Chapter One: A Heroine
She could feel it moving closer. It made no sound, not even through the dense sagebrush or across the packed sand. This didn’t surprise her, not a bit. The cougar was a hunter, just as she was. She wasn’t just a hunter of beasts, however, she hunted men, and sometimes the shadows of men.
Sera knew the cat could feel her watching just as she could feel it, muscle fibers twitching nervously beneath its thick fur and skin, sensing that something else was stalking it just as surely as it stalked its own prey. The mountain-cat’s eyes were desperate, eyes that seemed to glow with a vengeance and fury all its own.
She had chosen this place for its solitude as well as its silence, and the silence which surrounded her was welcome, for if no questions were asked, no answers were required. This was, for all intents and purposes, a hunt of purpose, of a vengeance for her and her people, and more importantly, for her and their survival. The cougar had gone mad, joy-killing much of the already slim flocks of sheep and cattle. It had left pieces of its madness in its wake; dead and dying animals bleating and sounding their misery and pain. It was a tidal wave of strength and insanity, crushing each living thing, feeding off the death throws of those animals unlucky enough to be caught in its path. The mountain-cat ate little of its spoils, leaving the meat to run sour, blood caking beneath the sliver of the waning moon.
She could see it now, crawling, belly to the earth, stalking its prey–a calf that had strayed too far from the protection of its herd. It was big, the mountain-cat, bigger perhaps than any she had ever seen, and she could kill it in an instant. The iron sights of her rifle perched upon its eye, moving slowly as it lead the creeping cat along.
The rifle wasn’t exactly old. It more than qualified as ancient. Cast deep in the heavy steel barrel were its maker’s marks, marks not only of a long dead gunsmith, but of a long dead civilization, decaying now, buried in the earth. Its remnants had been fragmented and torn both by the passage of time, and great wars that had sprawled over the land. The rifle itself was a small caliber, but well used by hunters like her and men-at arms. Handed down from generation to generation, it had passed through the hands of many hunters, but had passed over the hands of her father to hers. Her grandfather had given it to her upon a birthday some years before.
Her father had refused the gun, putting his faith instead into the compassion of the invaders, refused to take it up and fight and protect the very town he’d been born into. Brigham City. The town was once called that, long before the wars and constant battle that had since taken and infested the land. Now it was almost affectionately and some would say appropriately known as “The Brig.” A fortress built around a collection of empty schools and fallout shelters, and nestled against the mountain, the city has once thrived in the desert, water flowing freely from the mountain springs, giving life to both crops and harvesters in equal shares.
Destrachan.
The unspoken word on the tip of every man, woman, and child’s mind now.
The plague of all mankind.
These were the shadows of men, hunted desperately by each living hunter, given no quarter, no inch of freedom. They feasted on the dead and preyed on the living, not even half the men they once had been. This was the enemy now, not a foreign nation of unparalleled power, but the citizens of the very nation, state, and locale of their origin. Disease had turned them into such foul creatures. This was her purpose, and she did it well, without haste or hesitation. She was one with her weapons.
The scope had long ago been removed, its glass shattered in a vicious sandstorm while still in the hands of her great-grandfather. Now she held it, and tightly gripping the pistol grip stock. The blood of her ancestors flowed through her veins, the same blood of her father, grandfather, and many other hunters she knew of, but contained within more she did not. Confused voices calling her, memories that were not hers running through her conscious and subconscious. It was her grandfather she listened to now, his ways were hers, the ways of death and blood. And the hunt.
See the eye, she thought, though the thought itself was not hers, let the gun see what you see. Be one with the gun, let it be an extension of yourself. Respect the gun, and fear it. Treat it as you would the well-oiled and clean machine that it is and should be. Respect it. Fear it.
Would the gun jam? Could it? Not in her lifetime, as far as she saw it, the bullets on the other hand . . . her mind mulled over the possibility of a dud, a misfire, but thought better of it. She had been loading her own bullets since she’d left behind her diapers, and never before had she made a dud.
The powder, however, was not the same powder she’d loaded with in the past, of that particular powder there had been none in the Brig for more than a year. Before the sickness of shades, before the tide of destrachan, the explosive gun powder had been plentiful, and easily found, but now, in a small outpost far from any other, it was not so easy to come by. None, not even Henry, the Brig's one and only alchemist, could reproduce the work of master chemists of the last age. These bullets, reloaded in the same way as millions had in the past, had been loaded with another bluish powder, an explosive substance that had been recovered only recently, on a mission she herself had accompanied. That mission had nearly been the death of her and her comrades, had been the death of one of her own, a hunter, Mick. Perhaps others had more gunpowder, but the nearest settlement was miles to the south, and no one had heard from Hill in months.
At the thought of Mick, her heart began to swell with sickness and sadness, another hunter fallen to the foes they had sworn to fight. Their numbers were fewer now, much fewer than when she had first taken the oath at the young age of thirteen. So young, the first female hunter in decades, maybe the first in a century, or ever, as the order hadn't existed prior to the appearance of the destrachan. So young, and yet she was good, almost as if she were made for the job. And she didn't mind, not a bit, for there was joy in the battles she had fought in, and more than once had been told by Mick that she was turning the skirmishes to their favor, Mayhap even the war, his voice echoed from that day in the recesses of her mind. He had been dying from the wound on his neck. It wasn't much, but it was what it was, and though he wouldn't bleed to death, the disease, the sickness of shades was flowing throughout his body, infecting his blood and contaminating his organs and thoughts. Already he had been changing, becoming one of them, one of the damned before the hour was up. The bluish powder was not a substitution for gunpowder, though explosive. She should have thought of this sooner.
“Fuck.” She muttered the word under her breath, angry at herself. Laying the rifle carefully and quietly on its side, Sera quickly unsheathed the knife on her belt. The “knife” might have passed for a short sword, blade almost sixteen inches in length and honed to a razor’s edge; it’s handle was almost that long itself, measuring in at twelve–giving the knife the look of a spear. Leather strips were wrapped tightly around the steel haft, covering the metal beneath and giving grip to even the sweatiest hands. It really did look like a spear, so much so that she herself had called it such from time to time. Her spear-knife.
The beast was large, much bigger than she’d originally though, larger by far than she was. The cougar dwarfed even the calf–which was nearly full-grown–as it leaped gracefully and without a sound into the air, pouncing when the bovine could see it coming. Even if the calf had seen the mad cat flying through the air, claws extended with lethal intent, it would still have frozen in fear at the sight of it. The calf collapsed beneath the cougar’s weight, it’s throat disappearing in a spray of blood as the cougar bit down.
Something didn’t quite add up. Something was wrong with the cat, she could sense it now, and tiny details crowded back into conscious thought. It hadn’t eaten any of its kills, preferring instead to rip them to shreds, leaving the victims dead or dying, blood pouring from the tears and gashes in their hides. It wasn’t hungry, it was . . .
The answer is there, you can see it lying beneath the surface. You know it can’t be as simple as . . .
Mad, driven insane by some brain parasite.
And it isn’t mad of years, though it has many. See the sheen of its coat!
The mountain-cat’s fur glistened in the moonlight, shining in all the right places, almost radiant. Her desperation grew with every second she deliberated, holding her own counsel. It didn’t appear to be sick or dying, in fact, it looked perhaps the healthiest it had ever been. The cougar was strong
Eyes and teeth and . . . shadow
and fast and quiet, but still, the sense of wrong and dread filled her, pervaded her senses and thoughts, silencing her inner dispute. The wind blew softly across the valley, letting the grass rustle and it brought with it the scent of rent flesh and cat to her.
Single words, no ideas, glimpses of possibilities . . . darkness flooding her brain and filling it with teeth and blood. The thrumming of a sickened heartbeat, the humming of insanity . . . Destrachan . . .
Her mind reeled sickly and raced furiously at this realization, then shut it down, closing the thought off from the rest of her–detaching from her thinking part, becoming more primal, more animal than human. Sera crouched low to the ground, supporting herself with one hand, spear-knife in the other. Her eyes closed briefly, muscles twitching impatiently, becoming, changing. Transformed almost instantly into one hundred fifteen pounds of pure havoc. Her eyelids fluttered back open, green irises brightly reflecting the faint light from the stars and moon.
The wind blew through her dark hair which might have streamed behind her, an ebony wave, had she left it long, but she hadn’t. Her moccasins rolled softly in the tall grass as she sped across the distance between herself and her prey. Raging with the fury of the ages, a Valkyrie sweeping the souls of heroes back to Valhalla, her anger swelled within her and her vision went blood red. She could taste the blood in her mouth, a coppery heavy feel, and intoxicating, like strong wine. It ran like a torrent all around her, running through her, yet through it's haze she could see the beast before her, could feel the thrum of its glimmer, strong as any she'd ever felt, pulling her towards it, and it was aware of her. The cougar turned to face her, snarling in rage at being surprised in this place, its place.
The same fear she felt for the gun rushed across her, but she paid it no heed. The cougar must die that the Brig and its people might live. Running, closing distance fast before the glimmer caught her. The shimmering fur of the beast was an aura, a shadow of the beast’s spirit reflected back out as darkness–a cloak of anger, vicious and pure undying hatred for all things living, spreading its deadly touch to each and every single life that did not grasp hard enough, cling closely enough to its own. Blades of grass shriveled and yucca withered at the touch of the monstrous presence that now seemed to emanate from the beast itself. Glimmer.
And it hums, Sera thought, God damn it, why does it have to hum!
The “hum” was more like the roar of thousands of bees hovering around a person’s head, and gave the feeling that those bees might strike at any moment, bombarding the mind with a feeling of helplessness and despair.
The wind blew and the grass rustled; the glimmer all but disappeared. Still faint, nearly invisible.
Sera’s nostrils flared in excitement at the static energy growing and crackling all around her. The clear night sky clouded over, hiding the diamonds of the sky in a sea of dust and false moisture. While the ground wasn’t exactly parched, it wasn’t wet with morning dew either, every drop of water was absorbed quickly in the desert, required to fill the vast underground rivers that flowed in the sand and rocks below the surface. A dry lightning storm, common in this part of the world, had proclaimed itself with a crack of thunder. Overhead, the storm quickly gathered up energy and neared its culmination, readying a hurricane of lighting, thunder and gale-force winds.
The wind blew and turned, changing the direction of the waving dry grass. Rational thought, what had been left as her survival instincts took over her bodily functions, lost its place in her mind. Fury let loose in her mind, and the blood was back, soaking her to the bone with it's sweet seduction. The cougar would die, that the Brig might flourish.
The cat was already in the air, teeth bared in a scream, no time left for dodging. The beast was made for this, finishing a fight before it could begin, and so was she. Her instincts hurled her body up into the air to meet it. In the moments before they could connect, something tickled at the back of her mind, like a realization waiting to be born, a sound, perhaps, a far off sound associated with a large barred gate, rending and tearing itself free of concrete. The tickle lasted only a moment, but it was a moment she didn't have, she screamed her own battle cry, a wild sound that would have been at home in the throat of another cougar, and her vision ran red and grey, dripping with the blood she felt hot and heavy in her veins.
The two hunters collided in mid-air; huge paws clawing and tearing at her back. She held tight to the tender flesh beneath the cougar’s lower jaw, keeping the massive teeth as far from her as she could. Twisting and coiling, the cougar raked her legs with its rear legs, ripping her thighs into vertical strips of hanging muscle, trying desperately to free its head. Sera wrapped her bloodied legs around the cat’s mid-section in between a set of rapid strikes, using her reflexes to save some of her blood from being spilled. In response, the mountain-cat’s right fore paw dug its claws deeper into her back, ripping leather from her body. Her wounds coursed in vicious trenches, muscle torn free of skin lay hanging like jewelry from her shoulder blades.
Time in battle is slow time. Every detail, no matter how insignificant finds place in a memory, letting everything settle, allowing a hunter, a fighter, a warrior to do the thing done best. Bloodletting was no easy work, and the cat was a great adversary, size and strength its advantages. The cougar, for all its groping and turning, for all its struggles to the contrary, became the first to fall, finding itself beneath the girl.
A cat can’t always land on its feet.
They landed with a cracking of bones loud enough to make Sera shudder, or she would have shuddered, had she been herself and not as much animal as the beast beneath her. The crack reverberated through her body, joining the throbbing pains of her other wounds in a cacophony of resounding misery.
To say the cougar was merely angry at this new pain would be an understatement. The cougar was furious, was blinded by white hot rage as it began to recover its feet. Not only had the girl interrupted it while it fed, now its rear was broken, and perhaps would never heal. Its legs splayed out uselessly to either side, but the forelegs were working just fine.
Her pain wasn’t exactly red, but yellow and gold shining beneath the moon. Pain was at the tips of the mountain-cat’s claws, pointed and poisoned, the glimmer reaching out and touching everything she might have held. She wasn’t ready for the pain this time, several of her ribs had cracked in the landing, and she was bleeding profusely. The battle must end quickly if she was going to survive.
A voice from the back of her head, beneath her feral instincts: A battle will last as long as it must.
The cougar’s fore paw tore across her left breast, ripping the last of the leather holding her shirt together. Then the other paw cut into her right cheek, even as it moved aside, trying to get away from her. She could feel the blood oozing? Rushing down her face. On the ground again, her spear-knife was now within her reach. Had she dropped it in the fall or the landing?
Doesn’t matter.
She grabbed onto the blade's long handle, pulling herself to her feet, using as much of her strength as necessary to do it quickly. Dizziness flowed in waves across her mind, but she shook it off. Survival was all that was important now. Much more important than dealing with either pain or nausea, those would come later. Now, now she had to slay the beast. It scrambled to its belly, rear legs flopping about, forelegs pulling it nearer the lifeblood, precious lifeblood. The same blood that flowed, poured out and down like a torrent, absorbed back into the dust, staining the earth below a darkened crimson. Sera was wounded, perhaps dying, perhaps not, she didn’t care any more, her carnal side sought its revenge. She had the knife, and it might be enough to grant her victory over the cat. Visions of dragging the huge thing back to the Brig triumphant.
The cougar snarled as she approached, lashing out with its deadly claws. The glimmer had receded, strength waning, but the cat’s own strength was formidable and its insane eyes seemed to roar the pain both she and the beast felt. A huge paw swatted at her leg, but she easily dodged the blow, skipping backwards with grace. She was on the cat’s back now, gripping the fur at the nape of its neck, holding tight as the cougar bucked wildly.
She plunged the spear-knife into the thick cord of knotted nerves at the base of the cougar’s skull and the cat screamed. Its deathscream. All its bodily functions were lost, severed at that instant with the blade’s strike. The beast continued to scream, its body falling to the earth, limp and lifeless. And the mountain-cat’s cry, its deathscream whined down. Closing time for all one-stop shoppers. Landing gear has failed. It was over.
The blood of the cat ran freely even as it died, neurons in its brain quit their firing all together. Cabin pressure lost and not regained. It was over.
Wrenching the knife free, she wiped it on her tattered and now bloodied leather tunic, flesh and leather hanging in bloody strips, dripping onto the ground. Her pants were shredded from the thigh down, shirt worthless with tears and holes. A total loss. Her body was a landscape of canyons carved by rivers of surging blood.
The dizziness swept over her again. The bleeding would not stop until it was bound, and she needed to finish that before she could rest or faint from blood loss. Rending pieces of her leather pants to wide strips, Sera tied them snugly around her chest and legs.
The wind blew softly, rustling the dry grass and sagebrush into a frenzy of activity. Beneath the waning moon, the storm roiled impatiently, then struck. Bolts of lightning shot down from the sky like bullets from an automatic weapon, light brush fires that could burn the whole valley if left unchecked. And as quickly as it had grown, the storm broke, stars once again visible in the sky, lazy clouds drifting in the wind.
Sera gained her feet once more, then collapsed from duress and lost blood–not ten feet from the gun and satchel she’d left in the brush. Sleep came quickly, and the dreams came in broken, fevered flashes of light and dark.
Copyright 2006