by Peter Nealen
By the time I'd finished, he looked a little green. “Boy, we sure stepped into a hot one this time, didn't we?” he gulped. “The Huntsman? The Walker? And these sumasshedshiye zhenshchiny want to waste time on the bald guy while The Walker's still around?”
I rolled my eyes. “Sister Margritte is certain that we're overstating things, and that it's not really The Walker.” I glanced over at the Sisters' van. They were all already inside and waiting, and while I couldn't see faces clearly through the windshield, I could just feel the impatience. They hadn't bothered to get out and see who it was when Kolya had showed up. “I honestly think she's scared, and is in denial because she doesn't want to think about just how bad this could be.”
“Probably,” Kolya sighed. “Anything else I need to know, or should we get moving?”
“We should really get moving,” I replied. “Time's a-wasting.”
“Agreed. I'll see you in Bartram, my friend.” Kolya clapped me on the shoulder and ran back to his truck.
We roared out of the turnout and down the road. Bartram wasn't far, but, as I'd said, time was a-wasting.
Chapter 16
At first glance, it didn't look like anything at all was going on in Bartram. There was no purple-black storm swirling overhead, no smoke rising from ruined buildings, no nothing. The place just looked like a small town swathed in trees, in the lee of a tall, basalt bluff. I started to hope that we'd actually, somehow, gotten ahead of the madness.
I should have known better.
As before, we parked the vehicles outside of town and started forward on foot. Rather surprisingly, the Sisters didn't object; I'd been expecting them to, if for no other reason than to be difficult. But they just got out and started moving forward with us, albeit in their own separate little formation. Sister Margritte forged ahead, giving the distinct impression that if we didn't keep up, she was going to go in and put this town to rights all by herself.
Good luck with that, Sister.
The air was shimmering like heat-haze, as we approached the main drag, which was a little odd to start with, since it wasn't that hot. My earlier vague hopefulness started to wane. It was quiet, utterly still. There wasn't a soul to be seen on the street, either. The town looked abandoned, at least what we could see of it. Towering birches and willows were everywhere, veiling the houses in greenish shadows. It looked like there were countless hiding spots in the dark spaces where anything could be watching.
“Are we early?” Tall Bear murmured. “Or did we get here too late again?”
We stepped past the outermost willows before anyone could answer. As soon as we did, everything went sideways.
A thick mist came out of nowhere. One moment we were standing on an empty street, the next we were in pea-soup fog. Trees and buildings were only vague shadows; we could barely see each other. The temperature had immediately dropped a good twenty degrees.
The silence also lifted. I would have preferred the ominous quiet. The unholy screaming, shouting, shrieking, and howling was not an improvement.
The empty street was no longer empty. While the fog kept us from seeing any great distance, we could see far enough to spot the corpses on the street. Several appeared relatively unmarked, simply sprawled on the street as if they were asleep. Others were mangled piles of meat, blood, and bone that could only barely be seen to have ever been human. Or anything else.
The fact that everything was hidden behind the mist was somehow even more unnerving. Aside from the bodies in the street, the sourceless noises, and the fog, there still wasn't any indication that anything was happening. We couldn't see any action, and we probably wouldn't be able to see the gibbering horrors running to eat our flesh until they were right on top of us. The Sisters were little more than vague phantoms in the fog.
“Stay close,” Father Ignacio called out. “If we get separated in this we'll be taken out piecemeal.” Man of the cloth he may be, but Father knows tactics. Unfortunately, it didn't look like the Sisters were listening.
“What the blazes is that?” Kolya asked suddenly. It took a moment to figure out what he was talking about.
There was a strange music in the air, that seemed to ebb and flow with the tattered tendrils of the mist that swirled around us. It was like a twisted sort of pipe music, or maybe it was some kind of flutes. It was strangely hypnotic while also being discordant, jarring. It was deeply disturbing as soon as we started really registering the sound.
“Don't listen to it,” Father warned. “Concentrate on the screaming if you have to.”
“What is it?” Eryn asked.
“I don't know for sure,” he replied, “but it's not healthy, that's for certain.”
As if to prove him right, the piping became more strident, and I started to get a stabbing pain above my left eye. Not healthy, indeed.
I turned to Brother Barnabas. “Where do you need to set up?” I asked.
He was looking around, his face still composed in spite of the weirdness of our surroundings. He might have been contemplating a carpentry project, for all the emotion he showed. I supposed that after a good amount of time on a mountaintop guarding a woman who had turned into an eldritch horror, he was a little hardened to this sort of thing.
“We'll have to try to draw it out of town,” he said. “I wouldn't want to try to trap it inside the town if we can help it. Still,” he added wryly, “given how advanced this particular situation appears to be, that might well be more easily said than done. We might have to improvise.” He jerked a thumb at the pack on his back. “Good thing we came prepared.”
While all of the other unholy noise made it difficult to make out, there was a rumble of voices ahead, just outside the range of being able to make out words. As we advanced, a shadow started to form in the fog ahead. A broad shadow that moved and writhed like a crowd. Or a mob.
The Sisters had paused their advance at the sight. We slowed, too. None of us wanted to charge right into a repeat of Coldwell, and this was probably going to be much, much worse.
As we got a little closer, we were able to see a little more clearly. The crowd stretched from one side of the street to the other. The closest ranks were facing us, staring with blank eyes. Seriously blank; it was as if they had all rolled their eyes back in their heads until only the whites were showing. They were just standing there, swaying and twitching but neither advancing nor retreating. The rest of the crowd behind them was facing the opposite direction, apparently oblivious to our presence.
“Well, this is just ducky,” Charlie said loudly. “Another human hedge.” He looked over at me. “What do you think? Ophir all over again?”
I eyed the twitchy line of slack-jawed people. “I doubt it,” I answered. “I suspect that if we step too close, we're going to get charged by a tide of brainwashed zombies.”
“I don't see The Walker, or anything that looks like it might be The Walker,” Miguel said. “Do we try to get around these people to see if we can find it?”
“Best course of action I can think of,” Father replied. “Sister Margritte!”
“We'll go to the right!” she called back. The Sisters sort of faded into the fog in that direction. So much for any further coordination. Fortunately, we'd managed to scrape up a couple of old walkie-talkies, so we had one and they had one. Hopefully they'd work in this fog; I doubt anyone seriously thought the mist was any more naturally-occurring than the fog in Bowesmont had been.
We moved off to the left, looking for a way around the crowd. The ranks of people facing us followed us with those unnerving, white-eyed stares. While they twitched and swayed in random directions, their heads all moved as one, almost as if a single nervous system was guiding all of them at once. It was creepy as hell, and I hated to look away from them to scan the rest of the mist for threats, since I had that prickly feeling on the back of my neck. I kept thinking that as soon as I looked away they were going to descend on us.
But they stayed where they were. As we moved, and they kept
watching us—or whatever they were doing; I couldn't quite believe that they could actually see with their eyes whited-out like that—I started to feel like we were edging around a giant, bad-tempered dog, that was otherwise focused on something else, but was watching us out of the corner of its eye, ready to pounce if we got too close. Whatever was controlling these people—and it was pretty obvious that they were under something's control, especially after Ophir—it didn't view us as enough of a threat to act. At least not yet.
More shadows loomed out of the murk ahead, only to resolve themselves into buildings, albeit buildings that looked like they'd been overgrown with some sort of thorny, demonic kudzu. Yes, I know that Southerners consider kudzu demonic enough all by itself, but this stuff didn't have much in the way of leaves, those leaves were glossy black, and it sported thorns three inches long. The windows and doors were the only parts of the houses that could be seen under the tangle of spikes and vines.
There weren't any people in the overgrown space between the houses, but there were enough bushes, mostly sporting more thorns than they should have, to make progress difficult. We had to narrow down to a file, with rifles, shotguns, and eyes scanning in every direction for the next nasty surprise to come out of the woodwork. Unfortunately, that surprise didn't come in quite the form we'd been expecting.
Edgar suddenly started to shake. Miguel was the first one to notice, and grabbed his brother as he yelled, “Jed! Father!” We turned just in time to see Edgar's eyes roll back in his head, and spittle start to foam from his mouth. Miguel had wrested Edgar's rifle away, and now clapped his hands over his brothers' ears. “Don't listen to it!”
Father and I shoved our way through the clinging shrubs to get back to them. Edgar was twitching, jerking back and forth, though he was still on his feet. Miguel was crying now, his hands clamped over Edgar's ears, but apparently to no avail. “Don't listen to it!” he sobbed. “Don't!”
I looked around for something creeping up on us, but there was nothing there. The piping was just as loud as it had been out on the street, wafting through the air as if on the wind. I had to assume that was what Miguel was yelling about, as it still seemed to be making my headache worse, but I wasn't feeling any particular urges to roll my eyes back in my head.
Father was praying, and Edgar was jerking away from him and Miguel. With an inarticulate yell, he suddenly surged out of his brother's grip and started running back toward the street and the crowd. Miguel grabbed for him with a strangled cry, but got caught up in a bush that seemed to sink its thorns into his arm. He jerked back, blood flowing from the punctures.
“Edgar!” I yelled helplessly. Father's hand descended on my shoulder.
“It's got him,” he said heavily. “Whatever 'it' is. We've got to drive on. At least he's still alive. If we don't stop this, he won't be, and neither will a lot of other people.”
I hesitated, mainly because I had to haul Miguel back as he tried to surge after his brother. I hated to leave Edgar to the mercies of whatever was happening, but Father was right. If we abandoned the mission to try to save him, we would probably fail, and we'd end up just like him. Or dead. And the aftermath for everyone else in the country probably wouldn't be very good, either. This was the fifth town being torn asunder by this little cat-and-mouse game, and that was five too many. Reluctantly, I turned Miguel back toward the front, and we got moving again. Miguel moved out, but his shoulders were slumped, and he walked with the heavy tread of a man fighting with despair. Father gave me a look that told me he knew exactly how hard it was, then turned and led the way again.
We got around the house and tried to turn back toward the right, in the direction we'd been going. The shrubs and bushes were, if anything, getting thicker, and the thorns were starting to get barbed. Something didn't want us getting around that way.
When we fought through to the far side of the house, there were more of the blankly-staring people gathered there. The crowd was huge; there had to be close to a couple thousand people, packed together. And we started to see why.
The mist shifted, as if stirred by some wind, and for a brief moment, I could see to the center of the crowd. There was a figure looming over all of them.
I only caught a glimpse. The mist swirled back around it as soon as I got a look. But it was enough.
Seven feet tall if it was an inch. Black or dark gray coat, and a slouch hat that shadowed its face. It was...smoky, as if it wasn't entirely physical. It looked solid enough, but it seemed to thin out into the mist at the edges. Judging by Blake's description, I'd just seen The Walker.
The noises were getting louder. Screaming, hooting, howling. Green lighting suddenly flashed through the mist. The murk eddied aside in time to give us a look at what was happening further up the street.
A pack of misshapen monsters was throwing itself against the crowd of blank-faced people. There were flesh golems, larger and more outlandish than the ones in Bowesmont, along with plenty of the warped, horned, tentacled, corrupted people that we'd faced in Ophir. They were doing plenty of damage; The Walker's brainwashed meat shields weren't much for combat, particularly against things with horns, talons, and fangs. But they weren't unopposed. Even as I watched through the rent in the fog, a word—or something like a word—echoed down the street. It almost drove me to my knees as a spike of pain went through my head from ear to ear. I heard Eryn cry out behind me, and she did fall. It was a sound that shouldn't have ever been uttered. It was a word, a name, or an incantation; whatever it was, it was totally inimical to life.
Life of any stripe, apparently. We had just gotten the backblast. As the unholy noise echoed down the street one of the five-armed monsters that was sweeping three foot talons through the controlled people like scythes through wheat simply exploded in a red and black cloud of mist, like vaporized tar.
Gulp.
“And we want to get that thing's attention?” Charlie asked, his voice suddenly hushed. “That's grease spot on the pavement time.”
“We don't have much of a choice, do we?” Tall Bear snapped. He looked over at Brother Barnabas, who was as unruffled as before, even after what we'd just seen. That man had no nerves left at all. “I doubt we're going to have the chance to get this thing out of town. Whatever you need to do, I suggest you get started.”
Brother Barnabas simply nodded. “I'll need a little bit of space, and we'll have to keep the people from overwhelming us.” He looked around at the rest of us. “That means we need to get it to come to us. This could get...messy.” There was a flicker of something like pain in his eyes. He knew what this was going to cost. If we got The Walker's attention, it was going to throw its puppets at us before it ever came after us itself. Coldwell was going to be mild compared to this.
Father was going around to each of us even before Brother Barnabas had finished speaking. He had his own holy water flask out. He tapped Ian on the shoulder until he turned and bowed his head. Father blessed him, sprinkling the holy water and touching his ears in particular. Hopefully that would help keep the malevolent influence of The Walker's music at bay. Once he'd gone around to each of us, he looked at Brother Barnabas and nodded.
By then, Brother Barnabas and his two compatriots had figured out their plan of attack. “Back to the street,” he said. “There's more room there. Not as defensible, perhaps, but I think that if we can actually get a shot at The Walker, it might piss it off enough to come after us itself instead of sending its hordes. I think,” he stressed, as he was faced with several skeptical to downright incredulous raised eyebrows. “It's a theory. I've never done an imprisonment before, and certainly not against something of this tier.”
“WHAT?!” Charlie bellowed. “I thought you were the best the monks had to offer or something!”
“I am,” Brother Barnabas replied firmly. “And by the grace of God we'll make this work.” He looked over at Charlie. “How often do you think this happens? It's rare at best, and not just because there aren't that many of us. But we'
re all trained to do it. So you keep the zombies and the monsters off of us, and we'll lock this thing down.”
“You'd better,” Charlie snapped. “Because if I get eaten or turned into pink mist, I'm going to find a way to come back and haunt you. Somehow.”
“Ghosts don't haunt,” Brother Milo put in primly. “At least not the souls of the dead. Only demons or Otherworldly tricksters are behind so-called 'hauntings.'”
“I know that,” Charlie gritted. “You literal, stuck-up...”
“That's enough!” I bellowed. “Get to the street!” I snatched up the radio and called the Sisters. “We're moving back to the street. Brother Barnabas thinks he can set the trap and we might be able to draw The Walker into it. We'll need your support if it sends its little army after us.”
“Acknowledged,” was the only scratchy reply.
I glared at the radio. You'd better be there, Sister, I thought savagely.
We struggled back toward the street, finding, to my complete lack of surprise at that point, that it involved a couple more twists and turns than we remembered. It was almost as if Bartram had been ripped whole out of our world and into...someplace else, someplace where the normal rules didn't exactly apply anymore. Or if they did, they'd been bent at the very least.
When we finally got back to the street, it wasn't the same anymore. The thorny, vine-encrusted houses seemed taller, and seemed to be crowding the edge of the street, which didn't appear to be asphalt anymore. It was more like scree that had been fused together, a sharp-edged, lumpy surface that looked like it would take skin off like a cheese grater if you fell on it. The Friars didn't bat an eye, though. They just got to work, while the rest of us formed a rough circle and got ready for a fight.
