Sondranos: The Narrative of Leon Bishop

by Patrick Stephens

  “This is a terrible idea,” I said.

  “Would you rather the Belovores hear the car?”

  “No,” I stammered.

  “Then do you have something better?”

  I suddenly resented how she’d taken control of our group. My headache had gone away, but I felt like the reminder had been hanging over me. Daniel’s voice told me ‘I wouldn’t trust you to make another plan, either.’ As it was, I didn’t have any better ideas. With the Belovores getting closer, it seemed Annalise would have to save us. Again.

  “It’s a stupid idea,” she said. I wanted to tell her I understood, even though all I really wanted was to not hear it. “Life is filled with them. But we’re going to follow through with this one and hope it turns out for the best – in these situations, smart goes out the window, runs down the corner, hits some trash cans and then gets nailed by oncoming traffic.”

  I had nothing else to add.

  Annalise asked Kayt if she was ready, and repeated her instructions. Kayt acknowledged with a nod. She took a deep breath and almost choked on it. I wanted to hug her, to offer some kind of comfort. Maybe that would have been more active. But I couldn’t, even then. Kayt walked to the door nearly hyperventilating, and set her hands flat. She then put her hand on the door handle. After another deep breath, and a wipe of her cheek, she said she was ready. We made our way to the couch opposite the windows, and Annalise set her – what I assumed to be – stereo system on the table. She fingered the button, and made sure it was ready to play.

  “Tough girl,” Annalise whispered. She climbed over the couch and surveyed the small space between it and the wall. “Kayt? Make sure they pick us up, okay?”

  Kayt stopped breathing. She held it in her chest and furrowed her brow quizzically. It wasn’t until Annalise broke her sturdy expression and winked that Kayt got the joke and laughed. She covered her mouth with her hand. She stretched her arms out and shook them, and popped her neck. She laughed again, letting it die away.

  “Why haven’t you been asking me to do anything?” I asked. Annalise and I set behind the couch. I lowered my voice so Kayt couldn’t hear. Annalise paused, and attempted to hide a grimace by looking in another direction.

  “You aren’t ready for that,” she shrugged.

  I saw red. My skin was on fire, and I could feel anger boiling in the pit of my stomach. This time my head pounded, throbbed where I’d impacted the Belovore a few hours earlier. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? I’m more than capable of acting on my own and helping us survive.”

  “Really? The last action you made was to ram your head into something and nearly kill yourself – and if that’s the case, then why have you only been following me?” Annalise asked. “You divide your time between inaction and rash action.”

  I didn’t get time to answer. I wanted to scream back at her, but images of Daniel saying something similar came back and took over. I imagined him trying to goad me into action by saying I didn’t deserve what I’d had, and it felt like Annalise was doing the same. But before I could do anything, Kayt swung open the door and ran out – severing my anger. She must have thought it was the best moment, and forgot that Annalise was supposed to hit play on the music first. She was wrong.

  Annalise cursed, jumped back around the couch, and fumbled with the box. She had previously looked like she was going to select a certain song. Now, she scrambled to find something – anything. The trio of Belovores must have spun around when the music started. When we ducked behind the couch, we’d only hoped it was enough time to distract them from Kayt running across the street, and that her premature action hadn’t drawn their attention right to her, instead of serving as a distraction.

  The music rattled the walls. Pictures of Robert and a woman I could only assume was his wife shook. One fell off the wall, shattering. The holographic display inside fizzled, and the picture went out. The song pounded into a resonating thump, and Patsy Cline began to sing over speakers that looked far too small to carry a voice as voluminous as hers. Behind the couch, Annalise looked at me and began to sing along. She had no idea that I was still furious with her insinuation. A lot of people get angry when faced with the truth, and I was one of them.

  “Crazy,” I could hardly hear her voice over the noise, and I was within a few inches. I put my finger to my lips and tried to shush her – an even more pointless gesture than assuming we could stay quiet. “I’m crazy for feeling…”

  A pounding on the door made the beat sound like it had lost itself. The door cracked down, and the room grew warmer with the sudden breeze from outside. The breath of air smelled distinctly metallic – the Belovores were here.

  Annalise’s eyes teemed with tears. She still held her smile. She ducked down behind the couch even more, pulling her knees up to her chest. I followed suit, and closed my eyes. She put her head on my shoulder again, but this time sang in my ear. My head and neck throbbed from the constant stimulation.

  Annalise continued to sing along, her voice barely audible over the explosion of music. The Patsy Cline song ended with a crash. The silence was sudden, and painful. The Belovore destroyed the radio device, smashing it and scattered the pieces around the room. The pulsating red button was near the fireplace, dead to the world. Annalise was about to sing the next line when two large hands gripped us by the shoulders. Pain surged down my back through my ribs as the pressure forced the pain in my head to double. Annalise tried mouthing the words when she was yanked upwards; a hand grabbed me by the shoulder pulling me with her.

  The Belovore stank of steel shavings and mildew. Burnt sheet-metal. It sniffed us and pulled us from around the couch. We went willingly, hoping it wouldn’t try anything rash. Neither Annalise nor I said anything. We didn’t want to end up like the boy in the street. Instead, we listened as the Belovore pushed us out of the house to meet up with the other two in its group.

  This Belovore had strong chest plates. They were massive, and connected in a way that disproved that all the plates came in segments. This one might as well have been one giant armouring. The thin red lines connecting the muscle to the plate only showed near the chelimbs, and around its eyes. I called this one Chest-Plate, as I can still see the colour of red dancing beneath the surface when I close my eyes. It’s him that I associate the burning of Sondranos with, not the Irene, and not the Belovores I would meet.

  Chest-Plate pushed us forward with one of its chelimbs – I wanted to break out into a nervous chuckle thinking about the crab claw prodding me forward, but Annalise caught me before it happened. Kayt stared back at us from the group as we were neared closer. She’d been caught by the third – which had no discernible differences other than being the third in the trio. Kayt’s pants were torn at the knees. Blood stained the fabric, much like the tears that caressed her cheeks and sparkled in the sunlight. She’d tripped at the edge of the yard.

  She mouthed ‘I’m so sorry,’ when she saw us. The Belovore who’d caught her pushed her forward. She jumped at its touch and stifled a cry. Annalise gave no response, and neither did I.

  Chest-Plate urged us to the group, and walked beyond us towards the other prisoners. Most of them were crying – others were silent. One or two whispered between each other, words of disgust and hatred. Davion would have lectured them on the finer points of polite wording. However, Annalise, Kayt and I smiled when we felt a distinct rumbling in the distance. The Belovores hadn’t noticed it: the sound of an engine rumbling from the direction of Annalise’s garage. When we looked to the house, Lancaster’s spot in the blinds had been covered, the blinds replaced to their original standing amongst the others. The Belovores had no idea that it was a new sound – as far as they knew, it was just another noise in the distance.

  We were now on Davion and Melanie’s clock.

  Chapter Eight:

  Escape from Covenant Street

  Five weeks into the semester, I start teaching from a novel by Arnold Richter, the author of The Refuge of Albion. One of t
he quotes he loved to throw into his novels, no matter the perspective, was: ‘Nothing could be more fantastic, more… full of wonder than living in the future. It is my life’s goal to reach that day.’

  My favourite part is when I follow those discussions by asking the class to write a conservative discussion on the following statement: ‘What do you think Richter would say to learn that seven hundred and ninety-six years from the year 2000, lights are still lights; food is food; cars are still cars, albeit with entirely different propulsion units; and revenge, fear, and death are just as prevalent as they’d always been?’

  I never got the same answer twice. Even now, I can’t nail down the answer.

  Instead, I look back at all I’ve written and I can see that I needed a break. I wrote the last section in a hurry. I was terrified of admitting what had happened. The words came out, but I can’t remember writing a single one of them. Since then, I’ve taken silence as my companion. I can think clearly. Which I suppose is for the best considering what I have to tell next.

  The future is never as bright as when it still exists in infinite possibilities.

  With the car’s engine idling somewhere out of notice for the Belovores, we breathed a sigh of relief. The ignition would have definitely grabbed their attention. Annalise looked at me with content in her eyes - that kind you get when you think you’re going to die, but something else is going to make sure you won’t go down without a fight. It was hard to believe that this was part of her plan, and part of me still wanted to yell at her for coming up with it when I knew – and had to acknowledge – that I hadn’t been trying to come up with anything. How could I fault someone for trying where I hadn’t?

  “Into the group,” Chest-Plate said. The other Belovores were near carbon copies of each other. Sheered faces, with dull, flat teeth coming out between twig lips. Even though their teeth were flat, I imagined they were like a carnivore’s– perfect for tearing.

  “They seem so nonchalant about all this,” Kayt whispered. We pushed into the crowd, stepping away from Chest-Plate as he resumed patrolling the group. I looked up the road leading north. The rest of the Belovores patrolled the houses, pulling people out. A couple bodies littered the side of the road. One had her face upturned, just a short distance past the corner where we waited. She looked at peace, although her body was torn ragged on the curb.

  The group didn’t move for us. Instead, we were absorbed into their shape. I couldn’t count the numbers then, either, and I resolved to stop trying. It felt like we were somewhere between twenty and thirty in size.

  “This isn’t a battle,” I said. “Where’s your military? Police force? Anything defensive?”

  “That’s what I’ve been wondering. The attack must have been planned for a long time,” Annalise said. She nudged into a man who leaned against a girl that must have been his grand-daughter, and held his other hand out as if looking for his cane. “Here’s what I figure. They took out Sondranos-proper immediately. They flew to the south and must have taken out the airstrip there, along with the defensive base. They even destroyed the terminals, if what happened to the one near the Abbey was any indication. But what about the weapons? There must have been thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of guns and ammo stores.”

  The old man spoke up. The young woman by his side tried to calm him by placing her hand on his chest before he got worked up. “They found ways to track us without showing their faces. Rotten aliens.”

  “Sondranos is given easily into the hands of those who deserve it,” Chest-Plate silenced us. His voice had a disturbing finality to it, like a growl subsiding into something harsh and throaty. Chest-Plate’s words had a slight Russian twinge to them. If we could have gotten through this without having to hear him again, I would have been happy.

  “You mean to say you destroyed the entire Squadron Defensive Forces?” The old man asked. Chest-Plate stepped towards the man, pushing Annalise and Kayt out of the way. The girl whimpered and asked him to be quiet. “You only won ‘cause you fought dirty. There’s a reason we ain’t called you humans – you’re the furthest thing from it.”

  Chest-Plate didn’t care about the intended insult. To him, ‘human’ was simply another word in our dialect. The old man frowned at the lack of a rise in Chest-Plate. “Sondranos has always been ours, from the day we left. Our return was predestined. We had many years to remove the obstacles you might think effective,” Chest-Plate said.

  “What do you mean by obstacles? What’s the reason for any of this?” I asked.

  Chest-Plate turned to me and sneered. His breath stank of rotting leaves. “We have always been working towards our rebirth.”

  “That doesn’t explain the absence of a police force, or guns, or weapons of any kind,” Annalise said. Her eyes widened in realization. She stepped back, knocking into me and the old man. Kayt stepped closer. The old man acted as if he felt Annalise’s pain and gasped. He tried to push away from the girl, and tears nipped at the corners of his eyes. Chest-Plate didn’t move, and our sudden shift in direction only forced us closer. I steadied Annalise and, for the first time, saw fear and bewilderment. She looked at me. To say I was confused is an understatement. At that moment, she was more abstract than ever – I knew all I could know in such a short time, yet I didn’t know enough to read the emotion behind her looks. “I may have messed up.”

  “The sacrifice of our brethren will not be in vain,” Chest-Plate rasped.

  The old man clapped me on the shoulder. He let the weight of his body push forward, and used me as a steady foundation to stand. From behind Annalise, and continuing the conversation that was – hopefully – beyond Belovore ears, he said: “Ya can’t get within a few thousand kilometres of the planet without alertin’ SDF. However, if something travels fast enough through the atmosphere, SDF can’t track it until it hits. I’m willing to bet these things kamikaze’d their own pods just to take the big guns out first.”

  “Fear,” Kayt mumbled. “Why cause a panic when you think you can take on the world?”

  “You are a simple folk. Your ancestors once claimed we were the ones who had become stagnant – and yet, you cannot grow enough to fathom your own vulnerability,” Chest-Plate began to laugh. At least, I think it was a laugh. He stepped away from our bit of the circle and resumed patrolling. He barked something at Vertebrae and Third, who performed the same guttural laugh.

  “But what about weapons? Sondranos can’t have such a wonderfully non-corrupt police force. There have to be enthusiasts or criminals somewhere with weapons,” I said. None of this was in the brochure, and I felt somewhat slighted.

  “The man on the road had a pretty nice firearm,” Annalise recalled. Her eyes told me she looked inwards, to the past. “He got taken out pretty quickly. And then the dart flew back to the centre of the city. I’m willing to bet anyone with a weapon is being tracked. That dart could have hit us easily. The only thing making us different was that we weren’t armed.”

  The old man cut in again. The girl at his side set her forehead in her palm, trying to conceal that she was crying. Kayt moved past Annalise and set her arm around the girl, attempting to comfort her. The girl rested her head on Kayt’s shoulder.

  “Ain’t you ever tried to buy a gun, son? Well, I guess not if I ain’t never seen you in my store. I never forget a face, and I own the only gun shop on this side of town. All projectile weapons with an explosive power source are fitted with an ID chip,” the old man said. Then, as if he wanted no part in what he claimed next, past or present: “Governor Trottier passed that bill requiring a tracer for anything that can be used to kill a man. He’s dead now, and I’m fine sayin’ I never voted for ‘im.”

  “Why in the world would anyone want to do that?” I asked.

  “Has anyone in your family ever been shot, and the shooter went free?”

  This was the future Arnold Richter wanted to live in - where the only significant changes were how to control more violence. It was easy, then, to say that
the idea was ridiculous. What the old man would have explained, in a simpler situation, was:

  The chips record the fingerprints on the handles of every weapon on Sondranos. It privately logs the amount of bullets or charges fired, and connects with a satellite to link up the location when used. That same satellite sends a dead man’s switch to these chips every three hours. If you remove the chip, the signal doesn’t get through, and it short circuits the wiring. It melts the inside of the barrel and disables the weapon, making it useless. These chips had allowed Sondranos’ only defense - short of knives and swords - to be destroyed. I can bet that I would have never questioned that law if I’d gone on to live in Sondranos proper.

  I shook my head and turned away from the old man. Annalise took a deep breath and surveyed the neighbourhood. Kayt still comforted the girl, but she seemed to be calming down. The three Belovores ignored us and continued patrolling. It seemed we had bought time.

  A report of gunfire ricocheted through the neighbourhood. Two houses down from Annalise’s, right on the corner, a man ran from his door just as a Belovore set a foot on his lawn. Moaning and quiet sobbing came from the crowd. Chest-Plate, Vertebrae and Third all turned to face the house. The man was in his thirties, possibly older, with long red hair and dirty pants. He wore no shirt and was slightly overweight for his age. The Belovore was a shade as dark as night. Crimson lines surrounded the Belovore’s body plates, and its face was a kind of charcoal. It looked stronger than the rest.