Christopher Buehlman - Those Across the River

That was when I checked out.

That was when I went looking for Granny.

I didn’t even drain the beer out of the tub.

NOW WE WERE marching through the woods in the rain like three ghosts from the AEF. Tin hats and all. Enfields and 45s packed with silver bullets. Even if we couldn’t steal a march on them, even if they saw us first, I wanted them to see the big, soulless eyes of the gas masks and the silhouettes of the helmets and to know that something worse than they were was after them. I wanted them to be scared now. I wanted to give those fuckers bad dreams.

But those damned masks.

I had forgotten how much the nose clamp hurt.

Using the maps and the compass, I got us to Uphill Rock. The same tree leaned against the same big stone like Sisyphus at his hopeless labor. The rain was good. Even though it soaked us, it hid our scent, hid our footsteps.

Eicher went to pull his mask off so he could whisper something to us, but Granny wouldn’t let him; he insisted that we stay geared up whenever we were around the mustard, not to take a chance. By the time you smelled that sweet, garlicky smell it was too late.

Eicher motioned that he saw something.

The entrance.

Like a frowning mouth in the rock, half covered over with leaves.

Jesus, this was it.

Eicher motioned for us to cover him, and he put his rifle down and crept around to the side of it, slowly. Slowly he positioned himself and peeked in.

I guessed there would be four. Five if Dora had returned. I held up four fingers. He shook his head and held up seven.

Goddamnit. They had propagated.

Now he backed off the entrance and Granny came up.

The two of them were supposed to chuck while I covered.

Not so different from clearing a machine gun nest.

I got ready.

But Granny wasn’t ready. He was shaking, bad. I wondered if the jars were rattling. Thank God for the rain.

Eicher took three jars off Giangrande’s back and handed them to him. He took the other three.

He put up one finger.

They would pitch on three.

He put up the second finger.

Granny shook his head.

He couldn’t do it.

But Eicher could.

He threw his three jars one after the other, then he took Granny’s away from him and threw those, too. He pulled Granny back and got his rifle ready. Granny went to his position and took his rifle, but he just hugged it to him. He was in full panic.

A naked man walked out of the cave, blinking his eyes. He looked familiar, but I didn’t have time to figure out why. Eicher shot him. He didn’t understand what was happening to him. Then I shot him, too. He crumpled.

Granny looked like he was going to be sick. He went to pull his mask off. I dropped my rifle and went to him, stopping him from doing that, but he broke away from me and staggered off in the direction of the car.

More shots rang out.

I started after Granny, but then went back to help Eicher.

He had shot another man, who was holding his stomach and bellowing, collapsing awkwardly against the rocks. He shot him again.

There was motion behind him.

Two naked women running away.

Curly Woman and another one I didn’t recognize from the back.

He shot that one, and she twisted and fell. Curly kept going. Eicher dropped his rifle and took out his pistol, running up quite close to the wounded one. She was pointing at him as if he were a bad child and saying “NO!” while he shot her three more times. It must have been a reflex. If it weren’t so horrific and heavy with pathos it would be funny. It was Anna Muncie, the teacher of the younger grades, and she died scolding her killer.

This god-awful scene transfixed me, or I would have been faster.

The black one came out of a hole in the ground.

Hector.

The biggest one.

In wolf form.

He was all over Eicher, and now I didn’t have a shot. Not until Eicher was disemboweled. Then something hit me from the side, hard, and I went into the ground and had the wind knocked out of me. My rifle went flying.

Even as it was happening, I groped for the pistol. I wrenched onto my back just in time to see Mustache jumping on me. He must have thought he was in wolf form still because he tried to bite me. He was salivating. His eyes were wide and insane and I saw his open mouth over my face, felt his teeth on my eye plates, felt his hand grasping the edge of my helmet, trying to wrench it off me. If there is anything worse than being attacked by a huge, supernatural wolf, it must be being attacked by a very powerful naked man who believes he’s a wolf.

One more good wrench like that might have broken my neck, but he tried to bite me again. Saliva ran out of his mouth all over my mask.

I was dazed.

I couldn’t inhale.

But I did have the gun in my right hand.

It was between us and I couldn’t cock the hammer. He was so strong. I was sure this was it.

Then he realized biting wasn’t working and he reared up to hit me. For just that second, I had room. I cocked and squeezed. The gun went off, tearing through the middle of him.

He still hit me, but not as hard as I think he would have.

I think that would have killed me.

Instead it just cracked my left eye plate and made me see stars.

He grabbed his stomach and rolled off me, sitting Indian style and breathing hard, not looking at me. His eyes were tearing up from the gas, or from the injury, I don’t know.

Thank Christ I looked to my right.

The black one was stealing close to me, but quickly, like a border collie stalking sheep.

I don’t know how to communicate just how terrifying these things are up close. It’s hypnotic. You want to piss and shit yourself. You want your mom. It was big and fast and quiet and it was coming.

Then it sneezed. A great rope of snot came out of its muzzle.

It kept coming, but the spell was broken now.

I shot it.

It yelped, and broke and ran.

Crookedly, though.

It was hurt.

Maybe dying.

I managed to inhale.

I had a cracked rib.

I sat up.

Mustache was on his side now, looking small and white, bleeding uncontrollably through his fingers. I noticed the puckered white scars where his arm was burned from the fight with Martin.

I shot him again.

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, this was a mess. Granny was nowhere to be seen. I got up and went to Karl Eicher.

He was all untucked.

His legs spasmed rhythmically like he was trying to run.

But he was gone.

His blue eyes were still open under his mask.

His cruel, schoolyard bully eyes.

His joking, pool-shooting eyes.

I took his mask off and shut his eyes.

I LOOKED BACK at the first one we shot, and I saw why he looked familiar. I also saw why I hadn’t placed him.

It was one-armed Mike.

With two arms.

SOMEONE WAS COMING out of the entrance to the cave.

He was clutching a dirty cloth, maybe a towel, around him.

Freckled and homely and redheaded. I recognized him. He had played softball with us that first day. Pete. His name was Pete. He stumbled out into the cold rain with his free hand up, coughing, his eyes shut but tearing, his nose running freely.

“Please don’t shoot me,” he said, and sneezed horribly.

I didn’t know what to do. He was so full of gas he was bound to die.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and pointed the gun.

He couldn’t see me, but he knew what I was doing.

“PLEASE!” he screamed.

“You’re full of mustard gas,” I said, shouting so he could understand me through the mask. “It’s all over you.”

“I know it’s somethin bad. I just want to wash it off. I just want to stand in the rain and wash it off.”

I felt myself unraveling.

“You can’t,” I said.