Shadow Army: A Shadows Rising Novella

14. Darkening

Cress

The stringent, cloying, somehow-just-too-green smell of sargo bush sap filled the enclosed space of the cargo bin. It was getting everywhere, oozing from the broken branches laced together over the gopher, dripping down on us and making everything sticky.

Jimmy clutched one of the ion rifles close to his chest and stared through the slats of the bin.

I concentrated on making myself breathe. Slow and even. In, out. I wasn't going to fret about any gaps in the blind. I had done it well. The gopher looked like just another sargo bush, sitting innocently in the bottom of the gulley. There wasn't any way they would see a wheel or a fender or a glint of glass. They would just roll right on by. Breathe in. Breathe out. I had double and triple checked my work. Smoothed our tire marks out of the sand and gravel. We were going to be fine. There wasn't enough time to check again, anyway. The first vehicle had already passed Karumu's place.

Breathe.

I closed my eyes tight, my stomach churning as that deep roar of military bitrack vehicles and draft lorries grew from a distant rumble to an endless bone-humming grind of noise barely a hundred yards away.

Jimmy's hand found mine in the space between us, his lanky fingers wrapping tight around my wrist as one engine was followed by another, after another, after another.

It took hours but couldn't have been more than a few minutes before there came an end, and silence fell.

For a moment, Jimmy's breathing was harsh, hissing through clenched teeth, until finally his grip on my wrist eased and he visibly relaxed.

I waited for a full minute. Then another.

Nothing.

Then I looked at Jimmy.

He swallowed, then nodded, knowing what I was saying without having to hear the words.

I got up and pushed a few of the sargo branches out of the way, then climbed over the half tailgate, exiting our makeshift hide. A second later, I pulled the gopher out of Karumu's lot and onto the road, leaves and twigs fluttering in our wake as I sent the old girl chugging up the mountain toward Darkening.

Please let Doc be alright. Let him be safe. Please...

~~~

Red's Alehouse was gone. Flat and smoldering. I might not have known what it was if it hadn't been for the coopering hoops of his huge house ale barrels sticking up out of what had been the back room like the ribs of some great metal animal. Where the buildings along the bottom curve of main street used to close off the view of the rest of the town, there were only a few crumbling walls left here and there. A chimney stack from the brick ovens in Ordell's bakery. The front door frame of Lopine & Sons furrier and miliner's. There was hardly anything but sticks and stones blocking a straight view all the way from Main Street to the Market beyond the fountain square.

Grey sticks. Grey stones. The whole town was painted in shades of grey. Grey ashes lying thick as snow on the ground, grey smudges and footprints where the soles of countless boots had walked along the road, grey on everything.

I hated Darkening. There had been plenty of folk who treated me and my mother like we were lower than bugs, even with Da around, but even they hadn't deserved this.

I went round to the back of what had once been Doc's surgery. Then I sat for a moment, staring dully at the ruin of the kitchen I had stood in barely more than two days before.

All that was left was the round stove.

The stove door was hanging by one hinge and the pipe was askew.