Endworlds - Nicholas Read [23]
As he continued to gawk in fascination he wondered how they were supporting themselves on water. Though he was no weapons master (was he?) he doubted seeing anything like the diverse devices that were being wielded against the swaying, amorphous life form. For all their range and variety, however, they appeared to be doing little more than irritating their target.
As he looked on, the creature’s massive upper body swung toward him like a falling crane. Seeking further deadly contact with its agile tormentors, the creature’s tentacles flailed wildly in all directions. As the thick glutinous mass smashed into the river, several of its youthful assailants were sent spinning and tumbling to land on the water nearby.
Not in, but on.
Scrambling to their feet atop the rippling waters, they resumed firing as soon as they could reposition their weapons.
Uncertain as to whether what he was witnessing was real or a product of a waterlogged brain, an icy splash from the river energized him in a way the continuous drizzle had not. Wiping the film from his eyes, he jacked backwards as the creature suddenly lunged for dry land, a snout of teeth thrusting out to find purchase on the concrete sidewalk that hugged the Thames.
The apparition filled the boy’s view, and for a moment there was a relative quiet, punctuated only by a sickening wheeze as bubbles of white phlegm spurted from around where the creature’s baseteeth had dug in, inflating with every heave.
Then, as tentacles the size of tree trunks curled around lampposts along the riverfront and drew taut, it was clear the monster that had so drawn the attention of the youthful militia was only the head of a much larger creature that was now emerging from its watery crib.
As its beak gored hungrily at the flagstones to adjust its hold, the vague shape of a ponderous orb rolled from within the cavernous barn of a body to burst through the slimy dermis right in front of the sodden youth’s face.
He stared at it. The two-meter wide eye stared back, then narrowed, the lines in its iris opening like a lotus to reveal a disc of serrated fangs that abruptly snapped forward on a long stalk.
No time to run. No time for thought. One second from death.
His reaction took only half that time.
A distant spectator as his body drew on some deep reflex, his vocal cords contorted in a manner that would have astounded a laryngeal specialist, as he dropped smoothly into a low crouch with one fist clenched and the other palm up.
A single perfectly modulated sound escaped his throat. He had never heard it before and could not recall it later.
Part word, part song, it teetered on the edge of audibility; precise, beautiful, devastating.
The consequences were profound.
The monster froze like shocked jelly, its tentacles spastic against the death rattle that blew through the semi-fluid body. Eyeteeth and beak froze in a roar that never came. Then every atom of its being exploded.
Fine tendrils and tiny blobs of pale green protoplasm erupted high into the night, fanning away from the boy whose whisper was sharper than any weapon forged by man. The bulk of the creature still concealed in the water swayed and toppled backward to begin a slow, unseen slide to the English Channel.
WHILE THE RAIN WASHED alien goo from their clothes, the youths who had failed to bring the monster down slung weapons beneath their coat flaps and called in their injuries by routine. Save for the one who had been halved, there was no damage the rest couldn’t walk away from. This established, all turned quickly to the odd and faintly absurd figure standing alone on the riverside.
Strolling across the water, the half dozen survivors gathered in a semi-circle around him, bands around their ankles supporting them silently an inch above the ground on cushions of manipulated air.
The tallest,