Old Broken Road

by Alexander, K. M.

  The merchant spun, her heart hammering, the images from her nightmares flashing through her mind.

  Nothing. No sky. No vistas. Nothing but gray-black oblivion where the horizon once was.

  A gaunt shadow appeared, shaped like a slim man. Narrow hips. Wide shoulders. It emerged from the gloom, moving towards her. One of the caravan? She opened her mouth to challenge the figure, but the words stuck in her throat. She struggled to comprehend what she was seeing. She could shout for help, but somehow she knew no one would hear her. The gloom would strangle the sound just as it had the light. Gradually the shape began to shift. His head and arms fell into himself, and he slapped forward, collapsing into a mass of… of… something. A hideous, gibbering, glopping mess of dark flesh. A crawling nightmare.

  She backpedaled, her throat tight with screams.

  The thing slopped towards her like a thick, crawling tar. Arms formed only to be reabsorbed as they dragged the horror along the ground. Faces with yellow eyes would appear, only to disappear back into the mass.

  She fired her gun, the light blinding her as the slugs exploded out of the end of the barrel.

  No effect. Its fleshy mass absorbed the bullet.

  The thing continued its slow creep towards her. Mumbling that sound from multiple gaping mouths. Moaning metal, gabbling laughter.

  Recoiling in horror, she turned and began to sprint, not caring which direction.

  The thing picked up its pace, slopping forward with increased momentum. Pacing her, and ever so slowly gaining ground.

  “Help!” she screamed, stretching the word out.

  Her gun was no use. She stumbled, pressing onward, the thing right at her heels. It was intent on her, and somehow she knew that she couldn’t fight it.

  It was the nightmares and the sound made flesh. It was everything she’d witnessed. The road priest was right. The chuck—damn her—was right. The Broken Road was a damn mistake.

  The merchant slowed, turned and faced the approaching thing. It flowed towards her, faces, limbs, wide lidless eyes, and gaping mouths emerging from the roiling mass. It chattered the sound that was part laughter and part moan as it rushed at her.

  She felt sick, but forced it back down. She would not vomit in this moment. She refused.

  It launched itself at her, its ragged misshapen edges catching what little light existed in this void. It slapped against her, at once enveloping, touching her all over. She shuddered and screamed again.

  The mass wasn’t damp or wet, it just was. A dark thing, a gash in reality. It sucked the warmth from the muggy air around her, it felt around, inside her, probing her. She felt its presence reach into her nose, around her eyes, penetrate her ears, violating her.

  She felt her screams, but could not hear them. Felt her body convulse as the creature enveloped its fleshy form around her.

  Soon it would be over. She knew it in her bones.

  She felt cold.

  She hated the cold.

  ONE

  THE AIR HERE IS SO THICK WITH DUST THAT IT FORMS MOUNTAINS IN YOUR LUNGS. It grinds itself into your pores, gets in your hair, irritates your eyes, and crunches between your teeth. Every bite during a meal feels like you’re chewing sand, every drink tinged with the flavor of earth.

  Dust haunts you like a bad memory, following you around like a shadow. Walls do little. It finds its way in, blowing through cracks, rushing around door jams, and slipping underneath window frames in belching bursts.

  Welcome to Syringa. The edge of the high plains.

  I sat with my partner in a crowded no-name tavern down a no-name alley off a no-name street in this maze of a city. Autumn had been delayed. No one had informed the summer its time had gone, and its oppressive heat lingered. We had come to escape the sun and talk about the promotion of our scout Hannah Clay to full partner.

  I took a sip from my drink—a hard cider popular among the locals—hoping to wash the taste of dirt from my mouth.

  It didn’t help much.

  Above me, an electric fan droned its endless hum as it churned in its orbit, mixing the sweltering air into a murky haze. The grimy light from the gas lamps that lit the tavern struggled to penetrate the dust-filled air, reminding me how far I was from Lovat. Hell, I wasn’t in civilization.

  In a crowded corner, a kresh pianist plinked away at an old jazz number. The rhythm was off and his piano needed a good tuning. It filled the place with a lonely sound, and felt odd juxtaposed with the crowd gathered in the muggy tavern.

  I watched a pair of roaders—a fellow human and a four-horned dimanian—take shot after shot of clear grain alcohol while leaning against the long bar that ran the length of the space. Their laughter grew with each swig and their knees had begun to wobble. They were doing their best to perpetuate the stereotype that all of us roaders are loud, obnoxious, carousing types.

  The joint was crowded with us. Roaders. Caravaneers. Trail people. Whatever you want to call us. Trapped in the thin space that is Syringa. A scratch of life between the beginning of the eastern mountains and the end of the high plains.

  It was a place of business: contracts were signed, hands were shaken, and goods were traded and transported. A place to refuel: grab a bed, find a bite to eat, get in a fight, maybe conceive an illegitimate child or two before the next series of mountain passes or the next set of miles beneath one’s boots. Caravaneers, roaders, traders, travelers, merchants, and road priests—we all made Syringa a port of call.

  While other cities restricted caravansaras to outside city limits, Syringa was itself a caravansara. A massive one, her towers as much a part of the trade as the rickety stalls that lined her streets. The city had been large once, stretching out across the valley floor between two sets of rolling foothills. But as the high plains encroached, the city had pulled in, leaving bones of abandoned buildings scattered around its periphery like the scattered seeds of the farmers that work the endless miles of fields to Syringa’s east.

  It was dense. It crawled with life. Humans with dark skin and suspicious gazes. Horned dimanians. Giant maero that towered over the crowds. Bufo’anur with their thick gray skin, wide muscular shoulders, and bulbous eyes. Sundry stores, liveries, restaurants, hotels, pitchfork dens, brothels, and taverns squeezed the tangled threads of the streets.

  Merchants would set up temporary stalls before continuing on their journeys, farmers from valleys to the south and west would bring in goods for delivery. Lovat’s hunger was insatiable, and Syringa kept it fed. Produce mainly: potatoes, carrots, onions, and apples—always apples coming in by the wainload. Ponderous cargowains rolled across the Big Ninety carrying the food westward.

  Syringa had become small. She was not a city of levels like Lovat, nor was she wedged deep into canyons and fissures like Hellgate. There was no Sunk, no Crust, and as far as I knew, no tunnels wormed their way beneath the city’s foundations.

  A few stubby towers rose from its narrow streets, maybe twenty stories at their highest. Nothing like the vast towers of Lovat. They huddled around a ditch in the earth that Syringans claimed was once a roaring river. Now eleven years into a drought, it was a polluted brown trickle that was more trash than water.

  The two roaders at the bar took another shot, laughing and hacking as the liquor burned the dirt from their throats. A thin, dusky man in dark robes standing nearby crinkled his hooked nose in disgust before edging away.

  I looked at them with not a little envy. There are worse ways to pass time, and liquor helps a man forget.

  But let’s be clear. There's a lot of talk about roaders. Yes, some of us fit the stereotype. But the road doesn’t make a man an alcoholic. It’s not the road life that makes a man turn to the drink. It’s the waiting that does.

  The endless tedium between jobs. Weeks just waiting. Memories flicker from the past with little to temper them. Mistakes. Lost loves. Sometimes worse, depending on who you are.

  Boredom is like erosion: eventually even the strongest of stones get worn down. On
e fills the stretches between jobs numbing oneself.

  I took another drink and swallowed the bitter cider. I glowered at the news report flickering on a monochrome hanging from the ceiling and took another sip of the vile hard cider, wishing for something stronger, something colder.

  Images of recent events flashed in the harshness of black and white, promising more waiting.

  A dauger reporter wearing a titanium mask stood among static that could have been a dust storm, a blizzard, or a bad signal. She shouted at the camera so she could be heard. Her hands tried to shield the eyes behind her mask as she delivered her report from somewhere in the west. Syringa News Service’s reporter at large, Maia Titan, on scene at the Grovedare Span.

  Carter’s cross, it wasn’t good.

  “Good evening, Robert,” she said, her voice barely audible over the dull roar of the tavern.

  “Quiet!” shouted a voice.

  The crowd ignored it.

  “I SAID QUIET!” came the voice again. The bartender. The king of this tiny kingdom.

  The crowd lowered to a murmur so that the caravan masters, myself included, could hear the report.

  “I’m standing here on the eastern bank of the Rediviva not far from the Syringan camp. As you can see, temporary fortifications have been erected on this side of the Grovedare Span. This has essentially blocked all traffic along the Big Ninety. I repeat: all traffic along the Big Ninety is currently blocked.”

  The crowd groaned. I sighed.

  The span is the major crossing on the Big Ninety—the principal route between Syringa and Lovat. It stretches across the Rediviva, the massive river that cuts the territory in half and separates the Territories into two distinct and very different nations. Lovat, the towering city, nestled in an archipelago of emerald hills along the rain-soaked coast; Syringa on the edge of the high plains, brown, bone dry, and choking from dust.

  “Moments ago, I spoke with General Flora Bobal, the Syringan general in charge of operations,” the reporter continued. “She stated that Lovat’s mayor demands a formal apology from the Syringan Council for the military offensive. The general said the Syringan council have no plans to back down from a rightful defense of their lands within the territory, and Lovat needs to recognize the rights of other sovereign nations.”

  As she spoke those last words, a pair of gun placements along the shore behind her lit up, causing her to wince and move for cover. Across the river, Lovat responded in kind.

  “By the Firsts!” someone said. Someone threw a crumpled napkin at the screen.

  I couldn’t agree more.

  In the time it had taken me to hobble from Lovat to where I currently sat, the Syringan Council had decided, seemingly at random, that Lovat posed a threat and had marched the city’s militia towards the Grovedare Span. Naturally, Lovat, seeing the Syringa militia marching towards them, sent their own constabulary out, putting the territory’s two great powers into a deadlock.

  There they stood, staring at one another over a rickety old bridge above the widest river in the Territories, blocking the way of every roader and caravan in the territory.

  Carter’s cross, I hate politics.

  The standoff was now in its second week. Neither side was interested in capitulating. It left a whole bunch of roaders like myself and my company off the Big Ninety, staring at monochrome news reports in dingy taverns in the world’s most boring city.

  No, the road doesn’t make a man an alcoholic. It’s the waiting that does.

  The bartender turned down the volume as the news anchor—safe somewhere in his Syringan studio—repeated what the reporter had said. Eventually the news update ended and an amateur jai alai game resumed. The crowd in the tavern turned back to their drinks.

  “Great. Just great.”

  I looked across the table to Wensem dal Ibble, my partner in the company that bears my name—Bell Caravans.

  Wensem is maero, a seven-fingered, exceedingly tall, lanky, and pale race that are tougher than a box of nails and harder to kill than roaches. He’s good people, my best friend, and we’ve been running Bell Caravans for about seven years now. He even named his kid after me.

  The light from the monochrome reflected in his small blue-gray eyes as he watched the delivery of the bad news. No change. The opposing forces were digging in like weevils. Peace talks had broken down. A cease-fire wouldn’t be declared anytime soon. I didn’t like what that meant. It could make this military action last several more weeks, maybe months.

  My employer would not be pleased.

  Wensem looked at me with a frustrated expression. He had a year-old son at home, and he was itching to get back to him.

  “Think it could be months?” He rubbed his thin face with a pale seven-fingered hand and sighed heavily. Somewhere in the tavern, the piano player also gave up. Discussing Hannah’s promotion would have to wait.

  I nodded. “Looks like.”

  “Kit ain’t going to like months.”

  “No one will,” I said. Kitasha wen Gresna, or Kit as she was fondly called, was Wensem’s wife and mother of their son, little Waldo dal Wensem. Unfortunate name, really, but Wensem had insisted.

  He frowned. “What do we do?”

  I shrugged. “Not much we can do until Hannah comes back with the report. But whatever she finds, I bet our options are limited. Shaler keeps threatening to take us before the city’s caravan authority for breach of contract.”

  “They’d have to understand.”

  “If we were home, maybe. Here in Syringa, though?”

  Wensem swore. The Caravan Authority was the legal system set up to protect caravan companies and the merchants who worked with them. Here in Syringa, the Authority took a percentage of any fines they enforced on behalf of a wounded party. They also didn’t like Lovatines.

  “If the southern route is blocked—” I began.

  “Then we pay out the ass,” Wensem broke in.

  I breathed out a lungful of dusty air.

  “It’s a full refund plus fifty percent, Wal. We can’t afford that. Not right now, at any rate. Even if we sold the wain.”

  “I know,” I said. “Believe me, I know.”

  “You know what Taft will suggest,” Wensem said.

  I raised my hand, cutting him off.

  “Fine. Fine. Just saying.” He held up his hand innocently, “Just a suggestion.”

  “And a terrible one at that.”

  “So that leaves…”

  “Bridgetown?” asked a familiar voice. We looked up to the two figures approaching. They couldn’t be any more different. Taft, our human chuck, and beside her, the graceful dimanian priestess Samantha Dubois. I watched Samantha slip into the empty seat beside me as Taft leaned on the table.

  I smiled at them. “Ladies. Hannah back?”

  “She is,” Taft began. “And it ain’t good news.”

  I braced myself.

  “The route is open to Bridgetown, but there’s trouble north of there.”

  “Carter’s cross,” Wensem sighed. “What now?”

  “Seems ol’ Conrad O’Conner and his Purity movement goons took advantage of the weakened police force in Lovat and moved on Destiny in the lull. They have the whole route from the south blocked off, won’t let anyone into or out of Lovat from Bridgetown. It’s a bit of a powder keg.

  “Rumors are flying left and right. There’s stories going around that they murdered a family of cephels who tried to slip past. Supposedly they’re hanging above the trail like trophies, as a warning.”

  “By the Firsts…” I swore, and caught Samantha crossing herself. My stomach sank. A family? Recent memories threatened to overwhelm me, but I beat them back.

  “What do they hope to accomplish?” I asked.

  Samantha shrugged, “Hannah doesn’t know. No one seems to. They aren’t asking for anything.”

  “Why Lovat tolerates this insanity, I have no idea,” began Wensem. “I vote. We all vote. Maero, dimanian, cephels, hell even umbra an
d kresh. It’s one thing to allow free speech, but to let them operate out in the open, murder innocent people, and string them up as a message to us non-humans?” He shook his head. “The mayor’s gone soft.”

  Taft smirked bitterly, her thin lips parting her wide, fleshy face and making her cheeks round as apples. She was Syringan. Her smile showed rows of tobacco-stained teeth. “Lovat’s a big place, and Central doesn’t have the officers to patrol the city properly. Them Purity types are bound to slip past. They look like anyone else. O’Conner’s brilliant strategy. You can’t just start stringing up every human because everyone fits the profile”

  “The Reunified Church tried that with the Hasturians two centuries ago. You know where that got us,” Samantha added.

  “Right,” said Taft. “Let's not talk about the war again.”

  “So what do we do now?” Samantha sighed. “It doesn’t look like the Big Ninety will be open for some time, and if the south is blocked…”

  I smiled weakly, and Samantha made one of those annoyed faces that carries hints of playfulness. Dimanians look mostly human, but with ossified spurs growing from various parts of their bodies—usually where bone is close to the skin. Samantha has two small nubs sprouting from her chin, and small horns at both temples that amplify her cheekbones and delicate features.

  “Most routes lead to Grovedare,” I said. “Unfortunately, the river’s too fast for serious ferrying. The only other major crossing was a few days north at Applehome.”

  “Was? What happened at Applehome?” Samantha asked.

  She had taken to the roader life. We joked that if the whole professor thing fell through, she’d make a fine road priestess. She’s sharp as a tack and more than a priestess, really. She is one of the leading authorities on ancient religions and cults within the Reunified Church. I had never been a religious sort, but Samantha’s earnestness had piqued my interest. When she found out Wensem and I were guiding a herd of travelers back east, she asked to come along. She had an appointment with a bishop in Syringa, and she accompanied a group of clergy on their way to deliver supplies to a monastery near the city.