by Jeff Kamen
‘What is it?’ the guard said.
‘Krump ... potato.’ Her voice was strained. ‘Bean. Beans. Some meat.’
The guard coughed, scraping his chair.
He thought he heard the gun click.
‘You stay there. Right there. Right back to the wall.’
The chair scraped again.
‘That’s right. Just where you are.’
Not long after, his mouth full, the guard spluttered, ‘Shit, this is. Shit. You animal.’
There was a silence. Then Cora attempted to say something, and the guard cut in with: ‘Shut it. Back. I said back. That’s better.’ There was another pause, the sound of him eating, then: ‘So where are we? Eh? Where’s the desert from here? Eh? You fucking animal. You probably don’t even know.’
Moth found himself struggling to breathe. As soon as he passed the door he would be trapped inside with them. He heard Cora stammer a reply, her voice shrunken. Heard the guard eating again. He stretched the chain out tautly in front of him. Rigid as a rod. Do it now or leave, jump out the window.
A pale and rigid somnambulist, he moved free of the wall. Then, turning on the balls of his feet, he entered the kitchen.
Just a yard inside the door, it was already too late to turn back. He advanced slowly and with a rolling motion, his movements toylike and horribly stilted, like a figure walking through flames.
Cora was standing between the table and the recess, her arms hanging limply. Her owl eyes opening wide, so very wide at the sight of him, but she managed to direct her stare towards the guard as he pushed the unfinished meal away and cursed her for what she’d served him. She murmured something in reply, another apology, feeble and half-formed in her mouth, then took the dish from him before moving further along the table, tidying up as she went. As if the usual routine was in place and everything had to be cleared in a required order. As if everything in the room was normal, nothing out of the ordinary. Only the smallest strain appeared on her face as he paused mid-step, almost paralysed; then continued towards his target.
The room’s silence grew to a roar. She seemed to look down. Unable to watch.
The guard sat back in the chair. His shaven head raised as he looked at her. His mask hanging so that he could eat. There was nothing Moth could do but run at him and he charged at the chair and leapt up and dropped the chain under the guard’s thick neck and hauled back on it, hissing with effort. The guard had no time to react other than to thrust a hand up to protect his throat, and as Moth did his best to choke the life from him, the guard fought back ferociously, lunging left and right like a bull.
The man’s head was like an anvil, big and heavy and a long way forward of his tank, something he’d not taken consideration of, and as the guard lunged over the table he was dragged after him in a lethal embrace, forced to put a foot on the chair for leverage. Once positioned, he hauled back all the harder, his features scrunched in a terror of letting go, finding the chain already slipping from his grip. ‘Help me,’ he begged Cora, ‘help me!’
The guard was groping with his free hand for his gun, purpling, retching for breath, and with a shrill scream Cora threw herself at it, knocking it from his fingers so that it clattered away. The guard roared in outrage, working both hands up inside the chain, and as he lurched aside Moth was pulled off his feet and left kicking at the air. A plate smashed over the guard’s scalp. Then another. Cora was screaming and running back and forth, hurling anything at him she could lay her hands on, pots and pans and a rolling pin and a small jug and another plate, and somehow the guard got a hand free and punched her in the face. She groaned, went staggering away, and the chain slipped again and Moth wrenched at him once more, the veins pulsing on his brow, yelling at Cora to use a knife or fetch the billhook, to kill him any way she could.
The guard was twisting in his seat, wheezing hoarsely, blood painting his lips. Red teeth showed as the great barbered turret of his head turned a little more and a moment later he and Moth were staring each other in the face. The guard’s raw neck pitted deeply with the chain. Red gums bubbling and seething. ‘Gashh,’ he seemed to say. ‘Gashhh gar you.’
Moth hauled again, pulling the chain down towards his gut, begging once more for help as Cora came running with a breadknife. The guard booted at her to keep her away but in spite of this she still went at him, lunging and retreating with the blade. The next time he kicked, he struck the table. It jumped up with bowls and food and cutlery and the burning lantern frozen in the air for a moment and then it all came crashing down with dishes breaking and everything rolling across the floor. Then darkness fell, a few small flames licking up where the lamp had broken.
‘Get him,’ Moth croaked, ‘get him with — ’gasping as the guard seized him in a bearhug and tried to crush his ribcage. A moment later Cora stabbed him between the shoulderblades. The guard tried to kick her again but she was going at him in a tearful frenzy. There was blood in the air and he was making a high warbling sound, his face turning to a huge roasted baby face, and he was kicking at the pair of them when his chair broke with a crack. He fell to the floor dragging Moth down with him and they fought in a kicking bundle of groans, the guard’s tank scraping and grinding against the brickwork and Cora darting with the knife, stabbing him wherever she found him unprotected. All was flicker in the room, three wild shadows murdering one another, and then with a snarling effort the guard struggled to his feet.
Moth found himself hauled up beside him and tried to lash out with the chain. The guard ducked and jabbed, but clumsily. He was swinging with his fists but he was weakening now, stumbling, gasping, the blood streaming from his wounds. Retreating, Moth snatched at the mallet and was mid-swing with it when the guard butted him. He fell to the floor with whitehot circles spinning in his eyes and the mallet skipped away and when he looked for it there was a movement across the fireplace as if a huge bat was in the room. It was Cora, running for her blunderbuss, dark skirts flapping. ‘Just get him,’ he screeched, and then the guard was leering over him with his teeth barred like a dog, and before he could fend him away he had him by the throat. Choking, he tried to punch him with his wrapped fist but there was no contact, nothing, and in a terrible moment of helplessness he felt the guard sit over him, big thumbs pressing into his throat and gouging. He tried a final clubbing punch but could barely lift his hand to do it, and then a blast of smoke and scattersounds filled the room as she fired.
A black howl ripped across the ceiling as the guard flung up his hands.
Moth saw him through a misted haze. The guard was staring, turning slowly round. Just then Cora flew at him with her teeth gritted in fury and drove the knife into his eye with a plop. He never stood a chance. It was hot in his brain before he could move.
Moth watched the man’s huge wet skull drop towards him and then it rammed down sickeningly upon his own. The room plunged away and fell silent.
Low flames were guttering near the table in an oily pool. Black smoke rolling off in layers.
The guard’s feet jerked a few times, then moved no more.
Cora drew out the knife, her face blank with terror. Her upper lip mashed thickly; a blood face. As she surveyed the two bodies, her eyes filled with tears. Then she moaned, a deep and visceral moan of woundedness. She flung the knife away and pushed at the guard’s soaking body until the men lay apart.
After a while, one of them stopped bleeding and the other’s eyes tremored.
‘Motte?’ she whispered, taking her hands from her face, then she knelt down and pulled him gently, regretfully, yet authoritatively to her chest.
Chapter 56 — Aftermath
Neither went to bed. It was kitchen blankets and mending by the fire. Cora heated some soup and they drank it from the corners of their mouths. Dawn seemed unreal. The broken chair lay as embers in the hearth. The guard lay sprawled in the shadows.
Comrades, they lugged him out at first light and dug a deep pit under the nettles. They buried him with his tank at his
side and with his gun. She didn’t want it in the house. Under a flat grey sky they stood regarding each other, their faces damaged and chary. The wind blew her dark hair across her brow. There were still flecks of blood across it, for all her washing.
‘I, ah …’ he began. ‘I want to see what the explosion was.’
She touched her swollen lip tenderly with the point of her tongue. Then looked down at his ankle. She felt in her pockets and offered him the key. ‘You want to go,’ she said. ‘Go.’
He took it, feeling tearful and strange.
‘You want to stay,’ she added tightly, ‘you stay.’
He looked up, lingering in her eyes. ‘Let me see what it was,’ he whispered. ‘We can’t pretend any more. We need to know what’s happening.’
She looked down again, then nodded.
He watched her walk back to the house.
He left that same morning, dressed in a cap and warm clothes, his skeleton and musculature in burning riot. He felt unable to constrain himself, certain that the guard had been on the run, and for good reason. It seemed possible, more than possible, that the explosion had signified the end for the Ostgrenzers, but he needed to be convinced, to know that nothing else lay in store. Before he’d left, she’d brought him a knapsack with some food in it, and the first time he stopped to eat he realised she’d packed the knife. He pocketed it as he went on, looking out thoughtfully.
Avoiding the mistakes of his earlier journey, he trekked hard and reached the river in the early hours of the afternoon. He’d neither met with nor sighted any person on his way, and there was no one around as he searched the interior of the concrete tunnel he’d escaped through. He made his way through it cautiously and came out on the wide pale road.
A road he felt exposed on. Memories of gunfire ricocheting through him, shattering the quiet day.
It was the river’s noise that pulled him across to the rock border, and on climbing it, he looked down to find the water’s muddy turbulence below. Following its course along he looked to where it hurled itself away at the waterfall. Beyond it there was no bridge. Nothing broke his sight along that view of receding cliffs at all. ‘Shit,’ he whispered, and climbed back down.
Going on, he passed the great rugged opening the vehicle had drilled on its way out from the barren plain. He trod through dirt and rubble and still there was no bridge ahead and he looked along the eastward-leaning slopes and they stood stark and deserted. He glanced back towards the cavernous hole and then he hurried on until he was able to see the waterfall more clearly.
And then he stared. It was true, was undeniable: nothing hung adjacent to it but empty space and drifting vapour. On the far side, where previously sheer cliffs had stood above the tunnelmouth, there was now a mountainous pile of rubble, evidence of a landslide roaring down on a scale he struggled to imagine. Incredulous, he checked around himself, the lurking rocks, certain that had the waterfall not been there, he’d have doubted he’d come to the right location. He loosened his coat and stood thinking a minute, trying to process what it all meant. Then he continued silently ahead, treading in awe where once he’d run in terror.
Soon he came across other evidence of conflict: he saw the broken shafts of arrows, their warped heads and twisted necks and splintered tails — everywhere the mark of locals who’d battled with the Ostgrenzers. And yet, he wondered, with what result?
Further on, there was what appeared to a deep crater where the bridgeposts had stood, and which on closer inspection turned out to be massive hole torn from the rockface. He could not understand what the Ostgrenzers had done, short of cutting off their own exit in an act of violent sabotage, and he was approaching the split and blackened edge in hope of discovering more when he heard cries, faint human cries carrying across the river.
Peering across the misty view, he discovered people dancing upon a ledge. A small crowd of locals dancing a reel, whooping and hollering, tossing caps and scarves in the air. He had to concentrate to hear their voices, and when he did, he caught them crying, ‘Free ... we’re free,’ — a crowd who on noticing him cried out all the louder, all the fiercer. Bewildered, he waved back at them, still searching around, trying to piece the clues together, and taking care not to slip, he knelt at the bitten edge of the hole and looked down to see what remained of the bridge’s structure.
Most of what he could see was hanging out of the rockface. Where the giant trusses had come away there was little left but patches of concrete foundations and a handful of jutting rods. Attached to them was a huge tangle of steel tendons and struts and clinging wreckage. The rest of the bridge had gone, had been blasted away to nothing. He thought it must account for the rockslide overlying the tunnel, and was musing on how this might have occurred when he jolted, stunned by the sight of the vehicle.
It was at the bottom, swirling in a deep pool, down where the fallen waters broke up and reformed and ran on again. A dark and ponderous hulk that washed about continuously as the waterfall crashed and raged at its back, throwing over it pale sprays of scummy foam. He shook his head. Harmless now, bereft of its masters, he saw that its tall horns had been sheared away, as had the lower half of its chassis, the treads and carriage system too. The section that was left, still huge, still afloat somehow, appeared to be imprisoned by concrete drums and chunks of fallen rock, the entire grey mass entwined with a calamity of twisted and buckled girders.
The vehicle lunged and rolled and bobbed about, and his mind swam in contemplation of it. From his screen to the gorge to the bridge and now to here, to death’s finality. The remains of what he and others had feared so greatly, and yet which now lay powerless and drowned and broken.
He looked down at it for some time, tearfully surveying the destruction, all that jettisoned control. It meant that they were safe again: the villagers, his friends, himself; only his father remained unaccountable. He and the tribespeople, and even for them he felt all sense of threat retreating, for whatever ills they had suffered, he knew that nothing more would come at them from Ostgrenze. Like the City, perhaps Gabelstad too, the outer world could move on again, go in transit to some greater stage of cohesion. He watched the dark metal beast as it nodded in the flow, being pounded about like a drum beaten in announcement of its own terrible passing. Or perhaps in salute of some unutterable ceremony pertaining to it: the funeral of an immortal, a farewell to all things past.
‘Free ... we’re free,’ the locals continued to yell, dancing in each other’s arms, and as he rose up, stepping away from the edge, he waved to them again. And in honour of them, in honour of whatever had happened to rid them of their fear, he swept off his cap and threw it skywards, crying out in deep emotion.
~O~
He returned at nightfall, full of tales and conjecture, full of energy. She’d prepared a meal, and she heated it and sat quietly across from him as he continued his account. It was only later, his meal eaten and the fire burning low, that he realised she’d barely spoken a word. ‘Ah, are you okay?’ he said.
She nodded.
‘Nothing’s happened?’
‘No. I rest.’
‘You ... you don’t seem okay.’
‘Look, I am glad,’ she said, raising a weak smile.
‘You are?’
‘Of course I am. Glad these people are gone.’
He looked at her. Her pale and downcast face. ‘I’m, ah ... listen,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been talking too much.’ To make amends he offered her more wine, but she put a hand over her bowl.
‘Don’t be,’ she said. ‘What you say is good. I think good for everyone.’
He took a long drink, nodding at this, then set his cup on the table. ‘I, ah ... I’ve got to go home tomorrow,’ he said, and coughed. Then quickly added, ‘But I’ll keep my promise. I-I’ll come back again when I’ve finished. When I’ve done everything. I said I’d repay you, and I will.’
The room fell quiet. He looked up.
‘You free, Motte,’ she said, liftin
g a shoulder. ‘Free. No need to lie.’
‘But I want to,’ he said, and in growing unease he began to list the jobs he’d not completed, and in some cases had barely even begun, a list he strove to add to as she rose wincing from her chair, saying, ‘Please, I am tired. Very. This is ... a hard day.’
‘Wait,’ he said, ‘just a minute, that’s all,’ and as she sat again, sighing, he reminded her that in spite of his story, in spite of appearances at the bridge, it was more than likely that things weren’t over. He told her there could easily be other guards in hiding around the valley — desperate for food, shelter, even revenge. In a confiding tone he said that he was worried — for her as much for himself; that it all seemed too good to be true. ‘Think about it,’ he said, fidgeting awkwardly. ‘You’d, ah ... you’d be here all alone.’
Her smile as she looked at him was wry and distant. ‘I say you free,’ she said, ‘so, you free. This is not your worry. Soon you home again. It is better, no?’
~O~
In the morning he was woken by a knock at the front door. He jumped from his bed, disorientated to begin with on finding himself unchained, then he went to the kitchen and answered the door shakily, holding his knife.
Perhaps because of the recent fighting, the visitor took little notice of this, nor of the bruises on his face, although as he called for Cora from the middle of the kitchen he sent an array of glances in Moth’s direction as though more than a little intrigued about her domestic arrangements.
He was a handsome man in his fifties with swept-back white hair and grand sideburns, a man who, as Moth took a seat at the table, he watched from beneath hooded eyes as Cora came in and ran to him, kissing his cheek with delight before embracing him, making no mention of any matters but those that they as neighbours had in common, talking with great animation as she led him out to the garden and shut the door.