Saba struggled once more to his feet. The lizardman rolled upright as well. Saba knew that the reptile had more stamina than he did, and he would have to take advantage of its injury. He slammed down his hand with the club on top of the lizzie’s face. The lizardman grabbed him with its clawed hands, pulling him close and biting down on his neck and shoulder. Its remaining eye rolled up into its head and it was still struggling to breath. Saba hammered at the great head again and again, until finally the beast pulled back, ripping and tearing flesh as he did.
A thin mist-like cloud of blood sprayed from Saba’s neck as he fell back onto the ground. The lizardman hissed loudly and tried to feel its way across the room, either to the exit or to its enemy. For the moment, the creature still couldn’t breathe, but Saba knew this was not a permanent reprieve. He put his hand over the wound on his neck. The front of his uniform was being soaked in blood.
Then he saw it. The .30 caliber Hecken lay on the floor, near Eamon’s body, where it had fallen. Saba rushed to pick it up and pulled it to his shoulder, but it was so much heavier than it should have been. He could barely lift the end of the barrel up. Pulling the trigger, he shot the lizardman in the kneecap. It let out a loud gurgling hiss. Lifting the rifle higher, he fired again, and then again, and then again. The first two bullets exploding into the lizzie’s stomach. The third hit the wall behind, because the beast had already crashed to the floor.
Saba threw down the rifle and pressed both hands to his neck. He could feel the life flowing out of him in little spurts. The room was beginning to spin. He pulled his handkerchief from his breast pocket and pressed it to the wound. He knew that he had to keep it pressed there but he was growing weak. If he could pull up his coat collar and fasten the button, it might hold the makeshift bandage in place, but his fingers refused to do their duty and work the buttons. What little light there was in the root cellar seemed to be seeping away. Saba fell over onto his side, and he realized as consciousness left him that he was dying.
The next thing that he knew, he was lying on the grass looking up at the mists that hung in the air. He felt a jerk on his collar and his body was dragged six inches.
“What?” he said. He wanted to say more, but he just didn’t have the strength.
Someone appeared above him. It was Eamon. His face was ash white and he had a horrible gaping wound in his neck. Though there was blood all down his front, he didn’t seem to be bleeding now. But when he tried to say something to Saba, blood and saliva oozed out of both his mouth and the wound.
“What?” asked Saba again.
Eamon, on his hands and knees, grabbed hold of Saba’s collar and pulled him another few inches. It was clear that his fellow constable intended to pull him all the way to safety. How he had managed to pull him up the steps of the root cellar, Saba could only guess.
“Stop.” He felt his neck and found that his collar had been buttoned and was holding his handkerchief, now soaking wet, tight against his neck. “We both have to walk.”
Eamon tried to say something. More blood sprayed from his mouth and his neck. He shook his head.
“We can make it,” said Saba, as he struggled to get up.
He couldn’t sit, so he rolled over onto his stomach and slowly lifted himself to his hands and knees. His stomach rolled around in his belly and he vomited into the grass. When he recovered, he pushed off from the ground and got to knees. Grabbing hold of Eamon’s jacket, he pulled him up too. Then leaning against one another, the two injured men slowly climbed to their feet. Throwing an arm around Eamon’s shoulder, Saba took a single shaky step, then another. With agonizing slowness, they worked their way around the ruins of Mrs. Yembrick’s house.
They made it all around the burned foundation, and then one of Saba’s legs simply refused to accept the weight. He fell onto his face in the cold, damp grass, and Eamon fell right on top of him. With great difficulty, Saba pulled himself from beneath his friend. He rolled Eamon’s body over. Eamon was unconscious, and Saba couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not. Getting back on his hands and knees, Saba grabbed Eamon’s collar. It was now his turn to drag his friend.
Crawl. Then pull. Crawl. Then pull. Slowly he made his way across the yard. He felt a thrill when he realized that he was closer to Eamon’s home than he was to Mrs. Yembrick’s. He continued on. He refused to be weak. He refused to stop. With every crawling step he came closer to Eamon’s front door. That door became the focus of his every effort, until there seemed to be nothing else in the universe except for the three-foot by seven-foot portal. Suddenly he was there, and he threw his body against the door with a thud.
Dropping to the single wooden step, Saba didn’t hear the door open, but he did hear Dot scream. It was a horrible, frightened scream that he drowsily thought was totally out of character for her. Then the world began to spin again, and even before he hit the ground, everything went black.
* * * * *
The clock on the nightstand read 6:57 and without thinking about it, Yuah picked it up and wound it. It only went half a turn, because she had wound it the night before.
“Come back to bed,” said Terrence.
“I have to get Augie. He’s fussing.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Mother’s ears.”
She opened the bedroom door and walked down the short hallway to the nursery, pausing to look down over the balcony to the foyer below. Tisson was standing just to the left of the front door, looking out the window. She continued her way to the nursery. Augie was indeed fussing. Picking him up from his crib, she carried the little boy, still only half awake, back to her bedroom.
“You want me to take him?” Terrence slid his legs off the side of the bed and stood up stretching.
“Of course not.” Pacing back and forth, she stopped in front of the window that faced the backyard.
Whiffs of fog hung above the ground partially obscuring the outbuildings, children’s play equipment, and unplanted gardens in the back yard. It was at the same time a peaceful and melancholy image. Suddenly a dozen figures ran across the yard toward the left side of the house. They moved quickly, but there was no mistaking them for humans. They were lizardmen and they were carrying rifles.
“What the hell?” said Yuah.
Terrence stood up and placed a hand on her shoulder, and then he too looked out the window.
“Kafira,” he said.
He quickly knelt down and pulled a box out from under the bed. Opening it, he withdrew twin .45 caliber revolvers. He quickly walked out of the bedroom and to the balcony. His wife followed him, their baby still in her arms. They looked down toward the front door. Tisson had his hand on the front doorknob.
“Don’t open it!” Terrence shouted, but it was too late.
Tisson pulled the door open to reveal Dr. Kelloran standing just outside. She took half a step inside and then was shoved from behind. She fell onto her face, a lizardman sword stuck into her back. Her murderer followed her through the portal. A second invading lizardman shot Tisson in the face with his rifle. Within the space of a second, five intruders had entered the foyer and half a dozen more were right behind them.
Terrence raised the pistol in his right hand and shot four times. Each bullet found the head of a lizardman and all four crumpled to the floor. Two others raised their rifles and fired upward at the balcony. Yuah spun around to shield Augie with her body. Terrence fired twice more. One of the rifle-bearing reptiles dropped to the ground, but the last bullet missed its target. Terrence tossed his pistol to the ground and transferred its twin from his left hand to his right. He fired twice more, killing the other beast. Two more lizardmen took their place and began shooting upwards, while four more raced through the door and started up the staircase. A rifle bullet hit Terrence in the left wrist, but he fired twice more and both lizardmen below joined their predecessors dying or dead on the floor.
Turning, he put the barrel of the gun next to Augie’s head.
“Two bull
ets left,” he said, in a strained voice. “I don’t want them to get you.”
“No.” Yuah’s voice was quiet, but between the two of them, amid the gunfire and hissing and distant shouts, it resounded as loud as anything.
Terrence turned and fired twice at the two foremost lizardmen on the stairs, hitting the first in its eye and the second in the throat. Both fell back, rolling down the steps, bowling over the two uninjured reptilians behind them and knocking them down the staircase as well.
Suddenly a door at the far end of the hallway burst open and two lizardmen rushed out of Macy Godwin’s room. The first carried a rifle though he seemed inclined to use it only as a club, while the second brandished a wood and obsidian sword. Both, hissing loudly, ran at Terrence, who raised his pistol and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked uselessly, so he heaved it at the first reptilian, hitting him in the face. The creature fell to the ground, but slid across the polished wooden floor, propelled by its momentum. The second beast dived over the first. They both crashed into the man, one hitting him at shoulder height and the other at the knees. All three figures smashed through the splintering banister and fell down to the foyer below, landing upon cherry wood occasional table, and crushing it beneath their combined weight.
Terrence Dechantagne had no chance to get up. Both of the lizardmen that had fallen on him, and the two that had been knocked down the stairs, now jumped on him, ripping and tearing his flesh with claws and teeth in an orgy of blood and gore. Yuah covered her mouth with her left hand and pulled Augie closer to her with her right as she watched her husband brutally murdered. Then she gasped as two clawed hands grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her away from the edge of the balcony.
The reptilian hands pulled her back down the short end of the hall just in front of her bedroom. Then they turned her around so that she faced the lizzie to whom they belonged. It was Cissy. Yuah had learned to recognize her, even without the ridiculous yellow skirt, which she wore even now. Cissy yanked open the door of the laundry chute and pointed.
“In,” she said.
Yuah stuck Augie into the shaft, and still holding on to him, dived in after, headfirst. Cissy lifted Yuah’s legs and gave her a push and she slid down two stories to land in the pile of unwashed clothing in the basement. She rolled to her feet, quickly checking to see that Augie was unharmed. She carried him across the room to the steps leading up and out into the side yard. Poking her head out and looking both left and right, she didn’t see any of the cold-blooded intruders.
She ran quickly across the yard and out the front gate, just as more gunfire and a scream erupted from inside the Dechantagne home. Yuah turned and looked at the front door as a single lizzie, carrying a rifle, stepped out into the misty air. It saw her, and with a look of evil determination started after her. She ran, heedless of the sharp gravel on her bare feet. She ran for the closest nearby house—Saba Colbshallow’s small home.
Rushing through the yard, Yuah paused at the front door to look behind her. The lizardman had closed the distance and was already halfway across the road. She turned the knob and the door opened. Once inside, she slammed the door after her and threw the bolt. She looked around for a place to hide, but the small home was essentially a single room. Then she saw the ladder leading up to the loft.
As she started up the ladder, she banged the baby’s head against a rung and he wailed out in pain and anger. She shushed him, but didn’t stop climbing until she reached the top. She crawled away from the top of the ladder just as the front door burst in, the doorframe splintering. Yuah jumped up onto Saba’s bed, her back against the headboard, which was the furthest away from the ladder that she could get. Augie refused to stop crying. She saw the top of the ladder jump as the lizardman began climbing up. She watched as the top of the ladder jerked and then was still. Jerked. Then sat still. She knew that each time it jerked, the monster was coming one rung closer.
Suddenly there was a loud clang. Then there was a wet smack, and then another, and another. The ladder shook one final time and then remained still. Yuah didn’t move. Augie continued to cry.
“Yuah?” called a voice from below. “Are you all right?”
Getting up from the bed, Yuah edged her way to the precipice and peered over. The lizardman lay on the floor of Saba’s home in an expanding pool of blood. Above it stood Honor Hertling and her little sister Hero. Hero held a shovel in her hands. Honor held a blood-soaked lizardman sword.
* * * * *
The cuckoo clock on the office wall at M&S Coal had never struck Radley Staff as looking particularly professional. Mrs. Fandice had purchased it when funds for an office clock had been appropriated, and as no one else seemed to mind it, Staff had said nothing. It was so ornate that it took him a moment to read the hands. It was 6:45. He had just come down to the office from the apartments above and had not expected to find anyone at work yet. But Mr. Buttermore, Mrs. Fandice, and Miss Vanita were already at their desks. Miss Rocanna was putting her wrap back on.
“Going out, Miss Rocanna?” he asked.
“I thought I would go around the corner and bring back muffins for the office.”
“What a splendid idea,” said Buttermore.
“Hold a moment, I’ll go with you,” said Staff.
He took his coat from the peg and threw it on and then opened the door for Miss Rocanna. She nodded and stepped through the portal and Staff followed her. It was still cool and fog hung in patches throughout the town. The Pfennig store and Mrs. Bratihn’s dress shop were easy enough to see, but the houses in the other direction were just large shapes in the mist.
Staff offered his elbow and Miss Rocanna took it. Together they walked around the corner and into the square. It was early, but activity associated with business had already begun for the day. Mrs. Bratihn walked across the square from the south toward her dress shop. Mr. Parnorsham was already inside the Pfennig Store, at that moment cleaning the inside of the shop window. Aalwijn Finkler stepped out the door of the bakery to shake out a rug.
There was a steam carriage parked at the edge of the square, just next to the gate in the emergency wall. A woman in a bright blue dress with a large flower-covered hat sat at the steering wheel. From his angle, Staff couldn’t tell if it was Iolanthe or Yuah. Mother Linton stood at the side of the vehicle and carried on a conversation with the woman—whoever it was. Staff watched carefully, and though he couldn’t discern the identity of the driver, it became obvious that the discussion between her and the priest was becoming heated. He felt a jerk on his arm as Miss Rocanna stopped.
“I don’t care to be ignored.”
“Sorry. I was just trying to see if that was the governor.”
“It is.”
“How can you tell? It could be Mrs. Dechantagne.”
“No. It’s the governor. You can tell by her posture.”
“Pop pop pop,” rang out to the east.
“Those are gunshots,” said Staff, looking off in that direction.
A flurry of more gunshots echoed through the trees. Then suddenly a far louder gunshot rang out behind them. The window of Mr. Parnorsham’s Pfennig store exploded. Staff pushed Miss Rocanna to the ground and shielded her with his body, while quickly scanning the area. More shots were fired and Staff saw the source. More than a dozen lizardmen ran into the square, from the west side, wielding rifles. They shot wildly and inexpertly in all directions. Bullets were flying everywhere.
Mother Linton, who had turned to stare open-mouthed at the lizzies, fell to the pavement, red blood staining the white stripe on her otherwise black robe. More gunfire. Mrs. Bratihn went running for the safety of her shop, but suddenly fell, rolling across the pavement. Aalwijn Finkler was frozen in his spot by surprise. A lizardman fired at him from point blank range but apparently missed, and then took three steps over to him and viciously smashed his face with the butt of the rifle.
Iolanthe, now recognizable, pulled an enormous nickel-plated revolver from her glove box and stood u
p. Bracing her left foot by placing it in the driver’s seat, she took a two handed stance and began returning fire at the reptilians. A split second later, Mr. Parnorsham, wearing his white apron and bifocal glasses, stepped out of his store with a small black pistol and started shooting. As one after another of the lizzies began falling to the ground, they concentrated fire at the two humans with weapons. Staff mentally chastised both the beautiful woman and the old man for not taking advantage of any cover.
Iolanthe had emptied her revolver, having made most every shot count. She casually flipped it open and dumped out the spent shells, preparing to reload. Then she was shot. It was slow motion for Staff who watched as Iolanthe fell backwards, rolling across the back of the steam carriage and falling to the cobblestone below. Before he even realized what he was doing, he had raced halfway across the square.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see at least one lizardman rushing to reach the vehicle before him. He ever so slightly changed his objective from the woman on the ground behind the vehicle to the vehicle itself. He jumped up on the running board and reaching behind the driver’s seat, pulled out Iolanthe’s shotgun. He turned just in time to fire the weapon into the face of the foremost reptilian. Its brains sprayed back on the lizzie just behind it. Staff fired again, killing the second beast.
Suddenly there was more gunfire coming from behind, and Staff whirled around. But it wasn’t more lizardmen. Four soldiers from the militia base had run into the square through the great gate. With calm competence, they eliminated the remaining threat. Only one of the reptilians even had time to fire a single shot before the last of the twelve lay dead on the ground.
“Summon the rest of the militia,” shouted Staff. “And get a squad over to the east side of town. That earlier gunfire sounded like it was coming from the governor’s house.”
The Drache Girl Page 31