Ain't Talkin'

Mission Street went quiet for a heartbeat before the first construct bulled out of a butcher’s shop on the right hand side of the street.

Displaced strips of paper and a flowering cloud of dust from the edges of the sidewalk bloomed out when the construct screeched to a halt on all four limbs in the center of the street.

This one was not like the last two had been. It’s form and body had more substance, were somehow more there, though it still had a see-through and insubstantial quality. It’s legs were tree-trunk thick and ended in paws with opposable thumbs. It’s chest was a barrel and it’s head sat plopped on it’s shoulders without a neck. It’s face was that of a small child’s, freckle-faced with sandy hair and missing teeth. When it spotted the walker, it recognized it’s counterpoint and let out a small yowl like a cat in heat.

Roche ground to a stop on his bootheels. Markus nearly ran into the hunter’s backside. Both men drew their guns.

“How many of these things are there, kid?” This one made three.

“How am I supposed to know? Three? Thirty? Who cares shoot it!” Markus leveled his .45 barrel at the construct’s head with a steadier hand than Roche thought the kid had.

“Wait, no don’t.” Roche put his hand on the barrel.

Around them, women and men shrieked, pointing at the not-thing that stood taller at the shoulder than any man even though it walked on all-fours. Some men drew guns, aimed and waited, but did not fire.

The construct cocked it’s little-boy face to one side, confused.

Roche took a slow step forward.

“Easy.” Roche told it, chiding it like it was a horse. “Easy.”

“The hell are you doing?” Markus hissed through his teeth.

“Making sure it don’t hunt us. Maybe it’ll move on and hunt other folk. One’s that ain’t us.” Roche holstered one revolver and held his palm out to the thing. It’s head shook like a dogs. It reared back on it’s haunches and held it’s front hands at it’s sides, flickering in and out of reality. “You ain’t gonna hurt us, right?”

Roche wheeled sideways around the construct, holding his hand out to it, stepping sideways to keep facing it.

It yowled, low and long.

A woman, a fat barmaid in her brown nighty stood in a doorway behind Roche. While the hunter wheeled around the construct, the construct met the fat old maid’s eyes with it’s own. She screamed and fell to her knees, bleating like a throated sheep.

When the woman shrieked, the construct lunged. It might have just been a confused toddler of a thing with a little-boys face, but it lunged over Roche at the screaming fat barmaid with her golden braids and her sheeply operetta voice.

The not-thing’s body lengthened over Roche, when fully extended it stretched fully across the street and sidewalk.

While it’s belly stretched over the walker’s head, Roche moved quick. He bent at the knees and drew his bootknife. Bouncing off his toes he moved, he ripped sideways with the knife and opened the construct’s belly. Fresh offal and roped insides spilled over Roche’s oilskin coat and he rolled sideways. The construct tumbled, a thrown coil of shit, and Roche stood over it. He emptied his revolvers cylinder into it’s little-boy, freckled, full face. Eyes thick with whites opened to the sky full of holes and the missing-teeth mouth sagged open and dribbled fuel.

The operetta barmaid had kept right on screaming for the whole few seconds it had taken Roche to kill the thing. He drew his second revolver and fired it, burying a bullet beside her head in the closed tavern door. That shut her right the hell up. She clapped her mouth shut with a snap of lips sound, teared up and started crying. Roche holstered his guns after reloading the chambers from the loops of his gunbelt.

The not-thing bled white and red into the street, and all around Mission Street, lights flickered on in the storefronts and lofts, folk crawled from their hiding places and those who had not entered the streets initially were now wandering to windows and into the street.

Roche turned to Markus and said; “We have to go. Now.” The sirens began to scream out again, and the unmistakable light of floodlamps cornered into the street from the alleys and side streets followed closely by half a dozen Corp trucks loaded with soldiers, clamoring into the street.

Markus pointed his pistol at the lot of them, wheeling in circles. Roche stood quietly checking the bullets in his revolver chambers while Corporation soldiers surrounded the two of them and aimed dozens of rifles. Their commanders shouted orders. Roche and Markus took hollow steps closer to each other, the dead construct between them.

When Doctor Weaving, arm in a sling with a fresh bandage over his crisp, starchy shirt, stepped out of the Ethercorp truck’s cab, Roche instinctively clicked the hammers on his revolvers.