Twig

by wildbow

  I wasn’t listening. The time for that had come and gone. I could remember the looks on their faces as I’d talked to Franz. The stubbornness. I’d underestimated it. Was I supposed to believe it was gone now? That only now, confronted with a tangible danger, they were willing to compromise?

  I aimed my gun and fired, putting a bullet through the soft flesh of stomach of one man, so it would exit and penetrate the soft stomach of the one he was lying on top of.

  He fought, using the time where pain brought clarity but shock prevented the pain from immediately debilitating him. He fumbled for and reached for the knife, failed to get it at first grasp, and then, laying on his side, he kicked out at me.

  With one bent arm, I protected myself. Then I struck out, a pistol gripped in each hand. One hand went for the bullet wound, the other went for whatever was vulnerable. A punch aiming and failing to get beneath the leg to go for the genitals, a punch for the wound, a punch at the soft side of his stomach.

  In the midst of the scuffle that followed, him bigger and stronger, me capitalizing on his existing injury and every further weak point I was able to create, I climbed on top of him, using my body to keep him from reaching down, and endured a brief battering of his hands clubbing my back before getting in position to drive my knee into the wound, hard.

  He curled up around my legs, possibly in an attempt to stop me, possibly in an attempt to protect the wound.

  He went still, very possibly taking an opportunity to breathe, to find respite, to think.

  I took that opportunity for myself, using the stillness and the fact that he wasn’t rocking me this way or that to point the gun at where his spine was. I was fairly sure that the placement wouldn’t stop his heart and breathing, but would end the use of his lower body.

  The one he’d been lying on top of had been knocked senseless in more ways than just the one. While the man behind me hollered in stark horror, I climbed on top of the third man and made sure the senselessness was permanent in at least one regard. I smashed his face with the butt-end of the empty pistol, aiming for the eye socket.

  By the fifth blow, my hand was going numb from the secondary impact of the shock. I switched hands.

  He didn’t even fully rouse as I made sure that his eyes were unrecoverable, that he’d need top of the line surgery before he even got that far.

  There weren’t any others on this part of the floor that were moving. I moved between the prone and supine bodies, shooting to paralyze.

  The smoke was thicker, the sounds of people around me were clearer, and it was getting easier to move and balance.

  I knew that fire was burning somewhere, but it wasn’t spreading with enthusiasm. The smoke would be a better danger. The explosion had destroyed part of one exterior wall, and as the wall had come down, the floor had split. Now the vast majority of the others, Helen included, were down on the first floor, along with the part of the floor that had collapsed.

  Periodically, however, one of them would fire a gun. They weren’t leaving, and that told me something.

  The floor had folded, half of it now forming a steep incline. Where floorboards had broken, some broken boards stuck up like fangs, forming a kind of uneven barrier toward the middle of the room—one that was hard to use as cover to wage a war on those below, because it would’ve been cover that consisted of parts of the surrounding floor. Trying to get too close threatened to see me tumbling through broken floorboards.

  But I took hold of one of my victims, the smallest paralyzed one, and despite his very limited struggles, I was able to drag him a part of the way across the floor.

  The smoke was bad now. Every breath felt like I was drawing in salt, letting that salt settle on wounds.

  I didn’t want to get in the way of any gunfire from below, so I got the man as far as I could, then lay down on the floor, kicking him and pushing with my feet.

  He teetered over the edge, then rolled down the slope.

  I could hear the people below. There were a few more gunshots, flying up to strike ceiling and roof above. Many of the bullets created tiny circles of daylight that illuminated broad shafts of smoke, disappearing and reappearing as heavier plumes of smoke appeared across them.

  “Lamb!” one of them called out.

  I remained silent.

  “You should answer,” Mauer said. “I would.”

  That’s where you and I are different.

  “I know you’re up there!” the soldier cried out. “Lamb!”

  I took hold of a piece of floorboard that looked as though it had splintered in the middle, and tore it free. There were nails still in it, of a more old-fashioned type, not the kind that stitched would put together; they were more like long, narrow wedges.

  “Lamb, the smoke might attract the giant, if it doesn’t get other attention. Crown soldiers, whatever else they’ve got up their sleeves. It’s done. You win. We’ll cooperate. Whatever you want. But that gun you’ve got up there. Put it away.”

  Again, I remained silent.

  Silence had its uses, and I didn’t trust myself to speak.

  I knelt, wavering a little, my ears still a cacophony of nonexistent sound, and checked my gun was out of ammunition. I then disassembled it in part, tossed the chamber across the room, and then tossed the remains of the gun down.

  “Are we going to pretend there’s no other guns up there?” he called out.

  I didn’t respond.

  Smoke continued to pour forth. People down there were coughing, and I was suppressing my own coughs. The orange light of flames was dying out, not growing, but the side effect of that was that the chill was eating into me.

  My back was to a little table that served as a kind of storage chest and a table for the armchair that had been there. That same armchair now rested uneasily on broken floorboards that speared out horizontally.

  The people I’d broken and dismantled were still gasping, making pained noises, and struggling to escape, when the closest thing to a real way out was a window none of us could easily reach, followed by a drop resembling one from a third story building, probably onto jagged rubble. The lot of them were paralyzed from the waist down or with all four limbs disabled. Some weren’t moving at all.

  “I’m going to guess,” the man below called out, “That you throwing Brian down here was meant to be a message. You don’t want to talk for whatever reason. Right ho. But don’t go thinking that Franz spoke for all of us, or that we thought he was just. He was in charge, we obeyed. You know Cynthia, you saw Franz. Crossing them would end us. We have to obey, yeah?”

  “If you don’t respond,” Mauer said, “they’re going to be pushed to desperation.”

  Good.

  “Your funeral,” Mauer said. He settled into a more comfortable position, sitting across from me. Fray still stood off to the side, hugging Helen.

  The men down below were chatting. A tense discussion about possibilities, threat, and about the screams they’d heard.

  “Are you feeling biblical, Sylvester?” Mauer asked. He wasn’t a complete image like the Lambs were. He wasn’t someone I could coordinate with. When it came to the Lambs, I could finish their sentences. I could write their sentences, figure out how they would act and operate, even when they weren’t there.

  “Biblical,” I murmured the word.

  “You heard those fragments of verse from somewhere, for me to dredge up and parrot back to you,” Mauer said. “Interesting, what sticks with you. You know you’ve made other reference before, scant as it was.”

  I could hear rocks being moved down below. Part of the stairwell had collapsed, their path to the exit was clearly blocked, and so they wanted up and out.

  They simply had to get past the gatekeeper, and the gatekeeper wasn’t feeling particularly merciful.

  I could hear boards creak and protest. I could hear the scuff as boots sought traction on flooring that now acted more like a wall, a steep uphill slope.

  Emerging from my safer spot, I looked for
and saw the first of the hands reaching up, over, and out for a handhold.

  There were four of them, all climbing in concert, at separate points.

  I brought the plank down, swinging, stabbing the first hand with the nails at the end and affixing to the floor.

  The remainder, I simply opened fire on, targeting hands and arms, or in the rare case I was able to move close to the collapsed portion without risking being shot at, I aimed at feet. I disabled rather than kill, with one possible exception for the young soldier in an oversized military coat that brought his head down and forward as I was squeezing the trigger. It might have been a graze and it might have been something that shattered his forehead and leaked some of the contents of his skull out over his face. I only saw the spatter of blood and I saw him fall.

  “You lunatic!” the soldier from before called out.

  Not wholly wrong. I’m seeing things.

  “Hearing things,” Mauer amended.

  The one I’d nailed to the floor was struggling for a handhold. He wanted to reach a point where he could reach over and pull the plank free.

  My back and shoulder were aching and my shirt was sticking there in a way that suggested frank blood. The bandage had slipped, the sealing broken, no doubt. The cloth tatters that protected my two ruined fingers were already slipping loose.

  With that in mind, I was slow and careful as I got my hands on the chest-cum-teatable. I opened the door on the side and let the bottles tumble out, and then I hefted it.

  The guy at the edge where the floor was broken was scrabbling for a better grip or a foothold. He found it in the same moment I hefted the little three-foot-by-two-foot-by-three foot table. It landed atop the nails. One or two would have been knocked aside, twisting in his hand. The others would likely have been driven deeper.

  Whatever footing he’d had, he lost it. His body weight tore at the nails, to the point that I thought his hand would rip free, tears forming between the nails and the spaces between his fingers. From the looks of it, the flesh caught and bundled up, forming something more tenacious and hard to tear as it gathered.

  “What do you want!?” the one below called out.

  “What do you want?” Fray asked me, from behind me, where she stood in smoke and shadows, near one of the places the smoke was pouring out from damaged roof. “What are you fighting for, Sylvester?”

  You asked me that in the beginning. I don’t remember everything, and I forget a lot, but I remember that.

  “What do you want?” the de-facto leader hollered, voice ragged. He broke down into fits of coughing.

  Smoke settled, to an extent. Yes, it rose, it was getting steadily worse, there weren’t enough holes in the roof and walls to let it escape. Breathing was a chore. But they weren’t having a jolly time of it down there.

  “If you do this, we all die! You included, Lamb!”

  “I don’t think that’s what you want,” Fray said.

  “You need us as much as we need you!”

  No, I thought.

  There was a long pause.

  “Do you want the girl?”

  I remained silent. I kept my eyes fixed on Mauer, my gun in hand. I watched the soldiers I’d dispatched crawl and struggle on the floor. One was still nailed to the floor, the rest of him dangling from that ruined hand.

  A little snippet of hell, this. Not quite hellish enough, but I’d have to decide on some ways to patch that up.

  “If you want the girl, we can bring the girl. Just give us a ceasefire. Give us something.”

  I considered for long moments. I stared Mauer down.

  Reaching out with the pistol, I used the butt end to rap the floor. Knock. Knock.

  “That a yes?” the man called out.

  I knocked again. I didn’t want to talk, my voice strangled with smoke and emotion. I didn’t want to talk anymore for the time being.

  There was more discussion. I had the impression that smoke and circumstance was the driving force in their decision to accept.

  I could hear the order. The command to dig, to ‘find her’.

  Then the change in tone of conversation.

  “We got the body,” the leader said.

  I knocked once.

  “Coming on up,” he said.

  Helen’s hands had been tied, and it seemed very fitting that even now, unbreathing, she embraced one of the enemy.

  I ignored her, and stooped over the new leader of Cynthia’s soldiers here, and I checked him thoroughly before allowing him to climb the rest of the way up.

  He was followed by several others. Three men, each of whom I patted down, each of whom coughed and looked around at the work I’d done, at blood and fragments on the floor. One made a move toward the man I’d nailed to the floor, and I moved to get in his path, standing ten feet apart from him.

  “Leave them for now,” the de-facto leader said. He wore a helmet that covered much of his face.

  I suspected it would be back to business as normal as soon as I was dealt with. They could do that at any time. The only things I had going for me was a familiar with dark, smoky places, and an ability to endure pain and get moving faster. I’d already spent the second coin.

  “There’s more down there,” the leader said. He looked up. “We’ll have to use the window up there. We get your friend’s body up and out and you’re satisfied, yeah?”

  I nodded once.

  It took his friends to help him. I watched, cold, as the leader was lifted up to the beam that now hung, connected at only one end. It made for an uneasy tightrope walk of sorts to the window Jessie had escaped through.

  They’d get in my way. I couldn’t just ask to be helped up like their new squadron leader had. I couldn’t even try gun, because the climb up required both hands.

  No. Something simpler. I would get their help without asking.

  One used the boost provided by the other two to reach for the beam. The other two glanced momentarily at me.

  I ran, and it wasn’t a pretty run, or a fast one. The smoke meant I wasn’t taking in enough oxygen. I was distracted, and my balance was still a little off. The effect of the bomb blast or whatever it had been made every part of me hurt. My shoulder was bleeding through whatever cracks had formed in the seal and gaps in bandage.

  But I ran, choosing to run through plumes of smoke, to better surprise. I ran, setting foot where I was pretty sure the support struts ran under floorboards, marking the breaking point where long floorboards had broken in two. The action meant I made less sound.

  By the time they realized I was making my move, I was in close. I ran along the back of one and up to the back and shoulders of the other, who was busy climbing up.

  His instincts were good. The moment something was wrong, a sudden weight on his back, he let go of the beam,dropping.

  But in moving my feet to try and find footing to climb up the rest of the way, I’d set foot on the side of his face and his shoulder. I was able to launch myself skyward and catch the beam.

  The men on the ground immediately set to looking for weapons. One ran to the edge and shouted for a gun to be thrown up.

  I could have aimed and shot at them to buy myself time, but I didn’t trust my balance at this time. No.

  I ran along the beam the soldier with Helen was still walking unsteadily on.

  He turned, and he held Helen draped over one shoulder so she served as a partial shield. I could see the blood. Too much blood.

  “Not going to let you pass,” he said.

  A figure moved behind him. Sensing her or feeling the movement along the beam, he lashed out, smacking her across the face, and then grabbed her. It was a clumsy maneuver, but there wasn’t much space between Jessie and the window. She had to reach out to catch the side of the window.

  “Do you want to lose another?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t want to lose any more.”

  My eyes were downcast. I could see Fray and Mauer in the midst of black smoke. Helen stood a distance a
way.

  “Jump down,” he said. “Jump down, I’ll toss this one down onto the floor down there instead of out the window. They’ll decide what to do with all of you.”

  “I think I burned that bridge,” I said. “Besides, you’re missing the most important part of this.”

  “Fuck you, Lamb,” the soldier said.

  Not quite the ask and answer I’d hoped for. Still…

  “You hurt my friend,” I said. “In terms of me, that means your friends down there suffer. I have no more patience for any of this. It means you suffer. You don’t get to go easy. Understand?”

  “Fuck yourself,” he said. He looked down at his buddies, who had guns now.

  Guns and half-decent shots at me, but with a risk of collateral damage to their buddy here. Smoke didn’t help, nor would it help if they were feeling as unsteady as I had been.

  “That’s in terms of me. Suffering. Justice. But in terms of her…”

  He turned his head, looking more at Jessie.

  “Other her,” I said.

  Helen, head still lolling, slipped her arms free of the restraints and wrapped her arms around his head and neck.

  Panicking, the man reached up, and he tore her arm away from his neck.

  He’d broken her grip.

  Helen’s grip.

  What followed was frantic. Helen slipped and nearly fell, grabbing the beam instead. Jessie helped catch Helen before she could lose her grip on the beam too, and I charged forward.

  Between the two of them, each with some form of hold on the soldier, we bulled him off of the beam. My sole contribution was to stumble into the two of them, getting them and myself out of the window.

  The window swung outward. Jessie held it and Helen, Helen held Jessie, and I held onto both. We collided, all three of us, with the wall as the window swung out. My shoulder flared with pain, Helen looked like she was slipping, and Jessie had the burden of the two of us.

  But Jessie had her own kind of tenacity. She didn’t lose her grip, and her grip was what was essential. That and the structural integrity of the round window. Slowly, surely, she transferred the two of us to handholds.

  It was glacially slow for us to climb down. Jessie, meanwhile, took care of the latter part of the revenge. A bit of alcohol, a match, and the beam that served as the lifeline was set on fire. She quickly made her way down.