Zelen wretched at the pain. He fell to his knees, heaving. Green trails dribbled over his lips and onto the ground. One instant, it seemed like fluid; the next it turned to greasy powder. The ground underfoot hissed as the spores etching pits into the concrete.

“Get away from me!” Nitsky whispered, disgusted and horrified. “Get away!”

“He told us to be quiet!” Zelen hissed. He remembered what Valny had said, even the mercenaries didn’t.

Dr. Slavaa continued his pleading, “I’m not going to—”

—Valny fired off a third round of bullets.

“Stop!” Zelen yelled, sticking out one of his hands.

Something like rings of light and ivy appeared in Zelen’s mind’s eye. The air in front of him rippled like water. Bullets crashed into the disturbance, only to clatter to the floor in a tinny stream.

Valny staggered back.

Zelen lost his temper. “Beast’s teeth, just stop for a minute!”

Then, from out of nowhere, a massive, tendril-arm swept across the concrete and grabbed Valny by the leg and lifted him off his feet. The mercenary’s rifle clattered onto the pavement as he was lifted off his feet.

Zelen’s anger froze into fear. He and Nitsky turned in horror.

A creature lumbered toward them, drawn by the sound of gunfire and pointless screams.

At least they now knew where the penguins had gone.

The Stovolsk Penguins’ charm lay in their unity. They were trained to perform their tricks as a group, and their feats never failed to impress, though they’d never worked together quite as closely as this.

The creature rose up tall, lifting Valny higher into the air.

It was an amalgam of broken tree branches, long, ribbony swaths of unidentifiable flesh, and marine life: seals, fish, and—of course, the Penguins. The creature was a tripod; the Stovolks Penguins deformed, doughy corpses served as the creature’s limbs, two birds per leg. Their beaks were its toes. Fungal tendrils had long since ruptured out through the poor birds’ eyes. Other dead zoo-things massed together, forming a central body, supported by the penguine tripod. A lone, long prehensile tendril-arm emerged from the mass’ center, held together by stolen sinew. The tendril dragged Valny toward the slimy maw on its underside of the tripod’s body. The mercenary screamed and clawed as the dripping, writhing tentacles pulled him.

Crawling, Nitsky scrambled across the pavement, grabbed the rifle, leapt to his feet, and fired like mad at the tripod creature.

He felt guilty. He felt guilt over all the people he hadn’t been able to save; those who’d died without him even noticing; those who died in the darkness, like Ekaterina, only without any company in their lives’ final moments. Dr. Slavaa felt guilty about the mycophage. He’d earned his doctorate by pioneering its use for the treatment of fungal infections in the elderly and the immunocompromised. And yet…

I should have been able to make it stronger.

The tests had been promising, but… was “promising” enough?

Zelen only found out his parents had succumbed to the Green Death when he realized he’d forgotten to call his father to wish him a happy birthday. Work was like that sometimes—more times than Zelen wanted to admit, in fact.

More times than I wanted to admit.

Zelen Slavaa wanted to do something useful, and so, something useful, he did.

He charged at the tripod, summoning a dazzling web of light in his minds’ eye through sheer force of feeling as he ran toward Valny. Leaping to grab the mercenary, Zelen launched a dozen feet into the air, feeling the dazzle in his legs. The psychic rave swept over Zelen’s enlarged right arm, filling him with superhuman strength. At the top of his jump, he grabbed the tendril at its base and pulled, springing off the tripod’s body with a mental pulse, and taking the tendril with him. Its roots flailed as he careened through the air, and then smacked into his chest as he crash-landed on the concrete, skidding to a stop on his back. Valny and the tendril-arm tumbled on the ground.

The beast roared, rearing up on its legs in fury.

For a second, Zelen couldn’t move his arms, but then his broken back stitched itself back together as the still-writhing tendril broke in half, the upper part of which slithered into Zelen’s body at the point where it had touched his torn clothes. The tendril swam into his spine, curving over Zelen’s clavicle. The virologist’s torso grew taller still as the tendril settled into his back, forming something like extra vertebrae, and continuing on down past the base of his spine to form the beginnings of a tail.

So, I’m a sponge? Zelen wondered.

It wasn’t what he would have wanted, but it was better than nothing.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to save Valny.

It was too late for the mercenary.

“What the fuck!?” Nitsky screamed. “Valny! Valny!”

The lower half of the tendril had already sunken into Valny’s body, corroding through his armor with an acidic hiss. Valny’s spasms intensified as the fungus invaded his body. It grew preternaturally fast within him. Narrow, arthropodic fungus-limbs sprouted from the mercenary’s body. Valny’s corpse reared up and hissed, and then dashed after Nitsky, skittering across the pavement like a nightmare of a centipede.

The tripod joined it, charging ahead. A monster pincer maneuver.

Nitsky fired rounds wildly, lashing the gun back and forth between the two creatures, but the bullets ricocheted, sparking off the tripod’s flesh.

The mercenary screamed.

Zelen pushed himself up with his mammoth arm and then dove, throwing himself at the valnypede, ready to use his newfound superpower. It wasn’t the best superpower, but it was his, and if could save someone’s life, it was better than nothing.

Dr. Slavaa belly-flopped onto the valnypede. The writhing monstrosity shuddered beneath his grip, trying to skitter away. But its legs relaxed; its forward motion reversed itself as Zelen’s chest burned and twitched. His body soaked up the valnypede like a sweet liquor.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Suddenly, Zelen’s legs felt numb and frail.

“What the fuck, man?!” Nitsky said.

“Run, dammit!” Zelen growled, “Run!”

The tripod swept a leg across the pavement. Nitsky ran, coughing up a storm, only to stumble and fall forward. He fumbled for the gun, grabbed it, and rolled onto his back. The transforming virologist lumbered toward the penguin-tripod, screaming with the full force of his convictions, even as his legs gave out beneath him and the valnypede finished melding into him.

With an unearthly shriek, the tripod pummeled Zelen, pinning him to onto the pavement with a beak-clawed penguin limb. Spreading its oral tentacles wide, the tripod slammed its body onto the virologist, its tentacles’ hooks slicing what remained of the parka and lab coat to shreds. Zelen winced at the tentacles’ sharp, wet touch rasping against his skin.

The instant it made contact, Dr. Slavaa’s body got to work. The creature shivered. Its limbs sputtered helplessly. The transfigured fungus that Zelen’s body had become infiltrated the tripod with his hyphal threads, parasite devouring parasite. The creature’s shrieks softened as Zelen’s hyphae absorbed its monstrous nutrients. The tripod crumpled and folded like a piece of tinfoil in a fist, flowing into Dr. Slavaa’s body. Its mass became his.

The last thing Zelen Slavaa ever felt in his legs was the tautness of his skin tightening against his crumbling bones right as a cloud of numbness swallowed them up forever more. New flesh surged out of Dr. Slavaa’s midsection, his spine burgeoning into a growing tail. His twitched with motion as it thickened and lengthened, and as it grew, more and more of the mound of rotting meat on top came in contact with him. The corpses of the disfigured zoo animals—penguins and all—stuck to Zelen’s lengthening tail like flies on flypaper, and their tissues smoothed out and spread over his body in freshly wrought layers of growth. Mass crawled into his torso, forcing it apart in every direction in a domino reaction that spread down his belly and his neck, stretching him into a serpent, swelling larger and larger in pulses, like a heartbeat. Everything about him bulked up beyond belief.

The virologist rolled himself onto his new belly, propping himself up with an arm that had to be as long as Nitsky was tall.

The terrified mercenary shot at Zelen. The rounds bounced off the minutely scaled, violet-black hide that now covered most of Dr. Slavaa’s chest. It almost tickled.

“Stop shooting!” Zelen roared. He spoke with the force and pitch of three different voices. Fungus-blighted things took wing.

Eventually, Nistky mustered the courage to speak. “What are you?”

“I don’t know what’s happening to me,” Zelen said. He shrugged—or, at least tried to. He didn’t really have shoulders any more. “The world is ending, and I don’t know what’s happening to me.” He paused. “I’m scared,” he added, softly, unwittingly puffing out a cloud of spores.

“What’s in the fucking box?” Nistky demanded.

Zelen sighed. “It’s just what I said it was: a mycophage treatment. It’s a type of virus that infects fungi, and only fungi. It might help treat victims of the plague.”

“This isn’t a plague; this is judgment,” Nitsky said.

Zelen paused. He looked down at one of the watering holes. The ripples from his voice distorted the water’s dark surface, he could not see himself, and, after a moment, was thankful for that.

“You really think you can do something to stop it?” Nitsky asked, with a cough. His voice shook.

Zelen didn’t need to look to know that the man was weeping. “No,” he said, with a sigh, “but that’s not going to stop me from trying.”

Nitsky grimaced. “Why should I believe anything you say?” He aimed the rifle at Zelen’s face—or, rather, what was left of it. “And don’t say ‘because I saved your life’!” he added. “I’m fucking well-aware that I’m living on borrowed time. We all are.”

Zelen paused. He still felt like himself in mind, if not in body. He tried to think of something convincing—preferably, something true.

With his newfound height, Zelen could see the ugly, barbed-wire metal fence that marked the boundary between the Zoological Gardens and the airport’s airfields. It wasn’t far, but, in the hell Stovolsk had become, it might as well have been on the other side of the world. And Dr. Slavaa suddenly realized what he had to do.

I guess I’m not leaving after all.

“You’ve got my hopes inside that box,” he said. “Inside that case is the only chance I have left to make a difference or be remembered. It might be too late for us, but there are others, and they might still have a chance.” He lowered his snout in solemnity. “Please, let me help you get to the aerostat. At least let me do that much.”

Nitsky remained silent.

“What else are you going to do with your life, with what little you have left?” Zelen asked. “If it works, you’re a hero. If it doesn’t… we’re all dead, anyway.” The virologist shook his head.

“It’s a shame we’ve only just met,” Nitsky said, lowering his gun. Had we the time, I think we could have become fast friends.” He managed to smile. “And sorry about Valny. I think he would have liked you too,” he coughed, “but he was always a little too trigger happy for his own good.”

“I can see the airport from here,” Zelen said. “Follow me.”

Dr. Slavaa wasn’t used to taking the lead; he was something of a loner by nature, kind of like me. He was used to taking the initiative, though, and maybe—just maybe—that might be enough.

Zelen couldn’t quite figure out how to move with his legs now absorbed into a massive, sinuous tail. His new limb seemed to bend in every way except the one he wanted, so, with frustrated, polyphonic groans, he raked his claws into the concrete, carving out sparking furrows with which he dragged himself forward, foot by foot, following behind the desperate, dying mercenary.

Faster! he screamed at himself. Faster!

Little swirls of imaginary light scribbled around Zelen’s claws, giving him even more strength than he already had. The transformee charged into a wall, knowing the fence lay on the other side. It itched like hell, but with the help of the light-swirls, he pushed through with ease.

Behind, he heard growls, shrieks, and ravenous chittering.

“Go!” Zelen yelled, lurching out of the way.

He had to make it, otherwise… Zelen had given up his humanity for nothing.

Nitsky’s diminutive figure raced through the opening. The aerostat was in sight.

You can make it, Zelen thought, thrust himself in the opposite direction.

He had monsters to deal with.

The gardens and the zoo were alive with death, drawn by Zelen’s words. Melted, twitching limbs prowled between mutant trees, treading past fallen corpses and their arresting fungal blooms. Paws and hooves and broken fingers crawled along the earth, squeezing against one another in their race toward the towering transformee. Flesh stuck to flesh as the creatures merged together like puzzle pieces snapping in place. Zombie heads screamed atop shambling mounds as three primeval creatures coalesced into being. They were deathly behemoths; like boulders with legs.

If the plague was a sower of death, these shamblers were its gruesome harvest. And they yearned to be eaten.

To be loved.

The creatures charged at him. Scattered traces of eyes glint in the airport’s dying lights and the flames of President Paldin’s war.

The three great shamblers roared, and Zelen roared right back at them.

“Come and get me, you bastards!”

Flesh met flesh.

Zelen could feel the jumbled mash of animal bodies merge into him. His awareness expanded into them. His glory subsumed them into itself. He felt paws and toes and tails and limbs as if they were own; he felt them curdle and soften as they lost cohesion and melted into him in a great tide of change that crested over his head, smoothing it out as it swelled into a snout and sealed away Dr. Slavaa’s final human breath. New pairs of eyes blinked into being, and he saw the world like never before. He saw the magic in the air, the weaves of soaring wyrms blazing across the sky like shooting stars, a thing he’d never known. He saw sound and heat; the electromagnetic; the infrared. His fungal body soaked up the shamblers, and he grew and grew.

Then, a voice spoke to him, a voice that was not a voice, a voice that was ancient when time was still in its womb, a faraway voice, aching and heartbroken that sieved through the spatial weave to find him and know him and beseech him to make the pain go away.

Zelen had awakened, and—now awake—he could hear, and could a wyrm have sobbed, Zelen would have wept.

— — —

Nistky Pobosiek slammed the door shut behind him as he stumbled into the aerostat’s cabin. Through a window, he saw the control tower of Stovolsk International Airport explode in fire and shrapnel from the impact of an artillery round. He lost balance as the aerostat took flight, his aching knees pressing down into the plastic carpeting beneath him.

His heart ran sprints inside his chest, beating fast enough to burst.

Darkness crept into the edges of his vision. Gasping for breath, he held up the battered plastic case. He tried to say, “Deliver this,” but the words came out “Deliver us”. A moment later, he fell unconscious. The last thing he knew was the touch of panicked hands trying to reach out to help him.

He did not wake up again.

— — —

The aerostat soared high, bound for Elpeck.

Down below, in Stolovsk, a new wyrm joined the Night’s chorus, crying out for justice that he would almost surely never know.