by Glynn James
With him was a young woman, obviously one of the Sisters by the way she was dressed. She was walking with her arm in his.
"Amazing isn't it?" said a voice behind me.
I turned to see Rudy sitting on one of the seats. I hadn't noticed him there.
"What is?"
Rudy nodded towards Reg.
"He has been looking for her for about ninety years."
I looked up at them both and then back at Rudy.
"So she really was here."
"Yes. It would seem so. She has been for a very long time. Apparently she doesn't remember everything from the time they were married, but she remembers enough of it. Seems you're not the only one who has lost their memory. Their mind-seer, at least I think that's what they called her, tried to restore Marie's memory a long time ago, but it didn't work completely. It has taken a lot of time."
"Hmm. I was wondering if she would want to see him, based on how the Sisters spoke last night. Speaking of which, have you seen any of the other sisters?"
"Yes. Adler was talking to some of them over in their garden, and the one in charge left a message that you should go to the centre marquee when you are awake."
I looked up at Reg and his wife one more time before heading back inside. After nearly ninety years, he really had found her again, and they were both alive. Strange how things turn out.
I eventually found my way around the maze of tents to the central marquee, a much larger space than the others. There were a lot more Sisters than I had first thought. Whilst wandering around, I met at least a hundred of them. They were all deeply involved in one thing or another, so I didn't disturb them.
"Ah. I see you have finally woken," said a voice from near the back of the vast chamber. Her voice echoed slightly, which was odd. I wouldn't have thought that tents could echo.
The speaker was different to the Sisters that I had already met. She was short, maybe five feet, and very thin. She was also the only one who looked old, which was unusual. If Marie was anything to go by, the Sisters were ageless, just like The Resistance, yet their leader was old and grey and wrinkled.
"James Halldon, The Maw tamer. It has been a while since I saw you. Apparently you won't be able to remember me at the moment, though."
"No, I had a slight accident in the memory department."
She laughed.
"Well, at least you haven't lost some of your humour. Come. Let us retire to a quieter place and I will see what can be done. DogThing can come if he promises not to interfere and to stay calm."
I frowned at her.
"Really," she said. "Quite pointless me explaining anything to you isn't it? If I can help you remember, then I won't have any explaining to do at all."
I sighed. Seemed to make sense.
She looked down at DogThing.
"You will behave yourself this time won't you?"
DogThing turned his head sideways and whined.
"This time?"
She waved her hand at me.
"Bah. Come on."
We followed her out of the great chamber and into a smaller side compartment, where there was just a single chair placed in the middle. Nothing else.
"Sit there."
I did as I was told.
"Now. First I must discern the extent of the damage. This bit won't hurt."
She placed her hand on the top of my head and closed her eyes. Mumbling to herself.
I sat there, sceptical, wondering if this was a complete waste of time and that I would be no better off than before, when there was a slight twinge in the back of my mind. Something felt strange.
"Ah I have found some of the problem," mumbled the old woman. "Now, I can't promise that this bit won't hurt. It might not, but it also might be painful."
I took a deep breath and waited.
Nothing. She was still mumbling under breathe. A slight warm feeling tingled in the back of my mind.
"Senga," I said, not sure of where it had come from.
"Good," she said. "Very good."
"That's your name isn't it?"
"Indeed. Now shut up."
She mumbled some more, and the more I listened to her voice the more my eyes began to cloud over. The sounds she was making were gradually becoming more and more audible. Then I realised. She wasn't mumbling at all, she was talking to the part of my mind that I no longer had access to.
"Now this is going to hurt, but it will unlock what has been locked, and your memories will start to come back."
FLASH
My mind felt like it had exploded, and searing pain shot through my nerves. I felt my arms tense up and my spine cracked so loudly that DogThing whined. My eyes felt as though someone had stuck a hot needle into the centre of them.
FLASH
I am no longer in the tent.
Where the hell am I?
I'm in a field. It is daylight here, and the fields stretch for miles and miles. Barley is swaying in the wind. It's almost hypnotic.
There is a laugh behind me. Someone else is here with me.
"Are you coming?" asks the voice. Another laugh.
"Yes," I say, except this is not me now saying this, this is me back then. I have no control of myself. I am merely a passenger in a scene from my own past.
I look round. A face that is familiar smiles back at me. She is tall, nearly as tall as I am, and beautiful, so beautiful. Long, dark hair, the colour of midnight, blows in the wind. Brilliant, bright eyes, shine with mischief. She wears a long flowing dress of green and white, with a loose belt and a hood made of cotton.
It's 1773. I'm fifteen years old and she is fourteen.
Abegail is her name.
I'm in love with her. My first love.
I chase her across the field, and we fall over, laughing together.
These were the happy days.
"I'm going to marry you one day," I tell her.
"What makes you think I'll marry you?"
She laughs and runs off again through the barley. I jump up and chase after her.
I live in Georgia.
I do come from Earth, but not from London.
I come from America.
Georgia.
It's just a few years before everything changes, before the war, before we rebelled against the British and made our home our own land.
I never married her back then.
Why didn't I marry her?
FLASH
More pain. My head feels like someone has smacked me around the face several times. My vision swims, blurring everything. But then I focus. There are people around me, lots of them watching me from a distance.
I'm not in the field anymore. I'm not in the chair, with Senga standing in front of me. I'm somewhere else, yet again.
Where am I now?
I'm standing in a line with many other men. Some are my age, and some are older. We're in the village square. Someone is speaking, but I can't make out what he is saying. He is tall, with a long beard and a jacket that makes me think his is...
He is recruiter for the militia.
I'm frightened.
It's 1775, and I'm seventeen years old, and we are being mustered for war. The war that changed everything.
I have everything I own packed in a small bag that hangs over my shoulder. It's hot. It's summer here. I can feel the sun burning on the back of my neck. I'm sweating, but it's not just the heat that is making me sweat. Fear.
Abegail is standing not far away in the entrance of a building. My mother is next to her.
Gabriel Halldon.
We say goodbye. There are tears.
This would be the last time I would ever see my mother. She would die in the winter to come of a fever and I would not know that for years. I wouldn't know that until I saw Abegail again.
FLASH
My mind swims again, this time I seem to drift. I'm in pain, but I can't sense where the pain is coming from. It's excruciating. Am I wounded? Yes.
My legs. They are broken.
/>
I'm lying down in the mud. There are bodies around me. The smell of blood and the reek of the dead. I'm coughing.
Dying.
It's cold. It's winter.
It's the end of winter and nearly the beginning of spring. The year is 1778 and I'm twenty years old. We are at a place called Valley Forge. The war has stopped for the winter, but we weren't able to return home. I haven't been home for three years, and now I know that I may never go home. I will die here, just like the others.
I look down and realise that I'm sitting on bodies. Dozens of bodies. I'm in a pit. Blood covers my legs, but it's not my blood.
I try to move, but my legs are screaming with pain. I remember now. They are broken from when I was run down by the horse that charged us. I have been in the field hospital for weeks now, gradually getting weaker and weaker by the day. I know that gangrene courses through my bones and my veins, ever eating away at me, killing me slowly. They never tried to save my legs. They didn't even try to save me. Too many injured men. Too many sick and dying from disease or their wounds. Some would get help, but not someone with my wounds.
We had fought a battle. Black Hill comes to mind, though the memory is fuzzy and confused. I had been wounded. They dragged me for miles and miles on a stretcher. Both of my legs were broken and useless. I heard them talking. The tall one. He said that I should just be left to die. The other one. Shorter and thinner. He says no. The boy may live.
I was sick with fever. A lot of men were sick with fever.
We had stayed at the camp at Valley Forge over the winter, along with thousands of others from the army. There were multitudes of the sick and the dying. The field hospital smells of the dead and the dying, of the ointments and alcohol the doctors use to treat the wounds of those who may live.
Time moves on. The camp is packing up, now. The doctors visit the remaining sick. I am barely conscious. They say I am dead, but I'm not. I can hear them, but I can't tell them, I can't move. I try to call out, try to tell them that I'm not gone yet, but they walk away, and two other men come to lift my stretcher. They carry me somewhere and I feel myself falling.
I wake up. I'm still not dead.
I'm in the burial pit.
But they think I'm dead.
Somehow I manage to move. My arms and upper body still work, even though the cold of the winter numbs my fingers, my hands, and my face. I can't feel my face.
I crawl across the bodies and somehow manage to haul myself out of the pit. It takes so long. Just a few feet to climb, but it takes forever. Something moves underneath me. There is a cracking sound. I look down and the bodies below me in the burial pit are moving.
I must be delirious. I must be seeing things. No. They keep moving, crawling, writhing. Then one of the dead opens its eyes and looks straight at me.
There is death in those eyes.
Death and hatred.
I am out and crawling across the ground, one yard after another. Just a few more yards to escape into the bushes that seem so far away, yet they can't be more than a hundred yards away. I can feel something, some dark presence and I'm frightened.
There is a voice. I hear a deep voice. A harsh voice. It's back near the pit. I glance round, but my vision is still blurred. There is a tall figure standing next to the pit, looking down into the horror that I have just fled.
"Arise my brethren. Arise," says the voice. It chills me to my very heart. Evil has come here.
There are more cracking sounds.
Movement.
I see movement from the pit. Someone crawls out and slowly stands up. I can hear his bones snapping, as though his body still refuses to move. His head is lying on one side.
The dead man is standing up.
I crawl further away, further into the bushes, frightened.
The bushes are thicker here. I might be able to hide. I crawl into them as far as I can before they are too overgrown for me to force my way any further. I lay there, quiet and still.
The voice shouts.
"I know you are out there, you little rat. You will not escape from me."
My heart beats, thumping in my chest.
That voice.
"I have come to claim you all."
Moaning sounds, lots of them. I can barely keep my head from spinning, but I see well enough to see the dead men from the pit rising up, crawling out and wandering into the mist that spreads across the valley. There are dozens of them, maybe hundreds. They should not be walking. They should be dead.
Then there is a buzzing noise. I can't place what it is, but it's very near. A flash of light, nearby, and a faint popping noise, and then I can see someone standing near to me. My vision is so blurred now that I can only make out a silhouette of the new arrival, and nothing more.
Is this another evil?
The tall figure near the pit looks directly at whoever has just arrived, and he smiles a wicked, evil grin.
"You will be mine one day, rat," he says, and then he turns and walks off into the mist, with the mass of dead soldiers stumbling behind him.
I feel someone touch my shoulder. I try to push away but can't. I'm too weak.
There is cold on my back, my jacket has been torn open. Then pain, in the back of my neck. I'm being stabbed, a blade, or something else sharp. It bores into my neck and feels as though it will burst from the front at any moment. It's like nothing I have ever felt before. It digs inwards, to the centre of my head, to the nerves in my finger tips, even to my stomach. I try to scream, but nothing comes out.
Is this to be my last moment? Murdered by a stranger whilst I already lay dying? Will I ever see my family or Abegail again?
FLASH
My vision blurs for a moment. It's hard to find orientation. My neck hurts. I feel nauseous.
I am sick, everywhere.
My legs and arms don't seem to want to move. I can feel my heart beating all the way up into my throat. My right hand hurts more than anything else.
I look down at it, and try to raise it to my face so that I can see.
My hand is pale, like the dead. My veins seem black against my almost transparent skin. I start choking on my own vomit. Hands grab me and turn me over.
Then I can breathe again.
I feel my whole body shaking, convulsing.
There is a voice.
"I told you we should have sedated him first."
Who is that? Who is talking? I try to speak, but still nothing comes out.
"I know. We didn’t have time. He was nearly dead already."
The other voice is angry.
"It doesn't matter. It works anyway, so long as they still have a heartbeat."
"Yes. Okay. Next time we sedate."
I cough again, feeling the blood pumping through the veins in my head. It feels like someone is hitting me with a hammer.
Everything goes black. No bright flash this time. No more pain.
I awake some time later, open my eyes and take a deep breath.
"He's awake," says one of the voices.
A face appears in front of me. My vision is still blurred, so I can't make any features out.
"Stay calm, my friend. You are not dead and this is not Valhalla or Elysium. Your vision and your faculties will return. You need to rest."
"It's heaven in his culture."
"What?"
"Heaven. They believe in heaven. Valhalla and Elysium were years ago and that's Europe, anyway."
"Whatever."
FLASH
I'm standing on a ridge overlooking a vast plane that is completely covered with makeshift buildings. This is The Resistance evacuation camp. A sprawling city of tens of thousands of people from many worlds, all saved from death by The Resistance. It's called Evac. I think that they could have given it a more imaginative name. I always thought that.
A voice calls to me.
"Are you okay, my love?"
It's Abegail. She is here too. As are my brothers. I have been here for three years now and they
arrived barely a month ago. Something happened in my home town. Some kind of disease that was not caused by man.
I was not allowed to go, even though I am a Resistance soldier now. I should have kept quiet, but when they mentioned the name of my town I just blurted it out, told them we had to save the people there. They did, but they didn't let me go.
"You look better today."
She smiles.
"I feel a lot better. Whatever it was that they gave me has got rid of my sickness."
"It does that."
I step round her and move the hair away from her neck, looking at the red scar on the back of her neck. She flinches.
"It still hurts?"
"Yes, a bit."
"It does heal, but it takes quite a while. Don't worry, a couple of months and all you will have there is a nice scar like mine."
She looks out across the sprawl of the city-camp.
"Will we ever go home?"
"Maybe. I don't know."
"They don't want people to go home do they?"
"No, they need all the help they can get to fight the Horde."
"Is that why you never came home?"
"Yes. I am needed here. But they came to help because I asked them too."
"It's okay, you don't need to apologise again. I understand. You're a soldier now."
"And you, you will be soon if you join up. Then we don't need to be apart again."
She laughs.
"They take girls?"
"Yes. Lots of them. Some of the best soldiers in the Resistance are women. It's hard, and it's tiring, and sometimes it's upsetting, when we get somewhere and we are too late. But when you help some people escape the horror and bring them here. It's the best."
I look down the road to an area that has been set apart for the children to play in. I helped set that up. We took the swings and the slides from various abandoned places and brought them back here.
I point at the children playing, and Abegail turns to look.
"They wouldn't even have had the chance of life if it wasn't for what we do. It's important, Abegail. Much more important than anything I've ever done in my life. When we go out to fight, we go out to save people, we go out to destroy the horrors that invade the worlds that the Horde attacks. They say one day that we will find a way of getting there first, before the Horde has already done the worst of the damage and killed so many people. One day we will be there when they get there. We will be strong enough and we will be waiting."
