by M. C. Norris
Cecile was finally able to shake her head. “No.”
“Check yourself over. Make sure you’re not hit.”
“Malcolm?”
“Yeah?”
“I think I know why they’re here, the Hunters, out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“Why?” Malcolm stared questioningly into her eyes.
“They’ve all been waiting for me.”
Chapter Ten
The train whistle released a long and mournful scream that resounded for miles over the flatlands. Malcom watched their steam locomotive chug westward out of the station, and off into the starless gulfs. His heart dropped into the pit of his stomach. They were alone, three hundred miles behind what felt like enemy lines. The feeling of abandonment, that separation anxiety, was not unlike that which he’d experienced over in Afghanistan, every time he’d watched a chopper flying away into the night, leaving him and his men with some terrible task to perform before they could return to whatever place they called home. Over there, at least, he was in the company of the world’s most elite Special Forces unit, armed to the teeth, equipped with cutting edge technology, multiple lines of communication. Here, there were no lifelines.
“Let’s go,” he said, straddling the seat of one the two mountain bikes that the engineers had provided them. “We need to get the away from this train station.” He waited for Cecile to clamber unsteadily onto her bicycle, and together they began to peddle¸ northbound toward the place called Zurich, Kansas.
The open road was nothing but a death trap. Only one two-lane highway ran for thirty miles from the train station in Hays to their junction point in Plainville. Their enemies could be encamped in every draw, glassing the road from positions atop the limestone bluffs. Out here, if they were spotted, they’d be captured and killed. It was just that simple. To be seen meant certain death, and those deaths would be anything but quick. Whether or not Cecile was right about being the Hunters’ primary target, their stripped and tethered bodies would still provide their captors with the same long hours of gruesome entertainment out here on the ashen plains, where no living thing would ever hear their screams.
“Let’s ride parallel to the highway, but keep distanced from it by at least a half-mile,” he said, veering westward, out across the open pasture. It was a dark night. The only lights by which to see were the hot pulses of electromagnetic energy that flared maleficently through the low canopy of clouds. These dull flashes were sufficient to maintain a course parallel to the tops of distant telephone poles.
Malcolm’s tires rumbled over the hard, packed earth, popping aggregate fossils of seashells. It appeared that this region, the heart of the so-called Great American Desert, was stricken with extended periods of drought. Ironic that, at time’s beginning this parched veldt was down at the bottom of a primordial sea. Burning pillars of electrons leapt from distant landforms to probe the sky. There was a chill in the air. It felt as though the weather might take a turn for the worse. Southern winds pummeled their backs, urging them onward toward their bleak destination.
“I think it’s going to storm.”
Malcolm heard Cecile’s voice, thin and tremulous over the vibrations of rocks beneath her tires. What could the Hunters possibly want with her? He didn’t want to believe such a thing, because if they were indeed after her, specifically, if they somehow intuited that this woman would eventually arrive here, at this exact location and time, then they were dealing with something much larger than dragons, something more deadly than Hunters, something beyond the realm of their understanding.
These weren’t thoughts that Malcolm liked to entertain. He preferred scientific answers to problems, logic, and theories based on evidence. It was more satisfying to his pragmatic mind to believe that the dragons were mindless organisms, fulfilling their natural role that had been dictated by evolution. He had to believe that, just as he had to keep believing that the Hunters were an independent threat, one owed to their genetic mutations that had arisen in their lineage when some unearthly fragments of DNA embedded in their bodies had suddenly become excited, dominating their corrupted genetic codes. The deeper they rode into hostile territory, the more difficult it became to dismiss the possibility of some psychic connection between those monstrous men, and maybe even to the monsters who’d birthed them. Why else would they choose to be out here? How else could they have known that a train was coming? It was the first train to bisect this region in almost a year, and it certainly appeared as though the Hunters had been lying in wait for it. Even if they’d just happened upon it, out of dumb luck, then why then did those marauders converge on just one of around thirty cars, directing all the firepower they could muster onto the very railcar in which he and Cecile were being transported?
“They thought it was a gas cylinder!” Malcolm suddenly exclaimed.
“What?”
“They weren’t after you. They just thought that our railcar was a cylinder of compressed gas. If they blew it up, then it would’ve disconnected the train from the engine. They were after the cargo.”
“Hunters are killers, not looters,” Cecile replied, her voice still jittering, “and those were obviously Hunters.”
“Hunters do all kinds of things besides kill. They sabotage. They destroy. They create chaos. That’s why they’re all congregated here.” Malcolm was surprised to find himself smiling. “That railway is the only artery of transportation from the east to the west. They knew that a steam locomotive would eventually be coming from one direction or the other along that rail line, and they’d been out here waiting to attack. It makes perfect sense.”
It was a relief to make some occasional sense in a world of total disorder. The Hunters were biologically different. That much could not be ignored, but beyond those physiological mutations, they were still just people, and people always had a strategic agenda. It was part of being human. There was nothing supernatural about them. Their bodies could be dissected, and their small differences understood. What was perhaps their strangest ability to start electric engines was still a mystery, but that too would be explained one day. No doubt, it would be attributed to some differing signature in their bodies that perhaps attracted and reabsorbed the charged particles that jammed electrical circuits, allowing electrons to start flowing normally from cathodes to anodes again. Regardless of the mechanism by which they worked their apparent magic, like all magic, it was nothing but a physical trick played upon the observer’s eyes. It was not metaphysical, and it was not supernatural. There were no such things in Malcolm’s world. Those killers were just as natural as bare feet, and one day their tricks, like all tricks, would be explained.
“If that’s the case,” Cecile replied, “then why wouldn’t they just take out a section of railroad track?”
Malcolm grunted as his front tire jounced over a rut. She was really starting to irritate him. Of course she wanted to believe that she was being telepathically targeted by some dark sentience, maybe even by the Green Man himself. In her metaphysical delusions, being targeted by a thousand evil minions made her feel important, special, as if she was some last hope for the human race.
“Exactly,” he snapped back at her, over his shoulder. “If they wanted to be sure and kill you, then why not just take out a section of the track?” Malcolm grinned, when Cecile had no response. He’d flipped her deranged form of logic right back against her. “If killing you was so goddamned important to them, then they obviously wouldn’t have waited out here for you for six months just to launch some harebrained attack. No way. They’d have had plenty of time to remove a section of railroad track.”
“Maybe they didn’t know exactly how or when I’d be coming, but once I got within range of their detection, they zeroed-in on me, and—”
“No.” Malcolm thrashed his head from side to side.
“What makes you so—”
“No-no-no.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You’re nuts.”
“You d
idn’t see what I saw, Malcolm!”
“Keep your bloody voice down.”
“The leader of those riders singled me out. He pointed right at me.”
“You’re delusional. He pointed at the railcar.”
“He pointed at me! I saw him. He knew I was in there.”
“Alright, this is a pointless discussion. I think we can both agree that we’re in a pretty bad situation with plenty of danger, and plenty of horrible ways to die. Can we please not try and make this out to be something worse than it already is? There’s no reason to be telling ghost stories, for Christ’s sake. They’re obviously out here, and if they find us, we’re dead. End of story.”
Malcolm squeezed the hand brake of his mountain bike as they neared the head of a gradual precipice. His tires growled against the shifting aggregate. The grade before them drifted downhill into a great swath of blackness that snaked through a system of wrinkled draws toward to the highway. Rocky outcrops jutted from the slope at regular intervals, fringed with the spiked crowns of dead yucca plants.
“What’s down there?”
“The Saline River, I think.”
“Do we have to cross it?”
“Yeah. Based on the map, there’s just the one river to cross. I’m guessing that’s going to be it, right down there.”
“Can we use the bridge?”
“Absolutely fucking not.”
“Why?”
“Because if there’s going to be an ambush anywhere between Hays and Zurich, that’s going to be the spot, right there on that bridge.”
“I can’t swim.”
“You what?”
Cecile shook her head. “I can’t swim.”
“Well, let’s just walk our bikes down a little closer and see what exactly we’re dealing with. It’s pretty dry. I don’t think that there’s bound to be a whole lot of water flowing down there.”
“Could we camp here until sunrise, so we can actually see where we’re going?”
“Cecile, you want to cross thirty miles of open country in broad daylight?” Malcolm turned to stare at her. “For fuck’s sake. I want to be in Zurich before sunrise. We’ve got a train to catch tomorrow night.”
Malcolm headed down the hill, with the stock of his shouldered M-16 slapping rhythmically against his rump. As he descended the slope, he reflected on those warnings issued by General Cobb, who swore that if he took her out here, he’d sorely regret it. He was beginning to fear that he’d not yet even begun to appreciate the accuracy of that premonition. This mission was suicidal. Once the sun broke over the eastern horizon, there would be nowhere to hide in this country. Their movements would be visible from five miles in every fucking direction. So far as he’d been able to tell, the Saline River valley was the only topographical depression on the whole map. It was the only place where a person could ever hope to hide. If they made it to Zurich by sunrise, then they’d have to wait it out until nightfall before they could safely head back toward the train station again. That was assuming Cecile wasn’t right, and there wasn’t going to be a hundred killers on motorbikes waiting for them in Zurich.
The scuffing slip of a boot preceded the metallic clatter of a dropped bike and a cry of pain, just behind him. Malcolm turned, gritting his teeth, to find Cecile and her bicycle in a twisted heap in the loose shale. He suppressed the urge to chastise her for her clumsiness, instead helping her to her feet, and then righting her bike for her. She stood doubled over, clutching her right leg just above the knee. It wouldn’t do either of them any good if he lost his patience, and his temper.
“Are you alright?” he whispered, placing his hand on the small of her back, while his head swiveled up and down the river valley for any sign of hostile activity. Nothing moved. A rout of thunder trundled over the windswept plains. He could feel its resonance moving through the ground, as though the plates of the earth itself were shifting beneath his feet. Bright spumes of electrons whistled up from the desert floor to splash into pools of crimson light in the clouds. Bad weather was definitely on the way. The clouds rolled like breakers across an inverted ocean. “Come on, we need to keep moving.”
Cecile rose stiffly, before resuming their descent with a marked limp. Nothing appeared to be broken. Malcolm tried, as best he could, to assist her down the slope by clinging to her upper arm. If she fell again, he was afraid she’d pull the both of them to the ground, but with any luck the added stability of his grasp would prevent that from happening. The footing was poor, given the loose topcoat of smashed shale, shells and slag that slid easily underfoot, but the grade was not steep. Wind moaned through the river valley, rattling yucca spades like the ghosts of bygone snakes. There was something unsettling about this place.
When they finally reached the banks of the Saline River, Malcolm was relieved to find that it was dry, and looked to have been dry for several years. Desiccated weeds sprouted chest-high from every crack in the riverbed. Not a drop of water could testify that this had ever been a river. The only suggestion of flowing water was provided by a pavement of flat and polished slabs that wobbled and clattered underfoot like old bones. The winds conjured ashen dervishes that spun down the sloughing banks to gyrate on unsteady tails, as though drunkenly reckoning their lifeless world for a few lingering moments before dissipated into the night. Grassy tussocks nodded to gossiping husks of thistles that whispered rumors of recent death, while a brownish reek rode the midnight breeze. Malcolm turned his head upwind to scrutinize the bridge, where the current of soured air seemed to originate, drifting the course of the bygone waterway.
“What is it?” Cecile whispered.
The dark bridge kept its secrets, but Malcolm sensed that something terrible was over there. He felt it with dread certainty in his soul. Somewhere beneath that black arch was evidence of the worst sort of depravity, remnants of secret indulgences wrought of hunger and isolation, conditions that kindled savage notions from the imaginations of fallen men. He’d seen these situations, ill-lit recesses in forsaken lands that attracted strange tenants, harboring dark pastimes vaguely remembered in the ancient chambers of the human mind. Whatever dull eyes gaped back from that swath of shadow were owned by something he cared not to meet, not on this night, or any night, for that matter.
“Nothing,” he whispered, “let’s go.”
The ascent was more perilous. Sloughs of shale brought them repeatedly to their knees as they dragged their bicycles up the slope. Blackened heavens ignited, coals blown to life by stale winds, flickering in and out of existence within their smoldering beds. Those shells of thunder struck ever closer, sending shockwaves through Malcolm’s bones. The first droplets spattered darkly upon the blanched soil, striking his helmet and visor with their intimate percussion. He smeared the back of his gloved hand across the bulging lenses to create streaks of bleary mud.
“Malcolm!”
He heard the insistence in her tone, but it proved little good to turn her way when he could not see her, nor could he reply when thunder’s fusillade muted every trace of his feeble voice. He smeared with his fingertips, until he could discern something of her silhouette, crawling up the slope a meter behind him.
“Someone’s following us!”
No. This couldn’t be happening so soon. As he strained his eyes to see whatever it was she might’ve noticed through the gathering rain, a great pulse of electromagnetic energy revealed the ragged and shambling form in the riverbed. It clambered over the bank, and trailed them purposefully up the slope with its pendulous gait. By the play of red lightning, he saw a glimpse of the shaggy bulk of grassland Gollum, a thing that might’ve dreamt it was once a man before whatever horrors it had witnessed and liked to imitate had wholly consumed its depraved mind. Though he lost sight of it in the darkness, he could hear its chuffing breaths, the scrabbling of loosed gravel.
“Shoot it!” Cecile screamed. “Kill it now!”
“Come on!” Malcolm seized her by the wrist and hauled her upright. The thing was getting close
r, gaining on them with every second. He could put it down with one shot, but if he fired a round in this vast openness, then every killer for miles would learn of their whereabouts, and easily anticipate their direction and destination. He dug the toes of his boots into the softening ground, and pushed with all his might up the slope, dragging his bike by one arm, and Cecile, clinging to hers, in the other.
“Oh my God, fucking kill it, Malcolm! It’s right behind us!”
“Go!” He shoved her up the hill, ahead of him. With a fistful of her hazmat suit clenched in his hand, he straight-armed her up the slope, falling once to the mud, and scrambling back to his feet. The crest of the escarpment was just ahead. They could make it if they tried. “Go-go-go!”
Its snuffling respirations grew distinct, until he could the bubbling phlegm in its throat. He smelled reek of its putrid hides, hairless flags of skin and rattling adornments. Malcolm fell as it seized hold of his bike, releasing a deep woof of entitlement. It jerked until Malcolm could no longer hold onto both the bike and Cecile.
Malcolm released her, ordering her to run as he rolled over onto his back to engage his attacker. By the crackling phosphorescence in the sky, he discerned the shine of a single eye. Great chuffs of carrion breath were expelled with every yank to the bike’s frame, which dragged Malcolm further down the slope with each powerful heave. The strap of his rifle was caught around his throat. The weapon clattered over the rocks, above and behind him. He swiped an arm up through the gravel, but could not reach it. In an instant, the bike was yanked from his grip and hurled off into oblivion. Its distant crash was drowned by the man-beast’s roar, as its hairy maw split wide with some skyward proclamation of its dominance over this wasteland, over this puny challenger, whose flesh would soon be stripped in glistening mouthfuls from his bones.
With a strobe of white light and a deafening concussion, the skull of the grassland Gollum detonated in a cone of pale gobbets and crimson ribbons that spattered softly around the vicinity, as the mindless creature toppled backward. Malcolm felt its bodily impact, more so than he was able to hear it, over the soft gurgle of escaping fluids against the rocky hillside. When he wrenched his neck around, he found her kneeling over his shoulder, backlit by jags of lightning, poised like a dark angel with the M-16 in her hands.