Mayhem

by Michael MolisanI

  He was too stunned to be angry.

  Margaret wished that Geraldine would do it now. Draw a sidearm, and just take the man out of his misery. I’m lying to myself, Margaret realized a second later as her own hand began to tremble, I simply don’t want to kill him.

  “Manticore Actual,” Margaret turned away from the mud, reflecting dreams of ashen cloud and dull light back to the heavens. Geraldine thumped on the chest microphone, “All 2nd Ahmy Captains, yuh’ ordered to stand down. Repeat, repeat, repeat. All 2nd Ahmy Captains, yuh’ ordered to stand down. Roll it up, we’yuh headin’ home.”

  “Ramona got to you.” Alexander said for no one’s benefit.

  Val turned her horse first, pulling away from her cousin and Margaret.

  Geraldine turned away from the Antecedent Emperor, favoring Margaret with a smile, her shoulders squared back, “Be good, little Mayy. See yuh’ in the funny pages.”

  Why are the pages funny?

  Geraldine gave Margaret a wink but did not favor Alexander’s eyes again. It was as if he’d simply ceased to exist in her world.

  Margaret’s brother didn’t turn to watch them leave. His eyes were falling to the wet road, just as hers had, and she wondered if this was a behavior he’d learned from her, or she’d learned from him. It surprised her to think that a time had existed where they’d been so close.

  “We still have Mayy,” Amy said, her voice as broken as before, head swiveling at the chin each time she bumped a syllable.

  “No,” Alexander looked up from the mud, facing Margaret, his eyes narrow and jaw clenched as Lady Manticore and her cousin road toward their 2nd Army. “I don’t think we have Mayy, either.”

  There were a hundred things Margaret wanted to tell him, each one wrapped up like a bundle of kindling, bursting into flame. Her muscles ached, her mouth was parched, despite soaked armor. She wanted to yell at him, berate him for all the times he’d denied her a surname, all the times he’d mocked her, ridiculed her, or laughed at her. For the first time in his life, Alexander was watching Margaret as an equal and that might have been the kindest gift he could give.

  “Do you want to enjoy the rain for a few moments, Alex?” Margaret said, her voice soft.

  To the end, Alexander fought, just as he had his whole life.

  “Name your price, Mayy. Name it, name anything, and it's yours. I’ll accept you as a Lopez, grant you land, grant you power, grant you anything.”

  Margaret blinked, unable to reply. She could recall when he was too young to take on Maggi’s worst habits, when he had been a baby, and then a toddler with mischievous eyes and a daring grin. His hair was slicked down, just as it was now, promising her things he couldn’t even understand the value of.

  “Emperor Lopez,” Lord Owens shouted, separating from the other commanders, his horse lifting spindly and muscled legs as he approached. All the pride he’d been denied these last few years was released in the rain like a new kind of flood, “Stand down your army, or the independent House Owens will defend themselves.”

  “What would Maggi say?” Alexander’s mouth fell open, “You’re an Owens witch now?”

  Margaret’s expression changed and she could feel her fingers and toes again.

  A hundred more replies swept up through her mind, just as dry and brittle as the last batch of kindling. Her left hand lifted, halfway between her pommel and the pistol under her breasts. It would be so easy just now, to thumb the weapon free, draw, and shoot. There’d be no more words, no more fake goodbyes, and certainly no more moments left where Alexander could pretend he still held authority.

  “I don’t care what she’d say,” Margaret shrugged, “she’s dead.”

  I’ve missed you, and I will always miss you.

  She wanted, more than anything at this very second, to be afraid. She wanted to fear her brother’s death, fear the way her heart would split, fear the agony of his loss, but it couldn’t be summoned. The weapon she’d forged of her mind since she was a child was nothing more than cold steel at the pulse of her nerves now.

  I’m sorry, Margaret considered saying, but that was a lie. She wasn’t sorry.

  You don’t deserve this, she thought next, but she didn’t care. She didn’t deserve to be set on fire, she didn’t deserve to lose her arm, or wear fish skin on her face, but it didn’t take those things away.

  I wish things had turned out differently. That was also a lie. Townsend, the Bay Area Reach, all of this was something that she craved. A belonging that she’d never found with Maggi or Alexander, regardless of whatever love she felt for them.

  In this, Margaret found the words that she wanted to speak, here at the end.

  “Thank you,” Margaret said, “for being my brother.”

  It was now that she realized, they’d both simply accompanied her through this life. They’d never been her family, and she’d always been foolish in her attempts to make them so.

  I don’t need to belong.

  “Thank you?”

  Alexander Lopez asked, eyes dark and hard against the rain, turning from Lord Owens. He never saw Margaret’s left hand move up another few inches and thumb the snap on her pistol, nor did he see her draw, fingers clutching grip.

  All he saw was the shadowed interior of a 9mm barrel leveled at his face.

  The next few minutes were a blur for Margaret. She had no time to feel anything, only to act and react. The first round from her pistol penetrated her brother’s left eye, snapping his head back, causing his body to shift on the horse. She squeezed the trigger again, allowing her arm to shift up by a millimeter, and placing the second bullet in his forehead, just above the brow. Both impacts caused a sputter of thick crimson, spit up from an infant, no longer able to hold breast milk. The caliber was too small to shatter her brother’s skull, or pull apart the flesh of his face. There was a stark moment, frozen, for just half a second when he still sat upright on the horse, fighting until his final breath. Remaining eye focused on some distant horizon, that only the dead could see.

  Alexander’s horse reared up, kicking back the body of Margaret’s brother, losing it from the saddle, ankles caught in stirrups. There was no time for Margaret to calm the animal, it bolted for its life, hammering metal shoes into the soft road, fleeing the unknown.

  Alexander’s body was drug under the animal’s haunches.

  Amy screamed next. Something vile and bloody churning up from her throat, the projection of agony so foreign and strange to Margaret’s senses that she barely recognized it as human. It bent and pressed at the air, startled her horse first, then Eric Owens’ mount. The very rain that pelted them seemed to consider flight.

  With 9mm still drawn, Margaret’s eyes were wide, mind open, aware, as everything around her began to fall into a whirlpool.

  “Why?” Amy’s cry bellowed, the syllable drawing out, hands clutching her face, clawing at the skin, ripping loose membrane, but no blood would wash free.

  “All Captains, hold! All Captains, hold!”

  If Amy’s howling was acidic and loathsome, Townsend’s voice pouring through Margaret’s headphones made her feel like she was asphyxiating in molasses.

  “Kill her Mayy! That’s a goddamn order!” Eric hammered in a bellow, fighting his horse, gesturing wildly toward Amy.

  “Why?” Amy demanded again.

  Her fingers pulling at the skin around her mouth, bloody spittle running down her chin, the very vibration of her voice was driving Margaret’s mustang mad, the animal actively trying to break free of Margaret’s control, pulling so hard that Margaret fell forward for a moment without a second hand to keep her balance.

  From the direction of the 1st Army line, one of the big Antecedent guns fired. The whine of a shell cutting through the rain and wind met Margaret’s ears before the thump of ejaculation, chasing a wump of impact, one-hundred meters away.

  Margaret took a shot on Amihan Lopez, but the first round went wide. She was easily twice the distance that Alexander had been, and Marga
ret’s left hand was not dominant. The second round found her throat, punching through Amy’s windpipe and out the back of her neck, silencing the grinding revulsion of her cries, and calming the horses for a moment.

  “Movement, five-by-eight. Enemy forces are moving! Repeat, enemy is moving.” Margaret couldn’t recognize the voice in her ear, metallic noise pressed like a beetle looking to burrow inside her skull.

  “Confirm, 1st Army is advancing.” A second voice cut in, a calculated squawk that made her head turn, watching Townsend’s response. Lord Owens struggled to stay upright, Meyer was retreating, and Townsend had clutched his headsets to better understand whatever channels had come across.

  “Boss!” In all the chaos, Margaret had lost sight of Badger. He was now on her left side, voice projected in a cry above the radio traffic that filled Margaret’s mind, “We need to go! We need to go now!”

  Two more shrill songs played across the sky, a siren of thunder, trapped in a cage between thump and wump. These explosions were much closer, pelting the road in chunks of wet soil and stone. The air smelled like sulfur and petrichor, humidity braying at Margaret’s sinuses and lips.

  It was then that she caught a glimpse to her right, away from Badger, and realized that Amihan Lopez hadn’t toppled from her horse. Instead she stood stiff on the animal, onyx cruor fell across her pauldron and plate carrier, her lips spread and teeth smeared with glistening black.

  Badger saw Margaret’s eyes shift away, back to Amy’s horse. He couldn’t help but sneer against his own scars, watching, and refusing to believe.

  Amihan was still alive.

  Throat perforated, her arms were lifting, fingers jittering like a spider’s legs before they realized they were dead. The air was curling up around her wrists. This wasn’t the simmering blur of heat under a fire eater’s command. It was as if clear pustules bobbed and popped the world inside out. The very core of this energy made Margaret’s eyes ache, a savage tugging at the back of her sockets, where nerves were tethered. Margaret’s stomach turned, and beyond her control, clear liquid was summoned up and out of her throat, running down her lips, warm against the rain, splattering on her saddle and crotch.

  “You need to leave Badger,” Margaret coughed, her chin quivering, “I’m not going anywhere until this bitch is finally dead.”

  1:28pm April 15th, 39 Veilfall

  Manteca Reach, California

  Pistol still drawn, Margaret held it level and unloaded the remaining rounds in her magazine on Amihan Lopez. It was a total of thirteen shots, each jerk of her trigger finger, each hammer strike on the primer, tossing back the slide, muzzle flash as clear as the sun.

  Not every shot hit, but she watched as they split open Amy’s plate carrier fabric, exploded chainmail, and blistered her right arm. Two bullets hit the other witch in the face, one shearing open her cheek, shattering teeth in a mist of enamel, another cleanly taking her ear off.

  Amy didn’t move, her body didn’t shift, or pry away from the saddle. She simply leaned in with eyes that had turned the color of dirty paint thinner. Thick fluid fell out of her mouth, chunky, full of broken teeth, dragging her uvula and tonsils as if her entire mouth had turned to a ragged, frothing soup.

  You should be dead, Margaret raged past the bile that burned her gums, you should be dead! In impotent anger she even tossed the 9mm at Amy, slide locked back.

  Somewhere in that rage, Margaret’s mount finally freed herself, mind rendered aloft, falling prey to panic, a feeling Margaret had never known from an animal in her entire life.

  Because, Margaret realized, the mustang’s hide and skin were melting off.

  The animal reared up on two legs, kicking back at Amihan, clawing with hooves, as cherry and tan meat curled and fell to the ground with a surfeiting slap and flop. Muscles fell free like burned rope, loose and greasy, bubbling in ruby smears. The bit fell from her mare’s mouth, then armor at her haunches, leather and steel along her neck, all of it falling to saturated earth. Ligament and cartilage, even the poor creature’s eyeballs, melted and ran down cherry hide, exposing bone stained a deep ecru and sour crimson.

  It had been only seconds and the animal smelled like it had been left to putrefy in the Nevada sun for days. Caught in shock and tangled in the last bastions of a dying animal’s terror, all Margaret could do was lean forward and exhibit some kind of control on the beast. Some part of the mustang was still alive in her last moments, wild and pleading, listening to Margaret’s retching command.

  Get me close to the bitch and I’ll avenge you.

  The dying beast launched herself into stride, covering long yards between both witches, as it swole over itself on a wave of rolling gore. Her intestines fell from underbelly, along with her stomach, half-digested alfalfa and carrots withered up in a blend of rank feces and stale urine to press the animal in a sliding gush. Her bones began to snap under their weight, under Margaret’s weight, disintegrating in a rain of slender shards.

  It wasn’t a majestic assault on Amihan, and when she struck the ground, the horse’s fracturing skull was driven into the abdomen of her armored corset. She was close enough to grab Amy’s left leg with one arm, craning downward, pulling Amy off to one side, unbalancing her mount.

  “All allied Captains, advance! Weapons free! Weapons free!”

  Townsend’s voice was kissing at her ears, even as he shouted orders. His voice level, smooth, as though he was pouring coffee with care, to avoid a splatter or spill.

  Margaret pressed her mind close to that voice as she rolled back, her knee sliding out from under her as a flood of bubbling intestines and shit slid under, knocking Margaret to the mud, the back of her helmet grinding small stones.

  She was staring up at Amihan’s horse, its limp penis flapping as it tried to back away, to free itself of this gelatinous nightmare.

  “Vanguard-five and ten! Tick-tick-tick! Tick-tick-tick!”

  Troops in contact, Margaret thought, a 3rd Army Captain shouting into her headphones, just as Amy’s horse shifted up and stomped a metal shoe down a few inches from Margaret’s helmet. The splatter of mud and rot hit her in the face and she could feel Amy jerking at the horse’s right shoulder to push him forward.

  The horse turned, pulling Amy away from Margaret’s groping hands, as she attempted to claw out from under the animal. It was too late, and she felt an impact at the back of her helmet. One of the animal’s hooves landed square against her head, driving helmet to mud. The front of Margaret’s chin strap broke, and her radio gave a final crackle before headphones were torn out.

  I’m going to be trampled by a horse, Margaret thought, gasping at the rotting carnage and sludge under her, remembering Saint Louis.

  Blind, Margaret could only hear something like a shrieking upchuck from Amihan’s direction, followed by howling from the air above.

  Thump-wump, thump-wump, two shells hit.

  So close, that Margaret could feel a wash of heat and change in pressure.

  It felt like physics had been switched off, the gods hammering an emergency stop button, and Margaret was weightless as the world was suddenly upside down.

  For a moment Margaret could see flame, then the sky, then the horizon, followed by the sky again. The world had no weight or frame of reference. Even Amy’s horse was caught in this strange swimming lesson through summer air that dried her lips and kissed her eyelids shut.

  It's not summer, Margaret thought, just before she hit the ground.

  1:34pm April 15th, 39 Veilfall

  Manteca Reach, California

  Margaret hadn’t been fully knocked out by the impact, but her head swam loose and free just like contents of her mustang’s stomach.

  The sky was once again up, coating her face in cool nips and nibbles of rain. The world was free of sound, and a long-pitched whine was digging into her skull like a pack of earwigs intent on tunneling through her brain.

  This is fine, Margaret decided, this is all fine.

  Pulling herself u
p, she appraised her body. Her one arm was working, bones and joints moving as they were meant to. The same could be said for her legs. Her helmet was long gone, but if she was wounded, it wasn’t anything that would kill her.

  The rain had accelerated, now falling at a sustained rate across the mud below. She couldn’t orient herself, and she was no longer sure where the 3rd Army lines were. As she rolled into a kneel, Margaret realized Amy’s horse was still alive, jerking wildly with broken legs bent and bobbed at obtuse angles. The younger woman was under the animal and struggling to get free, silt and rocks tossed in all directions.

  Stumbling up to her feet, Margaret tripped once and almost fell, planting her bare toes on the wet earth, grinding in her heels, and trying to reorient herself beyond the spiral that seemed to pull her down.

  My neck hurts, she thought, so does my head.

  She reached into the surviving horse’s mind and clamped down on all its fear and panic. She couldn’t take away the animal’s pain, couldn’t heal the wounds, she could only whisper a lullaby and convince the great beast that it’d be okay.

  Margaret fell forward, over the animal’s stomach, gashes and cuts exposed bright claret along his hide. It didn’t smell of boiling rot, not the decay of a creature left to die, slagging off skin and hobbling bones. No, it smelled like blood, and the rain smelled of ozone. In this violence Margaret found something familiar to grasp onto, something to make her forget the last few minutes.

  Margaret was face to face with Amy Lopez. Her throat was a pool of black wine, thick, and gurgling with bubbles that snapped and popped. Her jaw flopped wildly, eyes wild enough to pause Margaret. They weren’t the dim, matte milk from earlier, these were eyes of little Amihan, the angry girl who’d rallied against bedtime, vegetables, and all the terrible injustices of childhood. Amihan was there, somewhere, in this twisted body that refused death.