Saul of Sodom: The Last Prophet (11 page)

  
The bloodbath filled until the brink of dawn. 

  
Just as the sky became two blending masses of steel blue and rose-red, the last
bodies fell in the streets of District 5.  In the rest of Nova Crimea, the sounds
of battle were fading.  North Street (“Poretsky Decent” according to the broken
signs over block corners) was transformed into the Styx, a meandering red river
of dilapidation and mutilation.  Most of the buildings still stood.  The ground
was uprooted and the fog of dust left in the wake of the blitz settled.

  
Saul stood, gazing out over the scene from beneath the arch of a broken wall.  The
clouds rolled in and a light snow coated the corpses white.  Soon, the corpses
would be dragged away, loaded into piles and shipped back to the martial world
for strip-down.

  
In the calm after the storm, scenes from the previous hours repeated in his
mind, and he kept coming back to the martial woman with the sapphire eyes.  Her
blood still caked his hands and face.  He could still smell her breath as the
blade tore in and feel the snap of her neck through the shaft of the blade. 
Now that the heat of battle had dissipated, the thoughts flooded in:
the image of the blood shooting out, and the writhing
eyes.  He was certain that he had killed many times before.  The blood of the
dead coursed through his veins like anemia.  So, why did
this
woman
linger?  What fresh hell was it he saw as the life left her eyes?  “Proximity
heightens the empathy” the neuralists always said.  But, what he felt at that moment
was no amplified sensation of the same small grumble in his soul which
naturally follows the kill -- at least without the neurals.  And he remembered,
at that moment, Malachi’s warning, something about nightmares spilling over…

   The cigarette reached its last draw and he flicked the
butt away.  A single file of East Grid soldiers were marched out of the wrecked
ingress of a nearby building, fingers laced behind their heads, gun muzzles
prodding them onward like cattle for the slaughter with the other POWs being
herded in streets.  A faint stir in the air caused his head to jerk around.  He
took up his gun and descended, following the noise to the door of a small
apartment block. 

   The locks were shot and the doors hung on a single hinge. 
He nudged the door gently with the muzzle and, three inches into its swing, the
door broke off from its seams and fell.

   He sidestepped into the entrance before the sound of the
clatter pierced the silence, lining the sights down a long, dark and empty
corridor.  The strobe light on the end of the rifle flashed over thin walls, shredded
by crossfire.  Three civilian bodies lay dead amid shards of broken glass, dust
and dirt. There were bloody trails left in the wake of the escape.  He stepped
over the doorsill and into the dark, and glass cracked and splintered
underfoot.  The floor was covered with bloody footmarks.  As he approached the
first apartment, something stirred.  The rifle jolted in his hands. 

   A thick trail of smeared blood led from the corridor and
stopped at the threshold of the apartment door.  The blood still looked fresh. 
He followed the blood trail with the tip of the rifle barrel, approaching the
threshold and nudging the door open.  The sound of wheezing, moaning breaths
became distinct.

   The door opened. 

   Settled with his back against a bullet-torn wall, lay a
man, legs twisted, mangled and spread before him, a round, red stain forming on
the carpet.  He was an East Grider and he was alive, though barely so.  Both of
his legs were shot through the knees, bleeding, and the wound below his
collarbone was fresh too.  The breaths squeezed into his chest and his head
lolled to the side.  The face was pale behind the streaks of blood.  When the
drooping eyes saw the vague figure reach out, a quivering hand rose.  

   “Stay calm,” said Saul.  “I will help you.”

   “
Net
…”  The East Grider feebly tried to wrestle him
away.

   “
Ya pomogu
” he insisted, waving the hand aside.
 
“
Rasslab
…”

   “
Net!
” the East Grider coughed.  Blood sputtered
from his lips and a crimson drool seeped out the sides of his mouth.

   He felt the hand clench tightly around his wrist, shaking
with fear.  He looked up and saw the eyes shimmer, as though sobered for the
very first time by the imminence of death.  The hand slowly released and tried
to reach for something.  The East Grider gasped the syllables of a Russian word
which vaguely sounded like “painkillers.”

   “
Khorosho…”
he nodded. 

   He took out two vials of sedative from the utility belt in
his gear and plunged the first vial into the neck, above the wound.  At once,
he felt the man’s relief as his body stopped trembling.  He threw the vial
aside, took the cap off the second vial and pressed down on the same place.  The
East Girder’s head hung, his chest settled and the hands wilted at his sides. 
He was gone. 

   A long, almost memorial, silence endured, after which he
put his hand over the man’s forehead and drew down the eyelids.  As he looked
upon the departed visage, he wondered why the aspect of sleep should bequeath such
strange nobility to the image of death. 

   Suddenly, to his left; a stir.  He jerked round, gun
raised, finger pressed on the trigger and the light flashed over the figure
standing at the entrance. 

  
“Easy there, commander…” 

   His trigger finger eased.

  
A pair of gemstone eyes shone through the gloom. 

  
He lowered his weapon, glaring back at Celyn with the look of someone who had
been caught in the middle of some disgraceful act.  He came to his feet and
stood still and silent, staring at the floor.  

  
For a long time, neither of them spoke.  After a while, Celyn sighed and
reached behind her back, took out a bottle of clear liquid, unscrewed the top,
drank and screwed the top back on again.  “Here,” she said, and tossed him the
bottle.  “It’s water.  I got it from a vending machine.”

  
He studied the contents of the unlabeled bottle nonetheless, returning a
sceptical glower.  He took off the top, cupped his hand, poured and splashed
his face.  Celyn, meanwhile, let down the long, frayed braids of her hair and
rolled out her neck.  “We actually pulled that one off,” she groaned and
chuckled with relief.  “Talk about cutting it close.”

  
The water ran wine-red in his hands as he scooped handful after handful up to
his face with increasing vehemence until it ran clear, whereupon he exhaled and
dried his face in a dirty, frayed vest lying on the floor. He then held out the
garment and examined it briefly for size as a fresh thought occurred to him: 
He would need civilian clothes.

  
He came into the only bedroom in the apartment; flicked the switch four times. 
No light.  Apart from the ruffled sheets on the bed, everything else in the
apartment was still in place.  Celyn waited on the threshold and observed
without a word as he propped the rifle against the wall and stepped up to the
bureau.  A sharp pain shot through his arm as soon as he tried to pull open the
top drawer.  He winced and clutched his shoulder, feeling the sting of his
touch against the exposed pulp of a wound beneath the rip in his gear.

  
“You’re hit?” Celyn came toward him. 

  
Now that the rush of battle had passed, his mind was being awakened to all kinds
of sensations.  The pain oozed into his flesh.

  
“Come here,” she said, beckoning him onto the edge of the bed.  “Can you raise
your arm?” 

  
He attempted to do so and managed, subduing a grimace with a clenched jaw, but
not the shaking of his outstretched arm.

 
“Looks like the round tore through the deltoid,” said Celyn, with a careful eye
on the laceration.   She emptied out all the contents of an iatric pack and
opened up a vial.  “This may sting a little,” she said, holding the vial over
his shoulder. 

  
He subdued another grimace as the pale fluid poured out and seared his flesh
like a brand.  The burn lingered until the painkillers kicked in, and the gear was
gently peeled back over the wound.  He watched her from the corner of his eye. 
Her touch was tender through the dead flesh.  The sounds of the faraway battles
had all but disappeared, and an uncanny peace settled upon them, in the solace
of that dark room.

  
“So…” Celyn murmured, “now you’ll just …disappear into the night?”

  
He sensed the hints of longing in her voice.  “Not yet,” he answered, quietly, “but…
soon.”   He flinched again.  The suturing gel filled the gap of the wound and
the raw flesh tingled.

  
“This whole region is one big warzone.  Where will you go?”

  
“South, toward Mamayev.  Then east, to the Kazakh border.”

  
“That’s East Grid territory.”

  
“There is no choice,” he said.  “I cannot remain in the West.”

  
He felt the wound contract and the binding gently but firmly layered over the
wound

 
“That is one hell of a march,” said Celyn.  “Better stock up on supplies.  You
may run into a few skirmishes on the way.”

  
“I can take care of myself.”  He brusquely came to his feet once the last strip
of gauze was layered and a loud explosion sounded from nearby. 

  
They rushed out of the building just in time to see the last fragments of a
severely battered building tumbling into the street.  Celyn came up by his side.