The Brotherhood of the Wheel

by R. S. Belcher

  “Come,” the pack of children all said. “You must come with us.” They began to move down the hill as one, slowly fanning out in groups of two.

  “No,” Lovina said, the same mind-numbing fear slipping into her again. She fought to shake it off, as she had before. The gun, raise the gun. Shoot. “No” was all she could muster. Suddenly, Jimmie was stepping between her and the approaching pack; he slapped his aluminum flashlight against his palm like a fighting baton.

  “No,” Jimmie said. “Lady’s not going anywhere with you, whatever the hell you are. She’s under my protection. You want her, you got to get through me. Now, come on!”

  Heck threw up his arms. It was obvious from the shudder going through the old man’s legs that Aussapile was scared shitless, but he was getting ready to tumble with whatever the fuck these things were—Black-Eyed Kids … yeah, right. He could rabbit. No, he couldn’t. He wasn’t some chicken shit who left anyone behind. He hadn’t left his crew in the desert. He had fought that thing to the bitter end.

  Heck was suddenly back in the drainpipe with the shrunken, skeletal face of Karen Collie near his own. She had such a sad look on what was left of her face. He could feel her fear, her regret, her pain. She was just a kid, with a million, million amazing things still to do with her life. These were the bastards who stole it. Heck felt the anger swell in him, the same anger that carried him through a dozen firefights, the same anger that allowed him to laugh as he took on a bar full of angry rednecks. The anger made him invincible. The anger felt like home. Heck slid the large combat knife out of his belt sheath and twirled it in his hand as the squire stepped up beside his knight.

  “Yeah,” Heck said. He hardly recognized his own voice when he got like this. “Like the man said. Come and get some.”

  Lovina blinked. The fear was falling away again. Behind her, she heard the oiled snick of a gun slide. She glanced over to see that Turla had pulled a .380 pistol out of a small holster hidden under his shirt. The former trooper moved beside her, his arms and hands also in a Weaver stance. “You ready?” Turla said softly. “Back-to-back.”

  The children were starting to move faster, almost blurring as they built up speed. The impassive look on their faces was now replaced by something primal, something that knew nothing of reason, only blood. At first Lovina thought it was her imagination, the fear, but now she could see that it was really happening. The Black-Eyed Children’s mouths had widened; their teeth were now an impossible mass of slender, razor-sharp bone needles—hundreds of them in their mouths. With their dead eyes, it made them look like sharks.

  “Why … why are you doing this?” Lovina asked as she moved to cover Turla’s back as he was covering hers, both of them positioned to keep any of the pack from flanking Jimmie and Heck.

  “Because,” Jimmie said as he raised his makeshift club, “this is what we do, what we’ve always done. Fight the monsters.”

  Jimmie had one second to glance at his squire. Heck was licking his lips, his eyes glazed with simmering anger. The boy nodded to him, and Jimmie nodded back. That was all there was time for before the pack fell upon them, snarling, snapping.

  Jimmie swung the flashlight and caught the one on the right hard on the side of the head. The little creature flew back several feet and dropped to the ground. It growled and sprang back up onto its feet, almost immediately, with inhuman speed and agility.

  The one on the left Heck took. The Black-Eyed Kid launched himself at the biker from about ten feet away, making a sound like a scalded cat. To the creature’s surprise, he was met in midair by the biker, who had also launched himself with impossible speed and distance, just as he had surprised Lovina by leaping out of the drain. The two crashed to the floor of the basin, and both found their feet almost at once. Heck crouched and quickly pivoted, using the knife to keep the creature at bay while it hissed and tried to get close enough to use its teeth. The thing fought more like an animal than like a human being.

  The other four had veered off—two going to the left and two to the right of the vanguard. Lovina fired at the two scampering BEKs, who were almost on all fours as they crouched and ran. They were trying to drive a wedge between the lines of Heck and Jimmie and her and Turla.

  Lovina exhaled the dregs of the fear, held her breath, and squeezed off two rounds. Behind her she heard Turla’s gun bark as well. The Black-Eyed Kids moved at dizzying speeds, running up and launching off tree trunks like parkour runners, as if gravity didn’t hold them. Her bullets struck one, and it fell, kicking, thrashing, and howling before it finally lay still. She missed the other, and it was on her, grabbing at her coat and opening its mouth full of death to sink its teeth into her throat. Lovina grabbed it by the throat and pushed it away with all her strength, but this thing, disguised in the body of a young boy, had the strength of a perp on bath salts. The mouth was moving closer, closer. An odd thought struck Lovina as she struggled with this thing for her life: Absolutely no odor came from the Black-Eyed Kid’s mouth—no bad breath, nothing. Lovina brought the pistol up under its chin and fired. There was a flare of heat, a roar, and then the aural sensation of going underwater. Everything smelled of scorched gunpowder. There was a ringing in her ears and some nausea from the discharge, almost like being hit with a flash-bang grenade. The Black-Eyed Kid was on the ground, mostly headless.

  Lovina became aware that she didn’t have a drop of blood on her. She should be bathed in blood and brains and bits of skull, but there was nothing. She looked over to where the other one she had shot had fallen. She was in time to see the body disappearing—evaporating into thick black smoke. She looked down at the headless one and saw the same phenomenon starting to occur. There was a groan behind her. Lovina spun to see Turla wrestling with the other two who had flanked him. His gun was still in his hand, smoking, but it looked as if he had been unable to hit the fast-moving creatures. One was wrapped around his gun arm, trying to pull it down and slowly succeeding. The other had him by his other arm and was getting ready to bite him. Lovina began to move to help the beleaguered ex-trooper, but she froze when she saw the face of the Black-Eyed Kid that was about to bite Turla. She almost vomited when the realization came to her. It was Shawn Ruth Thibodeaux.

  “No, goddamn it!” Lovina shouted as she grabbed the little girl she had been searching for. She struggled to keep Shawn Ruth from sinking her shark teeth into Turla’s forearm. Like the other Black-Eyed Kids, her strength was inhuman, and Lovina wrestled with all her training, all her might, to get her off Turla. The girl’s eyes were dead space—hungry, oily nullity. Turla was trying with everything in him to get his gun arm free from the other one, whom Lovina now recognized from the long-studied case file as Shawn Ruth’s friend Pierre Markham.

  Jimmie’s playmate had cleared the few feet he had been knocked back pretty fast. Jimmie clicked the flashlight beam to high power as the Black-Eyed Kid leaped on him like a squalling, rabid monkey. Jimmie caught the kid square in his weird eyes with the light, and it made the creature close its eyes and hiss. Jimmie used that instant to twist the creature into a wrestling hold he hadn’t used since high school. They both went down, the Black-Eyed Kid on the bottom and Jimmie, and all his considerable weight, on top. At the moment of impact, Jimmie drove the flashlight against the thing’s twisting, snapping head, with all his upper-body weight behind it. There was a sick crunching sound, and the little monster under him was still.

  Jimmie groaned and struggled to his feet. He saw the lady cop and Turla locked in a struggle with two of the creatures. He looked to see how Heck was faring. The biker had slashed at the Black-Eyed Kid several times and seemed to have gotten a few bites on his forearm for the trouble. Ugly, black veins were radiating out from the bite wounds like webs. However, the creature was staggering from the knife wounds as well. Heck lowered his guard, rubbing at one of the wounds, and the Black-Eyed Kid used the opening to lunge at his exposed throat. But Heck had been waiting for that. He high-kicked the thing hard in the chest. The Bla
ck-Eyed Kid went down, and Heck followed him, driving the knife deep into its small chest, with a snarl of his own. The creature struggled weakly for another moment, and Heck watched its face intently, eagerly, as it did; then, finally, it was still. When Jimmie glanced down at the one he had dispatched, its body had vanished.

  There was another blast of gunfire. Turla had stopped struggling to keep his arm up and away from the Black-Eyed Kid. Instead, he shifted to the side as his arm went down and fired two rounds from the .380 into the monster’s face. It fell back and down. However, the shift gave Shawn Ruth the opening she needed to bite Turla’s other forearm deeply. Turla put the small pistol to her head, wincing in pain as he did. Lovina almost shouted for him to stop, but this was not the girl she had wanted to bring home to her mama and daddy—this was some thing, some force, walking around, using and profaning her skin. Turla fired one round, and the skull of Shawn Ruth Thibodeaux blew apart. Shawn staggered back, Turla’s blood on her pale lips, and fell, beginning to churn black smoke as she vaporized. The smoke had no odor to it. Turla nursed his arm, obviously in great pain. Black, spidery lines began to radiate out from the blackening bite, crawling across his arm and hand.

  “Everyone good?” Jimmie shouted, spinning slowly to circle the clearing, gasping for air. “We clear?”

  “Clear,” Heck said, slipping the knife away. There was no blood on the blade at all.

  “Clear,” Lovina called out, “but Turla’s bit.”

  “Yeah,” the ex-trooper said. “Little fucker. Hurts like shit.”

  “Tell me about it,” Heck said.

  Jimmie and Heck moved toward Turla and Lovina, then stopped. Black veins had begun to crawl up Turla’s neck and to spread across his face.

  “What?” Turla said. Black lines crossed his eyeballs and filled them completely with darkness for a moment, but then his normal eyes reasserted themselves. Turla gasped in pain and fell to the ground. Lovina caught him and eased him down. Jimmie knelt, joining her. Heck paused, hearing the wail of sirens off in the distance getting closer.

  “Shit!” Heck said. “Guys, we got to move him. All that bang-bang got some attention! We got to roll.”

  Lovina checked Turla’s pulse while the ex-trooper clenched his teeth in obvious agony. The black veins had covered the last unmarked skin. Lovina gave Jimmie a look he had seen far too many times on the battlefield, on the side of the Road. It told him all he needed to know.

  “That bad, huh?” Turla said, wheezing a little. “Well … shit. At least we know what happens to the folks who let them in now, right?”

  “Yeah,” Jimmie said. “Guess so. I’m so sorry, Gil.”

  “Don’t be,” Turla said, coughing, then hacking. Lovina checked his pulse again. “I’ve been alone in that damn house dying for years anyway. This is how I wanted to go out. Thanks.”

  “Is there anyone we can contact for you, tell them?” Jimmie asked. There was the moan of another train’s horn far down the tracks, just past the tree line.

  “My wife passed away about four years ago,” he said. “It was a mercy. She had been sick on and off for close to ten years.” Turla shuddered. “Getting cold already. This crap works fast. Yeah, I guess you could let my kids know. I’d appreciate it, Jim.”

  Heck was standing behind Jimmie and Lovina now. He looked at his own arm. The bite marks were still there, but there were no black veins, no patterns.

  “You make sure you tell them what happened. Tell them everything, Jim,” Turla said. “Why I was here. About the Brethren. Why I wasn’t home all those times, all those years. You tell them their daddy was out there fighting the monsters. Please, Jim, tell them.”

  “I will,” Jimmie said. “I promise, Gil.” Turla’s breathing was coming quicker now, shallow panting. Lovina could feel his pulse skipping, growing fainter.

  Turla looked at Lovina with eyes already beginning to see past this world. “You make sure when you tell my kids about all this it ain’t no cold case.” He tried to chuckle; it was a rasp. “You find whatever stole these poor kids’ souls, destroyed them, used them. You stop it.”

  “Yes,” Lovina said, taking his wrist. “We will.”

  Turla tried to smile. Each breath was a shallow hiss. “The wheel turns,” he said, and died.

  “He’s gone,” Lovina said, placing Turla’s hand over his chest. His body was already beginning to smoke and dissolve, just as the children’s bodies had.

  “Damn it,” Jimmie said as he stood.

  “What was all that stuff he was talking about?” Lovina asked, rising. “‘Brethren’? ‘The wheel turns’? What is that?”

  “Good luck getting a straight answer out of him, luv,” Heck said.

  Up the hill, blue lights could now be seen stabbing the darkness. The bursts and the static of police radios, shouting, and voices could be heard on the other side of the vacant lot. “We have got to go,” Jimmie said, picking up Turla’s gun—the only thing that remained of him. “Leave the drain open—they’ll find Karen’s body.”

  Jimmie paused at the edge of the drain, looking down into the darkness. He hated leaving her like this. He hated not being able to pull her up out of the horrible hole she had wedged herself into, to die, alone, in terror. He made a silent promise to the dead girl. He looked up and saw the lady cop staring at him.

  “You are going to explain all this to me,” Lovina said as they headed through the sparse woods in the direction of the train tracks. The train’s horn bellowed again, much closer.

  “Yeah,” Jimmie said, “and you can explain why you’re not running up there to join up with your brothers in blue and why the hell those things were gunning for you.”

  “Come on, come on, come on!” Heck shouted as he sprinted.

  They reached the tracks. The engine’s headlight was close, brilliant, like a nova. The rails were vibrating as the three ran across them. The horn on the train blasted again and again, a bellicose warning. They cleared the tracks just ahead of the thundering train—a wall of speed and mass between them, the cops, and the empty battlefield.

  TWELVE

  “10-68”

  Walking the streets of downtown Atlanta, so full of life and energy, was like a dream to Mark Stolar after the past week. So many people, moving like guided missiles, to jobs or lunch, dentist appointments, or to meet friends and lovers. It was normal, petty, human, and after his time in Four Houses it was like gulping air after being beneath dark waters. It was April 27th, a Wednesday, around eleven-fifteen in the morning. If he were home, he’d be in his shorts watching Jerry Springer and eating Froot Loops. But all that changed yesterday, yesterday with Dewey, poor fucking Dewey. The small sliver of a flash drive in his pocket felt like a stone.

  He hated doing this, doing the bidding of the creepy bastard that had murdered his best friend. He wanted to get him back, to kill that motherfucker. But life had already explained to Mark that that was all just movie bullshit. He wasn’t a hero, he never had been. He was the sidekick, the occasional comedy relief. God’s gofer.

  Mark had met Dewey Rears in fifth grade while he was getting the shit beat out of him by two eighth graders who had called him “fag.” Mark had made the mistake of flipping them off, instead of just taking it. He ran and reached the edge of the school’s nature trails—the thick brush line that all the stoners hid in to have a smoke of one kind or another. His lungs burning, his legs rubbery with fear, he had fallen when the first one caught up and shoved him. They started kicking him, hard. His whole body felt like a bag of broken glass. He was crying, and that made them kick harder. He pissed himself, and that made them laugh and hoot and kick even harder. Then the kicking stopped, and there was a sound like a slab of hamburger meat hitting the floor. Mark forced open one of his swollen eyes, and there was Dewey, already towering a good foot over the other boys, driving his huge fist into another of Mark’s attackers. He kicked the third one, and they scattered like cockroaches.

  “You fuckin’ fat-ass!” one of the atta
ckers shouted as he ran away.

  “Yeah, you come on back, shitheads!” Dewey whooped. “We’ll do it again!” This big guy with a curly mullet, a “System of a Down” T-shirt, and kind eyes, reached down to help him up. “Won’t we, man?” he said, grinning.

  They had stayed best friends ever since. All through the bullshit of high school, all through Dewey’s parents splitting up and Mark’s mom passing away; through the nametag, hairnet jobs and the college promises and failures, through Dewey’s weird-ass career as a writer, a Bigfoot chaser. They had stuck through all of it together. Dewey Rears was the closest thing Mark had to a brother. Had. Now Emile Chasseur, this psychopath who called himself the Pagan, the Master of the Hunt—whatever the fuck that was—had ripped Dewey’s heart out, murdered him for some fucking insane horned-god-thing that couldn’t, couldn’t really exist, but that everyone had seen rising out of the trees, out of the woods, cloaked in sky and stars. Mark had seen it, and it made the insides of his brain itch. Just thinking of the Horned Man made him physically ill.

  “I’m sorry, Dewey, man,” Mark said. A woman in a suit, carrying a tote full of files, glanced at him over glasses attached to a bejeweled lanyard and walked faster away from him. “I fucked up, man. I should have done something, not just sat there shitting myself. Fuck, I’m sorry.”

  Mark wanted to cry. He felt the heat build in his eyes, but he fought it back. Don’t blink, don’t blink. Dewey was gone. All he could do now was try as hard as he could to make sure those other two kids, Cole and Lexi, didn’t end up the same way. He had agreed to run this errand for Chasseur to keep the kids alive, yeah. How fucking noble of him. That was self-aggrandizing bullshit. That was what he told himself, what those kids might think. The truth was he was terrified of being dragged onto that rock and gutted like an animal, like Dewey, torn apart by those shadow dogs. He was frightened of the Master of the Hunt, and whatever the hell he served. He took this errand so that he could run, run, run, and never stop running. After he delivered the flash drive like a good little sniveling coward, he would run.