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He couldn’t run fast enough.
The pain spread through his back with a hiss, and he remembered Rat’s face stretched across the wall.
He sank into the water, the pond scum, the mud. Flesh sizzling away and melting into the bog.
There was something he was supposed to do before he died, he thought distantly.
He didn’t expect to wake back up.
He was surrounded by something. One twitch, two, and he pulled one limb through something that resisted and then gave way to him, and another, until he stared up at an endless sunset. Red sunlight oozing into the water.
He breathed in. His lungs fluttered with torn tissue.
Build.
Breathed out.
Limbs trembling, he stood, something squelching beneath his feet. He didn’t look at it. He couldn’t.
He pulled off glasses that were smeared with — something — and hooked them on his shirt.
His gaze crept to the sky again. What was he supposed to do now?
He waited for an answer, but none came.
Kian. Rolan. Right. He had to find them. Had to get to the center. The Queen. They were going to fix things. He just needed them.
The longer he walked, the more his understanding of what had just happened slipped away, simpler visions and sensations writing themselves over the blank spots in his memory. He let it happen. His lungs felt clearer the more he forgot, and that first real breath was filled with relief. He swallowed, shook himself, combed his fingers through his hair. He was fine. He was alive, at least for now. He hoped the others were, too.
Find them reverberated through his mind again. He would.
He would.
Kian wasn’t hard to find. When he’d passed the abandoned oak tree, the bunker had been his next guess. And as he pushed his way through the undergrowth and into the clearing, he spotted a bright red motorcycle lying by the entrance, hastily discarded. Maybe it was Rebecca’s, he thought.
Rand knocked on the metal door. Maybe we should’ve come up with a passcode, he thought, because there was no answer. “Kian! Open up, man, it’s me.”
Silence. “Come on. I know you’re in there.” He leaned one arm on the door, tapping his teeth together. He’d kill for a smoke right now.
“How do I know you’re you, man?” Kian’s voice was muffled, but Rand could still hear how rough it was.
“I mean, I guess I could ask the same,” Rand said back. “What happened with Becky?”
“…It wasn’t her.”
“Sorry.” Rand pulled at his sister’s watch. What else could he say? “I, uh.” He cleared his throat. “Y’gonna let me in, or—?”
“That’s the thing, though. She still thought she was her. Or she acted like it, at least.”
“What’re you saying, Kian?”
“The monsters don’t know they’re monsters,” he whispered.
“Tell that to Officer Dudes,” Rand muttered. “He just attacked me in the swamp in broad fuckin’ daylight.”
“You don’t get it, man…”
This was getting tedious, and Rand was getting antsy. He could feel his heart thrumming in his chest. “Look, if you’re tryin’ to say you think I’m one of them, just say that. Otherwise, if you’re right about Becky, and those things are getting braver, there’s probably some shit out here that I’m not gonna be able to fend off. Open the damn door.”
Kian sniffed. Was he crying?
“Kian, I—“ Softer. “I’m sorry, man. I know this is all sorts of fucked-up. And I’m sorry about Becky. It shouldn’t’ve turned out this way.” He sat with his back to the door, eyes out for anything approaching. “But I’m just as scared as you are.” His voice shook. If Dudes came back to finish the job and he was just standing right here in the open waiting for him… “I don’t wanna die ‘cause we didn’t trust each other.”
“I can’t open this door, man,” Kian choked out. “I’m sorry.”
Something in the bushes snapped. Rand’s heart jumped to his throat, and he was on his feet before he could even think. “Fuck!” More rustling. No time.
Rand bolted.
A hissing behind him, almost fizzling. His skin seared with the memory. He braced to dodge.
And instead of a stinger, something hard clocked him in the side of the head and went flying past him. A beer can, punctured through and spraying.
The impact and the smell made him dizzy for a moment, but he shook it off. The beer can rolled through the grass, foaming gently. “What the hell?” He whipped his head around, wiping at his hair.
Rolan, his face and clothes smeared with mud, lowered the arm he’d thrown it with and relaxed his stance. He looked like shit. On top of his previously-broken arm, a few shards of glass were embedded in his legs, and he was favoring one leg. “Just had to make sure,” he said, and wavered in place. He stared with large, unblinking eyes at Rand.
“The hell happened to you?” Rand said, and stepped forward—
Wait. His eyes darted all over Rolan, looking for some sign of — something — and stopped. Maybe he should take Kian’s advice.
“Alcohol. Their weakness is alcohol,” Rolan said. He limped to the edge of the bunker, giving it an uncertain look, and leaned against it. “If they smell it, it disorients them. Guns are fucking useless, apparently, so I hope whoever’s made this has a shit-ton of beer.”
“It’s Mr. Dickman’s,” Rand answered automatically, then shook his head. “Just — wait. Slow down. What happened at the funeral?”
“God, I—” Rolan wiped at his face and gulped down a sob. It seemed like his whole world had just crashed down around him. “My parents’ bodies were fake. They were the bugs — the monsters, they’re like spiders or something. And so was everyone at the funeral, except my aunt, and she told me to check our basement, and my parents are…” He hiccupped. “They were alive down there. But I got chased. I brought them right to the fucking door.” He looked up at Rand pleadingly. “I barely got out. I don’t think they did.”
Rand’s mind, spiraling with paranoia since he’d wound up in the bayou, didn’t want to believe him. But on some base level, he knew this was Rolan. He fidgeted in place as Rolan tried to breathe through his terror, and stepped closer. Wordlessly, he slunk down to sit beside him. His heart rate was slowing down from its shock.
Kian was still breathing quietly behind the door. Rand knocked on it.
“If you’re not gonna let me in, can you take him in?” he said. Rolan looked up. A burst of anger spilled through Rand’s discomfort. “Even if you still don’t believe me after that beer. I know you heard what he was saying.”
“Are you a hundred percent sure, Rolan.” Kian’s voice was dark.
“Yeah. Yes. The alcohol works,” Rolan said, clearing his throat. His voice was still strained. “We’re both ourselves.”
The door clicked. Rand sighed with relief and helped Rolan to his feet, checking the treeline behind them. All clear.
“You were really scarin’ me there, man,” he said, and pushed the door open. Kian clung beside the opening, eyes scanning the both of them as they walked in. When they passed his silent inspection, he sagged against the wall. He hadn’t met their eyes yet.
“You really are all fucked-up,” Kian said to Rolan, with a weak attempt at a laugh. In his left hand was the neck of his guitar, clutched like a lifeline. Before Rand could react, Rolan moved behind him, and another spray of beer hit Kian in the face.
He sputtered, hands coming up to block his face too late. The guitar fell to the floor. “Dude!”
“I had to check, Kian!”
Kian smeared his eyeliner as he rubbed the liquid off. He stared at his hands and grew solemn again. “I know you did.” He picked up his guitar as gently as he could, and wandered deeper in.
Rolan shut the door with his good shoulder, and Rand locked it. The sound of the deadbolts sliding into place would’ve felt final, if it weren’t for the lingering thought in his mind. The center. Get to the center.
“Alright. Let’s stock up and get outta here before they sniff us out,” Rand said, eyeing a rifle on the wall. “Hang on — you said guns don’t work on ‘em? How can guns not work on something?”
“Their vitals aren’t in the right places,” Rolan explained. “At least, I think that’s why. Those x-rays Kian and I saw at the hospital… they were malformed. Like whatever made the fake ones didn’t know what to put in them.”
The open and shut of a fridge door, the pop of a cap, then Kian returned, bottle in hand. Rolan flinched like Kian was actually going to throw it at him, but the other man just handed it off. “It’s only fair.”
Rolan grimaced, but took a swig as Kian studied him. Evidently he saw — or didn’t see — what he was looking for, because the tension fell from his shoulders in a ragged sigh.
“Okay. Okay,” he said. “I guess we’ll, uh. Chill here. Until it all blows over.”
He had to be joking. “It’s not gonna just blow over. Why do you keep stalling like it’s gonna help us? If we stay here, they’re just gonna build right over us like they did to Rolan’s house and we’re gonna be stuck here until we starve!”
Kian didn’t flinch, but he squeezed his eyes shut. “If we go out there, we’re…” His attempt at a harsh tone broke. “If they’re already past the whole pretending-to-be-us thing, we don’t stand a chance, and I don’t wanna watch you guys get eaten alive or whatever they do.” His knuckles had gone white around the neck of his guitar. “So we should stay here until someone outside the forcefield, or the government or something, can get to us.”
Those pleading eyes had worked on Rand plenty of times before. They weren’t going to work this time. “Kian. We might be the only ones left in the entire town. We’re the only ones who can do something about this. What makes you think that the Elder Brain — or the bugs, or whatever they are — is gonna stop at the barrier it made? Everything in the books says they take over entire planets—”
“I don’t think D&D has anything to do with this, Rand,” Rolan spoke up, his voice rough. “I wish it was that simple too. But you’re right about the rest. Either we break our way out of here, or we kill it. We can’t just hide.”
“We have to find the heart of it,” Rand said.
Fear and frustration warred on Kian’s face. “Do you think it’ll let us?”
“I don’t care what it wants us to do. We all saw her out there. It… it’s gotta be us.” It’s gotta be me.