Stone Lantern

Another They Fight Crime! story. The challenge this time was to write a story about a mutated zombie and his bounty hunter buddy. An odd combination of choices, but I am happy with the result.

Proselyte

They had come during the day. The neighbours told her that they had come with big trucks and pulled into the front yard. They had said they were doing water testing, but that was a lie. Water testing was usually done by one person. He would run some water from the taps and get it in his little bottle. Then he took the bottle out to his truck and put some chemicals in it and then looked at it for a long time. Then he would claim it was safe to drink, but he never drank any himself. Water testing wasn’t done by nine men in environmental suits.

The neighbours had all run away. In a nice suburb in some small town, a big event like four big, official trucks pulling up would get everyone out of the house. They would all come out to stand by the trucks to ask what was going on. But, on an indian reservation you knew better. The old days of hunting down indians were over, but you never really forget. Your grandfather will talk about it and everyone will listen. You hear the stories all the time growing up. Whether you believe those stories about the white man and the government or not, you hear them. You remember them. So, when four large, government trucks pull up and nine men looking like space aliens climb out, you don’t question what’s going on. You just get the hell out of there. If you can.

The neighbours told her that the men in the trucks took some samples of the water and did some tests on her family. They had checked their spit and their blood. They tried to be nice about it. They tried to be cheerful and friendly with the kids, but the kids knew better. In the end, they put up some little signs around the yard saying “Boiling Advisory in Effect” meaning you couldn’t drink the water without cooking it first. They put some “Keep off the grass.” signs over the septic bed and they told her husband that he and the seven children would have to come with them for medical treatment. They said he would be fine, but he knew better. He tried to get them away, but there were too many kids and too many government men. He just couldn’t do it alone.

Mahrin had cried when she listened to what happened. The neighbours tried to console her, but couldn’t. The men had taken her husband and children. They had taken her three dogs and even the fish tank. She cried because she hadn’t been there when it happened. They hadn’t taken her to so that she could be with her children in whatever was happening to them.

She called the police, but they didn’t believe her. Even with the testimony of all of the neighbours, the police still didn’t pay any attention. These were the police who would beat an indian and leave them to freeze to death in a snowy field in the middle of nowhere. They didn’t care. Seven missing indian children were seven less people to arrest in the future. She called the called the water testing guy, but he hadn’t heard anything about these men or her family. He had no idea what was going on, though he did come out right away to look at the signs and take some samples of the water. She called her band office, the people in charge of her community, but they didn’t know what to do either. They were indians too. They told her it would be OK and her family would come home soon, but Mahrin knew better.

Months passed and Mahrin became sick. Sick in her body and her mind and her spirit. She began to revive her traditional ways. She spoke to the spirits every day, almost constantly. She spoke to the spirit of the morning and the spirit of the moon. She spoke to the spirits of the land and the spirits of her ancestors. They never spoke back, of course, but they were listening. She knew they were listening. She spoke to the spirit of the plants and the spirit of the water and those spirits did talk to her. They showed her that the land was sick. That the plants would not grow properly and that the water was foul. Nothing good can come from a place where the water is bad. She saw that the snakes and the frogs were unhealthy. The insects near her home were deformed. She herself was becoming very sick.

When she showed this to the police they told her it was proof that her family had been taken away for medical treatment and would be home soon. They ignored the facts: that her family had been gone for a month and she hadn’t heard from them, that the police had told her the first time that her family hadn’t been taken away, and that the land doesn’t do this to people. They didn’t listen. They didn’t care. They said the water was making her sick and she should go see a doctor.

Mahrin knew better. The land and the water don’t make people sick. People make the land and the water sick which makes people sick. Her land had been poisoned. Cursed. Neither her neighbours nor anyone else had been affected. Their land was healthy. They begged her to come stay with them. To leave her home that had become a sickness, but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t leave until the spirits told her who had done this. But, the spirits couldn’t tell her what she already knew. The government men had done this. They had poisoned her land and stolen her family. They would never give them back.

She began to plead with the spirits to return her family. She begged and cried. She performed all of the ceremonies she knew to please them. She gave them bread and meat and vegetables from every meal. She filled her house with the smoke of sage and tobacco and sweetgrass and oak. Cedar, red willow, pine, corn. The smoke of all things beautiful filled her home and she bathed in it. She opened herself up and allowed the smoke to cleanse her. But, her soul was too dark. She could not let go of her hatred and the spirits couldn’t return her family.

Life began to end on her land. Healthy, natural things died. Unhealthy, unnatural things took their place. The plants that grew were no longer plants of life and healing, but of sickness. They were the opposite of life. They were unlife.

Her friends tried to take her away. They came and begged her and yelled at her and finally tried to force her to leave with them. They did not want her to stay in a place of sickness. She wouldn’t go. She fought, she screamed and she refused to leave until they finally gave in. She would not leave and they would not stay. They drove away with a heavy sadness in their hearts. They hoped she would be OK, but they knew better.

With the unnatural plants came the unnatural spirits. Not the spirits of life that the indian children learn about or the mischievous spirits they laugh about. These weren’t even the natural, malevolent spirits that plague man. These were unnatural spirits of evil. New spirits. Spirits created by the abused land. Disgusting, unnatural spirits of sickness and unlife.

Still Mahrin would not leave. She became sicker. Her body began to twist and deform. She couldn’t walk without pain, she couldn’t stand up straight. Yet she lived. She was the last living thing on a land of unlife. She was bitter and angry. She was filled with hatred. She cursed the land and the spirits. She cursed the government and the police and her friends. She cursed the Creator and all his works. She cursed herself for being away that day.

The unnatural spirits roamed her house and lived in her water. They whispered to her. They whispered promises of dark evil. Promises of hatred and anger. Promises of all things bad and indecent. And they promised her revenge.

She listened to the spirits. Heard their voices in the foul wind that blew through her home. Saw their messages in the plants of unlife outside her window. Soon she would be dead and there would be no life left here. But, she would not give up. She would fight until she had no strength left. But, she was so sick. She was so weak and tired. She did not have the strength left to help her family. She only had the strength for revenge. She called out to the twisted spirits of unlife and begged them to punish those that had killed her family. Punish those that had destroyed her land and her people. Punish them with the twisted horrors of unlife they had created. She cried out for this vengeance with her dying breath. She cried out for her revenge and the spirits listened. As she went to her final rest, her body no longer able to resist the sickness and decay, she heard the spirits of sickness and unlife answer her. They promised her it would happen. They promised it would be all right. Mahrin knew better.

Five hundred miles away, in an unmarked mass grave lay the bodies of four native families and three uncooperative employees. Twenty-five bodies lay in the grave. Some, so hideously mutated that they were no longer recognizable as having once been human. Some, like the bodies of the ex-employee’s were normal. Whole, pure and untouched save for the neat round hole in the centre of their foreheads made by a .22 calibre bullet. Sixty miles away from the grave was the research facility filled with the people who had put them there.

The night wind picked up and a foul air blew in over the graves. Had anyone been standing in the area, they would have vomited at the smell and swore that just before the noxious smell reached their nose, that they had heard the sound of drums.

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Deep underground, amidst the pile of bodies, there was movement. A clawed hand with its dried out skin pulled taut over the muscle and bones, flexed its fingers. A hand that had once been human. A hand that had once been used to pat dogs, play with his children and caress his wife’s lovely body. A hand that science had twisted into a mockery of life, leaving it crooked and frightening.

The bodies shifted aside as two clawed hands pushed and shoved. The dirt giving way to the claws as the beast dug itself free of the the thirty foot grave. The beast was a disgusting, child’s nightmare of a creature. It was thin and long with a hunched back and extremely long limbs. It looked like a greyhound that had been skinned alive and thrown into a fire pit. The skull was too long and too thin. The jaw stuck out four inches too far and the tongue that snaked in and out of its despicable mouth, was four inches too long.

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It dug and it remembered. Seven children who loved him. Seven children who died. Screaming in terror. Calling out to him for help. Daddy! Daddy! But, he couldn’t help them. He was helpless. Useless. He was no father. Their bodies lay behind him in the grave he dug himself free of. They were distorted and mutated. They were abominations even to him. And they had lived through the whole process. Their tiny bodies twisted by science into abhorrent offences against the Creator. They had been alive and screaming from the pain through the weeks it took for the process to complete. They had been deemed unfit and killed. Their father had done nothing to help them.

The creature broke through the surface of the ground. Its long snout stuck out and sniffed at the air. Its arms pushed free of the dirt and it pulled itself out of its grave. It was no longer a man. It had ceased to be a man even before it had been killed. It had been ripped from the Creator and twisted by the hands of science. It had become an unnatural monster long before its death. It had once worshipped the Creator and now it served the evil spirits of unlife. It had changed religions. It was a proselyte.

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It shook the dirt from itself and tried to remember. It was filled with hatred. It tried to remember its life and its loves, but the spirits of unlife would not let it. It tried to remember its good times. Even the awful time it spent in prison for the stupid crimes of an angry, young man. Even those memories were denied him. All he was given was the haunting memories of his screaming children.

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From the hole behind him came a long string of cursing. Foul language spewed from the hole like vomit. A slender dark skinned hand on a slender leather sleeved arm reached up out of the hole. It’s match reached up after it and was followed by a beautiful, brown woman. She pulled herself out of the grave and stood up, still swearing, stopping only to spit dirt out of her mouth.

“Those god damned pieces of -” she stopped short when she saw the proselyte. For a moment she was afraid, but it was a moment that passed quickly.

“Well, god damn. I guess your one of the poor, damned savages they dicked around with at the lab. I was just askin’ myself what could be worse than bein’ dead and still walking around and you showed up to answer it.”

“Man.” she whistled. “What kind of world is it when they screw you up so bad you can’t even die? Those god damned scientists have screwed up the world right royal this time, don’t you think?”

The proselyte stared at her. Its long tongue slid out of its mouth to reach up and lick its eyeball.

“Right. They really buggered you up, didn’t they? Do you know why I’m here? It’s stupid. I mean, I know you’re here because they put that crap in your water to soften you up for the last year, so it had to be you. You know? So, your fate was decided over a year ago. You just didn’t know it. Me? They decided my fate six seconds before they blew my brains out all over their god damned wall.”

She pulled a gun out of her jacket and started examining it. Cleaning it.

“They send me out after one of their boys who’s decided he doesn’t want to be screwin’ around with the genetic makeup of the local savages anymore and runs away. Hey, no offence or anything. So, I go after this guy and I get him and I bring him back. To do it though, I’ve got to do the cab driver as well. The guy was in a cab when I got him. He had talked to the damn cab driver and I knew we didn’t want anything like that so I had to do the cabbie, too. That makes sense to me. Not to that tight ass, two inch penis Smith, though.”

She had taken the gun apart and began to put it back together. Proselyte was hunched over on all fours, watching her. She paused in her speech to look at him for a moment. As she spoke, Proselyte listened to the sounds of his children begging him to help them.

“He said that it caused an unacceptable interruption in the schedule. So I asked him what I was supposed to do? Bring him in? How would that be different than killing him? Should I have just let him go? Try to buy his silence? It was stupid to think any of those things was the right answer. Well, here’s some advice for you, indian. Don’t ever make some piss-ant back woods Director of a nothing project look stupid in front of his staff. The son of a bitch won’t have any choice but to blow your brains out so he doesn’t look like the impotent snotbag he is.”

She stood up and put her gun back in her jacket.

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I figure I’m gonna go back to that Director and I’m gonna make him suffer. What do you say?”

Proselyte jumped up onto all fours and howled. For another moment, she looked very, very afraid. But, only for a moment.

“Damn! They’re gonna piss themselves when they see us! I know I got this gun and all, but that’s just to get us through the guards. It ain’t for Smith. Holy crap, I hope we’re bullet proof, otherwise we won’t ever make it. I’ll shoot them and you uh, do whatever it is you can do and we’ll destroy that whole facility.”

Proselyte could feel the spirits of unlife gathering around him. Whispering to him. Giving him strength.

“I’ll tell you what, though. When I find Smith,” she said and grinned. “I’m gonna eat his brains.”

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