Bonfires Burning Bright (13 page)

24

“You!”

The creature’s voice boomed like thunder rolling over distant hills. Skull-Eyes, as Griffin had come to think of him, took a step forward, his massive clawed foot sending a shock wave through the ground.

“
You
did this!” it shouted.

“Did what?” Griffin stopped his advance. That the thing could talk surprised him. He took a ready stance and held the javelin aloft. He wouldn’t throw it—it was too valuable a weapon in this fight. Skull-Eyes towered over him, and would have a far greater reach. Griffin hoped the javelin’s length might give him a chance.

Well, that and the M9. He’d twisted his body, so his free left hand was hidden behind his side, and his right arm with the spear was pointed at the creature.

A few more steps.

Skull-Eyes charged, screaming. “You did this to me!” The monster sounded furious, but also wounded.

Griffin pulled the M9 and fired a tight cluster of three rounds toward the monster’s heart. The huge slab of a chest made an easy target. Two of the bullets found their mark, but Skull-Eyes twisted, his left shoulder moving into the line of fire. As a spray of blood arced from his chest wound, the top edge of his coiling armor took the third bullet. The armor—if that’s really what it was—glistened like wet dark concrete or rock, but the bullet’s impact shattered it as though it were ceramic. The round ripped into the underlying skin and destroyed a large portion of the upper part of the armor.

What lay underneath stole Griffin’s breath.

It was the tattoo.

The same one Savage Griffin had.

The same one he’d seen hanging of sheets of flapping skin around the maze.

The same one on Griffin’s own arm.

Skull-Eyes stopped his assault when the bullets struck. He turned now to face Griffin, and slowly reached his injured arm up. He grasped the front of his boney helmet and lifted. The long teeth slurped out of his chest.

He let the helmet fall to the ground.

Griffin staggered back a step.

No...

The monster shared his face.

He was Skull-Eyes.

The nearly fifteen foot tall, five-hundred-pound version of himself had no beard, like S.G did. His hair was long and pulled back into a ponytail at the top of his head, like a samurai.

“You never stopped the shifts!” the creature bellowed. Its reptilian tail swished behind it. Skull-Eyes lifted the lance, hatred filling its eyes. “Why didn’t you stop it!”

It wound up to swing with the lance, and Griffin fired five more rounds, aiming for the same spot on the thing’s already wounded chest.

But Skull-Eyes twisted again, allowing the other arm’s snake-armor to absorb most of the shots, while continuing to swing the lance.

Griffin dove to the side as the lance swooped down. He rolled with the javelin in one hand and the M9 in his other.

Skull-Eyes had allowed the violence of the swing to turn him in a full circle. He was lost in fury. As much as he looked like Griffin, the giant had clearly lost his mind—and the fighting skills that came with it. Not that it seemed to matter much. Millions of other Griffins had already lost this fight.

Griffin popped back up from his roll and fired off three more shots, this time into Skull-Eyes’s back, but still targeting the heart. All three bullets ripped into the giant. The creature turned again, trying to ward off the pain with its fragmented and crumbling arm gauntlets.

Griffin took the momentary reprieve to back up and away from the ATV. He’d need that to get Ava out of here, and he’d need more space. If this thing got in close, he’d be done for. He’d save the last bullet in the magazine for that—not for himself, but for a good headshot through one of Giant Griffin’s eyes. A 9mm round through the massive beast’s brain should put it down.

Should
.

So far, the bullets didn’t appear to be having too much effect. Maybe his twisted self’s heart wasn’t where it should be? Maybe it didn’t have a heart at all? His monstrous twin roared to the heavens, and resumed his assault.

Scrabbling backward, Griffin raised the M9 and fired his last three shots, not counting the one he would keep in reserve. The bullets found their targets in the monster’s chest, but the mammoth kept coming, until suddenly, he stopped, and the tenor of his roar turned to an agonized high-pitched scream.

The giant turned, revealing a shaft of glistening silver sticking from the side of its left scale-covered leg. An arc of the giant’s blood sprayed from the wound, littering the fallen snow with glistening crimson jewels.

Griffin glanced upward and to his right. Savage Griffin stood atop a wall of skulls, holding another collapsible silver javelin. His charred and shortened arm smoldered and oozed a viscous black fluid. Had the man been burned again?

Giant Griffin’s scream tapered off into a growl. “Always another! You never stop coming!” The monster’s furious glare fixed on Savage Griffin. He used his free hand to grasp the javelin and tugged the silver spear free, spraying yet more of his blood onto the snow. “I’ll kill you both. Like all the others. You always come. You always die!”

He flung the javelin up at the wall. The spear fell short and burrowed into the skulls and flesh, a few feet below where Savage Griffin stood. A foot of the javelin was still exposed from the wall, but Griffin knew it would retract into itself in a few seconds, lost inside the bone.

Savage Griffin leapt off the top of the wall and landed on the end of the spear. He balanced on it with his thick calloused feet and flung the other javelin in his hand. The weapon came close to hitting Skull-Eyes, but the giant stepped back, avoiding the throw.

“Never had to face two of us before, have you?” Griffin taunted, throwing his own javelin. The giant twisted away, but the spear pierced its side. As the monster was turned in pain, Griffin raced for Savage Griffin’s javelin, sticking out of the ground. He reached for it, but the weapon suddenly retracted.

Griffin’s swiping hand missed.

Without removing the spear from its side, the giant swung its long reptilian tail, swatting Griffin’s side, beneath his arm. He hit the ground hard, momentarily at the mercy of his monstrous self. But there was no mercy in its eyes as it raised the long pike.

Before Skull-Eyes could swing, another javelin struck the monster from behind. The spear’s tip slipped through the creature’s back and emerged through its gut. The monster howled, then spun hard and threw its long black triangular lance like a spear, up at the wall. Savage Griffin dropped down and clung to the shaft of the spear stuck in the skulls. He pushed on the wall with his feet, trying to pull the weapon free.

As the lance came closer, the stuck javelin pulled free from the wall. Savage Griffin started to fall the seventeen feet to the ground. The massive lance struck the wall like a Mack truck. Skulls exploded in all directions. Nearly half the wall toppled outside the arena, the rest tumbling inward. Savage Griffin’s body hit the floor hard, as a cascade of skulls rained down on him.

Griffin staggered to his feet and picked up the inert javelin he’d missed. It snapped out to its full, five-foot length. He was on his own again. The savage wouldn’t be getting up.

The giant turned slowly, limping with its punctured leg, one hand covering its wounded chest. It was breathing hard, but it still had a lot of fight left in it.

“It doesn’t matter how many come!” the crazed giant bellowed. “I always kill you!” He swept his free hand around at the area walls. “Millions of you. All bricks. That’s all you are.”

Griffin’s right arm itched furiously. His shoulders ached where they had been punctured. His left side hurt from the fall, and his right ribs would be bruised where the tail had struck him. He was breathing as heavily as the giant. His savage twin’s assistance had helped even the scales, but it was now just the two of them, and Griffin knew he would lose. The giant had too much mass. Too much meat. One javelin and one bullet just weren’t going to be enough.

He needed a tank.

Behind him, a wall detonated. Skulls flew like ballistic missiles and fleshy mortar spattered all around. A rusted pickup truck rammed through the wall of skulls, and as Griffin raced aside, he could see Charley Wilson at the helm behind the fractured windshield. His daughter, Avalon, was seated in the passenger’s seat, unconscious—maybe dead.

The giant looked on in shock as the battered pickup raced across the arena floor. He started to dodge, but Charley turned the wheel and hit the gas. The truck plowed into the huge beast of a man, carrying him twenty feet and then crushing him through a wall. A cascade of skulls buried the truck and the giant alike.

Griffin ran for the truck. “Ava!”

25

Griffin dug through skulls like a madman. His fingers were raw and bleeding by the time he reached the giant. He found the creature’s head first. He couldn’t tell if it was dead or just unconscious, but he didn’t care.

He held the M9 flush with the giant’s left eyelid and pulled the trigger. The shot sounded incredibly loud in the silence. The giant’s skull didn’t detonate from the shot, but the dark red wound in the eye socket was reassuring.

Part of Griffin said the execution was cold, especially since he was, in essence, shooting himself. But it was also a mercy. Whatever happened to this different version of himself, to turn him into a monster, there had to be a normal man in there somewhere that wanted to be released.

Griffin holstered the weapon and continued digging. He soon reached the truck’s driver-side door. The cab of the truck was still intact, except for the windshield, which had fallen in and now lay like a blanket over Charley and Avalon. Charley was bleeding in a number of places and had a huge knot on his forehead, but he was awake. Avalon looked slumped in her seat, held in place by a seatbelt.

“She’sh alive,” Charley said, and Griffin felt a huge surge of relief wash over him. “She’sh acting like she’sh all drugged out, but it’sh not for real. Jush like I’m not really plastered.”

Charley’s words were slurring hard as he spoke.

Griffin pulled skulls away from the door so he could get it open, while Charley kept talking.

“It’sh thish world, Griff. None of my cutsh are slowing down. Feelsh like I’m drunk, but I’m not. I…haven’t taken a drink in almosht two weeksh.”

Griffin felt the sting of his own wounds—where his arm and shoulders had been punctured by lizard teeth in a previous world. Every part of him was sore. And Kyle had said he couldn’t stop Cash from bleeding. Maybe the world was making Charley’s blood intoxicated again. He’d seen the man around town in the last week, and knew he was off the sauce.

“I know, Charley,” Griffin said, pulling the last of the skulls free and then kicking at a few with his feet as he struggled to get the truck’s door opened. The door wouldn’t budge. The front fender was crushed in.

“Undo your belt and lean away. I’m going to break the window.”

Charley did and slid over to the middle of the bench seat. Griffin raised his booted foot up and kicked through the glass. It fell in a liquid sheet on top of the windshield, broken, but still taped together by the tinted plastic.

Charley reached over and unclasped Avalon’s seatbelt. “I found her for you. They had her in one of the buildingsh. She’ll be okay.” He started to pull her body toward him, under the blanket of the windshield.

“Just get out, then I can get her.”

But Charley didn’t. He pulled Avalon across his chest, so her head was near the open window. Griffin reached in and slipped his hands under her shoulders. He pulled, and Charley tugged her pants toward him, until Griffin got her out of the truck, through the window. He staggered back, and the both of them fell to the bone covered ground.

“You tell ‘im,” Charley said. “You tell him hish ol’ man wassun drunk. I reshcued her.” Then Charley’s head fell forward and he stopped talking.

Griffin checked Avalon’s pulse. It was weak, but it was there. He scrambled to his feet and gently leaned Charley’s head back with one hand, while checking the man’s neck for a pulse with his other.

Griffin felt two strong kicks under his finger.

And then nothing.

Charley was dead.

The man had turned himself around just in time to give his life. For Ava’s. Tears filled Griffin’s eyes. He rested his head against Charley’s, whispering in his ear. “Farewell, Charley. And thank you. I’ll tell him.”

As Griffin slipped his head out of the cab, he noticed Charley’s shotgun resting against the seat. He leaned forward and snagged it. Checked the chamber. Empty. But he took the weapon anyway.

Moving quickly, Griffin picked up his daughter and carried her to the undamaged ATV. She woke as he lowered her down near the quad.

“Dad?” she asked, sounding strung out. “W—where are we? You look...funny.”

“We have to get out of here,” he said more to himself than to her. He pulled his belt out of his jeans and dropped the M9’s holster to the ground, tucking the spent weapon into his waist. “Come on.”

He wrestled her onto the ATV behind him, and wrapped his belt through the one on her waist, then around himself, effectively tying her to his back. She groggily wrapped her arms around his chest and said, “I love you, Daddy.”

He was just about to kick the ATV into life when he heard skulls skittering down a mound behind him. He glanced back.

“No. Way.”

The giant was on his hands and knees, his head hung low.

Griffin kicked the ATV to life and raced for the hole Charley had torn in the wall. He glanced back just before he reached the makeshift door, and saw that Giant Griffin had climbed to his feet. The monster looked up then with one ruined hole and one functioning eye, which followed Griffin.

The monster bellowed in rage.

Avalon looked back too, and held on more tightly.

Griffin exited what he now knew was an arena and swung left. He wasn’t sure if he could find his way back out of the maze quickly—even with Radar’s tip, but then he noticed a path of destruction cutting through the wall ahead. He didn’t need to leave the same way he’d come in. Charley had blazed a trail for him.

As Griffin turned through a freshly carved hole in the wall, the arena wall behind him exploded. The giant stumbled through, caught sight of them again, and roared.

Griffin raced through the maze, following Charley’s swath of damage, cutting through walls and headed toward the city’s fringe far faster than he would have by following the maze.

But still, the monster chased. Each footfall felt like an earthquake under the ATV, and they came faster and faster, as if the giant had no upper limit.

Griffin glanced in the small, shaking, handle-bar mounted rearview mirror. The giant was closing on them.

They passed under a familiar street lamp. The dead cat had fallen from it to the ground, and Griffin steered the ATV away from the corpse. He took the next right where he saw skid marks from Charley’s truck, pointing the way to freedom. “Thank you, Charley,” Griffin whispered again.

The monster was still giving chase, but Griffin had left the lumbering beast a turn or two behind. He could feel the thumping of the giant’s feet though, in between the manic beats of his own heart. Charley’s path had sped their retreat, but the monster no doubt knew the maze’s secrets. So he wasn’t about to slow the pace, even if the skulls littering the path made for a bumpy and dangerous ride.

Griffin rounded a corner, and the labyrinth’s exit lay dead ahead. He gunned the engine and raced toward the snow-covered sloping hill that led back to town. Before he reached the exit, two things happened.

The giant pursuing them burst through the wall behind them and roared with such hatred that a chill shot down Griffin’s back.

Then—night fell.
Boom
. It was black, just like that. The monster disappeared in the darkness.

The quad raced out of the last of the stone walls and into the open. The bonfires around the front of the structure lit the way, but they had died down while Griffin had been inside.

Avalon, shocked into wakefulness, clung to him tightly. “Hurry, Dad. I can’t see him yet, but he’s coming.”

“I know.” Griffin raced the quad up the hill, through the fine blanket of fallen snow. It wasn’t thick, thankfully, and the flakes had stopped falling from the sky.

Bong
.

The sound was so distant and so out of context that it took Griffin until the next one for him to process it.

Bong
.

His shouted curse started out with the proper consonant, but devolved into a growl of frustration. They were almost a mile from the town border. And they had less than three minutes.

The town was going to shift.

Refuge would be gone.

Bong
.

“Dad!” Avalon had realized the significance, even through her overdose-like symptoms.

“I know!” he screamed.

A roar answered them from behind as the giant gave chase up the hill.

Bong
.

The ATV slowed.

“What are you doing?”

The engine ground to a stop and died. Griffin tried to get off the quad and almost fell, his growl becoming an unending string of grumbles and curses. “Out of gas!”

He tore at the leather belt tying him to Avalon, and freed himself. Leaping off the vehicle, he ripped the jerry can from its bungee-corded home on the back.

He spun the cap off the can and let it fly away into the snow, and ripped the ATV’s fuel cap off and likewise let it fall to the ground.

The giant ran up the slope toward them, less than a quarter of a mile away, lit by the bonfires. Griffin dumped the jerry can upside down over the gas tank, letting fuel splash all over the bike and the ground before the neck of the can rammed into the opening.

“Hold this!” he shouted. Avalon twisted around on the bike and took the can.

He climbed back into the saddle and kicked at the starter.

Bong Bong
.

With the double chime, the giant increased its speed, now no more than forty feet away.

“Hold my pants!” Griffin yelled, and Avalon grabbed the back of his jeans with one hand, still holding the can over the gas tank with her other hand.

Griffin popped the clutch and the quad sprang forward, nearly throwing her from it. A fine spray of snow and grit shot up and launched backward, arcing out twenty feet and hitting the giant in the face as he closed the distance.

The wheels found purchase, and the ATV lurched up the hill, the engine protesting against the open throttle.

The quad sped up the incline.

Bong Bong Bong
.

Despite the slippery slope, the giant continued to gain ground. He was just fifteen feet behind now, and Griffin was giving it all he had. But he was more concerned about the shift. If they made it into town, all he had to do was tear ass up Main Street. The smooth road would allow him to easily outrun the giant. If the crazy bastard followed him all the way to the station, someone could blast him to pieces with the .50 cal.

But if they didn’t make it to the border in time…

Griffin wasn’t sure he could kill the monster. Bullets to the heart hadn’t done it. Getting run over by a truck hadn’t done it, and a point-blank, 9 millimeter slug in the brain pan hadn’t done it either. The thought occurred to him that the hellish giant might be immortal. That sacred him more than anything.

Bong Bong Bong Bong Bong
.

The staked Humvee was just up ahead. Less than twenty feet. The vehicle grew hazy as the air around town shimmered. Griffin held the throttle cranked to the max, leaning forward. Avalon had dropped the empty jerry can and wrapped both arms tightly around him.