The following morning, the pair of siblings remained on the premises of Petro’s longer than what they’d initially considered; each awoke with a hangover and slept late and when they did arrange their gear and descend the stairs to the barroom, Petro was angled over the stove behind the bar and the smell of pepper and ham greeted them. They took to a booth and ate the tough meat with hard bread and Petro occasionally started with conversation only for it to peter out in the morning dullness; the barman played Bill Evans from the speaker, and this added to the dreamish scene. They enjoyed cowboy coffee cooked with an egg; Petro insisted on its flavor, but neither of the travelers had a liking for it, though Trinity did comment, seemingly for the sake of kindness, on its unique profile. Petro beamed and nodded.
After breakfast, Trinity took the appropriated repeater rifle to a local pawnbroker at the direction offered by Petro. Hoichi remained with the barman, and they chatted idly in the hunchback’s absence. The warmth between the barman and the clown persisted from the previous night and Petro removed an old checkers board from a hidey hole and commented how he’d lost some pieces, but they could use some rocks he’d found to replace them.
Trinity left the place and though they’d overslept, Dallas seemed well awake; already, the barkers from across Dealey called out and the slave auctions began again. Briefly, she stood there, by a marred lamppost on the sidewalk, and vaguely watched the goings-on. The man in leathers was not there with his caravan.
She took down South Houston Street and along the way, city folk passed her by without notice; being a hunchback, her eyes remained averted to the legs of those around her and her angled gait dispersed whatever throng she came to. Although no one accosted her, there were those that mumbled apologies, surprise, or comments they did not believe she could hear.
The day’s sky was yellow with pink cloud streaks.
Manure rose above even the smell of raw-food market stalls casually dressed along either sidewalk of South Houston—Trinity maneuvered with some difficulty around the crowds there till she recognized the place which Petro had told her about. Across the street, there stood a lamppost which bent over, unlike the others installed throughout Dallas she’d thus seen, and she waited for a moment to dart across the street.
Upon standing in front of the pawnbroker’s, there was no great indication what sort of place it was, besides the hand-chiseled placard on the door which read: We By and Sell.
She pushed through the door, silvery rifle slung over her shoulder, and after dealing with the man behind the counter—a great-headed elderly fellow—and selling the rifle outright, she left the place hurriedly; she was stopped though, deftly by a hand grabbing ahold of her elbow. Trinity swung around and was confronted by the narrow face of the man in leathers—he grinned. Upon her glaring at the hand which he’d grabbed her with, he let go and put both of his gloved hands up and chuckled long. He remained in leathers; his hat swung across his shoulder blades from the cord around his throat. His hair stood on ends like he’d only just awoken himself.
“I meant no offense,” said the man in leathers, “But I noticed you last night at that bar. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, of course, and I kept thinking about the color of your skin and how nice it was. It is immaculate.”
Trinity straightened herself away from the man and angled with a forearm against the strangely bent lamppost. “My skin?” she asked. The bustle of people on the street seemed lesser with the crowds at the markets across the thoroughfare. Still, a few passersby came and went and paid neither of them standing on the sidewalk any mind.
“Of course.” he said. The man meticulously removed his gloves then he held them like a set of rags and batted them into his open palm while searching the street. Lorries and trucks and wagons went on. “Your skin—last night anyway—had a purple hue to it in the light of that bar. It must’ve reacted strangely to the pigment. The lights, I mean.” He shook his head and though his grin remained, his eyes did not smile at all. “Seeing it in the daylight like this, it’s like chocolate. It’s like a deep rich candy. It contains a warmth when interacting with the light of the sun; you glow.”
Trinity bit the inside of her cheek and attempted to brush by the man in leathers, but he put a friendly hand up and shook his head again. “Let me go,” said Trinity, “I’ll scream.”
His smile became rectangular—it was an expression between joy and a primeval urge. “Do you oil it? Do you keep it well?” he asked.
“What the fuck is your problem?” Each of her fists—one of which still held the scratch she’d gotten for the sale of the rifle—protested audibly at her squeezing her nails into the fats of her thumbs. The sidewalk on that side of Houston Street was becoming sparse of people.
“Hey!” said the man in leathers; he snapped his fingers in front of Trinity’s face, “Do you keep your skin hydrated?”
“I’ll scream,” she repeated.
The man in leathers threw his head back, bellowed loudly a noise like a shriek. No one stopped what they were doing. The customers and vendors across the street did not so much as look in their direction. He came in close to Trinity—so close that she recoiled. He smacked his lips then wormed his tongue around the inside of his closed mouth. “What do you say we get out of here?” he asked her, “Come, lost lamb.”
Trinity trembled then spasmed in fright as the door of the pawnbroker spilled open. The man from before, which she’d sold the rifle to, called out to them, “You alright?”
“We’re fine,” said the man in leathers.
“I was leaving, and this strange man came up to me,” said Trinity.
The pawnbroker raised a single bushy eyebrow.
The man in leathers guffawed and placed an arm around Trinity’s shoulder. “I was only helping her,” he told the pawnbroker, “I don’t think she’s from around here and she seems quite lost.”
The pawnbroker lifted an arthritic clawlike hand to the back of his head and scratched behind his ear. “You should leave her alone now,” he said plainly; his words did not contain the venom of an overt threat.
The man in leathers stood the way he was with Trinity under his arm for seconds and waited on the sidewalk; he looked frozen there like a man stopped in time. No emotion could be discerned from his face—it wasn’t the face of a man, but the face of a creature beyond sight, the face of a thing never seen. There was nothing and then like a queer animatronic, the man in leathers leapt from the side of Trinity, put up both of his hands and laughed. “Of course,” he said.
Trinity unclenched her fists and fled from the man and took down the sidewalk, restraining her breaths.
“Hey!” called the man in leathers.
She had only made it a few yards from the man. Trinity swallowed, pivoted around to see the man standing there, leaning against the strangely bent lamppost.
“You’ve dropped this!” he called after her. He held up the scratch which she’d dropped. “Thought you might want it back.”
She glanced at the pawnbroker which still stood there in his doorway; though he remained, his gaze had gone across the street to where the vendors were. “T-thanks,” said Trinity upon closing the distance between them. She reached out to grab the money from the man in leathers, but he maintained his grip and kept that alien smile. It was primitive and it glistened and reflected what sunlight came through the gathering red clouds.
A gas-powered car backfired as it drove by, and Trinity flinched and the man in leathers remained still.
She ripped the money free from his hand and took away without anything further.
The pawnbroker returned to his store and the man in leathers remained on the sidewalk, gazing after Trinity till she disappeared, and he returned the gloves to his hands and flexed his fingers there; the skin of the gloves creaked when he did that. He lifted the ragged leather hat to his head and tugged it over his mess of hair.
***
Black shadow horizons stood in all directions and the siblings fled across the wasteland. They made good time from Dallas and then Fort Worth came ahead, and they rounded the city’s edges without entering.
The added gear—canteens, cutlery, cookware—they purchased swung from their belts and from their packs. In the dawn, the two took on brown robes so there on the cusp of morning, the pair seemed like two dark ghosts against the paling sky.
They carried on with only each other and spoke infrequently during their travels, but at night, they camped by lowlight and cooked canned goods or chewed on pemmican and spoke in cheerful whispers. Sometimes Trinity sang and sometimes Hoichi joined her, but mostly he listened and applauded his sister’s voice; no one ever applauded the hunchback’s voice, but the clown did.
Some nights they slept separately and some nights they slept bundled together and stared at the stars and breathed their conversations into one another’s faces. It was light and fast travel, and they put days and miles behind and soon they were leaving signs which read: Weatherford and they spoke about the west in grand terms. Neither knew what the future held—neither knew what waited for them in the west. There was the vague idea of non-Republican city-states, and reservations, and whatever.
Perhaps Petro was right, and the world was all the same everywhere—there was truth to it, but not an entire truth.
Soon, the slaver and Dallas both became darkened places in their minds, and they brought it up less frequently.
On amiable nights, whenever fellow travelers spotted them, Hoichi hid the earless spots on the sides of his head with a wrap and Trinity remained seated and they invited others to join their camp and something like ‘commerce’ came and went and the strangers changed, but the conversations remained the same. “Where are you going?”, “What’s it like where you come from?”, “I’d like to see the North Country before I die.”
Always, the clown joked. Many times, Trinity asked why Hoichi did so and performed crass, and often he gave the same answer: “I am a clown. It is what they expect. A dog barks and a bird flies.”
Seemingly, this response did not sit well with Trintiy, because often she tried to tease more from her greatest friend, but the answer continued to remain a variation of: “A dog barks and a bird flies.”
Of course, she persisted and told him he was not an animal and to this he merely shrugged and offered a noise without any real follow-up.
The wastes, as it was in the time after the first deluge, expanded in all directions with warped ecology, it was deadened land, but it was not such an infrequent occurrence that a traveler might come upon some family, some rag-tag clan, some group of survivors—that’s what they were—and human faces were abundant in comparison to what would come. The catastrophe of the second deluge neared. No one knew.
Skies, pink and splattered with blood-mark clouds, seemed to go on to eternity. The dead world was all around, and in the day, a person could sit underneath that sky and wonder beyond reason. If not for mutants, demons, the monstrosities which lurked here and there, it would remain tranquil. There was otherwise absolute deathly silence. But on nights, long nights where the pink sky went to gray then to full black then even the stars and moon seemed to give no good light, those things came up from the earth and from the derelict places possessed by the old world, and looked on this strange desolate land with glass-eyed visages and slithered and lumbered and scanned the darkness for something to eat like beasts fresh from hibernation.
On the long nights, the nights which seemed colder than others—these were the nights which Trinity and Hoichi gathered into some alcove or crevasse and kept body-close together, and they sometimes witnessed in glances the yellow glowing eyes of the mutants which stalked from whatever place they perched.
Often, Hoichi gazed in wonder at the creatures and then turned to his travelling companion and asked her, “It feels like they’re looking right at us when I see those eyes?” The end of his words always came with the elevation of a question; it might’ve been a hope that there was any doubt.
Trinity calmed him when he became this way and told him it was unlikely—she would carry on about how she’d seen many mutants, and even demons, and she told how a person would know when they were stalked by those things, surely. This was a lie though. She did not know. Still, they comforted each other in these ways.
***
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Trinity saw the caravan from Lubbock first and notified her brother and they took to scattered refuse—debris and garbage—along the easternmost side of US-84; the dual roads were cracked from yellow grass and neglect and they lowered to the ground in their robes, and they held to their gear to keep it from clanking. The two of them spied on the caravan.
“That’s a lot of people,” said Hoichi.
Trinity pinched her mouth shut so wrinkles formed around her lips, and she shook her head. Her mouth opened, but no words came, so she shut it again. They watched.
Upon the caravan’s approach, the pair of them rose from their prone positions and hesitantly waited and watched and continued to whisper to one another. Hoichi angled higher from the ground with his knees beneath himself and it was only when the pair of them gathered enough details about the caravan that they wrestled from the ground entirely, patting their robes.
Hoichi called to those passing and the caravan from Lubbock called in return and stopped.
Evening came on so everyone and everything was bathed in abstract haze.
The caravan consisted of several vehicles—some carried by electricity, and some carried by horses or mules—and many walkers. Tanker trucks relaxed on their axles as the drivers braked and the work animals beat their shoed hooves against the road. It was the kindly faces of children which eventually spurred the siblings to greet the troupe openly.
The vehicles halted completely, and the Lubbock people came from their perches and the walkers gathered to the fore and among them were merchants and travelers looking for safety in numbers; so, the word was the Lubbock people were on their way to Fort Worth for a delivery of oil.
Trinity and Hoichi dealt with the merchants and reupped their dwindled supplies of water and rations and while doing so, a scrawny fellow with straw-colored hair and freckles emerged from the crowd—a group of young girls, fifteen in total, followed the freckled gentleman. The girls varied in age from twelve to sixteen and all wore matching, blue-faded dresses—the hems of which exposed the hairier shins of the eldest girls.
The man butted into the conversations and asked the pair where they headed.
“West,” said Trinity.
The man’s voice was narcotic smooth, “West is a direction like any other, but I mean to ask your destination.”
“Does it matter?” asked Hoichi.
The man smiled and revealed a smoking pipe which he kept and stood to lift a boot from the ground to knock the loose ash from its chamber by banging it against his heel. “Oh, I don’t mean to pry.” He stood properly and examined his pipe and blew across the open mouth of the chamber. “I’m Tandy O’Clery,” he offered out his free hand and Hoichi took it to shake; the man’s smile radiated.
The siblings offered their names, and the merchants dispersed to their carriages while the uniformed girls remained following Tandy; each of the girls remained silent. The sun dipped further over the western horizon and against the shadow-blackening fields in all directions, Tandy offered for them to camp with the troupe for the night.
Between the dual roads, the caravan cooked around a series of low fires with iron cookware and offered their guests both food and drink openly, especially Tandy. The display had the comfort of a small settlement once the merchants and troupe and travelers unpacked their belongings. When the siblings offered their own rations for adding to the meager feast, they were turned away and told to eat and not to worry.
After their meal, they languished casually around the fire, stuffed.
With night came a chill so everyone sat around the embers in groupings and drank wine—Tandy lit his pipe while he sat in a metal folding chair alongside a fire, and the smoke which came from it stank, but not like tobacco.
Hoichi and Trinity took to the hard earth on their bottoms alongside Tandy and absently stared into the fire—lining the circle opposite them were the uniformed girls.
Though the girls little prior, they now spilled themselves emphatically, guffawed, and even told stories to one another from their side of the campfire.
“Who are they?” Trinity asked Tandy.
Smoke bellowed from Tandy’s open mouth as he lazily slanted his head across the back of the chair and stared at the starry sky. “The girls?” he asked.
“Yeah.” The pair of them spoke lowly enough to not garner the girls’ attention. “Why are they all dressed like that?”
“I bring music to this world. Their parents say it’s for them. They are called ‘The Hollies’ in Lubbock—a musical choir I’ve been authorized to instruct.”
“They sing?” asked Trinity.
Hoichi studied the ground beneath him, plucked sickly yellow grass from a clump beside his foot and tossed it into the campfire; he watched it shrivel as it burst into flame. Everything, save the vehicles which were cast in the orange glow of firelight, looked to be a part of another world entirely—a world of absolute darkness. It was only this.
Tandy nodded at the hunchback. “They sing. I direct them to sing, so they do.”
Silence followed; Tandy smoked more, and Trinity took whatever drinks the ‘The Hollies’ handed her—she finished them quickly with gusto. Hoichi abstained and simply leveled back on his palms where he sat with his legs crossed and he put his head back as though examining the sky.
Hoichi broke the silence from their side of the campfire, “Trinity sings sometimes. She’s very good.”
Trinity flubbed her words around a mouthful of drink so the only thing which arose from her was a splat of wine across the earth.
The choir director, pipe still in hand, adjusted himself straighter in the chair, “You sing? Are you any good?” His grin shined in the darkness from the lowlight.
The hunchback shook her head and choked the wine which she’d kept in her mouth; after gasping then laughing, she pulled a bit of excess robe from around her sleeve and swiped her mouth dry with it. “Hoichi is my backup. I can’t sing without my backup, isn’t that right?” She leveled a wry grin in the direction of her brother.
The clown shook his head and continued stargazing. “I’m too tired to sing.”
“Me too then.”
Tandy puffed smoke and set the pipe by his foot and angled forward in the small folding chair; it creaked beneath even his wiry frame. “That’s a shame.”
“Were you looking for more to join your choir? In the market for talent?” asked the hunchback.
Tandy placed his chin in his hand and swiveled his entire body like shaking his head. “Oof,” he groaned, “I wish we had set out earlier in the day. It was nearly evening already when we set off from Lubbock.” Tandy shrugged then relaxed his body and fell back onto the chair dramatically. “It’s no worry, I suppose. We won’t miss the concert. It’s many days out.”
“How do you pick the girls?” asked the clown.
Tandy cocked his head and bit into his bottom lip before saying, “I don’t pick them. It’s the parents. The parents pay for their education—the choir is only one part of that education, you understand?”
The choir director lifted his pipe once more and took a few more puffs before corralling the conversation, “Oh! I asked you two before where you were going and you said ‘west’. I wonder if there was anything out west you were searching for.”
Trinity finished her latest drink of wine and sat it by her legs. “Freedom,” she said, “Someplace free, I think.”
“What a word,” said Tandy, “Freedom? I wonder if it’s a thing that’s real.”
Trinity’s expression became severe for a moment, long in the shadow. “That’s an easier thing for you to say.”
Tandy nodded, “Maybe you’re right.”
The clown interjected, “Tucson? Phoenix? I wonder if the reservations take anyone.”
“You have thought of anywhere further north?” asked Tandy.
“Vegas?”
“Stop thinking west. Besides, what I mean is further north than that even.”
“I wouldn’t know it well.”
“You should,” said Tandy, “It might be worth a shot.” He paused, cast his visage to the fire then lifted himself from the chair and moseyed into the nearby darkness where trash wood laid. He returned with an armful, cast it into the embers then fell into the chair again. “Anyway, I hope whatever you’re running from never catches you.”
“Who said we’re running?” asked Trinity.
Tandy shrugged, “Maybe you’re not. I hope you’re not. It’s harder to run than anything else. I’ve run forever myself.”
Trinity crossed her arms, gathered her robe around her; the firelight grew with replenishment and the circle became brighter and the choir girls chattered. “You’ve been running? From what?”
Tandy nodded, “I’ve been running from death forever. I’m immortal, I guess.” He broadened his shoulders by winging his elbows outward and he craned forward on his chair; he intentionally locked eyes with the pair, glancing his gaze betwixt them for some seconds. The siblings shifted where they sat and then Tandy burst out laughing. “I’m kidding!” he cried, “Who’d believe that, anyway?” He settled back on his chair and rested his hands in his lap and tilted back at the sky. “I do hope you’re not running from anything. Intuition tells me you are, but that’s none of my business. You’ve each got a scared look like someone’s after you.” He shrugged.
Hoichi stood and removed himself from the light of the fire and no one called after him while Trinity remained and took another cup of drink from the choir girls. He went into the outer darkness of the camp rings and relieved himself and stared into the vast westward nothing. Upon finishing, he pivoted to look north, where the road went, and he quietly whispered in the direction, “Lubbock?”
A shriek popped the silence and Hoichi moved quickly to the nearest wagon for cover and his eyes darted around madly; the people knotted around the fires became erratic in the darkness and he fled in the direction of his sister.
She stood by the peculiar choir director where he was flanked by the girls. Trinity moved to Hoichi and they stood dumbly by the firelight, eyes scanning the scrambling crowd of Lubbock folks. Shouts came further north—in the direction of the other parked vehicles—and upon Tandy’s movement, all the rest followed.
Upon winding through the overturned pots, pans, sundries, chairs, and lit fires, they stumbled through the throng gathered off the eastern shoulder of the road where yellow grass grew sparsely; onlookers shouted. All the merchants and travelers were there and two groups of them yanked on dual ropes which led tautly into the dark. Some heavy thing grunted in the shadows in response to the pull.
Hoichi and Trinity held onto one another; her nails pressed into his forearm. The pair of them did not breathe and watched the spectacle.
The tug-o’-war groups protested with groans and shouts and expletives as they offered a final yank. Those gathered, leveled lights in the direction of the thing in the dark, and as it exploded into the light, those watching stumbled over themselves and over each other to remove themselves from the creature’s presence. It was a sick mess displayed in the dancing lights of those panicked travelers.
The creature, finally observable as all those people gathered their wits and directed their lights appropriately, was cancerous incarnate; its pinkish body was coated in something like watery jissom—it was that which the thing excreted to ease its abysmal movement wherever it dragged itself along. It was a great oblong mass of twisted limbs and faces; its many eyes blinked as the thing shifted unnaturally.
Those gathered, tugged on the ropes to ensure the security of the thing while Hoichi and Trinity fell to the wayside. The ropes’ ends not in the hands of the Lubbock folks were bound to hooks and those hooks had sunk deep into the mushy flesh of the creature. Merchants and mercenaries and vagabonds pushed through the crowd to get a look at the thing while the siblings muttered to one another.
Tandy shouted for the choir girls to return to their camp; the man snapped his fingers and the normally jovial cherubic quality in his face was gone—he spoke sharply, looked angry, and stomped at any rebuttal the choir girls offered.
Everyone else wanted a look at the thing—everyone besides the siblings.
After some deliberation—the Lubbock folks tossed stones at the creature and trash wood too—they gathered up the courage to stab the thing with makeshift pikes and an overzealous woman among them fired a bullet from a carbine. Still, the thing writhed; its many mouths dotting its tongue-like body, gasped for air and sighed like whistles. The Lubbock folks growled primitively and whooped at the creature and further spilled its blood by jamming those pikes into the soft flesh. Only when it stopped moving did they elect to soak the thing with what oil was nearby.
They yanked the thing away from the vehicles and into the vast open eastern land then cut their ropes and when the thing came alight, the long-shadowed faces of the Lubbock folks stood against it as they watched and while they were watching the thing squeal and burn, Trinity and Hoichi watched the Lubbock folks.
Tandy called to the siblings and motioned for them to follow back to his camp, and they did, and they took around the campfire while the Lubbock folks participated in spectacle. The sky remained the same, the dirt beneath their feet was the same, and they were all they could be.
The camp remained quiet and many of the girls sat there too—others angled on their tiptoes to glimpse in the direction of the great bonfire across the way, but it was difficult with the arranged vehicles. Voices from far off called and couldn’t be deciphered, nor did anyone try. The choir camp sat and watched the fire and did not speak and Hoichi plucked at the yellow grass around his feet and tossed it into the fire.
“What was that thing?” asked one of the choir girls; her face was cut from distorted shadow, as all theirs were.
Tandy stamped his boot dully against the earth while he sat in his chair—hair hung in his face. He moved for his pipe and lit it and called for another girl to grab more wood and she did, and he puffed the pipe with a look of consternation. The girl dumped the wood and all that could be heard besides the far spectacle was the crackle of the fire. Then Tandy removed a flute and began to blow into it; no song came—he merely played with the thing and examined it in his hand like a toy. The choir director continued puffing on his pipe.
Finally, Trinity broke the camp’s silence, “It was a mutant. I’ve seen them before.”
Tandy placed the pipe and the flute to the side and smiled so smally it might not have happened. “You know the story behind it then?” he asked.
“Behind the mutants?” Trinity adjusted how she sat, again pulled her robes around herself tighter.
Tandy nodded, “About that kind of mutant. It is interesting,” he nodded again, seemingly to himself more than anyone, “Aristophanes, an old dead guy, said humans were split apart. So, we are to search the earth for our soulmate. Sometimes that soulmate is found, and sometimes the love from the reconnection is so powerful that what was once separate can then again be reunited. But,” he trailed off and leaned far back in his chair, so much that it looked like the thing might break from the way he was, “But, either the love is tainted or the love is too strong, and it consumes. It grows and grows and takes in everything from everyone that touches it. Even those not of the original pairing of soulmates. Some people call it a fiend, some call it cancer, some call it other things, I know.”
Hoichi, legs crossed, angled back on his palms, “What are you talking about?”
Tandy swept his hair back, “You saw it,” he angled to look at the choir girls—each of them were now craned toward his talking, “I know some of you saw it too. It has many eyes, many mouths, many arms and legs, and all the many pieces we too possess, plus whatever else was added in its consumption.”
Trinity asked, “It’s human?”
“It was,” he nodded, “At one point, it was many different humans. Now, those mutants, they only consume. If you were to touch it, it would swallow you whole, make you one with its many.”
“Is it true?” asked the hunchback.
“Is what?”
“You were talking about soulmates before. About tainted love or love that’s too powerful.”
Tandy guffawed theatrically, “I made it up! I don’t know anything about them. I know it eats you. I know it makes you one of its many.” He tilted his head to the side, planting his cheek in his hand. “Legion. Mhm. Maybe that would be a good name for it, then.”
“You lied?” asked Hoichi.
Tandy nodded, “Sure. Stories make sense of reality. It felt better when you thought it meant something, didn’t it?”
No one answered.
“Well,” said the choir director while leaping to his feet, “Maybe it doesn’t make you feel better. My travelling companions are burning a monster in a field tonight and I’m going to bed.” He turned his attention to his young charges, “You too.”