Girl Apocalypse

Fight to the End

Then it’s back out into the day light, breathing the air again, which isn’t as stuffy and murky as the inside of Elizabeth’s house, but still stinks of soot and smoke. We make our way through the streets, and I notice they seem to be unusually quiet for this time a day. They’re nearly empty now. They’d been busy and crowded not three hours ago, on our way to Elizabeth’s. When I remark on this, Josephine whispers that the city folk retreat when the palace guards are walking the streets and back alleys, and to keep a low profile and try to avoid being seen.

                So we creep like mice, darting down back alleys and edging around corners, backs flat against the walls, until we reach the market square. It’s eerie to see it so empty now. All the carts are gone, as if they’d never been there in the first place, or they’d simply vanished like smoke dissolving into thin air. There isn’t a scrap of fabric or fish head left behind. Nothing to indicate there’d been a market here at all.

                “Hurry, give me the diamond.” Josephine’s head is whipping around jerkily. Like a sparrow on the lookout for cats. I drop the diamond into her hand, feeling a tiny pang of something, fear or anxiety when it leaves my hand. It isn’t as if I want to keep the damn thing, but I’m so used to carrying it around. When I glance up at Josephine’s face my insides freeze. Her face is grim, and terrified at the same time and she’s looking straight at me, “Molly, I’m no more immune to this than anyone else is. The plague will hit me as soon as I’m done the incantation. For those infected earlier, it will disappear, and the plague will cease to infect others. It will not do the same for me. Do me a kindness and end me before I hurt anyone.”

                My mouth falls open, and her words impact me like blows in the gut. The witch had known she would die all along. And she expected me to be the one to do it.

                “Can’t you…heal yourself…” I stammer out, but she’s shaking her head. Then she hangs her head over the diamond, nearly touching it with her nose, and begins mumbling feverish incantation.

                Noise in the street makes me jerk away from her, running footsteps. The palace guards are coming. That’s just perfect. It’s all I need right now.

                “Gus, Ellie,” I snap at them, “when that wizard shows up, you run. I don’t care what happens, but until he does, we’ve got to hold the guards off so Josephine can finish the spell.”

                “We haven’t got any weapons,” Ellie cries, “what do we do?”

                But it’s too late to come up with a plan. The footsteps grow louder and suddenly they’re on top of us, rounding the corner and bursting into the square, tall, blocky men in silk robes. It’s tempting to make some crack about being surrounded by men in bath robes, but again, the long, pointy spears make me hold my tongue.

                I brace myself, sword hovering in the air, ready to take them all on if I can. I’ll go down fighting.

                But the men aren’t looking at me. They’re staring wide-eyed at something just behind me, and I turn to see Josephine in the throes of what looks like some kind of fit. Her entire body goes rigid, and her eyes are white slits. One hand his held aloft and frozen, fingers clenched tightly around the diamond. Horror turns my muscles to water as I spot the thick, black veins twisting from her hand, snaking down her arm at alarming speeds.

                Some of the guards begin to back away, and I have to resist the urge to follow them, to flee down the street with my tail between my legs. But Josephine is sacrificing herself for this, and I can’t let it be for nothing, so I grip the borrowed sword more tightly and step forward.