Twig

by wildbow

  I imagined the people here were now contemplating the implications. They had no damn idea what could happen when something fertile got loose.

  The Shepherd might have had a better idea, he’d been part of the war down south, but he didn’t flinch, didn’t crack, but I could see that his attention was elsewhere as the others around Gordon asked a flurry of questions. What was it, could he describe it, how did it happen?

  He knew what experiments had escaped, had used connections to reach students and manipulated those students into acting against the Academy. He wouldn’t have urged anyone to release something that bred or multiplied. There was too much chance that things would get out of control.

  What’s more likely? Do you think that the Academy is sending the bad stuff after you, or do you think there’s something suspicious going on with Gordon?

  How do you process this, how do you move forward?

  I was genuinely interested. I respected our enemy. I liked him. I wanted to see how he functioned when the chips were down, the situation bad and inexplicable.

  He was stone faced, eyes not focused on anything in particular.

  He raised his eyes only as the group from the shed returned. They each carried between two and four tools that served as weapons. Poles with saws on the edges, sometimes used for trimming buildings, sledgehammers, a short chopping sword, bent halfway down the blade, used for tending to growing woodwork, a pitchfork and a two-handed shovel with a pointed end.

  They passed them out to friends.

  Gordon was still describing the ‘monster’ that had thrown him through the window, in the most incomprehensible, breathless manner he could. “Big, and scaly, and it drooled and it had ears and it picked me up with these smaller arms and carried me up, but when I kicked it, it threw me with the big arms. That’s when I got this cut, then I kicked it again, and it threw me the other way, and then I got thrown through the window. It’s out there! The mother thing and all the babies and—”

  “Hush, hush! Quiet. You’re safe now,” a man reassured a seemingly panicked Gordon.

  I’d joked with Rick, earlier in the day, that my brain ran hot sometimes. It didn’t, but it felt like it was getting close. There were more than a hundred faces and postures to focus on, people, positions, fashion, track records, all making this moment exactly what it was.

  There were people around me. Unfamiliar faces.

  Everything had to be balanced and weighed.

  Maybe a gentle push to start. The room was paralyzed, caught in indecision. The man in authority was lacking, bleeding. Gill was up there by the Shepherd, now, half-kneeling and talking at a volume I couldn’t make out from the other end of the church.

  If the Shepherd wasn’t going to make a move, I’d have to at least act to counterbalance the impact of the group with the makeshift weapons.

  “We’re not safe at all,” I said, under my breath.

  A woman near me reached out, putting her hand on my head, while saying nothing.

  The gentle push wasn’t enough.

  “We’re not safe at all,” I said, again, just a little bit louder. “We might be getting surrounded by the monsters. We need to run, before they close in.”

  If she said ‘no’, then I’d gain no ground, and would have to find another way to push. But the entire room was hanging on Gordon’s words, the impact he’d made. Maybe, if she was undecided, that would be the deciding element?

  It wasn’t her that I wound up pushing into action. A man nearby spoke, “I’m going to peek outside.”

  “Is the way clear?” I asked, the words leaving my mouth before he’d even closed his mouth. If I could attach my statement to his, make it seem like his idea…

  “I’m not going out there,” he said, without turning. Too much to hope for. People weren’t cogs in a machine. They were milling around, looking for an out. I had to guess how they’d weigh risk versus reward, or one risk versus another, and then use that. I’d guessed wrong here.

  The woman beside me touched my head again, smoothing my tousled hair, as if that would reassure me and not irritate me nine ways from Sunday.

  I ducked out from under her grip, hopping down from the pew. I’d lost cachet with this particular section of the crowd. I could move elsewhere and try again.

  I found Mary, closer to the front. From where Gordon was, up by the altar, Mary all the way over to the rightmost wall, in the corner closest to the stage. Lillian was in the back corner, only a few paces from the door.

  Mary was looking my way. I gave her a ‘come here’ wave.

  Lillian wasn’t looking my way, and a furtive motion on my part didn’t get her attention. The way she was standing, there were too many people around her who blocked her view of the surroundings. Her attention was on the stage. On Gordon.

  Our Mary worked better in coordination with the rest of us than Lillian did. That was after being with us a day. Lillian had been with us for a handful of months.

  I shook my head, turned around, and moved through the crowd to get to Lillian. I pushed against people and jostled them aside. Any more agitation was a good thing, even if it was mild annoyance.

  I seized Lillian’s hand and hauled her over to the other side of the church.

  Gill was saying something. I was only barely processing it. Orders. Aim at the window above, in case it comes through. Organizing people in groups. The words were just noise. People listened, but our would-be mayor didn’t have the clout.

  The Shepherd was oddly quiet. Unable to talk? Unwilling?

  Thinking?

  Jamie had told me that I’d built my personality and means of dealing with people by copying and studying the adults around me. It had been a necessary thing, a scrabbling for control when I’d been subjected to appointment after appointment, the space between filled with every imaginable form of testing, for sanity, for memory, for competence of all stripes.

  I’d learned to read people because I’d had to. The Shepherd, though, was the first person I wanted. I wanted him in a box where I could make him perform and glean everything I could.

  It was his charisma. It wasn’t the usual sort of charisma like Gordon or Helen might show off when they were ‘on’. Not smiles and warmth. When he spoke, when he acted, he tended to achieve things. When he didn’t speak, as was the case right now, people were left waiting, hanging on the silence, in anticipation of the words.

  They didn’t know the particulars, not exactly. He was someone born with an enormous amount of natural talent for something, and after being altered irrevocably by the Academy, its war, and the modifications it made to his body, he’d found the drive to dig deep and utilize that talent.

  I was one of the people in his thrall, in a way. I very much wanted to hear him speak, to study him… but we’d left him speechless.

  I wanted to push until he found his voice.

  With Lillian trailing behind me, her hand in mine, stumbling to keep up, I hopped up onto a pew mid-stride, tugging on her arm as I made my way up. Her hand slipped from mine.

  I found the others, hopped down, and crossed the remainder of the distance. Mary had already made it, without Lillian slowing her down.

  Half of us crawled under a table that had been placed in a nook, books on top, formed a huddle, heads so close together that the sides of some of our foreheads touched. To onlookers, we were sort of hiding under a tablecloth. Friends finding security among one another, clustered together.

  Mary looked far from secure, squeezed in next to Helen. Helen, for her part, was smiling a little, but apparently oblivious.

  Lillian was late to arrive, worming her way into the cluster beside me. I gave her a pinch in the side, and she hit me far harder than necessary, in retaliation.

  “What do you think?” Jamie asked.

  “I think we need a stampede for the door,” I whispered. “I was going to try and move the crowd, spread fear and suspicion, but they feel too safe indoors. If we could take that safety away…”

 
; “We can take that safety away,” Mary murmured. “I can. We cut the power.”

  “We need the situation manageable,” I said.

  “You want a manageable stampede?” Lillian asked.

  “I wanted a manageable riot,” I whispered. “I thought spreading the word through the crowd would make people more restless than it did. The Shepherd is so good, damn it. We need…”

  I floundered.

  “Start with the basics,” Jamie suggested.

  I nodded. “The whole idea was to start a localized riot. If Cecil did his job and avoided getting eaten by Whiskers while running around in the rain, the Academy can arrive, shut down the riot in the early stages, and lay the blame at the Shepherd’s feet.”

  “Eaten by Whiskers?” Lillian asked, horrified.

  “Not important right now,” I said.

  “Cecil’s nice!”

  “Not the word I would have chosen,” I said. “Dense, unhelpful—”

  “He’s nice, Sy!” Lillian said. “He means well.”

  “When someone says ‘means well’, they mean the person is dumber than a stitched chicken.”

  “Sy,” Lillian said, her tone suddenly hostile. “Not another word about Cecil.”

  “Great!” I said. “Because Cecil doesn’t matter.”

  She reached out, grabbed the general vicinity of my nipple through my cloak and shirt, and did a twisty sort of pinch, hard.

  “Agh!”

  “Back on topic?” Jamie suggested, very diplomatically.

  “Fuck, that hurts,” I said, rubbing my chest.

  “Manageable stampede?” Jamie reminded me.

  “Manageable stampede,” I said. I looked over my shoulder at the Shepherd. “No. Even a regular stampede.”

  “Regular stampede,” Jamie said, in the same disbelieving tone that Lillian had used when I’d brought up the idea.

  “I want to see how he deals with it.”

  “I’d like to remind you that Hayle needs you to impress?” Jamie said.

  “I don’t need reminders, my memory isn’t that bad,” I lied. I’d almost forgotten. “It’s fine. We’re good. Even if things get sloppy, the Academy should be close.”

  “I’d like more confidence than ‘should’,” Jamie said.

  “Too bad,” I told him. “Unless you have a better idea…”

  He shook his head.

  “Trust me,” I said.

  “This from the least trustworthy person in Radham,” Lillian muttered.

  “Trust me. He has something up his sleeve. We need to rattle him way harder to make him show his hand. We still have cards to play. Gordon is a big one.”

  Jamie pursed his lips. “Helen?”

  “I trust him on this.”

  “Lillian?”

  “Ha!”

  “Thought not. Mary?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but… feels right. We don’t have the whole picture, I guess, if I had to put it into words?”

  “Okay,” Jamie said. “Alright. Then I’ll agree. You know this is on your head if this goes wrong, Sy? Not because I want it to be, but because—”

  “I get it,” I said. “I really do.”

  “I’ll go cut the power,” Mary said.

  “Okay,” Helen said. “And I’ll follow Gordon’s lead. We need another victim to make this count.”

  “Wait, what?” I asked.

  Mary seemed to take the fact that we hadn’t told her no as a signal to go ahead. She pulled away from the huddle and darted off into the crowd.

  “Lillian,” Helen said. “Cut me. Give me claw marks, like Gordon has. You do have a scalpel.”

  “I’m not doing that,” Lillian hissed. “Ibbot would kill me, and I’m supposed to put you back together, not take you apart.”

  “You know how to cut people to minimize the damage, don’t you?” Helen asked.

  “Wait,” I said. “Hold on. Why not me? Why can’t I be the next victim?”

  “Because I’m a better actor,” Helen said. “And you’re more useful out there, than someone that’s being looked after.”

  “Helen,” Lillian said. “It’s going to leave scars.”

  “It will not, don’t be a silly-billy,” Helen said. She laid a hand on the side of Lillian’s face. “They’ll make me as good as new.”

  “It’ll hurt.”

  “It will,” I said. “I should do it.”

  “I don’t feel pain the same way you all do,” Helen said.

  “I should still do it,” I said.

  “Sy,” Jamie said. “Maybe shut up?”

  “But—”

  “I’m doing it,” Helen said, firmly. “This is what I do.”

  “But—” I looked at Lillian.

  “Am I supposed to tell him no, too? Because I’d rather cut him,” Lillian said.

  “Yes,” I said. “And if Lil is more comfortable cutting me, she’ll cut cleaner, and it’ll be more believable—”

  Jamie put a hand over my mouth.

  “Do it,” Helen said. “Now. There’s no time. Or I’ll do it to myself, and it’ll be messy enough Ibott will be mad.”

  “But—” Lillian said.

  Helen raised her thumbnail to her eye.

  “Okay?” Lillian said, sounding unsure. She drew a scalpel from a pocket.

  I glanced back. The Shepherd had seemingly committed to silence. He was looking after Gordon.

  People were getting organized, the situation was stable. He was apparently content to let that remain the case until the monster showed up or something happened.

  I wanted so badly to make something happen.

  Stampede would shake the box. Take us out of the comfort of the church, or spread people out. He would need to round up his flock, do something. I really wanted to see what that something was.

  He’d let people get killed, freeing experiments to shake up the community. He was operating to specific ends, and a quiet dislike for the Academy was almost definitely a factor… but that wasn’t the whole story. He was working toward something big, and I suspected that something big would get a lot of people killed. A small war.

  Mary worked fast. Lillian was barely starting the second set of claw marks, Helen holding her hand and forcing her to keep moving it, while her fingers held the scalpel steady. The first set had been done across Helen’s shoulder and chest. This set was on Helen’s face, of all places.

  She started to rise. I put my hand out, stopping her. I gestured for Lillian to continue.

  The fear and panic were reaching a pitch, now.

  I wondered what was going through the Shepherd’s mind. If he was thinking the Academy was after him, this was a bad sign, right here.

  Lillian finished the third mark across Helen’s eyelid and cheekbone. Blood welled out. Helen smeared it, and grabbed her hair to muck it up.

  I moved my hand away. Helen crawled out from under the table.

  She took two steps toward the pews, then let out the most perfect blood-chilling scream I’d ever heard.

  Then she threw herself into the little table with books on top.

  So jealous.

  “They’re in the church!” I howled. “Run! Run! Run!”

  People ran. The double doors were hauled open, which meant we didn’t get stuck in them. People fled into the rain and darkness.

  A gunshot sounded.

  I felt a thrill, more than anything else.

  In the gloom of the church, lit only by candles, the Shepherd stepped forward. He held his rifle, the butt to his shoulder, barrel pointed at the roof.

  Eyes turned to him.

  He shrugged back his cloak, where his bad arm was covered.

  As new arms went, it was horrendous. Even in the gloom, I could see how it had been rebuilt using fungus or wood, like so many ruined buildings were, but the flesh around the fungus was ragged and ugly, not quite adhering or holding in place.

  He raised his arm, then gestured, a crisp right to left movement, one meaty, misshapen finge
r pointing.

  Guns cocked. More than a few. More than just the ones he’d carried with him.

  It explained his calm, all this while. From the start, he’d had soldiers in reserve. Hiding, maybe in the crowd, maybe in adjacent rooms. The weapons he was equipping his army with weren’t just improvised ones.

  People had stopped in their tracks for the second time, standing in the rain. They watched him.

  He advanced down the aisle, flanked by a dozen men with rifles, who were watching the crowd, looking out for monsters that weren’t there.

  One had Lacey, holding her arms behind her back.

  Believed to be an agent of the Academy. Not wrong, but not quite right, either.

  “The Academy is coming,” the Shepherd said. “They’re coming for us. It was always their plan, and I’ve been planning how to stop them for some time. I’m going to need all of you to listen very carefully.”

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  Cat out of the Bag 2.9

  “The creatures have gone,” the Shepherd lied. “Mother and babies both. It was a shock tactic, nothing more.”

  The restlessness of the crowd was intense, but in the exchanged words, the glances out into the darkness, I didn’t make out much that seemed to be doubting the Shepherd’s words.

  “The fear and confusion you’re experiencing right now is theirs. So is the anger, and the that deep seated feeling of frustration that there’s nothing you can do about it all. You’ve all heard it before. The Crown doesn’t lose wars. When they fight, they do it using monsters.”

  I’m almost offended.

  “They do it using people like her, who would put children in harm’s way for her goals,” he said.

  The man who had Lacey stepped forward. She struggled a bit before freezing. I assumed she felt a gun at her back.

  He pointed back at where two of his soldiers were holding the injured Gordon. “Two children have been harmed tonight. At least two more have been killed, earlier today. The Academy is walking a dangerous path, one that starts with claiming our dead for their work, then starts using us as pieces in their great machine. Lives are being lost.”