Ashtown Burials

by N. D. Wilson

  “There will be no Brendan!” Dr. Phoenix yelled. “No Order, no ranks, no charade of self-importance! Only master and mastered, Mr. Rhodes. I will build a new race, a species apart and above the filth of humanity. Ashtown will be a womb, and you shall be a nursery maid.”

  The twins followed Dr. Phoenix down the hall and past the boat. The other men trailed behind, some glancing at Cecil, some smiling, some smirking, some hanging their heads.

  A minute later, Cecil Rhodes stood alone. He looked back down the hall at the large door still open onto the courtyard, the door leading away from Ashtown, away from what he’d done. Rain spattered on the stone steps, and he could see a porter’s feet. Dragonflies darted past the entrance.

  Turning away, he ran after Phoenix, rushing past hundreds of damning eyes staring out of photos, past sprawling bodies bearing witness to his crime.

  One of the bodies jumped to her feet and kicked him in the stomach.

  Breathless, he crumpled to the floor and slid into the wall. His eyes filled with tears, and as he blinked them away, he found himself looking up the barrel of a revolver and into the face of Diana Boone.

  The hammer clicked back.

  Over her shoulder, the Smith boy appeared. He was holding a small African club.

  “God knows I should,” Diana said. Her voice was low. A growl. “But I can’t waste the bullet.”

  The boy stepped forward and raised his club. The blow fell.

  Cyrus looked down at the limp, unconscious lawyer. Diana was already scanning the hallway.

  “That’s one,” she whispered. “Your sister? Jax? Dennis?”

  Cyrus shouldered his club and looked into the Quick Water. His heart was racing. “All down,” he said softly. “They saw them coming.”

  “Good. Watch our backs.”

  Diana jogged down the hallway toward the big, open front door and a porter’s feet, pulling out the small corked bottle Jax had given her as she did.

  Looking over his shoulder, Cyrus ran behind, keys jingling against his chest.

  The two of them stepped out into the wet wind and flipped the small porter onto his back. Cyrus opened the boy’s mouth and lifted his tongue. Diana squeezed two drips off her dropper, and they rolled the boy back onto his face.

  Straightening, Diana squinted out into the dark courtyard. “See anyone?”

  “Over there,” Cyrus said, pointing. “On the path. Two people.”

  Side by side, they stutter-stepped down the slick stairs, reached the gravel path, and jogged through the stinging rain.

  “It’s Rupe!” Diana yelled, and she moved into a sprint.

  The big man’s head and shoulders were off the path, his face in the grass. He was wearing a rain cape, but the hood had fallen back. In one hand, he held a short shotgun. His other fist was clenched around foil-wrapped chicken. A dragonfly screen flickered in the grass. The boy, Oliver, was lying facedown in the gravel.

  Antigone’s cheek was pressed into the red carpet. She’d put a large man’s foot on her head to disguise herself, but there hadn’t been much need. The place was strewn with bodies. Young, old, men, women, children, monks. Under tables, on tables, tangled up in tablecloths, buried beneath food, shattered china, and the limbs of dining partners.

  So many people and so much silence. Each breath felt like a sneeze in church. The Quick Water had worked. She’d seen the horrible man coming with his people, and she’d shoved Dennis down and whispered at Jax. He hadn’t stopped. Not at first. Not until the doors had moved and the two green men had stepped aside for the monster in the bright white suit beneath the soiled lab coat. She stopped her breath and felt her heart quicken.

  The cloak. She hoped Nolan was right.

  A small crowd had entered behind Phoenix. Don’t look closely, she thought. Don’t, don’t, don’t.

  The bodies closest to the kitchen were all facedown. The bodies closest to the kitchen were all foaming at the mouth.

  The monster in the white coat moved farther into the room, prodding the unconscious dying, grinning from ear to ear.

  Suddenly, he stopped and closed his eyes, lifting his face and raising his arms.

  “Children of Brendan,” he said, falsely somber, “I pardon thee whatever sins thou hast committed—”

  He stopped, interrupted by a cough. Lowering his long arms, he squinted around the room. Nolan’s voice descended from the ceiling.

  “ ‘My name is Edwin Harry Laughlin.’ ” Lilting, mocking. “ ‘I am sixteen years old and a recent Acolyte in the Order of Brendan, Ashtown. My father’s name is Harry Hamilton Laughlin. My mother’s name was Pansy. She died two years ago, after one of my father’s experiments.’ ”

  Phoenix’s face purpled, and then paled quickly as he collected himself. “It seems we have a wit in the room,” he drawled. “Do show yourself now. Or how can I know in which direction to applaud?”

  Antigone bit her lip, watching Phoenix’s men swivel and search. And then the two identical green men slid forward, creeping smoothly across the bodies like stalking wolves. Their nostrils were flared, and their eyes were on one of the heat vents just beneath the beamed ceiling.

  “Shoot him,” Phoenix said.

  The men drew guns, and a pair of fireballs corkscrewed toward the vent, exploding in the grate.

  “Idiots!” Phoenix groaned. “I would prefer if you didn’t burn the place. Bullets! Use bullets. And your heads.”

  The men tucked away their weapons and drew new ones—long-barreled revolvers. The beveled grate bent and puckered as they fired, and the smell of sulfur and gunpowder drifted through the room.

  Antigone jerked at each report, but no one was watching. She could see Dennis breathing hard. Jax was inching forward, his jar tucked beneath his arm, dropper in hand. Antigone wanted to yell at him to stop moving. The men were right there. If any of them so much as glanced down, he’d be killed.

  The firing stopped. All eyes were on the ruined grate. The silence was brief.

  “ ‘My mother,’ ” Nolan said, “ ‘was the sort of sweet, empty-headed thing great men like my father can find themselves burdened with. There were even moments when I loved her. But I hate her Gypsy blood. I hate that it is in me. I want it out. I will get it out. My father tried, and he came close. I will succeed. At least, there are times when I think I will. I dream that I will. But my waking hours are spent in pain. My legs. My mind. Too many blood purifications. Too much electricity. I cannot sleep without nightmares, and when I wake, my bed is swamped with sweat.’ ”

  Dr. Phoenix was a statue, his face bloodless. His eyes unfocused. “You, sir …,” he began, but his voice trailed away. His jaw clenched, pulsing. His chest heaved. He was panting now, rolling his head, clenching his fists. Antigone tensed and slid a little farther away. Nolan had wanted Phoenix angry, but why that would make him take off his coat, she didn’t understand.

  And then, suddenly, the thin man with the black hair raised quivering hands to his shoulders. He tore off the stained white coat and threw it on the ground. His suit coat followed. Antigone blinked. The man’s hair was whitening. His nostrils flared, and his shoulders thickened, broadening. Huge hands balled into hairy melon fists. His legs thickened, shortening and bowing out.

  Snarling, Phoenix—Mr. Ashes—leapt forward, scrambling over bodies, jerking the guns from his sons’ hands.

  A gun fired, but not his. Flame flashed out of the vent, and Dr. Phoenix—Mr. Ashes—dropped to his knees. One of the twins fell. The other reached the wall. The firing shifted toward the door, into the crowd.

  Yelping, leaving one of their own behind on the floor, the men flooded back into the hall.

  Antigone saw Jax pinch two drops into the next mouth, roll over the body quickly, and wriggle on.

  Dennis raised his head nervously and then scooched himself forward.

  The coat was on the ground. Antigone puffed out her cheeks. It was her turn.

  Antigone tucked her little bottle into her jacket pocket. She ha
d a gun in the other, but guns were everywhere. Sliding slowly over a drooling monk, still gripping her Quick Water, she braced herself and prepared to run.

  Phoenix rose to his feet, and his back rippled beneath his shirt as he looked up at the vent. Dropping his guns, he splayed and flexed huge fingers. His voice was molasses-thick and just as slow. “I’m not that easy to kill, friend.”

  “You and me both,” said the voice of Nolan. “But the green one there looks hurt.”

  Phoenix moved like a gorilla, knuckling off the ground as he rushed toward the wall beneath the vent. Behind him, one of the wounded twins struggled to his feet. The other stepped out of his way.

  Phoenix leapt at the wall and two wrecking-ball fists crashed through the plaster. Leaving his arms in the holes, he pulled himself up off the floor. One fist at a time, he punched grips in the plaster as he climbed.

  Antigone’s eyes locked on the rumpled white coat. She should have gone already. What was she waiting for? Jax was nodding at her. Dennis, peering through bodies, widened his eyes meaningfully. She had to be fast. Faster than she had ever been in her life.

  One of the bodies near the kitchen door moaned loudly, coming to. Another one rolled onto its side. A third struggled to sit up. She’d waited too long. Phoenix’s men were peering back in from the hall.

  “Go!” Dennis yelled. “Run!”

  Antigone scrambled to her feet. Three men jumped forward through the door. Nolan’s gun cracked again and they jumped back. Both twins turned.

  Antigone’s knees were bouncing high. Running through the bodies was like running through Cyrus’s pool of tires—tripping, slipping, bouncing off backs, stepping on wrists. Her eyes searched for empty spots of floor and bounced back up to the coat. Jax was high-stepping toward the kitchen. Dennis lagged behind him.

  The twins were hesitating, picking their prey from among three runners. The coat was rumpled on the floor halfway between Antigone and the worried crowd in the doorway. Thirty feet. Fifteen.

  She heard Phoenix crash back off the wall behind her. Nolan was firing again, trying to cover her.

  Antigone slid across a tangle of teenage limbs in white shirts and snatched the coat. Turning toward the kitchen door, she ran like a dog in drifted snow, leaping bodies, popcorning up and down wherever her feet could find the floor. She was the only real target now. She was racing two bleeding green men with golden eyes.

  The coat flapped behind her like a flag.

  Guns were cracking all around. A bullet ripped through her short hair, and a pair of fireballs swirled over her head and exploded on the wall. Phoenix was roaring. Nolan was yelling. Jax and Dennis were shouting over their shoulders. They reached the door and burst through in front of her.

  One of the lean twins was faster than the other. He dove, snagging her ankle.

  Twisting at top speed, she fell backward through the kitchen door, slammed onto the floor, and slid headfirst into the island of still-flaming burners.

  The kitchen was all stench and burnt food and groaning bodies. Gunner was sitting up with his head in his hands. Jax was sweeping pots off the burners and shouting something. Dennis had tripped over little Hillary Drake and tumbled beneath a table.

  Antigone jumped to her feet, dropped her Quick Water on the floor, and jerked her small revolver from her pocket. Closing her eyes tight, she pointed at the door, looked away, and squeezed three times, feeling the gun bark and jump.

  Jax had already cleared the pots and turned up the flames. Antigone threw Phoenix’s coat across the flickering burners.

  A yell as primal as pain itself rose up in the dining hall.

  The door flew off its hinges, and the twins entered. Behind them, bellowing in agony, white-haired Edwin Harry Ashes leapt into the room. His right arm was on fire.

  Ignoring Antigone, he grabbed the edge of the island and swung up and over it, knocked his coat to the floor, and stamped out its flames.

  Jax raised a gun, but Ashes sent him sprawling with the back of his charred and smoking arm. He leapfrogged back over the island easily, crashing to the ground in front of Antigone, staring into her eyes with black rage.

  Stammering, stunned, she tried to raise her gun. His left hand closed around Antigone’s throat. Bullets hit the floor.

  Her breath was gone. She kicked and clawed and punched. She gasped, her ears ringing as she watched the twins throw Dennis back to the ground. Her vision blurred. The ceiling and walls disappeared.

  And then there was nothing. Not whiteness, not blackness—nothing. And she became part of it. Almost. She slipped to an invisible floor.

  Things were exploding. More guns. More fire. She didn’t like guns. And she wished Cyrus would stop yelling. She was trying to sleep.

  Breathing hard, dripping, Cyrus and Diana ran back up the front steps.

  “What now?” Cyrus whispered.

  “Time for the plane.”

  “Do we go all the way around?”

  Diana shook her head. “Too long.”

  A few of Phoenix’s men were visible down the hallway, peering through a door. Cecil Rhodes was still motionless, a huge knot over his temple. Cyrus hoped he hadn’t hit him too hard.

  Gunfire.

  “What’s going on?” Diana glanced down at Cyrus’s hand. He held up the Quick Water.

  “Shooting at Nolan’s vent.”

  Diana nodded. “We have to hurry.” She slid quickly inside and hung close to the wall, the enormous reptile skin above her.

  Cyrus had ditched his club next to Greeves. Now he held the little shotgun in his right hand, the Quick Water in his left. He’d wanted the revolver. Diana didn’t care what he wanted. She could hit something with a revolver. Anyone could hit something with a shotgun.

  The crowd suddenly flooded back into the hallway as Diana and Cyrus ducked around the corner. Diana jogged down the side hallway and around another corner. She forced a door open and slipped inside. The Africa collection. Cyrus hurried in behind her and shut the door.

  “Di?” The room was a black hole.

  “Over here,” Diana said. “Keep well to your left and come straight on.”

  Something large and breathing bumped into the back of Cyrus’s legs. Yelling, he staggered forward and fell. Teeth clacked together.

  Air rushed through the room. Teeth didn’t clack. They ground and snapped. In the darkness in front of Cyrus, the gold outlines around Sir Roger’s eyes began to glow. The skull was on its ear, rocking in place, trying to bite.

  Cyrus kicked it hard, skidding it back into the darkness.

  The lights flashed on. Frightened, confused, Diana stood at the switch, looking from Cyrus to the big skull.

  “I have the Dragon’s Tooth,” Cyrus said. “Sterling wasn’t lying. I have the tooth that killed Roger.”

  “What?” Diana blinked. “You’re serious?” She shook her head. “Don’t tell me. We don’t have time. Get up and come on.”

  They ran across the room to a small door set between shelves. Diana opened it, and they stepped into old brooms and mops and buckets.

  “Shared closet,” she said, and kicked open another door, shattering a brittle jamb.

  The next room was lit. Card catalog cabinets taller than houses lined the walls. Flights of spiral stairs on wheels dotted the room. Across from each other, two middle-aged women were facedown on the same desk, a plate of food and a scattered game of chess between them.

  “Keepers’ Catalog Room,” Diana said. “Tough job. Every item and collective holding of the Order is listed in here.”

  Cyrus set his shotgun and Quick Water on the desk, pinched cheeks and lifted tongues. After the drops, the women’s faces went back onto the chessboard.

  Diana rushed off to another door.

  They crossed a hall, went downstairs into a machinist’s shop, upstairs through an old coal-chute door, and out into the rain.

  Turning his back to the wind, Cyrus checked his Quick Water again.

  Diana was running down the
hill.

  “Trouble!” Cyrus yelled. “Di!”

  She didn’t hear him, and he didn’t care. Antigone was running in his palm. Cyrus raced alongside the building, dodging window wells and columns. He could see the kitchen’s garbage stoop, and he passed beneath the lit wall of windows. He could hear the yelling.

  Climbing the stairs on the garbage stoop, Cyrus pulled back the hammers on his shotgun and put his shoulder into the door, forcing his way into mayhem.

  A woozy Gunner was on his feet. Jax was down. Dennis was down. Two tall green men stood above them, their eyes on Nolan, bleeding and blackened, as he emerged from a heat tunnel. The kitchen door was off its hinges, and on the other side, dozens of people were trying to lever themselves off the red dining hall carpet.

  Cyrus ignored all of it.

  A man with gorilla hands was strangling his sister.

  “Drop her!” Cyrus yelled.

  Snarling, the man threw Antigone to the floor and faced Cyrus. “Smith!” he said, stepping forward. “I drained your father’s blood. Your brother and mother. And this”—he kicked at Antigone’s crumpled body—“your wretched sister. And you. All of you will die.”

  Cyrus’s gun had two triggers, side by side. He pointed at the man’s broad chest and pulled both of them.

  Mr. Ashes rolled backward with the blast, and then rose to his feet.

  “Right,” said Cyrus. “You’re one of those.”

  He dropped the gun and reached for his neck. His fist closed around the keys. Pulling them free of Patricia, he clenched the tooth between his knuckles.

  Ready, he raised his fist.

  The angry ape of a man froze, and then smiled. His anger drained away, and while the mayhem in the kitchen rumbled on, he picked up his white coat. The right sleeve had burned away up to the elbow.

  “Come on!” Cyrus said. “Come fight! Are you scared now?”

  As the coat slipped over the man’s shoulders, Cyrus watched him change. The veins and creases in his face smoothed. His arctic hair blackened.

  He thinned, his body stretching, lengthening.

  Dr. Phoenix stepped forward. “Boy,” he said. “Your mind is as open to me as was your pitiful brother’s, as was your unfortunate mother’s. It is as open to me as the sky to the bird, as the sea to the shark. I’m afraid that I must be quite insistent. Give me the tooth and those keys.”