Matt Hilton - Dead_s men dust

"It's a warning," I?nally managed. "Or a gatekeeper. I think we've found him, Rink."

"You're not kidding."

We both heard the music again; a sonorous piping this time. I stepped closer to the skeletal form. The music was coming from its bones. Tiny drill holes along the radius and ulna of the forearms made for a maniac's idea of a?ute. When the wind picked up, it disturbed the blanket and produced a racket like a wind chime.

"Son of a bitch's crazy as a bag of weasels," Rink offered.

As we walked on, I couldn't help peering back at the ghostly form. Who do those bones belong to? I wondered. Is there a family someplace that to this day hopes that their loved one will turn up one bright morning and announce that he's?ne, that he only needed to get away for a while but now he's back? I promised myself that I would see to that return, that I would take this person home again. The day wouldn't be bright, and neither would he be?ne, but he would be going home.

As would the next twelve skeletons we came across as we walked.

It was an unholy baker's dozen.

All were posed in similar styles to the?rst, strung up on poles, bodies formed of blankets. But some were in reclining postures, others placed to give the impression of?ight, two of them strung together as though engaged in a slow waltz. Cain was indeed crazy, as dangerous as a pit of venomous reptiles, and every bit as sly.

Across the amphitheater we went, and with every step my dread grew. I wondered if we were already too late. If John were already strung up in an insane ef?gy to Cain's dementia.

The tiny bones strewn in the sand gave me an even greater loathing for Cain than before. Many were the remains of tiny animals and birds fallen out of the sky, but here and there, I saw the phalanges of human?ngers protruding from their graves as though clawing their way to an afterlife denied them. Rink looked equally disturbed. I didn't know what face I wore, but I was sure that if my friend studied me now, he'd see that I, too, could fear.

The wind was picking up. The mist-not true mist, but particles of the alkaline desert borne on the wind-billowed around us. It invaded my mouth and nostrils, caused me to squint. I had the horrifying notion that the desert was actually formed of particles of bone, and I gagged and spat in re?ex. It was an absurd notion, but it was there. I pulled my shirt up over my face as protection against inhaling dead men's dust.

"Hunter."

I heard Rink's whisper. He was thirty feet to my left, crouching down, gun trained on something I couldn't see. I stopped, took up a crouch of my own. Rink indicated something beyond him that I couldn't discriminate from the shifting veil of sand. Duckwalking, I made my way over.

"There" was all Rink said. I could make out a hulking formation of rocks jutting out of the desert like the ruins of a mythical castle. Like the sand, the rocks were chalk white and glowed with phosphorescence against the night sky. If this amphitheater had once been the?oor of an ocean, then the rocks were millions of years old, ancient testimony to volcanic activity that had shattered the sea?oor in a cataclysmic upheaval. Directly ahead of us, two more spectral forms marked a?ssure in the rocks. Truly, they were gatekeepers this time.

This had to be the final place. Cain's place.

Alone, either man was a formidable enemy. Together, Cain had no hope of defeating them. Not when he was armed only with his scaling knife while both of them had semiautomatic handguns. The only chance he had was to separate them; use their loyalty for each other against them. It was a weakness Cain immediately saw. Though they were fearless warriors, neither wanted to die or to lose his friend. Cain, on the other hand, had no such qualms. He was prepared to die to achieve his aims.

Both Joe Hunter and Jared Rington transcended the level of even the most hard-boiled soldier. Their training… no, their indoctrination… had seen to that. Maybe they were beyond the normal psychological and physiological responses to the death of a friend guaranteed to halt even the sturdiest warrior in his tracks. Perhaps, like Cain himself, they had reached that ultracognizant level where they could elevate themselves above the ken of mortal man, to?oat on the seas of chaos where the "natural" order of being meant that nothing was as it seemed. This was the realm in which Cain existed; what if these two had achieved the same level of consciousness? What if, after all these years, he had found worthy protagonists, contenders for his title of Prince of Chaos? He chuckled to himself. Careful that the sound didn't betray his hiding place. Not a chance.

Standing at the threshold to Cain's domain, I balked at entering without a full reconnaissance of the area. Yet at the same time I knew that time was of the utmost importance. John was in terrible danger, possibly with only seconds to live, and I was dithering at the entrance to his torture chamber. Still, that unnatural talent for spotting the viper in the grass was screaming at me and I had to heed it.

I had to choose between my own and John's well-being, and at the end of the day I was left with very few choices. If I waited, he'd be dead. If I charged in, he could still end up dead. I had to act.

I stepped forward.

Rink was behind me. I knew that Cain couldn't come on me from that direction. Rink, on the other hand, had me as a buffer if Cain chose to come at us from the rocks. I went slowly, gun out, eyes and ears scanning for any sign of life. Periodically I looked up.

The rocks towered over me. They were sheer enough that I didn't believe Cain could scale them, but more than one soldier had lost his life by ignoring what was lurking above his?eld of vision. In Vietnam, many a jarhead was taken by surprise by a noose dropped around his throat, or even by the constriction of an assassin's legs dropping from an overhanging bough. The martial art named Viet Vo Dao is based upon that very premise.

I know I was crediting Cain with more tools than he perhaps possessed, but at that moment, before meeting him in combat, I had to credit him with everything possible. In my line of work, to underestimate an individual is to invite death.

The twin sentinels watched my progress. They were larger than those skeletons we'd already passed. More formidable to the eye, with their bison skulls and hulking forms of tattered rags and strips of leather. They looked like something out of a Tolkien novel; chimera-like demons guarding the door to the lower realms.

Beyond them, I came upon a well-beaten path that led to the center of the rock formation. The?ssure in the rocks was natural, but here and there I detected evidence that Cain had helped widen the doorway by means of hammer and chisel. Also, he'd marked his progress with weird symbols and pictograms straight out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. In retrospect, I believe the paintings on the rock surface were a history of his killings, but at the time, I couldn't give his demented story much more notice.

Rink was disciplined enough that he didn't immediately follow me into the passage. I was aware of him somewhere behind me. I could hear his breathing as he crouched at the entrance to the passageway, the strange acoustics amplifying his trepidation. But no words passed between us now. Talking would identify our position. We had to rely on stealth to get us through this thing unscathed. I walked on, mindful of not stepping on a loose pebble or piece of wind-blown brush that would alert Cain. Sweat moistened my brow, tickled between my shoulder blades. My vision was constricted to a narrow focus and my blood rushed in my ears. Not the ideal conditions for hunting. But they were was a response to the adrenaline racing through me and there was nothing I could do about it.