Free The New Weird by Jeff VanderMeer, Ann VanderMeer

the feather of white smoke rise from the barrel, and a second later heard the sound of the shot across the valley.
    The contest had begun.
    He looked up at the twin towers of Popolac and Podujevo. Heads in the clouds ― well almost. They practically stretched to touch the sky. It was an awesome sight, a breath-stopping, sleep-stabbing sight. Two cities swaying and writhing and preparing to take their first steps towards each other in this ritual battle.
    Of the two, Podujevo seemed the less stable. There was a slight hesitation as the city raised its left leg to begin its march. Nothing serious, just a little difficulty in coordinating hip and thigh muscles. A couple of steps and the city would find its rhythm; a couple more and its inhabitants would be moving as one creature, one perfect giant set to match its grace and power against its mirror-image.
    The gunshot had sent flurries of birds up from the trees that banked the hidden valley. They rose up in celebration of the great contest, chattering their excitement as they swooped over the stamping-ground.

    "Did you hear a shot?" asked Judd.
    Mick nodded.
    "Military exercises.?" Judd's smile had broadened. He could see the headlines already ― exclusive reports of secret maneuvers in the depths of the Yugoslavian countryside. Russian tanks perhaps, tactical exercises being held out of the West's prying sight. With luck, he would be the carrier of this news.
    Boom.
    Boom.
    There were birds in the air. The thunder was louder now.
    It did sound like guns.
    "It's over the next ridge." said Judd.
    "I don't think we should go any further."
    "I have to see."
    "I don't. We're not supposed to be here."
    "I don't see any signs."
    "They'll cart us away; deport us ― I don't know ― I just think ― "
    Boom.
    "I've got to see."
    The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the screaming started.

    Podujevo was screaming: a death-cry. Someone buried in the weak flank had died of the strain, and had begun a chain of decay in the system. One man loosed his neighbor and that neighbor loosed his, spreading a cancer of chaos through the body of the city. The coherence of the towering structure deteriorated with terrifying rapidity as the failure of one part of the anatomy put unendurable pressure on the other.
    The masterpiece that the good citizens of Podujevo had constructed of their own flesh and blood tottered and then ― a dynamited skyscraper, it began to fall.
    The broken flank spewed citizens like a slashed artery spitting blood. Then, with a graceful sloth that made the agonies of the citizens all the more horrible, it bowed towards the earth, all its limbs dissembling as it fell.
    The huge head, that had brushed the clouds so recently, was flung back on its thick neck. Ten thousand mouths spoke a single scream for its vast mouth, a wordless, infinitely pitiable appeal to the sky. A howl of loss, a howl of anticipation, a howl of puzzlement. How, that scream demanded, could the day of days end like this, in a welter of falling bodies?

    "Did you hear that?"
    It was unmistakably human, though almost deafeningly loud. Judd's stomach convulsed. He looked across at Mick, who was as white as a sheet.
    Judd stopped the car.
    "No," said Mick.
    "Listen ― for Christ's sake ― "
    The din of dying moans, appeals and imprecations flooded the air. It was very close.
    "We've got to go on now," Mick implored.
    Judd shook his head. He was prepared for some military spectacle ― all the Russian army massed over the next hill ― but that noise in his ears was the noise of human flesh ― too human for words. It reminded him of his childhood imaginings of Hell; the endless, unspeakable torments his mother had threatened him with if he failed to embrace Christ. It was a terror he'd forgotten for twenty years. But suddenly, here it was again, freshfaced. Maybe the pit itself gaped just over the next horizon, with his mother standing at its lip, inviting him to taste its punishments.
    "If you