Bolt
Chapter 22 - Act II - INGRESSION
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Chapter 22 - Bolt
Archie
Paysha drags me across the rabbit-scored grass, away from the Uplands Gate, away from Linda. She’s insisting we find cover in a nearby margin of woodland, which is barely visible in the half-moonlight. Another piercing scream echoes out of Newtown’s depths. Each one is a stab to my heart. Linda needs me and every ounce of me cries out to help her.
I dig in my heels and struggle to unbuckle my pack. Paysha grabs an arm with a vice’s grip and twists me around. “We can’t go back, you idiot,” she hisses, her breath hot on my face. “Don’t you understand? We’ll die.”
Flecks of spittle erupt from my lips as I rage back at her: “I don’t care. Run away if you have to! I need to go back in there. She can’t be taken. Not her.”
“There’s hundreds of Townies down there—”
“You don’t understand. She’s—”
“You can’t save everyone. What about Doc and the others? It’s too late, Archie. We need to—”
“My sister! She’s my sister, Paysha. I can’t leave her.”
Paysha freezes, staring at me in the semi-darkness. Her irises begin to scintillate like a luminescent sea, the sparks coalescing into flecks of green. My neck prickles. Something else is lurking behind those eyes, something inhuman and untamed.
“Tom, take Archie and hide in the woods before any Slavers appear,” she commands in a calm, cold voice.
“What can you do?” I protest. “You don’t know how—”
“Just go with Tom, Archie.”
Hideous images cascade through my head, worse than anything conjured by a fireside tale.
As Pash skirts the rise back towards the Gate, Tom ignores my protests and manhandles me towards a dark stand of trees. Another scream pierces the air, louder than every other. Hideous images cascade through my head, worse than anything conjured by a fireside tale. Monsters snapping at Linda’s heels; an implacable, despicable evil bent on her capture and—
Linda bursts from the Gate, eyes wide with terror. A trouser leg is torn and one arm is streaked with blood. Her pursuer emerges seconds later – a beast of a man, bearded, pierced and tattooed. Wielding a giant wooden crossbow, the bloodlust of battle magnifies his frustrated bellowing. My nightmare is now reality.
“Linda! Over here. Run! Run!” I shout, before Tom can clamp his hand over my mouth. Linda veers towards us, chest straining as her arms pump furiously. She’s a fast runner, she’ll make it. Halfway towards us, she stumbles on the uneven ground, pitching forward hard enough to knock the wind from her body. Shoulders heaving, her pursuer halts to cock his crossbow. I bite hard on a finger and Tom releases me with a yelp. I shout at Linda to stay down. She might still outrun the Slaver, but not his weapon. But she still drags herself to her feet and limps towards us, the urge to flee a greater imperative than any logic.
The monster raises his medieval-looking weapon and takes aim at a wounded deer deprived of its natural fleetness. From a hundred paces, the noise of the released bolt thuds into my heart as it pierces Linda’s body in a bloody spray. The impact throws her forward like a rag doll, arms flailing as her knees and elbows rake the earth. Time judders to a halt at the gruesome scene, my cry of horror and disbelief matched by the roar of success which erupts from her attacker. He thrusts his bow towards Tom and I, piercings glinting even in the pre-dawn light. Keep running, you cowards. Unless you want to suffer the same fate.
Linda moves, writhing on her stomach like a skewered snake, the bolt’s tail sticking out from a shoulder blade. Shucking my pack, I run towards her, sobbing with anguish. There’s a drumming of feet as Paysha emerges from some scrub to my left. She’s sprinting towards the Slaver at an impossible speed, Py flat out beside her. The brute pauses, his expression turning from triumph to amusement as he readies a second bolt from his quiver.
Tom cries, “He’s reloadin’, Pash – get back ‘ere!”, as I drop to my knees beside Linda. She tries to rise, her face contorted in a rictus of agony. My hands shake as the tears well up. I don’t know where to hold her punctured body. Bloody bubbles foam around her lips as she croaks, “Endure, Archie. You…must…endure.” A spasm of coughing wracks her body. No. Please, no. As I clutch her, her chest heaves one last time. She sags in my arms. She’s gone.
The world closes in on me, senses muted, as Linda’s unseeing eyes tell me I can’t comfort anyone but myself. I give up trying to cradle her pierced body, and resort to stroking her hair, helplessly repeating her name. An outstretched hand clutches a folded photograph. A bloody smear marks it as I prise it from her fingers. It’s the final photo I’d coaxed long ago from an old printer I’d repaired: the four of us on the clifftop, wide smiles plastering our faces. Juliana stands behind Linda and I, hugging us both tightly. The Elder, arms wide embraces us all. They both look younger and happier. After the Flood, Linda and I had needed those hugs even more than our adoptive parents had wanted to give them. We’d all lost so much.
I look up at Tom, but he’s focused on the Gate’s entrance, staring towards where Paysha and Py ran towards the enemy’s embrace. I follow his gaze, steeling myself for more injury and agony. The Slaver has disappeared and Paysha and Py are nowhere to be seen. Instead, two pairs of reflective orbs are emerging from the Gate, now Newtown’s hellish maw. The lower pair is a baleful orange, whereas the other glints with shards of brilliant-cut emerald. Py emerges first, trotting in front of the figure striding towards us. Paysha is barely recognisable, her face a bloody, gloating mask. She’s dragging a misshapen bundle tied to a short stick.
More waves of grief envelop me as I clutch my dead sister’s cool hand with shaking fingers. Linda’s violent end buries any glimmer of relief I feel at seeing Paysha alive. With eyes squeezed shut, I lower my head until our foreheads touch and whisper my last words to her.
There’s a violent tug on my shirt and a voice devoid of humanity says, “Get up, Archie.” As I’m hauled to my feet, Paysha’s hand clamps around my chin and forces me to look at her. Her smile is both fire and ice as she wipes the blood from around her mouth with her sleeve. “The monster who attacked Linda won’t be bothering anyone else,” she says, in a tone which chills my spine. She throws the bundle to the ground. It rolls unevenly away on its embedded stake, unrecognisable until I spy a glint within and tattoos without. It’s a dismembered head, pierced by a bolt. The Slaver who killed my sister.
The gruesome sight triggers repressed memories of what I’d heard and glimpsed as I’d hunched helplessly over Linda: a dog barking; a woman shouting; cruel amusement turning to disbelief and a hurried retreat within the Gate. More shouts, and the sound of a ratcheted crossbow. Then screams – a man’s screams – dying away before the final sound of a second bolt’s release.
Despite her avenging actions, I can’t reconcile her cold expression with my painful loss. “You don’t understand. Linda…Linda’s dead. You can’t bring her back.”
“Of course I understand, Archie,” she replies in a chilling monotone. “But there was nothing else we could do. You need to come with us now, unless you want to join her and the other Townies.”
“We can’t just leave her here,” I cry out, pressing my palms together.
“An’ we need supplies, Pash – food ‘n’ water,” says Tom. “But we can’t hang around ‘ere. More o’ those bastards’ll be comin’ outta that hole any minute.”
A surge of repressed rage roils my guts. “That ‘hole’ might mean less to you than your stomach, you stupid bloody Stinker,” I yell in his face. “But it’s my home! People are being butchered in there – my people. In the one place they felt safe.”
Tom takes a step towards me, fists bunched. “No, Tom,” warns Paysha. Cursing, he kicks the Slaver’s head instead.
“I can’t…I won’t leave Linda. Not like this,” I plead.
Tom shrugs, then sniffs. An acrid smell tinges the air. “Won’t be much of a home soon, Townie. But feel free to carry ‘er as far as yer can.”
I’m not like these Stinkers, who’ve spent years swimming through a soup of human decomposition.
“Tom’s right, Archie,” says Paysha, still emotionless. “But if you want to treat her properly, best turn away now.” She plants her foot on Linda’s back and grips the bloody crossbow shaft. I turn away, my stomach convulsing in a wave of nausea at the sound of torn flesh and cartilage.
“Less ammunition the better,” grunts Tom, as a crash of foliage marks the bolt’s disposal.
I’m not like these Stinkers, who’ve spent years swimming through a soup of human decomposition. I also endured the City’s funeral pyres burning for days, but they’ve literally stared death and decay in the face ever since. Swallowing my bile, I take a deep breath before facing Linda and my demons again.
“If you’re quick, you can bury her a little way off in these woods, Archie,” says Paysha. “And you can help him, Tom. She’d like that.”
“Maybe. Maybes not,” says Tom, grabbing an arm and a leg as if Linda’s body was a worthless animal carcass. With little alternative, I help him carry my sister into the woods, as Paysha retrieves our packs. As I stumble and curse, the Slavers’ victorious cries rise out of Newtown’s eviscerated guts, converging into a sickening chorus. Behind me, speckled across tufts of brown grass, leak the last bloody drops of Linda’s life from between my fingers. Inside my head, I’m fighting another battle, one I must win: to endure this new hell I’ve been thrown into, no matter the cost. I owe it to Linda, to Doc and the Elder; to every Remainer killed or captured by the vile beasts who’d invaded our homes and bodies today.
Another sound intrudes from beyond the Cliff Gate, a strange hum which percolates the still cool air. I strain to see through the wood’s canopy. A half-crescent moon hangs above us like a giant’s toenail. But something else is also up there, something huge; its cigar-shaped form picked out by dawn’s first slice of orange light. It’s the largest airship I’ve ever seen, its body glistening with solpanels and clusters of cargo pods slung the length of its vast belly.
The Upland vagrants’ outlandish tales are true: the Slavers are plundering people from the skies.
Go Paysha! You know how much I love the banshee, so this isa great addition!