Twig

by wildbow

  “Crap!” I swore.

  “No,” Jamie called out. “They’re different!”

  I had to glance over to look. I saw the women fading away, but the synchronicity was gone. They weren’t fading in and fading away in the same way. Not in a way that made them hard to count or helped them play off each other.

  The sounds Mary was making were undoubtedly different from the sounds they made on their own, but it was a more unfamiliar sound, one that was on similar channels to their usual mode of communication. Anyone could hold a conversation with a guy in the corner shouting nonsense syllables, suffering only minor annoyance, but these women were young, in a sense. They were inexperienced. There was an opening, a vulnerability today that might not be there in a year.

  “Catcher,” Mary said. “That thing, you challenged me to find a use for it.”

  “What about it?”

  “Give it to Sy!”

  It was a ring, sharp-edged, with a bit of a corkscrew coil on one side. I wasn’t even sure how to hold it without cutting myself.

  “What am I doing with this thing?”

  “Windows!”

  Further up ahead were a set of shuttered windows, the glass so dusty they were almost opaque.

  Clever Mary.

  I veered to the right, closer to the window, holding out the edge of the ring as best as I could.

  Metal screeched as it cut glass. It got a reaction from Catcher. I didn’t see Helen’s reaction, because she was toward the tail end of the group, but I imagined it was the same. An unpleasant sound to anyone with a good sense of hearing.

  We were covering ground now, and our assailants were faltering. They were able to keep up, but the confidence was gone. They appeared, flanking us, they taunted us, but they’d changed their pattern. It no longer seemed like they were everywhere, uncountable and unpredictable. They no longer were able to say, in their ultrasonic language, ‘I’m stepping out, someone else step in’.

  But, at the end of the day, they were wired to take advantage of any gap in defenses. They were scavengers, picking off the weak and, apparently, the overconfident.

  With a smoothness that proved deceptive, leading the eye to take a fraction longer to register it, one stepped out of the alleyway.

  Helen was the first to react, shouting in alarm. Mary turned, raising her knives. I swiped hard at the nearest window, and the edge of the circular blade cut into the base of my palm, making the woman flinch.

  The woman nonetheless drove her attack home. A length of pipe, sharp at one end. Her reach was longer, she was stronger, and Mary’s attempt to fend off the attack proved futile. She twisted around, trying to sidestep the attack, holding out the knives to keep it at a distance from herself, and the woman only took a longer stride, then thrust down and through.

  Mary.

  Injury added to insult, for Mary to be struck down by one of her successors.

  She’d always hated to lose, and to lose here, of all places?

  Catcher lunged. Off balance, senses failing her, the brown-haired woman wasn’t even aware enough to see the attack coming. The mancatcher closed around her throat. She stumbled as Catcher moved the stick to force her to carry forward with her movement, and folded over his shin as he kicked her in the middle.

  While she reeled, he repositioned her, and then kicked again, this time for the small of her back, snapping her back in two.

  I caught up to Mary, who’d ceased running, and only stumbled, each step weaker than the last. I threw my arms around her before she could fall to the ground.

  “Dumb,” I said.

  “Jerk,” she said, voice already weak.

  Catcher reached us. He relieved me of my burden, grabbing Mary with one arm, pole held in the other. As I stepped away, I felt the blood that had already welled out of the open wound.

  “Refuse to die,” Mary said, quiet. “Supposed to—have to look Percy in the eye. End him.”

  “You’re not going to die,” I said.

  “Good,” she said.

  Lillian had caught up to us. She wasted no time in taking hold of the tear in Mary’s dress with both hands and hauling it open wider.

  I was aware of the ghosts gathering around us. There was a feral edge to what they were doing, now. More disorganized, something about their body language and expressions that suggested we’d pushed them out of their comfort zone, and they were no longer content to bide their time.

  Very similar to Mary in that way. Sometimes her blood got riled.

  “Catcher,” I said.

  Catcher was still holding Mary with one arm under and around her armpits. He didn’t respond.

  “Tell me Dog and Gordon are close?”

  “They aren’t,” he said.

  There was no hand signal to go with the statement. He was telling the truth.

  Gordon was gone, Mary was down. Helen, Lillian, Jamie and I weren’t fighters.

  The ghosts were.

  “Excuse me,” I told Mary, as I reached under her skirt. I knew just where to reach to unclip two lengths of razor wire from her underwear, blades strung along the length.

  “Gave you your chance,” she said. There was a note to her voice, as if she was already delirious.

  My expression was stone as I took a series of knives for myself and then handed the other to Jamie.

  He gave me a look.

  “I hope you’ve been watching Mary closely,” was all I said.

  He gave me a curt nod.

  I could see Lillian trying to tend to Mary, Catcher trying to make her job as easy as possible while being on guard for an attack, and I couldn’t pull my attention away from the scene to focus on the enemy. I couldn’t think along multiple tracks. I felt stupid, at a time I needed all my wits about me, and I felt even stupider because of the incoherent, violent emotion mixed into it all.

  “Nobody’s dying today,” I said. “Not like this.”

  Previous Next

  Lamb to the Slaughter—6.8

  They circled like vultures. I counted six in total that were in plain view. All with effective reflexes and spatial awareness. The screeching as we were circled was mine, however, a scrape of blade against glass, back and forth, a staccato nails-on-a-blackboard noise that made the little hairs on my arms and neck stand on end.

  It was giving them pause, but I could read their body language now that I could track them consistently. They were building up confidence to attack. They’d seen one of their own die, and the noise of blade on glass was screwing with their senses. I imagined it was like being thrust from the bright world into darkness for the very first time.

  The thought of darkness made me glance at Mary, who was being worked on by Lillian. I really didn’t like the expression on Lillian’s face.

  Focus, I told myself. Adrenaline went a long way in helping me to pull my thoughts together. The edges around the thoughts felt sharper and the details more crisp. I felt more like myself, I could touch on a thought in the middle of a running stream of consciousness and that thought was crystal clear.

  I tested the knife in my hand, judging its weight.

  I’d practiced some, one didn’t spend more than a year in Mary’s company without trying it out, but the benefits of practice had been questionable. I’d pick it up after four or five throws, then I’d actually be pretty good, landing about three in four thereafter. Then I’d try again the next night, and I’d need a few throws worth of practice again.

  The women started, making motions like they were going to attack.

  ‘Feint‘ was my immediate thought.

  Catcher reacted all the same. The butt end of his weapon slapped out. he struck a window, hard enough to shatter it, the glass breaking, the crash sharp enough to give our attackers pause.

  Not that they’d been going anywhere, not really.

  Still, it was opportunity.

  I threw, roughly the same time Jamie did.

  Our targets didn’t even move. The knives went flying off, far from be
ing on target. Jamie’s went straight over his target’s head by at least a foot.

  “We’re doomed,” Mary’s voice was faint.

  “Don’t need commentary!” I said.

  “Wasting good knives,” she said.

  “Shush!” I told her.

  “Jamie,” Mary said. “Your arms are shorter than mine are. Release later.”

  “Got it,” Jamie said.

  “What about me?” I asked.

  “I’ve given you advice… hunnred times,” she mumbled. “Waste.”

  I really didn’t like how fast she was dropping off, here.

  The women moved, I scratched glass with the tool, and they halted. I tried throwing again.

  My target didn’t even dodge, for the second time. Jamie’s did, but I doubted he’d been on target.

  That was what I was telling myself. No way was Jamie going to be better than me at this and get to be the hero.

  They made a move to approach, and I scratched the glass again. I figured they were feinting or uncertain, but I wanted to tell them off all the same. Warn them, feed that uncertainty.

  My damn hands were shaking. It wasn’t helping my accuracy or concentration.

  Jamie, Helen and I weren’t strong. Catcher was, but Catcher was guarding Lillian and Mary. Each of the ghosts was capable and dangerous.

  When our ghostly vultures swooped in, I didn’t think much of our chances.

  It was too easy to let my thoughts run away. I wasn’t someone who won fights. At best, I helped find the road to victory.

  “No, no, no,” Lillian said. Her voice was breaking. “Please, Mary, no.”

  In my peripheral vision, I could see Mary drawing closer to the ground. Catcher let her slump down, easing the drop by slowly relaxing his hold on her. Lillian did much of the work in draping Mary out alongside the gutter at the base of a storefront.

  My hand tightened on the knife’s handle. As I turned away, I sensed movement, and moved to react.

  Three of them were closing the distance, using our collective distraction as an opportunity. Two women with blonde hair and a brunette, drawing in close, fast enough I wasn’t sure I’d get my arms up in time.

  Catcher acted. His weapon reached for one of the blondes, who immediately reversed direction, backing away out of range. He wasn’t striking at her, however. His weapon reached further, and one of the jutting spikes touched the wrought-iron railing I’d pointed out earlier.

  Swiping violently away from the enemy, he dragged metal against metal, eliciting a screech that made my vision waver. The two attackers stopped in their tracks, momentarily stunned or disoriented.

  I saw opportunity and went for it, knife in hand, the rest of the string of knives dangling, stabbing.

  She backhanded the wrist of my knife hand, hard. I didn’t make contact, and the entire string of knives fell from my hand. I reached out to catch it in the middle with my other hand, which still held the round blade, simultaneously trying to grab at her wrist with the hand she’d just disarmed.

  I realized, around the time I sort of failed at both, that I was doing exactly what Gordon always accused me of. Trying to do too many things at once. The disarmed hand was still smarting from the blow and was slow to move. I didn’t get a grip on her wrist.

  The hand that was grabbing the mess of knives and wire did grab what I was going for, but there were more sharp edges and lengths of wire than there were things to properly grip, and I only got the middle of the length. Wires cut into the webbing between four different fingers as I got a grip on the knife handle between my middle and ring finger.

  There was no time to adjust, or move, or do different, or even to make sure the wire wasn’t wrapped around my hand in a way that would make any action on my part hurt me more than it hurt her. I whipped the twin lengths at her upper body and face.

  I grazed her. I felt the impact, I saw her flinch, before she retreated well out of my reach. Superficial damage. She didn’t make a sound as she reeled, face twisting, one eye closed, a lick of crimson at one cheek.

  Small as it was, it was perhaps my greatest victory in an out-and-out fight yet.

  I had to think like they thought, connect the dots, figure out how they operated and mess with that. This was an unrefined project, untested in a combat situation. They weren’t soldiers. They were assassins, and they were still raw enough and new enough to the world that the unfamiliar could put them off balance. The jangle of blades and the nature of my attack had been strange to her.

  Strange enough to get the blades a half-inch closer to her face and upper chest.

  Jamie and Helen were together, dealing with the other one. She stood close enough that Jamie should have been able to swing and make contact, even with her being as fast as she was, but it wasn’t happening. He tried, she stepped away, and she kicked him, hard enough that he stumbled into the storefront behind us.

  Helen maneuvered to corner the woman, keeping one eye out to the side and behind her for any surprise or flank attacks, but the woman easily danced to one side, putting Jamie between herself and Helen, before stepping back a fraction to avoid a furtive slash.

  Jamie and Helen were getting further from the rest of us as they tried to keep their distance from their assailant. I wanted to shout something, a warning, but I couldn’t afford to take my attention off the one I’d just injured.

  I adjusted my grip on the wires and blades, trying to make sure I was in a position to respond if she lunged for me, and probably failing. I had to work to get one wire out of the webbing where it had bitten down between my index finger and thumb.

  Blood ran down my hand and dripped from my fingertips as I gripped the ring. I swiped it against the window, and the blonde woman in front of me lunged. Again, I swung the tangle of wires and knives in her direction.

  Too quick, for how slow she was on the approach. I finished swinging the moment before she got close.

  Her palm thrust out, slapping my forehead, driving my head back into the window with enough force that it cracked. The effect on my vision was about the same as what they were probably experiencing when I scraped the glass. Distortion, no strange colors or sights, but a momentary loss of the ability to put the pieces together.

  She held my head against the broken edges of the window, gripping my head hard enough to bend it back, tilting my chin up.

  Her other hand went up like she was going to slap me across the face, but I could see the blade, flat against her palm, held between two fingers. It was my throat, not my face, that she intended to strike.

  Efficient, almost surgical execution.

  I kicked at her legs. She was able to avoid the worst of it, pulling her legs back out of my way, while adding to the press of my head against glass, jagged shards like a half dozen individual knives cutting me.

  Catcher acted once more. Another swipe at the railing, fierce, this time swinging forward, simultaneously swiping at the three of the women who were surrounding him. They would be trying to find an avenue to get past Catcher and attack Lillian and Mary.

  It was a distraction, and I saw my attacker wince, but she didn’t let up the pressure on me.

  Catcher hadn’t stopped moving, however. He’d pulled another weapon from his coat. The woman who held me released me, stepping back to preserve herself.

  And my foot, which had been kicking at her, went up, the toe hooking under the front of her dress. As she tried to back up and evade the incoming attack, I caught her. She stumbled a little, I was hauled back and away from the window, feeling the glass slash me as I was hauled past it.

  She slashed at the fabric to sever it and free herself, but the delay cost her a half second’s time and a moment of her attention. Catcher’s weapon, akin to a bear-trap on a leash, slapped against the side of her face. It bit deep.

  She didn’t make a sound as he hauled on the cord. She clutched blindly at the contraption, but the teeth had sunken in, and she didn’t have the leverage to remove it. Blood welled out around
the edges of the trap’s teeth, too slick for her to get a grip on the metal.

  All but one of the women around us were backing off, now. Helen had the other blonde in her grip, the two of them on the ground, Jamie stepping on the woman’s head, knives in hand, watching Helen’s back. Catcher’s distraction had been well timed.

  I could see how the women were watching the one in the bear trap.

  I could feel it in my teeth, the harshness that cut through the humid air. A sound I couldn’t quite perceive. Different from what Catcher had described as a cacophony.

  She’s screaming.

  She was stumbling left, then right, hands scrabbling in a futile fashion, and she was utterly silent, but for the clack of the metal ring that was attached to the cord, banging against bloodstained steel. She reached the limit of her movement, the teeth pulling against flesh, and her entire body arched and spasmed with pain.

  “Helen,” Catcher said.

  “Yes? Is Mary okay?”

  “No. Finish fast,” Catcher said.

  I swallowed hard. Catcher’s ‘No’ hit me harder than I’d expected.

  “Aw. I never get to take my time.”

  Catcher was silent, studying the enemy.

  “Please, Helen,” I said. “Next time, I promise. But this is serious. Do it for Mary?”

  “I wasn’t going to say no,” Helen said. “Move your foot, Jamie.”

  Off to my left, Helen moved. Cartilage and bone snapped and ground together as Helen strained, a torture rack in human form. I imagined I could hear the silent scream from Helen’s victim as her arms were stretched out and to either side, like a bird. Helen’s body shifted, bones standing out in strange ways against skin or the fabric of her clothes, a biological equivalent to a spring or mechanism being set, a trigger cocked. Her hands bit deep enough into skin that I wondered if she was squeezing muscle aside to press against bone. Flesh between fingers was bulging like it might pop.

  Then Helen readjusted. It was a sudden, violent movement, the twist of a constrictor snake seizing its prey all at once, contorting itself in knots in a sudden, spasmodic way. Her body could move like that, but the body of the victim that was securely in her grip couldn’t. The wet sounds and the crunch of bone and gristle against more bone and gristle seemed to go on forever.