by Scott Hale
Atticus and the Deadly Beauties bounded through the doorway, leaving the cacophony outside for the chaos within. The study they entered was egg-shaped. The room held one desk with a chair, all iron-maiden-like. There were bookshelves bolted into the ceiling, far out of reach and long since emptied. Glancing down, Atticus spotted a window in the distressed floor. Behind it, a precious specimen lay crumpled and stiff: a pair of women’s underwear dyed in menstrual red.
Warren shouldered past his people, slammed the door shut, and threw the desk in front of it. “No one’s stabbing me in the back.”
Something hit the ground hard on the floor above and rained dust down on their heads. Elizabeth said, “Let’s get going, yeah?” and then shut up quick as the door they needed to go through slammed back.
Three soldiers ran into the room and stopped, surprised to find the Cabal there.
They drew their swords at about the same time they drew their last breaths, give or take a few seconds. Elizabeth punched one in the face and pulled him down on her sword, sending it out his back. Atticus vaulted across the room and, with the machete he’d brought, split open a soldier’s gut and spilt his innards. The last man tried to escape, but he slipped on the steaming intestines. Atticus crawled over his body, grunting as the soldier tried to kick him off, and broke his face open.
“Hell, I like your spirit,” Warren said.
“Thanks,” he said, tightening Bon’s glove on his right hand.
He stopped feeling so sore about being separated from Gary and James. It was better this way. He felt less responsible for their wellbeing, and they probably felt the same about his.
“If we’re quiet, we should miss most of the action,” Jessie said. She slipped past Atticus and leaned out the doorway. “It’s clear.”
“There’s more going on here,” Atticus remarked, machete in one hand, sword in the other. “This is an assault, not just a rescue.”
“Well, we’ve been gathering information and planning for about two months now.” Warren looked at Miranda and Elizabeth; they went to the doorway and joined Jessie there. “Now’s not the time, Gravedigger.”
“Hex waited two months to get her brother back?” Atticus persisted. “Does she even got a brother?”
“Three months, really,” Warren said, holding up three fingers. “She delayed some to bring you along. But brother? I’ve met a man named Ichor who said he was her brother. They were at each other’s necks. Literally. Teeth and knives and all that jazz.”
“You reckon she’s here for other reasons?”
“I reckon she is. Hex is a person of ulterior motives. We all are, in our own ways.”
Soldiers ran through the hall outside the study.
“Does it matter, Gravedigger? You’re using her, after all, to find your family. Just like she’s using you to sweeten the pot, to make sure the mission is completed.”
It doesn’t matter, Atticus heard Clementine whisper in his ear. You’re so close. You’ve come so far. Nothing stands between us now, other than the remains of those that would try.
“Hey, dead man,” Elizabeth said, “you first.”
Miranda nodded and, with her, the Deadly Beauties parted. “Earn your place,” she said, as though she resented his presence here. “Earn your myth.”
Though he thought myth was a stretch, Atticus let it go and took the lead. The hallway outside the room was narrow and split into three different directions. The walls themselves were the color of rust. They stretched into the attic, so that the ceiling here was the roof itself. Prison bars had been installed into the walls on the second floor. More soldiers, apparently not looking down, hurried past them.
Atticus put his finger to his lips. Some of the blood from the soldier he had crushed had stuck there. The taste of him made his tongue curl. He waved Warren and the Deadly Beauties forward, shrinking into himself as they passed. Even now, after everything, it didn’t sit right with Atticus to be taking orders. He’d sworn off letting others run his life long ago. It was too easy a role for him to slip into, the simple servant, dutiful and dangerous; Poe had known that, and had milked it for all it was worth.
Warren went to where the hallway branched, closed his eyes, and chose the leftmost path. “This should cut through the center of the house, to the sleeping quarters. If we’re quick, we’ll cross paths with Francis and Hex.”
“Could be a lot of soldiers still there,” Atticus said.
He heard a tapping. The shepherd was on the second floor, staring at him through the prison bars. Shit, shit, shit. The team was too focused on the hallways in front of them to notice it.
“Front of the line, Gravedigger,” Miranda said, not letting him off the hook. She smiled when she said it; probably could tell she was pissing him off.
Atticus looked back at the second floor, but the shepherd was gone. It won’t try nothing here, he thought. It can’t with them around. If it comes down here, I’ll have them kill it.
“You got a name, Gravedigger?” Miranda asked.
“Gravedigger is fine,” he said, going down the hallway.
He expected Warren to put a stop to the Beauties’ behavior, but he didn’t seem to care, and, really, Atticus couldn’t blame him. If he met someone claiming immortality, he’d put them to the test, too.
“Got a good ring to it, yeah?” Elizabeth said, taking out the piercing in her lip and slipping it into a pocket. “Real broody. People will like that.”
The team worked their way through the winding hallway. They couldn’t take more than a few steps before it would abruptly change directions. Screams and clashing steel pierced Atticus’ ears, the sounds being more amplified here. He had a sour taste in his mouth, and his stomach felt sick. But it would be over soon, and he hoped it wouldn’t take long to put this—Eldrus, the Membrane, the vermillion veins—all behind him. He could do that if he needed to, suppress and deny. He’d gotten good at it. He would have died a long time ago if he hadn’t.
The hallway split into three more corridors. They took the one that went past a small chapel. Peeking inside, Atticus found an altar bathed in candlelight, with a skull on a bundle of vermillion veins atop it. Cracked stained-glass windows hovered over the cramped spot, imposing their forgotten deities onto this offering.
“What… please… don’t.”
Atticus stopped, doubled back. At the end of the chapel, in the last pew, a young soldier sat, bawling.
“Please,” he blathered on, coming shakily to his feet. He dropped the sword he held. “Please, I’m sorry. We… we stayed in this house too long. It changed us. I don’t know anything.”
Miranda sighed, handed Warren her sword. She raised her bow, nocked an arrow, and shot the soldier in the neck. Blood spurted out across the altar, across the face of the crucifix behind it. The young soldier fell to the ground, disappearing into the dark there. They didn’t bother to check his pulse.
The sleeping quarters made about as much sense as their plan to slip through them. Chain-bound beds, twenty in all, dangled from the ceiling. There were doors, too, in the floor and the walls, some of which were ajar, most of which went nowhere. Garish stone slabs shot out of the ground, the blood on their edges a testament to their sharpness.
“I don’t see any signs anyone slept here,” Atticus whispered.
“Can you blame them?” Warren and the Deadly Beauties parted and scoured the quarters. “We didn’t tell you the story of this place.”
“Didn’t care enough to ask.” Atticus opened a door in the floor, but there was only dirt behind it.
“Not much for details, are you, yeah?” Elizabeth tapped one of the beds. “They’re upside down. Bedposts, see, flipped around.”
“Gravedigger strikes me as a thoughtful man,” Warren said, as though Atticus weren’t there. “Single-minded, but thoughtful.”
Atticus’ arms went taut. “Do you have a problem with my being here?” He imagined what damage he could do with them, the sword, and the machete.
&nb
sp; Warren smiled. “The old man, Francisco, said it happened long before the Trauma, back in the days when they kept slaves.”
Miranda interrupted. “We don’t have time for this.”
Warren nodded, shrugged. “Might be relevant. Why don’t you scout ahead, sourpuss?”
Miranda gave him the middle finger and marched to the end of the room.
Warren laughed. “I should be harder on the Cabal, but I’m just too damn nice.”
“You’re buying time,” Atticus said, realizing how much the man had been stalling lately.
“Hush now,” he said, giggling like a schoolgirl. “But, yes, yes I have. I don’t have to pay if the person’s dead. The more we stall, the more that fall. The Cabal isn’t the securest of jobs, right, Jessie?”
Jessie clicked her tongue and pretended to hang herself with a noose. “Right, boss.”
“Most of the men you saw were hired-on. We four and Francis are the backbone of this operation. Maybe you’d like to join us?” He waved off the offer. “Anyways, the story, Gravedigger. The Carpenters went into business with a family from a distant country. Can’t remember why. Can’t make heads or tails of that nonsense. The Ashcroft family, that was their name.
“So the old man I told you about, Francisco, he said the Ashcrofts sent two people to the plantation. Ruth and her uncle, Amon. He showed me the records. It’s kind of amazing what’s survived over the years.”
“We’re good to move,” Miranda said.
Warren winked and sent Elizabeth and Jessie to her. He shouldered up next to Atticus and walked with him to the end of the sleeping quarters.
“The Carpenters did well, but somewhere along the line, the father of the family, Abel, lost his mind. He became obsessed with Ruth Ashcroft, and then, and Francisco couldn’t ever figure out why, he turned on her. Amon left at some point, but it seems like Ruth may have stayed.
“Abel became convinced there was something wrong with the house, and that the girl had put it there. But he didn’t leave, man. No, sir. He stayed and remodeled everything. Francisco said Abel was at it for years, tearing the place apart.”
“A man needs a hobby,” Atticus said. His eyes darted back and forth, following a sound somewhere ahead.
“He stayed with the house, because he was trying to stop whatever was inside from getting out. Clearly, the poor soul was insane. You and I both know there’s better ways to handle things like that. But not Abel, no sir. He lived here until he died, constantly building and repairing, turning this plantation into an unsolvable maze, to keep the thing from leaving.”
“You thinking Eldrus found what Abel was trying to hide?” Atticus didn’t need to ask. He knew this was exactly what Warren was getting at.
“I’m thinking that, if he wasn’t as crazy as a shithouse rat, then, yeah. Whatever he was hiding, it was either too cruel to just kill him, or too simple to just leave. Yeah, I’m thinking Eldrus found something and they’ve conscripted it to their cause.”
“The vermillion veins,” Elizabeth said, raising an eyebrow.
“My Deadly Smarties.” Warren shook his head, too pleased with himself to stop smiling. “All right, people. Break’s done. Let’s get to kill—”
An Eldrus soldier ran screaming into the room and cut Jessie’s head in half. The top of her skull spun off, slinging a spiral of blood over her wide-eyed sisters. As her body hit the ground, they could hear, and then see more soldiers—five, no. Ten… twelve. Fuck!—burst into the sleeping quarters.
“Jessie!” Elizabeth lunged for her corpse.
Miranda grabbed her and dragged her back to Atticus and Warren.
“You mother fuckers,” Warren bellowed.
Atticus’ neck twitched with every squirt of blood that spurted out of the girl’s bisected head. Her severed brain slid out. A soldier crushed it under his heel and smeared everything she had ever been across the floor.
The soldiers didn’t speak, just swarmed. Atticus and the others broke apart, forcing the wave of men to do the same. Three soldiers converged, each taking a turn slashing at him. The sword shook in his hand as he deflected their blows. He couldn’t hold it much longer, not without his other hand. So he swung his machete and let it loose mid-swing, catching the red-headed soldier in the thick of his thigh.
The man stumbled back, went to one knee. Atticus hoped for a break in their attacks, but the other soldiers continued unabated. Their swords sang and shivered. Atticus ducked, gasped as he felt the wall at his back, the wall they’d been pressing him toward.
“Fuck!” he said, all teeth and spit.
Elbows bent, he didn’t have enough room to do much with his sword. He shimmied down the wall, bounced off it, and crashed into one of the suspended beds. A hot, wet pain slithered through his gut. Looking down, he saw a sword there, bleeding him like a stuck pig. The soldier holding it grinned, his eyes lost in the dark that circled them.
Somewhere, someone shouted Atticus’ name. He stumbled, the tug of a current at his ankles, at his knees. The sleeping quarters flickered and pounded. Something swelled and popped like a balloon. Another sword, the other soldier’s, the bearded one, in Atticus’ side, through his lung. He wheezed, fell forward, sending the blades in deeper, severing tendons, splitting muscle. He heard a throbbing, a thumping. A cracking like a crook beating at the door of his soul.
Atticus died for a moment, and lived again. He reared up, ripped himself free. Like a man possessed, he shrieked and flailed, drenching the redhead he’d thrown the machete at in hot cruor. He ripped the machete out of the soldier’s thigh, whipped around, and chopped off the dark-eyed soldier’s hand at the wrist.
The bearded soldier stabbed Atticus again, through his stomach. As he twisted the sword in deeper, Atticus hacked at his bearded face, cutting off his nose and lips, until the soldier finally stopped and fell to the floor to die, disfigured.
“You piece of shit,” the dark-eyed soldier cried.
Stump in his arm pit, he slashed with his bad hand at Atticus’ chest. The sword grazed his breastplate, but got his attention. When the man came back for a second strike, Atticus knocked his sword aside and rammed both his weapons into the dark-eyed soldier’s gut. He stood there for a moment, churning the soldier’s stomach with steel, and breathed in the coppery smell of death. It was his now, the life in the man’s chest, and he’d keep it forever.
Atticus kicked the man into the corner and turned around. Warren, Miranda, and Elizabeth grunted and yelled as they traded blows with the six soldiers still standing.
“Gravedigger,” Warren called, taking a soldier’s arm and breaking it. He moaned as another soldier snuck up and cracked his head with the hilt of his sword.
Miranda backpedaled, went to her knees, and fired at Warren’s bludgeoner. The arrow ripped through his eye socket and killed him quick.
Elizabeth shouted, “Watch out,” but Miranda was too slow. A stocky soldier from behind ran his sword into her shoulder. She shrieked, her neck stretched to the point of snapping. Tears in her eyes, she feebly pawed at the blade, unable to reach it.
A feral beast, Atticus bounded to them. Elizabeth saw him coming and fought her way toward him. She repelled one soldier, riposted the other. Grabbing one of the suspended beds, she pulled it back and let it rip, causing it to smack into the stocky soldier that had Miranda impaled.
“Get up,” Elizabeth said, air catching in her throat as she sidestepped a soldier’s thrust. “Get up,” she begged Miranda, who stood there unmoving, alive, but paralyzed with pain.
Atticus stumbled. His ankle bent until it sprained. His eyes fluttered. The Membrane kept getting in them, like stinging drops of rain. He saw it on the wall, in the ceiling, its fleshy pillars and piles of trash. He slashed at a soldier and fell short, his torn lung doing him no favors.
Atticus crashed to his knees and died again. He saw Pulsa diNura on the dried lakebed, same as it was and would probably ever be.
“Clementine,” he shouted, but before his wor
ds could be heard, he was in the sleeping quarters again. He was coming back quicker now. His resistance to death growing stronger every time his heart stopped.
A soldier fell in front of him. She writhed on the ground. Looking up from the blood-soaked, corpse-clogged floor, Atticus watched Elizabeth and Warren close in on the last three soldiers.
A greedy thought clotted up his mind: I need more.
Atticus started to crawl over the corpses, towards the three, no, two soldiers still standing. One, a captain by the bulkiness of her armor, caught him out the corner of her eye. She turned.
Before she could make her move, Atticus stabbed the machete through her shoe. He then pulled it out and pushed her down and, grabbing onto her leg, heaved himself onto her.
She went for a dagger, but he grabbed her wrist and used that to propel himself forward. Her face, so panicked and red, and cheeks, tear-streaked and quivering… He had to have it. He had to eat it.
CHAPTER XVI
“That’ll do for now,” Clementine said, caressing his face.
She smelled so good, but where was she? Not here, not beneath him; that was the captain, still struggling so sweetly. In her eyes, maybe.
Atticus put his forearm to her throat and pulled back her lids. In the pupils, perhaps, mingling with her soul, coming through from the Membrane. She wasn’t there, but she was near. Somewhere below, in the basement, with Will. But no, not here, not in this distraction.
“I’m sorry,” he said, ashamed of what he’d become. He took the dagger she’d been reaching for and slit her throat. “I’m sorry.”
Warren’s trembling arms wrapped around Atticus and pulled him to his feet. Though he couldn’t see them, he could hear what sounded like hundreds of mosquitoes congregating over the corpses, laying claim to what was now their new, bloody mecca. It made him think of Mr. Haemo and all the favors he’d have to do to get the giant insect to perform the ritual one last time.
“Jessie,” Atticus said, the girl’s body bringing him out of his thoughts.
He looked at Warren, who held him from behind, and Elizabeth, who had just put down the last soldier. He lingered on Miranda. She was moving now, but not much, and she kept touching her left arm, which had gone limp and rubbery.