Fallen Nation: Party At The World's End (3 page)

He jumped, hoping to see
over the heads of the stalks. He floated above them, defying the
laws of gravity, defying the laws of anything save willpower.
Airborne, he swiveled and watched her disappear into the alleys of
the village with a toss of her braids.

The ground was so very far
beneath him. Fear surged through his veins. He had always been
afraid of heights, the vast empty space would make his head swim.
Sometimes, as a child, he had lost consciousness
entirely.

Gravity wrapped its fingers
around him and dragged him to the ground. The world rolled
end-over-end. He tasted dirt, and was sure she was gone.

He shook his head and got
to his feet. When he stood, he was in a corridor. The walls were
lined with filing cabinets that seemed to go on forever. Ahead he
saw a desk in the middle of the hallway.

With a mere thought, he
was standing in front of a gnomish old man on the other side of the
desk. The name tag on his ill-fitting suit read FILE CLERK A743G1.
All caps, black type, probably Helvetica. The clerks arms were
unnaturally long and spindly. He had eyebrows like cloud-like
wisps. A young girl in an
Alice in
Wonderland
dress sat on the corner,
bouncing her legs back and forth as she hummed to
herself.

“
Young man, do you have an appointment?”

“
Appointment?”

“
You must have an appointment.”

“
No. I was following someone. Did a woman run this
way?”

“
There is nothing here but words.”

The girl looked askance at
Dionysus. “She went that way.”

Dionysus turned to
pursue.

“
Or, no. Was it that way?” She giggled.

“
Are you messing with me?”

“
You’re fun to play with. I haven’t even started.”

The File Clerk leaned
forward, motioning for Dionysus to come closer. “Listen to me, and
listen carefully. You don’t belong here, and bad things happen to
those who don’t belong. The walls taste your breathing. The floor
ponders your warmth. This is not a
where
, at all,” he
whispered.

Indeed, the walls breathed
with a regular rhythm, bulging and hissing like a living
thing.

“
You mustn’t tell him such horrible things,” the child
said.

“
You are in the belly of a sleeping whale,” the File Clerk
said. A cabinet flew open of its own accord, extending the entire
distance to the file clerks desk. A single piece of paper shot out
and danced down before him.

“
Now you’ve done it!” The girl clapped playfully.

“
Your appointment has been confirmed.”

“
My appointment?”

The File Clerk shrugged.
“With the Leviathan.”

The lights went out, one at
a time. Dionysus was left in darkness.

Light returned in the form
of the sun dancing out from behind the clouds. His shadow grew long
and thin as he crossed a schoolyard – past the broken
merry-go-round that tilted off its axis, the skeletal jungle gym,
the empty swing set. The scent of opium flooded his nostrils as he
approached the sheet-metal slide.

A girl was perched atop,
hands clasped around her knees. She peered down at him with an
eerie intensity. They were the eyes of an adult. No,
more
than an adult;
something ageless and incalculably cunning. A slight shudder passed
through his spine as the odor became more pronounced, and it dawned
on him: this was the girl he was chasing, though she was younger
now.

She wordlessly extended her
hand toward him, and he stretched his arm to clasp it. As she slid
down, her red locks and sun dress billowed behind her, revealing
pink cotton panties.

“
Pick me up,” she demanded, brushing sand off her
bottom.

He felt uncomfortable, but
found himself strangely compelled to do what she asked.

“
Over there,” she said, motioning towards a gulag-like
school-building, reminiscent of the high school he had gone
to.

Foreboding followed him as
he cut a path across the lawn, cradling her in his arms. Something
was very wrong.

The door creaked open, and
he walked cautiously down the hallway. “This room, over there. Room
49.”

As he approached the door,
her lips found his earlobe, delicately sucking, nibbling, biting.
No! It was not at all okay. He let go and spun. She was gone. Her
laughter echoed around him.

He stood alone in an old
classroom. There was a dust-coated chalkboard in the front of the
room.

“
I am always here,” her voice said. It was the voice of the
girl he had seen in the field, matured.

“
Hello?” he asked, looking around behind desks.

“
I hide in the gaps between each of your breaths. Every
swallow.”

The door to the classroom
opened and she entered. She was younger, a student. Maybe nineteen,
with spiked hair. A striped skirt clung to her hips and a sticker
and patch plastered bag slung over one shoulder. Another girl came
behind her, this one in her late twenties and dressed like a rock
star on her way down the red carpet at an event. That shampoo-ad
hair. And there was another: slightly older, naked and utterly
terrifying.

“
Who are you?” he managed to ask.

“
Lilith. We’ve met.”

“
We have?”

“
You can’t hide,” they said, in unison. “When you wake from
this dream, I will still be here, waiting to take you again and
again.”

The matron grabbed him, as
the student dropped to her knees in front of him. Her book-bag
slipped off her shoulder. She gave him a long, hungry look before
yanking down his pants with a single tug. The rock star Lilith
leaned against the desk, her arms crossed, a look of amusement on
her face.

The Lilith at his fly bit
her lip impatiently. She looked back at the other two.

“
Oh no, by all means proceed.”

He felt himself harden in
her hand as she locked gazes with him, her mouth opening
expectantly. Oh, fuck. His mind balked as her lips closed around
the head of his cock. The others tittered and circled slowly,
watching... herself? He heard the familiar sound of chalk scraping
against the blackboard, but he was too distracted to
look.

Rock star Lilith ripped off
his shirt, planted her hands on his chest and shoved. She smiled
wickedly as his head slammed against the linoleum tile. They were
all over him, sucking on every finger, every toe, in every crease
and crevice and bulge of his body.

Her mouth tasted of berries
and earthy wine. The nectar flowed into him as the youngest of the
three rode him ferociously. Meanwhile, one of the others whispered
in his ear, “You’d best wake soon. You’ve stirred the Leviathan. He
will be looking for you in this world and the next.”

As she spoke, the words
were burned into his mind by the gyrations of the lithe form on top
of him. Her shirt shredded in his hands, exposing hardened
nipples.

He felt the sting of
fingernails ripping into his flesh with each slick thrust as he
moaned into the ruby-lipped mouth of another.

She convulsed and flexed
around him, and he felt the swell of the climax completely
overwhelm his consciousness.

He read what she had
written on the board.
Wake up, Dionysus.
WAKE UP!

The air was full of smoke
and brick dust.

“
Wake up Dionysus. Wake the fuck up!” Loki was dressed in
maintenance coveralls. He cut the restraints quickly with a
box-cutter. “Dude. Wake the fuck up,and get that stupid smile off
your face. What were you dreaming about?”

Dionysus sat upright.
“Already?” He looked over to see that the window had been blown
open. The alarms buzzed painfully in his ears. Cody huddled in the
corner, his eyes wide with terror. He held his guitar in front of
him like a weapon.

“
Hey, Cody... Pssht. It’s fine. This is... a friend of mine.
Get out, if you can.”

Dionysus shook his head a
final time, trying to dislodge the delicious traces of dream that
stuck to his thoughts. Other voices joined the din of the alarm,
panicked patients, the clamor of administrative staff.

“
Up and go, let’s climb.” They grabbed hold of the rope and
scaled up to the roof. Dionysus grunted and faltered.

Loki hauled him over the
edge and detached the rope ladder. It was still anchored next to
the window and swung down, coming to rest near a twisted grate at
the perimeter grounds.

“
Problem?” Loki asked, in a whisper.

Dionysus shook his head.
“No, no. We just don’t get much...exercise around here.”

“
Don’t like fucking the orderlies?”

“
There’s a ladder! He went down!” they heard from
below.

“
Is it really this easy?” Dionysus asked.

Loki shook his head. “Don’t
tempt fate, okay? Just follow me.”

They approached a
maintenance door with a black duffel bag propped against it.
Dionysus was grinning like a kid on Christmas. Loki’s face was a
perfect blank.

Loki reached into the
duffel bag and threw a security uniform at Dionysus before
stripping off his coveralls and replacing them with his own
uniform.

Loki looked him up and
down. “You still a 32/36?”

“
Fuck, no. I’ve been doing drugs and coloring for ten
months.”

“
Huh. How do I look?” Loki asked, adjusting his security badge
and nameplate.

“
A pig among men.”

Loki spent a moment fussing
with Dionysus’ collar, then opened the door behind them with a key
card. They entered, Loki carrying the duffel over his
shoulder.

Alarms and running feet
echoed throughout the building. Dionysus and Loki approached the
door, Loki with a small mirror in hand. He angled to look through
the window in the door, glancing back at Dionysus. He
frowned.

“
What?” Dionysus asked.

“
You’re grinning like a mental patient.”

Dionysus grinned wider,
showing his teeth. “How’s this?”

Loki sighed. “Okay.
Rent-a-cop, right? In over your head and trying to take charge
of
that
.” He
waved in the general direction of the alarms. “You want commanding,
confused and a little hostile.”

Dionysus pursed his lips.
“All at once, huh?”

“
Yeah.” Loki’s expression and posture shifted, somehow
perfectly nailing his description.

“
That’s... creepy.”

Loki shook his head and
swiped the key-card in the door. They entered.

The two of them moved
purposefully down a hallway lined with high-security doors, shining
flashlights through the windows of each door in passing, as though
checking on patients. Two RENT-A-COPS trotted past them, exiting
through the stairwell. Dionysus and Loki dropped the act as soon as
the cops passed.

Loki opened a door. “She’s
in here, come on.”

Standing in the middle of a
padded cell, arms outstretched, was a tall, broad-shouldered
androgyne with a mane of purple hair.

“
Jesus! Time to go!”

Loki tossed the duffel
across the room at her. It hit her chest, bounced off and fell to
the floor.

“
This bag contains uniforms like those, right?” Jesus spoke
slowly. It had been months since she’d bothered to
speak.

“
Yeah.”

“
No.”

“
The hell do you mean, no?”

Jesus nudged the bag
dourly. “No. I’m not doing it in drag.”

Loki rolled his eyes.
“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“
No.”

“
You’re going to blow this plan over...” Loki was at a loss
for words.

“
If we argue much longer, yeah,” Dionysus said.

“
Look, just...” Loki paused, calculating something in his
head. “Fuck it.”

He grabbed Jesus from
behind and manhandled him out the door. Dionysus joined in. They
made their way towards a stairwell, which disgorged two
staff.

Loki shoved her against the
wall. “We got this one. Go to East Second to assist.” Jesus spit at
Loki and faked a struggle.