The Devoured

by Curtis M. Lawson

  The enemy was closing in, more quickly than he liked. If there had been another man or two to help move the damn cannon he might have stood a chance, but he was the last living soul in the Confederate battalion. The corpses of his brothers watched him with the marked disinterest of the deceased. The approaching giant—a terrible creature with pale blue skin, onyx hair, and the blue uniform of the Northern army—observed his struggle with the sadistic amusement of a confident predator.

  Without needing to look behind him, the old man could sense the ice and snow, and the gray of winter encroaching upon the warm, vibrant landscape of his California home. He could feel the life being sucked from the sapling that he and his boy had planted. The crackling of living leaves turning brown and brittle filled his ears like thunder. The cannon and he were the last lines of defense. The unnatural cold—the word fimblewinter kept entering his mind—would soon take his land, his home, and his family. Between him and the end of his world stood only a shining Howitzer, with its wheels stuck in the ice. The approaching giant let out a massive howl from three hundred yards away. The sound was like creaking ice and breaking glass, followed by a gust of arctic wind. The giant's frozen breath hit the last standing Confederate like a sack of ice to the face. Black, necrotized tissue instantaneously replaced the rawhide skin of the old man's hands. The same icy burn gnawed at his face and ears, and the old man was sure that his head bore the same frostbite as his digits. Near him, a Southern battle flag stiffened and shattered from the power of the eldritch scream. The frost-covered bits of the Stars and Bars danced away on the evil winds.

  Knowing that all he held dear was on the verge of annihilation, the soldier put all his strength and will into pushing the Howitzer into position. The icy grip of the treasonous ground released, allowing the cannon to be swung in a wide arc and pointed at the giant. The creature threw its enormous head back and let out a shrill laugh that was incongruous with its titanic form.

  "Laugh it up, Yank," the old man muttered as he adjusted the angle of his weapon.

  Confident of his mark, the old man fired the bronze gun, loosing a ball of fiery lead toward the ice-skinned invader. The shot missed its mark by a yard on the left. A curse escaped the old man's lips and he went about the slow business of loading his weapon. No cannonballs remained, so he bent down, and, in desperation, tore the skull from one of his decomposing brothers-in-arms. The wind whistled through its empty eyes and the old man could have sworn that it sounded like a somber, mocking version of the melody from Laurel Lee. This disturbed him more than reason called for, and, with more than a little bit of fear, he forced the skull into the barrel of the Howitzer.

  The thunderclaps of the approaching giant were getting louder. The monster was close. If the old man didn't act fast and effectively, it would devour everything in this world that was worth a damn.

  Taking a deep breath, trying hard to block out the pain of his frostbitten skin, the old man fired another shot. The skull ejected from the cannon, trailed by flame and black smoke. This time it found its mark, and bore a hole straight through the chest of the Devourer. The wound showed no organs or vital bits inside. Rather, the giant looked like a wax figure whose chest had been burned through by a cigar.

  After several long moments of pained disbelief, black ooze began filling the wound in the monster's chest. The massive creature fell to the earth and shattered like some crystal monolith. The resulting crash was louder than even the boom of the Howitzer, and the battlefield shook with the force from the fall. Careening from the dead, shattered hand of the Devourer was a massive cavalry sword, nearly the size of a grain silo. Like a nightmarish ice skate, the blade skidded along on its edge across the frozen plain. In its wake a deep groove was cut into the ice, revealing not soil or bedrock beneath, but rather a black, oozing substrate.

  As the ichor of the diseased land bubbled up from its earthen wound, the broken shards of the Union titan began to take on a life of their own. Ranging in size from a pebble to well larger than a man, the pieces of the broken corpse began to form into devilish creatures with crystalline flesh and tattered uniforms, the color of the winter sky before dawn. There were hundreds of them, each armed with razor-sharp talons and gnashing stalactite teeth.

  The old man could sense the fimblewinter behind him, encroaching further unto his home. The log fence that marked his property was creaking as the flash freeze caused the wood to contract with unnatural quickness. His grass was turning brown and then quickly fading to ashy grey.

  It was more than just the cold threatening the old man's family and home. The swarm of monsters that had once been a god were storming forward, like a hateful, living hail storm. An insatiable compulsion to snuff out any and all life burned behind their eyes.

  The old man had neither the bullets nor the time to shoot down each abomination. He would not allow these creatures to reach his wife and son. He would not let the cold northern winds capture his land. To the last drop of blood, he would fight these things.

  There would be no time to reload the cannon, so the old man did the next best thing. With a strong kick, he knocked over the powder keg that stood near the Howitzer. Another push with his legs sent the barrel rolling toward the oncoming frost monsters.

  The trollish creatures, dressed in the colors of the Union Army, took no notice of the rolling keg. Either their minds were incapable of self-preservation, or the implications of what was about to happen did not register in their alien brains.

  The old man raised his revolver and leveled the sights on the barrel. Once the gap between the ice creatures and the keg had closed sufficiently, he pressed down on the cold steel trigger. The burning round cut through the frigid air like a runaway star. The old man's aim was true. A great blast of fire and force tore through the better number of monsters. The shower of icy bits and melting crystalline limbs served as a testimony to the power held within the alchemy of man. Sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal married through human ingenuity had proved enough to shatter the arcane binds of these things from beyond. That thought brought the slightest smirk to the old man's lips.

  When the smoke cleared, the old man could see only seven trolls remaining. 'Seven is manageable,' he thought while training his irons on the closest monster. He aimed for the heart rather than the head, for even mindless creatures and animate machines have to circulate their fuel. He took in a deep inhalation of the frigid air, commanding his lungs to accept the burning cold oxygen. Clearing his mind of fear and hope and all things in between, the old man loosed one of his five remaining rounds. The bullet tore through the troll's chest, sending stress fractures through its entire torso. Midnight-blue ichor poured from the monster's wound as it fell backwards.

  There was no pause among the other blizzard beasts. In their black eyes, a grim determination seemed to move them along, rather than mad rage. The old man reckoned that their unwavering ferocity came not from mindlessness, nor solely from rage, but from necessity. These creatures fought for their future, as he fought for his family. It was him or them—humanity or the devouring gods what lay beyond. They charged forward into death’s valley because to waver meant oblivion.

  The old man could respect this. He nonetheless continued to rain lead upon them. One shot for each monster, that's all he could afford. Swinging his iron to the leftmost target, he fired a single shot before ticking over to the next abomination. Four of the five bullets shot true and proper, destroying whatever pumps kept the vile life-stuff flowing through the children of Utgard. One shot strayed and blasted through the shoulder of its target. This was good enough for the old man. With only three remaining, he felt confident that his blade could finish the battle.

  He pulled the thick, heavy sword from his belt. A comforting warmth radiated from its leather-wrapped grip. The warmth filled the old man with strength and pride. Like gunpowder, the gladius was a simple and elegant tool—something raw that had been harvested from the primal earth and shaped by will into an instrument of civilization. The
warmth coming from the sword, he had no doubt, stemmed from the living will of mankind, of which he was both a contributor and a conduit.

  With great effort, the old man forced the screaming muscles of his legs to power forward, despite the cold. With a shrieked battle cry, the old man charged at the three frost trolls. The trolls did not slow their pace, and met their enemy with a howl of their own. Seconds later, the first monster clashed with the old man.

  With a vicious overhead strike, the old man slashed at his enemy. The troll let out a sickening, abomination of a laugh as it brought its arm up to deflect the blow. The horrible laughter was cut short as the gladius cleaved through the creature's forearm and continued down through its clavicle. The gladius was stuck in the beast's icy flesh. The old man kicked the creature hard in the chest while pulling his blade back. The force of the kick dislodged the weapon and shattered the monster's torso.

  By this point, the second Union monster was upon him. This one was smaller than the last, half the old man’s height, but quick as hell. With the speed and ferocity of a wild cat, the troll leaped on to the old man, knocking him back onto the icy battlefield. Its hands gripped around his massive neck, while its legs conformed to some unnatural position that allowed the beast to crouch on its enemy as it strangled. The troll's mouth opened wide, revealing a maw full of razor-sharp flint and a black tongue that writhed like an eel. Still choking the old man with all of its unnatural might, the troll snapped its jaws in an attempt to tear the flesh from its quarry's face. With an agility that seemed supernatural for a man of his age and size, the old man brought the blade of his gladius between himself and the monster. White and blue sparks jumped into existence as the stone teeth of the beast bit against the unbreakable steel of the artillery sword. The monster tried to exert its enormous strength by shattering the blade with its jaws, just as it was crushing the trachea of the mortal beneath it. The gladius, however, burning with the combined will of all mankind, won the struggle. Cutting through the flint teeth, the blade sliced the troll's head off just above its lower jaw.

  The final creature ignored the old man, who was still gasping for air on the cold ground. It ran past the fallen warrior, and toward the warm lands just out of reach. Greedily sucking oxygen, he struggled to push the heavy corpse of his last kill off of his body. The old man would not let the last of the beasts reach his home. With all that was left within him, the old man flung the dead monster off of himself and pivoted backward into a kneeling position. The strangulation from moments before had left his vision blurred with dark spots. Nonetheless, he pulled the gladius over his shoulder and flung it with all the strength he could muster. It flew forward, tumbling end over end for the course of three revolutions before the blade pierced through what passed for the monster's heart.

  The old man laughed as he watched the final invader fall. He had not known if the blade would find its mark, and watching it do so brought a joy into his heart that bordered on madness.

  The joy was short lived. As the inky spots that had blurred his vision began to fade, the old man saw the most horrifying image he had ever laid eyes upon. From each shattered troll a hundred tiny, crystalline goblins had formed. Like a swarm of nightmarish faeries they descended upon his home, ushering the fimblewinter in behind them. His wife and child now stood in the doorway of their home, afraid and confused. The old man screamed some incomprehensible epithet of rage and despair. Still with no limit on the fight within him, he tried to run toward the house and somehow save them. As soon as he broke forward something grabbed at his legs, pulling him down into the icy ground. Trying to pull free, he looked at what had clutched onto him and saw that his fallen brothers of the confederacy, dead but moving, were dragging him down below the icy surface of the battlefield. He fought with all his strength, but he may as well have been a child wrestling a bear.

  "It's over, Johnny, and there ain't no marching home," one of them hissed from a mouth that was missing the bottom jaw.

  More undead hands grabbed at him, pulling him through the ice and waist-deep into the frigid ichor of the diseased soil. He turned his head once more to his family and home. The green grass was replaced with white frost and the house was cracking and screaming. His wife had fallen to the ground, a frozen, shriveled mummy. The worst sight, though, was the image of an army of tiny Devourers swarming upon his boy and eating their way into his flesh as he screamed for his father.

  The old man tried to scream back for his boy, but the diseased blood of the earth filled his mouth and nose with the essence of pestilence. His final words came out as gurgled cries as his countrymen dragged him into oblivion.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Emmett breached the frozen surface of the slushy, ice-choked water and gasped for breath. The intensity of the cold in the air burned his lungs like fire. Better to breathe and burn than to not breathe at all, though.

  Coughing and choking, he puked up water that tasted clean and fresh. Somewhere in the back of his mind this felt wrong. It should have been salt water, shouldn't it?

  The river was massive, but slow-moving. The icy slush did not just sit upon its surface, but made up the entirety of the river, at least as far down as Emmett could feel. At any moment, Emmett feared, the whole body of water might stop flowing altogether and freeze into solid ice.

  Emmett first looked to his left. He couldn't quite determine where the flow of slush ended and the snow-covered riverbank began, but a hundred yards or so away he could make out the image of a dwarfish creature with black, frostbitten skin and a long beard, the color of the winter sky before a snowfall. Braided into the creature's beard were shimmering bits of wealth, gold and silver and small stones of various shades. It wore a cloak of white fur and a hood made from the skinned head of a wolf. Beneath the cloak Emmett could see the shimmer of gold and silver necklaces, many of them, hanging about the dwarf's neck.

  The short, broad-shouldered creature beckoned Emmett, curling its stubby index finger back and forth toward him. The summoning finger bore a three-piece ring that was jointed at each knuckle and glimmered with a solar radiance.

  The dwarf put a mighty fear into Emmett's heart. It was not the strange proportions of the beckoning creature's body, nor its black, necrotized skin. It was the impatient manner in its stance and the greedy smile beneath its beard. There was an aura of insatiable hunger that emanated out from the creature. No, hunger was the wrong word. Greed. That was more accurate. It didn't need anything from Emmett. It desired something though, and with an intense, dangerous passion.

  Emmett, still fighting to keep afloat in the river of slush, turned his gaze to the other embankment. The river's edge seemed as if it were probably a further swim on this side, and what Emmett saw may have stricken most men as a more dire situation than a single, suspicious dwarf.

  Far off in the distance stood a massive tree, whose girth was wider than Emmett's field of vision, and whose heights reached above the misty, snow-driven sky. In front of this tree a bloody and vicious battle was taking place. Men with missing limbs, dressed in blood-soaked uniforms of Union blue, fought against Confederate soldiers with holes in their chests and pieces of skull missing. Among them was the odd Indian brave, riddled with rifle fire or belly cut open and leaking guts, pitting his anger against gray and blue alike. Their numbers were incalculable, as if the whole of each army were meeting on this final field to settle the war of the states once and for all.

  For Emmett, in the horror to his right there was also hope.

  Without looking back at the short creature on the other bank, Emmett began to swim toward land with a sense of urgency. If this was truly the whole of each American army, then his father would be there. His father would be there, a head above all the others, like Ajax at the sacking of Troy. His father would be there with answers, and action, and a way to fix everything. If Emmett could just swim to land, if he could see through the snow, and mist, and the smoke of rifle fire, and the spray of blood, then he would find salvation in the brillia
nt eyes and strong hands of the man who had given him life.

  Emmett paddled and kicked as hard as his strong, young body could manage. The more he fought to reach land, the stronger the grip of the sucking slush became. After a few attempts to swim with all his gusto, and a few times nearly being sucked down below the freezing river, Emmett caught on to how things worked. He steeled himself to the burning cold, and forced his firework nerves to slow down.

  Once he got control of body and mind, the boy let his body float on the surface and used his long arms to take slow, deep strokes that allowed him to glide through the slush. The going was slow, and the frigid slush sapped his strength and his will. There was no choice though. Emmett kept paddling.

  When his hand finally hit solid ground, mid-stroke, it was visually indistinguishable from the slush river that he was submerged in. His sense of touch told a different story. What his hand found purchase against was solid ice, hard as bedrock and cold as death. Emmett pressed both hands against the frozen ground and pushed his aching, tired body up and away from the river's grasp. Somehow it was colder in the open air than it had been in the slush. Emmett was okay with this. He preferred the increased chill to the heavy death grip of the quagmire that he just escaped.

  The battle raged around him, dead men hacking one another to pieces, yet still fighting. Cannons fired, leaving smoke that was indistinguishable from the steam rising out of their bodies—indistinguishable from the falling snow. No roaring powder blast accompanied the artillery's deadly payload. No cries, neither of death nor war, echoed from the gaping mouths of the angry and agonized. Swords clashed with no volume and horses screamed in silent protest. The realm of the auditory belonged to howling winds and creaking ice alone.