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rotworld · 1 year ago

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20: Drive-Thru

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you will have to go home again soon, but first you'll have to survive everything falling apart.

->contains gore.

The meeting is held in an abandoned theater. The damp, soggy scents of moss and mold are thick in the air. Tree roots split the floorboards and climbing ivy creeps up the walls. Only a handful of the seats in the front row are occupied, feral-eyed, sharp-toothed strangers lounging on the ripped, red upholstery. You know a couple of them; the Stag’s inner circle, their gazes hungry and lingering despite the somber mood. There are fewer of them than you remember. Others are strangers, no less intimidating.

To your surprise, Glenn is here, too. He greets you with a tense, mournful embrace, burying his face in your neck and inhaling your scent. He looks between you and Jamie with a knowing smile.

“There’s a plague in Verlinda,” one of the Stag’s men says. “Fever and chills, vomiting, and painful, pus-filled sores. Extremely contagious. Hitting some places worse than others, but we’re dropping like flies.” He scoffs at the look on your face. “You can relax, courier. Humans can’t catch it. Not even your kind, unless you’re our kin.”

“We sent you to the University with a tissue sample. We have a contact at the clinic who’s helped us before,” Garvan explains. “We need a cure. Treatment options. Anything.”

“We’re past that now,” another growls, raking his claws through the armrest of his chair. “We know who did this to us. The law is vengeance. Idleness dishonors his memory.”

Who did this to us, he said. They think it’s a bioweapon. Jamie doesn’t even seem surprised. “Anchor has a small army for private security. You won’t even get through the gate,” they insist. “We’re going to the University. They might be able to get clearance—”

The man snarls at Jamie like a rabid dog. “You’d deny us what we’re owed, outsider? You want to do things the human way with pretty words and a slap on the wrist, maybe a fine that won’t mean anything to them?”

“I’m not denying you anything. I’m telling you you’re going to get massacred and you’ll never get your vengeance if you rush in there without a plan. We stand a better chance in greater numbers.”

You still don’t have a plan—no real idea of what you’ll actually do once you reach the University—but an alliance is coming together. The Verlindans trust you, and by extension, Jamie. They’re willing to hold off their attack, but not for long. The idea of returning to Anchor makes you sick to your stomach. You don’t feel ready to face that place again, not after knowing everything they’ve done to the Drift. And for what? Why banish cities? Why set a plague loose in Verlinda? The God of Nelton tries to calm your racing thoughts but you feel so overwhelmed.

“Courier?” Glenn says quietly.

The meeting comes to a screeching halt, the theater falling silent. You wipe your tears with your sleeve. You’re fine. You don’t have time to lose your nerve. But Jamie asks the others if they mind the two of you stepping out for some air and their gazes are understanding.

“Not much more to say now, is there? We should all rest, eat. Get ready to leave…”

Their voices fade into a murmur as Jamie leads you outside. “You okay?” they ask. “God, nevermind. Stupid question. Let’s get some food, alright? Then we’ll check back in, you can properly introduce me to the guy who was looking at us both like a fresh steak.”

“Which one?” you ask dryly.

Jamie laughs and kisses your cheek. But once you’re back in the car, they stop you just before you pull out of the parking lot. “I’m not making you go back there,” they say quietly. “We could just stay at my place until this whole thing blows over, you know?”

You shake your head. You don’t want to go back, but you need to. Something in you will never rest until you do.

“Then I’ll be right there with you. Okay? You’re going to have your homecoming, courier, and I’m going to be there to see it happen.” Jamie takes your hand in theirs and squeezes reassuringly. When they smile at you like that, when they hold you and you can feel their warmth, you almost believe it’s possible.

[NOW PLAYING ON THE RADIO: MOON BY ART SCHOOL GIRLFRIEND]

For a little while, you just drive. You take a dirt path through a desolate stretch of Verlinda all the way to the highway, and then back across town again. You and Jamie spend the time talking about all the things you haven’t said before and try not to think about the suffocating sense of urgency in the air, like this is your last chance to get these things off your chest.

You tell Jamie everything you know about the Road Ripper, which isn’t much. They tell you they met Elisile while studying mimics during undergrad; that he visited often, the closest thing they had to a mentor. “He means well in his own way. But there are some things we could never understand about each other,” Jamie says. “Still, we stayed in touch. He has a soft spot for children of the road, even if he thinks we should all just leave, like glass mimics do. I wonder if he saw something he recognized in me, or just thought he did.”

You can feel another conversation happening like overhearing mutters in the next room, indistinct sound and sensation in the back of your mind. The God of Nelton has been quiet today, speaking more to Jamie’s fluke than to you directly. You’re not worried—you would feel any tension—but you wonder what they’re saying. The corner of Jamie’s lip twitches into a smile involuntarily and seemingly without their notice. Their hand settles on your thigh.

“Courier. About earlier, with Elisile…I’m sorry for frightening you. I meant what I said; I fear for you. I wish you would be more selfish. But I regret making you doubt me for even a moment.”

“To be fair, I’ve given you plenty of reasons to worry about my safety,” you admit.

“You have. I’d tell you to cut it out, but…this is the Drift.”

Their gaze is drawn out the window to Verlinda’s verdant landscape, watching cracked concrete and mossy roofs pass by. You’ve noticed they often look at houses. This part of Verlinda must have been suburbs once because there’s no shortage of them; quaint cottages with overgrown stone paths, bungalows with spacious porches and crumbling overhangs, two-story Victorian style houses rotting quietly deep in the woods. You wonder what home really means to them now.

“I wonder what the Drift would be like if Anchor cared about anyone but themselves,” they murmur. “Maybe there wouldn’t be much of a change. Anchorware has its limitations, even when it isn’t being sabotaged. It just seems like this place is crueler than it needs to be.”

You’re both hungry and there’s a line of neon signs dotting the highway. Most of the lobbies are closed, likely to avoid further spread of sickness. Jamie insists that they’ll pay and also insists that you get more than a basket of fried eggs.

“So,” Jamie says casually, “what’s his name?”

“Whose name?”

“The guy who was eyefucking us at the meeting. Short, red hair, nice thighs?”

Your face heats up. “That’s Glenn.”

“Go on.”

“Wh—what do you wanna know, exactly?”

Jamie laughs, giving you a gentle nudge. “You can relax, courier, I’m not jealous over something that happened before we met. You have good taste, he’s cute. If he lets us stay the night, I might even be willing to share you.”

The idea of Jamie and Glenn ganging up on you is undeniably dangerous and appealing. Maybe Halvard wouldn’t just watch this time. Maybe the God of Nelton says something, or maybe you look as flustered as you feel, but Jamie giggles and gives you a peck on the cheek.

You pull up to the drive-thru window and Jamie hands you their card. You get drinks, greasy fries to share, a couple comfort food sandwiches. But just as the cashier reaches out to hand you the food, you hear a sharp, brittle crack. It sounds like a bone breaking or a massive tree branch snapping off the trunk. The air crackles. Verlinda sways like a mirage. You feel like you’re moving, hurtling through space, and completely paralyzed at the same time.

There’s a brick in the restaurant’s foundation that isn’t like the others—shiny and metallic, colors rolling across its iridescent surface. You recognize it; you’ve seen industrial anchorware before. But it’s not supposed to be shimmering like that, you think. It’s not supposed to make the ground shake in time with its pulsing flashes. Instinct sets your heart racing. You know on a base, animal level that what’s happening is wrong and dangerous but there’s no time to react. You’re right next to the anchorware when it flashes and sputters and finally winks out like an extinguished candle.

Reality comes apart in a rush like a wave breaking over a sand castle. You fall straight through the bottom of the car, through the pavement, through oblivion. The drive-thru follows you down like a plunging stone, a smear of garish color and neon light. Form contorts and meaning shrivels. The drive-thru sign becomes porous, magma-spurting stone. The window tries to grow eggs, small plastic whorls forming along the frame.

You see the cashier trying to hold onto something but the worst of the malfunction is inside, viciously warring physics colliding. They’re liquefying before your eyes, red, misty slush spattering across the walls. And there is no cohesion, nothing that dictates a start or end to the carnage, nothing to delineate living from non-living, organic from inorganic, so the restaurant dies with them. Panels of checkerboard floor peel away and drift into the dark, leaving oozing, architectural scabs behind. Glass doesn’t shatter but bruises and bleeds. Putrid brick bloats and blackens like necrotic flesh.

Your fall slows but the carcass of the drive-thru keeps going, past you, far below you, neon flickering out and fading. You see shadows moving in the waning light just before it all goes dark; enormous scavengers drifting soundlessly through the void. You feel the air stir in their wake. You can hear them ripping the bloodied building apart, shrieking territorially over steel-marrow.

Something you can’t see brushes against your legs. Light, azure and emerald, sparkles in serpentine ribbons. The dark moon you see in your nightmares opens like the end of an eclipse, beholding you.

“Here you are again. Dreaming when you should not.”

The eye moves as the thing in the dark glides around you, stirring auroras and falling stars in its wake. Fingers—tendrils? Slender, flexible things—curl across your shoulders as it goes, squeezing playfully at your throat. “What do you want from me?” you say.

“More than you can give, as you are now. But I am patient.”

You smell blood with such sharp, visceral clarity that you can taste it. Slick, sour copper. Rancid blood. Shift-rotted. You’re no bottom-feeder. You won’t touch prey like that. You’re startled at your own thoughts, the realization; that you can tell so much from the smell. That you have this intuition, a bone-deep knowing. The fleshy, pseudo-organic slurry that used to be the drive-thru is far away but you can still smell it, can feel the air shift and things move all around you. Part of you knows this darkness. It’s at ease here.

“I need help,” you admit. You don’t know why you’re telling the thing, why you feel you can trust it with your worries. “Everything’s going wrong. The Drift is falling apart. I don’t know what to do.”

A rumble like distant thunder; the thing laughs. “I told you. I am not a dream. I am no oracle, no inner voice of yours. I cannot tell the future. But…” It comes closer in graceful, swaying motions, the eye bobbing like a buoy on the tide. “You are coming home. I know this, because you have no choice. You feel the end coming without knowing it is the end. I want to tell you not to go, but I am selfish. Maybe you will see me then. Maybe you will truly see me.”

You feel it near you. Some part of it, smooth and undulating, rippling with colorful light, wraps around you. It doesn’t constrict. It doesn’t choke you or cause you pain. It passes like wind and your heart aches for it as soon as it’s gone.

“Wake,” the thing says. “Come home. Come to me. Do you feel it now? You have always known how to breathe.”

You gasp and open your eyes. You are cold, sprawled out in the grass. You don’t see the car, or Jamie, or the drive-thru. You don’t even see Verlinda. This is the road, foggy and endless, and you are all alone. You climb to your feet and find yourself sore, dizzy, not badly injured except for a tender, bleeding spot on your scalp. You have no idea what the anchorware malfunction did—how much of what you just saw was a dream. You don’t know where you are but home is north now and far, far away.

“Jamie?” You don’t see them, but you call out anyway. You hope they’re alright. There’s no blood or debris. You were in the driver’s seat, closer to the anchorware when it failed. You hope that means Jamie escaped unscathed. It’s still night. The road goes east and west. You glance back and forth, unsure of what to do, where to go. A cold wind makes you shiver and wrap your arms around yourself.

A single snowflake flutters down and melts on your cheek.

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#rotpeach writes #goretober #the drift #i got a lot of asks but im a little worn out tonight so i'll try and catch up on those tomorrow!

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