The Arrivals

Chapter 16

Chloe wasn’t sure what she thought about the Wasteland or Jack or much of anything, but she knew what she thought of guns. There was something energizing about the weight of a pistol in her hand, and it didn’t hurt that the power they allowed her was actually a good thing here. She wasn’t going to blindly trust the people she was with, but she was happy to accept the use of the guns they had lying around their camp the way most campsites had firewood.

“I have a guy who makes a few things for us,” Jack explained as he handed her what, upon inspection, appeared to be a nine-shot revolver with a long barrel. It wasn’t completely dissimilar to the guns she’d shot years ago at home, but it was different enough that she turned it over in her hands and examined it. She flipped open the barrel and saw that the nine chambers were extra long. No bullet that she knew would require the length of these chambers. She held out her hand for bullets.

Silently, Jack dropped three narrow, pointed projectiles into her hand. He’d gone from ready to screw on the desert floor to adopting the demeanor of a distant gun-range instructor. If she were honest with herself, she wasn’t sure what she thought of it . . . beyond the obvious: her taste in men wasn’t particularly good. At home, she’d gone from loser to ex-con to the seemingly good guy she’d last seen screwing her boss. Here, she’d met all of three guys and was already rolling around with the one who’d given her the Wasteland equivalent of drugs.

Some things never change.

Chloe slid the odd bullets into the chambers and closed the barrel. “Target?”

He pointed at a distant rock outcropping that he probably assumed she couldn’t hit, especially as the sky was still dim. It wasn’t quite morning, but her vision was crisp enough since she’d had the Verrot that she could see more than well enough.

She aimed, inhaled, and pulled the trigger. The bullet made a whistling noise as it was propelled through the air and hit the outcropping almost square center. From this distance, it looked like the bullet shattered into tiny fragments on impact.

“Modified wood,” Jack explained. “Francis usually has them all blessed too. I haven’t seen any difference in the bullets after he treats them, but our Francis is a few steps past superstitious.”

“He’s the one at the gate?” She walked toward the rock she’d shot so she could see the damage.

Jack walked alongside her. “He is.”

They practiced with various other handguns, rifles, and a shotgun until Jack was all smiles. “You’ve spent more than a little time with guns. What was it you did at home?”

Chloe shook her head. “Nothing important.”

“Edgar was a hired gun; I was a gambler and a few other things. Francis sold drugs; Hector . . . no one’s quite sure what he did. He just calls it ‘carny work,’ but he seems to have spent some time in prison for it.” Jack held out a pair of throwing knives. “These are what he likes to use. Any knife skills?”

For a moment Chloe stared out at the desert behind Jack. She’d ended up in the midst of a group of criminals and cutthroats. Mom always swore I’d end up in bad straits. Chloe watched some sort of doglike animal running across the sand and tried not to think about Jason cutting her. Jason’s dead now, she reminded herself. I made sure of it. She looked back at Jack and said, “I’m not a knife fan.”

“Fair enough.” Jack picked up the bag and pulled out two other knives. “These are dummy knives. I’ll show you the basics for close quarters.”

“Jack? That animal is coming awfully close . . .” She pointed. If she were at home, she’d say it was definitely a canine of some sort. She wasn’t sure what sort, though: it had the larger, pointed ears of a coyote, but the downward slope toward the back haunches was reminiscent of a hyena.

When Jack turned and saw it, he immediately shoved her toward the weapons bag and grabbed the knife he’d left on the rock. “Gun. Now.”

Chloe withdrew a revolver, checked the chambers, and searched the bag for more rounds. “What is it?”

“Cynanthrope.” He came to stand at her side.

She lifted the gun and sighted down on the thing. “I can take it out.”

“Not it. Them.” He was scanning the area. “They’re pack hunters. If there’s one, there are others nearby. If you shoot one cyn and they weren’t intending to attack, they will.”

Chloe followed Jack’s lead, searching the landscape for the rest of the cynanthrope pack. She hoped he was wrong or that the solitary canine was just passing by, but her hopes were quickly dashed as she saw several more of the creatures come into view. “Jack?”

“I see them.” He sheathed the knife and withdrew his gun. “Hold steady.”

There were at least seven of the creatures, and now that they were closer, Chloe could see that they were decidedly larger than coyotes. They were even bigger than the German Rottweilers that one of her exes had owned. Like those dogs, though, these creatures were all muscle and intimidating teeth. Her ex’s dogs had been big sweeties, despite appearances, but she was pretty sure that the cynanthropes weren’t cuddly. They prowled closer in a sort of hive-mind behavior, and Chloe wasn’t so sure she agreed with Jack’s order to wait. With that many of them, the odds of avoiding injury weren’t looking good if they attacked.

One of the doglike creatures growled, and the others took up the sound, so it was like a growing roll of thunder that sounded far too much like an immense swarm of angry bees.

“Can I shoot yet?” she half begged. “I don’t want to be kibble here.”

“No.” Jack put his back to hers, both allaying the temptation to back up and intensifying her desire to do so. If she moved away from the cynanthropes, she could knock Jack off balance and interfere with his ability to defend himself—or she could enjoy that brief comfort of knowing that he truly was behind her without taking her eyes off of the monsters.

The cynanthropes continued to growl, but the ones she could see in front of her and to the sides were motionless. She wasn’t sure what they were waiting for or what to watch for, but before she could ask Jack, he yelled, “Dive left. Shoot.”

She did so, but all she caught was an arm of a cactus as the cynanthrope she’d targeted dodged to the side. She aimed and fired again, this time hitting the tip of one of the creature’s ears. “Damn it.”

The cynanthropes weren’t attacking. They’d moved to avoid her shots, but they weren’t all leaping at her. Chloe fired at them, and they backed away. All things considered, the situation was going much better than she’d expected. Then, behind her, she heard growling.

She tore her gaze off the three of the creatures she could still see in front of her and saw that Jack was rolling in the sand with one of them trying to bite his throat. His gun was nearby in the sand, but both of his hands were busy trying to keep the creature off of him.

There was no way she could shoot it without risking shooting him. After another look to ascertain that the rest of the pack wasn’t attacking, she walked over and grabbed the bag of weapons. With another glance at the unmoving cyns, she wished she understood the rules here better already. It would be handy if waking up in a strange world included a guide. Since it didn’t, she had to trust what she hoped were semireliable instincts. She looked in the bag and withdrew a weapon that looked like something between a hunting knife and a short sword, and another pistol.

Taking time to reload wasn’t something she was eager to do until she had to. Instead, she shot at the cyn that was closest. This time she hit it square in chest. It hissed in a very undoglike way, and another cyn raced closer. This was the one with the now-injured ear, and again it evaded her shot. It and the injured cyn both retreated, leaving only one of the cyns in front of her.

She turned toward Jack then, but before she could get close enough to help dislodge the cynanthrope that had him pinned to the ground, a loud whining of unmistakable fear came from all of the creatures at once. All of the creatures she could see, except for the one trying to eat Jack, fled in a rush.

As she looked up to see what had frightened the monsters away, she saw something even more horrific than the animals that had attacked them. One of the cyns, the one she’d shot, was being lifted into the air by a wrinkled, person-shaped thing. It ripped the throat out of the cynanthrope. Blood and flesh were clinging to its emaciated face as it turned to face her.

“Here, puppy, puppy,” she muttered as she swung open the barrel and shook out the casings. After wishing the doglike creatures would vanish, she suddenly wanted a surge of them to appear. Maybe that would buy her time to figure out what to do about the new threat.

“Any tips?” she called as she finished chambering several rounds, snapped the barrel shut, and raised the revolver. Her thumb was already on the hammer, pulling it back, and her finger was ready to squeeze the trigger.

“It’s on our side. Don’t shoot!” Jack yelled.

Chloe looked at him like he was a madman. When things that look like slavering nightmares arrive and run toward a person, shooting is a perfectly sound response. In fact, shooting such things repeatedly was an even more rational plan. I’m signed on to work with a lunatic. She forced herself to ease off the hammer and glanced at Jack, who was still pinned under the growling cynanthrope. “What is it?”

“Bloedzuiger.” He punched the cynanthrope in the snout.

With renewed horror, Chloe turned her attention to the thing. Red-tinged spittle bubbled on its lips. “That’s a bloedzuiger?”

The sight of it evoked the nausea she hadn’t felt when she’d learned she’d consumed blood. It was a disgusting, barely sentient-looking beast. Even the animals that had attacked them seemed more aware. This thing looked like it was frothing at the mouth.

“It’ll obey you within reason,” Jack yelled as he tried to keep the cynanthrope’s teeth away from his throat. The creature was stronger than its size would seem to indicate, but Jack was holding it off so far. “Help, please.”

She still wasn’t sure she could shoot the creature attacking Jack without hitting him too. They were moving too quickly for her to get a clean shot, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to turn away from the thing in front of her either. “I can’t—”

Her words died midsentence as the bloedzuiger responded to Jack’s request. It disposed of the remaining cynanthrope with a speed that was too quick to follow. Jack came to his feet as the monster that had rescued them stood with drool and blood dripping down its chest.

Despite the bloedzuiger’s actions, Chloe couldn’t force herself to lower the gun the whole way. She relaxed her arms slightly and lowered the barrel, but she still held it in both hands, ready to raise and fire. Jack came to her side, put a hand atop the barrel, and gently pushed it and her hands down until the gun was aiming into the sand.

“It won’t hurt you,” he assured her.

She wasn’t entirely convinced that he was trustworthy—really, that any of the people she’d met were trustworthy—but the drooling creature that stood watching them as Jack inspected their injuries was at the top of her increasingly long list of things to mistrust. It was more like the old black-and-white movie vampires than the romantic versions of later movies. It also wasn’t moving, so she turned her attention to the man who’d been fighting at her side.

Jack was cut in several places, but his wounds appeared to be healing as she stared at him. Her own cuts were likewise vanishing. She could feel the pain lessening by the moment, and she wondered why. Maybe it had to do with the Wasteland or the Verrot. If bloedzuigers were akin to vampires, did Verrot heal? Then a horrible thought followed that one: if I die, will I turn into that?

She glanced at the slavering bloedzuiger. This time, however, the eyes staring at her seemed to hold an eerie alertness. Its body was still and somehow contemplative, like a predator going still before attacking.

“Jack!” She lifted the gun she still held. “It’s doing something.”

He pushed the gun down again. “No. It’s not doing anything. Its master is checking in on us.”

“She a wise woman,” the creature said. “A fair replacement for your dead packmate, I would say.”

Dead packmate? Chloe looked quickly at Jack, but didn’t pursue that line of questioning yet. She had no clear idea who or what to trust, but she had a primal mistrust of the bloedzuiger. Later, she would ask about the odd remark. For now, she simply watched it. First crisis first.

“Why is it . . .” Her gaze snapped back to the bloedzuiger as she realized that the “master” who was speaking was using this bloedzuiger’s body but was not actually present. “Can it do that to us? Possess us?”

The bloedzuiger smiled, a truly horrific sight with the blood covering its cadaverous face. “My name is Garuda, and no, I cannot possess you or Jackson even though you’ve had Verrot.”

Jack stepped between her and the possessed bloedzuiger. “Your aid is appreciated,” he said.

“Monks are in Gallows.” Garuda’s gaze stayed fixed on Chloe as the bloedzuiger spoke to Jack. “I sent the newborn to tell you. I’m glad it served another purpose as well. It’s almost light, though, so I need to call him home.”

Jack nodded, and the younger bloedzuiger resumed the mien of a drooling beast. Garuda had departed as quickly as he’d arrived, and they were left with an apparently younger version of a bloedzuiger.

The bloedzuiger stared at Jack for a moment, and then turned and ran. It wasn’t graceful, more like a charging bull than a gazelle, but the speed at which it moved was remarkable.

Chloe stared after it; in mere moments, she could see no sign of the bloedzuiger. All that she saw was the seemingly empty desert. She now knew that it wasn’t truly empty: monsters on two feet and on four roamed out there. She wasn’t sure what other secrets the desert held, but the world she was now apparently to call home was growing odder by the hour.

“I’m sure you have questions, and I’ll answer what I can after we gather the rest of the team to head into Gallows,” Jack promised.

“Gallows is a town? With monks?”

Jack nodded.

“So we’re going there now?”

“We are,” Jack said. The look in his eyes was steely enough that she had no doubt that he was a man she’d rather not cross, and she strongly suspected that he wasn’t on friendly terms with the monks—although he was on such terms with the bloedzuigers.

“Right,” she said quietly. “Let’s go to Gallows.”

She had no desire to remain in the desert, although, admittedly, she wasn’t entirely sure that going to Gallows was any more appealing. The world she’d found herself in wasn’t feeling like a very hospitable place. Only half jokingly, she asked, “I don’t suppose you have a guidebook about desert dwellers or Wasteland monsters back at camp?”

Jack paused in his packing. “No, but you’ll learn fast enough, Chloe. I give you my word. If you’re one of us, you’re my responsibility, and I do my level best to protect all of those in my care. Unless you mean me or mine harm, I’ll do whatever I can to keep you safe.”

“I don’t mean you harm,” she said. That much she knew; however, she didn’t know Jack well enough to determine if she was one of them. She wasn’t sure that a life in a crude desert outpost was what she wanted or if there was a way to go back home. All she could say for sure was that as Jack stared at her, she knew that she didn’t want to be against him because although he hadn’t articulated it, she was pretty sure that he’d do that same level best to strike down those who weren’t a part of his small group of killers.