Johan turned to run, and his friends followed his lead.
They hadn’t made it out of the square when Aldous slipped on a slick rock and dropped face first onto the snow.
Johan and Dietrich stopped and turned, rifles raised, to see Aldous slide to an abrupt stop a snow bank.
Aldous’ blue eyes looked up at them, never back at the thing whose hard, heavy steps could be felt in his belly as the ground shook.
Dietrich lifted his rifle to his shoulder, aimed, and fired three times. Each shot lodged in the golem’s chest, not slowing it a bit, not gaining Aldous any time. He kept the rifle up as the golem stomped down on the back of Aldous’ calf, pulverizing the muscle and bone into the frozen dirt.
Aldous’ eyes opened wider as he screamed. The golem stomped down on the base of his spine, cutting off all feeling to his legs, crushing his pelvis.
Dietrich lowered his aim and pulled the trigger, putting a bullet in Aldous’ forehead before he could suffer anymore.
With that the creature began running again, blood now crusting on the cold surface of its misshapen right leg.
Dietrich shot it again.
Johan grabbed his shoulder. “It’s not working. Run.”
They did, and the golem stayed close behind.
~*~
The fire crackled weakly. The little warmth it gave off wouldn’t keep the golem away much longer. Johan lifted his rifle and shot it where a neck would have been on a person, then in the stomach, then in the crotch.
Johan laughed. “Too bad for you…no snowballs.” He laughed harder for a moment, then scowled and shot it where a knee should be in each leg. A shot to each shoulder and then one right where a mouth should have been.
By now the golem was covered in chips and spotted with dark splotches, bullets that had gotten lodged in its translucent body.
It felt not a single impact. It didn’t bleed and it didn’t stop, and though it was self aware enough to avoid the heat of Johan’s pathetic little fire, it didn’t really think. It only did what it was told.
Johan shot it in the chest again: dead center, bull’s-eye.
He didn’t know that the golem, hulking and frozen behemoth that it was, could have been stopped with a well-placed shot or two. On its forehead, etched carefully, invisible in all but texture, was the word, EMET, the Hebrew word for Truth. The word that, when wielded by a holy man, by one who is as much like God as an imperfect creature could hope to be, could give life to the inanimate. It could breathe life into the dust or ice of the Earth, in an imperfect imitation of God’s divine spark to Adam’s dust.
A carefully placed shot, or perhaps a few, to chip away some of the lettering carved into the golem’s forehead, could easily, if one were a good shot, change the word from EMET to MET; from truth to dead. Every robot has an off switch, every fortress a weak point. Like Goliath, killed by a stone flung by a mere boy, the golem’s weak point was at its forehead.
Johan lacked that bit of knowledge.
“Stupid, pig rabbi,” he said, squeezing off two more shots that struck the golem in the abdomen, chipped a bit of ice away, and then went off at wild angles. “I’ll just shoot you until you’re chipped away to nothing,” Johan laughed. “It’ll only take a few weeks. Or I could wait until summer.”
Johan stopped laughing. His lower lip quivered for a moment, and he shot again.
~*~
Johan and Dietrich ran, while the golem followed. The village square was far behind them and hardly visible when they occasionally looked over their shoulders to check their lead.
Johan was faster than Dietrich, who’d always prided himself on his strength and his bulky muscles which now slowed him down.
Johan was confident. Even if the monster caught up, it would get Dietrich first and he would get away.
“Where do we go?” Dietrich yelled. His words came out choppily. He was already out of breath.
“We need explosives.” Johan said it and thought it simultaneously. Bullets might not work, but a grenade would at least take a leg off and slow the bastard down. Then they’d go back for the old man, and Johan would enjoy killing him, making sure every damn one of “his people” watched as he was shot first in each knee and elbow, then in the stomach, and finally, only when he was already on the verge of death, right in the face.
But they had quite a way to go to get to their base, a distance that grew as the golem chased them away from it.
“Split up!” Johan screamed. “Go left, and I’ll go right. Meet back at home base. Then we’ll blow it to bits!”
Dietrich shook his head. “I can’t run much longer.”
“You have to…no other choice. Just think of the end. We’re not that far as long as we turn back now.”
Dietrich, through gasping breaths, said, “Yes.” He had started to cut left when it caught him.
They hadn’t been looking back, and Dietrich had been slowing. Just as he shifted his trajectory, the club at the end of the golem’s left arm, like an oversized fist with all of the fingers fused together, collided with the side of his head.
Dietrich fell, turning as he did so, and hit the back of his head on the frozen earth. The golem stopped in front of him, letting Dietrich pour rifle fire into its chest.
“Johan!” Dietrich yelled. There was panic in his voice, something Johan had never expected from Dietrich. He would have thought Dietrich would have died bravely, with his pride.
Johan saw the bulge at the end of the golem’s right arm come crashing down on to Dietrich’s abdomen, the blunt force of it crushing everything into the snow and dirt.
Dietrich yelled, and blood spurted from his mouth.
Johan turned and ran, faster than he’d run while staying with Dietrich, faster than he’d ever run before, he thought. It wasn’t fast enough, however, to get away from the sound of Dietrich screaming before his voice was abruptly silenced.
Johan ran in a wide arch, circling back to get a grenade, to get every grenade they had and rain his explosive fury down on this beast and blow it straight to Hell, where it could melt into a puddle of piss for all he cared.
Then Dietrich’s body landed in front of him, the head crushed up like it was rubbed in a giant mortar and pestle. It landed so close to him that Johan tripped over the body before he could stop.
He landed face first in the fresh snow. He rolled onto his butt and wiped the cold from his red face.
“How did it pick him up? The damned thing has no fingers!”
Then Johan heard it stomping and looked up to see that it was already close and moving with terrible speed. He crouched and went into a run like a sprinter from a starting block, giving it his all before he’d even stood all the way up.
Now the golem was between him and his grenades again. He’d have to sprint and put some distance between himself and the monster before trying to hook around again.
He ran and the ice followed.
~*~
Johan was getting cold.
The golem stood just outside the fire’s diminishing circle of warmth. Its body was chipped and pocked with dark bullets. Its legs and hands had blood frosted onto them. The arms hung peacefully at its sides, and Johan knew that it would wait until the summer came and melted it away before it would give up.
It had all the time in the world, and Johan’s time was dying out with his fire.
He shot it again. Then he pulled the trigger on his rifle and it clicked. He was out of ammunition.
He grunted and threw the rifle like a misshapen spear. It collided with the golem’s chest and fell to the ground. An icy foot stomped down on it, bending the metal beneath its colossal weight.
Johan watched this, studied the flattened barrel, and frowned. He pulled out his pistol, his lucky Luger won in a card game, and knew that if he had to use it, it meant he was about to die a cold and painful death.
~*~
Johan sprinted until he was going to vomit. He slowed momentarily and looked back to see the golem still f
airly close and completely tireless.
“Shit!” He’d been chased out of the village proper and was heading into a snowy field.
Around him were strewn bits of garbage and building debris from earlier bombings. He grabbed some, piled it together, and pulled a match from his pocket.
“Please don’t be too moist,” Johan said, fully expecting that the days of storms would have made it just that. He figured that his chances of getting a fire started were as good as his chances of boxing the golem bare handed and taking its head clean off.
Then a scrap of newspaper caught and the flame spread to a piece of clothing.
The golem was too close, Johan started to move, and it followed him, but he saw it went around the small fire.
It knows, Johan thought. A puny fire like that wouldn’t do it…but it’s not smart, it doesn’t know that.
Johan cut left, slipped for a moment, and actually thought he would fall. He caught himself and ran in a wide arch until he was by the fire again. It was growing larger. It would at least buy him some time to think.
~*~
Time was running out, and he’d thought of nothing.
He wouldn’t make it to retrieve his explosives now. He’d gotten too far away, and the most direct route back would bring him back through the village. Who knew what else those Jews were capable of?
Besides, he couldn’t run anymore. He was exhausted and the golem never tired. He was slowing down and the golem never would. He had a few pistol rounds and desperation to work with, but that didn’t leave him many options.
He wasn’t dressed properly, not anymore at least, as he’d burned his jacket and shirt; even with the small fire, the cold was getting to him. He felt like the blood was hardening in his veins, freezing up and solidifying, making him feel stiff and tired.
“Damn it, Johan, think!” he yelled.
The golem watched him with its eyeless stare. It would wait.
If a rifle wouldn’t do it, the Luger would do absolutely nothing. If he couldn’t run, if he couldn’t keep the fire burning, what did he have left?
His mind shouted nothing, but his will responded that there was always something.
A single snowflake caught his eye in its meandering descent from the sky. It evaporated over the fire.
Johan’s eyes widened. No, he thought, no. Not another storm. Not now.
He looked up, his mouth open and teeth bared, sweat beading on his forehead in spite of the cold.
“No!” he screamed. He wanted to curse God for doing it to him. For letting the old man create a semblance of life, and damning him atop those distant heights as he dropped white punishment on him.
Against the grey backdrop of cloudy sky, the snow became visible as it fell, quickly escalating from a flurry to a blizzard in a matter of moments.
Time is up, the voice of the rabbi said solemnly in his mind. Time is up, agreed the laughing voice of the God of the Jews.
The snow fell harder and the fire began to sputter. Its heat was failing, beaten to death by the falling moisture, beaten by the frozen water, just as he would be if he didn’t come up with something.
The fire hissed and shrank. The golem took a step forward.
Johan put his free hand down. He kept his Luger pointed at the beast, and got up into a crouch.
Snow swirled in the air around him, painfully numbing the exposed skin of his arms, sinking gradually through the cotton of his undershirt. It melted in the air over the fire and rained down on the flames.
The golem took another step forward. It could practically reach him now.
Johan looked at the Luger and thought momentarily of turning it on himself, of putting the barrel of the gun in his mouth and saving himself the trouble of dying exhausted.
Then he thought otherwise.
He stood, kicked the remnants of the fire at the golem, and sprinted in the opposite direction. The cold tightened upon his shoulders like the caress of the golem’s icy limbs. His legs were numb and stiff from his flight, his gait faltering time and again. The ridged crunch of snow behind him pressed closer. He only had a single regret; he should have killed that damn Jew.
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
by
Amanda Lawrence Auverigne
Violet stood in front of the large metal table. She leaned forward slightly and gazed intently at the large three-panel cardboard display in front of her.
Several bright sheets of colored paper had been carefully attached to the center of the display. Dozens of charts, graphs and tables adorned the parchments.
Violet scanned each page of numerical data.
After a few moments, she blinked several times before standing erect. She took a small step away from the table and lowered her sight from the documents and gazed at the front portion of the table.
Three large glass jars lay in the center of the metal slab. Each water-filled globe contained a small yellow goldfish that swam happily within its confines.
“So whaddya think?” a low voice asked behind her.
Violet turned around and she saw Hal standing behind her.
The handsome young man’s blonde hair fell to his shoulders in graceful waves. He wore a crisp blue shirt and pressed khaki slacks. His hands were thrust inside his pockets. He gazed at Violet with a pair of cobalt blue eyes.
“It’s an amazing project Hal,” Violet said softly.
The sound of loud melodic giggles filled the space.
Violet turned in the direction of the noise. She looked around the crowded auditorium and took a deep breath when she saw Anna and Sylvia walking towards her.
The shapely young women were dressed in identical tight-fitting track suits of violet. Their long hair was the color of chestnuts and their shimmering locks fell to their graceful shoulders in loose curls.
The two women moved across the table-filled space with confident simultaneous motions. Their arms swung carelessly at their sides and their slender hips moved in a slow sensual rhythm with each step they took.
The attractive young women tossed their dark hair in a flirtatious fashion. They released simultaneous bursts of laughter while they glanced at the groups of gawking young men they passed.
The wide eyed youths gazed at the sauntering pair of attractive women with expressions of longing across their features.
Anna and Sylvia continued their journey forward and they stopped in front of Hal.
Anna moved close to Hal. She gazed into his eyes with an inviting smile.
“Hello Hal,” Anna said.
“Hey Anna,” Hal said.
“I love your project,” Anna said.
“I like your project too,” Sylvia stated.
Sylvia moved closer to Hal. She raised her hand and brushed at the young man’s shining curls with a faint giggle.
“Um thanks,” Hal said.
“Hello Anna. Sylvia,” Violet said with a slight edge to her voice.
Sylvia lowered her hand from Hal’s hair. She turned to Violet.
“I’m sorry, who are you?” Sylvia asked.
“My name is Violet. And you’ve known me since preschool,” Violet said.
“Really?” Sylvia asked.
“Really,” Violet replied.
“Well, this school is so big. And well, I know so many people,” Sylvia said.
Anna giggled.
Sylvia turned away from Violet with a delicate toss of her head and she gazed at Hal with a slow lick of her lips.
“Tell us more about your project," Sylvia purred. "What did you feed the little fishies again?”
Hal raised his hand and ran his fingers through his golden curls with a low chuckle.
“Your hair is so wonderful,” Anna said.
“It’s like gold,” Sylvia added.
“Thanks," Hal said. "Uh yours is nice too.”
“Mine or Anna’s?” Sylvia asked quickly.
“Well both of you,” Hal responded.
“But which one do you like better?” Sylvia asked
.
“Yeah mine or hers?” Anna inquired.
“Uh…” Hal stammered.
“Come on Hal. Don’t be shy,” Sylvia said.
“Yeah Hal. You don’t have to be shy with us,” Anna said.
Hal took a step forward. He lowered his hands and gently removed himself from Anna’s and Sylvia’s insistent embrace.
“You both have very nice hair," Hal began.
Anna and Sylvia gasped in unison and they turned to Violet with expressions of bewildered rage across their pretty features.
Violet felt her cheeks become hot. She stared at Hal with wide eyes and swallowed with great difficulty.
"I uh," Violet said. "Thanks Hal."
Hal winked at Violet.
The sudden sound of loud squeaking noises filled the crowded auditorium.
“What is that?” Anna asked with irritation.
“I don’t know," Hal said.
"It sounds really weird," Sylvia stated.
Hal glanced around the crowded auditorium before he turned around and stared at the space behind him.
A pair of old iron doors lay embedded in the stone wall on the left side of the area. The doors were painted green and thick chunks of paint peeled from the partitions and landed on the floor in dusty heaps.
A few yards away from the green doors, three pairs of opened iron doors that lead to the outer hall were situated near the front portion of the room.
The doors were the color of lemons. One of the yellow partitions was propped ajar.
A large group of laughing students stood in front of the opened partition.
The pupils clutched chilled cans of soda and cell phones in their grasp and they looked around the space while chatting in a loud animated fashion.
Several bored looking teachers could be seen strolling through the dim hall just beyond the doors.
The squeaking sound suddenly stopped and the loud sound of dozens of conversations echoed in the vast room.
Anthology of Ichor III: Gears of Damnation Page 17