John Miller - Death Draws Five

A low, unbelieving moan growled out of her throat. She shook as if in an invisible wind, her eyes screwed tightly shut, her mouth slack and panting.

She wasn’t the only one in that condition. They all were. Some screamed, some laughed, some cried. Some fell out of their chairs, some leaped out of their seats. For some the sensation was nothing they’d ever felt before in their lives, for some it was as familiar as Saturday night. Some called on Jesus, some their husbands, some a boy nearly forgotten over the years. Some a girl. Some wanted a cigarette, but this was a non-smoking facility.

Fortunato shared it all while siphoning the maelstrom of energy that they’d released. The crush of emotion would have killed many men, but his ace-enhanced mind and his Zen training pulled him through, though it was the wildest experience he’d ever had in the course of a wild life. He basked in a glow of warm satisfaction for a moment, but suddenly he burned with his own need to go, to do, to find again his son.

His eyes opened and focused on Digger Downs, who was standing over his body sprawled on the couch, staring down at him with concern.

“It’s all right,” he told the reporter. “I’m back.”

“I guess you are,” Downs said. “Where the Hell have you been?”

Fortunato shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m not the kind who kisses and tells.”

The Short Cut

“What is this place?” John Fortune asked. He was flushed with excitement. Sitting next to him, Ray could feel the heat flowing off of him in waves.

“The Short Cut, lad,” Bruckner said expansively, as if that explained everything.

It was good enough for Ray. He looked out the windshield. The green sun was moving slowly but perceptibly across the sky. Soon it would set, though “soon” in this place seemed a concept hard to define. The road was flat, straight, and well-maintained, though the plants crowding its verge were like nothing Ray had ever seen. They were like trees, but their branches had no leaves. The trunks were bulbous, fleshy things, in shades of green, violet, and vermilion, shot through with scarlet veins which circulated a fluid which Ray was uncomfortably sure resembled blood. He watched them suspiciously as they whizzed by in Bruckner’s lorry, something bothering him. He realized that their branches were moving, though not in a wind. They writhed in several different directions at once, as if at their own volition.

He was about to point this out to Angel when something, suddenly and out of nowhere, hit their windshield with a horrific splat, squashed against it and spattered like a water balloon tossed out of ten story building. A wash of purplish goo instantly covered the windshield. Bruckner clenched his teeth on his cigar as he turned on the windshield wipers.

“This could be a problem,” he said, downshifting as the wipers and the windshield glass itself started to smoke.

“This ever happen before?” Ray asked.

“Rarely,” Bruckner said, “sometimes the locals raise a bit of a tussle.”

“This place has locals?” Angel asked.

Bruckner grinned without humor. “Oh, yes. Best if we stay clear of them, but sometimes we don’t have much of a choice. They used to be real quiet. Never bothered me. But in recent years... something’s stirred them up. It’s like, sometimes, they want my truck.” The lorry braked to a halt, and he looked over at Ray, Angel, and John Fortune. “We’d better get that windshield off before the acid eats all the way through. But not to worry. I carry spares.”

“And the locals?” Ray asked.

“Figger you and the lady can handle them, me lad. That’s why you’re here, after all. The boy can help me replace the windshield. You two guard our flanks, front and back.”

“Guard them from what?” Angel asked.

Bruckner grinned again. “Anything that looks strange.”

Ray and Angel exchanged glances. Ray nodded, and she put her hand on the door handle.

“Oh, one more thing,” Bruckner said.

“What?” Ray asked, starting to get annoyed.

“Funny thing, but guns don’t work in this place.”

Ray shrugged.

Angel said, “I’m covered.” She paused for a moment, frowning. “At least, I hope so.”

“I carry some stuff in the back you can use.”

Ray nodded. “All right. I’ll go to the back, with you. Angel, watch the front.”

“All right,” she said.

“All right,” John Fortune said.

They all looked at Bruckner.

“All right,” the Brit said. “Let’s do it.”

The air, like everything else in this place, was strange. It felt odd on Ray’s tongue. It had a bite to it, like a summer night after a lightning storm. The quality of light was also odd, probably because of the different colored sun, now hanging on the horizon.

Bruckner rolled up the trailer’s rear door, and for all his size, lightly leaped up into it. A weapon rack was bolted on one side of the wall. Swords, spears, bow and arrow.

Too bad Yeoman isn’t with us, Ray thought.

“What do you fancy?” Bruckner asked.

Ray decided to keep it simple.

“Those.” He nodded at the brace of morningstars.

“Good choice,” Bruckner said. “But watch out for splatters of what passes for blood among these boyos. Sometimes it can be corrosive.”

Ray nodded, and Bruckner tossed him the weapons. Their handles were black iron, as long as his forearm. Their heads were the size of Texas grapefruit, spiked. The chains attaching handle to head were about two feet long. Ray swung them once or twice to get their feel. He nodded to himself, and ran through an extemporaneous kata as John Fortune watched with his mouth open. Like all weapons, they felt like he’d been born with them in his hands.

“Right, me lad,” Bruckner said, clapping John Fortune on the shoulder. “Ever change a windshield before?”

“No,” the boy said.

“Nothing to it,” the Brit said cheerfully. “Give me a hand with these suction cups.”

Ray turned his back to the truck, scanning the land. It was flat and relatively featureless. If there’d be trouble, it would come from the weird forest a dozen yards from their flank.

Bruckner and John Fortune got the spare windshield from the case where the trucker kept it among a plethora of other spare parts, and part of Ray listened as they went to the front. Bruckner greeted Angel, who answered in a steady voice, and then issued a stream of commands as he and the boy attacked the ruined windshield.

Thoughts of Angel slipped languorously through Ray’s mind, though most of it was focused on the odd-moving trees, if that’s what they were, bunched by the side of the road, if that’s what it was.

Suddenly it became darker, almost without a sense of transition. Ray looked back to the horizon, and saw that the green sun had gone under. The light took on a quality that Ray had once seen while snorkeling in the Bahamas at a depth of thirty feet. It seemed denser, darker, and somehow a lot less friendly. A full moon rose rapidly on the other side of the horizon, splotched and diseased looking, shining with a greenish, almost phosphorescent light the color of gangrenous flesh.

As if the rising of the leprous moon was a signal, things started coming out of the oddly moving trees.

They were many-legged, spider-like creatures whose bulbous bodies were held high off the ground by too many skeletal legs. Big spiders were one thing, Ray thought, but these had heads and features that were disturbingly human. Except for their protruding fangs which dripped ichor which steamed when it spattered on the ground. They scuttled like crabs, moving fast. Their bodies, white and bulging and hairless, were the size of large dogs.