by Giselle Ava
I don’t recognise Walter’s eyes.
“I heard you’re heading out again,” Walter says.
“You want to fight?” I tell him.
“The hell kinda question is that?”
We take a delivery van through the streets of London as night falls. Percy, one half of the Lennox brothers, drives. The rest of us sit among the boxes in the back, our only lighting the dull streetlamps pouring through a plastic window in the door.
This is the plan.
Myself, Walter, George and the Lennox brothers take the outpost and John Montgomery with it. Meanwhile, Stirling and Nicholson take the camp, freeing the prisoners. If what Stirling has said to me is true, and Montgomery’s being there is any indication of things, there are other Unkindly among them, and they can fight. We have the upper hand.
We always have the upper hand.
We can do what they cannot, and they fear us because of it.
If they fear you, Arthur, says that voice inside my head, what will become of the city when all is done? If the people fear its leader, what then?
I shut out the voice.
“Stirling,” I say instead. The man looks at me, softly illuminated by the warm light. There’s a man who knows how to fight; he has a hunger, couldn’t be much older than myself. “Marianne told me you know some guys at this outpost.”
Stirling spits out his cigarette and catches it between his fingertips. “Couple of the boys, we used to flip carriages in and around London.” He surveys us with those sharp eyes. When he speaks, the corner of his mouth lifts, revealing gum. “You can make a lot of money doing that. Flipping them and all. Sometimes we’d make three hundred dollars in an evening.”
“How much you’d purchase them for?” says Redvers, the other Lennox brother.
“Who said we were purchasing them?” says Stirling without smiling, taking a suck of his cigarette. “Anyways, the boys, we got separated after Mildred died. That’s when I found Cobbe. Thought they must be dead; hadn’t heard from them in weeks. They’re good men, they are. Same with lots of them who are still out here. True Unkindly folk who didn’t fight in the war.” He looks across the cabin at George. “What’s your deal, anyway, ghost?”
“I didn’t fight in the war,” Dead George says, his ghost-like body casting a blue glow across the back of the van. “I spent my time sleeping with your wives and daughters, getting high with all the other poor fools who stayed behind. I didn’t know what I could do until I got drunk one night and broke a fella’s leg while standing six feet away. He came down with some ugly infection afterward and died a pitiful death. As for me, I was poisoned among other things.”
“Why didn’t you die?” says Nicholson.
“Perhaps Montgomery ought to know something,” says Redvers as the van jostles over a bump in the road and he nearly tumbles into Stirling, who groans.
“I don’t have a good feeling about him,” Stirling says. “Let me be clear, I ain’t here for him. Whatever happens to him, I got no opinion on it. It’s our folks I’m after.”
“That’s all you have to do,” I tell him.
“You got me thinking, Arthur,” Stirling says as he waves his cigarette around, throwing smoke into Redvers’s face, who promptly coughs. “What the hell does Marianne know about my connection to the guys at the outpost? I ain’t got a good feeling about her.”
“Who do you have a good feeling about, Stirling?” says Nicholson.
“Truth be told, I ain’t got a good feeling about most folks running round the Crossroads. I’ve been betrayed before, betrayal by incompetence and betrayal by intent. Where’d you come from, Arthur?” He leans forward, eyeing me through the darkness. “I trust you now, but something goes wrong here, I may add you to my list.”
Where did you come from, Arthur?
Where did I come from? I only remember pieces about what happened before this. I remember the schoolyard, I remember how they took me away, I remember the war—I remember pieces of it. Where did I come from? I remember I used to work at the docks with George, and then Mildred came and, with her, the revolution.
Do you remember the room?
The room.
“I’m just messing with you,” Stirling says. “I ain’t got a goddamn reason not to trust you. Fellas, look around and smell the air. We’re making history.”
“We all came from the same place,” I tell them. Looking from Stirling to Nicholson, I see soldiers who are tired of waiting, tired of the war. “We grew up thinking we’d be inheriting a proud new world. Our starry-eyed dreams were met with indifference, followed by war, and we could do things that they could not, so they used us in their war.” I look to Redvers and then Dead George and Walter Milne. I think to myself, Fortescue won’t know what hit him, when these proud men set fire to his ivory tower. “Now they want to kill us, and they have been, for far too long. Thomas Cobbe wants to wait around. He can wait, but not us.”
“I like the sound of that,” Stirling says.
The van stops, letting out a gasp of exhaust.
“Gentlemen, we have arrived,” declares Percy Lennox from the front. I feel a nervous twitch surge through my body, the part that reminds me that I am, in fact, Human.
Liberate the camp. Capture Montgomery.
“Let’s do this,” I tell the men.
Montgomery Captured
Stirling throws open the door of the van and we step out onto a dark elementary school carpark. Night has fallen heavy and thick; it will do us well. I draw my pistol, shaking the dust onto the gravel. Percy joins us outside, spitting out his cigarette and crushing it. Several tall spotlights illuminate the school grounds, the quiet parking lot, a guard post.
“Stirling, with me,” I say, striding to the makeshift guard post. The headlights from our van illuminate the small tent. There’s only one man inside there, reclining on a chair behind a desk. A single lantern sits on the table. Stirling and I aim our pistols at him.
The young man looks up at us and his eyes go wide. “Excuse me?” he says, rising from his seat and grabbing the rifle that’s leaning up against the table. He steps out into the light, raising the weapon at us clunkily. He’s no more than twenty years old. What’s he doing here?
“Put down the weapon,” I tell him.
He obliges, letting it crash to the ground.
Stirling walks up to the man and forces him to his knees while I stand in front, my pistol aimed at his face. The spotlights reflect off the sweat on his forehead as he looks up at me.
“Where’s Montgomery,” I say.
“He’s in one of the classrooms,” the young man says in a breath, suddenly averting his eyes. There’s clattering from the tent as Nicholson searches the desk. I divide my attention between him and the man, and Stirling’s pistol burning his temple. “Inside the building behind me, third door on the left. It’s not very well guarded; you’ll have no problem.” He swallows hard, his eyes darting to Stirling’s pistol, then back at me. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Where are they keeping the prisoners?” Stirling says.
“Go around the side of the building,” the man says. “They have it all set up there. Like cattle, there’s just fences all over the place, and they’re in there. I promise you I’m telling the truth. I was sent to watch over here recently. I wouldn’t be here if I had a choice.”
Stirling looks at me.
From my pocket I withdraw a silencer and fit it to the barrel of my pistol. The young man is watching me, tears forming in his eyes. I notice him quiver in Stirling’s grip, but Stirling fought in the war, Stirling is a strong man with metal beneath his skin, and this young man is not. I affix the silencer and aim my pistol at the man’s head.
You wouldn’t kill him, says the whine.
My finger caresses the cold trigger.
We can’t take any chances, not this time.
“Close your eyes,” I tell him.
“Please don’t—”
There’s the whisper of a bull
et leaving a gun and the man falls face-first onto the gravel, blood dribbling out of his forehead. I detach the silencer and slide it back into my coat. Stirling spits on the dead kid. Standing on his own, Walter glances at me and then at the boy, and he says nothing. Nicholson takes the boy’s rifle and cocks it back.
The double doors of the main school building shake as we throw ourselves into them, emerging in the bright corridor. There’s an officer just inside the entrance. He notices us and then Walter puts two bullets in him, one in his neck and the other in his right cheek, blowing out his face. He springs back into the wall and sprays blood on a class photo.
I’ve courted death for so long it has no impact on me.
Behind the office desk. My arm moves by its own instinct and shoots the officer in the face. Somebody else’s bullet blows off his shoulder, bone spitting out of him.
Bodies fall to the ground and you don’t think twice about them. There comes a point where life has no more weight. It no longer matters what’s traditionally right or wrong because all that matters is your mission, and you have to do whatever it takes to accomplish it. I learned this long ago, in the war. I learned that, the moment you question what you’re fighting for, the moment doubt creeps in, is the moment you take a bullet in the neck and suddenly morality doesn’t matter because you’re dead. We don’t hesitate. We have to find John Montgomery and free the prisoners. They’re Unkindly, which means we can use them.
And then you’ll be just like Fortescue.
Everything is quiet but for the blood pounding in your ears. There’s that mechanical whine. It’s always there. You hear it when you move, when you breathe. It’s as sure as pain. I step into a room filled with bodies, papers sticking to blood. Somebody on the floor groans and Walter Milne stands over him, shooting him once more in the back of the head. The sound a hand makes as it slumps lifelessly to the floor, that’s a sound you don’t forget.
What happens when the people fear its leaders?
They already do, I say to the whine in my head.
No, Arthur. You fear them.
And they fear you.
I walk into another room and wave my pistol at the only man who’s left still alive, lying on the floor in the corner, his eyes as wide as that young man’s were before I shot him. One of the lights has been shot out and it’s flickering. A globe of the world rolls across the floor. Smoke curdles in the air. The Lennox brothers and Dead George are here, searching the bodies.
You’re going to use the Unkindly to storm Fortescue Plaza.
Whoever said I was going to do that?
The question is, why wouldn’t you do that?
It’ll give you the clear advantage.
It’ll make you just like them.
I holster my pistol and lift John Montgomery off the floor, slamming him into the wall. He’s a man of no significant weight. His glasses fall off his face and I step on them. Montgomery is a thin man with straw-like hair and bad skin, red with blemishes. His breath smells of liquor. His teeth are yellowed. I throw him into his desk and he groans as he falls back onto the floor on all fours. “Wait!” he gasps, raising his arms.
The others enter the room.
“Help the other group,” I tell them as I sit down on the edge of the table and exhale. They all oblige, leaving the room to the music of distant shouts and gunshots. Walter stays behind, slowly skirting the table so he can see Montgomery up close, as does Redvers.
Montgomery looks at us. “I knew you would come.”
How did he know, says the whine.
I don’t look at Montgomery; instead, I stare at the wall. There are maps strewn across it, and missives in awful handwriting. “How did you know?” I ask him.
“We had an informant.”
I see. I slide from the desk and examine the maps, tearing one from the wall. I spread it before my eyes. This map shows several other camps, as well as the positioning of Fortescue’s outposts. There are numbers and little handwritten notes; it’s difficult to make sense of.
The map goes to the table, beside more notes.
Walter is leaning against the wall with his pistol still in hand. “There’s been a spy watching us,” he says. “Do you know anything about that? This informant?”
“I don’t know,” he says, and as I look down at him, I sense he’s telling the truth. “I never saw her, never even really spoke to her. She went by the name Elsie Penrose.”
“Our spy’s a she?” I say.
“Can Elsie Penrose be a man’s name?” Montgomery asks me.
I shrug. “I suppose a spy who you’ve never seen could be anything.” Montgomery watches me cautiously, occasionally glancing at my pistol.
“Suppose that’s right,” he says.
That’s the spy you’re looking for, the whine tells me, and I’m thinking about it. Actually, I’m thinking about one person in particular, somebody I’ve met on two occasions.
“The guard out front,” Walter says. “That your idea?”
“I lowered our defences. Tried to make it easier.”
“You know they’ll kill you,” I tell him.
Montgomery shakes his head. “No they won’t. If you take me with you.” He stands up for the first time, slowly and cautiously, but he stands sure enough, and points outside the room. “Those Unkindly, they’re volatile. I can help you. I know how to tame them. Fortescue fears them. They fear you.” He points at me. “Fortescue fears you. The Craxton girl too.”
Cecelia Craxton. I murdered her father in front of her.
“What about the Craxton girl?” I say.
“She’s out there. She lies in wait.”
“For what.” I already know the answer. You can hear the pounding of blood in your ears again. It’s like thick sludge being trod on by heavy boots on the battlefield.
“She lies in wait,” is all Montgomery says.
I glance at Walter. He’s staring back at me.
A communicator goes off and there’s a voice. We all look at the same time to the communicator on the table, the copper wires snaking along the floor, the speaker. “Montgomery,” the voice says, cracked and distorted. “Come in.”
“Who is that,” I say, stepping between Montgomery and the communicator, and taking our end of it in my hand. Slowly I begin to raise it to my lips.
Montgomery stares at me hotly. “It’s Fortescue.”
But I already knew that. I bring the device to my lips and say, “Montgomery’s right here. I have a gun to his head and I swear to god I will blow his brains out.”
“Ah. Who am I speaking to?”
“It’s me again.”
“Arthur, just the man I was thinking about. I find you intrude my thoughts all too often lately. Like a whine, like something I just can’t quite get out of my head.”
He doesn’t know about the whine, I tell myself.
“What do you want, Fortescue?” I say. It’s at this moment that Walter grabs Montgomery and puts the pistol to his head. I watch them as the speaker crackles.
“I was going to ask Montgomery whether Mildred Piper’s army had arrived yet,” Fortescue says, his voice warped. “Apparently, it has. And you among them, no less.”
I stare at Montgomery. He has gone pale.
“You can kill Montgomery. He is of no more use to me.”
Montgomery’s forehead burns with sweat as he looks at me. “I didn’t tell him anything, I promise. Somebody else knew. Somebody set me up. Arthur, somebody set me up!”
Walter grips him tighter, pistol to his forehead.
We came here for Stirling’s friends. Marianne told me about Montgomery. Somebody told Montgomery that we were coming. Somebody told Fortescue that we would all be here at the same time. Somehow, Fortescue knew that it would be me.
“Arthur,” Redvers says, walking back over to us with a sheet of paper in his hand. “Those men Stirling told us about, who were supposed to be here.” He shows us the sheet of paper. “I looked over the names of everybody in this camp.
Those men aren’t here.” I feel my heart sink. We came here for Stirling’s friends. “Those men were never here.”
Who told Stirling to come here?
I can see the scene in my mind’s eye. I can see Stirling talking to someone in the shadows, someone who knows who I am, who saw me arrive in the camp. The light moves to reveal her face. It’s Marianne Hopkins, and she’s telling Stirling there’s been a distress call.
She tells Stirling his friends have been captured.
She tells me to find Montgomery.
She tells Montgomery I’m looking for him.
She tells Fortescue I’ll be here.
“Five minutes ago,” says Fortescue, his voice gravelly and vaguely robotic through the damaged copper wires, “there was an attack on the Crossroads. We...borrowed a shipment of your bombs. They never even had a chance. Everybody who was there is dead.”
My head starts spinning.
I’m thinking of the correspondences I found at that abandoned church. I’m thinking of the bombs which had been transported across the city. I’d been too afraid to look at them.
Those transcripts weren’t from me.
“You’re lying,” I tell him.
“You don’t have the power to unite,” Fortescue says. I feel that thing again, the thing that reminds me that I am Human, the reason for all of this, that sickness in my body. “You only have the power to destroy, and to divide. You never stood a chance.”
I feel the weight of everybody in this room.
“And now you will die,” Fortescue says.
A bomb smashes through the ceiling.
Reach
There’s a whine in my ear and it looks like a bright red light in the back of my mind. This whine has been here ever since the revolution fell apart and it knows things that I do not. It knows what happened in that room. It knows how Mildred Piper died. It knows all the terrible things I’ve done. Sometimes I wonder if it knows what is still to come.