by Peter Nealen
Charlie thought about that one for a moment. “So you're hoping that they can lock The Walker up?”
“Hoping,” was the reply. “But it won't be easy. It never is. There's a reason why there are so few of them, and why they're always looking for new recruits.”
Well, that was encouraging…
The sun was sitting right on the edge of the peaks to the west when we finally came into view of the monastery.
It looked like an actual fairy-tale castle in the mountains. By that time, we'd climbed high enough that there were actually clouds below us, and one of them was so positioned that if it moved a little bit, the monastery would appear to be floating on it.
As we got closer, and the lurid light of the sun on the walls faded into the gray of twilight, we could see that it wasn't quite as fairy-tale a castle as it had initially looked. There was an outer wall, and a steeple that had at first looked like a turret on Mad King Ludwig's castle, but most of the structure looked like it had in fact been carved out of the rock of the mountaintop itself. It also wasn't quite as big as it had initially appeared, although it looked like the grounds still covered a good five acres.
There was also no way it had been built with heavy equipment. There simply was no way to get cranes or anything else up there. Which meant it had been built, stone by stone, by hand.
Not just the stone parts of the structure, either. As we got closer, creeping along the goat trail that clung to the side of what was now a scree-covered slope about a hundred feet above the treeline, the gate came into view. It looked like it was built of solid timbers. Somebody had needed to haul those things up the mountain, and then spike them together on the slope. It didn't really look like there was a lot of flat ground inside that compound.
It took another half an hour of carefully picking our way across the scree to reach the gate. By the time we got there, the sun was down, and twilight was giving way to night. A few lights were showing up on the steeple and below, but for the most part the place was swathed in darkness. Father Ignacio, predictably, was the first one there, though he'd slowed down enough over the last couple of miles to let most of the rest of us catch up. Reaching down, he picked up a rock and banged on the gate with it, the ringing booms echoing across the mountainside.
It took several minutes for anyone to answer. A narrow slit was opened in the right-hand door of the gate, and a voice asked, “Who's there?”
“I am Father Ignacio Rojas, itinerant exorcist for the Order of the Silver Cross,” Father said. “I have several Witch Hunters with me. We have to speak to the Abbot on a matter of great importance.”
“What matter?” the voice asked.
“I'll talk to the Abbot about that,” Father snapped. “Or has it become Brotherhood policy to leave their allies out on the mountainside in the dark?”
“The Abbot is...occupied at the moment,” the voice said primly. “He will not be free for some time.”
“Then we'll wait for him,” Father growled. “Are you going to make us camp out here on the rocks?”
I could have sworn I heard a long-suffering sigh from the slot in the door, and after another couple of minutes, the gate began to creak open.
The courtyard beyond was lit by candle lanterns. On reflection, I guessed that made sense. There sure weren't any power lines up there, I didn't hear a generator, and any fuel for the generator would probably have to be brought up by helicopter. My guess was that they went without electricity as much as possible.
There were flat areas in the courtyard, but a lot of it was stairwells, also apparently cut out of the mountainside. There was a lot of work evident in this place. Of course, if it was a prison for some Otherworldly monstrosity, I could see the wisdom in making sure it was well-built.
Since there wasn't anyone else around, I took the little man who came around the edge of the gate with a lantern to peer at us owlishly to be the recalcitrant porter. He was only an inch or two above five feet tall, skinny as a rail, with an unruly brush of blond hair and a beard that made it evident that he and Joe Dirt shared a common ancestor. He was dressed in a black, hooded cassock with a red tabard and sash. A five-inch silver crucifix hung on top of the tabard. It was a habit, just not one I'd ever seen or heard of before.
“Well, since you're coming in, don't block the gateway,” he said impatiently. “Get inside, and I'll show you to your rooms. I strongly suggest that you stay in them until the Abbot comes to see you. Not that safe elsewhere in the monastery, you know, particularly now.”
“Is she being more of a problem than usual?” Father Ignacio asked.
The porter looked at him with some surprise. “Yes, as a matter of fact, she's been quite restless for the last several days, with no end in sight. So I hope that you're not in a hurry.”
“As a matter of fact, we are,” Charlie started to say. “There's a small matter of entire towns getting wiped out to deal with down below.”
The little blond friar didn't even bat an eye. “Well, that is your bailiwick, I believe, not ours. Our charge is where our duty lies, and as long as she is proving...difficult, the Abbot will not be able to tear himself away to see you. So you'll just have to wait.” Without another word, but only a somewhat arch look that he made sure we could see in the light of his lantern, he turned and started up the nearest staircase.
We all looked at each other in the dim light. There wasn't anyone else around to ask, and there didn't seem to be much else to do, so with a sort of mutual shrug, we started up after the little porter. As usual on this little detour, Father Ignacio was already a good ten feet in front of the rest of us.
Now that we were inside the wall, I could see that in addition to the central tower, there were numerous smaller structures ranged up and down the slope. It looked not unlike an old Anasazi cliff dwelling, except that no Anasazi built this. It was too recent, and the structures themselves were too reminiscent of an actual medieval monastery, albeit a crude copy. The main building, that I had taken to be a steeple from a distance, was a round tower built half into the mountainside, with a conical crown on top. A cross was barely visible at the top of the cone, catching just enough light from the lanterns below to gleam like burnished metal.
The porter didn't lead us to the round tower, but instead to one of the squat, square buildings that huddled against the inside of the wall, just below the crest of the ridge. “I'm afraid these are the only two cells we have available,” he said. “I doubt you'll find them all that comfortable, but they are what we have. We rarely entertain visitors, for obvious reasons. Food will be brought twice a day. Again, please do not venture out until the Abbot comes for you.” Without another word, or even pausing to entertain any questions, he turned and hurried back down the steps.
“Well, he's a regular social butterfly, now ain't he?” Edgar commented. “No wonder they put him in charge of greeting people at the door.”
“Like he said, they don't get many visitors up here, and with good reason,” Father said, pointing to the door. “Come on, get inside. He might not be the most polite individual, but nothing he said was wrong. If their prisoner really is getting restless, this is probably the best place to be. We definitely don't want to be downstairs.” Something about the way he said it implied that “downstairs” didn't mean down toward the lower part of the compound. His voice brooked no disagreement, so we all hustled inside. It was late, dark, and we were all smoked from the hike anyway, in addition to the events of the last week.
Sleep wasn't going to be easy, though. We'd all heard the faint chanting coming from the round tower as we climbed the steps; in fact, I'd first heard it on the wind from a mile or so away. But we hadn't heard the blood-curdling screaming that now split the night. It sounded vaguely female, though it was far too loud to have come from any normal human throat. It wasn't a cry of fear, or pain. It was pure, distilled rage and hate.
Everybody started at that sound except for Father Ignacio. He'd obviously been expecting it. “Hope you've g
ot something to stop your ears up,” he said. “That's going to be going on for as long as we're here.”
Indeed, shutting the wooden door to the cell didn't do much more than slightly muffle the noise. It made the chanting harder to hear, but it didn't cut down much on the screaming. I was tempted, after a few moments, to open the door back up, so we could at least hear the monks' chant as a counterpoint to the evil noise.
The porter hadn't left us a lantern or anything else to provide light, but the cells had small fireplaces, and some searching around with flashlights led to finding a box of matches on the hearth. It took a little more searching to find the makings of a fire; there was a wood box in the corner, but it wasn't exactly full. We were able to get a small fire laid in the fireplace, but it was going to get cold the next night if nobody came to refill the woodbox.
As the fire caught, and flames began to lick at the wood, I took a look around the rest of the cell. It was about as ascetic a monk's cell as I'd ever seen. There was a mat for sleeping on, four stone walls, a stone floor, a crucifix on the wall, the fireplace, a stool, a table, and that was about it. The head was in a tiny alcove set back in the corner, with what looked like a composter toilet in it, probably the most modern item in the entire room.
I sat on the floor, against the wall, across the room from the fire. Eryn sat down next to me and leaned on my shoulder. Without another word, Father set his pack on the floor, lay down, rested his head on the pack, and went to sleep.
Another scream rent the mountain quiet. It was going to be a long night.
“So, Blake, I've got a question,” Tyrese said the next day. None of us had gotten much sleep, aside from Father Ignacio and maybe Ian, who had, as was his wont, bedded down in a corner without a word, curled up on his side with his back to the rest of us, and not moved until sunrise. “Just how were you tracking The Walker and the bald guy? How did you know where to go next, much less what to tell Jed?”
“It was easy,” Blake said with a half-hearted snort. He still looked wan and exhausted, and his eyes were still haunted. It was going to take a long time for him to bounce back from Ophir, if he ever bounced back at all. “That storm over Ophir? That's the calling card, and you can see it for miles. I just followed the storm.”
“Which raises the next question,” Edgar said. “Now that we've broken contact, how do we know where to go next?”
Blake shrugged helplessly. “I don't know,” he said. “I don't know what to do next. I tried to stop this, and I ended up a mindless vegetable caught in The Huntsman's net. If you guys hadn't come to get me, I'd be insane, dead, or both.” His shoulders slumped and his head dipped toward the floor. “I'm out of ideas,” he all but whispered. Again, I was struck by how lost and broken he seemed. This wasn't the old Blake.
“They've been following a line,” Charlie said. “It's a crooked one, but it's a line, nonetheless. I think that our bald guy might be deliberately picking small, podunk towns that nobody would necessarily miss for raw materials for his rear guard.”
“That's a good point,” Tall Bear said. “If the hordes that he's throwing at this thing have to come from cemeteries or even a living population, then he's going to have to find out of the way places to do it, that won't necessarily get the National Guard called in.”
“At least until somebody starts putting the news reports together and decides the zombie apocalypse has started,” I said. “There's no way this is staying quiet for much longer. Too many dead people. Relatives from out of town are going to start asking questions soon, if nothing else.”
“Not our problem,” Edgar said reasonably. “At least not at the moment. I'd say The Walker is a rather more pressing issue.”
“I'd tend to agree, at least until we go after it and find a National Guard roadblock in the way,” I retorted.
“We'll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Father interjected. “We do need to try to figure out where they're going next.”
Tyrese had a highway map in his pack. Most of us did, actually, but his was closer to the top. He spread it on the cold stones of the floor. This high up, even at midday, it didn't get that hot, particularly inside. None of us really wanted to go outside, either, after the porter's warning and the continuing screams coming from the round tower. They had been less frequent since the sun came up, but they still split the thin air every once in a while, and made us all wince. We did have the door open for light, though. We needed it; the room was too dim otherwise, even with the fire, though that had burned low during the night.
“Here's Coldwell,” he said, pointing to the speck on the map that was the now-murdered meth town, “and here's Bowesmont, and then Ophir.” He scratched his scalp. “They're all kind of in the middle of nowhere. Where did you first run into these characters, Blake?”
“Here,” he answered, pointing to a spot to the northwest of Coldwell, before withdrawing into his silence again.
Tyrese nodded. “You're right, Charlie, that is a pretty definite northwest to southeast track. So, we can trace it...” he suited actions to words, running his finger across the map. “Hmm. Couple of possibilities. Lone Hill's one. Barely a dot on the map. Or he could turn a little farther east and head for Chester City. After that...Bartram looks like the best bet. Nothing else for a good...sixty miles in any direction.”
“We'll have to check both possibilities,” Charlie said. “Unless we get lucky and hit on them at the first one. Which one's closer?”
“Lone Hill,” Tyrese said. “Probably a good bet to hit that one first.”
“Aren't we putting the cart a little before the horse?” Miguel asked. “Shouldn't we see if these monks can help us out before we start planning what we're going to do next?”
We all just looked at him. “Well, is there something else you'd rather do to pass the time while we wait?” Charlie asked. “Personally, I find this a little better than just sitting here listening to that thing screaming down there.”
As if to punctuate his words, another shriek rang off the rocks and rolled out over the narrow valley below.
A day and a half later, we'd almost run out of possible scenarios to talk over. Nobody seemed to be much in the mood for small talk, especially as the screaming got louder and more strident over the second night. There had been some commotion that evening, with monks running out of their cells and into the central tower. While there was only so much we could see from up at the top of the courtyard, it was apparent that the monks took up their never-ending litany in shifts, and it looked like things had gotten dicey enough that they'd called in an extra shift.
By mid-morning, though, things seemed to have settled down a little. The screams hadn't stopped, really, but they were farther apart and sounded almost tired. The chanting continued, relentlessly. It may have been a little bit repetitious after two days, but under the circumstances, I still found it a little comforting.
Footsteps scraped on the stone steps outside, and a figure filled the doorway. A bent old man in the red and black habit, with a golden crucifix around his neck shuffled into the cell and lowered himself painfully onto the stool that Miguel had hastily vacated as he'd entered the room.
“Well, Father Ignacio,” the old man said, his voice a deep rumble that managed to sound even more tired than he looked, “You've picked quite a time to come visit.”
“I kind of figured that, Father Abbot,” Father replied. “But we didn't have much of a choice. We've got a big problem of our own, that seems to be more up your alley, and time is short. Very short.”
The Abbot sighed. “Lay it out for me.”
Father Ignacio gave him the run-down. As he spoke, the old, bent Abbot's face got grayer and grayer. He already looked like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders, and the news about The Walker seemed to take years from his remaining life right in front of our eyes. He knew exactly what was going on. When Father Ignacio finished, the Abbot rubbed a hand over his eyes.
“I don't know who imprisoned The Wal
ker,” he confessed. “If it was any of us, they never recorded it, and besides, there would have been a monastery built over its tomb in that case. I suspect that that probably has something to do with how easily your mysterious sorcerer broke it out. And/or woke it up. Immaterial, now, of course. It's apparent that whoever did it, any bonds they might have had on the creature are broken.
“You were right to come here; unfortunately, I haven't got many Friars to spare. As I'm sure you heard, she's been a handful lately.”
“Who or what is 'she?'” Eryn asked.
“We don't name her,” the Abbot said, turning to look at her. “Unfortunately, doing so has a tendency to open the speaker up to her mental influence. Even with the bonds we've placed on her, she is still dangerous.” He paused, as if thinking. “She was human, once. A few of those we have had to imprison have been. Years of wickedness and congress with the Abyss have turned her into...something else. Her soul is still human, of course, but so twisted and steeped in evil by now that she recoils from holy things almost exactly the same way the demons do. They repulse her, even cause her physical pain. While the bars she lives within may be iron, it is the litany that you hear us pray that keeps her imprisoned.
“When anyone so thoroughly embraces the profane,” he went on, “the very sight or sound of the sacred becomes an accusation, eventually an unbearable one. That is how we fight our battles, with faith and the holy, rather than the combination of faith and force that your Order does. Now,” he said, raising a withered, liver-spotted hand, “there is a place for both. I do not impugn your calling. In some circumstances, the gun and the blade are as necessary as prayer. But that is where your Order and our Brotherhood are different.”
He turned back to Father Ignacio. “I can spare you three Friars, no more. I'm sorry.” He looked around at us. We had all gathered in one cell. “You will need more Hunters if you are out to snare The Walker, I fear. You will probably also need to call in the Sisters.” There was a chorus of groans at that, and Eryn and Tall Bear both looked around at the rest of us, confused.
