CHAPTER 13
KYLE STOOD JUST ON the other side of the force field that separated The White City from the barren lands he’d just passed through. But he didn’t press on. Something in him had to see the source of those hoofbeats, even though an equal part of him was telling him that was a very bad idea. After all, if he was able to pass through to this side, then who was to say that whatever was coming couldn’t do so also?
He debated briefly with himself over this notion: but it was too late.
Beyond the force field the sands swirled as a black horse approached at a half-trot, its eyes piercing red, the muscles in its thick chest flexing as it neared. It had a long black mane that was gripped with one hand by a man painted white from head to toe. Kyle guessed that this was The Shaman.
Black paint was smeared from the bridge of his nose to deep into his eye sockets and off into pointed lines across his temples. Across each of his cheeks were thin black lines, alternating between solid and dotted, six rows in total. A thick blue line was drawn down the center of his forehead and a red patch of color, shaped like a tongue, was drawn just below his lower lip. He wore a black and brown haircloth over his long black hair, that matched the horse’s, and sticking up from the haircloth were a dozen or so giant pins that seemed to hold it all together.
The Shaman looked at Kyle with a set of eyes unlike any Kyle had seen before; they weren’t black orbs, like the possessed people had back on earth, or red orbs, like those of the demons he’d fought, but instead they were almost completely white, with only tiny black pupils.
His chin jutted slightly out and his teeth were yellow, and around his neck he wore dozens of necklaces made of bones and shells, almost all of them white, but some stained red and orange. The necklaces matched more decorative shells that were wrapped and tied around his biceps, from which hung small tassels of colored threads.
There was no doubting it now: Kyle realized that he should’ve run when he’d had the chance. He doubted instantly that very little could stop this creature, in this place or in the entire universe itself.
Only when The Shaman’s horse pulled up, hard, a mere ten feet away from where Kyle was standing, did Kyle realize that the force field of The White City had indeed saved him. The funny thing was, he didn’t feel saved. He felt doomed. As if simply being seen by this creature had already sealed his fate.
They stood there for a moment, facing each other, Kyle feeling puny despite being over six feet tall, the rider easily double that height while on his horse. The Shaman held a spear with a brass shaft and black tip in his free hand. He raised it and Kyle cowered, but The Shaman only threw the spear into the ground next to the horse, with such force that it plunged a good two feet into the sand. The horse stood straight at first, and then side stepped to the right as The Shaman released his grip on its mane.
Kyle took a few steps backwards, thinking that The Shaman was going to dismount, but he was wrong again. Instead, The Shaman reached around and slung a bag that had been resting on his lower back around to the front of his body. Resting it on his lap, he untied it, opened a large flap with one hand and then reached inside with the other.
The sand storm that had been kicked up by his arrival had at first clung to the force field, then, like small magnetized beads on a vibrating metal surface, they rapidly bounced downward, back to the ground. The sky and air beyond the force field seemed to still before The Shaman’s hand came out of the bag clutching a gray powder.
Kyle was mesmerized. It wasn’t until The Shaman leaned over slightly, opened the hand holding the powder, pursed his lips and blew across his palm that Kyle became alarmed.
The powder hit the force field and passed straight through it in a small cloud.
This time Kyle did not fight the urge to run. Just as he was about to do so, he saw the powder coalesce from a fine dust to light gray spots, and then grow larger and larger, darker in color, until the spots morphed into insects.
Kyle first identified them by their sound: angry buzzing. Hornets. Black hornets.
A cloud of them spread out in front of him and then flew towards him.
Kyle spun and ran as fast as he could, almost losing a shoe, which was still heavy with sand, in the process.
Before him the city stood, gates wide open, with not a soul in sight. The wall surrounding the city was stories high and made of white brick. He had to get inside. Someone would be inside the city to help him. He was sure of it.
The first sting pierced his neck, just over his right shoulder blade, and the pain was acute. Sweat broke out on his forehead and across his back instantly, as if his immune system had not only reacted but completely panicked. His body flushed with adrenaline, seeming to double the pace of his run. But it was no use: another sting came just below his right ear, then on the left side of his head.
“Help! Somebody help!” he screamed.
The buzzing behind him grew more fierce and determined. He was somehow staying ahead of the main cloud of them, but another few caught up, one of them stinging his left palm, and the other stinging him just below the elbow. The effect was immediate; his arm flopped loosely at his side, numb.
He’d cut the distance to the gate by more than half. He swung his right hand behind him and around his head, as if to shoo the hornets off, and amazingly it seemed to work at first. The buzzing dropped back a bit, behind him, and softened. But then it came roaring back.
Ten yards, a first down, away. He lowered his shoulders, trying to shrink himself as a target, just as another sting came, this one on his lower back, the skin of which had been exposed when his shirt pulled up as he’d crouched.
But this hornet didn’t release. It was either stuck or determined to burrow deep into him.
Kyle screamed and fell face first, barely across the threshold of the city gates. Once on the ground he rolled over onto his back, wanting to stop the pain there no matter what, wanting to crush the hornet to death before it could get inside him and sting his organs. He felt a pop, then a warm liquid spread out across his back and left buttocks. The stinging stopped but the damage was done. The wound throbbed.
His eyes were closed and the buzzing was still roaring.
So this is it, he thought. Game over.
He knew he couldn’t outrun them anymore. He couldn’t even get up again. His legs were already going numb.
He kept his eyes closed and dropped the back of his head to the ground, which felt like it was made of polished rock, and waited.
But no more stings came.
The buzzing grew angrier and angrier, but that was it.
He opened his eyes slowly to see that the swarm was stuck by some invisible force at the threshold of the city, not ten feet away, moving in determined pockets from one side of the gates to the other, as if trying to find a crack of some kind but to no avail. After a while, members of its ranks began to die off, dropping like black specks of lint to the ground. Kyle felt woozy but forced himself to stay awake, and even managed to scoot a few feet backwards down the road, a little further from the gates, just in case.
By the time his eyelids began to grow heavy, the swarm had shrunk by nearly a third.
His breathing was shallow. His lip trembled and he felt a fever growing. He told himself that, no matter what, he couldn’t let himself lose consciousness.
He had to keep his eyes open.
But he just couldn’t.
The Lantern Man had told him not to pray here, in this place. That it was a bad idea.
But Kyle had nothing to lose now, and he knew it.
Father. Please. Help me.
Everything went dark.
THE BREAD MAN stacked the carts one by one with shelves of bread: cracked wheat, Italian, French and sourdough. There was symmetry to the process that calmed him. When he had an uneven order, where a single shelf might end up with two or three types of bread, he always hoped that he would have room in his truck for an extra cart or two, so he could avoid the unpleasantness of seeing r
olls of white bread next to rolls of pumpernickel. It just wasn’t right.
Today, he had a short day, so he could avoid such a disaster and fit in the extra carts he needed. He waited until Mr. Pender, his boss, wasn’t looking and then started to smuggle the extra carts onto the truck, the rollers squeaking almost so loudly he was sure he’d be discovered.
He usually had help loading the truck each morning but Carl had called off sick, and that meant The Bread Man might be late in getting to the Denny’s, which would mean he might miss the skinny waitress, who usually left right before lunch. He’d seen her leave at the same time on multiple occasions, but he had no idea what she did after work or where she lived.
And that was important.
He had to do his scouting.
If he could see the license plate of the car before she drove away, he could get her address, and from there, well, he could get her.
“Troy! What the fuck are you doing?”
The Bread Man spun around. Mr. Pender was approaching fast, a look of annoyance spread like a pancake across his fat, pimply face.
“What?” The Bread Man asked softly.
Mr. Pender came to a stop mere feet away, his yellow shirt stretching at the buttons, his brown Dockers woefully baggy and bunched against his shoes, his glasses teetering on the tip of his nose as his beady eyes fixed on the inside of The Bread Man’s truck.
“Don’t ‘what’ me, Troy. You’re doing it again. What’s with the extra carts?”
The Bread Man glanced away nervously, but inside, deep inside, oh, how he wanted to stab Mr. Pender with something. Because if anything bothered The Bread Man most, it was when people called him by his “real” name, which was his given name for this world, instead of the world he wanted to belong to someday, the world of The Other. A world where he could practice his art without the worry of ever being caught, where the girls just kept coming and coming, as if on a conveyor belt, and where their pain would never end.
“I’m sorry. I just thought it would be okay if—”
“Why, Troy? Why, after I’ve told you a good… half… dozen… times about the wastefulness of using too many carts on a run, would you think all of a sudden that it’s okay?”
“Because, well, it’s slow and—”
“Oh. It’s slow now?” Mr. Pender shouted, rolling his eyes and throwing his pudgy hands up. “Now you’re management, right? Now you know how many other trucks were running today and how full they are, right?”
Actually, The Bread Man did. He’d already checked the master schedule on the way in. But he didn’t dare say that to Mr. Pender. Instead his “stutter-voice” came out, the voice he hated, the voice all the kids at school used to tease him about whenever he got nervous and stammered his words, spittle shooting out the corners of his mouth. “N-n-n-no, s-s-sir.”
Mr. Pender’s face wrinkled with disgust, in just the same way some of the kids at school would look at him during those long days at recess before they would slam him in the face with the tetherball or push him into the water fountain.
“What, Troy? You going to get all freaked out now and shit your pants?”
One of the other drivers, a new guy named Charles, chuckled in the adjacent delivery bay.
The dock got quiet. The Bread Man went to his “place” for a moment, that secret place where he could plot things. Like cutting off Charles’ head and feeding his eyeballs to Mr. Pender, whom The Bread Man would tie to one of the dock posts. Then, once Mr. Pender swallowed the last eyeball down and then puked it all up—because, really, who wouldn’t?—then The Bread Man would ram Mr. Pender with a fork lift, over and over, spearing him like a fish, first in the groin, then in the stomach, then in the chest.
The sound of snapping fingers in his face jerked The Bread Man back to reality. “Hey! Troy! You still with us?” Mr. Pender screamed.
“Y-y-y-y-y-yes.”
“Okay now, you half-wit. Unload the extra carts, transfer the loaves to the proper capacity, get everything secured in the back of the truck and then get the hell out of here, okay?”
It wasn’t what Mr. Pender said, but the way he said it, in a condescending and fed up tone, that nearly drove The Bread Man to do it: to grab the Bic pen in his pants pocket and stab Mr. Pender right through his cheek.
But no. That wasn’t in the plan. That would make The Other very angry, and that wasn’t a good idea.
Instead, loathing himself through and through, The Bread Man nodded and did what he was told.
Mr. Pender turned on one heel and walked away, shaking his head.
At first The Bread Man couldn’t get the pounding in his chest and temples to stop. It hurt. As if his anger had spilled like syrup into his blood and was clogging the arteries to his heart and brain. He wondered if anyone could have a heart attack or a stroke due to pure rage, then realized that it was probably very possible. So he took quick, short breaths, each exhalation like hammering a nail down at the corners of his fury.
It took a while, but when he finally calmed down, he looked up to see Charles, who’d evidently been watching him the whole time.
Charles was looking at him funny, like those nasty tetherball kids who used to circle him and wonder why, even with all that blood running out of his nose, The Bread Man never cried. Like he was weird or something, which was always the worst part. Like they thought he was weird, when they were the ones doing all the merciless shit, as if being mean was what made them normal.
When all he wanted to do was play.
“Hey, dummy,” Charles said, flipping his Dodger cap on backwards. “You okay?”
Again, The Bread Man only nodded, afraid the letters from the words he wanted to say would come stuttering out of his mouth like a skipping record.
Charles walked away and The Bread Man went about moving the loaves between carts, closing his eyes whenever he saw that he was mixing breeds, telling himself that it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Except doing his job.
He was a deliveryman. Nothing more. At least here, in this place.
If only they all knew what his real job was.
As he finished rotating the empty carts out of the way and onto the dock, The Bread Man managed a meek smile as he glanced at Mr. Pender.
Fat-assed Mr. Pender… who had a pretty wife. He’d brought her one year to the company Christmas party. She’d worn a green dress. All the guys had whispered about how she must have married Mr. Pender for his money, because she was so far out of his league. She was friendly enough throughout the evening, but obviously, among a workforce of mostly males and a few hoochied-up Mexican girls who worked the dispatch desk, she was out of her element.
Off to the side of the office, leaning against the lockers, The Bread Man had watched her all evening. Until, at some point, she had gotten stressed over something Mr. Pender had said that apparently embarrassed her, and a fascinating thing happened to Mrs. Pender: a vein, right down the middle of her forehead, stood out, clear as day.
The Bread Man had marveled at its plumpness. It was obviously just a way her body manifested her stress.
He stood and looked at Mrs. Pender’s beautiful face as she tried to hide her humiliation at her husband’s comment, and The Bread Man wondered: what would happen if he could get her in his garage, secure her, get her stressed… and then put an IV needle right into that vein?
Could he bleed her out, completely, slowly, just through one vein?
The Bread Man slammed the sliding door of his truck down hard and turned the handle into the locked position.
Someday he would find out.
He would finish The Other’s work and then ask him for Mrs. Pender. Except with her he’d purposefully leave a little of her blood behind, so everyone would know she’d been taken or, more importantly, Mr. Pender would know.
Then The Bread Man would come to work and watch, with glee, as Mr. Pender mourned for his pretty little wife. Day after day.
CHAPTER 14
NAPOLEON AND THE GRAY Man had
been walking for hours when they saw him, just off to the left, cresting a sand dune and walking erratically from side to side in their direction.
“Is that Kyle Fasano?” Napoleon asked. From the man’s gait he seemed weak and confused, and not a threat.
Be careful of appearances here, Villa.
“Fair enough? What should we do then?”
I can do nothing. I will have to fold into you now, in the hopes of being unseen. Do you understand?
“No.”
When I do this, I cannot speak to you or guide you, for fear that they will hear or sense me.
“And if he attacks me?”
Then there will be no point in remaining covert. I will manifest as quickly as I can to help.
“As quickly as you can?”
You will have to fend for yourself for a while, I’m afraid.
“Great.”
You’ll still feel my presence, and I yours.
Then The Gray Man was gone.
Napoleon’s legs felt like cement posts. The sand was shallow in some places, shin-deep in others, and there was no way of telling where the firmer areas were so that he could walk more easily.
The approaching man was having the same problem. On a few occasions he actually fell, before getting up and wiping sand off his face. As they grew closer to one another it was obvious that the man had spotted him too, as he slowed his pace and seemed to be warily advancing.
Napoleon wondered if the man was thinking what he was thinking: that running might be a good option, but a hard one, and there was really nowhere to hide in an open desert anyway, so why bother?
As the man came near, Napoleon began his inventory: he looked to be about six feet tall. He was wearing a white dress shirt, open to the chest, and beige slacks. In his right hand he gripped a beige dress jacket, and in his left he was holding a pair of rust-colored dress shoes.
The man seemed to be sizing Napoleon up as well, and when they closed to within about ten feet of each other he came to a stop and Napoleon could see him squinting.
A Million to One: (The Millionth Trilogy Book 2) Page 13
