by Philip Webb
There’s a pause. Perhaps they’ve fallen for it, though I cannot see how it helps us. Except, if they’re desperate for me to remain alive, then they will not delay … My reactions are like molasses pouring out of a jar in winter. As footsteps charge up the sidewalk steps, the barrel of my gun lolls to and fro, mostly at the floorboards.
But the sheriff is already on his feet, standing square in the sunlight with his shotgun held out low by his hip. He waits, he waits. And … BOOM! Wood panels spiral away from the entrance. He pumps another shell into the chamber. A flurry of movement at the smashed door frame. BOOM! He strides forward, taking it to them now. A figure blasts through the window and crashes onto Luis — a shadow spitting flame. The sheriff swings to face him, primes, fires. And the gunfire falls silent.
“Luis!” I cry out, standing up in full view. Knocked unconscious? Or dead?
Nobody moves. It is as though time has all along been a perfect shuffle of cards, riffling and slotting and sliding next to each other, but now the pack sprays out of control onto the floor.
The intruder staggers and crashes backward.
The sheriff turns to me, his eyelids flickering. He sags to his knees. The shotgun slips from his fingers.
Long, deliberate strides bring a tall man to the threshold of the building. Can this really be a Visitor? He pauses to survey the scene, his shoulders blocking the light, his gun trailing by his side. I can see nothing of his face — it is locked in shadow. But his eyes flare briefly — gold, like embers in a gust of air.
He steps without concern into the office.
And, without even looking at the sheriff, he shoots him at close range. The sheriff spins with the force of the round and clatters to the floor.
No more cowering. I raise the gun. My flailing limbs seem to prop each other up. Just.
What do they want with me? My insides just let go and I soak my pants. The urine runs cold before it reaches my knees.
The intruder stops just in front of me, stuffing his belly onto the barrel of my gun. There’s a grin on his face. Several days’ growth. A smattering of boils across the flattened bridge of his nose. As I gape at him, the gold of his eyes spreads, in one beat, swallowing whites and pupils. And they burn. The flickering glow puckers the flesh and the lashes. He, it, is so close I hear the swill of saliva in its mouth as it licks its lips … Beneath the skin, I imagine a creature. Harnessed and hunched into a cloak of human flesh. Something made of molten hatred.
“Let’s see if you can hit the target, cupcake,” it mocks. The voice gurgles softly, like the lungs are full of mud.
“You got the shakes? Ain’t so easy to shoot a critter point-blank now, is it?” The way it talks — summoning the speech of Bud Haslett, a man long dead — chills me to the core.
It lets its firearm drop to the floor and thrusts its gut farther forward. I try to breathe, take ahold of my fleeing thoughts — this is all so wrong … Shoot! Shoot! But I can’t. And it knows I can’t. Its eyes blaze. And when it speaks again, there is no trace of Bud Haslett at all.
“So, it is true, about you.”
“W-what? What’s true?”
“You don’t know?”
Its leer widens. It reaches beyond the limits of what should be possible — a molar-baring snarl. Like a demon drawing back the cheeks from within.
I stumble away.
Its skin is hitched so high from the teeth that I think it will tear, and at last the grin slackens with a jowly pop.
A hot, sour stench envelops me as its voice bubbles up, loose with phlegm.
“Come to me,” it whispers. “Let me show you the answers you seek, about what will become of you and humankind. Bridgwater child.”
That is what it calls me. As though bestowing a title.
I must shoot. Everything in my wilting heart screams out to shoot. But I cannot. The smell of its breath is like musk, hot, almost … rabid. Blood beats wildly into my head and flushes straight out again. Unnatural visions flash through my mind: People all in a row, waiting, until light swallows them. And as they scream without sound, their mouths hinged back, jaws breaking right open, their faces unfurling like dreadful flowers …
I sway backward, dropping the gun, and stagger into the corridor that leads back to the cell. I fumble at the barred door and swing it shut with all my weight. The lock snaps fast.
The intruder follows me, leans its head against the bars, and closes its eyes with a dead smile. The eyelids just wrinkle black and drop away smoking, as the orbs beneath them shine out. It grips the bars so hard the fingertips split open and by degrees the steel begins to yield.
But then, as convulsions take hold of its shoulders, I see the sheriff stir from the floor behind. A single shot rings out and wet heat slaps into my face.
Even as the Visitor slides down the bars, the life goes from its eyes. A piece of its head the size of my fist is missing. Something like a fat worm wriggles from the skull and flops dead against the side of its face. My mouth is salty from blood — the stolen blood of Bud Haslett.
My breathing is chaotic. In a small voice I call out, but neither Luis nor the sheriff stirs. Smoke curls from the barrels of fallen guns. Strangely, I can smell it from here. I try the door but it will not budge, jammed somehow now that the bars are bent. Outside, all is quiet — no more outlaws for now to storm the building. If I could reach the dead Visitor’s revolver, I could maybe shoot the latch out, but it’s too far away, even at full stretch.
I must keep moving, keep thinking. Or my sanity will leak away. Once again, in my mind’s eye I see the terrible vision — row upon row of people awaiting the plunder of their bodies. I turn, meaning to find a different way out, and hear the crackling for the first time. And the air stings my lungs with smoke. Firelight jumps from the corridor and, within moments, snatches the ceiling beams. A river of smoke rolls toward me.
“LUIS! SHERIFF!”
The yelling makes me cough and I sink lower to avoid the fumes. I rattle at the door uselessly, then jam my arm up to the pit to try again for the butt of the Visitor’s gun. But I know I’m just wasting time — even at full stretch, my straining fingers are a good yard short.
But the Visitor is within reach. Maybe it has another weapon. I pad frantically at the jacket and the pockets above its chaps. Pocket watch, key fob, tobacco pouch. The possessions of an abductee — kept as what? Trophies? Cover? Smoke streams past me. I hold my breath ’til my chest burns and then I hold it some more. I rip the pockets from their seams. Just junk! A pocket Bible, shredded by gunshot, a wad of folded dollar bills … My eyes stream. I feel the heat at my back. Sparks settle on my skin. The crackle of flaming timber becomes a roar. I claw at the dead man’s clothes ’til my hands are slippery with blood.
Someone screams my name.
I can see nothing. Just a smudged hump moving through the gloom. I gasp for breath and take down only noxious fumes. My lungs pinch shut.
A single gunshot and the scraping of the door. A hand at my collar, dragging me clear.
“Megan!”
Luis!
We scramble for the door, away from burning walls, tumbling out into the sweet cold air. I choke and retch, and I can’t see, my eyes are so raw.
The sheriff has been dragged clear, too. The skinny Mexican boy tends to him by the curbside. But as I draw closer, it’s clear that the sheriff is in a bad way. His shirt is steeped in blood, and his skin is gray.
“We go now,” urges Luis. “Is nothing to do for this man.”
“Wait.”
I cradle the sheriff’s head. I don’t think he can see me, the way his eyes rove, but he smiles and tries to say something. I drop my ear to his mouth, but it’s gibberish.
“No time,” groans Luis.
“He saved my life. I’m not leaving him here.”
The sheriff finds the strength to raise his voice. “Get gone, Megan. I ain’t ridin’ nowhere.”
“You need a doctor.”
“Be here soon enough.
There’d be nothing to patch up if that last one could shoot straight. Never even looked. Angel on my shoulder today. Gotta shoot them between the eyes, Megan. Only way to take them down.”
“Don’t talk anymore.”
“Figure they ain’t gone far. We just beat ’em back some. Head up to White Sands. Devon Marshall.”
His breathing runs shallow.
The jailhouse is an inferno. Flames whip in the wind, hugging the wreckage as it crumbles. The vision visited upon me is a searing mark in my brain. The silent scream of men, women, and children waiting in line.
I must have a haunted look: Luis speaks gently, for all the urgency he must feel. “Megan, we go now.”
The young Mexican boy looks up at me with tears in his eyes. “Ride, senorita. I find help for our sheriff. Take horses. Go!”
I kiss the sheriff’s cheek and murmur my thanks into his ear. There is nothing in his expression to suggest that he understands me. It feels wrong to abandon him this way, but only a doctor can save him now.
I check that I still have the map, and nod to Luis. He tosses me my six-gun and the satchel of ammunition. Across his back he has slung a shotgun and the sheriff’s long-range rifle. He leads the way to two horses looped to a rail across the road — one of them, Cisco, is yanking and whinnying to get free. Luis unties a fine Appaloosa and mounts up.
“Whose is that?”
He shrugs. “Outlaws. Mine now.”
He looks nervously down the smoke-filled street, at the bodies lying there. “The others, they come back soon. Vamos, let’s go!”
One last look at the sheriff and his young charge, then I jump into Cisco’s saddle and dig my heels into his flanks.
“Where to?” cries Luis.
“Davis Mountains,” I yell over my shoulder.
I am vexed about taking an outlaw’s horse. It is bound to be someone’s stolen property, and there are towns on-Zone that carry the death penalty for rustling. Still, I cannot worry about that now. I try to blank my mind as we tear out of Marfa off the road and into open country.
We gallop east and north, out toward the desert flats and Marfa Airport.
We slow only for the abandoned trenches and barbed-wire defenses of the old Deadline border. To our right lies the concrete apron of the airstrip — rusted remnants of old planes tipped by the wind. I snatch glances over my shoulder but no one has given chase.
At last we enter the Zone, and there is that telltale shift, that sense in the air that the rules have changed. I feel no immediate danger ahead but we slow to a trot anyway. We may have outlaws on our trail but they are not the worst dangers here. This is a forsaken land, and from the wastes of Alaska down through the Rocky Mountains and as far south as Tijuana, the true threat belongs to the weaknesses of the human mind.
A raw wind scrapes over the desert. I climb down from Cisco to settle him — he is jumpy after the ride from Marfa and I, too, need to calm down. Luis keeps looking back and I know he’s eager to push on to the Davis Mountains, where there will be cover at least. But Pa always said the Zone claims most victims when they panic, punishing their rash decisions. We must be cautious.
We continue in silence, north toward Fort Davis, keeping two miles or so west of Highway 17. It makes sense to keep away from the road in case outlaws lurk there, and I steer a course along a dry wadi into the low sun to hide us from view as much as possible.
After a few miles, though, the wadi starts to lead us too far west, so I skip Cisco out of it. And that’s when I get my first real inklings of worry.
Luis calls to me. “I know. I feel it.”
Seasoned trackers like Pa call it the quivers, a sense that things are contrary to nature. I know Cisco feels it, too, from his sideways stamp and his necking at the reins. A change in the air. Like a tightening. Like every decision you make from here on in matters, from where you put your feet to when you breathe to how much shadow you cast. The only thing you can do is stay hair-trigger alert. Trackers get tuned in, if they live long enough. They can read the terrain and how it is changing. But me, I’m just learning, and I haven’t clocked up enough Zone hours to read my quivers properly. I just know we’re under threat, but what from is anyone’s guess.
We thread a way through thorny breaks. Wind picking up now. The branches of stunted trees all point west to the meager sunset glow, hungry for light, like praying beggars. There’s a scrabbling sound as they move to the gusts and squalls. Feels like a storm is on the way.
We both pull our collars up and tip our hats into the wind. I peer from under my brim at the gathering columns of dust and try to plot a course toward Blue Mountain. It’s a good place to enter the Davis Mountains and lies a little to the west of Fort Davis, allowing us to steer clear of roads and buildings. But it is not long before I spot the raised banks of Highway 17 dark against the amber blaze of the sun. Somehow we have strayed too far east. Grit races across the untended tarmac. In places, the road has become submerged beneath shallow dunes. Wind whistles through broken fittings high on lampposts. A tumbleweed bounces over the lanes. Both directions are empty, though I cannot see far up the northbound stretches — a gloom has built up over the road, a bruise in the sky and across the land that could be a dust storm, though it does not seem to move. Which worries me.
“Let’s cross the highway and skirt around it.”
“We go back west, no? Straight to Davis Montañas.”
“I tried that already. The Zone is pushing us here.”
“I think is danger …”
Rookie outbursts like this don’t help one bit, but this is no place for an argument — I need to concentrate.
“Just let me do the tracking,” I say calmly. “I’m not going to ride into it — I just want to keep it in range ’til I get more of a sense of it.”
He huffs in frustration but doesn’t argue. I may not have much Zone experience, but I have more than Luis.
I estimate that, whatever it is, the gloomy patch is half a mile wide, maybe more, though it is hard to tell because it is not obvious how far away it is. It has a fuzzy edge, and sometimes a tendril of shade will whip out like a dust devil from the central core of a twister. But twisters have sharp outlines and are much narrower, with blasts of debris at the base. This thing just hangs there like a smudge, right over Highway 17. We avert our eyes — it is clearly something of the Zone, and even paying such events too much mind can be perilous.
The dark patch is directly on our left when I hear the first baying of wolves. Cisco nearly bucks away from me in panic. I guess the wind is too changeable for him to have picked up their scent, so it is a shock they are so close. Luis has a much harder job keeping his horse in check — it spins and rears and skitters about.
I draw and cock the Colt, then scan our tracks. Four shapes are stalking the margins of the highway. They pad confidently, not bothering to keep low, and, God, they are big! The lead one pauses, a huge male, watching me as the wind ruffles the fur across his back, ears twitching. He throws his head back and howls. It is chilling to be so close to that eerie moan, a call of hunger that rises into the wind. Even as the howl dies, others answer it — to the front and behind us. They have us encircled.
“I not hold him!” cries Luis. “Ride! Any place! Now!”
“Wait! Panic and we’re done for.”
“Is not me! The horse panic!” His horse nearly topples as it rears with Luis practically standing in the stirrups.
“Steady him!” I shout. If he bolts, he’s dead, I know it. We’ve only been in the Zone an hour — I should have left him behind.
We will not outride a whole pack. I must think! For the first time since the wolves closed in, I look at the strange hanging gloom. Sunlight seems to bend around it — a vast column of blurred gray peaking below real and racing clouds. The decision is made even before I fully agree to it in my mind. Both Cisco and I act, as one — kicking into a full gallop. Over my shoulder, Luis takes up the charge, too — his horse desperate to follow.
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br /> Ahead, I can see nothing but scratches of movement in the mass of gray — it is like a hole in my vision, like peering through layers and layers of shifting muslin. But it is preferable to a pack of wolves on the hunt. I snatch another glance over my shoulder. Behind Luis, the beasts meet — two pincers, maybe twenty of them. There is a pause when I think they have given up the chase, but they funnel after us, undeterred by whatever it is we’re heading for.
I ride ’til my eyes can see nothing but the gray gloom. I expect a refusal from Cisco as we enter something like fog, though it is dry and made up of agitated scribbles of movement. A fur of static runs over my skin and there is a burnt smell, like cordite — crackles of charge like thousands of tiny lightless sparks.
Then, we’re in the clear.
It’s like we’ve popped a giant bubble.
The gray fuzz has all just disappeared.
Cisco slides to a halt in shock, as Luis tears past me.
And there in front of us is a town. A town that should not be there because there are no towns on Highway 17 between here and Fort Davis.
But that’s not the half of it. Because the entire town is hovering perhaps twenty yards in the air.
There is no time to take in this impossibility. I swing around in the saddle to see the wolves careering toward me, pitching into a new pincer movement. I fire off a round in their general direction, but they do not balk.
I put the reins in my teeth again and recock the pistol with both thumbs.
The town is our only option, though I cannot see how to enter it. I spur Cisco on ’til Luis is abreast of me. The place looms above us. It cannot be real! But this is the Zone. Weird space-time wrinkles are the reality here and now. The streets and buildings sway a little, like a flotilla of moored vessels on an invisible sea, anchored to the desert. The foundations and tree roots and sewage pipes hang from its underbelly like the frills and tentacles of a vast jellyfish. It has no means of support, though the air under it wobbles, as warped as the imperfections in blown glass.