by Al Ewing
They began to meet after dark, no more than three or four at a time - any more and the soldiers might have discovered their secret. They could not give their children food, or clothing, or even heat in the winter - everyone was allocated the same resources, just enough to keep them from starvation. Any family caught sharing their rations went to the Palace Of Beautiful Thoughts for a session with Master Minus.
All they could offer was education.
Not much - an hour a week at most, stolen after dark. Tiny groups of children smuggled to the schoolhouse and given the very basics - reading, writing, learning to count. Sometimes as little as reading to them of the world outside - anything at all to counter the endless propaganda hurled at them by their new rulers. Isidoro the schoolteacher was long dead, but his wife Verdad was alive and more than happy to carry on her husband's work, despite the risk to her aged bones.
For two and a half years, it had carried on. Years of paranoia, almost constant fear of discovery, but the fear was worth it to see the children smiling when their minds drifted to the delicious secrets that Verdad had given them, counting to ten in their heads or thinking of Magna Britannia, that country far away where there was a mechanical man to serve every family and the children had sugar-drops when they were good.
Tonight, things had proceeded as normal - the children shepherded in, the lessons beginning as usual. Climaco was watching for any soldiers when the flames first started licking at the sides of the building - the fire had started from inside, God only knew how. And then, as if on cue, the soldiers had arrived, circling the building to make sure no-one escaped and no help came. It seemed an example was to be made.
Climaco tried to struggle to his feet. He had to fetch water. He knew what the masked man would do next. He wished he had the strength to do it himself.
Staffelkapitan Jonas Oswald charged, baton swinging. In the past seven seconds, he had watched his entire unit fall like rain, but he did not let that slow him. If he could take the madman by surprise, then he could end this here and now. The masked lunatic growled like an animal, and turned, swinging his sword with a devil's strength. Jonas felt the blade strike, like a hard punch in the side - felt something tear in his spine - and then he toppled sideways. He could no longer feel anything below the waist, and there was something blocking his vision. He understood, then, that the end had come.
He remembered how this had all started. A couple of shared beers in the officers' mess after a hard day of herding human sheep - two bottles for the whole unit, and those were supposed to last the week. They hadn't even had the chance to finish them before the call went out.
Some cretins, most likely El Sombra and his fellow terrorists - had managed to set the old schoolhouse on fire. The unit was to form a ring around the building to prevent the fire spreading, wait for help to contain the blaze, and prevent any of the workers from interfering. Those were their orders, and they carried them out.
The hardest part was ignoring the screams from inside. But there was no saving those people, if you could call them 'people'. If they'd wandered into a restricted building and set it ablaze, then they'd brought this on themselves through their own stupidity, as you'd expect from subnormal intelligence. There was no sense in risking the lives of his men to save the lower races from their own idiocy - besides, the unit was needed outside, to prevent any more of them destroying themselves, like that idiot with the bucket who seemed so ready to hurl himself into the flames.
They'd been following orders. And the masked killer had swept down and butchered them all for it. Didn't he understand that they were trying to help?
Jonas Oswald blinked twice and realised what the object was that was blocking his vision, as the lower half of his body toppled forward, the ragged end of his spine flapping, leaving his line of sight clear. Then everything went black.
"Estoy hasta la madre, pinche pendeja!"
The masked man hurled his sword at the last of them. The man - at nineteen, barely that - screamed as the point of the sword plunged through the open mouth and through the back of the neck in a gout of red blood. The nameless young soldier crashed to ground, eyes already rolling back in his skull, and El Sombra took back his property.
"Water! Now!" El Sombra's voice was like an oncoming storm.
The man who'd been beaten earlier limped forward, carrying his bucket, and hurled the remaining contents over the swordsman. Others in the crowd picked up the hint quickly and doused him with what little water they'd managed to collect, until he was soaked through, dripping wet.
He turned to face the blaze, an inferno now. There were still screams coming from inside, which meant that there was some hope at least. But he knew he had seconds at best. This was not like fighting - something he could do almost without thinking. This would be difficult. He had to save as many of the children as he could, and his true enemy tonight was not the soldiers, or even the flames. It was time. Every second that passed could mean the end of a young life, in fire and agony and horror.
Tick tock.
El Sombra dove into the fire.
The flames licked his face and burned at his neck and back, bringing back memories of the desert heat. He made for the stairs, trying to get to the screaming and weeping he could hear coming from above.
The wooden stairs were a mass of flaming timber, but they could still support his weight. He stilled his mind, shutting off all sensation, all pain. Then he ran forward, pushing through the wall of fire, the calloused soles of his feet hitting the red-hot wood as he took the stairs two at a time. Smoke burned his lungs and his throat was raw. He could barely see and his ears were full of the crack and hiss of blazing wood. He was on the same floor as the screaming now, but he might as well have been a thousand miles away. Every breath he took was soot and heat and the terrible stench of cooked pork.
He staggered forward, eyes swamped with tears, and saw the children.
Six of them were huddled together, not looking at him. They were looking at the seventh, a boy, perhaps six years old but certainly no older.
His name was Spiro Otilio Herrera, and he was on fire.
His flesh was melting, running off his body like tallow-fat, as he thrashed and screamed at the top of his lungs. There was a sizzling that filled the room, and the stench of cooking meat. But the smell wasn't the worst thing.
The worst thing was what had happened to his face.
The fire had burned away lips, nose and cheeks, and burst one eye. The hair had been consumed first. All that was left was a shrieking, blazing skull, resting obscenely on the candle-wick body.
The masked man looked down at the thrashing thing that had once been human and he knew there was no saving the boy. Even if he could get Spiro Herrera outside, there was no medicine that could save his life. He would scream and scream for hour upon hour, each gasping, tortured breath bringing even more pain, until he finally died. Still, he would have tried. But there were six others who needed him and he had no time. El Sombra could do nothing for him...
...but draw his sword.
In that moment, El Sombra knew himself to be no longer a man. He was, instead, what the ticking clock had made of him.
He was a monster.
Tick tock.
Erendira Herrera, worker number 2137, was twenty years old and one of the most proficient workers in all of Aldea. So proficient that she had earned a commendation from the Oberstleutnant himself. Like other workers who had been commended, her papers allowed her to walk the streets a full two hours after sundown, provided she caused no undue disturbance. She had earned that privilege through her obedience to the Führer. Stood at the back of the crowd, watching the building burning and inhaling the sickly-sweet stench of sizzling fat, she listened to the shrill screaming coming from the upper floor of the burning building and seethed.
She remembered how this had all started. The uneasy smiles of her parents at dinner when she expounded on the greatness of Der Führer. Her mother's look of worry and pain when she
came back from another gruelling overtime session on the high scaffolding. The long arguments with her parents, as if being held up as an example by Master Plus himself was somehow not enough for them. The guilty looks when she mentioned how it would soon be time for little Spiro to begin his work training.
Once she had returned from overtime to find Spiro absent from his room, her mother and father refusing to allow her to contact the proper authorities, content to sit and wait. Eventually he was brought in by Mr Aguilar - a sloven who did not pull his weight on the statue and often needed to be beaten with a cane in front of the other workers - and her mother and father had said nothing about it to her, while Spiro babbled about pyramids and sphinxes and things which he had no business knowing.
She had not wanted to go to Master Plus about the matter. Not until she had all the facts. It was not her place to enforce law in Aldea and, besides, wasting Master Plus' time with gossip and scandal might tarnish her work record.
But she should have informed on them. She knew that now. It was perfectly obvious what had happened. They'd been having their little club meeting, learning their useless stories, and that doddery old witch Verdad had knocked a candle over and set light to all those useless books and bits of paper that should have been burned long ago. She'd started a fire and then fallen or something and not been able to lead the children out. She was stupid and old. In Berlin, they put stupid old women like her in chambers and gassed them, and then burned them in ovens.
She wished this town was more like Berlin.
It made her furious. Every breath she took was tainted with the smell of burning flesh and the blood of the dead. Because these fools could not accept things as they were, children were being burned alive. Good men had been butchered by a lunatic. And for what? So a few new workers knew that across the sea, there were pyramids? What would they do with that knowledge when they were ordered to get a half-ton block of stone up to the top of a hundred foot scaffold? Across the sea, there was discipline. There was ordnung. That was all that mattered.
She gritted her teeth, air hissing between them like the noise of a kettle. This would come back to her. When the soldiers investigated, they would find her parents and her little brother mixed up in this somehow, and that would be the end of her commendations and her special privileges. Number 2137 would be just one more troublesome worker from a bad family.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. This minority of rebels were spoiling things for everyone who did what was right. Someone had to teach them a lesson. Somebody had to show these criminals and thugs and their masked hooligan the difference between right and wrong.
She picked up a stone and hefted it in her palm.
The children stared at him for a second that seemed like an hour, and El Sombra looked back at them, unable to meet their eyes. The tears running under the mask were no longer caused by the smoke.
And that had been the easy part.
There had been only one choice regarding Spiro Herrera. Now there were more. There were six children in the inferno, and he promised to himself that he would save every single one of them.
And he knew he would break that promise.
A roof beam cracked and fell, blazing, superheated timber crashing towards his head, and he hurled himself forward. There were three girls and three boys. Two of the girls and a boy were awake and conscious. That might mean they could survive longer, but on the other hand, the still ones might need resuscitation. He could not trust that to the crowd, so it was likely he'd be performing it himself - spending vital minutes saving one child while the others burned. The awake ones first (Could he manage all three? He'd have to.) and then back inside for the rest.
All this ran through his mind in the split-second before the beam crashed through the floor behind him.
He grabbed two children in his arms and one by the hair, and twisted, his back smashing against the burning wall. The force of his momentum smashed through the weakened wood, propelling him and his three charges out into the night air on a plume of smoke. It was hard to compensate for the added weight, but he shifted his balance and turned a graceful loop in the air - a memory of jumping off the edge of a canyon while weighted with heavy rocks suddenly flashing into his mind - before landing hard on the pads of his feet, bursting blisters. The children were unharmed. Alive. Now for the rest.
The stone smashed hard into his left temple.
He winced in pain and his skull rang like a bell. He could not believe it.
Someone had thrown a rock at him. For saving three children.
And that was the least of it.
He was just one target. Rocks were hurtling through the air from all sides, at all comers. The crowd had turned on itself and become a riot. A part of him was relieved that he'd made the right decision - there was no way any of these people would be capable of resuscitating a burn victim - but another part was counting seconds. Tick. Tock. Every second that passed meant that the risk of another death was higher.
Tick. Tock. Tick.
If he left the children here they'd be trampled or torn apart by the mob. If he stayed, three more children died.
Tick. Tock. He heard screaming from above him. Tock. Tick. One of the unconscious ones had woken up. Probably because they were on fire.
If he moved these children away from the crowd and then left them, they'd be picked up by wingmen and taken to a torture chamber somewhere. Tick. Tock. He needed somebody who could get them home. But there was nobody.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Ti-
"Give them to me!" Climaco Aguilar lunged from the mass of bodies, one eye swollen, blood pouring from his nose, missing teeth. El Sombra recognised in him a kindred spirit, and gave thanks. "Get back in there! Get back..."
But El Sombra was already gone. Under a barrage of stones, Climaco herded the sobbing children towards the relative safety of the alleys.
Tick. Tock. Tick.
El Sombra's thudding heart was a stopwatch that counted down the seconds until the death of the next child. Every time his bare foot thumped down on the hard, hot timber, he left a sizzling footstep of blood. He tried not to think about the blood dripping from his sword...
Up the stairs two at a time and this time they could no longer bear his weight. He felt the third stair from the top give way underneath him, and he launched himself up, stabbing the point of his sword into the ceiling above him and letting it bear his weight for the split second he needed to swing himself over the gap to relative safety.
Upstairs things were much worse. There were large holes in the floor from where roof beams had crashed through or the wood had simply given way in the terrible heat. The smoke was thick and black, and the flames were raging out of control. He looked around desperately for the remaining three children. He couldn't hear anything from them. But he'd heard a scream. Was it seconds ago? Minutes? How long did they have to live?
He moved forward as quickly as he could, hoping that he wouldn't fall through the floor onto the bonfire raging below. The only thing he could do would be to grab the children and leave by the hole he'd made before. The smoke cleared for a moment -
- and he was looking at Verdad. Isidoro's wife. She'd been here all along, hidden from view by the smoke. Her old, wrinkled face was distorted in agony. She'd fallen and broken something, by the look of it. Her bones were very brittle and she had to be very careful now that there was no possibility of medical care for her. And she had been coming up and down the rickety steps and teaching the children by candlelight. How much courage did that take?
She looked at him with frightened eyes, then looked away, towards where the children had been. The meaning was clear. He had to leave her to burn.
He wished he had time to speak to her, even a few words. Could she tell him what had caused the blaze?
Did she remember how this had all started?
Tick tock. No time. He vaulted through the billowing smoke, and it was thick and black and tore at his throat and lungs with sharp needles.
Nobody could survive more than a few minutes in this place... maybe not even a minute. He had heard once that in an environment like this you had perhaps three breaths before you passed out. How many did a child of five have?
Where were they?
He was in the right place. He was sure of that. Had they moved?
Tick tock.
He drew in a deep breath of smoke and flame and bellowed.
"Scream! Scream, damn you..." The shout broke into a hacking cough. There was a cough in response. Thank God. El Sombra dove forward, reaching, hands brushing against small forms. One. Two. A boy and a girl.
There was another one. Where? He didn't have time. That cough he'd heard had been the sound of a death rattle. If he didn't move now, the two children he had would die.
He wished he could see through the billowing smoke, just for a moment - one moment was all it would take. He hoped he remembered correctly which direction led to the outside. He prayed to anyone who might be looking down for some guidance.
His only answer was the pounding of his heart.
He hurled himself sideways, protecting the children with his own body as he crashed through one of the windows. He was too weak this time for fancy landings, and so he fell hard onto his back, glass digging into the meat of his shoulder as the wind was slammed out of him on impact. He looked at the two bodies cradled in his arms. Both dead.
Above him, he heard the screaming begin again.
He had made the wrong decision.
Around him, the crowd busily tore each other apart. There were only a few left, less than twenty, the others having run or limped away to homes and families - those who were not simply beaten to death by the mob. Once upon a time, all of Pasito would have been filling buckets and pails, desperately doing everything they could to put out the raging inferno. Now the town reacted to trouble by turning on itself, the careful clockwork spinning quickly out of control. El Sombra did not have the time to stop them, or even to give a thought to how far his home had fallen.