Deathstalker Coda (52 page)
Authors: Simon R. Green
The next step was to possess the men on the ground. The uber-espers reached out greedily, using the strength of the ELFs they’d absorbed, and battalion after battalion screamed helplessly inside their heads as they were taken over, and alien thoughts moved their bodies. What had once been Finn’s armies marched into the cities they’d only been sent to subdue, and murdered and possessed every man, woman, and child in their path. They didn’t need to kill anyone, but they did anyway, just for the fun of it. What city defenses there were collapsed in shock and panic, as mass possessions swept through the streets and squares in an unstoppable tide. The uber-espers were now so powerful that one thrall could create another just by looking into their eyes. Possession had become infectious. It leapt through the stampeding crowds like wildfire, jumping instantly from mind to mind. People ran, but there was nowhere to run to. The soldiers had the cities surrounded.
Attempts at resistance were doomed from the start, because no one could trust anyone. Your closest friend or family could be a thrall, or be made one in a moment. People hid inside their houses, and barricaded the doors and windows, but the thralls just broke in anyway, not caring how much they damaged their bodies in the process. Men and women with smashed hands and lacerated arms smiled triumphantly through the jagged gaps they’d made, and forced themselves upon the defenseless souls within.
Some thralls were even able to manifest esper abilities on behalf of the uber-espers that rode them, if only briefly. They strode giggling down the streets, and houses exploded or burst into flames on either side of them. Roads cracked apart and sewers hurled foulness up into the streets. Sometimes the esper thralls blew people apart with a look or a word, or made them eat their own flesh; or whatever else occurred to the uber-espers.
The cities became Hell on earth, choked with smoke and the smell of blood, and the uber-espers danced their thralls through the burning streets, tearing everything down just for the fun of it. And when nothing was left but fire and rubble and the piled-up bodies of the dead, the uber-espers marched their thralls out of the dead streets, and off down the road to the next city. And so it went, city after city, population after population, until armies of thralls were on the march all over Logres, clogging the roads and tramping through fields full of crops. There was no one left to stop them.
Cities in the path of the thrall armies called out to the Emperor for help, but he had nothing to send them. What few troops he had left he needed to protect the Parade of the Endless. Not that Finn would have sent any help even if he could have spared it. He didn’t see the point in giving up even more of his armed forces to be possessed. And so cities set up barricades on all the roads leading in, and desperate men stood guard with whatever weapons they could find. Anyone approaching a city was shot on sight, without warnings, no exceptions. It was the only way to be safe.
Until the thrall army came marching up the road, rank upon rank of them, walking right into the face of the defenders’ guns, trampling over the fallen until they could swarm the barricades and eat up the defenders’ minds. And then they would march on, into the city.
From the Rookery, Nina Malapert’s news sites stayed on the air twenty-four hours a day, using remote control cameras to bring in the latest news and sightings. They spread word of danger areas, and cities under threat, as fast as they could get the information out. Telling everyone on Logres, and all the watching worlds across the Empire, of what was happening now that the Emperor Finn had lost control. Nina’s newsreaders became hoarse and strained and white-faced as they told of the endless atrocities and mass murders and possessions, and burning cities all across the world. Nina ran herself ragged trying to keep on top of everything, getting warnings out with as much advance time as possible, and lists of safe places to go. She kept the remote cameras moving from city to city, sending live pictures of what was happening. The uber-espers didn’t interfere. They wanted everyone to know what was coming for them.
Even the newsreaders on Finn’s propaganda news channels joined in, ignoring the scheduled programming. They knew a real emergency when they saw one. They shared resources with Nina’s sites, trying to get useful information to those who needed it. After a while they started to feel like real news people again, and ignored the piling-up propaganda reports, and the increasingly angry orders from Finn’s censors, in order to stick with the real story.
Massive crowds of refugees took to the roads and even commandeered the air traffic lanes, abandoning cities in the path of the uber-esper hordes. They ran away from their homes and their lives, taking only what they could carry with them, not sure where they were going, not knowing if anywhere could ever be truly safe again. They filled up the roads, millions of refugees on the move, shocked and tearstained and numb with horror, leaving behind them a trail of abandoned possessions that became too heavy to carry. They moved as fast as they could, and kept rest stops to a minimum. The thralls were coming after them, and they never got tired, never slowed, never stopped.
Some cities and towns took the refugees in, some turned them away, some shot at them on sight. Everywhere the few charitable cities and larger towns became saturated with people, overloaded to the breaking point with people too tired to continue. Many just sat down suddenly, wherever they were when their strength ran out, too numb to care, too exhausted even to eat. Facilities quickly broke down, even the most basic comforts and services unable to cope. There wasn’t enough of anything to go round. Food distribution between cities just stopped. Civilization was falling apart, on the homeworld of the Empire.
The uber-espers soaked up the energies supplied by millions of captive minds, and their powers blossomed as never before. They could do things now almost beyond even their wildest dreams. And being the kind of creatures they were, they looked upon each other with increasing suspicion. They had never trusted each other, quite rightly believing that any or all of them would turn on any or all of them who seemed dangerously powerful or invitingly weak. For a while they discussed scattering, leaving Logres for other worlds, so they could each have their own planet to subjugate and play with, safe from the interference and threat of each other’s ambitions. The idea was attractive.
But they knew they were more powerful together than they ever could be apart, and besides, if they did go their separate ways, there was always the chance that one of them might become allied with another, and prey on a mind alone. They couldn’t risk that. And even more than this, some strange unexpected force from within kept them from taking the idea too seriously. Some inner voice, that whispered it would be a very, very bad thing for the uber-espers ever to become separated.
So instead they decided to take control of Logres first, and then send their thralls out to conquer the other worlds. Once they forced their way into the Imperial Palace and possessed Emperor Finn, they could shut down all reports of what was happening, wait a while, and then happy smiling faces on all the news sites would announce that the emergency was over, everything was fine, and the happy smiling Emperor would order the other planets to open their starports to the goodwill ambassadors he was sending them . . . and the plague of possession would jump from world to world to world . . .
The uber-espers laughed, drunk on blood and suffering and power, and the promise of so much more to come.
The wave of mass possessions swept from city to city, crossing the whole world in a matter of weeks, and nothing could stop it or even slow it down. It jumped from eye to eye, head to head, often over before it was even suspected. The weaker minds tended to fall first, and so it was that children and even babies became thrall changelings. They attacked their parents and siblings with whatever came to hand, chuckling with alien glee as blood soaked their small hands. The uber-espers had always believed in the use of horror to destabilize opposition. And they did so savor the taste of the more vivid emotions, as they picked through brains like gore crows on a battlefield. They sent their thralls running madly through the streets, killing for the joy of it until killed in their turn, and shock and terror and panic destroyed any defenses the cities might have been able to assemble.
But there was still one final horror, even beyond what had already happened.
Diana Vertue discovered it. She led her followers, the Psycho Sluts, out of the Rookery and the Parade of the Endless, and they flew high in the skies of Logres like gaudy hawks of war, on a mission to protect the next city in the thralls’ path. Douglas Campbell hadn’t wanted them to go. He sympathized, but he didn’t think they could do anything against the massed might of the uber-espers, and he was afraid of losing them. If they were to be possessed, there was no saying how much damage they might do. Diana had nodded, said she quite understood, and then informed Douglas that she and the Sluts were going anyway. And there must have been something of the old Jenny Psycho in her voice, because Douglas just nodded, and turned away.
Diana and the Psycho Sluts came to Delta City in the early hours of the morning, dropping out of the crimson-streaked dawn like so many avenging angels. They took up a position on the outskirts of the city, by an abandoned barricade made of piled-up furniture, and linked their minds to set up a mental barrier in the path of the advancing thralls. The barrier shimmered on the heavy morning air like heat haze, shot through with shimmering energies. Diana could hear the thrall army coming long before she saw it. The crash and crash of so many feet, an army beyond counting, shaking the road with their studied malevolent approach. They appeared slowly over the curve of the horizon; at first just a crowd, and then an army, and then so much more. An uncountable force, all walking in perfect lockstep, their feet a thunder on the road.
The uber-espers must have known the mental barrier was there, but they didn’t even slow their thralls’ advance. They marched on, all with the same awful smile, the same horrid eyes, and crashed right through the barrier. The moment a thrall passed through it, the mental contact with the uber-espers was cut off, the possessing mind forced out of the body. Which fell forward, to lie limp and still on the ground, with empty faces and dead eyes; nobody home. The thralls kept coming, crowding through the barrier, collapsing into growing heaps of unmoving bodies before Diana and her appalled followers.
For this was the final horror. The uber-espers had become so powerful that once they took over a mind and ate it up, they wiped the brain completely clean. The old personality was subsumed, gone forever. A thrall was just a shell now, an empty body for the uber-espers to use as they would. Thralls could no longer be freed from possession and returned to their lives. Possession meant mind-death.
Diana looked at the empty bodies piling up before her, and didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t save anyone, and she and the Sluts couldn’t maintain the barrier indefinitely. Sooner or later the sheer number of thralls would overwhelm them. So Diana dropped the shield, and she and the Psycho Sluts flew silently back to the Rookery. The one place she thought she could still be sure of defending. Delta City was left to its own defenses, and fell.
Later, she reported back to Douglas Campbell.
I can keep the Rookery safe,
she said.
I can keep the Rookery safe,
she said.
What about the Parade of the Endless?
said Douglas.
said Douglas.
What about them?
said Diana.
said Diana.
The Rookery was now the only place on Logres immune to uber-esper possession. The combination of human and esper and alien minds had always frustrated the uber-espers’ grasp, and the new protective field set up around the expanded territory of the Rookery made everyone there safe from any and all forms of mental attack. And the uber-espers had good reason to be wary of Diana Vertue, also known as Jenny Psycho. They had worked together to murder her, over a century before, and yet here she was back again; and they had no idea how. Even they didn’t think they could bring themselves back from the dead. And there was always the chance Diana might make contact with the departed but still hated oversoul, wherever they had got to on their city of New Hope. The uber-espers thought they could probably take the oversoul, but they weren’t in any hurry to find out.
The only way the uber-espers could hope to crack the shield around the Rookery would be to lure Diana and the Psycho Sluts out so they could be ambushed, or for the uber-espers to turn up at the Rookery in person. And they sure as hell weren’t ready to try that yet.
They would wait, until they had overthrown and possessed all the cities on Logres, and then they would come and take the Parade of the Endless, and then . . . oh yes, and then . . .
Douglas Campbell called a meeting in his hotel room. All the really important people came, while two Psycho Sluts stood guard outside the door so they wouldn’t be interrupted or overheard. Douglas looked tired and harried, as well he might. He hadn’t slept or rested properly since the emergency began. There was panic inside and outside the Rookery, and everyone was looking to him for answers, for hope and salvation. No one expected anything from the Emperor, but Douglas was the acclaimed King of Thieves. The man who could do anything. And there in his crowded hotel room, Stuart Lennox, Tel Markham, Diana Vertue, and Nina Malapert all looked to Douglas for answers he didn’t have. He couldn’t tell them that, of course. He had made himself their leader, so he had to lead. Even if he wasn’t sure where he was going. Douglas sighed inwardly, and did his best to look calm and certain as he sat back in his chair to hear the reports his people had brought him.
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