by Chris Cooper
“Coming here must stir up a lot of emotions,” Oliver said.
“Mostly fear that the townspeople would drag me out into the square and hang me. Relatives of defeated dictators rarely fare well.” He reached for an old book on world history, which appeared to be from a library.
Asher traced his fingers along the pages. “Did I ever tell you I saw them topple the statue?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Comical would have been the best way to describe it, had it not been for the fact they were trying to overthrow my father—a bunch of men with hammers against a bronze statue. They almost lost the battle.”
“I can’t imagine.”
“Eventually, they had to tie one end of a rope around the statue’s neck and the other to a bull. A part of me was looking forward to walking in the fresh air on the way to the gallows. I’d seen people come and go for years across that square, and I was always curious what it would be like to walk it myself.”
“If you saw the statue, you must have seen me after they tied me to the base.”
“I did, but I have to admit I was more focused on my sister and how awful she looked. I saw her walking across the square, legs buckled and body thin and torn. I never imagined he would use her to hurt someone else.”
Oliver’s stomach clenched as he recalled driving the police car into the Witch, right in front of Asher.
Asher looked at Oliver. “You did the right thing. Imagine how much more damage she would have done under his command—how many more people might have died.” He pulled another history book from the pile. “This was always one of my favorites. US history reads like a dark fairy tale—brother fighting brother, metal birds dropping fire from the sky, thousands marching as far as the eye can see.”
Asher set the book aside and sifted through the pile once more. “It’s still here!” He grinned as he pulled a miniature leather-bound book of fairy tales from beneath the stack of heavy textbooks.
He stuffed the book into his back pocket and stood. “We can go now.”
Aymes and Clockmaker were waiting for them outside, and they all descended the staircase and crisscrossed down to the main floor of the town hall.
A noise came from the other side of the double doors leading to the meeting hall.
“There are more of you?” Oliver asked.
Aymes crossed the room and opened the door. Most of the room had been cleared of the wooden benches, and upon closer inspection, Oliver realized several of them had been used to bar the doors leading outside. Straw lined half the floor, and a stack of blankets and pillows sat in one corner. The room housed ten or fifteen people, most of whom were lined up at a table under the throne where Simon had once perched. A man scooped gray mush from a stockpot and splattered it into serving bowls.
“We go out and scavenge what we can during the day, but we can barely keep enough to feed them,” Aymes said.
“What about the blood seekers? How many are there?”
“Twenty, maybe thirty, but they’ve started to dwindle with the cold and lack of food. We thought they would turn on each other, and some have, but others have formed packs. We think they are hunting the remaining townspeople who have scattered to the forest.”
Oliver and Asher received stares from two children playing with a makeshift ball. Asher waved, but this friendly gesture frightened them, and they retreated to the corner of the room.
“The blood seekers killed their parents,” Aymes said, “but not before they squirreled the little ones away under the floorboards. They’re the only two children left in Briarwood, at least as far as we know. Several may still live on the outskirts, but it’s too dangerous to go after them. Isn’t worth the risk.”
“Isn’t worth the risk?” Oliver asked. “Seems a little cold.”
“You saw the blood seekers. They are not covered with their own blood. Even if we could find more townsfolk, odds are none of us would make it back to the hall.”
“So you’re just waiting here? For what?”
“To see who starves first, us or them,” Aymes replied.
Chapter Eight
Pan rooted his nose through the straw-covered floor and emerged victorious, with a hand-stitched doll between his teeth. He carried the toy back to the little girl, who had thrown it, but she struggled to pry it from Pan’s mouth.
A woman noticed Pan with the doll and marched over from the far end of the room. “It took a week for your mother to make that doll, and I’ll take a cold dip in the pond before I let that mongrel destroy it.”
As she pulled the doll out of the girl’s hands, Pan leapt at the woman’s legs, pleading for her to return the toy. When the girl cried, though, he turned and ran to her, sticking his cold nose in her face and licking her tears. She giggled again and wrapped her arms around the tiny pup.
Oliver sat next to Izzy and Asher on the straw floor in the Briarwood hall. The adults had cleaned up lunch and were lounging around, some making small talk and others playing games with odd-looking decks of cards. Life in the hall must have been boring, sitting and waiting for the next blood-seeker attack. He wondered if the townspeople found any joy in the leisure, considering how difficult their lives must have been under Simon’s rule.
Simon’s throne overhead was an austere platform bordered with intricate metal wheels on either side, and it sat in odd contrast to the straw floor. The room’s interior reminded Oliver of the old bombed-out cathedrals in Europe. Although Simon had been gone for only a year, the town looked as though it had crumbled centuries before.
“I knew Briarwood was real,” Izzy said. “I could see it from my house, for Pete’s sake, but to see it up close is extraordinary.”
“If only it wasn’t surrounded by bloodthirsty murderers,” Oliver said.
“Well, you can’t have it all, I guess,” Izzy replied with a sly smile.
The little boy Oliver had seen earlier was staring at Nekko, who’d huddled close to Izzy. He pulled a loose piece of straw from the floor and tried to entice the cat to chase it, but Nekko remained a disinterested lump.
“Move it back and forth.” Izzy made an s pattern with an index finger.
The boy wiggled the piece of straw as Izzy instructed.
Nekko fought the urge to pounce at first, seeming overwhelmed by the large group of people in the room. Finally, the boy wiggled the straw just right, and Nekko slapped her paw down, trapping the straw underneath. The boy pulled it away and giggled then started the process over again.
Gideon tapped Oliver on a shoulder and motioned for him to follow.
“I’ll be back,” Oliver said as he stood to follow Gideon.
Gideon led him to a workroom, where Aymes sat at a long table, leaning over an old parchment map of the town, with Anna and the Clockmaker on the other side.
“He was just talking about doing another supply run,” Anna said as Aymes gestured for Oliver to take a seat.
Aymes leaned across the table. “We have opened every cupboard and searched every storeroom in this place. We are running low on grain, and if we don’t gather more soon, we won’t have enough to feed those in the hall. Help us gather more supplies, and we’ll help you reclaim your town.”
“Where are the supplies?” Oliver asked.
Aymes pointed at the parchment map. The buildings had been drawn in ink, with the town square at the center. The briars were lined with inked skulls, and the map faded into nothingness on the other side. Behind the square lay several rows of houses.
“Stole this from Simon’s quarters. Quite something, isn’t it? We’ve been working our way through the dry goods stored in the houses just behind the hall, rummaging for barrels of rice and flour hidden in the root cellars.” He traced a finger along the row of houses. “These have been picked clean. As we travel farther and farther away from the hall, the risk of confrontation with a blood seeker or two becomes greater. We lost two men in last week’s scavenging. Every loss makes it more difficult to carry on and means one less
for protecting our town hall and the people in it.”
He pointed at a building behind the row of houses. “We keep a supply of grain in the storehouse across town. We haven’t touched it, so hopefully it’s still intact. We’ll have to sneak between the houses to get to it, and we haven’t been that far in some time, so there’s no telling how many blood seekers may be waiting for us. But if we can access it, we will have enough supplies for the foreseeable future.”
Oliver traced the map with his eyes. Buildings surrounded the storehouse, leaving nearly unlimited cracks and crevices in which the evil creatures could hide.
“This is suicide,” Oliver said.
“Either that, or we wait here to starve. I’d much rather face death head-on than watch our people wither away to nothing,” Aymes replied.
Oliver leaned over the map once more. “And if I help you, how are you going to help me?”
“We’ll march up the hill and lop the Collector’s head off,” Aymes replied. “Well, I’ll leave that task to Gideon.”
Gideon nodded.
“No offense, but how can you help us when you can hardly step outside without a blood seeker jumping down your throat?”
Aymes sneered. “I’ve made a more than reasonable offer. I see the way you carry that weapon, and your stance is hardly that of a hardened warrior. The blood seekers are dwindling. I know not how many are left, but we’ve been picking away at them slowly but surely. We’re both in troubled positions—I would be a fool not to admit it—but we can help each other achieve our goals.”
“Forget the storehouse,” Oliver said. “If you help me, you’ll have no reason to stay here. You can take the entire town to Christchurch. The barrier’s broken, and there’s nothing keeping you here.”
Aymes furrowed his brow. “Briarwood may be in a sorry state now, but this is our home. We’ve fought too long to give up now. No, you help us keep our town alive, and we’ll help you reclaim yours.”
Oliver realized the futility of Aymes’s plan. Even if he could save Briarwood, the barrier had been broken, and modern society, or the police for that matter, would surely come knocking.
He looked at Gideon, who sat back in his chair and folded his arms. He cocked his head to one side and raised his eyebrows.
“How can I help?” Anna asked. “I can’t just let you go off, getting yourself killed.”
“This is men’s work, and Oliver here hardly qualifies as is. Go upstairs, and perhaps one of the women can show you how to sew,” Aymes replied with a chuckle.
Anna’s face shifted from pale to crimson.
Aymes turned toward Oliver to speak, but before he could utter another word, Anna reached for a metal bolt on the shelf next to her and flung it at him, striking him in the side of the head.
“Ah!” Aymes shouted as he pressed a palm against his temple and winced. “What was that for?”
Anna slammed her fists on the table. “What do you think it was for? I’ll have you know I could have taken that blood seeker in the square myself while Oliver was fumbling for his gun.”
“Relax, woman. I meant nothing by it,” Aymes replied. He looked up at Anna. “If you want to help, we’ll need someone in the tower to keep an eye out for the seekers.”
Anna folder her arms. “Not exactly what I had in mind, but I’ll take it.”
The Clockmaker crossed the room and grabbed a metal object from a shelf nearby. “Here, you’ll need this, then.”
“What is it?” Anna asked.
The piece was made of curved metal that reminded Oliver of a miniature French Horn.
“Blow through it,” the Clockmaker replied.
Anna put her lips to the tip of the contraption and blew, filling the room with a piercing whistle. Oliver clasped his hands to his ears until Anna stopped.
“If you see anything approaching, give this a toot, and they’ll hear you all the way down at the storehouse.”
“How many blood seekers are in the area?” Oliver asked.
“We’ve cleared most of the square, but for all we know, twenty or thirty could still be hiding in the neighborhood and the outskirts of town,” Aymes replied.
“Twenty or thirty?” Oliver asked, more to himself than anyone else. He envisioned the three of them surrounded by blood seekers and wondered whether he would rather face whatever horror awaited them back home than be ripped apart by an army of bloodthirsty Briarwood villagers.
Once Gideon had sharpened his weapon and Anna had reached the lantern room upstairs, Oliver, Gideon, and Aymes left the safety of the basement to retrieve the supplies.
Oliver had never seen the other side of town before. His experiences had been limited to the square, where he’d spent much of his time either tied up or locked away in some form or another.
He looked back at the lantern room and saw Anna peering over its edge, perched behind the corroded copper frame. They crossed the backstreets, passing demolished houses and toppled streetlamps.
Unlike the other buildings in Briarwood, the storehouse had been constructed of long wooden timbers and somewhat reminded Oliver of an old log cabin. The thatched roof sat heavy on the structure and appeared to be nearly a foot thick. The building had been constructed in front of a field now covered in a thick layer of undisturbed snow.
The door to the storehouse had been left open, and they approached cautiously, although the snow crunched loudly under their feet despite their best efforts to step lightly.
Gideon approached the entrance, sword drawn and ready to strike.
Aymes pulled Oliver back several feet from the door. “If that contraption fires bullets, I suggest preparing to fire,” he whispered.
Oliver quietly cocked a hammer of his gun blade and raised it in the door’s direction while Aymes pulled an arrow from his quiver.
“No more guns in Simon’s chambers?” Oliver asked.
“No more ammunition,” Aymes replied. “Ran out months ago. I’ve been learning the bow, but I still miss now and then.”
“That’s reassuring,” Oliver replied.
Gideon pushed the door open and backed away.
They waited a moment, but no creatures emerged from the storehouse.
Gideon beckoned the others to join him and stepped inside the building, still brandishing his broadsword and listening intently for any signs of a blood seeker.
Oliver’s eyes took a moment to adjust as he entered the building, and the bright snow gave way to a brown earthen floor lit by nothing more than the afternoon sun creeping through the entrance and bouncing off dust particles floating in the air. Wooden barrels filled the room from wall to wall, probably one hundred or more.
“How many do we need?” Oliver asked.
Aymes laughed. “We need all of them. We can move one, maybe two.” He nodded toward a barrel. “Try to move it.”
Oliver stepped forward and slid his weapon into its sheath. He gripped the barrel at the top and tried to shift it. “How much do these weigh?”
Aymes pointed at Gideon. “At least one of him.”
Oliver figured Gideon might have weighed three hundred pounds.
“There should be a cart out back,” Aymes said. “If we carry two, that should last us for a week, maybe two if we’re careful.”
Gideon removed the bar from the barn door on the opposite end of the building. As he pushed it open, careful not to make unnecessary noise, a shrill whistle echoed in the distance.
“Blood seekers,” Aymes said.
Oliver looked around but saw no motion in his periphery. “Where?”
“Must be on the other side of town, maybe in the square. Come on—we must hurry. You and Gideon load the cart, and I will check the front of the building for seekers.”
“Shouldn’t we leave it?” Oliver asked.
“Leave it, and we starve. We’re taking it back. Best be on the lookout, boy.”
Oliver followed Gideon to the back of the building while Aymes went through the front door onto the street.
/> As Gideon approached the other side of the cart to grab its long wooden handle, a flash of metal caught Oliver’s eye as it struck Gideon’s calf. Gideon fell to his knees and opened his mouth as though to cry out, but no sound emerged.
A blood seeker crawled from behind the cart and raised his blade to strike again. Gideon caught his arm, and the knife stopped just short of his chest.
When Oliver raised his weapon, the blood seeker pushed off from the cart and pinned Gideon to the ground, still trying to press the knife into him.
As the two wrestled, Oliver hesitated, unsure if his aim was good enough to hit the correct target. Before he could decide, Gideon grabbed the blood seeker by the neck, his hand completely wrapping around the seeker’s throat. He slammed the seeker’s other hand against the side of the cart until the knife fell to the ground. Oliver kicked the knife away as Gideon tightened his grip on the seeker’s neck.
The seeker panicked and fell backward behind the cart. Eventually, he stopped flailing and lay limp in the snow.
“Are you all right?” Oliver asked.
Blood dripped from Gideon’s calf, and he ripped a piece of fabric from his sleeve and tied it tightly around his leg.
Aymes poked his head out of the doorway. “Are you coming?” He looked at the dead blood seeker then at Gideon, who rose to his feet. “Quickly, before more come.”
The cart’s large wooden wheels shifted clumsily on their axles as Gideon pulled it inside. He removed the wooden lid of a barrel and ran his hand through the grain before putting the cap back on. He smacked the top of the barrel with his hand and gestured for Aymes to help him lift it onto the cart.
Oliver tried to help but was certain he was only getting in the way. Once they’d loaded two barrels onto the cart, they ventured through the back door as Gideon pulled it behind them.
Oliver marveled at the size of the town. His eyes traced the winding dirt streets as they returned to the hall. He’d assumed Briarwood was a quaint little village, grand town hall aside, but the place seemed to stretch quite a ways into the forest.
