by Jon F. Merz
I stared at her. “Is that what you think?”
She shrugged. “You haven’t exactly given me any reason to think otherwise.”
“Yeah, well believe it or not, I’m not in a rush to see anyone die. I’ve seen enough death to last a lifetime and then some. But I’m also focused on the mission at hand. And that mission is killing is the Source.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re intense?”
“Yeah. People who never accomplish anything. They’re always the first to point it out. Because they don’t understand it. They want to take the easy way out. Settle for good enough. Shit like that. I’ve never been wired that way. So my best advice to you is this: deal with it. Because I’m not slowing down or changing just to make you comfortable. If that makes me an asshole in your eyes, I don’t much care.”
“What about breakfast?”
I stopped gathering my kit and looked at her. “I hope that was your idea of a joke.”
Ares frowned again. “I guess.”
“Good. Let’s get moving.” I took the canteen back and stowed it on my belt kit. I gathered up the chain and waited for Ares to climb off the bed with a heavy sigh.
“I don’t know how fast I’m going to be able to move today, though.”
“Just keep moving,” I said. “I’ll take your condition into account, but don’t think I’ll stop moving because of it.”
“Fine. Whatever.” She stormed out of the house and I followed.
Outside, the day was bright and sunny again. I couldn’t really remember the last time I’d seen anything resembling a rainstorm. It was either dark or brilliant sunshine. Every now and then we’d get a passing shower, but nothing that would enable the suckers to make an appearance during the day. It was almost like Mother Nature knew the importance of keeping them at bay until the Earth turned and she was forced to abandon this part of the land for the next.
Summer was turning into Fall, however. Even now I could feel the bite on the edge of the breeze that blew this morning. That was different, too. We hadn’t had much wind in a long time. Around us, the branches of trees waved in the winds and bristled against each other.
Ordinarily, I’d be ecstatic about it: I loved the Fall. But now I was apprehensive. The Fall meant less daylight. In a few weeks, it would be dark by four-thirty in the afternoon. That would give the suckers more time than they’d had since last April.
Finding the Source grew even more important now. I didn’t want to go through another winter without having killed it.
We continued to head further west for several hours. The road that stretched before us twisted and wound its way around trees and rusted out relics of cars that hadn’t worked in years. Scavengers had picked them clean down to their bones, doing their best to find anything of value they could barter with at the outposts. They looked like dinosaurs from a forgotten age, frozen in time and rusting apart. They’d offer no refuge if you were caught in the open at night. Suckers would tear the metal apart trying to get at you.
We came to an old sign post jutting out of the ground at an obscene angle. It looked like someone had grabbed the post and twisted it out of shape. But it read ‘Diablo - 5 Miles,’ and that was enough for me to feel better about how much more we had to walk.
Ares groaned behind me. “Five miles? I don’t think I can do another one. I’m exhausted.”
I frowned. On the one hand, she had a point. She’d lost blood and her current state wasn’t the best; she’d have a hard time enduring it. On the other hand, I didn’t like the thought of giving in to her whining. People always think they can’t do anymore and then when they have no choice, they find out they can actually go a lot further than they expected.
“Keep moving,” I said. “We’ve only got five miles left to cover and then we’ll be at Diablo. Once we reach it, I promise that I’ll give you some time off to recover before we start our hunt. Fair enough?”
“Not really,” said Ares. “But I suppose it’s the best you’re going to do for me, so I’ll take it.”
“You’ve got that right,” I said. “It’s a non-negotiable offer.”
“And what happens if I simply pass out here on the road? Are you going to carry me?”
I couldn’t see if there was a small grin on her face or not because she had the sun behind her. Instead, I just shrugged. “Probably not. I’d just drag you with the chain.”
She looked aghast at that thought, then clamped her mouth shut, and started pouting again. I shook my head and kept moving.
I smelled the corpse before I saw it. A lifetime of being around death will gift you with that ability. I wrinkled my nose and urged Ares on.
“What is that horrible smell?”
I didn’t answer her. I could see it ahead, off to the side of the road. Crows were feasting and I picked up a rock to scare them off the body. As I drew closer, I saw that they’d spitted the body and then burned it at the stake. I shook my head, drew my knife and cut the ropes that bound it to the stake.
I was never a religious person. I couldn’t afford to be. Besides, what god would ever have tolerated the kind of evil that walked the planet? Prayer didn’t do a damned bit of good when the demons came for you.
I stood over the corpse, looking at it. Ares stayed back, a hand over her mouth as if it would ward off the smell. It wouldn’t, but she’d learn that in time. Once you smelled death, it clung to the insides of your nostrils until you never forgot it.
I tried to view the corpse as dispassionately as possible. I viewed it the way a doctor would, noting the causes of death, who it might have been, that type of thing. He’d stood about five feet eleven inches with a muscled build. He must have come from Diablo. Was this where they punished criminals? I didn’t know.
That was when I noticed something else.
His right forearm had flopped onto its side when I cut it down. Now I saw something that the flames hadn’t been able to obscure. I stooped and brushed the flies away from the charred skin.
Two triangles balanced atop one another. A tattoo.
But they weren’t triangles; they were two Ms.
And I knew then this wasn’t just a criminal.
It was Rask.
10
I stood there for a moment, looking down at the body of a man I’d called a fellow Mortal Maker.
No bloodsucker had done this. Someone else had killed him. Someone who didn’t give a shit about what he was or what he was trying to accomplish. I looked down the road toward Diablo. I was betting someone had gotten annoyed with his presence and decided to do something about it. Rask was supposed to have set up a covert observation post, but I also knew that sometimes Rask could be unpredictable. He might have seen something that led him into Diablo proper. And once there, he might well have gotten himself into trouble - trouble that even he couldn’t get out of.
“Friend of yours?” Ares shuffled over, the chain clinking at her feet as she did so.
“He was,” I said. “We worked for the same cause. I might have called him a brother at one point.” I took a breath. “I should have been here. I should have been able to help him when he needed me most.”
“A vampire did this?”
I eyed her. “That look like the work of a sucker?”
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t. It looks like the work of humans. Bad ones.”
“Yeah.” I sighed and dropped my ruck, rooting around for the machete I keep in the back. It wasn’t much of a shovel, but I’d make do. There was no way in hell I was going to leave Rask like this. He didn’t deserve to have flies and crows feasting on him. I used the machete to scrape at the hard earth, breaking a sweat as I did so.
“Aren’t you worried?” asked Ares after I’d been working for a half hour. She was sitting against the tree, taking advantage of the impromptu rest period Rask’s death had given her.
“Worried about what?”
“That whoever did this is going to know someone cut him free and buried him.”
I wiped my brow and looked at her. “Why would that worry me?”
“Because they might do the same thing to you.”
“Let them try,” I said. “But they’ll have to kill me before I get my hands on them first. And I’m willing to bet I’m a whole lot better at dealing death than they are.”
Ares sighed. “Don’t you ever get tired of it? Don’t you get tired of the death? It clings to you and you choose to wear it like some stupid shawl.”
I stopped digging. Someone else had asked me that once. My wife. I’d come back from a mission overseas where we stopped a ship full of weapons bound for terrorist groups in the South China Sea. The op had resulted in the deaths of several bad guys and one of our own. I’d stayed up late drinking the pain away, wondering if my own time would come sooner than I thought.
Denise had come into the kitchen, leaned against the door jamb and just watched me for a moment while I crushed a beer and then went back for another.
“When does it stop? When will you stop?”
I’d looked back at her. My vision was cloudy from the tears that had fallen from my eyes as I thought about the man who had died. “It stops when I kill them all.”
“Kill who?”
“All the bad people.”
Denise shook her head and went back upstairs to the bedroom. I stayed where I was and drank myself into oblivion. I pulled it together in time for the funeral, and for some reason, Denise stayed with me regardless of my work.
Her memory disappeared and I was back in the bright sunshine with Ares staring down at me. “Seriously, at some point you have to say enough is enough.”
I ignored her and kept digging the grave for Rask. When I’d managed to scrape a hole about four feet deep, I rolled his body into it. There was nothing of value left on his body - they’d either stolen his gear or it else it had gone up in flames along with his flesh - so I rolled it into the grave and then started plowing dirt back over it, tamping it down as I did so. When that was done, I found some rocks and put them atop the grave, hoping it might be enough to discourage scavengers from digging him up and eating his charred remains.
I stood and wiped my hands on my pants, took a swig of water and then looked down at the gravesite. It wasn’t my finest work, by any means, but I thought Rask might appreciate it. I said a few words quietly and bowed my head for a moment. But like I said, I’m not a religious man. I do appreciate the sacrifice people make in their work, however, and despite our different backgrounds, Rask had been a good hunter. We’d done good work together and he’d helped try to fix our fucked up planet. That had to mean something. It had to me.
“I’ll find them,” I said quietly. “And I’ll find the Source.”
I grabbed my gear and slid my ruck back on, feeling its comfortable weight settle on my back. I slid the M4 over my right shoulder and picked up my staff. Then I helped myself to another swig of water before offering some to Ares.
She took it with a mumbled thanks. When she handed it back she looked down at the grave. “Was he nice?”
I smirked. “Nice? No. Rask was anything but nice. But he was damned good at doing what we did. And that’s gotta stand for something.”
“Like what?” she asked. “What does anything stand for these days? No one gives a shit. We all just want to survive.”
I shook my head. “There’s more to it than that. There always is. You just have to look and be willing to find it.”
Are nodded at the ground. “He went looking and look what happened to him. He’s dead.”
“Yeah,” I said. “He is. And there are people who did this to him. People I’m going to have a word with.”
“You gonna kill them, too?”
“Yes.”
Ares sighed and started walking down the road toward Diablo. “Well, let’s get going then. I wouldn’t want to delay your inevitable reign of vengeance.”
I could hear the sarcasm in her voice, but I didn’t care. She didn’t understand and she probably never would. People who don’t do what I did, who’d never done what I’d done, they’d never understand. Their world wasn’t what mine was and I’d given up a long time ago trying to explain it.
I followed after Ares and caught up with her, spooling the chain as I came abreast of her. No sense letting it drag through the dirt. It would just broadcast noise and alert anyone further down the road. I wasn’t trying to be invisible, but neither did I want to shout my presence to anyone.
Yet.
“What happens when we get to Diablo?”
I shrugged. “We carry out the mission as if Rask was still here with us. We find the Source and kill it.”
“You think it’ll be that easy?”
“No idea. But someone in Diablo must know something. Rask and I knew that at least.”
“So you don’t really have a plan then.” Ares shook her head. “You’re flying blind and you won’t even admit it.”
“Sometimes you don’t need a plan,” I said. “All you need is guts. And I’ve got that plenty.”
“Yeah, you do,” said Ares. “But sometimes even guts isn’t enough. Especially if you run into the people who killed your friend.”
“Oh, I’ll run into them, all right. In fact, I’m counting on it.”
“More death,” said Ares. “Was there ever a time when the world wasn’t consumed by so much of it? Can you even remember that?”
“Yeah, I can,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean shit nowadays.”
We kept walking for the next hour until I started to see signs that we were close. More trash, more scattered settlements of people out working in fields, trying their best to farm the land. I don’t know how successful they were, but I gave them credit for trying. At least they were doing something other than sitting around on their asses.
I kept looking around for the dog as we walked. Part of me hoped it was shadowing us, running along the periphery of the ground we were traveling through. Maybe even acting as a sort of guardian angel.
But I saw no signs of it.
And then Diablo rose up before us, looking every bit like some sort of medieval keep with tall pickets and even a barred gate that looked as though it had been welded together from old pieces of sheet metal. None of that would stop a sucker, but I assumed they were there to discourage any bands of brigands from trying their luck.
We stopped and looked at the outpost before us.
“That’s it?”
I nodded. “Diablo.”
“Looks like Hell,” said Ares.
“It might well be that,” I said. “Especially when I’m done here.”
Ares looked at me. “When does it stop? When will you finally stop?”
I turned and looked into her eyes, saw how brilliant and icy blue they were, and then saw Denise’s face all over again. I looked back at Diablo. “When I kill them all.”
11
The guards at the gate did a double-take when they saw me approaching with Ares trailing behind me attached by the chain. The elder of the two motioned for me to stop with the barrel of the shotgun he carried.
“State your business here.”
I eyed him and then rolled up the sleeve of my right forearm. I showed him the same tattoo that we all shared; the same one that I’d used to identify the charred corpse a few miles outside of Diablo. I nodded at his shotgun. “You don’t need that. I’m not the enemy, unless you’re protecting a sucker. In which case I’d strongly suggest you steer clear of me.”
He held my gaze for a moment, long enough to see the dead in my eyes. I could go through people like him without breaking a sweat. After you’ve fought and killed your way through the worst of humanity and then transitioned over to wiping suckers off the face of the earth, a dude like this wasn’t anything to get scared about. For me, the worst fear I came across now was contained in my dreams.
“The girl?”
“Is with me,” I said evenly. “And that’s all you need to know.”
“You got
some sort of fetish? Bondage thing?” He grinned. “I mean, it ain’t none of my business, but I saw you coming and thought I’d ask.”
“Sex has nothing to do with it,” I said. “She’s got a purpose yet to fulfill. That’s it. When she’s done, she’ll be dead.” I paused. “Any other questions?”
He frowned. “I don’t know, pal. You look like too much trouble. We don’t like trouble here in Diablo.”
“I’m here to replenish my supplies and get some rest before I continue on. I was told this place could offer me some of both. Is that true?”
“It’s true.”
“Then let me pass and I’ll be out of your hair in a day. Two max.”
“You sure?”
“Yup.”
He looked me up and down for another moment. I was obviously well-armed but I wasn’t brandishing anything other than the staff. And if you didn’t look closely at the staff, you might have simply discounted it as a walking stick, even though it was so much more than that.
Finally, just when I thought I was going to have to bribe him in order to pass, he stepped aside and nodded at the other guard at the gate. He glanced back at me as we started to walk again. “Watch yourself, friend.”
“I look like your friend?” I asked. But I didn’t wait for a response. I tugged on the chain and Ares and I passed under the gates and entered Diablo.
Ares caught up with m as we walked along the main street. “I didn’t think he was going to let us inside.”
“Makes two of us,” I said. “I thought I’d have to pay him. But he answers to someone else. And you can bet they already know all about us being here.”
“You think?”
“Yeah.”
The main drag of Diablo looked almost like an old western town. The main road - what had once been paved - was pockmarked and crumbling as if someone had dropped bombs on it. It was now mostly dirt and gravel but in places you could still spot chunks of asphalt. Buildings lined it on either side, some of them built out of cinder blocks and wood, others of better design. I spotted a wind turbine and solar panel arrays, which meant they enjoyed electricity here. A luxury to be sure.