by Scott Hale
He goes as deep as he can into the house, letting his nose guide him, and then goes deeper still. Not touching the piles of wreckage in the house’s furthest corner, he searches for fissures and, finding them, slips through. That’s where most people were these days. In the cracks, waiting to die as they waited things out.
Coming out of the fissure, Judas finds no one in the dark pocket on the other side. His eyes don’t need much light to work with, so he leaves the wreckage where it is and picks over the blackness.
There are a lot of cans of food. All of them are empty. The labels have been torn off and probably eaten. There are plastic soda bottles; most of them are filled with piss. Animal feces cultivate a small kingdom of flies in a recess. Stained cardboard and soiled linens stand in place of a bed. A few magazines about women’s health, do-it-yourself home improvements, and musical instruments are splayed out along the ground; pleasure, purpose, and past-time.
Judas can’t find any weapons aside from the sharp edges of the aluminum cans. He takes a seat in the makeshift room of a makeshift life. It wouldn’t be long now. It couldn’t be long now.
He dozes off. He dreams of the families he’s known. They offer them his faces. It was nice to know they still fit.
Judas jerks awake. There had been a noise, either in this world or the one inside his head, but there had been a noise. He knows what he wants it to be; his mind goes elsewhere.
North of here, deep in the swamp, there is a village called Traesk. Hundreds of Night Terrors are said to live there. To Judas, there is nothing more frightening than them. Pretentious, entitled, and narcissistic, the semi-organized tribe of sociopaths have dedicated their entire existence into “balancing” the human race by engaging in the very same behaviors they supposedly condemn in the “Corrupted.” At night, they sneak into towns and villages and rape and murder humans by the handfuls. Those women that are raped but are not fortunate enough to die afterwards sometimes give birth to demonic offspring that have been known to eviscerate entire families before being put down.
People call them Night Terrors, but Judas prefers to remember what they were called in the Old World: flesh fiends. It is important to him not to forget these things. A terrorist is a terrorist until it is on your television, at your table; accepted, celebrated; normalized.
The movement softens. Judas draws to the fissure and listens. He hopes it is a Night Terror. Some have chosen to wear the skulls of Lord animals rather than the skulls and flesh of humans. Those animal skulls fetch a nice price. Even in a world as hopeless as this one, oversized beasts and beautiful mutations can open mouths and wallets.
The hunger finds him again. With the knife in his hand, he thinks of cutting out his stomach. He has to stop doing this to himself.
The sounds draw nearer to the house. Footsteps. Long nails clicking against cement. He hears panting—two kinds—and rustling. Someone speaks. A man like himself, or so they all say. A Night Terror, perhaps. It could be a Lillian, which is not an issue, except the Lillians tend to move in droves, like locusts, eating away their host’s good will until nothing is left but prejudice and discrimination. Judas has killed his fair share of Lillians, but anyone more than one body wouldn’t do him any good. He has others waiting on him. Their mouths are not meant for human meat. Not yet, in any case.
They are inside the house, outside the fissure. Judas hears mumbling. Something heavy and filled with metal is set down. More panting, and a high-pitched whine.
Guided by hunger, Judas forsakes patience and pushes into the fissure. The knife leads the way, as it always has. The smell is overwhelming. He weeps.
A gasp. Bare, dry feet sounding scratchy on stone. Snarling.
Judas stops at the fissure’s midpoint. He’s been spotted.
On the other side, an old man stands in sweat pants and a grey hoodie. There are holes in his clothes from where he’s been hurt; the bloodstains around them are proof of that. He had been obese once; curtains of loose skin sag from his frame. Judas can’t see this, but he has before.
At Judas’ feet lie what might be his most prized possessions.
To his right, a stuffed sack of canned goods topped off with a rod of skewered squirrels. Winter wouldn’t be long now, and this was meant to see him through hibernation.
To his left, a dog. A mangy thing with greasy, matted fur. A quivering thing with wet, lifeless eyes and a pink, snarling mouth. It snaps at its master, perhaps out of confusion, or simply out of disappointment. It knows what’s coming, and the old man, by fire and stars, had promised otherwise.
Judas keeps pushing through the fissure, his eyes locked on the old man’s.
The old man turns to run, but makes fists instead and stays where he stands. There is nowhere else to go. There is nowhere better for him and his but this.
The knife scrapes against the fissure, issuing knells. It catches on the edge and then, as Judas moves free from the wreckage, it stabs through the air. Like a magnet, the blade is drawn to where it belongs.
Through flesh, in bone.
One for him, one for them.
The journey home is long. Judas goes by sun, and when he gets there, will be greeted by moon. He steers clear of the northern swamps of Traesk and dares not go farther south than needed to avoid drawing the attention of the Lillian sentries outside Cathedra. His place is in the east, far from the black city of Vold, where once he lived and now lives again. In that day, they called it Bitter Springs. Nowadays, they call it nothing at all.
Judas carries the dead dog in his arms and the sack over his shoulder. It is slow going on a stomach so stuffed. Through the fields and forests, he is vulnerable, but he knows no other way. There are things he can do to protect himself if needed, but he’d rather not. Some masks worn too long tend to crumble when removed.
This wasteland is one unending rupture. Where once there had been roads and cities and countless neighborhoods, there are now only the gaping wounds from which God’s wanting veins came through. After all these years, Judas still finds these scenes too surreal. Some say God did not die, that It slumbers. And if that is true, then the Earth left behind is one of Its nightmares. Or, perhaps, Its most stirring fantasy.
Judas sees the forest and makes for the trees. Dark things dwell in the heart of the Heartland. Not just Night Terrors or Lillians, but inhuman things. Fanged beasts, winged terrors; skittering hordes. Ancient horrors from myth and Membrane, ready to find their place in a world once cut-off from them.
But hostilities remain. Judas reaches the trees and slips into their wooded embrace. There is a heat in the air, like a wick quickly burning down to the wax. An inevitable clash is coming; something to swallow this rallying fire of freedom whole. He is not alone here.
Shouting. Gunshots.
Judas looks back and sees a lone truck struggling up and down the ruptures outside the forest. Gathered round it is a camouflaged gang of angry men and women. Those in the truck’s bed have the guns; those around the truck do not. They have torches and stakes and sharp pieces of silver fixed onto sticks, like spears.
Judas runs faster. The Corrupted don’t know they want him, but they will, and if they don’t, they’ll find a reason.
Their game isn’t far, and realizing that, Judas sees their victims in the northern part of the forest, not walking or running, but dashing between the boughs.
He sees the twenty or so vampyres in their conservative school uniforms. They are aged between five and twelve, and their hands are split from finger to wrist, as the mouths inside their palms plead with gnashes and hisses to suck dry the flesh bags that trail them. But the little girls and little boys show no sign of stopping. Combat is not their concern. They are desperate, and of late, endangered.
The lamias are slower. They slither from tree to tree on their serpentine bellies, while their feminine top-halves exert every muscle beneath their coppery skin to hurl them through the canopy. Unlike the vampyres, there is no question as to whether they are considering standin
g their ground. A lamia’s scales, colored in accordance to their temperament and toxicity, fetch a fetching price in the right markets. Judas expects that most of the fleeing lamias are responsible for the deaths of the mob’s many children. They will not be killed. They will be taken alive, first to be raped, then to be flayed, and then, when thoughts of revenge and acts of posturing have lost their taste, the lamias will be discarded, left to the cruelness of nature for their cruel nature.
Judas goes his own way. The Great Hunt will go on whether he does something or not. The Corrupted have decided that creatures such as the vampyres and lamias are the ones responsible for the Trauma. Even now it is easier to make fists than to point their fingers at themselves.
A lamia is sniped from the boughs. It cries out and hits the ground. The mob and pick-up truck close in. Its brethren do not stop, nor do the vampyres with which they’ve aligned themselves. Because the Nameless Forest is farther still, and for now, their only sanctuary.
Judas makes it home with a pack of strays trailing him. They smell the blood on his breath, and are desperate for the corpse of their own he’s been carrying. He sets down the old man’s dog like an offering. When the strays move, stiff and scared, Judas takes off his mask and does what needs to be done.
Mary’s heard the commotion. It would’ve been strange had she not. Their home is underground, beneath the shattered remains of Bitter Springs, but you don’t have to hear pain to know it’s near. You develop an organ for it. It makes you itch, like an allergy; on your neck, on the back of your hands. She’s scratching at herself when she flips the fallout shelter’s door back and comes halfway up the ladder.
Judas gets dressed and glances back. She is a pretty thing, framed by ruin or not. He would be lucky to have a wife like her, but for now, he’s just a guest in her home, with her two pretty daughters, Harper and Jane. They don’t know yet. His shape is the same, and they can’t yet see behind his eyes.
Surrounded by the broken bodies of “man’s best friend,” Judas laughs. He starts to drag the dogs in by their legs, and she comes out to help. He hands her the bag of canned goods with the skewered squirrels and she goes back with it under the ground, like a pilfering goblin.
They will eat well tonight. She, lonely and with needs of her own, will still be hungry when the fires have gone low and coals have begun to cool. He will have to think of something to keep her away. He is running out of excuses.
Judas drags the last of the dogs to the metal door and drops them down into the dark. He looks up to the sky and sees a green mist like a halo around the moon.
There is a sickness in the stars tonight. Or maybe there always had been. You see what you want to see.
God should’ve known better, he considers, closing the door over him as he descends down the ladder. It’s troubling that It didn’t.
10
They had dog for dinner, and dog for breakfast. Seeing Harper and Jane tear into the animals with their grubby fingers didn’t surprise Judas as much as it used to with the others. Pets were things of the past. Companionship didn’t count for much where a life could be lived from sunrise to sunset. Mary’s daughters had never known anything different, and never would. They, their mother’s only dreams, had been born into this nightmare.
“It’s such a nice day out,” Mary says to them.
Judas laughs.
She does not.
Harper and Jane have not seen the sun in some time. Like flowers feeling the first drops of rain after a long drought, they straighten up, and take off around the fallout shelter. There is not much room down there to run, so it is only a few seconds before they are swarming Judas, tugging on his shirt, jumping on him.
They smell like wet fur and blood as they whine in unison, “Please, daddy! Please!”
Judas is not their father. And if he were, he would not allow either of them to set foot outside of here. But he has a part to play; not to hide, but to pay for this gift in which he hides.
Mary sends Judas up the ladder. He tells the girls to be quiet while they put on their coats. Unlocking the hatch and pushing it back, sunlight floods the shelter, sending Harper and Jane scurrying for the comforts of dark.
“Find some shade,” Mary calls after him.
They want to go outside, and the first thing they ask for is to be out of the light. Before stepping off the ladder, Judas glances back and sees Mary’s preparing for a picnic.
He lowers the shelter’s door slowly. It clicks rather than clanks into place. Sound carries in the wasteland, and when it echoes back, he doesn’t want anything coming with it.
Bitter Springs, or what remains of it, is hard to look at. Having been so close to God, the town could not hold in Its presence. There is little left, and even less to recognize. Most buildings simply disappeared. They, along with almost every sewage pipe, power line, and other utilities, had been ripped off and out of the ground. What’s left is piles of rubble and hills of dirt, and the blighted and hewn forest they once called Maidenwood. It does not offer much in the way of cover, and yet because of where the town is, it is almost invisible.
Fifty miles from what used to be Bitter Springs’ outskirts, and across the soured, stagnated Tri-County river, is Bedlam, the birthplace of Lillian, God’s speaker and the leader of the Lillians. It is a holy site caught in a constant conflict between the religious order and those who have decided to live there. Some say they fight just to fight, while others say the aggression is being stoked by Vold to keep the Lillians scattered and stupid. Either way, with everyone there, or held up in the much closer ruins of Brooksville, it leaves Bitter Springs ignored.
Judas goes out a quarter mile from the fallout shelter and circles it. The wind howls in his ears with sharp warnings he has yet to heed. “Go back inside,” it seems to say some days. And on others, “You should not be here.”
Farther on, the morning fog clings like cotton. It is dark, though, and putrescent in color. The Putrid Prince had passed through these parts last night. Its taint lingers. Judas isn’t sure of the creature’s intent, but like the Night Terrors, the roaming cloud of disease appears to be targeting humans exclusively; more specifically, those Corrupted who do not bear the crimson defect. It used to kill them, but now it consumes them, repurposes them into contagious colonies. Mary, Harper, and Jane have Corruption, but Judas still insists on being precautious. It seems like something he would do, and therefore, something he should do.
Judas makes his way back to the fallout shelter. For a moment, he slips off the mask and trains his eyes and nose on his surroundings. He smells the pack of dogs he killed last night, and sees their blood blinking in the soil. He takes his senses farther out into the wilderness, probing every piece of debris and detritus that he can see for shapes and smells. Animals, rodents mostly, and stinking bones stand out to him in his stomach’s eye, but nothing of the human or humanoid variety. For now, they are alone here.
“Dad—”
Harper’s voice breaks likes a violin string.
On the ladder, holding the door over her head, she’s seen him without his mask.
Judas turns away from her and calls forth the flesh. Like clothes in a closet, they hang silently in the dark, waiting to be put on. His closet has gotten so full, he loses track of what he’s stolen over the years.
Harper persists. “Dad?”
She’s climbed out of the shelter. She’s coming towards him.
Judas walks away from her. The pressure slows his perusing. The flesh is here somewhere. He has to choose the right one. He can’t do this to them.
“Dad, what’s wrong with your—”
He’s found it, or thinks he has. She’s close enough to touch him, and she will, with those small, warm, dirty hands of hers, because she is a child, and eight, and like the blind, she has to feel something to truly understand it.
He needs to see his reflection, but everywhere he looks, there is only overgrown destruction. His mirror is behind him.
So, heart
beating and nearly breaking, he turns to face her.
Harper stops. She grinds her heel. One eyebrow arches after the other. “Dad?” she whispers.
He doesn’t say anything.
“Never mind.” She smiles and grabs his hand. “Is it okay? Can we? Please?”
Judas would rather wait until the fog lifts to be sure, but by the confused happiness on Harper’s face, he’s not sure he can. She’s his confederate. She knows what she saw, but for their sake, she’s willing to forget it.
When God left, it was the children who learned the quickest about how to survive.
“Well, I don’t hear your father yelling up there,” Mary says from inside the shelter.
Jane, seven, comes from the ground with a basket in her mouth.
“So, it must be okay,” Mary finishes, emerging from behind her daughter. She has a tarp folded over her arm and a bottle of wine in her hand.
Judas wishes Mary hadn’t brought the bottle of wine. It was special to her and her husband, and he has no idea as to why.
Mary drops the fallout shelter’s door. It clanks loudly, breaking this sad serenity. She tightens her shoulders, cringes, and says, “Oops.”
Judas spins in place. He searches the fog, but in it, nothing stirs. Only the dead world he once knew. Day by day, it’s breaking down. Sometimes it’s so loud, you might even think it’s raining. Jane, sentimental as ever, told him once that the sound was the planet crying. He liked that, but he didn’t like knowing why it wept. Because it was falling apart? Or because others wouldn’t let it?
“Are we okay?” Mary asks.
Judas nods. “Good as it’s going to get.”
Harper and Jane turn to one another like two cowboys in a stand-off. Their excitement bubbles over into red blotches on their faces. But they are quiet. They know better.
Judas picks a place for their picnic. It’s farther away from the shelter than Mary might have anticipated, so when he points it out, she doesn’t say anything. And when he realizes he’s not acting himself, she can’t stop talking.
