The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [28]
Vaslav Jelovsek was sitting behind the wheel, and trying to start the Volkswagen. He turned the ignition key once. Twice. Third time the engine caught and the wheels spun in the crimson mud as he put her into reverse and backed down the track. Vaslav saw the Englishmen running towards the car, cursing him. There was no help for it ― he didn't want to steal the vehicle, but he had work to do. He had been a referee, he had been responsible for the contest, and the safety of the contestants. One of the heroic cities had already fallen. He must do everything in his power to prevent Popolac from following its twin. He must chase Popolac, and reason with it. Talk it down out of its terrors with quiet words and promises. If he failed there would be another disaster the equal of the one in front of him, and his conscience was already broken enough.
Mick was still chasing the VW, shouting at Jelovsek. The thief took no notice, concentrating on maneuvering the car back down the narrow, slippery track. Mick was losing the chase rapidly. The car had begun to pick up speed. Furious, but without the breath to speak his fury, Mick stood in the road, hands on his knees, heaving and sobbing.
"Bastard!" said Judd.
Mick looked down the track. Their car had already disappeared.
"Fucker couldn't even drive properly."
"We have.we have.to catch.up." said Mick through gulps of breath.
"How?"
"On foot."
"We haven't even got a map...it's in the car."
"Jesus...Christ...Almighty."
They walked down the track together, away from the field.
After a few meters the tide of blood began to peter out. Just a few congealing rivulets dribbled on towards the main road. Mick and Judd followed the bloody tiremarks to the junction.
The Srbovac road was empty in both directions. The tiremarks showed a left turn. "He's gone deeper into the hills," said Judd, staring along the lovely road towards the blue-green distance. "He's out of his mind!"
"Do we go back the way we came?"
"It'll take us all night on foot."
"We'll hop a lift."
Judd shook his head: his face was slack and his look lost. "Don't you see, Mick, they all knew this was happening. The people in the farms ― they got the hell out while those people went crazy up there. There'll be no cars along this road, I'll lay you anything ― except maybe a couple of shit-dumb tourists like us ― and no tourist would stop for the likes of us."
He was right. They looked like butchers ― splattered with blood. Their faces were shining with grease, their eyes maddened.
"We'll have to walk," said Judd, "the way he went."
He pointed along the road. The hills were darker now; the sun had suddenly gone out on their slopes.
Mick shrugged. Either way he could see they had a night on the road ahead of them. But he wanted to walk somewhere ― anywhere ― as long as he put distance between him and the dead.
In Popolac a kind of peace reigned. Instead of a frenzy of panic, there was a numbness, a sheep-like acceptance of the world as it was. Locked in their positions, strapped, roped and harnessed to each other in a living system that allowed for no single voice to be louder than any other, nor any back to labor less than its neighbor's, they let an insane consensus replace the tranquil voice of reason. They were convulsed into one mind, one thought, one ambition. They became, in the space of a few moments, the single-minded giant whose image they had so brilliantly re-created. The illusion of petty individuality was swept away in an irresistible tide of collective feeling ― not a mob's passion, but a telepathic surge that dissolved the voices of thousands into one irresistible command.
And the voice said: Go!
The voice said: take this horrible sight away, where I need never see it again.
Popolac turned away into the hills, its legs taking strides half a mile long. Each man, woman and child in that seething tower was sightless. They saw only through the eyes of the city. They were thoughtless, but to think the city's thoughts. And they believed themselves deathless, in their lumbering, relentless strength. Vast