"Your guns won't kill it! They won't even slow it down..."
The old man's admonition was barely audible over the jeep’s rumbling engine and scattering scree beneath its wheels. His wrists were starting to bleed in his lap as he squirmed against the improvised handcuffs fashioned from fence-wire. He made no eye contact with the search party as he muttered, but the pair sat closest knew the invective was aimed at them.
"Think you've said enough for one day, old man." Billy glared at him, weighing the shotgun in his grip. Turning toward the driver without taking his eyes off their charge, he added "Any sign yet, Charlie?".
"No, just followin' the trail still" came the voice from the front. While the amorphous creature may have been difficult to spot travelling at this speed, its linear path of destruction was anything but. A line of disease, disintegration and destruction cut through the scrubland. This was at least the easiest part of their task.
The charred remains of another house passed by. The old Jones' place. No signs of life. What was left of the wooden panelling looked bubbled and rotten through, as if the building had been exposed to thousands of years of wear in an instant. The dwelling seemed to be frozen in one last cry as the remains of its supporting structure reached feebly for the clouds. The entirety of its contents - and inhabitants - were gone, either consumed or reduced to their constituent dust. The result was the same either way.
“There’s still time to tell us why you did it”, offered Zachary, the calmest and the oldest of the group, even being at least thirty years younger than the one they were failing to interrogate. Lines of consternation furrowed into Zachary’s face, but he spoke to the old man without reprisal or accusation.
“Did it?”, he responded incredulously, “You think this was my doin’? It was comin’ anyway, I just held the gate open! It would have found a way in, it’s not just me workin’ for the cause! You boys have got no idea what you’re dealin’ with…”
“Then why don’t you tell us?”. Billy leaned forward across the divide, raising his weapon slightly but not pointing it directly at the old man just yet. Even in this excitement, Billy knew that a bump or dip in the trail resulting in an accidental discharge could be disastrous if their captive were to be on its receiving end. Captive. That in itself was a joke.
The old timer’s eyes narrowed. “It’s here to clear a way for the others. The Old Ones. Soon be their time! You’ll see!”
From the very back of the truck, Wyatt joined in. “Why’d you call it up?”. A question so basic this late in the day was met with a snort of derision.
“I didn’t ‘call it up’, it was here all along! In the space between the spaces! I just opened the gate!”
Billy looked to Zachary. “Okay, can I shoot him?”
“Not yet, he might still be useful.”
The old man was becoming distracted and agitated now, his watery eyes seeming to focus on other places as he remonstrated with the hunters. “You won’t stop it! You can’t!!”
“That doesn’t sound useful. Let me know when you want me to shoot him”.
Wyatt again. “Maybe we can’t stop it, but maybe this can.” He held up a large book with both hands. Scabrous and ancient looking, a dark leathery binding etched and embossed with barely legible symbols struggled to contain thick, age-yellowed pages that seemed to hang at angles from its fragile grasp, bulging as if to suggest illicit additions secreted between.
The old man’s mood changed in an instant and he blanched as recognition of the tome registered on his face, the illusion of smug superiority shattered. “You don’t know how to use that book!” he blustered a little too quickly.
“Well then I guess you and your plan have got nothing to worry about! Let’s see…” Wyatt opened the volume casually at its middle, leafed through a few brittle pages and began to read aloud with an air of bemused interest. “Umph n'geena, brahuna hai...”
“No! STOP!” hollered the prisoner, unabashedly panicked now.
“…stoonto een ah g'tollah, g’facht ah n’geenah?” he continued quizzically, as if seeking confirmation from his companions. It came instead from the front-corner of the back of the jeep as the old man launched himself head-first past his closest captors and toward the reader of the words, an incoherent shriek of denial the only preemptive tell of the burst of energy.
Billy was quick enough to assist this velocity by ramming the butt of his shotgun square into the centre of the old man’s spine. Hands still bound, the howl ended as his face made first contact with the wooden floorboards.
After he was hauled efficiently back into his seat with neither grace nor compassion, Billy held the quarry in place with the business-end of the shotgun pressed into his chest, as Zachary fashioned a gag from a length of strapping hanging behind the driver’s seat.
“Well,” mused Wyatt, “it looks like that’s the passage, alright. And I’d say that’s all the help we’re going to get out of the old fool. We should lose him. He’ll be so desperate to stop us now, we won’t be able to trust a word that comes out of his mouth.”
“True,” agreed Zachary, “but we can sure use his reactions as a guide to how well we’re doing…”
The jeep began to slow down, noticeably. “Guys?” came Charlie’s voice from the front. “Guys, I think we’ve found it…”. The jeep stopped.
Around three hundred yards in front of them, a huge translucent, colour-shifting… thing - defying mundane description of shape - shuddered, pulsed and tensed for what came next, somehow seeming to stare from a thousand non-existent eyes, as the trickling sound of urine hitting the jeep’s floor came from the old man.
“Game time…” whispered Wyatt.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• Short stories © WorldOfBlackout.co.uk, all entries are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Y'know, mostly.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
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