Brimstone

by Daniel Foster

  He’d made it two steps when the creature’s enraged roar split the night. It really did make a mistake! Adrenaline, love, hope, fright, terror—every emotion Garret possessed mixed together into one powerful fuel. It filled him, wolf and human, mind and heart, with a single command. A single desire.

  Run.

  He did, as he had never run before.

  Despite the fact that everyone knows not to run forward and glance back, Garret did. Instead of pursuing him, the creature ripped a small maple tree out of the ground, snapped the root ball off, and with a Charity’s vengeful scream, flung it at him like a spear.

  Garret veered left. It impaled the ground where he had been headed, sending a spray of dirt that stung like wooden shrapnel. The tree was only meant to redirect him. As Garret veered, the creature landed in his path. Claws and teeth came at him, seemingly from all sides, spearing leaves and dirt and nicking his flanks on the way by. Garret dodged and feigned in a panic, ears pasted to his skull. He managed to avoid all the pointy things, but not the open hand that came through, grabbed him and flung him the rest of the way down the hill as if he was a pebble. Fortunately, it flung him directly down a small gulch in the side of the hill. A large creek ran down the middle of the gulch, so there weren’t any trees to hit. If there had been, the impact would have made the blow that broke his back feel like a pat on the head. The creature’s strength didn’t seem to have limits.

  Garret hit a long pool in the creek and raked down it, sluicing the rocks on both sides with his spray. Hacking up creek water, he floundered out of the pool and ran. A rock twice Garret’s own size grazed him and hit a nearby tree with enough force that the trunk exploded as if blown by a mining charge. Garret tacked back and forth as the creature tried to rain down death on him in slashing claws, gnashing teeth, and anything it could wrench from the ground and throw. Which was practically everything.

  “My sister, and now me?!” Charity screamed. “Don’t you ever finish anything!”

  Garret dodged left and right, running steadily down the mountain as debris rained all around him. If the creature had intended to kill him, it would undoubtedly have done so with its first or second throw. Charity, on the other hand, was venting her rage as only a scorned woman could. Hell should quail. Garret certainly did. When a whizzing boulder took some fur off his ears, he peed himself a little bit, too.

  Into the deep part of the forest they went. This was the old growth stand. The Indians had hunted here for a thousand years before loud-mouthed white man showed up. The trees had stood even longer. Some were big around as small houses and tall enough that, from the nearby hills, they made the valley which they stood look like it was only a shallow dip between peaks. But Garret wasn’t on a nearby hill, much as he would have liked to be.

  There was no underbrush here because the trees had locked their branched together centuries ago, cloaking the ground beneath in darkness. Garret hoped this would allow him to run faster and give him a slight advantage, since the creature didn’t seem slowed by anything anyway. Also, this was the shortest way to the Grant River Gorge trestle. He had to hope he’d correctly understood what the creature hadn’t meant to tell him. It had said they would fall to their deaths, and that they would be torn apart on the rocks. It had also used railroad spikes to pin Mrs. Malvern to the tree. Together, those three things added logically, but Charity wasn’t exactly logical. What if Garret was wrong? The familiar anxiety returned as he sprinted, with his legs hitching and tingling. His wolf ears picked up the faintest rumbles of steam engine wheels, hundreds of them, rolling through the mountains under a juggernaut of iron and coal. If he could already hear it, then the train was ahead of schedule. He had only minutes remaining.

  With no underbrush to slow him, he ran straight through, tacking only slightly to round the massive trunks. The creature, of course, had a better trick up its sleeve. As Garret ripped through the forest, the monster’s roars went from ground level to the treetops, bouncing down among the trunks until it seemed to be everywhere at once. It flung itself from tree to tree, sometimes disappearing into shadows, mostly just hurling itself through the air like a ball of furry muscle. It flung branches and chunks of wood down at him, some slamming into the bases of the trees, some stabbing the ground so hard that the dirt spray stung him if he was too close.

  Garret wasn’t thinking because he couldn’t spare enough brain power for it. At the moment, “stay alive” seemed like a tremendous plan, so he was going with it, but somewhere under his howling survival instincts, a human part of him demanded to know what on earth he planned to do when he got to the trestle. If the creature was still with him when he arrived, it wasn’t going to stand by and let him rescue Molly and Sarn. He stumbled.

  He caught himself on wearying legs. Over the last days he’d beat on his body as though it was invincible, depriving it of food and rest while continuing to demand it perform as if it had no limits. It did however, have limits, and they were fast approaching. Or maybe I’m way past them and I just haven’t slowed down long enough to realize it.

  The creature pursued him as if it was made of iron; relentless, remorseless, tireless.

  What did I do to deserve this? Why did it single me out?

  The creature’s roar rang from above. A spray of bark pelted the forest floor ahead of Garret. The creature had stripped it away while leaping from one tree to the next, over Garret’s head. Why hadn’t it just landed on him and ended it?

  The top ten feet of an oak tree flew by, branches still attached. It collided with another oak, which was dead and dry, breaking it off. Garret shot beneath the trunk as it tilted and rushed the ground. After the impact tremor settled, he began to feel the vibrations of the rumbling train up through his paws, even though he was keeping them at full tilt. The train had beaten him to where he’d hoped to head it off.

  I love Molly and Sarn. I love Ma and Pa. Why doesn’t it make any difference? So maybe his love was broken. So maybe he wasn’t deserving of being loved, but why didn’t love itself seem able to make anything right for anybody? Why did Ma have to die? It was pointless, senseless. Just more pain which accomplished nothing. For an instant his legs weakened and he stumbled in sadness. Whether it took minutes or hours, he knew in his heart, this was the last chase the creature would give him. When it determined to kill someone, it did not fail. Why did it have to end this way?

  What’s the point?

  Before the self-defeating train of thought could rob Garret of any more strength, he broke out of the trees alongside the railroad tracks. Huge black coal cars towered above him, barreling down the tracks at break-neck speed. The engineer hadn’t bothered with the brakes after coming over Clebold Mountain. Damn him.

  Even without the sorrow and fear weighing on him, Garret’s wolf body couldn’t run forever, but it would run the last few yards. He would force it. He had no idea what he was going to do when he got to the trestle. Try to free Molly and Sarn and die in the process probably. One thing he did know. His body was going to make this last sprint. He was going to beat the train there, because that was what he decided to do. His entire life boiled down to that. Beat the train. That’s all that matters.

  The steam whistle blasted up ahead, slicing through the dark in a shrill siren call. There was no crossing or depot ahead for miles. There was no reason to blow the whistle, but it fit. Garret ran for the sound, reeling it in like a fish on a line. Or reeling himself in, like a fisherman who had hooked a shark.

  He pushed himself until his heart felt ready to explode, and slowly he began to pass the train. One coal car at a time, he inched forward. But the trestle was miles ahead. He couldn’t hold the speed for more than a minute or so.

  A few pieces of coal pattered onto the ground in front of him. He flew through them and glanced up to see what had dislodged them. Atop the coal car was the creature. Greasy fur trailing in the wind, the creature paced down the tops of the cars, leaping easily from one to the next. It strode by him as if it had no ide
a he was there.

  Garret was too relieved to feel like an idiot. He slackened his pace, letting the rear of the nearest car clack and clank its way up to him. As the access ladder drew abreast, he flung his tired body towards it, shifting to human as he hit the iron rungs. Too tired to climb, he hung on the ladder, wrapping his legs and arms through it so he wouldn’t fall, and sucked for air.

  He rode like that for a few minutes. Eventually, his need to find out what new scheme the creature was hatching overwhelmed his body’s pleas for an end to the abuse. Garret forced himself to climb the ladder and began making his way along the tops of the coal cars. He couldn’t see the creature because the train was beginning to climb around the side of Bald Peak, so both its front and rear ends were out of sight. As he stumbled down the coal, Garret noticed that he was shivering from the cold wind. I need to be a wolf to make the jump between the cars anyway. He shifted and prowled ahead.

  The tracks rose steadily around the side of the mountain, and the night air opened up around him. The rising mountainside lifted the train up out of the lower trees. Garret pressed ahead, trotting as best he could on the loose coal heaped in the swaying cars. Trot, leap to the next, trot, leap, trot.

  At long last, the engine came into view, belching smoke from the stack and steam from the drive pistons. The creature was nowhere to be seen. Garret hesitated, whined. He could see the top and sides of the engine from where he stood. If the creature was anywhere on the engine, the engineer would have seen it, and Garret doubted all would be proceeding so calmly were that the case.

  Careful and quiet, he leaped down into the tinder car, then up onto the roof of the engine. Out in front of them, the trees peeled back along the side of the mountain and the tracks headed straight out into space, onto the trestle that would take the train across the gorge.

  Garret spotted the creature. It was on the trestle, walking with purpose back towards the oncoming train.

  At the edge of the trestle, the creature hunkered down and set one of its feet behind, bracing itself. The light from the train’s lantern fell on the creature. The engineer blasted the steam whistle. Ignoring the sound and the thundering vibrations of more tons of iron than Garret could imagine, the creature gripped the thick cross-ties with its feet, and every muscle in its body flexed. It reached out, opened its hands in a catching motion.

  Garret’s mouth fell open. “You have GOT to be shitting me—”

  With a sound like the earth splitting in two, the train slammed into the creature, flinging Garret from the engine roof like a bug. The thunderclap rolled across the gorge and iron screamed as it was sheared in two. The engine derailed, the cars behind it upending, tumbling, folding on their couplings and slamming together like a thousand-ton deck of cards.

  Amid the den, Garret arced out into the gorge, mercifully landing on the trestle, which, compared to the size of the gorge, was akin to the luck of landing on a tightrope. He flopped to a stop. His head was spinning. God, is the whole trestle swaying?

  Yes, it was. Garret came to his knees and surveyed the destruction. Perhaps the creature’s body could survive the unimaginable, but the trestle couldn’t. The leading edge of its abutment had been torn free by the creature’s—or more likely, Charity’s attempt—to brace against it. The engine hung from the cliff, making a last few sickly trails of smoke. The rest of its payload was spread out down and around the side of the mountain like a gigantic dead snake.

  The trestle creaked and swayed in the wind. Somewhere near Garret, an iron rivet popped. And another. Garret glanced around for Molly and Sarn, but didn’t see them. Neither could he smell them, but in the open gorge, the wind was carrying away all but the scents right under his nose.

  Garret crept towards the broken edge of the trestle, with its rails protruding and contorted. He drew up a few feet short of the mangled end. The creature was there, hanging from a broken cross-tie by one hand.

  Its massive body was bending much of the surrounding structure. The claws of its gripping hand were sunk deep into the wood, but it seemed to be an instinct reaction, because the creature was only partially conscious. Its eyes were open, but the fire within them was weak and unfocused. Garret caught sight of its free arm and almost peed down his wolf leg.

  The creature’s forearm was broken. Broken so severely that the twin bones had been shoved back through the skin to shine white in the night. The nasty injury leaked viscous blood, which dripped and fell away beneath the creature. Garret watched a drop fall, unable to believe that the creature had been injured. The blood fell hundreds of feet until it disappeared into the fog bank which covered the bottom of the gorge. In addition to its broken forearm, one of its legs was drawn up. It had torn something internally.

  It can be hurt. Not just blistered when it touches silver. It can really be hurt. And anything that could be hurt could be killed. Garret glanced around the gaping gorge. They were closer to the edge than the center. If the creature were to fall, it wouldn’t land in the river. It would hit the boulders at the river’s edge—after accelerating through a three-hundred-foot free-fall.

  Garret edged up to the woozy monster. He bit into the end of the cross-tie which was still anchored. He pulled and wrenched with all his strength, but the rail had been bent down over it in a way that made it impossible for him to dislodge. He shifted partially to human and tried with his hands. No success. He shifted fully human and felt around everything the cross-tie was held to. Though the trestle was damaged, the heavy iron beams and bolts were still far more than he could break by sheer strength.

  A low, disturbed rumble issue from the creature and it shook its head drunkenly. It was coming around. Garret shifted to a wolf and tried a desperate bite at its fingers. His teeth didn’t penetrate, but it did earn him a clumsy swipe from the broken arm. He rolled back out of the way. He kept trying until it became lucid enough to aim and send him sprawling. Only a lightning-fast shift to human and a quick grab at the edge of a cross-tie saved him from falling to his death.

  He pulled himself back onto the trestle, hugged his knees and panted. Just then, another wolf landed in front of him, having taken a flying leap from the near cliff. It hit, its two hundred and twenty pounds wobbling the compromised structure. Garret stared uncertainly at his father, and this time his father did not look down or shy away. He looked Garret full on, mutely. The smell of his mother’s blood was thick in his Pa’s fur. As was the mud in which he had buried her.

  He wanted to speak, Garret knew, but he had lost the ability. Garret could smell it, sense it on him. Pa would never return to human now. He could not. He had given up the fight. Garret slowly shifted to a wolf and stood eye to eye with his father. Beneath them, the creature growled and began to struggle for grip. His Pa’s eyes, mind, and heart were flooded with regret.

  I’m sorry for everything, Garret, his father said to him. Go to the shop. I left it for you. His Pa turned and leaped, a small, short leap, not a fraction of what was needed to take him back to the other side.

  He landed on the creature as it hung in the air. Pa’s weight and momentum proved just enough to rip the creature’s weakened grip out of the cross-tie. With a shriek from the creature, they both plummeted into the abyss.

  Heart in his throat, Garret jumped for his Pa’s tail, but he was too late. They fell away together, Pa and the creature, faster and smaller, until the fog swallowed them. The creature’s shriek ended with a suddenness so sharp that it was almost a sound in itself. Silence lingered behind. The wind gusted over the trestle. Just like that, his Pa was gone.

  Garret dropped to his backside on the last cross-tie and stared into the foggy void into which his Pa had fallen. Garret was breathing faster and faster, getting lightheaded.

  Pa…

  Before Garret could truly comprehend what had happened, someone said his name.

  “Garret?” The voice was weak and weary. It was Sarn. Garret scrambled back from the edge, peering here and there over the sides. The voice had come fr
om below.

  And there they were.

  Molly and Sarn dangled beneath the trestle not twenty feet behind him. They had been roped simply, around their bodies, then up and over the rails. If the train had passed over the trestle, its sharp, infinitely heavy wheels would have cut the ropes, and Molly and Sarn would have plummeted to their deaths on the rocks, just as the creature had said.

  Molly was closest, so Garret reeled her up, laid her semi-conscious form on the trestle, then reeled Sarn up. Garret checked them each for serious injury then kissed them both on the forehead. Molly wrapped her arms around his neck, and Garret returned the embrace with one arm, wrapping the other around his brother’s head and pulling him into the hug, too. They sat there like that for a while, no doubt longer than they should have, but Garret couldn’t make himself let go of his warm bundle of wonderful people.

  “Brother,” Sarn said into Garret’s armpit. “I’m glad to see you too, but it stinks in here.”

  Garret started laughing and released them both. Molly was laughing tiredly, too. Both she and Sarn wore bruises and small cuts, but other than that, they were unharmed. Garret wanted to kiss them and hug them forever, but considering the continued popping of rivets along the trestle, forever wouldn’t be very long if he didn’t get everyone back to the mountainside.

  Then he heard it. No one else would have noticed. Perhaps not even another wolf would have been able to distinguish it from the moaning on the wind and the creaking of the trestle, but Garret heard it because his ears were supertuned to the sound, and probably would be for the rest of his life.

  It was distant, and far below, but it was undoubtedly an exhalation, followed by a deep breath. It was the sound of the lungs that had chased him, pursued him, hated him, and killed his mother and his father. Somewhere far below, the creature had drawn a breath.