▪︎ Chapter 110 ▪︎ Artificial Suns

Deep within the Diverged Lands, tens of miles from Oakridge, the forest had split open.

The sinkhole stretched for miles, less a hole than an enormous wound carved into the landscape. 

Its slopes descended so far that moonlight failed to reveal the bottom, leaving only an expanse of darkness beneath broken shelves of stone and trees clinging precariously to the walls. 

Some had grown at strange angles after the earth beneath them shifted; others had already fallen and disappeared into the depths.

From that darkness, animals poured upward.

A bear scrambled over the edge and charged into the forest. 

It was enormous, nearly fifteen feet tall if it had bothered to rear onto its hind legs, but there was nothing ponderous about its movements. 

Its paws struck the ground in frantic succession before it vanished between the trees, joining countless other creatures already racing in the same direction.

More followed. Giant spiders climbed effortlessly over the broken stone, some only several feet tall while others towered above the surrounding undergrowth. 

Deer bounded up slopes that should have forced them to slow. Wolves, boars, large cats and animals less immediately recognizable emerged beside one another without fighting, while snakes flowed between their legs and insects spilled through every available opening.

Then came the birds.

The first flock erupted from the darkness and climbed sharply over the sinkhole, wings beating hard enough to disturb branches beneath them. 

Some possessed wingspans approaching thirty feet. 

Others were larger still, including one enormous bird that spread nearly forty feet of feathered wings before catching the air and banking toward the distant glow beyond the forest.

Oakridge.

Every creature moved toward Oakridge.

Predators ran beside prey without so much as turning their heads. Wolves ignored deer close enough to bite. Bears charged among animals they might ordinarily have attacked. 

Smaller creatures risked being crushed beneath larger ones rather than deviating from the direction in which they were traveling.

Nothing hunted. Nothing fed. Nothing fought.

The sinkhole continued disgorging them in a seemingly endless stream, as though the darkness beneath the earth possessed more life than could possibly have fit inside it.

Then something changed.

The darkness moved.

Not something within it. The darkness itself seemed to churn, its surface shifting where no surface should have existed. 

Animals continued scrambling upward around the disturbance, but the rock beneath them began to tremble. 

Pebbles broke loose first, followed by larger pieces that bounced down the slopes before disappearing below.

Something immense was climbing.

A long foreleg emerged from the blackness.

It extended more than eighty feet.

The limb unfolded with unsettling precision before its sharpened end struck the sloping wall. 

Stone fractured beneath the point as it drove several feet into the earth, anchoring itself there. 

Another leg appeared farther along the darkness, followed by another, each one long enough to span distances that would have required several strides from even the largest animals already fleeing the pit.

The creature hauled itself upward.

Calling it a spider was only possible because Earth possessed no closer comparison.

Its body followed the broad structure of an arachnid, supported by long segmented legs that narrowed into natural spearpoints, but the similarities deteriorated the longer one looked. 

Dozens of eyes crowded across its forward body, each glowing a cold green in the darkness. 

Some were relatively small against its enormous frame; others were massive glossy structures that shifted independently, tracking the creatures scrambling around it and the forest above.

Beneath those eyes opened a mouth far too large for any spider.

Rows of fangs filled it.

They layered inward through the gaping maw, some curved and others nearly straight, forming a forest of pale points around a throat large enough to swallow an automobile. 

The mouth opened briefly as the creature climbed, yet no roar or screech emerged from it.

Another leg found purchase.

Then another.

The enormous body rose higher.

Animals continued fleeing around it, barely acknowledging the thing emerging among them. 

A deer leapt across one of its partially exposed legs. Several wolves passed beneath its body. 

Spiders only a fraction of its size climbed alongside it before disappearing over the lip of the sinkhole.

Higher still.

Its body finally cleared the edge.

The creature stood nearly a hundred feet tall.

Many of the surrounding trees reached only portions of its legs, their canopies brushing against the segmented limbs while the creature's central body passed above them. 

It should have seemed clumsy at that scale. It should have shaken the ground with every movement and announced itself from miles away.

Instead, it settled onto the earth with disturbing grace.

Then the darkness beneath it receded.

The change was immediate enough to be unmistakable. 

The blackness filling the depths of the sinkhole contracted downward as though something had withdrawn it, revealing shelves of stone and portions of the pit that had been completely obscured moments earlier.

At the same time, the flood of animals stopped.

There was no gradual thinning. No final handful climbing after the rest.

One moment, creatures were pouring from the depths in an unbroken stream.

The next, there were none.

Only the animals already outside remained, and they continued rushing toward Oakridge without hesitation.

The enormous spiderlike creature paused at the rim.

Its many green eyes shifted independently for several seconds before, almost simultaneously, they oriented in the same direction.

Toward the distant city.

Then it moved.

Despite its size, the creature was deceptively quiet. 

Its sharpened legs penetrated the soil with muted impacts, sinking deeply enough to support its tremendous weight before pulling free with scarcely more than the sound of displaced earth. 

Its body flowed between them with smooth, economical movements, each stride carrying it an enormous distance.

The forest did not stop it.

Trees standing between its legs survived untouched. Those directly in its path did not. 

A foreleg pierced through one trunk and split it apart before the creature continued forward, while another tree snapped beneath the underside of its body.

A massive bear crossed beneath it.

One pointed leg descended.

The sharpened limb passed completely through the bear and buried itself in the earth below.

The animal died instantly, its body remaining impaled for a moment as the leg lifted again before sliding free and tumbling into the undergrowth.

The creature never looked down.

It stepped through wolves, deer and smaller animals whenever they happened to cross beneath it. 

Whatever relationship existed between the thing and the Tide did not appear to include concern for the creatures already rushing ahead.

Oakridge glowed faintly in the distance, tens of miles beyond the forest.

The spiderlike creature continued toward it.

───

Across the sea, in another country, a city had already been lost.

Corpses lay strewn across streets that had once carried millions of ordinary journeys. 

Some remained inside vehicles crushed together during the first waves of panic. 

Others covered sidewalks, intersections and the entrances to buildings where crowds had attempted to force their way inside.

Large animals fed openly among them.

A bear tore into a body beside an overturned bus, scarcely lifting its head as wolves passed nearby. 

Several enormous birds fought over corpses in the center of an intersection, their wings striking abandoned cars whenever they spread them. 

Giant spiders crawled over building facades and disappeared through shattered windows, while smaller creatures moved through storefronts and alleys.

The defenders had lasted only a few hours.

They had tried.

Soldiers established firing positions along major roads. Police created barricades wherever they could. 

Armed civilians joined them, firing from windows and rooftops while ammunition was distributed from whatever local stockpiles remained accessible after the Second Divergence.

It hadn't been enough.

The country had spent the weeks following the First Divergence making enemies of the supernatural creatures that had appeared within its borders. 

Vampires had been hunted, or forced into hiding. Werewolf packs had been treated as threats before many had ever committed a crime. 

Some fought back, some died, and many simply fled.

By the time the Second Divergence tore apart the world's geography, few remained willing to stand beside the authorities who had pursued them.

When the Tide came, humans largely stood alone.

The outer defenses collapsed first. 

Soldiers retreated toward the city, but the animals followed faster than defensive lines could be reconstructed. 

Once meaningful numbers entered the streets, every problem fed another.

People fled from creatures faster than they were.

Cars filled the roads until collisions made driving impossible. 

Drivers abandoned them and ran, creating crowds that attracted still more attention. 

Gunfire brought animals toward anyone attempting to defend themselves, and screams brought others. 

A person might kill one wolf only to attract three more with the gunshots.

A vicious cycle consumed district after district.

The city's population hadn't been annihilated. 

Tens of thousands remained alive, perhaps more, hidden in basements, reinforced buildings, maintenance spaces and whatever other places the Tide hadn't yet penetrated.

But tens of thousands were already dead.

That number climbed with every passing minute.

There was no force available that could retake the city.

No nearby army could simply drive along a highway to reinforce it. The highways no longer connected the places they once had. 

New forests, rivers, mountains and unknown terrain filled the spaces between surviving pieces of the old world. 

Moving substantial numbers of troops required routes that had not yet been surveyed, much less secured.

Even if reinforcements could somehow have arrived, supplying them was another problem entirely.

The city had become a concentration point for the Tide.

And someone had made a decision.

High above the clouds, an aircraft crossed the night sky.

It flew far above the altitude at which even the largest Diverged birds had been observed operating. From there, the city below looked almost peaceful.

Parts of it still had electricity.

Whole neighborhoods remained illuminated, their streets glowing beneath lamps that had somehow continued functioning despite the impossible geography created by the Second Divergence. 

Other districts were black. Fires burned across several portions of the city, their orange light flickering through columns of smoke.

The pilot stared down at it.

He had seen the reconnaissance imagery before takeoff. 

He had listened to the final transmissions from defensive positions as one after another stopped responding. He knew what moved through those streets.

He also knew there were survivors.

No one had hidden that fact from him.

Thousands of people remained alive below.

Perhaps tens of thousands.

The city was not empty.

That was what made the order what it was.

The Tide had already concentrated an enormous number of creatures inside the urban area. 

If those animals eventually moved onward, they could spread toward whatever settlements remained reachable. 

Conventional forces couldn't clear them. Reinforcements couldn't arrive in sufficient numbers. 

An evacuation large enough to remove the survivors was impossible under current conditions.

The aircraft continued toward its release point.

The pilot swallowed.

He tried to remember the city as something other than reconnaissance photographs filled with bodies.

He had been there once, years ago.

He remembered traffic.

That was what came to him.

Traffic, of all things.

He remembered sitting in a taxi barely moving through a crowded street, irritated because he was going to be late. People had filled the sidewalks. Restaurants had been open. 

Someone had been playing music loudly enough that he could hear it through the car window.

He had thought the city was too crowded.

Now he would have given almost anything to see that traffic again.

The order came through.

The pilot closed his eyes for less than a second, opened them and moved his hands across the controls.

The weapon released.

Immediately, the aircraft began its escape maneuver.

The bomb fell toward the city.

For several seconds, there was nothing remarkable about its descent. It was merely a dark object dropping through darker sky, accelerating toward the lights below.

The city grew beneath it.

Buildings became more distinct. Roads appeared as glowing lines between them. Fires marked neighborhoods already devastated by the Tide.

Somewhere down there, people were still hiding.

Perhaps some heard the aircraft.

Perhaps they didn't.

The bomb continued downward.

Then night vanished.

A flash illuminated the world so completely that, for an instant, darkness ceased to exist.

The fireball expanded through the city with terrifying speed. 

Buildings near the center disappeared inside incandescent light before there was time for them to visibly collapse. 

Streets, animals, vehicles and people vanished together beneath an expanding sphere of heat.

The fire rose.

Thousands of feet.

Then tens of thousands.

A towering column climbed behind it, pulling smoke, debris and vaporized material into the sky.

Heat raced beyond the central destruction. 

Buildings farther from the detonation ignited before the pressure wave reached them, windows flashing into fragments while anything exposed in the streets was burned.

Then the blast arrived.

Entire structures folded.

Vehicles tumbled.

Trees beyond the city bent and snapped in succession as the pressure front crossed the surrounding landscape. 

Animals that had survived the thermal pulse were hurled against buildings, crushed beneath debris or swept away.

The aircraft was already far from the detonation, yet the pressure eventually reached it.

The plane vibrated violently.

The pilot tightened his grip and maintained course.

Behind him, the city disappeared beneath fire and rising smoke.

For a few moments, the detonation resembled a star born upon the surface of the Earth, impossibly bright against the night.

Then the brilliance began to fade.

The pilot didn't turn around again.

The city had already fallen before he arrived.

That was the justification.

The government had not destroyed a functioning city to kill animals. 

It had destroyed a place its military believed it could no longer recover, filled with a concentration of creatures that might otherwise move outward and kill still more people.

The strike might save another city.

Perhaps several.

The pilot understood the calculation.

Understanding it didn't make the people still hiding below any less dead.

Far away, beyond the horizon, another aircraft reached another target.

Another flash illuminated the night.

The circumstances there were similar. A city had lost its perimeter. The Tide had entered in overwhelming numbers. 

Local forces had collapsed, and the fragmented geography of the post-Divergence world made conventional reinforcement effectively impossible.

A second artificial sun rose.

Then, elsewhere across the country, another.

The decision had not been made casually, nor was every threatened city marked for destruction. 

Places still capable of defending themselves continued fighting. 

Cities where the Tide had not penetrated deeply were reinforced with whatever resources could still be moved.

But once a population center was judged irretrievably lost, the enormous concentration of Diverged wildlife inside it transformed the ruins into a target.

The policy became brutally simple.

Do not allow the Tide to move onward.

If the city could no longer be saved, destroy the creatures gathered within it before they dispersed.

The country had spent weeks making vampires and werewolves unwelcome. 

Now, when physical endurance mattered more than ammunition and when individual supernatural fighters could hold ground that entire human units struggled to defend, there were too few of them left to matter on a national scale.

There were humans, finite ammunition and distances that no longer obeyed the infrastructure built across them.

When those failed, there was nuclear fire.

Another city vanished beneath light.

Farther along the coast, a separate defensive command received confirmation of the detonation and marked the location on a map. 

Officers immediately returned their attention to their own perimeter. 

They had no time to mourn a city hundreds of miles away when their own defensive lines were beginning to bend.

Across the country, flashes appeared intermittently through the night.

Each one represented a decision that would have been almost unimaginable weeks earlier.

Each destroyed enormous numbers of the Tide.

Each killed humans who had survived everything before it.

And each was made in the hope that somewhere beyond the blast radius, there would be fewer animals left to reach the next population center.

───

Across the sea, none of those artificial suns touched the night above Oakridge.

The Unified Sovereignties remained separated from those distant detonations by an ocean and by a world whose distances had become vastly greater than they had been days earlier. 

Oakridge had its own battle, its own defensive lines, and its own soldiers trying to survive until morning.

Tens of miles outside the city, the enormous sinkhole sat silent.

The flood of animals had ended.

No new creatures climbed from its depths. 

The darkness that had churned inside had receded, leaving only the immense depression and the tracks of countless animals radiating away from it.

Far ahead, the Tide continued toward Oakridge.

And behind much of it walked something else.

The nearly hundred-foot spiderlike creature passed through the forest with unsettling quiet.

Its many green eyes remained oriented toward the distant glow of the city while its sharpened legs repeatedly entered and withdrew from the earth.

A tree several meters thick stood directly in its path.

One foreleg pierced through the trunk.

The creature continued moving, and the tree split under the force before toppling behind it. 

Smaller animals scattered around its feet, though several failed to move quickly enough and were impaled or crushed without the creature ever acknowledging them.

Its stride remained unhurried.

There was no frantic desperation in its movement like there had been among the animals emerging from the sinkhole. 

It did not appear afraid of anything behind it, nor did it rush as though compelled to reach Oakridge as quickly as possible.

It simply knew where it was going.

The city's glow reflected faintly across dozens of green eyes.

Miles ahead, soldiers continued firing.

Vampires carved their way deeper into the Tide.

Werewolves rested before returning to the fight.

None of them knew that the stream of animals from the sinkhole had stopped.

None knew what had emerged last.

And beneath the moonlit canopy, nearly a hundred feet of spiderlike creature continued steadily toward Oakridge.