Penumbra:

Shadows Collide


II:

Legends


Penumbra - the shadow cast by two objects colliding - as in during an eclipse.


Summer - 2014

Witch Haven Island, off the coast of Massachusetts


Her hands slid against the mud, clawing through the muck. Sliding to one knee, Jill tried to rise. The sky was set ablaze, the fire eating through the clouds and casting flickering shadows around her as she moved. It had been a wildly desperate move, a mad one, but a necessary one - the lab and the monsters inside it had died roasting in the fires of hell from whence they'd come.

The smears of black and char on her face and clothes were a small price to pay for survival.

Marian had given them the pass, but why she'd been running had become evident when they'd keyed into that lab. What had waited in the once sterile environment was the stuff of nightmares. Tanks and tubes filled with abominations - grotesque testaments to experiments of men playing gods. Humans turned into things you only glimpsed in your darkest moments of horror. Lovecraftian creativity lingered like a hostile ghost around them as they stood, too shocked to move and too terrified to believe.

It took a helluva of a monstrosity to stun into frozen silence two of the most jaded people in the world when it came to the unimaginable.

In one tube, what had once been a little girl floated - her face bloated and sporting tentacles, one eye dangling like a forgotten deflated balloon on her ruptured cheek; one bugged out and looking terrified in a socket turned wet with rot. Her dress remained intact over her twisted belly and hips, white, pretty, and pure against a backdrop of infection and mutation. One hand had become a curled claw with razor-sharp fingers, slicing through the liquid that suspended her as if seeking to destroy and rupture any humanity it encountered. The other looked human enough, still clutching a teddy bear half ripped apart; it's cotton innards dripping down from missing legs and rended belly.

The contrast between innocence and malfeasance felt like a nauseating moment when you glimpsed something, blinked, and it became something entirely juxtaposed. Every time you closed an eye, the image changed - another horror, another suggestion of what had once been sweet purity - dual realities that perverted the eyes until the brain couldn't be sure what was real and what was illusion. Jill whispered, "Jesus..."

And Leon simply grumbled, "Not here, sweetheart...not here. God left this place long ago."

She covered her mouth with her hand to almost implore, "...if he was ever here at all."

Leon glanced at the hand holding the teddy bear and supposed, "...he wasn't. He couldn't be. Because this...this shit doesn't happen if there's a benevolent god to stop it."

The other tanks were myriad monsters in the early or late stages of growth. They were alien - unreal- covered in scales or mutated into half-human, half-animal hybrids. Plagas poked from heads and necks, erupted from faces and sockets, and infection took over where plagas ended. Strains of viruses making man into a monster. T-Virus evident in some, turning them into zombies strangely well preserved but half bloated in places from something, not T. Aquatic things huddled in schools like fish in other tanks, piranhas with burgeoning arms and legs somehow, goldfish with razor teeth and tentacles.

It was too much and too horrible. And it wasn't alone. A table waited beyond the glass, a woman strapped to it - her guts removed and dangling like meat in a butcher shop from hooks above her, a baby half aborted pulled from inside her with her face locked in a mask of pain, death, and horror. The baby had eaten part of her as it had been pulled free, its squirming body dripping still and twitching as it tried to find purchase to keep going - but even here, even in this house of madness and this obliteration of science, it was still incapable of survival on its own. It cried and whined sadly beyond the glass, the room unable to stop its piteous sounds from reaching her ears as it tried to eat its deceased mother.

Leon clicked on the computer in the far corner while Jill stood transfixed in horror. The room beside the birthing room was clearly for breeding. Monsters and human hosts locked in mid-coitus, some still copulating as she watched - a parody of sex that seemed impossible. Tentacles and fingers and fucking - hands and parts that didn't belong, penetrating in places that shouldn't exist. It was such a jumble of flesh, such a phantasmagoria of cosmic horror; her mind couldn't even make sense of most of it. The grunting, slapping, and thrusting of things finally had her gagging and turning away, her head swirling with disgust, one hand pressed to her belly to stop the rolling need to vomit. But the piteous cries of a baby eating its mother - the horrible symphony of procreation turned monstrous and perversely demonic - left her dizzy.

She thanked her subconscious or whatever instincts the brain had to protect us from too much horror kicked in to offer confusion to her eyes instead of clarity. Because if she'd seen it all and somehow made sense of every nasty moment, she would have gone insane on the spot from it. Instead, she swayed a little where she stood, her mind locking away the most horrible parts to save her sanity.

A whoosh of sound had drawn their attention as the doors opened and didn't give them time to do more than stare in horror. What ducked through was a tyrant, or wasn't, or hadn't ever been. It was human enough to stand erect, but its bloated body was covered in pustules that burped and dripped as it walked - loathsome and disgusting, stinking somehow like emptied bowels and sewage. Gnarled at the hands, what came from the wrists were curved scythes covered in blood. Its head had bloated to the size of an enormous pumpkin, its brains spilling out of a burst skull and sliding down shoulders so big it turned sideways to fit through double doors. It clomped on cloven feet, like a goat or a demon, as it moved slowly toward them as if it were Jason Voorhees and it had all the time in the world to do so.

Leon shot first, hitting it in that bloated face. The impact blasted off a chunk of that ugly face, throwing guts and brains around like confetti. Jill's shot was a half second behind his, hitting it in the chest, blowing a perfect fist size hole out its back with a cacophonous boom and crunch of bone. Leon popped off two more shots before she could readjust her aim, proving why he was the best around. What splattered the tanks stuck like glue, inching around as if they were slugs, slipping over the glass and then sticking - sucking on the transparent tanks until they cracked, the glass spiderwebbing out, showing the fragility and promising to release what waited inside.

Leon lowered his gun and lamented, "...fuck."

Jill backed up with him. "Yeah...yeah."

They couldn't shoot it. Shooting it was just using its goddamn blood to make more of it. Where it bled, leeches and slugs seemed to coagulate from its hemoglobin, turning into things that ate along the floor and stuck to everything they touched, collapsing tables, toppling chairs - and cracking glass enclosures. It was stupid to keep shooting. They'd had one enemy, and just like that, now they had a hundred.

And the glass was cracking all around them.

He backed up until he basically covered her and commanded, "Go. Now."

She listened. She turned and ran. She took flight as he covered her retreat. Whatever he'd gotten off that computer would have to be enough. The hallway they'd come through seemed too long somehow. She ran so fast her lungs ached, and her thighs screamed in pain.

She heard the first boom and didn't look back. She felt the building rock and shake like an earthquake. Jill cut left through a doorway and headed toward the emergency stairwell they'd found to get them into the building primarily undetected. Guards lingered as she burst into the room, caught unaware of her arrival.

They were lounging and drinking coffee or reading the paper. The second they saw her, they all went for their guns. There were at least six of them.

She kept on moving. She fired from the hip, spun low, and felt the air whiz over her head from a swung shock rod. It crackled; she punched him in the groin from the splits she was in and rolled out of the way of the next one swinging down at her on the floor. As she gained her feet, one grabbed her, and she leveraged him by his arm up and over her shoulder, flinging him into the wall with his own momentum.

Another grabbed her as she spun back, and Jill elbowed him in the face, kneed him in the crotch, and pushed him back into his companion. They both careened into the wall as the last one came for her. Leon's gun went off from the doorway and sent the man spiraling away with a burst of blood from his temple. Jill leaped over his body without a single thought. She shot the first guard that made a grab for Leon and swung into the now flashing stairwell.

Red lights chased her down the stairs as she went. She heard his boots to know Leon was behind her. He called, "Fifth floor, fire escape - west side."

He'd only seen the map of the building once for a handful of seconds. He really did have an eidetic memory. Impressed, Jill exited onto the second floor. She ran as another boom sounded behind them. The building rocked again, and he yelled, "Static charges, we've got ten minutes!"

Jesus.

She'd practically flown toward the fire escape.

More guards had waylaid them. He was swift and merciless, blasting his way through them while Jill picked off the stragglers. Bodies fell like tossed toys from a toddler's hand, and behind them, something roared. The whole building trembled as they ran, the titanic monstrosity having split and somehow turned into a Gumby of horror. The bones had twisted and became weapons from inside its own exposed chest cavity, waving bony protrusions like blades on tentacles and pus-laden intestines that slithered like snakes looking for food.

She hit the ladder first, hurrying down, and Leon turned back to cover her again.

She let him, sliding with boots to the side of the rungs to move faster. He followed, his gun echoing around the night sky as she slid. She hit the metal landing and found the ladder completely locked and unusable to keep going. Leon hit the ground behind her, and Jill shouted over the sound of their pursuer lumbering toward the ladder to follow, "What now!?"

He'd grabbed her arm, slung her out, shoved her against the wall, and commanded, "There! The goddamn window cleaning cart. Go!"

She'd gone. She'd crossed the narrow ledge from window to window to window, sliding with her back against the glass as they hurried toward the cart dangling in the distance. He joined her when she slid onto the cart, grabbing the lever to start their descent. It bucked, grumbled, and grunted with age, but it started lowering them toward the ground.

Jill glanced at her watch - three minutes. They had three minutes before the fucking building blew. It wouldn't be enough time.

She started to say just that, and the thing chasing them took a swan dive toward them from the window above. It raced toward him in a free fall, targeting their cart, and Jill shouted, "Jump!"

He glanced behind his shoulder at her, and she gestured wildly at the lake circling the building. Jump. Seemed stupid. It was too far down. But it wasn't. Fear just made it seem further than it was. She was hoping like hell the water was deep enough to survive.

Leon called, "Go! Jump!"

Jill jumped. She heard the thing hit the cart and the clunk of sound as the wind rushed around her. She couldn't know if he followed. She plummeted. She kept her body in a straight line and took a hard breath. Something exploded too close behind her. Fire licked at her face and arms. She instinctively resisted the urge to cover her face and took the sear of pain from it.

The hit to the water hurt. It shocked her system from the cold and the pain of entrance. She went down like a dart, sinking, sliding in the dark. But the pain was over quickly enough to figure out it wasn't as far as it had looked. She pushed upward, swimming through the cold. And the boom of sound forced her body to roll through the water. The chilly waves worked like a sonic boom, rippling over and over around her as it thrust her body into a swirling circle. She let it carry her out and out, watching the night above her in the liquid go red and raging.

And then she'd touched the shore.

Climbing out of the water, she turned back to see the building roasting as it exploded - launching steel and flame into the blackened heavens. The water made plop sounds as pieces of the exploded monster hit the lake's surface. She waited, watching, to see if those pieces started swimming, but they didn't. She knew why. Leon had chucked a pulse grenade into the water, which had stunned her and started her on that swirling journey, but it worked like a charm to stop the pieces of the exploded nightmare from pursuing them.

She looked wildly around for him as she gained her feet, aching but alive. She couldn't really doubt the stories about him anymore. He'd performed faster than her, more brilliant than her, and more instinctually. Survival was in his bones, and he'd earned the whispers she'd heard around the office regarding him.

Voice hoarse from the smoke pumping into the night, Jill called, "Kennedy!?"

Something grabbed her forearm, and she spun; the knife jerked from her thigh without thought. The blade landed against his throat as he kept that hand on her forearm and grunted, "Stop fucking trying to kill me."

Jill lowered the knife and breathed, "Sorry, habit."

He understood that kind of habit all too well.

His hair was singed around his face, making the perfect shag look black in places and crispy. His left eyebrow had a burnt spot in the middle, and soot and smears of something worse slid down his face. He looked ok otherwise. Soaked but surviving.

They both panted, watching the building burn.

Softly, she whispered. "We got nothing."

Leon returned, "We got plenty."

He let go of her forearm and limped away, steadying himself until he could sit on a stump overlooking the flames. Jill mused, "You got something off that computer?"

"That one and the one in the lobby."

She'd forgotten he'd put a USB drive into the lobby computer. He must have done the same in the lab while she'd stood there staring like an idiot. Jill studied him where he hunched around himself, texting something on the device in his hand. She wondered, "You ever seen anything like that?"

He shook his head, "Not all in one place. That was a goddamn carnival of horrors."

Jill glanced back at the burning building. "You sure that blowing it up will work?"

He shook his head again. "Nope. But can't hurt."

"Fucking bastards," Jill breathed with a fine trembling of rage, "you see how many fucking kids were in there?"

"Yeah," Leon leaned back a little and rubbed a hand over his face, "didn't think you could turn kids."

She made a slight sound of distress. "Me either. They've found a way."

'Yeah," he exhaled again and groaned lightly in pain, "and a way to transmit the virus via water."

Surprised, she looked at him. "Like T-Abyss?"

His hair shivered as he denied that. "T-Abyss was probably a baseline. This wasn't that. This...it's plagas based or combined with it, or something. And the data on the computer...it looks like it's meant to be spread by drone or something. Land or sea, sky or earth. It doesn't matter. Bugs, from the looks of it, can reach anyone, anywhere, anytime. My guess is a two-front assault - first the water, then the drones. This way, you can't even escape it - you drink, you turn, you die. You run, you get hunted down by a fucking killer mosquito, and you die."

"They're breeding, right?"

Leon glanced at her, his eyes silver in the flickering firelight, "Looks that way."

"Breeding fucking monsters," Jill released a heavy sound of horror and rubbed at her tired face, "Should be a limit to what madness assholes can make."

"They infect, they mate, they grow in tubes when all else fails - natural selection and unnatural at its best."

Jill glanced again at the burning building. "Sick fucks. Stupid, sick, twisted fucks."

Leon gruffed quietly, "...yeah. And these are the people we think are out there trying to save the world."

"They're not," Jill returned dejectedly, "they're just trying to make it theirs."

Sirens slid against the swirling night, and Jill encouraged, "We should go. Now. They catch us here; not even diplomatic palm greasing will keep us from the inside of a cell tonight. And I don't want to be anywhere these fuckers might have the leverage to interrogate us."

"Right," Leon intoned, "Let's move."

He started to rise and told her, "Campsite about three miles due east of here. Abandoned for repairs but operational. We can hole up there until I secure a good evac or safe house."

Jill nodded. "Yeah. Great. Let's do it."

They started through the woods, slowly but steadily. He limped, but he moved well even hurting. They were silent as they went, both reflecting on the horrors they'd seen. After a good trek in the dark, Jill finally offered, "You were fucking aces back there."

His voice came back to her, sounding strained and gravely, "Thanks. You listened, which is all I can ask for. I appreciate that."

"Sure," Jill glanced over her shoulder at him, "I did pairs missions for years, so I'm ok with taking the side seat provided the lead is right."

When he said nothing, she added, "You were right. I was distracted by that shit. But you kept it together...you saved our lives."

He shrugged, face looking pale in the moonlight, "It's what I do. No thanks necessary."

"You ok?" He looked too tired for what they'd gone through. Sure, they'd taken a dive and done some running, plummeting into the water had sucked, too - but that wasn't he worst he'd ever been through. She wondered what was amplifying it on him because he looked in too much pain for that.

Leon grunted, "Good as gold, sweetheart. Don't I look it?"

She started to answer, and he grabbed a tree beside him, staggering, nearly going to one knee. Worried, Jill turned back, rushing to catch him as he almost tumbled forward. Her arms gathered around his chest, and the vest clunked with magazines against her as she urged, "Whoa whoa, whoa...what is it?"

The second her hand slid across his back, she felt it. The vest was split from the left shoulder to the right hip. It was hanging on by threads. Her fingers slipped through warm blood and looked black in the darkness. He'd been bleeding this whole time.

Shocked, Jill gasped, "Oh my god, how bad?"

Leon soothed, "Doesn't really hurt."

"So, bad," Jill decided and tucked his arm over her shoulders, "Ok. How far?"

He muttered, "Less than a half mile."

"Ok. Hold onto me; I'll get us there."

He wasn't sure why, but for some reason, he believed her. They'd become unexpected partners in this mess, but it was working for them so far. So, he leaned on her and let her lead the way. With little choice and a whole lot of faith, he put his trust in a woman who'd been the weapon of a madman, and he never once doubted she'd see it through.