Slag Attack Read Online Free PDF Page B

the life of this city. I don’t know how to explain it exactly. It was just... just good to have her around, you know?”
       “ What will I find if I go to Fugueland?”
       “ You don’t want to go there.”
       “ Why not?”
       “ Nobody goes there. It’s dangerous.”
       “ Dangerous how?”
       “ It’s why they call this place Hollow City. Fugueland empties people out. I don’t know how it does but... people who go there, they ain’t the same when they come back. But, like I said, no one goes there anymore.”
       “ Thanks,” Shell says, turning to leave. “You’ve all been a big help.”
       “ Mister?” Mike 18 says. “You ain’t goin there, are ya?”
       “ I think I have to,” Shell says, turning his back on the Mikes and heading for his bike.
     
    Interlude: Fugueland
       
    Birth
       
    The bike long discarded he comes upon Fugueland. No. There are no blinding lights. No carnival signs. Just a swirling mass like a fogbank and standing there looking at it he feels life catch up with him. His body aches. His empty socket throbs beneath the patch. Nausea continues to gnaw at his stomach and head. Shell. He finally feels like his name. Takes a deep breath. Puts the gun down. Sheds his clothes and steps into something very much like pure consciousness. Each droplet clings to his skin and he feels it and he likes the way it feels and even though his eye is open it might as well be closed because he can’t see anything. The gray darkens but he doesn’t see it. He feels it. Darkens all the way to black. Deep space black. And he’s floating through this space and is suddenly aware it is not space at all but the womb and the womb smells like the earth. All the dark rich fertile loam of things long dead and things coming back to life and when he reaches out he clasps two handfuls of dirt and pulls away at them. Rending the womb. Opening the womb to the outside world and he pours out screaming.
       
    Life
       
    And comes to a plateau of sorts. Flat smooth earth and he’s at the top of something maybe the top of everything and this is all new to him and this feeling of newness feels good. He’s all emptied out and this lack of insides makes him less aware of his outsides. But awareness builds. He feels his bones coming up from nothing. Massing around themselves. And he feels his muscles and his nerves take shape and strengthen and then his skin. Blood chugs through everything and he takes his first deep breaths and fills his lungs with this unsullied air. Aware of his solidity in this space. He approaches the edge of the plateau and looks out onto a world not yet built. He knows what is to come. It hits him in a single blinding flash of knowledge. The people will come. The buildings will come. The cultures will come and with them will come all those dangerous human emotions. With them will come everything that can gnaw a person away from the inside. And he is also aware of the inescapability of that. He becomes aware of life’s grim march. Onward. Forever onward. Meeting whatever cruel fate awaits but it is through this cruel fate and face of humanity that true beauty can shine. No death is a good death but all death is inevitable. He turns to meet it. Casting out his insides to the blank world around. Hollow. Full. And now hollow again. Approaching through the fog is a pack of wolves. Except for their heads. Their heads are the tapered toothrimmed heads of mature slags. He lies down on the cool earth. Feels the air swirl around him and drop down onto his face and kiss his lips as the first of the slag wolves bites into his flesh.
       
    A Kind of Death
       
    It’s a mangled form emerging from Fugueland. Whole on the outside. Slagwolf-gnawed on the inside. The human body is an ever expanding collection of things some of which have to be trimmed away. Sometimes death is necessary. It gives us something to bury far beneath the ground so more light can