by David Boop
Red’s lip curled in horror and disgust at the very thought that a monster like the one he killed was a cousin to this beautiful woman, which made him kin to Red himself. It was an appalling story, even in the shorthand version she told because there was no time for a fuller tale. His mind, as it was wont to do, grabbed at the disparate pieces of the puzzle and found that they fit together easily, though the picture they made was ugly.
She cut him a look. “You only saw them in their protective garments, but you did not see them as they are. They lived all those years in the shadows and cannot abide the sunlight. Beneath those false skins, they are more hideous than I can describe, and more so for having once been part of the same human race from which my people sprang. They are our brothers.” She shuddered at the thought. “They are the face of the sins of our ancestors.”
“But they’re nothing more than flesh and blood,” said Red, nodding, once more touching the handle of his pistol.
“They are more than that,” she said quickly. “They are monsters, yes, but they are sly and cunning. They build machines and understand them. They stole my father’s time machine and used it to come here. To the past, to your world.”
“Why? Just to hunt?”
“No,” she said, “to conquer.”
– 8 –
“Conquer?” laughed Red. “How? There can’t be many of them in the cave.”
“There aren’t,” agreed Oona. “A dozen at the most.”
“Then…”
“By comparison, how many white men came to this country? A few hundred at first? And there were many millions here.”
“They had guns, and we, my people, had stone axes and bows, and every year more and more ships arrived.”
“The Morlocks have microwave pistols and a time machine,” Oona countered. “The time machine can carry four on each trip. With one machine, it will take many trips to bring more, but they can keep making trip after trip. And the reason they chose this age is that there is everything they need. Machinery, manufacturing plants, processed materials. This is the earliest point in human history where industry will suit their needs, and where opposition is limited to primitive weapons. They came here, to this remote place, in order to establish a foothold.” Her expression darkened and she looked sick. “Now they have my machine, as well. Soon, they will double their efforts. They’ll have enough of them here to form an army. They’ll raid your towns, take over and repurpose your factories.”
She stopped and shook her head, fraught with the horror and the plausibility of their plans.
More howls filled the night. Red could see the swollen sun hanging on the edge of the world, ready to fall.
“There is one hope,” said Oona. She dug a hand into her pocket and removed the crystal rod Red had seen her take from her sled. “This is a control rod, and it is very difficult to manufacture. With this, they could use my machine—without it, the machine is useful only as a blueprint to help them build more. It will take them many weeks to find this kind of crystal and fashion a replacement rod.”
Red nodded to the rod. “That’s why they’re going to come hunting for us, isn’t it? You didn’t just take it to keep them from using your machine, it’s bait to clear them out of the cave. Am I right?”
She smiled. She hadn’t smiled before now, and it changed her face from one of unmarked innocence to something else entirely. There was a feral, predatory cast to it, and the gleam in her eyes was dangerous and sly.
“My father once told me guile and its many uses,” she said. “It was unknown to the Eloi, and it saddened him that it was one of the gifts he brought to my people. However…it’s useful. The Morlocks are devious and evil and tricky, and to fight them one must sometimes become like them. Does it shock you, Red MacGill?”
His answer was a bitter laugh. “I’m half red man. White men slaughtered most of my people, including my mother. They are the Morlocks of my world, and I have learned to walk within their world. Because my father was white, I have not gone to war with all of them; but when I need to hunt one, I do so without hesitation or mercy. Tell me, Oona, does that shock you?”
“Not in the least.”
“Good.”
A chorus of howls filled the darkening sky. The horses stamped and tossed their heads in fear.
“Do you have any kind of plan?” asked Red.
“I do, but it’s not a complicated one.”
“Try me.”
“And it may be suicidal.”
“You should have been with me in Albuquerque.”
She did not ask why but clearly took his meaning. “Do you have any god you pray to?” she asked.
“I pray to the ghosts of my mother’s ancestors.”
Oona considered that. “I suppose I’m like that, too. The Eloi have no religion, and on my travels through time I found that religion as a concept burned itself out of the human consciousness tens of thousands of years before I was born. But…I tell my father what I’m going to do and ask him to watch over me.”
“That’ll do,” said Red. He drew his pistol and showed her the barrel, then handed her the rifle. “These are symbols of protection from religions all over the world. Some of those faiths have also died out.”
“And yet you carve their symbols onto your weapons?”
“Sure,” he said. “Why not? Just because no one else believes in the old gods, it doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. There might be whole planets of other people who still believe in them. Or…maybe believing in them doesn’t matter a damn. What does matter is that it comforts me to go into a fight thinking that maybe these sigils and symbols might give me a little bit of an edge.”
“And if that’s just self-delusion?”
“If it is and I die, I’ll never know, will I?”
She laughed, a strange and musical sound. “I like you, Red MacGill.”
He looked away, slightly embarrassed. The howls were closer now.
Oona stood and drew her porcelain pistol, frowned at it, then took a small knife from a pouch of her belt. She held the weapon into the spill of moonlight and used the edge to carve a name on it. Red stood close by and watched.
“Your father’s name?” he asked, and Oona nodded.
– 9 –
They mounted the horses and rode away. They rode long and far and in a big circle, and came up on the hills and the cave from the far side.
The moon was still down, but there were ten billion stars to show them the way. They tied the horses to a dead tree a mile from their destination and went in on foot. Low and fast and very quiet. It was reasonable to think that any Morlocks hunting them would have followed their path of escape toward the other rocks. The howls had been going that way, and even now they could hear more of the ghostly cries far off in that direction.
When they reached the edge of the slope, Oona stiffened and uttered a tiny cry, for her sled—her time machine—was gone. Long scrapes along the surface of the slope told the story of the machine being dragged into the heart of the mountain. Red also noticed that there was much less of the horse now, with most of what had been left cut away with brutal precision. He knew for sure now that Jack Hollister was not waiting to be rescued. Maybe Mathew had been luckier than his brother, because he had died instantly in that fireball, while his brother’s death was likely more painful and grisly. Poor bastard.
Oona suddenly clutched his arm and pulled him down. Ahead of them a piece of shadow seemed to detach itself from a bigger patch of darkness. As it moved away from the side of a towering piece of rock, Red saw what it was and a thrill of terror spiked through his heart. His blood turned to rivers of ice.
From its size and shape and the lumbering gait he knew it was a Morlock, but it no longer wore the protective garment. It stood there, hideous and terrible. Mathew Hollister had not exaggerated in his description. This was a monster, and its wide mouth full of crooked teeth that were smeared with blood. But whose blood, Red did not want to guess.
Wor
st of all was the expression in those eyes and carved into every evil line of its face. Despite the lineage of this creature, there was no trace of humanity left. There was intelligence and cunning and naked hunger, but beyond that, overshadowing it all, was a vile and obvious pleasure in this thing being what it was. Here was avarice and rapaciousness and gluttony and greed and malice combined into a focus of mind and a nature of being that viewed everything as either food or opportunity. There could be no willingness to bargain or reason with such a creature. You were its food or its enemy, but nothing else.
Oona made a soft sound of disgust as she raised her pistol, but Red touched her arm and when she looked at him in confusion, he shook his head. He used one finger to draw a circle indicating the landscape around him then touched that finger to his lips. She understood. It was too soon for noise. Then he silently drew his knife. Like pistol and rifle, it too was carved with holy symbols and had been blessed by medicine men from three nations—Comanche, Apache, and Cheyenne. Three warrior nations. The thrice-blessed knife was his favorite weapon, the one he trusted most.
He stood his rifle against a rock and moved off, relying on every trick of silence and hunting he had ever learned. He made no sound at all.
It is human, he told himself as he moved. It bleeds. It can die.
The Morlock walked along the perimeter of the hill with the cave in it, clearly posted as a sentry. He kept his head down, though, as if unwilling—or more likely unable—to bear the bright starlight.
Although the Morlock looked powerful and dangerous, that weakness cost him.
Red came up behind him and clapped a hand across the creature’s broad mouth, pinching his nostrils shut with thumb and forefinger. As he did that, he kicked the Morlock in the back of the knee, canting him backward against Red’s chest while the blade bit deep into the monster’s throat. Red turned the Morlock’s head from right to left as he drew the blade from left to right. The thrice-blessed blade cut deep, and Red twisted the dying beast to one side so that the spray of blood struck the ground rather than shoot into the air. The whole movement was precise and very fast and it did not allow the Morlock to make any sound. One moment it was alive—an alien and impossibly terrifying thing—and the next it was empty meat sagging toward the ground.
Red settled it down and crouched over it, looking down at the dead face. The stamp of horror was still there on the features, but there was no intent left as the muscles grew slack. Red was not winded. The killing was a simple thing, and something he had done before on white throats, red throats, and brown throats. Fast, easy, and silent as the grave.
He rose and turned and found Oona standing there. If he expected to see disgust or shock on her features, he was once more wrong about her. There was look of competent appraisal in her eyes. She nodded approval, and as she drew close said, very quietly, “You’ll have to teach me that.”
Then she moved past him toward the cave, pausing only long enough to spit on the corpse. Red smiled. He really liked this woman. He wiped the knife clean on the Morlock’s fur, sheathed it, picked up his rifle and followed.
They crept close to the slope but did not step onto it because its entire length was exposed. So, instead they circled around until they found a pile of broken rock that offered the right blend of useful handholds and flat sections where they could make a stand and shoot if they were spotted. It was a hard climb, though, and there was no way to do it while carrying the rifle. Red was loath to leave it behind because it had range and more stopping power than his Colt, but needs must when the devil drives. Or so Red’s dad often quoted.
They climbed and with them climbed the moon, leering over the edge of the mountains and then showing its scarred face as evening became night. Red wished he’d asked if it was brightness or actual sunlight that hurt the Morlocks. If the latter, then the moon might be a weapon because its light was merely reflected from the sun over the horizon. But he discarded that hope. The Morlocks were abroad at night, and they had to know what sunlight was. Then he realized that in his fear he was grasping at straws. A foolish practice for a warrior going into battle.
They reached the top of the rock pile and it was only a long step over to the top edge of the slope. He went first and then pulled her over. They paused to catch their breath and listen for sounds from within.
There was a noise and it confused Red, because it was not at all what he expected. It was an almost impossible sound. There were clangs as if hammers were beating on metal, and strange exhalations as if from the throats of dragons. There were metallic thumping and whooshings that sound like freight trains running fast along a track, but they were many miles from any rail line. There was the tink-tink-tink of tools on metal and rock and something that sounded like glass. And the coarse and guttural sound of deep voices speaking in a language he could not begin to understand.
When he turned to Oona, her face had gone white as milk—paler even than the moonlight. She touched her throat in fear, yet bent to listen more closely. He leaned toward her and mouthed the words “What is it? What are they doing in there?”
Oona shook her head and drew her pistol.
He drew his, too, and also drew his knife, keeping that in his left.
There was no plan beyond coming to this moment. They nodded to each other, each drawing in breath, and then rounded the corner before charging into the cave.
– 10 –
There was darkness at the mouth of the cave, but there was light further along. Pale light, from shielded lanterns. Light to work by, but mindful of the weak eyes of these underground abominations.
Enough light to hunt by.
There was one guard inside the tunnel, but no way to kill him with the absolute silence as the other one. Even so, Red took him before the creature could scream, driving the big knife blade into the socket of the thing’s throat and giving the blade a vicious quarter turn. The throat exploded in blood, but the windpipe was destroyed and the Morlock dropped to its knees, its pistol falling with a clatter to the stone. Oona snatched it up and now had a pair of nearly identical weapons. She grinned like a wolf.
They moved forward, following a sharp downward curve of the cave as it dropped into the earth and then broadened into a large cavern. Work lanterns were strung everywhere, casting the whole space in a dirty yellow glow. Oona and Red froze, shocked to absolute stillness by what they saw.
There—impossibly there—in the heart of the cavern, were three massive freight trains. Each bore the seal and logo of the crazy old man who’d hired him to come to Kansas. Not stolen by Arapaho demons or white men thieves. Somehow the Morlocks had stolen them. By what means, and how they transported all those hundreds of thousands of tons of metal and cargo here was something Red never learned. Even Oona, who knew so much of the Morlock’s science, was dumbfounded. And yet here it was. Or, what was left of it.
The boxcars had each been dismantled and their contents removed. Some of the cars were stripped down to steel skeletons, and of these none were whole. Beyond the line of cars was a massive cauldron in which the steel was being melted down and poured into molds. The engines had been torn apart and reassembled into some fantastical new shapes that were more like the factories Red had seen in Chicago for stamping out shaped metal for building and manufacturing. Stacks of newly made parts stood in rows. The massive cylinders and pistons chugged and worked, spitting out new parts with every minute. The engines glowed with heat, as if the need for the Morlocks to finish their work was pushing them to the limits of their potential. He saw them shudder and tremble; steam rose from tortured metal, and yet they clanged and chugged and belched smoke and spat out their infernal devices.
“No!” gasped Oona, but when Red glanced at her she was not looking at the factory but at something that stood near one of the walls. It was her sled, her time machine, and a Morlock mechanic was busy working on it. Some of the crystals inside the machine glowed and pulsed with strange lights. Oona pulled Red down behind a stack of crates and bent
close to whisper in his ear, her words masked by the thunder of this strange factory.
“They have my time machine working,” she cried. “That’s impossible. I took the crystal controller.”
They saw at once why it was more than possible. The Morlock dug into a canvas bag slung around his chest and removed a handful of crystals identical to the one Red knew Oona had in her pouch. He selected one and screwed it into place. The glow of the time machine grew brighter still, and although the Morlock winced at the light, he was smiling a broad and evil smile of pure triumph.
Oona began to say something to Red, but her words faltered as she looked past her machine. Her mouth fell open and Red turned to look, too. It took him a moment to make sense of it.
There was another time machine a few feet away.
It was not as battered as Oona’s, and looked quite new, though the design was somehow cruder. Blockier and far less elegant.
Beyond that was another.
And another.
Red stared through the yellow gloom. There were many more. Rows and rows of them.
And now he understood.
The Morlocks had come here for more reasons than one. Somehow their bizarre perspective of looking backward through time had allowed them to know about the transportation of tools and equipment on those trains, and they’d come back to this time to set up their factory. With all of these resources and a remote, secret place to work, they had toiled like hungry vermin in the bowels of the earth. Building time machines. Building a fleet of vessels that would allow them to conquer all of this world. Of Red’s world. They would be like a plague of locusts swarming through time itself. Maybe even ravaging other worlds. Red did not understand the science, but the implications were like icy daggers in his heart. He was witnessing the end of the world. Of all worlds and all times.