The Bitter End

by James Loscombe

  The brainwashed villagers clung to the scaffolding around the dam. Most of them did not even look at them as they lined up along the river bank though. One did. They were too far away for Ben to make out a face but, while the others continued their labour, he climbed off and ran in the direction of the palace.

  Peter held up a hand and they stopped, waited. If they could get Kirsty and Nicholas to come to them it would be better, fighting them on their own turf would be more difficult but they would do it if they had to.

  They waited in silence. The black wings above continued to flap and the tools continued to bang and cut but none of the Resistance spoke. They held their collective breath and they waited.

  And they waited.

  "They aren't coming," said Daniel.

  "Give it time," said Peter without turning to look at him. So they continued to wait.

  It got warmer so that it became a chore just to stand up. Ben could feel the sweat on his face and running down the back of his neck. They continued to wait.

  Hours seemed to pass. The sky remained black and noisy. Eventually they saw movement at the top of the structure.

  A black cloud moved across the surface like a swarm of insects. It hugged the stone structure and changed shape, narrowing to move between objects, rising higher when the dam did. It descended the steps towards them, like a bruise with faces in it. Ben watched it come towards them, a ghostly ghastly shape. He held his ground and he held his breath.

  It stopped before them and changed its shape again, becoming tall and narrow and then splitting into two distinct clouds which themselves began to solidify and eventually came out as Nicholas and Kirsty. When they appeared from the cloud they found that they had one hundred sharpened wooden weapons aimed directly at them.

  "We haven't come to fight you," said Kirsty addressing the crowd.

  Ben alternated between her and Nicholas. Her because she was the most dangerous of the pair, him because he didn't know if he could shoot something that looked like a little girl, even if she was a vamp.

  "We want to help you but if you don't want our help we won't force you."

  Did she realise they were outnumbered? She had to know that she wasn't in a position to strike bargains. "Let our people go then," said Peter.

  She smiled. "Your people have chosen this life. They don't want to go with you."

  "They're brainwashed," said Peter. "Either you let them go or we’ll kill you."

  Her smile widened. "And I thought we were supposed to be the monsters. Very well. Here are your people."

  The sounds of construction had stopped. Suddenly every face had turned towards them and one by one they started to move. They climbed down from the scaffolding, some dropping into the water, others simply letting go and dropping from whatever height they happened to be at, landing in piles on the hard ground. Ben could hear bones cracking and breaking. He turned to look and saw the people he had known all of his life shuffling and shambling towards them. He realised they hadn't just been brainwashed.

  "What have you done to them?" he said.

  But Kirsty and Nicholas had gone.

  He turned to Daniel who seemed to be as surprised as he was. "They're like zombies or something," he said, as much to himself as to Ben.

  There wasn't long to think, the one’s who had been closest were reaching them now. Ben remembered the vamps gone wrong at the tower, the way they had responded to Gabriel's instruction. They had been decomposing as if already dead. Was that what was in store for these people, his friends?

  He raised his crossbow and aimed at someone he didn't recognise. An old man who walked as if he had a broken knee. Ben thought about what he was about to do but it seemed like the only way to be sure; he squeezed the trigger and the wooden bolt shot through the air and imbedded itself in the man's left shoulder.

  The old man stumbled back but didn't seem to notice the pain. After a moment he kept coming, his face a blank rigour. Ben decided, he had no choice really, that these people were not people at all. They were vamps gone wrong or zombies or whatever you wanted to call them, but they weren't his friends.

  "Aim for the head," he shouted.

  As if they had known it all along but had needed someone else to make it okay they started to fire. The air was filled with the whooshing of deadly wood, flying almost silently through the air. Some of the shots found their targets but most went wide. The zombies kept coming.

  Ben fired off a few more arrows and brought down four. He looked around, needed to see where Nicholas and Kirsty had gone, and saw the door to the palace up above closing.

  "Dan," he said.

  His friend looked up.

  "This way," he ran towards the stairs. Dan was followed by Kris, Anthony, Joel and his boys. This was all of their fight now.

  Up the narrow stairs and along the narrow path at the top. Down below they were winning the fight, or at least beating it into a stalemate that would last until they ran out of bullets and arrows. As long as the kept the zombies away from the camp it would be okay. Once Nicholas and Kirsty were dead they could leave.

  They walked towards the door and the two guards stepped together to block it. Without breaking their pace Ben raised his crossbow and put a bolt through one of their heads and Daniel through the other. The two giants fell to the floor and they stepped around them.

  There was no time to think now, no time to stop and wonder if this was the right thing to do. Ben realised that they were out of options and they needed to be quick because if the zombies or the vamps got to the camp

  (Mary)

  then what would be the point. Dying here or dying there without them, it wouldn't make a difference.

  The throne room was empty. It continued to stink of rotting meat, shit and vomit but that smell seemed like victory now. But where were they?

  "We need to split up," he said. "Dan, you go with Joel and Kris. Martin, Alex, you come with me."

  Nobody argued, nobody seemed surprised that he had suddenly taken charge. Perhaps they realised that he had more at stake in this fight than any of them did, perhaps they were just glad the responsibility of deciding what to do wasn't theirs. Ben didn't question it, it felt right.

  He led Martin and Alex behind the throne. A zombie waited for them there, its arms outstretched ready to grab the first person it saw. For one terrible moment Ben thought that it was his own mum but he put a bullet through its head and when it dropped to the floor he saw that it was another old man. They kept going.

  The palace was filled with tunnels that went down into the dam. Narrow spaces that it seemed impossible Nicholas would be able to fit through in his new form. But he was the man who had appeared before them in a cloud of smoke so it seemed reasonable to believe he could fit through any gap. It certainly didn't rule it out.

  There were more zombies but they were easy to kill now that he no longer thought of them as people. They weren't his friends or neighbours, they were creatures like the vamps who wanted to kill him. Better he kill them first then.

  Three, four, five more zombies and an equal number of staircases. He was moving more quickly now, he couldn't afford to waste time because he needed to get out of the dam as quickly as possible so that he could get back to Mary and the boys. So that they could get on their boat and start their new life on the river.

  Eventually the stairs opened on a long narrow room. The ceiling was twice his height. He guessed it was about half-way down the dam and he seemed to be able to feel the pressure of the water on the other side of the heavy walls. For a moment there was silence.

  He led the boys further into the room, slowly now, the only thing moving quickly was the beat of his heart. Something was different about this room. It felt as if he was being watched and he wondered if the boys felt it as well. Something was off, something wasn't right.

  Ben was still surprised enough to jump a step back when the thing fell from the ceiling. It roared loudly enough to shake the walls and he had a momentary vision of
the water breaking through and washing them all away. He was surprised to realise that, if it killed the vamps and spared the rest, even if it meant his own death, he might be okay with it.

  "YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE COME" said Nicholas. "WHY DID YOU COME BACK?"

  Ben looked up at him, despite the height of the ceiling Nicholas couldn't stand fully upright. He said nothing.

  "THIS ISN'T YOUR FIGHT" he said.

  The two boys stood behind him, waiting for a signal from him for what they should do. He was sorely tempted to lay into Nicholas, he was supposed to look after these people and look what had happened. But what was the point; he wouldn't get the answers he wanted and every second he delayed was more time for the zombies outside to advance on the camp.

  Ben raised his crossbow and felt, rather than saw, the boys raise their own weapons.

  "ANSWER ME" roared Nicholas.

  He answered him with cold wood. Three shots were fired and two of them went directly into the heart. Nicholas, the General, the King, roared anger across the room but didn't go down. He swiped across them and Ben managed to step back, as did Martin, but Alex was caught by the giant hand that seemed to grow in size as it struck him.

  The boy was flung across the room and hit the wall with a sickening moist crack. He hung their for a moment and then slid off. Even in the darkness Ben could see that his nose was broken and several of his teeth hung crookedly from his mouth. But somehow he got up.

  They fired again and they reloaded and fired again. Their bullets and arrows pierced the leathery hide of the creature that had once been Nicholas, his brother in-law but never his friend. He roared and cried and the building around them trembled. He tried to fight back but Ben saw that he was dying now, he was weak and desperate.

  A final volley of shots brought Nicholas to the ground and in death his body shrank back to its normal size. Ben stepped forwards while Martin tended to his brothers wounds.

  "I never like you Nicholas," he said, standing over the body with his bow aimed at the head. "But I'm sorry it had to end like this." He pulled the trigger and a final arrow put him out of any misery he was still in.

  "How's he doing?" said Ben turning back to Martin and Alex.

  "I'm fine," said Alex, at least that's what Ben thought he said. It came out as a series of gasps.

  "Take him back," he said.

  "What?" said Martin.

  "You heard me," said Ben. "Take him back to camp, get him fixed up. You can help the others."

  "I'm staying here," said Alex.

  Ben shook his head. Somehow he knew that he had to fight Kirsty alone. It seemed like the only way it was going to work. Two teenage boys weren't going to be able to help him. "Do it now," he said.

  Martin didn't argue. He pulled Alex back across the room towards the door. Ben watched them go and then turned to pull the arrow out of Nicholas's head.

  18

  The tunnels seemed endless. An age seemed to have passed since he had last seen daylight. It became difficult to keep his nerve, alone in the tunnels, if there had not been so much danger he might have whistled just to hear something other than the water crashing against the other side of the wall. Then that stopped as well and the only thing he could hear was his own feet coming down of the rocky floor.

  He might have been miles underground. He had passed the cells they had been kept in the previous day. And he went on.

  He couldn't explain how but he knew he was going the right way. He even had a vague sense of what he would find when he got there, though every time he tried to picture it the image fell to pieces.

  There were bats down there. He could hear their occasional squeak in the darkness. There were flies that he had to brush away from his face. The ceiling got lower with each floor he passed and by the time he got to the bottom he was crawling on his hands and knees and wondering if he would have to crawl on his belly next.

  But it opened up and he found he could stand without his head brushing uneven rock.

  It was huge. A cavern. It was lit by invisible fluorescents in pink and green and white. The walls were more than a hundred metres apart and he couldn't see where the room ended on the other side. Perhaps it didn't.

  He checked his weapons, counted the arrows in his quiver and went on.

  It seemed as if he could see the curve of the earth in the floor. As he walked further into the room new things appeared, statues and structures, furniture and paintings on easels.

  "Hello Ben," said a terribly familiar voice behind him.

  He spun around and there she stood. Little Kirsty Lorimer but not so little anymore. Her skin was white and flawless. Her dark hair fell on her exposed shoulders. She wore a red ball gown that she filled in a way no thirteen year old girl should. Ben stepped back and raised his crossbow.

  "You've come to kill me?" she said. Her voice was like velvet, a seductive voice that should have sounded funny coming from a little girl but didn't, it sounded scary.

  Ben knew that he should have put an arrow through her head then but he couldn't bring himself to pull the trigger. His head was swimming.

  "I'm glad," she sighed.

  "You're glad?" he said, suddenly aware that he was being hypnotised but unable to resist it. "Why are you glad?"

  "I'm lonely Ben," she said. She shook her head and her silky hair brushed across her shoulders. "I thought Nicholas might be the one for me but he's dead now, isn't he?"

  Ben nodded and tried not to apologise. He reminded himself that Nicholas had been dead for a long time, the thing he killed was something else. Just like the thing in front of him wasn't really Kirsty Lorimer. That seemed like a dangerous thought but it was there now and he couldn't unthink it.

  "I suppose it's only right," she said. Her lips were full and painted, she ran her tongue across them and Ben saw them glisten.

  "He was a monster," he said. It felt like choking on a piece of dry meat to say the words.

  "I suppose I am a monster too?"

  "N..." he clamped his mouth shut and refused to say the rest. "What are you doing to me?"

  "Me? Am I doing something to you Ben?" She took a step towards him and for a moment he couldn't stop her, for a moment he didn't want to stop her.

  "Stop it," he said and he wanted to push her away but he couldn't. Instead he stepped back but she just kept coming.

  She stopped in front of him, her soft body pressed against his. He found that he couldn't move. He felt her leg touching his but he refused to look down, that at least he could manage. "You could stay with me," she said. "Keep me company."

  A part of him wanted to tell her that no, he didn't want to stay with her, but another part realised that was a lie.

  "We could have such good fun together you and I," she said. She moved her head towards his, her lips brushed against his ear. "Wouldn't you like that Ben?"

  He reached for her waist, meaning to hold her close to him so that she could take him. Take his life with a bite to the neck that he welcomed. But when he touched her he found her cold. It was like holding a body that had been pulled from the river.

  "You don't need your wife," she whispered, her mouth tracing kisses down his neck. Her cold lips and her cold body and he realised that he did, he did need Mary and he did need his boys.

  He grabbed her waist hard and pushed her away.

  She let out a squeal as she fell to the floor and the spell was broken. When he looked at her now he saw a dead girl who had been dressed in a funeral gown. Her skin was pale but blotchy, swollen as if she had been dragged from a watery death. Her eyes were sunken and her mouth a monsters hole full of teeth.

  She also looked scared and that was the worst part of all.

  Ben raised his crossbow. He said a prayer for her and then he pulled the trigger. She cried out in agony and surprise and before his eyes she changed.

  He saw her whole life cycle, the one she would never have. She grew up and became beautiful, for a moment she was the woman he had imagined when he first arrive
d in the room. Then she was old but still beautiful in her way. Then she was ancient and crumbling and he could see her body rot before his eyes. She turned to ashes on the floor and then rose up from them as a terrible monstrous shape.

  She cried out and the room shook. Rock fell from the ceiling onto the ground around him and he knew that if he didn't get out soon he would be buried alive, down here with her forever. Just as she had wanted.

  He pulled out the gun from his pocket and fired at her. She writhed and lunged for him but he was already moving, running back the way he had come. He needed to get to Mary and the boys, he needed Mary and the boys like he never had before.

  She came after him but the ceiling was crashing down on both of them now. He dodged falling rocks and turned back to fire his wooden bullets at her. Mostly he hit her. She ket coming, the heavy rocks crashing into her, knocking her from side to side.The door he had come through was in sight. He turned meaning to shoot her again, because if she followed him into the tunnels she would catch him, no question, but he found that he didn't need too.

  It seemed like more of the ceiling was on the ground than above them and she was trapped. Screaming and scraping desperately at the floor but unable to move. He watched her try to change shape again but she couldn't. If she could have turned into smoke it might have saved her.

  Ben walked back towards her, dodging falling rocks that were now letting in streams of water. He stood above her and prayed to a god that he had never believed in. He aimed for her heart and without a hint of regret he delivered the killing blow.

  He would have stayed and watched. Would have waited for her body to return to child size and even taken it with him to return to her family with his deepest regrets. But there was no time: water was now filling the chamber and if he didn't get out now he would drown and be just as dead as she was.