by wildbow
“They give us drugs,” she said.
“I know all about the drugs,” I replied.
“The drugs make us… eager. Angry. Hungry. I want to eat you as much as I’ve ever wanted anything.”
“But you don’t want a bullet in your head,” I said. I cocked the hammer of my little revolver with my thumb.
She didn’t reply to that.
“You have better, safer chances of a meal if you run off to that battlefield over there and go looking for the dead, or ask politely for your dinner. You know they’ll have something prepared.”
“When I shuck off my skin, I get a release. There’s pain, but there’s a rush…”
“Sure,” I said.
“Satisfaction, as sure as anything.”
“I believe it,” I said. I barely knew what I was saying. I was only speaking because I worried that if I didn’t keep this up as an interplay, me and her, she would monologue and convince herself to attack.
“When I go after someone else, when I hurt other people, I get a rush like that. The drugs make me so restless. Maybe if I take your skin off, with my teeth and my fingernails, it’ll be that kind of satisfying. I won’t feel so restless anymore, I think.”
“Counterpoint: You won’t feel restless anymore because you’ll have a bullet in your skull,” I said.
“I’ll have to break your arms and legs before I start,” she said, her head turning as she looked in the general direction of the one Otis had disarmed.
She wasn’t listening to me. She was convincing herself.
“Hey, Small Mercy,” I said. I clacked the end of my sword against the wall. “Hey! Hey, listen, listen. Pay attention.”
She turned her head back to me.
“Look at your dress,” I said. “Look down, look at it.”
She did.
“We helped you get that dress,” I said. “We—”
“Fucken’ die!” one of the other Mercies called out. “I’ll fucken’ eat your skin!”
“Shut up!” I called back, pointing my gun at him. I was glad that he listened. I turned back to the Small Mercy. “We got you that dress, didn’t we?”
“Doesn’t have anything to do with anything,” the Small Mercy said.
“But it’s something that happened, isn’t it?”
“Huh?”
“It’s a part of your story. The story of you. You started off weak, runt of the litter, and that makes you special. You were left behind. That makes you special too. You need a story, or you’re just one face in the crowd. You don’t eat the characters in your stories.”
“I don’t care about any of that,” the Small Mercy said.
“Well you’ve got to do something different than you’re doing. Otherwise you’re going to get left behind again. You need to remember how you got there so you can’t let it happen again. You need to remember how you fixed it. We’re how you fixed it.”
“No,” she said.
“Yes we are,” I said.
“I’m saying I don’t care about that,” she said. She took a step closer to us, brandishing her knife. Others stirred, pacing. Some moved closer, others moved from left to right or right to left.
My heart sank. I’d failed. I’d hoped to find a crack and wriggle my way into it before tearing it open wider.
She went on, “If I go, you’re just going to get torn up by the others.”
I hadn’t failed.
“I’ll do worse than tear ’em up,” one of the woman Mercies taunted.
“You can walk away, or you can run at us and get a bullet in your skull for good measure. It probably won’t kill you right away. It’ll just hurt, and you’ll feel horribly, horribly restless while you die. This feeling you’re experiencing now? Like you’re supposed to do something? Imagine that feeling, larger than anything, yawning wide open inside you, as your life ends and you realize you had more to do.”
The Small Mercy shook her head.
Another edged closer. I moved my gun, aiming at him. He stopped.
The others were getting restless.
I’d found my crack. I knew the language they spoke, the sensations that dominated their lives. “That’s what it’s like. All the worst restlessness you’ve ever felt, with no ability to do anything about it. Haven’t you ever heard about your life flashing behind your eyes? It’s because the moment stretches out as the brain dies. Imagine that moment, imagine that horrible restlessness you feel right now, going on for a whole lifetime.”
She shook her head again.
Others were looking restless now.
“If you go, you can go eat. You can tear off your own skin and feel that rush, and you can do it many, many more times.”
“No,” she said.
She didn’t have the articulation or presence of mind to really argue against me. The range of emotions I’d seen from the others suggested that they tended toward hostility, but other emotions were present, and those other emotions were heightened too. I remembered the apologetic one.
“Which do you want? The horrible restless yearning for a whole lifetime, or do you want to go, eat, and live the rest of your life, with all the good feelings you’ve got waiting for you?”
She raised her head, looking up, probably glaring at me. I could only just barely make up her shoulders rising and falling.
I was dimly aware that the explosions in the background were less frequent than before.
I had no way of verifying the feeling, but somehow it felt like the rebels were pacing out the remainder of their shells and shots. I imagined them anxiously waiting, wondering why we hadn’t yet turned up.
The Small Mercy started toward me.
“You want that horrible restlessness?” I asked.
“No,” she said. This time it was an answer to my question, not a frustrated rejection of a negative thought process.
“No you don’t,” I said. “Go. There’s food waiting for you, safer prey.”
“If I go, the others will eat you.”
“If you go, others will follow you,” I said. I left out the ‘I hope’ at the tail end of that statement. “You’ll think about this a lot. You might even see me again, and you can try to eat me then.”
“It feels like such a long way to walk, back to the camp,” she said.
“If it starts to feel like too long a walk, then run,” I said. “But I’m going to tell you this. If you try to walk or run to me? You’re going to get a bullet in your head.”
“Might not,” another Tender Mercy called out.
Great. Disturbing my two-path process here.
“Fine. Let’s pretend you won’t get shot. What happens? You think all the others near here are just going to sit back and let you have your fun? They’ll tear into us too. You’ll get a morsel. You’ll feel more frustrated. More restless. You’ll be angry at each other. That’s no good.”
I could see heads turn. The Mercies considering one another.
“But if you go? Food waiting for you. They’ll be all ready to feed you. They have to be, if they’re using you as guards like this.”
“They are,” the Small Mercy said. “They said it when I got my shot.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” I asked, trying to sound as incredulous as possible. “That sounds great. A lot better than a bullet in the brain. If you go now, you might even be one of the first. More food.”
She shifted position, moving her feet, hesitant.
Then she strode off, looking over her shoulder at others.
Other Tender Mercies that had been listening moved in her direction. Not enough. Not enthusiastically enough. I felt as though the ones that were remaining still had more gravity than the Small Mercy did alone.
Jessie fired her gun at the closest Tender Mercy. It was, as far as I could tell, a perfectly placed bullet in the brain. As arguments went, it was a good complement to my own.
Others started to back off. The remainder tensed, as if waiting for Jessie to move again or fire a second shot. I suspected the
y would rush us en-masse.
I watched, breathing shallowly, waiting to see what might follow. They were a bloodthirsty kind of species, and the fear of death hadn’t been set all that deep in them. I’d tried to taint this seemingly easy meal with other fears and bad sentiments, but…
No. Too many weren’t budging, still. They had a kind of gravity.
“There’s no meal for you here,” I said. “The others are going to snatch up everything.”
“I’m big,” a heavyset, woman Mercy said. I could see the bright red of her coat in the gloom. “I’m strong. I’ll get enough.”
“You’ll get a bullet in your skull,” I said, driving the point home. “No matter how big or strong you are, you’re going to die. Slow. Even if it takes only a moment to die, you’ll live a restless lifetime in that moment.”
The Small Mercy watched from the fringes, clearly antsy, fidgeting.
The Matron Mercy didn’t budge. She hesitated, weighing her options, and it was clear that restlessness was winning.
Twin explosions sounded in the background, off in the distance.
“It’s not worth it,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
I desperately wanted the others behind me to pick themselves up and come to stand beside me, tall, intact, and proud. To make the odds look worse. It was why I was so desperately stalling. I needed something.
I hated the sinking-gut feeling that came with the others not stepping forward or adding their numbers to ours. It meant the others were hurt. Or, worse, they were dead.
“No,” the Matron Mercy said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
I could tell from her tone that she was planning to attack. She was planning on being nonsensical, letting hunger and restless, drug-induced bloodlust win over sense and rationality. I could tell from the fact that Jessie wasn’t shooting that Jessie was probably out of bullets, or the injury to Jessie’s arm was keeping her from aiming and firing again.
In the distance, a horn sounded. Collectively, the Mercies turned their heads. Light from burning wagons at the perimeter of the city caught a half-dozen faces, highlighting the imperfections, extra skin and thick skin at key places.
I stood a little straighter. I waited, holding my sword in one hand and the gun in the other, and I looked confident.
She turned, and she left. With her leading, the rest followed.
I remained where I was, looking confident, not turning my back, as the last stragglers followed. The one with the broken arms. One Jessie might have shot, who limped.
I waited and watched for the ones on the rooftop, and there was no sign of them. They might have dropped something on us and hurried to the ground for their meal. Maybe the Small Mercy had been one of them.
While I waited, checking to see that the coast was really clear, I asked.
“How’s your arm, Jessie?”
“I’ll live.”
“You did good. You too, Otis.”
“You did terrible,” Otis said. “Up until you started talking. Then you did good.”
“It was stalling and shooting in the dark,” I said. “And a bit of knowing how experiments like them think.”
“Well alright then,” Otis said, in his rough voice. “You did terrible. Then you did mediocre.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Now free to check, I hurried to the sides of the others.
A few thugs, hurt, were working with the others. The debris had been a pair of crates loaded down with garbage. They’d shattered and scattered their contents in our midst as they’d landed.
A few had only been clipped by the crates, or by flying debris. One thug sat with his hand over his eyes, blood trickling down one cheek. Blinded or partially by something. Archie had an injured leg and a head wound, but he wasn’t complaining. Others demanded more attention.
Fang and Gordon Two were mostly alright. Bea was hurt but sitting off to one side. The Treasurer was coming to. Rudy was still out cold, if he wasn’t dead.
At the far end of the alley, Shirley and Berger stood beside two dead Mercies. Berger still held his improvised weapon—one of the fallen pieces of trash, it looked like, a curtain rod or pole with a ragged end. They’d been far enough down the alley that they hadn’t been hit by the debris.
I knelt beside Rudy.
“Mercies on the roof above us dropped it on us. Two came down, I don’t know what the rest did,” Bea said, from where she sat.
“Rudy?” I asked. Not asking Bea in particular.
“Fang said half of Rudy’s ribcage is shattered,” Bea said. “He’s not waking up.”
“Well, it’s a good thing we’ve got a lot of talented doctors,” I said. “We’ll improvise a stretcher. And we’ve got to hurry. The place we need to run through is going to close, if it isn’t already.”
“Sy,” Bea said. “It’s bad enough we should maybe leave him behind.”
“Improvise. Berger’s pole there will work for one half of the stretcher. We can use some jackets.”
“Sy, I like Rudy too, he’s a good fellow, he’s loyal to you, but—”
“Improvise!” I said, raising my voice.
“Improvise,” Jessie said. “We’re here because we don’t leave our own behind. It goes for Rudy too.”
“Okay,” Bea said.
I walked over to Berger, extending a hand for the pole.
He hesitated a moment, then handed it over.
“I’m surprised you didn’t take her hostage and run,” I said.
“Miss Shirley said she wouldn’t allow it,” Berger said.
In the meager light we had, I could only see the light and shadow of one side of Shirley’s face. I imagined her jaw was set firm.
“And,” Berger said. “I was concerned the Tender Mercies would have eaten me alive.”
“Of course,” I said, turning my back on him. I set to work helping with the stretcher.
It was a shoddy contraption, pieced together in two minutes. Simply holding it was a chore, given the size of the piece of wood we’d used for the one side. I was fortunate that I was deemed too tired and weak to do the heavy work.
Otis took one end. A thug took the other. We exited the alley, using the street now that it was clear, and we hurried toward the perimeter.
Already, the gap was closing. Soldiers were taking position, returning from conflicts elsewhere on the perimeter. Only a trickling, but it was a trickling of a score or so of soldiers with guns and defensive positions behind sandbags and atop wagons. They had stitched, they had a scattered few Tender Mercies with them, and they had warbeasts.
We weren’t moving all that fast, all considered, and our momentum fell even more as we realized the nature of the wall ahead of us.
The warbeasts started barking and howling, picking up.
I looked at Jessie, and I saw Jessie blowing on the rabbit whistle, hard. She took a deep breath, then blew again. The process repeated until I thought she would pass out.
The answer wasn’t immediate, but it did come.
The distant warbeasts barked and howled, and they nearly drowned out the distant punching sound of mortars firing.
The soldiers at the perimeter turned to answer the threat, preparing to scatter as explosions and gas erupted around them—
But there was no gas, there were no explosions. There was only gunfire and a concentrated attack as our people mounted an outright, direct attack on this isolated part of the perimeter.
We rushed the perimeter, moving into and through the enemy. We transitioned from gloom and darkness into lanterns and movement and the occasional person, in plain, detailed, clear view. It was dazzling and dreamlike and alarming.
This was the kind of fighting I could do. Springing the attack, attacking from the flanks and the rear.
We fought past what might have been eight or ten people, catching them from behind, stabbing, shooting only a couple of times, and claiming weapons as we went. Archie, I think it was, kicked over a lantern, setting a fire behind us.<
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The fighting was happening all the way to our left. All heads were turned, all attention elsewhere. Soldiers fired into the trees and innumerable gunshots sounded in return. I had no idea if our people were even aiming into enemy ranks, or if they were shooting just to draw attention.
We moved past the erected defense, six people working to move the stretcher with. From there, it was a nerve-wracking run across lantern-lit dirt road. Darkness was safer—and the cover of trees, a dozen paces away, was safer still. I lagged behind, making sure the group was managing. Too many of us were limping. We were hurt, tired, and frazzled.
I was the last one to disappear into the trees, home free.
Previous Next
Head over Heels—16.13
Home sweet home, I thought.
It had taken a little bit of doing to properly quarantine ourselves as we arrived back at Sedge. Measures had been instated by the students awaiting our arrival, and our Treasurer had pushed hard for some last minute changes and some firm rules. As much as I’d wanted to curl up with some blankets and company by the fire, we’d had to stand around while others ran around on our behalf. ‘Barracks Two’ was emptied out, the residents gathering their things, and we had marched inside, each one of us to a room.
The team that had gone into the city with me had mostly worn quarantine suits, but the Treasurer wanted to be careful, and I wasn’t about to complain. Jessie, the Treasurer, Fang, Bea, and Gordon Two all went to their quarantine rooms. Rudy, meanwhile, went to our makeshift operating theater.
The wagon that had picked us up was now on its way back to our retreating troops. They would walk back as far as they could, with people picked up by priority each time the wagons and carriages made a trip. Not ideal, but it would have to do. I worried about the Academy following, but multiple people had assured me that they had planned for that even before they’d worked out the measure to fight the Academy. They had made mention of bear traps and some tricks to mess with the warbeasts, lookouts, a system of warnings, and other things that had sounded pretty good.
Jessie had been more alert and focused than I, and seemed to think it was sound, so I was willing to leave it at that. I was almost too tired to care.
The room had a small wood stove—I didn’t believe that all of them did, only the ones further from the kitchen. The door was open and the screen set in place, the light from within the only source of light in the room for the time being.