by Mark Ayre
Shotgun came forward, preparing a third shot.
“Mercury.”
A man. At first, she assumed one of the infected was calling, excited to hurl some taunts before he murdered her.
After a second, she registered in the voice a clear emotion that did not fit her attackers. Fear. She closed her eyes, remembered the shout, deciphered the voice.
“Trey?”
The shotgun fired. The door bucked, and a hole appeared in the wood as Mercury rolled away.
Still facing the hall from which the infected had fired, Mercury backed up, pressed her body to the wall and stepped onto the top stair. For the good it could do, Mercury for some reason kept her knife raised.
“Mercury,” Trey called again. He had to be in Amira’s flat. His voice was distant but audible. “You need to run. Get out.”
Another shotgun blast. Another hole in the door.
It was unlocked. The shooter could have rushed in to face Mercury head-on. He didn’t. He wasn’t afraid. He was having fun.
“Where’s Amira?”
To this query, there was no immediate response. No sound but for the shotgun reloading, the footsteps of the shooter moving to the door.
“Trey?” Mercury said. “Where’s Amira.”
The shotgun appeared through one of the holes in the door. As though it were a periscope, seeking an enemy ship, it twisted left and right. Mercury was the enemy ship. If it found the right angle, it could blow her away. Taking a few steps backwards would protect Mercury from the next blast. She could not move until Trey responded.
“Trey?” She almost screamed.
The gun pointed towards the stairs.
“They shot her,” Trey yelled, his voice desperate, afraid. “She’s…”
The gun had paused. It pointed directly at Mercury’s chest. She was frozen to the spot.
“Mercury, she’s dead.”
Silence. Utter stillness.
She’s dead.
For several seconds Mercury remained frozen. Grief and desperate sadness bloomed in her heart. A second later it was taken over and destroyed, at least temporarily, by the wildfire of rage. A rotten, unstoppable fury which came from nowhere and within seconds had taken Mercury whole.
Mercury, she’s dead.
Casually, as though trying to avoid a dripping drain, Mercury took one step to the side a second before the shotgun cannoned. She heard more wall explode, then she was moving.
The shotgun was retreating; the shooter withdrawing it through the door.
Before it could disappear, Mercury arrived. Grabbing the end of the barrel in a tight fist, she kicked the door with all her might.
The shooter screamed as the block of wood sent him flying. Screamed as his finger was torn from the trigger casing and snapped as Mercury dispossessed him of the weapon with which he had probably murdered her best friend.
Lost to her fury, driven by her rage, Mercury barged through the door, turned, and fired.
The other gunman had been rushing from one wall to the other. The shotgun bullet hit his side, tore through him, and tossed him along the hall. As he went, his blood spattered. The man with the baseball bat cried out and dived forward, barely avoiding the spray of infected blood.
His mate, who had held the shotgun until Mercury relieved him of it, was not so lucky. When the door had hit him, he’d tripped and landed on his back. He hadn’t risen when his comrade took a bullet. As the pistol holder flew down the hall, almost cut in half by the bullet, a rain of blood covered his friend.
Behind Mercury, someone was climbing through the window from the fire escape. He was shouting something, but Mercury wasn’t listening.
The previous shotgun holder was screaming. The baseball bat carrier was charging.
The shotgun was empty. Mercury darted forward, ducked low. As the baseball bat swung, Mercury attacked with the shotgun. The metal barrel smashed the baseball bat carrier’s stomach. Having gone low, Mercury forced the shotgun barrel up, throwing the infected over her head and tumbling down the corridor towards the fire escape man. This done, she kept running, scooting low as she went, grabbing the pistol and spinning.
The two remaining men had been encroaching up the hall. They stopped as she pointed her new weapon in their direction.
“You’re a fool,” one of them said. “Easily lied to.”
She aimed for the speaker.
From the ground, the former shotgun holder burst up. Redirecting her gun, she shot the floor, his leg, his neck, backing away as she did so.
The neck shot did the trick. Gurgling, he went to the ground, blood surrounding him like a paddling pool.
While he had distracted her, the previous shotgun wielder’s two friends had seized the moment, the opportunity.
They burst along the hall. The one wielding the baseball bat was further away. As he was armed, she aimed for him anyway: a shot to the shoulder, two to the chest.
He disappeared, baseball bat and all.
The man from the fire escape rammed into her. She went head over heels along the corridor. The gun sprung free and bounded away.
In her fury, she’d forgotten the aches and pains obtained in her bungalow brawl. Though rage still consumed her, when she rose from this latest attack, she felt these pains again.
As she rose, he came. His foot found her throat, and she collapsed to the ground, gagging.
He attempted to kick her stomach. She caught his foot, twisted. He screamed, spun, collapsed to his front.
He tried to rise. She grabbed his legs and yanked. He fell on his face and cried out at the pain to his nose. She pounced, leaping up his body, landing on his back. In both hands, she grabbed his hair, yanked his head back until he was crying from the pain to both his throat and scalp.
“My best friend,” Mercury said through a choked sob. “She was my best friend.”
He tried to speak. Before a word could escape, Mercury slammed his face into the floor. He tried again. She slammed him again.
And again, and again, and again.
She was aware of the blood bursting from his nose. It spread across his face. It burned, peeling at his skin. When he screamed, she forced his face down. This time did not lift it. She smushed it left and right, coating it in his infected blood. She kept going as the blood ate through his face and began work on his skull, she held him down and used him like a scourer on a tough piece of dirt until the screaming stopped, until he fell still.
Then she collapsed.
Breathing heavily, she fell to the floor and scrambled away until her back was against the wall. Sobbing, she stared at what she had done, the bodies of the dead.
The rage was gone. Grief reared up and kicked all other feelings aside. The tears came like a waterfall.
“My best friend,” she whispered, staring at the bodies. “My best friend, my best friend, my best friend.”
Someone appeared in the doorway. Through tear-stained eyes, Mercury watched Trey tread with care into the hall, taking a jump over one pool of blood and, in doing so, almost tripping face-first into another.
Once he was steady, some way towards the exit, he turned to Mercury. He looked bereft.
“I’m sorry.”
“My best friend.” It seemed to be all she could say.
Trey stared at her a little longer, then shook his head. “Please forgive me.”
She looked at him, wondering what he could mean. Praying he was not admitting some culpability to her death. She opened her mouth to ask, to say something other than My best friend. Stopped when someone else stepped from Amira’s flat.
The someone surveyed the scene. “Girl, you did good.”
Mercury gave a strangled cry. Amira beamed and offered a hand.
“Always knew you had it in you.”
Twelve
They drove for over an hour, Amira and Trey in one car, Mercury in the other. After hitting the countryside, Amira located the copse she had previously pinpointed on a map. Driving offroad, they m
ade their way as far in as they could manage before leaving the cars and walking a short distance to a clearing. Upon arriving, Amira called Trey over, took his arm, and examined his hand.
“You need to think about what happened back there. You gave away our weapon. Could have got us killed.”
Once again, Amira made him feel as though he were a child. She told him off as though she was his mother, and he had let her down, disappointed her. Even the way she examined his hand was motherly. He winced as she tested the bones for breakages.
“I think you’re fine,” she said. “It might be sprained, but I’m not sure it’s as bad as that. You’re lucky.”
Trey’s natural reaction to being treated like a child was to hunch over and stare at the ground. In the clearing, perhaps buoyed by their latest escape, he straightened his back and attempted to speak with conviction.
“That maniac was going to start shooting your neighbours,” he said. “His friends downstairs would have slaughtered police and firefighters. I thought the whole point of what we were doing was to save lives?”
“Then you misunderstood,” said Amira. “During World War Two, the best way for those who opposed Adolf Hitler to save lives, in the short term, would have been immediate surrender. If they had handed their countries to the Nazis, the death toll, on both sides, would have been vastly reduced. So, to you, would that have been the desirable outcome?”
It was not the first time Amira had rolled out the Nazi argument. The annoying thing was, it made a lot of sense. Trey found himself unable to answer. Amira nodded.
“I get it; it’s difficult when faced with a situation in which you might have to see innocent people murdered because of your actions. You think I wanted to watch my neighbours die?” She smiled. “Maybe you do. I know you think I’m a bitch.”
“No,” Trey said, surprising himself with the speed and firmness of his response. “I don’t think that at all.”
Amira’s smile widened a little. Trey realised any sign of happiness on Amira was a rare occurrence. It was nice.
“Maybe you should,” she said. “But someone has to remember the bigger picture. I know we’re the only ones who stand a chance of stopping Heidi, and that means we have to stay alive. To survive, I hope no one else has to die, but if their deaths keep us moving towards the ultimate goal of saving the world, I’ll take that every time.”
Even as she held the smile, Trey saw total conviction in Amira’s eyes and knew she meant every word. He found her strength incredible. If he could emulate even a fraction of it, he’d be okay.
“You’re right,” he said.
“Well yeah,” said she. “Always remember, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
“Or the one.”
“What?”
Trey opened his mouth to respond, then closed it. In his youth, Trey had been a huge Star Trek fan. The chances of Amira being a secret Trekkie were slim to none. She’d probably heard the line somewhere but had no idea from where it originated.
Had he been in a more positive frame of mind, her comments might have inspired inappropriate thoughts of Amira in an Ahura costume.
“That makes a lot of sense,” Trey said, instead. “But I think Mercury’s going to struggle even more than me with accepting it.”
Having taken a separate car, Mercury had entered the clearing a couple of minutes after Trey and Amira. Since arriving, she had sat against a tree and stared into space. She looked lost, almost broken. Trey wished there was something he could do, but it wasn’t his place.
Amira looked to her best friend but showed no guilt, no remorse. Trey suspected she was feeling both.
“Go for a walk, will you?” she said. “If you’re not afraid of the dark?”
Trey didn’t bite. As a child, he had never feared irrational things like monsters in the closet or under the bed. Frequent beatings from his father, his brother, and his father’s lapdog Vicious Victor had ensured he feared only the real terrors which surrounded him.
Some children feared kidnap. Trey put it on his Christmas list.
Fear of the dark in the trees at night was not irrational, but Trey was not afraid. Lost in thought, he found too much trouble within to worry about what might be lurking in the blackness.
Amira’s words plagued him. He had meant what he said, that her comments made sense, that she was right. If his actions in the block of flats had got he and Amira killed, Mercury might have survived. Her chances of victory over Heidi would have been greatly reduced. If Mercury failed; if Heidi brought forth her master, humanity was doomed. Billions might perish. That could be the result of his compassion.
The question was: if faced with a similar situation to today’s in the future, could he sacrifice innocents to save the world?
Beyond the clearing, Trey allowed the trees to swallow him into darkness. Moving out of earshot of Mercury and Amira, he wandered at random, his mind always racing.
The problem was the fate of any innocents he had the chance to save was always immediate. Not only that, but they had faces. He might have to watch them die, in which case he would see their horror, feel their sorrow.
Compared to that, saving the world seemed a relatively nebulous concept. Not to mention you could rationalise. Even if we die today, maybe someone else will rise to defeat Heidi. There was no chance of that with the innocents. They lived or died based on the decision you made, there and then.
The wind whistled through the trees. Neither animal nor human shifted or moved within earshot. Trey was alone.
In a more extensive woods, Trey had stood with his siblings above the bleeding Mercury, who he had stabbed. By putting a knife in Mercury, he had made a decision. Murder this innocent woman and possibly save his father, rather than let her live and guarantee his father’s death.
His father had been vile, evil, despicable. Yet, Trey had killed an innocent to save the man. Surely it should be easy to choose the world over an innocent when he had already proven he could choose an abuser over the same?
The ritual had decapitated Carl, Trey’s brother. Beth, his sister, had survived half an hour longer, then died.
Even after this, Trey had chosen to partake in the murder of two further innocents. This time his decision had been even worse. He had picked himself over the deceased, though given everything he had done, their right to life was far greater than his.
If he could choose himself and his father over innocents, Why would he struggle to choose the world?
At the edge of the trees, Trey stopped. Sliding to the ground, he leaned against an oak and stared across the countryside. What appeared to be infinite stretches of fields drenched in darkness and moonlight. On such a quiet night, in a place like this, one could almost believe the world was empty, that they were alone.
Sometimes Trey thought he might be better off alone.
The cool breeze whipped at his clothes. Trey thought of his mother. Tall, beautiful, powerful. A mysterious figure in his youth, so little time had he spent with her. He had believed she was the bravest woman in the world.
That she had given her life to accept Heidi into her soul proved she was a coward.
If she could be afraid when she seemed to fear nothing, could he not go the opposite direction? Cast off his fear and do what needed to be done.
As a young boy, Trey had feared not only being a coward but becoming like his father and siblings. Cruel, twisted. Was that his destiny, curtesy of genetics? After he performed the bravest act of his life and sided with Amira and Mercury against Heidi the first time she had tried to raise her master, he had promised he would never again kill an innocent. He would fight to roll his apple as far as possible from his family tree.
But was that not selfish? Could he condemn the world to make himself feel better about his soul? Would any deity accept him into the great beyond if he saved one innocent but indirectly allowed seven billion to suffer and die?
He thought of Amira, thought of Spock.
The
needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
Their next meeting with Heidi would be their last. The final confrontation would be brutal. Trey did not expect to survive.
It was time to decide.
Rising, he assessed his faults. It did not seem it would be possible to overcome both his cowardice and potential for wickedness.
To defeat Heidi, he might have to let some innocents die.
It was better to perish a cruel man who had saved billions than to die a kind man who had failed the world.
This was not a freeing conclusion to draw. It did not make Trey feel good, but, perhaps, it was not supposed to. What mattered was not how it made him feel, but if it was right.
And it was right.
He had promised he would stop Heidi or die trying. That was a promise he intended to keep.
He wound his way back through the trees, taking his time, hoping when he returned, he would discover Amira and Mercury arm in arm, the best of buddies. He always felt excluded, on the outside when it was the three of them, but he did not deserve to be their friend. Was lucky enough to be their ally.
Through the last trees, he came, stepping into the clearing to find Amira lying on her back, staring at the starless sky. When Trey arrived, she sat up but did not stand. In the clearing, she was alone.
He asked, “Mercury gone for a walk?”
Shaking her head, “Mercury’s gone for good.”
As Trey gaped, Amira stood, came to him with a grim smile, and squeezed his shoulder.
“I hope you’re ready,” she said. “This war just got a whole lot harder.”
Thirteen
Sam did not see her brother as she led Liam into the night, away from the bar. She knew he would be around. Knew that he would have seen her and would be preparing.
Benny had been a wayward child. Often sent home from school, Sam remembered arguments between her brother and her parents about his behaviour. After mum and dad had died, he had stepped up for her but had struggled to hold down a job. There had been numerous brushes with the law—visits from unsavoury characters. Benny paid for almost everything in cash.