TRAVELERS ON A SKYBUS

CHAPTER 1

-

I

-

Apparently the waiting room was poorly maintained, and biting drafts crisscrossed its not particularly spacious interior. You might even say the wind seemed to be showing off. It was better than being outside, however, as the warmth from a battered atomic heater offset the cold, and there was no howl from the wind. If the roar of the engines had been audible, it actually would’ve completed the picture.

There were ten passengers in the waiting room. For an airport situated in a hick town in the eastern Frontier, it certainly had drawn a mixed bunch. There wasn’t even a single example of those whom it served the most—farmers.

A young woman draped in a metallic stole walked over to the window, hair as golden as the fibers swaying as she did so.

“Looks like they’re done loading the baggage. Guess we’ll be boarding pretty soon,” she said. Her remarks weren’t addressed to anyone in particular.

A man with a crew cut who’d been fidgeting with a deck of playing cards and an old man and woman who appeared to be husband and wife looked at her, but all three held their silence. The man with the crew cut was young—undoubtedly under thirty—and he had a crescent-shaped scar running down his right cheek. Judging by the way he’d repeatedly tried to strike up a conversation with the young woman, he seemed pleasant enough, but he was clearly a mobster. The front of his synthetic-leather jacket was open, revealing his gun belt and the broadsword tucked through it.

“Any time now. Being able to get to the Capital in six hours is handy,” the mobster began, and wiping the smile from his face, he ran his eyes over the group until they bored through a trio seated in the opposite corner. “The only drawback is you don’t get to pick who you fly with.”

The object of this frank remark was an individual who remained completely motionless, an opaque black-canvas hood covering his eyes, and a pair of hands bound by handcuffs resting in his lap. Instead, it was the men to either side of him that shot the mobster vicious looks—one of them a big, bearded man with a sheriff’s badge pinned to the chest of his shirt, the other a much younger man wearing the uniform of a police officer from the Capital. The younger one had a metal cylinder strapped to his back, and a gold badge glittered on the chest of his leather coat.

A policeman from the Capital had come to take custody of a criminal captured in the Frontier, and a sheriff had joined him in that task as part of his duty—the situation would be clear to anyone at a glance. There was one other obvious assumption to be made—most of the criminals who wore hoods to protect themselves from the sun weren’t human.

Turning to the elderly couple, the mobster said, “You folks drew the short straw. You’re out enjoying a nice family trip, only to have a suckling spoil it all. Ain’t that right, kid?”

Though he was looking for agreement from the boy who sat next to the elderly couple, the child didn’t nod at this, or move a muscle, or even glance in the mobster’s direction. Apparently he was being transferred from one orphanage to another, and though he’d had a nun with him earlier, at some point she’d disappeared. Since entering the waiting room, the boy hadn’t uttered a single word. Maybe the nun had given up, because she’d held her tongue as well, and a coldness had hung between the two of them that suggested they were glad to be rid of each other. The fox-faced nun seemed to have her own issues, but from the look of the boy’s threadbare navy-blue overcoat, tightly wrapped muffler, drooping head, and nice-looking but pale face, anyone could see why someone would give up on him.

The rest of the people there glanced his way from time to time out of concern for his quasi-autistic condition and because his vacant, half-shut blue eyes would suddenly start gleaming. Most of them thought the same thing: People would pay money to see a boy with beautiful eyes like that. No point putting him on a skybus that flies over the Playground.

Unable to get any validation from the boy, the mobster clucked his tongue. There was one other person present, but he didn’t even look at him, let alone say anything. The man seemed to have something unearthly about him. With a crimson cape and a scarf of the same hue, he seemed to be ablaze. He had a hard face, like sculpted bronze, and despite his wardrobe he didn’t seem the frivolous type. When he’d entered the waiting room, he hadn’t taken one of the many empty seats; rather, he stood by the door, his left hand resting lightly on the hilt of his longsword. One didn’t need to see that his blade was longer and heavier than those usually used for self-defense to know that he was a combat professional—he carried himself like a warrior. The strangest thing about him was the quiver he had on his back—it was stuffed full of arrows, but he didn’t have a bow. Ordinarily, everyone else would’ve eyed him with suspicion, but it was completely the opposite. Whenever the elderly couple looked at him, they exchanged looks of relief and nodded to each other. Because there was a suckling there.

“Here comes the pilot!” the woman said, and this time everyone—except the warrior—looked out the window.

From the fat, cigar-shaped craft parked on the distant runway, a man in a flight suit was approaching. The pilot looked at his wristwatch as he told them, “Get onboard, please. Well, I’ll be damned. We’re only thirty minutes behind schedule.”

Before the passengers headed out, their eyes focused on the hooded man in handcuffs. However, when the sheriff tugged on the thin line attached to those cuffs, the suckling got up without any resistance and proceeded outside where only wintry sunlight and bare trees waited, with one lawman before him and the other behind.

-

To either side of the cramped central aisle there were ten rows of seats, three to a row. First aboard, the woman took an aisle seat in the foremost row, and was sipping the contents of a small liquor bottle when along came the same mobster from earlier.

“Sorry, baby, but could you scoot over a bit?”

When that well-tanned face bared its pearly white teeth to her, the woman responded with a wry look of undisguised annoyance.

“There are plenty of other empty seats. I don’t want you crowding me.”

“Oh, don’t be that way. To make a long story short, we’re taking our lives in our hands during this flight. If I’m gonna die, I wanna be beside a lovely lady. Humor me, okay?”

More than his forceful approach, it was probably his carefree smile that changed the woman’s mind. Swinging her legs into the aisle, she said, “Take the window seat.”

“That’s mighty kind of you. I’m Jan.”

“And I’m not giving you my name,” the woman said, downing the contents of her little silver cup.

The man—Jan—quickly made his way to the window seat and was fastening the rubber seat belt when he gave her a funny look and a smile and said, “No problem, Maria, baby!”

The woman’s expression changed.

“Your stole. It’s embroidered there.”

“Oh, this thing?” the woman replied, looking down at one end where the metallic threads were coming loose. “That’s not my name. It belongs to the woman who lost it to me at the gaming tables. She was a fat farmer’s wife.”

“Well, that’s okay. If it doesn’t bother you none, I’ll still call you that.”

“Suit yourself. Whether you know my name or not won’t make a bit of difference.”

The engine began to growl.

Peeking back between the seats, Jan said to Maria, “Strange mix we got here. Don’t you think?”

Apparently he made a habit of soliciting agreement from other people. As the woman made no reply but rather kept drinking as if in a foul mood, he went on talking.

“That kid’s keeper never did come back. For a nun, of all people, to pull something so irresponsible, either the kid’s got his act together so well there’s no need to worry, or it’s the complete opposite. My take on it is, he’s a major problem child. When no one sees you off, it’s because they just want you gone. I don’t know if he’s got someone waiting for him on the other end, but he’d be a handful for anyone, that’s for sure. I mean, that nun was from the freaking Shillonget Monastery. To get tossed out of there, you’d have to be a real piece of work. There’s a medallion around his neck. It’s probably got all the details carved into it, and I wouldn’t mind a peek at that.”

While the mobster was blithering, the skybus had slowly started to glide down the runway. The scenery—a mossy old landing strip, decaying hangars, and a distant mountain range—began to race past the windows faster and faster.

While Jan gave his tongue a rest, the aircraft made expert use of rising air currents to climb to sixteen thousand feet and enter the jet stream.

“It looks like we’re in, all right,” the old man looking out the window said softly to his wife, who sat beside him with her hands pressed to her chest. “Now it’s just a straight shot to the Capital. Pare should be meeting us at the airport. Are you in pain, dear?”

“I’m fine,” his elderly wife replied, a smile gracing her paling face. “This happens every time. But will Pare really be coming?”

“Of course. I wrote to him, and we got a reply at the hotel, didn’t we? He’s a good boy, that one is. Unlike Depp.”

“Depp is just honest, that’s all. No one’s happy to have over a couple of old relics like us, whether they’re our sons or not.”

“That’s not true. After everything you and I did for those boys—”

Though the elderly man’s hoary eyebrows arched, his wife replied wearily, “Pare’s the kindest of the bunch. He won’t come out and say it—but we’re inconveniencing him. Once we’re in the Capital, let’s find a cheap hotel and stay there instead. That’d be easier on all of us.”

“There’s no need to do that. You know how hard we worked for—”

The old man’s eyes were bulging, but he relaxed when he saw his wife’s doleful expression. Taking a deep breath, he rolled back through his memories.

“Inge and Pages were both happy to see us, weren’t they? Depp, well, that was another story, but Pare—”

Suddenly he noticed that his wife had opened her eyes and was staring intently at him.

“What is it, dear?”

“Nothing,” the old woman said with a sad shake of her head. She wanted to tell him he was wrong. “Not a thing. You’re right. They’ve all been so good to us, haven’t they?”

“They sure have.”

Happy that his wife had finally agreed with him, the elderly man nodded repeatedly.

His aged wife managed to keep the hopeless smile on her face as she gazed at her husband, saying, “We pass over the Playground, don’t we?”

It wasn’t really a question. Though the old man sensed something terribly disconsolate in her tone, he’d long since lost the desire to try to discover what that was.

“Yes, we do,” he replied, turning his gaze to the window again.

Their fourth son would be coming to meet them.

With unsettling creaks here and there, the skybus continued flying smoothly at a speed of 330 miles per hour.

A tiny whisper rose in the aircraft’s silent interior: “Soon now.” While it wasn’t loud enough that the person in the neighboring seat could hear it, almost everyone there trembled.

At that instant, something happened—a heartbeat later, the skybus was thrown off balance, slipping from the jet stream and dropping toward the ground at an angle sharper than any dive.

-

II

-

“What in the world? He’s kicked the bucket!”

Though he heard Maria say this, Jan didn’t believe her, so he took the pilot’s pulse and felt for a heartbeat before letting go of his wrist again.

“Now we don’t have anyone to fly the skybus. Or am I wrong, and one of you can pilot this thing?”

The mobster looked over his shoulder at the survivors—all of the passengers—but naturally, there was no reply.

Apparently the nameless pilot had been highly skilled, taking the skybus from a fall that was essentially a vertical tailspin and pulling the nose up at the last minute for a landing that would’ve been considered miraculous on level ground, let alone this rocky expanse.

However, the miracle ended there, and the reality was that the passengers scattered across the rocks had sustained very real injuries. The old man’s left arm had been broken, and after finally pulling the first-aid kit from the somewhat-damaged skybus, Maria and the sheriff were in the process of setting it in a splint. The policeman, who was far younger than the sheriff, had suffered some bruising to his right shoulder, but he had nothing more than a damp cloth to put on it for the pain. The impact after their fall had left the liquid contents of the jar of painkillers splattered against the bottom of the kit.

Though both the boy and the warrior were unharmed, one had gone over to lean against a massive crag and not moved any further, while the other simply stood there scanning the area in all directions.

“Any of you folks familiar with the local geography?” the sheriff asked, looking over the group.

Grimacing, Jan said, “That’d have to be you.”

“I suppose it would,” the sheriff said, a wry look coming to his face, above his triple chins, before he surveyed their surroundings. He’d already looked the scenery over a good ten times, and not a blessed thing had changed. It was a wasteland strewn with boulders as far as the eye could see. There wasn’t a speck of greenery, but there was plenty of wind to slice into them like a knife. It came across the distant yellow expanse of sand. Before them towered steep crags.

It was just past three o’clock Afternoon. Though there was still plenty of light, once that was gone it’d be like a winter’s day in no time at all. It wouldn’t even take an hour.

After checking the time with his wristwatch, the sheriff looked up at the sun to judge position, as was often done on the Frontier, giving a nod as he said, “We could pull the equipment out of the skybus to figure out where we are, but basically this is the center of the Playground. No matter which way we try to go, it’ll be the same distance out of here.”

“So which direction is the safest?” asked Jan. There was hostility in his tone. Lawmen were the sworn enemy of mobsters, after all.

“They’re all the same,” the sheriff answered off the cuff. “If the village where we boarded had a Danger Potential rating of one, this whole region would have to be over one hundred thousand DP.”

“Then shouldn’t we hurry up and head for the Capital?” the pale-faced policeman said with urgency. “Most of us are alive, and there’s a little food and water left in the skybus. We should be trying to get out of this hellhole as fast as we can.”

“You suggesting we cross the Playground without a car?” Jan jeered. “I’m sure you’re a big man back in the Capital, but do you have any idea what kind of place the Nobility made this Playground of theirs? You know, I’m surprised we’ve lasted this long. They’re already wise to us. If they wanted to, they could tear us to pieces right now. When you think about it, staying or going is pretty much the same.”

The young policeman decided to meet the mobster head on. Eyes squinting angrily, he said, “I’d expect a lousy thug like you to be that ignorant. This is known as the E3 Playground, and aerial photos of this region are taken on a regular basis. According to them, no life forms exist out here.”

“Can they tell from the sky what’s underground, buddy?” Jan snapped back. “Legend has it these things will wait thousands of years without moving a muscle, just biding their time until some stupid prey like us come into their domain. Aerial photos? Don’t make me laugh!”

“You lousy smartass!”

The policeman used his uninjured left hand to go for the pistol on his weapons belt, while Jan said, “Hey, now,” and reached for his broadsword. Tension coalesced around the two of them.

“That’ll be enough of that,” a rusty voice interrupted, and it sounded like a fitting arbitrator.

Everyone turned in unison toward the speaker, relieved expressions on their faces. At last, they thought.

“Until we get out of here, we need everyone we can get,” the warrior said. His crimson scarf danced in the breeze.

The policeman twisted his lips as if to say, Is this guy against me, too? “This region is safe. There’s nothing here. You’re all frightened by unfounded legends.”

“Those same legends will keep rescuers from coming,” the warrior said.

This silenced the policeman.

Entry into the Playground for any reason was prohibited—parents weren’t even allowed to run out there in search of a child who’d wandered into it. Going in to rescue a skybus that had made an emergency landing was out of the question. They could send a distress signal, shoot off flares, or even spell out help on the ground with their bodies, but still no one would come.

“The Playground is laid out as an almost-perfect circle three hundred miles in diameter. To cross it on foot, taking into account the speed of women and children, would take a good twenty days. And with the number of people we’ve got here, our food and water won’t last two days, no matter how we ration it. That’s why we can’t afford to lose anyone to a stupid scuffle.”

“Why not?” Maria asked, sounding slightly unsettled.

The answer was perfectly simple.

“We might have to eat them.”

At this, everyone’s expression became one of horror. No one could say a word.

Looking overhead, the warrior said, “The sun will be going down soon, and the temperature will drop below freezing. You lose a lot of strength then, too. So I’ll thank you to see that we don’t lose any possibly vital sources of nutrition.”

“Guess we’ll be camping out today,” the sheriff groaned, looking up at the sky.

Nodding, the warrior said, “Yes, and there’s one thing we have to take care of before we set out. You must know what that is. Why did our skybus go down?”

Up until this point, the elderly couple had been intently listening to what the warrior had to say, but as their eyes burned with curiosity, their expressions froze.

“What do you think, Ms. Maria?”

As the warrior singled her out, the woman turned away in a snit.

“I don’t care to have people use my name so freely. What’s yours, anyway?”

“Begging your pardon. I’m Bierce—a warrior.”

It was unclear if his response improved Maria’s mood any, because she continued to look away from him as she said, “I get the feeling I saw something, but I can’t remember anything about it. All I know is what I felt. And that was fear itself.”

That caused a stir in the group. Everyone—except the boy and the suckling—agreed with her.

“That’s right. That’s exactly what killed the pilot and made the skybus crash. But how did it happen?”

This time silence tightened around the group. At that moment, they once again felt the same “fear itself” that Maria had mentioned. Letting out an inhuman cry, the old woman clung to her husband. The mobster and the policeman closed their eyes and quaked as if fighting great pain, and beads of sweat rose on the sheriff’s face.

A terror that could smash through even the strongest mind. Where did such a thing come from?

“Sheriff, is there some kind of illness going around that airport?”

“An illness? No, nothing like that. Hell, not even plagues bother going to a dried-up hole in the wall like that.”

“Then it would have to be someone’s doing.”

Everyone stopped moving.

The warrior continued in his stoic tone, saying, “Odds are the culprit is among us.”

“Wait just a damn minute!” Jan interjected. “We have no way of knowing that. Any fool could picture what’d happen if you released a terror like that on a skybus in flight and the pilot went goofy. You’d go down too. You’d all be in the same boat!”

“Maybe the one who did it was just going after one person and didn’t use the power right. Or it could be the person in question doesn’t even know when it’s gonna happen.”

Everyone in the group turned their heads the same direction in unison. As always, the boy was staring down at the ground, and the suckling remained silent.

“You don’t mean . . .”

Maria’s groan was easily drowned out by the warrior as he asked, “Sheriff, does this suckling have a power like that?”

“No, not so far as I know,” the sheriff stated flatly, but the way he looked at the prisoner was peculiar. “We didn’t hear any talk about anything like that from the area where he ran amok. Nothing about infecting other people with fear.”

“Not much is known about sucklings, on account of them always getting disposed of. Even if they did have a power like that, without the ability to control it, it wouldn’t do a fat lot of good. They’d be put down before they ever got to use it.”

The sheriff had no response. But the people envisioned a number of scenarios involving the suckling.

The policeman interrupted, saying, “Hey, don’t get any funny ideas! Some of the top researchers in the Capital are waiting to experiment on this guy.”

“I’m not saying he’s the culprit,” the warrior replied, his blue eyes focusing on someone else.

“Kid, can you talk?” he asked, but there was no reply. “Now, I’ve been watching everyone, but the only one who doesn’t seem to have been changed by that fear is you. Or could it be you didn’t even feel it in the first place?”

Was the warrior trying to say the boy was responsible?

“Answer me if you can. Because until we get this cleared up, there’s no way we can let you come with us.”

“Hey, hold it right there,” the elderly man protested. “We don’t know for sure that child’s to blame. You just said so yourself, didn’t you? It’s not right, threatening a youngster like that!”

A stern rock of a face stared intently at the old man. The old man winced but managed to stand his ground.

“It seems to me you weren’t born out on the Frontier, were you?”

The old man nodded. “Right, we hail from the Capital. We’re traveling around now, visiting our children who live on the Frontier.”

“I see. If you’d lived a decade on the Frontier, you wouldn’t say something like that to save your own life. Male or female, young or old, it makes no difference. A kid’s just as likely to be a killer as anyone else. How many people you think die at the hands of children every year?”

“But I’m telling you, that child’s—”

“There’s no way around this, old-timer,” Jan interrupted. “From here on out, it’s sure to be a hell of a trip. I don’t care if he’s just a kid; we can’t bring anyone along that we’ve got any doubt about. What the warrior said is spot on. But there’s something to what you’re saying, too. Right now, there’s the same chance any of us is the one responsible. And with that in mind, I have a suggestion.”

It must’ve been a really good idea, because the mobster was bursting with confidence.

“Let’s try threatening the kid with a knife.”

Jan whipped around in amazement to stare at Maria.

Downing the contents of her cup, the woman responsible for the remark continued, “That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it? It’s not too hard to see what a guy like you is thinking. If the kid is to blame, you just might wind up getting us another taste of that fear. An insensitive clod like you might be able to take it, but how do you think those old folks would fare? Try using this for a change!”

The way she tapped the index finger of her free hand against her head made Jan’s eyes widen.

“You trying to say I’m not very smart?”

“You trying to say you are?”

“You—you bitch!” the mobster said, making a tight fist as he started toward Maria.

Just then, a low gasp of surprise rang out. Actually, there were two of them, from the sheriff and the policeman. They were staring at the boy. And they’d seen that he’d finally looked up.

“Someone’s coming,” the boy said in a dazed tone. Compared to other children his age, his voice was low and feeble. However, the fear it carried was hair-raisingly real.

“Someone’s coming,” the boy said again, and then he stood up.

Oblivious to the fact that the eyes of all were focused on him, he started to walk out of the rocky area.

“Who’s coming?” the policeman asked, blinking his eyes like mad.

“Is it them? The Playground’s dismantlers? Or is it—an overseer?”

“Don’t talk nonsense!” the sheriff shouted. “There’s nothing like that out here. Those are just old wives’ tales.”

“How about that, then?” the warrior asked.

Halting about five yards from the group, the boy turned his face to the west. The warrior was behind him. Everyone but the suckling stood up and looked in the same direction.

The area to the west was hidden by a yellow cloud of dust—whirling sand. Out of it, a black shape began to come into view, nearly five hundred yards away. In the depths of that sandy cloud, it was hard to tell if it was man or beast. Yet everyone there knew. It was a human being. A man. And one of unearthly beauty, at that.

The figure first appeared as slim as a blade of grass. It soon took on a distinctly human form. The wide-brimmed traveler’s hat and pitch-black coat he wore and the saddlebags and elegant longsword over his shoulder became visible, and finally he halted before the group, all in under ten minutes—and the whole time they simply stood there, unable to move a muscle. As if their bones had been fused together by the unearthly aura the figure emanated—by his beauty.

Knocking the sand from his coat with his left hand, he said softly, “I’m D.” His whole form seemed swathed in glowing darkness.

“As you can probably see from that skybus, we’re stranded survivors,” the sheriff said. As a representative of the group, he was probably just about the perfect age. “You know, we were just about to head east. I don’t know whether to consider you lucky or not. I’m the sheriff from the Valkin area. Shrive’s the name.”

“I’m—Maria.” Though she was looking up, the woman’s gaze and voice were both vacant—but that couldn’t be helped when dealing with this young man.

“I’m Jan—and, as you can see, I’m a drifter.”

“I’m Franz Stow, and this is my wife, Bella,” the elderly man said. The old woman stared at the young man in black with a look in her eyes that suggested she was dreaming.

D’s eyes fixed on the boy, who hung his head low.

“What’s your name?” D inquired.

This was a miraculous occurrence, and it caused another miracle to happen. Though still facing the ground, the boy began to move his lips. What they formed was clearly a word.

“. . . Toto.”

“I’ll be damned!” Jan said, throwing his arms up in celebration. “I figured he didn’t have a brain in his head, but he can talk and everything. Hell, I guess even another guy couldn’t resist answering someone as good looking as you. Pretty ones and crying kids have all the luck in this world.”

“That’s a nice name,” D said before looking at the strangest member of the group—the hooded figure.

“He’s a suckling,” the sheriff said disdainfully. There was probably no need to keep telling people that, but he did anyway. He didn’t even know that he did so out of fear. “We’re in the process of transferring him to a government research facility in the Capital. At any rate, he’s shot full of drugs. Keeps him quiet.”

“Don’t give civilians more information than they need, sheriff,” the policeman said, stopping him. “This guy has a strange air about him. He’s no ordinary traveler. What are you, anyway? And what are you doing out here?”

“My horse has expired. As for my line of work—”

“He’s a Vampire Hunter.”

The world was robbed of every last sound. As they all stared at D, not even the wind whispered in their ears. At that moment, they all thought, Yes, that’s exactly what he is.

D’s eyes turned to the man who’d spoken.

“Vampire Hunter D, it’s an honor to meet you. I’m—”

“Bierce the warrior—I’ve heard of you.”

“Then that’s an even greater honor,” Bierce said, a grin surfacing on his bearded face and then vanishing.

The Vampire Hunter’s meeting with the warrior ended there.

D casually turned to the policeman, who backed away.

“I—um, I’m Officer Weizmann, on prisoner-escort duty for the Ministry of Police.”

“Get out of here quick,” D said. He was facing east. His tone suggested he didn’t have an iota of interest in anyone in the group. “The enemy will be here soon. Any talk of this place being safe is mistaken.”

“Really?” the sheriff said, looking all around.

“Don’t give us that crap. We don’t see anything here,” the squinting Weizmann protested, having circled around in front of the Hunter.

“Have it your way.”

And leaving them with this remark, D started to walk off.

“Hold up—me and Maria are going with you!” Jan shouted, but D didn’t stop.

“Just a minute. Don’t go speaking for me,” Maria said, her breath reeking of alcohol.

“Hey, I know what I’m talking about here. I’ve been doing what I do for ten years now. When things get hairy, I know who you can count on. And without a doubt, it’s that guy. C’mon, kid. Come with us.”

Toto didn’t move. The beauty that had brought back the boy’s humanity for a brief moment was now a good fifty yards ahead of them.

Jan had no problem cutting him loose.

“Okay, it’s your funeral. Someone look after this kid. He’s in your hands. Hey, anyone else coming?” he asked as he grabbed his simple travel case and got to his feet.

After careful deliberation, the elderly Franz rose. “We’re going with you. Come along, dear,” he said, taking his wife by the hand.

“Good idea,” Bierce chimed in, hefting a battered duffel bag.

“Wait just a minute!” Weizmann cried, his face going pale. “We’re the ones who’ll keep you safe—not some mobster and a Hunter you don’t know from a hole in the ground. Don’t you get it? Splitting up out here is dangerous. How are we supposed to save you if—”

Apparently Sheriff Shrive had grown tired of listening to the young lawman’s protestations, for in an effort to quiet him he told the man, “It’s no use.”

“But—”

“What are you gonna do? Stay here? I’ll help you if you do.”

“I thought you just said we should go.”

As he stared with a look of disgust at the backs of those who hurried ahead, Weizmann stomped his feet in place and checked the fit of his shoes.

“Before we go, let’s bury the pilot,” the sheriff said, raining a little on the younger man’s parade.

-

Before long, the three figures walked off in pursuit of the others, who were already out of sight, and as stillness choked the rocky spot, something bizarre transpired. Though no one was aware of it, the voices of men and women, as well as the wind and various other sounds, could be heard in the deserted wasteland. Sure enough, they were the voices of the survivors who’d been there a scant hour earlier talking to each other, and also the exact same sounds they’d made moving around—it was a complete reenactment of the past.

Then the sound of shoveling finished, a prayer chanted in the sheriff’s voice faded, and Officer Weizmann’s urged, “Okay, let’s go.” At the same time, another voice that the two lawmen hadn’t heard also replayed. It was a deep, deep, mocking sort of tone of pure delight. One thing alone was for certain: the source of that voice wasn’t human. No human being could laugh like that.

Shortly thereafter, three sets of footsteps echoed from the ground as they started off across the wasteland.

-

“They’re following us, just like I thought, the lousy pests,” said a hoarse voice. It came from the vicinity of D’s left hip. There was nothing there but his left hand.

The voice continued its harangue, saying, “This is partly your fault, you know. You’re the one who made that worthless bunch do it. You never should’ve told ’em it was dangerous out here. Talk about being completely out of luck. Those clowns think they were spared the hell of dying in a crash, and now they’re jumping into a different kind of hell. It’s a million times more dangerous out here.”

D pressed ahead, not saying a word.

As evening approached, the wind twined around the cooling light so it might sneak its chill into the people even through their eyes. That alone would’ve made it hard enough for a living creature to survive until morning, but this was no ordinary wasteland.

Shortly after, the hoarse voice inquired, “You hear that?”

There was no reply. That was as good as an affirmation.

“Why, that’s—a flute. My! Above us and below, to our left and right, I can hear it coming from every possible direction. There must be enough people playing to start a damn orchestra.”

“There are only two,” D said simply.

“That can’t be!” the hoarse voice replied, and then it fell silent, adding a second later, “You’re right. You really are one scary character, you know that? Sure as hell, you’re the only one who could do a job like this out here in the Playground, where your horse got gobbled up as soon as we entered the place.”

“How far is the fortress?”

“Another fifty miles. We should get there tomorrow. Of course, the real trouble will just be starting then.” Chortling, the hoarse voice added, “Those clowns will be better off if they die along the way.”

The voice stopped.

D had halted. Even in the midday sun, his beautiful visage remained icy cold, and he kept it pointed straight ahead.

“The sound of their footsteps has disappeared,” the hoarse voice was heard to say.

The man’s black hair fluttered in the wind like the lush grass of the prairies.

“So, what are you gonna do? You planning on going to save ’em?”

Before the voice had finished teasing D, the Hunter’s boots began treading the ground before him again.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hideyuki Kikuchi was born in Chiba, Japan in 1949. He attended the prestigious Aoyama University and wrote his first novel, Demon City Shinjuku, in 1982. Over the past two decades, Kikuchi has written numerous horror novels, and is one of Japan’s leading horror masters, working in the tradition of occidental horror writers like Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King. As of 2004, there are seventeen novels in his hugely popular ongoing Vampire Hunter D series. Many live-action and anime movies of the 1980s and 1990s have been based on Kikuchi’s novels.

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ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Yoshitaka Amano was born in Shizuoka, Japan. He is well known as a manga and anime artist, and is the famed designer for the Final Fantasy game series. Amano took part in designing characters for many of Tatsunoko Productions’ greatest cartoons, including Gatchaman (released in the U.S. as G-Force and Battle of the Planets). Amano became a freelancer at the age of thirty and has collaborated with numerous writers, creating nearly twenty illustrated books that have sold millions of copies. Since the late 1990s Amano has worked with several American comics publishers, including DC Comics on the illustrated Sandman novel Sandman: The Dream Hunters with Neil Gaiman, and for Marvel Comics on Elektra and Wolverine: The Redeemer with best-selling author Greg Rucka.