by Yates, B. D.
It didn't take long; Emmit assumed the quiet Reverend probably wanted to get away from the old married couple's bickering inside. Even without prescription lenses, Emmit could see that the Rev was completely and utterly broken down. He slunk out the door and closed it quietly behind him, rubbing at his head with one hand and carrying a spear in the other. Emmit saw his body turn one way, then the other, scanning for any intruders. Then he jabbed the spear into the frozen ground and leaned on it, his body looking weak and boneless. He stayed in that prostrated pose, quiet and motionless, until something small and white slammed into the cabin wall behind him and exploded. He snatched the spear out of the hardened snow in a lightning quick motion, twirling it to position his hands for combat and then holding it defensively in front of him. He doesn't look so weak and powerless anymore, Emmit thought, watching as the Rev began to creep forward on slightly bent knees, his head cocked and the spear steadfast. He's still got some fire in him.
Emmit grabbed another handful of snow, packed it into a tight ball, and lobbed it in the general direction of the Rev as if it were a hand grenade. Trying to hit him with it was hopeless, but he didn't need to. All he needed to do was get his attention and draw him towards his hiding place, away from the cabin.
The Rev made a snorting sound and sidestepped the snowball, keeping his alert eyes trained on the darkness. Methodically, he stalked close enough to see a humanoid, star-like shadow in the snow. He angled the spear towards Emmit's upturned face and inched forward as if approaching a venomous snake.
Emmit knew that it would be wise to alert him before he was close enough to thrust the spear through one of his eye sockets. He lifted both of his stained hands and held them up like a man being arrested, craning his neck to stare up into the bewildered face of the Reverend.
"It's me, Tim," he said simply, and the Rev immediately threw himself to the ground beside him. They shimmied over to a darker patch of the cabin's "yard" and squatted beside each other.
"Emmit?!" He nearly yelled, poking a finger into Emmit's chest as if to make sure he was real. His face looked like a cartoon ghost, but genuine surprise and happiness lurked somewhere just under the surface. "We thought Roy killed you, man."
Emmit placed a finger across his lips, then twirled that same finger in a large circle between them.
"Whisper," Emmit said, and the Rev nodded nervously. "That horde Roy mentioned. The Megahorde? It's not nearby. It's here."
The Rev swallowed hard enough for Emmit to hear the gulp.
"You saw them?" He asked, his hands gripping and releasing the shaft of his spear. Emmit nodded gravely.
"There was another supernova on my way here. It’s the only reason I made it here. When it lit up the woods, I saw hundreds of them, Tim. Well... I think I saw hundreds..."
Emmit resisted the urge to push his nonexistent glasses up onto the bridge of his nose.
"Are my glasses inside, by any chance...?"
The Rev frowned, then shook his head slowly.
"It was your old pal Poke again, Emmit. He crushed them. Then he burned them. I guess he figured you wouldn't be needing them anymore."
Emmit swore under his breath, driving one hard fist into the snow between his knees. It hit like a small meteorite.
"Fucker," he hissed. "I'm gonna need a pair of eyes, then."
He reached out with one chilled hand and clasped it around the Rev's, and they held the spear together.
"What do you say we get the hell out of here, Rev?"
Chapter 11: Nightmare Vision
They moved slowly back the way Emmit had come, using his meandering path as a guide. It hadn't taken much convincing to get the Rev to leave with him; not after he had seen two members of the camp "slain" in the same night. Tim knew his time left was limited. Poke never seemed to lose the draw for Provider, and he believed Emmit's story about seeing Roy choosing a safe stick for Poke, setting it aside with his pinky finger. What had really got him moving, however, was the knowledge that Pup was also still alive.
Now the Rev followed closely behind Emmit, his spear held upright in one hand and Emmit's shoulder secured in the other. He was steering him a little more than he needed to, but Emmit didn't complain. He was grateful to not be alone and to have someone defending him when he was at his most vulnerable.
"Hold up," the Rev grumbled, squeezing Emmit's shoulder and moving to stand in front of him. "Link."
Emmit looked in the direction the Rev was moving, and after some hard concentration he finally saw it. It stopped in its tracks, waving its arms like they were antennae in search of a radio signal. Then it turned and began stumbling towards them. This one was young and fresh.
The Link looked like it had just dropped out of thin air hours before, much the same as Emmit had, except it hadn't had such nice luck upon waking up. Its eyes were already dried out, faded to the color of dusty pearls and wrinkled in the corners from the vastness of its grin. Its clothes were still clean and new, save for the socks it wore, which were soaked with water and beginning to crystallize around its ankles. The corpse was dressed for a summer pool party, clad in neon red swim trunks and a simple black cutoff that exposed most of its blue-gray torso. Its hair looked like it had arrived here with it still wet from a leisurely afternoon spent in a swimming pool. It was a slicked back bed of spikes, now glistening with ice.
"Murrrrrderer..." it said once, and once only, before the Rev swiftly dispatched it. Emmit was struck by how human it had sounded, how alive, compared to the dried-out husks he had grown accustomed to. Tim jabbed his spear through the Link's neck, punching through the tangles of cords and arteries and severing the thing's head almost entirely. The blood that came out was still runny liquid, yet cooled enough to not steam as it hit the snow. It collapsed into an untidy heap at the Rev's feet, gurgling, one leg twitching like that of a dying cockroach.
"You weren't kidding," the Rev said gravely, looking over each shoulder before returning to guide Emmit. "They're everywhere. I think even more than you may have estimated."
"Can we make it?"
Tim squeezed his shoulder, pulling him slightly to the right to avoid tripping over the draining corpse of the swimmer.
"If we're very, very quiet, I think we can. But I don't see the light, Emmit. I haven't seen it in a while, if I'm honest, and I don't know how you plan to—"
Emmit shrugged under the Rev's firm grasp, one quick hitch of his shoulders.
"We don't have any other choice, Tim. Maybe if we go looking for it, it'll... I don't know, switch on somehow. Either way, we'll probably die. I'm gonna die on my terms."
The Rev didn't respond to that grim sentiment, and instead all Emmit heard was the storm wind sound of the Megahorde, hissing and moaning all around them. Neither of them harbored any delusions about where they stood in the scheme of things; most likely, they would join the horde before the night was through. But if they had to die, they would die fighting. Die trying. They wouldn't die at the hands of the two madmen back at the cabin, raging around like two hornets trapped inside a hot car. They would not be their food. They would not become their feces.
Emmit detected the sweetish smell of burning wood again, and his shoe brushed a partially buried hunk of splintered wood. They were close to the shed now.
"Tim," he said, looking back over his shoulder. "I told you that Pup's in bad shape. I wasn't exaggerating. Are you sure you're ready to see it?"
Emmit dug his heels in, forcing the Rev to stop. He turned to face his ally, who was rubbing at his eyes and forehead as if trying to reinforce them. Prepare them for what was coming.
"I'm not ready to see it, no. But that doesn't change the fact that we can't leave him."
Emmit could see the glowing doorway ahead of them and, tapping Tim on his chest to let him know he was in control, he went ahead on his own. Stepping back inside the broken door, it was like his mind had been wiped once more. He had forgotten how thick and rich the smell of blood inside the meat locker had been. It wa
s like pressing his face into a bowl of old pennies.
Pup had managed to drag himself closer to the fire pit for warmth, leaving a long, red smear behind him. He had rolled over onto his stomach, folding his arms under his head as a makeshift pillow. His breaths were fast and shallow. Emmit would have thought him dead if the Rev, mumbling his lord's name repeatedly as he jogged to the kid’s side, hadn't knelt and put a trembling hand on his neck.
"He's breathing," he said softly, "But I don't know if we can move him through a pack of Links without getting him killed. If we jostle his... legs... too much..."
Pup's eyes fluttered open, utterly devoid of light and life. His head bobbed and swayed as he tried to lift it from his arms, his hair matted to his forehead.
"Don't," he said plainly, and his face crumpled as he began to cry. Emmit moved over and sat down beside the Rev, folding his legs under him and resting on his shoes. He felt a fleeting rush of guilt as he did so; ridiculous guilt for the fact that he still had legs to sit on.
"Don't what, Pup?" He asked, in a soothing voice. He brushed the kid's hair out of his face. "Don't move you?"
Pup nodded, using a vast amount of the strength he had left in him. He licked his lips, which were a deathly shade of purple.
"I can hear them... out there. I can... hear that there's too... many of them. Don't... please don't take me out there with them."
His arm slowly slid across the floor, and his bloodstained fingers touched one of the sunken tourniquets gingerly.
"Take them off," he whispered, a fresh tear trailing down his cheek, leaving a glistening trail like a miniature comet. "I don't... want to be... turned… touched…"
The Rev's lower lip trembled ever so slightly as it puffed out from beneath his top lip, and Emmit noticed that his eyes were much wetter and much shinier than they had been moments before. He gestured towards the door with his spear and said, "I'll go watch the door, and... and I'll say a prayer."
He made it three steps before he stopped, half-turning to look back at where Emmit sat with Pup. Pup had laid his head on Emmit's knee, and Emmit was softly patting the kid's back.
"Listen to him, Emmit," Tim said huskily, then turned his back and went to lean against the shattered door frame. He didn't look back this time. Emmit stared down at the dying boy, swallowing the thick lump in his throat each time it formed again, desperate to appear stronger and braver than he actually felt.
"Pup..." he attempted, but his voice broke. He steadied himself, finding a random place on the floor to focus on. "Pup. Are you sure you want me to take them off? If I do, you're going to bleed to death."
Pup bobbed his head once and then it fell heavily, bouncing off Emmit's thigh like a bowling ball.
"While you were gone... I saw one... it walked right past the... door... I just laid here... waiting for it... to come for me..."
Pup was taking deep breaths now, gasping between his words so hard that his mangled body rose off the floor. His voice began to climb and warble, desperation contorting his young, puffy face. He grabbed a handful of Emmit's clothes and tried to pull him closer, but he had no strength left in him.
"It... didn't have... a face, it... all I could... see was... teeth... please god, don't take... don't take me out there... with them..."
He was clawing at the tourniquets now, raking his hooked fingers across the knotted ropes. The neatly cleaved femurs were astonishingly white, the marrow glaring out like two dazed eyes.
"Don't... make me... go out there."
"Alright, Pup," Emmit said, his voice gravelly as he removed his knife. "I'll let you rest now."
He helped Pup roll over onto his back, the boy's glassy eyes fixed on the ceiling. Emmit would have given one of his own eyes to make the other see better, given what he was about to do. He felt for the knots, using his fingertips to follow the tourniquets around the amputations and guide the knife edge under them. He gnawed his lip as he slowly cut the knots off at the base, his stomach hitching every time one of his fingers brushed against the red tangles of sinew that served as Pup's thighs. The first rope snapped like a rubber band, and Emmit began to work on the next one without delaying. He wouldn't look at what he had done; hearing it was bad enough. The arteries emptied themselves all over the floor in rapid spurts, with a sound like water flowing out of a tap as the pressure came and went.
"Almost over, Pup."
The second knot came off; the rope whipped apart. Now the flowing liquid sound was doubled, and he could already hear Pup's breathing beginning to slow. Emmit sat with a hand on the kid's chest, feeling each expansion and contraction weakening. It didn't take long; Pup exhaled one last time, and then simply never took another breath. His bloodshot eyes didn't change, even in death. He looked like a wax dummy now, a grotesque Halloween decoration in a haunted house somewhere. Emmit used the side of his thumb to try to close Pup’s eyelids, just like they always did in the movies. It didn't work. Pup's eyelids drifted slowly back open, giving the kid the look of a man who had died while hopelessly drunk. His left eye was frozen, more closed than his right in a ghastly corpse wink.
They won't get you now, Pup.
"Emmit!" The Rev shouted, as silently as he could. "Movement out here, we should get going. Is he...?"
Emmit nodded solemnly, folding Pup's thin arms and hands over his skinny ribcage.
"He's gone, Tim. It's what he wanted."
The Rev bowed his head, the end of his spear thumping on the floor as he leaned on it like it was the shoulder of a trusted friend. He shook his head, muttering to himself in harsh whispers, and Emmit could sense a deep rage boiling inside him. A rage that had probably always been there, suppressed by the disgraced Reverend's love for alcohol and his unwavering faith in a God that didn’t seemed to have any mercy for him.
"I think you did the right thing," he said finally, lifting his dark, vengeful eyes to meet Emmit's. "If we tried to carry him out of here and they got their hands on him... you know? You gave him a peaceful death. If he gets back up, then… we’ll just do it again."
Emmit was still looking at Pup's mismatched eyes when he heard the Rev cough, a sharp, rough bark that sounded like it had startled him. When Tim began to groan, his throat bubbling and full of liquid, Emmit felt his blood run cold. That hadn't been a cough.
Emmit was on his feet even before the pins and needles were gone, and even though the Rev was across the room Emmit could see the shadow spreading around the strange bulge that had formed in his clothes. It stuck out just beneath his rib cage, like a large bird had somehow gotten trapped inside his "armor" and was pecking its way out. The Rev was staring down at it, his hands outstretched as if asking a silent question. His spear stood on end, balancing for a half second before clattering to the floor. The cloth around the strange bulge began to darken and saturate, and the black stain spread out from it like runny ink across an old canvas.
"Emmit..." he burbled, then dropped heavily to one knee. There was a spear sticking out of his back, and at the end of the spear, grinning as he began twisting the long wooden shaft back and forth like a giant lever, was Poke. Emmit heard a muffled shredding sound as Poke placed one foot on the back of the Rev's bent leg and wrenched the spear free, and with nothing holding him upright, the Rev pitched forward. Emmit felt hot drops of blood speckle his face, thrown from the spear as Poke twirled it like the prop of a plane.
One of Tim’s arms was pinned under his body, the other stretched far out in front of him as if reaching for something that no one could see but him. He bled out almost instantly, a huge, dark puddle expanding from beneath him like a slow-motion shockwave. There was a sunken hole in the center of his back that made him look like some sort of horrible puppet. The fabric of his coat had been jammed deep into the wound.
"Tim, NO!" Emmit shrieked, and launched himself at Poke. His shoes slapped against the blood-soaked floor as he pelted across it. Poke lifted the bloodied spear and Emmit skidded to a stop, pinwheeling his arms for balance as his shoes s
lid on the unctuous planks beneath him. The spear head was inches from his teary eye; he had almost impaled himself on it.
"Oh, I think you better keep it down, Papa," Poke sneered in a voice that sounded choked by years of cigarettes and other poisonous smokes and vapors. "It's crowded out there tonight."
Poke strutted into the shed, keeping the red-gray spearhead trained on Emmit. He cocked his leg back and delivered a hard kick to the fallen Rev, burying the toe of his boot in the dead man's ribs. Tim didn't recoil or make a sound. He didn't pull his arms in to defend himself. Nobody was that good at playing dead. Emmit knew he was already gone.
"Stupid bastard was next on the menu anyway," Poke said, looking down at Tim's body with a disgusted curl on his lips. "Damn, you know what? Between him, Pup, and you, me and the boss man'll be fed until next winter."
He threw his head back and cackled like a supervillain from a bad comic book movie.
"Next winter, get it? Because it's always winter?"
Emmit didn't react.
"It's a joke, Papa, not a dick. Don't take it so hard."
Emmit wished for a swift, painful cancer to flourish in Poke's guts, a miraculous punishment sent directly from Heaven above. Old Testament style wrath of God type stuff. But as usual, when Emmit thought he might give God a shot at proving His existence and His empathy, nothing happened. Emmit was on his own, once again.
"I'm going to kill you, Poke," he said menacingly, his voice shaking but not from the chill in the air. "I'm going to kill you and I'm going to enjoy every second of it."
It happened so fast that Emmit couldn't have dodged it even if he could have seen it. Poke swiped the blunt end of his spear up, dizzyingly fast, and it connected with Emmit's jaw hard enough to knock one of his teeth out of its cozy gum bed. A fresh shot of pain exploded from the half-mended cut in his cheek. Emmit grunted and pursed his lips, tossing the sharp, broken tooth around with his tongue. He waited for the shock and pain to subside as much as they were apt to, and then spat the tooth at Poke in a jet of pink saliva. It bounced off his chest and pattered across the floor.