The Worldshift Chronicles: Monday

Chapter 14

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Chapter 14

On the fourth day of our walkabout, the herd set upon us.

The only reason I didn’t hear them in advance was because of the horrid weather, a nasty, midday haboob sporting winds up to sixty or seventy clicks an hour, full of stinging, red sand. Occasionally in my travels, I’d come across a lone scree venturing out before dark, if they were desperate and hungry and willing to take on the sunlight, which interfered with their nocturnal vision. A whole herd parading through the badlands was off charts bonzo weird. There was little food to be had there, and less water.

Screes mostly ran in pods of a half dozen to a dozen. They knew safety in limited numbers, because once their group absorbed too many new members, they’d start feeding on one another. Herds were rare. I’d only seen one, from a distance, a mob two hundred strong prowling in a deep canyon between Bard’s place in the Darkheart and the northwest road to San Francisco. The din they’d made was dreadful. Their collective hoots, howls, and racket followed me into my dreams. It was hard to believe those creatures derived from the line of human beings.

We trudged through the tempest, about a quarter click from the roadway, having donned our respirators and goggles, our dusters zipped, our faces tucked deep within our hoods. Raging gusts of radiated, rust-colored dust swept across ancient concrete bulwarks and half-buried, industrial ruins. The badlands were little more than fallout and gale, perpetually overcast, with brief eye-of-the-storm periods of stillness punctuated with spiraling dust devils. It made for slow going. Nobody hoofed it through there. Heavy hover transport was required provenance for passage.

We were setting a precedent…if we lived to tell the tale.

We reached the top of a dune and there they were, about a hundred or so. Their foremost scouts were as surprised as we must’ve appeared to them. Through the haze of the squall, they looked the same as they always did: big, bloodied eyes and crusted, green skin, clumps of black fungus growing about their bodies. Some were missing fingers or hands. A few possessed extra or mutated appendages. The bulk were as emaciated as scarecrows, clad in tattered cloaks, ragged loincloths and tunics and brassieres. It was theorized they had some semblance of intelligence among their collective, as they bred, crafted and donned their threadbare version of clothing, and knew enough about arcana to fear it.

It was an unexpected rendezvous.

I knew exactly how it was going to go down.

I dropped into mode zero, where my chi was most still. My thoughts and sight lines merged as one. In that zone, my hands became irrelevant, because I’d already made the shot in my head before I pulled the trigger, as well as configuring my next two targets.

I was fast.

Pulling metal from leather? I was a demon.

I learned to work steel early on. I took to pistol and rifle as easy as crows to carrion, and I liked it a lot better than sorcery. Just prior to my first year of my couriering, I’d started plinking mutie lizards and tin cans in the back lots of the ‘Del, using air rifles and powered down pulse pistols. Elders determined I had a knack, and a few showed me the ropes in general use and safety. Later on, Bard and Custer schooled me in the back forty behind the saloon. Custer was a war horse when it came to marksmanship, mostly scatterguns and autos, but Bard was a crack shot, a legit ace, versed in sniping as well as short range pistoliering. I used to razz him about it, him flying the peace flag so much, when he was unquestionably a former man of war. He didn’t appreciate it much.

Screes shrieked and hooted as they charged, feral, drooling, starving. I’d put both guns on my left hip, since my right hand and its broken finger were currently in the shop. I drew the backup pistol and opened fire on the first half dozen outliers running at us. All center mass shots. They went down, flipping over backward.

Thursday’s blue eyes lit up as he cast an ignis spell. An orange fireball the size of his head coalesced above his palm, then flew forth from his raised hand into a five-strong pod to our right. It split mid-flight into a trio of smaller burning spheres and enveloped three of them in spectral flames. They howled and ran into the oncoming swarms, flames lapping about their heels. I snapped off head shots at the other two.

The mob became enraged. Their howling in the sandstorm was a cacophony. Red dust and stinging sand blew about us in a tempest. I took out four more before popping the clip, wincing as I forced myself to use only four fingers on my right hand, then quickly reloading a new magazine from my belt.

Thursday expanded his ignis effect into a wave. The spreading surge torched an entire line of front runners, as many as fifteen or twenty. The screes wailed, burning, turning into one another, scattering every which way, afire in blinding winds. His pyromancy was more pronounced than I’d guessed. I wondered if he had downplayed his skills. Not that I was complaining.

I emptied the pistol anew, then drew the twinkie as a couple of larger specimens, each near seven feet tall, lumbered through the masses on a mission run. They roared as I unloaded successive barrels into each of their chests. Clouds of yellowcake powder meshed in the sand whirling about. Still more approached, though their body count grew as they leapt over fallen pack mates. I ejected the clip, slapped in another, and fired again. Each round found its mark. I cracked the twinkie’s stock, and though my thumbs and forefingers had their rightful earned calluses, the hot empties burned fierce as I plucked them from their barrels and reloaded from my strapped bandolier. I took out two more.

Thursday rasped through his respirator as he cast more arcane fire, covering for me as I reloaded. The air was thick with reddened soot. It was tough to breathe even with the filters, and difficult to see proper under the goggles. We’d taken out nearly half the herd. Green bodies, many charred by Thursday’s arcana, lay about in heaps. Usually with dwindling numbers, the remaining members of a large pod would retreat.

Then the storm quit, abrupt, petering out as the winds subsided. I’d seen it happen many times from inside the bullet, but never from outside within the storms. It was eerie. One second the gale roared, the next it shut off like someone flipped a switch. The caterwauling of screes continued, becoming much louder in the sudden vacuum. A number of thin, red dust devils began twirling across the salt flats. The roadway was obscured by sand drifts.

My hands became a blur. I phased out Thursday and his ongoing barrage of arcane flame. Reload, fire, repeat. We backed up to higher ground on a nearby dune with a better angle of the horizon. I’d presumed the mob was ravenous, on their last hungered legs, and that was why they weren’t backing off. Now I knew I was wrong. With my new vantage point, I saw why the herd hadn’t been deterred by our defense. They’d only been a vanguard. Beyond a series of dunes shrouding our former view was a valley chock full of the herd’s main body, swarming and hooting, a good five hundred more at least. They probably came in from the southeast stretches of the Famine Lands, subsisting on each other for sustenance.

Still my hands flew, clip to trigger to shell. I figured I was two seconds behind normal, what with the need to mollycoddle the broken finger. Screes fell left and right. Two managed to avoid both my gunfire and Thursday’s fireballs, bee-lining straight for us. I tripped one up and smacked it in the back of the head with the butt of the twinkie. Thursday dodged the gnashing teeth of the other and punched it in the throat. It went down, croaking for breath as I put one in its chest. I considered my smart bomb, but I couldn’t count on it leveling so many assailants spread across that wide an area, and if I did try, I’d be useless afterward.

Thursday knew. “Don’t do it. There’s too many of them,” he wheezed, puffing through his respirator. “I’ll be out of strength long before they run out of standing bodies.”

“And I’ll run out of bullets,” I replied, as I tossed the first empty bandolier to the side and dropped my pack, reaching inside to grab its twin. I reloaded and began firing again. The dust devils gained in strength and speed, confusing the central bulk of the herd as swirling, bulging contrails whipped through their ranks. I looked overhead at the storm front luxuriating in its foaming eye. I knew it then for what it was.

It was angry.

“We’ve got to make a run for it!” I yelled at Thursday as I picked up my pack.

“After you!” he shouted. “But I’m not going to make it very far!”

“Just gotta make it far enough!” I bellowed, and we took off, back from whence we’d come. Better than fifty screes at the lead fringe of the pack followed, shambling through the stinging sands. After near a half click, I spun around and blasted two slugs into a pair of speedier muties. “Look,” I squawked through my rebreather as I reloaded the twinkie. “The heat’s rising to the storm front. These twirly-bird drafts are about to merge into a full-bore cyclone.”

Thursday peered at the sky overhead. “How can you tell?”

“I’m a weather taster,” I said, as if he ought to know of what I spoke.

“What’s that?”

“Just run, Joop! Or the storm will take us right along with them!”

We ran.

Countless hooting screes followed, many losing their way in the storm as the dust devils gyrated about them. I glanced behind us, and as expected, two smaller sister-columns grew in size and intensity. Then a third whirlwind joined them. Winds picked up as they combined to form one massive funnel, an engorged tornado, reddish-black at its core, blistering spirals of sands whipping at its tail. The cyclone emanated a gruesome, breathy roar. It sucked in terrified screes, the herd in disarray, screeching and scattering, high tailing it in all directions. The tornado’s outer wake pulled at us as we dashed away. The nearest screes diverted and bolted east, away from the churning twister now taking a fortuitous turn westward.

Winds blustered as we collapsed in the sand, struggling for breath. My lungs burned. Thursday wheezed, coughing and hacking. His eyes bulged. His pale countenance was blue. I plucked his clogged respirator out of his mouth and replaced it with my own. I watched the cyclone spin toward the west horizon, taking wailing screes with it, flailing green bodies spinning at its apex, then falling from darkened sky. Perhaps a quarter of the herd had escaped the suction vortex, retreating toward the eastern mountains. I watched the last of them scatter in the distance, ensuring none were doubling back.

I scanned the expanse for shelter. After the effort Thursday had expended, he’d be lucky to make it a single click. To the south, I spied crumbling ruins of an old fueling station, its flagpole marquee bent from windstorms, yet the advertisement sign still retained legible lettering – Chevron. Its pumps were buried in sand drifts. Its concourse inside looked to be intact, but there was no way to tell for certain from that distance. I could only hope its roof hadn’t collapsed outright, and might provide partial respite from the winds.

Thursday labored for breath, coughing furiously. His knees buckled. He was ready to drop. I pulled one of his arms over my shoulder and began staggering toward the station.

“Let’s go, dragon boy. This is a humdinger of a haboobie.”

“What’s…a haboobie?”

“The sandstorm, rookie. Come on. We gotta get to cover.”

“There…is no cover…out here,” he gasped. “These lands…would be forsaken by the devil himself.”

“Actually, I think he summers out this way,” I joked.

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