Chapter Nine: Bonds of Prophecy
It was only a short jaunt to Sallak, the New Zion, and once it had been called Salt Lake City. Sera and Gabriel had left Hill behind as the next storm head broke, showers of pointed, stinging rain had followed them, even on horseback throughout the trek southward. They had made camp this close to the actual city—amid the ruin of the old—to keep watch for the horde which must be nearby and to avoid as much as possible, the treachery Seth had sown here.
The City itself was thus named for the lake of tears which lay very close to the west, and the ruins in which they camped spread for miles in every direction. Perhaps at one time, each separate burg had been given other names, but they all lay silent beneath the desert sands.
Rooftops of covered houses had long since caved in, falling to disrepair and the harsh elements of the great desert, once made to bloom by the pioneers of older times. Those were simpler times, perhaps, far simpler by some standards surely, with the land newly discovered and untainted by the industrialization modern man had spread. But things come and go in that way; simple, ordered systems growing and gaining in complexity with each generation that passes until catastrophe struck, leaving those who remained the legacy of past knowledge, and the vacancy its passing left behind.
A philosopher or anthropologist might ponder on such things, and gain a much greater insight into the civilization that could leave such monuments behind—monuments of steel and form and grace, but Sera did not dwell on such things, it was not in her nature. She was a child of those simpler times, and plagued as they were by the destrachan, the needs of survival urgent as they were, such things had never crossed her mind. For her, even the future as far as one day was uncertain, and the events which might take place between the now and then were beyond the scope of one who wished to survive that dangerous twenty-four hours.
Yes, for her, only the present mattered, and that present, the now, was a sea of sand interrupted by jutting peaks of rusting girders, cement and shattered glass. Wooden window frames cracked and swollen from rain and sun, cheapened relics of a day since gone. Occasionally the remnants of office buildings dotted the landscape, but even these had succumbed to the desert, steel beams riveted together, but barely able to hold their own weight against the decaying oxidation.
Nature's constant barrage of sand and wind, sun and water were tearing down the last structures of mankind's most advanced age, and it did so without prejudice and without hate, but with the steadiness of the world. Time was on its side.
Gabriel had set a small fire in the corner of an abandoned single story home, breaking support beams that had rotted and dried into bits for fuel. It was surrounded on all sides by walls, shielding it from any direct line of sight, and around this, they crowded for warmth against the stinging rain. Between the two of them, neither had a dry piece of clothing, and the temperature continued to drop steadily as night fell, turning the gray sky to black as the sun set, then disappeared entirely behind the mountains to the west.
Spirits were as low and soggy as the threads on their backs, but that didn't stop Gabriel from cleaning his small handgun with great care. In and out the wad of paper ran, over and through each crevice and hole, gun oil pulling tiny shavings of metal from the gun and depositing every tiny scrap into the paper. Sera would have joined him, but she hadn't even used her gun since before the cougar had attacked.
The cougar.
Images flashed dangerously in her mind as she recalled the fantastic battle. Snarling and baring its teeth, poisonous claws tearing at her, nearly bringing her to her knees. Just remembering the beast at all made her shiver with dread.
“It was destrachan, and I didn't know,” she murmured, visibly trying to shake the haunting memory from her conscious thoughts.
“There were hundreds of them, more than any other person could have taken out alone,” Gabriel interjected.
“No, just the one, the mountain cat. It was one of them.”
“What mountain cat?” he questioned. He didn't know. Of course he didn't know. That was before she'd met him, and even their meeting was lost somewhere in that fevered haze which had ended just a day before. Christ! That meant it had only been five days since it had started. It was short; it felt like ages since she'd been back in the Brig.
The Brig. Dead faces of the people she knew. Henry, Mick, oh Mick, the Hunter who had taken her oath, accepted her as one of those few who fought for the people who could only defend. They who took the fight to the destrachan, so that those who defended could have a chance. Mick, who should have survived the unfortunate discovery of the blue powder in those damned cans. Cans. Gabriel had mentioned something about cans. Green and gray cans. Son of a bitch! She screamed silently, Those bastards knew about the blue powder! The discovery that might have changed the tide of the battle against the destrachan had been used against the people who had learned of its properties. Those people, her people, bloated and burned and bloodied, flies buzzing and flitting about the corpses of her friends, neighbors, and family, around the corpse of the town itself.
Jack was the key to it. He'd started it all, set the ball in motion, let it crush her loved ones as he stood back and laughed. Jack. Jack would pay for it, pay for everything he'd done. Not just for her, or even for her town, thought that was part of it. So much blood was on his hands, and she'd make sure he paid for his crimes.
“What mountain cat?” Gabriel queried again.
“The cougar who gave me this,” she motioned to her face, where the flesh around the three deep scars was just beginning to heal. “Jack set it on its path, letting it cut a swathe of destruction through the Brig so wide that they'd beg me to take care of it. It killed our herds, our meat. We'd starve in the next winter if I didn't stop it. Not that it matters now, they're all dead. Every one. What did they do to deserve it? What did I do?” Sera let the tears come, not caring if he saw.
“It's not your fault. You can't blame yourself for anything that happened.” He moved closer to her, putting an arm around her shoulder.
“I was born. That's why. He thinks I'm part of something I'm not. He thinks I want to kill him. He's the reason I was the only hunter left. If there had been even one more, Mick wouldn't have died when we found that damned blue powder. One more could have been the difference that allowed Mick to live. Jack is right though. I do mean to kill him now. He can count on that.”
“You are part of something, Sera. At Hill, time stopped for you; you moved so fast that nothing could touch you. An entire army of shades, an army of the destrachan was routed because you were there. If he thinks you're part of something, then I have to agree. Nobody can do what you did. No one could have.”
“Then I should have been able to stop what happened at the Brig. I should have known, I could have helped. I could have stopped it from happening.”
“There's nothing you could have done. You had to be some place else. If you had died there, you wouldn't be here now, and maybe Fate couldn't let even the slightest chance of that come about. You're needed.”
She arched an eyebrow at the mention of fate, “Seth mentioned something about a cycle, a path tread only by two beings, and Jack said the same. He also said that the reason for it had something to do with the indecisive nature of men. That fighting was the only way we knew of to solve our problems.”
“I'm not sure I can follow you there. I don't know much about Seth, or even Jack for that matter, and I certainly don't know anything at all about any cycle.”
“Fighting to ultimately decide the next direction our social evolution will take. Mankind's fate. Our destiny.”
“Ka.”
“What's that?”
“It means that you should only seek to control the things you can change, and leave the rest to Ka.”
“But
how do I know which is which?”
Gabriel shrugged, “I
don't know. I've never worried about it. Let come what must come,
and leave the rest alone. You may be a part of this whole mess
because you really are who Jack says you are. Make sure, though,
that if everything has been planned up until now, that you don't fall
into any traps or ambushes he might have set for us along the way.”
“He means to kill me, Gabriel.”
“I won't let that happen.” He shook his head, “No, I can't let that happen. You are important to everything in existence, important to me. My life, the lives of every one in this town, and Hill, and every other outpost that still stands against the destrachan horde, though they may be turned against you, are still human, and no matter what plotting Jack may have done—and if what has happened recently is any indication, those plots will only increase in magnitude—they are still human, and just caught up in his politic and lies.”
Sera nodded solemnly as he finished, content to sit in his company by the tiny fire. She let all else unsaid remain hidden deep in her reserve. The hum began anew, surrounding them on all sides with a combination of insanity and a black hole of hopelessness. She recognized the feeling instantly, and the sound, as well. Yet something more was hidden underneath it, hiding in the hums amplitude, invisible in its interference. The wave continued to gain volume, shaking her to the core with its call to violence.
Glimpses, shadows of the past flashed in her brain, images of something she had killed days ago. She could see it as she whirled about, however, it was caught in her peripheral vision, passing just out of sight as she turned to confront it. Golden fur whipped throughout her mind and vision, even as the hum and that other familiar noise increased. Static. Harsh snarling filled the air, echoing through the sea of sand and twisted steel, glass and wood. White noise. Snowy fuzz filling and empty television screen. Golden fur snapping the air with whip like precision, teeth baring and growling and clamping down.
Was she asleep? Had she slept? No, the snarling continued, even as Sera loaded her magazines with the new rounds afforded her by Hill. Two hundred rounds. Would they be enough? How many would be enough to stop an army? She hoped against all probability that two hundred would be.
“Put out the fire, we have to go,” her command grated sharply against the short silence. He, too, had heard the cougar snarling nearby, and working quickly with handfuls of sand, the fire was smothered. Sera's satchel was already packed and slung across both shoulders; her rifle was at the ready, snugged to her armpit and ready to fire.
The horses fled quickly from the shelter as she untied them, fleeing as fast as their hooves could carry them into the rain-soaked night. The glimmer. She could feel it now, even before seeing it, had heard it even before then. Yet, even as ecstatic as it had been at Hill, the black and deadly aura was again ten-fold as strong. Something else was here, too. Something powerful.
That strange sound was just the beginning. Static electricity crackled about, enlivening, invigorating, giving the harsh scent of ozone even as the gold flashed behind corners and walls. What manner of creature was out there? What was waiting with the patience of the damned among the destrachan? Perhaps 'what' wasn't correct, but 'who'? The feeling was familiar and complex, it seemed as if web upon web of intricate lace had been laid upon it, though, obscuring the identity at the center of the disruption. The wave itself seemed to flow outward from a focal point not far from their campsite.
Perhaps I could follow it back, she though, perhaps it would lead me where I want to go.
She motioned with her free hand for Gabriel to follow. He did so quietly, slipping the last piece of his gun into place with its tiny pins and grooves, and finally clicking a clip full of rounds into the gun.
Sera slid silently around corners, across sand and concrete alike, through demolished buildings and passing them by. The rain itself had not stopped, dropping its pitter-patter of tears upon everything underneath the sky, echoing into every crevice and crack. The glimmer was aroused. It amplified everything negative in the spectrum of human emotion, the despair and depression of the onslaught of precipitation cast itself deep into Gabriel's heart, yet he trod on, through the puddles of standing water that rippled with each and every drop of rain. The puddles themselves looks as a sea tossed by wind and wave, a tiny hurricane for each.
Christ! He thought, What the fuck am I doing? Traipsing about the land in weather such as this with deadly fucking creatures about!
He knew the answer, though, even before he'd asked it. Knew exactly what reason he had to follow this girl to the ends of the earth, follow her on whatever course she stayed, be it through Hell or Heaven, or across the Plains of Desolation where their hosts met in battle. It wasn't just his feelings for her, though that alone would have been enough. Oh if only it was his feelings that made him follow! He loved her, but this was so much more than love. Why was this girl attracting so much more attention of all the foul demons of the night? Such a host of shades as she had drawn hadn't been seen since the days of old, and had been the very cause for civilization's fall from grace!
It was as if Time was loose, streaming into whatever future lay ahead and dragging him along even as he stopped for a moment to contemplate it. What was happening him? To the world? What fate was in store for him and the girl he loved?
The depth of his despair could not hold for long, however powerful the thing that lay in wait may be. Or its glimmer. For even as he plumbed the deepening hopeless well of his spirit he caught sight of her: Sera, in her element, hunting and following her spectre's trail with ease, guided by whatever phantoms had taken hold of her senses.
Gabriel couldn't help but feel weighted by a thousand generations of human beings. Maybe a thousand thousands, with all their hopes, fears and dreams, praying to whatever god they might place their faith in that the burden of humanity would not be too much to bear, that things would be allowed to continue along the path of progress. Those same prayers he himself had uttered in the dark of night, feeling the shadows strengthen as they sapped his strength. Dejection. A sense of faith lost when his pleas had gone unanswered. Yet even with the numbers the destrachan held, his faith had been restored in a strange renewal in the last few days as this girl, Sera, became the champion of change, wielding power the likes of which he hadn't seen before, though it wasn't just that either. Tales spun about through his thoughts, enriched by centuries of misuse though they were, but those stories told of strange, godlike power, wielded by men. He had always considered them myth, told ages before in a much different manner, with bits and pieces added later for a more fantastic finish, but seeing her had flooded doubt of that idea. Call it a hunch, call it whatever, he couldn't help but feel as if it had all happened before, in times without end, but maybe he was just being hopeful.
The glimmer.
Its hum echoed in his brain, breaking apart his train of thought as the first of what could only be many once-men appeared in front of them. His hesitation to fire stemmed from the way his thoughts flowed downhill, but that lasted less than a second before he pulled the trigger.
Cataracts was quickly degenerating the remaining eye of the carcass to a blind, useless gel, whitish film creeping upward and over the iris and pupil. The destrachan corpse was dead and still standing; brain matter—gray of flesh and red of blood—had sprayed across the remains of a brick wall, covering an extremely faded sign which once had read 'No Loitering.' The creature's tongue, swollen and discolored from whatever manner of parasites had infest the walking corpse lolled out the side of its mouth as it hit the sand.
Sera didn't seem phased at all that she had let that one slip into the danger zone, but inwardly she cursed—vowing to be more cautious. No good would come from her death. “It's moving, heading into the open near the wall.”
What is it?” he asked.
“I recognize it, it smells like the cougar but more sinister, darker. I know what it is, but its blurry—like a voice with no name, or a name without a face.”
“That's as clear as mud. Just forget I asked.”
She nodded, more agreeing with herself than acknowledging his comment. Lost in thought, Sera pulled her rifle up to her shoulder, right hand on the trigger and left supporting the gun, extended. Water droplets ran down the cool metal, dripping to the sopping ground amid the din of similar drops. It was quiet save for the rain. Her left hand balled in a fist, signaling for him to stop.
“What are we . . . ?”
She shot him a glare as sharp as any knife, and his mouth clamped shut of its own accord. Listening, holding her breath, waiting. The blood pounding in her ears wasn't loud enough to cover the faint sound just inside the next doorway. Heavy, labored breathing of a man afflicted. Perhaps he was wounded and dying, perhaps not. It was a chance she wasn't willing to take.
Stepping coolly into what must have been an office hallway at one time, Sera regarded the man as he rested against the far wall. His eyes were bloodshot, and bruised, small capillaries had burst near the outer edge of the iris of his right eye, filling it with blood and swelling the lids as near to shut as they could. Black and purplish flesh surrounded his facial features, swelling around the fractured bones and splitting the skin in several places. It appeared as if chunks of his scalp had been torn away; white bone flecked with grains of sand and wood reflected what little light was afforded in the ruined building. The man's left arm was gone, pulled from the shoulder and torn from the muscles, ligaments and tendons holding it. A sleeve of blood-soaked cloth hung limply, and this might have been his most serious wound if the circumstances were different.
“You've been bitten.” She said matter-of-factly. The forefinger and thumb had been bitten off, the imprint of teeth in his flesh was unmistakable, and the man nodded regretfully. Sinewous meat from his legs had been gouged out, leaving holes the size of golf balls to bleed continuously. Trails of blood splatters, smeared by footprints lead back down the hall to the man's left, indicating clearly from where he had come. Surrounding his neck in a display of near-intelligence, tiny patterns of bite marks missing major arteries and veins; they had wanted him alive when they ate him.
“I'm going to put you out of your misery before you turn. Any last words.” Her voice seemed cold, belying the true merciful nature of her statement. She waited patiently, counting to ten before aiming her rifle at his head, at the soft point between the eyes.
His throat trembled and his mouth moved without sound, gurgling as he caught his voice in a spray of blood and mucus, “Wait!” he sounded afraid, but also willing. “Wait. You don't remember me?”
Startled, she shook her head before catching herself. His face settled into memory, before he had been mutilated into this sad remnant of a man. “Henry! How did you survive what happened at the Brig?”
“I . . . what happened to the Brig?” he sounded as though he hadn't been there.
“You weren't there?”
“Never . . . mind . . . that. I've got to tell you what happened to me.”
“Go on.”
Sweat beaded on his face, and steam was rising from his body. The disease, the sickness of shades was working quickly, turning him. “The powder . . . I found someone who could turn it into . . . a weapon. He . . . lied to me, held me.” His eyes bulged in realization, “The Brig! Oh Merciful God!” He began to sob as it sunk in what had become of his town.
“Shhh. Never mind that. Who did you find? Who did this to you?”
“He never . . . said his name, but he mentioned . . . you. More than was natural. He's . . . waiting for you, Sera.”
She touched Henry's forehead, attempting to comfort the Brig's only other remaining survivor, but one who would soon leave her as its only survivor. “Fucking . . . bandecos. Cocksuckers . . . “ his words cut short as his body shook with rage; racked in pain, he finished, “make them . . . pay.”
How many times had she watched her grandfather do this very thing? How many times had she herself done this? Some had said that her grandfather was mad and unfeeling, that those he had killed before they turned were still the men and women they had always been. And they had been right, but they didn't understand it at all. Her grandfather had wept every night for the dead, for those he had granted death prior to the change. It was his curse to bear, the curse of every hunter, to give them release instead of becoming the monstrous destrachan, creatures who wore the same faces, but who held only hunger and damnation in their hearts. A final gift to all who stood against the horde, to all, regardless of faith or oaths, death was far better than the alternative.
“In life you held it close.
Now in death you hold it closer.
Embrace it like a brother.
Peace be upon your soul.”
A click from the trigger, sending the rifle's firing pin into the primer as it was wedged in the casing, creating that first spark of ignition into the blasting gel, becoming liquid fire, consuming the powder in the case and expanding, ever expanding, filling it to the brim with hot fiery gases and propelling the tiny projectile into motion, and still increasing in size and pushing, urging the copper jacketed lead slug even faster, leaving the barrel, flames expanding reflected from the man's good eye and they looked like the fires of hell. The bullet slammed into the space between the man's eyebrows, not yet reaching its maximum velocity of twenty-two-hundred feet per second, but getting close, and the man's dull, lifeless stare hid the scene that lay behind him. Grayish brain flesh, once an intricate pattern of neural pathways and separate regions which were subcategorized into compartments of mental activity, was strewn about with indifference against the wall, dripping down the broken plaster and beams, dropping to the concrete floor, leaving a trail of steaming blood.
Oh Henry, she thought as a single tear ran down her cheek. The man who had been working on a form of gun powder for decades, who had nearly gotten one that didn't jam after 2 firings before the incident with Mick. That damned blue powder had killed every living man woman and child in the Brig, directly or indirectly, and she damned the ones who had created it. She was alone, except for Gabriel, whom in her mind was now a part of her, connected inexplicably to her by ties as strong as fate, and nothing would keep them apart.
The night was dark as they left Henry's body behind, no moon had risen, leaving the sky a black cloak filled with holes help up against the sun, stars twinkling in seemingly random constellations and systems of other stars and planets. Comparing herself silently to the heavens always made her feel small and insignificant against the balls of fusion and fire that floated up there, somewhere, yet now she felt closer to them, as if it were possible to just reach out and grab them with her hands and show them to all. Beauty and danger go hand in hand as far as mankind is concerned, she though, The wouldn't understand why I did it any more than I could. They fight and bicker between each other like little children, for what reason? Is the competition for mates and food and land that great? Or is it purely over power to hold as a weapon over his fellow men?
Or were they all one and the same? The thought echoed, flowing along her mind with the wave, emanating from it and seeping through her. The wave as changing as its source moved, like a motorboat changing the water's surface with its passing, creating interference, some constructive, and some destructive, but still, the path was fluidic and easy to follow blind. Only . . .
The path she was to tread, her way and Gabriel's, their preordained trail as it crossed the cosmos and space, time and desert was not simple, weaving in and out through desiccated buildings and across sandy, treacherous and shifting terrain. A waiting throng of destrachan and once-men hunting her and the boy she might love, wanting to consume her flesh and render her body lifeless and bloodied. A part of her wanted to give up, to let it go, to drop her weapons and let her fate and mankind's come to her softly, stepping out of the shadows of the night, yet she could not. Even had the rest of her body acquiesced to this tiny urge, her hands would not be able to place her gun, her grandfather's rifle, on the ground, and neither her knife. The strange and ultimately human, compulsion to continue ever onward through whatever obstacles she faced and to whatever destiny the universe might hold for her.
The glimmer.
Most likely it was the glimmer that told her to give in, yet for all the blackening aura's strength, it could not bend the will of fate. So what if the hopelessness she felt cut her to the quick? Suicide is never an option, she thought. Taking in a deep breath, she began to move, at first a brisk jog, then a swift run, and finally a sprint, Gabriel at her side.
What was that noise? Was it auditory or hallucinated? From which direction did it come?
Esseshoos.
It tumbled through the air, catching in her ear canal and reverberating in the drum.
Esseshoos.
Gabriel recognized it immediately. “They're coming, they mean to ambush us, take us by surprise.”
“This isn't an ambush, and it isn't a surprise. They want to taste our fear as they surround us on all sides. We run for our lives.”
They ran, their lifethreads woven into the broken city of the damned among the steel and concrete, the shattered glass and beams, in the night. They ran in and around and over the fields of sand and sagebrush, even as the horde closed in. It was real, and it would see them dead, crushed back into the dust of the earth before their destinies could be actualized.
A lone shade, nearly decrepit from age, leaped from the roof of one of the towering skeletal buildings that surrounded them, landing softly on the ground before them. To its right a signpost jutted, bent, from the sand, paint faded from time and flecked with rust. Once it had read 'No parking in the emergency lane—Violators will be towed.' The destrachan's face had been ripped to pieces, its skin hung in tattered sheets, dripping the creature's bile and purulence onto the ground. It wore no clothing, possibly it had rotted over the centuries, its whitish, stringy hair clumped about its scabrous scalp randomly, tiny crawling insects making a sickening nest in it, drowning as the raindrops hit. Rain ran in tiny rivulets along its tightening muscles, wrapped harshly and disgustingly around its bones in a strange array of near-humanity. Its eyes stared ahead blankly at its prey, but its lips curled upward into a yellowed, toothy grin.
The once-man's tongue still worked, however, it was untainted by time and parasites; its host was falling to pieces, yet it was whole. “Koye gor tru'ump ot koye shiamon, Esseshoos.”
“What the fuck?” Gabriel announced, stopping dead in his tracks.
“Shut up, just listen,” Sera said. A sort of primal knowledge had overcome her, allowing her to recognize the speech. Gan'destra. The holy tongue. Was it some sort of Jack's trickery? Another example of his exasperating meddling, perhaps? How did she understand even a bit of the shade's gibberish? Yet she did understand it, all of it, and it frightened her more than words could express; though she had been running, a cold sweat ran down her back, chilling her more than the falling rain.
I am the mouthpiece of my maker, Jack.
She responded in kind, “Quaro gor nyuch kia?” Why do you serve him?
“Koye livye, Koye ilye, yetye chorye.” My life, my place, your death.
“Koye hevye du clieve ha'eil.” Her words surprised even herself, the words which she didn't know, yet the meanings she did. Arcane knowledge. I seek to break the pattern, your prison.
“Yetye hevye du clieve stiel.” You seek to break the mountain. The destrachan's eyes had whitened, cataracts filling the pupils and covering the irises, yet it stared straight at her, and in the shadowy night they seemed to almost glow, to shine.
“Yetye hevye du gor xorian ot ha'eil. Yetye hova ot ha'eil eie shiamon koya.” You seek to be savior of the pattern. You come of the pattern and our maker. There was something strikingly different about this creature, something that didn't make sense when compared to the other destrachan, with all the others she had ever seen, aside from the strange ability to speak.
The glimmer.
It's eyes weren't the only thing to glow with an inner light. The glimmer of this shade was not shadowy at all, but a grayish white, creating a halo around the vile form of putrescence incarnate. Ironic and perverse.
Esseshoos.
The chant gained intensity, flourishing, propagating with the glimmer, erasing hopes of outrunning them.
“Koya hova.” The destrachan's statement brought her attention back to the destrachan in front of her. Incredulity bloomed on her face as she understood what exactly had happened. The shade bounded upward, returning to its perch high up on the buildings, disappearing into the cement jungle.
“What the fuck?” Gabriel's statement, reiterated once more.
“He said, 'We come.'”
“Now how the fuck do you know that? How the fuck can you understand that . . . that gibberish?”
She looked straight into his eyes, challenging, questioning, a look of near contempt for his audacity. “You think I somehow know exactly what the fuck is going on? You think I have any fucking clue? I'm in the dark here as well. I have no idea how the fuck I know what he was speaking.” Gan'destra. “Only that I do know, and that it means something. Everything's connected, and even the most trivial of things affects the outcome. Now, are you gonna stand there and argue the specifics with me all day? Or are we going to try and get the fuck away from these bastards.”
He only had to turn back once. Along the street behind them, streaming like rousted cockroaches between the rusted and falling or fallen lamp posts, past the crushed and burned-out shells of vehicles that had once moved under their own power, through the broken window panes of shops and restaurants now lay dormant and still, save for the wildlife, and atop every building, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, they came. The destrachan. Holy ones. His mind went blank, careening off into the wasted city before them, horde of shades behind, and an unsettling 'It' that awaited them at the edge of escape. The only thing he could think of his father's voice, the simple sentence that lead him to become a runner, a hunter, a mercenary.
His father had been on his deathbed then, laying in his own stink and waiting to turn, or for the final give the hunters gave. Coughing up a mixture of blood and bile, he had pulled Gabriel close, whispering in harsh tones of his sorrows and his joys, his hopes and dreams, his loves and disdains, yet only a single sentence sprang to his mind as he himself ran for his life among the holdovers of a civilization gone silent and cold.
They bite, and that's when you turn.
He shivered at the thought, and ran that much faster, Sera at his side, sprinting as if the devil's own hand were reaching out of the dark and rain to catch hold of him, yet no matter how fast he ran, faster than he'd ever run, perhaps, a simple realization made him falter, his foot catching in the loose rock, twisting his ankle even as he regained his feet. They would have caught them anyways.
“Sera!” he limped along, loping, moving onward calling her name.
She stopped, sliding in the dirt and sand and gravel, turned to see his pained movement as the destrachan came from behind, ready to swallow him in the depths of their madness. That heartbeat, beating the same rhythm as hers. The glimmer, gaining intensity and momentum, hurling the hope from her blood and dragging her soul to the depths of depravity. Sera thought in that agonizing moment, between the wretched beats that were drummed out in the darkness somewhere nearby, that she might end it, end his torment and drop him in his tracks before they could reach him, and before he could slow her down, yet that was a part of something else, something that she would not free, that second side of humanity, so primal in its greed and its thirst for power and its trappings. Those were the thoughts of warmongers, and she would not give in to them.
The duality that existed within every being caught in the light of her recognition, shining with schizophrenic delight, each side existing without knowledge of the other, visible only when externalized. The inner, secret dual-nature was hidden in between thoughts, a conspiratorial binding of consciousness, the lines between feral and civilized action blurred by its existence. Yin and Yang, separate but connected, the light and the dark, the way of things. Karma, it seemed, was real. Evil begetting evil, and good begetting good, burrowed away in entire generations of good begetting evil and vice versa. All this begetting, and compartmentalized by ideals and religions, seeking out in some way a visible truth to conceal the internal one that was so frightening.
She was an actualization of these desires, the thing sought by priests and shamans alike to finish the cycle of evil begetting evil, and spirit away the veil over the internal battle between light and dark. Yin or Yang? Things aren't always what they seem, no matter how much one might think to the contrary, and which side was she on? The coin was still in motion, spinning in the air, dice were still rolling, tipping end over end and corner over corner, the deck still shuffling, randomly placing a carefully stacked deck.
God does not play dice, the voice laughed in her head, echoing along every peak and valley of the glimmer's hum.
This was all a moment as she hesitated to pull the trigger, a fiercely intense debate rolling through her mind of bitter, stagnant, and morally bereft reality against the sweet tang of human emotion. It was an instant, like many that had occurred throughout the ages, that could decide the outcome of a battle.
Her shots rang out into the air, slightly muffled by the pouring rain, bullets flying straight and true, their casings flying perpendicular along a greater curve and hitting the ground, pinging against the stone and sand. Had she closed her eyes? Had she blinded herself to the ultimate conclusion of her choice? What choice? Fate would deal as it saw fit, and her choice seemed insignificant.
Gabriel quivered on the ground, hands clapped over his ears, watching as blood poured out into the street. Was it his? Sera was moving towards him, had she shot him? Reaching down with her hand now, pulling him to his feet. The corpses of three destrachan lay nearby, she was tugging at his arm now, urging him onward and upward to his destiny at her side as it unraveled before them. He was alive.
His ankle burned as they moved forward and then left into a side street, an alley between two walls of brick. Dead end. They were closing off the alley behind them, leaving the two no choice but to stand and fight, and to hope against all hopes that it would be enough. His ankle screamed with the warble of a sprain, tendon ripped in its place, taut and immovable. She was suddenly firing again, snarl of anger and hatred frozen on her mouth, and she was frightening. He was shooting as well, letting off rounds slightly slower, to allow the shades the time to fall and be replaced at the line as it advanced. He fired to cover as she reloaded, switching one empty clip for a full one, slamming it home and loading the chamber, and off again as he reloaded.
The alley itself was ten feet wide, and perhaps two hundred feet deep, with the wall opposite the opening towering better than twenty feet in the air. The battle was like watching an earthworm crawl, albeit a fast and furious crawl, one segment retreating as the one following it advanced. Though the shades were falling quickly, the number of empty bullet casings now vastly outnumbered the full ones. He was on his last full clip when he felt the hot breath on his neck, and it might have been too late had he been less prepared, less of a runner, and less of a hunter. Yet the runners, too, had taken the hunter's oath, and as surely as he was bound by it, so sure were his reflexes and senses keen. Twisting his upper body to change the fight to his favor, he saw the shades climbing over the wall with a spider's grace and dexterity. His arm reached for the shade's arm as it reached out to him, its neck craning for a taste of the blood, teeth clamping down on nothing but air. His grip was tight, and as he twisted back, he could feel the grimy fingernails dig into his forearm's flesh, attempting to tear a chunk of him with it. With iron determination, he pulled with all his might against the creature's heft, tugging it into the air over his back and smashing it to the ground. Grinding at the soft flesh, the once-man's fingers continued their assault, wrestling with him, attempting to throw him to the ground within biting range. Gabriel brought his pistol to the creature's blighted and festering face, squeezing two rounds off under the tension and physical strain.
In the few seconds he had before being assaulted again, he checked his arm, wrenching it free of the destrachan's grip. The skin had broken in little half circles arrayed in a curved patter, blood trickling from the cuts and down his forearm. Mental count. Two bullets gone from his last clip, how many times had Sera reloaded? He could only remember twice, but then memories in battle seldom hold true, could have been double that. Time to conserve ammo. As if he hadn't been already. Gotta keep them off her back, take down a few more of the bastards. Yet, how many had fallen already? The corpses were piling up, boxing them in, making them even easier prey. Breathe in, breathe out. Battle time is slow time. He sought the emotionless center of his mind. Tactics and strategies, hand to hand combative positions, and take downs and holds flooded his brain, filling him with brutal intent and knowledge. Did they even have a chance?
Doesn't matter.
Coolly, he reached past the nearest once-man's bite, gripping the scabrous neck with his left hand and thrust it against the wall, using its own momentum against it, cracking bones and brick with a single hit. He smashed its face once more into the crumbling brick wall before it slumped to the ground, gurgling. In one fluid motion, Gabriel put his right foot to the same wall, pushing off with great effort, and flipped into the air, twisting his body in a full arc and clamping his hands onto the only destrachan within his reach. In a herculean feat of strength and agility, he spun the creature's head like a top, snapping its neck and landed nimbly on the ground.
It was just in the nick of time that he turned his head to see two shades bound from the roofs above and light upon the ground noiselessly behind her. He fired once, then again, each time hitting his target with uncanny accuracy. Fine red mist sprayed out from their heads in a conical shape, lightly touching the air with a hint of copper. Hollow points, gotta love 'em.
They had to get out of the alley, but how? She could feel the tiny golden threads stretching out from her, touching that vibrant and soothing source, yet as close as it felt, it was also distant, and hidden from her by an unknown person. Golden fur danced in front of her eyes, flashing back from her memory, of the beast with its snarling white teeth and claws of fury. Each flash came with a sickening white hot light, and a piercing high pitched whine, akin somewhat to the glimmer's hum, warbling in its discordance.
What was happening? She could feel one of the golden threads solidifying, taking form beside her, and would had been frightened had it not been connected to her, to her emotions. Sera fed the beast taking shape her anger, her hatred of the deadly destrachan, pouring that red bloodlust into it. It was alive, snarling and snapping the creatures around it into bits, tearing and clawing and leaving them bleeding where they lay. A brilliant white heat emanated from the cougar—perfect in form and color down to the last detail of her memory—distorting vision as she looked just past it. Was it really there? As she questioned herself, the creature disappeared, the golden thread attaching it to her slacking. Then it was back, ripping the destrachan to pieces as she sought and inner peace and calmed her mind, pouring her rage into the thread. She could feel her anger coursing through the cougar, binding it to her and draining all emotion from her. She felt detached, euphoric, disconnected from the pain and agony-filled hopelessness. The cougar was an extension of herself, the white-hot aura surrounding it was the only proof it was there at all, flash boiling the standing water around it and turning it instantly into a thick fog that covered the ground.
Tens of fallen destrachan became hundreds, claws searing the open wounds they created as the cougar rampaged through the ranks upon ranks of once-men. It was over. No retreat this time. The dead lay in heaps where they had fallen, the thick fog quickly dissipating as the cougar, too, thinned from its partial existence before disappearing altogether. They were both breathing heavily, she and Gabriel alike had been nearly exhausted from the battle.
She picked her way through the corpses, avoiding the bodies with ease, setting her path towards the beacon in her head. Gabriel walked carefully behind her, keeping a short distance between them. Was he frightened? Yes, terrified. This girl held power he had only heard of in stories and legends and he had seen first hand the devastation she could wreak upon those unfortunate souls who might step into her path.
“Sera . . .” he called.
“Yes?”
“Where did you learn to fight like that?” he asked.
“You mean the cougar?”
Now he was truly baffled. “What cougar? You mentioned a cougar before, I remember that, but I was talking about just now, like the shades you just demolished. You were a fucking whirlwind with that knife of yours. There was no cougar.” He said stressing the no in his last sentence.
“No cougar . . .” There was no cougar. What had she seen then? She looked back to the spot the cougar had stood last. Scorch marks being washed away by the steady rain, earth charred and burned. A single paw print two hand spans across, set in quickly moistening dried mud. Had it happened? Had she imagined it? The evidence was washing away. She kept silent.
Gabriel, too, said nothing, slightly angry at her refusal to explain, and slightly saddened by her lack of trust. Still, he followed her down the covered streets of the shattered city, the ruins of Sallak, the Old Zion. Their path led to a deep, bowl-shaped valley, a crater the size of a few square blocks, earth and stone forced outwards in a massive impact of some sort. At the center of the valley, the rusted and crushed remnants of a 747 fuselage lay in several chunks, wings had broken off, lying some distance from the main body and the cockpit was also detached, yet it was no where to be seen.
A solitary figure stood in a circle a short distance from the plane's fuselage. The circle was a groove in the sand and dirt, filled with black chunks of nearly identical size and substance. The figure was pouring a clear thing stream of liquid into the trench. At first, Sera though he was urinating on them, yet as they drew near the crater's edge, she could see it was a tin of some sort, a tin which the figure held in both hands. She closed her eyes a moment, trying to remember how many rounds were in her clip.
Sera. A lone thought drifting from the figure who had since tossed the tin away. She looked up, examining him up and down. A gold-colored cloak glistened in the rain, seeming to sparkle with its own light, creating another flash of the snarling mountain cat she had killed days ago sparking through her mind, accompanied by that high-pitched warble.
Sera.
There was no cougar. This thought was hers, even though she had a hard time telling it from the other. She could feel a heart close by, beating the same staccato rhythm as her own, thrumming in her ears and pounding in her head.
Flesh of my Flesh.
Her clip was empty. Pulling another from her satchel, she quickly reloaded, sending one into the chamber automatically, without thought.
Jack. She sent this thought back along the shadowy silvered thread extending to her from the figure. This could be none other than. He was a would-be puppet master, and she could kill him in an instant. The iron sights of her rifle had barely touched his shape when the rifle was pulled out of her hands by an unseen force, tumbling through the air to the figure, falling just on the far side of the circle, which was nearly thirty feet across the center. The groove was more of a trench, extending three feet out from the inner circle's edge.
Sera.
Jack.
The wind rustled through the deserted buildings and whistled around the steel and glass and concrete. The smell of sagebrush and wet fur wafted about, stirring this way and that around them. Time was a river, always running downhill like an hourglass losing its sand.
It's a good day to die, she thought angrily as she began the treacherous climb down the crater's edge to the circle and the waiting figure below. It is a good day to die.
Copyright 2006