Chapter 1
Camino was tall and brown skinned from years spent traveling the southern wildes between the lonely weepers that guarded the southern gates of his city and the overpass that guarded the entrance to Sac town—the derelict and long-abandoned home of the ancients. He was also worn down and somewhat raged to look at, like he’d cast a long shadow at high noon, but it was just his way. Typically, he wore a sweat stained Dodger’s cap and a whethered jean jacket that ended above the hip revealing the three tools of the trade: a short, sickle- shaped blade; a single shot hand canon; and a collapsible telescope.
To have a name was the goal amongst the people of Three-O. There were many ways to get one, but to be re-christened with the name of an ancient was a prize, and it was something Camino had coveted years ago, when he’d first come to Three-O after spending years of his life in enlisted and indentured servitude, protecting the length of the I-5 trades, the largest inland route between Malib and the Ash Lands.
And…with time on his hands in the now, and a little bit of sunshine on his brow, filtered as it was through clusters of pine needle, Camino’s mind got to wandering. With a memory like his, the images of his past came back to him slowly, but in sharp focus as if recreated by the hand of a master painter, subtle hues taking shape in his mind’s eye until he could almost see the jet black sand stone and auburn tinted soil that peaked up between tendrils of frost that had plagued him since he’d made his way north of the Trinities. At that time he’d been on his way to find his name, and he’d had no master to guide him as his apprentice had.
Camino, as he was called, was named as such because on his naming day he crawled out of Ash Lands clutching a large green plate to his chest that bore the word Camino. His hands had been bloodied and bruised, and besides a stooped razorsnout whose back barely reached Camino’s chest and whose breath turned out to smell like hot, frothy bile; his biggest challenge had been a persistent frost…and hunger.
At that time, he had been a fair scavenger, but a poor hunter.
On his naming day, all those years ago, it had turned out that the razorsnout had been the answer to the hunger, but that the frost would follow him back past the Trinities until at last he made his way back home to Three-O, always keeping the I-5 in sight, but never daring to tread it’s cragged and stubbled face—bandits were still a reality back in 2317.
Squatting in the shadow of the tooth and waiting for his apprentice to return with news of the road ahead, Camino remembered hunkering down in a lean-to 20 miles north of Three-O. The wind had picked up over a stretch of rough country, and even the red-bested hawks became scarce as night fell. And the frost, by that time, was an old friend nipping at his heels and the bones of his chest like a dog at dried carapace. Back then, a starless night had crept over the valley, and a warm humidity mixed with the restless winds until thunder and lightning threatened to render the effort of hauling branches over the concave edge of an ancient’s derelict—an upturned vehicle bearing the remnants of the name Cadillac—futile.
He remembered that the rain had gotten through, and that he had been cold, and above all that his name plate provided small warmth for all the trouble he’d gone through to get it. He also remembered that as the lightning drew near, when it flashed he could see clear across the valley from his lean to, and that in the small glimpses of brilliant light he could almost make out the shape of a tall and lumbering figure that seemed to move by locomotion across the valley, its arms or legs had been hard to make out, but it towered above the tree line and it seemed to take on the shape of a wooly oxen suspended over spindly bundles of gears and cogs…the thing filled him with fear. In the morning he decided that perhaps it had been a gargantuan—giant spider, hide tough as nails, poisonous bite, and with a sickly sweet smell that was said to fill the air when an unlucky traveller had mistakenly entered its territory.
At the time, the young-ish Camino didn’t smell anything by sunrise, so he wrung out his clothes as best he could, stowed his name plate, and set his sights on the last leg of his journey. He put the shadow out of mind as best he could, and thought about a warm bath and perhaps a warm girl at The Weeper’s Well.
The old hunter-scavenger brushed a fleck of dirt off his jeans and wondered when age would take the name of that day’s girl from him. The other old heads talked about old conquests as though they couldn’t be bothered to remember their names, but Camino always had. Any girl who’d been nice enough to go with him for any length of time could be recalled just as clearly as he he could recall the gargantuan…and just like he could remember waking up in Ohio, with a light blinking in the bottom left corner of his eyes with one line of text written there in fine printed block lettering that said:
Go west to California. There’s a life and purpose waiting for you there.
The light had gone long ago—but Camino didn’t much like remembering that light and those lonely nights crossing from the wastes of the East to the small light of the West. And in California, Camino had found himself passage on the I-5 caravan as an enlisted, non-insignia’d private, who eventually bought his freedom back from Captain Marconi and made his way north to Three-O, where he took up a trade as a hunter-scavenger.
Could have used a master to teach him the specifics, but the skills he developed during his travels grew on their own without much coaxing. Still, Camino’s memory was perennially green and because his apprentice was exercising her skill as a scout, surveying the way between Dry Creek and the old American Rio, he had nothing much better to do than to think and wait. But thinking tired him, and with a memory like his, the things that came back to him weren’t always pleasant. He shook his head and adjusted his Dodger’s cap.
Then high up above, a fanged blue jay squawked, hopped between two leafless branches, and then flew away in a wide swooping ark just past Camino’s head before pumping its wings like a windmill and vanishing into a row of ancient’s suburb. The old suburbs were tilted and slumped dwellings that had been done over by scavengers, dirt, time, and eventually growth. Little spin covered shrubs and dew drops littered the mounds in tight clusters. Camino watched a jack rat nibble something in the brush, and shortly after, he heard leather boots crunching softly down the road, and there came Mii-May, bearing only her birth name until she retrieved her own name plate from Sac Town.
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His apprentice plopped down in front of him like an old beggar, sighed, groaned, and got to massaging the meat of her calf. That pain in her leg could be a problem if it was more than a cramp. “So?”
While digging her forefingers into her calf she gazed up at Camino and looked him straight in the eye. Mii-May was skinny and scrappy looking, tough like unchewn jerkey, but she also had something pretty about her too. If she had wanted to follow her mother into small town politics, or if she had wanted any other future for herself, Camino had often supposed that she would have done fine, instead…the wildes and wastes had marked her the same way it started to mark everyone who carved out their living beyond the boarders of modern civilization, safety, security, and whatever other pleasantries modern civilization made itself good for--Camino liked to keep away from the necessity of civilization if he could help it, because when he stayed put too long and let people study him long enough, questions about his prolonged middle-age whispered around him like flies and he tried to avoid them.
She undid the tie holding her hair and shook her hair out. “Strangest thing. Three Gawth, moving quickly along the Sac Rio, western bank.”
“Three Gawth?” Camino held the inside of his cheek between two teeth and let it go. “You sure?”
She tapped her telescope with the three fingers in answer. “No mistaking a Gawth.” Her voice held no tense gravel but instead held the mater of fact fankness that she'd been cultivating since the day Camino took her under his care.
Camino studied her face and frowned. “Well then Mii-May, your name will have to wait. As licensed hunter-scavengers, it’s our duty to look a little closer.”
Mii-May must have reached the same conclusion herself, “but I was thinking…” She stood and tightened the belt at her hip.
“Yeah?”
“How long has it been since Gawth were seen around here?” Then for a second, her voice carried the steel and iron of a seasoned man of the wildes. But to Camino it still carried the light of that fierce, near-feral girl who’d first come out with him 5 years prior to begin her apprenticeship.
Camino let his memory unwind as images of white-furred, man-like goblins ran through the darkest corridors his thoughts, a spark of blue that might have been lightning, and a wooden door slamming behind him as a shower of fists and open palms railed against the other side. Heart thumping in his chest. Fear, sweat, and death filling the air in his own personal dungeon, and then the thunderous report of a full broadside as Marconi's roadship unloaded 36 guns against what meager cover the ancient's suburb could afford...and the world flying apart around him as his captain and crew saved him within an inch of his life. That had been Camino’s closest encounter with a Gawth on his third tour of the I-5. He pushed the memory aside while his apprentice studied him, and then it came to him, “The last time a Gawth was seen was about 20 years…and then only a sickly old thing put down easily with one of these.” He flicked the muzzle of his single-shot. “But there's one thing bothering me about what you said.”
“Hmm?”
Camino’s frown deepened. “They don’t usually travel in groups. Not in the wild. In the cities, they sometimes group up because they just happen to be concentrated and some unlucky carapace kicks over a bucket or coughs...kicking up a swarm. But out in the wild, they tend to get separated, and they don't travel in packs. That would be new.”
Mii-May’s brow pursed. “I saw what I saw.”
"I'm not calling you a liar." Camino waved his hand as if to wave away her doubt, “Your eyes are sharper than mine. If you say it’s so, then it is.”
An hour later, Camino watched as his apprentice pushed dry brush aside to reveal sets of human-like tracks left around a pool of mud, white fur caught on the rump of an ancients derelict fifteen feet away—bearing the name, Tesla. They followed the trail down the western bank of the Sac Rio, passing by the eastern face of a golden pyramid that had sunken upon itself in it’s center as if a giant of a man had sat there and rested only to find out the face of the thing wouldn't bear his weight.
Two hours later the sun shifted and deep purples and oranges lit the western horizon like a funeral pyre. A single solitary weeper bowed its head over the Sac Rio with its bronze-cast features hidden by a blackened and turquoise stained hood, it’s expression lifelike and sullen, mourning the end of the ancient’s world like all its sisters. A torrent of bats circled the air above the hunter-scavengers as the followed the trail east away from the river and towards the delta swamps. They moved silently through the air like fingers weaving their way patiently through a lock of hair.
They both knew that if the trail ran far into the deltas that they’d have to turn back and report what they’d found. Camino harbored a secret hope that this was the case, and that they could turn back towards the city and finish what they’d came to do…find Mii-May’s name plate. He wondered what truth his apprentice held in her heart. If he’d been young like her, three Gawth moving together might have excited him as an opportunity to grow clout along with a name yet to be discovered, but Camino wasn’t so brazen these days.
Let it be someone else’s problem, he thought to himself.
And then he heard it, footsteps on the dirt. Close by.
Mii-May motioned for him to get low, and he trusted her enough to follow her orders. Listening now, he thought that perhaps it was one beast, maybe rat-buck or maybe dumb-bug. But something in the way the feet scampered like soles, and the rhythm…erratic at first but patterned.
And then the sniffing.
A creature, borne on two legs came around an overturned vehicle bearing the name Regional Transit. It stood somewhat shorter than a full grown man, but its shoulders were broad and covered in a kind of fur that caught the sheen of the twilight and budding stars of early night. Its face was angular and sharp, and its eyes…bulbous, black as oil, and unmistakable.
A Gawth.
It stopped about twenty yards away without seeing them and pressed its flat snout to the air. There came the unmistakable sniffing again, and a call.
GUUACK….GUUACK!
Mii-May ducked low and came around beside Camino, both concealed behind the axel of an ancient’s Sube-coupe. “I can get around it. Catch it. Bring it in. Won’t have to find the rest.”
Camino nodded and Mii-May slunk low to flank the Gawth. Camino caught her arm. “Wait. He mouthed the word, alone?” And hoped the question registered with his apprentice without him having to say it because she had seen three Gawth moving together, and hear was just one.
Just then the sniffing stopped, and peering over his shoulder, Camino could have sworn that the Gawth was looking right at him, that its brow was furrowed, and that it wore an expression of disgust that he could see even through the shadows that covered its face. If that were true, then whatever it was, it looked like a Gawth but it was different because the Gawth Camino knew, didn't feel disgust only the drive to maim, eat, and destroy.
Camino’s hair stood on his arms and a chill ran down his spine. His grip tightened on his apprentice’s arm. The thing brought something two its lips and blasted the air with the call of a horn that would be heard for miles all around and that resounded through jacket and skin, through blood and bone, until the halls of his very spirit shook with fear. The bats scattered at the Gawth's call, a few shrieking and banking back towards the city as the call continued and resounded. When the call ended. All of Camino’s body tightened up like he’d just stuck his foot in a snare, and then further south, miles off, another horn answered in return…and all the while, the Gawth stared in their direction.
The light of day was fading fast, and whether he believed it or not, Camino had his answer--the Gawth was not alone, and it was a whole hellofalot more than he'd remembered, or had ever heard.