“I—“Graham looked down for a moment, and went to say something else.
But, she was gone.
Anger didn’t take him. He just sat where he was, as though no one came by. “Honor is all I have left,” he told himself. In the end, he was going to be a beast who kept his honor or a man defending those who had some left. Either way, this uniform wasn’t going to get clean anytime soon.
_
Rootgrove suffered from Conjurer’s retaliation and Drifter’s defense. A large majority of the population lost their lives in the bomb Conjurer planted, demolishing a quarter of the town. The residents never complained. Amy was masterful at keeping the town steady—or under the control of the Conjurer’s word nevertheless. So, they would recover eventually. That wasn’t River’s problem.
River shouldered through the door to the Conjurer’s city hall. He found the “Governor” of the territory sitting in the lobby. A lavish thing it was. Beautiful lights in bright chandeliers hung above them. Below them was a nice wooden floor, some dark colored wood and untarnished. The entrance area was furnished with some of the best furniture that slaves could make: sturdy tables, long lamps, comfortable looking leather chairs, and even a full bar. The best furniture of all was Elena and Amy, always at his side and always there gawking. River hated them. They’re all a useless lot.
“Oooh.” River eyed the wound on Conjurer’s shoulder with great interest. They amputated what was left of his arm. Elena—the Weaver—stitched the grotesque mass of muscles back together. If she had the arm, she could have sown him back together into working condition. But alas, Graham eaten the arm—or rumored to by the accounts of the civilians. So he wasn’t going to get that back any time soon. “That looks like it stings!!!”
Conjurer took on an acrid expression, scrunching his nose. “Shut up little girl.”
“Oh please. Stop that. Or I’m going to have to finish the job.” Playful as she was, Conjurer knew that she wasn’t lying. “Now, tell me, where do you think Drifter would go next? I mean you did give him the manifest. And you did, let them escape.”
“You’re partly to blame for this as well. You were contracted by Brink; I am a benefactor of their project. We both failed at burying the Ancestor’s involvement. So do not—“
River grabbed Elena by the throat. Her nails dug into the skinny woman’s throat, drops of red swelling and bursting down her neck. “Stop talking. If she doesn’t finish her weaving right now, it’ll open up again and you will bleed out all over this floor. I like red, but you won’t. So where are they headed?” Though a much more mature woman, Elena couldn’t wrestle from the grip. She clawed at River’s fingers, even drawing blood. “Sweetie, stop or I’m going to kill you.”
“Alright, I get it. They are most likely headed for the Tear. There was a factory there that I used to work at. Most likely Drifter would assume that there is a lead there. A lead that might lead him to the root of the Ancestors.” Conjurer pitched his nose with his only hand. “Now please, let Elena go. “
“Are you begging for her life or yours, I wonder?” She held the woman’s throat for a little bit longer, squeezing tightly. A thought crossed her mind to just kill her. I should kill her. Right there. Right now. The subsequent stream of blood would be beautiful to watch. No. Not yet. Killing Conjurer can happen at any time. She had more important business to handle, like Graham and that meddling group of Russians. She dropped her vice grip, casually. “It’s been a pleasure! No hard feelings, Elena!”
Elena raised her hand, and Conjurer quickly stopped her. “Master,” she said, coughing violently. “Let me unthread her. I’ll make a puddle of her in your name, sir.”
“You will do no such thing. Remember if you die, so does your master. Do you really want both of your ashes used as flour for a cake? No? Okay then, be quiet.”
“Master—“
“Stop, Elena. She touched you. You don’t know what she did.”
“You know me so well. So stop your friend before she kills herself.” River looked over her shoulder at the clock. “Oh dear I’m late. Raggy will be furious. I guess this is goodbye. Tootles! I’m off to see the Drifter, the Wonderful Drifter of Dusk! Wish me luck!!!!”
River pranced past the Conjurer and his dolls, against the bar, and through the door with a smile on her face. The Tear was formerly Texas. She always wanted to go there. They always said, “Everything was bigger there”. She wondered if that applied to full blown massacres. The thought filled her with glee. She sure did hope so.
13
Dawn
“The Moonlight Marches is what they called them. They stretched through Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma and finally ending at the Tear of Texas. The Marches was the worse that he had seen of this world so far.”
There were no apologies, nor was there going to be one.
Graham knew that some of the team expected it. Even a part of him felt the need to say “I’m sorry”. He didn’t take it back, because he meant what he said. The world was full of risk. He didn’t expect a team of elite soldiers or two dangerous people. Yet, he managed to live. Everyone managed to live, even if it was of luck mostly. No. He wasn’t going to tell them sorry. They would have to man up and learn how to fight properly. So, he would do it again, even if it meant them never speaking to him. When the time was right—or with no other option—he’ll bring them.
Not the first time and won’t be the last that someone’s pissed at me, he thought. They would get over it, eventually.
“You’re thinking.”
Stupor broken, Graham tilted his head to see the lean tower of bones known as Wood. He walked silently behind him, and sat down. He said nothing, yet observed. His thin face formed no expressions—giving no inclination that he even acknowledged his company aside from the words. They just sat. It didn’t matter who they are or who they were. Right now, they were just two people sitting at the rim of hell.
“How’d you do it?” Graham asked, looking at the red sky.
“You’re gonna have to clarify.”
“How do you become a monster?”
Wood scowled. “You act like it was a choice.”
“I guess it’s not.” Graham wiped the sand from his shirt. “You didn’t choose to kill those people.”
“I did. I didn’t choose what came after.”
He knew in that moment. “Wood,” he began, “You’re not bad. Why did you kill those people?”
Wood stood up, legs of his oversized jeans swimming around his ankles. “Bad’s perspective. I felt like they wronged me. I was the good fella in my head. Nothin’ stopped me from what I thought was right.”
Those words held meaning, deeper than what they touched on. Graham had the mind to ask, but Wood was already gone through the make-shift sun roof. He would ask next chance he got.
Solitude filled him slowly. Thoughts drifted back in his head, as his body continued to watch duty in auto drive. They were heading to the Moonlight Marches. No one had really told him much about it, Celine aside. Everyone was still reeling from the battles at Rootgrove and the Boneyard. Many people had lost their lives during the sudden attack: 35, to be exact.
Families were shattered. Still grabbing for names, Graham saw that familiar faces were now riddled with tears or worse pure hate. May, or that is what he believed her name to be, had lost her son and husband in the blast. A young man by the name of Brian was now an orphan driving his RV, barely enough talent to even handle it. Drum, the man who gave him the truck, and his wife was also a casualty in the fight. The stories of their make piled up, enough to line bookshelves.
Yet, from what he had heard about the Marches, this wasn’t the only sadness that he was going to see. They were not heading away from the death. They were heading towards more of it. Graham already felt his mind crumbling with the thought of it. These people needed something to believe in. Maybe not a hero. There’s no more heroes left.
He cursed himself for
thinking that, but he couldn’t banish it either. Acerbity in his mouth, Graham shook his head. All he could do is be the best person he could be in this world, regardless of what this world wanted him to be. Stop lying to yourself again. You aren’t looking to be a good person; you’re looking to be a righteous one. There’s a difference.
“Graham!” Someone shouted, quickly followed by metallic banging underfoot.
“I’m listening,” Graham responded, voice raised and leveled.
“You’re needed.”
No response was given; he did as he was told. He kicked open the hatch of the sun roof, careful to not slip off the side. His gun slung over his shoulder, he lowered himself down to the interior of Drifter’s RV. The landing was almost silent, despite the boots and the added weight. So silent, in fact, that it caused Rachael to jump. She shied away from him as soon as he snapped his attention to her.
“Why the look?”
The look, he repeated mentally.
A scowl was itched into his face. No anger laced it, just mournful disappointment. He couldn’t change it, not even fake it. “I’m just thinking. Reason you want to talk?”
The young girl went mute for a moment. “Are you mad at us?”
“There’s no reason to be mad,” he took in the thought, “Not a reason to be mad at all of you, at least.”
The undead soldier walked past her and took a seat on the cushioned area. He laced his fingers together, elbows against his thighs. “Is there any other reason that we’re talking?”
Words caught themselves in Rachael’s throat, arid in her mouth. Graham relaxed himself, albeit with a bit difficulty to allow some alleviation of the tension. “I come from the Moonlight Marches.” She bit her lip, sitting beside him with her hands clamped in her lap. “My Dad and I used to live in Arkansas. When everything happened,” she choked. “Things got bad. Just, no order. Nothing. If the bombs and chemical didn’t kills us, people did. People are the worse.”
She went onto explaining the things she saw before the Drifter came. Robbery and murder was the normal. Wild mutants and demons began surfacing. Normal people went insane, wielding anything from knives to guns to lawn tools. A suburb of fifty homes, only five families made it out alive. The rest were dead or worse, begging to be dead. “I never saw too much blood before then,” she said in remembrance, “By the end, I didn’t know when the sky ended and the grass started. There was so much red. This has to stop.”
Graham heard more, more than he wanted to hear. Detail by detail, his body screamed in anger. Deep within he felt nothing but a crippling darkness. The voice in his head was quiet again. He didn’t need its help to know what it was. It was hate, wasn’t it?
“Graham?” Rachael asked, tears held in her eyes as she tried to put the thoughts behind her.
The first real expression graced his face since he had walked from the Boneyard alive. “You’re right.”
He left her with no explanation. But she saw something, something that changed.
_
The Moonlight Marches began at a specific point. The bombs left a scar on the world. That wound, thousands of miles wide and long, fostered no life; just grunge, pits of thick pools of acid, and skeletons. Chemicals within the scar left it with something of a remarkable quality. It faintly glowed in the moonlight, white tendrils of the rays seemingly caught in the burnt soil. Memories of the lives lost in this initial blast stood where they were, whether it was bones of people or bones of a past happiness.
They trudged through several small towns bordering the Marches. Each held the same stories. People that refused to leave, out of grief and disbelief. Each of them was slowly being ripped apart by themselves or by bandits. The results were the same. Drifter’s visits were the only thing keeping this land alive. Radiation was killing them, but Drifter made their lives painless until death came for them.
All the normal humans of the caravan were equipped with protective suits. One pleasure of being a mutant or demon happened to be they were remarkably unaffected by most types of radiation. No one really knew why. Maybe it had something to do with the immune system or DNA being altered. Studies may be conducted years from now. Right now, people could only theorize in their heads the causes.
Graham, taking advantage of his condition, walked out of the RV without a second thought. They were told immediately to secure the surroundings, fanning out around the perimeter. Flanking him was Tyrus and Forrest, both in thickly bound suits and carrying their weapons. Wood lurked behind them, feet thick in mud.
“Why is he coming,” Forrest said, voice muffled within the sound of his helmet. His eyes nervously flickered to the corner and back ahead again. “He’s all different types of an ass.”
Normally, Graham probably would have agreed. What came out of his mouth was something entirely different: “Everyone needs someone that just doesn’t give a fuck.”
Forrest, stunned by the defense, bit his lip. “I mean—“
“You don’t know the story. And by now, I think that everyone has committed a little murder. Don’t you think? Now shut the hell up,” Graham barked, hissing his last sentence.
Forrest, visibly uncomfortable, took some steps aside to allow Wood to pass. Tyrus stepped aside as though nothing had happened. Despite his best quiet voice, the former whispered low to the dark skinned man, “What’s going on here?”
He was met with Tyrus’ smooth voice. “Learn how to go with the flow. I mistrusted Graham, ended up looking like an ass. Trust him. Been thinking, if Wood wanted to kill us, we would be dead. Now stop stirring up a pot of stew that’s already finished.”
Wood took his place with the rest of the group. No matter if they trusted him or not, he was a good asset. Rarely would he leave Drifter’s side, he knew. So something was wrong. Graham allowed the man to get used to taking point along with him, his movement sloth-like. Out of all of them, Wood always looked like the one least likely for battle. He looked like he hadn’t slept in years, the soldier noticed. “Can you handle if something goes batshit crazy?”
“Is that a question,” Wood asked, voice flat.
“I’m asking if you have my back.”
Wood went silent, brow furrowing. Long seconds passed before he opened his mouth again. “Uncle asked me to look after you.”
“So you were sent to spy on us?” Forrest interrupted.
Tyrus looked over, annoyed. “You don’t know how to stay out of people’s conversations, do you?”
Like a child chastised, Forrest stared at his gun and mumbled to himself.
Undeniably, Forrest was right. Drifter sent Wood with him as a precaution. The old caravan leader watched thousands of men break. Graham knew that he wasn’t going to be one of them. Even if his mind broke, he would thrive on to continue to right this. There were plenty of things that needed to be found out and fixed. Moonlight Marches had more than enough fixing to keep his mind off the pure atrocity of it all.
The four men reached the center of the hamlet, if you could even call it that. There were less than a dozen ruined buildings that “sheltered” a few remaining families. Only a few of them had roofs over their head, even those were not shelter from the elements that battered them on a regular basis. Women and children, clothed in tattered rags, scrapped for resources around town. Some resorted to savaging on the scar itself, despite its health risk.
The men of the town hunted and foraged from day break to sunset. They came back with meats and roots most of the time. Whether that was meat from animals or other means, Graham couldn’t know. He didn’t want to know. These people were trying to survive. Only a few months ago, I couldn’t stomach that.
A small fire within a rusted barrel sat smoking in the middle of the town. An older man kept warm by the flames, hands almost diving within it like it was water. He greeted them with mournful eyes.
“Good.” His voice felt as lost as his expression. “The Drifter’s men are here.”
“Is some
thing wrong?” Graham said, leveling his gun.
“Supplies are here.” The words were directed to no one, but the heavens. “I thought—nevermind. Just please, help my little girl.”
“You have a name?” Graham helped him to his feet, pulling him up by the arm carefully.
“Jacob.” He was no older than fifty, but he looked so aged and broken up close. His grey hair was as thin as his body, olive skin broken, eyes sunken. The entire town looked like this. The children even seemed years older than they were. “You are a new one. I never seen a dead one before. Do you bite?”
“Occasionally.”
Jacob gave a grim smile at the dark humor. “What the hell doesn’t anymore? Come on….” He paused. “If you want to, I know you’re busy.”
Wood was the first to follow, much to everyone’s surprise.
They followed suit to a house on the corner. At one point, it was two stories. Now, it looked as though a knife cleaved it completely in half. The top floor was exposed, only some remains of rooms that were once lived in comfortably. Jacob opened the door smoothly, allowing everyone to enter one by one. Funny enough, he left the door open. No one wanted to be in a locked room with a stranger; it was begging for a fight.
He led them through the corridor. There were more than enough people in this house. It reeked of human odor, vomit, and worse. Most didn’t even live in this area and was just staying for tonight. In the far corner, a woman spewed blood on the floor. On the worn couch, a man covered in tumors lied down, breathing his last breaths. Countless were sick, pale, yellowed. Graham gritted his teeth.
They stepped over a pile of sleeping and pained men to enter a side room. Compared to the rest of the place, this room was clean. The furniture was covered in dust, yet still intact. Light purple curtains draped over the window, despite the large crack on the second floor allowing in some exterior elements. A small bed was tucked into the corner. On that bed was a girl, coughing and sweating. Jacob pulled up a chair and sat beside her. Wood stood beside him, looking down.
Dusk Territories: Always Burning Page 18