The Walker on the Hills (Jed Horn Supernatural Thrillers Book 3)

by Peter Nealen

  It swung open, unlocked. A shape moved on the back seat, and I already had most of the slack taken up on the trigger before an old woman's voice said, “Oh, thank goodness!”

  The silver-haired woman who climbed out from under the blanket she'd been hiding beneath was tiny; when she stood up straight on the street, she couldn't have been more than about four foot ten. She was wizened, shrunken-looking, with her hair pulled back in a bun, shockingly pale blue eyes peering at us from within a mass of wrinkles. She looked like she was a hundred, but she moved with a spryness that suggested she was much younger. “I've been hiding back there for a couple of days. This whole town seems to have gone crazy! People turning into monsters, other things running around...can you get me out of here?”

  “Do you know whose truck this is?” I asked. There was something that wasn't quite right here, but I couldn't tell what it was. A look at Eryn got a frown and a shrug. She wasn't sure, either.

  “That nice young man...Blake, I think he said his name was...he told me to get in and hide when things started to get out of hand,” she said. She had a kindly, grandmotherly voice, that seemed weirdly out of place in a nearly abandoned town full of abominations. “When he didn't come back, I guess I assumed that the monsters had gotten him.” She looked up at me. “Please, do you think we could get out of here? I'll tell you everything I know about what's happened, but I really don't want to do it out here in the street.”

  Of course, as soon as she said that, and before I could even start to think it over, the three homunculi were suddenly advancing on us from out of nowhere, their mouths now gaping holes spouting screeching, incomprehensible gibberish. The flesh golems weren't far behind, boiling out of at least three streets and several alleys. And there were a lot more of them than there had been before.

  Chapter 8

  Homunculi usually tend to move strangely; they're not animated by a soul or a nervous system. The two in front were moving toward us in disjointed, gliding hops, rather like marionettes on a stage. The other one, the big one with the weird corpse-light in its eyes, was actually jogging toward us just like a human being, albeit one with oddly shaped and proportioned arms and legs. That actually scared me worse than the puppet-like movement of the others. The flesh golems were running at us more like people, but still not quite there; they moved with an almost drunken hitch to their steps, probably because no two legs were the same length. The old Boris Karloff Frankenstein's monster was actually pretty spot on, if a little bit slower.

  I couldn't jam my pistol back in its holster fast enough, even as Tall Bear put a double-tap into the closest flesh golem, eliciting no reaction but a stagger and the rotten mouth opening in a nearly soundless roar. Since there was no breath in those lungs, it just made a strange creaking sound. The big man didn't curse, but just dropped the rifle to hang on its sling in front of him as he snatched out that hatchet.

  “Go for the joints,” Eryn called to him, even as she leveled her shotgun at another one. Buckshot can be useful against golems, too. A couple of loads in the right place can do as much damage as a machete or a hatchet. She didn't fire right away, though, waiting for the thing to get close enough. Considering that they were coming at a run, that wasn't going to take long.

  My pistol back in my holster, I snatched the flamethrower off the street and hit the pilot light starter, even as the two smaller homunculi bounded within six feet of me. The 'thrower wasn't fancy, being mostly made out of pipe and an old propane torch, and I said a little, hurried prayer that it didn't pick that moment to crap out on me. It coughed to life with a satisfying roar, immediately engulfing the left homunculus in flaming gasoline. It burned like a torch, still screaming incomprehensible obscenities. I had to step backward, getting out of its reach, even as its substance burned and melted away, and I swept the stream of liquid fire across the other one, with much the same effect. “Back up!” I yelled, over the roaring of flames and the angry squealing coming from the burning homunculi. It was starting to sound more like painfully loud radio interference now, as the fire rapidly broke down their structure. Common sense would have said that clay shouldn't burn, but whatever unnatural things were done to it to make a homunculus meant that it burned like wax. “We've got to stay clear of them!”

  The last half of my sentence was drowned out by two shotgun blasts, as Eryn unleashed on the nearest flesh golem, blasting its knees to shredded meat. The thing dropped, but kept pulling itself along toward us with its arms, which she proceeded to turn into hamburger with another four shots. She is one of the kindest, gentlest people I know, but when it comes to fighting inhuman monsters, my wife can throw down with the best of 'em. Mama Bear takes over, and then, watch out.

  Tall Bear was mixing it up with a flesh golem, hacking at it with the hatchet. He wasn't terribly skilled with it; he was a fair gunfighter, but it didn't look like he'd gotten a lot of training with close-combat weapons. Not surprising, really. Most people don't. He swung, miscalculated, and just managed to bury the hatchet in the golem's swollen shoulder, where it got stuck. Then the thing hit him, and he lost his grip on the hatchet and went sprawling.

  I couldn't step in to help him. I had the big homunculus to worry about, and torching that flesh golem was probably only going to set Tall Bear on fire along with it. Not to mention the fact that as soon as I turned my back on the homunculus, it was going to tear me apart. It was moving quickly and smoothly, dancing out of the way of the stream of flame, keeping its distance but obviously looking for an opening. I didn't know what was inside that thing, but it was powerful, and very, very dangerous.

  A sudden scream rose above the noise of crackling flames, demonic gibberish, and Eryn's shotgun. I chanced a glance out of the corner of my eye, to see that when the flesh golem had loomed above Tall Bear, ready to finish him off, Chrystal had suddenly broken out of her cocoon of fear, rushed over, grabbed the hatchet, and was now brutally dismembering the thing with wild, flailing blows of the hatchet, screaming and crying at the same time. Tall Bear managed to roll out of the way of a couple of hysterical swings that missed the golem, and had the good sense to crawl out of the way before she accidentally split his skull open.

  My momentary lapse in concentration almost killed me. The homunculus was in my face faster than I'd ever seen one of those things move before. Greenish-blue fire flickered in its eyes as it reached for me. I had to chance it, taking a long step back and triggering the flamethrower right in its creepy, doll-like face. It lurched backward, letting out a piercing shriek, then, to my horror, it batted out the flames. It glared at me from a face gone featureless, like melted wax, except for the eyes, which didn't look like they'd been touched. This was bad.

  Eryn's shotgun was still booming, taking flesh golems apart one limb at a time, but even more of them were coming out of the woodwork. Tall Bear had gotten the hatchet away from Chrystal, somehow without getting any of his own limbs chopped off, and was going to work on another one, while trying to fend off yet another that was reaching for Chrystal. The little old lady was standing behind me, looking around with an expression of interest on her face but otherwise apparently just waiting for us to escort her out of there. I decided, in the split second that I had to think about it, that she really wasn't all there. The lights were on, but nobody was home.

  I triggered the flamethrower again, jumping backward as the big homunculus lunged for me. That close, even though it was only about a head taller than I was, it looked the size of a grizzly bear. This time I held down the trigger and hosed it, playing the stream of liquid fire up and down, from head to toe. I had to keep backing up as I did, because it just kept advancing, screaming obscenities and blasphemies that were fortunately mostly drowned out by the roar of the flames and the thunder of the shotgun.

  It was a blazing torch, flaming bits of it dripping off onto the pavement as it came after me. We were somehow all staying somewhat together, possibly because the heat was driving Tall Bear and Chrystal back along with me. A leg buckle
d, turning molten as it burned, and the thing dropped to the pavement, but picked itself up and kept coming for us, though slowly and haltingly, crippled by the shortened limb. An arm fell away, withering in the fire. Still it kept coming.

  We had fallen back almost a block before it finally collapsed, turning into a pile of burning sludge. A haze of something like dark smoke seemed to rise from it, letting out one final scream of hate before it darted away, vanishing around a corner. Good thing, too, as the flamethrower coughed empty at that point. Out of fuel.

  That just left the flesh golems, and there were still plenty of those. Eryn and Tall Bear had left a trail of dismembered golems behind us, and Eryn was shoving more shells into her shotgun's loading port. “I'm running low on ammo,” she called out to me, in the sudden lull in the noise. Again, it was something I couldn't do that much about; I dropped the empty flamethrower, left my rifle on my back, and drew my Bowie, hacking the wide black blade into the arm of a golem that was taking a swing at Tall Bear while he was struggling with another one. The blade was razor sharp, and went right through the arm. Putrid flesh parted and bone shattered. Flesh golems may be strong and unnaturally motivated, but they're still made up of parts of corpses in various states of decomposition. That gives them a certain fragility that a living human being doesn't have. The thing looked stupidly at the stump of its arm, and I went to work, hamstringing it first, then hacking at the other arm when it dropped to the ground. It was still animated, gnashing its teeth silently at me, but it wasn't going to propel itself anywhere anytime soon.

  Tall Bear had put down his opponent in the meantime, but three more were coming at us in the halting, rolling-gaited run that was about all they were capable of. There were a lot of those things. “We're going to get overrun if we stay here,” I gasped. Fragile or not, hacking even a sewn-together corpse apart is still hard work. “We need to get out of here. Back to the truck; only slow down long enough to put down anything in the way.” With my flamethrower done and Eryn almost out of shotgun shells, that was likely to fall to me or Tall Bear anyway, and it was going to be hard and messy. I hoped we could move fast enough to get out without having to fight any more of these things. A glance at the little old lady, however, risked dashing those hopes. Oh, well. She'd have to keep up, or we'd probably all die.

  Eryn led out, with the little old lady and Chrystal behind her. Chrystal was visibly scared stiff again, her earlier episode of ferocity lost now that she'd had a couple minutes to think about it. She was keeping up, though. Tall Bear and I kept to the rear, moving a little more slowly than we were able, since we had to keep turning to make sure there wasn't a squad of flesh golems about to wrap their cold, waxy, dead fingers around our necks from behind. We still kept up fine.

  So did the little old lady, whose name I still didn't know. That should have been a warning sign, but I was a little too preoccupied with not getting dismembered by walking corpse-puppets at the time to think of the implications.

  We pounded down the side street that I thought was the same one we'd come up, but all of a sudden, nothing looked right. When I looked back, I saw Blake's truck through the crowd of flesh golems, as expected, except that the street we wanted to be on was back there.

  That wasn't right. I'd been sure we were heading the right way. But there it was—we were actually running exactly the opposite direction we needed to be going. “Turn around!” I called out. “We need to circle back! We're going the wrong way!”

  Eryn looked back, surprised and confused. She faltered for a second, frowning at what she was seeing. “What the...” She had to turn back to blast the kneecaps out of a flesh golem that had popped out of a nearby doorway. Were there really any people left in this town, or had we only seen phantoms set up as camouflage for an ambush?

  “I don't know!” I threw back over my shoulder, as I hammered the blade of my Bowie into another golem's shoulder. If they can't punch or crush you, their options are limited. And these didn't appear to be all that inventive; perhaps that meant there was only one person trying to control all of them? I swung the heavy blade, practically a short sword, several more times, beating the joint to pulp and hacking through the putrefying muscle, fat, and sinew, while trying to hold off its right with my off hand. My forearm ached from blocking the thing's completely unmoderated blows, but I kept my head shielded until the one arm was hanging limply from a few strands of dead flesh, before wrapping my arm around the other one, locking it up, and hacking through it just above the elbow.

  I was sucking wind. Hand to hand is tough, and our enemies didn't give up or get tired. They might not be as strong as a living human being, but they made up for it in tirelessness and numbers. I kicked the golem's knees until they broke, finished hacking off its arms, and left it writhing on the ground for a few brief moments before its puppet-master lost control and it went inert. “We've got to head back,” I gasped. “We're going the wrong way.”

  Eryn looked around quickly, trying to spot where we'd taken a wrong turn and how to get back to the direction we needed to be going. “This way!” she called, blasting another flesh golem as she went. The buckshot turned a knee to hamburger, but it didn't go down right away, the damaged limb only buckling after another three steps. Tall Bear slowed just long enough to chop its other leg out from under it to keep it from chasing us. It took too many shots to drop one of those things.

  She led the way into a yard, and down between two houses, separated by a knee-high hedge instead of a fence. Momentarily in the clear, I yelled at Tall Bear, who finished smashing the hatchet through another golem's shoulder and collarbone, then kicked the nearly limbless thing into the next one behind it before following. He was puffing even worse than I was.

  For a few moments, anyway, we were blessedly free of pursuit, but I knew it couldn't last. When Eryn came out into the next yard and stopped, looking around in frustration, my heart sank. Were we turned around again?

  We were. I had no idea how it was happening, but somehow we kept getting redirected away from where we wanted to go. This wasn't quite as bad as the first time, but we were supposed to be facing back toward the truck, but instead were about ninety degrees off. I glanced up at the sky and muttered, “Could use a little help here.”

  I don't know if my little impromptu prayer was answered, or if whatever was screwing with our sense of direction was just out of juice, but in a couple more turns, we were heading back in the right direction. Unfortunately, our brief respite was ending; more flesh golems were coming out of the woodwork, including a couple that looked like ones we'd already dismembered, that had gotten their limbs somehow hurriedly stitched back on, even in the few minutes we'd been lost. Maybe it was just the fear and confusion making them look familiar. I sure hoped it was.

  We ran past Blake's truck and the still smoking remains of the homunculi, heading for the main drag and the route out of town. I imagined that Eryn was hoping that if we could get a good straight shot at the city limits, and could actually see where we were going, we might not get so turned around. She broke into a run, though she kept her pace down so that Chrystal and the old woman could keep up. I noticed that they were apparently still doing all right, though I filed the thought away as soon as I'd made the observation. My lungs were on fire already, and I wasn't straining myself on the run. Tall Bear looked smoked. A glance back showed about half a dozen flesh golems hirpling after us. We had a couple dozen yards on them, though, and no more seemed to be coming out in front of us. Yet.

  A spectral howl, loud and angry, split the air. It wasn't a sound I've ever heard come from a human throat, and as I looked back over my shoulder again, I saw another flesh golem come sprinting around the corner, shoving two of them out of its way and coming right for us.

  It was a good head taller than any of the rest of them, and it looked...mutated. It had four arms, for one thing. It's head was disproportionate to the rest of it, with an overly large maw lined with shark's teeth. Talons sprouted from all four hands and b
oth feet. There was an unholy, green-blue corpse-light in its eyes.

  “Didn't I get rid of you already?” I rasped. I knew it was the same spirit or entity that had inhabited the big homunculus. I didn't know for sure what it was, but I was really starting to suspect it was a minor demon. I really, really hoped it was a minor one.

  It was moving fast, gaining on us with long, angry strides. I highly doubted that I was going to be able to take it in a straight up fight. I was dead tired, limited to only a Bowie, when I'd rather have a battle ax or a halberd, or better yet a grenade launcher, and it wasn't going to either get tired or give up.

  But I had a weapon that it didn't. I stopped, turned, and stood in the street, shoved my gore-slathered knife back in its sheath, and pulled that flask of holy water out of my pocket.

  “What are you doing?!” Tall Bear yelled at me, already a good six paces behind me before he'd realized I'd stopped.

  “Keep going,” I said. “If this isn't enough, you still need to get back to the truck.” It wasn't that I was feeling especially self-sacrificial. I didn't want to die. But if this thing caught up to us, none of us were making it out. I'd rather be stomped to a pulp if it meant my wife got away. I knew it would hurt her, and she'd rather stand there in my stead, but given the choice...I'd take it for her any day.

  “Lord,” I said, directing my words slightly upward as the monstrosity of barely connected body parts pounded toward me, “please, grant me Your protection, and let Your strong right arm guide mine.” It wasn't easy to stand there while that thing closed in, waiting for it to get just close enough, but I managed it, as much as I might have felt like wetting my pants doing it. It sort of reared back as it got closer, and two of those massive arms pulled back, meaty fists with too many knuckles clenched to pound my face out the back of my head.