by Glenn Cooper
“What’s the matter?” John asked, sword in hand.
“One of my men saw torchlight in the woods,” the captain said in impeccable English. He had been an officer in Mussolini’s army and had studied classics before joining the fascists. Garibaldi admired him for his experience and erudition. “In case of trouble I did not want you to be off guard.”
Brian squinted into the woods and nocked an arrow.
“Thanks,” John said. “I think we shouldn’t stop. We should go all night if your men can take it.”
“My men are strong. We will keep riding. The woods are dangerous. There has been talk of how you say, grandi gruppi of these beasts.”
“Sorry, I don’t understand.”
“These beasts, these rovers, have found that they cannot steal food and people from towns and cities if they roam only in small groups. So, they have learned to cooperate and form big groups. This is a great danger, I think.”
A soldier let out a horrific scream from the rear of the column and others shouted in Italian, “To arms! To arms! Rovers!”
The rovers attacked from both sides, pouring out of the woods, brandishing their long, curved knives. Every portion of the Italian column was being attacked simultaneously.
John hacked at the nearest rover and put him down, then fended off another three. Yelling curses in French, a rover slashed the belly of the captain’s horse, spilling its guts. The captain went down, his right leg caught under the dying beast. Pinned, the nearest rover made quick work of him, stabbing him repeatedly in the chest.
Up and down the line, the battle raged. Steel clanged on steel, fists thudded onto skulls, musket balls and pistol shot slammed into flesh. There were nearly as many rovers as soldiers but the rovers had the advantage because they were fearless and savage and denizens of the night.
At close range, most of Brian’s arrows found their mark. When he exhausted his supply he drew his sword and fell in with Trevor. They protected each other’s backs, hacking and thrusting at the ragged, foul-smelling men.
John kept trying to fight his way back to Emily’s wagon but for every rover he destroyed, another attacked.
In the wagon Delia and Arabel clutched the terrified children and pulled them to the front. Emily took one of the swords lying on the floor and pushed Martin and Tony aside.
“Where are you going?” Arabel shouted.
“To fight!”
“Don’t!”
Emily didn’t listen. She jumped out the back and saw a rover straddling an Italian, about to plunge his knife. She swung her sword down onto the top of his skull and cleaved it.
The soldier smiled at her, said, “Grazie, signora,” and sprang back into action.
Another rover came at her. She used her favorite Krav Maga move of deflecting his raised knife arm with an inside-out lateral forearm deflection, ready to counterattack with her sword but he was too strong and the knife kept coming.
She felt a spray of blood on her face.
The rover’s knife was gone and his hand too.
John finished the man off with an upwards thrust to his chin.
There wasn’t time to say anything. There were more rovers coming but John stayed planted by Emily’s side.
Inside the other wagon Martin, Tony, Tracy, and Charlie huddled in fear, listening to the horrible sounds of fighting.
“What should we do?” Tracy cried.
“We have to stay here,” Tony said. “They’re rovers. We’ll be slaughtered.”
Charlie was muttering to himself and the monologue got louder.
“What are you saying?” Martin said.
“Rovers killed my brothers,” he said slowly, moving to the wagon flaps. “Rovers killed my father. Rovers killed my grandfather. I am going to kill them.”
“For God’s sake, sit down, Charlie,” Martin said.
“I’m not afraid anymore. I was afraid but now I’m not.”
He took one of the swords and then he was out the back.
The three of them looked at each other in shock. All they could do was listen to the awful sounds. Cries in Italian and French, then a shout from Brian and a reply from Trevor.
The wagon flap parted again.
“Charlie,” Tracy said.
But it wasn’t Charlie. It was a rover, his fetid breath instantly fouling the interior.
The rover locked eyes on Tracy and opened his toothless mouth exposing a brown tongue. He crawled fully in. Less than six feet separated them.
Tracy tried to scream but nothing came out.
But Tony did scream.
It wasn’t a scream of terror but of rage.
He hurled himself at the rover who was off guard, his mind probably set on raping.
Tony head-butted the man’s skull and the rover grunted in pain. Somehow his knife came to be in Tony’s fist. He pounded it into the man’s torso over and over. The only thing he had ever pounded so hard was bread dough.
He heard Martin talking to him.
“You can stop, Tony. You can stop. You’ve finished him.”
Tony did stop. He dropped the bloody knife and began to sob.
Martin held him and said, “That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Writhing, agonal bodies of rovers and soldiers lined the road. John, Emily, Trevor, and Brian were finding fewer and fewer rovers to fight and then, the remaining attackers slithering back into the night and it was over.
The Italians let out an exhausted victory call. Emily sat on the ground, too fatigued to speak.
“You’re a tiger,” John said, between pants. “I’d take you into battle every day of the week.”
“The children,” she gasped, trying to rise.
He helped her up and got to the wagon the same time as Trevor and opened the back. Arabel and Delia cried out in relief. The children were safe.
The fifty or so remaining soldiers tended to their wounded. The ones that could be saved were bandaged. The ones too far gone were bundled, groaning and hideously writhing, into the supply wagons for deposit somewhere more dignified than the side of the road to be carved and eaten by the rover stragglers.
John assembled the Earthers. The wagon drivers were destroyed. They would consolidate into one wagon. John and Brian would drive.
Suddenly Tracy asked, “Where’s Charlie?”
They searched frantically. Two rovers were on their bellies, shirtless and groaning away, their flanks a bloody mess. They were lying on top of something. John pulled them aside.
“Doc!” John shouted.
Martin examined Charlie’s lifeless body then pulled the lids down over his staring eyes.
“Poor, poor Charlie,” Tracy cried.
“Come on,” John said, softly. “We’ve got to go.”
“We’ve got to bury him properly,” Tony said with conviction. “We can’t let those bastards have him.”
John sighed and agreed.
He didn’t say what he was thinking.
If we don’t hurry we’ll be digging more graves.
They couldn’t see it but they heard it.
The early morning fog was so heavy the only way they knew they had arrived at the coast was the sound of the breaking waves.
John and Brian had driven the wagon virtually non-stop for a day and a half since the rover battle. One last dangerous night in the French countryside had now yielded to a murky dawn.
The two men had been pushed to the limit, refusing to let Trevor come up to relieve them. They wanted him with the others in the wagon in case of another attack. Pressed together, the others intermittently dozed on each other’s shoulders and tried their best to keep the restless children amused.
Now they had arrived, closer to their goal but still far away.
John pulled back on the reins. “I’m scared to go any further,” he said. “We could be heading to a cliff.”
Brian agreed. “Pea soup.”
They climbed down and went to the back to help the others out. The soldiers
dismounted and collapsed to the ground.
“You look like shit,” Emily said, holding onto John.
He kissed her. “You say the nicest things.”
Brian started walking away and John asked him where he was going.
“Small matter of a boat,” Brian said. “Just a quick rekkie.”
There was nothing they could do until the fog lifted so they sat in a circle and divided up the remaining food and water.
John took out his pad and drew a short, thick exclamation point.
Three days.
The sun never shone on this world but it was there, behind a permanent blanket of clouds. As the rising sun warmed the ground the fog over the land faded first.
John thought he heard something and stood.
“What?” Trevor said.
“I don’t know,” John said, looking around.
“Is it Brian?”
“I don’t think so.”
The fog lightened.
“Jesus,” John said.
They all stood.
Sam tugged at his mother’s dress. “Mummy, why are there so many horses?”
Stretching to the east, some two hundred yards away, was a continuous line of horses, hundreds upon hundreds of them and a thousand soldiers or more with dozens of caravans and wagons, an army materializing from the miasma.
The Italian soldiers, too fatigued to reach for their weapons, could only point weakly and lament their fate.
A single rider approached at no more than a trot, as if by coming slowly, he might magnify his authority.
Standing beside his caravan, Stalin handed over his spyglass and said, “You see, Pasha? I told you we would find them.”
Loomis adjusted the focus and found Emily standing among the Earthers. His tears puddled the image and he gave the telescope back.
“Tears of joy?” Stalin asked, laughing.
“You won’t hurt her or any of them, will you?” Loomis asked.
“If they remain good and loyal subjects, why would I hurt them? Same goes for you, Pasha. Remember that, please.”
The one-eyed rider stopped a few feet away and dismounted, holding his reins with his left hand, his right hand resting on the pommel of his scabbarded sword.
“I am Vladimir Bushenkov,” he said. “You will hand over your weapons and come with me. The tsar wishes your company again.”
John turned to Emily. “We almost made it,” he said. “We came damned close.”
“Is Paul, I mean, Pasha here?” Emily asked Bushenkov.
“He is here.”
“At least I’ll find out how to beat the strangelets,” she told John. “If we ever get back, I’ll know how to do it.”
Behind them they heard Tracy’s thin, tired voice calling out, “Excuse me. Are those supposed to be there?”
John and Emily turned their backs on Bushenkov and faced the sea.
Dozens of black lines appeared through the blanching fog, bobbing up and down. A sail was visible, then more and more of them.
Martin and Tony were shouting now for everyone to look this way and that.
To the north and the south of the Russian line, masses of men appeared from the thinning fog.
Thousands of men.
A light cannon fired off a warning. A shell crashed inland over the Russian line.
Bushenkov’s prominent Adam’s apple rose and fell in a gulp and he swore in Russian.
“Miss me?” It was Brian calling to them, approaching from the beach accompanied by a squad of standard bearers.
News of the flanking armies spread through the Russian cavalry ranks. Men shouted, seeking their orders.
Stalin howled in rage. “Who are they? Who are these bastards? Garibaldi is in Paris. He can’t be here.”
The word came down.
Iberians.
There was more cannon fire. This time the shells landed closer to the Russians. A low, throaty roar swelled up from thousands of Iberian lungs and the Russians began breaking ranks and fleeing inland.
Stalin refused to budge until General Kutuzov appeared at his side and pulled him into his caravan.
Loomis began to run toward the sea but Stalin ordered his personal guard to bring him back and when they did he kicked and screamed at them to let him go before he was forcibly thrown into the caravan. Its horses were whipped into a gallop and the caravan joined the retreat soon fading from view.
Bushenkov had remained in place, seemingly caught between the devil of the Iberians and the deep blue sea of Stalin’s rage. John got into his face and said, “Get the fuck out of here. We’ve got a ship to catch.”
The secret policeman’s chin quivered. Without uttering a word he mounted his horse and galloped away.
Behind Brian, a larger phalanx of Iberians appeared on the beach. The fog was now so transparent that the full majesty of the Iberian armada was visible at anchor along with dozens of beached longboats.
Finely dressed soldiers parted to reveal Queen Mécia in their midst, walking up from the sand, her leather boots wet from the surf, steadying herself on the arm of her man, Guomez.
John and Trevor greeted Brian with weary bear hugs.
“You knew they’d be here, didn’t you?” John said.
“Put it this way,” Brian grinned. “I was hopeful.”
Trevor shook his head and grinned. “Once a sly dog, always a sly dog.”
The queen smiled and nodded to Brian but went straight for the children. Delia picked Sam off his feet and Arabel lifted Belle so Mécia didn’t have to stoop.
“What a miracle,” she said, Guomez translating. “The most colorful and fragrant flowers, her majesty can ever recall seeing. She is most happy she could come to the rescue of the children, indeed all of these living persons. She wishes you well and hopes you are able to return to your own land.”
“Come on then,” Brian said, his voice choking. “You’d better be off. The wind’s a bugger so the crossing won’t be a quickie.”
“You’re not coming with us, are you?” Trevor said.
“I’m not.”
Trevor got angry, “For fuck’s sake, Brian, you …”
Brian shushed him. “Look, mate. I made a deal. As magnanimous as she’s sounding, she’s a tough old bird. She wouldn’t help unless I agreed to stay. I swear she’s a bloody clone of my first wife.”
“We can try to reason with her,” John said.
“It’s not her you’d need to reason with,” Brian said. “It’s me. Alice did it and so can I. Look, people,” he said to all of them, “I always thought I was born a few hundred years too late. I’ve always been happiest pretending to be a medieval soldier, prancing about like a twit in period pieces. The last month, with this adventure we’ve been on, I’ll say this: in the land of all these dead bastards I’ve never felt more alive. Now all of you, bugger off home. I’ve got to negotiate my new title. I was thinking Prince Brian the Lionhearted. Got a ring to it, don’t you think? And one last thing, Trev. Come here.”
Trevor came over to him, trying to hold his emotions in check.
Brian leaned in and whispered, “You did good, mate. Best damned student I ever had.”
37
Mellors regained consciousness tied to a living room chair.
When his glassy eyes focused on Murphy and Rix seated across from him he pulled against his ropes. He looked like he was about to scream.
“Shhh,” Murphy said. “Anything louder than a whimper, Jack, and I’ll cut your tongue out.”
“This isn’t possible,” Mellors said.
“That what you think?” Rix said. “A long, illustrious career as a detective, rising to the exalted rank of detective chief super, and that’s the best you can come up with. This isn’t possible.”
“Am I dead?”
“Not yet,” Murphy said. “But surely the lion’s share of your scumbag life’s behind you, wouldn’t you say, guv?”
“You’re dead,” Mellors said. “Both of you are dead.”
<
br /> “Bingo!” Rix said. “You finally got one right.”
“You’ve been dead for thirty years.”
“Right again,” Murphy said.
“You’re young. Like you were. What are you, ghosts?”
“Now you’ve lost your way again,” Rix said. “We’re not ghosts. We’re flesh and blood just like you. Well, maybe we don’t smell quite as fresh. Here have a snort.” He leaned forward and passed his forearm under Mellor’s nose.
Mellors grimaced, his eyes widening.
“So how old are you?” Rix asked.
Mellors didn’t answer.
“I’ll say you’re eighty-five, eighty-six,” Murphy said. “What do you reckon, Jason? Probably retired eight to ten years after we kicked it. A good twenty years of retirement. Nice fat super’s pension supplementing all the filthy lucre he made off with during his years of wickedness. Lovely seaside house. Probably flush with mateys in the local bar. But I don’t see a woman’s touch. All alone, Jack? Wife leave you, did she?”
“Cancer,” Mellors said.
“The tragedy of it,” Murphy said.
“Fuck you!” Mellors shouted.
Murphy got up and punched him in the face. “I said, shhh, didn’t I? One more bit of noise and you will regret it.”
Mellors spit blood onto the carpet.
“It’s really difficult to get that out of a nice beige pile,” Murphy said, “though I have to say, that hasn’t been one of our principal concerns these past three decades.”
“Tell me what’s going on,” Mellors said. “Tell me how you’re here when you were killed. I was at your bloody funerals. Tell me how you haven’t aged a day.”
“Tell you what,” Rix said. “Let’s take a little stroll down memory lane. Let’s relive a little episode in our lives that you probably haven’t bothered to even think about since 1985. After we've had that stroll, we’ll tell you everything, explain all the mysteries of the universe, bring you well into the fold.”
Jack Mellors pushed his way through the crowded pub to the farthest table in the back, close enough to the gents to smell the urinal cakes whenever someone opened the door. The big man with silver temples folded himself into a chair and put his pint onto a beer mat.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said.
