“Careful, he's gone from shooty to stabby,” Cakey said, grabbing David by the shoulders. “Sure you don't want me to deal with it?”
“I've got this. I want to finish it.”
“Well, commence to finishing, then, kiddo,” Cakey said and stepped back.
Gooty lay on his back beside Mattock, eyes closed, blood pooled on the floor around his head and shoulders. David had dropped his gun somewhere along the way, and he spotted it now, resting between Gooty’s feet like some kind of strange offering. Mattock saw it, as well, brandished the knives and rushed at David. He held one knife in his right hand, reversed so that the blade pointed backward, arm cocked at his side. The other he thrust in front of him. David saw him coming and tensed, ready to leap out of the way of the forward blade. But then, as he twisted to one side to dodge it, Mattock drew that knife back and brought his right hand forward and across. David felt the knife bite into the flesh right under his ribs and knew that his sideways momentum would drive it in deeply. He flung himself backward, shifting his momentum into a backward somersault that slammed him into the wall.
When he came up, he examined the wound, a long, shallow cut. It could have been much worse. Mattock came at him again. He had both blades reversed this time, both arms drawn back, so David could not tell which he would lead with. David decided on a feint of his own. He lunged for the left arm, as if to grab it. Mattock pulled that arm back and brought the right arm up and over, driving the blade down at his shoulder. At the last second, David grabbed the right arm instead, and when it descended, rather than trying to stop it, he pulled it down faster. Then he dropped to the floor, avoiding the blade, and let his weight add to the force of the blow. It came down, missed him and continued in an arc right into Mattock's own belly. It sank in deep with a satisfying moist sound, like a wet kiss. Then David hit the ground and rolled, knocking Mattock off his feet. Again they landed together in a heap, but when the general slammed face-first into the floor, it pushed the knife to the hilt.
Mattock unleashed a throaty sound, somewhere between a growl of rage and a shriek of agony. David crawled out from under him, grabbed the pistol from between Gooty's feet and leapt up. When he turned, he saw Mattock rise, pull the knife out of his belly and cast it aside. His face was scrunched up in pain, the strange wrinkles bunched up around his cheekbones. The hat had fallen off his head, revealing thin, graying hair. He looked old, old and sad, with big ears, deep wrinkles and an ugly flush at his temples. He took a stumbling step toward David and raised the other knife.
This sad old man, was this the one who had made the nations tremble? David couldn't believe it, this frail thing, this unhandsome thing. He wanted to say something cutting, some final statement on the man's life that would send him to eternity indignant and ashamed. But it was a waste of breath.
David pulled the trigger. The pistol jumped in his hand, the ejected shell spun wildly and hit the wall, and an explosive sound filled the corridor from end to end. And Mattock, clutching his chest, eyes rolling back in his head, dropped to the floor. And then it was quiet.
Cakey, standing some distance behind Mattock, his hands clasped and his mouth open, approached the fallen tyrant, kicked him a few times to make sure he was dead and nodded at David.
“Good, David. Real good,” he said. “I thought he almost had you. Are you okay?”
David touched the wound on his stomach, felt the rivulets of blood running down. “It's not too bad.”
Cakey rushed over to Gooty and knelt down, reaching out to lay a hand upon his chest.
“Gooty, hey,” Cakey said. “Goot! Speak to me, pal.”
Gooty stirred and opened one eye. It rolled about fitfully for a moment, then settled on Cakey. He opened his mouth to speak, but it took a few seconds to get the words out, his voice thick and sleepy.
“Gavril,” he said. He grimaced in pain and his eye slipped shut. “Gavril…Veo la…Veo la….” A soft sound escaped his mouth, a final expulsion of air, and he was gone.
Cakey stared at him for a moment, bent close, waiting for words that would not come. Finally, he shook his head.
“He's dead,” he said softly.
He wrapped his arms around Gooty and raised him into a seated position against the wall. Gooty's head tipped sideways onto his shoulder, but Cakey righted it and held it in place. Then he closed Gooty’s mouth and pressed a hand to his cheek.
“My brother, my brother,” he said, and burst into tears. “My friend.” His shoulders shook as he wept.
David was too numb to grieve, too filled with empty horror at all of the awful things he’d seen. He pulled open the cell door and stepped inside. Here he found Annabelle, hunched protectively over Telly, the rifle in her lap. She started when he entered, grabbing at the rifle, then saw his face and breathed a sigh of relief.
“Who's dead?” she asked.
“Gooty.”
She nodded sadly. “Poor Gooty. But he was ready. Kept saying Josefina's name, kept whispering—I think he was praying.”
“He saved my life,” David said. “At the cost of his own.”
Annabelle lifted Telly, propping his head against her shoulder. He looked pale and weak, his lips drawn back, his eyes rolling about. He reached up and scratched at his scalp, digging in hard enough to draw blood. Belle grabbed his hand and pulled it away. When he tried to scratch again, she smacked him on the wrist.
“Gooty saved your life,” she said to David. “Can you save Telly?”
David nodded and went to him. He picked Telly up in his arms, brushing against Belle as he did so. When he rose, she rose with him and laid a hand upon his shoulder.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I...I killed Mattock,” David replied.
She reached out and pulled back the fold of cloth where he'd been cut. She looked at the wound, then up at him. And then she smiled and leaned in close, and it was the same as the moment on the stairs, the pull of her, the gravity, the waves of heat radiating out of her, the small, pouty mouth drawing near. But this time, he moved to meet her, his heart pounding as he anticipated the kiss. At the last second, however, she shifted, turning her head to one side and laying it upon his shoulder. Then she wrapped an arm around the back of his neck and pressed herself against him. An embrace rather than a kiss, comforting instead of arousing, with Telly awkwardly crushed between them. David’s little thrill crumbled into embarrassment and a whole-body strangeness that made him shuffle his feet, and when she drew back, he could not look at her. Of course that was how she felt about him. Of course. An older sister, a friend. He cleared his throat and fidgeted, feeling the weight of Telly in his arms, the painful press of his small body against the knife wound.
“David, I can't tell you how thankful I am that you became a part of the Kroo,” she said.
And that turned his embarrassment into something warm and wonderful, if still not quite what he'd wanted. He smiled at her.
“Let's go save Telly's life,” he said.
When he stepped into the hallway, Cakey had finished with his weeping. Gooty's hands were clasped delicately on his stomach, his face settled, his feet placed together, like a man taking a brief nap after a long, hard afternoon. Cakey kissed his fingertips and pressed them to Gooty's forehead, then he rose.
“And so ends the ever-night,” he said.
Chapter Twenty Five
Out of the Ruins, a Vision
Cakey dragged himself up the mountain of ruins and poked his head through an opening near the top. He was there for a few minutes, looking back and forth. Then he slid back down to the floor, stooped down and grabbed the booted foot of General Mattock. They had stripped him of his cloak and hat and the array of weapons on his belt, emptying pockets and pouches.
“What do you see out there?” Annabelle asked.
“The soldiers have all fled like cockroaches,” Cakey said. “Didn't see the creature, but there's a path of destruction heading east. Looks like a whirlwind went through. Lot of b
odies in its wake.”
Cakey started dragging Mattock up the mountain of ruins.
“Where are you taking him?”
“Gonna leave him out in the open,” Cakey said. “So his people can find him. Better they realize their precious general is a corpse. Maybe some of them will give up the fight and find a new life.”
He got to the top of the ruins and forced the body through a gap, moving some broken wood beams aside to make it wide enough. He gave Mattock a final kick, and the body disappeared into what had been the massive entry hall. They heard it rolling down the far side.
“Right on top of the broken pieces of the front door,” Cakey said with a final glance. “Arms above his head. Looks like he died surrendering. Perfect.”
They left the wide open room and worked their way back to the room with the tank. Telly, despite his small size, was dense and heavy, and David soon found himself panting from the effort of carrying him. But the little guy was still alive, David saw his chest rising and falling. Still alive.
“Hang in there, boss,” he said.
They climbed through rooms full of wreckage, broken doors, shattered tile and concrete, wood and mortar, stepping over bodies. The irony of it didn't escape them, that the General's own source of power and life had been the fall of his empire—or, if not quite the fall, at least the beginning of the end. It seemed all too fitting, and David wondered if Cakey wasn't right in attributing all of this to destiny.
The creature's tank stood in the middle of an open space where the metal walkway had once been. Cakey hopped over the gap, landed on the rim of the tank and reached down, bracing himself against the edge, to scoop up some of the liquid in his cupped hand. He was careful not to spill it as he hopped back across to the others.
“Here you go, boss,” he said. “Drink up.”
David held Telly close while Annabelle pulled his mouth open.
“You gotta swallow it, Telly,” she said.
He stirred, opened his eyes and groaned. Cakey held up his hand and poured the liquid into his open mouth. Telly immediately gagged, so Annabelle clamped his mouth shut.
“That’s a good boss,” Cakey said. “Drink it right up.”
Telly's eyes slipped shut, but he swallowed, grimacing.
“Might need a little more,” David said.
Cakey repeated the process a couple more times, hopping over to the tank, scooping up some of the liquid and returning to force feed it to him.
“How long will it take to start working?” Annabelle asked.
David found a soft spot on the floor among the mangled bits of one of Mattock's couches and set Telly down.
“I don't know,” David said. “Not long, I hope.”
“It’s your turn, dame,” Cakey said, thrusting his hand at Annabelle. “I know you’re busy being all motherly to our diminutive leader there, but you’re sick, too.”
She drank from his hand, made a disgusted face and shook her head.
“Tastes vile,” she said.
“Just think of it as medicine, really gross excreted medicine,” Cakey said and hopped back over to the tank.
He knelt on the rim, peering down into the tank, as if looking for something. After a moment, he reached down, fished around and brought something up. David saw a long, blackish tube dripping cerulean liquid and thought, for a second, it was a tentacle that had ripped loose. But when it came up all the way, he saw a small metal cap attached to one end.
“What do you figure this was?” Cakey asked.
“That’s how Mattock collected the spores,” David said. “It was stuck to the creature.”
Cakey frowned and held the tube away from him. “Well, then,” he said. “Why don’t we just leave that sucker right here where it belongs.” He leaned over the side of the tank and dropped the tube to the bottom of the silo. David heard it land in the darkness below, a hard thump on the ruins of the walkway. His attention returned to the tank. Quite a bit of the healing liquid remained, enough to serve hundreds of sick. David stood across the gap, gazing at it, and the vision came to him again—sick rubes lined up, hands out. He'd had a glimpse of it before but very fleeting. Now, he saw it clearly, what could be. He looked at Annabelle, wondering if she saw it, too.
“Cakey, you said there was a platform below the tank, maybe a lift,” David said. “Do you suppose there really is a way to move it?”
“Well, why don’t we find out,” Cakey said.
He hopped over the tank, landing on the rim on the far side. Balancing himself against the open hatch, he reached across to the panel of buttons on the wall. He pressed one, and the lid shuddered and began to close.
“Wait, what are we doing?” Annabelle asked. “Can't we just get out of here? We've still got miles to go to get out of Tockland.”
“I do believe our friend David has a dream,” Cakey said, pulling himself on top of the hatch as it closed. “Would it involve taking this big old tank of alien goo with us, kid?”
“Yes,” David replied.
“Why?” Annabelle turned to David. And did she sound a little annoyed? He thought so. “What dream is he talking about? Let’s get out of here while we can.”
David, withering under her gaze, nevertheless felt a sudden boldness, so clear was the vision in his head. Still, it took a moment to gather his courage to share it.
“So many sick people out there,” he said. “And here we have a way to heal them. Think about it. What if we weren’t always fighting rubes? What if we had a way to help them instead?”
Annabelle considered this, shifting her head from side to side. “I guess I can see that. But the tank will run out eventually. There are so many sick people. We can't heal them all.”
“I know, so we give what we have to give until the tank is empty,” David said. “Mattock won't be releasing spore clouds into the air anymore, right? Even if we can't heal all the sick, we can heal some—many—and that's a good thing? Isn't it?”
She grunted thoughtfully and nodded. “It is a good thing. Yes, it is.”
Cakey rapped his knuckles on the hatch.
“Climb on board, friends,” Cakey said. “Let's see where this thing takes us.”
David stooped down to pick up Telly, but Telly started coughing. The coughs became deep hacking sounds, his whole body convulsing. David put an arm around his shoulders to steady him. The coughing went on for almost a full minute, and then Telly heaved and vomited on the floor between his legs. It was mostly blue-tinged phlegm, but David saw tiny shapes moving in the midst—purplish wormy things, the longest of them no more than an eighth of an inch, writhing in the puddle of vomit.
“Son of a gun,” Telly muttered, opening his eyes. “Would you look at that?”
“Those are the brain worms?” Annabelle said, leaning in close to get a look. “Those tiny things? That's what is killing so many people?”
“Your whole body must’ve been riddled with them,” David said.
One by one, the worms ceased writhing and went still. Just to be safe, David moved Telly aside and stomped on them, grinding them into the floor.
“Oh, my aching head,” Telly said, grasping his forehead in both hands. “Help me up.”
David helped Telly to his feet, then lifted him onto his shoulder. Telly held on tight, as David hopped onto the lid of the tank. Annabelle followed.
“Hang on, folks,” Cakey said. He started pressing buttons on the panel. The first two did nothing, but on the third, the whole tank shook, and the lift at the bottom began to raise them toward the ceiling. David set Telly beside him, Annabelle grabbing his hand to keep him in place. Above them, the ceiling split open, revealing a brightly-lit room above, a hint of sky showing through an open window. David had put the pistol back in his pocket, but he drew it out now, in case they found themselves rising into a room full of enemies.
Instead of a room full of enemies, however, they found themselves in some kind of second-story loading dock. It wasn't a window but a wide opening in th
e wall with a sturdy ramp that led down into a courtyard. There was a long, low table nearby, a scattering of cards and papers on top suggesting it had been recently occupied, but no soldiers. The floor in one corner had collapsed into the room below, a few support beams sticking up like broken bones poking through flesh. At the bottom of the ramp a truck sat parked in the courtyard, an old retrofitted cab-over with armor plates bolted to the body. A mounted machine gun rose above the cab, and a small crane attached to a bulky motor sat in the back of a flatbed trailer behind a large metal framework.
“I suppose our dearly departed Mr. Mattock took his tank with him wherever he went,” Cakey said. “Moving it from place to place, always keeping the real source of his power close at hand.”
When the tank had fully ascended into the loading dock, Cakey dropped to the floor and hurried down the ramp to the truck. David, gun still drawn, ready in case any of the soldiers returned, lifted Telly to his shoulder and hopped down after Cakey. It was a ten foot drop from the lid to the floor, and he landed hard, dropping Telly in the process. But Telly managed to find his feet and tumble.
“Getting your strength back, boss?” David asked.
“Eh, ten percent,” Telly replied. “But that’s better than zero percent, which is where I thought I was headed.”
Annabelle came next, landing nimbly beside David. Cakey climbed down the end of the ramp onto the bed of the truck and examined the controls for the crane. After a minute, he had it running, and the crane swung up and over their heads, the claw-hand at the end grasping the top of the tank.
“Watch out, folks,” Cakey said.
He picked up the tank and swung it back over to the truck. The metal framework contained a steel skirt that seemed tailor made to fit the tank. After lowering the tank into the framework, Cakey fiddled with the controls, and a set of clamps clicked into place, securing it to the trailer.
“Well, look at that,” Cakey said. “Old boy had his tank ready to go at a moment's notice, didn't he?”
Shadows of Tockland Page 36
