Darkness and Trees

The darkness around Angus was heavy, pendulant, and oppressive. The trees here were so tall, and not made of wind-worn stone punching upwards from a blasted heath. The crowd around him was thick, foreign, and loud.  A strange smell, coppery blood and molded bread, reminded him of the charge he supported. He called her lad, as much because he initially thought this enigmatic and fiery willed Retrograde had been a boy, as to see how she would react. Mostly she would just roll her eyes. He tried not to worry about the bone sticking out of her arm, he knew it must be painful, but she just gritted her teeth behind thin lips and a zippered face, and didn’t make a sound.

She was a true survivor, not like the caravan around them with their laughing, and singing, and bells, and drums. Something in the thin road up ahead stopped the crowd and he heard someone yelling that there was a toll to Bravo. Someone said they were “General Mustang’s men” collecting. Slink spoke up, “Mustang has no power here. They’re just bandits.”

Angus handed Slink over to a pair of frightened Rovers, instructing them to keep her safe while he checked things out. In the darkness near an old horse pasture, he saw Mustang’s men squared off against the green fighters at the fore of the caravan. The tension was mounting, so Angus helped it along. It was a simple plan. There were maybe forty people here in this caravan and that was plenty. He would feed every single one of them through this grinder to get the Retro-girl through to her friends. She wore their name on her back, The Desperados.

Angus shouted, dropping his accent so no one would remember it was him, “Kill them all, they’re just bandits!”

He felt more than saw the line of Mustang’s men tense at the goading. Some woman nearby turned towards Angus, “We’re trying to negotiate a cheaper toll!”

Angus looked her in the eye, “The cheapest toll is their blood.” He drew his gun, aimed it between two of the fighters, and fired it into Mustang’s ranks. The woman stared in blank shock. At the shot the battle was off, shouts went up and both sides charged immediately. Angus walked calmly back to where he had left Slink and scooped her arm around his shoulders, “Come on, lad, let’s get you home.”

“Damnit Angus, I’m a girl.”

Angus just smiled, if she’s angry, she’s conscious.

------

The darkness around Angus was heavy, pendulant, and oppressive. The trees here were taller than that south road, and the shadows they cast were deep. The things in the no-light of road stood stark still. It was eerie the way they stared.

The one called John Henry said in his stern voice, commanding, demanding, “They won’t move as long as you watch them.”

Someone called out, “There’s some behind!” Angus turned to look, only to hear rushing movement at his side. The thing was on him, tearing at his meager armor, slicing open his side. He fell then, and screamed. Through the pain and the spattering rain, he saw the MC moving as one, fending off these things from each other, moving in concert. Without question or hesitation, they fought for each other. Thin strong hands grabbed Angus’ harness and drug him over the ground; he looked up and saw their prospect, the pale Merican Dakota, tossing him into the cabin. Someone was working on his wound, a figure with a patch on their back was standing in front of the door, protecting.

Even in the pain as someone poured fire into his wounds, Angus could not help but think that he had never seen a bond like this in his life. Not even Rover clans had this sort of camaraderie, loyalty, and love. Here it was, in the face of abject horrors, unfaltering and unwavering.

In the cold terror of that black night, Angus’ heart yearned for something that it had never known.

------

The darkness around Angus was heavy, pendulant, and oppressive. The trees here seemed taller in the morning’s light, but no physical thing cast shadows on the Rover. Having seen his cousins had been a source of joy, initially. Now, though, they were gone again, staying somewhere near town.

He picked through a pile of rubble, looking for scrap or other things of value, lost in thought. Livvie, Face, and wee Brodie had been familiar, seeming safe. Their presence, though, had been fleeting and he could sense a change in certain members of the club when they found out Angus had family alive. A Rover with a clan was a Rover with other loyalties. The MC didn’t like other loyalties and knowing that he had a family with its own agendas and goals, somehow set him apart. This fact gnawed at Angus in the cold air of Clintymas.

As he dug around an old bar of silver to pull it out of the ground, his grey and black scarf, the Dark Storm scarf, drifted into his way. It caught on his trowel, and he muttered a bit as he swatted it aside.

He stopped what he was doing and realized what he had done. Then he nodded. He was born a boy; he would never belong, fully, with the matriarchs of the Storm.

By right of birth, he was set apart. They were his cousins, and Brodie was like a sister to him, but they would never be the family he lost.

 ------

The darkness around Angus was heavy, pendulant, and oppressive. The trees here were taller than any he had ever seen, extending like the fangs of a giant snake into the night sky. In the half darkness at the edge of the square the Rover looked at the two hundred or so people gathered on the arc-lit porches of the old Washbourne slave quarters.

They had come from all over the world to fight Mustang. There were strains, rare and exotic, he had never seen. There were people there with knowledge far deeper than anything that he had ever encountered. Someone here could know how to make The Knife from the book. There were friends in there, people he had bled for and laughed with.

Chloe and Dakota weren’t there, though.

They were off trying to stop everyone’s destruction. They were saving all these lives and Angus just stared at the crowd and thought about how he would slit every throat in front of him to make sure those two came back to him safely.

‘I understand,’ a grave voice said in his mind.

‘Shut up, Fred.’

Freddy spoke up in the recesses of his nightmares, ‘I didn’t say anything, bub. That was you. I guess … I guess my work here is done.’

Angus frowned, ‘Whatever.’

‘Say it one more time for me?’

“I’m not afraid of you, you’re not real,” the Rover whispered.

“What say Angus?” Woni asked, looking over.

“Nothing.”

------

The darkness around Angus was heavy, pendulant, and oppressive. The trees here were smaller and recognizable, home. The crowd around him was thick, known, and loud. The Desperados stood around him, and John Henry spoke with familiar authority, “We all stay on the left side of the road. This way we don’t get separated.” It wasn’t lost on Angus that the Iron had included him in the plan, simple as it was. They were waiting for the scouts to check the area around boot hill for major dangers.

The Rover stepped into the pale red pool of light around the MC’s former president; he unconsciously rubbed his arm where JHL had crushed it not long ago with his hammer, a price Angus would pay again to help repair his friend’s mind. “John Henry, can I ask you something?” Angus had formed the sentence perfectly in his mind, it was such a simple idea, ‘Teach me how to spot things hidden in the dark, as you do, so that while you’re gone I can help watch over your family.’ Yet, for some reason when he walked up to John Henry and tried to say just that, it came out jumbled and broken. He stammered, foolishly. Either the stern Iron figured out what Angus was trying to say, or he just wanted to shut him up, and agreed to show him when they got back.

Angus stepped away and muttered under his breath, “Idiot. Why do you always do that?”

A strong hand slapped on Angus’ armored shoulder, “Hey Angus, you alright?”

The tall Rover looked up into the perpetually grinning face of Tim Freeman, “Yeah, Hammers, I’m good. How’re ye?”

“Ready to get home,” the young Iron brandished his chain axe and paced off. Angus could not help but notice how comfortable that man was in his own skin, and as he walked away and the words on the patches across his back became apparent, Angus smiled: that was the real skin Tim was comfortable in. That Iron would kill and die for anyone with those rockers.

Angus looked, set apart from the group a moment, as the MC congregated around one another. Fierce Slink, who had saved him more than he saved her that day in the wastes. Clever Chloe, with her wit sharper than Angus’ own machete. Cunning Cutter, whose brutal coldness was outmatched only by his loyalty to his friends, the one member of the club that Angus somehow felt the most akin to, only Angus’ mask was far more intricate. His cabin-mate and best-friend Dakota, her well-mocked softness and easy smile the frightening chains on a pit of fury. Towering Hammers, the literal and figurative beacon at the heart of the MC. Somewhere nearby were the hooded shadows of Shrooms and Tom, ever present though rarely seen, and just as dear to Angus’ heart despite not knowing either very well.  The prospects, Woni and Rahn, fidgeted nearby, on the cusp of something new and wonderful. At their center was John Henry, stern, almost scowling.

And when no one seemed to be looking Angus saw something familiar paint across that face. It was a strange look, fleet as a hunter, but it read clear in those moments when that Iron was surrounded by these people. They all knew it and Angus felt it too.

Home wasn’t down that road. It was right there, in that circle.

The darkness around Angus was heavy, pendulant, and oppressive. The trees were tall and dark. The crowd around him was inconsequential compared to the family he had chosen. Angus smiled, the fear of rejection was gone, because now he understood. The burning times were nigh, and soon would come the first cool night of fall, and Angus would have to ask a question.

Fire at High Noon

Fox woke suddenly and silently. Her eyes snapped open but she didn't make a sound or movement. She really hadn't meant to sleep so long but the little girl had been exhausted from trekking through the woodlands in the night. The woods had been crawling with zed, horrifying boneheads whose skeletal heads pulsed with dull bone colored lights. As the morning came she had arrived in the slums of downtown Bravo and slipped under one of the buildings. Now she lay there, terrified.

The slums were silent.

Normally there would be someone, anyone wandering around, hammering on shanties, or a cart being dragged to the trade markets.

There was nothing but silence, not even the birds sang. It was so quiet that it rang in her ears.

The tiny Remnant girl slipped out from under the building, peeking through one of the windows to see five beds arrayed in the small space, with curtains draped for a modicum of privacy. There was a pale banner hanging on the front with black words on it. She couldn't read it but the letters looked stenciled, like the border patrol used. Her mother and father had been on the border patrol, but lost everything when they were “set free” by a law these Downtowners had made. When her mother, Ceanin, died the night before, blood hemorrhaging from her nose, Fox had no choice but to head to town for help.

Looking around on this brisk but sunny morning, there didn't seem to be anyone around.

Fox walked, barefoot but soles thick and callused, down the road towards town. Off to her right was a skeleton hand of steel rising over the trees and twisting towards the sky, the great radio tower. She stopped a moment and looked at it, the beacon that had guided her across the hills towards Bravo. As she watched she heard a sound, a distant and high keening.

The whistle grew louder and something in sky caught her attention, arcing towards the tower itself. Almost as fast as a bullet, a massive object the size of a wine barrel tumbled from the sky into the tower. In a fraction of a moment, barely registering in Fox's vision, the bomb tore through the tower's girders, hit the ground with a concussive whomp and burst into a fireball.

Fox didn't have time to react, the blast flung her backwards and she crashed through a bush as a conflagration ripped through the trees. She screamed and grabbed her head as the sound rendered her ears useless. The explosion subsided with a gout of smoke and fire reaching towards the stark white clouds. Deaf, but alive, little Fox scrambled to her shaky feet. The blast had put her so far away from the road that she was closer to another that wound along the edge of an escarpment lined with cabins. It too was devoid of people.

Fox ran, stumbled, tripping, screaming and crying. She felt another bomb land somewhere behind her, it lifted her and cast her forward, she hit the side of a building and felt her arm snap. A piece of sharp, red painted wood that used to be part of the Logistics Outpost, tore through her hip. She saw a fireball erupt further down the road, leveling houses and casting fire and debris about.

Fox stood, and turned to see another bomb hit a field nearby, ripping a hole in the ground. Another hit a tall battered building near the crossroads. That's when she saw the first person, someone jumping off the porch of the building before being engulfed in fire and shrapnel. She ran towards the crossroads and saw another explosion not far away, the air growing hot and hammering her battered, limping body as an old well-used forge exploded skyward.

Fox ran. Straight down the main road of Bravo as fire rained from the sky. A round saloon off to her left fell in on itself before it's roof lifted off, carried on a roaring ball of fire. The sun was blotted out. Smoke rose everywhere and the little girl screamed and stumbled. She fell in the road and could see off to one side a small loathsome shack with an altar of bones and black before it. Undead were rising from under and in it, pouring forth like a bag of rice with a split seam.

She screamed and turned to run from the sudden horde.

The building too got hit by another round of artillery. The morgue exploded and a burning bench hit the little girl, tearing her leg off and sending her spinning.

She lay on the road, watching a tidal wave of fire sweeping up the road toward her from the direction of the lake. A massive fireball carried the parachute-like outline of a tent high into the sky. The bombs hit everywhere, bursting in the trees high up and showering flaming splinters. The explosives scraped the earth, sweeping towards her with the inevitability of time.

Her vision narrowed and she barely registered the Goliath, spinning in flames, being tossed by a bursting mortar like a rag doll; an ancient copse of trees being scattered like matchsticks by a blast; an old sign with wooden arrows being pulverized to sawdust in an instant.

Everything wood burned.

Fox lay, tears streaming down her face but silent, on a growing island of her own blood.

She whispered through choking smoke one wish as Bravo burned, the Bombs of Star City exploding around her.

“Please, make it stop.”

Finally, almost mercifully, a shell did.

No evidence of a little Remnant girl would ever be found on the day that Bravo burned.

The Second Confluence

Angus woke with a start. The morning light was arching into the cabin almost cheerfully, the reddish tinge from the smoke to the south only added to the seeming warmth. The cabin was empty, John Henry and Sal were on the road, Hammers was off doing whatever Hammers did. Zuni was quiet.

There were three other figures in the cabin with him and Angus eyed them wearily. He knew two of them well enough, the third was new. None of them ever came out in the light so this was a bit odd.

He looked at the new figure whose shape wavered and broke apart as if a sputtering fire in a breeze. He was tall and would be imposing if he wasn’t so hazy. He had dark clothes and a machete similar to Angus’ own pig-sticker. He wore a mask, stark white, with cracks and stains and dark holes cut for breathing and seeing. They called him Voorhees and he stood silent in the corner, regarding Angus with a slight tilt to his head, like he was confused or trying to puzzle something out.

The second form, like a pale shadow by the door was a slight girl dressed all in white, her long, matted hair hung like seaweed over her face. Her arms were stained with blood, and Angus glanced at his hand and the same stain that covered his palm, impossible to wash away.

The third figure sat beside him and idly played with the clawed glove he wore. He smelt of burnt flesh, and his beaten fedora hid his charred face. Freddy spoke, “You got low the other night.” Angus nodded, he was strangely surprised and not surprised when he realized just how much Five Fingers sounded like John Henry.

“You’re not real, Fred,” Angus said.

“I know, I know,” the nemesis replied, “We all wanted to talk.”

Angus nodded towards the hockey mask, “I don’t know him.”

Freddy chuckled, “Sure you do. You met him, didn’t you? You’re part of his story.”

“I’m only a bit player.”

“Are you?” Freddy picked at a scab casually, “You gave that one quite a bit of thought last Friday. Just like you gave me thought, and you’ve given little Samara there a LOT of thought.”

“Maybe,” Angus said, “If ‘e draws me in ah’ll face ‘im. Bu’ th’new guy isn’ why you’re here. You look so differen’ in th’light.”

The girl in white spoke up, a harsh whisper, “You … you scared us.”

Angus chuckled, “Oh?”

“You started acting like we do,” Freddy said, “You disappeared the other night, when you sat across from the MC’s president. Why?”

Angus sat in silence, staring at the floorboards of the cabin, “They give a lot of talk about the Hard Question. To me, it’s not a question.”

Voorhees tilted his head quizzically, like a gore hound hearing a high pitched sound.

“My answer to their question is simple, I give it fast because that’s how it sits in my mind, there is no hesitation. The question is who? The answer is no one,” Angus stared towards the rising sun,  “Including myself. If it means saving one of them, I’d even kill myself.”

“Why did you do it though? The way you did? He caved your skull in with that hammer of his.”

Angus looked at Freddy, and then Samara, and tossed Voorhees a glance, “Once upon a time …”

They all snapped to. The casual conversation immediately became rapt, these figments of nightmare fed off of the new story like starving horses at a trough.

“There was a man, who was walking along and he fell in a hole. He was surrounded by black tunnels and shadow and there was no way out. He couldn’t reach the edge, but he could see out. He was trapped in the darkness; he was a prisoner in this nightmare.

“Along comes a priest, his skin glowing with holiness and light. ‘Father!’ the man calls up, ‘I’m trapped in this hole! Can you help me out?’ The priest nods, pulls out a paper, writes down a prayer. He tosses it in the hole with the man and keeps walking.

“Then a sawbones comes along. ‘Doc! Doc!’ the trapped man shouts, ‘Help me! I’m in this hole and I can’t get out!’ The sawbones writes out a script for a brew, tosses it down in the hole and keeps walking.

“Then a friend comes along,” Angus places his hand over his heart at this point, “and the man in the hole shouts up, ‘Bro! Help me, I’m trapped down here!’ The friend looks down in the hole, then, all at once, jumps inside. Our guy says, ‘What are you doing, man!? Now we’re both down here!’ His friend smiles at him, ‘Yeah, I know. I’ve been here before. I know the way out. Follow me.’”

They all sat in the morning stillness a moment, Samara finally said something.

“You joined his nightmare.”

Angus nodded, “I learned it from watching you.”

“And then you lead him out,” Freddy said.

Angus looked at Voorhees, “I did. I lead him out. And maybe I’ll do it again.” The masked nemesis grew uncomfortable under the Rover’s gaze and turned away, fading into the fabric of the sun’s light. Samara reached up and brushed her hair away from her baleful eye to gaze cleanly on Angus.

“Angus,” she said, “Promise you’ll do it again?”

Angus nodded as she also faded away. Freddy persisted, thinking.

“Go on Fred, get out of here, you don’t belong in the light,” Angus said.

Freddy looked at Angus, “I don’t think you do either.” Freddy also faded away and as he faded out Angus slowly woke up.

There was no sun, no warm light, just a cold empty cabin, with grey skies and ice falling from the sky. Reality bit hard. Angus sighed and looked at the empty beds and the cabins across the road, he thought of all the friends he had close to him. He thought of them all, and felt all at once, alone.

The First Confluence

“... Step by step by inch by loaded memory ...” -Tool

Angus knelt before Cadence, who stood nude before him save for the clawed glove. Cadence leaned down, his hair spilling like clumped blackened seaweed across the Rover's face. Angus was cold, burning in yellow fire and freezing, and Cadence's breath reeked of a cesspool and stale, oily water. Angus shivered, as this thing that was supposed to be his friend traced the knife-like fingers of the old leather glove up his chest. Angus stole a glance at the abattoir around him. It looked like his cabin, except for the meat hooks from which hung all his friends, swaying in the freezing heat. The floor was slick with blood and viscera and pale yellow icy flames. He saw a horse standing in the doorway, behind Cadence, a nightmare with a military hat on and fires pouring from its maw. Cadence whispered into Angus' ear and the Yorker's pale skin became cloying fabric, and his body shriveled to a young girls frame, “I'm only killing you because they're still alive.” He was Samara now and her lips found Angus' and glowing sickly green rad-roaches poured from her mouth into his. The Jones tried to scream and he finally thrashed and found himself flying to his feet, Lyra in hand, and pointed into the quiet, still, darkness of his cabin. His subconscious was distantly aware of his own echoing scream.

A woman's voice in the darkness, “Angus? Y'all okay?” The Merican woman was still in her cot, he could see in the dark. She was already holding her brutal, spangled club and her pale hand was tracing down towards her shield. Angus lowered Lyra, thumbing the hammer back into place. Torch hadn't even woken, he still snored softly.

“Aye, lass, sorry,” he muttered, “Bad dream. Was I loud?”

“A bit,” Dakota relaxed, Angus could see she was, like him, wearing her armor. Since that night a lot of them still slept in their gear, hands on weapons and syringes.

“Ah'll take a look aroun',” he said, and pulled on his boots before stepping out into the darkness. There was a figure on the roadhouse's porch next door, hooded, holding a staff, “Ash?”

“You okay, Angus?” she asked, a pale yellow light in her eyes.

“Aye, did ah wake you?” he said, becoming embarrassed. Most of the MC was away on their outlaw errands, their iron beasts the best way to break Mustang's blockades, but there were still some of his extended family around.

“You only got me up, I wasn't really sleeping, be careful” she turned and slipped back into the roadhouse. Angus looked around at the darkness of the Hollows. There was a shambler in the road, making its way towards him, attracted by the sounds. The Rover drew his Deere J and wandered over to it. It was a larger one, and it wore the trappings of a raider, it's pale mad-man's mask askew, and its straight jacket torn and stained. It moaned and groped towards him and Angus realized something. The wounds it bore, the injuries that had felled it, he recognized them. This thing hadn't been a raider, there were cuts in its skin Angus had made himself, there were burns across its back, a slit throat. This had been one of Mustang's murder squad.

Angus staggered away from it in shock. This person had tried to kill him and his friends unsuccessfully, they had prevailed and then sent it to the Gravemind and here it was, spent. All that had made that fanatic what it had been, was absorbed and gone in the great something-else down below. Angus stared at it a moment, his imagination filling up with images of a massive featureless cave packed with wandering gray souls, including this one, murmuring at winged harpies clawing at their faces. The Jones began walking towards the South road. The zed staggered to follow him, reaching and grabbing. The Rover walked just ahead of it, leading it away from Zuni and the rest of the cabins, most of which stood empty.

“Beastie, ah know ye canna understand me, but ah've somethin' t'say t'ye,” Angus talked to the zed as he walked through the cold and drizzle, “Yer kin are rollin' fer war an' it looks like ye already paid th'ultimate price.” He ducked under some branches and angled off the road, into a clearing full of brambles; the zed staggered to follow, bumping into trees and stumbling over bushes.

Angus faced it, and held his sword up, point first at the walker. It stumbled straight for him and the tip of the sword pressed against it's sternum, stopping it short, it swiped almost blithely, lopping off one of its own fingers on the extended blade. Moaning, it chomped its teeth.

“Ah carry 'round this book, see. There's a passage ah foun' innit, tha' kinda fits th'occasion. Yer General, yer Star City folk, yer Fallow Hope … they's drawin' a bead on this town. There's somethin' they should know though. Yer tryin' t'spread terror … t'fill us wit' fear. But there's one thing ye need to remember, but ye seem to fail to consider. Sure, we like our brass, an' our brawlin', an' we like our capitalizin' … but tha' ain't all we is. Sure, we's whores, an' mercs, an' outlaws, an' liars, an' cheats … but there's one thing we all have in common …

“It don' matter none wha' terror ye put in us, it don' matter wha' nightmares ye visit upon us … we are, an' ever shall be, Braves. An here's tha' quote,” Angus pushed the zed back, sending it off balance, he turned his blade, cocked it back and swung, decapitating it. As its head fell away, so did Angus' accent, and he spoke clear and precisely in the sharp early morning air, “If there is a war to be fought, we don't consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not it is right to fight.”

He knelt down next to the zombified Star citizen and whispered, “Once upon a time there was a fool in a shining kingdom who lead his armies against the bonds of friends and family.” Angus folded the zed's arms across its chest and straightened its twisted legs, “He thought himself mighty, and righteous, and the waves of his hatred broke and fell away on the mountains of his enemy's defiance.” Angus gathered up the severed head and placed it upright on the zombie's chest, and the severed finger went in the thing's pocket. “And as his armies broke and ran, tears rushing down the General's face, he asked why he had failed.” Angus stood and watched as her unseen tendrils reached up from the nowhere place below them to gather up her fallen mouth. “And a child gazed on this fallow lord and told him the truth, 'Because you lacked conviction.'”

The zed dissolved into the ground.

Angus turned, grim and sure, and walked back towards his nightmares. Soon, he laid back down, closed his eyes, and as the slaughterhouse rose around him again, and the nemesis slipped out of the shadows of his subconscious and dressed themselves as his chosen family, he smiled.

Freddy Five-Fingers, wearing Thursday's face, stalked towards him, asking, “What's got you cheerful, sunshine?”

Angus chuckled at this vision, “Ah'm jus' happy t'see ah have so much conviction waitin' t'greet me. Now, where did we leave off?”