The hill-folk had been a hollow shell of their past. Once, they had ruled this patch of desert wasteland, and nary a traveler passed through their territory without fear deep in their hearts. Those times were long past now, and the purges of New Orleans had reduced the hill folk from a wide-spanning and close-knit family to dozens of disparate groups squabbling over petty things. They had no unity, no leadership. When Ramses first set out on his pilgrimage, his first step had been uniting the remaining hill-folk under his banner.
This was no insignificant task. Ramses was not part of the family, genetically or by marriage, and the hill folk were notoriously wary of outsiders. Ramses took his small group of loyal mutants to where he knew a mutant of some importance, who the hill-folk called Papa, would be hidden.
“You and your ilk have existed thus far without my consent,” Ramses said to the man. He was grotesquely obese, completely immobile in a pre-war sofa bed. Surrounding him was a harem of daughter-wives, tending to him. They held some power over the hill-folk, though it was far less than their patriarch.
“An'? So whut? Yew thank yew an' yer fuck ugly shits kin come in here like yew own thuh place? Who thuh fuck do yew thank yer?” Papa said. A slab of meat was positioned into his mouth by one of the women and he devoured it messily.
“I am the future. I am the rising sun of mutant-kind. I am Ramses. You have felt the ripples of my presence in this great pond, I know it,” Ramses said.
One of the daughter-wives spoke up, “He’s the what’s been travelin’ around, gettin’ folk together, Papa.”
“Yeah, Papa, he’s been goin’ ‘round ‘n fightin’ back ‘gainst the regular folk,” said another.
“Shut up!” Papa shouted, slapping the wife closest to him, though she had not spoken. His ragged and yellowed nails caught on her cheek and left an ugly gash.
Then, before anyone could react, Ramses had lunged forward, fingers forming a sharp point, and drove his hand through the layers of fat and muscle which comprised Papa’s body, piercing his struggling heart. The overweight mutant tried to grab for Ramses’ head feebly. It took him nearly a minute to cease his struggles and die.
Ramses drank of his blood, ignoring the screams of the daughter-wives. When he was finished, he made a proclamation.
“Your family is meager and weak. Should you wish to avoid the coming tumult, gather any you care for and join my family. We shall march in a day and an hour. Do not be left behind.”
“On one condition,” said one of the wives.
“Oh? You would bargain with Ramses? What is your condition then, girl?”
“We want the people what have been goin’ ‘round and killin’ family. And we wanna control what’s left of the family, too.”
“Petty vengeance, hm? Your condition is acceptable. You shall have it. Find Sunny outside; he is the man with the head of a beast. He will begin to organize searches for these assassins.”
And so the rabid and incestuous hill-folk threw in their lot with Ramses. Had they been at the height of their power, it would have taken subtlety and time to absorb them, but given their relative weakness after the purges of New Orleans and the expeditious nature with which Ramses had set out on his journey, this course of action would serve just as well.
It was time to start his march in earnest, Ramses thought.
The march had gone on for weeks. Across the desert now crawled an appalling throng of horrible, altered things. They were hundreds in number, a veritable army of detestables, and clad not in uniform dress, but in attire both arbitrary and wild, wardrobes out of mad hallucination, vestments a mix of skins of men and animals and worse things and plunder from destitute unfortunates who happened to cross their path. One wore the remnants of military fatigues, still stained with blood, and one wore only a rainhat, and one wore a child’s clothes, badly stretched over a too-large frame. And so on.
Leading the procession was something that could almost, at times, be called dignified, or distinguished, or imposing. Certainly, the great mob which stalked close behind thought these things of him. He stood two heads above a normal man, not that there were any nearby to provide reference, and was wide at the shoulders. He wore a white embroidered cloak which obscured his form down to the ankles, at which point two bare feet were visible, blue like the midnight sky. Most distinctive of all was his golden helm, with which he never parted. It brought to mind the emaciated face of death, and through it, a cruel gaze emerged. He advanced unerringly onwards, never sparing even a glance at those behind him. He walked towards the setting sun, never blinking.
The grand march had paused only twice since it began three weeks ago. Both times, it seemed to be on the whim of the one who led it, and those who followed would not dare to question his whims. As the sun began to set, the march paused for its third time.
Those mutants who had chosen the golden-helmed man as their messiah grew relieved for a chance to lie in repose. They very rarely stopped - not for food, or water, or to rest weary feet. It was up to them to find these things as they walked.
The mutants spoke amongst themselves for some time, especially those who had set fires to sit by in the night.
At the front of the procession, two individuals joined the leader. One was a hulking beast of flesh, bursting with limbs and heads in a mass that made it seem almost like twelve men molded into the form of one. The other was a meek-looking man, hair and garments untidy, with four octopoid limbs of scrap steel attached to his back. They stood in silence a couple of feet behind him for a minute before breaking the silence.
“Great father Ramses,” said the massive one to the leader. “Something important going on? Why we stopped?”
“We have lost five members of our cavalcade today,” Ramses said. “Something stalks us through this desert. I intend to confront it tonight.”
The man attached to the metal limbs twitched and trembled, before finally releasing pent-up energy in an avalanche of words that spilled out as though they were an intelligence of their own.
“I can’t afford more delays. I need - very promptly need - more materials to work with. We were supposed to reach Bad Water days ago, and here we are stopping again.”
“You will get your materials, doctor. Or do you doubt me? I had thought you faithful.”
“Doubt you? Of course not, Ramses, no doubt at all. Call it uncertainty. Are you sure the town won’t be empty by the time we get there?
“As sure as I am of all things. Now be calm. Rest. Tomorrow we will come upon Bad Water, and it will be purified.”
As night fell, the mutants began to whisper and chitter, their queer buzz settling over an impromptu camp that had been set.
“He never sleeps,” said one who huddled near a fire at the edge of the camp.
“He can not bleed,” said another who was sharing in the heat.
“They say he will never die.”
“They say his breath is fire.”
The flames crackled softly in the night. Stars passed slowly overhead, gazing emptily upon the vast and barren landscape.
“These things are not true,” said Ramses, sitting upon a rock, nearer to the fire than the other mutants.
Instantly, all conversation around that fire stopped. None of those present had seen their leader approach, and now that he was among them they seemed almost afraid to utter a single sound.
Ramses looked about him. He was naked now, save for his helm, and he sat with his legs crossed and his palms resting down upon his knees. So much of an icon was he to these wretched things that as his gaze fell upon them they began to almost shrink, curling in on themselves, as if unworthy of even a shred of his attention.
“These things are not true,” he repeated. “We all meet our ends. As the sun rises and sets, it is inevitable. We may only choose where we expire.”
Then, he sat in silence, eyes closed. Ramses knew what would happen next, as he often did. Within the next hour or so, each member of the group around him would begin to disappear into the night. Something slithered through these sands, and it would whisk them away before a scream could even escape their lips. The mutants did not know this, and they also did not know the reason why Ramses had joined them or said what he had said. They sat in silence, confounded and not a little stunned by the circumstances.
Forty-two minutes later the first mutant fell to sleep, embracing what abyssal and dark dreams its addled mind could conjure. One by one, the others around the fire joined the first. Fifty-two minutes later, only one other mutant remained awake, besides Ramses, who opened his eyes and began to stand from his stone as the last embers of the fire died out and left them in darkness.
Ramses approached the wakeful mutant. It was a small and wretched thing, skin like the stone of a red mesa, with a too-large head and vicious claws to rend flesh. It blinked slowly at Ramses as he approached.
“This is a terrible place to die in,” Ramses said. “I am sorry.”
Ramses gripped the thick neck of the small mutant. It was a sorry struggle of seconds before Ramses found a grip and snapped its vertebrae silently. Doing the same to the other sleeping mutants was the work of minutes, and Ramses slit them open so that the scent of blood would carry heavily on the wind. The bodies were piled, and Ramses stood waiting.
The thing that slithered out of that crepuscular desert darkness just minutes later did not expect there to be another sitting by the bounty it had scented. Nor did it expect that man to be looking directly at her, one palm raised and facing her. He stared calmly at her, inspecting her fully now that she had stopped moving.
"You are beautiful," Ramses whispered, his voice traveling as if ferried by the wind. "Join me, and you shall never again feel hunger or thirst, or indeed any want at all."
The mutant, a woman with the lower body of a snake, wicked in her elegance and poised as if ready to strike. She did not speak.
Ramses strolled slowly and confidently towards her, arms at his sides. Distanced only by a matter of feet, either of them could strike a killing blow in an instant. Both of them had surely done so before. Yet Ramses and the snake woman both seemed to be completely enthralled, in the light of a dying fire.
When only an arm's length separated the two, Ramses raised a hand, cupping the snake woman's face.
"What is your name?"
"Sasha."
“Sasha,” Ramses repeated. “Tomorrow there will be great and heady death in the town of Bad Water. Follow my grand march there and feed to your heart's content. I swear to you that you shall go unmolested.”
Sasha nodded enthusiastically. Then, after a silence, Ramses removed his hand from her face, and she slithered back into the darkness of night.
He knew that the asset he had just gained was well worth the loss of the petty group of mutants. Well worth it indeed.
When it came time that the mutants reached the town of Bad Water, the crimson hue of the evening sun was just beginning to kiss the desert sand. Ramses paused and raised his hand once the town was visible, signaling for the army to stop.
“Karnak, keep the rabble in place and send our fastest back to Sunny. I wish to keep him updated on our movements. I will fall upon Bad Water and determine its final judgment. March upon the town in thirty-five minutes, should I not return before then,” he ordered. “I wish to judge the town, and to witness firsthand the worthless filth that infests it.”
And so Ramses absconded from the troupe, moving through the desert as though he were a grain of sand, pushed on by the wind. His bare feet carried him, and when he neared the border of Bad Water, he lowered himself onto all four limbs, nearly slithering along the ground. He progressed silently, approaching the largest and most well-kept home in the village. There was almost no one about the village.
Normal sensations did not guide him. Sight and sound were not to be relied on; they could all too easily be fooled. Instead, he let his prescience guide him, half-seen visions alerting him to the presence of a starving transient near a dilapidated trailer or a child wandering the edges of town quietly, alone. The first he killed silently. The second caught only a glimpse of his movement as he swept past. Had he wished, she would have seen nothing and thought only that the wind had picked up for a moment. If the child was smart, she would leave town before the killing started.
It took all of fifteen minutes for Ramses to infiltrate the large building. It was the home of the most important man in Bad Water. The sheriff of Bad Water snored loudly in his office, legs up on a half-rotted desk, gun resting an arm’s length away. Ramses took a seat across from him.
He was not here without purpose. Bad Water was, as human settlements often were, a debased and corrupt town. Whores and degenerates made their life here, lechers roamed the streets and reprobates and libertines ran rampant. It disgusted Ramses, but a part of him thought that perhaps there was something he was missing. Perhaps they were worthy of a continued existence.
So he sought out their elected official - the man they chose to represent them. Now, it would be time to test him.
Resting on the desk was a radio, which Ramses grabbed and, after a brief inspection, crushed loudly in one hand. The sheriff awoke with a start - evidently, the man was a light sleeper.
The sheriff’s skinny body tumbled onto the ground in a tangle of limbs and furniture, partially stuck in his chair. It took him a second to properly assess his surroundings.
“The hell? Fuck was that?” the sheriff said, disentangling himself and standing. He caught sight of Ramses sitting calmly in one of his chairs.
“Aw, shit,” he shouted, eyes widening. “ Fuckin’ mutie, how’d you get in here?”
The sheriff reached for his gun.
“Make any more noise and I can guarantee the death of every man, woman, and child within this squalid hamlet. Look at me. Gaze upon me. You have heard the stories. If you cannot recognize the most notable of your enemies, then you do deserve your death..”
“Huh? What’re you -” he cut himself off, realization dawning. His eyes caught Ramses’ aurum helm.
“You’re that freak, goin’ around, leading more of your freak muties together, leadin’ an army. Well, lemme tell you somethin’. ‘Round here, we kill muties.”
The sheriff’s hand shot out for his gun, but Ramses beat him to the punch, shooting out of his chair and crushing it much as he had the radio.
“We shall play a game. If you lose, my army will descend upon your town. If you win, we shall pass you by, and the degenerates here will live for years longer. Yourself included, of course.”
“I ain’t playin’ no damn games with you, freak. What’s to say the good folk of Bad Water won’t kick your asses?”
Ramses’ hand was suddenly around the man’s throat. He raised him a foot into the air so that he could look him in the eye. “You know that is not true, sheriff. Now, please, play. For my sake, and the sake of your town.”
He let the sheriff go and sat back down, indicating with his hand for the man to do the same. When he did, Ramses spoke.
“We will begin with a classic.
It walks on four legs in the morning,
two legs at noon,
and three legs in the evening.
What is it?”
“Fuckin’ what?” said the sheriff, indignant. “Riddles? We’re doin’ damn riddles? Are you shittin’ me?”
“I suggest you answer quickly sheriff. Your life depends on it.” Ramses said. A chill menace radiated out from him.
The sheriff quieted, unnerved. He was not an educated man and did not know of riddles, but this one was simple enough.
“Man,” he said after a minute. “The answer’s man.”
“Well done. Now, your turn.”
“My turn?”
“Yes. You tell a riddle.”
“An’ what if I don’t? What if I don’t know no damn riddles?”
“Then you and your town die. I will be patient. Think of your riddle.”
Ramses sat, still as a stone, as the man thought.
“Well, alright. How about this,
What has hands an’ can’t clap?”
“A clock. My turn.
Who makes it, has no need of it.
Who buys it, has no use for it.
Who uses it can neither see nor feel it.
What is it?”
The sheriff thought for a moment. He ran a hand through sweaty hair and rested his chin in his hand.
“Can you answer, sheriff?”
“Gimme a damn second,” he said, repeating the riddle to himself. He could feel Ramses practically staring a hole through him, unblinking.
Minutes passed.
“A coffin,” the sheriff shouted suddenly. “It’s a damn coffin!”
“Correct. Your turn.”
“What d’you put in a bucket to make it lighter?” the sheriff confidently inquired.
“A hole,” Ramses responded nearly instantly. “My turn.”
He was growing increasingly disappointed with the man. The sheriff let out a huff of disappointment, having been confident that his riddle was a good one.
“Alive without breath,
As cold as death,
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
Clad in mail, never clinking,
Drowns on dry land,
Thinks an island is a mountain,
Thinks a fountain is a puff of air.
What is it?”
This riddle was the only one to have well and truly stumped the sheriff. He scratched at his head. Minutes passed in nearly total silence between the two.
Ramses knew that in two and a half minutes, his mutants would descend upon the town. They would bathe the streets in crimson rain and paint the sky red and color the air with the screams of innocents.
“Do you have an answer, sheriff?” Ramses said.
“I’ve got it, it’s on the tip of my tongue.”
“If you do not have an answer then I will have won the game, sheriff.”
“Damn it, I said I got it. Gimme a minute to think.”
“If I win the game, then you will die, sheriff, as will this wretched town.”
“To hell with this, then. To hell with you and your freak army. What gives you the right? Just ‘cause I don’t know your damn riddle answers it means all these good folk have to die? It means I gotta die too? To hell with it, and damn you. You think you can go ‘round, killing and taking from folk, but you’ll get yours in the end.” The sheriff spit on the ground.
“My right, sheriff? I shall indulge you. My right is the right of nature. It is the right of fate. All things die, and all things kill, sheriff. There are insects of prey, birds of prey, mammals of prey, and fish of prey. And over all these things is humanity. Where then, are the men of prey? This is what I am. I am the apex of humanity. Mutantkind is the grand predator which will feed on humanity. I have killed to obtain food and to clothe myself. I have killed to adorn myself, I have killed to attack and to defend. I kill to instruct and I kill to amuse. I kill to kill. I want everything and nothing resists me. This murder is the highest of all callings; not a second may pass that something is not being killed. And so I have chosen to take the threads of fate and raise mutant-kind above humanity, so that they may do the same as I. We will be predators of men, and humans shall be our prey. It is our rightful place. That is what gives me the right.”
Just then, as his speech finished, the sheriff a second away from launching some reply or another, a cry ripped through the air. It began as a distant rumbling. Then, as it approached, it became a wailing, as though the wind itself was rebelling against some sort of poison inhabiting it. It quickly became articulate, a barbarous howling filling the air. Shouts and yells, the screams of men and women being ripped apart, gunshots firing madly and sharply punctuating the screams.
“You will witness the fate of Bad Water now, sheriff. Know that you could have prevented this, had you not so thoroughly disappointed me.”
Ramses grabbed the man by his shirt, dragging him roughly out towards the front door of his building. When he grabbed desperately onto a doorframe, Ramses broke his arm. When they were outside and he looked away, Ramses grabbed hold of his face, forcing him to look upon the destruction which his mutants had wrought.
Riding down upon the town was a horde without description or peer. It was as if all the demons of hell had risen upon the town, more horrible than any reckoning imagined by man. Screeching and yammering, kicking up clouds of dust that clothed them, monsters caught only in glimpses among the gunfire. Some burst through windows, ravaging the inhabitants of small shacks, others cornered women and children, cats playing with caught mice.
Ramses stood, watching, fingers holding the sheriff’s eyes open, forcing him to see what his failure had wrought.
Out of the plumes of dust, a lumbering beast easily a story high, covered in raw flesh and screaming faces and grasping arms, approached, and kneeled before Ramses.
“Karnak,” Ramses said. “Well done. Sup yourself on the flesh of the weak and degenerate. When you are done, begin another broadcast, and let the world know of our triumph here. Today we celebrate. Tomorrow, we continue our march.”
Karnak nodded many heads.
The sun cast an orange-red glow over Bad Water.
Later that night, Ramses sat on a makeshift throne near the center of town with the sheriff kneeling close to him, naked and covered in cuts and fresh bruises. Around him, mutants howled in celebration and a simple sort of animal elation.
The mutants had not touched the sheriff, recognizing that he had been claimed by Ramses. Ramses looked down at him now, among the throng of the deformed army, defeated.
“No fight in you, even now, hm?” he whispered to himself. “How disappointing. How utterly disappointing. Will there ever be a human to challenge me?”
He kicked the sheriff nearly ten feet away, and a pack of slavering mutant things tore him apart after a brief moment of hesitation.
On the outskirts of town, a snake woman was eating more than she had in months.
In the sheriff’s home, the doctor was working on what he called upgrades, forging mechanical limbs for unfortunate mutants. In another room, Karnak had set up for the night’s radio broadcast.
In a faraway place, a dragon rested. A bastion of steel awoke beneath him.
Ramses was ready to keep moving. Even if thousands had to die, he would continue to build his army and march to that faraway place.