Sticks had been stuck solidly into the earth in the area surrounding the cave. Some looked like attempts at crude fences. Other, larger chunks of wood had scowling, snarling faces carved into them.
“Did they do this?” she asked. “The things?” Duc said nothing as he faced off against a carved face with sharp teeth and tree branches sticking out of its head like antlers.
They left Maël’s body behind. His head had been twisted around. She had heard of primates half the size of these things that were able to dislocate a man’s arm with just a jerk. A bigfoot towered over man. The one that killed Maël probably did so without even trying. That made her angrier.
Maël had been a good man. He had treated her well the few times they’d slept together. He had given her a jar of pickled beets that he’d found in an abandoned house in Saint-Bonnet-la-Rivière. She’d smirked and patted him on the shoulder. He’d looked so serious when he handed it to her. It almost made her laugh.
Duc crashed through the brush ahead of her. He wasn’t being quiet about where they were headed. He was that confident that they were gone.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I think we should have killed the things a year ago,” Pénélope said. “We should have found every rifle, every pistol, shit – every large knife, and killed them.”
“They’ve managed to stay hidden for as long as we’ve known about them. What makes you think we could just get the drop on them like that? Not to mention,” he said, “They’re notoriously strong. No, I think we would have had a massacre.”
“So you think Maël’s death was worth it then to not go to the trouble?” His eyes became hard and she knew she’d said too much. Duc had asked what she thought, but she had gone too far questioning his decision. She changed the subject.
“We know another tribe of the things moved in here, then a week later they all leave. And before they go they kill Maël. At least we’re rid of them,” she said. She was relieved when he stopped staring at her and went back to looking at the tracks. “Did they abduct him?”
“No,” Duc said. “He holds a knife. There’s blood here that isn’t his. He fought with them at this point, and his are the only tracks up to here. He came out here by himself…?” Duc covered his eyes with his hand.
“Maybe he decided to kill them himself?” she said.
“He wouldn’t bring a knife to kill them. No, he came here to go to the Cave.”
She saw it now. A knotted rope was slung over his shoulder. His belt held candles. Duc continued.
“He came to go the Cave. I don’t know why. They stopped him and killed him. Protecting something maybe?”
“Something he wanted,” she said. Duc looked at her and nodded.
“Let’s see what it is,” he said. He bent over and stood back up holding the rope. He handed her the candles.
Aidan couldn’t see anything, but he saw the light of a flashlight brighten the room. Wynne screamed thought this time it wasn’t in desperation. It was in terror.
“Oh, fuck,” a man’s voice said.
“Oh shit. Oh God. I’m sorry. I thought they came back. I didn’t know it was-”
Aidan popped up from behind the gurney and fired. The figure jerked and made a sound like coughing as the bullets thudded into him. Aidan stopped after six shots and waited. The man stumbled back towards the doorway. He made it three steps, and then he fell. His flashlight clattered across the ground. Aidan kept the rifle trained on him. His breath rattled rasped for a few moments and then stopped.
Wynne was sobbing now, Aidan noticed. He walked around the gurney and kneeled over him, picking up a flashlight and shining it so that the room was illuminated. His leg was covered in blood and he held his arms over his head. Aidan nudged his shoulder with the butt of his gun.
“Wynne. He’s dead.”
Wynne uncovered his head. “What the fuck Aidan? What’s going on?”
Aidan shushed him and grabbed his arm, slinging him upright so that he could walk.
“I’m leaving now, Wynne,” Aidan said. “It’s just you and me now which is good. We can talk.”
Wynne groaned as Aidan started walking. He veered around the man’s body and saw now that he was dressed in filthy fatigues that were now soaked in blood. It was still spreading across the floor as they walked by.
“Are you paying attention, Wynne? Because I want to know some things. There’s things that you know that I don’t.” The stepped over Gerard’s body. Wynne looked down and started sobbing again.
“Wynne. Ignore Gerard and listen to me. He has no questions for you.”
“Aidan what are you talking about?” Wynne’s voice cracked. “Did we kill a soldier?”
Aidan began to worry that Wynne was going into shock. He knew little about medicine. He didn’t know what to do, and he knew Wynne could die.
“Just concentrate on walking, and on my questions Wynne. I don’t know how much time we have left. Did Janessa ever talk about me?”
Wynne stopped walking.
“Keep walking, Wynne, and answer my question, please.” Aidan pulled him along. “Did she talk about me?”
“Aidan,” his voice was thick with pain. “Listen, she said things were over. She said that you scared her, and that she’d broken things off.”
“I scared her,” Aidan said. She’d never seemed scared. The only time he remembered seeing her scared was at the town festival. He had arrived and seen her sitting with Wynne, Wynne’s arm around her shoulders. She looked scared then. Aidan has just paused for a moment, and turned around and left.
“I’m not real good at being like everyone else, Wynne. I don’t think or say the right things. I’m not you. I’m the you that’s on the other side of the mirror. My right hand is your left hand. Your right hand is my left hand. You see? That’s why everyone loves you. That’s why everyone hates me.” Wynne made a confused noise.
“Don’t worry. We’re almost there,” Aidan said.
“We’re barely out of the base, Aidan,” Wynne said.
“I know. I think I understood what happened now. Perhaps there was a mistake. Perhaps Janessa was supposed to be with you, and she mistook your shadow for her lover. You see? She corrected her mistake, but it was too late. I’m in pain, Wynne.” It felt strange to say that. Gerard’s insults. The town’s shunning. None of that had ever fazed Aidan. It had just been how things were. But seeing Janessa with Wynne at the town festival – that was different. On his way home, Aidan had thrown up.
“Aidan. I’m sorry.”
The had reached the entrance of the base. They stepped outside. It was dark now.
“I’m sorry too, Wynne. You and I can’t exist together anymore. I’ve never cared that you were the one that people loved, and that I was the one they didn’t understand. But I can’t be alive without Janessa. I’m going to leave you here. I’ll shoot you first, if you like.”
Wynne stopped walking again. He didn’t say anything. It was a clear night. Stars shone down on the two, and crickets chirped.
When Wynne spoke, he spoke slowly, “Aidan. The world isn’t like you say. We’re not reflections of each other. We’re just twins. Killing me won’t get you Janessa. I’ve known you longer than anybody, and I know this must hurt, but you’re just strange, Aidan. You’ve always been this way. And maybe that made you interesting or desirable to her. I think she just figured out that in the long run, you just weren’t what she wanted.” Aidan looked over at his brother, his face pale in the moonlight. Whether it was from the pain of the gunshot in his leg or the white light of the moon, he couldn’t tell.
A pounding sound shook the ground. Aidan rested his hand against a jeep they stood beside to keep from falling over. Wynne shouted, but Aidan couldn’t tell what he was saying.
The wind picked up. Sand blew and stung Aidan’s eyes. He looked up at the sky.
“They did come back,” he said. Wynne couldn’t hear him.
A huge black disc obscured the night sky. Lights glowed and spun, making the world around the brothers so bright they could barely see. The jeep started rattling. The air around them begin to buzz with static. Aidan looked at his brother.
“Wynne, I see now. It’s not that only one of us can exist. It’s that I have to go back to the other side of the mirror,” Aidan shouted. Wynne just stared at him confused. Then Aidan shoved him, hard, back through the doorway of the base. Wynne shouted in pain, and fear, as he sprawled in the hallway. He looked back in time to see Wynne fly upwards along with the jeep and out of site. There was a heartbeat. Two heartbeats. Then the lights were gone. The jeep crashed down back in front of the doorway with a crash.
Aidan lay there, breathing heavily, before pushing his body up so that he could crawl. He crawled over a scorched corpse, out the doorway, and through the dust. He looked at the sky and only the stars looked back. In the sand, there was a dark spray of blood. He rubbed it with the palm of his hand, leaving a red smear, but he could not see his brother.
The three went deeper, Aidan leading the way. It was all darkness. They’d found several flashlights in a cabinet by the entrance and now three beams of light lit up the rooms and halls. Inside the building they found more of the same – soldiers cooked from the inside out. Now, though, there were civilians. A blistered leg with a woman’s high heel shoe stuck out from beneath a desk. It looked like she’d crawled under it to hide and had died there, sprawled out with her hands over her head. Another pair of corpses looked like a young boy clutching an infant girl to him. The soldiers had kept family here, Aidan knew that, but they never saw them in the town. Only soldiers in their trucks came down to trade.
As they went deeper into the building, the halls and rooms became less comforting. Carpets gave way to tiled floors. Wood-panelled walls with photographs of military heroes or American patriotic imagery disappeared and there was only metal and white stone. They pushed through a door that said, “Clearance Level 4.” It was all swinging double doors and gurneys.
“This place is like a hospital,” Wynne said. It had been awhile since any of them had spoken and Gerard jumped. Aidan looked over his shoulder at the two of them. Gerard was pale and sweating. Wynne’s flashlight beam trembled as his hand did.
He wondered if Wynne’s hands had trembled when he’d touched Janessa for the first time. Aidan’s had and she’d smiled at him. He didn’t know if he’d ever touched anyone affectionately in his life. It didn’t come naturally to him. It probably came naturally to Wynne. He doubted that his hands had trembled.
“Yeah. It does,” Gerard said. “Base clinic maybe?”
Aidan shined his flashlight through one of the windows on a swinging door.
“This is strange medicine,” he said. Gerard and Wynne approached him and peered through the window. Gerard pushed open the door and it reeked of carrion. Wynne threw up.
It was a room full of operating tables. A corpse lay on each one. They all lay on their backs, staring at the ceiling. All of their mouths hung wide open and their eyes stared while their abdomens were exposed. Large pins held back flesh. In some cases ribcages were cracked and split in half.
“Jesus,” Gerard said. Aidan walked into the room. The other two just watched him, uncertain. Wynne wiped his mouth and breathed heavily.
The corpses here weren’t cooked like the others. They were all decomposing, but slowly. They were older men, Aidan noted. They all had gray hair or no hair. Whoever’d done this hadn’t bothered to strip them naked. They tore open their jackets and cut into them. Aidan moved an arm so he could he look at the shoulder. Stars. He grunted.
“What are you looking at?” Gerard asked.
“The losers of a war, I think.” If his answer exasperated Gerard, the man was too disturbed to say anything about it.
In piles next to some of the corpses were their internal organs, seperated individually and neatly arranged, leaving only empty cavities in their stomachs. Naked spines gleamed white up through the holes that were cut open. Other corpses were not so neat and intestine and stomach unspooled over the edge of the table and onto the floor as though someone had just reached their hands into the men and yanked them out. He wondered if they were still alive when it happened. The way their faces were twisted and their mouths howled silently, be believed that most of them were.
“Aidan,” Gerard said. He was suddenly whispering. Perhaps he was paying respect to the pain suffered in this room. “Get the fuck out of there. Let’s go. We’ve seen enough. Hero boy here is-”
There were several pops and Gerard’s words were cut off. Aidan looked over to see blood sprayed across the door Gerard had been holding open. Gerard was toppling to the ground, his face a dark mass, as Wynne shouted something. There was another pop and Wynne fell to the ground, still shouting.
Aidan crouched down behind one of the surgical tables and checked the action on his rifle. He wasn’t very good with guns, but he knew the basics. Between yelling at them, Gerard had showed them a few other things on the way up. He clicked the safety off and chambered a round.
“Aidan, help,” Wynne shouted. He laid in the doorway and was trying to crawl inside. Aidan was motionless.
A minute ticked by as Wynne crawled, groaning and leaving a trail of blood behind him. “For fuck’s sake, help me,” he screamed. His voice was a wreck.
Aidan heard footsteps over Wynne’s breathing.
They moved towards the largest compound. Around them it looked as though God had stepped from the sky and applied a blowtorch. More blackened corpses, some disintegrating into ash. Melted chainlink fences. Scorched husks of vehicles. Aidan peered into the window of a jeep that had a corpse sprawled over the steering wheel.
“I don’t think any of this shit is salvageable,” Gerard said. “God damn it. What did this?”
“Maybe a dragon,” Wynne said. Gerard stared at him. “What? Since the Nightmare all sorts of impossible things have happened. Is it that hard to believe?”
“A fucking dragon,” Gerard slapped him upside the head. “This is a military base. Could be the army’s starting to turn in on itself. Maybe the Ranch stopped taking orders. Maybe they napalmed their own installation. We don’t need any Harry Potter bullshit to come up with answers.”
Gerard was bigger than both of them and meaner. There wasn’t anyone in Rachel who could stand toe-to-toe with him in a fistfight, so Wynne put up with his shit and Aidan put up with his shit. He tongued his mouth where his incisor and canine were missing. He wondered if he’d miss them the next time he ate.
“Dragons and bombers are brothers,” Aidan said. “If you go far enough forward or far enough back, you’ll see that. It’s all a loop. Medieval peasants were telling stories of napalm. We’re telling stories of dragons.”
“I swear to God,” Gerard said, “you’re not going to make it back to Rachel if you don’t shut the hell up. Nobody will miss you.”
Aidan went back to tonguing the gaps in his teeth. He glanced at the sun. It’s path across the sky was almost complete. Another couple of hours and the air would cool. Maybe Gerard’s temper would cool with it. Or maybe whatever had destroyed this place would come back with the darkness, swooping in like it did before in the night and then it would be their bodies growing cold. Three more dead soldiers.
Gerard picked over the remains of the jeep finding a scorched canteen that still contained water on the floor. He unscrewed the lid, took a drink, and offered it to Wynne and Aidan. They shook their heads. He shrugged and the kept moving.
The entrance to the complace, a metal door, had been melted into slag. There were more corpses around the entrance as though the shadowy doorway had spit them all up. The trio peered through it, but couldn’t see anything in the unlit, windowless building.
“Aidan, you go in first,” Gerard said.
“Is there something in there you’re afraid of?” Aidan asked. He had said it curiously, but he realized instantly that Gerard did not take it well. His eyes flashed and the corners of his mouth tightened. He stomped over towards Aidan, who unconsciously took a couple of steps back.
“Gerard… hey…” Wynne said.
Gerard grabbed Aidan by the back of the neck and dragged him to the entrance.
“You do what I fucking told you,” he said, and then he shoved Aidan through the entrance. Aidan stumbled a couple of steps before his foot caught on something sending him sprawling down the hallway. He caught himself with his hands and grunted as a pain shot up his wrist, his rifle jabbing him in the thigh.
Aidan pushed himself on his hands and knees, looking back at what caught his foot. It was another corpse – the first civilian that he’d seen. A woman in floral-patterned skirt and a white blouse, her skin charred. He turned over and sat, rubbing his wrist.
“Their clothes,” he muttered.
“Stand up and keep walking,” Gerard said. He had his rifle pointed at Aidan. Aidan didn’t notice.
“Their clothes. They all look as though they’ve been burned alive, but their clothes are fine. We never noticed.”
The corpses had been cooked of all their moisture. Already blackened from what looked like fire, the sun had done the rest of the job. The bodies that the vultures and coyotes left weree mummies. One laid on its back, one hand curled up over its face as though it were shielding its eyes from the light. Aidan leaned over and took the scorched camouflage hat off the dead soldier’s head and rested it over his grimacing, crumbling face.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Gerard was scared of Aidan. When Gerard got scared, he got angry. Aidan had lost two teeth that way on the hike in. “Just take his gun and leave him alone.”
“Nobody likes being stared at. The sun’s had one miserable eye on us lately. I’m letting him sleep more peacefully.” He bent over and looked down at the body. One of its legs had been carried off. The patch on his vest said Hamilton. Aidan grabbed the rifle at the dead man’s side and checked the ammunition.
“Besides, who knows when it’ll be handy to have a dead man owing me a favor.” Considering that the dead far outnumbered the living and these days Aidan’s chances of being dead by tomorrow got better and better all the time, he figured it would come in real handy.
The water had gone foul in town. Vultures circled in the sky from sun up to sun down. There was even word that the inscrutable Bigfoot tribe had relocated. The creatures were strange and harmless, but they seemed to have a way of knowing when things were going bad. Then one day strange lights and terrible sounds were heard from the Ranch. No word came in from the soldiers over the radio. It had been a month since they’d visited the town.
The Rachel town council sent the three young men to investigate. Aidan. Gerard. Wynne. When Gerard’s lot was drawn to go, his family wept. His daughter wailed and wailed until the mother carried her out of the hall. When Wynne volunteered, the women of the town twittered anxiously and the men looked solemn. When Aidan volunteered, there was silence. He wondered if it had made them uncomfortable or if he just simply wouldn’t be missed. The town figured they were being sent to die. With everything horrible that walked the earth since the Nightmare, whatever had brought the quiet to the Ranch could likely swallow them in an instant.
But if Wynne was going, he had to go. He might not get another chance to be alone with him.
Aidan found a corpse that had a pair of boots that looked to be his size. He pulled them off while Wynne and Gerard looked at a tank in the middle of the yard. The cannon barrel drooped and the treads had fused together. Gerard climbed on top of it and began pulling on the hatch. It wouldn’t budge. Aidan inspected the boots, pouring out chunks of flesh that had come off along with the boot. He sighed and dropped it.
“This thing won’t open,” Gerard said. “And you know what we’d find inside if it did? Maggots and more dead men. We’ve seen everything we need to see. This place is dead. There’s nobody left alive to tell us what happened here. We might as well head back to Rachel.”
“We can’t,” Wynne said. “There might be people alive inside the buildings that we could help. And there might be answers inside with them. We can’t go back yet. We have nothing to tell the town, and we don’t know if Rachel is still in danger. We don’t know if what came here is still around.”
“Exactly,” Gerard said. “Just the reason to get the fuck out of here. We have some idea what happened. If we die, then nobody will know anything at all.”
Aidan leaned on his rifle, watching them. They remembered he was there and Wynne turned to him. “Aidan, what do you think?”
“Who gives a fuck what he thinks? He’ll probably just say something that doesn’t make any sense anyway.”
“Oh, we should stay,” Aidan said, staring at Wynne. “I’m not done here.” Wynne’s face clouded. Gerard didn’t notice.
“Fine. We’ll stay and see how many corpses we can find. Maybe we can get them all to owe us favors. Right, psychopath?”
“At the very least, we’ll give them some company for a little while,” Aidan said. Wynne looked nervous. Gerard turned his back on them and gestured at the largest building.
“We’ll check that one. If there’s nothing in it, then we’re done here. We can go back to Rachel and tell them what we’ve found.” Gerard would get to return to his family. Wynne would be treated like a hero. Gerard wanted return to those who loved him. Wynne wanted to be loved even more. Aidan understood. He knew how powerful a motivator love was. Especially when it could be so precious and rare.
