Sondranos: The Narrative of Leon Bishop

by Patrick Stephens

  “What do you have for me?” Chest-Plate roared.

  “I want you to give me one of your prisoners,” he said.

  “They are not my prisoners. It is only because of a deal our Elder made that some of you will survive. If I had my way, you be scattered across the landscape to feed the crops.”

  “The girl, for two more.”

  “Two more, plus yourself. No girl. You die if our Elder denies your forgiveness.”

  Lancaster closed his eyes, and started again. “You must want something. There has to be something you need. I can find a way to give it to you, if you just give me what I need.”

  “Since when does a human need to acquire another human to get what it needs? Hasn’t it taken enough when it works together?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” Lancaster said. “But I can assure you, it will be worth your while.”

  “Don’t move, Lancaster,” Annalise mumbled.

  Chest-Plate turned to Vertebrae and Third in what I could only assume was his way of looking for a response. He got nothing. He stomped forward, his foot rumbled the ground, and he opened his arms wide as if to invite violence. This was when Lancaster jumped – he balled his fists and closed his eyes, raising his hands to protect himself. Kayt cried out as Chest-Plate growled and let out a thin exhalation. Before Lancaster knew it, Chest-Plate lunged, swiped the claw of a chelimb across Lancaster’s throat, and pulled it back just as fast. The claw hadn’t needed much room, so Lancaster never felt the chelimb reaching between his upended arms towards his throat. Blood arched away, across the street. Lancaster opened his eyes as he gasped for breath. He fell to his knees as the Belovore stood over him.

  It was the first time I’d ever seen someone I knew die. And it was nothing. Lancaster had tried to stand up for us; rather, he tried to sell us out – but at least he’d been doing something. Kayt, Annalise and I had allowed ourselves to be captured, and stood in the crowd talking. Yes – we’d been learning more about the Belovore threat, but we hadn’t been doing anything. Our story had left our control as Abilene spread it through the crowd.

  One thought continued to recur, as it does now.

  I’d been travelling with Lancaster for hours. I’d heard stories about him, and watched as Davion talked him down from foul language. Everything I’d needed to know about the boy was right in front of me, and had been. He was scared of being himself: he’d been rejected by Kayt, and was afraid of losing her; he felt the need to be brave beyond stupidity. This was a man on the cusp of discovering who he wanted to be, and now that had ended. And yet, when I watched him die, I felt nothing. That is what continues to haunt me. I would learn more about him and the kind of man he hoped to become, but only after his death. His life became retrospective.

  “Lancaster!” Kayt yelled. She tried to push away from us, but Annalise grabbed her. I couldn’t feel anything around me. The next thing I heard was Abilene yelling out to the crowd, telling them to attack.

  This was not what we’d planned. I’d hoped for some kind of coordinated attack, or at least the semblance of a plan. Abilene had taken it into her own hands.

  Chest-Plate turned from Lancaster’s body and stumbled backwards as at least half of the crowd tore at him. The rest divided towards Third and Vertebrae behind us. We were almost trampled in the charge. I wanted this to be more organized. I’d hoped that Abilene would come back to us and say when they were ready, to which we’d reply with some sort of cohesive plan of attack. Instead, we had mass chaos. I could see that the crowd was closer to forty. It should have been as easy to control as a classroom.

  Mine and Annalise’s eyes locked in the middle of the screaming crowd - Annalise looked at me as if to add: ‘did you think they would trust us with their lives?’ Kayt side-lined us and ran to Lancaster. I saw her start talking to him, but all I could hear was the sound of people scrambling against the Belovores, attacking without regard to anyone else. Chest-Plate and the other two growled as they started swinging at the oncoming crowd. Out of the corner of my eyes, I spotted Abilene hurrying her two daughters away from the scene. She fled in a direction that would have taken her towards the tree-farm. Depending on whether or not the Belovore Davion had hit was alive, they would certainly survive another day.

  Chest-Plate fell within the first seconds of the attack. The Belovore had been swinging, but to little effect, as the rest of the crowd grabbed him by the arms, slowing his attacks. Someone had grabbed his chelimbs and tore them off. Another group had dislodged the plates across his torso, severing them from the body beneath. The same man who’d torn the chelimbs off wielded one of the dismembered limbs and stabbed Chest-Plate through the open wound. Chest-Plate tumbled to his knees, and then landed face-first into the pavement. It had taken no more than a minute to kill the Belovore, and no less than ten people to do the job.

  The rest of the crowd swarmed the other two Belovores, but in the distance I could see more Belovores coming. They’d let their own prisoners go, and ambled towards the crowd like they knew victory would be assured once they arrived. The female Belovore I’d seen earlier walked faster than the rest, and three or four more sped up to join her – also females. They looked far angrier than the males, and more powerful even though their armour seemed lighter.

  I knew, then and there, that the neighbours would get slaughtered.

  “Run,” I yelled.

  My voice cracked, but I yelled it again. Annalise picked up the signal. She started pushing people away, telling them to book it, to move, to go anywhere they might be safe. A loud crash from Annalise’s garage registered in our ears, but failed to make us turn around. The frenzy of the crowd tearing at the Belovores as they swung and pinched and roared against the outbreak of violence kept us trained on what we needed to do.

  Kayt sobbed over Lancaster, holding his head in her arms. I felt a lump in my gut weighing me down. Annalise and I picked her up, noticing the car streaming towards us. Kayt fought back, trying to keep hold of Lancaster. Lancaster’s head tilted to the side as if he was watching us leave.

  Melanie screeched the tires to a halt next to us, barely missing a quartet of people who were tearing at Third. Four lay dead at his feet, while three continued tearing at his plates.

  Melanie yelled for us to get in, but we didn’t hear her – her lips and the way her eyes scowled told us enough. Annalise pushed Kayt into the backseat first with Davion. He grabbed and pulled her in. Annalise went next, and I followed. I shut the door while Melanie accelerated. It seemed as though everyone else was too preoccupied with the fight to notice our car.

  The wheels screamed against the pavement. We were propelled backward, pushing us into the seats. The noise of the car leaving was enough to rouse a few of the people in the crowd. Most of them had taken off – but the ones who had a score to settle remained. Third was finally on the ground, his plates torn off, revealing a thick, sticky mess of muscle and blood. He squirmed, rolling like a turtle on its back. Vertebrae had gained the upper hand, killing two, while the rest of his attackers had fled.

  “We have to go back!” Kayt yelled. She twisted in the seat and out of Davion’s grasp. She tried to reach for the door, but Davion pulled her away. “We can’t leave him there.”

  “The boy was an idiot,” Davion said.

  “Don’t you ever talk like that about Lancaster!” Kayt swung at him, missed, and then leapt, pounding her fists against him. In the small space of the backseat, the power behind the punches was minimal. Davion took the blows and raised his hands to let them come. They landed loudly through his robes, and nobody moved to pull her away.

  We all knew what was coming. The breakdown. She would start crying and say she missed him – that’s how it was supposed to go. Some of us wanted it to happen. It would have given us permission to break down over everything that had happened in the last few hours. Only, that’s not what happened. Kayt pulled her hand to her other side and swung. She hit Davion in the jaw with the back of her hand. Blood jumped fro
m his lips, and Kayt fell back into her seat. Her chest rounded up and down with each severe breath of air she stole.

  No tears fell.

  In the distance, the sight we left behind was of more people running from their homes as the Belovores went to join the fight in the centre of the road. Annalise and I watched them from over our shoulders as Melanie took to the road, not bothering to stay in the lines. There was no magnetic lock to keep the car steady, so she took advantage of the curves to gain speed. It wasn’t long before Covenant Street was far behind us.

  We couldn’t save them all, but maybe those who’d escaped would survive. That’s what I told myself. It would be two hours before anyone would speak again.

  I am not proud of who I was. Regret is something I feel on a daily basis. It stows away in the back of my mind when I wake up, prepared to spring out and steal whatever moments of happiness I have to feed upon, ready to survive another day.

  I don’t know what happened to any of the neighbours in Covenant. I do know that they managed to take down Third and Vertebrae before the others arrived. I would like to think that they took the smart path and ran before any other Belovores joined the fray. I can pretend that they didn’t think they’d be taking them down one by one, because even I knew then that it was impossible. Abilene probably made it out, with her daughters in tow. The old man and his granddaughter might not have made it. I could have opened the door and yelled for everyone to climb on, or in, but that would have freed up the Belovores. Or weighed down the car, preventing our escape.

  I’m supposed to say I don’t regret my actions; instead, I regret not having control over them. Though, I’m also certain this is my way of asking for a proper excuse for driving away from Covenant Street, or not doing something to save Lancaster.

  Regret begets excuses; excuses beget regret.

  In the dark, those two are always the same.

  Chapter Nine:

  The Birth of a Present Moment

  Melanie stopped the car in the middle of a plateaued region of the crests, at Annalise’s insistence. The sun had finally broken through the cloud cover from beneath; the crater nibbled at the edge of the light when Melanie pulled to the side of the road. It may have been later in the afternoon, but from within a crater, sunset always came early. Orange light lit the dirt to a tangerine shade, and turned the grass into sepia stalks. Melanie muttered: “God, I hope we can get this thing started again.”

  “I’m certain we will,” Annalise said as she opened the door. She stretched her legs through the opening of the passenger side door first, and then climbed out. She looked to the north. Her shadow cast long and thick on the soil, pointing away from where the crags now basked in shadow. Back the way we came, the trees were hardly visible. They vanished even more as sunlight fled than behind the rising and falling of the landscape. Covenant Street only existed in our memories, and I found myself turning a blind eye to the still cover of clouds above.

  Davion climbed out, and I did the same in tandem with Melanie. Only, Melanie turned back around and bent into the driver’s door – I stopped her before she could say anything to Kayt. I waved my hand, intending for her to translate it as ‘Leave the girl alone,’ and Melanie seemed to understand. She nodded and came back out. Kayt remained in the back of the car, silent. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through, but I know talking about it after such a short time would have only made her question if she could have done anything.

  The four of us walked around to the trunk, where Annalise pulled it open and started hoisting the bags out. We’d all silently agreed to continue surviving. We weren’t ignoring Lancaster’s death, but we were acknowledging how raw the wound would have been for the young girl. Davion set his hand lightly on Melanie’s shoulder and whispered loud enough for us to hear: “I knew you were capable.”

  She smiled and blushed. Davion clapped her lightly on the back and walked away from the car, casually walking into the centre of the road.

  Annalise placed one bag on the ground and let it tip over. The bags I’d retrieved tumbled to the edge. Annalise then pulled out some convection foil and some of the meat she’d taken from the refrigerator.

  She held them both up and grinned. “Pop the hood, would you Mel?”

  “What for?”

  “The engine overheats,” Annalise grinned.

  Melanie rocked onto her heels, then the toes of her shoes. She hesitantly looked back to the still-open door of the driver’s seat.

  Davion retrieved the fallen bag. He carried it to the front of the car. “Go ahead, Miss Nesbit. I feel Lise has been struck with inspiration.”

  She turned and ducked back inside the driver’s seat door. I trampled a bit of grass nearby, along the edge of the road. A tangle of roots that had crawled through a crack in the pavement to reach the sunlight, but had died and dried long before I’d arrived.

  “I think we’re going to cook something up,” Melanie offered.

  “I don’t know how much longer I can take this,” Kayt said.

  “We’re all out here, sweetheart.”

  “Not all; not anymore.”

  “Would you rather I leave you to your thoughts?”

  “I keep seeing him there. Why did we leave him behind?”

  Melanie leaned forward, placing her knee on the foot-well. She sighed and stammered before trying to explain what she wanted to convey. “We would be dead right now. You have to understand, Lancaster knew what he was getting into. Before he left, Davion and I tried convincing him not to go. We were almost done with the engine.”

  “You should have tried harder,” Kayt rasped.

  “He lied to us, Kayt. He told us you three were captured, but that nobody was guarding the group. Davion told him not to risk it, and Lancaster agreed – he said he was going to keep watch and let us know if there were any changes. The next thing we knew, Lancaster ran out. We finished the car as fast as we could.”

  “It wasn’t fast enough.”

  “It was as fast as faith would allow,” Melanie said. I wanted to intervene, but the conversation seemed to be going fine. I’d expected yelling and considerably more cursing. But what struck me as odd was what Melanie had said, then: ‘As fast as faith would allow’. That wasn’t Melanie talking. At least, not the one I knew. More had happened in that garage than she was explaining.

  “The definition of faith is putting your complete, unwavering trust in something you’ve never seen, nor have any proof exists. You can have faith, but I’m not going to be an idiot,” Kayt said. That, also, didn’t sound like Kayt.

  Melanie nodded, reached under the steering wheel, and popped the hood. She smiled through a placating grin. “If you need anything, don’t hesitate.” Before she closed the door, she released a small catch below the door-lock and the window evaporated. I hadn’t seen windows like those in years – it was almost enough to make me forget the car was ancient. Melanie closed the door quietly. “We’ll be out here when you need us,” she finished.

  Melanie noticed me after closing the door. Inside, Kayt leaned her head down.

  “Poor thing,” Melanie whispered. “So lost without Lancaster.”

  “Melanie,” I took her by the arm. The way she turned towards me made it look like she’d perfected gliding. Annalise had begun walking towards the engine, and Davion was entranced by what she was about to do, so I led Melanie casually away. “What happened to the woman who was out for Davion’s blood?”

  “We all have our impressions. What matters is how we interpret them,” she said. “I’m sorry for the impression I left on you.”

  Hours had passed since I’d said the same thing; yet, coming from her, I felt that she meant them in a far greater capacity than I could have realized. Sipping at Blanc de Noirs in the cellar of an Abbey just after the city had been destroyed, or having just escaped a potential massacre – who’s to say whose story had more importance, and who owned those words?

  And who was to say which Melanie was the kind I would pu
t my faith in? You can’t only know someone for a few hours and understand their core, no matter how much you hope to be right.

  Regardless, I was certain Davion had a hand in her change. And that change had happened in the garage.

  Melanie clapped me on the shoulder and left to the front of the car. Davion watched Annalise, his eyes wide and his hands at the ready should she need help. She handed him the convection foil and the steaks, then propped the hood open. Steam rose from the engine in a mushroom cloud of white-hot mist. I could feel the heat from a few feet away. Nightfall had already begun to twinge the air will a cooler breeze, but the engine made the atmosphere feel like it had never changed from mid-day. Beads of sweat formed on Annalise’s forehead.

  Annalise then took a rectangular sliver of foil from the packet and set it on the engine. It stiffened, and small dots of red illuminated around the base. Annalise set the meat on the foil.

  “Damn it,” she tossed her hands in the air.

  “What’s wrong?” Davion asked.

  “Seasoning,” she said. “I didn’t even think to grab it.”

  “The Good Lord saw fit to provide us with meat and drink. If He wished for us to have seasoning, He would have provided,” Davion laughed it off. Annalise rolled her eyes. Melanie nodded her head agreeably, and I had no idea what to do.

  “Unless you have an extra tub of engine grease,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  I once read – in another Arnold Richter novel from 2035 – that engine cooking had become a very popular pastime during the early quarter of the twenty-first century - ever since a book called Manifold Destiny was reprinted for the Electric Motor crowd and those who were stranded on the ‘constantly rebuilding’ magnetized strip-ways started holding roadside barbecues – they weren’t nearly as reliable as they would become a hundred years later, only having been installed in cities like Perth, Boston, York, Pretoria, and Johannesburg. Since then, most combustion engines had been turned into nothing more than kick-starters for vehicles, especially with the magnetic locks required to allow the Transit Authorities control over destination and traffic.