White and Other Tales of Ruin

There was a sound like the buzzing of distant insects beneath the gunfire. And as the three powerboats roared into the park? two emerging from the distant haze of mist, one coming straight up the street behind us? and a line of bullets coughed out brick dust by our heads, I realised how wrong I was.

We were involved. Hell, I realised, can never be selective. It’s there for the benefit of everyone.

The boat slicing through the mud behind us slowed down, and a man on the bow loosed a burst of suppressing fire at the bandstand on the left. The noise was shockingly loud. Another hail of bullets came our way, kicking up great gouts of mud and releasing its stench into the air. Bullets buzzed by our ears, ricochets singing behind us, and I was sure I could feel the breeze of their passing, smell their rich metallic tint as they exploded against the wall and the boats’ hulls.

The driver of the powerboat fell back, his face swallowed by a fresh red hole.

“Oh God,” Laura said, turning her head away, and I could see that she’d be splashed when the bullet had struck him. She caught my eye and, inexplicably, tried to smile. It came as a grimace, teeth bared, eyes wide, and for a second? for the first time in my life? I was frightened by my daughter. What madness could she have inherited from this place?

“Into the boat!” the man on the bow shouted. They drew up next to us and he fired again. Tracer rounds tore across the mud lake and strafed the bandstand. Two people dropped, one of them sliding into the mud, and one of the boats from the mist immediately pulled up and disgorged several more fighters onto the tattered wooden structure. They picked up scattered weapons and immediately opened fire on the central bandstand and our boats.

“Quickly!” the man shouted, ducking down as the gunfire increased.

“No,” I said. We shouldn’t go with them, should never take sides, because once we did that we were truly embedded in this scene, part of the play and bound into whatever climax awaited these pointless people. The man looked at me, wide-eyed and disbelieving. His machine-gun drifted in our direction. Its smoking barrel looked hungry.

Something stung my elbow. I looked down and saw a rosette of blood opening on my muddied sleeve, and my arm went numb. A bullet had kissed me. Laura guided me to the edge of the dinghy, stepping over into the powerboat and taking me with her. Blood ran down inside my sleeve, warm and shocking, and it dripped from my fingers as a dark brown paste. It was carrying dried mud with it. I wondered what bacteriological horrors were seeping hungrily into my wound even now.

In the back of the powerboat sat half a dozen people. They all looked tired, underfed, sick, but their eyes gleamed with excitement. Some of them glanced at us, but most had their eyes on the body of the dead driver where he was leaking across the timber boards.

They all carried weapons. I saw at least three pad-rifles.

“Chele!” I said, turning to hold out my hand. She was hunched down in the dinghy, hands over her head, trying to present as small a target as possible. The wall of the house was all but disintegrating under the hail of lead, and a fine powder drifted in the air and stuck to our wet clothes. Chele stood slowly, glancing over at me. She was readying herself to jump. She looked like a ghost.

“We can’t stay here,” one of the people said, leaping to the wheel and leaning on the throttle. The boat started to pull away. I reached out for Chele and she jumped.

“Laura!” I said, but she was already there. Between us we hauled Chele in, trying to keep low as the bullets sang around us like angry bees. The boat was humping fast across the mud lake now, each impact feeling as if we were striking concrete.

I reached for one of the pad-rifles strapped to the engine mounting. I expected them to jump at me, fight me for it, maybe even shoot me … but if we were going to get out of this I had to do something.

The sound was almost unbearable, the stink of mud richer and more nauseating than ever, and I could taste blood in the air. Perhaps that was the red mist I saw.

I pulled Chele and Laura close to me, hugging the pad-rifle to my left side. Its heavy plastic was strangely warm, its wide barrel and gas-ports wicked-looking, black eyes promising so many horrors yet to be seen.

“It’s a reinforcement boat,” I said. “Nobody can last long on those bandstands, not when they’re so exposed. Everyone on this boat will be dead soon, including us, if we don’t get out of here.”

“How do we do that?”

“I have this.” I nodded at the pad-rifle. Laura refused even to look at it.

“But?“ Chele began. But she did not have a chance to finish.

Sometimes, when everything’s as bad as you think it can get, it gets worse. Misfortune upon terror upon horror … all crowd in to drown their victims, ensure a completed job.

The boat was just approaching the central bandstand when someone shouted out: “Demons!”