The path decayed along with its markers, meandering back and forth like a drunk with a sextant had plotted the way. What had been a trail grew wild and bent-legged, jogging over hillocks and dipping into ditches. The earth grew wet and spongy until it was like walking over a dead man whose skin was starting to give way to corruption. In places it opened up, and dark water gaped beneath the ground. Flies buzzed in the blackness, eating away the mangled bread crumbs until there was almost nothing left. The clouds parted for Luke’s lamp, and closed in a curtain when he’d taken his light and moved on.
He’d gone nearly twenty yards with no sign of something dead when the air opened up. It was like stepping from a narrow narthex into a vaulted cathedral. The hum ceased, and somewhere nearby water lapped at muddy shores. Far above was a faint click-clacking sound, like bats roosting. Luke held his light up high, but still couldn’t see more than a few yards in any direction. Thick grass shushed against his knees. He turned left, then right, skin prickling on the nape of his neck. The torch flickered, and Luke smacked it against the heel of his hand. It juttered, then steadied. He unscrewed the red lens with careful fingers. White light bloomed, and Luke nearly dropped the flash.
Towering trees stood in a wide circle, their hoary branches and scarred trunks thick and strong. Bones hung from those branches, swaying on twine tendons with every breeze. Femurs clacked against scapulas like wind chime xylophones, and finger bones conducted a symphony of swaying spines. Beneath the bones a lagoon swallowed the land, but eight little islands reared out of the murky pool. Across the expanse, no more than forty or fifty yards away, two trees embraced each other like conjoined lovers. Martyred above the arch like a meat gargoyle was another torso. Black rags and flayed skin dangled from scored ribs, and something was carved in sloping, idiot letters above the carcass.
“Golgotha,” Luke muttered, sounding out the legend written in yard-high letters. The word fell into the quiet, hollow as a lie told in a confession booth. “Jesus Christ.”
Luke stepped closer to the water’s edge, shining his light up at the macabre mobiles. They reminded him of the gator bells his uncle put up every spring. They’d ring in the wind, but people in the parish looked for the brass baubles even if they couldn’t hear them. They knew if there was a bell hung in a tree it was there to let everyone know to keep their hands on the throttle and their fingers on their triggers.
Something splashed in the water, and Luke swung his beam over the pool. Ripples skipped and bounced, turning the surface into a melting spiderweb. Luke thumbed his rifle’s selector switch with his right hand and cozied his finger around the trigger. His knees bent without conscious input, and he tracked his light from one end of the water to the other. All he saw were the waves, and seven little sandbars.
Luke was already moving when the water surged. He made it two steps before the little lake burst like an infected sore, showering his back with warm, brackish wet. His ankle turned, and he went down hard. His flash bounced away in a crazy kaleidoscope of light and dark, and something went after it. Something the size of a diesel tractor that hissed like July rain on a hot top. Luke swung his rifle up with clumsy, half-numb hands, and fired. Three rounds made flat, slapping sounds, and the shape grunted. The torch stopped rolling, and the creature turned toward Luke.
It looked like something that had crawled out of the bottom of the barrel after the six days of creation were over and done with. Its hide was a pale, quarried gravel stretched over a too-big frame. Its massive chest dragged the ground, but its belly sloped up and back to pair powerful hindquarters. Meat hook claws tipped the end of massive feet, tree trunk legs churned the mud, and a lashing, scaly tail dug great gouges in the earth. It had too many legs, too many teeth, and a face that was nothing but a pale, eyeless shelf of bone above a double line of gaping, snuffling holes. The blind behemoth hissed, and charged.
It was fast. Fast enough that Luke barely had time for one more burst before it was on him. He rolled, and the thing thundered past. The tail smashed against Luke’s helmet, turning his roll into a spin as the chin strap gave way and the steel cap sailed into the darkness. He slammed into a tree hard enough to shake dew from the leaves. The bones overhead beat out a dinner-bell boogie.
The ground shook as the thing wheeled ‘round and came again. Luke didn’t have time to roll out of the way. He jumped, grabbed a branch, and swung his legs up just as the sightless freight train rammed the base of the huge tree. The tree swayed, and Luke’s grip went queasy. He hooked his legs around the branch, gritted his teeth against the pain in his ankle, and hauled himself up. The thing hit the tree again. Then a third time. It paused, head cocked like it was listening for falling fruit. When nothing fell it walked around the side of the tree with its head held high in the air. It took a step and snuffled. Then two more. Then a third. Luke stood slowly, arms out for balance until he had his back against the trunk. The thing wasn’t sure where he was, but Luke was sure it would find him if he didn’t figure something out fast.
He drew his M-7 and slipped the muzzle ring over the barrel. He held his breath then clicked it into place. There was a pause from below, then the damp snuffling continued. He took a firm grip on his rifle and pressed on the ejector clip with his thumb the same way he’d pushed in the spring lock on his door when he’d been a teenager. The tension built, and it clicked like a tiny twig breaking. The creature paused again, holding its breath. Luke did the same, and after fifteen seconds it started walking and sniffing again. He pressed in the fresh magazine but if the creature heard it around the tree it gave no sign.
Luke shifted his grip on the rifle and waited. The whatever-it-was came closer, circling around the other side of the trunk. It rose up, clawing and sniffing at the lower branches. Luke cocked his arm and let fly. The half-empty magazine sailed through the air and struck a hanging skull with a hollow crack. The skull rebounded, banging off a set of leg bones, which jived along half a dozen ribs. The thing dropped low, pointed itself at the other tree, and Luke jumped. His boots slid on the creature’s skin but he brought his rifle down bayonet-first into the back of its neck. The steel caught against something hard, and turned just as Luke’s boots skidded off the back plates and his ass hit hard enough to make his tailbone go numb.
The creature roared, and the sound reverberated over the water. It shook and bucked, whiplashing back and forth across the broken shore. Luke held on, jerking and twisting the six–and-three-quarter inches of steel embedded just south of the base of the skull. When he didn’t come free, the thing turned back toward the lagoon and started running. It managed three lumbering steps before Luke pulled himself onto his knees, and squeezed the trigger.
A bomb went off in the creature’s neck, and pain raked Luke from crotch to crown. The behemoth spasmed and threw him off. Luke hit the dirt hard enough to jar his brain, skidding through the mud in a graceless ballet. The creature swayed like a drunken prize fighter, blood and ichor pumping from its mangled neck. Its knees gave out slowly and it collapsed with its snout in the water. Blood pooled, pouring into the lagoon and turning it a darker shade of black. Luke watched the thing twitch and scrabble, but he stayed where he was until the creature’s bladder let go in a stream that reeked of battery acid. When he was sure it was dead he levered himself to his feet, collected his light, and went looking for his rifle.
He found what was left of his M-16 half-in and half-out of a mud puddle. The stock was cracked, the carry strap had pulled loose from the front mooring, and a thick clot of muck dribbled from the inner workings. The firing pin had blown through the rear workings, the hammer was bent back like a crippled gymnast, and the barrel ruptured like a rusty sewer pipe. The M-7’s handle was locked in place, but the blade had sheared right off. Luke ejected the clip, unsnapped the strap, and sat on a rock where he could watch the water along with its recently deceased resident.