But this one was surrounded by a pungent, alluring odor as it gasped at the thick air and stumbled over the earth. He could feel the vibrations of every step.
Fantasies of ruptured, flowing flesh appeared in the darkness of his mind like quick, blinding flashes of light as he crouched behind a rotted stump, resting his arm along the fallen length of tree that still connected it by thin, tenacious strands. He watched as the figure appeared from out of the fog; a man, not too old, and very fat. The man did not see him through the fog, even as he looked around in a kind of desperate, cautious confusion. He was searching for something, and was too distracted to notice. The man stumbled off in another direction, up and toward the road.
He followed at a safe distance, measuring the strength and edibility of the man, deciding whether it would be better to give chase or spring upon him from a hiding place somewhere farther down the path. But as the human gasped and the smell of his sweat grew stronger, the Beast grew hungrier, more agitated, then found his legs pumping harder as he zeroed in with silent fury, in a race against time and starvation.
The fat man turned and gaped, face frozen in stupid terror as his belly was slit open with a swift downward slash of claw. The scream was transformed into a gurgle almost before it left the Straggler’s mouth.
He slid his hand through the tear and felt his fingers swim through the tangle of intestines, rupturing the stomach and left lung before gently fondling the beating heart as he lowered the fat man’s body into the shivering wormgrasses. He knelt close as the heartbeat quickened and grew erratic under his probing fingers. He looked into bulging brown eyes and let his tongue unroll; the sharp but oil-moistened tip of his tongue ran graceful lines around the eyes, savoring the stupid fear of the dying man, smelling the meat as it marinated in its own panic, before driving his tongue brainward through the eye as his hand crushed the heart within the body cavity.
Wherever Kate traveled, the angelhair followed. It fell through the fog, it fell from the trees in the dead and dying forests, it fell between the hollowed out buildings in the infested city wastelands that sprawled across the landscape like impenetrable but unavoidable barriers. Once she found herself in a clear, blue-skied flatland of rock, sand, and small, whimpering cactus. Even there the angelhair fell from the sky, marking the path she followed, draping across her shoulders and her thick black hair, sometimes setting a path she then felt compelled to follow. If she stood in someone’s doorway begging for a place to hide from the night-cold, there was no way to conceal the thin strands that danced down upon her, and when her host awoke the next morning to find the house smothered in angelhair, Kate was sent on her way. If she slept too long in the open, she would awaken beneath a deep pile of the stuff, hidden from madmen and predators but unable to breathe and barely able to move. She traveled to keep it from accumulating too thickly in one spot, weaving a restless zigzag across the country.
She was moving into lowland country now. There were things that spread like grasses here, but when she sat or tried to catnap, they seemed not to be grasses at all but vast, uniform colonies of gently flagellating worms.
Kate followed the path of a narrow, shallow stream that cut through the shrouded landscape. Within it swam small fish, so weakened that it was easy to scoop them from the water for food. But most of them were bent and crippled by parasites that clung to their sides and slowly sucked their life away. These parasites had thorny carapaces and hooks that dug deep into the flesh. The parasites themselves were inedible and impossible to remove without tearing the fish to pieces. She had run out of food and would have used her gun to hunt if the few animals she saw were large enough to withstand a shotgun blast and still remain relatively intact; instead, she scooped at schools of dying fish and hunted for those few—literally about one out of ten—that had not already become a host.
When she first heard the sounds she stopped and tried to form a picture of a creature which would make such sounds. Whatever it was, it was big, and whether it was chewing on the carcass of another animal or just munching away at the wormgrasses, Kate was sure it was dangerous. She moved quietly, her sharp eyes scanning the misty countryside. Kate had seen any number of incredible things during her years of wandering, and the more time went on and the more populations everywhere thinned out, the more extreme and unpredictable the life forms became. She followed the chewing and tearing sounds, slowing with every step as they became louder and more focused and she began to imagine in those sounds and scents the presence of flesh, bone, viscera cooling in the afternoon fog.
She moved cautiously and yet was still caught off guard when she came upon the creature sitting at the lip of a great fissure in the earth, neatly tearing apart the body of a fat human male. It was larger than a man, maybe eight feet tall if it stood erect, with a body thickened by a studded, convoluted armor except for long, thin, and tortuously knotted legs. Its arms were as long and hideously muscled as its legs, but the biceps were lined with thorny growths and the triceps covered by the heavy carapace that extended sharply off its shoulders. But it was the creature’s head that frightened her most, especially in the moment it turned to look at her. Long and sleek along the cheeks but sharply ridged and crowned along the top, it seemed to have no definite eyes or ears or nose—just a mouth like a long, soft-fleshed proboscis. Without knowing where its eyes might be, Kate knew exactly the moment it looked into her eyes while its lips peeled back to show a ring of sharp teeth. She saw those teeth actually bend into hooks, and in the next instant saw a long tongue dance out between them in a hypnotic pattern.
It dropped the body pieces to the ground and roared. The armor on its shoulders rose and fanned outward like the plumage of an iron peacock as it crouched.
Kate raised the shotgun and fired at the beast that stood no more than fifteen feet from her. As she turned to run, she caught sight of the armored wing blades exploding into a hundred black jagged pieces. Then she ran as fast as she could, her feet directing her to lower ground for speed’s sake alone. She could hear and smell the creature closing the distance on her.
She leaped over the trunk of a fallen tree, whirled and fired point blank at the beast just as it leaped. The recoil knocked her backward as the beast clutched its stomach, howling in pain as it dropped to its knees.
Dazed and winded, Kate wobbled to her feet and watched the creature thrash upon the ground. It was not weakening; it was not dying. Its thrashing was growing more violent, more energized, and she realized it was about to rise again. Fearing her dread would paralyze her, she yanked the shotgun away from the grasping wormgrasses and resumed her downhill flight.
It wasn’t long before she once again felt its presence behind her. She could see something down at the bottom of the slope—a roof of some kind—and next to it, a gutted automobile. She tried to spring toward it, her stride so exaggerated and unsteady on the steep incline that she was afraid she was about to run off the edge of a cliff.
Instead, she tripped over a crusty growth and went rolling through the grass. The shotgun bounced on downhill; she glimpsed it disappearing in the fog as she skidded to a stop. Her skin began to itch and burn. Slapping and scratching at her skin, Kate was completely off-guard when the creature slammed into her, wrapping her in its sharp, deadly caress.
Four years earlier, Kate had been stabbed in the arm by a woman who could no longer stand having this angelhair-conjuring witch in her home. Two and a half years earlier, she’d been gang raped by a group of Stragglers, one of whom had held a .38 to her cheek as he giggled his way through the act. She knew more about the threat of close-range death—intimate death—than she could even bear to think about. And yet nothing could compare to being wrapped in the thorned arms of this monster, her face only inches from the prehensile teeth that were hooking toward her.
Her ten-inch blade was in her hand on instinct; she didn’t know if the soft white bulge tucked within the armored folds of that face was an eye or an ear or what, only that it was close and vulnerable
. The blade sank into the bulge just as the creature’s tongue-tip sliced open her cheek. It released her and grabbed the ruptured orifice with one hand, thrashing out blindly with the other in a backhanded blow across Kate’s face that threw her down the slope. It seemed to take forever to touch ground, but when she did she tumbled out of control over rocks and brittle mounds rising out of the earth.
Two thoughts screamed for attention as she finally rolled to a stop. One, the fiery pain she felt was not something within her but something swarming upon her. Two, there was someone standing above her, a thin and bloodied male. She blacked out while still trying to figure out whether this strange looking person—now kneeling toward her—was a child or an old man.
Paul could see fleeting glimpses of the monster on the high ground above the court as it took a hesitant step downward, then retreated. He had to strain to make out the black shape against the churning fogbank, afraid he might lose sight of it as it crept down the slope to attack. Finally, he caught a brief, final glimpse of the creature slinking back to the high ground.
It’s afraid of the Mites, just the way Dad used to tell me.
Paul pulled the woman out of the rubble, struggling to heft her over his shoulder. She was just a little shorter than he was and probably a lot lighter, but she was out cold and almost impossible to lift. He finally managed to get her back to the trailer and stretched her out on the concrete at the base of the front steps. His father sat out on the picnic bench, his eyes bulging, empty whites, nodding his head and mumbling replies to the very real voices in his head while Paul examined the woman’s face, her arms, legs, ribs. Nothing seemed to be broken, but she was cut badly on her face and hands.
Worse, though, were the Mites. He could see their glittering shells moving in and out of her long, thick hair, moving along her cuts and dancing within the coagulating blood. He ran into the trailer and came out with scissors and wet rags, hastily cleaning the wounds and wiping away as many of the Mites as he could, then began hacking at her hair. Within minutes he had it chopped down to two or three inches, at which point he rested her head in his lap and began picking at individual Mites, crushing them between thumb and forefinger, slapping at those that escaped onto his pants, moving quickly and with the hopeless determination he’d once used with his father—before the man had succumbed to the sweet, perpetual dreamworld which the Mites offered and began responding to Paul with violent flailings and screams. Then it had no longer been his father talking, but the Mites inside of him.
Paul looked at the woman’s face as he groomed her. He wondered how old she was. Surely not as old as father. Thirty? Twenty-five? There was a delicate beauty about her features that no scar or stress line could hide. He had been a little boy the last time he’d seen a real, uninfested woman—probably no more than twelve years old.
He saw a large Mite disappear down the front of her shirt and ripped away the buttons in a panic, trying to grab it before it escaped. Suddenly she was awake, letting out a scream that escalated into a roar and grabbing his wrists. He tried to stand but her grip was unbreakable and he found himself fighting to free his wrists and retain his balance as she stood and tried to throw him back to the ground. He twisted his body abruptly, managed to free one arm and break her grip on the other with a downward sweep onto her forearm. She howled with pain, then punched him in the face. He landed tailbone first on the concrete and then squinted up at her, trying to make her out through the thousands of flashing lights that danced before his eyes. When he focused on that face again—that pretty, delicate face—it wore a wide-eyed, teeth-clenching grimace of rage. Her hand fumbled at an empty knife sheath.
“I was only trying to get the Mites off you, lady. They’re all over you.” He propped himself up on one elbow and pointed toward the stream. “You better go wash yourself off—”
He didn’t have to finish. Her attention turned abruptly to the hundreds of tiny creatures crawling over her. She let out a resounding “Shit,” then headed off toward the stream. She turned back to him for just a moment as he was standing up. “You lay a hand on me again, mister, and I’ll fucking KILL you!”
He watched her retreat and wiped away the blood that was leaking from his nose and into his mouth.
His father moaned and looked at Paul with eyes that for just a moment seemed just a little bit aware and alive before his weighted head drooped forward and the eyes went dead-white once again. When Paul stepped forward to push his father’s body into a more comfortable position, he noticed several long, white strands of hair lying across his arm and draped over his head. He gathered them together and held them to his face and breathed deep. They smelled sweet and pungent ... like the woman bathing in the stream.
They lived in rusted hulls that were scratched and torn from some long-forgotten struggle, staring at the outside world through cracked and cobwebbed glass. Had Kate been of a more philosophical mind, she might have taken issue with the idea that they were still human at all. As it was, she could only look upon them with hopeless, cautionary fear, knowing that the only way to avoid their fate was to climb out of this crumbling, parking-lot wasteland and face the thing that had forced her here in the first place.
Which, of course, was the decision all of these people had once made: either risk agony and death at the hands of that thing up there, or fight the inevitable infestation of Mites and spend the rest of their lives in whatever shadow-world the Mites in their heads would take them to. What purpose did these people serve the industrious insects? What did the humans provide the Mites? They could build a mound four feet tall in a single afternoon, using nothing more than their own secretions. How were the encrusted cylinders blooming from the heads of these people different?
Paul did not, could not, know. But Paul’s father, and all the rest—she counted 24 in all—knew very well. Perhaps that was all they were able to know. It was Kate’s overwhelming priority never to find out for herself. She was starving down here, and the few dried rags of meat or canned green beans Paul gave her were not nearly enough. What did the others eat? Did the Mites feed them, sacrifice their own bodies for the nutritional needs of their hosts?
Kate wandered the court during the daylight hours, trying to keep the angelhair from accumulating too heavily in one spot. She tried to talk to the crowned, white-eyed, gently mumbling people who staggered about, trying to grasp something useful in their aimless wandering or in the apparently random building and scurrying of a billion tiny insects. She tried to keep those same insects off of her own body as she walked the perimeters of the trailer court and looked for signs of the monster in the fog. As she did, the angelhair fell, snagging atop the trailers and on the old rooftop antennas and in the branches of the dead trees until it seemed as though she was weaving a canopy of silky fibers over the entire court.
How many of those creatures—warm-blooded predators, large enough to require frequent meals—could there be in a world where there was very little on which to feed? Surely there couldn’t be all that many—maybe it was a sport, a one-of-the-kind monstrosity. But as she walked the perimeter, weaving the outer edge of her silver canopy, she looked into the fog-laden roads and slopes and could feel their presence, their attention. During those first few days it had been hard to understand how these people could have allowed themselves to be subjected to the Mite infestations; why Paul, tearing himself apart to hold the infestation off a few more precious weeks or months, didn’t just take his chances and escape this valley. The longer she stayed, the more she understood. It was the fog and the shadows lurking within it. Once you saw the creature, especially at the range from which she’d seen and felt it, it was impossible not to see suggestions of it in every dark or thin patch in the rolling blanket of cloud.
Kate had to get out. She’d wandered too many years to end up trapped here, scratching her flesh away because of a bunch of gruesomely opportunistic insects, afraid to leave because she saw hallucinations in the fog that surrounded her. There had to be a way to get free,
and as the days passed she grew convinced that somehow the answer lay with Paul.
After their first ugly encounter, she’d kept away from him for a couple of days, always aware of his presence, his curiosity, his obvious and sadly awkward attraction to her. Once she came to believe the reason he’d given for his groping hand on the first day, she let down her guard and allowed him to approach and talk to her. He led her to the most well furnished of the abandoned trailers, he found her scraps of food, and in his own, clumsy fashion, he tried to provide her with conversation. Were it not for the horrible scabs and scars festering atop his head, he might have been a fairly attractive young man; his eyes were piercing light blue and there was a warmth and determination in his smile that was almost heartbreaking when she considered how bleak his future was in this rusted, bug-saturated hell.
And so, lying in her trailer at night, sleeping in a bed for the first time in months, she would try to walk herself through her escape, try to rationalize her chances now that she’d lost her shotgun and her blade. With each passing night, Paul would figure more and more into these fantasies, and she began to see reasons why his presence might give her the courage to attempt it, how it was the only way Paul could escape the fate of his father, how his presence could help her odds of surviving.
But Paul was even more afraid of the monsters in the fog than she was. As much as he despised the Mites, he spoke as though he were in debt to them for at least providing a refuge from the creatures in the high ground surrounding the trailer court. And—as far gone as his father might have been—Paul was truly devoted to the man. Kate doubted she could convince the boy to leave unless his father was brought along.
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