by North, Geoff
Jenny saluted him. “Aye-aye, Colonel. Now go back to Mom. She needs your protection more than I do.” She shoved past him and set off towards the hills. She had gone a hundred yards when the first spat of rain stung against her forehead. Jenny scratched at it like a mosquito bite. More drops struck her cheeks and bit into her arms.
The others started yelling behind her. Jenny turned and saw them running. The rain came down then like a blanket of fire. It was too late to make it to the hills before they were all soaked in it. Jenny looked at her hands. Clear water ran between her fingers and down the length of her exposed arms. Her skin wasn’t melting away. The rain hurt, but it wouldn’t kill them. Cryers were made of tougher stuff than that.
Aleea Shon made it to her first. Jenny tried grabbing the woman, wanting to tell her the threat was minimal, but she pushed her into the mud and kept running. The ground was shaking under Jenny’s hands. Ivan Tevalov’s knee caught her in the shoulder and knocked Jenny onto her back. They were all rushing past her. She saw her mother’s head bobbing back and forth as her father carried the woman on his back.
He yelled to her on his way by, “Get up and run!”
Leonard stumbled in the mud and fell on top of Jenny. He tried helping her up but the rumbling ground made it too difficult. He made a squeaking noise of apology and pushed away from her, fleeing along with the others.
Jenny sat up and saw Eunice bearing down on her at unbelievable speed. There wouldn’t be time to roll away from the impact. Her head would be caught between the woman’s thighs and torn off at the shoulders. There was a sickening crack and Eunice’s body rose into the air. One of her toes scraped through Jenny’s hair, and the woman was gone. Something huge and matted with fur brushed her face. More creatures thundered past, shaking the earth and throwing up mud. Jenny was caught in a stampede of monstrous heads and raking claws. She slipped and fell repeatedly in the mud, trying to get back on her feet. By the time she was finally able to stand, the wave of animals had passed.
Jenny staggered through the disturbed earth, stumbling in ruts and wet cracks. One of the creatures had turned and was charging at her again. Colonel Strope smashed into its side, throwing it off course. His arms wrapped around its thick neck and twisted. The creature lost its balance and fell over sideways. Strope wrestled his way on top and punched through one of the black eyes. The creature roared a low, throaty growl as Strope pushed his arm further in, breaking through the socket and slipping his fingers into its brain. Jenny watched his arm give one final jerk, and the animal went still.
They started looking for the others. A heavy fog—caused by the rain that continued to pour and the heat of so many moving bodies—had set in. Strope led Jenny to her mother first. She was sitting in a puddle, staring off into the mist.
Jenny stared at her father accusingly.
“I had to put her down—I had to come back for you.”
She didn’t appear any more damaged than she already had been. Perhaps it would’ve been best if one of those hooves had crushed her skull in. The thought made Jenny sick. She was becoming more like Eichberg with each passing hour.
Leonard Dutz appeared out of the gray, weaving through the rain and gnawing on something red. “So hungry…so hungry...so hungry.” Strope guided him to Jenny and the man sat down next to her and Edna, his eyes glued to the piece of flesh clenched in his fingers. Jenny almost asked what it was—monster or cryer—but decided she didn’t want to know. There wasn’t much difference between the two.
The ground started to shake again. Leonard looked up from his meal. Blood and rainwater were running down his chin and neck. “Tastes like hamburger.” He giggled, and more blood bubbled out from between his teeth. “The cows are comin’ home.”
Jenny felt the heavy thuds of the creature’s feet through the ground, and heard the low snorting of its breath. None of them could see a thing beyond an arm’s length in the fog. It could be coming from anywhere, but it was definitely coming for them. A woman started screaming, and the animal’s charge ended abruptly. There was a sound not unlike a tree crashing down in the forest.
Jenny’s father grabbed her by the wrist before she could explore further. “Wait,” he whispered. “The rain’s beginning to let up.”
They sat still for the next few minutes, staring out into the rising mist, listening for sounds, and feeling against the mud for movement. Leonard sucked noisily on a piece of remaining gristle. The colonel smacked it out of his hand. “Quiet.”
An immense, unmoving form began to take shape forty feet away. One of the beasts was lying on its side. Something almost as big was perched on top, ripping into the dead animal’s stomach and pulling out steaming entrails. As the fog lifted, Jenny saw Eunice Murrenfeld, covered in gore. The woman was shoving heavy intestines into her mouth faster than her fat hands could pull them out. Her thick throat bulged like a balloon being fed too much air as she sucked it all down. She wasn’t even bothering to chew.
Leonard started crawling towards the woman and her prize. “Burgers.”
Lothair Eichberg appeared out of the remaining bit of gray haze and helped Leonard stand. “Leave the woman with her kill, Leonard. There’s more for you to feed on…more than enough for all of us.” Lothair led him to a second carcass. Leonard sank to his knees in front of its gargantuan head and smiled up gratefully at Eichberg. “Eat all you can, my friend. It’s been a long time coming.”
Leonard started in on one of its big black eyes.
The bodies were scattered all around them. Jenny spotted Aleea Shon a hundred yards away, gnawing ungraciously at an arm already stripped clean of its fur. The animal’s muscle was proving hard to chew through, but the woman stuck with it, anchoring the creature’s long claws into the ground for additional leverage. The Russian was staggering between carcasses, weaving away like an old drunk. He held a heart the size of a grown man’s head between his hands. His face was mired into the organ, sucking away at the torn arteries. Tevalov tossed it aside seconds later and fell greedily onto the next dead form. His gray beard had turned red. Even her father had become part of the frenzy, pushing meat and fur clumped together into his mouth.
Jenny wouldn’t eat. Not like this. Not like them. She would starve herself before sinking to that level. Unfortunately, she realized with sinking dread, it would be an almost eternal wait.
When the feasting had finished, and the cryers had gorged themselves sufficiently, Lothair resumed his trek towards the hills. Leonard fell in behind him, followed by the still-stumbling Tevalov and a blood-drenched Shon.
Eunice pulled at the back end of one of the creatures, dragging a hundred pounds of meat on bone after the others. Twelve more feet of glistening intestine were draped about her shoulders and neck for a future snack. Edna was in Strope’s strong arms. She chewed mindlessly on a piece of fat as he carried her.
I’ll stay here. I won’t go with them no matter how hard they try and make me. I’ll sit here until I die. She remembered the boy from her dream. Colby…Cobe. His name was Cobe.
Jenny out set after the others.
They found Mary Gades another quarter mile on, or what was left of her. Half of the old lady’s head was mush—the other half was twitching in agony. She was trying to speak, but her throat was pulp, and her bony chest had been trampled flat into the mud.
“Can you save her?” Aleea asked Eichberg. “Like you saved your granddaughter?”
“Why bother?” Lothair continued walking.
Brian Haywood had almost made it to the hills. He was propped up against a rock and his legs were gone. His left arm was lying on the ground next to him, still attached to the stump of his shoulder by a piece of skin and a few blue veins.
“I bet you’re all wondering how I made it this far.”
Lothair didn’t hesitate, offering the most likely answer. “You were pinned to the face of one of those animals and pushed here.”
“Yeah, that’s about right. Like steppin’ in front of a semi. Damn t
hing’s claws tore my legs clean off as we went.”
“Unfortunate.” Lothair started to step around him.
“Hold on just a minute—you ain’t leaving me here like this, are you?”
“You’d only slow us down,” the old man said without a trace of compassion.
“What about our deal? My farm for your cryogenics installation… You promised to take care of me.”
Eichberg went back to him as Jenny and the others continued up. “I promised to have you cryogenically preserved near death. I brought you back, and our business came to an end. Done deal.”
Haywood didn’t argue. He didn’t plead. “You got me there. Guess I wouldn’t be much use to anyone now…not like this.”
“At least you’ll die in familiar surroundings. This was still good farming land in your time, wasn’t it?”
“You bet. I owned over six thousand acres.” He went to point with a hand no longer there and settled instead with a nod of his head to the southwest. “Best years of my life…I should’ve stayed dead.”
“Perhaps not all of us are suited to a new world.”
“No kidding.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Haywood.”
“Yeah, see you later, Eichberg… Nice to see the bison return to this new world of yours.” Lothair waited a moment longer for him to explain. “The late eighteen hundreds…beginning of the twentieth century…this was buffalo country. Hundreds of thousands of them covered the land…until mankind came along and wiped them out, that is.”
“Those weren’t bison we encountered, Mr. Haywood.”
“Technically, no…but I thought the idea…was kind of poetic.”
Lothair left the farmer propped up against his rock and headed into the Dirty Hills.
Chapter 35
“Don’t even think it.” Lode rumbled.
Willem crawled slowly back under the small shelter and settled between the sleeping form of Lawson and the whimpering Trot. The boy’s face was a conflicted mask of emotions; fear, hatred, desperation, and a few others Cobe couldn’t name but felt just the same as his brother.
Lode spoke again. “We’re not going anywhere until I’m sure the rain’s stopped for good.”
“It’s been hours,” Willem complained.”
“You’re in a hurry to get to Rudd, boy?”
“No. Just sick of sittin’ under this shitty piece of wood.”
The shitty piece of wood was actually ten or eleven pieces nailed together into a larger unit—a section of old, thin barn wall that had collapsed in ruin, or perhaps a piece of someone’s house that had blown away from Rudd during an even more violent storm than the one that had passed over them.
“If we hadn’t taken cover beneath it, the rain would’ve burned the skin clean off your bones.” Lode studied the back of one of his immense hands. The faded tattoo of a screaming howler was stippled over in blisters. “Haven’t been caught in one that bad since I was about your age.”
“Maybe you should wear more clothes,” Trot offered.
Cobe looked at the tiny blisters on his arms. They were like freckles, but instead of being dull brown, they were raised and angry pink. The lower part of his back still burned where he’d exposed the skin to cover his head and neck with his shirt. Willem and Trot had done the same, and both looked to be in about the same amount of discomfort. They were three miles from Rudd when the first drops fell, and had to run only three hundred feet to the old piece of wall resting up against a boulder at an angle. That frantic race had been enough; if it had been three hundred feet more—Cobe imagined a grisly scene of five rotted skeletons lying out in the mud.
“He’s right,” Cobe said before Lode could respond to Trot. “We should wait here a little longer.”
“Finally,” the giant said. “At least one of you has some brains and sense.”
They had been trapped there for three hours. Four more passed as Lode sat near the highest part of the opening, scanning the clouds that continued to roll by with the threat of more burning rain. The rain never came, and as evening set in, Cobe saw Rudd for the first time. Light flickered in the distance—fires being lit, candles and lanterns burning in windows.
That’s where we’re likely going to die. Lawson started to snore back in the shadows. Some worse than others.
Trot poked his head out from the shelter and looked up. “I can see stars!”
Cobe groaned. Sometimes the man could only think in the past and present. He rarely saw the bigger picture of things.
Lode rose up into the night. “Let’s go.”
There was no wall surrounding the town when they arrived. A massive trench had been dug out centuries before, spanning forty feet across and almost as deep. It encompassed the entire village in a misshapen ring, separating its residents from the rest of the world. Lode pushed the lawman out onto a narrow bridge made of rock. Lawson’s boot caught on stone and he staggered to his hands and knees. Lode kicked at him until he was standing again. The giant stood at the edge, giving Cobe, Willem, and Trot room to follow in a single line. Cobe considered driving his shoulder into Lode’s stomach—to send him down into the blackness. Surely the trench was riddled with more sharp rocks on the bottom for the freak to split his skull open on. Or maybe enough acidic rain and sludge had accumulated in the depths for him to drown in. Lode saw the murderous intent in his eyes and shook his head.
Two men with big clubs called out from the other side, asking who they were, and what business they had in Rudd. They backed away a few steps when Lode came into view, searching for bigger weapons in the mess that acted as a guard station.
“We’re the representatives from Burn,” Lode yelled back, “here for the Rites.”
The guards looked terrified and dismayed. One of them tossed his club to the ground and shrugged dejectedly. “May as well call ‘em off right now if you’re going into the ring.”
“I’m not Burn’s champion.” Lode pushed the lawman in front of them. “He is.”
Rudd was bigger than Burn, or at least it had that appearance with the squat houses and shacks spaced out over a larger area. The wide streets were just as dirty, Cobe noticed as they struggled through mud that gripped their feet up to the ankles. He wondered if the rainwater absorbed in the dirt would leave their feet burnt and blistering. His wet toes weren’t stinging yet, and he supposed there might not be enough time left for any of them to be overly concerned.
“Like home,” Trot commented.
“Smells like piss and shit,” Willem said.
“That’s what I mean… just like home.”
Faces stared out suspiciously from windows and through cracks in walls. They ducked out of the light when Lode made eye contact. Cobe didn’t blame them. He wondered if this town had its own version of a homicidal giant, and shuddered at the thought. From the guards’ reactions, he didn’t think it was so. He thanked the gods he’d never believed in for that small miracle.
Time was running out for Cobe and his brother. He’d given up on the idea of saving all four of them. The lawman was too broken to make it anywhere—with or without help—and Trot was too stupid and slow. He should’ve taken his chance back on the bridge—he should’ve pushed the big fucker down, or at least died trying.
Lawson stopped walking when they reached the town’s center. He staggered around in a slow circle, taking it all in.
Lode didn’t hit or kick him back into movement. Their journey had come to an end. “When’s the last time you visited Rudd, Lawman?” They all knew the answer to that. Lode just wanted to hear him say it.
“About a million years ago.” The old man chuckled grimly. “Or so it feels… I fought in the Rites once before when I was a hell of a lot younger than I am now.”
Lode rested a hand on his shoulder. It was the first non-violent contact he’d shared with the lawman since Big Hole. “This will be like old times for you, then.”
A pack of howlers began to wail beyond the trench surrounding Rudd.
Part F
our:
Rites
Chapter 36
The procession of workers trudged by Sara’s home in the pre-morning gloom carrying shovels and picks still encrusted with dirt from yesterday’s digging. It would be easier going for them today, she thought. The rain had softened the ground, and the rusty tools would cut into the earth with less back-breaking difficulty. They would return filthier—filthier than they appeared now—long after the sun had set, and the pit was finished.
Sara leaned against the frame of the only window in her two-room house and watched them walk by. Today was day four. It normally took three days to prepare the pit, but the previous day’s downpour had left the men hunkered underneath hastily-erected tents and hole-ridden blankets for the better part of it. Sara had treated six of them where the cover had been inadequate and the rain had gotten through. She had applied healing oils, and wrapped burnt, blistering sections of skin and scalp in bandages. One poor soul never made it back from the pit at all. There hadn’t been room for him to take shelter. Sara had heard all about it from the men she’d tended to; how he had screamed in agony, and ran from tent to tent, blanket to blanket, begging for cover. The rain fell harder, and the man took to running in frenzied circles, steam rising from his body, the skin bubbling off from his bones.
Sara shook her head and tried to block the images of their stories from her mind. She continued to watch the workers march by, and prayed the rain would stay away until the Rites were finished and everyone had gone back home.
“No clouds today,” her daughter said from behind her. “I hear some of the chosen are going to practice. Can I go watch?”
“Same answer as yesterday and the day before, Kay. No.”
“But it ain’t going to rain today, I’ll be safe.”
Sara looked away from the men and turned to her. Kay’s light blue eyes and big-toothed smile pleaded with her. She was taller than most fourteen-year-old girls in Rudd, but not yet filled out in those areas enough to be considered a young woman. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a bun—a style she’d copied after her mother—accentuating the fine spatter of freckles on her forehead and cheeks. Those cheeks glowed pink this morning—a sure sign her only child had fretted over asking her mother to do something again when in all likelihood she already knew the answer. Sara could feel for the girl. Life in Rudd was dismal at the best of times, and when the opportunity arose to leave its dirty, violent streets—even for a few short hours—most folks jumped at the chance.