For a second, Martin thought that the cannibal might have been only a corpse, but the reality was far more sickening to him. The cannibal had pink flesh in places, like those he’d killed amongst the hungerleaf trees. Martin strode boldly into the room, the cobblestones grinding together under his feet. None of the corpsemen responded to him.
Slowly, Martin’s men fanned out into the room behind him.
Martin stopped by the pair of corpses. He shot the cannibal first. If the other noticed, he did not show it. The corpseman lifted up a cobble that had fallen from his mound and added it back on. It fell again. Martin waited politely for the man to get it to stick before he shot him. Huxley fired a second shot, re-killing the cannibal. A few moments later, he re-killed the builder too.
Chelsea and Constance walked up next to Martin. The vibrations of their footsteps caused the rock mound to tumble. Martin sighed.
“This is unholy,” Constance said.
Chelsea nodded, her blue eyes on the pair of dead men.
“Over here, sir!” A hunter named Marcus called.
Martin looked across the chamber to where he was pointing. A carrion barrier lay there, completely destroyed.
Caval walked up beside him.
“Is that the wall you were talking about? The one your men took down?” Martin asked Caval.
Caval nodded.
“God damn,” Martin said. “We’re going to have to rebuild that quickly. Though I don’t suppose it’s too dangerous if the Carrion’s devils didn’t come in and kill these guys. Any idea how long it’s been down?”
Caval grimaced. “I’m sorry Martin. Time didn’t really make sense to me then, when the corpsedust had me.”
Martin turned to his men. “Search the rest of the chamber! Hidalgo, Huxley, Chelsea, you’re with me. I want to see what’s in that temple.”
Martin’s boots ground more cobblestones together as he crossed the distance. He could see into the temple now. There was a single circular bench inside that lined the temple’s inside wall. Seated on it were some men which might have been corpses, or could have been corpsemen. Martin couldn’t tell. He opened fire. Hidalgo, Huxley and Chelsea followed suit.
None of the corpsemen even bothered to move as the bullets tore through them. Black, half-congealed blood spewed forth from their bodies. Chelsea’s shotgun left huge craters in its victims, allowing Martin to see the corpsemen’s organs.
The ones whose eyes kept blinking, Martin realized, were the corpsemen. The others had been undead for some time. After another round of gunfire Martin was confident that their enemies had been destroyed, though a few were still twitching.
This is the worst job I’ve had in my life.
And that was saying a lot for Martin, because he’d once worked in waste management.
“This one here,” Chelsea was saying. “I think he was the leader.” She bent down by the body and looked at his arm. “Martin, do you see this?”
The body had an odd tattoo on its shoulder. It was of a man who appeared to be encased in rock from the waist down with his hands raised in the air—like he was praying, or diving upwards.
I’ve seen that before . . . but where?
“Martin, do you know who else has that tattoo?” Chelsea asked.
Not on Hidalgo, but I have seen it before.
“Father Klein does,” Chelsea said. “He was trying to keep it secret. I was in the church late one night about a year ago. When he exited his sleeping chamber, he was changing his shirt. He tried to cover it, but I saw it. It was too weird a symbol to forget.”
Klein? What could he have to do with the corpsemen? What does he have to hide? Mark my words, Father or no Father, he’s going to be telling me.
“Martin, Chelsea, you should be looking at this one,” Hidalgo said. “He be still alive, a little. And I think he be humming.”
Martin moved closer as Chelsea knelt by the corpse.
“Oh, God,” Chelsea said. “Look at his legs.”
The man’s pants were so tattered that they ended at his mid-thigh, revealing a pair of skinless legs. The exposed muscles were dark grey, almost black, and so smooth that they looked oddly metallic. Perhaps one of the corpsemen had been eating off of this one.
Martin leaned forward to examine it. The thing’s skin was unusually pale. As Martin got closer, he noticed that the face was colored like marble, with light blue veins running under the skin in way that made them look like a pattern in stone. This corpse showed no signs of rot. The body’s eyes were closed, and its head leaned back against the wall of the temple as if in peaceful repose. There was something about the man’s face that bothered Martin. Something that was hauntingly familiar.
“His skin looks like marble.” Martin said.
Huxley leaned in beside Martin, and picked something up out of its mutilated lap. It was a spent bullet.
Martin shook his head and went back to inspecting the corpse. Hidalgo had been right, this one was still alive, but barely. Its throat was vibrating a little. Martin looked again at the thing’s face. He was sure he’d seen it before. Death had changed the man’s features dramatically. The cheeks had sunken in, the complexion was different, but the man was . . .
Kyle.
“It’s Kyle,” Martin said.
Chelsea’s lips parted. “Oh no! Please be okay, please be okay.” She put her hands on Kyle’s cheeks.
Kyle, or what was left of him, was still breathing.
“You be knowing this one?” Hidalgo asked.
Martin nodded. The fellow was still breathing, though with what had happened to his legs, Martin wasn’t sure how. Chelsea stepped back, her hands covering her mouth, her eyes glistening.
Wait. He’s not just breathing, he’s Humming.
Martin tried to listen.
“Hmm . . . hmm hm hm. Hhm dum dum.”
“You’ve got to be okay,” Chelsea was saying. “Martin, we have to take him back to Harpsborough. We can feed him the sinfruit juice. He can tell us what happened to the expedition. Tell us if Aaron is okay.”
Kyle’s eyelids fluttered open. “Ezekiel cried, ‘Dem dry bones!’”
Martin leapt back and Huxley let out a high pitched scream. The eyes were all black, like a dyitzu’s.
That is not Kyle.
The body lunged forward, its head colliding with Huxley’s. The scream was cut short. Huxley collapsed backward to the ground. A single line of blood began to trickle down from a cut along his brow. The blood spread out, forming tiny rivers which flowed across his face.
It went for Hidalgo next, its arms swinging like clubs. Hidalgo skipped back, tripping over a fallen body, and landing on the ground. The black eyed thing was on top of him. Hidalgo shouted in pain as it took a bite out of his shoulder. Red blood spurted up from the wound.
The creature reared back, spitting blood and chunks of Hidalgo’s skin out of its mouth.
Martin fired two bullets into the back of its head. The bullets stopped, robbed of all force, and dropped to the ground where they bounced, tinkling along the marble floor alongside Martin’s spent shell casings.
Martin had helped fight an Icanitzu once in the Bordonelles, and his bullets had been similarly ineffective.
The creature rammed its head downward, slamming it into Hidalgo.
Martin attacked the thing, clubbing at it with his rifle. The rifle stopped, just like the bullets, and Martin lost his balance, falling into his opponent.
Unlike his rifle, Martin’s body was able to affect the thing. They staggered together over the fallen corpses littering the room.
It turned on him suddenly, arms flailing. Martin blocked one strike with his rifle, then another, and another. One slipped through, hitting Martin in the stomach hard enough to make him double over. He tried to stand back up straight, doing his best to ignore the pain. He could not. Martin tried to flee from the creature, but it managed to land another blow on the back of his head during his mad dash towards the temple’s exit.
Martin fought to keep his balance, but the blow had blurred his vision so badly he couldn’t get his bearings. He reached out but his hands grasped only air. He toppled down a few stairs and landed on the cobblestones. He struggled to his hands and knees, his world still spinning.
He looked behind him.
The flayed legged creature stood in the doorway of the temple. It walked out into the cobblestoned chamber and began to descend the stairs.
Martin’s hunters and Constance’s men opened fire. Bullets skipped off of the marble flagstones beneath its feet and buried themselves in the temple wall. Stone cracked from the barrage, sending out jets of dust. The Harpsborough men stopped firing.
Bullets rolled like marbles down the stairs.
The creature was unharmed. It descended another step.
Martin clutched at the loose cobbles and tried to stand. The world was still spinning too quickly for him to stay upright, but even through his shaky vision, he spotted his rifle ahead of him. He threw the cobblestone in his hand backwards and lunged for his gun.
His heart soared as his fingers clasped around his weapon. He used it to support his body’s next attempt to stand. He succeeded.
His legs felt shaky beneath him, and his world was still spinning, but he was on his feet. The cobblestone he’d thrown was skittering across the ground to the right of the creature. Martin’s men hadn’t retreated, but Martin couldn’t understand why. Their weapons were useless against this thing.
It’s me. They’re not running because I haven’t been defeated.
This was all wrong. Martin wasn’t supposed to be the hero, he knew that. Heroes were people like Aaron, or Galen, or Michael. Martin was just a hunter. He wasn’t even a particularly good one. Even Katie, his girlfriend knew that. He was no fighter.
But they were all looking at him—and at the creature.
You took this job, Martin. Fuck Katie.
The creature was approaching. Martin walked towards his fate.
It swung again. Martin’s rifle stopped the blow.
It started to circle him. Martin tried to keep up with it on his shaky legs. It struck out again and again, but both times Martin backed out of range. His footing was starting to feel a bit more secure. The world’s spinning was slowly grinding to a halt. Martin kicked out at it, his foot hitting the thing’s knee. He didn’t do any damage, in fact, he only pushed himself away from the beast, but at least his foot wasn’t affected by whatever magical immunity this thing had to bullets.
Even so, the creature’s body seemed to be made of stone. It attacked him again, low and high, low and high. Martin picked off the attacks, one by one, retreating. He swung out with his rifle on instinct, but again there was no effect.
The creature moved forward. Martin tried to dart back, but his strike had left him off balance. He took a blow on the shoulder and fell tumbling to the ground, his rifle flying from his grasp. Again he struggled to his feet, his fingers clasping around the loose cobbles. It was almost on him. To buy time, he threw a stone. The stone bounced off of its forehead even as Martin found his footing. He didn’t have time to make it to his gun, so he backpedaled away in the other direction.
His legs were still shaky, and his ankle turned on a loose stone. He dropped to one knee. The creature was coming fast. One image stuck out in Martin’s brain. It was of the stone bouncing off the creature’s head. It had bounced. The stones could hurt it.
Martin picked up two more stones and powered himself back up to his feet. Perhaps sensing his newfound confidence, the creature stopped. Martin felt the rush of blood in his ears. His heart was pumping like it had never done before.
He breathed in, filling his lungs with air. “STONE HIM!” Martin’s voice boomed.
He hurled one of the cobblestones at the creature, then the next. His men were complying. Stones, a few getting dangerously close to Martin, flew in from all directions. Martin backpedaled again. The creature tried to stay with him, but the cobblestones were coming in fast and thick. One strike jerked its head to the side. The rain of rock slowed it down.
Martin grabbed two more stones and flung them. One struck home, hitting the thing in the chest. The Harpsborough men, emboldened now, were getting closer. Their throws were getting more accurate. It was the creature’s turn to lose its footing. Martin joined in, picking up cobbles and throwing them as fast as he could. Black blood, slick like oil, was coming out of the thing now. It crawled forward, but only for a moment. Even after it stopped, the stones kept coming.
After a while, a few hunters paused. Then a few more. Then all of them. Everyone was looking at Martin. He moved forward to inspect the creature. Its brains were leaking out of its nose.
“It’s dead,” Martin reported.
His men broke into cheers.
“You think it’s coincidence?” Rick asked El Cid.
Q had brought them all to another room that looked down upon the cypress swamp. This one was even higher than the first, and the mists had almost cleared completely off of the lake.
El Cid let her binoculars fall away from her face. “This corpse trap was set years ago, perhaps even anticipating the call. The corpses have been gathering here for at least that long. I think it’s safe to say that our clash with their harpies has caused them to adapt their schedule. And Q, you were right. Those aren’t people on the backs of the harpies, they’re wights.”
Jessica was leaning over Molly, sewing the girl’s abdomen together with a needle and some devilgut thread. Molly’s face was red, and she was tearing up. Even so, she didn’t cry out. Ellen felt a bit of jealousy, since unlike her, Molly didn’t need anything to bite down on.
Massan wasn’t in very good shape either. A bump the size of a golf ball rose up from the back of his head. His eyes were unfocused, and he kept asking where they were and what they were doing. Rick said he’d be okay in a few days.
Ellen walked passed them to stand next to El Cid and Rick.
The corpses were gathering, grouping together. After a group got large enough, a harpy would fly out, bearing a wight. Then the group would march in a single file line out of the chamber. Q had said they were heading west.
Rick frowned. “So you’re sure it’s a call that’s caused the devils to leave here?”
El Cid nodded.
“We had thought it was a wave.”
“I can see why you thought that. But like I’ve said before, the circumferences of very large circles can end up looking like lines.”
A particularly large harpy took flight. Ellen couldn’t tell from this distance, but it might have been larger than the one El Cid had fought.
Eagan whistled. “How many wings is that? Eight? Ten?”
“Twelve.” El Cid took her binoculars off her neck and pulled their string around her ponytail. “Take a look.”
Eagan accepted the binoculars and held them up to his own eyes. “That thing’s going to be as hard as a Minotaur to kill. How old do you think it is?”
El Cid shrugged. “At least a thousand years, by my guess.”
“Can I look?” Ellen asked.
“Sure, kid,” Eagan answered. “Just be careful. Binoculars aren’t easy to come by.”
Ellen took them and put them up to her face. At first everything looked blurry, but then she was able to focus the lenses. Her field of vision shook radically with the trembling of her hands, and she had to struggle to keep them steady. She saw the long lines of corpses moving slowly across the Cypress swamp. The binoculars brought her close, scarily close, to them. She could see their facial features. One’s nose had rotted away. Another had no arms. A third’s skull had been cracked open and never grown back together.
“A Minotaur?” Rick was asking.
The one with no nose was stumbling through the cypress knees. Ellen wondered if corpses ever sprained their ankles.
“Maybe.” El Cid’s voice did not carry with it great conviction.
“An Archdevil?” Rick tried.
El Cid was silen
t.
“You think it’s Tu-El, don’t you. You think they’ve found him. You think he’s returned to the City of Blood and Stone.”
“Maybe,” El Cid answered. “There’s an Archdevil at Londinium too.”
“Who the hell is Tu-El?” Massan asked.
No one answered him.
“Surely calls this big have happened before,” Rick said. “To fight the Spanish Imperials, maybe. Or the 1860 Americans.”
“Yes,” El Cid answered. “At those times, great calls went out. You know your history well. But there is no empire for them to face. There is no great enemy. This is too . . . too human a time to attack.”
A corpse toppled over into the swamp. Slowly, it managed to drag itself back up to its feet.
“Where are they going?” Ellen asked.
“West,” Q answered.
This wasn’t telling Ellen much. “What’s west?”
“The Carrion.”
Ellen took the binoculars away from her face and looked towards Rick. “But that’s where we’re going.”
“Hold your fire!” Martin shouted as the corpsemen reinforcements entered the room. “There’s too many.”
And none of the new corpsemen had guns, for that matter.
Wait. Those are just corpses.
But there were a lot of them. At first Martin thought they were moving as a mob, but then he noticed that there was an unnatural order in their formation. It was more like a column. And they weren’t heading towards his men.
Maybe they haven’t seen us.
But the dead had seen them. Their heads were all turned towards Martin and his hunters, even as they walked the other way. That defied everything that Martin knew about corpses. They were unthinking attacking things, he’d thought. They’d never ignore a warm blooded human, he’d thought.
Martin and his hunters backed away, moving to the exit of the chamber. The corpses, now perhaps numbering over a thousand, stumbled past the temple.
Knight of Gehenna (Hellsong Book 2) Page 38