Through The Valley

by Yates, B. D.

  For the first time in his life, Emmit began to honestly consider the fact that maybe he wasn't such a nice, gentle guy. Maybe he was capable of crime and violence and brutality; weren't all people, when pushed to their breaking point? Standing there, shaking with exponential rage as Poke kept taking shots at him, he felt like a coiled viper chased into a corner by a predator. His breaths were rapid and shaky. His skin was radiating heat. He couldn't take much more.

  "He's probably about as weak as you are, honestly," Poke was droning on, tapping his chin with his finger as if performing a deep mental analysis of the Reverend. "I'm surprised he's survived as long as he has, he's not real good in a fight either. If we needed some crops tended to, now that's where I think he'd do some good..."

  "Poke, I'm warning you," Emmit whispered. He was panting now, beads of sweat budding out from his hairline and dotting his forehead like condensation on a beer mug. "Stop."

  I can't take anymore. Not one more word. One more racist remark, one more shitty insult, and I'm going to stab him.

  Emmit released one clenched fist and passed it over the vague hump of the broken spear head under his clothes. The feel of it under his shaking palm scared him for two reasons; because he honestly didn't know any more if he was capable of killing a living person (or if he already had) and because the feeling of his control slipping away felt amazing. He couldn't remember ever feeling more alive, not even when he had finally lost his virginity. He craved the violence that his racing pulse was promising.

  "Hey, what's your bitch like? We don't get a whole lot of pussy in here, and when we do Roy won't let us near it. She hot? Big titties? You know, I hope she is a bitch, so maybe your boy can learn to be a little more of a hardass than you are. Must be hard having such a cuck for a dad. Now, if I were his dad, I'd—"

  That did it. Emmit's fist was like a harpoon, lashing out from his body so fast that he felt the crushing pain in his hand and wrist before he even heard the meaty whap of his knuckles connecting with Poke's eye socket. Poke's head snapped back, and Emmit saw with immeasurable satisfaction that it had instantly begun to puff up, turning a pinkish red that would soon fade to purple and black. But that wasn't enough. No, one was not enough. Fifty would not be enough.

  Emmit grabbed Poke by the throat with both hands, grunting with exertion, trying to crush his windpipe closed. Poke was smiling at him, even as he was sucking down each breath as if through a straw. He didn't try to defend himself. Instead, he folded his spidery arms behind his back.

  "There... he is..." Poke wheezed. "Your... boy... might..."

  "SHUT UP!"

  Emmit let go of Poke's neck, where his blackened hands had left two dark patches that looked like a spectral bird with its wings spread. He cocked his arm back, barely registering the pain in his hand, and pistoned his arm out again, harder this time, hard enough for the momentum to drop him to his knees.

  His fist found Poke's mouth with a sound like a cork popping out of a wine bottle, mashing his lips into his teeth and immediately filling his mouth with blood. Shoulders heaving, Emmit stared down at his knuckles. Triangular flaps of skin had been filleted from two of them, probably from snagging on Poke's nightmarish teeth on their way across them. Poke lay in a heap in front of him, rolling slowly from side to side. Impossibly, he did not cease his snickering.

  "Feea betta now?" He slurred, a long tendril of bloody spit stretching from a wedge-shaped slice in his lip. Poke's mouth moved as if he were chewing a wad of gum, and then he spat a crimson mass of jelly onto the floor. Two broken, bloodied teeth skittered across the dirty wood like dice.

  "Not really, no," Emmit mumbled, squeezing his throbbing wrist. His hand felt like a pouch of broken glass. "You're still alive."

  Poke chortled wetly, rolling over onto his back in front of the fire. He swallowed blood repeatedly, his Adam's apple sliding back and forth as if it were pacing the hallway of his throat. He folded his hands behind his head and crossed his feet, smiling even as fresh blood trickled down his cheek and pattered on the floor.

  "Roy should be back any time," Poke said, and something about his tone, the smugness and arrogance of it, made Emmit look up from his swelling wrist and blackened palms. His belly filled with ice water. He felt the way he always did when a cop pulled him over, inundated with the blood chilling dread that spread like frost on a windowpane all throughout his abdomen. The feeling that he would soon be in deep trouble. Deep shit, as the cool kids liked to say.

  Christ, what have I done?

  * * *

  Emmit stood in front of the cabin door, tiny wisps of steam curling off his head and shoulders like trailing ribbons. He wasn't even cold. He knew that this was a great way to get himself sick, but he had no shits left to give on that particular evening. The cold air felt like firefighting helicopters dousing a raging wildfire with cool, clear lake water.

  He stooped and grabbed a handful of snow from the ground, packed it into a loose ball, and pressed his throbbing hand against it. His fingers wiggled feebly, one by one. He didn't think it was broken, but he would be feeling the beat down he had given Poke for days to come.

  Emmit knuckled his foggy glasses up onto the bridge of his nose and squinted into the trees, cocking his head slightly to listen. As the sky faded into a bruised purple, lined with streaks of gold like veins of ore in a cave wall, a different array of stars began to twinkle like a multitude of eyes opening from their day's slumber. The wind gusted here and there, moaning through the branches and birthing more of the tiny whirling tornadoes. They chased each other in haphazard zig zags before being obliterated by stronger wind gusts, only to be reborn a few feet further away.

  Everyone is dead.

  The thought stalked out of his subconscious and didn't feel like it was his own. If they had run across the same horde his team had, or maybe an even bigger one, it wasn't too far-fetched. It was hard to fathom the thought of big, powerful, terrifying Roy being brought down by anything so simple and weak as a zombie. But it was classic zombie knowledge, wasn't it? They were never a threat, in the movies anyway, unless you got swarmed.

  That got him to thinking, and he froze in the process of reaching for more snow for his bruised knuckles.

  If I go at night, and if I'm careful... really careful, there's no way they could catch me. They don't run. They're slow as hell. If they're spread apart, I could just walk right between them...

  He gazed into the foreboding twilight shadows of the tree line, trying to imagine himself traipsing through it in the dead of a moonless winter night. Looking at it from the safety of the cabin gave him the queer sensation of standing on a half-sunken ship or maybe a small rock, a tiny safe zone, while sharks circled and waited patiently for him to slip. It was strange to him to think of the woods beyond the cabin as enemy territory. In his old life, his old time, the woods were something to casually admire in the fall, or a place to take Deek for a hike when the weather was warm, and the forecast didn't call for storms. But here, in this place, everything that wasn't the safety of Roy's cabin had to be treated like shark-infested waters. A no man's land.

  He thought, with a satisfied smile, of Poke rolling around in front of the fire, nursing his freshly rearranged face.

  Maybe the cabin isn't such a safe place after all, E.

  He shrugged in response to himself. Maybe it was and maybe it wasn't, but until he saw the mysterious light for himself and had proof that it was real, the cabin and its motley crew of survivors were the best hope he had of surviving long enough to ever hug his son again.

  A lump rose in his throat as he imagined hugging his boy close to his body, feeling his small muscles and bones constricting gently in his arms, smelling the blue raspberry scent of his hair. Shampoo that only a child could appreciate bathing in, and only a parent could appreciate smelling. The world around him responded to his fresh round of tears in its usual uncaring fashion; a gust of wind that whistled and moaned, the crack and rattle of dead branches, the whisper of snow devil
s living their short lives around him.

  "I'm coming back," he muttered, his throat clicking. "I'm coming back or I'm going to die trying, Deacon."

  The cold was finally catching up to him as his temper began to subside, numbing his sore hand to the point where the ache was little more than a dull throb. He didn't want to go back in and face Poke, let alone share a small room with him, but he also didn't want to stay outside and freeze. There was always the chance that the light could appear tonight, and if it did, he would need to be fed and rested—

  Movement near the edge of the tree line.

  Emmit stood still and alert like a frightened deer, staring at the swaying branches. Clods of wet snow were still falling from them. It could have been anything. The Links could have followed them back, could maybe smell them or something. Or maybe it was an animal, a deer or a boar, except—

  Except you haven't even seen a bug since you got here. No bugs, no birds, no animals whatsoever.

  That was Emmit's first realization that something savage and unthinkable was happening in Roy's secret shed out back, but he was too distracted by whatever had caught his eye to bring the thought to completion. There was definitely something moving, and it was moving towards the cabin.

  At first, Emmit thought it was an animal, some sort of four legged beast that walked low to the ground. It came slowly out of the forest, followed by two more squat, trotting shapes.

  Foxes? Wolves maybe?

  The shapes were almost upon him before he could make out the fluttering locks of Roy's hair, and the glowing whites of the Reverend's eyes, bright and aware in their sockets of brown skin. They were approaching like soldiers behind enemy lines, hugging their weapons and never daring to stand. Emmit threw the cabin door open, letting the heat and a few stray cotton candy wisps of smoke out into the night air. The three hunched men filed past him one by one without a word, huffing and puffing with exertion. Emmit shut the door behind them and extended his uninjured hand to Pup, offering to help him stand upright.

  "Can't... yet," he wheezed in his juvenile voice, swatting Emmit's hand away and falling over onto his side. "Lemme breathe, man."

  "Christ on his throne," The Rev gasped, falling heavily to his knees. "My body wasn't designed to squat for that long."

  Roy was winded too, long blades of his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat. He was showing no other signs of any weakness. He was standing tall and rigid, golem-like, as he surveyed the cabin. He swept his wild eyes from side to side, scanning every detail. Poke had dragged himself to his feet and was leaning beside the fireplace, one elbow propped on the small shelf mounted above it. Roy's eyes stopped on him, and the interior of the cabin suddenly felt much, much smaller.

  "The fuck happened here?" Roy said, the silence following his gravelly voice deafening. "Where's Muddy?" His bear paw hands rested on his hips.

  "Roy—" Emmit attempted.

  "I WAS ASKING HIM, PISS ANT!" Roy roared, sending a shockwave through the room that made all the men jump. Emmit wanted to stand tall, stand his fucking ground for once, but his knees went weak under him. He shrank against the cool wood of the wall, hating himself for it.

  Poke's mouth worked and wiggled again, and he spat another red wad into the fireplace. It hissed and bubbled on the glowing embers.

  "Muddy didn't make it, Boss," he said with slurred words. "He started swinging wild and his spear broke. Links, man, there had to be a hundred of 'em. They got him."

  Roy clicked his tongue, nodding solemnly and staring off into some imaginary distance. He swept his long hair out of his face, exposing his reddening cheeks.

  "And the two of you, you couldn't help him? Couldn't smash a bunch of freaks before they had time to turn him?"

  Poke's eyes fell on Emmit, and the corner of his mouth twitched just enough to suggest that a smile might be lurking there. Emmit felt his heart, thudding in rhythm with the pain in his hand, free-fall like a severed elevator car to the heels of his feet. He shook his head slowly, from side to side.

  Don't you dare, Poke.

  But Poke dared, and he did it; he did what he had planned to do from the start, and it had gone right over Emmit's bespectacled head. He couldn't blame his poor vision for this oversight.

  "Muddy was hurting bad, Roy. He was screaming. Getting them riled up. We tried to get close but there were so many."

  How could Roy not hear the fake emotion in his voice? How could he not see how staged Poke's performance was? Emmit had seen soap operas with better acting, and that was quite the feat.

  The Reverend and Pup were transfixed, Pup's hand frozen in midair as he had been slicking his sweaty locks of hair back. It felt like the air did before a particularly nasty storm, pregnant with electricity and waiting to explode. Nothing breathed but the cracks and the holes in the wall, wheezing like asthma victims.

  "I told Papa to run..."

  "Papa?"

  Roy gave Emmit the slightest of glances, and Poke nodded his swollen, leaking head.

  "I been calling him that because he talks about his son all the time, Boss, and he didn't have a nickname yet. I told him to run, and he said to me, 'we can get them off our tail'. He took his hammer—"

  "You are a fucking liar!" Emmit erupted, his legs suddenly like iron pillars. He stormed forward, his busted hand warped into an accusatory point that, although slightly crooked, was locked between Poke's eyes.

  "I DIDN'T FUCKING ASK YOU TO SPEAK!" Roy boomed, and shoved one massive hand into Emmit's chest. Emmit felt his shoes leave the floor as he sailed backward, rag dolling back to the spot he had come from. "You two, hold him."

  The Rev, whom Emmit had begun to think of as his only friend in this hostile world, hustled over and wrapped his arms tightly around him. He pinned Emmit's lanky arms to his ribs, tight enough to immediately restrict the circulation. Pup seemed frightened, the bewildered expression he often wore lingering on his face as he climbed to his feet and shuffled over without much urgency.

  "Calm your ass down and let the man say his piece," the Rev said, a little too loudly and with a touch of uncharacteristic meanness that sounded strange coming from him. It sounded as fake and staged as Poke's sorry story, meant to please Roy's ears. He leaned in close, his lips brushing Emmit's earlobe.

  "Keep your mouth shut, it won't do any good," he whispered, his voice scarcely more than hard stresses and the quiet sensation of his lips moving. "Poke is like his lieutenant, man. He's gonna take his side, don't make it worse."

  Pup finally arrived, half-heartedly putting his hands on Emmit's heaving chest. All eyes were on Poke, and to Emmit, his injuries suddenly seemed much more severe, much more pronounced than they had been only a few moments before. Every wound he had given him seemed to scream for Roy's notice.

  Roy held his open palm out to Poke.

  Continue.

  "He took his hammer and hit Muddy in the leg with it. He broke it so he couldn't run. Then he took off. I'm sorry Roy, but I followed after him. I couldn't save Muddy, not if he couldn't run, know what I mean?"

  Emmit lunged forward, and the Rev gently pushed him back. His eyes were fierce, locked on Emmit's with a cautionary, fatherly intensity. He shook his head from side to side in one solid motion that felt like the period at the end of a sentence.

  Don't, he said without saying it.

  "Your face," Roy said, in an eerily calm voice that was robotic and monotone. "This blood. What happened?"

  Poke shifted from foot to foot, looking like a mischievous child imprisoned in the principal's office. He was looking at the floor as he pointed to Emmit.

  "When we got back, I gave him shit for it. I told him I was gonna tell you everything that happened, and he said he'd kill me if I did. Then he just started beating my face in, Boss."

  Emmit was sick with rage, sick the way a man sometimes felt when he finally found himself alone in a back bedroom with a girl he had been obsessing over, and all she wanted to do was tease and play hard-to-get. The urge, the need,
to beat Poke to death felt every bit as urgent and all-consuming as the burning desire for sex was when it reared its slathering head. It was animalistic, almost subhuman. He wanted nothing more than to sacrifice his own hands to the act of reducing Poke's face to runny oatmeal. His vivid, white-hot anger felt like being horny because it was something he desired, badly, even more than food and water, and he knew the act would feel oh, so good.

  "Go stick your face in a snow drift," Roy said, still speaking in his emotionless answering machine voice. "It'll help with the swelling and it'll ease up some of the tension in here."

  Poke gave an awkward wave and smirked, then let himself out without even dressing. He pushed the door shut gently behind him, as if a loud noise might detonate a bomb. There was a bomb in the room after all. And it was turning to stare Emmit down.

  "You," he said. He crossed his massive arms, piling them on top of one another like felled trees. "You have a real funny way of saying 'thank you.'"

  Emmit stared up at him, jaw clenched and eyes calm with a stoic acceptance. Whatever was going to happen was going to happen, and no matter how hard he fought, that wouldn't be changed. He felt like a condemned man being marched to the gallows, but the only crowd there to watch were the very same men restraining him.

  "He didn't tell you the truth," Emmit said tonelessly. "I know you don't believe me, but Poke killed Muddy. He stabbed him in the leg, and—"

  "Why should I believe you over someone who has been here with me, in this frozen fucking hellhole, for years? Poke has never gone behind my back. Not once. What's more logical, Papa? Poke suddenly goes rogue, or a newcomer..."

  He suddenly lashed out and grabbed Emmit's chin with one vice-like hand, mashing his cheeks between his teeth as his jaws were forced open by Roy's thick, curled fingers. He jerked Emmit's face up to meet his. His breath smelled faintly of burnt meat.