by Andy Graham
Shadows writhed on the ceiling of the cave, surrounded by smudges of red and green and blue. Major Henndrik of the Unsung, a man who had broken untold women’s hearts with his claim of being married to the legions and the safety of the nation, a man who had broken untold men and boys in a manner that is too horrific to recount, shouldered up to a statue. Three lines ahead of him, a wash of colours lit up one end of the cave. A small pool of water lapped at the cave floor, surrounded by boot marks and wet dust. A scrap of blood-soaked material lay scrunched up next to the pool. They’d been here. Resting? Or was this a trap?
He raised his rifle to his shoulder and flicked the infrared on. Nothing. The Unsung had been warned that electronics were unreliable under the mountain but Henndrik had never expected to get that far. Nor had he expected the military intelligence to be right. He cursed his stupidity for not picking up Malakan’s torch.
Henndrik had bare rock behind him. Empty shadows either side of him. Statues to the front. As his eyes adjusted to the brighter light he saw a trail through the dust. Something had been dragged here. Franklin dragging the woman or the other way round?
Step by step, he moved to the first row of statues. Drops of blood bunched up into dust balls around the stone feet of one. Maybe it’s not a trap. Maybe one of them is hurt.
Henndrik eased through the statues. Empty. The next row, too. The drag trail was messier here. The cave silent. And as he studied the ground, he became aware of someone breathing, ragged and shallow. The thin seams of gwenium embedded in the rock flickered, sending red pulses of light across the cave. It made the statues look like they were moving. Henndrik cursed silently. Fingers tightening on the rifle, he leant up against a statue, a depiction of a man with scars carved into his chest. He was holding a rifle. On the other side of the dust trail was a stooped figure with a pot belly clutching a knife. But there, sheltered between a fat man carrying a rock on his shoulder the size of Henndrik’s ambition, and a man with a mane of hair that blended with his beard, was a prone figure: Franklin.
Henndrik took slow breaths and studied the shadows for the Donian woman.
The legionnaire struggled to sitting, the Unsung tactical vest he must have thieved was stained and ripped. “Don’t bother hiding. She’s gone for help.”
Easing out of his hiding place, the major kept his rifle on the legionnaire.
“She’s not too happy with what you did to her ancestral graveyard, either.”
Henndrik’s finger hovered over the trigger. Orders were to get inside the Angel City and open the main gates, keep some folk to do the mining and shit on anyone who gave them trouble. But this? Maybe bringing Ray Franklin in alive rather than dead would be worth more, maybe even a promotion. Sub-Colonel Henndrik, that had a good ring to it. Who knows where else it could lead? The VP would need a loyal man in charge of the legions now Field-Marshal Chester had been dealt with. Henndrik made his choice. “Captain Ray Franklin, you’re coming with me.”
“Captain?” Franklin coughed. He had blood on his hand. “Thought that rank had been revoked a long time ago.”
“Randall Soulier wants a word with you.” The cavern was quiet, just the pulsing light that seemed to be hissing. That voice was gone, too, the chuckling one, deep and hollow like a mountain’s voice. “Stay still,” Henndrik ordered, fumbling at his belt. “Put these on.” He tossed Franklin a pair of handcuffs. “Behind your back. Then we’re going for a walk. And if we find that woman of yours, I’ll shoot the both of you.”
A hand clamped over his mouth and jerked his head ceiling-wards. “No, you won’t.”
Henndrik felt no more than a sliver of pain as a knife sliced his throat. He collapsed into a gurgling heap. Above him, surrounded by a crimson nimbus of light from the red rock seams, stood the pot-bellied statue, knife dangling by its side. The statue wiped a swathe of dust from its face to reveal the dark skin of a Donian woman. One hand still gripped the knife, the other curved protectively around her belly.
Not a pot belly. Pregnant, Hendrik thought as his breath hissed from his lungs.
“Nice trick.” Franklin’s voice was distant, crackly.
It was. Get wet. Roll in dust. Pretend to be a statue. Dodgy light and dreams of promotion hadn’t helped Henndrik.
The woman didn’t reply. She was watching Henndrik die. And as his blood dripped off her knife, and the lifeless eyes of the statues gleamed in the flickering red light, the booming mountain chortling in his ears became a deep belly laugh.
36
The Monster Under The Mountain
They left Henndrik’s corpse surrounded by rubble. Dust slowly settled across the tangle of stone limbs and yellowing bones. It would take an age to clean up the carnage, something Brooke wasn’t letting her brother forget. She jabbed the end of Henndrik’s rifle into Malakan’s back. He fell, scraping shins that were already ripped to the bone. “Easy, Brooke,” Ray said. “He’s a prisoner. He has rights.”
“He’s evil.”
“Maybe, but let your people judge him.”
“Like we just judged that Unsung major?”
Ray pushed Malakan towards the exit tunnel. As they walked, Brooke whispered: “You desecrated our dead. You desecrated our dead. You desecrated our dead.” She repeated it over and over. They entered the tunnel, the red light from the Resting Room faded, but she kept up her litany: “You desecrated our dead. You desecrated our dead. You desecrated our dead.” The words echoed maddeningly around them, twisting and turning until they seemed to take on a life of their own. As the moonlight from the Council Chamber turned the black of the tunnel grey, and then a mucky white, Brooke switched to, “We are going to desecrate you. We are going to desecrate you.” Malakan, clad only in shoes, started sobbing.
Ray lay a hand on her shoulder. “Leave it, Brooke.”
“Leave it? Leave it! How can you say that knowing what he’s done? And you,” she yelled at Malakan, “stop where you are. I’m sick of seeing your pimply arse in front of me.”
Her brother was withered and wrinkled by cold and fear. “Be thankful he’s not facing you,” Ray said.
The anger flooding through Brooke’s face faded, twisted into disgust and then a mild amusement. The kaleidoscope of emotions was a stark contrast to the Brooke he had known. That woman had had two settings: angry or sleeping. She placed her hand on Ray’s chest and smiled. “I meant what I said, in the cave, about you and me. I lo—”
Ray put a finger on her lips. “Quiet.”
“Quiet? You know how hard this emotional crap is for me and you tell me to be quiet?”
“No, it’s too quiet, the Chamber. We should be able to hear them by now.”
And as easily as breathing, Brooke shed the emotions she wore so clumsily and slipped back into her legionnaire’s aura. She crept past Malakan, pausing to stuff a rag in his mouth. Ray followed, eyes drifting between the treacherous rocks dotting the corridor, past the floating corpse of Sub-Corporal Nonnweed and the lieutenant Ray had choked to death. The latter would stick in Ray’s mind for a long time. Once the red moment of kill or die wore off, the questions kicked in. At least for anyone with an ounce of humanity. Killing someone from a distance was one thing. Doing it and hearing their last breath in your ear was something else. He chuckled wryly. Sympathy was wasted on the dead. He skirted the body Nascimento had impaled on a stalagmite, and stopped at the fallen thrones.
Moonlight slipped through the entrance and glowed on a floor that was littered with the debris of a fight: gloves, handcuffs, a knife, a few rifles, bloodstains and bodies. To one side lay a row of tribespeople and Resistance fighters. The former with their eyes opened, watching for the End Times, the latter with their eyes closed, sleeping. “Stupid,” he muttered. “Don’t sugarcoat it. Call it what it is, death, not sleep.”
Brooke dragged Malakan by the hair and forced him down in front of their dead, at Karaan’s feet. Their long moon shadows, one tall, the other on his knees and pleading through his gag, stretched back through
the darkness. The Elder’s black-and-white beard was red. “This is what you did,” she hissed in Malakan’s ear.
Ray walked the line of bodies. “Nasc’s not here. Laudanum or Stella, neither.”
“Stella?” Brooke’s eyebrows raised. “You still on first-name terms with the doctor?”
“I am. She’s not.”
Brooke grunted. Jealousy, Ray guessed, walked hand in hand with love.
They left Malakan shackled hand and foot to as many Unsung corpses as they could find handcuffs for, and went in search of the survivors. The Donian and the Resistance were standing around the main gates. Above them, wooden spikes were tipped with silver moonlight that winked off and on again as the silhouettes on the palisade continued their patrol. Shadows hunkered in circles at the base of the wall. Ray approached and they silently turned to face him. The patrolling shapes came to a standstill, no longer watching the forest beyond, but him. “Not sure this is good,” Ray whispered to Brooke. Nascimento was there, jacket back on but unbuttoned, the tattooed serpents’ tails winding across his chest just visible. He approached, face grim. “Really not sure this is good.” Brooke slipped her hand into his. “Glad to see you survived, Nasc. Where’s Stella?”
“Here.” Her hair was twisted and tangled into wild knots. She clutched her daughter to her side as if she’d forgotten how to let go of her. Vena Laudanum emerged from the other side of Nascimento, heavy coat hanging immobile.
“OK,” Ray said, as the wooden palisade creaked in a sulphurous wind, “this is beginning to freak me out. What’s going on?”
Nasc pointed to a lump of metal on the ground. “Suicide-drone. New idea the Unsung have been trialling. Send in a small drone with a tracking device. Use it to provide a signal for a second wave of bigger drones. Supposed to be more accurate than other methods. Sounds like just another money-making scam to me.”
“Not sure I follow.”
“First one is built for speed. They’re made to be quick rather than deadly.”
“The tribes use drones as target practice,” Brooke said. “That’s why the legions stopped using them.”
“Still don’t follow.”
“This one carried a message,” Nasc said.
“And a threat,” Vena added.
A restless muttering sprang up in the waiting crowd. A woman was whispering to her neighbour, their heads nodding slowly, eyes fixed on Ray. Matt, the leader of the Resistance, his black polo-neck sweater torn, watched. The wrestling calluses on the backs of Brooke’s knuckles scratched Ray’s palm. He knew what was coming, should have seen it an age ago. “Randall wants me to give myself up, doesn’t he? I give myself up and you all live.”
Nasc nodded. He looked as odd without a grin on his face as Brooke did with one. “Yup.”
“I stay here and he unleashes any number of these drones and worse.” He booted the metal globe with his foot.
“Kind of the long and short of it. We got till dawn. Not sure why he needs so much time but we just took a big bite out of his forces. That must have slowed him down some. I reckon sending this Henndrik dude through the tunnels was his ace card and now the VP’s scrabbling for an alternative that’s at least half way to shoddy. What happened to the good major anyway?”
“I took care of him,” Brooke said fiercely. “And Malakan is next.”
Nascimento winced. “Poor sod. Lukaz is going to be disappointed about Henndrik, though,” he added as the white-skinned man loped towards them, dog at his heels. The dog paused to sniff at the remains of the drone before cocking its leg and pissing on it. Some of the assembled people gave the animal a round of applause. “The Milkman here had dinner plans for the major and his eyes.” Nasc held out a piece of paper. “Odd that the upper echelons of government have free access to something that’s considered a rarity by the masses. Take it, Franklin. Got your name on it. There was a photo with it, too, of Stella’s kid. He’s alive. Note says he’ll be let free as a ‘token of goodwill.’ Not great tactics, if you ask me.”
“If it gets out that he murdered an Ailan child hostage, even our apathetic nation will rise against him,” Vena said as Stella pulled her daughter closer, shivering. “And there are enough witnesses here for it to be an optics problem for even the best PR guru. On the other hand, if the child is released and Ray refuses to give himself up, that tips the moral see-saw in Randall’s favour. It’s relatively easy to play that angle and so whatever lies the VP wants to add into the mix will be harder to untangle.”
Ray grabbed the note off Nascimento. “Spoken like a woman who knows how to game the system.”
“My sister was an expert at these games and Randall a good, but flawed, student.” One of Vena’s hands was buried deep in a pocket of her black coat. The other drifted, seemingly under its own control, from the mole on her nose to the skin under her jaw. “Much to the detriment of our current situation, he appears to have finally learnt patience. Restraint, less so,” she added quietly.
Ray read the message. It was simple: he was to give up in return for a chance at peace. “Not much choice, is there?”
“He’s lying!” Brooke said. “The VP always lies. All of them do. You can’t do this! I won’t let you.”
“And if he’s not? I can’t take the chance. He’ll ruin this place. Eventually the VP will just reduce this mountain to rubble. He only cares about one thing: winning. And . . .”
And I’m tired, he wanted to say. As much as I love you, Brooke, and want that child of ours, I’m tired of doing the wrong thing. Maybe this way I can finally do right by all of you.
He couldn’t admit this to his friends, barely wanted to admit it to himself. The words wouldn’t come. “My family has caused too many problems in this country,” he said to her. “I should go. The Franklins are yesterday. You” — he placed a hand on Brooke’s belly — “are tomorrow.”
“We are your family, you pretentious idiot.”
“Brooke—” He pulled her close.
“I won’t let you go.”
“I wouldn’t stop you going.”
And she pulled free.
“My son, Ray?” Stella asked, voice trembling. Emily stood at her side, head tilted, jaw jutting, a tiny echo of her mother’s posture. “He’s still got my son.”
“I’m going. I’m not doing much good here.” He took his knife from his belt and threw it on the ground. “They’ll disarm me anyway, no point giving them a reason to hit me any more than they will.” He offered Brooke an apologetic shrug and yelled, “Open the gates.” Tribespeople scurried along the top of the palisade, weapons clutched in their hands. Nascimento stood in front of the gates, arms folded across his chest. “See you soon, big man.” Ray held out his hand.
Nascimento ignored it. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“You know where.”
“OK.” Nascimento nodded and called up to the people sitting above the huge wooden gates, legs dangling over the edge of the palisade. “Open the gates. We’re going out.”
“There’s no ‘we’, Nasc. It’s me he wants.”
“You go. I go. Simple.”
“Nasc. Get out the way.”
Nascimento placed one hand on Ray’s shoulder. “The 10th Legion was about the best thing I ever did. And now? After what I’ve done I couldn’t go back, even if I wanted to. You, Aalok, Skovsky Junior, Hamid and Orr. Lost some other good ones, too. No way I’m letting you walk out of those gates alone. 10th Legion. Rivermen, remember? You forgotten our motto?”
“Come to bury your bones.”
“Well, my bones are going down with yours, Franklin, whether you like it or not.”
“Mine, too,” Brooke stood next to Nascimento, barring Ray’s path.
“No, Brooke, you—”
“You gonna tell me what I can or can’t do after what you just told me, Franklin?”
“But—” his protests were cut off as Stella Swann stood on the other side of Nascimento. “I’m coming, too. That bastard’s got my son
.”
“Count me in,” said Matt. Part of his braided Mohican had burnt off. “Whole point of the Resistance is to resist.”
“No, all of you. Listen to me. This—”
Lukaz appeared, a defiant grin across his face and his leather-belt sling back in place. He stepped up to Stella. “I got one good arm left.”
“I’ve got two.” Mayka was battered and bloody. “I got a whole lot of bruises to hand out, too.”
And as Ray watched, silhouettes on the palisade hurried down the stairs or dropped lightly to the floor. Shadows became men and women. The clouds shifted, moonlight flooded the Angel City and Ray was facing a wall of people. Scared, defiant and unmoveable.
“Your call, Franklin,” Nascimento said. “We could open these gates and rush them, but then we’ll probably get mown down by machine guns and picked off by snipers. Or we wait for them to come get us and do the same to them.”
“What about the suicide drones?”
“These boys can shoot, really shoot.” Nasc waved his hand at the Donian people. Mayka nudged him in the ribs. “These people can shoot. We’ll do OK for a bit. Kind of.”
Off to one side, Vena Laudanum watched, face unreadable.
“What’s it gonna be, dude? You gonna stay put or fight your way through us to get to these gates?”
“Where are you taking me?” Ray ducked as a stalactite snagged at his hair. They’d left the others overseeing the preparations for the Unsung attack. Nascimento and Lukaz were organising the defences and wracking their brains over what to do about Jake in case the VP went back on his word. Stella, assisted by Emily and an army of children, were in the makeshift hospital. Laudanum was helping them all, a bit of advice here, a nudge there, a waspish comment or put-down there, and all of it, Ray grudgingly admitted, was perfectly timed and placed. Brooke clicked her fingers. “Focus, Franklin!”
“Yes, ma’am. On you?”
“Soppy is worse than maudlin, Franklin.”
“I’m not thinking soppy.”