Ain't Talkin'

It was Roche’s turn to ask. “What? What is it?”

Markus’ mouth hung open. He spoke over a swollen tongue. “There’s something out there.”

Roche whirled and watched over his shoulder. There was nothing. The white was a featureless vision of absolutely nothing. There was no ripple in the nothing. Not a speck of color in the pristine slate of the ether. No creature, man or animal, stood against the backdrop. But even Roche couldn’t argue with the feeling.

The smell of campfire immediately forgotten, he’d been distracted by it, the hunter’s senses tingled with static electricity. Something wasn’t right. That was undeniable.

“Do you see it?”

“Nothing to see, kid. But you ain’t wrong. Something don’t feel right.” Roche drew his Ruger’s and tipped his hat back with a gun barrel.

“Yes. It’s there.”

Roche strained his eyes. The walls of the white were all at once an inch from his eyes and beyond sight in the distance. The white flickered. Something the walker had never seen in all his endless years wandering through the nothing. Even the presence of etherfish could cause nothing more than a vague unease and a hairline ripple in the fabric of things. But here, now, like a dying fluorescent light the white had blinked.

It had taken a blink of a portion of a second, so fast that even Roche was doubtful if it had happened at all. Maybe the walker had just blinked his eyes and not realized it. Then it happened again.

The ether shuddered and like a light against a closed eye there remained a hideous gray shadow, fading into the white. It beat red for a half-moment, like an organ, and then the shape slipped down into the floor of the ether, beneath the walker and his charge.

“Did-”

“Yeah, kid. I saw it that time.”

“It dove under-”

“Yep. It sure did. We need to move. Get on the horse.” Roche pulled Lucky’s reins and shouldered the mare towards Markus.

“But I don’t know where I’m going.”

“‘Course you don’t. If that thing comes at us though, you kick the horse and you fuckin’ go. I’ll find you.”

“How will you find me?”

“Are you kidding me with this right now? If it comes you go. I’ll worry about finding you. Not my first rodeo.” Roche took Lucky’s reins, Markus sitting in the saddle and started leading the horse further through the ether, keeping his eyes over his shoulder.

The not-thing shuddered like it was cold. It crept like a tape that’d been played too many times, through static and noise and white nothing. It shifted, nearer and farther away without a second of notice. It shivered and it danced. The shape was that of a long-bodied lizard with far too many legs. It moved like a swimmer, gyrating and slipping through the white like the ether was liquid. It was near and far and under them and even with them.

“Roche?”

“Eyes front kid. I’m gonna drop the reins and you take them up. If I give you the go ahead, you spur the horse on and get as far from here as you can. You got it?”

“Y-yeah. Yeah, I got it.” Roche let the reins go and Markus took them up. The walker started walking backwards, facing the construct as it jittered through the white behind them, both a stone’s throw away and miles in the distance at once.

“Kid?”

“Yeah?”

“Any advice on how to kill this thing?”

Alex Markus slumped and his jaw went loose. “It’s alive. If it’s alive it can die, right?”

“Bullets are always bullets. Get going on, kid.”

When Markus simply sat for another moment, Roche slapped Lucky on the ass with the barrel of his gun and she took off at a canter. Within seconds Markus had tightened his legs and settled in the saddle, he spurred the mare to a gallop and was quickly disappearing into the ether.

Roche stood solidly in the middle of a vast endlessness of nothing. The walker clicked the hammer’s of his Ruger revolvers and gritted his teeth.

Silently the construct fiddled forward, an amoeba figure of neither reality or pure ether, cocking something like a confused head with staccato movements.

“Hey, you!” Roche shouted at the thing. It’s attention snapped to the walker in the wide-brimmed hat and duster coat that was pointing two revolvers at what was vaguely it’s chest.

Roche pulled the triggers and charged forward, the heels of his boots making no noise in the void.