CRYERS

by North, Geoff

  “How much time is left?” The lawman asked.

  “Less than two minutes,” Cobe answered.

  Lawson looked to Jenny. “How big of an explosion is that thing gonna make—do we have enough time to outrun it?”

  She didn’t know how to answer. How did you explain to a group of people that had just learned of the existence of an ancient Technological Age the difference between an explosion and an implosion? Jenny had lived during that Age, and she barely understood it herself. “I doubt it,” she finally replied.

  “Hello?—is somebody there?” A one-eyed horse poked its head around the rubble. Dust stepped forward a little more and they saw Trot sitting on his back. The other horses galloped up from behind.

  “Now we have a chance,” Lawson said.

  Chapter 62

  Dust had never run so fast and so far in less than a minute. Even carrying the combined weight of Lawson and Trot, the horse was still pulling ahead of the others. The lawman counted backwards in his head the best he could. He’d started at ninety and was now down to twenty. His timing might’ve been off so he risked a look back. The pile of rocks they’d climbed out of was still there, but getting smaller. Big Hole’s crater wall didn’t seem as high. There were low hills ahead of them to the west. He dug into Dust’s sides and hollered for the horse to run faster. Dust did as he was told.

  Willem’s face was buried in horse hair. Cobe had shoved the boy’s head into the horse’s mane and told him to hang on. It had been the only thing he’d said to his brother before riding off. He couldn’t say anymore if he tried. The air was pushing into his face too fast, forcing him to breathe through his nostrils. Dust was pulling ahead of them. Cobe did as he saw the lawman do, and kicked his heels into the horse. They started making up ground. Sarah and Kay were racing up beside them on the right, Jenny and Angel to their left.

  It had been more than two minutes, Lawson was sure of it. He started counting back again from sixty. Dust was beginning to slow, all of the horses were. By the time Lawson had counted back to thirty, they were into the hills. When they’d reached the top, he had hit zero again. Dust had come to a stop and the lawman didn’t force him another step further. The others caught up and gathered around them. They looked back over the plains and waited.

  “Maybe it malfunctioned” Jenny said. “Maybe I don’t know shit about nuclear phys—”

  A blast of cold wind from the west sucked the air out of her lungs. It rushed around them, whistling in their ears, and pushing against their backs. Cobe shoved Willem back down into the horse’s mane and held him there by the neck before the boy could be lifted away. Cobe’s ears made an uncomfortable popping sound. He shut his eyes and felt his stomach lurch.

  The wind ceased.

  Cobe opened his eyes and saw that the distant rock pile had vanished. The crater wall was gone. An immense, gaping absence of everything had swallowed up most of the plains below them.

  Big Hole had become a whole lot bigger.

  ***

  They had traveled at a considerably slower pace for the rest of the day, stopping finally along the shore of some nameless lake where the water wasn’t too tainted to drink. The last bit of orange sun sank behind another set of distant hills. Willem deposited an armload of branches next to his brother and fed a piece into the flames. He grinned at Angel sitting next to him and winked at Cobe. “Nice night for a fire, hey brother?”

  Cobe didn’t think it was particularly so. The air was cold and howlers were crying somewhere off in the north. But it was the safest he had felt since leaving Burn. They had plenty of guns and ammunition, and Jenny had caught two rabbits for them to roast. If Kay was sitting next to him instead of Angel he may have answered his brother differently. He nodded glumly. “It’s alright.”

  Kay and her mother were sleeping soundly a few feet away in the grass. Trot was sitting on the other side of the fire re-telling the story of how he’d single-handedly reined the horses in and fought off a hundred screaming cryers. The tale became greater every time, but no one seemed to mind. He had saved all of their lives, and he could tell the story any way he wanted. Jenny was seated next to Trot, staring intently at Cobe with her green glowing eyes.

  Two girls liked him—one uglier than a roller dropping, the other not quite human. They were both orphans, like him and his brother, but he wasn’t attracted to either. The girl he liked still had parents.

  He looked away from the fire and saw Lawson standing by the water’s edge. The big gun Cobe had taken from the tank rested heavily in the holster at the lawman’s side. He was smoking one of his cigarettes, listening to Trot and other sounds in the evening. Cobe went and stood with him.

  Lawson exhaled smoke and grumbled. “Don’t go wanderin’ off.”

  “Just stretching my legs.”

  “I mean don’t go off with yer brother again. You seen what’s out there… It ain’t safe.”

  Cobe buried his hands in his pockets and kicked a stone into the water. “I’m sorry for all them things I said about you being responsible for our parents dying… I know you cared for Ma, seeing how close she was to Sarah... and what Sarah means to you.”

  Lawson replied after his cigarette was done. “We’ll keep headin’ west first thing in the morning. I know this old trail we can start followin’ just over them hills. It’s a hard ride where we’re goin’… long stretches of dry plains, and plenty of high mountains between. And I got this feelin’ in my gut we ain’t seen the last of Lothair Eichberg’s kind. We woke somethin’ bad and it sounds like there’s more Big Holes planted in the ground.” He hitched a thumb back at the others around the fire. “Help me along with that bunch and we’ll make it to Victory Island. We’ll be safe there.”

  Cobe nodded. It was what he expected the lawman might say. “I reckon we will.”

  Chapter 63

  “I did good, didn’t I?”

  “You did well, Leonard. You did very well.”

  “I ran fast like you told me. I carried you in my arms and ran up the hole. I ran across the ground and kept you safe.” He grinned up at Lothair. “Now you can carry me. We can run across the ground and catch that old lawman…Which way did he go?”

  Lothair looked at his ravaged face. The torn scalp and bite marks would heal quickly enough. He wasn’t sure if the eyeball would grow back. Lothair could barely stand, but he realized there was no other way around it. Leonard no longer had feet. Or legs.

  “He went west.”

  Leonard kept grinning.

  “It doesn’t hurt?” Lothair asked.

  “Nope, can’t feel nothing.”

  Lothair touched Leonard’s thigh. He ran his fingers along one of the smooth grey stumps the outer edge of the collapsing black hole had cut off. Both limbs would grow back, but Lothair couldn’t wait. His great-granddaughter’s mind attack had left him lost for hours. Too much time had been wasted sitting in the dirt recovering his thoughts and listening to Leonard go on, and on, and on. He had a grandson to meet, and a cowboy he wanted to kill.

  He sat on Leonard’s chest and choked him until he was dead.

  Lothair Eichberg stood up and started walking towards the hills where the last streaks of pink were surrendering to the darkness above.

  “He went west. Where all cowboys go… riding off into the sunset.”

  The End

  Thank you for reading CRYERS

  Please head on over to www.geoffnorth.com and join the mailing list if you enjoyed the story. And if possible, please leave a review on Amazon. I like to know what I did right, and where I missed the mark.

  Other Books and Stories by Geoff North:

  Live it Again

  The Last Playground

  An excerpt from

  Children of Extinction

  Available in July 2014

  I wasn’t born a monster. That came later, when the thing got inside my head and started to twist. I used to be normal. I cared for people and I had friends. The more it took over, the more
twisted I became. What you’re about to read will sicken you. You will say I was a monster and that I deserved to die. But read on before you judge too quickly. Try and understand I was as much a victim as anyone else. I didn’t ask for this.

  I should’ve written earlier, before things got really messed up. Maybe then I could’ve read the words back and seen what I was becoming. Better yet, I could’ve blown my brains out before things got too out of hand. But I was too much of a coward. It would’ve found someone else. Besides, once you got a whiff of the thing, it was in your head for good. And nobody could get it out. You wouldn’t want it to. At least not in the beginning.

  That smell was awful. The only way to describe it was like cat piss and black pepper. Have you ever stuck your face into a bag of extra-salty, extra-vinegary potato chips and inhaled deeply? You know that feeling when your chest forces your throat to lock up from the sharp fumes? You try it, you cough and laugh, then you finish your chips and forget about it. But this smell stayed with me—it stayed with all four of us, I’m sure—for seven years, three months, and a handful of days. It was like a big old bag of extra-pissy, extra-peppery chips that just kept on giving.

  Abraham Feerce found it first.

  Abe was my best friend back in 2009. We were hanging out at his parents’ farm one afternoon that summer, two seventeen-year old kids listening to Eminem and the Black Eyed Peas in the backyard, drinking beers from the fridge in his dad’s workshop. We were kicking a rubber soccer ball back and forth between sips.

  Abe’s twin sister Sheila heard it first.

  She paused the music halfway through I Gotta Feelin’ and told us to listen. There were a lot of pretty girls in Birdtail High but none of them came close to Sheila. I hung out with Abe a lot those days. He wasn’t the brightest kid but you didn’t’ have to be a rocket scientist to figure out why I was there all the time. He didn’t accuse me of anything or treat me any differently. They weren’t identical twins—that would’ve been a bit weird, I guess. All they had in common was the black hair and fair skin.

  Sheila’s friend, Rebecca Turnbull was with us that day. Sheila called her Becky but me and Abe called her Tubby Turnbull behind her back because she was kind of on the chunky side. He would never admit it, but I think Abe had a thing for her. Tubby may have been bigger than Sheila but she was just as pretty.

  Becky said it sounded like something buzzing.

  Abe went up the steps of the porch where the girls were to unpause the music and told them it was probably a hornets’ nest.

  Sheila insisted we find it.

  I followed her into the woods south of the farmhouse. And why wouldn’t I? She was all jiggle and wiggle. Abe trailed after Becky, bouncing his cheap rubber soccer ball where he could.

  The buzzing got louder, like a hum and a lot more intense. It hurt our teeth and gave us all gut aches. We should’ve stopped right then and there. We should’ve turned back, went back to the yard, finished that case of beer and got good and drunk instead. Maybe things would’ve turned out normal for me and Sheila. Maybe our relationship wouldn’t have got so sick. But we kept going, deeper into the brush, further and forever away from carefree summer afternoons, sipping beers and staring at your best friend’s sister’s tits.

  Abe made a choking sound when we came across it.

  I tore my eyes from Sheila and got my first look.

  It was the size and shape of a kitchen stove. That’s where all similarities with anything made on Earth ended. It was grey and streaked with dull swirls of purple. The color moved, like smoke trapped on the surface, clinging and creeping. It was disorienting to look at for too long and I wanted to shut my eyes—like you want to when looking down from high up. That square cube thing just sat there, one corner stuck in the ground on an angle, an opposite upper corner snagged on the branch of a poplar tree.

  The buzzing got worse. I wanted to pull my teeth out and drive something sharp into my ears to make the itch stop. That’s how bad it was. A dark opening appeared and a little figure started to slip out.

  What’s first contact really like?

  Sheila puked on my runners. I felt urine run down my leg. Becky started crying, and I think Abe shit himself. Or maybe that was me. I can’t remember that part so well.

  Its head reminded me of the welder’s helmet my Dad used to wear. I hadn’t seen it in years—not since he became a drunk and quit working—but that’s what this thing’s head was like. All grey, no mouth, no nose. There was a four-inch horizontal slit where its eyes should’ve been. We knew it could see us through that black line. It could see us. It could smell us. It could hear us. I wanted to giggle because I suddenly pictured one of those parking passes sliding out of the narrow space. Or a bank card going in. Funny what your brain sees when you’re too terrified to move.

  Its head vibrated, a fast shaking—like it was cold, or scared. Or like it wasn’t quite all there, if that makes any sense. Picture a guitar string settling after being plucked too hard. That’s what it was like. The sound it made too. That low hum. That buzzzzzz. Its arms came out next. One three-fingered hand clung to the opening, the other stuck to an oozing wound on its narrow chest. But they weren’t fingers, not really. They looked more like swollen worms without joints or knuckles. They were greasy wet and slithering, with little black receptor-things growing out of the tips. It made me think of those big rubber mats you see in store doorways, the ones with thousands of tiny grip catchers formed to the underside. These ones moved though. They crept along the thing’s wounded flesh and stuck to the surface of its strange craft like insect legs caught to fly paper. The entire time its body continued to vibrate and hum. It made it hard to focus in on the thing. I know that’s what caused the buzzing sound in our heads and the aches in our guts.

  This yellow stuff started to leak out between the fingers on its chest and that’s when we smelled the cat piss-black pepper stink. It dripped down and beaded off the surface of the cube. Me and Abe puked next. Sheila and Becky were smart—they held their breath after that first sniff and pinched their nostrils shut. The thing’s blood—gut juice, puss, whatever the hell it was—hit the ground and started to spit and smolder. Sounded like bacon sizzling in a pan, popping and smoking. The grass all around started to turn white.

  Abe wasn’t the brightest kid—I think I mentioned that earlier. He acted on dumb, ignorant instinct. But that ignorance may have saved our lives that day. It may have saved everyone. He threw the soccer ball at the thing’s head. Its arms flailed defensively in the air. The ball struck the chest wound and stayed. There was a sucking sound as torn grey skin melded to the ball’s rubber surface. It was one of the grossest things I ever saw.

  With the ball held against its chest, the thing waved us away with its free hand…and then it spoke.

  Seriously, children…you don’t want this ball back.

  It had no mouth to speak with but that’s what we heard the thing say in our heads, I swear. And judging from the ten-foot wide circle of white, dead ground caused from a drop or two of its insides, we didn’t argue.

  Becky’s hand reached for the cube, as if her fingers were drawn to the streak of alien goo. What the hell was she thinking? She touched it and moaned. Abe grabbed her arm and pulled. It looked as if he’d touched an electrified fence. He stepped away from her and the two just stared at each other for a few seconds. I’ll never forget that look between them—like they’d been let in on a little secret.

  Abe started running. He ran right out of the forest and into a crop of wheat. Smart move for a kid that may or may not have shit his pants and couldn’t hit an alien in the head with a soccer ball from a dozen feet away. Becky took after him a few moments later.

  We should’ve done the same. I felt for Sheila’s hand instead without looking. Her fingers were cold and sweaty. The little creature talked in our heads again.

  It’s hopeless kids. Once the seal breaks, you’re all…fucked.

  The words buzzed and itched in our brains like mo
squito bites you couldn’t scratch. It was real bad when that thing spoke to us, and it said a whole lot more over the years. Horrible things that change the way a kid thinks and grows. Abe and Becky were lucky to run when they did. Well, at least we thought so back then. We haven’t seen them since but have a pretty good idea where they ended up. And I thought we had it bad.

  Seems so long ago. Sheila and I are living in the Feerce farmhouse now. Her family is gone. Mine’s all dead. The thing is still out in the woods holding that cheap soccer ball against its chest. I’ve done things I should be ashamed of. But I’m not. I don’t know what shame is anymore. I don’t have a shred of decency in me.

  It’s raining hard outside. Lots of thunder and lightning. That used to scare me when I was a little kid. I always thought the Bogey Man was waiting out there when it rained this hard. He would make the lightning flash and the thunder boom just to frighten me. I like the rain these days. The noise too. Where’s the Bogey Man now? Where is he in all this grey? Maybe he’s planning some bad shit. Just like I’m doing.

  I’ve talked to a lot of people. I’ve made them do things they didn’t want to do. Now I’m heading out to talk to one more.

  And when I do, things will change. Something bad will happen.

  Something really bad.

  Here’s what it is…