by Will Madden
“It says ‘real cheese flavor’ on the side of the box.”
“Attention! This is the police. Lower your weapons and dismount, or you will be fired upon!” The captain lowered the megaphone and snapped hard to his left. “You want a write-up, Merkel?”
“I’m just sayin’! I got a cousin who puts cheese in them crackers.”
They heard the hoof beats now.
“Definitely the Pointer Sisters.”
“They’re very excited.”
“So excited.”
“Not what you or I would call cheese, but.”
“When I was a kid, me and my brothers used to play ‘kill the horse.’”
“Still too far away.”
“Sister would pretend to die from the venom bites.”
“Tackle boxes! Coming on-line!”
“This goes to show. Childhood dreams do come true.”
“They’re barely touching the ground. Shit, how fast they moving?”
“I told you them was fucking engines!”
The captain no longer cared about swear words. The knights activated an apparatus on their bracers and kite shields of golden light appeared on their wrists. The horses wore terrifying equine skull masks with rams’ horns and frog-like goggles over the eyes. Their breath rasped over the amplification system.
Hammond heard his sergeant pacing up and down the barricade. “Riot’s got a tried-and-true anti-cavalry formation. It’ll hold.”
“Radar clocks ‘em at 150 kph and accelerating.”
“Spears or no spears,” said Novak, “I wouldn’t want to stand that charge.”
“Sharpshooters! Take out those horses!”
“180 kph!”
“Propulsion’s leaving a blue residue in the air behind them. You actually see ‘em speeding up!”
By now, the police could see the riders’ helmets covering their eyes and nose. Full beards were split and tied into forks. As they descended the mountain, their steeds pounded the road with hock-high metal boots that left divots in the asphalt. The knights’ three-quarter riding capes flapped, fully extended behind them.
“Should we run?” mumbled a disguised voice. “I’m thinking run.”
“Hold your ground!” the captain snapped. “Sharpshooters, what’s the holdup?”
“No holdup, sir. Lit up the leader like a Roman candle. That spandex must be some kind of body armor. Barely slowed him down.”
“220 kph!”
“A slow down of negative forty.”
“Riot unit, hold your ground! Your spearheads have nowhere to go but through.”
“Neither do those lances.”
“Thirty seconds.”
The morning sun blinded them now, as if valkyries or avenging angels hovered behind the riders, swords drawn and trumpets blaring, which by divine grace were definitely playing the Pointer Sisters.
“Clemons? A funny time to ask, but. You ever think the worst thing about Horselords is, you never once got to see ‘em live?”
“All the damn time.” His partner released the safety catch on his sidearm. “It’s been a privilege, Hammond.”
“Yeah.” A hard swallow. “Hey, Clem? I boned your wife once.”
“S’ok. I love you too, man.”
Inspector Lu watched the anti-cavalry spears snap like twigs on the horses’ barding. In turn, the knights’ lances pierced the face guards of the front liners—a dull pop as the tip penetrated the visor—snatching up slack bodies and tossing them like heavy sacks against the riot shields behind them. The horses trampled through after, flinging helmets and boots to rain down upon the asphalt.
As the impact threw the riot line right and left, engine flair illuminated them from behind—blinding the police like an explosion. And at the epicenter, silhouettes of four riders upon hard-galloping mounts, the enormous leader standing in the stirrups, shoulder-length curls flowing from his winged helmet, spearpoint held aloft to shatter the corona of the sun.
Watching the horses’ well-muscled legs churn, Lu was not sure her eyes saw any of their hooves actually touch the ground.
The chargers were not slowing as they approached the barricade.
The knights collapsed the shafts of their lances like a spyglass, swapping them out for a new weapon, a short pike with a thick shaft and a broad flat head. As they leveled them against the squad cars, firearms began to pop off on either side of Lu. The horsemen laid flat against their animals, vanishing behind their shields. Across the horses’ chests, ripples appeared in the close-fitting armor as it dispersed the momentum of the bullets harmlessly.
“300 kph!”
Bearing down on them at the speed of thought.
“Battering rams!” Lu heard herself cry. “Move! Move!”
The pyramidal teeth of the lance-heads bore into the sides of the cars. With a crunch of metal and shattered glass, the pikes lifted and shoved the broadside of the vehicles. The off-duty motorcycle cops watched their bikes go down under the side-skidding cars, which driven by the immense collision, rolled over the bikes and launched into the air. These improvised missiles smashed into support vehicles, toppling the operations van, pinning an ambulance, and crushing any personnel that happened to be in the way.
Having expended their momentum on this charge, the four riders now turned ‘round and faced the line they had just plowed through. Holstering their pikes, they drew swords, hammers, and axes. The power units on the engines redirected energy to their wrist shields, which glowed vibrantly.
Someone was calling her on the comm.
“Gangland Intelligence,” she barked, “Lu speaking.”
“Ops just went dead, Inspector,” the Chief said, “What the hell is going on?”
“The tipoff was correct. An advanced propulsion apparatus . . .”
“A jetpack. For horses.”
“Essentially. Antiballistic equine armor. Module weaponry. I . . . Jesus, some kind of force field.”
“What’s the situation?”
“The good news is, having piled up our vehicles, the road back into Dodoville is blocked. They’re trapped up here with us.”
“That is not good news.”
“Chief, a lot of off-duty officers here for the show this morning. We should uh . . . have the manpower to subdue just the four of them.”
“That is terrible news. The road double backs under Daggett Bend. They’re not trapped up there. They’ve cut you and half the force off from the city. You said so yourself, Inspector—”
Lu felt her heart sink. “They don’t fly, they jump.”
“I need those officers back in town. Pronto. Make it happen.”
How did she inherit responsibility for this shitshow?
“Yes, Chief.”
“Until you find someone alive who’s in charge, you’re in charge. Harrowfew out.”
The knights made their way toward the ravine, bullets ricocheting off their mounts and shields as they hacked and slashed through the opposition, iron-encased hooves trampling those who went down before them. Their powerful arms worked tirelessly, shattering a jaw with a hammer or down-thrusting a sword behind a clavicle into the lungs and heart. Three of the knights did the brunt of the fighting, while the shield of the runtier one absorbed fire from the rear.
Some insane bacchanalia had seized everyone. Ignoring the knights’ onslaught, the cops focused their attacks upon the horses themselves, whose alien anatomies and terrifying masks held them in thrall.
In the cradle, Lu had learned what horses were, why they must be feared, why they must be destroyed. Not until she was in high school, when the entire student body had been invited up to Davy Castle for a classmate’s birthday, did she learn the truth. Rochelle Cumin had shown Epifania her secret stable, full of the beautiful, docile creatures. They did not breathe fire, did not unhinge their jaws to swallow dogs alive, did not have toes like a man or a cat-o-nine-tails on their rumps. Mrs. Cumin, rest her soul, had been Zahzian, a foreigner. Ever since moving to Dodoville, sh
e told Lu, she’d kept a pair of illegal mares to protect her mind from succumbing to local superstitions.
If Lu had not seen those magnificent beasts with her own eyes that day, she probably would have still believed that monster malarkey when she woke up this morning.
But unlike horses, Dodoville held the Horsefolk themselves in reverence—if not because they mastered and mounted demons, then because they had always made an enemy of Dodoville’s ganglord, or the British governor, or, in the long-gone days, the Council of Capricrats. And even as enforcers of the law, the police had appropriated the mythos of the Horsefolk into their own identity, spiritually donning their mantle of toughness or freedom or . . . whatever. And now they faced these strange centaurs in battle, the invulnerable horses joined at the withers to their inviolate riders.
Even from here, Inspector Lu could hear ribs splinter, the spurt after a carotid artery severed, the gurgle as lungs filled with blood.
The Pestilence was picking them apart.
Lu could see the knights were barechested beneath their capes. They were mortal under there, she assumed. She drew her sidearm and leveled it against the leader. From this angle, the laser shield allowed her access—the space between his broad shoulders target enough, even for someone who worked a desk job.
For a brief moment, she thought of Judy, her four-year-old. She thought of her growing up in Dodoville, daughter of the woman who shot the Horsefolk in the back.
Only a momentary distraction, but a moment too long.
The helicopters were now in position. A shoulder-mounted RPG appeared in the cabin door. Shit was about to get real.
On the leader’s signal, all four riders turned toward the precipice. If their steeds could carry them down to the path below, the Horselords would have free rein over Dodoville. Each knight nodded his readiness. Their thrusters glowed a blinding azure as they leaped as one over the cliff.
Any officer with legs left under them ran to the edge to witness their fates. Gasps of fright escaped impoverished lungs as the bright colors drifted through mist over craggy rocks and the spearlike trunks of evergreens.
“They made it,” a voice cried, not without a note of relief. As if the police had not just endured a bitter reversal, as if the city had not been left open to ruin.
Inspector Lu surveyed the carnage. A head pierced through the temple, a shoulder shattered in its socket, a knee broken the wrong way. Looking for assistance, she found a medic with a piece of fender where his eye should be had been. He’d been having a smoke against the side of an ambulance when debris began to fly.
Her orders were to get the able-bodied back to defend the city, but what mattered now was helping the wounded.
Lu turned over the body of a downed officer. A sword slash to the upper thigh. The incision was deep, and without medical attention, he would bleed out.
“My only regret is . . .” The man’s disconcerting pale-green irises focused on nothing. “Where were the monkeys? How much cooler if there’d been monkeys!”
Lu improvised a bandage, but it couldn’t staunch the flow. She pressed on the wound with both hands and screamed for help.
“Stay with me, Clemons,” she said to him.
“My whole life, all I’ve wanted was to see a monkey on a horse. Maybe with like . . . a flamethrower.”
Her fingers were thick with blood, she was just slopping it around. She watched as his face lost color. He shivered.
“Didn’t you see, Clemens?” she said, holding his hand now. “Did you see what got you? It came at you with a poleaxe shaped like a candy cane. An orangutan on a Lipizzaner.”
“What color?” he gasped.
What?
“The Lipizzaner. Was it white or black?”
Lippizaners are gray, Lu thought. Or did she say it aloud? Clemens’ head turned weakly from her as he muttered under his breath . . .
Did he just call her a bitch?
“Clemens, you must have seen it. A white stallion. White as the driven snow! Wearing a tall black plume. And—”
“A monkey on a white horse!” gasped Clemens. “Spectacular!” The spirit escaped his body in a swirl of mist.
Lu felt the hot tears stain her cheeks in the cool morning air.
Was that it then? Had Dodoville just fallen on her watch?
One hope remained. The thought seemed blasphemous to her, like the desperate prayer of a faint-hearted unbeliever. But what the Dodo PD could not do . . .
Perhaps this was work for a man in a vegetable mask.
EPISODE THREE: Lamentation on the Light Rail
A LONE OFFICER STOOD at the police checkpoint that closed off the mountain road to civilians: all that remained between the Pestilence and Dodoviille.
He had witnessed the helicopters maneuvering, heard the gunfire and the shouting. Surely, the Horsefolk were enjoying their last stand, making a heroic gesture that would cement their place forever in local lore.
Then the four riders approached, a rail of particle light trailing them down the incline. The steeds’ legs churned, steel boots throwing up asphalt like clods on a raceway. Blue yellow green and red.
And the largest of these was yellow.
Upon this giant mare, the leader road down hard upon him, long curls flouncing in the wind, the massive arm brandishing the axe above and behind his head. With the cape, it looked like the Angel of Death approaching, its wing curtained open to strike.
The bass from the saddle-mounted stereo shook the earth. The Doors. He knew before he even recognized the track.
One horse or thousands, he no longer saw. He knew his fate was bound with this behemoth in yellow, behind its skeletal mask and the ram horns helixed like cayenne peppers past its jowls. When he heard its breath rasp like a box cutter through carpet, the prayer of entreaty died on his lips. For this was now the face of his God—the sole arbiter of his fate. He did not run. He did not hide. He didn’t even try.
He closed his eyes and waited.
Hoofbeats like harbingers called:
the axe, the Axe, The Axe, The AXE.
The officer bowed his head and softly whispered: Amen!
The barehanded slap broke like a tsunami across his jaw.
A hand, course and unyielding as unsanded wood, spun him ‘round and sat him down, the sting so sharp it brought tears to his eyes. At such speed, it was a wonder it had not taken his head off. As the heat radiated from his face, he suddenly understood why this blow was the insufferable insult to precipitate a duel. Officer Robert Viklow, slapped. Who he was, what he was worth. The unfading outline of those heavy fingers lay upon his cheek. Now and forever.
Like a child who had received correction.
Shame. Shame.
He sat on the ground and wept for the pain, yet feeling nothing at all in his face.
Through! They were through!
For the first time since the disastrous Revelers Crusade of 1934, the Horsefolk rode into Dodoville. Abhoc let out a whoop as he stood on his saddle, his feet a flurry of belt-high kicks in a display of balance and stamina. Bubo silenced his playlist and sang acapella into the microphone: “Wanted Dead Or Alive,” the traditional Horsefolk campfire song. Even Brum’s grim countenance broke into a smile as he nearly beat his fellows to death with congratulatory slaps on the back.
Downtown, the morning rush had begun in earnest, congesting traffic and inciting the usual knife fights in the intersections. The agile horses moved nimbly between vehicles and pedestrians, rear-mounted jet thrusters speeding them down streets and sidewalks alike.
“Hail King Harthur!” cried the Pestilence, raising an arm in salute. “Jesus Harthur Christ is king!”
Screams of delight echoed all around them.
“Hail Arthur!” voices cried.
Thanks to Facebook, the Pestilence had ridden straight to the welcoming committee.
Anticipating the Horsefolk marauders would be slaughtered up in the mountains that morning, some whimsical individuals had made signs to celebr
ate the occasion and amuse those on the way to work.
“I FOR ONE WELCOME OUR NEW HORSEY OVERLORDS!” said one.
Outside the old Black Ring Security building, a banner reading “Death to the Norman” hung window to window. Below it were oversized heads of famous Normans with Xs over their eyes: Norman Rockwell, Norman Mailer, Norm McDonald, William the Conqueror, Norman Bates, Norman Reedus, Sean Connery as Richard the First, Norm from Cheers, Stormin’ Norman, and Noam Chomsky, just to see who’d notice.
“Ridiculous,” said Abhoc. “King Arthur fought off the Saxons, not the Normans. Even I know that.”
Even he!
People in horsehead masks stood making archways of vuvuzelas adorned with flags. On balconies, damsels in some degree of feigned distress. On the street, various Merlins beat each other senseless with gnarled sticks because this is why we can’t have nice things.
When the Pestilence appeared, some believed they were part of the entertainment. Others had riled themselves up until they no longer cared.
Either way, Heckley did not intend to let down his audience. He lowered his visor and reared his horse.
“Hiho, Silverrrr!” he shouted, winning a booming cry of joy in response.
Setting his lance, he charged down the sidewalk. The tip exploded a parking meter into a cascade of coins and buttons. Igniting his booster to regain momentum, his aim held true as he burst the next machines as well, one after another like so many steel bubbles, all the way to the intersection.
“A cleeeean sweep,” purred Bubo into the PA, fist pumping in the air. “Hoo hoo hoo hoo!”
Hoo hoo hoo hoo , said the crowd.
“Laaaadies and gentlemen,” he continued, “the finest lancer on this or any side of the Antipodes . . . Sirrrrr Heckleham!”
Heckley brought his horse around toward the mess he had made. His mare put forward two forelegs and bowed deeply.
On the street, the clamor of approval shook the windows.
“They are welcoming us as liberators!” said Heckley, waving to the crowd like a beauty queen.
“Aye,” said Bubo, “from their boring lives.”
“Life and boredom, boredom and life,” said Abhoc. He fetched a human skull from his saddlebag and held it for Heckley to see. “First one then the other, what do you say?”