The Year's Best Australian SF & Fantasy - vol 05

by Bill Congreve (ed) (v1. 0) (epub)

  Bowley watched him, swaying like he could hardly hold his seat, and said, “It took some of yours, didn’t it?”

  The Man nodded.

  And did you keep German’s? Bowley wondered, Or did the dreaming take it from you? His scalp goosepimpled. The spook could as easily have kept his and Clay’s, had he wanted. Giving them up had plainly cost him.

  “How do we stop it?” he asked.

  The cowled head remained lowered, the tattered fringes of the shawl falling forward to hide the Man’s face completely. “Kill all of them,” he said. “All but the first infected. Each death will be a shock to the dreaming that possesses them. While it’s still reeling, I can - perhaps - subdue it and return it to the land.”

  Kill all of them. Bowley’s vision blurred. Oh, Maise.

  ~ * ~

  The mist had settled at the bottom of the valley, where the town stood, denser than when they’d left. There was a crowd gathered between the posts of the town gate. All men, except for Maise, and all of them armed. Alby and young O’Shane were among them. Bowley watched their faces fall when they realized German wasn’t with them.

  Bowley gathered his jammed gun and dismounted. He slapped Clay on the rump. The crowd parted to let her by and she skittered off down the street, vanishing quickly into the grey - smart enough, he hoped, to stay inside the rune circle.

  “Where’s German?” Maise asked.

  “Dead,” Bowley replied. “Same as old Stink.”

  She looked away from him, covering her lips with her fingertips and drawing deep breaths.

  “We’re ready,” said Alby. “Everyone else is in the church.”

  “Uncarved bullets won’t hurt the dream-taken,” said the Dappled Man, down from his horse now, too. Only an arm’s length from Bowley, he seemed to fade into the mist. He stood straight though, and apparently without difficulty.

  Bowley looked around at the frightened, determined faces, then back at the spook. “We’ve got more than four guns loaded with carved bullets,” he said.

  He pulled his revolver from its holster and reached past Maise to offer it butt-first to Ulf Erikssen, dug in his left pocket for fresh cartridges.

  “I can only defend four of you,” said the Dappled Man.

  “Reckon we’ll defend ourselves, mate,” said Alby. He handed one of his rifles to Ted Wright. German and young O’Shane followed suit.

  The spook was still for a minute. His pale eyes glittered beneath the ragged fringe of his shawl, boring into Bowley. Bowley hoped his fear wasn’t plain to see on his face. He returned the Man’s stare as levelly as he could. At last, the Man said, “Anyone else wants to fight, you’ll need weapons with killing runes carved on them.”

  “The rest get your arses into the bloody church,” said Bowley, his knees momentarily weak with relief. Most of the crowd scattered.

  Maise glared at him through tears of frustration.

  “That includes you, Maise,” he said. He was amazed that his voice was steady. “It’s your whole bloody family coming down on us, love. What’ll you do if you get Lucy in your sights? Or Jemima?”

  Her nostrils flared. She pressed her lips white as she, too, tried to stare him down. He put a hand on her arm, pushed her gently. Maise turned away, swayed a little and stumbled on her first step, then walked in the direction of the church.

  Bowley took a long breath, felt it chill his lungs. He let it out with a puff. To no-one in particular, he said, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He strode through the crowd and down the street towards the police station. Inside, he went straight to his desk drawer and retrieved his half-empty bottle of whiskey. He pulled the plug with his teeth and took a long swig. He closed his eyes for a minute while the burn of it spread through his chest.

  He rummaged around in the drawer for the screwdriver he thought might be there, found the letter opener and decided that would do. He perched on the desk with the carbine across his lap to try and un-jam it. To his relief, he was able to do so without disassembling the gun. Bootsteps sounded on the boards outside as the lever snapped back into place, chambering the offending cartridge properly, this time.

  Alby leaned on the doorpost.

  “Didn’t know you’d fallen behind, Bowls,” he said. “Spook said to keep riding, when we realized.”

  Bowley passed him the whiskey. “I know,” he said. “No worries, mate.”

  They made their way past empty houses to the church, where the spook had gathered everyone willing to fight below the steps: young O’Shane, Ulf, Ted Wright, half a dozen others busily loading their weapons with the spare bullets Alby and O’Shane had carried. Bowley handed out his spare rifle bullets. A handful of women and kids and shamefaced men huddled in the church’s doorway to watch. Dougie MacGill, mad old buzzard that he was, was the only one to turn out without a gun, armed with the rune-carved pike head he’d souvenired when he retired from the redcoats, stuck on its rough cut pole.

  The town’s rune-stone ring ran across the back of the unwalled churchyard. The world beyond it was invisible in the mist.

  Bowley looked down at his hands. They were rock steady. His emotions felt dull and distant - locked out. He cocked his carbine. He heard the creak-and-click repeated around him as the others did the same.

  The Dappled Man raised his voice. “Hold your shadows close. Keep the your boot soles on the ground. For every one of its taken that the tribe killed, the dreaming can take one of you. There are worse things than dying, if you fall.”

  He let that sink in, before adding, “This dreaming has no understanding of guns. That’s our advantage. Choose your shots well, because you’ll not have enough bullets to finish this task.”

  “Alright, lads,” Bowley said. “Spread out a bit, but stay close to the church. We don’t know which way they’re going to come.”

  Somebody shut the church door with a thump, and then only the movements of the men disturbed the silence - the crunch and crackle of their boots on dirt and brittle grass, the creak of oilskin coats - as they positioned themselves in a rough semicircle, anchored at the corners of the church. Bowley’s badge clinked against the top button of his uniform jacket as he took a few paces to position himself behind a headstone.

  They waited.

  German’s death played again in Bowley’s mind. He’d frozen, he knew, in the moments before the dream-taken had brought German down. Would it have made a difference, he wondered, if he hadn’t? Might he have saved him?

  The Dappled Man’s spoke: “They’re here.” The howling began in Bowley’s head an instant later.

  A stick snapped, out in the mist, from, the direction of the town gate. Gravel scraped. All weapons swung in that direction. Another sound cut across the howling.

  “Number Sevens!” Bowley cried.

  He dropped to his haunches a heartbeat ahead of the men around him. A war boomerang throbbed low overhead, through the space he’d occupied an instant before. A cry, abruptly silenced, told him someone hadn’t been fast enough. Dougie MacGill hit the dirt with five feet of bent wood buried in his ribs. War boomerangs clattered against the stone of the church walls.

  Somebody loosed a shot.

  “Not until you can bloody see them!” Bowley yelled. He peered over the top of the headstone.

  Ragged figures materialized out of the mist. Bowley came to his feet, bringing his carbine to his shoulder. For an instant, the sharpness of his perceptions overwhelmed him. He’d seen, in feral dogs, the hurt and desperation that drove them to hurl themselves at the muzzle of a gun. He saw it now in this charging rabble, with grime and gore unwashed from their faces and caked into their cuffs and shirtfronts, axes and shovels clasped in their fists.

  Gunshots cracked to his left and right.

  His vision narrowed. He was in his marksman’s place, where he could act and not feel. Francisco Del Mar came under his sights once again. Bowley’s first shot punched through the charging man’s face and out the back of his head. The second hit him si
de-on as he stumbled. The impact took the shattered back of his skull clean off.

  Bowley searched for a new target, wondering if he could pick out the first taken, the one who mattered, and avert the worst of the carnage.

  He paused, overwhelmed by a sudden feeling of wrongness. “Where’s the rest of them?”

  There were less than twenty attackers in front of him. Half of them were down already and all of them, he saw, carried some kind of injury. He spun on his heel, shouted his question at the Dappled Man, positioned at the foot of the steps.

  The Man was already turning, pointing, out where the rune-stone perimeter came closest to the church. Bowley saw movement in the mist.

  “Alby! Over there!”

  He ran to that side of their line, his gun at his shoulder, as Alby and the others nearest pivoted to meet the new threat.

  His sights found a blackfella, running among the Del Mar mob. There were others. The tribe’s intervention had cost them. Bowley tracked the blackfella’s approach. He fired just as the man passed behind a tall tombstone. The bullet kicked chips off the edge of the stone. Someone else’s bullet knocked the blackfella flat.

  The new wave of attackers came fast. Bowley put his next two shots into the torso of one of the older Del Mar nephews from less than ten yards away. The twin impacts knocked the Del Mar off his feet, like a giant hand had slapped him flat. The axe handle he’d brandished pin-wheeled between the headstones. Bowley shot little Letitia Del Mar, coming behind, wearing a pinafore brown with blood. Her hair flicked up as the bullet came out the back of her head.

  He was dimly aware of Alby beside him, flipping his rifle, already empty, to use as a club. Of Ulf, beyond Alby, with Bowley’s service revolver gripped in both hands. Young O’Shane, pumping bullets from his pair of pistols with methodical precision.

  A still figure caught Bowley’s eye, out beyond the mayhem - a girl, standing straight and tall, her arms raised before her. Jemima Del Mar. Maise’s niece. The first taken, Bowley realized.

  In front of the church, the Dappled Man mirrored Jemima’s pose.

  A woman charged straight at him. It was Maise’s sister, Lucy - Jemima’s mother. Bowley’s finger froze on the carbine’s trigger. His pulse pounded in his ears. There was nothing of the woman he’d known in the rictus of Lucy’s face. He squeezed the trigger with a jerk, pulling the carbine’s muzzle sideways. The bullet hit her high in the chest. She staggered into the arc of Alby’s rifle butt. Bone and wood crunched together.

  Les Barrett, a senior son-in-law, was hard on the Lucy’s heels. Bowley flipped his empty carbine in his hands, felt the hot metal sear his fingers and palms, and swung. He met the downward arc of the man’s mattock and used the momentum of the blow to push the weapon aside and put his elbow into Barrett’s face. Bowley pulled his carbine back over his shoulder and swung. The trigger guard caught Barrett squarely in the side of the head. The blow jarred Bowley’s wrists and elbows. Blood crazed beneath the skin of the dream-taken’s temple, patterning like shattered porcelain. Bowley adjusted his grip and hit him again. Barrett collapsed.

  Ulf went down under the weight of two assailants. Young O’Shane and Ted Wright arrived an instant too late. Ulf started to convulse on the ground. Ted impaled one attacker on the point of Dougie MacGill’s pike, belted the other with a long-handled mallet he must’ve taken from one of her kin. The woman’s head rocked on her shoulders. She lunged at Ted, making him stumble. O’Shane shot her, point blank, in the face. Ulf started to rise from the ground at his feet. The Irishman put his second pistol to the publican’s forehead and pulled the trigger.

  Closer to Bowley, Alby kicked little Tomas Del Mar, all of four years old, under the chin. He raised his boot again and stamped on the child’s thin chest as he bounced against the earth.

  Hands grappled Bowley from behind. Sharp teeth sank into the side of his neck. He wrenched free and spun. The carbine’s stock missed his attacker by a whisker. Javier Del Mar, patriarch of the family, peeled back his bloody lips in a soundless snarl.

  A hand snaked over the old man’s shoulder and caught him around the face. Alby thrust his hunting knife up under Javier’s chin. The Del Mar jerked backwards as the blade penetrated. Alby stumbled and they both started to fall.

  “No!” Bowley lunged after them. For an instant, he clutched Alby’s coat sleeve. Then the oiled leather slipped through his fingers and Alby’s back hit the dirt.

  His eyes bulged. His heels drummed the dirt. His shadow flitted away from his stricken body, then it too began to thrash, but only for a moment. Still struggling, it was sucked into the earth.

  Alby started to rise. Bowley rammed the carbine’s butt into his face. Alby fell back. Bowley hammered down again. Bone gave beneath the blow. Alby’s limbs twisted spastically. Bowley swung in a frenzy, as though he could obliterate Alby’s identity and, with it, the horror of what he was doing. The carbine’s stock snapped. Bowley staggered. Alby’s bottom jaw jutted up, above his collar, obscenely intact.

  The field was still.

  For a while, Bowley leaned on the splintered butt of his gun. His breath rattled in his ears. His neck and his burnt hands throbbed. He slowly pushed himself upright.

  Aside from Bowley, only three of the townsmen who’d begun the fight were still on their feet. Young O’Shane was one of them, still with both his pistols in his hands. His face was slack, his eyes closed. Ted Wright crouched with his forehead resting against the pole of Dougie MacGill’s pike, one forearm pressed against his belly. Blood dripped between his legs. Bowley began to shake.

  One Del Mar still stood amid the carnage. Jemima. Neither she or the Dappled Man had moved, still confronting each other in their invisible battle of energy and wills. Even in the pale light, Jemima’s shadow was dense and dark, many armed and many headed, as though cast by many suns. The Dappled Man’s captive shadows writhed across his body.

  He took a step forward. Then another. Jemima remained rooted. The Man walked towards her, each step an obvious effort, like a man wading through mud. He reached out and caught Jemima’s chin. Still, she didn’t move. Her shadow’s many limbs writhed in agitation and it began to shrink towards her feet. Darkness poured out of her mouth and out of her nose and ears and eyes. It ran up the Dappled Man’s wrist and into his sleeve. Jemima’s body shook violently. The Man bowed his head, his shoulders hunched.

  The last bit of shadow drained over Jemima’s lip. The Man released his grip on her jaw and they staggered apart. The Man swayed but kept his feet. Jemima crumpled.

  A keening sound penetrated Bowley’s gun-deaf ears. At first he thought it was the dreaming, howling still, and he wondered how that could be. Then he realized the noise was coming from Jemima - each cry an uninfected blast of anguish, followed by a terrible, wrenching gasp for air, then another long, monotonous cry.

  Maise raced across the field, arms outstretched, fingers splayed. She was too slow to catch Jemima before she fell. She skidded to her knees beside the girl and scooped her up. Jemima’s face and neck were crimson, veins and ligaments pushed out with the force of the sound coming up her throat.

  The Dappled Man stood over them, his shrouded head bowed, leaning a little, like someone who’d taken a bad hurt to the ribs.

  His horse picked its way through the slaughter and stopped beside its master. The Man took a moment to react, as though he didn’t see it at first. He reached up an arm, then got his foot into the stirrup and lifted himself with painful slowness to slump in the saddle.

  The horse moved off again, past the rows of tombstones and out to the rune circle. Blackfellas waited in the fringes of the mist. They fell into step beside the rider as he vanished from sight. They’d see the dreaming put back into the ground, back where Jemima and her kin had found it, to go back to sleep and lie undisturbed until it withered away to nothing. Bowley wondered if he ought to go after them, to be certain it was done with and they’d seen the last of it.

  He looked over at Maise, with her eyes scr
ewed shut and her teeth clenched in a grimace, her own body wracked by sobs as she held her niece. What comfort could he offer her? What was there left for he and Maise, with the blood of her family on his hands?

  He let the shattered carbine fall from his fingers. He walked towards Maise. Her head was turned away, to where the Man and his escort had gone into the mist. She didn’t respond when he knelt beside her, put his hand on her back. He took a grip on her shoulders, pulled her in to him. She didn’t resist. Jemima had exhausted her voice, for now, and sprawled in her aunt’s arms, panting like a hurt animal. Her eyes were bulged and bloodshot in her still-red face.

  Maise pulled away suddenly, and turned to look at him, her face fierce. “You go after them, Robert,” she said. “You make sure it’s done right.”