by Chris Miller
He rounded a corner, wheezing and coughing in fits, and his feet fled from beneath him. There was a wet sloshing sound, and he found himself once more spitting mouthfuls of mud only a moment later. His entire front was covered in the slop, thick, sticky gobs of it clinging to his every surface. He whipped his hands, slinging chunks of moist clay free, and tried wiping them on his shirt. This did little more than smear the filth all over him, so he tried again on the seat of his britches with slightly better results.
Then he was on his feet again, running in little more than a stumbling trot, his chest heaving for breath and finding precious little. He had to get out. Had to flee. Had to—
He stopped short suddenly at the corner of a building, his eyes wide with caution and fear. He hugged his body up to the rotting wood of the structure and peered around slowly at what he’d seen.
Across the street stood an old church, its planks and columns split here and there, the windows tarnished and dusty within, rivers of rain sheeting the outside. The spire rose into the sky, a steeple of sorts, though the symbol at its top was nothing readily familiar. He squinted at it in confusion for a moment before blinding clarity burst through from the back of his mind.
The coiling spiral atop the steeple was familiar to him after all, only not something he recognized from other churches and places of worship. But he’d seen this before, and all at once he knew from where.
The book. Dreary’s book, that damned tome he always referred to with the shit about tribes in South America and the words of the ones he called The Elders. The book he’d gotten all his ideas about N’yea’thuul and his obsession with joining what he called the divine.
The symbol on the steeple was identical to one he’d seen in that very book on numerous occasions as Dreary pontificated on the object of his obsession. It had been on a drawing of a black square or cube of some kind. Something Dreary had referred to as the marker. Right here, in this damned little town, was the symbol.
“Hell’s bells,” Quentin mumbled under his recovering breath.
Slopping sounds from his left caused him to shrink back into the cover of the alley, and they became louder with every passing second. He inched forward again, one eye peering around the corner, wide and feral. It was the stranger and that black fella. He had seen them vanish into the alley, no matter how crazy it had seemed, and here they were now, closing in on the church and armed to the goddamned teeth from the sight of them. The black fella had a shiny piece in his hand that looked nearly as alien to Quentin’s eyes as the abominations, except for its similarity to his own revolver in most ways. But it was big, and he’d never seen a gun that shone so.
That wasn’t important, however. What was important was that he was in a town full of creatures from Hell and a boss who would be seeking to have his head on a pike for deserting them in cowardice. And like manna from Heaven, right before him, the very thing his boss was after was right before Quentin, as well as Dreary’s nemesis.
The vast lake beyond the church, which seemed to nearly surround the town on three sides rippled and waved in the rain. A scene he’d have found peaceful at another time, but which now added to his rising dread. Yet, the church, the marker, was right in front of him. Within his grasp. Getting his hands on it—or perhaps even better, on Dee himself—could set things right with Dreary. He couldn’t hold Quentin’s cowardice against him if he could convince Dreary he’d been after James Dee in the midst of the skirmish.
Abandoned you, fellas? Why, hell no, Dreary! I seen that snake Dee and the other guy getting away, I let out after ‘em! See? See these dead fuckers here, Dreary? I got ‘em!
It just might work. And having their corpses on the floor in the church with the marker would be all the better.
James and the black man halted for just a moment as a woman’s scream filled the air, coming from inside the church, and another woman sprinted from around the side of the church, a shotgun in hand. James and the black man both drew down on her, but no one fired. Not yet. They were shouting at each other, but for the drumming rain and the horrible, nightmare roars of the abominations back across town, Quentin couldn’t make out what they were saying. It didn’t matter, though. Their words were of no consequence. What was of consequence stood right in front of the church, and the even greater prize within.
Quentin pulled his gun and smiled.
PART V:
Flashpoint
26
Mr. Bonham vanished around a corner and Dreary made to follow him. He could still hear the wailing roars of the abominations behind them, and because his hearing was focused on this, he jolted and slipped to the mud when the roar of Bonham’s shotgun assaulted his senses and he was showered in sticky warmth.
He wiped at his soaking face and drew his hand back, registering the tacky blood there. He quickly began wiping his hand clean on his vest as he rose and saw another of the abominations collapsing to the ground in a wet slosh, its entire middle section a gaping wound which seemed to be wheezing some putrid, final breath as it crumpled.
“Good man, Mr. Bonham,” Dreary said and patted his companion on the shoulder.
Bonham’s head twitched the slightest bit at the touch, but aside from an affirming grunt, he said nothing as he tossed the spent shell and loaded a fresh one in his weapon.
More screams from behind them and the clamor of voices from townspeople got them moving again. They wasted no time. Dreary knew they were looking for a church or temple, something that would be marked with the sign of The Elders, the coiling spiral. It would be there he would find the key to his divinity. To become one with he who slept in the cold darkness of the cosmos, to awaken and draw that great sleeping god forth from the depths of the universe to wreak havoc and destruction on this damned world so that Dreary could rule over the ashes.
Despite his haste and apprehension, Dreary smiled as they ducked through one alley to the next, crossing the streets. Twice they encountered more of the abominations, no two of them precisely alike—some with still-living hosts, others dead and rotting—and in both instances Bonham dispatched them with hardly the twitch of an eye. The man was coldly efficient and would serve as a worthy general in the coming annihilation. Dreary could hardly have stumbled across a better servant had he searched the world over through eons of time. And once he achieved his divinity, perhaps he might just put that thought to the test.
So close, he thought to himself as they rounded onto a street and saw just what he was looking for. He didn’t stop running, but his footing wavered a moment and he stumbled a bit as the dazzling spectacle sunk in before him.
It was a church. Nothing so spectacular as his dreams and visions had tried to conjure in all his years of searching, but it bore the symbol of The Elders at the top of its spire. Elation welled within him as copper flooded his mouth in anticipation.
I’ve found you! his mind celebrated. I’ve found you at last!
Bonham stopped short before him and Dreary almost crashed into the big man. He managed to get stopped before taking them both down into the mud, and he allowed Bonham’s calloused hand to guide them both behind some old wooden boxes and barrels piled next to the building to their right.
“What is it, Mr. Bonham?” Dreary asked through hitching breaths, the rain running in streams off the brim of his bowler hat, his sodden bowtie a pitiful frown beneath his neck.
Bonham didn’t speak, merely indicated with a nod of his head. Dreary followed the man’s gaze to the front of the church where he saw Mr. James—fucking—Dee and his companion come to a halt before the building as a woman with a shotgun came rushing to meet them, her snarl evident despite the distance and the torrential downpour.
They were shouting something to each other, the three of them, but Dreary couldn’t make out just what. There were screams coming from inside the church as well and the black man was becoming visibly alarmed.
The distance was too great to take any chances with the shotgun or their revolvers, but as though Bonham c
ould read Dreary’s thoughts, the man began tucking his shotgun on the string back into his overcoat, and then pulled the repeater from the sheath on his back. He lay the barrel over the end of a box in front of them and flipped up the rear sight. Bonham looked up to the sky for a moment, then back to the church. Seemed to judge something. The distance, maybe, Dreary guessed. Then Bonham began making adjustments to the sight on his weapon.
A moment later, the man was letting out a long breath and peering down the length of the repeater with one eye.
“Aim true, Mr. Bonham,” Dreary whispered as he placed a hand on Bonhamn’s shoulder. “The prize is within those walls.”
Bonham grunted again and settled in for his shot. Somewhere behind them, the streets of Dust were growing louder with the sounds of approaching death.
27
They were nearly to the church, the screams inside no doubt those of Denarius’s wife, when the snarling woman rushed around with the shotgun. James and Denarius both pulled up short, weapons drawn, aiming at the woman.
“You step aside, now, y’hear me, woman?” Denarius’s trembling voice cracked through the rain. “I ain’t here for nothing but my family!”
James glanced over at Denarius and saw the Magnum’s barrel quivering in the air. The man’s whole body was tense and James could imagine the inner turmoil he was going through. His wife’s screams pierced the air like an arrow, the muffled grunts of a man inside beneath her tormented wails. He could hear someone else crying, a child perhaps, and knew this would only add to Denarius’s crumbling self-control. He was at the edge of a breakdown, the tears clearly evident even against the rain.
The woman cocked a hammer on the shotgun, but she didn’t raise it.
“Y’ain’t coming in here!” she growled. “Them’s in there’s for The Proprietor and The Elder, now drop the guns!”
James nearly burst out with laughter at this. The gall of the woman, who’d foolishly rushed out on two armed men, not even bothering to raise her weapon. Did she expect one of the abominations to swoop in and take them out? James had no idea how many of the abominations there were in Dust, but at least most of them were behind them in town. Of course, it would only take one. Against an average man, anyway.
But James Dee was far from average.
“I’m giving you to the count of three, ma’am,” James said, his voice silky smooth in contrast to Denarius’s. “Then I’m gonna snatch that weapon out of your hands and put you down like a sick dog.”
He said none of this with malice or any bravado for embellishment. He was merely stating a fact. As if he’d just told the woman it was raining out. Like it was obvious.
The woman’s face cracked into a smile, revealing yellowed and browned stumps in her gums. Her sopping hair clung to her face like torn rags and her sodden dress had fused to her unglamorous figure.
“You gonna snatch my gun, huh?” she mocked him. “That’ll be a helluva trick!”
She raised the barrel, but only about midway. It still wasn’t pointed at them.
“One,” James said as flat as a salt plain.
The woman began laughing in malicious cackles. Denarius took a trembling half-step forward.
“It don’t have to be this way, miss,” he said. “This man is full of magic. I seen it with my own eyes! Just step aside and let me get my fam—”
A fresh, sharp scream rolled to their ears from within the church and Denarius jolted. James put a steadying hand on his forearm.
“Two,” he said to the laughing woman.
“You sons of bitches come to the wrong goddamn town,” she said as her laughter dropped off and her voice took on an ominous tone. “The Elder will not be denied, and The Proprietor will—”
“Madam,” James said, cutting her off, “your Proprietor is in all likelihood slain as we speak. I’ve given you fair warning, and I aim to keep my word. When I count three, you’d best have that scatter gun on the ground and your ass moving away from it.”
The woman’s eyes widened in alarm just for a moment, but long enough for James to take notice. There was fear present in that brief instant, but the clouds of hate and malice rolled back in, obliterating all else.
“I’m gonna enjoy watching you—” she began, then stopped short.
James’s free hand was out and the shotgun was flying through the rain—as though on a track—straight into it. It clapped in his hand with a wet smack. He quickly holstered his revolver and broke the shotgun open, inspecting the contents. Satisfied with the sight of two untouched blasting caps staring up at him, he snapped it back shut as he made his way toward her.
“Step aside!” Denarius was screaming at the woman beside him.
She did not step aside, but instead crumbled to her knees, her hands going up in surrender, her face a rictus of shock and amazement and fear. The fear was back in full force, all malice and hate scattered to the four winds.
James cocked the hammer of the shotgun.
Denarius shot a hand out as they stopped before the woman, about five feet away. He didn’t touch James, only gestured for him to stop.
“She’s unarmed, Mr. James,” he said. “This ain’t why we here. She can’t do us no harm now.”
James glowered at the woman before him, who now trembled to the point of quaking with terror, her wide eyes streaming tears and she begged for mercy through the repugnant stumps in her mouth.
“You ain’t no man!” she was mumbling. “Ain’t no man like I ever seen! Let me go! I beg you!”
“Mr. James, please,” Denarius broke in once more. “You got business here, but it ain’t her. And my family needs me. Don’t do this. Think of what it means!”
James was already thinking of what it meant.
You have a pure heart . . . but you’re not a good man.
“I’m not a good man, Denarius,” James said without moving his cold stare from the groveling woman at the end of the barrels. “It’s time you recognize that.”
Denarius was shaking his head. “Yes you is, Mr. James! You a good man and you brung me here to get my family because they’s good inside you!”
“No,” James said in a near whisper. “I brought you here because this is where the marker is. Your family being in the same place is just a coincidence.”
“I don’t believe that!” Denarius shouted. His eyes were bold against his chocolate skin, full of righteousness and decency, all the things James had longed to be as a child. All the things he hoped to regain one day.
But today was not that day.
The shotgun bucked in James’s hands as flames licked from its barrel and the woman turned into a crimson mist from the tops of her drooping breasts up. Gore spurted and coated them both, hot against the cool rain, and what was left of her collapsed to one side, the severed arms flopping beside her.
James looked to Denarius then, whose face was twisted into a look of horror and shock as he looked at the shredded remains of the mad woman.
“Y-you ain’t had no cause . . . ” Denarius whispered and trailed off. There was nothing more to be said.
James looked back to the door to the church and cocked the second hammer of the shotgun as he raised it to his shoulder.
“I told you I’m not a good man.”
The door exploded.
28
Marlena screamed.
The man was standing over her, his filthy face peeled open over repugnant, blackened stumps inside his drooling mouth. His eyes were wild and ablaze with anticipation and lust—no doubt as much for her sex as for blood, Marlena reckoned—as she crawled backward on her buttocks. The man had his britches unbuttoned and was wrestling with the buttons on his long underwear. Grime clung to the exposed fabric of his undergarment, dirt and yellow and brown stains blooming in a sick parody of art.
Martin screamed then, causing Marlena to jerk her head to the right. She saw her son there, huddled at the foot of the stairs that rose from the sanctuary floor up to the hideous black cube that seemed to serve a
s a sort of altar in this godless house of worship. Marlena’s eyes stung with fresh tears, not for herself, but for her boy, frightened and alone, though he was not ten feet from her.
“Mama!” he cried between sobs. “Mama, make him stop!”
If a human heart could have exploded under the weight of anguish for one’s child, Marlena’s might have then. She could feel it trying to crush in on itself, her son’s confusion and fear like a mountain of lead bearing down on her very soul.
The man got his cock out. God, it seemed, had exercised brevity in His phallic allocation the day He had breathed life into the monster before her now, and for that, she supposed she should be thankful. There wasn’t enough there to cause any significant damage to her, even fully erect as it was now. Still, it wasn’t the man’s mighty little mouse she was really worried about. His face was a twisted forest of malice, but his eyes betrayed the true depths of his depravity.
Whatever path this man had followed in his life, he’d found somewhere along the way an affinity for his basest desires. No, it wasn’t just sex—that dark meat, as he’d said moments before—the man was after. It was power. Power over another, control over another life.
And he meant to take control now.
“Ain’t had me a nigger bitch before!” the man howled as somewhere outside the distant sounds of gunfire and screams and the wailing shrieks of abominations drifted in through the thin walls. “Y’all’s snatches big enough to take a real man’s poker?”
Marlena had been continually scrambling away from the man, but as he spoke, her back and head struck something solid behind her and she could move away no further. Just as she’d reached the obstruction—a brief glance told her it was the obsidian cube—the man had spoken this last sentence. All her fear and terror of what was happening to her, to her son, all the adrenaline rushing through her veins and causing her very skin to ripple and sway, all of it seemed to take a moment’s hiatus. The man’s words, as cruel and disgusting as they were, had managed to strike her funny bone, and now they began to tickle. An absurd laugh belched from her throat, an uncontrollable thing, and it gasped past her lips. The man paused for a moment, three steps down from her, his twisted face of malice melting to one of confused astonishment.
