Character · Book 4, The Gate of the Feral Gods

Frank Q and Maggie My

A married couple — whom Carl takes for police by their bearing — who stumbled into the dungeon with their teenage daughter and were told by their guide that the only way to survive was to kill other crawlers. Frank has three skulls when Carl meets him; Maggie has five. Their daughter, Yvette, would not.

Segment appearances

• Chapter 2 — The Wasteland through a telescope
• Chapter 10 — Squeeze out the Juice Box
• Chapter 14 — Maggie
• Chapter 15 — The Gate of the Feral Gods
• Chapter 17 — Jennifer and Dale's house
• Chapter 19 — Orren
• Chapter 20 — Gwendolyn Duet
• Chapter 25 — The Akula
• Chapter 27 — Leatherface
• Chapter 29 — Where the Red God Glows
• Chapter 31 — Emberus, summoned
• Chapter 32 — Acolyte of Emberus
• Chapter 33 — Phase three
• Chapter 34 — Seeding the pond

Arc

What Maggie became

Maggie chose the Infiltrator race — a Scree, a brain parasite — and got into Chris at the end of the third floor; when the takeover finished she left Meadow Lark, hunted Carl, and killed her own husband at the Desperado's counter, possibly for the ring he had just given away (ch. 10, ch. 14). Her sponsors are Prince Maestro and Crown Prince Stalwart, both; she got a Celestial Grenade to summon Algos, the god of pain, on Carl on arrival; their game guide said the collapse dead can come back, and a caprid cleric, a liaison, offered help if she killed Carl: 'They have my other daughter' (ch. 14, ch. 34). 'I'm not angry anymore.'

The end

Petrified in the street, dropped into a flooded tomb, out again to kill a tomb raider, hidden in the sand with Chris's camouflage, she is called out, silenced by the AI mid-sentence, and throws the winding box — a decoy — as far as she can. Carl phases into Chris's head and pulls her out; she bites, burrows up his arm, and is blown out of his neck by the third floor's parasite cure into Mongo's mouth (ch. 34). The AI's quest text remembers her running over a Labrador with her Tahoe (ch. 29).