“Thanks,” she said, stepping away from his embrace. “You might ask first next time.” That said, she went straight to work. She pointed. “There. That whole section of ground. Get everyone off of it.”

Marcus did, yelling and gesticulating to the soldiers. When the space was clear of everyone but himself, Marcus felt the earth beneath him trembling, a low-level vibration that made his tail tingle. “You, too,” Ana said, her voice tight with concentration. “Get on the other side of me.”

As he slithered around her, he caught sight of the trench again. It wasn’t empty anymore. Panicked soldiers were swarming through, in full retreat now and running as fast as they could. Behind them, the cloud loomed, and the creatures out in front of it were taking more horrible shape every minute. Marcus could hear them now, a cacophony of wails and roars, of misery and ecstasy and bloodlust. There were deeper sounds too, bellows of prehistoric dimensions.

Ana cursed. “Fools! The gates are still open for you.”

It didn’t matter. The soldiers looked crazed. Desperate. Soon the first of them were running past Marcus and Ana. They were so heedlessly frantic that Marcus placed himself in front of Ana, towering above the soldiers on his coils to keep them from trampling her. From on high, he could see over the mass of soldiers. The first of the creatures were in the mouth of the trench now. They were attacking the running soldiers, jumping on their backs and pulling them down, ripping into them with fingers and claws and teeth. “You have to close it,” he said. “They’re coming.”

“Let me see,” Ana said.

Marcus curved around and hoisted her up. She stared at the scene, lips tight. “Hold me steady,” she said. Marcus propped her against his chest so she could see, clinging to her torso to hold her in place. Intimate, but he wasn’t even thinking about that. He craned around and watched the horde approaching. Creatures he could only describe as monsters. They came in all shapes and sizes, no two the same. All of them marred by deformity. Massive jaws on that one. A too tiny head on another. Legs and arms that jointed in the wrong places and made their rapid progress grotesque. Many of them looked broken, but on they came. Masses of deranged humanity, people baring their teeth and shouting, driven by a rage that Marcus recognized all too well. He felt it now, wafting in on the hot breeze buffeted by the oncoming cloud. One of the creatures pulled out in front of the others. It was human-like but not quite, ghostly white, skeletal, with arms that curved like meat hooks. Its eyes were fixed on Ana.