The creature, eyes onyx-dark and without whites, sat atop the boulder like a throne and gazed across the far east hills and valleys from its perch along a high ridge. Over its otherwise naked body, was slung a poorly cloak constructed from the patchwork skins of paint horses—the material was strung together with twine through stone-punched holes by untrained hands. The Nephilim seemed like a sculpture against the midday sun’s pink sky; this façade was broken only by its steady breath. This humanoid form was great, with blood-stained hands the size of ceiling fans which hung between its spaced knees, eyes like cannon balls which dully observed, a chest as broad as a lorry which methodically rose and fell. Long dark hair hung over its beardless face.
He, The Nephilim, blinked then went on staring. Beyond him too, where he sat upon the risen earth, land stretched west—on the furthest horizons that way, smoke.
The blank visage he drew indicated stupidity, as did his brief utterances; he spoke frequently to himself and no one else, always in short bursts. This was no indication of his honest intelligence. He could speak clearly and at length but chose not to engage in the practice.
The Nephilim rose from the boulder, planted his bare feet onto the ground and held the ragged cloak around his throat with pinched fingers.
He rounded the boulder to find a scene of fresh viscera there; already birds picked along the sidelines. Among the carnage were a family’s belongings—wagon, books, tools, a dog carcass without a head, scattered children’s toys. He moved to where a dead woman lay face-up and towered over the corpse and stared into the open expression of horror frozen there. He blinked, sighed, lowered himself to lift her booted foot. The Nephilim planted a heel against the corpse’s crotch and yanked swiftly with his hand clamped around the ankle. The leg tore free easily and blood splatter shot across the earth, and he removed the pantleg and boot and lifted the naked leg to his mouth with both hands, allowing the cloak to fall away from him where it remained crescent shaped on the earth.
The beast twisted the leg like clay to shuck the meat from bone. He chewed and walked back to the ridge and stared again and chewed again.
***
Gray cacti and low yellow brush stretched toward the sky in all directions; the siblings cursed against their traveling, against the path in front of them, against the places they’d come from. Trinity took the rear and kept a hand on Hoichi’s elbow as they traversed the arduous land. The earth was like frozen desert ocean waves across Sagebrush Valley. The sun, highest as it was, beat sweat out of them at the pace of a heartbeat.
Among the spitting, the cursing, the scrape of heels against packed earth, Hoichi stopped and grabbed ahold of his sister and pointed ahead in the general direction they’d been going; ahead a series of dead hills was a single ponderosa pine tree. Trinity slammed ahead and Hoichi dragged after her, then keeping his hands on her arm.
“Goddamn, it’s hot,” said Trinity, “Sweat is reaching places I never knew it could.” She blinked and the thick sheen pooled across her eyelids sent drops like tears down her face.
Hoichi pushed his forehead into the shoulder of his robes and rubbed it wildly back and forth. “Dangerous temperatures,” said the clown, “Too dangerous.”
“C’mon to that tree then. Hurry,” said Trinity.
They slammed beneath the ponderosa then carefully sidled around so their faces were well shaded; the clown wafted himself and laid on his back while the hunchback drank heartily and took the hem of her robe wildly to her face—she rested against the trunk of the tree. When Hoichi lazily reached out toward her, motioning for the canteen, she lifted it once more with one hand then outstretched her other with a single index finger.
She sighed and handed him the canteen.
“Maybe north’s good,” said Trinity, “Like that guy from Lubbock said. North wouldn’t be so hot. That’s what people say. I know you were little, but what do you remember about it?”
Hoichi remained silent while he drank, but eventually rose from the open mouth of the canteen and craned to sit cross-legged; he capped the container then dabbed around his eyes for sweat. “It’s cold,” he nodded, “But I was so small, I don’t remember much.”
“Let’s rest here,” said Trinity; she shifted beneath the thin branches of the ponderosa, “Maybe even until dark, huh?”
“Maybe,” nodded Hoichi.
They remained there, silent for a time, and watched the sun in the sky, and sometimes they pointed at the sky to show a cloud to the other, but neither of them seemed in good spirits.
***
Kleine Leute, said The Nephilim; he watched the siblings from the ridge, nodded. He’d taken to sunbathing entirely naked atop the boulder; his horse-cloak was laid out beneath him. He snorted then moved to the disaster camp and among the splintered wagon and strewn corpses, he found a barrel with a spigot. He opened the spigot and splashed himself with the water that came from it, swiping his hair back from his face.
The Nephilim returned to the boulder, hunkered alongside it, lowered nearer the edge of the high ridge. He watched the unmoving figures beneath the shade of the ponderosa and asked himself, Weiche Körper? he nodded to himself, Gutes Gefühl.
He returned to the disaster camp to sate his hunger and watched the siblings from his perch and even as the sun went down, he remained where he was, unsleeping. They lit no fire, so the landscape was dark. They lit no fire, so he descended from where he was, and he was startingly silent for his size. He stood at the edge of the furthest twisty branches of the ponderosa, lowered himself to peer beneath at the sleeping figures. The Nephilim examined them, matched his own breathing to theirs, came close enough to stare at their faces.
The man sleeping there beside the woman had no ears and his face was strange. The Nephilim reached out to the sleeping man, pointed outward with the index finger of his massive right hand—he could easily swallow the sleeper’s head in his palm—and traced the areas where the man’s ears should’ve been without putting skin to skin. This stalker then turned his attention to the prone woman and angled over her and reached out to feel the breath from her nostrils with the tips of his fingers. The Nephilim cocked his head while his gaze traced between the pair.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Hastily, The Nephilim fled from the scene and returned to his perch where he watched them for the remainder of the night.
***
Neither of the siblings stirred beyond the average twists which accompanied sleep, and upon waking to the heat of the sun, the pair of them sat and drank and rubbed their faces.
Hoichi examined the ponderosa tree, “Thanks, ol’ pal,” he said to the inanimate object, “Couldn’t have done it without you.” He yawned, stretched, rose to his feet and dusted himself off. His robe was painted with the dull gray-khaki of the earth.
Trinity rose too and they examined the sky through the branches of the tree; she stopped for a moment, outstretched a hand to the one of the branches, traced along it delicately. “It’s very green. Look at it, it’s really green.”
Hoichi nodded, “So?”
“So? You remember I wanted to see the gardens back at Dallas. We should’ve. It’s maybe the greenest place on earth. At least the nearest one I know. But look at this—you almost never see anything this green out in the wastes. Everything’s so messed up out here.” She pulled her own robe closer around herself and shook her head. “I smell bad. We smell bad. We should stop soon. Somewhere, maybe where they’ve got gardens. Somewhere with a bath and fresh clothes. Hot bath. Clean clothes.”
“Gotcha’,” said the clown, “Clean bath. Hot clothes,” He made a face. “Bath clothes. Clean hot,” He shook his head, “Whatever you said.” Though he grinned, Trinity did not. He nudged her, nodded, and removed the grin from his face. He apologetically shrugged.
They set off from the ponderosa and clamored across the landscape like amateurs, headed westward; the uneven terrain left their feet sliding so they grappled with one another for aid over every big rock and ridge. Seemingly, determination and nothing else carried them.
Trinity was the first to meet the highest western plateau; Hoichi remained behind to shove her by the rear. She toppled forward onto her knees then threw her head back as though to speak, but her mouth was frozen in its pursed shape when she saw the view awaiting her there. The disaster camp remained unmoving, save the scavenger birds. She didn’t scream in surprise. She lifted herself to her feet, brushed her knees off, and shook her head.
Hoichi came after, stumbling into her with his momentum.
They stood there together and examined the camp.
Three wagons sat in shambles—two overturned and the one left upright was missing a wheel. Glinting in sunlight was a small tanker on wheels; it had been drawn by the remaining upright wagon. A discarded boot sat by their feet. Fourteen bodies lay strewn across the ground around a dead fire—a fifteenth body remained unseen by them, crushed beneath the side of an overturned wagon.
The pair of them took alongside a boulder for rest and wiped their brows and shot each other curious looks.
“What did it?” asked Trinity.
“Something bad. Fire doesn’t look that old,” said the clown.
Trinity moved from their place at the boulder and Hoichi followed.
A one-legged, one-armed woman lay on the earth, face up, clothes mussed; a stain circled the spot where her leg had been torn free. The blood halo by her shoulder, where her right arm had been, was minimal. Trinity kicked the remaining leg of the dead woman; the boot she wore matched the discarded one they’d passed. “This one’s still a bit stiff,” said the hunchback.
“How’s that possible? We would’ve heard it? They have guns?” Hoichi followed his sister then looked at the dead woman on the ground; he dispersed from there, circled the fire, examined the wagons, stopping whenever he saw a corpse. “Kid over here,” he called.
Trinity hunkered down by the dead woman and fished through the departed’s pockets. She came away with a wallet, dumped out a few Republican coins, and let the wallet smack the ground beside the corpse.
She went to her brother; he struggled with a blanket he’d pilfered from the back of the upright wagon. He flapped it flat over the corpse of a small boy; there stood a concave impression, black, across the dead boy’s forehead—there were no eyes. The scavenger birds cawed. Trinity helped her brother to tuck the ends of the blanket around the edges of the corpse.
The pair shooed the birds away and picked over the scene. Hoichi found a double barrel shotgun misplaced beside the wheel of an overturned wagon; he held it to the sunlight in both of his outstretched hands and squinted and whispered, “Bent.”
Trinity examined the wagons’ contents, moved from corpse to corpse and rifled through their pockets and came away with hardly anything; a bit of scratch and a tablet was all she found. She held the tablet, an electronic device, up to her face—its glass screen was cracked terribly, but she pressed the power button on the side of the thing and waited and waited and nothing happened. She shrugged and unslung her pack and put the thing away with her own belongings. “Maybe worth something,” she said to Hoichi, who watched her with some interest. She nodded to the shotgun he held.
“It’s warped, but surely there’s some shells around here somewhere.” His gaze traced the disaster camp. “I don’t know if I want to stick around here much longer though.” His vision shot to the horizon and then traced there too, first to the west, then the east where they’d come from. “I feel eyes, don’t’ you?”
“Paranoia?”
He shook his head, “I don’t know. I don’t like it. What do you think about Roswell?”
“And what?” asked Trinity, “Backtrack?”
Hoichi shook his head again, “You’re the one that was talking about getting a bath. If we keep heading west, then who knows what we’ll find? We’re low on water, I know that. Food too. Pushing on this way’s been foolish. How long until one of us drops from the heat? Or what if starvation?”
“Sure, but the reservations aren’t much further, right?”
Hoichi moved beside an overturned wagon, sat the shotgun across the side paneling of the vehicle, then removed his pack and scanned the red sky; thin clouds transpired there. “What’s the plan then? Do we push on? I trust you.”
Trinity moved to her brother and put her arms across a wagon wheel and put her head down into her arms there. The pair sat in absolute silence besides the patter of the fowls that leapt from spot to spot.
A black bird with red eyes tested the border between itself and the clown and turned its head sidelong to look at Hoichi. The man kicked at the bird and the animal flapped its wings in protest and hopped away before gliding across the disaster camp to peck at the remains of one of the scattered corpses.
Trinity lifted her head. “Wherever we go, let’s stay awhile, yeah? I’m so fucking tired.”
“If we can, we will.”
***
Roswell, beyond its perimeter chain-link fencing, was a city of lights against the darkened sky. Against the blanket of night, Roswell shone like a beacon and the siblings became casual in their pace upon seeing the place arrive in front of them.
Each of them, the hunchback and the clown, lumbered zombielike. They’d quickly depleted what water they’d had and Hoichi had begun to complain about a blister on his right foot; he favored the leg, and even with her own tiredness, Trinity took on some of his weight onto her shoulder.
They came from the sagebrush hills, saw the brave lit caravans venturing south across Highway 285, and Trinity complained for a bath and Hoichi continued mentioning, especially with the landscape growing dark, how he felt eyes on him, and about how he wanted to rest his foot.
It was full dark by the time they rounded the city’s perimeter to meet its gates at the highway. ROSWELL stood out in magnificent lighted font over guarded catwalks suspended across the path and graffities of aliens stood out across propped flat trash flanking the entryway.