Dusk Territories: Always Burning (15 page)

“I’ll be back within the hour. If not, search for me.”

“Nah. I’m not. Don’t come back in an hour, I’ll just consider ya a dumbass for not listening.”

Graham put on a sly expression, battling his true indecisiveness. “Don’t you worry your head off while I’m gone.” He loaded his pistol and moved the knife into a more accessible location. “Anything I should know before heading out?”

“Nope, just mutant animals are a bitch to kill.”

Beastmaster’s fight still fresh in his mind had taught him that. “Noted.”

Advice taken, Graham chose a reasonable direction and headed towards it. The mask of camaraderie dropped, leaving only a hunter’s thirst. He would have to find something. Once he had it, he’ll rip it open.
You can’t stop your nature. Not when you were human, not when you are this.
He couldn’t prove his conscious wrong.

_

Stalk. Shadow. Hunt.

A million words described what he was doing now. All that mattered was that he was doing it.

Graham had allowed himself at least a quarter of a mile away before he gave into his body’s drives. It was frightening at first. A large part of his body just yearned to a painful thirst. Soon, he allowed himself to become accustomed to the thought, to adapt. Most men would fight the urge to keep all threads of humanity. However, Celine’s words stung in the back of his mind. If he fought it, he could die. Worse, if he fought hard enough, a lot more people could die.

So he had to learn, even if it scared him more than anything in his life could.

Intuitively, he had gone into a crawl. Fingers and toes were firmly in the mud. Bulky dragonflies and mutated mosquitoes flew over his head, fighting vigorous and violent battles. There were worms as long as snakes and beetles larger than his fist had taken residence in mud beside and under him. He had felt them, felt their life.
They would never do, I need something bigger
.

He found it.

Blood dripped from his fingers, oozing from the sides of his mouth that he couldn’t quite chew on in his madness. The weapons that he had carried were almost next to useless in his hunt. The pistol had been used to weaken it, slow it down. Swiftness of his body took the rest. Blood stirred the darkness in him. Plans for the knife went straight out of the window.

Now, he sat cross-legged, almost uncomfortably satisfied with the bear’s throbbing intestines in his mouth. He swallowed, feeling the hunger reel back like a fisherman’s line.
Graham greedily licked his lips clean of blood.
I shouldn’t be doing this.
Being eaten alive, with no true chance of a fight, was a doom no creature wanted. The thought should have saddened him. Nothing. He felt nothing.

Survival
became his favorite word. It kept him company and tucked him in.
It was a word that he had learned too well, and used too often.
The meaning of his existence at this very moment boiled to it
. He didn’t have a reason to be here.

He had, in fact, been going through the motion of it all. Drifter had accepted him, for one reason or another. Orders came and gone and he did them. Words and sights would enter his head. Nothing compared to what he lost. His memories barely produced anything in his head, but he still missed the Marines. Everything he had ever wanted, everything that he had ever been, taken from him, by…

By what exactly. By fucking what exactly.

Why was the world like this? What destroyed everything that he knew? Why couldn’t he remember? Why was he this?

For the first time, he let his anger boil, leaning over to savagely dig for the heart of the beast. “There’s a reason,” he declared, tearing through the sheets of red muscle and fat. “There has to be a reason.” He peeled through more layers of meat, finally revealing the heart. With an almost incredible strength, he tore it from the corpses, it slowly beating in his palm. “And I’m going to find out.”

One hunger may have been averted, but another still festered. A lone bear, no matter the size, couldn’t satisfy the craving for the truth. Just like this heart, he was going to rip the history of this mistake out of a corpse.

_

Graham made it back to the camp. He had washed a lot of the blood from his purpled flesh. What was left was only from the lacerations from his rot. For a couple of moments, he laid on his back looking up to the ceiling of the dark room. As much as he tried to convince himself he was tired—a concept that was harder said than done—his body refused to rest. The meal was sustainable, so he felt no need of the sleeping process.

Alas, he would have enjoyed the escape as opposed to the staying up doing nothing.

He closed his eyes again, trying to force himself asleep. Maybe it was the bed, last time he slept outside.
That wouldn’t help right now
. He sat up, rubbing the corners of his eyes. “Dammit, David. Should’ve gotten more sleep when you could.” As Corporal, he hardly even slept. Now, he wished that he had. Escaping from the dark, Private First Class R.J. Andres had called it.

Somehow no matter what he did or what he went through, R.J could sleep at night. Graham only remembered vaguely how the man did it. The words escaped him, lost in the core of his memories.
I wish I knew, RJ.

A knocking of the door saved Graham from his endless pondering.

He got to his feet, successfully finding his boots this time, before answering the door.

Wood stood, sleepy-eyed and obviously somewhat irritable, in the door way. He scratched the green stubble on his chin. “Uncle wants you…” he muttered, yawning.

“For what exactly?”

“Planning…”

“Planning for what?”

Wood shrugged lazily. “Planning for planning. Damn if I know.” He gave another yawn. “He wants you there. I’ll drag you there if I have to. Missing valuable sleeping time.”

“You sleep damn near all day when Drifter’s protected.”

“You try transformin’ into an acid spitting monstrosity on a command…”

Graham couldn’t argue with that. “Lead on.”

The two men ventured crossed the camp not sharing a word. Though it was nighttime, the caravan was still too quiet. A few of the lights were on, dimly flickering through some of the steel shutters. Nearly everyone was up, Graham guessed.
That’s unusual.
Normally, despite everything, the caravan slept soundly with the guards patrolling—at least in his time here. The only thing that he could assume was that something was going down and something that the Drifter probably didn’t like.

Wood opened the door to him and his father figure’s RV without a knock. Graham followed, extending at least that courtesy with a rap of his knuckles on the open door.

“Graham,” the Drifter bellowed, “Come in, son. Come in. No need to be so….” He searched for a word.

“Civil,” Wood answered, plopping face down on the nearest couch.

“Civil! That’s a good word! Come, come in?”

Drawing a deep breath out of pure nerves, Graham entered, closing the door behind him.

Drifter, his long white hair ablaze with orange color from the candle, sat comfortably in a recliner. Beside him was Heron, dressed in her leather vest and equipped now with her sword and pistol. The Scottish brothers sat opposite of them, both with ale in hand; only Pub had a cigar dangling from the corner of his lips. Crisium and Tyrus stood in the back of the RV armed considerably well.

Graham took in the surroundings, and for fleeting seconds, he felt unsafe.
What are you doing?
His hand touched the gun in his holster.
You’re on edge; you’re paranoid that this might be about you. Trust them.
Only Heron and Drifter saw the motion. The former scoffed. The latter smiled, pushing back a laugh. “You should take a seat, trigger-finger…” Heron gave a cold look after speaking, glaring at the seat covered completely by the half-sleep Wood. Graham remained where he was.

Haggis gulped down his ale. “What? Ya don’t trust us, after all we been through. Breaks my heart, I tell ya.”

“Don’t wound ‘em, brother? He’s just defensive—aye, Drift?”

Drifter jerked his head back, eyes still looking directly ahead. Graham hadn’t seen that face from the man. The old man peered over his glasses. Graham didn’t flinch. Inside his stomach bubbled. Whether it was from the food or the sudden insecurity, he didn’t’ know.

“Trust—that didn’t stop you from joining us, what has changed, I
wonder
?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course, you don’t. Let me give you a lesson. Trust isn’t bad or good. It’s a concept, an idea. It only changes when something’s added to the mix or taken away. What have you added? What did you take away? What’re you hiding?”

“I’m not hiding anything.”

Drifter pulled off his broken glasses. “But you are and I wonder what that is, Mr. Graham.” He cleaned the bronze rim of his glasses with his dirt covered tank top. “Little white feather,” Heron nodded, “Would you mind…fetch me my meal?”

Despite watching Heron disappear into the kitchen area, Graham felt the meaning of the statement.
He knew
.
Somehow, someway, he had figured out what he needed to eat. Mind games were far from his expertise. Yet he knew he just lost one. Drifter just smiled in his victory. “Oooh. You’re horrible at this game. Alas, that’s not why you are here.”

The rest of the room seemed to take in a large exhale at the same time. Heron came back with bread, dried meat, and a mug of water
on a small tray, sitting it in Drifter’s lap.
“I called you here for something different—“Drifter grabbed his cane, knocking Wood on the head. “Other people are allowed to sit, my boy.”

With a few grumbles, Wood forced himself upright, entire body curled up within the chair. Heron took her place beside him. Graham followed suit albeit stiffly.

“What I called you here for is something completely different?” Drifter sipped his water. “A scout of mine was killed the other day.”

Crisium shifted from her post. “Was it Stella?”

Tyrus eyed Crisium from the corner of his eyes. “You seem way too happy if it was.”

“I should’ve killed her when I had the chance, Ty.”

Drifter stroked his beard. “But she had her uses, even now. They say she was killed in a fire.”

“Remind me how that helps again?” Pub asked, blowing a ring of smoke.

Drifter said nothing. Like a good showman, he
took the chance to instill some suspense. Dinner kept his attention. He completed small bites of his bread, and chewed slowly on his deer meat. After he finished those, he drained his cup dry, licking his lips. “I gotta hunch she was killed by the demon that’s trailing us.”

“Or she flipped her candle over with her fat?” Haggis sipped his ale, suppressing the laugh from his own joke. His brother gave no such respect, almost choking on his cigar from his laughter.

Heron rolled her eyes. “Can you two please allow Drifter to explain before you continue your horrid jokes?”

The brothers looked at each other, as to continue their joke in private with their eyes. “Yes ma’am!”

Always jokers amongst the group.
It was a reassuring thought. Without them, the world would have gone mad long before all of this happened. Graham balled his fist. It was silly not to trust them enough with this...condition. But like Drifter said, trust was a concept. It changed often. So it was better to be cautious than not. “Back to the topic, why do you think that she was killed by a demon?”

Drifter helped himself to the rest of his bread, passing the rest of the meal to his nephew. “She was far too cowardly to die in fire. Besides, the way my watchers tell me about the body—or lack thereof—I can safely say that we have a demon trailing us or ahead of us.”

“It’s River.”

“River?” Graham scanned the crowd, looking for an answer. He found none. Finally, he turned to the speaker, who snapped off a piece of jerky into his mouth.

“River Valentine,” Wood repeated. Graham had never seen a grin so wide from the man. “We have some unsettled business.”

Drifter cackled. “We do, don’t we?”

No one else seemed to jump into the joy of it all.

This woman or girl was dangerous. Graham could tell by the way everyone was breathing. “So she’s priority if we have to fight her.”

“I’ve seen her before. Crazy girl, no older than 17 or 18. Are you willin’ to kill someone like that?” Haggis asked. It wasn’t a question of could, more than would he if the choice arose.

Graham pondered it for a while. “She’s dangerous. Do I have a choice?”

Wood chewed his food. “Yeah, you have a choice. Kill her. If not, I’m sure as hell that you won’t like the one that’s left.”

_

The blood smelled like honey in his nose. Ragnar chose not to steal it from the “bees” that produced it right now.

Ragnar was dressing wounds. It wasn’t an unheard of concept. As the Cannibal Pack-King, yes, it may have been foreign. The man behind it all was not unaccustomed to touching blood as well. Mostly he stopped it. He was a doctor, a trauma surgeon to be exact. He was skilled, one of the best that ever touched the profession in many people’s eyes. The best part, he was happy, truly happy. The sweetness of a good day’s work wasn’t enough to save him anymore.

There were times where he would regress. No, probably progress back to his better self. It usually happened when he saw certain people hurt. Anyone that looked like an old patient or an old family member sparked it. His mind would automatically assess what’s wrong. Before he knew it, he was pushing people out of the way, treating the wounds with anything that he had on him. It was a painful instinct at times
. A man once lived in this flesh, that man believed in something better.

But he wasn’t that man. “He” wouldn’t eat these people to survive the next day.

“It shouldn’t hurt any more, just don’t scratch it.”

The little girl looked at the bandage for a moment, already resisting the urge to itch. Fearfully, she nodded. Was this a kind face that she was used to? No. A bearded axe murderer was the last thing she wanted to see. But, on the same breath, she wasn’t going to have an infection tonight.
The same small infection that killed so many people in this sticks and mud town,
he thought.