Lucky's Girl, page 27
One of the Pack was dead with another bleeding to death in the woods behind Lucky’s house. They’d been shot by Jake. He had taken up with two interlopers, including a Pig Their God had promised Lucky revenge upon.
Errol.
Jake had shot two wolves, and had left the house with Errol and Frankie, and had done it willingly. Jenny had run away. Now the Faithless were running in all directions. Thankfully none had escaped Elton, but more of the Faithful were dead or horribly injured.
Blackie growled. All of this was unacceptable. Her Pack, his Pack, the Faithful, lay dead and dying but the aggressors were all in one place now.
They must be devoured.
All of them, including the children.
Jenny did not go with them, she did not abandon us, she remained Faithful.
Blackie locked eyes with Lucky. Something was wrong with him. His thoughts were not correct. He had come this far, only to put other things before Their God.
She spoke to him in images and ideas; I am alpha, and you are my mate. You have been given to me by Our God. Our union grows within me. All is as promised by Our God. Nothing else matters. We must kill them. They have shed the blood of the Pack and the Faithful. None may be spared, no mercy granted.
A new sensation flared through Lucky’s mind – panic. He had defined his life by the dictum that never again will I suffer the oppression of fools, until he’d been called back to Elton by the Big Tree. He’d been promised that those who had injured him would be punished. His God had promised their suffering and annihilation, and now he was on the eve of that covenant.
Why would Blackie wish to undo the perfect symmetry of that revenge?
But he did understand. Possessiveness. And for a wolf, that would be difficult to change. Blackie didn’t care about his couplings with the Women Most Faithful, but she couldn’t abide Jenny. But for Lucky, Jenny was justice, the punishment the Traitor was to receive.
The Traitor had hurt him, and no one, neither man nor woman, had ever hurt him.
But the Traitor had. He’d abandoned him to exile, stripped him of his family and his place. He had never sought him out, to be his companion, his confidante, his Ace. Instead he’d chosen a life of mediocrity. He had chosen to become a nobody over a life with his best friend. He’d stabbed him in the back and had thrown dirt over his grave. He was worse than Jerry and Errol, much worse than his uncle, worse than dear old Dad and Mom, the Rev and Abby James.
Lucky had held out his arms for Blackie to come to him. She’d held his gaze, denying his embrace. He didn’t flinch, but this had never happened to him. When women demanded, they’d fallen apart in his arms and had been brought to heel in his bed. But now he understood – she wasn’t a woman, she wasn’t even human, but just as women had to be tamed, Blackie would learn as well.
He lay before her in a simulacrum of submission, she standing above him and licking his face. Lucky smiled as his hands explored her body, and soon he was behind her pushing his cock in and out slowly and lovingly.
She was his, even if she didn’t fully understand it yet.
***
No one knows fear like a parent whose child is missing, and no one knows the joy in that child returned. But even then, reunions can be difficult, with some bridges gone, and others still in flames. Kenny wanted to cry, wanted to let tears of joy wash the blood and grime from his face, but his son needed strength, not tears.
Jake had said no to Lucky.
He hadn’t said yes to his own father but he had said no to Lucky. That was a start. So far their conversation was no more than Kenny asking he if he was okay, and Jake mumbling “yeah.” Now they sat together in the cell while Jerry, Errol, and Frankie hashed out what had happened in the last day and a half.
Apparently Frankie and Errol suspected Wally Weed had abducted his sister Fat Sally. Frankie said that she’d gone to go check on her errant brother, and that was the last time they’d seen her.
Their entire story sounded like bullshit.
Not to mention that they were wearing full-blown reality-TV bulletproof gear and carrying assault rifles. Fully automatic assault rifles. Completely illegal fully automatic assault rifles.
AK-47’s make a very distinctive sound. Theirs were the guns which had made that sound.
Frankie was lying on the cell floor, bloody strands coming out of his mouth. There was a big scorch mark on the side of his Kevlar. He’d been shot and probably had a set of broken ribs to show for it. His breath jerked in painful little gasps. He was bleeding somewhere inside because his saliva was pink and foamy.
They’d crashed into the side of the station and Errol had run to the other side to help Frankie get to the door, Jake following close on their heels. He’d pushed the two inside, squeezing the trigger on the shit-men streaming at them. He didn’t hit any but they’d fallen back long enough to grab a gym bag full of AK magazines and get inside. Afterwards a desk had been pushed in front of the door. It really was the only thing left to do.
But now, there were questions. Not about Lucky or Blackie or the madness gripping Elton Township; questions about Elton’s faithful mayor and mailman, and Elton’s resident barkeep.
Jerry kept looking at the floor and at the door, but not at Errol, doing his best to not look at Frankie either. The shit-freaks were pressing their faces up against the glass, but that was nothing new. Jerry needed a drink and he was spinning out, but that wasn’t enough to blind him to everything which had happened in the last few minutes.
There were a lot of questions, but there was one that Jerry had right now.
“Where’s Torgeson?”
Frankie stopped coughing, and Errol inhaled but didn’t exhale.
Jerry paused. “Errol, is Torgeson okay or not?”
Errol’s breath shook and he held his hand over his mouth.
Jerry exhaled hard. “Oh fuck me. Jesus Christ, Errol, what the fuck happened out there?”
Errol’s voice hitched, causing him to stammer. “Jerry, he… he didn’t understand. We’d just gotten attacked by fucking wolves and these fucking fucks…”
He motioned to the shit-freaks smearing up the glass door.
He continued. “We both got knocked down, dropped our guns. It was Jake, this little kid, who picked one up and shot the wolves. Then more of those fucking shit-fucks came and the cop… Torgeson showed up and shot Frankie…”
Errol buried his face in his hands, sobbing, tears pouring between his fingers.
Jerry shook his head in disbelief. “What happened, Errol? What did you do?”
Errol shook his head, his face rubbing against his palms. “I didn’t mean to, I swear I didn’t mean to!”
Jerry inhaled hard, then spat it out. “What in the hell are you two doing with those guns and that Kevlar?”
Frankie croaked out. “Sally, Wally took Sally, we went to get her back.”
Jerry shook his head over and over. “No, no, no! Bullshit, what the fuck were you two doing? How would you know Wally had done something to Sally, huh? How would you know that? You’re fucking lying!”
Errol tried. “Sally had left a note and…”
A small voice interrupted.
Jake. “She’s dead. Lucky cut her open to wake up the Big Tree.”
CHAPTER 17
As the final rays of sunlight withdrew behind the curve of the earth, Elton Township drifted from shadow into Darkness. In the cabins and trailers of the Faithless, candles were being lit and flashlights checked, guns reloaded, and prayers offered to a God who seemed much less potent than before. There was a new God in town, and he did things very differently. They knew tonight would be a fight for sanity and survival.
Darkness was spreading out in beams of un-light from Grove Island. A vast inhalation, held for a terrific moment, then an exhalation from a being who straddled worlds. Not completely here, nor completely there, one who would hunt the forests of mortal man in the flesh. Neither all man nor all wolf, possessing eyes seeing from the Darkness of this world to the absolute Darkness of its own.
The un-light unfolded from the crown of the Big Tree, gnarled, malformed and titanic, its roots sinking down to the last time the Wendigo had walked amongst men, seeing the world through his eyes, tasting it with his tongue, feeling it with his skin. Through his Tribe he had bathed in the blood of thousands sent by a feeble King Amongst Men. Faithless, false and weak, they had rejected the Marriage of Man and Beast, the return of Man to his true nature.
Some men preferred their constructs, their tools, their buildings, their impotent clay Gods, their false hierarchies, their struggles, their ideas… to their true nature, to their real desires, to a real God. They would rather be slaves in prisons of words than live in the real world. They would take these hollow prizes over the hunt, over the kill, over the survival of the strongest and fastest.
But tonight, The Big Tree, The Wendigo, The True God of the Faithful was here, The True God of the Faithful was now. The Tribe, the Pack, was alive!
Black beams of un-light were opening like a hand over Elton, falling first over the church. It inspired a sound of many bodies disentangling from a writhing mass of true human ecstasy. A great sigh of contentment, a moan of pleasure and hunger at what was about to unfold. The great doors opened, the congregation spilled out to prepare the bonfire.
Tonight would be the Fulfillment of the Covenant of Their God and Their Prophet, the Bringer of the Great News that Their God is Here, Their God is Now!
Tonight Lucky would be wed. The girl was to be his First Lady, his Alpha amongst women, to take a seat of High Honor next to the Alpha of the Pack, Blackie. She was Jenny, daughter of the Traitor, the Judas who had denied Lucky, and had sided with the Pigs of the System to keep him from sharing the Great News that Their God is Here, Their God is Now!
With great wisdom she had seen through her father’s lies and corruptions, through all of his false Gods and Idol Worship. She had seen that Lucky was the Prophet, and that her place was beside him. She would not repeat her father’s crimes, and their love would heal the wounds the Traitor had inflicted on Lucky’s pure heart.
***
No matter how injured, or tired or scared, all humans can sense the approach of Darkness and Silence. They instinctively know what the first men had known; that the world and light are but passing things. Darkness is older, and would be there to witness the death of light. And in that final Darkness, The Gods of the Outer Dark would climb upon their thrones of chaos and all of creation would die. Every thought, every word, every hope, every dream would cease. There would be screaming, and there would be death, and then there would be no more.
And now, in Elton Township, Darkness and Silence had returned. Buried under clotted leaves and soil, cocooned in the fibrous roots of the Big Tree, the eyes of the Wendigo had begun to stir. In the Silence and Darkness they tore open the fabric of the roots encasing them. They rose in human form, razor thin, in starving need of sustenance. Five women of the Most Faithful crawled on the ground to the living meat.
The first sacrifice was still lashed to the Big Tree, her obese form swelling against the ropes, skin splitting and fat running into the ground and disappearing, the thirsty roots of the Big Tree drinking deeply.
Her brother had been tied to the other side of the tree. He had given himself freely so that His God could walk the world of men once more. He awoke, seeing the five women Most Faithful crawling towards him.
He smiled. “You’re so beautiful, so beautiful!”
They raised their heads, struggling towards him.
Tears of joy ran from his eyes, his penis growing hard as a rock. “This is my flesh, I give it unto you! This is my blood, I give it that you may have eternal life!”
A trembling had run through their flesh, and a convulsive wrenching deep within. Heads tilted back, blood running from tightly shut eyes, agonized screams as their eyes open again with two irises, glowing a cold grey. Teeth had elongated and blood poured from gums, stretching and creaking as bone grew in place and stretched into snouts. Hair sprang from skin as arms and joints crunched in gristly unison.
The transformation completed, they were bones and fur and skin, stretched tight over giant teeth and bulging eyes.
They stood to regard the sacrifice.
Rapture became terror. Praise became screams. Ecstasy became evisceration.
***
The shrieking carried out across the dry expanse of Lake Elton and over the roof of the empty church, the sound amplified by the canopy of Darkness and Silence holding Elton in its embrace. There was no sound of wind, neither bird nor crickets; there was no light from the stars, and every other source of illumination struggled to shine.
Darkness devoured light, and Silence devoured sound.
Except for the screams of agony, except for the pleas of despair; those things were louder as they nourished real Silence and Darkness.
And the screams came to the ears of the prisoners of Elton’s new paradigm; Jerry and Errol, Kenny, Frankie and Jake in the tiny police station, and to the Faithless, hiding in trailers and cabins.
No one spoke until the screaming had ended. It had gone on and on. After Jake had told them of the sacrifice, of the vision given to Lucky and the Faithful and Most Faithful, they knew that nothing would be beyond imagining tonight. Until the dawn came, Elton would live in Darkness and Silence, and in that place, death would reign supreme.
Frankie let out a gasp: he’d held his breath the whole time. They all had. “Tell me that didn’t sound like Wally, please somebody tell me that wasn’t Wally!”
The sound had been small and feeble, as if from a child hiding in a closet. Nobody answered. Finally Kenny cleared his voice. He rapped his knuckles on the bench, making a curious, deadened sound, like it had come from far away. “The light… and the sound… I can’t see out that glass door anymore, and everything sounds like we’re in a decompression tank.”
Errol’s teeth clattered. “Should we try to make a run for it?”
Jake whispered, “We’ll never get past the Faithful.”
Jake had told a crazy story, fragmented and baroque, of hideous orgies covered in dreck, bestiality, lycanthropy, mass hypnotic visions, and trees with eyes. They had listened in stunned silence. They all knew Jake had been traumatized. He’d witnessed the inversion of morality and sanity. Lucky’s kingdom was sick in the extreme. He was Manson and Jim Jones combined at the very least. His ability to bend people to his will verged on the supernatural, but that didn’t explain humans living with wolves, people who seemed to have forgotten their lives and had regressed to savagery.
And they’d killed people. They were pretty certain Doc Pete was dead, he’d told them of a burned man eaten alive. And they didn’t doubt Fat Sally was dead. Jake’s description of her was dead on. And everyone who had tried to escape Elton earlier – those people were probably dead too.
The other parts of his story must have been the concoctions of severe trauma.
But this Darkness, this Silence; this was more than a lack of electricity.
You could feel it.
Kenny turned to Jerry in the darkness. Four lanterns fought to illuminate the room, and although the flames hadn’t guttered, it was several degrees too dark.
“Jerry, we need flashlights. Something. Now.”
Jerry shook his head. “My maglite’s in my cruiser. I’ve got others but no batteries. It wasn’t a budget priority.”
Frankie wheezed. “There’re Maglites in the getaway bag.”
Errol leaned down to the big black gym bag, pulling out four high powered LED lights with attachments to fit to the barrels of the AKs.
Jerry shook his head. “Getaway bag.”
Kenny gasped. There were two more Krinkovs and lots of magazines. And two more Kevlar vests.
Jerry covered his face with his hands and gritted his teeth. “Can you make this make sense for me, Errol? Frankie?”
Frankie coughed. “I’m a survivalist. Been planning for the big one for years.”
Jerry laughed, but it was cold and bitter. “And now you’re lying again.”
Kenny shook his head. “Fuck it, Jerry, this is a godsend. Who fucking cares?”
He couldn’t understand the betrayal unfolding between Jerry, Errol and Frankie. He picked up a Krinkov, snapping the powerful light to the barrel. He inserted a magazine, racked it and clicked on the safety. “Just like the movies. All the bad guys carry these.”
Jake looked up. “Grampa says gooks and ragheads use them because they can get full of mud and sand and keep shooting but…”
Jerry interrupted him. “These are steel core Teflon-coated bullets. I guess Torgeson should have known it was the end of the world.”
He held one of the magazines, popping out a bullet. He held it up to the light then tossed it to Errol. Once a cop always a cop. “You got something you wanna tell me, Errol?”
His face betrayed him. Errol looked at the ground and shook his head.
Jerry looked at Frankie, prostrate and bleeding from the mouth. “How ‘bout you, Frankie?”
Frankie coughed again and whispered, “This isn’t the time, Jerry. One day we’ll sit back and have a drink and…”
Jerry’s face was a mask of ice, a cold realization coming over him. He was a fool and he’d been taken for a fool and used as a fool, probably for a very, very long time. He didn’t know what it was or how it worked, but he’d been used. His very incompetence had been part of their plan. There was a reason that bar existed, there was a reason a town like Elton had an unnecessary mailman and a sheriff it couldn’t afford.
And he’d been so far gone for so long he hadn’t seen it.
By the feeble rays of lantern and flashlight, a lifetime of lies, betrayal and deceit were highlighted.
Errol shook his head. “I don’t think that drink’s happening, Frankie.”
