Madelyn's Last Dance

by Ike Hamill

The lights caught the blood as it began to gush from the animal’s ear.

  Madelyn yelled with her effort as the bear began to shake its head. Soon, she was only holding on by the arm that was lodged inside the bear’s ear. It whipped her to the side. When the bear collected itself and tried to reach her with a paw, Madelyn stabbed her arm into its head with one final effort.

  The bear went rigid and began to topple. She scrambled up on top of the bear’s skull as it fell. Madelyn rode the animal down to the ground and threw herself free as it rolled. The bear began to jitter and twitch as it landed. Its limbs flew and claws tore at the ground senselessly.

  Madelyn, bloody up to her shoulders, crawled away.

  When she had a little distance from the wreckage, Elijah stepped up and raised his weapon. His bullet was the first of many. Around the circle of spectators, people stood and approached. People fired at the bear’s head and body.

  Madelyn stood with her hands on her hips. One of the citizens came up to her side. He was holding a spotlight on the bear. They watched together as someone shot the bear through the eye. Madelyn looked up and then elbowed the man. She pointed.

  The man turned his light straight up. The beam hit the low clouds and illuminated the darting shapes. The man tried to track the shapes at first. He realized that they were too fast. They zipped in and out of the beam. A few other people with lights began to point them upwards. The patch of sky above Madelyn was lit.

  A second later, someone fired the first shot into the sky. Different people tried, but soon realized it was a fruitless pursuit. The black shapes were gone as soon as the trigger was pulled. Lights appeared from the top of the building as people climbed to the roof to get closer to the phenomenon.

  Madelyn had drawn their attention to the sky, and the people became obsessed with what they saw in the low clouds. Her focus shifted back to the lifeless form of the bear. Elijah stood near the nose. Madelyn walked over next to him. Using her foot, she lifted one of its bloody lips. She leaned over and tried to look under it.

  “What are you doing?” Elijah asked.

  “I want to make sure that it’s just a bear,” she said.

  He stared at her, confused.

  “Of course it isn’t,” he said. “It’s some mass hallucination. It’s a nightmare come to life.”

  Madelyn nodded and backed away. “Still,” she said.

  They looked up at a cheer from above. A black shape tumbled from the sky and landed near the building. Cautious people moved in to investigate it. Madelyn and Elijah glanced at each other and the dead bear before they joined the others.

  Madelyn met some of their eyes as she approached. They had forgotten to be scared of her. She was a real monster in their midst. Most of them, if not all, had seen her hang. They had put away that fear in the face of a greater threat.

  She leaned forward as someone poked the thing with the barrel of a rifle. Its flat body was a couple of meters across. The thing was so black that it seemed to absorb the light shined at it.

  Madelyn blinked. It reflected so little light that it was difficult to make out the features of the thing. They all backed away as people burst from the front of the building. One of the women was holding a long pole. She slid it under the black object and flipped it.

  On the underside, the machine’s casing had been damaged. They saw the electronics inside.

  “How did you do it?” someone asked.

  “Just luck,” the woman said. “I missed the one I was swinging at and I hit this one.”

  “Careful!” someone said.

  A young man had crawled out onto the body to bend the cover farther away from the inner workings of the thing.

  “It’s a machine,” someone said.

  “Who made it?” another person asked.

  Elijah put his hand on Madelyn’s shoulder and pulled her back from the group.

  “We shouldn’t be complacent. There might be other threats coming,” he said.

  Madelyn nodded. She scanned the clearing. With so many people wielding lights and pointing them different directions, she found it hard to make out faces. Her eyes would adjust to the dark and then immediately be blinded again.

  She saw the people approaching and recognized them by their gait.

  “Jacob,” she said. She put out her hand.

  He took it, despite the drying blood that coated her palm. Harper came forward and touched her too.

  “Someone needs to take charge here and set up a perimeter. The next attack could come from anywhere,” Madelyn said.

  The woman behind him answered. “Got it.” The woman turned and began barking orders. As soon as she took control, Madelyn recognized her. She was one of Cleo’s guards.

  “Can we trust her?” Madelyn asked Elijah.

  “I think so,” Jacob said.

  “Yes,” Harper said.

  They turned as two more shapes approached from the dark. Amelia was supporting a lot of Logan’s weight from the look of it.

  “What can we do?” Logan asked.

  “You can rest your leg,” Elijah said. “Take up a position where you can keep an eye on the area outside the safe harbor and stay off your leg.”

  Logan clenched his jaw and looked like he wanted to argue.

  “You’re an engineer, right?” Madelyn asked Amelia.

  The young woman nodded.

  “Come over here and check this thing out before the goons destroy it,” Madelyn said. Amelia worked her way out from under Logan’s arm. Jacob took her place and they turned to walk back into the darkness.

  Madelyn led Amelia to the black shape. One of the crowd was beating the metal housing with a stick.

  “Hey!” Madelyn said. “Back away. This is an engineer.”

  A couple of lights turned to Madelyn. People backed away from authority. She pointed Amelia towards the device. A couple of people tried to help by shining their lights on the thing as Amelia crawled onto the black body. Madelyn ordered other people to go help Penny’s crew. They were reticent to leave the scene where a discovery might take place, but they were frightened enough by Madelyn to do her bidding.

  When Madelyn turned her attention back to the machine, Elijah was next to Amelia. He was helping her pull away some piece of it so she could investigate deeper.

  “It’s hard to say for sure, but I think I’ve seen some of these components before,” Amelia said. “I need to get this to a lab so I can test it.”

  “Where?” Elijah asked.

  Amelia frowned as she looked up at him. “All the equipment was destroyed in Building Three. I just remembered.”

  “You should come take a look at this,” someone from the crowd said. They waved to Amelia.

  Elijah extracted himself from the surface of the machine and joined Madelyn. He glanced around the group and then leaned in close to her.

  “You might consider making yourself scarce,” he said.

  She raised her eyebrows.

  “Now that the bigger threat has waned, people might start looking for new villains to hunt.”

  Madelyn nodded.

  She and Elijah turned away from people who stood around the black machine. They started to walk towards the edge of the safe harbor.

  “It’s time we tracked down Ryan,” Madelyn said. “He’s the architect of this madness.”

  “One of them, at least,” Elijah said.

  She looked at him as they passed out of the circle of light.

  Elijah motioned with his chin towards a couple of people slowly making their way across the trampled grass. It took Madelyn a second to recognize the woman. She looked so much older, and so frail. Cleo was leaning heavily on the person walking alongside her. It looked like the last of her strength had been tapped.

  “I think she knew a good bit about Ryan’s plans. I believe that’s why she was so quick to make sure that you were prosecuted and punished.”

  Madelyn began to turn in the old woman’s direction. Elijah caught her elbow and steered her bac
k on course.

  “Not now,” Elijah said. “There are too many people around, and they’re still on the fence about you. There will be a better time to confront her.”

  “Okay,” Madelyn said. “But only because Ryan is the bigger threat.”

  # # # # #

  Amelia followed Frederick towards the front of the building. He wouldn’t tell her what he wanted her to see.

  “Just come look,” he said. He held a decent flashlight, but he pointed it towards their feet. It made Amelia nervous.

  He led her up the stairs at the front of the building and then around the staircase. The door behind there looked like it led to a utility room. The metal near the handle was scraped and bent—someone had pried the door open.

  “When we gathered here, someone said that there might be medical supplies in here. We didn’t find any,” Frederick said. He glanced around before he put his hip to the door and forced the damaged mechanism open. Once through, he closed it behind them and then flipped on the lights.

  Amelia’s mouth fell open.

  The far wall was covered in monitors.

  “I don’t know what they were watching—all the feeds have been cut—but there’s some equipment here you might be able to use,” he said.

  She looked down at the bench. It wasn’t just equipment. On the bench she also saw decent reproductions of a lot of the circuits she had been working on. The craftsmanship was reasonably good. She picked up one of the boards. It wasn’t a perfect copy of her work. She saw mistakes that would need to be corrected.

  “I was in here with Clifford. He said that this room was strictly off-limits to Ryan’s people. Those guys knew how to follow orders. I don’t think that any of them ever thought to come in here. But Clifford said that he saw your cousin come in more than once.”

  Amelia nodded. “Carter didn’t do this. Maybe it was Patton. He used to be decent at fabricating until Niren started working on electronics. Sometimes a brother will give something up if their sibling excels at it.”

  She looked up at Frederick. “I guess he didn’t give it up.”

  Frederick shrugged. “You think you can use this stuff?”

  “Yeah,” Amelia said. “But we’re going to have trouble getting it through this door. Come on.”

  She grabbed the light from him and led the way back through the hall and out the front door.

  “Hey!” she yelled. “Don’t break that.”

  A couple of angry people were standing on the surface of the black machine. One of them held a metal pole and he looked like he was about to swing.

  Amelia recognized him as she approached. “Byron, stop! I need that.”

  “It shot something out the back,” Byron said. “It ran into the dark and we didn’t get it. We have to bust this thing before it does something worse.”

  “Then help me separate the controls from the back of it. I need to get it to the lab so I can study it.”

  Byron shrugged. Amelia enlisted several bystanders and got them to help with the metal. Fortunately, the parts to contributed to the machine’s flight were pretty fragile and they snapped off. With some bending and twisting, they were able to break the machine down to a manageable size. Amelia took one end and Byron the other. Frederick lit up the path so they could carry it inside.

  “Set it down right here,” she said as they got it inside.

  Intrigued by the action, people followed them in to the room. People began to pick up tools and instruments as they milled around.

  “Everyone, I need you to give me some space,” Amelia said. “I’m going to need some room to work here, okay?”

  She looked to Frederick. His voice carried even less authority than hers. Every time they tried to herd someone out, another curious person came in.

  “I’m sure there is work to do out there. I don’t need your help in here,” Amelia said.

  She was starting to lose hope that she would be left to concentrate. A familiar face showed up in the doorway.

  “Anyone who doesn’t need to be in here needs to go see Penny for an assignment,” Brook yelled. People stopped and looked up. “Go, people! Now!”

  She had the room cleared in seconds. Brook even ushered Frederick and Byron through the door before she closed it behind them. She slid a cabinet into place to block them in.

  “Thank you,” Amelia said.

  “What is that thing?” Brook asked.

  Amelia pointed up. “Someone knocked it out of the sky. My best guess is that it was somehow connected to the monsters that everyone has been fighting."

  “How?” Brook asked.

  “I don’t have any idea,” Amelia said. “Do you think those things are real?”

  Brook stood straight and considered the question for a second. “Real? They have to be real, right? They’re killing people.”

  “Maybe that’s just what we think,” Amelia said.

  “No,” Brook shook her head. “You helped treat the wound on Logan’s leg. You know that spider was real”

  Amelia sighed and turned back to the machine. “You’re right. I guess I just can’t get my head around it. It doesn’t make sense how those things could come from nowhere.”

  “Don’t get bogged down in the big questions,” Brook said. She pointed at the machine. “Focus on what’s in front of you.”

  Amelia nodded.

  # # # # #

  Their orders were to space themselves evenly, but Jacob and Harper had a fairly flat and open area to guard. They moved fairly close to each other for safety. Jacob held a rifle and Harper was armed with a spear and a knife.

  She pointed. Jacob turned to see his aunt and Elijah disappear down one of the trails.

  “Good,” Jacob said. “People were starting to make me nervous.”

  “It’s going to take a while for them to get used to seeing her walking around,” Harper said.

  Jacob nodded.

  Penny came around on her patrol and motioned for them to spread out. Harper nodded and moved until Penny left. Then, she moved back closer to Jacob. They didn’t have a lot of light except for the glow from the sky.

  “Seems just as likely that the next thing will come from inside the safe harbor, you know?” Jacob asked.

  Harper nodded. Still, they kept their eyes on the shadows at the edge of the woods. Harper pointed at movement. Someone stumbled from the darkness. The person was headed directly for one of the other guards. Jacob and Harper held their position, but watched carefully. Stragglers were expected.

  The next person up the line yelled for one of the roving patrols.

  “Need help here,” he said. “It’s Luke Miska. He’s hurt.”

  Jacob and Harper looked at each other.

  “I’ll go,” Jacob said. “Keep watch.” They exchanged weapons. Harper took the rifle. Jacob took the knife.

  He ran towards the next post. Luke was on the ground. The guard was holding his position, but his attention was on the approach of the roving patrol.

  “Hey!” Jacob called. “Watch that guy.”

  “It’s Luke Miska. He’s injured.”

  Jacob arrived and looked at the man on the ground. Luke looked terrible—his face was so white that it glowed. His bare feet were scraped and bloody.

  “They’ve got a makeshift clinic in building one. We need to get him…” the man started.

  Jacob waved for him to be quiet and knelt next to Luke. He pulled up the hem of Luke’s torn shirt until the man’s belly was exposed. The skin was white and unblemished. There was no sign of ripped flesh or even a scar. Jacob exhaled and stood again.

  “Okay,” Jacob said.

  “What’s wrong?” the man asked. They both looked up as the roving patrol arrived. It was an older guy and a kid.

  “I saw this man earlier, in the steam tunnels,” Jacob said. He used the name of their commander, to validate his claim. “Penny was there. A snake came out of this man’s stomach.”

  They all looked at him like he was crazy. Jacob under
stood. He was a relative newcomer in town. He hadn’t earned enough trust to make such a claim.

  “It wouldn’t be the strangest thing I’ve seen tonight,” one of the roving patrol said. “Let’s get him to the clinic, but keep an eye on him and let them know that he might be… infected.”

  They didn’t have a good way to move him. The kid took Luke’s shoulders and the older man tried to lift his legs. As soon as they raised Luke from the ground, his head lolled back and his breathing became constricted.

  “He was conscious just a minute ago,” the man on guard duty said.

  They put Luke down. “Stay here. I’ll go find something we can use to move him.”

  “There was a stretcher around before. I saw someone bring it here,” Jacob said. As the words left his mouth, he realized how unhelpful they were.

  As the older man shuffled back towards the buildings, the kid said, “We could carry him between us. You know, prop him up.”

  “He’s pretty tall,” the guard said.

  The kid wanted to try anyway. He lifted Luke’s arm and tried to raise him to a sitting position. The guard was the first to see something wrong.

  “Put him down!” the guard said.

  The kid moved like lightning. He dropped Luke and backed up. The guard carefully moved around Luke as they watched. He crouched near the man’s head.

  “I saw something,” the guard began to say. He didn’t get a chance to finish the thought.

  Luke sprang up from the ground and grabbed the man by his ears. He pulled his own face close to the guard’s. Fortunately, the kid was close enough to pull the guard backwards. As he fell, he pulled away from Luke’s grasp.

  Luke immediately flipped himself over and shot towards the two of them.

  Jacob did the only thing he could—he grabbed Luke’s bloody foot and halted his progress.

  The guard pulled a handgun from a holster. He pointed it at Luke.

  “Don’t shoot him,” the kid said.

  The guard didn’t listen.

  At the sound of the gun, and the blinding flash, Jacob threw himself to the side. If there was another shot, he wanted to be out of the line of fire. He rolled and looked up just as the kid screamed. It took him a second to figure out what he was looking at. There was still a blue star etched on Jacob’s eyes from the flash. The kid was pressing his hands to his own face.