by wildbow
But they were listening for an order from here, at least. I could help turn the tide here. Other opportunities could be created.
Jamie held the distant soldier at gunpoint, and divested him of his rifle, pistol and knife. He handed me the pistol. Once we both had guns, it was easy enough to make the two stitched overseers retreat to the other end of the alley, further from the people they’d been attacking.
They turned and ran out into the street we’d approached from, toward their friendly forces. We let them.
Once they were gone, I turned my attention to a window. Lugh didn’t have high security. I opened the latch in a matter of a minute, let myself in, and we made our way through, out into the next alleyway, deeper into the midst of crown forces.
We were just in time for Mauer’s Plague Men to make their move. Unfortunate.
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Counting Sheep—9.2
My first indication that there was something wrong was the corpses. Citizens of Lugh lay scattered on the street, skin crimson, blistered, and eyes bugging out. The light shimmered on and around them in a way that made it look as though I was viewing them through a screen or filter, or if they were laying at a river bed, with silt running over and around them. They were still, and the shadows were alive in a very detailed, particular way that I couldn’t define easily from this distance.
The second indication was the smoke, which wasn’t behaving like the smoke from the fires. It crept close to the ground, heavy, rolling downhill, and the ‘living shadow’ element was doubly true there. Most telling, however, was that it wasn’t hot. There were fires here and there, but the air wasn’t heated to the point that smoke-dirtied snow was turning into grimy rain.
I ventured closer, focusing on the clouds. The image I saw reminded me of hand-cranked projector video that I’d seen in the big presentations with professors and doctors. The silence, the crank and whirr, and the image, moving even when the subject was unmoving, showing some warbeast or operation at work, behind dancing flecks, flickers, and dust on film strips writ large.
I gestured for Jamie’s benefit.
Plague, was the sign. Disease, sickness. I wasn’t sure I was right. It could have been parasite, or, more problematic, an airborne chemical or poison. Whatever it was, some small form of life was moving within the dark smoke and serving as a transmission vector. Where the smoke touched a surface or a person, it left the thin covering of shifting, dancing life painted over that surface.
The only men who walked in the midst of the low clouds of smoke were distinct in appearance. They wore black military jackets and heavy boots, and their skin was scarred and pocked. I recognized them as plague men, armed and moving in formation. There were some on either end of the street, effectively trapping us.
One fired a gun at a body. The city around us was so chaotic and noisy that I almost couldn’t make out the sound of the solitary gunshot.
I edged down the alleyway, aiming to get a better view of the situation.
I could see modified wagons, with special containers on the backs. Some had been blown up, and others lay askew, with a wheel gone or the stitched beast at the front laying dead. Squadrons of stitched soldiers had been laid low, joining the officers in heavy clothes and masks who had been in charge of them and the plague boxes.
Some of the gunfire we’d heard earlier had been from an altercation between the Plague Men and the Academy, apparently. They walked without trouble in the midst of the clouds, periodically stopping to drive a bayonet into a throat or kick at a gun that lay in a twitching hand’s grasp, putting the weapon out of the owner’s reach.
The Academy had set up here, using the boxes as both a defensive position and a means of keeping Mauer’s people back and away. Clouds of heavy smoke and whatever else that killed, walling off entire sections of the city. Then the Plague Men had come striding through those same clouds with a viciously effective flanking maneuver and explosives.
Now we were surrounded.
I’d already jumped down from the window to the foot of the building, and now I didn’t have a way out that didn’t involve running past a squadron of armed soldiers. Jamie was still at the window, legs dangling, a handkerchief held to his mouth.
He gestured. Question. I didn’t have an answer.
I crept further along the alley, fully aware that if I was spotted, I would be shot. There would be no questions, no hesitation, and no mercy. I couldn’t trust my enemies here to make mistakes, like I might hope for with stitched or people who had been ordinary citizens an hour ago, before a gun had been pushed into their hands.
As I reached the street, I positioned myself closer to the ground. Newly dry, I still crawled through muck, blood, and water. The crawling smoke provided me some cover from the plague men.
There was a body here. A man had fallen, and lay face down in the same large puddle I was crawling through.
I searched him, slowly and carefully, investigating pockets and belt. I avoided any fast movements that might tip the soldiers off, and I kept my face pointed toward the ground, the hood of my coat hanging low over my brow. In the gloom, I didn’t want them to see the paleness of my face or ears.
Pocketknife, I could take. A notebook, I’d take for now. A small medical kit, well worn, I’d hold onto that until I had something else to occupy my hands with. A flask. I could keep that too.
Lighter and cigarettes. I kept the former, and left the latter be.
I couldn’t hear footsteps, but I saw what could have been a shadowy figure moving against shadow, in the midst of smoke. They were vague shapes, ones that could so easily be mistaken for tricks of the light and deceptive play of my eyes and brain. I didn’t wait to clarify the image, instead pushing back with the heels of my hand and crawling backward. I backed into garbage, and collapsed into position, curling around a sour-smelling black paper sack of waste.
I couldn’t see up without raising my head, and my eye was only afforded a view of the slice of street and building, visible between ground and the edge of my hood.
If shadowy figure moving against shadow was hard to make out, given the circumstances, then that figure’s shadow added another step of obfuscation to the mix.
I remained where I was, until I could be reasonably sure that he was gone. I raised my head.
Two more figures were there, but they weren’t facing my direction. I remained still, watching and waiting, until they were gone.
I got the flask and lighter out, and put them neatly by the pile of trash, waiting at the ready.
Then, with the same care as before, I edged closer to the end of the alleyway that opened up onto one of the streets with the plague boxes.
My skin prickled. I wasn’t in the midst of the smoke, but some of it was touching me. That it prickled made me want to swear. It could have meant something very bad, but it wasn’t so bad or so telling that I could be certain about how to move forward.
I reached my position from before, by the body. This time, I crawled almost on top of it.
The smoke that flowed down the street reached the body, and it collected with more strength along the far end of the corpse. Heavy and close to the ground, it reached the side of his leg, torso, and his armpit, and pooled there.
I extended one hand down into the dark smoke.
The prickling was roughly ten times as intense, there.
I turned my attention to the body. A Crown soldier. He wore gloves, a turtleneck, a heavy coat, and a metal mask to allow safe breathing in the midst of plague.
I had to lift his face up off the ground to get the mask off. With it firmly in hand, I retreated back to the shadows.
A series of rapid-fire explosions in the distance suggested that someone had burned an ammunitions cache or a storehouse of something combustible had caught alight. The noise echoed like thunder, and every set of eyes on the street turned in that direction.
Back in the shadows and cover of the pile of trash, I looked up for Jamie. He wasn’t sitting
in the window, but standing back from it, looking down at me.
My fingers brushed against the flask, lighter and medical kit.
The tingling in my hand had dwindled. An investigation suggested the skin wasn’t any puffier, more sensitive, or less sensitive than it had been before.
I gave it a long moment, ready to act. Mentally, head to toe, I took measure. My thoughts were clearer, if anything. My breathing and heartbeat were fine. I was hungry and thirsty, but that wasn’t anything new. I was cold, but the snow gathering around us was a good indicator of why that was appropriate.
I could see the visual noise of whatever was in that crawling smoke, now that it was actually on me. Bugs, individually smaller than the dot left by a sharp pencil on paper, winged and capable of crawling, they were falling off my hand and fleeing to the street instead.
They didn’t like me, it seemed.
No other symptoms. For a weapon of war, if I was going to experience symptoms, it would need to be faster and more comprehensive. There was no ruling out some accumulation of chemical or substance, symptoms appearing later, simply because I had immersed myself in this smoke for too long, but if that was a problem, I suspected even the plague men would be giving it a wider berth.
No, this was a weapon meant for culling the weak, cutting down ordinary man and animal.
I gestured nothing in specific to get Jamie’s attention. He drew closer to the window, glancing left, then right, to make sure nobody had seen us. He gestured back at me, question. Opening the medical kit, I found a bandage. I pulled it out, removing the metal clip that kept it fastened in place, and in a few motions of finger and wrist, wrapped it partially around my hand. I pointed to Jamie, before raising my hand, fingers extended.
He nodded.
I put the bandage back in the kit. I checked the coast was clear, then tossed the full kit up to the window. He caught it.
While he busied himself, I turned my attention to the mask. Lighter and alcohol in hand, using my hunched-over body to keep the light of the flame from being seen, I burned the metal surface of the mask that sat in between my crossed legs. The smoke, dirt and moisture that had accumulated on it made it clear to see where I had burned it. If I squinted, I could even see the metal changing color as it got hot enough.
Inside and out, with straps included, I burned the mask as clean of the microscopic bugs as I could get it. I stared at it by lighter-light to make sure it was clean enough.
When Jamie reappeared in the window, I gestured to him, and then tossed him the mask as well.
Hands covered, the bandage even binding the ends of his sleeves to his wrists, jacket zipped up high, with mask on and hood up, cinched close to his head, Jamie hopped down to the foot of the alley where I was.
We retraced our steps, my third visit to the alley’s end.
Further down the street, plague men opened fire. They unloaded a dozen shots, walking rather than running to cover, bending down slightly, and then waited.
Whoever or whatever they had been shooting at had been scared off, if their targets weren’t outright dead.
That small distraction would have to do. Signaling Jamie, I indicated the way.
Straight into the crawling smoke.
Augmented as they were, their eyes weren’t so special that they would see two dark figures in the midst of the thickest part of the smoke.
I held my breath as I ran, blind, one hand on Jamie’s wrist, the other extended out in front of me. I moved my feet and shifted my weight to dissipate the impact of boot on road and move as silently as possible. The noise around the city made it easier, obscuring the sounds I did make, but I didn’t want to let my foot come down too hard and sharp in one of the moments where bullets weren’t flying and crowds of people weren’t hollering to be heard over everyone else.
I tried to hold on to a mental image of the scene, where I’d last seen soldiers, where they might be, and what I might do if we were caught. Time spent thinking about that took my thoughts off of the prickling that was now feeling more like a burn.
My lungs strained as we ran. The act of running meant bringing my feet down, and as quiet as I was trying to be, every strike of boot on ground was threatening to jar my mouth open, and allow a gulping of air to enter my mouth, to be later swallowed. If it was an airborne threat, I couldn’t afford that.
My hand touched wood. I stopped running, and ducked low. Jamie was so fast in matching suit that I suspected he’d both been anticipating it and had known where we were.
The smoke rolled downhill, and here, under the wagon, we were upwind and above the worst of it. I allowed myself to breathe, and felt the prickling extend inside my mouth as I opened it to gulp in air.
Beside me, Jamie crawled into position beside me, and collapsed, making a dangerous amount of noise in the process. One arm was pressed up against his hood. He’d been adding the bulk of the arm to minimize how much might slip through that gap. His breath hissed almost imperceptibly as he breathed through the mask and filter.
I watched him, unmoving, unable to act or speak to verify if he was alright.
A bandage-wrapped hand grasped at the ground, as if he could find purchase there.
The precautions hadn’t been enough. I felt cold inside, my stomach knotting.
If I had to watch him writhe and die here…
I grit my teeth until my jaw hurt. The more the prickling faded from my skin and scalp, the more sick I felt, and that sickness had nothing to do with the crawling smoke.
There were soldiers no less than ten feet from us. The noise he’d made as he collapsed hadn’t tipped them off, but they were still there, and our options were few. I couldn’t drag Jamie to safety, I couldn’t help him. We had no Lillian.
I saw him move, fighting to avoid making noise or moving too abruptly, writhing in pain. Behind the tinted lenses of his mask, his eyes were wide and staring.
I thought back to the old Jamie, on the day he’d… what even to call it? Departed?
Reaching to his belt, I patted him down. Nothing in front, on the sides—
Behind.
The medical kit. I popped it open.
Before I’d even looked at the contents, he reached out, pushing the lid closed. He managed a shake of his head, before he squeaked.
His hand went out, and touched the underside of the wagon. Fingers extended to move against the surface above us, once, twice.
He gestured, and the gesture was worrying. Fingers curled at the first and second knuckle, thumb tucked in.
We’d started out with six or seven gestures, and had let the rest evolve organically. The first six or seven were intended to be broad, encompassing a wide range of things.
Jamie wasn’t one to forget things, or to lose control of his mental faculties. That made the fact that he was being this vague and unclear very troubling.
Fingers curled and thumb tucked in was the face. Look, sense, attend, and, in cases, apply our particular talents.
I tried the most obvious means, and reached for his mask, ready to pull it off. If it was a problem—
He shook his head. He made a small noise of pain. My head turned, eyes searching for the movement of boots, the approach of soldiers.
Again, he touched the wagon’s underside.
Look, I understood.
I knew where the soldiers were standing, having just checked a moment ago. I grabbed the wheel of the wagon and hauled myself out from under it. I moved more quickly than quietly, trusting the ambient noise to cover any slip on my part.
Think, Sy. How do the designers of these wagons think? What’s the logic to how this was put together? There has to be a mechanism to open or close the doors for the plague at the front of the box, or something that activates them and makes them start billowing out and forward like this. An outside of wood with metal to catch and stop bullets, so they can function in a warzone and double as cover, and at the back, for the people using that cover, boxes of ammo, things to use to repair the wagon
…
I reached the back of the wagon, double-checking the coast was clear before climbing within.
A team of Academy students or doctors put a lot of thought into this, debated it into the ground, presented it to a professor, who tore the concept to shreds and then rebuilt it. This is how the process goes.
The sides of the box were doubly reinforced and lined with boxes of ammo and two spare rifles. Not what I needed or wanted.
In case of an emergency, some rookie gets in the path of the smoke or the wind blows the wrong way, they want to be able to reach the medical supplies quickly.
I touched the floor of the wagon, and gauged the dimensions.
It was thick. A very deep floor, between what I was standing on and the part the wheels were connected to.
I ran my fingers over the surface, and found gaps I could fit my fingers in.
I lifted it up. The boards of the wagon’s floor doubled as the supplies for fixing anything that took a bullet. Lengths of metal and wood.
Beneath those lengths of metal and wood were more kits, each branded with the Academy’s symbol.
I collected three of the kits, checked that the coast was clear—which wasn’t too hard given how close the wagon was to the wall, and how the plague men were gradually moving themselves further up the street—and then headed down to Jamie.
On the last day I’d talked to old Jamie, he had demonstrated some knowledge of Academy tools and procedure. He’d known how to operate, with information gleaned from textbooks.
Now, while he was suffering, I was hoping he knew how to treat himself.
I opened up the kit, double checked Jamie, and saw his eyes were closed behind the tinted lenses of the mask. I grabbed his mask and shook his head back and forth until the eyes opened.
He saw the kit, and with hands tense, tapped one finger down.
I lifted a syringe, pre-filled. I used it, squeezing out a portion, and Jamie extended a finger, pointing to a point on the side of the syringe.
