Chapter 20: The damned

Yusuf's knees shook violently. Samara grabbed him before he could hit the floor and let him lean on her. 

Thick smoke snaked through the sea of stumblers to the rampaging flesh golem. It swirled around its limbs and solidified. The large body of the golem crashed into the ground with a resounding bang, crushing a large swathe of friendly forces. 

Samara whipped her head to the archers, to me. “Now! Kill the thing!” 

Simultaneously, we released a rain of death upon the golem. Twangs, bangs and swishes mixed to create a melody of destruction. Our projectiles rained down on the monster as it clawed down its allies in a desperate attempt to get back on its feet. 

The old man’s arrow was the first to hit. It burrowed deep into the disgusting mass of bodies and left a small crater. The many mouths on the body twitched and screamed in pain. Coincidentally, my bullet found the gaping maw of one, and flew inside before bursting into flames. 

The high-pitched wail died abruptly as light flashed through the cracks and wounds lining its body. It slumped down on the ground, limp. Smoke billowing out of every orifice. 

I heaved a sigh of relief. The runners were many, but as long as we had ammunition and the shield bearers held out, their numbers would dwindle until there were none left standing but us. 

“Thank god…” an archer muttered.

The old man snapped at him, with spittle spraying from his mouth. “Keep firing!”

So we did. 

In the distance, something thundered toward us. But there was no time to worry about it. All that mattered was here and now. 

A mound of bodies littered the line of conflict, growing larger by the minute. It was already thigh high. The sight was both gruesome and sobering. Those were once people. Citizens of an empire. All of them, children to someone. Yet we were slaughtering them like livestock.

I swallowed and kept firing. Killing someone became remarkably easy when you had a rifle. All it took to erase someone from existence was to squeeze the trigger on my wand. Then I could sit back and watch as the bullet engulfed another runner in a fiery explosion. They were about as sturdy as a human, the stumblers. If a blessed group shy of forty could slaughter like this, it was no wonder why the nations tried to keep them under control. 

Murder was easy. Way too easy. And with each pull of the trigger, it grew easier yet. 

Anna and the other shield bearers grew tired. Their moves turned sluggish, but with the mound of corpses at their feet, the pressure of the horde lessened. 

The runners didn’t seem to be capable of thought, but they were still clever enough not to rush into the spikes covering the barricade. At least they were smart enough to learn not to repeat it after a few stumbled into them and served as examples. It was a macabre sight, watching them charge into the spiked wall of death. I was just glad to not stand in the resulting shower of blood that washed over the melee fighters. 

The supply of bullets on the windowsill grew thin; I turned to the old man and yelled, “I need to resupply!” 

He nodded and picked up his own pace of fire to compensate for the lack of mine. He was a well-trained soldier. The others listened to him and followed his orders with a smile on their faces. Not only that, but he was strong. I wasn’t quite sure what his blessing did, but his arrows sure packed a punch that seemed unnatural. 

I shoved my hand inside the satchel and grabbed a handful of bullets without care, then slapped them onto the windowsill, not sparing the time to order them like before. All of them had that sloshing liquid inside—vial ammunition. 

Not shocking, since most of my supply was. My frugality in using them felt stupid now that I thought about it. I could always just go back and get more should I need to. After killing the jailor, things weren’t so bad at the chambers.

I pulled back the bolt and chambered a bullet. The motion grew more polished with each repeat of the action. Practice makes perfect, I mused and squeezed the trigger.  

The firing tune of my wand intermixed with the cacophonous orchestra of the gruesome battle. 

Just in time for the shift. 

The horde staggered forward one step in unison, as if a pulse shot through them, then stopped dead in their tracks. Their flaming eye sockets turned the windows. To me and the other archers. 

The runners roared as if possessed, making the ground shake, doors rattle, panes of glass clatter. The barrel of my wand vibrated in the cradle of threads. 

Without abandon or regard for their lives, they rushed forward, not adhering to the shape of the funnel any longer. Blood splattered onto the rows of fighters down below as the stumblers impaled themselves on the barricade. Body after body, life after life, until the pikes no longer threatened the mass of the horde. 

Samara whipped her head from side to side. Her voice cracked as she screamed, “Every one but the shield bearers back to the building!” 

Without the supporters propping them up, the shield wall shook. The weak ones were pushed back. I gritted my teeth and kept firing. Throwing caution and accuracy to the wind. My heart caught in my throat. The thought of Anna leaving her children behind gnawed at me. 

Just the smallest step back by a shield bearer created a vacancy that allowed the vicious hands of a stumbler to shoot through the gap and grab a shield of another. With a pull, one of the door wielding brutes fell into the maw of the horde. 

His screams never even reached me. They drowned in the sounds of his flesh being torn to pieces by razor sharp teeth. 

Anna glanced at the door. Her eyes shaking nervously.  

She turned to the others and said something I couldn’t make out. Not that it mattered to me. I just kept firing. Creating cloud after cloud of flames. Cringing as the fucking things climbed over each other to get past the barricade. 

The shield bearers rocked back in unison, then forth in a tackle, shoving the closest attackers back. They turned and sprinted to the library, with Anna somehow pushing past the others, and leading the charge. One after another they fell to stumblers throwing themselves at their legs. The fallen shield bearers screamed and clawed at the ground. Their bloody fingers leaving red marks where they scraped layers off of soot. 

After only a few seconds, Anna was the only one remaining. Her hot breath made drops of moisture manifest on the barred rims of her mouth guard. They shone like specks of light. 

“Fucking cover her!” screamed the old man. 

I swallowed. Over the course of only a few minutes, I shot down more runners than I had time to count. If my trigger finger was human tissue, it would have chafed from pulling the bolt repeatedly. Yet still I wasn’t confident in firing when they were so close to her, but I had to. Thinning the thick of the herd was of little consequence to Anna when they clawed at her heels. 

My sight pulled close. The already familiar feeling of magic pumping through my veins filled me with a feeling of comfort. Behind Anna, a runner was rapidly catching up. In only a few moments, it would be in range to entangle her legs with its arms, tripping her just like the others. I breathed, then exhaled, slowly. I squeezed the trigger like one would the hand of a lover. 

Recoil hit me; I paid it no mind. Instead, I tracked the graceful arc of the shot tearing through the air with a loud whistle. The stumbler bent its legs and lunged forward just as my bullet pierced its shoulder. 

Anna yelped as the sudden inferno singed her. The shockwave sent her barrelling into the doorway with a loud clamour. She made it through. 

Below, the fighters who made it back shouted noisily. Wood struck against wood. The archers kept firing. 

“James, Cal! Get down here!” Samara shouted. 

We spared each other a quick glance and gathered the ammunition we had prepared at our windows, making room for other archers. I shoved as many bullets into my pockets as I could without it becoming cumbersome. They rattled as I jogged down the stairs to the reading room. 

Anna bent at her hip, gasping for breath. Her helmet lay on the ground, discarded, revealing her sweat sodden hair. It stuck to her skin in clumps.  

I hurried to her, checking for burns. “You alright?”

She panted, “Yeah. Thanks for the cover.” 

“I didn’t burn you, did I?” 

She smiled. “Don’t worry about it. Better a slight burn than being eaten alive.” 

Samara stepped between us. “Enough. We need to evacuate the building. You both will secure our path.” She nodded at me and the old man, James.

“Where are we going?” James asked. 

Samara helped Anna stand. “Don’t know. But we have to use the rooftops.” 

I nodded and looked at James. His face turned rigid. 

“Is it dangerous?” I asked. 

Samara sighed. “Of course it is. But staying here is not an option.”

I agreed. It made no difference whether we stayed in the library. It was only a matter of time before the horde broke through the barricaded door or climbed the walls. There were many ways to enter a building like this. I clicked my tongue and cursed them for not having boarded up the windows in advance. They could have built ramparts, oiled the walls. They could have done a lot of things. 

The fighters were caked in blood and sweat. Their eyes uneasily darted between the boarded up windows and the door whenever they found a moment to spare in their desperate struggle to regain their breaths. 

James grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the sick-bay stairs. 

“We’ll do as you say,” he said, with his back turned to Samara. 

It was an unusual show of disrespect in the base. Maybe his seniority played a part in it. In all other scenarios, someone like him would lead the poor greenhorns out of a shitty situation like this. But the poor man was stuck playing goon to Samara, just because of her surname.  

The stumblers banged on the walls. The wooden fortifications creaked under the increasing pressure of their advance. 

“Hurry,” Samara whispered. Barely loud enough for me not to hear it. But I did. 

The sick-bay was cramped with civilians. Every non-combatant had been crammed inside to stay out of the way when the fight started. 

They practically swarmed me and James when we entered, asking questions about what was going on; why we were there and not outside fighting; if it was over. 

One of them grabbed my shoulder and shook me. I pulled loose and gave him a hard shove. He fell on his ass, staring at me with disbelief written all over his face. 

I bared my teeth at him. “It’s obviously not over. Calm the fuck down and don’t get in my way.” 

After that, they backed off and quietened down. They whispered with hushed voices about how I acted immaturely and unnecessarily. 

I disagreed. 

These were people who didn’t want to get their hands dirty. My blessing let me make fucking threads of magic, yet I was out the slumming it with the fighters. I could swallow their sloth if it was just how they normally acted, but this was a damn crisis. It made no goddamn sense for them to sit it out. 

I drummed my fingers against the buttstock of the rifle. Samara better have a damn good reason for this. 

James stopped at the edge of the room and jumped up high, barely reaching the butt of a rope hanging from the ceiling. As he pulled it down, a hatch with a folded ladder followed. 

He gestured at me to climb up, so I did. Above, darkness swallowed me whole. 

The crowd of civilians went dead silent. Eying James and I like we were a platter of food placed in front of a starving crowd. 

“You go first,” James said. His hand rested on the handle of his knife, his gaze lingering on the crowd. 

I gave him a quick look, and climbed up.