MOTHERSHIP

The old homestead was twenty-five miles north of the New Highland Garrison. An hour’s drive through the scalded stretch of woodland tracks that scattered the northern hillsides, so she told him. She was much older now yet still retained those distant memories of a life long ago, before the coming of the great, black eye and the culling of humankind. She remembered the preeminent strike upon the cliff of battle, and over the edge. She remembered the mighty fall and what fears she felt when the destruction of the MOTHERSHIP was set and the world plunged into darkness, the darkness that grows darker still. She pointed to the weathered map, on an insignificant blotch drawn next the abandoned highway.

“There it is,” she said with a sigh. “If it hasn’t been taken already, you’ll find it there.” The B-man stood next to the light of the lamp and pulled a packet of cigarettes from his scarred trench coat. He placed one of the sodden cigarettes between his pale lips and accepted the woman’s lighter.

“Thank you,” he said, drawing harshly and exhaling. “What makes you think it’s been taken?”

“Well, it’s a trinket, it’s expensive, made from sterling silver.”

“It’s of no value to anyone unless they plan on melting it down to make more bullets.”

“It’s of value to me,” she replied adamantly.

“Sorry, of course it is…” he drew again, harder. “Are you sure you want me to do this? This job won’t be cheap. Even if it’s twenty-five or thirty miles, this is tough terrain with aberrations moving throughout,” he warned her.

“It’s twenty-five miles, son. That hasn’t escaped my memory, and I’m sure. I understand you folks don’t need batteries or supplements like the rest of us but I have food and ammunition in that closet back there. I even have a daughter of age. She’s good company and is looking for a suitor,” she offered. The B-man turned his face away, fixed his coat and put on his brimmed hat.

“I’m not in that kind of market. I’ll take what cans you have, plus the ammunition.” He walked over to the exit, turning the wheel and opening the hatch.

“I should be back before this evening.” He said before closing the iron door behind him.

The Garrison depot was quieter in the early hours of the morning. Most highwaymen took to leaving at noon when the blood aurora hung the highest, allowing structures and landscapes some visibility against the charred sky. Landscapes shadowed with caliginous rays of the most monochromatic red, bleeding from the clouds, barely touching the tallest of buildings and peaks. Not much different from the nights that followed, although they were enough for a highwayman, a darkfinder, to find his bearings. Those who see in the light, however, do not take well to those who see better in the dark, for what belongs in the dark they do not understand.

As the B-man walked along the depot platform with a stock shepherd close to his side, he traded looks with pierced strangers and felt the eyes of every man rest upon him. When he arrived by the dimly lit cage in which his armored truck was parked, he sighed at the ornery writings of white graffiti left upon the chassis. Creatively “nightcrawler” and less creatively “freak” was what the authors wrote, whom in their ill-manner, sneered in the cage adjacent. The B-man gave them no notice as he took a seat behind the wheel, slammed the door behind him and ignited the machine. He gave a sharp whistle, and the stock shepherd leapt into the seat behind him. He hit the accelerator and together they shot off into the all-consuming blackness.

The crowd in the depot behind him could never track him; a good thing, for the truck was without lights. That glare would only impair him, burn through his retina. Yet in the dark, he saw all what others could only hear. He travelled forth amongst nightmares he witnessed all around him and the strangers that ran, screaming through their blind world in hopes for some temporary salvation. Sometimes he would stop his chassis and call to them.

“Follow the light”. They would pause in their desperation and call out to the dark for help, and as always, none was given. He drove onward until eventually the Garrison, that lighthouse in the distance behind him, blotched out of sight as if cloaked by a cloud on a starless night.

Through the starved, crooked trees that lay like the clutches of dead crows, the driver kept on. Chased by the howling of otherworldly horrors, accompanied by massive, ungainly legs that stalked over rotting acres while the deific eclipses they suspended swayed and wailed like hungry children into the emptiness of the sky. As he watched them from his truck, the darkfinder tightened his grasp around the grip of his revolver. The stock shepherd began to whimper. The driver looked to his canine companion and wished he could only reach over and scratch behind his ear and give words of reassurance. He kept to the highwayman’s codex, however, and detached himself.

“Quiet dog. We’re nearly there.”

The old homestead was indeed twenty-five miles from the Garrison, just like she said. Sat upright amongst barren fields and skeletons of cattle, just beyond the great highway, now a mass grave for miles. The B-man climbed from the driver’s seat and scanned the area. Bodies by the entrance, darkfinders; had she sent others? Pained keening from the inside; familiar but not human. He readied the revolver and kept the dog behind, then proceeded inside. The dilapidated hallway was cold and unwelcoming, leading to a narrow junction. He followed the moaning to his left and continued through into living room where a body sat against the chair, fondling the remains of its skull with a rifle. The B-man moved on towards the staircase. That is where he found her. The hole in the staircase was no hole but a pit, a crevasse to the storage unit below. With the upper floor inaccessible he climbed as far as he could before looking down into the hole and towards the source of the horrid lamentation…

(Sometimes, those survivors less fearful would come and ask, then dismiss upon his telling. The things he had seen in the endless void, the unspeakable. To put face to the cries and screams in the distant dark, those godless echoes and thooms. He warns those callow ones not to ask but they do. Some throw punches and curse his father. Some, in their misplaced kindness try to understand. There is nothing to understand.)

Arachnidan appendages clawing bloodily against brick wall while strigiformic necks twisted violently, quenching for death against the edge of jagged wood. Upon one lay a locket, heart shaped and dressed in emeralds. Conceived of sterling silver, just like she said. He saw the photograph of the young woman within. She was standing in the sunlight with her mother. She was beautiful and happy. He lowered his revolver into the pit. The gristle of blonde hair and blue eyes with twisted flesh tearfully stared back. The bullet tore through her altered design, leaving nothing left. The darkfinder stepped down. Feelers, wiry and volatile began writhing. Her stomach had a mind of its own. The shepherd bayed wildly. Sentient intestines wrapped around the B-man’s neck. A hive like humming grew stronger. The second head rose from the stairless pit; jaws clenched and eyes filled with orgiastic parasites. Unfathomable terror took hold. The shepherd ran towards the aberration. The creature, in insatiable hunger, freed itself from the domestic tomb. The dog cried out for the last time. The darkfinder’s head hit the wall. Sleep.

He rose from a rest well earned, but unintended. He found his bearings like all darkfinders should, emerging from the untouched house that stood timelessly amongst veiled death. The bleeding thing that bared the silver heart bellowed in gluttonous glee as it feasted on the canine’s corpse. By the car it stood, wheezing dumbly. The B-man rose his revolver high and aimed down the sights. The bullet sent a symphony through the machine causing armored chrome and offensively placed spikes to soar skyward, severing the creature severally. Chunks of strange flesh rained from the blackened tempest in searing flames whilst echoes of the explosion filled the valley. They were a calling to all those nightmares nearby. Distant sentience, latent in the dark called back. With that the B-man took the spattered locket and left.

He returned to the Garrison three days later. Gates constructed of foreign metal, scavenged from the fallen bondage. Weakened by the lights, he struggled but made his way inside and marched through to the woman’s quarters. She was surprised as the befouled darkfinder, still alive and drenched in blood not belonging to himself, knocked on her door. She answered and the B-man tore through the room with a firm hand around the woman’s neck.

“I found the trinket you left, lying in the staircase,” he whispered through gritted teeth. The woman clawed for breath.

“I can explain…” She gasped. The B-man squeezed harder.

“There is nothing to understand. There never is.” He concluded, dropping her to the floor. She gathered herself and sobbed in a pitiful mass. The darkfinder yanked the lighter from her ragged cardigan and lit his last cigarette. He turned to the closet in the back.

“I’m keeping this lighter and whatever is in that closet. You move, you die.”

“Please… please don’t go in there,” the woman wailed. The B-man opened the door regardless. Inside the closet he found her. Stuffed amongst boxes of ammunition and cans of outdated food, sewn together with wool and dressed in summer clothes. Her face was smiling. She looked happy. The woman scrambled over to the B-man’s feet.

“Please don’t hurt her, please don’t hurt my baby girl,” She begged. The darkfinder drew hard on his cigarette and turned his head away. For the first time in a long time, he began to understand.

“I just wanted to keep her safe, I wanted to keep her alive.”

The B-man reached into his scarred trench coat, worn and bloodied, pulling out the silver locket now blackened by the world. He reached down to the trembling mother and opened her palm. She yanked her hand away, and retreated to one of her four corners.

“No, no…I don’t want it,” she insisted. “You’ll get more use from it now.”

The woman raised her head from her arms. Her swollen eyes fixed on his holster.

“Just give me the gun,” she asked calmly. The darkfinder cautiously reached for the grip of his weapon.

“Please,” she begged once more. “You can have it back when I’m finished.”

MOTHERSHIP: The Dark Defeat

Written by Aden Robert Halsey