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THE SWARM MASTERS
It had been a difficult winter for Cintra Bristol. Winter snow usually didn’t usually come this far south yet this year it had and so late in the season. She had struggled to survive with her family dead at the hands of Marauders and now beneath the weight of urgently needed firewood, her struggle was all the greater. Her only clothes were a muddy woollen skirt, a coat stained with the blood of a recent nightmare of loss, and a simple cloth wrapped around her head. The snow crumbled beneath her feet and beneath the lighter tread of her only companion.
The Jade was a white wolf befriended by her late father from a Pup and tended for in part by Cintra so he had become her companion when the others were lost.
“Tomorrow we must go to Sandpoint and sell some of father’s gold coins for that preserved sausage you so love to gobble down.” Cintra looked at the suspiciously fat wolf.
“Oh! Once I saw a Goblin,” Her voice was getting old.
“Sitting in a Tirro tree,” The Jade lobed through the snow with better pace.
“a Tirro tree, a Tirro tree.” A moment of happiness flitted through her mind as a memory of her father singing the very same song surfaced. Cintra smiled with difficulty.
“Oh! Once I saw a Goblin sitting in a tr…” Something under the snow snagged her right foot and Cintra ate snow as she was pushed to the ground by the weight of the wood at her back. She screamed with the pain of the surprise and the Jade instantly came to her aide with the warmth of his breathing. Cintra reached back and grappled the bound load pulling it to the left side of her body. Her real injury became instantly apparent as she put weight on her right foot.
“Damn! Wretched goblin distracted me…cunning little bugger.” The Jade looked around for the Goblin she was talking about. Cintra pulled herself on the bundled firewood and sat up. The Jade instantly put his head in her lap. Cintra laughed as she stared at the beautiful green eyes that expressed their concern with such meaning.
“Goblin got away, did he sweetie? Not to mind.” The old boots were cold to touch as she investigated her ankle. A feeling of frustration curled her brow. She kissed her wolf on the warm nose and took a lick of warm slobber that quickly became cold.
“How do I get the wood home now?” She stared at the distant dwelling that was a combination of straw mud brick, logs, stones, and rye thatching. It was a bonfire waiting to burn. They were so close but now it would cost her every footfall to the door.
There was a long rope inside the door, and the block and tackle. The thought hit her. She struggled without the load now through the snow and it took minutes to reach the door of her family home. The Jade entered the simple dwelling and took up residence in the open doorway as Cintra went to work looking for the tools of her need. The Rope and the Block and Tackle were still useable. She tied off the block and tackle to an anchor point her father used to strain ropes and carried both ends to the distant wood. The rope ends were short and she shook her head.
“Not quite long enough.” Cintra gave a lot of slack and ran one end of the rope out slowly to the wood bundle. Behind her the other end pulled back toward the house until there was perhaps five feet of slack. Cintra tied off the Rope on the Wood and turned back expecting the Jade to be behind her. He sat in the warmth of the distant doorway.
“Done for the day are we?” Cintra smiled as she made the return trip toward shelter. The Rope end was almost through the door.
“That was close.” Cintra struggled now to sit on the hard floor and brace her good leg against the timbers. A good grip and she began to pull at her load. The firewood now seemed ten times as heavy as when it was on her back as it pulled its way across the snow. The pain in her good leg burned like her right by the time the time the bundled wood got to where it was going. The Jade looked at her as though it was her fault the warm was getting out.
“All right, I’ll close it.” Cintra Bristol hefted the wood that last distance through the door and with the rope and tackle cleared, closed it.
“And now: a fire and my injured foot.” Cintra struggled with a paltry selection of wood and old straw and made a fire with flint and steel. Her foot no longer hurt. Such a prospect was most likely a bad sign. Cintra peeled off the boot and the poor cloth that had done such a botched job of keeping the cold out to reveal the bruises and a bone broken and out of place.
“Oh…Damn!” This would cost her dearly. She looked at the Wolf who stared at her foot.
“Sorry. No Sausage tomorrow.” Cintra looked about at what food she did have. Now she and her friend would live on cheese, some bread, and turnip and rabbit broth.
“Not the turnips…anything but the turnips,” The Jade joining her suffering at the prospect of turnip put his head on the floor. Cintra Bristol dragged herself across the floor seeking a pot, turnip and lean rabbit. It found itself lifted with difficulty into the stone and mud fireplace as Cintra worked the metal legged tripod that supported it into place without getting burned. The suspended iron pot sat more next to the fire than in it. Cintra rolled away from the fire so as not to put too much stress on her foot and came to a halt against her friend.
“Now it’s a waiting game.” She relaxed now to the aroma of turnip and rabbit broth…
Cintra Bristol woke to the screams and found herself tied down.
"What?" Her body was bound up in some web cocoon. A scream came from right next to her and she struggled to turn her head to look. A large brain burrowing worm was working on the twitching corpse of her faithful companion animal The Jade. Beyond the Jade were a hundred Villagers from Sandpoint; most seemingly dead and some about to be - the screams mixed with an unfamiliar screeching. They were trapped in some terrible web-hive. Is this what a spider egg-sack looked like from the inside? Cintra Bristol struggled for freedom.
A shadow loomed over her. It was a faceless creature. It held one of those brain burrowing worms which it placed on her head. Cintra Bristol Screamed with terror at its wet touch.
The Jade was on her in a furious attack as it pulled the wretched worm apart. The Jade collapsed by her side as the moment of relief washed over her and fell away into the darkness.
“The Jade?” her companion through so much died in the web next to her. She wept now at the loss of her friend.
“No.” Cintra grappled for the flint edge in her pocket. Its edge cut at the cocoon from within. They must have sensed her bid for freedom. Her thoughts of resistance drew them now from across the web hive.
“Come on damn you, cut!” People around her cried with despair. They pleaded for help and begged for mercy from the horror that had them. Cintra Bristol was mad with desperation now as strange and terrible hands reached out for her, unhuman hands seeking to hold her down. One of them assumed the face of the memory of her father.
“Cintra Bristol. Stop squirming. Its all right Cintra, I’ve got you. You are safe.” The voice oozed a calm that would have overwhelmed her had it not been for the fact that several of them wore her father’s face and came from all of them; Closing in the distance a fiend of a Spider that would undoubtedly tighten her bonds or worse. She panicked now as it disgorged a large worm from between its sword scaled mandibles. Cintra screamed in horror at what she was now witnessing. Cintra pulled her arms free and her hands carried the flint and its steel companion past her head as she reached away from the monsters that held her firm.
“Please burn! Please just burn. Damn you!” The striking flint sparked repeatedly and drew their attention. They reached for what she had in her hands.
Horror of her failure struck her as they took the tools from her and pulled her down. The demon spider adjusted the web before cutting it away. Now it grappled her and turned her slowly as she dizzied, then attempted to empty her stomach contents. The new web began to constrict her now and she could only scream and then not even that. For a long moment she glimpsed something toward the centre of the web. Spiders were emerging through a storm of light and others carrying off the cocooned. She would be lost if they got her that far.
The nest shuddered and she was dropped through the web around her. Now nest of monsters moved to investigate the new threat. Cintra was narrowly missed by the harpoon of some siege engine that had penetrated the web. The outer wall sliced away and she was free. She fell through the hole into a darkness of smoke and fire. The web snagged above her and she unravelled in a downward direction. Free of it she fell several feet onto a building roof. Some madman with an axe was working on a web anchor the thickness of a tree trunk as spiders clamoured down it in defence.
“Are you all right? Did you see any others?” her woodsman of the moment attacked a Spider that came at him knocking Cintra Bristol through the weakened thatch roof. A scream came from above and blood and organs emptied on her through the hole in the roof.
Cintra fled the gore of it. The streets were awash with chaos as archers fired at the spiders above them, the nest; anything that moved across the top of buildings was challenged with fire. Children stood in the middle of a battlefield and screamed for their parents to rescue them from the Monsters only to be carried away by the Monsters or worse still to become the Monsters.
The nest became visible as she left its shadow. It sat over the town of Sandpoint anchored to it by many cables of terrible strength. Fire had failed to burn its almost smoke-white outer surface though it had certainly smouldered.
A harpoon flew overhead and penetrated the outer web. Cintra couldn’t see where it had penetrated the envelope. Cintra looked in the direction the harpoon had come from. Was that toward the harbour or was it some place else? Then she realized something. Hadn’t her ankle been broken? She looked down at her foot. Then felt it for broken bones she knew would protrude…Why heal it at all? It was strange that they would do something out of kindness only to feed on their victims later. Cintra ran toward hope.
The town was ablaze with spot fires. Where the Nest had proven inflammable, the community of Sandpoint had not. Nearer the docks, recruits worked to pull a burning building down into a heap that wouldn’t ignite the buildings packed around it. The sound of heavy Ballista hurled a harpoon from the deck of a ship crowded and busy.
“Hello? Where can I find…” Cintra was pushed down the busy vessel gangway and struggled to force her way back through the crowd.
“Where is the Captain?” Cintra looked toward the crew at the Ballista as they fired another shot at the distant nest. The crewman looked about and indicated toward the forward Ballista crew. Cintra pushed through the crowded deck as they busied to load.
“Are any of you the Captain?” A rough looking fellow looked about.
“Captain? Woman wants you…” The man on the Ballista winch looked up.
“What is it Madam, we are rather busy here.” He continued on the winch.
“Captain. You need to burn that thing.” Cintra pointed at the nest.
“Unless you noticed, the web doesn’t burn.” The Captain
“Captain, I don’t know if anyone has told you but your Harpoons are getting through the web. You need to wrap them in fire and burn that thing from the inside.” Cintra stared at him with a tired weariness. He nodded with some understanding at the gore covered sight before him.
“Right, you heard the lady lads, break out the pitch and cloth. Let’s light this cobweb lantern up.” Cintra smiled and collapsed on the deck…
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The old pickup rattled noisily down the moonlit road. An old Fugazi cassette screeched and crackled in the tape deck. Mike O’Neill stared blankly out the window at the desolate expanse of desert beyond the highway’s thin ribbon of blacktop.
Mike was a young man; rather nondescript-looking for the most part, not too thin and not overweight. He was of average height, with short brown hair and eyes of a similar color. His clothing was shabby: torn blue jeans, a grease-stained white t-shirt, and dusty, worn combat boots. The only thing remarkable about him was the tattoos.
The young man was a veritable living tapestry. His entire left arm was marked in red, black, white, and blue; inked to resemble the flayed musculature beneath the skin, a true masterwork. Mike’s right arm featured cruder, patchwork designs. Band logos: Black Flag, Neubauten, Minor Threat, the Misfits. Heavy black lines, an Irish flag with faded colors, a crudely drawn scorpion. A few words in crabbed script: “I’ve Got the Straight Edge,” “Alexander Supertramp,” “Rollins,” “Death Trip.”
The song changed on the stereo.
There’s something acting on this body
Something goes in when nothing comes out
There’s someone acting on this information
Nothing’s given from this location
Mike turned to the driver of the pickup.
“You know, I met Old Man MacKaye once.”
“No shit,” said Gwen.
There’s something happening but maybe it’s just me
Gwen Allen had picked up the hitchhiker with the backpack and the guitar about ten miles east of Cimarron, New Mexico, just as the road curved in view of Urraca Mesa. She had no idea why she had stopped for him, but he seemed to be nice enough.
Mike became defensive.
“Hey, seriously, I’m telling the truth here!”
Gwen laughed, brushing her short black hair out of her blue eyes. She was not breathtakingly beautiful- her nose was a somewhat over-large, and her teeth a bit crooked –but she was still rather attractive; a nymph in a tank top and jeans.
“I believe you, really.”
Mike leaned back in his seat. “Alright.”
“Where was it?”
“DC. I’d been there for a few months, working some shitty job, and was taking the metro back to my squat. I boarded, and ran into this skinny old dude with a bald patch and a crooked nose. He saw my ink, and struck up a conversation. We pulled up to his stop, and he just turned and looked at me.
‘Don’t let anyone f!!% with you.’ That’s what he said.
“It took me a few seconds to recognize him, and by that time he was gone. Ian f*~$ing MacKaye. Damn, he got old.”
Gwen stared morosely at the road ahead. “Age happens, Mikey. Get used to it.”
The tape ended, and Mike switched it for a fresh one. Ed Hamell’s nasal voice began to blare from the broken-down speakers.
Down on his knees, beggin’ her please
Picture his eyes, she gives the trigger a squeeze
And her name… was America
Gwen spoke. “You know I’ve got a gun in the glove compartment, right?”
Mike blinked.
She continued. “In case something ever goes down, you know? Don’t look, though. Something might happen if you look at it.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, just… something, anything.”
A pause. The music played on.
95, 95, just to keep us alive
95, 95, just to keep us alive
She glanced at her passenger. “You know, you never told me where you were going.”
Mike spoke, without emotion. “Vancouver.”
“What are you looking for?”
Another pause.
“You there?”
Silence. Gwen fixed her eyes back on the road. In the distance, she heard the crack of thunder.
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The Man lit a cigarillo, smoke curling through the hole in his hat brim as he jammed the old Zippo into his pocket. He spotted the eighteen-wheeler coming from two miles away. Grinning, he reached for the matte-gray handle of his LeMat revolver. Nine chambers, each carefully loaded with powder, wad, and bullet; the pistol’s low-slung second barrel seeming a grotesque jawbone. A beautiful, evil-looking piece of machinery. Just like the Man.
He’d never had a name, they said. His mother was a scorpion, his father a thunderhead. They whispered to each other about him, behind his back but always heard.
“Did you hear? His hat is made from human skin.”
“See those eyes? They aren’t his.”
The Hat Man never denied the rumors. In fact, he himself didn’t know the veracity of their statements. He didn’t care.
All he knew was that he had a gift. His dead black shark’s eyes widened as the eighteen-wheeler’s headlights appeared over the horizon.
“Time to start killin’.”
He spun the revolver’s cylinder shut.
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The pickup happened upon the first body just after sunrise. A dark, slumped form huddled under a speed limit sign. Gwen slowed to a stop.
“Stay here.”
Mike gave her a quizzical look. She answered, stone-faced.
“Take the gun. Don’t move.”
Gwen opened the door of the truck and walked slowly towards the corpse, her sandaled feet crunching on the loose gravel near the highway’s edge.
The man (as the corpse was indeed a man) had been shot through the fleshy patch at the base of his jaw. The bullet had exited through the crown of his head, taking a saucer-sized clump of bone, skin, and hair with it, along with the man’s worn baseball cap.
And the eyes…
Both of the man’s eyes were gone, the eyelids flayed and ruined. In the dark, bloodied sockets were a pair of iron spheres, each about an inch in diameter.
Gwen scrutinized the scene with an almost dispassionate curiosity. With a careful hand, she removed the spheres, rubbing each clean on the dead man’s shirt, placing them in her pocket.
She turned the corpse over, exposing the torn back of his shirt and the bruise-black skin of his back. It had been just long enough for the man’s blood to have drained through his veins and capillaries, pooling where gravity dictated.
Carved into the dark flesh was a bizarre message.
FAIR PLAY, MAN
SEE YOU AT ARMAGEDDON
In the truck, the radio turned on of its own accord, volume maxed, the gravelly vocals of Henry Rollins oddly distorted.
Lookin' out my window, sun comes up, sun comes burnin' down
No answer, no answer, no answer, no answer, no answer, no answer, no answer
I'm alone in my room, but I'm not by myself
I'm alone in my room, but I'm not by myself
I've got my hands wrapped 'round my gun
I've got my hands wrapped 'round my gun
No answer, no answer, no answer, no answer, no answer, no answer, no answer
Can't touch me, can't touch me, can't touch me, can't touch me, can't touch me
Suck in.
Pull it, pull it, pull it, pull it
Mike felt himself being drawn into the stereo, even as he watched Gwen sprinting back to the pickup. Rollins’ voice merged with the pounding in his ears and a maddening, obscene laughter that seemed to come from the inside. Mike felt the backs of his eyes burning, the pressure building.
He snapped back into reality as he felt the unmistakable pressure wave of a gunshot. Mike was holding the gun from the glovebox, a frighteningly heavy Raging Bull revolver. Gwen’s hands were clasped around Mike’s, her finger on the trigger, pointing the firearm’s smoking barrel toward a likewise smoking crater in the dash.
She wrenched the pistol from Mike’s grasp.
“What the HELL were you thinking?”
Pull it, pull it, pull it, pull it…
“I…”
No answer, no answer, no answer, no answer…
“You what.”
Suck in…
…
“Where was I?”
“Right here. Ten more seconds, and the song would have ended. And then…”
Mike stared into the cracked rear-view mirror. “There was a man in my head. He made me hear things… He had a gun.”
“You would have shot yourself. In the head.”
“He told me that it was all going to end. Soon.”
A pause. An intake of breath. Silence.
Mike stared at Gwen. “You know something.”
She stared back. “I do.”
“What do you know?”
No answer.
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The semi’s high-beams cut paths of fire through the asphalt. It sped as if possessed, trailing smoke and sparks, lights glaring hotly in the near-dusk. Dust whipped up behind the wheels, glowing red and fusing to the semi’s undercarriage as the tiny rock particles melted and reformed.
At the wheel, the Man cranked the air conditioning and laughed.
“We’re goin’ to hell, boys and girls! We just gotta pick out a handbasket yet.”
A low moan escaped the boxy trailer behind the cab.
There had been twenty of them. Mexicans, hoping for the chance to make some money on the other side of the fence.
The man in the hat had told them about a place, a land of bountiful harvests and boundless opportunity. And he locked them in.
Old Diego had gotten sick first. Then, Rosa and her baby. All of them had it now. The old man was already dead, along with the child.
Hacking coughs. Bloodshot eyes. Bleeding gums.
And hunger. Ever-present, never-ceasing.
Oh, they were hungry…
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They had left the car behind, and had begun to walk down the dusty highway, the setting sun staining the brown New Mexico dust a deep red. Gwen had taken the lead, seeming to glide along the pavement, her sandals in one hand, her gun in the other. Mike followed, lugging his pack and guitar, staring moodily into the dirt as he trudged heavily behind her. After nearly an hour of silence and wind, he spoke.
“Who the hell are you following?” It took several minutes for Gwen to answer him.
“He’s… something different.”
A pause.
“Calls himself The Man, but he’s not. Reaver. Draug. The World-burner. The local Indians call him Brother Blood. He’s been called lots of things. I just call him what he is: a coldhearted bastard. You follow?”
Mike stopped in his tracks. “What are you, some sort of cop?”
She shrugged. “No, just a… concerned citizen.”
“A vigilante, you mean.”
“You could call it that if you wanted. I’m not some lunatic ‘Nam vet with a shotgun and a head full of conspiracies. I’m just the kind of girl that likes to think we can all do our part, you know? To make the world a better place.”
A short pause. Mike adjusted his pack. “Yeah… F&$@ it. It’s getting dark. We should get moving.”
Lookin' out my window, sun comes up, sun comes burnin' down…
No answer, no answer, no answer, no answer, no answer, no answer, no answer…
Hours later, after the blue-tinged moon had risen above the blackened silhouettes of distant mesas, the pair stopped to rest in an abandoned trailer near the roadside. The rotting structure seemed to have been vacant for years; its walls denuded of paint, the carpet gone, one section of wall partially caved in.
The entire interior had a musty smell, not mildew—the climate was far too dry—but, as Mike quickly discovered, the residual stench of a colony of dead, mummified rats. Mike’s curiosity got the better of him, and as he peeled back the dry, rotted floorboard, he noticed that the rats’ tails were twined together. It resembled nothing so more as a mass of desiccated, gray worms. He dropped the floorboard back into place, stifling the urge to vomit, and continued into the trailer’s main section, where Gwen waited.
Mike sat in a chair opposite. For some time, each stared into the ether, saying nothing and not knowing why.
It was Mike who broke the silence.
“Wanna hear something?”
Gwen looked up, mildly interested. “Sure. Why not, right?”
He reached over toward his battered gear and retrieved his guitar. The thing looked like it had been through a wood chipper, with chipped varnish, bent pegs, and badly trimmed strings. Gwen had thought it amusing, the way he treated the thing. As if it was made of glass, or something. How it had gotten so battered, Gwen did not know, but it was clear that Mike had found it in its current condition.
The young man pulled his thumb over the strings, and her musings stopped. Each note was precise, perfect. Mike began to sing in a low, cracked baritone.
Darkness, darkness, be my pillow
Take my hand, let me sleep
In the coolness of your shadow
In the silence of your deep
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Twenty miles away, the Man drove ever closer, his tractor trailer filled with the moans of the damned. His hands clutched the steering wheel tightly, their grayish skin stretched taut, shining in the moonlight.
The Man grinned, a terrible rictus of demoniac intensity, as he leaned back in his seat.
“Y’ALL MIND IF I PUT ON A LITTLE TUNE FOR YA?” He had to shout in order to overcome the horrid noise of the possessed vehicle. The Man’s voice was greeted with a chorus of moans from the trailer.
“WELL ALRIGHTY THEN!”
He laughed, a sound reminiscent of shearing metal and thunder heard through the cool desert air. One of his long, ashy fingers pointed lazily at a monstrous-looking ghetto blaster nestled in the passenger’s seat. The speakers began to blare with eldritch intensity, a cacophony of thumping bass and dissonant electric guitar. As the guttural voice of Tom Waits entered the discordant mélange, the passengers’ moaning increased tenfold.
Well he’s all boxed up on a red belle dame
Hunted Black Johnny with a blind man’s cane
A yellow bullet left a rag out in the wind
And old blind tiger, got an old bell Jim
In the dark depths of the trailer, the last of the Mexicans had succumbed to the sickness. First, they had ceased in their frightened speech. Next, their sight failed them, followed by muscle control. The last thing each of them heard was the sound of their own pulse slowing to a complete stop.
For hours, their cooling corpses had lain in the darkness. Then, the soothing voice. The same voice that had offered them the promised land now offered salvation. The voice of the Man was the voice of God, lifting them up into the light.
But the hunger had returned tenfold. The Man promised them sustenance, and they obeyed. They would feed, and soon. Moaning in hunger, they swayed to the music.
Here come the big Black Mariah
Here come the big black Ford
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Gwen closed her eyes as the last chord of the song faded. As Mike stowed the guitar carefully near his pack, she spoke.
“I suppose I should tell you why I do what I do. Opportune moment and all that, right?”
Mike shrugged. She continued.
“Why not then. Alright, here it is.” Gwen shifted uncomfortably.
“Five months ago, I was living in Mesilla, down near the border. From my apartment, I could see the fence, and all the little blue-green vinyl and tin shacks nestled like robins’ eggs on the hillside.
“One night, I woke to the smell of smoke. The ghetto was in flames, great spurts of fire overtaking block after block of shanties. Intolerable heat, even from a tenth of a mile away in my apartment block. Hellish.
“And then… I saw the people. Hundreds of them. Staggering towards the fence like broken marionettes, every one of them burning, and every one of them completely silent. The entire scene was something like a medieval landscape of hell. Silent, broken, burning human dolls lurching towards the fence, first a hundred, then two, then a thousand, slamming their bodies into the chain link, each one charring and disintegrating, only to be replaced by ten more.”
Mike shifted uncomfortably. Gwen seemed not to notice.
“It took a week for the fires to die down. No one went to extinguish them. Not our fire department, not their own people, no one. When the town had burned itself down to molten metal and ashes, I thought it time to investigate. I slipped through a hole in the fence I had seen the locals using, and entered my purgatory...