A Worm Is A Bird and Other Bad Things

She pulls him forward, and they begin running again, but she takes a second to reply. “If it’s gone, we’ll flee the city. Watch the world crumble as we get drunk on French wine.” She ducks as shrapnel from an explosion skims close to her face. “If we survive this, I’ll gladly join you. But not yet.”

They speed up, as the rain turns to ash. It would have been spring, but this carnage has stripped Paris of its season. Apart from the cherry blossom, which fall between the cracks. Pink tears, from trees mourning for the tourists who worshiped their beauty, before the worms came. Deckard slows, as they reach a row of cherry trees. She stops to reflect, to watch events beyond her. Death doesn’t discriminate, doesn’t care about daughters or husbands, or those left behind. It’s rolling back its eyes and laughing as it reminds her of New York; of a place she never wanted to look back on.

“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.

The two survivors crawl back further, allowing the last to march past. Deckard whispers. “Now we know why no one’s saved us!”

She moves swiftly, dragging Bailey towards the entrance. “Something’s changed them. We’ll have to do it ourselves!”