Gasping, he waited for the tremors to subside. When they finally did, he checked the teenager’s breathing, and was relieved to find that Henry was—perhaps miraculously, given what had just happened—still alive. Even unconscious, the boy still held the orb tightly in his one hand.

  “Okay,” he muttered. “Okay. Just need to be more careful going—”

  There was a sound behind them—a muffled, slithering noise.

  The Exit glanced down the corridor, but it was empty in both directions. He pushed himself up from the floor, and wobbled on his feet. Water streamed from his clothes and body.

  Henry groaned softly. His eyes fluttered beneath his closed lids.

  The sound was repeated, closer this time. The Exit saw a shadow cast against the wall, farther down the hallway. Steeling himself for another fight, he stood over the boy.

  Then, a figure came into view. It wasn’t a shark-man or a mermaid or any of Leviathan’s other loathsome spawn. It was a girl, about Henry’s age. Her skin was pale as moonlight, and her dark hair hung all the way to her slender waist. She was dressed in a simple, flowing white dress. The garment was clean, yet threadbare and frayed around the seams. As she drew nearer, the Exit saw her eyes. They were dark and round...and surprised.

  As surprised as he felt.

  The girl stopped a few feet away from them, clearly shocked by their presence. Slowly, the Exit raised one hand, palm extended.

  “Hello.”

  Flinching, the girl recoiled at the sound of his voice.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Who are you? How did you get here?”

  The girl opened her mouth and shrieked. Cringing, the Exit clapped his hands over his ears. He didn’t feel pain, but he did feel a wave of intense discomfort. The air pressure in the corridor changed, and his ears popped. She continued to scream, and it felt as if all of the oxygen in the place was being pushed aside. He stumbled backward, watching, as her mouth opened wider and wider. Her lower jaw dislocated, and her chin sagged. Then, tiny fissures appeared in her cheeks, and her face split open, peeling back like a banana, and revealing a lone, tentacle-like appendage inside her throat. The tendril snaked upward, extending from her torso, and then split again, revealing a mouth at the tip, lined with hundreds of tiny, razor-sharp teeth.

  The creature lunged, and on the floor, Henry woke up and began to scream.

  The Exit stumbled backward, nearly tripping over the trembling teenager. He glanced down quickly. Henry appeared to be having a seizure. The Exit stepped over him and felt his back brush up against the wall. The monster rushed at him. Her tentacle head swayed back and forth, and ropy strands of frothy drool dripped from her jaws. The Exit raised his fist, and remembered that he no longer had the knife.

  The elongated tentacle snapped forward and before he could maneuver, the mouth seized his arm. For a second, there was no pain—only shock. Then, as those hundreds of tiny teeth began to bite into his skin, the Exit screamed. He flailed, punching the tendril with his fist. Then he grabbed it and tried to yank it free. The creature only bit down harder. The teeth dug in.

  “Henry,” he shouted. “I need some help! She’s got me…”

  The boy responded by curling into the fetal position and shrieking.

  The Exit realized that the teenager’s mind was gone. Like so many others before them who had ventured to R’lyeh, the experience had been too much for him. Henry would be no help.

  Which meant that both of them were about to die.

  Redoubling his efforts, the Exit wrapped both hands around the tentacle and pulled as hard as he could, but still the appendage wouldn’t budge. Indeed, the teeth seemed to sink deeper into his flesh, and he felt a sickening sensation—it was sucking his blood through the wound. His stomach lurched. He tried digging his fingertips into the monster’s flesh, but despite the fact that it had stretched like warm taffy, the skin was tough like leather.

  The creature extended her arms out to the side, and the transformation happened again. The hands on both arms split open, revealing two more mouths. Then her arms twisted and shifted, turning into tentacles. They snaked toward Henry, encircling his leg and arm. Then, they too began to feed.

  A sudden wave of exhaustion swept over the Exit, startling in its ferocity and strength. He was still terrified and panicked, but he found himself too weak to do anything about it. His grip relaxed. His fingers slid away from the tentacle. His arms hung by his sides. Slowly, he went limp, sagging down to his knees. His mouth gaped slightly, and a line of saliva ran from his lips.

  Through heavy-lidded eyes, he watched Henry flopping and twitching, still curled into that ball. The Exit envied him. It would have been nice to just curl up in the same position right now, right here in the middle of R’lyeh, and go to sleep.

  He heard footsteps, and saw a platoon of heavily armed shark-men approaching. The Exit only had enough energy to blink at them.

  Then he succumbed, and slept like the dead.

  LEVIATHAN’S SPAWN stood over the intruders, studying them. The thing that looked like a girl but wasn’t reverted back to her original shape, leaving behind horrid, puckered bite marks on both victims. Then she turned to the humanoids and spoke to them in a squamous, barking tone that sounded more like squelching than speech.

  Impassive, the shark-men stooped over and picked up the two unconscious forms. Then they marched down the corridor with them, walked through a seemingly solid ceiling, and disappeared.

  Night fell in R’lyeh, and the city’s master laughed.

  PART III

  SURFACED

  14

  I n the dream, Frankie was back in New Jersey again, escaping from the home of Jim’s ex-wife. To accomplish this, they had stretched a ladder from the attic window to the house next door, which was owned by Don DeSantos. Jim, Martin and Danny had already clambered across. Now it was her turn. Just like in real life, the dream version of this event was fraught with overwhelming sensory input. Frankie smelled the rotting zombies, and heard their taunts and jeers as they stormed the house. She felt the ladder shake, felt the cold metal beneath her palms.

  Then, just like she had in real life, she fell.

  Frankie jolted awake, gasping.

  “Easy.” A cool hand touched her forehead. “Take it easy. You’re okay, Frankie. It was just a dream.”

  Her eyes focused. The voice and the hand both belonged to Tony Genova, seated next to her on an olive drab folding chair. Frankie tried to speak, but her mouth was parched, and her lips felt dry and cracked. As if reading her mind, Tony raised a plastic water bottle and tipped it to her lips. Frankie drank, greedily. Then she sighed.

  “That good?”

  She nodded. “Weird dream. From back on my world. I was falling.”

  “Good thing I woke you up, then.”

  “It’s strange. I’ve been thinking about that moment a lot lately.”

  Tony stared at her, listening.

  Frankie turned away from him. “Where are we?”

  “We’re in a medical tent. Still at the refugee camp.”

  “How long was I out? And why do I feel fucked up?”

  “Not too long. Maybe twenty minutes or so? They gave you some morphine when they cleaned your bite and stitched you up.”

  “I wish they hadn’t done that.”

  Tony frowned. “Stitched you up? Jesus, Frankie! I know you’re tough. That’s one of the things I like about you. But come on.”

  She shook her head. “I wish they hadn’t given me morphine.”

  “Why?”

  She hesitated.

  “Come on.” He smiled. “You can tell me.”

  “I’m a junkie, okay? Heroin.”

  Tony sat silently for a moment. Then his smile grew wider.

  “Is that all? Shit, Frankie, we’re all addicted to one thing or another.”

  “Don’t fucking condescend me, Tony.”

  “I’m not condescending you. I’m being serious.”

  “Pretty boy like you? What would you know about it?”

  “I fucked around with heroin, too. And coke. And all kinds of other shit. But it’s in the past now. For both of us. The you who’s lying here on this cot? The one who was formed by all of your other dying selves? The one who went through that weird shit with the spheres? That’s the real you. And she’s a lot more than just a fucking junkie. So am I.”

  She sighed. “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand more than you know. You’re still tied to the past. We all are, to some extent, except for maybe the Exit. You didn’t like who you were before all of this, right?”

  “That’s putting it lightly.”

  “Well, I didn’t like who I was either. Frankie...the shit I did...the shit all of my selves did? Even before we were all born again, I wanted to get away from it all. Get a fresh fucking start. But there was no fresh start for people like us. There was no magic reset button. We could wake up one morning and decide we wanted to do better, that we wanted to make up for all the bad things we’d done, but our past was still there, and those bad things were spread out in our wake. But now we have a fresh start. Amun gave it to us. I mean, granted, we’re probably gonna fucking die before we get a chance to enjoy it, but it is what it is, right?”

  Frankie smiled. “You suck at pep talks, Genova.”

  He shrugged. “My pillow talk is better.”

  Frankie laughed, and then groaned. She felt a sharp pain, as if her skin was being pulled. She flipped the sheets aside and looked at her wound. As Tony had said, it was indeed stitched up, though the job appeared to have been done in a hurry.

  “They gave you a heavy fucking dose of antibiotics,” Tony said. “One of the medics told me to watch for signs of infection.”

  “You tell her what happened to me?”

  “That you were bitten by a mermaid? Yeah. She didn’t say much, though. They’re busy as shit. Lot of wounded being brought in.”

  “She probably didn’t believe you.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. I got the impression that some of the injured weren’t hurt by the fucking tsunami.”

  Thunder boomed outside. Both of them fell quiet, listening to the rain beat against the canvas tent.

  “So,” Tony said, “did you really mean it when you said I was pretty?”

  “Asshole.” Frankie giggled. “Where are the others?”

  Tony gestured with a sweep of his hand. “Teddy and LeHorn are still out there looking for them. Teddy’s pretty upset. He’s worried about Sarah and the kid. And Bloom, too, I guess.”

  “So am I,” Frankie said. “We already lost Lucifer. What if we—”

  That was when the screaming started outside.

  TEDDY SMELLED it before he heard the screams.

  He’d been making his way down a row of tents, poking his head inside each one, looking for his friends. People bustled around him, ignoring him for the most part, or perhaps giving him a quick, cursory glance. To them, he was just one more shell-shocked soul amidst the chaos and confusion.

  Mud squelched beneath his shoes. The refugee camp had been hurriedly assembled on a hilltop, but vegetation was sparse there. Only scraggly grass and a few stunted trees grew in the wide, flat area. Teddy didn’t recognize the trees, and assumed they were indigenous to Indonesia. There certainly weren’t anything like them back home in West Virginia.

  Frantic as he was to find Henry, Sarah, and Bloom, Teddy paused for a moment, daydreaming about home. Punkin Center was here, on this world. It wasn’t his Punkin Center, any more than it was his Earth, but maybe this level’s versions of Carl and other friends were there. If so, they were probably complaining about the weird rain. Teddy was suddenly overcome by a sense of homesickness and hopelessness so strong that he swooned. He reached out and grabbed a passing soldier to steady himself. The man flinched, mumbled at him and then pushed him away. Teddy teetered back and forth. The soldier’s expression changed, and he reached out and grabbed Teddy before he fell over.

  “Thank you,” Teddy wheezed.

  “New York,” the man said. “Phil-a-del-phia. Loss Angels. Ball Tee More.”

  Teddy nodded. He didn’t have the heart to explain to the soldier that he could understand him just fine and the man didn’t have to speak the few words of English that he knew.

  “Very good. I reckon your English is better than a lot of folks back home in America.”

  The man’s eyes widened. “You speak Indonesian?”

  “I reckon I do.”

  Smiling, the man held on to him until he fully regained his composure. Teddy patted the soldier on the back and assured him that he was okay. The soldier stared at him for a quick moment, and then stepped back. He gave Teddy a quick nod and a salute, and then hurried off into the downpour.

  “Ball Tee More,” Teddy muttered.

  His thoughts returned to Sarah. Wiping raindrops from his eyes, Teddy continued down the muddy pathway, slopping through puddles and peeking into tents.

  That was when he smelled it.

  The stench was muted at first, and he thought that perhaps he was imagining it. But then it grew stronger and unmistakable. It was the smell of the sidewalk after a storm. The aroma of sex and chlorine.

  The smell of the worms.

  Then the screaming started, and Teddy hurried toward it.

  “STAY HERE,” Tony said, stalking toward the closed tent flap.

  “The hell I will.”

  “Don’t argue with me. You’re still hopped up on morphine, not to mention injured. Stay here.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, Genova!”

  Grunting, Frankie sat up and swung her feet off the cot. Her ears rang and a wave of dizziness washed over her. Steadying herself, she closed her eyes, took several deep breaths, and waited for it to dissipate. When it subsided, and she opened her eyes again, and Tony was already gone.

  “Goddamn him.”

  Sighing, she got up off the cot and stood there for a moment, swaying slightly. She felt disjointed from the remnants of the morphine in her system. It wasn’t quite the same high that heroin had given her, but it was close. Everything was real, but she felt removed from it all. The screams, Tony, this tent, her injuries. It was as if she was watching them on television, rather than experiencing them for herself.

  She’d missed this feeling.

  And she hated herself for it.

  Outside, there were more screams. Then, she heard Tony yell something unintelligible. Frankie took a step forward and felt a tug at her arm. She glanced down and realized that she was connected to an IV. It ran from her hand up to a bag on a metal stand next to the cot. Grimacing, she pulled it free.

  “Wonderful. Why is it I always seem to end up wearing a motherfucking hospital gown?”

  The thought summoned another memory—one that took place shortly after her fall into the swimming pool that she’d dreamed about only minutes ago. She’d been in a situation like this before, in Ramsey Towers. It had turned horrific very quickly. Judging by the sounds outside, history was repeating itself.

  Pausing, she glanced around the tent, looking for a scalpel or anything else she could use as a weapon. Finding nothing, Frankie grabbed the IV stand and experimented with wielding it with both hands. Satisfied that it would suffice, she limped toward the door as fast as she could. Another round of shrieks and cries rang out as she exited through the flap.

  Outside, she paused again. The wind blew the falling rain directly into her face. The sensation combined with the drugs in her system was disorienting. Blinking, she glanced around. She stood in the middle of a muddy field, amidst a row of canvas tents. There was a hole in the ground about three tent-lengths to her right. Rainwater poured in around its edges. Sticking out of the hole was something long and brownish-white. At first, she thought it was a tentacle of some kind, but then Frankie realized that it was a worm—an impossibly large one, much bigger than the others she had encountered so far. It had no discernible eyes or nose, but it did have a mouth, out of which jutted the head, neck and flailing arms of a small child. As Frankie watched, the creature swallowed the unfortunate victim and then ducked back down into the hole, vanishing from sight. It left behind a coating of slime which shone on the wet ground.

  Somewhere in the fray, Tony yelled, “Let her go, motherfucker!”

  Frankie turned and glanced around for him. Instead she saw a soldier whose upraised weapon was pointed at a second worm. The creature snaked toward him with a terrifying speed that seemed to belay its ponderous bulk. The soldier opened fire, and Tony’s voice was lost in the din of a burst of automatic gunshots. The creature thrashed and spiraled, but did not slow. It slammed into its opponent, knocking the soldier off his feet and crushing him beneath it. His next round of gunfire sprayed a terrified crowd of nearby bystanders. Shrieking, the group scattered.

  The ground trembled beneath Frankie’s feet. She glanced down, curious, as a hole began to open directly in front of her. Mud and rocks plumed upward. A lone segment of a worm appeared in their place. Frankie raised the IV stand over her head with both arms and jabbed it down, piercing the rubbery flesh. A foul liquid gushed out of the worm. The beast dove back down into the earth, and she had to wrench her weapon free.

  She heard Tony again, cursing.

  “Genova,” she shouted, “where are you?”

  “Frankie? I thought I told you to stay put!”

  “And I told you to suck it. Where you at?”

  “Here!” He suddenly yelped. “Get off me, you cocksucker!”

  Frankie followed his voice to a collapsed tent. Several shapes moved beneath the wet canvas. One of them was obviously Tony. The other was bigger and elongated, and made a horrific, gaseous, hissing sound. Frankie swung the IV stand again, battering it over and over. Warbling, the creature shuddered and convulsed.

  “Ouch,” Tony yelped. “Watch where you’re hitting!”

  The canvas rose into the air as the worm reared. Frankie dropped her weapon and grabbed Tony’s arm. The worm swayed back and forth above them, wearing the tent like a hat. Bracing her feet in the mud, Frankie pulled Tony as hard as she could. Instead of freeing him from the wreckage, she toppled over backward and landed in a puddle. Mud squelched beneath her. Both of them gaped as the creature loomed over them. It opened its massive mouth and hissed again.