James Baldwin - Blood Hound

“DOG,” Zarya gasped behind me. “DOG!”

Carmine sobbed in pain as he dragged himself up and staggered back, eyes darting between me and the DOG. “No, no way, fuck this. Fuck this fucking shit right back to hell.”

Mouths unzippered across the entire length of the DOG’s body as a terrier-like head formed at one end. It split and divided into sinewy tendrils that whipped and shot through the screaming, fleeing men. Its body split apart with a soggy sound into more mouths, which grinned and gnashed and squeaked as they dragged one, then another of the soldiers into its maws. One flew over my head as I dove for Vassily, grabbed him under the elbow, and hauled him up. A spined tentacle lunged for us: I slashed it with the knife, and it recoiled. Vassily was fighting to stay with me, but he was sagging in my grip.

“Chest,” he wheezed. “Chest.”

Carmine wasn’t sticking it out: he was running away from us, towards the entryway. He and Lev were closest to the DOG, which bounded after them, shrieking with laughter. They had nearly reached the door, and Lev had flung it open when a many-jointed extrusion flew from the demon’s back like a harpoon. Carmine grabbed Lev’s jacket and pulled him around, using him as a human shield, and Lev’s piercing scream rang through the factory as it hooked him and dragged him back towards the gnashing mouths.

Zarya shook me out of it. She had knives in each hand. “Come on!”

“I’ve killed one of these before,” I said. “Take Vassily and run. Something’s wrong with him.”

Her reply was to worm her way under Vassily’s other arm, hissing through her teeth. On contact with his weight, her skin began to bubble like paint, bubbling and peeling with dark blue and silver blisters. “I don’t have long. We’re going.”

Lev screamed a second time, a sound that blurred to garbling and wet mastication. The DOG was still chewing as it turned. It didn’t whirl in place so much as reform to face us and began to lope and ooze across the ground. Lev’s severed arm fell from between its teeth. I pushed Zarya and Vassily off towards the back of the factory and faced it down with the knife in my hand and my jaws clamped shut. Kutkha, if you can do anything for me right now, make sure my aim’s good.

“HAHAHAHAhahahahHAhAHAAA!” The DOG was far, far larger than the last one and getting larger. Every dead thing in the room was being sucked into its body and incorporated. It was shrieking a hundred things at once as it slunk forward, crunching as bones splintered and the shards reset into its carapace. “WE LOVE YOU X YOU love ALEXI X YOU!”

I cocked my wrist and hurled the knife at the thing as it bore down. I felt gravity hitch, and the knife flew straight and true. It sunk to the hilt in the DOG’s flesh, and it screamed: a hideous, many-throated, wailing shriek of rage. The demon fell back, tendrils whipping wildly as its substance sloughed from around the blade and evaporated in a foul-smelling cloud.

Now I could run. I caught up to Zarya and Vassily at the back of the factory, barreling under the man’s other arm and catching her wrist, and the three of us ran while the DOG screamed on and on behind.

“How the hell do I know you?” I huffed the question out as we pelted across the floor, through a doorway and into the darkness of the factory proper.

“It’s a long story, and we don’t have much time.” She ground the words out through gritted teeth. I could see Vassily’s limp hand burning the skin of her back and arms. “I don’t know you-you. But I knew other-you.”

Other-me. Because that made sense. The DOG was shrieking, scraping itself along the floor to try to dislodge the blade still buried in its body. Between us, Vassily cried out weakly.

“His wound is infected.” Zarya broke our stride to speak. She was bathed in sweat. “The DOG… everything near it putrefies.”

“There’s no time.”

The DOG screamed pandemonium as it crossed at a limping run towards us. We hit a huge side-rolling door that was partly open. We squeezed through: I put my shoulders to it and tried to roll it across. Zarya staggered to my side, gripped it with her sinewy hands, and with strength far beyond her size, practically threw it shut.

Vassily was staring at Zarya in naked, semiconscious shock, his eyes dark and glassy. She was humanoid, but she was not human, not by the slender length of her throat, her long hands, or her eyes. They were the color of the Earth seen from space, too blue to be real. Zarya, on seeing Vassily’s response to her, lowered her face as if sighting down along a horn. Her return look was one of reproach.

“Angel?” he croaked.

“Gift Horse,” she replied. “Not the same thing.”

He had no time to reply before the DOG hit the door with a heavy slapping sound, followed by the hiss and acrid odor of dissolving metal, and the three of us had to start running again.

“You are not… the first of you.” She panted breathily as we headed away from the smoke and screams. “There’s others. Other Ruachim. My Alexi… he died.”

“Your Alexi?” I snapped back. We pressed through another metal door, slamming it closed behind us. It led into a room with coats and goggles hung on hooks and beyond that, a wide door hung with heavy plastic strips. No sound came from beyond. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means there’s many,” she said. “The man I knew… the man who was my Hound. He wasn’t the first, either. I don’t know how to explain.”

This was too weird. “If we head in and press through, there’ll be an exit to the outside.” I glanced behind as something screamed, high and loud. “I can guess that a DOG is opposite of GOD. What is a Gift Horse?”

Zarya’s lips trembled for a moment, and briefly, her eyes unfocused. When she spoke, it was vague-sounding, growing stronger only as she went along. “The questing beast. The firebird. The daughter of the trees of knowledge. GOD’s radio.”

My breath sped in time with my pulse. “I… understand. Somehow. Come on.”

“Lexi?” Vassily was sagging on his feet, head lolling. His voice was high and delirious. “Left arm.”

“GOD dammit. He’s having a heart attack,” Zarya said.

“Don’t you dare give up now,” I snapped at him, blind with rising panic. It hit a dam of resolve and flowed back from him as I continued to drag Vassily’s dead weight. “We can make it.”

“Vassily, Vassily, please.” The word from Zarya’s lips sounded like an invocation. As she spoke, Vassily drew in a phlegmy breath.

He staggered forward, half his weight on my shoulder, his left arm hanging limp over Zarya’s. “Don’t feel… so good.”

I knew why. “Scopolamine causes cardiac arrest. Breathe, Semych. Deep and steady. Come on.”

The poultry processing plant was cavernous. We ran in near silence past cold processing machines, cutting belts, empty cages, and vats full of water that would be electrified if the equipment was active. Zarya was sobbing and shivering violently. She didn’t touch anything, and when she accidentally bumped into a conveyor belt, she let out a stifled sound of pain. Her skin seared with a welt that looked like the lash of a bullwhip.

“You’re not meant to be here,” I spoke, puffing, as we pressed towards the back of the factory. “Where did you come from?”

“Eden,” she said, “At first, but then I left. I lived… Elsewhere. Another Cell. A world, like this one, but it’s dead. You were there. But the whole Cell is dead. I’m not usually fragile like this—”

A triumphant chorus of howls rang out behind us, followed by the thump and crash of something very heavy hitting the floor. The steel door.

Zarya looked back, her hair swirling around her shoulders. “It’s coming for me. It wants me.”