The camera floated down the isle past the lone movie-goer and flipped around to face him. A 1920’s era T.R. stared back through the screen. A razor-straight part cleaved his gleaming hair and he wore a starched white shirt with little round collar wings. The camera panned back and refocused over his shoulder at the back of the theatre. T.R.’s mind swam with confusion. It was like he was looking through the back of his own head. The door swung open and two figures walked in—a tall man with slumped shoulders and lank hair holding the gloved hand of a young girl. Dressed in a gingham skirt she he had to be no more than thirteen or fourteen. The man wore a coat and tails, his top hat grasped in his other hand. T.R. felt them come down the isle behind him like the tide come to claim a paralyzed man left on the shore. On the screen they advanced down the isle toward him and stopped. The screen went out and the theatre was plunged into perfect, velvet black.
T.R. knew what was behind him: his master and his intended, young Maggie Owens. Only he didn’t want Maggie anymore, not like he’d last seen her at Missus Najarian’s house. She wasn’t the taught little hottie running around town in a pair of cut-offs and a t-shirt tied off so you could see the sweat roll down her flat, tan belly. She was a walker now, emptied out. Really just an extension of The Dark Rider, like a finger on his hand. T.R. guessed he was almost as far gone. The thought of her as she had been sent a spark along his still erect penis. He almost moaned with the agony, but the fear of making a sound in this tomb sewed his lips shut.
The susurrus of bare feet on grit as someone shuffled around in front of him. There wasn’t much space between his boney knees and the next row of seats. Someone was standing right in front of him, not breathing. T.R. sucked in a quick breath as if ready to take a plunge into a deep pool. Fungus, rot, sharp stench of corrupt tissue. Soft, dry lips brushed his mouth and he jerked his head away. The Pompiliad caught hold of his skull from behind and the buzzing became thunder. T.R. thought he was screaming but couldn’t hear himself. A dainty hand pressed down on his crotch and his entire lower body roared in pain. She leaned in again, but this time her sweet, teenage kiss found his empty eye socket and the wasp crawled through into his brain.
The buzzing ceased.
The Pompiliad and Maggie Owens walked back up the isle. The swinging door allowed for a flash of dim light—really a lessening of dark—and then it was just black. The muted roar of the chopper shook some dust from secret places and then faded into the distance.
After a time, a field mouse slipped from its nest in one of the seat cushions. Its oil-drop eyes were quick and clever, its humped little back glossy. It had done well on the beetles and various bits left by the big animals that made this place. Now, it smelled something new. One of the big animals had been in here, but was now still. Sometimes they had things, good things for nesting or eating, and being a field mouse means being curious—cautious, but curious. It slipped along the tops of the seats and stopped about six inches away, testing the air with its nose. It froze, no, this thing was wrong. This wasn’t… The mouse couldn’t move, turned to stone in its terror.
T.R. opened his eye and stood up, tearing through the duct tape like it was wet tissue paper. He left some skin behind him, but didn’t mind. There was no mind to bother. The buzzing was gone and his poor, painful dick had deflated. These, too, were moot. He wouldn’t have minded anymore anyway. T.R. Dalton no longer existed. The husk that clomped up the isle toward the fragrant night was nothing more than the single directive planted in him by The Pompiliad: kill William Two-Bears McFarlan.
Chapter 38
Will almost wiped out as he rounded a sharp bend deep in the labyrinth of mining roads around Shard. The back wheel sprayed gravel as the big cruiser tried to squirt out from underneath him. The headlight jounced, spraying flashbulb glimpses of skeletal woods—a thousand faces in the leaves, a thousand grasping hands in the branches. Will dug in his heel hard and let go just as the bones began to do interesting things. The bike found its center and he rumbled on.
He wasn’t far from the shaft, from the dragon and safety. Dampf would take care of everything. They’d lost the battle in town, but the war would be decided in that glowing cavern below the fire. He just had to make it there without getting himself killed. Wouldn’t that be funny, the fate of the world decided upon a bad turn in the mountains? A big root snaked across the road (really just a gravel path overgrown with tall weeds) and Will stood up on the pegs to better take the shock. Oh, his poor bike.
Dad would’ve been pissed that he took the Indian into the woods like this. Nothing to be done about it, though. The town was full of walkers. Will shook his head. Hard to think of them like that, walkers, zombies. Jesus, they’d been his neighbors, his family. But he had to think of them that way. That had not been young Luther Becket he’d plugged back at the Dalton place, it was a puppet. And that hadn’t been the puppet’s father he’d wasted in the kitchen a few minutes before. Chrissakes, he’d spent half a day next to Rick Beckett clearing snow on the mining road that led from town proper back to their little village. Rick kept trying to pay Will with canned tomatoes from his garden. No, that really hadn’t been Rick and his boy. Him and the rest, they were gone. They were walkers.
After he’d separated from George and Erica, Will zipped around a group of them standing by the t-junction where Main Street merged with the highway feeder road. They’d dragged a bunch of junk over to block the way, but he’d been able to scoot around and onto the gravel track. Will had recognized an old axel that had been sinking into a clump of weeds in front of the old Jefford’s place since he was a kid. It was weird to see it moved like that, as if it had come alive and rolled over there all by itself. Even though the axel movers were standing right next to it, swaying, tracking his progress with radar dish faces as he passed, Will couldn’t reconcile that they’d done the moving. There was no feeling of life to them at all. It was like driving past a clutch of headstones. At least he knew where they were. Back there in the dark, behind him. Get thee behind me, you freaky sonsabitches.
He took another sharp bend, downshifting and keeping his wheels about him this time. He didn’t expect to run into anything in the woods. They were all in town. And with this thought in mind, he almost plowed into the back of Lorain’s Subaru. Will shouted, “Shit!” and slewed the bike sideways. If he’d been on blacktop, he’d have gone over the side and through the Subaru’s back windshield. Gravel pelted the bumper loud enough to hit his ears over the engine.
Will shut off the bike and silence pounded. There was no susurrus of wind, no insect song. He pulled his pistol and stage whispered, “Loraine! Kiddo!” then thought better of it. Wasn’t like he was being stealthy driving around a hog like the Indian. Will walked around the car, but it was empty. The driver’s side door was open and hanging by a hinge. He ran his fingers over the crimped metal where the door would have met the car. Something had ripped it halfway off the frame. The shotgun he’d given Loraine was lying on the ground. There were no footprints. Not even a paw print from Darwin.
Will got back on the bike and gunned the engine. He needed to move. He knew damn well who’d taken the Howards and their dog. The shaft was close, just over the next rise maybe. He could be there in another five minutes. He feathered the brakes as he topped the rise, throwing ruby light over the giant spider web that clung to the Subaru’s front bumper.
* * *
Will stood before the shaft and tried to make his legs move. George and Erica’s Jeep was parked a few feet away, a line of mustard-colored rope tied off at the bumper and slipped into the mine. At least they’d gone down voluntarily. It gave Will some courage. His friends were waiting for him inside. It wasn’t just a god-monster and its pet nightmare spider—which, by the way, had kidnapped a mother and her kid, not to mention the family pooch. Two-Bears never trusted Yïn. She always seemed on the edge of disobedience, as if the dragon barely had her controlled.
“I need to move,” he said to himself.
He
clicked the Indian’s headlamp on and pointed it down the throat of the shaft. The ever-present line of smoke drooled up into the night. It would run the battery down to shine the light without the engine running, but he could always jump it off the jeep when they came back up. The thought stopped him. Even now, in the face of ultimate craziness (seriously, he could wake up in a psych-ward in another minute and not be surprised an iota that the whole thing had been a hallucination) he didn’t just hold out hope for victory, he assumed it. Will shook his head. The über optimist. Sure.
Ten feet into the shaft, the rope slipped off into the side cut and disappeared down the rabbit hole. The light from his bike faded to little more than an ivory blush on the dusty rhyolite walls. He grabbed the line and planted his feet on either side of the opening. It ran at a sharp angle for about ten feet before dropping straight down into…what? He gritted his teeth, tasted metal and sand. His gun was going to have to stay snapped in its holster while he rappelled then dangled in open space like bait on a fucking trout line. Will thought about calling out to George and Erica but stopped with his mouth half open. Best to come in with some surprise on his side just in case they weren’t all friends anymore. Had he ever been a friend to the dragon? Closer to a press-ganged recruit.
Each backward step was a silent deliberation. Look ma, the world’s first Native American Ninja warrior. He bit down on a gasp as his foot reached the end of the angled shoot and dangled in space. Damn, did he wish he had gloves. If he had to zip down the line like some Navy Seal or something, he was going to leave most of his palms on the rope. Really, just fuck it. Will Two-Bears McFarlan let out a breath and hopped backward into gravity.
For a moment, he hung suspended in emerald gloom, the green werelight dazzling him. The rope slung tight under his butt and took his weight, but his hand did, in fact, already hurt like a mofo’.
Will kicked out, spun himself around and sucked in a breath. His father was standing right in front of him, upside down, boots sticking to the roof of the cavern like he was, well, a spider. Dad winked a bloody eye. Will’s heart slammed in his chest and the world reeled, but he got his head together fast. If he passed out now he would fall some three stories and maybe do more than knock the wind out of himself this time. It was just the spider fucking with him yet again. Just a bad joke. Actually, kind of a good sign. If Yïn had wanted him dead, he would be.
Will sighed, “If I could get to my gun, I’d totally shoot you.”
Yïn flipped him the bird and smiled. She reached behind herself and rooted around, eyes slotted up and to the right (or rather down and left) as if looking for something in her back pocket. She nodded to herself and yanked a cable of silk out behind her and stuck one end to the roof of the cavern. Will watched as his dead father descended, his body changing in rude bursts, until a huge spider placed all eight claws on the strange metal ground. It sounded like someone dropping pebbles on a frying pan. Yïn detached and reared up to mark him with her alien eyes. She waved a razored foreclaw. “Right, right,” Will muttered, “C’mon down.” He began a grunting descent. “Jesus, I can actually feel my hair turning gray.”
After what felt like a long time, his hand and butt complaining with every inch, Will’s Chucks touched down. “That’s one small step for man,” he whispered to himself. “One giant cluster-fuck for blah, blah, blah.” He shook his hands out and blew on them. Yïn’s pincers jigged in and out in what Will had always assumed was giant spider mirth. Still, he couldn’t shake the whole psychotic gardener coming at him with a big pair of shears gestalt. “Yeah, yeah, some of us can’t pull five-hundred pound test filament out of our asses.” He flexed his hand, making sure his fingers would do what he needed, then hauled leather so fast even the spider was caught off guard.
Yïn stopped laughing.
“Where are my friends, fucko?”
Can’t kill me.
Will winced. The voice in his head wasn’t speaking English or anything even close to language as he understood the concept. If static or wind or lightning could talk it would sound, feel like this. “Maybe not,” he said. “But I bet I’m close enough to really mess you up.” He ratcheted back the hammer. “Wanna’ check?”
Yïn’s mandibles twitched. A smile? Will scowled. The spider waved a pedipalp and turned, its claws throwing that weird staccato around the cavern. Will walked behind it, wondering just exactly where you were supposed to plug a pony-sized spider from another dimension. Were its brains in its thorax? Did it have a brain? Jesus, the last time he saw this thing it was a flock of birds. He shook his head and lowered the gun. Smaug felt leaden and stupid brushing against his leg, but he wasn’t about to put it away. They rounded an emerald column—the joining of a stalactite and stalagmite that stretched toward the dark ceiling—and stopped to take in the tableaux.
A roughhewn block sat before Dampf’s bed of diamond spheres. Deep scars gouged the sides where the dragon must have clawed it from the wall. Dampf was nowhere to be seen. Childe Howard and Darwin sat on the block. Kiddo was tousling the beagle’s ears. George, Erica and Loraine stood nearby, an amiable trio. They could have been talking about sports or discussing the weather. Will’s eyes blurred and stung. “What the hell is going on here?” he shouted.
Childe looked up and shouted back as if he hadn’t heard, “Hey! Constable Will!”
Erica smiled, “There he is.”
Loraine squinted in the half-light and beamed.
George brayed, “Howdy, Sheriff!” He trotted over, big amiable golden-retriever of a man, and slapped Will hard on the shoulder. “You made it. Boy, we were getting’ worried.”
Will stammered. “You were getting worried?” He pushed past George and walked over to Loraine. “What the hell happened to you? I found your car and the shotgun. It looked like you’d been abducted by aliens.”
“Oh, that,” she said.
“Yes?”
Childe piped up, “Loraine totally blew a gasket back there.”
“Yes, thank you, Childe,” she said over her shoulder then faced Will again. “He’s, uh, actually sort of right. I, um…for a minute, I couldn’t really figure out how to, um, work.” Loraine, with a deep blush on her round face went on to describe the scene after she almost ran into the giant spider web. She had put the car in park, set the brake and started to cry. Nothing like hysterics, just a slow steady leak.
“Kiddo kept trying to talk to me, but it was like I wasn’t really even there,” Loraine explained. “I dunno, I guess I just got to this point where I realized—and I mean, I really got it—that all of this was happening for real. My brain just needed to shut down for a few minutes while I processed everything.” She sighed, considered. “Maybe it would have been different if we’d made it to the highway. We just kept getting deeper and deeper into the woods and I could feel that we weren’t getting any closer to the road.”
“And then you hit the web,” Will said.
“Right and I stopped. Just stopped.” She nodded over Will’s shoulder at Yïn. “That’s when the big ugly came.” She shuddered. “Jesus, I get that it’s on our side and everything, but I can barely stand to even look at it.” She leaned in. “Makes me feel like I need to pee.”
Will put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m not much of a fan either. You see the dragon yet?”
“Ha! I still can’t get over that. No, I haven’t. The spider just led us down here. Shit, carried us. That’s why I dropped the shotgun, I guess. It kind of just peeled open the car and scooped us all up. Kiddo kept tellin’ me not to worry and the dog’s actually wagging its tail and whining like when I make hamburgers.” She shook her head and looked at her feet. “By the time we got down here, I was back to myself and feeling pretty okay about everything considering. I mean I guess I’ve hit acceptance? Does that make sense?”
“Sure. I think it’s about the only way any of us could possibly deal with any of this.” He winked at Kiddo. “’Cept maybe your boy, there. Kids’ve got elastic for brains.”
> She smiled. “Yeah, Kiddo’s imagination is his armor. I’m just hoping mine holds up when I do see your dragon.”
George sauntered over. “I fainted when I met it.”
Will smirked. “You were loaded.”
“I know. You’d think that would’ve helped.”
George nodded toward the stone slab, “That’s new.”
“Yeah?” Will said. “Guess you’re right.” He looked at his friend—his scary smart friend. “What’s got your hackles up, Georgie boy?”
“Look like anything to you?”
Will watched Childe lean over and kiss his doggie on the snout. “Flintstones park bench?”
“Okay,” George said. “Maybe it’s nothing. Just kind of reminds me of something is all.”
“Something you don’t like.”
“Right.”
Will slapped George on the shoulder, the one with the M16 strapped to it. “Know it looks like to me? A good place to crouch behind and lay down cover fire.”
Erica walked up. “You really think guns are going to do any good against, um…”
“Beings,” Lorain offered. “Beings is a good word for them.”
“Right. Fine. Beings. You think guns are going to work against beings like that?” She pointed at Yïn.
“No,” Will said. “I really don’t.”
“Then what...?”
He held up his hand. “I think they’ll work against the walkers. I know they do. You just have to hit them right and we already covered that.”