by Peter Nealen
“There's another one,” Eryn said, “nine o'clock.” I turned fast enough to see what looked like two kids peering out of another upstairs window before being pulled back away from the glass.
We were getting out of the periphery and into downtown. The buildings were older and generally of somewhat better construction. Trees were planted in the sidewalks. There were old-style streetlamps placed between them, though they had those ugly spiral fluorescent bulbs in them. The place looked like someone had gone to a lot of effort to keep it up, in marked contrast to the rotting meth town that was Coldwell.
I saw movement, and turned to address it at the same time Tall Bear whipped his AR up. “What the hell was that?” he snapped.
“I don't know, but it sure didn't look like a local,” I said, my rifle in my shoulder and pointed in the general direction of the alley where I'd seen the sudden movement. I hadn't gotten more than a brief glimpse of it, but I'd seen just enough for my imagination to start filling in macabre details. The little bit of movement I'd seen had suggested a weird, jerky, marionette sort of movement, which was filling my mind with old memories of a disturbing figure with a head that was too large, with blank, black, doll eyes and a fixed, idiot grin. I sure hoped I was imagining it.
The three of us, Eryn, Tall Bear, and I, spread out, edging toward the alley. Chrystal had sort of latched onto Eryn, and was following her closely. We hadn't given Chrystal a weapon, though I had picked up an old, well-worn Colt Anaconda for cheap, that was strapped under my seat as a backup gun. None of us were sure that giving the traumatized, shaky girl a firearm was all that good an idea, as much as having a fourth gun would have been welcome under the circumstances. So there were only three barrels pointed at the alley instead of four.
I had angled furthest out into the street, and was the first one to step past the corner and get a good view down the alley. It was empty, aside from some trash, a couple of dumpsters, and an old, steel fire escape on the side of the brick building that housed one of the local sports bars.
I lowered my muzzle and turned to scan the street again, as Eryn stepped forward to check the alley herself. That was when I saw an unmistakable figure standing about three blocks away, near the abandoned Ford sitting in the intersection. From that distance, I really couldn't make out a lot of detail, except to see that it was tall and broad. It also seemed twisted somehow, its shape subtly wrong. I couldn't say why at the time, except that there was just something off about it, as it stood there, motionless, watching us.
“We've got company,” I announced. I hadn't said it loudly, but somehow it seemed to echo down the street. That was when the figure abruptly turned and lumbered away, down the cross street and out of sight.
Tall Bear started forward, but slowed when we didn't charge ahead with him. “Aren't we going to follow him?” he asked.
“Sure we are,” Eryn said. “We're just going to do it carefully. I'm sure my husband will agree; that thing was letting us see it for a reason. We're supposed to follow it.”
“And whatever is waiting for us to do so can wait a little longer,” I finished. “I'm not going to charge into an ambush.”
We continued our slow, measured movement up the street, passing several diners, a handful of clothing shops, a musty-looking bookstore, and at least five bars. We came even with the stopped Ford sitting at the endlessly cycling traffic light. That was where we saw the first sign of real violence, aside from the vandalism at the edge of town.
There was a large bloodstain on the asphalt right next to the open driver's door. Strangely, aside from some damage to the door, the truck itself seemed untouched, and when I bent down to look more closely at the dark, crimson splatter, it seemed almost dried. Whatever had happened, it had been a while ago. There was a lot of blood on the ground, and I was sure that it was blood; there was still the faintest hint of a sickly, coppery smell in the air. There also was no sign of a body, and no drag marks through the blood, either.
I looked around again. The truck wasn't running, but the keys were still in the ignition. There were also other signs of violence; the door was crumpled and pierced in several places, in a pattern that almost suggested that something with large talons, or really, really strong, rigid fingers, had grabbed the frame and wrenched the door open.
“Uh, Jed?” Tall Bear ventured. He had posted himself near the hood, and was looking in the direction that the tall figure had disappeared earlier. I followed his gaze, as Eryn murmured, “Oh, no.”
There were eight figures standing in the street, watching us. They had appeared suddenly; they weren't drifting out into the street, they were standing there like statues, as if they hadn't moved at all. None of them were human.
Three of them, while all of different sizes, were obviously homunculi. Big-headed sorcerous marionettes, made painstakingly out of clay and human blood, with blank faces showing only expressionless, black, button eyes and fixed, idiot grins. One was the largest I'd ever seen, standing almost seven feet tall. It was also subtly different from the rest. There was a strange, pale, flickering sort of light in its eyes, that I didn't dare look at very long. The other two might be getting puppet-mastered by sorcery from somewhere else, but I was pretty sure that one was occupied, and not by anything good.
Which should have been a big “No Kidding.” Angels don't need such abominable conduits to work through.
The other five figures looked human at first glance, but any sort of scrutiny would quickly give the lie to that impression. They were all tall and broad, but there were irregularities to them that most humans don't have. Arms and legs were never quite the same size on the same body. Their arms were too long and too big, giving them a decided simian look. They didn't have eyes, only blank, glassy orbs like marbles in their sockets. Their flesh was pale, purplish, the color of a corpse. Which made sense, because in a sense that was exactly what they were—constructs, not unlike the homunculi, but made out of human body parts, sewed together chunks of corpses. They were flesh golems. I'd encountered one of those before, and you never really knew until it revealed itself whether it was sorcerously animated, or if it was actually possessed by an evil spirit.
Without consciously thinking about it, I already had my rifle in my shoulder and pointed at the big homunculus, knowing that it wasn't going to do a blamed bit of good. You can shoot a homunculus all day, but it doesn't have any vital organs to tear open. You may as well shoot holes in a clay statue (which is essentially all you're doing when you shoot a homunculus).
“What the hell are those?” Tall Bear demanded. There was an edge of fear to his voice, that hadn't been there even as the brainwashed mob in Coldwell was coming after us. This was even farther outside his experience, and there's nothing like a homunculus to give you the willies.
“In a word, puppets,” I replied. “Except for that big claymation looking thing. I'm pretty sure something's wearing it like a suit.”
“What, like a person?”
“No,” Eryn put in. There was a bit of a shake to her voice, too, but she was keeping it under control. “Like a spirit or demon is using it as a body.”
The big deputy was definitely shaken now. He'd accepted that there was some weird stuff going on, but to be confronted this directly with unnatural creatures of sorcery and demonic power was something else. I knew the feeling. I'd had over seven years to get used to it, and it still screwed with my mind. “How are we supposed to fight that?” he asked, his voice sounding a little hoarse.
“For homunculi, fire is usually the best option,” I said matter-of-factly. My deadpan words were a good way of covering over just how scared I was. I had a makeshift flamethrower in the truck, but it was a half mile away. There was no way we were going to get to it before those things were on us. “Flesh golems are a little tougher; you've got to break down their structure enough that they can't move. They're just animated, sewed-together body parts, without a functioning nervous system, so shooting them in the head or the vitals doesn't do m
uch.” I was also wishing for my big Raider Bowie or a hatchet at that point, but I only had my folding Espada on me. “If they lose coherence, the spells pulling their strings fall apart.”
“Which ones are which?” Tall Bear asked. He had his rifle pointed, and his finger was almost resting on the trigger. Whether shooting would work or not, he was about to give it a try, just to be on the safe side.
“The homunculi are the claymation figures,” I said. “The flesh golems are the Frankenstein's Hulks.”
There were now three guns pointed at the group of puppet monsters, but none of them moved. If our position had been a little less tenuous, I would have dropped the hammer immediately; you don't screw around with such things. But just opening fire wasn't going to accomplish much at the moment, and could just bring them charging at us to squash us into pulp. Or worse. We were at a fragile Mexican standoff, and I wasn't quite ready to break it yet.
There was one thing to do, though, and I started praying a litany of protection from the powers of the Abyss under my breath. As I did so, I started backing away from the truck, starting to edge my way back toward our truck. I wanted that flamethrower, badly.
As I moved, I took a chance and looked around. I half expected to see something worse creeping up on us in the few moments that we'd been transfixed by the sight of the things standing in the street. But the streets were just as still and empty as they had been before. But one thing did catch my eye, though I didn't dare stop and stare at it. Blake's truck—and it was unmistakably his gigantic, gold Dodge Ram—was parked about a block away, in the opposite direction from the group of monsters.
It was the first confirmation I'd seen that Blake was there, but we didn't dare go straight to it. We needed to get the rest of the tools first, hopefully without getting torn to pieces by the Frankenstein gang and their grinning, blood pottery friends.
But as we continued to ease away from the old Ford, something even stranger than what had already happened occurred. The flesh golems and the homunculi turned and drifted off the street and out of sight. They didn't charge us, they just walked down a couple of alleys or side streets, slowly, unhurriedly, though the homunculi kept their heads turned toward us, showing us those blank eyes and unchanging, unsettling grins.
“Move,” was all I said, once they were out of sight. “Back to the truck.” We'd come back to investigate Blake's truck, but not before we were a little better geared up.
We formed kind of a little wedge as we moved, with Tall Bear and I forming the base, Eryn at the point, and Chrystal trembling in the middle. We weren't quite running back to the edge of town, but we weren't moving slowly, either.
I kept an eye out, not believing for a moment that we were going to get back to the truck unmolested. Whatever sick game the person or entity controlling these things was playing, that bloodstain in the street suggested that it wasn't just for grins. As we moved, I caught glimpses from windows or down alleys and side streets. The townspeople weren't showing their faces anymore. All I saw were pale corpse faces and blank, black doll's eyes. They were staying a block or so from the main drag, but the things were following us, pacing us down the street. We'd get a glimpse every time we crossed a street or an alley.
While the tension seemed to ratchet up with every block, the monsters still didn't attack us, even as we got out of the town proper and came back to where the truck was parked. It didn't make any sense to me, but at that point, I was just offering up a few prayers of thanksgiving, and not looking a gift horse in the mouth. Nobody else was complaining, either.
We stopped at the truck, and I quickly set my Winchester against the bed and started pulling stuff out. It briefly occurred to me that some pipe bombs would have been great to use against the flesh golems, but they can be more trouble than they're worth, especially when you've got a sheriff's deputy along for the ride. We had enough problems without getting the ATF after us.
“Jed, hon,” Eryn called out, “you might want to hurry up.” A glance up from the flamethrower I was pulling out of the bed showed me that our shadowers had come back out onto the street, and were again standing there watching us, with their disturbing, lifeless stares. I hurried up. I slung the flamethrower across my back, stuffed my Bowie through my belt, and grabbed a hatchet.
“Here,” I said, thrusting the long-handled hatchet at Tall Bear. “Just got one more thing.” It was two, actually; Eryn and I each had our own hip flask full of holy water. I kept a jug of it in the truck to top them off. We didn't have extra flasks, and, frankly, we didn't know if Tall Bear or Chrystal were believers or not. That question certainly has some bearing when you're fighting sorcery, which comes from demonic powers. Just going through the motions can sometimes be worse than not doing anything at all. Faith isn't magic. The Almighty isn't going to just reach down and save your skin because you're in danger and you said the right words. You've actually got to believe, as well as rejecting the power of evil with every fiber of your being. At the same time, if you start to act like the sacred is magic, and subject to your will rather than pleading for the help of the Power of God, it opens up all sorts of avenues for the powers of darkness to exploit. It's hard to explain, and not something I was going to try to articulate when we had monsters breathing (or not breathing, as the case may be) down our necks.
I handed Eryn her flask, and she took it and pocketed it without lowering the shotgun she had leveled at the nearest homunculus. The big one was still hanging back, and still had that corpse-light gleam in its eyes. I wasn't sure I wanted to know what had taken up residence in there. The first homunculus I'd encountered, it had turned out, had been under the control of no lesser a being than Mephistopheles himself, much to the surprise of the idiot who had built it.
It's kind of difficult to maneuver a rifle and a holy water flask at the same time. I'd put a sling on the Winchester recently, though, so I was able to sling it across my back, bring the flamethrower forward to hang in front of me, and kept the flask in my back pocket. I felt weighed-down and clumsy, but I'd rather be able to set those things on fire from a distance than get in a hand-to-hand fight with any of them. Try punching something that doesn't feel pain sometime. It doesn't work all that well.
“Got another one of those flamethrowers?” Tall Bear asked hopefully. “Maybe a few Molotovs?” He was adjusting to this stuff pretty well; I'd said we needed fire, so he was thinking of how to set them on fire. He wasn't freaking out, and he wasn't in denial. He saw what he saw, accepted it, and accepted that Eryn and I knew what we were talking about. Chrystal, on the other hand, was shaking again, hyperventilating, and looked like she was going to be sick. Unfortunately, we still couldn't leave her alone.
“Afraid not,” I replied. “Leave the homunculi to me; you may have to use that hatchet on one of the golems.”
But when we advanced again, moving back into the town, the monsters just fell back and slipped back into the shadows and the alleys. This was starting to really creep me out. What were they waiting for?
We worked our way back up the street, the flamethrower's pilot light hissing in front of me. Once again, the homunculi and the Frankenstein crew simply shadowed us, their dead eyes never leaving us alone. I was almost ready to attack them first, just to get it over with. But without knowing what else was waiting in the wings, I didn't think that was a good idea. The way they were just lurking around us, following, those blank grins on the homunculi managing to look like smug, I know something you don't know expressions...I fully expected that as soon as we fired a shot, all hell was going to break loose.
A couple of blocks short of the main intersection, we turned left, intending to work our way over to Blake's truck. I was on point, and as soon as I turned the corner, there was a flesh golem standing there, in the middle of the alley. It didn't look like it had a neck, and it's massive fists hung almost to its knees. Its eyes were gray, glassy orbs without iris, pupil, or life. It was a meat puppet, nothing more.
I stopped, at first, and I f
elt more than saw the rest stop behind me. It wasn't a good position at all, but that thing was kind of blocking us in. But when I stepped forward, lifting the flamethrower, even though I knew it wasn't going to do enough to stop the golem if it tried to attack, it stepped back, turned around, and shambled away.
“What in the hell is happening?” Tall Bear asked. “I'm guessing this isn't normal behavior for these things?”
“It's kind of hard to tell what 'normal behavior' is for an unnaturally animated clay statue or pile of sewed-together body parts,” I admitted. “Some monsters you can find patterns for, but these things...it's anybody's guess.”
Whatever was going on, the golem, while never getting quite out of sight, kept its distance. We continued to work our way toward Blake's truck.
I could see two of the homunculi and a golem, lurking about fifty yards away, watching silently, when we reached the truck. It was parked on the side of the street, not quite in a parking spot. All the doors were closed, and the windows were rolled up. Tall Bear posted himself near the hood, while Eryn covered the bed and the direction we'd come. Nobody had said anything, but I guessed it was kind of unanimous that I got to open the truck.
With everything else gone wonky, I wasn't ruling out the truck being a trap. I carefully shut off the pilot light on the flamethrower, unslung it, and placed it on the curb. It was taking a chance, especially with those creepy clay dolls watching us, but torching the truck if there was something lurking in the back seat was probably just going to get the rest of us roasted along with it. Leaving my rifle on my back, I drew my pistol and reached for the door handle. I realized that if it was locked, I was about to look a bit like an idiot, but I tried the door anyway.
