The Emperor

by N. M. Brown

  “You are no King!” Flick answered, moving into a battle stance. “You no leader! Never we follow you again.”

  Weapons were raised on both sides and Echo’s gut went cold. Knives were held out at the ready. Sticks and staffs as tall as McQueen were suddenly tilted. This was it, their escalated situation and stood side-by-side with McQueen, Echo suddenly wondered if this had been a bad, rash idea.

  “Is this going where I think it’s going?” McQueen asked, his feet also taking tiny steps backwards.

  “The ultimate clash of a rebel alliance attacking their mad king in a fruitless hope to end his tyranny and overthrow him, all the while hoping not to kill the innocent in the process, but by all means, happy to kill them anyway?” Echo asked in a quick, rushed breath. “Yes. Yes, I think that’s exactly where this is going.”

  Flick and his masses stepped forward, armed and ready, while Shade’s overwhelming crowd of followers shook with an animalistic excitement. All it needed was the catalyst; the spark that would burn this Hell to the core of the Earth in blood and brimstone.

  “Never?” Shades voice rang out, amused. “Never will you follow me again?” The King laughed, but it was a slow deadly laugh. It was a laugh of a man on the edge, about to lose everything and nothing at the same time. It was the laugh of a boy who had seen centuries fly past him; seen cities rise and cities fall. It was the laugh of a boy who could and would, start from the ground up again, happy to pay with blood. “Never is an awfully long time.”

  Shades words were like a pistol at a race and every child moved, their feet slapping the compact ground as battle cries screamed around the room. Faces grinning wildly, they were a collective battalion of hungry, blood thirsty savages.

  Echo stumbled back. McQueen stumbled back. Screams of anger turned into screams of pain as blood spurted. It was chaos and madness shoved inside a small shoe box and then shaken. Echo kept moving backwards finding to her relief that the chilly air of an exit tunnel was in their grasp.

  With a clumsy reach, she grabbed for McQueen, ignoring the splatter of warm blood that hit her face as she pulled at him, ready to run, ready to fly from this Hell, but found resistance.

  “No.” McQueen cried, pulling back as his eyes stayed glued the carnage. “No. No. Stop, they have to stop killing each other.” He begged but no one could hear him. No one wanted to.

  “We’ve got to go Queenie!” She yelled at him, pulling harder.

  “We can’t leave them.” McQueen argued, but even his body didn’t agree with his words as he moved away from blood that splattered at his feet. Some of the fighting had spilled over, their short walk to the exit now blocked by one or two skirmishes. McQueen tried to stop and help, pulling apart the fighters. “Stop.” He yelled, but the thanks he got was two blunt rocks bashed against his arms until he let go. Free, they were right back to it.

  “Canice!” Echo screamed, battering away a pointed stick, but cried out in pain as a rock flew through the crowd and hit her shoulder. “Canice please? We have to go now.”

  Face ashen and tears streaming down his face, McQueen looked torn down to his very core, but in that very next moment, they got their dose of reality.

  A deafening battle scream snapped both their heads up and across the battlefield, stood on his throne was Shade holding aloft a severed head. Fresh blood dripping from its neck and Echo almost vomited as she saw the death scream of Flick, his face a mask of pain.

  Shade took a breath and Echo's skin went cold as he screamed an order one last time over his victorious battlefield. "Kill the Elders! Kill them all!”

  Echo ran and didn’t look back.

  XXXII

  McQueen wanted to throw up. He wanted to vomit again and again until he could expel his memories, expel his guilt and expel all that he had seen.

  The vision of that severed head still bobbed in his mind causing all the air leave his lungs like a fist to his gut. The smell of copper blood as it had hit the dusty floor left his skin in an ice cold sweat, while the battle cries of the innocent still rang in his ears. They had all killed each other for nothing. Death and blood, murder and survival all for one boy’s belief in a make-believe Kingdom.

  McQueen really wanted to vomit. But he couldn’t. His breath came out in short, sharp puffs as he ran behind Echo, her long, mattered hair but an inch in front of him. He couldn’t lose her down her, - if he did, he’d never find his way out - so he stuck close to her every movement. Turn after turn, she flew down tunnel after tunnel, her feet not pausing once. Together they ran until their lungs burned and their teeth ached. Only went black dots clouded McQueen’s vision did he demand they stop.

  The adrenaline they'd hoarded was wearing off and in just a few steps, they both staggered against the wall for support. Glancing this way at that, they'd come to a stop in some dull candlelight, the flame still flickering gently.

  "Do you know where we’re going?” He asked, huffing as much as she was.

  "Yes." Echo hissed through a ragged breath before forcing her legs to move. “I found a likely exit when exploring, before you fucked us over five-ways to Sunday.” McQueen bit his tongue and didn’t argue.

  There was a time and a place and right now, he just wanted to get out of here alive. Echo pointed to a mark high in the wall; a cross made from white chalk.

  “We need to follow these. There’s an exit near here.” She explained and McQueen almost kissed the wall. He really did fear they could have ended up anywhere, heading in any direction across the wild countrysid.

  “I can’t… Those kids… I can’t even.” McQueen whispered, feeling the need to talk; to understand that he wasn’t alone in seeing the horrors that had just occurred. “This place… I should have listened. I should have stayed away from Wapping Woods.”

  McQueen let out a humourless laugh and he felt the madness creeping in. If he’d just dropped that damn cold case, things would have never gotten this bad. If he’d not poured over every case, he’d wouldn’t have had it committed to memory and he’d wouldn’t have recognized Wendell. If he’d stayed away, Mitch and Johnny would have gone missing, likely never found, but that was the truth of so many cases. Not knowing what happened to them would be a blessing and McQueen couldn’t even begin to think what he might tell the Bell family about their sons.

  “It would have happened anyway.” A soft voice came from Echo, and drawing himself out of his depressive spiral, McQueen watched the back of her head as she diligently looked for the next cross on the wall. “You would have never let that cold-case go. You’d have never left a body unidentified. One way or another you would have ended up down here.” She answered. “You might have gone and come back with a swat team and saved everyone. You might have found the Under-ert and left, coming back to find it all gone and empty.” With a silence pause, Echo seemed to contemplate her words before letting or a sad, small confession. “You can’t change what you did in the past Queenie, any more than you can predict the future.”

  “Do you think we could have actually saved anyone? Didn’t we ever stand a chance?”

  “No.” Echo snapped, leaving no room for question. “They are all addicted to Dixie before we arrived, and they’ll still be addicted when we left. There is nothing we could have done different.”

  McQueen couldn’t deny what she was saying wasn’t true. These kids… they weren’t kids and they weren’t saveable. The fact didn’t hurt any less though. He was about to say more, when she suddenly wrapped a dirty hand around his mouth and froze.

  They'd just past another junction, and their candles had diminished to one every few feet. It was dark and damp, with not a soul I sight. Yet, quickly Echo dragged them to the side, ducking into a pitch-blackhole and staying just out of reach of the candles glow. An invisible clocked ticked by and with every second, McQueen felt the tension in his body rise, but when nothing happened Echo relaxed. "I thought I heard-..." She whispered, but McQueen suddenly stopped her.

  Whatever she’d heard, he hadn't
, but he trusted her judgment and as she'd drawn breath to speak again, he did hear it. The tell-tale sound of stones moving over stones in silent foot falls. No sooner as he'd clamped a hand over her mouth, three boys - no older than ten- loped by. Their eyes flickered to the darkness causing McQueen heart to skip a beat, but they quickly moved on as one. They could have been a part of a savannah pride in Africa; hunting, stalking, slowly finding their prey. Strange gurgles and grunts left their mouths and McQueen recognized the language of a cooperative pack.

  “They were hunting for us, weren't they?" He asked softly, checking they were gone.

  "Yes." Echo breathed back, keeping her eyes trained ahead for the three boys in case they back tracked. “Shade is King. His word is law and we are on the chopping block.”

  McQueen seemed to absorbed Echo's words and didn't react, safe in knowledge that they both knew they needed to get out of here.

  Following the twists and turns, Echo pointed to the narrow gap where she found the crib hole, baby bottles and all. They didn’t stop to inspect; the dark cramped crack could hide any vicious children too easily and the air of freedom was too sweet.

  Instead they prowled ahead and with silent steps and entered what McQueen could only describe as a slave’s quarter. Rotting blood and flesh filled his nose through the scent of burning and he could see with his own two eyes the squalor the Under-ert’s food was made in.

  "Uhg-... what's taht smell?" He breathed through in hand that was clamped over his mouth.

  Echo had done the same, the dirty, bloody sleve of her coat over her mouth, so her words were little more than a mubble. "Death. Its the small of death."

  Side-stepping along the edge, he was just about to open his mouth and ask Echo to hury, when she held up a hand stopped him in his tracks. As one, they froze and McQueen held his breath for good reason.

  As quiet and as stealthy as the children of the Under-ert where, they had nothing on the Murmur Maids. Like ghosts waltzing through a bookcase, two girls had appeared, softly murmuring to themselves, twisting their heads side to side, their hair flipping each time as they listened. McQueen didn’t dare breath as blackened eyes looked at him.

  The girls face was round and young, her hair a soft gold and held back by a black ribbon. The skin around her eyes were red and puffy, shiny with infections.

  They moved as one around the room, listening for a pin drop and only by luck, just as McQueen thought he’d pass out from lack of air, a clatter of rocks sounded in the distance. Heads whipping and with no concern of walls, the murmur maids ran on silent feet, leaving McQueen and Echo in a trembling state.

  “I don’t think can take this much more.” He admitted, feeling cold to the bone. “How much more pain can that phyco put these children through?” he felt his heart swell in anguish as he fought back the need to break down.

  “You’d be surprised.” Echo answered but by the time McQueen looked up to ask her what that meant, she’d already moved and McQueen could do nothing but follow. Through the darkness they stepped, away from the maids but ever vigilant for more silent threats that might come their way.

  However, whether it was luck or fate, the temperature around them began to rise, the air lost its damp, mildew taste and the echoing sound of their own foot steps diminished. Without comment, they both sped up, ready to find freedom at last.

  Ducking through the small, child size hole McQueen cheered at the sight of a perfectly cut stone walls; their first sign of civilization. He didn't even mind the putrid, decomposing smell. "We must be in a swage tunnels." McQueen mused, touching the rough brick walls covered in slime.

  "Bully for us." Echo laughed, as she looked both ways down the long sewage pipe where a rat squeaked and water rippled as the poor rodent scurried away. Eyes dancing upwards, McQueen sighed as he saw the most beautiful sight in all of creation; a perfectly round, heavy manhole cover.

  “Voilà.” Echo said in an unenthusiastic voice. “Freedom and normality await you.”

  “Us?” McQueen corrected, looking through the gloom and seeing Echo for the first time in natural light. “Normality wait for us both.”

  But Echo snorted, looking up at the sunlight with a squinted sneer. “For you, but I still have a bounty on my head don’t forget. From the depths of Hell, we might be leaving, but the Devils clutches wait for me.”

  “I forgot all about that.” McQueen answered honestly, looking at her neck. The mottled bruises had now faded to a murky yellow with her other cuts were hidden under a thick layer of dirt. “I won’t let anything happen to you Echo.”

  But she just quirked an eyebrow in disbelief. “Really? Between catching up on sleep, eating and explaining this whole charade to the police, you’re going to protect me from my family?” She scoffed.

  “Well it’s not like you can stay down here?” McQueen challenged and Echo sighed, knowing he was right.

  “Guess we’ll be spending more time together after all, Queenie.” She said. “Up, up and away.” And they began to climb the first wrung, ready for the nightmare to be over.

  ◆◆◆

  Stood leant against their work Jeep, McQueen chuckled again as he watched Echo slap away the paramedics as they buzzed around her in the back of an ambulance. Police lights flashed and there was a buz of people around him.

  McQueen had already had his check up, and minus a few shallow stab wounds, risk of sepsis and the need for a bath, he was in the all clear. Physically he was ok. Mentally… McQueen didn’t want to ask. Echo on the other hand, was being fussed over like a child which amused him greatly. As she’d climbed out of the man-hole cover, she’d stepped right into the path of an oncoming car causing the driver to swerve to a screeching stop. Though he’d come over to check she was all right, she'd given him a tongue lashing, all the while McQueen had begged for his phone.

  "So, tell me this again." Hale cleared his throat again, his eyes darting over McQueen once more as he took in the dirt, the smell and no doubt the starving look in his partners eye as he stuffed down his fifth burger. "You got the call from dispatch about Mitch Bell's abduction, we met at the school at which point I instructed you to find a trail?" McQueen nodded and whipped his face quickly of sweet-chili sauce.

  "Yes. Ms. Headly was with me as we fanned out from the school, and we quickly came to a children’s party.”

  Hale ground his teeth and narrowed his eyes as his residual anger flared up. McQueen had been told, through short, angry puffs, that Hale had been called to the children’s party not five minutes after they had fled. McQueen service weapon had been recovered and the hysterical woman arrested. She’d proclaimed insanity, saying she was just overcome with jealousy and wanted to kill the bitch who stole her husband. It was safe to say; Hale wasn’t worried about her story holding up in court.

  “And after the party you didn’t call backup for?” Hale prompted, referring to his notes. "You fled, losing your orientation and fell into a ravine in which you found… ‘a red shoe’ that belonged to Mitch Bell?” McQueen nodded, suppressing a satisfied groan as he scoffed down some salty chips. “After finding this, you entered the tunnel … not calling for back up, again.” Hale growled but let the point go.

  He’d already reprimanded McQueen enough times his ears were bleeding, but it still didn’t mean it wasn’t a stupid mistake.

  “After entering the tunnel – with no back-up - you found -..." Hale paused as if preparing himself for what he had to say, "and I quote, 'a ragged collection of children who were a part of an underground cult. This cult was led by one teenager, Shade ‘No-last-name’ and who you believe to still be at large.'."

  McQueen nodded again, hearing the distinct note of sarcasm and disbelief in Hale's voice. "Yes. The Tunnels stretch across half of Rippling, if not further. I saw at least fifty, sixty children down there, all in states of neglect, all hooked on Dixie."

  Hale huffed, but jotted down some more notes. "Right," He strung out. " And where are these children now?"