Hunter's Dirge: A Grimdark Scifi Epic, page 24
“Why are you avoiding certain questions and answering others?”
“We’re out of time, little Hunter. Go to Downver. Find Aurelia. Fly to Astrea. Kill the Mind. Only then will Anna be saved.”
“Just—” Thompson began, but he blinked, and he suddenly found himself in the foothills of the Northern Butcher Wastelands, exactly where he and Volya had first entered the hidden area where they had both died. The bending of flesh trees against an invisible wall told him that he was currently facing the hidden area’s invisible threshold. Thompson slowly moved his hand forward and found that the invisible wall felt distant yet solid somehow, just like Tether’s body.
“Andre, I will beg if that is what is required. Please do not do this,” Thompson heard a woman say as if from only a few inches away. He spun around and sniffed the calm air, seeking out the source of the voice, but all he could see or smell were several packs of Nomads moving about.
“I’m sorry, Gladys. Please believe me that I am sorry. I beg of you to understand, darling. Please believe me that I want nothing more than to spend eternity by your side,” a man said, but Thompson knew this voice, for he had experienced the same voice coming out of his own mouth.
“Andre!” Thompson shouted, spinning around wildly to search for the voices that seemed so close that he should be able to touch the mouths from which they originated. “Where are you? Show yourself!” Thompson demanded wildly, his heart racing at his inability to locate Andre and the woman he was speaking to.
“I will never forgive you, Andre Madeira. Not for a hundred years. Not for a quintillion years. Not even until the end of time. I hate you. I loathe you. I wish I had never met you. Leave,” the woman lashed, her anger a thinly veiled curtain over her incredible despair. “Get out!”
“Where are you?” Thompson howled at the top of his lungs. “Show yourself!”
“Heyo! Hunter!” a young boy called out from at least fifty feet away. Thompson turned and saw the little boy and Biofreak pair named MaxxEl, along with his Mutants. They strode toward Thompson. While the Mutants appeared on edge as they stared at Thompson through threatening slits, the Biofreak El was gazing at the large white clouds overhead with a contented grin. Meanwhile, Maxx beamed at Thompson with an excited smile.
Just like last time, I didn’t see or smell them. I can smell them now that I know they’re there, but it’s like they’re invisible to my senses until they decide not to be. Even Volya couldn’t sense their presence the first time we met them, and Volya misses nothing. How is this possible?
Thinking of Volya prompted Thompson to sniff for her presence, along with the presence of the Cleaners, but presently there was just the overwhelming smell of Biofreak body odor filling the air.
As the group moved closer, Thompson looked about the environment, searching for the source of Andre and the woman.
“Where your Huntress? That who you looking for?” Maxx asked, looking disappointed. “She seem like a great ally.”
The irony of Maxx’s words wasn’t nearly as stabbing as the sudden realization that the voices Thompson had heard were in his head.
Maybe the dream of being Andre is still lingering in my mind, Thompson considered as he mentally willed the old world human to leave him be.
“You okay, Hunter?” Maxx asked as he deftly slid down El’s arm and approached the Butcher of the Wastes with only a modicum of fear chemicals coursing through his body.
Either this little boy has incredible control of his emotions, or he doesn’t realize how dangerous a Hunter is…how dangerous I am, Thompson reasoned, glad that Volya wasn’t here to force Thompson to kill the boy and his tamed beasts.
“I’m fine,” Thompson assured the boy as he held up a hand for him to stop his approach. “It isn’t safe to be around me, little one. You should take your Biofreak and your Mutants and get far from me. There’s no telling when my Huntress will return.”
Maxx cocked his head in amused surprise. “You afraid of your Huntress? You? I didn’t tell you when we met before, but I know who you are, Hunter. I know you the Butcher. I know what you did. I know you dangerous. I know. We know,” Maxx announced, puffing his chest and lifting his chin to show that he was not afraid of anything, let alone the Butcher of the Wastes.
“You have nothing to fear from me, Maxx. I may be a Hunter. I may be a killer. But I don’t want to kill. I hate killing.”
Again, Maxx cocked his head with even more surprise. “Like us,” Maxx chuckled. “We good at killing, but we don’t like it. We like making friends. That why we leave King BigBilly’s army, because we don’t want to kill no more. BigBilly ask us to stay, but we say we can’t kill no more, and BigBilly let us leave. BigBilly also don’t like killing, but he do it because he strong, and because the Nomads tell him he has to.”
Thompson couldn’t help wanting to hear more about this king and army that Maxx, with his battle armor and weaponry, had clearly once been a part of.
“I’m sorry, Denis. Forgive me, my only friend,” Andre said suddenly, cleaving Thompson’s mind with the vicarious but perfectly real grief and anguish over having to kill his own friend in order to achieve a world free of the Titans’ grasp over the world.
Maxx apparently noticed the sudden pain in Thompson’s features, for he asked, “What is it, Hunter? You okay? Or you want me to call you Butcher?”
“It’s nothing,” Thompson huffed, gritting his teeth against the mind-splitting headache as he adjusted his senses to accept the pain and place it in the distant background of his awareness. “It’s nothing,” Thompson repeated. “I’m fine. Call me Thompson. That’s my name.”
“Thompson,” Maxx repeated, as if inspecting the phonetic texture of the word with his tongue. “That a good name,” Maxx confirmed with a serious nod.
“Thanks,” Thompson said, issuing a huff of genuine laughter. It was then that he realized this was the first time he had ever truly been on his own in the world. “I like your name too. All your names.”
Maxx nodded excitedly and placed his hand-flaps atop the metal heads of each of the battle-axes hanging at his waist. His eased stance appeared to calm the Mutants, who both sat back on their haunches. While Jamis lolled his wolf tongue and panted merrily, his eyes on Maxx, Brutus stared intently at Thompson with his lizard black eyes as he periodically tasted the air with his forked tongue and strutted his chicken legs in warning. As usual, El was somewhere in his own head as he stared happily at the puffy clouds above.
They seem so innocent, but there’s no way they’ve survived out here this long being innocent, Thompson thought. Still, Tether said Volya is still alive. She might be on another planet like I was, or she might be back on Earth, like I am now. I just have a feeling I haven’t seen the last of her, and if she finds this little boy again, she will undoubtedly kill him.
The boy’s joy was tangible, and as he stood beside his strange family, Thompson couldn’t help the urge to protect them.
But I can’t stay here. I have to find that little girl, and I have to get to Astrea. But maybe there is another way to protect this little one along the way. Tether said that I am free from Volya’s control with my new body, so if she does show up again, I’ll use this new body to stop her from hurting anyone, even if it means I have to kill her.
The realization that he might have to kill Volya to protect Maxx struck a surge of violent self-hatred through Thompson, and he felt as though he were betraying Anna with his decision.
I’m sorry, Anna. But if it means protecting this boy, then I must kill. I know you would want me to protect him. I can feel it. And I can feel that you knew all this would happen. You knew that one day I would come and save you. That’s why you went back, isn’t it? You knew that one day I would be able to kill the god that stole you from me—Mendel…Andre…the Mind. That has to be it. It has to be, Thompson gasped as he stumbled upon this new line of reasoning that made perfect sense to him and also meant that Anna had never stopped loving him. On the contrary, it meant that she loved him enough to trust that he would one day come to her rescue.
I’m coming, Anna.
“I’m sorry, Denis. Forgive me, my only friend,” Andre said from within Thompson’s mind as raw pain frothed through his brain.
“Thompson?” Maxx checked, his smile souring in concern.
“A friend…an ally…” Thompson said in response, knowing what he had to do to protect Maxx. “Will you be my friend, Maxx?”
Maxx smiled wider than ever and said, “MaxxEl and the Great Gargantuan Group of Good Guys friends with the Butcher? With Thompson, I mean?”
“Yes, I would like that. I must go to Downver. There is a young girl there who I must find. Will you go with me? Will you help me?”
“Yes!” Maxx shouted in excitement, prompting Jamis to howl and Brutus to strut more severely than ever. El shook his head as if just coming out of a coma, then joined in on the excitement with whooping howls of his own. “Yes, we go with you, Thompson! We go!”
As they traveled south to Downver, Andre and other voices, along with accompanying migraines, continued to assault Thompson’s mind, and though they remained frequent, their intensity waned significantly over time. After a few hours of jogging beside El, the voices were no more than distant white noise heard between each of El’s drumbeat steps.
I wish you would just leave me alone, Thompson seethed at the voices broadcasting themselves like an intermittent but ceaseless radio in his mind. Meanwhile, Maxx spoke at great length about his travels, battles, preferences, upbringing, and life in the so-called Boreal Kingdom, which Thompson had never heard of. The boy didn’t appear to be capable of silence, but Thompson was grateful for his presence all the same, for it gave him a purpose. As Maxx merrily regaled the group, Thompson sniffed the air, cataloging the known and unknown scents as he remained vigilant and ready for Volya.
At the moment, Maxx was relating to Thompson the events of the Battle of Red Lake, a region in the Boreal Forests. As he spoke, Maxx sat atop El’s misshapen head and threw each of his axes as far as he could, one to his left and the other to his right. Over and over, Jamis and Brutus retrieved the axes and returned them to Maxx, with Brutus fluttering its wings to El’s shoulder and Jamis hopping in a single arc onto the other shoulder. To Jamis, this was clearly a game of pleasure, but Brutus appeared spiteful of the activity, though Thompson was coming to find that Brutus always appeared silently spiteful relative to Jamis’ lolling tongue and barks of excitement.
“So anyway, on our way to Red Lake, one of the women, Lucy, she—” Maxx said, stopping himself suddenly with a look of horror strewn across his face.
Thompson looked up to check on the boy, who appeared embarrassed.
“What is it?” Thompson checked.
“I sorry, I said too much.”
“What do you mean? What did you say?”
Maxx looked like he might start crying and whispered beneath his breath, “I sorry, King BigBilly.”
It was the mention of the woman that silenced this normally immutable human, Thompson noted. Is he afraid that I might hurt that woman? Is he protecting her?
Thompson came to a stop, and Maxx patted El’s head, signaling him to do the same. They were close to the craters now with only a few miles to go. Only a handful of Nomads moved about the wasteland—the result of Thompson’s savagery and failure to do right by Anna. And still, he was going to continue failing her, for he was going to kill, one way or another. Tether had said that the only way to save Anna was to kill the Mind, so that meant killing was inevitable, and killing was what repulsed Anna most about Thompson and the world at large.
I need to connect with him. I need to make him my friend so that he trusts me…so that I can make sure he is safe, Thompson told himself. However, another part of his mind—the part that was Andre—told him that he was manipulating MaxxEl, using the boy, the Biofreak, and the Mutants as a means of power, for deep down he knew that he needed allies, just as Andre knew he needed Mendel and the other Titans.
“It’s okay, little one,” Thompson assured the boy despite his permanently threatening, growling voice. “If you are trying to protect that woman, then that is something I understand more than anything in this world. My entire life revolves around a woman. She’s the reason I’m going to Downver, and she’s who I need help saving. Your help.”
Maxx lifted his eyebrows and stared at Thompson with a tear-filled gaze full of despair, strength, and tenacity.
“This woman you are trying to save is in Downver?” Maxx checked.
“No, she’s in Astrea. But I have to go to Downver first to retrieve a weapon that I will use to save her. Her name is Anna, by the way. I’m trusting you with that information, Maxx. You can trust me too.”
Maxx nodded and wiped the tears from his eyes, but he wasn’t ready to reveal anything about Lucy or the other women he had mentioned in the Boreal Forests spanning the entire northern portion of the continent.
The scent of a Cleaner struck Thompson’s nose suddenly, and he followed the source to a group of figures a few hundred feet away moving north, away from Downver. Just a few seconds after Thompson, El caught the scent as well, and he growled a warning to Maxx, prompting the Mutants to tighten into a proper battle formation at El’s feet.
“No-faces,” Maxx stated suspiciously. “El don’t like them, so I don’t like them.”
El grunted in agreement.
“It’s just one Cleaner,” Thompson said with surprise. “I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a Cleaner travel alone before.”
“Oh, sure,” Maxx shrugged, “we seen that lots of times, but you right they like to travel together. El say they bad.”
“They are,” Thompson confirmed stolidly, but he reminded himself that they were just pitiful puppets, just like him.
With jarring surprise, Thompson squinted and saw that the Cleaner was leading a lone human man and a pack of Nomads that looked like vibrant green hills sliding across the ground behind the man.
Again, I wasn’t able to smell him until I saw him. Is it me, then? Is my ability to smell weaker in my new body? Thompson considered worryingly, but then he remembered that he had not been able to smell MaxxEl even when he was still a broken Hunter wearing a skinsuit.
What is going on? Thompson gasped inwardly, and at the same moment, the droning voice surged in volume, and he heard Andre say, “This world must change. It must undergo a neoevolution that is beyond even Mendel’s Vision. We must—”
“Quiet!” Thompson shouted to his mind, and he envisioned the mental fog occluding the voice, choking it into silence. It didn’t work fully, but it did succeed in quieting the voice back to a mere whisper.
“I didn’t say anything,” Maxx said, looking at Thompson with a level of concern.
“Sorry,” Thompson said, shaking his head at his own broken mental state.
My new body might be an upgrade, but I had to trade my mind for it, Thompson thought.
The human man wailed loudly, and Thompson observed that the man had finally turned and noticed the strange group staring at him: a Hunter, Rover, Biofreak, and a pair of Mutants. They were a collection of misplaced oddities from the new world that this man was clearly old enough to remember having not existed.
I wonder if he’s old enough to remember the bombs, Thompson thought as he shuddered at the memory of the destruction displayed on Andre’s monitors. He was shocked to recollect that Andre had also been horrified by the sight of millions being obliterated all at once, despite being the one to press the button.
You won’t get forgiveness from me, Thompson thought, directing his words toward Andre and the other voices still droning on in the background of his mind. No forgiveness, not for you or me, Thompson thought.
“No!” Thompson heard the man demand to the Cleaner. “I understand perfectly well what you’re saying, and my answer is no! That mirror guy said you have to listen to me. All of you! I’m not going anywhere near that Hunter or giant or Mutant or Rover either. Take me back to Wintersvilla, like you said you would!” the man demanded. Being so demanding and forward appeared to take a physical toll on the man, and he let himself fall onto his bottom and pant on the ground in exhaustion.
Being so far away, the man could only be heard by Thompson due to his heightened Hunter hearing. MaxxEl and their Mutants remained silent and battle ready, never taking their eyes off the single Cleaner.
The Cleaner nodded solemnly to the man, then turned and began walking toward the Hunter and his group. In response, El growled louder. To avoid a battle, Thompson stepped forward and held up his hand for MaxxEl to remain in place, which seemed to calm both the Rover and the Biofreak.
Thompson and the Cleaner each broke away from their respective group and walked to one another, meeting face-to-face beneath the midday sun. A spherical, knee-high Nomad made of thick root-like structures tumbled across the ground between them, racing north with incredible urgency. The Cleaner wasted no time and began speaking to Thompson without a second Cleaner to clang skewers with. He knocked his knuckles against the head of his skewer, making it hard but not impossible to understand him.
What are you? the Cleaner asked Thompson with clangs of his skewer and stomps on the ground. The Cleaner, like all Cleaners, appeared neutral in his demeanor. The Cleaner posed his question as if attempting to decide if Thompson was merely an interesting part of the environment that had a right to remain there or if he should be treated like a weed to be culled.
Thompson was taken aback by the question and was uncertain how to respond.
“I’m a Hunter,” he answered. He remained on guard since one never knew what to expect from a Cleaner. “You should know that, shouldn’t you? I assume you’ve spent most of your life torturing a Hunter just like me. Or maybe you were even one of the Cleaners who tended my birth-fire. You all smell exactly the same, like the most rotten scents from the old world,” Thompson said, remembering from Andre’s memories that the original purpose of the Cleaners was to clean the nuclear waste left behind by the omega-class nuclear bombs.
