El Sombra

by Al Ewing

  Inefficiency could not be tolerated.

  The numbers crunching beneath the creature's metallic carapace dictated that the only correct course of action would be to do as much damage to the flesh as possible, in order to minimise the possibility of the target escaping and healing its wounds elsewhere. The weak bag of skin and muscle would be rent. The blood that flowed through the organs would flood onto the dirt. The eggshell skull that housed the fragile brain system would be crushed, its precious cargo pulped between steel claws.

  Efficiency would be maintained.

  Der Zinnsoldat crashed through the wall in a shower of debris and brick-dust, metal hands extended to crush, to tear, to kill. After that, the room was silent, but for Carina's breathing.

  She was alone again.

  In perhaps less than an hour her entire world - the cosy womb in which she had spent nine years asleep and barely stirring - had been destroyed, physically and figuratively. The wind that blew through the gaping holes in the walls was warm, but it chilled her nonetheless.

  She looked around at her possessions. Most of the vases had been shattered, and the furniture was in pieces, but her most prized possessions - the books - were still on their shelves. Absently, she picked up a chunk of brick and looked at it before placing it neatly on top of a pile of other bricks. She reached for another and then stopped, the futility of the task overwhelming her.

  She looked at the door. This was the door that had been locked for nine years, since a time she could barely remember, and now all that was left was a single torn and hanging hinge and a vista of empty space. Carina was not a fool. She knew that El Sombra had risked his life to open that door, to give her a means of escape.

  Escape to where?

  She picked up another brick, absent-mindedly placing it on the pile, and considered her options.

  El Sombra ran, and a tidal wave of killing metal crashed and pounded at his heels.

  His lungs burned and he measured the time he had left to live in seconds. Even if the wingmen hadn't been briefed on the deployment of this creature, the sheer noise of the chase would bring them swarming like flies. If he was still on the run when that happened, he would have no room to dodge without dancing straight into the arms of the beast. The bullets would ricochet off the iron gargoyle's body like the stings of a hundred impotent insects, but the masked man would be shredded like confetti.

  The maximum response time of a Luftwaffe unit to a disturbance of this magnitude was - maybe - two minutes. This close to the statue, one minute.

  That was if the General had not already informed them of his plans.

  His bare feet slammed against the dirt. His lungs burned and his heart threatened to burst free from his chest. Behind him, he heard the echo of thunderous footfalls and the sound of clanking, creaking, groaning metal. He strained his ears, tuned out the panting of his breath and the sound of metal thunder at his heels, and the sound of the clanking and creaking seemed to come from the sky above his head. A creaking that could only be made by one thing in all the world.

  Metal wings.

  He was out of time. Any second now, the bullets would cascade down like a waterfall, filling the whole street. The few citizens who were taking the air on their brief break from their allotted tasks - and now found themselves flattened against walls and the ground in terror as they watched the violent, impossible spectacle pass them by - would be torn to pieces along with him. Gunfire would crash through the thin walls of the dwellings and take more lives, and it would begin in less than an instant. There was nothing he could do about -

  - a man on a horse.

  A Nazi. One of the grey-coat guards, the earthbound ones, riding on a horse, a man of rank trying to look big, but only looking confused and shocked as he took in a sight he was never given the proper clearance to imagine. El Sombra threw himself at the soldier. His name, for the record, was Klaus Haas, he was thirty-seven years old and, to his credit, he nearly managed to unholster his Luger and fire before the sharp edge of El Sombra's blade met his belly with enough force to unseat his spindly legs and fat bottom - even as the rest of him toppled to the ground in an entirely different direction.

  The name of the animal was Karsten. Karsten had been bred in stables in Augsberg reserved especially for horses designated for military service. In the normal course of events, a horse possesses a natural aversion to the smell of blood and will bolt at loud noises such as gunfire and the crack of a severed spine - but Karsten had been trained for the battlefield, and so he merely stood still, barely shuffling as his owner was bisected on top of him. At the Augsberg stable, warhorses were trained to stand still if their riders were killed so that they could be of use to other soldiers. The flaws in this thinking would have been apparent to any stablehand of Augsberg, had one been there to watch El Sombra nimbly leap onto Karsten's back and swat his flank with the flat of his sword, spurring him to gallop.

  This had all occurred in the space of perhaps two seconds. Der Zinnsoldat was not slow by nature, but the inertia that the heavy machine had built up in its headlong chase worked against it. It had assumed, based on the data it had collected deep in its clockwork mind, that the target would keep the same course until he slowed fractionally enough for Der Zinnsoldat to reach him. When the meat-thing changed direction so suddenly, the machine could not stop itself in time. Thus, instead of reaching to pluck its target from the back of the horse and crush him like a bag of kindling, Der Zinnsoldat flew past, a slave to its own momentum. It corrected the problem instantly. Metal feet and palms impacted against the ground, kicking up dirt and dust, forcing the mechanical behemoth to a slow skidding halt before it swung around and burst again into motion, chasing after the horse and its cargo, grabbers snapping like crocodile jaws.

  El Sombra gunned the horse on with another swat of the blade. He had a better chance of keeping out of the monster's reach now, but he still tensed in anticipation of the hail of death that was about to erupt from the clear sky. He risked a glance upwards and saw a single wingman, armed with a pistol and not even aiming it, desperately signalling for backup with both hands. The meaning was clear - the wingman had not been invited to this particular party - either Eisenberg had forgotten to inform the troops or, more likely, he wanted to allow his mechanthrope to have the kill. There was a logic in that. Gunning a rebel down with machine-guns was effective, if slightly mundane, but having a rebel torn apart in the crushing paws of a giant metal ape had a certain style all its own. It would send a simple message - you thought you knew the worst we could do to you, and you were wrong.

  Tactically brilliant, if you were a five-year-old boy who wanted to show off his new sparkly toy. El Sombra grinned. He had maybe twenty seconds before the sky came alive with the Luftwaffe, and he knew just how to use them.

  He steered Karsten towards the statue.

  Master Plus was in the doorway.

  By this time Carina had built a small cairn of bricks, perhaps to mark the death of the life she had led. She was absent-mindedly tidying up, keeping her hands busy as she thought the situation through. She knew she had to leave. The question in her mind was where to go - or so she told herself. In truth, she had still not reconciled herself to the notion that the entirety of the world she inhabited was a house of cards that had finally tumbled to the ground around her. A part of her still believed that things could return to normal, that the holes in the walls could be repaired and everything could be made secure again. It was a part that had no say in her conscious thoughts, but it was strong. Strong enough to keep her stacking stones and pretending to herself that she did not need to act just yet.

  And now Master Plus was in her doorway. He was a mess; his white suit stained, the fat on his body trembling like jelly. He ran forward and took Carina in his arms, holding her close to him, tears rolling down the fleshy mass of his face as he sobbed like a child. "Carina! Oh God, you're alive, you're alive! I saw the holes in the walls and I thought the monster had got you... I thought you we
re - oh, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me..."

  Carina, who had rehearsed this moment in her mind a hundred thousand times since the moment the masked stranger had cut his way through her immaculately-designed horizon, found herself with nothing to say.

  She held her father close, and the part of her that hoped so strongly that everything could be put back and made as it was curled up and died at the touch of her father's tears. There was no going back. Everything she knew had been broken and strewn about at random, and there was no power in creation that could tidy it all up now.

  She sighed softly, her own tears coming now, as she held him close, and part of her burned with anger that she should be the one to comfort him.

  "There, there, Father." she whispered. "There, there."

  "Hi-yahhh!"

  Karsten thundered forward, one step ahead of Der Zinnsoldat. The metal monster had almost caught up many times - for Karsten, as noble a beast as he was, was flesh and blood and thus could tire, or fall momentarily behind in the chase. But Der Zinnsoldat had a weakness too - one El Sombra was quick to observe. The monster reached out with one immense steel fist, slamming it into the side of a wooden house, not slowing down. The wall exploded into matchwood as the beast thundered forward, the fist opening to gather fuel, before thrusting it into the open furnace of its chest. The flames leapt higher, spurring it on, as the pipes on its back screamed in a geyser of superheated steam.

  El Sombra grinned.

  It needs to eat. But not drink.

  He drove the horse forwards into the Great Square. For a second, in this vast and open space, he would be a target. He glanced up again, to see a trio of wingmen flying high above on plumes of steam, readying their weapons. The first response. He grinned again. Let them come. He had an answer for them now.

  He swatted Karsten's backside, driving him on towards the base of the gigantic stone statue. At this time of day, there were more than a hundred workers swarming like ants over the immense idol, chipping and polishing at the stone. It was near complete, this great stone prayer to the gods of death and madness, and in just a few days the order would go out to dismantle it again. But El Sombra had other plans.

  "Run!"

  He shouted it at the top of his lungs, driving the horse around the edge of the scaffolding and between the tall wooden struts. At first, the workers only stared down at him, uncomprehending, but when Der Zinnsoldat crashed through into the square, pipes hissing with a semblance of terrible fury, they dived from the structure, bolting for any shelter they could find.

  El Sombra ran his horse around and around the edge of the great stone effigy. Above, the wingmen who gathered with their guns ready were unable to open fire. To hit the workers with a poorly-aimed shot would be bad enough, but to hit the statue was unthinkable. And so they held their fire, flapping in great circles, watching helplessly as the massive mechanical engine of destruction closed in. There was nothing in its programming about the importance of either the great statue or the scaffolding around it, and so it swept the wooden struts to one side, collapsing the structure bit by bit as it followed the charging horse and its rider around the base. The faceless machine did not flinch as the heavy wooden beams and planks crashed down on it, or make any sign that it even noticed the inconvenience, beyond grabbing one of the thinner wooden beams and snapping it into pieces to feed its ever-hungry furnace.

  El Sombra gritted his teeth and rode on, wood and metal crashing all around him before he burst free from underneath the toppling scaffold. Tugging the reins hard, he turned the beast around to face the wreckage. Broken slats of wood were strewn on the ground and piled against the base of the statue, leaving the bulk of it naked - Hitler in full salute, feet apart, immortalised in one hundred feet of stone. The very sight of it made the bile rise in the masked man's throat. Too often he had stared at the grotesque effigy, but no longer. If he accomplished nothing else before this monster finished him, he would at least bring this stone idol crashing down.

  He spurred the horse forward, hooves pounding the ground. At the statue's base, the machine paused. The target was coming towards it. The best course of action would be to wait for it to come within reach and then lash out - disable it, crushing all organs and bones beyond recognition. It was simply a matter of calculating the best moment to strike.

  El Sombra concentrated. This would be tricky. He eliminated all mental chatter from his mind, focussing on the moment. Time seemed to slow, then stretch, the hoof beats beneath him echoing, a slow drum-beat of war.

  As the horse reached the base of the statue, he tugged the reins hard. Karsten jumped between the feet of the Führer.

  Der Zinnsoldat analysed the move in a microsecond. The target had moved behind the sheltering protection of a wall of shaped stone, but it would not stand up to a serious blow. The robot swung a huge metal claw around, like a wrecking ball...

  And struck.

  The sound echoed across the clockwork-town. The sound of stone cracking and crushing under the terrible impact of metal. It startled Carina, making her pull away from her sobbing father, and look in the direction it had come from - towards the statue.

  For a moment, the great effigy of Adolf Hitler seemed to shudder slightly, then began to list to one side. Something in the stern features suddenly appeared to suggest desperation as the sound of crumbling stone grew louder and the statue began to topple backwards. For a moment, Hitler seemed to be gazing up at the sun, the saluting hand pointing to the sky - and then the whole thing vanished from Carina's sight with the sound of a colossal thunderclap.

  Carina blinked, realising how it already seemed as if the statue had always been gone. How much the lack of it made her feel that the old Pasito had returned. She smiled.

  Master Plus screamed.

  If Carina had spent the last nine years in a prison, then so had he. For nine years, his continued existence and the existence of everything he loved was dependant on his usefulness to the regime. The main part of that usefulness was in monitoring the workers of Aldea in their constant and methodical construction and destruction. The state of the central statue corresponded with his own state of health. If things were ahead of schedule and moving smoothly, he was secure and happy. But if something happened to the statue - some minor blemish, perhaps, or an imperfection in the quality of the stone - the blame fell to him. He was woken in the middle of the night, interrogated, occasionally beaten. Once, early on, he had been taken to visit the Palace Of Beautiful Thoughts. That was because the lower tip of the little finger of the saluting hand had crumbled away under an over-eager chisel.

  Now, the entire statue was gone.

  Master Plus saw all of his hopes and dreams fall with it.

  "No!" he screamed, freeing himself from his daughter's arms and scurrying to the window on his fat little legs. "No! That monster, that cursed metal ape! I knew it would do something like this!"

  "The metal monster? You knew about it?" Carina had not thought she could be shocked any more by what her father had done. But to hear him refer to the thing that had nearly killed her in such familiar terms sent a fresh wave of anger through her.

  "Yes... yes, my superior, the General, he brought it in to track and kill the insurgent - El Sombra. I told him it was too dangerous, but he would not listen. I swear, Carina, I never thought the terrorist would..."

  Carina breathed deeply, then exhaled sharply. "You mean to say you set that killing machine to hunt him down? That... that thing that can tear through stone and brick and kills without pause, you sent it after a human being?" She closed her eyes. "I don't even know you, Father. Are you just going to stand here and let that machine tear the town to pieces?"

  Master Plus took a couple of paces towards Carina, then stopped, looking down at the floor. In the floorboards beneath him, there was a deep gouge where the massive feet of Der Zinnsoldat had pounded and chewed up the wood in its rush to kill. As he looked at it, he remembered a human being writhing on a floor much like it, being slowl
y crushed by a foot like an industrial press, while he watched. While he watched. As if from a great distance, he heard himself speak.

  "What can I do?" He sighed, shaking his head, and when he raised it, his eyes were filled with tears. "What can I do to stop it? They said they would brand a number on your forehead and make you a slave. I had to convince them I could be of use to them - I still do, every day. I grovel. Just to keep you safe for as long as I can. What else could I have done? Yes, I am guilty, I will always be guilty - but tell me, what else could I have done?"

  There was silence, and then Carina turned to the doorway, looking at the empty space for a long moment. Then she looked over her shoulder at her father.

  "Did you come here by foot, Father? Or on horseback?"

  El Sombra's vision cleared.

  Between his thighs he could feel the flanks of the horse, hooves still pounding the dirt. In his nostrils was the scent of blood and powdered stone. His vision was a slowly clearing blur.

  He remembered now; a chunk of stone had impacted against his forehead, cutting it open and scrambling his brains for a second. Karsten had kept galloping on, bless him. He was still alive, which meant that his plan might have worked. If he could just get his vision clear...

  He blinked...

  ...and saw what was left of the statue.

  With one foot shattered by the blow, the immense construction had become unstable. The other ankle had slowly cracked under the weight, and the statue had swayed backwards, finally toppling with an impact that shook the earth like the fist of some terrible god. Now the great stone face stared impassively up at the sky, and the saluting hand rose vertically like some strange obelisk, flat palm facing the sun. The great stone head and shoulders had done the most damage, flattening a number of officer's dwellings on the edge of the Great Square, but the bulk of the statue had fallen in the Square itself, and thankfully none of the workers had been crushed.