Eventually Justyn’s cold reserve melted. He did not become talkative, but he enjoyed joking around with Wodan. They were both outlanders, and often pointed out the strange behavior of the men of Sunport; when each one bragged about their merciless schemes to make money and their skill at taking advantage of everyone around them, but then immediately fell over one another to help a certain priest carry his heavy execution cross from one wagon to another, the two could not help but laugh together. Wodan no longer spoke with Justyn in a commanding tone to enforce their absurd relationship of employer and bodyguard; now, they were both two outsiders with secrets to protect.
One night, Justyn sat hunched under his hood. “Wodan,” he said. “What drives you?”
“The horse on this cart,” said Wodan. “And these Ugly are driving me insane, too.”
Justyn did not laugh. “No, really. Is it some kind of… religion, or something?”
“Why would you say that?”
“You don’t like the Ugly, right? Is it because their religion is different from yours?”
“I’ve got a personal grudge against the Ugly, but that’s not what drives me. It’s not a religion, but it is a belief, I guess.”
“A belief.” Justyn looked up at the stars for a moment, then said, “A belief in what?”
“I believe the world can be a better place than it is. I was cast out of my home for a while. I fought to survive, and lost friends, and did everything that I could to get back because I thought my home was different from the wasteland. I thought it was civilized… peaceful. But it was more than that. I thought my home was a good place for humans to live, to find their potential and then do something good with their lives. I was wrong. My home was no different from the wasteland. It looked different, but on the inside, every human was at war with every other human. A human could only find peace or strength or beauty by taking it from another. But once they did that, they could only see ruin behind them and shame before them. That’s no way for humans to live. That’s what demons have turned us into, Justyn – monsters. Small, petty monsters.”
“You think you can change that?” said Justyn. “Where I come from, we… we don’t have demons. Not like you do. But people still behave that way, Wodan… exactly as you’ve described.”
Wodan’s interest was piqued, but he tried not to show it. He had assumed that only Haven was free of demonkind, until recently, but he did not want to throw a lot of questions at Justyn and scare him back into his shell. “Even if your people don’t have demons, they must have something demonic that they worship, something evil and shortsighted that they value.”
“But what do you mean to do about it?”
Wodan was unsure about this point. He thought for a long time, then said, “I think it’s possible to smash those evil symbols, and I mean to start with the Ugly. Without evil masters setting the limits of human experience, I think we’d be surprised to see just how much strength we have in our species. That’s where I’m going to start. But what about you, Justyn? You seem like a pretty strong guy. What is it your people worship? What limits them? Are they all as strong as you?”
Justyn laughed darkly, then said quietly, “They worship me. They give me their devotion and their power. And one thing I’ve learned, Wodan, is that you can get all the power you want, but it doesn’t mean you can ever change anything.” Wodan started in surprise, then Justyn said, “I’m gonna get some sleep, man. Good night.”
* * *
They came to red sands. Scraggly trees bent over small oases that provided water for the horses. The day was not as hot and the night was not as cold as it was in the white sands, so people could move around and speak without covering their faces. Unfortunately the moderate climate allowed for arguments to continue without either party breaking off due to exhaustion. When counted all together, the mercenaries who guarded the merchants outnumbered the Ugly; unfortunately each merchant tended to look out for himself, and since the Ugly outnumbered any single merchant company, they assumed a position of leadership.
The disputes were terrible. The Ugly were often afraid that Filius Bilch was right behind them, so they drove the caravan hard and ended up losing many horses. Upon reaching the more temperate red sands, the merchants argued that they should sleep by day and move by night, which was standard practice among caravan travel. The highest-ranking Ugly agreed with the fine details of the merchants’ argument, but in general the Ugly seemed to be driven to a kind of madness by their defeat at Sunport and the news of their terrible losses in the overseas crusade. At one point an argument boiled over into nonsense, men screaming and waving guns, and eventually Wodan could not make any sense of what was being said by either party. Eventually a merchant with only a few guards was singled out by the Ugly and driven off from his own stock. The goods were plundered by the starving Ugly, food and drink devoured, trinkets and textiles stomped into the sands, and the other merchants looked on, shaking their heads and cursing, but not moving to stop the spectacle. Wodan was enraged, but he knew that he could do nothing against his foes; they were too numerous and too heavily armed. The victimized merchant wailed, tossed sand at his worthless guards, and found refuge on another merchant’s cart.
The morning after that they came to a place where the sand was blue and flecked with purple stones. Wodan woke as his cart came to a stop, and he reasoned that the Ugly must have finally seen the sense in allowing the animals some rest. He rose and saw the sun rising in a dim, green haze. He saw several merchants gathering in a tent. He nudged Justyn awake and the two followed them inside.
The tent was packed to the brim with men debating and complaining. Wodan entered and pressed his way in, and one merchant frowned in annoyance and said, “There’s no more room for – oh, shit on me!” He lifted his eyes and saw Justyn standing over him, and room was immediately made for the newcomers.
Wodan and Justyn listened as the brightly-clothed merchants debated. Somehow the priest had fit his giant execution cross into the small tent and held it over the men, and two mercenaries took turns supporting the thing. Just when Wodan was about to pass out from the press of bodies, the merchants formulated a plan to stick together against the Ugly. Vows followed one after the other and men promised that if one were attacked, all would respond, as that was the only way to protect their profits, and possibly even their lives, against the Ugly. The priest solidified the proceedings with a prayer to some god. Delicacies were produced and passed around, but Wodan quickly made his way out of the tent for he was afraid that his true name and purpose would be gotten from him if spent time with all of the merchants rather than dole out carefully controlled information to one or two at a time as he usually did.
When the sun fell they rose and packed their things and a merchant got into an argument with the Ugly almost as he was coming out of his tent from first waking. The merchants glanced at one another, ready for action and regretting their vows, but the Ugly were tired, sullen, and mostly concerned with the handling of a dying comrade who had said little the past few days, and so whatever the matter was, it was dropped, and they moved through the wastes. The merchants were in high spirits and Wodan and Justyn shared a lizard with a man who had been drying the thing out for a while. The lizard’s guts were surprisingly stretchy and they had fun pulling and shooting the stuff at the men in the cart ahead of them, who cursed and laughed.
The night was very dark and Wodan could only just make out the outline of tall, slender spires of rock around them. Just as Wodan started to doze off, he felt some sort of pounding and heard a cry go up from several carts. Wodan shot up and saw men pointing and holding torches aloft. Something loped alongside them in the distance. They could hear many footfalls, and Wodan prayed that it was only a group of wild horses. He thought he saw horns, then a bit of light reflected off eyes – too many eyes, too close together. The thing streaked away suddenly and disappeared into the dark land. The men stood in their carts, staring as if turned to stone.
“A fles
h demon!” Wodan hissed.
“Shhhhh!” said the priest. “It’ll pass... it’ll pass...”
Wodan hunkered down in his alcove atop the cart. He wondered if perhaps the creature had seen the Ugly. He knew that their kind had cooperated before, so he reasoned that if the thing was a demon, then perhaps it would leave them alone. Wodan stayed awake and watched the stars from his little alcove. He looked at Justyn, who was sitting up in his seat and seemed to be praying quietly. He grew silent, then let his hands fall to his sides. Wodan thought he saw something in Justyn’s hand, but he decided not to press the matter.
* * *
Wodan must have fallen asleep somehow, because he woke to screams and inhuman caterwauling. He fumbled about for the case strapped to his back, then he decided that he could actually be dreaming, for he heard strange singing – female voices rising and falling without harmony. He rose to his knees and tried to shake off the nightmare, but in a slender strip of blue on the horizon he saw tentacles, horns, and segmented backs arching and running. This was real and they were surrounded. Gunshots blasted from every cart and men shouted to one another, terrified beyond mere panic. Justyn woke violently from his alcove, kicking one leg in the air and breaking a side panel from the cart before the bundle strapped to his back became hung up on another board and pulled him down.
“How could we have both gone to sleep?” Wodan shouted.
“I’m – I’m awake!” said Justyn, blinking and knocking another side panel loose to extricate himself.
Wodan heard a terrific crash and the screech of wood splintering as a nearby cart was rammed, then his own cart was rocked and flung over. His head hit wood, then he crashed into hard, gritty sand.
The pain woke him up and sharpened his senses. He jerked the case from his back and it immediately came open, spilling pieces of the gun and clips of ammunition in the sand. He bent and felt about, gathering the cold steel components and trying to ignore the gunshots, the cries, the hideous alien barking. And the singing, the endless singing of invisible syrens…
Justyn rose and watched Wodan piece the gun together. He looked at his own wrapped bundle and gritted his teeth, but did nothing else.
“Keep your head on straight!” said Wodan. “We’re going to have to fight if we want to live! Okay?”
“Don’t worry about me!” Justyn snapped.
He finally pieced the gun together, then stuffed clips into his pocket. He fumbled about with the gun’s suppressor, but seemed unable to fit the grooves together. In a flash of waving torches he saw, only a few cart-lengths away, some monstrous thing with tentacles rise up and fall on a group of mercenaries. Their torchlight was snuffed out, and in the dark he could hear a wet, slippery sucking sound, then the cracking of bones, the tearing of meat. Before Wodan could move, a multi-legged thing loped around his own upturned cart. He could see dim torchlight reflecting off greasy fur and shining eyes, but the rest of the beast was black and featureless. He felt his own hands jerk in terror; he was overwhelmed by the horrifying idea that the monster staring at him had some form of intelligence behind its cold eyes. The monster jerked, suddenly aroused by his fear.
“Justyn, look out!” Wodan shouted.
“I said don’t worry about me! You get that gun ready and kill that thing, you hear me?”
Justyn stepped back, but seemed more angry than alarmed.
Just as the demon bore down on them, Wodan notched the silencer into place, then yanked the trigger and felt the heavy submachine gun jump wildly as it spit out a hissing stream of bullets. The demon lurched to the side and crashed into the ground, kicking its spindly legs.
Wodan saw that Justyn stood frozen. Wodan was infuriated and shouted, “Justyn, I don’t care if you’ve got some kind of idiotic religious beliefs, or if you’re a coward or something, but we need to work together! Go grab a gun from someone!”
“I told you to worry about yourself!” said Justyn. His face was tortured. “I’m not supposed to help - you don’t understand!”
“Then to hell with you!” Wodan jumped to his feet and ran for a torch lying on the ground. He felt his conscious mind melting in the ear-splitting chaos. He picked up the torch and immediately saw that he was standing in a circle of dead men, torn apart but nearly bloodless on the thirsty sand. Feet drawn to the fire bounded up to him; he saw a blur of unnatural forms and fired. Silent death shook in his hands and lurching forms hit the ground. Instinct pulled at him; he whirled and dropped to one knee and saw another demon sneaking up behind him. The crouching form entered the circle of torchlight and he swore that he saw a bald chicken’s head before he blasted it off. As the gun clicked empty he chucked his torched and yanked another clip from his pocket.
He ran in a crouch along the caravan. Long stretches of darkness and overturned carts lay between islands of men firing and waving torches. He heard frantic prayers further down the line, then saw the Ugly screaming about their obedience to demonkind even as they fired on the monsters.
Justyn stood beside him suddenly. “I have to go make a vote,” he said. “You just stay alive, alright?”
“You’re a shit bodyguard, you know that? You do what you want, but if you break from the caravan those things are going to overwhelm you!”
Justyn turned and disappeared into the dark night. Wodan had no idea why the giant moron wanted to practice the democratic process alone in the middle of the wasteland while people were dying all around him, but he cast his doubts from his mind. He had to survive this nightmare.
Nearby, a group of men swore violently as they ran out of ammunition all at once. They leaped from their cart, them scrambled to get back on as they fell on something grotesque and hairy. Wodan ran to them, felt wind whipping his face, then saw a long bony arm spring out of the thing and punch through a man’s torso. Wodan stopped and fired into the thing’s back. It arched and squealed and turned to him, and Wodan could just make out the side of its face - jaw extending back nearly to ears, tongues twisting like a snake pit, eyes extending down below the jaw - then he aimed and fired and the thing’s face flared open like a flower, spraying red and shattering teeth. Wodan ran to the men as the thing crashed to the ground, screamed, “Throw your torches! Throw your torches!” and bounded up into the cart just as one sensible man among them flung two torches into the sky, end over end, and they fell among a group of crouching, pale-skinned simian monstrosities gathered around a grotesque display of human limbs, jawbones, and coils of innards. The men in the cart wailed and, as the demons turned and hissed, firelight glinting in their slitted eyes, Wodan fired at one, opened up its neck and torso, then fired wildly at the others as they scattered.
“Out of the cart!” Wodan cried, changing his clip. “We have to keep moving! Find guns or we’re done for!” He leaped out of the cart just as the simian demons bounded over the sides. None of the men followed him. He heard the cart rocking as the demons tore the men apart.
Now pale blue light crept into the waste from the black horizon. Wodan ran, then turned back to the caravan to see where he could help. Most of the carts were overturned and in pieces. Others rocked back and forth as men fired or struggled with demons hand to hand. He saw the terror in the mercenaries’ faces as they swung empty rifles and beat at unnatural forms climbing over sides, saw men fall to the ground, or leap and run before they were overtaken by doglike monsters with horns and mouths so full of teeth that they could not shut fully. The Ugly fought the hardest against their gods, and never seemed to run out of ammunition.
Wodan was struck by two thoughts. The first was that cooperating to kill the flesh demons was the only way to save the carts and the horses, and thus survive the trek across the wasteland. The second was that the caravan was lost. The merchants and mercenaries were not cooperating; each abandoned the other as soon as their ammunition ran out, only to be picked off by packs of canine demons. Only the Ugly seemed to have any chance of survival, but even their odds looked slim.
Wodan turned to a high roc
ky outcropping and ran for it. Still the voices continued to sing, each out of harmony, all working to add chaos and a sense of the inevitable. He leaped onto an incline of stones at the base, then climbed higher and turned and watched the battle. A giant, transparent slug with tentacles dancing on its back lurched and grinded as it climbed atop a cart. Mercenaries stumbled at the impact, but concentrated on blasting at other demons. As the slug rose up and wrapped several tentacles around the cart, Wodan saw that the demon had men stuck to its surface, either face down or stretched about awkwardly, faces twisted in blind terror, bones breaking as the thing flowed and jerked about. Furious and desperate, Wodan aimed and fired at the thing. Even at this distance, the high-quality weapon of Haven struck the monster. Bubbles gushed inside its body as the bullets cleaved through it. The thing shivered and, as Wodan’s clip emptied, he saw the thing turn yellow, then brown, then it splashed heavily onto the sands beneath the cart.
Wodan felt his pocket and found only one clip remaining. Just as he decided he would have to save it, he saw a blur of white forms skittering below him. He could barely make out hairy limbs under roach-like shells. One stopped and turned a small, piggish head up to him. Terrified, Wodan slammed the last clip into his gun and fired. The thing’s shell flew apart and its back erupted into a geyser of putrid yellow good. The others approached too quickly to hit, but as they skittered up the vertical face of stone beneath him, he leaned over, aimed straight down, and blasted the creatures from the side. Shells and twisted limbs rained yellow and gathered in a soup of noxious intestines, then his gun clicked empty.
[Demonworld 3] The Floyd Street Massacre Page 2
