The Stone Scry Page 6

  He needed to find them—he needed a pile of cash, only he sat on a heap of student loan debt. When his friend, Sam Mason, approached offering an opportunity to earn gobs of green from the water trade, he could not refuse. Sam had a scuba buddy, Abu Zaid, who lived in Emerald Isle and owned a sizable four-bedroom, indestructible house. They withstood the Wash’s fury and connected with a technologically savvy tribe, harnessing freshwater and selling it at a premium to the West Coast. Contractors designed the purifiers and housing, ants put them together, and rat catchers kept them going. Spotters harvested food from the sea and patrolled tribal territory protected by guardians.

  Transport lanes connected to the terminally dehydrated West Coast returned copious amounts of cash and supply stocks to the Divers. They were able to get parts, high-end goods, and specialized tools. The tribe needed smart members capable of handling themselves in life-threatening conditions.

  Shaquan White accepted the offer. He could earn enough money to get out of North Carolina and search for his parents. Unfortunately, when an offer is too good to be true—that old proverb.

  “Hey Tawney, I was thinking.”

  “What’s the matter, baby?”

  “A tribe is nothing more than a glorified gang. Some use brutal tactics to gain wealth, like the Danvers, and some close themselves off to the world like the Britts. The Divers maintain civility utilizing technological proficiency. Superior tech never stands on its own though, you know? Advanced systems are one side of the equation, the other being morality.”

  Shaquan found this out quickly. Technically, he was a designated rat catcher performing maintenance and repairs, but ignorant requests from hidden prejudice often led to ant work. He received a sliver of water trade profits. At least as a spotter, he had street cred and worked amongst friends.

  “What are you saying”—she flashed her Bambi eyes—“you want to leave the Divers?”

  “Girl, I’m the only black man in this tribe!” He stood up and said, “Look at all those structures poking out the ocean. Those used to be houses. Now they’re dead husks. Sunken Island, Tawney.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “The Wash is done. The world’s changed. A new flood is coming.”

  “Yeah?” She jiggled his arm and asked, “What’s this new flood?”

  “Tribalism.”

  “What are you saying, Shaquan?”

  “It’s just a matter of time before we go toe to toe with the jackers or the military. Or worse, baby. Spotting out in the network, I’ve heard rumors of new things settling down.”

  “Where do you fit in this?”

  “I don’t. What do you think is going to happen when the Divers lose their wealth? They’ll implode like all civilizations before them. You know who takes the brunt of their angst first? Foreigners. I need to be like those dolphins out there beyond Sunken Island, you see those?” he asked and pointed.

  She rolled on her back and watched the pod of dolphins bobbing north through the sound. “You can take me.”

  He leaned in and kissed her soft, plush lips. “Maybe I should take you right here.”

  Tawney wrapped her arms around his neck and giggled, ready to accept his proposal, when distant shouts interrupted their enthusiastic moment and startled them apart.

  “What the hell?” she said and cursed, striking the sand.

  Abu sprinted toward them hollering out disjointed sentences. Alarmed, both rose to try deciphering his jabbering as he darted across the pavement at barreling speed. Shaquan lifted his hands and shouted, “Slow down, Abu!”

  His friend, drenched in sweat, slammed into him spattering perspiration over Tawney’s face.

  “Shit Abu,” she said and wiped the spray off. “Slow down and say that again.”

  “Sammy was elected master hunter!”

  Shaquan stood frozen. Assigned to the master hunter’s unit vacuumed in higher profits. He would not have to sneak back into society as an outcast searching for his parents. Instead, he could pay off debts and roll back in a free citizen. He could access state resources, such as public buses and information centers. Enough cash and he could afford airline tickets.

  Yet each day floating by drifted his parents further away. He imagined himself as Eleanor Vance in Robert Wise’s The Haunting, fighting the will of Hill House. His mind scurried in fear through crooked doors from one decrepit room to the next. Awkward angles distorted his stance, ghostly sounds screwed into his brain, and confusion permeated his emotions. Hill House, hungry for souls, ate Master Hunter Samuel Thomas Mason and wanted him next.

  Shaquan White was not Eleanor Vance. “I’m happy for him, but there’s somewhere else I need to be.”

  “I know, me too,” Abu said and nodded. Shaquan reciprocated, time to defect.

  Part 3: Civil Service

  Dear Dad,

  I am reaching out because I really need your help. The jackers have cut off our shipments north and east of Raleigh. They retreated from Fayetteville, but something else has taken their place. The thought of anything more dangerous than them spooked our tribe to a crippling level. We fortified our defenses and increased patrols at the cost of less hunting time.

  Shu Chen was able to get my post to Mom, so I am hoping he can safely get this to you. I know you are working with the swamp stompers. At first, this saddened me, but I realize how essential stompers are for friendly communities. Have jackers assaulted Raleigh? What is Fayetteville’s status? Please tell me you are ok, send any help you can. People are on edge.

  Love you and Mom, and miss you both

  Sam

  Chapter 5

  Tom Mason drew his lucky three-inch knife and surgically removed samples from a patch of rice cutgrass. His son, Sam Mason, gave him the scuba knife upon leaving to Wilmington. It had uncovered fossilized Carcharocles megalodon teeth, some longer than the blade itself, and untangled tank-snaring kelp in a California kelp forest. Tom named it “Needle” and carried it on excursions as if he were Bilbo Baggins armed with Sting.

  Blotched disease patterns on rice cutgrass leaves and stems matched symptoms caused by a rust fungus. Unlike a rust, however, the patches were luminous blue. After bagging them, Tom gripped around the stalk of a neighboring cattail and drew it out of the soil, careful not to lose roots or sap.

  “Lou?”

  “Yeah,” answered Lou Frasier wading in closer.

  “Let’s collect this.”

  Lou slipped his hand into a belt box and pulled out a clear glass vial. Removing the black screw top, he held it in front of him. “You want TE buffer?” he asked.

  Tom deposited root-soil into the container gently to avoid losing a single clump. “Please.”

  He brought out a small squeeze bottle and squirted Tris-EDTA buffer into the soil bits while Tom bagged the uprooted cattail; white luminescent hatch marks lined its dense brown seed head. Lou remarked at the hatch marks, “What is this?”

  “Exactly.”

  Lou unslung his automatic MP5, rolled up his sleeve, and surveyed the marsh using his forearm. A dark line passed down the center of it. “Might be something just ahead, doesn’t look normal. You think the pill is changing things here?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What do you mean, pill?” asked a soldier dressed in dark-green and grass-colored patterns, slogging through knee-high water towards them and carrying a formidable automatic rifle. “You talking about those weird lines running down your forearms?”

  Lou winced, and Tom answered, “Yeah.”

  “How come you two have those freaky looking things? Was it some experimental accident?”

  “You could call it that,” Tom said.

  The young, green-eyed sergeant, James Laramie, shrugged and asked, “What? Hit a nerve?”

  “Quiet,” Tom said, holding his hand out. He rolled his own sleeves back and placed his forearms together, scanning the area. “Reveal,” he whispered, eyes closed tight in deep concentration. A menacing outline took shape
in his mind. Grainy, maybe pixilated. He stepped forward tuning the vision into a solid form behind his eyelids. Lowering his arms, he said, “Gator, past the clump of giant bamboo.”

  “Ok, Dr. Mason. We’ve got good distance on it.”

  Tom read James like a periodical. The sergeant was excited about some action. Mucking through a swamp was tedious, like waiting for a stock investment to make money. But this gator was different, and James could not see what Tom’s arms revealed. His eyelid began twitching.

  James asked, “Not a normal one is it? I see your eye acting up.”

  Tom rubbed his thumb deep into the tendons of his forearm and shook his head.

  Raising a fist, James summoned four other soldiers painted in swamp camouflage from the shadows. The last one to arrive, Jeannie Chase, slid over and asked James in a hushed voice, “What is it?”

  “Dr. Mason’s got something twenty meters north,” he replied.

  She asked, lifting her shoulders, “What, jackers?”

  “Gator.”

  Fernando Chavez, the shortest swamp stomper, spat and scoffed, “A gator? Who cares, it’s a Thursday lunch.”

  Tom ignored the insurrection. “Lou, you see it?”

  “Big fricking thing. Five meters.” Keeping one hand on the trigger, Lou lifted his other arm and turned it like a radar dish. “See its neck?”

  “Yep.”

  “Sample?”

  “Yep.” Tom did not hunt mutated monsters from hell for the excitement. Every time they found one, his nerves spun so tight he could smell smoke; a ghost sense, the illusion added clutter to his thinking.

  James readied his M4 rifle and commanded, “Saddle up, we’re going to bag it.”

  “What?” Chavez dropped the handle of his rifle into his palm and said, “If there aren’t jackers around, they’ll come after we zap it.”

  “Dr. Mason wants a sample.”

  “How about I piss in a cup?”

  Tom whirled around and faced the disgruntled soldier. “That thing is a fifteen-foot mutated monster. It has an elongated giraffe-like neck so it can reach around and bite your face off before you tickle the tip of its tail. It has legs twice the length of a normal gator, which means it can run twice as fast. So how about you shut the fuck up, or I use you for bait?”

  Chaves gripped his rifle tight, drumming his fingers on the barrel. “You may be boss back at the Fort, but out here there’s a lot of scary things that don’t take orders. Jump out at you”—he jerked his body forward—“make a man shoot without thinking.”

  Chaves did not know a child of the green pill read every thought coursing through his grey matter.

  Tom did not flinch. When finished reliving high school taunts, he turned and motioned a silent order towards James.

  Following the order, James commanded, “Chaves, you bring up the rear. I’ll take point. Dr. Mason, you’re on my rear. Lou, take the right flank. Needleman, left flank. Chase and Suki, cover the assets. Move out.”

  Chaves muttered, “Pinche wedo,” and repositioned near a sunken dead water oak. Tanaka “Suki” Suzuki whispered to Jeannie to cover the “asses,” and she replied by rolling her eyes and chambering her rifle.

  James asked Tom, “How you want to do this?”

  They had done over twenty exploratory missions together. When the order came through for the first, James believed it a joke, in fact, an insult. His commander ordered him to lead two assets into the wild, which he retorted as a cherry-picking assignment. He would never forget what Commander Andy Ochoa said, “Watch your ass because it may not return home.”

  The Commander was right about that excursion and each since. James had seen things working with Tom that defied reality. Evolution he could not explain. Glowing grass and man-eating vines. Oversized, slime-covered bears and fanged coyotes. Twenty missions and thirty soldiers lost, he took Tom and Lou’s precautions seriously.

  Tom stroked his beard scruff and replied, “I’ll take it out, but I have to get in close.”

  “Ok, when I mark a clear shot, I’ll signal you to take it.”

  “No”—Tom corrected James—“please let Lou cover me, and you take flank. Stay close to him.”

  “You got it.”

  Lou cracked half a smile and said, “Yeah, thanks Doc.”

  The unit inched north towards the patch of towering reeds. Insects circled in a sunray undisturbed. Chiggers nipped at bare skin. The air was still and humidity thick against Tom’s sweaty face. While pushing through the reeds, he could feel the gator’s beating heart in the lines running down his arms. Its rhythm slow and robust, pumping, flowing to the brain. The creature’s neck extended three feet from shoulder to jowl. Although its legs folded inward, he could tell they were longer than usual. Some bastard offspring between an American alligator and a horse.

  Then Tom detected something else. Fury, hunger, wrath—lamenting the swamp. He stopped and hissed, “Something is wrong.”

  Lou and James huddled in.

  “It seems angry for being here.”

  James’ brow furled. “Angry? What the hell…it thinks?”

  “I don’t know. Hungry, but it also wants revenge on something. Lou, you read these things better than me. What are you sensing?”

  Lou lifted a bare forearm. “I’m not sensing anything else near us, but there’s an emotion coming from the gator. It’s pissed off about something.”

  James asked, “How can it be pissed off?”

  Alarm bells rang to a din in Tom’s mind drowning out chirps of chickadees and finches hiding in the trees. He shook his head, but the ringing would not stop. “Does it know we’re here?”

  “Yes,” Lou replied, lifting his arms outward.

  The beast turned its head towards them, crescent moon eye-slits directed to Tom.

  “Curved,” Tom murmured, “curved pupils…”

  The eyes peered into his sending a burning sensation along the nerves in his neck. Eyes thoughtful and cunning, it was not the gator that watched him. Something else loomed behind, calculating, rendering judgment upon him.

  Tom dropped on his knees and whipped an M2010 sniper rifle off his shoulder. Cycling the bolt, he fired off four rounds. Swaying black willows and bald cypresses went quiet; buzzing cicadas scurried to hide in the reeds; a wafting smell of methane and rot crept into his nose. He sensed a flurry of confusion behind him emanating from the team.

  James and Lou shoved in shoulder to shoulder, squinting as they looked for signs of movement. Tom then stood upright, startling both men and sending them tumbling into the water and decaying plant litter.

  Lou blinked his eyes to chase away entoptic phenomena. “Doc?”

  Tom did not respond. Pulling back the thick reeds, he took robotic steps forward towards the gator’s corpse, ignoring giant bamboo shafts swapping his cheeks. Stepping out to a silty mound, he peered past the carcass to its apex.

  A black fog floated in the shade of two half-dead oaks bent over each other. The foggy entity passed the animal—hovering over it. Elongated teeth extended from the sticky, black center and catlike eyes appeared.

  James emerged behind from the clump of irises and asked Tom, “Dr. Mason, don’t you want to collect a sam—”

  Tom could smell the intense, pungent fragrance of rotting flesh and fish guts that punched James in the face.

  “Christ,” James exclaimed and wafted. “What is that God-awful smell?” Lou suddenly wrenched him backward and stepped between him and Tom, weapon trained on the black fog with its sight lined between two catlike eyes and long sharp fangs.

  Tom hollered at the apparition, “Who are you?”

  Its teeth clacked as it responded, “Aren’t you going to take a sample, Tom Mason? It’s why you’re here, isn’t it? Why you killed this poor creature? Don’t you want to—pick apart—the natural world?”

  “Who are you?” Tom repeated. The ferocity projected in the mist forced a choice of fight or flight. He chose to fight.

  The other squad me
mbers repositioned amongst the deadwood not knowing what to shoot. To them, the fog was invisible.

  It licked its teeth using a long, rough pink tongue and said, “Oh, there are some naughty people in your company, Tom Mason. Naughty people, I think that. Can I have a taste?”

  “No, demon!”

  “Demon?” It chuckled at the word. “I met one of your kind before, Tom Mason. Many years ago.” The entity taunted, saying, “I know where you come from. How did the green pill taste when you swallowed it? Did it have an, mmmm, stony flavor to it?”

  “What is your name?” Tom’s frustration neared a peak, drowning feelings of helplessness. Life be damned, he would not endure lacking information.

  James grabbed Lou’s arm and asked, “Who is he talking to?”

  “I can’t explain it, James, but it’s there.”

  “Are we in trouble?”

  “I think so.”

  James turned the others and commanded, “Fall back! Fall back two by two!”

  The thing guffawed. “Oh no, James Laramie, no, no. The bell has rung, it is time to trade.”

  Thick arms, claws longer than Tom’s Needle, shot out dripping sulfurous ooze from the murk. Invisible fingernails like daggers ensnared each soldier. Chaves looked at his incapacitated leg. No visible demonic appendages but fresh puncture wounds sent blood spraying out into the decomposing swamp water. His scream drowned out Chase’s. Suki and Needleman dropped on their knees wailing.

  Lou held his hand on James’ chest and asked the fog, “How do you know our names?”

  Grey clouds congealed overhead blocking out the sun. Shadows crawled away to hide in swamp forest roots. The putrid fog moved in closer, drifting further from the dead gator, and stopped.

  “I have been watching you, Tom Mason, and you, Lou Frasier,” it said and licked its teeth, then continued, “children of the Stones. Children of the green pill.” Its decrepit voice pushed out words like cough syrup, “Children of the vile creation. Abominations of the world, you and its makers, I think that.”