Written by Zachary and Joshua Forbes
Thomas Wylde from Three Rivers Plague and Foot In The Grave
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Thomas’ heart raced.
The music was as loud and as passionate as it had ever been. The Soul Smashers, synthetic or not, were still at their best. Harvey’s big arms moved with rhythmic intensity as his drumsticks tapped and twisted against the set. Ben worked his fingers in spread precision on his keyboard. Hughie thumbed and smacked against the lower strings of his electric bass, small in stature but heavy in the groove.
Ahead of them all, Nick Coleman rocked a guitar solo on the tail end of Flaming Down, one of their hardest and fastest tracks. The ceiling lights reflected in bright colors all around him. A digital display showing a vast planetary view from wherever in the universe they were was shaking and shimmering overhead. Though it couldn’t be real, Thomas figured, just excellent effect-work from the venue. But it further emphasized the band’s energy. Epecially Nick’s. He was on fire, and the smoke machines made it look literal. The crowd rocked and danced as a blurry universe shifted above them.
Nick. He was Thomas’ best friend. Before Kennedy, before the end of the world, it had always been the two of them. A cruel set of circumstances had forced them apart. Now the guitarist was looking up from his stratocaster with the same smile and the same mannerisms he’d always had. He was wearing a leather jacket over a Soul Smashers band shirt. His black hair stretched down his neck, which further emphasized his height. Thomas himself was still dressed in his worn wasteland clothes–a thin blue sweater with a brown scarf and leather boots. He probably smelled putrid, but these bandmates were synthetic. They didn’t have to smell it.
The guitar solo riffed off into a fade and Harvey smacked his final note on the snare. A microsecond of silence was blown away by thunderous applause. Thomas grabbed his microphone off its stand and sauntered towards the center of the stage where the other bandmates were convening. They all locked arms, with Thomas in the middle. Nick draped his guitar over his shoulder and joined up on his left as Harvey’s big dark frame closed in from the right. Hughie and Ben took up the ends.
All five of them smiled and bowed to the crowd as a display of Saturn’s rings shined above. It was all so surreal. Thomas wondered for a minute if he’d finally succumbed to the infection and wound up in some strange afterlife. He didn’t feel dead. Maybe he was in purgatory, or just visiting heaven for a bit, like those sick patients from the old world where people woke up from a coma and wrote a book on meeting Jesus.
But his euphoria quickly faded as the feeling of cold metal flesh finally settled in. His friends’ arms weren’t real. None of it was. Just like the spatial display, these bandmates were only projections of a world that no longer existed. Still, he clung tight to them, and fought back joyful tears.
But a smell began to creep up into his nostrils. One that even he had a hard time ignoring. It was harsh and acrid and insisted on making its presence known. Thomas pulled up his scarf around his mouth and nose, peering back and forth at his bandmates for a reaction. They all carried on with their smiles and waves to the audience.
Thomas then felt a cough coming on, and unlike his tears he failed to hold it back. A pair of hacks came up from his throat and spit moisture out over the front of the stage. His vision began to blur and he realized it was the smoke machines. They’d been pumping out too much too fast. It was filling the stage and fogging up the ceiling display.
“We need to tell the stage hands to dial back the smoke,” he managed to choke out.
A heavy slap came down on his back from Nick’s metallic hand. “It’s fine. The show’s about over anyway,” the guitarist soothed.
“But it’s cough blurring the display,” Thomas managed.
“It kinda looks like we’re in a galaxy,” said Hughie from the end. “Like dust and comets.”
“We are in a galaxy,” Harvey added, his voice deep but friendly. “Everyone is.”
A fair point, but it didn’t help lessen the intensity of the fog. Thomas kept his chin low and held his scarf right up to his mouth, hoping to tolerate the thickness until they were signaled off the stage. But before he could see any signs from the venue employees, he felt his guitarist get yanked away from his side. Not down off the stage by an adoring fan or sideways by security, but up.
“Nick?” Thomas asked, feeling through the smoke. It was too blurry to see two feet in front of himself. He was swiping fog away with every movement. “Where’d you go?”
A set of screams sounded from the audience. A stampede of moving feet suddenly erupted from beyond where Thomas could see. He backed away as the stage shook beneath him. The screams were drowned out by a different sound–squelches and snarls, and they were much closer.
Something swept under his feet and sent him tumbling back. His head made contact with the platform as more fog enveloped him. Staring straight up, he saw swishing movements from winding limbs. A massive rubbery tendril came crashing down from where the rafters should’ve been. He rolled sideways and just barely avoided its trajectory, but something else began to wrap around his foot.
He was suddenly dragged across the stage, friction burning his arms and his face. Whatever had grabbed him was strong and vicious. In Thomas’ experience, creatures only got that way when they were looking for food. He flailed and scratched against the floor, gripping nothing, until a straightened extension cord finally wound up in his grasp. He immediately tightened his fingers around it until all the slack vanished and he was holding himself in place.
A wet screech came from somewhere above him, rustling the stage curtains. He knew the cord wouldn’t hold for long. Not with how intensely this thing was pulling him. So he used his free hand to swing the microphone backhanded into the tendril. There was a pop and a ring of feedback that echoed around the stadium. He swung the microphone again and got a similar sound. The tendril finally released him as its owner screeched back.
Thomas fell to the floor, still surrounded by smoke. Dozens of inhuman taps from spider-like feet bounced around the stage. He was surrounded by unseen enemies. One of them finally came into view just a few feet ahead. It was about the size of the drum set with a dozen legs and a million eyes. All of them were dead set on him.
This wasn’t heaven or purgatory–this was hell.
“Get back!” an older voice cut in.
A keyboard came down on the creature, the individual keys breaking and scattering about. Ben, or his synthetic replica, was beating the creature over the head with it. Green blood splattered the stage as the spider creature squelched and scurried away.
“What are these things?” Thomas asked.
Ben hurried over to his side and pulled him up. His grip was firm. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s just focus on staying together.”
In that moment Thomas noticed the other bandmates forming a circle around him. Harvey, Hughie, even Nick, whose left hand had been severed and was now leaking sparks of electricity from exposed wires. They were all holding their instruments. Guitars were swung overhead, drumsticks were poked and jabbed, and what remained of Ben’s keyboard continued to smash against squishy opponents.
A last stand.
Except Thomas couldn’t get any hits in, not for a lack of trying. He tried to force his way from the middle, shouldering between bandmates, but they would always close in on each other and block him from getting past. Their bodies were sturdy and heavy. Full of machine parts. The tendrils slashed into them, making sparks and denting metal. They were eating the hits for him while keeping him away from the action.
The group backed up further and further, brushing past the stage curtains and eventually reaching a back wall. Thomas felt through the fog as the others fought. He found signs and engravings and eventually a doorway, which wouldn’t open without a key.
“We’re trapped,” he said. “We have to push forward. These rooms won’t open.”
But they couldn’t push forward. Not against these things, and not without guns. The creatures would tear them to shreds in minutes. At least in some way, Thomas thought, he was going out beside his friends. He closed his eyes.
Then he felt a breeze.
HIs eyes opened, and the fog was wafting away. The acrid scent and chilly feeling left with it, until there were no more squelches from the creatures and the entire stage was clear with a view out to the audience.
Kennedy stood in the front row, a woman with a security tag situated beside him. They were holding heavy industrial fans connected to a back wall with long cords. The gusts from their blades were so strong Thomas could feel his blonde hair flailing wildly behind him.
They placed the fans down on the stage and angled them towards the air vents as the last traces of smoke vanished. Thomas pulled himself off the wall and raced to where he remembered the smoke machines. Nick followed closely beside him. Together, they flipped them all off and pulled out the plugs for good measure.
Then they stood in silence, breathing heavily through the clean air, until they both let out nervous chuckles.
“Where the hell are we?” Thomas asked, finally.
Nick smiled, though there was something behind it. “I’m just a guest here. So are you, but in a different way.”
“Do you guys know you’re-”
“Synthetic?” Nick asked. “Yeah. We know.”
“Then you know I can’t stay,” Thomas replied. “I’ve got real people to return to. Rachael, Maverick.”
Nick nodded, and they came in for an embrace. It was their final concert together, and it was more than Thomas had ever expected to get. His bandmates. His friends. He would take solace in the fact that somewhere out there in the universal void, they could all still exist. And they would always care about him.
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