by M. K. Gibson
“Move,” I threatened.
The People opened their ranks slightly, allowing me to hobble towards the rock where TJ was bound. And towards Ehawee and Akecheta.
“You should have left,” Ehawee said in a squawking voice.
“And you knew I couldn’t. He’s one of my people.”
In her eagle-hybrid form, I wasn’t sure, but I swear I saw her smile, then look back towards Macha. “I know.”
I turned my guns on Ehawee as I continued to move slowly towards TJ. “You OK, kid?”
“Uh, no!”
“Yeah, sorry, dumb question,” I said, chancing a glance over to where he was bound. I stowed my right gun and popped the retractable blade from my tech bracer. With a couple of swipes, TJ was free.
“Now what?” TJ asked.
“Working on it.”
Akecheta took several menacing steps forward. “You cannot take him. Wakinyan has decreed it so.”
“Well, I don’t care what Wakinyan wants.”
Akecheta crossed the distance between us in a flash. I responded by putting the barrel of my gun hard between his bovine eyes. “Don’t make me do this,” I whispered.
“If you shoot him, then there is no place on this planet where The People will not hunt you,” Ehawee warned me.
“No,” I said to Ehawee while keeping my eyes on Akecheta, who snorted and glared back at me. “You put me in this position. You captured us. You were going to sacrifice the boy. I will NOT bear the guilt of what happens next. Now back . . . the fuck . . . up.”
No one moved. No one breathed. The entire moment hung on a razor’s edge. My mind raced with a thousand images and a thousand scenarios.
“No,” Akecheta said, breaking the silence. He brought his hand up fast, batting my gun away.
“Shit,” I swore as I kicked him square in the bison balls, then shot him with a hard stun from my left gun. The warrior hit the ground as everything went to shit around us.
Ehawee summoned another bolt of lightning from the sky, once more striking the still hovering gunship. Through The Collective, I felt the connection to the ship sever. The ship listed to one side, drifting towards the ravine’s edge, and fell slowly.
“Hang on!” I yelled to TJ, putting the kid onto my back as I fired in full auto-mode, spraying stunning blasts wildly into The People. Willing The Collective to pump as much adrenaline into my system as it could, I turned on my still-wounded legs and ran through the pain towards the ravine’s edge. The falling ship continued to drift downward into the valley below.
Holstering my guns, I jumped onto the back of the ship with the strangest sense of déjà vu. TJ and I tumbled across the top of the gunship as I screamed in pain. Desperately, I tried to reestablish a link with the ship’s on-board computer. However, The Collective couldn’t make any contact, and the ship continued drifting downward, scraping the rocks.
Above us, I saw a few of the bison-hybrid warriors leap off the ravine’s edge onto the ship with us. From a lying position, I pulled my guns and fired at them, knocking them off the ship as they landed. The crazy warriors stopped coming once the ship was too far below them to jump down. Instead, they flooded down the carved paths in the ravine’s rock face.
“Well, time for plan B,” I said.
“That was plan A?!” TJ yelled.
“I didn’t see you come up with anything!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry for getting tied up. Here I was, trusting the adult not to abandon the child to the skinwalking people!”
Ouch. “OK, point taken. Sorry. But we have to get out of here.”
“You think?”
“I said I was sorry, kid, no reason to be an asshole about it. Now look,” I half-shouted, getting frustrated. “I can’t walk very well.”
“Why?”
“Jesus kid, just listen!” I said, angrier. As I did, I saw TJ wince.
Damn it. Dealing with a kid was a lot like dealing with a young recruit during my military time. They’re often scared, confused, inexperienced, and looking for guidance. I took a deep breath.
“Here’s the situation, kid: I got shot in my knees. I’m healing, but slowly. So when this ship, hits the ground, I need to you slide off and haul ass over to the Outrider. Fire it up, come get me, then we drive like mad.”
“OK,” TJ said, nodding. “You really got shot in the knees?”
“Yeah.”
“I . . . I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK,” I said. “Now just do your part. I’ll do what I can to hold them off.”
“Not to argue,” TJ said. “But is the Outrider the best plan? That didn’t work out too well for us last time.”
I looked over at the ground, determined we were at a safe enough height, and shoved the kid off the ship.
“Ouch! Asshole!” TJ yelled once he hit the ground. But the little trooper popped up quickly and did as instructed, running back towards the Outrider. I turned my attention back to The People. The warriors were still coming down the ravine’s pathways. I fired on them, shooting as if they were an old-fashioned shooting gallery at a carnival, doing my best to slow them down.
The ship hit the valley floor with a hard impact that shook me and knocked me from my sitting position. I too rolled off the back of the ship and down to the ground below. Pain flared through my legs, and I had to close my eyes to try and block it out.
I listened, and heard the Outrider’s engine coming fast. I tried to stand and failed, falling to the ground. I put my guns away and began to crawl with just my arms.
TJ whipped the Outrider into a drifting halt and a spray of debris. “Come on!”
“Trying,” I grunted.
The kid jumped out of the vehicle and wrapped his arms around me and pulled as hard as he could, trying to lift me. I don’t know, but together, the two of us managed to haul my near-useless ass into the vehicle as the bulk of The People began to reach the valley’s base. I heard their thundering hooves and Ehawee’s screeching above.
“OK,” I said, pulling my legs into the vehicle. “Go go go!”
“On it!” TJ said, dropping the Outrider into gear and slamming his foot down on the accelerator. “Which way?”
“Southeast,” I said. “We still have a mission to accomplish.”
“What if they catch us?”
“Then we fail. And every one of our people will suffer and die. So, what does that tell you?”
TJ turned his eyes to the open plain and gunned the engine. “We can’t fucking fail then.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
You’re Late
Thunder crashed and lightning struck the ground while TJ and I raced across the open plains of South Dakota. Behind us, the herd’s hooves rumbled in time with the storm. I couldn’t see her, but I knew Wakinyan was above us, guiding the herd and guiding the storm.
A screech above let me know Ehawee was there. Guided lighting strikes next to the Outrider told me she was gaining on us.
“What do we do, what do we do?!” TJ panicked. “They took our turret and they’re aren’t stopping!”
“I know, I know,” I said, looking over my shoulder in thermal vision at the herd. It looked thinner than earlier. Perhaps some of them didn’t have the stamina to keep up?
I could keep firing my weapons, but the only problem was I was hungry and weak. Tesla turned me into a walking generator for my guns and tech. But with the amount of trauma I’d endured, The Collective was drawing all types of my body’s reserves to patch me up. If I kept firing, then I would lose power, possibly when we needed it most.
“We have to just keep driving,” I said, trying to think of a plan.
Lighting struck just ahead of the Outrider, exploding the earth in a spray of rock and dirt.
“Shit!” TJ cursed, whipping the steering wheel to one side to avoid the destruction. “We can’t keep this up!”
“Kid, we don’t have a choice!”
“But that thing is going to kill us!”
“What thing?!�
��
“Jesus,” TJ grunted. “How is it you never see it?” TJ grabbed my head and pointed my chin to the sky. “There!”
Once again, I could see the Thunderbird. Wakinyan stretched across the sky, and I was in awe. She rolled through the clouds in impossibly slow arcs. Each flap of her wings exploded in concussive ripples of thunder. It was impossible that such a creature could exist. I saw her. I saw through her. She was the storm and so much more.
As we drove, we passed an ancient sign. “What’s a Nebraska?” TJ asked.
“Another state.”
“State of what?”
“Never mind,” I said, not wanting to explain it.
I lit a smoke and tried to think of a plan. If we could maintain our top speed, then they should become too tired to follow. They were, after all, biological, and our fusion cell-powered vehicle had enough power to drive for days before we had to swap out a fresh cell.
But Ehawee wasn’t exactly normal. If she really was Wakinyan’s child, then she had power. And perhaps she was bestowing that power on her herd, allowing them to maintain their pursuit. If that was case, though, then why was the herd thinner?
Realization hit me. “Shit, TJ, stop!” I yelled.
“What? Why?!”
“Just stop!”
TJ slammed on the brakes as the Outrider crossed over the open terrain onto an ancient paved road. I saw a sign reading Highway 83. And there on that highway was the rest of the herd in their hybrid forms, huffing and puffing. In each of their hands, they held an over-sized plasma rifle. And each one was aimed at us.
“How did you know?” TJ asked.
“Divide and conquer,” I said, looking at the bison warriors. “Send your fastest warriors ahead to cut off your quarry while the rest move in from behind.”
As I spoke the words, the rest of the herd closed in behind us. They too were breathing hard, only their anger and Ehawee’s power fueling them. The bison shifted into their hybrid forms, removed their weapons from their specially-designed harnesses, and aimed them at us.
Ehawee landed on the old highway. She reverted to her human form, turning to face me. The storm, it seemed, was a couple of miles behind us and holding in that spot, not moving in. She looked tired and weaker than before, like she was pushed to her limit.
“You have gone far enough,” Ehawee said with labored breaths.
I stood with my guns in my hands. “We’re not going back.”
“No, you’re not,” Ehawee agreed as the finality of the chase settled in.
“Mother!” Macha said, stepping forward, turning back to her naked, human form. “We can’t!”
“You did as you needed to,” Ehawee said, not looking at her daughter. “And we did as we needed to. They were just not skilled enough to escape. It is the nature of things.”
Macha moved to stand in front of the Outrider, spreading her arms wide. “I will not allow it.”
“Move, Sister!” Akecheta said, stepping forward from the herd and remaining in his bison-man form. “You felt the will of Wakinyan, as did Mother and as did I. They are to go no further.”
“Ever the righteous fool, Brother,” Macha said, looking up at the minotaur.
“Better a fool than to be unwise.”
“Following does not make you wise, Brother. It makes you cattle.”
“Enough!” Ehawee cried out. “This ends now.”
“I agree,” came a deep, rolling voice from the darkness. “From the dark and into the dark, we walk. Thunderous sky guides our steps. Until the storm no longer hears the song of the land.”
“Chael!” I cried out.
Like a great ghost, Chael’s form rose up behind the warriors who blocked the Outrider. Each of his massive hands wrapped around a bison’s horns and tossed a warrior with casual disinterest.
“What is that?!” Akecheta bellowed, turning. As he did, Macha shifted into her own hybrid form and struck her brother across the head, knocking the bigger bison to the ground.
“Stop!” Ehawee commanded, but the siblings refused to obey. “People, destroy that thing!” Ehawee ordered as she shifted into her eagle form, grabbing each of her children in a giant, clawed hand.
The People turned and began firing on Chael. The giant laughed and shrugged off the plasma blasts, enduring the assault like one endures a hot shower.
“Chael, no killing!” I screamed.
“No fun,” Chael pouted, but the giant obeyed.
Wading into the bison-men, Chael grabbed the nearest of The People and tossed them into the night, repeating the process as he went. When a warrior tried to sneak up behind Chael, the giant lashed out, smashing teeth and breaking bone.
Chael made his way to the Outrider and smiled at me. “You’re late.”
“You disappeared,” I countered.
“I gave directions.”
“‘Southeast until you reach a river’,” I said, using air quotes, “are not directions!”
Chael sighed, then snatched a hand out, grabbing a bison-man by his bullish throat and lifting him in the air. “Child of the Sky, you have been forsaken.” With a casual disinterest, Chael threw the creature back as if he weighed nothing.
“Hello little one,” Chael said, waving at TJ.
“Hey Chael, where’d you go?”
“Away.”
“Why?”
“I was afraid,” Chael said.
“And now?” I asked.
“I am not.”
A roar cried as our Akecheta broke away from Ehawee’s grasp and gored his sister in the stomach. The bison man pierced Macha in the gut, then shook his head, driving the horn in deeper, savaging his sibling.
“Stop!” Ehawee said.
“No!” Akecheta said in response, his frenzy and bloodlust rising. “I am the better child! I am the one to lead The People when you pass on!”
I fired my blasters at their highest stun setting into Akecheta. The enraged minotaur shrugged off the attack and returned to his downed sister, raising both of his fists above his head, ready to bring them down on the wounded Macha.
Chael crossed the distance. He grabbed Akecheta’s outstretched hands in one of his and lifted him in the air so his feet dangled. “Nice cow,” Chael said, then hammered a fist into Akecheta’s gut so hard I swore he hit spine.
With the wind knocked out of him, Chael dropped Akecheta, who reverted to a naked man. Chael brought up his foot and placed it on the back of the downed warrior’s neck, then looked at Ehawee.
“Scion of The Thundering Faith, choose which child lives and which child dies.”
“I cannot,” Ehawee said, looking at both her children.
“Spoken like a true mother,” Chael said with a soft benevolence. Then the giant kicked Akecheta hard in the gut, launching the nude man into the darkness. Turning, Chael stomped over to Macha and knelt beside her. Licking his finger, Chael then pressed his saliva-coated digit into Macha’s wounds. He repeated the process several times, and with each pass of his finger, her wounds closed more and more until there was only bare copper skin.
Chael once saved my life that way. He did so because I used manners. I could only guess at why he did it now.
“I thank you,” Ehawee said.
Chael nodded. “The People must be strong when the time comes to defeat Wakinyan’s greatest enemy, Unktehi The Great Devil, father of the Abominations. And when Unktehi is no more, The People must turn their attention to the Dark Poison in the land.”
“You know our ways?”
Chael smiled a mirthless grin. “I speak for The Dark Poison. They wish you to be at your best when they crush you and feast upon oblivion from your skulls.”
Ehawee looked to me. “This thing cannot be allowed to roam the earth. It is possessed.”
“Tell me about it,” I said, lighting a smoke.
Ehawee tapped her staff and pointed at Chael, just as she had with Legion.
Nothing happened. She tried again, tapping the staff, but no lightning c
ame to her call.
Far behind us, the storm roiled and raged, thunder rolled and lightning flashed, but no aid came to Ehawee. Chael’s smile widened as he stepped very close to Ehawee.
“You are beyond her help. Past her sacred lands, she cannot reach, not yet. But, I can reach you.”
Chael reached out and grabbed Ehawee’s neck. The leader of The People clawed and raked with her talons, but Chael’s skin refused to break. Chael laughed with demented laughter.
“Now the sky child feels the courage of the host.”
“Chael, don’t! We have to go!”
Chael stopped, then looked at me with his milky-white eyes. “You are right. Goodbye, lady bird. Tell your mother I said hello.”
Chael dropped Ehawee and walked past the remaining bison warriors, who looked on in confusion. The giant climbed into the back of the Outrider, all the while whistling “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees.
Still standing in the Outrider, I looked at Ehawee, then Macha. “We are leaving. If you follow, I can’t make any promises what will happen next.”
“Mother,” Macha said as she helped her mother stand up. “I am sorry. What do we do?”
Ehawee rubbed at her daughter’s stomach. “Go, Salem. Go, take the boy and the giant, and never return. You have made an enemy of The People. Now and forever.”
“I didn’t want that,” I said. “I didn’t want any of you to come to harm.”
“I know.” Ehawee nodded. “But if you remain, then I must try and kill you. I must obey my mother. You have caused us to fail. Because of that, we cannot be allies. Enemies is the only way.”
I didn’t know what to say. I simply nodded at Ehawee, then at Macha. “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Salem. May you find what you seek.”
“TJ, drive.”
“OK,” the boy said, turning the engine on.
Putting the Outrider in gear, TJ drove us past the remaining warriors of The People. They stared at us with hatred and spite. Many were hurt. A few, possibly, were dead. I meant what I said: I never wanted any of them to get hurt. But for the sake of my own people, I had to do what was best for them. Even at the cost of The People.