Broken Hero

by Jonathan Wood

  The woman reaches behind her back and from somewhere or other produces a singularly prodigious sword. It makes Kayla’s look substantially more toothpick-like than usual.

  “Stupid weapon,” Kayla comments. “Too feckin’ slow.”

  “Not to be contrary,” Clyde says, “but doesn’t that rather depend on the wielder?”

  Kayla shrugs. “I’ll feckin’ gut her, no worries.”

  “Couldn’t I just shoot her instead?” asks Hannah, which is hardly the attitude I’m trying to foster.

  “Sure,” Kayla says, stepping aside.

  “No!” I say as Hannah pulls her gun. “Nobody is shooting anybody until—”

  “Wait,” Tabitha says. “Hit. Seventy-four percent likelihood. Ashmortok sisterhood. Limited to the Himalayan region. Associated with the Book discovered here in the thirties. One that led to the founding of MI37 and all that. Seemed to be dying out in the forties. Reinvigorated in the early fifties. Primarily European immigrants. Co-opted a lot of the National Socialism precepts from the disbanded German party. Sort of fit with their whole death cult thing.”

  The woman licks the blade of her sword. Black blood wells from her tongue. She spits it at us. It starts to boil on the ground.

  “You know what?” I say to Hannah. “Just go right ahead and shoot her.”

  28

  At almost exactly that moment, a lot of bad things all happen at once.

  Four figures leap from the trees that tower over either side of our trail. Men and women alike, wearing facepaint and little else. They are silent, the only sound the rustle of foliage behind them.

  The blood the woman spat on the ground before us boils up, a great black cloud steaming off it. Thin gelatinous tentacles rise up from its surface. Eight-foot-long strands whip back and forth, block the path ahead.

  The spitter herself charges toward us, through the cloud of thrashing blood.

  Hannah shoots her.

  The shot snaps through the whipping blood severing strands, and slams into the woman’s neck. Flesh rips and blood explodes out of the wound. She drops, gurgling and thrashing. That’s actually rather reassuring.

  Then the four jumpers land, and are upon us.

  Felicity leaps back. A blade falls close enough to slice a button from her shirt. She tries to get her pistol up but her assailant—a wiry little man with curiously long nipples that are possibly the most horrifying thing I’ve seen since I joined MI37—slams an elbow into her wrist and the weapon goes flying.

  I get my own gun up and blow a fist-size portion of his brain into the forest beyond the path. That’s quite enough of him, his violence, and his creepy nipples.

  Of course, defending Felicity has left me open to death by hideous gutting. I drop and roll as a blade slices the air above me.

  Despite the size of their blades, which are broad enough to resemble absurd anime props, our attackers move with terrifying swiftness. I on the other hand move with agonized lethargy.

  I had intended to come out of my roll in a cat-like crouch. Instead, I come out flat on my back, panting.

  The blade reappears in my field of vision, starts to fill it.

  I roll sideways. The blade hammers into the ground next to my head, slices down into it several inches.

  That buys me time. My attacker heaves on her blade trying to free it. I heave to try and get my body into a kneeling position. We both get there at about the same time. She raises her blade. I raise my pistol. My bullet beats her downward strike. She topples over backwards, carried by the weight of her weapon.

  I struggle to my feet, survey the scene. There are more of the bastards now. Hermann and Volk are almost covered in them. Three are clambering up Hermann’s back. He throws himself backwards, lands on his spine. Blood and bone go crunch.

  Volk for all his humble nodding and placating smiles seems to have no problem burying his fist six inches deep in a man’s chest cavity.

  But swords bite at them. Volk’s chest plate is notched and pitted. He leaks oil from a gash in his thigh. Sparks are spitting from Hermann’s shoulder.

  The rest of MI37 are doing even worse. Tabitha is just sitting on the ground with her laptop clutched over her head. Clyde slumps over her, pawing clumsily at batteries lying spilled on the ground. He gets one in, mutters, and a looming cultist spirals through the air, limbs finding new angles to exist in.

  Felicity and Hannah are back to back, firing. Felicity’s magazine runs dry. She fumbles for another. The cultists close.

  I fire with the wild abandon of a man too tired to give much of a shit. There are probably moral implications to my actions, and ramifications that I will have to live with for at least a little while. There are perhaps faces that will haunt my remaining dreams. But, goddamn it, I bloody hate death cults.

  I shoot, shoot, shoot again. The attackers are whirling dervishes. Mostly I miss but one bullet snaps a knee in two, sends one crashing and screaming to the ground. I catch another in the chest and he collapses.

  One of the attackers, broad-chested, abdomen streaked with lines of black and white, stands over his fallen comrades chanting. He holds out his prodigious sword one-handed and I swear I see electricity crackle down the blade. Where our attacker’s blood has spilled, black mist begins to boil.

  A black whip slashes at me. I duck back, but I’m too slow. A line of pain opens up along my cheek as the skin splits open. Blood pours down my cheek.

  Shit. Shit. I can’t die here. I don’t want to be remembered as the jerk who accidentally ended the whole of reality.

  Well, I suppose if that happens there won’t be anybody to remember me, but still, goddamn it, I don’t want to die.

  More blood whips at me. I stagger back, trip over my own exhausted limbs. A whip smashes the ground before me. I leap sideways, collide with something, someone, bounce back, trip, bite dirt.

  “The hell?” I manage, trying to twist and see what I hit.

  I should have bloody known.

  Hannah stands there, panic edging in at the corner of her professionally calm eyes. She holds out her gun to me. “I’m out.” The panic is seeping into her voice.

  “Goddamn it,” I say struggling to my feet. I reach for a spare clip but I don’t have one.

  Shrieking, a largely naked man descends upon us. His speed causes his loincloth to flap in a manner that leaves far too little to the imagination. He brings his sword down.

  Hannah ducks under the blow, comes up close to his sweating barreling body, and drives her fist up into his throat.

  “You,” she says, following up with a cross to the man’s temple. “Are.” Her elbow follows her fist, crashing into his skull. “Not.” Her knee buries itself in his crotch. “My.” She cocks a fist. “Type.”

  With a slurred roar, the little man slams a fist into Hannah’s throat. She staggers back. He follows up with a flurry of kicks. She blocks, but weakly. The little man whips up his sword.

  Hannah lashes out with a leg, steps on the inside of his ankle. He squawks, goes down, and lands back-first on his sword.

  He dies noisily.

  Hannah stares at me, eyes not quite focusing. “Erm.” She blinks. “I think I really need your gun.” Her voice sounds hoarse after the blow to her throat.

  The thing is, though, I need my gun. There’s no way I can practically use one of the death cult’s swords. They must weigh in excess of fifty pounds. I have no idea how these people are managing to wave them about with such deftness. It’s absurd.

  I look up. Clyde is still crouched over Tabitha. He looks exhausted. The pair are encircled by steaming, whipping blood. He sends kinetic blasts at it, sending it spattering, but it just rises up from where it falls, diffused but far from destroyed.

  Herman and Volk resemble disturbed ant hills, churning with seething masses of cultists. Volk’s hand emerges, the arm behind it dangling assailants, plucks a cultist off Hermann and flings her bodily across the trail. She collides with a tree, her back cracking audibly.

>   Felicity is crouched at the edge of the path, lining up shots. She shoots slowly but steadily, efficiently. But it’s not enough. She’s being shut down.

  Kayla. Where’s Kayla?

  And then she arrives in my view, skidding to a halt, feet kicking up clouds of dust. Her whole body is smeared with streaks of gore. She spits a wad of blood at my feet.

  “What are you feckin’ waiting for? Give her the feckin’ gun.”

  As if she’d been standing over my shoulder the whole time. I look down at the weapon. “But,” I say. “I sort of need to be able to defend myself.” It doesn’t seem that unreasonable.

  Kayla rolls her eyes. “Feckin’ fine then.”

  She whirls to the side of the road, slashes at a tree. A branch falls. Her blade flies. Five, six, seven cuts maybe.

  She tosses the hacked-off branch to me. I’m so startled I barely have time to react. It is four feet long, wickedly sharp, and aimed directly at my liver. Still the lizard brain overcomes my shock, jabs out a hand in time to catch it.

  “Wait,” I say, “seriously?” It is in the end, a stick.

  “You doubting my feckin’ work?” Kayla’s sword is leveled at me. And I am very much aware that the fighting is moving back toward us fast.

  “Erm…” is the best I can manage.

  “What the feck are you waiting for? You can feckin’ defend yourself now. Give her the feckin’ gun.”

  Dumbly I throw Hannah the gun.

  “See,” Kayla says, “that wasn’t that feckin’ hard, was it?”

  “Thanks,” Hannah says to Kayla, proving that she does actually know the word.

  A cultist launches himself at us. Hannah ducks, he sails past her. I yell, jab my stick in his general direction.

  There is a meaty thwack. When I open my eyes, I have speared the man directly through the throat. He dangles there gurgling his last.

  I rip the stick free. The flesh of his neck parts with shocking ease.

  Kayla nods. “Good, now go feckin’ kill things with it.”

  I don’t need to be told twice.

  29

  Felicity is hemmed in. She snaps off shots with increasing speed. Where one cultist falls, another steps in. They are mindless in their relentless assault. She runs out of bullets, scrambles for a fresh magazine.

  The cultists charge.

  I slam into them like a wrecking ball. Kayla’s wooden sword whips through flesh, tearing muscle, ripping at bone. I catch the first one low in his back, wrench sideways and send him tumbling and tripping through his own spilling guts. The blow carries on, smashes into another thigh, bites deep. The woman yells, spins, whips her massive blade at me as she falls. I leap sideways, my stick gouging a great funnel of flesh from her as I do. Her screams spill with her blood.

  The cultists’ charge falters. Felicity drops her gun. I see it clatter on the gravel of the trail. She closes distance, ducks under a blade, gets inside their reach. She punches the same way she shoots. Short sharp jabs, aiming for nerve cluster, for weak points. A knife strike to a man’s wrist. His sword drops. The other hand buries a stiff finger into his Adam’s apple. He follows his sword to the ground, gagging. She whirls, ducks another blow. Her cupped hands clap down hard either side of a woman’s head. The woman howls, reels away, blood streaming from her ears.

  Three more. A sword whips up in front of my face. The tip of my nose screams pain. Blood is running down from a cut across my forehead. I try to blink it away.

  It is the big man with the electrified sword. The one who set the blood to steaming. I thrust at him. Maybe if I can end him, I can end his spell.

  He bats my blow away, the momentum of his massive sword sending me reeling sideways. There is a massive spark as my stick meets his sword. Wood blackens. His blade is still electrified.

  My mind scrambles as fast as my feet. The current is still active. He’s sustaining whatever spell is animating the blood. If I can get him to drop the blade… Even better, if I can do it before he drops the spell…

  Electricity, as explained to me, is the lubricant needed to reach between realities. Without it there is what Clyde and Tabitha refer to as “inter-reality friction.” In my experience that largely resembles the spell-caster blowing up.

  I redouble my attack, feint left, feint right, then go in hard left again. I want to get in close, inside the reach of the cultist’s blades. These bastards are useless at close quarters. But my opponent knows that too. He pushes me back. I feint again. I step forward and in.

  The flat of the cultist’s blade smashes against my shoulder, sends me flying. I jam out a hand, skid over earth, skinning my palm. My mouth feels full of blood.

  By the time I get my bearings he’s coming at me. The sword is held high over his head. His mouth is wide open, an utterly silent howl of victory. His blade descends.

  I jump forward, toward him, desperate. Close the distance. But I don’t close it enough. Oh shit. Oh nuts. I whip my stick upwards in a flat arc.

  Wood bites flesh. I feel the tug of resistance, then free air.

  His wrists. I just chopped through both his arms at the wrists. Holy shit. Kayla really knows how to carve a stick.

  His sword flies away over my head, flipping end over end, arcing down, bisecting a cultist perfectly, balls to brow. Blood is a monochromatic rainbow launching from my attacker’s truncated arms.

  The spell. He didn’t drop the spell. And the electricity is gone. And I got in close.

  Realization strikes me just before the detonation does. It catches me full in the face. I am bowled over massively. I eat dirt, gasp at sky, eat dirt. I am a ball of flying pain. I can feel chunks of the detonated cultist digging into my skin.

  I land on my back. The sky spins.

  Around me—more explosions. The steaming pockets of blood all detonating, like small land mines. The valley rings with the cacophony of violence.

  I don’t know how long it is until I can pick myself up. The world seems curiously silent now. Everyone is standing dazed. Somehow I am still alive. Given the pain I’m in, I’m not sure I’m glad. Still, at least I haven’t rewritten reality just yet.

  I see Felicity stand, her features obscured by dirt and blood. And that galvanizes me somehow. While she’s still here, I do have something to fight for.

  A cultist struggles to his feet before Felicity. He bares his teeth. They have been sharpened to fine points.

  She shoots him in the head.

  God, my job is weird.

  “To me!” I yell. “MI37, to me! Make for the fort. We can defend the fort! We can do this! MI37 to me!”

  I start to jog forward. It’s as much as I can manage. Running is beyond me, as much as I need to do it. Felicity falls into line beside me as I pass her. Then Clyde and Tabitha are up and with us. Tabitha still clutches her laptop to her chest. A chunk of plastic has been gouged from its case, obscuring the manufacturer’s logo. Clyde’s face looks scorched, blast marks giving him panda eyes. Kayla and Hannah fall in with us too. Kayla has Hannah by the wrist, helping pull her along. Behind us I hear the pounding footfalls of Volk and Hermann. I glance back. They are stumbling too now, wires and pipes hanging ragged from them. Hermann has a cultist’s dead body caught in a jagged knee joint. The body flops obscenely.

  Around us, cultists stagger back to their feet, into a run. They flock after us, a great ugly wedding train of murderous fuckers. We are haggard and bewildered. Only the fact that we’re more used to being blown up than they are seems to have given us an edge. My limbs scream at me that death would be better than this. But whatever inner core of sheer obstinate stubbornness has kept me alive so far makes me stay on my feet.

  We stagger round a curve in the trail and Lang’s lab is before us. A yellow stone fortress hacked into the mountainside. Our goal. Our safety. Our savior. Little more than a hundred yards away.

  Except it is not safety. It is not our savior. It’s where the bastard cultists are coming from.

  30

 
At this point I think it’s probably not unreasonable to just curl up and accept the beating the universe clearly wants to give me. Rock, hard place. Frying pan, fire. Pick whatever damn metaphor you want. I am the whipping boy and reality is the dude with the whip. Except… if it whips me then reality stops existing… so the reality is… wait… Maybe I’m beyond metaphors.

  “Oh fuck.” Tabitha sums it up far more succinctly than I ever could.

  We have a moment, maybe two. The forces before us are surprised to see us. The cultists behind us are just as stunned that we’re somehow still alive.

  “OK,” Hannah says. “How much ammo do we have left? We have to conserve—”

  “Shut up,” I snap.

  “Arthur!” Felicity sounds shocked.

  “The hell?” Hannah doesn’t really sound less shocked.

  “Just shut up and let me think.” I’m spinning, scanning for options. I can count my life expectancy in seconds. Reality’s isn’t much longer.

  “Off the path,” I yell.

  “I don’t think—” Hannah starts.

  “I’m the goddamn field lead!” I yell, grab her by the collar and heave.

  Then I’m in among the trees. The foliage is thick, heavy. Branches and leaves slap at me. I slap ineffectually back. I’ve seen Kayla use her sword like a machete but I can’t get the trick of it with mine.

  Volk and Hermann overtake me. Their bodies punch holes into the foliage. Saplings are crushed beneath their feet. MI37 stumbles in their wake.

  Adrenaline does funny things to time, to perspective. The world narrows down to a timeless tube. There is only the space directly ahead of me. And I plunge into it for an indeterminate, aching time.

  “This way. This way, you fools!”

  Hermann’s harsh consonants clatter into my consciousness. I turn my head to see him. The world feels like one of those awful dreams where you need to do something quickly but everything moves like treacle. An infinite sluggishness.

  We must be running parallel to the slope of the mountain. Foliage is still to our left, but on the right it’s given way to an increasingly sheer wall of stone. Hermann stands at the entrance to a narrow fissure. A natural cave.