The Gypsy Morph (27 page)

Bear ambled over. “You look spooked, Sparrow,” he said quietly.

She glared at him. “You think? Didn’t you hear those screams?”

He nodded slowly. “I heard.”

“Didn’t they spook you?”

He nodded uncertainly. “Sure.”

“Then shut up.” She turned back to Hawk, her eyes dark and angry. “Can we go now?”

He was about to say yes when the Klee stepped out of the fog.

EIGHTEEN

F
OR A FEW ENDLESS MOMENTS
, no one moved. Not even Cheney, who must have sensed the danger instinctively. None of them had ever seen anything like the Klee—had not even imagined such a thing could exist. They stared at it as people always stare at things so foreign and so unlikely, they seem a trick of the mind. They stared at it, as well, with the cold realization that they had come up against something much more terrifying than anything they had encountered before.

The Klee stared back at them, immobile against the screen of the dark and the mist.

No, not at them, Hawk corrected, catching the glint of its tiny eyes beneath the heavy brow. Not at
them.

It was looking right at
him.

Perhaps the others didn’t know this, but he was certain of it. He didn’t know why he had been singled out, but he knew he had. Perhaps something about him had caught its attention. Perhaps it had been looking for him all along. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, he was the one it was focused on, the one it wanted.

“What is it?” he heard Sparrow whisper.

He had no idea. It was of monstrous size and appearance for something that walked upright and was vaguely human. It stood well over eight feet, its massive body coated with a mix of scales and tufts of long hair and clots of debris that seemed to have grown into its leathery hide. Huge, bowed legs supported its tree-trunk body; its overlong arms hung loose from its shoulders, ridged with muscle. Wicked green eyes peered out from beneath a brow formed of bone grown thick with scars, and there was an intent in those eyes that left Hawk chilled all the way through.

Cheney growled deep in his throat and took a cautious step forward, muzzle drawn back, teeth gleaming.

“No, Cheney,” Hawk said at once.

He reached down and touched the dog’s thick ruff to reinforce his command, and he felt Cheney shiver in response.

“What do we do?” Bear asked.

“Back away,” Hawk ordered.

He took one step and then another. Sparrow and Bear went with him, their movements slow and cautious. Both leveled the barrels of their weapons and pointed them at the monster. Hawk took a third step, and his companions did the same.

Cheney had not moved.

“Cheney,” Hawk whispered. “Back.”

Still the dog did not move. He remained frozen in place, his eyes fixed on the monstrosity confronting them, head lowered, ruff bristling, muscles gathered. The mist drifted in curtains across the barren terrain, ceaselessly changing the look of things, conspiring with the darkness to trick and deceive, to cause the eyes to question.

“Back, Cheney,” Hawk repeated, a sinking feeling blooming in the pit of his stomach.

Then the mist swept in out of the night, a suffocating blanket that enveloped everything, and the creature facing them was gone.

For a second, no one moved, staring into the hazy darkness, waiting for it to clear and for the monster to reappear. But when the dissipation finally took place, the monster was nowhere to be seen.

Cheney remained in his defensive crouch.

“Can we go now?” Sparrow asked in a small voice.

Hawk nodded without answering.

They set out anew, moving away from the place where the monster had appeared and then vanished, following the tracks of the AV, still trying to make their way toward their destination. They walked in a tight cluster, Bear and Sparrow with their weapons held ready, Hawk with his eyes on the darkness, and Cheney, who was again on the move in front of them, leading the way. Cheney didn’t seem entirely satisfied with the decision not to stand their ground, a reluctant participant in their efforts to get away. He slouched guardedly some half a dozen paces ahead, muzzle lowered, head swinging, the hair ridging his spine bristling like spikes.

No one said anything.

The minutes passed, a slow progression that measured their efforts at putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the creature, efforts that did nothing to reassure them. There was something about the encounter that left Hawk wondering if what they had seen was even real. It felt as if what they had witnessed was the emergence of an apparition, a specter not subject to natural laws. Nothing about it felt right. Its abrupt appearance and disappearance suggested that their encounter had been with a ghost come out of the ether rather than a creature of flesh and blood.

And yet he could not shake the feeling that there was substance to it, that the weight of it, should it be felt, would be crushing.

Like the weight of its gaze as it stared at him, he thought. Immense, implacable, and overpowering.

More time passed, and they kept moving, passing in and out of chambers formed of mist and darkness. Distance lost meaning, the terrain unchanging beneath their feet, a swampy combination of sucking mud, sand, and withered scrub. The horizon was a low, jagged line fading into the night’s gray emptiness. There was no sound and no movement. They might have been alone in the world, the last of its creatures.

“Maybe we lost it,” Sparrow ventured finally, a hopeful whisper in the deep silence.

“I don’t know,” Bear whispered back. He glanced about, looking decidedly uneasy. “It doesn’t feel that way to me.”

“You’re just spooked,” Sparrow continued. She gave him a quick grin and glanced at Hawk. “What do you think?”

The boy shook his head. “I don’t like it that we can’t see anything. I wish it was daylight.”

Bear shook his head. “I wish we hadn’t left the city. These mountains don’t feel right. All this open space feels dangerous. It reminds me of the farm when I was a kid.”

“What do you mean?”

Bear shrugged. “No protection from anything. I like walls with doors, and doors that lock.” He paused. “That thing back there. We used to see things like that now and then, roaming the fields. Mutants, changed by the chemicals and radiation from the bombs. Lizards and Croaks and such, but other things, too. Some of them were big and mean. Some of them didn’t even seem to have a reason for being. You had to watch out when you were out in the open. You had to be real careful all the time. We learned that the hard way. My little brother . . .” He trailed off and shook his head. “We lost him because of one of those things. We didn’t go out much at night after that.”

No one spoke for a moment, and then Sparrow said, “In the mountains where I lived with my mother, we never saw anything like you described. Or like that thing back there.” She shivered. “Maybe there were monsters, but they didn’t come around. The only monsters we saw were members of the militias that were hunting us. That was bad enough.”

“Everything’s hunting us,” Bear said quietly.

True enough, Hawk thought. Street kids were at the bottom of the food chain. All kids, for that matter. He tightened his grip on the prod and peered ahead into the darkness where the mist was beginning to thicken again. Bear was right. It was harder to defend yourself out in the open, away from the protection of walls and doors, from the safety of barricades that would keep the bad things out. He remembered how safe it had felt inside their home in Pioneer Square, the rest of the world locked out by Fixit’s inventions and the sense of security that being part of a family created. He wondered if they would find that again where they were going, if the sense of always being hunted would finally end, if the shelter that was promised really would be waiting when they arrived.

He shook his head. He couldn’t imagine it, but he wanted badly to believe that it could happen—an escape from the madness of the world, a retreat from their fear that everything could end at a moment’s notice. It didn’t seem too much to ask, he thought. Not if the vision he had been shown so often was true.

The fog was growing heavier about them, an ebb and flow of shadow movements that could have been anything. Their vision was down to less than a dozen feet and still diminishing. Hawk kept his eyes on Cheney, a few steps ahead of them, watchful for any signs of danger. The big dog kept moving at a steady pace, head swinging, muzzle lowered. Maybe he knew where he was going. At this point, none of the rest of them did. It was impossible even to determine direction.

“Morning can’t be far away,” he said quietly. “It can’t be long now.”

“Hope so,” Bear mumbled.

The ground dropped away into a shallow ravine, and the mist that had collected there stole the last of their vision. They moved through it blindly, fearfully, anxious to get past. “Damn,” Bear muttered.

When they climbed out again on the far bank, they were back on level ground. But the mist was even thicker here.

Bear grunted. “Hope this isn’t going to continue all the way to . . .”

He gasped sharply. The Klee had materialized right in front of him. He had just enough time to bring up the barrel of the Tyson Flechette before a backhand blow sent him tumbling head-over-heels into the ravine and out of sight. Hawk and Sparrow were already falling back, scrambling away like frightened cats, when Cheney burst out of the darkness and flung himself on the Klee. His body weight and the ferocity of his attack staggered the monster but did not knock it over. The Klee straightened as Cheney tore at one arm, and then shook free of the big dog. When Cheney came at it again, it was waiting. Cheney was airborne when the Klee braced itself, stopped the dog’s momentum with one arm, and delivered a devastating blow to the shaggy head with the other. Cheney went down and did not move.

Sparrow screamed in horror and fury, leveled the Parkhan Spray, and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. The weapon was jammed.

The Klee brushed her aside as if she were not even there and came for Hawk.

H
E IS JUST A BOY
and not much of one at that. Eleven or twelve years old, scrawny and awkward. Uncomfortable in his own skin and never certain that he is where he should be, he is stumbling toward his teenage years with uncertain steps. He spends most of his time with his parents, who are still alive, their presence a constant reassurance in a world where little else is. He is living on the Oregon coast somewhere remote and wild, away from other families, but away, as well, from the things that hunt those families. He knows about these predatory things because his parents have told him about them. Incessantly. He must be cautious. He must think before doing anything. He must never go out alone unless he is in sight of his house. He must carry a weapon everywhere he goes. He hates that part; weapons frighten him. Yet he must remember that danger is never very far away.

“Even here,” his mother tells him, her voice firm and insistent, “you are not safe. There are terrible things hunting you, and you must keep watch for them.”

He does not know what these terrible things are, and his parents are vague when he asks what they look like. They look like lots of things, they tell him. They take many forms. They can be anything and everything. You must not trust your eyes.

He doesn’t know what that means. If he doesn’t trust his eyes, what is he supposed to trust? How is he supposed to tell what these monsters look like if no one can describe them? How is he supposed to protect himself from something so unknowable?

He is very young when his parents first warn him and the dreams begin. The dreams do not come every night, but they come often. Far too often. They are always the same. He is in his house or just outside. He is alone. He is doing something that pleases him—he can never remember what—when he hears an unexpected noise. He turns toward the source, but sees nothing. The noise comes again, from another direction this time. He looks around guardedly, remembering his parents’ warning to be careful. It has been daylight until now, but suddenly it begins to get dark. He calls for his parents, but they do not come. He is no longer in his home or even near it. When he tries to find it, he cannot. When he tries to make his way to safety, he cannot. He cannot move. His lack of confidence in himself paralyzes his muscles. Nothing he does seems to help.

And nothing ever changes what happens next.

As he struggles to find shelter, to find help of any sort, he becomes aware of a hidden presence. He searches for it frantically, trying to protect himself, but he can never quite manage to discover where it is hiding. Even when he is standing out in the open, he can feel it right next to him, but he can never see it. Finally, he breaks free of his immobility. He starts to run—through the rooms of his house, suddenly numerous and enormous, or through trees of a forest if he is outside—seeking escape from the thing he senses shadowing him. He runs until he is exhausted, until he has run as far as he can. But the presence is still there, dark and malevolent and implacable in its efforts to hunt him down. He knows what it is. It is the thing his parents have warned him about. It is the thing he has been told to avoid. But he has failed in his efforts to heed and obey, and now it has found him.

He tries closing his eyes against what he knows is coming, but somehow he cannot manage to do even that. He cannot help himself—he must look. He must see what it is that has hunted him for so long. He must see what it is that his parents have warned him about. He must know the identity of his hunter.

He can feel it looming over him. He can feel it reaching for him.

He opens his eyes and looks around wildly, but there is nothing there. He is more terrified than ever. Sometimes, he cries. Sometimes, he screams. Nothing helps. There is never anything there.

And then his hunter falls on him like a massive black weight, still invisible, still unknown, and he is crushed.