by Aeryn Leigh
By the end of the day's walk, the mountains smaller now in the distance, they made camp on the riverbank. Mick and Abe went hunting, found nothing. The night passed without incident.
So did the next day.
Tempers rose, along with the unease, and rising panic. Two Suns. Andrew conducted an experiment that dawn, finding an unenclosed area of flat ground, and stuck a six-foot stick into the ground. One shadow. Then a fainter second line, heading away from the stick's base.
Griffin snapped it in half, and half again, and threw the pieces away.
No one wanted to be the man who broke first, so they all damped it down hard, yet still the furnace of madness flickered. Hungry. Waiting for fuel.
Laurie withdrew, muttering to himself, in a black, foul mood.
Amelia took in the new surroundings in her stride.
And the day after that, all the while following the river, which got wider, as more tributaries joined it. The mountain pass they'd left behind opened into undulating hills, rolling this way and that, as they travelled south-east now, into the afternoon of the third day since leaving the bombers.
"Man, I'm hungry," said Abe. "Fat, juicy steak, oh yeah."
"Shut up," said Eugene, alongside him. "Your ass wouldn't know what to do if you saw a cow anyhow."
Behind them, Mick laughed. "I would," he said to Thorfinn. "How's that leg holding up?"
Thorfinn walked on. "Yeah alright," he said. "Not doing the hundred-yard sprint anytime soon but."
"Reckon you could if you had to," said Mick. "Fear is a mighty concentrator." Like two fucking suns.
At the end of the procession, Amelia whispered down into Griffin's ear.
"Fellas," Griffin said, voice raised, "Amelia needs to go to the lavatory." She whispered again. "Umm pretty bad."
"Okay," said Laurie and Lucius simultaneously. They looked at each other. The men stopped and sat down, some under the sparse trees, others on the rocks edging the stream.
Griffin leaned forward, and lifted the girl off and down onto the ground. A large clump of bushes and shrubs lay just to the right, a dozen yards or so away. Amelia pointed, and Griffin nodded. He walked to the other side, and stood, his back to her, and looked out at the woodland to the south, eyes alert.
Amelia walked to the shrubs. The green, leafy foliage blocked out most of the sunlight, as she ducked her head and squeezed inside. She started singing to herself, and squatted for a pee in the dry leaves around her. Pulling her underwear and pants back up and turning around to leave — she paused. The air changed. It smelled like cool rain after a sweltering day. The hairs on her forearms started to tingle. The voices of the men carried through the leaves, distant, muffled.
From the wet patch of leaves, a small blue ball of light appeared, no bigger than a pea, and rose from the ground, hovering. It grew larger, as it rose. Amelia just blinked, transfixed, as the semi-transparent sphere began to rotate, blue lines of knots endlessly entwining upon themselves on its surface. It seemed as fragile as morning frost, and as silent.
It reached head height, and paused. Amelia blinked. Blue lines fell from it, down to the dry leaves, and from those lines the construct formed, a three-dimensional render of a girl her age, made entirely of blue and swirling knots, snakes eating themselves to eternity - and the blue sphere now somewhere inside it. Eyes of white looked right at her.
Eyes of dancing ones and zeroes.
Amelia boggled at it.
The girl smiled.
It held up its left arm, a glowing silver bracelet around it's wrist, swirls moving in opposite direction to the skin — if that’s what it was — underneath. Again, the smell of ozone, blue hands raised offering her a pair of fat wild pheasants, quite real, and quite dead.
"Are you an elf?" Amelia whispered. "Wait, a dwarf?" The little face looked at her blankly. She tried English. "Faery?" The girl rolled its shining eyes. It shook its arm again, the fowl swinging in its left hand.
"Oh," said Amelia, cottoning on, "thank you." She took the birds. "They're heavy." The girl bowed. Amelia bowed in return.
When she lifted her head, she was alone.
"Griffin," she shouted, "I'm coming out now." Amelia took a few steps through the branches and back out into the sunlight, singing.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Relinquishing Command
"I'll be damned," said Mick. He stuck his head into the bush, then back out again. "Any more magical bushes of bounty around?"
"I bloody hope so," said Laurie. The rest of the sentence he kept to himself.
Otherwise we're fucked at this rate.
"Okay everyone," said Lucius, as more heads peered into the bushes, their butts sticking out, "time to keep moving." He felt eyes upon him, and looked at James, who turned away.
That evening, a couple of miles downstream, they dressed and cooked the two birds. Daniel and Andrew scored a drumstick each, and set off with Jimmy, munching on a pheasant wing himself, to make their nightly observations. They ate whilst walking.
Daniel peered through the sextant. "Well there's the moon, anyhow," he said, making a note. They sat on a log, a couple hundred-yards away from the camp, Jimmy standing, pistol in hand.
"A new moon too," said Andrew. "Well that's a relief." He scanned the sky. "Now that is interesting," he said, pointing.
Daniel aimed the sextant. "The North Star. We found it."
"Polaris," said Andrew. "But next to it? Quick, quick, do you see it? It's not the two companion stars either."
"It has a sister?" said Daniel, peering through the sight. "When does Polaris have a sister?"
Andrew paused, consulted his almanac, chewed the end of the pencil. "Buggered if I know."
They stared at the night sky a little more.
"So, we're on a circumbinary planet," said Andrew.
"A what?" said Daniel.
"A planet that orbits two suns instead of, umm, one," said Andrew. "And the second sun eclipses the bigger star every two days."
"How is this possible?" said Daniel. "We were on Earth." He dropped his head.
"Not a clue," said Andrew. He went to speak more, but stopped. What is there to say? We're living a scene straight from a pulp science-fiction story? Balderdash?
"Ok Jimmy, we're good," Andrew said a minute later. The three walked back. Griffin and Bear stood watch, and greeted them as they walked past to the camp-fire.
Skippy lay on her side by the fire, tuckered out. Amelia sat next to her, drawing in the dirt with a stick, now humming to herself. Zia however, did laps of the fire, rubbing against legs, the smell of meat in the air.
"What is it about cats?" said Mick, as Zia rubbed against his leg. "Stand-offish all day, but the moment there's food – Voila! Instant friend." He licked the juices off his fingers.
"Puss, puss, puss," said Bear, holding out a gristle of meat. He put it down, and Zia grabbed it in a flash, gnawing, head sideways.
"Well you want the good news, or the bad news?" said Andrew. He sat down in the grass.
"Well —," said Laurie.
"Good news is, gentlemen, the North Star is out." He pointed a stick in its direction.
"The bad news folks is that it shouldn't have a companion star, and by our reckoning this is France" said Daniel, fishing through his kit.
"Well —" said Laurie.
"I like stars, especially the bright ones," said Amelia. Practising all day every day seemed to be working wonders on her English. "Mummy says they're angels."
"It seems —" said Laurie, body tensing.
"Never did trust in stars," said Eugene.
"What mate?" said Mick. "How can you not trust the stars? They're bloody right there!" He pointed at the night sky. “Well except for that bit,” he said, looking at the dark patch over the Eastern horizon.
Squadron Leader John exploded. "Christ Almighty, the next person to interrupt will get a foot up the arse." The camp fell quiet. He breathed in, then out. The wood crackled as it burned.
; "So, this is how it is," he said. "After that storm-front hit, I hoped we'd been blown off course to Norway, or Ireland. Somewhere close. But this is not France. People don't just vanish in the middle of the night, taken screaming up into the sky. A sky that has two bloody suns. And no Southern Cross." He looked into the embers. "I'm relinquishing command."
All eyes turned to Lucius.
“Laurie,” Lucius said, "have a sleep on it. Tomorrow we'll work something out. For the rest of you, make inventory of food supplies and give it to Andrew or Jimmy. We got another long day's walk ahead of us." He looked around at their faces, the fire shadows playing across their faces. "Go on, get to it."
"The stars are bright and the sky is dark," sang Amelia, thinking of the little blue girl, and its shiny jewellery, and those eyes alight with mischief.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Not Alone
They followed the main river south-east between hills, and through forests that stretched to the horizon for another two days before they found it mid-morning.
The group clustered around the edge of the clearing. A forest, or what had been a forest. Acres and acres of woodland, of stumps, chopped with blades.
"Finally!" said Bear amongst the buzz of excitement.
"Looks like axes," said Griffin. He knelt in front of the closest stump, appraising it with a professional eye. Zia hopped up onto it. "Sharp ones. Clean cuts."
"Lumberjacks?" said Amelia by his side.
"Uh huh," said Griffin. He stood up and took in the scene. "Either the trees were floated down the river, or they were carted out on land." He walked a few yards in. "A lot of this is a mix of new and old work too." Some stumps were old, grey. Others green and brown, the sap rising through, the blood of the tree turning to crystal amber.
"Mick, Abe – scout out the clearing edge please," said Lucius. The two men grinned and set off. Lucius tried not to smile.
Thanks Momma, he thought.
"See Laurie?" said Andrew, Skippy between them. "We should be able to find help now."
Laurie mumbled something and walked down to the river's edge, where he sat in the grass.
"How's he doing?" said Lucius, coming over. He patted Skippy's head.
"Not too well, I'm afraid," said Andrew. "Mick says the blow he took to the head is affecting him, concussion after-effects maybe." He sighed. "And he's had periods of low moods for as long I've known him. Nasty thing depression."
"Man's got his demons, no doubt," said Lucius, "but then again, haven't we all?"
Andrew started to speak, then stopped. Abe and Mick yelled from across the southern edge. Andrew fetched Laurie, and the group walked over. There, undeniable, a path, complete with wheel ruts from a cart, and footprints of humans and horse-shoes, in light-brown soil baked from the suns.
The path led through the forest, winding its way along the edge of the river. Here and there, chopped trees made way for new saplings, planted with care.
"Does this mean we found people?" said Amelia, this time sitting on Bear's shoulders.
"Hopefully," said Bear, shrugging his shoulders to adjust her weight. "You're getting pretty heavy, you know."
"We've been on the path for hours," she said. "Do you think they will know where Mummy is?"
Bear looked at Lucius beside him. "I don't know, Amelia. Maybe," he said.
"At any rate," said Lucius, "there'll be others to look after you." He felt Horace's letter in his pocket. Horace wrote a letter to his ma, just before they'd left, but forgot to post it. Damn fool, and now he's dead, he thought. Thanks to Amelia's mummy. Bitch. "We can't."
Mick called out from up front, sixty yards away. "The forest ends up ahead, just over that rise."
"Alright everybody," said Lucius, focusing, "listen up." They halted. "Griffin, prep Betty, and go on up the front. Andrew, Mick, you're with me. Everyone else, stay a little behind until we give the signal. Agreed? Okay." He went up the path and joined Mick, and then Griffin, holding the four-foot long machine-gun. He cocked the slide of his Colt 45.
"Mick?" Andrew said, his own pistol out. Mick's service pistol lay holstered still on the man's side.
"Don't worry," said Mick, looking up at him, "I can get it out quick enough. Shall we gents?"
The four walked on, up the slight hill to where the forest ended. They came over the rise, and crouched.
"Fuck me," said Mick.
Griffin whistled his breath out. "Damn."
"Interesting," said Andrew.
Lucius raised his binoculars. "It could be worse." He paused. "Or not. I'm not sure I believe what I'm seeing either."
Before the four men, the path wound down about a mile before it stopped at the walls of a fort. A logging operation next to the river cut the trees into serviceable logs, which were being loaded into ships waiting on the river. In the fields surrounding the fort, a handful of men and women worked the earth, horses pulling carts and ploughs here and there, harvesting crops, and making ready for new plantings. On the thick walls of the wood fort, cannons straight from history books perched, like vultures awaiting the next carrion, peering out, black, squat, and ugly.
"We're almost out of food and supplies," said Andrew. "There's not much option at this point."
Mick stabbed a finger in the direction of the boats. "Viking bloody longboats? Cannons that I saw in a school textbook?" He soaked in the sight. "Jesus Christ."
"Lucius," said Abe, behind them. Louder now. "Lucius?"
"Dammit Abe," said Lucius, turning around, "I told you —"
Men, white men, red beards, and fur clothing, surrounded the airmen, child, and pets. Their axes in one hand glinted in the light, and antique pistols pointed at them in the other. One man stepped forward, and threw iron manacles on the ground. "Blumen," he said, gesturing at the crew of the Damage Inc.
"Never goin' to happen," said Griffin.
"Easy," said Lucius, "don't do anything hasty, you hear?" He counted the newcomers. Five. They could take them down, but not before they'd lose a few of their own, he concluded. They held those axes with familiarity of ease.
"You want to see your families and girls again? Put 'em on," said Lucius, looking straight at Laurie. The Australian nodded. Lucius gave Griffin a quick glance. The big man lowered his chin. The rest of the party reached them. The man who'd spoken threw a manacle at Lucius's feet. He threw the pistol to the side and bent down, and picked up the black, rough iron shackle.
When this is through, Lucius decided, you are all dead men.
Mick ground his teeth, as the red-haired men collected the Damage Inc.'s weapons and stuffed them into a rough sack. The Browning remained on the ground, as the Viking men locked the manacles on the now disarmed black crewmen, and fed a chain through them all, avoiding coming into close proximity with the Lancaster crew. The leader pointed at Laurie to pick up the great gun.
Amelia still sat on Bear's shoulders. Skippy didn't move from Bear's side. The leader of the red-hairs gestured for them to move down the path, and they did, the B-17 crew clanking as they moved, the Lancaster's crew behind, and two red-hairs either side, the leader behind them all.
Halfway down the path, Zia leapt from Eugene's backpack and bolted for the trees in a screech. Skippy barked once and gave chase.
"Zia," yelled Amelia. "Zia!"
The leader of the red-hairs stepped forward and punched Bear in the kidneys. Bear staggered and fell onto one knee. Amelia toppled head first into the dirt.
"Bastards," said Mick, stopping. The man on his left lifted his gun up and fired at Abe, last in the chain. It hit him in the neck. James charged the man who'd fired as Mick's hand moved by its own accord, bringing the Smith & Wesson up. He aimed at the red-hair and pulled the trigger, swinging around to sight his companion. Abe fell to the ground, Lucius screaming.
Laurie's own pistol fired as the leader's axe bit into James's shoulder, the bullets tearing into the red-hair's torso. James emitted an unholy sound, falling to the ground under the dead body.
Jimmy died, a Viking sword running him through as he jumped in front of a warrior charging Lucius. And Eugene's head rolled to a stop, feet away from his body. It ended as quick as it started, all five red-hairs dead or severely wounded.
A horn sounded in the fort.
"Get these manacles off," said Lucius. "Now!"
"I'm trying to," said Griffin. His left arm dangled limp by his side from a musket wound. Both bomber crews huddled in a group around Amelia, no cover to be had.
Laurie ran to them and dropped the confiscated pistols. "I can't find the key," he said. "And Griffin, quickly, the firing pin for Betty." In the fields, farmers ran for the tree line. An arrow speared into the ground twenty-yards away. Griffin reached into his left pocket and gave him the metal pin.
"Terrific," said Mick. "Back into the forest?"
"Yes," said both Lucius and Laurie.
Laurie unfolded the custom tripod and set the .50 calibre down. "Go on. I'll cover you." Unsteady fingers re-inserted the firing pin into the big machine-gun. He propped the ammunition crate open and began feeding in the ammo belt, bullets longer than his hand.
Lucius picked up Abe's unconscious body and slung it over his shoulder. More arrows landed around them. The big, wide wooden gate of the fort started to raise up.
"Let's go," shouted Lucius. Mick scooped up the unconscious Amelia.
"You be good be a good girl, Betty," said Griffin. He walked a clinking step and paused. "See you, Laurie." Laurie nodded. Griffin knelt down, as with heavy grunt, lifted Jimmy's body. Thorfinn picked up the lighter body of Eugene, standing right amongst the chained men.
“Sir?” said Andrew, next to Laurie. "Are you sure?"
"Yes, you talkative bastard. Go." Andrew hesitated. "For fucks sake move it or I'll shoot you myself."
"Right," said Andrew. "To the tree line," he shouted, James's body over his back.
Laurie ran to the nearest body, and dragged the red-haired man back to the machine-gun, and then two more, making a human sandbag wall in front of his position. He lay prone behind Betty, laid his pistol next to him, and the brace of pistol muskets taken off the bodies. He flipped the rough iron-sights up.
