A/N: At long last, a new chapter! It's going to be interesting balancing this with the other Gravity Falls fanfic I'm working on, but in all honesty it's a lot more fun than my previous approach (ie: sitting around doing sweet FA until inspiration struck). Coming up, a chapter of survival, struggle, attrition, and unbearable decisions - but first, review responses!
Fantasy Fan 223: I hate to say it, but Bill's going to be doing an awful lot of line-crossing in this story. Whether he'll become more human is a difficult matter to gauge. I mean, mentally? Not terribly likely. Physically? Well, Bill has the building blocks of reality under his command, so you never know what form he can take next. And yes, without saying too much, Ford is going to have a very bad time of it - not merely because Bill will be more brutal with him, but because he knows Ford's mind in detail. He knows what makes him tick, his hidden fears and insecurities - and Ford has an awful lot of them. Worse still, Bill isn't out to get answers from him this time around: this time, Bill will torture Ford for the fun of it, and he can afford to take his time. But that's a matter for another chapter. I hope you enjoy this latest one, and thanks for your support.
Kraven The Hunter: That might just be the best worst pun I've heard in a long time - congratulations.
Northgalus2002: I'm very sorry to hear of your ongoing troubles - and I'm very sorry to say that the spark of light in the darkness might take its time in showing up. I'll do my best to spring some more optimistic notes in later chapters, but for now I can only beg your indulgence for a little while longer.
rcppcsPOTTER: Thanks for the review.I hope this chapter lives up to the hype - it's been a very interesting process to imagine what might constitute torture for Wendy. Also, I was thinking of a postcard from Abualita to Soos, but when I considered that Bill was just launching fake pleas for help in Soos's direction, I found it funnier when I imagined that Bill ran out of ideas for what to write in Abualita's case because he simply has no idea what could make her scream for help - he still hasn't found a method of torture that could work on her.
Aaand without further ado, the latest chapter: read, review and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is not mine. I trust this isn't much of a surprise.
Sad to say, it wasn't the first time Wendy had awoken to find herself dangling from the ceiling: yearly apocalypse training always threw her and her brothers in the deep end, and relaxing bat-style was just something you had to master if you wanted to catch your breath on the harder nights. Time and time again, she'd spent her evenings hanging upside down from a tree branch, waiting patiently for Dad to finish beating the bushes for the slowpokes and handing out penalties for anyone too slow to get out of reach; then it'd be a swift scramble up the tree trunk, a leap onto the cliff, and then a short walk back to the encampment.
But this time, things were different: this time, she had her feet in a noose. This time, there was no carefully-arranged cushion of leaves and grass waiting for her a few feet below. This time, there were no tree branches to latch onto on the way down, no cliff walls or outcroppings to cling to. In fact, all that awaited her was an uninterrupted drop of no less than two hundred feet onto a hard stone floor, with nothing between her and the ground but shadows.
And unless Wendy was horribly wrong, she'd been a tapestry up until a couple of minutes ago.
And then at long last, her memories came flooding back: Weirdmageddon, rescuing Mabel, building the Shacktron, the attack on the Fearamid, the failed attempt at making the Zodiac Wheel, and then… getting transformed into tapestries. But if that was what had really happened, then what had happened to all the other transformed members of the team? Where was Dipper and Mabel? What had Bill done with Stan and Ford?
Forget all that, Wendy. You can't answer all these questions now. Get yourself out of this mess, then find the others.
Craning her neck upwards, she saw that the noose fastened around her ankles was actually attached to a metal grating in the roof perhaps a hundred feet above her. Fortunately, the knots around her legs were pretty sturdy, so at least she didn't have to worry about accidentally slipping free of the noose in the meantime. So, wrenching her body sharply upwards with a nerve-searing jolt of pain along her spine, she reached up and grabbed the rope.
It took a while to properly orient herself, but eventually she was able to haul herself upright enough to clamber up the length of rope, slowly ascending towards the grate. Doubly fortunately, the grating was bordered by a tiny ledge, allowing her just enough space to hang on while she forced the tiny metal trap door open.
Once she'd finished clambering onto the corridor above and gotten her breath back, she hurriedly checked her pockets for weaponry – and in another stroke of good luck, it turned out that Bill hadn't disarmed her completely: she still had her pocketknife tucked in her belt, plus two emergency crossbow bolts stashed in her boots. No axe and no crossbow, sadly, but if nothing else, she had something sharp and lethal to work with. So, cutting through the noose around her legs, she slammed the grating shut, got to her feet, turned around-
-and promptly found herself face to face with Bill.
"Hiya, Red!"
Wendy instinctively lashed out, her pocketknife slicing through the air in a deadly arc – or at least it would have been deadly if Bill had been there for the blade to connect. Instead, the knife phased harmlessly through him, the substance of his physical form suddenly as tangible as mist.
"Now that's what I like to see!" the hovering triangle laughed. "An eager player! Oh you are gonna be spectacular, Red!"
Wendy blinked. "What are you talking about?" she demanded. "Where's Dipper and Mabel? What have you done with the others? What am I going to be spectacular at?"
"Isn't if obvious? The world as you know it is now my personal playground, and the human race – such as it is – are all my playthings. Pine Tree's already got a game of his own running, as does Shooting Star, Question Mark and all your other friends; now it's your turn. Are you ready for the biggest challenge of your entire life?"
"Go to hell."
"Aw, is that any way to treat a friend?"
"We aren't friends, Bill. We never have been and never will be, and if I ever actually catch myself thinking of you as a friend, I will happily stick my head in a bear trap. Oh, and another thing: you might as well turn me back into a tapestry, because I'm not playing along. Clear?"
Bill's eyelids quirked upwards, and Wendy got the distinct impression that he was smirking at her.
"Crystal clear, Feisty," he chuckled darkly. "Trouble is, I really am your friend. In fact, I might just be your best friend in the world right now… though that might just be because I'M THE ONLY FRIEND YOU HAVE LEFT. Thing is, Red, I have exclusive rights over who you'll be allowed to meet or speak with, and I have it in my power to isolate you from literally every single human being on the planet if I so please: without me, you'll never see your friends and loved ones ever again. Hoo boy, I hope you said your farewells to your dad and your brothers when you had the chance, because all four of 'em might as well be dead from here on – dead as your dear old mommy. In fact, if you really aren't interested in playing my little game, I've got a few ideas for live burial I'd like to try…"
And with that, he turned and began to float away. He'd barely gone ten feet when something at the back of Wendy's brain hammered on a panic switch, and she instinctively let out a desperate yell of "WAIT!"
"Changed your mind, then?"
"…Yes," Wendy sighed. "I'll play along… just don't hurt them – any of them."
"Oh, you have my word as Undisputed Master of the Universe," said Bill, smugly. "And while you're at it, see if you can't turn that frown upside down: you're gonna enjoy what I've got planned for ya."
Yeah right, she thought, but she obligingly forced her face into a smile nonetheless – if the painful, teeth-clenched rictus could be called a smile. "What do you want from me?" she asked.
"Come on, Red, you know me well enough by now: I want entertainment! I want drama, violence, comedy, bloodshed, romance and genocide – all the usual wonderful things humans usually produce if they clump together for long enough. But from you specifically… well, I want to see if you'll rise to the biggest challenge of your life. Back in the days before I took power, you were the toughest out of all your little circle of friends, a survivor from the moment you had a chance to shine; in fact, I'm willing to bet you might have even given Ol' Sixer a run for his money if only he hadn't shut down the portal. So, I'm going to give you the next best thing: I'm going to put all those hard-won survival skills and apocalypse training to the ultimate test. You're going on a journey across my new domain, and you're going to endure everything it can possibly throw at you – and I mean everything. Weirdness waves, unreality pockets, bubbles of pure madness, shapeshifting landscapes, desperate survivors, zombies, mutants, and everyone who's been unlucky enough to run into all that stuff ahead of you… and unless you're being attacked, hunted or spied on, you'll be alone. It'll be like it was in the early days of Weirdmageddon – just you against the world. It'll be a journey through hell, Red, and I can guarantee you're going to suffer for every step of it."
"And what am I going to get out of the challenge apart from that?"
"A chance to see your friends and family again, of course. If you play along for long enough, you'll see all those little people you've come to know and love so well, and you'll get to spend a little quality time with them. After that… well, what happens to them next is up to you. Word of advice, Red: this is a test of your survival skills; if you want to stay alive – and keep them the same way – you'd best love 'em and leave 'em. Stay any longer… and you might just have to kill them."
Wendy's eyes narrowed. "Why would I want to kill my family and friends?"
"Ah-ah-ah! Spoilers! You'll have to wait and see: it's a surprise."
And then Bill did something so horrific that Wendy's mind needed a minute or two to process it: his face split open, a three-foot-wide gash tearing itself across the length of his body just below his eye, immediately revealing a deep, bloody trench in the "flesh" of his form. Then, twelve jagged shards of bone tore through the borders of the wound, six chisel-shaped splinters lining on each side of the trench. But even with all this, it wasn't until the corners of the wound curled upwards that Wendy realized that Bill had just grown a mouth and was smiling at her.
"So tell me," he said, his new mouth remaining completely immobile, "Are you up to the challenge?"
In spite of herself, Wendy smiled back. "Bring it on," she snarled.
Five minutes later, the Fearamid stopped above one of the few intact cities left on the face of the Earth.
Wendy wasn't given its name or location, and from what little she could see of the place as they drifted towards it, it didn't have much of an identity left: this could have been any big city in the United States – or Russia or China or Japan or England or anywhere else in the world. For all she knew, it hadn't even existed until today: maybe Bill just dreamed up the place just to torture her. All Wendy knew was this was to be her starting point, the first square on the board game that her life had officially become.
Once they'd stopped, Bill deposited her on the summit of a vast mountain range composed entirely of wrecked cars, a monument taller than any of the crumbling skyscrapers that surrounded it. From above, it was an incredible sight, a colossal ziggurat of twisted metal and shattered glass, thousands upon thousands of derelict vehicles fused into one nightmarish mesa under the pitch-black sun; it must have taken every single car in the city to build and then some – and knowing Bill, it couldn't have taken more than a couple of seconds to build. Up close, it was even more imposing – especially once Wendy set foot on the topmost car of the pile and promptly realized that this apparently solid mountain was a lot more unstable than it looked. Once she'd recovered her balance and managed to avoid sending the "summit" on a death dive, Bill left her there without another word, vanishing into the depths of his fortress and slamming the gates behind him.
As the Fearamid slowly floated away, Wendy began the long, arduous process of descending the mountain. It took about two hours, and the first third of that was spent trying not to start an avalanche as she made her way down from the summit, navigating her way through the labyrinth of pitfalls and jagged spars barring her path to the foothills; the rest was spent bandaging the wounds she'd gotten from scrambling through broken windows or over shredded bodywork.
Eventually, she reached the base of the mountain, silently rejoicing as her feet touched solid ground at long last. Once she'd gotten her breath back, she surveyed the surrounding landscape for any potential threats, patiently studying the deserted streets for anything that might tell her where she'd ended up. Fortunately, there didn't seem to be any immediate danger on the horizon, and though there didn't seem to be much in the way of street signs or landmarks, the streets were clear and easily navigable – probably because most of the cars that could have blocked the roads were now piled up behind her.
Taking this as a good sign, she set off down the street as quickly as she could, constantly scanning the corners and alleyways for any sign of danger. Thankfully, no monsters or hostile survivors showed themselves. However, as she hurried down the road, Wendy couldn't help noticing the suspicious cleanliness of the ruined streets: yes, there were craters and rubble and maybe the occasional spent casing from a firefight, but no bodies.
Perhaps two blocks away, she found an abandoned shopping mall, its doors torn open and its counters smashed to rubble. Once again, there were no bodies inside; more curiously, though the place had obviously been looted by other survivors, the place hadn't been picked clean yet. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, Wendy quickly loaded a shopping cart with the few supplies she could gather, then went next door to raid the neighbouring shops. Ten minutes later, she left the area with the cart loaded with canned food, bottles of mineral water, powerbars, dried fruit, antiseptic ointment, bandages, a flashlight, some rope, a hammer, some nails, a few lengths of timber, a backpack, a crowbar, and a crossbow she'd taken from the sporting goods shop (complete with a quiver of arrows).
What with her mind being set on following her training to the letter, it wasn't until sunset that Wendy finally realized something was very wrong – wronger than usual, in fact.
By now, the lack of bodies barely registered; no, what was worrying her was how easy this had been so far: Bill had said this was to be the ultimate test of her survival skills, but so far she hadn't been given anything more challenging than making her way down the mountain. Either someone had screwed up, or Bill was trying to lull her into a false sense of security. Knowing Bill, the latter was a safer bet… and knowing had nasty the Weirdmageddon-corrupted Gravity Falls had gotten after dark, he was almost certainly planning for something to attack at nightfall.
So, she began looking for shelter, hurriedly tracking down an apartment building and surveying the place for threats and potential defences. As soon as she'd found a room that seemed secure enough, Wendy barricaded the building's staircase with furniture from the surrounding rooms, blocked the hallway with a taped-together mass of bookcases and mattress, boarded her door shut with seven heavy planks, and dangled a length of the rope out the window and into the alleyway below – too short for any intruders to reach but just long enough for her to reach the ground without breaking in bones. Then, one she was certain nobody could break in without alerting her, she arranged a frugal meal of pineapple chunks and tuna, before settling down to eat.
Where am I going to find the others? She wondered to herself. What did Bill mean? Is he going to make me kill them? Or is he just going to try to kill them as long as I'm around them? Or…
She shook her head. Whatever. It's not as if I can find out right now – not until Bill's ready to spring his big surprise on me. Might as well get some shut-eye as long I'm properly walled in; I might not get another chance for sleep later on.
So, once she was finished eating, she double-checked the defences, sharpened her knives, cleaned and tested her crossbow, and switched off her light before finally settling down to sleep.
Later than evening, Wendy awoke to the sound of bloodcurdling moans from somewhere outside, followed by the crunch and clatter of several angry someones pummelling their way through the barricades. It took less than twenty minutes for the invaders to breach the first line of defences, and barely half that time for them to tear through all the mattresses. By the time they started pounding on her door, however, Wendy had already loaded her backpack with as many provisions as she could carry and hightailed it out the window.
Unfortunately, they were waiting for her at the mouth of the alleyway – just a few stragglers from the mob besieging the apartment, but more than enough to block her escape. Wendy barely had enough time to ready her weapons before they charged her, snarling and howling at the top of their sepulchral voices. In the end, she wasted no less than three crossbow bolts, and was forced to abandon her crowbar after it got stuck in the skull of the tenth and final attacker. After that, she was forced to run – or risk getting caught by the rest of the horde.
By the time she'd outrun them, she was already counting the cost of this particular disaster: she'd lost her shelter, she'd lost her access to additional supplies, she'd been forced to abandon about fifty percent of the provisions she'd gathered yesterday, she'd sacrificed far too much ammunition in escaping, she'd left the rope back in the apartment, and on top of everything else, exhaustion was already setting in.
On the upside, at least she knew where all the corpses had gone.
Fortunately, the zombies couldn't keep up with her for long; they were faster than anything she'd seen in pop culture or Gravity Falls, but they still weren't exactly Olympic-class sprinters. After about two or three blocks, she left the horde behind entirely; just to be on the safe side, she then checked the streets for a halfway decent vehicle, looking for cars that hadn't become part of the mountain. In the end, she had to make do with one of the few mountain bikes that hadn't been taken by looters, and spent the next few minutes cycling through the ruins in search of shelter.
Unfortunately, it seemed that the zombies had already finished with the rest of the city – what was left of it at any rate: Weirdmageddon had already torn much of the place apart, and the zombies had made sure that it couldn't support survivors once they were done with it. Doors had been torn off, windows had been shattered, floors had been undermined, even brick walls had been battered down by the undead.
Finding no supplies, no shelter and no time to improvise with zombies still on the prowl, Wendy had no choice but carry on, cycling out of the city and into the wastelands of Bill Cipher's demented kingdom.
Any semblance of stable reality ended about thirty feet beyond city limits: the blasted earth liquefied and began to drip upwards into the sky, sending huge chunks of the surround landscape trickling skywards to flow between the baleful stars (most of which were bloodshot eyeballs by now); rivers petrified, forming stone highways between the liquid ground; trees sprouted downward, their trunks splitting in half as their limbs stretched towards the ground and layered the warped earth with a network of pulsing green creepers – almost like veins. Even the road changed, tearing itself free of the ground and spiralling aimlessly into the sky in a mad, crooked corkscrew… but with the rest of the countryside melting and boats in reach, it appeared to be the only way out of the city. So, with no other options at hand, Wendy followed it, her bike somehow adhering to the road even as it turned upside down on its route to the next city.
After about half an hour of riding, the road left the liquid landscape behind and led her through a deep canyon of living human flesh: the ground beneath her feet, already disturbingly soft and warm to the touch, visibly pulsated and shivered with every step she took. However, even with the heartbeat ringing softly in her ears, it wasn't until she looked up at the canyon walls that she realized just how alive this place was: each wall was lined with gigantic human faces, each one about twenty feet tall; their expressions were permanently frozen in fear and agony, their mouths agape in silent screams. And every single face was alive and fully conscious, a fact Wendy discovered when she noticed their terrified eyes following her down the road.
Were these people – human beings? Is this what Bill did with Dipper and Mabel? Are they here somewhere?
Don't go there, Wendy. Focus on what you can see for now; leave imagination out of the equation, and adapt to the situation as you see it.
Perhaps two miles into the canyon, she soon found that one of the faces had died at some point, and had since rotted away into a bare skull protruding from the canyon wall. By now on the verge of collapse, Wendy brought the bike to a halt just under the massive skull's jawbone, scrambled up its teeth, and hauled herself into one of its vacant eyesockets.
There, with her backpack as a pillow, she lay down to sleep, desperately hoping that nothing would disturb her this time.
Scant hours later, Wendy awoke to a stabbing pain in her side.
Fortunately, she'd already gotten into the habit of sleeping with her knife in reach, and she immediately lunged in the general direction of her attacker, burying the blade all the way up to the handle in dense, armour-plated flesh. Unfortunately, though about twenty-seven thrusts of the knife were enough to kill her attacker, it left her pinned down under the considerable weight of its corpse, her side still pierced for good measure; it took several minutes of heaving and groaning and swearing, but she was eventually able to shove the body away – immediately rewarding her with another sharp jolt of pain as the blade in her side came loose.
It turned out that her attacker had been a giant tick, a bloodsucking parasite grown to the size of a German Shepherd by the Weirdness Waves; the "blade" was none other than the tick's proboscis, sunk deep in Wendy's flesh just above her hip. Fortunately, it hadn't had enough time to start draining her blood before she'd killed it, but the massive bug had still left a puncture wound in her side – one that was bleeding quite heavily by now. As if to add insult to injury, she barely had enough time to clean and bandage the wound before an ear-shredding shriek from outside sent her scurrying towards the edge of the eye-socket, crossbow in hand.
Outside, the canyon was infested with ticks, hundreds upon thousands of them crowding for a spot on one of the giant faces; every so often, one of them would climb just high enough to stake a claim on a patch of face, sinking its proboscis deep into the unprotected flesh and gorging itself on the helpless face's blood. Every so often, one of the faces would let out an agonized scream as the ticks burrowed in search of fresh sustenance (explaining the noise she'd heard), but more often than not, they could only whimper in pain. By now, dozens of the swarm had already fed, their pear-shaped bodies so swollen and bloated with swollen blood that they looked about ready to explode… but beneath them, thousands more were clamouring for food, layering the canyon floor in a vast carpet of chittering exoskeletons almost six feet deep.
It didn't take long for Wendy to realize that she couldn't stay here: one of the ticks had already found her, and if the whole swarm discovered her, she'd be drained dry in seconds. Unfortunately, climbing down to retrieve her bike would be suicide: even if she could reach it without getting killed, she wouldn't get far with so many ticks in the way. So, instead, she climbed upwards. It took a lot of effort to latch on without alerting the ticks below her to her presence, but eventually she was able to get a grip on the brow ridge just above her and slowly haul herself onto the skull's cranium. From there, it was just a couple of yards from the top of the skull to the upper ridge of the canyon, an easy route out of the area; all she had to do was walk quickly and stay as quiet as possible.
And it was at that point that Bill materialized next to her, once again unsmiling, and bellowed "LATE NIGHT, RED?!"
Wendy didn't even bother to check if the ticks had heard the noise: she just put her head down and ran like hell across the uppermost ridge of the canyon. But then, she didn't need to stick around to see if any of the swarm below her had realized she was there – she could already hear the faint clattering of exoskeletal limbs making their way up the canyon towards her, growing steadily louder and more frenzied with every step. Needless to say, the ticks were faster than the zombies, and though Wendy was able to stay at least a few yards ahead of the swarm, one of them would occasionally outpace the rest of the army and rush her, slowing her down for several precious seconds while she furiously stabbed it to death.
Fortunately, the swarm didn't stay interested in her for long: as far as Wendy could tell, the only reason they were chasing her to begin with was because she was a potential source of food that hadn't been claimed yet, and once they realized that she wasn't going to be as slow or helpless as their usual prey, most of them broke off pursuit and returned to the canyon. About thirty of them charged on after her, too hungry or too stupid to give up just yet.
Bit by bit, she whittled away at the remaining swarm by any means available to her: her crossbow, her knife, her fists, her feet – at one point, she resorted to crushing the oncoming tucks under the weight of her backpack. In the end, survival training gave way to frustration, and she resorted to charging the swarm head-on, kicking and punching and stomping and even biting the ticks in a frenzy of rage, and for the next few seconds, all she could think of was the satisfying crunch of exoskeletons rupturing under her booted feet.
It took about five minutes for her to kill every last one of them, and by the end of it, Wendy was barely standing: out of breath, bruised from head to toe, muscles screaming in exhaustion, her arms and back dotted with puncture wounds, clothes befouled with blood, her hair soaked with pulped tick innards, she couldn't have been a pretty sight to anyone.
And the hell of it was that the disaster clearly wasn't over yet: from somewhere nearby, there came the distinctive sounds of night creatures disturbed by the noise, hungrily sniffing the air as they approached. Wendy couldn't tell if the animals approaching were wild dogs or more of Bill's monstrosities, and at that point, she couldn't care less: she wasn't in any condition to fight at present, so it was time to move on.
Again.
This time, she didn't bother being stealthy: she just ran on, not stopping until the canyon walls sank back into the earth and the terrain once again gave way to road. Fortunately, the creatures investigating her trail weren't nearly as bloodthirsty as the ticks, and none of them pursued beyond the canyonland's boundaries.
After another half an hour of jogging through a forest of sequoia-sized human hands, the road led her to the top of an extremely steep hill overlooking what could only be her next port of call: sitting in the very centre of an immensely deep crater, the ruins of a small town languished in the depths of a putrid-looking lake, hundreds of dilapidated houses half-submerged in over six feet of polluted water.
A little ways down the inside wall of the crater, a half-uprooted sign proclaimed "WELCOME TO JOLLISDALE – POPULATION 24,050." Naturally, some enterprising graffiti artist had crossed out the entire population tally and replaced "Jollisdale" with "THE DROWNING LANDS."
I never thought I'd miss Robbie's atomic muffin. Wendy's heart gave an unpleasant wobble, and she silently amended, I never thought I'd miss Robbie this much.
There was no sign of what could have caused the flooding, what could have formed the crater, or even if Jollisdale had actually been located here – wherever "here" was – before Bill had turned Planet Earth into his own private playground. For all Wendy knew, he could have created the entire settlement just for the sake of drowning it. In fact, the only thing that was clear at this point was that the town was completely lifeless… and that several two-story buildings lay well above the waterline – some of them large enough to serve as halfway-decent shelters. So, once she was certain that there was enough debris on the shoreline to carry her as far as the nearest house, Wendy began tentatively making her way down the slope of the crater, half-climbing half-sliding down the embankment towards the water's edge.
On the very edge of the shoreline, she found a large chunk of wooden fence bobbing aimlessly in the stagnant water, just large and stable enough to serve as a raft; after scavenging a stop-sign from the cloying mud bordering the lake, she was quickly able to repurpose it as an oar and begin rowing her way across the tarry waters. Immediately, a host of mutated sea life swam up to investigate the raft, barely illuminated by the feeble beam of Wendy's flashlight: armour-plated minnows, dolphin-sized aquatic spiders, jellyfish haloed with crowns of human teeth, conjoined bundles of sea-snakes writhing through the water like living clumps of hair… at one point, an octopus with a human face oozed from the depths, inspecting the oar with long tentacles tipped with bundles of mismatched human finger. And as the waters grew steadily deeper, less-distinct shapes began gliding out of the depths; troublingly, several of them seemed very interested in the raft.
Are there sharks in this lake?
Not wanting to find out, Wendy made a beeline for the nearest house, nimbly leaping onto the roof before anything in the water could get too curious. Fortunately, the homes were packed pretty tightly together, ensuring that there wasn't much distance to travel between rooftops as she went on searching for shelter. Unfortunately, most of the houses were only a story tall at the very most, and unsuitable for either shelter or scavenging: even there had been something of value inside, Wendy didn't feel like swimming in search of it.
It took forty-five minutes of scurrying across rooftops and wading through the shallows, but eventually she found a house that was only partially submerged: a handsome two-story home, most of the luxuries on the second floor were still intact, and after a bit of improvised abseiling, Wendy was able to clamber onto the building's roof and enter through an open bedroom window.
Once she was finished searching the place for hostiles and resources, she set up as many traps as she could: string and sleigh bells were perfect for alarms, electrical cables made halfway-decent tripwires, the attic supplied rope for at least three snare traps, and the upstairs office had enough pins, thumbtacks and shotglasses to savage anyone crossing the upstairs landing with bare feet; for good measure, once she'd picked a room for herself, she took what thumbtacks and broken glass were left and superglued them to the bedroom door. After that, though, the most she could do was lock it and barricade it with the owner's second-best armoire – and then finally get around to cleaning and bandaging her wounds.
Yawning, Wendy checked her watch. By now, the hands were almost invisible under the spider-web of cracks marring its surface, and time was an unreliable commodity anyway, but it had to be at least three-thirty in the morning – unless Bill was getting ready to spring another prank on her, which wouldn't be much of a surprise. At present, that didn't matter: all that mattered was staying safe… and getting just enough sleep to keep her going through the long, hard day that was sure to follow.
Eight hours, she pleaded silently, as she lay down on the bed. Please, just give me eight hours of sleep. I won't ask for anything else. Give me eight uninterrupted hours of healthy, renewing sleep, and I will be at peace with the world as it is until the next battle royale. Eight hours. Just eight hours.
This time, Wendy didn't even get past the first hour.
Less than forty-five minutes into what was supposed to be a hard-won slumber, she was awoken by the sound of crumbling masonry, and opened her eyes just in time for the entire building to collapse beneath her. Sent tumbling out of bed, Wendy slid helplessly down the suddenly-diagonal floor and out through the window, followed swiftly by her crossbow, backpack and every single provision left with her. For half a second she was airborne, plummeting towards the waters of the lake and whatever monsters were lurking within; a second later, she landed with a thud in the grip of something large, rubbery and distinctly tentacular.
Instinctively, she lashed out, stabbing the tentacle in a panicked frenzy, but the grip around her waist refused to budge; instead, it began hauling her towards the flooded street – specifically towards a large boat moored just on the edge of the curb.
There, five inhuman figures stood in readiness, their scaly bodies still dripping with brackish water, their webbed hands outstretched towards the starless sky, unblinking eyes fixed on Wendy as she descended towards them.
"Be one with us!" one of the fishmen screeched. "Drink deep of the saltwater sacrament and accept the blessing of transformation! Escape the damnation of the sunlit lands and join us in the deep and boundless ocean, where none shall suffer and no desires will be left unfulfilled!"
Wendy let out a noise that started as a yawn and ended as a snarl of exasperation. "Do we really have to do this right now?" she shouted. "You couldn't ask me again in five hours?"
"The blessings of the eternal sea cannot be denied! All humanity shall know the bliss that we have attained, and all the prisoners of dry land will join us in the Abyssopelagic Paradise of the Mariana Trench! Praise be to the Emperor of the Eternal Ocean, he who brought our blessings back from the precipice of extinction! Praise be to our Lord and Master, Bill Cipher! He shall be forever honoured!"
"Glad to hear it. Can you let me go now? I've got a lot of sleep to catch up on."
"Join us, sister! The Acolytes of the Deep welcome you to the peace that only lightless ocean can bring! Cast off your earthly marks of shame – your hair, your unwebbed hands, your crude lungs, your weak eyes! Partake of our divine communion, cast off your humanity, and join the ranks of the Acolytes of…"
Wendy sighed deeply. "Whatever," she grumbled. "Let's get this over with."
Several extremely crowded hours later, Wendy staggered out onto the shoreline, dripping wet and sporting at least a dozen extra cuts and bruises. Her knife was dull, her crossbow was out of ammo, her supplies were currently sitting on the bottom of the lake, and now that it was morning, she could easily confirm that she'd gotten no sleep whatsoever.
On the other hand, she'd at least left a dent in Bill's forces – to the tune of ten zombies, thirty-one giant ticks, five Acolytes of the Deep, and one kraken (well, she assumed it was dead – it had been missing at least half of its tentacles and pinned under a bus when she'd last seen it). And more to the point, Bill hadn't been able to kill her, and he sure as hell hadn't broken her.
And with this in mind, Wendy shambled up the beach, sat down heavily in the sand, and promptly lost consciousness.
The next few weeks were a bit of a blur.
She vaguely recalled making her way out of the crater and getting as far as a highway; there, she was picked up by a couple of ex-Discount Auto Warriors, who gave her a ride in their truck "outta respect to you and Gideon." She'd enjoyed about two precious hours of sleep in the cab, before awakening to discover one of the bandits attempting to pickpocket her. The ensuing fist-fight ended up crashing the truck, dislocating Wendy's shoulder in the process; with the drivers either unconscious or dead, she was forced to pop it back into place by herself, repeatedly slamming herself against the bulk of the crashed truck until the distinctive crack rang out and she could move her arm again.
For a while, she waited for more traffic on the road – she still wasn't certain why: maybe she was starved for company and hoping that there might be other survivors around; maybe she was hoping for another bandit truck to loot for supplies. But after about four hours of waiting in the shade of the ruined truck, lunching on canned peaches and trying not to imagine what else Bill might have in store for her, she eventually realized that she was wasting her time and set off again.
She wasn't sure which direction she took, but she distinctly recalled leaving the road for a dense forest of petrified trees: there, cold grey mist billowed endlessly, blotting out the angry glare of the obsidian sun and plunging the forest into perpetual dusk. She also recalled the trees getting annoyingly aggressive, and having to spend several minutes picking sharpened twigs out of her arms as a result.
Somehow, she eventually made her way into a wide and trackless savannah composed entirely of metal: towering lengths of serrated steel stood as tall as trees, deep pools of molten silver bubbled and simmered in cauldron-like ponds, and hills of riveted iron dotted the alloyed landscape beneath fields of grass composed entirely of old razorblades. Even the fruit on the trees looked suspiciously like hand grenades. And yet, no signs of animal life – not even bees, despite the presence of electrum flowers.
A couple of miles down the pewter-plated pathway, though, Wendy found the remains of previous visitors. Left immobile by the weight of their leaden skeletons, their eyes bloodshot and almost sightless thanks to their platinum irises, their muscles threaded with copper wires, most of them were still bleeding thick trails of viscous mercury. Some had torn themselves open, exposing bellyfuls of iron pistons, bronze gears, and other crude machine parts – none of them functional by the looks of things. The few visitors still alive and conscious spoke to her, just coherent enough to explain that their lungs had started to corrode: they asked her to do something for them, but Wendy couldn't recall what; whenever she tried to remember, she found herself suddenly fighting back tears.
One way or another, she left the steel savannah behind as quickly as possible: even if the metal hadn't been contagious, she didn't much feel like hunting down a tetanus shot in the middle of an apocalypse.
Gravity got weird after that: she vividly recalled walking across a weather-beaten courtyard and watching the ground crack and shatter beneath her feet, huge chunks of asphalt and concrete and god only knew what else floating sharply upwards. With the earth itself shedding one layer of surface after another, Wendy could only hop from one piece of airborne rock to the next, trying to reach some kind of shelter before the inverted gravity sent her flying off into space. Somehow, she made it about fifty feet before gravity gave another wobble and her perch abruptly flipped upside down, sending her crashing into the branches of a tree.
And then… she was in the suburbs, tripping over craters in the ground and stumbling over human corpses, knocking on every single door she passed in the hope that someone might answer. More often than not, there was no reply – either because the house was empty, or because the inhabitants were too scared to answer. Every so often, a door would spring open and a fear-crazed survivor would level a shotgun at her head. Nobody ever wanted to talk, let alone cooperate. A few weren't satisfied with chasing her away: one even tried to cut her throat, and actually got as far as digging his knife into the side of her neck before Wendy was able to kick him away and pummel him into submission.
Sometimes, she'd run into processions of refugees making their way across the wasteland. Some were making their way to the cities, hoping that there'd be other survivors they could buddy up with; some were looking to the suburbs and small towns in the hope that they'd find safety away from the major population centres. Most were just fleeing for their lives, directionless and desperate to the end. Wendy didn't stick around for long, just enough to ask if anyone had seen any sign of Dipper or Mabel or Mr Pines or Soos or any of the others; the answer was always no. Occasionally, however, she entertained some mad notion of staying with the refugees – if only because it'd be better than being alone on the road again. But in the end, Bill always made sure she left: once the refugees worked out that the monsters were following Wendy, nobody wanted her around anymore.
Every so often, the few provisions she'd scavenged from the bandits and abandoned houses ran out, and she went back to hunting food as she had in the earliest days of Weirdmageddon. Sometimes, she was lucky enough to get hold of a halfway-edible bird or a handful of rats, but more often than not, she had to make do with whatever mutant nightmares the wilderness could offer: flying squid, rubbery and tasteless; multi-bodied piranha-hounds, heavily tenderized and often still biting even as she tried to eat them; road worms, each one as thick as a car tyre and about five times long as the average car, only worth the risk of hunting for the rich bounty of succulent internal organs they harboured. Once, she got desperate enough to shoot down an Eyebat and stew it for dinner: easily the worst part of it was the fact that it wouldn't stop staring at her.
Sleep became almost impossible: Bill took such delight in waking her with monster attacks that Wendy eventually gave up on finding shelter entirely, and resolved to soldier on until she could soldier no more. From then on, she subsisted almost entirely on caffeine and energy drinks, and anything else that could keep her from passing out until she was certain that the latest threat was over and done with. She slept wherever she fell, a deep, dreamless sleep that only left her feeling even more exhausted when she finally awoke, and for good measure, she usually ended up hurting all the more for having toppled facefirst onto the asphalt. Every time she fell, she prayed that she stayed down just long enough to get a decent eight hours of sleep, just enough to replenish her strength; invariably, Bill woke her with another monster attack, and Wendy was left to furiously batter the monster into submission before trudging onwards – but always with a little less strength and a little less enthusiasm.
One day, the exhaustion got too much for her: her body was covered in hastily-bandaged cuts and bruises, she hadn't eaten in days, her supplies of coffee and soda had finally run dry, and by that point she'd almost given up on ever seeing her friends and family again anyway. As far as she was concerned, this entire challenge was just a chance for Bill to kick back and watch his newest toy crack under the strain of an impossible task in a world that was literally out to get her at every turn. And once this realization occurred to her, Wendy literally couldn't take another step: she slumped to her knees, collapsed sideways into the dirt, and let the weariness that had been threatening to overwhelm her finally drag her into its depths.
She was dimly aware of heavy footsteps approaching her, of rough hands seizing her by the arms, but she was too tired to care by that stage.
And after that, void was all she knew.
"Wendy?"
Oh no, not again.
"Wendy?"
Just go away. Kill me or let me sleep, I don't even care anymore.
"Wendyyyyyyyyyyy? I know you're awake. There's no point in trying to pretend you're asleep anymore. You've tried that trick way too many times for it to work now."
Aaaaaand now I'm curious. Who the hell are you and why does your voice sound so familiar? Where the hell am I?
"Wakey wakey, eggs 'n' bakey. Come on, Wendy: we already know you're awake. Just open your eyes and say hello to your family like a good little girl."
WHAT?
Wendy's eyes shot open, and she immediately realized that she was clearly no longer in the wastelands: she was sitting on a couch in the middle of someone's living room – and in a house that had somehow managed to withstand Weirdmageddon unscathed, no less. No broken windows, no holes in the walls or ceiling, no smashed furniture, no corrosion, no fire damage, no water damage, no damage of any kind in fact. Even the wallpaper was intact, every last-
There was a pause, as Wendy's mind executed the mental equivalent of a double take.
Flannel wallpaper. Red-and-black tartan, as they called it in more pedantic families, but the Corduroys called it flannel whether it was red tartan or green plaid. Trembling, Wendy looked down out the couch she was lying on: the upholstery was flannel too. And on either side of it, those distinctive red lamps. And those pictures on the sideboard were of-
"Welcome home, Wendy," chortled a hideous voice.
Wendy very slowly turned towards the source of the voice.
Sure enough, there he stood in the doorway: Manly Dan Corduroy himself, dressed in the same flannel shirt he always wore when he was at home and relaxed – the one that matched the upholstery of the couch. And yet… something was wrong. The figure standing in the door looked like dad; he had the same massive physique, the same tree trunk-like arms, the same fiery red beard and barroom-brawl teeth… but his expression was warped into a smile that looked utterly alien to dad's permanently-frowning features. And his eyes had changed too. As he drew closer, Wendy half expected to see yellowed sclera and slitted pupils just like the ones Dipper had shown while Bill had been possessing him, but no – whatever was happening to dad was very different.
"What's wrong, Wendy?" Dad boomed cheerily. "Don't you wanna give daddy a hug?"
"I…"
"Come closer. Families should be close, don't you think?"
And as he lumbered menacingly towards her, she got her first clear look at the things wriggling and writhing within dad's eyes: a host of tiny glowing maggots and millipedes continuously scuttled in and out of his eyeballs, passing through his pupils and into the optic nerve without leaving a scratch – and judging by the glowing trails they left in their wake, they were tunnelling steadily deeper into his skull.
He was holding an axe in his hand, Wendy realized.
No, no, no, no, this can't be happening…
"Dad," she began. "Wait just a-"
Suddenly, the axe was in motion. Wendy had just enough time to dive out of the way before the axe slammed home, cleaving the couch in half. A split second later, she saw dad's shoulder give an almighty heave out of the corner of her eye and she instinctively ducked just in time to avoid a fist the size of a Thanksgiving turkey hurtling towards her; in the spot where she'd been standing a moment ago, one of the lamps exploded into flying shrapnel.
"Come on, Wendy," dad sneered. "You can do better than that. I taught you better than that."
"What do you want? Why are you doing this?!"
"Weren't you listening to what Bill told you? It's kill or be killed! Either you prove that you're the greatest survivor this family's ever produced, or you'll just have to let me pour these Thought-Maggots into your eye sockets. You won't have to think or feel ever again. You'll be just like us: a family of perfect survivors in the service of the Maggot Hive and Bill Cipher. Isn't that right, boys?"
Mocking laughter echoed from around the house, and suddenly the corridor from which dad emerged was blocked by three all-too familiar figures: Wendy's brothers, all of them grinning rabidly, their eyes aglow with Thought-Maggots. And all three of them were armed – even the youngest was brandishing Wendy's hatchet.
Oh god, wake me up. Someone wake me up from this nightmare.
"Dad," Wendy pleaded, "If you're still in there-"
"Oh I am, Wendy. I'm always in here. That's the beauty of the Maggots: they always leave just a little bit of the real you behind once they're finished converting you."
"-I don't want to fight you!"
"Really? That's okay then: all you gotta do is lie back and let the worms feast, and you'll never have to worry about anything ever again. Of course, if you wanna get outta here alive and in one piece, then you'll have to fight us."
"I don't want to hurt you!"
The four of them laughed, a sickening parody of her family's usual booming guffaws.
"Oh, hurtin's just half of it, Wendy. You wanna get out of this house alive, you'll have to kill all four of us. Split our skulls open, scatter the worms and burn the bodies. Bill says you've got the guts to kill monsters, but have you got the stomach to kill a human being? You got the iron in the blood to kill family?"
"Dad, please, don't make me do this…"
"Kill or be killed, girl. Law of the jungle – and more importantly, Bill's law, too. Kill us, or let the worms eat from the inside out. So tell me… what's it gonna be?"
And so, with Bill's obnoxious laughter echoing across the house from somewhere overhead, Wendy finally made the only reasonable decision left to her.
She ran.
She flung herself over the coffee table, ducked the next swing of the axe and sprinted out the door as fast as her feet could carry her – out of the house and back into the endless nightmare that was modern-day Gravity Falls.
But Bill was still laughing.
They'll never stop hunting you, Red, he cackled. They'll be following your trail from now on, and they won't stop until you're dead or you've got human blood on your hands… and I won't stop until I see your sanity split down the middle like a china plate in a shooting gallery. You just wait. It's gonna hurt so good…
A/N: A/N: This chapter's soundtrack choice is The Bog from Mad Max: Fury Road.
Up next - Pacifica's game!