by Trevor Zaple
“I’m so sorry,” he mouthed, unsure in the cacophony of dragged-out sound that surrounded him if any words escaped his lips at all. “I’m so, so sorry”.
Carolyn knelt behind him and put a steady hand on his shoulder. He did not acknowledge it; what was there left to do? After everything that they had done – everything he had been through since that day he had shed his old life for a strange new one – this would be how it would end. Blown apart by mortar shells fired by a faceless army on the other side of a shattered, burning wall of old brick buildings. More tears slid down his dust-caked face, carving out a warm, wet track. He clenched his eyes shut tighter, wanting to block out everything: the sun, filtered by iron-grey clouds and billowing smoke; the sounds of buildings collapsing into splinters and dust around them; the sight of people that he had once considered his charges fighting and dying to protect him. Carolyn’s hand squeezed his shoulder and he forced his eyes open. If he was going to die, he was going to see it coming. The world owed him that much.
He loosened his grip on the screen and looked at the tablet. The simple outline of the dialogue box was open before him, a vertical line flashing and waiting to be transformed into words, meanings. He used a hand to wipe the quivering tears away from his face and sniffled hard to clear his nose. He saw that other soldiers had arrived, likely fleeing the collapsing city hall, and that they had joined their fellows to engage the servants surrounding him. Their struggle had intensified; the servants were fighting back viciously, although their casualties were becoming serious. Richard began to tap on the screen. One last try pays for all he thought, and wondered where the thought had come from.
WHO IS SHE? CAN I SPEAK WITH HER?
I DON’T KNOW, BROTHER. I MIGHT BE ABLE TO HOOK UP A VISUAL LINK, PRETTY SURE THAT TABLET HAS A CAM ON IT. HOW’S YOUR BATTERY?
Richard checked, and grimaced at the information.
NOT GOOD. 4%.
YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO TURN ON THE CAMERA WITHOUT IT SHUTTING DOWN, THEN. I DON’T KNOW WHAT ELSE TO DO.
WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE HERE.
I KNOW, MAN, I KNOW. LISTEN, SHE’S COMING AROUND HERE, ONE OF HER MAIN ASSISTANTS IS HERE, SHE WANTS TO GATHER EVERYONE UP BEFORE THEY STORM INTO YOU. I CAN TRY AGAIN, SEE IF SHE’LL LISTEN. I’VE ONLY TALKED TO HER THROUGH HER ASSISTANTS SO FAR, MAYBE I’LL HAVE BETTER LUCK FACE TO FACE.
TRY Richard typed, and struggled to figure out how to finish it. In the end he shrugged and sent it as is. That was all he could ask, in the end. Troy would try, and the people trapped inside the collapsing fortifications of the Stratford square would live or die on the outcome of his trying. He hugged the tablet close to his chest and closed his eyes. The sound of gunshots increased, as did the desperate sound of bone crunching on bone. He wanted to rip off his ears and cause the screaming that he could hear everywhere to cease.
“GED TUH FUGGER!” he heard a wet, snuffly voice cry out. He thought that it was Karl’s voice, if he could imagine Karl with a smashed nose. ”A THOUSAND GOINS TUH THE MAN DAT GILLS DAT FUGGER!”. Richard chuckled weakly. Karl had paid at least five times that amount for him; even now, at the end, the man was trying to hold on to every last coin that he could.
There was a commotion behind him and when he turned to see what was going on he saw a large collection of men and women running to join the fray. They were dressed as servants, and they swelled into the crowd of Richard’s people with a tidal force. The servants surged forward with a great resounding cry, and the soldiers suddenly found themselves surrounded. The amount of gunshots increased, but the pacing between shots was off, to the point of seeming random. They were panicked shots; there were agonized screams and moans from those who were shot, but within moments the sounds of gunshots ceased altogether and was replaced with the simpler, brutal sounds of men and women struggling hand-to-hand. In a way, Richard found this to be even worse.
“Come on, Troy,” he whispered, and in that moment he heard the tablet ding and vibrate slightly against his chest. He flipped it over and ran his eyes eagerly over the screen.
HER ASSISTANT WON’T EVEN LET ME SPEAK TO HER, MAN. SORRY. SHE SAYS, AND I’M QUOTING HER HERE, “SAMMIE DOESN’T NEGOTIATE WITH THE ENEMY. END OF STORY”. FUCKING BITCH. BOTH OF THEM. ALL OF THEM. I’M SORRY, RICHARD. YOU’RE A GOOD MAN, YOU KNOW THAT? I’M SORRY IT HAS TO END LIKE THIS.
Richard stared at this message, unable to believe what he was reading. His hands shook, and he began to laugh. It was low, chuckling laughter at first but it grew to a much louder, more unstable type in less than a minute. He felt Carolyn’s hand come off of his shoulder; she would be concerned. Let her be he thought wildly. He tried putting some coherence to his racing thoughts, but he found that he was utterly unable to do so. He shook his head, trying to shake his brain into functioning. Ahead of him, he saw that the mass of servants was being pushed back; the soldiers from the wall must have broken ranks and fled into the square, where they found their brethren engaged in a losing battle with the rabble. He checked the battery. 3%. It dropped to 2% while he watched it. So little time. He let out a short, harsh exhalation and began to type. Try, he had told Troy; Troy had tried and failed. So now Richard would try, with a final shot into the darkness.
TROY IF YOU’RE STILL THERE TELL HER I’M STILL SORRY I KILLED THE DOG. TELL HER EXACTLY THAT. He hesitated, unsure of whether to add in his next thought, and then let out a bale of crazy laughter. Fuck it! he screamed inside his head, then typed: THEN TELL HER “IF YOU WANT TO BE A GOOD PERSON THEN COME HELP ME. OTHERWISE, FUCK YOURSELF. I HOPE YOU MAKE THE RIGHT DECISION.
UM, WHAT? came the reply, and Richard shook his head with frustration.
JUST DO IT!!!! he typed, and saw that the battery was at 1%. Ahead of him, a figure was pushing its way through the fighting throng. He stuffed the tablet into his shoulder-bag and then handed the bag to Sandra. She was standing stiffly, watching the melee, her eyes round with shock; she didn’t notice the bag at first and only took it once Richard shook it under her nose. He turned back and saw that one of the soldiers had managed to get through the barrier of servants; he was young, and he looked dazed and frightened. Richard leapt forward with an inarticulate, barbaric cry of rage; his fist struck the young man in the chin on an upward angle. The soldier’s feet left the ground as he went backwards into the backs of the surging servants; he was tangled up with the limbs of several others and then dragged into the crowd. Richard bent over and rested his palms on his knees, his breathing coming heavy and laboured. He was too old for this sort of thing, and he felt it all catching up with him.
Another soldier came through, this one much thicker than the previous one and also much more alert. He snarled as he spotted Richard and charged towards him. Tyler appeared beside him, running swiftly and brandishing one of Sandra’s kitchen knives. Tyler swiped it through the air as he closed the gap with the soldier, but the soldier knocked Tyler’s arm away and drove one meaty fist into the former horse-trainer’s gut. Tyler fell to his knees, gasping for breath, and the soldier took the opportunity to apply his denim-covered knee to Tyler’s face. Tyler sprawled onto his back, blood splattering in a messy arc away from his face. He lay on the cracked asphalt, twitching and scraping the back of his head along the ground. The soldier resumed his stride towards Richard; a moment later one of the servants from the crowd darted out and threw themselves around the soldier’s legs, tripping him up and driving him to the pavement. Two others joined in, piling onto the soldier and clawing at him like animals. They growled and screeched like animals as well, and Richard had to turn away. He had no wish to see anyone literally torn apart, whether they were his enemy or not. He wondered if Troy had ever acted on his message, or whether it even had any meaning.
He turned back to see if Tyler had gotten up and saw that Karl was emerging from the bloody, writhing mess around him. Blood soaked the bottom of his face and his shirt; he was moving with an odd lurch, and he was breathing exaggeratedly through his mouth.
“Fuh...found dew.
..you...you fugger. Deach you...tuh hit your master”. He lurched forward and Richard sighed heavily. At that moment there was a loud explosion from the main gateway of the walls, which lay a hundred yards away or so. The sound of cement collapsing inward drifted over a moment later, followed by the cry of a mass of people flowing into the square.
“WHAT DUH FUG WAS DAT?” Karl screamed, and Richard charged at him, his head down. He caught his former master off-guard, driving them both into the hard pavement. Karl flailed and clawed at him but Richard found that he was unable to move; he could catch his breath but only barely. It felt like he was breathing through a straw, and when Karl bunched his strength up and tried to flip him over Richard had no recourse but to let him.
Karl straddled him and drove a fist down into Richard’s face. The man’s knucklebones crashed with brutal force into Richard’s nose, and Richard felt it break in a searing flash of nauseating pain. His shallow breathing was cut off entirely, and he pulled in through his mouth with panicking, trying to get as much oxygen to filter into his abused system as he could. Karl’s fist came down again, into his jaw this time, and Richard felt more of his teeth shatter upon impact. The fragments fell backwards into his throat, choking him and cutting up the lining of his esophagus. He hacked out a forced cough, trying to get them to dislodge; Karl swayed slightly on top of him and readied his fist for another blow. Richard saw, through a haze of pain and blood, that a lot of the strength seemed to have drained out of Karl, as though the two solid blows to Richard’s face had taken most of the energy out of it. When Karl brought his fist down again it was much slower, and Richard was able to twist his head so that Karl’s fist went directly into the pavement. Karl screamed wordlessly and reared back, flailing his now-limp hand in the air. Richard pushed at him with all of his remaining strength; Karl went toppling backwards and fell off of Richard with a loud crunch as his head hit the ground. Richard tried to lift himself up off the ground to his feet, made it a sitting position, and then collapsed back onto the ground, fighting for breath. He rolled his head to the side to look at the crowd and saw Karl getting to his feet. Richard let out a ragged, painful breath and wondered with deep sadness where Carolyn was. He wanted to reach out for her, take a shaking grasp on her hand. She had wanted to die together. The thought kept repeating itself over and over again inside of his skull. All she had wanted was to die together, when the end came.
Behind Karl, who was tottering slowly towards him, he saw that the struggle and fighting in the crowd had ceased. The servants were now moving quickly away from him, and replacing them were a large number of denim legs marching on black boots. He rolled over onto his back to get a better view of the situation, and saw that Karl was practically standing overtop of him now. The man’s face was a shattered monstrosity; he saw nothing of Karl Tiegert in that bloody, mangled horror.
“Garl,” Richard said, his voice clogged and broken. “Garl, give up. Led id go. You gan live. You gan save yourself”. If Karl heard him, or understood him, he did not acknowledge it. He issued a low, scraping growl, and lurched forward with his arms outstretched, as though to fall to his knees and strangle Richard. Before he could get the chance, an arm that terminated with a slender, strong hand holding a large-caliber pistol appeared next to his head. A quarter-second later there was a shockingly loud report, and Karl’s brains exited the right side of his head. His face drooped into slackness and his body collapsed beside Richard, one loose arm flopping outward to come within touching distance of Richard’s ear. He looked at Karl’s body with growing regret, and when he turned back to look up into the sky Samantha was standing overtop of him.
The woman standing above him had aged considerably, and her face had gone hard, but it was still that pretty Dutch face that he remembered so well. The hint of those classic curves still haunted this face, but the jawline was more pronounced now, as though she had been making a habit of clenching it for a quarter-century. Her hair had been chopped short, only an inch long and her eyes had become like diamond chips, unbreakable orbs that seemed to hold no pity at all. She pointed the muzzle of the gun at his shattered face and for a moment Richard thought that she was going to fire; in that same moment, Richard felt himself welcome it. She did not fire, however; she spun the gun downward and sheathed it in a black leather holster that was secured snugly on her shapely denim jeans.
“It is you,” she murmured, and Richard thought he heard a trickle of tenderness in the gruff voice that had replaced the tone he had once drunk himself into a stupor to forget. He continued breathing with some difficulty, not knowing what to say, if there was in fact anything at all that could be said in this situation. She thrust her hand down and offered assistance; he grabbed onto her forearm and hauled himself to his feet, admiring the taut musculature of that arm. He brushed his clothing off and stood awkwardly, very aware of the blood smearing his face and trickling down onto his shirt. Around them, a cry arose from the servants; they were celebrating, cheering on the soldiers that had blown a hole in their defensive wall. The soldiers raised their weapons and cheered along with them, seemingly relieved that the fighting and dying seemed to be over for the day.
Two figures appeared on either side of him: Sandra to his left, and Carolyn to his right. Sandra had his shoulder-bag slung over her own shoulder and was brandishing a knife, as Tyler had done just moments before. Carolyn was unarmed but she held up her fists, unsure of whether the strange figure in front of them was friend or foe but unwilling to take chances. Richard shook his head and felt it swing wildly back and forth on his neck.
“No, no,” he muttered, and gestured shakily at Samantha. “Sandra, Garolyn, I’d like you to meet Samantha. She’s, uh...an ode friend. Very ode”. It was an effort to speak, especially through his clogged breathing apparatus, so he left it at that. Samantha crossed her arms across the chest of her thick-looking black leather jacket and stared at all three of them. Richard felt somewhat intimidated; she was every inch a hardened soldier. To break the tension, he reached into the bag hanging on Sandra’s shoulder and withdrew the tablet. He stepped forward and offered it to Samantha as though it were an ancient artefact that he was superstitious of. Her eyes went wide with shock. She took it wonderingly out of his hands and looked at it for a moment before turning her surprised visage to Richard. Richard shrugged.
“It needs a charge,” he warned her. Samantha laughed and in that instant twenty-five years seemed to strip away, and it was as though they had, for the briefest of seconds, managed to reclaim the past. She shook it pointedly in her hand.
“I told you this would come in handy,” she said archly, and Richard laughed a harsh, choking laugh. It was all he could manage.
Satisfied that the fighting was over for the time being, Sandra went to help Tyler to his feet. The man was unsteady and his limbs seem to shudder like rubber, but he managed to stand after a fashion, leaning on Sandra and blinking a lot. Carolyn reached out and took his hand, and when he squeezed her hand in return it felt as though it were for the first time again. He kissed her on the forehead and caught Karl’s sprawled corpse out of the corner of his eye. He knelt to look over him, making himself remember every inch of the man in his last instant. When he arose, Samantha was looking at him with an unreadable expression in her shatterproof eyes.
“If he was a friend of yours, I’m sorry,” she said warmly. “It looked like he was trying to kill you, so I took action”.
Richard laughed shortly. “No,” he replied sadly, “he was trying to kill me. He wasn’t such a bad person, though. He was a slave owner, sure, and he had me whipped a few times, but he was a fair man. Fairer than some”. He looked to the collapsing structure that had once upon a time been Stratford’s city hall. “Fairer than a lot of people I’ve known”. He put his arm around Carolyn and took stock of the disintegrating scene around them. The servants were being rounded up into one area, massed into an open spot away from the collapsing walls. Their expressions were shocked, and blank; the kind of face a
person puts on when they are unsure of their own immediate destiny. The dead lay where they had fallen, their corpses merely obstacles for the soldiers now attempting to impose order on the gibbering chaos they had burst in upon. Richard spit a rivulet of blood onto the pavement.
“Fairer than the world can be, that’s for sure”.
EPILOGUE
At the end of it all Richard and Carolyn found themselves homeless. It was homelessness by design, but knowing that did not significantly diminish the feeling of being cut loose that accompanied it.
After ascertaining that the situation was more or less stable, Samantha’s soldiers marched the servants outside of the walls and into a park that lay amidst a sprawl of former middle-class housing. The constructed walls of the town square collapsed in on themselves as they watched, and to Richard there was an air of finality about it. As he watched the burning wreckage smoulder down into rubble, he knew he was watching his life end. He had spent twenty-five of his fifty-seven years in that life, and an emptiness seemed to settle into him as he realized that it was over. He had Carolyn, though, and it prevented him from feeling completely alone.
At first there was enough distraction to keep him from thinking about it. His reunion with Samantha was an awkward one; they had certainly not parted on very good terms, although they both kept up the polite fiction in public. When the other servants found out that he knew the battle commander of the armies battering at the Republic, they looked at him with the sort of awed reverence one would give to a folk hero. As the days passed he began to hear rumours that he had actually orchestrated the entire invasion as a sort of secret agent, directing the armies from the relative backwater of Karl Tiegert’s arena. At Samantha’s request he did not deny these rumours, although he refused to come out and give any credence to them either. Let the people think what they will he told himself. They always will anyway.