The First Ones

by Michael Weinberger

  The whole world seemed to move in slow motion, as the Driver looked from the four grotesque gashes in his thigh to the beast that had caused the grievous wound. He knew that the pain would come, but he turned off that part of his mind and acted. Three quick shots with the semi-automatic shotgun, driven pointblank into the center mass of the creature charging straight for him, sent the beast away in pieces. He squeezed the trigger a fourth time, but only heard an empty click. The third shot had been his last round. The Driver looked at his shotgun, saw the open chamber, and then noticed the last remaining werewolf charging for him as the world returned to full speed.

  Out of ammunition and wounded as he was the Driver could only watch as the beast charged in to take that last precious moment of his life. He managed to draw in one final breath of the sweet, clean, crisp mountain air, that in this moment, smelled as luxurious as any of the finest perfumes, and tasted as delicious as the most decadent of foods. Then a booming staccato of explosions came from above him, as the woman fired the entire contents of one of her Desert Eagles into the oncoming wolf. Blood and flesh splattered from the impact of each round until the beast fell still and silent on the road at his feet.

  The Driver let out the breath he had been holding, like a smoker releasing a treasured draw off of his last cigarette, before he looked down to his leg and was finally able to assess the damage that had been done. He only sighed in response to what he saw before applying pressure with both hands to the pulsating wound.

  The woman began to exit the vehicle, but he immediately called out to her, “Stop!” Painfully, the Driver fished the Range Rover’s keys from the pocket of his injured leg, “Take the truck and get out of here!”

  The woman froze, color draining from her face, and was about to protest when the Driver continued, “You know what’s at stake here, and you know how far you will have to travel before this is over. I’ll only slow you down…”

  “That doesn’t mean we can’t get you to some help along the way,” the woman replied calmly, but her voice broke halfway through as a small sob escaped.

  The Driver chuckled as his face began to lose color and turn a shade whiter, “I don’t think I could make it to the first town, even if I wanted to make the effort.” He tossed the woman the keys and said, “I’ll try to cover you, go!” Then he smiled, “But do you think you can spare me one of your hand cannons and an extra clip?”

  “I can’t just leave you…” and the woman was interrupted by the sound of additional howls and snarls coming from the forest, before they both looked apprehensively toward the darkened tree line.

  “You need to go.” The Driver spoke with such calm authority that the woman found herself nodding as she tossed her second handgun to him. Despite the dizziness that was setting in from his blood loss, the Driver managed to snatch the gun deftly from the air. Then he began to drag himself away from the truck and toward the side of the road, where the beasts would be coming for him.

  The woman hesitated another second before she too was in motion. The Range Rover started smoothly and, after taking one more second to see that the child was still strapped into her seat, she gunned the engine and sped away.

  The Driver nodded to himself, as he watched the taillights of the SUV speeding away, then he checked the clip in the gun, satisfied that it was fully loaded before taking in another long and steadying breath.

  “Well,” he said to the emptiness, “let’s see if you can kill me before I bleed out.”

  Then he fired one round into the darkness of the forest from where the beasts had previously emerged.

  The sound of howls immediately rang out again and the Driver found himself smiling at the sound as the familiar tingles of adrenaline flooded through him.

  “That’s right! Bring it on, you literal Sons of a Bitch!!!”

  Chapter 5: Laughing at Death

  The tail lights of the Range Rover had passed completely out of sight before the next beast appeared. The Driver almost missed the glowing light of its animal eyes as the moonlight barely separated the beast’s silhouette from the other shadows of the forest.

  The Driver aimed down the barrel of the handgun, fixing the iron sight between those two glowing orange retinas, but held off from pulling the trigger. His mind may have been clouded from both pain and blood loss, but he still had the sense enough to wait for the perfect shot and not waste his ammunition. True, he had the stationary beast dead to rights, but it would be a long shot to make accurately with a handgun, especially given the weapon’s high recoil.

  More shadows appeared and he found his eyes darting back and forth over numerous dark silhouettes that seemed to flow endlessly out of the inner aspect of the forest. Strangely, each came to a halt just inside the tree line.

  Panic began to seep its way into his spine and he found himself yelling at the shadows.

  “Well?!? Let’s go! I’ll blow every one of you back to whatever hell you came from!!!”

  A shriek came from the sky above and it startled him into shifting his gaze away from the tree line. The sound was shrill and piercing like an eagle or a hawk, but also had a similar deep and resonating bass that the wolf beasts made from their own throats as they growled and snarled. The sound was so alien that the Driver couldn’t help but try to find the source of the sound. All he could see was the night sky, empty save for the stars, until he thought he saw something large moving downward and toward him, though he couldn’t make out any detail to indicate what it might be.

  Realization dawned on him in an instant and he raised the handgun skyward while desperately straining his eyes as he attempted to lock onto the diving horror he felt closing in on him. He saw it, or saw something, looming... hovering... several yards above him as it blotted out a portion of the night sky with its own blackness.

  He had forgotten about the wolf beasts on the ground before him and it was then that they charged.

  The Driver heard them coming and knew he only had a few seconds before he would be overwhelmed…and probably ripped to shreds. There was nothing that would change that now but, if this was his moment to die, then he’d leave this life after he put a bullet in the Mother of all Monsters’ skull. The creature abandoned it camouflage in the final moments of its dive and the Driver took Kaylanna’s appearance fully into his vision, in all her nightmarish manifestation. A scream caught in his throat, as he saw the ancient evil that he and the others had pledged themselves to fight and protect the child from, even at the cost of their own lives. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as the Driver tried to aim his final defiant shot against the nauseating sickness that threatened to overwhelm him. He willed his finger to gently squeeze the trigger, knowing he only had one chance and couldn’t risk the aberrant inaccuracy that jerking the trigger might bring. He was sure the gun was about to fire and tried not to flinch in anticipation of the recoil, but instead of the violent force and sound of the gun firing he instead felt a sudden tearing pain in his hands as the weapon was wrenched from his grasp. Then he was screaming, partly in frustration from his missed opportunity, and partly from the new onslaught of pain that wracked his body as a multitude of claws ripped into his flesh, restrained his good leg, his arms and his wrists as they held him helpless and fast to the ground.

  Only then did the hovering creature land on its soft pads of what were a cross between human’s foot, and a wolf’s paw. The body was human-like but elongated and covered in short black fur that gleamed with a peculiar blue hue in the moonlight. The creature had strangely thin and distended arms, with a web of skin on the underside of each arm that connected to its body, resembling the wings of a bat, complete with the elongated fingers and wickedly hooked claws.

  The creature’s face came into view from the darkness of the night and the Driver’s breath caught in his throat. The face before his eyes was worse than any nightmare one might ever conceive. Twisted with terrible features, fangs that extended from an elongated mouth and snout that appeared to be a bizarre cross between a wolf
and a pig. Only the face of the creature was devoid of that shiny black fur, revealing instead a dark and leathery skin. The creature tensed and wrinkled in what appeared to be a furious scowl as it glared down at the Driver, who stared back in shock and horror.

  The creature looked him over slowly, with its eyes taking in every detail of him, until they stopped at the area where his leg had been injured, and she took a few uncomfortable moments, before looking directly into his eyes.

  The skin within the face seemed to undulate and change, as the creature knelt down, sniffing at his wound. The Driver tried to struggle, to shift his injuries away, but his injured leg had gone numb and lifeless and it was all he could do to lay limply on the road. Pain from the effort of trying to move his leg caused him to wince and pinch his eyes shut but, when the noxious impulses ebbed, he opened his eyes again and found himself looking into the face of one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen.

  She was completely naked, completely human, kneeling before him and looking at him in such a way that the Driver had only seen before in private moments. Moments when a lover was on the verge of commencing something of a more intimate variety. It was a “sly fox” look that seemed to say, “I might very well eat you alive,” which of course had only been a metaphor previously and one he had relished. Now the literal meaning behind the phrase was a distinct possibility.

  “That looks quite painful,” the newly emerged woman said, with a convincing amount of concern and pity in her voice, “I suppose you know that the wound is fatal?”

  The Driver didn’t react or answer, but the woman seemed to read his thoughts as she nodded, “Yes, of course you do. Unfortunately for you,” the Witch-Woman waved her hand over his injury and the blood that had been flowing copiously from the wound slowed to a mere dribble, “the small amount of blood you will lose now will not be what ends your life. It is a poor death, long, slow and painful, I intend for you.” Then the woman smiled a beautiful smile, “That is… unless you can prove helpful to me.”

  “Kaylanna,” the Driver gave name to the ancient evil before him without realizing he had spoken aloud.

  The Witch-Woman moved in close to caress his cheek, making him jerk as he felt the roughness of the leathery skin and the lancing pain from the point of sharp claws. He almost screamed again when he saw that Kaylanna’s hand had morphed back into that disgusting flying demon bat’s hand. Kaylanna ran the tips of each claw lightly over the skin on his cheek, despite his attempts to twist out of the way, yet left his skin completely intact.

  “I would be disposed to give you the gift of a swift and painless passing,” she cooed, “if you were willing to help me.”

  The Driver looked incredulously at the beautiful face that smiled back at him, marveling at the disparity between the stunning face he could now see clearly, and the unholy visage that it had replaced seconds ago. Then a sound came out of him, quietly at first, and slowly gaining in volume and intensity, until he was in a full uproarious fit of laughter.

  The beasts that held him looked uneasily at each other and seemed as though they wanted to back a few steps away from their mistress and her impending wrath. The Witch-Woman only frowned in confusion and was about to say something else when the Driver interrupted her, while desperately trying to get his laughter under control.

  “I…I know what the stakes are in this, and I know what your intentions are for the world should I, and the rest of us, fail. I’m also aware that I’m basically a dead man, yet still breathing, but before I close my eyes for the final time I will tell you the one important thing. I want to feel every last little bit of pain that life can give me, because while I can feel pain, I know that I’m still alive, and still defying you.”

  Kaylanna’s face twisted into a terrible mask of rage, but did not morph into the frightening creature that she had been when she first landed on the road. Instead, she tilted her head to one side without taking her eyes off of the Driver, and gestured to a trio of the beasts to one side of her.

  “Go!” She ordered, “Cut through the woods and see if you can intercept the vehicle before it reaches the main highway.”

  Without hesitation the beasts burst into a run and sprinted down the road in the direction that the Range Rover had gone. The Driver watched them go, but lost sight of them as they darted off the road and back into the forest.

  It was the pain that diverted his attention back to the horror of what was sitting before him. The white-hot intensity of what just exploded painfully through his body was like nothing he had ever experienced. The fatal wound on his leg was only a small irritation that had been forgotten in the onslaught that now engulfed him.

  The Driver’s whole body convulsed in an attempt to escape from the source of the pain, but with the remaining beasts holding him fast, his body merely twisted in place without gaining any relief.

  Then, as suddenly as it had started, the pain was gone.

  The Driver’s body collapsed as his contracted muscles suddenly released, and he was once again sitting and restrained, in front of the witch-woman. Looking down to his torn thigh, his already labored breathing caught, as he saw Kaylanna holding the flesh of his thigh to one side, exposing the large, long bone underneath.

  Her taunting, sing-song voice spoke in deliberate and even tones, “You know, this modern method of study called ‘science’ has revealed many secrets of human anatomy to me. I have to admit that some of the lessons have been quite fascinating. For example, did you know that there is a thin tissue that covers every bone in your body?”

  When he did not reply, Kaylanna continued undeterred, “It’s called Periosteum, and there are two reasons why this is so relevant to your immediate future.” The Witch-Woman held up one clawed finger, covered with his blood, and waggled it in front of his eyes. “First, because the injury one of my children managed to inflict on your leg has exposed your femur,” the Driver’s eyes frightfully followed Kaylanna’s finger as she slowly lowered her terrible, pointed claw to a spot only millimeters above the long bone in his leg. He sucked in a nervous breath as she continued, “The other reason is because Periosteum has no less than five times the number of pain fibers as the next most innervated tissue in the human body.”

  The moment the sharp tip of the claw grazed the surface of his bone the incredible pain he had felt mere moments ago returned. Desperately he tried to defy his tormentor, even searching for the strength to spit one final time in her eye.

  Kaylanna only smiled a half-crooked smile as she watched the Driver fight against his pain, but all mirth suddenly left her face as she returned his glare and her voice changed to an eerie deep, resonant rasp.

  “So, you want to feel the pain of life? Then I will slow your death and show you such pain that you will forever carry the memory of it with you into the abyss.”

  With that the Witch-Woman began to slowly draw the clawed finger up and down the length of his leg bone. Impossibly the intense pain that the Driver had barely been able to tolerate before, quadrupled in less than a heartbeat, and the scream that came out of him was one of such agony it made every living creature within earshot look for a dark corner in which to hide until morning.

  Chapter 6: A Creation Story

  25 years ago

  The boy listened to the fire as it crackled and to the crickets as they chirped peacefully in the background while he sat cross-legged on the boulder that elevated him nearly ten feet off the forest floor.

  “How’re you feelin’ up there boy?” his grandfather called to him from several yards away.

  “Doin’ fine sir.”

  “Good, now keep your eyes closed and practice what I taught you while I tell you a story.”

  The boy was confused, “How am I supposed to do both?”

  “Well, all I want you to concentrate on is clearin’ your mind of your own voice and focus more on what you feel. The words of the story I’m about to tell you will be no different. Just hear the words the same as you hear the sounds of the
forest, let them flow over you and into your mind, becomin’ a part of you. Try not to let your brain contemplate the words…”

  “Contemplate?”

  “Sorry boy, what I mean is don’t think too much, instead just hear what I’m sayin’ and we can talk about it after if you wanna ask questions. You think you can do that?”

  “I guess,” the boy said sheepishly, and then brightened as he asked, “can we do the s’mores after?”

  The boy’s grandfather laughed, “Well, I suppose that depends on how well you do.”

  “All right.”

  “Good boy. Now you listen close because there are lessons in what I am about to tell you. Lessons that you’re going to be needin’ someday…”

  ***

  Once there was a world with no life to be found anywhere upon its surface. The world itself was newborn and fire had scoured its surface in the process of its birth. Eventually the fires diminished, the embers turned to ash and the entire surface was blackened across the dry and barren plains that spanned from pole to pole. The pitch black covering the world’s surface made it nearly invisible in the black void of space, and none of the other celestial bodies making up the starry part of the sky could see it.

  There the world floated, completely alone in its section of the cosmos.

  The world grew lonely and began to cry. Its sobs shook its surface forming cracks that were both deep and wide. Salty tears fell from the skies, filling vast chasms, creating many oceans and cooling what still remained of the birthing fires. A thousand years went by, and the world continued to cry, until one day it stood out in the heavens as a majestic blue orb, unique within the universe. And when the world was all cried out, it began to sing to the stars surrounding it. The song was so sad and beautiful that the sun and the moon spoke to the world with gentle voices.