by C. E. Murphy
Asag. Sumerian demon of sickness, who, according to my undernet search, made rivers boil with his ugliness and had sex with mountains to make rock-demons to protect himself with. Rock demons and landslides had enough in common to make the link, especially with Marnie’s discomfort about what the kids had reported seeing. The boiling water was a clue, too, even if I couldn’t imagine what a Sumerian demon was doing in the Pacific Northwest. There’d been no reports of unusual sickness in the area, but it was possible he brought sickness, rather than followed it. With boiling rivers and drying-up wells, it was easy enough to see how sickness could come in his wake.
And he’d been defeated by a god in Sumeria. Ninurta, god of sunlight and of healing. I would probably have to wait until Joanne caught up with me to take Asag down, but at least I could locate him on my own.
Marnie had claimed the kids were up at the treeline. I doubted it. Most of the Cascades had a timberline around six thousand feet. Keechelus Lake was just south of Snoqualmie Pass, which was only about three thousand feet above sea level. If the local teens were getting hit by rock slides a couple thousand feet above the mountaintops, I was not only out of my league, but way envious of the flying teenagers.
The terrain wasn’t bad. Low underbrush sprang back after I passed over it. Fir and pine trees provided cover from afternoon sunshine. Birds and squirrels scolded me for intruding on their territory, but weren’t disturbed by anything stranger than me. I wasn’t in the right area yet, in that case. I worked my way up the mountain, switch-backing around a few steep hills covered in huckleberry bushes. Another month and they’d be ripe. On the off chance I had time to go berry-picking, I stopped and recorded the latitude and longitude on my phone. Then I started uphill again, combating mosquitoes until I had to stop again and dig the subwoofers out and hang them on my pack. I couldn’t hear the sonic buzz that vibrated the air in a way that made bugs back off, but I could feel it crawling on my skin. Hikers had been using the tech in lieu of bug spray ever since the sound industry—with some help from the military industrial complex—had turned stereo speakers into something you could roll up or put in a back pocket. They were covered with a solar screen that stored about sixteen hours’ worth of low-level power usage, too, so they could be used as back-up batteries. I vaguely remembered that when I was little—when I’d first met Joanne Walker—cell phones and cameras has to be plugged in, but cars didn’t. Even knowing it had been like that in my lifetime didn’t make it seem any less strange.
There was a rhythm to the climb, a comfortable cadence that clearly let my mind wander. I reset my thoughts toward the data I had available, considering what I knew as I edged upward. Boiling rivers and dried-up pipes weren’t making the news, but there had been a recent story about a proposition to dam the other Yakima River source lakes. I didn’t know if Asag was an opportunistic demon, or the kind someone had to raise, but the threat to the free-flowing sources might tie into the signs of his presence here. All the big US rivers and a lot of the smaller ones were already dammed, and the effects of that were visible in dozens of ways all over the country. An environmentalist with his head on wrong might’ve thought a demon would help solve the watershed problems, but it was just as possible that demons struck where the terrain was inviting. The Cascades offered mountains for mating with, plenty of rivers, lakes, creeks and streams, and enough people that if he survived by making them sick, he’d have a steady diet of illness coming his way.
But it didn’t really matter how he’d gotten here, unless someone had raised him. In that case, capturing him would give me a line back to whoever had done the summoning. If he’d simply spent the past four millennia digging his way through from Sumer and only just made it to Eastern Washington, then all I had to do was bury him again. In another four thousand years he could be someone else’s problem. It wasn’t the kind of solution Joanne would embrace, but I’d made my peace with what I could and couldn’t do. Burying evil worked for me.
I’d climbed high enough on those thoughts that the fir trees had thinned around me. A few sturdy ones still grew higher on the mountain, but I’d reached something close enough to a tree line that I sent a silent apology toward Marnie’s teens. They’d no doubt been up around this level too. I checked my phone, which told me I was at about 2600 feet above sea level. A good day’s hike under ordinary circumstances, but probably nowhere near my destination. Rocks slid beneath my feet and bounced a few yards down the mountainside before settling into new beds. The mosquitoes weren’t so bad this high up, but I left the subwoofers on, just in case. Then I started circling toward narrow waterfall trickles and stream rivulets spilling downhill.
I had a great view of the simmering Keechelus Lake. If my instincts were right about the causality being the demon Asag, he had to be within view of the lake himself, or it wouldn’t be boiling. I didn’t want to think about how many square miles the lake was visible from, because Eastern Washington would be a wasteland before I’d explored them all. But Marnie had said her kids were up on this snub-nosed peak, so that was where I had to start. I gulped down most of a sixteen ounce water bottle and stuck what was left into my pack. I had another larger bottle, too, and an unwise lack of concern about what would happen to my guts if I drank straight from the streams. The way I saw it, they’d probably been boiled recently, and besides, my water bottles had filters that were supposed to clear the bacteria out. I hadn’t gotten sick yet while on mission.
More stones shook loose as I made my way around and over boulders. I had rope in my backpack along with some very basic rock climbing gear, but if I ended up anywhere sheer I was going to have to find a way around. Being prepared for every possible contingency just weighed too much. I stopped for another drink of water, wiping sweat away and listening to rocks crack and bounce on their way down the slope.
A long gulp and a few steps later, I realized I hadn’t been walking on shoaly ground for some time now, and hadn’t knocked any stone loose in longer than that.
Carefully, I shrugged my backpack off, knelt, and unzipped it as I looked over my shoulder. Everything in the pack had a designated place. I didn’t need to see what I was doing to find the frags, nor to gently swing the grenade launcher into place so I could load it.
The boulders just down the mountainside from me were moving. Rocking slowly, like giant eggs trying to right themselves on invisible legs. Smaller stones were crushed beneath them as they shifted, puffing into dust and bouncing into the distance. I caught signs of more movement uphill from me, and breathed carefully as I loaded the last grenades into the launcher. Then I looked up.
Stone golems were staggered across the mountainside above me. Taller and broader than me, they had visible black pits of eyes and no hands or feet, just blunt ends to their long arms and stubby legs. They had mouths, too, gaping maws like caverns built into a moving mountainside. They moved slowly and in rhythm with each other. Below me, one of the boulders cracked, egg-like again, and another golem emerged from it. The snap of a second boulder breaking apart sounded like a gunshot. I counted six, and more being birthed. I would need a blanket assault to take them all out at once, and my grenade launcher wasn’t going to be enough.
A rumble started, so deep it made hairs on my neck stand up. It felt familiar, but the sensation slipped away as one of the golems below me crouched, then leapt.
I caught it in the belly with a grenade, and flung myself behind a man-sized huddle of rock to protect myself from the fragments. The roar disrupted the rumbling, but it started up again a moment later, angrier this time. The golems picked up their speed, converging on me. I waited a count of eight, long enough for the ground beneath me to vibrate hard with their running steps, then bounced up and fired again, hoping to catch more than one with the next grenade.
Two golems exploded into pebbles. I bellowed, “Hoo-ah!” and dropped again, waiting for the rest to come closer.
The stone next to me cracked open and a golem dropped its full weight on me.
&nb
sp; Air slammed out of me in a sob. My ribs weren’t shattered, but I’d felt them crack. If the golem levered itself up a few inches and dropped on me again, I’d be flattened. I couldn’t afford that, and I didn’t have many other options. Neither did it, though. It growled and snapped at me toothlessly, but I was certain if anything got caught between those flat gums it would be crushed. I exhaled to get the last air out of my gut so I could breathe in again, and when all the air was gone, I squirmed one arm free. The frag rifle was crushed between me and the golem, but even Joanne might think twice about setting off a grenade on her chest. Maybe not—I’d seen her take hits at least that hard and walk away—but it was a rash idea.. And I didn’t have magic to back me up. I wheezed a breath past the pain, fumbled a grenade from the backpack, and swore I would never do anything this stupid again if I lived through doing it once.
Then I pulled the pin and shoved the grenade into the golem’s mouth. I grabbed its lower jaw and jammed it up, closing its mouth on the grenade, and I counted eight seconds in a prayer: “Please, God, let this work. Let it work.”
Stone exploded on top of me. Shards slammed into my belly. Dust penetrated my pores. A thump like being hit by the shockwave of a sound barrier breach drove me a few inches into the ground. My ears started to ring , the noise building until it had a visual of its own, rings spreading through the black behind my eyelids.
On top of that, I heard something else. An irritating vibration, enough to set the teeth that didn’t feel loosened on edge. It made the air shiver, like a barrier set up around my skin.
Like a subwoofer playing a pitch to drive mosquitoes away. Subsonics that humans couldn’t hear. Subsonics that rattled the air, though, and probably the earth.
I’d led the rock golems right to me.
Maybe I wasn’t so smart after all. If I’d done it on purpose it would’ve been clever, and it was still better than hiking all over the eastern Cascades trying to find them, but I was supposed to be the one who relied on thinking ahead. Thinking ahead was supposed to keep me from getting cracked ribs and grenade concussions.
The ringing in my ears faded a little. I had to sit up, even knowing it was going to hurt. It was going to hurt a lot. I did it all at once, rubble falling away in a noisy counterpoint to the pain crashing through my body. I didn’t dare prod my ribs to see how bad they were. I could find out later, after I’d finished destroying rock golems and taking out their demon father. I rolled all the way to my feet, panting through the pain, and didn’t dare stop to take stock of what other damage I’d sustained.
Four golems had been reduced to sand. There were four left, and no obvious signs of more generating. I wondered if eight was a number of significance in ancient Sumer, or if I’d just interrupted their spawning session before it reached the number I knew was significant, which was sixty. I had to hope so, because I didn’t have enough ammo for another forty-two golems.
The four left were spreading out, acting more wary. That was anthropomorphizing: rock did not act wary, even when animated. It didn’t plan, either, but I did, and to my eyes, it looked like they were preparing a more strategic attack. If all four picked up speed and moved in on me at once, I was done for.
At least I could even the odds. There were two grenades left in the launcher. I hefted it to my shoulder, took a breath against the oncoming kickback, and fired.
The grenade flew where it was supposed to, but I dropped. The kickback was centered against my shoulder, but it slammed the whole body at the best of times. Firing it with cracked ribs was not the best of times, and I didn’t have a tripod to brace it with for the final shot. I gritted, “Hoo-ah,” through my teeth this time, sat up, and fired a second time before I let myself think about it.
I blew a leg off the closest golem. It would have to do. The remaining two hesitated and I seized the opportunity to snag more grenades from my pack. Only two frags left, but three flash-bangs as well. I detonated them close enough to myself to provide cover while I crept away, an Army crawl that banged my ribs against the ground but meant not having to get to my feet again. I had dust in my teeth. Even the Mojave hadn’t ground itself into me as much as this mountainside was doing.
I covered forty yards before the smoke cleared. Then I rolled on my back and stared at the sky, taking deep cleansing breaths. I couldn’t manage another frag unless the golems got close enough to throw one at them, and I didn’t want to let them get that close. I put the frags on my belt anyway, just in case, then quietly drew my pistol. They had eyes. Eyes were normally vulnerable. I just had to be steady enough to make the shot. I breathed, and listened, and when the cracking footsteps came clear, I rolled to my feet a second time, sighted, and fired.
The first volley was perfect. I caught one of them in the eye. Its head exploded into puffs of dust. The other one turned its face away. All the way away, so the back of its head faced me. The third one, the one I’d blown the leg off, was still down. I thanked God for small favors and got the second-to-last frag out. I knew how far I could throw it, uninjured. I figured I could manage half that distance with my ribs on fire, then knocked another three yards off to be safe. It put the detonation range dangerously close, but I couldn’t risk the launcher again. Another hit like that and I’d be unconscious. And I hadn’t even laid eyes on the big show yet.
That didn’t bear thinking about. I watched the golem stumble over uneven ground, edging toward me with its head still on backward. They really did use their eyes, unlikely as it seemed. I flung the frag, collapsed to the ground, and tried to breathe around shooting pain while I waited for the explosion. Noise and smoke billowed after eight seconds, but it took another minute and a half to get back to my feet. The golem didn’t make it to me in that time, so I knew I’d done it some damage.
Quite a lot, it turned out, though it wasn’t dead yet. It was like the robot in that old sci-fi movie, pulling itself along by one arm and its grinning jaw. I didn’t have an industrial metal crusher handy, so I just shot it in the eye. It died. I didn’t dare sag to the earth beside it, because there had to be a creator-demon around here somewhere, and I didn’t think I could get to my feet if I went down again. So I just waited. The air cooled off as the sun started sliding into the west. I could still smell boiled fish, and the frothing lake down below gave me something to focus on while I waited. Demons did not beget golem protectors just to run away while somebody went through the golems with a bunch of hand grenades.
Although now that I thought about it, that seemed like a very smart thing for a demon to do. I wondered if I’d been had. I slumped to sitting and awkwardly searched my bag for some snack bars and the rest of my water. I put the water on a rock while I ate, which hurt more than I thought it would. Light refracted in a bubble rising from the bottom of the water jug, and then in another.
By the time I realized the water was in fact boiling, Asag was just about on top of me.
I unloaded a clip into him, naturally. Sparks pinged off him where the bullets hit, and he rolled back, but I hadn’t done any real damage. One for the notebooks: silver didn’t stop demons any more than it specifically stopped anything else. I had, though, been counting on the bullets be as reliable as always, and they weren’t. That was unfortunate.
He rolled forward again, having given me a chance to see what I faced but having lost almost no momentum. I expected a gorgon, something to freeze me in my tracks as well as boil water. I was a little disappointed: he was ugly, but not ugly enough to turn me to stone. He was round and multi-limbed, with a hide that looked as hard as the golems I’d blown up. He had eyes everywhere, protruding from each of his three arms and legs. They were all of almost equal thickness, so he could cartwheel in any direction. I wished I had an elephant gun, but I didn’t even have one of those in the Caddy’s trunk. I’d never met anything a bullet didn’t at least slow down.
I had one grenade left, but my aim was too bad to risk using it unless he was on top of me, and I’d done that once already. I was still trying
to work out a line of defense when he rolled over the last chunks of stone between us, and bloomed into a Lovecraftian horror.
The hide was just that: a protective outer covering. Within it lay a silently screaming mess strewn by faces of the dead which were marked with pox and stretched long in pain. Greyish-white intestines pulsed as they strangled the dead, and tentacles popped back in from looking out of the hide, every one of them ending with a red staring eyeball. The entirety of Asag’s innards dripped with acidic slime. The stench was overwhelming. Tears flooded my eyes. I coughed and threw my arm over my face, afraid the air would become toxic, and nearly fainted as the action pulled my ribs.
One of his arms unfolded. They weren’t thick and stumpy after all, but multi-jointed, long, and very thin. Folded up they had to be strong as a bundle of sticks to support Asag’s weight, but extended—
—extended it lashed at me like a whip, scoring a slice across the arm protecting my face. Acid burned so deeply I couldn’t even cry out. All I could think was I’d have lost my eyes if my arm hadn’t been in place. I could fight a demon, but I couldn’t fight it blind. I curved my spine and rolled backward, narrowly escaping another lash, and waited for adrenaline to kick in hard enough to let me push past the pain in my ribs.
The crunch of hitting the ground did the trick. I’d been sitting, so it hadn’t been a long fall, but it didn’t need to be. Endorphins flooded my system, burning pain away so fast I knew I’d pay dearly later. But it was the only way there would be a later, so I was willing to pay. I rolled to the side, pulled a knife from a thigh holster, and braced myself for the next hit.
Ichor spurted from Asag’s arm when it met the knife. A clean cut, severing the end, which fell to the ground lifelessly. The silent faces in his belly screamed aloud. I drew another gun to open fire into the tender flesh.
This time the bullets had an effect. He staggered back, reeling from one thick leg to another. Both his other arms unfolded, snapping at me almost too quickly to be seen. I tried firing once, then stopped wasting bullets: I was a crack shot, but they were slim and speeding. The knife was a better weapon against them.
