Valentine's Exile

by E. E. Knight

  He pushed the Lincoln, daring himself to wreck it, locked on to a distance a hundred yards in front of the car as if watching for downed tree limbs was the be-all, and end-all of his life. Which it might be, if he struck a big enough object in the dark.

  "They're still behind," Ahn-Kha observed ten minutes, or six hundred or so clock flashes, later. "Gaining, it would appear. Perhaps they have Hummers."

  "Shouldn't have shot that poor Cup," Thatcher said. "They wouldn't be after us like this otherwise. I bet there's a locator in this rig."

  "You people are crazy," Gail said. "They say I'm the one who causes problems. They must have never met you." Her voice sounded raw and tired.

  Valentine crossed legworm trail after legworm trail, recent mounds with just the beginnings of growth on them.

  Ahn-Kha coughed again. "My David, I have a suggestion."

  "I don't want to hear it," Valentine shot back.

  "They are going to catch up with this truck sooner or later. Would it not be better if we weren't all in it when they did?"

  "Ahn—"

  "Let him talk," Duvalier said.

  "I cannot walk far. Let me lead them on a wild Grog hunt. When they catch up, I will grunt and pretend that I am simple. They will think a trick has been played, that a poor dumb Grog has been put at the wheel to lead them away."

  "Lots of Grogs know how to drive. They're good at it," Thatcher said.

  Valentine looked at Duvalier, but she wasn't listening, or was only half listening. Her lips were moving in steady rhythm.

  "Four minutes behind," she said. "I marked that hilltop."

  She began to fiddle with her explosive-packed Spam cans, a detonator, and a fuse. She threw one out on one side of the road, and then the other went into the opposite ditch.

  "You'll have to get royal-flush lucky to take one of them out," Thatcher said.

  "I'm not trying for that. I just want to fool them into thinking they've been ambushed."

  Valentine drove past a burning barn, collapsed down to the foundation and mostly sending up smoke by now. The Lincoln plunged into a thicket and he had to slow down. He found another legworm track and cut off the road again, splashing through a stream. The wheels briefly spun as they came up the other side, then they were out into broken country again. Following the leg-worm trail, he found yet another farm service road running along a rounded, wooded hill. They were in real back country now. It would be dangerous to go off-road—not that the roads in this part of Kentucky were much better.

  "They're still behind," Duvalier said.

  Valentine wanted to wrench the steering wheel free of its mount, throw it out the window, turn around, and smash the Lin­coln into their pursuers—

  "Enough, my David," Ahn-Kha said. "Let me take the wheel."

  "Val, it's the only way," Duvalier said.

  "Alright. But I'm coming with you."

  "No," Ahn-Kha said. "You've kept faith with me. You must still see Gail back. I may be able to fool them. With you, there will be too many questions."

  Valentine stopped the Lincoln in the middle of the road. "We have to hurry. Everyone out. Thatcher, don't forget your gun and duffel."

  Ahn-Kha climbed out the back and came around to the driver's door, helping himself stand up by putting his long right arm on the side of the Lincoln, puddler cradled in his left. He was a mess, his back peppered with bandages and streaked in blood, a thick dressing on the back of his firepluglike thigh. Duvalier stopped before him, then stood on tiptoe to kiss one whiskered cheek. She looped her oversized canteen around the Golden One's neck. "I want this back, you hairy fuck. You hear me?"

  Ahn-Kha murmured a few words into her ear.

  "Oh, dream on," she laughed, wiping away tears.

  Valentine could only stand, tired and fighting his headache, fiddling with his gun. Would it be better for their pursuit to come upon all their bodies, stretched out next to the flaming Lincoln? Perhaps with every dead hand posed with middle finger extended?

  "We'll meet another dawn, my David," Ahn-Kha said as he reclined the driver's seat all the way so he could squeeze up front. He tossed the puddler onto the passenger seat.

  "If we live to see another dawn," Valentine said.

  "If not, we'll meet in a far better place," Ahn-Kha said. One ear rose a trifle.

  "Good luck, old horse," Valentine said. He placed his forehead against Ahn-Kha's, hugged him, felt the rough skin and the strangely silky hair on his upper back.

  Ahn-Kha squeezed the back of his neck and the Lincoln drove away.

  "Off the road! Fast," Valentine said. Issuing orders in his old command voice, then picking a route up the hill, kept him from staring after the receding Lincoln. The best friend Valentine ever had, or would ever have, left only a little blood on the road. "Thatcher, lead them up that hillside."

  Duvalier pulled the whining, pregnant Gail Foster into the bush, opening a gap in the bramble with her walking stick. Dr. Boothe and Pepsa followed her, Pepsa searching anxiously down the road for their pursuers. Valentine spotted one of Duvalier's Spam cans, unopened and unwired, left in the center of the road, and picked it up with a curse.

  Valentine closed the gap in the brush behind them by forcing a few tree limbs down, and limped after his party, giving his tears their time.

  Halfway up the hill they froze and counted the pursuit. A col­umn rolled up the slight incline: another motorcycle, two Hum­mers, a pickup with dogs in it, and two five-ton trucks. A platoon of Wolves or a team of Bears could knock hell out of them, but he and Duvalier would waste themselves against it.

  Without Ahn-Kha's reliable strength alongside him, he felt like a piece of his spine had been plucked out.

  "He did it," Duvalier said as they saw the pursuit convoy crest another rise in the distance.

  They crested the hill, and thanks to its commanding view Valentine went through Thatcher's inventory. He'd brought some good topographical maps of Kentucky, and between the two of them they made a good guess as to where they were. Several lights could be seen between the hill and the northern horizon, but they were so distant he couldn't tell if they were electric or burning homes.

  "What do you suppose that is?" Duvalier asked, pointing southwest.

  "I don't see anything," Boothe said, but she couldn't without Cat eyes.

  A garbage pile, perhaps? It looked like a plate of spaghetti the size of a football field.

  "That's a legworm dogpile," Valentine said. "Look at all the tracks."

  "What, that hump down there?" Thatcher said, squinting to try to make out what they were talking about. "I saw three of them all tangled up once after a snowstorm."

  "Let's get off this ridge," Valentine said. "Take a closer look. Maybe some of their tribe is around."

  Valentine pointed out a tree at the bottom of the hill, and had Thatcher find a path toward it. Gail's breathing was labored and Duvalier gave her the walking stick. Valentine hung back to check the rest spot, and waved Duvalier over.

  "You dropped this in the road," Valentine said, giving Duvalier back her can of explosive-filled meat.

  She looked at it, puzzled, and whipped her bag off her back. The wing locks were still clicked shut. "Then it jumped out on its own."

  "Someone left it?"

  "Everyone was in a hurry to get out of the truck. Maybe it got kicked out in the confusion."

  Valentine only remembered the sound of feet hitting the ground. "Let's not leave anything to luck, good or bad," he said.

  They caught up to the others at the bottom of the hill, and walked out into the horseshoe-shaped flat with the legworm dog-pile roughly in the center. What might have been utility poles at one time could be seen against the horizon, a few miles away. The peak of a funnel-topped silo and a barn roof showed.

  Legworm trails crisscrossed the ground everywhere, but none looked or smelled fresh. Maybe their minders were on the other side of the valley.

  Gail collapsed, crying. "Legs won't hold me up anymore." />
  Boothe listened to her heart and breathing with her stethoscope. "She's healthy, just out of condition."

  "We can rest for a little," Valentine said.

  Then need came, terrible need. Valentine felt them on the tow­ering hill behind, moving like an angry swarm of bees.

  Reapers.

  They'd home in on the lifesign—he had a pregnant woman, and bitter experience told him that Kurians hungered for newborns like opiate addicts sought refined heroin; he might as well be run­ning with a lit Roman candle—and that would be the end of them.

  "We're in trouble," Valentine said.

  "What—" Duvalier began.

  "No time," he snapped. He handed her his rifle. "You and Thatcher head for those telephone poles. Doc, you and Pepsa go into those woods and find low ground. Lie flat, flat as you can." He tossed her Thatcher's 9mm.

  "Reapers?" Duvalier asked.

  "Coming down the hill." Boothe went as white as the cloud-hidden moon. "Hurry." He grabbed Gail's wrist. "I'll lead them off. Maybe I can lose them."

  You won't. Too long until sunup.

  "How?"

  "Interference." Price's critter camouflage, writ in sixty-foot letters.

  Valentine took Gail's wrist and pulled her to her feet.

  "Hate this," she said. "I want to go to my room. Please? This endangers the baby."

  He could feel them coming, but caution had slowed them, stalk­ing lions reevaluating as the herd they'd been stalking scattered.

  Gail's legs gave out. Valentine picked her up in a fireman's carry, hoping it was safe to carry an expectant woman this way.

  "Those chain things sound like wind chimes. I like wind chimes," Gail said. "Are we going back to the Grands soon?"

  "Very possible," Valentine said as he ran.

  From a hundred feet away the legworm pile looked like a gi­gantic lemon pie with a lattice-top crust—baked by a cook who was stoned to the gills. The legworms had pushed banks of earth up into walls, forming the pie "tin," and had woven themselves at the top.

  Valentine reached the bank and climbed up it, sending dirt spilling. He went down on one knee, set Gail on churned-up ground, and caught his breath.

  They were coming again. After him. Fast.

  "I don't want to run anymore," Gail said.

  "Good. We need to crawl."

  He pulled her beneath a smaller legworm's twisted body, back set to the elements, shaggy skin flapping in the wind like an old, torn poster. They descended into the dark tangle, and perceived a faint aqua glow from within.

  Valentine felt like he was back in the ruins of Little Rock, negotiating one of the great concrete-and-steel wrecks of a building downtown. Legworms lay on top of each other everywhere, a sleeping pile of yellow-fleshed Pickup Sticks.

  The air grew noticeably warmer as he pulled Gail deeper into the nest.

  The legworms were not packed as tightly at the bottom. Valen­tine felt air move. He followed it, and the glow.

  "Don't like this," Gail whispered.

  "Don't blame you."

  And came upon the eggs. The legworm bodies arched above and around, making a warm arena for their deposits.

  About the size of a basketball, the eggs had translucent skin. The glow came from the growing legworm's underside; the soft "membrane" had blue filament-like etchings of light, transformed into aqua by the greenish liquid within the eggs.

  "Smells like old laundry in here," Gail said.

  "Shhh."

  Valentine saw deep pock marks in the skins of the larger leg-worms at the center. The eggs must have dropped off. Black lumps, like unprocessed coal, lay scattered between the living eggs. Evi­dently only a few eggs made it to whatever stage of the metamor­phosis they now enjoyed.

  Stepping carefully, Valentine crossed the egg repository, hoping the baby legworms were giving off enough lifesign to confuse the Reapers' senses.

  He heard-felt-sensed motion behind.

  A string of Reapers entered the egg chamber, clad in their dark, almost bulletproof robes, the first staring about as if to make sense of the small glows and vast shadows.

  Valentine shoved Gail toward an A-shaped arch in a legworm's midsection. She turned around to protest, and her big eyes grew even wider, until they seemed to fill her face.

  Gail shrieked. She instinctively reached for him, putting his body in between herself and the others.

  As one, six Reaper heads turned in their direction. Valentine drew his .22 target pistol.

  The lead Reaper dismissed the threat with a wave, a grotesque wigwag of its double-jointed elbow. It had a burn-scarred face, making its visage that of a badly formed wax mask.

  Valentine pointed the gun at Gail's head. She squeaked.

  The Reapers spread out, but came no closer.

  "keep calm, brother," the leader said in the breathy voice that always brought Valentine back to the terrors of the night Gabriella Cho died, "no one need die tonight, be warned: hurt her and we will peel off your skin and leave you raw and screaming."

  He switched the sights of the pistol to the Reaper's yellow gimlet eye.

  Valentine tried to still his hand.

  "You believe you can stop me with that?"

  "Not me," Valentine said.

  And shot.

  He aimed at an egg, shot, switched targets, and shot again, as quickly as he could pull the hair trigger. The gun felt like a cap pistol in his hand.

  But the bullets had an effect.

  They struck the eggs and tore through them, sending fluid flying, splattering the Reapers. The egg chamber suddenly smelled like old milk. He stifled a gag.

  Evidently Reapers didn't get nauseated, or had poor noses— they just wiped at the fluid in disgust.

  All around, legworm digits twitched like fluttering eyelashes.

  Valentine dropped the empty gun as he ran, pulling Gail along behind. Tons of legworm righted itself and he threw her under it, dove, rolled, felt its legs on his back as he made it to the other side. Snapping noises like garden shears came from the egg area.

  Valentine drew his legworm goad, buried it in the back of one as it began to roll, and pulled Gail tight to him as they ended up on its back.

  The earthen bowl writhed with searching legworms.

  Valentine anchored one of his cargo hooks in the loose skin atop the legworm, and looped a chain around Gail. Her white fingers gripped it while the legworm's back rose and fell as it negotiated the lip of the crater.

  A Reaper flew through the air. Well, half of one. Its waist and legs were still on the ground.

  Another jumped atop the back of a moving legworm and ran toward them like the hero of a Western on top of a train, arms out and reaching.

  Two legworm muzzles rose from either side, one catching it by the head and arms, the other by its waist.

  "Make a wish," Valentine said. Gail shifted position so that she wasn't resting on her belly, and gasped at the scene behind her.

  The Reaper parted messily.

  More legworms carefully stabbed down with their muzzles, lifted them covered with black goo and shreds of black cloth, then stabbed down again.

  "Help!" Gail screamed.

  A bony, blue-veined Reaper hand gripped her leg, pulling her off the legworm.

  She clutched at Valentine and the securing chain. He shifted his grip on his legworm goad. He brought down the crowbarlike shovel edge on the Reaper's head. Skin peeled back, revealing a black, goo-smeared skull.

  The Reaper made a sideways climb, more like a spider than a man, still pulling at Gail so hard that Valentine feared both she and the baby would be divided between the antagonists in Solomonic fashion.

  Valentine crossed the shimmying legworm back, jumping as the Reaper swung its free arm. He buried the goad in the forearm holding Gail, and the Reaper released its grip.

  Stars—a ringing sound—pain.

  The Reaper had struck him backhand across the jaw. Some­thing felt horribly loose on the left side of his head; bo
ne held only by skin sagged at the side of his face. Valentine blindly swung with the goad as he backpedaled, then lost his balance. This time Gail screamed as he clutched at her to keep from falling off.

  Valentine's vision cleared and he saw, and worse, felt, the Reaper straddling him. The goad was gone, his pistol was gone. He put up a hand against the tongue already licking out of the Reaper's mouth. It pulled his shirt open.

  Valentine groped at his belt. He had another cargo hook. . . .

  Gail struck the Reaper across the back of its neck with her hands interlocked, but it ignored her the way it would a butterfly alighting.

  Valentine brought up the cargo hook—feeling the pointed tongue probe at his collarbone—and buried the hook into the Reaper's jaw, returning pain for pain. He pulled, desperate, and the black-fanged mouth closed on its own tongue.

  The Reaper's eyes widened in surprise and the tongue was severed. The cut-off end twitched on Valentine's bare chest. Valentine slid and gripped the Reaper by its waist with his legs. It brought up its bad arm to try to pull the hook out, fumbling with the chain.

  Valentine pulled, hard, putting his back muscles into the effort, straining—God, how his jaw hurt as he gritted his teeth—the Reaper looking oddly like a hooked bass with eyes glazed and confused—hurt it bad enough and the Kurian shuts down the connection?—and the Reaper's jaw came free in a splatter of blood. The Reaper swung at his eyes but Valentine got a shoulder up. He punched, hard, into the open wound at the bottom of its head and groped with his hand wrist-deep in slimy flesh. He dug with fingers up the soft palate.

  The Reaper's eyes rolled back into its skull as he squeezed the base of its brain like a sponge.

  Gail whacked it again and it toppled off the back of the leg-worm. Valentine sucked in air and pain with each breath.

  "You look funny," Gail said.

  "I bet I do," Valentine said, though it hit his ears as "I et I oo." Valentine examined his chest. The tiny wound from the Reaper's tongue had a splattering of Reaper blood all around it. It itched. He tore up some of the fiberglass-like legworm skin and blotted the tarry substance away.

  The legworm they rode waved its snout in the air as it hurried around the perimeter of the pushed-up earth. When it slowed to re-descend into the pit, Valentine removed his first cargo hook, used it to lower Gail, and dropped off himself. He retrieved his goad and the other cargo hook.