I get a hold of the plushie and crush it to my chest.
There is a ghastly trail of blood in the dust a little farther away from the truck. So much blood. But it leads to the carcass of a horse, already swarming with flies under the sun. It looks like it’s been dead for less than a day, considering the absence of maggots. Someone—certainly the killer—carved good chunks of meat from the poor beast.
“What the hell happened here?” asks Janice, circling the horse.
“I have no fucking clue,” answers Leonard.
Alastair is watching me. He points to a smaller bloodstain in the dirt a little farther away. My heart jumps into my throat.
“It looks like someone was on the ground here, bleeding from their leg,” he says. By someone, we all know he means Perri. Who else could it be so close to the truck? “There isn’t much blood, so it must be a minor wound. They dragged him in this direction.” He walks back towards the dead horse. There are long tracks in the blood. “It looks like they threw him into a caravan of some sort. They’re heading north.”
“Then we’re going north,” I say, walking back to the King’s truck.
I take the wheel while Alastair sends a radio message offering a hefty reward for whoever brings my truck back to the Traveling Market. Presently, I couldn’t care less about my vehicle, but I’ll certainly be happy to have it back once all of this is over.
Perri has been taken. He would never leave all his things and my truck behind willingly. And there is no trace of his robot friend, Vex. It might have been a trap after all. If she betrayedhim, I’ll take pleasure in dismantling her piece by piece when I get my hands on her.
I put my foot on the pedal, and we’re off.
The journey is slow; we often have to stop and check the tracks to be sure we aren’t losing the trail. We counted five caravans. They’re all heading north, following the train tracks along the San Francisco Bay and towards the San Pablo Bay. Every few miles, we find strange rock formations with the horse meat left on top, like an offering.
“What the fuck are they doing?” Leonard voices out loud on the third discovery.
I’m confused too, until Alastair says, “Do you know who dwells in those waters?”
Icy dread slithers down my spine. I rarely leave the Traveling Market, except to visit my mothers south of Nevada. I’m not aware of most gods’ territories, aside from the ones that might cause a problem for us. San Francisco is usually too far away for me to care.
Until now.
“Scylla,” says Janice.
The shelled monster. Unlike the Greek mythology, she’s not a many-headed creature, but I’ve heard that she has enough legs to make up for it.
“Shit,” says Leonard. “Do you think they’re trying to attract her?”
Alastair stays quiet for a moment, his eyes on the calm waters. I wonder if he feels the need to take his clothes off and dive into the bay. “Let’s go,” he says at last. “They’re much slower than we are. We’ll catch them before nightfall.”
But before we can make it to nightfall, our fears turn into reality. Scylla attacks.
She rushes out of the bay, moving faster than a creature her size should be able to. Leonard and Janice have been driving in front of us, leading the way through the ruins of a small town. One second they were there, and the next, the old god had caught their truck in her giant pincers. I have enough wits to swerve and avoid a collision with the deep-blue shell of her underbelly. Our tires slide into the water she has brought out of the bay in great waves with her sudden attack. I put my foot down on the gas to take us away.
“Don’t stop,” Alastair tells me as I check in the rearview mirror.
She’s breaking the truck roof with her strange legs.
“The others?” I ask.
“We can’t help them,” he says grimly.
He’s right. In the first years after the Rise, armies could do nothing against the old gods. The two of us are powerless.
I obey and keep driving, following the bay inland until we reach the strait. The middle of the bridge was destroyed a long time ago, but it gives us a view of the terrible scene on the faraway shore. Scylla has broken into the mercenaries’ truck with her pincers. She’s devouring the soft meat she found inside. Our friends.
There will be nothing left of them to bury.
She’s bigger than a building, and her long abdomen is longer than a soccer field. I would have slept better at night not knowing what she looks like, but it’s too late now.
“Fuck…” I say.
