Tag: Flash Fiction

Wasteland, pt. 3

Pavowski3 Comments

It’s Flash Fiction Round Robin Week 3, and I come to you continuing a tale started by two other frequenters of TerribleMinds.

I’ve compiled their contributions here, but if you like what you see, you should click on their names to read more of what they’ve written: Angela Cavanaugh started the story, and a fellow known as WildBilbo wrote the second part. I’ve written the third section, and hopefully, hopefully, somebody will pick it up and finish it next week.

I hope I left it poised for a good ending. I don’t write a lot of action-y stuff, but I had a good time with this.

Here, then, is…

 

Wasteland

Part 1: By Angela Cavanaugh

They didn’t count on me surviving. Of course, if those fools could do anything right then I wouldn’t be walking through a desert right now. The once green ground is now completely scorched, and I haven’t seen the remains of a building for miles. The only upside is the clouds. Those fallout clouds block out what would otherwise be an intense noon sun.

Someone might ask me, were there any survivors left to ask, why I was headed into the epicenter of the fallout. They’d warn me of radiation poisoning. But I’m not worried about radiation. I might have survived the blasts, but my blood got poisoned all the same. I ain’t got much time left, and if I’m going to go down, you could bet that I’ll be taking them with me.

I’m headed toward the center, because it’s where they are. Not just the men who tried to kill me. Yeah, they’re there, too. But for all I know, so is everyone that wasn’t massacred.

Before they dropped the bombs, those gentlemen built themselves a fortress. They’ve got an entire city that could withstand the blasts and keep out the resulting radiation. They tucked themselves in, safe and sound, and blew up the world.

I should know, I was originally meant to be in that city. Had my apartment all planned out, furnished even. My days of wet work were supposed to be over once the world had achieved peace. Their idea of peace, anyway. And I was ready to retire in that peaceful place.

But until that day came, I was working security. Which is a nice way of admitting that I was an assassin. Every so often someone would get curious about what we were building. Or worse, they’d find out what it was. It would have put a real dent in the plans if word got out. Therefore, any time we found out that someone was snooping or onto us, I’d get called in to take care of the problem.

I kept walking. I could just see the outline of the city in the distance. It was obscured by the clouds, but even still, I could see how massive this was. This wasn’t some little bunker under the earth. The men who put this project together were rich men and political leaders. They were used to living a certain luxurious lifestyle, and saw no need to compromise that just because they were bringing about the apocalypse.

This didn’t mean that they wanted to associate with the working class. That wasn’t their idea of a peaceful paradise. They funded the very best robotics research and made certain that their city would be self-sustaining. Automated farming machines, automated electricity, completely automated anything. These men might be elitist, but they weren’t stupid. They hand picked everyone for their society, and some of those they chose were scientist, teachers, a few people who could work on the automated machinery if needed.

My guess is that these people would end up as slaves before too long. They brought them in under the guise of equality. But those who run things, they’ll never see these people as equal. Seems to me that those who hold the knowledge are better than those who have the power. They’ll never get a chance to realize that.

I coughed a wet cough and spat blood. Maybe a quick death in the newly created desert would have been preferable to the slow one I’m now suffering. And perhaps either would have been better than if I had lived in that city. I don’t know how long it would have taken them, but eventually they’d have tried to make me a slave like the rest.

If there was one thing that I liked less than being controlled, it was being tricked. The bombs weren’t supposed to go off for two more weeks. I suspect that was intentional misinformation. A way for them to quietly clean up their loose ends without any protest.

I had gone out on a job, the same as I had several other times. There was another threat to our project. And we were so close to completion. I put all my fear into that job and rushed out to kill whoever dared threaten the future of humanity. That was how they had sold it to us originally. I could hate myself for having been so naive.

When I got to the address that I had been given, I found that there wasn’t anyone inside. There was just a large mirror in an otherwise empty room. Scrawled on the mirror in black sharpie was a message to me:

“There’s no room for men like you in our new world.”

The threat was reflected in the mirror: me.

They might be smart, but so am I. I ran from the house and looked for a place to hide. Luckily for me, a neighboring house had a deep tornado shelter. Once I got inside of it, I could tell that it had been outfitted during World War Two as a bomb shelter, as well. I had only just made it in when I felt the quake of the bombs exploding.

I survived. Problem was, while this may have been a bomb shelter, the owners clearly hadn’t been expecting to need it. There were no provisions. I wouldn’t be able to stay there long.

Truth was, I didn’t want to. I had a rage inside of me that I needed to express. Radiation or not, I was heading to the city.

I was getting close now. I could see distinct outlines of the tall buildings that rose over the top of the solid fence that surrounded the city. If I could keep myself together, I could have my revenge.

I coughed again. The blood was thicker this time and came more readily. I caught my breath and continued on. Because if there was no place in this world for men like me, there was no place in it for men like them, either.

 

Part 2: by WildBilbo

Men like me… men like me… men like me…

While my shoulders and arms burned from exertion, my memory of their last message cycled through my head. A constant beat, it kept me focused me as I scaled the wall of the fortress. Upwards towards the waste ducts spewing filth down the sides of the massive walls. The pounding sleet was not helping matters, but I clung on, fuelled by rage and revenge. Arm-over-arm, my aching hands gripped the reinforced concrete joins and dragged my sickening body towards my goal.

The walls were built on a slight inwards angle to better resist the attacks of extreme weather, which eased my climb somewhat, but it was still gruelling work. I had left most of my equipment below, keeping only the essentials; goggles, carbon dark-suit (in waterproof pouch), climbing gloves, tough nylon cable, and a simple double edged carbon knife. Any more would be weigh me down on the climb, and be detectible once inside.

Men like me.

My teeth ground as the phrase rolled around in my mind, angrily scratching at the sides. The very traits that made me such a valuable tool in clearing the way for their new world made me too much of a risk to keep around to live in it.

Innovative. Relentless. Merciless.

Unnecessary. Unpalatable. Unwanted.

Men like me.

I felt a molar shift then pop out of its socket under the pressure of my clenched jaw. I spat it out in a long stream of bright red pit  and heard it clicking as it rolled down the fortress wall. I knew the radiation must have settled deep to be affecting my gums already. Hanging six stories above ground level, I was glad my muscles were still my own; it couldn’t be long till it took out my central nervous system. I had to hurry.

With a lunge, I grabbed the lip of the waste duct and dragged my head and shoulders inside. Processed sewerage, rubbish and radioactive runoff funnelled from the fortress dome hit me full in the face, threatening to cast me back, until I was able to wedge myself against the sides. I was grateful for my goggles, otherwise I would have been blinded by the muck. Carefully I crab-slid my way sideways, working my way into the immensely thick walls, moving inwards and upwards against the quick flowing corruption swirling about my chest.

I shuffled this way for an interminable length of time in the dark, stopping only to cough lungful after ragged lungful into the filth sodden scarf I had wrapped around my head. My teeth continued to drop, one by one, leaving gaping wounds in my gums. I needed to regularly swallow, as the blood would not stop flowing and filled my mouth.

I was falling apart.

As I moved I thought about the inheritors of this new world. I contemplated the privileged few, ensconced in their towers under the dome, looking down on the mere mortals, scuttling technicians, scientists, teachers all labouring to maintain this structure, working to keep the boots firmly on own their necks. The utopia I had imagined, had worked for, was never possible. I killed, I had been killed, to entrench the power of the powerful.

All men are fools. Even men like me.

The pipe opened up into a massive chamber so suddenly I slipped and fell, briefly going under and taking in a lungful of the icy sludge. I clawed my way to the surface gagging, dragging my way onto a long maintenance ladder, hooking my elbows around it as I vomited in long, heaving spasms. When they subsided, I ascended, one rung at a time until I reached the hatch. I took a breath, closed my eyes and turned the wheel.

As I expected, the hatch was unsecured. The fortress was designed to keep out the environment, not people. There were not meant to be any people left outside. No need for strict security measures when all that remains outside is a toxic wasteland. A wasteland and millions upon millions of rotting dead.

My cracked lips curled into a sneer. Not all dead.

I stood in a long narrow corridor of bare concrete and grey steel pipes. An orange light slowly started to glow, reacting to my presence. I used it to get ready. Stripping off naked, I cleaned myself as best I could, then put on the skin tight carbon dark-suit. I reached out and put my thumb through the sensor returning the corridor into darkness. I disappeared.

It was time to decide which way to move so I listened. From the right I could hear the deep bass thrumming of a huge engine., to the left nothing… no. Wait. A whistle.

Grasping the carbon blade I started running towards the whistler. As exhausted as I was, I covered the distance quickly, and he wasn’t expecting anyone to be here. I had a quick glimpse of my victim, a maintenance tech, carrying a toolbox and a clip board, whistling tunelessly. Wearing the dark-suit and coming from the unlit corridor I was invisible until it was too late. There was no time for him to scream as I moved in close, ducking low under the startled man’s clipboard, before pushing up with my legs, both hands on the carbon knife’s hilt. I drove the blade up through the man’s chin with enough force for the crosspiece to shatter the his jaw, while the twelve inch blade broke through the top of his skull and pierced through his hard hat.

I held him there, keeping him upright as he kicked about, flinching and twisting on my knife as he died. Once certain, I lowered his body, removed my knife and wiped it on his corpse.

I had to move quickly now. Not only was it getting increasingly difficult to breath, this man would be missed in his maintenance routine soon. Disposal would be pointless, I didn’t have time to do a full clean, and his blood was still pooling on the floor. I grabbed his maintenance pass and then stepped over the body, heading down the corridor to my goal.

I had work to do.

 

Part 3: by Me

Hours might have passed in those tunnels. Or maybe it was just a few minutes. The lack of sunlight made it impossible to tell, and my irradiated brain wasn’t helping matters. Every few hundred feet, I’d have to stop and wait for the dizziness to pass, or pitch over and vomit. Darker and darker it streamed out of me like so much poison, until suddenly nothing came up anymore, and I just convulsed with dry heaves. The tunnels, which all looked the same to begin with, blended together into one great grey tangle of concrete and pipes, and only the numbered access panels assured me I was going in the right direction. Even still, I kept finding that I’d turned around without knowing it.

The city sprawled above my head, a tightly contained sprawl of antiseptic steel and infuriating smugness. That lackadaisical nonconcern for those “lesser” people outside the walls. I wondered how many throats I could slit under the cover of darkness. Then I remembered that, had things unfolded differently, I would have been on the other end of my own knife. Another dry heave wracked my guts. Not far now.

The control grid that webbed across the city had nerve centers scattered all around like raisins in a fruitcake. Redundancy. No central location meant that shutting down the grid would be impossible. It also meant, of course, that I could access the grid through the hatch that now floated spectrelike over my head atop a newly minted ladder of steel rebar. It was only a height of twenty feet. Once, I could have scaled it in a heartbeat, soundless as a ghost in the wind. Now the climb seemed to take all I had. My lungs heaved and burned as I climbed. Near the top, I missed a rung and split my fingernail wide open against the steel. I saw it flutter down past me like a wounded butterfly. The pain seared all the way up to my elbow, and I cried out despite myself.

Idiot.

There was a clatter of footsteps above, and then muffled voices from the other side of the hatch. Before I could recover myself, the faces of two more techs slid into view as the hatch beeped and withdrew.

Sick as I was, the training didn’t miss a beat. Like a coiled snake I struck, reaching up my blood-streaked hand to grab the ankle of one man and yank him down through the hatch. His jaw cracked the floor, then his skull clanged off the ladder, and I didn’t have to see him fall to know the other man was my only concern. With strength I didn’t know I still had, I surged up into the room and spirited up behind him. The red plastic phone receiver in his hand fell with a clunk onto the bank of instruments as my blade slid between his ribs, my hand clamped over his mouth to muffle his scream. He sank to the ground and I knelt over him, his eyes piercing mine with terror and shock.

I must have passed out. Next thing I knew, I was stumbling to my feet again as a red strobing light flooded the terminal and a klaxon sounded. The man was dead, but… there, the emergency phone dangled off the side of the terminal, a forlorn wind chime spinning lazily in the air. There would be a squad of enforcers on their way, and I didn’t know how much time I’d lost.

On hands slippery with blood — mine or the tech’s, I couldn’t tell anymore — I hoisted myself up and jammed the pass I’d taken from the first unfortunate into the slot. The displays blinked and flashed the dead man’s name and then gave way to a schematic of the city. Like a huge bicycle wheel, it fanned out in a protective dome, the spokes separating one district from the next. My eyes flicked across them: sections of town for the rich, the laborers, the government workers… even in our new Utopia, the men like me had to be segregated.

A quick glance told me I was closer to the heart of the city than I’d thought. This nerve center was just a few blocks from the city council’s office. My dried, rotting lips curled into a smile which was probably pretty horrifying, given my dearth of teeth. A second glance froze my blood. The perimeter of the wheel was spotted with red, blinking alerts, some tiny, the size of an apartment; others the size of a city block. Breaches. Leaks. Irradiated air and smoke and dust streaming into our city on the hill through a hundred tiny defects in the “impenetrable” walls. Too many failures to be a mistake. This was a systematic, designed failure of the defenses. I stared for a moment — too long, really — then began to laugh, cackling so hard I set off another wave of dry heaves.

The bastards have killed themselves.

Oh, it was too rich. They meant to cleanse the country of the nameless masses, eradicate the weak, the unnecessary, the unwanted. To do it, they built dirty bombs so insidious they had shattered the very walls they’d built to protect themselves. Somebody inside had killed them all from inside. I might have wept with joy, but for the dehydration.

I wondered if the poor souls in the city knew, then realized that, of course, they didn’t. The liars in charge would hide the truth from them until it could be hidden no longer, just as they had hidden it from me. Odds were, everybody in the city would be dead from radiation poisoning within a few weeks. My revenge was complete, and I hadn’t even had to lift a finger.

But it wasn’t good enough. Not for a man like me.

The footsteps of the enforcers clattered on the corrugated walkway outside the control room. They’d be on me in moments.

Bart Luther, Freelance Exorcist

Pavowski3 Comments

Chuck’s challenge this week: The Four Part Story, part two. It’s a round-robin storytelling exercise, and this week I’m extending the story started last week by Josh Loomis: Bart Luther, Freelance Exorcist. The story started off at 980 words. I added about 1005.

Josh’s bit begins the story. My bit begins after the asterisks. If you enjoy it, click back to Josh’s blog and let him know, too!

 

Bart Luther, Freelance Exorcist

I can’t imagine to understand everything that occurs in my life. I can’t account for everything I’ve seen. At least in terms of science. But those aren’t the circles I’ve traveled in, even after I left the church.

Not that me leaving keeps the church out of my life.

The balding priest sitting across my desk from me kept looking down at his hat, his fingers on the brim, perhaps because instructions were embroidered on it in really tiny letters. I rested my elbows on the desk’s blotter and interlaced my fingers in front of my chin. The clock on my wall ticked away seconds quietly. Finally, he took a deep breath and looked up at me.

“Forgive me, Mister Luther. This is not the sort of thing I am used to discussing.”

I shook my head. “It’s okay, Father O’Donnell. This isn’t the normal thing your parishioners deal with.”

“Ah… yes.” His brow furrowed. “I would appreciate it if you did not mention I brought this to you.”

“Right. Because the church would not want to admit that things like this actually exist.”

O’Donnell shifted uncomfortably in the chair. I kept myself from shaking my head or making a retching noise. Instead, I took a deep breath.

“Why don’t you tell me about the problem?”

“The problem is Samantha. She’s the daughter of one of our parishioners. She’s sixteen years old.”

I lowered my hands to reach for my notebook and a pen. “Possessed?”

“I’m not sure.”

I stopped writing. “You’re… not sure? Is it possible she just has a fever or something?”

O’Donnell shook his head. “She is speaking in tongues. Being… abrasive with her parents, when she never has before. She refers to things she could not possibly know. We cannot think of another way to explain it.”

“And how are you keeping the family from telling everybody in the neighborhood their daughter is possessed by a demon?”

“Her father told me of the trouble in confession. I reminded him that what he told me there remained between us, and that his wife and household were also bound by that stricture.”

I chuckled. “No wonder the girl was open to possession. It’s clear her old man isn’t very bright.”

O’Donnell glared at me. “I don’t think I appreciate your tone, Mister Luther.”

“Not the first time I’ve heard that.”

“We don’t have time for this.”

I looked up from my notes. “If you don’t like how I do things, Father, the door is behind you. Best of luck finding another freelance exorcist in the phone book.”

“But you are not listed in the phone book, Mister Luther. The church office has your card on file.”

Some priests, like most nuns, have no sense of humor. “My point is, I am your only option, unless you want to dust off your older texts, launder a fresh collar, and do this yourself.”

“I have no experience with such things. You have a great deal. Which is why you charge such exorbitant amounts of money for your… freelance exorcism services.”

“I also ghost-write inspirational books for churches like yours to sell in their gift shops!” I gave Father O’Donnell my best, cheesiest smile. He glared at me.

“Please. Mister Luther.” He paused. “Bartholomew. She needs your help.”

I sighed. “You don’t have to use the girl to get me to help you, Mike. I’m going to do it.”

“You had your reasons for leaving the church, I know, and…”

“Mike, come on, it’s okay. I’m sorry I was so hard on you. You can relax.”

The priest clutched his hat and let out a long breath. “It has been a hard time for me. I christened Samantha. Her confirmation is in two weeks. Or, at least, it should be.”

That got a smile. “Do you know I still have my confirmation bible?”

The priest started smiling, too. “Still sentimental after all these years, my son? That’s a promising sign.”

“You know I’m not coming back to the church, right?”

“I’m not sure why you left the priesthood in the first place…”

“I didn’t like the view from the inside.” I picked up my valise, opening it to check the inventory. “I still pray every day, Mike, and I do what I can to do right by Christ and my neighbors. But between bilking innocent, gullible people for cash and all of the shady crap the Vatican’s been responsible for over the years…”

Father O’Donnell held up his hands in surrender. “I do not agree with your reasoning, Bartholomew. But I’m heartened to know you’re still serving the Lord.”

I shook my head. “However you see it. Now, what else can you tell me about Samantha?”

Father O’Donnell told me where Samantha and her family lived, the sort of things she’d been saying, and I wrote all of it down. I made a fresh batch of coffee, poured some into a paper cup for Mike with a lid, and handed it to the priest before he left. I returned to my desk and sat.

An actual exorcism. From everything Mike had told me, Samantha was now renting out her head to one of the more nasty denizens of Dis. I dug out one of my source journals and looked through my notes. I had it narrowed down to a few possibilities, but I would need more information before I knew for sure. I closed up my journals and notebook, dropping them in the valise on top of the vials of holy water and my blessed crucifix.

I needed to get myself to Samantha’s family’s house to try and save her. But I also needed to make sure I had all the help I could manage. If I was right, I wasn’t the only one in danger.

So, taking a deep breath, I reached for my phone and started to dial her number.

*******

When I pulled up to the house, Nora was already there; arms crossed, leaning back on her beat-up old Volkswagen in a sweater two sizes too big for her. Her mom’s. She watched, unmoving, as I parked my dented Chevy and got out.

It’s an old and practiced way between us, the way we stand apart, waiting. I won’t hug her unless she invites it, but she won’t. Not after our last parting. With an inward chuckle, I counted my blessings that she even came. Truth be told, I didn’t expect her even to take my call.

“Dad.” Her eyes dropped to the gravel drive. She ground a few stones under her heel.

I almost choked up. Years had passed since she called me that. “Sweetie.”

She jerked her head toward the house, the last rays of the setting sun glinting off her hipster sunglasses. “You speak to the family yet?”

I’d gotten my valise out of the backseat to check its contents again. Not that I needed to, but old habits die hard. “Thought I’d let myself be surprised. You?”

“Just poked around out here a little bit.”

“Getting anything?”

“Fear. Confusion. Flashes of anger and hurt.” She cast a resentful eye at me. “The usual family stuff.”

I let her barb pass; she could say a lot worse, and I’d deserve it. I popped my bible into my pocket, snapped the valise shut, and moved toward the front door, stretching my arm out to her. She shoved her hands into her pockets and walked in front of me.

The steps to the front door creaked soothingly underfoot, like an old rocking chair Nora’s granddad used to sit and spin tales in. I thought of him and then I think of how he died, all hooked up to tubes and howling in pain. It’s not a memory any of us cherish, and I hadn’t thought of him in years. The memory just jumped to the surface like a fish in a calm pond. I glanced at Nora, but she was laser-focused on the door.

“Ready?” I asked.

Wordlessly, she rang the bell.

A heavy clatter of rushed footsteps, and the door opened just a crack. Darkness inside, and one wild eye peering out at us in the knife of dusky light. “Are you the priest?”

No. “Yes.”

A thunder of stampeding feet came from the second floor, and the man winced away from the noise like a frightened dog. “I wish you hadn’t rung the bell.” His voice was hushed, the whisper of a hunted child afraid for its life.

“Samantha?”

The stomping stopped, and the man’s face grew pale. “Don’t say her name.”

“Mister Gallod?” Nora’s voice was level and warm, and entirely unlike the voice she uses with me. “May we come in?”

Ed Gallod thought for a moment and then shuffles aside. We’d barely cleared the door when he eased it closed behind us, muffling its clicks as best he could. The only light came from dim, smoky candles. Piles of open books were strewn around the couch, the floor. Unwashed dishes crowded the sink. The disarray made it feel like a squatter’d been living there. Ed trudged a well-worn path through the mess and sat amidst a pile of books. He cleared a space for Nora to sit, and offered to do the same for me, but I declined. I was too nervous to sit still. My eyes watered at the candle smoke, but something else burned behind it. Sulphur. That awful eggy stink burrowed right up into my nose and nested there. Funny, I hadn’t smelled it at all outside. Nora either didn’t smell it or didn’t show it.

“Sorry about the mess,” Ed whispered. He looked like he might crawl right out of his skin. “I’d turn on the lights, but … they just go off. TV’s nothing but static or … voices.” He licked his lips and passed a grimy hand over his face. “Or screaming.” Tears welled in his eyes.

“Father O’Donnell told us. You don’t have to go through it again.” The stairway at the dark end of the hallway gaped like a maw and disappeared halfway up its length. I wished there was light. Light helps.

Nora reached across and lay her delicate fingers across the back of his hand, and a veil lifted. His eyes went clear and he looked at her, and at me, as if seeing us for the first time. His voice, still hushed, came out stronger, resolute. “What do you need?”

“Do you have something of hers? Something personal.”

With a trembling finger, he pointed to the armchair next to Nora. A ratty little stuffed elephant perched there, missing an eye, but cheerful and pink in the half-light. “Her mother was holding onto it… I don’t know, to remind herself of what S–” he stopped and cast his eyes at the ceiling. “Of what she was like. Before she left.”

O’Donnell had told me. Samantha’s mother couldn’t take it. Left town. Went to stay with her sister, and left poor Ed to deal with their possessed daughter all by his lonesome. Poor sap.

Nora took the little elephant and crossed to me, turning it over and over in her hands, her eyes closed. She shuddered a little and then looked at me. I raised my eyebrows at her. She nodded. I turned to Ed.

“Let’s go meet your daughter.”

With heavy steps, candle in hand, he led us up the stairs. The air on the second floor stifled, like a sauna on a summer day. The sulphur smell grew stronger as Ed stopped at the door that could only be Samantha’s. My gut turned to ice. At the floor, under my feet, I saw fingernail scratches in the wood, like somebody had been dragged into the room. I tried to control my breathing, but I couldn’t: it wasn’t me breathing. The sound of angry, quick, snorted breaths filled the hall. The door loomed. My fingers found my bible in my pocket.

Cold Blood

Pavowski10 Comments

Chuck’s challenge this week: The four-part story, part 1. That means it’s time to buckle up, because I’ll be taking on stories started by other authors and extending them in my own twisted ways, and they’ll be taking my creations into new and exciting directions of their own.

It was a bunch of fun last time it happened, so I’ve got high hopes this time, too!

So, how do you go about writing the beginning of a story that you won’t be able to write the ending to? Lots of unanswered questions, lots of plants (no, not that kind of plant), lots of hints at what might have come before, but not a lot of concrete. At least, I think that’s a good way to go about it. At any rate, that’s what I’ve tried to do here.

Enjoy, and if you’re here from the challenge and thinking of using this story stem, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

 

Cold Blood

Cold.

The weather reports had called for cold, but that was the first thing Lem could process, and the only thing, for that matter. Despite the sleeping bag her legs were snarled in, the stocking cap smushing down her short hair, and the two hoodies she had layered up the night before, the cold had seeped into her toes and her fingers in the night, and she could barely feel them.

She sat up, and a crack of thunder sounded in her skull. Too much whiskey the night before; yes, that had been a mistake. And not a drop of water around before bed, either. All the water in their flasks had frozen. Was still frozen, she discovered, turning a heavy flask over. It would have been funny, if her head hadn’t felt like it was tearing into two halves down the middle. She poked Mark to wake him up.

But Mark wasn’t there.

His sleeping bag had been right next to hers when she passed out, but now it was rolled up and neatly secured with paracord in the corner of the tent. Next to it sat Mark’s pack, which was also arranged and collected and ready to depart. But no Mark.

She peeked her head out of the tent — sucking in a sharp icy breath, because god help her, it was even colder outside — and looked around. There, the ring of stones around the pile of ash from last night’s fire. There, the funny little outcropping of trees that Mark had said looked like a bunch of aliens dancing around a maypole. There, the dusty trail leading off into the woods. In the distance, the burbling sounds of the river. But no Mark.

Lem cleared her throat, sending another shockwave through her pounding head, and stumbled out into the grey morning. She tried to call for Mark, but her voice was hoarse and tiny in the predawn mist. It wasn’t unlike him to go for a little explore before she was awake, but something felt off. The sleeping bag, his pack. He hadn’t lit a fire. And he’d had as much to drink as she had, if not more. By rights, he should be the one sprawling on the ground in the tent, unable to shake the fog out of his head. She called out once more, Mark’s name issuing out in a great cloud of vapor. Three crows exploded out of a nearby bush and went flapping off into the sky, cawing at one another and at her pitilessly as the grey swallowed them up.

An hour later, Lem had built a fire and thrown a few sausages in the pan, figuring that when Mark returned she could have a bit of breakfast ready. She’d thawed out a canteen and chugged a good quart of water, and that had helped, too. But the hour had come and gone: she had gathered kindling, listened to the thick sizzle of the gristly meat, and then devoured them herself, all without seeing or hearing any sign of Mark. It was only when she was cleaning up from the meager meal that she started to get uneasy.

Not at the thought of being alone in the wild; she carried a gun and was well-trained in its use. That had been her father’s insistence when she took up hiking, and she dutifully loaded it before every expedition, even though she had never had cause to use it. Nor was she uneasy at Mark’s absence; he liked the solitude of the woods even more than she did, and he would be back soon enough with some clumsy excuse about forgetting to leave a note, and they’d kiss and laugh over it and that would be the end. It was the cold, she realized. The sun was up now, casting long, skeletal shadows through the trees, but it was getting colder. Unseasonable was not the word. The chill was unnatural.

She chuckled at herself as she thought it, and went to pack away her mess kit back in her pack, and that was when she spotted it. It was frozen solid but unmistakable, dark crimson in the dust, glittering with the scattered sunshine; A tiny disk of blood that looked like it might have frozen before it hit the ground.

She bent to examine it, the vapor of her breath seeming to melt its surface just a little, tiny droplets condensing on the angry red ice. Now that she’d spotted this tiny pool, the next one seemed to catch light at the edge of her vision. She rose and walked toward the new spot, and then she saw the next patch of ice… and the next, leading toward that strange snarled copse of trees.

For a fleeting moment, she thought of her gun. Her tent was only thirty feet away, just as far from her now as the weird interwoven trees that had caught Mark’s fancy the night before. It would take only a moment to retrieve it. Then came a sound that made ice of the blood suddenly surging through her veins. The cracking of a twig underfoot, but not under her foot. Under another foot entirely, just beyond the edge of the trees encircling the clearing.

The Crater Devil

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Chuck’s challenge this week: The Subgenre Blender. I drew Cryptozoology and the Wild West.

We kind of laugh nowadays at the stories of monsters often glimpsed but never seen, of creatures that seem to defy nature and terrorize people and animals in the dwindling remote parts of the world. But there was a time (before the internet) when stories like these might have been taken much more seriously. People still believe in Bigfoot, not because the evidence is so compelling and widespread, but because nobody was around to debunk it on a widespread scale before the myth could take hold in people’s minds and hearts.

Imagine what it would have been like in the old west, when there was no internet and barely any newspapers, and you could come to a town and hear stories — believed by an entire town — of a mythical monster that lives out in the mountains.

You might believe it. You might even be willing to spend a lot of money to get famous proving it.

Here’s “The Crater Devil”.

 

 

The Crater Devil

“The Crater Devil?” Luke spoke through a bushy mustache in a voice like honey poured over gravel. “Sure, I’ve heard of it.”

The barkeep set down two shotglasses of whiskey in front of the unlikely pair. The mahogany liquid steamed as it sloshed over onto the lacquered bar. Luke tossed his shot back in one great gulp.

Leonard sipped at his whiskey, wincing mightily at every taste. The liquor made him sweat, though the afternoon was quite cool. “Heard of it, of course. But you’ve never seen it.”

“I don’t think anybody around these parts has seen it.” Luke chuckled. “But we know the stories. And I’ve heard it. That was enough.”

Everybody had heard the stories. Way off in the mountains, past parts unreachable by wagon and only barely traversible on foot, in a great crater two miles wide if it was a foot, was a lake filled with crystal blue water. Nothing green grew for miles around the crater, no animals would drink from its waters. And in that crater, lurking in those waters or prowling the peaks all around, was the Devil. Elverton MacLeod had set out to explore the crater decades ago, and was widely spoken of as the first human victim of the beast.

Depending on who was doing the telling, the Devil looked something like a man, but stood three times as tall, all red-skinned and covered with coarse black hair. Or it had the body of a man and the head of a bull. Or it was a great lizard with legs thick as tree trunks and razor sharp teeth. Or it was an albino coyote with haunting red eyes that howled like a starving child. Nobody telling stories about the Crater Devil seemed to be particularly reliable, so the details were always changing as the stories got passed from one ear to the next. What didn’t change, though, were the Devil’s horrible, piercing, bone-chilling red eyes. The devil could fix you with its gaze from two hundred yards away, and once you were caught, you were stuck. Couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out, couldn’t even think until the Devil either took you or left you. Those who were left would stumble back into town days later, delirious and panicked; hence the varying reports on the creature’s appearance. Those who were taken were never seen again.

Leonard licked his lips and leaned in to whisper in Luke’s ear, too low to be overheard by anybody eavesdropping — which nobody was — “I’m going to find it.”

Luke measured Leonard with a pass of his heavily lidded brown eyes. The man was thinner than a railway line, with an eager face and an untidy mass of blonde hair pulled back and tied with twine. He might have been the nuttiest son of a bitch Luke had ever laid eyes on. A scientist, he claimed. “And you want me to … do what, exactly?”

“Look at me,” Leonard said. “I’m a scientist, not a frontiersman. I wouldn’t last the night out there by myself. You, on the other hand… Besides. Your friends told me you’d know where to find it.”

Sucking his teeth and eyeing the bottom of his empty glass, Luke blew out a heavy sigh. Leonard signaled the barkeep for another round. In silence, Luke pondered while the portly man brought the drinks around. Then he lifted his glass and eyed Leonard over its gleaming rim. “And what’s in it for me?”

This time it was Leonard, a grin splitting his face, who threw back his shot of whiskey. In him, it caused a terrible fit of coughing and wheezing. Finally he gave his response in a hoarse whisper. “If we can document the Devil, we’ll both be rich beyond our wildest dreams.”

Luke sneered and showed Leonard his back, so Leonard added in a noncommittal voice, “I’ll give you a hundred dollars in advance.”

******

Elverton MacLeod turned his face skyward, letting the cooling drizzle smear the grime embedded in the deep crevices of his forehead and cheeks. Full moon coming on behind the clouds. Monster hunters and fame seekers would be out and about. Time to hitch up the wagon.

******

The horses had been abandoned when they started tugging against their harnesses halfway up an unnamed trail that cut between two mountains. The trail itself tapered off to bare rocks and weeds not a hundred yards on, so Luke and Leonard trudged up the craggy face of the mountain one behind the other. Leonard kept tossing nervous glances at the cliff faces around them while Luke chuckled, his broad shoulders trembling silently.

“Nothing to be afraid of ’round these parts,” he said. “‘Cept the Devil, of course.”

On the ridge off to their left was an outcropping of rock that jutted toward the sky like a great angry finger. A darkness under one of its stones seemed to shrink with sudden movement.

“Did you see that?” Leonard said, pointing wildly. He produced a dusty pair of binoculars and mashed them against his face.

Luke shook his head and kept churning his legs. They were traversing the face sideways now, and the footing was too uncertain to be looking at every little thing the weird little scientist jumped at.

The binoculars fogged over almost immediately in the cool mist that was falling, but Leonard was almost certain there was a dark shape behind the rocks that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

******

The two specks were picking their way across the south face of the mountain, making slow but steady progress. They’d reach the crater in a few hours. Then the smaller speck stopped and looked in his direction. Elverton shrunk backwards against the rock face, melding with its shadow. He wouldn’t be seen, but he’d lose time while the man kept his eyes turned toward the rocks. The hides had to be secured to the wagons, the lamps had to be lit…

As he watched, the man’s backward glances grew less and less frequent, until the two specks disappeared around a bend in the crags. With unnatural grace, Elverton scrambled away along his secret path back to the crater.

******

In the twilight, the crater exploded with color. The still water of its surface caught the jagged peaks of the ridge opposite, inverted them and flung them back skyward again over the sickly grey sky. The drizzle had grown into a light rain and turned the stones underfoot into slick little traps, hungry to turn their ankles as they picked their way down toward the crater. The far face of the basin was covered in shadow, and the rock faces that curved down toward the crater’s edge were striated with darkness.

Even in the growing darkness, the scientist’s eyes were alight with fervor. A faint, reverent whisper escaped from him: “This is it!” They had reached the level ground at the bottom of the basin, not fifty feet from the water’s edge. “Keep watch,” he told Luke, as Leonard unshouldered his pack and began to set up a camera on a tripod, unfolding its spindly legs and trying to make it stand level on the loose stones.

Dutifully, Luke swiveled his eyes across the lake, wondering how long the funny little man was going to keep him waiting out here.

******

The two men had stopped in the perfect place. The darkness would hide him until he was almost upon them. Elverton threw the stitched sheet of red-painted leathers over his head, hoisted his trundle, and wheeled it slowly toward them.

******

Leonard was dancing around like an unstrung marionette, looking through the camera, testing the flash powder, holding his hands up to frame various aspects of the landscape. A waste, Luke thought. He wouldn’t see a damned thing out here as it was, and the shadows were only getting deeper. Luke found a stone big enough to park his butt and parked it, absently rolling a cigarette.

Then the canyon exploded in noise.

It sounded as if an ox had been shot through the throat and was gurgling and groaning its life out, but loud enough to shake the walls of the basin and reverberate in their bones. Leonard fell over, sending stones clattering. Luke’s cigarette fell from his lip and he froze.

Swaying toward them, a hundred yards off, were a pair of searing orange orbs, bright and terrible against the dark. Leonard had recovered and ran for his camera, but the terrible howl broke loose once more and he crashed into the tripod, pulling it over with him.

“Luke?” Leonard shouted, his voice two octaves higher than normal. “Get your gun!”

The legs of the tripod had tangled in his coat and Leonard kept tripping and stumbling, getting halfway to his feet before thumping to the ground again. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw the Crater Demon lurching toward them, the details of its appearance only suggested in its silhouette; it was the size of a large horse but it moved like a lizard, its crimson hide the color of blood behind its burning eyes. The sudden moisture at Leonard’s thigh did not come from the rain-soaked stones he kept stumbling on.

“Luke?!”

The Demon was no longer looking at Leonard. It had turned its attention fully on Luke, who still sat, motionless, his hand still curled toward his lip as if he were still holding his cigarette. His eyes were wide and sightless, his face wet with tears, but he did not stir as the beast slithered toward him.

“LUKE!”

Then the Demon howled again and Leonard’s reason fled faster than he did. He abandoned his camera and his binoculars and bag and ran as fast as his legs could carry him back up the path out of the canyon, and he did not stop running until he was back in the town, dehydrated, delirious, and babbling about a horrible red beast that had devoured his partner whole on the spot.

******

“Shit, Elvy.” Luke shoved the mass of hides off him, and Elverton collapsed next to him in a cackling fit. He spun the little wooden crank and the beast’s howl echoed from the tiny box, but disconnected from the amplifying horn, it sounded hollow and tiny. “You coulda gone easy when you knocked me off the rock. Damn near twisted my ankle.” Grabbing one of the lanterns off of the mask of the beast, Luke got to his feet and began picking through Leonard’s bag. The binoculars were intact, and there were a handful of gizmos in there whose purpose he could only guess at. More interesting to Luke was the wad of cash at the bottom.

“Did you see his face?” Elverton hooted.

Luke shook his head. He wondered if Elvy wasn’t losing his mind a little bit after all these years living in the wilderness, but the payoff more than made up for it. “Over four hundred dollars in here, man.”

“And that camera’s got to be worth a few hundred more,” Elverton said. “Think he’ll come back?”

Luke shook his head. “He pissed himself. He ain’t coming back. Neither should I, after the stories he’s gonna tell. Not for a while.”

“Next town over?”

Luke grinned. There was a pretty waitress at the saloon in Huskerville. Time to go fishing again. “Next town over.”

Page-Turner

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Chuck’s challenge this week: Must Contain 3 Things. My three things: Library, Survival, War.

Ever gotten totally lost in a really good book? So did Elloree. Her story is below.

Page-Turner

In the flickering light of her dying candle, Elloree resembled nothing so much as a praying mantis in smudged plaid and oversized glasses. Her spindly fingers tracked like machines across the typeface, barreling toward the bottom of the page, then flicked it over with robotic efficiency. Her radiant eyes bounced from side to side as they drank in the words like so much water down the throat of a man dying of thirst. Her papery lips alternately pursed with puzzlement or curled up with satisfaction or opened just slightly to gasp with surprise. In a matter of moments, she had finished the book and tossed it on the pile of its brethren; another stripped-down carcass added to a growing pile of bones.

She rose, dusted her knees, and ghosted her way through the aisles. They towered over her diminutive frame like guardians, shielding her from the crimson light streaming through the windows, the streaked and scorched sunlight invading her fortress as it did for only a few times every day. She floated through fiction, bandied around the biographies, and reveled past the reference section, landing at last in her favorite section: Romance. She picked out a thick volume with a strapping bare-chested man on its cover and hummed dreamily to herself as she carried it back to her nest.

******

Rast’s shrill whistle pierced the evening, and Nell lifted her gaze from her bedraggled footsteps.

“Up ahead,” Rast whispered, as if afraid of breaking the dusty silence. “See it?”

She did. And as it always did when they approached another town, her throat tightened. Most likely it was just full of more of the same: smoldering corpses, shattered buildings, the haunting echoes of an entire community’s tortured final moments lingering in the air like poison. Occasionally, despite all the festering death, there would be some supplies. It had to be risked.

Nell straightened her pack on her shoulders, brushed an errant strand of soot-smeared hair from her face. “Let’s go.”

******

The sun was almost down, but Elloree hardly noticed. She never did, as the sunset looked the same as sunrise and much of the rest of the day. With the never-breaking columns of acrid black clouds streaming overhead, only an occasional ray of burning light would streak through, and then only briefly. The rest was darkness and smoke, and her candle was guttering. She lit another and continued her story.

******

The extermination here had been methodical and absolute. The roads were pulverized and difficult to walk on; Rast and Nell found their footing much more easily several feet off the road in the mud and weeds. The buildings were hollowed and skeletal, their shells weird misshapen silhouettes against the fading red light. No food. No survivors. Nothing left.

“Sun’s down soon,” Nell said. “Time to go.” She hated making camp in towns; you never knew when a sentry would pass over. They were better off when they could find a copse of trees or a rampant untended cornfield. But Rast wasn’t listening. He was squinting against the fading light, his three-fingered hand needlessly visoring out the sun. “There’s a light.”

“Don’t be stupid. I don’t want to get caught out here.”

“Nell. That building. Over there. It’s intact.” he pointed with his five-fingered hand. “And there’s a light in its window.”

Nell sighed and humored Rast with a look. He was daft as a post, but loyal, and he tried to help, bless him. He was also absolutely right.

The Septids razed every building they declared “tactically useful,” which included food storage, weapons repositories, residences, schools, churches, and offices. Occasionally you’d find a squat untouched, a shed or a low-slung warehouse. This building was small — probably too small to hold anything useful — but it was also definitely illuminated from within. Not by much. A light too faint to be mistaken for anything other than the reflected glow from the scorched sun burned at one window at the nearest corner. But that one window glowed while the others were dark. Rast’s sharp eyes had picked out something useful after all.

She turned to him and nodded, drawing her pistol. “Quietly.”

******

The cracked and smoke-stained door opened soundlessly as Rast leaned into it, and on practiced, stealthy footsteps, they stole into the wide open space.

A library.

For a moment, Nell simply gaped. She couldn’t believe the building was so intact, but it didn’t take long to figure out why. Books had long ago gone obsolete. They’d been digitized and collected into virtual storage, which was easier to police and took up less space. Most libraries had been decommissioned, but in some outlying towns it hadn’t been finished before the overthrow. And here they were, in a library.

With somebody else. At the end of the room, a shuffling of feet, a clatter of books. They edged around the shelves and aimed their guns at the tiny girl hunched over a novel in front of a ludicrous pile of books. Her eyes peered at them curiously through the thick lenses of her glasses.

She blinked at them, and they at her, for a few tense moments.

“How are you alive?” Nell finally asked.

Elloree shrugged.

“How long have you been here?”

She shrugged again.

The girl seemed so carefree, so unimpressed by them. Nell felt foolish. “How did you survive the war?” She demanded, her voice growing shrill.

“The war?”

Rast giggled foolishly. Nell scowled. “The war,” she explained, “that wiped out most of humanity. The war,” she continued, “that destroyed this town. The war,” she finished, “that somehow left you untouched. You didn’t know?!”

Elloree shrugged, looking a little sheepish. “It’s just… well… I’ve been reading.”

Rast began cackling. “Bookworm read right through the end of the world!”

“It’s just,” Elloree said, “that they were really good books.”