Monster Planet(76)

Ayaan opened her mouth to speak but Nilla was already climbing back down the ladder. She stayed visible this time. At the bottom Erasmus waited with a handmade quilt he'd probably found in the farmhouse. Nilla wrapped it around herself gratefully. When the green phantom bowed before her she returned the gesture.

'Our master awaits,' the green-robed lich said. 'He is the''

'I know all about your Tsarevich, and what he wants. Mael Mag Och and I spoke of him often. Let's go make all his dreams come true, shall we?'

Ayaan lead the way back to the truck. While Erasmus danced around their new friend, blathering away like a puppy in heat, she smiled and laughed and genuinely seemed excited about what lay in store. Only when she saw the corpses with their hands and lips removed did she seem to frown, and then only for half a moment. Ayaan imagined she was the only one who saw.





Monster Planet





Chapter Twenty


Sarah leaned forward and puked up her guts. The hands in her armpits held her perfectly steady as her body wracked itself over and over again, her lungs and her stomach expelling their contents all over a cobblestone curb. She stared at the mortar between the paving stones, stared with an intensity she couldn't have mustered normally, until sparkling lights appeared in her vision. With a great braying cough she opened up her whole body and spewed out another gallon of filth.

The mucus running down her face, the tears in her eyes were full of black flecks. Her nose pulsed and ran with a stale reek, an earthy, disgusting stink.

There was more of it, more foreign crap in the hollow parts of her but she lacked the strength to even heave. She sank back against waiting arms that lifted her up into the light. Someone wiped her face with a rough cloth and someone else poured water across her forehead and her eyes.

'Come on, pumpkin, just a little more,' her father said, and Sarah turned her head to the side under his bony fingers. 'Just open your mouth, just a little more.'

She couldn't have done it herself. Something else creeped inside of her, something cold, and pushed. A thick sludge of black and yellow nastiness drained out from between her lips. Then she slept.

Ptolemy stood guard, squatting on the top of a brick wall. When she woke light the color of wine colored his bandages and bounced off his painted face. When he turned to look at her she saw white patches in the death mask. Some of his linen was gone, too, probably devoured by fungus. He looked smaller, as if he'd lost weight. She wondered what he looked like under the bandages.

She remembered suddenly her arm'the compound fracture, the bloody mess that had been all that remained of her right arm. She lifted it now and examined it. Dark bruises wrapped around her elbow and a twinge of pain went up her shoulder when she tried to make a fist. But the skin was unbroken and she could bend her arm just fine.

That injury should have killed her. Any of her injuries should have killed her'up to and including the time she fell and skinned open her chin. When the Epidemic came, when the bodies of the dead filled up the cities and countries of the Earth, every strain of microbe and virus had gone through a population boom. The world was full of horrible infectious little things just waiting for you to get a bad scratch. But here she was. She didn't feel great, not by a long shot, but she could tell she was on the mend.

Sitting up a little she coughed noisily but unproductively. She saw she was wrapped in thick blankets that were only a little tattered along the edge'had they been taken from one of the houses nearby? She looked around and saw she was in a kind of courtyard. Dead leaves filled its corners and a dry fountain stood at its center, a big cracked concrete bowl decorated with nymphs and cupids and dolphins. Lying on a cloth next to the fountain were a sword, a noose, and a length of fur. The relics, she remembered. The relics of the Celt, whoever that might be.

Ptolemy leaped down from his perch and offered her his hand. As she struggled up to her feet she checked her pockets and found her pistol there, its magazine completely empty. She touched the soapstone scarab.

i death thought sent you sent me thought to my death,he told her. He sounded embarrassed.was but strategy it was but strategy

'Yeah,' she said, 'well. Just don't doubt me again.'

He bowed gallantly. Behind him Gary scuttered over the wall on his six bony legs. She could have talked to him if she wanted'she still had his tooth in her pocket'but she remembered what had happened before and didn't dare. Her father arrived a few moments later, forced to take the long way round. He emerged through a door in the house behind the courtyard. 'Oh, sweetheart, you look so much better,' he said, putting a withered hand on her cheek. She closed her eyes and smiled. It was so good to be back with him, to have him be alive. She refused to question that feeling.