by Jack Yeovil
Inside his mind, a crate from Tasmania shook. Nails came loose.
His eyes focused properly. His knife slipped as he was working on Bugs' teeth, and he cut himself.
Licking his finger, he tasted blood.
"Your holiness, we believe the ground zero will be in Southern Arizona, near the Mexican border. In the Gila Desert."
Pope Georgi I looked at the mapscreen. Father O'Shaughnessy amplified the projection and narrowed down the area.
"Somewhere about here." He tapped the screen with his pointer.
"What's this name?"
"Santa de Nogueira. It's an old monastery."
"Ours?"
"It was, but it's been empty for over a century and a half. We still own the ground, but only through a Spanish land grant that probably has no legal status."
"Is anybody there?"
"Somebody must be, or the demon wouldn't be on its way."
"Who?" .
O'Shaugnessy lit his pipe. "There, Holy Father, you have me. Cardinal Mapache is scouting the area…"
"The prophet?"
"He's an esper, Holiness."
"Indeed."
"He is trying to divine any presences in the monastery."
"Results?"
O'Shaugnessy exhaled smoke. "Mixed. There are at least three people in the building, probably refugees from justice. The deserts are full of criminal factions, juvenile delinquents. But it's not the people who interest Mapache."
The Pope frowned. "Continue."
"There seems to be a supernatural presence."
"A demon?"
"That's hard to say. It is attached somehow to one of the people, but not in a standard possession. Mapache says they have formed some sort of gestalt."
"Is that orthodox?"
"The Holy Spirit has spoken through human beings before. The son of God took mortal flesh."
"You are flirting with blasphemy."
"Blasphemy and I are just good friends. Holy Father."
The Pope smiled.
"Can we get anyone there in time?"
"Mapache says no. Sister Chantal is busy in Kamchatka, and Mouier Kazuko Hara is still convalescing. I don't think we have anyone else qualified to handle something like this."
"Your suggestions?"
O'Shaughnessy spread his hands. "Prayer, Holy Father."
Duroc watched the Jibbenainosay disappear into the sky like a Montgolfier balloon, and was relieved to see the thing getting further away from him. It still trailed its corpses like puppets, and had sprouted some non-organic looking appendages that seemed capable of doing plenty of severe damage. He got the impression that even Nguyen Seth wasn't exactly unhappy to see the Dark One off on its way to get Jessamyn Bonney.
Duroc couldn't believe that it had come to this. The Jibbenainosay was something you called up if you wanted to sink Antarctica, not take out an eighteen-year-old girl. Of course, the Manolo and Proctor options hadn't proved effective. Jessamyn—Krokodil, she was calling herself now—was demonstrating an unsuspected resilience. Still, she would have no chance against the Dark One.
Then, Duroc supposed, Seth would have the problem of finding something else to keep the Jibbenainosay occupied.
It didn't rain any more, but sometimes this part of the desert was visited by violent sandstorms. Hawk-That-Settles thought one was coming along. At the height of the afternoon, the wind began to blow gently, and sand drifted against the walls of Santa de Nogueira. He hadn't seen Dr Proctor around all day, but that didn't worry him. It would probably be time to gather the womenfolks indoors, board up the windows and sit tight until it blew over. But he knew Krokodil wasn't going to be be the proper squaw and let him protect her from the elements. She stood on her chapel roof, looking unblinking to the North as the sand blew in her face.
Erich Von Richter, born Ethan Ryker, pulled back the joystick and lifted his Fokker up over the turbulence. He had been with the Red Baron for three years now, giving air cover for the Flying Circus's raids. They only had two planes, but the rest made do with Kustom Kars kitted out with razor-edged biplane wings and machete-blade propellors.
The convoy was down on the road, drawing level with a couple of eighteen-wheelers. He was alone in the skies today, because the Baron had some business with the yaks in Welcome. He was turning over a percentage of the scav for a tankerload of fuel, and an extension of the warranty on the Fokkers.
Von Richter loved flying, but he didn't care for the aerobatics that were the Baron's special thrill. He much preferred laying down a blanket of napalm in front of an interstate wrapper, or opening up with his twin burpguns, kicking up ruts in the road and puncturing the running groundrats.
His old man had sprayed crops for a living, back when there were crops. This was a much better way to use the skies.
"Yo, Rikki," said Heidi in his earchip. She was groundleader for the day. "We have the camels in sight. Are you available?"
"There's some weird whirlwind effect up here."
"If you can't handle it, we'll be okay without you, flyboy."
Heidi was always taunting him, jockeying for his plane. "Nothing I can't breeze through, roadcrawler. Remember, you're talking to an ace."
He dipped the bird's nose into the turbulence and swooped down. It was rougher than he had thought. The stick jarred in his hands, bruising his palms.
The motors cut out and the Fokker fell thirty feet like a deadweight before they cut in again. That shouldn't happen.
"Flyboy, what are you freaking around for? This is combat, here. Squirt some lighter fluid on those trucks and leave it to the Arizona Korps."
He didn't answer Heidi. He was too busy with the stick, trying to regain control of the biplane.
Suddenly, he was surrounded by a cloud. No, there were no clouds in the Big Empty. It must be smoke. It was black and thick, as if night had fallen in an instant. It wasn't like regular air. The instruments weren't responding properly.
Von Richter shivered as the temperature fell. Ice formed inside his goggles, and his sweat crystallized.
The engine stopped, and he tried to scream. A gust froze his throat.
The Fokker didn't fall. It was suspended in the black cloud.
"Rikki, what is that freaking thing up there? Tell me I'm having a GloJo flashback."
Von Richter thumbed his gun controls and the guns chattered, spinning bullets and cartridge casings into the black. They emptied quickly, but he still kept pressing.
This was serious weird shit.
A face ten feet across appeared in the blackness. It was more or less human. Von Richter screamed, and beat his hands against the ribbed canvas.
The face's thick lips opened, and a white beak pushed out, opening three ways. A violet thing shot out of the beak, and latched onto Von Richter's face.
Tiny filaments threaded instantaneously through his entire body, and there was a mighty tug as the black thing turned him inside-out.
The Fokker fell out of the sky, and crashed into the sand, surrounded by chunks of ice. Pieces of Erich Von Richter rained down around the wreckage.
The Jibbenainosay sped onwards, towards the South, thinking less of its latest prey than a desert wanderer does a single grain of sand.
The Arizona Korps didn't stop to bury their ace.
Dr Proctor had been polishing his knife. When the Indian came into the wine cellar, he looked up, teeth bared again. "Hello, Tonto," he said.
The Ancient Adversary was puzzled. The Vessel was not what he had expected, not the titanic being that could bestride a world and wrestle mind-to-mind with the Dark Ones.
This Jessamyn Bonney was so fragile, so slim, like a butterfly. It knew a moment of doubt. Then, it firmed its resolve.
It was shrunken inside Jessamyn now, inside Krokodil.
Alone, Nguyen Seth sat in his library. The Jibbenainosay was on the loose, and Krokodil could not withstand it.
Inside his mind, he could still hear her: tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…
/> He opened a book, but could not concentrate on the text, could not even recognize the language in which it was written.
This distraction must end soon. There were things to be done. He had another demon to summon, a subtler fiend, and a more complicated enemy to be struck down.
The Jesuits were becoming a nuisance. He would have to do something about the Vatican.
The sand was blowing hard now, stinging her face. This was the first sign of the Jibbenainosay.
She remembered her dead foes: Daddy Bruno, Miss Liberty, eyeless Holm Rodriguez, Susie Spam-in-the-Can Terhune, Bronson Manolo. And Dr Proctor, not dead but neutralized.
Behind all the faces, she saw Elder Seth.
The Krokodil part of her knew what was coming, what the Jibbenainosay was, and it was afraid. That was a first for it.
The Jessamyn Bonney part didn't care any more.
On the road, Trooper Nathan Stack was concentrating on the screen, wondering again whether he should try to be reassigned. He didn't know whether riding with Leona was a good idea after their break-up, but he wasn't sure if he could stand the thought of some other grunt drawing the duty. Sergeant Leona Tyree handled the United States Cavalry cruiser with expert ease. They had had a call-in from an interstate convoy, out of Phoenix for the East. Someone hadn't paid off the yaks, and a polite oriental gentleman in a suit had made a scrambled telephone call, and the Arizona Korps were cutting loose again.
Stack saw a shower of blips on the screen. "Dead ahead, Leona. Five ve-hickles. They're stalled."
Then, the whole screen lit up, a solid mass of light.
The cruiser swerved as Tyree looked over at the radar, but she got it back on the hardtop.
The glitch was gone.
"What was that?"
Stack tapped the screen. "According to this heap of junk, that was a flying object the size of the U.S.S. Nimitz."
Tyree laughed. "You startled me there. I'll have the system stripped and overhauled when we get back to Fort Apache."
"Yeah."
A thought occurred to him. "Say, Leona, do you want me to log it as a UFO?"
Tyree sneered. "Nahhh. That gag's stale already."
The Jibbenainosay cleaved through the air, gradually delighting in the unfamiliar sensations of physical existence. The human brains it had absorbed taught it much about this universe. Its new form was awkward in some ways, but there were things about it that offered possibilities.
It had never had things to hurt before. It found that it enjoyed inflicting pain. Even more, it relished taking away the spark of life from these scumspeck beings.
Soon, this universe would belong to the Dark Ones.
"Dr Proctor, you're…?"
"Better?" The Devil laughed in his face. "Yes, I suppose I am."
Hawk-That-Settles was backed up against a winerack. The bottles were long gone, but in their nests were a series of figurines. This was where Dr Proctor stored his cartoon creations.
The Devil had his whittling knife, and was making leisurely passes with it, just under Hawk's nose.
"There's a storm coming, isn't there Tonto? I can feel it in the air."
"Yes. A bad one."
"Do you perhaps know anything about the history of your people?"
Hawk gulped, the shining knifepoint a hair's breadth away from his adam's apple.
"Of course you do. You are a Son of Geronimo, are you not?"
Hawk nodded his head.
"Do you know what General Phil Sheridan, the war hero, said…"
Hawk knew what was coming next.
"'The only good Indians I ever saw,' old Phil said, 'were dead.'"
Hawk's eyes went to the doorway. It was too far off. He would never make it.
"Tonto, how would you like to be a good Indian?"
She remembered Doc Threadneedle trying to tell her to stay human. She supposed he wouldn't have been proud of her.
The horizon was invisible now, the air thick with sand. She could hear the Jibbenainosay coming through the whirling winds.
Krokodil hoped there was a way she could make it up to the Doc.
Where was Hawk-That-Settles? He should be here to see her take the final steps, to see her progress to the Seventh Level of Spirituality and beyond.
It loomed out of the sands like a whale, and towered over her. There was a face in the middle of it.
She recognized the likeness of Nguyen Seth.
It smiled, feelers leaking from its black eyelids.
She remembered her father's favourite saying from Nietzsche. What does not kill me makes me stronger.
"Come on. Jib," she said. "Make me stronger."
VIII
Dr Proctor's knife shook, the point just under Hawk's chin.
Then, the world turned upside-down.
The Devil was pulled across the room, as the wineracks wrapped around him. Hawk was struck to his knees by a flying brick. He saw the stones of the ceiling shake loose. Ancient mortar fell as white dust.
Hawk choked, and held an arm up to ward off falling masonry. The whole monastery was going to come down on his head, thousands of tons of European stone.
Sand was blowing through in a throat-filling hurricane. Hawk covered his mouth. You could drown in this thick swirl.
He couldn't see Dr Proctor any more, but he could hear the man thrashing around, breaking the wineracks like matchwood. A carved Yosemite Sam hit him in the face. There was a lot of debris flying around, as if the cellar were the focus of a giant whirlwind.
The floor fell, like an aircraft hitting a pocket of turbulence, and Hawk plunged down with it, landing hard. He thought his ankle might be broken.
He knew this wasn't an earthquake.
A chunk of ceiling struck the flagstones, and burst like a stone frag grenade. Hawk heard Dr Proctor scream as the shrapnel hit him.
Hawk looked up, and saw light through the hole. Stones disappeared, pulled upwards, and sunlight, filtered through sand, streamed in. The whole of Santa de Nogueira was being pulled apart and tossed into the air. This was in the cellars. Hawk couldn't imagine what it would take to pick the structure apart piece by piece and still keep the chunks in the air.
Then he was seized by hands of wind, and tugged upright like a marionette. Pain lanced through his chest. He must have broken his ribs again.
The sand got into his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He shook his head, trying to fight the smothering blasts. There was nothing solid under his feet any more, and yet he was being drawn upwards.
Stones bounced off his head and shoulders as he rose through the storm. It was only a question of how soon he would be smashed against a lump large enough to do serious damage.
Through the sand, he could see Dr Proctor, also floating steadily upwards. The madman's limbs flailed, and he was screeching. To think that Hawk had feared Dr Proctor, had imagined that this pathetic puppet was the Devil.
They were well out of the cellars now. Hawk couldn't see any ground below, but thought it must be hundreds of feet beneath him. They were above the layer of the whirling stones. The skeleton of the monastery still stood, stripped of its bulk.
Hawk had flown in his spirit dreams, but this was the first time his physical form had been so elevated. In his dreams, he had walked the winds with the wendigo and the eagle ghosts. Now, he was helpless, a kite without strings, buffeted this way and that. Rising slowly, he had the sensation of falling from a great height, picking up speed as he shot towards the iron-hard ground.
Then, suddenly, he was above the sandcloud, floating in the still air. Dr Proctor broke the surface of the sandstorm at the same time, and the two men shouted to each other.
There was calm here, and a light breeze. The storm below was like a sea of agitated grit. Stones, wooden beams and gravemarkers were tossed on the surface of the clouds, being thrown up and sucked down. Krokodil was down there somewhere, swimming through the sand. The sky stretched away to a blue infinity, and the sun bore down on them.
In t
he gentle warmth, Hawk suddenly felt all the injuries he had sustained in his flight upwards. His face had been effectively sandblasted, and one of his legs hung useless.
He couldn't hear what Dr Proctor was shouting, but it didn't matter. Words were no good. All the songs Two-Dogs-Dying had taught his son were no good. There was no adequate response.
The thing that hung above the storm, its tendrils dangling into the sandclouds, was unquestionably a gitche manitou. Hawk couldn't bear to look at it, and yet he was unable to turn his head away. The Jibbenainosay was dark beyond darkness. Hawk supposed that a Black Hole must look like this, concentrated and yet immense. It was not a being Hawk could ever have shared a universe with.
It made the sky seem small.
IX
It left the chapel alone, but tore up everything else in sight. Millions of tons of sand tossed around her, but she was in a bubble of empty air. The Jibbenainosay was cloaked in its storm now, but she could sense its bulk beyond the chaos. The entity was big enough to be infested with Godzillas the way a dog has ticks. For all its size, it appeared light, almost insubstantial. Krokodil knew it was from another place entirely, and she didn't mean Oz, Heaven or Akron, Ohio.
She saw its summoning in her mind. There was Elder Seth cutting himself open, surrounded by the bleeding dead. And there was the Jibbenainosay billowing inside a cathedral, squirming into the universe, the foul-smelling shit of some other reality.
Also, she knew that inside her was something that recognized the Dark One, that knew its secret names and the nature of its multiple existence. Something which, in another life, could even claim kinship with the Jibbenainosay. This was ihe thing that had helped her best Dr Proctor, had hauled her up to the Sixth Level, had made her Krokodil.
Whatever it was that possessed her, she hoped it would have the resources to fight this world-gobbling thing.
A tentacle shot out of the sand, and she brushed it aside. Its sweat stung.
She swung down from the perch, and dived into the sand. She expected to be engulfed, but her bubble travelled with her. Standing in front of the door to the chapel, she braced herself. The chapel must be the last of Santa de Nogueira. There were excavations in the earth where the storm had uprooted and scattered the monastery's subterranean cellars and passageways.