weapon turned on him and he was backed up against the nearby wall. A purple clawed gauntlet roughly gripped his chin and tugged his head this way and that to expose his neck, all under the scrutiny of narrowed, solid pink eyes. He was too stunned to resist until a finger hooked into his mouth to tug his jaw, when he angrily batted the invading hand away from his face. The claws were relentless and relocated their assault to the middle of his chest, groping blindly.
"Has anything…touched your face?" Zim asked uncertainly, almost as if he didn't want to know the answer.
"What, you mean other than you poking your fingers in my mouth?"
Zim frowned, uncharacteristically stone-faced. "Nothing else? Nothing…" He made an awkward gesture with his hand that implied suffocation or muzzling. "Nothing attached itself to your face?"
"No. I think I'd have noticed something like that."
The set of Zim's antennae relaxed by a fraction and he lowered the cannon. His hand, which had been roughly probing Dib's chest, ceased its' search and uneasily petted the blue shirt fabric with obvious relief. "Come. We need to leave." It was a statement, not a request, as Zim snatched his wrist in a vicelike grip and pulled him away, glancing around nervously.