The Throes of Death
Breathe. Ringing filled the inside of their head.
They gasped, sputtering against their waterlogged mask. Tore it off so all that choked them was the taste of their own blood and the rain hitting their teeth. The landings swam above them, bright splotches blotting chunks of the picture out the way the ringing blotted out crashes of thunder. Otsana stood aloof on the catwalk, peering down at them.
Warmth spread from their side, combatting the icy, numbing rain. It was almost pleasant. Almost. They let their eye close, head throbbing. Almost.
Shit, their stitches.
Their eye flew open, hand flying to the warm, wet injury. They sat up with a groan, only to collapse back down to their elbows, gasping and shivering. Stars burst in their head, over their vision. Hot pokers ripped at their chest and empty eye.
Shit, fuck, ow. They scrubbed their eye to combat stinging tears, if only because they needed clearer vision to see Otsana. Except she'd vanished from the catwalk. Probably coming to finish the job. They rocked to their side, clutching the torn path of new scar. Was that three broken ribs, or four? They swore they could feel the snapped ends scraping against each other when they moved. Blood drooled from somewhere behind their teeth. That wasn't great.
Legs sprawled over theirs, eyes open, bloodshot, was Jonesy. Railing bulging from his spine, a pillar aimed at the blackened sky, shards of fractured bone buckled outwards from its base.
They staggered to their feet, swayed in doubles. It was a straight shot to the open door, the lighter patch of grey in the distance acted as their guide.
Between flashes of lightning, a silhouette appeared I the door. Small, drenched. Radio started towards them, a bright streak of electricity lit the wide whites of its eyes.
Gone.
Never there.
True grabbed the slippery pipe and shook the body loose, bone scraping on the rusted metal. It let go with a squelch and flopped to the floor like a wet sandbag, landing in a puddle of its own fluids. Steam curled from the gaping wound, blood sloughing from the blunted point of the railing. It was unwieldy, it slipped in their grasp, but it was all they had. Their shovel hung from its clip four storeys up.
They peered up, skimming the flights of stairs and finding no glimpses of activity. Shrilling ringing bounced off the walls of their ear canals. They scanned the shadows for movement. The sensation of being watched set their hair on end. And yet, no sign of Otsana.
Warily, they backed away from the stairs and the corpse. Pressed a hand to the split as they went. Blood had soaked through to their coat. Oh well. Propping the rail on the wall, they fumbled with their sash and managed to get it up around the burst injury and cinched it tight. A sharp bite of pain bleached their vision white, then passed. Good enough. They'd get stitched back together when they made it back to the After Market. They were almost done. Almost. The bomb laying on the catwalk would have to suffice because they were not making it back up those stairs.
The downpour let up briefly as they limped further from the destroyed roof. The wind swirled around them, stealing their last remnants of body heat. A gust knocked them against the wall, rattling their broken bones.
"Ouch," they muttered under their breath. Still kind of hard to breathe. Kind of hurt a lot.
A figure appeared in the door. They hefted their makeshift weapon, ready.
"True!" It was Cal rushing towards them. There were scorch marks up his bare arms, a split-open bruise bubbled on his crown. Eliza trailed after him, arms empty of bombs and knives. "Suni's dead. They blew the Market. Where's Radio, Jonesy?"
"Dead, he—" a cough interrupted them, white-hot agony flash-bombed their body and left the taste of iron painted on the roof of their mouth. "He sold us out."
"You good?" Cal's voice sounded wavy.
"Mmhmm." The fishery had tipped on its side again. The ear ringing blew up to an entire brass section over which the heard faint strains of cursing. Eliza gripped their chin and forced them to look up at her. Two Eliza's stared back down at them, the crazy in her eyes a touch intense. Too much like Allsaint.
"You ruined my stitches," she tutted.
"Not now." Cal smacked her hand away. Bending, he looped True's arm over his shoulders.
"Ribs," True gasped as blinding waves wracked them, "ribs."
Cal stumbled, footing lost on the rain-slick floor. Cleared his throat. Lost his hold.
True hadn't heard the knife slide in. But they heard the tearing flesh when Cal collapsed, a midnight shade of red sloughing from his open neck.
Eliza blinked down at him.
True pivoted to catch a glancing blow with their pipe. A sneer flitted over Otsana's harsh expression. She butted what was left of True's nose, slamming a shock of static across their brain.
Groaning, they struggled to keep their feet under them. They slipped on the blood. Cal's blood. He lay face-down in it, scarred hand stretched out over Eliza's foot, as if he'd been reaching for help. Unmistakably dead. Hysterics clawed at True's throat.
"What are you laughing about?" Otsana snarled, seizing the pipe and slamming them into the wall with it. All the air vacated their lungs with a crunch.
Scraping in a breath, they said, "You fucked up."
A streak of pale skin and dark hair slammed into Otsana. Someone's skull cacked on the cement. Devoid of the brief support from Otsana pinning them to the wall. True sagged to the floor. Chest cavity filled with angry wasps, they could do little else but watch the fight.
Eliza came up on top. Fists clawed into Otsana's hair. Gone was any semblance of sanity. She was feral. She was furious. She slammed Otsana's head into the floor. Again, again. Screaming while she did.
A dark stain bloomed on the wet concrete. Otsana's knife lay abandoned, just within reach of her searching fingers. Lurching to their feet, True limped for the knife.
"Eliza!" the warning fell on deaf ears, punctuated by the sharp abrupt gasp of a woman with a knife plunged into her gut.
Blood fountained over Tosana. It shrouded her, coating her eyes and everything around them. Steam gathered where hot blood struck cold floor. With a guttural cry, Eliza wrenched Otsana's arm, knife and all, from the gaping wound. Bit off two fingers. She dove into Otsana's scream, sinking her jagged teeth into cheek muscle and ripped it free.
True straggled closer to the fight, using the bloodied pipe as a crutch.
Otsana heaved Eliza off. Brandishing the knife in her mangled hand, but the blade didn't get the opportunity to bite flesh. With a solid thunk, her head whipped back. An impression of the broken handrail denting the side of her blood-soaked skull. She deflated. Another crack of the pipe crunched her eye socket. By the time she hit the ground she was limp, lifeless.
They kicked away the knife for good measure. Knelt in the spreading pool of blood to get a better look at Eliza's damage.
She swayed, hands pressed loosely to the stab wound. It dumped her life out in pulses, her own heartbeat jettisoning blood from the injury.
"It's better this way," she said, glassy unfocused eyes fixed on Cal's body. Her breaths came in lurches that rattled her chest. "I never wanted that stupid disease to get me."
Her hands abandoned the pretence of holding anything in. It was too late, there was too much blood. Steam rose around her, a ghost twining itself around the remains of its body a final time. And the body sank, exhausted at last.
True closed her eyes.
It was time to go.
The storm, for all its shrieking and downpour, had not scrubbed the fish odor from the island. True hobbled from the fishery and spotted the lump at the island-side base of the bridge. Radio had laid the final bomb. Radio itself was nowhere to be seen.
The storm battered True, livid and writhing. They scanned the far bank for glimpses of Radio as they limped for the bridge. Flickers of orange peeked between the trees, phantoms of the last After Market. Between flashes of lightning and fire, marched the Red Faction.
A mob much larger than the one that had marched out of the fishery not too long ago teemed in the street. Both the hunting party and the shadow killers at the base of the bridge returning home. The head of the pack set foot on the bridge, cutting off all escape.
Lightning cracked, transforming night to day and carrying with it a final, desperate idea. True cast their gaze over the far bank once more.
There, in the clump of brush where they had waited earlier, a form, Radio.
Crashing to their knees by the bomb, they freed the bottle from their belt. Popped the lid. Dumped half the contents on the bomb, then heaved to their feet and hobbled as fast as they could manage toward the fishery.
The bottle coughed the last of its content midway between building and bridge. They cast it aside, dug their lighter from the coat pocket. If ever the needed a lighter that sparked in the wind, it was now.
The mob reached the halfway point of the bridge, by now the lead must have spotted True, but they made no effort to hurry. The troupe carried on its steady march. The only way off the island was through its mass. What was one lone scavenger compared to their war party? The Red Faction had already won.
The bridge groaned as it took on the full mass of the mob. A groan the Red Faction would hear again and again as its numbers grew. As its message spread. As it shaped the world into what it should be instead of what it was.
The tail of the mob stepped foot on the bridge as the head was mid-step off, and in that brief moment when the entirety of the Red Faction stood on the barnacled wooden bridge, the scavenger knelt and touched their flame to the fuel.
Fire flare, scorching an unstoppable path toward the Faction.
Spark, flash, boom.
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