by Chris Capps
The roar of gunfire beneath us mixed with the screams of contest. Smoke choked us as we ascended.
All around, buildings stared blankly at us. I hoisted myself into the entrance of the nearest one. The door had been knocked partially off its hinges by the tremendous impact of the city’s collapse. And yet, it seemed, the structural integrity of the house itself remained sound. Glancing inside I caught sight of a pile of furniture. It had drifted to the far side of the room and lay in a moth eaten heap.
Slowly, hand over foot, we made our way up to the smoke-stacked building at the other end of the plate. By the time we reached it, the oozing molten fluid coming from the windows had hardened to a porous metal. The gunfire below was becoming irregular, fading.
Thunfir and I grasped the tremendous door’s latches and pulled hard, assisted by gravity until the building hung open like a mouth screaming in silence down on its own ruined body. It was like an excavated skeleton, forever in the act of giving up its final breath. We climbed in and stared at what we found.
White bundled sheets. Some had burst or been torn open during the fall, revealing pale hands or bleached legs. Thunfir and I both braced ourselves against the wall as the massive shape transformed in the near darkness from a single object to a pile of much smaller bundles.
“I suspect,” Thunfir said, “This must be everyone.”
Everyone. They lay pale and cold, twisted beneath ivory sheets. No blood, nothing. They must have chosen this fate. They must have been poisoned.
“Rather than risk capture at the hands of savages,” I said grimly, looking up into the vast room. There was a cold furnace with the black porous metal crawling out of its side in a long streak to where the windows were. The jet black engine of this city, cached in soot and grime had gone cold and finally died. Whatever mechanism was used to keep the city ambulatory had belched its last black cloud. We had killed it, its inhabitants had died by their own hands. And quickly too.
“How long since the city fell?” I asked, “In minutes.”
“Not even an hour,” Thunfir said grimly as he felt the cooled black metal river with his hand, “Whatever poison they used, it works fast. They gathered here for shelter before the battle.”
“What did they think we were going to do to them?” I asked, trying to understand the scope of what I was seeing. Though I had seen mass graves, this one was so unexpected - so sudden - that I found it difficult to grasp in my mind’s eye.
“What were we going to do?” Thunfir asked with an odd note in his voice. Beneath us, down the sloping platform we could hear the sound of battle cries growing. I noticed the voices of our own men mingling with the unfamiliar tones of the Thakka Cluster.
Our forces had routed the descending army and were climbing toward us, ready to strike a fatal blow to the city’s heart, unknowing that its citizens had already elected to rob us of their lives. Dropping my rifle, I laid my back in the crook where the sloping walls and floor met. Here I felt cradled, warmed by the still steaming river of metal nearby.
We continued our exploration of the leaning city for the remainder of the day. Eventually, the intercom broke into our conversation and casual looting to say that Crassus had found the leg controls of the device in the under-section of the plate itself. Of course it wouldn’t do us much good to lower the city now, but we could even it out slightly to make exploration easier. From the city’s upright horizon I saw the sky shift until the plate lowered us to look directly at the Plexis, rising like a brilliant white sun.
Shortly after that I was summoned to the room at the heart of the walking city where I would see my brother at its controls.
“It’s not terribly complicated,” Crassus said pointing to a white screen, “Much more intuitive than the Plexis. I suspect they added to it as time went on. This place has likely never fallen out of human possession.”
“What does it do?” I asked, looking at the banks of twinkling lights surrounding us.
“Everything,” Crassus said, “Everything the city can still do - which isn’t much.”
“Is it still a threat to the Plexis?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, pointing to a small display to his right, “right here.”
It was a three dimensional skeleton projection of a missile with words wrapped around it. While most of the text was unintelligible, there was one bit that we both would understand.
“14 KT,” I said aloud. 14 Kilotons.
“That would do the trick,” Crassus said, “I don’t know why they had this, or why there were so many empty slots here. This is the last one. Good thing it didn’t go off when the city had its tumble. Of course these missiles would have been designed to take a beating.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t use it when they realized they were losing the battle,” I said.
“Why would they do that? Just to spite us? After they disposed of the city’s masters, there was nothing left to do but drift away in peace. The soldiers dropped down and bought everyone time enough for their poison cocktail to kick in. I suspect everyone was gathered at that foundry building when it happened. We haven’t seen anyone else.”
“Let’s not tell anyone about the bomb,” I heard myself say. I don’t know why I said it. I didn’t then either. We were both surprised. It wasn’t until we had left the room several minutes later and locked the door behind us that I heard Crassus’ final response on the matter, equally unexpected,
“I won’t.”
That night I was sitting by the fire with nearly sixty improvised funerals behind me. The Thakka Cluster, which had been provisionally useful during the battle itself, was parading their dead through the hills far away. Maybe they would all be ambushed and we would never hear from them again.
“This is only the beginning,” Euclid said resting his hand on my shoulder, “There will be others. The city was poorly armed. Its citizenry was held aloft only by the legacy of its founders and whatever bullying they could muster. I will wager we won’t be this lucky again.”
I pulled a small twig from the edge of the burn pit and let the tiny flame light my cigarette. Taking off my glasses, I pushed the heels of my hands into my eyes deep in thought.
Euclid was right. Victory had come too easily on this day. And while the next attacker may not have a wandering city at its disposal, it would be no doubt armed with something far worse - cunning. The only thing we had feared from that machine had been the brutality it had displayed in its propaganda. And yet the next band wouldn’t be armed with that.
Like waves pulverizing a beach, the attackers would come from all over. They would form alliances, claw over one another, and finally breach the doors to the Plexis. Weapons that had been forgotten for over a century would be unearthed. Legions would pour willingly into the fire filled valley.
And then there was the Thakka Cluster. The next onslaught could very well begin as soon as they returned if we denied them access. With their love of death they wouldn’t hesitate to tear the spider city apart, looking for weapons to break into the Plexis. And they may even find the 14 KT. What then?
Smoke drifted from my fingertips in the hot dry air of the mass funeral pyre. In its glow I dared my gaze to wander among my fellow Plexis tribe members. Their faces looked heavy, withdrawn. Would they be able to once again become features of this rolling desperate landscape? Would the Plexis tribe remain without the Plexis itself?
No. In that moment, I knew it wouldn’t.
It was this or nothing at all.
- - -
In the days following our first battle, I could tell Crassus was different. The first night, as we laid down in our respective bunks, I heard a sound I hadn’t heard in a long while. He had once again taken up the habit of letting moist eyes get the better of him as he fell asleep. Though he tried to hide it always, it had been a long time since I had heard Crassus actually crying. I leaned over my bunk and called down to him,
“Hey.”
He didn’t respond at first, so I swung
my legs around and hopped to the floor, sitting in one of the chairs we had pulled into the sparsely furnished apartment. His fists were over his eyes, and he dragged them down finally to look at me. After a moment’s pause he asked, a hint of accusation in his voice,
“Why did they poison themselves?”
“I don’t know,” I lied. After a moment, I realized the lie wasn’t going to hold up so I added, “They probably thought it would be a better way to go than having their city conquered. I don’t know if you still remember my history lessons, but the Teutons did the same thing after the Battle of Aquae Sextiae. Hundreds, maybe thousands strangled one another in the night rather than suffer under the yoke of slavery.”
“What were we going to do to them?” Crassus asked. His eyes had cooled significantly since the battlefield when I saw the fire within him. He was wounded now, unsure of his place now that it was over. With my eyes closed, I remember breathing relief that he hadn’t lost his gentle character. Though he could be driven by passion to defend his home, he wasn’t destined to become a tyrant.
“I don’t know,” I said reassuringly, “I know we wouldn’t have killed them.”
“They would have,” Crassus said, “The Thakka Cluster. They would have killed everyone. And if they’d found the bomb, who knows what they would have done? They worship death. Somehow, they’ve tasted it already. Those years wandering in sickness, sharing it between them. And they’re our problem now. Our troubles are multiplying.”
He was looking at a piece of paper he had pinned to the wall. It was the pyramid of rats, the mathematical principle Euclid had offered to explain how the Plexis had been built. Exponential growth. He stared at it now uneasily, agonizing over some mystery hidden in the future. He continued, “I don’t want them to die. I just don’t want them here. This place is ours.”
The next morning the Thakka Cluster returned. Their dead had been consumed by some mysterious ritual somewhere out of sight. And now they stood in a line of nearly a hundred in front of the Plexis’ front door. The door, rare as it was, happened to be closed that morning.
Thunfir and I were on Floor 19 making small talk shortly before the line spilled over the horizon. I sat and he stood staring out at the rising sun casting shadows on the hill.
“That’s what will be the death of us, Ebon,” Thunfir said pointing with one hand and sipping his coffee with the other. I had been drawing a thread and needle through a ripped jacket, but his gesture effectively summoned my eyes to the window. Out from it I could see the line approaching, their many mouths open from the long chant they were now singing.
“Nothing we can do,” I said, “Not unless you want to force them out.”
“I do,” Thunfir said banging his fist softly against the window so that it vibrated, “But I won’t. They fought well yesterday. And whether we needed them or not, we had a deal.”
“I made the deal,” I said.
“Given what we were working with at the time, I tend to think it was the right choice. No, I don’t doubt that it would be right to let them in. I just fear what we will become, living next to them.” Thunfir‘s voice was strained, but not without hope. He turned and stroked his rough cotton-like beard between two dirty fingers and he added, “But if there are problems, I suppose we still outnumber them.”
They were almost at the front doors to the building, so we descended to meet them. When we did, the blind Thakka Cluster matriarch was perched atop a throne litter being carried by six of her attendants on long poles. She held up her right hand and clasped her thumb to the small and ring fingers. Her other two long and slender fingers were upright, close together and standing straight. The gesture meant nothing to me, though it may have been some form of benediction to the Thakka. Her blindfold was, as always, obscuring her eyes.
With explosive gunfire tracing bullets into the sky behind them, and with the thrumming dirge of their fallen comrades still on their red and wet lips, the parade came to halt in front of the steel trellised door. Thunfir and I arrived on the other side, staring through the cage at the hundreds of armed Thakka cultists. Thunfir looked over at the entrance controller, a thin man leaning uneasily against the wall and staring into the sea of blue lines under hardened eyes.
“Open the gate,” Thunfir said in a booming voice with his palms upturned, “Let them in.” With a loud whir, the steel portcullis of the Plexis lifted and the sliding glass doors opened. Thunfir walked out, hands raised in a sign of peace to meet the Thakka Cluster. One of the Matriarch’s attendants was leaning close to her ear, whispering something into it.
“Thunfir,” the Matriarch said from her throne, “I understand why Ebon approached us without weapons. He was our prisoner. But why do you insult us in this fashion?”
“Insult you?” Thunfir said, taken aback, “No insult was intended. I approach you in friendship. We don’t need weapons around our allies, because we don’t attack them.”
“We do,” the Matriarch said lowering her hand. She let the burning bundle of leaves fall from her fingertips to the ground and the grey eyed tribesman I recognized from my first encounter with the tribe strode forward, stamping the burning bundle under bare foot.
It was Thurrus, the man whose face had first emerged from the throat of a wolf. He stared harshly at Thunfir holding a scavenged rifle from the dead army of the spider city. Handing the rifle carefully to one of his apparent subordinates, he walked up to Thunfir so that their noses nearly touched, and in a flash - struck him hard against the side of his head.
Thunfir staggered backward once, before turning back and punching Thurrus in the face. Their arms locked, hand to elbow as they struggled in odd silence. Someone from the Thakka Cluster side called out,
“Kill him, Thurrus!”
Thurrus seemed eager to oblige, driving his head forward and smashing it against Thunfir’s skull. The old frontiersman leaned backward, his woven beard trailing his massive form as he almost tumbled to the ground. He was dazed, swaying heavily on massive boots.
A line of armed Thakka cultists had marched in front of the Plexis entrance grabbing any who attempted to rush in to help Thunfir, goading them back with oozing and bladed polearms and pointed rifles. It was the look in their eyes most of all that kept us back. It was desperate, ready to die. ‘Give us any reason,’ those eyes said, ‘any reason to kill you.’
Thunfir’s hand burst forward, connecting his fist to his rival’s face so that muddy crimson now flowed freely from Thurrus’ nose, eroding the thick landscape of dirt that had accumulated. From the circle now gathering around the two, hands reached from between bodies and grabbed Thunfir’s tree trunk of an arm, hands too strong for him to rip free. He curled his lip, changing tactics to elbow his captor in the face and sent two men cascading to the ground.
More hands now emerged from the swirling chaos of the crowd, clutching Thunfir’s coat and holding him in place. Thurrus had recovered from his spill and quickly darted his hand out to smash Thunfir’s face. Again the next hand moved over and pummeled him. Thunfir, leaning backward into the hands clutching him, kicked with both feet and sent Thurrus back. More men were piling on, grabbing his hair and projecting fist after fist against his bulky torso.
He disappeared in the swirling crowd, and I looked in shock from the spectacle before us up to the Matriarch. Though blind, she knew precisely what was happening. Fulfilling some unknown sacrament, she traced her hand across her face and gently kissed her own fingertips. I could hear Thunfir’s bellowing war-cry from beneath the writhing crowd. It broke briefly, irregularly with each fist, so that he was being played much like a drum under the savage hands beating him.
And then, following some unseen signal, working as a single creature, the crowd stopped and stood around him, looking down. With the conflict over, I managed to push my way through the crowd and lean down to Thunfir.
He was blinking, opening and closing his mouth with a trembling uncertainty. His eyes were unfocused, twitching all around him and rollin
g back into his head. I leaned down and examined the many abrasions eating into his face. They were bad, but not enough to kill him. The real danger was the concussion he had clearly suffered. I stood, stared at the Matriarch. Her purple lips were twisted, peeled back in an inexplicable and ecstatic gratitude.
The parade filed past me, hundreds of faces blankly staring at me cradling Thunfir’s bleeding head as the dining hall swelled with their numbers. When the Matriarch reached the door, special care was taken to ensure her litter didn’t accidentally knock against the edges of the doors as the girth of her throne was carried through. Inside I could hear wails of delight as the Thakka Cluster feasted their eyes on the bounty they had won.
Thunfir’s eyes were still rolling around in his head, rattling as if something vital had been dislodged during his beating. I held his head, ignoring the blood staining my hands as I whispered to him.
“Don’t let them see you die,” I said. His eyes were still unfocused, rolling between me and the brilliant blue sky beyond, “I need you alive.”
Coughing heavily, the blood stained edges of the old man’s beard pulled upward as he looked past my head into the sky. For only a moment his eyes seemed fixated on something, focused on some unknown feature hidden in the unexplored blue of day. His bruised arm raised from the ground and he pointed up, past me. His mouth was moving again, cluttering sounds together in something almost resembling speech. Finally, with the smile draining from his face, he nodded with his eyes still above me. His breaths were short, sharp, and he whispered,
“Do you see it?”
“What is it?” I asked, tearing my eyes from his broken face and looking up into the blue sky above, “What do you see?” He swallowed hard, stifling a cough and spattering blood from his nose across his upper lip,