Amrita

  With five feeble senses we pretend

  to comprehend the boundlessly complex cosmos.

  Olly looked like a racoon about to attack, lips pressed thin and eyes feral. As glad as she was to seem him alive and safe, she had no idea what he was doing here, hiding behind a crappy car on some random street. Her heart went out to him. He must have hated seeing all this weirdness and horror, this powerless boy who only wanted clean streets and safe neighborhoods. It made her sad that his noble ideas didn’t belong in this shithole of a world they found themselves in.

  He sagged back against the car when he recognized her, swallowing with difficulty and then gasping in relief. He withdrew his hand from his ever-present backpack; he’d probably been ready to pull the crowbar on her. Instead, he put his knees up and his head down between them. He might have been crying a little; she couldn’t tell.

  “Hell of a night, huh?” she said gently, sitting on the curb right next to him. She reached out and put a calming hand on his shoulder. He was shaking like a man with hypothermia. “I hoped you’d be safe at home. What’s happening?”

  “Are we safe?” he whispered. “Are those things going to attack?”

  She peeked over the top of the car. The troop of young monsters marched onward, just as she’d instructed. “Nah, we’re good. They’re, uh… headed somewhere else. Why are you way the hell out here?”

  “Nowhere else to go,” he mumbled, teeth chattering. “The shoggoth under the library tore my house down.”

  “Oh no.” A wave of guilt washed over her. She’d been so worried about Olly being in the line of fire that she hadn’t considered that his dad was certain to be targeted or that their house would be collateral damage. “Are you okay?”

  He shrugged, not looking at her.

  “What about your pops?”

  “He was fighting it and made me leave. I think he’s okay, but…”

  Amrita chewed her lip. The thought of that class-A douchebag fighting one of her shoggoths made her knuckles itch, but she couldn’t really tell Olly that. He looked ready to snap. “I’m super sorry about your house. I didn’t know.”

  He balled his fists in his hair at his temples and pulled. “It’s too much. I can’t hold it all in order. I’m going crazy.”

  She scooted over to where he sat against the car, gently untangling one hand from his hair and holding it in her own. “Dude, you’re not crazy. Everything else is, but not you.”

  “You don’t know,” he said raggedly. “The design is too chaotic to see, but I can’t stop tracing it. It’s fractal, and I keep spiraling through different layers. I almost used the power, and now I’m stuck in it. The abstraction, it’s beautiful, but I can’t, I can’t…” He was babbling, his eyes wild. “Down, down, down.”

  She reached over with her free hand and flicked his nose with a finger. He blinked, shocked out of his stupor. “Bro, you gotta shut up. You’re freaking me out, and that should not be possible after the things we’ve seen.”

  He clutched at her hand with both of his as if it were the only thing keeping him from drowning. “I’m sorry. I’m here. You keep me from flying apart. I’ll be okay.” He shuddered and gestured down the street. “Those things, the shoggoths… they’re bad. I can feel them. It’s like tar sticking to my brain.”

  She stood halfway up without letting go of his hand, checking on her troops. The last few were clomping on past them. “I mean, they’re ugly, I guess. Dunno about the tar on the brain thing.”

  “How can you look?” he asked. “I barely peeked and I feel like I’m going to lose my mind.”

  She thought on that for a second. The shoggoth were gross, horrifying, and unnatural. But after a quick double-take when they’d first come up from beneath the Baptist chapel, she hadn’t given it another thought. They just didn’t register.

  “When I was nine,” she said, still watching the shoggoths lurch out of the halogen pools of street light, “somebody at school showed me a video of a dude getting beheaded. Like, for real. The next year a friend I used to eat lunch with got raped and murdered by her uncle. I’d met him. Could have been me. Our armies go all over the world and blow people to hell because we want money. We as a species might not survive another hundred years because we can’t stop using everything up all at once, and nobody really cares – not enough to do anything. Next to all that, who cares about some green skin and weird eyes? I ran out of horror a long time ago. It’s honestly kind of refreshing to see some bad shit that isn’t trying to look good.”

  “You’re right,” he said, his eyes a million miles away. “It’s us. We’re the problem. We’re the piece that doesn’t fit in the equation.”

  She frowned, worried by his whole vibe. “Yeah… I don’t really know what that means.”

  His attention returned, and he pulled her back down next to him. “Can I change my mind about that whole running away thing? It sounds pretty good right now.”

  She put an arm around him. “Where would we go?”

  “California,” he said immediately. “Lots of classic adobe pueblo architecture. Central spaces and gardens, community-focused. Not LA. Too much modernist garbage. Someplace close to the beach.”

  She felt a surge of fondness. “You nerd.”

  “What about you?”

  She thought it through, enjoying the daydream. “Beach sounds nice. I’d pick the islands off Florida, though. Or Mexico.”

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  He relaxed enough to give a shaky smile. “Knew I should have taken Spanish.”

  “Eh, whatever. We could just talk to each other. Screw the locals.”

  He was quiet for a long moment, and they leaned against each other. “We can’t stop this, can we?” he whispered.

  She sucked at her teeth and thought of her shoggoths marching on the church. “I’m not sure.”

  His hand tightened on hers. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  She laughed. “I was gonna say the same thing.”

  “I don’t want it to be my fault.”

  Amrita turned toward him and took his face between her hands. “This isn’t your fault, Olly. You’re the one good person in this town.”

  His mouth worked soundlessly before finally he said, “Not for long.”

  She kissed him as tenderly as she knew how, savoring the feel of him, the sweet kindness that radiated from his being. “Stay here. Be safe.” She stood.

  He reached for her pant leg. “Don’t go. Don’t be one of them.”

  “I have to, dude. It’s the only way I can keep the body count down. Gotta keep my parents safe, and you.”

  “Shut up,” he hissed suddenly, looking off to the side. “I won’t!”

  She gritted her teeth, ready to be offended, and then realized he wasn’t talking to her. “Tell your cancer friend he needs to pack up and back off,” she said. “Maybe then things can cool down.”

  He looked desperate and scared. “You don’t understand.”

  “Nobody understands anything, Olly. That’s sort of the whole ball of wax.” She reached down and detached his hand from her jeans, rubbing it between hers to let him know she wasn’t rejecting him. “If you can talk him down and make those little squid bastards stop attacking, we can do all our stuff. Buy a bus ticket, go to Florida. Or California, whatever. Both. Neither. Talk to your monsters; I’ll talk to mine. Maybe we can keep more houses from getting knocked down.”

  He stared at her mutely.

  “I gotta go. I’ll find you tomorrow. It’ll be okay.” She didn’t believe it, really, but the shoggoths were fading in her mind the further they got away, and she didn’t dare let them off her leash. She backed away, waving to him. He watched her go, begging with his eyes until she turned toward the road.

  It’d be okay. She’d see him tomorrow. He’d figure out how to make the alien in his brain chill out, and they’d make out a little. Tomorrow.

  * * *

  She caught up to her empty-headed soldier creatures as they slouched toward Bethlehem Lutheran. They were only a few blocks away now, but where the church tower normally stood up like a sentinel over the rooftops there was only a jagged stump of bricks.

  “Looks like the party got started without us,” she said to the nearest shoggoth at the back of the file. It swiveled its black chameleon eyes at her and breathed noisily through a blowhole up top but did not otherwise respond. “Nice chat.”

  She jerked to a halt just a minute or two later as an old Ford van came flying through the air at the street corner just ahead of her boys. It crashed to the ground, flipped over twice, and ground to a halt. She trotted forward cautiously, mentally commanding the shoggoths to stand still but be at the ready. A three-story brownstone on the corner blocked her view of what had thrown the car, but she could feel something big and angry nearby the closer she got. Hustling, she got right up to the corner, using the brick wall of the building to shield herself as she peeked down the cross-ways street.

  There, maybe a hundred feet away, was the big fella she’d caught a bare glimpse of under the library just a couple of days ago, back before she knew anything about anything. She felt a surge of kinship with it and realized this was the creature she’d inhabited in her dreams just a few hours before. Now it wielded a broken street lamp in one tentacle like an oversized club and had another wrapped around a Buick that it heaved down the street in her general direction. A defenseless man stood right in the path of the steel missile, and Amrita braced herself for a very unpleasant squish.

  Instead, the little bald dude waved his arms and the damn thing bounced off nothing back into the air, crashing through the intersection just like the van before it. The old sedan came to rest only a few feet away from her nearest shoggoths.

  “Holy shit,” she whispered, and then she recognized him in the graying light of approaching dawn. It was Olly’s dad. He was fighting her shoggoth, and based on the rage, pain, and frustration she sensed from the huge creature, he was damn near winning. Now that she looked closer, she saw the beast dripping black blood all over the place, and there were no fewer than four severed stumps where arms had been when the night started.

  The little man pointed his stiff fingers at the shoggoth with a cry she couldn’t quite hear, and a cluster of red eyes disappeared in a spray of black. The great octopus shoggoth screamed in pain, thrashing five barbed tentacles through the air like whips. Each one bounced off an invisible shield.

  “Son of a bitch,” she growled, and with a thought she sent twenty of her fastest shoggoths hurtling toward him. They ran past her on slender insect legs or stumpy squat ones like a bear, including a couple that bent backwards at the knee, but they moved with confidence at her command.

  Walter Mason never saw them coming. The first one to reach him was built like a linebacker and had two extra arms, and it tackled him hard, driving him to the ground. The others gathered around, hooting and shrieking, but she commanded them just to hold him down and cover his mouth.

  She turned her attention to the big one, which was breathing like a bellows, tottering on its great tentacles. “You okay, baby?”

  It gave a clacking, coughing cry, and she felt its desire to rip the man to shreds.

  “Hold up on that for a sec,” she told it, grateful that the massive creature seemed willing to obey her. It was no empty shell like her troop of younglings. This thing was old, and it wanted blood. Apparently, though, it knew a priestess when it saw one.

  She had her boys haul Olly’s dad upright, one of them holding on at his ankles and another at his arms. A wet, green tentacle was wrapped around his head, blocking his mouth. She came right up to him and gave him a stern look.

  “You’re a total dick, and I ought to let them eat you,” she said. “But I like your son, and that’d make him sad. But if you try to hurt the big guy when I uncover your mouth, shit’s going down. Got it?”

  He glared at her and gave a terse nod. She thought a command at the tentacle-haver and it fell free. He spat blood, grimacing at her.

  “If you ever come within a hundred feet of Oliver again, I’ll kill you,” he said calmly.

  She goggled at him. “Are you for real, mister? All I have to do is stop paying attention and you’re dead. You really gonna mouth off? Even I know better than that, and I’m an asshole.”

  “My life means nothing. You stain my son by your mere presence.”

  “He doesn’t want anything to do with this war!” she shouted, fists clenched. “Neither do I. Cthulhu can stay where he is forever for all I care, and your squid buddies too. This is all bullshit.”

  “And yet here you are, protecting these abominations instead of a fellow human. It rather undercuts your argument.”

  “Your little monsters are the one who started this. I’m just here to keep people from dying.”

  “I was not dying.”

  “I’m not super hot on you killing them, either,” she said, pointing to the quiescent shoggoth looming over them. “As far as I’m concerned, they’re way cooler than you. They’re not trying to keep me away from my friend.”

  “Aren’t they?” he said, his glasses glinting in the pre-dawn light. “They’d attack him even more ferociously than they do me.”

  “Not if I tell them not to,” she countered.

  “That won’t last.”

  She had a good comeback for that, she really did, but when she opened her mouth to give it, she heard a cry from behind her. “Amrita, don’t!”

  She whirled. It was Olly, standing right at the corner she’d been hiding behind before. He’d followed her. He cast out his hands, and three of those little black squid buggers sprang forward, rushing at her. In her shock, she lost her mental grip on her shoggoths for just a second. She felt their arms go slack, but all she could think about were the killer squids and what they’d do to the big guy. And to her.

  That was when Olly’s son-of-a-bitch father pulled a gun from his pocket and shot her.