guts would come with it in one long, slippery crimson ribbon.
Caleb claimed to be a cleanser. Victor had accepted him for the advantages it offered rather than for the veracity of his claim. There were cleansers, after all, and then there were cleansers. Caleb was a maniac who wanted to rape and maim and kill and that had its usefulness for Victor, but when it came right down to it, Caleb was not going to survive the transition. An authentic cleanser would never allow it. The future belonged to the disciplined.
Victor had found him on this very mountain and had taken that as a sign that the universe intended them to meet, and the man had been useful so far, but now Victor dared to question if it hadn’t been a sign at all, was in fact a test of his will. Could he do the right thing?
The life of a cleanser was a solitary one. That was the point. Sure, there were others like him, thousands even, and there were specific “grounding points,” or meeting places (typically a “marked” place) where they could associate if needed, but the essence of the calling was the single-minded primal man who, though he might long for a family or clan, understood that true survival, the purest form of it, meant a life alone, constantly on the prowl for nature’s next offering.
He had been confused with the girl. Watching her from afar in the bookstore, following her home some nights, stalking her up this mountain--those were the signs of a desperate man. A pathetic man. He had wanted to believe he was being disciplined, wanted to believe that she was a potential life mate who would travel the dark future at his side. Again, he had misread the signs. This was another test.
Part of survival was internal equilibrium. That required a frequent letting of his fluids. He did that numerous times a day. Instead of relying on himself, or simply taking the girl and being done with it, he had fooled himself into believing she might realize his prowess and pledge her devotion to him.
If he could make himself vomit he would, he was so disgusted with himself. So pathetic. He had believed in love.
He knew better now. Love was a beast that hooked its talons deep inside you and infected you with some poison like a sedative that convinced you it was okay to be trapped, okay to be this beast’s victim. Okay to die in its embrace.
The trail grew steeper, Caleb’s screams closer, and Victor stopped.
His mind was clearing and sharpening. He knew the error of his ways and continuing to follow that idiot up the mountain was another error in this recent streak.
The girl didn’t scale this whole mountain. She would never make it before Caleb overtook her and that would be that. No, she was much closer.
He knew that with the certainty that primal man knew there were deer grazing just the other side of hill. Instinct guided the earliest men and it was all the purest cleansers really needed.
The girl was close. Very close.
Playing hide and seek with him.
FORTY-SIX
Mercy walked to the edge of the cliff. What would it feel like to jump off and plummet to the darkness below? The free fall would be exhilarating and horrifying, but her death might be long and protracted if trees cushioned her fall. She could end up lying as a broken heap of bones and torn flesh, paralyzed but alive. She would starve to death. The crows might pick at her skin, slowly eat her alive.
She wasn’t really contemplating suicide. Just curious, that’s all.
She could no longer hear Caleb, so he was either well up the mountain or perhaps his vocal cords had finally given out.
Or he’s doubled back and once you turn around, there he’ll be, grinning and calling you a bitch.
Victor was probably with him, too. That way they could take turns with her until she was too exhausted to fight back and then they’d double-team her before beating her to death and throwing her over the side.
She had heard something behind her but it couldn’t be him. That was too cruel, too nightmarish, too damn unfair. She turned slowly.
The surrounding trees stood still and dark like giant bodyguards. The crows continued grazing. They went about their scavenging in peace, slowly moving to grant each bird equal access to every spot of grass. A bird or two flapped into the air for a moment before settling back again, but there was no tension in them like birds usually had when anything got close to them. Birds were small and vulnerable. They took few risks. They had wings, after all. Better to fly away. Only pigeons crowded around people. They had learned in the big cities that people were slobs who dropped food everywhere like deer droppings. Those birds never got tense, just crazed for food.
She had thought the same thing when she sat in the hospital room where her mother spent her last few days. Her mother’s chest strained to suck in enough air to keep living, sounding like a high-pitched whistle. Her head lolled back and forth on the bright white pillow and her eyes rolled in their sockets. She was loaded with morphine. The doctor said she was in another world at this point, a constant dream state. But sometimes when Mercy would look up from a book, her mother would be staring at her, eyes wide. Those eyes tried to convey what her voice no longer could. Her final noises were phlegmy chokes and that whistling sound like a little kid with a gap between his front teeth might make.
Mercy wanted to run from her room, hide somewhere, and sleep for days, years. She wanted to sprout wings and leap from the large hospital window, fly far from this hospital and her dying mother, fly to the other side of the world if she could.
But she didn’t have wings. All she could do was toughen up.
Tough bitches were strong and rational. They didn’t ponder death or daydream about flying fantasies that would never come true. They accepted the conditions of their situation and did whatever was necessary to survive.
The doctors had wanted to sedate her mother even further, essentially send her into a coma. They insisted it would be less painful for her. Once the muscles relaxed, her breathing would slow and stop and she’d be at peace. Dad had almost agreed but Mercy stopped him. “She wouldn’t want you to,” Mercy had said. “She’d want to tough it out.”
She had toughed it out like a true bitch until that last gasp that stiffened her whole body as if Death had seized her and then she collapsed into the bed, finally at peace.
Right to the bitter end.
She took a deep breath and didn’t wince at the pain in her nose from the cold air or the misery running rampant throughout the rest of her body. She could be tough. Had to be. She had only to figure a way out of here, down off this fucking mountain.
The evergreen rustled as if an animal were crawling up the trunk. Maybe that’s all it was. But she knew better. Even before Victor Dolor stepped out of the tree as if emerging from another dimension, Mercy Higgins knew she had waited too long to get tough.
Now, it was either do or die.
FORTY-SEVEN
She was a blacked-out figure set against an impossibly bright moon that was far too big, as if this mountain’s peaks grazed the edges of the upper atmosphere. The moon’s light bathed over his own face and that was good. She could see the smile on his face and read the predatory determination in his eyes. He didn’t need to see hers to know she was scared out of her mind, even contemplating a leap from the cliff.
That would be a shame, but he’d get over it. Once Caleb made his way back down, Victor might throw him off the edge, too. Then he could put all this shit behind him and refocus his attention on the approaching Dark Days.
