VERMyN part 5: Salvation

FIVE: SALVATION
Two hundred and twenty three days later…
Snow falls slowly when there is no wind. Gravity is patient and so is the ground waiting below. People, however, are not.
The streets were sick with traffic as the GGX Season Premiere was about to begin. With the first ever Pregnant Fencing match set as the grand finale for the night, the former Global Gladiators stadium that sat across the street from MediaNop Tower was filled to the brim, inside and out.
Across the city to the north, the mansion of Syd Sylver was large and new. Having been completed just a month ago, he was finally settled in. Finally truly at home.
The site for the mansion replaced the cemetery that had long been unused. The caskets and tombstones were carried in trucks out of the city on their way to the landfill below the south side where they’d be incinerated. There were no protests. The last to have been buried in the overcrowded underground were set vertically so as to save space and plans had been made to remove and reset the caskets all on end, until the due process for disposal of human remains was eliminated.
The incinerator was much more practical.
There were three construction crews working all hours to complete Syd’s mansion before the dead of winter. For its massive size, it was up in record timing. The grounds would take more time, but that could wait until spring came and the earth softened. Then Syd would have his garden, his fountain, his mirror pools and his statues. The hedge maze for the back still needed designing, but he would get to that eventually. For now, the gate that surrounded his property would do and once he could, he would have the ivy planted to obscure the view of outsiders, though the surveillance cameras and gun turrets diverted their attention anyway.
The main floor inside was all diamond checkered black and white. Long red curtains covered the floor to ceiling windows. Golden chandeliers hung from the ceiling with cross-like ornamentation holding the candle-flame-shaped bulbs of light.
Dinner was set up for Syd Sylver in his living room. He wanted to keep Chef Benicio alive long enough to see the extravaganza come to conclusion, but he was too hungry. Going on a week almost, Benicio looked more and more pale with each limb lost until his skin was almost as white as Syd’s. The game died two days ago, but Syd made sure to have his slaves save every last bit of meat they could. They sliced him down the middle of the chest and went in for the breast and rib meat as careful as doctors with Syd watching over them.
There were six slaves, each a gift from the Serpent and each adjusted to his specifications. Thirteen years of age, their skin was bleached white and their hair follicles were destroyed to keep them smooth all over. They were born boys, but Syd had that taken care of too. Now there was only a slight hole, hardly even visible, where their urine came from. Their tongues were taken, all except one, and over their faces they wore masks of black human skulls always. They never strayed from his side and took all commands dead serious.
They were his hands after all and Syd was good to them because they were good to him. They never erred and so punishment was never in need of consideration.
And they took care of Kongo the Dog-E-Tard as well. Throughout the mansion, along the ceiling, a canopy of ropes and branchlike structures made the perfect mode of transportation between the rooms for him. Syd’s slaves took enjoyment in them, though they couldn’t show it, and eventually the Dog-E-Tard forgot his days in the cage and found love for Syd and the slaves through gratitude for his vast playground.
Syd Sylver sat upright in his throne chair made of endangered redwood tree. He wore his silver suit, the one he only ever wore to special occasions. Under the light it sparkled everywhere and the light rippled across him as he moved. The suit was adjusted at the forearms where the sleeves were cut back halfway.
The doctors were able to save his arms at just below the elbow. The elbow was important. By saving that joint it left them with only the wrist and other finger digits to manufacture replacements. Those they had come up with so far were nowhere near what they would need to be to appease him, so instead he went with prosthetics more along the line of mannequin. They were white and the hands, frozen in stiff position, were set so that he could interlock them in front of him.
His hair was a little longer on top and he enjoyed how it fluffed and flipped back at the front. It was still cropped close around his ears and the back of his head. The color was still platinum and he made sure every few days to have the roots dyed to keep them that way.
Two of the slaves took turns feeding Syd while three stood behind him watching him eat. The sixth came back into the room, holding loosely to Kongo’s neck leash, just in time for the show to start.
They watched in silence as Syd thought about everyone he’d never see again outside of this final television appearance. Chev Mason: MediaNop’s VP. Patrick Aswell: the founder of Dog-E-Tards. Laredo Hanshi: the human skin fashion designer and creator of SapeSkin. Jeff Randall: News Minute Anchor and host of Behind the Crime. Nick the Stick, Debalish, Harvey Lee, but most of all Ebenezer. This was it for them all. This was the end and every end couldn’t help but leave opening for a new beginning.
Two hours later, during the commercial break and before the first ever Pregnant Fencing match, Syd Sylver left his dining room followed by his six pale black skulled boys. At the elevator to his viewing deck tower, the highest point in his mansion, Syd stopped and held out his arms. The slaves removed his prosthetics, and he walked into his self activating elevator only once the retinal scan approved him.
The elevator had only one stop and it moved on his own once he stepped inside, rising up slowly to the top of his viewing deck, the one place within the mansion that only he could go. Inside the elevator, mirrors surrounded him, replicating Syd’s image into millions. Staring into his own eyes, the world changed as the entity entered it.
“My hands,” spoke Syd to his reflection as the form wafted away, becoming his savior. The mammoth head replaced his face, the smooth pale boney frame became his body and crawling all over it like spiders were the millions of hands, ever moving. “I call upon you MAMOTH. Together we will witness the destruction of Our city so that We may rebuild in its place Our empire.”
The ceiling to the elevator opened once they got to the top and the image of Millions disappeared as the floor pushed up, raising Syd into the cleared room. The ceiling was low and there was nothing within. Surrounding the room were windows and Syd stepped forward to them, to face MediaNop Tower. The sun was bright. The clouds had cleared as Syd knew they would. The snow was settled and waiting.
“Many die today at Our hands. It is for Us that their souls are extinguished. We will breath in their death through Our nostrils and they will never escape the prison of Our body.”
Behind him Syd could feel the comforting breath on the back of his neck. It was warm and it hugged him where his skin was exposed. Syd raised his arms and once again he could feel his hands. They were there as they were before, replaced by Millions.
Syd Sylver breathed in deep, closing his eyes for the inhale and then opening them wide for the exhale as he fluttered his hands to ignite the first sound of his symphony.
It was exactly 3:00 p.m.
X X X X X
At exactly 3:00 p.m., the same time the starting bell of the Pregnant Fencing match rang, two buses crashed into the two west facing corners of MediaNop Tower. The wave of fire came from not only the gas tanks, but also the hidden tanks of prepared explosives within the buses.
Craters etched out of the Northwest and Southwest corners of the building, but it was the third explosion, set in place well in advance at the West end's foundation, that began the tower’s timber.
Fireballs flipped cars and imploded windows on all neighboring buildings. Those barely within reach became bald and deformed, while those well within reach metamorphosed to ash. It rushed over all like tsunami waves. The steel and concrete buildings crumbled away while people both within and without the building melted to nothing instantaneously. Souls ejected their bodies and were cursed with the best view to the horror possible.
All became soot and broken down matter. The material of everything whittled away to its finest.
Inside the tower, the first four floors were extinguished and those in the middle and the top felt the floor rise and fall with a boom. They were hopeful until the floor began to tilt. The spire at the top leaned slightly until the angle became dramatic and the tip of MediaNop Tower pointed west as the building slowly creaked away from its erection.
Desks slid and the few workers inside wobbled to keep balance. The angle increased and all the furniture and equipment skidded with screeches that accelerated in volume as the angle became more and more severe. The Med-center, the offices, the studios, the dressing rooms, the stages and sets tumbled, crumbling those within their trajectory.
From far away, people heard the explosions and looked to see. They gasped in horror, but they waited for the building to fall level onto the stadium to really scream.
The sideways crashing of the building’s thick floor slabs pummeled the roof of the stadium, cutting right through, making portions of people flat instantaneously. Guts sneezed through compressed bodies, tossing innards easily. Sheets of glass sliced through some before squishing them flat. All within came to death and their pieces and organs joined the party of an all inclusive end.
The screaming reached the brink of human capability, but was nothing in comparison to the colossally immortal sounds of metal, glass and concrete colliding with the terrible, but patient, speed of gravity.
And for a moment there was no sound.
All along with each other, the rich, the poor, the old and young, and all in between extinguished just as quick and mercilessly as any other. Any religion or belief in God or higher power held no reprieve or hope for the destruction of so many so fast. Male and female alike crumbled into dissolve simply. Each race and ethnicity was represented and each one combusted equally.
Death proved wholeheartedly that it has no prejudice. Without distinction, the lives of thousands suffered massive eviction.
The rubble couldn’t settle onto the bodies it claimed before more explosions within the stadium ignited and what hadn’t already collapsed. Confusion raised terror on the streets as everyone lucky enough to still be alive ran as far as possible away from the bubbling apocalypse behind them.
Burning corpses lay amongst burning people that gurgled and crawled the best they could to separate themselves, to escape that similar fate. Fires burned in scattered clusters and muffled screams could be heard, but never located.
The rest of the tower that didn’t fall over the stadium instead fell on the building behind it. The top spire sliced straight through another skyscraper, trailing a scar into it before the rest of the building crashed into its glass and floors, sending the second one off balance like a domino.
People within this building, all their work qualms and relationship jitters, divorces, runaway children, health problems and all, saw it happen and suddenly, everyone was rushing for whatever little bit of time they could scrounge. Terminally ill or not, aged and dying or young and vibrant, all scrambled for the exits. People bulldozed through each other, trampled some beneath and tore others out of their way for the door. The weight of the building thrashed through the office floors and some who didn’t even know they were about to lose their life did in calm ignorance.
The clatter took long to settle and the dust of fine concrete, plastic, paper and humanity never really would.
Powder rose like smoke from the monstrous dying entities of glass and mortar. It grew up and out taking over air everywhere like wildfire to dry grass. People watched from blocks away, stuck. Their eyes became the all of their bodies as they watched something so far beyond their mental capacity they couldn’t hope to maintain, understand or control. They stayed still and stunned until the creeping dust and floating debris made it obviously clear that they were soon to be taken over, to be enwrapped within the opaquely grey blob-like moving cloud mass.
Then they ran.
The terror behind them, though not immediately life threatening, promised fate similar to those already incinerated or crushed, as if the dust were the very cause of the terror and was now running through the city streets rampant, wrapping around buildings still standing and filling every hole or crevice to rob it of safety.
They are overtaken and around them a rushing otherworld is now their reality. Inside the cloud, people appear and disappear from each other just as fast with the billions of floating molecules between them, hiding them and obscuring their vision. Everyone within is completely alone, save the few that hold each other, but all become blanketed in bits of floating building and death.
Those beyond the reach of the cloud watched, taking up the middles of streets. No cars moved and some people stood on top to get a better view of the disaster. From this distance, the far off clouds hardly seemed to move though the closer they were to them the faster they seemed to travel.
The rubble stayed invisible to all underneath the haze. From tops of neighboring buildings, cameras too late could only record the aftermath. In the back of their minds, the recorders cursed themselves jealous to not have captured the horrendous and monumental moment on film. They watched through the viewfinder the particle shield that hindered the sight of the thousands now dead within the beastly atrocity’s afterbirth.
For a while no one else died until loss of blood took those pinned beneath the avalanche of concrete. The slow process of digging them out began, but no matter who was saved, the dead stayed that way.
X X X X X
Syd Sylver breathed out once all he could see was cloud in the distance. He took a bow, his symphony concluded, and when he rose back up his hands were gone.
The clouds came back. The snow started falling again and the wind picked up, sending the white flecks sideways as if the world was turned at a wrong angle.
Syd stepped back onto the platform that lowered into the elevator. The mirrors that surrounded him were infinite and he had to stare himself in the eyes this time. The way down was long and he strayed from eye contact with himself more than once until the doors finally opened.
On the television, for the first time under his reign of MediaNop City, the black and white insects of TV static ate and birthed each other under the buzzing racket of a distorted lost signal.
In that moment, They smirked.
This is going to be fun, They thought.