Ghostfinders 02 - Ghost of a Smile

away. The two figures were physically and spiritually monstrous, a blunt assault on the senses. The triumph of the beast over man. Like demons from the Pit taking on the shape of man to mock and befoul the human figure. They were both a good ten feet tall, and half as broad across the shoulders. Swelling chests, muscular arms and legs, all of it covered with thick dark fur matted with blood and shit and other things. Their hands had claws, their mouths held massive teeth, and sharp, pointed horns thrust up from their broad foreheads.
    The male and female had grossly exaggerated sexual characteristics, as inhuman as every other part of them. They moved like animals, held themselves like animals, and they stank of blood and musk, of slaughter and sex. They were everything that humanity was supposed to have left behind and risen above. To look at them was to know there was nothing left in them of human reason, or human concerns. They would do what they would do because they could, and because they wanted to. They had left Humanity behind, or perhaps thrown it off, for the freedom that provided. Their faces still had human lines, but there was nothing of man or woman in them. And if the eyes are the window to the soul, only the Beast looked out.
    “Oh God, JC,” said Kim. “Do you see what I’m seeing? They did this to themselves! ReSet changed them, but these shapes came from urges and needs hidden deep within them. Horrid dreams, bestial nightmares, all the things we’re not supposed to want or believe in . . .”
    “Monsters from the id,” murmured Happy.
    “We could have been anything that we wanted to be,” said the male. “But if we couldn’t rise to be New People, what was the point? So we let the Beast out. Followed the alternative path our partially awakened DNA showed us, the way we could have been if Humanity hadn’t got in the way. We didn’t have to give up much to become so much more. Meet the progenitors of a new race. All the power of the Beast, and the intellect of man, with none of the drawbacks. I am Gog. This is Magog. You may kneel and worship us, if you like.”
    “Are we not glorious?” said the female, Magog. “We’re what happens when you strip away all the human limitations, physical and mental and spiritual . . . When you let the Beast out, and adore it. It’s amazing what you can do, what you can achieve, without conscience or ethics or control to get in the way. We can do anything.”
    “And we have,” said Gog. “And we will. Oh, the things we’ll do . . .”
    “What about the New People?” said JC. His mouth had gone dry, and he had to fight to keep his voice calm and apparently effortless. “You really think they’re going to let you run wild?”
    “You think they care about the world?” said Gog. “They’re up there deciding what to do with it.”
    “Making their minds up about what to make of it,” said Magog. “And when they’re finished with the world, we won’t recognise it at all.”
    “They have no use for civilisation,” said Gog. “They don’t need it.”
    “I really think we need to get out of here,” Melody said quietly. “We are not equipped for big-game hunting.”
    “Look at the size of those brutes,” said Happy, very quietly. “They’d run us down before we got anywhere near the doors. Keep them talking, JC. Give us time to think of something that doesn’t involve wetting ourselves.”
    “My plan exactly,” said JC. “Think hard. And quickly.” He raised his voice to address Gog and Magog again. “Do you know what the New People are planning? What their intentions are?”
    “No,” said Gog. “I don’t understand them, any more than you could. They don’t think like people any more. They’ve risen above that. Perhaps they don’t think at all. Perhaps they do something better than mere thinking . . .” He rolled his head slowly across his broad shoulders. And then he smiled, to better show off his teeth. “They’re up there, at the top of the building, deciding the fate of the world . . . But whatever they finally settle on, you can be sure neither your kind nor mine will have any part in it. They don’t need machines, or tools, to change their world, or a civilisation to protect them from it. They’re the gods we were all supposed to become, before something went wrong in our DNA, and we all had to settle for being human.”
    “Whatever kind of world the gods choose to live in,” said Magog, “odds are, we