Peter stopped and grunted. Iduna approached, said, “What is it?”
They saw a leaflet faded with years, a hand-drawn advertisement for a wasteland carnival. It promised grotesque sideshows that would make the viewer forget the horrors of the everyday. There were dirge-singers, illusionists, fire eaters and skin carvers that conquered pain, collections of ancient gadgets, and bards who told of atrocities in far-off lands. Captured cousins of flesh demons, no less hideous than the real thing, would be held on display. There was a woodcut illustration of one such monstrosity, a small lizard-shaped boy who throttled the carcass of a chicken over his head. Around the picture were the words:
SEE HIM FIGHT, DOG AND RAZOR FOOT ROOSTER!!!
YES THE PRINCE OF LIZARD TAKE ON ALL COMERS!!!
“What is that thing?” said Iduna.
“If you look close,” said Peter, “you can see where somebody’s carved letters into its body.”
“Poor thing. It’s almost like a little boy, but caricatured to look ‘tough’.”
Peter paused, and darkened.
“Is it...?” said Iduna, prodding him.
“It doesn’t look anything like the monster that chased me. That thing was more dragon than lizard, believe me.”
They bent close. Beneath the drawing, in smaller print, the poster read
THE SINFUL OFFSPRING OF SNAKE AND TIGHT YOUNG GIRL
CAIN IS A KILLER!! AND FIGHTS FOR THRONE OF HELL ON EARTH
BRING YOUR TOUGHEST DOG AND ROOSTER TO FIGHT
ALL BETS, ARE FINAL AND NO GUNS ALLOWED IN TENT
“Old man,” said Peter, “what is this thing?”
The old man looked, then turned quickly and pretended to sleep.
Marlon and Wodi entered.
Iduna winced at Marlon’s bruised face. “Don’t worry,” he said, rubbing his jaw. “It hurts even worse than it looks!”
Jules laughed from his corner, said, “I don’t know if it looked worse before or after that thing got a hold o’ you.”
“Alright, alright, whatever,” said Marlon. Turning to the old hermit, he shouted, “Hey, old man, wake up! You got a mirror in here?”
“No,” said the hermit.
“Are you sure?” said Marlon. “I mean, if I need a bunch of feathers or a big bundle of sticks covered in dust, I know I can look on the third shelf from the left. I can see your wad of cat guts on top of this pile here, but I don’t really need those right now. You sure you don’t got a mirror anywhere in here?”
“Ain’t no mirrors in this place,” the old man said quietly.
“You could stand to look in one yourself,” said Marlon. He fell noisily into a pile of rags and leaves. “Guess this is the bed,” he said. “Or is it the dining room table? Or the trash can? I can’t tell in this dump.”
“Don’t mess with my stuff!” said the hermit, perking up suddenly. “If you… if you mess with my stuff…”
“Don’t worry,” said Marlon. “We’re not gonna take any of your embroidered towels or fine china, if that’s what you’re worried about. In fact, if you need any help with your interior decorating, I could take a dump in the middle of the room. I don’t think it would clash with the theme you’ve got goin’.”
Wodi laughed loudly. The old man rolled over in his nest, reached into a bundle beneath him, and pulled out a shotgun.
Wodi’s laugh stopped short. Marlon pushed away quickly.
“Well, g’night then,” said the old man, curling up with his shotgun held close.
The five Havenders looked to one another, eyes wide, jaws loose.
Soon the old man snored, then Jules followed him into sleep. Iduna and Peter laid close. Wodi and Marlon looked at one another. Marlon’s fingers twitched and Wodi smiled. As the last candle flickered and died, Marlon whispered, “That thing is ours, buddy.”
Chapter Eleven
Saints of the Sacred Oasis
Eragileak, the guardian demon of the valley, knelt among the bushes and watched his hated foe. In the clearing ahead, the great black-scaled lizard, Serpens Rex, was grinding against Bilatzailea, the succubus who had taken Saul’s seed only hours before. Even though built for this sort of work, she still found it difficult to accept the reptile’s obscenely powerful thrusting. Releasing the right balance of pheromones was also incredibly difficult, because her people had next to no knowledge of his genetic makeup. One wrong scent, one imbalanced secretion, could cause the horny monster to realize he was making love to a potential enemy and send him into a murderous rampage. Bilatzailea knew this was her greatest performance ever and treated it with great care; because Serpens Rex had an unreasonably voracious metabolism, an inability to handle extremes of temperature, and only marked his territory with mating signals once every decade, it would be no surprise to her if she found out that this “king of the reptiles” was the last of his kind.
But what a powerhouse! Blindness was right – his seed could provide unstoppable storm troopers for the great Ritual of Sacrifice that was to come…
Finally the great lizard stared into the distance, mouth open, and gave one last powerful thrust that threatened to drive her pelvis up into her spine. He gushed into her and produced a sound like a rooster deflating.
Bilatzailea was filled with joy. She had it… she had it! Now if she could only get away with her life intact!
It was Eragileak’s turn. He lifted a heavy stone and crept from his hiding place. It had sapped a lot of his strength to hide the light of his soul – the purple light that shone from his belly – but knowing that he would soon kill his greatest enemy gave him power. Carefully, carefully, he crept into the clearing.
Bilatzailea did not have to look to the side to know that her brother was near. Slowly she edged herself away from the black lizard. The monster’s enormous phallus slid out of her with a wrenching sound of violent suction that woke him from his post-coital paralysis. Bilatzailea froze – then the lizard sighed and collapsed on top of her. Hundreds of pounds of dead weight crushed her and thousands of sharp scales dug into her. She was trapped under the behemoth.
Eragileak lifted the heavy stone, then paused. Crushing the lizard’s head could potentially kill Bilatzailea, too. The seed she carried was far more important than his personal grudge. He studied the monster, unsure of what to do. The small of his back – perhaps crushing that would immobilize the beast long enough to find another opening. Eragileak shifted his weight, lifted the stone, then…
He heard a cry in his mind. An order to stop. Once again, Blindness, the lord of the oasis, jerked Eragileak’s leash.
He was told to watch.
Serpens Rex shook. His arms shuddered and his head lolled from side to side. His tongue leaped and shivered as if trying to flee a sinking vessel. The great lizard pushed away from Bilatzailea, then stood on weak legs. With lurching movements he approached Eragileak, then stood before him, arms at his sides. Eragileak dropped the heavy stone and was dumbfounded. The mighty Serpens Rex… now, a puppet!
Eragileak probed the channels and found his uncle Blindness. Far away in the world but right beside him in the landscape of their mental space, Eragileak saw Blindness as a dark mote ringed by a halo of dazzling brilliance. With a thousand sharp fingers he had probed the brain of the human he’d recently taken into himself. He had hundreds of brains packed into his sac – animals, ghouls, primitive humans – but none could match this new one. Most brains he consumed were shaped by fear, limited by environment, starved by poor diet, and crippled by a thousand bad habits necessitated by the wasteland. But not this brain. This brain did not know fear! Moments of anxiety, a few quick surprises, that was all. But true fear, the fear of living under brutal masters in an uncaring environment day after day, was alien to this brain. It knew only the hunger for more information and the joy of continually seeking out stimulating interactions, thus its potential was…
Amazing, said the voice of Blindness from the ring of fire.
For hours he had dug, prodded, fed and st
arved, threatened and rewarded, and used all the old tricks he knew to open up minds and make them his own. And now, he had even been able to slip into the doorway that sexual release had opened in the simple mind of Serpens Rex.
Now, said Blindness, he is one of us.
Eragileak approached the great lizard. He put his face against the monster’s. No response. He slapped him lightly across the face, waited, then slapped him again with enough force to send a man’s head spinning like a top on a neck full of shattered vertebrae. Serpens Rex staggered, then resumed his obedient pose.
Eragileak was torn. He still wanted to see his old enemy dead. He traced long, dirty nails lightly across the lizard’s face, delicately pried his mouth open, felt the warm tongue all the way to the back, then dug one of his claws into the thick meat. Eragileak’s claws were not sharp, but still he dug in, then tore a long line of broken flesh down the middle of the lizard’s tongue all the way to the very tip. Blood ran out in hot channels and pooled in at the base of the mouth, filling the cracks between yellow teeth.
Eragileak watched, fascinated, then nodded. He wanted Serpens Rex dead… but perhaps this was better.
Bilatzailea stood, groaning and hissing in pain. Her skin was imprinted in red fish scale patterns and she clutched at the opening to her primary incubation crevice, fearful that Serpens Rex had damaged the apparatus beyond repair. “I’m going back home now,” she said aloud. Eragileak was startled at the sound, then reasoned she must be limiting her open channels in order to spare him an awareness of her physical pain. “Those invaders… it’s up to you now.” She paused, then said, “Up to you and your new friend!” She lashed out with a sharp kick at the back of Rex’s knee, staggering him. Eragileak laid a hand atop the lizard’s head, then watched Bilatzailea disappear into the forest.
Eragileak felt Blindness tugging at his awareness. Once more the light about the dark mote flared as more of the new brain’s defensive layers were stripped and its potential was unleashed. Eragileak gazed in wonder, for the lord of the forest was summoning an army.
* * *
The mind of the lord passed over the forest, and the tribes were called.
First, the Tongue Eaters. They squatted in a moist, narrow canyon, their bodies little white mounds unmoving in the mist. Their leader woke in the night and gave a hollow cry. Then the angry males, plagued by throat infection and painful venereal leakage, also felt some god pass through them for one moment. They rose from their dark crevice and went into the night. As they marched they grunted the hollow tone that was theirs and theirs alone, a tone that no other tribe envied the use of, for this clan did not earn their name by eating the tongues of others, but by chewing off their own.
Now the Stone Skins. Tough and dull-witted even by ghoul standards, and prone to rashes that scabbed over like the flesh of the mountain on which they lived, this tribe felt the call and left off from the ritual torture they were inflicting on one of their own. Better prey had been promised them, soft prey free of callouses and unused to pain. The hunters left their clansmen, feet bound by vine, skin torn and bones chipped from thrown rocks, suspended from the cold stone of the mountain.
The Rot Gnawers felt the call. Pale and allergic to sunlight, these bulb-eyed ghouls coated their greasy skin in soot and dust and crawled in dark tunnels. They only ate what was already dead, and their favorite game was to hold down one member and drop maggots into his eyes and nose and laugh while the maggots slowly burrowed into meat and brain. Because they spent their lives in darkness, they ceased to use facial expression. As they flowed smoothly out of their dank tunnels, it seemed as if the blank-faced dead were rising to consume the world of the living. The blind god promised them a place of hiding far to the north, cold tunnels untouched by morning, and there they would find warm, fresh game.
The Chanters of Prayer were gathered around their sacrificial pit when the lord interrupted them. Their tribe was short and had spindly limbs and, since they could not compete with the other tribes in the hunt for food and mates, they had decided to rule in the secret realm where the gods dwelled. To this end they dug pits in the ground and caught the beasts that fell within, killed them, then the butchers would descend and divide the meat while the leaders fell on the ground and rapidly chanted the maddening gibberish that would trap the souls of the beasts. Their leaders often listened to the bones of the dead; just as the sounds of the sea could be heard in seashells, so too could the demands of the dead be heard from the other side through the cold bones. Now when the lord came to them and spoke in their minds, their leaders threw their bones and danced in fear, terrified that their own system of rule might have some basis in reality. After much confusion, they took up their knives and clubs and ran to the mountains in the north, where they would find their ultimate test, their greatest sacrifice.
The God Feeders also heard the call. Their tribe was greatly feared throughout the valley. For years they had abused the other tribes before the lord of the forest came to them. They were patient hunters with grim faces, and they often laid their excess kills at the entrance of the crystalline world where the lord dwelled. Many feared them, but few envied them: Because of their diet of raw meat, they left trails of writhing worms and maggots wherever they squatted. And they were quick, very quick, to turn on their own. Now the God Feeders saw visions of mountains, they saw caverns and a trap made of numbers, and they ran north on all fours to make the vision real.
The lord of the black valley touched one mind after another. These tribes and others gathered for the ritual of human sacrifice. It would be a test to prove their worthiness to the god called Blindness. The vision showed the morning sun rising on a day of blood. They would be victims no longer. They would be tools of justice in the hands of something infinitely beautiful and endlessly hungry.
Chapter Twelve
Escape from the Black Valley
On the morning of their third day in the valley, Wodi and Marlon woke at the same time, locked eyes, and rose at once. In the gentle blue light that seeped through the cracks in the hut, Wodi crept over sleeping forms until he was perched over the old hermit. Marlon joined him and raised the black spear over the old man’s head. Marlon nodded to Wodi.
I have to do this right, he thought, exhaling slowly.
Not only was the shotgun cradled under the old man’s bony forearm, but Wodi saw a piece of twisted black metal peeking out from under a pillow. Wodi probed with his fingers, then pulled the thing free. He smiled at Marlon: The old man, in his paranoia, had slept with a revolver under his head. He held the thing up to the light for Marlon to see. The handgrip fit him perfectly, and its weight was reassuring. He passed the gun to Marlon, then looked about some more. Sure enough, two unopened plastic bags full of bullets sat hiding in the corner. Wodi stretched over the old man, paused while the old man muttered in his sleep, then slowly handed the bags over to Marlon.
Now, the shotgun. Wodi watched. He saw no easy way to do the thing, so he breathed deep and quickly lifted the old man’s bony arm and placed it to the side. The old man muttered once more, then laid still. Wodi grasped the shotgun and was awed by the thing, a complicated black metal weapon that would spit death to anyone who stood in their way. He nodded, then they quietly slipped out of the hut.
Outside, all was blue and mist with great gray trees reaching far overhead. The two laughed nervously as Marlon tore open the plastic bags.
“This stuff’s never been used!” Marlon exclaimed. “How long you think that old fart’s been sitting on this stuff?”
“It probably belonged to the people he came here with, way back in the day,” said Wodi, examining the heavy shotgun. “I wonder if…” He stopped. Inlaid in the black metal was a small, silver insignia of a gear. “Marlon, where have I seen this before?”
Marlon studied the thing, then said, “It’s from some wasteland cult. I think they’re called Smiths. They worship machines and make guns and stuff like that.”
“Is that a fact?” said W
odi, searching his memory but finding nothing.
Marlon took the shotgun from him and said, “Double barrel. Too bad it’s not a pump-action from Haven! Looks like the shells are all buckshot, so they’ll spread out. Pretty good for distance, but murder up close.” He popped the gun open, then said, “Dirty as can be! Was he using this thing to dig holes with?”
“Will it still work?”
“Yeah,” said Marlon, blowing into the end. “But no pawn shop in Haven would take this old girl, that’s for sure.” He studied the revolver in his other hand, then said, “This is a snub nosed little guy. Not sure of the caliber, we don’t use this type in Haven. A good up-close gun. Can’t fit more than six bullets, but that’s the problem with revolvers. Not that I would trust any automatics outside of Haven, you know? They’re too tricky to make.”
Marlon showed Wodi how the guns were loaded. Soon Iduna came to them bearing two stained cloth bags.
“What are you boys doing?” she said, staring at the guns.
“We decided to pack some heat for the rest of the trip,” said Marlon. “Is that all right with you?”
“You’re just going to end up shooting yourselves,” she said.
“Really? Do the bullets on these things not come out the front, or what?”
“What’ve you got there?” said Wodi.
“I took some of the pig meat,” she said. “He had a lot of it, and I thought it might go bad before he ate it all, so... I...”
“Good idea. We’ll need it if we want to get through the wasteland.”
Next came Peter, hobbling and scowling. He carried several sticks and a large bundle of greasy clothes.
“You doin’ the old man’s laundry?” said Marlon. He scanned the woods for demonic hordes, one gun in each hand. There was no doubt in his mind how intimidating he appeared.
Peter’s eyes locked onto the guns and he answered the question as if reading from memorized notes. “We can tie these rags to the sticks and make torches, for the mine. I’ve got a flint and some tinder, too. Now, son, how’d you come by those firearms?”
Marlon pretend-fired the revolver five times into an invisible demon, then aimed the gun at the ground and executed the monster with his final shot. “Oh, it’s no big deal,” he said. “That old man was sittin’ on ’em. Figured I’d borrow ’em.”