Birds of Paradise by Oliver Langmead (read any book .TXT) 📗

greenhouse glass lays a simulacrum of paradise so dazzling that Adam does not let his gaze linger long upon it. To be absorbed by the sight of it would be to invite corrupted memories he knows would overwhelm him. Leaning over the side of the boat, he sees himself reflected in the waters instead: a void of deeper darkness in the inky blackness.

The folds of Crab’s face shadow his eyes completely, even as he steers the boat closer to the light of the greenhouse. He navigates around the crystalline construction’s edge until he comes to a long section that looks like any other, and there he cuts the engine. Leaning over, he runs his coarse fingers down a length of the metal frame until they come to a cross-section between four panes, which rests just beneath the surface. “Right there,” he says. “I wouldn’t have noticed it if it weren’t for the floods. You can see it better from the inside.”

Leaning out, Adam tries to see the metal cross-section through the thick panes of the glass. The grass beyond the shatter-shard windows is a rich, healthy green, and blades brush up against the edge, almost hiding the outer shell completely; but there, between them, Adam sees the metal cross-section and the water dripping through it. The hole must be the size of a pinprick, he thinks – the result of a shoddy weld, revealed by the waters. It’s not much of a weakness.

“What do you reckon?” rumbles Crab.

Beyond the glass, some of the garden’s occupants are gathering. They stand upon the grassy hillside rise, some now wearing pieces of clothing, and others bearing rifles. For the first time since meeting them, Adam takes the time to really see them. He notices their withered flesh, their manicured hands and their fake tans, and he notices their expensive jewellery, and shining fake teeth, and plucked brows, and he notices how clean they are, as if they have scrubbed the outer world from themselves. There is no sign of Frank Sinclair.

“Think you can get through?” Adam asks.

Unzipping his boiler suit, Crab shrugs it from his shoulders. His skin really does look like a map of a mountain range, Adam thinks, and when Crab slips into the waters, which rise up his chest, he becomes an island. Exploring the greenhouse frame with his fingers, Crab hums to himself: a low rumble that sounds like the movements of the inner Earth. Then the skin of his arms begins to shift. It splits tectonically into hard plates, cracking into continents as he applies pressure against the frame. The metal groans, and the glass panes around it shudder, but it remains strong, resisting him. His palms divide, cracking as he forces the strength of a mountain against the weakness in the vault, becoming jagged as his hands crush into claws. The hum in his throat deepens into an earth-shake rumble as his features shift, hardening and splitting, rocky mandibles emerging. His dark eyes gleam in the fissures of his face, and the black waters splash over him, and the greenhouse frame moans, bubbles rising as it slowly twists inwards.

There is panic among the garden’s occupants. They raise their rifles.

The waters around Crab churn as he tears into the greenhouse.

A gap emerges large enough for the floods to start rushing through, and they splash, oily and tainted across the pristine grasses. The tip of one of Crab’s claws scrapes inside and the first shots from the garden’s occupants ring out, ricocheting from the reinforced glass.

Adam finds himself moving automatically; opening his satchel and hauling his gun belts over his shoulders as Crab forces both of his claws into the gap, the metal screeching as he applies colossal pressure into widening it. The waters swirl around him now, flecked white as they pour into the greenhouse.

More bullets smack into the gap, but those that meet Crab’s claws only serve to crack his stony flesh. The greenhouse frame shakes, screeching as Crab shreds it, and then the plates of glass to either side of him finally twist away. The floods gush around him as he grinds himself inside.

Claws raised to his face, Crab shields himself from the gunfire aimed at him.

The waters must be freezing cold, Adam knows, but he does not feel it. The gap torn in the greenhouse wall is barely large enough for him to squeeze through, but he forces himself inside.

Then he is wading through the sodden grasses, and the greenery almost overwhelms him. There are the trees, and the flowers, and all the brilliant colours he remembers of paradise, inviting him to remember them, inviting him to forget about everything else – all those dark years spent beyond the garden. There are waters lapping at his legs, and bright mirrored sunshine being reflected upon him, and bees and wasps buzz as they flicker past. Except those aren’t bees and wasps at all. They are bullets, and Adam is being shot at.

Rising from the waters, Adam tends to the garden.

The pistols feel so familiar in his hands that he barely needs to concentrate on taking shots. First, he fires upon those bearing rifles. Adam does not miss because he does not know how to miss; each shot is a mechanical process that his hands know better than he does.

Skulls shatter, spraying blood and bone across the rich grasses.

There is yelling, and screaming, and the stink of gunpowder, and bodies tumble.

When all eight pistols are spent, Adam recharges them automatically: powder, ball, ramrod. Reloaded, he cuts down those foolish enough to have not run from him.

Advancing to the apex of the hill, Adam expends the last of his pistols once more and waits a while, searching the greenhouse for movement. There is some in the distance, but everybody around him is dead. This time, when Adam reloads, there is no urgency.

Mounting the hill alongside him, Crab looks human again. There are welts across his skin where bullets struck him, but none have drawn blood. “You get that