(CIRKUMFLEKS)Magazine

A Worm is a Bird and Other Bad
“Isabel?” Bailey grabs hold of her, “What’s wrong? Why have you stopped?”
She doesn’t answer. He takes her hand, as if they are no longer Captain and
mate, but two people, caught up in something horrific. “Come on, run!” There
is some sign of life. A few survivors scramble from the wreckage of fallen
Zeppelins. Bailey, points at the nearing Academy. “We’re almost there!”
She nods, allowing him to cauterize the memories, as the bouquet of present
events filter into her, leaving New York where it should be. She becomes
something better and braver. “I’m sorry. Yes, of course.” She looks at the
world as it is now. Civilian’s clamber about, searching for the quickest exits,
for unbroken bridges connecting them to the country, allowing them to run
away from Paris, into the suburbs. Those who haven’t been swept into the
Sein, or the other unmentionable places, beneath civilized structures.
She motions to the Flight Academy as they sneak past another worm, too
gigantic to register them as a threat. As if they’re fledglings, already chewed
by a cat, and doomed to starve. “There it is!” They stop, outside the large and
tattered entrance. Its gates have been blown off. Craters and Zeppelin’s litter
its foundations, just like everywhere else in the city. The main building is
steaming, the Zeppelin hangars lined with skeleton ships.
Bailey mutters, “We’re too late!”
Deckard regains her authority, as if it’s a natural part of her. “Let’s look inside
first, before we reach that conclusion.” She signals to the carnage, to the
dead all around. “This is genocide. I can’t give up, until I know for sure, that
we’ve lost.”
Bailey nods. “You’re right, but I’d rather be in the country, drowning myself in
wine and women!”
Despite this, they sneak towards the main entrance, using the cover of trees
and their own slight of foot. Five months on board the Zeppelin hasn’t robbed
either of them of their stealth. In fact they have set foot in many foreign lands,
but nowhere as strange as Paris looks now. “Get back!” whispers Deckard.
She pushes Bailey into the foliage, as something lumbers out of the security
doors, leading through to the Academy foyer. They squat, as the thing is
followed by others, all of them shaped like men and women, bound in some
sort of mesh, distorting them into something less than human. “What the hell
are they?”
What used to be flesh is pressed so tightly to the mesh that it looks like little
fatty eyes, bursting through. Their features appear like worms, walking on two
legs. Bailey whispers, “Look at their boots!” They both look down as the
parade of human worms march past, with the same boots as themselves.
(CIRKUMFLEKS)Magazine 2.2012