Demonworld (10 page)

They saw images of the little ones who inhabited the valley, the ones the humans called “ghouls”. Twisted, loathsome things made in the image of man, their streamlined brains could at least be remotely used by Blindness to find the invaders. Once that happened – Bilatzailea must strike!

Eragileak whined into the channel. Was his strength of no use at all?

Blindness cast an image of one of their hated foes: Serpens Rex. He, too, was made in the image of man long ago when there was no end to the pride and means and cruel artifice of man. Eragileak hissed, blood boiling. How many times had he faced that scaly monster, that living blasphemy-made-flesh? Even earlier today Serpens Rex had ruined his game of chasing some human child through the cold woods. Gods, what a fighter he was!

He, too, must be tracked. Eragileak must do the thing himself. It was bad timing, to be sure, what with human invaders running loose in the oasis, but when winter came Serpens Rex would surely bury himself and they would not see him again for months. And if these humans were only the beginning of a major incursion, they could be sure that they would need progeny based on the seed of Serpens Rex. He must be found and dealt with now.

Dealt with?
Eragileak imagined finding the lizard-thing sleeping, his belly fat with kill. He imagined bringing a rock down and crushing the monster’s head with it. He saw its eyes pop out under the pressure of a deflated skull. He wondered if Blindness truly meant for such an amazing thing to come to pass.

Blindness sighed, his shadow shivered, Eragileak saw the mist of his breath in the cold air, then Blindness said into his mind:
Yes, but first… we need a little squirt of that seed, dear uncle!

Eragileak nodded at the wisdom of it, then turned and loped back into the forest. Bilatzailea slid down from the altar, her little naked feet tapping on the glass, then she went her own way.

That seed
, said the voice of Blindness through the broadcast.
I tell you, an ounce of that slime, with all its many gifts, will open the door of the coming Coagulation
.

The great Coagulation! Blindness thought for a moment on the Final Ritual Sacrifice, the Holy Glutting, the worldwide act of violence that would end the age of man and usher in a new aeon of love and eternal peace. Man had been a blight upon the earth and a scar in the vision of heaven for so very long. But now, at last, the Great Mother, the Queen of All Flesh, had her house in order. In a few short years all the children of God would bubble up from the homes down below in three beautiful hosts of the holy and they would speak to mankind face to face in the only language that mankind understood. They would crush the bodies of men and women and pile them up like a mountain of agony. Blindness could see the twisted limbs, the runes of blood written on soft flesh, and in their eyes…

Those eyes would be open, and they would finally see a vision of a universe black and beautiful and eternal.

River Crossing

Marlon woke in the morning feeling famished but ready to tackle the day. He saw a sharp, blue sky through the network of black limbs. He saw Peter lying in a hollow above him, mouth open, snoring like a pig on its back. Iduna was curled up beside him, a disturbing sight. Marlon plucked a handful of the gray leaves, stuffed them in his pocket, then realized the rest of their group was nowhere near.

Startled, he looked down. He saw Hermann standing and staring at the base of the tree.

“
Hermann!” he hissed. “What is it?”

Silence. Annoyed, Marlon climbed down, huffing and catching on tree limbs. He dropped to the ground, then gasped in alarm – Hermann was watching a strange man sleeping at the base of the tree. Marlon turned about, fumbled for his club, realized he had left it in the tree, then quickly dug through all of his pockets and pulled out the combat knife.

“
Who are you?” he shouted. The old man did not stir, so Marlon turned to Hermann. “Who is he?” Hermann continued to stare, a look of dull hatred on his face. Marlon turned back to the old man, kicked his leg, shouted, “Where’s Wodi and Saul? And why is Hermann acting like a retard? Answer me!”

“
We’re down here.”

Marlon turned and saw Wodi strolling up the hill. Saul sat down below, near the base, where the stream turned about a pile of wide, jumbled stones. Saul looked distant and exhausted. Even Wodi, who usually seemed alert, looked deeply disturbed by something.

“
Where the hell did you and Saul get off to?” said Marlon. “You know we need to stick together! I thought this old guy killed you!”

“
Last night, we…” Wodi paused and looked at the sleeping old man. “Me and Saul, we went into this… old cave.” Marlon looked at the rocks. One large stone jutted up near the stream and Marlon decided that it probably could conceal the entrance to a cave.

“
Without telling us?” said Marlon.

Wodi paused, unsure of himself.

“
Wodi!” said Saul. “Just shut up!”

Wodi lowered his face. He seemed to have aged.

“
Alright, whatever,” said Marlon. “Whatever you guys did in that cave, I don’t really care. Right now, we gotta interrogate this old guy.”

“
He’s probably the seventh,” said Wodi. “Remember? Saul said there were seven of us thrown into this mess.”

Marlon bore his eyes into the stranger. The old man was small and thin, with skin like beefy jerky. He had a sparse beard that was stained yellow. He wore tattered laborer’s coveralls that were worn threadbare at the knees. He came awake and blinked in the light. Marlon stepped back, ready to plunge the knife into him should he reveal himself to be the true mastermind behind their exile.

“
Ughhh,” said the old man. “Hoof!”

“
Talk!” said Marlon. “Now!”

The old man looked about, deeply disappointed, and said, “So this bullshit is real after all.”

Wodi knelt beside him and said, “What’s your name?”

“
Salem Jules,” said the old man.

“
Are you a Havender?”

The old man nodded.

“
And you found yourself out here yesterday morning?”

Again he nodded.

“
Were you given anything?” said Wodi. “A tool? A weapon? A clue?”

“
Nothing,” said the old man. “I woke up and didn’t even have a bit of leaf on me to burn.”

“
Looks like we’re all in the same fix,” said Wodi. “You can try chewing on one of the leaves on this tree, if you like. It’s some sort of psychedelic.”

Jules immediately screwed up his face with distrust and crawled away from the tree. Wodi laughed. As if hurt by the sound of laughter, Hermann winced and said, “Another man about to die!”

Marlon grabbed Hermann by the shirt, then said, “You need to get your head on straight and stop acting like a weirdo, or you’re gonna make me regret going back for your ass!”

“
I… sorry, Marlon!” said the doctor. “I don’t, uh, quite know why that came out of me.”

Peter huffed and made his way down the tree with his eyes glued to the backpack full of nutrimilk. Iduna stared into the distance, forlorn and unhappy and on the verge of complaining about something. Hermann wandered about with a confused look on his face. Marlon watched Saul and Wodi wander away and heard Saul mutter, “Don’t tell anyone about… that place.” He saw the old man, Jules, watching his own hand shaking, in need of some kind of intoxicant.

“
Gods be-e-e-low,” said Marlon. “I’m the only normal one in this whole bunch.” He stood in wonder at the idea of dragging such a collection of knuckleheads all the way back to Haven. Then he thrust his fears into the back of his mind and set about the work of making sure everyone had a spear.

Just before noon the seven came to a wide river. They sat in a huddled group, their spears jutting out from them like a porcupine squatting. Marlon, Wodi, and Peter moved to stand on the bank. Sunlight shone down on them where the river broke the forest canopy in half. Marlon tested the river’s depth with his spear. As far as he could tell, it was bottomless.

“
That map,” said Peter. “If this is the river on that map, and I’m willing to bet that it is, then that means we’re about halfway through the forest. But there’s no way we can cross here. It’s too fast and too deep.”

“
Not to mention what might be in there,” said Marlon. He looked back. Hermann sat against a tree trunk, pale, sweating.

“
Can we make a raft?” said Wodi.

Marlon cast his eyes about the forest. The trees that could be made into rafts or bridges were far too big to cut down with their tools, and none were strong enough to throw a weighted vine to the other side that could be used to pull them across. “We’ll have to move along the river,” said Marlon, “and see if there’s a better place further down.”

Wodi nodded.

“
Hey, listen,” said Peter, suddenly speaking loud enough for the others to hear. “I don’t mean to speak out of turn, but we’ve gone through two-thirds of the nutrimilk already. If we keep going at this rate-”

“
We’ll worry about that later,” said Marlon. He drained a nutrimilk packet and threw it into the river. It sped away from them, and Peter and Iduna exchanged a look with one another.

They walked downstream for over an hour. Marlon was hampered, for while he carried a new spear and knife, he also refused to get rid of his club. Because it had proven effective against Saul, he felt it would be a shame to abandon it when it might prove useful later. It hung on his belt and knocked against his boots.

Eventually, they smelled decay.

They quietly skirted around the stench. However, their route took them far from the river, and the darkness of the forest in that area prevented them from seeing the sun.

“
Stop for a minute,” said Marlon. “We can’t tell east from west. We’re going to lose our way.”

“
Can I scout it out?” said Wodi.

Marlon nodded quickly.

“
You be careful!” Peter said gruffly, and it was not obvious whose safety he was more concerned about.

“
Hell,” said Marlon. “I bet this kid could sneak up on a cat and take the milk from its titties. We’ll be okay. Just yell if you need someone’s head bashed in, alright Wodi?”

Wodi flashed a toothy grin and darted into the darkness.

Long minutes passed before Wodi emerged from the black to join the six. “The hell took you so long?” said Marlon.

“
An army of ghouls,” said Wodi.

Everyone choked on their surprise, then gathered close.

“
There’s a large clearing ahead,” said Wodi. “It’s full of them. I couldn’t get an exact number, because they all look the same, but I think there’s over thirty ghouls there.”

“
A community?” said Saul.

“
Ehh...” the boy shook his head. “They’re all armed. Spears, knives. I think they were males. It was like a hunting party or something like that. There was a big one with them, as big as you, Marlon, but twice as ugly, and I think he was their leader.”

“
So, we go around them,” said Peter, and Marlon nodded.

“
Wait. There’s also... there’s a ferry there. It was sitting on this side of the river.”

“
Doesn’t matter,” said Peter. “We’ll keep going and find a better place to cross downriver. Right?” He looked at Marlon, said, “Right?”

“
Let me think,” said Marlon.

“
What’s there to think about?”

“
Tell me about the layout,” Marlon said to Wodi.

“
The clearing went right up to the river, but there was dense wood all around the clearing. The trees went... I think they went pretty much all the way to the river, plus there was a high bank over the water.” Marlon said nothing, but stared at the ground. The boy said, “I think we could... I mean, it’s possible we could sneak to the ferry. If we go around the clearing.”