Sentinel

by Joshua Winning

  They knew his purpose.

  Nicholas awoke with a start. He gripped the back of the bus seat, the fog of the dream lingering. Then everything came back into focus.

  Relaxing, he collapsed back into the seat.

  “Bad dream?”

  Nicholas looked across at Sam and nodded. “It felt so real. They were whispering about me.”

  Sam moved in his seat, making the worn leather creak under his weight – it was almost as if he had gone to sit suddenly upright but caught himself at the last moment. In his confused state, Nicholas didn’t notice.

  “Who? Who was whispering about you?” Sam asked. He looked worried, but for once Nicholas didn’t pick up on the tightness in his chaperone’s tone.

  “The trees,” Nicholas said. “Three trees, all huddled together like... women. And they were talking about me. They knew me.”

  A rumour of a smile crept onto Sam’s lips, and the leather seat creaked again as he relaxed back into it. “How unusual,” he remarked. “That head of yours is quite the mystery.”

  Nicholas looked out of the window and was surprised to find that snow was flurrying heavily now. A pallid mantle had settled upon the world, making it appear strange in the gloomy afternoon half-light. Time seemed to linger confused between night and day.

  “Snow,” the boy murmured. “Again.”

  “Indeed,” Sam commented. “It seems we’re to be denied yet another summer.”

  “Two weeks ago it was thirty degrees,” Nicholas said. “We all went to the park for a picnic… I got sunburnt.”

  Sam chuckled, then grew serious. “The road is beginning to ice over,” he said. “I would have advised the driver to stop, but we don’t have much further to go.”

  Nicholas nodded. Then, inexplicably, that dull, prickling pain returned in his stomach.

  “Are you alright, lad? You’ve gone dreadful pale again.”

  “I– I don’t feel right,” Nicholas said. A swell of nausea coursed through him. His vision darkened and he put a hand to his forehead. His skin was clammy and cold. He saw red. The hot red of the bus’s taillights on the road. And another red. Darker and glittering.

  Something’s wrong.

  “You don’t look right, do you want water?” Sam offered.

  “I– I think we need to stop the bus,” Nicholas said, his vision swimming alarmingly. “There’s something–”

  BAM!

  Before Nicholas could finish the thought, a horrendous explosion rent the air. The bus lurched on the icy road.

  Nicholas and Sam were thrown against their seats.

  “What’s going on?” Nicholas cried.

  “It sounds like one of the tyres has blown,” Sam said.

  The bus careered across the road like an enraged bull. The driver pumped the pedals and spun the steering wheel, but the vehicle skated precariously over the road and he could do nothing to bring it under control.

  As the bus pitched over a bump, Nicholas was thrown against the window so hard that the breath was knocked from him.

  “He... he can’t stop it,” Nicholas gasped, clutching at the back of the seat. The jerky motions tossed him about, and the seat’s metal frame jabbed him painfully as he was thrown repeatedly against it. The vehicle hit another bump and Nicholas’s bags tumbled into the aisle.

  “Hold on!” Sam yelled.

  Nicholas watched the driver frantically playing with the bus’s gears, but still they sped across the frozen road.

  “Come on, you clapped out thing,” the driver bellowed.

  He stopped and squinted, as if he’d spotted something on the road. What is it? Nicholas thought uneasily. He saw the driver pumping at the brakes again, but the bus ploughed onwards. The driver said something under his breath, then jerked the steering wheel to the right. The bus’s wheels turned on the road but the vehicle failed to change direction, merely skating across the ice.

  “What’s going on?” Nicholas exclaimed.

  “I don’t know,” Sam replied. “Just hold on!”

  Nicholas craned over the seats, attempting to see whatever it was that the driver had seen.

  Something was caught in the headlights. Somebody standing in the middle of the road.

  It was a woman and she was smiling.

  At the last possible moment, she stepped out of the bus’s path, her crimson gown billowing behind her. And there, ahead, was a sharp bend in the road.

  Sam squinted through the windscreen and his face hardened.

  “Get down, boy!” he yelled. “Down!”

  Nicholas didn’t waste time asking questions. He threw himself down. Under the table he saw Sam do the same.

  He squeezed his eyes shut.

  The bus pummelled into the bend in the road, hitting the embankment at the roadside and bucking alarmingly upwards. The front of the vehicle ricocheted up into the air, its back wheels still sliding on the icy road. Then with a THUMP the back wheels struck the grassy bank and the bus catapulted forwards.

  There was a moment of stillness as the vehicle fell through the air.

  Then- CRUNCH. The bus crashed down into the ditch at the roadside. It crumpled on impact, rocking onto its side and rolling over in the wide, muddy ditch. Finally it came to a standstill.

  There was blackness. And throbbing pain.

  Nicholas lay still. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t see. All he knew was that his whole body was suddenly heavy. Aching. His clothes pinned him down.

  There came a rasping breath nearby, followed quickly by a cough.

  Nicholas opened his eyes. It took him a moment to realise where he was, his surroundings had changed so much. Up on the ceiling were rows of crumpled bus seats and tables, and all around him were splinters of glass. Except it wasn’t the ceiling of the bus above him; it was the floor. The bus had landed upside down and he was lying on the hard metal of the roof.

  The cough came again and Nicholas turned his head. Sam lay a few feet away. The old man looked as beaten up as Nicholas felt – his eyes were closed and there was an angry red slash on his cheek. But he was alive.

  “Sam,” Nicholas managed to rasp.

  He could practically see the old man’s mind willing himself to move. Finally, Sam’s eyelids trembled open and he struggled to focus groggily on him.

  “Nicholas,” Sam said, and coughed again. “You... you alright?”

  “Been better,” Nicholas replied. He tried to move, but his muscles screamed at him to stop. He lay there motionless.

  “Agreed. Just try–” Sam’s head twitched to one side. “Shhh.”

  Nicholas held his breath. Then he heard it too – very softly, but with growing clarity. The patter of soft footfalls.

  Then a new sound tore into the silence – that of ripping, screeching metal. It made Nicholas’s teeth knock against one another.

  The bus shuddered and a blast of cold air hit him in the face. The boy squinted down to the front of the bus where the noise seemed to have originated. He frowned. The door had been ripped from its frame. There was another whisper of hushed movement and a silhouette appeared in the doorway.

  Somebody’s here to help us!

  The stranger swept into the crumpled bus.

  It was the outline of a woman. Mountainous curls of soft hair framed the silhouetted head, snake-like in the dim light. Nicholas watched the newcomer as she peered at the bus driver’s seat above. He could just make out the obscure form of a slumped body, held in place upside down by the seatbelt.

  A voice hissed.

  “Sentinel pig.”

  A shiver ran through him, as if icy fingers had caressed his spine. That wasn’t the voice of a rescuer. Not any rescuer he’d choose to come to his aid, anyhow. He watched as the woman reached for the slumped body in the driving seat and pulled it by the throat into the aisle.

  “Please,” a choked voice cried. It was the bus driver. “Please... Help me.”

  “Help you?” a voice spat in reply, and the curls were tossed back to release a
scathing laugh. “Help you?”

  “Please... please...”

  The face of the silhouetted woman moved closer to that of the man in her grasp so that they were almost touching. Nicholas saw her raise another hand to the man’s face and caress his cheek.

  Then she tore his throat out.

  “NO!” Nicholas cried.

  The woman spun and dropped the lifeless body.

  Sunlight finally broke through the clouds, illuminating her face.

  Nicholas gasped. He couldn’t help it. She was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Pearly skin shimmered in the light, her proud countenance framed by ruby curls. Her eyes sparkled like the diamonds in her crimson dress.

  Nicholas felt like he’d been punched in the gut. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think.

  “There,” the woman purred, taking measured steps into the bus. “There you are.”

  “Stay back!” Sam warned, though his voice contained none of the authority he had surely intended it to.

  The woman smiled and her loveliness increased tenfold. “Do you fear me?” she teased, peering down her nose at him. “Am I feared by those who seek my demise?”

  Nicholas watched her unhurried approach, his mouth half open. She was mesmerising. He forgot everything. The pain. The bus. The world. It all fell away around her until there was only the woman; stark and red and impossible.

  “I do not fear you, hag,” Sam sputtered.

  “Lies!” she bellowed. Glass crunched under her feet as she loomed toward them. “All men fear me. You’re all worms, writhing in pitiful worship.”

  “I bow to none but the Trinity themselves! Nicholas, stay away from her. Don’t look at her.”

  The woman’s eyes slid from the old man to the boy.

  “Nicholas,” she whispered. “Such a noble name. I wonder if you will die with the nobility it suggests?”

  “You’ll not touch him, witch,” Sam’s voice barked. Nicholas could barely hear it.

  “We have searched too long and hard to give up now,” the woman purred. “How interesting that he was so easily discovered, even after all your efforts.” She winked at Sam. “You’re losing your touch.”

  Now she was standing over Nicholas, and he was lost in the depths of her cat-like eyes. Enraptured. Unable to move. She stooped down and cupped his chin in her hand. Her skin was ice cold and he melted into it.

  “Just a child,” she murmured quietly, searching his young face. “All this time we have feared you, sought you, and you’re nothing more than a human child.”

  “Get away from him!”

  Nicholas was unaware of the sound of crunching glass and stomping footsteps behind him. All that existed in his world now was this enchanting creature. He could happily lie here for the rest of his life.

  Before he knew what was happening, a dark shape hurtled over him and barrelled into the woman.

  Sam and the woman tumbled across the hard metal of the bus ceiling.

  Nicholas blinked sluggishly and shook his head. What was going on? He turned towards the scuffle and saw two bodies crash together at the front of the bus. The woman in red landed on top of Sam. One of her hands went to his neck and squeezed while the other pressed down on his chest.

  “Fool,” she spat. “Nothing will come between me and the boy. Especially not a decrepit old corpse like you.” She turned her nails inward against his chest and the sharp tips sliced through his clothing.

  Sam gasped and swung upward with his left hand. There came a bone-crunching thwack as he struck the woman over the head with a heavy object, and she crashed backward. She hit the side of the vehicle, a previously intact window shattering under her weight.

  “Nicholas,” Sam called, “here, lad.”

  He fumbled with the object that he’d used against his attacker – it was his old-fashioned suitcase. The old man’s hands shook as he struggled with the catches on the side.

  Nicholas heaved himself to his feet, but even as he did so the entire vehicle creaked. There was the sound of complaining metal as the battered bus roof weakened under the weight pressing down from above.

  “Hurry!” Sam yelled. He flipped open the lid of the case.

  Nicholas took a step, but before he could advance any further his path was blocked. The woman stood coiled, as if she were about to pounce. The tussle with Sam had left her breathless and glowing – she had enjoyed it.

  “Nicholasss,” she hissed. “You won’t get away. I can smell it on you; in your veins, your skin, your hair. You’re different.”

  Nicholas stopped still, bewitched by the murky spirals of her eyes. “Different,” he murmured.

  “You feel it,” she hummed. “I see it in you. It’s printed in every fibre of your being.”

  “Leave him, she-devil!” Sam’s voice roared.

  She ignored the old man. “You’re dangerous,” she whispered. “You’re a threat to the world, Nicholas.”

  Nicholas suddenly felt only four years old. A child in an adult’s world. She knew. She knew everything that he’d been feeling, all of the strange things that had been happening to him.

  BLAM!

  A flash of orange lit the inside of the bus and shocked Nicholas out of the woman’s grip. And then he saw her face. It had gone blank, one eyebrow arched upwards in angry surprise. His eyes travelled down her body to where dark crimson flowered on her gown.

  “What–?” she murmured.

  There was another fiery explosion and the woman’s body convulsed before collapsing in a heap at Nicholas’s feet. Revealed at the front of the bus, blue smoke curling about him, was Sam. He lowered the rifle in his grasp and gave Nicholas a half smile.

  “Thought that might shut her up,” he said.

  Nicholas simply stared back at him.

  “We have to move quickly,” the old man added urgently. “It won’t keep her down for long.”

  “It won’t… what?” Nicholas said.

  “Find your things, hurry,” Sam urged, already dismantling the rifle and slipping it back into the suitcase.

  “O–okay,” Nicholas mumbled.

  He tried to forget about the body that lay at his feet, pooling black liquid across the ceiling of the bus. He scraped through the shards of glass and quickly found his backpack. Shouldering it, he hurried to the front of the bus, where he found Sam already had his suitcase.

  Sam was bent over the crumpled body of the bus driver.

  “S–Sam,” the driver gurgled, his face covered in blood. “I’m… I’m s–sorry…”

  A final breath sighed from the gash in his throat and he was gone.

  “Malcolm,” Sam said in a hushed tone. “You’re in a better place now.” He pulled the driver’s coat from the wreckage and draped it over the dead man’s form. “May the Trinity bless you.”

  He straightened.

  “Follow me,” the old man said without looking at Nicholas. “Be careful.”

  Nicholas watched as Sam stepped through one of the shattered bus windows and out onto the grassy bank of the ditch. He cast a glance back at the shape of the woman, lying motionless in the darkness, wondering what she had known about him. Then he followed Sam.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Footprints

  NICHOLAS HAD NEVER BEEN SO COLD in his life. Or scared. If it hadn’t been for Sam urging him tirelessly on, Nicholas suspected he might have succumbed to the lure of sleep hours ago, despite the hostile climate. His eyelids drooped and every step made his frozen toes ache inside his boots.

  Apart from the occasional bursts of encouragement, Sam was quiet again. The older man frowned against the grey weather. The fedora perched on his brow gathered snow and submerged his features in shadow.

  Nicholas didn’t know what time it was, but an odd half-light was ebbing into the frosty countryside, picking out the highs and lows of the snow-cloaked landscape. Great expanses of bare terrain huddled under the icy air for what seemed like miles, and the hills resembled the shoulders of great giants who had
buried their heads ostrich-like in the ground.

  “Can we slow down?” Nicholas asked breathlessly. “I can’t feel my feet anymore.”

  “We can’t stop,” Sam replied resolutely. “Our only hope is to place as much land between us and that bus as we can. We need to reach safe ground as soon as possible.”

  “Do you think we’ll be attacked again?”

  Sam’s unwavering stare betrayed nothing and he was moving mechanically, as if a switch in his brain had been flicked to ‘auto-pilot’. He’d set a brisk, urgent pace that Nicholas, weighed down by his suitcase and backpack, struggled to keep up with.

  “We’re not safe out here in the open,” the elderly man mumbled.

  “Do you think we’ll get into trouble because of what happened with the bus? Would they arrest us?” Nicholas asked.

  “The police!” Sam’s mechanical demeanour stalled momentarily and he uttered a good-natured laugh. “No lad, nothing like that.”

  “Then what? What are you afraid of?” Nicholas skipped along as fast as he could. Sam may be in his seventies, but if his stride was anything to go by, he was fitter than anybody Nicholas knew.

  Sam didn’t answer. He pushed on through the snow.

  “What is it?” Nicholas persisted.

  Sam glowered from beneath the brim of his hat and Nicholas could tell that he’d struck a nerve.

  “Can we please slow down?”

  “No!” Sam answered gruffly, before adding quietly to himself: “We can’t slow down for anything. If that woman reaches us before we get to safe ground we’re done for. At least the snow will cover our tracks.”

  “Woman? What woman?”

  No reply came. Nicholas detected in the older man the same inner struggle that he’d observed earlier when he’d confronted him about his parents.

  “You can’t mean the woman from the bus; you shot her twice, I saw her go down,” Nicholas pressed. Grimly, the boy added: “There was blood everywhere.”

  “You have to trust me,” Sam murmured, not looking at him. He scanned the horizon, and the old man reminded Nicholas of a nervous deer who had picked up a dangerous scent, but not yet discovered the whereabouts of the hungry lion.