The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [134]
At least twenty little terriers had arrived while the Vermiform was talking. They sat in a rough circle around Cyan's feet and continued to regard her.
"Well, I like them," she said, bent down to the nearest one and caressed its ears. It allowed itself to be stroked and waggled its head with pleasure. Their crowd thickened, but I couldn't tell where they were coming from ― just trotting in from nowhere and taking their places at the edge of the pack.
Their inevitable steady increase repulsed me. I said, "God, girl, you have a lot of wants."
"Compared to you? I bet you'd be buried in a pile by now!"
Sparks began to crackle in the tunnels at the far end. I caught a glimpse of the Gabbleratchet thundering in their depths. It more than filled every passage and morphing beasts charged half-in, half-out of the bedrock. Their backs and the tops of their ears projected from the floors: for them, the rock didn't exist. Skeleton horses, rotting horses, horses glowing with rude health reached the tunnel mouths. Paws and pasterns projected from the wall ― they burst out! The front of the screeching column came down the cavern in a red and black wave.
"The 'Ratchet!"
I couldn't look away. Their screaming was so deafening Cyan and I clamped our hands to our ears. They tore everybody in their path to shreds ― obliterated the Neon Bugs on the walls as they passed, and the lights went out.
The Vermiform wrenched us backwards ―
― Bright sunlight burst upon us. I squeezed my eyes shut, blinked, and tasted clean, fresh air. A warm breeze buffed my skin. We were on a beach. Cyan cried out, disorientated.
"Precambria!" said the Vermiform. We tumbled out of its grasp onto the yielding sand.
"Thanks," I said. "Good Shift."
"The Gabbleratchet is chasing us!" It quivered. "We doubt we have thrown it off. We will take you on again." It pooled down around us, its worms moving fitfully, trying to summon up the energy.
A barren spit curved away into the distance. The aquamarine sea washed on the outside edge, moulding the compact sand into corrugations. Low, green stromatolite mounds made a marsh all along its inside. Behind us, on an expanse of featureless dunes, nothing grew at all. I looked down the spit, out to sea.
A splashing started within its curve. The water began to froth as if it was boiling. Creatures like lobsters were jumping out and falling back, lobes along their sides flapping. They had huge black eyes like doorknobs. One flipped up, and in an instant I saw ranked gills and an iris-diaphragm mouth whisk open and gnash shut.
Hundreds of crab-things scuttled out of the water's edge; their pointed feet stepping from under blue-grey shells with arthropod finesse. There were long, spiny worms too, undulating on seven pairs of tentacle-legs.
"Something's chasing them," said the Vermiform. "Oh no. No! It's here already!"
The patch of frothing water surged closer. Cyan and I stared but the Vermiform started knitting itself around us frantically. Different parts of it were gabbling different things at once: "Eat the damn trilobites ― hallucigenia ― eat the anomalocaris ― but LEAVE US ALONE:"
Straight out of the froth the Gabbleratchet rose, without disturbing the water's surface by so much as a ripple. Dry hooves flying, the stream of hunters arced up against the sun. Red eyes and empty sockets turned to us ―
― Endless salt flats. The vast ruins of a city stood on the horizon, its precarious tower blocks and sand-choked streets little more than rearing rock formations in the crusted desert that was once the ocean bed.
"I've been here before," I said. "It's Vista."
"What's that in the distance?" Cyan said, pointing at a bright flash.
"Probably a Bacchante tribe."
"They're coming closer."
"They doubtless want to know what the fuck we are."
After Vista Marchan fell to the Insects, its society transformed