Shotguns v. Cthulhu

by Larry DiTillio

  Lewis looks up to see the white utility, with its doors swinging and machines falling as the vehicle flies through the steaming sky. Rangers fall too: foolish, flailing space men, mission aborted. One remains braced in the driver’s seat: Lewis sees him clearly as the truck rotates. That’s a whole truck up there, spinning slowly as though something wraps it, carries it amidst shifting coils. And, as the nacreous mist thickens, something does.

  Kelsie all but stumbles towards the lookout. She’s made it: there’s a bench concreted firm into the ground and there’s the cliff. Ferns, flowers fall away: the valley lies before her, a snaking, smoking rift down to the metallic sheet of the lake. Nothing in that view suggests a source for the dreadful sounds, the mash of flesh and branches. It was behind her then, the accident. Lewis, oh my God. And she turns. She begins to turn back, as branches crack and wind flattens, and something huge and whistling like a train churns up the hill. Into her view drops a white utility. It drops from the sky right before her eyes, crashing, sliding away down the cliff as something in the air loosens and billows, shooting away with a furl resembling the feeding fringe of a coral polyp as much as steam or clouds or a weather balloon: what the Hell is she seeing?

  Lewis hasn’t stopped moving down the main track. This was where both truck and terror came from, but they aren’t there now and he can really put on some speed. His is the discipline of pure motion, but maybe there’s something in this headlong rush of a small, brown boy being hunted through the London alleys. The track bends and bends again; on his left Mount Haszard and on his right the creek, bubbling with increased vigour. And his cluttered mind suggests that if what he saw was an explosion, the freakish herald of a volcanic event, then in all likelihood he’s running right into it. Where is Kelsie? If he was so far ahead that she didn’t see the horror, then she might well have continued on up to the lookout. He’s closer now to the exit than the entrance: when he reaches that he’ll head up and meet her. They’re bound to be safe on the mountain.

  Kelsie had the rope and carabineers in her pack. This was her plan: an assisted fall from the lookout, ten metres down onto what they called the Terrace, then a straight though possibly scalding sprint to the shore. She’d take risks when it counted. Confined to the remainder of the path, Lewis would have lost minutes and been lost in wide, white-grinning admiration of a stunt so worthy of himself. Then she could have told him she was through. Now she goes through the same motions to deadly purpose: there are people down there, she can hear them. Anchor on the bench and on the largest tree, though that wouldn’t be worth much: quickly, quickly pull the sleeve in place so the cliff doesn’t cut the cord as she goes over. Climbing was her first love, in the erosion gullies around the farm: her first attempt to escape. Her second took her to London and where hasn’t she been since then? Stepping off into air, she looks down.

  Lewis hears another rumble. A thrashing, boiling, torrential sound: in the direction of the lake, pure white striates the sky. There’s been no geysers in Waimangu since just after the eruption, when they claimed it held the largest in the world. What’s this then, what is this? It’s incredible! In all his travels, running round and round the world in search of its edges, he’s never seen the like! The entire lake must be rising and even as he runs, as the track beneath him starts to shake and the outrunners of the wind hits, there’s as much delight in his whoop as fear. Until he realises that the wind and the whistling are coming from behind him.

  Kelsie drops into ruin. The valley floor is made up of smashed sinter, broken rocks, raw scars scraped through the undergrowth and white wreckage steaming, all of it steaming. A white figure flails, caught half in metal, half in water the same unearthly green as the spring. Rumbling, roaring, human screams a tenuous thread of sound. Kelsie is shaking, everything is shaking and as she lands, nice and light and square, she’s nearly flung off her feet. Not even unhooked she is turning, stumbling, drawing the rope across the heaving pink and yellow ground. Inhaling an overwhelming smell, like eggs boiling in a rusted kettle, she reaches down and hauls on wet fabric.

  Lewis slithers in blood-warm water, popping and stinging against his skin. There was nowhere else to go as something that wasn’t a trick of the light, nor a current of superheated water or anything else but a creature came hunting. His entire body knew it and that wracks him beyond the heat and acid. He keeps himself loose and floating: going with the flow, but he isn’t alone. Slick like rubber and obscenely buoyant, white corpses follow the current, floating swiftly towards white Hell.

  The ranger’s name is Ahere, her skin darker than Lewis where it isn’t burned, her eyes a brimming brown. Crying and hugging Kelsie, she tells her things: a seismological blip, a bloom on the thermal map, an early morning expedition in full heat-wear down to check the lake. A new vent had opened, yes, but there had been nothing to suggest more until the thing emerged. Hīanga, she says, we put the lines down and it comes, we put the lines down and it catches us! She points frantically to a strange, circular mark in the sinter, a circle at least a metre across with five deep indents that Kelsie assumes was caused by some part of the utility. All she really gets from Ahere’s story is that the lake is dangerous. But there’s no going back the way she came: the whole cliff looks unstable and she doubts Ahere could make it in the best circumstances. Whatever Ahere saw, whatever she saw, they have no choice and apparently there’s a reason. Ahere is saying they’ll be safe.

  When Lewis was a little boy, he loved dinosaurs (raptors, hunting him through the alleys). Ruins too, the temples and tombs of all the ancient civilisations, but keep digging and you reach dinosaurs, their big, stone bones tomb and temple both. To go back further takes more than science or even imagination, but clawing at foam and slurry, Lewis realises that this isn’t the youngest landscape on earth: it’s the oldest. Go back further and it was all like this or near enough, a fury of earth and water. Near enough for that thing, maybe; that primal, elemental thing. Maybe life on earth did not begin with cells, but with fire and air. The cluttered part of his mind runs on like this, the other is crawling in the sludge, out of the creek but keeping low. It wants to find a hole and crawl inside: the other is telling him he needs to find the widest open space, where the rocks won’t fall on him. That’s what they said in Japan. He can only hope Kelsie is safe.

  Kelsie was going home. From the North Island of New Zealand, Sydney is a hop across a puddle. She was going home and not like she swore to her father she never, ever would. She got the news two days ago in Wellington: her grant had come through and she had a whole new life of work and study waiting. But how to tell Lewis she’s sick of living in hostels, tired of waitressing in shitholes to fund the next leg of the trip, while he blogs and preaches parkour. She knows he wants to climb Machu Pichu, has tagged Easter Island and Antarctica as stations in his quest for who knows what, and perhaps he will. But she’s going to die in New Zealand with a stranger staggering on her arm, as the earth shakes beneath their feet and through the steam, the whistling rises once again.

  Lewis runs. On the path but hunching, nearly on all fours. The hunter is still out there: he hears its whistling, its rush. He pushes, burning all his last and, miraculously, there is Kelsie paralleling him through the steam. All this, and neither has gained so much as a step! He lopes along the gravel, she jogs across the world famous Warbrick Terrace, deep crimson flashing under her feet. Her hair flashes: she is magnificent, she would be flying were she not hampered by a pale and lumbering thing. A monstrous form, a homunculus or golem with gleaming white skin. And fly she must, for through the clouds the hunter is coming: he feels its wind, sees the mist clear. And as it comes, his shrieking, cluttered mind sheers clean away. He sees angles and surfaces. Instinctively he understands that little warm-blooded things scuttling through ferns don’t interest this hunter. How could they threaten it? How could they even feed it? It’s the monster it seeks, with its unnatural contours: he yelps and changes course.

  Kelsie hears Ahere shriek and fe
els her suddenly sag against her: thinking she’s stumbled, she yanks her up and then sees her face plate is shattered. Her nose and eyes have vanished behind a web of cracks and there is blood. Are there stones in the air now? She grabs Ahere, reaching into her core for one last effort and oh my God there’s Lewis sprinting towards her, Lewis with his stubbled head, arms and legs pumping crazy. She lets go of Ahere’s arm and sees Lewis raise his, a sharp, black rock in his hand. It freezes her brain. She can’t comprehend what she’s seeing, match cause and effect. Only when the second flint strikes the helpless woman, opening a gash in her thermal skin, does she leap to intercept him, grabbing his arm, hauling at him, her height and weight costing both their footing and bringing them down.

  She’s in his arms now, rolling and thrashing; he laughs and rolls with her, all heat and sweat and hair. Slipping, sliding, seeping crimson; he’s hard as a rock, licking permanganate from her skin.

  He’s below her and she strikes him hard, no longer thinking of Ahere but rather of his grasping hands, his grinning mouth, of being dragged and used, and assumed. Of needing to win so she can finally, finally not need him.

  Something passes over them, the two little mammals rolling in the mud. Something screams in agony and the crimson drenching them is at blood heat.

  Kelsie stares down at Lewis and things click back into perspective. He’s still grinning but he’s shivering and what comes out of his mouth isn’t words. She could leave him here, she really could. In light of what he did and the trouble she’ll have, perhaps she should. But she can’t. Somehow, she has to get them all to the lake. Looking around, she can no longer see Ahere so presumably she’s followed her own advice. Aching weary but somehow no longer terrified, she staggers up and then offers Lewis her hand.

  He had rather lie here, wet and happy, but everything is shaking and they had better find shelter. Somewhere quiet and dark where the water makes no sound. He stays close to his mate, gaze darting through the undergrowth and ears peeled for the hunting cry of the things below, that strike from above. Their voices are everywhere, but only the whistling counts.

  Up ahead, Kelsie sees black and white. Black the fringe of unbelievably stubborn vegetation: white the boiling lake. There’s no escaping there. Then part of the black resolves into a roof and windows, wheels, and she realises what Ahere must have meant. Running off from the dock, directly ahead of her and Lewis lies a road, and parked upon it is a small bus. The access road and the bus that takes tourists out of the valley! A broad and stable slope, solid walls and engine: this is their way out and always was. Where is Ahere? There’s no sign of her here. Oh please, let her not still be back there...

  He knows the artificial hollow is a trap. They can’t go in there: he takes hold of his mate to pull her away. She resists him, chattering shrilly as though it’s he who doesn’t understand. He does understand, the hunters are waiting for more white monsters! Now she is grabbing him, dragging him towards the unnatural planes and sharp angles, and what is that dark substance streaming across the ground like water, yet solid? He twists out of her grasp, makes a blow of it, a stunning blow to the side of her head—and misses. She has jumped clear of him, landing on the black.

  Kelsie screams as the bus explodes upwards in a geyser that holds a shadow, a writhing, tubular shadow that crushes windows and seats. Shrapnel scatters but she is already running, uphill again but she will not give in to what she saw and will not die in the grip of a nightmare. Lewis pursues her; she hears him ploughing through the bush at the side of the road, chuckling in his madness. She veers away from him, though it costs her speed, and now she is shrinking from the whistling in the air, from the steam-shadow hurtling, coalescing into solidity right above her.

  He gathers up all his strength, all his superbly honed muscle, and makes his leap. Although he no longer considers it as such, this is the pinnacle of parkour: a passe muraille such as hearsay finds impossible to believe, that makes the witness gasp and the practitioner sigh. Not to scale a wall, but to interpose himself between his mate and the thing with the whiplash body, the grasping tendrils, the five-pointed sting. It is not fully material, not at its full strength when he hits, so the impact sends that sting plunging into the tar. But it solidifies around him, lifts him up with a billow and swarm, and does not fade as it carries him out, over the edge of the world.

  At his yell, his triumphant scream, Kelsie glances over her shoulder.

  Who looks back on the Waimangu track? Anyone who does will never really leave. When the rescue team finds Kelsie, she has painted herself with sulphur and antimony, and is using her pitons to punch the five points into the road, again and again.

  Old Wave

  Rob Heinsoo

  The first time I paddled across deep waters I became a man, killed a turtle, and lost the girl I loved to a trader who brewed weak beer. My friend Grinner and the other boys were proud to have finished our initiation and to paddle alongside the grown men on a kaala voyage. But every stroke brought us closer to Sunward Island where Rain would marry a man who already had two wives. My uncles slapped my shoulder and said that Rain’s new husband, Windhope, had always been good to my own mother when trading. Rain was sure to speak up for me if I wanted to enter the kalaa trade myself some day when I had wives and full canoes of my own. They talked like we always talked, expecting our life on Sweetwater Island to go on forever.

  It was my first kalaa, but most of the men paddling away from our home in our four largest canoes had lost count of their kaala trips, either north with the Red-Shell necklaces or south carrying a White-Shell armband.

  On this trip to Sunward, two days to the north, our Chief carried a Red-Shell kaala necklace named Many Yams. Many Yams had come to us three moons earlier from the chief of Coraldown, the next island south of Sweetwater. Many Yams had brought us strong crops, pleasant rain, and good fortune. Or at least that is what Chief would claim when he passed the necklace on to Wide Man, the chief of Sunward.

  Rain rode in our Chief’s canoe, shaded in a reed pavilion beside Many Yams. The other three canoes in the kaala expedition, including the one I paddled with my friend Grinner and our uncles, rode low in the water under heaped bundles of dried yams wrapped in banana leaf. By giving Wide Man the yams along with the Red-Shell necklace, our Chief would show that he was the biggest man this year, especially wise when giving away one of Sweetwater’s daughters, since status and power flowed to the most generous kaala-givers. We all felt good about ourselves because Wide Man had already fallen behind. We had expected him two or three weeks earlier, carrying a White-Shell armband that would have come to him from the north, but he was late.

  As we paddled toward Sunward, I thought about the nights Rain and I had spent under these canoes, on the beach far enough away from the village that we imagined no one could hear us. Once Rain had told me I was “beautiful in the dark.” We both laughed because we knew I was ugly everywhere else. I was taller and stronger than full-grown men, but my mouth twisted and my eyes scared children. Mostly Rain liked me for my voice. I wasn’t called Singer for nothing. It was a name I worked hard to keep, especially since I had spent most of my childhood called ‘Rock.’

  Where most people in Sweetwater lived calmly and avoided trouble, I loved fighting. When I was seven years old, a year after my father died, I had broken three older boys’ arms and heads with a rock. One boy, Fisher Bird, nearly died. People called me Rock for years until my voice and the fact that I never hurt anyone again let me grow a new name. I learned all the fishing songs and as many paddling songs as I could learn without being on a kaala voyage. I even knew the women’s planting songs and weeding songs and a couple of the birth songs. Men weren’t supposed to sing the women’s songs, but people said that songs were luckier when I sang them, so no one minded. Grinner said, “Singer’s voice is the opposite of his face. Shut your eyes and listen.”

  I shut my eyes as I paddled and told myself to give up on Rain. She had not looked at me once since she slipped ins
ide the shade made of reeds. Even when we stopped to trail our hands in the ocean to find the north-ripple current, Rain kept her back to me. So I kept my eyes closed and let the sun burn away the memory of our nights.

  When it was just me left in my head I started singing a strong-paddle song, just to myself, the others were all laughing and sharing some joke, so no one could hear. For some reason I changed the song and sang in the voice of a turtle, a coughing grunt instead of words. There was a knock on the bottom of the canoe and I knew we’d hit a grandfather turtle’s shell as it came up to breathe. I opened my eyes, handed my paddle to Grinner and dove over the side away from the outrigger. I curled back under the canoe’s track and found the dark oval of the turtle as it sunk toward darker water. One flipper, then the tail, avoiding the beak, I fought grandfather up toward where I could hear my uncles cursing me. I got a breath and yelled “Turtle!” and the curses turned to cheers.

  For three moons on Sweetwater

  Many Yams brought twins.

  On the first day of paddling,

  She called the turtles in.

  A day later, still on the water, Grinner and I were excited to see Sunward for the first time. We were so eager for the moment when the Chief would launch into the Arrival Song that we were already whispering it to each other so that no one else could hear. Not the real words, of course. Grinner was filling in the song with new words, lines about what the girls on Sunward would be saying to each other when they saw us row into the island with the giant turtle on our boat, how they’d never seen one that big. He was trying to make me feel better about losing Rain. I did feel better, rowing in the sun with my best friend and a prize turtle and uncles who were speaking to me as if I was an adult.