Far Cry – 14.12

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Zed closed his car door and stepped out of the car, stretching.  He stared out at the dark, knotted ski town on the far side of the slope.  The highway cut diagonally across the one end of town, and there were no cars on it.  People were using side roads, and over time, the highway would move to reflect changes.

And this place would be their domain.

Nicolette pulled up behind him.

Normally, this would be the point where the local Others met them at the boundary of town.  Normally the town would look very red to his Sight, and now it was dark.  No lights were on.

Nicolette’s car door slammed.  She fixed her headpiece.

“The barrier’s down, the way in is clear if we want to drive.”

“Let’s go on foot.  It’s more subtle,” she said.  Her eyes flashed as she looked.  “We’ll be too visible if we go by road.”

Zed nodded.

“Get your stuff.  I’m going to do a little bit of old-school augury.”

Zed headed to his car, popping the trunk.  He collected his power glove, the scratch-a-sketch, three phones, and the computer with Nina in it.  At the back, inside a case, was the gun.  The one that packed enough power to bring down most Others, but came with dire consequence.  To pull the trigger meant that the wielder would die in a shooting down the road.

Extreme times called for extreme measures.

Revenge threw all measurement out the window.

He belted the gun holster to his waist and then slipped the gun inside, checking it had the bullets.

A bird of prey shrieked as it plummeted from the sky.  Nicolette’s glasses were red with the Sight as she put a hand out.  Talons seized her wrist.

“Nerve wracking, that,” he commented.

“Really?  After all we’ve seen and been through?  A bird?” she asked.

“I wouldn’t rule it out for the Carmine Killers,” he told her.

She nodded, eyes unfocusing, deep in thought.  A hand stroked the spellbound bird’s head.

“That’s a beautiful bird.  I know old Augury tends to hurt birds, but maybe you could find something-”

She but her hand on the bird’s head and snapped its neck.

“-like a chicken instead?” he asked.  “Ugh.”

“I wanted something vicious,” she said.  She drew a wand from her belt.

“Is that… Alexander’s wand?”

“Don’t make a big deal of it.”

“Did you… Alexander?”

She shook her head.

“But you know who did?” he asked.

“The less said, the better.  Besides, you can’t keep a secret worth a damn.”

“I know well enough to know that if someone says the less said the better, I should stop asking.”

Nicolette cut the bird open.  “We can walk while I do this.”

“Right.  Disembowel a bird while we walk into town.”

“I don’t think there are any locals left.”

Nicolette touched her wand to her eye, then withdrew a black bead, balanced at the wand tip.  She handed it to Zed.  “Hold this?”

Zed adjusted the bags he carried and took the bead.  “Were you there when Alexander did that and that Tim kid who was squeamish about eyes fainted?”

“No.  I think I was working.  I heard about it,” Nicolette said.  She looked at Zed and her eye had a hole in it down the center, where the pupil and iris were supposed to be.  She touched her wand to the bird’s intestines and wound them up around the bit of wood.  Then, touching it to her eye, drank in the guts.  The one eye had a coil of red intestine where the iris was supposed to be, and the pupil was larger.  She blinked a few times and then took her glasses off, putting them away.

Walking into this town was a heavy thing, and light conversation that should have distracted them faltered, struggled, and died.  Like so many had.

Zed could See inside houses, as they were drawn in laser outlines, and many were unoccupied.  Power didn’t flow, and that would affect his technomancy.

“Do you know where to go?” he asked.

“The hawk does,” Nicolette replied.

He nodded.

To gather their forces.  To pick up the ones who remained.

There was a strip mall with its own generator, but the generator faltered.  Some people were huddled in the basement, and it looked like they had stockpiled supplies from nearby stores.  Nobody dared to venture outside.

Even if they did… what awaited them?  A knotted place like this was isolated.  The people who had been able to act on deep-seated instinct had fled.  Many of those who hadn’t been able to escape had been slaughtered wholesale.

Nicolette’s one red eye was focused on another part of town.  Zed looked and he could see power there, his Sight interpreting it as something of an electrical storm in slow motion, like a sequence of photos taken with slow exposure.

Her head snapped to the side.

Zed raised his power glove, keypad at the glove’s wrist, wires going to the fingers.  He touched a button but didn’t press it.

Edith.  Not like the Edith he knew.  There was no fire in her eyes.  Only blackness.

“You shouldn’t have come.”

“We promised to help,” Zed said.

“You shouldn’t have promised,” Edith amended.  There was something about her that was defeated, and there was something about her that reminded him of how Durocher had been.

“We probably shouldn’t have,” Nicolette admitted.  “Miss knew what she was doing.  Picking kids capable of worming their way into our hearts, winning us over.  Getting enough of the right people on the right side…”

Edith’s expression didn’t change.  “Follow.  Watch for traps.”

Then Edith moved, walking off, and her shadow lingered where it was.  It moved, boiled, and hands reached, a face very like Edith’s emerged.  Road, lawns, and sidewalk shifted and resettled as it moved, catching up with Edith and flowing back into her.  She wore all black, which made the definitions blurry.

The farther we come, the closer we come to our own beginnings.  Me and pretending I’m doing better than I am-

Zed thought momentarily of Brie and then pushed the idea out of his mind.  Nicolette and that anger and willingness to get her hands bloody.  Now Edith and her Doom.

The only difference is we understand things more.  Or we have understandings, like Edith and her Doom and their willingness to put everything aside until Matthew is avenged.

They followed, and Zed kept his distance from the shadow that roiled as it followed Edith.  Edith’s stride was long, she had more vigor than she should have, and she was angry, or she was something that transcended listening to how tired she was.

“They’re coming,” Nicolette said.

Zed looked.  That flow of power was coming here.

“Run,” Edith said.

Zed ran, and he reached for his multi-deck tape player.  He hit the buttons, and peppy aerobics music began pumping out.

“It helps more if you clap in time with the music,” Zed said.

“I’m not doing that,” Edith told him.

As they ran, Carmine power began to flood into the residential area.  Blood boiled up from the ground, and bones surfaced, spearing skyward.

“The culprits are making Kennet their place of power.  The seat of the throne,” Edith said.  “It won’t be long before it’s like this everywhere in Kennet.  Unless we act.”

“Is there a we that goes beyond you and us two?” Nicolette asked.

“There is.  Come on.”

They reached the shore of the river, now flooded with blood and meat chunks, and they headed down the beach.

“Clementine said the Faerie had a cave here, I think?” Zed asked.

“We moved, because they know where the original Faerie cave is.  Here.  It’s about fifteen feet further down.”

“Convenient,” Zed told Edith.  He didn’t voice other thoughts.  His worries over who was still around and who wasn’t.  He had hopes, but after the new Carmine had taken the throne the practitioner community had fallen into shambles.  Very few of them had made it out intact, with the way the rules were now interpreted and judged.

And the trio of Kennet witches…

His heart was heavy as he followed Edith down the new path to the Faerie cave.

His heart didn’t get much lighter.  The Trio hadn’t been wiped out, but… the cast of characters in the cave was very small.

Lucy was there, wearing a red sweatshirt dress, wolf mask hanging from a ribbon around her neck, cat and deer masks at her waist.  Snowdrop hugged her, and a dog sat beside her, a soldier’s dog tag at his collar.  And off to the side, so still and so quiet that he could be mistaken for the terrain, was the giant Faerie.  He sat so still, lost in thought, a dark and angry expression set on his features, that he looked more like a statue.  Bits of wood crawled up his legs, and moss grew across his shoulders and in his hair.

Not an uncommon fate for the Fae of the Winter court.  To go so still that they became objects or landscape features.

And Peckersnot.

“Just you?” Zed asked.

Lucy nodded, swallowing hard.

“I’m so sorry,” Nicolette said.

“You did what you could.  We were all blindsided,” Lucy said, her voice a bit hoarse, like she’d been shouting a lot.

“It’s been cool, it being just us, things a bit peaceful compared to everything before,” Snowdrop said.  “I didn’t really like her, so it’s okay.”

Zed nodded.

The dog became John Stiles.  A little more haggard and a little more sad than he’d once been.  “Did you bring firepower?”

Zed gave his bag a pat.

“We’ve been talking about making a foray.  Trying to weaken their influence,” Edith said.  “Every hour we wait, they get stronger, more capable of wielding their power.  We’d appreciate the help.”

Lucy nodded.  “We’ve been working out our options.  We don’t have a choir like the Carmine Killers did, but maybe if we can pull together enough raw offense…”

“I’m up to try,” Zed said.  He unzipped his bag, and began pulling out equipment.  “Do we have a plan?”

“Let’s leave that to the military expert,” Edith said, looking at John.  “Willing to lead?”

John nodded.  “Good strategy begins with knowing your opponent.  Let’s discuss.”

🟂

They mobilized, running down dark streets.  Blood was everywhere.  Where it wasn’t welling up from the ground to establish this as the foundation of the new Carmine Throne, then it was bloodstains from the carnage of recent days.

They’d fled from the source of the Carmine Power before, but now they were organized.  John led the way, carrying his gun, while Guilherme followed, footsteps stomping.  No longer graceful, he’d frozen in the state he was in as the mystery had resolved and the Carmine Killers had made themselves apparent.  He snarled, growled, angry.  Because who wouldn’t be?  Edith and Lucy grieved but they were tough enough to hide it.

Zed and Nicolette, for all of their losses, mentors and friends both, were left to be the rational minds.  Nicolette had her eyes and Zed was decked out in the tech he’d patched together in a cave.

If it was even possible to be rational against a threat like this.

“There!” Nicolette called out.

Snowdrop had no jokes or sarcasm anymore, definitely no little pointy forks.  No, she had heavy arms.  The weapon ring, and a six-pack of Gushing Granny soda dangling from her other hand, ready to go.

Light flared, bright in their eyes, and it didn’t dim or pass.  Zed’s eyes were forced to adjust to the glare.

“Of course they’d leave the highbeams on,” Edith said.  “Monstrous.”

Monstrous.

The Kei truck puttered in the middle of the empty road, sporting its new blood red paint job.  It was smaller than the fridge Zed had had in his apartment, tires barely bigger than a dinner plate, but it was all menace.  It had power that reached most of the way across Ontario and part of the way into Manitoba, and that power was concentrated here in Kennet.  This was the truck’s home turf.

It honked, and it was an out of place sound from a malignant entity, brief and lighthearted, as if to mock them.

“The Carmine Car,” Zed whispered, shivering.

“It’s a truck, not a car, and I hate alliteration,” John said.

“My boss used to love it.  Used it all the time.”

“It’s a truck,” John said, voice firm.

“How does she drive, or see?” Lucy asked.

“Sticks going down to the pedals and one hell of a booster seat,” Edith said, glaring at the vehicle.  They were all spread out across the road, except for Peckersnot, who sat at John’s shoulder.

Zed had to squint to see her against the glare of the beams.  Behind the driver’s seat was a small form.  Very small.

Cherrypop hooted and hollered, then cackled.  The second Carmine Killer.

“Yalda really let us down,” Lucy said.  “Not specifying that the masked woman she saw was as small as Cherrypop, and that the guy was a car, not a human.”

“We didn’t tend to broadcast it,” John said, “But Yalda mostly killed people dumb enough to hurt a kid despite warnings, so she picked up a lot of stupidity from the people she killed.  She wasn’t too clever when it counted.”

“Understandable,” Lucy said.  “But she still let us down.”

“Yes.”

The wheels squealed as Cherrypop hit the gas.  All of them tensed.

She soared forward, about ten feet, then braked hard, skidding and fishtailing before ending up with the rear bumper facing them.

“She’ll be so terrifying when she learns how to drive,” Zed said.

“We need to act before then,” Nicolette said.  “Hit it with all we’ve got!”

Zed aimed the power glove, but Edith was already striding forward.

She’d lost Matthew, so he was okay giving her the first shot.

A widow in black, she unleashed her own Doom, a towering darkness that wore a pale face much like her own.  The darkness picked up objects from beside the road- a mailbox, a bit of fence, a car-

And the Carmine Truck reversed through her.  It was potent enough that the Doom couldn’t stand before it, and it passed through, straight at Edith.  She tried to guess which way it was going, guessed wrong, and got hit by the rear bumper.

The truck kept reversing.  Tires hit Edith’s body and took three or four seconds to find the traction to get over that hump.  Cherrypop didn’t even seem to realize she’d done it.

“Snowdrop!”

Snowdrop pulled out the sixpack.  Instead of using the one can like Lucy had, she used all six with the weapon ring.  Bringing the ‘Gushing Granny’ branded rocket launcher to her shoulder, she aimed, then fired at the truck.  Soda fizzed behind the rockets as they fanned out, and they produced plumes of smoke on impact, hitting the side of the truck.  Granny Smith apple soda rained down from the sky in the wake of it.

And the truck came tearing through, running over the rocket-wielding marsupial.  Cans of soda popped at the same time parts of Snowdrop did.

“Snowdrop, nooooo!” Lucy shouted.

“This wasn’t the way my story was meant to end,” Snowdrop gasped out as she lay on the road.  “I shouldn’t die under the wheels of my second best friend after Avery.”

“Get off the road!” John shouted.  He emptied a gun into the side of the truck.  “Cherrypop’s so tiny, I can’t hit her!”

The truck’s wheels squealed as it turned around.  It was acting of its own volition more than Cherry’s now.  Wheels skidded on bloody ground and it spun, nearly hitting John.  It was only because of his nature as a super soldier that he was able to escape it all.

Guilherme caught the truck by the back end.

John retreated a few steps, back onto grass and beneath a tree in a house’s yard.  Maybe intending to use bullfighting tactics, to bait the truck into a collision.

But a tree branch was tied back, and it whipped forward as he jostled it.  A condom was tied to the end and it slapped, wet, across his eyes.

He fell, and the truck, fueled by Carmine power, pulled free of the giant Faerie’s grip.  It bumped and rocked awkwardly as it drove over John’s head.

“Now stay dead!” Cherrypop shouted, and John did.

Guilherme shouted in rage as their supersoldier team captain died.  Since he’d fallen to winter, Zed knew, rage was all the Faerie knew.  If only it hadn’t been Cherrypop and the stupid truck springing this on all of them.  Anyone would be pissed at this, especially a Faerie who cherished good fights.

This was anything but good.

“After Guilherme, it’s going to be us,” Zed told Nicolette.  “What’s your hawk eye telling you?”

“We can’t win,” she said.  “All we can do is hope our angry green giant buys us time to cast something.”

“It won’t be enough,” Lucy said.  “We just lost half our firepower in the span of a minute.  They’re too strong.”

Zed began to calibrate his power glove.  “Try.  Back me up.”

His friend with her hawk eye and the witch in scarlet moved up, ready to fend off the next forays from the truck.

It was busy doing donuts and making attempts at doing a wheelie.

Peckersnot tried to make a run for it, until the truck fishtailed out of the donuts, hit the sidewalk, jumped about five feet, and landed on him.

It began to drive over him, back up, drive over him, back up…  Cherrypop’s cackles filled Kennet, magnified by her Carmine power.

“Detestable,” Zed spat the words.  Nobody argued.

🟂

Avery picked up the remote and turned down the volume as the after-credits sequence of the superhero movie played out.  “Snow, you can’t let her crank up the volume like that.”

“I’m not sorry and I’ll do it again,” Snowdrop said.  She was slouched on Avery’s bed.

Avery nodded, beginning to pick up trash.

She looked down at the little red goblin who was sprawled out beside Snowdrop.  It sure looked like she’d finished an apple soda bigger than she was.  She made happy sounds and giggled, her leg kicking as she slept.

“Did you have a fun night, decompressing after everything?” Avery asked.

“No.  Cherrypop ruined it.”

“That’s good,” Avery said.  She picked up the empty soda can, then adjusted Cherrypop’s sleeping position.  “I wonder what a little goblin dreams about, her leg kicking like that.  Running?  Farts?”

Snowdrop shrugged.

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