In which Kyle Crane gets a bit of an ouchie and Zofia counts to seven.
Chapter 9
Pilgrim's Path: The Seventh Man
2023
Zofia felt like a trope come to life.
She stood in a tiny bathroom, her hands tight around the edges of a dirty sink. A mirror bounced her reflection back at her. A mirror which had no kindness to give. Her skin was pallid, made so much worse by the sharp white light she stood in, and her eyes sunken and dark. Every breath came with a hitch; a sharp shudder that ran the length of her.
She couldn't stop shaking.
Bile rose against her throat. But, no, she couldn't throw up again. She'd done that already, had emptied her stomach; her dignity; her decency. Her fingers clawed at the sink.
How old had he been?
Twenty?
No.
He'd been younger, probably. Eighteen, maybe. With a youthful, handsome face, straw blond hair, a clean shave, and bright blue eyes. Wide eyes. Scared eyes. And her knife in his throat.
The latter hadn't belonged there.
Behind her, the door creaked softly.
There'd been so much blood. Zofia looked down, at hands that ought to not be so clean. Not after today. Not ever again. There was still dirt under her fingernails, even though she'd scrubbed. And scrubbed. And scrubbed. Maybe she ought to wash them again — but soon as she reached for the faucet, Crane's hand intercepted her wrist.
"You're gonna wash your skin off," he said as he pulled her against his chest. The proximity made his voice a quiet rumble at her back; one that sunk deep, chasing after her heart.
Go away, she almost snapped.
He'd come looking for her while shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of uncharacteristically bland boxers and a bloody bandage around his left forearm. A forearm he crossed in front of her, dragging her even tighter against him as he folded his arms over her chest. Then he set his chin atop her head and Zofia realised she'd been freezing.
Okay. You can stay.
All that shaking, it'd not only been the memory. The I killed someone rotating in her head like an awful rotisserie chicken. Zofia's eyes flicked left, to the small window peering out into a bright night, where a fat moon bounced off thick snow.
The snow had been red when she'd killed that boy.
"I don't get it," she said.
"Hm?" Crane rumbled behind her. His light brown eyes were turned down to watch her, attentive as ever. Attentive and weighed down with — what? Guilt? Why'd it have to be guilt? This wasn't his fault. This hadn't been him. This'd been her. All her. So why did he look like he'd been the one with the knife and she'd been the one watching?
"I don't get why now. I tried to poison an entire bunch of people, remember?"
"Tried. Then failed," he reminded her. Because he'd— as luck would have it —gotten in the way. His scruffy beard scratched against her cheek as he hitched his chin lower and placed a kiss to her temple. He'd been nothing but a Tourist to her back then. An oaf of a Tourist with a chip on his shoulder large enough to have its own postal code.
"But I would have."
"Not the same thing."
"I let people die. I ran off so many times in Harran, left someone else to Biters or to Rais's men, I lost track."
"Uh-uh. Nowhere near the same."
I watched you kill. For me. You crushed Tahir's skull in a fridge door. And after, did I bother asking if you were okay? Of course I didn't. Why-ever would I have? She didn't say that out loud.
"What about the Rainbow Hulk? I led it right up to the—"
"Fi."
"And Rais? I put a machete through his chest." Where his voice had remained steady and soft, hers had begun to rise.
Crane's arms tightened.
"Where were the nightmares then? Hm? Why's Rais not keeping me up, but I can't close my eyes without seeing that boy's face?"
"Because Rais was a deep-fried turd getting ready to burn the entire world down. And that boy? That boy was going to kill you, Fi. You know that, right?"
She nodded.
"What you don't know though is why. You're asking yourself, Was he with that gang of asswipes because he fit in, or was he there because he had to be? Did he have a family? Was there a girlfriend or a little bro waiting for him? A mom? A dad? A cat?"
Zofia felt her chin quiver. She clenched her jaw.
"I know this isn't helping," Crane continued, "but it's what you're thinking, isn't it?"
A nod. It was all she could manage.
"What if I let him run," he read right off her tattered soul. "Would he have gone off on a redemption arc? Done better? Done good? What was his name? How old was he really? How many years did I cut off him? What if I hadn't gone into that shop? What if I'd carried a gun? Why'd he have to be there? Why'd we have to be there? What. Why. If. And it goes on and on."
Crane nuzzled his nose into her hair. Her messy, matted hair. His eyes fell shut and his lips were drawn into a gentle frown.
"Does it go away?" Zofia finally asked, her voice a broken thing hiking up her throat. She had to be careful or it'd turn into a sob. "Ever? And did— I mean— does it—" God, she couldn't put the words together right, could she?
But how was she supposed to ask this?
How was she supposed to ask a man— who only lived and breathed still because others didn't —if this got better? Bearable?
"Does it get easier?" Crane finished for her. He scoffed. "No. No, it doesn't."
2036
He'd been wrong.
Zofia pulled her bow forward and set an arrow against it, drawing it halfway.
"Hey, fellas." Crane strode into the room, unarmed. His arms were extended to the side. His palms turned up. This was the bit where he gave these men a choice. Where he made them an offer; a courtesy that he extended to nearly anyone.
Exactly once.
Hardly anyone ever took it. Why? She didn't have the faintest. Maybe it was because they were desperate. Or maybe it was because they thought There's just one and a quarter of them and a bunch of us, what could go wrong? And so they ignored the offer— year after year —and how could anyone ever blame her for how it had all eventually become easier?
"Look at that!" mocked one of the men. His hockey mask was streaked red and black and his machete was wet with blood. "Are these friends of yours, Dylan? Did you bring 'em to play? Shucks-shucks, you shouldn't have. Tha's so sweet."
In response, Dylan's head thumped back against the wall. His hands were in his lap, clutching a jacket slick with blood. The way he huddled there, Zofia figured he wasn't long for this world.
She did her best to ignore the implications of that. There'd be time to worry about that later.
The machete came up. Pointed right at Crane. And that was that.
Crane didn't waste time. He stalked down the concrete ramp, straight for the men with their wicked tools of homemade murder. He angled away from her, giving her room, and Zofia drew the bow the rest of the way. Her knuckles kissed her cheek for no more than half a beat before the first arrow— a solid, long thing with a sharp iron tip —thudded into the chest of the man to the far left.
Center of mass.
Nothing fancy.
Still deadly though, what with how lungs did not much like having holes punched into them. Supposedly.
The man— who, like all his friends, wore a hockey mask with reds and blacks painted over it —took a staggering step back. Zofia's brow furrowed, even as she'd nocked another arrow and aimed it at the next man in line.
Except the first one wasn't falling.
She readjusted her aim. Let fly. And when the second arrow struck, he laughed. No. Really. Laughed; a wet and gurgling sound with a pinch of hysterical mania wrapped up in it.
That, Zofia thought, was not how this was meant to go.
It'd been a while since Kyle had seen a man (not a Biter, not a Viral, but a living, breathing, man) stay on his feet even after being turned into a human-shaped pincushion.
Did that stop him from rushing the rest of them?
Nah.
He'd think about it later. Much like he'd give his filter a wash when this was done, since that thing hadn't just fed him the wrong intel on what he was walking into, but it'd missed out on a whole fucking subway cart parked off on the right. Its nose stuck out of the tunnel, red and white, an abandoned metal beast left to rot in its own lair. Or some such nonsense. Anyway, this wasn't a maintenance tunnel as he'd originally thought. It was a subway station. There were automated ticketing booths, signs reading Platform A, and a row of red seats bolted to the far-off wall. The seats looked uncomfortable enough to have his ass hurt from just thinking about sitting on them. But anyway. There really wasn't any time for sympathy pains in his ass cheeks.
Thug Three (he'd labelled them aptly, from left to right) came at him with his machete raised.
With a quick jerk to the side, Kyle slipped around Thug Three's slash. The blade whooshed by. And before Thug Three could recover from his own momentum, Kyle lifted his leg and snapped the heel of his foot against an unsuspecting knee. When you did that sideways, into a direction which knees did not normally bend, that resulted in—
POP
—a scream.
Thug Three hopped away. Tried to, anyway. Thug Four swung a bat at Kyle, and since Kyle had no intention of getting batted on this fine day, Kyle grabbed Thug Three by the jacket and jerked him into the bat's path.
There was a meaty impact, followed by a muffled crack. Thug Three's hockey mask flew off his head— both shattered, head and mask alike —and his machete dropped with a clatter.
Why, thank you. Kyle ducked low, swiped up the weapon — and, while still low, charged Thug Four.
At the last moment, he rose and rammed his shoulder into Four. Hard. The impact bounced the dude clear off his feet.
Kyle hadn't ever been a football kinda guy. He'd avoided it. Period. Then the world had gone and ended itself and Fi had informed him, all matter of fact, that he'd missed his calling playing rugby. What with how he let his tackles do a lot of the talking these days.
Anyway.
It worked.
Thug Four landed off to the side, right on time for Five to step in with a grotesque-looking knife having a swing at Kyle. Kyle blocked its swing with an upwards cut of his borrowed machete. Metal clinked off more metal. Five's arm went wide — and Kyle stepped forward, got his hand around Five's throat, and squeezed.
Tight. Real tight.
Cartilage gave way under his fingers, the sound muffled; a bit like stepping on porcelain wrapped in cloth. People were fragile like that and Kyle couldn't stand that he'd come to terms with that.
Then things got weird(er).
When Kyle caught Five's eyes through the slits of his hokey mask, none of what he saw made sense. They were wide, yeah, but there wasn't any fear in them. Not a flicker. All Five had for him was a feverish, manic stare, ringed by thick black veins crawling away from his eye sockets.
The same black shit that he could see between his fingers as they crushed Five's throat.
Kyle stared.
Bat! his filter hollered and Kyle shoved Five away from him, putting enough distance between them so he could swing his machete in a quick, upwards slice and follow through by cutting the dude's throat open. Something, something double-tap.
Too slow, you idjit.
The bat connected.
Hard.
Way. Too. Fucking. Hard.
With the force equivalent of a bull with a cactus shoved up its ass, the bat cracked into Kyle's left arm. He couldn't tell where exactly. Forearm? Elbow? Upper arm? Shoulder? What'd once been an arm with individual parts suddenly came together into a single lump of acute pain. Even his fingers ached. A tingly kind of ache.
"Son of a—" Kyle rounded on Thug Four. And Four, laughing, raised his bat again. And Kyle, 100% done with this shit, near cut his damn head off.
Zofia's second mook hit the concrete with an arrow jutting from his head, its feathering wobbling wildly as it pointed for the ceiling.
The timing was impeccable. Because right as he'd fallen, she heard the heavy thumps of naked feet bounding along the maintenance tunnel and saw shadows dancing in the muddled, red light.
"Bollocks."
Crane showed up by her side, pulled the doors shut, and lodged a machete between the handles. But double-winged doors were about the worst at keeping anything in (or out) and so he put his back against them and jabbed an arm in the general direction of Dylan.
His other arm hung limp by his side.
She quirked a brow, her mouth half open to ask him if he was alright. And to tell him to hold still before he did anything that'd make the whole damn thing fall off.
But that'd have to wait. Reluctant, Zofia hurried to where Aiden crouched by Dylan's side, Crane's machete in one hand and his other steadying Dylan by the shoulder.
They were ghastly to look at. Horribly so.
Dylan had barely any colour on him, and Aiden's skin had begun to take on an ashen look, punctuated wildly by angry red splotches pooling around his neck and cheeks from exertion, pain, and the onset of a fever, she figured.
"— what are you talking about?" she heard Aiden snap.
If Dylan was talking to him, then he didn't much acknowledge the young Pilgrim's existence. His eyes were fixed on nothing in particular. Not on Aiden. Not on her. And certainly not the door at the far end where Crane strained against a chorus of frustrated screeches. The door at his back rattled.
"How is he?" she asked, kneeling by Dylan's other side. It was an instinctual kind of question. A sort of thing you asked because, really, what else were you supposed to say? He about dead yet?
Aiden leaned back on his haunches. "I—" He paused. "His wrists. I think he did this to himself."
She looked the man over. Dylan had a plain sort of weathered look on him; with reasonably well-kept hair and a face that'd, somehow, avoided scarring. Age lined his features, telling her he'd lived most of his life before the Fall, and yet there was something gentle about him that was at terrible odds with how he was about to die in a damp underground junction.
Her eyes cut to where Dylan's hands were splayed out in his lap. The blood she'd seen earlier didn't come from a wound on his chest or stomach as she'd originally thought. He hadn't been run through. Instead, he'd rolled his sleeves up at one point. Had slit his wrists open. A bloodied pocket knife lay by his side.
"Go home," the dying man slurred at nothing in particular.
"Bit late for that, innit?" Zofia pinched Dylan's chin between her thumb and index finger on that hand of hers that didn't have any more than that. She squeezed and turned his head her way. "What way to Villedor? There's three doors in here, which one do we take?"
"What are you doing?" Aiden's voice had a hoarse quality to it that she didn't much like. She ignored him. Much like the loud bang behind her.
And the "Ah, shit. Fi! We gotta go!"
"We need to get him up." Aiden again. He fumbled against Dylan's shoulder until a spasm shot through him and forced him to sit back down.
"Which. Door?" she repeated.
Dylan's eyes slid erratically from side to side, never quite catching on hers. She pinched his chin harder.
"You've made it, okay?" she said. "Whoever you're running from, they're not catching up with you. You'll be gone by then, at any rate. But we? We're not done running yet. So. Please. What way into Villedor? Is it this one?" She pointed to the one farthest to her left. "Or this one?" Her arm swung to the one nearest. There was another at her back somewhere, but she had an inkling that one wasn't it.
"Fi."
"First one… on my right," Dylan finally managed. He even met her eyes. Solidly, too. "The passage is marked. Follow the marks until you reach a staircase. Go down. Then hang left. There's… there's a crypt."
"Marks. Staircase. Down. Left. Crypt. I understand."
Dylan nodded. It was weak. But it was there. "I'll… I'll make noise." His eyes left hers to focus on where Crane held back Death. "You go."
"No! We can't leave him here, he knows where Mia—"
Dylan lifted an arm to shove at Aiden, who'd come back to try and get him up. "Go."
"But, Mia—"
Zofia grabbed the broken record's arm and heaved him to his feet. "Move. Your sister won't have much use for you if you're in ribbons." She half dragged and half pushed him to the nearest door— it was propped open with a wooden wedge —and gave the tunnel beyond it a cursory glance. More red light. More pipes.
But nothing moved.
She threw it open and gestured for Aiden to go in. He only looked back at Dylan once.
Kyle's back had itself the shittiest massage imaginable; the sort that came with the pokey ends of door handles slamming into his spine whenever a Volatile (or Volatiles, plural, how the fuck was he supposed to know) threw itself (or themselves) at the door he had to hold shut.
But. Hey. He had this. Totally.
Kyle growled at his feet when the door rocked him forward — and the moment it let up, the moment the assholes on the other side got ready for another round, he shoved off and high-tailed it across the room to where Fi held open a door for him. This one looked sturdier. Metal. Heavy. And it opened the right way, meaning no Volatile would be tearing it off its hinges. Would they eventually dig through it? Yeah, sure. But they weren't about to straight up knock it over as they'd done with the first one.
One more long stride to go, and Kyle's insides knitted a whole-ass freaking doily over how no one had bothered (or was bothering) to pick up Dylan. You know, the man they'd originally come for? The dude he'd just talked to? Half an hour ago? At the most?
He stayed where he was and Kyle slipped through the waiting door.
Fi slammed it shut. Right as the machete he'd used to bar the double winged doors bent — and snapped. Death crowded in.
"This way," she whispered. "Quiet, so they don't hear."
Back in the junction, Dylan hollered at his Death, taunting it with taunts that'd seen better days. And in the maintenance tunnel, Aiden stared at the door with his jaw working quietly. Like he wanted to go back out there. Kyle snatched his machete back from the kid and pulled him around with a grab at his shoulder.
"You heard her."
A bit like they all heard when Dylan started screaming.
Aiden flinched. Kyle did, too.
But all Fi did was tuck her shoulders down more and walk faster, while the screams behind them cut off and the rending began.
Unlike the first set of tunnels, which had been dry and dusty, the one Zofia followed presently was positively damp. The air tasted mouldy and wet and the walls were streaked with water damage. Small, white chalk arrows marked them, exactly as the late Dylan had said they would, though Zofia didn't need them to know what direction to go. No one had been through here for so long, that Dylan's tracks were about the most obvious signs she could have asked for.
They led her to the stairs he'd mentioned.
Dark stairs.
Hm.
Zofia pulled her torch from its netting on her pack, clicked it on, and let its beam cut downwards. The stairs were made of mesh, so she could see all the way down to the bottom.
Water winked back at her. A puddle.
Her eyes cut up again and she threw a look further down the badly lit maintenance tunnel. A sign reading EXIT hung only a meter deeper in. It pointed away from them. But there weren't any tracks leading to it.
So. Downwards then.
No one questioned her decision to head down the stairs. Crane because he knew better and Aiden— she chanced a glimpse over her shoulder, at his pale face and puffy red eyes —because he looked like he needed all his focus to remain upright.
Which lasted him until they were maybe a quarter down the steps. He near fell, either because he rolled his ankle or because a seizure took a bite out of him, and would have if Crane hadn't grabbed him under the shoulder with his still functioning arm. He didn't let go until they reached the bottom.
It was dark enough down here for Zofia to pause again, her torch cutting left, then right. Water dripped steadily somewhere near. Drip. Drip. Drip. And when they all stood still for long enough, she could hear small feet scuttle over hard ground and a distinct, soft squeak.
Crane had heard them too. "Rats," he said.
"Rats?" Aiden echoed. Gosh, he sounded ready to wipe out right then and there.
"Mhm. They're great." Crane winced as he pulled his limp arm closer to his chest, his hand cradling his elbow. "When you got rats in a place like this you can bet on it being unoccupied. They don't last long sharing with creepy crawlies."
"Ah," was all the young Pilgrim had to say to that.
Once she'd turned them left (as Dylan had said she ought to), it didn't take long until they found the source of the dripping.
The tunnel's wall had been broken down. Not in a neat and clean way, either, but in a let's bash a hole in here and leave it at that kind of fashion. There was rubble everywhere, big chunks of concrete and stone. A lonely sledge hammer was propped up next to the hole.
And, beyond that hole, stood the reason for the air tasting so wet. So old.
The crypt.
Zofia paused on the threshold between new and old, her feet balancing on a large concrete slab. Gone were the smooth walls. The crypt was old stone, with a tall, domed ceiling, and it had three passages. One went left, one went right, and one cut right past her. The passage on the right was marked with chalk, with an arrow drawn right on the side of a stone coffin set deep into the wall.
Or did that make it a sarcophagus?
Zofia's lips pursed.
Ankle-deep water covered the ground.
. . .
Her pursed lips fell into a frown. That'd get her socks wet. She disliked wet socks.
"Huh." Crane shuffled into the passage next to her, standing close enough to send the crypt's chill running.
Zofia, drawn by the warmth like a moth unable to resist getting lit up by a bug zapper, leaned into him.
"Ow," she got for that, along with a rueful smile when her eyes snapped up and found him staring at her. She'd cosied up to his limp arm.
"I'm fine," he fibbed.
She frowned. "It's broken, no?"
His uninjured shoulder hopped up in a shrug. "Probably. So. Are you going tell me why we left Dylan back there?"
Something dropped from her heart. A heavy weight which she hadn't known she'd been carrying around ever since they'd slammed the last door. Since she had slammed the last door. But who could blame her? She'd been too busy finding them a way out, after all. Zofia looked away, her focus back on the torch's beam. And then she got her feet wet, dallying on having to give him an answer.
Splash.
Splash.
What was she supposed to say?
"He cut his wrists," was what, apparently, with her voice trapped in a morose monotone. "By the time we got to him, he was too far gone."
"And that's why we left him to get torn to shreds."
Zofia splashed her way to the end of the passage, where a narrow set of stone steps ended at an iron gate. The gate was made of vertically arranged pickets. They were tipped with intricately sharp ends. Rust covered the lot of it. Enough for her to wonder if one could pick up blood poisoning from it by proximity alone.
A chain and padlock had kept it closed.
Had.
They hung open.
She really didn't want to think about Dylan or how she'd heard the disappointment in Crane's voice, so she pulled the gate open (it screeched horribly) and climbed the steps, her torch lighting the way.
Up there, she met a wall with a ladder hanging off it. The ladder went up. A wooden hatch waited at the top.
"He said he'd make noise. His words, Crane. He knew what he was doing. And, yeah, sure, we could have dragged him through the door. Maybe quick enough, too, but he'd have left a blood trail to it. Which would have told them where we went." Zofia tested one of the rungs. It was sturdy. The dust that'd collected on them had been disturbed recently, leaving the tell-tale tracks of two hands and two feet going down. "You good with a climb?"
He scoffed. I got this, it said.
Then Aiden screamed.
It was a quick, startled yelp, followed by him hitting the top of the stairs. He'd have fallen back down if Crane hadn't grabbed him by the backpack straps and hauled him up, even as the seizure did its best to pull the young Pilgrim's limbs into a tight ball. She could see the tendons in his neck bulging like thickly corded wire and heard how his scream tapered off into something hoarse and warped.
With her feet shuffling under her, Zofia thought that maybe she'd been wrong with the whole No one turns that quick, Crane.
But. Really. No one ought to. He'd only just been bitten.
Whereas just these days easily fit the death of six men.
Crane rushed Aiden past her and pushed him to the bottom of the ladder. "Up you go," he said. "Into the light, kid. You get up there and you don't stop running until you find sunlight."
Aiden nodded and started to climb, with Zofia right behind him.
She heard it the moment Aiden opened the hatch: Music.
Genuine music.
Muffled notes filled the well of darkness beyond the opening. Old notes, recorded ones. The sort that fell out of speakers and weren't freshly plucked from strings. And underneath it, like a current pulling by, were voices.
"Aiden, wait."
His sodden shoe vanished through the hatch, not waiting for tick. So Zofia climbed faster. Up in the dark, Aiden began wheezing; like he was struggling for air since his throat had begun to twist into a shape it wasn't meant to be in. Every wheeze grew heavier. Hoarse.
His heart would hammer hard against his chest. Pound at his ribs with the intent to beat itself free. His ears would ring. His vision turn murky, dipped in ink.
This is too quick. Way too quick.
Aiden knocked into something. Wood. A door, probably, what with how there was a soft creak of hinges parting and suddenly there was light in the room that didn't come from Zofia's torch.
They'd come up in a storage room. There were boxes, with tarp thrown over them (one box had been moved off the hatch, leaving scratches on the floor), and near-empty shelves lined with jars.
Aiden stumbled through the door he'd pushed open, out into where the music was louder and where a host of scents overwhelmed Zofia. They were distracting. The old wood. The hay. The idea of golden straw. Goat musk. Life; it smelled of way too many lives lived in a too-tight space and she didn't quite know how to process them.
Where on Earth were they?
"Who the fuck is that?" a man asked.
"He doesn't have a biomarker," replied a woman.
"He's turning!" someone else entirely added.
Which was all well and good, except then someone suggested hanging. Han-ging.
Zofia slipped through the door and out into a— a— a what? Her neck craned back. The place was roomy, with the ceiling so far up, that it even had its very own sky.
Literally. There were stars painted on it, lit up by sunlight streaming in through tall windows made of coloured glass.
A church.
She was in a church.
In a church that smelled like a farm and which was packed with people; a lot of who were, at present, stringing up the young Pilgrim. Literally. With a rope.
"Oh, for—" Zofia ran up to the ring of pushing bodies as they surrounded Aiden — who may or may not have been putting up a fight, she couldn't see much from here. They'd thrown a rope over a wooden beam. Had stuck his head through a loop. And then two of them heaved.
"Stop it!" she shouted.
No one listened.
Aiden came off his feet. Went higher. Higher. Higher still, his legs kicking and his hands scrabbling uselessly at his neck where the rope dug in.
"Stop!" Zofia shoved past a man. Shouldered a woman aside when she got in the way, cheering. They were cheering. The lot of them. Every man, and every woman, they cheered and laughed and called to watch the "Fucker hang."
"Who're you—" someone started. A man. With a wool hat and a wool sweater. He put himself into her path. Tried to grab her. Zofia snapped her elbow up. Broke his nose. He wheeled away.
Aiden's legs stopped kicking frantically. His arms fell to his side. Twitched once, then twice, and then meekly fumbled back up to drag uselessly at his own neck.
Zofia, feeling oddly compelled to keep the men dying around her to a solid six for the day, rushed the two idiots pulling on the rope. She had her knife out already; its blade kept sharp for a moment just like this one. She cut upwards, steel glinting happily, and sliced clean through the rope before anyone caught on to what'd happened.
Aiden fell.
He landed in a heap, air whistling down his throat.
The church's eyes turned on her.
. . .
"Bollocks."
"Get her!" "Kill them!"
Look at us, we're murderous fuckwits!
Zofia held the knife up in front of her, her stance dropped to a near-crouch, and slowly walked backwards until she'd reached Aiden. He'd fallen to his side. Had started coughing, with one hand on his throat and the other clawing at the ground.
Weapons.
Weapons swam into view scattered inside the crowd. They were drawn from belts and thrown into the group by onlookers who preferred to keep their distance from the murder, but who were otherwise keen to lend a hand.
She also saw a chicken. Up on the roof of a makeshift shack inside the church.
A chicken?
. . .
A shack? In a church?
Not only a shack. Stairs. Walkways. Living arrangements.
Stop looking. Focus.
Someone got near her. The man with his broken nose and his wool hat. She swiped at him with the hatchet. He fell back. Another took his place. He had a shovel— repurposed to moonlight as an axe —and was just about to swing at her when:
CRACK
A single gunshot snapped at the air.
Everyone— including the chicken —scattered. Men and women tripped over each other as they got out of Crane's way, who carved himself a path through the ring of people by means of simply existing. Every single step of his purpose; a I might as well own this entire place kind of purpose, punctuated by blood smearing his arms and front and murder in his eyes.
The gun probably helped, too. He held the Glock high, its barrel pointing up. Plaster rained from the ceiling.
"First one touching her gets one between the fucking eyes," he said. Very matter of fact and with a growl folded in. His gun arm dropped. Swept around the circle of wide-eyed faces. "Am I making myself clear?"
Zofia slid back until her heels touched Aiden. She groped behind her, blindly, her eyes not once leaving the crowd and the hatchet still up. Aiden found her arm. Grabbed it. She pulled until his weight leaned against her shoulder.
"Can you walk?" she whispered.
Murmurs hopped through the crowd. Glances were exchanged.
Aiden nodded.
Fists tightened around weapons.
One man took a tentative step forward. Crane's sidearm snapped to him.
"Nah-ah. Back up."
The muzzle jerked. The man shrunk back.
But Zofia knew this wasn't going to last. So did Crane. His eyes cut left and right, looking for a way out of the church, but wherever he looked all he likely found were more people.
So. Many. People. Up on those makeshift walkways. Down under the roofs of indoor shacks. They were everywhere, and soon they'd collectively decide that a single gun was not going to be enough to put them all down.
And, still, Crane took his time to ask, "You okay?" as he came up next to her.
"For now."
And when she chanced a look up at him, his lips scooted up into a crooked smile. That absolute madman.
"Pretty wild, huh?" He jabbed the gun at another brave man. "Long mountainside hikes. Volatile nests. Crypts. Churches."
"Crane. I swear. If I hear you go on about how you find me the nicest of sights I am going to personally bite your knee off and leave you to this here mob."
"Okay. Jeez. Let's— ah— maybe if I put this down—"
Crane just about had lowered the sidearm by a notch and begun to raise his other arm to indicate that this had all been one big misunderstanding, when the crowd smelled blood. One foot went forward. Then another. And another.
—until a single man shoved himself through the crowd.
"Friends!" the man shouted, pushing until he'd cleared himself a path. He was unarmed. "Is this how we greet our guests these days? With a hanging?"
The silence which had choked the crowd after Crane had fired a shot broke. All at once, too.
"That one's about to turn!"
"We don't know who they are!" ("Raiders!" "Bandits!" "PeeKay spies!")
"Where'd they come from?"
"Fuck off, this isn't any of your business!"
The man met all that with a bright smile from under a thick moustache and crossed the distance to her, where he stuck himself under Aiden's second shoulder and hefted the young man up. Which was just as well, since Aiden had begun to slump horribly. And mutter. Incoherently.
"Hakon," he said. An introduction, she figured. He even held out a hand, stuck it right under her nose.
Zofia frowned at the hand and then at him. Her lips remained tightly pressed together. Her hand on the hatched.
"Crane," said, well, Crane. "Kyle Crane."
He didn't shake Hakon's hand either, but he did throw in one of those man-chin-nod-thingies that served as a placeholder in a pinch.
Hakon returned it with a nod. "See, now we're friends. Now it's my business." He looked back at the crowd. "You want to hang them, hang me too," he told them.
A collective bristle travelled from shoulder to shoulder — but no one protested.
"Now, Mister Crane, what do you say? Should we get you three out of here before these fine fuckers find more rope?"
Crane snorted. "Yeah. Lead the way."
And off they went. Slow and steady, with Zofia's hand cramping around the hatchet, her socks waterlogged disasters, and six men dead behind them.