The teen opened the van door slowly, trying his best not to disturb his sleeping companions. He stepped gingerly around the prone forms strewn everywhere, forcing himself to look anywhere but at their torn chests, at their glazed eyes. A few cautious steps. Then a few more. Coyote stepped again, and his foot sank into a wet pile that squished under and around his sneaker. He had no desire to know what he stepped in.
Finally, he reached Father Bryce. He stopped some feet away, unsure if he should interrupt the solemn ceremony. The priest was leaning over a young man, whispering because he strained his voice long before.
". amen," Coyote heard Bryce finish as he closed the young man's eyes. The priest stretched, yawned, then started toward the next body.
Coyote spoke softly. "Enough, Father. You've done enough."
He gently touched the priest's arm and led him to a car that had stalled nearby. When Bryce stumbled, Coyote found that he was not strong enough to keep himself and the priest from falling. But Tal Tu was. The edeinos must have followed him from the van, Coyote thought, as the lizard man steadied them.
"Thank you, Tal Tu," Bryce said in a cracking voice. The priest leaned against the car, and Coyote jumped onto the hood beside him.
"You know," he said as he peered into his mass kit, "I ran out of hosts hours ago." He held up a single wafer so that his two companions could see it by the light of the fire. "I saved this one, though. For an emergency, I guess."
The priest looked to the side, and Coyote followed his gaze. There, beside the car, was the mortal remains of a woman. Bryce took his last host, broke it, and placed it in her mouth. Then he made the sign of the cross, and closed her sightless eyes.
"She needed it more than I did," he said.
Enough of this, Coyote thought. He leaped down from the car and grabbed the priest's arm again.
"Let's go, Father. It's time to get some rest."
The priest looked around once more, but he nodded at Coyote's words.
"Yes, I do need to rest. I am so very tired."
Father Bryce allowed Coyote to lead him back to the van, and Tal Tu followed behind them.
37
Old Man Baker watched the man in the work boots, who, in turn, watched the priest and his companions. Baker was once considered mean and cantankerous, a man you avoided if you could. But when the dinosaurs appeared and the fire started, Old Man Baker became just that — an old man. He ran when the rest of the masses ran, and he hid when the dinosaur men started killing. He lay on the floor of a stalled Honda, his eyes shut tight to block out the awful sights.
But he couldn't block out the sounds.
First there were the frightened sounds of the confused masses, typified by muffled sobs and uncontrolled bawling.
Then there were the dinosaur men's shouts of reptili-ous joy, accompanied by a ceaseless, hissing chant.
Finally, there were the screams. Hundreds of human voices filled with pain and raised in terror reached the
old man's ears at the same time, and those were followed by wave upon wave of screams. Most frightening of all, remembered Baker, was how each wave of screams abruptly ended, cut off the way a power failure cuts off a TV.
He lay on the floor of the Honda through all of those sounds, praying that the chanters, who were so very close, would not find him. And when the sounds stopped, he stayed on that floor, eyes still shut tight, refusing to move in case even one dinosaur man was at the window watching him, waiting for a sign of life.
Old Man Baker would probably still be there, had not the man in the work boots showed up. He must have been calling for quite some time, Baker thought, before the old man responded. Baker finally opened his eyes and looked up from his spot on the floor of the back seat. The door nearest his head was ajar, and the first thing Baker saw was a work boot resting on the frame just inches from his face. The boot had a metal tip guard, and it was stained with a dark, wet substance. His gaze carried further, and he saw the rest of a large man with blonde hair. On the man's right forearm, which rested across his bent knee, was the tatoo of a cobra. Its jaws were spread wide, revealing dripping fangs that were poised to strike.
The large man helped Baker out of the car, then forced him to walk with him among the bodies. And so Old Man Baker's worst fear came to pass. He was forced to put an image to the sounds he had heard, and the reality of the torn bodies was worse than anything his mind had conjured earlier. Once during the long walk Old Man Baker turned to look at the tatooed man. He saw the man's smile, his longing gaze, his studied examination of the wounds that killed the masses. Then he turned away, knowing full well that the tatooed man was enjoying this terrible stroll through the garden of the dead.
When the van approached, the tatooed man made Baker squat down behind a station wagon. They stayed there for a long time; the tatooed man watching the priest make his rounds, the old man watching the watcher. Finally, the priest returned to his van, and the tatooed man turned to Baker.
"The priest is very much like me," the tatooed man whispered. "He works with the dead, I work with the dead. It's my calling."
The tatooed man produced a large hunting knife from a sheath that was hidden under his pants leg. He held it loosely, letting its serrated edge gleam in the fire light.
"These lizard men are artists," the tatooed man continued, "every death along this road is a masterpiece. I admire their style."
With that, the tatooed man plunged his serrated knife into Old Man Baker's chest. Stunned by the quickness, Baker did not scream. Once the pain registered he
tried to call out, but only blood gurgled from his lips. The tatooed man twisted the blade, carving a hole very much like those in the bodies littered across the area. He smiled at his own technique, then wiped the blade clean on Baker's coat sleeve.
The last sight the old man witnessed was the metal-tipped work boots walking away.
38
Running. Very quickly. Fast. As fast as he could. Trying to find Vicky. Trying to stay ahead of them.
Trying to survive.
Running. And others ran with him. Others he could not quite see yet. Others he could not name.
They ran from the sound of beating wings. From the smell of sulfer and fire. From the claws.
Running. And something called from up ahead. Something — wonderful.
It was the color of polished turquoise, and it shone with a light all its own. It was the color of bright crimson, swirling through the turquoise like blood-filled veins.
He needed to reach the wonderful thing. He wanted to hear its song from up close.
But the wings were louder now. Terribly loud. Drowning out the song. Pounding against him with rapid beats.
Then he felt the claws.
Decker sat up bolt straight in his bed, sweat pouring down his face, his chest, his arms. He took a deep breath, calmed himself. Already the nightmare was fading, but he knew that sleep would be a long time returning.
He reached for the remote control on the nightstand, and switched on the bedroom television. He flipped through the channels until he found the cable news network. He adjusted the volume and leaned back to watch.
"It is being called the Day of Disaster, that moment almost 96 hours ago when all communication with New York City ceased, and the President and Vice President of the United States were declared missing," said the practiced newscaster as video of the Opening Day ceremonies at Shea Stadium filled the small screen. Decker recognized the rock singer Eddie Paragon, who sang the National Anthem that day. He watched as the video switched to the beginning of the game. Then, as Walter "The Truth" Jones released the first pitch, the screen dissolved to static.
"The disaster was categorized by a massive disruption of telephone lines and television signals," the newscaster continued. "All major media has since rerouted as much of their communications networks as possible, but some services have been irrevocably lost. The effected area, which is roughly 600 miles across,
continues to impede most efforts to gather inf
ormation."
Decker watched the pictures that continued to flash across the screen, but he did not hear the words. Instead, he re-examined the information he had, which was more complete than what the TV news showed.
He knew that spy plane and satellite fly bys were able to map a 600 mile, diamond-shaped area on the eastern seaboard which showed no patterns of electrical activity. He was on hand when the Speaker of the House, acting in the President's stead, declared a national emergency and ordered all armed forces to go to DefCon Two. Even now, reserve units, National Guard and state-side regular army were on their way to Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. to defend those cities in case the "dead zone" spread. U.S. troops in foreign lands had been alerted to the possibility that they could be called home at a moment's notice.
Efforts to scan Shea Stadium and the immediate area from above were blocked by an intense and quite localized storm. Decker had studied what pictures they had, but he could rationalize little of what he saw.
He had listened to the final communications with the two National Guard units that had been on armed maneuvers that first day. Since they were available, they were ordered to make their way east in order to determine what was happening in New York. Their last report situated them just west of Elmira. But what they reported was strange. The radio operator claimed that a line of "big lizards" was in stationary position some two clicks distant. Then communication was interrupted, and the units, along with 300 more miles of United States area, fell silent.
Towns and cities along the edge of the dead zone were being inundated by more and more refugees every day. These people all told stories of friends and relatives who behaved savagely, of giant dinosaurs that smashed cars and buildings as they walked, and of lizard men who killed for the sheer joy of it.
But efforts to confirm these reports by low-level fly bys, helicopter reconnaissance, and special forces deployment met with disaster. Planes and helicopters that flew too low lost power and crashed, and contact with soldiers air-dropped into the dead zone was cut off almost immediately.
The Canadian government, too, was being kept abreast of the situation, and there was even talk that some kind of joint committee would be formed in case the dead zone spread across the border.
Of all the theories, Decker wasn't sure which one he believed just yet, but one thing was certain: something terrible was happening within the 600 mile zone of silence. Decker finally drifted off to sleep with a thousand questions on his mind.
But not a single answer.
On the morning of the fifth day after Baruk Kaah set clawed foot upon the Earth, Sergeant Richard Macklin, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, stood on the south bank of the Mackenzie River, holding the reins of his horse as he waited for the ferry that was stolidly making its way across from Fort Providence. Macklin watched the creamy curl of water turned by the bow of the ferry as it plowed against the current flowing northwestward out of Great Slave Lake, a current that would eventually flow into Mackenzie Bay on Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean. Torn fragments of dark clouds scudded high in the clear, blue sky of northern Canada. Macklin shivered involuntarily, and noted that even darker clouds were gathering on the horizon.
Macklin's horse whickered and dug with its right forehoof at the loose gravel of the ferry landing. Macklin turned to the horse and stroked its neck, soothing it with the companionship that had grown between them on their patrols into the fringes of the RCMP post jurisdiction at Fort Providence. He glanced skyward again and saw that the clouds had rolled overhead, turning the day into night.
"We're in for a helluva storm," the officer said aloud.
A thunderous sound of an avalanche rolled quickly and briefly across the river, stopped and faded into silence. Macklin, caught by the sound, by his subconscious identification of it as an avalanche, and by his forebrain's conflicting knowledge that there should not be an avalanche here, jerked his head to look across the river.
The ferry slip on the far side of the river was no longer there. The Mountie post and the restored Hudson Bay Company trading post were no longer there. The small town had been obliterated by a huge, growing stalk, half a mile wide, rising in a gently curving arc, and disappearing high in the dark sky.
The sound of the engines on the ferry stopped, and the boat, caught in the current, began drifting downstream. The ferry was still close enough for Macklin to see the high-cheekboned, Slavey Indian face of the pilot through the glass of the windows in the small wheel-house, and he could see the faces of the two deckhands, who had been leaning against the bow railing. The pilot, with the quick, head-turning movement of a man confused by his surroundings, dashed from the wheel-house and to the port rail, staring fixedly at the giant stalk that had smashed into Fort Providence. As the boat spun in the current, the pilot ran from port to starboard and back, trying to keep the mutant plant in sight.
The deckhands joined the pilot in his fixation on the stalk, which they now saw was actually hundreds of stalks and vines and leaves twisted together. As the boat drifted farther downstream, they leaped over the rail and began swimming toward the north shore of the
river. The current carried them swiftly away and Macklin soon lost sight of their bobbing heads and splashing arms.
"What in hell is going on?" Macklin asked vainly of the horse beside him. For answer, the horse neighed loudly and shook its head as its ears and nose caught the sounds and smells coming downwind from the people and creatures stepping off the stalk on the far side of the river. The horse reared and tried to bolt. With his left hand, Macklin pulled down on the reins, bringing the horse's flailing forelegs back to earth. He grabbed a handful of mane, pulled himself up and flung his right leg over the back of the horse.
As he seated himself in the saddle and fought his feet into the stirrups, he was better able to control the frightened animal. He brought the horse to a snorting, stiff-legged standstill and stared at the plant bridge — which was what his mind decided it was when he saw the things walking off of it.
What Macklin had assumed were people because of their upright stance turned out to be reptiles of some kind. But there was more than that stepping into the remains of the town. Macklin saw tusked, hairy, elephantlike beasts dragging large travois piled high with leaf-wrapped bundles. At the edges of the mass of lizard people were large, tawny creatures that moved with the sleek grace of hunting lions. Some of the lizards rode on the backs of one-horned beasts that looked to Macklin like the pictures and reconstructions of dinosaurs he had seen.
Macklin's horse began to chomp at the bit and stomp and curvet in its aversion to the alien smell of the beasts on the other side of the river and to the tight rein that Macklin was keeping. To calm the horse, Macklin ran him a short distance back and forth along the river bank, while always focusing his own eyes on the exodus on the site of the smashed town. He watched the creatures walk west and east along the northern bank of the Mackenzie, and he watched them move northward, away from the river.
"Easy, boy," Macklin spoke softly while he made mental note of the numbers and types of creatures coming off the bridge. He knew the officers down at the Hay River post were going to want details, not some panicky story about lizard men, mastodons, saber-tooths, and dinosaurs camping along the Mackenzie. It was some time before Macklin noticed that there was someone on the other bank, watching him. That the creature watching him was intelligent Macklin knew just from the intensity of its interest in him. That the creature was not human was also obvious from his saurian face and body. "Uh oh," Macklin muttered to his horse.
Then the saurian waved with one of its clawed forelimbs, gesturing behind, as if calling someone forward from the mass coming off the bridge. Silent in the
distance, what looked like two winged reptiles flapped into the air and headed across the river, toward Macklin.
"Shit," said Macklin. "I think it's time to go make our report."
He reined his horse to the right and spurred him into a gallo
p, heading southeast along the shore of the river, not following the bottom half of the Yellowknife Highway but taking the shorter way across country to the town of Hay River. Macklin had the horse at full gallop along the grassy bank of the river, and he had his service pistol in his hand, when the first winged lizard reached him. Half turned in the saddle, the Mountie saw that one of the lizard people rode atop the winged creature. The lizard man menacingly held a spear at the ready, preparing to throw it at Macklin.
With his arm extended and the pistol aimed just to the left of the protruding breastbone of the lizard man, Macklin squeezed the trigger. The recoil kicked his hand upward. The report echoed off the surface of the river. The lizard man screamed wildly; it fell to the ground, crunched into a boulder, and lay unmoving. Macklin yelled in triumph, spurred his horse and galloped on.
The second winged reptile flew high and ahead of Macklin. Judging its angle of attack, it clapped its leathery wings closed and plummeted hawklike at Macklin, with its taloned feet opened and ready to grasp. Macklin aimed his pistol forward over his horses head and fired. He missed. His second shot, close upon the quickly fading sound of the first, blasted off the top of the creature's skull, splattering blood and brains onto the seated lizard man.
Before the dying winged reptile crashed to the ground, the lizard man launched his spear. The spear flew into the chest of the galloping horse, burying itself halfway up the shaft. The forelegs of the horse collapsed and it began to tumble headlong to the ground. Macklin let his pistol drop to the end of its lanyard and used both hands and all the strength in his arms and shoulders to haul back on the reins, trying to keep the horse's head up, trying to keep him from running into the ground.
But the horse went down. Macklin pulled his feet from the stirrups and rolled over the horse's neck and head as the horse crumpled and its kicking legs churned up the grass and soil. Macklin made it to one knee before the pain of broken bones and torn flesh hit him like grating, tearing fire in his left shoulder. He lurched to his feet. Slumping, he retrieved his pistol into his hand and waited.
torg 01 - Storm Knights Page 9