by James Jaros
Trophies of a sacred war. Tributes to the One True Son.
God and man, beating on his breath like the wings of heaven’s dove.
The blood of ages to bleed the blood of man.
Jessie and Burned Fingers avoided a damaged road that ran through the valley, walking down a riverbed of smooth round stones instead. Dust softened their steps; but their sandals, cobbled together from old treadless tires and lizard skin leather, left clear tracks.
She welcomed the shade of the hill. The valley was narrow enough to shelter them from the stark morning light, sunrise and sunset the only earthly constants that hadn’t been mangled by the reckless generations that had left them this ragged world.
Goddamn them.
Nothing but scorn for the louts who ruled her country at the turn of the century. Those feckless politicians and their big money backers—and the supine media that exalted them all—could have saved billions of lives and millions of species; but in those first fifteen, twenty years, when simple steps could have averted this tragedy, they did worse than nothing—they created an illusion of safety and comfort while the world spun inexorably toward collapse.
Goddamn them.
The signs had been everywhere—oceans dying, Arctic melting, killer heat waves, massive crop failures, freakishly strong storms, the list went on and on—but her grandparents and most everyone else pranced about so childishly, so narcissistically, that they’d made Nero seem like an alarmist.
Goddamn them.
She could scarcely imagine the courage, the unerring instincts of those who did try to stop the genocidal consumption, who bombed and struggled for years to try to shut the maw of that beast—and were hunted and tortured and executed for their fearlessness.
Kids, mostly. Nineteen-, twenty-year-olds. Some even younger. A few older. Veterans, too. The first leaders of the rebel forces. They’d fought back, and Christ, they were killed with a ferociousness that exposed both the cruelty and underlying fear of those in power.
She wished the wastrels who’d persecuted them—who were so busy pointing their fingers and guns at others—had done the planet a favor and aimed at themselves instead.
“Ready to start up there?”
She had to ask Burned Fingers to repeat himself; but she didn’t hear him a second time, because her eyes were drawn to dust-laden lumps on the slope to their left, like the ones she’d seen on another hillside less than an hour ago. And then she realized with a start that the protrusions were too precisely uniform for any boulder field that she’d ever seen.
“Does that look right to you? It looks too perfect.”
“Not them,” Burned Fingers said as the first Pixie-bob rose to its feet, kittenishly pawing silt from its face before turning its eerie yellow eyes on them.
In seconds the entire slope shifted.
Bliss failed to account for the sun’s blinding strength, narrowing her eyes as she eased from the shadow of the boulder wall.
The instant she shaded them, a gun barrel pressed into the base of her skull. Another hand jerked away her shotgun, then clutched her throat with fingers so dry and callused they could have been covered in scales.
Choking violently, she glimpsed Jaya looking around wildly. He had no means of retreat, no firearm.
“You become a bully boy,” the man said to Jaya in a voice quieter than his threats might have allowed, “and I’ll kill her. Then it’ll just be me and you.” He lowered his eyes to the boy’s chopped-off pants. “Then I’ll kill you, too. I’ll have to,” he added cryptically. “Be a good boy,” his tone softened, scaring Bliss even more, “and I’ll let you live.”
He marched them about fifty feet to a motorcycle and trailer and pushed them away. She felt shade and looked back at him still in the sharp light, squinting hard. The lines around his cavernous blue eyes were deep, and drew his cheeks and nose up, as if the whole of him were fighting the harsh rays. But long ago he’d lost whatever battle he might have fought with the sun: his blond hair was bleached almost white, and his skin was dark and leathery. His voice sounded worn as well.
“Get on the ground, on your bellies. You have no cause for the heavens.” But that wasn’t the only reason he wanted them facedown.
He kicked apart their legs and ordered their arms outstretched till they looked like they were trying to hold back the earth from committing another grievous crime. Keeping his gun on them, he edged over to the motorcycle and placed her shotgun in the side car. He looked pleased by his coup and prospects. Always alert, he led the chained hound to his prisoners and fed out the links slowly, building the beast’s desire.
“You going to have fun now, boy? You gonna have fun?”
“Don’t do this,” the girl said. Shaky voice.
The dog issued a deep growl, not loud but marked by an urge for savagery.
“You hear my hound? He knows your words.”
The dog clawed the earth and jammed the metal muzzle against her smooth skin, like he was trying to bite through the brittle looking cage.
She cried out once. Hunt didn’t care. Eyes fixed on her and the dog.
Oh, he wants them so bad. Hunt raised his eyes skyward. Should I, Lord? Should I?
Penance was always the burden of belief, the sweet reprise of victory over the fallen.
Yes, my son, you should.
Hansel whined.
“Shut him up,” Burned Fingers hissed.
Jessie signaled the dog and returned her attention to the Pixie-bobs, now a teeming mass of brown and gray and black fur. One hundred of them? Two hundred? No idea. And she also didn’t know whether to start shooting—or hope that the notoriously ravenous creatures would awaken slowly to the needs of their bellies.
“Let’s keep going,” Burned Fingers said in a calmer voice. “High ground never hurts.”
Jessie heard her breath quicken as the hill steepened. Slow going, but the cats were starting to stretch, familiar feline behavior that made them appear slightly less nightmarish.
She eyed the crest about two hundred yards away, hoping that if they could slip over the top, the P-bobs would forget about them. Out of sight, out of mind? Something like that. But mostly she hoped to see Bliss and Jaya alive and unbroken down below.
And if they’re not there?
Then she’d take her rations and stay behind. But she’d make Ananda go with the others. If she found Bliss and Jaya, even days from now, the three of them would trek after the lumbering caravan, and trust that it was hampered by uphills all the way to arctic Canada—and that they themselves would not be set upon by Pixie-bobs, panther packs, or roving bands of brain-fevered men.
But the gathering P-bobs looked like they could break any promise of survival.
“Good dog. Yes-yes, good boy.” Hunt fed out the chain so Damocles could root at the boy’s pretty features. Almost girlish, but not, which made them even better. A fair-haired boy. That’s what they call them, the blond ones with skin so pure you could just tear it apart with your teeth. And him trying to turn away, like that’s gonna stop Damocles.
“His muzzle’s coming off. It’s what has to be. You don’t understand but I do. We’re part of something here, and it’s bigger than you or me.”
Speaking softly, but there was no point in explaining. Still, he’d tried. His conscience would allow no less.
“If you’re smart, and I mean smarter than you’ve been in your whole heathen lives, you’ll do nothing but pray. Damocles knows. He knows a true soul. But no matter what he does, you better do nothing but pray because if you try to fight the Lord’s will, Damocles will go crazy with vengeance. It’s only right and just. You’ll see.”
He bent over his dog. “You want me to take that off, boy? Do you? Do you?” His master’s touch incited the beast. Sinewy muscles rippled in the sun. Froth speckled his flews. And another fine growl—deep and rich and deadly—unsettled the air.
“What you gonna do now, Damocles? You gonna help me? You gonna help the Lord?” He worked the
muzzle’s leather straps, tight knots he couldn’t tear apart fast enough, fingers mean as fever sores.
The girl’s eyes were on them. She’s got herself a pretty face, too. Yes, she does. “And don’t you forget it,” he said to the dog.
When he undid the first knot, he could have sung a thousand hosannas. Only one slipped from his mouth. The boy looked at him and closed his eyes.
Living in your own world. Can’t take this one, can you? And you don’t even know the half of it. Do you? But you sure will. I keep my promises. God above knows it’s true, and so will you.
He yanked off the metal cage and slapped the dog’s snout with the meat of his hand. The animal growled louder.
“No, Damocles.” A sharp, whispered command. The dog quieted, shuddered.
Then he slapped him again. “You like that? You want some more, do you?” Slapping him two more times. Getting him all worked up. Got to do your duty. God’s watching. God’s watching.
The dog knew about pain and pleasure, sin and grace. More than they’ll ever know. How you had to keep the balance true. The whole universe, every dark corner of it, teetered on a point so fine that the eyes could never see it. Only the soul, and only in God’s heavenly grasp. Right where the blinding blackness met the infinite burning brightness of the Almighty, Satan warred with the Lord over a golden throne that could never be shared. And it came down to every man, woman, even babies—Yes, girl babies, special ones. Guardians from God, but real as saints and miracle wonder—to keep the fiery claws of hell from raking out the eyes of angels, the light of kings.
It came down to him.
He looked at the two of them stretched out on the ground. His role was clear. It had always been so.
God and man.
He squeezed Damocles’s head to his breastbone, felt the dog’s moist heat, his squirming animal hide, and spoke sacred words to him that no demon could bear.
Then he fed out the chain, faster this time.
Sunlight now coated the whole hillside, gnawing Jessie like a parasite. She and Burned Fingers were only feet from the summit. He lowered himself to his hands and knees, and she settled next to him. No telling what might be crawling up the other side, but could it be any worse than the Pixie-bobs? They’d stopped their stretching, and at least forty of the cats were studying them openly.
“Hurry,” she whispered to Burned Fingers.
He unwrapped his field glasses, raised it to his eyes and looked down. “It’s a good-sized ravine.” He glassed the periphery. “But I don’t see a goddamn track.”
She peeled her eyes from the cats and peered over the hilltop. “Wouldn’t be any with all that wind.”
“But no one’s come out since it stopped blowing.”
“Can you see down into it?” She had decent vision—good enough to keep one eye on the brightly lit P-bobs, but not strong enough to see into those shadows.
“Nope.” He shifted his elbows for a different angle. “I can make out some rocks, but it’s too deep to see anything below the wall closest to us.”
She swore softly. She could march down there fully exposed or wait to be eaten by those cats. All their creepy yellow eyes were fixed on them, making her decision easy: she stood with the full intention of heading toward the ravine, but Burned Fingers pulled her back down.
“Not so fast,” he said in a hushed voice. “Let’s give it a few minutes and watch.”
“A few minutes! Look behind you.”
“I’m seeing a section that’s catching some sun now,” he said, ignoring her panic. “It looks like a motorcycle hauling a trailer, but the goddamn thing’s open in the back, and it’s got a couple of those old telephone booths crammed inside. One’s open, the other’s chained up.”
“Oh, Jesus, did you hear that? And would you look at what I’m saying.”
The first yowls rose up the hill. Like a baby crying.
Damocles lunged at the boy. Fair skin, fair hair, fair game.
“Temptation, temptation,” Hunt whispered, sunlight spilling into the ravine, more every minute. He fancied them nude on the ground, hot sun moving over them like a big warm hand, patting their fine round fannies, heating them up, turning them pink as pink can be. Getting them ready.
The hound strained so hard on his chain that the links snapped as loud as his jaw.
He wants a piece of him. Don’t I know.
“He’s getting closer, boy. Better take off your old shorts or I’m going to let him do it for you.” Saw his dog shaking, the boy shaking in his clothes. “He’ll take your skin, you don’t do what I say.” More than skin, God’s will be done. “Yeah, Damocles, you like him. Don’t you, boy? I can tell. You do.”
Oh, dear Jesus, not that.
Damocles tearing into the boy’s back, ripping at it, lifting the weight of him off the ground.
“Stop him! Please.”
Boy begging, moaning bad, hiding a scream. Hunt needed the hound worked up, fever frenzy, but not biting crazy. Boy blood made his dog mad. He looked it now, with pink foam dripping down. And trying to break the chain, digging up deep lines of dirt.
He worked hard to hold him back. Dog’s claws caught the girl’s leg and tore it down to her ankle, sure as a razor. But she lay still. No shaking from her. No moans. Not even now. Nothing moving but the blood curling around her toes.
Hunt yearned for more, just like the hound, but dragged him to the girl. The boy was driving the beast insane. Blood on his back. Blood on his back. He kept repeating those words. Exorcism or incantation? Wasn’t sure. Couldn’t say. Medieval and wrong, but wicked strong. The whole of the sun spilled in, a curtain rising, and he saw bone through the bite, and red rivers running to the boy’s armpit, ribs.
He forced the dog’s sniffer to the girl. “She smells good. You want her? You want her? You,” he wheeled on the boy, fast as a lash, “take them off.”
But Damocles didn’t much care about the boy now, sniffing all the way up her baggy pants.
There he goes, snuffling, rooting at her, raising dust between her legs, motes spinning madly in sunbeams. The hound wouldn’t hardly let her go. And the boy, newly naked in the sun, fanny warm and pink as he’d hoped.
“You, too,” he said to her, voice reedy with all kinds of need. “Take them off.”
He pulled the beast off her, man and dog jerking like flames in rain, and grabbed a green cloth collar. Green for go. Green for I found them. Bring guns, men. Bring back the tank.
The beast drooled, strained to see the girl. Hunt snapped his fingers so hard the air rang for seconds, sharp sound keeling on stone.
But the dog’s eyes stayed on her. Hunt grabbed his jowls, got his stare.
“Home,” he commanded.
Damocles sprang loose, unburdened by desire, racing around boulders, never looking back. Up the road, still sprinting.
Hunt watched him vanish, then looked back at the naked boy and girl, arms and legs open to the earth. A magnitude of filth.
He would offer them the blessings of True Belief.
But first he would favor himself, as he had the hound, with release from the only chain that bound him.
Hansel could not take his eyes off the Pixie-bobs. The spectacle must have been shocking to the canine: scores of cats stretching their open mouths into the air, yowling louder with every passing second. As Jessie reached over to make sure he stayed close to the ground, she spied a sleek white and gray dog bolting from the ravine.
“Over there,” she said to Burned Fingers, pointing to a shockingly fast sight hound tracking up dust. Looked like a Borzoi. Or a saluki or whippet. More likely a mix, maybe of all three.
“Your rifle,” Burned Fingers said, urgent as a heartbeat.
She handed it over. He aimed the M–16, but the dog sprinted into shadows and reappeared only in ghostly sporadic movements.
“I can’t get a fucking fix on him.”
“Why kill him? What’s the point?”
“Because he’s a messenger dog. Li
ke the pigeons. Heard of them? And there’s only one message anyone’s sending.”
“Holy shit.” The truth of it slammed her. “Is there any way to catch him?”
“Nope, not even if I had that bike down there. Those dogs can move around this country faster than anything.”
Burned Fingers grabbed his field glasses, but the dog had disappeared. “We’ve got to get down there and find out what’s going on. That trailer’s cutting off my line of sight. All we can do is get our asses in place and hope to hell we’re not spotted.”
It can’t be any worse than them. She’d returned her eyes to the cats, and they greeted her attention by starting up the hill. Not fast, not in piranha mode, but with unmistakable intention.
“You see that?” She nodded at them.
“Sure do, and it doesn’t make me want to hang around.” He turned back to the bare hillside that loomed over the ravine. “We’ve got to separate, not for them but for whoever’s down there. And we’ve got to run,” he said, standing. “No straight lines. Keep them guessing the whole time.”
She dragged herself to her feet and commanded Hansel to heel. Burned Fingers was already barreling down the hill. She glanced back one more time at the advancing Pixie-bobs and took off, bearing right before cutting back sharply after the first few steps—running poorly because of a gunshot wound to her thigh. It caused her serious pain for the first time in days, but mostly she felt as exposed as the sun, the land, the sorry plight of humankind.
Chapter Four
Hunt stared at the boy’s pinkening rump, trembling. Blood from Damocles’s bites pooled at the base of the kid’s spine, brimming as if it might spill into the cleft, the only shadow that still defied the sun.
His mouth moistened, longing even the brute heat couldn’t burn to ash.
He didn’t looked closely at the girl. Not once. His refusal marked his penance, eagerness to show the Lord strength and resolve, his true spirit soul. And he’d seen all he wanted of her clawed leg and foot, her horrible body.