Vessel, Book I: The Advent

by Tominda Adkins

Beard's Fork Road is a featureless, one-lane road off Route 61, just a trail following one of the area's countless mountain trenches. On this road, you won't see much―a scattering of 30s-era bungalow houses separated by overgrown fields, a tangle of rusting cars, a nervous gathering of deer, and―if you look hard enough―the shrubbery-coated mouth of an ancient gravel road, marked by a barely legible sign which reads "Whalen Quarry Road: No Trespassing".

  If you take your chances and trespass, and follow Whalen Quarry Road for a few twisting, descending, nauseating miles, you'll find Whalen Quarry itself. And if you stop right there and turn around, you might just live.

  The road itself ends abruptly on the mountainside, sloping off into an unorganized pathway of worn tire ruts leading straight down to the filled-in valley that had once been the gravel quarry. The valley is nothing now but eroding piles of pebbles and deep, stagnant pools of gray water. Its far side is bordered not by another mountain, but by a humungous, rectangular monster of rust and chipped paint, over a half a mile in length. An old gravel processing plant, a place no one wanted or needed anymore, a place that would have been torn down long ago if it hadn't been purchased.

  Purchased, of course, by the Hollows. They positively love places like this, mostly because no one ever stops by. And also because the people who occasionally do stop by are usually criminals or drug addicts or wayward teenagers―people who are expected to turn up missing anyway.

  Easy pickings, Abe had explained.

  The ambulance sat parked where the gravel ended. There was no sensible place to hide it, nor was there any sane reason to risk getting it stuck in the mud below. The Vessel stood alongside it, squinting into the heavy rain, surveying the valley below and feeling mutually―yet silently―stupid about coming here.

  Corin squashed the toe of his shoe into the sloppy tire tracks. Instead of collecting in droplets on his face and arms, the falling rain spread evenly over his skin before disappearing, fast and clean as rubbing alcohol. He turned to the others. "Well?"

  Everyone else was already soaked to the bone.

  "We could try calling her again," Jesse suggested from the shelter of the ambulance's rear door.

  Ghi shook his head, which was harder than it looked. Wet, his hair appeared to have shrank two sizes and gained twenty pounds. "That might be a bad idea. What if she's not alone now?"

  The driver's side door opened. Abe slid back out into the weather, protecting his eyeglasses by making a visor with his hand. Everyone looked his way.

  "I've sent out a general distress signal," he announced. "No one's answering. Even if they're already on their way, it'll still take the hunters just as long to get here as we did."

  The mood dropped a few more degrees at that point, as did my chances for survival. Nothing was moving near the enormous building below. No cars, no Hollows. For all they knew, I wasn't even there anymore. There was no way to tell. Maybe the place was empty, or maybe it was teeming with waiting Hollows, wall to wall. Maybe I had never been there. Maybe I'd been forced to deceive them on the phone, and this was all some lethal setup, a trap. Maybe I was already dead. Or worse. These were the things running through their minds as they watched the rain move in heavy sheets across the valley.

  Jackson cleared his throat.

  "Look, we kicked their asses back at the bridge. We can do it again," he insisted, weary of the suspense. "I say we just go for it."

  "Oh? And what would your contribution be?" Jesse snorted behind him. "Caving the building in on us?"

  He had a reasonable point. None of them were even close to using their forces in any precise manner, with the exception of Khan. Which wasn't all that reassuring.

  "Actually, Dorothy," Jackson shot him a warning look, "I was thinking I'd just step out of the way and let you flutter all around. They won't know what hit them."

  Jesse kicked a fleck of mud in his direction. Jackson responded by sending an entire sheet of vengeful mud right back. Jesse, outraged and suddenly brown from the neck down, lunged. No one did a thing about the violent smacking match that ensued. It was only making the obvious fact even more painful not to say:

  Coming here had been a terrible idea.

  Khan stood with his weathered pink shirt pulled up over his head to ward off the rain, absently running his tongue through the newest gap in his teeth. Abe looked at his watch. Corin paced, stopping every few seconds as if about to suggest something, then saying nothing. Ghi turned suddenly from staring at the building, a flash in his golden eyes.

  "Jackson's right," he declared.

  "I am?" Jackson glanced up from where he was holding Jesse in a bent arm lock, pressing his furious face into the mud. "About what?"

  Ghi stood with his back to the valley. Every second that passed was another second they weren't using, another second during which something preventable could be happening. At the very least, after leaving Stella in a parking lot and driving here, it seemed totally irrational to spend anymore time standing there on the side of the mountain, waiting and wondering. No matter how bad of an idea the next step was.

  "About the bridge, you know?" he said. "We might not know what we're doing, but the Hollows were still afraid of us. And that's enough."

  Corin frowned. "Enough for what?"

  "Enough to make it out in one piece," Ghi said. And somehow, even though the knob in his throat bobbed to an incredible height when he said it, he sounded unshakable. Convincing, even.