“... 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?”
