[Demonworld #4] Shepherd of Wolves

by Kyle B. Stiff

  They rode through the night, lights dimmed but shining onto the trackless, moonless waste. Looking at the stars in the expanse overhead, it was easy for Wodan to imagine that they were soaring through space, riding endlessly on warm engines. Cedrik took the lead and Wodan wondered how he navigated, how he marked their course by the stars.

  The night became very cold, the wind froze in their eyes, and eventually they put their helmets back on and the suits became nearly perfect isolated environments. The truck’s horn bleated impatiently and Wodan felt as if he was waking from sleep. The others came to a stop and gathered.

  “What’s up?” said Cedrik, peering into the window of the truck.

  “I AM FALL ASLEEP IN HERE!” shrieked Justinas.

  “Fallin’ asleep?”

  “YES!”

  Chris sidled up to them. “Well, we might as well sleep in Pontius if this is as far as we’re gonna make it today.”

  “I WILL CRASH AND DIE!” Justinas hung his bleary head out the window, arms stretched wide.

  “It’s alright,” said Cedrik. “It’s actually not far from morning. Let’s go ahead and make a fire an’ chill out.”

  “Our internal clocks will acclimate as we go along,” Wodan offered. “It’s cool, Justi.”

  “I KNOW IT IS “COOL”! TELL IT TO CHRIS KENNY NOW!”

  They fueled their bikes again while Cedrik pulled a bag of charcoal and kindling from the back. “We’re going to make a fire?” said Wodan. “Won’t that attract demons?”

  “This close to the city,” said Cedrik, “that’d only happen if our luck’s bad. Real bad. Plus we’ll sleep better if we’re warm, get better rested. So we can ride better tomorrow.”

  “I bet we’re close enough to Pontius,” said Chris, “that we could make it back there if any demons attack.”

  Jon Best stared into the night, gun in hand, jaw clenched as if making preparations for their final stand against any creature that dared show its face.

  Cedrik directed Sylas in the making of the fire. “Just how much fire-making gear do we have, Cedrik?” said Wodan.

  “Enough to get us to the foothills,” said Cedrik. “After that, we can scrounge up wood. And after that, we won’t be able to make fires. Too dangerous. Demons, invaders, primitives, you know.”

  “So these are the easy days,” said Sylas, breath forming into mist around him.

  Cedrik nodded.

  Wodan wandered to the back of the truck and saw Jake and Chris eating and exchanging stories of sexual maneuvers. It was the most he’d ever heard Jake speak. Wodan hauled some of the illicit liquor from the truck and Chris’s eyes formed into white O’s.

  “Dinner’s ready!” Wodan said as he set the stuff near the fire. The boys gathered around, eating and smoking and drinking as they sat around the fire.

  Wodan joked and had everyone laughing. Jon rambled on at length about his hero, a man in years past who was ostracized from many groups of friends because he talked incessantly about war tactics, weight-lifting techniques, and hand-to-hand combat. Chris began the tale of the time he accidentally had anal sex with a girl, and how she had threatened to sue him for reparations, which could be done under Pontius Law in those days.

  “Thing is,” said Chris, “I didn’t even know that’s what I’d done until the next day when I was playing with myself, and smelled my hand, and sure enough, you guys, it smelled just awful.”

  “Yo, man,” said Cedrik, “you ever been with a dude?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Any o’ you?” said Cedrik, looking about.

  Jon snorted derisively.

  Cedrik shrugged. “Maybe every man needs to try it, least once.”

  “Man,” said Jon, taken aback. “Are you gay?!”

  “I been with a lot o’ girls, when I was young,” said Cedrik. “But girls just aren’t really my thing, you know?”

  Jon’s face lost all color. He had already written off Jake and Sylas and Justinas for not being real men, and now he had seemingly been betrayed by the one who appeared to be the manliest one among them.

  Wodan remembered, once again, that he was no longer a citizen of Haven. In Haven, most people cared little about anyone’s sexual orientation. Seeing Jon stare ahead as if he’d witnessed something beyond his comprehension and Chris shake his head in exasperation, Wodan knew that he was dealing with people from a society that reacted with anger and revulsion toward the unknown. Unfortunately, many facets of the human condition became a great unknown to people who suppressed rather than reflected with unblinking eyes. Wodan knew that such a society could do little to prepare its people for anything but a mediocre existence filled with fear and a reactionary need to control.

  Wodan wanted to keep things moving so that he could possibly defuse the situation, so he said, “You must have had a transformative experience, Cedrik. What happened?”

  Cedrik nodded calmly. “Yeah. I went into Pontius one night and picked up this chick. We were hangin’ out a while and, you know, it was just something different. Times we had, it was somethin’ out of a story. She kept warnin’ me that I might not like the real her. Then one night, we were about to… you know… and I found out pretty quick that she had the same stuff that a man has. She was a man. I thought about leaving.” Cedrik laughed, then said, “But I was already worked up, you know?”

  “Why didn’t you beat his brains in?!” said Chris.

  “Told you, I was worked up. But really, I guess I was more curious than anything else.” He looked into the distance, then said, “It was like lookin’ in a mirror. You can learn somethin’ about yourself, man.”

  They sat in silence, then Wodan and Jake both laughed at once. Jake was seated on his pack, and fell backwards; Wodan reached for him, then fell and kicked up a shower of burning embers. Everyone laughed, including Jon.

  While Wodan brushed embers off his pants, Jake said, “Are you really the guy who took out the Ugly and the Coil?”

  “No,” said Wodan. “I just kind of did my part. And everyone’s part, Jake, can end up being pretty unexpected. Just like Cedrik here. He’s done the most so far, leading us through the wasteland. And not a one of us expected to hear what we just heard, now, did we?”

  Chris shrugged and, across the fire, Jon stared into Wodan. “You ever get shot?”

  “No,” said Wodan. “Been shot at tons of times, but never been shot. There was a close-call thanks to a bulletproof vest, though. You?”

  Jon thought for a moment, then shook his head. “But my brother, he’s been shot. An Ugly shot at him with a subbie, hit him in the chest, man... bullets went through his lungs, one tore into his kidney, one went right through his guts. He was laid up for weeks.”

  “He survived that?” Wodan shouted.

  “I swear he did,” said Jon. “He’s tough, sure, but you never know, you’re right, you never know what to expect from a situation. So you’re fine by me, Ced. Sorry if I flew off. But that’s why you got to be ready for anything at any time from anyone.”

  “Is he okay now?”

  “Yeah. In fact, he got shot in the head just a few months ago. He wrecked his car into a Smith, and the guy just blasted him... right here, above the eye.” Jon took a deep swig, then added, “And he survived that, too.”

  “Is he retarded?” said Chris.

  “Naw, man. Anyone can get shot.”

  “I mean, did getting shot in the head make him retarded?”

  “He’s just as he always was.”

  “That’s pretty amazing,” said Wodan. “Hopefully you’ve got some of that in you, too.”

  Jon darkened for a while, then said, “Well. It’s not like that for the whole family. I’ve got... I had... another brother.”

  “Oh?”

  “He got shot in the arm. Right in the thick muscle, here, on the shoulder.”

  “Blew his arm off, did it?” said Chris. “I’ve seen that.”

  “No, it was a little bullet from a .22 handgun. It got infected a
nd he died a week later.”

  The boys drank in silence for a while, waiting for Jon to say that he was only joking. But he never did.

  Chapter Six

  Watching vs. Being Watched

  For days they rode through the flatlands by the cold of night and slept in tents to hide from the heat of day. They grew pale. At daybreak they ate, and drank a little, and even after the alcohol was gone they enjoyed one another’s presence. Even Chris’s periodic eruptions became a focal point for comedy later, though Wodan considered Jon’s rambling monologues on guns and total warfare even better entertainment. Cedrik showed Wodan how he guided them by the lights of the Southern Cross constellation, and also by Sirius, the dog star, when it was out. Ophiuchus came to the fore for a while but when Wodan asked about it Cedrik shook his head, and said only that it was a dread constellation.

  They rose each day at sunset. It was a wonder to Wodan that this awful, harsh land could be so beautiful just as the sun died. He often met Sylas rising at the same time, and they greeted one another silently. One sunset Jake woke bleary-faced and confused. Wodan saw him remove a photograph from his pocket. Jake looked at it, shrieked, and dropped it. Jake looked around wildly, then shouted, “Where am I? Who are you people?! Oh, hell... why did I come here?”

  Wodan picked up the photograph and saw a slender female face staring ahead with vacant eyes. Jake stared at him, eyes wild with terror.

  “She’s not the same as you remembered?” said Wodan.

  “God’s death!” said Jake. “I’m a complete idiot!”

  “You don’t think she’s worth dying for anymore?”

  “Fuck no!” said Jake. “Are you kidding, man? What have I…”

  “Well, you’re in it now. Got to continue on.”

  Jake mounted up his bike, hissing fiercely the whole time. Cedrik clapped a hand to his shoulder and said, “Chill, man.”

  “She isn’t worth dying over!” Jake snapped at him.

  “Happens all the time, man,” said Cedrik, and they rode on.

  They rode through a dry storm one night and stopped because Cedrik could not see the stars for the dust. For several nights after that they had hunker down in their tents, for the bikes and even the truck would malfunction, each in turn, and Justinas had to dismantle and clean as best he could. Wodan knelt beside him while Chris and Sylas assisted but, unable to understand the functions of the machines, Wodan drifted away so that he could joke with the others or listen to Jon speak of all things deadly.

  The storm passed and Wodan lost track of the nights of their journey. They entered rocky lands, then they came to hills where the truck lumbered upwards very slowly, and they could hear Justinas grinding the gears behind them. They sometimes raced one another downhill. They had already run out of dry tinder, but in the hills they would often divide into teams of two and look for dead wood hiding in the crevices. Cedrik warned them to only cut living trees if it was absolutely necessary, which was usually never the case; he told them that cutting off life today could mean death tomorrow. Chris was able to shoot some wild animals for many of their meals, for it turned out he was a notable marksman.

  “When you get to where there’s big animals,” said Cedrik, sitting by the fire at mealtime, “then that means people, primitives, aren’t too far away. But people around - that means demons aren’t too far behind, either.”

  “How long can we keep building these fires?” said Wodan.

  “I’d like to keep doing it in these hills as long as we can,” Cedrik said. “Probably demons already hear our engines, if they’re around. It’s easy to push our luck this early on. People tend to let the landscape make their decisions for ’em. We’ll just do the same.”

  To Wodan, something felt unwise about that line of reasoning. However, after a long night of riding, the chill tended to seep through the clothes and into the bones. Everyone brightened up by the fire, and none of them looked forward to a camp without fire.

  The hills on either side were unlike the foothills of the mountains back home. Wodan remembered gray stone veined with purple rising into ice-capped ribs that stretched upward into a roof of clouds. These hills were red, traced with dull brown or sparkling strips of blue and yellow, sliced by ancient waterways long gone. Whenever they topped a hill Wodan often cast his eyes far into the east, where the hills made their way to the Black Valley that had forged him so long ago. He should have looked on the place with dread. Instead, he felt it calling out to him.

  They rode deeper into the hills, which became taller and more jagged such that the boys had to stick to the valleys. Cold wind whipped at them and it seemed that walls of red stone stretched on and on, forever and endless. Wodan knew that the world was far more vast than he’d ever suspected. It went on and on and needed no one to tend it, no one at all.

  One day, just before daybreak, Wodan and Jake slowly rode into their camp with a squat, dead tree suspended between them. The others were gathered in discussion. Wodan noticed Chris atop a hill, his eye glued to the scope of a long rifle.

  “What’s up?” said Wodan, stopping nearby.

  “I found a village, I think,” said Jon.

  “The only reason I don’t want to go into it now,” said Sylas, “is because we’re tired and it’ll screw up our internal clocks.”

  “But they could attack us while we’re asleep!” said Jon.

  Quietly, Cedrik said, “If they’re primitives, they won’t attack if they heard our engines. They’ll be too scared.”

  From atop the hill, Chris called out, “I see fires, but not shit else.”

  Wodan noted that none of them mentioned bypassing the village entirely. They’d been alone for too long, and needed some change. “They pretty far away?” he asked.

  “Sure,” said Jon. “I rode far out, but all I saw was their fires, really. Yeah, they’re far.”

  “Then let’s check ’em out tomorrow before nightfall, after we’re rested,” said Wodan. “That way if it comes to a fight or a scam, we’ll be ready either way.”

  They talked excitedly over their fire, and Jon showed them a technique he’d picked up for how to disarm a man and shatter his windpipe, just in case matters developed that way in the village.

  Chapter Seven

  Loneliness Is Other People

  Near sundown Jon and Sylas ran among the tents, kicked open flaps and tossed in sand. Wodan closed his eyes again just as a great heap slapped him in the face, and he heard Chris beside him sputtering and cursing, as he rose to chase down the offenders. Wodan got up slowly, then saw Cedrik doing pushups while Justinas sat smiling on his back. The sun was low and burning dull like molten metal cooling, with a strip of green sky visible over the darkening hills.

  This time Jon took the lead and they crept slowly through pathways in the valleys. Jon stopped them after a while and conferred with Chris, who pointed and nodded. Wodan rolled up beside them and said, “Let’s leave the truck behind.”

  “You think?” said Jon.

  “Yeah. These people most likely live in the shadow of some demon. I’m sure they’ve got their eyes open for a scam, just looking for weaknesses. If we bring in a truck full of goods...”

  “You think they’ll attack?”

  “If some dude runs at us with a rusty .38, we’ll just blast him. What I’m afraid of is that these primitives aren’t going to want to visit with us so much as probe us with questions about our gear all night long, and even if we don’t let them into our truck, sooner or later things will turn up missing.”

  “S’right,” said Cedrik. “We’ll just lock it up, and Justi can ride in with one of us.”

  Chris leaned back and hollered, “Who’s bitch you wanna be, Juicy?!”

  “I stay with truck,” said Justinas.

  A cry in the negative went through the riders and then, when they finally got Justinas out of the truck and onto Cedrik’s bike, they all laughed and pointed, especially when Justinas had to wrap his arms around Cedrik in order to stay on
the bike.

  Night settled in and they rode through some ancient riverbed, hard and flat, where they could pick up speed, and then they saw the fires ahead. Wodan sped up, drew alongside Jon, then yelled, “Why’d you come so far out here, man?”

  Jon shook his head, then put a hand to his ear.

  “I SAY, WHY’D YOU COME SO FAR OUT HERE? WERE YOU TOUCHING YOURSELF?”

  Jon yelled something inaudible.

  “I SAID, WERE YOU BEING INTIMATE BY YOURSELF!”

  Jon seemed to hear, then stared ahead with his jaw clenched. On the other side of Jon, Jake nodded as he moved his fist back and forth.

  They rode into a village of mud huts with several fires burning in the center and saw people, painted and and nearly naked, running into the huts. Eyes stared out at them as they cut the engines on their bikes and took off their helms. They looked about for a while, then dismounted.

  “HELLO-O-O!” shouted Wodan. “WE COME IN PEACE! HELLO!”

  A woman screamed, then the cry was cut off suddenly. The riders looked around, unsure what to do. “They never seen motorcycles, probably,” said Cedrik.

  Wodan checked to make sure that the automatic handgun at his side was easily accessible, then strode up to one of the huts. He heard the others following behind. He stuck his head inside and saw eyes staring back at him. As his vision adjusted he saw women and children, their bodies painted with red and yellow designs. Some of the children wore white markings. Wodan stepped inside slowly, his hands upraised. A woman shrieked as she clutched a child close to her breast. Another hissed in some unintelligible language. Wodan lowered himself to the ground, cross-legged, hands still upraised, and the other riders did the same. Wodan looked back and saw Jon leaning against the doorway, hand on the gun at his hip.

  They sat in silence for a long time. The fear of the women lessened. Eventually an envoy from another hut crept forward, all women, and they muttered something. “Hello,” said Wodan. “Friends, friends.”