David Hanrahan - Archon of the Covenant

She walked back across the sodden wild, crisscrossing the web of dust and mud, stepping high over peppergrass and trodding past a soiled, trampled patch of chicory. As she got near to the door, she paused — rattled by some question, something out of place. She turned back to the flattened chicory and saw its white petals stamped into the soil. She looked at her path out to the graythorn and back to where she stood now — steps away from the door. All about the chicory, on either side of her path, a trail of muddy footprints vectored out in every direction — passing from dust into mud and back into dust. Silt splattered lines intertwining with the pools of wet clay in the hard-packed land.

She took another step back. The sun was cresting now in the east. A warmth fell upon her feet and the sod basins around her. The still pool beside her rippled. The clods of mud broke on the surface and a jaw craned open above the layer of thick pitch. A gasp of air sucked into the gaping maw and it settled back under the surface — a pair of nostrils protruding just above the surface, spits of air firing out. She looked around at the other mud holes — they too trembled and moved in the dawn. A hand shot out of one nearby — grabbing a quail that wandered too close. A revin splashed up from the pit, covered in a thick layer of mud, hair matted in clumps of dripping clay. Its mouth broke open and, in a wild gust of feathers, sunk the flapping bird into its teeth, ripping breast from bone. The revin sat there in the pool, gnawing at the torn bird, feathers clinging to the side of its muddied face. It stopped, eyes opening and looking up slowly at the girl, statuesque in the daylight shining upon her like a flood lamp against the pale eastern wall of the mission. A hand shot out from the pool beside her and clamped down hard on her ankle. She cried out. A piercing shriek. From each pool, revins emerged, splashing forth from their mud slumber, shivering in the cool morning. The revin with the bird, its muddied skin now drying and cracking in the sun, pointed at her and gurgled out a garbled shout.

The revin grasping at her leg stood slowly in the pit, its waist still submerged as it rose. Its eyes opened, filth weeping forth into eyelids — a coruscate hellion in ochre and umber. She cried out again — her scream piercing the daybreak. Time slowed. The day went silent. The blood rushed out and she went pale as the revin raised its other hand towards her neck — mud dripping on her sweatshirt from the open fist.

In the distance, from the graythorn thicket, those searing eyes burned like daylight stars in the dark void of the brush. The eyes emerged from the chaparral, revealing a dusty coat of fur, a gaunt face, and a dark mane. The Mexican Wolf bounded forth, darting between the revins as they emerged from their sub-firma slumber. They saw the creature and jaws fell open. Their faces twisted up and they clenched their fists, reaching out for its legs as it loped past.

The girl pleaded as the revin reached its fingers around her neck, clenching down. Her cry was cut short as her esophagus constricted around the grasp of the diseased creature. The once-thinking. It looked her in the eyes and saw her brow widen with fear. She tried to mouth a simple “no” but the revin just grinned at her misfortune. It meant to take her life. To punish her.

The wolf leapt into the aurora and the girl looked up at the momentary eclipse caught high in her vision, in the timeless halcyon of her fading breath. The revin felt it too — this shadow falling on its back. It began to turn but the wolf crashed into its spine, sinking jaws into the blistered nape of the sopping hominid. The revin let go of the girl and thrashed about, reaching back for the wolf as it started to fall back into the pit, its shrill roars deafening the still air of the waste. The wolf sank its jaws deeper and the spinning sent it twirling around the revin’s abdomen like a tether ball — flesh ripping open on the muddy neck as it craned around, grime and blood sputtering outward. The revin reached forward, trying to push this specter off. But the wolf’s incisors were sinking into its soft cervix. Death was now in the eyes of the revin. It fell back into the mud and the wolf bit down. There was a snap and a spray of red in the air, covering the ashen face of the wolf. The revin submerged in the mire and the other revins, now standing on the contours of their silt dens, looked on as their kin gurgled in the pit. The wolf sidled backwards with the girl, who clambered upright and inched back towards the door as well. The revins tensed up and rushed at the pair of creatures looking forth, sunrise glaring brightly in their vision. They surrounded them from all sides. The girl reached out and placed her hand on the back of the wolf and it looked up at her, claret dripping from its muzzle.

A hand whipped into the air and snagged the girl by her shoulder. It was the sentinel. It pulled her backwards into the doorway and let her go before speeding back towards the open door. The wolf sprinted in after them and disappeared into the rear of the complex. The sentinel slammed its front tire into the hatch, crashing it shut. Its shadow hand gripped on to the tiny bolt latch and pulled the lock, jarring it into the metal strike plate and twisting it into a mangled mess. The revins bashed at the weathered portal from the other side — peels of white paint popping off from the inner chamber where they braced.

“Get back into the church!”

The girl stood there, paralyzed with fear at the fragile door being torn to pieces from the other side. The sentinel positioned its railgun from left to right, leveling it with the revins on the other side, and looked back at her. It spoke softly now:

“Please.”

She nodded at the machine before running full sprint past the interior courtyard, back into the chancel. She found the row of wooden pews beneath the full glow of early morning light, falling through the rose windows, and ducked beneath. The interior of the pale mission rang with the bodies crashing against the walls just outside. She pulled her sweatshirt over her head and hummed some lost tune aloud, matching the rhythm of the cries outside with intermittent crescendos in her song. The Mexican Wolf crawled along the underside of the pews and lay next to her, watching the dark portal hidden in the sacristy.

Several minutes went past before the sentinel finally came darting into the crossing. The cries outside had grown louder. There was now a furious assault on the main oak door at the narthex. DDC39 rolled over to the girl and the wolf loped off in the shadows of the western transept. She looked up at the machine from under the pews.

“Are we safe?”

“No. We are in danger, Becca.”

“How many are there?”

“More than a hundred. I can’t tell for sure. They’re everywhere.”

“Can’t we leave?”

“Not yet. I need more time to charge. Stay here — stay hidden.”

The sentinel turned back to the reredos and faced the small portal from whence they had just returned. It darted back to the panel and slammed it shut with its front tire. Swiftly twisting on its base, the sentinel turned and reached its hand out to the wooden altar, grabbing it by the underside and dragging it across the apse. It screeched across the tile floor before slamming into the chipped, fresco panel in a plume of dust. The din of the revin horde outside crashed about the exterior façade in waves — high tide of the unthinking about the lighthouse in the desert. The relative quiet of their sanctuary burned away as the cries and shouts increased, getting closer. The massive, mesquite doors at the front began to rattle, then shook violently — the obstruction propped against it beginning to shift along the dirty floor and a slight crack appearing where they began to slowly slide open. The dirty, broken fingers of the mass outside crept into the cracks — nails peeled back, blisters opening on the splintered wood. The sentinel sped over to the front and bolstered the obstruction alongside its frame, leaning into the barricade as the hands crept in, swatting at the wooden pile just inside. From the other side of the room, a furious rattling on the frescoed panel sent a wooden statue of Santiago, perched just inside, crashing to the ground. The hidden door began to push open — the altar tipping back, lifting off of one side. The girl shouted: