American Apocalypse III: Migration by Nova

Author:Nova [Nova]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-11-23T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“You wanted to talk?”

I spun around, slapped leather, and almost blew Freya’s head off. I slid the Rugers back in the holsters and told her, “That was not smart, kiddo.”

She laughed. “Look behind you.” I didn’t turn around; I turned sideways and stepped back. I had a sudden urge to keep her and whoever else was around in my field of vision.

“Well, how nice. You brought the kids.” They were both standing there. Both armed and looking far too comfortable with the weapons. “We going to have a picnic?”

“No,” she snarled. “We are not going to have a picnic!” Her face, hell, she had changed. She had grown again, and her face was cold as death. Gone was the kid I knew. This was something else entirely.

“So was it something you ate that’s bothering you?” I asked her.

She screamed, reached forward, placed both of her hands - cold as ice, across my ears, almost interlacing them behind my head, and pulled me to her lips. Lips that were as hot as her hands were cold.

I was paralyzed. I knew her, and thought of her, as a kid. What had me in its grip was not a kid. I was beginning to think it wasn’t even human. Instead of a tongue, a steel blade slid out from between her lips and jammed its point in the back of my throat. It didn’t stop there. It continued to punch through tissue and bone until it came out the other side. The pain was excruciating.

Then it was gone. My world went black. I heard a voice tell me, “You are dead, Gardener.”

“Well, that was not very nice of you, Freya.”

An amused voice, similar to Freya’s yet much older and colder, said, “I am not nice. I am not even a person, nor has the word merciful ever been used to describe my actions. Now open your eyes and walk with me.”

I walked alongside the latest version of Freya. I think we must have skipped through some of the earlier versions, because this had to be Freya 15.0 at least. It was definitely a mature product at the end of its cycle.

She was wearing a pearl white dress with a cape of red that must have been awesome before time, dry cleaners, and various fabric-eating bugs had wrought their various forms of destruction on it. Her hair was white and thinning, her skin pale and finely lined. She told me, with a hint of sadness coloring her voice, “You see me as I really am, Gardener.”

She stopped walking and faced me. “Not at all awe inspiring am I. None who are alive in your world have seen me this way. They see the old me, the few that still look and dream about the old days.” She sighed. “Those few are usually drug-addled idiots who would be hard-pressed to lift the swords they dream about in combat against one of the Old Ones on his worst day.”

She shook her head and continued walking.

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