Greyborn Rising

by Derry Sandy

  The birds moved with her and more continued to join their number. She was like the Pied Piper of vultures. There were so many now that she could hear the sound of air as it sighed past their many wings. Then she heard something else, something behind her breathing heavily. She looked back and saw the cane stalks about two hundred meters behind her, bending and swaying as something large bulled its way through. Lisa ran and the birds seamlessly adjusted their synchronized flight to track her progress. The thing behind her began running as well, breaking through the cane stalks with a crashing rush.

  She felt like now was a fine time to entertain a full panic, and so she panicked. Where was she even running to? she wondered. The cane field had no end and the vultures were pointing right at her. There was nowhere to hide. She decided that it was more horrible to wait to be pulled down from behind by the unseen pursuer than to stand and face it. Maybe it was something benign.

  She stopped and turned to wait for her tail, but a moment later she wished she had kept on running. The beast that came through the cane stalks could best be described as a bear that was covered in bony spines rather than fur...a bearcupine? It had a long prehensile tail and stood almost ten feet high at the shoulder. Even from fifty feet away it stank as if it had rolled in a latrine. The spines covering its body shivered in excitement making a noise like a bag of bones being shook. A long tongue lolled out of its broad snout as it salivated, its dull red eyes focused on her exclusively. It took two deliberate steps toward her and then charged like a cape buffalo. She ran to her right as fast as she could. Big animals were bad at rapid maneuvers, she thought. But she knew it was futile. The thing had all day to chase her down and with no cover in sight she was doomed.

  The crash of the creature’s onrushing charge through the cane grew louder behind her, then there was silence and she knew it had pounced. She dropped flat to the ground and the beast sailed above and past her leaving a fetid wake. It landed and turned around with the agility of an animal half its size. She was still on her stomach atop a bed of battered cane stalks. It didn’t even bother leaping. Instead, it shambled up to her.

  From her prone position the spiny bear looked even more massive. She looked up at its ugly maw. “If Voss was here, he would make a rug of you,” she said out loud. Voss did not come but someone else did. The man who speared the beast through the neck with a bamboo pole was tall, slender and boyishly pretty. He wore black skinny-jeans was in his mid-twenties and looked like he had just stepped out of a vintage record shop. He was entirely out of place here.

  The pole went in one side of the creature’s face and out the other in a spray of blackish blood. The spiny bear bellowed in rage and twisted around violently to meet its attacker. How the man kept hold of the spear was anyone’s guess, it bent and broke leaving half its shaft in the beast’s face and the other half in the man’s grip. The bear charged him and he stepped to the side like a bull fighter, when the animal wheeled he shoved his broken bamboo stave into its left eye and simultaneously yanked the other half of the broken weapon from the creature’s neck while dodging a swipe of its dinner-plate sized paws.

  The brute was wounded but far from dead. It did not charge again but began circling looking for a weakness, acknowledging the stranger as an adversary rather than an easy meal. The newcomer looked very small battling the giant bear but he was very fast and very strong. Lisa did not want to move for fear that she would break his concentration. The bearlike beast charged again, and again the man stepped aside, but this time the charge had been a feint, at the last moment the creature’s tail whipped forward and coiled around the man’s ankles. He recovered his balance quickly but not quickly enough. The beast’s clawed fist slammed into the man’s face with a sickening crack.

  The man fell to the ground in a heap and the bear moved in for the kill. Lisa shouted instinctively and it turned. Reminded of its first prize, it came for her.

  D’mara Lockhart, erupted from the cane fields with the suddenness of a summer storm. The little girl held a twelve-foot bamboo spike in front of her like a pole-vaulter determined to clear the high beam. The spiny beast gathered itself for violence, but at the last moment the girl leapt high.

  Lisa’s eyes tried to follow her upward journey but D’mara had leapt into the light of the big bright sun. Lisa was momentarily blinded and so was the spiny bear. When Lisa’s vision cleared D’mara had driven the wooden spike down the mouth of the beast so powerfully that it had run through the entire length of the bear and into the ground. The spiny beast was dead, but the impaling stake prevented it from falling over, so it sat upright looking ridiculous and undignified with three feet of bamboo protruding from its open mouth. D’mara ignored the fallen man and walked over to Lisa, her brown face looking like a hurricane sky.

  “You have lost your mind,” the girl said, not as a question but as a statement of fact. “We get here, you are thirsty, you need water, but you refuse to walk with me to find the water because you are, as you put it, ‘about to turn into a raisin and die.’ I hide you and tell you stay where you are in the grass. The moment I turn my back to get the water that you asked for you wander off for a nature walk. Do you have any idea what lurks in the Grey? This isn’t West Moorings or even Belmont. You think that was bad? There is far worse out here. Were you bitten or scratched?”

  Lisa had no recollection of any of the conversation about the water. “No I was not bitten, I…I don’t remember any of that conversation.” Lisa’s mouth was not producing any saliva and she suddenly felt light headed.

  D’mara stooped next to where she lay and placed a hand on Lisa’s forehead. “You’re burning up. Here sit up, drink this and eat this.” The girl gave her a skin of liquid that Lisa hoped was water and a weird fruit that was perfectly spherical and covered with a waxy, deep-blue rind. Lisa drank from the skin.

  It was not water. It was unlike anything she had ever had before. It had the consistency of water, but it tasted like…life, if all the best flavors in life could be distilled into a liquid she though. The first sip refreshed her from her toes to the ends of her hair. The best description for its taste was sweetness but to describe it as sweet would not do the drink justice. It was cold, crisp, and wild. It was, in all honesty, the best thing she had ever tasted. “We should take some of this home,” Lisa said.

  She bit into the fruit, it was not as good as the ‘water’ but it was still amazing. She felt completely better. D’mara walked over to the prostrate man and toed him with a slippered foot. “Clarence Jeremy, you can either get up or get left for the buzzards and I assure you, they are gathering.” The man groaned and rolled over, the right side of his face was covered in blood, but under the blood the flesh looked whole.

  “Fifty-seven, I was almost decapitated.” Clarence said as he sat up.

  “Yes I saw. You need to be sharper if you are going to be of any help here. Get your shit together, Clarence.”

  The pretty man looked genuinely hurt, “Hey, if it wasn’t for me she would have been dead when you got here,” he said.

  “Fair enough, but when you are attacked in the future go for the heart and don’t get tripped up by a silly tail trick again. Did Kat send you?”

  “Yes, she said I needed to find and protect Lisa, she gave me a whistle to blow when I found her.” He pulled a thong out of his shirt and stared at the crushed bit of bone attached to the end of it. The whistle had been smashed in the fight.

  “Well, that’s not going to help us much now. It does not matter, Lisa knows the way back, and we won’t be returning until Lucien is dead.”

  “I do? Don’t you have another of those black travel boxes?”

  “Nope, fresh out, but you know the way, when it’s time to go we will be able to go. For now, welcome to the Grey. We need to get moving, the birds will give away our position as long as we remain in view.”

  “Why are the birds following us?” Lisa asked.

  “Because outsiders are always soon to die in the Grey?” Clarenc
e ventured.

  “Well yes, that’s part of it. But all the creatures here share a low-grade psychic connection. The vultures signal the predators both visually and mentally. The predators come and do the killing then the vultures benefit by getting to eat the scraps. It’s symbiosis on a grand scale. If Lisa had stayed on the grassy knoll, where it smelled of maboya she would not have been hunted.”

  D’mara sniffed the air, “Clarence, you are better at this, help me.”

  Clarence also lifted his head and tested the air. “It’s faint, but it’s there, east?”

  “Yes I agree, east. Let’s go Lisa, we have miles to walk and this probably won’t be the last time we have to kill something big and nasty. By the way, this young man is Clarence Jeremy. He led a team of kidnappers to Stone, where they intended to kill your friends and bring you back to Lucien. Don’t worry, he’s a nice guy, had a bit of a hard life but you can trust him. We can trust you right, Clarence?”

  Clarence’s head was bowed in what Lisa thought was shame. “Yes, you can trust me.”

  “Good, we are all sorted now, single file. Clarence you lead with that amazing nose, Lisa take the middle, and I will bring up the rear. Oh, wait, one last thing…”

  The one last thing was utterly disgusting. D’mara tore open the corpse of the spiny-bear and smeared them with its blood, guts and feces. Lisa gagged at the stench.

  “We stink of the Absolute, and out here, that is a dinner bell. So we will trade that smell for a different stink.”

  They set off heading east, accompanied by the maelstrom of black vultures and a retinue of fat golden flies.

  Chapter 27

  Rohan Le Clerc was uneasy. Kat had been under the dirt for six days and seven nights now and he was becoming a bit concerned. Even though Tarik had shared the tale of how long he had waited for Kat to return the last time she had slept, Rohan still could not shake his worry. Voss was on guard duty at the grave site and Rohan monitored the camera feeds in the security room. He knew he should be sleeping in preparation for his shift, but he couldn’t tonight. There was a weird feeling in the air, an expectant feeling.

  Awaiting Kat’s resurrection was boring and stressful work and he was on edge. Before Kat’s burial it had been years since Rohan had spent seven consecutive nights at Stone and his self-imposed house arrest was starting to generate cabin fever. While Kamara and Tarik were bound to the grave neither he nor Voss could do much else other than perform their security shifts. Yes, he could retreat inside Stone between his watches, but he was not confident enough to leave the premises even with Voss on guard.

  At least I can leave the graveside, he thought. Tarik and Kamara had been bound to the same one hundred square feet of space for the last week. They seemed to be coping with the situation better than he was though. Kamara did Yoga daily and practiced with her sword. Rohan had been able to bring it to her after getting her to explicitly say that he could touch it. Tarik ate, slept, and read.

  The weird feeling in his gut would not dissipate. Something about the night was odd. A suspenseful mood held sway. Rohan went downstairs and out onto the wide marble porch where he listened. It was quiet, no jumbie birds or crickets sounded. The air was still, no breezes stirred. Twice Rohan started towards the grave site but swallowed his uneasiness and sat on the steps of the porch to wait for Voss to call him for his shift.

  There were not many trees on the grounds immediately around Stone House. Beyond the walls there were many ancient trees and Rohan knew them all. That night there were three strange new trees beyond the wall. When one of the trees leapt over Stone’s walls in a single stride the odd feeling in Rohan’s stomach coalesced into something tangibly familiar, alarm.

  ***

  Voss’ watch was almost over and he knew Rohan would be impatiently waiting to relieve him. The Orderman had become stir-crazy recently, unable to sleep, keen for Kat’s return, and concerned that Kamara’s and Tarik’s attachment to the grave made them all vulnerable. His concerns had merit. Being out in the open with two people metaphysically tied to a small square of earth made them an easy target.

  Lucien knew where they were and to be honest he was a bit surprised that no other monsters had been deployed to kill them. If he was Lucien he would strike now while the soucouyant-witch slept or rotted, while he and Rohan were the only ones guarding, and while no one could stray too far from this patch of dirt whether by compulsion or dedication. Given the circumstances, Voss was almost relieved when he saw the three giants sprinting towards them across Stone’s lawn. An attack was to be expected and it had finally come. He had always been a better soldier than sentry.

  The creatures approaching looked like men who had been stretched to a height of twenty-five feet. All sinew and bone, their massive, bare feet were surprisingly silent as they came. They were dressed in the garb of field slaves, ill-fitting, stained cotton trousers and tattered shirts that were left unbuttoned to flap in the wind as they sprinted forward. One was shirtless. In their matted hair they wore branches and leaves, Voss assumed for camouflage. Their faces were those of old negro men, sun-creased and lined, but their eyes burned silver like moonlight. Moongazers they were called because they drew their power from moonlight; rare creatures even in the stories. Nonetheless here they were, three of them, coming to kill him.

  “Kamara, Tarik, we have a real problem here,” Voss called out as he took a knee and opened fire with his assault rifle. The goliath hound that kept watch with him grew to its massive size and charged out to meet the intruders. Kamara emerged from her tent carrying a long-gun. She raised the weapon, sighted, and opened fire too. The giants were still about a quarter mile away but closing fast. Voss knew at least some of the bullets were on target but the giants seemed unfazed. Voss heard an engine roar as Rohan crested a rise at the wheel of a pickup truck in pursuit of the monsters. Voss could see Agrippa in the passenger seat and one of Cassan’s dogs in the back. Rohan was firing a submachine gun through the window with one hand and steering with the other while keeping the accelerator floored. The creatures paid as much attention to Rohan’s bullets as they did to his and Kamara’s.

  Tarik emerged from his tent armed with an AR-15 and began firing at the oncoming trio. The first of Cassan’s dogs hit the lead Moongazer with an impact that sounded like a car collision. The monster and the huge hound fell to the ground entangled in a vicious battle. Rohan caught up with the remaining two and swerved to ram the truck into the shins of the nearest one, bringing it down in a heaped tangle of long limbs. He then set the dogs on it before the giant could regain its footing. Agrippa and Cassan’s second dog lit into the fallen Moongazer as Rohan chased after the third one on foot, still firing his weapon. The giant easily outran him ignoring his gunfire. It was obviously focused on the people by the graveside, who were pegged to the spot like the bait-goat in a lion hunt.

  “Kamara, its coming,” Voss said.

  “I guess it is,” she replied displaying surprising calm.

  The giant was now fifty feet away and Voss ran out to meet it. He aimed at its knees in an attempt to slow it down, but the bullets may as well have been a drizzling rain. Voss dropped the gun and called the beast that lived inside him. It had always been there, the beast, existing as a ferocious companion since his first memories of himself, always eagerly waiting to be released from the cage of his humanity. The beast flowed from within him, warm as a shot of alcohol. He did not allow a complete transformation, he just needed claws and fangs for this job. Talons erupted from under his finger nails and his fore-arms doubled in size and became covered in fur. The change used to be painful at a time, now it was routine.

  He now had the tools he needed. With a bestial roar he leapt at the creature, clambered up its calf, and tore into its leg with tooth and nail. The flesh tasted foul and the blood that ran from the wounds shone silver like moonlight. He got the reaction he needed, the giant bellowed in pain and stopped to swat him off. He dodged its blows clambering around the creature’s thigh
like a monkey on a tree trunk.

  The delay caused by Voss allowed Rohan to catch up. Voss saw the man leap from the ground armed with two machetes, one in either hand. He plunged them into the giant’s lower back clinging to the embedded blades some twelve feet off the ground. When the creature reached behind and tried to grab Rohan he slashed at the hand with one blade while clinging on to the other that was still buried in the giant’s flesh. The blow removed one of the giant’s fingers and it fell to the ground like a branch.

  The Moongazer frantically tried to dislodge its two tormentors while Rohan and Voss tried to do as much damage as they could. Voss clambered higher onto the creature’s thigh and began to root into its groin, while dodging the giant’s crushing blows. Rohan hacked into its spine, hoping to land a disabling strike.

  Another of the Moongazers ran past them. Voss glanced behind and saw one of Cassan’s dogs lying on its side, dead or unconscious, Agrippa was nowhere to be seen and the other goliath hound was still locked in mortal combat with the first Moongazer. Voss hoped Jonah had heard the commotion and would soon arrive with the third oversized dog.

  There was only one choice to make, Voss sprang onto the back of the passing Moongazer.

  ***

  Rohan was now in a spot on the Moongazer’s back that it could not reach no matter how it contorted. Soaked in silver blood, he hacked repeatedly into the giant’s back. The blood was as cold as ice water and tasted bitter when it inevitably got into his mouth. Rohan persisted, thinking he was making progress but then the tormented giant began growing, stretching skyward like the mythical beanstalk in the children’s story.

  In seconds it doubled in height. Its arms grew too, longer, it could reach him now and it did. He was in its grasp before he could react. Its massive hands were calloused and strong. It could easily crush him, but instead, the Moongazer hurled Rohan as hard as it could, launching him upward and away. He tumbled end over end like a chicken carcass in a rotisserie grill as he ascended skyward, powerless to stop his flight. He reached the zenith of his trajectory then began to fall.