Monster Planet(72)

Without a word, without a command they carried her inside the farmhouse. The front door lead through a simply decorated parlor and into the back of the house, to an enormous kitchen. A wood-burning stove blazed merrily in one corner while a barn door up on trestles filled the center of the room. Dark blood stained the wood in several places.

A painted wooden door in one corner of the room stood ajar. Something bright glinted behind it. As the corpses carried Ayaan inside she caught a glimpse of blonde hair, and then the door closed silently. Ayaan had no time to wonder about that'she was too busy fighting her captors.

The skinless corpses threw her down onto the table hard enough to make her head reel. While she pulled her consciousness back together the wizard came in and secured her spread-eagled with stout iron chains. He'd clearly done this before. His wooden arm was no use for the job but he worked the manacles quite adeptly with his callused hand.

'My name,' he told her, perhaps as a courtesy, 'is Urie Polder and I eat the dead for the magic they got. Don't you get me wrong, gal. I didn't come to this lookin' for a taste of gray meat.' The ghouls moved to the corners of the room while he busied himself with pots and pans and especially knives. 'It was a kinda court of last resorts arrangement, you unnerstand. The larder,' he said, stabbing a butcher's knife into the wood of the table until it vibrated in place, 'was bare. Now that's an old, old story and I don't need to be re-tellin' it. I weren't the first time I or mine went hungry, but God help me, I hope it to be the last.' He brought a cleaver down to stick in the wood as well. 'It was only when I et her heart that I felt it. That was when I felt the holy power for the first time, and I knew what God had given to me, this puissance, this strength.'

'Whose heart?' Ayaan demanded, curious despite her situation.

'I'm a rebuilder,' Polder told her, ignoring her question. 'Some folks come on through here and see all the skulls and like and say I'm some nature of demon, but it ain't true.' He gestured with a knife-sharpening steel. 'This is where it begins once and over again, it's the Garden, right? Only this time, the Fall come first, and now we're goin' back to the good place. It's Eden in reverse.'

He looked up at the ceiling and brought his hands together in prayer. The stick-fingers of his artificial arm wove around the living fingers of his right hand. 'Our Father,' he began, 'who art in Heaven, ahallowed be''

A horrible murderous scream interrupted him. He stopped in mid-prayer and looked down at her, though it was clear to Ayaan that the noise had come from outside.

'Hell's hinges, it'll be afternoon afore I get somethin' to eat.' He waved at them with his wooden arm and his skinless ghouls filed out of the room to the barnyard. 'So you're not alone, well, I shoulda guessed so much.' It took Ayaan a moment to realize she was being addressed. 'Evil comes calling in threes, don't it just. The furry fellow, you, and who else? Who else is out there knockin' at my gate?'

Another scream came. Another'they made Ayaan grit her teeth. One long, extended howl that seemed t come from everywhere at once. Then one of the skinless ghouls came smashing up against the windows outside. His denuded face flattened against the glass and then he slid off, leaving a thin scum of milky pus against the pane.

'What's... what's that blurrin' out there, it moves so fast like a car used to,' Polder said, staring out the window. 'And there, a green fellow, now what could that be?'

'That's death,' Ayaan said, 'for you, anyway.' She lay back on the table and closed her eyes.

The wizard grabbed her leg and shook it painfully. 'Now you start talkin', gal, as I will have none of that. Who is that, and what does he want? His boys are awful fast.' He grabbed up an iron poker and laid it across the crook of his human arm. 'Don't you go astray now, you mind?' he told her. His smile told her he had meant it as a joke. Throwing open the kitchen door he strode out into the barnyard to do battle with the green phantom.

Before he'd taken three steps an accelerated ghoul leapt to his shoulders and slammed him to the ground. He cried out and tried to raise his wooden arm in self defense but the ghoul raised its doctored arms and jabbed his belly, chest and face over and over again, the sharpened bones moving so fast they shimmered in the air. Blood leaked out of the wizard in great gouts and his energy started to flicker.

'Da,' someone said from near Ayaan's face. She turned to look and saw the interior door ajar again. A skinny little girl, maybe thirteen years old stood there, her face pocked with acne but her hair the color of corn floss. She looked up at Ayaan with very wide eyes. 'My Da,' she said, as if that conveyed a full message on its own.