“You’re to be a-carrying on with the numbers,” he says, kicking over the bag with the numbering bands and tools. “Though there’s less to do now.”
“How many’d we get?” Davy says, smiling.
Ivan shrugs, annoyed. “Three hundred, three-fifty, can’t say for sure.”
I feel another greasy twist in my stomach at that but Davy’s grin gets even higher. “That’s hot stuff, right there.”
“I’m to give you this,” Ivan says, holding out the rifle to me.
“Yer arming him?” Davy says, his Noise rising right up.
“President’s orders,” Ivan snaps. He’s still holding out the rifle. “You’re to give it to the night watch when you leave. It’s only for your protection while you’re in here.” He looks at me, frowning. “The President says to tell you he knows you’ll do the right thing.”
I’m just staring at the rifle.
“I don’t effing believe this,” Davy says, under his breath and shaking his head.
I know how to use a rifle. Ben and Cillian taught me how to use one so I didn’t blow my own head off, how to hunt safely with it, how to use it only when necessary.
The right thing.
I look up. Most of the Spackle are back and away in the far fields, as far as they can get from the entrance. The rest are dragging broken and torn bodies to the fire that’s burning in the middle of the next field over.
But the ones that can see me are watching me.
And they’re watching me watch the rifle.
And they ain’t thinking nothing I can hear.
So who knows what they’re planning?
I take the rifle.
It don’t mean nothing. I won’t use it. I just take it.
Ivan turns and walks back to the gate to leave and as he goes, I notice it.
A low buzz, just barely beyond hearing, but there. And growing.
No wonder he looked so pissed off.
The Mayor took away his cure, too.
We spend the rest of the morning shovelling out the fodder, refilling the troughs and putting lime on the bogs, me one-handed, Davy one-legged, but taking more time than even that would allow for cuz brag tho he may I don’t think Davy wants to get back to the numbering just yet either. We may both have guns now but touching an enemy that almost killed you, well, that takes a bit of leading up to.
Morning turns to early afternoon. For the first time, instead of taking both our lunches for himself, Davy throws a sandwich at me, hitting me in the chest with it.
So we eat and watch the Spackle watching us, watch the pile of bodies burn, watch the eleven hundred and fifty Spackle left over from the attack that went wrong, wrong, wrong. They’re gathered round the edges of the fields we opened up and along the wall of the monastery, as far from us and from the burning pile as they can be.
“The bodies should go in a swamp,” I say, eating my sandwich with one tired arm. “That’s what Spackle bodies are for. You put ’em in water and then–”
“Fire’s good enough for ’em,” Davy says, leaning against the bag of numbering tools.
“Yeah, but–”
“There’s no buts here, pigpiss.” He frowns. “And what’re you moaning for their sakes anyway? All yer blessed kindness didn’t stop ’em from trying to rip yer arm off, now did it?”
He’s right but I don’t say nothing to that, just keep on watching them, feeling the rifle at my back.
I could take it. I could shoot Davy. I could run from here.
“You’d be dead before you got to the gate,” Davy mumbles, looking at his sandwich. “And so would yer precious girl.”
I don’t say nothing to that neither, just finish my lunch. Every pile of food is out, every trough has been refilled, every bog has been limed up. There ain’t nothing left to do except the thing we gotta do.
Davy sits up from where he was leaning against the bag. “Where were we?” he says, opening it up.
“0038,” I say, keeping my gaze on the Spackle.
He sees from the metal bands that I’m right. “How’d you remember that?” he says, amazed.
“I just do.”
They’re looking back at us now, all of ’em. Their faces are hollowed-out, bruised, blank. They know what we’re doing. They know what’s coming. They know what’s in the bag. They know there ain’t nothing they can do about it except die if they resist us.
Cuz I got a rifle on my back to make that happen.
(what’s the right thing?)
“Davy,” I start to say but it’s all that comes out cuz–
BOOM!
– in the distance, almost not a sound at all, more like the faraway thunder of a storm you know is gonna get here quick and do its best to knock yer house down.
We turn, as if we could see over the walls, as if the smoke’s already rising over the treetops outside the gates.
We can’t and it ain’t yet.
“Those bitches,” Davy whispers.
But I’m thinking–
(is it her?)
(is it her?)
(what is she doing?)
{VIOLA}
The soldiers wait until midday to take me and Corinne. They practically have to tear her away from treating the remaining patients and they march us down the road, eight soldiers to guard two small girls. They won’t even look at us, the one next to me so young he’s barely older than Todd, so young he’s got a large angry spot on his neck that for some stupid reason I can’t keep my eyes off.
Then I hear Corinne gasp. They’ve marched us past the storefront where the bomb went off, the front of the building collapsed on itself, soldiers guarding what’s left of it. Our escort slows to take a look.
And that’s when it happens.
BOOM!
A sound so big it makes the air as solid as a fist, as a wave of bricks, as if the world’s dropped out beneath you and you’re falling sideways and up and down all at once, like the weightlessness of the black beyond.
There’s a blankness where I can’t remember anything and then I open my eyes to find myself lying on the ground with smoke twirling around me in spinning, floating ribbons and bits of fire drifting down from the sky here and there and for a minute it seems almost peaceful, almost beautiful, and then I realize I can’t hear anything except a high-pitched whine that’s drowning out all the sounds the people around me are making as they stagger to their feet or open their mouths in what must be shouting and I sit up slowly, the world still gone in whining silence and there’s the soldier with the spot on his neck, there he is on the ground next to me, covered in wooden splinters, and he must have shielded me from the blast because I’m mostly okay but he’s not moving.