by B. V. Larson
But my changed hand knew the truth. It gripped his wrist even as his knife rose to pierce my breast. I looked at him and the look of dark determination on his face changed to surprise. He looked at the claw on his wrist and then, finally, for the first time since I’d met him, I saw fear in his face. I shoved him away, and my new hand seemed strong because it left purpling bruises where it had touched him.
I shoved him backwards, but he was trained for such things and twisted and rode the force of my movement. I was pulled off-balance by his judo move and I lost my grip on his knife hand. He sprang away from me and I did the same. We both lifted our weapons and circled. Sand spit out from our shuffling feet.
“Again you sneak up on me,” I told him. I was angry, but scared. He was so much more trained than I was. I’d fought and learned things, but I had no military training to back it up. It was one thing to fight a mindless monster that came at you while you hacked at it. Fighting a man who had made a lifelong study of combat was quite another.
“I moved on that witch not you,” he said, “but I can’t save you Gannon, I know that now. No more than I could save Wilton, or that thing at the bottom of the lake.”
I lunged at him and my sword flared up like a torch swept about in the air. It made no sound, but flared and brightened eagerly.
He dodged with expert precision and slid his dagger under my blade, but could not reach me. He barely managed to get his shoulder out of the way before the tip skewered him. He recovered quickly and so did I. We went back to circling. I hesitated to attack again. It might be just what he wanted.
“I wondered if it would come down to this,” I spat at him, “you and I deciding who would tell the tale to the others, deciding who was the changeling and who the hero after the other was buried in a shallow hole.”
“I’ve never planned to murder you,” he said.
“But you killed my mother, didn’t you?” I demanded, and I saw the surprise in his eyes. For just a second, he stopped tracking my blade tip and instead glanced up at my face. That was the opening I needed. Instead of lunging, I went in slashing this time in wide arcs. Slashing is much harder to dodge than thrusting, and so he moved to block me instead. His long knife and my longer sword clashed and rang. He gave ground, and I kept up the attack, advancing, hoping he would stumble while shuffling backward in the sands.
He tried to gain the initiative, making a few counterthrusts to back me off, but I kept coming and with his shorter weapon he couldn’t stop me without exposing himself. I pressed the attack and our chests heaved.
Overhead the stars twinkled and the lantern that lay on the sands beneath my coat shot out occasional rays of light. The colored beams fluttered over the scene and intermittently illuminated our feet and spurts of kicked-up sand. My blade shined green, then red, and then back to blue-white again as the shifting rays touched it.
The Captain’s right boot slid back and located a piece of driftwood. He stumbled and went to one knee. I hammered down three blows and he caught them all with his knife hilt. He was good and very fast, I had to admit. Perhaps, with more even weapons he could have beaten me. But he was down now and I tasted victory.
Then the driftwood he’d stumbled over came up and smashed me in the face. I was shocked, but I knew that knife would be following the driftwood, so I used the hilt of my weapon to bash blindly down. I cracked the steel counterweight at the bottom of the hilt into his skull. It made a satisfying thump.
Both blinded by pain and nearing exhaustion, we disengaged and climbed to our feet again. Breathing hard, we went back to circling. He had the piece of driftwood in his hand now; it was about the size and weight of a fireplace log.
“How long have you known about your mom?” he asked between ragged breaths.
“The Hag told me.”
“For what it’s worth kid, I didn’t—” he paused to breathe. “I didn’t murder your mom. She had changed. I killed a changeling, that’s all.”
“I’ll kill you for it, all the same,” I said and attacked again.
He blocked with the driftwood and the dagger and I had an even harder time getting through. Then he came at me, reversing the tempo. I had no idea how to stop two whirling weapons, a club and a knife, I only knew how to stop another sword, and so I retreated, parrying as I went. I counterattacked with stop thrusts to keep him honest, but he kept moving in on me, catching my blade, beating it out of the way, and trying to get in close for a finishing move.
I realized I needed to do something fast, so I feinted, and then tried a move I’d learned from our fencing instructor. It was quite illegal in the fine sport of fencing, but the duelists of centuries past weren’t above such a thing. It was risky, so I waited until he was in mid-step and wasn’t ready to make a good counterattack.
I lunged and stabbed at his foot. I received a crack on the shoulder from his block of wood for my troubles, but was gladdened to see my saber come back out of his boot darkened by blood.
He howled and his breath blew through a line of clenched teeth. He made a staggering attack and I skipped away easily. He switched stances, putting his injured foot behind him.
“I’ve beaten you,” I said.
He ignored me, and advanced, favoring his foot. I hopped back.
“I’ll I’ve got to do is wait it out, that foot is already getting stiff. Soon, you’ll start to tire and slow down.”
“Shut up.”
I exulted. I was getting to him.
“Only one of us is leaving this beach and it won’t be you,” I said.
He stopped chasing me then, and stood up straight. He grinned, and I didn’t like the feral cast to his face. He hefted his knife and reversed it with a casual flip of his wrist. He now held it in a throwing position.
My face fell. I recalled his legendary throwing ability. He had even done a few exhibitions at the county fair. I backed away a few paces.
“You’ve only got one throw,” I reminded him.
“That’s all I’ll need, boy,” he responded confidently.
I felt a wave of frustration. “You started this. You were going to knife me while we stood there together, after everything we’ve been through down there, after I went down there to save your worthless hide.”
He shook his head. It was his turn to be exasperated. “You aren’t Gannon anymore, boy. Look at your hand. Look at that crazy magic rock you dragged out of the bottom of the lake like you were mothering an egg. You’re carrying a magic sword you got from hell-knows-where and that Hag, that thing, whatever, had you in her spell, and don’t try to say she didn’t.”
“A good enough reason to kill me?”
“What would you have done if I’d gone crazy over a magic chunk of glass and had grown a hand like a dead man’s claw?”
I chewed my lip. “And my mother?”
“It wasn’t your mother. She had turned.”
We stood there glaring at each other for perhaps another minute.
“Make your move, boy,” he growled.
“I need to think,” I said. “Truce for now?”
He thought about it, “Truce,” he said.
I backed away and left him with the lantern on the beach. Somehow, when it was covered, I didn’t care about it that much anymore.
Thirty-Three
As I stumbled up the slope in the woods I felt a tiny hot wet spot on my face. It was a single tear. I hadn’t shed a tear since the day I’d found my parents. I felt ashamed, not for my weak emotions, but for my selfishness. So many had died, but I could only cry for my own losses.
I felt confused and disgusted and wished with everything I had I’d never gone down there. The Hag was different from all the others. She was far stranger and more powerful, I knew, than even Malkin had been hiding in his little limestone hole. She wasn’t just a normal being, twisted into something new, she was older. She was a creature who had walked the Earth in past supernatural ages like this one. I wondered how many more alien creatures had awakened like Malkin an
d the Hag, and shuddered at the form our new world was taking.
Perhaps Wilton had been right after all. Perhaps you had to adjust and adapt to survive. Like my ancestors who had once faced the Ice Age, I would have to change my ways. I would have to learn new ways to deal with a hostile and lonely world. I didn’t look at my left hand, but I could feel it in like a lump of hard bones in my pocket, where I’d stuffed it to hide it from myself and anyone else I might meet. It made the skin of my thigh crawl with disgust where it rested.
I trudged in misery for an hour or so, dead-tired. Finally, up ahead, I saw a moving white light in the trees. I thought about the gun I’d had in my pocket, and realized I’d left it behind on the beach in my coat. It did not matter much anyway. I was out of bullets for it. I stood in a pool of shade behind a tree and waited.
While I watched, I wondered about how I had trekked through the woods so far in the pitch dark without a light of any kind. Had my eyes shifted, just a fraction, too? Then I realized that dawn was coming, and was in fact nearly upon the landscape. Perhaps that explained my vision, I thought with relief.
The light came a bit closer and I realized it must be a propane lantern. I stepped out and called out to the bearer, who jumped like a surprised burglar.
“Hello,” I said.
“Holy Moses,” exclaimed Vance. He clutched at his chest. “It’s you, Gannon. I almost filled my pants!”
I grinned. I was very glad to see him. Even in the darkest moments, he could cheer me up. “Hello brother, what are you doing out here?”
“Checking my traps,” he said. “The center is just over the hill. We are gathering all the food we can for winter. But I tell you, I’m still hoping I can get through another year without finding out what muskrat tastes like.”
“Gathering traps in the dark?”
“It’s dawn. Got to get to the traps before the foxes do.”
I nodded and followed him back toward the center. He had a sack of somethings over his shoulder. Occasionally, the sack quivered slightly.
“Not much meat on a rabbit, you know,” he said.
“Even less on a squirrel.”
He snorted in agreement. “But tell me how it went? What did you do? How did it go?”
I told him an edited version of my tale. For now, I left out the part about my fight with the Captain and my altered hand.
“So there’s a city of dead things down there?” he asked with great concern.
“Essentially.”
“Well, great. That’s just grand. I suppose she can turn into a bat and come in our windows as well, eh?”
“I hope not.”
We got to the Center then, and I found my way quickly to my bunk. Monika lavished my dirty face with kisses, and then began to gently bathe my cheeks and forehead with medicated wet wipes she’d gotten from somewhere. The sting of the alcohol in the wipes felt good drying on my face. I kept my left hand jammed in my pocket, and she left it alone. She said a few things to me in her own language, speaking softly and not really expecting an answer. They sounded like the kind of things you might say to a tired, sick and frightened child. I liked it, and closed my eyes.
I wondered if criminals went home like this and enjoyed every kindness they could absorb with intensity before the inevitable heavy knock came at their door. I fell into a sleep as deep as the lake itself.
* * *
The heavy knock came about three hours later. I awakened with a jolt of unwanted adrenaline. My dreams tore apart like frosty spider webs and in a few hazy moments of blinking, they were gone forever. I sat up.
The knock came again, three sharp reports. I felt I knew who it was before I opened the door. I almost forgot about my left hand, but managed to jam it deeply into a pocket before the door swung open.
It was the long lost Preacher. Somehow, I’d known that forceful, undeniable knock of confident authority. Seeing his stern face, I knew relief and dread all at once. We studied each other’s faces for a moment, and I knew that mine was honest and showed my feelings plainly. It was difficult to be duplicitous when awakened from a deep sleep.
“John Thomas,” I said in a raspy voice. “Welcome back.”
“The same to you, Gannon,” his voice rolled out. As always, I liked the resonating quality of it. He had the kind of voice that everyone could hear in church—you couldn’t help but hear him. Even when the babies were all crying at once it seemed that you could hear his every syllable in the furthest pews.
I really was glad to see him, glad that he had survived all this time, somehow, just as we had. I was grateful too for the leadership and guidance I knew he would provide us. Just the same, I feared him. He, like no other, would soon divine any secrets I might try to hold back.
His gaze flicked from my face, to Monika, who sat up in the bunk behind me. Monika had no poker face, she wore her fears on her brows. What’s more, I knew that she already knew something was wrong with me. She had said nothing last night, but that was all the more telling.
He took it all in. Her expression, mine, the two cots which were pushed together now, he examined it all in a moment. His eyes even paused on the sword and my pocketed hand. In the dim room, even with reflected sunlight streaming in behind him, the sword still glimmered.
All of this took no longer than three seconds before his eyes were back to my face, boring into my eyes. He always stared you in the eye, unblinkingly. He nodded. He gave me a thin smile.
“I imagine you have quite a story to tell,” he said.
“I certainly do,” I told him. “I bet you do too.”
“Yes, I truly do. Let’s get some breakfast and cleanse our bodies.”
I followed him and Monika followed me. Her hand reached out and I felt her light touch. I reached back my right hand, my good hand, and clasped hers. She was still with me, I knew. Had she, during the night, touched me and caressed me, in my deepest slumber? Had she, perhaps, felt the gray, leathery thing that rode in my other pocket? Or was it simply a sense she had that all was not well? I was again impressed by her natural quiet empathy. She was one of those rare people who didn’t speak much, but was very much involved and always knew the score. I squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back, faintly.
It was about then that I saw the thing on the Preacher’s belt move on its own. It didn’t jump, exactly, but it certainly did shift its weight. A black, wooden handle protruded down from his belt, and I recognized that he carried an axe as he had the last time I’d seen him. He had it attached to his belt with a loop of thick leather, with the head of it resting against his waist the way a carpenter might carry a hammer. The handle, not as long as the usual handle of a wood axe, but perhaps only two feet long, ran down his leg. I could see that he would be able to grab the haft under the head of it and pull it free quickly.
It was the handle of the thing that moved. It switched from one side to the other, first sliding around behind his knee, then rolling forward. The movement was not due to any action on his part, I was sure of it, even though I had not been staring at it directly when it moved. I would have assumed it to be a natural thing some months ago before the world had gone mad, but not now. I knew that when odd, impossible things happened, they happened for a reason and I knew the rippling sources of those reasons intimately.
I knew, instantly, that the axe on his belt was not the same as the last time I’d seen it. I knew that it had a power now, that it was, in a way, alive. I stopped dead and Monika pushed up against my back. She didn’t run into me, she wrapped herself up against my back and peeked around me. She was already aware of what I had just noticed, I realized. She never missed these things. Maybe this was the reason for the look of fear on her face when the Preacher had come calling.
I stopped dead and, after two forward paces, the Preacher stopped too. We were almost out to the lobby. Around us, faces were watching, I now realized. There was Jimmy Vanton, Holly Nelson and Nick Hackler, who chewed on a sandwich. Holly Nelson’s unwashed, rat-tailed hair sli
pped down into her face, but she paid no attention. Her eyes simply slid back and forth between the Preacher’s back and my face. She had something in her hand. Something very sharp, of course.
“Preacher,” I called out.
He turned his head back and raised an eyebrow at me.
“What rides on your belt?” I asked.
He turned his body around slowly, fully. We stood perhaps twenty feet apart in a corridor that was perhaps ten feet wide. He put his hands on his hips. The thing attached to his waist moved again, this time the metal edge of the axe seemed to be black and shiny, and it twisted and gleamed at me. I realized then that it wanted him to reach down and grab its handle, that it wanted him to pull it out and swing it. He glanced down toward it, and then slid his eyes back to me.
“As I said, Gannon, we both have long tales to tell.”
“But what is it? That is not natural.”
His brow darkened somewhat, the very first hint of anger I’d seen from him today.
“Gannon,” he said, in a voice that told me he struggled to speak as gently as he could. “One might ask you about the shimmering blade strapped to your side. Or—” he paused here, and I knew he was about to say, Or the hand you keep jammed in your pocket. But he didn’t. “Or where you’ve been and who you’ve talked to.”
I chewed my lip for a second, and then nodded. “All right, let’s talk then—now.”
The crowd of pale faces that poked into the hallway breathed a collective sigh of relief then. There would be no clash of wills or weapons. Not yet, anyway.
I followed him out to the lobby and paused at a breakfast spread someone had laid out. I had already decided to forget about our primitive bathing facilities, little more than a can of heated water in freezing shower stall, but I wanted food. There was coffee, weak but wonderful, and a big pile of homemade-looking sausages and homemade-looking flatbread. I realized that everything except the coffee, which was probably brewed up from salvaged grounds, we had made ourselves. Nick Hackler had on an apron and a smile as I approached his buffet. I realized instantly that he had probably gone to great effort to put all this together.
