Just as Matthew tensed, just as his arms tightened and his knuckles whitened around the steel piping, just as he was about to swing-
“Who’s there?”
A voice from inside the pizzeria. Young, female, scared, nearby. Probably right behind the door.
“Who is it? I don’t want to hurt anyone, just leave me alone.” She continued, not making a whole lot of sense.
Matthew stepped toward the door, leaning as he went to set the pipe onto the ground. "Somebody in the same situation as you, I think." He whispered at the door. "I'm Matthew. I was on my way out of town with somebody else when we got a call from Sax. We came back to get you."
“Who the hell is Sax? That’s a stupid name.” The voice replied, sharp with fear. “Was he the guy they-“
There was a pause, a cut, a break in the sentence. Like someone swallowing hard.
The door made a strange, almost tangible humming noise, just for a second - and then it unlocked audibly.
It opened a crack, and a young face with short, neat brown hair put an eye to the gap.
“Are you… are you magic? Like me?”
Couldn’t be more than 14.
Matthew smiled at her while all around him the cold suddenly seemed a whole lot sharper. "That's what they tell me. Uhhhhh… here, I can prove it."
He held up his hand, flipping it both ways to show her there was no kind of trick or device attached. He wasn't entirely sure what he was about to do, honestly, but there was a vague impression in his mind that it was something. How did you even cast a spell, anyway? You concentrated, he guessed, and you said magic words? Or was it a motion?
He focused on his hand, concentrating, and tilting his head like he was trying to force out a stubborn sneeze. He swished his hand through the air in what he thought was a mystical fashion, and as he did so he felt something welling up in him. After a moments fog began pouring off his hand as though it were made of dry ice until he couldn't even see his hand anymore. He marveled at it himself, entranced by what he was doing, but even as he did Matthew could feel pressure building in his head. There was feeling like a dam breaking and a sharp stab of pain suddenly shot through his brainpan, cutting off the stream of fog as he brought his hand to his head to massage his temple.
"See." He said with a strained hopefulness. "Like I said, we're in the same boat."
She nodded slowly, before pulling the door open the whole way. She was tall for her age, had a skinny sort of build, complete with baggy black jeans and a plaid flannel shirt.
“My name is Jan.” the girl said nervously, looking around the alleyway.
“Is the centipede still around?”
"You mean the graffiti?" He asked, leaning back to look up at the wall.
That was strange, he thought. When he'd first looked at this wall he could have sworn it held a stunningly detailed depiction of a gigantic centipede. No, though, on a second inspection it looked like there was only a black outline where the centipede would have been, almost as if it had gotten up and left its shadow behind. Usually he remembered things better than that.
He stared at that spot for what felt like way too long as creeping dread began to fill his body. "No." He said quietly.
There was the clatter of what might be plastic on concrete, rapid and copious, as the creature from the painting made a rush down the alley towards them, emerging from the black backdrop of the silent soundscape, casting no shadow and leaving no trail in the snow.
Just as it came into visual range, it reared, bunched up, and leapt at Matthew, screeching with a noise that sounded too human for belief.
“No!” Jan screamed as the centipede collided with Matthew and knocked him to the ground.
Matthew didn't have any time to process the noise before he found himself struggling with countless legs. He wasn't even on the ground for a moment before the thing reared up and brought its awful, bile slick jaws down toward his neck.
But Matthew was extraordinarily lucky, and as he was bowled over onto the ground he reached out to where he remembered he'd laid down his pipe. As the bug came in for the kill he whipped the pipe toward himself, shoving it up to block the creatures deathblow. Its jaws wrapped around the pipe and Matthew tried to push it of him, but the creature was unperturbed and pushed back to pin Matthew to the ground. It shook its head to try and wrest the obstruction out of Matthews hands, and he was forced to hold on for dear life lest he be left defenceless.
The legs of the beast were like porcelain wrapped in fabrics as they scraped against Matthew’s skin, taking bits of his own skin away with them and their unnatural, paradoxically smooth feeling. It took a while to try and push through his block, but quickly leaned back to come in at him again, trying to crush him with its wide jawed head.
Matthew was grateful for the short reprieve from the tender caresses of its knife like legs. He was trying his best not to scream about this entire situation, even though that was probably useless at this point. As the thing came down on him again he turned onto his side and flipped the pipe up, bracing the end of it against the concrete so the centipede would slam down on it instead of him. Simultaneously he went digging around in the rim of his pants for the gun.
With a sound somewhere between the tearing of silk and the cracking of concrete, the centipede’s neck came down on the pipe and it started to squeal through its scissor like jaws, glistening like black glass in the night.
It tried to scurry down the alley, but reared up again when it realised that it couldn’t lie prone with the pipe sticking out of it.
Matthew crawled away from it as soon as it reared back up, happy to be free of that cage of legs, and scrambled to his feet. Ripping the gun out of his waistband he leveled it at the creature. He hesitated for a second. The noise, he thought.
No, screw the noise. The cops had definitely heard this thing!
The cops had definitely heard this thing…
He took a deep breath and pulled the trigger, the shot cracking the air of the early morning. The bullet pinged off the nearby dumpster. He shot again, a splash of snow erupting near the creatures legs. He shook his head and shot again, by some chance hitting the thing in its carapace.
There was a flash of sparks - the bullet ricocheted off the creature’s back. It didn’t even seem to notice.
It turned back towards him, something vile beginning to bubble around its jaws, a sort of tongue-tentacle-thing between the pincers slathering it over the blades of keratin it had for teeth in quick, deliberate movements. From a small wound present on its pale, off-white underside, there emerged the pipe. Something else leaked from the wound itself, like very faint, very distant, thin grey light.
Matthew took a step back, scowling. So the gun was super useless, but the pipe had gone in. Which just meant this thing must be balls strong. His eyes traced the grey light that poured out of it in place of blood around where the pipe jutted out if it's body.
He could have just grabbed the girl and ran, left the cops that were no doubt running back here right now to deal with this. Unfortunately he had the cutting feeling that if he did that, just turned his back on it for a moment, it would be on him again. He remembered how far that thing had been able to propel itself through the air, and if he got tangled up in there again at was it. Even if he got out from under it the cops would be here by then. That would be the end of him.
That would be the end of Jan.
He grit his teeth. "Run inside." He said, not taking his eye off the things slimey mandibles. "They're only looking for one mage anyway." Then he lunged forward with a yell, grabbing onto the exposed pipe. He wasn't entirely sure what his plan was when he did it, but as the thing screeched and began struggling against him he started trying to lever the thing deeper and deeper into the centipede, maybe wrench off one of those armored plates on its stomach.
As he did, flailing as he was for any solution, the pipe in his grip slowly began to change. A blue light began where his hands touched it, and began extending its way up along the shaft of his makeshift weapon.
“What?! I can’t just leave y-“
As the blue light built in the pipe, and outshone the grey winter sunrise that bled forth from inside it, the creature screamed again -
And pulled away.
As it did, the pipe went with it - and as the pipe left Matthew’s hands, it
exploded, streaking blue glow through the darkness of the alleyway, penetrating the creature from the soft convenience of its own internals, and turning its sharp screeching into a primal shriek of agony.
The centipede staggered backwards, falling and rolling over itself as it bled bastardised starlight over the snow on the ground, before pushing itself up against the wall and turning back to face Matthew.
For a solid second, still glowing blue with shrapnel and grey with false ichors, it sized Matthew up.
Then it flopped onto its front and scuttled unevenly towards the mouth of the alleyway as fast as it possibly could.
Jan looked between it and Matthew in a stupefied mix of wonder and terror.
Then, from the street Matthew had come from;
“
Oh my fucking god what the fuck is that thing?!” followed immediately by an agreement in the form of a chorus of gunfire.
Matthew himself stared fixedly at his own hand, occasionally casting a glance up toward the alley where the thing had scuttled off as shirkes and gunfire began to echo past the two of them.
There were eras to a human life, points that mark the end of one stage and the beginning of a new and wildly different existence. For ordinary people it was simple. Your first day of school. Your first car. The first time someone said the words "I love you" and really meant it. For Matthew his life, until today, consisted of two eras that he knew of. The time before he had lost everything and the time afterwards. Now, though, it was really setting in that he stood at the beginning of a new era. Coming out from the dark and dismal time when he couldn't blow things up just by touching them and stepping into the bright wonderful future where he could.
A particularly loud and painful scream shook him from his introspection. Right, things hadn't changed! He spun around and ran up to Jan, reached out to grab her hand, thought better of it, and then motioned to the back door. "Inside. Through the building. We can get out through the front while they're dealing with that. Go!"
He ushered the girl inside the dimly lit and gutted pizzeria, only pausing for a moment to consider it before closing the door behind them and leading her through the kitchen to the front of the building. Sure the door had been barred since the health inspector shuttered this place, but he had a feeling that wasn't going to be much of a problem for him anymore.
He walked up to the front windows and peaked out between the boards designed to keep people out, scanning what he could see of the street just in case someone had decided they didn't want to fight a giant centipede.
Outside, the centipede was gradually being worn down by a sustained hail of gunfire; every now and again, a shot would strike true, and the beast would shine a little brighter from whatever place existed on its inside. The police too had taken casualties, however, and in places their men either lay still, or clutched at grave wounds. Only four cops remained standing now.
The Centipede lashed out, slick jaws tearing a piece from the gun arm of the closest officer, and accordingly the police officer fell backwards clutching at it - for a moment.
No more than a few seconds later, his back arched and his body seized, contracting and contracting and twisting.
“Fuck!” Jan yelped as she saw it.
At the rear of the group of police officers, however, was Míra, glancing towards the alleyway with her gun in her hands and her teeth clenched.
Matthew looked away, shuttering at how close he'd come to what looked like a horrifically painful demise. At the same time, though, he couldn't help but wish those guys had met the centipede a little farther into the alley.
"Okay." He said, shaking his head quickly to try and steady himself for what came next. "We still gotta go while they're all tied up with one another." He laid his hand on the front door, dreading what was about to happen. No matter what this was going to be noticeable. Even in the midst of fighting a giant bug you were bound to notice a door blowing up, and then… well, he looked down at his other hand and the gun still wrapped in his white knuckled grip.
That's when something the cops had said earlier sprung into his mind. A bit of ideal speculation about what kind of wizard could be hiding in the pizza shop. Not to mention the weird feeling he'd gotten when the back door opened.
He turned back to Jan. "Can you open this?" He asked. "You know, quietly?"
Jan stared agape at the horror beyond the bounds of the pizzeria, her hands beginning to shake, before she finally registered the words he was saying.
“Uh, shit, yeah. Yeah I can.”
She reached out unsteadily for the door handle, wrapped her left hand around it, and closed her eyes. For a second nothing happened, but then her body tensed and her face twisted in strain, and…
Like the popping of a bubble, the door buzzed for a split instant as if it were vibrating, and then the lock came undone.
“Ok. All good.”
"All right, great job." Matthew said, pleasantly surprised his hunch had been spot on. He looked around the pizzaria, searching for anything he might be able to use. There was nothing much to see, the place had been pretty thoroughly cleared out, but his eyes fell on a cracked and broken piece of the tile flooring about the size of a dinner plate and about as thin. He picked it up, then focused on it. He tried to picture it breaking, divided up into sections like the world's simplest 3D puzzle and pour that thought into it.
He could feel it this time. Something flowing out of him as the room was steadily lit by the soft blue light the enveloped the tile. He nodded, and motioned to the door with it. "Okay, what I need you to do is open this up and run like a bat out of hell a block that way." He motioned up the street, toward where he'd parked the car. "There's an old beater car in front of the ABC store, you can't miss it. Hide in there. I'll be a few steps behind you, so if any of that nastlyness back there turns your way I'll…" he looked down nervously at his hands, gun in one, makeshift bomb in the other, and couldn't help but swallow. "I'll take care of it."
He put his shoulder up against the door, leaving Jan enough room free to turn the knob and bolt. He prayed Mira spotted them. He didn't want to have to blow a bunch of people up. "Take a deep breath. Steady yourself. We go on three. One...two...three!"
The door burst open with a slam, breaking the already flimsy glass behind the chipboard covers hammered across its front, and on the other side of the street Míra jumped at the sudden addition to the cacophony she was already part of. Her eyes widened in surprise, and her jaw dropped, as she saw the blue glow in Matthew’s hand and started to back away from the ongoing fight. Jan sprinted out of the building with all haste and made a frantic break for the car.
Matthew skidded to a stop a few steps from the door and motioned frantically for Mira to follow the girl while keeping a careful eye on the police for the moment they took their attention off the centipede. He thought maybe, if he did that, it would make what he was bound to do a little bit less than murder.
Take their attention it did, and the three remaining cops all flinched as the door slammed open, turning their heads momentarily to face the new threat. The centipede reared up once again, spreading phosphorescence across the snow, a dull glow that didn’t melt it as they met, preparing to attack the nearest cop.
Matthew took a deep breath, saw the centipede rear back, and threw the chunk. It flew through the air, hit the ground, bounced once, and came to a stop at the feet of one of the cops the creature wasn't focused on. "Come on!" He shouted. It sounded like a challenge, but really it was a plea.
Míra started to back away further from the fight, turning away to run properly as Matthew yelled, and the cop standing over his improvised tile-bomb stared at it for a moment in confusion - before turning his divided attention back to the beast that had started to wrestle his fellow officer’s body to the ground.
As Mira reached him the tile went off at the officers feet, sending small perfectly cut pits flying in all directions. Matthew thought about how odd it was. It wasn't as though it was even really an explosion. There was no boom, no concussive force. The tile just split apart in all directions like a clump of roaches scattering when you turned on the light, except damn anything in their way. He chose to focus on that, and not the numerous red splotches slowly growing under the holes peppered into the mans uniform. End he spun around and ran like hell after Mira.
The police officer who had been closer to the not-explosion was sent silently flying as the ceramic tile detonated with a sharp crack, having been close enough to it that he was probably killed immediately. Another officer went down screaming and clutching at his leg - which was no longer moving - as it went off, leaving the third man grappling with the centipede on his own.
Mira got to the car first, and threw herself into the passenger seat, turning only briefly to acknowledge the teenage refugee curled up in the back seat.
“Fucking drive!” She screamed as Matthew reached the car.
"Driving. Yeah, driving!" Matthew stammered as he cracked the key and backed out of the parking lot and shot off down the street. He was shaking, his breathing heavy and ragged as though he'd just run a marathon, and could feel a wave a nausea building in his swimmy head that he struggled to force down. It was a relief when he felt the other guy take the wheel and start driving for him again. It gave him a chance to calm down.
"Where do we go?" He asked. "I need to know where we're going." He glanced in the rearview mirror, taking stock of the uninjured girl in the back with a sigh of relief despite everything. "Jan, you doing okay back there? You might want to buckle in."
“Buckling the fuck in!” Jan shouted back, still in the grip of panic.
“Back the way we came, Matt, back the way we came! Out onto the highway! What the fuck was that fucking bug thing?!” Míra too was still clenching her teeth, a grimace fixed on her features, reloading her weapon and turning to look behind them in case they were being followed.
Matthew turned, sliding across a raid slick with already melting snow back onto the main highway without losing any speed he'd built up. The main road stretched out before them, and he floored it. "Graffiti." He replied. "It was just graffiti before it tried to eat me. Crawled right off the dang wall. Bled magic!"
“What the fuck?!”
“I saw it blink at me so I hid! I thought the door was locked but it just opened when it touched it!”
“What the
fuck?!”
The tension did not fade for a full minute of teeth clenched silence.
“I’ve never heard of fuckin’ street art coming alive before. I’m gonna need to- oh, shit.” Míra’s eyes went wide as she suddenly realised something, and reached for her phone.
She started dialling, sliding her gun back into its holster as the sound of electronic dial tones filled the car.
“Hey, this is Petrov. Who’s calling?” A male voice, with a neutral, almost generic American accent replied.
“It’s María.”
Silence, punctuated only briefly by muffled speech in the background of the other end of the call.
“You’re pretty late.”
Míra nodded, like they could see her.
“Yeah. Sax got held up, had to go get his guest.”
“Held up?”
Míra swallowed.
“Yeah. I don’t think he’ll be able to join us.” She took a moment to let it sink in - sink in like a ship at sea. “How’s the party going?”
“Did you get his guest?”
More silence.
“Yes.”
“Fuck. Yeah, it’s going ok. Don’t think we’re expecting gatecrashers, which is one thing at least. What about you? Bringing any uninvited guests?”
“No, they got… chased off. I’ll tell you later. We’re probably fifteen minutes out, with the speed we’re going at. That still work for you?”
More silence and chatter in the background.
“For now, yes.”
"Hey, uhhhh…" Matthew started, not sure if he should be speaking. They were obviously talking in some kind of code. How should he word this? "Do you guys know if there are any guests that canceled? Or maybe were expected to attend but never got an invitation?"
Mira took a moment to look at Matthew, half dumbfounded, before she moved her mouth to speak into the phone again - but not fast enough.
“Maria who the fuck is that? That your plus one? Fuck is he talking about?”
“I… uhhh… let me put you on hold.”
“No w-“ the phone chirped as she tapped on the hold button.
“What do you mean? Is there someone you think we forgot?”
“Why the fuck are you guys talking in code? It’s not like they don’t know what we’re doing.” Jan added.
"I'm talking in code 'cause they're talking in code." Matthew said quickly. "And I mean, magic just pulled a bug off a wall and almost killed us with it. I didn't do that magic. I don't think she did that magic. So if not me or Jan, who? And do they have a problem with her, me, you, the cops, or the universe."
“I’m not gonna lie to you man, if there’s a mage pullin’ fuckin’ insects out of street art to kill us with, then they can go take care of the FOE for us.” Mira retorted.
“Fucking what?” From the other end of the phone.
“I’ll tell you later, alright? We’re nearly there.”
"Praise god." Matthew said in relief. He was bleeding, his head was promising him an acre of pain in the coming hours, and he felt like he was about to throw up. He wanted nothing more than to lay his head down on this wheel and pass out. Instead, he kept what energy he had left focused on the road in front of him.
With any luck, they were home free.
