White and Other Tales of Ruin

I looked up and saw several black shapes circling slowly down from the grey sky, wide webbed wings drifting them skilfully towards our boat.

“Now we’re finished!” a woman shouted out, and I swear there was joy in her fear.

“They’re here for them!” The voice came from the bandstand. Someone was leaning out, pointing at us, and I knew without looking that it was the madman from the barbing world. Black Teeth.

He’d been spared for some other fate.

As the demons swirled down, their wings now cracking at the air, the fighters in the boat turning to look at the three of us, bullets zinging past from both directions as we came under concerted fire from the sunken bandstands … I knew that it was time to fight.

“Chele?”

She spun around and hit the gunwale hard, the impact audible even above the gunfire. Laura cried out. Someone laughed. I dropped to my knees beside Chele and flipped her onto her back, hearing the impact of bullets on bodies behind me. There were several thumps as corpses hit the deck, but Laura was beside me, pressing her hand to the terrible wound in Chele’s face, holding in the blood, wiping away what was left of her eye where the bullet had blown it out, crying, crying for this stranger who’d helped me save her from her cruel crucifixion. And someone was still laughing.

I glanced around and saw Black Teeth leaning out over the mud, ignorant of the bullets biting at his cloths and hair, or perhaps simply not caring. He was pointing at us, his hysterical eyes wide open. I looked at his hands and imagined them wrapping barbed wire around Laura’s wrists, touching her as he did it, his eyes glinting as his fingers strayed, and before I really knew what I was doing I’d brought the pad-rifle to bear.

As if badly scripted, the gunfire paused to add gravity to the moment.

I held the weapon waist high. I’d seen these things working, so I knew I didn’t need to aim.

Black Teeth stopped laughing for a second and stared at me in disbelief. Then he smiled again, showing the rot in his mouth. Shook his head. He knew I’d never do it.

I pulled the trigger. The balustrade misted into fragments and the madman splashed back in a wash of red. His laugh seemed to hang in the air for a few seconds like a cartoon speech-bubble, or perhaps it was the rifle report ringing in my ears.

At least I knew what fate he had been spared for.

The thought that the demons had known what would happen? had perhaps engineered it? was too dreadful to contemplate, although it all made perfect sense. They were the scriptwriters and we were the actors, although our lines and actions were subconscious, not learnt.

“Daddy!” Laura shouted, and a black shaped knocked me from my feet.

I kept hold of the pad-rifle as I went sprawling, holding out one hand to break my fall, feeling it slip in something leaking from one of the corpses. The shape closed in on me again and thumped my back twice. I realised it had landed. I could feel long claws curling into me, clenching, finding purchase so that it could finish the job … whatever job that was.

Were the demons here to kill us, or let us go? I had no idea. But I had no time to waste thinking about it.

Chele was dead, most likely.

Laura may be next.

I heaved myself up as hard and fast as I could, hoping to catch the demon unawares. It worked, partially, and the thing slipped from my back, clutching out chunks of my flesh as it did so. I screamed and it screamed back, its voice like that of a giant tree frog, a bass rattle that set my hairs on end. I had to bring the rifle to bear?had to? but at the same time I wondered why nobody in the boat was firing at the thing. I shook my shoulders, pushed sideways as if to turn on my back. Claws raked my skin. Something tapped at the back of my neck, and I felt the warm dribble of blood around my ears and scalp.

The gunfire had started again, and the air smelled of hot metal and death.

Laura leapt into view, landing right by my face and launching herself at the demon. It grumbled at her and waved its wings. One of them caught her under the chin and sent her falling back over Chele’s prone body, but she had set it off balance and allowed me to scramble away from the clenching claws. I stood, spun around and aimed the pad-rifle.

For a second, silence fell across the whole scene once again. Gunfire stopped. Shouting ceased. Even the flow of the mud seemed to lessen, the steady roar of debris pushing past buildings dulled. The demon sat frozen against the edge of the cockpit, its black armour wet with my blood, antennae flipping at the air. Its visor was black and held no reflection.

Briefly wondering if I was about to do something awful and unforgivable, I pulled the trigger.