Twig

by wildbow

  “Sy,” Jamie said, cutting into my train of thought. “Do you intend to help everyone we run into?”

  “No,” I said. Then I hesitated. I touched the ring. “I don’t know. I feel like there’s an obligation to do something.”

  “You’re getting soft,” Jamie told me.

  “Mm.”

  We made our way down the street, tracing our steps back to the north end of the neighborhood. As we rounded the corner, finding our way to the open area that topped off the neighborhood, where the people had been getting dropped off, we slowed and stopped in our tracks.

  Three, maybe four dozen people had lingered here. Thirty to fifty people had fallen as if they’d been shot, collapsed against walls and sprawled on the ground. In places they sat in groups of three or four. Wooden walls creaked as they grew, and the bridge that had spanned the canal had been destroyed in the wall’s growth. Now branches and wood crawled out onto the plaza, over the immobile people. The bioweapon had crawled forth, extending along the fallen, reaching out for surfaces and others to cling to. The reason I was so imprecise in counting the people was that the growths had extended far enough in places to make the count difficult to impossible.

  In places, the plants had flowered. Bright red, opened wide, almost iridescent in the gloom. Four or five petals to each, though some of the oldest ones seemed to be expanding further, black speckles toward the centers, each petal rounded at the left and right edges, with a pointed part at the area near the center. It made me think of crowns, the elaborate sort that covered the whole head.

  Where the rain poured over the flowering growths, it turned red, collecting pollen or something else, thickening. The rainwater that pooled beneath that scene was eerily similar to blood in texture.

  Together, we backed away from the scene. I wasn’t sure it mattered so much—the rain seemed to be catching the worst of the pollen from the air and the flowers, rinsing it away and letting it pool at the ground instead of billowing out around us.

  My thumb touched the ring, then dropped away. My hands fell limp at my side.

  After a moment, I pulled off the ring and slid it into a pocket. I deliberately looked away from the scene, gesturing. I saw Jamie’s expression change as he saw the gesture.

  Driven by something unconscious, I’d used the gesture not for ‘go’, the standard direction for moving from place to place, but for ‘retreat’.

  Retreating not just because this was scary, but because it was a loss.

  We changed course, moving around to the other side of the plaza, then off to the west.

  Backtracking.

  Once we were far enough from the wall that I could be sure we wouldn’t be stirring any copious amounts of pollen-infused water into the air, I began setting out the grenades and mines, placing them at the base of the wall. I saved only two, discarding the satchels and sliding a mine into one pocket and the grenade into the other.

  I rigged it carefully, arranging a kind of timed switch using the cord of the mine and two thin icicles, with the satchels used to pack things in and down.

  We retreated.

  The exertion of walking briskly had opened a wound on Jamie’s leg, I noted. I saw the bloodstain.

  A full minute passed, with Jamie and I tense. We knew the explosion would draw attention. We knew we’d have difficulty running. Jamie sat where he was with hands pressed to his ears, his face dead serious. I did the same.

  The explosion was more intense than I’d expected. It damaged key structures of the wall, and a whole series of growths cracked and began to topple, tearing adjacent sections down with them. The wall buckled, and began to bow down in our general direction. It stopped where it was, angled like it would fall if it could, but remained too braced by the sections on either side.

  Once we were fairly sure it wouldn’t fall on us, we ventured forth.

  The hole hadn’t blown all the way through. Three-quarters of the way, perhaps, but not all of the way. The weight of the wood above had also come down, filling the void we’d created.

  It couldn’t be easy. No, now I had no idea at all how to get the rest of the way through. If I tried, then the wall might collapse down, and we wouldn’t be able to get to where the explosives had cleared a way.

  Worse, the wood at the base provided a good source for new branches to grow. The damaged area was already slowly filling in, twigs springing up, ready to become branches that would become trunk-like growths.

  “Give me the explosives,” Jamie said. “Wait, don’t. They might be contaminated.”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Place the mine where I tell you. Then we’re going to stand where I say, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, my voice soft.

  “Don’t put that much trust in me,” Jamie said. “I’m not an expert in demolitions, architecture, or the math in this. But I have some ideas.”

  “I’ll trust you,” I said. “We don’t have any other choice.”

  He nodded. He leaned on the umbrella as he limped his way to the foot of the leaning wall.

  At his order, I placed the mine, and held the grenade.

  “And when it blows, you’re going to throw there. Okay? I don’t trust my legs or the shakiness of my hands to throw anything right now.”

  “Okay.”

  He nodded.

  He and I stood with our backs to the wall that was almost guaranteed to collapse as the explosive went off, roughly sixty feet separating us from the blast site. We waited, teeth clenched, bracing ourselves.

  This one went off so much sooner than the last that it caught me entirely off guard. I pulled the pin of our last explosive and threw. Right on the mark.

  I felt both terrified and vindicated at the same time.

  The wall leaned further, until it stood at a forty-five degree angle, and then the rest followed much more quickly. There was a deafening series of cracks as the wall behind us began to come to pieces, and those cracks radiated across a point five feet above our heads.

  One of the key supports gave, and an entire section of the wall toppled, crashing down so the very top of the wall touched road or the faces of buildings. In places, the bottom ends of the wall had broken away. Where we stood, the trunk-like growths were thicker, a building across the street braced the fallen wall, and it hadn’t collapsed on top of us. More claustrophobic than ever, it formed a kind of lean-to roof over our heads.

  “Quick,” Jamie said. “Before any new growths push it down on top of us.”

  It didn’t grow that fast, but it was a scary idea, and the whole setup was precarious enough that I didn’t want to roll any dice.

  At a pace that felt agonizing, given the speed at which things were developing around us, we made our way to the broken part, I led the way, moving ahead of Jamie and stomping on any growths that might trip him up along the way, while Jamie hobbled, lagging behind.

  A little more dramatic than I’d been expecting or hoping for.

  I hesitated at the exit to the short tunnel we’d blown through the wall. Smoke was billowing from the bits that were smouldering. It was resistant to fire, and the rain helped with matters even further, but it was impossible to have explosions like this without smoke.

  I looked at the gap between us and the nearest building. It was the span of a single street.

  My memory was bad, but I did fairly well when it came to remembering enemies.

  Even as the wall began to grow closed around us, I patiently gathered sticks and bits of wood together into a bundle made of my jacket. I tied it closed as best as I could. It required two hands to hold.

  I very nearly lost my footing, my boot, and stumbled out into the opening as I moved to hurl it—wood had grown up and against my boot, trying to capture it and make it part of the construction. I tore it free, then hurled the bundle.

  One second, tw—

  A bullet caught the bundle.

  Fast reaction. He was close, and being close meant he was accurate.

  An
d Jamie couldn’t run.

  “He’s in the tower above the library,” Jamie said.

  “The tower above the library,” I said. “That means absolutely nothing to me.”

  The wood continued to close in the space around us. There were thin branches that now reached from the floor to what little remained of the ceiling over the tunnel, and they were growing thicker, drawing on mostly water for bulk, but would soon expand with more substance and harder material.

  “Will he fire right away or will he second guess himself?” Jamie asked.

  “Neither,” I said. “He’s patient. The sanguine part of his personality makes him a patient hunter. Hard to ruffle. He won’t make that mistake again.”

  Jamie closed his eyes, clearly thinking. He had to bow his head as wood grew in around him, and I had to shift position as the wall to my left expanded, creaking violently, almost nudging me into Jamie.

  “Three quick steps for me, three and a half for you. Stop. Then forward,” Jamie said. “Given distance, given the timing, the speed of the bullets and what we saw before… he has to lead us, so if we stop then, the bullet should pass. If he doesn’t anticipate us stopping—”

  “He won’t,” I said. “No. I feel like he’ll take the higher odds, be able to shoot as we rush forward. I don’t think he knows you’re hurt. Keep that in mind.”

  “I did.”

  He raised a hand, and then he gestured.

  Three and a half steps at a brisk walk. Stop.

  I didn’t see or hear the bullet, but I heard the dull echo of the distant gunshot, that might have been masked by the atrocious creaking of the wall behind us.

  We passed the street, then carried on, moving briskly.

  “Thinking about where he was. Standard walking pace, there’s only so much ground he can cover. He won’t ride a bike or anything, there shouldn’t be any horses or automobiles, there are only so many places he can be, if he decides to move…”

  “Don’t overheat,” I told Jamie. “Be gentle on that brain.”

  He shook his head. “Tell me how he thinks. We need to outmaneuver him, figure out the path that gives him the fewest clear shots at us.”

  I nodded. I didn’t like seeing Jamie dig this deep into his memories and thoughts. It was like me in my deepest Wyvern states, but I knew that Jamie could had a hard time surfacing. He could get bogged down in it all. I wasn’t sure if having less treatments at the Academy would make that easier to do.

  “I can’t keep track of all of the places he could be,” Jamie said.

  “I don’t think he has a lot of imagination,” I said. “Point, shoot.”

  We made our strategy to cross a bridge, getting to a point where we could get down on hands and knees, protected by the little bridge’s sturdy railing.

  There was no gunshot. Was he repositioning? Did he have other reasons for holding back?

  There were no further incidents as we made our way back to the area where the Boatyards merged into the middle-city.

  Backtracking. Because I’d inadvertently barred our way from going further East, because North would have meant getting past that sea of the people that could no longer be saved, and because it was familiar territory with familiar people I suddenly felt were far more in need of help than I’d originally thought.

  And, perhaps, because there was no real difference in going east or south or north or west. At the foot of buildings, where there had been nothing growing before, I could see scattered growths. Growing like weeds in crevices, the plague flowers fought with the builder’s wood for the broken-up ground and collected dirt that might serve as workable soil. The builder’s wood grew faster and grew thick, while the plague flowers had reached the maximum limit of their growth and then opened. The flowers were startling in their color when set amid a drenched city that looked like it had been drained of its color like a slaughtered hog was drained of its blood.

  There were no soldiers to stop us. The rain was the loudest protest we heard as we walked, wary of every shadow and possible point of attack. There were bystanders, but they watched us from behind windows that had been tightly sealed, with frightened, alarmed eyes.

  Back past Jer’s place. Past the Eastern end of the boatyard.

  We were two blocks away from the brothel when Dog made his appearance, cutting us off. Like Jamie, he limped, but he limped with one leg, and it was because of machinery that had been damaged by a trap.

  Catcher and the Bruno with the flame canister appeared soon after.

  Jamie and I stopped where we were. Jamie was too hobbled to run away. I wasn’t about to leave him.

  My mind raced as I thought about options.

  “Take us in, then,” I said, a little defeated. “Just… let us take measures to ward off the plague? Can you let us help people, in the meantime? I don’t want to let Jamie get sick, or—”

  “Sylvester,” Catcher spoke.

  I fell silent.

  “You followed us, headed us off,” Jamie said.

  “No,” Catcher said. “We followed them.”

  He used his Mancatcher to point.

  I turned around.

  Behind us. Arachne, with one of her arms curled up in the strangest position, knuckles tucked into her armpit, body slightly hunched over, but alive. Tentacles looked to be the one in worse shape. One of his tentacles dragged limply behind him as he walked with Arachne’s support. One of Catcher’s Brunos was with the pair. A turncoat. Maybe an informer from the start, helping Sanguine’s group find us by following Dog and Catcher to Tynewear.

  So that was why Sanguine hadn’t gone out of his way to open fire. He’d known that the others were tracking us. He might be on his way now. He might be in a position or getting in position to support them with gunfire. Staying well out of reach of my weapons and manipulations.

  I could sense the hostility between Catcher and Sanguine’s group. Were they going to fight over us, their bounty?

  Between a rock and a hard place, the surroundings decorated with scattered red flowers.

  Previous Next

  Cut to the Quick—11.13

  “Catcher, buddy—” I started.

  “Don’t talk,” he said.

  I shut my mouth.

  As the wind blew through the street, I could smell smoke from distant fires. It wasn’t from the direction of the wall Jamie and I had slipped through. They were burning other parts of the city.

  My thoughts flew. In a way, it was a good thing that we were so cornered. It left very few options for me, with only so many people to deal with, only so many permutations as I thought about how this situation might unfold.

  Approaches: straight offense, defense, escape, mediate, negotiate, or the gamble, the faith-based approach. Offense and defense were out. I was weak and unarmed. Escape wasn’t an option with Jamie being hobbled, unless I wanted to abandon him and rescue him later… and it was a bit of a dim chance as it stood. Mediation, playing the enemy parties against each other, not wholly out of the question, but Catcher wanted me to shut up. He knew how I approached things, and he’d be wary of it. Negotiation, playing myself against an enemy party, I wasn’t sure if that was any better, and I didn’t have any leverage to apply to achieve the better outcome.

  That left taking things on faith. I didn’t have the means to really shake things up and force a metaphorical roll of the dice, in the hopes that they would land in a better configuration than they were in right now.

  That left the who? The what? Dog, Catcher, one Bruno on each side, Arachne and Tentacles. Sanguine had been a distance away the last time he’d taken a shot. I knew that. The pair with the enhanced senses knew that.

  The cards I had left to play? Jamie. A spare knife, tidbits of knowledge.

  “Arachne,” Catcher said, his voice carrying.

  As Arachne responded, her voice was hollow and sounded like it had been formed of parts that shared little with human anatomy. “Catcher, dear.”

  I might have assigned a note of deris
ion to her tone, but it was hard to assign anything to it. Even the way her mouth moved was more like a ventriloquist’s dummy’s than a human’s. She was a shell of hard ivory ‘skin’ and crimson, hornlike material.

  Mentally, I connected a few dots with the thought. The way her arm was curled up, the way she moved, the ‘shell’. She was a spider.

  “…I don’t know how to put this, but the stakes for this job are higher for us,” Catcher said. “I would like to pay you to stand down and walk away.”

  “No,” Arachne said.

  “Why not?” Catcher asked.

  Tentacles was the one who answered. His voice was strained in much the same way Jamie’s had been. “Because we were hired, and our employer wants to see this through. If we finish talking here and the quarry gets handed off to you without a fight, we’ll find bullets in our heads not long after that.”

  “That too,” Arachne said. Not a woman of many words.

  “—And because Arachne has a one-track mind,” Tentacles added.

  “We know about Arachne’s mind,” Catcher said. “We’ve crossed paths often enough when hunting the same quarry.”

  I glanced back at Tentacles. His tentacles were limp, draped out on the road within ten feet of him. Periodically a tentacle moved or shifted. His human arms were set around his lower ribs, and he hunched over. If it weren’t for the tentacles propping him up, I suspected he might topple over. Even with that, he found the time to dig out a cigarette and light a match to light it, shielding it from the rain with his hand more than he shielded it from the wind.

  The Bruno by Catcher’s side was keeping a fair distance from him.

  We didn’t injure him. He’s sick. I thought of throwing the scraped off blood and muck at him.

  I had a dead or alive order on me. The first priority was to ensure the ‘alive’ part. So long as we were alive, there was room for good things to happen and for things to improve.

  No, scratch that. So long as we were alive and still outside of Academy clutches, there was room for better things.