Midian Unmade (24 page)

Serge blinked and he staggered on weakening legs. “Yes,” he whispered. Then his voice rose. “Serge will give you pride of Soviet Russia.” He ripped his Speedo away and let the rising pride of Soviet Russia swing free.

Brigid rolled to her hands and knees, gasping for breath, and crawled to the back exit. She pulled at the curtains, found her feet, and stumbled through the opening between them.

Serge leapt between Manda's legs and she fell back, laughing and moaning, hands gripping at his back as he thrust into her like an invading soldier. Manda clutched his hairless head with both hands and pulled his lips to her wide-open mouth. She fed and her fingers lengthened across his skull, digging into skin and bringing blood.

Manda broke away from his lips and threw her head back. She arched her back, wrapping her legs around him, engulfed in orgasm. A lift of his head, and Serge shook and moaned in one final hammer thrust. Manda laughed, feeling his useless earthly essence spill into her.

Serge looked down at her, blinking and dreamy-eyed. His face had paled and tremors shook his body. Sweat dripped from his chin.

“You … you … are witch.” He lifted his arm high, and clutched his hand into a massive fist. It came down like a hammer and smashed into Manda's cheek, making her head snap. Her legs fell from his waist and she went limp. He cocked his arm back for another blow.

“Serge will kill you.”

“I think not,” said a high-pitched voice.

Serge looked up. Crawling from the darkness, a contorted horror, hardly bigger than his pillow, grinned with twisted teeth, and bulging eyes. It was naked, skin loose and dragging as it flopped closer on a flipperlike arm. Drool dripped, escaping its darting tongue.

Serge tried to scream and move back, but an arm flung out from the thing, tipped with a crablike pincer, and caught his shoulder in a viselike grip. Serge the Strongman convulsed and rolled over to his back as the pincer pierced his shoulder. His skin turned gray and wrinkled as muscle deflated toward his deep bones.

“Hadn't you heard? Soviet Russia died long ago,” Ozlet said.

*   *   *

The cool night-dewed grass felt good to his bare feet. It had been too long, too many deformed years had passed since he had run the night, bathed in the light of the lovely moon. Ozlet grinned into the moon's full face as he wept and ran naked across the open field toward the cloak of wooded darkness ahead.

He did not weep from the tortured memories from Serge; they were soldier's memories, violent and rage-filled. He had taken plenty of those onto himself, had even been one long ago. He packed those away like so many faded pictures in a trunk. No, he wept for joy at his transformation and the first burgeoning of hope since the fall of Midian. Full-bodied now, tall and lean as in his youth, he reveled in the power and length of his legs, the return of his arms and hands, and the strength to carry his love, his Manda, in his arms.

She stirred and her eyes opened to his moonlit face. Her confusion disappeared as realization dawned.

“Ozlet?”

He smiled. “Hello there.”

She touched his face. Gone were the deformities. She wiped away his tears, then ran her hand across his bald head and returned his smile. “Ozlet.”

“That's me.”

Her confusion returned. “Serge?”

“A husk.”

Manda bit her lip. “I'm sorry. It's all my fault.”

Ozlet shrugged. “You are what you are. I can love you no less.”

“Where are we going?”

“Oh, hell, I don't know. We run. We hide. Thus is our life.”

“They will chase us.”

“I'm sure of that. Didn't leave a pretty picture back there.”

Manda laid her hand on his chest, feeling his muscles and the rise and fall of his breath. She smiled in amazement.

“Let's go far away,” she said.

“We will, my love. But one thing is for sure.”

“What's that?”

“I'll be carrying
you
from now on.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck, and laid her head on his chest.

“I hope your hair grows fast,” Manda said, smiling. “I hate bald men.”

Their laughter ran across the grass and rose to the moon as they passed into the shadows of the trees.

 

TAMARA

Paul J. Salamoff

I am still haunted by the events that transpired at Midian.

It was never my intention to kill, but that is what I have done.

Baphomet help my soul.

When Boone arrived, it felt like a liberating time for the tribe of the moon. Even though there was immediate dissension in the ranks, he brought a newfound sense of hope. I could see it in Lylesburg's eyes. The way he looked at the young man. Was this the fruition of our age-old dream?

But our hopes were dashed when the world encroached into our sanctuary and our home was laid to waste in a pile of ash and rubble. Many of my brothers and sisters died that day, but I survived.

But at what cost?

I can still feel his warm blood on my body, a scarlet stain that won't scrub off no matter how often I wash or how hard I scour. My clawed hands thrust up inside his bowels. The gaping wound that I made led to an effortless evisceration. There was so much blood. It splashed against my naked form, coating my breasts, spikes, and stomach … warm crimson dripping down the cleft between my thighs.

I understood for a moment what Peloquin must have felt during his nightly hunts—the raw animalistic thrill of the slaughter. Face-to-face with my prey, witnessing as the light and life drained from his mortal soul. But that sensation was fleeting; a momentary thrill.

As my senses returned, what I was left with was the corpse of a man crushing me with almost two hundred pounds of dead weight. I am so small, so easily frightened. My lithe form is fragile. But Baphomet blessed me with talons and barbed protrusions to protect my physical self. These however do nothing to protect my soul. Even in self-defense, I cannot remedy my actions.

I am not a killer.

I was not a killer.

For the moment, I was safe. The fighting was long over, having ended in the early hours of the new day. As far as I could tell I was now alone in Midian. Left for dead underneath the carcass of a deceased man.

Using the cave wall for support, I used all my strength to heave the corpse off of me. He toppled over onto the harsh ground, eyes staring up through the blasted-out opening above us. Smoke still wafted on the surface, blotting out the morning sun and protecting me from its harm.

Wiping my bloodied hands on the man's clothing, I got my first real look at him. He seemed considerably younger than I thought. My first impression of him was that of a vicious old bear as he charged out of the darkness with a rifle leveled directly at me. Being petite makes me fast and I easily avoided the first shot as it whizzed by my torso.

He was moving at such a hasty speed in unfamiliar and uneven ground that he tripped himself up on a large rock and stumbled into me. The rifle was knocked from his grasp when we both hit the ground. It still lay where it fell.

Panicked even more so than I was, the large man punched and hit me. He was as desperate to kill me as I was desperate to live. I didn't know I had done it until it was too late. Human flesh is so delicate. It tears so easily. So much blood.

I cannot accept that I am forever damned. If Baphomet's teachings are true, then there is a way to make amends. A way to make peace with my heinous actions.

I studied his lifeless body. He was like Boone in many ways. Handsome and physically fit. Though he was dressed for killing, for the hunt. Curious to know the name of the man whose life I had taken, I rifled his pockets and found a handmade snakeskin wallet.

Flipping it open, I discovered his driver's license. I read through the words on it. Lylesburg taught me man's language and I had become quite adept at reading and comprehending it—so good that I would in turn teach the young Breed of Midian both English and our native tongue and read them stories found in books scavenged from the outside world.

Daniel Morrell was his name. Such an amiable name for a man filled with such rage and bigotry. He looked almost angelic in his picture. There was no hair on his face like there was now and he even wore a thin smile, a stark contrast to the angry scowl that came at me from the darkness.

There were some pictures among his credit cards. I wish I had not bothered to look. Then I wouldn't have seen their faces. A loving wife. A beaming son. So young. Too young to be without a father. But he would be without one—my talons still caked with his father's blood had seen to that.

I could make this right. I could ease the pain and ease the burden on my soul as well. Baphomet has blessed me with other gifts, gifts that made me unique among the tribe of the moon.

I was blessed with the
Becoming
. I discovered it at a very young age.

To know someone is to become them
.

But the knowing was to devour their flesh, to consume them into my body so that I might join with them and become them.

Peloquin valued this about me, that's why he tolerated my pacifist chidings and reproaches against him and his hunts. He would on occasion bring me gifts fresh from the hunt, usually the heart of an animal, sometimes of a human, which I would devour like candy. I was young then and didn't fully understand the implications of the pieces of flesh that I simply regarded as nourishment.

He was very prideful and took great pleasure in imparting all the details of his hunts down to the most specific minutiae to the tribe. His stories were self-indulgent and boastful, and with my help, he could reenact the events of the evening as a bizarre Grand Guignol pantomime, with him as the noble hunter and me as his deserving prey.

You see, this gift allows me to transform my body, to change my appearance and become those that I
know
.

There's an address on the driver's license. Lylesburg kept maps in the library. Hopefully they have not all burned.

Just a taste is all I need. A small snack to aid me in my journey.

*   *   *

Covered in layers of heavy garments that provided shelter from the sun, the prolonged journey to Shere Neck was arduous. I kept mostly to the heavily wooded area, but the sun continued to beat down on me like a taskmaster's whip. The most demanding part of the journey was escaping the ruins of my home. Many came to put out Midian's fires and deal with the scores of corpses. Most were to be buried by grieving families. The others were to be marveled over, dissected and studied on metal slabs.

Who will mourn for them?

I got to the farmhouse on Crandall Road just before midday. I found safety and shelter in a barn among the animals that I felt more kinship to than the ones that kept them. From the hayloft, I had a good view of the comings and goings at the front of the house.

I was there when Daniel's wife was given the news about her husband. It ate into my core to watch her falter and slump against the lawman who delivered the tragic news. She was an attractive woman, even when her face was distorted by agony and despair. Her name was Anna. It suited her.

Eventually the man departed, as I'm sure he had more dire news to deliver to other families in the county. Anna stayed on the porch. She looked as though her life had vacated her body. A corpse cursed with the inevitability of having to go on living.

I watched her for almost an hour. Unmoving, she had no more tears left in her body to shed.
I truly am a monster
.

As the golden hour approached, a school bus pulled to a stop at the end of the long road and her beaming child exploded from the open doors. He looked to be no more than five years old. Running with the wild abandon of the young, he had no idea what grim news awaited his return.

My heart raced as I prepared myself. I felt it might burst at this very moment. It would have been a fitting demise for my crime, but I was spared the scene as Anna embraced her son with such fervor and then carried him in her arms into the house.

I hated myself for the feeling of relief that washed over me. I didn't deserve to be spared this, but thank Baphomet I was.

Lying down in the hay, I allowed myself to sleep. The events of the last twenty-four hours started to take their toll and my body, though strong, needed to rest.

*   *   *

It was many hours later when I awoke. I could tell by the placement of the moon that it was around ten p.m. Almost a full day since the siege and destruction of Midian. Its loss and the loss of my brothers and sisters were not real to me yet. My dreams saw fit to confuse me … trick me into thinking that reality was the dream.

While I slept, my brain concocted fantasies of a thriving necropolis where the forgotten and unwanted lived in peace. So many happy nights secluded and sequestered from the outside world. Those thoughts stayed with me as I woke and clouded my mind with erroneous hope.

It was the texture and smell of the hay bed that I slept on that brought me swiftly back to cruel reality. I openly wept. Not for myself, but for the others. The survivors. How scared they must be.
Where are they now? Did Lylesburg save any souls and lead them to safety? I wonder if I shall ever see a familiar face again.

Looking out at the farmhouse, I saw that all the lights, save the ones on the porch, were off for the night. The house appeared still. The only sound was the grunting and clucks of the animals I shared the barn with and the insect life that sang their night songs.

Their melody soothed me as I initiated my
Becoming
.

It's a slow process, but there is no pain, just the ebb and flow of muscle and organs and the reshaping of my bones and cartilage. It always starts the same, with a tingle that surges through my body eliciting an orgasmic sensation. But after that, the physical alteration is always a new and unique experience. The process is never the same, especially when the
known
is human and in this case, a male.