Maya took two steps to the other side. It gave the man with the nailed club the impression the women were already moving into a timeworn strategy for dealing with miscreants like him. The man’s offsider with the red beard summed up the stakes pretty quickly and immediately turned heel to stride off west, absenting himself completely from the situation to which he’d contributed. Kvelda grinned, watching, and scooped up a rock, hurling it after him. The fourth woman, another newcomer, sensibly restrained her from repeating the taunt.
Under such odds the remaining man’s spirit broke. He shook his head angrily as if he blamed the present state of the world rather than himself for what had happened. He retrieved a plasticated satchel from beside the smouldering fire and set off with it. Unlike his offsider, the man headed south, his course taking him past Day. They locked eyes, but neither made a move or sound. Day stayed fixed in place after the man passed him, listening intently for a double-cross and the sound of an impending attack. The trudging footsteps continued.
When Day looked at the women next, Maya was ushering her companions further on while still holding her ground. Kvelda gave a last unreadable glance and set off with Hilda and the other woman. Maya also looked at Day, and while her expression was neither cold nor hostile, it was impassive enough to remind him they were all but strangers to each other.
“We don’t need your help. The thought is appreciated, though,” she said.
Day thought a moment before he answered. “No one should be throwing rocks at each other.”
“No,” Maya agreed. “Yet it happens all the time.” She held his eyes for a moment more, adding meaningfully, “Must keep you busy.”
Day flushed slightly. It was probably the sort of wordless reaction the woman had hoped for. She gave a laugh that sounded anything but mirthful, accompanying it with a pitying head-shake that communicated the fact he was not only thoroughly reprehensible but translucent as well. Day’s blush deepened as his fist squeezed around the handle of the drawn knife. He wasn’t keen on being made to feel foolish, yet Maya’s snickering rejection managed to convey both.
As the train of women continued to walk away, Day advanced to the charred remains of the cooking fire the previous two men had abandoned. Like all the days at that time of year it was cool, and a guttering wind made matters worse. Day crouched beside the fire and fed it the few crumbs of wood left over. Several twigs kindled into flame and Day sat on his haunches staring at the temporary bright blazes with inordinate concentration.
The afternoon darkened, moist-looking clouds moving over from the east to filter sunlight from the day. He continued looking into the fire even when it was half-dead, just a collection of coals and cooling rocks. Amid the ashes he could discern the skeleton of one of the large marmot-like rats that could sometimes be glimpsed on the flat plains and, as the fire cooled, the coals broke down further to reveal more and more of the creature’s blackened ribcage.
Perhaps because of the depth of his annoyance and introspection, the five figures managed to advance to within a dozen paces of his position before he sensed them. Even the sun contributed to their stealth, the westering orb sending their long shadows away from the campfire. At the first hint of their presence Day jumped suddenly upright and tugged his knife free of its sheath.
His sudden motion halted them instantly. Although Day hadn’t seen his own face for quite some time, he imagined at that moment he resembled a ferocious creature, wild and mad. He was still shirtless, the ritual tattoos dark blue against his pale skin. Where there was tension, the muscles lifted up from his body like corded wood. Although he was not a bulky man, his physique was frightening, especially with a razor sharp knife blade attached.
The small crowd glanced at each other. They were a harmless-looking motley: a short, toadish fellow with thick glasses; a woman of about forty, drawn tight across the face where once she would have been ample; a taller man with dusky skin and a short grey beard wearing canvas sheeting like a toga; an old man of nearly seventy, spry-looking but not well, his nose red and a running mess; a girl of about fourteen, barely developed into a woman, her hair cropped into an unappealing bowl as if it might discourage male attention.
Perhaps because he had the least to protect, the old man wheezed and came forward a couple more steps.
“Hold on a moment,” he said, holding up a pleading hand. “We wanted to talk.”
Day straightened from his cat-like posture, but he didn’t put the knife away. The day had room left for one more surprise and he was too wary to think otherwise.
“Your fire,” the old man said when he could see that Day wasn’t going to comment. “We haven’t got matches, flint, anything. May we use your fire to cook? Please?” After a moment he added, lamely, “Sir?”
Day put the knife away and scrunched his mouth around as he often did while he thought about things with which he wasn’t overly concerned.
“You have food?” he asked after a moment.
The old man’s rheumy blue eyes glowed powerfully, recognising a hook with which to reel the Neolith in.
“Food? Indeed we do, sir. Jenny and Josiah managed to secure us a haunch of mutton as well as some of that giant reptile, whatever it is, during the last drop. We’d be happy to share.” For emphasis he added, “For tonight.”
Day grunted and motioned around. “You’ll need to find some wood. It’s been dying for a little while.”
The man in glasses scowled and spoke up from rearwards. “You’d better help us find some then, if you want to be fed. You don’t have much to bargain with if we all sit around and watch your fire die.” He spoke in an accent that sounded unrecognisably foreign to Day. Without his glasses, the man’s eyes were mismatched. Behind the thick glasses they appeared crooked, fish-eyed.
The woman already had her hand on the man’s belly to quieten him. The dark man in the toga backed away, obviously expecting violence or some sort of bad reaction from Day. Instead Day snorted a laugh and nodded.
“True enough. And I’m hungry.”
The others looked relieved. The teenage girl sobbed quietly. The old man comforted her. The man in the toga and the remaining woman quietly began the search for wood even though they somehow looked immediately incompetent, scouring the ground right before them with their eyes when there was clearly nothing to be had. The man who spoke so aggressively a moment before watched Day, carefully while making sure to keep his distance. His threatening pose was at odds with any likelihood he could back it up.
Day sheathed the blade. He had already spread out his damp trousers. He bent and picked them up, mostly dry now, rolled them into a tube and slipped them into the plundered hide shoulder-bag he now carried with him. He did this while slowly walking off a distance, ignoring the immediate foreground to catch a glimpse of anything useful as fuel.
After a few minutes he had three meagre sticks in his hand as well as seven or eight slivers of wood, some of which were already partially blackened. Day wandered back to the fire and dropped the wood, seeing a few more sticks collected. He then continued on in the opposite direction, drawing closer to the black man.
“Makes you wonder where the wood comes from, don’t it?” the man said, seemingly ill at ease. Something about the nervous tension around the man’s eyes suggested he’d been hurt before, badly, it seemed, and never quite recovered. Day felt pity, but didn’t let it show on his face.
“Yeah it does. Place should be picked dry by now,” he agreed.
The man in the toga was the one called Josiah. He watched Day a moment longer and then, seemingly emboldened, started speaking in hurried gasps.
“The vamps, man, they got six of us when we was driving in a truck between Memphistown and the old quarry east of the river. There’d been a bad plague in the summer, you know, and the bodies was pilin’ up faster’n we knew what to deal with. Old Man Chew, he said the quarry, so we were takin’ bodies out there in convoy. Vamps got us when we had a flat and had to fall behind the other trucks.
“Loree tried to fight and they killed her, then and there on the spot. They was ghouls, of course, though we didn’t know that then. Was still daylight, see? The rest of us just sort of gave in, let them take us. We spent a night in another old truck an’ in the morning they put us on a train with a bunch of others. About forty of us there was then. Seems the vamps had gone gatherin’ all through the south of the state and they was using the rail lines to get back this a-ways, the stinkin’ things, damn ‘em.”
Josiah licked his lips and blinked rapidly, not quite staring off into space.
“So we’re on this train,” he started again. “We’re all moanin’ an’ cussin’ an’ worryin’ ‘bout what’s to come. Been on this train about three hours when it slows down. Ghouls with guns – we’re in shackles, you know, the usual thing – open the doors of the train and start getting us down. We’re in the middle of this . . . well, not a forest exactly, but there’s wood everywhere, little trees. And they say ‘Get wood,’ and so we do. All afternoon.”
Day looked at the man with vague appreciation for the tale, now that his point was becoming clear. Few people were willing to discuss the specifics of their ordeals, and even less wanted to hear it recounted all over again by others. As Josiah had implied, certain details like the presence of restraining gyres were common to almost every captive’s experience. The ghouls wore face masks and carried automatic rifles and tried to do everything without getting close to the humans. Day supposed it was a difficult situation for them, and one false move might see them overwhelmed by superior numbers. As he had heard from others, the ghouls were happy enough to kill one or two of the prisoners instead of risking themselves in a show of more immediate physical force. A few executions were good for personal motivation. Though Day was brought in on his own, the stories of people being taken in whole groups seemed more common than otherwise.
“How’d the wood get in here then?” Day asked.
Josiah nodded. “We loaded all that wood onto the train carriages where we’d been sittin’ before, you know? When it was time to go we’d got a few tonnes, that’s for sure. So we clambered back up there and once we was in place them ghouls threw up this plasticky cord stuff, told us to tie it in bundles and not waste any. We spent the whole trip back tying the stuff into piles. A few days after I was in here, the choppers went over and dropped a few of them bundles. One I saw was tied up with the same pink cord we used that day on the train. They dropped plenty, that day. I ain’t seen it since.”
”How long have you been here?”
Josiah pulled a scrap of paper out of his toga.
“Nineteen weeks, three days,” he said. It was a long time.
Between them they found a few bigger sticks and a number of small ones. Josiah unearthed a collection of skinny twigs that had been almost completely submerged in the soil, possibly on purpose but then forgotten. When they came back to the campfire Marco, the suspicious one with glasses, had roused the fire and placed a few awkward-looking pieces of wood onto the flames. Getting around the other side, Day saw the pieces were carved figurines of women with spears and shields. They made him think of Maya and Kvelda again.
“Well it should be enough to cook with,” the woman said.
She handled a flat pan with casual ease and looked across at the bowl-haired girl Jenny, who was filling a deeper bowl with water from a plastic bottle with a handle.
“Not too much Jenny. Water’s gonna have to boil fast.”
The girl nodded and from the front pocket on her apron-like skirt she started transferring lentils into the water. Day raised an eyebrow at the little legumes but said nothing. It had been a while since any of the non-meat airdrop material had gone his way. He remembered the chaos around the box of tinned food dropped by one chopper and how he had stayed away, afraid the violence would worsen. Several men had their heads bashed in with the cans during the rush. The vegetables and the sweet things some of the cans contained were priceless beyond imagining. Right then and there Day agreed he would cheerfully knife-fight for the chance to win a sweet custard or a tin of preserved fruit.
Even though they could’ve taken it from him at any point, the unusual group let the old man dole out the remaining portions of meat. The mutton was still attached to the bone, though it was seriously whittled down. The reptile meat was reduced to a series of fat joints of meat, the scaled skin long since removed. On seeing the meat, the two women groaned aloud.
“I’m sorry, ladies,” the old man said wistfully. “We have to cook it all up now before it turns green. A figure of speech only, of course, since it was green to begin with.”
The woman and Jenny giggled politely and the old man attempted to include Day in the convivial atmosphere that was clearly a hallmark of the leadership that was keeping the little group together.
“What do you think it is, eh?” the old man asked him. “Alligator, maybe? It’s a little big for snake. Anaconda, maybe.”
Day felt bad for sounding so monotone, but he replied, “I’ve heard there are wyverns in the desert now.” Day rubbed his jaw. “I suppose a few ghouls could gang up on one of these, if they’ve got the guns. Plenty of meat.”
The women looked even more distastefully at the lizard meat, so much so that when it was cooked and accompanied by a broth stew with the mutton in it, apart from Marco, everyone else refrained, allowing Day to eat his full. With some of the mutton and lentil stew he managed to sit back replete by meal’s end. The warm feeling in his stomach was comfortable even if the reptile meat didn’t quite sit right, as if it had begun to turn already and not been cooked through. Any minor discomfort was a thousand times preferable to the starved, stomach-clinging-to-spine feeling of true hunger. The rush of digestion made Day a little sleep-prone as he stretched out on the ground and let the scant conversations of the others wash around him.
He learned that the old man’s name was Creek and the woman who cooked the meal was Lila Bengtsson. The woman’s great claim to fame was being born during the middle of a werewolf attack while her parents were leaving a place called Kansas City along with thousands of others. The city elders had, apparently, in the face of the Rising, and having lost contact with the national authority, decided to detonate the city’s concealed nuclear ordinance and so consign the newly-appeared monstrous denizens of that city to the hell from which they came. In the resulting chaos, cars and trucks leaving the city had piled up for miles on end and it had been a frantic procession on foot to leave the city before the appointed hour of retaliation came.
“My ma, she was eight months pregnant and a day at that time. My folks were with my father’s two brothers and their wives and children. My uncle, he owned a gun store, so there was plenty of ammunition. When my momma went into contractions they circled the wagons, so to speak, and I was born then and there while the wolf-men raged.”
The diminutive Marco spoke up. “I thought they established there was no such thing as werewolves? Your parents might have thought they were battling werewolves. . . .”
Lila got a little defensive at that, and it took Creek a minute to wade in and defuse the situation.
“Now you’re both right,” he said. “A fellow I was travelling to Canada with one time told me about how he’d lived with a pack of werewolves for three months about three years previous. This’d be in 2005 or something close to it. The wolf-men call themselves lycanthropes, but the similarity between them and wolves is just superficial, at least that’s what this fellow claimed.”
Creek told a few more stories about his travels to lighten the mood. As a seventy-two-year-old, he’d been twenty when the Rising took place, a junior police officer in the city of Boston on the eastern coast of the continent. The city authority went from knowing about a couple of grisly unexplained murders and missing persons cases to a full scale supernatural turf war in a matter of days. In quiet, reverent tones Creek described how he and twenty fellow officers defended their station house and fifty civilians against a two-week
siege mounted by creatures of allegedly hellish origin.
“They were every colour of the rainbow, I tell you,” he said slowly, looking around until he had everyone’s eye. Even Day sat up cross-legged for the tale’s sake.
“Most had fangs and claws, but there were no two that looked alike. Some went down under ordinary gunfire, as long as you had enough. For special emergencies we had M-14 rifles, each with a thirty round clip. I remember pouring two whole clips into one poor boy because he’d caught this woman who was sneaking in to join us. He, that thing, he must’ve thought nothing could harm him because he just went on tearing her up while I fired the first thirty. God help me,” Creek said, making a sign, “but I must’ve hit that poor woman a few times too. By that stage it was a mercy, just for her to be quiet and still. I was angrier than hell, crying like a schoolgirl – figure of speech there Jenny, sorry – and boy, if that second clip didn’t just cut him right in half, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.
“He flopped around a while after that, but his comrades just left him there to die. Sad in its own way. Some of those things if you’d seen ‘em in a zoo, even though they had arms and legs like us, they were pretty. Beautiful, even. It was a shame to kill them.”
After a moment’s silence, Day asked, “But that’s what you did? You killed them all?” It was a hope-filled notion, to hear such a tale of human revenge and survival against the preternatural forces.
Creek caught his question and smiled crookedly, shaking his head. “Afraid not. Late in the second week we were running out of food, though we had water. A few of the boys and a few of the civvies tried to sneak out. Some got away, I think. We had to listen to the rest of them screaming. After that my captain turned his gun on himself. A few more did the same or asked us to do it for them. Then while us remainders were still figuring out what to do, some of the varmints got in on the second floor. We weren’t prepared, so we fell back to the basement, which is where we kept our cells. In the confusion a few folks slipped out again, but we’d been feeding and looking after the remaining prisoners up till then. The time for distinguishing between good fellas and bad ones seemed over, what with creatures at the door yappin’ for our blood.
Endless Night Page 6