Dirt cakes my hands and knees as I lean my head against the rocks, blood mixing with the clay from the scrapes on my elbows. Invisible knives work their way through my temples, intensity sharpened when I open my eyes to the ruthless sunlight. Mix a hangover with some head injuries and you’re bound to have a bad day.

Small stones dance under my fingertips, each pebble caught in the vibration of a heavy motorcycle engine. I clap my hands to my ears and wish the world away, the pounding headache escalated from a dull throb to an agonizing sting. The engine dies down, tires kicking clouds of dry dirt into my face as it skids to a stop, the dust tickling my nose until I hold back a sneeze.

“Hey! You alright?” Thief says.

Her thick leather boots block my view. Behind them rattles an impressive hunk of scrap metal and greasy mechanical pieces. An old bike hums and spits black exhaust, the casing torn away long ago, insides wrapped together like intestines. Clamps struggle to hang onto their hoses and rusted bars threaten to ditch the warped frame, but despite how it looks, her bike is a rare treasure. No one understands her strange powers as a mechanic, how her bikes should limp but instead they run smooth and unmatched in speed. No one ever challenges her to a race unless they want to lose.

She crouches down and offers me a canteen, her left arm still bleeding and displaced, cuts and bruises peppering skin showing through the rips in her combat suit. A sleek black helmet dangles from her fingertips, stolen from a Legion Commander she killed sometime ago, the sides painted with red designs that match her ink.

I take the water and splash it over my hair. Tepid and stale, it doesn’t help clear my headache at all, and when I take a drink it leaves a foul aftertaste. She gives me a hand and hauls me to my feet.

“You took a nasty blow this time, he hit you with a hammer” she says.

“Sure feels like it.” I stumble and grab my head, struggling to maintain my balance.

“That’s two headshots in one day.”

My fingers massage the back of my neck where a welt forms, sticky and hot with a gash still healing. “Yeah, yeah. How long--?

“You were out a few minutes.”

“Ah, that motherfucker.” I clench my fists. “I should’ve killed him before I left the bar. Never let me forget to do that again.”

“You’ve still got a chance,” she says. “Let’s go, they’re headed to the lake.”

“They’re headed to the what now?”

I don’t give Thief the time to answer. She dips into her helmet, swings me onto the back of her bike, and kicks it into gear. We zip down the dirt road to the bottom of the mountain, leaving the Variant’s bones to decompose behind our backs.

Humid wind and tiny gnats sting our faces as we disappear into the dust cloud waiting for us on the hillside. Walls of foliage rise at the edges of the road, the town disappearing somewhere to the left of us as we pursue our sacred hidden lake. Corrupted crave water, with both Witch and Delta in the transformation phases it's no wonder why they’d seek out our reservoir. The other hunters figured it out before we did; bikes rumble over the horizon where greedy Ancients persist to claim a prize that doesn’t belong to them.

“You got any weapons?” I shout into the side of her helmet. Her long hair sticks in my mouth when I speak.

“A pipe and a gun.”

“How many charges?”

“Enough.” She cocks her head in the direction of a black saddlebag. A wicked metal pipe follows the side of the bike below the bag’s leather straps, curved end adorned with spikes and nails. Retrieving both weapons requires a certain amount of finesse, but I manage to snatch up the pipe, find the gun, and keep my seat. I load the gun by putting the charges between my teeth. It awakens and whines, blue light glowing at its muzzle. I slip it over Thief’s shoulder where it lands in her lap.

“Hold this,” I say. “I prefer melee.”

She snorts and sticks the gun in her holster, quick to return to the handlebars. “No, you’re still a bad shot and you know it.”

“Bad shot,” I say. We pull alongside an unsuspecting hunter, goggles glued to the road as his busted scrap-metal bike drags him along. He glances up at us, revs his engine to pull forward, but I slam the pipe between his tires. Momentum does him a disservice; the bike sends him crashing, trapped and broken between metal parts and sharp rocks.

We take out the others and I come to fancy the pipe with every brutal kill. The nails slice rims and puncture helmets, the bar shoves riders off their seats to break their arms beneath the tires of those behind them, and the bent edge punches through visors to stick glass pieces in their faces. Thief shoots heads off of shoulders with her light bullets and keeps her bike unwavering as we pass every unfortunate contender. When the lake comes into view, the two of us ride alone.

Almost. There below us rides Witch and Delta, both a mess of mutation, both hungry for the perfect lake at the bottom of the hill. The water means sanctuary. Saint’s tunnels run underneath the Earth with entryways hidden under the pond, each one sealed and oxygenated. With their Corruption so well developed, there’s no way Thief and I can follow once they jump, the water will be too contaminated for us to survive.

“Hey, hey, there they are,” I shout. “Punch it.”

Thief does the opposite. Instead of revving the engine, the bike sputters until it slows. Instead of opening the throttle she leaves it alone. The smeared road turns back to rocks below our feet, the trees reappear at the side-lines, the bike powers down.

“What the hell? Why are we stopping?” I ask.

“We’re out of gas.” Thief slams the bike into an impressive skid, slicing up the dirt with her tires. As soon as she brakes the motor dies, the sound replaced by an awful shriek at the lake’s edge.

Delta sinks his teeth into Witch’s shoulder, his body dripping with wax again, face misshapen and demonic. Their bike swerves and collapses. The humid air thickens with that foul smell of death and putrefaction, and for a moment I wonder if Thief considers dismounting to run in the opposite direction. She shifts in her seat with her gaze fixed on the horror show beneath us, and I can see her swallow beneath her mask.

“Stupid.” I smack the back of her helmet and dismount. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Take the piss out of me later.” She shoves me away. “They’re escaping.”

“Not really.”

Witch makes a break for the lake with his loyalty to Delta forgotten, but the other doesn’t let him get far. Thief retreats to her bike. Despite her visor I know she struggles to watch Delta trap Witch, where he slams the other to the dirt and disembowels him with his teeth. The Variant returns with every bite, his shadow growing along the ground, and Witch is soon lost inside its jaws.

We race each other down the hill. Thief loads the rest of her cartridges into her light gun; I brandish my pipe. Delta leaves Witch a mess of insides scattered across an open ribcage, but as Ancients our immortality can be cruel at times. He still breathes, his eyes still blink, he still twitches in the dirt, his own Corruption ready to take him to the water’s edge, this time without his sanity intact.

The Variant drags itself to the water and forgets about its escape, succumbing to a burning thirst that comes with the desire to ease the pain of transformation. One formed arm pulls along its mess of mutated appendages, trailing wax and glue behind its mangled legs. I sprint in front of Thief ready to tackle the creature once again, ready to accept the burning acid and the pain of my own mutation, as Thief drops behind me to let me take the kill. We pass Witch as if he isn’t there, side-stepping his bloody remains.

The creature pauses at the water’s edge as if to stare at its reflection. For a moment, the hillside breathes. The Variant reaches bent fingers to make ripples in the pond, unaware of who it used to be, but with a stillness that tells about the person slipping away inside, claimed forever by the Beast. This is my one window to pull it from the water and claim my prize, and I’ll be damned if I miss it…

“King, look out!”

A clap of thunder scares away whatever birds remain. They flee from the tall pine trees surrounding the lake. Thief slams me to the ground. My teeth crack against the rocks, my lip splits and bleeds. I shove my elbow into Thief’s ribs to get her off of me, but she holds me still.

Vicious rays of light bullets shoot through the haze where my head used to be. They slice into the back of the Variant’s skull. He flails, back arched, blood tossed through the air, then collapses into the water, lifeless, stiff, and silent.

“No!” Thief shouts.

“Are you fucking kidding me,” I mumble.

She lets me go. We stand to watch the lake trade it’s clear blue for murky gray, sludge overtaking the surface like pale algae as the Variant dissolves and disappears.

Witch drags his tattered body toward the lake, one distorted arm grasping rocks, the other holding a smoking light gun. We leave him to wallow in his agony. Jawbone Hill watches from the hillside, ready to drink up its disease and wither away.