inherit the earth

by Hunter

  They hurry through the parking lot and get into a black late-model Taurus. They throw their luggage into the trunk and get in the car — the man driving, the woman sitting in an uncomfortable position with her seat leaned back all the way. They head south, toward the freeway. I follow.

  The path of the black Taurus describes a labyrinth through New York. I follow them out of

  Harlem and then to Sixth Avenue, then the Avenue of the Americas. A left on Canal Street, a right on Hudson. Through the Holland Tunnel. A left onto 14th Street, then on to 1-78 West. I follow them through the New Jersey Turnpike to 1-295 South. The East Coast is snowed in. The maze runs slick.

  After we leave New Jersey, the black Taurus leaves the interstate. I kill my headlights and follow. The driver takes to the back roads, the secret byways around the beaten path, the hidden roads that America celebrates but rarely travels. I follow them along rural routes, down bootlegger roads, down the unpaved stretches awash in sleet and snow. A few times, the Taurus planes across a patch of ice, but the driver is a pro. Rather than slam on the brakes like the denizens of the city are apt to do, he glides over them, letting the ice dictate his path, until he can regain control of his vehicle.

  He always turns in to the skid. I follow him all night long.

  Just before six in the morning, the driver stops at an Exxon station. He pulls around to the far side of the convenience store, into the darkness near a dumpster. I think he has spotted me, but my car’s almost out of gas. I turn my back to the store and pump gas, watching the reflection in my window for signs of my prey. My tank is barely half full when the car drives off again. Though their side of the parking lot is dark, and the snow falls even harder now, I see the driver. I don’t see his passenger. I replace the nozzle and speed off, my bill unpaid.

  The driver of the black Taurus zips back on to the interstate, then off on another rural route. I think we’re somewhere in North Carolina, maybe near Charlotte. It will be light soon. Though the driver has made good time all through the night, he’s driving way too fast now. I’m doing 95 and my Audi can’t keep up with him. I scream as my car slides across ice in the blackness.

  The shotgun in my jacket digs into my armpit. For a second, my stomach seems suspended in nothingness, unaffected by gravity. Then the car isn’t moving anymore. I regain my orientation on the side of the road. I can barely make out his rear lights in the distance. As I turn around to pull back onto the road, my car quakes. Another car, headlights off just like mine, rockets past me. My Audi whines as I gun it back to the road.

  I catch up with the other cars — the black Taurus and the blue boat of a car that roared past me right behind it. The driver of the Taurus slams on his brakes, but the blue car keeps going.

  The rear of the Taurus crumples under the weight of the Chevy Caprice Classic that slams into it. The passenger-side rear light shatters and the wheel buckles under. The Taurus spins around twice, still moving at full speed over the ice. It flips when it hits the guardrail. I hear the car as it tumbles down the embankment and smashes into the trees below. The Chevy, after this mighty bump, veers to the left, meeting a similar fate on the opposite side of the road. When it crashes against the trees, one gives under the frost. Tons of Chevy chop at its frozen base. The tree shudders and falls across the road. That’s how I stop — by slamming into this fallen tree.

  I’ve survived too many encounters with dead things that speak, with fiends that would drain the life from a vein in my throat or man-wolves that rather tear out my jugular. Some call me a martyr, but I won’t meet my end catapulting through my own front window. The seat belt rips into the flesh below chin, pinches at my waist and steals my breath. The airbag deploys. I am alive.

  I unbuckle myself, pivot in my seat, and kick the door off its remaining hinge. Snow welcomes me out of the car. The headlines of the Taurus beam up from the trees below, but I see nothing of the other car. I run to the right of the road. I run to the Taurus. To my prey.

  The driver hasn’t gotten out of the car, but he already has his gun ready. His window is down about a third of the way, his pistol dangling out at an odd angle. He takes an awkward shot at me. I crouch and move down the embankment, approaching his car from the front. I slither through the snow, over the shards of shattered trees. I grab the gun, break the driver’s wrist on the window and steal his weapon. He pulls his hand into the car and begins to cry. The first rays of the sun appear from the east.

  I stand up and try to open the door. It’s stuck. Inside, the driver, holding his broken hand, inches away from my door to the other side. I yell at him through the window.

  “I won’t hurt you. Get out of the car. ” “Meshugannah cunt! ”

  The door won’t budge, but I demand that it open. I grip the door’s handle and the frame above the window. Pain erupts in my chest, my lungs strain to keep enough oxygen in my system, my eyes threaten to close and surrender to the snow. Though my arms are sore and my chest hurts, I pry the door off its hinges.

  I reach in the car and pull the flailing driver out by his feet. Tears stream from his eyes. He still clutches his hand. I stare at him as he screams insults at me.

  I have the second sight. Something is wrong about him. I pick him up by his coat like a kitten grabbed by the scruff of the neck. I lean him up against the car and search him for weapons.

  Then I hear a banging, a hollow sound of someone pounding on metal. I look around, unable to locate the source. Then I hear the muffled voice, from the trunk: “John! Let me out! It’s happening! ”

  The driver — John — shouts back. “Calm down! It’s okay! I’m okay! ”

  “Right now, John. It’s coming right now! ” “Shut up! ” John bangs on the side of the car for emphasis. “Be quiet! The sun’s coming up! ” “Forget the sun! Open the trunk! Right! Now! ” A bullet zooms past John and me. It passes through the broken front windshield and shatters the glass in the rear. I turn and see the shape of a man silhouetted in the headlights. I see the

  shadow of the gun and his shaky hand as it wavers in the headlights. He makes his way down the embankment. His gait is slow and awkward — he drags his left leg and clutches at his shoulder. He advances toward us, pulling the trigger as he approaches. He’s screaming.

  “Kill it! Kill it before it gives birth! ”

  The future, as it reveals itself to me, can go one of two ways — either I shoot this guy in the head right now or he kills John, the thing in the trunk, and me. I raise John’s gun, wrap my hands around it, and squeeze the trigger. He falls to the snow and does not stir again. I trust my foresight, and hope that I have not just killed a fellow hunter.

  At first, I think John has pissed himself, but as he moves across the headlights I see that the wet patches are blood. The driver of the blue Caprice did not miss us both. The banging from the trunk resumes, frantic this time — “It’s here, John! Right now! ”

  John springs to the top of the Taurus, plants his good hand and turns. He lands on me, bowling me into a smashed tree. His injuries do not hinder him. His eyes are shot with blood. He picks up the gun I took from him, at the same moment towering over me. He points the barrel at my head. “You’re not opening that trunk, ” he says.

  A long, slow scream escapes the well of the trunk. Quiet at first, an elusive hum, it crescendos into a muffled wail. At the same moment, I fire my shotgun through my coat. A flap of John’s

  scalp flutters as he wheezes and dies. His body falls against the Taurus and slides to the ground.

  The snow is bright under the rising sun. John’s blood looks all the more red as it pools on blinding white. This shining snow bums me. It melts inside the sleeve of my coat, under my turtleneck, in the crevices of my ear and in the space between my fingers. The sensation reminds me of Goran’s greasy fire.

  I pick myself up and pry open the trunk, once again finding strength for the price of a little pain.

  In the trunk, surrounded by luggage, a woman is giving birth. She rears back from
the sun as her skin begins to sizzle. Next to her, in the darkened space behind the back seat, a half-opened gym bag holds the staked torso of a dry corpse. Two red rivulets, and two black punctures, give Lord Chernobyl its only color.

  Looking at this bloodthirsty amputee, and the bags in the trunk, I realize where the rest of its limbs are.

  I know from a glance that neither of these creatures is alive. After the instant revulsion I see more. In some dark room in the past, I see John drink from the wrist of Lord Chernobyl — unstaked, feral, vital though it does not breathe. I see Chernobyl scream as its servant rises up, full of his master’s blood, and shoves a sharpened chair leg through its ancient chest.

  The woman giving birth shares the fiend’s blood. Though she does not burst into flames, as I have seen these creatures do before, her skin simmers under the first rays of the sun. Her teeth are pointed, and red from a recent feeding. Yet she goes through the motions of a birthing — her blood has already broken.

  I do not know the future, but I know what I must do.

  • • •

  The blue Caprice is battered and windowless, but at least it runs. After I push the car free of the tree (and earn a new scar when the car slips down the hill), I head north toward the interstate on the icy road.

  A baby cries in the back seat. She is a child of a new era’s first sunrise. She is a living thing that crawled into the world from between dead legs. The possibility of her existence reminds me that I understand nothing. I am too weak to solve her mystery. I will not name her, and I will not keep her, but I have brought her to the world.

  I have redeemed the sacrifice of her parents, of two servants who rose against their master to save their child. I have negated the sacrifice of their anonymous hunter. I cannot tell this child their names. For that reason, I cannot tell her about the four corpses I left in the woods. I cannot tell her the names of the dead.

  Carpenter sat up with a jerk, bobbing from the momentum like a jack-in-the-box on a tight spring. He looked around the room, trying to orient himself. Something wasn’t right. The room looked the same; at least, he assumed it did. It was one of those rooms utterly lacking in character, giving no indication of where you were, what it was meant for — really, of being anything more than a space with four walls, a ceiling and a floor. It was sparse, completely forgettable, with nothing on the walls and only a minimum of furniture. A metal desk encompassed most of Carpenter’s view, looming over him like some large, gray, blocky beast. Like a minimalist elephant.

  That was the first clue things were off: he was looking up at the desk. Then there was the blocky office swivel chair next to it. Carpenter figured it was significant that the chair was lying on its side. Considering he vaguely remembered he’d last been sitting in the chair (at the aforementioned desk, in fact), he felt it was reasonable to assume that he’d fallen out of the chair recently.

  Carpenter nodded. That would certainly explain why he was sitting on the filthy concrete floor.

  Frowning in distaste, he rose to his feet to brush the grime from his tailored suit. Something dark dangled on the periphery of his vision when he stood. Startled, Carpenter snatched at whatever it was and almost brained himself with the worn hammer clutched in his hand. He hadn’t even realized he was holding the hammer; must’ve grabbed it reflexively when he’d fallen from the chair before. Even though he’d almost cracked open his skull with the thing, Carpenter felt absolutely no desire to put the hammer down. In fact, a small but seemingly lucid part of him felt that doing so would be a very, very bad idea right now.

  Something definitely still felt off, but he had enough immediate strangeness to deal with so he left the larger unease alone for the moment.

  Using his off hand, Carpenter plucked away the thing that was hanging from his head. Holding it up, he saw that it was some kind of… ear-muffs? No, like the headphones a radio announcer used, except looked like it only had one earpiece. And it was really compact, like you stuck it in your ear instead of around it. Plus, it had a curved piece extending from it with a fuzzy black bit on the end, like a really small boom mic. A cord dangled from the thing, too, the other end a metal plug that swung lazily a few inches above the floor.

  Looking down as he was, Carpenter glanced around to see what the headphone thing might’ve been attached to. On the other side of the overturned chair he saw a rectangle of black plastic, folded in a V like a thin, half—open briefcase. What looked like a couple keys from a typewriter keyboard lay scattered around it. There was a word embossed on one side of the object, but Carpenter had trouble reading it. He realized it was because the word was upside down from where he stood, so he shifted position and crooked his neck to get a better look. That did the trick. Carpenter saw the word said COMPAQ.

  He frowned. He didn’t recognize the name. Sounded Spanish or something, and Carpenter didn’t know any spies.

  Still not quite getting it, Carpenter nudged the briefcase thing with a spotless wingtip. It tipped over (the whatsit, not the wingtip), knocking loose a few more scattered bits of itself. One half of the thing was a keyboard, the other half was a flat screen.

  His thoughts finally sparked to life. Looking from the headset to the broken laptop to the overturned chair and then to the papers and photographs scattered across the desk, Carpenter finally remembered where he was.

  Or, more correctly, when he was.

  And, even more importantly, what he was.

  • • •

  Lupe Droin frowned at her computer screen. The message flickering before her could have been authentic, but Lupe was not about to give this bastard the benefit of the doubt. He’d proven pretty fucking sneaky in the past; she wouldn’t be surprised if this was yet another trick so that she and her pals would let their guards down. Still….

  Rubbing distractedly at the smooth spot by her left eye, Lupe considered. She admitted to herself that he already had the upper hand, considering how she was allowing him to get her all pissed off like this. Hell, it’d been two days since this, his last post, and here she was looking over it again. Lupe wasn’t some cringing little waif, waiting for some big he-man to protect her. She sure as shit wasn’t afraid of some guy talked big and came on with industrial size attitude. Shit, she’d grown up with that all around her, and look where it’d gotten most of them. Dead, on drugs, in prison, or any combination thereof. Guys coming across so heavy were covering up for something, and Lupe had a good idea what it was.

  For the most part, she let the attitude roll right off her like sweat off her back. So why did this guy push her buttons so damn easy? She’d never even actually met him. Just all this online shit. Who’d’ve thought a bunch of words would get her going? Not like a conversation where you can’t get ‘em to shut up; she could hit DELETE and be done with it. But she’d found herself scanning for his email handle every time she logged onto hunter-net.

  No, it wasn’t just the attitude. There was something else. Lupe knew herself well; growing up down and dirty in the big city you either faced some hard truths about yourself or ran like hell from ‘em. Lupe wasn’t the type to run. But this, this was some new territory. She wasn’t sure what to make of it, but she knew one thing.

  She couldn’t get this Carpenter out of her head.

  Lupe cleared away her reverie with a quick shake of her head. She moused up and clicked open the new post that shed some light on Carpenter’s strange final message. She clicked the original open, too, dragging both out and arranging them side-by-side. The first started with Carpenter’s usual self-satisfied comments, then switched abruptly into a disturbing “shouted” passage (as signified by being written in all capital letters) with no apparent regard for grammar or punctuation. This in itself wasn’t unusual; the vast majority of Internet users thought “grammar” was a type of cracker and “punctuation” a fancy way of saying “stab. ” This asshole was normally more articulate than that, though. Strange, considering he was supposed to have been some mobster back in the day. Where’d
a guy like that learn to construct proper sentences? Lupe smiled, chiding herself for stereotyping somebody just like others made assumptions about her.

  Anyway, the post was a wild rant, starting off with him claiming “the bitch is dead” and he was being dragged back to “the other side. ” The odd part was that it turned into what looked like Latin (maybe hints of Spanish, too, although it didn’t make much sense to her). Well-spoken the guy might be, but fluent in Latin? That was a stretch.

  The second post shed some light on things. It was from everybody’s favorite researcher, Bookworm55. The kid was naive, but he knew his shit Lupe frowned, reading Bookworm’s translation of the strange text. One passage in particular caught her attention:

  “The storm heralds the hour of destruction, and its winds shall fan the flames ever higher. Heaven’s stepchildren wander, blind, into the kingdom of death but their sight is keen. ”

  The words stirred something deep inside Lupe. They gave a tantalizing hint of what this was truly all about.

  Of what she was, and why she was chosen.

  • • • •

  The hammer Carpenter held was as old and well used as a sixty-year-old hooker. Its head was stained and pitted, a few brilliant lines scraping the otherwise dull metal like the canals crossing the face of Mars. The wood handle was stained almost black from years of soaking up sweat, grease, oil, and blood. A splinter was gouged out of the end, revealing a bright wedge of blond wood beneath the weathered exterior.

  This was in stark contrast to Carpenter’s appearance (the grime from the floor covering him notwithstanding). His black hair was combed back with a precision drill sergeants dream of for their troops, one unruly lock having tumbled forward during his fall making him look like Superman’s evil twin. He wore an impeccably tailored charcoal gray double-breasted suit. His wingtips were buffed to a mirror shine, but for a few damnable scuffs from the fall. His shirt was starched with the precision of a master, firm without being too stiff. The cuffs shot from the suit sleeves precisely a half inch, showing simple silver cufflink studs. His tie was wider than the current style with a colorful pattern of swirls and loops. It was the only color to the whole ensemble. Your gaze would naturally home in on it if Carpenter’s eyes didn’t instantly grab you instead.