The Crest

The two men walked in the murkiness, through an undeterminable time of day, somewhere between twilight and nightfall. They were charcoal silhouettes set in a plutonian shadow that distorted the mind and crushed the soul. If there was a God, it was not out there.

The two strangers met unexpectedly on the road, they gazed at each other and kept walking, pondering the next phase of their journey. They walked apart from each other, on each side of the road, distrustful.

“Dark times, man,” Axel said to the other man.

“Indeed, the elders predicted it. End times.”

“Not if I can help it,” Axel replied.

“Where you headed?” the other man asked.

“Away from the packs of human wolves. And you?”

“Don’t know exactly. My path is uncertain. My spirit animal has been silent. Where are you from?” The other man asked.

“Ashland, been out twenty days now,” Axel revealed to him.

“Ashland?” The man laughed hysterically. Appropriately named, we live in ash land man.” He waved his arm to their surroundings.

“And you?”

“Up from Cali.”

“You’re a long fucking way from home, my friend.”

“Home? Nice concept, I guess. Not too many homes left anymore. Not much of anything left.”

What’s your name?”

“They call me Biff. Biff Redhawk.”

“Well Biff Redhawk, I’m Axel and I’ll tell you right now I don’t travel with partners so get that idea out of your head. I’m a solo operator, safer that way. Got it?”

“Good enough. Want nothing from you anyway, man, maybe a little information and a little conversation, lonely on the road you know.”

“Dangerous too. Surely, you must have some idea of where you’re headed?” Axel asked.

“There’s a place. I saw it in a vision. It’s a fortress on a ridgeline. I’ll know it when I see it, I guess. Inside there are people that can take us in — and there are plants.”

“What plants?” Axel asked, intrigued now.

“Friendly plants, but they need our help. I assume that is why you’re traveling.”

“Kind of, I can’t explain it. Like an image in the forest leading me, a scent. I believe my spirit totem is a fungus,” Axel articulated to his companion.

“Your spirit is a fungus? From your dreams?”

“That’s what I know.”

“And what does your spirit fungus say?”

“Not sure. It started with the psilocybin. It’s as if I was connecting with something. Like a gas coming out of the ground. It was colorful, always a step ahead of me.”

“You said scent. What kind of scent?”

“Musky, hard to describe. It emitted the scent of decaying leaves, a little like anise. I don’t know, it activated a part of my brain or some shit like that,” Axel noted.

“How so?” the other man asked, interested.

“Triggered something. I took the shroom and now I can follow the path. That’s all I know. Day in and day out, I follow the scent, it’s spiritual, man. Like a phantom in the forest. Like an instinct,” Axel noted.

The night grew darker, implacable, and the cold drifted in like the icy breath of a banshee. The two men continued on the road. Just then they saw a flickering campfire ahead and heard voices. They stopped behind a huge downed Douglas fir. Silently, they watched. They saw a group of men wearing red scarves emblazoned with a black rose. They could smell the stench of the bearded Antisis even though they were 25 meters away. They saw three prisoners tied together, huddled, a family. An adult male, a female, and a young boy. The prisoners were pale, shivering, skin, and bones.

“Slavers?” Axel whispered.

Biff hesitated, “I don’t think so, man.”

They grabbed the father and to their horror, they slashed his neck with a knife. Then, in front of the other two family members, they chopped the man into pieces. They began to boil the limbs in a pot.

They saw the absolute horror of the mother and the boy as they huddled beside a tree. The mother clasped the ears of the boy so that he could not hear. She held his face to her chest.

The two men in hiding saw the abomination too but did nothing; a horror of their species in a world gone mad. There was no civilization anymore, there were illusions of refinement, yes, and fake thoughts placed in their heads to make themselves feel good, to keep them from going insane. How quickly it changed to carnality; mankind’s deepest, darkest instincts surfaced. Now they witnessed, and grew afraid.

The two men saw enough, they slowly crept away from the campsite, sick to their stomachs. How would it end?

Axel remembered the look in the mother and the boy’s eyes, he stopped and vomited. After a minute he spoke to Biff.

“I’ve changed my mind. You want to travel together?” he asked.

“Yep,” Biff Redhawk replied.