Hotel of Madness Read online

  “Thank you for that,” beams Vapoura.

  Calcium

  I saw them before I heard them. Hands emerging from the rolling fog. Their distinct moans echoing off each other, searching for something, possibly me. But that doesn’t disturb me; after seeing nothing but glacial hills and crawling mist, zombies are almost welcome. Almost. What bothers me is the certain feeling they aren’t there for me or anyone for that matter. They wander past in a slow shambling gait reserved for when they lack the stimulation of live prey, walking in no particular direction but away from where they were. I resist the urge to reach out and stab one and watch them roll past. The ones that stumble too close I avoid despite any instinct I have to run. I should run, but after many hours of horrifying first-hand observation, I have come to intrinsically understand that while they're zombies, they're not brainless. There is something there, call it Arthur’s alien intelligence or some visage of the former life. I don’t know, and normally I wouldn’t care, but in this case, seeing them shamble around, vacant eyes and lacking any of the predatory menace I’ve come to be hyper-aware of… I don’t feel any danger.

  Or maybe I’m going crazy. That’s a reasonable possibility. Zombies, superheroes, alien landscapes hiding in the employee corridors of a 5-star hotel and conference center. Yup, losing my marbles, as my mom would say. I watch this parade of the undead for a while before I start to pick up on something that initially gives me hope before gutting me hard with despair.

  I see people. Regular Katsucon boys and girls of all ages in different stages of dishevel. I see them all shamble, much like zombies, into the great beyond as they roll out of the fog and make for the empty white hills. I see them, but I know shouting to them won’t do anything. No, at best, those benign zombies would suddenly realize that I’m very much here and should be on the menu. At worst, I also get them killed. But I run to them anyway, mostly hoping running won’t break the zombies out of their trance. I also figure it is better to get their attention up close.

  I dash to a couple wandering the expanse in no particular hurry. From a distance, they look normal. Most importantly, they aren’t zombies. But up close, I see the effects the zombie apocalypse had on their Friday evening. First, the guy is bruised to shit, as if hit with a few baseball bats and given one ice pack to calm the swelling. No noticeable bite marks, but by the state of his anime t-shirt that he must have gotten from the dealer’s room, he definitely wasn’t very lucky. His girlfriend fared slightly better. She bears a significant swelling knot on the top of her head that looks like it still hurts as it peeks over her straight black hair. Her dress, she was a cosplay rendition of Cinderella, is torn to pieces and matted with blood, probably hers. Honest guess? They both got lucky enough to barely make it to a door they could keep closed.

  As I run to them, I wave my hands in their direction to no response. When I get close to them, I try to nonverbally direct their attention to myself with no luck. They aren’t paying attention while I am respecting their personal space. After more hand gestures fell flat, I step directly in their way, hoping that they will stop, but they don’t. In fact, they would have knocked me over if I didn’t mind my balance. Frustrated but not yet deterred, I grab the girl, who is closer, and pull. The sudden jerk breaks something. Her eyes go wide, and her face forms an “O” of terror before reverting back to blankness. She pulls her arm back with surprising strength and keeps moving.

  The memory of V comes flooding back, how the fog took her before she had time to scream and returned her wrong. But another memory, or dream, resurfaces, bubbling out beyond my conscious view. A vision of a blasted earth made cold from nuclear winter as lines upon lines of people ignore the hellscape around them for a giant glowing tree in the distance.

  Kill the tree. The words mean something, but I’m not sure why. Or how to do it. I’ve been wondering in this fog for hours, maybe even days… who knows? I thought I had a purpose, but I’ve forgotten it inside this empty world. I forgot I should still be in the Gaylord. That zombies are eating people and that I followed a man down here in hopes of stopping it somehow. But this isn’t zombies. This is worse… You can run from zombies, fight zombies, but zombies aren’t God. And that is what this mist is… God. In some weird, unholy, entirely evil form, cold and moist and sticky with sweat and still drying blood. No screams, no fantasies about being the last man or woman on earth in the eternal wasteland. Just slowly waiting to die in the fire or go mad.

  More people, fewer con-goers. These are people working at the local shops and convenience stores pouring in. All vacant-eyed, all recovering from various stages of extreme shock, pain, or grief. As if they were plucked from the middle of these emotions and given a new, more important set of instructions. Zombies march with the crowd of normal people now, their moans searching but also empty.

  “They're heading toward something.”

  I turn to see where the crowd is heading. The zombies and the humans all shamble forward in one undistinguishable mob toward a looming outline of a giant tree.

  * * *

  “Why didn’t you let it kill me?” says a man somewhere between terrified and tired. I remember what she promised, and I’m honestly too fucked up to stop her if I tried.

  “Even a one percent chance of you actually accepting the sacrament would be… problematic.” Thinking about that, being on DURA’G steroids doesn’t seem half bad considering the immediate alternative.

  I stare at Vapoura, who is standing rather casually with one hand on her hip and the other on a translucent blade, a rapier reminiscent of the Princess Bride or the Three Musketeers. A slender piece of cold metal, still sharp at the edges. This sword drew my attention simply because of the eldritch power emanating from it in waves. Enough force to make the ground beneath it radiative for a thousand years. A miniature Chernobyl waiting to happen.

  That thing cut a greater Daemon’s hand like butter. This is more than just soul forged. This is destiny entanglement given flesh. Wherever Vapoura is or will be in space-time, that blade will follow. I shudder to think how many people she killed with that. What it would feel like to get torn apart by it. Clean? Quick? Or would it be like having your body thrown off a waterfall, the sensation of perpetually drowning punctuated by your head repeatedly bashing against the rocks below? A soul trapped between being cut to pieces and eaten alive.

  Things have gotten that bad that this thing has manifested in our reality. Between the Fed and the League, you’d figure one of these assholes would have gotten this together but nope, ass up and face down we go.

  “You’re probably thinking about whether I have any more need for you.” Let me guess, she doesn’t. “I don’t. Though, to be honest, any extra help against this DURA’G fellow would be appreciated. Fought the fella three times so far, and this zombie thing is rather new.”

  Somehow, her casual composure is far more terrifying than a melodramatic super villain speech. But on the other hand, it gives me some time to slowly inch away from her.

  “How good is your memory, Hero?”

  “Comes and goes.”

  “That’s good.” She walks over, the blade sparking against the ground as she drags it casually. “You have to relish the number of unique encounters there are in this in the Multiverse. I remember everything, and trust me, it all kind of blends together after a while. I’m surprised this body I incarnated into has affected my personality this much.”

  “You're no longer Meg?”

  “Oh, I never say that. I’m not borrowing anything in the traditional sense. This was an awkward merger between inhuman and human. A fusion, if you will, thanks in part to the Necronomicon. I’ll destroy that book, by the way. I really hate it when Seekers find it just lying around everywhere in unreality.”

  “How environmentally conscious of you.”

  She smiles. Her eyes literally glow to match its amusement. Vapoura is on the famous side, but I’d have to dig deep in my branching memories to remember if the bastard was always this jo
vial about ending the world.

  Vapoura takes another step before whipping the rapier up and down to my throat. Up close, the sword bites at my flesh by sheer proximity. An eager hunger radiates from the weapon, and a hopeless void awaits me if it touches me.

  “Don’t panic.”

  “Trying hard not to,” I say with a sizable gulp.

  “As promised, a quick death.”

  I close my eyes and think, Fuck me.

  * * *

  It takes me a while to get there. Walking for what feels like hours, or even days at this point. Though without food or water, I doubt it’s been that long. My mind has been wandering, desperately trying to get me to focus on this or that. Or to not focus at all. But then I remember how Jacob died. Or how Rico died. And then Vee… can’t forget Vee. The reminders of how she went lurk below me in elongated shadows and stretch and move independently of any source of light. They, whatever they are, wait for me, and they are patient.

  But so am I, apparently. Because now I see the tree. But to call it a tree, now that I’m up close, is a mistake. It’s like a mushroom tipped with hands. Its “trunk” is merely a fiber bundle, connected to adjacent branches, splitting from those until nothing above is visible. And each branch ultimately ends in hands. Small, large, male, female, doesn’t matter. Human hands, composed of bark, not flesh. It doesn’t make sense. I refuse for it to make sense. But it is right there. And it's glowing. Because at the base of it is this… furnace. Heat can be felt for what feels like miles, and people are walking into it. I only know it's a furnace because I see their bodies being burnt alive. The smoke, which should be black, turns into white fog, and their bodies wriggle in pain, but they don’t scream. That is what freaks me out the most. At first, I thought it was simply the zombies reacting that way. Wordless cries of pain and horror as their hair is set on fire and their flesh melts to reveal their rancid bones. But no.

  It was the people, the couple really, that sealed it for me. They walked right in, not minding the heat, or their clothes and hair igniting, or their eyeballs boiling and their skin peeling back as their flesh cooks like pulled pork. There were no screams. None. Even while their bodies danced inside the tree like a circus puppet show, no screams.

  I wanted to run then. I realized what was happening, why I was coming this way, drawn this way. And I wanted to run. To scream for all the people that didn’t. Run. Please, God, let me run. Let me get away from this place. Let me live. I don’t want that. I don’t want that, oh God, please.

  Well, God didn’t answer, whether my mothers or this one. This is more than a pull. I’m being dragged. A will not entirely my own presses my mind into its palm and pressed it hard. I feel my knees buckle under the strain, and I scream in futile rage.

  “NO!”

  But nothing hears me. No one to negotiate with. I feel my hands tighten around Arthur’s dagger, both hands clasped tight around the handle until I feel the white of my knuckles peek through.

  “NO!”

  But there is nothing I can do about this. Nothing but wait to dance in the open flame beneath the Blood Mist Tree. Oh, how it sings to me! So beautiful is the song of the ongoing fire. The words vibrate within me, forcing me to smile in silent glee.

  “In the great wide sea.

  Comes the only World.

  It watches ships go by.

  As its people play the drums.

  Now let it hold you well

  In its little dark place.

  Where the sun don’t shine.

  And the stars go to ache

  Feel the great wide me,

  As I roll through this place

  I seek those who will find

  A place where their hearts won’t break

  To the Tree made of Calcium.”

  I stab myself, and the knife flares with eldritch light. I instantly fall down, unconsciously choosing the meat of my thigh as I collapse in instant pain. Not sure why that worked. Don’t care. The heat of the Tree is immense, and I dash around in hopes of finding a spot not serving as an opening to the fires ahead. I run and run and push harder and harder through the crowd of humans and zombies alike. All patiently waiting their turn. All hearing that song in their heads. All waiting to die.

  Finally, exhausted, I push through the last of the zombies to an edge of the tree, where the flames of the furnace end and the Tree is no longer hollow. I gasp for air. The mad rush through the barely living and the walking dead hurt a lot more than I realized. I was too enthusiastic with the pointy knife to go on a full sprint afterward. Without the adrenaline, I’m forced to limp along the side of the Tree, looking for something, anything to tell me what I should be doing.

  Behind the Tree, within the shadow cast from the light ahead, grows a forest of mushrooms. Sickly bulbous things glow faintly and with some familiarity before I realize what they are; baby versions of the thing that I’m standing under. They grow innocently and rather weakly in a dense forest they created. Tiny lights illuminate their insides, mini flames that, if properly nourished, would grow into the bonfire everyone is very fond of.

  “Mushrooms growing in the dark… and feeding off the dead.”

  I look at Arthur's dagger, remember the words “made of calcium,” and bite my lip. That isn’t bark or the weird fibrous filaments a normal mushroom is made of. It’s bones. Maybe not just human bones, but definitely made of bones. And I plan to kill it with a knife.

  Alone with a Dagger

  It’s me and Vapoura. Or at least a past version of me with good hair. Am I Hispanic? Shit, shit. The fight is hazardous, me and the trident versus her, I mean him, and that terrible blade. Vapor’s Blade, he calls it, and he whips it with deadly precision as the skies pour down rain. We dance. Well, for him, it’s a dance. This is desperation for me. I make the sky boil and strike the ground with guided lightning. Enough energy to fry a herd of elephants explodes where the Avatar used to be as he fades into mist, disappearing and reappearing in rapid succession. I raise the Trident to block, left, no right, before he emerges from the edge of my vision.

  *Snap* his fingers go, and my chest explodes in the agonizing biting cold, aw that I remember. Followed by a rather persistent, bright red pain on my ankle. Wait, that didn’t happen—

  “AWW FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!” A zombie, only alive from the waist up, gnaws at my ankles, its bite like corrosive acid as its hunger invades my flesh and eats bits of my soul.

  “FUCK!” I kick it in the face, once, twice, four times, to no avail. I gather myself. Desperation needs to be calmed for one moment, and I kick as hard as I humanly can. Its mouth is ripped from my bleeding ankle. Desperation now kicks in, and I grab the zombie's head before it lunges, somehow, for another juicy part. I scream in rage as the undead life drains from him into me.

  Not enough. That meager soul wouldn’t stitch a sweater, let alone bruised ribs, burnt skin, a bum ankle, a shoulder on the verge of dislocating permanently, and several contusions. But I’m alive. In a lot of pain, nursing a bad back and a concussion, but alive.

  “How?” I don’t try to sit up, just laying on the asphalt, contemplating what happened. I wasn’t saved. Vapoura may be under the influence but even while sharing a consciousness with a goth girl from the DMV, getting rid of liabilities isn’t something she takes lightly. Something must have happened to distract her.

  Maybe DURA’G? Assuming the zombies were a happy accident brokered by the Necronomicon...

  “Oh fuck.” The base assumption was the zombies, and now the Daemons were merely servants of DURA’G. But Vapoura fought DURA’G before and notes that this particular manifestation is new. What happened to Derek is the norm. Recruit an army of seekers and full-on practitioners to do your bidding on earth, maybe even roll the dice for staying under the radar just long enough to avoid the attention of any of the local players before your army of lesser Daemons summon something truly nasty. Like DURA’G himself. Yes, himself. What if DURA’G is closer to human than I originally wanted to assume. What if
he... what if IT had a structure that could be comparable to basic immune anatomy and that he had blood, and organs, and—

  “His own colonies of gut bacteria…” Which means the swap that occurred in that hotel room was between a normal human bacterial ecosystem and an eldritch being of God-like power and awareness. Which makes sense, really. If you just catch any old bug from hell, all you’ll get is a steaming puddle of excrement and bodily fluids. It’ll eat the person too fast and too hard. Now get something used to existing in relative harmony with its cellular neighbors, and now you have something relatively well suited to behave like a zombie. Dumb luck, really.

  And something that powerful? Well, even if it's equivalent to a single cell organism, it would be fully sentient but also perpetually dominated by the overpowering will of the mind controlling it. Eventually, as the plague grows, more of DURA’G will inevitably follow. Or maybe not entirely. Maybe DURA’G just becomes more aware. And the Daemons aren’t his minions. They're also him in body and soul. Like your liver being given self-awareness. Or your heart.

  Even the sacrament in that context...dear God. I do mean dear God; the sacrament is obviously a Christianity analog, the religion that keeps on giving, with the notion of communion being that you literally consume the blood and body of christ metaphorically. Which, in this case, is consuming the flesh DURA’G to be saved from an apocalypse that you started. Sounds legit.