Endless Night

by Warren Hately

  Kvelda went to her father without any opposition. Maya and the other women watched with a mix of expressions, not all of them good. Maya turned her gaze at Day’s approach and nodded coolly.

  “This is Kvelda’s father,” Day explained.

  She and Fox were in close conference, not up to the task of mediation.

  “He’s come through a lot to find her. He came to the farm on purpose.”

  “That’s dedication,” a black woman in the group said.

  Day realised that all the women apart from Maya were newcomers. There was even one he wasn’t sure was a woman, but he refrained from peering closely.

  “You helped him?” Maya asked.

  “I did.”

  Maya nodded and said nothing else. Day looked around.

  “What happened to Hilda?”

  Maya closed her eyes once and shook her head slightly. Her voice rose a pitch in height, not volume. “Vampires,” she said. “She was bleeding already.”

  Day nodded slowly. “Sorry to hear it.”

  Maya ignored the comment, looking expectantly at Kvelda. As if on cue, the girl broke from her frantic discussion and, holding Fox’s hand in one of her own, turned back to the other women. Her normally pretty face was aghast with tears and emotion. Day couldn’t help a tired smile, wondering if in all the horror of the camps, this reunion was the closest thing to a miracle. Yet he couldn’t be sure it would make her happy. Dragging a loved one into your nightmare couldn’t ever be a pleasant thing.

  “This is my father, Fox. That’s Maya, dad, the one who’s been looking after us all.”

  Fox nodded humbly to the tall woman, but Day couldn’t help reading a hint of worry in the older man’s gesture. Maya hardly reacted.

  “Going, are you?”

  “I’m –” In confusion, Kvelda looked back at her father.

  Fox put his hands either side of Kvelda’s shoulders. “My daughter’s coming with me. I’ll look after her now. You have my thanks.”

  Maya stepped a pace forward. “Got somewhere to go, have you?”

  “I didn’t come here just to sympathise,” Fox said, daring to sneer at his own humour.

  Maya’s tone was matriarchal and precise. “So you do have a plan for getting out of here?” She sounded more like she needed to be sure than to know the actual details of whatever Fox had planned.

  Fox finally caught the gravitas in the woman’s voice. He lowered his silvered brow and did his best discouraging scowl.

  “That’s for Kvelda and me to talk about.”

  Maya shook her head slowly. Her long dark hair swayed like a veil. Very slowly, her eyes flicked from Fox to Day and then to Kvelda.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a loud voice. “If you’ve got a way out of here we want to know what it is.”

  Maya gestured and the majority of her group sprang alert again and fanned out. The moment Maya took a step forward they began closing in.

  “Maya!” Kvelda’s voice almost broke with surprise. “What do you mean?”

  “You know it’s my job to protect the group, Kvel. It’s why I’m here, to guide. If there’s a chance to get some of the group out of here, I have to take it.”

  “But what about . . . what about all the things you’ve said?” Kvelda’s tears resumed. “You said you would always watch over me.”

  “You left the group.”

  Kvelda’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. Perhaps wisely, Fox drew his knife and glanced sideways at Day, reaffirming their agreement at yet another crucial point.

  Day scowled and flexed his cold fingers. None of the women circling the father-daughter pair had positioned themselves to deal with him. Perhaps they just thought he was a spectator or a clever but disinterested observer. Although he didn’t like the thought of crossing Maya – more out of a desire not to betray the principles he once held rather than any fear of her he held himself – he also knew his own future lay with choosing sides.

  “Just hold them,” Maya said. “We’ll need to search the man.”

  Day spat in annoyance. The moment the women started moving he blurred, drawing twin knives and stabbing into the closest woman eight or nine times. She was half-turned away from him and took the wounds unguarded along her side and in her neck. She flattened herself to the ground with a whimper, wounds hissing.

  Maya’s eyes widened at the violence, though already Fox was fighting as if for his life against the four women who had pounced on him. Another one easily grappled Kvelda to the ground and held her there, the young woman seemingly unable or unwilling to take a stand where her loyalties were tied, though perhaps she was simply too stunned to move.

  Seeing Day, Maya called again. “Forget care. Don’t let yourselves be hurt. They must have something.”

  Maya and the black woman turned on Day. He wouldn’t let himself be intimidated. Once he had admired the women asserting themselves against the violence of the male world around them. It was good for them to be unchastened by their sex and feel like they too could be a force, even a threat. But Day was too seasoned by the farm to think anything but quick and brutal action would work and he moved forward like a streak, slashing backhanded and causing a line of redness to open across the black woman’s forehead. She fell away with a startled noise, one hand clapped to her face. He followed, punching the blade into her chest and following with the other one until she toppled back, limbs twirling, Maya coming forward desperately, but physically unable to intervene in time.

  Day scurried back several yards and said, “Your women aren’t warriors, Maya.”

  “I’ll have to show them how it’s done,” she said.

  She had a length of fabric in her hand, the end filled with something hard. She swung it in slow deadly circles and moved closer.

  “I never wanted to be the enemy to you,” Day said solemnly.

  “Yet here you are.”

  “No,” Day said forcefully. He felt the real need not to let himself be misunderstood, especially if he killed her now and she took a false understanding with her to the next life. “It’s not like that.”

  Maya swung the heavy sap, stepping into its wake.

  “You’re choosing to fight,” Day said.

  Maya reversed the sap suddenly and Day had to arch backwards out of its reach. The woman kicked the side of his knee and he fell flat on his back. He rolled out from under the crushing blow a moment later, hearing what sounded like rocks in the fabric cracking against the dirt.

  He jumped up, but yet again, he was only dancing, inches away from another swinging blow. He slashed backhandedly and caught Maya across the forearm. She countered by jabbing a punch with her unoccupied left, but Day’s body-senses telegraphed the move and he swerved out of the way.

  From there, once Maya had committed herself, it was an easy thing to end the fight with vicious slaughter. He stepped sideways and behind her, falling into the woman’s wake, yet at the last moment he hesitated to plunge the knife into Maya’s lower back. She snapped around like a viper, swinging the prehensile club before even realising Day had effectively granted a reprieve. Day moved back and shame as well as fear stilled her a moment as she watched him.

  The young man flicked his eyes sideways. Another woman was holding her throat and twisting in agony on the ground. The other three were piled on top of Fox, keeping him pinned. Two of the women were bleeding freely from cuts to their arms and hands.

  “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  “Try as I might, I can’t see it any differently,” Maya said.

  She took a step forward again, making a visible show of readying her improvised weapon and thus demanding Day do the same. He briefly wondered if she’d suffered for competing so long on men’s terms. Her actions bespoke a certain kind of resolution: one that usually came with fatalism attached.

  “I can,” Day said. “I can see you just telling your women to get off Fox and leave Kvelda unharmed. Otherwise I’m going to kill you; and then if I have to, I’ll kill
all of them as well.” Day shook his head, sweating sincerity. “I’m not boasting. It’s what I’ll have to do. We are getting out of here. You’ll just have to learn to live with it.”

  Maya looked at him a moment and, as if she needed assurance it was safe, she then looked across at the desperate figures of the women straddling Fox. Beneath them the old warrior wasn’t even unconscious. He was breathing heavily and seemingly willing to lay and wait while Day cleared the path for him.

  Maya dropped her eyes. “How are you getting out?”

  “I don’t know,” Day said. “He hasn’t told me yet.”

  Maya grunted, unable even to be mollified by this small confession. She drew several paces back and looped her sap around her broad waist and then motioned to the surviving women.

  “Alright. We lost this fight. I’m sorry. Annicka and Reve died for nothing.” Although she was clearly saddened – if not completely devastated –by the truth, Maya let none of it show in her voice. “How is Rebecca?”

  The squat middle-aged woman who had restrained Kvelda was now kneeling beside the woman Fox had quite clearly killed. She looked up at Maya with a trembling face the colour of scrambled eggs.

  “She’s . . . Becca’s dead, honey. This bastard punched her in the throat, broke her pipes.”

  Maya closed her eyes briefly and Day almost felt embarrassed at how badly things had gone wrong. It went to show – unnecessarily, and for the millionth time – that death shot through even the simplest negotiations when human beings were reduced to such a pitiful state.

  Fox got awkwardly to his feet and all but dragged Kvelda backwards away from them. Day drew near and, goggle eyed, Fox said, “Good piece of thinking there.”

  “Just remember the deal,” Day said in prayer-like tones.

  Wide-eyed, Kvelda looked at Day closely. Clearly her facial muscles had been through a kaleidoscopic array of expressions already that afternoon and couldn’t handle any more. She merely stuttered, “God, it’s you?” and broke into a teary laugh and covered her mouth and nose with one hand. Day recognised hysterics when he saw them and thankfully so did Fox. Kvelda’s father began whispering reassuringly to her while withdrawing and leaving Day to cover their retreat.

  Day locked eyes briefly with Maya, but the tall woman shook her head in irritation and, perhaps, also in surrender to her costly failure. It hung heavily on her. Day could do no more.

  He trudged behind the father and daughter a fair while. The afternoon darkened, seas of black-sailed ships seemingly churning through the sky en masse. While Day thought about possible shelter and his next meal and, curiously, what feelings Kvelda might have for him after all this, Fox continued to exchange whispered words with his daughter in efforts to both explain himself and calm her.

  Eventually, Day tired of being a pedestrian and stalked forward, the wind cosseting him, and he took Fox by the shoulder.

  “We need to get into shelter. Rain’s coming.”

  After he had spoken he found himself in the reality of being less than a yard away from Kvelda’s glowing face, now scrubbed free of the distress that had earlier marked it. The girl watched him unblinkingly with her wide blue eyes, fawn-like in both curiosity and innocence. It occurred to Day for the first time that perhaps she was unhinged. It was hard to credit anyone going through the farm and being such a babe in the world, yet in her it was palpable. He averted his gaze like she was some kind of medusa of the soul, Fox watching him with a craggy expression.

  “Where are we meant to shelter?”

  Day wrapped his arms in his shaggy coat and looked elsewhere. Two hundred paces away a group of people were stretching sheets and tarpaulins out.

  “Let’s try them.”

  “First place you see mightn’t be the best,” Fox said, the doubt plain in his voice.

  Day paused long enough to look further. Sure enough, there were more groups in the distance frantically trying to organise themselves. Not many had any timber or poles or struts with which to build the shelters. They made humped tents by draping themselves and each other with the coverings instead.

  As he looked, large raindrops started spattering around them.

  “I’m cold, papa,” Kvelda said.

  “Day. . . .”

  “Alright,” Day said. He snapped his hand up and started forward.

  He led them towards the first group. A man with a hatchet and a burst of thick dark beard was coordinating efforts, a skinny old man stripped to the waist and a handsome but heavyset woman lashing club-length pieces of wood together to make a timber frame. Perhaps another eight or nine people swarmed around them, busy as bees.

  “Do you need help?” Day said from a distance of about forty yards.

  The man looked at Day with a granite gaze. His teeth were discoloured and slimy when he gave a sarcastic smile.

  “Help? That’s a good one. What can you offer apart from taking up space?”

  “We don’t have any shelter. No coverings at all. I can keep your hut safe at night though,” Day said.

  “Can you?” The man squinted at him a moment and then twisted around. “We already got the best protection we could buy. Mikhail? Where are you?”

  The name almost didn’t register. Day looked around impatiently and suddenly saw the ugly but agile figure of the boxer step over a box of stuff on the ground and push past a pregnant woman with a sallow face to glare hideously at Day. Mikhail’s teeth weren’t as bad as the man with the axe, but they were still distinctive, his greasy black hair cut short at front but long and stringy at the back. He’d acquired a long grey coat with silvery buttons and tattered tails since Day had seen him last.

  Mikhail didn’t say anything to give his knowledge away. The man with the hatchet ran a hand along his bristles and watched Day shrewdly. His eyes flicked across to Mikhail and he gave a slight nod.

  Mikhail peeled back the flap of his coat to reveal a holster made of fur. A matte black pistol grip protruded from the self-made thing, the darkness of the casing seeming to glow invisibly with danger. A leer spread itself across Mikhail’s face as he moved his hand. For the first time in a long while, Day felt faint with surprise and the fear accompanying it. However, as Mikhail started to draw the gun, the other man stilled him with a word.

  “Still think you’re much use to us?” the hatchet-man asked.

  Day felt Fox and Kvelda’s presences behind him like hot needles in his back, but he knew which way survival lay.

  “No I suppose not. Sorry for troubling you.”

  He glanced behind as if to say “follow me straight away,” and then he made good on his words, lowering his shoulders like a submissive dog and slinking off to the left. Mikhail’s leer turned into a look of outright disgust, but something about the other man made him obey the command not to draw the gun. Day was glad. He was reassured by the sense of his companions sticking close behind.

  “What was going on there?” Fox asked. “That’s not like you.”

  “Glad you think so,” Day said. “His name’s Mikhail, the one with the gun. A chopper crashed here some weeks back. The ghouls lost their guns before the vampires sent a clean-up crew.”

  “You knew that guy already, though.”

  “Yes. We’d . . . crossed paths already,” Day said.

  “Good one to stay away from, I bet,” Fox said.

  Kvelda said, “It’s raining.”

  True enough, the rain started coming thick and fast. Day peeled his coat off and passed it to the girl. She gave one hesitant look but then slipped into it. Fox grunted his approval and looked around. They were behind Mikhail’s organised little group now and a few other huddles of shelter were visible but slowly receding amid the grey curtains of falling wetness.

  “Hoi, there, you!” a man’s voice called.

  They turned to see a small figure standing at the flap of a tall-masted tent. The shape suggested the occupants had a single pole and not much else. A motley of different materials was sewn together, most but not all
of it water resistant.

  Fox led them towards the man. Perhaps Fox thought Day’s luck had gone. When they were within twenty yards, Fox nodded his head to indicate he was ready to hear what the stocky character was offering.

  “No need to spend a night out in the cold. Not for her, anyway.”

  “What’s on offer?”

  “You can have a corner for tonight if you leave the girl to us.”

  Day looked sideways. Fox’s expression didn’t change.

  “How many of you?” he asked.

  “Six men,” the short man said. He was heavily bearded and wore spectacles. His voice seemed to vibrate through the downpour.

  “Don’t you have any women of your own?” Fox asked.

  At his side Kvelda clutched Fox’s shoulder, whispering his name in fear. “Papa?”

  “The woman for the night’s all we’re asking,” the rotund man said.

  Fox nodded and started moving. “I tell you what. . . .” He drew the knife at his belt in an instant and brought it up backhanded, the blade sweeping across the bearded man’s face.

  “I’ll get dry and think about it.”

  The man shrieked at his slashed face. Fox’s boot took him in the belly and then the knife punched into his chest with a sickening percussive sound. Day drew both his knives, not even thinking he was about to be a party to murder. He knew where his loyalty lay as well as whose company offered the best survival prospects.

  He forced his way ahead of Fox, knowing the interior of the tent would be gloomy and that the bearded man would have other men poised inside eagerly listening, if not watching to see whether his audacious trade went well. Fox would be blind for at least an instant, exposing a weak chink in the defence of their triad.