The Fall

by Michael McBride

  Missy screamed, but she couldn’t look away.

  Dirt showered them where they stood just beyond the fence, thrown up from the ground when the bent metal sheet hit.

  The thing that stood before them was like nothing they had ever seen in their lives.

  The general shape was reminiscent of a bull, but that was about where the similarities ended. It had a short broad head from which two long golden horns originated, framing a pair of flaming red eyes that stood out like beacons against the yellow fur. A shaggy beard hung all the way from its chin to the ground, matching the thick mane of rust-colored fur that arose from its shoulders. The rest of the body was more straw-colored, save for the end of the short tail that was capped with a tuft of orange hair. It snorted furiously, blowing up clouds of dirt from the pen. It looked as though they’d bred a bull to a lion and highlighted the coloring.

  “What in the world is that?” Mare gasped.

  “I…I don’t know.”

  As they watched, several more animals appeared through the stirred dust like ships through a fog. Only a couple bore horns like the first, though theirs were much smaller and lacking in the sharp curvature. What they assumed to be the female of the species was even more brilliantly colored than the males, with sunset orange instead of gold for the base color of the body and rust-colored fur on the mane and tail, though theirs were much shorter and lacked the beard.

  Several smaller animals stayed behind the females, trying to both keep out of sight and see what was happening at the same time.

  “They’re beautiful,” Missy said reverently.

  “Those can’t be cows, can they?”

  Before he could even think about stopping her, Missy was up on top of the fence, her legs dangling down into the pen. She brought her backpack around into her lap and unzipped the pocket. She removed a box of Triscuits and tore it open, palming a handful in her left hand and extending one of the crackers in her right.

  The bull snorted again, lowering its head all the way down until its beard was folded atop the dirt.

  “Come on.”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Mare snapped. “Lord only knows what those things are!”

  She made a clicking sound with her tongue and the bull took a couple of heavy steps toward her, watching her with eyes like fireballs.

  Missy tossed the cracker in front of the bull, its nostrils flaring wildly.

  Mare grabbed her by the back of the pants and prepared to haul her backward the moment that thing even looked like it was thinking about charging.

  “It’s okay,” she said, tossing another cracker in front of it, only this one a little closer.

  It snorted again, grunting, but made no advance.

  “We should keep mov—” Mare started, but she cut him off with a look and her finger pressed to her lips. “We don’t have ti—” Again, the look.

  The bull raised its head, unblinking eyes studying Missy. It stepped forward, first with its right, then with its left, drawing in another deep inhalation and blowing it forcefully out.

  It lowered its stare to the cracker in the dirt, cocking its head to the left and studying it curiously.

  Slowly, it righted its head and lowered its chin, looking alternately to the cracker and then back up to Missy until its snout was within inches, its jaws already parting for the tip of a wide, bulbous blue tongue.

  One of the calves raced around from the back of the small herd and darted in front of the enormous bull, snatching the cracker from the dirt and then galloping across to the edge of the pen.

  Missy laughed.

  The big bull looked curiously at her, then took another step forward and slopped its long tongue onto the remaining cracker, jerking it back into its mouth. Its jaws ground from side to side, the only remaining thing familiar about the cow.

  Missy pulled out more crackers and scattered them across the dirt in front of her. The unusual bovines crowded around her from all sides, mobbing her as she tossed handful after handful into their midst.

  Mare allowed himself a smile.

  “Look at them,” Missy giggled. “Aren’t they the most amazing things you’ve ever seen?”

  The largest bull stiffened, then raised its head, cocking its ear to the sky with a snap. Another bull followed suit, then another. Despite the crackers still sitting on the ground around their feet, all of the cows stood perfectly still, noses raised to the wind.

  Thunder grumbled above like explosions crossing the sky.

  They looked frightened.

  The calves all scurried away from the group, dashing so quickly toward the open barn door that dirt flew from their heels, chased by clouds of dust torn from their passage. The females hurried behind, far more lithe and coordinated than any cows they’d ever seen. They moved more like rhinos, lowering their faces to the ground and charging forward. The ground rumbled beneath their weight, nearly knocking Missy from the fence.

  Mare grabbed her hips and braced her before she could topple backward.

  “I don’t like this!” he shouted, but between the thunder and the stampede, the words didn’t even reach his own ears.

  The bulls inside the pen lined up side to side, horns lowered toward Missy and Mare, their shoulders forming what appeared to be an impregnable barrier between them and the females and young ones whose eyes burned brightly inside the darkness behind the mangled door.

  The largest bull snorted, blasting steam from its nostrils. Its eyes now resembled molten lava.

  Mare looked back over his shoulder.

  The long grasses in the field between the barn and the highway shimmered like waves rolling to shore. Had the grass grown even longer since they’d passed through?

  In the distance, smoke drifted from the stalled cars, lining the horizon as though this was where they’d come to die.

  A dozen long V shapes parted the grasses, firing straight toward them.

  Before whatever was out there reached the end of the pasture and emerged into the cornrows, Mare was already leaping over the fence behind Missy, sprinting past the formidable line of bulls toward the barn.

  A series of loud hisses filled the air, like so many kettles spontaneously come to boil.

  The ground trembled beneath their feet as Missy disappeared into the darkness, followed quickly by her brother. The red eyes fell away from them, receding into the shadows before closing gently and all but disappearing.

  Missy slammed into the side of one of the beasts, which bucked up from the ground nervously, before darting around it and looking back out through the doorway into the lightning-strobed pen. Clouds of dust clogged the air, ripped side to side by the rising wind, thrown from the ground behind the advance of the bulls. Black shapes like human shadows slithered up atop the tall fence before the much larger beasts slammed into it. Wood splintered in all directions, the fence exploding with a furious crash.

  The shadows leapt into the air, skin shimmering with the lightning like so many fish leaping from a pond at sunset, and then knifed back down into the herd. Braying screams erupted over a chorus of hissing.

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” Mare screamed, grabbing Missy by the hand and sprinting deeper into the darkness in the barn toward the far side. Surely there had to be some sort of entrance or exit on the street side of the suddenly enormous livestock house.

  Sounds only vaguely reminiscent of mooing arose, more like the horns of so many semis.

  “Hurry!” he yelled, pressing his palm into his sister’s lower back to urge her faster.

  All of the windows on the front side of the building had been painted over; the only light permeating was a muted grayness that hovered like a mist rather than expanding outward.

  Missy hit the bank of doors first, lowering her shoulder and slamming her hip into the long metal release bar. The door bowed outward just enough to give a glimpse of the rusting chain locked between the handles from the outside, before knocking her back into her brother, who smashed her again into the unfl
inching door.

  “They’re locked!” she screamed, grabbing for her sore right shoulder.

  “They can’t be!” Mare raged, throwing himself over and over into the door, kicking at the metal bar as hard as he could, but only succeeding in raising a ruckus. He whirled around in time to see one of those tall black creatures, its movements sinewy and serpentine, framed in the middle of the distant doorway, arms extended to either side with fingers curled into hooks. Spikes rose from the top of its head, jutting out from its shoulders. There was a flash of auburn from beneath its chin as it released a hiss like a ripped tire. Hooves pounded a retreat toward them in the darkness.

  The creature rose to its full height, cocking its head back and flashing the colored strap of scales hanging from its chin, and then bent sickly in half from the right. A pair of long golden horns framed its waist, its torso flopping awkwardly onto the bull’s skull. There was only a flash of orange and gold like the sun emerging from the clouds before the creature was pounded into the side of the door, the entire building shuddering around them. White sludge exploded from the impact, spattering the bull’s mane, the doorframe bending outward. Several of the wooden letters adorning the front of the building snapped free and fell down onto the bull’s back.

  It took a step back, shook the fluid from its shoulders like a dog, and then turned its blazing red eyes toward them.

  Snorting loudly, it stamped its right foot on the ground.

  The cows and calves slowly separated themselves from the darkness, first by opening their blazing eyes, then by emerging into the wan light stretching into the barn from where the door had once been. Two more bulls appeared behind the first, one shaking the tattered torso of one of those black creatures from its horns.

  Missy and Mare dared to follow the advance of the other animals as they skirted piles of sloughed hides, still slick with a film of blood and connective tissue, where whatever these things were had simply arisen and stepped out of their former bodies.

  The herd parted for the largest bull to step through, falling back into rank behind him to shield him from the rear. He stomped all the way over to Missy, then lowered his nose to the ground between her feet, its front limbs bending as though kneeling before her.

  Missy reached tentatively toward the bull, her fingertips touching the smooth horns that felt like polished gold, then quickly recoiled.

  “What are you doing?” Mare whispered.

  Gently shaking her head, Missy reached back out and stroked the long horn from the tip all the way down to the shaggy hair of the mane, combing her fingers through it.

  The beast snorted impatiently.

  Missy stepped around the side of it, fingers still working through the coarse hairs, finally summoning the courage to slide her other hand into the scruffy mane as well.

  One of the other males let out a bellow, its footsteps charging away from them over a rising swell of hissing.

  Mare turned his head at the sound, but couldn’t see where it had charged off. By the time he looked back to his sister, she was already on top of the bull, legs clasped firmly to its sides, hands knotted in the mane. The beast was already turning away from him, Missy’s hips shadowed atop its rump.

  “Come on, Mare!” Missy called over her shoulder.

  By the time he spun around, one of the smaller bulls was kneeling beside him.

  He looked again to Missy, who was already through the door and into the pen, and all he could see beyond her was a rising tide of those black creatures swelling up over the fence.

  “Come on!” she screamed.

  Mare threw his right leg over the bull’s back and wrapped his legs as tightly as he could around the massive belly. He feared pulling too hard on the mane, but as soon as the creature started to move, he had no choice but to clasp those handfuls as tightly as he could and wrap his wrists several times. Powerful muscles flexed and relaxed beneath him, nearly bucking him. It was all he could do to turn his face to the side so he could see anything, as he feared raising his head even an inch. Dust filled the air all around him now, thrown up from the charge of the cattle. Black creatures with faces like lizards flew past, arms striking at him, tearing bloody chunks from the thing beneath him. It let out a piteous roar and almost collapsed forward into the dirt, nearly launching Mare from its back.

  “Help me!” Missy screamed from ahead of him.

  Mare raised his head and looked in time to see one of those black creatures with its fist entangled in her bull’s mane, dragging its heels in the dirt as it clawed furiously at her. The bull beneath him righted itself and charged forward into the cornrows, leaving the black monster, claws dipping with blood, to be run down and trampled beneath the flood of cattle behind.

  “Help!” Missy screamed again.

  Where are you? a barely audible voice whispered inside of her head.

  “I can’t find you!” she screamed.

  More man tears! the voice whispered.

  “Hold on!” Mare shouted, ducking his head as soon as he realized his bull’s intentions. It canted its head to the left and gored a horn through the creature’s back, rearing up and tossing it over its shoulder and away from his sister.

  “I don’t know what that means!” she wailed.

  You have to find more man tears!

  “Help me!” she called again as the raging behemoth beneath her barreled straight into another reptilian person, launching it up and over her with a slap of warm fluids.

  White sand! The voice was growing smaller in the recesses of her mind. Black smoke! White sand! More man tears!

  Missy craned her head back from atop the lead bull’s back, listening for the voice, but all she could hear now was the pounding of hooves. She could vaguely see the shape of her brother on a bull’s back behind her before the herd closed in tighter, bodies blending together into masses of stampeding legs, rising and falling heads, and flaring manes.

  Those black creatures were fading quickly into the distance, racing out into the field behind them, but at nowhere near the same pace.

  The last thing she saw before bringing her face back down into the thing’s wild mane was the front of the building. Several of the letters had fallen from where they had once formed words. The A and the U from AUCTION were nowhere to be found, nor was the U in HOUSE. The first O from JONATHON had fallen down, knocking free the I from MIRAMONT, and sitting slightly askew in its stead between the M and the R. The A had fallen down and knocked off the second E in STEERS, wedging itself awkwardly between the E and R. The final T in MIRAMONT and the fist S in STEERS were somewhere in the dirt beneath.

  CTION HO SE

  J NATHON

  MOR MON

  TEARS

  “Mormon tears,” Missy whispered, hugging as tightly as she could to the bull’s back. “White sands.”

  She closed her eyes and, for the first time in what felt like forever, thought she just might know where she was going.

  III

  West of Easton, Pennsylvania

  PATCHWORK FIELDS PASSED BELOW, SPOTTED BY THE OCCASIONAL FARM HOUSE, bordered irregularly by the forests separating the black rivers from the quilt of wheat and grains. The fields themselves were divided by channels carved away from the rivers, the crops marred with semicircular grooves from the large wheels of the sprinkler systems mounted between like metal rainbows. The highway bisecting the farmland was barren, save for the random car parked askew across the twin lanes or dead in the fields torn by its passage. New Jersey had faded and fallen away beneath them without event. The cities had been clogged with stalled cars, the streets littered with human remains like rotting cornhusks. None of them had wanted to set down for fear that once they were on the ground, they wouldn’t be able to return to the air. There were no signs of life besides, though every now and then it looked as though shadows raced from one darkened recess to another. With the flashing lightning throwing shadows in random directions, it was easy enough to mistake motion for the shifting of darkness. The clo
uds were so low overhead that they flew only several hundred feet from the wavering fields below, fearing the roiling heart of lightning flaring above them should they dare to rise any higher.

  I know you can hear me! a voice screamed inside Adam’s mind, piercing his temples like knitting needles. We have to help her!

  Adam slapped his hands to the sides of his heads to keep it from exploding.

  “Doc!” Norman shouted from the seat beside him, grabbing Adam by the back of his fatigues and jerking him away from the open door before he could topple forward. “You alright?”

  “I don’t—” Adam started, only to again be cut off by the voice inside of his head like a razor blade slashing through his gray matter.

  We’re out of time!

  Adam screamed at the pain, though he didn’t even hear it over the bullhorn assault of the voice in the confines of his skull.

  Find me now!

  Adam eased further onto the seat, grateful for the hand tangled in the cloth on his back. His head lolled back over the headrest and he realized he was panting.

  He wiped the back of his hand beneath his nose and dragged it away with a long crimson smear.

  “Holy crap,” Norman gasped beneath his breath, eyeing the bloody spatters down the front of Newman’s uniform. “What in the name of God was that?”

  Adam lowered his head, pinching his nostrils tightly shut. He looked up in time to see a bolt of lightning tear the air in front of them, striking a stalled pickup on the road beneath, whipping back and forth before lifting the truck from the asphalt and throwing it off into the cornfield. It receded back into the clouds with an electric crackle and a bang of thunder that sounded like the chopper had been rammed from the side.