Dolan stared in horror as the nightmare descended from outer walls of the Casino.
When RK had said something was coming, he’d expected an attack coming from the forest beyond the grassy meadow of the parking lot. He hadn’t expected the threat to be above them the whole time. Speaking of above them, hadn’t all the skylights disappeared under the deluge of transformative rain? If so, then…
Dolan glanced up and saw tendrils descending from the ceiling above the Group 2 survivors gathered near the doors.
The tendrils themselves were green and purplish-red, striated like muscles, with tips like strange hands that grabbed and grasped survivors, pulling them up and away. The first few who were taken got caught completely by surprise. Dolan wasn’t sure whether the lack of screams spoke to the speed of their victim’s fate or something more sinister.
Then one of the men in Group two’s eyes widened, as though he’d suddenly thought of something disturbing. Slowly, he turned and looked up just in time to see a woman get snatched, one of her high-heels falling with a thump on the mossy floor.
That was when the screaming started.
The grasping tendrils were flowing through the doors and through the ceiling, there was nowhere to retreat to.
“What do we do, sir?” A security guard next to him whispered.
Dolan turned.
His group had watched the scene unfold the same as he had and were staring at him in desperation. Dolan swallowed heavily and pointed at one of the flamethrowers.
“Everyone, listen up! The flamethrowers are going first to drive the tendrils back, then you all follow right behind them, got it?” Dolan said.
His group nodded.
Dolan gestured. “Clear us a path!”
Flames lit up the enclosed space in a bright orange glow as Dolan’s guards unleashed their flamethrowers upon the plant creature’s tendrils. A distant screeching echoed throughout the Casino as the tendrils blackened and curled. The sound was like a hundred voices screaming at once. Dolan shuddered, not wanting to imagine the kind of nightmare capable of making that sound.
The tendrils drew back from the heat, leaving the way out clear. At least for the moment. Dolan could see some of the tendrils inching around the edges of the flamethrower’s gout of fire, searching for a different way in.
His group hurried forward through the exit.
“Don’t look up! Watch for puddles!’” Dolan barked.
He mostly said that first part because he didn’t want to see what the owner of said tendrils looked like. It was a nightmare, after all. Moreover, the puddles were a much bigger threat now, though greatly reduced since Group 1’s sacrifice, as he could see piles of clothes and twisted trees marking their location.
Todd’s group went the opposite direction, hurrying through the grass and hopping at strange intervals. It was rather confusing to Dolan. There shouldn’t that many puddles left over there. It was Las Vegas after all, even with the storm quieted the temperature was over ninety degrees. Dolan tried to puzzle out what they were doing-
There came a sudden scream behind him and Dolan turned in time to see one of his guards plucked from the ground and up into the air…
“Above! Guards, use your flamethrowers!” Dolan shouted, hurrying as safely as he could across the meadow.
But how had the Nightmare been able to get that guard? Dolan couldn’t see any questing tendrils in the air. He looked around when a woman behind him screamed as she was yanked to the ground and dragged up to the Casino’s roof.
In horror, he took another, closer look at the grassy meadow that stretched out in front of him. Grass rustled, as though in the breeze. But there was no breeze now. The tendrils were here as well, he realized. They'd lain hidden in the long grass, waiting for someone to step too close. That was what Todd’s group had seen and avoided.
The monster had lain a trap.
“Tendrils in the grass!” Dolan shouted and turned. “Be carefu- !”
The shout died in his throat. There was nobody behind him. His Group was gone. He felt something slither near his foot and fought the urge to twitch. Only his eyes moved to look down at his feet.
A smaller tendril than that in the Casino was probing around his legs, tiny hands touching his pants. It was a tentative gesture, as though it weren’t quite sure if he was prey or not.
Dolan’s mind worked furiously as he tried to figure out how it was sensing him. Heat? No, he’d already have been taken. Movement? Perhaps, but nobody had been moving when they watched Group 1 meet its demise. Furthermore, the tendrils that had descended from above couldn’t possibly have detected movement, being in the air as they were.
No, it had to be something else. Something only a plant… could…
He thought back to his knowledge of plants.
High School Biology 101. Plants had photoreceptors that could, in a sense, ‘see’ light and possibly heat. They could also smell things- though mostly only relevant pheromones. And they certainly could detect carbon dioxide in the air. Sound, again, was something they could hear, though like a sense of smell, only plants which needed to hear things developed the necessary receptors to do so.
So what if someone made a bunch of nightmare plant monsters whose purpose was to hunt and transform humans?
With dawning horror, he realized the tendril could see him and would soon recognize him as a human the longer it lingered near his pants, which were no doubt doused with his own human scent. Every breath he took expelled CO2, which the plant would also eventually detect. And his body heat and light reflection would mark him as completely different from the grass and trees around him.
This was a waiting game, and one he would undoubtedly lose.
The tendril continued probing around his legs as Dolan looked around for something, anything that could help him. He would likely be snatched away as the others had, but he would be ready for it. There! He spied a flamethrower one of his security guards had dropped lying in the tall grass a few yards away.
Dolan glance down at the tendril then over to the flamethrower. It would grab at him instantly when it detected him moving. Any shifting of his weight would alert it now. Could he stretch himself far enough to reach it before being snatched and hauled off?
Only one way to find out. He closed his eyes, took in a deep breath. Then he leaped.
As though it had been waiting for this moment, the tendril lashed out like a rattlesnake, striking his ankle and grasping him tight.
Dolan hit the ground with a wheeze, then gasped in pain, sparing a split-second glance at the tendril. The purplish striation of muscle along the tendril were contracting, the hands gripping him like a vice. He looked back at his prize and snagged the handle of the flamethrower just as the tendril reeled him in.
He bit back a scream as he zoomed along the grass, hoping desperately it didn’t drag him through a puddle. Then it wouldn’t matter if he had a flamethrower or not. He made it to the outside wall of the Casino safely and ascended upwards.
The ground beneath him receded as he rose into the air, bouncing along the concrete wall in painful jolts. His terror increased the farther up he went. The Casino was roughly 50 stories tall at its tallest peak and the tendril seemed to be dragging him all the way there.
Beside him, he could see other survivors being dragged up. Most of them were screaming. Far below, he could see figures moving through the grass carefully. One of two would step on a tendril and get dragged screaming back towards the Casino.
Dolan took a quick breath and exhaled. It wasn’t over for him yet. He could still get out of this human. The edge of the roof was quickly approaching. He could hear sucking sounds and screams and steeled himself for whatever was waiting for him.
It didn’t help.
The thing that awaited him on the roof truly was a nightmare. It was a huge, round flower bud that reminded Dolan of Audrey II from that old musical. That wasn’t too disturbing, Dolan hadn’t thought a giant hungry plant wasn’t scary. But that thought didn’t last for long as Dolan soon learned why this was called a nightmare. It’s bud opened up like a flower, revealing a slimy scarlet interior covered in spines, lined with screaming human faces. Yellow tendrils whipped out and lashed at a survivor it was dragging into its mouth.
“Help me!” The man begged, reaching out for salvation that would never come.
The tendrils dug under his skin, though no blood welled out. They distorted his features as the tendrils slid beneath them, smaller tendrils branching off. The survivor’s complexion acquired a greenish hue as the tendril dug into him.
The man’s shrieks grew louder and louder, the plant’s tendrils pulsing beneath his skin. His skin puffed up, as though something were being injected into him. Then there came that loud sucking sound Dolan had heard earlier and the man began to shrivel, his shrieks rising in tone.
His body was warping, the dimensions growing inhuman as Dolan watched on in horror.
The man’s head reshaped, bones of his skull crunching, until it assumed a lizard-like shape. His green skin grew glossy and lifted slightly like scales off his skin. Around his neck, longer scales lifted, turning yellow as they formed a frill. The man’s scream rose into hisses as his tongue extended into a thin tendril.
While the man’s transformation was happening, Dolan noticed the rest of the vines were still doing their job, collecting people. A thought occurred to him. If this thing was transforming its victims, then where did they all go?
The man at this point had gone silent, his body continuing to shrink. He was assuming a quadrupedal form, one with strange glistening red fruits embedded along his sides. An appendage grew from his backside, long and slender. But rather than the tail ending in a narrow point, the scales towards the end of it began to grow out into long, dry, hair like structures. As Dolan puzzled over what he was looking at, a thought suddenly came into his mind – foxtails.
Dolan used to have a dog, and the bristles growing out of the lizard’s tail looked identical to foxtails that used to get stuck in his dog’s fur every fall.
The strangeness of the newly formed plant-lizard’s tail hadn’t escaped it either, as it looked towards it back and gave the tail a quick wag, causing some of the foxtails to shed. But it barely had time to comprehend its new situation before the vine carried the it back over the edge.
It was like an assembly line, Dolan realized. People came up, were processed into these freaks, then were ferried away back down to…fulfill whatever purpose the plant instilled in them. As another person was brought forward and repurposed, Dolan understood fully what that meant. Everything here was designed to spread life.
When the storm went away, these creatures would stay and continue growing the forest. Dolan could only guess at how soon the desert around Las Vegas would take to become a forest. It needed water, so he wasn’t sure how Mary Anne would address that problem. Or maybe she didn’t care about the long term consequences. That everything here would shrivel up and die at the first drought.
Another screaming victim was levered towards the maw. Again, tendrils stretched forth, digging under the victims’ skin. Dolan flinched as they bloated, the man crunching and cracking as he was transformed…into a doe. The doe’s belly hung low, and Dolan imagined he saw something kick, denting the hide from the inside. A heavily pregnant doe. And then the victim was finished and carried away, the transformation much faster than the poor reptile-plant hybrid.
More screaming, more victims. The majority became pregnant forest critters, badgers and foxes and moles and squirrels. Once in a while, someone would remain male, but it was quite rare. Even rarer were the hybrids, which took it some time to transform. On the surface, there didn’t appear to be a pattern. But Dolan was a gambler.
No, Dolan thought to himself, I understand how it works now.
Only one male is sufficient to impregnate a hundred females. In other words, most victims will naturally be turned into pregnant females. Normally, biodiversity would be an issue, but since she could magically make every cub or pup or whatever genetically diverse, that was no longer a problem. If the desert didn’t reclaim the city, then in a few years it would be the very definition of ‘teeming with life’!
The tendril wrapped around him tightened and he was pulled towards that scarlet maw. It must be his turn next. The last victim was carried back over the edge to be deposited safely on the ground somewhere else. Dolan readied his flamethrower.
He grit his teeth as he was pulled with great force to that maw, but no amount of determination could draw his eyes from the mucus dripping from the thorns that lined its gullet. Dolan wondered what the purpose of the thorns were. To look intimidating? Though not much of a consolation to Dolan in his current predicament, it at least appeared that the nightmare didn’t actually use them to eat.
As Dolan neared the mouth, probing mouth-tendrils, a nauseating bile-color, stretched forth to transform his flesh.
Dolan pulled the trigger on the flamethrower.
Bright flames spewed forth, engulfing the predatory bud. High, inhuman screams wailed as the bud blackened and curled. The tendrils reaching for him flailed in pain, though they were too close for him to harm directly without setting himself ablaze. Then, with a lashing motion, the tendril around his leg flung him violent against the roof.
Dolan smacked against the loose soil covering the roof, all air leaving him in a painful wheeze. The flamethrower bounced away and over the edge. He gasped for breath and blearily looked up at the rather angry-looking bud as it reeled him in. It was blackened and scorched, the flame clearly having done damage, but not enough to destroy it outright.
While the bud had been swollen and disfigured by the heat and flames, the tendrils weren’t damaged by the inferno at all. Dolan wanted to cry. There was nothing he could do now.
Dolan grimaced as tendrils wrapped around his body, before piercing his delicate flesh. Cold, fibrous worms wriggled and flexed under his skin-a feeling was alien and uncomfortable, though surprisingly not painful.
He clenched his teeth as a cold fluid began flowing intohis insides. His entire body began to feel bloated and oddly empty all at once. His skin grew taut, then grass began to grow like fur all across his body. Dolan tried to groan but only ended burping up sickly sweet amber goo.
Dolan smacked his rubbery lips, tasting… honey. Why honey? The tendrils disgorged even more fluids into him and his clothes creaked and strained and then snapped off of him as he swelled. His bones cracked and crunched painlessly, skull deforming, face creaking out into a muzzle.
He was turning into a big, furry hybrid of some kind, he knew that. His insides crackled loud enough for his new ears to flick at the sound. In fact, his innards were feeling weirdly squirmy. He burped again and something buzzed out angrily. It landed on his nose, and Dolan saw it was a honey bee.
Dolan’s mind raced as the tendrils dug into him further, squirming in his head. His mind felt suddenly cold, like a bucket of ice water had been dumped on it. Then the tendrils quietly slurped. Thoughts grew slower, more difficult to string along. His brows grew heavy and settled over his dimmer eyes as the tendrils withdrew, leaving Dolan reeling. He burped again, a swarm of bees flying around the green bear’s head.
The confused hybrid felt itself being pulled away and back down the side of the Casino. Dolan was still in there in his greatly reduced brain, but it was hard to exert his own will. It was like every neuron had been rewired for one purpose.
Pollination.
Honey drooled from its slack lips as it was gently deposited at the edge of the parking lot. It snuffled the air and caught an odd scent. Something was unpollinated. Dolan lumbered towards the source of the smell. Then it came upon the strange lizard with the fruits embedded on its side.
They stared at each other, quivering softly. The lizard scurried unsteadily towards the big bear, nuzzling its lips with its tendrils. Dolan felt an overwhelming compulsion come over it and opened its maw, belching a swarm of bees.
The bees landed on the lizard and began the pollination process. Feeling strangely satisfied, the bear settled down with a hollow thump as the hive got to work. More unpollinated creatures drifted towards him and the bear belched again, spreading the hive’s workers around.
As Dolan sat contently near the other creatures, a constant stream of bees walked up his throat and briefly buzzed around his tightly closed maw. He knew that they wanted to get, but he felt as though enough of his swarm had departed for the creatures that stood before him. He could feel them crawling through his belly, wriggling around in his skull, and could hear the ever-present sound of a light buzz echo through his new body.
It should have been disturbing, but it all felt so normal to him. He knew that he had been born a human, but despite the brief flicker of his new existence, it felt as though he had always been this way.
As the bees finished their work, a swarm began to form around him as bees landed in the thick grass that made up his “fur”, and Dolan briefly wondered how they were going to get back in. That question was quickly answered by the feeling of tiny bodies parting in his ears before more bodies walked between them, crawling through hollow passages that led from his skull, down through his neck and back into his body.
He realized what the parting feeling was – guard bees. There were guard bees patrolling his ears, keeping other insects away from trove of honey that his hive body now carried. But with the rest of his swarm returning, they were inspecting the new found arrivals and letting them in if the passed whatever check it was that bees had.
As more and more bees returned, Dolan could feel its belly swell up with more and more honey. It grew heavier. It knew that soon it would be time for it hibernate, while the hive split and created another husk.
That was a strange though – a husk. Was that what it was? It could feel millions of tiny legs crawling through chambers inside of its body. It could feel itself subdivided into cells, each filled with honey and squirming larva. But there was no mental connection to the bees. Just a strange, overpowering instincts to move them to new sources of pollen.
Was it really just a mobile hive? A vessel for insects that cared no more for it than they would hollowed out tree? And as Dolan looked down at a paw, only to see a small white flower blooming out between his grass pelt, Dolan couldn’t help but wonder just how much of a difference there between itself and a empty log.
Dolan wasn’t sure what this all meant for it, but it knew it was strangely right. Like it was its purpose.