by Thomas Head
As they stood without words to either side of him, Doc resisted a shiver. Each of them soaked it in, and they could only do so in their own way, in the odd solitude of their minds, silent and pale as corpses.
Tyler alone stepped forward.
He looked at the walls castle and studied the sturdiness of the high stones. These higher stones were darker, something like a less weighty sandstone, but they were not stone at all, or even metal, but something in between.
Then they heard bony steps, coming to them from the gloom.
They held up their weapons, then shielded their eyes as some hundred yards away, blue light formed in a ring around a blackened hand.
The hand belonged Emily, her form fully revealed as the blue light grew,
Then the form was Doc’s mother, then again it changed, Doc could only suppose it was some important woman to the McCarthy’s. Indeed, the charred corpse of old Gill was the last form it took, but the voice that cackled out from the unhinged jaw was like that of a beast.
“What fools! What witless little fools! How dare you breech the sanctity of this domain?”
Now, all down the enormously deep hall, blue fire emerged from small placards of machinery that were recessed into the walls. But the fire that glowed around the form’s head had no source.
Once again, it became Emily.
Tyler’s fists clenched around the bow, not yet drawn, and his eyes began moving back and forth between the arrow and the being guised in the flesh of the woman before him. She stood a mere fifty yards off now. Tyler began to shake. Doc poured himself into concentration, and at the word of his uncle beside him, drew ahead of Tyler and said. “We are the Merry Commandos of Goback. And we have come for those whom were taken from us.”
“Who is this? Who is this who dares speak to the Heir of This World with such comfort, such foolish familiarity?”
Behind him, Doc could hear them readying their stances for battle. Well behind the Emily-like creature, yet another helicopter stood at the ready—no, it was the same one; arrows jutted from the tail, and its windows and belly bore the pocks of numerous gunshots.
Damn it to hell, but they had not even crippled the machine.
Doc leered at it, then her. “I am called Doc!”
“Doc?” it mocked, and it began cackling, as deep as an echo in a bottomless well. “I assure you, Doc, that my girl will recover quite fully from the scratches you and your little companion will put on her—just soon as she has… eaten.”
At that, Tyler’s arrow whipped through the air, striking the creature that so resembled Emily between the eyes. But it merely pulled the missile from the course, blackened wound and threw it aside.
The ease of it made their skin crawl. Doc’s heart rose up into the roof of his mouth.
The Emily-creature approached, smirking.
And they all charged.
There was a strange crackle in the air as the Emily-creature raised its arms out to either side. But it managed nothing before Doc reached it. Roaring, Doc hacked into the creature, but it pulled the blade out of its chest with a slow, audible breath, waving its hand before them.
Thunderous noise ripped through his skull, and all of them were sent splashing back away from it.
Dinga fire another arrow, hitting it in the chest.
But again, the strange thunder splashed across their minds and they were sent aloft, thrown back another ten feet. There were the sounds of groaning now, and Bik’s arm appeared broken. The Emily-creature was smiling as it waved its arm yet again. And again, they were knocked into the walls and against each other.
It happened again, and as Doc was sent tumbling toward the mouth of the tunnel, he clipped his back against Dinga’s bald head, sending them both into awkward sprawls. Everyone was facing different directions.
She managed, somehow to shoot her bow again. Her next shot was quicker, lower. It nearly put out the Emily-creature’s eye before it roared out a deafening boom, and pinned them against the roof with its unnatural force.
“Now…” It said. “You will look upon the rocks that will end you!”
And it flipped them upside down.
Doc began neighing.
“What is this!” it roared. “This is how you meet your doom?”
Dangling there, Doc motioned for the others to join him in the odd sounds of neighing, and no sooner had they begun than a doorway at the far, far end of the long, cavernous hall exploded.
They were dropped on their heads.
The walls were trembling as an enormous, mechanized devil emerged, thundering. The ground shook with every thud of its blades.
The Emily-creature turned to it.
“Nooo, my lovely!”
Yet the helicopter came. They kept neighing, louder now. It roared toward them in thunderous crashes, clipping the walls. Bik and Dinga were scampering to hide themselves over the ledge while Tyler, Uncle Jickie, and Doc stood to face it.
The Emily-creature ran to it, but the body was flattened in a single trounce, dropping without a sound.
Tyler grunted.
The chopper came, ripping straight at them, just as quickly as ever. The floor was collapsing in like a web of black. Doc thought he heard a lion, but it was his Uncle Jickie. He dug a small knife in Doc’s thigh and pushed him into Tyler, just before the machine would have flattened them both.
As Doc spilled to the floor beside it, the blades made a large whomp whomp to either side of his body, and it launched itself after his uncle. There was a great thud overhead as it clacked against falling stone.
Just as it went over, a massive chunk of the metallic rock falling upon it, Doc saw the edge collapse, and he saw his uncle flattened against the front of the machine.
The floor, cracking right in front of him, was so close that Doc saw over the edge, saw his uncle falling, tumbling with the helicopter.
Doc saw him, laughing, just before they both exploded—the machine in a great burst of flame, and his uncle, in a great splash of red on the rocks, far below.
Chapter 56
Doc breathed, so exhausted he was unable to do so much as flinch. He had thought about this moment a long time, about life without his old uncle. But he had no idea that he would feel nothing. There was nothing in his heart, or his head, but exhaustion. It was so utterly complete that for a moment more he could do nothing but continue to lie there, breathing.
In time, he could move his head.
Then his body.
Struggling not to pass out, Doc turned to find Tyler reaching over to him with wheezing grunts. As cold wind blasted in on them, steam swirled from his exposed gut—he had been mangled by a chunk of the large falling stone, cut nearly in two. As he pulled off his helmet, blood sheeted from his mouth in rusty splatters. He dropped his eyes, looking out at nothing.
Doc pulled himself to his side, openly tearful.
“I will find her. I swear it. I will find her. And I will bring her home.”
Tyler breathed. But he was otherwise as motionless as the dead, staring off at nothing, or perhaps at some winged barmaids of legend, swooping down from the Heavenly Halls to swoop him up.
He made no gesture to signify that he had heard him. He just became still.
And he stopped breathing.
* * *
Deep in the silence of the mountain, Doc watched a light go up from Tyler. It was like a meteor, spat from the earth itself.
He watched, and knew something was over. Something was leaving.
It had found what it needed here in Tyler.
* * *
Then Doc descended.
It was harder going than he had expected. The inner workings of the mountain were hand-hewn, but they were awkward and what should have been steps were worn slick the effects of time and poor drainage. Doc dragged himself down, deeper and deeper, for what felt like a quarter mile. He was guided by the blackish glint of the strange lighting.
There , in a sinister nest of webs, Doc found the woman he had
come for.
Emily, was no more. She was long dead in fact. Doc put his helmet back on and looked around the great stone room, rimming the edge of large, evil-looking hole. They were all dead in here, some three hundred corpses. Their sightless eyes were black or else no longer in their sockets. Their bodies had been drained as if by vampires.
The three nearest him now were river rats, wetwomen.
Then Doc heard a whimper. Tenderly, Doc unclasped a young boy from a tangle of sticky fibers that held him fast to the wall alongside yet another woman. She had somehow managed to free herself of the netting, just enough to offer her breast to the little fellow—the only reason he was still alive.
“What’s your name, son?”
The little fellow looked up at him. Then he squalled, crying.
Doc reached down and hugged him, startled to feel the bones in his little back. He still wore his own little commando’s helm. He could do little for him pat his back, tenderly, and stroke his silky hair as he drank water from his canteen, finishing it off before he nibbled on some jerked pork Doc had in his shirt.
The three nearest him, the river women, were somewhat free of their netting as well. It was plain to see that they had helped bare-breasted woman free herself long enough to breastfeed the child. Someday, Doc would come back and take them to their burial grounds. He would give these people the respect Doc had not given them in life.
Today, though, Doc would pull the little fellow’s helmet down over his eyes. And they would make their way to the fresher air outside.
He picked him up, just looking around another moment.
Then he began to carry him.
His concern was the lad in his arms, and the woman to whom Doc hoped to return. He looked around as walked, moving ever more swiftly.
Chapter 57
They left out of the strange mountain by way of an old flake-stone causeway, one built from refuse and rubble. The way was small and hidden.
Just a few miles outside, not far from the lake, they came to a spring that rolled up from the blackened weeds and broken stone with undulating dollops of cool, clean water. Doc thought he should have tested it first, but the little fellow was so slaked with thirst that he dropped to his knees and plunged his cracked lips into it, drinking for far longer than seemed possible.
Doc walked up a small rocky knoll and stood, looking. Far beyond the Lair was the ruins of the little building they had sheltered in before the attack. He should call it the ruins of ruins, he thought, as it hardly been standing beforehand. Now, as Doc looked, it seemed hardly more than just another rocky knoll, or a pile of rubble.
There was something else. The air was somehow different. Lighter. Doc have never been one gifted with any manner of special “sight”, as they call it, but it seemed that the evil that had infected this place had lifted.
When he looked back to the east, however, back to the zombie-infected hills through which he knew the little fellow and he must somehow pass, he could again sense the stagnate blackness. It was as difficult to describe as it was easy to sense. The best Doc can say is this—it was if the clouds were somehow slower, more morose, not to mention lower to the ground, like ghosts, or the souls of mothers, searching for lost children.
Whatever evil had transformed this place into this black desert had not been vanquished by their merry band. It had only been uprooted. And now it was making its way out of here.
Doc looked around, hoping the longmongers had done the same.
* * *
For an hour after the little fellow drank, they just rested. Doc was looking for some trail amid the stones, but he finally had to admit there was no clear way home but through the impossible reaches that they, grown men all of them, had not all survived. Doc wished desperately there was some way to get him home by boat. He could sleep while Doc rowed. But that, of course, was impossible.
Doc reached down and patted his head, and this was enough to warrant a small cry from the lad. He could hardly keep his feet under him.
“Stop your nonsense, there!” Doc wanted to say, just as his uncle used to whenever Doc felt weak or sick. “What’s wrong?”
But of course Doc said nothing of the sort to the boy. Instead they sat again.
“Hullo, there,” Doc whispered, rubbing his back more tenderly.
“Hello,” he whispered back.
Doc nodded
And Doc nodded again. He turned and looked east. It seemed impossible, but he could almost hear his uncle calling: “Now, Doc, what do you mean by this ‘impossible’ nonsense!”
“Then let us get going,” Doc told him.
His own words recalled the real reason of his presence in these lonely stretches. His quest been eclipsed, at times, by the fearful events of the trek here. But his quest wasn’t to kill longmonger or strange beings from their lair. His quest was not even to reach Emily.
His quest was to bring hope home.
* * *
As the little fellow napped that afternoon, Doc gathered some supplies from the corpses of his fellows, and, in all, managed maybe four pounds of jerked pork and venison and two canteens of water.
“How old are you?”
Doc was terribly surprised when he said, “Seven.”
Thundering fuck, but he was small. Doc would have bet his ass that he had seen no more than four or five. Then Doc realized he was lying. He was, at most, six
As Doc looked at him, and once more at the trail ahead, the whole scene was repugnant beyond endurance. His mind’s ears were so filled with the death cries heard in the afternoons before that Doc had to focus on his little face to keep from weeping. It was a strange wonder, he thought, that such acts as killing zombies merit the crude recitals of what seems to the listener as a glorious conquest.
Doc could not rid his mind of the commando’s dying faces.
But just then, Doc saw something that made his heart soar. A horse. It was one of the packhorses, and it was still laden with supplies. His legs freshened with the very sight of it, and the tumult in his head dissipated. It was unsafe to leave the lad to go chasing after it, so Doc called to it in the whistling grunts the wildmen used.
The beast pricked its ears, and almost immediately made a detour of the rocky fields in order to reach them. It disappeared down a slope, then came trotted spiritedly up yet another toward them, slowing as Doc made clucking sounds for it to halt.
Doc reined him parallel to a small hill and let the little fellow climb atop its bare back.
It was unsafe.
Doc climbed in front of him and told him to not to let go of the remnants of his camo.
* * *
They set off. It was nearing night, and they went riding along what looked like the remains of a wooded river trail. Posts, or stumps, jutted at regular intervals alongside a flat, road-like way of flat stone. He shivered to think that zombies might actually be building things now.
After dark, Doc struck out a bit more briskly and still followed the path parallel to the stumps or posts.
When they reached the old zombie nests, Doc was first apprised of their whereabouts by his horse pricking forward his ears and sniffing the air uncannily. Doc tightened rein and touched him with his heel, but he snorted and jumped sideways with a suddenness that almost unseated them. The beast then came to a stand, shaking as if with chill.
“Wise where men are fools,” Doc whispered, dismounting.
Suddenly, something skulked across the trail and gained cover in the stones. With a reassuring pat, Doc urged his horse back towards the dry creek bed, for the camps were pitted with festering holes; but the beast reared, baulked and absolutely refused to be either driven, or coaxed.
Bringing the reins over his head, Doc tried to pull him forward but he planted all fours and jerked back, almost dragging him off his feet.
If ever horror were plainly expressed by an animal, it was by that horse. Legs rigid, head bent down, eyes starting forward and nostrils blowing in and out, he was a picture of terro
r.
“Are you possessed?” Doc whispered.
Something wriggled in the rocks. The horse rose on his hind legs, wrenched the rein from his hand, and just after Doc pulled the little fellow from its back, it scampered up into the rocks across the pitted black hills. Doc pulled back and suddenly, Doc was gripped by the little fellow. So together they walked on, and the lad let go somewhat, gripping him with only a single fist. Suddenly, in the silver-white of a starry sky, Doc saw what had terrified the animal. Close to some burnt shrubbery, lay the stark form of a dead zombie, knees drawn upwards and arms spread out like the bars of a cross. Was that one of the ones they had killed? Doc rushed towards the corpse—no it was not.
But just as the impossibly good possibilities of this sprang to mind, he quickly turned away. From downright lack of wits, Doc forgot that the sight of such a creature, even in life, much less mutilated beyond semblance to mankind, would send cold chills down the boys back.
Would that I had the strength and skill to be a father to the lad in this awful place: No child should ever have to see beneath the glory of the epics, to see the truth in the shedding of blood, the dead in their shame; for them, the pageant of war must not be stripped of all its falseness, revealing carnage and slaughter in their revolting nakedness.
Doc could not look back to know if that were one of the first zombies, but walked with the lad aimlessly around it, toward the camps. As they approached, there was a great flapping of wings. Up rose buzzards, scolding them in angry caws and hisses at their interruption.
Doc pulled the lad close, happily now.
The buzzards would never eat them before.
They walked past yet more bodies like the first. He counted eight within a stone’s throw, and there were twice as many shado here and there as they continued to walk, so many that it soon became obvious that the commandos had not killed them all.
