Free Furnace 4 - Fugitives by Alexander Gordon Smith

I studied the beast the more I realised that although it may once have been human, it was something much worse now. Its hands were huge, far too big for its arms, and swollen into clubs. There was something wrong with its bones, jutting up as if it was wearing a suit of armour beneath its flesh. And between the blades I could see its muscles moving, as though there were snakes in there desperately trying to find a way out.
    Its face, though, was the most horrific thing about it. Not because it was disfigured, or because it was unrecognisably alien, but because it was that of a child – swollen, yes, and bruised, but a kid’s nonetheless, nine, maybe ten. It swivelled on those giant shoulders, wearing an infant grin so permanent that it could have been painted on. Nectar dripped from that grin as though a tap had been turned on inside its mouth, splashing down the front of its body and leaving a trail on the tiles.
    The creature studied us all with eyes that flashed gunmetal grey. Beside me the Skull fired again, the bullet thudding into the berserker’s chest hard enough to rock it backwards. The creature peered down at the wound more from curiosity than with any sign of pain, and the skin around the ragged hole began to pulse black, revealing a network of veins. In seconds it was sealed by a plug of nectar, the berserker flexing its grotesque muscles and grinning at me with that mannequin’s smile.
    It laughed, a giggle that danced up my spine. There was no warmth in that laugh, no sympathy, only madness and cruelty.
    ‘Run,’ I yelled, but before the word had even left my mouth the berserker was on the move, covering a quarter of the platform in one bound. With another cackle of delight it swiped Zee out of the way, sending him flying over the ledge onto the rails below, wrapping its other hand around my head and neck. I felt my tendons stretch to breaking point as it lifted me off the ground, only half noticing that Simon was gripped in its other fist.
    The berserker pulled us closer, its jaws distending impossibly wide like a snake preparing to devour its prey. Its whole face seemed to stretch with the movement, its eyes drooping as the skin beneath them was pulled down, its cheeks almost tearing with the effort. Inside its maw were blunt blocks of rotten enamel that had once been teeth, and its breath smelt like the charnel room inside Furnace, like it was engulfing me with death.
    Then it leant forward and sank those teeth into my neck.
    My vision sparked, black explosions that slowly erased the creature and the platform from view. The berserker pulled free its barbed teeth, and the last thing I saw was its eyes, pale silver and filled with black tears.
    Then the darkness swallowed me.

Visions
    The first thing I realised was that I was hanging in midair, a hundred metres or more above the earth. And the first thing I saw was a building.
    It rose from a burning city, silhouetted against a sky that was so cloudy and so dark it could have been forged from obsidian. Smoke roiled against the encroaching night, and in those coiling tendrils I saw shapes – twisted bodies that swarmed over the streets below, that leapt effortlessly from rooftop to rooftop, and that crouched in dark corners gnawing on hidden feasts. Every time I tried to focus on one of those forms it vanished, becoming smoke once again.
    The building was alight as well, smoke pouring up from the windows like inverted waterfalls. I studied it, trying to work out where I had seen it before. It was an office block, similar to all the rest – a tombstone of concrete and glass that rose maybe forty, fifty storeys from the inferno at its feet. Crowning the structure was a short four-sided spire, like a pyramid, although against the smoke-stained, blood-reddened sky it looked more like a pyre.
    I tried to breathe but hot air, devoid of oxygen, filled my lungs. I struggled, but I couldn’t move. Somewhere, behind the illusion of the city, I could still see