'We passed that stream.'
'That's water, then. I didn't see no fish.'
'Here we go, see here. Jerky.' A Ranger held up a foot-long piece of dried meat. It looked more like a dried stick or shriveled leather. They found more pieces, mostly tucked into shackles or clutched in dead hands.
Branch examined a piece, bent it, smelled the meat. 'I don't know what this could be,' he said. Then he did. It was human.
It had been a caravan, they determined, though an empty one. No one could say what these captives had been hauling, but hauling they had been, and for long distances and recently. As Branch had noticed, the emaciated bodies had fresh sores on their shoulders and backs, the kind any soldier recognized, from a heavy load carried too long.
The Rangers were grave and angry as they made their way through the dead. At first glance, most of these people looked Central Asian. That explained the strange language. Afghanis, Branch guessed from the blue eyes. To his Lurps, though, these were brothers and sisters. That was enough for them to think about.
So the enemy had beasts of burden? All the way from Afghanistan? But this was sub-Bavaria. The twenty-first century. The implications were staggering. If the enemy was able to run strings of captives from so far away, it could also move armies... beneath humankind's feet. Screw the high ground. With this kind of low ground, the high ground was nothing but a blind man waiting to be robbed. Their enemy could surface anywhere, anytime, like prairie dogs or fire ants.
So what's new? Who was to say the children of hell hadn't been popping into mankind's midst from the start? Making slaves. Stealing souls. Raiding the garden of light. It was a concept too fundamental for Branch to accept easily.
'Here he is, I found him,' the Spec 4 called near the back of the heap. Knee-deep in the torn mass, he had his rifle and light aimed at something on the ground. 'Oh yeah, this the one. Here's their boss man. I got the motherfucker.'
Branch and the others hurried over. They clustered around the thing. Poked and kicked it a few times. 'It's dead, all right,' the medic said, wiping his fingers after hunting for a pulse. That made them more comfortable. They gathered closer.
'He's bigger than the rest.'
'King of the apes.'
Two arms, two legs: the body looked long and supple, lying tangled with its neighbors. It was soaked in gore, some its own, to judge by the wounds. They tried to figure it out, carefully, at gunpoint.
'That some kind of helmet?'
'He got snakes. Snakes growing out his head.'
'Nah, look. That's dreadlocks. Full a' mud or something.'
The long hair was indeed tangled and filthy, a Medusa's nest. Hard to tell if any of the muddy hair- tails on his head was bone or not, but he surely seemed demonic. And something in his aspect – the tattoos, the iron ring around his throat. This was taller than those furies he had seen in Bosnia, and immensely more powerful-looking than these other dead. And yet he was not what Branch had expected.
'Bag him,' Branch said. 'Let's get out of here.'
The Spec 4 stayed as jumpy as a Thoroughbred. 'I ought to shoot him again.'
'What you want to do that for, Washington?'
'Just ought to. He's the one running the others. He's got to be evil.'
'We've done enough,' Branch said.
Muttering, Washington gave the creature a tight kick across the heart and turned away. Like an animal waking, the big rib cage drew a great breath, then another. Washington heard the respiration and dove among the bodies, shouting as he rolled.
'He's alive! He's come back to life.'
'Hold your fire!' Branch yelled. 'Don't shoot him.'
'But they don't die, Major, look at it.'
The creature was stirring among the bodies.
'Keep your heads on,' Branch said. 'Let's just walk in on this, one step at a time. Let's see what we see. I want him alive.' They were getting closer to the surface. With luck, they might emerge with a live catch. If the going got complicated, they could always just cap their prisoner and keep running. He watched it in their light beams.
Somehow this one had missed the massed headshot woven into their ambush. The way Branch had set his claymores, everyone in the column was supposed to have taken it in the face. This one must have heard something the slaves hadn't, and managed to duck the lethal instant. With instincts this acute, the hadals could have avoided human detection for all of history.
'He's the boss, all right, he's the one,' someone said. 'Got to be. Who else?'
'Maybe,' Branch said. They were fierce in their desire for retribution.
'You can tell. Look at him.'
'Shoot him, Major,' Washington asked. 'He's dying anyhow.'
All it would take was the word. Easier still, all it would take was his silence. Branch had only to turn his head, and it would be done.
'Dying?' said the thing, and opened its eyes and looked up at them. Branch alone did not jump away.
'Pleased to meet you,' it said to him.
The lips peeled back upon white teeth. It was the grin of someone whose last sole possession was the grin itself.
And then he started laughing that laughter they had heard. The mirth was real. He was laughing at them. At himself. His suffering. His extremity. The universe. It was, Branch realized, the most audacious thing he'd ever seen.
'Shoot the thing,' Sergeant Dornan said.
'Don't,' Branch commanded.
'Ah, come on,' said the creature. The nuance was pure Western. Wyoming or
Montana. 'Do,' he said. And quit laughing. In the silence, someone locked a load.
'No,' said Branch. He knelt down. Monster to monster. Cradled the Medusa head in both hands. 'Who are you?' he asked. 'What's your name?' It was like taking confession.
'He's human? He's one of us?' a soldier murmured.
Branch brought the head closer, and saw a face younger than he'd thought. That was when they discovered something that had been inflicted on none of the other
prisoners. Jutting from one vertebra at the base of his neck, an iron ring had been affixed to his spinal column. One yank on that ring, and he would be turned into a head atop a dead body. They were awed by that. Awed by the independence that needed such breaking.
'Who are you?' Branch said.
A tear streaked down from one eye. The man was remembering. He offered his name like surrendering his sword. He spoke so softly, Branch had to lean in.
'Ike,' Branch told the others.
First you must conceive that the earth... is everywhere full of windy caves, and bears in its bosom a multitude of mirrors and gulfs and beedling, precipitous crags. You must also picture that under the earth's back, many
buried rivers with torrential force roll their waters mingled with sunken rocks.
– LUCRETIUS, The Nature of the Universe (55 BC)
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