Head Dead West

by Oliver Atlas

  And suddenly I’m alert.

  Because there is Zoe.

  She is under the shadow of a zeppelin, unconscious and strapped to a gurney. Armed Bokor surround her. Behind them, a ramp into the blimp is waiting. Above us, I feel a sudden chill. The roof of the hangar begins retracting.

  “Where are you taking her?” asks Milly. Until now, our weapons have been trained at the ground, but her gun drifts up now, toward the Duchess.

  The imperious woman eyes her slyly, never betraying any fear that we might open fire. “To ODOZ, of course. Who do you think funds our operation, Ms. Ruse? The Faction had its fun with her. Now the government wants theirs. Unless, of course, you can produce that magnificent beast for me. Hmm?”

  “How about this,” breaks in Madame Rogger, flushed and unable to contain herself. “You leave that girl where she is, and we’ll take her and that blimp, or I’ll shoot you in the head.”

  “And ensure the deaths of your friends?” The Duchess raises her arms in mockery. “I don’t mind dying. The question is: do you mind if they do?” She sweeps a hand toward us, as though a monstrous game show hostess.

  “Damn.” Madame Rogger spits on the ground and stamps it out, lowering her revolver.

  “Load up the girl,” commands the Duchess to the white and black skinned Bokor who flank her.

  Just like that? No more negotiation? “What about the horse?” I cry. “If you get me a few things, I can get it for you. Wait!” I shout at the two Bokor as they head for the gurney.

  The Duchess sniffs. “You clearly cannot summon the creature. Therefore, our negotiations have ended. The girl will go to the government.”

  My mouth opens to object. All our weapons rise to take aim. And at that moment, a lilting, leathery voice fills the hangar.

  “No she won’t, Desreta.”

  For the first time, I notice a hint of fear on the woman’s chiseled face. Her eyes flash with instantaneous recognition, even though none of us can find the speaker.

  Beside her, Molner howls. A vargulf alarm. After a moment, a chorus of wolf-song answers in the distance.

  “We will take the Nameless One back now, Desreta,” declares the voice calmly. “Given that you were not the first thief, we will leave you and your servants unpunished. If, that is, you submit to my authority and release her now.”

  The Duchess glares into the open hangar, searching for the hidden intruder. “Your authority must be significant,” she hisses, as a small army of vargulf appears at the entrance of the hangar, hurrying forward with leashed skargs in tow.

  “Oh, it is,” says a new voice coming from near Zoe. Every head snaps in that direction to find Van Vandercain standing on the ramp of the zeppelin, two pistols in hand. “It’s the authority of power, Duchess. Either you bow to it, or you die by it. Understand?”

  The towering woman roars with scorning laughter. “Power? Two Rangers against me?”

  Two rangers? My mind lurches. She can’t be including me in that count. She must mean the leathery voice. And that must mean—

  The ground around us begins to rumble and I nearly fall as the Duchess . . . seems to grow.

  “What the hell?” I stagger away as Milly, Madame Rogger, and Skiss step alongside me in support.

  “Blake,” Skiss’s voice is in my ear. “We need to leave. We need to leave now. South is . . . he is . . . . ”

  But she can’t find the word. She doesn’t need to. We’re staring down an army of vargulf and their zombie pig-hounds, a swelling voodoo queen, and Van Vandercain—and she chooses this moment to mention a threat we can’t even see? The Southern Ranger must be bad news indeed.

  I nod and whisper back, “Wait for my move.”

  A hand grabs my shoulder. It’s Milly’s. Her free hand points up to the opening ceiling and the dark night sky.

  I open my mouth to ask what I’m supposed to see.

  But then I see them.

  On every side of the giant rectangular opening there are dark figures, hundreds of them, each a deeper black against the black of night. They wait in silence, cloaks billowing in the frigid breeze.

  A seething growl emits from Molner as his nose contorts in loathing and fury. “Mymar.”

  The Duchess continues to grow. The concrete around her feet appears to be reddening, heating, burning. She echoes her captain in a flat voice, eerily empty of tone: “Mymar.”

  Is it time? Do we run? Do we fight?I have no idea what to do.

  “What do you say, Desreta?” asks the cordially menacing Southern Ranger from out of nowhere. “Don’t you think the time has come to submit?”

  The giantess lowers her head, now a good twelve feet above the ground. Her black hair has grown as well, a cloak, a veil, a snaking swathe of ink. “Submit,” she repeats in her new hollow voice. Her head snaps up. Her eyes are white and void. She raises an accusing finger, straight toward Vandercain’s heart, and roars, “SUBMIT!”

  At that, the hangar itself begins to shake. The skargs begin to screech. The vargulf begin to howl. And hundreds of silent Mymar swoop down from above, their black cloaks streaming.

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Kairos

  Chaos.

  Flashes of gunfire. Vampires raining from the night sky. Beast-wolves pouncing, yelping, roaring. Bokor throwing powder-clouds and breathing fire. A giant woman whirling and lashing, hurling her enemies impossible distances.

  When I studied classic literature, I learned that ancient Greek had two main words for thinking about time. One was Kronos, which referred to time as the great sequential flow we all feel caught up in. The other was Kairos, which referred to particular moments in the flow of time at which actions were most potent and effective, most able to shape the future. I was always intrigued at how Kronos had made its way into our language through words like ‘chronology,’ while Kairos was watered down through whole phrases such as ‘at just the right time.’ Was our history so fatalistic that we only wanted to talk about time-as-a-chain and not also time-as-a-crossroads? Had we become such scientific and theological fatalists that we didn’t believe in the value of a word for those moments of fulcrum during which wise action could alter the fabric of history?

  As I dash for Zoe with my three friends in tow, I’m thankful that sometimes—usually when we’ve acted consistently and faithfully—Kronos graciously leaves us no way to miss out on Kairos. When the perfect moment arrives, we know what to do because it’s the only thing we can do. And in the chaos of the hangar, the only thing we can do is run—run like mad toward the little girl we came for.

  The Bokor who were guarding her have joined the fracas, desperately trying to ward off the sudden onslaught of vampires. Only the Duchess’s pair of tattooed generals remains, standing guard over the gurney, wheeling it toward the zeppelin’s ramp, where Vandercain stands tall, pistols blazing. The pair jolt and reel under the barrage of bullets, but they press forward, impervious.

  Finally, Vandercain tosses his guns aside. With a snarl, he transforms, ripping up out of his clothes into the jagged fur and fangs of a vargulf. In a leap, he barrels into the pair of Bokor, crashing with them over Zoe. The three roll away flailing and gouging as the gurney flips over. Milly screams at them and fires her shotgun. My ears go numb with a single-pitched ringing.

  Then we’re beside Zoe, hands scrambling to free her limp form from the straps. But they’re cinched tight. I grab my dagger and start sawing.

  “We need to secure that blimp!” I shout at Madame Rogger and Skiss, who stand guard nearby. “Get it prepped to fly.”

  Madame Rogger rolls her eyes, has the chutzpah to mock me with a curtsy, and grabs Skiss by the arm. The two duck their heads amid the zinging gunfire and run for the zeppelin.

  “Blake,” pants Milly, tugging at the levers holding Zoe down. “I have to tell you—”

  And then she shrieks.

  I have a tenth of a second to wonder why.

  My neck whips to the side and I’m smashed into the air, flipping twi
ce before crashing ten yards away across the smooth hangar floor. Dazed, I roll to a knee just in time for my eyes to explode with white as my head rocks to the side again, this time with blood flooding my mouth.

  “Feel threatened now, Ranger?”

  Molner.

  The vargulf’s voice echoes between my pounding temples.

  A giant hand is wrapped around my head, squeezing my eyes out of focus. I’m hoisted off the ground and hot, rotten breath spews over my face. “I’m going to bite your fingers off. I’m going to eat your tongue out. But first—” I’m flipping through the air again. I’m crashing onto the cement. With a groan, I squint up at Molner, who grins and continues his rant. “I’m going to—”

  His chest suddenly changes color. It changes shape. In the muddled blur of my ringing head, what I see makes no sense, but I know I see it. Molner sways for one second, two seconds, then falls.

  “Let’s go,” says Milly, suddenly beside me with a smoking shotgun, hoisting me up to lean on her. “I got Zoe loose.”

  I blink. Milly’s face comes clear. All those freckles. The quick turn of her nose’s tip. The deep blue of her eyes: frightened, furious, full of indomitable hope.

  “Milly,” I say her name with a dumb smile, half drunk on a wash of feeling that everything will be okay.

  For a moment I think she’s going to mirror my smile, but then she screams.

  I follow her horrified stare to Zoe body’s. Not far from us, the little girl is hunched unnaturally, as though scrunched against a wall, only there is nothing behind her but air—a faint, shimmering air.

  And her color. Something’s wrong with her color. Already pale, she’s turning visibly whiter with each second.

  So blind a moment before, every detail is now painfully crisp: Zoe’s blanching skin, the bruises along her face, the two red holes on her neck that are pumping blood into nowhere.

  Clementine flashes up with thunder. A bullet explodes over Zoe’s shoulder and something squeals, dropping the little girl who slumps back to the floor.

  Blood. I see the invisible thing’s blood. It hangs in the air like the afterglow of a passing mist. Through the blood I can glimpse a creature standing above Zoe, all but invisible. I fire again. Another scream, this one ragged with rage. The creature stalks toward us, away from the child. It comes in feinting angles, changing tacks cautiously, but with confident intent as though certain my first two shots were blind luck.

  I wait . . . I wait . . . I wait until the thing is as far away from the little girl as possible . . . and then Clementine sends a burst of three bullets into the thick of its flickering bulk.

  It screams again, a scream now tinged with disbelief.

  “Damn you, West,” it breathes. “But your bullets won’t do.”

  “South,” I say in greeting. “Nice to finally meet you.”

  The Southern Ranger takes another step forward. Calmly, in the slow flash of an eye, I holster my pistol and take Milly’s shotgun. “Want to wager she’s got silver in here?” I ask. “Because that seems like a safe bet. But she’s a redhead, you know, and unpredictable. So there’s always the chance she had a premonition and loaded it with wood.”

  I’m bluffing, of course. I have no idea if South is a vampire. Given the surprising state of the Duchess—given the proliferation of Oregon’s phantasmagoria of surprises—who knows what he could be? And the gun is loaded with silver. But bluffing is my only idea. It’s all I’ve got.

  “I’m not a gambler, West,” he breathes. “That is why I always win.”

  He stands watching us. Maybe calculating his best options. I consider pulling the shotgun’s trigger and putting an end to the strange standoff, one way or another. But before I do, South leaps away.

  I almost collapse in relief. “Come on, Milly,” I say, pulling her toward the blimp.

  Beaten and exhausted, I gather Zoe in my arms while Milly shoulders the rifle still housing the vial with the Cure. Our feet are on the zeppelin’s ramp when Milly lurches forward, bending awkwardly, as a spike plunges out the front of her shoulder. The spike wriggles there for a second, probing toward her face. It is black and glossy.

  The spike, I realize with disgust, is not a spike. It’s the tip of a finger.

  Spinning, Zoe in one arm, the shotgun raising in the other, my eyes follow the black cord as it winds fifty feet away to where The Thing That Was The Duchess approaches us. Another cord whips out of the distance, lancing straight for my head. I duck aside and it whistles by, clawing into the side of the blimp.

  There’s no time to think. I press the shotgun barrel against the finger stuck in Milly’s back and fire. The finger rips but doesn’t sever. Duchess Desreta shrieks. Yelling right along with her, I fire on the finger again, and this time it snaps cleanly. Milly is free and we’re staggering backwards up the ramp.

  Another roping finger lances at my chest but I bat it aside with the shotgun. Deflected, it rakes down my arm, ripping my shirt before looping around the shotgun and yanking it free. I don’t wait to see if the hideous tentacle-finger has enough coordination to shoot. Instead, I turn with Zoe and run up the ramp, leaping to the side as another three fingers shoot through the hatchway.

  On the wall beside me stands a red button. Hoping it does what I think it does, I slap it. The ramp lurches up, causing the probing fingers to escape before they’re cut off. The ramp thumps shut.

  I wish there was time to celebrate.

  “Zoe?”

  I lay the little girl down and listen for her breathing. At first, all I hear is ringing—muffled shrieking, frantic gunfire. All I hear is Skiss, somewhere in the dark cargo hold, whispering soothingly. But then I feel, rather than hear, a breath come up from Zoe. She’s alive.

  Knowing the girl has survived, my mind leaps to the next question. “Milly!”

  “She’s alive, Blake.” I see the outline of Skiss not far away, cradling a ragged-breathing figure. “We need to get her help, but she’s alive.”

  My stomach begins to rise, indicating we’re taking flight. My heart rises too. Maybe we’re actually about to pull off this crazy rescue. Maybe everything is going to be okay. A second passes, then another. My stomach continues to flutter with the motion of ascent. Every second matters. Every second. Every second of rise means a head start on the other two zeppelins in the hangar.

  Then Madame Rogger’s shout fills the cargo hold: “Give me a break!”

  A second later, the blimp lurches sideways and forward, spilling me down the aisle.

  I scramble to my feet and lumber for the cabin. There, Madame Rogger struggles with the controls, cursing under her breath while pushing the throttle all the way forward. Through the window, I see something that almost makes me wet myself.

  Cords. Black cords, dozens of them running up the side of the window.

  Fingers.

  Fingers that have grabbed hold and won’t let go.

  Pressing up against the window, I look down to where the grotesque form of the Duchess stands with arms outstretched amidst the chaos, her fingers taut, shooting up a hundred feet to our craft. Vampires attack her, but are thrown aside by stray arms. Even some of the Bokor have become terrified and fire on her, to no effect.

  “What is that?” I say to no one in particular, in macabre awe of the monster below.

  Madame Rogger snickers with nervous terror. “Something in need of help.”

  Help. Yeah, right.

  But then I freeze.

  Help! That’s it.

  Or at least it’s worth a try.

  I rush to retrieve my rifle. It’s lying beside Milly. As I grab the gun I check her pulse at the wrist. It grows weaker with every beat. I scramble over to Zoe and check hers. She doesn’t have one. I drop her wrist and try her neck. Still nothing. But she’s breathing. She’s almost panting. There’s a cold sweat rising on her forehead. Crap. She’s manifesting. But manifesting what? A zombie? A vampire? There’s no way to know.

  Quick and calm as I can manage, I
slide the precious vial from the rifle barrel and unstop it. The ship is still shaking and reeling, but I manage to get a single drop down Zoe’s mouth. Then Milly’s. If there’s any immediate effect, I can’t see it. I reseal the vial and place it back into the rifle.

  Next to Skiss is one of the modified shotguns. She catches my tormented eyes on it.

  “If one of our girls begins to change,” I begin, not sure what to say.

  “I’ll strap them down,” she answers.

  When I return to the cabin, I slide open one of the side windows and extend the gun barrel carefully into the open air. Bracing myself as the blimp rocks to-and-fro in its struggle against the tentacle-fingers, I take aim at the Duchess.

  “What are you doing?” cries Madame Rogger, still fighting the ship’s yoke.

  I don’t know what to tell her.

  I simply inhale and pull the trigger.

  As I do, I don’t know what’s more surreal: the creature I’m firing at, or the fact that I’m shattering the only existing antidote for an infection that has devoured the human race. And my hope in doing so?—my foolhardy, silly hope? That somehow a trace of the Cure will render the bullet potent enough to faze the monstrous Duchess. Even if it merely startles her, maybe we can tear free.

  The rifle reports, splitting my ears, shattering the vial.

  A second passes. The zeppelin rocks violently, threatening to flip.

  For all I can tell, I’ve missed—

  —I’ve missed and all is over, the game is up—

  —But then an alarm of misery rips the air, a hair-raising siren that halts everything. The fighting and frenzy—it all hesitates as the Duchess screams. Vampire, vargulf, Bokor—claw, blade, gun. Everything freezes. Everything except our zeppelin.

  It doesn’t freeze.

  It flips upright and slides away from the Duchess and her devilish tendrils before bobbing up into the calm night sky.

  Chapter Sixty-Five