Fables of Failure

by Gregory R. Marshall

  I ran to my next spot of cover and dove for safety. A dusting of rock powder sprinkled my bark, from where the bullet broke a corner of the cover away. Gods, how long was I going to be able to keep doing this? Rushing a trained marksman in the dead of night? He was probably laughing at how stupid I was being. What choice did I have? Could I flag down a trucker, use his radio to get help? I ran and dove. Another shot rang out, the path of the bullet much too close for comfort. I looked out at the road and quickly brought my head back to safety. I was close enough now that he might switch guns.

  There were two possible sources of cover, on my left and right. I desperately needed to increase the odds a bit. Hefting a large rock, I took off my coat and cinched it around the belly of the rock. I threw it towards one cover, and watched my coat flutter as it was riddled with submachine gun bullets. Before the volley stopped I reached the next boulder. He was not on the opposite side of the highway at all—he was using the traffic to shield his rear, and he was camped out behind his own rock formation, facing me.

  Now I was close enough to shoot back, and there was no doubt that this is what was called for. If there was any advantage on my end to speak of, it was that his cover was smaller than mine, and I would have an easier time spotting him when he darted out of hiding to open fire. Behind him, the traffic was a shrieking, honking, hellish procession. It was so hard to think. I sensed movement, like the Creep was shifting his weight and getting ready to spring into sight. My shot rang out, but missed. I’d forgotten how bad the recoil can be on an Opus Magnum—it made my old Provisian Peacemaker look like a popgun. It was liable to take my arm off.

  A pause in the fighting stretched, ominous and interminable. Finally, Mission Creep’s fire went a bit wide on the other side of my rock. He must have anticipated that I was going to pop up on the other side of the boulder. I would not get another chance like this. I rose and brought my gun level.

  I don’t remember falling to the ground, but I was dropped in a screaming heap, my hands up to my empty left eye socket. It could have been any number of things that had taken my eye. He could have shot it out, or shot the gun out of my hand as I was firing. It could have been the recoil. I knew then that it was over, but I could do nothing but scream.

  He was approaching me now; somehow, I knew that though it was impossible to hear anything over the din of the traffic and my own agony. The part of me that could still feel emotion was deeply sad. I wasn’t in despair because I had failed, or because I was going to die—it was nothing so rational as that. I was saddened because I knew the Creep better than anyone else, better than his mom or his step father or the redneck children he used to run with. And now I was just an animal in a trap, and he was going to put me down.

  I felt him over me, and my heartrate actually slowed. It seemed like I could feel the decrease in the blood flow gushing from my lost eye. I knew he was leveling his gun at my head, that he was going to waste me.

  6

  And he did fire. Had he deliberately missed me? The desolation I had felt a moment ago gave way to anger. He was toying with me, deliberately missing at point blank range. I had misjudged him, thinking he had more honor than that. My hands moved to uncover my good eye.

  He wasn’t shooting at me. There were gunmen, at least three, stationed among the boulders and rocks. “Don’ shoot!” Mission Creep hollered. “I’m on yer side! Don’ shoot! Don’ shoot me none!” They shot. They couldn’t hear a word he was saying above the gunfire and traffic. He was just a voice in the wilderness, screaming at other badly confused men.

  Now it was possible to piece together what was happening. Mission Creep was accomplishing his objectives, but not in the right sequence. He had incapacitated me and found one of the Ignoble militias. But they didn’t know who he was or what he had. They must have thought Mission Creep was a Burialist coyote or a cartel man. I looked up at him. He was gritting his teeth. I had never seen him shoot like that before. It was like he didn’t want to hit them. He finally knew who his people were; he was finally among his brethren. And all they wanted to do was kill him.

  He ducked down, bullets pounding the side of our cover. He was on the wrong side of the boulder for it to give him much protection. The assailants were to the left of him, the broad side of the boulder facing down towards the highway. He had to shoot back or he would be dead. He sprang up and returned fire. I kicked the back of his knee, forcing him to stumble forward and down. This was all the opportunity the militia men needed. A burst of fire knocked him down beside me.

  I grabbed his gun. It was much easier to fire than the Opus Magnum, and it sprayed an unholy hail that made up for my newly discovered lack of depth perception. An Ignoble went down. The Creep and I had each gotten one, leaving a single fighter remaining. I reached towards the Creep’s coat pocket, breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that the vial was still there, still intact. I had given an eye for this thing, and I wasn’t going to lose it. I transferred it into my own pants pocket.

  Mission Creep groaned. What a tough bastard! His chest was a cratered with bullet holes. It seemed wrong to not even listen to his last words, under the circumstances. I double checked his hands to make sure that he was not going to pull a hunting knife and gouge me. Then I leaned close. “Cuttin’…o’ the wyg…” He said. “Don’ go back…cuttin’…” He was silent, his last words wasted on this delusion. I looked back towards where my surviving enemy was camped. I needed a plan.

  The road was maybe three hundred feet away. I was able to see now a stretch of guard rail that was there to protect sideswiped cars from falling into a deep ditch. If I could reach it, I could use the ditch like a trench, and cut the Ignoble’s feet right out from under him. It was not going to be easy, but it was my best bet. I ran, firing into the night as I went. If he could be pinned down until I reached the ditch, the battle was mine.

  He craned his gun out over the rock behind his back, firing blindly. This counterattack was so ineffective I stopped shooting and just ran. He wised up and started shooting from the shoulder again, the bullets digging in right near my heels. I returned fire until I was greeted by a hollow click, like a death messenger at my door. I was empty. I flung the gun down and ran for my life.

  My plan had gone to pieces just like the Creep’s had. I fled on borrowed time, barely avoiding fire. There was no point reaching the trench now—it wouldn’t do any good if I didn’t have a gun. My only shot was a dead run right across the highway. The odds had to be at least twenty to one against making it, but he’d have as much trouble himself if he tried to follow. I ventured a look behind me. He had thrown his own gun aside. I could hardly believe my luck. Maybe he had been near the end of his clip when he found us, his ammo exhausted from other skirmishes.

  My relief was short lived—this fucker could run. He brought me down with a flying tackle about a foot away from the highway. We were nowhere near the ditch or the guardrail. The velocity of speeding night shift vehicles rattled our bodies, and he hit me with a hail of punches. Couldn’t he see that I wasn’t a Burialist? It didn’t matter. I had killed his comrades, his fellow militiamen. His blood was up, and I could tell he wanted nothing more than to beat me to death with his bare hands. His face was darkly happy under the heavy scars and stitches of the mandatory disfigurement.

  I could not fight or grapple as well as this man. The life was being pounded out of me incrementally, the back of my head smacking crumbs of asphalt from the nearby road. Had the beautiful angel of death been cheated this many times only to get me now? Perhaps it was time to stop fighting the inevitable. In one last gambit, I brought my fist and forearm down across his brow and nose. It wasn’t much, but it stunned him just enough for me to send a knee to his groin. We rolled and I pushed and tugged. On my back again, I used my legs to push him up and over me.

  His lifeless body fell at my side. I doubt the driver of the truck even realized that his vehicle had decapitated someone.

  Time had gone on strike, and there was no way
to tell how long I lay there, breathing and grateful to be alive. Soon my body stabilized enough to mix a healthy dose of pain in with the gratitude. I had to patch my eye. It was almost sure to get infected anyway, but the chill wind cutting into it all night could not be good. I ripped into the camo sleeve of the Ignoble, hoping to fashion what I could in the way of an eyepatch. The piece I had torn was not long enough, so I went for more. I had to wad up a ball of material and get it to soak up the blood. I could hold it in place with a loop of cloth and change out the wad when I had to.

  I stopped. Something was not right. A rational person in my situation would not have taken the time to indulge his curiosity, but I didn’t get where I am by being rational. There was a seam, a perfect line in the mutilated flesh where the Ignoble’s bicep met his shoulder. Suppressing my disgust, I probed it. It peeled. I was soon holding a rubbery translucent gauntlet, a costume piece of fake scarring and punishment. The dead Ignoble’s arm was unblemished, though corpse rot was bound to set in soon. What did this mean?

  These were questions to wrestle with later. I had to make my way back to my craft. It was time to face either my liberation or my destruction.

  “PROVISIAN DAWN”

  1

  I parked the POGO craft and limped into a donut shop called ‘Hole ‘Nutter World.’ Everything hurt, and I stank of diesel fumes and gun powder. My bark had been sheared from my body here and there, fragments of rock powder and grit stinging and itching in the wounds. The donuts were lousy, but what I was really buying was a little plausible deniability. The kid gaped at me as he put my donut in a bag. The blood was congealed on my makeshift eyepatch. “S’matter, kid? You don’t like jelly-filled?”

  I heard him starting to wretch as the door tinkled closed behind me. I threw the donut like a discus. Probably good enough for duck food. When the canopy of the craft opened, I crumpled up the bag and tossed it in. A believable narrative. There were probably a lot of people who would want a donut after losing an eye and trekking desperately through the wilderness for eight hours. I never liked them myself.

  There was no question my craft was being tracked, and I wasn’t going to be stupid. The donut shop was a reasonable walking distance from the central Provisian water treatment facility. I had walked enough for ten lifetimes, but there was no other choice. With any luck, I’d pass a health clinic on the way and get myself a real eye patch.

  2

  Owlish carefully placed the ring on the counter. He studied it sadly and seriously. He was wearing a shirt celebrating President Gild. “GILD IS IRONCLAD!” The shirt read. “It works. It was really just a matter of rewiring, and rerouting the currents of telluric energy. I…” He glanced up at me. “Who am I kidding? You don’t care how it works. You just care that it does.”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s like I said before. There’s always a cost to something this powerful. I experimented with it a bit, to see if it could give me my legs…and…” He leaned against a pillow that he sometimes carried on the platform of his gimp pulley when he felt overworked. “Well, the ring affects different people in different ways. You going to tell me where you really got it?”

  I shook my head, and put it securely in the pocket of my shirt. “We didn’t really discuss payment.”

  “You had the right of it, Forrest. That thing is incredible. I was wrong to try to gouge you on it.” He looked at me and winced. “Sorry. What happened to your eye?”

  “You should have seen it with the patch I made myself. Don’t change the subject. You were wrong to gouge me, but I have to go away for a while, and I’d like to leave you with a parting gift. Some food for thought.” I placed the Dry Men insignia ring on the counter, the one I used to flash to get into places. I put Mission Creep’s almost-empty vial beside it, with just the last bit of glowing orange residue adhering to the bottom. Finally, I let the empty husk of the Ignoble arm piece flop before him. “Consider this a challenge. Analyze these and do some detective work to see what you can find. I bet those InfoShock Magazine people won’t have the balls to print it, whatever it is.”

  He was already looking less drowsy. “What? What the hell is this?”

  “The truth, Owlish. And don’t go into it with guns blazing. Violence is ugly, my friend. Gods bless.”

  3

  I took a last look at my loft. What an irony that I had to leave my home now that I finally had one. It seemed like I’d barely spent five nights here, but it was the most comfortable place I’d ever called my own. It was private and quiet, absent of vermin and slumlords and orphans and pedophilic monsters. The world was unjust, but I was going to see that I got my own back on it, if nothing else.

  Outside, I double checked the invitation the Dry Men had left me. I had radioed them that I completed the mission on my way back, and it was waiting for me when I returned. I hadn’t expected them to give me a moment’s rest. Everything was tradition and promotion and ceremony with them—the instinct to recharge would be inconceivable. It didn’t matter. It was best to have this over. The fuel gauge of the craft showed me that I had more than enough for what I needed to do.

  I was to attend a ceremony at the Grand Lodge of the Dry Men in Cape Caravan. The Order wanted to celebrate my success and promote me. Apparently, this shindig couldn’t go down in Plenty Burrows. Had to be the Grand Lodge. Self-important fucks. After landing, I walked up an impressive staircase and pulled the door open. A line of robed guards with swords stood at attention in the hallway, holding them out point forward. I walked silently past them, feeling like I was walking down the throat of some terrible beast. Brandishing sharp objects seemed a weird way to pay tribute.

  Opening another door, I found myself in a hallway full of older men wearing fancy suits. They were giving each other some weird effeminate handshake, thumbs caressing knuckles. “Ah! Mr. Cromwell! Here he is!” Doctor Tower exclaimed. They applauded heartily. I was unsure how to respond. No one had ever clapped for me before. Behind me, two men helped me into an ornate purple kimono. It was loose and comfortable, though I noticed that the cuffs were made of metal. I had to struggle to get my hands through.

  “This is Mr. Grove, mayor of Cape Caravan.” Dr. Tower said. “Mr. Hughes, visiting professor of Computer Science at Provisian University. Dr. Gallows, President Gild’s minister of health.” I shook hands and smiled, not trusting myself to say anything. No one commented on my eye. I had told Tower about it on the flight back, after reporting that the vial of orange fluid had been destroyed when Mission Creep was riddled with bullets at the hands of the Ignobles. You can only trust a report as much as you trust the reporter. And I expect people might start questioning things more, now that I dumped the antidote in the water.

  After the introductions, they shuffled off into a dark auditorium. There were other Dry Men milling about, but it seemed that I only had to meet a few senior members. “I want you to see something before the show.” Dr. Tower said, leading me towards a side room.

  “What show?” I asked.

  “It’s called Dawn of Provisia. It reveals the true origins of our nation. Everything—including how the old world fell and all that’s been suppressed. Seeing the show is a rare opportunity for enlightenment. Only people above Nth degree are allowed to see it.” I must have looked confused. “Dry Men take the rank of a defecting operative that they kill. Mission Creep was Nth, so you took that during the mission. And you get promoted again for your success in preventing the opposition from getting the formula.”

  I almost shook my head in disgust at this convoluted, clichéd garbage—he who kills the king gets to be king, seriously? --but I checked myself. We were in a narrow hall that branched off from the lobby. The floor was covered with the familiar black and white zigzag of the Dry Men. At the end of the hall was a large box cloaked in a red velvet curtain. “Every Dry Men lodge is entrusted with a relic of Provisia’s founding.” Tower said. “Since this is the Grand Lodge, we have the best of all.” He drew the curtain aside with a
tasseled gold cord. I bent down to get a closer look.

  In the glass box sat an antediluvian cactus. It was so old that its arms were knotted and arthritic. Many of its spines were snapped in half or missing entirely. Near its top, there was a single human eye, the pupil covered with a blue-white cataract. No, I realized, it had two eyes, but the other was squeezed closed. It did not at all look like it was winking. The eye looked painfully swollen shut. It had a tiny mouth, a sad triangular gap.

  “Do you know what it is?” Tower asked. I was not sure how to answer. It was a weird item to call a relic. The thing was ancient and tortured, but alive. “It’s Commodore Cactus.”

  I had hoped not to hear that name mentioned again in my lifetime. “Commodore Cactus is just a legend. And he would have to be…”

  “That’s right. He would have to be a little over four centuries old.” Looking closer, I saw that the mouth was moving.

  “Is he trying to talk?”

  “He’s begging us to take his life.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Legends don’t get to die.” Dr. Tower took a watering can from a hanger and sprinkled it on Commodore Cactus, who shivered as if it were ice cold. He pulled the curtain shut. “Come. The show is about to start.”

  4

  I was taken to a high private balcony overlooking the stage. The theater was big, but there can’t have been more than twenty-five seats. Whatever was going to be performed here, it was not intended for the masses. The seats were spacious and comfortable, with a little table perched at just the right height over the lap. Waitresses brought food to each of the tables. A roast duck with stuffed dates and penne in Elven Vodka sauce was brought before me. I thanked the waitress, but she didn’t respond. She seemed to be in a trance.