Banshee (4 page)

The man’s eyes goggled at her choice of words. “Bigger than hell hounds coming to eat us? What could be worse than that?”

Lurvy chuckled with mischief. “When the other riders see these, you’ll be sewing dragon scales until your fingers fall off.”

Andi and Dane both hooted their approval at that.

Tenafelt rubbed his scalp with an exaggerated slowness, and then sighed. “I guess I hadn’t thought this through.” He pulled at a lip and then clapped his hands together decisively. “Have the squeakers and middies round up all of the scales they can find from the stalls, midden heap—everywhere. Even cut down those ridiculous mobiles hanging on the Commodore’s porch. I want them here by this afternoon.” He looked around in dismay. “And get my wife. She’ll need to be here, too. As well as any of the other midshipmen who have too much free time this month. Or this year.” With one final grumble, he retreated to a supply closet and began pulling materials free. His already busy schedule just got more hectic, but if he was any judge, this was going to save lives. And in turn, that meant they could finally start thinking about winning this godforsaken war.

Dragons

“We just didn’t know what was going on. It was—look, I know that a lot of smart people could see the dragons, put their hands on them, smell the spice of their skin. Hell, there was one senator who had a massive Firster male
burp
in his face after eating a truckload of tuna. It wasn’t like people couldn’t see what was real; they were as real as anything that had ever existed under the heavens. It was just that we couldn’t make these creatures who spoke to us like children fit our collective psyche. The whole planet was at war in one way or another, and there were idiots—politicians, yeah, but regular people too, and don’t get me started on those asshole professors who tried to say that the governments had gotten together and engineered the dragons. Like
that
could ever happen. All that nonsense about dragons being an extension of the military-industrial complex, and how we needed to find out who was really responsible for all of the missing people? It was insanity. There were like forty million people in the United States who just vanished, but then someone got the bright idea to start treating all of the holes in the ground—you know, mining tunnels, caves, whatever—like crime scenes. The first time that guy from New Jersey sprayed Luminol in a collapsed subway tunnel . . . I still remember the way the reporter screamed. That place lit up light a Christmas parade. There was blood
everywhere
, thirty-feet high on the ceilings, along the walls, just—all over. Who knew how many people had been dragged down there? I mean, who really gave a damn about their neighbors, you know? No one cared. No one paid attention to anyone except themselves, and maybe a small part of their family. We were like a herd of sheep who decided to ignore each other. We were the perfect prey. Those first few months, when the creatures were hunting, they did whatever they wanted, and no one fought back. Hell, no one even noticed. I know I didn’t, and I was a cop; I got paid to be observant. I didn’t even have time to feel sorry for myself, though. My wife was taken by something that looked like a dark green crab, six-feet tall that walked upright. It ripped into her and had her down a sewer before I could draw my personal weapon. After I sobered up a week later, I thought to myself that if anyone didn’t believe it now, they were as good as dead. They just didn’t know it.” – Officer Tomas Fusco, New York Police Department

—
Bulwark Archival Materials, Access Date 96 A.R.

Ruins of Louisville/Kentuckiana

August 6-15, 2074

Railways, that transformer of the American West, still existed in the newly-baptized destruction of the continent. Abroad, these staples of transportation remained—Europe, in particular-- and the railroads that endured were near the top of the technological heap in terms of surviving relics from the bygone era of modernity. South American railways were non-existent, as was functioning transportation of any kind near mountains, but Central Asia still held on bitterly to their trains. These were the locomotives that had ferried German soldiers as they hurried south to assist the Ottomans, more than a century earlier. France had no less than three routes still in working order, as did England. There were unconfirmed reports of former arms dealers using trains as mobile residences, looping endlessly across the scorched remains of Syria and Iran. In the American heartland, there was a reasonably functional loop that linked up as far as the ruins of Chicago to the north, and Corinth, Mississippi to the southeast. Trade continued via rail, even if the entire operation was held together with wire and prayers. The second purpose that the trains served was salvage. Little manufacturing existed on the entire planet, if at all, so the constant search for useful goods was unending. Venturing into fallen cities and towns was among the most dangerous work known to man, and the hardy souls who pursued that occupation were wild, morally-ambiguous people who rarely behaved long enough to stay in town more than a day or two. The last significant load brought in to trade was three entire cars loaded with appliances, parts, and tools from an abandoned industrial park in Louisville, Kentucky—or to be more accurate, the remains of what had once been Louisville.

The floods killed off whoever was too slow to get to high ground, which was nearly everyone, and it had taken decades to find a way around several wall-like structures of debris that effectively ringed the ruins from the swollen Ohio River southward. An enterprising salvage crew manned by a hardass named Cynthia Pennyroyal finally broke through just north of the tusks that were once a bridge connected to Indiana. Landing her four salvage boats on the shattered remains of the Louisville riverfront, she lost three experienced men in the span of a minute—one to drowning, while two were eaten whole by a crocodilian nearly sixty-feet long that had been waiting in the toxic muck under the bridge pilings. A lucky shot from her pilfered M72 LAWS rocket went through the beasts’ eye and detonated in its cavernous skull with a gelatinous thud. Her crew, now only nine strong, had spent two days skinning the monster, taking every claw, tooth, and bit of rib bone they thought could be used. The talons, nearly two-feet long, were blacker than the soul of a horse trader, and just as sharp. Cynthia mourned her lost men with a toast from her stores of honest-to-god bourbon, saluted their corpses that were now hidden in the gut of that unholy creature, and then stepped confidently into the debris that used to be a city.

The find was life-changing. Her crew would never want for anything, ever again, and the runoff from such an enormous haul meant that she could trade at will with every township in a five-hundred mile radius. Cynthia’s team set about securing the opening with deadfalls and other traps; nowhere in the new world order did the term
sharing
ever get bandied about, and they weren’t about to begin charity work anytime soon. Humanity was important, but so was business, and Cynthia was an expert at making both ideas work together.

New Madrid, August 4, 2074 A.D.

From any height or distance, the town looked remarkably like a series of lumps covered in vegetation. Closer, the design of the houses became clear, and after the facts of the area became apparent, the residences appeared downright ingenious. Low, semi-buried walls left little above ground, and thus little to attack in the event of an overrun from Underneath. All of the streets bowed back in a crescent, where they eventually gave way to the sprawl of farms that provided the bulk of the food for the 1800 residents. The roofs of each house were cleverly terraced bed gardens, each covered in a riot of various herbs, peppers, tomatoes, and other plants that yielded high value with minimal work. At the center of the town stood the taller but still terraced Grange Hall, a modest building of one and a half stories that had actual glass windows. South of town, an active creek was dammed three times in less than a mile, and hydroelectric stations, small but effective, sat perched at each of the most stable bank areas. The streets were graveled and there were pads of concrete visible as well, although those appeared to be more for stabilizing the land than transportation. A single, well-groomed rail spur passed in between the town proper and the first fields. Slightly elevated and parked above an endless ribbon of chipped granite and schist, the rails curved off into the distance; two bright lines reflecting the sun until they winked out under the swell of ripening wheat and oats. The trains, truncated affairs of a kludged engine and a few cars, would arrive infrequently from either direction. There was a reasonably functional loop that linked up as far as the ruins of Chicago to the north and Corinth, Mississippi to the southeast. Their primary function was trade, but sometimes refugees arrived as well, usually a few days after the killing moon. It was understood that with each dark night of the month, another community, sometimes two, would fall to the predations of the hordes raiding from cave systems across the continent. The dirty, wounded survivors would arrive dehydrated and near catatonic. They rarely had any goods or trade items, but their labor and expertise were welcomed just the same. New Madrid had need of residents. Underneath did not stop claiming victims just because the lifeblood of the town was being drained away, one screaming kill at a time. Salvage was by definition an uncertain pursuit; the men and women risking their lives to pry goods from the dead cities could be relied only as long as they survived. Their rough trade was a calling, not a career, and they were often regarded with a healthy respect. French expected a train soon, and his eyes flickered down the length of track, wondering how far away the inevitable conglomerate of rail cars and broken souls might be. He felt a kinship to the people who braved the dangers of overland train travel because he had been one such soul not a year earlier.

French was born and bred to the westernmost portion of the Appalachians near what had been Asheville, North Carolina. His parents were, in their original incarnation, an artist and a college professor, but those occupations fell by the wayside when the entire world went to hell. Asheville resisted the fallout with stolid resilience. It may have been the excellent location, or perhaps it was the wildly-diverse artistic community with rustic skills that suddenly came back in fashion. No matter what confluence of luck and ability Asheville possessed, it worked. French’s parents were no shrinking violets, and the maxim he’d grown up with—never stop learning—became a fact of life that could, at the very least, preserve some sliver of hope for their familial future. From an early age, it became clear that he was a child who would need little in the way of encouragement. His parents mined every resource possible to salvage books, maps, and anything of note that could prepare him for the savagery that waited just outside the bucolic setting of the robust city in the forest. For nearly six decades, Asheville didn’t just survive, it grew. Twin landmarks on opposite sides of the valley were appropriated and developed as nerve centers. On one side, the vast sprawl of the Biltmore estate stood watch, its grounds teeming with activity as a market, meeting place, and nexus for local defense. Opposite the noble Biltmore was the other city sentinel, The Grove Park Inn. Both locations boasted excellent views, access, and naturally-occurring defenses that only buttressed the success of Asheville, and after fifty-nine years, it looked like the forests of Western Carolina were going to be the launching pad for a regional government.

That dream ended with a roar. On July nineteenth, fifty-nine years after the first emergence of dragons, and fifty-eight years after the first hellspawn leapt upward to feed, Asheville was attacked by three—and
only
three—monsters of such hideous power that the land shook with their overland arrival. The first hint that something was wrong came in the form of nearly a thousand dead livestock tumbling down the confluence of the Swannanoa and French Broad Rivers. Scouts at the limits of the defensive ring raised the alarm immediately upon sighting the gore-clogged rivers rising up their well-tended banks. Hogs, horses, and cattle of all sizes were gashed open, presumably drained of blood, and tossed into the river somewhere upstream. The pale, pink flesh of the dead animals was unnaturally light in color, and many were missing their heads. Crawling on and in each carcass were grotesque, misshapen lice, nearly the size of a lobster. More than one of the townsfolk went to investigate, only to recoil in horror upon examining the crustaceans. At the end of the waving tendrils that sprouted from their carapace, were human eyes and rasping feline tongues protruding from the general vicinity of their mandibles. They croaked and groaned, and one militiaman, a steady veteran of two decades, swore that the louse he picked up laughed at him. Rumor spread at the speed of fear, and there were no less than six sightings of a robed figure in the forest on the opposite side of the defensive lines. Panic was on the verge of dissolving what defenses Asheville had in place until the rather prosaic issue of the river and livestock caused the town to refocus on the immediate issue. Mass death was nothing new, but the volume of carcasses was so great that the river began to clog, and then rise, threatening to burst free and undo years of backbreaking work by the city and her people. A savvy governor named Amanda Larson swiftly began moving militia into the area. While her instincts were correct, no one could have possibly been prepared for what arrived behind the mounds of dead livestock.

The first of the Unholy Trinity, as they were coined, burst from the river on six squat, muscular legs. Nearly seventy feet in length, the creature was smooth and featureless, right down to the short, unremarkable tail that lashed the water to muddy froth as it powered toward the hastily organizing soldiers. They needn’t have bothered with their small arms. In seconds, the maw of the beast opened to reveal a circular row of needle-like fangs that flipped outward into a halo nearly ten feet across. The monster was stupidly single-minded, but it was enough. The scarlet mouth was the only color on the oddly pale behemoth, and it began to dart forward and impale screaming men and women with terrifying speed. The rules of engagement became simple: once the fangs touched a human, all blood was drained from their flailing body until they ceased struggling, then the fangs, operating with complete independence, would flip outward and discard the remains. In short order, additional troops and some bold citizens began to unleash massive amounts of gunfire into the gray flesh of the lamprey lizard, causing it to slow appreciably. Several militias with massive fifty caliber rifles on low tripods began adding their hammering shots to the melee with obvious effect. Gouts of fluid and flesh blew skyward with each booming impact from the riflemen, whose rate of fire was slower than the militia. With the enormous knockdown power of the .50 calibers in play, a crescent of soldiers began to advance on the beast, and it looked like a pyrrhic victory would soon be at hand. When three massive reports sounded at once, and the targeted heavy fire struck in a fusillade of destruction, the skull of the creature caved in with the ripping sound of an enormous tree being felled. The monster, then covered in oozing wounds, slowed to a stop, raised its eyeless head to the skies, and loosed a long keening howl of anger and frustration. The ruined skull crashed to the earth with a massive splash of pink liquid and gore, and an uneasy quiet settled over the thick haze of smoke. The wounded cried out as rescuers began to move warily forward, giving as wide a berth as possible to the still-twitching corpse. And then the forest exploded.

Matching horrors rampaged forward from the mountainside, with shrieks that froze the blood of everyone in the valley. Scaled and apelike, the putrid gray pair of demons stood four stories tall, both armored with bone plating that gleamed like poisonous fruit. Where the lizard had been silent, these two uttered glass-rattling howls from the moment they spied the masses of defenders standing near their downed compatriot. In a blur, one of the monsters accelerated away and up the mountain, crashing through trees in a cacophony of destruction that seemed totally without purpose . . . until it stopped.

Oh, shit
, the town collectively swore when nearly forty thousand people realized they were bracketed with nowhere to run. An unseen command was shared, and both animals flashed into action incongruous with their heavy builds. The apes were athletic, angry, and remorseless. They smashed and grabbed in a whirlwind of destruction, flattening buildings and hurling people into the air, or crunching them between molars the size of washing machines. The screams and chaos were too much, and panic overwhelmed many of the militia who were still in shock from the butchery of the first attack. French, a master woodsman and officer in the militia, was out of the fight on a salvage meeting nearly three miles away. Unbeknownst to him, his wife had the presence of mind to flee for their bolt hole when it became obvious that the fight was over. Humanity had lost. By the time he reached the outer defensive ring, it was apparent that Asheville, the hope of a new nation and the center of what was called the Cherokee State, wasn’t just going to be sacked, it was doomed. Despite the unrelenting mania of the monsters, the big guns of the militia still boomed out at regular intervals. It was obvious that they were having an effect, because one creature could not raise its left arm, and the other had sheets of putrescent emerald fluid raining from one eye. Both were wounded, but the largest of the pair wasn’t done. It lunged and tore with renewed vigor, raging over homes that had been crushed more than once. At that point, the attack had passed the one hour mark, an ungodly amount of time for such terror to reign unabated. Thousands of dead were scattered through the debris, and French could see horses and riders in full gallop leaving in every direction. The city was dead. The state was no more, and when French saw the matchsticks that had been his parent’s home, he knew his life in Asheville had ended. He gathered two small watertight trunks from the remains of the only home he’d ever known, which was now collapsed downward with the enormous weight of not one but two giant strikes from the monsters. He prized two rifles and ammunition from the space that had been his father’s shed, and counted his lucky stars that both were undamaged. A Browning pistol was beyond repair, and he dropped the once-noble weapon into the mud with a pang of regret. Following an arterial spray of blood, he found his mother’s hand, and nothing else. Numb with loss, he began to dig, but then stopped as the enormity of the day settled on his heart with a painful constriction.

A dazed neighbor whose shirt was impossibly clean, despite his wounds, looked up at French, who asked simply, “My father?”

A short grim shake of his neighbor’s head told him everything he needed to know. He sensed without searching that his wife was already long gone, and let a shaky sigh leave his body.

“My wife?” he asked.

The neighbor stood thinking. “She left in a hurry before the . . . before the attack started. Told my wife to get out, said that she saw something on the bank of the river. Someone, I mean.” His neighbor paused and spat blood. His shirt was blooming red now, but when French made to assist him, he was waved off with a sad smile. “Got hit from behind.” He turned slowly to show his back to French, and a long sliver of metal protruded from high on his spine. “It’s in my lung. You go to that wife of yours. She took some stuff with her, said you would know where she was. She asked me to get my family, too.” Another slow grimace and his neighbor slumped to the ground. “I don’t think anyone will ever rebuild. Too many bones.” He nodded once at French as his eyes closed for the last time.

There was no shame in relief at knowing some of his family was safe. Underneath his folksy reserve beat the heart of a pragmatist, and he would not apologize for that quality, not that there was anyone left to hear such a confession. French grabbed the nearest horse that was alive and capable of listening, a sturdy appaloosa gelding flicking its ears back and forth in response to the sounds of fear and pain emanating from every corner of the valley. He did his best to calm the mount, and slung his two small cases over the saddle horn, before swinging himself up with the practiced ease of a lifelong rider. He took one last, cringing look at the citywide coffin that had been Asheville, vowed that he would avenge someone, somehow, and set off to the west. His mother had been a Bruxton, originally from the boot heel of Missouri, and her family had a colorful history, to put it mildly. She’d saved letters and accounts of his ancestors for pure entertainment, telling French that there must have been some heavy drinkers in her family tree in order to cook up the stories she’d heard as a child.
West, then. Away from this place and, perhaps, to some semblance of my family,
he thought, as the horse began to canter toward the setting sun
.
Through it all, French never shed a tear. That would come later.