Sondranos: The Narrative of Leon Bishop

by Patrick Stephens

  “One of us is,” an unfamiliar female voice called down.

  The new woman carried Davion with her as their shadows fragmented the light of the cellar. I rushed to help while Melanie watched. The new woman was tall, with more figure than Melanie. She held less weight and her head was topped by dyed red hair. It had lost its sheen since the last time she’d coloured it, so the tint mixed with brown roots beneath. A large shirt, men’s size, hung over her shoulders and de-emphasized her heavy-set chest. I was certain she wore it for that exact purpose.

  Let it be said that sexual competition always exists in matters of life and death because Melanie looked at her breasts first, cocked her head to the side, and grimaced before speaking.

  “Is anyone else out there?”

  I retrieved Melanie’s bowl and filled it and my own with more Blanc de Noirs.

  I walked over to the woman and offered my bowl, as if to trade.

  “Thanks,” she huffed.

  At the bottom of the steps, Davion steadied on his feet and collapsed onto my side as he shifted weight. I saved the wine. I escorted Davion to the same barrel Melanie sat on. She begrudgingly let him take her place, snatching her bowl from my hand, just as careful not to spill. Melanie swirled the contents, sniffed, and sipped.

  “I’m Annalise Davenport. And no, ma’am. Nobody else I could see. It was lucky I caught your friend here before the darts came.”

  “Darts?”

  “Looked like escape pods. Only they’d been retrofitted with some pretty powerful guns. They were mowing down anything that moved,” she said. “Though now that I think about it, they didn’t take aim at us once we left the main road.”

  “Once your friend was eliminated,” Davion said.

  “That was the first time I’d ever met him.”

  Melanie had a passivity that only broke when she was angry. I could sense the opposite from Annalise. In any other situation, my attention could have been drawn to her first. In the classroom, I would have deemed her as a risk for disruptions. Annalise sniffed the contents of the bowl, glanced quickly in my direction and then gulped the contents. Where matters of the end of the world occur, even the finest of wines become nothing more than distractions.

  Davion slumped forward, his hands over his eyes and his head near his knees. He dry heaved twice. All of us stayed silent as he spat out something white, rubbed his eyes, and sat up.

  “We’re safe,” Davion began. “They didn’t use anything that would poison the atmosphere. If we can find somewhere safe, we can survive this.”

  “You can’t know that for sure,” Melanie interrupted.

  Davion locked eyes on her.

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “I have my thoughts. But I’d rather not say anything.”

  It took ten minutes of Davion answering the same questions with the same answers before Annalise stepped forward. She’d taken it upon herself to refill her bowl it and handed it to Davion. If we weren’t careful, we could drain every cask in the cellar dry before the day was over. I’d already begun feeling the slightest numbing of my senses, which usually resulted in an overpowering urge to reminisce if I’d drunk too much. Melanie might have also begun feeling the effects, but I never could have proven it. She then retreated to a spot behind us. Davion drank and a smile the colour of the Blanc de Noirs tinted his lips paler than his face; he started to tell what had happened after he’d ordered Melanie and I to the cellar.

  “I found Annalise and told her where to go before realizing I had to give up on any survivors,” Davion said. “If there were more of those darts, or any people inclined to violence, then any efforts I made would be fruitless. She helped me back here. It may have only been the wind knocked out of me, but that was enough. I’ve been fasting for three weeks now. My body was weaker than it should have been.”

  After a pause, Davion added as an afterthought: “I am ashamed to say I was unable to save another, but he brought death upon himself.”

  Annalise eyed me from her spot near the casks and took a deep breath.

  Melanie glared at Davion. She was thinking of her mother, and the state her father had left them in. I didn’t need to work with shaping young minds to understand that. “How does someone bring death upon themselves?”

  Davion swivelled to face her. He placed his hand on his side and groaned as he twisted his body. Melanie knelt before him. He whispered towards her with the energy of a priest, much like the same energy she’d displayed back in the Abbey. Had I not known any better, I would have thought her to be genuinely concerned.

  Annalise ushered me to the side, near the opened cask.

  What followed was what Annalise had seen. I could tell she wanted me to know everything, as her tone questioned whether or not it would come back to haunt her later. I’d learn later that she’d had issues with the right story being told. One story can have different plots, meanings, and events if the tellers are different enough. Annalise was careful, afraid of what she said. Annalise didn’t seem to trust anyone, but I trusted her, and maybe that was enough. Maybe that’s why I choose now to portray her tale and not Davion’s.

  Annalise Davenport inspects her car when the implosion of Sondranos begins. The sudden pressure change in the atmosphere had been enough to send the engine into fits before it died completely, so now she hopes something is wrong with the car and not the system propelling her away from the city. The sound-proof interior of her Hybrid-Delorix muffled the rumblings of explosions and detonations.

  She kneels down and looks beneath. The carriage looks fine: black cables and steel rods, no leaks, and the bright green hydraulic system seems to be fully pressurized. Unfortunately, there is no tell-tale blue lightning bolt arcing from the battery to the Transit Strip. It should have a constant stream of static electricity to a thin metallurgic line beneath the pavement.

  She gets up, wishing she’d left for home a bit earlier.

  Her probation officer wouldn’t have minded her leaving their court mandated meeting a bit earlier, he was always more considerate of her given the charges. Instead, she’d shown him the same respect, and just took on the anxiety of wanting to leave the city limits internally.

  It’s the smell that grabs her attention.

  A gust from behind her of burnt Aurichrome, on a bitter and alcoholic wind.

  Annalise stands on the tip of her toes to see into the distance, curious. Sondranos crater-life isn’t flat, as most would expect. There are sudden jutting hillsides and deep crevasses that make the crater floor feel like a shaved down version of the Highlands. While she wasn’t too far from the Terminal, she’d just crested down a hill that blocked her view of the city by just a few inches on the horizon line.

  A man in his truck a few lanes ahead gets out of his car and stumbles.

  He grimaces, and it makes him look like an actor scrunching his face as exercise. There aren’t any other cars nearby. Annalise is certain that if there were, they’d all be doing the same as him. In the distance, Annalise notices a meteorite plunging from low orbit, though she knows that’s not what it is. The man next to his truck starts pushing from the back end, grabbing the tow hitch with a large, meaty hand. He’s clueless.

  Annalise jogs up to him. Running feels like it would make her panic, so she doesn’t do it. Keep it calm, she whispers, hoping her body will listen. Keep it collected.

  “What are you doing? We have to get out of here,” she says.

  “Damned thing can’t start,” he grunts as he pushes again.

  “Have you looked in the other direction?” Annalise mumbles, and scans the horizon. She refuses to look at the destruction. Already, plumes have begun to form and shuttles started falling from the sky. This grabs the man’s attention. He turns around. Annalise can see the terror in his eyes. They agree on something in that moment – it’s best left unspoken for now.

  “We have to go,” she says, again. He shakes his head.

  “I don’t understand,” he says. “This has to
be a joke.”

  Silence. Awkward, broken silence that Annalise doesn’t want to hear.

  “I have a small arsenal in this truck,” the man finally says. It makes Annalise feel somewhat safer. But not by much. The man looks at her, confused, and then corrects his expression. “Most of it’s highly explosive.”

  “Maybe we should head for the terminal – it’s close by, right?”

  “I’m not leaving this truck.”

  Annalise groans, looks at the terminal, and takes a deep breath. Why can’t she just leave?

  “Damn it,” she mumbles.

  She turns to help the man with the truck; her heart sinks in her chest. She pushes. The truck doesn’t move and she feels the tendons in her legs straining and crying out for her to stop. Dull pain reels down her legs and swims in her mind. She’s sure she felt the blast, but does her best to ignore it. She’s been getting better at ignoring certain parts of Sondranos. Panic: she can control it. She’s done it once, she can do it again.

  They push harder. Annalise hears the gears rattling under the strain of the truck’s weight.

  A flash of light and it feels like someone’s throwing Annalise into the car – it gives her and the man the false sense of strength they need to think they’re doing well. She ignores the pressure on her back and wrists. The connection bolt is gone, but the magnetic strip – often used when the programming goes awry or someone at Transit hasn’t been paying attention – still clings to the truck for dear life, creating a kind of friction that turns the movement of the wheels into momentum in dry glue. If the system were to restart, then it could send a surge through the frame of the truck so strong that every combustible item would detonate. Which is why ancient combustion engines and weapons weren’t allowed in transports, she wants to say. An explosion on the road would cause the strip beneath to ignite, severing any chance of a five kilometre restart of the system.

  “We need to keep pushing it forward. The connection isn’t severed,” she says, instead.

  “Is there some other way to cut it?”

  “Not unless you have a directed EMP generator on hand.”

  The man looks at her and shakes his head. He makes a movement that reminds Annalise of police officers searching for their badge, and she suddenly feels intense distaste for the man. “Other pants, sorry.”

  She stifles a smile, and they both push forward.

  Again, it starts moving.

  A bit of gravel crunches under the wheels.

  She sets her back against the truck bed latch and pushes with her legs. She can’t help it, the reprimand falls off her tongue. “Why the hell were you carrying a truck full of explosives? You do know those things are illegal.”

  “Not plain explosives. Highly explosive rounds and a few guns. I’m transporting them to the detonation yards,” he grunts.

  The sound of screaming and a slight jerk of the truck forward startles her. It isn’t normal screaming – a high pitched wail from overhead shudders in her chest and freezes her heart. She stumbles to her knees. Instead of standing, she looks up; her companion hasn’t fallen, but he does the same. Darts streak into the atmosphere, exiting the cover of clouds now blanketing above the city. First one, then a dozen more. They circle the city. Some head to the West, others to the South. Annalise draws a mental line on the map of Sondranos. To the South is the military base. West is in her direction – suburbia.

  “Who would attack us?” the man asks.

  Annalise keeps silent.

  A dart turns their way. Its silver glints in tiny specks of sunlight poking through the city smoke. Annalise tries to see the mother-ship, but can only see blue above.

  “We have to leave this behind,” Annalise says. “Let it blow, it’s all going to go that way anyway.”

  “No. I have to get paid,” the man yells, and pushes harder.

  She can tell that his mind has jumped to the next logical assumption.

  All this was just a distraction.

  “How much do you want to bet that ship is flying towards us with ‘making peace’ on its roster?” Annalise stops and sets her hand on his shoulder.

  The man doesn’t turn around. He keeps pushing.

  Annalise sets both hands on him and pulls him around.

  He slips and lands knee-first on the road. His gaze turns momentarily to the sky.

  “Those look like Aeronautics escape pods,” the man says, muttering like someone had just wiped his brain clear of all emotion. He’s right. The dart looks more like a bullet flying at low speed when it turns. Solid, jerky movements convince her that control is minimal behind the wheel. The darts have no windows to speak of and only a stream of exhaust showing its flight path. “That’s impossible. Those haven’t been in use for about four hundred years,” he says.

  Annalise notices the priest coming towards them from the corner of her eye. His robes kick about his body. He moves at a brisk pace, no more than a jog. He waves his arms at the two.

  The man with the explosive truck is watching the dart, dumbfounded. Annalise instantly connects that the priest is coming from the Abbey next to the terminal. The priest comes closer – his eyes are wide and he wipes sweat from his brow onto his pants.

  The man pushing the truck scrambles to his feet and runs to the passenger side door. He climbs in and struggles, reaching something Annalise can’t see even though she has an idea of what it might be.

  Annalise doesn’t know which direction to go – to the priest or with the man? She recalls him mimicking a police officer and heads for the priest to warn him away. By then, the dart is even closer. The scream is louder, like wind through a tunnel. She can see something bright glowing near the centre. The dart shakes slightly against the wind before firing. Small bursts explode like light bulbs from the barrels set within the front. The bullets – if she can even call them that – hit with the impact of small meteorites. Dirt, pavement, and grass plumes into the air. Annalise dives to the ground, covering her head

  They hit the bed of the truck,

  KA-DING, KA-DING, KA-DING

  . Bullets clamour against the cabin, piercing the body without any effort.

  Two land in the bed while one pierces the roof.

  When the clinging stops, Annalise turns to face the truck. The man sprawls out, nearly collapsing out of the seat. He’s been hit in the arm; blood courses through his tee-shirt. As he struggles to turn, Annalise notices the rifle. He points it at the dart and begins firing.

  The priest reaches Annalise at the moment pride starts to settle in her stomach. Always fight back, no matter the odds. She wants to join the man. Anger has begun powering through her veins. She doesn’t want to know the whole story; she wants to make the attackers die. Preferably slowly.

  The priest stops her as she stands. “What is he doing?”

  “What do you think?” Annalise scans the location of the dart before heading towards the truck. The priest grabs her shirt and pulls her to him; Annalise’s gut reaction is to rear back and hit him. The priest keeps his hold on her shirt, so when he sprawls backwards, she falls too.

  “I will not let you kill yourself, Miss,” the priest yells as they tumble together, awkwardly.

  Out of her periphery she hears the man firing. Small balls of white energy propel outwards, surrounding by the crack of propulsion. After a dozen or so shots, the man stops firing. He pulls out the chamber and reloads with a round he pulls from his pocket. The dart swivels around and screams back into another strafing run.

  KA-DING, KA-

  A bullet catches the engine and ignites.

  There’s the spark.

  It catches the engine and sends a pulse through the truck. A crack in the pavement streaks out like lightning from both ends of the truck as the strip beneath the pavement burns like incendiary paper. Smoke bleeds through cracks in the pavement, steam rising up as far as Annalise can see. At the truck, fire plumes upwards and the dart dives through the conflagration. Annalise watches the dart. A small trickle of
black smoke bleeds from a point below the dart’s thruster. It bucks and weaves back towards the city. At least he took a chunk out of it first, she thinks. She doesn’t consider that she could have been killed in that explosion until afterwards. She doesn’t need to look to know that his body is charred beyond recognition, scattered across the roadside with the rest of his truck.

  “We have to get out of here,” she says to the priest.

  “I agree wholeheartedly,” the priest says. “I know a place we can go.”

  Annalise silenced herself with a snap. I could imagine what happened next.

  “I’m pretty sure they were just cleaning up resistance,” Annalise said after a moment of silence. “Making way for ground troops.”

  “Why?”

  “They went for the weapons, not the people. At least, that’s how it seemed.”

  Davion clapped his hands together. The noise brought the attention of the room back to him. Melanie’s knees popped as she stood. Her features had resumed that sunken look.

  “We need to leave,” Davion whispered. It was still loud enough to bounce off the walls. We either hadn’t heard any more detonations, or the darts were busy in other areas. Annalise looked at me.

  “We can’t head south,” Annalise said.

  “No. North,” said Davion.

  “I’m fine staying here,” Melanie mumbles.

  “They haven’t bothered to touch the Abbey,” Davion turned to Annalise. “Am I correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “That stands to reason they are only going after people. Or at the very least, they are respectful of religious foundations.”

  “Maybe they just haven’t hit us yet,” Annalise said.

  “Rules of extinction don’t really apply when it begins,” I said.

  “Nobody could make the human race extinct,” Melanie responded. “Not now.”

  “I suggest we head to my commune,” Davion continued. “It’s in the north, just on the edge of the crags.”

  “Why?”

  “The landscape provides natural protection. It’s safe, and I know that it will remain so. There are even ancient tunnels dug into the side allowing for surface protection. We can hide there for months with the provisions my people grow to maintain stability.”