In my mind, I saw the forest filled with children, yet not one of them human.
Even now, the thought of them made me want to weep.
I leaned into my horse, whispered in its ear, quickly now, we must go faster—
Claire turned around to look back at me.
I lifted my hand to wave.
Another spear of lightning shot down from blackened heavens, but this time it was much too close. It split the skies with crooked light—first a single bolt, then it splayed into countless jagged sprays, all of it breaking right over Claire and the carriage, until finally it leapt to the ground, striking a nearby oak. The tree exploded and burst into flames, causing the stallion to go wild. I could barely hang onto my own horse, for it too reared up, despite the fact that we were still a good distance away.
The white stallion leapt up, front hooves striking air, and the carriage careened behind, bumping and crashing and nearly toppling sideways. Both Claire and Hannah screamed, their cries echoing my own.
“No! Please, no!” I cried, as if I could stop what was happening.
Hannah was thrown out of the cart and she thumped on the ground like a pile of sticks, not moving.
Somehow Claire managed to hang onto both the carriage and her child, though the reins now flew untended and out of her reach. She’d never regain control of the horse, for it had gone mad, mouth foaming, eyes unblinking and fierce. When its front hooves finally came back to earth, they found purchase and the beast shot away, dragging the carriage behind it, my stepsister, my niece, and the body of my dead friend in tow.
I raced to Hannah’s side in a matter of moments. Both Elsie and I jumped down from our horse, worried that the old woman was dead. I knelt and touched her brow, then leaned closer to see if she still breathed. There was no evidence she was alive, yet a coarse whisper came to my ears.
“Save the infant,” Hannah struggled to say. Her eyes weren’t open yet, but she was trying to sit up, an expression of pain on her face. “Leave Elsie with me. Here—” Her gnarled fingers wrapped around mine as she handed me the bone-and-iron scythe she’d been carrying. “Go, girl! You can save them, if you keep your wits!”
Though clearly afraid, Elsie nodded at me.
“If you cannot get out of the city, get to St. Peters. We will find you,” Hannah said.
There was only darkness and rain behind us, and no way to know if John had been attacked by a sangsue horde or if he would yet emerge from the storm, ready to help us. Still, no one needed to convince me to pursue Claire, or to try and save her child.
It was my heart’s desire. They could not have stopped me.
I lifted my head, ready to climb back on the mare and set off for Geneva. Already, the other horse was out of sight.
I fumbled with the stirrup and the reins, my hands and feet clumsy with urgency, the mare as impatient as I was. Steam puffed from my horse’s nostrils and she stamped her hooves as I climbed into the saddle. Cold mists swirled about us, the road pockmarked with deep puddles where snow had melted. The bank of clouds was nearly upon us as we set off, the mare galloping at a fast pace, my cloak flowing behind us like dark wings. We were like a creature from another world, united in purpose, eager to find those we cared most about.
For most of my life, I’d hated Claire.
Now that was she was in dire jeopardy, I realized how much I truly cared about her. Yes, she’d teased me when we were younger—she’d always been a shallow, thoughtless girl. But we’d been united by some higher purpose, thrown together when our parents married, after my own mother died. Claire had needed a father, I had needed a mother, and we had both grown up needing more than we received.
I knew Claire’s baby would need more than we’d been given. The child needed to live like all girls were meant to, in the manner my mother had always hoped I would be—free to learn, free to work, free to love.
Free.
So I raced through an unfamiliar darkening landscape, in a foreign country, beneath lightning threaded skies, hoping to find the sister I’d always wanted, eager to return to the home I had run away from.
Nine
The road twisted beside the lake, rising and falling, past small cottages and endless columns of trees, until everything around me turned blue and gray, all other colors erased. If this country had seemed foreign to be me before, it now seemed forbidden. Geneva opened up ahead and I hoped I would discover the stallion before I reached the city gates, the beast weary and resting by the side of the road, everyone inside the carriage safe.
None of the others had been back to the village since all of this began. We hadn’t mentioned it in any of our discussions of leaving, but it was possible—dreadfully so, in fact—that all three of the city gates would be locked. During the best of times, they were locked, religiously, at 10 p.m. and, unlike the city gates throughout France, no amount of begging or bribery would open them. As much as I dreaded riding through the city, with its narrow cobblestone streets that always seemed to go uphill, it was where we’d be most likely to find a boat and gain access to the Rhone River.
Our best plan of escape was exactly the same as what Byron had proposed earlier today.
This day felt longer than a century, one hundred full years of torment and terror from beginning to end.
I caught a glimpse of the carriage then—less than a quarter mile ahead—weaving past an overturned cart, melons scattered across the road. A body stretched out beneath the cart. It was a young man, his hands chewed off, his head trampled, and his arms and torso covered with savage bites. I shuddered, forcing myself to look away.
“Claire!” I called out, hoping she could hear me.
The road curved one final time until I could see a vast expanse of lake ahead and it looked as if we would ride over a cliff, plummeting down into the fathomless water. I held tight to the reins, not remembering this part of the road, cast in brilliant unnatural light as the sun broke through the clouds. It was a blindingly bright apparition, this light, and it startled the mare, causing her to miss deep ruts left in the road by the wheels of passing carts.
The horse leapt, I clung on and, with a sharp left turn, we banked away from the lake, my leg so close to the rugged hillside that bits of gravel chewed through both my britches and my skin. I winced in pain.
Geneva bared herself to us then. The city gate hung open, the hinges broken, a sullen darkness spilling across the narrow streets ahead. In the distance, I heard the clatter of hooves and wheels against cobblestones, as well as an occasional high-pitched scream from my stepsister. I followed those sounds, up and ever up, through a maze of twisting streets that led toward the rising hilltop in the center of the city. Geneva was a ghost town, a woman ravaged, her doors hanging open, her shutters ripped off, her last inhabitants now dead and strewn throughout the streets—sometimes the bodies sprawled half-in, half-out of cottage doorways, but they were nearly always covered with bloody slashes, while their unblinking eyes stared up at the heavens.
The sangsue had most certainly been here, hordes of them.
My mouth dry and my stomach unsettled, I saw the white stallion finally slow to a stop up ahead, right in front of a pile of bodies that barricaded the road. The stallion reared and Claire screamed. I urged my mare ahead until we came alongside the carriage. There, I fumbled for and retrieved the runaway horse’s reins. I struggled to calm the beast, while Claire managed to jump out of the carriage, babe in her arms.
All around us, blood ran between rugged cobblestones in thick rivulets and, from time to time, one of the bodies in the barricade stirred, moaning for help.
My stepsister cowered on one side of the road, shaking her head and trembling, her attention fixed upon the pile of bodies. I worried she might have one of her frenzied emotional fits.
“Come, sister,” I said, still sitting atop the brown mare, one hand extended down to Claire. “Give me the child and then climb up behind me—”
“No! They’re here! I can feel them, watching us
—”
Had she been aware of the sangsue all along?
“The dead, they’re coming back to life!” she cried and I realized she wasn’t staring at the barricade, as I suspected, but at the body still loosely strapped to the stallion’s back.
Byron’s body.
Overhead, the sky crackled with lightning, white spiny fingers finding purchase in tumultuous skies.
And with every flash, Byron tossed and flinched and jerked.
A low cry emanated from deep within my chest, a sound even I didn’t recognize. Was he coming back to life or was this merely animal electricity—a freak example of galvanism caused by the unusual storm that had pursued us for miles?
I didn’t have to wonder long, for a voice cried out from the tangled sheets that bound him.
“Let—me—go—”
There were also unintelligible sputterings and curses and animal-like growls, but wouldn’t I growl too if I found myself in that state?
“Hold my horse!” I commanded Claire as I climbed down. I didn’t wait for her to acknowledge my request. Instead, I struggled to gain control of the white stallion, grabbing him by the bridle and soothing him. My words could barely be heard over the thunder that echoed down the narrow streets.
The storm drowned out all sounds and I focused only on the body of my friend, miraculously coming back to life. I continued to run one hand over the horse’s muzzle, while I fidgeted with the bindings that held Byron with the other. He wriggled like a wild creature and part of me was afraid to set him free.
What if he was no longer the same? What if his spirit had departed and something else inhabited his flesh? What if he awoke with the sangsue blood sickness, just like the wolf?
Why had I not contemplated these possibilities before?
Terror flooded my heart, my breath came in short gulps, while the wind ran over me, cold and wet and howling. I slipped the knife from my boot and with a few snips, Byron tumbled free, at last, rolling off the horse and landing on the ground with a thump. He didn’t move and his eyes were closed.
For the first time I looked at him as he truly was—a shattered mess of broken and torn limbs, one leg shorter than another, his chest ripped up, long scars on his face and his hair ripped out. His former beauty was gone and, more than anything, he now resembled the corpse that he should have been. His lips and fingertips were blue, his skin pale, and there were large dark puckers in his flesh where I’d stitched him together. He looked much like the patchwork man from my sketches. Until now that image had intrigued me.
Now it caused me to wince with remorse, wondering what curse I might have cast upon my friend. Would he even be able to walk?
As if in answer to my inner questions, Byron twisted on the ground, stretching one arm and turning his head, a low moan coming from his closed mouth. I didn’t speak or move, I could only watch as he struggled to his knees, grunting, his head shaking back and forth as if he couldn’t believe this any more than I could.
At last, he lumbered to his feet, his balance precarious, his shorter leg slamming out before him again and again, always catching him before he fell.
He lifted his head, swept a troubled look from the pile of bodies to the narrow street, a trapped expression in his eyes, like he was an animal that had been led into a cage. Then his gaze met mine. He blinked, worked his jaw from side to side, his tongue slipping out between his teeth and his mouth opened twice, unintelligible sounds coming out.
“Byron, I’m so sorry,” I said, tears forming in my eyes.
“What—happened—to—me—” His words were without tone, wooden and slow. He behaved more like a man who’d received a strong blow to the head, than one who’d died and been resurrected.
“You were injured,” I told him.
He stared down at his hands, as if not recognizing them. “Am I—truly alive?”
I started to answer, yes, of course, you are, but before I could, he continued.
“Or am I in hell?”
“You are alive!” I told him quickly.
He continued to look at his hands, turning them over, studying the palms and the fingertips and the stitching on his forearms, as if it all belonged to someone else. Then he took two steps toward me, his gait unsteady.
“How did this—happen?” He cocked his head, a look of fear in his eyes. “They were after me—a pack of those creatures—and then I remember dying—” He shuddered. “Did you do this?” His last words came out as a whisper, horror in his eyes.
“I couldn’t bear what happened to you, Byron,” I confessed. “I couldn’t let those monsters kill you.”
He shook his head. I worried what he would think when he saw his reflection and knew the full extent of his injuries and how different he looked now. He’d been so handsome. Now, he was frightful.
I hadn’t noticed the passing of the sun behind the clouds or how the shadows in the street seemed to waver and move, not until darkness fell across his face. It wasn’t night, not yet, but it was dark enough for any nearby sangsue to come out of hiding. We wouldn’t make it to the river as we hoped. It was too far away and the journey through these twisting streets too confusing. But the spires of St. Peter’s Cathedral stretched above us, perched at the top of the hill we’d been climbing. The church was close enough that we might get there before any of the King’s followers captured us.
The King gave his word that none of his people would harm me. But I feared the rest of my party would be fair game.
The wind howled around us, something skittered across the cobblestones—a rat probably—still it struck a note of fear in my heart. I realized then how quiet Claire and the babe had been since Byron had woken up.
I swung about.
Claire was gone. So was my horse.
All that remained behind was a bundle of blankets. No, it wasn’t just a pile of blankets. They stirred and whimpered, until at last a tiny fist broke free and swung about, the movements erratic. It was my niece, abandoned. The shadows behind her shifted, a doorway in a nearby building opened and bright sangsue eyes peered out.
“No!” I ran toward the infant, my bone-and-iron scythe drawn to protect her and ready to use, swinging through the gloom.
Several beasts crouched in the doorway to an inn, their long teeth glittering, their lips red from feeding. Their gaze fixed upon the scar on my cheek—the King’s mark—then they looked at something else, something over my shoulder.
Byron.
He pushed me aside and lunged toward the child even faster than I, grabbing her blankets with one fist and then pulling her toward his ripped and scarred chest. He seemed to know this was his child and he growled at the sangsue who watched him.
They hissed in reply, but drew back, shoulders hunched.
They were afraid of him.
In this dark world of the undead, Byron was the greater monster.
Ten
We stood like that longer than I could bear, me with my scythe drawn, Byron sheltering the child and staring down menacingly at a small horde of sangsue while they whispered and cowered, their numbers growing. One by one the creatures came, as if summoned by a telepathic cry, every one of them stopping as soon as they caught sight of Byron. They would pause, cat-like, their movements becoming liquid and slow, lifting their noses to the air and taking a long sniff.
They could tell Byron was both dead and alive, and something about it put them on edge.
“We cannot stay here,” I said to Byron in a low voice. “We have to find Claire.”
He didn’t answer me. Instead, he addressed the sangsue.
“I will kill you,” he said to them, his words more growl than human speech. “Every one of you.”
Their eyes glittered and narrowed, but several of them took a few cautious steps backward. Two sangsue retreated into the inn, where they began to yip and howl like wolves, calling the rest of their pack.
I slid one hand on Byron’s arm, hoping he would realize it was me, and I waited until he looked m
e full in the face.
“Give me the child,” I told him. It wasn’t a request. It was a command. After he slid the babe into my embrace, I handed him my rifle. “Kill as many of these beasts as you want and stay as long as you like, but the child and I are leaving.”
I began to back away from them then, stopping only long enough to set the white horse free from the carriage. I’m not sure if I hoped the sangsue would pursue the horse instead of me, or if I wanted to give the animal its freedom. It didn’t matter, for as soon as the horse began to gallop away, scores of the blood-drinking creatures emerged from the shadows.
I lifted my head and pulled my braid to the side, making sure they all saw the King’s mark on my cheek. There was no way to know how long this scar would shield me, but I needed every bit of protection I could get. Scythe drawn, I continued to back away from the sangsue, trying to figure out where Claire might have gone. She could have tried to make her way to the river, although that seemed unlikely. My sister knew nothing about boats. She didn’t even know how to swim.
Byron fired the rifle—a loud concussive boom that was quickly echoed by thunder overhead—and the noise caught me off guard. I nearly dropped my own weapon. I glanced back and saw two of the beasts near him as they collapsed to the ground, one with its head blown off, the other moaning like a wounded animal. With a war cry, Byron lunged at the rest of the pack, ripping arms off torsos and clamping his jaws on flesh until it peeled off. Howls shrieked down the narrow street. I expected the rest of the sangsue to come to the aid of those being attacked, but they did the opposite.
They began to flee and hide.
I took the opportunity to strike several as they ran past me, carving neat slices from their flesh, causing them to wince and stumble, then gaze back at me in horror. Teeth bared, they tried to fight that which they were powerless against. They’d been touched by the bone of someone killed by a sangsue; I expected their flesh to burn.
Dawn_A Re-Imagining of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Page 5
