by James Davis
Impulse and curiosity.
The old man could have killed him. Harley was good with a blaster, but whatever forces the old man held in his hands would have proved better. He had spared him and Harley wondered why. He supposed he was just stupid enough to sit around and try to find out.
But as he waited his thoughts were on his mother somewhere in the deserts of the Navajo Nation. He couldn’t reach her by Link, but he knew danger was coming for her and everyone around her. The Wrynd in the Castle Valley would move that way eventually and if they didn’t there would be zombies around the Phoenix Hub that would surely be going there, if they weren’t there already. If she was to survive her son needed to get to her. But first he would see what the old man had to show him.
Harley had lived in the Castle Valley for more than 10 years, roaming here and there but eventually ending up back at the farmhouse on the outskirts of Orangeville. He didn’t know why. It just felt like home. While he sat and waited for the old man he considered how in all the time he had lived in Orangeville, he had only seen Edward Toll and his wife a half dozen times and had never paused to give them a moment’s thought. He remembered the old woman trying to give him one of her apples and being denied by the old man. Why had he done that? Harley had been just a boy. Perhaps it was all by the old man’s design. He remembered the lightning flashing in the clear sky and reaching up from the parched earth beneath his feet to strike down the Wrynd surrounding them.
The marshal had told him to keep an eye out for the Gray Walker and kill him if he could. He had heard whispers of the Gray Walker for a number of years, but they were mostly just tall tales of a stranger wandering the desert. Other than the legionnaire’s story of him taking away her linktag, there were few stories that attributed supernatural powers to the man with the gray eyes. But Edward Toll – Harley had seen the powers in the old man. What would Marshal Tempest think if she knew such a man was alive and walked the Wilderness in this New Age of Discovery?
Harley lit a cigarette and smoked it slowly while the morning sun stretched higher into the sky. It was another warm July day with hardly a hint of cloud. It was looking to be a dry summer once again and by August what was green would be kindling. Most of it was kindling already. He connected to his scye and sent it scouting toward Price. The day before, after making good his escape from the zombie infested city, he had sent it into Huntington in time to see Quinlan and his children turn and start up Fairview Canyon. He found himself wishing them luck and was more than a little surprised.
His scye found Edward Toll stumbling south two miles from where he sat with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. The old man looked rough, ragged and badly dehydrated. There was no way he would make it another 20 miles to Orangeville on his own. When he lowered the scye within the old man’s reach, he batted at it as if it were a fly, his eyes glazed and delirious. Harley frowned. He had watched the old man kill more than 20 Wrynd with a flick of his wrist but now he was dying of exposure walking down the highway. How was that possible?
He sent the scye soaring again and before he brought it back he turned it further south. There was dust on the highway and Harley’s scye raced that way.
“Scuttle me.”
There were two semi-trucks heading south on the highway. They were pulling cattle trailers behind them and inside there were scores of people, clinging to the slotted walls. Through the scye, he could hear them screaming and he could smell the fear in them. At the steering wheel of the trucks were Wrynd and Harley looked twice just to be sure. Zombies were driving. Sitting on the roof of the cab of the first truck was King Orrin himself. He was madly grinning and slung around his waist was a holster and sidearm. A red scye floated easily by his right ear. They would be on the old man in a matter of minutes.
Harley had always lived by instinct and in the past few days had started to worry that his instincts were off kilter and would in the end get him killed. But he knew no other way. As the Wrynd bore down on the old man on the road, Harley tossed his cigarette away, climbed in his truck and raced to meet them.
“Things are about to get intrestin.”
Orrin slept among the carnage he had wrought the night before and woke covered in blood. He felt magnificent. The ink coursed through him and he felt more alive, more powerful than he had in weeks. It was a good day to rip and tear and eat and kill.
When he walked down into the hotel lobby, Ralph was slung over a chair, snoring softly and Nina was curled up on the floor by the hotel desk. Ralph had a pulse rifle wrapped in his skinny arms and Nina had a holster and pistol strapped to her waist. He smiled. Good enough then.
He didn’t wake them but went outside to find the two semi-trucks Ralph had spoken of parked in front. Ralph had painted in blood Orrin’s name on the doors. Orrin didn’t know whose blood, but he thought it was an excellent touch.
He stretched and cracked his neck and examined the old trucks with interest. They would serve nicely. He had taken his first shot of ink years before and walked away from the life he had known and loved to live a life he had been commanded to live. In all that time, he had not driven a vehicle, used a weapon or even taken advantage of technology except to order more drugs. He found himself relishing the return of a life he held so dear. He drew his sidearm and the blaster felt like an extension of his own body. He looked forward to using it very soon.
He let Ralph and Nina sleep for another hour and then kicked them awake. His other Daggers, Luke, Yolanda and Christian, came down from one of the upper floors, looking pleased and Orrin did not ask them what they had been up to because he did not care. He ordered them to make things ready. They gathered up the prisoners out of the reception hall and herded them into the cattle trailers, enjoying the sounds of their screams in the morning air. Ralph brought him the case with the ink and Orrin opened it to look inside. They were all still there, which meant that Ralph might live to see another day. He was a good Dagger.
“Bring four not so enthralled in the flare. I need them to be able to think and be useful. He looked at Ralph and Nina. “You two come with me. The rest of you stay here and organize the others. I want more people found and brought here. No more killing. We need them alive. I have need of their teeth and claws.”
Luke, Yolanda and Christian looked unhappy to be left out of the battle and skulked away. Orrin turned to Ralph and Nina. “We go south until we find the old man. When we do we stop the trucks and unleash our cargo.” Orrin slapped the side of the cattle trailer and those inside screamed and rushed to the other side. “We let them out one at a time. We squeeze them through the chute like cattle and when we do you inject each one of them, twice.”
Ralph and Nina grinned. “They’ll be uncontrollable.”
Orrin nodded. “Yes they will.”
The semis wove through the wreckage in the city until they reached SR-10 and then picked up speed. Orrin rode sitting on the roof of the cab of the leading semi, enjoying the sensation of the air whipping past him, of the dryness of the blood on his chest and legs, of the feeling of the blaster at his side.
The air was shimmering off the old asphalt as they made their way out of the city. At first Orrin thought that it might be a mirage, the tiny dot on the horizon, but as they drew closer his eyes focused and he knew it was the old man, stumbling southward. He leaned forward with anticipation. A flash of light beyond the old man caught the zombies’ attention and when he looked up he recognized Deputy Shelley’s pickup flying toward them.
Orrin roared with approval. With rage. With hunger.
Harley’s truck screeched to a stop 20 feet from Edward. The semis were running side by side down the highway with Orrin standing up on the hood of one of them, waving his arms in delight. Five hundred feet from where Edward still stumbled along, oblivious to everything around him, the trucks skidded to a stop on the four-lane highway and turned with one truck’s nose facing west and the other facing east. Six zombies scrambled out of the cab of the semis and raced to the trailers. One of
the Wrynd used a cattle prod to zap the screaming hostages in the trailers and they stumbled toward the back, where the other zombies funneled them out of the door one at a time, injecting them in both arms as they passed through.
Those infected stood dazed for a moment, but it only took a moment before the ink took effect, and then they unleashed a blood curdling scream that echoed through the desert. Their mad eyes flashed with a storm of raw energy and desire and compulsion and hunger, and the first thing they saw when they were overcome was the little old man stumbling down the road. They roared and raced toward him in ones and twos and then there were a dozen and two dozens and Harley scrambled out of his truck with his blaster in one hand and a water bottle in the other.
He cut down the closest Wrynd with a shot that surprised even him and the Wrynd at the trucks fired back. The pulse blast whizzed two feet over Harley’s head. They weren’t good, but they weren’t bad.
“Zombies with blasters. It just keeps getting better.” Harley ran toward the old man and grabbed him by the arm and when he did the last of the energy in Edward Toll seemed to exhaust itself and he sank to his knees on the hot asphalt. Harley brought the bottle to his cracked lips and Edward drank greedily. Another pulse blast ripped away the road eight inches from Harley’s left knee.
Harley stood and fired off eight quick bursts with his blaster and eight more Wrynd dropped to the ground. When they did more than a dozen of the other zombies fell upon them and started ripping them apart. One thing you could count on was zombies not being particular about what they ate when on the ink.
A blood curdling roar made everyone stop in their tracks; even the zombies eating their recently fallen comrades lifted their heads and looked back when Orrin stomped on the hood of the truck in fury.
“Harley Nearwater!”
“When did my name become such a curse?”
Harley shook his head and looked toward the big Wrynd king. He should have moved on. Orrin’s scye raced toward him and Harley flicked down his eyeset and sent his own scye racing to meet it. The scyes met in the middle, clashing together in a blast of light and sparks and Harley reeled from the pain the impact inflicted on his own body. He tried to slip the scye around Orrin’s but every move he made the zombie countered and with every strike of one scye to the other the two men flinched and grunted from the effort. At his feet Edward still drank from the water bottle but made no effort to stand and while Harley fought scye to scye against the Wrynd king the other zombies were coming their way. There were too many of them and not enough of the fallen to distract them anymore.
“Scuttle this.” Harley flashed his sidearm and fired and the blast tore through Orrin’s left shoulder and the Wrynd king tumbled from the truck. He took aim at the closest zombies, who were dangerously close by now, and ducked as two more blasts from the armed Wrynd went wild. “Old man,” he screamed. “I don’t know if you have a Jedi mind trick up your sleeve or can make lightning come out of your fingertips, or your arse or any other orifice in your crackin’ body, but I’d appreciate any help you could give about now.” A Wrynd dove at Harley and he kicked it hard in the groin. Zombie or not, a groin kick was always effective.
He bent down to pull Edward to his feet and the old man stared at him. His eyes were far away and full of sorrow and pain and dark anger. “The end is coming,” Edward whispered.
And then Harley heard it. A thunder all around him and he felt the earth tremble beneath his feet and when he cast his eyes to the east and west there was a cloud of dust racing toward them.
“Oh shit.”
Orrin heard it as well and he clambered back on top of the truck and fired at Harley. His aim was much better than the others and he missed him by mere inches. Harley shot back wildly and then the Rages hit and he dove under his truck.
The herd of elk came first, 30 or more of them and he counted 10 great bulls among them, their horns in velvet, and they ran over the attacking Wrynd. Behind the elk came cattle and coyote and antelope. There were groundhogs and field mice and lizards and creatures Harley couldn’t even recognize. Crows dove from the sky like a black rain and a dozen or more horses trampled down the zombies in their path. But the Wrynd didn’t stop and Harley watched while six of them tackled a great bull elk, biting and scratching and hitting. These new Wrynd had no teeth filed into daggers or nails filed into claws, but the ink gave them strength and the elk fell bleeding.
But it was of little consequence. In a matter of minutes, it was over and the Wrynd army Orrin had unleashed lay dead or dying on the road. Orrin stood on the hood of his truck staring in disbelief and he aimed his blaster at the head of the old man and screamed. A swarm of crows enveloped him and his scye went to work trying to cut them away. Ralph and the other armed Wrynd clambered on top of the semi and helped Orrin escape the attack of the black birds. Harley could see no other zombie standing.
During the Rages, the old man had knelt on the ground beside Harley’s truck and he knelt there still, the empty water bottle lay on the ground in front of him. He was unharmed. It was as if the Rages had made a wide berth around him, purposely avoided putting him in harm’s way.
When the last of the zombies on the ground had been stomped to a grisly death, the animals turned their attention to Orrin and the other two on the semi and surrounded them. Harley lay very still under his truck and even the ground hogs and field mice did not look his way. As they surrounded the three surviving Wrynd, Edward Toll finally lifted his head as if he had awakened from a dream. He looked at the carnage around him and then he slowly climbed to his feet. All of the mass of wildlife turned his way.
“Stay down!” Harley hissed, but the old man paid him no mind.
The wildlife came to Edward and encircled the old man. A great elk, possibly the largest elk Harley had ever seen in his life, stepped toward Edward. The bull looked like a king, like a king of all nature. Edward caressed its muzzle with one of his gnarled hands and the elk bowed his head. A painted horse weaved her way through the other animals toward Edward. It nuzzled him for a moment and then knelt before him and the old man draped his arms over the horse’s mane and let himself fall. The horse stood and the old man lay on top of her. He sat up and looked directly at Harley.
The look he exchanged with Harley then was a look that stretched back through time, to when he was but a small boy holding out his hand as a kindly old woman tried to give him an apple from an orchard that could not possibly be real. It was a look of denial. A look of deep and everlasting hatred.
“The end is coming.”
The animals turned as one and ran to the north in a thundering mass of nature, except for the horse that carried the old man. She turned her great mane and trotted to the south and Harley twisted his body to watch her as she picked up speed and galloped away with Edward clinging to her back. Harley stayed that way for several minutes, just staring. Then he remembered Orrin and his two zombies and he scrambled to his feet.
Orrin sat on the hood of his truck and the other two Wrynd sat beside him. They were bleeding from the attack of the crows and when Orrin looked toward Harley there was blood pouring into his right eye from a deep gash in his forehead. Harley holstered his weapon and rushed for the driver’s seat. It was most definitely time to go.
A Wrynd screamed and leapt from the bed of Harley’s truck and ran at him, so fast that Harley couldn’t react. Something black and cold flashed before Harley’s eyes and hit the Wrynd in the chest and Harley jumped back in horror. There was a shadow, or what appeared to be a shadow, and it fell upon the zombie and the Wrynd shrieked. There was no sound except for the sound of the zombie as the shadow fed. Harley watched while the shadow ripped the Wrynd apart, reminding him of a dog or a wolf tearing at its prey, but not a dog or a wolf Harley ever hoped to meet. When it was done the Wrynd was a horror he could not gaze upon and the shadow turned to him and from the blackness there he thought he saw eyes, pink glowing eyes. Then it was gone in an instant, dashing to the east and Harley fell ins
ide the cab and closed the door.
He started the truck and turned south and stopped when he saw a flash of light. A wall of black clouds was rushing his way from the south and within them lightning flashed angrily. Another Rages was upon them.
“The end is coming.”
Harley turned around and headed north. He nodded at Orrin as he passed and then picked up speed and drove away from the storm.
“It never rains.”
The old mare carried the shepherd easily as she galloped south. Once, long ago, before the Rages, she had been a young filly on a ranch outside of Huntington. She was born there and Man had cared for her and she had felt loved by them. But then the Rages came and she knew that she must hunt humanity. She must hunt and she must kill, even though it was not of her nature.
But the old man riding on her back was outside of the Rages and as she carried him she could feel the sorrow inside him but did not know how to lift it. She rushed him toward his orchard and she felt him caress her side and her mane and she hoped that in some small way she might help ease his pain.
As the storm rushed toward them, full of lightning and thunder and vengeance, it parted for the mare and she took the old man home.
The man with the gray eyes squatted on his haunches on a hill overlooking the highway. He wore a faded duster that kissed the ground as he bent low. He let fine grains of sand rush from his left hand to his right, from his right hand to his left as he watched the Wrynd attack the drifter and the old man. When the animals came he smiled in spite of himself and when the old man rode away on a beautiful painted horse he found himself grinning happily. Harley Nearwater was right. It was an “intrestin. World.”
Harley drove north, racing away from the storm. The surviving Wrynd chased after and the man with the gray eyes watched them flee and let the sand fall from his hands. The shadow slinked forward, looking at him with its pink eyes and he nodded with approval and opened his coat. It faded inside and its eyes were lost in a sea of eyes staring out from the gray man’s duster, like stars on a cloudless night.
