Pilgrimage of the Sacred and the Profane Read Online Free PDF Page B

front canopy was in the woman’s way, so she touched its curved
     plastic surface and it quickly retracted to the rear.
    The thing was about a foot-and-a-half in diameter. It was perfectly round, too. Within
     it, a multicolored mass that seemed to be a liquid was gently rippling.
    “A critter of some sort,” Granny remarked. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.
     Tae, get inside.”
    Once she’d sent the girl into the depths of the covered wagon, the crone took the
     nearby blunderbuss and laid it across her lap. With a muzzle that flared like the
     end of a trumpet, the weapon would launch a two-ounce ball of lead with just a light
     squeeze of its trigger. Pulling out the round it already contained, the old woman
     took a scattershot shell from the tin ammo box that sat by the weapon and loaded that
     instead. Her selection was based merely on a gut feeling, but it was a good choice.
     From somewhere up ahead of them, more globes than they could count began to surround
     the wagon and the rider.
    “Looks like the Bullow Brothers are gonna wet themselves,” the old woman laughed as
     she eyed one of the lenses in her mirror. “What the hell are those critters, anyway?”
    “I don’t know,” D said simply.
    “What do you mean?! Didn’t you just say they’d be attacking us
soon
?”
    “There was nothing about them in the notebook.”
    The crone’s eyes went wide. “Then this is something new, is it?”
    The question was barely off the old woman’s tongue when their surroundings were filled
     with light. Not only had the globes taken on strange colors, but they’d begun pulsing
     with life.
    “God, these things are disgusting. I’m gonna make a break for it!” Granny shouted,
     forgetting all about the man she’d asked to guard them as she worked the reins for
     all she was worth. The cyborg horses in her team kicked up the ground in unison. The
     intense charge pushed the globes out of the way, leaving them spinning wildly in the
     vehicle’s wake. Racing on for a good four hundred feet, the crone then stopped her
     wagon. As her eyes came to rest on D by their side, she was all smiles.
    “Stuck right with us, didn’t you?” Granny said to him. “Forget what you said—I just
     knew you’d be worried about the two of us. Good thing for us. That’s just what I like
     to see in a strong man.”
    The old woman was about to lavish even more praise on the Hunter when suddenly she
     stopped. D had taken one hand and slowly pointed to their rear. “Take a shot at them,”
     he said in a low voice. Perhaps he’d only kept up with her to see what effect it would
     have.
    Though her face made no secret of her apprehension, Granny must’ve shared his interest,
     because she raised her blunderbuss. “Oh my,” she said. “Those two boys are coming,
     too. Hold on a minute.”
    “Now,” the Hunter told her.
    “What?” said the old woman, her eyes widening. She then found out why D had instructed
     her to shoot—the globes they’d knocked out of the way were now rising without a sound
     to disappear in the high heavens. They were moving so quickly that hitting them would
     be no easy task, even with scattershot. The globes that surrounded the galloping Bullow
     Brothers also broke off immediately and headed for the sky.
    “You are one scary character,” Granny muttered, not exaggerating her opinion of him
     in the slightest. And as she spoke, she brought the blunderbuss to her shoulder and
     leaned out from the driver’s seat. She didn’t have time to take careful aim. A blast
     of flames and a ridiculously loud roar issued from the preposterously large muzzle
     of the weapon, rocking the world. Globes shattered above the two brothers, sending
     out spray. There wasn’t enough time to get off a second shot.
    D and the old woman waited silently for the pair of riders approaching in a cloud
     of dust.
    Clay was the first to speak, shouting, “What the hell were those things? We’re not