by Anthology
He had come upon carcasses this morning. Ten of them. It had been the Dog. From the size of the jaw and the pattern of the teeth, it could be nothing else. He had seen them many times already.
Ten thousand pounds, one of the EDU-39 tribe had said. Ten thousand pounds at the least, by God, and big as an elephant.
“That dog and me are going to have a hell of a lot to talk about when we meet,” said Lirk aloud.
He had already spoken to one old dog this past month. Craw Ironspear, Lirk’s father, had taught Lirk everything he knew about the ways of the hunt. Craw had slain twenty-five beasts in his fifty-three years, and his home was decorated with their hides and skulls.
His mouth twitched in the shadow of a smile. Craw had not thought Lirk ready for his first hunt, Lirk remembered. When Lirk had told him of the hunt, three weeks earlier, Craw had told him to let it lie.
“A Dog like that could swallow a man whole, and not even bother to spit his boots out,” Craw had said, sniggering at his own joke. Lirk had gazed at his father with steady eyes, not to be drawn away from the path he had set for himself. His father’s head was crowned with a wreath of wispy white hairs that ran down into a scruff of side-whiskers. His eyes were squinty and dark, like Lirk’s, with a wicked glint. He was short, some five and a half feet, but it only served to make him that much more dangerous. Craw Ironspear was known for more than just slaying beasts. Even at fifty, a gun still hung low on his hip.
Craw rubbed his head in thought. “With an anti-tank rocket from the Industrials you may have stood a chance, but not with that rifle of yours.” He was quiet again for a while, before he finally spoke, “No… You’re just not ready for that kind of monster. If I were ten years the younger… And if my knee didn’t hurt so much, I would go after it myself. But you? Leave it alone, boy. It’s out of your league.”
Lirk paced the room, hands clasped behind his back, a thin smile on his lips. “I did not come here looking for your permission.” He stopped his pacing and turned towards his father, “I came here to tell you how it is. This monster destroyed three tribes and, left unchallenged, it will destroy more. People say there is no good left in Dirge, that heroes are dead. I would not have it so.” Lirk shook his head, “No, Dad, I will hunt it whatever you say. And truth to tell, Dad, I’m tired of living in your shadow. This is the one. The one that will make me a legend all of my own.”
Craw smiled sadly. “Spoken like a true Ironspear. I am proud of you, boy. For whatever it’s worth to you.” And just for a second Craw seemed tired and old. Then he sighed and straightened, and the familiar glint returned to his eyes. “Come,” he said, “there is something you will need if you want that Dog.”
He walked over to the eastern wall of his cabin, where a strange gun hung on a rack. Lifting it clear, he came back and thrust it at Lirk. It was blacker than night and as large as a carbine, yet without a stock for support. Lirk had never seen the like. It was side-fed, like a rifle, with a pump action and eight slots along its side in which Craw had lined red and gold shells, ready for reloading.
“This is the gun Matt Tannerby used to kill the Bastard of Godwin,” explained Craw. “A scattergun like no other. Twenty-four gauge. Only an Ironspear can wield it and keep his arms. Loading it is pretty simple; just remember to pump it after every shot. Matt Tannerby was a big man, and had the gun modified to suit him. He removed the stock and had a pistol-grip fitted. He shot her one-handed. You’d be lucky to fire her with three.”
Lirk tried the grip. It felt comfortable in his hands. The gun of Matt Tannerby, both blessed and cursed with the blood of the Ironspears. His father had told him the stories when he was just a boy: the lance that gave them their family name, the gun that slew the Bastard of Godwin, the man that had written the first page in the legend of the Ironspears. Those had been his favorite tales. “Thank you,” he said, though the words felt thick in his throat.
“There is nothing to thank me for. It is yours by right. Now go get me another skull.”
Lirk smiled at the memory. If the stories were true, it would be a big skull.
Three days out from EDU-39.
The deeper into the Junkyard he went, the colder it became. Four layers of clothing held out most of the chill yet, inevitably, some still seeped into his bones. Food at least was plentiful here and water too. When he was lucky he would find a sealed can of food, that had not yet decayed, or a water-tank in the bonnet of car that still carried some water. A man just had to know where to look. Finding food in these wastes took skill and patience.
Lirk trudged through a drift of rubbish, his gloved hands tucked under his armpits, three scarves wrapped around his neck—all the way to his nose. Yet more garbage fell from the dune-tops.
There was an old path that ran through here which he had been following for the last day or so, but as the land began to rise, and the piles began to grow, he had lost sight of it. It did not matter, for he had found a new trail to follow.
Dog tracks. Unmistakably large Dog tracks.
The Junkyard was beginning to get at him. He wondered if he had been traveling in circles, for in that labyrinth of forgotten things all places were one and the same. The methane in the air made him cough and choke, the stench was unbearable. How could the ’yardies stand it? It had become so cold that he had wrapped his guns in skins to stop the actions freezing over. If the Dog caught him unaware, he would be dead for sure. Yet a frozen gun was no use to anybody. Lirk meant to get that Dog or die in the attempt.
That day, he made an early camp in a small circle of cars, overlooked by half a dozen swaying scrap-dunes, and set his fire by a suitably intact mannequin. He could almost feel the scavengers breathing down his neck. Lirk took his bed cloth and laid it over the mannequin, fussing over it until satisfied with his handiwork.
Everything seemed strange in the firelight. There was something of the fey about the way the shadows danced and flickered. The way perceptions of things changed. Twisted bed frames became giants grasping at him. Sodden newspapers became sheets of gold.
Lirk grabbed his blankets and made his way to the second highest dune, being careful to leave no tracks. He clambered up as high as he dared; cursing colorfully when the whole pile lurched. Draping the blankets over his shoulders and pulling them tight around himself, he checked his side-arms, rifle and tactical shotgun.
He heard their feint footfalls long before he saw them. They came slowly and without a word. Lirk guessed they were using hand signals to organize their attack.
He saw one across the clearing. He was fur clad and wirily built. The young brave raised a high-caliber rifle and sighted his quarry.
His rifle spat thunder and the shot echoed into the following silence. The mannequin fell forward, almost into the fire.
Lirk raised his own rifle and waited. Moments later, the scavengers entered the clearing. Five men moved in like wraiths, armed with guns, blades and power tools. One of them, carrying a revolver, motioned for the man who had fired to approach the huddled figure in the centre of the clearing. As an afterthought, their leader stopped the young man and moved in himself. Lirk smiled knowingly, then spoke.
“It would be unwise to step any further, scavenger.”
The warrior froze and his companions cast nervous glances at the scrap piles.
“You,” continued Lirk, “with the pistol. What is your name?”
“Steelchewer.”
“Tell your overweight friends, Pigscrewer and Boylover, to step out and join us.”
Steelchewer barked a command and two large men stood up from their hiding places behind nearby cars and joined the others. Their faces were dark with anger.
“Good,” said Lirk from his perched position. “Now drop your guns.” They hesitated. “Drop them.”
They did.
Their leader spoke, “Our shaman has foreseen what you intend to do. We will not allow you to make the attempt. The Dog God must not be harmed.”
“The Dog God? What kind of a dog
hunts solely for slaughter? What kind of a god slaughters the weak for sport? Tell the old fool he is a shaman of lies. I stalk a rabid beast, nothing more. Take your men and leave me to my hunt. If it truly is a god, then I will fail.”
“We are seven, you are but one. Your first shot will give away your position. You cannot slay us all. Why would we leave?”
“There is truth in what you say, and your bravery is not in question here. Your men would gladly give their lives at your command. I know this. But who will take the first shot, the one that will mark my position? It will not be you, but one of the others. Are you willing to cast away any of their lives? I think not. You need every one of them, lest your god take a liking to your scent. I see the tranquilizers in your arsenal. Take your men and your guns and go in peace. I have no quarrel with you.”
Steelchewer motioned for his men to take up their weapons. Lirk aimed his rifle at one of the larger men’s chest, just in case. The scavenger leader said, “You are a good judge of character, Ironspear. Your clan is known even here. Know, we will return for you.”
The scavengers turned without another word and loped into the surrounding shadows. “It will cost you your life,” said Lirk softly into the night.
He let his rifle rest on his thighs and leaned back. He hoped they would take his advice and leave him be. The Junkyardies had enough orphans and widows as it was. He had no wish to add more to their number. Lirk decided to keep his vigil tonight. Falling asleep could be the last mistake he would ever make. He drew his blankets around him, choosing to risk remaining on his dune.
Hours later, sleep took him unawares.
Lirk fell to his knees when he saw the destruction.
An entire tribe in ruin. Corpses, everywhere there were corpses. Women, children. Lirk felt tears burn a slow trail down his cheeks. Mothers clutched broken babies. Men crouched by trampled gers, what was left of their families still inside. A man stood expressionless by the mauled body of a relative, his fingers clasping those of a severed arm in the macabre mockery of a handshake. His own.
There were a dozen survivors in all. EDU-11 had fallen silent and it had meant death for its followers.
Lirk forced himself to his feet and half-stumbled to where an old woman sat, on the carcass of a shopping trolley.
“What happened here, spirit-mother?” he asked her. She did not reply, but merely sat, checking a car-battery for signs of life. He repeated the question, to no avail. He would gain no answers here. Standing, he left her to the echoes of whatever evils she had witnessed.
“The Dog God’s wrath,” she whispered, barely loud enough for him to hear. Lirk stopped and turned. “It was the Dog God’s wrath, and it was terrible.”
“The Dog God did all of this?”
She stared at him, an old woman with haunted eyes that made her older still. “The Dog God cast a spell of silencing on our Depositor and attacked us in the stillness. The Dog God came upon us with its single, bulging eye. Yet not to feed. It came for death and violence, for pain and sorrow and punishment.”
“Punishment for what?”
She shrugged, a helpless gesture. “The Dog God is wise. I have seen it in His silver-disc eye. I stared into it and He left me be. He spoke to me, in my heart.”
“What did it say?”
“Error. Unit is beyond expiry date. Your time is soon, old hag. Let your last days be full of pain and tears. Live. Live and wish for death. Error.”
Five days out.
The scavengers had not given up their hunt. It seemed they had lain in wait for him in the scaffolding forest that stretched out behind him. An ambush. Lirk shuddered as he took in the gore-spattered scene.
The Dog had found them first.
Fallen scavengers lay about the sloping hillside like bloody marionettes with their strings cut. The garbage ran red with their blood. Limbs had been severed; skulls crushed under what must have been huge jaws. Ribs rose from their chests like crooked fingers, ribbons of flesh hanging from them like a madman’s decorations. He recognized the two large scavengers amongst them. One from the size of his headless corpse, the other by the size of the mess. A young warrior had been torn in half, his insides connecting his torso to his legs. Two more lay dozens of metres away, another even further up. No doubt they had sought to escape. Scores of empty casings showed that they had given the Dog a war. That made him smile.
A low growl.
Lirk’s blood froze. At the top of the slope, only fifty feet away, the garbage moved.
Lirk forced himself to swallow, despite his dry mouth. The wreckage moved again, slowly raising its head. That’s impossible, thought Lirk. He forced his hands to slide slowly down to his rifle, his fingers fumbling to remove it from the sheath. It was one of the biggest guns he had. He knew now that is was not nearly big enough.
This was it. The Dog. Shaking the pages of bloody paper and plastic bags from its massive head, its snout the length of his torso, it stood up on all fours. The thing was bigger than a van.
How could anything that big exist? Nasal vapors steamed from its nostrils. A large satellite dish grew out one deformed eye-socket. The silver-disc eye. The other socket was a mess of pulsing flesh. The Dog shook litter from the rest of its body. The monster’s frame rippled with muscle, so much so that its very fur had torn at the seams, corded muscles bursting through, bright red against the grey fur and bare to the elements. Parts of the Dog were clearly machinery, as if the Dog itself was somehow part of the Junkyard. It was unnatural, grotesque. Its mouth foamed white. He had come hunting for a Dog God, and had found the Devil. The rifle was clear now, and Lirk took the safety catch off. It cocked its head to one side, as if studying him—though it had no eyes to see. How can it see me? It has no eyes! The answer came to him almost at once. Radar. The thing uses radar, and the tribes use the Depositors to merge their signals with the EDUs. Then all thoughts vanished as its lips pealed back into a hellish grin. From its teeth hung telltale signs of human victims. The scavengers. Bloody bullet holes riddled its pelt.
Another growl shook the earth. More vapors steamed from flared nostrils.
Lirk raised the rifle. The gunshot echoed in the clearing, the bullet disappearing in the muscles of the beast’s torso. It snarled again and stalked forward unfazed, a sense of feral rage rising from its massive frame like smoke as two more shots slammed home. It hunched down for a second, then charged. Lirk hastily fired off round after round, not even taking aim. He was not likely to miss. His hands shook madly, denying him the headshot.
Dropping the rifle, he dove to the right. The Dog slid past him. Shrugging off his pack, he snatched up his gun. He shot twice more. Lirk dived again as the beast charged at him a second time. But the Dog was faster. The claws on its forepaw tore a gash in his arm as he sailed by. Lirk lost hold of his rifle. He cried out in pain.
Forcing himself up, he made a run for the bottom of the slope, hoping that the steep gradient would hinder the Dog’s downward charge—its unnatural bulk made its front legs too short for a charge at such an angle. Lirk tore at his coat and drew his handguns from their holsters beneath his arms. Slugging through waste that rose up to his knees, he realized the Dog would catch him easily. He could hear the monster crashing down the hill behind him. Lirk would never make it to the field of twisted metal at the bottom. He took the only option left.
Twisting around in mid-stride, Lirk threw himself onto the hard-packed rubbish, back first, guns leveled at the Dog’s massive head. He slid back at a breakneck pace, unloading every slug he had into the demon. Bullets tore into its muzzle, shredded its ears. Bullets lost themselves in its shoulders, rent through its forelegs, rebounded off the metal that grew from its flesh. On it came.
The guns now empty, he twisted around on his back, so his feet would make first contact with something, rather than his head. He slid past the first few bits of scaffolding, before his feet connected with one and stopped his descent. Dragging himself upright, he checked his arm. There was a lot of b
lood. He tried not to think of the inevitable infection. The Dog crashed through the scaffolding behind him. Lirk sheathed his guns and ran.
The Dog growled, bulling through anything in its path, the metal scaffoldings proving to be no barrier at all for the monster.
Hurdling a half-buried trash can, Lirk sprinted through a small patch of barbed- and razor-wire foliage, cursing as it snagged his trousers. He burst through a copse of twisted metal...and nearly plunged into an abyss.
Lirk slid to a halt at the edge of a cliff. Cold wind slammed into his face and he stumbled back. Fifty feet below was a frozen river of polluted water that glittered dark brown. He glanced over his shoulder, the Dog was closing in, slowly. It knew it had its quarry. There was no escape.
Lirk tore his hunting knife from its belt sheath. He snarled and charged back towards the mountainous Dog, his guns forgotten.
Closing in on the beast, Lirk pounced—throwing himself bodily at the Dog’s head. It bulled into him, driving the air from his lungs. They both slid to a halt. The Dog, now above him, mauled at his chest with its powerful jaws. Its teeth tore through his many layers of clothing. Lirk cried out as they ripped into his skin and lanced his knife into its face and body repeatedly, not allowing the Dog to get a clean bite. The knife slid deep into the flesh beneath its jaws. The Dog snarled in pain and jerked away, the knife still embedded in its face. Stumbling to his feet, he took two strides and sprung upon it without thinking. His free hand grabbed a fistful of blood-matted mane. He fumbled for the knife, but could not reach it. The Dog tried to shake him off. Lirk snarled wordlessly, clinging on to the side of its neck. His enemy charged forward, driving him into as many obstacles as possible. Lirk screamed as his back slammed into scaffolding after scaffolding. A lorry door hit his side so hard he swiveled around until he was beneath the Dog. Lirk’s fingers curled into its fur once more. He cried out as pain shot through his wounded right arm, but held on. As it dragged him through the ice, he reached for the knife with his free hand.