Chapter Text

“I don’t think we have to do this, is all I’m saying.” I said this even as I filled up the backpack. “I know you want to save the world but how many can we possibly help by going out there tonight? A dozen, a hundred? And we have next to no information. We could be totally wrong and it’s monsters from a hundred different worlds!”

Haley, with astonishing dexterity, slipped one wing through the pack and slung it over her back. “Well, first of all, husbands who attack their wives with bats automatically lose all arguments for the next 24 hours, it’s in the manual. Second of all, we’ll save the world for every individual we help out there tonight, as the cliche goes. Third of all, it’s not just direct contact- we’re going to empower them to save themselves, weren’t you listening?” She huffed in exasperation.

Of course I had been, but I didn’t want to acknowledge the sense of it even as I sent my wife out into danger. We’d written two messages, one in English and one in Sherriff’s written language, which we were just calling Morphish for lack of any better term (his word for it still translated as English in my brain, frustratingly). Sherriff’s letter was written out by hand, and boy was trying to write legibly in an alien alphabet that you knew but had never written before a fun experience.

Both letters laid out the situation as we understood it and gave directions to a rally point for our “Visitors”- we’d decided on the city’s dual football/baseball stadium complex- where we could try and direct authorities and set up some kind of crisis control. The idea was that each infomorph we encountered would get the alien letter for themselves, and the english letter to help pacify any humans around who could be calmed down enough to read as they gathered more infomorphs together and made for the stadium, maybe 20 miles distant.

Using Tom and Amy’s generator for power and our own printer as a sort of impromptu Kinko’s, we’d scanned and printed several hundred copies already. Haley and Amy were going to go distribute these around the neighborhood while I watched her child and Delmutt, printed more copies, and tried to call emergency services. So far, I couldn’t get through- either cell service was down, or it was being jammed as pretty much everyone in town attempted to place a call at once.

Haley and Amy said goodbye and headed out into the gloom and rain. It was well past 11pm now, and the immediate sounds of violence and distress were harder to detect, but my heart was in my throat as they disappeared. What was all this? It was chaos- nothing made any sense. Yesterday I’d been a computer programmer with a stable career, in a loving marriage with the most brilliant woman I’d ever met in my life. Today she was some kind of superhero but also half an animal, and I was… still me, in a world that might be collapsing?

I felt the mental equivalent of a hand on my shoulder. < Self, I can’t rightly say I’ve been in too many scrapes worse’n this. But let me tell you- that doubt you’re feeling, that’s natural. Ain’t no person on this or any other world ever felt like they were really ready, when the time came callin’. We’re jes’ not born to it. But you’re doin’ fine. Keep moving forward, and don’t you stray from her side. You two can get each other through this.>

A pause. < Also, I could use a gun.>

I didn’t own one, I’d always been kind of opposed to the whole concept of lethal force. But Tom… might? We hadn’t known Tom and Amy well, before this. We worked our 9 to 5s and they worked theirs, and we might wave at each other over the back porch once in a while, but I’d never been in their house. Delmutt was actually getting along shockingly well with the kid, who was gradually winding down towards sleep now that the immediate excitement about the big giant mantis lady was over. I decided to break yet another taboo and go rob my neighbors.

It wasn’t much of a burglary, to be honest. The front door was still wide open where Amy had burst out of it, and while the house was unlit with the power outage, the layout was similar enough to ours that I had no trouble finding the master bedroom. Soon enough I was in the master closet, and I had a few things that might come in handy tonight- Tom’s bike leathers and helmet, the keys to his Harley, and a 9mm that he’d kept in a holster by his bedside. Thank god for lax American gun safety habits, I guess. Sherriff, can you use this? <Oh, yes. Little fancy for my tastes but I’ve fired stranger, from stranger hands than these.>

I took the motorcycle from their garage for good measure and wheeled it over to our place, where Amy and Haley were returning, soaked through. Well, Amy was. The water just steamed off of Haley seconds after she got through the door. The temperature on that body… anyway. Amy looked at me with a raised eyebrow when she saw what I was carrying, but I gestured back outside and said, “For phase 2. How’d phase 1 go?”

Haley answered. “The problem is very widespread. Half of everyone we encountered had been swapped for infomorph vessels. Nobody else got one in their brains, or magic powers, though, so nobody could bridge the communication gap. The smarter people had figured out that nobody meant any harm, and we had some success handing out the flyers there. The more panicked ones…” she trailed off, looked downcast.

Amy spoke up. “They’re killing each other out there. We saw. I saw. A lot of blood, a lot of bodies. We did what we could, broke it up where we could. But it’s too much.”

Haley chimed in. “Sean if this is happening all over the world- this really could be the end of civilization. We got as many people and infomorphs distributing copies of the flyer as we could, but- not even a dozen out of the whole neighborhood. If people meet this in violence on day one it’s just going to get easier on day two. I don’t think we can stop it.” She choked up a bit.

I knelt down and hugged her. Sure enough, she was like a little oven- radiating heat just inches from her skin. Scales? Whatever. She was my hero and I held her until she knew it. “You said it yourself- you’re stopping it with everyone you contact. We just have to go wider. The flyers all had instructions for tuning to the local public radio station- now we need to get a human-to-infomorph signal running. Just like we planned, one step at a time. I looked up the tower’s location and I got the bike ready. Saddle up, we’ve got a trip ahead of us and you’re the only one who can see in the dark.”

We said our goodbyes to Amy and Delmutt, the two awkward in each other’s presence but at least not frightened, not any longer. I got on the bike leathers and stepped out into the rain. Tom was a bigger guy than I was, but they fit well enough. For some reason the loose fitting leather added to my growing sense of unreality though.

Haley climbed up behind me on the seat, neck and forelimbs wrapped over my shoulders. She was practically more of a backpack than a passenger. She shouted into my ear, through rain and helmet- “I didn’t even have time to ask, dear, why’d you get the bike?”

“This is a rapture scenario, half the people on earth- or more- just got vanished. This neighborhood rolls up the sidewalks after 9pm so we haven’t seen many accidents, but there’s bound to be chaos on the highways. We need to get to the public radio station if we want to get the word out to as many people as possible, and a bike’s probably our only hope for navigating tonight. I’ll go slow.”

As I keyed the ignition I had to admit, full biker getup, a pistol on my hip and a roaring engine underneath me did feel remarkably badass. I could see why Tom kept the thing around- like I was ready to save the world. Or at least the local municipality. ‘Keep those wings tucked up. Last thing I need is a parachute deploying from my back when we’re on the highway.” With a roar, we were off.

Pulling out of our little suburb, the roads were a disaster. infomorphs did not, as a rule, know how to drive anything more advanced than a stagecoach. Sherriff was in the back of my mind having some kind of panic attack even at the low speeds we were traveling. Easily half the cars on the two lane access road were in the ditch, and most of the rest were simply parked, the occupants having stopped and gotten out, either to flee from each other or to do god-knows-what. It would have been completely impassable without the slim profile of the motorcycle and the eagle-eyed night vision of the dragon on my back.

Within five minutes of starting, Haley took off- I’d genuinely forgotten she could do that- and looped around my head before waving me over to one particularly imposing-looking semi, wrecked into a concrete siding and half leaning out over the creek below. Just looking at that mangled mess, I didn’t have a good feeling about what we were going to see.

Up close it was substantially worse. The truck must have been going overspeed when… whatever it was… had happened, and it immediately lost control. What was left of the front was a ruin of steel and glass, and if it weren’t for the trailer attached, it would already have fallen the twenty feet to the creek below. At first I didn’t believe there could possibly be any survivors, but as Haley landed on the remains of the cabin door and begin literally tearing it apart holy shit - I assumed she must have sensed something moving inside. Halting the bike, I climbed off and called up the side to her. “Can you get them out?”

She was still tunneling through the remains of the door. Whatever her claws were made of, apparently they did not have any substantial problems with rolled aluminum or whatever truck cabin doors were made of these days. “I think so! It’s an infomorph, they look injured! < Sherriff, what is a spinal injury like for you guys?>”

He called back. “ <We’ve got exoskeletons, so probably not like yours. We still feel pain though. But most bodily injuries, like paralysis, is more of a temporary condition for us, so we hain’t really got any procedures, ma’am. Just change bodies. Round these parts there may not be any spare bodies though, leastwise not for a few months. Still if I had to choose between the fall or the rescue, I’d take rescue any day.>”

She nodded, seemingly set on some course of action, and snaked her neck down into the smashed cabin. I couldn’t do much from my position on the ground but I got ready to catch her or the vessel if she fell. I shouldn’t have worried, though. Small as she was, the thing she pulled out was smaller- it looked like a variant on the “Scout” body I’d last seen Sherriff wearing. <Yep that’s a courier, use em to move mail between settlements. Poor thing, those vessels have almost no density. This is probably a waste of time.>

She flew to the ground with the insectoid vessel in her mouth, placing it gently on the ground between us while I tried to shelter it from the rain. She mumbled in frustration. “Shit, we can’t take it with us, and I didn’t think to set up a triage center. Damnit! We can’t leave it to die!” I didn’t have answers for her.

“I think we have to, honey. We’ve got to get moving or we’ll lose a lot more. Here-” I took off the leather jacket, and was immediately soaked. “I can at least make it comfortable, and we can leave a copy of the flyers and some road flares. Others should be coming this way if they follow our instructions, they’ll find it.” I put the jacket over it to keep out the rain, and lit two flares a respectable distance away. We both stood silently for a minute before getting on the bike and driving away. It was the hardest moment so far in a night that had already been too stressful, for both of us.

Even after that, the going was extremely slow. We couldn’t slow down and talk to every infomorph or human. We got into a system- as we approached a wreck, I’d drop below 15 mph and Haley would grab a sheaf of flyers out of our bags, then fly over to the occupants, drop them off, and catch back up. A surprising number of humans did not have much reaction to a small reptile winging out of the night to hand-deliver flyers to them- I assumed they’d had enough trauma for one night that this small bit of madness didn’t even register. The infomorphs were almost universally more receptive and grateful to get any indication of what was going on. Those that were still conscious, at least.

It was half an hour out, having left our access road and hit the highway proper, that we finally encountered another group who’d had the presence of mind to act amid the chaos. Unfortunately it was the local highway patrol, and they were in full paramilitary panic.

We heard the sound of gunfire before we saw them, around another two wrecks. Six officers in body armor, shotguns and rifles pointed at the thoroughly-punctured remains of a UHaul van. Two people cowered on the other side of their squad cars, red-and-blue lights going full blast, adding another note of disorientation to the scene. I tried to motion Haley down behind my back and hit the brights on the cycle so they couldn’t see us clearly- I had a sinking feeling that I knew what was going on here.

Unfortunately she didn’t take my meaning, or the urgency of the situation overwhelmed her. She took off from my back and raced through the air toward the officers, shouting over the rain. “Wait! Whoever’s in there, they didn’t mean any harm! They-” an officer with a shotgun whirled towards the sound, got a split second flash of something with wings and claws and teeth coming at him, and unloaded. The roar split the air and momentarily overwhelmed all other sound, for me. All I could see was Haley, dropping to the ground like a heap of wet laundry, without a sound. The rest of the officers turned towards her, weapons levelling.

Somehow Tom’s pistol was in my hand.

I could feel Sherriff taking over my arm, my shoulder, guiding me as I raised it. You’d better do some real Roland Deschain shit, Sherriff, or she’s a dead woman. Like lightning, he started snapping shots off. One shot, and the shotgun aimed at Haley jerked out of the officer’s hands, trailing shrapnel. Two shots, and the man next to him dropped his rifle as he stumbled back, clutching his hand. Three shots, and- the last went wide as I had to drop to the ground behind the cycle, avoiding a hail of bullets from two with the presence of mind to fire back.

As I huddled I muttered at Sherriff- “Holy shit, where’d you learn to shoot?” <Took me more years than you’ve been out in the world, son. Sorry I couldn’t get them all.>

The rapidly approaching end of my life was interrupted, though. On hands and knees behind the bike, I saw Haley stir on the ground. Not dead, then- that was good. She took a moment to assess our position. I didn’t see how she had any hope of changing the situation, but she had a better handle on it than I did. She cocked her head back, and with a roar like a blast furnace opening, shot a stream of blue-white fire twenty feet into the air.

In the silence afterwards I heard another muttered “Holy shit. ” Was that me, or one of the officers? Didn’t matter. We were all thinking it. Haley took advantage of the interruption and roared with a voice like a foghorn “Okay everybody fucking FREEZE . Just… nobody wants to hurt you, okay? Stand down.” I don’t know if it was her tone of voice, or the absolute deadeye position that Sherriff’s arm and handgun were maintaining as I stood from behind the bike, but they stopped. It was evident to me that we could have killed them if that was the intent. Hopefully they were coming to the same conclusion.

I jumped off the bike and ran to Haley, still keeping one eye on the officers the whole time. “Honey! Where’d you get hit?”

She groaned and looked at me, spitting blood. “Ugh. Everywhere. I have a new appreciation for what ducks go through during hunting season.” If she could quip, she was fine. Still keeping my eyes, and arm, pointed toward the officers, I poked her with one boot. “Do you have any holes in you?”

She got off the ground and checked herself. “... No, actually. I felt the round hit, it was way worse than that bat, but I guess it deflected? I have an enormous sore spot right on my chest though. I don’t know how hard these scales are.”

I sighed in relief. “Uh, top of my head, you should be about as tough as a person wearing full plate right now. You’re not bulletproof and you probably have some real damage internally so try not to make any sudden moves for a minute, okay? Let me talk to these people. Make sure your ribs are okay.”

I walked to the officers, who had now- mostly, save one guy who still thought he was covering us- stood down, trying to bandage the two with injured hands. I did not lower the handgun. At this point I wasn’t sure if it was me or Sherriff in charge of that arm but we were of one mind on that. These fuckers had been running around shooting confused innocents, they got no slack from me. One of them- tall, muscled, mustache- spoke to me. “You and that thing, you can talk to each other?”

I came to a halt a few feet away. “That’s my wife. Whatever you’ve been shooting tonight? Whoever you’ve been shooting? Might’ve been someone you knew, too.” Not strictly true but I needed them thinking about the infomorphs as people as soon as possible.

They looked a little taken aback. Mustache spoke again. “But we- I- one minute I had a lady on the side of the road for a ticket, the next minute one of those came out of the car at me. We thought it was some kind of invasion! You’re saying what, they transformed? How come none of them said anything then?”

I backed up and sidestepped to the back of the UHaul. Sure enough there was an infomorph’s vessel inside, now quite dead. “Did you look at any of them? Did you see any way for them to make human noises? Look, officer, something weird’s going on here. A lot of people got body swapped with these things, and I got one in my head.” They tensed a bit at this, but did not go for their guns- “I’ve been talking to it and as far as I can tell they’re just people. Confused, scared people in a world that’s reacting with violence to their presence. It’s our job to help them. An hour ago, maybe I’d have said different. But now I’ve been out here, seen them- we have to try. We can’t stay. If I leave you with something written in their language, you can show it to any more you run across, okay? Try to help them, draw in the dirt if you have to.”

Another one, treating the one with the mangled hand, spoke up. “You just shot two police officers, you’re not going-”

I cut them off. While I was talking, momentum was with me. “I’m pretty sure the world is ending. Sean McCarthy, I live down the road in Blackwood. If there’s still a justice system tomorrow come find me and arrest me. In the meantime, sorry about your hands, but try not to kill any more people okay? Here. Show these flyers to them, the one in English says the same thing. We’re leaving now.”

I met Haley back at the bike. “You okay to ride?” I asked, mounting up. She climbed up behind me and spoke into my ear again. “I’m- I hurt, but I don’t think any ribs are broken. Just go.”

We went.